Testament to the Work

There is a peculiar kind of visionary outcast who is compelled to explore and record their journeys into uncharted territories. This impulse is what I call esoteric cartography, and it is a most rare endeavor. Esoteric cartography is not a byproduct of random exploration. It arises within a highly disciplined practice rooted in systematic inquiry. In this sense, those who aspire to the practice must be serious spiritual practitioners of some kind. This is the consequence of a whole life dedicated to the great mystery of phenomena. This kind of life cannot withstand any concessions to cultural, aesthetic, or religious criteria. Esoteric cartography dwells within its own unique category and abides as a radical departure from any other field. As a result, the activity must be addressed exclusively on its own terms.

Esoteric cartography has been an undercurrent in human civilization for millennia. Generally, societies do not support this type of exploration, and it is usually ignored. With very few exceptions, the practice is reserved for eccentrics at the margins of society. A true outsider rejects the values of the culture so that their work can flourish beyond its influence. Such a person lives in a universe of their own creation and answers to no one. The esoteric cartographer strives to live in a continual state of innovation founded upon mystical inquiry. Therefore, the cartographer must be a dedicated practitioner of the mystical variety. If the mystical impulse does not reign in the personal psyche the visions will merely be products of the imagination, intellect, and emotions. The esoteric cartographer is not an artist or a religious person in the sense that mainstream society would define these things. They are not bound by personal or collective psychology. They live to serve the unknowable. This service and its context pose something that academia will always misinterpret as it strives to reduce the practice to fit within the general humanities.

I was born in the last year of the baby boom, three months to the day after President Kennedy was assassinated. Growing up in the subsequent social upheaval of that period I spent most of my time getting into trouble. My only productive interest was the pursuit of the visionary impulse in all its magical and wondrous forms. I dropped out of high school as a teenager to pursue this quest and I ultimately sought artistic training to help refine this endeavor. The sad thing was that the educational institutions that I encountered all failed completely to provide any useful aid or support, and the attempts at formal education were a true waste of time. However, I did not let that discourage me.

What became clear to me is that the status of an outsider is necessary for the serious cultivation of the visionary impulse. For me, the greatest aid came through the structure and discipline of formal spiritual training. By the early 1990’s I was learning ceremonial magic in the style of post-Renaissance Hermetic Qabbalah. I was taught within two mainstream occult orders that were offshoots of the well-known Golden Dawn model. But something essential seemed to be lacking. This perceived deficiency made me wonder what the Western Esoteric Tradition may have lost over time. Maybe this perception was due to the limitations of those presenting the material, or maybe it was produced by my own inadequacies in deciphering the system. However the disconnect arose, seeking to resolve it turned out to be the driving force behind my urge for further discovery.

Hermetic Qabbalah has always relied upon a syncretic approach in which historical streams mixed and cross-pollinated. This framework is rooted in the syncretism of the Greco-Egyptian traditions of late antiquity. Modern Hermeticism derives from these ancient sources, but most of its methodology derives from what evolved between the medieval period and the 18th century. Beyond the Hermetic works, my greatest influence was certainly early Hebrew Kabbalah. By the late 1990’s I had found a living tradition through Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. However, I had absolutely no interest in the exoteric religion whatsoever. In fact, I grew to resent the petty fixations on endless details of ancient nonsensical laws, and I definitely did not believe in the basic premise of their religious mythology. However, spending time within the most orthodox areas was the only road into the rare Kabbalistic material that I was seeking, and I had to keep my mouth shut in that part of town to get what I came for.

As my technical understanding of these systems expanded, the amalgam of influences also began to expand. I was gradually exposed to a variety of non-dual systems from Near Eastern and Central Asian lineages. This completely changed the how the work evolved. On the surface, Hermetic Qabbalah seems to be an emanationist system that does not directly address non-duality. However, there is a connection to non-duality under the surface that is extremely misunderstood. This becomes evident through the influence of innovators like Plotinus and the Neoplatonists. Their monism points to a next step that is far more supple and as vast and open as the sky. I am most definitely not saying that these philosophical streams carry the view that interests me, they most certainly do not. What these streams do carry is a hint of what can evolve, but it needs to be brought out in ways that the Western Esoterica has not yet seen.

The decisive element that allowed the influence of non-duality to fit into Western Esotericism was oddly found through the Chassidic perspective on Kabbalah, which vividly expresses non-duality in its own way. This connection allowed for a natural blend with the Hermetic material, because both traditions share the same root Kabbalistic axioms. After the Renaissance, Christian esotericists in Europe had extracted enough wisdom from Hebrew Kabbalah to construct a working system of their own. Post- Renaissance esotericism struggled with its connection to exoteric religion until an internal self-sufficiency was developed, and Hermetic Qabbalah served as the structural underpinning for most of Western Occultism.

Before my spiritual work began in earnest in the early 1990’s I struggled as a visual artist. I never really had any interest in contemporary art. This was because what was happening in the galleries always seemed perverse and self-referential, like a series of impenetrable private jokes held by an intellectual elite. My disillusionment came to a head in 1996 when I made the decision to abandon the pursuit of art completely to dedicate my life to spiritual study and practice. This preparatory period lasted 10 years, during which I made no visual work at all. The training concluded in 2006 at the age of 42. By that time, I had been exposed to enough technical Kabbalah, non-dual wisdom, and alchemical theory to attempt to remake the structural framework that Hermetic Qabbalah was based upon.

Esoteric cartography attempts to account for what is uncovered in spiritual practice. This process is usually associated with visual diagrammatical forms, but the practice also embraces linguistic modes of inquiry as well. This is not just because writing is incorporated into the visual images, but because writing itself can become a cartographic effort. In this sense, it doesn’t matter if graphic or linguistic aspects are utilized. The main thing is how the territory is explored and how the exploration is recorded.

What set the stage for my unique practice of esoteric cartography was the discovery of Kabbalistic shiviti and illan diagrams. Illanot (plural) are complex representations of the Kabbalistic hierarchy, usually incorporating the 10 sefirot of the tree of life. A shiviti is a talismanic image that displays a divine name or series of permutations with other linguistic elements. Both illanot and shivitis can be specifically made for advanced Kabbalistic work and can give themselves over to an extreme level intricacy. My images came to utilize a combination of these types of representation. Every image I would come to make would eventually bear their imprint, both in terms of composition and detail.

The manufacture of my cartographic images came out of sheer necessity. The diagrams served as the support for the complex kavanah and yichud meditation practices that I had adapted from Hebrew Kabbalah. When I began the manufacture of images according to my precise specifications it was because I simply required the support diagrams that did not yet exist.

During my investigations I was introduced to an obscure 13th century Kabbalistic work called Fountain of Wisdom. This was the only Kabbalistic text that I had ever encountered that did not utilize the structure of the 10 sefirot. The text intertwines all manner of poetic metaphors, aetheric imagery, and esoteric number play. It required a whole new way to interpret symbolism, and it was up to me to decipher its language because there were no external resources available. The amalgamation of the shiviti and illan forms became full-fledged esoteric cartography through grappling with Fountain of Wisdom. This struggle took years and was worked out in a series of notebooks in 2006 – 2007. This was precisely where the structural architecture of my work was born.

Fountain of Wisdom describes torrents of energy that coagulate and dissolve within a vast amorphous ocean, and this volatility mirrors processes described in many Hermetic texts. The similarity with aspects of the alchemical process was a major key to the amalgamation I was forming. What made it visually cohesive in diagrams was the insertion of the sefirot as an overall organizational device. This placed the aetheric activity within a common symbolic language that both Hebrew and Hermetic systems both utilized.

At this time, I was also digesting many grimoires or works of practical magic. I was not interested in the evocation of spirits or the manipulation of phenomena. My interest was in patterns of transformation, particularly as they are portrayed through graphic elements. Grimoires utilize magical seals to bind intention. A magical seal summarizes how various powers function and can be accessed, and this is certainly a form of cartography. Virtually every image I ever made contains some sort of seal within it, and this became a way of graphically summarizing the synergistic blending of everything I was investigating. My seals incorporated patterns from the letters of Hebrew divine names, and the patterns fit within complex networks of linear and circular models of sefirot. These symbolic languages eventually blurred their boundaries and coalesced into a single unique language with its own syntax.

The final piece of the visionary puzzle emerged spontaneously through the experimental exploration of drawing itself. This asserted a wild range of activity as a biomorphic mode of representation. Biomorphism displays organic shapes, textures, and atmospheres. It is usually associated with Surrealism and psychedelic art, but its roots go back as far as medieval manuscript illumination. The term refers to imagery derived from living or biological forms or morphologies. The process extracts and mixes abstract patterns from organic life within contexts that transcend conventional representational designation. The organic forms commingle with geometry to form unexpected combinations, and this creates an entirely unique visual vocabulary.

As a young artist in the 1980’s I explored biomorphic imagery in drawings and paintings, so this was not anything new. I never dreamt that this imagery would return. Biomorphism dwells within the twilight between positive and negative spaces and forms a bridge between the seen and the unseen. Every element in my images could find their new life within the swirling biomorphic undergrowth. All the sacred symbols could then activate the biomorphic aethers to transform the array into a living window for an unlimited scope of vision. Within this array, the sefirotic structure is always present as an organization principle. This provides a framework that holds the vision together and allows it function as a diagram. Without this framework the biomorphic activity would float away into a blur. The sefirotic structure is never artificially imposed onto the image. It is automatically asserted without any contrived effort. This spontaneous assertion of the sefirotic structure is evidence of the indelible imprint of my formal practice.

Prior to the 10-year preparatory period that began in 1996 or the creation of any diagrams, I voraciously swallowed any book I could find on almost any esoteric subject. In the period between 1993 and 1994 I spent almost every day in the Metropolitan Museum of Art surrounded by the artifacts of human civilization, absorbing my reading material on the benches. In 1995, a year before my decision to dedicate my life to spiritual practice, I moved into a tantric hermitage in the Midwest where a blend of Advaita and Vajrayana was practiced. This was where I was introduced to the living doctrines of non-duality that would radically alter the course of my development.

Gradually, my concerns shifted away from magic and into mysticism. After a few years I returned to Brooklyn and sought deeper instruction in technical Kabbalah. In 1998 I met two influential rabbis with whom I established relationships that went on for years. One was from the Litvak tradition and the other from the tradition of Chassidus. These individuals must remain anonymous because there is a stigma against teaching Kabbalah in general, but there is outright hostility against teaching it outside of Orthodoxy.

I am an apikoros (religious heretic) according to certain interpretations of Jewish law. A heretic violates Rabbinic authority willfully when it comes to theistic faith and its observation. There is tremendous benefit to such a designation: It invites the freedom to innovate creatively in an unlimited way. Whatever is of use can be absorbed and what is superfluous can be discarded. The heretical position within Jewish esotericism is by no means unique. A wide variety of heretical groups have appeared over the centuries with issues very similar to my own.

Because I am unencumbered by any type of authority, I have been able to work without external interference. This renders me free to conduct my explorations in any way that I see fit. The bulk of my innovations originate on cards made of heavy hot press watercolor paper that are carried in my right breast pocket. In my left pocket are a range of mechanical pencils and technical pens used to make the notations. These items are carried everywhere I go, so the work becomes possible in all circumstances without interruption. The work has become a continual ongoing process because I have dedicated my entire life to the prospect and have no other pressing interests or responsibilities other than single pointed service.

Once the innovations that have been worked out in the cards becomes clear, the content can then be elaborated upon in more extensive writings and drawings. This system has remained unchanged since 2006 when the mature drawings first appeared. The cards are the primary means of cartographic exploration. However, they exist in a raw form of notation that only I can understand. After the developed images arose and were published in books, this work ceased to be a private affair, and what had originated in the cards was made accessible to an audience.

The cards serve as a guide for the rest of the cartographic process. However, the developed drawings are certainly not byproducts of pre-existing ideas that are worked out elsewhere. They are truly original innovations that are never dependent upon prior material. Even though the themes might arise first in the cards, each exploration uncovers fresh surprises and is a unique magical event that cannot be predicted. This is quite misunderstood by those who would reduce the work to a form of illustration. I am quite insistent on this error not being the case.

Eventually, what began in the cards as a private intimate activity became public. My work first appeared in published form in 2010 as a line-by-line commentary on the first 3 chapters of the Bible called The Kabbalistic Mirror of Genesis. The book was written in 2006 during the first phase of my discovery of esoteric cartography. This was my first literary effort, which was a herculean task because I had no training or experience whatsoever in writing. The book was extremely well received and went on to be published in future years in multiple printings.

Once I had accumulated enough visual work, a beautiful large format catalogue of my cartographic images was published under the title The Sacrificial Universe in 2011. This book also contained written descriptions of my supporting ideas. This was the first effort at a monograph. A second volume was then published under the title Blazing Dew of Stars in 2013. Both titles were also received quite very well within the esoteric community.

After the publication of the first 3 books a seismic change seemed both necessary and immanent. By the fall of 2012 an intense need for isolation was building, as if something deep was calling. At the time I did not understand it. Acting upon this impulse required a great deal of introspection. All I knew was that a lot of solitary practice was needed, and everything I had learned had to be gathered in a cohesive way. This was the beginning of the second major phase of the work which extended everything that had been accomplished since the inception of the work in 1996.

By late spring of 2012 my wife Rachel moved out of our loft so that I could pursue solitary retreat. She got a studio a few blocks away and left me alone to disappear within the silence. Rachel’s mission was total support of the work, which she believed in as much as I do. She is selfless by nature, like an angel. It is impossible to describe how touching and beautiful her presence is to me. It is one of the great miracles of my life and development. If it wasn’t for her, my work could never have flourished in the way that it did. My degree of focus and absorption is so all-consuming that without external help I would be relegated to a rather grim and primitive existence. This would have certainly got the better of me.

As soon as I was completely alone, I stopped speaking, and the silence washed over and overtook everything. This was a profoundly intimate gesture, but it subsumed the entire world. What began as a private event became the actual face of reality. The fullness of the silence became thick and pervaded every detail of life. It suffused all my cells as well as inanimate objects. The universe became a dark sparkling vastness, bright like a sun but hidden like the night at the same time. It hung like a mountain but opened like space. Its resonances seeped through everything, and its poignancy permeated the layers of tension that had accumulated over the course of my life. This offered the greatest challenge I had ever experienced, but it was nothing other than simple perception. This is how the period of solitary retreat arose, and it lasted 3 years in various forms.

In the loft in Brooklyn my retreat life blossomed. Night and day blended with each other, and sleep and wakefulness began to merge. Within a few months the overall tone of reality slipped into a profoundly dreamlike condition. This state ultimately became permanent and persists to this day. This is not a hazy or indistinct type of dream. A sharp clear fullness pervades the dream, and the clarity flows through itself as the tides of phenomena come in and out. This is the seal of transparency that marks reality, both suffused throughout the act of perception and in everything that is perceived. What I realized was that this state was not fabricated or induced by anything I was doing. Reality innately expresses this transparency by its very nature, and things have always been like this all along. However, it generally goes unnoticed as discursive conceptuality meanders through the states of its distraction.

My main activity during the retreat years consisted of staring at the world in astonishment and considering how the body-mind could never be separate from the expanse of the mysterious vastness that appears to surround it. Along with this came a great deal of cartography, worked out in my pocket cards and in more developed drawings. I started many drawings that would be completed over the following years, and these images accumulated in stacks that I stored in boxes. Along with the hundreds of pocket cards made during these years, the boxes of unfinished drawings served as the groundwork for the body of work that would develop in the next phases of my cartographic service.

Unfortunately, everything has its price. The years of solitary retreat took a toll in terms of my mental health. The dreamlike state manifested an acute awareness of the delicacy of the plight of existence. At the center was the anguish that the mind experiences as loved ones pass in and out of the picture, and happiness comes and goes as we chase it but never manage to make it permanent. It became agonizingly apparent that nothing is permanent at all, and everyone and everything is literally passing away. We live in the residue of memory, and the existence that human beings experience is formed by patterns that are sealed by memories. The memory networks are like passing winds that live within a fleeting temporariness. Realizing this is profoundly sad. Everything that we think of as solid and dependable is anything but that, and this truth hurts on the deepest possible level. This realization caused me bouts of extreme anxiety. However, the trouble is the price of admission and is unavoidable.

While the dreamlike state became permanent, my internal anguish evolved into heartbreak. This condition comes from a struggle with the central unresolvable existential tensions of life itself. The purpose of spiritual practice is to deal with this burden and discover essentiality within it. But heartbreak is both a poison and a medicine that cures the disease. If it can be transformed into a scintillating vapor, it can sparkle through the myriad conditions of daily life. It changes reality from the inside out. The ability to recognize the unconditioned core of essentiality through the barrage of scintillation is the how the mystical quest becomes drawn through all things. It is its main form of currency.

In 2015, after 3 years of difficult and often painful solitary retreat, Rachel and I moved into an old house on the outskirts of New York City. I was eager and ready to work. We had withstood our share of problems associated with occult book publishers, and Rachel and I decided that we had enough of it. It was Rachel who suggested that we publish the material ourselves. This became possible because of who Rachel is. She had the background to handle the layout, design, manufacture, and management of the books. She was uniquely qualified because she served for over 25 years in the print publishing industry as a top designer and art director.

Over the next 10 years everything I had cultivated since 2006 would be codified into a vast succession of books, including the multi-volume Lightning Flash of Alef and Psycho- Aetheric Alchemy series. These books presented a cohesive systemization of my innovations and discoveries. However, the system was constantly evolving and refining itself. It never rests in the safety zone of becoming a frozen relic. This mutability characterizes the unique volatile nature of esoteric cartography. It is based on a process of endless exploration that refuses to become static. This is what allows the work to have its true significance. Plenty of systems claim to be definitive and “true.” In the absence of any such claims, the work can breathe and be breathed in by others in an open way. It doesn’t try to give final answers. It only strives to become immersed in the right questions and innovate variable possibilities based upon those lines of inquiry.

The area we moved to was Great Neck Long Island, which was admittedly an extremely odd choice. I had spent over half my life in Brooklyn and wanted to get as far away from anything that was “cool” as I possibly could. This area contained a large Orthodox Jewish population. Nothing is less cool. Jewish fundamentalism had grown at an alarming rate in the aftermath of the holocaust. This was an amplification of preexisting anxieties that Jews have always had about the outside world. The collective trauma seemed to consume the culture, and what I observed can only be described as a set of obsessive-compulsive tendencies based on a group neurosis. However, we share the Kabbalistic symbol system. The bond is close enough to connect, but far enough to allow the distance that a true outsider requires.

Thankfully, the house was incredibly peaceful. It allowed for an uninterrupted state of non-distraction that was not possible in Brooklyn. The turbulence of our former lives was now over, and Rachel and I lived in a state of half-retreat, somewhere between total isolation and integrated functionality. During these 10 years I produced a highly concentrated non-stop succession of work, and Rachel saw to it that the books were manufactured beautifully. She also handled all the book business and the daily affairs of the household. We had an agreement: I work without interruption and would not ask any questions about what was going on around me, and she would take care of everything to keep me going. The books we made together are so poignantly touching to me that when I gaze upon them my heart feels as if it is going to explode. Happily, others like them too.

During the 10 years that we worked in the house I took in no news of the world. I participated in no cultural activities. I made sure to separate myself from anything that would disrupt the singularity of my vision and stream of concentration. This was by necessity, not by disposition. My behavior had to be consistent to get the results I needed. I found this out through trial and error in Brooklyn. I would take no breaks or vacations. I would not waste time on lesser concerns. I worked every single day in the same manner. Work began before dawn and commenced immediately upon arising. I alternated between formal practice sessions, writing, drawing, and mapping on the cards in my pocket. I worked until exhaustion in the afternoon. Each day was the same in this regard.

My workspace was comprised of a highly ordered series of altars and was more of a temple than a traditional studio. The formal aspects of my spiritual practice were completely integrated into the activities of drawing and writing. The act of working was a fully developed form of meditation and prayer. The simple act of entry into this space became a sacred act. I also wore a uniform consisting of a green moleskin shirt (with obligatory pockets), black sweatpants, and green undershirt. This uniform was like a token or seal for the outer aspect of the work. The consistency of wearing it every day was not unlike the behavior of orthodox Jews in a sense. It arose as a method to keep my actions in line with single-pointed focus. Whatever the reason for this odd behavior was, it worked and that was more than enough. I was not interested in the reasons; I was interested in the results.

During the 10 years in the house 18 books were completed and published. Another 3 books were finished and then withheld to be incorporated into later projects. The first books that were published were the 7 volumes of the Lightning Flash of Alef Series which were released between 2015 and 2023. Then, in 2024, an unexpected upsurge of material arose seemingly out of nowhere. In that year alone 11 short books were published. When such a thing occurs, conceptualizing too much about it or questioning why or how is generally counterproductive. The main thing is to keep working.

And keeping working I did. When the trajectory of life surrenders to a path and nothing remains apart from that momentum, no more choices need to be made. The trajectory shines so brightly that it burns away the possibility of anything else. What remains just gets stronger. This sacred work is not done for my own personal sake or for the sake of others. There is no sense of obligation to anyone or anything other than the inherent goodness of the divine service itself. In this sense, the work is non-negotiable. It is the boss, not me.

– David Chaim Smith, December 26, 2024

Published Works

Other Publishers

Kabbalistic Mirror of Genesis

Sacrificial Universe

Blazing Dew of Stars

The Awakening Ground