From OISPEGGY@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu Fri Sep 29 18:22:27 1995 Received: from nova.unix.portal.com (nova.unix.portal.com [156.151.1.101]) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.11/8.6.5) with ESMTP id SAA08669 for ; Fri, 29 Sep 1995 18:22:27 -0700 From: OISPEGGY@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu Received: from ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu [128.205.100.3]) by nova.unix.portal.com (8.6.11/8.6.5) with ESMTP id SAA26731 for ; Fri, 29 Sep 1995 18:22:23 -0700 Received: from ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu by ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (PMDF V4.3-9 #5889) id <01HVV2JX22ZK8Y6CWB@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>; Fri, 29 Sep 1995 21:23:11 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 21:23:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: ...finally, a QBL post of worth.... To: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com Message-id: <01HVV2JX2CMQ8Y6CWB@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> Organization: University at Buffalo X-VMS-To: tagi X-VMS-Cc: OISPEGGY MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Status: RO Newsgroups: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!ub!news.kei.com!news.texas.net!news.sprintlink.net!simtel!col.hp.com!news.dtc.hp.com!hplextra!hplb!cal From: cal@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Colin Low) Subject: Re: Klippoth Nogah Sender: news@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Usenet News Administrator) Message-ID: Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 17:07:12 GMT References: <43uu49$fis@jobe.shell.portal.com> <43v3ps$12p@jobe.shell.portal.com> <446ksb$4gg@nntp4.u.washington.edu> Nntp-Posting-Host: clow.hpl.hp.com Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, England X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL0.7] Followup-To: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi Lines: 77 R Brzustowicz (brz@u.washington.edu) wrote: > In article , Colin Low > wrote: > . . . . > >Perhaps the Klippoth are the projection of the organic basis for consciousness. > >They are the shells between one thing and another, the separations we have to > >make to find our way to the nearest restaurant. We project our nature into > >our dreams and visions. This interpretation is consistent with traditional > >Kabbalah, or at least, some versions of traditional Kabbalah. > > > >The Klippoth may be a projection of the "otherness" of the world, but they > >also have a moral dimension. They are a moral "otherness". > This is reminiscent of Plotinus' notion of "matter" as "evil" -- that > is, as resistance to the unimpeded flow of intelligibility. "Matter" > in Plotinus is not the material world, but the bare, abstract, > "Just-Say-No-ness" that constitutes the ultimate barrier against which, > and with which, the Intelligible constitutes the material world. > It is evil because it resists, even blocks, meaning (intelligibility) -- > but it is only with this separator that a world in time can be unpacked > from the "standing now" of simultaneous, interpenetrating meaning > in the world of the Intelligible. > Although the evil of matter is, in one sense, that which is most alien to > (and external from) the world of the Intelligible, it is nonetheless > contained therein in the relationship of difference of distinction. Wonderfully put. Yes, I think the more intellectual or philosophical slants on the Klippoth do come close to the Neoplatonic, but I haven't tried to follow this up systematically. I have seen quotes from Cordovero which suggest that he inclined towards this view, but I can't confirm this as the Pardes still awaits translation and my Hebrew still isn't that good. Later Kabbalists were quite contaminated by Neoplatonism - for example, Israel Sarug was very successful in combining Neoplatonism with the Lurianic material he purloined from Chayim Vital. Re: your comments about matter blocking intelligibility with its "Can't Do" attitude (looks bad on a performance evaluation - teamwork "poor", enthusiasm "none", judgement "severe", current achievements "constitutes the world but adamantly refuses to take part in anything"). The surprising thing (and it genuinely astonishes me) is that reason, which might be nothing more than an emergent property of a neural network, is in a sense congruent with physical matter. We can construct mathematical models of matter, and they turn out to be sufficiently congruent with the real stuff that we can build Pentiums that are almost Ideal. This reinforces the point that physical matter isn't "real matter": physical matter is intelligible. There is no evidence in physics that matter is unintelligible. The increasing quality of computer animation is an ample demonstration that not only is the world of physical matter intelligible, it is a minor subset of all intelligible and possible worlds. Perhaps. You would need a mind that transcended a world to show the self-consistency of that world. This recalls the worlds of unbalanced severity of the Zohar which were and are no more. So if physical matter is intelligible, to what far periphery do we push Neoplatonic matter? It becomes an ideal. It is an otherness as inscrutable as Kether, more so perhaps, because it is deduced rather than observed, like a murderer in the night. Is milk something "in-itself", or is it a colloidal suspension of oil and water? Every point on the complex plane is in the Mandlebrot set or it isn't, but there are regions where "in" or "out" become so inextricably tangled that we lose interest in "in" and "out" and become more concerned with the patterns they make. Perhaps, as in the Mandlebrot set, the dualist separations into matter and logos are arbitrary, but the patterns are real. Are there abstract principles existing outside of space and time with which we can unite, or are these principles one with the patterns they make? What were we before we fell into the fractal oilbath? One? Two? Many? Nothing? Some days I feel the world become as ragged as an old soap bubble. Colin