Sime~Gen Inc. Presents

ReReadable Books

December 2006

"Neptune, Klipot, and Fighting Evil"

By

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Is it really a good idea to "fight" evil? Might that not be a little bit like the fishermen who hack the starfish in half because they’re decimating the clam beds?

Remember the Star Trek episode where Kirk, Spock and McCoy are trapped in cylindrical force-fields, and Spock gets free by damping the emotions that are feeding the strength of the field. Might it be that the harder you fight evil, the more power you give it?

This year we’ve explored the potential trends that might manifest from Neptune’s transit of the USA Natal Moon. One of the lower manifestations of Neptune is frustration – no sooner do you produce a concrete result than Neptune dissolves it away. You get a job, and the company goes bankrupt. You buy a new car, but it’s a lemon. You get married, but break up within the year. You loan a friend money, and never see them again.

Everybody hates you, your friends desert you, and you don’t know why. Confusion, disillusion, depression, and bewildering failures that are not your fault reign supreme. The harder you fight, the worse it gets.

Neptune can do that to a life by transit of the 12^th or even sometimes the 6^th House, occasionally transit of a planet. But it doesn’t have to. It isn’t inevitable. It isn’t built into the structure of the universe, and you’re not enslaved to your Natal Chart.

There is a level of Wisdom that allows one to handle the incoming power of Neptune’s influence without melting down your whole life, regardless of your Natal Chart.

We’re all familiar with the Astral Plane, and most of us have already made an excursion or two there, conscious but out of body. It’s a sizzling Initiation that convinces the conscious mind that our Self is not our Body, but something separate and separable from it. That experience is a first step on a path to understanding the structure of the universe.

There are many philosophies about how the universe works, and where humankind fits into reality. Many Paths base their concepts and rituals in Kabbalah, which we touched on in the July column this year.

In Kabbalah, one acquires Wisdom by learning how to learn something from every person, and every experience. The result of this practice is an "open mind" that can judge without being judgmental (quite a feat) and this is the basis of Chesed, (Mercy, Kindness, Greatness – the root word for the name of the Chasidim—the 4^th Sepherah).

When one has acquired Wisdom causing Kindness to burgeon within you, you begin to see how humans are structured, and perhaps you may encounter someone already close to the ideal (Neptune is Idealistic as well as the root of the Fantasy genre).

Under the influence of a role model close to being an ideal human, you have a chance to discern the nature of the Reality of which we are an integral part, our native habitat.

With that discernment, you then have a good chance to structure your life in a way that can be enhanced by Neptune, not dissolved by it.

It has been my experience that reading Science Fiction and Fantasy – and the related works I’ve reviewed in this column for nearly 13 years –provides a better chance because it exercises the Imagination (very Neptune related).

I don’t usually review books in the December column, but I want to point you to a novel by Jennifer Fallon titled Medalon with one intriguing, provocative quote that put me in mind to try to explain the klipot in this column. Regarding the Goddess of Love, Fallon writes:

"Well, she is a Primal God," Mandah continued. "Now Xaphista, whom I’m sure you’ve heard of, is an Incidental God. That’s what they call a demon who gathers enough power to become a god. Once they achieve the status of a god, the bulk of their power comes from their believers, so the more they have, the stronger they are. If their believers lose faith, they whither and die. Primal Gods will exist as long as life does."

I don’t subscribe to that theory of the universe, but this novel does show how such a universe would function and makes you think about universes. Understanding how the universe really works is the key to surviving Neptune. So I want to end the year with an exploration of how to benefit from the dissolving influence of Neptune.

In the September and October columns this year, we focused on Urban Fantasy, especially Jim Butcher’s successful Dresden Files novels.

Butcher uses the model of the universe where ordinary existence lies side by side or is just a thin film above a seething cauldron of nasty evil things that feed upon us all. Harry Dresden is one of the Wizards who fights to defend us from all this evil that lurks unknown to us, around every corner.

The Dresden model of reality, is close to the reality I live in but warped in a way that makes it unbelievable, and therefore not scary to me (which may be the secret of good entertainment). In the "magical champions fight to protect us from evil monsters" model of reality, you can’t win.

One defining characteristic of the Horror genre is that evil can be buried, chained, chased away into another dimension, but it can’t be killed permanently. "You can’t win" is part of the formula (which is being broken on TV now, mixing in the Kabbalistic model discussed below).

In the Horror genre model of the universe, whatever is "out there" really is trying to "get" you – the world is full of inimical things that devour all goodness and still have no goodness inside. What’s after you is Pure Evil, something which is literally God-forsaken. There is no recourse but to run, hide, or fight. And it really is hopeless.

It seems to me that people who have experienced heavy Neptune transits (that sometimes last 15 years or more) might find that "you can’t win" model much more realistic than I do. Some whole lives are that way.

How do you win under a Neptune transit if fighting doesn’t work? What is really going on when Neptune roils up opposing forces that erode your life’s structure?

Look to one (of many) Kabbalistic models of the universe to find some help. In this model, most humans constantly fight their "evil inclination" and sometimes win, while many others win that inner psychological battle all the time, but still have to fight it daily. It is however possible for anyone to become a third kind of person, a tzadik, a person at inner peace because their good inclination has won the inner battle.

The tzadik is not at war within, and thus the surrounding world is not a combat zone. Thus a tzadik’s life is affected positively by Neptune. Still even a tzadik lives in the real world closely surrounded by clinging negative forces which can only be safely approached with Wisdom.

Here is a quote from Tzvi Freeman, author of Heaven Exposed (reviewed in July), about how to get to be a tzadik. This is from a post at http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=3004 explaining what evil is.

This second realm itself is divided in four parts. There is the highest realm, referred to in the Zohar as 'the shiny shell'. That means it is something like the crust immediately surrounding a nut, which can actually be eaten along with the nut. Similarly, those things in the realm of klipat nogah can be elevated when their spark is redeemed. In this realm lie all those things and events that the Torah permits -- all the earth, most fruits and vegetables and all kosher animals."

He goes on with some examples and concludes about the spark sinking when elevation fails: " . . . Where does it sink to? To the other three levels of klipot, which cannot be redeemed so easily. This is the realm that covers all those things and deeds that are forbidden by the Torah. All of them are also nurtured by a Divine spark -- otherwise they could not exist. But the spark is so deeply hidden that it cannot be redeemed -- except through extreme methods. Methods such as a deep, inner teshuvah, or through a test of faith."

If Neptune is giving you hell, read Tzvi Freeman.