Holy Grail
The Magical Cup and the Element of Water
There are few places that are simultaneously more pleasant and delightful, or more alien or hostile to us than the water. Spend time in a turbulent ocean, or a rushing river, and it becomes quite apparent that we aren’t built to abide there. Evolution crafted us for entirely different environmental conditions. Yet, we require water. It is necessary for all life on this planet (that we know of). It gave birth to us, and we cannot stray far from it’s influence if we want to survive.
Thales of Miletus1 saw water as the fundamental principle from which everything in the kosmos arose. For him, water was transformative. Visiting Egypt, he experienced the Nile river flood cycle that brought fecundity to the desert. The water transformed the land and gave rise to the abundance that the Egyptians relied on. Yet, the aftermath of Hurricane Helene brought down mass destruction on Appalachia last year, and throughout history floods and storms have been said to symbolize a deity’s wrath.
We can gain a lot of insight about the element of water by inspecting its attributes. Water is essential to life. It is a substance into which many elements can dissolve. It has the ability to reflect and refract light. Magically speaking, water is often associated with emotion, and in the tarot it is the suit of Cups. מ, Mem, one of the three mother letters of the Hebrew alphabet, is attributed to the trump the Hanged Man. Like the number of days of the Biblical flood, Mem is given the number 40 in gematria2. The letter is shaped like a womb, and has connotations of motherhood and creativity.
How do we bring this assorted set of correspondences into something real, and actionable? Here in the almost-apocalypse, we need real, tangible things that will allow us to navigate the road ahead in the best way we can. We need tools for our toolbox that will actually work for us, not just sit there lonely and collecting dust.
In the Golden Dawn and other derived traditions, the Cup is one of the four elemental weapons (or symbolic tools) of the magician, along with the Wand (Fire), the Pentacle (Earth) and the Sword (Air). Collectively they make up a large part of our magical toolbox because they are the heavy hitters. Most problems, goals and issues broadly fall under one of these elemental headings. The Cup holds water and symbolizes the infinite plane extending in all directions with no boundaries. It is the counterpoint to the fiery Wand that is a rigid point extending infinitely along a line with no end. The Cup is the Holy Grail, the Moon, the ultimate form of receptivity.
Water is known for it’s ability to acheive equalibrium in whatever vessel holds it. The Cup symbolizes the physical and spiritual vessel we cultivate in order to contain the divine Waters. If our vessel is cracked, lopsided or has holes in it, the Waters will flow out as soon as they are poured in. If our cup has no depth, there is very little Water that can be held.
Our emotional states are a barometer of our inner equalibrium. Turbulent emotions rarely signal a harmonious and stable interior life. As magical people, we seek an interior state that is conducive to empowering our magical Will, because otherwise we are either too unfocused to do much of anything —our energy is spread out and diluted, or we are too focused but in the wrong direction. Either side of this coin is not ideal for spiritual work. In bodily terms, stress and anxiety go hand-in-hand with inflammation, making it extremely difficult to cultivate an ideal body state for good health. Often (in myself, at least) all these things are tied together in one big loop of stress responses that make it really hard to work objectively towards my goals.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of building up excess fire (read: anxious) energy and causing an unbalanced state that leads to problems regarding things that fall under the domain of Water. It’s pratically a side effect of existing in the late-stage capitalist landscape we must navigate. You may make it work for some time, but eventually the lack of balance will lead to the aformentioned stress loop that seems to result in all kinds of negative health symptoms. There’s a reason it’s called burnout. This is when we need to take out our toolbox and navigate to the Cup.
In Liber 4 Part 23, Aleister Crowley writes of the Cup:
Thus, ultimately, as the wand is a binding and a limitation, so is the Cup an expansion — into the Infinite. And this is the danger of the Cup; it must necessarily be open to all, and yet if anything is put into it which is out of proportion, unbalanced, or impure, it takes hurt.
And here again we find difficulty with our thoughts. The grossness and stupidity of “simple impressions” cloud the waters; “emotions” trouble it; “perceptions” are still far from the perfect purity of truth; they cause reflections; while the “tendencies” alter the refractive index, and break up the light. Even “consciousness” itself is that which distinguishes between the lower and the higher, the waters which are below the firmament from the waters which are above the firmament, that appalling stage in the great curse of creation.
Since at the best this water is but a reflection, how tremendously important it becomes that it should be still! If the cup is shaken the light will be broken up.
And in an earlier passage:
As the Magick Wand is the Will, the Wisdom, the Word of the Magician, so is the Magick Cup his Understanding.
Crowley uses the word Understanding here specifically to reference the sphere of Binah, the third sphere on the Tree of Life. Understanding is the translation of the word Binah into English. Binah is spelled בינה and has a gematria value of 67.
It’s worth quoting a large passage from Sepher Sapphires Volume 14 on the entry for the number 67:
The fundamental meaning of Binah is the power of separation, the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, and the power to adapt means to ends. Thus it is the mental ability to distinguish one thing from another which is the basis for understanding.
Binah is both the dark sterile Mother, Ama, and Aima, the bright pregnant Mother. This aspect of Reality is the matrix of all possible specialized forms of expression. Ama represents this aspect of Being prior to the beginning of a cycle of the Life-power's self-manifestation. Aima is the fertile womb from which flow forth all forms made manifest during such a cycle of the Life-power's self-expression.
One of the keys to working with the energy of Binah is discernment. Understanding as a concept requires you to be able to discern one thing from another. If you don’t have a grasp of what you are encountering then you are unable to meet it with any type of flexibility or strategy and so cannot incorporate it into your larger energetic field in any meaningful way. On a deeper level, the act of creation is the ultimate form of discerment. To individuate is to seperate one thing from the totality of other things that it isn’t.
In practical terms, being able to discern what energy goes into your Cup and what shouldn’t is a life skill that is worth developing. Leveling up your Cup to be able to hold a variety of types of experiences is also worth while. The better your Cup is at holding various experiences and ideas, the less the “shakable” you are.
The nature of life is flux, it is a very rare life indeed that goes by without disturbances. Cheating the system by only feeding into your Cup the same curated experience every day is hardly enlightening by any stretch. Because of the varied experiences any person might encounter during their life, the Moon is an energetic pair with the Cup. Part of the dance is being able to change steps when needed, to be fixed is to the dancer’s detriment. The Moon is always changing in light, sometimes dark, sometimes full, but never the same from day to day. Just as the Cup recieves and reflects the divine light, the Moon recieves and reflects the light of the Sun. It is probably fruitful to draw further parallels between the two. That, dear reader, I’ll leave to you for further exploration.
Hello reader, thank you for ending up on my newsletter. I truly appreciate you! Since you made it this far and must have some passing interest in all things odd, I want to introduce you to a new podcast called Dispatches from Post-Reality. I am creating the art for the show episode covers and social media posts. It touches on some of the same esoteric subject matter you’ve come to love from this newsletter but with a decidedly funnier and much more casual tone. Check it out!
Thales lived circa 624–546 BCE. He lived in self imposed poverty, claiming philosophers had better things to think about than getting rich.
For a deeper dive into what gematria and qabalah are all about, see this post.
If you plan on doing gematria these two volumes are going to be your go-to books.
Oh, you have to be kidding me. I have been having a Grail adventure for some months now. Thanks for this.