What the Jews Knew Part Deux

from kabbalah to biohack bros

Last week we kicked off with Part One of What The Jews Knew that contrasted the Hebrew concept of “letting the Mystery Stay the Mystery” and Christian fundamentalist certainty, and also shared a revised Holy Trinity that restores the feminine holy ghost and shifts the geometries of that triad to interesting effect.

Check it here if you want to catch up!

Now we’re going to riff on two more things that the Jews knew…

#3: Biohack Bros and the High Holy Guardian Angel

Let’s fast forward from the first few centuries A.D. to the middle of the historical deck and zero in on–

A medieval rabbi who’s the accidental Godfather of our current psychedelic biohacking personal optimization moment (god forgive him).

I’m only gonna sketch the briefest of outlines of this one, but if you’re already into some of these characters, it’s worth a deep dive yourself.

The Fabled Story of Abraham the Jew.

Also known as Abraham of Worms or Abramelin the Mage—Abe was a legendary figure from 15th century German magical tradition–most famous for his "The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage."

Abraham was supposedly a German Jew who traveled extensively through the Middle East in search of magical knowledge. His book describes his journey to Egypt where he encountered a master named Abramelin, who taught him a comprehensive magical system centered around achieving "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.

In the Abramelin system, the Holy Guardian Angel represents one's higher divine self or spiritual guide. It’s not quite your “higher self” in the sense that it’s also apparently autonomous and does its own thing. But it also appears uniquely paired to you in some kind of “witch and her familiar” sort of way.

Contacting your HHGA Abramelin style involved an elaborate 18-month ritual preparation including:

• Extended periods of prayer and purification

• Social isolation and dietary restrictions

• Daily invocations and ceremonial practices

• Gradual progression through different spiritual states

But here’s the thing: There’s no real historical record of the fella, and stories of his magickal ways don’t actually pop up until the 18th century.

He’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a plausibly deniable tall tale of his own!

(see also: Gerald Gardner inventing modern Wicca out of whole cloth, Carlos Castenada fabricating his Yaqui Don Juan, Gurdjieff’s supposed worldly wanderings, and even Alex Comfort pretending The Joy of Sex was a found lovers’ journal, and you quickly realize most of modern esoterica has been capital T Truths wrapped in Big Little Lies)

A little while later though, (late 19th, early 20th centuries) the occultists of the Golden Dawn and one Mad Bad and Dangerous To Gnow Aleister Crowley dusted off the Jew’s instructions on invoking the High Holy Guardian Angel.

It became THE central ritual of Western Magick and set us up for the whole Age of Aquarius Sex Drugs and RocknRoll era.

(Crowley condensed it from the 18 month ordeal it used to be, cuz we moderns be busy)

Fast forward another half century, and you get the Psychonaut Trifecta of Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, and John Lilly, hooking down copious amounts of psychedelics (LSD, ketamine, DMT, THC), summoning their High Holy Guardian Angels (HHGA) in float tanks and , and thoroughly rethinking “the human biocomputer.”

They came to the conclusion that consciousness is hackable, that hedonic engineering is desirable, and that we can tune our primate nervous systems to access information and even entities that used to be the domain of superstition.

Hedonic Engineering -- The human nervous system studying and improving itself: intelligence studying and improving intelligence. Why be depressed, dumb, and agitated when you can be happy, smart, and tranquil? –Robert Anton Wilson

Fast forward a final half century and you get us to today.

Where an unholy combination of snake oil preaching and unlimited hubris about Man’s Transhuman Potential, has given us The Biobros.

Shilling hacks, stacks, shots and shortcuts

while…

hooking down copious amounts of psychedelics (LSD, ketamine, DMT, THC), summoning their Singularity Avatars (HHGA) in float tanks and sexytime , while thoroughly rethinking “the human biocomputer.”

#sameasiteverwas

How crazy is that?

A direct through line, from medieval Abraham to near-evil Aleister, from Aquarians Lilly and Leary to PodBros Huberman and Marcus

Like I said, the Jews knew.

Final Point to Bring It Home

While Early Christianity had a good run, filled with enthusiasms, ecstasies and agonies, by the time Emperor Constantine made it the state religion of Rome things got a lot less fun.

They locked shit down (doctrinally speaking) with the Council of Nicea and thereafter, anyone having unsanctioned flashes of Divine communion were no longer welcomed to the table.

They were burned at the stake.

The salad days of tongues of fire, holy pentecost and Damascene Conversions were done. Deference to popes and bishops were in.

But the Jews embraced a less centralized, more “open-source” mode of cultural development. And it’s one we could take lessons from today.

#4: Kabbalah and the Midrash

Kabbalah emerged from earlier forms of Jewish mysticism in 12th- to 13th-century al-Andalus (Spain) and Provence, France. The Zohar, the most famous and foundational text of Kabbalah, doesn’t appear until the late 13th century.

(the cute little red string bracelets and Hollywood offices came later).

This is the landscape that ol’ Abraham the Jew and his instructions for rocking your High Holy Guardian Angel sprung up from.

But this new, ongoing, living mystical tradition wasn’t as ancient as it made out to be. It was emergent. It didn’t originate in the deserts of the Holy Land. It started in southern Europe.

And it wasn’t violently stamped out by the Hebrew Establishment, either.

Instead, it was haltingly, grudgingly integrated into Jewish tradition.

A lot of this comes down to another Hebrew innovation, the Midrash (from the Hebrew root d-r-sh, "to seek" or "to inquire").

It’s basically a process of discussion and meaning-making that gets added, layer upon layer to the original “texts.”

This created an interpretive culture where:

• Gap-filling was encouraged: Midrash tackled apparent contradictions, missing details, and unclear passages in Scripture (and there’s lots)

• Inspired Riffing was accepted: Rabbis regularly derived moral, legal, and theological lessons through creative textual interpretation

• Symbolic (vs. Literalist) reading was standard: Events, characters, and objects in biblical narratives were understood to carry deeper significance

This midrashic culture eventually crystallized into the famous PaRDeS system that Kabbalists adopted:

• Peshat (simple/literal meaning)

• Remez (hint/allegorical meaning)

• Drash (homiletical/moral meaning)

• Sod (secret/mystical meaning)

  Kabbalah positioned itself as exploring the fourth level - the sod - while explicitly affirming the other three levels. Kinda subversive, but sneakily successful.

Can you imagine if America’s cultural Christians were able to have something as inclusive and adaptive as that four step PaRDeS method of discussion?

Instead, we seem to be stuck with a Protestant Peshat (simple, literal, fundamentalist truth and loyalty tests) rather than progressing through the other three, all the way to the end goal.

The Secret within the Secret.

After all, Jesus famously taught in parables. Most scholars conclude that it was a great way to get dumb crowds to remember wise things.

First you sow the seed…

Then you water the seed…

#hadtoBeThere

But there was always another reason too.

Parables don’t just make hard concepts easier.

They make secret concepts harder.

Unless you’re gifted “with ears to listen and eyes to see.”

(or a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring).

Parables can work as cloaking spells, not just stepping stones.

Then those Sunday school fables unlock like a Magic Eye painting, and what seemed simple, even simplistic becomes a three dimensional map of hidden realms.

And the kabbalistic midrash invites us to keep turning those koans over and over for fresh insights, grounded by embodied realization.

End result?

Abraham the Jew begats Aleister Crowley.

Crowley begats Lilly and Leary.

Lilly and Leary begat psychedelic biohack bros???

Oh, never mind.

We shoulda burned that fucker Abe at the stake when we had the chance.

***

But to pan back and sum up what became a two part series on What the Jews Knew:

#1: In a world of increasing uncertainty, the tug of fundamentalism is more alluring than ever. Awash and unmoored, we’ll cling to almost any rock we come across.

That’s where the Hebrew tradition of never presuming to define and know the Divine might serve as a helpful antidote.

If we let the Mystery stay the Mystery, we can be less certain, but more open. Less righteous but hopefully more right.

#2: We don’t need to bolt on new stuff to match our current social sensibilities. Quite often, all we need to do is dust off the original stuff, like revising the gender of the Holy Spirit, to restore what always was. That’s a far more powerful (and subversive) way to effect change.

Rollbacks get less pushback.

#3: As we survey the relentless landscape of products and programs, tips and tricks in today’s neuro-porn psychedelic personal improvement marketplace can we remember a couple of things:

• there’s nothing new under the sun, techniques for hacking human consciousness are as old as the hills, and we’d do well to learn our lineages before blowing ourselves to Kingdom Come (or wasting our money on the latest geegaw or gadget)

• High Holy Guardian Angels are, apparently, a thing, and probably not to be fucked with casually on your weekend Aya or breathwork retreat

  #foolsrushin

#4: And finally, Revelation, even the freshest and most powerful, goes dank if left stagnant over time. That stream of inspiration needs to keep flowing, as the Jewish traditions of Kabbala and midrash insist.

False certainty is as bad as abject ignorance.

There may indeed be nothing new under the sun.

But the Jews knew that too, a long time ago.