"Heidrick, Bill - The Star Sponge and the Fifty Gates" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heidrick Bill)

Many of those who espouse the "new" Chaos Magick fail in this regard.
There is nothing new or revolutionary in Chaos Magick. It is the common
practice of all students of the mysteries, and a beginning to serious work.
Study of established systems is necessary. From Crowley's spontaneous
(Chaotic?) vision of the Star Sponge, a trivia in itself, he went on to
discover the ramifications of this vision in the accumulated lore of
mathematics. Had he not done that, he would have spent much time
"rediscovering the wheel". As it worked out, Crowley was able to apply
elementary field theory by metaphor to teleology and, less successfully, to
sociology.

-oOo-

"4. The fifty gates of Binah have been variously explained. They do not
appear to be of any great importance; it is only their number which is
significant. The reference is to Nun = 50 = Scorpio Atu XIII -- Death."
--- from "Cry of 14 Aethyr", "Vision & Voice", page 82, fn 4.

The 50 gates of Binah were not directly understood by Crowley as such, but
he acquired the conception through time and personal experience. The
essential idea behind the 50 gates appears in many of his writings and
attainments; e.g., "Wakeworld" in "Knox Om Pax", and "Vision and Voice".
Crowley missed the significance of the G.'. D.'. diagram of the ten
Sephiroth in seven palaces in this conjunction. That diagram ("Equinox" Vol
I, No. 2, "Temple of Solomon the King", p. 272, Dia. 27) shows the
distribution of the ten Sephiroth into seven palaces, and is a representation
of the exact moment of the opening of the fiftieth gate --- the crossing of
the Abyss. At that moment Malkut and Yesod merge and the upper three
Sephiroth appear as one, as Binah. Crowley was aware of this from direct
experience, and noted seeing the Supernals as one Sephira on first crossing
the Abyss. Unlike his experience with the "Star Sponge" vision, he apparently
did not identify this with a pre-existing body of knowledge, the tradition of
the Fifty Gates of Understanding. Very Probably this oversight can be blamed
on the old Golden Dawn representations of these 7 palaces and the Beast of
Revelations in a Christian negative view. See "Equinox" Vol. I, No. 2,
p. 275, Dia. 33 and p. 283, Dia. 51, where the Beast is associated with the
palaces. Most of the speculation concerning it has dealt with things like the
seven hills of Rome, Christian heresies concerning "Satan", Antichrist and the
like. This Beast is a relic of gnostic and prechristian mysticism of unknown
antiquity. "Revelations" is itself a forgery, with the visions copied from
prechristian Merkabah sources. The Beast with 10 horns and 7 heads is a
variant of the serpent on the 32 paths of the Tree of Life and an alternative
to the diagram of the seven palaces.

There is a list of the Fifty Gates of Binah or Understanding in the back of
a translation of the "Sepher Yetzirah" by Wescott, although not in all
editions, and the original of that list is in Kircher's "Oedipus Aegyptiacus".
Westcott took liberties with his source. He changed gate 41 and removed
material from the description of gate 50, concerning Moses. His translations