TOTBL

The Third Path · III

Every tree casts a shadow.

Beneath the Tree of Life hangs the Tree of Death. Its fruits are the demons, and its roots are in the abyss.

In the Kabbalah the Qliphoth — the shells, the husks — are the remnants of the broken vessels: the powers cast out of the holy order at the beginning of creation. They are the realms of the demons, ruled by the princes of hell, and orthodox mystics fled from them in terror.

The Left-Hand Path descends into them deliberately. Each sphere of the Other Tree is a kingdom of the night with its own demonic ruler, its own gate and its own initiation. To pass through them is to be devoured and reborn ten times over.

Below, the traditional attributions from the old sources are set beside the gnosis of the Temple. The way leads from Lilith, the gate, upward through the darkness to Thaumiel, the two-headed crown of Satan and Moloch.

The Other Tree

Ten Kingdoms
of the Night

Select a sphere · arrow keys to move

Shadow of Malkuth

Lilith

“The Night”

The gate of the Other Tree. Read from here upward.

Symbolic Sphere
Earth — the material world
Correspondence
Naamah and Lilith in later attributions

In the sources

Shadow of the Kingdom. The world as it appears when stripped of its consolations.

Gnosis of the Temple

The gate of the Queen of the Night. Here the world is stripped of its consolations and the first initiation begins.

The Clauses

  1. I.

    Every treecasts a shadow.

    Where the god of order planted his tree, the serpent coiled at its root.

  2. II.

    The shells holdwhat creation cast out.

    The demons are not destroyed. They wait in the husks for the one who calls.

  3. III.

    The descentis the ascent.

    Down into the abyss is the only way out of the world.

  4. IV.

    Each sphere hasits prince.

    Ten kingdoms of the night, and in each a ruler who must be faced.

  5. V.

    Lilith opensthe gate.

    The Queen of the Night receives the adept first. None pass her unchanged.

  6. VI.

    To be devouredis to be initiated.

    In every sphere something of the old self is given as food to the dark.

  7. VII.

    At the crown of the Other TreeGod is divided.

    Thaumiel: two heads facing one another — Satan and Moloch — and between them, Chaos.

Read from the gate upward. The tree is climbed in darkness.