My Musical Qabalah.

[Zeroeth_Nature (Self-Lightening, ΑΘΕΛΗΜΑ,)]

@Zeroeth Nature

Thumos springs from the frustration of eros, desire for whatever is (believed) good for oneself. In other words, we have here Wrath and Lust, Mars and Venus, Geburah and Netzach… Not only is Netzach on the right side and Geburah on the left side of the Tree of Life, but they belong to different triangles as well. Netzach belongs to the aesthetic, sensual, lustful triangle; Geburah, to the ethical, (self-)righteous, wrathful triangle…

Netzach: lust of lust;
Hod: wrath of lust;
Chesed: lust of wrath;
Geburah: wrath of wrath.

In a draft for an email I mostly wrote last summer, it says:

‘Moving toward what is good and moving away from what is bad are two sides of the same coin which is eros. Thumos, then, is not only moving toward what is bad, but also moving away from what is good.’

Perhaps, then, lust of lust is eros’s moving toward what is “good”; wrath of lust is eros’s moving away from what is “bad”; wrath of wrath is thumos’s moving away from what is “good”; and lust of wrath is thumos’s moving toward what is “bad”.

What about the middle pillar (and, for that matter, the supernal triangle), though? Here we arrive at the third of Buddhism’s “three poisons”: let’s call it “delusion”. This is the opposite of understanding or wisdom, though not of knowledge (Daäth).

Netzach: lust of lust;
Yesod: delusion of lust;
Hod: wrath of lust;
Chesed: lust of wrath;
Tiphareth: delusion of wrath;
Geburah: wrath of wrath.

My draft immediately continues:

‘In fact, […] thumos has its own goods, which are directed toward the bad, such as victory over it and revenge against it. For the sake of such goods, it spurns the goods of eros. So thumos is basically the mirror image of eros’.

Perhaps, then, delusion of lust is the belief that eros’s goods be good and its bads be bad; and delusion of wrath is the belief that the goods of thumos be good and the goods of eros be bad…

This still leaves out Malkuth, however. Being on the central pillar, it too must be delusion of something, but of what? Delusion of delusion?

Chokmah: lust of understanding;
Binah: wrath of wisdom.

I actually turned these last two around on purpose. Contrast:

“To attain the grade of Magus he [the Master of the Temple] must accomplish […] the renunciation of His enjoyment of the Infinite so that he may formulate Himself as the Finite”. (Crowley, “One Star In Sight”.)

Binah: love of comprehending delusion—which is not just the delusion of goods and bads, but at bottom the delusion of selfhood—;
Chokmah: will to create delusion.

Like I said before, the said renunciation and formulation are symbolized by the Star card from Tarot, which is the same Star from the title “One Star In Sight”:

“The Order of the S. S. [Silver Star] is composed of those who have crossed the Abyss; […]
Every active Member of the Order has destroyed all that He is and all that he has on crossing the Abyss; but a star is cast forth in the Heavens to enlighten the Earth, so that he may possess a vehicle wherein he may communicate with mankind. The quality and position of this star, and its functions, are determined by the nature of the incarnations transcended by him.
[…] There are full accounts [of the Grade of Master of the Temple] in the Magical Diaries of the Beast 666, who was cast forth into the Heaven of Jupiter, and of Omnia in Uno, Unus in Omnibus, who was cast forth into the sphere of the Elements.” (ibid.)

A grade cannot be separated from the tasks required for passing that grade (and only the grade of Ipsissimus does not have such tasks). A Master of the Temple’s being cast forth in the Heavens, then, is precisely his renouncing his enjoyment of the infinite so that he may formulate himself as the finite. To be a Master of the Temple means, among chiefly two other things, to try and formulate oneself as the finite.

@Zeroeth Nature

‘That passage from The Book of Thoth¹ made me finally see that, since I crossed the Abyss (i.e, got through the dark night of the soul) in early May 2020, the sub-Supernal Sephira I’ve been “cast down” or “cast out” into (Crowley uses both terms interchangeably) is Yesod. And I understand this to mean my task is to repurify the message from Dionysos (Tiphareth), which has been partly distorted by scholarship (Hod) and partly by the pseudoscientific, the “spiritual” etc. (Netzach).’

¹ “This Sephira [Yesod] is the seat of the great crystallization of Energy. But it takes place very far down the Tree [of Life…]. There is little help from low, unbalanced spheres like Netzach and Hod. What saves Yesod is the direct ray from Tiphareth; this Sephira is in the direct line of succession.” (Crowley, The Book of Thoth.)

So, does my Word, Athelema, make special sense in the context of Yesod as the delusion of lust? I do indeed think so. Thus I also wrote before in this thread:

‘My current crisis revolves around my renunciation of the Will, my identification with the Love that is not under Will.’

In other words, my renunciation of wrath, my identification with the lust that is not under wrath (cf. phobos, “hate, repulsion”). Which is not to say Crowley was cast forth into Tiphareth; as I wrote elsewhere:

‘I do not agree with Crowley on who the historical Magi were, although there is some overlap. For example, Crowley lists the Buddha and identifies his Word as Anatta. I agree on this one, but would also list Homer, for example, whose Word I’d identify as Hades. […] And as for Crowley himself as the Magus of our “Aeon”, whose Word be Thelema (“Will”): wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that Nietzsche was the Magus of our “Aeon”, whose Word (then) is “will to power”?’ (Indirect source: https://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=419364#p419364)

will to power
amor fati

‘I think you and Sloterdijk are wrong about Nietzsche because you don’t appreciate (the full extent of) his exotericism. In the fundamental respect, the doctrine of the will to power does not disinhibit the “powerful”, but on the contrary.’ (Source: https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2922111#p2922111)

@Zeroeth Nature

“[Socrates learned] that the humans in charge, the males in charge, judge nature to act unbearably toward humans, like a sea always in motion, always threatening humans and human constructs with destruction, always failing to distinguish worthy from unworthy. […This is his] insight into the male need to master feared and hated nature, to conquer nature. […W]hat he learned [ruling males] would dearly want to believe [is] that nature is not what she seems but wholly otherwise, end-directed for human benefit by caring gods who ensure that the worthy benefit and the unworthy suffer.” (Laurence Lampert, The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss, page 126.)

This is crucial, but incomplete. For even more fundamental than the insecurity of such types about whether their worth will ultimately be worth it for them is their insecurity about their worth itself.

“[T]hey can be ‘convicted by their proper vanity’; they can be made to bridle themselves, Bacon hints, if attention is paid to their nature, to what they are rather than what they ought to be. […] Uneasy in their self-regard, they crave recognition both by the many and by the few who are like themselves. They are lovers of honor consumed by the passion to be looked upon as marvels and to outstrip those already honored, and in Bacon’s New Atlantis they are given what looks like free reign.” (Lampert, Nietzsche and Modern Times, page 36.)

This, however, has been the Machiavellian-Baconian strategy. The Socratic-Platonic was different:

‘Plato flatters these people with the notion that they are philosophical because they love what they know and hate what they don’t know. For, seeing as such loyal and vigilant dogs constitute the axis around which society turns, and are for that reason highly esteemed by the people, philosophy acquires a better name if they call themselves philosophers.’ (Sauwelios, ‘A Tutorial in Platonic Political Philosophy’.)

And the Nietzschean-Sauwelian strategy is different still. It’s a combination of the former two:

“Strauss […] had often intimated that philosophy as such is characterized by courage and that philosophical courage is the very opposite of the ‘political courage’ defined in the Republic as the determination to stand loyal to the dyed-in opinion about which things are terrible. Philosophical courage is the contrary, the refusal of the mind to stick fast to any loyalty bred into the heart.” (Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, page 115.)

The Nietzschean-Sauwelian strategy dares the “real men” to become real real men, genuine philosophers—true wokeness-friends.

(Source: https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2905883#p2905883)