[demonsbane]

It is easy to understand the Kabbalistic take about the planets can be viewed as outrageously absurd from our current viewpoint. And any straightforward try to make both of them compatible only can be wrong (1).

However, that apparent absurd can be viewed as a paradox, only solved from the utmost metaphysical point of view (2) involving the nature of perception. It is exactly a koan.

This is in line with the subject:

"The Sword Bridge, or the bridge so narrow and sharp that to cross it is to be cut in half (or to fall to the Abyss), is a common theme in shamanic initiation and in later legendry. Sir Lancelot must cross a Sword Bridge into the kingdom of Gore (...) Iroquois ghosts must cross and impossibily narrow bridge to the Afterlife (...)
_____(Suppressed Transmission II, p. 122, note 5)

Metaphysical knowledge is sometimes symbolized by walking along that impossibily narrow and sharp edge. In this context "being cut in half" means to fall in a partial and dualistic understanding of reality, or put in other words: to fail the quest. In this case, both "halfs" are the incompatible Kabbalistic and modern science takes about the subject (3).



(1) That is the reason why GURPS Infinite Worlds fails in trying to be a "universal generic setting" for GURPS.
_____True, GURPS is a universal multi-genre roleplaying system, but it needs to take each setting and genre separately, not all of them simultaneously. Fantasy, being the modern fictional expression of most ancient world-views, along with its characteristic Worlds Within Worlds vertical cosmology -shared by Kabbalah-, can't be consistently combined with Science Fiction approaches. Not in the same setting.

(2) Metaphysics is the domain "beyond all opposition", and that does include the opposition between the Kabbalistic "spiritual" nature of planets, and the materialistic one portrayed by modern astronomy.

(3 Kabbalistic cosmology, however, wasn't an end on itself but a path to the goal of Atziluth: the metaphysical domain of the Absolute. In that point, the entire Tree of Life, Briah, Yetzirah and Assiah, along with the diverse vertically aligned planetary worlds or ontological states had to be leaved forever "behind", entirely transcended. Differently than that, modern science is "closed" in itself, being unable to provide any path for what it is actively denying.