The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford (Lon Milo DuQuette)
The Qrapola Qabalah
[My 2-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford: Dilettante’s Guide to What You Do and Do Not Need to Know to Become a Qabalist” by Lon Milo DuQuette.]
"The Chicken Qabalah, by" Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford (a.k.a. Lon Milo DuQuette,) is a well-written, entertaining guide to the Qabalah, and those who enjoy the mixture of witty Jewish humor with Qabalistic philosophy will likely find it an enjoyable and uplifting read. But I personally do not care for DuQuette's brand of cosmic musing, and I have little regard for his Qabalism, which I shall proceed to critique.
DuQuette, like most Qabalists, drinks from the fountain of the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley; and because he does, much of his Qabalistic theology is flawed. Duquette reduces the true mystical Kabbalah to the untrue occult Qabalah, and the result is a vision of Ultimate Reality and cosmic reality that I don't subscribe to.
According to Moshe Idel, author of "Kabbalah, New Perspectives," there are essentially two Kabbalahs - the mystical-ecstatic one, and the theurgical-theosophical one. The mystical- ecstatic one is about receiving the Divine (or Supernal) Influx and becoming en-Light-ened by its radiant Power. Duquette has next to nothing to say about this Kabbalah. Kabbalah means "to receive," and the highest Kabbalistic practice is to receive and become one with this Power, the Holy Spirit.
DuQuette, egregiously, reduces Ultimate Reality to Nothingness. He repeatedly states that the final goal is to attain the consciousness of Nothing." Nothing is a Zero, and Duquette, by attributing Divine status to a non-Existent, is guilty of the reification of Zero. Some mystics explain that Nothing really means "no-thing," but Duquette does not accept this POV; he emphasizes that "this Nothing is really nothing." But Duquette then contradicts himself when he elsewhere describes this Nothing as a "force" and as "pure consciousness." Ultimate Reality cannot be both Nothing and pure consciousness. Consciousness is hardly Nothingness.
DuQuette has next to nothing to say about the truly spiritual, or mystical-ecstatic, Kabbalah, but is he more insightful about the theurgical-theosophical one? Hardly.
First off, DuQuette believes that the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet "form the foundation of everything we can think of and all other things that will never occur to us." Pure poppycock. Letters have no ontological primacy and are not some ineffable "Alphabet Soup" wherefrom manifest existence derives. Rather, they are man-made symbols that enable man to create language. If the 22 letters were the true "building blocks" or reality, other great mystical traditions, such as Hinduism Buddhism, and Christianity, would also have identified them.
DuQuette's Tree of Life is farsical and flawed. When DuQuette talks about the 22 letters and the planets, he excludes Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Then, when he provides us with his Tree of Life figure, Neptune and Pluto are included, but Uranus isn't. These inconsistencies are not addressed by DuQuette, and this reduces his credibility.
I do not accept DuQuette's version of the Tree of Life. He correlates Neptune with Chokmah (and Wisdom), while I firmly maintain that it is Uranus, not Neptune, that correlates with Chokmah. DuQuette also associates the Tarot card the Tower with Mars, while I hold that the Tower card is a perfect match with Chokmah and Wisdom. I also disagree with other Duquette attributions, but since this is just a book review and not a book, I will not elaborate here. Finally, DuQuette omits altogether any discussion of the Sephirah Daath, which he considers a false Sephirah. I disagree, and consider Daath (and Neptune) as half of a mystical dyad involving Kether (and Pluto).
A couple of final points: DuQuette states that the Chia, the undiluted Life-Force itself, is our true identity. This is false. The Chia, which corresponds with Taoist Chi and Hindu Prana, is cosmic in nature, while our true identity, Self-Aware Light-Force, is acosmic, and not implicated by the Life-Force. DuQuette states that `we perceive there is creation, time, and space, Heaven, and Earth because of a fundamental defect in our powers of perception." If our perception is defective, then so are our minds, which depend upon perception to form concepts. Since DuQuette holds that man's perception, and by implication his cognition, are defective, he really has no business writing about, and attempting to educate people about, spiritual reality.
In summary, this book is a one-star piece of philosophic poppycock, but since it has some entertainment value, I give it two stars.
[My 2-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford: Dilettante’s Guide to What You Do and Do Not Need to Know to Become a Qabalist” by Lon Milo DuQuette.]
"The Chicken Qabalah, by" Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford (a.k.a. Lon Milo DuQuette,) is a well-written, entertaining guide to the Qabalah, and those who enjoy the mixture of witty Jewish humor with Qabalistic philosophy will likely find it an enjoyable and uplifting read. But I personally do not care for DuQuette's brand of cosmic musing, and I have little regard for his Qabalism, which I shall proceed to critique.
DuQuette, like most Qabalists, drinks from the fountain of the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley; and because he does, much of his Qabalistic theology is flawed. Duquette reduces the true mystical Kabbalah to the untrue occult Qabalah, and the result is a vision of Ultimate Reality and cosmic reality that I don't subscribe to.
According to Moshe Idel, author of "Kabbalah, New Perspectives," there are essentially two Kabbalahs - the mystical-ecstatic one, and the theurgical-theosophical one. The mystical- ecstatic one is about receiving the Divine (or Supernal) Influx and becoming en-Light-ened by its radiant Power. Duquette has next to nothing to say about this Kabbalah. Kabbalah means "to receive," and the highest Kabbalistic practice is to receive and become one with this Power, the Holy Spirit.
DuQuette, egregiously, reduces Ultimate Reality to Nothingness. He repeatedly states that the final goal is to attain the consciousness of Nothing." Nothing is a Zero, and Duquette, by attributing Divine status to a non-Existent, is guilty of the reification of Zero. Some mystics explain that Nothing really means "no-thing," but Duquette does not accept this POV; he emphasizes that "this Nothing is really nothing." But Duquette then contradicts himself when he elsewhere describes this Nothing as a "force" and as "pure consciousness." Ultimate Reality cannot be both Nothing and pure consciousness. Consciousness is hardly Nothingness.
DuQuette has next to nothing to say about the truly spiritual, or mystical-ecstatic, Kabbalah, but is he more insightful about the theurgical-theosophical one? Hardly.
First off, DuQuette believes that the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet "form the foundation of everything we can think of and all other things that will never occur to us." Pure poppycock. Letters have no ontological primacy and are not some ineffable "Alphabet Soup" wherefrom manifest existence derives. Rather, they are man-made symbols that enable man to create language. If the 22 letters were the true "building blocks" or reality, other great mystical traditions, such as Hinduism Buddhism, and Christianity, would also have identified them.
DuQuette's Tree of Life is farsical and flawed. When DuQuette talks about the 22 letters and the planets, he excludes Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Then, when he provides us with his Tree of Life figure, Neptune and Pluto are included, but Uranus isn't. These inconsistencies are not addressed by DuQuette, and this reduces his credibility.
I do not accept DuQuette's version of the Tree of Life. He correlates Neptune with Chokmah (and Wisdom), while I firmly maintain that it is Uranus, not Neptune, that correlates with Chokmah. DuQuette also associates the Tarot card the Tower with Mars, while I hold that the Tower card is a perfect match with Chokmah and Wisdom. I also disagree with other Duquette attributions, but since this is just a book review and not a book, I will not elaborate here. Finally, DuQuette omits altogether any discussion of the Sephirah Daath, which he considers a false Sephirah. I disagree, and consider Daath (and Neptune) as half of a mystical dyad involving Kether (and Pluto).
A couple of final points: DuQuette states that the Chia, the undiluted Life-Force itself, is our true identity. This is false. The Chia, which corresponds with Taoist Chi and Hindu Prana, is cosmic in nature, while our true identity, Self-Aware Light-Force, is acosmic, and not implicated by the Life-Force. DuQuette states that `we perceive there is creation, time, and space, Heaven, and Earth because of a fundamental defect in our powers of perception." If our perception is defective, then so are our minds, which depend upon perception to form concepts. Since DuQuette holds that man's perception, and by implication his cognition, are defective, he really has no business writing about, and attempting to educate people about, spiritual reality.
In summary, this book is a one-star piece of philosophic poppycock, but since it has some entertainment value, I give it two stars.
