The 30th Path: Yesod to Hod

A guided meditation, originally written for a group (hence the first person plural!) As this is the 30th path, there had been two previous guided meditations of this nature performed by the group and the preparatory rituals are not included here. You might want to either design an appropriate "lead in" or modify the first sentence so it makes sense in your context.

Relax and center...

We step through into something denser than air. A moving, undulating field of ether surrounds us, from which countless jumbled images emerge, and into which they dissolve again in an elusive, fascinating display. The field of all possibilities extends infintely beyond and through each of us. The probability that an image arises at any given point is determined more by the direction of one's attention than any quality inherent in the seething brilliant vortices themselves. Images of the so-called real are no more evident than images of what can hardly exist. What habits of being engender them?

A thin glow of tangerine light presages dawn. And at the thought of sun rising, so it does - and now blazes overhead, not really seen, but felt as heat on the top of the head. The orange of the horizon settles under our feet and becomes our path. A step forward - the swirling images, sound of smoke, taste of a song, all shifting, shifting - except the lion and the old man.

We are, of course, drawn to follow them as they move ahead of us. The man soon stops, draws in the dirt beside the path, three lines; one as long as three toes of the lion, one as long as four toes, one as long as five toes. And as we watch in wonder the lines move themselves to form a triangle - the angles and dimensions of which reveal the maker's name, Pythagoras.

Knowing his rule, we follow him in silence, as he imparts to each of us the lessons we need to hear. [pause briefly] After a bit he stops again and in the dirt draws another figure, the pentagram, symbol of man and divine proportion of form. And a yet further on, he stops once more along the rusty colored path, draws ten dots in the dust, the tetractys, perfection of number. At once, we all notice a tree with a green mantle and a deeper green pool of shade beneath it. Pythagoras, with little ceremony, seats himself beneath it, closes his eyes and commences to nap.

We are alone now with the lion who fairly glows in the brilliant sun. He looks down the path, shakes his mane, roars, and sets out at a trot. Casting our eyes beyond him we see something reflecting the white light of the day. When we arrive we find a small tetrahedron by the side of the road, perhaps a foot tall and highly polished. A signpost, surely we are travelling the right way. Continuing, we pass a large sandstone cube, then farther along an octahedron of polished pink granite, like giant crystals shimmering in the sunlight by the side of our path.

The lion continues to trot along and we hurry to keep up, puzzling as we go about the significance of the forms we have seen. Another tree comes into view, and as we near we see beneath it a man, at a plank table, with parchment, pencil, rule and compass. He invites us to join him in the shade and introduces himself as Dr. Dee. He is just constructing his hieroglyphic monad and shares with us his second and third theorems: "Neither the circle without the line, nor the line without the point, can be artificially produced. It is therefore, by virtue of the point and the Monad that all things commence to emerge in principle. That which is affected at the periphery, however large it may be, cannot in anyway lack the support of the central point"..."the central point which we see in the center of the hieroglyphic monad produces the earth, round which the sun, the moon and the other planets follow their respective paths. The sun has the supreme dignity and we represent him by a circle having a visible center".

Thanking him for his wisdom, we resume our path, guided by the remaining forms of icosahedron and dodecahedron visible in the distance.

The sun is nearly blinding at this point, and the tops of our heads nearly burned, but just ahead great walls loom, and a dark but welcoming doorway defines our objective. The stone threshold is dusty with the orange sand tramped from the feet of other travellers along this road. The lion slouches, tired, against the wall, having delivered us here.

Just inside a man, or a woman, gestures for us to enter. Heavy wooden shelves line the walls of an octagonal room. Scrolls and books crowd together on them. A special case contains lenses,instruments and hand tools of finest manufacture, the pride of a true artisan. And in another case, a stack of vellum bound by ribbon, and bottles of finest black ink and finely tipped quills. Pots filled with lovely and unusual plants soften the dry environment of what we now realize is a sort of temple. Our host looks at each of us in a way that arouses us. Each is drawn to approach, and at first touch is filled with a flow of creative living energy hitherto unknown. Each of us explores this with the hermaphrodite, for so we now know our host to be, until it's time to go. [pause here a fairly long while]

Before leaving we are each invited to record, in a book, in the dust of the floor, or on a wall, our personal sign or sigil. And having done so we exit, rejoin the lion who awaits us, and walk the path home, now the color of a ripe persimmon in the late light of the sun.