Daily Reflection 3.24.21

Sun Tzu next tells us that

We are not fit to lead an army on the march unless we are familiar with the face of the country-- its mountains and forests, its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps.
 

In the Great Work of the conquest of our own souls, we need to be familiar with the face of the country we intend to conquer. While we are all unique individuals, different in our own ways, we are all human beings having a human experience. To gain mastery over a human soul, we will be greatly aided if we start with a map.

It happens that maps of the soul are quite common. The world of the mind is much wider and more various than the physical world, and so many, many different types of maps exist. All describe the same territory, but they do so in different ways. In just the same way, a map of a physical country might be a road map, a topographical map, or a detailed ecological map. Each is useful in its own way, but it's very important to understand what type of map you are using. A topographical map won't help you find an intersection, nor will a road map help you avoid a hill.

Here are several maps of the human psyche.




The Tree of Life was originally developed by the Gnostics, and was later appropriated by Jewish Cabalists. Christian occultists picked it up from the Jews during the Renaissance, and it has seen further development since then. The Tree of Life is a map of reality, conceived as ten spheres, which are centers of constructive power, united by 22 paths. There is also a hidden semi-sphere (that's the one without a number on this version of the Tree), two barriers, called the Abyss and the Veil, and an unmanifested background from which the first sphere emanates. In order from ten back to one, the spheres represent the individual's capacity for 10 embodiment, 9 relation, 8 perception, 7 emotion, 6 thought, 5 intention, 4 intuition, 3 intellection, 2 will, and 1 existence.

The exploration and integration of the spheres of the Tree of Life is often the central initiatiatory work in schools of ceremonial magic.

It isn't the only possible map. Here is a very different one from the Chinese Taoist tradition:




This view sees the soul divided into five parts, which also correspond to the Chinese five elements and to the five major organs. A major aim of traditional Chinese spiritual practice is the integration of the five souls, each of which has their own necessary function.

The five soul model is quite effective on its own terms, but it is not the same as the Tree of Life, and trying to use them at the same time doesn't work. It's like trying to use a road map and a topographical map at the same time; you get confused and you don't get anywhere.

Or, to say it a different way, every spiritual path involves three components, which can be called View, Method, and Fruition.

View is the path's understanding of the spiritual world and the human soul.

Method is the path's specific set of practices and disciplines.

Fruition is the results that one can expect from doing the practices and discipline's and keeping to the particular view. The stuff you've heard about "different paths to the same mountaintop" is simply not true; different spiritual paths lead to different mountaintops-- that is to say, they have different results.

That's not to say that they can't be blended and can't inform one another. In fact, different traditions blend and move into and through each other all the time. The Tree of Life is a perfect example. Its origin is probably in the Tetractys, an ancient diagram used by the Neoplatonists:




Take those ten dots and rearrange them, and you have the Tree of Life.

Take the Tree of Life-- or, more likely, some precursor to it-- and rearrange it with Chinese symbology in mind, and you come up with this:



That's the Taijitu. It's functionally identical to the Tree of Life, and it appears in Taoist sources a century before the earliest versions of the Tree appear in Jewish sources.

So some blending of maps is possible-- in the same way that, if you are exploring a city like Pittsburgh or San Francisco for the very first time, a road map combined with a topographical map could actually be extremely useful. The point is not to try to blend two maps until you fully understand them and know what you're doing with them. To give a personal example, the Tree of Life is traditionally blended with astrology, so that the spheres correspond to the planets. I've had this in my mind for a number of years, but I've only just realized that it's prevented me from fully understanding the Tree on its own terms. The key issue was the Eighth sphere, called Hod in the Jewish version of the Tree. Its astrological correspondence is Mercury, but it is not Mercury, and if you try to understand Hod simply as Mercury you miss something important. 

Probably the simplest Soul Map of all is the one given by Plato in the Republic. The soul is like a city, Plato tells us, with three classes of people. There are the rulers, the warriors, and the workers. The rulers correspond to our reason; the warriors to our strength of will; and the workers to our desires. If we subordinate our will to our desires, our reason is overwhelmed. If, on the other hand, we make our will the servant of our reason, we can master our desires and our destiny. 

The point of all of this, though, is that we need to pick a map to work with. And, to shift the metaphor a little bit, from warfare to travel, we need to have a destination in mind. A topographical map won't help you find Fifth Avenue, nor will a road map lead you to a mountaintop. 

One day I will write out a detailed Map of my own, which will probably treat the soul as an old growth forest, with trees and meadows and animals and rivers and soil. Ultimately, I think, that is all of our purpose. While all of us are human and must start with a map of the human soul, all of us are individuals, and must conclude by making a map of our own soul.