The Qabalah Gates of Light: The Occult Qabalah Reconstructed Revised Edition The Story of How, and Why, the Masters of the Occult Misunderstood the Jewish Kabbalah.
By Gary M. Jaron
First published April 2014 Revised edition published 2018 Printed by CreateSpace, Charleston South Carolina, U.S.A. CreateSpace i s a DBA of On-Demand Publishing LLC, part of the Amazon group of companies. ©2018 Gary M. Jaron All Rights Reserved. ISBN 13: 978-1985061828 Gary M. Jaron can be reached at
[email protected] Blogs: http://garyjaron.com/ Figures rendered by Isaac Hall 2014 Manuscript edited by Annie Agard Cover Illustration taken from the cover page of the 1516 Latin translation Portae Lucis Lucis of of Rabbi Gikatilla’s circa 1290 Sha’are Orah, Orah , Gates of Light. The source of the picture was the Center for Online Judaic Studies. This book uses Palatino Linotype font. This selection was based on the font used in my hardback edition of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. Wine.
I offer my heartfelt thanks to Cedar, for putting up with my loud kvetching, as I worked on this book.
Table of Contents Table of Figures Why a New Edition? 1: The Purpose Behind This Book. 2: Why Study the Kabbalah? The Answer the Qabalists Gave. 3: The Rules of the Game 4: The Jewish Kabbalah and the Christian Cabalah 5: The Origin of the Occult Qaba lah 6: Introduction: The Sefer Yetzirah, The Bahir and The Zohar 7: Sha’are Orah: the Original Gates of Light 8: The Qabalah Texts 9: The Key to the Kingdom: Etz C haim, The Tree of Life 10: The Diagram of the Tree 11: The letters and the Paths 12: How and Why the Qabalists Were Mislead. 13: The Meaning of the Hebrew Names of the Sefirahs 14: Keter 15: Chakmah, Binah and Da’at 16: Gedulah/Chesed, Gevurah/Din, and Tifereth 17: Netzach, Hod and Yesod 18: Malkuth 19: My Planetary Qabalah Correspondences 20: English Alphabet Gematria 21: Philosophic Metaphors 22: The Road Goes Ever On Bibliography Commentary
Table of Figures Figure 1: Enclosed Tree Figure 2Alternative array aka Zohar Tree Figure 3: Illustration from Latin Translation of Sha’are Orah Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8: English translation of Kircher’s Tree Figure 9 1300 Kabbalist (Zohar) Tree Figure 10: Enclosed array with GRA based letters Figure 11: Modern Qabalah Tree Figure 12 Zohar/ARI Tree with my planets Figure 13: Enclosed Tree with my planets
Why a New Edition? In 2017 when I first began to contemplate writing a sequel to this first book, I was led onto a train of research and thought that ultimately brought a realization that I had made some errors and false assumptions when I wrote this first edition of this book. First off I now realize that Kaplan’s natural array and his placing of the GRA’s letters on that array, was a fabrication of his own devising, a mistake that he created. None of the original Kabbalists made use of such an array, as Kaplan himself notes on page of his book on the Sefer Yetzirah. Next, I now realize that what I call the Enclosed array was the one used by the earliest school of Kabbalists and was replaced by Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla, in his Gates of Light and by the Zohar. When I set about to place the Hebrew letters onto the tree both in the Enclosed array and the Zohar/Ari version, I mistakenly tried to replicate Kaplan’s attempt to use the GRA’s arrangement on his Natural Array as the model to emulate. That was my mistake. The working out of GRA’s true Tree and his letters on that tree is a prominent part of my second book. I also now realize that Athanasius Kircher was even more deliberately fabricating a falsehood, than I had first realized. He choose to use what was in his time an outdated version of the Tree, the Enclosed array, since now the Kabbalists had embraced the Gikatilla ZoharAri version at the time Kircher published his book on Cabala. Kircher also fabricated his own letter placement on his Tree completely ignoring the Sefer Yetzirah. Despite the fact that he offered a translation of the text into Latin in his own book. Lastly, I had confused the meanings of Hod and Netzach, by getting those misapplied to the correct sefirah. Therefore this revised edition has numerous changes based on the above realizations. G.M. Jaron, February 1, 2018.
[1]
1: The Purpose Behind This Book.
I first encountered the symbols and ideas of the Qabalah in 1970 when I began exploring the Occult and Magick. I first encountered Jewish Kabbalah from a course I took at the University of California at Northridge in 1974. The professor was a self-proclaimed Rabbinic Kabbalist. The class textbooks were Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism and On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism . Reading them was like encountering lightning on a clear day. What puzzled me was I kept recalling the Occult Hermetic Qabalah material that I had previously read and those author’s claims that their works were based on the Jewish sources. It was clear to me that theirs was a collective failure to make use of the Rabbinic source material correctly. Trying to understand these disconnects and divergence became a pet project that became in 2000, the first version of my thoughts and research in the earliest draft of this book. It was never completed in any satisfactory way and reluctantly abandoned. On July 7, 2012, I was attending the third annual TheurgiCon Conference in Oakland, California where one of the presenters made an interesting comment concerning the question of what is an appropriate offering to make to one of the Gods. It went something like this; he challenged the idea that someone could make an offering of a chocolate cup cake with red sprinkles to one of the ancient Gods. The speaker explained that there was a young practitioner of the Occult arts who had made this offering of the sprinkle covered cupcake at a ritual the speaker had attended. The young practitioner then justified the correctness of the choice by explaining that the color red of the sprinkles covering the cupcake seemed like an appropriate color for that God. The TheurgiCon presenter then went on to explain that these ancient deities are not mere figments of the imagination. These deities, he said, have a long recorded history and literature that explains who they are and how to interact with them. It is not appropriate, he said, to make up whatever you feel like. This book agrees with his ‘no-chocolate-cupcakes-withsprinkles-of-any-color’ rule. If you believe that, it is perfectly acceptable to make an offering of chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles to a specific God or Goddess then you should simply put this book back on the shelf and not purchase it. This book is not speaking to you. However, if you feel that entities, powers, deities, and the like do exist, that varying cultures have been interacting with them for a very long time, and that these traditions need to be respected, then this book speaks to that attitude. I believe that the powers of the Sefiroth have a reality that should be respected and that our interaction should be conducted out of historically invigorated respect. I further believe that the sefirahs with their specific powers have not been listened to by many past and present practitioners, and hence their many interactions with them seem to me to be of the offering-cupcakes-with-sprinkles type. Many practitioners have been to a certain degree in error. What I mean is that in most Occult rituals that invoke or communicate with specific sefirahs, it was if the practitioners were sending a message to the wrong telephone number or house address. The actual entity living there is not the one they wanted to communicate with. Now, if the entity was nice and polite, they have been forwarding these messages, but there is the possibility that over the years of misdirected communications they just got tired and annoyed and have been tossing them in the trash. My book tries to explain the source of these mistaken addresses.
To begin with, this book is concerned with the word that has become associated with the efforts of the Rabbis who created the Jewish mystical tradition. That mystical tradition has a long history, and its impact on the non-Jewish world and non-Jewish traditions is really the focus of this book. I will use these three different spellings of this word, Kabbalah, Cabalah, and Qabalah, to refer to three different ideas and foci of the groups who make use of some of the symbols first created in that Jewish/Rabbinic mystical tradition. This idea and system of notation is not new with me, and others have found it a useful convention. The differences between the three spellings begins with the question how do you transliterate the eleventh letter of the Hebrew alphabet that is the letter Kuf. Is it spelt with a K, a C, or a Q? If you look through texts on this subject and on the Web, you will encounter basically three varying spellings, they are Kabbalah, Cabala or Cabalah, and lastly Qabalah. Initially the choice of K, C, or Q was a sincere attempt to transliterate the Hebrew letter accurately. The difference began with historical usage. The oldest writings by non-Jewish scholars would often use the C spelling. I will ascribe the C to refer to the specific Christian variant of the Kabbalah tradition. Then in the 1700 or 1800, the non-Jewish writers began to use the Q spelling. I will use the spelling with a Q to refer to the Occult variant of the Kabbalah tradition. The K spelling was often used by Jewish writers, especially with the important work of Gershom Scholem in the 1940’s. Gershom Scholem transformed the study of the Jewish mystical tradition by his assertion that it was a major force in the shaping of Judaism. Henceforth Jewish scholars consistently and intentionally used his K spelling. I will for the sake of clarity designate certain differing beliefs with each of these spellings. Therefore, I will place significance to the different spelling and intentionally mean something specifically when I spell it with a C, or Q, or with a K. When I speak on this topic and wish to differentiate between the three sources, I will call them the “Kay-ballah,” the “Ceeballah” and the “Que-ballah”. The term reconstructed from this book’s subtitle refers to an attitude and a project in the neo-pagan movements and traditions [2]. The reconstruction movement and attitude attempts to utilize what is known of the past by scholars who study that past so that some form of that can be practiced today. Examples of this process are many and varied. Neo-pagan groups studied archaeology, anthropology, and any historical records they can get their hands on to re-imagine and reconstruct the religious practices of ancient cultures such as, Canaanite, Celtic, Egyptian, Greek, Norse, Phoenician, Roman, and Slavic, etc. I am thus proposing to go back to the source texts of the Rabbis who created the Jewish mystical tradition to find out what is known of that tradition and to reexamine them in light of the idea of creating a practice of them for today. I am not imagining a Jewish practice but trying to acknowledge the existing practice of the Occult tradition. I wish to re-orient an Occult practice that is rooted in the original meaning and purpose of the Sefiroth as conceived by those who created this system, the Rabbis of the Kabbalah. What I am suggesting is that there needs to be a reconstructing of the Occult tradition based on the source texts of the Rabbinic/Jewish Kabbalah. What do I mean by Occult and those who practice within this tradition? Occultists are people who study and or practice Occult teachings. So, what does the word Occult mean? Referring to the Oxford English Dictionary, it presents the first two definitions, which give the attitude behind the word, and then the fourth definition discloses the variant I am interested in and I am referring to.
1) Hidden (from sight); concealed (by something interposed); not exposed to view. [First used in print in 1567] 2) Not disclosed or divulged, privy, secret; kept secret; communicated only to the initiated. [First used in print in 1533] 4) Of the nature of or pertaining to those ancient and medieval reputed sciences (or their modern representatives) held to involve the knowledge of or use of agencies of a secret or mysterious nature (as magic, astrology, theosophy and the like)… [First used in print in 1633] [3] Therefore, I am using the term Occult as the study of things ‘ancient and medieval’ that has been ‘kept secret’, ‘concealed’ and something not previously ‘exposed to view,’ such as ‘the truth’ concerning magic, astrology, theosophy, and to that list, I would add neo-Platonic and Hermetic thoughts and beliefs. These were all gathered together by such organizations in the 1900th century the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis, amongst many others. I am writing this book to explore the connection behind the Occult traditions with the mystical tradition of the Judaic culture and religion known generically as the Kabbalah. By exploring where the Occult tradition strayed from the Rabbinic source material, and what problems arose as a result, I hope to show why there is a need to reexamine the current understanding of the Rabbinic tradition. In this light, I suggest a return to the Rabbinic Kabbalah source material to rebuild the symbol system that has become the central core of the Occult Qabalah tradition, such as the Tree of Life, which is called the Sefiroth by the Jewish Kabbalah. I will propose for use within the Occult Qabalah system a reconstructed Sefiroth, aka the Tree of Life, on the basis of the Rabbinic Kabbalah source material. This book is not meant to be the end of any journey in the realm of the Jewish Kabbalah or the Occult Qabalah. My book is meant to be a beginning. This book offers a new set of orienting tools, a re-tuned compass, and a new map to assist you, the reader, in finding your way in this vast territory of knowledge. I will point toward many ideas but will not conclude or exhaust the possibilities. My book is offered in the hope that you, my readers, with more knowledge in such endeavors will explore in depth where I have only given brief outlines or suggestions.
2: Why Study the Kabbalah? The Answer the Qabalists Gave. Why study the Jewish Kabbalah? Eliphas Levi wrote, in his usual grand and flamboyant style, the following as his first sentence of his preface to his exploration into the Jewish Kabbalah system: ‘Judaism is the oldest, the most rational, and the truest of religions. ’[4] Here is how Arthur Edward Waite frames the importance of this subject: From whatever point of view it may be approached, the Kab balah is, however, of importance: it connects with other literatures which are included like itself under the general denomination of mystical, and there is a sense in which it has been thought, in its highest development, to stand at the head of it all. [5] Dion Fortune explains it this way: Very few students of Occultism know anything at all about the fountain-head whence their tradition springs. Many of them do not even know there is a Western Tradition….The adepts of those races whose evolutionary destiny is to conquer the hysical plane have evolved a Yoga technique of their own … This technique is based upon the well-known but little understood Qabalah, the Wisdom of Israel. … Everything must have a source. Cultures do not spring out of nothing…The mysticism of Israel supplies the foundation of modern Western Occultism. It forms the theoretical basis upon which all ceremonial is developed. Its famous glyph, the Tree of Life, is the best medi tation-symbol we possess because it is the most comprehensive. [6] Returning to Waite: ‘The Victorian schools of French and English Qabbalism were inclined...to claim all ‘Occult sciences’ are rooted in the Secret Tradition of Israel; but it seems more correct to infer that the Kabbalah has been engrafted on [to them]… ’[7] Aleister Crowley explained the importance of the Kabbalah thusly in appendix A of his book Liber 777: Qabalah is: (a) A language fitted to describe certain classes of phenomena and to express certain classes of ideas which escape regular phraseology. You might as well object to the technical terminology of chemistry. (b) An unsectarian and elastic terminology… (c) A system of symbolism which enables thinkers to formulate their ideas with complete precision, and to find simple expression for complex thoughts… (d) An instrument for interpreting symbols whose meaning has become obscure, forgotten or misunderstood by establishing a necessary connection between the essence of forms, sounds, simple ideas (such as number) and their spiritual, moral or intellectual equivalents. (g) a system of criteria by which the truth of correspondences may be tested with a view to criticizing new discoveries in the light of their coherence with the whole body of truth. [8] 2 B: Examining the Reasons Behind Their Answer.
The Qabalists all believed that there was a tradition of universal Occult truths, knowledge, and wisdom that was supposed to be passed down through the ages from some ancient and mysterious source. According to this view of the Occult tradition, the Jewish Kabbalah was believed to contain the closest thing to this ancient source material of ‘Occult Truths’ in Western Civilization. The Hebrews became the Jews, and during this transition, they became a culture that revered the written word. They ultimately wrote scrolls and books. The Jews supposedly took the oral records not only of their own tradition but also of those secret Occult teachings and recorded it in books. What is historically true is that the oral tradition of the Hebrew/Jews became first the Torah. Later material was added to their collection of sacred texts to become the Holy Scriptures known as the TaNaK , which is made up of the Torah, the prophetic writings, called the Nevi’im, and then the other writings, the Ketuvim, the proverbs, psalms, and the other recordings of history. The Rabbis added to this material and created what they referred to as the Oral Tradition; this was the commentaries on the TaNaK . This material eventually became the Talmud and so much more. They also began to write down the teaching of their mystics and this became the Kabbalah tradition. According to the Occult Qabalists, hidden here was recorded as well the secret knowledge of all those other cultures the Hebrews/Jews had encountered. S. L. MacGregor Mathers spins a version of this origin story for the ‘Kabbalah’ The Kabbalah was first taught by God himself to a select company of angels…From Adam it passed over to Noah, and then to Abraham…who emigrated with it to Egypt, where the patriarch allowed a portion of this mysterious doctrine to ooze out. It was in this way that the Egyptians obtained some knowledge of it, and the other Eastern nations could introduce it into their philosophical systems. [9] I believe that Mather picked up this idea that God taught the Kabbalah to angels, who taught it to Adam, from Jesuit Priest Athanasius Kircher, but more about this later. Here is Dion Fortune’s version of the origin of the ‘true science of the West’ known as the Qabalah The original stream of Hebraic mysticism has received many tributaries. We see its rise among the nomad star-worshippers of Chaldea, where Abraham in his tent among his flocks hears the voice of God. …Generation by generation we trace the intercourse of the princes of Israel with the priest-kings of Egypt. Abraham and Jacob went thither; Joseph and Moses were intimately associated with the court of the royal adepts. When we read of Solomon sending to Hiram, King of Tyre, for men and materials to aid in the building of the Temple we know that the famous Tyrian Mysteries must have profoundly influenced the Hebrew esotericism. When we read of Daniel being educated in the palaces of Babylon we know that the wisdom of the Magi must have been accessible to Hebrew illuminati. …Esoteric traditions avers that the boy Jesus ben Joseph, when His calibre was recognized by the learned doctors of the Law who heard Him speak in the Temple at the age of twelve, was sent by them to the Essenian community near the Dead Sea to be trained in the mystical tradition of Israel, and that He remained there until He came to John…Christianity had its exotericism in the Gnosis, which owed much to both Greek and Egyptian thought. In the system of Pythagoras we see an adaption of the Qabalistic rinciples to Greek mysticism.’ [10]
Here is Eliphas Levi’s conception of how the Kabbalah came to be transmitted to the Christian world The Hebrews are in possession of science whose existence St. Paul suspected and which St. John, initiated by Jesus, both hid and revealed within the immense hieroglyphs of the Apocalypse, borrowing for the most part from the prophecy of Ezekiel. [11] The publication of this work[The Book of Splendors] will make known the implacable hate borne by priests of Catholicism towards Freemasonry, which is Judaism reformed according to the thought of Jesus and his beloved apostle, John, whose Qabalistic revelation has always been the gospel of occult Christianity and the schools of unprofaned Gnosticism. Associated with these schools are the Johannites, the non-idolatrous Templars and the advanced initiates of occult Masonry. It is there that that keys of future are to be found, for there are preserved the secrets of the single, universal revelation whose doctrines Judaism, first and perhaps singly among religions, has preached to the world. [12] As we can see according to these Occult fairytale histories it was the case that either the Hebrews learned of God’s secrets and taught them to the world by passing them on to the final true inheritors of all wisdom, the esoteric Christians, or alternatively the ancient Hebrews mastered these truths during their sojourns with the ancient learned of the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, and the Babylonians. For those early Occult Qabalists, these Christian seekers of true wisdom, desired to explore the wisdom they believe was the heritage of those ancient cultures, such as Sumer, Babylon, and Egypt. The problem was these were for at that time lost and locked into silence since they could not translated the material, and so they fell back onto what they did have access to, which was the materials of those ancient Hebrews. Those Christian scholars had pounced upon what Hebrew texts they could find. These Hebrew texts could be translated and therefore this made the ‘hidden’ knowledge potentially available to those scholars. Therefore, translations of a few of these Rabbinic Hebrew texts were undertaken. At first, they were translated into Latin, later still these texts were translated into other more accessible European languages. The Occult Qabalists believed that the secrets of all those other ancient civilizations lived on in the teachings of the ‘Hebrew mystic tradition’; and this helps to explain their interest in the Jewish Kabbalah. The Occult Qabalists hoped to gleam the end result, the final product of these early teachings of Occult Western cultures in the writing of the rabbinic Jewish Kabbalists. The Occult Qabalists believe that just as there were universal scientific theories and truths, which were not contained or confined to any one culture, so must there also be universal Occult wisdom. Their model made some sense. Since, science was laying down the secrets of the universe it seemed logical that there should be an Occult science. This idea of Occult science was inspired by the worldview of science that they grew up with. Actually, the worldview of science that the Occult Qabalists had inherited went back to the very birth of the modern world, which was inextricably connected to the birth of, and the triumph of, science and reason in the years 1637 - 1690. The problem with the Occult Qabalists’ analogy of an ancient ‘Occult Science’ to a universal scientific worldview was that whereas scientists attempted to understand the nonverbal
things-in-themselves and always relied on the observations of this nonverbal underlying reality that could be quantified, verified, measured and validated to determine the principles of science and what would be considered scientific facts, this process could not be duplicated with the ‘Occult Science’. The focus of the ‘Occult Science’ was not the nonverbal realm separate and distinct from human conceptions. Rather the Occult focused on human understanding and interpretations of abstract concepts that were non-sensory ideas conceived of by humans. God, Gods and Goddess, demi-Gods, angels and such were not nonverbal objects that could be quantified, verified, measured, and validated. These entities that were the focus of the Occult investigations had only one form of certainty and measurability, and that was within the mind of the beholder. Whether the encounter with them occurred as part of external reality can never be determined with any form of certainty. Hence, these encountered ‘entities’ only existed after the encounter with any measure of validation in the recounting of the event. They were and are beings of internal reality, beings that do, and did exist in the minds and words of the beholders. These ‘entities’ were verbal, abstract constructs with no discernible and provable direct reference to nonverbal things of nature and reality. Hence, the ‘Occult Science’ was always a concoction of human internal experience that was conveyed in word and preserved in the heritage of a specific culture and communities. My own insight of the ‘We shape, and are shaped by, ideas’ [13] principle best explains the variations in these insights and concepts. A more formal explanation of this insight was stated by prof. Steven T. Katz ‘ Mystical experience is ‘over-determined’ by its socio-religious milieu: as a result of his process of intellectual acculturation in its broadest sense, the mystic brings to his experience a world of concepts, images, symbols, and values which shape as well as colour the experience he eventually and actually has.’ [14] E very participant in a culture used and uses metaphors and symbols of their culture to describe the universe, and this is the stuff that the ‘Occult Science’ was made of. The truth is that a person can never exist outside of their cultural upbringing. Every human through the process of acquiring a human language enters into the process of enculturation. To speak, write, and think in a particular human language is to participate in a human culture in its broadest sense. Therefore everything you think, speak, or write is in conformity with, expanding on, or purposely contradicting and challenging, the culture you live in. Here I am using the phrase live in to take into account your own linguistic, geographic and historical setting and context. The Occult truths of those ancient civilizations of Egypt, Sumer, and Babylon were the farthest thing from universal. They were a product of their culture and the individuals living in that culture as it existed at that time. The Jewish Kabbalah was a Jewish mystical tradition with some influences from those other cultures as the specific authors were exposed to them. A specific author would take ideas from the other cultures and then transmute those ideas into the symbols and metaphors of the Jewish culture. This is why the Jewish Kabbalah was always a product of the Jewish worldview. The Christian Cabalah in the Renaissance was a product of their Christian world view. It grew out of the desire to find a uniting of ancient pagan pre-Christian mystical insights to complement and supplement and hence to serve Christianity as they saw it. Without having real
access to the texts of Sumer, Egypt and Babylon, they imagined that they could find in the materials of Judaism, Greece, and Rome the ideas whose source they presumed came from those prior three older cultures. This imagined fantasy is what they wanted to believe and so they created an amalgam of ancient occult insights. Now having inherited the Christian bias of supposed cultural supremacy, they therefore desired to show that all this prior occult wisdom flowed into and found its supreme form in a variation of Christianity as they were now developing it, this variant tradition which would be called Christian Cabalah. It was only with modern times of the 1637-1690’s that the dream of a cultural nonspecific universal system of science was truly and fully born. This dream was a very Western civilization worldview. The seed of this dream started with the Greeks and their dream of universal truth, a system that describes how things are. This was intensified when Alexander the Great brought much of the known world under the influence of one culture, the culture of the Greeks. He began to create a single world culture to rule conceptually as he ruled by military force. That was how the dream of universal truth was fabricated; it was the dream of a Western Worldview. That dream was given new life and form by Rene Descartes with his 1637 book Discourse on Methods and Isaac Newton with his 1687 book: Natural Philosophy’s Principles of Mathematics. From Descartes and Newton was born the paradigm of mathematical language being something that is not limited to any specific culture, but is a pure universal language. With the acceptance of the Western paradigm of science throughout the world, mathematics has been accepted as the first, perhaps the only, truly human universal system. To many scientists mathematics is supposedly beyond the merely human. Let me take you briefly back to the birth of the paradigm of modern science and with it the modern worldview. ‘ In 1660 Europe was in revolution. At no time in its brief history as a society had any generation stood to the future with an orientation so distinct from that of its ancestors.’ [15] The worldview of the Western world was the born in ancient Greece. This worldview was pass down through Rome and Arabic Empire, and in this worldview anything was possible, especially miracles of God. In this world of the ancient philosophers and thinkers, the Divine was intimately connected to everything, so that it was the function of natural philosophy to serve theology. The revolution of the seventeenth century overthrew this ancient way of thought. The material world was dissociated from the world of God and assumed to be rational, so that it could be apprehended and mastered by observation and measurement. In the Discourse of Methods (1637), Descartes had organized the method of free inquiry by which Europeans were to develop the control of nature. He had reversed Copernicus, who had displaced the earth as the center of the universe: there Descartes had put man--alone, intangible, percipient--with only his ‘mind’ to grasp and master his world. Descartes succeeded in defining a universe in which the human reason was supreme. …In the world of experience…it could lead, as Descartes saw, to mastery of the material world: ‘We might thus render ourselves lords and
possessors on nature. (From Discourse on Methods, part VI). [16] Descartes put as his starting point of his, and in his opinion anyone else’s, analysis the concept of doubt and the distrust of ones’ senses and one’s experience. You could not trust either, Descartes said. The answer to doubt was the first principle: ‘ Cogito ergo sum.’ I think, therefore I am’. The human mind and its ability to think rationally was the sun around which the entire universe was to orbit. Descartes followed Plato’s view of the senses and ignored Aristotle’s trust that he place in them. Descartes put the senses and experience on trial, and he assumed that the senses were guilty, and false, unless they could be verified by instruments of so-called objective means and codified in mathematical principles. What Descartes had started, Isaac Newton finished off. Using Descartes principles of doubt, Newton built his own rational analysis. Under the influence of this method, Newton believed all existence could be revealed as being a mathematical and mechanistic certainty, and through this combined process, all things came to be reduced to mechanical component parts. Newton’s 1687 Principles of Mathematics was an ‘epochal work, which was destined to serve as the frame of reference for physics and other sciences for more than two centuries…’ [17] For his own and succeeding generations, Newton converted the world into formulas of measurement. It became a world, in which the physical and the mathematical appeared as the two essential and complementary aspects of reality. The empirically observed and the mathematically deduced were given a factitious identity. All the more effectively because he did it in the name of empirical observations. …The world of matter became a world of atoms --‘solid, glassy, hard, impenetrable particles’--existing in otherwise empty immaterial space and time. [18] Once a scientist leaves the nonverbal observations and begins to explain and formulate her thoughts and ideas in a human language, she begins to leave the universal and enter the culture of her language system. English is one cultural collection of systems and there is a joke/quote that was and still is valid that ‘ America and England are two cultures divided by a common language. [19]’ America is a culture different from England, and also different from Australia and Canada, though each somewhat share what is called the same English language. They are all not the same as French, or German, even though these all share the Western civilization worldview, each with its own variant of the worldview. And as the West is different from the Eastern Civilizations, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Indian, Korean, etc., each of those cultures is also different and distinct The Occult Qabalist, being shaped by the worldview of modern science, and by the primacy of physics in the realm of science, dreamed of and sought to find an equivalent system in the Occult realm. This Western modern dream transformed the Jewish mystical tradition that was the Kabbalah, and then based its system upon the work of the Christian Cabalists who had already amalgamated much of the prior insights and teachings of pre-Christianity into the service of Christian mysticism, and made a new thing. This new system went beyond just supporting Christianity and instead devised a system to bridge the teachings coming from Judaism, Greece, India, and China into a new system: Occult Qabalah. This supposed ‘universal’ mystical system was Occult Qabalists’ attempt at creating a selection of ideas and blending them from the entire world into a single new Western framework of Occult
teachings. This new invented idea of the Occult Qabalah was supposedly based on the Jewish Kabbalah, but was treated as a ‘mathematical language’; a supposed abstract and culturally nonspecific language/system to contain Occult truths in the same way that mathematics contained universal truths for the physicist. The Occult Qabalists were subconsciously creating a new idea and were also subconsciously forcing themselves to fail to be self-aware. They were forcing themselves to forget that it was their own desires that were the source of this invented system that previously did not exist. This invention was actually proof that no one can create a system that is not based upon the cultural environment from which it is developed; no system is divorced from the cultural worldview of its creators.
3: The Rules of the Game How can a worldview cause a misinterpretation? Let me present an example. In the United States there is a game played with a bat and a small ball. A pitcher throws the ball towards a batter. The pitcher wants to throw this ball in such a way that the batter fails to hit the ball in a way that is ‘legal’ according to the rules of the game. The hitter is trying to hit that ball and thus be able to run to the bases. A team scores when a runner is able to come back to the place where the batter was standing. In the United States this game is called, Baseball. In England, there is a game that has all of those same elements. However, it is a very different game using very different set of rules. This game is called Cricket . If a player who only knew cricket or only knew baseball went to watch the other game and tried to understand it, she would fail. The two games, though having some basic similarities, are very different in the specific details. The two displaced players of the games would look upon the other game and be puzzled as to what was going on and why things were being done the way they were. To a cricket player, the bats are supposed to be flat, but a baseball player knows that bats are rounded cylinders. In cricket, the ball is thrown in a manner and style very different from that uses by a pitcher in baseball. If you took a baseball pitcher out of that game and asked him to throw the ball for a cricket game, he would do it incorrectly. The same results would occur with a cricket pitcher trying to participate in a baseball game. Another difference between the two is that in cricket, there are only two bases with a series of three short poles or sticks between them, while in baseball there are four bases with no sticks. The worldviews of cricket and baseball are not the same, and thus the rules of the two games are different. Let’s explore the worldview of those non-Jews who have studied the Jewish Kabbalah for a moment. They are coming out of a Christian upbringing and worldview. Christianity believes that it is the only true faith and the only true religion. Christianity believes that the only purpose for the ancient Hebrews and the Jewish faith was to set the stage for revealing the truth that is Christianity. Christianity asserts that the only ideas of value within the tradition of the Hebrews and the Jews were those that were passed on and found their fulfillment in Christianity. For Christianity, the only thing of value within the teachings of the Hebrews and the Jews is whatever relates to the message of the coming of Jesus—their Christ. According to these rules of the game, you can take whatever you like and want from the Hebrew and Jewish tradition and disregard and jettison the so called old ideas associated with them, since they are irrelevant to the greater supposed real truth of what is to come after the Hebrews and the Jews. This attitude, these rules of the game, I assert are the unconscious premises that orient those non-Jews who created the Occult study of the Jewish Kabbalah. However, if you accept the ‘no-chocolate-cupcakes-with-sprinkles-of-any-color’ rules, then, you are believers in the concept of reconstructing the past traditions to use in the present. For you then a respect for that past culture is your guiding star, your orienting tool and purpose. Therefore, the culture that needs to be studied is the culture of the Kabbalah, which is ultimately and specifically the rabbinic Jewish culture.
I assert that the Occult Qabalah Tree of Life symbols are based on and depended on Babylonian astrology, and Hellenistic and Roman symbols and deities. Now, the question to ask is how did the Rabbinic Jews relate to and remember these three cultures of Babylon, Greece and Rome? To appreciate the rules of the game for the rabbinic Jews who created the Kabbalah, we need to ask ourselves how they recalled those three cultures. Let us start with Babylon. According to the Hebrew Bible, there were three deportations of Jews to Babylon after Babylon conquered Judea and destroyed the first temple in Jerusalem. There was the exile of King Jeconiah, his court and many others in Nebuchadnezzar's eighth year; Jeconiah's successor Zedekiah and the rest of the people in Nebuchadnezzar's eighteenth year; and a later deportation in Nebuchadnezzar's twenty-third year. These are attributed to 597 BCE, 587 BCE, and 582 BCE, respectively. The forced exile ended in 538 BCE after the fall of Babylon to the Persian king Cyrus the Great, who gave the Jews permission to return to Judea province and to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The Exilic period was a rich one for Hebrew literature. The Hebrew historians of the Exile include Jeremiah 39–43 (which saw the Exile as a lost opportunity); the final section of Second Kings (which portrays it as the temporary end of history), Second Chronicles (in which the Exile is the ‘Sabbath of the land ’), and the opening chapters of Ezra, which records its end. Every year the Babylonian’s destruction of the first Temple and the exile of the people is recalled during the reading cycle of the Torah and TaNaK in the Synagogue on the holy day of mourning to remember the that destruction of the Temple, the holy day of Tish B’ Av. Now turning to Greek impact on Jewish culture, one way the ancient Greeks are recalled is with the yearly celebration of Hanukah. According to the traditional account of the events, in 167 BCE Antiochus IV of the Seleucid Hellenistic kingdom based in Syria ordered an altar to Zeus erected in the Jerusalem Temple. Antiochus IV also banned circumcision and ordered pigs to be sacrificed at the altar of the Temple. Antiochus's actions provoked a large-scale revolt. Mattityahu, a prominent member of the priestly caste and his five sons Jochanan, Simeon, Eleazar, Jonathan, and Yehuda, led a rebellion against Antiochus. Yehuda became known as Yehuda (Judah) HaMakabi (‘Judah the Hammer’). By 166 BCE Mattathias had died, and Yehuda/Judah took his place as leader. By 165 BCE, the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid monarchy was successful. The Temple was liberated and rededicated. This means that the Greeks were remembered as the ones who desecrated the Temple, and the menorah becomes the symbol of that act of rededication of the Temple. The menorah is lit each year to celebrate the festival of Hanukkah and the defeat of the Seleucid Greek religious Empire. Lastly, let us turn to Rome, which brings to mind the war of revolt with Roman Empire. According to Josephus, the violence which began at Caesarea in 66 CE was provoked by Greeks sacrificing birds in front of a local synagogue [20]. The Roman garrison in Caesarea did not intervene, and the long-standing Hellenistic and Jewish religious tensions took a downward spiral. A series of events led to open Jewish revolt throughout Judea against Rome and war between the two began. In 69 C.E. Vespasian, who was the general of the Roman force in Judea, had been elevated to the status of Emperor replacing the disgraced and dead Nero, and Vespasian left his son Titus in charge of the ongoing war. Titus began a siege upon Jerusalem to bring an end to the rebellion and the war. Josephus claims that 1,100,000 people were killed during the siege, of which a majority were Jewish, and that 97,000 were captured and enslaved [21]. With the
Roman victory, the Temple is once again destroyed and it is completely ransacked. The day of this destruction is said to have occurred on Tish B’Av, which was the day the Babylonians had also destroyed the temple. Henceforth the two events become associated on the religious calendar of the Jewish people by the Rabbis to recall the two times when the Temple had been destroyed by the enemies of the Jewish people, the Babylonians and the Romans. As you now should be able to conclude, the rabbinic worldview does not look upon the Gods and religions of those three conquering empires of Babylon, Greece and Rome with anything resembling kindness or fondness. The Rabbis view those cultures with their religions as the enemies of Rabbinic Judaism’s religious values and freedom. Keep this lesson in mind when we discuss and analyze the assumptions behind the thinking of the Occult Qabalists.
4: The Jewish Kabbalah and the Christian Cabalah I will first explore briefly the origins of the Jewish Kabbalah and the Christian Cabalah. For the origins of the Cabalah, I will rely on my reading of the source materials of Joseph Leon Blau, Arthur Edward Waite, and Frances Yates. However, let me say a few words about mystical traditions in general. From time immemorial, our species has a need to understand the world we live in. This need compels us to search for meaning and order. Out of this search eventually came what we now call philosophy, science, and religion. Every culture in its formative years developed a religious worldview, a system of beliefs and metaphors that shaped its understanding of the world by focusing on what was considered supremely important. This set of ideas gets transformed into symbols and can be described by the term the sacred. That system of the sacred was passed down through the generations. The sacred explains where we come from, and where we were going, collectively and individually. Religion is the culture’s system that is developed to formulate and formalize the collective and individual interaction with that sacred. The founders of those religious systems tended to be visionaries, individuals who literally had auditory and/or visual visions. From these founders, the religious system acquired a set of metaphors and symbols. As the religious system was taught to those in that culture, there were individuals who desired to know and experience the Divine by more direct and intimate means. These individuals were mystics, and out of their communion with the Divine, they came back with a life changing experience. When they attempted to comprehend what that experience was, they did so within their cultures and their individual metaphor/symbol systems. They were shaped by their culture, and in that process of comprehending what they experienced; they in turn continue the process of shaping that culture. These individuals created new aspects of that culture, that religious system. This new sub-set is the culture’s mystical system. Every culture has its own unique mystical system to describe their own unique understanding of their sacred. The mystical system serves the culture by expanding and adding depth to that culture’s sense of the sacred. Within the history of the Jewish people, this mystical system has come eventually to be known by the name Kabbalah. Although the Jewish people did not exist in isolation and were undoubtedly influenced by others and their culture’s, still the Jews crafted the Kabbalah for themselves using their cultural metaphors and wrote it in a language familiar to, and they thought only available, to themselves. This mystical tradition could be as old as Judaism itself, which would make it 3,000 to 5,000 years old, depending on how you calculate the history of the Jewish/Hebrew culture. Whenever you see the word Kabbalah in this book, I am talking about the living, ongoing mystical tradition of the Jewish people. Important Kabbalah source texts were The Bahir, The Sefer Yetzirah, Sha’are Orah, and The Zohar. Now, I will briefly recount some history that you are probably very familiar with. The first century was a time of major transition and invention within Judaism. One of those new forms of Judaism centered on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and with the destruction of the Temple, this group like the rest of Judaism had to address this crisis. Out of this crisis, it created and crafted the New Testament texts to insure its identity and survival. Saul of Tarsus was a Jew
who found the Judaism of his upbringing no longer satisfying and out of his repeated encounters with fringe groups that he was debating, his unconscious began to shape an amalgamation of ideas that would satisfy his spiritual needs. His exposure to the gnostic/mystery religious groups, including the early followers of Jesus, enable him to use the gnostic/mystery religions metaphors and symbols and blend them with his own dissatisfied version of Judaism. Building upon the structure of the nascent Jesus Jews, he was primed to create something new. While traveling on the road to Damascus Saul had a mystical encounter and from this, he was transformed. He took on the name Paul and became a believer in his own vision of the teachings of the Jesus Jews and he crafted what would become Christianity. Paul directed his efforts not at other Jews but towards a non-Jewish audience. Both Paul and the other early Jewish Jesus followers as they set down their ideas believed that they could take the material, symbols, and metaphors of Judaism and recast and reuse them to suit their new purposes. What would become the modus operandi of the Christian worldview was an attitude that ‘Old’ ideas should be appropriated and assimilated for their own ‘New’ and therefore better purposes, and that whatever was not used, these leftovers, should be trashed and discarded. As the years went by the texts of this group would become the New Testament. Eventually they would leave their old Jewish roots behind and craft a different religion with its own way of seeing the world. The two religions would exist in parallel with little meaningful communication between them. Eventually Christianity would become antagonistic towards and resentful of the existence of its parent, Rabbinic Judaism’s continued existence. It was because of this lack of communication that led to the mystical side of Judaism’s growth and development being a complete unknown to Christianity. In the early years of the Jewish mystical tradition, I am generically calling the Kabbalah, its teachings and its manuscripts were not widely distributed and only passed on amongst a small set of teachers and their students. This circle grew slowly over time as this group increased and dispersed, willingly or not, over wider geographic space. This wide ranging geographic disbursement increased the amount of and the exchange of manuscripts. Now there was a possibility for this knowledge to spread to an even wider circle. It was in the late 1400's when a new vision of the world was taking shape in Christian Europe. The impetus of this intellectual movement was the wealth of manuscripts brought to Florence Italy from the Byzantine Empire centered in Constantinople. With the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Christian Europe began to have access to previously unknown Greek and Roman manuscripts. The study of these texts began a reexamination of Plato and a discover of the writings of thinkers who would be called Neo-Platonists, in addition to the writings of other Greek and Roman intellectual schools of thought, such as the Hermetic school, the Orphic school, the Pythagorean school and others. This new vision of the world was trying to create a synthesis out of the inheritance of ideas and beliefs whose source was Greece and later Rome. This new world view would acquire the title of the Renaissance. This worldview held the belief that a complete human being should be knowledgeable in all fields of human endeavors, such as the Arts and the Sciences. This world view believed that all wisdom shared a single purpose to enlighten and revitalize Christianity with a new rebirth. It was the desire to amalgamate all this wisdom of the ages from the non-Christian sources that led some to find and pick up the Jewish Kabbalah material. Joseph Leon Blau, A. E. Waite, and Frances Yates all agree that the inventor of what will become the Christian Cabalah is the Italian Renaissance scholar Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola (1463-1494). [In 1486Giovanni Pico]conceived…the idea of summarizing all human knowledge in a compendious summa in the medieval tradition, and decided to go to Rome to defend publicly the nine hundred theses into which he had compressed the philosophic wisdom of the ages. There he announced that he would dispute with all comers and generously issued an invitation to scholars to attend the disputation…The Oration on the Dignity of Man was written in Rome as an introduction to the nine hundred theses. [22] In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII halted the proposed debate and began investigating Pico’s heretical ideas. Included among the nine hundred were forty-seven theses drawn from Hebrew Kabalistic sources and another seventy-one ' cabalistic conclusions according to Pico’s opinion, derived from the fundamental ideas of the Hebrew sages, greatly strengthening the Christian religion.'[23] This manuscript according to Blau, Waite, and Yates was the birth and source of the Christian Cabalah. Pico believed that he had found in the Kabbalah ideas and proofs that confirmed the truth of the Christian religion. ‘ There is no science which makes us more certain of the divinity of Christ than magic and Cabalah .’[24] Pico used the Kabbalistic system of Gematria to make conclusions which, to quote the phrase repeatedly used by Pico, ‘ No Hebrew cabalist can deny.’ The conclusions were that the Christian Trinity could be proven and demonstrated by the use of Kabbalistic Gematria. Gematria is based on the Hebrew's use of letters as having numerical equivalents. Gematria is a system of a series of alphanumeric substitutions and manipulations whereby new insights can be derived and 'deduced'. In the fourteenth Cabalist Conclusion that Pico states most clearly his argument that Cabalah confirms the truth of Christianity. Briefly the argument is that the name 'Jesus' is the Tetragrammaton [YHVH], the ineffable name Yahweh, the four lettered (in Hebrew letters) name of God but with a medial S (shin) inserted [Y-H-SH-V-H]. The meaning implied, and as expanded by later Christian Cabalists (notably by Reuchlin in the De verbo mirifico) is that the S in the Name of Jesus makes audible the ineffable Name (composed only of vowel sounds) and signifies the Incarnation, the Word made flesh or made audible. [25] Pico believes that there are numerous Christian doctrines that are proved by the Cabalah. ‘ His list includes the mystery of the Trinity, the Word made flesh, the divinity of the Messiah, original sin, and its expiation through Christ, the heavenly Jerusalem, the fall of the demons, the orders of the angels, expiations, and punishments in hell.’ [26] In his system, Pico equates the planets [27] and a variety of other concepts and terms from Orphic traditions and Zoroastrian traditions with the various sefirah of the Sefiroth and with other ideas that Pico found in the Kabbalah texts that he studied. [28] According to Scholars such as Blau who have studied Pico's writings: The major source in Hebrew cabalistic literature for the conclusions of Pico was the Bible commentary by Menahem Recanati. It is important to mention this only because Menahem's commentary is not an original work but a simplification of the Zohar. Pico's source may be said, therefore, to be a
watered-down version of the cardinal document of the Cabalah.' [29] Pico brought the Cabalah into the Christian world; largely through his influence it remained a factor in the thought of many people for nearly two centuries. His own knowledge was limited; his over-dependence on one source perhaps reprehensible. But the knowledge of others increased because of his limited knowledge; and other sources were studied because he had studied one source. Out of the ashes of ‘The Phoenix of his age' grew the Christian Cabalah. [30] I will designate those non-Jewish individuals and their mystical system they developed by the term Cabalah. I will define a Cabalist as an adherent of the Christian religion who believes that the Jewish Kabbalah is either a precursor within Judaism of certain doctrines which ultimately are expounded in Christianity and/or someone who mixes and or finds Christian dogma, symbols, motifs, and metaphors in their understanding of the Kabbalah. The Cabalah is always a Christian system. After Pico's 1486 work there came others Christian Cabalists, German Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522) author of On the Miracle-Working Name, 1494, Paul Ricci, who translated Gikatilla's Sha'are Orah, Gates of Light from Hebrew into Latin in 1516, Ricci’s son sent a copy of this text to Johannes Reuchlin who used it when he wrote his 1517 text On the Art of the Kabbalah. Francesco Giorgi (1466-1540) of Venice, author of De Harmonia Mundi, first published in 1525, Athanasius Kircher (1570-1629), German Jesuit who was the author of the important book Oedipus Aegyptiacus in 1623, and the German Lutheran Christian Knorr Von Rosenroth (1636-1689), who translate a portion of The Zohar in his two volume Latin work: Kabbala Denudata: The Kabbalah Unveiled, published in 1677-1684 [31]. The Christian Cabalah is an ongoing and living tradition, and one that is different and divergent from the Jewish Kabbalah. An example of a modern Christian Cabalist who ventures off into his own Occult Christianity is Carlo Suares (1892-1976). He is the author of The Second Coming of Reb Yhshwh: the Rabbi Called Jesus Christ , amongst other books. You can find his work on websites dedicated to his teachings. Suares’s work is clearly not ‘kosher’. Suares’s Cabalah is built upon the modus operandi of Christianity, which is that the Jewish people do not possess the wisdom and insight to recognize the truth. The truth that Suares believes is that the Jewish people existed only as a mere means to an end, and that end was to be the birth culture for Jesus the one who was the Christ. The Jews by their refusing to convert to the truth of Christianity is evidence of their collective ignorance. For Suares the only truth the Kabbalah possess is found in the material of the Sefer Yetzirah which he considers to be the work of Abraham and thus pre-Jewish. Suares discovered a new re-interpretation of the ‘True’ meaning behind the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Suares rejects both Jewish Kabbalah and Occult Qabalah as misguided and erroneous. To quote Suares: In particular, the majority of cabalists are Jews enslaved to the Torah, and they have always asserted that one cannot know how to be a cabalist without practicing the Mosaic law. In this way Mosaism both annexed and rejected the Qabala and made it unrecognizable. But the Qabala is not a derivative from, or a superstructure of, of a Heresy of Mosaism. The contrary is true: Moses was directed to give out this very
ancient knowledge antedating Judaism in an historical sequence (and it is undeniable that the people who received it became its protective shell). The Sepher Yetsira leaves no doubt as to its anteriority and its cabalistic method: it never refers to Moses, or to his laws or to the historical Jewish people. It is outside the flow of time. Its only contact with history -- in language that has nothing anecdotal about it -- is the legendary Abraham.’ (Suares, Sepher Yetsira, p.113) [32] Suares has completely ignored the fact that the Sefer Yetzirah depends on, uses the insights of, and uses the metaphors from, and even quotes, passages of TaNaK , the collective text of Holy Scriptures of the Jewish people. The Sefer Yetzirah clearly was not written by Abraham, since it quotes and used the TaNaK, which was written hundreds of years after Abraham could have lived and died. For example, one of the core motifs of the Sefer Yetzirah is the division of the Hebrew letters into three groups, these are the Mother letters (Alef, Mem and Shin), the Double letters (Bet, Gimel, Dalet, Caf, Peh, Resh, and Tav) and the rest of the letters of the alphabet (Heh, Vav, Zayin, Chet, Tet, Yud, Lamed, Nun, Samekh, Eyin, Tzadi, and Kuf) are called the Elemental letters. Now the inclusion of Resh as a double letter is depended on the existence of the Hebrew text of the TaNaK . The fact that the letter Resh is considered a double letter only makes sense when you refer to the grammar of that text and the presence in the text that the letter Resh is receiving the grammatical mark the dagesh in that text. [33] Without the existence of that fact, the Resh would never be considered by the Rabbis as one of the double letters. My only explanation for a modern scholar, such as Surares, to believe and assert the Sefer Yetzirah was the product of a pre— Torah Abraham is to consider that he was biased by his Christian religious worldview and thus ignoring clear and obvious evidence to the contrary. Let us now leave Christian Cabalah and move onto the Occult Qabalah.
5: The Origin of the Occult Qabalah Now we shall go over the origin of those people who created the Occult Qabalah. In general, these Occultists, who used and discussed the Rabbinic Jewish Kabbalah, did so by accepting the premises of the Christian interpretation of the Cabalah, and hence they could almost be considered Christian Cabalists. However, in general they believed in ideas beyond the accepted Christian theology such as the teachings of the Greek Neo-Platonists and Pythagorean mystery schools. They believed these other teachings and traditions contributed to a greater understanding of the Divine. The earliest of these Occult scholars and practitioners were Christian practitioners of occult wisdom tradition who saw Jesus as yet another wisdom teacher rather than the incarnation of ‘The One and only True God’. Their use of the Kabbalah was not to support Christian theology as was the goal of Christian Cabalah, but rather to enhance this Occult ‘theology’; hence I am distinguishing them from their fellow Cabalists by designating them as early Qabalists. Let me now begin to list some of those early formative scholars of the Occult Qabalah: the German Heinrich von Nettesheim aka Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) who published De Occulta Philosophia in 1531, the Swiss alchemist Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim aka Paracelsus, the Rosicrucian philosopher and alchemist Robert Fludd (15741637), the alchemist Thomas Vaughan (1622-1666), and the English Thomas Burnet (16351715). [34] With the creation/discovery of the Rosicrucian tradition in the 1600’s it can be noted that their use of Kabbalah material is varied and thus it becomes a challenge of how to designate this early Rosicrucian tradition is an important question. In general, these Rosicrucian’s accepted Protestant Christianity and they built upon it their own new structure. They did believe in a ‘universal’ set of Occult truths. This makes them a transitional group and thus they blended the two mindsets of Christian Cabalah and Occult Qabalah. Very likely, the focus of the use of the Kabbalah material changed throughout the history of that tradition. How each practitioner did interpret the focus of the Kabbalah material and the overall focus of their thinking, either as a part of the Christian or Occult tradition, will place him/her as either at the Cabalistic tradition end of a continuum or at the Qabalistic tradition end of that continuum. The next phase in the history of the Occult Qabalah begins in the late 1800's. This next phase has as its progenitor the ex-French Catholic who became an Occultist, Eliphas Levi (born Alphonse Louis Constant 1810-1875). In 1853, he met the author and Rosicrucian Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Levi and was influenced by him. Levi blended Rosicrucian and Masonic ideas with his own in his magnum opus Le Dogme et Ritual de la Huate Magic (The Dogma and Ritual of High Magic) which was published in1856. Levi left behind a legacy which was taken up by others in France. Waite, in his own book The Holy Kabbalah, explains Levi’s work in the following manner: It remains to say that Eliphas Levi represents the invention of a new and gratuitous phase in the study of the Kabbalah…the standpoint of Levi is that there is a religion behind all religions and that is the veiled mystery of Kabbalism, from which all have issued and into which all return. [35] Levi accepted the beliefs of the Christian Cabalists and he studied their texts. What
White is arguing is that Levi's primary focus is not on bolstering Christian theology but proclaiming Levi’s belief in a secret source, a secret continuous tradition behind all the accepted philosophies and religions. It is this dream and vision that guided Levi to seek out the Kabbalah and the Cabalah and transformed it into the medium of this secret tradition. It is this conception of the history of ideas that gives rise to the tradition that I am designating as the Qabalah. Eliphas Levi is a pivotal figure in the transition from the Cabalah teachings to the creation of the Qabalah. In England in the late 1800’s, a collection of individuals came together to shape the Occult Qabalah tradition as it is known and understood in our modern age. They were for the most part born and raised in the Christian tradition, who studied the Occult writings of the prior European continental Occultists that I just mentioned, and expanded upon that body of work. They came together and were the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in England in 1888: William Wynn Westcott (1848-1825), Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (1854-1918), and Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1941), amongst others. Later members who became prominent and influential individuals of the Golden Dawn tradition were Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), Paul Foster Case (1884-1954), Dion Fortune (born as Violet Mary Firth, 1891-1946), and Israel Regardie (born as Francis Israel Regudy [36], 1907-1985) who is the only one in this list born of Jewish parents. To summarize, although within the works of these Qabalists they may also referenced Christian symbols, motifs, metaphors and dogmas, these individuals look beyond Christianity for their understanding and purpose for both the Occult and Kabbalah material. The defining difference between a Qabalist and a Cabalist is that a Qabalist is a seeker of and believer in an Occult tradition that is ultimately separate from and not the same as any particular religious tradition. A Qabalist is someone who has been influenced by Christianity; however, the Qabalists do not see their tradition as exclusively adhering to Christianity. A Cabalist sees and believes that this Mystical tradition flows through and into Christianity and is a means to fully realize the insights that can be found within Christianity. In contrast, the Occult practitioner may refer to the work of the Cabalah tradition however; the Qabalists takes those insights and transform it to fulfill the goal of working on Occult Magickal tradition. This is what I am designating as the Qabalah, and it this Occult tradition which is a thriving ongoing and living community of believers and practitioners. These teachers and practitioners weave a tale of history that is more legendary than historically rooted. I find them making claims that they do not and cannot substantiate and verify. My own inclinations are the academic, the historical, the scholarly, and the metaphysical/philosophic. Thus, it is not very surprising that I read with favor the writings of Arthur Waite when he writes as a historian of the Kabbalah, Cabalah, and Qabalah. Gershom Scholem said of Waite’s book The Holy Kabbalah: [Waite’s book] represents a serious attempt to analyze the symbolism of the Zohar. His work,...is distinguished by real insight into the world of Kabbalism; it is all the more regrettable that it is marred by an uncritical attitude towards facts of history and philology, to which it must be added that he has frequently been led astray by Jean de Pauly’s faulty and inadequate French translation of the Zohar, which, owing to his own ignorance of Hebrew and Aramaic, he was compelled to accept as authoritative. [37]
Waite’s style could be characterized as overly academic, obtuse, and pedantic. However, what matters is his attitude towards scholarship and history with regards to the Qabalah material. In the end, I find Waite to be a reliable guide, though not the easiest to read. I am not intending to make a definitive study of these three traditions, nor did I attempt to try and classify all individuals who have written on the Kabbalah, Cabalah, and the Qabalah. In the history of the Kabbalah, Cabalah, and Qabalah there have been many prominent writers. I may come to mention others later in this book. My designation of writers/thinkers as being Cabalists or Qabalists is not meant to be the final and true designation of that persons place in history. It is merely how I, correctly, or incorrectly, see that individual’s beliefs. I can say for certain that when I use the term Kabbalist, I will reserve it exclusively for thinkers/writers when they are writing and thinking about the mystical tradition of the Jewish people and culture.
6: Introduction: The Sefer Yetzirah, The Bahir and The Zohar Throughout this book, I will make reference to four Kabbalah texts: The Sefer Yetzirah, the Bahir, The Zohar, and the Sha’are Orah . In this chapter, I will focus on the first three books. The history of the Qabalah was influenced by the Sefer Yetzirah and portions of The Zohar that had been translated into Latin, French, and English. 6A: The Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Formation or The Book of Creation) Aryeh Kaplan writes in his introduction of The Sefer Yetzirah: The Sefer Yetzirah is without question the oldest and most mysterious of all Kabbalistic texts. The first commentaries on this book were written in the 10th century, and the text itself is quoted as early as the sixth. References to the work appear in the first century, while traditions regarding i ts use attest to its existence even in Biblical times. So ancient is this book that its origins are no longer accessible to historian. [38] The Sefer Yetzirah may have been known to the Rabbis of the Talmud, placing it to around 240 C. E., if the reference found in the following Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin is truly referring to this book. ‘ Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Hoshia would engage themselves in the book of [Sefer] Yetzirah every (Friday) before the Sabbath…’ Kaplan in his translation and annotated edition of The Sefer Yetzirah references Tractate Sanhedrin 65b. [39] In the same Tractate on page 67b, the same event is recounted in a slightly different version that ends with ‘ Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Hoshia would engage in Hillkhot (rules of) Yetzirah. ’ However, Kaplan notes that according to the commentary of the Sefer Yetzirah by Yehudah ben Barzilai, aka Barecloni, (circa 1082-1148 C. E.), the text Hillkhot Yetzirah mentioned on page 67b of the tractate Sanhedrin is simply another name for the text also known as the Sefer Yetzirah. Kaplan references Barceloni’s text on page 268 as the source of this insight. [40] To put the date of 240 C.E. into context, the process of deciding what would be included into the Holy Scriptures of the Jewish people began around 200 B.C.E, and that process culminated around 200 C. E. with the final version of the written text. I believe from clues found in the text itself that whoever wrote the Sefer Yetzirah had to know intimately and have access to the written text of the TaNaK . The earliest commentary to the Sefer Yetzirah was written in 931 C. E. by Saadia Gaon, where he remarks that ‘ It is not a common book, and many people have been careless in changing or transposing the text.’ ( From Saadia Goan’s commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, p.34.)[41] There have been many versions of this text. The Sefer Yetzirah is a short book even in its longish version, which is approximately 2500 words in length. The text has short chapters, the first dealing with the Sefiroth, the next with the nature of the Hebrew alphabet in general, and then a chapter on the 3 Mother Letters, a chapter on the 7 Double Letters, and a chapter on the remaining 12 so called Elemental Letters. The last chapter is a summation of sorts. It is interesting to note that the term Sefiroth is used in the text and the text mentions that the Sefiroth is composed of ten units however; the actual names of the ten sefirahs are never given in the text itself. This text is composed with the clear notion that Oral commentary, given by a teacher to the student, would explicate the meaning of what is present in this terse content. In building a
reconstructed Qabalah, we will examine this categorization of the Hebrew alphabet into those three groups. (Note: I use Kaplan’s spelling for the names of the Hebrew alphabet and for consistency I will use his transliteration of the Hebrew letters into English letters in how I transliterate the names of the Sefirahs, with the modifications such as the use of the ‘th’ whenever a sefirah ends in the Hebrew letter Tav.) The briefness and the prior secrecy of this text caused there to be numerous versions of the manuscript. Kaplan notes that these congeal into 4 significant groupings. They are referred to as the 1) the Short Version, 2) the Long Version, 3) The Saadia Gaon version of the text that is accompanied by the first commentary on the book written by Rabbi Saadia Gaon in 931, (Rabbi Saadia Ben Joseph, who became the head of the city of Sura’s Jewish academy in Babylonia, circa 882-942, and lastly, 4) the GRA Version of 1806. The GRA stands for The ‘ Gaon Rabbi Eliyaho ‘, the Hebrew word gaon translates to genius. His full name was Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalmen Kremer and he was born in 1720 in Vilna. He wandered for a while and returned to the town of Vilna in Lithuanian where he lived from 1748 till his death in 1797. This text was edited and published with commentary based upon the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572) aka as the ARI. The name ARI is derived from the acronym for ‘ Elohi Rabbi Itzhak ’, the ‘Godly Rabbi Isaac’ or ‘ Adoneinu Rabbeinu Isaac’ ‘Our Master’ or ‘Our Rabbi’, Isaac’. As for translations of the text, the earliest translation was from Hebrew to Latin. Aryeh Kaplan gives us a slightly confusing list of these translations. He states that the first translation of Sefer Yetzirah [42] was done by Gulemus Postellus, aka William Postell in 1552. He goes on to note that the next translation was done in 1587 by Jonannes Pistorius, aka John Pistor. However, Kaplan adds the following to this citation: ‘ Some scholars attribute this translation to Johann Reuchlin, or to Paul Ricci (an apostate Jew who had translated Yosef Gikatalia’s Shaarey Orah into Latin). At the end of British Museum Ms. 740, there is a note that it was written in 1488 by a Jew, Yitzchak of Rome.’[43] That date and attribution associated with the manuscript would mean that this text was the first translation into Latin. Next, in 1642, Joanne Stephano Rittangelio aka John Stephan Rittangel, made his translation of the text, and he also included and translated the accompanying work The thirty-two Paths of Wisdom . This text is used by the Qabalist William Wynn Westcott, who knew only at best some Biblical Hebrew, so Westcott relied on the Rittangel’s Latin translation when Westcott made his English translation in 1887. [44] Lastly, according to some scholarly research a fragment of a Latin translation of the text is found in Athanasius Kircher’s Oedipus Aegyptiacus 2:1, which dates it at 1653. [45] If Kircher actually translated this, he definitely didn’t learn anything from doing that, as the Hebrew letters as placed on his image of the Tree of Life demonstrates. If that research is correct, then it could simply mean that Kircher commissioned a translation for publication within his book and Kircher himself never read it. Or if he did read it, he deliberately made choices avoiding the internal logic presented there, which would be my conclusion. The book was known, studied, and influential in the formation of the Qabalah tradition. Important Qabalists including Eliphas Levi, Gerard Encause aka Papus (1865-1916, he was born in Spain but lived his adult life in Paris, France), and as I noted before, William Wynn Westcott (1848-1925) all referred to the text. Papus had published a French translation of the text in 1888. 6 B: The Bahir Aryeh Kaplan writes in his 1979 English translation of The Bahir: The Bahir is one of the oldest and most important of all classical Kabbalah texts. Until the
ublication of the Zohar, the Bahir was the most influential and widely quoted primary source of Kabbalistic teachings. It is quoted in virtual every major book on Kabbalah, the earliest being the Raavad’s commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah, and it is cited numerous times by Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (Ramban) in his commentary on the Torah. It is also paraphrased and quoted many times in the Zohar. [46] The book’s name is derived from the verse in the book of Job 37:21: ‘And now men see not the light which is [Bahir] bright in the skies;’ The Bahir was first published around 1176 by the Provence Spanish school of Kabbalists and was circulated to a limited group in manuscript form. The first printed book form appeared in Amsterdam in 1651. The first translation, which Kaplan calls ‘ wordy and virtually unreadable ’[47]was done by Flavius Mitridates around the end of the fifteenth century. The next translation was into German, done by Gerhard (Gershom) Scholem in 1923. The first English translation was Kaplan’s in 1979. The Bahir is an excellent example of the rabbinic invention of the Written and the Oral Torah. With its sparse fragmented structure it seems to have barely left the oral aspect of its transmission. This concept of Oral Torah derives from the rabbinic legend that on Mount Sinai God gave to Moses the knowledge to write down a series of five books which collectively are the Torah. Simultaneously, Moses was given all the teachings of all the Hebrew/Jewish teachers, students, scholars, rabbis who would come after Moses. This is the Oral Torah. This collective cultural knowledge and information would eventually get written down in the form of the Mishnah, the two Talmuds, and the thousands of commentaries on the Torah and Talmud. The Kabbalah texts such as The Bahir, The Sefer Yetzirah, The Zohar and Sha’are Orah, are all considered in the context of this legend as commentaries on Torah. Hence, they too were revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai. From this legend comes the rabbinic statement and principle that no written text of Torah can be understood without consulting the Oral Torah, the teachings of those who have studied the written text. The rabbinic principle of written and oral could metaphorically be used to mean that every sacred text requires a set of oral teachings or commentary to be understood. As I said, The Bahir oral origin is apparent in its structure. It is structured like a teacher’s lectures notes. It has a teacher’s repeating a student’s question and then it presents a brief set of key phrases that explain and answer the question. Presumably, the phrases are merely there to refresh the memory of the teacher, who upon seeing the phrases would then recall the topic and then orally expound in more detail in a class lecture. Kaplan gives us the full lecture in the section of the text called Notes to The Bahir. These notes are culled from rabbinic commentary and from the original insights that a living Kabbalist such as Kaplan can provide. The Bahir explores the hidden meanings of the first Torah verses concerning creation, then explores the hidden meanings of the alphabet, then begins an exploration of the meaning of Sefiroth, the Tree of Life, and ends with explaining the nature of the human soul. 6C: The Zohar The Zohar seems to takes its name from the verse in Daniel 12:3: ‘ And they that are wise shall shine as the brightness (ZoHaR) of the firmament; and they that turn the many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. [48]’ The word ZoHaR has also been translated as splendor or radiance. Its authorship has stirred the most controversy of all the texts
of the Kabbalah. My own inclinations are toward the scholarly and not the legendary. (I like fables and legends; they add excitement, romance, and stimulation to our life. Legends, magick, and the occult are like lingerie for the mind; in that they intentionally tantalize by means of concealing the very thing they wish to emphasize and thus reveal.) The Zohar purports to be the Aramaic writings of the 2 nd century C. E. Talmudic and Kabbalist Rabbi Simeon Ben Yochai. But when I first read Gershom Scholem’s forty page [49] explanation to demonstrate how the real author for the main body of the book is Moses De Leon, a Spanish Kabbalist (1240-1305), I was and still am convinced. [50] The Zohar is multivolume work with added material by unknown authors attached to it in subsequent publications of the book. The Zohar is the single most important book of the Kabbalah. It has been called the Holy Zohar and the soul of the Torah. Its publication marks a significant stage in the evolution and history of the Kabbalah. In Kabbalistic literature, after the expulsion from Spain, and particularly in the Safed and subsequent periods, the Zohar was taken to be the preeminent source of mystical doctrine, and all the new mystical ideas were made dependent on it by way of interpretation. At the same time, popular consciousness was full of stories from the Zohar--the arguments and statements in it concerning the soul, the Torah, the commandments and prayers, sin and punishment, the messianic days, and the life of the world to come--that were channeled to them by ethical writings, which became a kind of popular branch of Kabbalistic teaching. In this way the Zohar was able to achieve the highest possible status. It gained a place in the national consciousness as a canonical text, third only to the Bible and the Talmud. The Talmud and the Zohar were regarded as two aspects, the revealed and the concealed, of the divine revelation embodied in the books of scripture. [51] I will make reference to The Zohar principally through the anthology of texts collected and introductory notes added by Isaiah Tishby in his three volume set The Wisdom of The Zohar. Tishby wrote it in Hebrew and it was translated into English by David Goldstein. This English edition was first published in 1989. The Zohar was studied by and even a portion translated by the Qabalist S. L. MacGregor Mathers. He was not reading it from the original Hebrew source text but rather a Latin translation of it when in 1887 he published his book The Kabbalah Unveiled: Containing the following Books of the Zohar: The Book of Concealed Mystery [Sifra di-TZeniuta] The Greater Holy Assembly [Idra Rabba] and The Lesser Holy Assembly [Idra Zura]: Translated into English from the Latin version of Knorr von Rosenroth and collated with the original Chaldee and Hebrew Text . Other important Qabalists such as Waite, Westcott, Regardie, and Crowley, make reference to The Zohar. Dion Fortune seems to have gotten her knowledge of The Zohar, and the Kabbalah in general, second hand from studying the material of, and with, members of the Golden Dawn. After the partial Latin 1684 Rosenroth translation, the next attempt was a French translation by Jean de Pauly in seven volumes with notes and commentaries. Tishby writes of this translation: The name of the translator is fictitious and his real identity has never been
discovered. This translation includes most sections of the Zohar, but it is full of dreadful errors, and Christianizing falsification. The translation was done in the years 1900-1903, and was then corrected by a ‘reliable’ rabbi, but the ‘corrections’ are also full of mistakes. [52] In 1931-1932, a five volume English translation was finally done by H. Sperling and M. Simon. The translators did their work in good faith, but their lack of knowledge of kabbalistic doctrine led them into error from time to time. Most of the separate sections are missing from the translation, and even in the Midrash haZohar itself the translators skipped many difficult and important passages. [53]
A selection of passages from The Zohar was done in 1932 into German by E. Muller. The selection is arranged according to subject matter. The translation was effected with great care, but there are frequent mistakes in comprehension. The selection suffers from the fact that nearly all the passages are cut down in size.[54] In 2003 Michael Berg of the Kabbalah Center, an organization that blends rabbinic Kabbalah with its own infusion of New Age borrowings and ideas, published to sell to members its 23 volume English translation of The Zohar text. This English text is a translation of the 1945-1955 translation from the original Aramaic into Hebrew, with commentary done by Rabbi Yehuda (Judah) Ashlag. Prof. Daniel Matt was commissioned to undertake his own translation of the text into English. This translation of the main sections of the multivolume Zohar text is being published gradually by Stanford University. It is a project that is taking Matt many years to complete. The first volume of his multivolume translation of The Zohar was published in 2003.
7: Sha’are Orah: the Original Gates of Light Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla around 1290 finished in manuscript form the text Sha’are Orah, a Kabbalah text whose name translates into English from the Hebrew as Gates of Light. Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla (1248-c.1325) who lived in the Cas tilian area of Spain was a student of Abraham Abulafia and then became a student of Moses de Leon (c.1240-1305) [55]. Gikatilla’s book the Gates of Light is a study of the Sefiroth in which he elucidates the Biblical and rabbinic symbols and metaphors that have been and c an be applied to those ten sefirahs. In 1516 Paulus (Paolo) Ricciuss (Riccio), a Jew who had earlier converted to Christianity and became a contributor to the Christian Cabalah, published Portae Lucis, a Latin translation of the Sha’are Orah. The publication of Portae Lucis is pivotal in the history of the Kabbalah, the Christian Cabalah, and the occult Qabalah. The first Hebrew edition of the Sha’are Orah in book form was published in 1561 [56]. At least the first chapter of Sha’are Orah seems to have been referenced by Mos es de Leon in his book Mishkan ha-Eduth, which was written in 1293 [57]. Rabbi Joseph Angelet published a commentary on Sha’are Orah at some time in the early 1300’s. [58] The first English translation was made in 1994. The structural premise of Sha’are Orah is that if you are to approach the Divine, be it through pray or meditation, you should do so by focusin g on one of the Divine Names. There are ten names which are associated with each of the ten sefirahs which make up the Sefiroth. You, my brother and soul mate, have asked me to show you the pathway to the Names of the Ever-Blessed God so you may derive what you will from them and reach the place that you desire…to divulge to you the way the light is disseminated and how God wants us to reach it. [59] [W]e must now go forth and explain each of the Holy Names as they are written in the Torah. We must enlighten your eyes concerning every place where they may be found, so that you will understand and be aware of the well of living waters which flows from all His blessed Names. [60] Gikatilla views the Sefiroth from the perspective of us looking up, or inward, towards the Divine Source. Gikatilla outlines the journey we would take to reach the Divine. He sees this journey through the Sefiroth from the bottom, which is our nearest connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, traveling up the Sefiroth to the true and final source. Gikatilla refers to the 10 sefirahs as gates, and he associates the 10 names of the Divine that appear in the TaNaK with each of the sefirahs. I believe these ten names of the Divine are listed according to their usage in in the TaNaK . The more prevalent appellation is associated with the lowest of the sefirahs and the least prevalent appellation is associated with the most obscure of the sefirahs. Here are the ten Divine names listed with the name of the sefirah that Gikatilla associates with them. Malkuth = Adonai ‘The Lord’ Yesod = El Chai ‘The Living God’ Hod = Elohim Tzvaoth ‘The God (plural form) of Hosts’ Netzach = Adonai Tzvaoth ‘The Lord of Hosts’
Tifereth = YHVH (when it is pronounced as Adonai) ‘The Lord’ Gevurah = Elohim ‘God’ (plural form) Gedulah = El ‘ God’ (singular form) Binah = YHVH (when it is pronounced Elohim) God Chokmah = Yah Keter = Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (from Exodus 3:14) ‘ I will be who I will be.’ Or ‘ I am who I am.’ The Sha’are Orah studies the Sefiroth to explore it as a reference tool to other Biblical symbols and metaphors. The title of this book you are reading pays homage to Rabbi Gikatilla’s book.
8: The Qabalah Texts In discussing the Sefiroth and its meanings, I will be referring to the Kabbalah texts I have previously mentioned. I will be comparing them to some of the principle works of the Qabalah [61]. They are S. L. MacGregor Mathers’ 1887 The Kabbalah Unveiled, Aleister Crowley’s 1907 & 1909 Liber 777 , Israel Regardie’s 1932 book A Garden of Pomegranates and Dion Fortune’s 1935 The Mystical Qabalah. I will also make note of the Sefer Yetzirah that Westcott in 1887 translated into English from the 1642 Latin translation done be John Stephan Rittangel. [62] These books are a product of the Qabalah teachings up to the time of their publication and influenced most, if not all, subsequent writings of Qabalah. I will also reference Qabalist Arthur Waite’s book The Holy Kabbalah: A Study of the Secret Tradition of Israel , published in 1924 as sort of a benchmark of what knowledge of the Kabbalah was potentially available to the later Qabalists Regardie and Fortune. Waite’s book is a small encyclopedia of the Kabbalah and its offshoots the Cabalah and the Qabalah. Mathers, Crowley, Regardie, and Fortune each have their misunderstanding of the Kabbalah, as I hope to demonstrate. As for Fortune, as I hope to show, she delights in her ignorance of the Kabbalah source material. Having said that, she is a good student and she does present accurately Kabbalistic ideas that she was taught when they agree with her own version of Qabalistic beliefs. She studied psychology, particularly Freud and Jung, and her Qabalah has overtones of her own beliefs referencing that studied. 8A: A Garden of Pomegranates by Israel Regardie In the preface of the second edition of his book, and in the first chapter, Regardie lays out the nature of his sources for the analysis that he will be presenting in his book. I began the study of the Qabalah at an early age. Two books I read then have played unconsciously a prominent part in the writing of my own book. One of these was .Q.B.L. or the Bride’s Reception by Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones), which I must have first read around 1926 [63]. The other was An Introduction to the Tarot by Paul Foster Case, published in the early 1920s. [64] I unashamedly admit that my book contains many direct quotes from Crowley, Waite, Elphias Levi and D. H. Lawrence. I had incorporated numerous fragments from their works into my notebooks without citing individual references to the various sources from which I condensed my notes. [65] Regardie comes to the material not via the teachings of the Rabbis but by the teachings of non-Jews, the Occult Qabalists. It is important to note that though Regardie, who was born in London, England to Russian Jewish parents, does present an extensive summary of rabbinic source material; it is not clear whether Regardie has read the material in its original form. All of
the biographies I found on the Web state that he learned Hebrew from a tutor sometime after he moved with his parents to Washington DC. They moved in August of 1921 when Regardie would have been 13. It is usual for a Jewish male child to have his Bar Mitzvah at that age, and this could be the reason behind his being tutored in Hebrew. If that is the case, he could have been tutored in how to pronounce Biblical Hebrew or at best to actually read only Biblical Hebrew with some limited amount of skill. I say this because Regardie seems to lack any advanced skill of reading Biblical Hebrew and especially Rabbinic Hebrew. Rabbinic Hebrew is much more advanced, and it is needed to read any of the source material of the Kabbalah. Rabbinic Hebrew is written in its own differing script, has a much larger vocabulary, and a more complex grammar structure than Biblical Hebrew. To offer an analogy, Biblical Hebrew would be like arithmetic, whereas Rabbinic Hebrew would be like calculus; mastering the first is no guarantee that you could master the second. It is significant to notice that all of the Hebrew texts Regardie refers to are materials that were translated from Rabbinic Hebrew into English. This being the case, I have a suspicion that he had no skill in reading Rabbinic Hebrew and relied solely on these English translations. Although he demonstrates some knowledge of Rabbinic Judaism, it is significant to me that Regardie treats the material in the same manner as his fellow non-Jewish Qabalists with no real recognition, appreciation, or understanding of the Rabbis and the real Jewishness of the Kabbalah. Regardie comes across as someone who is a little more sympathetic to the Jews but still writes and thinks like all the other Christian occult Qabalists. An example of this is stated by Regardie in his preface to his second edition of his book. Some of the passages in the book force me to today emphasize that so far as the Qabalah is concerned; it could and should be employed without binding to it the partisan qualities of any one particular religious faith. This goes as much for Judaism as it does for Christianity. Neither has much intrinsic usefulness where this scientific scheme is concerned….The Qabalah has nothing to do with any of them [referring back to Judaism and Christianity]. Attempts on the part of cultish-partisans to impart higher mystical meanings, through the Qabalah, etc., to their now sterile faiths is futile… [66] As you can discern, I find the above statement to be inaccurate and a misunderstanding of the reality of the material, the Kabbalah source texts. Although the Qabalah is a product of the mix of Christian and occult material, the Kabbalah is a product of the Jewish rabbinic minds and worldview. The Kabbalah was created by Jews for Jews. The Kabbalah was never intended to be of any other use except to explain the mystical aspects and insights of Judaism and its Jewish source texts. The Christians and the students of the Occult pretend to find some non-Jewish system in them when there is none originally there. They have in their own documents placed and invented Christian and occult connections. Any symbol system can be used by any other culture for whatever purpose the user chooses. However, the source material is a product of the source culture. The Occult Qabalah is a new invention created to serve new purposes, but the Kabbalah source material is forever the Jewish insights of the Rabbis. Now Regardie has read some of the original Kabbalah source material, at the very least the English translation of the Sefer Yetzirah by Westcott. We can document this by his comments on the appendix to the Sefer Yetzirah called The Thirty-two Gates of Wisdom .
At this juncture let me call attention to one set of attributions by Rittangelius usually found as an appendix attached to the Sepher Yetzirah. It lists a series of ‘intelligences’ for each one of the ten Sephiroth and the twenty-two Paths of the Tree of Life. It seems to me, after prolonged meditation, that the common attributes of these intelligences is altogether arbitrary and lacking in serious meaning…I do not think that their use or current arbitrary usage stands up to serious examination or criticism. [67] As I earlier quoted from Regardie directly, he gave as source material the English writings of S. L. MacGregor Mathers (1854-1918), Frater Achad (1886-1950, born Charles Stansfeld Jones), Aleister Crowley (1875-1947 ), Paul Foster Case (1884-1954), Arthur E. Waite (Regardie notes that he has read The Holy Kabbalah: A Study of the Secret Tradition in Israel .), Eliphas Levi (1810-1875), D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (18311891), William Wynn Westcott (1848-1925). [68] It is significant to note that there are no Jewish scholars or rabbinic source materials being referenced as inspiring Regardie’s work. Therefore, for me Regardie is a Jew by birth but not by worldview. His worldview is that of his Christian Occult associates and teachers. Regardie’s book outlines the symbolism, as he believes it, of the 10 sefirahs and the 22 paths of the Sefiroth, the Tree of Life. In 1999 Regardie’s student, friend, and confidant Chic Cicero and Sandra Tabatha Cicero, both of whom were Senior Adepts of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, published a new edited and annotated edition of Regardie’s A Garden of Pomegranates. They also added material in the section entitled Skrying on the Tree of Life . Although they include in their bibliography Aryeh Kaplan’s Sefer Yetzirah and Gershom Scholem’s Kabbalah, they fail to use these two texts to reexamine or to reconstruct the Qabalah system. This can be seen on at their web site, where they present the Kircher Tree as the guide to placing the Hebrew letters on their image of the Tree of Life. You can see this tree at the Hermetic Art web page. http://www.hermeticgoldendawn.org/hogdframeset.html 8B: The Mystical Qabalah by Dion Fortune Dion Fortune states It is not my intention to write a historical study of the sources of the Qabalah, but rather to show the uses that are made of it by modern students of the Mysteries. For although the roots of our system are in tradition, there is no reason why we should be hidebound by tradition. [69] Fortune is correct that it is perfectly acceptable to take a set of symbols and ideas and to use it in another context to gain new insights. This is an act of creative genius. She honestly said her intent was not to teach Jewish Kabbalah but to show how that system has come to be used in a new way, the creative and fascinating thing that is the Occult Qabalah. Fortune explains succinctly and well the purpose behind the creation of the Occult Qabalah. It is not necessarily incumbent upon us to do certain things or hold certain ideas because the Rabbis who lived before Christ had certain views. …The modern Qabalist is the heir of the ancient Qabalist, but must re-interpret doctrine and re-formulate method in the light of the present dispensation if the heritage he has received is to be of any practical value to him. [70]
Notice that she calls both the ‘modern’ Occult teachers and practitioners and the ancient Jewish rabbis who created the Kabbalah by the same term, Qabalist ; this can easily lead to confusion. Notice also that she is implying that all of the Kabbalah was the creation of the Rabbis ‘who lived before Christ ’, this is a mistaken view of the actual historical origins of the texts, which are in fact many hundreds of years beyond the time that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died. Again Fortune states: I do not claim that the modern Qabalistic teachings as I have learnt them are identical with those of the pre-Christian Rabbis, but I claim that they are the legitimate descendants thereof and the natural development therefrom. [71] To describe the relationship of the modern Qabalah to the rabbinic Kabbalah let me present a metaphor to illustrate this. The Qabalah is an invention of people who are willing to steal material from one plant and forcibly graft it unto another foreign plant that do not in nature ever meet, and then that same person forgets the act when this new plant is created. It is a form of highly selective memory in order to fabricate a convenient and self-serving fantasy. Fortune is truly a child of Christianity when she writes: The interpretation of the Qabalah is not to be found, however, among the Rabbis of the Outer Israel, who are Hebrews after the flesh, but among those who are Chosen People after the spirit—in other words, the initiates. Neither is the Qabalah, as I have learned it, a purely Hebraic system, for it has been supplemented during the mediaeval times by much alchemical lore and by the intimate association with it of that most marvelous system of symbolism, the tarot. [72] The phrases ‘the Hebrews after the flesh’ to contrast with the ‘ Chosen People after the spirit ’ harkens to the concepts and metaphors of Pauline Christian theology from the Greek New Testament . She is correct when she says that the Qabalah as she was taught is not a ‘ Hebraic system. The Occult Qabalah is a system that is revising and revitalizing the source material from the Christian Cabalah. It may be alleged against me that the ancient Rabbis knew nothing of some of the concepts here set forth; to this I reply that it is hardly to be expected that they should, as these things were not know in their day, but are the work of their successors of the Spiritual Israel. For my part, although I would not willingly mislead anyone concerning the teachings of those ancient of days, and upon matters of historical accuracy stand subject to correction from any who are better informed than I am in these matters (and their name is legion), I care not one jot for the authority of tradition if it hampers the free development of a system of such practical value as the Holy Qabalah… [73] Here I disagree with Fortune, for I believe that one can be respectful to the source material and still create something new. This is the principle of the reconstruction movement within the Pagan and Neo-Pagan traditions. You can listen to the authority of tradition and use it as a solid foundation upon which to build your new edifice. Dion Fortune states in the first four chapters of her book that she is not teaching what she calls the pre-Christian views of the Rabbis who created the Kabbalah. She claims to be
teaching the ‘True’ living Occult tradition that stems from that source. Fortune, who told us she lacks direct knowledge of the source materials and does not care to bother with the study of them, believes that the Sefer Yetzirah and the teachings that come out of The Zohar came into being in that pre-Christian time period of Judaic history. It is true that those texts do claim to come out of this 1 st century BCE time period. However, Kaplan, Gershom Scholem, and Isaiah Tishby, amongst other scholars, have evidence that no references to the Sefer Yetzirah exist earlier than the 1 st century CE; for that and other reasons they place this text around 200 CE. As for The Zohar, evidence shows it comes into existence only in the 1300’s from the hand of Moses De Leon. The ideas contained therein and the text itself is only referenced after the book was published by Moses De Leon in the 1300’s. This means that even if the claim for the Zohar’s early origin were valid, its impact, and effect on the Kabbalah occurred not in the 1st century but in the 1300’s. Tishby writes: An important method of fixing the date of the appearance of the Zohar is to examine the quotations that have been made from the book. This examination shows that is the early kabbalistic literature there is no reference at all the existence of the Zohar, and that the first quotations make their appearance only toward the end of the thirteenth century. [74] A complete discussion of the evidence of the impact of The Zohar and its origins can be found in Tishby’s The Wisdom of the Zohar and in Gershom Scholem’s Kabbalah and Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Fortune implies that the Kabbalah teachings came to an end with the supposed 1 st century BCE origin of the Sefer Yetzirah and The Zohar, and that within the Jewish heritage no new material was created after the 1 st century BCE. She also is claims that Jesus of Nazareth was taught the Jewish wisdom known as the Kabbalah, and from there he passed it on into what would become Christianity. Thus, according to Fortune, only within the secret study of Christianity were the ‘True’ teachings of the ‘ Qabalah’ maintained and expanded upon as time passed. Just as Christianity claims to have replaced the Jewish religious heritage so Fortune claims that mystical Judaism has been replaced by that same Christianity. To someone raised in the worldview of Christianity, this might make perfect sense. To a person outside of that worldview, this idea needs to be proven, and it has not. History shows that the mystical form of Judaism did not end in the 1 st century BCE or CE, but continued far beyond those times. To again reference recent scholars, Tishby, and Scholem present evidence that The Zohar is not a product of ideas found in the 1 st century but of ideas found in the 13 th century in Spain. There is no evidence that ideas of the Kabbalah exist within Christianity, or were even known to Christian thinkers, prior to the late 1200’s and early 1300’s. Hence, the ' living tradition' that Fortune states she is a part of could have only started not in the ancient world of Judea but in the modern European world of the post— Zohar. This makes historic sense; this would be the time of the creation of the Christian Cabalah flowing out of the source texts of Giovanni Pico. Fortune is a child of the tradition which created the Qabalah, the tradition that grew out of the marriage of the Cabalah with the Occult arts. This occult tradition likes to fabricate and exaggerate its claims of ancient origins and history. My own book intends to show that at the time of the creation of the Christian Cabalah
this time frame was still a premature withdrawal from the seminal Judaic elements of the Kabbalah from the non-Jewish Qabalah tradition that Fortune claims is the true heir of the Kabbalah. This withdrawal resulted in many misinterpretations and flaws in that child, the Occult Qabalah. So far as actual scholarship goes, I am in the same class as William Shakespeare, having little Latin, and less Greek, and of Hebrew only that peculiar portion which is cultivated by occultists—the ability to transliterate unpointed Hebrew script for the purposes of Gematric calculations. Of any knowledge of Hebrew as a language I am guiltless. [75] Fortune gives as her sources the teachings she acquired as a student of the Golden Dawn, hence from Mathers, Westcott, Waite and Crowley. [76] To this, she adds her studies of Freud, Jung, and Blavatsky’s theosophical ‘bible’ The Secret Doctrine: The Key to Theosophy . [77] Fortune’s book explores the meaning and symbolism of the 10 sefirahs of the Sefiroth, the Tree of Life, with a single chapter on the meaning of the 22 paths.
9: The Key to the Kingdom: Etz Chaim, The Tree of Life For the Qabalists, the ‘mathematics’ of occult truths was found in the symbol system known as the Tree of life, the Sefiroth (which some Qabalist transliterated from the Hebrew as: Sephiroth.) This was the key to all of the Kabbalah, according to the Qabalists. The key to understanding the Sefiroth according to the Qabalists is the set of correspondences one could make with the astrological and mythic significance of the planets assigned to the sefirahs. As Fortune notes: The essence of the unwritten Qabalah lies in the knowledge of the order in which certain sets of symbols are arranged upon the Tree of Life. This Tree…consists of the Ten Holy Sephiroth arranged in a particular pattern and connected by lines which are called the …Paths of the Sefer Yetzirah, or Divine Emanations. …The Qabalists further placed upon the Paths of the Tree the Signs of the Zodiac, the Planets, and the Elements. …which fit accurately and, correctly placed, are found to correspond perfectly with the Tarot trumps, and giving the keys to esoteric astrology and Tarot divination. [78] You should notice that contained in that statement of Dion Fortune’s is the myth of the Occult, which is that all of the ancient wisdom is a unity that comes from one source. Do you really think it makes sense that the Rabbis would wed the symbols of their well-remembered enemies, the signs of the Babylonian zodiac, and the planets with their associations to the Greek and Roman Gods and Goddess as the key to interpret the meaning of their Holy of Holies, the very nature of the Divine? I believe that Fortune and the rest of the Qabalists are mentally tool trapped inside their mind’s box and that they cannot see beyond their own worldview. It makes no sense for the Rabbis to describe and define their idea of God according to the teachings of their age-old enemies the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans. It is insensitive to propose such an idea. Does it really make sense that those foreign symbols were matched up to the Tree of Life symbols as if they were a unified painting that was the creation of the Jewish rabbis? Doesn’t it seem more likely that those symbols were artificially placed on the tree by the non-Jewish Qabalists as if they were decorating their Christmas tree with pretty ornaments? Let us move on, and agree that the image and collection of symbols associates with the Sefiroth is highly significant and worthy of study. The Sefiroth is mentioned in the first chapter of the Sefer Yetzirah in the opening verses. There it is described as a pattern composed from a set of 10 Divine attributes. These 10 attributes are individually called sefirahs. Each of the 10 sefirahs is connected by a series of 22 paths. By adding the 10 sefirahs and the 22 paths, you get the 32 mystical paths of wisdom. The phrase Etz Chaim is Hebrew phrase meaning the Tree of Life, which refers to the tree planted in the center of the Garden of Eden. The Kabbalah teaching that associates the name Tree of Life with the set of symbols known as the Sefiroth is illustrated in this reference from The Bahir, chapter22. The author of the Bahir writes here in an enthusiastic style similar to Fortunes. I am the One who planted this tree in order that all the world should delight in it. And in it, I spread All. I called it All because all depend on it, all
emanate from it, and all need it. To it they look, for it they wait, and from it, souls fly in joy. [79] The Tree of Life, according to the Kabbalist rabbis, is not a mere map of the Divine, but it is the body of the Divine, the heart that pumps divine essence throughout all of the Cosmos. It is also the blueprint for all creation, the cosmic DNA which gives all things the means to grow into their proper form, to use a modern metaphor. The importance of the Sefiroth and the metaphor that is the Tree of Life is continued in The Bahir chapter 98: And all the Holy Forms oversee all the nations. But Israel is holy, taking the Tree itself and its Heart…And what is the Heart? It is the 32 hidden paths of wisdom that are hidden in it [the Heart]. In each of their paths there is also a Form watching over it. It is thus written (Genesis 3:24): ‘To watch the way [paths] of the Tree of Life. [80] Now before we give the actual names used for the individual sefirahs of the Sefiroth, let me take you to some of the Rabbis reasoning for some of the names that they might have used. In the Midrash Aboth de Rabbi Nathan we find the aphorism: ‘Seven middoth [attributes] serve before the throne of Glory: they are Wisdom, Justice and the Law, Grace and Mercy, Truth and Peace. [81] In the Talmud Tractate Hagiga 12a ‘by ten things was the world created, by wisdom and by understanding, and by reason and by strength, by rebuke and by might, by rightgeousness and by judgment, by loving kindness and compassion. [82] The Rabbis were working out in those passages the names of the attributes. However, in the end, the Rabbis cannot rely on their own logical analysis alone as to what should be; rather they must base it on the Holy words given to them and recorded in the TaNaK . It is Isaac the Blind, circa 1200 C.E., who was the first Kabbalist to consistently use the word ‘Sefiroth’ and relate them to the biblical enumeration of God’s traits in First Chronicle 29:11, [83] and that gives us the names of the sefirahs that finally get used. Another significance of Isaac the Blind and his disciplines is that they originated our meaning of the word Kabbalah. As Gershom Scholem explains: At first the word ‘kabbalah’ did not especially denote a mystical or esoteric tradition. …All this demonstrates that the term ‘kabbalah’ was not yet used for any one particular field. The new, precise usage originated in the circle of Isaac the Blind (1200) and was adopted by all his disciples. [84] Coming back to our focus, which is an inquiry into the source texts for those labels that were actually used for the sefirahs; the uppermost sefirahs derive their names from the following verses. Exodus 31:3 ‘and I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in Understanding, and in Knowledge. [85]’ Again from Proverbs 3:19 & 20 ‘The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; By understanding He established the heavens. By His Knowledge the depths were broken up.’[86] Lastly, Proverbs 24:3 & 4: ‘Through wisdom is a house builded, And by understanding it is established; And by knowledge are the chambers filled. ’[87] So now, we have labels for two of the upper sefirahs, they are Wisdom and
Understanding, but not the uppermost sefirah. The uppermost sefirah was named Keter, the Hebrew word for crown. Keter is directly mentioned only a few times in the TaNaK. There are three instances of it in the book of Esther. One reference note that a crown is placed on the head, just as the sefirah Keter is place on the head of the rest of the Sefiroth, this image is described in the verse in Esther 6:8 ‘and on whose head a crown [Keter] royal is placed.’ Or, perhaps, it is from the appearance of the word in Proverbs that was the source of inspiration for using the word Keter/Crown to be a label for one of the sefirahs on the Sefiroth. As in Proverbs 14:18 ‘The thoughtless come into possession of folly but the prudent are crowned with knowledge ’; Proverbs 14:24 ‘The crown of the wise is their riches.’ Since there is a sefirah above both Wisdom/Chokmah and Understanding/Binah, perhaps this is why this sefirah at the topmost place on the Sefiroth was designated as Keter? It is also true that the Rabbis imagined the Sefiroth not only as a tree but also as a being in the shape of a human, Adam Kadmon, the Supernal or Primordial Man. With either Chokmah and Binah as forming his head, or Chokmah alone as the head and Binah as the heart, either way the uppermost sefirah makes sense to be a name for a thing above the head. There is also the well-established Biblical metaphor of God as supreme ruler and king which would inspire the idea that since a king wears and needs his crown, so does the Sefiroth. As I noted earlier, Isaac the Blind gave us where to find the list for the lower seven sefirahs. The standard list comes from First Chronicles 29:11. Here is the Jewish Publication Society 1917 translation: Thine, O Lord, is the Greatness [Gedulah], and the power [Gevurah], and the glory [Tifereth is also translated more commonly as Beauty], and the Victory [Netzach is also translated more commonly as Splendor], and the majesty [Hod is also more commonly translated as Endurance], for all that is in heaven and in the earth is Thine; Thine is the Kingdom [Malkuth], O Lord, and Thou are exalted as head above all. [88] There are some alternative names given for the sefirahs and they are the following: the use of Ratzon translated as Will to replace the more common name for the uppermost sefirah, Keter. Another name for the sefirah Gevurah is Din. The attribute Din perhaps comes from the following verses from the Psalms: Psalms 9:8: ‘ But the Lord is enthroned forever; He hath established His throne for [Din] judgment. ’ Psalms 76:9 ‘Thou didst cause [Din] judgment to be heard from heaven; The Earth feared, and was still.’ The sefirah Gedulah is also called Chesed. The attribute Chesed, translated varyingly as kindness, loving kindness, goodness, and mercy, is given as an attribute of the Divine in hundreds of places throughout the TaNaK : Genesis 24:27, Psalms 25:10, 40:11 & 12, 57:6, 61:8, 85:11, 89:15, 115:1, 138:2, and so on. Another name given to the sefirah Tifereth is Rachamim, which means compassion. This attribute name comes from many verses describing God as showing and having compassion such as Isaiah 63:7 & 15, Psalms 77:10, 79:8, 119:77, Zechariah 1:16, Daniel 9:9, and Nehemiah 9:28.[89] Returning to the verse from First Chronicles 29:11, you may have noticed that there seems to be in the verse actually only names given for six sefirahs and not for seven sefirahs; the answer to that puzzle is that the word ‘ all’ in the verse is treated as a placeholder for
Yesod/Foundation. To derive the word ‘ all’ as connecting to Yesod/Foundation we start with the Rabbis who write in the Talmudic tractate Chagiga: What does the world rely on? One pillar is called Tzadik (the righteous one) [90], as it is written, ‘The foundation of the world is the righteous one. (Proverbs 10:25).’ (Chagiga 12b) [91] This gives us a link to connect Yesod/Foundation to TZaDiK /the Righteous One. Gikatilla in the Sha’are Orah refers to the idea that the term Righteous is always associated with the sefirah Yesod: This attribute is called TZaDIK [Righteous] throughout the Torah, and because it is called YeSOD (foundation) and it carries all that exists beneath it, it is called TZaDIK YeSOD OlaM (the righteous one is the foundation of the world.)’ The significance of this attribute being called TZaDIK is that this is the essence of the everflow that influences all the good, blessing and giving of the attribute ADoNaY. As it is written, ‘…the TZaDIk is merciful and gives. (Psalms 37:21)’. [92] Now Gikatilla needs to explain how he connects TZaDiK to the Hebrew word all, Kol. It is in this attribute that all kinds of everflow and bounty come from the nine other spheres and thus it is also called by the name of KoL (all). The reason is that this attribute draws all that can be drawn from the upper Spheres and brings them to the attribute ADoNaY; because all relies on this attribute, it is called KoL (all). [93] Note the name of God that is associated with Malkuth according to Gikatilla is DoNaY . To summarize, Gikatilla notes that when the attribute of the Divine in totality is referred it is done so by the word KoL/all, the term is used to refer to the Divine’s offering of Its bounty to the Earth and Its peoples. For Gikatilla this aspect of the Divine is actually the attribute of the Divine as the Righteous One, who is thus acting as the Foundation of the world and thereby maintaining its ongoing existence. Therefore, Righteous One and KoL/all are alternative names for Foundation/Yesod. Hence in First Chronicles29:11 the word all in that passage is listing the name of sefirah Yesod. It is a circuitous route to this conclusion. Nevertheless, that is how the rabbinic mind thinks. Now, it should be noted that Gikatilla is not making this connection up all on his own, independent of other Kabbalah teachings. Similar logical trails are found in The Bahir. It is thus written (Isaiah 44:24) ‘I am God, I make all, I stretch out the heavens alone, the earth is spread out before Me. …I am the One who planted this tree in order that all the world should delight in it. And in it, I spread All. I called it All because all depend on it, all emanate from it, and all need it. [94]
Kaplan, in his commentary to this section of The Bahir, notes the connection of Kol/all to Yesod/Foundation. ‘All’ refers to the sefirah of Yesod-Foundation. The final seven Sefiroth are alluded to in the verse ‘Yours, O God, are the Greatness, the Strength, the
Beauty, the Victory and the Splendor, for All in heaven and earth, Yours O God is the Kingdom…’(I Chronicles 29:11). This verse names the Sefiroth, and here, Yesod-Foundation is referred to as ‘All’ (Also see 78). This Sefirah is called All, since through it must flow all spiritual sustenance. [95]
Now we have labels for the ten sefirahs. Let me now go off on a tangent and explore the idea that for some Kabbalists, they considered that there was an eleventh sefirah whose name was Da’at . As Gershom Scholem explains: From the end of the 13th century onward a complementary Sefirah, called Da’at (Knowledge), appears between Hokmah and Binah, a kind of harmonizing of the two that was not considered a separate Sefirah but rather ‘the external aspect of Keter. [96] As Sanford R. Drob explains: Keter is spoken of in the Zohar as Ayin, nothingness, a ‘darkness’ that is at the same time the source of all light. Such nothingness is both the epistemological and ontological gulf between Ein-Sof and creation. According to Cordovero ‘Keter is called Ayin on account of its great transparency and closeness to its source.’ In view of Moses DeLeon, Keter is beyond the limit of perception; according the Kabbalists of Gerona, it is the ‘cessation of thought. [97] Note: the Kabbalists refer to the Divine by the Hebrew word for infinite, which is transliterated as Ein Sof , Ayin Sof , or Ayn Sof , literally ‘a thing without end’. Therefore, if we consider as did some of the Kabbalists, that Keter is so connected with the Infinite Source so that it is not part of the created things of the Sefiroth then we need to make ten by including Da’at/Knowledge as the sefirah found below the pair of Chokmah and Binah and above the pair of Greatness and Strength. This teaching concerning Keter as not part of the understandable workings of the rest of the Sefiroth is mentioned in The Bahir 17: Rabbi Amorai sat and expounded: Why is the letter lef at the beginning? Because it was before everything, even the Torah. [98] Kaplan offers this explanation in his commentary on that section: The Torah emanates from Chakmah-Wisdom, while Alef alludes to Keter-Crown, which is higher than Wisdom. KeterCrown is not perceivable in this world, and therefore the highest actual level that can be erceived is Chakmah-Wisdom. [99] So, for some Keter was considered too connected to The Source to be one of the ten sefirahs of the Sefiroth that we can know, and hence this fact allowed for the creation of a missing tenth sefirah at the nexus point amongst Chakmah, Binah, Gedulah and Gevurah. You may recall that Da’at was often repeatedly referred to in the TaNaK texts when Chakmah and Binah were mentioned. [100] Nevertheless, the consensus amongst the Kabbalists was to treat Da’at as not truly a part of the ten sefirahs; and thus not on the usual list and not part of the usual diagram of the Sefiroth. Now we have labeled all of the sefirahs of the Tree. The next question to ask is this,
how do we arrange them in a diagram?
10: The Diagram of the Tree We know that the Sefiroth is made up of ten interconnecting points, called sefirahs, each of which are named after an attribute of the Divine, but what is the nature of this configuration? Is it a single line? A series of circles? Or some other possibility? There is a tradition for the arrangement of the sefirahs as a series of circles; the Hebrew word for this configuration is Iggulim. This arrangement is referenced by The Zohar and by the teachings of Isaac Luria. However, both acknowledge the upright model as the main focus of study. The Hebrew name given for this model, the upright configuration is Yosher. Isaac Luria explains that it comes from the verse in Koheleth aka Ecclesiastes 7:24, ‘God made man upright (yasher). ’[101] Ultimately, Luria explains that the two models of upright Iggulim and the circles Yosher are not to be seen as contradictory but as complementary. ‘ Each world, and every single detail of each world, has these two aspects—circular and linear. ’[102] Although the circular configur ation is used in the tradition, as I mentioned, it is not the main focus and the usual form. The Qabalah material focuses its interests exclusively on the linear upright form and that is now what we shall do. It is Gikatilla in Sha’are Orah who offers this insight into the upright configuration and describes it as being 3 upright columns; ‘ Thus is it stated: “…the two pillars, the globes and the two capitals on top of the columns; and the two pieces of network to cover the two globes of the capitals on top of the pillars.” [Second Chronicles 4:12] Here I will explicate. The two columns are Netzach and Hod and the two capitals on top of the columns are Gedulah and Gevurah, the two pieces of network to cover the two globes are Chakmah and Binah. ’[103] We now know the following from all of this, which is that the upright configuration that is associated with the Sefiroth is a vertical arrangement made up of 3 columns, the two outer columns having 3 sefirahs, and that leaves the inner column having the remaining 4 sefirahs. Now, if you were to draw the 10 sefirahs made up of 3 columns as Gikatilla has described, and then you were to draw lines to connect each of the sefirahs together, this configuration could be a completely enclosed array of the 10 sefirahs with twenty-two lines interconnecting them. This is the array that according to Kaplan was used by the earlier Kabbalists [104]. (See Figure 1).
Figure 1: Enclosed Tree
You should note that this array has 3 horizontal lines, 7 vertical lines and 12 diagonal lines. This 3/7/12 is exceedingly significant. That numeric r elationship is the numeric classification of the Hebrew letters found in the Sefer Yetzirah. In the Sefer Yetzirah, it states that the Hebrew alphabet can be classified in the following manner. First, there is 3 letters called the Mothers, 7 letters called the Doubles and the remaining 12 letters are called the Elementals. From this 3/7/12 set of correspondences, each of the lines is associated with a specific letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It is important to note that the group called the Doubles is based on the Hebrew letters that take the grammatical mark called the Dagesh. Amongst these letters are the expected letters Beth, Gimel, Dalet [105], Caf , Peh, and Tav. The seventh letter of this group is the Resh. Aryeh Kaplan notes this concerning the Resh: Highly significant is the fact that the Resh is here considered to be one of the Doubles. Most post-Talmudic grammarians take recisely the o pposite view, and state that the Resh never takes a Dagesh. Not only is there no verbal distinction between the hard and soft Resh, but modern Hebrew grammar does not even recognize such a difference in the written form. There are, however, ten different words, appearing in fourteen places in the Bible, which are written with a Resh containing a Dagesh. See Table 28. [106] [107]
(Therefore, the grouping of the Resh with the Doubles is done so by reference to the appearance of the Resh in the full canonical text of the TaNaK and this fact helps to date the Sefer Yetzirah.) It is interesting to note that in the way of counting the sefirahs, the sefirah of Yesod was counted before Netzach and Hod. In the Sefer ha-Bahir, and in several early texts of the 13th century, the Sefirah Yesod was thought of as the seventh, preceding Nezach and Hod, and only in Gerona was it finally assigned to the ninth place.’ [108] [Gerona is a city in Spain where there is a rabbinic and Kabbalistic school.] The main figures in this group were…led by Ben Belimah, Judah ben Yakar, …Ezra ben Solomon and Azriel; Moses ben Nahman [aka Nachmanides]; Abraham ben Issac Gerondi, …Jacob ben Sheshet Gerondi; …Meshullam ben Solomon Da Piera…Asher ben David, a nephew of Isaac the Blind.’ [109] The Bahir and the school before the Gerona school according to Kaplan, the enclosed array was used by the Kabalistic school of Provence. The School of Provence France was ‘in the mid-12th century and later, in the leading circle of the Provencal Rabbis: Abraham ben Isaac of Narbonne…his son-in-law Abraham ben David (Rabad)…and Jacob Nazir of Lunel. ’[110] Also, we should include Abraham ben David’s son, Isaac the Blind. As I just explained, the enclosed array was taken up by a Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher in his work, more about him later in my discussion of the Christian Cabala. The decision of the Gerona school of Kabbalists to change the way to count the sefirahs I believe was done on the basis of a reference out of the TaNaK . It comes down to First Chronicles 29:11 ‘Yours O God are the Greatness [Gedulah], the Strength [Gevurah], the Beauty [Tifereth], the Victory [Netzach], and the Splendor [Hod],
for All in heaven and in earth; Yours O God is the Kingdom [Malkuth] .’[111] Noticed the sequence of how these Hebrew names for divine attributes are listed in the passage from First Chronicles. It is not Beauty then Greatness followed by Strength, which would give us a different way of counting natural array diagram, but the sequence is listed as Greatness, then Strength, and finally then Beauty. This means that Beauty is counted after the pair of Greatness and Strength. As for the switch from the Enclosed array to this other choice as shown in figure 2.
Figure 2Alternative array aka Zohar Tree
This array in Figure 2 is the one used by Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla in his book the Sha’ are Orah, the Gates of Light published in 1561. Also it is the choice of the Zohar (Written in the late 1200’s and distributed at that time, though first published in 1561) and of Rabbi Isaac Luria (aka ARI in Safed around 1560’s). Now, the Sefer Yetzirah 1:4 tells us that we can have only ten sefirahs and it seems clear that Da’at is not to be included in that list. Ten Sefiroth of Nothingness Ten and not nine Ten and not eleven Understand with Wisdom Be wise with understanding [112] Hence, this important text is part of the logic for why we talk of ten and not eleven sefirahs of the Sefiroth. Keter, Chakmah, Binah, and the other seven are included, but Da’at is not part of the ten. [113] Now, let us go beyond the list of the sefirahs and return to the question, what is the pictorial arrangement of them? Let’s examine the early texts of the Kabbalah and Qabalah and see what our choices are. Actually, there are not many illustrations to examine, as most of the texts were without them, and that leaves a short but significant group of illustrated texts of published Kabbalah and some of the formative texts of the Qabalah. I’ve listed them in chronological order. My list intentionally ends with the work of Dion Fortune, who is the last formative scholar to shape the Qabalah. All subsequent work in the Qabalah written after the 1930’s is built upon the work of Mather, Crowley, Case, Achad, Waite, Regardie, and Fortune. 1100 - 1200 Kabalistic School of Provence, France 1200 -1300 Kabalistic School of Gerona, Spain 1290 Joseph Gikatilla’s manuscript of Sha’ are Orah(Gates of Light) completed 1350? Zohar manuscripts 1516 Latin translation of Joseph Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah published: Portae Lucis. 1558+ Zohar printed editions 1548 written (?) and published in 1591 Moses Cordovero’s Pardes Rimonim ( A Garden of Pomegranates). 1561 Hebrew edition of Sha’ are Orah published. 1570+ Isaac Luria and his school in Safed, Palestine/Israel 1625 Philippe d’Aquin Tree of Kabbalah. 1652 Athanasius Kircher’s, Oedipus Aegyptiacus. 1684 Christian Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata (The Hidden Kabbala). 1708 Rabbi Mordecai Ben Jacob’s Pa’amon ve Rimmon (Bell and Pomegranate). 1790 / 1806 The Gaon Rabbi Elijah of Vilna, Lithuania commentary and text of Sefer Yetzirah is published, uses the Natural array 1884 Sefer Yetzirah Warsaw edition 1887 S. L. MacGregor Mather’s The Kabbalah Unveiled 1909 Aleister Crowley’s Liber 777 1920 Paul Foster Case’s An Introduction to the Study of the Tarot 1923 Charles Stansfeld Jones aka Frater Achad’s Q.B.L. or The Bride’s Reception 1924 Arthur Edward Waite’s The Holy Kabbalah 1932 Israel Regardie’s A Garden of Pomegranates 1932 Israel Regardie’s The Tree of Life: A Study in Magic 1935 Dion Fortune’s The Mystical Qabalah As mentioned before, it was during the 1100 – 1200 in the Kabalistic school of Provence, France and the Gerona School of Spain, where the Enclosed array was the choice. However, with the Sha’are Orah things change. Although the text only existed in circulated manuscript form circa 1300, and it was only first published in Hebrew book form in
1561, there was a Latin translation in 1516 under the Latin title of Portae Lucis. This Latin translation of Sha’are Orah was translated by Paulus Riccius. The title page of Portae Lucis has an illustration of an elderly bearded Jewish man holding a diagram of the Sefiroth. This as far as the information I can gather appears to be if not the earliest pictorial representation of the Sefiroth, then this is the most significant, and most referred to representation. (See Figure 2)
Figure 3: Illustration from Latin Translation of Sha’are Orah
[114]
In this illustration, you will notice that this configuration of the 3 columns is slightly distorted. It has the middle column pulled downward and hence not in its natural array, which is what we would expect based on my earlier discussion of the First Chronicles passage. This lowered arrangement is followed in all subsequent illustrations of the Sefiroth, and that leads me to the obvious conclusion that this is the origin of all those other diagrams within Kabbalah, Cabalah and on into the Qabalah. The Portae Lucis illustration shows the top of the middle column above all other sefirahs. The next sefirah down rests between the 2 nd sefirah of the left and right column, the next sefirah down the middle pillar rests below the lowest of the sefirahs of the left and right column, with the last sefirah of the middle column residing below all the other sefirahs. (See Figure 2) We know from Gikatilla that there are 3 columns, so that the illustration is slightly askew, as I noted previously. To re-configure the array to straighten it out, we must move the two top pair of sefirahs over a bit to properly make the configuration as described by Gikatilla. For now, I will not include the connecting line to Malkuth. I am doing this to emphasize the potential options concerning how this can be done. (See Figure 3)
Figure 4
We can see from the re-configured title page array that there is 1 horizontal line, 6 vertical lines and 10 diagonal lines. We know from the natural array that to correspond to the 3 usage of the 3 mother letters there must be 3 horizontal lines. Now we can draw them in, one to connect Gedulah to Gevurah, and the other to connect Netzach to Hod. (See Figure 4)
Figure 5
Next, from the natural array we know there must be 7 vertical lines corresponding to the 7 double letters. Now we can draw another needed vertical line in its only logical place, from Keter to Tifereth. (See Figure 5)
Figure 6
Now, all that remains is for us to place the last 2 diagonal lines, the last of the lines corresponding to the remaining 12 elemental letters, as well as the last remaining vertical lines. Here there are two choices. When we make these choices, we will have created the two most historically common arrays of the Sefiroth. By placing the last two diagonal lines at the bottom, connecting Hod and Netzach to Malkuth, we would be encompassing all the sefirahs into an interconnected collection of lines, and thus enclosing them all, with a feeling of completeness. This enclosed array has some visual appeal and it continues the multiple lines motif that first occurs with the pair Chakmah and Binah, and continues in Gedulah and Gevurah, thus giving Hod and Netzach multiple lines coming out of them with the last two connecting to Malkuth, finishing the enclosure. I will refer to this as the Enclosed Tree. (See Figure 6)
Figure 7
By doing this, we have created the array that the Jesuit Priest and Cabalist Athanasius Kircher placed in his 1623 book Oedipus Aegyptiacus. I Aegyptiacus. I believe deliberately used the older Enclosed array, rather than the one now being used by the Kabalistic rabbis who referenced Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah and the Zohar. Kircher wanted to deliberately break from the Jewish rabbis. Now concerning Kircher’s book Oedipus Aegyptiacus, Aegyptiacus , a noted English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (born 27 July 1857 – died 23 November 1934) wrote an important and scathing study on that text. Many writer writerss pretended to have found the key to the hieroglyphics, and many more professed, with a shameless impudence which is hard to understand in these days, to translate the contents of the texts into a modern tongue. Foremost among among such pretenders pretenders must must be mentioned mentioned Athanasius Athanasius Kircher, Kircher, who, in the 17th century, declared that he had found the key to the hieroglyphic inscriptions; the translatio ns which he prints in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus Aegyptiacus are utter utter nonsense, nonsense, but as they were put forth forth in a learned learned [115] tongue many people at the time believed they were correct. Budge is pointing out that the accurate meanings of Egyptian hieroglyphs were not deciphered until 1824, when Jean-François Champollion finally solved the riddle through his study of the Rosetta stone. Therefore, Kircher’s work in 1623 written before the work of Champollion was based in fraud. Nonetheless, the diagram that Kircher published in his work the Oedipus Aegyptiacus has Aegyptiacus has shaped the Cabalah and Qabalah profoundly. It is the source of the both efforts to understand the Sefiroth. Kircher associates both Hebrew letters to the paths as well as placing the planetary glyphs on the Tree image. (See Figure 7 for an English translation version of Kircher’s Tree [116] and the source of the picture is Hall 1928, 121.
Figure 8: English translation of Kircher’s Tree
Some important things to notice about this fig ure are that Kircher places the Hebrew letters on the tree in a pattern that follows the sefirahs starting with Keter and working down the alphabet, and he also places the planets on the Sefiroth in a pattern that should almost be familiar once you realize how he counts the sefirahs. My assumption for his divergence for this choice was to purposely ignore any reference to the Rabbinic choices and logic. Kircher places the planets in the following manner, counting up from the bottom. Malkuth he associates with the Moon, then Mercury at Yesod, then Venus at Hod, then Sun at Tifereth, then Mars at Netzach, then Jupiter at Chesed/Gedulah, then ending with Saturn at Din/Gevurah. His method of counting the sefirahs is a bit eccentric but he does follow a familiar pattern. It is the Ptolemaic pattern of the planets. This idea of matching the Hebrew letters to the paths of the tree and the placement of the planets with certain sefirahs becomes a foundational idea for the Qabalah, even though later Qabalists change the planet’s arrangement. It is Kircher’s ideas concerning the influence of the Hebrews/Jews with the origins of the Kabbalah that become of also lasting importance for the Cabalah and the Qabalah. It was he who invented the lie that the Jews had nothing to do with the Kabbalah. Kircher invents the idea that Adam was taught the four letter name of God and other ‘Kabbalah’ teachings, and that it is Adam who passed it down the ages to be changed and corrupted into the varying ‘pagan’ teachings of the world. Kircher uses Adam as a means to rob the Jewish rabbis from having been the source of the Kabbalah. ‘It is worth pointing out that in this interpretation, the historical uniqueness of the ancient Jews is greatly diminished if not obliterated. The teachings of the Kabbalah and the possession of a four-letter name of God belong to all humanity. This is just one example of Kircher’s tendency to undercut Jewish uniqueness –the unintended and heterodox consequence of his emphasis on the common origin of human cultures. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that Moses and the revelation at Sinai are most entirely absent from Kircher’s histories. Most Christian interpretations of the Kabbalah described Moses as the source of the Kabbalah just as most versions of the prisca theologia derived pagan wisdom from Moses and the Pentateuch. Kircher, however, preferred to trace both to Adam and located the dispersion of the primeval wisdom to the gentiles in a pre-Mosaic biblical past. This interpretation undercuts the significance of the Old Dispensation to the Jews by robbing them of their unique role as guardian of pre-Christian truth. …The claim that a continuous tradition of true wisdom and religion begins with Adam, the common father of mankind, may support a Catholic universalist vision, but it could suggest a disturbing question: What more had God to teach mankind by the revelation of the Law or the incarnation of Christ?’ [117] Intriguing questions, but not ones that we need to dwell on here. This ‘it-all-beginswith-Adam’ myth that Kircher invents is picked up by later Qabalists, including Mathers as I mentioned earlier, since it fits with their view of the world. [118] Those early Qabalists of the 1600 – 1930’s, having been raised as Christians they accepted consciously, or unconsciously, the
Christian’s version of a ‘common sense’ view of the world that the Jews contribution to history is minor, or irrelevant, and either way, unimportant. Although, Westcott and Waite both accepted that the Kabbalah derived from the Jews and reject this particular Christian myth. [119] Returning to the Sefiroth illustration presented by Kircher, to reiterate, it is important to note that Aryeh Kaplan associates the shape of this array with what he labels as the ‘O lder Kabbalists’. This fact is noted on page 28 in his translated, revised, and annotated text of the Sefer Yetzirah.[120] My assumption is that these ‘ older Kabbalists’ would be the Provence and Gerona schools who come before the 1300 and the unveiling of The Zohar. This Sefiroth array was also one of the choices of Moses Cordovero in his 1541, or 1548, Padres Rimonim, the English title would be The Garden of Pomegranates , but more about that shortly. Now, to consider another version of the Sefiroth, if we place two diagonal lines to connect Binah to Gedulah and Chakmah with Gevurah this leaves only one more single line to make the needed twenty lines and this last line would be a single line to connect Yesod with Malkuth. (See Figure 8)
Figure 9 1300 Kabbalist (Zohar) Tree
In doing this we will have created the array that Rabbi Gikatilla describes and it is the one referenced in the Zohar as well. This array becomes associated with the Safed school of the Kabbalah, which culminated in the insights of Rabbi Isaac Luria, aka ARI, in 1570+, hence the term the ARI array, or ARI Tree. This array or Tree is the form of the array that is now common in Kabbalah texts that flow out of ARI’s Safed school. This array visually resembles a tree, with the trunk of the tree being the line connecting the earth and soil of Malkuth to the rest of tree that branches out from Yesod. The fruits hanging from the branch es of the tree would be the other sefirahs. This choice also makes logical sense even if it disrupts the feeling of enclosure and completeness of the other array. It turns out that this is the choice of the Rabbis. The Rabbis are ones to ignore the logic of images and pictures. To ignore the importance of images is a logical choice of someone of the rabbinic world view, someone who has embraced the commandment against making images as it is found in Deuteronomy 5:8 ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, even any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water und er t he earth.’[121]. The rabbinic logic is one that would refer back to the TaNaK. This line of logic will be familiar since it is tied up with how Yesod/Foundation became a name of one of the sefirahs. The logic of Rabbi Isaac Luria perhaps comes out of two important texts of Kabbalah tradition, The Bahir and The Zohar, each of them built their concepts upon the prior rabbinic tradition. From The Bahir paragraph number 22: It is thus written (Isaiah 44:24) ‘I am God, I make all, I stretch out the heavens alone, the earth is spread out before Me.’ I am the One who lanted this tree in order that all the world should delight in it. And in it, I spread All. I called it ll because all depend on it, all emanate from it, and all need it [122] From the Zohar: NOAH WAS A RIGHTEOUS MAN (Genesis 6:9).Assuredly so, after the supernal pattern. It is written, ‘The Righteous one is the foundation of the world’ (Proverbs 10:25), and the earth is established thereon, for this is the pillar that upholds the world. [123] As I explained earlier, the word all is associated with the sefirah Yesod. Thus, Yesod is the all and it is from it that the heavens are ‘ stretched out ’, the other eight sefirahs, flow upwards out of it and ‘the earth is spread out before it ’, meaning that Malkuth, the earth is beneath it. In accordance with the above textual based logic, placing the last remaining diagonal lines to connect Netzach and Hod to Malkuth would go against this logic and take away from the significance of the text describing that Yesod as the key foundational point that rests and has its roots in the world, referring to Malkuth. Accepting this logic of one line connecting Yesod to Malkuth therefore means that there remains only one place to draw the last two needed lines: One line to connect Chakmah to Gevurah and one line to connect Binah to Gedulah; and thus you have made the Gikatilla /ARI array. Now let us examine the choices found in the list of historical texts and their illustrations. I have already discussed the choice of the 1516 Latin Portae Lucis. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this illustration is how correctly it reflects the writings of the author of the
text Rabbi Gikatilla. The illustrator or the person instructing the illustrator seems to have actually paid attention to the original manuscript and what the author wrote, that outcomes is remarkable, given the difficulty of the text and the almost 200 years between the manuscript and its publication in book form. The next publication date is 1591 for Moses Cordovero’s Pardes Rimonim ( A Garden of Pomegranates) this is the date of the Cracow print edition. Cordovero’s original manuscript was composed in 1541. The Pardes Rimonim is a commentary on the Zohar text. The discrepancies between this commentary and illustrations…show that together they appear to validate two major forms of the diagram that have been prominent in the kabbalistic tradition, that which can be associated with Cordovero, since it is consistent with his commentary, and that which is closer to the illustrated diagram and can be associated with Isaac Luria. It was probably the growing influence of the Lurianic version of the Tree in the period intervening between the writing and publishing of the Pardes that accounts for the presumed editorial tampering with the original Cordovero diagram to bring it closer into conformity with the different version of the Tree popularized by Luria that had gained in authority during this time. [124] In 1617, the Complete Works of Robert Fludd was published. He was an alchemist with debatable reference to either Kabbalah or Cabalah [125], and he offers an illustration that makes no use of the 22 line motif for building the array and constructs his own unique version. Hence, we can disregard it. With the publication of the Cabalist Philippe d’Aquin’s Tree of Kabbalah in 1625, we have an illustration that has the 2 lines coming out of Hod and Netzach connecting to Malkuth. Here the manuscript date and the publication date are closely related. Next, the Cabalist and Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher’s, in his fictional Oedipus egyptiacus published in 1652, he makes use of and refers to Philippe d’Aquin’s Tree of Kabbalah. Assuming that Kircher had control over the illustration, he continues to present the two lines to Malkuth version, the Enclosed array of the earlier Kabbalistic schools. This illustration with its placement of the Hebrew letters, the placement of the planets, and the shape of the array is influential and significant due to its being reprinted in many later and more modern, 1900+ Qabalah texts. In 1684, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata (The Hidden Kabbala) Cabalah text is published. Rosenroth’s illustration has the two lines from Hod to Netzach to Malkuth. In 1708, Rabbi Mordecai Ben Jacob’s Pa’amon ve Rimmon (Bell and Pomegranate) is published in Amsterdam, from Rabbi Mordecai’s earlier written manuscript. The illustration of this Kabbalist has one line to Malkuth. In 1884, Sefer Yetzirah is published in Warsaw. This Kabbalah edition has an illustration of the Sefiroth with one line to Malkuth. The Qabalist S. L. MacGregor Mathers publishes in 1887 an English translation of a portion of the Rosenroth Kabbala Denudata. His The Kabbalah Unveiled has a few illustrations. One entitled plate III is a simplistic illustration of the lines interconnecting the sefirahs that does not have all 22 lines and has only one line to Malkuth. Whereas his illustration found in plate VII
has the two lines coming out of Hod and Netzach to connect with Malkuth. This illustration says it is based on writings of the Qabalist Eliphas Levi’s work La Clef des Grand Mysteries. Levi’s knowledge of the writings of the Rabbis is nil, as Waite states in his The Holy Kabbalah [126]. The Qabalist Aleister Crowley, in his privately published Liber 777 in 1909, has a plate of a reproduction of a hand drawn illustration of the Sefiroth with the two lines coming out of Hod and Netzach to connect with Malkuth. The Qabalist Paul Foster Case, in his 1920 An Introduction to the Study of the Tarot, has the illustration of the Sefiroth with the two lines coming out of Hod and Netzach to connect with Malkuth. The Qabalist Charles Stansfeld Jones publishes in 1923 Q.B.L. or The Bride’s Reception: Being a short Cabalistic treatise on the nature and use of the Tree of Life with a brief introduction and a lengthy appendix. He is one of Crowley’s principle disciples and has the illustration of the Sefiroth with the two lines coming out of Hod and Netzach to connect with Malkuth. The Qabalist Arthur Edward Waite publishes in 1924 his work The Holy Kabbalah, in which he reprints Kircher’s illustration. The Qabalist Israel Regardie publishes his Garden of Pomegranates in 1932, and the book is later revised in 1970. Also in 1932, he publishes The Tree of Life: A Study in Magic, it is also revised in 1968. These books have the illustration of the 22 lines array with the two lines coming out of Hod and Netzach to connect with Malkuth. The Qabalist Dion Fortune publishes her The Mystical Qabalah in 1935. Her book has the illustration of the 22 path array, and it is the one with the two lines coming out of Hod and Netzach to connect to Malkuth. You should have noticed an interesting trend. The rabbinical texts contain all three versions of the array, with the single line to Malkuth version used by ARI and his importance establishes that this array has lasting prominence amongst Jewish scholars, whereas the Cabalists and the Qabalists use exclusively the enclosed array with the two lines coming out of Hod and Netzach to connect to Malkuth. It is interesting to note that Regardie in his text makes note of the Kabbalah logical preference for the ARI array despite that fact that he only references pictorially the Enclosed Array as used by Kircher. Regardie cites an unspecified portion of the Zohar text when he discusses Yesod to this effect: ‘ Everything shall return to its foundation, from which it has roceeded. All marrow seed, and energy are gathered in this place. Hence all the potentialities which exist go out through this.’ (Zohar) [127] Fortune has a textual reference that acknowledges the logic of the Rabbis in her book’s section on Yesod. Fortune three times remarks that all the other sefirahs connect to Malkuth through Yesod. (1) ‘Yesod, then, must be conceived of as the receptacle of all the other Sephiroth, as is taught by the Qabalists, and as the immediate and only transmitter of these emanations to Malkuth, the physical plane.’ [128] (2) ‘The only approach to Malkuth is through Yesod…’ [129], and lastly, (3) ‘…it may be aptly called, in the words of the Qabalists, the ‘receptacle of the emanations’; and it is from Yesod that Malkuth receives the influx of the Divine forces.’[130] Yet despite all this, in Fortune’s book the illustration offered is the Enclosed Array as used by Kircher, which has not only Yesod but also Hod and Netzach connecting to Malkuth,
completely contradicting all of the remarks she had previously made concerning Yesod. If the illustration choice was her own and not the act of the publisher, we can speculate that the acceptance of the Enclosed Array by her Golden Dawn Qabalist teachers was something she could not overlook or overturn. Thus, in her published book, she passed on the Enclosed Array to the next generation of Qabalists and this is the array that is shown in Diagram III of her book. In summary, I believe that the publication of Sha’ are Orah and Portae Lucis in 1516 was the seed crystal that has contributed to ARI’s choice of the Sefiroth array used throughout the subsequent history of the Kabbalah. It is however, Kircher’s illustration that became the seed crystal of the Sefiroth array that flowered in the subsequent Cabalah and Qabalah works.
11: The letters and the Paths It seems clear to both the Kabbalists and the Qabalists that there are 22 paths connecting up the 10 sefirahs in the Sefiroth, and thus the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet should be assigned to these paths. However, how to do this is the question. As always, you need to understand the rules of the game before you begin to play the game. My study of the Qabalists is that they had assumes that the Kabbalah is played by Western logical thinking, and this assumption turns out to be a complete mistake. The Qabalists were metaphorically speaking trying to take the worldview of America with its rules of the game of American baseball and forcing it onto the British game of Cricket. However, the Qabalists ignored the writings of the Rabbis who created the tradition, and instead chose the picture published by the Christian Jesuit priest, Athanasius Kircher. I believe I can demonstrate the perspective of the Western logic used by the Qabalists and for their antecedents the Cabalists. I can do this by examining the illustration of Kircher’s Tree to ascertain his logic. Kircher’s Sefiroth is Figure 7. As I shall describe latter, there were many opportunities to correct Kircher’s error. Eliphas Levi had the chance first, and then, the Golden Dawn Qabalists, starting with the first to use and refer to the Sefer Yetzirah in their own texts were W Westcott, then Aleister Crowley, then Paul Foster Case, Israel Regardie, and finally Dion Fortune. They each had their time to notice that Kircher’s illustration did not follow the logic of the source text the Sefer Yetzirah, and yet they did not. When you examine Kircher’s Sefiroth, you will notice the following. The illustration starts with the fact that there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and then they would take note of the fact that there are 22 paths connecting the sefirahs within the Sefiroth. Therefore, each letter must be assigned to a path. Hebrew is read from right to left and thus the letters must be assigned in this manner, starting with the right side of the tree. Next, of course, you start at the top most path and work your way down. Simple and logical. That is the form of logic was used by Athanasius Kircher in his 1652 illustration of the Sefiroth, and this becomes the format used by all the Qabalists who considered the question of assigning the Hebrew letters to the paths. (See Figure 7) We should recall that some scholars believe that Kircher made a translation of the Sefer Yetzirah and that this was printed it in his 1652 work along with the illustration. If he did not do the translation but merely reprinted someone else’s translation, then there were in 1652 four existing translations of the text available to use. If he used any of those other translation, he should have had available to him a document that once read and understood would pointed to a completely different system of associations of the letters to the paths than the one he created. If only the Rabbi’s thought like, and used the logic of, Westerners. However they don’t. The Qabalists could have heeded the Sefer Yetzirah and attempted to place the letters in a pattern to match that of the Sefer Yetzirah. It could have been an obvious choice, starting at the top and working their way down. Yet, the Cabalist Kircher failed to consider the logic of the Rabbis as presented in the Sefer Yetzirah; my assumption is that Kircher deliberately made his divergent choice and all the Qabalists who relied on him just did so out of inertia, and unconscious bias of preferring an ‘Occult’ Christian source to a Jewish Rabbinic source. Now let us consider the logic of the Rabbis, specifically the one who wrote the Sefer
Yetzirah. The Sefer Yetzirah explains in repetitive detail how the Rabbis think and therefore how the letters should be grouped. As a point of historical fact, it should be recalled that the Qabalists Westcott, Crowley, Case, Regardie, and Fortune all read the Sefer Yetzirah and should have by that study uncovered the internal logic of the Rabbis in that text. If they had successfully done so, they should have recognized the significance made of the three groupings of the Hebrew letters, with its structural reference of the chapters of the text to the 3 Mother Letters, the 7 Double Letters, and the 12 Elemental Letters. This pattern of 3, 7, and 12 is easily matched to the Sefiroth with its 3 horizontal lines, its 7 diagonal lines, and its 12 vertical lines. For the Rabbis it is clear that the letters must be assigned to the paths according to these rules. Now let’s examine the specifics about the how’s and why’s concerning the Rabbis placement of the letters on the paths. In accordance with the Sefer Yetzirah: There are 3 Mother Letters: Alef, Mem, and Shin There are 7 Double Letters: Bet, Gimmel, Dalet, Caf, Peh, Resh[131], and Tav There are 12 Elemental Letters, aka all the rest of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet: Heh, Vav, Zayin, Chet, Tet, Yod, Lamed, Nun, Samekh, Eyin, Tzadi, Kuf In the Sefiroth, there are 3 horizontal paths In the Sefiroth, there are 7 vertical paths In the Sefiroth, there are 12 diagonal paths The Kabbalists assigned the 3 Mother Letters to the 3 horizontal lines, the 7 Double Letters to the 7 vertical lines and the 12 Elemental Letters to the 12 diagonal lines. This is the first step in the logic used by the Kabbalists of how the Hebrew letters are assigned to the 22 paths. For the next step, the Rabbis are in agreement with our Western minds, following the principle of top to bottom and right to left. Thus, the Hebrew letters in the groupings of 7 and 12 could be assigned to the paths by this logic. However, an interesting thing happens when you go to assign the Mother Letters to the Sefiroth. There seem to be two different systems, one drawn from the text and commentary of the Bahir and another system based on the text and commentary of the Sefer Yetzirah. It is clear that the three Mother Letters are to be placed on the three horizontal paths of the Sefiroth. The question is, which of the Mother letters go on which path? One answer, according to the Bahir, is the following; according to the commentary, the Alef is placed at the top most horizontal path between Chakmah and Binah, Mem is placed at the middle horizontal path between Chesed and Din and Shin is placed on the lowest horizontal path between Netzach and Hod. This logic is explained in the commentary notes that Kaplan gives to text of the Bahir. Alef is usually said to represent Keter-Crown. Actually, the ‘Holy Palace’ is the confluence of the four basic concepts, Keter-Crown, Chakmah-Wisdom, Binah-Understanding, and Malkuth-Kingship, and it is seen as the center point of the six Sefiroth of Zer Anpin. The four concepts are denoted by the four corners of the Alef. Furthermore, in the diagram of the Thirty-Two Paths, Alef is the channel between Chakmah-Wisdom and BinahUnderstanding. [132] Shin represents the confluence of the three lowest Sefiroth, Netzach-Victory, Hod-Splendor, and Yesod-Foundation, into Malkuth-Kingship. In the diagram of Thirty-two Paths, Shin is the channel between Hod-Splendor and Netzach-Victory…[133]
This of course would leave the third Mother letter Mem, being placed on the path between Chesed and Din in the center of the Sefiroth. The other rabbinic logic arrangement is found within the Sefer Yetzirah. According to the Sefer Yetzirah, each of the three Mother letters represents an element that corresponds to where that element is found in the body. Three Mothers Alef Mem Shin in the Soul, male and female, are the head, belly, and chest. The head is created from fire, The belly is created from water, and the chest, from breath, decides between them. [134] Alef corresponds to the element of air as in the Hebrew word for air, Alef Vav Yod Resh, and thus finds a natural home in the lungs that would be located on the Sefiroth map of the body between Chesed and Din. Mem corresponds to the element of water as in the Hebrew word Mem Yod Mem, and thus finds its natural home in the stomach and womb areas that would be located on the Sefiroth map of the body between Netzach and Din. This leaves Shin, which corresponds to the element of Fire as in the Hebrew word Shem Mem Yod Mem. This would symbolically represent the fire of creative thought and thus find its natural home on the Sefiroth map between Chakmah and Binah. This placement of the three mother letters is use by ARI and the GRA on their diagrams of the Sefiroth. When you examine the placement of the letters on the Sefiroth, it follows not the Bahir logic but the logic found in the Sefer Yetzirah. In the end, the Rabbis of the Kabbalah tradition henceforth used this system of ARI and GRA, and so shall we. Figure 9 is the Enclosed Tree with my assignment of the GRA letters onto it [135].
Figure 10: Enclosed array with GRA based letters
Now there is another version of the Tree with Hebrew letter assignments to the paths. ARI has his own tree array and his own placement of the twelve Elemental Hebrew Letters on his tree that differs from the logic that the GRA uses. They both use the same placements for the 3 Mother Letters and the 7 Double Letters. The purpose of this book is to discuss the ten Gates of the Sefiroth, the sefirahs and not to focus on the meanings of the letters and the paths. Therefore, I will leave the ARI assignment of the letters to the Tree and the logic behind that choice to a discussion in my next book, The Qabalah Paths of Light .
12: How and Why the Qabalists Were Mislead. We have to face the fact that the Qabalists were misled by a number of factors, one of which was their own unconscious bias and prejudice against the Jews. They just repeatedly failed to assume that the Rabbis knew what they were doing; instead, they repeatedly relied on the efforts of Christians and repeated those errors over and over again. Nonetheless, to be generous to the Qabalists, they were at a disadvantage. They were limited by the translations of the texts that were available to them, often using some Chri stian Cabalist who translated the Hebrew into Latin, and then most of the Qabalists were reading only those Latin translations. The Qabalists using what was available to them simply couldn’t work out what the sefirahs meant other than trying to gleam something by the Hebrew name alone. These lists of the names of the sefirahs prove not very revealing, the names are metaphors for the Divine attributes taken from the TaNaK . These names need to be explored and explained. What is interesting to notice when you examine the books of the students of the Golden Dawn tradition, and I will use Israel Regardie and Dion Fortune as prime examples of them, is that they seem to have gathered very little insight from the material and study of their teachers. For example, the two of them make almost no real reference to Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mather’s The Kabbalah Unveiled, first published in 1887, and then revised by Mather’s in 1925. The book is Mather’s translation not of the Rabbinic Hebrew source texts of The Zohar but rather an English translation of the Latin edition done by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata. Nor does Fortune or Regardie make much reference to Arthur Edward Waite’s 1924 encyclopedic book The Holy Kabbalah, which as I noted earlier, this text was praised by Gershom Scholem for its insights into rabbinic Kabbalah. [136] Regardie and Fortune were either not impressed by those two volumes or could not understand them, or could not find within them useful material to assist them in presenting what the Sefirahs of the Sefiroth meant. I have to assume that by the way in which they both completely fail to refer to those texts when trying to explain the meanings behind the ten sefirahs. As for what use those students make to the source texts of the Rabbis, little is found. W hen we examine Dion Fortune’s 1935 The Mystical Qabalah, which we will get to in more depth shortly, suffice it to say she refers to The Zohar without citation, suggesting to me she was told about the ideas contain there and did not herself have the text or read it. My presumption is that she is referring to Mather’s text The Kabbalah Unveiled. In Israel Regardie’s A Garden of Pomegranates, first written in 1932 then revised in 1970, he also makes vague references to rabbinic sources. Again, his use of the rabbinic texts and his lack of any in-depth analysis using the texts suggest to me that he did not study these texts directly, and his knowledge was second hand concerning these sources. With them both in the end I will demonstrates their failure in understanding the sefirahs. Again, to be fair to the Qabalists, the best tools in English needed to uncover the meaning behind the Sefiroth really weren’t available until after their efforts. For example, it is not until 1941 that Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism was published in English. It was not until 1974, with Gershom Scholem’s publication of his Kabbalah: A Definitive History of the Evolution, Ideas, Leading Figures, and Extraordinary Influence of
Jewish Mysticism, that we get in English these two sources that give us insights into the study of Jewish Kabbalah and what the sefirahs mean. In 1979, Aryeh Kaplan’s translation with an introduction and commentary of The Bahir was published. In 1983, an English translation of Isaiah Tishby’s The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts: with extensive introductions and explanations was published, and made available even more information of what The Zohar had to say concerning it’s understanding of the sefirahs. In 1990, Aryeh Kaplan published his English translation and heavily annotated version of The Sefer Yetzirah: the Book of Creation, In theory and Practice . In 1994, an English translation of Joseph Gikatilla’s The Gates of Light was published, a text dedicated solely to exploring in depth the rabbinic understanding of each sefirah utilizing the motifs and people from the Torah as metaphors. It was in 2004 when the first book of Daniel C. Matt’s in depth, insightful and clear English translation with commentary of what is to be a multivolume set of The Zohar was first published. If a Qabalist wanted to create a reconstructed version of the Occult Qabalah this project could not have started any earlier then 1941 since that was when secondary source material began to be available in English. It would not be until 1979 that the primary source material was available in English. All of this would really be needed as tools for a reconstruction of the Qabalah to be undertaken. However, no one did this. As I hope this book explains, it is long overdue. So we can appreciate that, according to the efforts of the Golden Dawn’s must illustrious and referenced students, Regardie and Fortune, it seems that the Qabalists were left with scant clues to guide them. They were desperate to find a way to understand the system of symbols of the Sefiroth. They needed a key to unlock the concealed meaning behind the metaphors that they read in the texts that they had available to them. As Dion Fortune noted: In this we see an example of the value of the Tree as a method of counterchecking vision or meditation; correct attributions fit upon the Tree through endless ramifications of symbolism, ...incorrect symbolism breaks down and reveals its bizarre associations at the first attempt to follow out a chain of correspondences. It is amazing what ramifications of association-chains can be followed when the attribution is correct. [137] As Fortune so aptly puts it, incorrect symbolism breaks down when you fail to correctly check the attributions to the tree, but she was herself unable to do this. By correctly examining the Rabbi’s accumulated knowledge, insight and wisdom of the Sefiroth, systematic correspondences between the symbol systems can be found. I believe that the system as outlined in my book point toward a set of correspondences which are properly rooted in the source material of the Kabbalah, and hence they fit the goals of the Reconstruction movement. My presentation is more in touch with the living tradition of the Kabbalah. For the Qabalists the key to understanding the Sefiroth was not the Kabbalah texts themselves, but something else. That something was a thing that the Qabalists had easy access to. Dion Fortune, with insightful honesty, explains: Broadly speaking, then, we sort out the gods and goddesses of all the pagan pantheons into the ten pigeonholes of the Ten Holy Sephiroth, relying chiefly upon their astrological associations to guide us, because astrology is the one universal language, for all people see the same planets. [138]
Let me point out a few important things to note from this statement by Fortune. One, just as I said that the planets with their astrological associations were artificially associated with the Jewish Kabbalah using the metaphor of Christmas tree ornaments, Fortune recognizes that she is using the sefirah as ‘ pigeonholes’. She treats them as objects without meaning that has to be filled with meaningful significance. The sefirahs to her are without significance in their own right. She cannot gleam from them any purpose or explanations as to their use. She lacks the sources to do so. The next thing to note is her idea of ‘ one universal language ’. It is true that all peoples, all cultures of the world can look upon the sky and perceive the same sensory nonverbal objects as the planets. However, only someone who lacks insight into how cultures and those raised within a culture come to understand the world would jump to the faulty conclusion that the significance given to a nonverbal objects are the same in all cultures. She is unaware that her own cultural upbringing has biased her. In reality, there is no universal language, though the dream of the universal is a dream of Western mindset bequeath to us from the Greeks. All cultures encounter the same nonverbal objects, but the words used to describe them and the metaphoric meanings and significance associated with those objects, can be different from one culture to another. What is clear from Fortune is that for her it is the Babylonian creation of astrology with the Greek and Roman overlay to that system that is the Qabalists key to understanding the Jewish creation of the Sefiroth with its ten sefirahs. The focus of Fortune and Regardie’s study of the individual sefirahs of the Sefiroth is first and foremost on the planet that they found associated with each sefirah. The source of this association was the diagram made by the Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher in his aforementioned 1623 book Oedipus Aegyptiacus. That book, with its chart, was the source text for what was to become the Qabalah. (See Figure 7) Kircher starts us down this road of placing the planets on the Sefiroth. It is a system that is as far as I can ascertain was never directly picked up by the Qabalists. All they did was use the idea of associating planets with a specific sefirah. I am crediting Mather’s work with being the source of the actual system used by the Qabalist as it is first presented. I am assuming that he changed the planets to the placement the Qabalah and this gets passed on through the ages. I have not been able to pin down who in the Golden Dawn had made the connection. However, the fact remains that once a system of correspondences was presented it was passed down in that exact same order ever since. (See Figure 10) This is so important, that I will repeat myself. Fortune and Regardie are prime examples of the dilemma facing the Qabalists. They know that the meanings of the sefirahs are important, however, they lack the information that provides adequate source text explanations of their meaning. What are they to do? They fall back on what they do know. They assume that there is significance and meaningful intent in this pattern of association that is made between the planets and the sefirahs. Thus, Fortune and Regardie, through their study of the Babylonian, Greek and Roman metaphoric use of the planets meaning, and the non-Hebraic mythology associated with each planet, and the non-Hebraic astrological symbolism associated with each planet, they take all of this together as their the set of keys to decipher the meaning of the Jewish rabbinic Kabbalah greatest symbol and mystery: the Sefiroth. Fortune and Regardie do not first outline the Kabbalists’ understanding of the sefirah and then refer back to this foundation to build upon. Nor do Fortune and Regardie attempt to glean any insights that Mather or Waite’s famous books might offer. Rather Fortune and
Regardie treats non-Kabbalist material such as the mythos of Babylon, Greece, Rome, Egypt, Hindu, China, Scandinavia, amongst others, as being relevant authority in one’s understanding of the Jewish rabbinic Kabbalah. To do this, they go directly to the associated planets to find a meaning which they assumed must correspond to that sefirah. Thus they, and every other master of Qabalah, when they examine first those planets and then assume that the significance of the planets can be made the same as the sefirahs of the Tree of Life, are working from a hypothesis that has never been, and has yet to be, proven valid. As I said before, it does not make sense that the Jewish Kabbalists would assign as the True meaning of the sefirahs of the Sefiroth, the system that describes their idea of the Divine according to the meaning of and the symbolism of the Gods as understood by Babylon, Greece and Rome. It is a fact that the Rabbis knew about and even respected those culture’s philosophy and systems. This attitude of respect starts with Philo of Alexandria, who lived around 20 – 30 CE. Philo made use of Plato and Aristotle’s philosophy. This use of Greek philosophy continues on through Moses Maimonides use of Aristotle and the Scholastic scholars study of Aristotle in Maimonides writings starting around the 1300’s. However, Philo and Maimonides always assumed that Torah reigned supreme when a difference between the Greek and the rabbinic views clashed. It is complete nonsense to believe that the Rabbis would use the Gods of their old enemies, those who sought to conquer them, those who destroyed and desecrated their Temple, and those who sent them into exile, as the True key to understanding their own idea of the Divine. That is the reason why the Zohar and the Sefer Yetzirah makes scant mention of the planets and their meanings. It is because the Rabbis have no intention of using them symbolically to interpret the meaning of the sefirahs, but rather they are only showing that the Divine created everything including the planets and, they wish to show when and how they were created. As Fortune notes: The essence of the unwritten Qabalah lies in the knowledge of the order in which certain sets of symbols are arranged upon the Tree of Life. This Tree…consists of the Ten Holy Sephiroth arranged in a particular pattern and connected by lines which are called the …Paths of the Sefer Yetzirah, or Divine Emanations. …The Qabalists further placed upon the Paths of the Tree the Signs of the Zodiac, the Planets, and the Elements. …which fit accurately and, correctly placed, are found to correspond perfectly with the Tarot trumps, and giving the keys to esoteric astrology and Tarot divination [139]. Now the problem with the meaning of the word Qabalists becomes important. Is she intending to mean by the use of the word Qabalists ‘The rabbinic Kabbalists further placed upon the Paths…’ or is she alluding to ‘The Christian and the Occult Qabalists further placed upon the Paths…’? We cannot tell. The statement made by her would be true if she was referring to the non-Jewish Cabalists and Qabalists. The statement is false if she were referring to the rabbinic Kabbalists. She, building upon the knowledge she gained of the Qabalah from her Golden Dawn teachers, creates a system that naturally is in keeping with what she was taught. Hence, she presents not the insights of the Kabbalah but the insights of the Qabalists who were her teachers. Fortune has the hubris to proclaim that what she is presenting is the ‘ True’ teachings of the Kabbalah. The interpretation of the Qabalah is not to be found, however, among the
Rabbis of the Outer Israel…Neither is the Qabalah, as I have learned it, a purely Hebraic system, for it has been supplemented during mediaeval times by much alchemical lore and by the intimate association with it of…the Tarot. It may be alleged against me that the ancient Rabbis knew nothing of some of the concepts here set forth; to this I reply that it is hardly to be expected that they should, as these things were not know in their day, but are the work of their successors of the Spiritual Israel. I care not one jot for the authority of [rabbinic] tradition if it hampers the free development of a system of such practical value…I do not say this is the teaching of the ancient Rabbis; rather do I say, this is the practice of the modern Qabalists, …it is a practical system of spiritual unfoldment; it is the Yoga of the West. [140]
We can take from this pride in her ignorance that she has inherited the Christian bias that the Jews are of no value and exist only to be a footpath to Christianity. She has no respect or appreciation of the culture that created the Kabbalah and foolishly believes that ideas are created ex nihilo and have no connection to the source. This idea is nonsense. Ideas are forged by a specific person, and they are directly related to the human mind that brought them into being. Ideas are shaped by the creator’s cultural and individual background. Her book is itself proof of this, as her personality is the key to understanding the information that is in the text. Now, when you examine the material from the Qabalists, such as Mathers, Crowley, Regardie, and Fortune, there is a set and consistent list of planetary correspondences to the Sefiroth. I will start at the bottom of the Sefiroth Tree and work upwards towards the top. As I said, my assumption is that Mathers is the source of this assignment [141]. [142] (See figure 10 for the typical planetary placements on the tree with the Kircher Hebrew letter assignment that is becomes normative for the Qabalists.)
Figure 11: Modern Qabalah Tree [143]
Earth=Malkuth Moon=Yesod Mercury=Hod Venus=Netzach Sun=Tifereth Mars=Din Jupiter=Chesed Saturn=Binah Uranus [144] (Regardie) or the Zodiac (Mathers, and Fortune [145]) = Chakmah Primum Mobile (Fortune) or (Mathers) Neptune [146]=Keter To discover the source of this arrangement we go to three Kabbalah texts and to some Cabalah texts as well. The Kabbalah texts would be the Sefer Yetzirah, the Zohar, and Gikatilla’s The Sha’are Orah Gates of Light . For the Kabbalah texts, we begin with the 1516 Latin translation done by Paul Ricci of Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah, The Gates of Light . In his introduction to the text, Paul Ricci gives a list of the planets as follows: ' The ten peculiar members of the great corporeal man are the intellectual heaven, the primum mobile, the orb of the stars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon together with the rest that her sphere includes. '[147] This list of the planets in that order in Ricci’s could have been the Qabalah source text, however I do not believe so, since no Qabalist that I am aware of makes mention of this text. Therefore, we need to look elsewhere for the sources that could explain it the use of the list in that specific order. Next, we shall refer to the Sefer Yetzirah and the Zohar. These Kabbalah books mention the planets only once in each of their texts. Despite the possible time frame that separates the books, depending on what you accept as the true author of these documents, the texts give the order of the planets in exactly the same way. What is extremely important to realize about these two passages is that in both texts no great significance is associated with the listing of the planets other than the sequence of their creation [148]. It appears from reading the context of these lists that the authors were merely demonstrating how the whole of the known universe was created as a product of the forces outlined in those texts, those forces that are manifested in the formation of the Sefiroth. The two passages are brief and an exact match in their essentials, and they are found in Sefer Yetzirah 4:7. It is important to note that this passage in the Sefer Yetzirah is not describing the sefirahs but rather list of sevens as in the seven vertical paths of the Tree. Seven planets in the Universe: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon. Seven days in the Year: The seven days of the week. Seven gates in the Soul, Male and female: Two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and the mouth[149] There we have a listing of seven items that can be found in creation. Two things are important to note about this chapter. The first is that the concept of seven refers back to the seven letters of the Hebrew alphabet knows as the Doubles. These seven letters are matched to the seven diagonal paths that are found on the Sefiroth. Therefore, as far as the Sefer Yetzirah is concerned the planets, if they were to be placed on the Sefiroth, would be placed on seven paths and not have been associated at all with the sefirahs of the Tree! All of chapter four of the Sefer Yetzirah is involved in discussing groups of seven. In the text no hint, overt or otherwise, is made that the Rabbinic author knows or is referring in any way to any Babylonian astrological symbolic meaning that the planets may have, nor is there any reference to Greek or Roman symbolic meaning. No hint that the author even knew of such symbolic meaning can be shown or found. Nor does it make any sense to think that the Jewish rabbis would play the game of the
Kabbalah and use their age old enemies’ religion to describe their own idea of the Divine. In The Zohar III Zohar III 251a-b, is where in this text that the planets are mentioned. The Zohar passage begins thus: ‘ The Faithful Shepherd said: Why is the eating of leaven prohibited during the seven days when one eats unleavened bread? ’ The full context of this passage is that a mystic teacher came to Rabbi Simeon ben Yochai and his followers and taught them all the hidden importance of the varying commandments given at Mount Sinai. Moses is the unnamed but implied ‘faithful ‘faithful shepherd’. shepherd ’. This section deals with the seven days following the first day of Passover when eating of leaven bread is prohibited. The text continues: And why is it written written ‘no leavened bread shall be eaten’ [Exodus 13:3], and ‘You shall eat no yeast’ [Exodus 12:20]. There are seven planets: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the sun, Venus, Mercury, and the moon. They are from both the good side and the evil side. The inner light is unleavened bread, and the outer husk is leaven, and the husks are leavened bread, --male, and yeast --female. The matzah that is within is protected, and these are ‘the seven maidens who were suitable to be given to her from the king’s house.’ [Esther 2:9] and of them it is said, ‘you shall protect the matzah’ [Exodus 12:17] The matzah is kept for her husband, who is Vav [a Hebrew letter, one of the four that make up the Holiest and the unpronounceable name of the Divine: YHVH.], and together with him she becomes a mitzvah [Hebrew for commandment]. It is he that protects her for yod he, [two Hebrew letters that make up the four letters of the Divine Name. Yod, and the letter Vav mentioned previously, are mystically considered the Masculine principle and He is considered the feminine principle.] concealed within the Mem Zadde of matzah: yod for Mem, he for Zadde. nd the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded that seven blessings should be pronounced over her on the eve of Passover, and they are her seven maidens, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and and the Moon. [150] As can be seen, the planets are referenced here as the seven maidens mentioned in the book of Esther of Esther.. No symbolic meaning drawing upon Babylonian astrology or Greek or Roman, or any other cultures mythology, is associated with these seven maidens. The planets are merely listed in a specific order and that is all. This is the same order as that given in the fourth chapter of the Sefer Yetzirah. Yetzirah . Now, in that fourth chapter of the Sefer Yetzirah there Yetzirah there is an attempt to reference the seven letters to the seven planets and create a series of attributions. Kaplan in a chart lists ten differing rabbinic Kabbalah lists of such attributions [151]. The important thing to notice is how the same attributions shift and flow between those lists as to how they are assigned to the planets. The same sets of attributions are assigned first to one planet and then a different one by each of the 10 rabbinic sources. The lack of consistency and uniformity is startling, especially when you compare it to the Occult Qabalah tradition. Within the Occult Qabalah, tradition there is a historical consistency, and the teaching has been passed down with stability and agreement from one teacher to the next. The reason for the differences in the two traditions is easy to explain. Whereas the Occult tradition sees importance and significance in the planetary symbols, the rabbinic Kabbalah tradition does not place any real significance or importance on the symbolic meanings of the planets [152]. My conclusion is that the taint from Babylon, Greece and Rome to the planet’s symbolic meaning could not be forgotten and ignored by the Rabbis. The Rabbis could not seriously and could not whole-heartedly put any real effort and value into these associations.
The Sefer Yetzirah does Yetzirah does make reference to astrology directly, but only mentions briefly the meanings associated with the twelve constellations of the Zodiac. This discussion of the Zodiac is made in Chapter Five, where all things twelve in number are considered [153]. The discussion of the twelve is in the context of the meanings and significance of the twelve Hebrew letters the Elementals and the corresponding twelve paths of the Sefiroth. Again, it is important to notice that this is not an explanation of the meaning of any of the Sefirahs. However, the rabbinic writer of the Sefer Yetzirah makes Yetzirah makes no serious or thorough attempt to link these Babylonian, Greek and Roman astrological Zodiac systems to the Jewish Kabbalah. [154] Historically, it can be shown that the Rabbis did know of Babylonian, Greek, and Roman astrology, and some of them did study it and make use of it. However, I believe that this study and use was always in the context of studying something that was not ‘kosher’. This studying and using of astrology was something foreign and outside of the Jewish tradition. Scholem writes, ‘Astrology and alchemy play at most a marginal role in kabbalistic thought. … Interestingly, Interestingly, kabbalistic kabbalistic attitudes attitudes toward astrological astrological magic were were highly ambivalent, ambivalent, and and some [155] leading kabbalists, such as Cordovero, actually approved of it. ’ Now, the importance of these passages from the Kabbalah texts for the Qabalists has not been proven. The Qabalists make no direct reference to them. The Qabalists do make reference to the Kircher’s illustration of the Sefiroth. This illustration, which has the planets placed on the Sefiroth, seems to have completely shaped the Qabalists’ understanding of the metaphors and symbolic meanings of the sefirahs of the Sefiroth and thus their teachings of the Qabalah. Regardie and Fortune, by using their formidable knowledge of the Babylonian, Greek, and Roman astrological and mythological attributions to the planets, decipher the planets meaning and thus believe they have mastered the meaning of the Sefiroth. Now we need to consider the actual order of the planets in that list, here is that list again. Earth=Malkuth Moon=Yesod Mercury=Hod Venus=Netzach Sun=Tifereth Mars=Din Jupiter=Chesed Saturn=Binah Is there significance to it? As stated above, it seems that this order is only the order in which the planets where created. The simple logic is that the planet closet to the Earth was created first and the planet farthest from the Earth was created last. Hence this list of the planets in the sequence given in the Sefer Yetzirah and Yetzirah and the Zohar corresponds Zohar corresponds to the ancient Western understanding of how distance the planets were from the center of the Universe, the Earth. This arrangement is how the ancient world in observing the sky above the Earth saw and understood the arrangement of the planets and the Sun. For Western Civilization, it was the writings of Claudius Ptolemaeus, aka Ptolemy; a 2 nd century BCE natural philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, whose name is associated with this arrangement. Ptolemy studied and codified the Babylonian astronomical teachings, and it is through Ptolemy that the Western Civilization gained access to Astrology. Ptolemy believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe and the Heavens above were arranged outward from that central focus. This understanding was changed in the late 1500’s by observations and insights of Johannes Kepler and finally Nicholas Copernicus. What was the reasoning behind how the planets came to be associated with each sefirah? Is there truly purposeful significance in this association? I believe that the planets were assigned to the Sefiroth in a perfectly logic manner. However, it is only that this association was merely logical merely logical and not meaningfully significant to the authors of the Sefer Yetzirah or Yetzirah or The Zohar. Zohar .
What we have is a simple matching of two systems of sequence, both of which are related to spatial arrangements. The last sefirah is known as Malkuth, usually translated as the Kingdom. Malkuth is the sefirah of the physical realm and throughout the Kabbalah is associated with the physical plane upon which Humanity dwells, the Earth. This idea comes directly from the ancient teachings of the Kabbalah. What happens next is that the distance from the Earth/Malkuth is used as the key to fix the remaining planets; using the reference point of the Earth and Malkuth, the remaining planets are assigned. The Moon being the closest neighbor to the Earth is thus assigned to the sefirah closets to Malkuth, and Saturn, being furthest out, is assigned to the sefirah most distant from Malkuth. All of the planets are matched up to the Sefirahs on the basis of the understanding of which Sefirah is closest to Malkuth and which is farthest away. A simple logical arrangement, but as I have previously shown from the Sefer Yetzirah and the Zohar, this Zohar, this arrangement had no intended symbolic and meaningful purpose. That arrangement is given as the following. Malkuth Yesod Hod Netzach Tifereth Din Chesed Binah Chakmah Keter Now to overlay the Ptolemaic arrangement with this listing of the accepted order of the Sefirahs we get: Malkuth=Earth Yesod=Moon Hod=Mercury Netzach=Venus Tifereth=Sun Din=Mars Chesed=Jupiter Binah=Saturn Chakmah Keter It should now come as no surprise that this is the exact listing that Mathers, Crowley, Regardie, and Fortune give. It is the commonly accepted listing throughout all the books of the Qabalah. This arrangement is where they all start in their understanding of the Sefiroth. They start first with the planets’ association via the Ptolemaic overlay on the Sefiroth and then examine the astrological and mythological significance of the planets, which they then place on the meaning of the Sefirahs. Now, I mentioned many pages back that the Qabalists modified Kircher’s illustration. Kircher’s illustration has the glyph for the Moon next to Malkuth and references the Earth next to Yesod; this gets reversed by all the Qabalists, so that where the Moon is always associated with Yesod and the Earth with Malkuth. Now Kircher does place the Sun at Tifereth, which agrees with the Qabalists. However, Kircher’s placement of the planets is due to his counting of the sefirahs different from the traditional Qabalist and more importantly for intentionally different from the rabbis. To best elucidate why this Ptolemaic overlay fails to demonstrate an understanding of the Kabbalah I will, for the sack of brevity, use only one metaphoric planet, Venus. Why Venus? I believe it is clear that Venus is the planet in Babylonian astrology and Greek and Roman mythology associated with sexuality. As Waite realized, the secret of the Kabbalah is Sex. The motif of sexual union is the single most important metaphor in all of the Kabbalah’s understanding of the Sefiroth. The Sefirahs interactions are almost always described in terms of sexual intercourse. The sexual nature of the Kabbalah has been noted by the Jewish scholar Gershom Scholem: Some of these mythical symbols afford a particularly striking instance of the way in which genuine Jewish thought became indissolubly mixed up with primitive mythical elements. This is true above all of sexual symbolism. [156] The mystery of sex as it appears to the Kabbalist, has a terribly deep significance.’ [157] ‘This sexual imagery is employed again and again, and in every possible variation. [158]
As Tishby notes: In the whole array of anthropomorphic symbols special importance is given to sexual symbolism, which portrays the life of the divine in the context of a male-female relationship. The sexual terms indicate, according to the symbolic interpretation, the process whereby the divine influence flows, and is received, in the world of emanation. The same sefirah that is described as ‘female’ in relation to the source above it of the influence that it has, is also thought of as ‘male’ in relation to that which is below it. [159] Sex is the powerhouse, the dynamo of the Sefiroth. If you fail to correctly notice the sexual symbols and metaphors of the Sefiroth, you will misunderstand all of the Sefiroth. The Sefiroth, besides being called the Tree of Life is also described as the Primordial human Adam Kadmon. When this is done, then the Sefirahs are ascribed and associated with the head, the heart, the torso, the arms, the legs, and the genitals of this metaphoric and cosmic human. The ninth Sefirath, Yesod, out of which all the higher Sefiroth—welded together in the image of the King—flow into the Shekhinah, is interpreted as the procreative life force dynamically active in the universe. Out of the hidden depth of this Sefirah the divine life overflows in the act of mystical procreation. …It is to be noted that the Zohar makes prominent use of phallic symbolism in connection with speculations concerning the Sefirah Yesod… [160] Before examining the anatomy of the Sefiroth, we should again recall that for the Kabbalists there is no symbolic significance of the assignment of the planets on the Sefiroth. The placements of the planets on the Sefiroth have no intentional purpose, no metaphoric or symbolic meaning, and the placement systems does not affect the understanding and interpretations of the Sefiroth. For this reason, the finding of the sexual center of the Sefiroth is important because this placement of the planet best associated with sex will thus unlock the connection of the two otherwise unrelated meaning systems. How you place the sex planet on the Sefiroth will demonstrate your understanding of the sexual center of the Sefiroth and hence this most vitally important focus of meaning for the Kabbalists. But it is as if, Kircher, Crowley, Regardie, and Fortune looked between the legs of the Sefiroth and fail to see the sexual organ of the Sefiroth. What is the actual sexual center of the Sefiroth? Isaiah Tishby was impressed with Gershom Scholem’s insight into the sexual symbolism associated with Yesod: ‘When we come to the sefirah Yesod, which is symbolized by the penis, we even hear echoes of ancient phallus worship.’[161] The anatomy of Adam Kadmon is built around Tifereth as the torso, thereby placing Keter as the crown, Chakmah is assigned to the head, the place of inner thought, Binah is considered as either another aspect of the Head, and of thought, or as the heart, Chesed as the right arm, Din as the left arm, Netzach as the right leg and Hod as the left leg, placing Yesod as the sex organ. Malkuth is either not noted as a part of the anatomy, or thus seen as the foundation upon which all stand, or is noted as the mouth, that organ of speech that is the pathway for the Divine to speak to humanity and allow the mysteries of the infinite divinity to become known to the finite realm.
In the Hebrew Kabbalah text The Bahir, Netzach and Hod have been attributed as the two testicles as well as the two legs [162]. But again, for the Kabbalists, this anatomical set of attributions is pictorial and not determinative as to setting the full meaning of the sefirahs in the Sefiroth. For the Kabbalists, the true nature of the Sefirahs is found not by looking through the prism lens of images as symbols to find the meaning of each of the sefirahs. Rather, they uncovered the meaning of the sefirah through words found in the TaNaK and then assigned metaphoric symbols only as an aid to illustrate the understanding they had already found in the text. This is the difference between the Kabbalists use of symbols and the Qabalists use. Fortune and Regardie, as will be demonstrated, used the metaphoric meanings that the planetary symbols possess in Babylon, Greece and Rome to be the means to interpret back significance to the sefirahs of the Sefiroth. The planet, whose name is derived from Roman culture and whose corresponding astrological and mythological meaning connotes sexuality is the planet Venus. Thus, the placement of the planet Venus is the key assignment to demonstrate that one understands how to create a bridge between the Qabalah symbol systems with the Kabbalah system. What happens when you use the Ptolemy system to place the planet Venus on the Sefiroth? The answer is you will associate the planet Venus with Netzach. Having the planet Venus in Netzach, how does Regardie describe the meaning of that sefirah? Regardie, although appearing learned in the writings of the Kabbalah, still fails to realize the overwhelming influence he places on the non-Hebraic Kabbalah symbols of the Planets, the astrological and mythological meaning systems of the non-Hebraic Kabbalah source material which he uses to related back to the Planetary symbol systems. (Note: hard brackets [] is my additions, whereas soft brackets () were in the original.) Netzach…meaning ‘Victory’. Sometimes it is named Eternity and Triumph. It is the seventh potency, and to it is logically attributed the Nike [goddess of] (Victory). In his Greek Studies Walter Pater wrote….’ [163] ‘Astrologically its [Netzach] planet is Venus. It should follow in consequence from this that the gods and qualities of Netzach relate to love, victory, and to the harvest. Aphrodite (Venus) is the lady of love and beauty,…The whole implication of this Sephirah is of love-albeit a love of a sexual nature. Hathor is the Egyptian equivalent and is a lesser aspect of the Mother Isis. She is depicted as a cow goddess, representing the generative forces of nature. [164] But this association of the planet Venus with Netzach is the human anatomical equivalent of saying that the right leg is our sexual organs and that our genitals have nothing to do with sex. To be fair to Regardie, he seems to realize that he is caught in a contradiction. Regardie appears to realize that Netzach is not the main sefirah associated with the sexual organs in the symbolic anatomy of the Sefiroth as Adam Kadmon. He appears to know how the Kabbalists associated sexuality with Yesod, takes this information, and does find a way to apply it to his understanding of Yesod. He then additionally finds in the Moon, which has been assigned to Yesod, a sexual overlay. Our minds have an infinite capacity to make and find correspondence between any given sets of objects. This is what Regardie is doing. He needs a connection and thus finds a connection and makes the connection. ‘ Yesod is this stable foundation, this changeless ebb and flow of astral forces, and the universal reproductive power in nature.’ [165] The Moon, which is the natural marker of the passage of time, which matches with a women’s menstrual cycle, is Regardie’s way to recognize sex and sexuality as having to do with the
meaning of Yesod. Now let us examine Dion Fortune’s understanding of the placement of the planet Venus on the Sefiroth. It is important to recall that for Fortune: Broadly speaking, then, we sort out the gods and goddesses of all the pagan pantheons into the ten pigeonholes of the Ten Holy Sephiroth, relying chiefly upon their astrological associations to guide us, because astrology is the one universal language, for all people see the same planets. [166] Fortune doesn’t look to the writings of the Jewish rabbis, nor to Mather’s and Waite’s writings either, to understand the pigeonholes of the Sefiroth. She just looks to the planets placed in those pigeonholes and analyzes the Babylonian, Greek and Roman metaphors, and symbols of the planets. [We] shall comprehend the nature of Netzach in the microcosm best if we remember that it is the Sphere of Venus, with all that that implies. Translated from the symbolic language of the Qabalah into plain English, it means that we are concerned here with the function of polarity, which is a very great deal more than mere sex…It is important to note in this respect that Venus, or in her Greek form, Aphrodite, is not a fertility goddess at all,…she is the goddess of love. Now in the Greek concept of life, Love embraced much more that the relationship between the sexes. [167]. It is a fact that the Greeks had three words that we could translate as love; they are eros, hilo, and agape. We could say that these translate as desire, attraction, and affection. For the Greeks eros is the desire for physical sex, and philo, as Socrates explains in The Symposium, is based in the metaphors of physical attraction. Agape’s meaning for the Greeks was associated with one’s affectionate relationship with a family member. Fortune believes that ‘ The Aphrodite cult was something very much more than the simple performance of an animal function. [168]’ The idea of love that she is imagining to me seems to be more informed through Western culture that flows up into the later conception of Romantic Love which stems from the Troubadours of the 11 th to 13th centuries. Fortune seems to conflate the philo and agape emotions with Venus and dissociates Venus from eros. Fortune recognizes that for the Greeks, sex that leads to birth was the province of one’s relationship between husband and wife, whereas sex for pleasure was a pursuit found outside of the home.[169] Fortune associates the form of sexuality to breed, with the fertility Goddesses Ceres and Persephone, who Fortune believes is the exclusive goddess who is worshiped by wife in her home. [170] It is true that for many Greek men eros was found in the homosexual relationships of the older man with the younger male. For someone like Socrates, this homosexual relationship combined not only eros, but philos as well. Eros also was found for many Greek men by paying for the sex act with the female pornai who sold their sexual services on the streets and brothels. Lastly, at the top of the eros seller’s social scale were the hetaeras, literally the Greek feminine form of the word companion. These were the courtesans who would be educated women who offered a variety of services, companionship in the form of entertainment in conversation, poetry, and music as well as sex. Fortune seems to make Aphrodite the Goddess exclusively for and of the hetaeras. It is correct that the hetaeras considered Aphrodite to be the patron Goddess. However, it is also true that the temples of
Aphrodite had many woman priestesses who did offer sex as part of their sacred services to any and all who desired it. This understanding of Aphrodite as not being a goddess of eros is unique to Fortune and appears to be historically inaccurate, as noted by Classical Greek and Roman scholar Edward Tripp: Aphrodite: A goddess of erotic love, identified by the Romans as Venus.’ ‘There is little doubt that Aphrodite, like Artemis, was originally a mother-goddess, of a type almost universally worshipped in the Near East and perhaps best known under the name Ishtar or Astarte….The Romans identified her with their own Venus, originally a minor fertility goddess. [171] Fortune re-interprets Aphrodite and her cult to fit her own conception of non-sexual romantic love and thus this becomes her proper understanding of the Jewish Kabbalah’s Sefirah Netzach. Fortune notes that the association of the planet Venus with Netzach symbolizes the following: The correspondence in the microcosm is with the loins, hips, and legs. These, it will be noted, form the setting of the generative organs, but not the generative organs themselves, and bear out the idea previously shadowed forth, that the goddess of love and the fertility goddess are not one and the same thing. [172] The important fact to note is that Fortune has divorced eros, physical sex, and sexuality from her interpretation of Aphrodite. Fortune does correctly take notice of the insights of the Rabbis’ Kabbalah when she says of Yesod that it has the ‘ Correspondence in the Microcosm: Reproductive organs.’ [173] For Fortune fertility, is to be found here in Yesod and she sees the Moon as the sole sexual/fertility symbol. Yesod is also the Sphere of the Moon; therefore to understand its significance we must know something about the way in which the Moon is regarded in Occultism.’ [174] ‘Yesod is essentially the Sphere of the Moon, and as such comes under the presidency of Diana, the moon-goddess of the Greeks…Diana, however was represented at Ephesus as the Many-breasted, and regarded as a fertility goddess. Moreover, Isis, is also a lunar goddess, as indicated by the lunar crescent upon her brow, which in Hathor becomes the cow-horns, the cow being among all peoples the especial symbol of maternity. [175] [It should be recalled that Regardie sees Hathor as a goddess of the planet Venus and not the Moon.] ‘What then is the key to the magical Moon, who is sometimes a virgin goddess and sometimes a fertility goddess?…It is to be found in the rhythmical nature of the Moon, and, in fact, the rhythmical nature of sex-life in the female. [176] Hence, sex and sexuality waxes and wanes like the Moon. To understand Fortune’s claim that Diana is a fertility Goddess, this appears to be a multilayered conflation and confusion of ideas and deities. It seems to derive from Fortune misunderstanding of how the Greeks absorbed older different Goddesses to make them their own. We will start with the Anatolian, what is now Turkish city of Ephesus, whose inhabitants had their own pre-Classical Greek Goddesses, it was she who was the Lady of Ephesus, and it was she who was the many-breasted
fertility deities. Once the Ionian Greeks had immigrated to this territory and the time of Classic Greek culture was in place, the pre-Greek deities were absorbed and transformed. That is how the many-breasted fertility Goddess worshipped at Ephesus was replaced by the Classical Greek Goddess Artemis, the virgin Goddess of the hunt and sister to Apollo. Diana was: An ancient Italic goddess. Diana, originally a deity of the Latins or Sabines, was a patroness of the wild things and of birth, both human and animal. Apparently a fertility goddess of the ‘mountain-mother’ type, she was easily identified with the Greek Artemis. Diana was the patron goddess of the Roman plebeians, most of whom were of Latin or Sabine origin. [177]
Diana absorbed the Classical Greek heritage and associations of Artemis. Artemis was a virginal huntress, having asked her father Zeus if she could be forever a virgin. It is correct that Artemis does get associated with the moon and almost takes over for the separate goddess Luna for the moon, although, Fortune I believe is mistaken when she calls Diana/Artemis a fertility goddesses. She and Tripp seem to notice the fact that Diana/Artemis was the patron of the act of childbirth, and jump to the conclusion that she is a Goddess of fertility referencing the sexual act itself. Acting as midwife to childbirth is different from the sexual act that can lead to conception. Artemis took on the role of the patron of childbirth from the Greek poet Callimachus’ writings, where he recounts that she acts as midwife for her twin brother Apollo. As we noted earlier, Netzach and Hod both could be given equally some association with sexuality since they are associated with the right and left testicle. However, if this Kabbalah tradition were being recognized as primary by Fortune and Regardie, or others, than some sexual imagery would have to be equally applied to the presentation of both Netzach and Hod. This Fortune and Regardie, and all other Qabalists, fail to do. This demonstrates that they do not understand the sefirahs primarily or principally through the Kabbalist source material but rather give predominance to the foreign planetary placement and allow this to guide their understanding of the sefirahs of the Sefiroth. The Qabalists are using the symbols and meanings of the historical enemies of the Jewish people to interpret the meaning of the Jewish conception of their God. To add insult to injury, the Qabalists assume that they are unlocking the true understanding of the meaning of the Jewish Kabbalah. In summary, since we have to choose a single planet to be associated with the sexual organs as the Rabbis do in their association of those sexual organs to Yesod, the most logical planet to pick would not be the moon but rather would be the planet Venus. The Ptolemaic placement of the planet Venus with Netzach is thus shown to be useless as a means to give insight into what the sefirah Netzach truly represents. I could do the same sort of analysis with each of the planet’s placement on the Sefiroth based on the Ptolemaic system examining the justifications and explanations of the remaining sefirahs meanings, but I will not. The results will all be the same. Fortune and Regardie can only understand the sefirahs significance through the lens of the planets and they offer no insight into the actual Kabbalah’s understanding of the sefirahs. They demonstrate that they have inherited the Cabalah and use it as their jumping off point to imagine that they are uncovering the meaning of the Sefiroth. This is what Fortune calls the ‘True’ meaning of the Jewish Kabbalah, which is of course nonsense and fabrication of her own imaginings.
13: The Meaning of the Hebrew Names of the Sefirahs Where does one start to seek to ascertain the meaning of each sefirah? The answer is quite simple. Though it may not yield depth, it is still the obvious place if you have any respect for the tradition that you are exploring. The place to begin is with the Hebrew names that had been assigned to each sefirah. The names that had been assigned to each sefirah, not surprisingly, do have some useful meaning and significance. My guide to the meaning of the Hebrew words is a dictionary that would have been available to Waite, Crowley, Regardie, and Fortune. When I enrolled in my Biblical Hebrew class at the University of Washington in 1967, Professor Clear had us purchase a dictionary whose first edition was printed in 1907 by the University of Oxford in England. It had been subsequently reprinted and revised in 1953, 1957, 1962, 1966, 1968, 1972, and went into a second printing in 1975. The full title of this dictionary is very long: A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament: with an appendix containing the Biblical Aramaic Based on the Lexicon of William Gesenius [in German] as translated by Edward Robinson, edited with constant reference to the Thesaurus of Gesenius as completed by E. Rodiger, and with authorized use of the latest German edition of Gesenius’s Handwurkbuch uber das Alte Testament by Francis Brown, D.D., D. Litt. With the cooperation of S. R. Driver, D.D., Litt.D., and Charles A. Briggs, D. D., D. Litt. This dictionary was affectionately called by my Professor Clear as BDB. Scholars had been working on translating the Hebrew books for a very long time, and it seems obvious to me that the simplest way to understand a Hebrew term is to look it up in a Hebrew dictionary. Yet, as we will see later, the Qabalists seem to ignore this approach to clear understanding. The BDB dictionary was available at the time that Mathers, Waite, Westcott, Crowley, Regardie, and Fortune were writing their books. Referencing this dictionary or any equivalent dictionary is something they could have done to come up with the simple definitions for the sefirahs when they set about writing their books on the Qabalah. Let us begin with the Hebrew. Keter is the first sefirah. It is the Hebrew word translated as crown, a simple metaphor for the topmost sefirah, which rests upon the top of the Sefiroth. This would infer that the next pair is considered the head that is being crowned. Below Keter are the pair Chakmah and Binah, the thinking attributes. They are, as all the pairings of the Sefiroth, to be understood together. Chakmah in Hebrew is grammatically a feminine noun. The usual translation for this word is Wisdom, but this is misleading. According to BDB, the word has the connotations of knowledge, skill, and shrewdness, acting with knowledge, and teaching information. Wisdom’s meaning is about the accumulation of information and skill. Perhaps a more appropriate name for Chakmah would be Skill, as in skillfully applying Knowledge. Binah, which is usually translated as Understanding , is also grammatically a feminine noun. BDB give its connotations as discernment, to make distinct, to perceive, to observe and thus to understand. Thereby perhaps Binah could be translated as Perception. The next pair is Chesed and Din. Chesed is usually translated as love and it is
grammatically a masculine noun. But BDB list the connotations of the Hebrew word as goodness, kindness, loving kindness, and acts of kindness, which the Rabbis considered as acts of piety. This sefirah could be called Kindness. Chesed is also given, from First Chronicle 29:11 the appellation Gedulah, also a feminine noun, which translated as Greatness, which offers little insight into the meaning or significance of this sefirah and hence my preference, as well as other Kabbalists, for the appellation for this sefirah with the name Chesed. Din, also known from First Chronicle’s listing of attributes as Gevurah, and from other sources as Pachad. Gevurah, a feminine noun, is translated as Power which again yields little insight into the significance and meaning of this sefirah. Hence, the other names are the preferred terms for this sefirah. One alternative name was Pachad, a masculine noun, meaning Fear. However, the most common appellation is Din, a masculine noun which is translated as Judgment and BDB notes its connotations as governing, making choices, decisions, and passing judgment. Thus, the two names that are the most meaningful are Loving Kindness and Judgment . The next sefirah is Tifereth. Tifereth is also known by the name Rachamim, often translated as Compassion, the Hebrew word derives from the root meaning womb and thus giving the word’s metaphoric meaning of a mother’s mercy. Tifereth, a feminine noun, is translated as Beautiful or Glory by BDB. Next pair below Tifereth is the sefirahs Netzach and Hod. Netzach, a masculine noun, is translated as Eternity, and BDB notes endurance, perpetuity and thing that is everlasting, as its meaning. Hod is a masculine noun translated as Splendor. BDB lists as poetic meaning of majestic vigor or force, as the splendor of lights, glory, and Divine Majesty of God. Next is Yesod, which is sometimes treated as a feminine noun and other times in the Biblical text treated as a masculine noun. The word is translated as Foundation and BDB adds only the connotation of a base. The last sefirah is Malkuth, a feminine plural noun translated as Kingdom, although I would translate as a newly minted word of Queendom, given the universal feminine imagery associated with this sefirah. BDB gives the connotations of the word as royalty, reign, sovereignty, royal power, and the royal realm itself. In the next chapters, I will briefly explore the meaning and symbols of each sefirah as offered by the rabbinic tradition of the Kabbalah. Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah, Gates of Light is an exploration of the TaNaK ’s metaphors and symbols that can be associated with the sefirahs of the Sefiroth. Gikatilla’s text is intense in its breadth and depth. Since my purpose is neither to offer depth or breadth, I will utilize instead the exceptional, brilliantly insightful, and clear writing of Sanford L. Drob’s Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives to summarize some aspects of each of the sefirahs. His book sifts through the writings of Gershom Scholem, Isaiah Tishby, Moses Cordovero, The Zohar, Chaim Vital, and others. I end each section on a sefirah by giving a newly chosen descriptive attribute associated with each sefirah from Kaplan’s translation of text The 32 Paths of Wisdom and the paragraph number from the text as well. How and why I have made these choices will be explained in my next book, The Qabalah Paths of Light .
14: Keter Keter or Keter Elyon, as it is often referred to in the Zohar, meaning Supernal Crown, is the first sefirah. In the TaNaK, leaders are metaphorically crowned by God. Those leaders are anointed by God’s blessings. Hence, the leader who is the anointed one, a messiah, is the crowned leader. The first sefirah is thus crowned by the infinite Divine. The Infinite Divine is known by the Rabbis by the Hebrew word, Ayn Sof (also transliterated as Ein Sof ), which literally means ‘that which does not end , and hence the word, Infinite, would be an appropriate translation of the phrase . Keter is all that we can ever grasp of the Source, the One, and the Infinite Divine that is Ayn Sof. It is the first emanation out of the infinite unknowable Ayn Sof, and this is the key to understanding this sefirah. As we are finite beings, it is here that our finite mind attempts to grapple with the Infinite and ultimately fail. To paraphrase Lao Tzu’s opening line of the Tao Te Ching: ‘The Ayn Sof that can be spoken of is not the true Ayn Sof. The name that can be named is not the true name.’ [178] Being the Infinite and therefore all things, it is also ineffable and beyond finite comprehension. Therefore, to attribute any specificity and particularity to Ayn Sof is to demonstrate that one does not truly know it, hence the need for the silence of negation and emptiness. Another name for this sefirah is Ratzon the Hebrew word for Will. This first sefirah is the primal divine Will. It is potential and totality of Will without being formed into any specificity. At the very beginning the King made engravings in the supernal purity. A spark of blackness emerged in the sealed within the sealed, from the mystery of Ein-Sof, a mist within matter…Within the spark, in the innermost part, emerged a source, from which the colors are painted below…a single point shone, sealed supernal. Beyond this point nothing is known, and so it is called RaySHEETH (beginning). [179] Keter is the time prior to the beginning of manifestation, the time before creation; hence, it is the essence of the unknowable. Going from Ayn Sof to the crown of the Tree of Life, the Sefiroth, this sefirah is the first thing we humans can encounter, or traveling up the Tree, it is the last thing we encounter, the realization that this is the point of contact that is still vaguely recognizable to human conceptualization, and beyond that is the Infinite Unknowable, Ayn Sof. Keter is the name we give to our encounter with that which by its nature is before names. Keter is the source, the seed, out of which all things will flow. Everything was comprised within the generality of BeRaySHEETH. Once it was established…then it produced the offspring from the seed that was sown in it. What was this seed? Engraved letters, the mystery of the Torah, which emerged from that point. [180] With 32 mystical paths of wisdom engraved Yah [181]’, so begins the Sefer Yetzirah. Ayn Sof, the King, in this quote given the name Yah as in the first letter of the Holy unpronounceable Name YHVH , engraved into its self the Sefiroth, containing ten sefirahs and all of the Hebrew
letters. The Hebrew letters are the paths of wisdom. Out of the seed of Keter, the rest of the Sefiroth comes into being; the twenty-two Hebrew letters form the paths connecting each sefirah. The seed is potential but not realization. Behold, everything is bound together in one thing…It includes everything because, since the paths are hidden and are not separable, and are gathered together in one place…the sum of all, hidden and not revealed. [182] The seed, the beginning, the starting point, the source, is Keter. Clear human understanding will be found only at the end at the place where all gets fully manifest at Malkuth. Keter is the Light that was originally conceived, and it is the First Glory. The attribute assigned by Kaplan to this sefirah is Mystical Consciousness # 1.
15: Chakmah, Binah and Da’at Chakmah and Binah are, as all the pairings of sefirahs of the Sefiroth, to be understood together, as abstract ends points of their respective continuum. Chakmah represents the essence of Divine skillful and the ability to use its knowledge so as It can create. The Kabbalists conceive of Chakmah as the place, stage, or time where and when, the first presence of and manifestation of Divine thought takes place. Once the beginning had emerged from it, and the river became impregnated, so that it could produce everything…a generality with no particular…for the mother shall become pregnant and shall produce all the particular things, in order to reveal the supernal names. [183] The river, and the mother, who is impregnated and gives birth to the particulars is called Binah. Binah is the Primal Mother and Chakmah is the Primal Father. Keter is the place where the idea of creation is born, Chakma h is where the process of realizing that idea is born, and it is implanted through the union with Binah. It is there in Binah that the transformation of potential is realized and is birthed. Chakmah is where the first thought emerges. In Chakmah, this thought is not yet clarity or reveled in words. ‘ Thought is the beginning of all, and in that it is thought it is internal, secret, and unknowable. ’[184] This is where all the patterns of what is to be first reside. When the most secret of secrets [which is either Keter or Ayn Sof] sought to be revealed, He made first of all, a single point [this is Chakmah] and this became thought. He made all the designs there, He did all the engravings there and He engraved within the hidden holy luminary [this is Binah] an engraving of a hidden design. [185] The biblical figure Moses Cordovero associated with Chakmah is Adam [186]. The attribute assigned to Chakmah is Sanctifying Consciousness # 3. Within Binah, there is the perception of understanding the knowledge that is given to it by Chakmah. Here knowledge is perceived and understood and crafted into metaphors to be more easily understood, here in Binah is reconciliation, fulfillment, completion, separation and differentiation. Out of Binah, the rest of the emanations are born. Binah is the womb of existence out of which all created things are born. Binah is the palace erected around the point and seed of Chakmah. [187] I think it is odd, that Moses Cordovero associates this primordial feminine, Binah, with Noah. I should think that the Biblical personality should be Eve, the unsung hero of the Garden Tale[188]. Tishby does say that Leah is associated with Binah by some unspecified Kabbalists [189]. The attribute assigned to Binah is, Hidden Consciousness #7. It is called this because it is the radiance that illuminates the transcendent powers that are seen with mind and experienced through faith. Da’at Drob says concerning the meaning of Da’at: The word Da’at derives from a root
meaning ‘attachment’ or ‘union’, and this Sefirah is said to bring about a union or mediation between the two Sefirah above it, again establishing a pattern in which two opposing Sifirot are mediated and resolved by a ‘third’ [190]. Drob notes that Chaim Vital says in his text Sefer Etz Chayyim 22:1, ‘Chakmah and Binah are to no avail, for Chakmah and Binah are concealed and become manifest only by means of Da’at.’[191] As Chakmah is the Father and Binah is the Mother, this makes Da’at the son that is born out of their sexual union. Drob offers this insight, ‘Psychologically, Da’at can also be conceived of as the rinciple that unites intellect and emotion (Sechel and Middot). [192]’ The biblical figure associated with this sefirah by Moses Cordovero is Shem. Shem is mentioned in the TaNaK in Genesis 5:32, 6:10, 7:13, 9:18, 9:23, 9:26-27, 10, 11:10, and also in First Chronicles 1:4. Shem is also mentioned in the rabbinic texts, The Talmud tractate Nedarim 32b, Midrash collections Genesis Rabbah 46:7 and 56:10, Leviticus Rabbah 25:6, and Numbers Rabbah 4:8. Shem is believed to be Melchizedek, the king of Salem, who Abraham meets after the battle of the four kings ( Genesis 14:18-20). These three Sefirahs represent the Divine intellect and creative power. It is through them that Divine plan and purpose was conceived and launched. In the mythology of the Zohar a small bit of theme is begun, this theme is then fully elaborated by Isaac Luria. This theme is that the Divine conceived of creation but was unable to manifest it according to its initial conception. Creation was made only to be undone many times since it was deemed inadequate by the Divine creator. Finally, the Sefiroth was imagined as the vehicle for this, the final and present form of creation. The idea was to take the Infinite Being and power of the Divine and cast it into a finite structure. By doing so, It would at the structures end be able to create and reside the multitude of finite beings that is the universe with the abundance of life, as we know it on the Earth. Drob summaries the story of this cosmos creation this way: According to Luria the Sefiroth, as they were originally created, were unstable, disunified structures, which were unable to hold the energy that they were meant to contain. As a result, the upper three Sefiroth were displaced and the lower seven shattered, causing a fundamental flaw in creation, a flaw that is humankind’s divinely appointed task to correct. Shards from the shattered vessels attached themselves to sparks of divine light and were scattered throughout the cosmos. [193] According to Luria, the Divine was now trapped in a cosmos that was in disharmony and unbalanced. The shards of the failed creation were everywhere, especially within the human soul. This meant that we could affect creation through our will and our desires. We could take up the cause of Tikkun Olam, a Hebrew phrase meaning the healing, the repairing, or restoring of the world through the act of performing a mitzvoth, (Hebrew word for commandments),as well as acts of goodness, truth, beauty, and right action. These acts would slowly return us, the universe, and the Divine itself, back to its intended stability and harmony. The upper three sefirahs are considered the concealed form of Divine intellect whereas the lower seven are the revealed forms of Divine presence in creation, with the personal indwelling presence of the Divine itself abiding in Malkuth. We shall now explore the revealed aspects of the Divine in the lower seven sefirahs.
16: Gedulah/Chesed, Gevurah/Din, and Tifereth Beginning with the pair Gedulah and Gevurah, with Greatness and Power, we come to the first continuum of Divine forces with each end being a pure abstract form of that force. Together they are supposed to balance and create harmony in the Divine, the universe and within us. However, according to the mythic tale of creation from ARI, we live in a flawed creation, and so, all is not working as it was meant to be. Each end of the continuum, if it were to flow out in the fullness of its potential power unchecked by the other, wo uld overwhelm humanity; hence, there is the eternal need for th e two forces to be properly mediated and moderated by the other. Drob notes ‘ As Gedullah (greatness) this sefirah reflects God’s awesome presence, what modern theologians have referred to as the mysterium tremendum. ’[194] Gedulah is the source of the outflowing Divine spiritual presence throughout the cosmos. When we feel that spiritual nature of existence, we are sensing the presence of the sefirah Gedulah. The other name for this sefirah is Chesed, and this name gives added insight into the nature of the power contained here. Chesed, the masculine noun, is divine goodness, parental love, and benevolence. Parental love can be a love out of pride and recognition that the child has lived up to one’s expectations. Drub notes For Cordovero, the ethic of Chesed involves acts of loving-kindness towards others and God. Visiting the sick, providing charity to the poor, welcoming guests, attending the deceased, and bringing the bride to the wedding canopy are all mitzvoth that reflect the supernal trait of Chesed. [195] The biblical personality assigned by Moses Cordovero to Gedulah is Abraham [196]. The attribute assigned to Gedulah/Chesed is Scintillating Consciousness #10. At the other end of the continuum to Gedulah is the sefirah Gevurah/ Strength or Power. This sefirah is understood as the principle of measure, limits and limitation, as well as restraint. This force enables the physical manifestation of existence to be. If the Divine power flooded out fully, as it was in the time before The Beginning, then only the Divine would be and there would not be any place for creation. It is because the Divine utilized this power to restrain and contract Itself within Itself, this act of contraction allowed for there to be a place to create creation itself. Here at this sefirah was the event of the Divine’s failure to restrain the flow of creative Infinite energies to form this sefirah of Gevurah, and here at the power of restraint is where the cosmos shattered. Here was the breaking point. Here is where all things first failed. Contained within this nexus of Gedulah and Gevurah is the potential for further cosmic disruption. The other name for this sefirah is Din, meaning Judgment , and by this name, the power of this sefirah is more fully revealed and clarified. Din is the strength and power of Divine judgment which can become Divine wrath. This idea of wrath is why the term Pachad, Fear, came to be associated with this sefirah. Din refers to the application of the law strictly applied without mercy and mitigation. Interestingly Drob notes: Gevurah is a singularly important middah both because it reflects the very essence of creation itself (which is limitation and restraint) and because it introduces a dimension of divine justice and righteousness into the world. Gevurah is thus the Sefirah that is reflected in the experience of ethical values. Its
negative aspects is moral evil. [197] Chesed and Din, Loving Kindness and Judgment are essential and complementary; they are needed and required for the continued existence of the cosmos. Without limits and without judging, there can be no act of benevolence. One defines and gives the other meaning. Moses Cordovero has an interesting view on how we are to manifest this pair of forces in our daily lives. For Cordovero: A man should never exercise power and judgment for his own sake…One should only exercise power on behalf of his wife, for Gevurah is more appropriately contained by the female. A husband should, for example, provide his wife with such things as clothing, adornments, and a house, but should not exercise Gevurah in the aggrandizement of himself. Cordovero associates Gevurah with man’s evil inclination, and this includes sexual desire, which ‘should be directed chiefly towards the benefit of the wife whom God has chosen to be a help meet for him. [198] The biblical personality assigned by Moses Cordovero to Gevurah is Isaac, the son of Abraham. Thus, the pair of Chesed and Din is matched up with the intertwined pair of father Abraham and son Isaac. In the tale the binding of Isaac, Abraham’s love of God and his child were tested and judged. The expectations of the Divine parent and the human parent were manifested and illustrated in this trial and act. Here within this tale God, Abraham and Isaac each tested and judged the others true intent and the extent of that love. Loving Kindness and Judgment were for that moment in time critically and precariously in play with the outcome, as far as Abraham and Isaac could ascertain, uncertain. [199] The attribute assigned to Gevurah/Din is Unity directing Consciousness #13. These two sefirahs meet and an attempt at mediating their opposing forces in Tifereth, Beauty. This principle of two being mediated by a third is described in this passage of the Zohar, ‘It is evident that there can be no perfection except that one aspect be joined to the other and a third hold them together to harmonize and complete them. ’[200] It is this idea that opposites can and must be resolved into and by way of a third, which is the central idea of the Kabbalah according to Drob. [201] It is out of this dialectical relationship that truth is found and manifested. Tifereth is the sefirah that acts as the harmonizing principle of the whole of the Sefiroth, and thus throughout the cosmos. Through harmony there is found beauty. The inherent aesthetic nature of the physical creation is due to the activity and manifestation of this sefirah throughout the cosmos. For the Kabbalists, it is by the contemplation of the cosmos’s inherent beauty that one can be guided to the truth that there is a Divine who is the One who created all of this beauty. Thus, it is the One who is manifested in the beautiful form and body of the cosmos. Tifereth is also known as Rachamim, meaning Mercy and Compassion. Here resides the attribute of compassionate and motherly love, a selfless love without question. It is by the power and force of this love that creation is allowed to be. The biblical personality associated to it by Moses Cordovero is Jacob. It was Jacob who had the dream of seeing a ladder with the angels ascending and descending from Earth back up to the divine realm [202]. It was also Jacob who acquired the name Israel when he successfully wrestled with an emissary of the Divine. [203] This occurred when Jacob set out to meet and reconcile himself with his rival brother Esau. The metaphor of wrestling could be seen as how opposites are resolved and blended.
Tifereth and Malkuth are thought of as intertwined, and flow one to the other through the erotic power contained in the sexual organ that is the sefirah Yesod. Hence, I would add as a Biblical figure to associate with Tifereth, the unnamed male lover, who is attributed by the Rabbis as Solomon, from The Song of Songs. Songs . The attribute assigned to Tifereth is Stabilizing Consciousness #15.
17: Netzach, Hod and Yesod This continuum pairing of Netzach, translated as either Victory or Eternity, and Hod, translated as Splendor, Splendor , Majesty, Majesty, or Everlastin or Everlasting g, are the most enigmatic of all of the sefirahs. Netzach, Hod, and Yesod are the sefirahs that are considered as archetypes for the spatial and corporeal world. Drob describes them this way: They are considered receptacles for the upper middot and serve as tools or vessels for the factual application of kindness, justice and compassion in the world. However, unlike the upper Sefiroth, which act through the stimulus of will and reason, these Sefiroth act mechanically and thus follow the casual order of the natural, spatio-temporal world. [204] One could consider these three as being the archetypes of the spatial dimensions of width as Netzach, height as Hod and depth as Yesod. I would speculate that possibly these would then be the archetypes of temporal dimensions, with Past as Netzach, Future as Hod and the Present as Yesod. Continuing with w ith the the metaphor of tools, it is here that the Kabbalists attribute Netzach and Hod as being the source of revelation and prophecy from the Divine to humanity, hence the tool by which Divine wisdom and knowledge is made manifest to humanity. Netzach is the receptive principle and Hod is the active principle. Hod is the Interpreter, the active ritual actor and Netzach is the mystic or prophet, who receives information and inspiration from the Infinite Divine. Hod is outer focus and Netzach is inner focus. Aaron the High Priest deals with the timeliness of ritual acts whereas Moses as experience revelation which took him into the timelessness of contact within the Divine. It is for this reason that Moses and Aaron are associated with these two sefirahs by Moses Cordovero [205]. Moses represents the prophet, the one who was chosen by the Divine to serve as the voice of the Divine, which is assigned to Netzach. Whereas, Aaron represents the High Priest, the one who has given himself to serve and seek out the Divine, which is assigned to Hod. I would venture the following insight. Netzach is the seeming eternity of time held in the experience of a single moment. It is the act of mystic revelation and/or contemplation, being taken out of the normal eternity of time. Hod is the never-ending flow of time. It is the splendor and majesty of time as experienced as an everflowing river of activities and events. The attribute assigned to Netzach is Consciousness of the mystery of all spiritual activities #19. The attribute assigned to Hod is Sustaining Consciousness #23. The Kabbalists’ insight into Yesod, Foundation , is that it is the sexual center, the organ of sexuality itself. It is here that all of the potencies from the other nine Sefirahs are gathered and gush forth in a seminal force and are implanted deep within the receptive and final feminine sefirah. It is also conceived of as the place where all the other emanations, power, and influences, are gathered and fuse together in the alchemical creative act and process of union. This is the sefirah of transmission and translation. Here what is above is processed into the language of below. This is the where spiritual and material meet, blend and are harmonized to enable the lower realm to communicate with the upper realms. The biblical personality associated with this sefirah by Moses Cordovero is the High
Priest Pinchas, the grandson of Aaron. The biblical verses discussing Pinchas are found in Numbers 25:7, Numbers 25:7, 25:11, and 31:6, Joshua 22:13, Joshua 22:13, and 22:30-32, and lastly in Judges 20:25. Judges 20:25. He dealt with the potential idolatrous influences of the Moabites and the Midianites as the Israelites journeyed journeyed in the desert desert after their their exit from Egypt. Idolatry Idolatry was often conceived conceived in the sexual sexual [206] metaphor of adultery in the TaNaK . Other Kabbalists assign Joseph to this sefirah . Joseph was the one who showed he was able to restrain his sexual impulses when he was being seduced by the advances of Potiphar’s wife [207]. The attribute assigned to Yesod is Renewing Consciousness #26.
18: Malkuth Malkuth is the culmination of the whole process of divine emanation. It is where the Infinite truly becomes finitely realized. Malkuth is the goal of the creative act. It is here that Ayn Sof comes to know Itself through interaction with the other, the finite beings that are Its creation. Malkuth is the Lower Mother where Binah is the Upper Mother. This sefirah is the embryo that grew in the womb that is Binah from the seed that was Chakmah. It is here in Malkuth that Divine thought makes itself manifest in the Oral and Written Torah that are communicated through Malkuth, as the mouth of God, to us mere mortals. [208] Malkuth is that which is manifested. If one can describe Keter as absolute silence, then Malkuth is the outpouring of divine speech and song. Malkuth is the accumulated totality of all of the revealed attributes of the emanated Divinity as it presents itself to humanity. Malkuth is where the Divinity beyond humanity takes on a human face and form. Here it is that the personal God is formed and manifested. Associated with Malkuth is the fulfilled feminine aspect of the Divine. Also, it is here that the indwelling presence of the Divine, known as the Shekhinah, finds Its dwelling place in physical reality. Drob notes: The Zohar states that Malkut exerts no influences of its own. It is a passive Sefirah that is compared to the moon, which only shines by reflected light. The Kabbalist [Chaim] Vital states that Malkut ‘has nothing of its own except that which the other Sefiroth our into it. [209] Reflecting on the name given to this sefirah, it is important to note, the reciprocal nature that there cannot be a King if there is no kingdom that is ruled over. The biblical personality associated to this sefirah by Moses Cordovero is David, the beloved king, whereas Tishby notes other Kabbalists who associate the matriarchs, and particularly Rachel, though also Miriam and Queen Esther as well, with this sefirah. [210] Recalling the erotic interrelationship that flows from Malkuth to Tifereth through Yesod, I would add the biblical person of the unnamed female lover from The Song of Songs to associate with this sefirah. The attribute assigned to Malkuth is General Consciousness #30.
19: My Planetary Qabalah Correspondences Having traveled this long circuitous path to explain that the Qabalah’s accepted Ptolemaic planetary associations with the Sefiroth is a fatal mistake; I need to offer something in its place. I shall now elucidate how I would apply the planets to the tree, using the planets as ornaments only. My idea is to take the established metaphors of the Kabbalah and match them appropriately to the equally well established metaphors of the Occult traditions found to be associated with the planets. I will use as a basic rule which is that the Kabbalah’s own understanding of the meaning of each of the sefirahs is my guide and not the meaning associated with the planets. Once you understand the individual sefirahs then you can assign a symbolic planet that resonates with that understanding. Remember, the Kabbalah is the source and from that, you build the Qabalah. Now, using all that I have discussed before concerning the meanings of the sefirahs according to the Kabbalah as my guide, I will attribute to each sefirah a planet and a corresponding Greek God and Goddess. You can expand on this structure by referring and using the deities of other cultures if you desire. However, I hope you will recall that to truly understand the sefirahs, the associations of the planets with their specific symbolic and mythological references and associations will not avail you. Actually, they can easily distract and deceive. You are almost better off without them. Nonetheless, with that caveat, I will offer a new system. My own preference is the ARI array. It to me is more interesting, dynamic and its shape has justifications in the sacred scriptures. This array has the Infinite, Ayn Sof, with Its power flowing downward in the process of manifestation to the singular point of Keter. Then out of this one, there becomes the many, the rest of the eight sefirahs, until again it all focuses into a single flow into Malkuth, which is itself the realm of the physical infinite of the Cosmos. ‘ As below’ is therefore a mirror of ‘ as above’, just as it is said in the famous phrase from the Emerald Tablet whose author is given as Hermes Trismegistus [211]. The simplest and easiest place to start is the planet Earth. That is where we are and where the Shekinah dwells. It is in Malkuth that we find the Shekinah, and so it is the planet Earth that should be associated with that Sefirah. Next, as I have said many times before the sexual center of the Sefiroth is found at Yesod, and it is the planet Venus that is associated with the Goddess of sexuality, Aphrodite, who should be placed there. The foundation of all the interactions above and below is the combining and unifying activities metaphorically represented by sex. Hod and Netzach are the two sefirahs associated with the Divine connection with humanity. They are in the rabbinic setting associated with the gift of prophecy, with communication with the Divine. They are the prophet, Moses with Netzach and the High Priest, Aaron with Hod. They are the focus of timeliness and timelessness. They should thus be associated with two planets that match our human connection with seeking a path of connection to sacred wisdom and knowledge from the Source, the One. Within the Occult traditions, there are two paths, the path of the Shaman, the path of the Wicca, and the Goddess; these are the Nature traditions. The other and opposite conceptual path is the path of the Magician of
ceremonial Magick, the Gods of the active mastery of the Occult knowledge. Hence, the planets Moon and Mercury seem appropriate to place with this pair. I will place the planet Moon and Hecate to match up with Netzach. This equates with the receptive nature of the prophet Moses. I will place on the right the planet Mercury and Hermes Trismegistus to match up with Hod and the more participator and active nature of Aaron the High Priest. That ends for me the seeming natural matches and associations. These associations work and do fit the actual Kabbalah meanings behind the sefirahs. As for the other sefirahs, they are not so simple. Here the planets and their usual Occult symbolic associations can easily lead you astray from the Kabbalah meanings of the sefirahs. Having repeated that caveat again, I offer choices but I do not suggest that these are the best and only solution to this riddle. Keter=none, it is mystery and silence, the idea of the Neo-Platonic Nous Hockmah=the planet Jupiter, the Father God Zeus, and the Neo-Platonic Logos. Binah=the planet Saturn, the Mother Goddess Hera, and the Neo-Platonic Demiurge. Gedulah/Chesed= the planet Sun, the bringer of loving attention and gifts of light and energy, and the Gods Helios, and Apollo. Gevurah/Din=the planet Mars and the Goddess Nemesis as the Goddess of retribution for evil deeds as well as the Roman Goddess of Justitia, who became the statute that adorns courthouses, the triple Goddess Lady Justice who has the iconography of the blindfolded Roman Goddess Fortuna and the scales of Tyche, the Greek Goddess of luck and fortune, and the sword of vengeance from the Greek Goddess Nemesis. Tifereth= the planet Neptune and the Ocean God Poseidon [212] and the Ocean Goddesses Tethys, and Thetis [213]. I choose the planet Neptune to represent symbolically and metaphorically the beauty of water in all its forms as well as the bounty, blessings of the water, from the primal watery womb. Netzach= the planet Moon and the Goddess of Wicca and the witches, and the three aspects of Hecate. Hod= the planet Mercury and the God of Magick, Hermes Trismegistus, the thrice blessed. Yesod=the planet Venus and the Goddess Aphrodite and the God Eros. Malkuth=the planet Earth and the Goddess Gaia. See Figure #11 for the ARI array and my new placement of the planets. See figure #12 for the enclosed array, traditionally used in the Qabalah texts, with my placements of the planets.
Figure 12 Zohar/ARI Tree with my planets
Figure 13: Enclosed Tree with my planets
20: English Alphabet Gematria I am writing in the English alphabet, and you my readers are reading English. For us the path to knowledge and study is through the English alphabet. Can we connect the English alphabet to the 32 paths of the Sefiroth? Here is my solution to that puzzle. The trouble is the Hebrew system based on that alphabet is 22 letters grouped into 3, 7, and 12. The English alphabet is 26 letters, so the challenge is to create a similar system. We need to find a logical way to group the English letters into a similar system of 3, 7, and 12, with a logical remaining group of 4. The way to begin is to list all the letters in the English alphabet that share affinity of sound, hard and soft. These letters with their grammatical rules to determine when to pronounce them as hard or soft, remind me of the grammatical rules for the Double Letters in the Hebrew alphabet. It turns out that there are 12 English letters in this group. Here they are: B & V & W F&P C&K&Q G&J S&Z Next grouping are the vowels. However, here we have an overabundance of riches. A, E, I, O, U, and Y, is a group of six. However, that doesn’t fit with the Hebrew pattern, and so we will have to do something with that later. If we take out those 12 Double Letters, we are left with 14 letters. We could try to make out of these 14 letters our groups of the needed 7 and 3 and then find how to use the last 4. Let us try to find our Mother Letters. These will be the first, last and a middle letter. To find our English Mother Letters, we could go back to the vowels. If we pull out the letter A, the logical first letter, and we pull out the letter Y, since it is an odd letter, both a vowel and a consonant, from the list of the English vowel letters, then we are left with4 letter that are made up of 2 pairs of similar types of vowels E and I and O and U, which makes some sort of sense. Now we need our middle letter to complete the 3. I was led by intuition to H. this is a letter that again has an interesting property. Try saying the letter H by itself, and it sounds like you are taking a breath; which is also like saying the sound of the letter A. The sound of the letter A is also like the sound of breathing. Let’s use these two breath sounds, A and H, to make two of our needed Mother Letters. To this, we will add the letter Y. We have now have established our 12 Doubles, and our 3 Mothers, and an interesting set of 4 vowels, leaving us with a last set of 7, which is what we need. Those 7 letters, D, L, M, N, R, T, and X, these are reminiscent of the Elemental Letters of the Hebrew alphabet, in that this group has no special properties and is just the remaining letters of the bunch. So now, we have grouped the letters in some sort of logic similar to the logic of the Hebrew letters and they fall into the following groups and their placement on the Tree of Life: 3 Mothers = A, H & Y: the horizontal paths 12 Doubles = B, C, F, G, J, K, Q, P, S, V, W, & Z: the diagonal paths 7 Elementals = D, L, M, N, R, T, X the vertical paths And here is what we can do
with our remaining vowels: 4 Vowels = E, I, O & U: I would place them on the central pillar of the Tree thusly: E: placed on Keter I: placed on Tifereth O: placed on Yesod U: placed on Malkuth Now what do we do with our four sefirahs on either side of the central pillar of the tree? Here I place concepts related to oral communication. For example, on Chakmah, we place the concept of Sound, on Binah, we place the concept of Silence, on Chesed, we place the concept of Starting, on Din, we place the concept of Stopping, on Netzach, we place the concept of Fast, and lastly on Hod we place the concept of Slow. Now, another thing the Rabbis did with letters is play the game of assigning numeric values to the letters. That was the game/system called Gematria. Now, we need a letter to number assignment similar to the Hebrew system to make the Gematria system work. For this we can simply assign the numbers to English letters, as in Hebrew, by their placement in the alphabet, the first letter is one, the second letter is two and so on. I am not the first to do this. With a quick search on the Internet, you will find this system I am offering below. [214] A=1 B=2 C=3 D=4 E=5 F=6 G=7 H=8 I=9 J=10 K=20 L=30 M=40 N=50 O=60 P=70 Q=80 R=90 S=100 T=200 U=300 V=400 W=500 X=600 Y=700 Z=800 There are many ways to use this system. The principle way is to add up the letters/numbers and then find another word that adds up to the same value, and then you can say those two words are related in their hidden meaning. Now besides the simple letter to number substitution system in the Hebrew Gematria
rules of the game, there is also the Atbash rule, which is taking the word, switching the letters and then adding up the numeric value, thus, the A would become a Z; the B would become Y and so on. There is also the rule of the game that breaks down all the numeric values of the word to the base digits 1 through 10 with no use of the number zero. Thus A-I is 1-9, J-R is again 1-9, and so on. Hence, this matches the Western numerology system. The Western numerological system assigns meaning to the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, & 10. Here is an example of meanings associated with the numbers according to existing numerology. 1= Masculine, Yang, Active principle, the Beginning, the seed, will, and individuality. 2=Feminine, Yin, Receptive principle, the womb, duality, balance, and cooperation. 3=Union, creativity, sexuality, the act of fertility, the results of fecundity, harmony of opposites, beauty, and the balancing point. 4=the four elements, four seasons, reality, solidity, the physical, manifestation, structure, foundation, and endurance. 5=mastery, power, the senses, experience, adaptability, variety, and activity. 6=partnering, family, full or complete nurturing, full or complete harmony, full or complete beauty, relationships, and the work week. 7=Luck, the planets, unseen, spiritual power, mystical power, seven days of the week, and the Seventh day of rest, the Sabbath. 8= Eternal, eternity, infinite, abundance, responsibility, law giver, and harvest. 9=integrity, artistry, overview, combining the mental, the physical and the spiritual. 10= completion, overview, fulfillment, abundance, culmination, and community. As illustrations of playing this Gematria game, I will explore the following interrelated words, God and Creator, then Divine and Tao, and then lastly, Ayn Sof . We can see a connection between the words God and Creator through the Gematria game. God: G=7, O=60, D=4 This adds up to 71, and then resolves into 8. How about the word Creator? C=3, R=90, E=5, A=1, T=200, O=60, R=90 This adds up to 449 and then collapses into 17, and finally resolves into 8. Both God the title and name of the being who is the creator of the universe end up at 8, the number of the infinite and the number of the law giver. Also note that the associations with 17 and 71. The Sevens are related to the planets, the stuff the creator created and Ones are related to the masculine active principle. In the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, God is directly or indirectly associated with the masculine principle. Now onto Divine and Tao, these are two terms and names are more abstract and mystical ideas of the deity. D=4, I=9, V=400, I=9, N=50, E=5 This adds up to 477, then collapses into 18, and finally resolves into 9. T=200 A=1 O=60 This adds up to 261, and resolves into 9. Here we have those two mystical names both connecting up in meaning together through the number 9. Symbolically Nine was the number
that combined the three ‘ worlds’ of the mental, the physical and they spiritual, a decidedly mystical insight. Now Ayn Sof works out this way A=1 Y=700 N=50 S=100 O=60 F=6 This adds up to 917, which collapses into 17 and finally resolves into 8. Of course, you will note that 8 is the number of infinity and that Ayn Sof is the Hebrew word for Infinity. That ends my introduction to the game of Practical Qabalah and Gematria.
21: Philosophic Metaphors The following is a brief outline of a system. It is a seemingly cryptic list. It is my ‘ Emerald Tablet ’. It is my key to unlocking the wisdom of philosophy and metaphysics. To fully explain this list would require writing another book. With that preface, I present for inspiration and exploration, the following philosophic metaphors to associate with the sefirahs. They come from the Neo-Platonic trinity of The Good, the True and The Beautiful , Taoism from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, the Metaphysics of Robert Pirsig from his books Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila, and lastly the concept of holons as invented by Arthur Koestler in his book The Ghost and the Machine and his book Janus. It is important to recall that the pairs Chakmah – Binah, Chesed – Din, and Netzach – Hod I do not consider as separate and oppositional, but rather as end points of their respective continuums. The idea of the continuum was inspired by my studies of the Non-Aristotelian system of Alfred Korzybski’s work Science and Sanity. Keter: Silence, Our contact to the Infinite, which is known by the names Ayn Sof, Lao Tzu’s the Tao, and Pirsig’s Quality Chakmah: Internal, yang Binah: External, yin Gedulah/Chesed: Whole units, the self-motivation and the needs of the individual; here resides the self’s creative insights, aspects of Koestler’s concept of the holon Gevurah/Din: Parts, the altruistic motivation and the needs of the collective; here resides justice and analytic judgment, aspects of Koestler’s concept of the holon Tifereth: The Beautiful Netzach: Timeliness and Dynamic; aspects of this have been explored by Pirsig Hod: Timelessness and Static; aspects of this have been explored by Pirsig Yesod: The Good Malkuth: The Song, and The True, physical manifestations, finites.
[215]
22: The Road Goes Ever On
This has not been meant to be the final word on the topic of the Occult Qabalah. My purpose has always been to offer a map and a compass to guide you. I have set out to demonstrate that there is a need to reexamine the foundation of the Occult Qabalah’s understanding of the Sefiroth, the Tree of Life, if you wish to acknowledge its true source as Rabbinic Kabbalah. I have been trying to convince you that there is a need to reconstruct the teachings of the Qabalah and to abandon the existing system since it has been based on misunderstanding and misconception. The current Qabalah system is based not upon the Kabbalah, but rather the current Qabalah is actually based on the Christian Cabalah. The Qabalah as it exists today in the texts of its current teaching is a hybrid and/or a revised modification of Christian Cabalah. It is a distorted and flawed vision of the Sefiroth. At the very least, if you continue to use the old Christianized Qabalah then you can acknowledge that you are not working with the symbols and true meanings of the sefirahs of the Sefiroth. However, if you do not wish to be associated with the biased attitude of Christianity, then you should abandon the mistakes of the Christian Cabalah and go back to the actual historic teachings, as I have been explaining. The Qabalah’s existence is a historical fact. The Qabalah’s purpose and its uses of the Sefiroth are its own, unique and fascinating. It is a tradition worthy of study and practice. The project of reconstruction has begun with this book, but it is not over. There is another phase in this project. This aspects refers to removing other Christian source material from the Occult Qabalah, if you so choose. The current Qabalah makes use of Christian motifs, mythology, and attitudes. It need not. The Christian worldview is based on the mythology of the Fall, and Original Sin. The premise is that humans are flawed and irredeemable. That human flaw was demonstrated in the Original Sin at the Garden and thus the cosmic fall from Grace. No act of humanity can correct this; rather, we must wait for Divine intervention to be saved. The Christian solution is to wait for redemption and escape from this Fallen and corrupted world. This is not the mythology and worldview of Judaism. To work with the Kabbalah is to work in the Jewish worldview. The worldview of Judaism is one of hopefulness and not of helplessness. Judaism is based on fixings one’s mistakes and participation. We were made with a purpose, and that purpose is to be partners in creation. We were given the ability, the power, and the choice to assist in the restoration, rebuilding and repairing of the Cosmos. According to the Zohar, God made many worlds and destroyed them before our final creation. ARI elaborated on this theme. In ARI’s creation tale, perfection is impossible even for the Divine. According to ARI, in the process of creation of taking the Divine’s infinite form and placing it in a finite pattern, the sefirahs shattered right after the making of the sefirah Din. This shattered sefirah filled creation with the imperfect material. Then the Divine finished creation and discovered that IT was enclosed in an imperfect and unharmonious creation. Now, my own additions to this myth would be the following. As Adam’s mistake was the cutting of the shoots in the Garden [216], and by this act I see the conceptualization of division and the believing that this separation was actual. The similar flaw was found in the creator when
Ayn Sof took the blended unity of all existence and tried to manifest division and actualize this division into reality by conceiving to ultimately create an actual infinite multitude of separate, on some level, things. This created the seed of disaster and failure of the plan to create the Sefiroth. The creative act was momentarily shattered at the fifth Sefirah. When that sphere shattered shards from it scattered outward. Then hastily the creative act was continued and finally completed, thereby trapping the Divine. Now all the imperfect and unharmonious shards were collected into one creative being and that was us, humanity. Here, my tale and Luria’s continues in agreement. The Divine could not alter all of this. It was trapped in a web of Its own making, the Sefiroth and the Cosmos so conceived and made. To fix all of this was required a created being. A being who was a blended of the divine and the finite to take up the task of Tikkun Olam, the repairing, the restoring and the healing of the World. A being was needed who contained the disharmony but also had within them a balance of cosmic harmony. We and the Divine as well, are capable of making mistakes. However, it is up to us to make it better and restore cosmic harmony and balance. It is up to us to choose harmony over disharmony. This is our heritage and our destiny. We are to take up the task of Tikkun Olam. According to the Rabbinic mythos, this world is prime cosmic real estate, a gift of wonder and beauty that must be cherished and honored. We are here as a blessing, there is nothing grander that awaits us, even in death. We are told to enjoy the permitted pleasures while we may, for there is none in the afterlife. Our purpose is not found in the afterlife, our purpose is to contribute in this glorious and beautiful world of bounty. We were created to do our part. The mystical purpose of the Kabbalah is to transform the Mitzvoth, the 613 Commandments found in the Torah, and by extension, all acts into a means to restore the balance of the Cosmos. To keep the Sefiroth as a dynamic flowing interactive reality the Tree must be feed through the roots in the soil of Malkuth. Our acts of kindness, justice, goodness, truth, and beauty help to maintain the proper flow and harmony for the Cosmos. Selfish acts, acts of cruelty, greed, and ugliness resonate upward and transform the sefirahs into separate entities, create stasis throughout the Sefiroth, creating disharmony throughout the Sefiroth, the Cosmos, and the Divine. This mythos asks us to choose to help or hinder Tikkun Olam. A reconstructed Qabalah can contribute and partake of this process as well. By our actions and by using this restored vision of the Sefiroth we can play our part in Tikkun Olam. When we are working on ourselves so that we are in harmony, to heal our troubled minds and souls we heal the Cosmos. By helping others we help everyone and everything. As you can see, this is a much different world than portrayed through the Christian mythos. The choice is yours. So, in conclusion, I offer the example of Rabbi Hillel. The story is told that when Rabbi Hillel was asked to teach the core principle of Torah while standing on one foot, he replied ‘ Do not do to others what is hateful to yourself. ’ I do not believe you would want your cultural heritage to be robbed, and misused. Then, please do not continue to perpetrate this unkindness to the Rabbis’ Kabbalah. Go back to the texts with respect, listen, and learn from them. Then having done so, follow Rabbi Hillel’s advice in that same famous quote. ‘ All the rest is commentary, go and study. ’[217] There are many books on the Qabalah that need to be rewritten.
I hope to discover that one of you, my readers, have been inspired to write such a book. I invite you to now to go down the never-ending roads that lie before you. Go and find your way.
Bibliography Adler, Margot. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in American Today. Revised and Expanded 1986. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1979. Blau, Joseph Leon. The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance. Kessinger Reprint. New York: Columbia University Press, 1944. Blumenthal, David R. Understanding Jewish Mysticism: A Source Reader The Merkabah Tradition and the Zoharic Tradition. New York: KTAV Publishing House Inc., 1978. Budge, Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis. "Egyptian Language." Internet Archive. 1910. https://archive.org/details/EgyptianLanguage (accessed December 21, 2014). Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Revised World's Classic Paperback edition 1982. Edited by Roger Lancelyn Green. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. Case, Paul Foster. The Tarot, a Key to the Wisdom of the Ages. First Revised Edtion, 1990. Los Angeles: Builders of the Adytum, 1947. Center for Online Judaic Studies. "Portae Lucis title Page." Center for Online Judaic Studies. 2008. http://cojs.org/cojswiki/Portae_Lucis_(Shaarei_Orah),_Abraham_Joseph_Gikatilla_(Transl (accessed March 24, 2014). Chen, Ellen M., ed. The Tao Te Ching: A New Translation with Commentary. A New Era Book. Translated by Ellen M. Chen. St. Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House, 1989. Crowley, Aleister. Liber 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley Including Gematria & Sepher Sephiroth. First Paperback Edition 1973. Edited by Israel Regardie. York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1909. —. "The Book of Thoth from Equinox volume 3 no. 5." Ra-Hoor-Khuit Network. March 1, 1998. www.rahoorkhuit.net/library/crowley/volume3/vol_3_no_05.pdf (accessed February 3, 2013). —. "The New-Comment." The New and Old Commentaries to Liber Al vel Legis, The Book of the Law by Aliester Crowley. 1996. hermetic.com/legis/new-comment/ (accessed November 24, 2012). Drob, Sanford L. Kabbalistic Metaphors: Jewish Mystical Themes in Ancient and Modern Thought. Northvale: Jason Aronson, Inc., 2000. —. Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives. Northvale: Jason Aronson, Inc., 2000. Fortune, Dion. The Mystical Qabalah. 1999 American Edition Reprint. York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1935. Gikatilla, Rabbi Joseph. Sha'are Orah: The Gates of Light. First English Translation. Translated by Avi Weinstein. San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994. Gilmore, Myron P. The World of Humanism 1453-1517: The Rise of Modern Europe Series. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1952. Goldin, Judah, trans. The Living Talmud: The Wisdom of The Fathers and Its Classical Commentaries selected and translated with an Essay. 1957 Seventh Prinitng of the
paperback edition. New York, New York: Mentor Book from New American Library, 1955. Gurney, J. "Tarot of the Golden Dawn." Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition. Autumnal Equinox 2009. http://www.jwmt.org/v2n17/gurney.html (accessed November 28, 2012). Hall, Manly P. "The Secret Teachings of all Ages, The Tree of the Sephiroth." Sacred Texts. Edited by John Bruno Hare. 1928. http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta29.htm (accessed March 22, 2014). Jacobs, Louis. The Schocken Book of Jewish Mystical Testimonies: Compiled and with Commentary. New York: Schocken Books, 1996. Jaron, Gary M. Find Your Way. CreateSpace, 2018. —. Qabalah Paths of Light: The Occult Qabalah Reclaimed. Charleston: CreateSpace, 2018. Jewish Publication Society. The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text: A New Translation With the Aid of Previous Versions and With Constant Consultuation of Jewish Authorities. 1955 new edition. Edited by M L Margolis. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1917. Jones, Charles Stansfeld, and Frater aka Achad. "Chapter One:THE FORMATION OF THE TREE OF LIFE BEING "A QABALISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS."." QBL: The Bride's Reception. Benjamin Rowe. December 23, 1997. http://hermetic.com/achad/images/QBL_Traditional_Tree.gif (accessed March 2, 2014). Josephus, Flavius. "War of the Jews." Internet Sacred Text Archive. 75. www.sacredtexts.com/jud/josephus/#woj (accessed November 30, 2013). Kaplan, Aryeh. Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice. Revised Edition 1997. York Beach: Samuel Weiser Inc., 1990. Kaplan, Aryeh, trans. The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary. First Paperback edition 1989. York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1979. Katz, Steven T., ed. Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Leet, Leonara. The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah: Recovering the Key to Hebraic Sacred Science. Rochester: Inner Traditions, 1999. Levi, Eliphas. The Book of Splendours: the Inner Mysteries of Qabalism Its relationship to Freemasonry, Numerology & Tarot. Second Paperback English Edition 1984. Edited by Papus. Translated by R. A. Gilbert. York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1894. —. Transcendental Magic its Doctrine and Ritual. Edited by Arthur Edward Waite. Translated by Arthur Edward Waite. two vols. London: Rider and Company, 1896. Mathers, Samuel Liddell MacGregor, trans. The Kabbalah Unveiled: Translated Into English From the Latin Version of Knorr von Rosenroth, and Collated With the Original Chaldee and Hebrew Text. Vol. Fifth Paperback printing 1997. York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1887. Matt, Daniel C., ed. The Heart of Jewish Mysticism. Translated by Daniel C. Matt. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995. Mo, Frater. "Tree of Life and Thelema." Cor Lucis: Know Thyself. December 7, 2012. http://corlucis.org/the-tree-of-life-and-thelema/ (accessed March 2, 2014). Newton, Isaac. "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton." Keynes MS no. 28. Edited by William
R. Newman. Indiana University. June 2010. http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/mss/dipl/ALCH00017 (accessed December 27, 2013). Nussbaum, Fredrick L. The Triumph of Science and Reason 1660--1685: The Harper Torchbooks The Rise of Modern Europe Series. New York: Harper & Row, 1953. Oxford University Press. Oxford English Dictionary. Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Place, Robert M. The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2005. Regardie, Israel. A Garden of Pomegranates and Skrying on the Tree of Life. Third Edition, Editied and Annotated with New Material, 1999. Edited by Chic Cicero and Sandra Tabatha Cicero. St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1932. —. The Tree of Life: A Study of Magic. Second Edition, 1994 Reprint. York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1968. Revak, J W. Etteilla: The First Specifically Esoteric Tarot Deck. November 03, 2001. http://www.villarevak.org/bio/etteilla_2.html (accessed November 24, 2012). "Revived Qabala." Psyche.com. January 1997. www.psyche.com/psyche/qbl/revivedqabala.html (accessed September 09, 2012). Scholem, Gershom G. Alchemy and Kabbalah. First English Translation 2006. Translated by Klaus Ottmann. Putnam: Spring Publishers, Inc., 1977. —. Kabbalah. 1978 Paperback edition. New York: A Meridian Book, 1974. —. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Seventh Printing of Third Revised Edition. New York: Schocken Books, 1954. —. On The Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. Second Paperback Edition 1970. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Schocken Books, 1965. Sperling, Harry, and Maurice Simon, . The Zohar. Vol. One. Five vols. London: The Soncino Press, 1931. Stolzenberg, Daniel. "Four Trees, Some Amulets and the Seventy-two Names of God: Kircher Reveals the Kabbalah." In Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything, by Paula Findien, 143-164. New York: Routledge, 2004. Tishby, Isaiah, and Fischel Lachower. The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts, with extensive introductions and explanations. English Translation edition 1983. Translated by David Goldstein. Vol. One. Three vols. London: the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1949. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Oxford, 1954. Tripp, Edward. The Meridian Handbook of Classical Mythology: Originally published as Crowell's Handbook of Classic Mythology. New York: Meridian Book, 1974. Waite, Arthur Edward. The Holy Kabbalah: A Study of the Secret Tradition in Israel. 1996 Oracle Reprint. Hertfordshire: Oracle Publishing Ltd, 1924. Watts, Alan, and Chung-Huang Al. Tao: the Watercourse Way. New York: Pantheon Press, 1977. Welch, Holmes. Taoism: The Parting of the Way. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966. Westcott, William Wynn. "An Introduction to the Study of the Kabbalah by William Wynn Westcott based on lectures." Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. 1910. http://www.hermeticgoldendawn.org/hogdframeset.html (accessed February 12, 2013).
Westcott, William Wynn. "Sepher Yetzirah translated by Westcott from the 642 Latin translation by John Stephan Rittangel." Internet Sacred Text Archives. John Bruno Hare. March 9, 1999. www.sacred-texts.com/jud/yetzirah.htm (accessed February 2, 2013). Yates, Frances. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age. Routledge Classic reprint 2001. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.
Commentary
You are invited to insert your commentary on these pages.
[1]
Note on the style of my writing: 1) I will use the feminine form of the third person singular pronoun when referring to an individual person in the abstract. 2) I will use italics and single ‘ ‘marks to designate quoted texts so as to highlight visually the difference between my own words and those of another author. I will reserve double “ “ marks to designate spoken dialogue. This is my own convention and an adaption of the traditional MLA or Chicago Manual of Style systems. 3) The subject of this book is the iconic image of the Tree of Life known in Hebrew by the word Sefiroth . This image is made up 10 spheres interconnected by lines. When referring to an individual sphere of the Sefiroth the Hebrew word sefirah will be used . [2] (Adler 1979) Possibly a term coined by Isaac Bonewits, according to the Wikipedia site on the topic of
Polytheistic Reconstructionism. [3] (Oxford University Press 2004) [4] (Levi, The Book of Splendours: the Inner Mysteries of Qabalism Its relationship to Freemasonry,
Numerology & Tarot 1894, 15) [5] (Waite 1924, v) [6] (Fortune 1935, 1-2) [7] (Waite 1924, 542) [8] (Crowley, Liber 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley Including Gematria & Sepher
Sephiroth 1909, 125) [9] (Mathers 1887, 5-6) [10] (Fortune 1935, 3-4) [11] (Levi, The Book of Splendours: the Inner Mysteries of Qabalism Its relationship to Freemasonry,
Numerology & Tarot 1894, 15) [12] (Levi, The Book of Splendours: the Inner Mysteries of Qabalism Its relationship to Freemasonry,
Numerology & Tarot 1894, 16) [13] (Jaron, Find Your Way 2018) [14] (Katz 1978, 46) [15] (Nussbaum 1953, 1) [16] (Nussbaum 1953, 1-2) [17] (Nussbaum 1953, 24) [18] Nussbaum, pg. 26.
[19] This has been attributed to George Bernard Shaw, as well as Winston Churchill, both attributions
cannot be verified. However, Bertrand Russell in the Saturday Evening Post , June 3, 1944 article’ Can mericans and Britons be friends ’, wrote: ‘ It is a misfortune for Anglo-American friendship that the two countries are supposed to have a common language. ’ Also, Oscar Wilde wrote in The Canterville Ghost , 1887, ‘We have everything in common with America nowadays, except of course, language. ’ The source for both is found in Wikiquote. [20] (Josephus 75) Book II, chapter 14, section 5 [21] (Josephus 75) Book VI, chapter 9, section 3 [22] (Gilmore 1952, 196) [23] (Blau 1944, 20),Pg. I, 107, Pico Della Mirandola, Opera Omnia, Basel, 1572. [24] (Blau 1944, 24),Pg. I, 105, No. 9, Pico Della Mirandola, Opera Omnia, Basel 1572. [25] (Yates 1979, 23) [26] (Blau 1944, 25) [27] (Blau 1944, 22)Pg. I 111, no. 48, Pico [28] (Blau 1944, 22-23) [29] (Blau 1944, 28) [30] (Blau 1944, 40) [31] MacGregor Mathers translated part of Rosenroth’s Latin translation of
The Zohar into English in
Mathers’ book :The Kabbalah Unveiled in 1887. [32] (Revived Qabala 1997) [33] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 160) [34] As source for information concerning these individuals, and others, can be found in (Waite 1924, 437-
487) [35] (Waite 1924, 493) [36] In England, the family name changed when his older brother was enrolled in the British Army, who
entered the name as Regardie. The family accepted this and officially changed it to. [37] (Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 1954, 212) [38] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, ix) [39] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, xix)
[40] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 347) [41] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, xxiv) [42] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 336) [43] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 336) [44] A copy of Westcott’s translation can be found at www.sacred-text.com/jud/yetzirah.htm [45] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 336) [46] (Kaplan,
The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary
1979, ix) [47] (Kaplan, The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary 1979, x) [48]
The Zohar I:15a
[49] (Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 1954, 163-204) [50] Isaiah Tishby in volume one of his books The
Wisdom of the Zohar starts on page 13 and continues through till page 96 to discuss the origins and authorship of The Zohar . [51] (Tishby and Lachower 1949, 25) [52] (Tishby and Lachower 1949, 102) [53] (Tishby and Lachower 1949, 102-103) [54] (Tishby and Lachower 1949, 103) [55] Moses de Leon is considered by many scholars of the Kabbalah, prominently Gershom Scholem, as
being the author of the Kabbalah text the Zohar . [56] (Gikatilla 1994, xxi) [57] (Scholem 1954, 195) [58] (Gikatilla 1994, xxxi) [59] (Gikatilla 1994, 3) [60] (Gikatilla 1994, 9) [61] At the website: http://www.private.org.il/GD/ there are pdf versions of many important texts by the
Golden Dawn writers. [62] (Kaplan 1990, 337)
[63] Regardie in 1926 would have been 19 years old. [64] (Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates and Skrying on the Tree of Life 1932, xxiii) [65] (Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates and Skrying on the Tree of Life 1932, xxiii) [66] (Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates and Skrying on the Tree of Life 1932, xxi) [67] (Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates and Skrying on the Tree of Life 1932, xx) [68] (Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates and Skrying on the Tree of Life 1932, xxviii and 12) [69] (Fortune 1935, 2) [70] (Fortune 1935, 2) [71] (Fortune 1935, 2) [72] (Fortune 1935, 19) [73] (Fortune 1935, 20) [74] Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, pg. 20. [75] (Fortune 1935)20 [76] (Fortune 1935, 22) [77] (Fortune 1935, 27) [78] (Fortune 1935, 23-24) [79] (Kaplan, The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary 1979, 9) [80] (Kaplan, The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary 1979, 36-37) [81] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 160) [82] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 160) [83] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 161) [84] (Scholem, Kabbalah 1974, 6) [85] (Jewish Publication Society 1917) [86] (Jewish Publication Society 1917) [87] (Jewish Publication Society 1917)
[88] (Jewish Publication Society 1917) [89] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 163,166) [90] You should note that the Hebrew root TZ
D K forms a variety of words such as righteous and
righteousness. The idea of giving material goods, be it in the form of money or food, clothing, etc. is referred to as acts of charity, for which the Hebrew word is TZaDaKah . As you can see the idea of charity stems from the root of righteousness. Righteous is not the same as the English phrase self-righteous. Righteous in Hebrew is the act of doing what is right. It is also loosely translated as justice and just action. Giving to the poor is doing an act of justice, of doing what is proper, correct, right and good. A Righteous One is a holy individual who acts towards all others with right and just actions. [91] (Gikatilla 1994, 59) If you check your copy of The
Gates of Light, you will notice that the text gives Proverbs 10:12 as the citation. However, once I looked up that passage in the TaNaK I discovered that Proverbs 10:12 actual reads as follows: ‘ Hatred stirreth up strifes; but love covereth all transgressions. ’ (Jewish Publication Society 1917)This led me to track down the correct citation and that turned out to be Proverbs 10:25. [92] (Gikatilla 1994, 60) [93] (Gikatilla 1994, 101) [94] (Kaplan, The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary 1979, 9) [95] (Kaplan, The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary 1979, 101) [96] (Scholem, Kabbalah 1974, 107) [97] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 211) [98] (Kaplan, The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary 1979, 8) [99] (Kaplan, The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary 1979, 100) [100] Exodus 31:3, Proverbs 3:19 and 20, Proverbs 24: 3 and 4. [101] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 167), Chaim
Vital, Sefer Etz Chayyim 8:1 [102] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 169), Chaim
Vital, Sefer Etz Chayyim 1:1 [103] (Gikatilla 1994, 144) [104] (Kaplan 1990, 28) [105] A mild quandary is caused by the desire to be consistent. How do you transliterate the twenty-second
Hebrew letter that Kaplan names and spells as Tav? It is a double letter sometimes having a ‘tee’ sound and sometimes having a ‘thee’ sound. When it appears at the end of word the letter has the ‘thee’ sound. I have
tried to show that by having the names of the sefirahs that end in Tav transliterated with a ‘th’. However, Kaplan spells the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet ‘Dalet’, which does end in the twenty-second Hebrew letter of Tav. For my consistency sake, I will spell the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet ‘Dalet’, rather than as ‘Dalet’, as Kaplan does. [106] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 160) [107] These are in
1Samuel 1:6, 1Samuel 10:24, 17:25, 2Kings 6:32, Jeremiah 39:12, Proverbs 11:21, 20:22, Ezekiel 16:4, Habakkuk 3:13, Proverbs 3:8, Proverbs 14:10, Proverbs 15:1, and Song of Songs 5:2.
[108] (Scholem, Kabbalah 1974, 107) [109] (Scholem, Kabbalah 1974, 49) [110] (Scholem, Kabbalah 1974, 43) [111] (Jewish Publication Society 1917) [112] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 38) [113] Although when to count Daat is an important discussion and one I go into in my second book The
Qabalah Paths of Light, pp145. [114] (Center for Online Judaic Studies 2008) [115] (Budge 1910, 15) [116] To see the Tree online you can go to http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta29.htm or
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/themes/tol.php [117] (Stolzenberg 2004, 155) [118] There is a version of this story that the Kabbalah was taught to Adam by the Divine within the Jewish
tradition as well. However, there is a difference. When the Rabbis tell something it is often in the form of “According to Rabbi so-and-so it was taught the following…” The point being t hat the idea came from a Rabbi who told a Midrash or an Aggadah concerning the topic. Clearly, the source is the Rabbi who is accredited with offering the story. However, Kircher offers up this idea he is not attributing the story to a Rabbi but trying to remove the traces of the Jewish origins and source material, hence using it to deny the Jews of their rightful heritage. [119] (Westcott, An Introduction to the Study of the Kabbalah by William Wynn Westcott based on lectures
1910) [120] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 28) [121] (Jewish Publication Society 1917) [122] (Kaplan, The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary 1979, 9)
[123] (Sperling and Simon 1931, 193) Zohar, 1:59b [124] (Leet 1999, 15) [125] See Waite’s discussion of Fludd in
The Holy Kabbalah , pp467-469. While, Frances Yates,
concludes that this historical question has been resolved in another way and treats Flood more as a Qabalist. [126] (Waite 1924, 487-493) [127] (Regardie 1932, 54) [128] (Fortune 1935, 254) [129] (Fortune 1935, 255) [130] (Fortune 1935, 258) [131] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 160) [132] (Kaplan, The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary 1979, 169) [133] (Kaplan, The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary 1979, 170) [134] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 150) Sefer
Yetzirah
3:6. [135] My determination of the GRA letter pattern is explained in my second book, The
Qabalah Paths of
Light . [136] (Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 1954, 212) [137] (Fortune 1935, 51) [138] (Fortune 1935, 89-90) [139] (Fortune 1935, 23-24) [140] (Fortune 1935, 19-20) [141] (Mathers 1887, 104) [142] (Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates and Skrying on the Tree of Life 1932, 36-55) [143] (Jones and aka Achad 1997) [144] The Planet Uranus was discovered by modern astronomers in the year 1781. [145] (Fortune 1935) [146] The planet Neptune was discovered by modern astronomers in the year 1846.
[147] (Blau 1944, 70) [148]
The planets were placed in their position on the eve of the Fourth Day [of Creation], that is on Tuesday night. They were placed one at a time, an hour apart, in order of their distance from earth. Thus, in the first hour (6 p.m.), Saturn was placed in its position. In the second hour (7 .m.), Jupiter was positioned. The order of creation of the seven planets was then as follows: First hour =Saturn, Second hour = Jupiter, Third hour = Mars, Fourth hour=Sun, Fifth hour = Venus, Sixth hour = Mercury , Seventh hour = Moon (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 180-181) [149] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 174) [150] (Tishby and Lachower 1949, 665) [151] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 178-179) [152] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 159-193) [153] (Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation: In Theory and Practice 1990, 197-228) [154] It should be noted that author Warren Kenton writing as Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi, does accept and
make use of the ‘standard’ assignment of the planets on the Sefiroth as acceptable. I disagree with accepting this configuration. I’m not the only one to consider Kenton/Z’ev knowledge of Kabbalah as dubious. Joseph Dan, a professor of Kabbalah at Hebrew University in Jerusalem complained about the proliferation of New Age pseudo-Kabbalah and referenced specifically Warren Kenton as a prime example. I quote from footnote 57 of the introduction of Dan’s The Heart and the Fountain: An Anthology of Jewish Mystical Experiences: ‘ Another distressing phenomenon is connected with the numerous books
concerning Kabbalah, its history, nature, and traditions, as instructions for modern living, ublished by ‘Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi’, who is nice English gentleman from Hampstead who does not know any Hebrew. ’ [155] (Scholem, Kabbalah 1974, 186-187) [156] (Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 1954, 225) [157] (Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 1954, 227) [158] (Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 1954, 227) [159] (Tishby and Lachower 1949, 288) [160] (Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 1954, 227) [161] (Tishby and Lachower 1949, 288) Here Tishby is referencing (Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish
Mysticism 1954, 222-225) [162] (Kaplan, The Bahir (Illumination): Translations, Introduction and Commentary 1979, 182) Kaplan also
cites the Kabbalah text Padres Rimonim by Moses Cordovero, 5:24 as another source for associating Netzach and Hod with the right and left t esticle.
[163] (Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates and Skrying on the Tree of Life 1932, 51) [164] (Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates and Skrying on the Tree of Life 1932, 52) [165] (Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates and Skrying on the Tree of Life 1932, 53) [166] (Fortune 1935, 89-90) [167] (Fortune 1935, 227) [168] (Fortune 1935, 227) [169] (Fortune 1935, 227-228) [170] (Fortune 1935, 227) [171] (Tripp 1974, 57-61) [172] (Fortune 1935, 232) [173] (Fortune 1935, 252) [174] (Fortune 1935, 259) [175] (Fortune 1935, 261-262) [176] (Fortune 1935, 262) [177] (Tripp 1974, 200) [178] (Chen 1989, 51) [179] Zohar I:15a, translated by David Goldstein in Tishby’s text, The Wisdom of the Zohar. [180] Zohar I:15a-b [181] Sefer Yetzirah, Kaplan translation, 1:1 [182] Zohar III:65a-b, David Goldstein [183] Zohar III:65a-b, David Goldstein [184] Zohar I 246b, David Goldstein. [185] Zohar I 2a, David Goldstein. [186] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 196) [187] (Tishby and Lachower 1949, 282)
[188] (Jaron, Find Your Way 2018) [189] (Tishby and Lachower 1949, 288) [190] (Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors: Jewish Mystical Themes in Ancient and Modern Thought 2000, 218) [191] (Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors: Jewish Mystical Themes in Ancient and Modern Thought 2000, 218) [192] (Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors: Jewish Mystical Themes in Ancient and Modern Thought 2000, 219) [193] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 164) [194] (Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors: Jewish Mystical Themes in Ancient and Modern Thought 2000, 219) [195] (Drob, Kabbalistic Metaphors: Jewish Mystical Themes in Ancient and Modern Thought 2000, 220) [196] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 196) [197] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 220-221) Drob
is here referencing Cordovero’s Palm Tree of Deborah, p. 104. [198] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 221-222) [199] This tale is told in
Genesis Chapter Twenty Two.
[200] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 222) Drob is
quoting from Zohar II, 176a. [201] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 223) [202]
Genesis 28:10 – 22.
[203]
Genesis Chapter 32.
[204] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 224) [205] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 196) [206] (Tishby and Lachower 1949, 288) [207]
Genesis chapter 39
[208] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 226) [209] (Drob, Symbols of the Kabbalah: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives 2000, 226-227) [210] (Tishby and Lachower 1949, 288) [211] The phrase comes from the second line of the Emerald
Tablet . Here is the translation from the Latin
