Descriptions:
Video Description
A single word, deeper, changed the way Lyam Christopher heard a conversation about herbal medicine. A professor claimed that science goes deeper than a thousand years of grandmotherly experience, and that little phrase opened a door. This video follows the door into two very different shapes for arranging ideas: the branched hierarchy and the nested hierarchy, and the difference turns out to unlock many of the strangest sayings in mystical books.
In a branched hierarchy, he explains, the general idea sits on top, and the specific details hang below like branches from a trunk. In a nested hierarchy, the general idea is the larger container, holding every smaller detail inside it like a mother carrying her children. Kabbalah says Kether is in Malkuth and Malkuth is in Kether, which sounds impossible until you see it as nesting: the whole lives in every part, and every part lives in the whole.
Then he shows why this small shift is a rescue. When we think only in branching, we start to believe the mind on top must be better than the body below, or that science must be better than folk wisdom. Nesting restores a more generous picture: the invisible general principles buoy up the visible details, and the world begins to bloom with meaning rather than rank. The whole pattern winds through Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation, and it reads like a key for many old mysteries at once.
Full Video Transcript
Branched versus nested hierarchies. I was recently in a conversation with a professor
and it was about science and it was about herbal medicine and pharmaceutical medicine.
And I had a comment about how herbal medicine relies on anecdotal evidence and a lot of
anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is stories from people who have actually
taken versus various herbal medicines and as you can guess the herbal
remedies that came to us down from through our ancestors through various traditions
those those remedies are based on perhaps a thousand years or more of experience living
out in the wild and living in agricultural settings and treating various ailments naturally
and uh science comes along in the modern age science the way it is now that is um and will
dismiss that kind of evidence anecdotal evidence as unscientific and that kind of gives it license
to come along and say that oh you know that the thousand years of tradition that your family has
using these herbal remedies uh none of that is valid because it’s not scientific it’s only based
on anecdotal evidence. And then the scientists will basically say that, well, science goes much
deeper into the evidence for how these herbs actually work. And that struck me as strange.
The professor used that word deeper, that science would actually go deeper into how these various
remedies work. And I just was noticing something there, which we’re going to get into. Okay,
that there’s a problem with the use of that word deeper i’m sure some of you see it already
we’re going to get to that and maybe our exploration of branched hierarchies versus
nested hierarchies will show you very clearly the error that science seems to make or that
modern science seems to make when they refer to hard evidence as deep all right now there are
many things in the mysteries the study of the mysteries the study of magic and study of mysticism
that are really difficult to understand and i know some of you are reading books like the tree of
life or the mystical kabbalah and kind of are telling me i don’t really know what this is saying
i’m just going through the motions reading it like i’m supposed to okay uh many of these things will
have to sink in like seeds they’re sort of planted like seeds and they sort of sprout later because
eventually you start to understand um how you you start to develop the key to how all of the these
various philosophical mystical concepts work okay and i’m going to give you uh the master key for
well for most of them today okay and that really is the difference between the branched hierarchy
and the nested hierarchy or another way to look at it it’s the difference between the vertical
hierarchy and the nested hierarchy and if you can experience the world both in the vertical hierarchy
sort of way and the nested hierarchy sort of way then you can experience or you can appreciate many
of these cryptic sayings that come from mystical literature okay i’m going to go over some examples
here this is from israel rigardi probably from the tree of life i don’t quite remember where i got it
while man is assumed into godhead and the divine spirit is brought down into manhood
a new heaven and a new earth make their appearance and familiar objects take on divine radiance
this is referring to a nested hierarchy view of the universe okay and this the saying like this
is basically attempting to plant the idea of how a nested hierarchy works in the perception
of an initiate somebody who’s initiated sees the world differently okay um otherwise if you’re not
initiated it sounds like a very pretty thing to say it sounds mysterious okay so we’re going to
go over the key to it here are some more sayings uh he is the world and the world he is yeah he
is the world and the world is in him that don’t make no sense right uh and so once again uh the
branched hierarchy versus the nested hierarchy, the nested hierarchy comes to the rescue in
understanding a concept like he is the world and the world is in him. Maybe we should return to
this slide and interpret it once we’ve seen the difference between a branched hierarchy and a
nested hierarchy. And from Kabbalah, Kether is in Malkuth and Malkuth is in Kether. For those of you
who are studying the Kabbalah magic curriculum or the Golden Dawn curriculum, this is a fairly
common saying that you’ll run into in your studies and in your reading. That’s simply saying the
lowest sphere of the tree of life, well, the highest sphere of the tree of life is in the
lowest and the lowest sphere of the tree of life is in the highest. How is that possible? That’s
impossible. No, it’s not. And of course, it wouldn’t be one of my videos if I didn’t make a
reference to Led Zeppelin. So when all are one and one is all. Once again, a paradoxical statement
that makes sense to an initiate. Might not have really made much sense to Robert Plant when he
wrote that because he was only 21, but he probably understands it now. What you’ll notice here,
this is the tree of life that the Golden Dawn student studies. And as one proceeds through the
grade system. One goes from the lowest sphere, Malkuth, down there, up to Yasod, up over to Hod,
then over to Netzach, then to Tifareth, then to Geborah, Hesed, Bina, Chokmah, and Kether,
supposedly, right? So those are the grades of the Golden Dawn. And the goal of the student in the
Kabbalah Magic Book, or the goal of the student in the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn curriculum,
them is to reach Tifareth. The five equals six grade. Five equals six doesn’t make any sense,
does it? So these weird appellations like two equals nine, three equals eight, four equals
seven, they are just little references to a nested hierarchy system. And so the 10 spheres
on the tree of life can also be portrayed as concentric circles like this question is which
one of the circles is kether the outermost or the innermost in other words which sphere is the
highest or or the which which sphere is the highest grade the outermost or the innermost okay
well both are true it just depends how you look at it most commonly within the astrological system
with the astrological way of looking at the universe the outermost sphere is the highest
grade and the innermost sphere is the lowest grade okay so in this diagram the red numbers
one two three four five six those are the grades that you go through the levels of initiation that
you proceed through and the black numbers ten nine eight seven proceeding outward there those
would be the uh sphere oath the spheres of the tree of life that you are in so when you’re in
the first l the elemental weight of the golden dawn that is uh the first elemental grade of the
golden dawn is sphere 10 grade number one sphere 10. okay then you proceed outward towards the
outside and this is the same as the astrological model of the universe with earth in the center
and then the sphere of the moon the sphere of mercury the sphere of venus the sphere of the
sun etc it goes all the way out to the outer edges okay however you can reverse it and so the highest
grade can also be seen be seen as the innermost level and maybe we’ll talk about that in just a
little bit a little bit of profundity there and you’ll notice that it sort of represents uh like
it almost looks like an amphitheater when it’s done in concentric circles like that and in fact
one of the keys to the enochian system or the enochian ethers is that the ethers can be seen
as these various tiers of seeding and the enochian angels are pretty much like the watchers
the watchers or the people in the audience who are basically observing what’s going on on the
physical plane okay not only that but whatever is going on on on the stage of the physical plane
is a representative of the things that they are feeling and experiencing and the way this is
presented in the astrological system is that the potentiality of the divine is is on the outside of
this massive theater and it begins to condense downward and inward through the various tiers
or levels of existence and then eventually materializes or congeals on the physical plane
as some kind of actions and drama okay and as it does so it passes through the various perspectives
and of the audience members and takes on characteristics of those audience members
okay and so in the astrological model of course the outermost sphere being um of the planets
being saturn uh the the power of pure potentiality of god let’s say begins to condense inward uh
towards the earth and it passes through the sphere of saturn the sphere of jupiter the sphere of mars
the sphere of the sun all the way down you know through the moon down to the earth and by the
time it reaches the earth it ca it carries with it the perspectives and the personalities of all
of the planets and all those planets plus the potentiality of the divine itself are now
manifesting in a drama in the physical world of the stage this is a very important way of looking
at the universe because it’s kind of how the magician operates okay if you read manly p
hall he has a great book called lectures on ancient philosophy i think it is and he gives
the the bare bones the bedrock of what all philosophy is based on and that is hierarchy
and he portrays the hierarchy mostly like this as a vertical hierarchy this is what we refer to
in epistemology as a branched hierarchy here or a vertical hierarchy okay and you can see it looks
like a um the power structure within an organization with the boss at the top and the
underlings underneath and they are seen as supporting the boss okay it’s also the model
for the city state and everybody down below is generating wealth which flows to the top right
and then supposedly trickles down haha okay so um and uh manly p hall says specifics are suspended
from generals that was a cryptic remark just to make unless you are aware of this hierarchy and
you can walk around in the world like this too this is very much the abrahamic way of seeing
things where the higher levels of reality are hovering over you and you
are under them and to understand them is to stand under them okay and so you can
see there’s like there’s an angel hovering over your head and that’s your
higher self right your higher self right and that is the vertical hierarchy way
of looking at things and in this viewpoint then when you leave this world
you don’t go back into the earth you your spirit or your soul goes back up
into the sky okay well so the vertical hierarchy is one way of doing a hierarchy
and it’s not necessarily really very representative of reality okay it’s a
convenience okay many people would call this a patriarchal kind of model because
the the highest uh the highest most profound the biggest detail sits on top uh and it’s the boss
of all the others bosses them around tells them what to do and they all serve the higher in that
way okay he’s like a dad and all of his underlings are his children who obey all of his commands
supposedly okay and then we have um the this is the same uh diagram again okay in other words
i want to go back to the previous you have the main idea main idea which is supported by three
major details which is supported by and of course one of those major details is supported by two
minor details okay this is the way a paragraph is structured when you’re writing or when you’re
speaking every paragraph has a main idea usually and it’ll have one or two or
three major details something like that might have some minor details maybe as
an example of something okay and of course all of knowledge is structured
this way okay this is how the knowledge holds together okay the brain kind of
needs this structure too because we can’t hold on to a lot of knowledge all
at once it kind of has to be processed and then mapped away somewhere and then we can access parts
of the map we can’t really hold on to too much of it all at once all at the same time but when we
map the knowledge out like this then we can access it the knowledge piece by piece as as a part of
some kind of larger map okay which is sort of supposedly filed away in the mind somewhere in
the halls of memory wherever that is okay and so this is the same diagram again we have a main idea
we have three major details that supposedly support it, and the two minor details which
support one of those major details. But what you’ll notice is, here it seems like the main idea
is the mom. This is what could be seen as a matriarchal kind of hierarchy, where the mom
idea is the biggest, and the three major details are babies inside her. She supports them, or she
bodies them forth okay and this is the uh this is this is why this is sort of matriarchal because
then in this kind of view um details come out of the great mother not some out of boss figure in
the sky okay we come out of the earth did we come out of the sky well you could say the earth kind
of is sitting nested in the sky maybe right uh but uh in the ancient mysteries yeah it was more
matriarchal where we were seen as coming out of the earth and going back into the
earth from dust you were made and death from to dust you will return and so
specifics are bodied forth by generals not necessarily suspended from them but
bodied forth by the generals the general ideas and then we come to the outline
this is the standard outline which is very important to be able to think like
this okay what is that a standard outline is this a branched hierarchy or a nested hierarchy
the temptation might be to call this a branched hierarchy with patriarchal right and you’ll
notice that the highest ideas or the biggest ideas are shoved over to the left and the most specific
ideas are shoved over to the right and the ability to think like this is very important okay and a
lot of times when people make references to idea maps as they are relaying ideas to you they make
references to various positions on a map okay they’ll say under this topic all those all the
or they’re going to say within this topic what which one is correct you know um i’m speaking
about something that’s under this topic or within this topic see they’re both correct if i say
i’m speaking about something within this topic i’m using a nested hierarchy view and if i say
i’m speaking about something under this topic then i’m using a vertical hierarchy or branched
hierarchy and you’re supposed you’re expected to know both of those you’re just supposed to
know those things somehow and nobody maybe even ever told you about that and you’re just supposed
to have seen it for yourself at some point what surprises me and i must have been maybe a third
or fourth grade when i suddenly realized that we have very specific types of knowledge and we have
more general types of knowledge and then it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and it’s like
where how far does it go that was always so fascinating still very fascinating to me
but the surprising thing is that many people never really have had that realization
that um and so when we talk about smaller subjects within larger subjects that are also within larger
subjects um they they know what you’re talking about but they’re not used to thinking that way
they never had the big aha about like how far does it go wow they’ve never wondered about that
and this is a major handicap if you haven’t had that sort of experience of awe in in as far as
these nested hierarchy um the way that the mind works the way it maps things out
then there’s a large part of the academic world and the world of science and philosophy and art
that is going to be beyond your understanding for the most part or it’s just a glimmer you can’t
quite get you can’t quite see what people are talking about unless you are really proficient
at working with both the branched and the nested hierarchies and the outlines so incidentally
an outline is really a nested hierarchy quite simple isn’t it so you can see that the largest
details the thesis and we have two main ideas that support the thesis and we have major details that
support the main ideas and minor details support the major details or the other way around you
could say that the major details body forth the minor details okay the thesis bodies forth the
main ideas and the main ideas body forth major details so why is this so important to magic
well you have to remember that when you’re standing in your magic circle it’s kind of like
standing in the middle of all those concentric spheres and the outermost
sphere is the most general and the innermost sphere is the most specific
and you as a material being are standing in the center as the most specific
manifestation of all of these sort of invisible really poofy really big
general forces and all of them are condensing and congealing inward right
now to make you as you are and as you remember the great potentiality of the
divine is on the outside and it begins to condense inward but it has to be
filtered through all the perspectives of these entities that are in the audience
Saturn Jupiter Mars the god of the Sun Apollo let’s say and and so on and so
forth Venus Mercury and these perspectives of these deities are being
lended to all this power as it condenses inward and by the time it manifests on
this plane with emits the four elements the four elements are pretty much playing a part as well
all these forces sort of intermingle and intertwine and excruciatingly complicated
ways to create lots of drama where some kind of process can be worked out something called
karma okay and so the magician is now operating in the center of all of these spaces as they
congeal inward from general to specific in a nested hierarchy and so when it
wherever he goes whatever he’s doing whatever he’s experiencing he sees the
end result at least in his physical senses he sees the the end result of
this congealing condensing power from general to specific the specific result
is the end product of very general processes which are happening right now
okay it’s not necessarily a sequential process it is a functional process it’s
happening right now and in the nested hierarchy point of view I’m gonna go
back and the nested hierarchy point of view what you’ll notice is that all of
the forces that the magician experiences are present right here right now in the
hierarchical or the authority the vertical hierarchy here you’ll notice
that um the the specific experience is at the bottom and the general experience is at the top
and this makes it look like uh the magician standing in the midst of his magic circle
is completely cut off from the most general principles of the universe and that he must
somehow climb out of his body and get up there climb up the tree of life to get to that higher
level okay so this is one of the problems with the vertical hierarchy way of looking at things
it it sends us the um incorrect message that we are cut off from the most general levels of reality
that we are cut off from god and so in we oh where are we hold on so in this diagram here
you notice how a good way to look at this is if you’re looking downward into
a spring boil when the water comes erupting upward from the ground from the
earthers if you ever look into a spring and the water is really gushing out of
that spring you can see the whole spring pool itself which is sort of like the
main idea here and various bilious
formations on the water as they come up and they momentarily form and
disappear. And, of course, there’s a patch of turbulence. And within that patch of turbulence
are other smaller patches of turbulence, right? And so that kind of view of reality, that’s more
accurately how to describe what’s happening within the nested hierarchy view. And so
the magician is not cut off from the divine. The divine is right here. It is bodying him forth
right now even as it has to pass through several levels of activity which are right here and right
now so this is what is meant by these cryptic remarks he is in the world and the world is in
him should make sense now okay i think when they say he that’s basically shiva you say or god you
could say god is in the world and the world is in him okay or not more obviously you can see
kether is in malkuth it’s right here and malkuth is in kether malkuth being the sphere in the in
in the center and kether all around right so okay all right and of course all of us are part of one
thing right now we didn’t come from some oneness and now we have to get back to it somehow as
though it’s somewhere else it’s right here it’s nowhere to go so you can see how the nested
hierarchy viewpoint kind of rescues us from that sense of being cut off from the divine and
whenever you’re reading the most the deepest most profound literature many of the references made
simply rely on your ability to rescue the branched hierarchy with the nested hierarchy all right
that’s nested okay and so the magician in his magic circle is basically the end result of a
congelation of power, not the end result of all the things that happened to him in his life in
the past. That’s an illusion, okay? We are the end result of stuff that’s happening right now.
That’s a different way of looking at reality, okay, of tweaking reality. And so all this talk
of auras, okay? I can see auras and things like that, right? Which you might want to, let’s say
you can’t see auras, right? So when you look at people, you might want to consider that all these
people are have these rings around them okay that are condensing inward to create who and what they
are right now that’s kind of what’s happening or like everybody is in the midst of his own
amphitheater and of course um what you can see is the end result of that congealing process of
divine power condensing and materializing at every moment okay and there are ways in like vedanta
philosophy where they try to define the aura in terms of these sheets and the most general
ones are usually on the outside okay but also some of the more um the more powerful spheres
are also considered in the center as well okay and so uh there’s something very important about
that because as the magician um experiences himself as the focal point of all of these
general forces condensing inward and becoming specific um he can learn how to access the highest
sphere right here and right now and that tends to be um something you can experience by uh by
focusing on in on some kind of um metaphorical center okay not a literal center of your body
like your heart or your third eye or something like that okay those are just um metaphorical
ways of trying to get at this what the way that this thing comes out okay um here’s an example
here this is a lapis lazuli stone and uh it carries supposedly carries the virtues of jupiter
and see it’s very sky like jupiter is a sky god sort of got a high altitude sky color with cloud
like formations on it right and so aesthetically it carries the virtues of jupiter okay it carries
the virtues of of everything actually but it’s particularly portrays the character of jupiter
in its color and formation okay and supposedly these stones have power right so um and you can
even see the the condensing power coming inward as it as it forms something very specific it goes
from general to specific and appears to us as a stone right now okay um this particular stone
carries more virtues of jupiter than other stones do because of its aesthetic quality okay and
um so you can look at the power of a stone as it being a focal point for the powers of jupiter
mostly the powers of jupiter right and and of course from its center then supposedly radiate
outwards also you know these sort of concentric spheres and it sort of has a an emanation of
jupiter-like influence along with all the other planets too of course and the elements as well
but you can see because of the aesthetic quality it has um the way we experience it is mainly in
the character of jupiter okay it’s a cool way of looking at the world okay and um when people
can see auras it largely has to do with with that kind of experience sort of behind the scenes
operating unconsciously um the ability to see auras is kind of a what they call synesthesia
but that doesn’t mean it’s a hallucination synesthesia is actually a psychic ability
okay we shouldn’t dismiss it as a hallucination or a malfunctioning of the mind that’s absurd no
it’s a it’s a soulful way of seeing the world okay very important um if you see things in the
imagination the tendency of the modernistic mindset is to say that uh they don’t exist
because they’re imaginary as if imagination isn’t real which is absurd because if you experience
something in the imagination you have experienced it therefore it is real as an imaginal event okay
so when you experience these objects in a particular way then you can you’re they’re
carrying forth the virtues of jupiter for real for real in your mind and in your experience
um and acknowledging that then you really begin to able to start working with the powers of these
uh aesthetic qualities let’s say okay um and if you try to dismiss or if you try to call them
subjective and use the words objective and sub subjective to try to explain them
you’ve missed the point this is neither objective nor subjective okay so it’s best to go at these
various phenomena with the mindset of phenomenology look up that word and
phenomenology is usually the way to go about understanding the mysteries mysticism and magic
and of course you’ll notice that um the last video i talked about yin and yang and how um yin is the
the round circle and yang is the point at the center one way of looking at it in the symbol
of the sun okay and this is very much also an emblem of the magician standing in the midst of
his magic circle yes you’ll notice how yin is the general principle of all the congealing powers
right of the condensing inward from general to specific and then of course the whatever arises
in the drama as the actor as the action is the male principle or the yang principle this is why
eat the ego this is why the ego is archetypally male because it stands
forth from the background powers of the universe into physical manifestation in
a phallic sort of way and this is why archetypally speaking women tend to
hover in the background and men tend to go out in the foreground okay that
doesn’t mean women can’t do that okay just archetypally speaking that’s that’s
why male and female archetypes are sort of portrayed that the way the way that
they are not that anybody is bound by them and has to like a woman has to be feminine not at all
and of course i also talked about the vesica piscus and that is the the circle with the dot
in the center also becomes a symbol of the vagina and uh what is it that emerges from the vagina
but the yang principle right the center of the circle comes forth into physical manifestation
or physical action in a phallic sort of way and lo and behold we have jesus emerging from his
mother mary he has condensed inward from the general powers of the universe the governing
general powers let’s say and congealed as a representative of them carrying all of their
virtues here as we all do for better or for worse carrying all of their virtues and their vices
and then he represents the way back sort of like he’s holding that door open you can come back
you can come back in here sort of and that’s yin yang and dao so in other words the dot
and the circle together sort of fading into one another would be the principle of dao
and that was sort of i’m going to get some comments about that i’m pretty sure
so it gives you a different perspective on uh the magician and his powers so when you have
magical sigils or whatnot. And why is the center of the sigil so important? Why do we stand in the
magic circle? It is the sphere of action, the sphere of specificity that has condensed out of
all of these ethers into physical manifestation, into physical action to enact some kind of drama
on the world stage. That’s why they call the lowest world of the tree of life, the sphere,
the world of action. Asea is the world of action. And Asea consists of the lowest sphere,
Malkuth. And so back to my example in the beginning. So science has sort of usurped the
word deep. And when they say, I’m going deep into the scientific research, okay, I’m going deep into
the evidence. I have an issue with that because when I was describing herbalism, I was describing
it in terms of you know a thousand years or more of tradition that uh uh of experience not in terms
of uh tangible data and the interesting thing is that when the science says i’m going deep into the
the evidence mostly what they’re doing is they’re going they’re just they’re just delving into
surface level phenomena it’s kind of like they’re looking at the ocean and they see waves and they
point it they point at one of the waves and say that’s water no that’s no a wave is not water
all right so um i think science has sort of usurped the idea of deep when they say i’m
going deep into my evidence or something like that and so you know the science would say that
the pharmaceutical industry is has much deeper research that’s a strange concept when somebody
is referring to a very rich cultural tradition of herbalism let’s say or or of um holistic medicine
okay and uh we could just as easily turn this upside down and say the deepest level is the is
the the most profound level the most of what the biggest level so the surface world is the world
of the physical right and it’s bubbling up from a deep wide vast world of power okay and so you when
when we have it presented like this this is like the spring boil with waters gushing up from below
through a hole right and then of course it forms turbulence on the way up and then uh bumps of
turbulence on the surface as these these details so going deep into the research is just simply
going getting lost amidst the details it’s getting lost in the surface world to say that i’m going to
go deep into the research okay to be fair i think as they do that they start to form theories and
they in in some sense they’re delving down deep into what might be causing these things and making
theories okay so yeah there’s there’s some but to say you can go deep into the facts that’s kind of
silly facts are superficial for the most part so i would tend to say oh uh the scientist in the
pharmaceutical industry would be better off saying, I refuse to dive so deep into the meanings behind
these things or these traditions or whatever like that or these experiences. I’m just going to focus
on the shallow details. All right. So I’m hoping that’s clear. You might want to go and read some
of the Tree of Life right now or read some of the Mystical Kabbalah or grab some really profound
alchemical text and see if you can see how the idea of the nested hierarchy comes to the rescue
and explains oh that’s why he said it that way now i understand when you can see the world in
terms of nested hierarchies um everything is always sort of buoyed up by the by general
invisible principles okay because you all you can see with the physical senses are the
specific end results okay and eventually you develop the ability to perceive the
deeper stuff okay even if that comes to you in some kind of synesthesia look up
that word okay the synesthesia and so the ability to see condensing levels of
power or radiating layers of power from the inside out or from the outside in
these are a form of synesthesia just as if you’re listening to music and you
start dancing and whenever their high note is playing you’re playing around up here and whenever
a low note’s playing you’re playing around down here that’s synesthesia okay that’s in fact that’s
sort of a um a vertical hierarchy way of doing your dance right all right okay so i hope that
makes sense and i think um for the next video i’ll make it i’m going to keep it really superficial
i think i’m going to give you a list of all the biohacks that i do things that i do to um signal
of the body to be in good health okay so until next time
Source: Lyam Christopher