Over the years, I’ve found, compiled, and experimented with many variations of potential keys in lucid dreams. Some of those keys, that have consistently worked for me, I’ve shared in my lucid dreaming groups, and in general, participants have confirmed their effectiveness. Early on, I asked a Rabbi friend of mine on how to “correctly” pronounce Hebrew words and letters, but I soon found modern pronunciations often proved ineffective in the dream state.
Ancient Hebrew texts did not usually designate vowels (or even provide spaces to separate words), and modern Hebrew seems at best a reconstructed version of the original spoken language. In any case, over the millennia Hebrew has undoubtedly changed greatly from the pronunciations used in Biblical times. My approach became experimental – I’d try out different words and pronunciations until I’d find an effective one.
At that point, I may notice a transformation, hear a chorus of voices joining in with my chant, or feel myself powerfully drawn away at a great rate of speed to end up … somewhere. That “somewhere” might correspond to the attributes that I would expect from my Kabbalistic map – or not. In the latter case, I’ll revise the map to fit the territory. Where I go, and the effects that the journey has on me, can profoundly impact both my understanding and my Beingness. For example:
“Judge of Judges”
42 95 EWK (Fully Lucid) “In a dream analogue of the living room of the house where I grew up, I realize that I dream, and decide to do the assigned task while looking at myself in the mirror over the mantel. I chant cHok/MAH Ell/oh/HEEM. My face begins to shift and change, growing huge and monstrous – very severe looking, like a combination of the Wizard of Oz and the Face on Mars.
I see a white massive head floating above my body, detached, large black eyes with black eye-like hollows below them. I wonder how I could describe this to my lucid dreaming group. It looks inhuman and powerful – a Judge of Judges.
I stop chanting, and look around the living room. I see my dog Shazam, and decide to repeat the experiment with another mirror. I chant cHok/ MAH Ell/oh/HEEM, and my face becomes beast like, with golden hair, turning into the face of a man -lion. I continue chanting, and it changes back into the face of the Judge of Judges.
When I look through the picture window I see a beautiful countryside, green grass and trees. I decide to chant Ah/METH (Truth), and to see what happens. I begin chanting, and feel a strong pull and fly off . . . I get distracted, and lose visuals, but I hold onto some grass until the visuals return.
I now find myself in a beautiful park like setting, and resume chanting. I pass a collection of nice gray houses, and decide to stop and talk with whoever lives in them. I go to the door of one and a nice lady, who looks 40 or 50, greets me in friendly fashion, and takes me to the shared garden park at the back of the house.
She casually speaks in Japanese to an oriental woman, and I ask her if everyone speaks multiple languages here, although I suspect telepathy. She calls over a group of the inhabitants, very diverse in race, cultures, and interests, but all of them intelligent and friendly. I sense only harmony between them – no friction.
After waiting for a few minutes for something to happen, I realize that this takes too long, and decide to leave. I say, “Excuse me, but I have to say good bye before I . . .” At this point a young woman jumps on me, and sort of wrestles with me, closing my mouth before I can say “. . . wake up!” I immediately get her point – these people think they still live in physical reality, and do not know they have died.
The young woman-spirit looks very fresh and attractive, 18 or so in appearance. I say “Good bye!” to the others and wave, with the girl still wrapped around me. I ask if she acts as a spiritual guide for me. “Oh no,” she replies, “another woman-spirit brought you here, but I decided to keep an eye on you to see what you would do.” I tell her I have not seen this guiding spirit, though I did feel a pull, and in other dreams I‘ve occasionally felt hands in mine when this happens. She asks how long I’ve had this dream. I tell her, after reflection, “about 10-15 minutes, perhaps as long as 20. I‘ve actually had a very interesting time.”
I tell her about the cHokmah Elohim chant and the Wizard of Oz effect. I tell her I want to go home – by which I mean my real home. I start flying off at the thought, and reluctantly untangle her from me and put her on a rooftop, though I feel tempted to take her with me. She seems very sweet and innocent. I tell her to please visit me any time – physical reality does not seem so bad – it helps develop some spiritual muscles.
She looks a bit bemused, perhaps disappointed?, like a Peter-Pan fairy. As I fly off I chant Ah/METH!, my Kavanah improved, my voice sounding deep and rich, and I even hear a hint of a chorus of voices joining in. I come to a sort of giant ladder made of chain metal links three feet high. I lose visuals, but try to stay in the dream by holding onto my kinesthetic sense as I climb down it. This works for awhile, but RWPR.”
Comment: In this dream I tried to tune into the Sefirah Da’ath, first by chanting a potential God Name, Chokmah Elohim (meaning “Wisdom-God”), and then through an alternative title designation, Ameth (“Truth”). As best I can tell, I ended up visiting a rather nice section of the afterlife, where the recently departed become acclimatized.
In waking life, after this dream I found my point of view could shift far more easily to the impartial observer/fair witness aspect of me, so much so that even now, when I think of myself, instead of an image of my human face, the image of the “Judge of Judges” often springs to mind.
Why have I decided to devote so much time to the Tree of Life in my lucid dreamwork? For years brief descriptions of the Tree in metaphysical books had left me intrigued, but baffled. However, after I had a series of dreams in which “Kabbalah” came up repeatedly, I realized that I could congruently overlay the TOL diagram on my own phenomenologically based maps of consciousness (7), and that doing so resulted in a far more detailed map.
It also provided a potential means for exploring and experiencing different kinds of consciousness – by means of time-tested Hebrew keys.
In the Sefer Yetzirah, the Hebrew word used to describe the creation of the connecting paths, actually means “engraving.” This implies that for us as individuals, not all paths come “pre-installed”, but that in some sense one has to “engrave” them, making the connections intentionally. Well-traveled “engravings” might look like superhighways, others might barely exist at all, or only in potential.
The same applies to the Sefiroth, though I suspect that these major centers functionally exist in everyone to some degree. When I invoked an image of my personal TOL in the following lucid dream, it lacked some diagonal pathways on traditional representations, and showed others in the process of formation:
38 155 “In bed, fully lucid, I hold up some papers and chant: ‘By the Power of Alkahest / Let the Map of My Tree of Life Manifest.’ A diagram appears, then fades away, thin black lines on a white page, not the standard paths. Later I see a similar diagram in another dream. Description similar to a standard tree, but with 11 Sefiroth – including Da’ath. The diagram shows all outside paths, also the 11th, 12th, but not the 13th path (Shin) between Binah and cHockmah. Tifareth and Da’ath only connect via the Middle Pillar, but they have multiple unfinished paths radiating upwards from them.”
In this dream I believe I saw something equivalent to a “circuit diagram” of my soul. Since that dream I‘ve done a lot of work in both waking life and while lucid dreaming, intentionally engraving the pathways, making and deepening interconnections, so I expect that my personal TOL diagram looks a lot different now, than it did when I had this dream in 1996.
In setting up dreamwork I make use of a TOL consciousness diagram, that I initially based on the Short Version text of the Sefer Yetzirah (2), but that has changed a great deal over the years as a work in progress. I have now spent almost two decades researching and exploring the Tree. My own lucid dreamwork, plus more than a bit of intuitional inspiration, has allowed me to design a diagram that I’ve found quite useful, if rather limited in dimension when compared to the “real” Tree of Life, that it can only partially represent, as this early lucid dream clearly indicted:
“Traveling Up the Tree of Life”
34 80 (Fully Lucid) “. . . I decide to try traveling up the Tree of Life, and chant EHYEH (Aaa/Heh/ Yay) as I fly upward, arms over my head for protection. I go crashing through a gray stone roof at a fast rate. At one point I switch to the ALC chant, but this slows me down. I decide that I really want to go to Keter, not Chesed, and resume chanting EHYEH. I end up at the fork of the Tree near the top – HUGE branches all over the place – the Tree at least a mile high.
Above me I see an artificial structure on the top of the tree, that reminds me of the hut on the peak of White Mountain. I want to climb up to it, but fear I might wake up before reaching it. I ask for the help of “Sandalphon to take me along” but when I remember the archangel actually associated with Keter, I ask for the help of “Metatron to take me along.” I feel lifted up above the hut then down into it. Inside I see a treasure chest.
On my left, I see a black wolf-like beast, my dog Shazam now with me on my right. I open up the treasure chest, looking for something I can use but it looks full of mundane things – pearls (looks like costume jewelry) and little items of hardware. [Shazam] goes after a red fuse, I grab it and pop it in my mouth. I see a small refrigerator and look for something to eat (Food of the Gods or vitamins), but see nothing. I think of swallowing the fuse, but then feel slightly nauseous at the thought.” RWPR
Comment: I saw the Tree – a huge Evergreen, perhaps miles in height, in twilight. The hut at the top shifted in the wind, and looked rather unstable, although firmly attached by a steel belt secured to a platform grafted onto the Tree, so it could not fall off. I saw other artificial structures, like giant ornaments, attached elsewhere. The Tree had many, many, branches, not 22, though the Sefiroth looked artificial, just stuck on.
To me the message came through loud and clear. I’d intended to see the “real” Tree of Life, and expected to see some variation of the usual diagram, but instead I encountered an enormous, living, growing Tree, with artificial looking structures, representing the Sefiroth, grafted on. Although very useful, and a great way to focus one’s intent, I understood from this dream that the Kabbalistic Tree of Life diagram at best only shows one two-dimensional slice of a far greater multidimensional reality.
