The Sephirot and the Thoth Tarot: The Numbers 9 and 10 in Relation to the Modern and the Postmodern

Regarding ages within Kali Yuga, then, we wonder if there is good reason to construe Modernity and Postmodernity as sub-ages, if we take these epochs to mean what they are usually taken to mean. There is some confusion regarding the terms here, but I assume that Modernity can be defined synonymously to "Modernism", as "a socially progressive trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve and reshape their environment with the aid of practical experimentation, scientific knowledge, or technology" according to Wiki. Postmodernity, then, is the reaction against this which lead to the bleeding out of faith in reason, progress, objectivity and truth. These ages correspond - in the psychohistory model - to the rationalist and nihilist sub-aeons of the atheist aeon, respectively.

I have long ago speculated that there is an affinity between these two ages and the numbers 9 and 10 in number mysticism - I now wish to return to that thought and develop it.

In the Thoth Tarot by Aleister Crowley (designed by Frieda Harris), there is a great and curious symbolism regarding the numbers, from 1 to 10. The same can be said for other Tarot decks of course, but Thoth Tarot is the one I am most familiar with. As in a standard Tarot deck, there are 40 number cards, divided into four suites of 10 in accordance with the 10 Sephiroth of the Kabbala. The suites represent the elements of fire, earth, air and water. The 9's and 10's in this particular tarot deck look like this:



There is of course much that could be written about each and everyone of these cards, and for that purpose there are sources far better than this blog. Yet a shallow description of the cards suggests that they do have affinities for the ages mentioned above.

For the number 9, we have:
9 of Wands - Strength.
9 of Disks - Gain.
9 of Cups - Happiness.
9 of Swords - Cruelty.

For the number 10, we have:
10 of Wands - Oppression.
10 of Disks - Wealth.
10 of Cups - Satiety.
10 of Swords - Ruin.

I will illustrate my point by briefly analysing the Wands and Swords cards in relation to the modernist and postmodernist eras (as is standard in Tarot, Wands represent fire, Disks represent earth, Cups represent water and Swords represent air).

9 of Wands represents a self-conscious strength, a force that knows itself, full of self-confidence and full of ambition. This relates well to the way Man believed, during the era of modernism, that his all-powerful will would conquer everything, whether in the realm of science, culture or the natural world.

10 of Wands represents a later stage where this all-conquering force has become imprisoned due to the fear that it would destroy everything in its path if it were not contained. This corresponds well to the contemporary fear of nationalism, fascism, masculinity and violence in all of its forms. Everything must be kept safe and harmless, because every instance of powerful self-assertion invokes the specter of masculine tyranny of some sort. The phenomenon of Trumpism is a reaction to this; whether it succeeds in liberating the fire element from its dungeon remains to be seen (so long as it is merely an echo of 9 of Swords, though, chances are that it will not).

9 of Swords stands for the "temperament of the inquisitor", also highly self-aware like the other 9's, but so removed from its source as to lack any higher direction. The mind, the intellect, in this situation, turns itself into God, and begins to weed out whatever it judges as evil in the garden of the world. Fanaticism, intolerance and persecution belong here, as does the most heartless forms of human and animal experimentation. This is where we find the totalitarian "big stories" of communism, nazism and the most dogmatic forms of scientific materialism.

10 of Swords reacts to the 9 by declaring all the big stories to be null and void and deconstructing truth itself as nothing more than a myth. Here, finally, reason turns on itself and the result is intellectual suicide, the breaking down of everything into parts, incoherence, madness.

Finally, when the Swords suite has reached the end the road, even the deconstructivist philosophers of 10 of Swords cannot defend their positions, since by their own definition their own truth claims are no better than anyone else's. At this point, a new "intellectual seed" - Ace of Swords is ready to be sown, initiating a new cycle of the element of air.

Likewise, when 10 of Wands has weakened itself so much that it is completely tamed, then it can no longer resist a new seed of action represented by Ace of Wands.

As Crowley also writes somewhere (I do not have the exact quote): When you reach the bottom, you suddenly find yourself at the top again. Thus in the Tarot at least the 10 is followed by the 1, or - if progress from one cycle to the next can be allowed for - by 11.

The Yugas: Part 2

If we except the notion that Kali Yuga began roughly a few thousand years ago, and that it corresponds to the most "intellectual" of the four ages, then we would also be inclined to think that Kali Yuga has subdivisions of its own. We have already seen that Vimalananda describes the late Kali Yuga as the "Ghora (terrible) Kali Yuga", a kind of sub-age, but ultimately, we could scrap this schema altogether and replace it with whatever we like. After all, if the progression of the yugas is essentially characterized by a movement from "the extreme of intuitive consciousness to the extreme of intellectual consciousness", then the difference between the yugas is one of quantity rather than quality. In Satya Yuga righteousness is at 100%, in Treta Yuga it declines by one fourth, and so on - Satya Yuga is extremely intuitive, Kali Yuga extremely intellectual. But if this is Kali Yuga, we must amend the above model because we know that there have been more shifts on the intuitive-intellectual scale during the last few thousand years than can be accounted for by the terms "Kali Yuga" and "Ghora Kali Yuga". If the ancients (including in Greece and Rome) imagined the world divided into four ages, we should take heed but we need not slavishly follow their model. In particular, we are concerned with the shifts in mentality that have taken place during the last 500 years or so, and we may divide this period into two, three, five or ten sub-periods if we find it illuminating to do so.

I'm afraid I am not expressing myself clearly, but my point is this: The history of the world could be divided into various time periods, and each division would yield different kinds of patterns. For any division, all that is required is that the constituent parts would, taken together, represent the whole. The number 1 may be divided by 4, 10, 23 or 357 if you will, and each division will reveal different patterns. If the number 1 represents history, and we divide it by 4, then the "first age" of that division would not be equivalent to the first age of history divided by 10. An unspoken premise here also seems to be that each one of the ages should have equal weight, just as 1 divided by 4 equals 0.25, where 4 * 0.25 = 1. This does not mean that each age need to be equal in length, but that each is like a pillar, where all pillars together uphold or constitute Being in equal measure.

Whatever division you prefer, you are stating at least one of the following:
1) that there are abrupt shifts in the quantity of intuition relative to intellect at key points in history, such as the shift from the pre-modern to the modern world.
2) that there is not simply a continuum, after all, from intuition to intellect, but that differences in quality can in fact be captured which vary between ages.

While Vimalananda's model is a clear example of 1), it is not clear whether he also embraces 2). An example of 2) would be the idea of astrological ages, as well as the psychohistory model with its three paradigms of transcendentalism, materialism and magic. However, even if examples of 2) could be found which are valid, one is inclined to think that such shifts in quality are normally less important. After all, Earth has existed for billions of years and time has previously moved very slowly compared to the breathtaking speed of change in our contemporary world. So if, as astrologers claim, the last age of Pisces began 2000 years ago, that would be significant, but most past ages of Pisces probably would not. An astrological age lasts about 2160 years, which in the era of dinosaurs was nothing - whereas today it might make the difference between low-tech human civilization, posthuman hypermodernity, and planet-wide collapse.

A future query might be why there would be abrupt shifts in the quantity of intuition relative to intellect.

The Yugas

Today I want to start a reflection on the ages of the world. There have been many models of such ages, including the aforementioned psychohistory model, but one that I find to be of particular interest is the traditional Indian understanding of cyclical yugas. In my studies I have not come across any source on this which I trust more than the Aghora trilogy by Robert Svoboda. Skeptics may decry this but in the field of spiritual knowledge it would be absurd to put oneself solely in the hands of modern academia.

I begin by quoting two sections from the second book of the trilogy. For those unfamiliar with the books, they are in the form of discussions between the author, Robert Svoboda, and his mentor, the tantric master Vimalananda, during the 1970's and 80's. (In fact, the first book in the trilogy is all monologues by Vimalananda, the second book changes the format to dialogue.)

The first section discusses the four yugas. The second section discusses the ten avataras in relation to Kali Yuga. In both sections, I use bold type for key paragraphs. 

"Each period of creation, or 'day' in the lifetime of the Creator, is called a kalpa. [...] Each kalpa lasts for billions of years, and is divided up into fourteen periods called manvantaras [...] Each manvantara is made up of about seventy cycles of the Four Yugas. The Four Ages are Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, and our era, Kali Yuga. We are now living in the twenty-eighth Kali Yuga since the beginning of the current manvantara."

"At the end of Kali Yuga there is a pralaya, a period when all societies and communities are destroyed, usually bu natural calamities. Then there is a period of rest, and Satya Yuga begins again. At the end of each manvantara there is a more extensive destruction, and at the end of the kalpa the entire cosmos is temporarily resolved into its elements while the Creator 'sleeps'. When He wakes, the cosmos is again recreated by His thought. We are all actors in the Creator's dream" 

[...]

"Now, in Kali Yuga, only one-fourth of the normal amount of righteousness remains. [...] Everything is in flux and always changing, and you are likely to get contrary effects from any religious rituals you perform. But, the texts say that Kali Yuga is the best of all ages because it is the age in which everyone, regardless of caste or karma, can realize God. The problem is, most people are so overcome by Maya that they have no desire to know God."

"Kali Yuga eventually develops into the Ghora ('terrible') Kali Yuga, when things get really bad in the world, at which point the gutters are overflowing with filth. Nature then cleans out the gutters, by whatever means She sees fit to use, and Satya Yuga begins again."

Aghora II: Kundalini, p. 100, p. 101.

"After Krishna leaves the Earth Kali Yuga begins. Then comes Buddha. Buddhi means discrimination, and Lord Buddha represents the perfection of discrimination, though He is devoid of aesthetic experience. He is a man whose logical faculties are fully developed, but Who is trying to do without Maya altogether because of the many temptations of Maya, which increase in strength as Kali Yuga develops. He is not willing to live in the world and enjoy it; He wants out of the world. Lord Buddha is called the Compassionate One because even though He is no longer in the world He longs to to help others who are trapped in the cycle of birth and death to escape also.

The last Avatara is Kalki, who is yet to come. [...] When Kali Yuga is at its worst He will appear and will destroy all but a handful of people. Then He will change the consciousnesses of those whom He allows to live so that they will remember something of their true selves, and Satya Yuga will begin again." 

"So this whole business of yugas and avataras is basically one long loop of evolution from the extreme of intuitive consciousness to the extreme of intellectual consciousness, and then back again?"

"More or less."

"And it just keeps going on, over and over?"

"Yes, it does, but it is more like a spiral than a circle, since the events of one cycle act as a foundation for the events of the next. There is a continuous progression. Now, this idea of the Ten Avataras as reflections of the evolution of human consciousness is just the beginning; every concept should have many layers of meaning. Then Ten Avataras also reflect individual spiritual evolution."

- Aghora II: Kundalini, p. 228.

We will not here focus very much on the question of avataras, but on yugas. And we note that the movement of the yugas can be summarized as "one long loop of evolution from the extreme of intuitive consciousness to the extreme of intellectual consciousness, and then back again". This is a key explanation. From the sea of undifferentiated consciousness, we have moved to the dominion of razor-sharp intellect. Many people should be able to accept this perspective, whether they are religious creationists or darwinian atheists. (As for those who deny the reality of consciousness altogether, they are lost.) There should be no dispute then, if the model of the yugas is valid, that we are now in the last of the four yugas.

Now, we may question the model above with its explicit assumption that after the end of Kali Yuga, Satya Yuga will begin again. We could envision at least two other possible outcomes:

1) Kali Yuga never ends: Once Man has achieved his current level of extreme intellectual consciousness, he never returns to the undivided consciousness again. Rather, he keeps moving towards ever-sharpening forms of intellectualism and materialism. That would be in harmony with a standard account the development of the modern world: After Man has seen the light of Reason, why would he ever again start going "backwards"?

2) Kali Yuga does end, but it is not replaced by Satya Yuga, for how could Man suddenly go from extremely intellectual to extremely intuitive? Rather, Kali Yuga is followed by Dvapara Yuga (the third age), which is followed by Treta Yuga (the second age), finally followed by Satya Yuga. 

We believe that option 1) is unrealistic, if only because it is now very difficult to believe that Man will continue on his present course for many more hundreds of years, let alone thousands or millions of years. The break with the natural order has come so swiftly and had such disastrous consequences for the balance of nature that something now has to give. A defender of 1) may suggest that even if the state of the world is rapidly worsening and "the gutters are overflowing with filth", many humans will survive the coming centuries and go on live better than ever, with genetic upgrades and computer implants of various kinds. But even for such a hold-out of hypermodern posthuman civilization, it is unclear how long it could survive. Most likely it would continue to pollute its surroundings without any kind of faith in God or Nature, and with bigger toys come greater risks. Thus, in the long run - half a millenium or so - we question whether 1) is realistic. However, if such survival were coupled with true human enlightenment, the way many New Agers imagine, then perhaps such dangers could be averted, but then it would still not be Kali Yuga any longer, thus 1) would still be false.

Such a scenario - a hypermodern civilization joined together with some kind of collective spiritual awakening - seems more akin to option 2) above, and also more in tune with the psychohistory model. I believe this is more realistic, seeing as we have already left behind some of the darkest expressions of materialism (compulsory atheism in some countries) and now, possibly, we are heading towards the light. The defender of 2) still has to show how spiritual enlightenment can ever occur on a collective level, excepting new spiritual movements which quickly tend to become debased anyway. 

If both 1) and 2) are false, then the scenario described in Aghora II: Kundalini begins to seem more feasible, though it makes limited sense to the rational mind. Perhaps the only way a modern scientist could accept it is if we were to interpret it in the following way: modern, rational, intellectual Man will live until he has destroyed his world utterly and completely, at which point lower life-forms will take over the world again, and the planet will slowly heal. After many millions of years, more complex life-forms will again emerge, and finally something akin to humans. These "new humans" will go on to become more and more intellectual until they develop all the necessary technology to destroy the world once more, after which they too go extinct, and so on. 

This goes against the accounts given by Vimalananda in Aghora II: Kundalini in at least two ways:

1. Vimalananda speaks only of human evolution; there are humans in Satya Yuga also.

2. Vimalananda speaks of a progression of ages, where the events of one cycle of yugas builds on the events of a previous cycle. Though it is a somewhat obscure statement, in all likelihood this refers to something more than just the material artifacts left behind from the last cycle of yugas - something spiritual. 

Furthermore, the theory of avataras could of course never be accepted by the rationalist mind. In Vimalananda's account, the last avatar commonly known as Kalki is necessary for the transition from Kali Yuga to Satya Yuga.

More on the avataras in a future post.

Könsdysfori och godhet

Såhär är det alltså, om jag har fattat det rätt:

Det viktigaste är att vara en god människa. Egentligen är det inte så viktigt på en individuell nivå, eller ja, det beror lite på vad man lägger i begreppet. Men på en kollektiv nivå så är det jätteviktigt: tillsammans ska vi se till att upprätthålla det goda.

Detta är viktigt inte minst för att mota ondskan i grind. Bara genom att kollektivt stå upp mot ondskan, alltså för godheten, så kan vi hålla nere ondskan. Och detta måste göras igen och igen, ty ondskan riskerar att resa sitt huvud gång på gång - vi måste ständigt vara beredda att utkämpa Kampen.

På en individuell nivå är det också mycket viktigt att inte vara ond, betydligt viktigare än att vara god. När ondskan ligger lågt så kan vi också ta det lugnt med godheten, men vi måste vara redo att mobilisera oss när nästa strid nalkas.

Men hur är det då med sådana här saker som den explosionsartade ökningen av könsförändrande* kirurgi, varav många patienter i efterhand har ångrat sig? Hur ska vi kämpa mot det? Det är ju ingen konsekvens av ondska, utan möjligen av slapphet, förvirring, vuxnas oförmåga att sätta gränser. Så hur ska vi då demonstrera mot detta? Det finns inga mörkermän att peka ut som ansvariga (såvida inte vissa höjdare inom läkemedelsindustrin, men det vore i så fall knappast någon heltäckande förklaring), så hur ska vi då förhålla oss? Svaret verkar vara: Vet inte. Och om regeringen lägger fram ett förslag om att sänka gränsen för kirurgiska ingrepp i könsorganen till 15 år, och att ett sådant beslut ska kunna fattas utan vårdnadshavares godkännande, hur ska vi då förhålla oss till en sådan regering? Tja, eftersom det inte är ett uttryck för ondska, så kan det ju i grund och botten inte vara något fel på partierna som stödjer ett sådant förslag, även om förslaget som sådant kanske inte är helt genomtänkt. Ondskan vet vi ju av historien att den kommer från höger (eller möjligen från yttersta vänstern, fast då blir den ju typ höger), så det är nog ändå bäst att fortsätta hålla på de rödgröna partierna och fortsätta peka finger åt allt som är till höger om KD (eller kanske C).

Tillägger en av deltagarna i senaste Filosofiska rummet: René Guenon var en neo-fascistisk tänkare (09:30-10:30).
https://sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/1261287?programid=793

Jag vet inte om hon menar att traditionalism per automatik implicerar fascism? Traditionalismen som ofrånkomlig bärare av mörkrets krafter, som ett slags inkörsport kanske... I så fall torde väl också Mikael Kurkiala som jag tidigare refererat till kunna räknas som "fascist". Men eftersom vi inte delar detta omdöme så tar vi oss ändå friheten att referera till en gammal men återigen aktuell recension av Kurkialas I varje trumslag Jordens puls:

Kurkiala finner att de postmoderna feministernas världsbild inte är ett radikalt brott mot den västerländska modernismens projekt, utan dess fullkomnande. De har drivit den moderna människans överordnade projekt - att underkuva naturen - till det absurda.
"När queerteoretiker och postmoderna feminister konstruerar ett jag, fristående från varje idé om det givna, naturliga och heliga, det vill säga från det som per definition inte är förhandlingsbart, så går de marknadens ärenden. Marknaden gnuggar händerna. För den individ som inte bara byter jeans och frisyr utan även identitet måste framstå som den idealiske konsumenten - alltid på väg, aldrig nöjd, bortom all förankring. Dagens radikalitet utmanar inte moderniteten, den är dess logiska förlängning."
Ja, Kurkiala går längre än så. Det moderna projektet handlar om att ta kontroll över naturen och det har resulterat i en människosyn enligt vilken vi finner det närmast oacceptabelt att vi själva inte skulle ha kontroll. Detta tänkande menar Kurkiala, "är en logisk förlängning av den nu månghundraåriga ambitionen att förjaga eller härska över det som vi känner oss hotade av. Det måste vara "vilden", naturen, kroppen eller könet. I grunden är alltså detta tänkande besläktat med det koloniala."

Om det idag är det könet, vad blir det då imorgon?


*Den officiella termen idag är förstås "könskorrigerande kirurgi", men vari består korrigeringen om individen i efterhand ångrar sig? "Könsförändrande kirurgi" respektive "könsbyte" framstår som mer neutrala termer. Inget av detta ska förstås tolkas som att jag ifrågasätter existensen av individer som blir genuint hjälpta av ett sådant könsbyte, det vill säga individer för vilka ett könsbyte de facto kan innebära en upplevd könskorrigering.

The Principle Of Explosion And The Paradox Of Creation

The principle of explosion is a rule of classical logic, which asserts that if a contradiction is true, then anything is true. This can be demonstrated in the following manner:

P1: P is true.
P2: P is false.
C1: Either P or Q is true (P1).
C2: Q is true (P2, C1).

The first two premises (P1 and P2) set out the contradiction, where "P" can be any statement, found to be both true and false. In the first conclusion (C1), we simply conclude from P1 that if P is true, then either P or Q is true. Thus if the sun is shining, it is also true that the sun is shining or that unicorns are real. However, we have also shown in P2 that P is false, and therefore Q must be true. Hence, unicorns must be real (or whatever else you want to put in the place of Q).

Perhaps this seems like mere sophistry to some, but I find the metaphysical implications to be rather interesting. It reminds me of the Rig-Vedic assertion that at some point there was neither existence nor non-existence, nothing was then that can be fathomed. From the initial paradox of being/non-being, everything simply is - though perhaps not unicorns.

1. THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
     What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
2. Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
     That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
3. Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminate chaos.
     All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
4. Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
     Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
5. Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
     There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder
6. Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
     The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
7. He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
     Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Rig_Veda/Mandala_10/Hymn_129

Postmodernism, post-structuralism and magic

To discuss "postmodernism" is a bit like entering a swamp: if you don't know the terrain, maybe you should not venture into it in the first place. There are many academics who would be quick to criticize what they perceive as straw man-critiques of "postmodernism", and I believe they are sometimes right to do so. At the same time, ordinary mortals can hardly be expected to shut up about everything that they do not fully comprehend at the academic level of sophistication.

Things get even more complicated when throw the term "post-structuralism" into the mix. These are related terms for a broader movement, but apparently they are not the same. So what is the distinction? Having at least taken a brief course in Discourse Analysis at my local university, I volunteer to enter the above-mentioned swamp and try to sort out the one from the other.

It seems fair to say the following: postmodernism is the name for a broader social (societal) movement strongly connected to art and literature,  and also the name of our current era as a whole, as in "the era after the modernist era". It rejected all the prevalent assumptions of the modernist era, such as the naive belief in never-ending progress and in quantified, objective truth. Post-structuralism is linked to postmodernism, but more associated with theory and philosophy. There is no "postmodernist" school of philosophy, but there is a post-structuralist one. I would suggest, then, that post-structuralism be understood as a kind of sub-category of postmodernism - its philosophical "superstructure", if you will.

What do the post-structuralists say? In brief, the following: there are no self-sufficient structures that uphold order and predictability in language or society. Everything is in a state of flux, and words cannot be taken to really refer to anything. Words are articulated in a discourse, but none of the words relate to anything but to other words. For instance, if I say: "Democracy is better than dictatorship", I have articulated the word "democracy" as something other than "dictatorship", and thus both words attain meaning. If I were to say, instead: "Democracy is better than socialism", another articulation takes place. By referring words to other words, we create a web of articulations which create meaning. But such meaning will never be stable, because words are never articulated in exactly the same way.

Perhaps a more pedagogical example is the priest who says: "I hereby declare you to be husband and wife." Such an articulation creates the reality it describes, and therefore it is performative. If I am not mistaken, this is also the position of post-structuralists regarding language as a whole. All truth claims are articulated within a discourse; no knowledge can be gained from outside of a discourse. Everything is situated, relative, contextual; but this also means that we have the power to create our own reality.

This last point, it seems to me, has been seized upon by post-structuralist philosophers, in both a negative and a positive way. The practice of deconstructing a discourse deemed to be biased or oppressive is the negative way, while the question of how to create a more liberating, subversive discourse that can also appeal to the masses is the positive way. Basically, the question is being asked: How can we use language to make it easier for people to think the way we are thinking (and perhaps more difficult to think according to other ways)? How can we, through language, articulate a kind of world which is more similar to how we would want it to be?  This, I believe, is a form of magic.

The magician is someone who creates his own reality. The ancient spell Abracadabra has been taken to mean "I create as I speak." That is what the magician does. That is what the priest does, when he pronounces a man and woman as husband and wife. If the psychohistory model is correct, then, we may be in for a surge in word magic in the future, and this will be at least one of the ways for the rise of the magic paradigm to manifest.

Given that we do not see a return to older modes of thinking, according to which words have actual, fixed meanings, of course - but that seems, to me, unlikely.