The Subtle Body. Stanton Marlan - The Black Sun

[Luxibis]

The Subtle Body

Images of the subtle body have been known throughout history and across cultures and have been discussed and imaged in a variety of contexts. From the Western astrological, kabbalistic, alchemical, hermetic, and magical traditions to Indian, Chinese, Buddhist, and Taoist ones, imagining the subtle body has played an important role in medical, psychological, sexual, and sacred psychologies.

For all of these traditions, human beings constitute a microcosm, internally linked with the larger universe, and are reflected in a body that is not simply material but also “subtle” and primordial.

Sanford L. Drob, a philosopher and psychologist who has written extensively on the kabbala, traces the emergence of the symbol of the primordial man in a number of religious and philosophical traditions from the Atman of the Upanishads to the macroanthropos of Plutarch for whom “the sun is at the heart and the moon located between the heart and the belly.” He notes that the Primordial Man is also important in Gnosticism: “In the Nag Hammadi text, the Apocryphon of John, we learn that this anthropos is the first . . . luminary of the heavens.”

The idea of the Primordial Man also appeared in the Jewish tradition first in the literature of “Merkaveh mysticism.” Drob notes that the “clearest example of this is found in a work that he dates as “no later than the sixth century” titled Shi’ur Koma (the Measure of [the Divine] Body), “where the author seeks a vision of one ‘who sits upon the throne,’ a gigantic supernal man who is imprinted with magical letters and names.” The one who sits on the throne was part of the ecstatic vision of Ezekiel’s chariot and was considered to be an “image” of God.

Ezekiel describes what he “sees” above the firmament: “and the likeness of the throne was a likeness as the appearance of a man upon it above. And I saw as the colour of electrum, as the appearance of fire round about enclosing it, from the appearance of his loins and upward . . . and downward I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness round about him.”

Imagining the divine in human form presented a problem for some Jewish thinkers. The twelfth-century, Jewish rationalist Maimonides “believed that the Shi’ur Koma was heretical and should be burned,”

but other authorities understood these images differently. Scholem, a scholar of Jewish mysticism and a colleague of Jung’s at the Eranos circle, held that these images did “not imply that God himself had a body” but that a bodily form could be attributed to God’s “glory” or the divine presence or “Shekinah.”

As Jewish mysticism developed, especially in Lurianic kabbala, the attempt to imagine the divine took shape in the image of the Primordial Man, Adam Kadmon, who began to be imagined in bodily form (figure 4.3a).

The body of Adam Kadmon is considered to comprise ten sefirot, a kind of infrastructure of fundamental archetypes linking God, human beings, and the world. Sometimes the configuration of these structures is imagined in the form of a tree and at other times as comprising the structure of primordial humans. In figure 4.3b, the archetypal structure shows itself in the spheres of wisdom, intelligence, beauty, mercy, justice, foundation, honor, victory, and kingdom, which are laid out according to a traditional pattern, constituting what has also been referred to as the Tree of Life. There have been many descriptions of and variations on both Adam Kadmon and the Tree of Life in kabbalistic literature.

Adam Kadmon as Cosmic Man and an image of the subtle body has also been taken up in Christian kabbala. In this image of the head of Adam Kadmon (figure 4.4), the skull is drawn in such a way as to reveal roots as part of the brain structure, linking his subtle body with the image of the tree.

From this head, a white light is said to “illuminate a hundred thousand worlds. . . . The length of His face is three hundred and seventy thousand worlds. He is called the Long-Face, for this is the name of the ancient of ancients.”

The body of Adam Kadmon is a body of lights, an illuminated body whose organs are divine lights. The sefirot themselves are a source of lights, colored translucent spheres that serve to modify the infinite expanse of the God, referred to by the kabbalists as Ein-sof.
Dramatic images of the subtle body of Adam Kadmon have been painted by Alex Grey, a contemporary artist. One of his paintings, titled Psychic Energy System (1980), represents for the artist the kabbalistic Tree of Life (color plate 7).

He writes: “The Kabbalistic Tree, when keyed to the human body is known as the Adam Kadmon or . . . First Man, and denotes the emanation of the highest spiritual world from above the head down through the physical world at the feet. The symbols represent ten divine attributes, such as wisdom, mercy, judgment, and beauty.”

Grey’s image links the kabbalistic subtle body with the Chakra system of the Hindu tradition. He considers them to present a “similar spiritual-to-physical spectrum.” In both systems, “the body has become a permeable channel for the circulation of the subtle and fine energies of spiritual consciousness that are ever-present and interpenetrate the self and surroundings.” The intensity of such fine energies is also known in Tantric representations of the subtle body, where they are referred to as nadis, which “form an intricate web of subtle energy fibers that permeate the physical form. Certain texts speak of 350,000 nadis, through which the solar and lunar energies flow” (figure 4.5).

In Praying (color plate 8), Grey depicts what he considers “the spiritual core of light which transcends, unites, and manifests in the various religious paths.” Here again he blends the subtle body idea into a syncretist “portrait revealing a sun in the heart and mind.” “From the inner light in the center of the brain, a halo emanates and surrounds the head. The halo is inscribed with signs of contemplation from six different paths”: Taoist, Hindu, Jewish, Tibetan, Christian, and Islamic. Grey’s focus emphasizes the significant overlapping unity between the variety of images of the subtle body. However, just as there are differences in the metapsychologies and individual experiences that produced them, differences in general patterns and particulars also exist with regard to the chakras.

Phillip Rawson notes that the “Tibetan Buddhists assert that there is a significant difference between their pattern of the subtle body and the normal Hindu one.” These differences are further compounded as we look at the various traditions we are discussing. Yet, Grey is not wrong about the significant archetypal overlap between them.

In color plate 9, which shows a traditional scroll painting from seventeenth-century Nepal, the ajna chakra is placed in a similar position as Grey’s sun and is considered the third eye of wisdom. At the very top, not indicated in Grey’s image, are the male and female deities pictured in intimate embrace, signifying the interpenetration of opposite forces. In figure 4.6 we see a full body view of the chakra system.

The ajna chakra is again pictured with male and female deities in an intimate relationship, and a number of different deities appear in each chakra. At times, some of these figures become standardized, but in other representations they change according to the individual, inward psychic experience of yoga and Tantric practice.

Rawson describes how, when “the subtle energy (Bodhicitta) becomes united with the void of wisdom, the sky of the mind fills with infinite visions and scenes. Then like sparks, seed-mantras emerge and crystallize gradually into complete and glowing living forms of devata¯s, beautiful or terrible, which confront the meditator.”

These images of the creative imagination can be both personal and transpersonal to the mediator. Like active imagination in analysis, these forms can become important reference points and inner powers that at times extend individual consciousness, while at other times they challenge and prepare the ego for dissolution and transformation. These images have a personal psycho-spiritual importance, as well as contributing to the traditions from which they emerge and add to the overall collective representation of the subtle body.

Stanton Marlan - The Black Sun. The Alchemy and Art of Darkness.pdf