Perhaps it is a bit risky, starting this blog when the rest of the Alchemical Hero Academy website is not yet really ready for public consumption, Well, maybe not so much risky, but bad form, from a marketing perspective. One might even say foolish… but I just couldn’t resist for so many reasons
For Starters, April Fool’s day is a personal holy day for me and while I take what I am trying to accomplish by starting the Alchemical Hero Academy very seriously, I think it is important to also take it lightly.
But more to the point, there is a relationship between an esoteric understanding of the Fool card in the tarot and aims of the Alchemical Hero Academy. Without going into a long exposition here, I will give a few connotative points.
In many Hermetic Traditions, the Fool of the tarot, rather then indicating stupidity, symbolizes Wisdom that is utterly beyond convention and reason. In Wilburian Integral Speak, it is trans- or post-rational rather then pre-rational. The fool is the highest Adept that is always joyful without regards to any circumstances. The Fool thus represents the Unreasonable Happiness. It also emblematic of both the resilience and responsiveness that the Alchemical Hero strives. The Fool’s way of being is that of uncontrived responsive that is always spontaneously perfectly (and often pervectly) appropriate, though it may not always seem so to those bound by convention. Thus in their aspiration to to expand there capacity for inexhaustible benefit, an Alchemical Hero ever strive to such Foolishness.
In these same Hermetic Traditions, the Fool card is associated with Hebrew letter Aleph. In Qabalah (or Kabbalah or any number of variant phonetizations) each of the Hebrew letters have esoteric meanings and correspondences. Among these for Aleph, are the three veils of negative existence – Ain – NOT, Ain Soph – Limitless, and Ain Soph Aur – Limitless Light), Infinite Potential, The Wellspring of all that exists that is itself nothing et all. The esoteric meaning of Aleph is NOT et All dissimilar from the esoteric meaning of the Letter AH within Vajrayana Buddhism (both it Himalayan Varieties and it Japanese expression) which is the linguistic equivalent of Aleph in the Tibetan and Sanskrit Alphabets)
Since the initials for Alchemical Hero are AH and AH is the linguistic correlate to Aleph and Aleph corresponds to the Fool then It seemed appropriate to start this Blog as prelaunch on This day in honor of the Fool even though or especially because in might be Foolish to become visible while the rest of the sight is still mostly in the realm of potential.
In addition, the Alchemical Hero’s continual application of Personal Alchemy Practice is refereed to as Alchemical Life Practice. The initial of that, ALP, are transliterations of the 3 Hebrew Letters that spell Aleph- Aleph, Lamed, Peh, (Interestingly, the word ‘April’ contains all three of those letters)
So with all these I could hardly resist beginning this blog on this Holy Day of the Fool…
So as to seem well read I will leave you with a rather Long quote from Jorge Lius Borge’s short story – Aleph
“On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph’s diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror’s face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I’d seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny — Philemon Holland’s – and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon – the unimaginable universe. I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity. “
BTW There is a Joke within a Joke in the previous post, maybe more then one, but for now I will point out one: For An Alchemical Hero who has become competent in the especially optional ‘Alchemical Esoterics’ vector of Training could probably be able to use that method, sans the potentially freedom inhibiting part of sending the ash to a politician, quite effectively, as any Chaos magician will attest. More effectively then many of the New agey Manifestation methods, in fact.
Leave a Reply