To get off the path of the Kabbalah proper, I'm rather fond of a belief of Plato's. He believed that the soul was a fallen, polluted deity incarcerated in the body as in a tomb and doomed to a perpetual cycle of rebirth. This came from Plato often feeling he was a man in his own world often out of his element. Pythagoras expounded on this, and taught that the soul could be liberated by ritual purification.

Sound familiar? Of course, Plato believed that the universe of a God was an unmoving, unchanging entity (Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover" later) and that the soul could be released through rituals of pure reason. Not really practical, that.

The Kabbalah comes from the Greek concept of "emanation", around the time of Christ, with the error bars being about 400 years in either direction. They believed that God could not directly influence Mankind, that a God who was born on the Earth and existed in human beings was a blasphemous concept. So they had God emanate the Logos, the divine Wisdom and Creativity of God, which was more accessible to human beings. The Logos eventually became a duel aspect, two emanations, with Wisdom being on one side and Creativity being on the other, and these two influence man.

It's an easy step to see how the Demiurge was first "Ein Sof", the Platonic unknowable, untouchable universe, which emanated into the real world as Kether, a form of God which did exist in the universe but was still unknowable by mankind. Kether, like the Greek God of the early philosophers, emanated the Logos -> Binah and Chokmah. These two are STILL unknowable and non understandable by mankind, so it emanated again in pairs until it became the Shekinah, which IS knowable by mankind as God existing as the world we live in, in all his aspects. Yadda yadda yadda, here's your copy of the Zohar, and your complementary cookie.

It's easy to see from here where later "magicians" got the concept that they could have power over the World, and hence the power over God, if they walked and understood each of the Sephira in turn. So how does this relate to KULT? Good question, except that I think Plato is an AwakenedBeing out there somewhere.

I don't think the Demiurge is equal to Ein Sof. In that case, its (his?) disappearance would have been caused by the disappearance of Archons, which make out its consistence. The rests of the Demiurge would then be the remaining Archons. I guess that Astaroth then would be some kind of mirror-image of the tree of life, turned upside-down, with the Angels of Death replacing the Archons.

FuzzyLogic fuzzylogic@LEGO.MCIT.MED.UMICH.EDU

I think Jerker is completely correct in the idea that if the Demiurge = Ein Sof, and the Demiurge goes poof that all the Archons would go poof as well. I don't remember how far I went on my rant of this particular topic, but in my Kultiverse (ich, what a term) Ein Sof is a role (heck of a job, being the nothingness from which all springs)

Job Title: Ein Sof

Responsibilities Include: Self-exile and emanation. Must be a self-starter.

Poor Astaroth. Guess who got suckered into being Ein Sof when the Demiurge ceased to Exist, and endures the tortures and the eventual destruction of it as it knows itself if the prison is completely sundered? Sucks to be Astaroth.

Mind you, this is only in *my* universe, and is by no means gospel or "right" in any way. Heck, I might be flat out lying in the service of some dark (or bright) master. In short, its my party and they'll die if I want to.

On another note, I don't like the idea of a "good" or an "evil". We're the good guys, just ask us! I think its more of poor humanity caught in ambitions and series of cause and effect. Good and Evil are just terms my NPCs use to make the PCs feel better or worse about themselves.

I'm working on a Kult campaign using the World of Darkness rules and background (albeit somewhat toned down from its current comic-book state). One of the reasons I'm curious about Heaven is that the Wraith rules for the Jail of Night (kudos to Paul Beakley for an excellent series of articles) present a version of the Shadow which I'm not sure I buy. I've never been completely happy with the Shadow rules in Wraith, and I'm not sure that the ones in Kult work completely either. I'd like to be able to find some way of blending the Gnostic idea of opposites and the Shadow of Jungian psychology effectively in a game, but neither of the two game systems does it perfectly. Of course, maybe Jung made some mistakes in his search for the Truth... all the same, though, I'd like to think that he had the basic symbolism down. I just read a book called "The Gnostic Jung", a collection of essays where he finds psychological parallels for Gnostic myths and cosmology. Great Kult material. It's a great way of tying mysticism into science and equating body and mind. Perhaps Jung was a budding Conjurer of Madness? He certainly found effective methods of raising mental balance above zero...

As for Jung being a conjurer of madness... After writing a paper on Jung and Nietzscheanism and the untergang des ubermenschen, am I ready to call the a guy one of the Great Masters in the Lore of Madness. Quite whacko (and that's a technical term), and full of insights. His material does fit nicely with KULT, it really does.


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