Mezlá — Grace from Within
The Absolute — the Great Spirit— moves toward self-knowledge through the infinite diversity of Its aspects. Dividing Its mind into the differentiated multitude of Monads, It answers each of them, across the chain of incarnations, with a distinct influence. Christians call it “Grace” or “Divine Glory,” Kabbalists call it “Mezlá” (or “Or Hasadim”, אור חסדים “Light of Piety”), and Scandinavian pagans call it “Wod.”
Crowley held that Mezlá is the Power issuing from Kether to Malkuth, vitalizing and sustaining all things in the Tree of Life. In the universal sense, Mezlá is a discharge of unifying Power: an impulse toward realizing the primordial, given unity of being.
This Power sustains the Tree as a single whole. It is the unifying, system-forming force — the “call” of the Tree’s Upper Root — maintaining the bond with its “lower” branches.
Mezlá is the “anticipated” Power of the cosmos’s evolutive impulse, the Power that drives the Great Flow toward increased awareness. Only what already holds unity in potential can strive for unity and attain it: what issued from unity through primary differentiation; what is, in essence, ontologically one.
Unlike the “Holy Spirit,” the Shekhinah, born from the “echo” of the Absolute, Mezlá draws its source from the total awareness of all living beings; it belongs to the manifest world, even though its source is the Great Spirit. At the same time, the cosmos’s response to Mezlá’s “call” — as the general principle of evolutionary unity in the ascending flow of awareness — is the “created light,” Epinoia.
Ontologically, Mezlá is the prototype of that pleromic united macrocosmic awareness that stands as the goal of the cosmos’s evolutionary process.
Thus, the Absolute is present in the cosmos as a binary: the active component — Mezlá (“Divine Love”) — and the passive — Shekhinah (“Divine Wisdom”), whose “operative” component is “divine thought,” Epinoia. Modern occultism describes this presence as a differentiation within the Unknowable Light (“Ain Soph Aur”): the active part “Od” and the passive “Ob.”
Just as Shekhinah, born from the “seed of Kether” in Malkuth, strains toward the Crown, so Mezlá pours forth from Kether and streams into Malkuth. These Powers animate the cosmos with the impulse toward development and the overcoming of its limitations. In more European terms: just as the ideal world, Iriy, seeks expression in the real world, so the real world seeks to become like the Heavenly Prototype. In conjunction with the Eternal and the Unconditioned, everything transient and conditioned receives new meaning: it rises again into being, becomes a living symbol, and opens into a fathomless revelation.
The action of Grace grants the human being the inestimable gift of union with the Spirit, which Christian mystics called “deification.” The action of Mezlá is always carried out in cooperation (in synergism) with the free will of incarnate beings. This synergism is an essential element of the Flow of Power in the world. Here, mind strives toward the Absolute, toward the Monad; and the Monad strives toward expression in mind. The manifestation of this “descending” energy of the Monad is traditionally called “tsure.” The incarnate being, for its part, manifests will, and the Spirit manifests grace; from their joint action an evolving personality is formed.
Thus, Mezlá is simultaneously the principle of the cosmos’s inner unity — ontologically binding the primary genetic unity to the diversity of its concrete manifestations — and the principle of this unity’s dynamic becoming as a synthetic unity, actively uniting the multiplicity of states, forms, and phenomena.
This means the links of the cosmic hierarchy are not separated by insurmountable ruptures. They are inwardly conjoined — dynamically, through involutive unfolding and evolutive ascent, and statically, through the constant immediate participation of each in the Great Spirit. It also means that within every link of the cosmic symphony the totality of the others is reflected — both distinctly and through an infinite range of combinations.
The reflection of the whole in the part is potential, and the entire evolution of the part consists in actualizing this richness. This is what constitutes the objectification and affirmation of individuality.
The Magus who has grasped unity in diversity reflects the entire Universe within himself, and the Universe, in response, reflects the Magus. In this mutual reflection, the potentials of the Magus’s Monad are brought to birth. Through this, concrete being rises — finally — into participation in the cosmic activity of the whole as such. It does not merely slip free of local, relative conditions as sole imperatives; it rises not only above the milieu, but above its own individual limitation.
The Mind in Action
Individuality and Separateness
Why Does the Wheel of Life Turn?
Self-Knowledge of the Great Spirit
Freedom from Unity
Lilith and Lucifer
The Crystal of the Mind
Pleroma: The Great Perfection
Is the manifestation of Mezla not the inner joy-happiness, existing as if autonomously from the events of life and not connected to them?
Mezla is a deep inner inspiration, “Wings of the soul” that lift it towards the Divine. Whether this state can be called “joy” depends on one’s internal glossary.