#qoph

This is Water: The Gnosis of Attention

A man once told a story about two fish. One asked: “How’s the water?”. The other had no idea what water was. This parable was retold by David Foster Wallace. But what he offered could stand beside any page of the Zohar or the Corpus Hermeticum.

The parable that begins with a fish unaware of its element conceals a wisdom older than its author. It repeats the ancient instruction whispered to initiates before the mirror of the waters: do awake within the medium that sustains you.

David Foster Wallace spoke to graduates in the tone of a secular priest; his sermon touched the banal of a supermarket queue. He warned the audience of the invisible water of habit, of the slow hypnosis that turns the mind into a wheel of resentment and self-reference. To awaken, one must first see the element one breathes.

The letter Qoph marks the nocturnal hemisphere of consciousness. It belongs to the Arcanum The Moon and the unconscious instinct that rules without words. When the fish becomes aware of water, it pierces the veil of Qoph. It glimpses the element as element and the unconscious as medium. When consciousness turns upon itself, Qoph transmutes into Resh. And Resh means the head, the face turned toward the Sun.

More at The Mirror of Sienna.