Watch this space for more details on our Tree of Life Badge, coming out in conjunction with Def Con 29.
[More to come]
in the meantime, please enjoy this introduction to the Tree of Life. It is part of a series on the topic that gets into some more advanced ideas. Keep in mind that this first video illustrates the traditional Jewish Kabbalah, while our badge illustrates the Hermetic, or Christian version. There are some differences that seem subtle up front — two paths up top shown in the traditional Jewish Kabbalah do not exist in the Hermetic version; and two paths down below in the Hermetic version do not exist in the Jewish version. Like everything else Kabbalah, this will have more meaning as you delve deeper in your studies.
But wait. Before you get too deep into it, it’s important to prepare yourself. Crowley himself made a point in Liber O, Section I, parts 1 through 5, to remind the student specifically not to get in too deep. Do not attach too much significance to things you will learn. They are here for “a widening of the horizon of the mind” and “an improvement of control of the mind.”
I was fortunate in my own travels to have found things in a particularly useful order. While I dabbled in esoteric readings for many years, one of the early books that took hold turned out to be a vaccine, if you will, against falling too deeply into most any rabbit hole you will encounter. It was “The Illuminatus Trilogy” by Robert Anton Wilson.
I feel similarly about “The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford” by Lon Milo DuQuette. It eases the student into an understanding of the history and practice of the study of Kabbalah while retaining a humorous detachment. “If you’re not careful, you just might learn something.”