Imagine two main stages in creatives’ lives. The first is of sheer excitement but no to minimal skill. The second, the opposite.
Stage 1. The Crown
Stage one is nothing but possibilities. Or, as Viktor Frankl calls them, “unactualized potentialities” for the skills and projects you’ll eventually build.
It can be viewed as Kether, the first Sephirah in the Qabalistic Tree of Lifе. Pure Spirit, yet to manifest.
Stage 2. The Kingdom
In stage 2, you have concrete skills, style, and proficiency, such as a deep awareness of how to turn ideas into existence. Yet the shimmer of infinity is gone alongside your beginner’s naivety expressed by the Fool card, which is Kether. Welcome to Malkuth, the Kingdom of form, density, and separation.
The Kingdom and the Crown
Now, here’s the catch: Most people believe the Spirit and Matter are separate, but students of Qabalah know that:
“The Crown is in the Kingdom and the Kingdom in the Crown.“
Like water and ice, Spirit and Matter are the two conditions of the same thing! Everything in between is degrees and proportions:
- The Paths and Sephiroth between 1 and 10.
- The other alchemical Elements, Fire, Water, and Air. The realms of Archetypes, Ideas, and Formation, in the process of manifestation.
Reflection
From all Elements, Earth bears the most resemblance to Spirit. They mirror each other, as both contain all possibilities:
- One is seed, or pure potential.
- The other is the physical reality of action and the “actualized potentialities” in the past, in Frankl’s terms.
Real Life
Reflections bring clarity:
- At 15, you had no skill but raw excitement. You were in Kether. Infinite, but unformed. The Fool embarking on your journey.
- At 35, you have skills your fifteenth-year-old version didn’t even dream about, yet excitement is substantially lower. You are in Malkuth. And though you never stop learning, you are somewhat complete. The Universe card.
The challenge is to keep going. The only way to do so is to realize the circle, recognizing Kether’s excitement in Malkuth as every grain of matter holds the Crown within it.
Quest Completion
Orders like the Golden Dawn and the A∴A∴ run their systems on what we call “The Way of Return,” which we’ll cover in another post. Their adepts climb the Tree, following the Path of the Serpent.
On a micro level, you achieve this task with each project, extracting Spirit from your skills and actions. You make divine law prevail in the Kingdom of the Shadows, finding infinity in the finite.
No End
It starts unravelling the moment you get to work. And as you do, excitement grows, overflowing into the next project, all having the same blueprint, which is You. After all, the whole diagram is based on overflowing with Malkuth being Kether of another Tree, going to infinity, duh.
The cycle never ends, like the never-ending reflection of the Sephiroth. YHVH is not a one-time event, but an ongoing transformation, reflected in your work.
Creation itself is the alchemy: The Knight (King) and the Queen have sex, birthing Prince and Princess, who repeat the cycle, becoming the Kngth and the Queen. Artists and creatives are Magicians, whether they realize it or not.