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Chapter
1.: The Tree of Life
At the root of the Cabalistic view of the world are three
fundamental
concepts and they provide a natural place to begin.
The
three concepts are force, form and consciousness and these
words
are used in an abstract way, as the following examples
illustrate:
- high pressure steam in the cylinder of a steam
engine
provides a force. The engine is a form which constrains the
force.
- a river runs downhill under the force of gravity.
The
river channel is a form which constrains the water to run in
a well defined path.
- someone wants to get to the center of a garden maze. The
hedges are a form which constrain that person's ability to
walk as they please.
- a diesel engine provides the force which drives a
boat
forwards. A rudder constrains its course
to a given
direction.
- a politician wants to change the law. The
legislative
framework of the country is a form which he or
she must
follow if the change is to be made legally.
- water sits in a bowl. The force of gravity pulls the water
down. The bowl is a form which gives its shape to the water.
- a stone falls to the ground under the force of gravity.
Its acceleration is constrained to be equal to the
force
divided by the mass of the stone.
- I want to win at chess. The force of my desire to win is
constrained within the rules of chess.
- I see something in a shop window and have to have it. I am
constrained by the conditions of sale (do I have
enough
money, is it in stock).
- cordite explodes in a gun barrel and provides an explosive
force on a bullet. The gas and the bullet are constrained by
the form of the gun barrel.
- I want to get a passport. The government won't give me one
unless I fill in lots of forms in precisely the right way.
- I want a university degree. The university won't give me
a degree unless I attend certain courses and pass various
assessments.
In all
these examples there is something which is causing change
to take
place ("a force") and there is something which causes
change
to take place in a defined way ("a form"). Without being
too pedantic
it is possible to identify two very different types
of example
here:
1. examples of natural physical processes (e.g. a falling
stone) where the force is one of the natural forces known to
physics (e.g. gravity) and the form is some combination
of physical laws which constrain the force to act in a well
defined way.
2. examples of people wanting something, where the force is
some ill-defined concept of "desire", "will", or "drives",
and the form is one of the forms we impose upon ourselves
(the rules of chess, the Law, polite behavior etc.).
Despite
the fact that the two different types of example
are
"only
metaphorically similar", Kabbalists see no fundamental
distinction
between them. To the Kabbalist there are forces
which
cause change in the natural world,
and there are
corresponding
psychological forces which drive us to change both
the world
and ourselves, and whether these forces are natural or
psychological
they are rooted in the same place: consciousness.
Similarly,
there are forms which the component parts of
the
physical
world seem to obey (natural laws) and
there are
completely
arbitrary forms we create as part of the process of
living
(the rules of a game, the shape of a mug, the design of an
engine,
the syntax of a language) and these forms are also rooted
in the
same place: consciousness. It is a Cabalistic axiom that
there
is a prime cause which underpins all the manifestations of
force
and form in both the natural and psychological world and
that prime
cause I have called consciousness for lack of a better
word.
Consciousness is undefinable. We know that we are conscious
in different
ways at different times - sometimes we feel free and
happy,
at other times trapped and confused, sometimes angry and
passionate,
sometimes cold and restrained - but these
words
describe
manifestations of consciousness. We can define
the
manifestations
of consciousness in terms of manifestations of
consciousness,
which is about as useful as defining an ocean in
terms
of waves and foam. Anyone who
attempts to define
consciousness
itself tends to come out of the same door as they
went in.
We have lots of words for the phenomena of consciousness
- thoughts,
feelings, beliefs, desires, emotions, motives and so
on
- but few words for the states of consciousness which
give
rise to
these phenomena, just as we have many words to describe
the
surface of a sea, but few words to describe its
depths.
Kabbalah
provides a vocabulary for states of
consciousness
underlying
the phenomena, and one of the purposes of these notes
is to
explain this vocabulary, not by definition, but mostly by
metaphor
and analogy. The only genuine method of understanding
what
the vocabulary means is by attaining various states
of
consciousness
in a predictable and reasonably objective way, and
Kabbalah
provides practical methods for doing this.
A fundamental premise of the Cabalistic model of reality is
that
there is a pure, primal, and
undefinable state of
consciousness
which manifests as an interaction between force and
form.
This is virtually the entire guts of the Cabalistic view
of
things, and almost everything I have to say from now on
is
based
on this trinity of consciousness, force,
and form.
Consciousness
comes first, but hidden within it is an inherent
duality;
there is an energy associated with consciousness which
causes
change (force), and there is a
capacity within
consciousness
to constrain that energy and cause it to manifest
in a well-defined
way (form).
First Principle
of
/ Consciousness \
/
\
/
\
Capacity
Raw
to take ________________ Energy
Form
Figure 1.
What do
we get out of raw energy and an inbuilt capacity for form
and structure?
Is there yet another hidden potential within this
trinity
waiting to manifest? There is. If modern physics is to be
believed
we get matter and the physical world. The cosmological
Big
Bang model of raw energy surging out from an infinitesimal
point
and condensing into basic forms of matter as it cools, then
into
stars and galaxies, then planets, and ultimately
living
creatures,
has many points of similarity with the Cabalistic
model.
In the Big Bang model a soup of energy condenses according
to
some yet-to-be-formulated Grand-Universal-Theory into
our
physical
world. What Kabbalah does suggest (and modern physics
most
certainly does not!) is that matter and consciousness are
the
same stuff, and differ only in the degree
of structure
imposed
- matter is consciousness so heavily structured
and
constrained
that its behavior becomes describable using the
regular
and simple laws of physics. This is shown in Fig. 2. The
primal,
first principle of consciousness is synonymous with the
idea of
"God".
First Principle
of
/ Consciousness \
/ |
\
/ |
\
Capacity |
Raw
to take _____________ Energy/Force
Form |
\ |
/
\ |
/
\ |
/
Matter
The World
Figure 2
The glyph
in Fig. 2 is the basis for the Tree of Life. The first
principle
of consciousness is called Kether, which means Crown.
The
raw energy of consciousness is called Chockhmah or Wisdom,
and
the capacity to give form to the energy of consciousness is
called
Binah, which is sometimes translated as Understanding, and
sometimes
as Intelligence. The outcome of the interaction
of
force
and form, the physical world, called Malkuth or Kingdom.
This
quaternery is a Cabalistic representation of
God-the-
Knowable,
in the sense that it the most primitive representation
of God
we are capable of comprehending; paradoxically, Kabbalah
also
contains a notion of God-the-Unknowable which transcends
this glyph,
and is called En Soph. There is not much I can say
about
En Soph, and what I can say I will postpone for later.
God-the-Knowable has four aspects, two male and two female:
Kether
and Chokhmah are both represented as male, and Binah and
Malkuth
are represented as female. One of the titles of Chokhmah
is Abba,
which means Father, and one of the titles of Binah is
Aima,
which means Mother, so you can think of Chokhmah as God-
the-Father,
and Binah as God-the-Mother. Malkuth
is the
daughter,
the female spirit of God-as-Matter, and it would not be
wildly
wrong to think of her as Mother Earth. One of the more
pleasant
things about Kabbalah is that its symbolism gives equal
place
to both male and female.
And what of God-the-Son? Is there also a God-the-Son
in
Kabbalah?
There is, and this is the point where Kabbalah tackles
the interesting
problem of thee and me. The glyph in Fig. 2 is a
model
of consciousness, but not of self-consciousness, and self-
consciousness
throws an interesting spanner in the works.
The Fall
Self-consciousness is like a mirror in which consciousness
sees itself
reflected. Self-consciousness is modelled in Kabbalah
by making
a copy of figure 2.
Consciousness
of
/ Consciousness \
/ |
\
/ |
\
Consciousness | Consciousness
of ________________ of
Form |
Energy/Force
\ |
/
\ |
/
\ |
/
Consciousness
of the
World
Figure 3
Figure
3. is Figure 2. reflected through self-consciousness. The
overall
effect of self-consciousness is to add an additional
layer
to Figure 2. as follows:
First Principle
of
/ Consciousness \
/ |
\
/ |
\
Capacity |
Raw
to take _____________ Energy/Force
Form |
\ |
/
\ |
/
\ |
/
Consciousness
of
/ Consciousness \
/ |
\
/ |
\
Consciousness | Consciousness
of ________________ of
Form |
Energy/Force
\ |
/
\ |
/
\ |
/
Consciousness
of the
World
|
|
|
Matter
The World
Figure 4
Fig.
2 is sometimes called "the Garden of Eden"
because it
represents
a primal state of consciousness. The effect of self-
consciousness
as shown in Fig. 4 is to drive a wedge between the
First
Principle of Consciousness (Kether) and that Consciousness
realized
as matter and the physical world (Malkuth). This
is
called
"the Fall", after the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden
of Eden.
From a Cabalistic point of view the story of Eden, with
the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the serpent
and the
temptation,
and the casting out from the Garden has a great deal
of
meaning in terms of understanding the
evolution of
consciousness.
Self-consciousness introduces four
new states of
consciousness:
the Consciousness of Consciousness is called
Tipheret,
which means Beauty; the Consciousness of Force/Energy
is
called Netzach, which means Victory
or Firmness; the
Consciousness
of Form is called Hod, which means Splendor or
Glory,
and the Consciousness of Matter is called Yesod, which
means
Foundation. These four states have readily
observable
manifestations,
as shown below in Fig. 5:
The Self
Self-Importance
Self-Sacrifice
/ |
\
/ |
\
/ |
\
Language |
Emotions
Abstraction_______________Drives
Reason |
Feelings
\ |
/
\ |
/
\ |
/
\ Perception /
Imagination
Instinct
Reproduction
Figure 5
Figure
4. is almost the complete Tree of Life, but not quite
-
there
are still two states missing. The inherent capacity
of
consciousness
to take on structure and objectify itself (Binah,
God-the-Mother)
is reflected through self-consciousness as a
perception
of the limitedness and boundedness of things. We are
conscious
of space and time, yesterday and today, here and there,
you
and me, in and out, life and death, whole
and broken,
together
and apart. We see things as limited and bounded and we
have a
perception of form as something "created" and "destroyed".
My
car was built a year ago, but it was smashed yesterday.
I
wrote
an essay, but I lost it when my computer crashed. My granny
is dead.
The river changed its course. A law has been repealed. I
broke
my coffee mug. The world changes, and what
was here
yesterday
is not here today. This perception acts
like an
"interface"
between the quaternary of consciousness
which
represents
"God", and the quaternary which represents a living
self-conscious
being, and two new states are introduced
to
represent
this interface. The state which represents the creation
of new
forms is called Chesed, which means Mercy, and the state
which
represents the destruction of forms is called Gevurah,
which
means Strength. This is shown
in Fig. 6. The
objectification
of forms which takes place in a self-conscious
being,
and the consequent tendency to view the world in terms of
limitations
and dualities (time and space, here and there, you
and me,
in and out, God and Man, good and evil...) produces a
barrier
to perception which most people rarely overcome, and for
this reason
it has come to be called the Abyss. The Abyss is also
marked
on Figure 6.
First Principle
of
/ Consciousness \
/ |
\
/ |
\
Capacity |
Raw
to take _____________ Energy/Force
Form |
|
|\ |
/|
| \ |
/ |
--------------Abyss---------------
| \ |
/ |
Destruction |
Creation
of_____\_____|_____ /____of
Form \ |
/ Form
| \ \ | /
/ |
| \ \ | /
/ |
| \ Consciousness / |
| of
|
| / Consciousness \ |
| / |
\ |
|/ |
\|
Consciousness | Consciousness
of ________________ of
\ Form |
Energy/Force
\ \ |
/ /
\ \ |
/ /
\ \ |
/ /
\ Consciousness /
\ of
/
\ the World /
\
/
\ |
/
\ | /
\ | /
Matter
The World
Figure 6
The
diagram in Fig. 6 is called the
Tree of Life. The
"constructionist"
approach I have used to justify its structure
is
a little unusual, but the essence of my presentation can be
found
in the "Zohar" under the guise of the Macroprosopus and
Microprosopus,
although in this form it is not readily accessible
to
the average reader. My attempt to show how the Tree of Life
can be
derived out of pure consciousness through the interaction
of an
abstract notion of force and form was not intended to be a
convincing
exercise from an intellectual point of view - the Tree
of
Life is primarily a gnostic rather than
a rational or
intellectual
explanation of consciousness and its interaction
with the
physical world.
The Tree is composed of 10 states or sephiroth (sephiroth
plural,
sephira singular) and 22 interconnecting paths. The age
of
this diagram is unknown: there is enough information in the
13th.
century "Sepher ha Zohar" to construct this diagram, and
the
doctrine of the sephiroth has been attributed to Isaac the
Blind
in the 12th. century, but we have no certain knowledge of
its
origin. It probably originated sometime in the
interval
between
the 6th. and 13th. centuries AD. The origin of the word
"sephira"
is unclear - it is almost certainly derived from the
Hebrew
word for "number" (SPhR), but it has also been attributed
to the
Greek word for "sphere" and even to the Hebrew word for a
sapphire
(SPhIR). With a characteristic aptitude for discovering
hidden
meanings everywhere, Kabbalists find all three derivations
useful,
so take your pick.
In the language of earlier Cabalistic writers the sephiroth
represented
ten primeval emanations of God, ten foci through
which
the energy of a hidden, absolute and unknown Godhead (En
Soph)
propagated throughout the creation, like
white light
passing
through a prism. The sephiroth can be interpreted
as
aspects
of God, as states of consciousness, or as nodes akin to
the
Chakras in the occult anatomy of a human being .
I have left out one important detail from the structure of
the
Tree. There is an eleventh "something" which is definitely
*not*
a sephira, but is often shown on modern representations of
the
Tree. The Cabalistic "explanation" runs as follows: when
Malkuth
"fell" out of the Garden of Eden (Fig. 2) it left behind
a "hole"
in the fabric of the Tree, and this "hole", located in
the center
of the Abyss, is called Daath, or Knowledge. Daath is
*not*
a sephira; it is a hole. This may sound like gobbledy-gook,
and in
the sense that it is only a metaphor, it is.
The completed Tree of Life with the Hebrew titles of
the
sephiroth
is shown below in Fig. 7.
En Soph
/-------------------------\
/
\
( Kether
)
/ (Crown) \
/ |
\
/ |
\
/ |
\
Binah |
Chokhmah
(Understanding)__________ (Wisdom)
(Intelligence) |
|
|\ |
/|
| \ Daath
/ |
| \ (Knowledge) / |
| \ |
/ |
Gevurah \ |
/ Chesed
(Strength)\_____|_____/__ (Mercy)
| \ |
/ (Love)
| \ \ | /
/ |
| \ \ | /
/ |
| \ Tipheret / |
| / (Beauty) \ |
| / |
\ |
| / |
\ |
|/ |
\|
Hod |
Netzach
(Glory) _______________(Victory)
(Splendor) |
(Firmness)
\ \ |
/ /
\ \ |
/ /
\ \ |
/ /
\ \ |
/ /
\ \ Yesod /
/
\ (Foundation) /
\
/
\ |
/
\ | /
\ | /
Malkuth
(Kingdom)
Figure 7
From
an historical point of view the doctrine of emanations and
the
Tree of Life are only one small part of a huge
body of
Cabalistic
speculation about the nature of divinity and our part
in
creation, but it is the part which has survived. The
Tree
continues
to be used in the Twentieth Century because it
has
proved
to be a useful and productive symbol for practices of a
magical,
mystical and religious nature. Modern Kabbalah in the
Western
Mystery Tradition is largely concerned
with the
understanding
and practical application of the Tree of Life, and
the following
set of notes will list some of the characteristics
of each
sephira in more detail so that you will have a "snapshot"
of
what each sephira represents before going on to examine the
sephiroth
and the "deep structure" of the Tree in more detail.
Chapter
2.: Sephirothic Correspondences
The correspondences are a set of symbols, associations and
qualities
which provide a handle on the elusive something
a
sephira
represents. Some of the correspondences are hundreds of
years
old, many were concocted this century, and some are my own;
some
fit very well, and some are obscure - oddly enough it
is
often
the most obscure and ill-fitting correspondence which is
most
productive; like a Zen riddle it perplexes and annoys the
mind
until it arrives at the right place more in spite of
the
correspondence
than because of it.
There are few canonical correspondences;
some of the
sephiroth
have alternative names, some of the
names have
alternative
translations, the mapping from Hebrew spellings to
the
English alphabet varies from one author to the next,
and
inaccuracies
and accretions are handed down like the family
silver.
I keep my Hebrew dictionary to hand but guarantee none of
the English
spellings.
The correspondences I have given are as follows:
1. The Meaning is a translation of the Hebrew name of
the
sephira.
2. The Planet in most cases is the planet associated
with
the sephira. In some cases it is not a planet at
all
(e.g. the fixed stars). The planets
are ordered
by decreasing apparent motion
- this is one
correspondence which appears to pre-date Copernicus!
3. The Element is the physical element (earth, water, air,
fire, aethyr) which has most in common with the nature
of the Sephira. The Golden Dawn applied an excess
of
logic to these attributions and made a mess of them, to
the confusion of many. Only the
five Lower Face
sephiroth have been attributed an element.
4. Briatic color. This is the color of the sephira
as
seen in the world of Creation, Briah. There are col | 