Contemplating Sefer HaBahir

Journey Into Redemptive Consciousness

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Ark Sparks From The Dark

הוא בשחקים וכא"א ישת חשך סתרו
Sefer HaBahir, verse 1, excerpt from lines 2-3

"in the skies [round about G-d in terrible majesty], another verse states, He made darkness His hiding place ..." (traditional interpretation)

"Hua, with (laughs of) laughter, and as one alef exists darkly, protects the connection ..." (Liorah's interpretation)

"in the skies" = "with (laughs of) laughter" = בשחקים

This word from Sefer HaBahir is not from the shoresh shin-chet-kuf שׁחק, meaning "pound to a fine dust". Rather, it is from the shoresh sin-chet-kuf שׂחק, meaning laughter and overcoming difficulties. They look the same, almost.

That in the skies (with a shin, where the dot is on the right) is not on the earth. It isn't "real" yet.

Laughter (with a sin, where the dot is on the left) makes it real. I wrote a poem many years ago, Ark Sparks, about this kind of "crazy laughter" of the "left emanation".

crazy
strange and curious, maybe even insane
a misfit mind, a holy madness
what can I say
without excuse and
absolutely true
deep and darkly iconoclastic, living on the cutting edge
tottering everywhichway in bitty bytes zapping happily
chaos into a confounded matrix offering up numbers
irrational against the laughing lightning bug
dancing through the brain
stringing wavelets of funny disequilibrium
crazy
strange and curious, maybe even insane
a misfit mind, a holy madness
what can you say
without excuse and
absolutely true
deep and darkly iconoclastic, living on the cutting edge
tottering everywhichway in bitty bytes zapping happily
chaos into a confounded matrix offering up numbers
irrational against the laughing lightning bug
dancing through the brain
stringing wavelets of funny disequilibrium


You may right, I may be crazy ... but it just may be a lunatic you're looking for. (Billy Joel, You May Be Right)