Katabasis & Anabasis: A Lamentation for a Daughter
A Christian Cabalistic Meditation on Grief, Loss & Integration
“Do they love less who have no hope?” — Moses, Ten Commandments (1956)
“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.” — Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death
Part I: The Shattering of the Vessel
“Every genuine knowledge is born out of sorrow, of suffering, of grief. True, profound knowledge is never born out of joy.”
— Rudolf Steiner, Man’s Being, His Destiny & World Evolution“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.” — C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
I did not fall from grace.
I fell from her laughter.
And when I fell, it was not into silence, but into a storm of unsayable absence — a rupture so total that the very fabric of the world frayed. I had once walked, however blindly, in the light of Malkhut, the Sefirah of presence, the kingdom of earth. There, in the domain of the Church Militant, I prayed, I hoped, I lived in the mystery of things unfinished. And she — my daughter — was the light I did not yet know I would one day need to remember.
But when she died — when she was taken — I fell.
I did not descend the Sephiroth.
I fell through them, backward, into the hollow spaces beneath.
In Christian Cabala, the Tree of Life rests above a hidden perfidious twin: the Qliphoth, the realm of shattered vessels, distorted echoes, fallen shells.
Each Klippah contains a twisted mirror of its higher counterpart. Where Binah gives form and understanding, its inverse offers only confusion and isolation. Where Tiferet reveals divine beauty, its shadow hides the agony of disfigured longing. And so I passed — not in theological theory, but in lived soul-reality — through each of these broken chambers.
The descent was not linear, not liturgical. It was wild, storm-ridden, and black. I fell into grief like a gravity so strong, it goes beyond the ground, beyond the grave — downward and on into the unseen, into places no map dares to chart.
Part II: Katabasis & Confrontation
First came dark silence, the cruel numbness of shock. Then the shattering, where every thought of God that once consoled me broke under the weight of a single name no longer spoken aloud.
Then came the rage—a scream that shook the inner heavens and returned to me void.
The unbearable days. The impossible nights.
Thaumiel split me in half, neither alive nor dead, warring against myself — why wasn’t it me? It should have been me!
Ghagiel confused my thoughts — what’s the time? what day is it? what’s today’s date?
Satariel concealed my sight, oppressed my reason — who are you? — (It’s me — I’m the doctor who treated your daughter) — I don’t know you — please leave
Gamchicoth consumed my time with minutia — I’m sorry I’m late — (It’s been four hours) — I know, I couldn’t find my keys
Golab found me cruel — Jeez, buddy, what’s your problem? — The only person with a problem is you, cuz I’m gonna beat your fuckin ass!
Thagirion found me prideful — No one’s gone through this except me
Harab Sequel ate at my core — Jesus, I haven’t slept in three days
Samael made me lie — (You’re taking this loss very well!) — Thanks — I’ve ‘done the work’
Gamaliel consumed me with excess — I’m just gonna get drunk and stay drunk
Then Nahemoth — the lowest nadir — the dismal abysm of despair, decay, desolation. I walked through waking hours as a shadow walks behind a flame — present only by the light of something now gone.
I don’t want to go one anymore. I can’t go on anymore …
***
But in that desolation, I did not know I was praying. But my pain prayed.
I now believe grief is its own form of Cabala. Not the study of what is hidden, but the wounding of what is holy. It teaches not by light but by absence. Its glyphs and ciphers are tears, its parchment the pierced soul.
There, in the nihilistic realm of Naamah, demoness of specters and the dust of nonbeing — where even despair began to lose its form — I expected no revelation, no vision. No endurance. Just a passage out of existence.
But something stirred in the ashes.
She came.
Not the daughter I lost, but the Dark Maiden, veiled and luminous with black-violet sorrow. She did not shine with gold or angelic flame. She shone with grief recognized. She knew the tortured terrain. She did not promise to lift me out. She reached down and sat beside me.
She embraced me.
And in her silent embrace, I heard a whisper that would shape the road back up.
Part III: The Black Madonna — Revelation at the Lowest Klippah
“There is no light except that which issues from darkness.” — The Zohar
“All revelation which does not give hope is useless and superfluous.” — Valentin Tomberg
She came not as Queen, nor Virgin of Light, but as the one who weeps beside tombs.
She wore no crown, only shadows.
And still — there was majesty in her sorrow. Not just the majesty of power, but of presence. A dignity forged in the crucible of loss.
She did not need to speak, for her very being was language. Her eyes were not consoled; they were consolation. She had walked this path before — through deadlier dangers, darker fires, deeper griefs. She came not to explain my pain, but to accompany it. Not to remove the wound, but to show me how it could become a doorway.
I recognized her, though not as I had known her.
She was Mary — but not the serene figure of stained glass or childhood prayer.
She was the Blessed Virgin of the Qliphoth, clothed in the dust of Golgotha
and crowned with shards of the dark shattered mirrors that reflected that Day from Noon to Three.
She embraced me as one who had lost her Son.
And I, who had lost my daughter, finally understood: she had harrowed her own hell.
As Christ descended into death, so too did she — not bodily, but spiritually, maternally, mystically.
She descended into the agony of the sickness unto death, the grief that knows it cannot resurrect, and loves still.
She showed me her heart — pierced, yes, but not consumed.
It was not pity that made her descend to me.
It was familiarity.
She, too, had passed through the gates of the broken Tree.
She, too, had dwelt in the cracked rooms where hope gasps for air.
She, too, had waited at the silence of sealed tombs.
In that moment, she revealed not doctrine but something older, deeper — a kind of maternal knowing. Deeper still — She was Gnosis itself. She reached into the wrack and smoke of my desolation and whispered without sound: “I will lead you back.”
She did not lift me.
She stood and invited me to rise.
Together we turned toward the ascent — not away from grief, but through it.
The black, blood-filled roots of the Tree wrenched apart.
The first step back toward Malkhut was lit — not by certainty, but by the flame of one who had grieved before me.
Part VI: Ascent through the Sephiroth — The Mother Re-veiled
“Only wonder leads to knowing.” — St. Gregory of Nyssa
“Death can be understood as the passage from one form to another, from a limited degree of life to another higher, freer one.” — Peter Deunov
It was not an ascent of triumph.
It was an ascent of tenderness — slow, aching, and deliberate.
Each step was a scar remembered, a tear dignified, a silence answered.
She led me not as a commander but as a mother who had buried her joy and still called it holy.
Her hand did not pull — it steadied.
Her presence did not blaze — it warmed.
We moved upward from the Qliphoth toward Malkhut, not by force but by consent.
And there, at the boundary of shadow and light, she began to reveal her fullness.
She was no longer only the Dark Madonna of the lowest shell.
She began to shine — not in denial of her sorrow, but through it.
She was the same and yet other:
The Blessed Virgin … re-veiled as Tiferet, the ineffable Beauty at the heart of the Cosmic Tree.
And I understood:
She was Hagia Sophia, not only as Divine Wisdom, but as Wisdom that has wept.
She was the Incarnation of the Shekinah, not untouched by grief, but transfigured by it.
She was overshadowed by Binah, the Spirit of Understanding—
not as an abstract intellect, but as the breath that sings through the broken reed — a second hypostatic union — a truth transubstantiated into the Holy Ghost.She was the Holy of Holies.
There, ascending through the Sephiroth, I saw what grief had made invisible:
each sphere — not as a rung of riddles and occultic achievement — but as a recovered capacity to love — truly, fully, deeply.
Yesod healed the memory of holding her.
Hod gave dignity to my sorrow.
Netzach gave strength to continue.
Tiferet, in her, mirrored the love that still burned within me — a true burning — more encompassing than the dark-winged “ravens of dispersion,” more consuming than all the dark-throated “devourers” …
She taught me that the Tree is not just a ladder to divinity,
but a pathway of reunion — every step a returning to what was never truly lost.
I began to see that the Blessed Virgin does not sit only atop thrones,
but walks with those whose souls have been shattered like tablets.
She does not remove us from suffering;
she shows us how to rise with it in our hands — still bleeding, still sacred.
And as we climbed, she began to speak of promises.
Part V: Promise in the Trinity — The Child Beyond the Veil
“The human soul thirsts for ideas and concepts that surpass death, ideas and concepts that truly understand the being of the human soul.”
— Rudolf Steiner, The Enigma of Death & Questions About Life“In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God.” — St. John of the Cross
At the border of Tiferet and Binah, the Mother turned to me.
Her voice was no longer silent.
It flowed like memory and music, like a melodious lullaby sung from eternity.
She told me that the Tree we had climbed was not mine alone.
It was hers.
It was Christ’s.
It was the Spirit’s breath made visible.
It was the very mind of the Father dreaming us into love.
And then she opened the mystery:
That the Tree is not only descended from —
but ascended through.
That the lightning flash does not strike down only from Keter to Malkhut,
but may be reversed — from Malkhut to Keter — if love so chooses.
“If you live conformed to the will of your Father and my Father (Keter),” she said,
“If you are redeemed by my Son and your Brother (Hokhmah), and sanctified by my Spouse and your Paraclete, the Spirit (Binah),
you will rise. And in your rising, you will find her.”
The Tree became transparent.
I saw that what I had known as loss was not annihilation.
It was separation — yes — but not eternal.
My daughter had not been taken.
She had been received.
Received into the mystery of the Trinity,
into the blinding love at the center of all things.
The Blessed Virgin — now robed in light — spoke with gentle fire and sparkling softness:
“She waits for you not as a child frozen in time, but as a soul awakened beyond time —bathed in the light of the Three who are One.”
And I knew:
Christ had harrowed Hell for all.
But Mary, too, had harrowed grief for me.
And because of that,
there is a path through sorrow.
A ladder of flame.
A Tree blooming upward.
Part VI: The Dream of Return
“The fullness of existence, life’s true richness, does not consist solely in health and happiness but in an ever-expanding range of joy and sorrow; and the broader the range, the richer life becomes.” — Valentin Tomberg
“The love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.” — Simone Weil
I walk now with different eyes.
Not unbroken — never that.
But no longer lost.
The Tree is in me now — its roots, its scars, its blooming light.
And though I remain in Malkhut, in exile and in flesh, a sinful son of the Church,
I know the way.
Not in doctrine alone,
but in grief transfigured.
The Blessed Virgin walks with me — sometimes in shadow,
sometimes as a whisper in my daughter’s name.
She is the beauty that bends low.
The glory that weeps.
The flame that sings quietly in the soul’s darkest hour.
And I believe her promise:
That if I sacramentalize myself in the Sephiroth —
Balancing Gevurah and Chesed within the scales of the Sacred and Immaculate and Silent Hearts —
And fletch my own heart with the flaming Wings of Sophia —
That if I live by the Will of the Father — Keter —
clothed in the mercy of the Son — Hokhmah —
and stirred daily by the breath of the Spirit — Binah —
then one day —
The lightning flash will reverse.
I will rise.
Not by my own strength,
but by the dream of God
drawing all things back to Himself.
And there, in the Light of the Trinity,
beyond all speech,
beyond all sorrow,
she will be waiting.
Not as a memory,
but as a flame of the same Love that made her.
My daughter.
My joy.
My crown.
The Tree will flower with reunion.
And all the rotted shells will fall away.
“What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imagination and our feelings do not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it.”
— C.G. Jung
“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” — Julian of Norwich