The "Avatar" as a Qaballistic Construction

As I was flying back from Riyadh to Amman the other day, I logged into the Royal Jordanian "in seat" entertainment center (not bad of a service really - not as good as "Song" in the United States, but still a good service).  Clicking through the menu to my my favorite category of movies (Action), I was surprised to find among the list the recently released movie "Avatar".

So shortly after the pre-flight safety demonstration, and before the flight had taken to the air, I put the headphones on and settled in to watch the movie.

A bit of a slow starting flick, if you ask me, but once it got going, I found the storyline quite fascinating.

I always like a good Qaballa flick, and this is one of the better ones going.

A "qaballa flick" you say?  Sure.  And if you know your "Occult roots", penetrating through Qaballa and other Occult symbolism is really not such a difficult exercise.

With this article, we will attempt to move you from the branches of the tree (you know, the ones that are "sacrificed" at the end of each seasonal year), and move your understanding to that of the "trunk" and the "roots" of the Tree.

"Satan's Tree"

One of the "geometric Golden Branches" of the Illuminatus System remains "the rabbinical Tree of Life".  Really, a "Tree of Death" in that it represents "mortal life", elaborate meditation rituals have been caste in order to utilize the "Tree of Life" as a means to attain altered, or "elevated", states of awareness.

In other Occult systems, as in Asatru or Buddhist sects, various meditations are invoked to achieve the same goal as is assigned to the "Tree of Life".

The idea relative to Kabballah meditations is that if you pass through "Kether", the "crown", you will enter into what is, essentially, the "astral world" where you are able to partake of knowledge and experiences wholly beyond the physical world.

We can hear adumbrations of this concept reflected in various works of the musical arts.  The song "Katmandu", by Cat Stevens, for instance, intones the line,

"Chop me some broken wood 
We'll start a fire
White warm light the dawn
And help me see
Old Satan's tree" 


Katmandu, the capital of Tibet, is high up in the mountains and is regarded as one of the more spiritual places on Earth.  Bob Seger would wax about the places he had been throughout the United States, but when it was all said and done, he stated

"That's why I'm going to Katmandu, 
Up to the mountains where I'm going to. 
If i ever get out of here, 
That's what I'm gonna do." 


Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull would use the Eastern norm of presentation in his work called "Circular Breathing",

"Pick up my wings and fly 
into a Constable sky...

"Suspended in spiral sounds - 
Sounds of circular breathing. 
I'm a kite on a silver thread. 
Daring lightning to strike me dead...

Matchbox cityscape below - 
I watch Lowry matchstick figures go. 
Caught in the timeless flow of discreet silence."

In motion pictures, there are two movies that did a very good job of hinting at this this paradigm of learning through astral projection or of entering into altered states or even visiting other worlds (as in Avatar), and these are the movies "Matrix Reloaded" (the series really) and, of course, Avatar.  Each of these movies hint at parallel realities, one occurring in a dream-like state, and the other "the waking state".

In a scene from the Matrix Reloaded, we see "the Keymaker" (keys being intricate to ciphers) describing how to enter "the Matrix":

Keymaker:

There is a building.  Inside this building, there is a level where no elevator can go, that no stair can reach.  This level is filled with doors.  These doors lead to many places, hidden places.  But one door is special.  It leads to the Source.


This is a near direct reference to Qaballistic techniques of seeking out through astral working the very core roots of the Letters as an Occult construct.

Equally, the idea of a "waking state" and a wholly real alternate reality induced through the "dream state" is found in both Avatar and the Matrix Reloaded. Whereas the Matrix Reloaded achieves this demonstration through a "plugging in" of the characters and a subsequent immersion into a alternative and very real "waking state", the Avatar achieves this through a submersion of the characters into a scientifically fused alternate body known as "the Avatar".

Each alternate reality is brought about by an induced state in the same manner as a ritualized meditation that are a part of the traditional Qaballistic Arts. As the meditative state ends via the end of "sleep" as brought about in the Avatar, the induced state body "sleeps" or, as in the case of the Matrix, the induced body returns to the waking state body and disappears from the altered existence "waking state".

I know I hung on that windswept tree,
Swung there for nine long nights,
Wounded by my own blade,
Bloodied for Odin,
Myself an offering to myself:
Bound to the tree
That no man knows
Whither the roots of it run.

None gave me bread,
None gave me drink.
Down to the deepest depths I peered
Until I spied the Runes.
With a roaring cry I seized them up,
Then dizzy and fainting, I fell.

The Speech of the High One, taken from the Poetic Edda.

A Qaballistic De-construction of "AVATAR"

The movie "Avatar" provides us with a wealth of Qaballistic imagery, but if we are to de-construct Avatar from a Qaballistic perception, we focus first upon the very word itself, or "AVATAR".

The word AVATAR presents us with two distinct halves: AVA and TAR. AVA is unique in that it presents us with a "palindrome" in that the letters and subsequent numbers are written the same "forward and backward".

A=1
V=22
A=1

This is important due to a core held Occult belief, or that of "the material world" and that of "the spiritual world". This archetype gets broken down further into a fight against "good" and "evil" in that "LIFE" is viewed as "good" and its reverse, "EVIL" is viewed as "bad". In a Qaballistic sense, words may be interpreted such that what is "forward" (read naturally) is "good" and what is read in reverse is "evil".

From an English Qaballa perspective, this principle draws its inspiration from the Book of Formation, or "Sepher Yetzirah",

"These (twenty-two)letters, which are the foundation of all things, He arranged as upon a sphere with two hundred and thirty-one gates, and the sphere may be rotated forward or backward, whether for good or for evil; from the good comes true pleasure, from evil nought but torment."

In an Osirian representation, these "Letters" are read from "left to right" (to return one back to the Garden of Eden), while in a Setianist system, these "Letters" are read from "Right to Left" (or to remove oneself further from what is "right", thus "exiting" or "leaving - left" the Garden of Eden.

We view this through an analysis of "the Master Number".

The Master Number (11:11 or 11011) is encoded many ways. The first, and paramount, is that of the "Ace, Jack, and King", or AJK. A is the 1 letter, J is the 10 letter, while K is the 11 letter. AJK = 11 = 11011. The sums of these letters, however, reveal the following:

A = 1 = 1
J = 10 = 55
K = 11 = 66

1+55+66 = 122, or, when set back against the Letters, A is 1 and 22 is V.

122 = AV

The number 122, or AV, is a code for LIFE, for we know that the Master Number, 11011, is a code for 12960 years, or the underlying numbers to the Letter LIF(e). However, it holds that the sums of the digits 1+55+66 = 122 (AJK = 1+55+66) and therefore 122 is but another digit to express the same core letters of AJK.

These letters and digits (AV = 122) are important when we hail back to universal mythology. From the Japanese tale of Amaterasu, we read of the following,

"When the sun goddess concealed herself, the world was plunged into darkness, plants stopped growing, and all activities came to a halt. Desperate for Amaterasu's return, 800 gods gathered to discuss ways of getting her to leave the cave. A wise god named Omori-kane proposed a solution.

"The gods hung a mirror on the branches of a tree outside the cave. Then they had a young goddess named Ama-no-uzume dance to music while they laughed loudly. Amaterasu heard the noise and wondered what was happening. Opening the door to the cave a little, she asked why the gods were so happy. They told her that they were celebrating because they had found a goddess superior to her."

Curious at who this goddess might be, Amaterasu opened the door wider to look and saw her own image in the mirror. When she paused to gaze at her reflection, a god hiding nearby pulled her completely out of the cave. Another god then blocked the entrance with a magic rope. After Amaterasu emerged from the cave, her light shone once again, and life returned to normal. To punish Susano-ô for his actions, the gods banished him from heaven."

To this day, the mirror (a symbol of purity), along with a necklace and a sword, remain Imperial Japanese symbols and are kept in the inner sanctuary of Shinto shrines.

A necklace, mirror and sword are still the Japanese imperial symbols, kept in an inner sanctuary of Shinto shrines.

Why is all of this important still?  Aside from Amaterasu's shrine being located at "Ise" (Isis), we have in play another Qaballistic construction.

M = OM = PI = 1 and 0, etc.,
IRR = 122 (Isisian Code) = LIFE
OR = Suffix

M-122 -OR = M-IRR-OR

The M-IRR-OR, Pi and Life, represents "Purity".

Since AV is a code set for LIFe, its opposite 221 (VA) becomes a construction of "anti-Life", or that which is opposed to "the Goddess".  VA(MPIRE) is one such word.  VA(HALLA), or "the Hall of the Dead", is but another, while words as VACANCY (VA CAN'T SEE) denotes that which is "empty" or "void of Life".

All this "conjecture" is but one way we may begin a Qaballistic deconstruction.

To you who are familiar with the workings of the Occult, you perhaps are already beginning to see the relationship of "the MIRROR" to the Hermetic idea of Macroprosupus, or to the Hermetic maxim, "As above, so below".

Further, the digit 122 is derived from the A as 1 (a mirror of itself), the J (10), which forms the mirror 55 (5 mirrored on itself), and the K as 11, itself a mirror, which, when summed, creates the mirror of 66, or 6 mirrored on itself.  Even further, the "K" may be viewed as a two dimensional representation of a "mirror" in that the vertical is as the mirror and the "V" emanating into the vertical would be as the line of sight as on peers into the mirror and is reflected back out.

In Gnostic perceptions, what is "below" could also be viewed as "the Demiurge", while what is "above" is viewed as that of "purity".  Thus to be "mired" into a particular set of circumstances is as to be "mirrored" from a state of what is above through which "the Mirror", representing Purity (Pi and Life) would enable the one "mired' to, as Amaterasu, to escape from the darkness and enter back into the purity of the Sun.

All of this is quite difficult to express and explain, but I hope and trust that some will begin to see the conceptual connections, and yet there is far more to go to a Qaballistic breakdown of the word AVATAR.

AVATAR and the Letter K

The word AVATAR also hints at another core Occult construct. This construct deals with the inherent value (archetypal) of the Letter K. This is best demonstrated through an analysis of Egyptian mythology.

The "Ka" of the Egpyptians has many interpretations, but at its most basic element, is viewed as "the etheric double", or "astral body". It is in the term "double" that we find the construction of the Ka as "the Letter K". As the Ka (Kay) is borne, its double 11 = 66 is born at the same time.

Although Egyptian mysticism attributes to the Egyptians a desire for the Ka to remain at the body of the deceased and partake of offerings made to same, in our Western construct, and especially as the Letter Kay (the Ka) is incorporated into Qaballistic constructions, it is simplest to equate to the Ka that of purely the "etheric double".

In Western constructions, we may then view this conceptually. The body may be viewed as that which may be seen. The Ka (Kay) is linked directly to the "body" but which, for all intents and purposes, is "dead" in that it "cannot be seen".

The body is incarnate. The Ka is "disincarnate".

The Ka, however, maintains on a disincarnate level, all the mental, intellectual, and physical attributes of the incarnate spirit.

What is SEEN is AV -
What is NOT SEEN is VA -

Now we may begin to Qaballistically peer into the construction of an AVA-tar.

In the movie "Avatar", through an induced state, the character Jake Scully is able to leave his physical body and is able to exist in a virtual double body as represented by the scientifically generated "Avatar". This archetype is but a representation of the Letter K, or the Ka. The same process is accomplished in the Matrix film series.

In this way, elements of the movie "Avatar" become but an acroamatic cipher for the Letter K, while the very name AVATAR is a Qaballistic construction of the very same "Letter", while it could also be noted that the Cirque de Soleil production "Ka" was billed as a "gravity defying" production that took "adventure to an all new level."

Final Qaballistic Analysis of "Avatar"


From here, the Qaballistic deconstruction of the archetypes within the the movie Avatar spins rapidly into degrees of Occult polarities set against the Philosopher's Stone.

We view the Rabbinical Tree of Life as being that which is "carnate" or "material life", as that of the Rabbinical Tree, while that which is "incarnate", or "spiritual", as being that of the Garden of Eden. In the movie Avatar, we are dealing with two "material realities", but from the point of view of the main character as represented by Jake Scully, the material world within which he lives is quite different from that of the virtual world within which he is able to dwell equally.

Projection into his "Avatar" is as an astal projection to another world, whereas his return from this "projected state" returns him to his paraplegic self.

He is projected to an alien race called the "N'avi". The N'avi dwell "in the Mother Tree", which from an Occult perspective, would be viewed traditionally as "the Tree of Life". The "N'avi", although they "do not fly" directly, nonetheless dwell in a place where birds typically do, or a "tree". Thus the "N'avi' are akin to living in an "aviary", or what is to Jake Scully "a land of birds" in that he is able to project out of his body (fly) and exist with the N'avi in their "dwelling".

The idea put forward is that the N'avi live in a virtual "Garden of Eden" where the connection of the N'avi to their planetary existence is absolute. Their "Tree" would follow Setianist representations of what life is like as one meditates and contemplates on "Kabballah" in an effort to return oneself to a knowing of "God".

The Earth "invaders" have discovered a precious "material", or metal, that can only be acquired through a "chopping down" of the Kabballistic Tree. In this sense, the Earth invaders, largely Setianist in nature, care little for the beauty that is within the Tree and would rather destroy the Tree in order to mine the riches that exist below the Tree.

The Tree is "gnarled", its trunk taking the form of a whirling mass, akin to Cancer upon which the Dreidle of the Setianists, spins. The Tree is destroyed, and a battle ensues for the remaining scraps of what has been left after the destruction of the Tree.

From a Hermetic Qaballistic perspective, those that dwell in the Tree are as the invading Setianist Earth invaders, but they are caste as those who exist outside of the Tree. In a Hermetic perspective, in order to mine the riches of the Philosopher Stone, it is necessary to destroy the Tree so that we may arrive back to the Garden of Eden, for the "Flaming Sword and Cherub" is the Dreidle that guards the way to the Garden of Eden.

In the film Avatar, there is a sympathy for those that dwell within the Tree as being that which is "good" and in harmony with their environment, but as the archetypes spin rapidly, turning 1's into 0's and 0's into 1's, while is real Kabballistic reality, there is no sympathy, per se, for those that dwell in the Tree for those that dwell in the Tree have the same mannerism and tactics as the invading Earthlings who do not dwell in the Tree but are seeking to mine the riches that lie below the Tree.

At the end, the battle is waged to protect the riches of the Philosopher's Stone by denying the Setianist "Tree Dwellers" who do not live in the Tree (but really do) from benefiting from the riches that lie in the Garden of Eden once the Tree has been chopped down and full beauty of the Garden of Eden is laid bare for all to see.

The Avatar, indeed, provides a rich environment for Qaballist musings and de-constructions.