In Search of Sephiroth
Genichiro Kobayashi
As stated by Robert Smithson, “the wasted remains of ontology, cosmology, and epistemology still offer a ground for art.” I shall attempt to delve into one of these mediums of opportunity to discover something in art, or more specifically, locative media or walking art. The cosmology of the Jewish Kabbalah revolves around the Tree of Life. It is an algorithmic journey in which one can attain knowledge through passing through the 10 spheres, or Sephiroth, which represent the attributes that God created to exist in the physical and metaphysical world.
"Tree of Life: Ten Sephiroth"
The journey is more like a trickling down of the knowledge of God from the Ain Soph, or “light without end,” as it passes through the Kether at the top of the tree all the way down to the Malkuth at the bottom. Identified from studying the Tanakh, the Sephirah from top to bottom are: Kether (total consciousness), Chokhmah (wisdom), Binah (love), Chesed (vision), Geburah (determination), Tiphareth (creativity), Netzach (persistence/ “the eternal now”), Hod (observation), Yesod (memory), and Malkuth (healing / realization of the Divine Plan). The lines drawn between the Sephirah represent the paths in which energy transmits between the spheres and the process in which I will be walking along my spiritual journey.
Similar to the “Great Cleansing of the Rio Grande” a walking project by Dominique Mazeaud, I will also do a “literal and symbolic cleansing” along my journey and make ritual of it. Although I don’t have seven years to repeat the ritual, I plan on doing it twice, walking along the path of the Sephiroth once in each direction. In my opinion, humanity today lives in a technologically advanced era whether it is post-modern or post-post-modern, etc. we have the knowledge to manufacture complete destruction (nuclear weaponry) as well as life (cloning). The journey of the Sephiroth culminates to “total consciousness” and with the advent of GPS and other location aware devices I feel that as a whole humanity as already reached Kether. Individually however, we may still need to make this journey.
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Once I arrive at the White Mountain Crooked Creek Research Station, my plan was to plot a course based on coordinates of the permutation between 10 and 22 (if possible) to represent the divine numbers of the Kabbalah, however after examining the coordinates of the station I found that it was quite improbable a task to accomplish. From there I decided to assume that, as an individual who lives in this technologically advanced human race, I have obtained Kether and that I will have these technologies available to me. As I journey however, upon arriving at equidistant points separating my walk into ten sections, I will remover these “luxuries” I’ve taken for granted. My “cleansing” will involve my removal of manifestations of the Sephirah as I walk between the paths such as my GPS for the Kether. I will then remove my map/compass, my emotions, my glasses, my determination (I’ll let myself get distracted), my creativity (landmarks), my sense of time, observation, memory (cognitive mapping) and water respectively as I cross the spiritual spheres back to being a “relatively” primal being, naked of technology. Once I reach my destination (or once I can no longer continue due to dehydration) I will cross the journey back to the station, slowly adding my “technologies” until with a GPS I can safely make my way back to the station.
The sign in the diagram above is one mile away from WMRS (White Mountain Research Station) and also the location of my first sphere, the Kether. The algorithm in which I used to navigate my way around during the journey was simple: follow the road, then every twenty minutes, plot a waypoint on my GPS and remove a “luxery”. At the first location I stopped using my GPS for navigation purposes; however I did keep it to mark waypoints of the 10 Sephiroth along the path. The journey will eventually take me to the Patriarch grove some 3 miles away from the first sphere.
Like many other walking artists, the journey exists in the walk in it of itself. I will adhere to Hamish Fulton’s philosophy of “no walk, no work,” and take photographs, but so much as “to intrude on the intimate relationship that exists between [myself] and nature,” as well as keep a journal to document notes along the journey. As an addition to Fulton’s footsteps, however, I’m adding a new element to this spiritual journey. As you may have notice from the diagram above, the central sphere, a hidden 11th Sephirah called the Daath exists. It was not originally drawn in the Tree of life but as the two sides of the tree are meant to represent balance, there was an uneasy imbalance within the center. The Daath was meant to be the balance between the Chokhmah and the Binah, as well as the balance between man and woman and God. Rumor has it that it was also a gateway in which the darkness emanates from the back of the tree (i.e. Hell). After an hour of walking I arrive to Binah, the third waypoint.
Before removing my emotions, however, I look forward to see if I can find Daath. As far as I can tell the road ahead of me seemed to be the steepest one I’ve climbed thus far, but not much trouble aside from that. I head on to face Daath and as soon as I reach the foot of the hill I hear vehicles coming from behind me; two cars, one driven by a man and one by a woman. As they drive past me (a lone hiker in the middle of nowhere) they offer me food/water/transportation/etc. tempting me to indulge, however with my emotions gone I declined them all. Following them, the climb continued, which upon inspection of my GPS after the journey, climbs 160 meters in 20 minutes. But that wasn’t the end of it however; on the path through Daath I began being plagued by insects (my apiphobia kicking in slightly as bees and flies encircled me). In my honest opinion it wasn’t a coincidence, I had found Daath and it is a path through hell.
I arrive at Patriarch Grove and find the other drivers that passed me on the way. I introduced myself and had a conversation with them about my project as we compared my journey to Guy Debord and other artists. At this point I take a moment to simply enjoy the state of “dérive” or so Guy Deboard states, “[the] playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects,” in which, “one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.” I’ll let myself drift for a bit and really feel the extent of freedom form this technologically shackled society.
As my journey followed, I arrive at Yesod, blind, carefree and drifting and I allow myself to simply drift off the road finally and get lost. The fastest way to do this, or so I thought at the time, was to simply go off the edge of the trail and down the mountain. Loose footing and downhill the whole way, I let the rocks tumble me to the bottom of the mountain. About another twenty minutes pass. My last sphere, water, arrives. In stead of removing it as previously mentioned. I set a time limit; I would keep walking until my current bottle (half-empty) ran out of water.
My journey ended at:
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Two hundred meters down from the trails, 6.2 miles from WMRS and I was completely lost with no direct route back to the trail because the cliff I came down was too treacherous to traverse. The second half of my journey began here, my journey back up the Tree of Life and to WMRS. My original goal was to prove that man can live comfortably without these technological shackles of society, however at this crucial moment, I was proved incorrect. I realize now how engrained these shackles are, that after removing them all, I have been left helpless. For two more hours I wandered aimlessly through the woods with no forth-knowledge of which way would lead me home. I began to slowly replace my spheres and was able to slowly climb my way back through the Tree of Life by regaining my determination, my vision, my landmarks and water. Even my sense of roads helped here:
A river of bristlecone pines lay before me. Brett Stalbaum, my professor once told me, “When you’re hiking, never follow a river, because they always lead you to cliffs.” Using that from my memory, my observational skills to find the “river” and my cognitive mapping to follow this back to the cliff I fell from, I was eventually able to see where the trails were again. It was here that I needed to regain my emotion as I had informed the faculty at WMRS to send a search party at 5:00 (only 2 hours left to find a way back up and walk back to the Station) and I was still relatively trapped at the bottom of a cliff. Finally I needed my GPS to track elevations and find a path that would safely lead me back to the trails.
As far as the journey to prove humanity’s ability for self-preservation….well that was a failure, however I was never a boy-scout so the experience might have come in handy. As an average person taking this journey of the Sephiroth, the walk really speaks for itself. It was one of the most invigorating experiences I’ve had, a close second to throwing myself out of an airplane once. What shocked me the most was that even though I was “out of shape,” I was still able to complete the journey. Fourteen miles of walking, carrying over a gallon of water and other techno-gadgets, my search for the Sephiroth if over. The journey is there for everyone, just beware the Daath. I found however that the Daath on the way up the Tree is something like paradise. I am not a religious man, but the Daath favored my journey as I was climbing towards enlightenment and the Daath was incredibly difficult to bear as I moved away from Enlightenment. Maybe there is something to it, maybe it was coincidence, the only way to see is to take the journey yourself.