Merkavah – Vertical Flow
As mentioned, the Great Flow of Power, the embodiment of the quadripolar quaternary principle, includes two types of movement: horizontal and vertical vortices.
The horizontal rotation of Power is symbolized by the World Wheel, the Whirlwind, and was discussed earlier.
The Vertical Flow, including both descending and ascending currents, likewise has several symbols, among which the most famous is the Chariot of the Most High — Merkabah (Heb. מֶרְכָּבָה, “chariot”).
In Ezekiel’s vision: “And I saw a whirlwind coming from the north, a great cloud and a whirling fire, and a brightness about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of fire from the midst of the flame“, which corresponds to the vortical character of the Merkabah flow.
The description of the Merkabah given by the prophet Ezekiel notes that “from the midst of it there appeared the likeness of four living creatures — and thus was their appearance: their appearance was like a man; and each had four faces, and each of them four wings; and their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot, and they gleamed like polished bronze. And human hands were under their wings, on their four sides; and their faces and their wings were the same for all four; their wings touched one another; when they went they did not turn about, but each went straight forward in the direction of his face. The likeness of their faces was the face of a man, and the face of a lion on the right side of each of the four; and on the left side the face of an ox for all four, and the face of an eagle for all four.”
In other words, the movement of the Merkabah is closely connected with the relations among the Primary Elements, indicated by the symbolic animals.
The teaching of the chariot traditionally represents the deepest, immutable, eternal foundations of the world. In fact, the Merkabah describes the Flow of Power as a composite of involution and evolution, understood both cosmically and individually.
In other words, the Merkabah signifies the totality of the Creator’s manifesting forces present in the created world: the very process of ongoing creative activity that sustains the cosmos. It is said the Merkabah is the “structure” of the Shekhinah, the mechanism of the manifestation of the Creator’s presence within the created.
Note that the word “Merkavah” also means “assembly”, since it is believed that each act of creation was “sealed, as with a seal, by the Name of God” — this is one of the earliest tenets of chariot mysticism.
Indeed, this notion later developed into the Gnostic teaching of the “Logoi“, which constitute the hierarchy of divine emanations. The idea of the moving, creative, and magical power of the word — which also underlies any name-based magic — finds parallels in the idea of the Merkabah.
It is not surprising that knowledge of the Merkabah was the goal of many Magi and mystics, because knowing this flow means understanding the process that moves the world, and therefore how to influence the world. Understanding the chariot’s structure is to understand how the Most High ordains the destinies of the cosmos, since the Chariot encompasses the universe with creative power. In the writings of such mystics one often finds descriptions of the experience of passing through various halls of the heavenly palaces (hekhalot), guarded by angelic hosts, on the way to the Throne of Glory, the center of the cosmos’ creative activity. According to some interpretations, the mystic descends into the depths of his own being and confronts his divine archetype, and in this sense the Merkabah is perceived as a sign of the analogy between microcosm and macrocosm.
The ecstatic ascent of the soul to the Throne of God is not the only element of this mysticism. It also involves many other techniques much more closely linked to magic. One of these, for example, is the “vesture, or clothing of the Name” — a special, mysterious, and solemn rite in which the Magus is ‘imbued’ with the great Name of God, performing a symbolic act of clothing himself in a garment woven with the Name.
Beyond that, the notion of the Merkabah as an ascending vortex spurred the search for ways to move from one level of the cosmos to the next, higher one. Not only through mystical ecstasy, but also by performing special magical practices, a magus could raise his status from lower to higher, opening up new horizons of power.
At the same time, such an ascent is dangerous because of the possibility of disembodiment resulting from exceeding the bounds of human existence, which is effectively a kind of death — although in magical literature it is described as a “kiss of God“, a kiss that leads to the dissolution of the physical body. This, in turn, can result in the failure to fulfil the tasks of incarnation and a renewed fall into the denser worlds.
Thus the vertical movement of power, the Merkabah, which usually attracts mystics because of its ascending aspect, can also turn into a descending one, and not only lift the soul to the “throne of God” but also cast it down into the depths of creation.
The horizontal rotation of Power is the Horizontal Flow of Power, a movement of the Quaterren formed by attraction along the axis of the poles of Passiveness – Receptivity? And the Vertical Flow of Power should be formed along the vector of Activity – Neutrality?
No, the Vertical Flow of Power is also polarized along the axis of Activity-Passiveness, since the entire Flow corresponds to the Quadri-polar Quaterren.
How should the arrows on graph 2 https://enmerkar.com/en/way/the-turning-wheel-the-world-wheel be understood?
The Activity – Passiveness axis is the most general and characterizes any flow in general. In the considered axis (Passiveness-Receptivity), the first He is more active than the second He, while Yod is more active than Vav (Activity – Neutrality), resulting in a general Activity – Passiveness…
So here is the question, what characterizes Vertical/Horizontal flows in the context of Quaterren?
The World Wheel presented in this graph characterizes the horizontal projection of the Whirlwind, its Quaterren aspect, while the Merkavah represents Vertical movement.
So, in general, the global vortex is described by the coordinates of two quaternaries – vertical (merkavah) and horizontal (circle)?
Since, if we mean the vortex, it can be simplified as a torus or Hopf fibration, thus the vertical cross-section will give us two points of neutralization for the ascending and descending currents.
Rorik, if you’re interested, I will share my vision. The world consists of an infinite number of intertwining vectors of strength in the form of a fine mesh. It weaves to form a single matrix of the world. But at certain points, large vortices emerge – centers of power.
Yes, I understand, or one can speak about configurational and phase spaces. But I’m trying to figure out more narrow questions – the tetrad and the ogdoad are clear, but three, five, six, seven – not so much. The circle is clear, but the vortex is still not. For example, the sphere has six cardinal points (7 if we consider the center), while the torus (vortex) has four cardinal circles. A sphere has one center, but a torus has two, as it is formed by the turning of a circle around an external center lying in the plane of the circle but outside its boundaries. What might this tell us?
What might that tell you, you will understand while meditating on figures. If you are interested in the Beginning in the form of geometric figures, I recommend meditating on separations, e.g., circle, square, as a start. You will see the differences in the movement of energy, such as how a circle gathers energy and spreads it across the entire field or the properties of the square, such as materialization. This is the basis for understanding vectors. I can also recommend meditating on the letters of Hebrew. Each letter has a gematrical meaning + these are Forces. Good luck 🙂
The question was actually about something else; I should have formulated it like this: how much do geometric and physical metaphors reflect reality in this theme? The vortex, as a universal physical object, has many features, just like the sphere, torus, etc., and in different approximations, a vortex ring may be represented as a sphere, where the inner part reduces to the axis and positive and negative poles, and as a torus – on the other hand, a sphere can topologically be represented as consisting of two tori. If we look at the cross-section of the torus perpendicular to its axis, the picture schematically resembles a tree, especially in traditional images of the Tree of Life, where the sprawling crown and root system nearly touch each other.
Indeed, the vortex as a universal form of movement of the Medium can be represented as a culmination of two poles: horizontal and vertical. Thus, the formation of the vortex occurs according to the quadripolar principle (https://en.enmerkar.com/magus-way/kvadripolyarnyj-kvaterner), rather than bipolar, quaternary (the latter is simply an epistemological simplification). Consequently, in the vortex, there are two types of movements, thus two types of potential differences. And you are absolutely correct in noting that each of the poles of the quaternary, in the case of a dynamic vortex, acts as a circle, a self-sufficient cycle, the sum of which gives birth to this dynamic object. Practically, such understanding is vital precisely for transcending the boundaries of “flat” projections to volumetric thinking. In other words, recognizing that each element of the quaternary contains all four poles, and so on to infinity, realizing such a fractal nature of reality allows us to transcend the notions of “beginning” and “end”, “source” and “mouth” of existence. For the concept of Merkavah, this understanding leads to the conclusion that it is impossible to achieve the highest point while remaining within its confines, which always remains an ideal, an abstraction, To identify with it necessitates a complete and radical shift in self-identification.
It’s interesting that if we present such a model – a horizontal and a vertical circle, then a third circle naturally suggests itself – also vertical, but perpendicular to the plane of the first vertical and the second horizontal.
Yes, but no fundamentally different type of movement will be added to this.
I agree, here we can rather talk about different starting points and different routes to the Pole (or Center, in the case of a toroidal topology).
“For the concept of Merkabah, such an understanding leads to the conclusion that, being within its limits, it is impossible to reach a higher point, which remains the ideal, an abstraction for which complete and radical change of self-identification is necessary.”
By the way, this can also be illustrated geometrically – a circle, a sphere, the surface of a torus are defined by their center, but no matter where you move, the center is always located outside the reachable surface space.
About the activation of the merkaba at Melchizedek, everything is described in the ancient secret of the flower of life. It represents two interpenetrating tetrahedrons, like the star of David but three-dimensional.