Theos-Talk Archives (August 2004 Message tt00736)

http://adreampuppet.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_adreampuppet_archive.html

Swedenborg, Blake and the Sexual Basis of Spiritual Vision 



According to the Kabbalistic theories adopted by Zinzendorf, God and the 
universe are composed of dynamic sexual potencies (the sephiroth) which interact 
with each other and produce orgasmic joy when in perfect equilbrium [13]. In 
the Holy of Holies of the Temple in Jerusalem, a golden sculpture of male and 
female cherubim guarded the Ark of the Covenant. The Kabbalists claimed that the 
cherubim were entwined in the act of marital intercourse, thus forming an 
emblem of God's joyful marriage with his female emanation, the Shekhinah (or 
Jerusalem). When the Temple was sacked by pagans, the erotic statuary was paraded 
through the streets in order to ridicule the Jews. That Blake was aware of 
this tradition is suggested by his reference to the defilement of Jerusalem, "Thy 
Tabernacle taken down, thy secret Cherubim disclosed." [14]
After the destruction of the Temple, the re-joining of the cherubim (and thus 
the reintegration of the male and female within God) depends upon the 
reverent act of sacramental intercourse by the devout Kabbalist and his wife [15]. 
This reintegrative process can also take place within the adept's mind, while he 
meditates upon the male and female potencies of Hebrew letters and numbers 
until he reaches a state of visionary trance. God's androgynous essence is 
manifested in the microcosmic body of Adam Kadmon (the Grand Man), and the 
Kabbalists portray the divine processes within that body "in vividly sexual terms." 
[16] Blake's declarations to a confused Crabb Robinson that "we are all 
coexistent with God; members of the Divine Body, and Partakers of the Divine Nature," 
which was originally androgynous and manifested in "a union of sexes in man" 
reveal his familiarity with this Kabbalistic tradition [17].


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]