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Kabbalah Wisdom

Introduction to Kabbalah Wisdom

In the May newsletter I published the new introduction for the Visions of the Schechinah e-book. In the June newsletter, I am publishing the introduction to the e-book Kabbalah Wisdom.

This e-book consists of Chapters six and eight from Everywoman a Goddess: Everyman a Hero in Her Service and is available for only $2.50. These new introductions, give you the reader, a chance to hear new ideas from me .

Many people have commented that my book has so much in it that it should really be many books. Perhaps that is true but in self-reflection, my greatest ability is integrating multiple subjects, which is why my book is written in this manner.

By breaking up into five e-books the focus is on less subject matter at a time as well as being more economical. This e-book Kabbalah Wisdom combines the chapters “Midrash of Love”, with “The Kabbalah in Tantric Kabbalah”. While there is a lot of my Jewish point of view throughout the book, especially regarding Teshuvah, the Schechinah and Lishma, this e book contains most of my creative prophetic writing on Jewish topics.

Despite my unconventional life and career, I am actually deeply connected to Jewish history and especially Jewish intellectual history. I do not really seek to be a radical but deep in my heart I desire to be accepted by Jewish thinkers and Jewish society. I am comforted by the knowledge that both Maimonides and the early Hasids were rejected as too radical for Jewish history and thought. Maimonides books were burned in his lifetime and afterwards for several generations. I do not enjoy being ostracized by society and by Jewish society in particular. The true God of the American Jewish people Success, has deserted me. My naïve notions that merely thinking up wonderful new ideas would bring me attention and success have been treated the way, naivety and new ideas are usually treated by a society ruled by power elites whose only concern is to maintain their power.

I have come to accept that only when my medical research on apocrine sweat comes to fruition will any significant numbers of people both Jewish and in the larger world ever hear of me and my ideas. I am going forward with my research again after a hiatus of several years. Very soon I will be asking my readers to help me find volunteers with active cancer in their bodies to donate apocrine sweat for proteomic analysis.

Nevertheless I do take some solace from the response of a Hasidic rabbi when he heard my idea that the reason God tells Moses that he is going to harden Pharaoh’ heart is because he is giving Moses an opportunity to argue with God. The rabbi said to me “ This is your own idea?” because he had never heard it anywhere. He also complimented me on its profundity.

This e-book has my extended discussion about arguing with God and also my Midrash on the two parallel stories of the banishment of Ishmael and the Akeda, the binding of Isaac. I believe that this Midrash holds the key to healing the rift between the children of Ishmael and the children of Israel. Healing this rift will be completing the Teshuvah of Sarah that the shofar blast calls for every year.

Further Chapter eight reveals my own personal mantra and its meaning. It is my Divinely inspired path to heal the fragmented male energy in this world and to then unify the masculine and feminine energy both in yourself, in your relationships, and in the Divine and to bring healing on an unprecedented scale into manifestation.

I am both a student of Maimonides and a student of Kabbalah. I embrace both the rational and the mystical and indeed the mystical only becomes understandable and feasible when it can pass the test of rationality. The rational without the mystical cannot bring any creativity into the world and therefore by itself is not in the image of the Divine. Critical to this process is to embrace Abraham’s arguing with God in the name of peace and justice, Sarah’s Teshuvah for banishing Ishmael, the healing of Isaac at the place God sent an angel to Hagar, and the integration of male and female modes of thought of the left and right cerebral hemispheres.

Come and see, come and see.

Trees of Life

Rabbi Cooper in God is a Verb explains that the ten sephirot of the kabbalistic tree of life act as ten step-down transformers that allows Divine Energy to reach humanity in a form that will not overwhelm us.

What is also remarkable about the tree of life is that it includes the Divine Masculine energy and the Divine Feminine energy within itself. The tree is both masculine and feminine. This fits in perfect agreement with Genesis 1, where human beings are described as being made in the Divine image, male and female together.

Another use of the metaphor of the tree is made in Kabbalah when referring to Tzadikim or very holy individuals. They are described as God’s trees.
What about real trees, how special are trees to be singled out for such important spiritual metaphors? I have always been very drawn to trees, personally. I love to live around trees, especially mature trees. When I am around trees I feel calm and at ease.

Looking up at them, at their movement in the wind, their silhouette against the sky in the sunshine, during dark skies, at night, in the gloaming hour, they are so alive and vibrant.

I love the variety of kinds of trees. Having lived in New York City and Upstate New York, living in California, and having visited the South, you can almost tell where you are geographically very quickly just by looking at the trees.

I remember in my childhood learning about ancient societies that are no more. One of the common characteristics they shared about their decline is that the cutting down of their trees destroyed their climate and agricultural base. Jared Diamond in his book Collapse details this truth over many societies in many time periods. Cut down enough trees and the rain will cease and humans will suffer.

Why should this be so? That is the subject of my revelation. As a pediatrician fluid status was always essential in evaluating and diagnosing what was wrong with any child. Small children have less fluid reserves and are therefore more susceptible to dehydration. In understanding fluids in a child or an adult you have to understand fluid compartments. Fluid exists inside cells, fluid exists inside the circulatory system and fluid exists outside of cells but not in the blood vessels, the interstitial space. Water does not just cross the cell membranes between cells and blood vessels passively, there are active transport mechanisms involved and when those mechanisms are disrupted is when illness occurs.

My revelation was that just as water requires a passageway to cross a barrier in our cells and organs, water requires a passageway in the larger physical world as well. Trees are that passageway. It is easy to think of the barrier between earth and sky as analogous to the barrier of the cell membrane. The tree is the mechanism, a living mechanism, for water to travel across this barrier. The roots of the tree organize the soil, changing the microchemistry of the space within its reach. The roots draw up water from the soil into its body and then above the ground into its trunk, branches and leaves.

Just as its roots organize the soil, its branches and leaves organize the sky. Trees of all kinds bring water from the soil into the sky. The variety of trees matches the variety of local conditions on the surface of the earth. Once trees have transported water into the sky clouds are formed. The tree appears to be a single independent living thing separate from other living things. When you think of trees in this way, they are not separate at all. They are part of a living mechanism of a living being. The earth is alive and trees are essential to the movement of fluids in the compartments of the earth. Kill enough trees and a disease starts to manifest, the disease of drought and climate change.

The image of the New World that became the United States of America when the European colonists first arrived was of a land completely covered in trees. It was a place of unbelievable abundance. There are very few trees left now in the United States compared to those that lived in the sixteenth century. Someone might say that well there are lots of trees in the American west and this is true. Yet from the Mississippi River to the east coast was one continuous forest prior to Columbus. As many trees are gone in the eastern United States this area is still not as denuded of trees as Europe. We need to compare to what we once were and not to the worst possible examples.

To some degree, human beings cut down trees all over the world because we are ignorant as well as greedy. We can not afford to be willingly ignorant any more. It is clear that a species that cuts down trees and disrupts the living mechanism for fluid transport from earth to sky is acting as the carrier of a planetary disease.

One of the visions that the Schechinah has given me is to grow hemp plants in the sky to shift the balance between carbon dioxide production and consumption, to lower the levels of carbon dioxide in the air and reduce global warming. Hemp is a great source of plant fiber that eliminates the need to cut down trees for their pulp products.

The planet is sick and at some point sickness reaches a tipping point. We must as a species recognize the importance of trees and change our behavior. Either human beings will become stewards of Mother Earth, recognizing the Divine Feminine, or we will suffer most terribly. We must become holy individuals, the trees of the Divine, and the first step is to recognize the importance and honor of trees. Yes we must all become tree huggers.

Reader Contributions

This month we are honored to publish three poems. I think you will enjoy all three.

The Daughters of Hecate

By the dark of the moon
That shimmers deep
In the night’s heart/in the heart of the night
By the wisdom
Of each cycles spent blood
By the flux of our moon-blood/wise-blood
By the steps of our dancing

I bless myself
And my sisters

From We dream of Bodies Perfected
a book of poetry by Suzan Bokanovich

For the Lady

I will type my hands on your hands,
On your breasts
And along your back.
My little finger
Will curve across your foot.
I will type my tongue on your tongue,
My tongue behind your knee
And along your thigh.

I do not have enough hands,
My tongue is not long enough,
Let me type more simply on this sheet
My face next to yours.

From “no idea” a book of poetry by Richard Autio

Both books may be purchased from Petroglyph Books
Petroglyphbooks.com

Vintage Passion

Alabaster fields,
these full warm breasts
waiting to be seeded by the pleasure
of fingers spread
then firm pressed
and watered by the slick brush
of tongue and trailing whiskers.

Vineyards grow,
in each pulse of blood rushing through
vein tendrils under transparent skin
feeding the instant sprout
of hard raised nipples
and pushing out
that other musky seedling
in lower fields;
begging for flickered nurturing
to encourage flowering
and transformation.

Warm,
luscious taste waiting…
in this milky harvest,
grown in such
deliberate rough farming
of my joyful treasure.

Vintner's pleasure,
to suckle, twist and bend
each warm nub
then stomp the passionate fruit
with
nibbling teeth and pinching grasp.

Unstopper the stream
of sudden cream
and taste this sullen wine.
Come,
drunken in it's flavor
to discover freedom and release.
Breathe heady scents
and fall,
inebriated into energetic thrust.
Exhaust yourself
in a second planting
of precious seed,
deep and full
into the demanding steam
of dark pink welcoming womb.

Choose a label
and a name.
Bottle up the essence
of this occasion.
Let it age into a potency
more honest
even than
the moment of it's making.

My favored wine
this cup of thought,
this thirst quenching draught
of memory and gift.
It was a very good pressing
as I recall.

Copyright June 20, 1999
By Marie Hinchy