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Video Description
How does a system built on one central pillar actually change a person? In this follow-up to the lesson on hierarchies, Lyam Christopher lifts the hood on the Golden Dawn machinery and shows where initiation really happens. The banishings, the magical journal, and above all the Middle Pillar ritual, he says, form the main vehicle of the elemental grades. Even a student who stayed in the Neophyte grade for a lifetime, he notes, would already have everything required to grow.
Then he maps the four worlds the work moves through. The Kabbalists called them Asiyah, the world of action; Yetzirah, the world of formation; Beriah, the world of creation; and Atziluth, the world of pure emanation. The Greeks pictured a similar ladder, but with three levels instead of four. What makes the practice remarkable is the claim that these are not distant floors above the head. They are drawn down to be experienced right here, all of them present in this very moment.
The practical result is quietly astonishing. Because the dream-like world of Yetzirah is where things begin to take shape, the magician can meet old patterns there, make peace with them, and keep them from solidifying into a hard physical life. The whole ascending path is laid out step by step in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation. When the separate levels finally collapse into one, he says, the old web of struggle turns light, even funny, and a kind of relieved awake living takes its place.
Full Video Transcript
This video is a follow-up to the one about hierarchies, the nested hierarchies, and the vertical hierarchies, and I’ve gotten a number of questions about how these might manifest or how to experience these, and one of the fundamental concepts in the Kabbalah Magic Book curriculum is the middle pillar, the way that the middle pillar ritual is conducted throughout the elemental grades of the Golden Dawn.
And the way that the middle pillar is done is the primary initiation vehicle or instrument in the work, at least in the elemental grades.
You could say that the primary, the main initiation aspect of the system is the banishings and the journal work, the work in the magical journal, those together.
So if you stayed in the neophyte grade of the golden dawn all of your life, you would make progress towards enlightenment.
You kind of have everything you need in that grade, but to go through the elemental grade processes, it can accelerate the process and get much more engaged with bringing a dualistic mindset into a system that inherently initiates you into a non-dual frame of mind.
other words enlightenment okay so what we’re going to talk about then is this
four level model of existence the Greeks had a system called metaxi which is
three levels so the world of mortals and the world of the physical world then
there was the world of let’s say imagination which was populated by
diamonds or spirits and also the spirits of deceased heroes things like that and
then there was the realm of the gods three levels in Kabbalah we have four
and there are various other takes on the levels of the universe or levels of
consciousness that are also in levels of four four worlds so according to Plato
there were four levels of knowing and the lowest level was that of the
imagination okay this is where you’re walking around in the world seeing
things or even closing your eyes, imagining what’s out there. Okay. This is the world of
imagination. I don’t subscribe to this model and we can maybe talk a little bit about
what I think is wrong with it. Okay. The next level, now this model can work pretty well
because I think all of the academic world is built upon it. It’s kind of the, Plato is the
founder of the Western academic world. And I would say one of the reasons that the Western
academic world is sort of hyper-intellectual, stilted, is we owe this to Plato, mainly his
interpretation of Socrates. And in the ancient Greek world, Plato and Socrates were the Athenians,
and the people who followed him were the Athenian philosophers, the Athenian thinkers,
the Athenian scholars. But much of Greece kind of saw the Athenians as arrogant and
stuck up and whatnot uh and there’s a reason for that because the traditions that greek philosophy
came out of were much more shamanic in nature and much more akin to a non-dual perspective
uh much more natural much much more inert immersed in the natural world um peter kingsley is a good
scholar to look at for evidence of what i’m talking about okay so that basically plato
was misinterpreting the ancient pre-Socratic teachings of prehistoric teachings, possibly
even, and turning them into something very civilized, very control-oriented, very governmental,
very civics-oriented, right? Anyway, so he saw the lowest level as being that of imagination,
and you can see how this might be a problem because previous pagans or shamanic-type peoples
lived in a world that was completely uh imaginal like in the words dreams were very important to
them and when they walked around in the world they were recognizing that imagination was involved in
creating everything around them no matter what it was even the language and the thought structures
were all imaginal to them and we get much of this um restoration of imagination to a much higher
level we get that uh in the romantic movement which came after the supposed enlightenment in
Western philosophy okay the romanticists such as William Blake or Goethe or you
know philosophers and great poets and thinkers like that anyway see the four
worlds of Plato or the four or the four levels of knowing there was imagination
and then there was the world of belief and this is the world where people run
around and they just snap judge you know and then they people tell you what to
believe and you just hold on to that belief and then you proceed as though that belief is your
thing right uh so that’s the second level of knowing where you you believe something you
don’t question where that belief comes from okay you just it just kind of appeared or somebody gave
it to you and now you believe that and you proceed as though it’s true okay and uh the bulk of
humanity seems to be in on this level on the level of belief uh and that’s why i think right now we
have sort of a rise in sort of a fascism type governments that are attempting to
like have a resurgence all over the world because still a majority of people
are only on this level of Plato’s taxonomy of knowing then there’s the
reasoning level okay and this is where you you begin to construct maps of
reality that are abstract such as bubble diagrams and flow charts and things like
that but you construct those things based on sound reasoning not just on
snap judgments okay and then there’s the fourth level the level of gnosis and
that is direct apprehension of the universe exactly as it is but people who
teach Plato tend to regard the level of gnosis as a completely abstract world
full of perfect shapes and perfect geometric figures this is not at all
what the mystics of the Orient or the East posited and I would propose that
this is a misinterpretation of much older traditions which were in fact a
non dual okay so so let’s switch over to the four worlds of non duality this you
can get this from the Vedic literature like particularly Advaita Vedanta so
level one the lowest level let’s say is waking consciousness when you’re walking
around in the world you’re paying your bills you’re you’re pushing things
around and you’re getting pushed around that is the world of waking
consciousness where you actually believe you are this physical body who needs to
eat these things and chase after these things and run away from predators and
stuff like that but that is the world of the waking consciousness and then
the level two is the realm of dreams which could also include daydreams and imagination right and
then there’s the realm of dreamless sleep which is a world of darkness or seems to be anyway where
just everything shuts off and it’s very important to be able to go into a dreamless sleep at night
and for most of us we don’t really remember what happens there but we emerge from it feeling
refreshed and and as though it was wonderful and a happy state of mind to be in and hopefully you’re
healthy enough to get into a dreamless sleep state some of us as we get older have difficulty doing
that partially because of electric lighting and screen time and things like that because our
bodies respond to blue light in terms of sleep which i did talk about in the last video
about biohacking and then supposedly there’s a fourth level which they refer to as turia and
i’m going to borrow a term from tibetan buddhism that is also tantra they call that level the clear
light so beyond this darkness of dreamless sleep that supposedly there’s a world of pure light
which would correspond to gnosis pure gnosis okay um kind of can be misleading because we
think we get into this realm that’s beyond everything and sure it’s beyond everything
but it also permeates everything so it’s not some other place you need to get to but it certainly
seems that way because you kind of disengage from the outer states and you you just enter into the
inner state and this is where when you touch down upon that state it is the ultimate ground of being
and it is the substratum from which all the other levels of reality now emerge so many people would
say that clear light is the highest level and that’s fine but it might be more accurate to refer
to it as the deepest level so if you descend down into sleep you can go into the dream realm you can
go into the dreamless sleep realm and then you can even get down into the clear light realm where
everything is pure potentiality completely liberated from all the other phenomena that
exist let’s say above it all right and then there’s the four worlds of of kabbalah level one
asiya level two yetzira level three buria and the highest level at saluth glad i could clarify that
so uh yeah asiya is the world of action this is the world where things happen so just as in the
advaita vedanta tradition the outer world or the world of waking consciousness this is the world
where you go out and you do things and you can get pushed around you can get run over by cars
and you know things like that um then there’s a world of the yatsira which is the world of dreams
and imagination where you can also run around and fly around and you’re basically invulnerable but
you can still suffer all kinds of calamity and um yatsira is interesting because uh many of the
beliefs that we have gathered from asia we carry on into the realm of yatsira and this is why we
have nightmares you know and things can chase after us and crush us to death and we can fall
we have a dream that we’re falling or we’re going to hit the ground and you know things like that
and of course we we do get crushed or we do get hit the ground and it’s like hey i’m actually
all right or we wake up screaming you know uh yatsira and then there is uh uh buria which
would correspond to dreamless sleep and this is the sort of womb of creation and bria is very
important uh to golden dawn magic it’s primarily where the golden dawn magician operates because
we’re sort of we’re playing around with forces in yatsira stirring the pot which is bria and um
so potentialities can emerge from absoluth um through bria and then condensed down to yatsira
where we can see them taking on forms the world of formation is Yetzirah and then they crystallize
and materialize sometimes in the outer world as in the world of action as a Siyah okay they don’t
always do that though because we there are many karmic potentialities that we harbor in the higher
or the deeper Atzaluthic realms that when they mature they they appear in the realm of dreams
where we can then deal with them and make meaning out of them and and make peace with them so they
don’t need to emerge in the world of Asia where they now beat us over the head and say you still
didn’t get it you need to make sense of this now I’m coming out in the physical world you
know getting serious right so much of what the magician does is he operates on the level of
Yetzirah, heading off his karma before it crystallizes and materializes around him as a
difficult life. Okay, so if anything, the magician lives a sort of charmed life, possibly, because he
is able to head off things before they become physical. He’s able to deal with them by conjuring
them up through ritual as demons or dark experiences or scary elemental forces and
uh and come to terms with them and make peace with them almost like making contracts with like
with them or even to witness them dissolve and just disappear and not bother him in the physical
realm okay uh this is how the magician operates but one of the problems when you have a dualistic
mindset you have to remember that students of magic come into magic with the dualistic mindset
and when we do that everything’s separated i’m over here and this thing the thing that’s
bothering me is over there and when everything is separated then we take the levels of consciousness
literally and we think well i’m down here in atzaluth oh sorry i’m down here in asia and i
need to get up there into atzaluth it’s not here it’s up there and i need to get there and this is
where the nested hierarchies come to the rescue which was two videos ago we talked about how
nested hierarchies work so the world of atzaluth the highest world is actually present right now
here in the sia okay and so eventually what happens as we go through the elemental grades
in the kabbalah magic book is we work with each level and we do the middle pillar energies in that
level essentially initiating ourself or introducing ourselves to all of the forces supposedly on every
level of existence from asia to absolute one grade at a time and in the golden dawn system
the world of asia is the world of earth the world of yatsira is the world of air
the world of bria is the world of water remember it’s the womb of creation and then the world of
absolute is the world of fire the world of clear light spiritual potentiality power and so how does
this materialize when you do the grade work uh there’s a portion of your daily ritual work where
you do the middle pillar in the four worlds and in the grade of zolotor or the earth grade we work
with the with the tree of life or the or the middle pillar energies in asia and that simply
involves visualizing the physical body either as a physical body if you want to or as a crystalline
form okay and it’s really helpful if you can visualize it as a um maybe as the crystalline
substance that corresponds to the sphere that you’re working in for example if i’m working in
yesod i might see the body as a gigantic moonstone like the body is made of moonstone material
or if i’m working in in the realm of hode which is mercury then i visualize the body as a giant agate
like a orange sort of a stratified orange stone substance as an agate okay or just the physical
body and here you are coming to terms in this grade you’re coming to terms with the physical
body so there’s there’s some awareness exercises involved like proprioception and things like that
where you are aware of how much your body weighs and how it feels when it’s sitting on a chair
how it feels when you’re walking how it feels when you’re working and doing things
uh that’s sort of a zen zen meditation can be very important in zelotter and when you do the
middle pillar it’s all done within this physical body which we visualize okay and we could say even
say that the physical body is part of the aura okay and it corresponds to the lowest level which
is earth so you have the symbol of earth down there and there’s the hey which is up above
that’s hey final and that um hey is one of the letters of the tetragrammaton you would hey vow
hey okay and the tetragrammaton corresponds to among other things it corresponds to the levels
the four levels of the tree of life or the four worlds um you would hey vow hey is at saluth
Berea, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. The Yod is for Atzaluth. And the Tetragrammaton and the four
worlds also correspond to the four elements, as I’ve already mentioned. And so in the Zolotar
grade, you are simply working with the body and you’re seeing your middle pillar energy work done
with the body. Then in the realm of Yetzirah, which is, this is the Theoricus grade, this is
world of air so we have the symbol of air there and uh this is the letter is
vow okay so uh vow is an extension of uh it’s a little bit bigger than your yard
and so now what we visualize is the sort of astral double the body of light the imaginary duplicate
of the physical body and this is like the the body of light which is seen as sort of behind and
inside the physical form from which the physical form draws intelligence and learn knows how to
manifest in this particular way throughout your life okay and so um so in the grade of the oricus
you’re visualizing um the yet’s erratic body which is simply like a body of light like an astral
double of your physical body again this is much more pure it’s usually visualized just as white
light but then of course for the middle pillar exercises you um you visualize it in the various
colors of yatsira and then in the next grade which is practicus practicus corresponds to the
water element the water element and uh this is the world of bria which as i said before is like the
womb of creation and this is where you visualize the aura as we tend to know it the aura as the
egg-shaped glowing sphere of light around you and then you work with the various colors of the golden
dawn system of magic in that egg-shaped zone okay and this um this egg shape around you is not
necessarily hollow it’s com it’s basically opaque it’s glowing but it’s opaque with that color you
can’t really see through it but it’s glowing brilliant the various colors are glowing and
and brilliant if it’s a white light it would be more like a a white fog okay and not not the clear
light of the highest level okay this is the word of bria so you really can’t see through it i have
to remember that the world of bria is also the world of dreamless sleep which most of us can’t
see through or see past okay as you can see uh what seems to be happening is that um within that
you still sort of have the body of light present and even within that you have the physical body
also present so as we go through the grades we are building up i don’t know like levels of the aura
or components of the aura that uh comprise our current state of being all right and all
these things coexist all at once so one at a time we’re just we’re playing around with these forces
as they might manifest in um you know as the astral double but then also as the aura the
of light that supposedly is around us you have to remember that the aura of light around us can be
seen as radiating outward okay but also um primarily it’s more of an astrological type
thing with where the powers condense inward and eventually become you crystallizing as your
physical body okay so um there’s one way of seeing it where the energy comes in and then turns in
eventually comes out and turns into you right here but there’s also um maybe even in the physical
world there’s electromagnetic you know stuff radiating radiating out that sort of mirrors
the egg shape of the aura supposedly you have this electric field around us looks like a taurus
shape okay like our body’s a giant magnet and then finally in the grade of fire which is the
grade of philosophers uh we the that’s the highest level and the world of absolute really cannot be
imagined all we can we can imagine uh the world of atluth as sort of a pressure that’s being
exerted upon the womb realm of berea but it’s pure potentiality so you all you can sense is
the potential for something something’s coming something wants to be born but we don’t know what
it is it just has a certain feeling element that’s beginning to emerge right uh because
absolute is at the very highest level the world of pure potentiality so we really can’t represent
this in any form of the body so we represent it abstractly as the tree of life itself the
kircher diagram of the tree of life itself this is now represents the power of absolute
which is in the aura okay and conceivably by this grade your visualization faculty is developed
enough where you already have a sense for all the various spheroth of the tree of life and you can
actually feel them around you as though the aura really is built that way it’s a very interesting
thing so you enter this world um as if all this stuff is true and eventually you begin to sense
it that it’s being i don’t know being built or being discovered as though it’s actually there
who knows what’s really happening there you know maybe you’re entering an imaginary world where
it’s already been there it’s already been constructed i don’t know but you do get the
sense that this thing is actually there waiting for you to discover it not really waiting for you
to build it okay so and now the important thing about this is that uh all of these levels exist
all at once and by the time you get to the portal grade you are visualizing them all together okay
and the adept mainly just um pictures the the um the aura of maria and the tree itself and of
course it’s hard not to imagine the body of light there as well okay but so the main effort of the
adept then is to have the tree of life built into the and of course the aura around it and then for
the adept the main colors that they will would probably choose to work with are the planetary
colors of the of the various powers they’re invoking okay so if you’re working with um the
forces of hode let’s say you would work with the briadic colors of mercury the briadic color of
of mercury which is orange and then you would work with the planetary color of
mercury from the King scale which is yellow okay which actually comes from
the paths not from the Spheros okay it’s another system of magic to learn pretty
much as the planetary colors another example is if you were to work with the
sun then the the aura would be gold golden sort of an opaque golden color and the the tree of
life itself would be orange sort of a clear translucent orange okay the colors of um
absolute are translucent like you could see through them okay for example if you’re working
with the forces of kether which is all like white light um the the the tree of life itself would be
clear white light translucent colors of the tree of life and the color of the color of
the aura for bria would be sort of an opaque or hazy foggy white light again and then the color
of the body of light would be a more even more opaque as far as the white light is concerned
um and then um and then of course the color of uh of the lowest level you could picture that as the
like a diamond or something like that your body is made of crystalline diamond or just the body
okay and you can see all these things happening all at once so all four levels are present
interesting too because by the time you get to the portal grade and to the adeptus minor grade
the entire scheme of the four worlds collapses because what you begin to realize in your bones
is that they all are functioning together right now so there’s no need to climb all the way up
to the highest world from here uh it’s all right here and you live it you can see it you can feel
it everything is filled with the radiance of pure potentiality right now okay and yeah when you get
to that state um suffering and you know all the travail that we face in daily life much of that
is gone by that point if you actually succeed in this work of transformation um there’s still
difficulties of course but they’re no longer um personal as they arise you just notice them and
you feel i guess you feel a swell of sadness for everybody who has to deal with these you know
various karmic forces as though they are real you see them as illusion and everybody else tends to
regard them as real okay anyway that’s the way that you can see these worlds let’s see now so
So the highest world of Atsaluth is Atsaluth, which is the tree of life itself.
And then the next lowest world is Berea, the aura, which is present right now, right?
And then emerging from the aura, very much like Jesus emerges from the womb of his mother, right,
is the body of light.
And the body of light then crystallizes into the physical form.
And all these things are present right now.
They’re not separate from each other.
it’s kind of like the whole grade system is a big joke because you you you build up this all these
different grades of the golden dawn and you take them very seriously and then suddenly you realize
oh these levels of consciousness are not separate from each other they’re all part of the same thing
and everything collapses and it’s a tremendous relief everything becomes very funny after that
because we’re always invited to create these complex webs of intrigue and suffering and
i don’t know relationships between this and that uh and then um on for the somebody who’s an adept
they can see through all that they just know that that’s just um the relative world which is not
real it’s just the way that we have evolved to function in the world of asia and it’s quite a
relief to be able to walk around the world like that all right shorter video this time you’re
welcome so we’ll see what we talk about next time I’m not sure at this point but
I wanted to share that with you because it’s kind of how the great work system
is constructed it’s sort of how the initiation process works and that’s what
you’re in store for as you’re you know going through these various grades and
doing all these mysterious projects okay well until next time
Source: Lyam Christopher