Genesis 13:18 Meaning Abram Moved His Tent

The altar goes up in Mamre, which is confusion, because the head does its true work precisely in the muddle of a mind not yet cleared. Abram, the spirit-potential folded inside a person, shifts his tent, the covering of the brain, and settles where thought is tangled, and there raises an altar, the head itself, as the place of sacrifice. What is offered on it is nothing outward: it is a person's own animal nature laid down and killed, the lower creature in the self given up so the higher mind may reign. The joining called Hebron is the community of the faculties drawing together around that act. The confusion is not avoided but entered, and on that very ground the lower self is put to death.

Abram: the spirit-potential within a person, the higher promise that pitches its dwelling in the head Tent: the covering of the brain, the movable house of consciousness a person carries and re-pitches Mamre: confusion, the tangled, unsettled state of a mind in which the real inner work still has to be done Altar: the head, the raised place where a person offers up and slays the animal nature within Hebron: joining and communion, the drawing together of the inner faculties into one body