The Petrine Barque & Theistic Evolution
The Final Ezkaton & the Ark of the End
Love is the uppermost point of Causation; Existence is the culmination point of all Revelation.” — Glenda Green
“Everything runs by magick. Science is a small domain of magick where coincidences have a relatively high probability of occurring.” — Peter Carroll
“Christ is the light by which the scientist must work, and — acknowledged or not — the Holy Spirit is his inspiration.” — Rev. Anthony Duncan
“A Science which does not bring us closer to G*d is worthless.” — Simone Weil
According to Weigelius, had our First Parents, Adam and Eve, partaken of the Bark of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil — a kind of splintery pre-Purgatory of the proto-Cross in ouroboros (or purgative Eucharist) — instead of its Fruit, they would not have fallen into Original Sin.1 (This dovetails with the Sethian Gnostic conceptualization of the Edenic Treeform suffused with a hidden Sophia spirit.) Weigelius also ties the idea of a lust for divine sidereal Beauty (in addition to Luciferian Pride and Ahrimanic Unrepentance) into both the Angelic and Edenic falls. Curious notions. Kabbalistically, the ‘Bark’ or Trunk of the Sephiroth is the Trinity (Keter, Hokhmah and Binah), Gnosis-in-G*d (the Clingstone of Daath), along with His Mercy (the Red Rose of Chesed) and Judgment (the Green Thorn of Gevurah); while the ‘Fruit’ of the Sephiroth is His Victory (the Nectar of Nezah), Glory (the Honeycomb of Hod), the Cosmos/Foundation (the Flowerbed of Yesod) and the Etheric Church/Kingdom (the Rootball of Malkhut). The Bark and Fruit of the Sephiroth overlap at Tiferet — Beauty. Interplaying ideas of vast sidereal beauty, non-Euclidean time, eternality, and knowing one’s place in the Cosmos reach back to Thales.2
The Last Seeds of Eden (usually three in number) were said to have produced a Copse of G*d-suffused Trees whose Holy Scions included Isaac’s aborted pyre; the Burning Bush; Moses’ Rod; the Staffs of Aaron, Enoch, Elijah, Elisha, and other Patriarchal Saints; the pyre of Baal’s 450 prophets; David’s Sling; the Lintels and Columns of Solomon’s Temple; St. John the Baptist’s Staff; and St. Longinus’ spear-shaft, among other woodworks (and other vegetation — such as the wheat and grapes of the Last Supper.) The Church as the Barque of Peter3 is a sylvan trinity of three more rumored Scions — Noah’s Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Cross (and remaining Arma Christi) of Christ/Hokhmah at Golgotha4: A G*d-filled but Crucified Pilgrim Church of nascent Nezah, homebound Hod and scarred Tiferet on a Sea of Martyrs’ Blood (the Church’s Seed) — sunned by the Ein Sof, yet always violently-storm-tossed and pursued by Qliphotic dragons and pirates (twofaced Judas apostates, hinderers, concealers, polluters, ruiners, dispersers, poisoners, devourers and whisperers) — whose Polestars are the Solar Eucharistic Monstrance (The Pillar of Severity {and Fire}) and the Lunar Isis-Sophia-Maria (The Pillar of Mercy {and the Cloud.})5
Some maintain that the Sephirothic Tree of the Kabbalah is simply the top-down structural layout of the ships the Knights Templar used to import Middle Eastern mysticism into the Europe after the Crusades; others have concluded that the Knights Templar were so enamored with Kabbalah that they embedded its form into their boatwork. The first is a cobbling-together of bad metaphor and worse fiction, similar to deathless rehashes such as “The Catholic Church did horrible things, like burn down the Library of Alexandria,” which is absurd reductionism and a yawning void of historicity.6 The second is slightly more probable, but still more than a bit of the “kabbalistic apopheniac,” together with an insistence that everything “esoteric” — from Simon Magus to Giordano Bruno to your local Shriner — is somehow one continuous unbroken chain of “Alternative Illumination” (the Golden Thread conceit taken to the point of absurdity and abuse.) However, the Kabbalah has inherent marinological (and mereological)
Symbolism — especially for Christians — and will outlast pseudohistories and self-styled esoteric orders —(dishonoring both Crusader and kabbalist alike)— for it comes from G*d’s Chosen People and is therefore part of Salvation History.
The Toledano Tradition of Kabbalah celebrates a “Sephiroth of Sephiroths,” a further Flowering of the Tree of Life, exploring the interrelation and iteration of G*d and G*dhood; Celestial Intelligences; the Hierarchies of Heaven, Earth and Humankind in Soul, Spirit, and sacralized Corporeality — the greatest “Chain of Being,”7 even exploring subjective emotions and objective neurological systems. Psychologically and Sophiologically, the Macrocosm of the G*dhead effloresces into the Microcosm of Man, just as Man’s Consciousness blossoms into a further understanding of G*d: The Logos in Loving Conversation. This down-furrowing forestry of Life in all its complexity most resembles a maritime endeavor, as one sails from the first Einsofic emanation to the final Malkhutic enmooring. In Christian Kairos, it is a sea-pilgrimage of Salvation History from the Edenic EIN SOF to the Messianic Malkhut of consummational disembarkation onto the Holy Shores of a New Heaven and New Earth.8
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The ideas of Toledano kabbalah and Christian voyage can be superimposed on the concept of the “Omega Point” proffered by the mystical (and controversial) Jesuit titan Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.9 Teilhard posits that, through the inscrutable Sacred Science of the G*dhead, unconscious Materia will superessentially evolve into a conscious form of Divinitas: At the furthest stage in this orthogenetic process, the Noosphere will coalesce and the numenized Earth itself will become “conscious,” its own kind of Logos (or Terrasophia) of “panentheism” and “panpsychism” — the singularity of the Omega Point,10 when Being itself is perfected to Parousia and Christ/Hokhmah returns in terrible Glory.
Kabbalistically, the EIN SOF and the pre-spoken Logos are the ALPHA (the HYPTERTYPE and Einsophia.) The Father/Keter speaks the Logos (the Christ/Hokhmah), which then suffuses Materia with the Holy Ghost/Binah (the PANTHEOTYPE) and moves it forward towards the Consummation of Christ/Hokhmah’s Second Coming at the Anthroposophia/Malkhut/OMEGA (the ARCHETYPE.) Paradoxically, Teilhard maintains that this very Evolution necessitates the Incarnation of Christ/Hokhmah (the Logos “ouroborosing” back to its Speaking.) I would conceive the Incarnation to be Daath, since this is the first and most inexhaustible Mystery — the abyssal fountain through which the Holy Eucharist is confected, Golgotha and Gehenna conquered, the G*d-Man resurrected, and the Gold of the Church and Her Sacraments supercelestially alchemized until the Ezkaton (the Seven Lower Sephirahs.) The Tree of Life can be seen sacramentally as Christ/Hokhmah’s Holy Cross and evolutionarily as Teilhard’s “Christogenesis.”
Teilhard speaks of “compressive forces” (which I call MU) funneling the Prima Materia and Mankind’s Consciousness to the Christic Omega Point and conceives of them as nexions of human contact in compounding complexification. I also conceive these compressive forces as the Luciferian and Ahrimanic Impulses of Steiner, and the Omega Point itself as Christ/Hokhmah’s perfect and ultimate “balance” of the two.
The Christian cosmologist and theoretical mathematician Frank Jennings Tipler —a true “Resurrectionist” — has built an ingenious multiverse theory (I can scarcely comprehend) on Teilhard's Omega Point.11 What follows is a brief kabbalistic reconception of some of his simpler propoundings with my own humble thoughts:
Measurement (Creation: The Lower Sephirahs) necessitates Consciousness (the Logos — Christ/Hokhmah spoken by the Father/Keter — responded to by the Holy Ghost/Binah: The Upper Sephirahs.) Nothingness is a “pre-conscious Cosmos”—(vs. Chaos, a state which necessitates Sin)— an unlimited field of quantum potential. If quantum mechanics and the Omega Point are both true — and Truth is a Person (Christ/Hokhmah) — they both justify and “demand” a kind of Divinity — in this case, an Angelology and Spirit-Realm that approach infinity, both in size and complexity (Cantorially, there can be multiple and varying infinities: As I alluded to, each saved, sanctified, and deified soul is its own kind of infinitude — Nefesh, Ruach, Neshamah, Chayah, Yechidah, etc.12)
For the future (Parousia) of every point in Spacetime (the Lower Sephirahs) requires an “Intelligent Observer” — an oculi logos under the Eye of the Logos — to collapse the wave-function (the Tzimtzum.) The only way this can occur is if the Cosmos is closed —(i.e., will collapse to a single point in Kairos)— and yet contains seers with Einsofic abilities to perform an unbounded series of observations in Chronos (“The Watcher at the Threshold” in endless reiteration.)
The Tree of Life must see itself: The HYPERTYPE gazes down in Self-transcendence; in the ARCHETYPE, the Father/Keter and Son/Hokhmah “behold” one another as “Light from Light”; and the PANTHEOTYPE “gazes out” from every point of simulspatiality to every other point of simulspatiality.13
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If all Existence is simply the inexorable movement of ALPHA → MU → OMEGA, of what necessity is the Sacramental Life? Of personal holiness? Of — ultimately — the Church? Paradoxically, for Teilhard, it is everything — an ever-apotheosizing Ecclesia Universalis, not unlike Tomberg, alive with hyperluminous nexions of Sophiology and Spiritual Science, and imaging the Toledano Sephiroth:
… The Church is the Mediatrix between G*d (the EIN SOF) and the World … [which must present] the World (the Sephiroth) [with] the Universal Christ (Hokhmah) in human-cosmic Dimensions (the Adam Kadmon), as the Animator of Evolution …
… The Church is like a great Tree (Etz Chayim) whose roots must be energetically anchored in the earth while its leaves (Sephirah) are serenely exposed to the bright sunlight (the EIN SOF.) In this way, She sums up a whole gamut of beats in a single living and all-embracing act (the Tzimtzum), each one of which corresponds to a particular degree or a possible form (emanation) of Spiritualization … 14
The Church is not some Schillebeeckxian bastardization devoid of Resurrective Hope15, some cobbled-together corpus of poor souls with poorer conclusions where matter is immaterial. No — the Church is Christ/Hokhmah’s Bride, embodied, alive, suffused with Sophia, numinous with Gnosis, Whose Queen is St. Mary, the very Anima Dei, and Protector is St. Joseph, the Terror of the Demons. More fundamentally, it is Christ/ Hokhmah Himself (His mystical Body, our Duty and our Salvation — which will undergo its own Golgotha16), the opposite of the World, to which we are dead, yet called to “christify” and enchurch — for our life is hidden with Christ/Hokhmah in G*d (Col. 3:3).
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In sum — just as St. John pointed to Christ/Hokhmah and proclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of G*d Who takes away the sins of the World!” (Jn. 1:29) — the Lumber of the Sephiroth is the Barque of Peter that points to the OMEGA.
*1. The Christic/Hokhmahic Cipher of 777 is equivalent to “And Take Also of the Tree of Life.” The Roman Rite of Good Friday links Eden’s Tree, Christ/Hokhmah’s Cross, and the Tree of Life in the New Jerusalem:
Eating of the Tree forbidden,
Man had sunk in Satan’s snare,
When his pitying Creator
Did this second Tree prepare
Destined many Ages later
That first Evil to repair.
*2. Selonosophia is equivalent to “Astral Realm.” Mary, the Lunar Logos, knew her place in the Cosmos, and so was crowned with it. To interpolate Crowley, “Every man and woman” — who follow the Woman — “is a star.”
*3. “Christ/Hokhmah conquered the Devil using the same weapons that the Devil used against us: A virgin, a tree, and death. These tokens of our demise have now become tokens of our Victory. Instead of Eve, there was Mary; instead of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Wood of the Cross; instead of Adam’s death, the Death of Christ/Hokhmah (the Second Adam.)” — St. John Chrysostom
*4. “The world is a sea in which the Church, like a ship, is beaten by the waves, but not submerged.” — St. Hippolytus. My own humble church’s ceiling is built like a ship, recalling the Noahide Ark. St. Augustine of Hippo and Philo both commented that the Noahide Ark was built like a “Great Man” (i.e., Adam Kadmon). The outrushing of the animals from the Ararat-beached Ark to repopulate the world with life can be seen as the Lifeblood and Water from Christ/Hokhmah’s Side at Golgotha birthing the cosmic Ecclesiogenesis. St. Jerome maintained that the Mystery of the Church as the Bride of Christ/Hokhmah, the Petrine Barque and the Noahide and Covenantal Arks together constitute a literally inexhaustible metaphorical nexion.
*5. A kabbalistic conceptualization of St. John Bosco’s great dream-vision.
*6. This may seem like a strange illustration, random as it is cliched, but I came across this very polemic — from a wide array of “reputable sources” — not less than a dozen times while doing general research for this book. (One should look to pagan Rome.*) Thus, I thought it deserved pride of place amongst “examplary errata.” This lie (from the father of lies) — like many others of the same ilk — will likely not be righted until Truth Himself — Christ/Hokhmah, the Father’s Veracity — returns in Glory.
*I also came upon the contested errata that the library was burned by the second Rashidun caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, who reputedly said, “If the books agree with the Quran, we have no need of them; if they are opposed to the Quran, destroy them.” As a Christian author, I both disagree and agree with the sentiment: Practically speaking, I want my own work to have progeny and bear a spiritual fruition for Christ’s Church (although part of it is my own pride as well), but I also appreciate the caliph’s world-defying fervor and single-mindedness, as it finds an analog in Aquinas’ humble dispensation of his own titanic works upon the saint’s death.
*7: In equation form, the Great Chain of Being (Sephirothically sevenfold) can be expressed as the following:
The Supercelestial G*dhead = Existence + life + will + omniscient reason + intrinsic immutability + omnipotence (HYPERTYPE & ARCHETYPE)
Celestial Entities = Existence + life + will + angelic reason + given immutability + multilocation + superhuman strength (1st and fullest PANTHEOTYPE)
Humanitas = Existence + life + will + reason + bilocational potentiality + strength (2nd PANTHEOTYPE {w/ 1st PANTHEOTYPE potential if/when perfected in Paradise})
Animalia = Existence + life + will + localization + strength (3rd PANTHEOTYPE)
Vegetalia = Existence + life + localization (4th PANTHEOTYPE)
Materia = Existence + localization (5th and least-infused PANTHEOTYPE)
Absentia (Nothingness) = Localization + intrinsic immutability (a dark reflection of both internal Daath & the external EIN SOF, devoid of the PANTHEOTYPE and a characteristic of the Qliphoth.) Conversely, it is the “Mother of all Things,” for it is also the potentiality and possibility of all yet-conceived Creation. And like all Creation, can be redeemed, sanctified … and deified.
*8. Moving from the EIN SOF/ALPHA to the Malkhut/OMEGA can also be seen as a move of alchemical crystallization from the “Vegetable Kingdom” of Eden to the “Mineral Kingdom” of the New Jerusalem at Time’s End, as the Heavenly City is a Paradise replete with Glass, Gemstone, Pearl, and Precious Metal. “Christ … is in all men, just as the seed in the premetallic is metal: It is a matter of bringing this seed to maturity.” — R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz
*9. See Chardin’s “Mass on the World” for the heights of Eucharistic theopoetics on the “event horizon” of actual Sacred Liturgy.
*10. This is not unlike Green’s “Hypersynchronicity” — an Ezkaton-immanentizing flashpoint that will astronomically accelerate Spiritual Science and Christ Consciousness —(or the “Concrescence of Sophia” in certain Gnostic mysticisms where Sophia is Christ/Hokhmah’s Bride and a hypostasis of the Holy Ghost/Binah)— except taken to an ultimate conclusion.
*11. Great intellectual adventurers like Green, Steiner, Teilhard, Tipler, Tomberg, et al., who propose a “spiritual science” are accused of being “anti-science” or “pseudoscientific” by those people who maintain the monolith of “Science” (whatever that is) is, by nature, anti-spiritual: Their charge is, essentially, “You are ‘scientific’ only to the extent it ‘backs up’ my belief — different than (or beyond) that point, you are ‘unscientific.’” (It reeks, too, of the snobbery of credentialism.) Scientism is ignorant, idolatrous and supremely obnoxious. Ultimately, the irreligious make a religion of irreligiosity and a science out of de-spiritualizing science. I don’t much care. To quote the arch-kabbalist Suares: “Just smash the wall of light!” (my favorite “kabbalistic koan.”)
*12. If G*d is apotropaically beyond Infinity (0 = 1) and cantorially, there are infinite infinities, then each soul can be loved infinitely, eternally and uniquely in their own infinite, eternal and unique Romantica Divina, even through Christ’s seemingly singular Arch-Sacrifice.
*13. Just as the Qliphoth — which I explore later in greater detail — is blind to itself. Teilhard maintains that “The Universe as we know it is a joint product of the Observe and the Observed,” the intersection of quantum physics and noetics. The “Omnividens Oculus” beyond the Universe — yet permeating it (the PANTHEOTYPE) — allows for the AAHH of Beauty that has no observer.
*14. Portions taken from Teilhard’s “My Fundamental Vision,” kabbalized by me. Teilhard’s love of Mary is also fundamental for Salvation and fundamentally Sephirothic: “We do not swoon in Mary’s shadow — We climb in her light.” Pope Pius XII unites Mary’s Sorrowful Heart to Christ/Hokhmah’s Sacred Heart by calling the Sacre Coeur the “Ladder of Light” that we “climb to reach our Savior G*d.” Both complimentary sentiments were apprehended in Giles’ Christian Kabbalah.
*15. “And if Christ/Hokhmah has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” — 1 Cor. 15:14
*16. “The earthly fate of the Church as the Body of Christ is modeled on the earthly fate of Christ Himself. I.e., the Church, in the course of her history, moves towards a death … until the Last Day when, after fulfilling her earthly task, She becomes “unnecessary” and “dies,” as indicated in Psalm 71:1: ‘Until the moon shall fail.’ These ideas were expressed in the symbolism of Selene as the Church. Just as the kenosis of Christ was fulfilled in death … even so it is with the parallel kenosis of the Ecclesia-Luna.” — Hugo Rahner
Postscript:
This essay was partially inspired by a highly detailed narrative dream in which I found myself on an impossibly enormous galleon sailing up a coiled sea suspended in a starry, cosmic space. The ship was filled with all the Holy Dead and the Living Church. St. Peter was not so much the captain, but a figurehead — literally — a larger-than-life figure standing on the prow of the ship and pointing upward. Above us, spiraling ever higher, was another galleon, and another, as far as I could see — what I have come to call Weltkirchenschiffe — the “barques” of previous worlds’ churches who have already experienced their Consummation and are now sailing deeper into the Ineffable G*dhead. Likewise, below me, were shadowy ship-forms, the potential “barques” of potential worlds possibly yet to come. (The snaky, corkscrewing seascape and dragon’s-head prow recapitulate the DRAGONIC EGG & SACRE COEUR.) “Genesis,” “The Ark of Noah,” “The Elect,” “Pleroma,” “I AM an Archangel” and “I AM Going Home” are all gematrically equivalent, as is “Dragon Head” and “Keter.”