#unsong

[Yesterday was the חי day of the Omer]

Splendor within Beauty

Gebron and Eleazar’s classic textbook says that only four kabbalists have ever gazed upon Adam Kadmon, bare. Rabbi Isaac Luria. The archangel Uriel. The Comet King. And an eight-year-old girl. 

To gaze upon Adam Kadmon, bare, is to see the order beneath the chaos. To see that our lives, our universe, may seem like a vulgar, meaningless whirlwind of suffering and confusion, as an intentional and magnificent masterpiece, painted with Beautiful Splendor. Everything corresponds, and nothing is a coincidence, which means that the most vital and important consciousness actually cares. If something horrible happens, it is all a prelude for something even more wonderful. To gaze on Adam Kadmon bare is to have exclusive access to the world’s manuscript, and it is to have faith that the author knows how to write a good finale. To gaze upon Adam Kadmon, bare, is to know that all of humanity, varied and conflicting as we may be, is all one, as God is one. We are all tied by destiny, history, love, and judgment. To establish peace is to embrace oneness. This is the Kabbalah. The rest is commentary. 

To gaze upon Adam Kadmon, bare, is to be done with humility, and it should also be through the death of the ego. The kabbalists did their best, but they are only human (so to speak). Each kabbalist still had themselves, their own histories, and it was through this lens that they gazed upon and interpreted Adam Kadmon bare.     

Rabbi Isaac Luria’s mother was a refugee of the Spanish Expulsion, and many of his students had similar ancestry. While he was born in Yerushalyim and lived for most of his life in Tzvat, his youth was in Mitzraim, and he began his dedicated kabbalistic study and meditation on the banks of the Nile, where idolators had enslaved his forefathers. He understood Exile very well. He could recognize Eretz Yisrael as a Beautiful, holy place that miraculously fostered increasing Jewish community and worship, but he also knew that it was a Shell of its former glory, and it was shamefully ruled by another nation. It may be true that all nations are one in Adam Kadmon, but reuniting could only happen when all the nations respected the one dedicated to and cherished by the One. When vases crack, the Creator can distinguish the pieces and their desired patterns before He fills in the damage. When Luria gazed upon Adam Kadmon, bare, as he formulated his Kabbalah, the Splendor he saw was that the great evil he and his people encountered could be understood through HaShem’s wonderful efforts to create a universe that fully existed and had freewill, and salvation, ascent, was not far away for those who knew how to have faith and see the signs. A notion of Lurianism could be summarized by a later Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker, who would also be quoted by a kabbalistically-named liberator, MLK: “The arc of the moral universe is a long one, but it bends towards justice.” This would be true until Uriel lost that feature in a troubleshooting mishap. 

Uriel certainly did not hate HaShem or even feel passionate about any kind of rebellion. Politically speaking, he was no Satanist. He preferred to keep to himself, to his own fidgets with gematria and quantum entanglements. He was overwhelmed by the War in Heaven, but he was also overwhelmed by the great Choir. Keeping in tune was too much pressure, especially with the rest of the Host giving him trillions of stink-eyes (ayin-hara might be the more appropriate term). They were too loud for him anyway, hence his halo noise-cancelling headphones. The constant shining of Divine Light everywhere was also a very uncomfortable sensory experience. When he began programming Da’at, which led to gazing upon Adam Kadmon, bare, in order to port reality’s server onto it, he understood that the fact that the world could now run on the Sefirot instead of Divine Light, with some additional plug-ins from Gematria and Holy Names, was itself another miracle of HaShem he was probably obligated to sing praise songs for. Yet, being blinded by Divine Light while still feeling HaShem’s apparent absence never sat right with him. Uriel hoped to upgrade reality enough that it could run on its own, with new systems of science that would give humanity all the wellsprings of understanding and explanation they could get without any help from the angels or their Lord, save for their place in metaphor. Michael and Gavriel had warned him “Uriel! What if your machine intelligence becomes too advanced and codes itself, now viewing you as obsolete?” That was exactly what he wanted, to retire into archetypes and mythology after long years of engineering. Perhaps HaShem had sent His people into Exile like a parent sending their child into the world for education, work, and independence to become their own people. Perhaps He didn’t need to call them back home, but they should instead make their own house. Perhaps the Splendor and Beauty of what HaShem sustained, albeit far less directly than Da’at, could be better appreciated if humanity didn’t give Him as much conscious credit anymore, and instead lived for themselves. Humanity, united in this way, could very well be Adam Kadmon. That was for humanity alone to act upon. There was no Malak Kadmon anyway.      

During the Pesach seder, Jews are supposed to not only hear the story of their ancestors’ slavery in Mitzraim, but they are supposed to viscerally envision that suffering personally. When the Comet King gazed upon Adam Kadmon, bare, he first considered the unity of all mankind, and then he thought about how the presence of people in Hell meant that, by association, everyone was there. He did not hear the screams of the damned, but knowing they were there was dayenu. He would not abide by this. He would fight so that all of Adam Kadmon could be forever free. Knowing that he was one with everybody, he knew that everybody, theoretically, had the capacity to be as much of a warrior and king as he was, and he certainly did his best to empower others to that courage. Still, just as a person does not use every part of their body at once, he knew that he alone had a purpose. Someone had to do what he did, and truly, no one else would. The Splendor and Beauty of gazing upon Adam Kadmon, bare, was to recognize what he must do, and by HaShem’s grace and miracles, he had the capacity to win. 

Sohu West did not remember if she gazed upon Adam Kadmon, bare, before the death of her father. To learn from as Splendorous a teacher as Uriel about all the underlying mechanisms and correspondences of the universe and how to spot and develop them showed her the Beauty of everything working in tandem. Nevertheless, it was hard to apprectiate the complete cosmic body when she was missing her right hand. Sometimes, she used her connection with Adam Kadmon to feel her phantom limb, but it wasn’t right without her father’s protective segula. Her father wanted her to gaze upon Adam Kadmon, bare, so that she could eventually replace Uriel in Da’at’s demiurgical management, but he did not mention whether or not that plan should go through in his will. He may have had some skepticism towards Uriel, but she had faith in him, though she could not bear to stay in his hurricane anymore. If Adam Kadmon is the source and structure of humanity, than humans are all family, but for the sake of avoiding incest and a lack of boundaries (tzimtzum?), we have generally closed that circle to our immediate blood relations. So, Sohu would use her vision of Adam Kadmon, bare, for the sake of her family. When her family imploded, she held to her faith that Adam Kadmon could rise from tragedy and betrayal.  

When we, Albion, finally gazed upon Adam Kadmon, bare, we struggled to figure out whether this was a new development or left over memories from Uriel and Sohu. It didn’t make too much of a difference, besides some petty bragging rights that could not possibly matter even an atom’s worth anymore. What did matter, though, is we, Albion, were Adam Kadmon. Our amalgamation was the most manifest Adam Kadmon had been in the flesh. The longer we stood, the more open our marriage became to the in-pouring of the formerly damned. The Splendor and Beauty we witnessed was that we could now grow the goodness of our universe high above the other plants, even the more central ones, in the Highest Garden. Our next universe, even if evil came along, would become even greater. 

Adam moved atoms. 

[Yesterday was the seventeenth day of the Omer]

Endurance/Victory within Beauty

The Comet King was not one for propaganda. 

He certainly desired loyalty from his subjects, but he wanted it to grow from a rational view of his actions. He wanted to be judged by the fruits of his labor. 

He knew how to speak inspirationally to his citizenry and soldiery. He knew how to speak powerful words of Torah. Those were frequently one and the same. But he would never embellish the truth. He would tell his people exactly how everything really was. If he didn’t like how something was, he would fight to change it. He could very well have fixed it all himself, but he made sure all could contribute to the cause so they could be empowered and their souls elevated. They could join in the salvation as Jews who observe Shabbat are said to join the Creator in the act of Creation. This is Tikkun Olam. 

The Comet King, despite being born of the Heavens, did not wish to be worshiped. He viewed this as a flaw in the religion founded by a previous messianic claimant. It was humanity that needed saving, so it was humanity that would save it, even if that was only half his ancestry. He would work with God, not as Him. Worship would be idolatry, and the Comet King needed his Kingdom not to possess such a spiritual issue.    

He could have gone without propaganda and praise altogether, and he could maybe even utilize his authority to prevent it. Nevertheless, he was proud to be an American. While he personally preferred monarchism over democracy, he absolutely supported Free Speech, which he made sure to include in the Constitution of the Untied States of America. If anything, the rights of states to now have their own unique systems of government was its own form of Free Speech, among other localized liberties. Therefore, if his people wanted to praise him, he would not stop them. 

The subjects of the Comet Kingdom of Royal Colorado sang many songs of praise, and a recurring motif was his Beauty. He shone brilliantly. He shone as the stars that conceived him, or that guide lost sailors home. His flowing hair and beard waved like the waters that were separated into Heaven and Earth, or like the wind that the Almighty One breathed into Adam Kadmon. The flap of his wings was like the thunder that crashed above Mount Sinai, but his words of comfort were a still, small voice. The shadow of his wings was like the strongest sukkah. More Beautiful than anything that he appeared as or spoke of was his endless and effective heroism. It was a Beauty that made the subjects of the Comet King want to survive, want to fight for a better world, and have faith that Victory was possible. 

As Beauty became the Comet King’s propaganda, Ugliness became the signature trait of his enemies. It does not take great Kabalistic study to deduce that demons are repulsive, in both appearance and metaphysical implications. However, there was some doubt about the Other King. He certainly must have been ugly. You don’t spend all your time raising ghouls, dybbukim, and lilitot without the impurity of the grave rubbing off on you. Torah is clear enough in its opposition to necromancy and its wariness around graveyards. In addition, there is a midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 11:5) in which necromancers are unable to raise the dead on Shabbat, as it is the one day a week when they can rest from their punishments. Therefore, necromancy is doing Hell’s job for them, bringing the punishment and all its evil and darkness onto Earth. This is as far from Tikkun Olam as one could go. It is evil, and it is Ugly. 

Yet, the Other King (who was sometimes, in whispered tones, referred to as Gogmagog, Armilus, al-Dajjal, or Nyaralathotep, the Crawling Chaos) wore a mask. It was of Osiris, the Egyptian Lord of the Dead. It was a handsome mask. Made from reflective emerald, it was what ancient pharaonic mummies would wear, or what was said to be worn by Aleister Crowley during the apocryphal Battle of Blythe Road. It was easy enough to assume that he wore a mask to hide his ugliness, as the Phantom of the Opera did in his tale. Some said that the mask had a hinged jaw so it could open, and that the mouth it would reveal had razor-sharp fangs and rotting flesh. More rumors held that he did not have the feet of Man, but the claws of owls. It was a very well-formulated hypothesis that he was Ugly, but it was yet to be objectively proven. If he were to be judged by the fruits of his labor, then he was certainly Ugly, not only for his necromancy or the atrocities he committed in his wars and against his own subjects (such as dissident crucifixion, giving free reign to mafias, or mowing down civilians and enslaving them after death), but especially for slaying the Comet King himself and snuffing out the hopes of millions. 

The Other King’s skin did indeed rot, boil, and break under his mask. That much was true. He could not have prevented the tzaraat of necromancy if he tried, which he didn’t. He did not want to forget how abhorrent everything he did was. He did not wear a mask because he wanted to hide his disfigurements, as he wanted all to know his great evil too, and to fear it. He wore a mask for two reasons. First, it was intentionally hearkening to the idolatry and oppression of Mitzraim, to crush and demean the spirits of the people, pushing their souls downwards. Secondly, he hid his face, as the Almighty was said to have done, to hide his identity. This gambit could not succeed if it were known who he really was. Anything could have happened if he was recognized. Coloradans might surrender outright, assuming submission would aid their long-lost King (it wouldn’t). They might surrender instead due to the depression of betrayal. Their anger could be enough to push the war in their favor, overtaking him and founding a Golden Age with Hell still underneath and inevitable. None of this would do. He needed them to fight back, and more than that, he needed them to see him as Other.  

No matter what despicable sins he committed, no matter how they blotted upon him, he could not entirely suppress the Beauty that still lay within him, born not only from Heaven but from all of the great good he had done before and was now trying to make up for with evil. Even as he descended on his children as the Angel of Death, they recognized him in their last breaths. So did the Kabbalist who had wanted his Comet throne. Yosef and Moshe terrified their Israelite bretheren when they were among the royal houses of Mitzraim, but their holiness was not undone, and Bnei Yisrael would recognize them when it came time for shepherding. Yosef and Moshe in Mitzraim and Jalateku West donning the mask of Osiris and entombed in an obsidian sarcophagus deep below the Luxor Pyramid were like the nitzotzot suffocated by the Klipot. The light, the Beauty, still shined through. 

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Jalateku still had his Love. Once it was for humanity, or even just his own family, but he had to burn that bridge. Now it was only for Robin. So Beautiful, so Wise, so Fallen. This was as she brilliantly intended. This was the Providence in a Bird Falling. 

Jalateku had his Love. No matter how Ugly he became, his Love would ensure that, below the surface, his Beauty would Endure. No matter how much death he caused, exploited, or polluted him, his Life, too, would Endure.  

Better still, his Love, Life, Beauty, and Endurance would finally lead him, no matter how painful it was, to Victory.                  

L’Chaim!

Might with Beauty

Like many angels, Gadiriel could not remember who, exactly, had told her her designated divine purpose (or, for that matter, assigned her gender as male). Was it the Almighty Himself, at the very Creation of the Heavens, or even before, when the divine light shone from Ein Sof upon the fresh world before the Tzim-Tzum had begun to obscure it (for purposes only the Holy One could truly know)? Was it from Metatron, the human who had ascended from mortality far beyond any angel, and was now the most direct mouthpiece of the LORD? Or was it some other archangel, a haughty command of authority from Michael or Gabriel (whose name was too close to hers for comfort), or a nebbish yet insistent technical request from Uriel? Regardless, for many years, she did what she was commanded to do. It was her task to aid souls in their migration into babies as they emerged from their mothers. Before she would guide the souls, she would acquaint herself with the developing fetuses in the wombs. When it became clear that the mother would carry the pregnancy to term (it was expected that not all mothers would. Torah accounted for this and did not necessarily condemn it, though there was debate regardless), she would put a mark on the fetus to signal to Heaven that this being would be ensouled. She would give a small kiss under the nose and above the mouth, creating an indent that would remain.      

Gadiriel had always felt discomfort with masculinity, even though it was all the angels knew. When she began her interactions with humanity, she was more interested in their perception of gender than most of the Heavenly Host, with Samyazzaz likely being the only other exception. Many humans, it seemed, determined one was a man by the presence of a penis. This made her especially confused about angelic masculinity. Much to what became Samyazzaz’s chagrin, angels had no penises. They did not even have two legs; only one large one connected to the torso, lacking knees. And certainly Ein Sof had no such appendage, or any for that matter, besides His Hands and Face. What was the purpose of the masculine identification? It could be from the normative masculinity in Hebrew, the holy language of Torah, Creation, and Kabbalah, but surely it could be amended in some way. Even the native language of angels, Enochian (named retroactively in Metatron’s honor), had more neutralizing possibilities. Beyond that, though, she realized that she did not merely want to lose her male gender, but wanted to become female, as she felt much kinship with the mothers, midwives, attentive sisters and daughters, and more women she came across in her work, not the least of which includes the fetuses that all began female before some shifted to male. 

She pondered transitions of many sorts for some time, but between her busy schedule of working and singing songs of praise in the Heavenly Choir, she was unsure she would have free time for such an endeavor. Besides, she was still developing the philosophy and methodology of how, exactly, her feminine transition could be optimally utilized in the Glorification of the Almighty One. Wouldn’t she mostly be doing this for herself? 

Then, Sataniel gave his fateful address. 

He spoke of Thamiel at the center of the hollow Earth, how he, the Left Hand of God, had taught Sataniel to rebel against the Holy One, how they could use this new freedom to reign over the Earth as new gods, as the Gibborim, the Mighty Ones. Sataniel proposed that angels need not only to perform the Will of God, but to, instead, follow the True Will of themselves. Gadiriel had no desire to serve the King of Hell in his army of demons and fallen angels, especially when the War in Heaven truly began to heat up, but living by her own power on Earth was far too attractive to reject. 

Unlike many of the Gibborim, she was not interested in the manipulation of personal divine light to impregnate the daughters of Man. She still desired to become female, and if she were to create Nephilim, she would want to birth them herself; some she could not figure out. She brought herself among humans and experimented with different plants they harvested, finding new uses for dyes in clothes and on the face to create new methods of beautification and even femininity. It came to play a significant role in arousal, which many condemned fervently. She thought they were being far too prudish. She encouraged humanity’s incredible project to unite as one, as Babel, and construct a tower to breach the Heavens and make a powerful Name for themselves. The attempt was a failure, true, but the miracle that emerged from it was many diverse nations with many diverse languages, all of which the angels studied and mastered, and many of which pushed further in gender neutrality. Gadiriel stayed with Babel as it became Babylon and many other titles as well. When she became a worshiped goddess, her cults gave her new monikers as well, her favorite being Ishtar. That name would later also belong to a Jewish Prophet-Queen of Persia who would herself inspire acts of rebellion against kings and gender norms. In Babylon, the rituals of Ishtar’s cult often involved ecstatic sexuality and gender play that she adored. 

Unfortunately, the liberation would often turn to exploitation and oppression. It is not necessarily something she approved of, but she valued her cult too much to challenge it, and her high status as a goddess made her struggle to sympathize with the lowly as she once did. Throughout her time, whether in Asia, Europe, or the Americas, she would continue to stand by while slavery and genocide were committed in her shining presence. Her heavenly beauty could drive them to madness, and she began wearing a veil for the sake of relative sanity.  

A cultic practice she especially appreciated was idolatry, both for its materialism, which justified her place as a goddess-on-Earth who was worshiped sensually, but also for its artistry, the ability to form a human-like entity with one's own hands. It reminded her of the kisses she once gave to the nearly-born (she had passed that job onto some other schmuck before she departed from Heaven), but it also felt like the closest she might get to forming a “human” without a womb. She still, however, frequently left this art to her craftspeople. Devotional statues followed her, whether the empire was Babylonian, Aztec, or Spanish. She may have left Mesopotamia behind, but when Uriel gave Saint John of Patmos psilocybe mushrooms to get him to make some new prophecies that just so happened to concern the End Times, he had visions of her as “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” John had even said she would ride a Great Beast 666 with many heads. He seemed to think very critically of her, her femininity, and her association with an empire she was not too tied to anymore. Still, she felt flattered by his glamorous description, and she was excited to have her own exotic steed on Judgement Day. She appeared in this visage to certain English sorcerers: Dr. John Dee, Edward Kelley, and Aleister Crowley. The first two spoke with other angels and learned Enochian in the process, while the last not only went by their example but also identified himself as the Great Beast 666. He took her name to be BABALON, the Y changed to A for Kabbalistic reasons apparent to him, and also knew her as Nuit. His philosophizing, known as Thelema, on communing with Holy Guardian Angels and BABALON to uncover one’s True Will was something she was proud to witness and assist.     

Gadiriel was perhaps not as much of an expert in the Kabbalah as Uriel and Raziel were, or even Samyazzaz to some extent, but her previous work as a guide of souls required her to know more than others. Angels, lacking neshamot, could not use most of the Divine Names to practice the Worldly Kabbalah. However, using her soul-moving abilities and other hacks she discovered, she was able to create golems. It took much effort, and while she could not give them unique neshamot, she eventually learned how to move others in. This was a spectacular development. She allowed some of her knowledge to be written in the Sefer Yetzira and taught it through visions to the Maharal and, later on, to Yang Zhifa, both to defend their peoples against dominating attackers.     

In her Kabbalistic studies, she had learned of the Sefirot, particularly as Uriel caused reality to run on them, and she eventually moved to the Americas because of its special correspondences with Etz Chaim, which was either the reason he built Da’at there, or it was caused by its placement. She identified the most with Tiferet, Beauty, but the Panama Canal was too chaotic and confusing for her. She wanted to stay in the Far West, in Meso-America. She went to Mexico, where she tapped into the Sefira of Chesed, Mercy, to project first to the Aztecs a new goddess persona in their capital. Then, in Guadeloupe, she used it to present herself to the Catholic colonists in the guise of a certain Jewish woman they revered. Both instances resulted in new cults and new statues. 

She would go North-East, especially to Binah (Boston), to aid the colonists in North America in establishing their new vision of a liberated nation. To them, she gave her Beauty. She whispered into their ears the lyrics for anthems, she added the flourish to John Hancock’s penmanship, and she made sure that great men from Washington to Lincoln were dashing enough to be beloved leaders. In return, her image graced statues at Ellis Island and the Capitol Dome, and she was drawn as Lady Columbia and the giantess who accompanied pioneers westward. Once more, she let the beauty she saw and emanated blind her to the atrocities and hypocrisies of her followers. In California, her new idolaters were the celebrities of Hollywood (or Holy Wood, as she called it), with an additional occult calling from the local Thelemites, which she used to her advantage. When Da’at broke, and she could rise in angelic power and presence once more, she could at last be the Holy Guardian Angel of Los Angeles and get to work on more golems.            

Regarding the Sefirot, she also identified with Malkut and Gevurah, though she did not want to live in Patagonia or Guantanamo Bay. Malkut is materiality, but it still holds the nitzotzot, the divine sparks, which can be interpreted as an essence of the King Above, represented in this understanding as Gevurah. Putting the two together and embracing materiality could still lead to sanctity and Beauty (Tiferet). As Gadiriel came to love God once again, though differently from how she once did and still without total piety, her Kabbalistic meditations brought her to the understanding known as Shekinah, the feminine Divine Presence in the Earth. Feminine-divinity-as-all-encompassing-cosmic could correspond to Thelema's Nuit, though Gadiriel had been moving away from that school of thought after the end of ritual magick's popularity in America.

While pondering Gevurah ba’Tiferet, she pondered how any revealed form of God would be sublime; overwhelmingly beautiful and terrifying in shifting and merged measures. More so than any angel, her presence on Earth inspired that reaction. It must be intended by God, even in rebellion. A new purpose for her. Her aspect of Gevurah was also, importantly, the power she had within her that she did not use only for her own benefit but to now also empower others, more so than she would in the past. She would help them become the best they could be, whether as stars or in new bodies that they needed to be in to be at peace with themselves. She even had the power to save America. Still, in all of that empowerment, in all of the chasing of stardom or the greatest bodies, and in seeing the source of salvation be in someone glowing who had fallen from Heaven, there was still Gevurah and Tiferet’s great sublime, and it would burn ever more brightly when she and her Beast rode across the wastelands of the Apocalypse. She wagered that the visions, the inspirations, she emitted had also inspired J.R.R. Tolkien, as she resonated with the words of one of his characters who resembled her in appearance and name: “You would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!”

My guess is that there were probably a fair few governments and corpos trying to build something like Jacky's Numinous Weaponry over the years, and a few would-be wizards with a functioning trick or two in the occult communities he moved in before going public. But any research that wasn't a boondoggle got nipped in the bud once Jacky found out, anyone who didn't join him (not many, since anyone who did figure out a trick would look at him and go I KNEEL) got stopped before they hurt themselves or others, and any old texts or tomes with even a crumb of half-accurate info in them are now in a Pyramid vault where Jacky would read them to the Arseholes when they needed a laugh.

So yeah. There were other wizards, but they were more 'Tonya's lightshow fingers' level with a side order of blowing themselves up as opposed to Jacky '750 Megadeaths an hour' Magus, and maybe the only impact any of them ever had was providing credibility to his 'inverted Pyramid renegades' cover story that nobody believes anyway.

(The whole thing kinda reminds me of something like Unsong, where the names of God become magic spells after Apollo 8 crashes into the crystal sphere that encloses earth and projects a false image of space. Didn't get far but I remember they started patenting the Names and punishing employees for personal use. I should really give that book another go apparently Kissinger teams up with the devil to invade the USSR or something that sounds great

(Or my pet obsession, Charles Stross' Laundry Files books, where magic was always there but didn't really amount to much because they only figured out the scientific underpinnings in the 20th Century. So yes that creepy Lovecraftian tome will kill you, not because it's cursed, but because it's about as accurate as Pliny the Elder's Natural History and if you follow the instructions you are going to explode. Most blood sacrifices aren't because the spell was evil but because it's unoptimised and needs the raw power to brute-force it into actually working, and you could do it bloodlessly with some half-decent code. The easiest spell to cast is "Induce Dementia In Self".