by RobertAllen » Wed Aug 03, 2011 9:55 am
52. I have a little son like a wanton goat; my daughter is like an unfledged eaglet; they shall get them fins, that they may swim.
For a chapter about fire it sure has a lot of water in it. Of course, it's fire, but more significantly Netzach, qualifying that fire...
I know there is a very profound notion about the relationship of water to fire here, I can feel it, but like a dream that is not recoded immediately on waking I cannot say exactly what it is.
Beyond this I am struck by the notion of adaptation: the goat, a creature of earth, and a fledgling eagle, an animal fitted to fly in the air are presented as evolving other organs that will allow them to function in another environment. The simplest association I have is that the body is the goat, and the eagle is the mind. And water, by definition, is reflective.
53. That they may swim, O my beloved, swim far in the warm honey of Thy being, O blessed one, O boy of beatitude!
So the sentiment may be that the lower vehicles will be able to reflect the higher experience, not so much to show it forth, but to participate, swim, inside of it. These lower parts of the soul do not dissolve, they just live inside of it and are benefited by it? In any event it is a good and pleasurable thing to do, possibly even salutary.
The whole takes the form of a prophecy, not unlike those from other religions concerning the renewal of the earth—the descent of the new Jerusalem, the assumption of the physical body in its reconstructed perfection into heaven...
Love and Will
"I remember seeing Atlas looking at a world whose hoops and rings had been broken by Copernicus, where Tycho Brahe placed his back beneath the globe, and a shouting Ptolemy tried to support the round lump, to stop it from falling into the void. In the mean time Copernicus was breaking many crystal spheres that were placed around the globe and was stamping out the little lights that flickered in the crystal jars." (de Hooghe, Hieroglyphica, Amsterdam, 1744)