An enception is a conceptual capacity, the ability to “get” a concept. Once an enception is established (by our enworlding neshamah to our conceiving ruach), its conceptual form can be received (whether intuitively perceived or intellectually conceived) as given wherever its corresponding form occurs in reality, both by our conceiving ruach in Yetzirah, and our constructing/construing nefesh in Assiyah.

Or so I think. I’m trying to map my own experiences to the experiences of others who seem to know this strange space I navigate. Today it seems that:

Assiyah is a world of actuality, where, using given objects of perception and truth, we (as nefesh) construct systems of materials and ideas and methods, and truth is understood pshat, construed objectively in terms of their place in a constructed system, but that objectivity is determined by the conceptual repertoire given by Yetzirah. Whatever is not in that repertoire is inconceivable and is perceived as senseless chaos. Assiyah actualizes an enworldment, giving it perceptible material and symbolic form.

Yetzirah is a world of formation, where pure concepts interrelate, harmonize or clash, overlap, attract, repel, stabilize, destabilize and restabilize at various scales, forming subjective patterns of receptivity, obliviousness, attraction and revulsion in us (as ruach) which determines what is and is not given as real and true in Assiyah. Ruach is organic enceptions within enceptions, a capacitive system in everse. Yetzirah defines the limits and terms of intelligibility within an enworldment. Ruach understands in the mode of remez, that is it recognizes and relates forms, thematizing, analogizing, discovering the connectable dots and associating them, within an enworldment. Yetzirah is concerned with carrying a possibility of enworldment into its development of integrated forms and developing, integrating and strengthening it to the point where the enworldment can be actualized in Assiyah.

Beriah is a world of instauration (creation and revelation) where a new enworldment can enter Yetzirah, always ex nihilo, effecting radical expansion and reordering of subjects (ruach), how they enworld themselves (nefesh), on the whole and in part, in actual life. Amidst this change to ruach and its enworldment, a higher self maintains its continuity in Beriah as neshama. Conversion experiences are of Beriah, and they are understood in the mode of drash, homiletically, in pure and spontaneous interpretive application without objective construal, disclosing everything as belonging within an intuited, given enworldment. Beriah is where enworldments differentiate themselves within an infinite field, where difference is possible in principle.

Atzilut is the world in which all being is rooted, regardless of degree of awareness of this rootedness, in whom all neshama is of common chaya. It is from here that all value flows, and when we feel a rush of intensely inspired gratitude and joy with an epiphany from Beriah, that is the light of Atzilut, the brilliant bloodflow of the world, and it is understanding in the mode of sod. I am almost entirely sure there is much, much more to sod than this, but this is what I have had of it, if I am not mistaken.

For many years, and with increasingly intense focus, instauratio ex nihilo is crucial to me as a designer, philosopher and mystical fanatic.

My live question is cartographic. It is bound up with Beriah, but I’ve wavered on “where” it happens. I think I am moving toward (or into) an understanding that takes Beriah as a holistic world conception that perfects at Malkhut of Beriah, and bursts whole into Yetzirah as its Keter. And what it bursts through is the veil of nihilitude demarcating the worlds. On the side of Beriah, the nihilitude is part of infinitude, but on the side of Yetzirah, it is the outer limit of existence, beyond which there is nothing.

I have learned never to take that nothing on the outer limit of existence at face value. As a designer, as a philosopher and as a mystic I have pressed against the nothingness, and punctured it, and I testify: there is very real, very beautiful being on the other side of it, and if we cross over we return with transformative treasures, the best of which is exnihilist faith.

I am writing this same piece over and over again. I am circling this problem like a GPS satellite, photographing what is below, sending geolocation data down to the surface so I can figure out where I am.

A few years back, my friend Jarrett, team alchemist, gave me a framed print of a Ptolemy, as hermetic cartographer, lunar compass in one hand, solar globe in the other. This demonstrates why I have always loved working on her teams.