POINTS OF LIGHT 928 EAST FIFTH STREET VOLUME V #2 Brooklyn, New York 11230-2116 Copyright 1991 by: Temple of the Eternal Light (718) 438-4878 An "Omni-Denominational" Religious Fellowship _____________________________________________________ WELCOME ALL READERS. POINTS OF LIGHT is the monthly newsletter of TEMPLE OF THE ETERNAL LIGHT. It is an open forum for anyone to send in articles, poetry, short, short, stories, advertising or anything else. We desire it to blossom into a cornucopia of fact, or fantasy relating to modern magickal living, spiritual growth and a network linking all members of our human family by a chain of fellowship. With wishes for Love and L.V.X. Rt. Rev. Jerome Peartree, Publisher Rev. Karen DePolito, Editor ****************************************************************** OPEN INVITATION TO ALL This event is open to both members and non-members. Please call a day in advance and let us know you are coming. SATURDAY, February 22, 1992, at 8:00 P.M. - GNOSTIC MASS Priestess: Karen, Priest: Jerome, Deacon: George All participants are requested to accept the sacraments, DONATION: $3.00 ****************************************************************** "I came not to bring peace but the sword" (New Testament) After gaining the awareness at Tiphereth, the Cabalist (magickian) continues increasing individual consciousness by realizing the Geburah, the next sephira above. Geburah (Mars) represents the contraction of energy at one point. Its symbol is that of Iron. In the body there is a lot of iron contained within the red blood cells. Red, representative of the color of Mars. There is a physiological response to Geburah in the body. Its essence is that of bloody sacrifice. Ancient Jewish law considered the blood as the source of life. The spirit of the individual resided in the blood. This was one of the reasons for the Hebrew ban on the eating of blood. Geburah is the sephira of stern judgement, of severity. The path from Tiphareth to Geburah is represented by the Justice card which depicts a woman holding sword and a pair of scales. The first inclination of many people who begin to understand their will is to use it in a destructive fashion. They immediately go after the people they dislike. They look for justice as they think they haven't received justice all their lives. Their desire is to cut away the unwanted or make decisions as to what is retained and what is to be discarded. This encompasses external material, friends now unwanted, a possible change of employment or even a spouse. From the Latin verb meaning "to cut away" is where the word decide originates. One of the first great legal decisions is of Solomon cutting a baby in half. Its real mother cries out not to cut the baby in half. Geburah is a lot of cutting. Therefore, it is associated with the sword. The old tradition, long before our world began, God, in creating the universe, had overloaded one sephira, Geburah. This is what made God appear to be a God of stern justice, of vengeance -- a wrathful deity. In overloading the sephira, it broke. All the sephiras at one time were called "containers". They were considered to be jars which held energy. For instance, the Crown (Kether) held the first energy coming from God himself. The energy overflowed into two containers, called Wisdom (Chokmah) and Understanding (Binah). Then they overflowed into other containers, until finally resulting in Malkuth. In the Talmud, too much energy fell into Geburah and the container breaks. Energy falls out into the universe, into creation, until everything is rearranged and is flowing smoothly again. The pieces of Geburah broke into what we now call in Ceremonial Magick "the shells", which have become what is known as the Qlipoth. The Qlipoth originate in a Tree that exists below Malkuth. In essence, it may be considered an anti-tree. It is a negation of the Tree of Life as we know it. The rulers of the Qlipoth are rulers of discord and disharmony. Instead of one ruler as in Kether, the #1 Qlipoth has two rulers continually fighting. All the sephira have antagonistic qualities: a. Beauty - Ugliness b. Victory - Defeat All sephira have a reversal of their natural qualities. A Demon is associated with each Qlipoth. In Golden Dawn ritual after exorcism, begins the ritual -- "I have banished the shells unto their habitations" -- which means all these broken pieces or fragments have been banished to where they reside. Malkuth in this world is the Kether of the tree below it. In Malkuth there is a meeting of the forces, the unholy and the holy. In banishing the evil spirits out of the area of the circle, we are purifying Malkuth. During the ritual we bring energy down from Kether and then up again, and put everything in order, ie: banishing evil spirits. During evolution, we can't take any extra baggage with us as we rise. Therefore, we banish the shells unto their habitations. That is, we rid ourselves of negative energy. It is a cathartic ritual. An exorcism done well can be a spiritual cathartic experience. It can free a person's mind from an entity. Whether the entity is within the person's mind or external, is irrelevant. If an exorcism will help it is performed. In the same way, if psychiatry will help it is offered. It is proven that you will get a lot of negative things during a ritual. That is why one does the LBR in order to purify the area around the ritual Temple. One should start and end a ritual with the LBR for purification. A ritual will draw strange things not only from the subconscious but from the area around you. Which, due to the energy generated and which is not generated, manifests not in our third- dimensional but in a different reality. This will always attract all sorts of strange things like a magnetic field. One can find poltergeist activity and things falling, bad vibes etc. in a house which has not been banished completely. Arguments can occur between people over meaningless things. The negative force fields remaining are a ll due to improper banishing. The five-pointed star is used for protection against the shells. It represents to them where they once were. It represents Geburah and the will of God. Goetia, which is a book Solomon used, describes evil spirits locked in a bottle. The two Seals of Solomon were used to coerce demons to do one's bidding or else be forced into the bottle. King Solomon had 72 spirits that helped him build the Temple. He put them into a bottle, sealed it and threw it into the water. The bottle washed up on the shore. Some people found it, broke the seal, and opened it. The 72 spirits fled to the universe. They remain scattered and can be called to do the magickian's bidding. They fear the symbol of the five-pointed star as it represents to them their bondage. It is a containment of their energy. It is a symbol of the sephira wherein they existed before they were broken to pieces. You could conceivably put them back into the bottle. In Goetia there is a diagram of the bottle with the proper seals. The importance of the five-pointed star is such that in every grimoire over the last 2000 years it is shown. The Craft uses it as its symbol. It is the symbol for their religion. A Craft member belongs to the Old Religion that precedes Judaism. There are 72 spirits in the book Goetia. Inscribe a pentagram in a circle and you get five 72-degree arcs. 5 X 72 = 360 degrees, 72 in each sector, which also means there is an evil spirit for every five degrees of the zodiac. The 72-letter sacred name Shemhamforash is obtained by writing out the verses of Exodus Chapter 14 Verses 19-21, in Hebrew. They obtained the sacred name. They found each verse had 72 letters apiece. They line up the letters in the first verse in one direction, the next verse in the opposite direction, and the third verse in the opposite direction. These three rows of three letters are read up and down to obtain 72 -- 3-lettered syllables which represent the sacred name. Today's genetics reveals the genetic code as a three tiered set having no beginning and no ending. (The puzzle continues) Because they had no written vowels in those days, the pronunciation of the words was lost. There is no way to indicate how it was pronounced. According to Charles Ponce, a caballist around 300 C.E. rediscovered the pronunciation and gave it a code name, which was called Tetragrammaton. This is inscribed around the circle. It is Greek and means "the four-lettered word". o ---> Y 10 o o ---> YH 15 o o o ---> YHV 21 o o o o ---> YHVH 26 The Tetractys ____ 72 Why four letters from 72? One can boil down the 72 syllables into the four- letter word (YHVH). It is supposed to give you the same amount of power. But your body must be in harmony to pronounce it correctly and produce the proper vibrations. At Geburah, one may feel our origin came from the stars.