Mezla – Grace from Within

The Absolute, Great Spirit, moving toward self-knowledge through the infinite diversity of its aspects and dividing its consciousness into the differentiated multitude of Monads, exerts in each line of incarnation a specific influence which Christians call “Grace” or “Divine Glory,” Kabbalists — “Mezla” (or “Or Hasadim”, אור חסדים “Light of Mercy”), and Norse pagans — “Vod.”

Crowley held that Mezla is the force issuing from Keter into Malkuth, vivifying and sustaining all things in the Tree of Life. In the universal sense Mezla is a release of the unifying power, the impulse toward the realization of the primordial potential unity of being.

In other words, this force sustains the Tree as an integral whole, serving as the unifying and system-forming power, the “call” of the Upper Root of the Tree that maintains its connection to its “lower” branches.

In fact, Mezla is the “prefigured” power of the cosmos’ evolutionary impulse, the force that drives the Great Flow toward an increase of awareness. Only that which already contains unity potentially — that which has emerged from unity by its initial differentiation and remains ontologically one — can strive for and attain unity.

Unlike the “Holy Spirit,” the Shekhinah, which is born of the “echo” of the Absolute, Mezla has as its source the collective awareness of all living beings — that is, it belongs to the manifest world, even though its origin is the Great Spirit. The cosmos’ response to the “call” of Mezla as the general principle of evolutionary unity in the ascending current of awareness is the “created light” — Epinoia.

Moreover, ontologically Mezla represents the archetype of that pleromic unified macrocosmic awareness which is the very goal of the process of the Universe’s evolution. Thus the Absolute is present in the Cosmos as a binary active component — Mezla (“Divine Love”) — and a passive one — the Shekhinah (“Divine Wisdom”); the operative element of the latter being “divine thought” — Epinoia. Modern occultism describes this presence as the differentiation in the Unknowable Light (“Ain Sof Or”) of an active part, “Od,” and a passive one, “Ob.” Just as the Shekhinah, born from the “seed of Keter” into Malkuth, aspires to the Crown, so Mezla, pouring forth from Keter, flows into Malkuth; it is these forces that imbue the Cosmos with an impulse to develop and to overcome its limitations. Or, in more European terms, just as the ideal world, Iriy, seeks expression in the real world, so the real world seeks to approximate the Celestial Archetype. In that act of conjunction with the Eternal and the Unconditioned, all that is transient and conditional acquires a new meaning, is in a sense reborn into being, becomes a living symbol and an unfathomably deep revelation. The action of Grace grants a person the invaluable gift of union with the Spirit, which Christian mystics called “deification.” It is clear that the action of Mezla always operates in synergy with the free will of embodied beings. Such synergy is an essential element of the flow of Power in the world. In this, mind aspires to the Absolute, to the Monad, and the Monad aspires to be expressed in mind. The manifestation of this “descending” energy of the Monad is traditionally called “tzure.” The embodied being, for its part, manifests will, and the Spirit — grace; their joint action creates the evolving personality. Thus Mezla is simultaneously the principle of the cosmos’ inner unity, ontologically linking the primordial unity with the diversity of its concrete manifestations, and the principle of the dynamic emergence of that unity as a synthetic unity actively integrating a multiplicity of states, forms, and phenomena. This means that the links of the cosmic hierarchy are not separated from one another by insurmountable ruptures, but are intrinsically connected — both dynamically in the process of involutive unfolding and evolutionary ascent, and statically through the constant, immediate participation of each link in the Great Spirit. It likewise means that in each link of the cosmic symphony the whole is reflected — both in isolation and in the infinite combinations. The reflection of the whole in the part is potential, and the whole of this part’s evolution lies in the actualization of that latent potential — which constitutes the objectification and affirmation of individuality. A Magus who has grasped unity in multiplicity reflects the whole Universe within themselves, and the Universe, in turn, reflects the Magus; in this mutual reflection the potentials of the Magus’ Monad are actualized. Thanks to this, concrete being is raised, for the first time, to participation in the cosmic activity of the whole as such. It frees itself from the dominion of local relative conditions as sole imperatives, rises above its environment and above its own limitations.