INDRANET
THE NET OF NETS
permutations, associations, analogies,
correspondences etc.
The essential methodology of the Tarot
is to read as many associations as possible. C.C. Zain calls this ‘The Law
of Correspondences’. Naturally the deeper and richer the associations, the
greater the spectrum of analogies.
"Everywhere on earth there are people of our kind. That for a small part
of them, I can be a focal point, the nodal point in the net, is the burden and
the joy of my life."
Hermann Hesse, private letter, 1955.
THE WEB OF ASSOCIATIONS
“…each card triggered feelings
of…” Rosengarten, p.31.
Rosengarten,
Arthur, Tarot and Psychology. Spectrums of Possibility, Paragon
House, St. Paul, Minnesota, 2000, pp. 244 - 245.
“The psychological context of
dream-contents consists in the web of associations in which the dream is
naturally embedded.”
Jung, C.G. Psychology and Alchemy,
p. 44
"The
Empress Wu, who had difficulties understanding the Hwa Yen philosophy, asked
Fa Tsang, one of the founders of the school, to give her a simple, practical
demonstration of cosmic inter-relatedness. Fa Tsang took her to a large hall,
the entire interior of which - the walls, ceiling, and floor - was covered
with mirrors. He first lit a candle in the centre of this hall and suspended
it from the ceiling. In the next moment, they were surrounded by myriads of
glowing candles of different sizes reaching to infinity. This was Fa Tsang's
way of illustrating the relationship of the One to the Many.
He then placed
in the centre of the hall a small crystal with many facets. Everything around
the crystal, including all the countless images of candles, was now collected
and reflected in the small interior of the brilliant stone. In this way, Fa
Tsang was able to demonstrate how in Ultimate Reality the infinitely small
contains the infinitely large and the infinitely large the infinitely small,
without obstruction. Having done this, he pointed out that this static model
was actually very limited and imperfect. It was unable to capture the
perpetual, multidimensional motion in the universe and the unimpeded mutual
interpenetration of Time and Eternity, as well as past, present, and future.
In: Stanislav
Grof , The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human
Consciousness, SUNY Press, Albany, NY, 1998, p. 52-. 53.
"Indra's
net" is a phrase found in Kegon go-kyo sho (The Book of Five Doctrines
of the Kegon Sect), a book that interprets the Avatamsaka
Sutra "The barrier gate
of Indra's net" is "a
teaching that the world is like the
orbs of the mesh that forms the net of the diety Indra, which are in an endless relationship of sosoku and so'nyu."
Sosoku means all things come together and become one; so'nyu
expresses an all-inclusive relationship
whereby A both contains B and is contained by B. In other words, the image is
of the knots of the net that join orbs of infinite number which all mirror each other in a relationship that
continues forever. This metaphor, that each orb contains a universe and each
orb is connected with every
other, represents the intricate view of the universe held by Mahayana Buddhism.
INDRA’S NET = INDRANET – Erik Davis
= NET = Neptune = ESTROGENIC = TRIDENT = FISH
"...at every turn a fresh constellation of
correspondences appears."
[Campbell, Joseph, Primitive
Mythology, p. 186.]
Another dynamic version of this idea is found
in the Hindu teaching of `The Jewel Net of Indra', where an infinite
woven net, with jewels at each of its knots, creates an infinity of
reflections within reflections. There is perhaps a link with the jeweled nets
that cover the Ompalos both at Delphi and at the Oases of Siwa, plus other
sites,
This gives a slight understanding of what to
expect of any journey through the metaphysical mazes of the Hermetic
Teachings, including the parallel systems of the Sephiroth of the Kabbalah;
the endless permutations of the Sacred Tarot; the visual literature of Alchemy
- or even the Oriental system of the Hexagrams of the I Ching, and so on.
We meet with woven strands and interlaced
meanings, correspondences, analogies and a wealth of structural paradigms and
non-structural processes, not to mention the mystical textures, difficult to
place in words, and the codes and ciphers which all add to the richness of
existence.
Samten de Wet
“Imagine a
vast net; at each crossing point there is a jewel; each jewel is perfectly clear
and reflects all the other jewels in the net, the way two mirrors placed
opposite each other will reflect an image ad infinitum. The jewel in this
metaphor stands for an individual being, or an individual consciousness, or a
cell, or an atom. Each jewel is intimately connected with all other jewels in
the universe, and a change in one jewel means a change, however slight, in every
other jewel.”
Mitchell,
Stepen, The Enlightened Mind: Harper Perennial, New York, 1991. In
Rosengarten, p. 175
“…the beginningless web of
interrelations….” Rosengarten, p. 174
“…the laws of interbeing…”
Rosengarten, p. 174
“If everything indeed is
interconnected and emerges from one cosmic vat of possibility, it would be
impossible not to find or construct meaningful correspondence in any given
reading.” Rosengarten, p. 175
Saturday,
08 November 2003
Dear
Louis,
....
the development of a true network.... Yes!
But
I think we also have to become conscious that it is the networks, that have
to be networked!
At
a certain level, a saturation point, a ceiling is reached, its limits defined by
the current pool of academics researching Western esotericism. I had the
good fortune to have experienced the Internet in its very early phase back in
1985, in London at the Computer Centre of the GLC, where we linked up with The
Well in San Francisco. As Karen-Claire Voss says, the Internet is a Hermetic
body, or manifestation, or as I see it, of Mind, in the Mercurial,
Quicksilver sense.
Some
of the more esoteric doctrines of Tibetan Buddhism indicate that Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas could manifest in such forms, even in an Art Style. This level of
esoteric speculation, is brilliantly manifested in the Kabbalistic literature -
I use the Gershom Scholem spelling. Now if one thinks of the Kabbalah as a
Western esoteric system, how do we deal with its geographical roots in the
Middle East, Safed and Baghdad. Or the Oriental influences on the Norman
Courts of Palermo, and those of Spain under the Moors?
There
are serious considerations emerging regarding the Templars and Rosicrucians,
having roots in the Middle East. Brother R.C., after all, visited Damascus and
Fez.
The
Islamic Shi'ite doctrine of the abdals, the Hidden Ones, is very similar to
the idea of the Invisible Brotherhood, and we are not even touching on the
parallels between the Ikhwan al Safa brotherhood and the Rosicrucians as well.
But
I digress. In all of the above mentioned systems, there seems to be some form of
emanationism, and the emergence or re-emergence of Hidden bodies of Wisdom
is a commonplace to many cultures. And in particular, the Renaissance . . .
But,
I believe, that the Form of this manifestation, in this case under
speculation, the Internet, is still in its infancy. We can see the emerging
tectonic plates, and the resulting fault lines. Cross-cultural and
intra-cultural dialogue, across these chasms, be they ideological,
theological, or any of the other energy-depleted Logos systems, is very
necessary. But is must not remain a matter of merely moving the furniture
around.
This task that lays before us, in mining and bringing to the light of day, the
rich seams of esoteric material, should also spread outwards, as incandescent
inspiration for new forms of culture and enlightened action.
I
once visited Dr. Helena de Jong in Leiden. She has written definitive studies on
Michael Maier's Atlanta Fugiens. I asked her, give or take the words, whether
working with these alchemical images within the academic context had any effect
on her inner life, by which I suppose I posited an objective/subjective
dichotomy. She replied with great enthusiasm, and said yes, she kept a diary of
her dreams. And to end this tirade, on an open note:
"Jung
once remarked that his life's work has been to encircle the "central
fire" with a series of mirrors but that necessarily there were gaps where
the mirrors met."
[Rose F. Holt, Review of 'The New God-Image' by Edward Edinger, in: The
Roundtable Review, Jan/Feb. 1999, p. 11.]
Yours
sincerely,
Samten
de Wet.
Higgs bosom and Orphic concept of the
Net:
by "Arthur
E. Gregory" <arthra999@yahoo.com>
Some
of you may recall the quotation I cited earliar regarding the Higgs-bosom
field:
.... Instead of a field spread throughout all space a solid contains a lattice
of positively charged crystal atoms. When an electron moves through
the lattice the atoms are attracted to it, causing the electron's
effective mass to be as much as 40 times bigger than the mass of a
free electron. The postulated Higgs field in the vacuum is a
sort of hypothetical lattice which fills our Universe."
This "lattice of positively charged crystal atoms" reminds of an
ancient Orphic concept found in M.L. West's The Orphic Poems published
by Orford university Press, on page 10 is the following description is
made under the topic of Krater, Net, Robe:
"The Net was in all probability the Orphic poem known to Aristotle in
which the formation of a living creature was likenend to the
knitting of a net. The image already alluded to in the Timaeus
suggests that the soul is air occupying the interstices of a material
body. It savours of Pythagoreanism for there is a certain analogy between
the picture of the net being built loop by loop and the Pythagorean number
cosmogony in which the world is built up from a monad that breaths in
..."
The Orphic Poems by M.L. West are based largely on his research into the
recently discovered Derveni papyrus!
I also wanted to mention one of the best texts on Orphism by Robert Eisler
entitled Orpheus the Fisher produced in 1921. In his Preface,
Eisler makes the following statement:
"My lasting gratitude is due to my dear friend GRS Mead, BA, MRAS
whose indefatigable help has made it possible to me to present these
essays to the English speaking public ..."
Arthur Gregory