So, if you stalked my Tumblog, you may have caught a few throwaway sentences that announced I had reached the end of the Path of Cheth and had set foot upon Binah. It was such an anticlimactic end, that I almost dismissed it as the wishing of a vain and cowardly mind. Surely after all I had went through just getting to the Path of Cheth, there had to be something more to the success than the notation that I arrived. Right?
I have struggled with how to write this or if I should let it fade gently away because of how sparse and unfilling the final words of the Path of Cheth “saga” will be. I’ll try.
When I last wrote of the Path of Cheth, I had made it across to the mountain, but failed to find a path up the mountain. Instead, the path I found led me on a winding jaunt that ended with me being expelled from the unyielding granite. I wrote then that I considered the journey across the Abyss to have been completed once I stepped off the tightrope onto the granite.
That assumption was in error. I had only traveled halfway across the Abyss, and had only traded one challenge for another.
If the tightrope was a manifestation of my fear and I had conquered that fear, then what was this hunk of immovable granite? I have attributed the Path of Cheth to be represented by the Chariot tarot card. (Or vice versa, depending on which way you form the question.) The tightrope represented my fear of failure and my fear of succeeding. Terror and Hubris combined to either pull me off or push me out of control. (Now you see why the handhold rope was a false help?) But I made it! I crossed the tightrope. I have control over my metaphorical horses! What else is there to the Chariot?
Determination and focus.
Do I have the focus to proceed? I suspected the false path that led me back to the Abyss was a distraction, nothing more. I came back to the mountain the next night, arriving at a different cliff face than the first. Again, there was a well worn, toe-width ledge that led to another easily trodden path just wide enough for me to walk comfortably. Again, the high walls prevented me from seeing anything other than the foot-rounded path before me. Again, the path ends with the mountain itself pushing me into the Abyss.
I wasn’t about to try this a third time, I told myself. Going up the mountain will not be that easy.
I spent a few more nights trying anyway, because the alternative was the impossible. Every time the tightrope brought me to the granite block, it would end at the vertical cliff face. It took a little dexterity, a little stone hugging, and lots of toe-stubbing to dance off the tightrope onto the footpaths. As hard as it was, the alternative was walking up the cliff face itself.
That can’t happen, right?
Just thinking about ascending the true vertical surface has caused the stone to be rendered polished glass smooth. The traction I had earlier that allowed me to hop to the ledge was gone.
I had my wings, but they were useless here. Nothing can fly in the Abyss except for what the Abyss creates. There is no atmosphere to push against. But then why do I have a body?
The paradox confused me. I feel. I pinch my skin and have pain. I move my mouth and chest as if I am speaking and there is sound despite the complete lack of air to carry sound waves. What the hell is the nature of the Abyss that it allows me just enough of myself to be my self, but not enough of myself to take advantage of my self?
Its nature is to confound, confuse, and prevent anyone from crossing it, that’s what. And if giving me just enough of a mental rope to tie my hands with false assumptions works, then by all means, let me have what I think is my self and think it complete.
Which do I value more? The journey or the destination? If I want to detail the journey for you readers, then I will likely forfeit the destination. If I want to reach the destination, to completely cross the Abyss and not stop halfway like I did with the Path of Vau, I will likely not remember the journey nor the destination.
Sorry, guys. I gotta do this.
I placed my right hand flat against the glassy surface of the granite and willed it to stick. I reached above my head and placed my left hand flat against the granite and will it to stick as well. I didn’t realize my feet were covered in socks for the journey across the tightrope. I resolved to ponder another time on what the socks could represent. I shook off the sock from my left foot, and pushed my toes against the granite.
Only my right foot remained on the tightrope. All else was sticking to the impossible granite. I pushed my weight to my left foot and pulled myself up slightly by my hands. I shook off the sock off my right foot and pressed those toes against the granite as well.
The tightrope disconnected from the granite with a twang. I caught myself thinking about the physical impossibility of what I was doing. I forced those thoughts away by focusing on my destination.
Up. I will go up. And I will reach the summit. I began my crawl up the glass smooth surface slowly. Each movement gave me more confidence in myself and I moved a little faster than the step before.
I did not notice when the cliff had become a spire. By the time it registered that the surface I was climbing had changed in shape, I was climbing a shaft that was three times in circumference as I could reach around. As I continued climbing, the shaft narrowed.
I was able to embrace the shaft completely. Then it was only a foot across. Then it was as thick as a braided iron cable. Then it was as thick as a single iron cable.
It became the thickness of a broom handle, but still I kept climbing. As thin as my hair, but I did not relent. As thin as a laser light in fog, but I persisted.
And then I was standing on solid ground.
It came as a shock to me and I did not recognize at first that I had stopped moving, was standing, and was completely alone. I blinked several times in confusion before I realized my surroundings had changed.
I was surrounded in a thick fog that was heavy with moisture. The scent of water embraced me, but I was not damp. I had a body, but it was indistinct and shifted with my thoughts. It was just enough of a form, to say that I had a form.
I realized the ground under me was not really a ground, but something my mind had created to give me the reassurance of something physical to “stand” on. I did not know where I was, but I did know where I was not.
I was not in the Abyss. This was not a trick. I knew with a certainty that surprised me that I had crossed the Abyss completely and was standing in a representation of the sephira of Binah.
I felt like holding up a little sign with the words, “Now what do I do?” crudely painted on it. I was elated, and a little let down. The only thing here was the dominant scent, and sense, of water.
I felt no other sentience here. I was alone. Or so I thought.
I stopped looking for other sentience like mine, and just stood still and listened.
Something smiled back at me. I couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear it, couldn’t feel it, but I knew it. Whatever it was, it was beyond all my senses, natural and supernatural. I knew it was smiling at me, because it wanted me to know.
I thought of all the things I had planned to say. My introduction would expel me because it would identify me as a manifestation of the lower realms, and nothing manifested can exist above the Abyss. My names were useless, in all the thousand languages I could have used. Physical gestures were an illusion only I could see. Everything I could use to communicate in the lower realms were useless or even dangerous for me here.
All I could do, was to be still, and listen.
I surrendered what little I had to Binah. I released what I held of myself and my identity. I opened myself up to the forces around me, and listened.
…
I… I’m tearing up trying to find words to explain. If you, dear reader, and I were sitting in some peaceful place together, this would be the point in the story when I grasp your hands with what feels like a panicked grip. I would lean close to you while my mouth mimics speech though no sounds are made. My eyes would be large, bloodshot, and rimmed with tears. You would fear that I am having a panic attack, or that I have heard some distressing news that was completely undoing me from within.
No… it’s that beautiful. That the slip of the shadow of the reflection conjured up as “memory” can bring me to this, even now. It’s the harmonies that formed the framework of creation, the musical scale that the melodies of matter was hung on. It’s the iridescence of the purest of colors, that not even the mantis shrimp can comprehend, but instead are what colors look like when not soiled by material interference.
It’s hearing my name, the name I bore before I was born, the word that no other flesh could hold but this one and it will never be uttered again once I leave it. It’s having all these emanations of ineffable things reach into my exposed and defleshed self and rearrange me.
Instead, I stop trying to say what can not be said and just sigh.
I came up from the deep trance in a cold sweat and a near panic. I was back in my flesh, and it felt like I was being thrown into the deepest pit in a forgotten dungeon lorded over by something evil. But it was only me returning to my body. What I interpreted as “evil” was me departing from the unsullied presences above the Abyss. Nothing inherently evil about flesh, after all. It’s what choices we make in this flesh. I think.
I quipped a bit on Tumblr about the non-ending I had for the Path of Cheth, and wondered if I had vainly imagined the entire thing. Until a chance conversation with a friend made me realize something. The effects of the Path of Cheth had already begun to show itself in my waking life long before I had completed it. I would not have spun out Noxporium as a separate site with an eye to it becoming a business front, if not for the Path of Cheth. I would not have stood up for myself on the side tumblog “Three More Cards” and stop chasing the bottom dollar if not for the Path of Cheth. I would not have placed real and tangible values on myself and my abilities if not for the changes the Path of Cheth has carved in me.
I’m probably doing this Kabbalah thing entirely wrong, with the wrong associations, and the wrong Tree of Life, and the wrong magical system to access it. But whatever wrong thing I’m doing, it’s coming out right. And I’m not turning back now.
I said on Tumblr that I was going to try the Path of Cheth again to its completion. Just to be sure that what I experienced at the end was legitimate. I did go back to the Warring Fields and stand on the cliff edge with the tightrope extending at my feet.
But I did not step forward.
It was real. I just knew in the same manner as I knew the intelligence of Binah had smiled on me. I have no concrete proof to deliver to any inquisitor. No mark, no sigil, no secret truth that only the Chosen Ones know. I just know I have a business to expand, and I’m more settled than I was before, and I’m not giving that up.
And such is the saga of the Path of Cheth. The End.