Black Aether

by David Chaim Smith

If we hold ourselves as separate observers of reality, we will never understand reality. Contemplative mysticism is like a wild beast that consumes itself upon the fires of its own life force. The labyrinth of impressions that constitute so-called “ordinary” life are incinerated whole as a single sacrificial offering as the mind confronts the endless expanse of its own confusions and pain. This becomes the great tikkun (repair) for a seemingly meaningless random universe based on cognitive error. Reality is then absorbed within the very space that presents it, familiarity passes into oblivion, and an astonishing secret nutrient becomes available to all those who seek it.

In this style of contemplative practice, the psycho-aetheric toxins that obscure phenomena are sipped like a bee draws nectar from a flower and the universal solvent called black aether is discovered in the heart of the most virulent and poisonous klipot (shells of superficiality). The black aether dissolves and annihilates the whole field of illusions, and as each obstructive shell evaporates into nothingness the secret elixir of En Sof overflows through whatever appears. When delusion is overcome only En Sof remains, and reality is spontaneously reborn as profound truth, beauty, and goodness. This realization is the true goal of the great work.

172 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2022

About the author

David Chaim Smith was born in 1964 in Queens, New York. His early career was as a visual artist throughout the 1980s. In 1990 he began an immersion into the root sources of Alchemy and the Hermetic and Hebrew traditions of the Kabbalah. In 1996 he abandoned visual art for a total dedication to spiritual practice, from which came a unique blend of practical mysticism and creative innovation. This blend coalesced while working with an obscure thirteenth-century text called The Fountain of Wisdom, which he mapped out diagrammatically in notebooks during his ten-year hiatus from visual art. The resulting symbol vocabulary served as the basis for his 2006 return to art, generating the content for several books. He currently lives in the suburbs of New York City with his wife, Rachel.