
I want life to teach me to become better acquainted with death.
During the more strict days of quarantine, I would go for a walk every day in the Mountain View Cemetery. I watched the cherry blossoms bloom and then fade.
I watched the tulips, irises and lilies blossom and then fade. But this undeniable beauty was foregrounded by deep anxiety and fear about the ravages of COVID-19.
There are some headstones in the Mountain View Cemetery with a name and a birth date. The date of death is still not etched into the stone.
This got me thinking.
What if when we were born we received a grave stone and a plot in the cemetery? What if every year on our birthdays we took a pilgrimage to our graves? Would we learn something? Would we be better prepared for death when it came?
A tree in the forest is born and dies in the very same place.
I marvel at that simplicity, that certainty.
The Four Worlds (Hebrew: עולמות Olamot/Olamos, singular: Olam עולם), sometimes counted with a prior stage to make Five Worlds, are the comprehensive categories of spiritual realms in Kabbalah in the descending chain of Existence.
Four Worlds Of Kábala..png
Four World.png
General Worlds
in Kabbalah
Shiviti on vellumTetragrammaton.jpg
A”K
Atziluth
Beri’ah
Yetzirah
Assiah
The concept of “Worlds” denotes the emanation of creative lifeforce from the Ein Sof Divine Infinite, through progressive, innumerable tzimtzumim (concealments/veilings/condensations). As such, God is described as the “Most Hidden of All Hidden”,[1] and Olam is etymologically related to, and sometimes spelled as,[2] עלם (Noun: העלם Ha’elem meaning “concealment”). While these dimmings form innumerable differentiated spiritual levels, each a particular World/Realm, nonetheless, through the mediation of the sephirot (Divine attributes), five Comprehensive Worlds emerge. “Higher” realms metaphorically denote greater revelation of the Divine Ohr light, in more open proximity to their source, “Lower” realms are capable of receiving only lesser creative flow. The Worlds are garments of the Ein Sof, and Hasidic thought interprets their reality as only apparent to Creation, while “from above” the Divine Infinite fills all equally.
As particular sephirot dominate in each realm, so the primordial fifth World, Adam Kadmon, is often excluded for its transcendence, and the four subsequent Worlds are usually referred to. Their names are read out from Isaiah 43:7, “Every one that is called by My name and for My glory (Atziluth “Emanation/Close”), I have created (Beriah “Creation”), I have formed (Yetzirah “Formation”), even I have made (Asiyah “Action”). Below Asiyah, the lowest spiritual World, is Asiyah-Gashmi (“Physical Asiyah”), our Physical Universe, which enclothes its last two sephirot emanations (Yesod and Malchut).[3] Collectively, the Four Worlds are also referred to as ABiYA, after their initial letters. As well as the functional role each World has in the process of Creation, they also embody dimensions of consciousness within human experience. All is mind.
Dear Jason ;
As Isaiah 43-7 shows, there are deeper and more meaningful reading of
holy scriptures. Splendor Solis Tarot , Inner Alchemies of Mithraic Light
A 78-Card Deck and Companion Book ,by Marie Angelo ,is exactly a
holy, quiet, fascinating, breathtaking, unique and awesome place between
a crowded, noisy and rushed up books, bookstores, and bookshelves.
A sacred work to the caliber of “Alone with the Alone” by Henry Corbin.
A picture held us captive, and we could not get outside it for it lay in our
language and the language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
We cannot know our world until we find a compass that can chart what
world we know.
Theodore Spencer
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Not sure I understood all that, but thank you for taking the time to comment Theodore.
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Gershom Scholem > Quotes
“We live in our language like blind men walking on the edge of an abyss. …
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