III.  THE DIAMOND BODY EXERCISE

C.  THE DIAMOND BODY IN QBL AND ALCHEMY

1. SEPHIR YETZIRAH: THE BOOK OF FORMATION:

There is an explicit link between the Diamond Body configuration (showing the atomic structure of diamond crystals) and a traditional meditation technique from Jewish mysticism.  A description of the figure appears in the classical text, SEPHIR YETZIRAH, THE BOOK OF FORMATION.

THE SEPHIR YETZIRAH is a fundamental text of written Qabalah.  Legend says the book was recorded by the Patriarch Abraham.  Its lineage is supported by recent archeological discoveries.  Chapter 5 of the Book of Formation details correspondences of the constellations with month of the calendar system in use at the time.  This data has been analyzed as predating astronomical knowledge of the Precession of the Equinoxes.  The correspondences synchronize during the time of Abraham, approximately 4,000 years ago.

Further support of this date is provided by the fact that the original text is inscribed in the Sinatic alphabet.  This is comprised of the original Hebrew letters revealed to Abraham.  It predates the square Aramaic letters used by Ezra the Scribe by more than a thousand years. Jewish scholar, Gershom Scholem makes a more conservative estimate on the antiquity of the book.  He dates its composition between the third and sixth centuries.  In any event, it is a magical treatise and a tool whose aim was speculative rather than ecstatic.

THE BOOK OF FORMATION describes the emanation of the ten spheres of the Tree of Life.  The spheres are connected to one another by twenty-two paths, which correspond with the Hebrew letters (Path 0=Aleph, Path I=Beth, Path II=Gimel, Path III=Daleth, etc.).  Together, the spheres and connecting paths form a map of the universe.  The sacred letters are symbolic glyphs which represent sounds.

Both spheres and paths represent discret domains which order diverse contents.  The contents of any domain are determined by the archetypal dominant residing at the core of the content in question.  In general, spheres represent modes-of-being, and paths represent transition stages, or gates between them.

Qabalah presents the individual soul as a Microcosm which is a reflection of the Celestial Man, or Macrocosm.   Hermetic philosopher Aleister Crowley suggested that, "The soul interprets the universe; the universe veils the soul."  The universal man is also called Animus Mundi.  The doctrine presented here is one of the primary examples of the Hermetic dictum, "As above, so below."  Through the identity of the individual with the universal, we have the option of participating consciously in the divine process of creation.

The individual, as a physio-spiritual entity is represented by the geometric configuration of the Tree of Life, pervading the human form.  The spheres, or Sephiroth, are imaginal representations of a set of self-consistent worlds or planes of consciousness.  There is orderly transition between them.

The twenty-two paths provide a means of accessing the connected series of experiences based on changing states-of-consciousness.

The perception of this process occurs through imagery.  It is coordinated through the system of correspondences.  It provides the most eloquent, elaborate, and comprehensive system for metaphorical perception of imaginal realms.  Translating the message into a special language adapted to the channel's information rate is called coding.

Qabalah (QBL) is a coded form of information concerning self-realization and mystical experience which is suited specifically to the human receptor.  In Hebrew numerology, QBL = 132 = "to receive."  There are various spellings for Qabala or Kabbalah, but this consonants-only form yields the proper numerical equivalent.

Tree of Life modeling permits discreet focal points for easy, methodical concentration for long periods of time.  The depth of differentiation of archetypes elaborated by this system categorizes, or modularizes, the characteristic experiences of various stages of mystical progress.  See Table   for a taxonomy of mystical states in relation to the spheres of the Tree of Life.

Different spheres are the domain of different divine attributes (for example, Chesed is the sphere of Mercy, Geburah is the sphere of Severity, etc.).  The paths provide gateways to the discreet states of consciousness graphically depicted as the spheres.

With such an ancient tradition, QBL provides grounding for one's philosophy in a comprehensive range of highly developed and extensively tested disciplines.  The letters of the sacred Hebrew alphabet are employed as tools in a wide variety of meditational and invocative techniques.  Each letter has a tone associate with it, so the words and phrases may be sung.

Each letter or path corresponds explicitly with a number (i.e. Tiphareth = 6, Yesod = 9, Aleph = 1, Mem = 40, Shin = 300).  Number and letter are alternative ways of depicting the same entity, or archetypal process.  Mathematical manipulation of the Hebrew alphabet is a primary way of working within the system.  (Complete numerical equivalents for the alphabet are included in Appendix B).

The mathematical science of Gematria allows a means of viewing the relationship between diverse groupings represented by the spheres and paths.  Each letter has a numerical value which is qualitative not quantitative.  Its function is to disclose intensities, valuation and rhythm.

Codified numerical equivalence between words may be discovered.  For example, in Hebrew, both the word 'love' and the word 'unity' add to 13.  Therefore, they are cognate.  They express the same nature or quality.  Each letter or number signifies that aspect of divinity which is inherent in it.  The number of a word or phrase shows its quality and its relationship to other things and ideas.

Through the numerical value attached to words and phrases, one is able to see metaphorical equivalents among apparently unrelated concepts.  Gematria is, therefore, a primary tool for philosophical speculation in QBL.  It provides access to unknown or implicate aspects of all-things-nameable.  It helps one see what is not readily apparent.  It accomodates as much depth and volume as a person's inner complexity brings to it.

Modern magickal practice has adopted the system presented in QBL as its basis.  It uses the Tree of Life as a consciousness map.  This is because it is comprehensive, eloquent, and extremely efficient.  The occult deals primarily with realization of latent subconscious cognitive abilities.  It is development in areas which were previously unknown (occulted or hidden) because they were unexplored.

QBL has two branches: speculative/philosophical and practical/magical.  In terms of information processing QBL denotes channels and levels of observation.  Paths are transmission channels.  Spheres are levels of observation.  The transmission channels are used to call benefic powers using the holy names of God and his angel mediators.  QBL is an ancient information-processing system.

The only proper application of Magick is to influence the process of one's own psychological transformation.  Magick, used solely for self-transformation, furthers religious needs.  The path up the Middle Pillar of the Tree of Life shows successive purification of a soul on its journey to union with the ultimate, or Godhead.  It is a middle path which shows a soul undaunted in its primary desire to return "home."  There are other paths, to be sure, but none so direct, and therefore efficient.

THE BOOK OF FORMATION had the most dynamic effect on initiating speculative QBL.  As old as the SEPHIR YETZIRAH may be, it seems that mystical experience of the geometrical figure we are calling the Diamond Body predates the composition of the book.  The book is probably the exposition of a mystical system of standing tradition, which was only transmitted orally prior to the appearance of the text.

The mystics achieved a vision of a geometrical figure through meditation practice.  This geometry was a 4-dimensional array of the holy letters.  It is a geometrical picture of the creation or formation of the universe--an omniradiant event that continues to happen.

Those who engaged in this meditation form were known as Merkabah visionaries.  They sought ecstatic direct visionary experience of the Throne Chariot of God.  Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Ezekiel, Isaac, and St. John the Divine have been associated with Merkabah mysticism.  Surely, as a rabbi, Jesus was familiar with this practice, also.

2.  MERKABAH MYSTICISM, OLD AND NEW:

There is some extant literature concerning Merkabah Mysticism in additoin to the SEPHIR YETZIRAH.  The most important of these works are the Greater Hekhaloth and the Lesser Hekhaloth.  Rabbinical commentary concerning the secrets of the Throne Chariot also exists.  The majority of these works were not designed for practical use by mystics.  They described characteristic stages on the path to the vision of the Throne Chariot.  They contain speculation rather than explicit instructions.

It is possible, however, to deduce certain requirements and proceedures from these writings:

 1.  The aspirant must be at least 30 years old before his study of mysticism should be initiated.  This ensures grounding in the day-to-day life and reduces the chances that the immature seeker desires transcendent escape from reality.

 2.  Specific moral qualities were required of candidates before the mystics were willing to reveal their secret knowledge, or Gnosis.  We might assume that these qualitis would include those of importance in the Torah, or Law.

 3.  Twelve to forty days of ascetic practices, including fasting and prayer, preceded the soul's penetration to the revelation of the Throne.

 4.  Techniques for facilitating the journey included hymns and songs, the recitation of secret or holy names of God, and magical seals to protect the aspirant.  These seals warded off danger from demons and hostile angels and allowed further access, much as a key unlocks a door.

 5.  The posture recommended during meditation is to sit in a low chair, bend forward until the head rests on the knees.  This posture enhanced the ability to experience altered states of consciousness through changes in blood flow and subtle vibrations induced in the skeletal system by reciting god names.  Breathing becomes shallow in this position.

 6.  The further one progresses upon the path, the greater the dangers of psychological disintegration.  The worthiness of the soul is tested on every level--physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.  The Qabalistic practice of creating and dissolving images as containers for psychic forces acts as a protection against identification with, or deification of symbols.  Such potent symbols of wholeness, such as the Tree of Life, are a danger in themselves as they promote the identification of the ego with the Self.

If the aspirant were unworthy, he could penetrate no further. The angels guarding the gates would confuse his mind and disturb his senses, (which shouldn't be too difficult after 40 days of fasting).  This interference could include hallucinations (rather than visionary experience), and psychosomatic manifestations of discomfort.  In the Eastern systems of meditation, these phenomena are regarded as blocks to the flow of Kundalini up the spine.

 7.  Once the ecstatic state has been attained by the mystic, he ascends through what were variously described as seven heavens or chambers.  The soul ascends toward its original home.  Counting from the bottom of the Tree of Life upwards, this would include the spheres of Malkuth through Chesed.

 8.  At this point the soul receives its revelation.  It is the vision of God as King on His Throne.  This vision of God as King is the magical image of the sphere Chesed, #4 on the Tree of Life.  It is below the Abyss, where visionary I-Thou imagination is still possible.  The gulf between the soul and God is not bridged below the Abyss.  This meditation did not aspire to even an understanding of the true nature of God, let alone a reunion of the soul with Godhead.  It was ecstatic, not transcendent.

This mystic path provided perception of the phenomena of the Throne-Chariot, the awful mystery that surrounds God's majesty.  A voice is heard to speak from the "Throne of Fire."   It conveys the secret of heaven and earth to the aspirant.  It gives him the names of Knowledge, or Gnosis.

Use of this Knowledge could be viewed as the aspirant's creation of the sphere Daath.  Daath is unique among the Sephiroth on the ascent up the Tree.  In order for the initiate to experience Daath, he is required to first create it.  This is unlike the other spheres, which are a priori givens.  Experience of the reciprocal view of the Diamond Body figure brings one back onto the Middle Pillar on the threshold of the Abyss.

Meditation is a procedure.  Daath, as a knowledge-contact, is a quantum change induced through Grace.  It is God's answer to the call of the aspirant, and cannot be induced through effort alone.  In creating a Daath state of consciousness, the aspirant has crossed 'an abyss' from a procedure to a grace.

In a classification of creative, psychedelic (mind-expanding), and unitive states, this development is best described as 'psychedelic.'  The characteristic experience is a transient altered state of consciousness.  This ecstasy includes the experience of loss of self, time, or space.  There is an infusion of a special knowledge, and a purification of self.

The original Merkabah mystics did not aspire for this vision with intense love of God.  They did not concern themselves with speculation concerning the immanence of God in matter, through the Shekinah.  Their interest lay in the direct experiential process of contemplating their mandala-symbol until it took on a life of its own--a divine life.  This entity projectes a revelatory character.

But the immanence of God-in-matter is a philosophical issue open to speculation.  The geometry of the Throne-Chariot or Diamond Body relates directly to the formation of matter.  We might speculate that these geometrical representations of archetypal relationships have a great deal to do with fundamental patterns underlying all matter, even if they are only Ruachian models.

The figure of the Throne-Chariot (and its reciprocal, the Vector Equilibrium Matrix) and the basic blueprint for the formation of matter are not distinct and separate.  This threshold of matter, or DAATH, the Invisible Sphere does disclose the minimum conceptual elements necessary to depict the spiritual order inherent in matter.

There is no way to intellectually grasp Reality beyond the Abyss.  Penetration into these realms requires intense devotion or love.  For any information regarding these planes we must rely on the testimony of saints who have journeys in consciousness to these realms.

Knowledge (Gnosis or Daath) takes the soul to the uppermost reaches of the causal plane.  This is the limit to the realm of the mind.  There is neither mind nor matter across the Abyss.  Here is the limit of the mind's ability to comprehend divine order conceptually.  It is the emptying out of symbolic meaning in preparation for direct experience of the Reality of God, through Union.

Several graphic depictions of the descriptions of the Throne-Chariot given in the SEPHIR YETZIRAH have been developed through the years by Jews and occultists.

A group known as the Chariot of Fire from Los Angeles has used the information to depict a system in which all the paths are compacted onto an octahedron.  In this arrangement, the seven double letters are paths connecting the six spheres which correspond to the cardinal directions, above and below, and the central Inner Court.  This Inner Court is comprised of the three Mother letters--Aleph, Mem, and Shin--plus the nexus point which is composed of Aleph/Tau.

In his book, THE TAROT (1947), Paul Foster Case developed an array which shows closer harmony with the closest-packed spheres of the diamond structure.  Here the paths are dispersed over the octahedron and its containing cube (Figure 4).

It is important to include both the octahedron and the cube in the modeling. When both are visualized, the figure has the ability to reproduce itself indefinitely.  It generates and regenerates itself mathematically, like a fractal.  It projects outward or inward in an infinite geometrical progression.

There is an infinite series of octahedrons within cubes within octahedrons within cubes.  This is another way of viewing the matrix structure which has been described elsewhere as the Vector Equilibrium Matrix.

Case showed the paths, or keys, in relationship to the Bravis lattice.  He did not add the connecting lines which reveal the octahedron within the Cube of Space.  This may have been intentional, as he felt careful study of the figure would reveal much to the discerning reader.  Perhaps more than he might have imagined...

In any event, this array shows the three "Mother letters" as Cartesian coordinates.  These represent the three dimensions, the fourth being the synchronous Aleph/Tau in the center.  This center is the holy place in the midst of manifestation which shows forth the sacred aspect of time.

The planetary gates are shown as the central points of the six plane faces of the cube.  The rest of the paths are shown on the matrix of the cube edges.

Case, true to prevailing attitudes in occultists of his day, attempted to obscure the proper correspondences for the Cube.  Most of the attributions agree with the text of the SEPHIR YETZIRAH.  However, two letters are switched.  Lamed (Key 11, L) is ascribed to the compass direction Northwest; Southwest is listed as Nun (Key 13, N).

The proper order, according to THE BOOK OF FORMATION, is Northwest = N, Nun; Southwest = L, Lamed.

Past generations of occultists would frequently present most of their information accurately.  However, they would change at least one element.  They reasoned that the serious student would discover the discrepancies through astute observation.

This practice was intended to preserve the highly effective magical techniques from easy access by the vulgar, who might misapply them.  This attitude hardly seems appropriate today.  There are competent people who might appreciate  magick as a highly devloped art-form if the system were presented in a consistent, credible manner.

The vulgar, or dilettante, can never apply even the most profound teaching.  It requires the discipline of follow-through.  Psyche's secrets are safe because they are not communicable to those who haven't experienced them.  They are initiations.

3. INFORMATION CODING AND ACCESS-STATES

The Hebrew alphabet, of all languages, has certain qualities which make it extremely efficient for the transmission of information with minimal distortion.  Its sacred aspect may be shown best by examination of the inherent mathematical superiority of the language.

Redundancy percents allow us to evaluate relative efficiencies of various languages or codes.  The frequency of appearance of the various letters of an alphabet determines the relative redundancy.

The constraints imposed by the language itself furnish the gross redundancy level.  For example: the redundancy of French letters is 19%, relative redundancy of Hebrew letters is 10.4%.  Gross redundancy of the French language is around 45%, that of English is 50%.  Here, classical Hebrew shows its remarkable efficiency.  This is largely because it is constituted of a majority of consonants.

A remarkable consequence of redundancy nicely illustrates the over-all character of our intuitive knowledge of language.  It is the possibility of making crosswords, that is, of attaching each letter to systems of different n-gram probabilities.  If the redundancy were zero, any collection of letters would be a possible and meaningful message, as is the case with certain secret telegraph codes used in commerce.  If the redundancy is too high, the structure of the languages imposes too rigorous internal constraints.  In order for two-dimensional crosswords to be possible, redundancy must be at most 50 per cent;  three-dimensional crosswords are possible if the redundancy does not exceed 33 per cent.  Thus from the above example, it should be possible to make three-dimensional crosswords in classical Hebrew.  Such crosswords have been realized by H. Bluhme in Munich.(1)

There are limits in any given access-state which depend upon the method of decoding information transmitted.  All symbolic representations are encoded information.  All other things being equal, the most original message is composed in a system such that all the symbols are equiprobable.  In classical Hebrew, exclusive use of consonants (except vav and yod) creates a more nearly equal distribution of written symbols and a majority of words composed of three root letters.

In any limited system, prior events effect the probability of occurance of any given symbol.  The probability of a symbol depends upon preceding symbols in the sequence.  Within a given alphabet there are constraints upon maximum information flow.  These are related to relative information and redundancy levels.

There are limits imposed on the flow of perceptible information whether it is received via imagery or language.  The constraints of language are greater.  The repertoire of possibilities is smaller.  The amount of constraint imposed by grammar is enormous.  A holographic display, like the Throne-Chariot or Cube of Space displays more simultaneous possibilities.

Assuming the possibility and desirability of communicating with entities in other dimensions, a message of maximum information may appear senseless if the individual does not have a coherent system to decode it.  Redundancy, or chronic reappearance, provides a guarantee against errors in transmission.  This fact of information-processing may bear on the chronic reappearance of archetypes in an infinite variety of forms.

Speculative QBL cuts through the complexity of the experience of archetypal reality.  It postulates one form of order within the chaos of ever-shifting imagery, a way of uniting the living opposites.  It provides an intelligible conception which schematizes reality.  It offers the Tree of Life as its comprehensive consciousness map of the human psyche, realm of spirit, and the Creation.

The philosophical concept of the Philosopher's Stone or Diamond Body implies the access-state represented in QBL as Tiphareth, the heart-center.  In mystical experience, an enormous amount of emotional and cognitive information is received in a short period of time.

While this enlightenment, in theory, is a complete experience, it requires time to digest and decode.  It would be an error to assume than an individual--a psycho-physiological mechanism--could instantly absorb an unlimited quantity of information.  No individual may become omniscient.

There is an upper limit to the apprehension of information in any given instant.  A maximum flow of perceptible information per unit of time exists.  This limit has been measured at 10 to 20 bits per second (Quastler, 1955).  Perception actually takes place through a process of filtering, or perceptual selection.

Too large a flow of information is perceived as absence of structure or internal information.  IT APPEARS AS CHAOS.  This becomes evident in therapy when clients journey deep into their dreams.  In following the images down deeper, they ultimately find swirling, funnelling images or great voids.  Just past this point in the journey is the healing place.

This chaos is perhaps the major disorientation experienced by those unprepared for the crossing of the Abyss.  Therefore, if our intent is to extend our perceptual field, it is advantageous to channel information by providing a system and boundaries.  This focuses our perceptions on a digestible amount of data.  In other words, intuitive perceptions from within can be grounded in daily life.

Tree of Life modeling allows for quantized conceptualization of mystical experiences.  Toward this end, the coded system uses the qualitative distinctions of spheres, paths, letters, numbers and other components of the correspondence system.

 4.  THE HEBREW ALPHABET

[Hebrew Alphabet]

Since all the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are glyphs for the sounds they represent, mystical use of this alphabet may be seen as the synchronous union of the soul with the sound-current.  This is a time-honored tradition which has to do with the nature of the Word, or Logos, as an inner mystical "sound" which carries the aspirant's soul up into the higher planes like a magnet.  (see VOICE OF THE SILENCE, by Mdm. Blavatsky).

We may infer, from research in information theory, that maximum originality or information is transported by messages in which all symbols have an equal probability.  An equal distribution of probabilities furnishes in effect the maximum of choice.  Maximal transference of information is only possible for a receptor who is totally ignorant of what might be transmitted (beginner's mind).

Images are more fundamental than symbols.  They present themselves prior to the focusing on various symbols.  Imaginal psychology is trying to re-capture this primacy of image over symbol.  An image preserves the specific context, mood, and unique qualities by holding symbols in the subtle net, or matrix, of imaginal life, which is its underlying reality.  We have become accustomed to asking the rote meaning of things when it comes to symbols and dreams.  This reductionistic approach loses contact with the unknown aspect of the autonomous stream of imagery.

In anima-consciousness (being-in-soul), imagery takes priority over symbol.  The repertoire of images is infinite.  The gamut of archetypal potentials interact with one another in eternally unique, creative acts.  These creative acts, perceived via imagery (through metaphorical sensory perception), do not symbolize something else.

In a polytheistic orientation, all gods are co-equal and co-temporaneous.  They may or may-not all be coordinated by some over-arching principle.  They have equal potential for manifestation in any given moment.  They operate in the matrix of the four planes of Reality.  This is the soul-field.  It encompasses physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual (archetypal) levels.  It is a direct personal experience of the unknown.

Individuals do not have either the emotional or intellectual capacity to comprehend "God" as an all-inclusive principle.  We may, however, differentiate discreet aspects of the psyche in digestible quanta.  God has various divine attributes, or characteristics.

In polytheistic systems, these are presented as various gods and goddesses.  Each is sovereign in its realm, and has the capacity to influence the human body through symptoms, behavior, emotions, thoughts or ideas, convictions, and spiritual experience.  Existing independent of space and time, they are equiprobable.

Thus an image is not pre-determined or predictable.  It is direct perceptual experience of the unknown, and in fact, unknowable.  The appearance of a symbol, however, allows us to infer manifestation of corresponding processes which occur either in space or time.

The symbol is both a primitive expression of the unconscious and an idea corresponding to the highest intuitions of ego-consciousness.

But symbols do not appear in isolation.  Symbols are held enfolded in the net of an image which probably includes visceral sensations.  A visual image may entrain other senses like taste or smell. The appearance of symbols in anyone's psyche is predictable.  What symbols will appear and how they will be presented in multi-sensory imagery is not predictable, much less what they mean.

The predictability of symbols (their tendency to recur cross-culturally in mankind's psyche) and the unique quality of symbols contained in imagery show a relationship between explicate and implicate order.  They are fundamental components in the language of the psyche.  Symbols are best described or catalogued by archetypal processes and their ruling god or goddess, with their attendant attributes and correspondences.

Since all parts of the process are inferred, or enfolded by a symbol, they allow us to predict future occurrences within the framework of probability.  Given an elaborate, but limited repertoire of symbols, there is an upper limit to information output.  Uniform distribution, or equiprobability, offers the maximum possible choice in constructing a message.  Shannon, following remarks of Boltzman and Szilard, has given the name maximum entropy to this maximum information.  In other words--chaos.

In a mystical experience, there is a communication between a human receptor and a god-form.  The Jewish system is so finely tuned that total enlightenment can be achieved through meditation on a single letter, according to their elders.  The archetype makes its presence known through corresponding imagery.  To simulate its eternal aspect, it re-iterates itself over-and-over in a symbiotic relationship with humanity.

In other words, while we cannot assimilate the maximum information which is the archetype itself, we can decode an optimal amount of relative information through the correspondence system.  This is accomplished by "seeing through" the literal aspects of life into the dimension of psyche and the gods.  It is accomplished simply by noticing.

Repetition, or redundancy, increases the possibility that the message will be noticed.  How many times have we realized there was a lesson to be learned in an experience that we should have gotten earlier in life?  By noticing the archetype's influence, you take up a conscious relationship with it.  To give it attention is to give it worship, but not necessarily in a formal, religious way.

In information theory, a message has a degree of predictability which is in ratio to its degree of coherence, or regularity.  Foresight is enhanced by knowledge of which symbols are component parts of each archetypal pattern.  It is a clue you are dealing with Apollo, for example, when you have fantasies of the omnipotence of science, or fascinations with "solar" occupations like music or healing.

The symbols may be bolder or more primal, like a mandala, totem animal, or just a color.  If one of the symbols presents itself, there is a high degree of probability others with the same theme will follow, reiterating the message.  The presence of the entire process is inferred from viewing a part of it, like a hologram.  This part, which comes into observation through the soul, is the unfolding of a portion of the implicate order.
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(1) Abraham Moles, INFORMATION THEORY AND ESTHETIC PERCEPTION, Urbana, Chicago and London, University of Illinois Press, 1968.
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5.  THE SELF, ALEPH/TAU, THE NEXUS OF THE DIAMOND BODY

Aleph, the beginning, and Tau, the end are simultaneously attributed to the center of the Diamond Body or Throne-Chariot.  This center with its coordinated opposites radiantly arrayed around about itself, is an archetype of the Self.

There is a rhythm or periodicity in the unfolding of psychic processes.  A knowledge of the wavelength or cycle of this process makes accurate prediction of its behavior more likely.  Phenomena perceptible to the human senses always display a form of periodicity.

Only periodic or regular repetition provokes expectation.  Expectation is an essential condition to foreknowledge.  Looking forward is expectation, not certainty.  Archetypal processes are re-current or chronic.  This chronicity, or tendency to continually re-appear over time describes the fundamental manifestation of archetypes in the space/time continuum.

The archetypal process is a special case event, or series of events.  It occurs in time.  For example: there are several ways for the soul to experience ascent up the Tree of Life.  This is enactment of the archetype of "The Way."  As in the case of psychological individuation, it is unique for each individual--an experiential journey through many states of consciousness.

Pathworking can take place within the context of various religions--Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, neo-pagan, etc.  It could be approached as a spiritual science.  A wide assortment of entities might be encountered, etc.  These variations of detail constitute the unfolding of an archetypal process.  Body and mind are affected by the archetype's attempt to manifest itself in space and time.

...archetypal psychology does not see psyche and soma working as Cartesian opposites in the first place.  What is so surprising about synchronicity once one assumes that soma is subsumed by psyche?  There is no need to work out a factor called synchronicity--only, we might suggest, the basic factor of "chronicity", which is the time of the soul itself.  Instead of saying spookily, that some events are "synchronistic", we should see all events as "chronic."  It is, after all, only with Cartesian dualism that one needs a concept of synchronicity--if body is taken as fantasy, it too is soul and a dualism is uncalled for.  There is nothing to be "joined." (1)

The recurrence or redundancy of phenomena becomes apparent after a period of observation.  Archetypal phenomena become expected when you learn to see them everywhere, operating all the time.

There is a repertoire of archetypal processes, which unfold themselves time and again.  These phenomena can be viewed from a perspective termed synchronicity.  We are not witnessing "meaningful but acausal connectedness,"  but recurrent patterns with corresponding details.  It is probable, therefore expected, that the whole entourage of correspondences will follow in the wake of an archetypal activation.  For example, if a man is relating to his anima, virtually everything in his moods, environment, dreams, and thoughts will feed this back to him, in a subtle disguise.

A person who takes a sudden interest in "expanding his consciousness" might be seen as being under the influence of Apollo.  The correspondences or keywords attached to this type of temperament allow us to make certain generalizations concerning future psychic processes.

We would expect an increase in values attributed to such qualities as light, clarity, and truth.  The principle of rational consciousness might be held in one-sided esteem.  Involvements with music or medicine could occur.  The creative imagination would stir with inspiration as the result.  The intensity of these experiences might be frightening.  Dream figures might include fair-haired youths, fantasies of illumination, etc.

Any or all of these characteristic experiences might precipitate into the life-story of the individual.  But this is more than a meaningful coincidence.  It is an expected unfoldment of an archetypal process by an aware observer.  The details of the enactment remain unique and unknown, but the characteristics of the major recurrent patterns are the same.

The soul enfolds extremes.  In the matrix of the soul-field one can embrace conflicting viewpoints, and hold those modes of consciousness simultaneously.  This is a form of the union of opposites.  To continue the above example: the individual might become aware of his inherent Dionysian aspect (which is the counterpart of Apollo).  Instead of experiencing conflict, he might develop appreciation of both modes of being.

Magickal use of symbols in ceremony ignites unfoldment of the "process" which is encoded in the symbol.  The process functions through visualization.  Libido, or psychic energy or magical Will, is consciously poured into the unconscious in order to activate it.

The experience of the Diamond Body meditation produces congruence of the letters ALEPH/TAU, the beginning and the end.  Aleph/Tau might be seen as the psychic reality which combined appear as "synchronicity/chronicity."  This intimates something about the cyclic or recurrent nature of time.

Aleph, as Air, permeates the whole Cube.  Aleph, the airy "breath spirit" Mercurius, is the vertical axis of the Diamond Body.  The path indicates a "trickster" aspect through its correspondence with the planet Uranus, unexpected meaningful connectedness.

Synchronicity helps explain the subjective experience, so important in life of "meaningful coincidence."  It also provides a hypothesis for understanding divination in astrology, tarot, and the like.  It does not explain the effect of magic in invoking forces, changing patterns through ritual, effecting healing or fulfilling desires. (2)

These effects of Magick are produced through the magician's relationship to his "will."  His ability to change things is in direct proportion to the amount of psychic energy he can free-up and focus on his desire for transformation.

This "energized enthusiasm" is a creative act which can also be accomplished by generating libido through a meditation technique.  Most commonly, a psychotronic machine, or meditation "device" is employed.  Examples of such devices are the Middle Pillar Exercise, Sex Magick operations, and the Diamond Body Exercise.

This "will" consists of ego-consciousness making a free choice to work with the subconscious toward an end, the True Will.  The True Will is the expression of highest inner aspiration.  Consistent activity in this direction is the Great Work, the opus of soul-making.

The main method used is to place one's magickal practice in synch with psyche's rhythmical transformation processes.  These include seasonal changes, lunar tides, biorhythms, and brainwaves.  Most of these systems are related to electromagnetic (EM) fields.

EM fields are seen to control, manipulate, and direct internal state functions and chemistry.  By focused attention, it is possible to generate "standing wave" patterns in both the brain and the body.  Those which resonate with higher systems can produce dramatic change.  Such a higher system is the electrostatic field formed in the ionosphere's cavity around the earth.  It is possible to create a resonance between this field and that of an individual body/mind.

Ego-consciousness and anima-consciousness together represent psychic reality.  The Diamond Body, as a paradigm, contains both in Aleph/Tau.  Aleph, the Middle Pillar of the Diamond Body, is formed of the joining of I, THE MAGICIAN and II, THE HIGH PRIESTESS (Mercury and the Moon).  Add Shin (Spirit) and Mem (Water) and the gate Tau (Time) opens.

Tau is corresponded with both Earth and Saturn.  Saturn reminds us of the Greek god, Chronos, whose connection with "chronicity" seems evident.  Saturn, in astrology, is also associated with the ego and will.  It is also associated with the limiting factor of time, the boundary conditions.  Chronicity is sacred time (Chronos) appearing as multiple recurrence.  Tau, as Saturn (Time) is the gateway to imaginal space (KEY XXI, THE UNIVERSE).

The "nexus point", ALEPH/TAU, is the Magickal Child of the union between THE MAGICIAN and THE HIGH PRIESTESS.  It partakes of the nature of both.  It is androgynous.  The will brings the consciousness into synch with recurrent patterns which pulse through the psychic field.  ALEPH/TAU is "where it's A-T."

We can experience simultaneity of a mystical level of consciousness and the critical, interpretative level of consciousness.  This is best achieved through parallel experience on the cognitive (knowledge) level and affective (experiential) level.  ALEPH/TAU summarizes the entire Diamond Body figure.  All the letters, in fact the entire Creation are enfolded in this central shrine.

If cosmos is seen as the result of the creation of language, meditation on the Hebrew letters within the Diamond Body matrix is a sacred paradigm, par excellence.

A creation implies a superabundance of reality, in other words an irruption of the sacred into the real.  It follows that every construction or fabrication has the cosmogony as paradigmatic model.  The creation of the world becomes the archetype of every human gesture, whatever its plane of reference may be. (3)

The Diamond Body figure is a multidimensional mandala.  It is more than a mental construct, since it is the geometrical heart of atomic structure.  A mandala, in function, is essentially the same as magic circle.  Mandalas have been used extensively for magically acquiring information about the rationally unknowable.  They have been used not only as concentration techniques, but also as tools for parapsychological experiments.

A modern example of this occurred during studies at Maimonides Dream Labs.  Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman were trying to impress certain information on an individual's dream.  They found that an individual, being monitored for dream states, could incorporate a mandala, (which was concentrated on by another subject), into his dream.  This led to their famous theory on dream telepathy.

Jung has equated the mandala (inner psychic aspect) with synchronistic phenomena (parapsychological equivalent).  In alchemy, this is known as the experience of the Unus Mundus, or One World.  It is the unification of body, soul, and spirit.

In the past, such magicians as Zosimos and Bruno attempted to combine these two equivalents into a unitary reality.  One need only construct a mandala, which via synchronicity yields parapsychological "knowledge" or access.

The crucial ingredient is an act of personal intervention by the magician in a given moment of time.  When the individual confronts the continuum, the implicate order emerges from its latent state--it emanates forth.  One experiences knowledge of immortality and gains access to sacred time/space, which is essentially an escape from time.  The time-scale of the archetypes is eternal, because only form is involved in time.  All forms are born, die, and are time-bound.

ALEPH/TAU is the nexus-point of the operation.  It is the point of maximum in-between-ness.  TAU corresponds, in the Diamond Body figure, with the heart-center or Tiphareth.  This is the central sphere on the Tree of Life, and the central sphere of the group of closest-packed-spheres in our model.  The heart-center, Tiphareth, is the Philosopher's Stone.

It is the enlivening of that part of the soul known as the Ruach, the Moral Soul.  The heart (Tau) of the Heart (Tiphareth) is beyond time.  The Ruach, itself is alleged to stay with the body at death, and is transcended in the Neshamah grade of the soul.  In the qabalistic tradition, it is possible to meet the Neshamah (or soul) face to face before death.  The union of mystic and soul restores the divine order.  This soul and the World Soul are synonymous.

"Finding" or "attaining" the Stone is one thing.  However, the "application" of the Stone is its use as a magickal tool.

Combining solar-consciousness gained at Tiphareth, with the twilight or anima-consciousness of THE HIGH PRIESTESS (Path II, GIMEL) gives one access to the Invisible Sephira DAATH.  This sphere is not an a priori given on the Tree of Life.  It is not an archetype like the other spheres.  It is characterized as the gate to an altogether different dimension.

In order to experience it, the magician must first create it on his ascent up the Tree of Life.  The name of DAATH is "Knowledge."  This is knowledge in the merging sense, such as Adam knew Eve.  It is "gnosis," a personal experience of divinity not mediated by religious authorities.  The experience is of mutual recognition between god and man.

"Knowledge" is not a thing-in-itself; it is rightly denied a place on the tree...Knowledge, so far as it exists at all, even as a statement of relation, is no more than a momentary phenomena of consciousness.  The proposition vanishes automatically as it is assimilated. (4)

Therefore, this knowledge or access state, which is reached by uniting with one's Self, is the state of maximum information flow.  One is, in that instant, a Babe in the Abyss of the transcendent imagination (Shekinah).  The gulf between a meditative procedure and the grace of God is crossed.  When one is ignorant of the possibilities, all symbols are equiprobable (i.e. THE FOOL).  The vehicle of consciousness upgrades from Ruach to Neshamah, which is known through the Shekinah.

Maximum information flow contains so much information that it appears as chaos.  As soon as this "Knowledge" begins to be processed in images, we are dealing with particularized information, not a concept or experience of Knowledge-as-a-body, per se.  We are now dealing with relative quantities of information processing.  The processing is experienced as space/time.

The practical application of the Stone has enormous value.  It gives breadth and depth to one's magickal practice.  According to Israel Regardie,

The place of balanced power from which the working of the opposites may correctly be viewed, is the implication of Daas, [Daath].  It is shadowy and the word is used advisedly...for most have not cultivated the difficult art of avoiding the opposites...it is a new factor of adaptation or equilibrium, especially between the two broad divisions of consciousness--the ego on the one hand with its desire for adjustment to modern life with its refined and non-natural conditions, and on the other hand with the superficial levels of the instinctual life, concerned with primitive things, of self-assertion, and the unbridled gratification of its every whim and caprice.  It is this new factor of adjustment which comprises the principle impetus to what has been called the Golden Flower, growth of the Red Rose upon the Cross of Gold, Stone of the Philosophers, medicine of metals. (5)

Paradoxically, he says elsewhere

Some Qabalists postulate a Sephirah named Daath, or Knowledge, as being the child of Binah and Chokmah, or a sublimation of the Ruach, supposed to appear in the Abyss in the course of man's evolution as an evolved faculty.  It is a false Sephirah, however, and the Sepher Yetsirah, in anticipation, most emphatically warns us that 'Ten are the ineffable Sephiros.  Ten and not nine.  Ten and not eleven.  Understand with Wisdom, and apprehend with care.'  It is a non-existent Sephirah because, for one thing, Knowledge when examined contains within itself--as the progeny of Ruach--the same element of self-contradiction, and being situate in the Abyss, dispersion and so of self-destruction.

It is false, because as soon as knowledge is critically and logically analyzed, it breaks up into the dust and sand of the Abyss.

The unity of the various faculties just mentioned, however, comprises the Ruach which is called the Human Soul.  (6)

Saints tell us there are two parts to the experience of Daath.  The lower one has a downward tendency and creates the phenomenal world of the lower universe.  This experience has to do with the subconscious mind of God, and has been termed the Dark Night of the Soul.  The other experience at this level is connected with Kether and draws us upward.  The soul becomes pure and chaste (as symbolized by THE HIGH PRIESTESS path) and loses worldly desires.  It begins taking the pearls (pearls correspond to KEY II) of God's Holy Name.

ALEPH/TAU reminds us that the Diamond Body Meditation is a circular process of imagination.  It does not run down (the process of radiation or entropy) because it draws continually from the free-energy of the archetypes themselves.  It is a form of alchemical circulatio.

The Diamond Body Exercise is a geometrical description of Tiphareth.  The Vector Equilibrium Matrix is an excellent metaphorical description of Daath.  The V.E.M. permits conceptual coordination among opposites.  It represents a sort of "omnicomprehension."  It is multi-directional.  We might speculate that here there is "zero-error" and "zero-time."  Through this model, we experientially comprehend the word Universe.

When one uses both ego- and anima-consciousness as alternatives, there is a natural balancing which occurs.  Binocular vision includes the eye of both scientist and mystic.  The HIGH PRIESTESS represents the Anima Mundi or World Soul.  She is the channel for descending and ascending energies.  This process is eternal and does not degrade because entropy and negentropy are produced equally.  It is an interplay of chaos creating order, yielding to chaos for re-structuring, then chaos self-generating new order.

A system holds together because it contains more gravitational coherence than radiation of energy.  This coherence is best described as the love of the various components for one another, whether they be sub-atomic particles, molecules, humans, or gods.

Disorder emerges because of entropy produced during ordering processes.  Breaking down the old order makes room for entirely new systems and structures--new order, which cannot come about without de-structuring.  Order, in this sense, corresponds with explicate, ego-consciousness.  This entropy emerges causally as the result of linear or directed thinking.  Alchemical thinking is not linear, but circulatory.
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(1) Charles Boer and Peter Kugler, "Archetypal Psychology is Mythical Realism"
(2) J. Marvin Spiegelman, "Psychology and the Occult", SPRING 1976, Dallas, Spring Publications, 1976.
(3) Mircea Eliade, THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE
(4) Aleister Crowley, THE LAW IS FOR ALL
(5) Israel Regardie, THE MIDDLE PILLAR, Llewellyn (St. Paul, MN), p113
(6) Israel Regardie, GARDEN OF POMEGRANATES, Llewellyn (St. Paul, MN), pp.102-103.
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6.  MEDITATIONAL USE OF THE DIAMOND BODY: CIRCULATIO

Circulatio, or circulation of the light, combines the alchemical operations of sublimatio and coagulatio.  Sublimation means generally to have an ennobling effect, and coagulation means to solidify.

During circulatio, one sublimates body and coagulates spirit.  Circulation around the aspects of being leads to an equilibrium where one is contained within the opposites.  This containment is graphically shown with the Vector Equilibrium Matrix.

This balancing is a delicate process.  It must be performed by the right person at the right time.

Sublimatio consists of spirit and soul ascending from lower to higher in the imaginal realm.  Through it, the spirit hidden in matter becomes visible.  Sublimatio is the alchemical form of resurrection.

According to Edward Edinger, in EGO AND ARCHETYPE:

Sublimatio, psychologically, is the process of raising concrete, personal experience to a higher level, a level of abstract or universal truth.  Coagulatio, in contrast, is the concretization or personal realization of an archetypal image.(1)

Sublimatio is a vertical, solar activity (represented in the Diamond Body as THE MAGICIAN).  Coagulatio is feminine, or lunar (represented by the HIGH PRIESTESS).  Excess quantities of either of these potencies may have destructive effects.  The solar-libido, which is creative and life-promoting, may be experienced as scorching dryness or fiery anger.  The lunar-libido also has negative forms.  These modes of psychic energy have a wide range of power.

The congealing, benumbing effect of the lunar quality is an extreme form of the feminine principle to promote coagulatio.   Images and urges of a spiritual nature which would prefer to soar unfettered by the earth are obliged by the feminine Eros principle to become related to personal, concrete reality.  If the ego is too far removed from such reality it will experience the encounter with the feminine as a paralyzing crash to earth.

It can be quite helpful to realize that the damaging effects of the dangerous lunar power and the destructive solar power are, nevertheless, aspects of the Philosopher's Stone.  When one is recuperating from the effects of an encounter with either of these potencies, it helps in maintaining one's orientation and perspective to know that what he is suffering is from the Stone itself.  Anyone who would seek the Philosopher's Stone is bound, repeatedly, to be a victim of one of its partial aspects.  These happenings constitute the alchemical operations which gradually bring about the transformation.  But the operations are on ourselves.(2)

Eventually (even-tau-ally), the solar-principle provides an increase in understanding and an expanded field of awareness.  The Stone's lunar portion materializes elusive intuitions and spiritual potential.  One submits willingly to the transpersonal totality of psyche.

The royal marriage of THE MAGICIAN and HIGH PRIESTESS produces the Philosopher's Stone through circulation.

Spirit penetrates soul, and soul envelops spirit.  When spirit and soul unite thoughts are immobilized.  It is much like the moment of consummation in Sex Magick.  The soul "crystallizes", and becomes tuned to receive the divine.  Spirit becomes an effective influence in the personality.  This is real-I-zation of the Diamond Body, or Self.  The phenomena which used to be experienced as (eternal or internal) light is now perceived as psychic revelation.

Sublimatio means to raise or ennoble.  Sublimatio is the vertical, Middle path and corresponds with the element Air.  In QBL, Shekinah is the Middle Pillar.  In psychology, alchemy and magick, it is the Anima Mundi.  She mediates the ascents and descents of the soul and spirit.  Through her, the ten spheres of the Tree of Life slowly sublimate into Kether, the Crown (and Primordial Air).  The "ascents and descents" of the soul are characterized in ancient lore as Angels.  An example of this imagery is the story of Jacob's Ladder.

The Supernal Triad (the top three spheres of the Tree of Life) represents the three aspects of knowledge: the Crown, Wisdom (the Knower), and Understanding (that which is known).  In Kether, the Crown, all opposites reside in total union.  It reconciles oppositions which are distributed throughout the other spheres.

In alchemical thought, one may be redeemed through this self-knowledge.  But there is great danger in direct revelation of the archetypal psyche.  The danger lies in calling up the pure archetype, which the ego-consciousness is never able to assimilate or integrate.

If one succumbs to the disintegrative effect, the personality is annihilated in the Abyss of the transcendent imagination.  This dissolution has been likened to drowning.  The alternate is release from the personal ego attitude and a pro-active move toward participation within the archetypal dimension.

Dreams, active imagination, and the practice of Theurgy or Ceremonial Magick may all be seen as forms of coagulatio.  In the process of circulatio, there is a resurrection of the Soul of Body.  Images are an expedient mode of access to the knowledge of the soul, as it circulates rhythmically throughout every cell of the body.

The body becomes subtle and spirit gains body.  One is able to maintain daily functions in the ordinary world without losing intimate contact with the archetypal dimension.  In fact, this connectedness to daily life is essential to balance soul-travel in archetypal realms.  Maintain ordinary pursuits except during the allotted meditation period.

This indirect penetration to the core-of-being produces fulfillment.  One may use conscious, purposeful action to intentionally produce experience of unconscious non-action which is purposeless.  This is a natural preparation for death, the experience of awareness without the constraints of time/space.

The dynamic activity associated with ego-consciousness (the desire to know, to penetrate and illumine) culminates in a cessation of effort.  The rational process of controlling imagination defers to another power, the autonomy of the stream of consciousness.

This experience of silence and tranquility is known as Sophia, or Divine Wisdom.  This means there is an emptying of the personal attachments of the ego.  We then experience a timeless incarnation of the universal aspect of being.

The Merkabah mystics had one goal: entry into the throne-world of the Merkabah, or Chariot of Fire (Diamond Body). They passed through the seven lowest spheres of the Tree of Life before they gained admittance.  Using common shamanic methods to achieve a trance state, they sent their souls upward or downward to pierce through the veil surrounding the Throne Chariot.

The devotee sought nothing more than the vision of the Merkabah.  No explicit doctrinal statements beyond accounts of their journeys to the heavens grew out of the experience, nor do we find the slightest hint of a developed system beyond that of simple shamanism and the later involvement with magic.  The Merkabah-rider did not attempt to see beyond the throne-kingdom or question its nature and origin.  It was there.  It was to be experienced, and nothing more...no specific mention is made about the precise nature of the transformation which the Merkabah-rider underwent.(3)

These mystics threw their souls headlong into the fire of the Universe for no other reason than the desire to experience the Radiant Form of God.

A practical example of meditational use of the Cube of Space (Diamond Body) is given by Gareth Knight, a contemporary British magician and Qabalist.  He suggests the aspirant not waste time and energy in 'playing' with the symbols and symbol systems instead of using them.  The correspondences enrich the conceptual framework, but should not become an intellectual preoccupation.  Spontaneous offerings of the unconscious should be acknowledged without sidetracking into associations.  Stick to the image, itself.

For instance, build the Cube of Space in the imagination with oneself standing in the centre.  Concentrate on the six main directions initially and reflect on their general function and meaning.  Then it becomes a matter of following one's nose.  The details of the minor directions may be filled in.  It may then well occur that certain figures may appear more or less spontaneously in any particular direction.  These might be astrological figures, or Tarot pictures, or William Blake's four Zoas, or images quite independent of any known system.  Simply take them for what they are worth and use them in the immediate context in which they arise.

Our aim, when one crops up (say the Tarot Trump I, THE MAGICIAN, in the West), is to consider what it may mean--not to rush away and start to rack one's mentality on yet another mental construction of images or how to allocate all the rest of the Trumps around the Cube.  This is to substitute reason for intuition.(4)

Just use the spontaneous image like an entry way and keep following your symbols deeper and deeper, letting them unfold their hidden aspects.  The magical approach to the use of the Diamond Body has a purpose other than the mystic's experience of the Divine.  The magician taps into the Divine power to which he has gained access.  This enhances his ability to pursue the Great Work.

We have our basic structure in the Cube of Space on which we have affixed the Hebrew letters and their immediately associated symbols.  That is the fixed central part of our magical generator.  We need to let the other parts revolve around the fixed part if the generator is going to work.  The principle is just like an electrical machine, a rotating coil and a fixed one, which can be used to convert motion to power or power to motion--it is a two-way energy converter in consciousness.(5)

The restoration of the original unity (Kether) is a collective venture which each individual must set out to accomplish for himself.  This is not done through an imitation of the life of a god or gods.  It comes through fulfilling the Great Work which creates that unique reality which is the individual.  Each individual must experience the diverse aspects of his relationship with Divinity, within the constraints of time/space.

Polytheistic psychology would not suspend the commandment to have 'no other Gods before me,' but would extend that commandment for each mode of consciousness...polytheistic psychology obliges consciousness to circulate among a field of powers.  Each God has his due as each complex deserves respect in its own right.  In this circularity, there seem no preferred positions.(6)

[insert:CUBE OF SPACE WITH GODS & GODDESSES]

 The restoration of the exiled soul is our personal response-ability.  Each individual who does this makes a personal contribution to the content of the collective unconscious.  The results get up-loaded on the "psychic net."

By means of this circulation, a "spiritual earth" is built up, a mystical body, which was identified both with man's resurrection body and with the world-spirit.(7)

The function of imagination in this process is to make tangible the fact that matter in its subjective (expressive) aspect is spirit.  Spirit, regarded objectively, is the material world.  It is the world of limitation and repetitive cycles.

The circular states of repetitiveness, turning and turning in the gyres of our own conditions, force us to recognize that these conditions are our very essence and that the soul's circular motion (which is its native motion, according to Plotinus) cannot be distinguished from blind fate.  It is as if the soul frees itself not from blindness but by its continual turning in it.   Ultimately, if the spontaneous mandala heals, it does so because it compels a recognition of the limitation of consciousness, that my mind and heart will turn only in a circle, and yet that same circle is my portion of an eternal necessity.(8)

Circulatio is an economic psycho-feedback system which transforms ego-consciousness by recycling the content of its experience with archetypal patterns.

Psychofeedback is a method of controlling the human system (and only the human system) by both reinserting into it the results of past performance (as with orthodox feedback concepts and by inserting into it the result of its present performance or experience.(9)

Rather than describing this process as one of control, it might be better understood as one of co-ordination.  Both the ego-consciousness and the archetypal processes collaborate in the creation of the human ordering processes.  This is mediated through the Anima, soul in body.

In yet another modern rendition of alchemical thinking, Buckminster Fuller speaks of a type of circulatio in his Synergetic lingo:

It is characteristic of "all" thinking--of all system's conceptioning----that all the lines of thought inter-relationships must return cyclically upon themselves in a plurality of direction, as do various great circles around spheres.  Thus may we interrelatedly comprehend the constellation--or system--of experiences under consideration.  Thus may we comprehend how the special-case economy demonstrated by the particular system considered also discloses the generalized law of energy conservation of physical universe.

"Comprehension" means identifying all the most uniquely economical inter-relationships of the focal point entities involved...This is the way in which thought processes operate with mathematic logic.  The mathematics involved consist of topology, combined with vectorial geometry, which combination I call "synergetics"...(10)

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(1) Edward Edinger, EGO AND ARCHETYPE, Baltimore, Penguin Books, Inc., 1973.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Charles Ponce, KABBALAH, San Francisco, Straight Arrow Books, 1973.
(4) Gareth Knight, EXPERIENCE OF THE INNER WORLDS, Cheltenham, Helios Book Service (Publications) Ltd., 1975.
(5) Ibid.
(6) James Hillman, "Psychology: Monotheistic or Polytheistic",
(7) M.L. Von Franz, NUMBER AND TIME, Evanston, Northwest University Press, 1974.
(8) James Hillman, THE DREAM AND THE UNDERWORLD, New York, Harper and Row, 1979
(9) Paul G. Thomas, PSYCHO-FEEDBACK, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1979.
(10) R. Buckminster Fuller, OPERATING MANUAL FOR SPACESHIP EARTH, Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press, 1968-69.
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D.  ENTROPY AND REVERSABLE PROCESSES

We may explore the concept of circulatio further by referring to the laws of thermodynamics.

1.  THERMODYNAMIC LAWS

Carl Jung was the first to propose a heuristic relationship of consciousness to the laws of thermodynamics in his attempt to understand the principles behind psyche.  He believed that the psyche is capable of converting statistical organizations in a natural state to one of a 'higher' or 'unnatural' state.  He referred to this in alchemical terms as the opus contra naturam.  These transitions, he stated were "in opposition to entropy."

An exploration of this tenet is extremely important to our understanding of the Diamond Body Exercise.  With a better understanding of these physical laws of thermodynamics, visualizations and modeling can be thought of as beginning in an equilibrium state, passing through some stage of non-equilibrium, and eventually ending in another state of equilibrium.  Thermodynamics seeks to understand these processes.

An ideal process is called a reversible process.  This process is theoretically classified as a change in the state of a system which goes through a continuous succession of equilibrium states.  At no point does the system experience a stage of non-equilibrium.

The first law of thermodynamics denies the possibility of creating or destroying energy.  That is the so-called conservation of energy law.  Libido is seen as that energy related to consciousness.  It is that 'psychic' energy which psyche must conserve.  Libido is the motivational energy for life processes.

The second law of thermodynamics, as a macroscopic concept, states that there is a tendency on the part of nature to proceed toward a state of greater disorder.  The greater the disorder, the greater the entropy.  A reversible process has a zero change in entropy.  This can also mean that there is a negative entropy, or negentropy.

Entropy is a concept which describes the "usable" aspect of energy.  To understand this better, visualize a heat source at one end of a closed room.  At an early stage, we can state that the entropy of the room is low in that all the heat is at the source-point.  As time increases, the heat flows into other parts of the room.  Although the energy (total heat) has remained constant, the entropy, or order of the energy has decreased.  It is now more difficult to do work (like boil water).  Entropy is a measure of the disorder of energy.

It has been emphasized that work, as defined in thermodynamics, is a macroscopic concept.  Haphazard motions of individual molecules against intermolecular forces do not constitute "work."  Work always involves order or orderly motion.  The entropy of a system is measured by the macroscopic degree of molecular disorder existing in the system.  When the entropy of an isolated system increases, the system is proceeding from a state of lower to a state of higher probability.  The second law of thermodynamics is therefore only seen as a statistical law.

An example of this important distinction can be described via the conduction of heat from a hot stove to a kettle of water.  The second law asserts, not that heat must flow from the stove to the water, but that it is highly probable that heat will flow from the stove to the water.  Individual molecules can flow in the other direction, like in a gaseous state.  It is understood that there is always a chance that the reverse may take place, on a microscopic scale.  The second law of thermodynamics shows the most probable course of events, not the only possible ones.

At critical points near, but not at, absolute zero, there is an abrupt change or shift in laws, from statistical to quantum.  Superconductivity and superfluidity experiments demonstrate conditions where laws of probability do not operate.  It is the removal of entropy which allows the simplicity of the laws covering nearly perfect order to be seen in manifestation.  Such laws are of a different order than macroscopic statistical laws.

The Vector Equilibrium Matrix is a visual tool to bridge macroscopic structures into quantum modes.  It graphically depicts the sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere (now-here).  It can be used as an access tool for realizing multiple quantum ordering.

2.  ORDER AND CHAOS

To begin to understand this form of order, a new tool for perception is needed.  The new concepts of order involve the discrimination of the relative differences in time and space (and similarities).  Attention should now be given to similar differences and different similarities.  Such a format in mathematics is called a ratio, or matrix field.  According to Professor David Finkelstein of Yeshiva University, "The universe is a cosmic computer on the pregeometric level of information in which space and time appear as secondary statistical constructs."

The Vector Equilibrium Matrix is such a matrix field.  Although seen as a geometry at any stage, it is pregeometric in that it describes the change from one stage to the next.  It is a quantized state of information.

Physicist, David Bohm illustrates these notions of ratios in terms of a simple geometric curve.  By approximating this curve with a series of straight-line segments of equal length, a ratio can be stated to define this curve.  This curve has only one independent difference, that of being a space displacement as the straight-line segments curve on a flat plane.

A circle could be described similarly, except that the segments can vary in direction as well as position.  This ratio now describes a curve of the second class.  A helix creates a curve of the third class, when the angle between lines can turn in a third dimension.  This is an example of various kinds of similarities in the differences.

In the above example of curves, the similarity (or ratio) between successive steps remains invariant.  A new set of curves can now be described, where this similarity is different.  The segment-lengths now vary.  This leads us to consider not only similar differences but also different similarities of the difference.  As the degree becomes indefinitely high, we now can describe what is commonly referred to as "random curves."  Now, by quantizing our system of variance, we have have ordered a "random" event.

This kind of curve is not determined by any finite number of steps.  Nevertheless, it would not be appropriate to call it "disordered," having no order whatsoever.  Rather, it has a certain kind of order, one which is of an indefinable high degree.

We no longer use the term "disorder," but rather distinguish between different degrees of order, some of which are deterministic chaos.  Order is not to be identified with predictability; it is found in the connectivity of two events.  The mechanism used to identify an "event" is most revealing.  Insight is the perception (or psychological equivalent) of a certain type of resonance.  This specific form of ordering (insight) has meaningful implication to the individual experiencing it.  Intelligence is a sequence of such insights, leading to purpose and practical behavior.

This resonance allows for the transference of information from an implicate order to the explicate order.   Since the total of the explicate is encoded throughout the implicate order, the resonance provides a direct access or return to psyche.  This resonance is called a "complex."

3.  COMPLEXES AS REPAIR FUNCTIONS:

A complex is the interaction, in time and space, of an individual with an archetype.  It is a personal experience.  The archetype is "interfering" with the human part of life.  Conscious awareness is altered through the experience.  The more consciousness differentiates among the complexes, the more negentropic the effect.  There is a decrease in entropy.  A complex provides information from the archetypal dimension that facilitates adaptation, healing, and evolution.

If a system changes such that a spontaneous increase in disorder (deterministic chaos) will bring the system back to its original state, then the state may be defined as orderly and thereby associated with an increase in negentropy (decrease in entropy).  The complex becomes a way to bring the system back to its "original" state.  The ordering principle allows the transfer of information from psyche to consciousness.  Psyche's energy is continuous.  Its "quantum-like" nature is seen as a complex, or group of complexes.

The entropy of all macrocosmic structures increases in time.  To reverse the natural degradation which eventually occurs, an ordering process capable of returning the system to its original state is required.  This process can be thought of as a "repair function."

Living things routinely incorporate self-repair systems within their structures.  Immortality of any system is, in principle, feasible only if its repair system is not irreversibly impaired.  If an impairment can be identified, restoration to its original structure must be accomplished by performing work.  These functions require the search for, and then application of, specific information.  A complex is a source for these specifics.

In these formats lie the nature of the differences (and similarities) in which energy is viewed.  Energy is the scalar quantity which is measured on a relative scale.  Present convention equates zero energy to the absence of any observable forms of energy.  But there is a seething ocean of scalar energy just below the level of observation.  As our worldview shifts from the statistical to the quantum, we find that our ordering models lead to a concept of of abundant or infinite energy (or potential).

There is an absence of any observable forms of energy within the Vector Equilibrium Matrix.  Thus, this center is an idealized state for negentropy because it contains unobservable virtual (scaler) energy which can be "translated" or "transduced" into 4-dimesional reality.

4.  REVERSIBLE PROCESSES

This energy does not exist in the uniform continuum, but in association with structures within structures.  Macroscopic systems are universally irreversible and mortal.  Their internal disorder spontaneously increases over an extended period of time.  Some basic structural component of the elementary particles appears to be universally immortal and reversible.  The key seems to be in the quantum viewpoint.  As our model becomes smaller and smaller, the access to negentropic ordering becomes greater.

The Vector Equilibrium Matrix represents a "repair function" or ordering on a quantum level.  The Diamond structure represents an immortal body, with the V.E.M. describing the geometrical way in which this structure reverses itself.  With this set of visual tools, the existence of an infinite source of negentropy is now available.

The existence of an infinite source of negative energy permeating the universe constitutes a plenum.  Within the very vacuum of space there are observable properties, as Dirac indicates: "Infinite sea of negative energy."  It is now possible, with a hierarchical view of matter, to give an operational definition to this potential.

Therefore, we define Nuit, goddess of Infinite Space as the sum of all unobservable forms of energy that exist in the microcosm beyond our observable limits.  It is a plenum, not a "matter-free" state.  It is not the V.E.M. which is important, but its center which is everywhere present, Nuit.

5.  THE ALCHEMY OF ENTROPY

The amount of energy in a system that is available for work is called Gibb's free energy.  The conscious will is the ego's "free energy."  It is continuously subject to degradation of value by psyche's entropic function.  This dissociability of psyche diffuses the ego.  The more consciousness differentiates, the more organization is given to ego as free energy.  This access of free-energy can create a negentropic effect, thereby re-ordering that which was in disorder.  This is the complexity of the interaction between ego and archetypes.

When the archetypes create chaos, it is for re-structuring in a new form.  This de-constructing is called solutio or liquification of consciousness in alchemy.  It is the necessary pre-requisite for the completely new image.  When the ego undergoes solutio, the pathway to the new self has opened.

One proceeds down that pathway through the alchemical process called imaginatio.  This indicates an abstraction from concentration and active fantasy.  This so-called "free energy" can exist quite independent of the ego.  It is also a product of the Self.

Sublimatio is the process of raising physical and personal experiences to a higher or more abstract level.  It is an elevation of perspective, an ascension in viewpoint.  It means that what was once taken literally, such as the body, is now perceived in a more subtle way.  The body itself becomes subtle, another venue for psyche and the imaginal life.  As an ordering process, sublimatio leaves the explicate and enters the implicate realm.  Free-energy comes into time when it leaves the archetypal world.

Sublimatio is the raising of material from the bottom of a vessel.  The difference between a neurosis and a sublimation is that a neurosis isolates; a sublimation unites.  Something new is created, and negentropic potential becomes available.

Through sublimation, the spirit hidden in matter now becomes visible.  "Primitive thinking," or anima-consciousness, is more suited to maintaining opposites in harmony while this ordering process continues along mythical patterns.  It might be thought of as an archetypal ordering process.  When disorder is not ordered by archetypal processes, it falls to the ego.  When chaotic energy is ordered by archetypes, it is drawn to them because they are strange attractors.

A middle path between "primitive thinking" and directed (ego) thought points to the type of sublimation which Jung speaks of in AION.  The ego system has a "linear form" or segment of time irreversibility implanted as a result of directed thinking and the historical development of the self.  A relationship between the ego and the self is possible through the transcendent function.  This is not built up by directed thinking, but rather with the negentropic source: imagination.