Anthony Testa - The Key of the Abyss.pdf

To what end is this region explored, and what Adept, having aspired to
the Height would choose, at the moment of triumph, to again reach
down … to the dark world,
Beneath which lies a faithless depth,
And Hades dark all over, squallid, delighting in images, unintelligible,
Precipitous, creaggy, a depth;
Always rolling, always espousing an opacous, idle breathless body,
And the light hating world, and the winding currents,
By which many things are swallowed up. 141
If, by raising up to the gate of Da’ath the magician destroys all of his
ego (and it must be else the Adept will be ravaged by Choronzon and
ejected from the Abyss) then, upon his arrival at the shore of the
supernal Realm, he may choose to renounce (for a period, it cannot be
forever) the union with the Higher world and instead reintegrate his
ego as the complex of both sides of the tree. Thus, as he walks the path
upward, the universe is likewise upraised. The key to this Arcanum is
this; if the Magician brings into himself the fullness of both sides of
the tree, the integrated ego is perfectly balanced in the constant
annihilation of positive and negative forces. Therefore we may say that
the magician has been successful in maintaining his emptiness even as
he has crossed the Great Outer Abyss.
Da’ath is Knowledge and Knowledge is that which obtains from
experience. If, as Nuit says, For I am divided for love’s sake, for the
chance of union. (Liber Al, I-29) then we may also see the division of
the primal unity as the chance for experience. Da’ath, it should be
noted, is of a dual nature, Da’ath Elyon, the higher Knowledge and
Da’ath tachton, the lower or mundane Knowledge. Who shall say
what is and is not of the higher realms? Therefore, though the Lefthand
way it is of course a path of trials and dangers, is it any less than
the path of the Right hand? Those who fear will always find reason to
reject new ways of thinking if only because they threaten accepted and
therefore comforting beliefs. We who would walk the Darker roads
must understand, as only the Master of the Temple can, that Truth is
brighter than day and deeper than the night, and no matter the cost, is
the only prize worth having.
141 Chaldean Oracles
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