Aeons and Sephiroth

Until mind has shaped the perceptual stream flowing through it into a more or less coherent picture — that is, until it has created a world in which its manifestation will develop — it is, in fact, within a fluctuating, probabilistic dreaming stream, “wandering” through the space of the Interworld. It is precisely from this point of view that one can say that worlds emerge from the Interval, “extracted” from its totipotent field much as crystals form from a saline solution.

Accordingly, one may say that the Interval is the “womb” of worlds, and all the laws and principles that can be observed in worlds are present in it in an “embryonic” or “seed” form.

It is common knowledge that, from the point of view of the Hermetic myth, the “skeleton” of any manifested reality consists of the complex of sefirot — stages, forms, or modes of the manifestation of the Light of mind when it contacts the medium’s vessel.

However, it is discussed far less often that in the Interval the structuring system that keeps its seething virtual core from sinking into the unmanifest chaos of Khoshek is the hierarchy of aeons.

One may say that one level of aeonic forces is the “prototypes” or “fields of causality” of the sefirot, which share the same axis of analogy and perform the same function.

The very notion of aeons is of Gnostic origin: the Gnostics called the emanations or modes of the Deity that “fill the space” separating God and the world. In other words, one can say that aeons are levels of the deity’s “creative states” just as the sephirot are levels of His creative manifestations.

In different systems these emanations are named, classified, and described differently; however, the very idea of the “radiation” of Divine Order is common to all schools of Gnosticism. In Basilidean gnosis they are called sonships (υἱότητες, huiotetes); in Valentinianism they form male and female pairs called syzygies (συζυγίαι, from σύζυγοι, lit. “yoking together”).

We have already mentioned that each aeon can be regarded as a quality, as a being, and a space, since it is precisely a particular kind of mind that determines one characteristic or another of the medium of its manifestation. Therefore, for the Interworld, aeons are simultaneously its “deities,” its properties, and its domains.

In one of the most widespread variants — among the Valentinians — were counted 30 aeons belonging to “five generations” and three groups (8+10+12), which correlates with the experiences reported by Dee and Kelley, and later by Crowley. Moreover, since from the “lower” level the higher ones appear as unified, from the level of the “lower” dodecad of aeons the decad and the octad look like two spheres; therefore, at this level one can find 14 different aeonic “spheres,” which agrees with the fourteenfold division of the Duat in the mythology of Ancient Egypt.

A similar concept was also known in the East, where it was asserted that any quality or deity is “born” from a special potency — Bīja ( बीजा, “seed”). Various schools of Buddhist thought hold that karmic manifestations arise from such “seeds” that are hidden in the stream of mind or in the psychophysical continuum. The external world is created when the seeds “sprout” in mind. In this sense, “seed syllables” can be described as “semantic aeons,” just as deities and principles have their semantic manifestations in the form of mantras.

However, regardless of which system and classification of aeons we adhere to, it is important to understand that, in principle, when we enter the space of the Interval (in exteriorization, dreaming, or postmortem), we are subject to the laws of the aeons, and the “habitual,” “sephirotic,” regularities there are only conditionally valid. As mentioned, the very numerical system must be different — non-sephirotic: not decimal, but octal or hexadecimal.

Thus, for example, the closest aeonic “analog” of the sephira of Manifestedness — Malkuth — is the aeon Sophia, described by Kabbalists as “Presence,” Shekhinah, while the very possibility of the emergence of this sephirotic principle arises from the aeon Makaria — “blessedness.” Even the World Vortex — Baphomet — appears there in its “embryonic,” “seed” variant as the Great Desire — Abraxas.

It is a mistake to apply habitual descriptive methods to the Interval. Understanding the peculiarities of the functioning of the Interworld as a “virtual cauldron” will make it possible to pave the way for its study, and thus not only increase the effectiveness of passing through it in postmortem but also reduce the risk of dangers from its inhabitants during life.