Descriptions:
Video Description
What is the strange gap in the Tree of Life where a sphere seems to have gone missing? In this densely Kabbalistic lesson, Lyam Christopher explores Da’ath, the hidden Sephirah of knowledge, and the space many call the Abyss. The tree is a map of how reality grows, from pure, formless possibility at the top all the way down to the dense physical world below. But between the upper three spheres and the rest, there is an empty place, and he invites the viewer to peer straight into it.
The story he tells is cosmic and almost dreamlike. To make room for a world of separate things, the limitless divine had to pull back into itself, opening a dark space where light could gather and forms could appear. The old Kabbalists called this opening the Tzimtzum, a contraction, and they said the vessels made to hold the incoming light eventually shattered. Those falling pieces became the brokenness and trouble we now call evil, and the work of repair, Tikkun, is the slow, loving effort of putting things right.
Then he turns the great mystery toward the viewer. The Abyss, he says, is not a faraway ledge to reach someday; it is right here, in the very act of seeing one thing stand out from another. Knowledge itself, Da’ath, is that separating glance that makes objects knowable. Even the famous vision of howling winds and screaming voices is gently reinterpreted: chaos originally meant formlessness, not ruin, and losing form need not mean falling apart. Magic, in this view, is learning to see how things genuinely grow rather than how we force them together.
Full Video Transcript
Okay, this week we are talking about Da’at. There have been a number of requests for this. Da’at is the sphere of knowledge, also known as the abyss. However, some people might say that Da’at and the abyss are two separate things. This is going to be a very Kabbalistic video. So if you were looking for a video laced with a lot of Kabbalism, this is the one.
So let’s jump right in to the abyss. This is the tree of life diagram that hermetic Kabbalists use for hermetic magic. And if you’ll notice, it’s basically a map of the universe in abstract. It’s a map of the manifestation process from unmanifestation at the top to full manifestation at the bottom.
And if you were to walk up that central path, as though you were walking up, standing atop several stepping stones,
all right, so you would go plunk, plunk, plunk, and then suddenly fall into the abyss.
Because there seems to be a stepping stone missing right underneath those top three spheroth.
What’s going on there?
So, Kabbalists, some Kabbalists say that there used to be a sphera there.
Hmm, okay.
and they say that well it fell it fell down okay so that uh the one at the bottom there is called
makuth and that is the physical world that’s where we are supposedly in this outward physical world
with physical bodies and this world has come into existence because of some kind of um cosmic
calamity some cosmic disaster and it used to be way up there underneath those top three spheroth
and it has fallen down to here and so we can talk about how that happened among occultists
they say that the spot that’s empty now where there used to be a sphera that empty spot that’s
where the abyss is one of the abysses okay it’s really the abyss and is the supposedly it’s the
gulf that exists between the divine and humanity which uh humanity cannot cross while still
incarnate supposedly all right and um the the tendency to call that the abyss uh i guess it
kind of comes from the lemma maybe i don’t know um i’m not sure if it was really that much of a
golden dawn concept maybe some of you can chime in on that um part of that comes from a
misunderstanding okay we’re going to talk about the misunderstanding towards the end of the video
so to regard doth as the abyss it’s fun to do that but we’re eventually going to look at what the
abyss is okay and the most important thing i can say right now is that the abyss is not somewhere
way out there way up there that you need to reach and then you’re going to get there and you’re
going to say oh my god there’s the abyss now i need to do some kind of special technique to cross
it okay the abyss is right here okay it makes the experience of watching this video possible okay
and we’ll talk about what the abyss is uh is it possible to bridge the the abyss yeah well first
First of all, remember, talking about it as the abyss is a bit of a mistaken concept.
And so we’ll get to that.
Let’s just call it Da’ath for now.
Incidentally, Da’ath, there’s that apostrophe there.
That’s just to, when we transliterate Hebrew into English letters,
that apostrophe there is to show that the Hebrew letter Ayin has a strange pronunciation there.
It has a little interruption there.
So it’s Da’ath.
I’m not sure why that is exactly
Da’ath means knowledge, among other things
Alright, so let’s go back to the beginning
The Sphira, Da’ath, actually was the first Sphira to be created
Or we can see it that way
So, supposedly when God wanted to create the universe
It wasn’t really clear how to do that
because God was perfectly infinite and peaceful
and there was nothing really in existence, okay?
He was in a state of nothingness or he was in a state of no-thingness, okay?
And speaking in terms of phenomenology,
if there are no things that can be distinguished from other things,
then phenomenologically speaking nothing really exists that’s not really a difficult concept okay
so in order for something to exist it needs to stand out in relation to something else
okay and before the universe was created there were no things standing out in relation to other
things okay the universe was simply completely pervaded by the divine mind okay there wasn’t
in a universe either it’s just a matter of speaking so god was pretty much complete and
limitless had no limits going on okay so in order to create the universe what he had to do
was to create a space for it so he had to open up a part of himself he had to separate himself
from a part of himself in order to open up a space where things could then emerge okay so if
everything is pure consciousness then there’s really no there aren’t no objects anywhere in
existence so in order to create a space where objects could arise well god had to withdraw
from a portion of himself because he filled everything up so now he’s withdrawing from a
part of himself and he’s opening up this chasm inside of himself where things can now appear
and that process is called sim sum a contraction okay and he sort of withdraws part of himself
away from himself and what happens as he does that the part that is still identified as him
is light and the part that is not that is no longer identified as him is darkness okay now
this is really the process of the divine entering a sort of dream sort of like going to sleep and
having a dream okay so the the nothingness or the emptiness that he opens up inside himself
is simply him having a dream. It’s not real. So it’s the space opens up as if, as if the divine
is no longer in it. It looks that way. Okay. But in some strange way, that emptiness is not really
empty. Okay. It just looks that way. It appears that way. It’s just a dream. Okay. But then now
within this dream space, things can now start to appear. So when, when God is perfect and there’s
no universe uh he’s referred to as ayin which means no thing no thingness there’s no thing
perceivable anywhere or ayin soft and without end okay pretty much when he starts to get restless
and like he wants to create something that’s ayin soft it’s like i’d like to create something but
i’m completely limitless there are no boundaries anywhere i can’t create something unless there
boundaries or limits so i’m going to have to create some limits okay so in that restlessness
he becomes ayin safor he’s discovering that he has no limits okay ayin saf okay ayin saf is without
end okay ayin safor is light without end so ayin safor can be said to exist once that big chasm
has opened up that big chasm of darkness that’s a sort of dimming of the light within a certain
part of himself, okay? And that place that opens up is called the Teheru, which essentially is
Da’at, okay? We can’t call it Da’at yet because Da’at means knowledge, and there’s nothing in
that space really to know. There aren’t any objects that have arisen in it yet, okay? So
Da’at is really more like the knowledge state that we have as we experience objects inside the
teheru okay so of course the next step then is to introduce objects or to have things arise
like dream phenomena arise within the teheru the dark space right so within the darkness
things start to happen and so we have this pushing in or this arising of uh now something’s starting
to push in okay let’s see what we can put inside this space and start creating the universe right
But this is really interesting because many of the world’s cultures and mythologies have this same kind of imagery going on.
Kabbalah simply makes it very difficult to understand and very abstract.
So let’s go to ancient Egypt.
The ancient Egyptians observed the Nile flooding once a year, the Nile River.
And then when the floodwaters receded, the water goes down, suddenly all these mounds would appear.
They would arise up out of the Nile because the water level was going down and it looked like now we have these sort of mounds started to appear.
So what used to be a featureless sort of waterscape now becomes a landscape with features in it.
okay so what was sort of a nothingness becomes a realm of somethingness because things begin to
emerge within it and you can see what this how this is correlating with the creation of the
universe okay so as god retracts pulls away from part of himself okay it’s like that’s the same
thing as the waters of the nile going down and then of course things begin to emerge things begin
into, or they look like they emerge, right? Because the water is going down. So as the space
opens up, suddenly these things start to encroach into the space. It’s like, oh, okay, it’s happening
now. The drama of the dream creation is happening, okay? Now, when this happens, it’s very much like
the Egyptian creation myth, where the waters of chaos sort of withdraw or settled, start going
down and then some kind of form begins to emerge the primeval mound the benben appears okay and
stylistically the benben is the pyramid the four-sided pyramid we we can view the primeval
mound or the bump of earth that’s coming out of the water we can view that as a four-sided pyramid
in the abstract simply to symbolize that oh it’s comprised of the four elements so each
facet of the pyramid of the four-sided pyramid is one of the elements okay and then we have to
remember that that space remember god is withdrawing from himself right and then things start to arise
and appear within that space um but mysteriously god still fills that space in some kind of
spiritual sort of you know ephemeral sort of way um and so uh within that space um that spirit of
gods can sort of settle down upon the mound okay it’s a very beautiful image because and of course
you have so you have the the nile river and the water’s receding and the the um the mound appears
to be emerging from the water and then this uh gray crane or bird comes and settles down upon
the mound okay it’s like so the spirit of god is now settling upon and look oh look there’s something
to look at now something’s starting to appear and so this bird landing upon the mound is sort of
like the god’s attention being drawn to oh look i can see something and it’s now settling upon
the mound okay these are not really complicated concepts uh but they are i guess they really are
abstract aren’t they yeah um but they basically are just at the root of how things manifest in
relation to each other that’s what we’re describing here okay so this space opens up and of course
now as the waters recede and that space opens up all kinds of complexities can now begin to emerge
okay and so you can get not just a bunch of mounds but all kinds of structures start to appear
and start to fill up this dream space okay and here we have a tree of life let’s say
So you might say that the tree of life is the dream body of God that appears within that space.
OK, when things appear within the space, that space of darkness, OK, they begin to arise there.
Then it’s Da’ath because that ray of consciousness is now settling upon them and say, oh, I see them.
I can see this. I can see that. I can see this over here.
and also there are different perspectives arising inside that that can see each other
in other words they can see each other and they know each other they have knowledge of each other
and da’at means knowledge okay so that’s why that big empty space essentially is da’at and so here
we have the tree of life emerging within that space in its abstract form of the hermetic
kabbalistic tree uh but as this happens you know as the space opens up and that sort of um
these these 10 vessels of light begin to emerge it’s like they’re being they’re they’re streaming
in uh and there’s like light flowing in now uh something um something bad happens okay um
they the vessels that are holding that light they shatter they can’t really hold
the the radiance of the light and so what happens is something you know be really beautiful and
orderly was about to emerge but something apparently goes wrong with it and the vessels
shatter. Some people say it’s only the vessels four through 10 that shatter and that the top
three spheroth are still in place. Okay, that’s a nice way to look at it. And in the shattering
process, there are pieces of those vessels fall down, and they sort of fall down to the bottom
of the chasm. And this is how evil comes into existence. Okay. And so the idea is that the
broken pieces of these vessels are now flung out into this chasm or empty space. And what
we get is a massive confusion. Okay. We have all kinds of chaos. And that chaos now needs
to be sorted through and repaired. So in Kabbalah, there’s a process known as tikkun. It’s also
known in Judaism as well, the process of tikkun, where the things that we do in the world help to
organize and clean up the mess of the broken vessels. And the broken vessels are not really
so you shouldn’t take them necessarily literally but all kinds of evil are pretty much the result
of these vessels breaking you know eons and eons ago and so if you act in a righteous way or a
virtuous way you’re helping to clean up the uh the debris field of the universe okay which process
known as tycoon so there’s another another way of looking at the sphere oath of the tree of life
okay so let’s go back to when um when daath first emerged you pretty much have the uh the space
opening up and then as it’s opening up these sort of things begin to appear these sort of
primeval mounds and each of these primeval mounds has a particular thing going on with it these are
abstract concepts that begin to emerge okay there’s darkness and light okay this is not physical
darkness and light this is more of like um more akin to the brilliance of genius and the darkness
of oblivion okay these are abstract concepts that are sort of behind physical light and physical
darkness okay and we also have expansion and contraction and for those of you who have been
studying kabbalah these are the highest sphere off on the tree of life okay um tether hakma bina has
said and gebura okay and you can see it happening here the light and the darkness appear first
because that’s the when god opens up the hole within himself suddenly he’s light and darkness
that duality appears right so the light and the darkness are already starting to appear
to manifest right no problem yet then there’s the expansion and in the expansion of these vessels
something goes wrong and they break okay and that’s the the contraction is sort of like that
collapse of the vessels and so that’s when kubura comes into existence or din okay and supposedly
evil arises that way too okay there’s something very important about the concept of this kind of
evil or chaos okay and it’s it’s um it’s the reason that we mistakenly refer to daath is the
abyss okay i rather like referring to it as the abyss nice um but there is a misunderstanding
there that we can talk about in a bit and so we have these concepts of the um the light is hakma
the darkness is bina the expansion is hesed and the contraction or the destruction is gebura
and so when the whole thing collapses inward so you can see uh this is a different way of looking
at the tree of life uh you guys can do this too by the way i kind of conjured this this morning
i just kind of created this this morning um so you can do all kinds of meditations um on the way that
this sphere oath uh can be configured okay that that one version of the tree of life that hermetic
tree of life is not the only way of looking at the sphere oath okay in many ways this this is
more accurate okay um but there are no ways of looking at the sphere oath that are really
entirely accurate um you might recall that um in astrology the manifestation process proceeds from
the outside in okay from outside we have the um the field of pure consciousness or god and then
filtering in from that we have the this the signs of the zodiac and then in from that we have the
sphere of saturn then we have the sphere of jupiter okay then we have the sphere of mars
the sphere of the sun okay so it kind of condenses inward and then earth is down in the in the center
so this is a condensation of power um from the mind of god out here all the condensing down
into something dense and physical and it could it could be said that anything that arises in
the physical plane has to pass through all these layers of condensation to finally materialize here
and happen okay that’s why looking at the tree of life in this way can be really interesting
one of the interesting things about this is that when the vessels broke and they shattered and all
the pieces rained down it’s almost like you have this sort of impact crater where all the things
fell down the middle here there’s like a like a meteor fell from the sky right and it made this
impact crater um the reason i bring that up because is because in islamic and christian myth
when satan fell to earth he hit the ground really hard and he left a big crater and that crater had
nine levels in it and of course then we get dante’s version of hell with that those tears of
hell that go inward the bottom the in the center of hell is the lake of ice at the very bottom the
ninth level of hell okay uh and so um this collapse of the tree of life is similar to that you could
say and these things now um fall inward and then um and then malkuth ends up in the center okay
and so a lot of the cleanup process supposedly is happening now in malkuth in uh that’s the physical
world in the center okay now it might be interesting too because it’s like well liam just
redid the whole tree what’s he doing you might try doing ritual after this you know i’ve studied
this diagram a little bit and and uh or maybe do some diagrams of your own in your magical journal
okay and see what this does to your ritual practice okay it can really liven it up animate it so um
But what this shows you is that everything is inside Da’ath.
Everything’s happening inside Da’ath.
It’s that space that opened up, okay?
Everything except Kether.
And Kether is the concealed of the concealed.
You cannot see Kether, but you’re pretty close, okay?
And can you perceive Chokmah and Binah?
Sort of, yeah.
in in terms of brilliance and oblivion those we have a vague recognition of what wisdom and
understanding are and what brilliant insights are like the brilliance of the mind the light
of consciousness we know these things we recognize these things okay so even hakma and bina are
somewhat discernible by us at least you know sort of condensing down and we can experience them
secondhand, you know. So all these things are arising within da’at except for kether. Kether,
which is pure potentiality, okay. What this means is that da’at is right here, right now, okay. And
if you’ve been following closely, remember that when things, when that space opened up, it made
it possible for different objects now to appear so that we can perceive objects. So you’re very
act of perceiving objects around you is your participation in this sphere or the sphere
of Da’at. Okay. You could say that, you know, Da’at really is not a sphere of the tree of life.
It’s simply the space where the tree of life has emerged, but one way of looking at it. Okay. And
that space, that space exists everywhere. It’s a space that allows thing, one thing to stand out
in relation to another. Okay, so it’s almost like you are a physical object over here. And we have
this stapler, which is a physical object over there. And so you are participating in that sort
of knowledge relationship. This is me and this is not me. It’s the same way that God started the
universe. He basically said, Okay, first thing I have to do is say this, this is me and this is not
me he had to make that dualistic relationship first and when he did that then everything started
to unfold like the manifestation process started to happen and so you’re the very act of perceiving
objects is uh is a an activity of the sphere of daath so knowledge daath means knowledge
my knowledge of this object means that i can wrap my head around it my mind can circumscribe it in
other words sort of wrap it up in this and create an object out of this okay in reality there are no
objects anywhere in the universe strange to say that i know okay but uh they’re constantly being
created by your nervous system and by your consciousness okay this is actually unified
to everything else around it there’s no separation between this and its environment there’s no
separation between this and the Milky Way galaxy or the Andromeda galaxy, okay, the separation
is illusory and it’s being maintained by consciousness, a sort of dream consciousness
of Da’at, which makes knowledge possible. So we come back to the standard Kircher diagram of the
Tree of Life and you can see that it gives you a new perspective when you see that empty space up
there all right you can see how um it almost looks like there’s a direct path between that center
sphera and kether at the very top it’s like i should be able to just jump right across there
right but it’s such a long path and that’s because you can see tifareth and kether are really close
right there right but you got to get across the ath to get up together yeah and tifareth is very
intimate with Chokmah, Binah, Hesed, and Gabburah, okay, and with all the
Sviroth below it as well. And so this concept of the abyss, you know, Crowley
when he described the abyss, Aleister Crowley, he said it was a screaming place
of howling winds and vortexes and voices screaming at each other, its
consciousness whirling around trying to grab hold of itself, screaming, I am
am I? Okay, so it’s, and so that strange chasm of darkness and chaos or disorder and vortexes and
howling winds, that pretty much arises from a mistaken perception of chaos. Chaos originally
originally meant formlessness, right? In the Greek sense, it was formlessness. Chaos was not
disorder, right? In fact, disorder kind of requires some presence of order in order to be
conceived of as disorder. But anyway, so chaos was not a big debris field of things flying around,
hitting each other okay like a tornado it’s um that’s when we describe chaos today it’s like a
you know a tornado or a hurricane or some calamity or a really messy room full of debris
lack of order okay confusion but chaos originally meant formlessness okay so that’s very important
because if you are afraid of formlessness you will confuse formlessness with disorder and
that can be a big problem because then the the attainment of enlightenment will scare the hell
out of you because it will seem like everything’s falling apart into disorder as you sort of
dismantle yourself and fall apart that’s not what’s happening okay it’s simply you you’re
learning to uh you’re learning to see your formless nature so having no limits having no
form does not mean you are disorganized or you know falling apart or or crazy right uh so it but
the problem is in our ignorant state we do confuse disorder with chaos okay so there’s this
um issue of like um there’s chaos and then there’s chaos all right so in modern days when we say
chaos we normally just mean disorder and you can now maintain a distinction between the two uh and
so if you find yourself confronting formlessness okay if form starts to dissolve that’s not
necessarily craziness or losing control or whatever like it’s it’s nothing to be afraid of
In fact, the way that things, the way that the cookie crumbles, it happens in a quite orderly way.
Yeah. And there’s always some kind of intelligence behind these things.
And so this idea of Da’at being the screaming, crazy vortex of howling voices,
I think that arises from our ignorant perception of chaos as craziness,
as opposed to just form that is no longer taken seriously
or that is no longer, that pretty much is not even there anymore.
All right, so I hope that makes sense.
How is this important to magic?
When you can see how God supposedly created the universe,
you see how things arise.
You see how things actually come into existence.
They don’t come into existence the way you think they do.
Okay, so what we’re really getting at is that vertical dimension of causality, not the horizontal dimension of causality that we think like, oh, I, I take the stick here and I beat that over there and produce results, right? That’s not the way things arise, things arise, sort of spontaneously, they grow.
So just to go back to a previous concept, so we have this idea of the when things first start to
appear in that empty space, okay, that pure light begins to enter in and make things appear. All
right, notice how that’s an organic process. It’s grown into the space, filling it with light so
that eventually you get this this kind of complexity okay this is not the same thing as
building something it is this is something that is emerging or growing organically okay so this
is the difference between something that is alive naturally alive and something that is assembled
okay and this is this is one reason why artificial intelligence could can never achieve sentience
that’s actually impossible because it’s assembled it hasn’t emerged like this organic living tree
entity has emerged okay there’s a difference between putting something together and how
assembling it and having it act like something that is filled up from the inside by light
there’s a difference between assembling something and growing something we can’t really grow
something but we can encourage something to grow maybe if we act like a gardener okay
we can’t assemble a plant it’s not possible that doesn’t work that way okay because that’s that
if we try to assemble a plant we are operating on the horizontal dimension of causality okay
that’s not going to happen we would be better off just building a car and then if we are
gardening then we are now participating with the the vertical dimension of causality okay and that
is how things emerge as the waters recede and then things start to appear and they come into
come into existence naturally right and so the act of doing magic is to appreciate that process
to to anticipate it to take advantage of it as it as things come into being yeah i hope that
made sense and you guys just remember you guys did ask for this this was a heavily kabbalistic
video so I hope you enjoyed it and until next time
