08-16-2013, 09:46 PM
learning through catalyst? is this not the same but explained another way ?.
The Path of Lamed is one of the most important paths on the Cabbalistic Tree. Like some earlier paths, it leads the journeyer back to the heart of the Tree and to the revelations of Tiphereth, but its occult significance and its closeness to the Divine Mystery of enlightenment is such that much of its Cabbalistic meaning remains hidden. Only initiates who have been suitably prepared and have experienced the Mystery may know the secrets.
All who approached the Mystery at Eleusis, for example, were required to have certain knowledge and to undergo special rituals. The revelation of the Mystery “opened their eyes” and they were enlightened, but the exact nature of that mystical revelation was so secret that still, after some two-and-a-half thousand years, it remains unknown. We know that the worshippers purified themselves in the sea and made a ritual sacrifice to the Goddess Demeter, and that their journey to the Sanctuary was made with much ceremony, with dance and with the cry, “Iaccus!”. Enlightenment, which marked initiation, was different for each individual. But, in any case, a vow of secrecy protected the Divine Mystery.
The same is true of many Cabbalistic, Hermetic, Alchemical and Magical associations, where to break the vow of secrecy is regarded (metaphorically) as the death of the initiate. Aleister Crowley, an initiate of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, therefore wrote of the Path of Lamed and the Tarot card of Strength in riddles, and in exhortations with obscure references to “rapture and vigour”, “ecstasy” and “grave mysteries”:
“Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, force and fire, are of us.”
“I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge and Delight and bright glory, to stir the hearts of men with drunkenness..”…
“Love one another with burning hearts… ”.
More plainly, he describes this card as “the most powerful of the Zodiacal cards, [it] represents the most critical of all the operations of magick and of alchemy”. (The Book of Thoth 92).
Ted certainly knew Crowley’s works; and obscure as Crowley’s interpretation of this path is, there are magical elements of it which may well lie behind the Birthday Letters poem, ‘God Help the Wolf after Whom the Dogs Do Not Bark’ (BL 26-7), which is the poem on the Path of Lamed in the Atziluthic World. Sylvia’s dancing and her great capacity for love pervade this poem, but the framing reference to the “mystery of hatred” in the first and last lines associates her with that same paradox of hatred which was aroused by the Divine love of those figures of religious Mysteries to whom Crowley refers – Osiris, Horus, Dionysus, Guatama Buddha and Christ. Ted’s purpose, it seems, was not to suggest that Sylvia herself was such a figure but that, as he writes in ‘The God’ (BL 188 - 191), she was like “a religious fanatic”, driven to offer to others that spiritual energy and that spark of Divine love which she carried within her.
Crowley’s explanatory notes for this particular card and Path also throw some light on the obscure second line of Ted’s poem: “After your billion years in anonymous matter”. Clearly this cannot literally refer to Sylvia, although it might be thought to refer to The Goddess and (as in other Birthday Letters poems) to Sylvia’s embodiment of her. Crowley’s notes support this interpretation. Following an explanation of “the magical doctrine of the succession of Aeons, which is connected with the procession of the Zodiac”, Crowley refers to a belief that our present Aeon is that in which “the Beast and the Scarlet Woman… of the Apocalypse” will appear. The Scarlet Woman is part of Zodiacal time and space – part of the billion years of anonymous matter. She is The Goddess. Crowley identifies her as “The Great Mother” and as “Love”, and he associates her with “the mystery of Dionysus Zagreus”. But she was revealed by St. John the Divine as “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH [sic.]” (‘the Revelation’ 17:5), and she, too, was “promptly hated”.
If all this seems too esoteric or far-fetched, then is may be noted that Crowley also offers a more common explanation for the figure on the card of Strength, identifying her as the Moon Goddess, the Female essence represented in human form and shown in control of a wolf, or some other wild beast, which represents the animal passions within us.
The Cabbalistic meditations for this Path of Lamed1 are ‘The Woman justified’ and ‘By Equilibrium and Self Sacrifice is the Gate’. And, just as the figure on the card is female, the Path of Lamed is specifically associated in the Mysteries with Woman (with Demeter and Persephone, with the Shekinah, and with the Scarlet Woman) and with the relationship between human and Divine energies. At this stage of the journey, the Male energies of the previous Path are given form in the Divine passions embodied in the Female which, through the strength and judgement derived from Sephira 5 (Gevurah), may be brought into equilibrium at Sephira 62. Through control will come enlightenment and a rebirth which will release the Initiate’s full potential. But Lamed, the Ox-goad, indicates that the necessary strength for rebirth on this path will only be learned through the prick of pain.
In some respects, one approaching initiation on this Path is still the Fool and, so, may express his or her passions too freely. And uncontrolled passions, and especially uncontrolled love, commonly bring exploitation, abuse, censure, rejection, jealousy and hatred to the Foolish. The sorrow which results from this is the spur of pain, the ox-goad, which should teach understanding and restraint. But control of the Wolf energies is not an easy or comfortable lesson to learn.
Such is the Cabbalistic background to ‘God Help the Wolf after Whom the Dogs Do Not Bark’.
The original title for this poem was ‘A Little Touch of Timon’3, which suggests that Ted initially wanted to make an analogy between Shakespeare’s Timon (of Timon of Athens) and the hatred which his generosity and love eventually aroused in those who received it, and Sylvia and the “mystery of hatred” which she meets in this poem. But the title under which the poem now appears in Birthday Letters is a parable, akin to a response Ted once made to Daniel Weissbort who was commiserating with him over the “outcry” his every move provoked, and over the way “The Scholars band together / fortifying the narrow view”: “Pity the man”, Ted muttered, “whom all men love”4.
Wolf pictureWolves have a long history in myth, folk-lore and religion, of representing the animal passions in human beings5 and, as I discuss in ‘Wolf Masks’6, Ted’s belief in the essential value of such wolf-energies and in the need for them in our world and in us was constantly expressed in his work. The Wolf in Sylvia, then, was the energies which she embodied and which, as her journals often show, she expressed too freely and needed to learn to control. But these same energies were what drove her to seek her true Self through her poetic Self: without them she would have achieved nothing. So, Sylvia’s Wolf needed to be controlled but not subdued to the extent that it lost its wolfishness: its energies were “the gifts” with which she “tried [her] utmost to reach and touch” others, and they were essential to her quest. But the dogs which barked after her, were those people to whom she felt closest: people whose responses to her shaped her self-image, and whose disapproval and hatred caused her the most pain.
At first, in the poem, Sylvia’s gift of love is seen as childishly (Foolishly) indiscriminate – as something which she gave passionately to “every visitor to the house”. Then, child-like, she dances as if to keep her father alive with her love; as if her own spirit could “sweeten” and tame his bitterness and be part of his death. Her failure to keep him alive, or to join him in death, is then seen as a complete loss of self: where once there was anger and bitterness which required her sweetening dance, there was now nothing but silence. Her sorrow drove her to find a new self – a new reason for dancing - but her sense of emptiness and loss became a panic over loss of time in that very search.
‘God help the Wolf… ‘ takes up and elaborates on Sylvia’s search for Self, and it is useful to read of Ted’s own concept of the poetic Self and a poet’s search for that Self in the essay which he wrote in 1988 as a tribute to T.S. Eliot. The essay was originally titled A Dancer to God (Faber, 1992), and in it Ted traces in Eliot’s work a spiritual quest driven by the passionate Divine spark of Eliot’s inner poetic double. Not only does the essay’s title reflect the image of Sylvia’s dancing which dominates ‘God Help the Wolf… ’, but Ted’s statement in the essay that “we live in the translation, where what had been religious and centred in God is psychological and centred on the idea of self – albeit a self which remains a measureless question mark” is also very applicable to Sylvia; and his poem ends with her still “floundering”, still trying to “save” herself, still trying to answer that very question.
The Path of Lamed is one of the most important paths on the Cabbalistic Tree. Like some earlier paths, it leads the journeyer back to the heart of the Tree and to the revelations of Tiphereth, but its occult significance and its closeness to the Divine Mystery of enlightenment is such that much of its Cabbalistic meaning remains hidden. Only initiates who have been suitably prepared and have experienced the Mystery may know the secrets.
All who approached the Mystery at Eleusis, for example, were required to have certain knowledge and to undergo special rituals. The revelation of the Mystery “opened their eyes” and they were enlightened, but the exact nature of that mystical revelation was so secret that still, after some two-and-a-half thousand years, it remains unknown. We know that the worshippers purified themselves in the sea and made a ritual sacrifice to the Goddess Demeter, and that their journey to the Sanctuary was made with much ceremony, with dance and with the cry, “Iaccus!”. Enlightenment, which marked initiation, was different for each individual. But, in any case, a vow of secrecy protected the Divine Mystery.
The same is true of many Cabbalistic, Hermetic, Alchemical and Magical associations, where to break the vow of secrecy is regarded (metaphorically) as the death of the initiate. Aleister Crowley, an initiate of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, therefore wrote of the Path of Lamed and the Tarot card of Strength in riddles, and in exhortations with obscure references to “rapture and vigour”, “ecstasy” and “grave mysteries”:
“Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, force and fire, are of us.”
“I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge and Delight and bright glory, to stir the hearts of men with drunkenness..”…
“Love one another with burning hearts… ”.
More plainly, he describes this card as “the most powerful of the Zodiacal cards, [it] represents the most critical of all the operations of magick and of alchemy”. (The Book of Thoth 92).
Ted certainly knew Crowley’s works; and obscure as Crowley’s interpretation of this path is, there are magical elements of it which may well lie behind the Birthday Letters poem, ‘God Help the Wolf after Whom the Dogs Do Not Bark’ (BL 26-7), which is the poem on the Path of Lamed in the Atziluthic World. Sylvia’s dancing and her great capacity for love pervade this poem, but the framing reference to the “mystery of hatred” in the first and last lines associates her with that same paradox of hatred which was aroused by the Divine love of those figures of religious Mysteries to whom Crowley refers – Osiris, Horus, Dionysus, Guatama Buddha and Christ. Ted’s purpose, it seems, was not to suggest that Sylvia herself was such a figure but that, as he writes in ‘The God’ (BL 188 - 191), she was like “a religious fanatic”, driven to offer to others that spiritual energy and that spark of Divine love which she carried within her.
Crowley’s explanatory notes for this particular card and Path also throw some light on the obscure second line of Ted’s poem: “After your billion years in anonymous matter”. Clearly this cannot literally refer to Sylvia, although it might be thought to refer to The Goddess and (as in other Birthday Letters poems) to Sylvia’s embodiment of her. Crowley’s notes support this interpretation. Following an explanation of “the magical doctrine of the succession of Aeons, which is connected with the procession of the Zodiac”, Crowley refers to a belief that our present Aeon is that in which “the Beast and the Scarlet Woman… of the Apocalypse” will appear. The Scarlet Woman is part of Zodiacal time and space – part of the billion years of anonymous matter. She is The Goddess. Crowley identifies her as “The Great Mother” and as “Love”, and he associates her with “the mystery of Dionysus Zagreus”. But she was revealed by St. John the Divine as “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH [sic.]” (‘the Revelation’ 17:5), and she, too, was “promptly hated”.
If all this seems too esoteric or far-fetched, then is may be noted that Crowley also offers a more common explanation for the figure on the card of Strength, identifying her as the Moon Goddess, the Female essence represented in human form and shown in control of a wolf, or some other wild beast, which represents the animal passions within us.
The Cabbalistic meditations for this Path of Lamed1 are ‘The Woman justified’ and ‘By Equilibrium and Self Sacrifice is the Gate’. And, just as the figure on the card is female, the Path of Lamed is specifically associated in the Mysteries with Woman (with Demeter and Persephone, with the Shekinah, and with the Scarlet Woman) and with the relationship between human and Divine energies. At this stage of the journey, the Male energies of the previous Path are given form in the Divine passions embodied in the Female which, through the strength and judgement derived from Sephira 5 (Gevurah), may be brought into equilibrium at Sephira 62. Through control will come enlightenment and a rebirth which will release the Initiate’s full potential. But Lamed, the Ox-goad, indicates that the necessary strength for rebirth on this path will only be learned through the prick of pain.
In some respects, one approaching initiation on this Path is still the Fool and, so, may express his or her passions too freely. And uncontrolled passions, and especially uncontrolled love, commonly bring exploitation, abuse, censure, rejection, jealousy and hatred to the Foolish. The sorrow which results from this is the spur of pain, the ox-goad, which should teach understanding and restraint. But control of the Wolf energies is not an easy or comfortable lesson to learn.
Such is the Cabbalistic background to ‘God Help the Wolf after Whom the Dogs Do Not Bark’.
The original title for this poem was ‘A Little Touch of Timon’3, which suggests that Ted initially wanted to make an analogy between Shakespeare’s Timon (of Timon of Athens) and the hatred which his generosity and love eventually aroused in those who received it, and Sylvia and the “mystery of hatred” which she meets in this poem. But the title under which the poem now appears in Birthday Letters is a parable, akin to a response Ted once made to Daniel Weissbort who was commiserating with him over the “outcry” his every move provoked, and over the way “The Scholars band together / fortifying the narrow view”: “Pity the man”, Ted muttered, “whom all men love”4.
Wolf pictureWolves have a long history in myth, folk-lore and religion, of representing the animal passions in human beings5 and, as I discuss in ‘Wolf Masks’6, Ted’s belief in the essential value of such wolf-energies and in the need for them in our world and in us was constantly expressed in his work. The Wolf in Sylvia, then, was the energies which she embodied and which, as her journals often show, she expressed too freely and needed to learn to control. But these same energies were what drove her to seek her true Self through her poetic Self: without them she would have achieved nothing. So, Sylvia’s Wolf needed to be controlled but not subdued to the extent that it lost its wolfishness: its energies were “the gifts” with which she “tried [her] utmost to reach and touch” others, and they were essential to her quest. But the dogs which barked after her, were those people to whom she felt closest: people whose responses to her shaped her self-image, and whose disapproval and hatred caused her the most pain.
At first, in the poem, Sylvia’s gift of love is seen as childishly (Foolishly) indiscriminate – as something which she gave passionately to “every visitor to the house”. Then, child-like, she dances as if to keep her father alive with her love; as if her own spirit could “sweeten” and tame his bitterness and be part of his death. Her failure to keep him alive, or to join him in death, is then seen as a complete loss of self: where once there was anger and bitterness which required her sweetening dance, there was now nothing but silence. Her sorrow drove her to find a new self – a new reason for dancing - but her sense of emptiness and loss became a panic over loss of time in that very search.
‘God help the Wolf… ‘ takes up and elaborates on Sylvia’s search for Self, and it is useful to read of Ted’s own concept of the poetic Self and a poet’s search for that Self in the essay which he wrote in 1988 as a tribute to T.S. Eliot. The essay was originally titled A Dancer to God (Faber, 1992), and in it Ted traces in Eliot’s work a spiritual quest driven by the passionate Divine spark of Eliot’s inner poetic double. Not only does the essay’s title reflect the image of Sylvia’s dancing which dominates ‘God Help the Wolf… ’, but Ted’s statement in the essay that “we live in the translation, where what had been religious and centred in God is psychological and centred on the idea of self – albeit a self which remains a measureless question mark” is also very applicable to Sylvia; and his poem ends with her still “floundering”, still trying to “save” herself, still trying to answer that very question.