Gnosis III: The Tree of Life
Dr. Hereward Tilton
Fall 2025
In the Jewish Kabbalah, we find the divine cosmos-creating emanations known as sefirot arranged in an arboreal schema or ilan known popularly today as the ‘Tree of Life’. In this course we’re going to study the ancient Gnostic precursors of the sefirotic cosmogony, its evolution among the medieval Kabbalists and the early modern followers of Isaac Luria, and its reception within the Christian Cabala and the modern occultist or ‘Hermetic’ Qabalah. We’ll also explore the conceptualisation of the sefirot as parzufim or ‘countenances’ constituting the primordial human known as Adam Kadmon – a notion which also has clear precursors within ancient Gnosticism and the Philonic doctrine of the Anthropos.
As we explore this central motif within the Western gnostic traditions, we’ll approach the Kabbalistic Tree of Life as a representation of transitional events in the individuation process. Within the human microcosm, these events are related to the integration of the shadow via the exposure of somatically encoded complexes – a process depicted within certain Kabbalistic traditions as the creation of an ‘ethereal body’. As these transitional events are also discernible in the macrocosm without us, we’ll uncover the physical laws underlying the longstanding fractal depiction of the sefirot and their ancient Gnostic forebears, the Aeons.
THIS COURSE PROVIDES:
—The third installment in a five-part series on the subject of gnosis
—A deep dive into the crucial symbolic dimensions of esoteric history
—Advanced knowledge for researchers and connoisseurs
—An ability to speak to the foundations of spiritual praxis
—Familiarity with the language of esoteric systems
Nine Saturdays Live on Zoom
2 PM — 3:30 PM PST
September 20 - November 15, 2025
Enrollment opens June 21, 2025
Hereward Tilton (BA Hons 1, Ph.D.,FHEAl is a religious studies scholar who has taught on the history of alchemy, magic, and Rosicrucianism at institutes dedicated to the study of Western esotericism within the University of Exeter and the university of Amsterdam. His interest in psychedelia was first kindled in his early teens, and he was inspired by experiments with LSD and lucid dreaming to study the work of Jung and Eliade as an undergraduate. Since receiving his doctorate he has conducted research on alchemical entheogens in early modern Germany under the auspices of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and he has translated and introduced an eighteenth-century Austrian black magical manuscript dealing with traditional psychoactive fumigations called Touch Me Not: A Most Rare Compendium of the Whole Magical Art (Fulgur Press, 2019). In his most recent books, The Path of the Serpent, Vol. 1: Psychedelics and the Neuropsychology of Gnosis Rubedo Press, 2020) and its forthcoming sequel, he applies recent discoveries in psychedelic neuroscience to the symbolism and techniques of a European gnostic tradition with historical and phenomenological ties to Indo-Tibetan tantra.