Paul Laffoley
(b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

The Tree of Sephiroth
1998-99
Mixed Medias on Rag Board
Eleven parts: Each: 30 x 30 in.

Subject: The ten globes of absolute light of the tree of the Sephiroth and the false eleventh Sephirah named Daath (or knowledge) which spans the Abyss of Transition.

Symbol Evocation: The Source of Traditional Western Magic

Comments: The Kabbalah is the most continuously sustained tradition of western mysticism. Mysticism is a unique experiment with meditation as an invariant structure of ritual. Mysticism functions within the ritual in order to conduct one's mental experiments. The goal of meditation is to produce a union between the variable objects of consciousness and the invariant nature of consciousness so that transcendent knowledge can come through to the mind. Magic (or sympathetic magic) is the belief that any object of consciousness can be affected by: naming, numbering, lettering, geometrizing or otherwise symbolically representing these objects by means of analogy. In doing so, it is held that certain states of consciousness are induced in the mind by degrees which then transcend the realm of phenomena and transport the soul back into the unity of the cosmos. From Hebrew kabbalah means "the received collections" or "traditional collections," but alchemy (traditional Western magic) denotes "the Prophets" and "the Hagiographs" as opposed to "the Pentateuch." The Kabbalah's origins are from the final pre-centuries before the common era through the fourteenth century. Although it has continued to develop to the present day and always in contrast to orthodox Jewish doctrine, it survives without loss of continuity. Besides the great deal of interest it has always engendered in non-Jewish students of the tradition, it is now considered under the province and protection of the Hasidim rather than the Talmudists, because of its theologically esoteric nature.

The Kabbalah resides theologically not in "the Law" taught to all the children of Israel, nor in "the Soul of the Law" revealed to the rabbins and teachers, but in "the Soul of the Soul of the Law." Therefore, only the highest initiates among the Jews were instructed in its secret principles, which often take a lifetime to learn, beginning after one's 40th year. Eventually the insular communities that emerged around these initiates (Tsaddik or saintly mentors) became the source of the present day Hasidic movement within which devotion to the study of the Kabbalah is complete. My interest, as a non-Jew and an artist, in the Kabbalah derives from my lifetime study of the Occult in general. Specifically my interest derives from my reading of authors such as Manly P. Hall, Aleister Crowley, and Israel Regarde (Crowley's secretary for a number of years) and discovering that many artists of the 1920's (like Marcel Duchamp) were self-initiates in the Kabbalah. My entry point of study will not be the alpha numeric codes associated with the Kabbalah-- the Gematria, the Notariqon, or the Temurah-- but the major diagram of the divine emanation-- the Tree of Sephiroth (the ten globes of Absolute Light connected by 22 paths). Even more specifically I will concentrate on each of the globes (or Sephirah). They are almost the complete cognates of higher dimensions of space and time that we might read of in contemporary physics. There is a little known tradition in the study of the Kabbalah that as you move up the Tree of Sephiroth from Malkus (10) to Keser (1) in your meditation on each globe (of your own diagram), you are required to place a spot of your own blood in the center of that Sephirah to indicate that you have successfully united (at that level) Spirit with Matter, and thereby released another aspect of your Soul into the unity of the God-Head. I plan to follow this tradition.