Review: The Kabbalistic Mirror of Genesis or how the Mystery-Saint learned to stop worring and Surf the Flux

The story of Genesis. It's a classic. Drilled into our heads from birth, either in Sunday School or through popular culture: Eve and her "evil" apple never fall far from our Tree. Those of us studying "Gnosticism" and the "Occult" have heard rumors about a differing interpretation to the story, like how maybe the serpent wasn't really the villain and it has nothing to do with woman being the weaker or more depraved sex. How mayhaps that same serpent was trying to enlighten our first couple. ( More on that later)

       When I heard about this book I got really intrigued. I have had the impression for a while that what we are dealing with in the Bible are allegorical lessons about the evolution of human consciousness.

         A non-theistic approach to the creation story in the Bible, which is what the author uncovers for us through a kabbalistic exegesis, is something sorely needed in this day and age in which we see so much strife between people's because of "belief". Muslims, Christians, Jews, even Atheists have reified their beliefs and turned their Gods into something like a war banner to wave above the fray. Something to hide behind and fight for and use to create more seperation between people.

"Concepts are always limited... even concepts of God... the only way out of this is to be immersed in openness without being held to any concept of reality or unreality."

Kind of like Austin Osman Spare's "Need Not Be, Does Not Matter"? Ah, but like William Burroughs said; (and I am paraphrasing) The Shits always have the need to have to be "Right" right? Like if there is a bearded guy up in the clouds kicking ass and taking names, we want to make sure to get in good with him, get on the good list so we can get into that special after hours club with all the virgins and the streets of gold. And I know YOU aren't going to be in that club because I didn't see YOU in MY CHURCH and you don't look or sound like ME and MY FRIENDS.

"Placing faith in division leads to a shattered world."

"When phenomenal space is engaged with a stance of existential combat"... we get a klippoth.

so ...

"Spiritual purification is the stripping away of these concealments" ... or klippoth.

"Klippoth become free as the mind relaxes into spacious love of the Shechinah... a devotion to wholeness beyond  conventional extremes."

Aristotle was wrong, it's not a dead world, we kill it by reifying it and forcing it into the narrow channels of our belief until finally, the Shechinah's flow into our life dries up. After all the Shechinah can only rest in a joyful, open heart. A heart with the "Faith that beauty is in itself sublime"


The free interplay of consciousness and phenomenon, running and returning, going out and coming back, ever new, ever joyfully creative.

(So called explanations pile mystery upon mystery and delude the mind, creating the habit of thinking about that which it can never concieve)

Right "in the beginning" of the book David Chaim Smith starts tearing down assumptions. He retranslates the famous opening words "In the beginning" to more accurately read "With beginningness". Suddenly it seems as though the famous text is talking about something that is happening at every moment, not long ago in the past, like some chronological outline of how some bearded white man on a cloud created a planet in  a little under a week and then partied hard for a day. I mean, really; anthropormophize much y'all?

To be honest, this is a hard book to review as it is not so much a book as a whole "attitude adjustment". You're going to have to have studied some kabbala or cabbala and use this book like a vise in reverse to keep your mind propped open; a wide open consciousness. I was prepared in a way by reading Carlo Suares and his Cipher of Genesis. David Chaim Smith focuses more on unpacking the kabbalistic secrets of just the first three chapters of Genesis than the whole book and I have heard him say on a podcast that that is the only part of the bible he is interested in. Those podcasts are great by the way, they really help to elucidate the writing. Check out the www.occultofpersonality.net/  and the www.thelemanow.com/ . David has some amazing stories about how he got to where he is and how he once threw a Hostess Twinkie at Terence Mckenna during a lecture. "I am sick and tired of these stories about self-transforming machine elves and self-dribbling metallic basketballs!"

This is non-duality but it is not your Osho's non-duality. David Chaim Smith doesn't kid himself and he doesn't kid the reader. This is no huggy New Age fantasy. He ruthlessly attacks our lazy consciousness habits and reified beliefs. He lobs that Twinkie into our synapses like a mind-grenade.

(The witness (ego) can't master the jungle of sense (activity) information of reality but must learn to ride the changes, surf the flux.)

And what about the infamous serpent? I want to keep something back so you buy the book but we can go ahead and say that the Messiah and the Serpent both as agents of Gnosis have more in common than Contemporary Christianity would have us believe and David supports this idea well:

"Gnosis embraces the danger of transformation while the animal state runs from it. For the evolving human mind the serpent's danger is a precious treasure which expresses the dynamism of B'reshit (withbeginningness) through the possibility of change."

"Ego cherishes the illusion of permanence" and the serpent represents embracing the danger of transformation.

Get this book, you won't be disappointed. I will close with one last quote:

"The central message of the Edenic allegory is that when perception does not obscure Divinity everything is bliss. In fact the word Eden itself means DELIGHT"

http://www.amazon.com/The-Kabbalistic-Mirror-Genesis-Commentary/dp/0956778003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336838366&sr=8-1

(P.S. Someone send me some money so I can buy David's new book from Fulgur "The Sacrificial Universe" it ain't cheap! But it features David's art which I forgot to mention and which is awesome.)