I’m writing a book about the Cube of Space, a little-known Qabalistic glyph that can be worked with using the imagination. I started it in 2023 but decided to put it off for a while. I was writing a therapy book at the same time, and I started to find it tricky to simultaneously write two books that weren’t entirely dissimilar. Now my attention has been hijacked by my novel series, Lemurian Pushback. But, soon, I will return to this project and complete it, hopefully later in 2024. In the meantime, this piece is intended to give the interested reader an overview of a way of working meditatively with the Cube.
I first wrote about the Cube of Space back around the beginning of the millenium. I’d been studying Qabalah with Paul Foster Case’s organisation, The Builders of the Adytum (BOTA) in London. There were regular meetings at one of the rooms upstairs at the Theosophical Society’s building near to Baker Street tube. I had been accepted for Pronaos – group ritual work – and was waiting in the upstairs room to be called down for the initiation. I’d been studying the Cube and, whilst sitting there waiting, I found myself attracted to look more closely at the direction of flow around the twelve sides. I noticed something that I hadn’t seen before – that two of the six faces had a circular flow, whilst the remaining four did not. Checking more closely, I noticed that two book-like shapes were naturally created by paying attention to the flow, one that opened East and one that opened Above. Later, after the initiation, I wrote a brief article about this with the same title as this piece. This is a more extensive exploration of the topic, which includes a way to build up the Cube in your imagination.
Students of Qabalah, Alchemy and related topics will be aware of the term Liber Mundi, often reduced to simply Liber M or Book M. It refers to the Book of the World, which is not a traditional written book but rather the idea of learning to read the world around us. Relating to this, I propose another book – the Liber Corpus – or Book of the Body. Learning to “open the body,” both physically using Bioenergetics or Breathwork, and imaginally, using the technique herein detailed, removes energetic blocks from our system and allows greater energy to flow. In addition, the Cube of Space visualisation technique that I give in this piece, will improve the flow of intuitive insight from other dimensions or guides. This has been my experience.
My actual book on this topic, that I mentioned at the beginning, will feature 22 chapters, each with both a Bioenergetics or Breathwork exercise along with an introduction to one of the 22 Tarot Keys and how they are attributed to the edges, faces, axes and centre of the Cube of Space. This piece will only look at the attribution and how to build the Cube up in your imagination. Because I’m not going to go through each Key here, in order to make use of this piece, you will need to already be intimately familar with the 22 BOTA Tarot Keys. I have versions online here. If you don’t happen to be familiar with them, I guess it might be tricky. So this piece is kind of restricted, just because of this, to those who’ve done BOTA coursework. Just to be clear, the Rider-Waite deck, or others, is not so calibrated to this exercise – just my opinion.
Let’s get going. Here’s a picture of the Cube with the directions of flow evident, which I found online.
Yes, it looks weird and confusing! For now, forget about the Tarot Keys and just look at the twelve edges and the flow along them. Can you see the two faces where the four surrounding edges create a circular flow? They are the Upper face and the Eastern face (furthermost away). Let’s make it clearer.
Hopefully, you can now see what I’m talking about and also notice the book-like shapes that form when the directions of flow are considered.
What happens when you “open the book,” so to speak? Essentially, the Cube becomes a four by three Gnostic Cross.
If you’re into Qabalah, you may be getting an intuition about the Cube and how it shifts from three dimensions to two in an esoterically suggestive manner.
Other writings on the Cube of Space, of which there aren’t many, when they do look at unfolding the Cube into a Cross, invariably pick the upper face to be the face that opens. This is the one chosen both by Paul Foster Case in The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order and by David Allen Hulse in his book New Dimensions on the Cube of Space. Neither of these sources even mention the possibility of opening the Eastern face, as I recall. I don’t know why that is. However, I do prefer to use the Eastern face myself, as this keeps us upright, in the world, as opposed to being on our back, looking up. So that is the one I’ve used for the Cross image above.
If you’re feeling pretty lost, I get it. I think you do have to be into the Cube to easily follow along. If you’re not lost… awesome! If you’re lost but still intrigued, feel free to go through this piece a few times before continuing. Or wait for my book, which will be a lot more extensive.
Let me now go through the 22 steps for building the Cube shape up in our imagination.
Preparation: Sit down with eyes closed and spent one minute simply breathing relaxedly and paying attention to the sense of your body. Remember that it is within the sense of the body that energy is stored, so paying good attention to this throughout will hugely help the process. You should imagine yourself to be facing East. You may also simply face East but imagining it is important.
When ready, you will begin to build up each Tarot Key in your imagination, to start with in front of you and then place it in the part of the Cube given. This can be done whilst imagining yourself seated away from where you are. Or it can be done by actually placing the Keys, imaginally, behind, above, in front of you etc. I find that the strongest results are to be had doing the latter, mostly because we are seeking to physically open up the sense of our back, where a lot of energy tends to be held in blocks.
Because the Keys are rectangular and the Cube is based around squares, after building each Key up, you may need to expand the sides before placing it, depending on whether this feels important to you.
I recommend to build each Key up in front of you for ten to twenty seconds and then moving it into its place on the Cube. Take a couple of seconds to then see it in its place, before moving on to the next Key. Note that the Keys for the faces of the Cube should all face towards you.
Be aware that, aside from with the Keys assigned to the six faces, you will need to imagine rolling each Key up into a scroll (horizontally not vertically) before placing it.
This is the sequence of Keys and where and how they are placed.
Key 2 – High Priestess – Place underneath you, as though a carpet
Key 1 – Magician – Place above you
Key 3 – Empress – Keep in front of you
Key 10 – Wheel of Fortune – Place behind you.
Key 16 – Tower Struck by Lightning – Place to the left of you.
Key 19 – Sun – Place to the right of you.
This completes the six faces of the Cube. Be aware that the Keys should all be facing you, so to speak, such that the Magician’s feet are above to the front, the High Priestess’s head beneath you and in front. Now we move on to the 12 edges. For these keys, and the axes that follow, you will need to build each up in front of you for ten to twenty seconds, then roll it up horizontally and then place it in the correct edge, possibly inverting it first, depending on the direction of flow. Refer to the first diagram in this piece if you’re get confused about the flow directions.
Key 4 – Emperor – place upside down front left.
Key 7 – Chariot – place front below, facing to the right
Key 5 – Hierophant – place front right, upright
Key 6 – Lovers – place front above.
Okay, that’s the opening face done. Now we move onto the sides and backs of the book.
Key 8 – Strength – place left above, pointing behind you.
Key 9 – Hermit – place left below, pointing behind you.
Key 14 – Temperance – place behind above, pointing to the right
Key 15 – Devil – place behind below, pointing to the right
Key 17 – Star – place right above, pointing front.
Key 18 – Moon – place right below, pointing front.
Right, we’ve now done 10 of the 12 sides, just two of the behind ones to go.
Key 11 – Justice – place, upside down, behind to the left
Key 13 – Death – place, right way up, behind to the right.
Now it’s time to do the three directions (or axes) and complete with the central point.
Key 1 – Fool – place on the vertical axis, passing right through your body.
Key 12 – Hanged Man – place on the front-back axis, again passing right through you
Key 20 – Judgement – place on the left-right axis, again passing right through you.
Note that there is no direction of flow for these three axes. Finally, we mark the central point.
Key 21 – World – screw up into a ball and place right in the centre, inside of you.
You have now built up the entire Cube. Continue sitting for another minute, still feeling your body as you breathe relaxedly. Then you’re complete.
Notes and Extra Bits you can do:
- I don’t bother with the diagonals, as they are not assigned to the 22 Keys and would require using the end-forms of the Hebrew letters.
- Note that the faces are all Hebrew double letters, the edges all Hebrew single letters, and the axes all Hebrew mothers, with the central point taken by Tav.
- Much of the attributions are, I believe, originally taken from the cornerstone Qabalistic document, Sefer Yetzirah.
- If you find yourself getting into this practice, you may at the end unfold the Cube that you’ve just built up and make it into a Cross, placed immediately behind you.. If you like, now check the flow of energy in this Cross shape.
- You may notice that the four Archangels – Michael, Auriel, Raphael and Gabriel (Keys 14, 15, 6 and 20) – are all located on the North-South axis, along with the Chariot – the Key for the perfected Self. This suggests, perhaps, that these four are concerned with giving humans the experience of Time.
- You may notice that, should you open the Cube into a cross using the Upper face, that the only Key that remains “on the binding,” so to speak, in both configurations, is Key 15 – Devil, Auriel.
Bibliography
The True & Invisible Rosicrucian Order, Paul Foster Case (contains useful references to the Cube)
New Dimensions on the Cube of Space, David Allen Hulse (an awesome and insightful alternative way of working your way around the Cube.)
The Cube of Space: Container of Creation, Kevin Townley (a more intellectual type of guide but with interesting stuff nonetheless)