> Questions:
> 1. The Sephorith on the Tree of Life, are equated with emotions...knowledge, and existence, or at least this is the impression that I have gotten....
Archetypal energies that exist in the universe (macrocosm)- all of which man (the microcosm) contains naturally only in a yet unordered form.
>The Tree in it's present form seems to be of little value to me, other than to use the generated emotions to change forms of energy. The filing system that most people claim it to be does not seem to work well for me, because everything needs to be cross referenced...
I used to share this view, but after I realized that all things were interconnected and that any system will show only one set of possibilities out of an infinite whole, I was able to make use of traditional and non-traditional versions of the tree since each showed a different version of the whole picture. Any mental map made will always be inefficient for accurately portraying the whole of infinite reality due to its being bound up in Airy/intellectual thought-with-form.
"The map is not the territory." It's just an incomplete guide for personal experience of the territory.
>this is one thing that the circular Tree seems to point out. It also resembles the geometric figure drawn in Kaplan's book describing the path of the twenty two letters. So my question is....can anyone tell me how it is used [ the traditional Tree of Life ], to effect the physical and the mundane???
By reorganizing the forces within you until they match the 'universal' pattern or organization and thereby learning to tap into those forces more effectively and at will. Also, there is the matter of attunement to those specific energies and states of consciousness through practice and learning how they function in nature so as to apply them more effectively through force of will.
My arrangement:
Spirit (0)- Contains the seed and all possibilities of manifestation of a particular object/topic. Allness. Beyond duality.
Fire (123)- Contains its first manifestations as 'individual' from the whole - I consider this to be the level of 'thought-without-form' or Intuitive thought/existence (in my own 'system' of doing things anyway).
Air (456) - Contains the mental/intellectual structures/programs of a psyche - the Mental Body (when viewing a person's aura from that level). Thought-with-form.
Water (789)- Contains the Emotional body of a person - also the level of 'astral' plane and dreams.
Earth (10) - The ultimate manifestation of all preceding principles. This would be the physical body itself.
Modifying anything on any of those 'levels' will have an effect on one or many of the others. Modify the intellectual programming of a psyche and you will create change in the physical actions of the person (although possibly only temporary since the person will usually revert back to the way they were if it was not their will to change and if that's the only aspect of their consciousness that was tampered with). Physical injury can cause energy changes and trauma to more subtle layers of the aura as well.
A seemingly (yet not) unrelated text that might be of interest here would be Frances Yates' book on "The Art of Memory." Page 217 should explain a bit of how the tree of life is normally used as a filing system and as a method for reorganizing the microcosm so as to be a more accurate reflection of the macrocosm. Of course, each person's 'system' for accomplishing this will vary depending on his/her views and practices.
> 2. Astrology seems to be a way of classifying people, some seem to use the Tree for the same thing. Does this theory seem to be more accurate???
Putting one system against another and trying to decide which is more accurate isn't possible. One person may make better use of one system over another but that depends on his/her talents and skills. If it works, I say use it ;)
> 3. Now here is the goody..lol.....at what point does one enter the Tree???
You ARE the tree. Or at least, in order to make the Tree work for you, you must become like the Tree by reorganizing your consciousness and internal latent 'forces' and energies until they match that arrangement of sephiroth/paths etc.
From what I've seen, some aspects of ceremonial magick structure such as the Tree of Life cannot always be applied immediately without prior preparation. There appears to be the need for building into one's self the structure and assigning meaning and adding energy/inertia to that structure (and set of symbols) in order to make it useable and effective for personal magickal work. Another example of this could be the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. In my own experience with that, it was entirely ineffective for banishing after only having practiced it for a couple weeks. I had to build the ability to banish into myself through practice of that ritual (and its visualizations) for several months and years in order to make it more effective and useable for me. Drawing a pentagram now produces the visual pentagram lit up in the air before me (in a darkened room) and an impenetrable barrier against unwanted people and lower astral entities, whereas drawing one before with the intent to banish an unwanted force only produced a vague hint of an effect. The more you do something and reinforce that act with energy and consciousness, the more effective it'll be over time.
> 4. If the ten are of nothingness.....which is incorrect...because in the past nothing meant no one thing....[ another example of how our language has changed..and the reasons for searching the beginnings ], how can each one have it's own color???, and only one color???
Color attributions have changed periodically. When we dogmatize to the point of exclusion of all other possibilities then we miss the point I believe.
I believe 10 was used as a base number due to the structure of the Hebrew alphabet. (In other words, this was possibly done out of convenience.- later Ed. addition) 12 or 14 or any other number could have been used to equally good effect in my opinion. The 10 sephiroth are 'emanations' of the infinite Allness and also contained within it. I always envision a primordial abstract unmanifest non-dual soup of Allness condensing into a definite point and thus becoming 'manifest' first as kether (and then proceeding from there in the usual manner described by other writers on Qabalah) when I try to visually imagine the process of manifestation for understanding. Each will see it differently.
> 5. Now I would equate each sphere as one of the major chakras...but as we work, and evolve we develop more major chakras, how would this fit in??? Was the ten a statement of what was there at the starting point???, before evolution???
I don't feel that the sephiroth are exactly related to the chakras at all. Each person may view the same phenomenon but will always have a slightly different interpretation of it. In this case, it's the Hindu mystics and the Jewish mystics. The Hindus (or whoever it was that created the chakra system) viewed the energy of the human body and saw spinning wheels or points of contact between soul and body. The Jewish mystics/clairvoyants saw the same phenomenon but probably zoomed in on different aspects of what they saw and perhaps only saw more general spheres of energy influence. I believe that they also added some conjecture and sought to make the body conform to their ideas of perfection and order as time went on and may not have entirely based their 'system' (i.e. tree of life) on clairvoyantly viewed phenomena. I think the goals of the practitioners/creators of a system have a lot to do with the structure/use of the system. Someone with more historical knowledge will have to do more research on this topic to know for certain. These are just my guesses and thoughts on the subject.
As far as relating the chakras to the sephiroth, I personally consider Tiphareth to be a combination of solar plexis (3rd) and heart (4th) chakras. This makes much more sense to me. Yesod (when considered as an energy 'center' in the aura) seems more like a combination of the 1st and 2nd chakras to me. The Middle Pillar would be the pranic tube of course.
> 6. This is a symbol of visualization to take us with-in ourselves to different areas that can be used ...if any of you have read "Bardon", he tells you to generate the spheres of color, and to place them at certain points in your body...these are to be used at later dates in different workings, is this not the same thing??? In the supposed walking the paths...are you not gathering energy???, to activate and further charge the spheres??? I hear of no one using the spheres in their magick...why not???
Perhaps you haven't run into anyone who's into that sort of thing yet. Lack of evidence does not indicate complete absence. If they're Qabalistic magickians then you'd think they'd be using the sephiroth in their workings...
> 7. Tell me how you use the Tree and what you think it is for, and what it can be used for, do you see any way that it can be improved???, be brave and adventurous...stick your neck out....I do it all of the time, how else can you learn, and explore except through questions, answers, and the sharing of prospective.
My Qabalah is not your Qabalah and vice versa. Since it is a living system and not a rigid one, each always develops his/her own uses of it based on the basic rudiments of the 'system'. If we're truly adepts then we'll be always working on and changing our views and 'systems' so as not to become rigid and narrow our perceptions unnecessarily. Such changes occur naturally in our development - as Crowley once mentioned that the adept's view of his universe can change in completely different ways every week! I only cling to one piece of 'dogma' if it can be called that: "Reality is Infinite - All things are Interconnected." Much of what I do has been received directly as a result of personal astral work and training under supervision of other adepts and it was only later that I discovered books that supported my experiences (such as the Kybalion, Bardon's works etc.).
For me, the Tree of Life is a way for me to organize the energies/forces in my consciousness so as to make more immediate use of them. I've found the mental and emotional stability that results from this to be indispensable. However, unlike some rigid traditionalists, I don't feel that certain paths ONLY link certain sephiroth together. A little research in Gershom Scholem's works will show that historically, the early Kabbalists did not believe that some sephiroth were not connected by paths. They felt that ALL things were interconnected in some way - each sephira to every other. I was quite tickled to find that out since again, it supported the visions and experiences I had had in my own workings.
I am aware that each arrangement of the Tree of Life, from the more modern Renaissance conceptions of it in popular use today, to the more ancient circular pathless version by Rabbi Isaac the Blind (mid 12th c.), has something useful to offer. Each shows a different view of the phenomena being observed. Even though the 'paths' don't all interconnect on the modern tree, when using it I still mentally know that they all do anyway even if that particular arrangement can't show it. All is in All.
I don't claim to know everything or anything for that matter, but if my thoughts have been helpful to someone here then they have served their purpose.
Amoris