The Eternal Jew’s Tale, #214, Messiahs, 9

In this episode… first let me apologize for the delay in posting this Eternal Jew episode. This montage about Isaac Luria needed a complete rewrite. Now here it is, part one of three, the last scene in The Eternal Jew’s Tale.

The Eternal Jew’s Tale
Messiah Tractates, a Montage
Luria, Glorious, 1 of 3

A brilliant mind, how far it sees! Imagination unrestrained to overlay this rugged world with patterns that are sharp and clear, and driven by divine intent, so that everything might have a cause that’s knowable, holy, true, and just.
Such a noble urge to approve the world, to yoke that wild animal, us! And more; to overcome the world, to wrench the tools from the grip of God and make repairs that God hasn’t done, or at least to force the Holy One to finally repair this runaway world.

Or is that noble urge, in fact, a will to power, Promethean, superposed on a perfect man. Is Isaac Luria such a one?

Many disciples gather around as Isaac astounds in messiah works, revealing hidden past lives and issuing rectifications for them.
But careful now. The borderline between delusion and lucidity can be faint, can cease to be, and then our maps become our maze.

Did lucent Ari* cross that line and drift into the other side?
* as Isaac Luria is known

Here’s our Isaac, Lion of God, revealing the workings of the human soul…

“There are reasons for suffering and pain; reasons we may choose to sin and reasons sin is tempting to us, the same; reasons God is lashing us; reasons we defy the Lor; and I’m the lion revealing it to us…
“… I have looked into the mercurial heart, a cave of shadows, confusion, murk… I see faces of transmigrant folk bound in every human soul… your past sins are the active cause of current troubles, sorrows, failures… aah, but I know the means of atonement and the rectifications to erase your sins…

“… for nocturnal emissions (a shameful sin), use ice and snow as a mikveh until your teeth chatter and your fingers turn blue…
“… when among your khevra* you speak untruth, lay yourself in thistle thorn til blood streams from your back and arms…
* fellowship of mystics
“… whenever you stray from halakha* walk barefoot in the rocky hills to the tomb of Rabbi Meir and back…”
* Jewish law embedded in tradition

But even his most devoted ones find these rectifications cruel.
So he seeks to build a new model of the world with a court of Kabbalists and mystic laws, to reveal the working of Divine Will as it cranks the gears of history. Long he ponders the mechanics of it…

‘… of course… it must be… the Sefirot… the Force of God driving the worlds… but look… the outcome… so misaligned…
‘… but of course… the Force of God is so great… how could it not shatter these shells?… so the Sefirot must displace the Force, must re-align the torque of it so the clockwork of the human soul won’t get stripped, won’t bend or break…
‘… A ten-fold lattice in which every vertex is axled to every other vertex, turning the gears between them all, as the worlds dizzily spin below,
‘spin within, spin above, spinning the wavering border of the mind;

‘… could it be… maybe like this… Chesed* and Gevurah* vortexing around cruelty and laxity, trying to bend the sexual urge into a spirit of holy ascents beyond Chochmah, to Keter’s realm.’
* Kabbalistic terms; the Sefirot are the ten energy nexuses, Khesed, Gevurah, Khokhmah, and Keter being 4 of them, Keter, Crown, being the highest and closest to God-knowing

These Sefirot are so luminous, predictive, transformative… but only Isaac holds the key to make the attributes unlock their inner workings of the mind. All of his khevra stand back in awe, stand dismayed or skeptical; to them these brilliant emanations seem dull, opaque, inscrutable, or mere Neoplatonic analogs,

splendors of artificial gems, truths composed of dubious beliefs,outdated, simplistic, misguided, disproved,
but who will admit their knowledge is decayed?

~~~~~~~~~~

In the next episode The Ari astounds by revealing hidden secrets from the earth.