On the Demiurge, the One, and the Source

I briefly studied the Kabbalah many years ago, but it’s all leaked out of my brain now, sadly.

Hmm, the right side of God… God is not good or evil. God is a universal law, like gravity and the speed of light. This is my perception anyway. God is consciousness; God is the ability to realise that your consciousness exists within you, but separate from your human body’s brain.

There is nothing behind the source, unless you consider the Demiurge to be the Source. The Source is the sheer potentiality of all things, in every dimension and timeline and minor fluctuation and deviation. The Demiurge is the one who filters the raw potentiality of things into gross manifestation on the physical realm. (And, if you’re a mage, this manifestation is aided and abetted by demons or djinn or angels or other entities, who sway it in your favour).

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Yes many of the sages studied with the Greeks and studied Philosophy, the Rambam went as far as to say the philosopher was the highest a man could reach.

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the way i see it there are infinite amounts of veils on the source. it is passive in my book. everything emanates from if…

what about nothing, lack need, shortcomings? Those have to come from somewhere. the source is perfect so not from it…

also the three veils of the qlipoth hosheh tohu and bohu. where do they originate?

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I wish to reply to his first, since I don’t feel quite fit enough yet to comment on your previous post (But, thanks a lot for your explanation, @Veil)

I will say, I personally disagree with this. The Divine Demiurgos traditionally comes from The One, and The One is traditionally considered Good. In fact, Plato called it “The Good”, even though no names can truly be applied to it (Or the Demiurge), but suggests that “The Good” comes close.

In Platonism, in my understanding, there is not so much a concept of “evil”, but rather what appears to be evil is rather that which is very far from The One, making it like Darkness. This world is the furthest from The One, so while everything partakes of The One, some things here partake much less of it than others.

In Platonism, this world is imperfect, rather everything here being a model of the eternal Forms above. As I have said elsewhere, there are many earthly scorpions, each with a different appearance and varying characteristics, but there is one singular Celestial Scorpion, from who descends all earthly scorpions, and has power over them.

Now, the Demiurgos and all the other Gods are indeed considered Good. They are closer to The Good than all other things. So, in Theurgy, one tries to recieve the light of the Gods. In my experience, simply being in the presence of the Gods has transformed me and I would say given me a natural inclination towards virtue. When we pray to the Gods, often we experience Joy upon contact and for some time afterwards. This itself is a good thing, and to me reveals in a practical way the goodness of the Gods.

It seems Socrates did not consider the Gods to do evil. Naturally, it is contact with the Gods and recieving their light that leads to perfection, and this is the path of obtaining Union with God.

Now, Plato in his ‘Meno’ had Socrates explain that it is not in man’s nature to be evil. No one does something evil simply for the sake of doing evil. Rather, even when we do evil things we do this because we think there is good in it. I think the more terroristic groups of Satanism is a good example of this. They have commited terrible things but even here they believe that what they are doing is ultimately good, that it is rebellion against an evil tyrranical God. The evil God has “enslaved” people and is decieving them (something clearly evil), but rather who they worship have the “truth” and the “light” (things percieved to be good), and so even breaking one’s morals, which would have been set there by an evil God, is good, in their reasoning.

So, we cannot bring ourselves to think what we are doing is bad. People tend to have excuses for their bad actions.

It is not in man’s nature to be evil, and I feel this is a reflection of the higher worlds, and the Gods.
In a similar way, we see how evil actions arise simply from a “darkness”

As I have said in this post, a traditional view is that lack, need, scortcomings etc. Rather come from distance from The Source, an absence of its light.

As for the existence of nothing, can we find an example of this? No, I’m afraid we cannot. There is nothing in this cosmos that is “empty”, there is nothing that has not been filled.

In Plato’s ‘Timaeus’, he has Timaeus explain that the universe does not have eyes, or ears, or legs etc. Because there is nothing outside of it. It is complete and contains all things within itself. It has no need for these things. There is no lack of anything within it, it has been modelled after perfection. He says, even with immortality, that since it is not appropriate for something created to last forever, the Demiurgos created time, which is the world’s image of immortality, so that it may endure forever.

And indeed, we cannot find an example of “nothing”

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I always enjoy your thought-provoking posts, Dank, even if (maybe especially because) we disagree on some points. After all, it would be endlessly boring if we all just sat around in an echo chamber endlessly agreeing with everyone else. :smiley:

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In orthodox Judaism as I’ve learned it, there’re two sides to the face, partzuf, of god the right and the left:
The right being mercy and the left being judgement.

@Dankquanicus about there being no empty space in Judaism again, what I’m familiar with, god, demiurge I’m not sure if that the same thing as a source, contracted himself, that’s timzum, so empty space appeared, to create the world…

In the Hebrew bible it only says god created the heavens and earth, so it’s not clear if god is considered the architect and then the source or the engineer and then the demiurge or maybe both or neither.

What about hell? What about what existed before god’s creation? That’s not stated…

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In Judaism I don’t recall they believe in a demiurge per se. The traditional beliefs of the demiurge can be thought of as 1, the source created everything so source is demiurge or 2, source made everything hence the source made the demiurge as a second in command if you will.
So it’s kind of like either way you see it demiurge is the first emanation.

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So, the demiurge can be metatron or he can be silence or both. Interesting.

If the demiurge is the first and the source, then something is beyond the source. Why? The demiurge is king of the gods and in most myths I know before the gods came titans/giants etc and if it comes from it then maybe the source created several demiurges and they would fight among themselves for domination

And that wouldn’t make sense.
So there’s only one demiurge and therefore one creator, but your question is valid how do we know if it’s the source or comes from it?

If it were the source, then it wouldn’t be possible for it to contract(shrink) itself. Why? The source is passive and only serves as a door to emanation. Contraction requires an active element: the ability to close and open the door.

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The Source is not the Demiurge; the Source, the Allspring, is from before the Demiurge. The Demiurge may be able to be personified (or not, depending on your paradigm), but the Demiurge is not the Source, which simply cannot be personified (“the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao”).

@Dankquanicus specifies that the Demiurge is named and venerated as Zeus. While I don’t disagree with that, in my own personal work Metatron or Melek Tawus could also be deemed the Demiurge, and they are all from very different and distinct religions/paradigms. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I think all entities answer to Metatron or Melek Taus, or only work under their jurisdiction… if that makes sense.

Silence is the closest thing I could personally name as the Demiurge, and likely my opinion and conviction matches Dank’s in terms of who’s calling the shots, since I consider Silence to be above and beyond and separate from all other paradigms, while still being the only constant at the very top of the chain. (Considering here Zeus being a force of nature, rather than ‘merely’ the father and final Authority of the Greek gods.)

I would go so far as to say that each paradigm could name a different Demiurge (as in the example of Melek Taus vs. Metatron), but neither is more right or wrong than the other, when you’re working under that specific paradigm. But when I think about it, I still think that Silence would outrank and outweigh Metatron and Melek Taus combined (and I say that with no small amount of forethought, given that they are both my patrons and their influence is considerable in my own life.)

The Source cannot contract, nor can it be contained, nor conversed with in a two-way manner. The Source is consciousness itself; both the god-spark in every living human, and the gestalt of every god-spark ever to have been, to be, or to currently exist. It does not divide, it multiplies. Like I said, it is not a person or entity or even archetype to converse with or corral into a form. It simply IS, as a universal law, like gravity or lightspeed.

That, at least, is my opinion — limited as it may be.

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@Veil So the demiurge in your paradigm is the sphirah chokhma meaning wisdom in Hebrew

While the source is kether, crown, pure existence…

That’s what I understand, correct?

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I couldn’t say, sorry, I briefly studied the Kabbalah many years ago and have forgotten basically all of it except for Malkuth (?) being the final sphere, and something about Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph [Something] preceding the first sefirot sphere

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So, I’ll try to explain: kether is the first sphirah and is the source of all other spheres.
Chohma is the first emanation from that sphere.

Malhut is the tenth and last emanation from kether…

Every sphere contains all the other spheres and is in turn contained by them, like concentric circles…

Think about a pebble making waves in a creek…

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Kether emanates from ein sof the inefable the formless etc. ein sof is probably source according to Jewish Cabala traditions. So if we take the concept of the demiurge the demiurge could possibly preside over kether.

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I don’t really think in terms of that paradigm, but I suppose in that case I would consider Keter to be the Demiurgos — the first emanation of God or existence that can be named and categorised, as the Source simply cannot be, for it is limitless.

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So, if we think in that vein the source is the ain, the nothingness, so to speak…

What about ain sof, infinity and ain sof aur, infinite light?

I cannot understand nothing, because in my view the mind cannot work on empty and needs concepts for theories and to understand the world…

Nothing is the closest to what you’re describing as source to me…

That’s exactly the point! That’s why it’s inefable,

You see the thorax of Abraxas is the nothing then the first emanation is the nous or mind so source we can say “mindless” pretty much all paradigms try to explain the same thing just the “dogma” is what changes.

Edit: some spelling issues :see_no_evil:

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In my view the source has got to be a hive construct: if it has all experiences then it needs to instantly assimilate them and that makes it a headless hive something the hidden ones, the rule makers as I argued in my journal…

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I think while it could possibly be a hive construct (again, being the gestalt of all experiences, everywhere, ever, in any dimension), it is not a rule-maker. It has no sense of “rules”.

What it is, is pure consciousness, unsullied by anything else. Undivided, but able to multiply infinitely.

Applying any kind of human or even animal or primal attributes or instincts to the Source is, in my humble opinion, misguided. It does not have feelings, it does not have thoughts or judgments. It simply is.

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I want to add here that that is in the Greek Platonist tradition. The Roman Platonists considered the Demiurgos to be Jupiter. I think “Identify as” is a better term here.
Now, the Orphic tradition is also very symbolic at times. For example, in the Hymns of Orpheus, Saturnus/Kronos is identified as The One, despite that The One is not an intelligence or spirit, or that they can be understood. So, it’s important not to take this in such a way.

For Norse and Germanic pagans, the Demiurgos would be identified with Odin, who is called Aldafaðr (“Father of Men/The World”), Fjǫlnir (“The One who is Many”, and Runni vagna (“Mover of Constellations”), among many other names.

Interestingly, our word “God” is the contracted form of the Germanic name “Gaudan”, which is the Germanic name of Odin.

The Zulus also traditionally have a name for the Demiurgos, as do the San people.

I want to add here that I myself also don’t use the Qabalistic Tree of Life, although I have a basic knowledge of it. But I think it’s important to note that this Tree of Life is only one map of everything. It is good, but not the only one, and not perfect in itself.

I want to add here, interestingly, the Gods are traditionally considered similarly limitless. They are everywhere at all times, and they are not confined by space, having existed before the universe was created, and they existed before time was created. Each of them are all-powerful, and everywhere at once (and as I said above, we see their signatures in all things in the world).

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I altered the title of the topic again @Veil since I’ve often seen “The Source” used to refer to The Demiurgos. Hopefully the added variety makes things slightly clearer… at least for some.

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