Sunday, November 27, 2011

Letter 23: PKD's Gnostic Key to the Sefer Yetzirah

At some point in the late period of his Exegesis, Philip K. Dick discovered Kabbalah. He can probably be considered a Christian Cabalist in the light of passages like this below, from Fall 1981


[64:E-5] The universe was created out of 22 Hebrew letters ("Sepher Yetzirah") but there is a missing 23rd letter; when his 23rd letter is added, all the negative prohibitions of the Torah vanish; severe limitation and justice are replaced by mercy and freedom: this is the third Shemittah and it is the Messianic Age. Christ, then, can be construed—as rogue information system—to be the corrected, completed basis of creation in which 23 Hebrew letters replace the 22 originally employed.
...
The plasmate is this hyper-information (the 23 letter system) feeding into the old rigid, mechanical, limited, fossilized 22 letter system. As the blood of Christ, just as Valis is his cosmic body.

1 comment:

  1. PKD joins the 23 Enigma conspiracy. :-)

    23rd letter is perhaps Shin, who's alternate phonetic value is not due to allophonic variation.

    This is the old Christian Kabbalist meme, which is to make "Jesus" (Joshua) out of Yhwh by inserting a Shin before the final Heh. This doesn't work, however, as the last letter in Joshua is an Ayin.

    In fitting this into his "system" PKD, as usual, came up with something unique and interesting.

    ReplyDelete