The Path of Justice

In my previous communication I promised to say more to you about ‘the Path of the Hermit’ of the ‘way out of this world.’ However, I would be remise if before then we did not explain what we must do as a sort of preparation for that part of our journey on the Path of Return. Again, we are sending you this missive early. It will be available to the public in a future post of VOXHERMES.

The critical path on this part of our journey reflects the two essential qualities of sacrifice through service that we must make to reduce and eliminate our karmic burden, and with them the demonstration and enhancement of our personal discipline and strength. They are, in short, not easy virtues to bear, but then again, are any of the virtues easy to bear on this journey? All of the paths we experience are being worked simultaneously, but unconsciously. When we engage in esoteric practice we decide consciously to methodically work a specific path. With it, we then need to understand that, with a few exceptions, we can work only one path alone. Because of their connectedness we need to work at least two, three, four, or even five paths to attempt a conscious awakening of the totality of the energies and intelligences we are working with. That is why we are told to balance the paths as they are represented on the Tree of Life by working its complement after a period of time.

There are three paths that lead to Tiphareth, and five that extend from it. For this discussion we will only concern ourselves with two of those paths: one that leads to Geburah and one that leads to Chesed.

The paths leading away from Tiphareth connect the individual with increased power and authority -and in theory responsibility and wisdom. We say ‘in theory’ because we must recognize two things. First, not all beings are equal in expression or experience. Some are on the decent or involutionary current. Second, awakening or understanding of an energy is always partial and incomplete unless we are on a Path and, even then, only when the Path is completed are our energies fully expressed without danger of creating negative conditions for us or others. This does raise a third point: what constitutes a negative or positive condition – i.e., karma – is highly subjective, and we encourage you to read our previous statements on karma in the various essays, lessons, and books to better understand this point. We can best understand karma as a habit, and freedom from it as a freedom from a habit or unconscious pull or action. Instead we have established an interior equilibrium or center point from which we can not be moved or at least not moved dramatically and without our own concent and agreement. This is the meaning of “the point within the circle” of Freemasonry.

Freedom from karma is freedom from the fruits of our actions, and that only happens when we are free from attachments and identification with those actions and results. Our little ‘I’ gives rise to the bigger ‘I’ and we relax into the larger perspective of life and Beingness. This is the practice of Service, or Bhakti and Karma Yoga, and they are indispensable in esoteric work.

For someone to live a relatively happy life, all that is needed is to make some modest effort at those requirements of the first six or nine paths on the Tree of Life (even if through psychotherapy or education and not necessarily esoteric work). If conditions are right, with a modest amount of effort, a healthy personality will be created and a pleasant life experienced.

This is not to say one is a victim of circumstances, but rather that one is often highly susceptible to their influences. Only with personal effort, and preferably as an aspect of initiation, does one overcome some of their material limits: physical, environmental, or both. Even the life of a successful beggar, prostitute, gangster, or embezelor requires some degree of personal effort and skill. Even more so if we are talking about a life that is aimed at leading us away from such difficulties, or even more precisely, that of initiation.

The path below Tiphareth – those of creating a healthy personality and relationships with others – are mainly concerned with us as individuals, and require a great deal of interior and exterior skill building. The path leading away from Tiphareth are primarily concerned with expanding and developing our sense of self to reflect our inherent or original nature, or Self. In summary, we reduce our limits by reducing our attachments. This gives rise automatically to more possibilities, powers, and insights. To even if we may dare say near their end, allow us to turn ourselves into miniature gods. But before that can happen, we need to understand some critical points.

The paths leading from Tiphareth can be understood as enhancing our capacities: our powers and wisdom. In practice this means these paths are about us fulfilling our duties. To overcome our limited sense of self, we must act from a different sense of Self, we must act FOR something other than self or even Self, but Beingness itself. We must not think of ourselves, but instead must SERVE.

This does not mean we are martyrs, or engage in what is called “idiot compassion,” but that we accept our responsibilities as one who can do more because of access to greater knowledge and authority, both over our personal nature and the natural world. Even if this is only incrementally demonstrable at times through our experiences with natural magic, alchemy, astrology, meditative disciplines, etc., it is an authority that demands responsibility – and obligation, a duty as enshrined in the motto, Cui multa dantur, ab eo multa expectantur. Or, “To whom much is given, from him much is expected.”

The path from Tiphareth to Geburah is one in which our understanding of our Beingness gets rocked from its comfortable bliss of Tiphareth and is “multiplied,’ or strengthened and increased. This domain moves heavily into the material world, and with it, gives us greater access to the invisible as well. The pentagram, the symbol of Geburah, is the key to this dual awakening.

As we have stated in previous essays:

To make yourself like God you must be just or righteous, and that must also be accompanied by charity. To be righteous without charity is to be self-righteous, as only in action, is truth realized. To fail here is critical, as failure to be charitable is little more than the restriction of the Qlippoth. You are a Child of Edom, Cain murdering Able, out of his own selfishness.

Charity with proper intention, that being the enlightenment of all beings, or in kabbalistic terms, to assist in the restoration of creation in a state of Light, is truth in action. It is TRUTH, it is LOVE, it is KINDNESS, it is the seed of future beneficent fruit. It is what is often called “union with the Divine through action.”

TRUTH is the “Man of Light” and lives eternally. In the sacrifice the aspiring adept, or even adept makes, is an expression of confidence that touches eternity, and thus has the seeds of regeneration within itself. This regeneration is found in Tiphareth and is why self-sacrifice, or rather, the sacrifice of one’s selfishness, is the BASIS of enlightenment.

How is selfishness to be eliminated, or rather transformed? In classical schools it is done through offerings and charitable actions. Charitable thoughts are not enough, only actions count, as “actions speak louder than words.”

The Twenty-Second Path has many qualities. For ease of understanding we can say they each have four fundamental experiences. Let us start with the most abstract, the Hebrew letter Lamed or so-called ‘goad’ or staff that pokes the goat to move it along. Karma, the cause and effect that keeps us moving on our path – no matter how fast or how slow, it keeps us moving forward. The letter Lamed is also the ‘heart’ of the Hebrew alphabet, and in particular is about learning and teaching, and even the so-called “heart of Eve” (Mother of Nature, Sophia) as essential for learning. The heart obedient to the law, who worships, and is generous through actions is the heart of the qabalist, of the Adept. These we can say are the essential qualities of Beingness or Atziluth for consistency in our analysis.

In Briah we encounter the power of the Archangels, or organizing forces in the universe. These are forces that, regardless of their extremes, always return to an equilibrium. In Yetzirah this notion of justice is heavily tainted with emotions and difficult for many to experience. We have seen much of this in recent years where, in the social domain, emotions run high in relation to the judicial and legal systems. Also we see it on the personal level of relationships in families, school, even work, where there is the question of fairness and what that means or looks like in action. In Assiah it is the energies of power, or one could better say ‘magnetism,’ even to the point of enchantment (remember the powers of the adept we mentioned in our course Unfolding the Rose – Illumination and Western Esotericism) that give power and with it authority and wealth to the individual who has it.

For those who understand the importance of coincidence or synchronicity, and by that we mean the unconscious forces that form the substrate of our existence and poke through into consciousness, it should be no surprise that I write about this Path and justice and walk in on my wife watching a movie wherein the main characters provides a soliloquy on the problems of the scales of justice and learning to live with the problems of its imbalance.

For ourselves, we have chosen the Path of Return, and its requirements have been made clear to us. How we will fulfill those obligations is our choice. Maybe this essay is a “coincidence” for some of you, a reminder of that which is needed to make haste on your journey. Could it be?