Yael R.

Dragwyla First North American rights

Email: Polaris93@aol.com 7,042 words
http://polaris93.livejournal.com/

Qaballah and Tarot: A Basic Course in Nine

Lessons
by Yael R. Dragwyla

Lesson II: Keys 1-10 – the Lower Arcana and the Court Cards

A. An Historical Overview of Qaballah and Tarot: Their Origins

1. Qaballah
The word Qaballah or Qabbalah comes from a Hebrew root meaning “to receive” and signifies
“reception.” Originally the knowledge contained in Qaballistic literature was transmitted orally from
generation to generation, i.e., “received” by each new generation of scholars and mystics from the previous
one, hence the derivation of the term.
According to Arthur E. Waite, in The Holy Kabbalah,

... [T]he subjects with which it is concerned . . . are Sacred and Divine Subjects:
they include the most profound Mysteries of God and the Emanations of Deity; the
celestial economy; the process of creation; the scheme of Providence in regard to man;
the communications of God in revelation and to the just in his [Congregation]; the
offices and ministries of good and evil angels; the nature and pre-existence of the soul;
its union with matter and its metempsychosis; the mystery of sin and its penalties; the
Messiah, His kingdom and His glory to be revealed; the state of the soul after death and
the resurrection of the dead, with occasional . . . intimations on the union of the soul and
God. Hereof is the aspect and this the part which was conceived and unfolded sub
species aeternitatis. Here also . . . is the abiding part, rooted in everlasting values, and
the one voice among many voices of old Tradition which bears a message from the past
to the modern world.
. . . The Kabbalah, in a word, is the hidden thought of Israel upon doctrines of Jewish
Religion . . . and upon the proper understanding of that Written Word which is referred to
a Divine Origin . . . .1

Tradition holds that the Sepher Yetzirah (The Book of Formation, on the creation of the world) was
received by the Patriarch Avram and transmitted by word of mouth from him to following generations.
Later, this work was first written down by Rabbi Akiva ben Yoseph, the pupil of Rabbi Yoshua ben
Hananiah, who was in turn the successor (as well as the opponent, at one point) of Rabban Gamaliel, the
head of the Palestinian Jews at the close of the First Century e.v. 2 and in the closing years of the Second
Century. Akiva, born around 50 e.v., is said to have written the Sepher Yetzirah after the destruction of the
Second Temple of Jerusalem itself by the Romans in the Second Century e.v.; he was subsequently
martyred by the Romans for transgression of the edict of Hadrian against the teaching and practice of
Judaism.
After Akiva and the Sepher Yetzirah, the Zohar (The Book of Splendors), the great metaphysical and
theological work of Qaballah, probably came into existence sometime in the Thirteenth Century e.v. There
is some dispute about this; for more about the pros and cons of debate on this subject, the interested
student should consult A. E. Waite’s The Holy Kabbalah, Book II, Chapter 3.3
Numerous works on the Qaballah were produced by various Jewish scholars after this period, while
non-Jews gradually took to its study. By the mid-Nineteenth Century, Western occultists, Jewish and
otherwise, were so familiar with the subject that Eliphas Levi, one of the best-known and most
knowledgeable of all Western occult philosophers and practitioners, based an entire system of Magickal
techniques and metaphysics upon it. At the close of that same century the Golden Dawn, which at that time
was the major heir of the general Western esoteric tradition, based its rituals and theosophy entirely upon
the metaphysical system of Qaballah.
Aleister Crowley, in turn inheriting this same tradition from the Golden Dawn, likewise built his
O.T.O. and A∴ A∴ solidly upon this same metaphysical and theosophical foundation. To this day, the
main Western Magickal traditions and practices all incorporate the Qaballah into their rituals, beliefs,
metaphysics, and philosophies on every level and Plane.

2. Tarot
Refer back to the notes in the Class Syllabus. Not that much that is truly reliable is known about the
origins of the Tarot itself.

B. The Lower Arcana of the Tarot and the Ten Sephiroth of the Tree of
Life
Introduction
In order to show the relationship between the cards of the Tarot and the concepts of Qaballah in a
clearer light, a description of each Sephirah or Atu and its corresponding card or cards and other
associations is given in this and the next lesson.
Nota bene: While many works on Qaballah, Magick, and related disciplines go out of their way to
establish correspondences among the many concepts and symbols used in these disciplines, few make it
clear why they do so, i.e., what such correspondences are used for, and why. Therefore, in order to avoid
confusing beginning students and make this subject as clear as possible, discussion of the Sephiroth and
Paths should be prefaced by an explanation of the uses of such correspondences in Magick and the other
Hermetic disciplines, and the rationale behind that use, to wit:

0: Notes on the Use and Rationale of Correspondences in the Hermetic Arts & Sciences

Here and there in the literature on the Hermetic Arts and Sciences, micro-diamonds in what is all too
often a literary dust-bin, are to be found clear, concise definitions of the “doctrine of correspondences” or
“doctrine of signatures,” as it is also called, e.g.:

The doctrine of correspondences is perhaps the most difficult of the magical axioms
to fully understand. It ultimately derives from the Neo-Platonic conception of each man
or woman as a microcosm (a ‘little universe’) that is to say as a reflection of the
macrocosm – the cosmos as a whole. It is believed that every factor present in the
universe is also present in the soul of man, that – to use a phrase beloved by some
magicians – ‘the aura of a man is a magical mirror of the universe.’
Since magicians believe that the soul is the universe in miniature they also believe
that it is possible to link any factor in the individual psycho-spiritual make-up with the
corresponding factor in the universe at large. In other words, to call down a natural force
to strengthen that same force in the individual soul; technically this process is called
invocation.
The actual techniques of invocation involve the magician in the use of one or the
other of the traditional systems of classification. Today the system used by most Western
occultists is based on a 32-fold classification and printed tables of the major
correspondences are available . . . . The advanced magician, however, uses such tables
only as a basis for his own mental activity; he transforms a portion of his mind into an
invisible card-index and sorts every fact known to him onto one or other of the thirty-two
available ‘cards,’ each of which correlates with a natural force. . . .

-- Francis King and Stephen Skinner, Techniques of High Magic: A Guide to Self-
Empowerment (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1976, 1991), pp. 13-14

Because he knows that mind characterizes the entire universe, the magician is able to
enjoy what we may call a unitary view of nature. For him the universe is exactly what
the word implies – a unity. This in turn leads him to postulate that a law manifestly in
operation in one part of the universal system is equally operative throughout the whole.
The consequence of this last premise is that, since the universe is in itself a complete
whole, some characteristic of the major components must be shared by the lesser
components, animal, vegetable, or mineral. We have, for example, seen how varying
combinations of identical molecules lie behind the evolution of all matter; the visible
results may differ but the essential properties of matter remain the same. All things
therefore have the same components and obey the same natural law, and behind their
outward form there is but one mind. In magic it is this universal ‘oneness’ that has long
been an object of study and research. It represents for the magician, as it must also for
the scientist, the secret of nature. It is the unifying principles behind the intricacy of
natural phenomena, reconciling the unity of substance with the heterogeneity of form.

In magic the underlying similarity between different things is systematized by

identifying certain correspondences between them. From time immemorial magicians
have sought to establish the natural affinity that exists between certain planets, metals,
jewels, birds, beasts, herbs, colours, flowers, and scents. A great deal of patience and
ingenuity have been expended on this formidable task, but observation and experiment
have also played their part. Magic is, after all, much more than an academic exercise.
Nowadays many of the correspondences that have been elaborated may appear crude and
naïve, but the fault often lies not in the correspondences themselves but in the archaic
way in which they are expressed or the quaint reasons once thought up to justify them.
We must allow for the fact that much extant magical writing dates from the Middle Ages
or earlier and reflects the mental and cultural climate of its time. Some of these writings
may be downright silly and many others will be inconsistent with what we now know to
be true. However, while it is only right to discard everything that strikes us as foolish, it
would clearly be imprudent to reject the rest out of hand.
The most important of the universal correspondences are those that exist between
ourselves and God. Although we know well enough that man is no more than the product
of a natural evolutionary scheme, we must nevertheless accord him a special place within
that scheme. He is its fulfilment. If the material world is but a reflection of God, it is in
man that God is truly reflected. Like the universe itself, only on a far smaller scale, man
is a psycho-biological unit; by studying that unit, the microcosm, we are able to gain a
more profound understanding of the universe, the macrocosm, for we can confidently
expect God, the sum of all things, to be everything that we ourselves are, only much
magnified. We may even go so far as to liken Him and the universe in which He
expresses Himself to the human organism expressed on a vast scale. Man, the miniature
organism, is able by introspection to expand his consciousness so that his inner self
reaches out and embraces the universe. Clearly, the closer the miniature resembles its
subject, the greater the expansion that is possible. Thus it is above all the complete man
who, once he has experienced every human impulse and integrated them in one balanced
personality, is able to reach the heart of the universe wherein lies union with God. This is
the supreme achievement of magic, and it is summed up by Aleister Crowley as ‘the
raising of the whole man in perfect balance to the power of infinity.’ In short, it is the
apotheosis of the self.
If the universe is man on a gigantic scale, the mysterious forces that move it may be
equated with those that move man. Through them is woven the fabric of all visible things
and it is the magician’s task to discover their true nature. To this end he need only
cultivate the forces already latent in himself, for they are, of course, the same as those
that regulate our world and propel the furthermost star. ‘Know thyself’ was the good
advice given at Delphi. In order to make them easier to comprehend, however, the major
cosmic forces have been named in magic after various planets and the gods and
goddesses of the ancient world. However, this personification is merely a device to help
us appreciate their real significance: the friendly figure of Mr Therm was always more
evocative than the vague concept of High Speed Gas. Even more personalized are the
lesser forces, which are dubbed angelic or demonic according to their function. In the
Western hemisphere these often have Jewish names which are ceremonially invoked in
magical operations based on a system known as the kabbalah. Elsewhere in the world
their names are different, . . . but that need not disturb us; the forces they represent are
still the same.
Apart from the results they achieve and the names they have been given, little is
known about these forces. They presumably represent different aspects of the universal
mind, its thoughts and intentions which, unseen and inexorable, move through the
universe in pursuit of some divine ambition. There are forces that sponsor growth and
conservation; others cause decay and destruction; still others promote love and peace;
while others, no less potent, are harbingers of hatred and war. Because of these
differences it is possible to describe some forces as positive and others as negative. No
moral judgment is implied by this classification, and both types of force are equally
necessary. Indeed, the theory of opposites is very ancient, and many ethical systems
advise us to achieve a balance between the opposites in our own character. The
philosopher Hegel is well known for his emphasis on the need for a negative as well as a
positive element in life. Because the first of these discards the old and the second ushers
in the new, progress is possible only when they act together. This synthesis between the
two is the goal of the dedicated magician who, having experienced and mastered all
things, becomes the complete man, the true likeness of God.
The power that is used in magic is derived from the forces we have been describing
and so comes from both within and outside ourselves. It is formed by linking one aspect
of the magician’s personality with a corresponding aspect of the cosmic mind. This at
once sets up a current of power which the magician can draw upon for his own purposes.
It is not unlike flicking a switch to turn on the electric light. However, just as electricity
requires an efficient wiring system, so magical power always needs a suitable conductor
through which to flow. This conductor is established by the performance of an
appropriate ritual, every detail of which contributes to the final influx of power. It is
because each detail is so important that [time-tested rituals] must be scrupulously
followed. This is not only because the success of the whole operation will depend on it,
but because, as in the case of electricity, magic can be dangerous when tampered with.

-- David Conway, Ritual Magic: An Occult Primer (New York: E. P. Dutton,

1978), pp. 27-31

SIGNATURES – These are Paracelsus’s teachings of natural correspondences. All

things have their stamp or signature and that signature is a clue to their connectedness to
other things with similar signatures. The understanding of the properties and uses of
herbs, stars, minerals, etc. depends on knowing this principles. If, for instance, you had
to choose a substance for healing and could not test the difference between poisonous and
non-poisonous plants how would you proceed? Random testing could prove fatal, but if
 you were to allow yourself to be guided by a plant’s similarities to a function or part of
the body, you’d probably do considerably better.
For instance, as Arthur Versluis points out, in The Philosophy of Magic, pitch from a
pine tree, being the excrescence of a wound in the tree, provides a good poultice, just as
vines, being similar to veins, are probably efficacious in aiding circulation. Yellow
plants, closely aligned with the color of jaundice, are helpful in treating liver ailments . . .
There is nothing whatever far fetched about such correspondences: they are simple
common sense, drawn from the principle of the essential unity of man and cosmos. If we
carry the idea of signatures far enough they can lead us into the heart of the “everything
is everything else” gnosis, wherein, as a spider, one can occupy the center and be
connected to every strand in the universal web.

E. E. Rehmus, The Magician’s Dictionary: An Apocalyptic Cyclopaedia of

Advanced Magic(k)al Arts and Alternate Meanings (Los Angeles: Feral House,
1990)

As used in Magick, established, traditional correspondences between Qaballistic concepts and Gods,
Planets, gems, perfumes, and any- and everything else in the Universe are exploited to develop methods of
reinforcing the power of ritual. That is, during ritual invocation, used to call down or call in a God – the
Intelligence informing one or another universal process such as, e.g., Love, War, Benevolence, Fertility,
Birth, Death, etc. – various things are used during the course of the ritual to establish within the mind of the
Operator an overwhelming vision or impression of that God, in order to create an identity between the God
as conceived within the Operator (the Microprosopus) and that same God as found at large in the Universe
or Multiverse (the Macroprosopus). Anything and everything that helps to that end can be and has been
used in this way during rituals. For example, during invocations of Venus, the Goddess of Love, tapestries
tinted in pastel hues, scarlet, and the color sky-blue, the gems coral, amber, emeralds and turquoises, tea
made of the herb damiana, venereal perfumes such as red sandalwood, things made of copper (the
traditional metal of Venus), the Tarot Trump The Empress, vases full of spring flowers, clusters of 4, 7, or
16 things (Her numbers include 4, 7, and 16); copper pennies would serve well in this context), and other
things traditionally associated with Venus might be used as ritual adornments, to help build up in the
Operator’s mind a powerful impression of the presence of that Goddess until it is possible for the Operator
to identify him- or herself completely with Venus and successfully complete the invocation.
There may be more to this than psychology, however. In a sense, the universe behaves as if it were a
vast hologram in which all matter and energy constitute a series of relatively but ultimately ephemeral
forms, each of which enjoys a certain amount of autonomy, but which is ultimately based on a process, a
sort of universal flux constituting the universe as a whole which gives rise from time to time to such forms.
As the eminent biologist Lyall Watson puts it:

Newton’s laws of motion make it possible to determine the position occupied by an

object in space at a series of times. They assume that it is the same object which moves
from place to place. [David] Bohm[, a physicist based at Birkbeck College in London]
suggests that [rather than moving, objects are] created again in each new position.* It
folds [and disappears]; and each time it unfolds and reappears, its form is generally
similar, but there are differences in detail. [Thus] what we like to think of as objective
reality, is merely an appearance which is abstracted from a hidden flow. No unfolded
object has an independent, substantial existence in its own right; it depends on the folded
order for its form.

***

*This idea is virtually identical to the Islamic philosophic concept of Occasionalism, the idea that all that
exists is (re-)created anew by Allah from moment to moment, i.e., from occasion to occasion.
 . . . With the hologram we have found a way of showing how this works for light, but
the same rules could apply to sound or to the movement of electrons.
[Thus all matter] can be understood as a set of forms, which enjoy a certain amount
of autonomy, but are really based on a process – a sort of universal flux. Matter is
independent enough to be investigated in itself, but only up to a point. You can discover
a particle’s position or its velocity, but not both. Some things can never be known,
because ultimately there are no particles.
[This idea] fits in rather well with our general experience of things[, and] even
begins to make some kind of sense of purely mental forms. Thoughts can be considered
as particular objects unfolded from the deeper ground movement of mind. And
everything, the whole of existence, can be seen to have its origins in a single source –
universal life energy.
. . . [There] must be degrees of foldedness [such that] living organisms have . . . a
more direct connection with the energy source than inanimate matter could have or would
need. And . . . we lose this link, our lifeline, . . . when we die.

Lyall Watson, gifts of Unknown Things (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), pp.
39-41

So you might say that Magick is the Art and Science of folding and unfolding reality according to the
Will of the Operator. Given that, then, Magickal correspondences of the sort established by Qaballistic and
Magickal theory are equivalent to blueprints or recipes instructing the unconscious mind of the Operator
where to grab hold of reality and how to fold or unfold it to bring into manifestation that which is in
conformity with his or her Will.
The true Magickal Machine is the living organism – i.e., you and I and everything else that lives, up to
and including Gaia, the living Earth described by James Lovelock and his colleagues in their work on
planetary physiology, and worshipped as the primordial aspect of the Great Spirit by almost all cultures.*
It is necessary to understand how this machine works in order to get the most and best results out of use of
Spare Sigils; after all, the mind is part of that machine, and the greater the mind’s comprehension of the
mechanisms underlying its own operation and that of the organism of which it is part, the more thoroughly
it can cooperate in and reinforce the performance of the Magickal Machine.

*This is reflected, albeit in a muted form, even in Judeo-Christian cultures. For example, in the Book of
Revelations, it says to “honor the Earth and its creatures.”

The Magickal Machine has both physical and paraphysical (biophysical) aspects, the latter including,
e.g., telepathy, telekinesis, etc. These two types of functioning aren’t separate; rather, like two sides of a
coin, they are inextricably integrated in function and form. The physical aspects includes the sexual organs
and the complete neuroendocrine system (NES) of the body; the paraphysical aspect comprises the Chakra
system, which may be thought of as comprising those organs of the Body of Light that perform the same
functions for it that the organs of the NES does for the physical body, and which are the ultimate targets of
acupuncture.
The Chakras that are most important to the operation of the Magickal Machine are those associated
with the central nervous system (CNS), the genitalia, and the mid-line of the body in general. They include
the “invisible Chakras,”* which aren’t on or in the physical body at all, but rather are located on an esoteric
umbilicus reaching from the center of the Earth up through its surface, between the organism’s hind feet
and legs to the base of its spine, or on a similar linkage between the crown of the head and the true center
of the 16-dimensional universe, outside the space-time “skin” of the universe as we normally perceive it to
be.**†
*In acupuncture, these are associated to some extent with “ghost points,” which are acupuncture meridians
and points that are actual on the physical body, but stimulation of which can affect things outside the
physical body. Stimulation of these points via moxybustion, acupuncture, Reiki, and shiatsu massage
has been used with great success in exorcisms, including exorcism of poltergeists from places in which
the patient lives in cases in which the patient is clearly not the source of the poltergeist attacks, even
through telekinesis.

**These umbilici may be best described in terms of “string theory.” The essence of string theory is that it
can explain the nature of both matter and space-time. It answers a series of puzzling questions about
particles. Each string is only 10 -20 times the size of – 100 billion billion times smaller than – a proton
is vibrating, and each mode of vibration represents and distinct resonance or particle. The string s so
egregiously small that, from a distance, the resonance of a string and a particle are indistinguishable.
The particle is not a point at all, but a mode of a vibrating string. Thus each subatomic particle
corresponds to a distinct resonance that vibrates only at a distinct frequency. Such particles aren’t by
themselves fundamental in nature; it is the string that is fundamental, and it is its vibrations which
comprise particles – matter is nothing but the harmonies created by this vibrating string. This idea
bears a striking resemblance to the concept of “enfoldedness” developed by David Bohm and
described by Lyall Watson, quoted above. For more on string and super-string theory, see Michio
Kaku, Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th
Dimension (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. viii, 16, 152-183, 335n.1, 345n.10.

†In the case of beings that do not possess bilateral symmetry, such as most true plants, algae, fungi,
protistans, and many invertebrate animals, the Basal Chakra, which is vertebrates such as ourselves is
located at the base of the spine, is sited at the center of mass of the organs of elimination and/or those
of reproduction, whichever is more centralized. The Crown Chakra, which in vertebrates is located at
the crown of the skull, in other beings is located at the center of mass of the CNS and/or that of the
organs of sight, whichever is most completely centralized.

Magickal operations are initiated by stimulating the mind with images, sounds and music, perfumes,
colors, drugs, and sensations appropriate to the aim of the particular Magickal Operation under
consideration. For example, Venereal Workings, dedicated to the Goddess of Love, employ images of
sexuality, sensuality, and luxury; Tarot Trump III, The Empress; tinctures of the herb damiana, which
generates sexual arousal; the colors bright green, spring green, olive green, amber, sky-blue, and patterns
of cerise and green such as are displayed on the leaves of coleus plants; perfumes and incenses such as
rose and red sandalwood; jewelry made of emeralds, other green stones, turquoises, and copper, sacred to
Venus; a vase of roses – the flower of Venus – on the altar; etc.
The result of this constellation of stimuli is that the body and its spiritual analog, the Body of Light,
begin to drawn Kundalini energy up from the center of the Earth via the “invisible” Earth Chakras, which
are ruled by the Outer Planets, up to the basal Chakra at the base of the spine, which is ruled by Saturn.
This phenomenon is known as Kundalini rising.
As the mind and its primary throne, the CNS and the endocrine system, become more and more excited
due to this stimulation, the current of Kundalini energy that is being drawn up into the organism becomes
stronger and stronger. Eventually it begins to rise up along the spinal Chakras, which are ruled by the Inner
Planets. Here, the basic processes of the physical body and the Body of Light cohere this energy in exactly
the same essential way in which a laser operates, polarizing them so that they are concentrated into a tight,
narrow stream which arrives at its target with maximal impact.
The target for these energies is the mid-brain sub-system of the CNS/NES, the limbic or emotional
brain, an ancient, elegant marriage of neurological and endocrinological systems that began to evolve from
the even older “reptilian” stem brain during the Early Permian, some 286 million years ago. When the
energies that are rising higher and higher in the spinal Chakra system are strong enough and coherent
enough, they finally erupt in bursts that strike the pineal gland, a small, reddish, cone-shaped endocrine
gland lying deep in the brain, sited at the midpoint of a line drawn through the skull through points on
either side of the head just below the ears. From ancient times, the pineal gland has been called the “Seat
of the Soul”; in many ways it deserves that epithet, for it is the source of serotonin, the stuff of dreams and
visions, a hormone that is critically involved not only in sleep, particularly REM sleep, but also
paraphysical functioning, above all psychic and clairvoyant perception. Here, electrons in the atoms of the
material that makes up the pineal gland, hyper-excited by the barrage of Kundalini energy pouring in from
the top of the spine, begin to leave their parent atoms, making their way in an electronic flood-tide toward
the pituitary, another endocrine gland in the mid-brain that is involved in regulation of the endocrine
system as a whole as well as the growth and development of the organism. Stimulated by this
bombardment of β -particles, the pituitary shuttles the electrons and the kinetic energy they carry back to
the pineal body, which is still being bombarded from below by the Kundalini energy fountaining up the
spinal Chakras.
The incoming Kundalini energy is transformed by the pineal body into kinetic energy and added to that
already imported to the electrons which have just been returned to the pineal gland from the pituitary, and
they become even more energetic. Out they go again to the pineal gland; and so the cycle continues, again
and again, the pituitary and the pineal gland together acting as a living cyclotron, shuttling electrons back
and forth between them, faster and faster, transforming more and more of the Kundalini energy erupting
from the spinal chakra into kinetic energy associated with these electrons.
Finally, the electrons now pouring back and forth through the circuit connecting the pineal gland and
the pituitary become so excited that they can no longer be constrained by the combined action of the pineal
and pituitary glands. At this point, they are “fired” out through the Crown Chakra, ruled by Pluto, which in
vertebrates such as ourselves is located at the top of the skull. At this, the climax of the organism’s arousal
due to the stimulations of the Working, the energy from the pineal-pituitary system thus released through
the Crown Chakra “takes a print” on its way out of the CNS/NES of whatever electronic patterns are
present in the brain at that moment, especially strongly redundant ones representing thoughts, ideas, and
feelings that have been continuously introduced to and reinforced in the organism throughout the
Working.* And because of the holographic nature of reality, since these patterns are thus introduced to the
universe at large when the Kundalini energy called up in the Working is “fired” from the Crown Chakra,
eventually they must manifest in physical form one way or another. In this way Magickal Workings come
to have manifest, tangible results, coming to fruition on the physical, social, and biological planes in ways
first determined by the psychospiritual stimuli presented to the mind of the organism during the
Working.**

*In his beautiful book Gifts of Unknown Things (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), op. cit., the
distinguished biologist and naturalist Lyall Watson discusses the work of the physicist David Bohm,
the developer of the new description of reality which Bohm calls “the enfolded order.” Based on
research into the nature of holograms, as previously described, Bohm has developed the idea that
matter, all matter, can be understood as a set of forms which exhibit a certain degree of autonomy but
which are actually based on a process, a sort of universal flux. Ultimately, says Bohm, there are no
particles. There are only relatively stable forms derived from that universal flow. Anything that can
be seen, heard, or handled by scientific instruments is an abstraction unfolded from the invisible,
inaudible, intangible ground of all matter (ibid., pp. 39-41 and passim. So, if Bohm is right, the result
of Kundalini rising that occurs during Magickal operations is an unfolding of new abstractions from
the ground of matter/energy Bohm describes, which ideally conform to the Will of the Operator.

**In invertebrates performing their own brands of Magick, animals or otherwise, who don’t possess a
neuroendocrine system like ours, different organ-systems with similar functions carry out the activities
that in us are mediated by our endocrine glands, spinal cord, and brain. Determining which tissues,
organs, and organ-systems are used by the organism during such Magickal activities in non-vertebrate
animals, plants, fungi, etc. would be a fascinating area for research, particularly because, scientifically
and Hermetically speaking, it is virtually virgin territory, deserving far more work, on a vastly more
intensive scale, than has ever been devoted to it.
 It is in this connection that the correspondences of Qaballah are put to their most powerful uses.
Another way of looking at Bohm’s new concept of reality, it is as if the Universe or Multiverse were a
gigantic computer, one of which we, too, were part, and reality simply our experience of the state of that
computer and any changes going on in it at a given time t. You could say, then, that Magick involved
reprogramming that computer from the inside, by one or more of its own components (the Operator[s]),
and that the correspondences of Qaballah and Magick were addressing functions used by the programmer
(the Operator) to cause the computer to manifest whatever state he or she wanted at the time. The greater
the redundancy of the signature of the Gods or Spirits the Operator is trying to invoke or evoke in the
various ritual furniture and activities used during the Working, the greater the repetition of the address of
the Being which the Operator is calling in or up and the stronger the identification between the Operator
and that Being, until finally the Operator’s Will becomes identical to its Will, and as that Being the
Operator can bring into manifestation the reality he or she desires.
Anything that serves in the process of ritual reinforcement is grist for the mill. Anything. It can be
something as trivial or mundane as a bus-ticket, a condom, or the float from a toilet-tank, or as “spiritual”
and idealized as a prayer, a hymn, the religious music of Mozart, or the Chartres Cathedral. As long as it
helps build up and reinforce the identity between the Operator – or, at least, his or her deep unconscious
mind – and the Being which he or she is trying to call via the ritual under consideration, it is appropriate to
the ritual and will help the Operator to bring about change in the Universe or Multiverse in conformity with
his or her Will.
Therefore, in the following descriptions of the Sephiroth and Paths in this Lesson and the one
following it, I have tried to provide a fairly comprehensive and rather eclectic list of correspondences for
each Sephiroth or Path, to give an idea of the sort of things that might be appropriate for a ritual Working,
whether invocation or evocation, devoted to that Key. No such list can ever be all-inclusive, because
ideally everything that exists or could exist can be associated with one or more of the Qaballistic Keys, and
any such list would have to be infinite in extent. Even a merely very long list would tax the space available
here for exhibiting it, not to mention the student’s patience! So I have tried, in each case, to give a good
idea of the sort of things that might be associated with a given Key, with the underlying assumption that the
intelligent reader, no matter how little he or she might know about any of the esoteric Arts and Sciences,
will get the general idea and fill in that list with whatever other associations he or she finds appropriate for
that Key.
In two cases, I have given virtually every single instance of a particular category of things as
correspondences to various Keys. One of these includes the ten Commandments, from the Book of
Deuteronomy in the Old Testament; this is because, historically speaking, the Qaballah was originally
developed as a system of metaphysics based strictly upon the Holy Books and religious philosophy of
Judaism, and the ten Sephiroth are in fact exact correspondences to the Ten Commandments first given by
Moishe Rabbinu to the Children of Israel at the foot of Mt. Sinai.
The second case is that of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United
States of America. The USA was originally founded and the U.S. Constitution created by a group of men
all of whom were Deists, and the majority of whom were Masons and well-acquainted with Qaballah and
its uses in Magick. That these men came up with exactly ten – “Ten, and not nine; ten, and not eleven;
ten.” – amendments to the Constitution, leaving it to the future to add more, if any, may have been no
accident; it isn’t entirely impossible that they had the Ten Commandments and the ten Sephiroth of
Qaballah in mind when they first drew up the Bill of Rights. So I have also included those here and in
Lesson III, as appropriate, as correspondences with the ten Sephiroth and Keys 11-20 (Trumps I-X) of the
Qaballah. For the purposes of mundane Magick, i.e., Magick applied to worldly affairs, especially politics,
environmental considerations, and other global concerns, the Bill of Rights may be considered as a sort of
secular version of the Ten Commandments, though applied to governments rather than the governed –
man’s answer not to God, but rather to other men who would set themselves up as Gods. For such
Workings, the first ten amendments to the US Constitution may be used as close correspondences with the
traditional ten Sephiroth in the same way that any other correspondences would, not only to reinforce the
power of ritual, but also to direct it toward specific aims, goals, and targets.
Again, because of the necessity to conserve space and out of the belief that students of this material are
intelligent and can decide for themselves whether a given correspondence given here is appropriate and, if
so, why it is, I have not always gone into detail as to the rationale for including that particular item as part
of the list of correspondences for a given Key in either this lesson or the following one. Unfortunately, I
must leave a good deal of that up to the student, simply because it isn’t possible to provide all-inclusive
such lists or explanations for them. If you, the student, find any of the correspondences given here
questionable or their employment in Magick or anything else useless or even counterproductive, then
scratch them off your list (or, if you are reading this with the aid of a word-processor, use your Delete key
for that purpose). If you aren’t sure of why I have included one or whether it is appropriate, in the
Bibliography for this course I have included a lengthy list of texts that could be of great help in that respect.
In addition, Liber 777-Plus, my own extension of Aleister Crowley’s Liber 777 (there are probably a
great many other such out there, by a great many authors; I make no claims as to being unique in that
respect) may prove useful by way of providing much longer, more complete and representative lists of
correspondences not only for the traditional 32 Keys of Qaballah, but also for the 94+ new Keys that are
included in the new 16-Sephiroth, English-language Qaballah mentioned in these lessons and discussed in
detail in Part 1, Book 2 of Volume 3 of my text on Magick, New Magicks for a New Age.
I would welcome any comments, questions, and constructive criticisms readers of these notes might
have for me. You can contact me for that purpose on the Internet at polaris93@aol.com.

Nota bene: The Ten Commandments, the Bill of Rights, etc. can all be indexed via the Qaballah.