Kindle Notes & Highlights
These pathways correspond to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet but also denote angels or divine spirits which act as intermediaries throughout the system and are themselves arranged in hierarchies.
Similarly, there are also bad angels or demons, organized in hierarchies correspondin...
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gematria,
The Egyptian lawgiver Hermes Trismegistus had revealed mystical teachings, including an account of Creation which hinted at his knowledge of Moses’ wisdom.
Natural magic uses characters, but Cabala uses numbers through its use of letters (Magical Conclusion 25). Natural magic uses only intermediary causes, the stars. Cabala goes straight to the first cause, God himself (Magical Conclusion 26).
Pico claims that Man’s true greatness lies in his freedom to become whatever he wants to be.
Both animals and angels have their fixed place in the universe and are powerless to change their natures. But God gave to Man, alone of all creatures, no fixed abode, form, or function. Free of such limitations, he has the power to change and develop, to make and mould himself.
“Man is a miracle, a living thing to be worshipped and honored: for he changes his nature into a god’s, as if he were a god. . . . Conjoined to the gods by a kindred divinity, he despises inwardly that part of him in which he is earthly.”8
The Oration alludes to esoteric knowledge known only to the few. Pico speaks of occult Hebraic law, vouchsafed only to initiates, and he recalls the symbolism of the sphinxes on Egyptian temples, indicating that mystic doctrines should be kept secret from the common herd.
For eons, clouds of gas expanded. Huge glimmering balls of hot gas formed into stars. Deep within these stars, nuclear reactions gave birth to elements such as carbon and iron. When the stars grew old, they exploded, spewing these elements into the universe.
Eventually this matter was recycled into new solar systems. Our solar system is one example of this recycling, a mix of matter produced by cycles of stars – stars forming and exploding. We along with everything else are literally made of stardust.
However life began, all its forms share similar genetic codes and can be traced back to a common ancestor. All living beings are cousins.
We humans like to think of ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, and it is true that we are the most complicated things in the universe. Our brain contains one hundred billion cells, linked by one hundred trillion synaptic connections. Yet we are part of the evolutionary process, descended from bacteria who lived three-and-a-half billion years ago.
If God spoke the world into being, the divine language is energy; the alphabet, elementary particles; God’s grammar, the laws of nature.
By an intricate and unrepeatable combination of chance and necessity, humanity has evolved from and alongside countless other forms of life over billions of years.
To be “religious” means, in the words of a contemporary physicist, to have an intuitive feeling of the unity of the cosmos. This oneness is grounded in scientific fact: We are made of the same stuff as all of creation.
Everything that is, was, or will be started off together as one infinitesimal point: the cosmic seed.
Life has since branched out, but this should not blind us to its underlying unity. The deepest marvel is the unity in diversity, the vast arr...
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Becoming aware of the multifaceted unity can help us learn how to live in harmony with other human beings and with all beings, with all our fell...
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The human mind has devised alternative strategies – scientific and spiritual – to search for our origin. The two are distinct, but complementary. Science enables us to probe infinitesimal particles of matter and unimaginable depths of outer space, understanding each in light of the other, as we grope our way back toward the beginning. Spirituality guides us through inner space, challenging us to retrace our path to oneness and to live in the light of what we discover.
God is not some separate being up there. She is right here, in the bark of a tree, in a friend’s voice, in a stranger’s eye. The world is teeming with God. Since God is in everything, you can serve God through everything.
What kind of God can we believe in? The Hebrew word emunah, “belief,” originally meant trust and faithfulness, both human and divine. Without trusting another person, we cannot
love; without trusting others, we cannot build and sustain community. But how can we trust the cosmos, or this God of oneness?
When we gaze at the nighttime sky, we can ponder that we are made of elements forged within stars, out of particles born in the big bang. We can sense that we are looking back home. The further we gaze into space, the further we see back into time.
But neither God nor the big bang is that far away. The big bang didn’t happen somewhere out there, outside of us. Rather, we began inside the big bang; we now embody its primordial energy. The big bang has never stopped.
And what about God? God is not an object or a fixed destination. There is no definite way to reach God. But then again, you don’t need to reach something that’s everywhere. God is not somewhere else, hidden from us. God is right here, hidden from us. We are enslaved by routines. Rushing from event to event, from one chore to another, we
rarely let ourselves pause and notice the splendor right in front of us. Our sense of wonder has shriveled, ...
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How, then, can we find God? A clue is provided by one of the many names of Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God, the divine presence. In Kabbalah She is called ocean, well, garden, apple orchard. She is also called zot, which means simply “this.” God is right here, in thi...
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