kabbalah

Preface i
Introduction 1
The Tree of Life 5
The Pillars & The Lightning Flash 13
Sephirothic Correspondences 19
The Sephiroth 29
Malkhut 29
Yesod 34
Hod & Netzach 40
Tipheret 49
Gevurah and Chesed 52
Daat and the Abyss 58
Binah, Chokhmah, Keter 63
The Letters & the Paths 71
The Letters 71
The Paths 80
The Tarot and the Tree 91
The Four Worlds 107
Atzilut - Emanation 107
Briah - Creation 108
Yetzirah - Formation 109
Assiah - Making 110
The Four Worlds & the Tree 110
The Souls 113
The Great Work 117
Notes on Kabbalah
The Klippot 121
Practical Kabbalah 125
Initiation 127
Ritual 131
Essential Ritual Steps 134
Using the Sephiroth in Ritual 138
Suggestions for a Malkhut Ritual 140
Other Practical Work 141
In Conclusion 143
References 145
Preface
i
The domestic cat is a curious creature. Anyone
who has lived with a cat will have become
accustomed to finding the creature on top of the
wardrobe, in the attic, beneath the bed, under
the floorboards, and inside each and every cardboard
box that appears in the home.
Human beings are curious creatures too,
every bit as curious as cats, and differ only in
being less fascinated by the interiors of empty
cardboard boxes. For many people the urge to
explore is as vital as eating, drinking and sleeping.
Kabbalah is part of an ancient tradition of
exploration. The domain of exploration is the
human condition. For some people the experience
of living in the world is not enough;
because we are self-conscious we can observe
ourselves in the process of living, and we can
observe ourselves observing ourselves, and
immersed in this introspective hall-of-mirrors,
people have attempted to find meaning and
make of sense of it. Morality, ethics, metaphysics,
theology, science and mysticism are consequences
of a long tradition that places human
existence inside a larger framework. The truth,
as Chris Carter observes, is out there.
The urge to explore is as strong today as it
ever was. It is an individual impulse that cannot
be satisfied gratuitously through books or television.
For some people the need to explore the
human condition is urgent and instinctive... and
personal. It is the personal element that distinguishes
received knowledge from first-hand
experience, and it is the root of wisdom. Should
you live a moral life because you were
instructed in morality, or can you find an inner
wellspring of morality? Can we ground our
lives in a context that is not completely arbitrary?
Is there a home for our hearts that does
not insult our intelligence?
We live in a deeply confused age. A plethora
of full-time professional experts in every subject
has disenfranchised the majority of people from
genuine inquiry. Pick up a book on any subject,
work through its references into the heart of the
subject, and you will discover a world of complexity
that is utterly intimidating and alienating.
There is so much to know.
My primary motivation is to learn at first
hand. It is important to learn what other people
have learned, but too many people have lived
and died for me to learn more than a small fraction
of what they have learned. There is a prodigious
supply of information, facts, opinions,
theories, suppositions, and doctrines, but the
wisdom needed to sort through the mountain of
trash in the hope of finding a gold nugget is not
supplied.
Kabbalah is part of a long tradition of learning
about the human condition that devotes as
much time to the heart as to the head. The head
can be catered for en-masse - this is what schools
and universities do - but the heart is always
intensely personal. The head can be taught in
lectures and instructed from books, but the
heart has to live each experience from the
inside.
Kabbalah comes from a time when people
lived less in their heads. Kabbalah has been
practised since Crusaders were riding to the
Holy Land in the early Middle Ages, and its
underpinnings go back another fifteen hundred
years to a time when Rome was a one-chariot
town on the banks of the Tiber. There are elements
that date from a time when Jews were living
in Babylon in the time of the Assyrian kings,
and there are borrowings, buried deep within,
that go back as far as Sumer and Akkad five
thousand years ago.
Kabbalah is capable of touching the soul in a
way that very few things can. It contains much
that went out of fashion two hundred years ago
when it seemed that human reason could provide
answers to all meaningful questions. It contains
much that has been actively suppressed by
established religions - and even Judaism has
gone through phases of trying to limit the influence
and accessibility of Kabbalah. Kabbalah
brings the subjective and personal element back
to learning (hence attempts to suppress it).
Unlike science, which studies the natural world
in a way which factors out the subjectivity of
Preface
Notes on Kabbalah
ii
human consciousness, Kabbalah takes ‘consciousness-
acting-in-the-world’ to be a legitimate
field of study, and the world of the
Kabbalist extends beyond the world of natural
science to include a larger world of direct mystical
apprehension. It includes God.
From the point of view of Enlightenment
rationality, as embodied by thinkers such as
David Hume and Immanual Kant, Kabbalah is a
reversion to a discredited metaphysical view of
existence that projects human values onto a universe
that is utterly alien to human values.
From the point of view of a modern Kabbalist,
Hume and Kant are just as dated; the astounding
success of modern physical theories, particularly
quantum mechanics and general
relativity, shows that human beings do indeed
have a deep and penetrating understanding of
the natural world through the medium of mathematics,
just as Plato proposed two and a half
thousand years ago. We reason about the natural
world and create exceedingly complex technologies
on the basis of that reasoning. Our
minds can function as a simulacrum of the external
world. The Kabbalistic doctrine that the
human being is a microcosm, a perfect miniature
simulation of the world at large, contains
more than a grain of truth - it is at the heart of
modern epistemology.
What does this book propose to achieve?
What are its goals?
If a chemist from the twentieth century could
step into a time-machine and go back two-hundred
years, he or she would feel a kinship with
the chemists of that period. The glass apparatus
would be cruder, the chemicals less refined, and
there would be considerable differences in terminology,
underlying theory, and laboratory
procedures, but a chemist today still shares
much in common with the chemists of the past.
However, despite this kinship, chemists have
not been trapped in the past, and the subject as it
is studied today is very different from the chemistry
of two hundred years ago.
Kabbalah has existed for nine hundred years,
and like any living discipline it has evolved
through time, and it continues to evolve. One
aspect of this evolution is that it is necessary for
living Kabbalists to present what they understand
by Kabbalah so that Kabbalah itself continues
to live and continues to retain its
usefulness to each new generation. If Kabbalists
do not do this and become trapped in the past,
then it becomes a dead thing, an historical curiousity,
as was virtually the case within Judaism
by the nineteenth century.
These notes were written with that intention:
to present one view of Kabbalah as it is currently
practised, so that people who are interested
in Kabbalah and want to learn more about
it are not limited to texts written hundreds or
thousands of years ago, or for that matter, modern
texts written about texts written hundreds
or thousands of years ago. For this reason these
notes acknowledge the past, but they do not
defer to it. There are many adequate texts for
those who wish to understand Kabbalah as it
was practised in the past.
These notes have another purpose. The majority
of people who are drawn towards Kabbalah
are not historians; they are people who want to
know enough about it to decide whether they
should use it as part of their own personal
exploration into the condition of being human.
These notes may be brief, but there is enough
information not only to make that decision, but
also to move from theory into practice.
I should emphasise that what I present here is
one interpretation of Kabbalah out of many. I
leave it to others to present their own variants
and I make no apology if the material is biased
towards a particular point of view. It is easy,
when looking at history from a great distance,
to see homogeneity where there was none, and
when looking at a tradition as long-lived and
complex as Kabbalah there is a temptation to
over-simplify and create for the modern reader
the fiction of an homogeneous, monolithic and
internally consistent tradition called ‘The Kabbalah’.
There never was such a thing. The variety
of viewpoints, interpretations and practices
was (and still is) bewildering.
A version of these notes was published originally
on the Internet over the period 1990-1992,
and ASCII versions of the text can be found on a
number of Internet and bulletin board servers.
This version has been completely revised and
greatly extended.
I would like to thank M.S. and the T.S.H.U. for
all the fun.
And the title? It comes from the Sepher Yetzirah:
Preface
iii
“Ten sephirot of nothingness: Their measure
is ten which have no end. A depth of
beginning, a depth of end ...”
Colin Low 2001
Notes on Kabbalah
iv
Introduction
1
The word “Kabbalah” is derived from a root
which means “to receive or accept” and is often
used synonymously with the word “tradition”.
There are many alternative spellings of the
word, the two most popular being Kabbalah
and Qabalah, but Cabala, Qaballah, Qabala,
Kaballah (and so on ad nauseam) are also seen.
The choice of spelling in these Notes was made
as a result of a poll of the books on my bookcase,
and it should not be taken as highly significant.
If Kabbalah means “tradition”, then historically
the core of the tradition was the attempt to
penetrate the inner meaning of the Bible, which
was taken to be the literal (but heavily veiled)
word of God.
The act of reading sacred texts, such as the
Bible (Tanakh) and Talmud, is a vital activity in
Judaism. Torah scholars were and are respected
and admired as leaders of their communities.
These documents are seen as having an almost
holographic complexity, and rather than having
a single agreed meaning, they were scrutinised
and referred to in order to yield new meanings
to deal with every kind of situation. Vast commentaries
were written and referred to. Ingenious
interpretations and insights were
accumulated, and often printed around the text
of the Bible so that it becomes a kind of early
hypertext.
In these circumstances it was natural for
secret or initiated traditions of interpretation to
arise, traditions grounded in the Jewish religion
but which encouraged more daring speculations
about the nature of God, the creation, and
the role of human beings in it.
The earliest documents associated with Kabbalah
come from the period ~100 to ~1000 A.D.
and describe the attempts of “Merkabah” mystics
to penetrate the seven halls (Hekaloth) of
creation in order to reach the Merkabah (thronechariot)
of God. These mystics appear to have
used what would now be recognised as familiar
methods of shamanism - fasting, repetitious
chanting, prayer, posture - to induce trance
states in which they fought their way past terrible
seals and guards to reach an ecstatic state in
which they “saw God”. Documents such as the
Greater Hekhalot describe the heavenly halls that
must be negotiated to reach the throne of God,
and provide clues as to how to pass the various
guardian spirits.
A highly influential document, the Sepher
Yetzirah, or “Book of Formation”, was written
during the earlier part of this period, probably
during the late Roman empire, and may have
originated in Palestine. It is an extremely terse
and enigmatic document that has been the subject
of many commentaries since the earliest
times. It appears to be theurgic. It describes how
God made the world using numbers and letters,
and implies that a person can acquire some of
the divine creative power by understanding
numbers and letters.
By the early Middle Ages more theosophical
developments had taken place, chiefly a
description of “processes” within God, and the
development of an esoteric view of creation as a
process in which God manifests in a series of
emanations, or sephiroth. This doctrine of the
sephiroth can be found in a rudimentary form
in the Sepher Yetzirah, but by the time of the publication
of the book Bahir in the 12th. century CE
it had reached a form not too different from the
form it takes today. The doctrine of sephirothic
emanation and the use of the word “Kabbalah”
as a description for a particular mystical tradition
is believed to come from Provence in the
south of France, from the school of Isaac the
Blind, who is widely credited with being “the
father of Kabbalah”.
A motive behind the development of the doctrine
of emanation can be found in the questions:
“If God made the world, then what is the
world if it is not God?”
“If the world is God, then why is it imperfect?”
1
Introduction
Notes on Kabbalah
2
It was necessary to bridge the gap between a
pure and perfect being and a manifestly impure
and imperfect world by a series of “steps” in
which the divine light was successively diluted.
The result shares something in common with
developments in Platonism, a system of philosophy
which was influential from classical Greek
times until the Renaissance. Platonism also tried
to resolve the same difficulty by postulating a
“chain of being” which bridged the gap
between the perfection of God, and the evident
imperfection of the world of daily life.
The most influential Kabbalistic document,
the Sepher ha Zohar or Book of Splendour, was
published in the latter half of the thirteenth century
by Moses de Leon (1238-1305 CE), a Spanish
Jew. The Zohar is a series of separate
documents covering a wide range of subjects,
from a verse-by-verse esoteric commentary on
the five books of Moses (Pentateuch), to highly
theosophical descriptions of processes within
God. There are some who believe the Zohar
dates back to the Roman occupation of Palestine,
but many scholars believe it was written by
Moses de Leon and passed-off as an earlier text.
The Zohar has been widely read and was highly
influential within mainstream Judaism.
One of most interesting characters from the
early period was Abraham Abulafia (1240-1295
CE), who believed that God cannot be described
or conceptualised using everyday symbols. Like
many Kabbalists he believed in the divine
nature of the Hebrew alphabet and used
abstract letter combinations and permutations
(“tzeruf”) in intense meditations lasting many
hours to reach ecstatic states. Because his
abstract letter combinations were used as keys
or entry points to altered states of consciousness,
failure to carry through the manipulations
correctly could have a drastic effect on the Kabbalist.
In Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism [39]
Scholem includes a fascinating extract from a
description of one such experiment. Abulafia is
unusual because (controversially) he was one of
the few Kabbalists to provide explicit written
details of practical techniques.
An important development in Kabbalah was
the Safed school of mystics headed by Moses
Cordovero (1522-1570 CE) and his successor
Isaac Luria (1534-1572 CE). Luria, called “The
Ari” or Lion, was a highly charismatic leader
who exercised almost total control over the life
of the school, and has passed out of history and
into myth as a saint. Emphasis was placed on
living in the world and bringing the consciousness
of God through into the world in a practical
way. Practices were largely devotional.
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries Judaism as a whole was heavily influenced
by Kabbalah, but two influences caused
its decline. The first event was the mass defection
of Jews to the cause of the heretic and apostate
pseudo-messiah Shabbatai Tzevi (1626-1676
CE), an event Scholem calls “the largest and
most momentous messianic movement in Jewish
history subsequent to the destruction of the
Temple and the Bar Kokhba Revolt.” The Shabbateans
included many prominent rabbis and
Kabbalists, and from this point on Kabbalah
became inextricably mired with suspicions of
heresy.
A second influence was the rise in Eastern
Europe of a populist Kabbalism in the form of
Chasidism, and its eventual decline into superstition
(in the eyes of its rationalist opponents),
so that by the beginning of this century a Jewish
writer was able to dismiss Kabbalah as an historical
curiousity.
Jewish Kabbalah has vast literature of many
thousands of texts, most of which have not been
translated into English.
A development which took place almost synchronously
with the translation and publication
of key texts of Jewish Kabbalah was its adoption
by many Christian mystics, magicians and philosphers.
Some Christians thought Kabbalah
held keys that would reveal mysteries hidden in
the scriptures, others tried to find in Kabbalah
doctrines which might be used to convert Jews
to Christianity.
There were some who recognised in the Kabbalah
themes with which they were already
familiar in the literature of Hermeticism and
Neoplatonism. Renaissance philosophers such
as Pico della Mirandola were familiar with Kabbalah
and mixed it with Gnosticism, Pythagoreanism,
Neo-platonism and Hermeticism to form
a snowball which continued to pick up traditions
as it rolled down the centuries. It is probably
accurate to say that from the Renaissance
on, virtually all European occult philosophers
and magicians of note had a working knowledge
of some aspects of Kabbalah.
Non-Jewish Kabbalah has suffered greatly
from having only a limited number of source
texts to work from, often in poor translations,
Introduction
3
and without the key commentaries which
would have revealed the tradition associated
with the concepts described. It is pointless to
criticise non-Jewish Kabbalah (as many writers
have) for misinterpreting Jewish Kabbalah.
After 500 years it should be recognised as a parallel
tradition with many points of correspondence
and many points of difference.
Very little information has survived about the
Practical Kabbalah, but there is abundant evidence
that it involved a wide range of practices
and included practices now regarded as magical
- the fact that so many Kabbalists denounced the
use of Kabbalah for magical purposes is evidence
in itself (even if there were no other) that
the use of these techniques was widespread. It is
highly likely that many ritual magical techniques
were introduced into Europe by Kabbalists
or their less scrupulous camp followers.
The most important medieval magical text is
the Key of Solomon, and it contains the elements
of classic ritual magic - names of power, the
magic circle, ritual implements, consecration,
evocation of spirits etc. Its name and contents
suggest at the very least a Jewish influence. Noone
knows how old it is, but there is a reasonable
suspicion that its contents preserve techniques
which might well date back to Solomon.
The combination of non-Jewish Kabbalah and
ritual magic has been kept alive outside Judaism
until the present day, although it has been heavily
adulterated at times by Hermeticism, Gnosticism,
Neoplatonism, Pythagoreanism,
Rosicrucianism, Christianity, Tantra and so on.
The most important “modern” influences in
the English-speaking world are the French
magician Eliphas Levi, and the English “Order
of the Golden Dawn”. At least two members of
the Golden Dawn (S.L. Mathers and A.E. Waite)
were knowledgable Kabbalists, and three
Golden Dawn members have popularised Kabbalah
- Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie, and
Dion Fortune. Dion Fortune’s “Order of the
Inner Light” has also produced a number of
authors: Gareth Knight, William Butler, and
William Gray to name but three.
An unfortunate side effect of the Golden
Dawn is that while Kabbalah was an important
part of its “Knowledge Lectures”, surviving
Golden Dawn rituals are a syncretist hodgepodge
of symbolism in which Kabbalah seems
to play a minor or nominal role, and this has led
to Kabbalah being seen by many modern occultists
as more of a theoretical and intellectual discipline,
rather than a potent and self-contained
mystical and magical system in its own right.
Some of the originators of modern witchcraft
(e.g. Gerald Gardner, Alex Saunders) drew
heavily on medieval ritual and Kabbalah for
inspiration, and it is not unusual to find modern
witches teaching some form of Kabbalah,
although it is generally even less well integrated
into practical technique than in the case of the
Golden Dawn.
To summarise, Kabbalah is a mystical and
magical tradition which originated nearly one
thousand years ago and has been practiced continuously
during this time. It has been practiced
by Jew and non-Jew alike for about five hundred
years. On the Jewish side it has been an
integral and influential part of Judaism, and has
once more come into vogue after two centuries
of neglect1. On the non-Jewish side it has created
a rich mystical and magical tradition with
its own validity, a tradition which has survived
despite the prejudice generated through coexisting
within a strongly Christian culture.
The tradition continues, and in what follows
you will find an introduction to the tradition as I
received it, plus whatever personal insights I
am able to offer.
1. It was nurtured during the last two centuries
in many East European Chassidic
communities, most of which were devastated
by the Holocaust.
Notes on Kabbalah
4
The Tree of Life
5
At the root of the Kabbalistic view of the
world are three fundamental concepts and they
provide a natural place to begin. These concepts
have more than one name; for the moment I will
refer to them as consciousness, force and form.
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 find a way to the centre 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 fixes its
course in 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.
• 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 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
different types of example here:
• examples of natural physical processes (e.g.
a falling stone) where the force is one of the
natural forces known to physics, such as
gravity, and the form is some combination
of physical laws which constrain the force
to act in a well defined way (e.g. all stones
fall with the same acceleration).
• 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 of the
land, polite behaviour).
Although the two types of example appear to
be “only metaphorically similar”, Kabbalists see
no fundamental distinction between them.
There are physical 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 physical
world obeys (natural laws), and there are completely
arbitrary forms people create for their
own purposes - the rules of a game, the shape of
a mug, the design of an engine, the syntax of a
language. To the Kabbalist these forms are also
rooted in the same place: consciousness.
It is a Kabbalistic 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 can be
2
The Tree of Life
Notes on Kabbalah
6
referred to as consciousness. It would be a mistake
to read too much into the word at this
stage, but it is worth noting that in traditional
Kabbalah the primal, first principle of being or
consciousness is synonymous with the idea of
the Godhead.
Consciousness is indefinable. We know 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. Being happy, being confused,
are both aspects of being.
We can define the manifestations of consciousness
in terms of the manifestations of consciousness,
just as a dictionary uses words to
describe other words - I am happy when I feel
good and I am not sad. This 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 many words for the phenomena
of consciousness - thoughts, feelings,
beliefs, desires, emotions, motives and so on -
but few words for the underlying 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 of
consciousness, and one of the purposes of these
notes is to explain this vocabulary, not by definition,
but mostly by metaphor, example and
analogy. The only genuine method for 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, methods which are outlined later in these
notes.
A fundamental premise of the Kabbalistic
model of manifest reality is that there is a pure,
primal, and indefinable state of divine being or
divine consciousness, which manifests as an
interaction between force and form. This is virtually
the entire basis for the Kabbalistic view of
emanation, and almost everything I have to say
from now on is based on the 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). This
duality is shown in Figure 1. The examples at
the beginning of this chapter were chosen to
demonstrate the interplay of force and form in
real life.
What do we get out of raw energy and an
inbuilt capacity for form and structure? Is there
another hidden potential within this trinity
waiting to manifest? What Kabbalah suggests
(and this idea will be developed in detail at a
later stage) is that force and form become
“locked” together, like baking a cake. You start
off with flour, sugar, eggs, water and so on, but
what comes out of the oven isn’t what went in.
Force and form interact to produce something
which is neither force nor form, but something
quite distinct from either, something which I
will call “matter” although that is something of
an oversimplification. By matter I mean “the
stuff of the real world”.
Something resembling this view can be found
in physics. Physicists talk about “energy”, and
use the concept of energy almost like money -
every form of matter has its equivalent in
energy (this is the basis for E = mc2), but what
distinguishes different kinds of matter are the
laws which determine its behaviour. Again, we
can see here a duality between “energy”, the
raw unformed stuff from which everything is
composed, and “form”, the natural laws which
determine how energy behaves in different circumstances,
the rules which distinguish a proton
from an electron.
What Kabbalah suggests (and modern physics
most certainly does not!) is that matter and
First Principle
of
Consciousness
Raw Energy
Figure 1: The Prime Duality
Capacity
to take
Form
The Tree of Life
7
consciousness are the same stuff, and differ only
in the degree of structure imposed - matter is
consciousness expressed in the intermixing of
force and form, but so heavily structured and
constrained by form that its behaviour becomes
describable using the regular and simple laws of
physics. This is shown in Figure 2.
The glyph in Figure 2 is the basis for a kabbalistic
diagram called the Etz Chaiim, or Tree of
Life. The first principle of being or consciousness
is called Keter, which means Crown. The raw
energy of consciousness is called Chokhmah 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, is called Malkhut or Kingdom. This is
shown below in Figure 3.
This quaternary is a Kabbalistic representation
of God-the- Knowable, in the sense that it
the most abstract representation of God we are
capable of comprehending. Paradoxically, Kabbalah
also contains a notion of God the infinite,
the transcendent and the unknowable which
transcends this glyph, and is called En Soph. En
Soph means “without end” and is used to signify
the unmanifest ground from which all
manifest being springs, the earth in which the
Tree of Life is rooted. There is not much more 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: Keter and Chokhmah are both
represented as male, and Binah and Malkhut
are represented as female. One of the titles of
Chokhmah is Abba, which means Father, and
one of the titles of Binah is Imma, which means
Mother, so you can think of Chokhmah as Godthe-
Father, and Binah as God-the-Mother. Malkhut
is the daughter, the female spirit of Godas-
Matter, and it would not be wildly wrong to
think of her as Mother Earth. And what of Godthe-
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 Figure 2 is a model of consciousness,
but not of self-consciousness, and selfconsciousness
throws an interesting spanner in
the works. Self-consciousness is like a mirror in
which consciousness sees itself reflected. Selfconsciousness
is modelled in Kabbalah by making
a copy of Figure 2.
Figure 4 is Figure 2 reflected through selfconsciousness.
The overall effect of self-consciousness
is to add an additional layer to Figure
2 as shown in Figure 5.. 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 (Keter) and that Consciousness
realised as matter and the physical world (Malkhut).
This is called “the Fall”, after the story of
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. From a
First Principle
of
Consciousness
Capacity
to take
Form
Raw Energy
Figure 2: The Garden of Eden
Matter
The World
Keter
Binah Chokhmah
Figure 3: The Garden of Eden
Malkhut
Notes on Kabbalah
8
Kabbalistic 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 Splendour 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. 6:
Figure 5 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. 7.
The objectification of forms which takes place
in a self-conscious being, and the consequent
Consciousness
of
Consciousness
Consciousness
of
Form Energy
Figure 4: Self-Consciousness
The World
Consciousness
of
Consciousness
of
Consciousness
of
Consciousness
Consciousness
of
Form Energy
Figure 5: The Fall
The World
Consciousness
of
Consciousness
of
First Principle
of
Consciousness
Capacity
to take
Form
Raw Energy
Matter
The World
The Tree of Life
9
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 7.
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. A Kabbalistic “explanation” runs as
follows: when Malkhut “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
centre of the Abyss, is called Daat, or Knowledge.
Daat 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. Daat is located in the
abyss on the central path between Keter and
Tipheret.
The diagram in Figure 7 is called the Tree of
Life. Rather than simply present the Tree without
any kind of rationale, I have employed a
“constructionist” approach to explain its structure,
and I believe it is original, but the essence
of my rationale can be found in the Sepher ha
Zohar under the guise of the Macroprosopus
and Microprosopus, although in this form it is
less accessible to many readers. 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 divinity and its
interaction with the physical world.
The Tree of Life is composed of 10 states or
sephiroth (sephiroth plural, sephira singular) and
22 interconnecting paths, making a total of 32
“paths”. These are the “thirty two paths of wisdom”
discussed in the Sepher Yetzirah. The age
of this diagram is unknown. There is enough
information in the 13th. century Sepher ha Zohar
to construct the diagram, and the doctrine of the
sephiroth has been attributed to Isaac the Blind
in the 12th. century, but we have no certain
The Self
Self-Importance
Self-Sacrifice
Language
Abstraction
Reason Feelings
Figure 6: Self-Consciousness
Instinct
Emotions
Drives
Perception
Imagination
Reproduction
Consciousness
of
Consciousness
Consciousness
of
Form Energy
Figure 7: The Tree of Life
The World
Consciousness
of
Consciousness
of
First Principle
of
Consciousness
Capacity
to take
Form
Raw Energy
Matter
The World
Destruction Creation
The Abyss
of
Form
of
Form
Notes on Kabbalah
10
knowledge of its origin.
The origin of the word “sephira” is unclear - it
is almost certainly derived from the Hebrew
word for “number” (SPhR), but it has been
attributed to the Greek word for “sphere” and
also 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 Kabbalistic 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. The 22 paths interconnecting the sephiroth
on the Tree also have a rich body of associations.
From an historical point of view the doctrines
of sephirothic emanation and the Tree of Life
are only a small part of an extensive body of
Kabbalistic speculation about the nature of
divinity and our part in creation. To concentrate
on the Tree is to ignore an equally rich body of
speculation on Adam Kadmon, the divine or
archetypal human being. There are many, many
aspects of Kabbalah which I have not explored
in these notes, and to concentrate exclusively on
one small part of Kabbalah may seem short
sighted to the academic, but to a practising Kabbalist
life is short, the Kabbalah is there to be
used, and so I have chosen to concentrate on a
part of the Kabbalah which has survived to the
present day. The Tree of Life 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 Esoteric
Tradition is largely concerned with the
understanding and practical application of the
Tree of Life.
The following Chapter will continue to
develop a broad understanding of what the Tree
represents, before going on to examine the
nature of each sephira in detail.
The Tree of Life
11
Figure 8: The Tree of Life
Keter
(Crown)
1
Chokhmah
(Wisdom)
Binah
(Understanding)
Tipheret
Chesed
Hod Netzach
Gevurah
Yesod
Malkhut
Daat
(Knowledge)
(Mercy)
(Victory)
(Beauty)
(Glory)
(Strength)
(Foundation)
(Kingdom)
(Intelligence)
(Splendour) (Firmness)
(Love)
2
4
7
6
5
8
9
10
3
En Soph
Notes on Kabbalah
12
The Pillars & The Lightning Flash
13
In Chapter 2 the Tree of Life was derived from
three concepts, or rather one primary concept
and two derivative concepts “contained” or
“concealed” within it. The primary concept was
called consciousness, and it was said to “contain”
within it the two complementary concepts of
force and form.
This Chapter builds on these ideas by introducing
the three Pillars of the Tree, and uses the
Pillars to clarify a process called the Lightning
Flash. It should not come as a surprise to find
that the three Pillars are called ... the Pillar of
Consciousness, the Pillar of Force, and the Pillar
of Form. The Pillar of Consciousness (see Figure
9) contains the sephiroth Keter, Tipheret, Yesod
and Malkhut. The Pillar of Force contains the
sephiroth Chokhmah, Chesed and Netzach. The
Pillar of Form contains the sephiroth Binah,
Gevurah and Hod.
The classification of sephiroth into three Pillars
is a way of saying that each sephira in a Pillar
partakes of a common quality which is
“inherited” in a progressively more developed
and structured way from of the top of a Pillar to
the bottom. Tipheret, Yesod and Malkhut share
with Keter the quality of “consciousness in balance”
or “synthesis of opposing qualities”, but
in each case it is expressed differently according
to the increased degree of structure imposed.
Likewise, Chokhmah, Chesed and Netzach
share the quality of force, or energy, or expansiveness.
Binah, Gevurah and Hod share the
quality of form, definition and limitation. As
one moves down the Tree from Keter to Malkhut,
force and form are combined together.
The symbolism of the Tree has something in
common with a production line, with molten
metal coming in one end and finished cars coming
out the other.
In older Kabbalistic texts the Pillars are
referred to as the Pillars of mildness, mercy and
severity, and it is not immediately obvious how
the older jargon relates to the new. To the medieval
Kabbalist (and this is a recurring metaphor
in the Zohar) the creation, considered as an emanation
of God, is a delicate balance between two
opposing tendencies: the mercy of God - the
outflowing, creative, life-giving and sustaining
tendency in God, and the severity or strict
judgement of God - the limiting, defining, lifetaking
and ultimately wrathful or destructive
tendency in God. The creation is “energised” by
these two tendencies as if stretched between the
poles of a battery. Modern Kabbalah makes a
half-hearted attempt to remove the more obvious
anthropomorphisms in the descriptions of
“God”; mercy and severity are misleading
terms, apt to remind one of a man with a white
beard. Even in medieval times the terms had
distinctly technical meanings as the following
quotation shows [39]:
“It must be remembered that to the
Kabbalist, judgement [Din - judgement,
another title of Gevurah] means
the imposition of limits and the correct
determination of things. According to
Cordovero the quality of judgement is
inherent in everything insofar as everything
wishes to remain what it is, to
stay within its boundaries.”
I understand the word “form” in this sense -
it is that which defines what a thing is, the structure
whereby a given thing is distinct and different
from every other thing. A square is not the
same as a triangle - their forms are different.
The complementary concepts of consciousness
and force are difficult (if not impossible!) to
define, because one can only define the form of
something. Of necessity I use the word “consciousness”
in a sense so abstract that it is virtually
meaningless, and according to whim I use
the word God instead, where it is understood
that both words are placeholders for something
which is potentially knowable in the gnostic
sense only. Consciousness can be defined only
according to the forms it takes, in which case we
are defining the forms, not consciousness. The
same qualification applies to the word “force”.
3
The Pillars & The Lightning Flash
Notes on Kabbalah
14
My inability to define two of the three concepts
which underpin the structure of the Tree is a
nuisance. This is the reason why I introduced
the concepts of force and form in the previous
Chapter by the use of many examples.
I will now return to the metaphor of the Tree
as a production line, with molten metal coming
in at one end (Keter), and finished cars coming
out the other (Malkhut). The conveyer belt zigzags
across and down the Tree in a pattern
called the Lightning Flash. The following discussion
describes the path taken by the Lightning
Flash as it moves down the Tree from
Keter to Malkhut.
In the beginning ... was Something. Or Nothing.
It does not matter which term one uses, as
both are equally meaningless in this context.
“Nothing” is probably the better of the two
terms, because I can use “Something” in the
next paragraph. Kabbalists call this Nothing En
Soph which literally means “no end” or infinity,
Figure 9:The Three Pillars & The Lightning
Flash
Keter
1
Binah Chokhmah
Tipheret
Chesed
Hod Netzach
Gevurah
Daat
2
4
7
6
5
8
3
Pillar of Form
Pillar of Consciousness
Pillar of Force
Yesod
9
Malkhut
10
The Pillars & The Lightning Flash
15
and understand by this a hidden, unmanifest
God-in-Itself.
Out of this incomprehensible and indescribable
Nothing came Something. Probably more
words have been devoted to this moment than
any other in Kabbalah, and it is easy to make
fun the effort which has gone into elaborating
the indescribable, so I won’t ... but in return I am
not going provide a justification for why Something
came out of Nothing. It just did. A point
crystallised in the En Soph.
In some versions of the story the En Soph
“contracted” to “make room” for the creation
(e.g. Isaac Luria’s doctrine of tsimtsum), and this
is probably an important clarification for those
who have rubbed noses with the hidden face of
God, but for the purposes of this discussion it is
enough that a point crystallised. This point was
the crown of creation, the sephira Keter, and
within Keter was contained all the unrealised
potential of the creation.
An aspect of Keter is the raw creative force of
God which blasts into the creation like the blast
of hot gas which keeps a hot air balloon in the
air. Kabbalists are quite clear about this; the creation
didn’t just happen a long time ago - it is
happening all the time, and without the influx
of creative force to sustain it the creation would
crumple like a deflated balloon. The force-like
aspect within Keter is the sephira Chokhmah
and it can be thought of as the will of God,
because without it the creation would cease to
be. The creation is maintained by this ravening,
primeval desire to be, to become, to change, to
exist, to evolve. The experiential distinction
between Keter, the point of emanation, and
Chokhmah, the creative outpouring, is elusive
and it is difficult to say anything which would
be meaningful. In the tradition, Keter, although
manifest within the En Soph, is hidden from us,
and Chokhmah is the first true manifestation.
Force by itself achieves nothing; it needs to be
contained, and the balloon analogy is appropriate
again. Chokhmah contains within it the
necessity of Binah, the Mother of Form. The person
who taught me Kabbalah (a woman as it
happens) told me Chokhmah (Abba, the Father)
was God’s prick, and Binah (Aima, the Mother)
was God’s womb, and left me with the picture
of one half of God continuously ejaculating into
the other half. It is a vivid and appropriate metaphor,
and one with a long history of use in
Kabbalah. The author of the Zohar also makes
frequent use of sexual polarity as a metaphor to
describe the relationship between force and
form, or mercy and severity, although the most
vivid sexual metaphors are reserved for the
marriage of the Microprosopus and his bride,
the Queen and Inferior Mother, the sephira Malkhut.
The sephira Binah is the Mother of Form. Form
exists within Binah as a potentiality, not as an
actuality, just as a womb contains the potential
of a baby. Without the possibility of form, no
thing would be distinct from any other thing; it
would be impossible to distinguish between
things, impossible to have individuality or identity
or change. The Mother of Form contains the
potential of form within her womb and gives
birth to form when a creative impulse crosses
the Abyss to the Pillar of Force and emanates
through the sephira Chesed. Again we have the
idea of “becoming”, of outflowing creative
energy, but at a lower level.
The sephira Chesed is the point at which form
becomes perceptible to the mind as an inspiration,
an idea, a vision; that “Eureka!” moment
immediately prior to rushing around shouting
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”. Chesed is that quality of
genuine inspiration, a sense of being “plugged
in” which characterises visionary leaders who
lead the human race into every new kind of
endeavour. It can be for good or evil. A leader
who can tap petty malice and vindictiveness
and channel it into a vision of a genocidal new
order is just as much a visionary as any other.
The positive interpretation of Chesed is the
humanitarian leader who brings about genuine
improvements to our common life.
No change comes easy; as Cordovera points
out “everything wishes to remain what it is”.
The creation of form is balanced by the preservation
and destruction of form in the sephira
Gevurah. Any impulse of change is channelled
through Gevurah, and if it is not opposed then
something will be destroyed. If you want to
make paper you cut down a tree. If you want to
abolish slavery you have to destroy the culture
which perpetuates it. If you want to change
someone’s mind you have to destroy that person’s
beliefs about the matter in question. The
sephira Gevurah is the quality of strict judgement
which opposes change, destroys the unfamiliar,
and corresponds in many ways to an
immune system within the body of God.
There has to be a balance between creation
Notes on Kabbalah
16
and destruction. Too much change, too many
ideas, too many things happening too quickly
can have the quality of chaos (and can literally
become that), whereas too little change, no new
ideas, too much form and structure and protocol
can suffocate and stifle. There has to be a balance
which “makes sense” and this “idea of
balance” or “making sense” is expressed in the
sephira Tipheret.
Tipheret embodies the idea of wholeness, of
balance in a dynamic sense of reconciling many
opposing forces, and represents an instinctive
morality, which is not present by default in the
human species. It isn’t based on cultural norms
and it doesn’t have its roots in upbringing
(although it is easily destroyed by it). Some people
have it in a large measure, and some people
are, to all intents and purposes, completely lacking
in it. It doesn’t necessarily respect conventional
morality: it may laugh in its face.
I can’t say what it is in any detail, because it is
peculiar and individual, but those who have it
have a natural quality of integrity, soundness of
judgement, an instinctive sense of rightness, justice
and compassion, and a willingness to fight
or suffer in defence of that sense of justice.
Tipheret is a paradoxical sephira because in
many people it is simply not there. It can be
developed, and that is one of the goals of initiation,
but for many people Tipheret is a room
with nothing in it.
Having passed through Gevurah on the Pillar
of Form, and found its way through the moral
filter of Tipheret, a creative impulse picks up
energy once more on the Pillar of Force via the
Sephira Netzach, where the energy of “becoming”
finds its final expression in the form of
“vital urges”. Why do we carry on living? Why
bother? What is it that compels us to do things?
An artist may have a vision of a piece of art, but
what actually compels the artist to paint or
sculpt or write? Why do we want to compete
and win? Why do we care what happens to others?
The sephira Netzach expresses the basic,
vital, creative urges in a form we can recognise
as drives, feelings and emotions.
Netzach is pre-verbal; ask a child why he
wants a toy and the answer will be “I just do”.
“But why,” you ask, wondering why he
doesn’t want the much more “sensible” toy you
had in mind. “Why don’t you want this one
here.”
“I just don’t. I want this one.”
“But what’s so good about that one.”
“I don’t know what to say ... I just like it.”
This conversation is not fictitious and is quintessentially
Netzach. The structure of the Tree of
Life posits that the basic driving forces which
characterise our behaviour are pre-verbal and
non-rational; anyone who has tried to change
another person’s basic nature or beliefs through
force of rational argument will know this.
After Netzach we go to the sephira Hod to
pick up the final imprint of form. Ask a child
why they want something and they say “I just
do”. Press an adult and you will get an earful of
“reasons”. We live in a culture where it is
important (often essential) to give reasons for
the things we do, and Hod is the sephira of form
where it is possible to give shape to our desires
in terms of reasons and explanations. Hod is the
sephira of abstraction, reason, logic, language
and communication, and a reflection of Binah,
the Mother of Form in the human mind. We
have a innate capacity to abstract, to go immediately
from the particular to the general, and we
have an innate capacity to communicate these
abstractions using language, and it should be
clear why the alternative translation of Binah is
“intelligence”; Binah is the “intelligence of
God”, and Hod underpins what we generally
recognise as intelligence in people - the ability
to grasp complex abstractions, reason about
them, and articulate this understanding using
some means of communication.
The synthesis of Hod and Netzach on the Pillar
of Consciousness is the sephira Yesod. Yesod
is the sephira of interface, and a comparison
with computer peripheral interfaces is appropriate:
between the computer programs running
on a computer and the real world are various
interfaces, such as a mouse, a visual display, a
printer, a keyboard and so on. Yesod is sometimes
called “the Receptacle of the Emanations”,
because it interfaces the emanations of all three
Pillars to the sephira Malkhut, and it is through
Yesod that the final abstract form of something
is realised in Matter.
Form in Yesod is no longer abstract. It is
explicit, but not yet individual - that last quality
is reserved for Malkhut alone. Yesod is like the
mold in a bottle factory - the mold is a realisation
of the abstract idea “bottle” in so far as it
expresses the shape of a particular bottle design
in every detail, but it is not itself an individual
bottle.
The Pillars & The Lightning Flash
17
The final step in the descending process is the
sephira Malkhut, where God becomes flesh, and
every abstract form is realised in actuality, in
the “real world”. There is much to say about
this, but I will save it for later.
The process I have described is called the
Lightning Flash. The Lightning Flash runs as
follows: Keter, Chokhmah, Binah, Chesed,
Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, Malkhut.
If you trace the Lightning Flash on a diagram
of the Tree you will see that it has the zigzag
shape of a lightning flash. The sephiroth are
numbered according to their order on the lightning
flash: Keter is 1, Chokhmah is 2, and so on.
The “Sepher Yetzirah” [24] has this to say about
the sephiroth:
“When you think of the ten sephiroth
cover your heart and seal the desire of
your lips to announce their divinity.
Yoke your mind. Should it escape your
grasp, reach out and bring it back under
your control. As it was said, ‘And the
living creatures ran and returned as the
appearance of a flash of lightning,’ in
such a manner was the Covenant created.”
The quotation within the quotation comes
from Ezekiel 1.14, a text which inspired a large
amount of early Kabbalistic speculation, and it
is probable that the Lightning Flash as described
is one of the earliest components of the idea of
sephirothic emanation.
The Lightning Flash describes the creative
process, beginning with the unknown, unmanifest
hidden God, and follows it through ten distinct
stages to a change or manifest effect in the
material world. It can be used to describe any
change - lighting a match, baking a cake, walking
the dog - and students of Kabbalah may be
set the exercise of analysing any arbitrarily chosen
event in terms of the Lightning Flash.
Because the Lightning Flash can be used to
understand the inner process whereby the phenomenal
world changes and evolves, it is a key
to practical magical work. Because it is intended
to account for all change it follows that all
change is equally magical, and the word “magic”
is essentially meaningless (but nevertheless useful
for distinguishing between “normal” and
“abnormal” states of consciousness, and the
modes of causality which pertain to each).
It also follows that the key to understanding
our “spiritual nature” does not belong in the
spiritual empyrean, where it remains inaccessible,
but in the routine and unexciting little
things in life. There is a real sense in which
lighting a match, baking a cake, or walking the
dog are all connected with the deepest spiritual
realities. The view that the Tree of Life and the
Lightning Flash describe how everything is continuously
created leads to a view that everything
is equally “spiritual”, equally “divine”,
and there is more to be learned from simple
daily routines than there is in a spiritual discipline
which puts you “here” and God “over
there”.
The Lightning Flash ends in Malkhut, the
world of matter where we live our lives as
human beings, and it can be followed through
the hidden pathways of creation like Blake’s
“golden thread”, until one arrives back at the
source.
This introduction to the sephiroth via the
Lightning Flash has provided only the bare
bones of a description of each sephira. The next
Chapter provides detailed information (“correspondences”)
for each sephira, and then in
Chapter 5 we will follow the Lightning Flash
from Malkhut back up to Keter by examining
the qualities of each sephira in detail.
Notes on Kabbalah
18
Sephirothic Correspondences
19
The correspondences are a set of symbols,
associations, metaphors 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 are obviously appropriate,
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
one 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 a sephira. In some cases it is
not a planet at all (e.g. the fixed stars). The
planets are ordered by decreasing apparent
motion - the sun and moon are
included, so this is one correspondence
which pre-dates Copernicus.
3. The Element is the physical element (earth,
water, air, fire, aethyr) which has most in
common with the nature of the Sephira.
Only the five Lower Face sephiroth have
been attributed an element.
4. Briatic colour. This is the colour of the
sephira as seen in the world of Creation,
Briah. There are colour scales for the other
three worlds in the literature (e.g. [35])but
I don’t use them in my own practical work.
5. Magical Image. Useful in meditiations;
some are astute.
6. The Briatic Correspondence is an abstract
quality which says something about the
essence of the way the sephira expresses
itself.
7. The Illusion characterises the way in which
the energy of a sephira clouds one’s judgement;
it is something which is obviously
true at the time. Most people suffer from
one or more of these according to their
temperament.
8. The Obligation is a personal quality which
is demanded of an initiate at this level.
9. The Virtue and Vice describe the energy of
the sephiroth as it manifests in a positive
and negative sense through the personality.
10.Klippot is a word which means “shell”. In
medieval Kabbalah each sephira was
“seen” to be adding form to the sephira
which preceded it in the Lightning Flash
(see Chapter 3). Form was seen to be an
accretion, a shell around the pure divine
energy of the Godhead, and each layer or
shell hid the divine radiance a little bit
more, until God was buried in form and
exiled in matter, the end-point of the process.
At the time, attitudes to matter were
tainted with Gnostic and Manichean
notions that matter was evil, a snare for the
spirit, and consequently the Klippot or
shells were “demonised” and actually
turned into demons - some books give lists
of Klippotic demons. The correspondences
I have given here restore the original idea
of a shell of form without the corresponding
force to activate it - it is the lifeless,
empty husk of a sephira devoid of force.
11. The Command refers to the Four Powers of
the Sphinx, with an extra one added for
good measure.
12. The Spiritual Experience is just that.
13. The Titles are a collection of alternative
4
Sephirothic Correspondences
Notes on Kabbalah
20
names for the sephira. Most are very old.
14. The God Name is a key to invoking the
power of the sephira in the world of emanation,
Atzilut.
15. The Archangel mediates the energy of the
sephira in the world of creation, Briah.
16. The Angel Order administers the energy of
the sephira in the world of formation,
Yetzirah.
17. The Keywords are a collection of phrases
which summarise key aspects of the
sephira.
Sephirothic Correspondences
21
Table 1: Malkhu t
Meaning Kingdom
Number 10
Colour Brown (citrine, russet red, olive green, black)
Briatic Correspondence Stability
Magical Image A young woman crowned and sitting on a throne
Titles The Gate; Gate of Death; Gate of Tears; Gate of Justice;
The Inferior Mother; Malkah, the Queen; Kallah, the
Bride; the Virgin.
Element Earth
Virtue Discrimination
Vice Avarice; Inertia
Illusion Materialism
Klippot Stasis
Obligation Discipline
Command Keep silent
God Name Adonai ha Aretz, Adonai Malekh
Archangel Sandalphon
Angel Order Ishim
Planet Cholem Yesodeth (The Breaker of the Foundations, the
sphere of the elements)
Spiritual Experience Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel
Keywords The real world, physical matter, the Earth, Mother
Earth, the physical elements, the natural world, sticks
& stones, possessions, faeces, practicality, solidity, stability,
inertia, heaviness, bodily death, incarnation.
Table 2: Yeso d
Meaning Foundation
Number 9
Colour Purple
Briatic Correspondence Receptivity, perception
Magical Image A beautiful man, very strong (e.g. Atlas)
Titles The Treasure House of Images, the Receptacle of the
Emanations
Element Aethyr
Virtue Independence
Sephirothic Correspondences
22
Vice Idleness
Illusion Security
Klippot Zombieism, robotism
Obligation Trust
Command Go!
God Name Shaddai el Chai
Archangel Gabriel
Angel Order Cherubim
Planet Levanah (Moon)
Spiritual Experience Vision of the Machinery of the Universe
Keywords Perception, interface, imagination, image, appearance,
glamour, the Moon and tides, the unconscious, instinct,
illusion, hidden infrastructure, dreams, divination, anything
as it seems to be and not as it is, mirrors and crystals,
the “Astral Plane”, Aethyr, glue, secret doors,
tunnels, sex & reproduction, the genitals, cosmetics,
instinctive magic (psychism), the shamanic tunnel.
Table 2: Yesod (Continued)
Table 3: Hod
Meaning Glory, Splendour
Number 8
Colour Orange
Briatic Correspondence Abstraction
Magical Image An Hermaphrodite
Titles -
Element Air
Virtue Honesty, truthfulness
Vice Dishonesty
Illusion Order
Klippot Rigidity, rigid order
Obligation Learn
Command To Will
God Name Elohim Tzabaoth
Archangel Raphael
Angel Order Beni Elohim
Planet Kokab (Mercury)
Spiritual Experience Vision of Splendour
Sephirothic Correspondences
23
Keywords Reason, abstraction, communication, conceptualisation,
logic, the sciences, language, speech, money (as a
concept), mathematics, medicine & healing, trickery,
writing, media (as communication), pedantry, philosophy,
Kabbalah (as an abstract system), protocol, the
Law, ownership, territory, theft, “Rights”, ritual magic.
Table 3: Hod (Continued)
Table 4: Netzach
Meaning Victory, Firmness
Number 7
Colour Green
Briatic Correspondence Nurture
Magical Image A beautiful naked woman
Titles -
Element Water
Virtue Unselfishness
Vice Selfishness
Illusion Projection
Klippot Habit, routine
Obligation Responsibility
Command To Know
God Name Jehovah Tzabaoth
Archangel Haniel
Angel Order Elohim
Planet Nogah (Venus)
Spiritual Experience Vision of Beauty Triumphant
Keywords Passion, pleasure, luxury, sensual beauty, feelings,
drives, emotions - love, hate, anger, joy, depression,
misery, excitement, desire, lust; nurture, libido, empathy,
sympathy, ecstatic magic.
Table 5: Tipheret
Meaning Beauty
Number 6
Colour Yellow
Briatic Correspondence Centrality, wholeness
Magical Image A child, a king, a sacrificed god
Sephirothic Correspondences
24
Titles Rachamin, charity; Melekh, the King; Zoar Anpin, the
lesser countenance; the Microprosopus; the Son
Element Fire
Virtue Devotion to the Great Work
Vice Pride, self-importance
Illusion Identification
Klippot Hollowness
Obligation Integrity
Command To Dare
God Name Aloah va Daat
Archangel Michael
Angel Order Malachim
Planet Shemesh (Sun)
Spiritual Experience Vision of Harmony, Knowledge & Conversation of the
Holy Guardian Angel
Keywords Harmony, integrity, balance, wholeness, centrality, the
Self, self-importance, self-sacrifice, identity, the Son of
God, a King, the Great Work, the Philospher’s Stone,
the Sun, gold, the solar plexus
Table 5: Tipheret (Continued)
Table 6: Gevurah
Meaning Strength
Number 5
Colour Red
Briatic Correspondence Power
Magical Image A mighty warrior
Titles Din, justice; Pachad, fear
Element -
Virtue Courage and energy
Vice Cruelty
Illusion Invincibility
Klippot Bureaucracy
Obligation Courage and loyalty
Command -
God Name Elohim Gevor
Archangel Kamael (sometimes Samael)
Angel Order Seraphim
Sephirothic Correspondences
25
Planet Madim (Mars)
Spiritual Experience Vision of Power
Keywords Power, justice, retribution (eaten cold), the Law (in
execution), cruelty, oppression, domination & the
Power Myth, severity, necessary destruction, catabolism,
martial arts
Table 6: Gevurah (Continued)
Table 7: Chesed
Meaning Mercy
Number 4
Colour Blue
Briatic Correspondence Authority
Magical Image A mighty king
Titles Gedulah, magnificance, love, majesty
Element -
Virtue Humility and obedience
Vice Tyranny, hypocrisy, bigotry, gluttony
Illusion Being right (self-righteousness)
Klippot Ideology
Obligation Humility
Command -
God Name El
Archangel Tzadkiel
Angel Order Chasmalim
Planet Tzadekh (Jupiter)
Spiritual Experience Vision of Love
Keywords Authority, leadership, creativity, inspiration, vision,
excess, waste, secular and spiritual power, submission
and the Annihilation Myth, obliteration, the atom
bomb, birth, service, spiritual love
Table 8: Daat
Meaning Knowledge
Correspondences Daat does not manifest positively and it is not appropriate
to think of it in the same sense as a sephira.
Keywords Hole, tunnel, gateway, doorway, Janus, black hole,
vortex.
Sephirothic Correspondences
26
Table 9: Binah
Meaning Understanding , Intelligence
Number 3
Colour Black
Briatic Correspondence Comprehension
Magical Image An old woman (possibly in mourning) on a throne.
Titles Aima, the Mother; Ama, the Crone; Marah, the bitter
sea; Khorsia, the Throne; the Fifty Gates of Understanding;
Intelligence; the Mother of Form; the Superior
Mother.
Element -
Virtue Silence
Vice Inertia
Illusion Death
Klippot Fatalism
Obligation -
Command -
God Name Elohim
Archangel Cassiel
Angel Order Aralim
Planet Shabbathai
Spiritual Experience Vision of Sorrow
Keywords Limitation, form, constraint, heaviness, slowness, inertia,
old-age, infertility, incarnation, karma, fate, time,
space, natural law, the womb and gestation, darkness,
boundedness, enclosure, containment, fertility,
mother, weaving and spinning, death (annihilation)
Table 10: Chokhmah
Meaning Wisdom
Number 2
Colour grey, white flecked with silver
Briatic Correspondence Revolution
Magical Image A bearded man
Titles Abba, the father
Element -
Virtue Good
Sephirothic Correspondences
27
Vice Evil
Illusion Independence
Klippot Arbitrariness
Obligation -
Command -
God Name Jah
Archangel Ratziel
Angel Order Ophanim
Planet Mazlot (the Zodiac, the fixed stars)
Spiritual Experience Vision of God Face-to-Face
Keywords Pure creative force, life-force, the wellspring, the erect
phallus and ejaculation, standing stones, fountains, the
fountain and water of Life, springs
Table 10: Chokhmah (Continued)
Table 11: Keter
Meaning Crown
Number 1
Colour Brilliant white
Briatic Correspondence Unity
Magical Image A bearded man seen in profile
Titles Ancient of Days, the Greater Countenance (Macroprosopus),
the White Head, Concealed of the Concealed,
Existence of Existences, the Smooth Point, Rum
Maalah, the Highest Point, and many, many more
Element -
Virtue Attainment
Vice -
Illusion Attainment
Klippot Futility
Obligation -
Command -
God Name Eheieh
Archangel Metatron
Angel Order Chaioth ha Qadesh
Planet Rashith ha Gilgalim (the first swirlings, the Big Bang)
Spiritual Experience Union with God
Sephirothic Correspondences
28
Keywords Unity, union, all, pure consciousness, God, the Godhead,
manifestation, beginning, source, emanation
Table 11: Keter (Continued)
The Sephiroth
29
5
The Sephiroth
This chapter provides a detailed look at each
of the ten sephiroth and draws together material
scattered over previous chapters.
Malkhut
Malkhut is the Cinderella of the sephiroth. It
is the sephira most often ignored by beginners,
the sephira most often glossed over in Kabbalistic
texts, and it is not only the most immediate
of the sephira but it is also the most complex,
because Malkhut is the final expression of form.
Contemplate the incredible variety of biological
life and the amazing variety of human manufactures
and you will understand how Malkhut is
the final expression of an underlying unity
through infinite forms of diversity. For sheer
inscrutability Malkhut rivals Keter - indeed,
there is a Kabbalistic aphorism that “Keter is in
Malkhut, and Malkhut is in Keter, but after
another manner”.
The word Malkhut means “Kingdom”, and
the sephira is the culmination of a process of
emanation whereby the creative power of the
Godhead is progressively structured and
defined as it moves down the Tree and arrives
in a completed form in Malkhut. Malkhut is the
sphere of matter, substance, the real, physical
world.
Malkhut is a veil that conceals. In the least
compromising versions of materialist philosophy
(e.g. Hobbes) there is nothing beyond physical
matter. From this viewpoint the Tree of Life
above Malkhut does not exist: our feelings of
identity and self-consciousness are no more
than the by-product of chemical reactions in the
brain, and the mind is a complex automata
which suffers from the disease of metaphysical
delusions.
Kabbalah is not materialist, but when we
examine Malkhut by itself we find ourselves
immersed in matter, and it is natural to think in
terms of physics, and chemistry and molecular
biology. The natural sciences provide the most
accurate models of matter and the physical
world that we have, and it would be foolish to
imagine that Kabbalah can provide better explanations
of the nature of matter than those available
to us as a result of the natural sciences. For
practical purposes the average university science
graduate knows (much) more about the
material stuff of the world than the medieval
Kabbalist ever did, and a grounding in modern
physics is as good a way as any to approach the
inexhaustible mysteries of Malkhut.
For those who are not comfortable with physics
there are alternative, more traditional ways
to approach Malkhut. The magical image of
Malkhut is that of a young woman crowned and
throned. The woman is Malkah, the Queen,
Kallah, the Bride. She is the Inferior Mother, a
reflection and realisation of the superior or
supernal mother Binah. She is the Queen who
inhabits the Kingdom, and the Bride of the
Microprosopus, the King who is also the Son of
God. She is the Anima Mundi, the World-Soul.
She is the Shekhinah, the indwelling spirit of
God in matter. She is Gaia, Mother Earth, but of
course she is not only the substance of this little
planet; she is the body of the entire physical universe.
Some care is required when assigning
Mother/Earth goddesses to Malkhut, because
some of them correspond more closely to the
superior mother Binah. There is a close and
deep connection between Malkhut and Binah
which results in the two sephiroth sharing similar
correspondences, and one of the oldest Kabbalistic
texts [24] has this to say about Malkhut:
“The title of the tenth path [Malkhut] is
the Resplendent Intelligence. It is called
this because it is exalted above every head
from where it sits upon the throne of
Binah. It illuminates the numinosity of all
lights and causes to emanate the Power of
the archetype of countenances or forms.”
One of the titles of Binah is Khorsia, or
Throne, and the image which this text provides
is that Binah provides the framework upon
which Malkhut sits. We will return to this later.
Notes on Kabbalah
30
Binah contains the potential of form in the
abstract, while Malkhut is the fullest realisation
of form, and both sephiroth share the correspondences
of heaviness, limitation, finiteness,
inertia, avarice, silence, and death.
The female quality of Malkhut is often identified
with the Shekhinah, the female spirit of
God in the creation, and Kabbalistic literature
makes much of the (carnal) relationship of God
and the Shekhinah. Waite [41] mentions that the
relationship between God and Shekhinah is
mirrored in the relationship between man and
woman, and provides a great deal of information
on both the Shekhinah and what he
quaintly calls “The Mystery of Sex”.
After the exile of the Jews from Spain in 1492,
Kabbalists identified their own plight with the
fate of the Shekhinah, and she is pictured as
being cast out into matter in much the same way
as the Gnostics pictured Sophia, the outcast
divine wisdom. The doctrine of the Shekhinah
within Kabbalah and within Judaism as a whole
is complex and it is something I don’t feel competent
to comment on further; more information
can be found in [39] & [41].
Malkhut is the sphere of the physical elements
and Kabbalists still use the four-fold scheme
which dates back at least as far as Empedocles
and probably to the Ark. The four elements correspond
to four readily observable states of matter:
solid earth
liquid water
gas air
plasma fire/electric arc (lightning)
In addition it is not uncommon to include a
fifth element so rarefied and arcane that most
people (myself included) have difficulty saying
what it is. The fifth element is aethyr (or ether)
and is sometimes called spirit.
The quantity of material which has been written
about the elements in occult and astrological
literature is enormous, and rather than reproduce
in bulk what is relatively well-known I
will provide a rough outline so that those readers
who aren’t familiar with Kabbalah will realise
I am talking about approximately the same
thing as they have seen before. A detailed
description of the traditional medieval view of
the four elements can be found in Barrett’s The
Magus [2]. The hierarchy of elemental powers
can be found in 777 [8] and in the Golden Dawn
material [35] - I have summarised a few useful
items below. The elements in Malkhut are
arranged as shown in Figure 10 below:
Table 12:
Element Fire Air Water Earth
God Name Elohim Jehovah Eheieh Agla
Archangel Michael Raphael Gabriel Uriel
Elemental King Djinn Paralda Nichsa Ghob
Elemental Salamenders
Sylphs Undines Gnomes
S
N
E W
Zenith
Nadir
Fire
Air Water
+Aethyr
-Aethyr
Earth
Figure 10:The Elements &
the Cardinal Points
The Sephiroth
31
The cardinal points have been rotated
through 180 degrees from their customary
directions so that it is easier to see how the elements
fit on the lower face of the Tree of Life -
see Figure 11. Aethyr is shown as the centre of
the circle, but has been split into positive Aethyr
at the zenith, and negative Aethyr at the nadir.
It is important to distinguish between the elements
in Malkhut, where we are talking about
real substances (the water in your body, the
breath in your lungs), and the elements on the
Tree, where we are using traditional correspondences
associated with the elements, e.g.:
Earth solid, stable, practical, down-toearth
Water sensitive, intuitive, emotional, caring,
nurturing, fertile
Air vocal, communicative, intellectual
Fire energetic, daring, impetuous
+Aethyrglue, binding, plastic
-Aethyrunbinding, dissolution, disintegration
The elements in Malkhut are real. You can
stub your toe on a stone, you can drown in the
sea, and you can set your house on fire (fanned
by a strong east wind no doubt). If you attempt
to work with the elements in Malkhut you are
working with the stuff of the physical world.
Malkhut is not an inner mystical state - it is
really there.
The pseudo-element of Aethyr or Spirit is
enigmatic, but it can be thought of in terms of
the forces which bind matter together. It is
almost certainly a coincidence (but nevertheless
interesting) that just as there are four elements
there are four fundamental forces (gravitational,
electromagnetic, weak nuclear & strong
nuclear) known to date, and current belief
among theoretical physicists is that they can be
unified into one fundamental force - that is, the
properties of matter are an expression of four
forces which are really the same thing. Sometimes
I like to think that the four elements are
the four forces, and the one unifying force is
aethyr.
On an even more arcane tack, Barret [2] has
this to say about Aethyr:
“Now seeing that the soul is the essential
form, intelligible and incorruptible, and is
the first mover of the body, and is moved
itself; but that the body, or matter, is of
itself unable and unfit for motion, and
does very much degenerate from the soul,
it appears that there is a need of a more
excellent medium:- now such a medium is
conceived to be the spirit of the world, or
that which some call a quintessence;
because it is not from the four elements,
but a certain first thing, having its being
above and beside them. There is, therefore,
such a kind of medium required to
be, by which celestial souls [e.g. forms]
may be joined to gross bodies, and bestow
upon them wonderful gifts. This spirit is
in the same manner, in the body of the
world, as our spirit is in our bodies; for as
the powers of our soul are communicated
to the members of the body by the
medium of the spirit, so also the virtue of
the soul of the world is diffused, throughout
all things, by the medium of the universal
spirit; for there is nothing to be
found in the whole world that hath not a
spark of the virtue thereof.”
Aethyr underpins the elements like a foundation
and its attribution to Yesod should be obvious,
particularly as it forms the linking role
between the ideoplastic world of “the Astral
Light” [26] and the material world. Aethyr is
thought to come in two flavours - positive
Aethyr, which binds, and negative Aethyr,
which unbinds. Negative Aethyr is something
like the Universal Solvent - it requires some care
in its handling!
Tipheret
Hod Netzach
Malkhut
Yesod
Fire
Earth
Air -Aethyr Water
Figure 11:The Circle Cross
- the Elements on the Tree
+Aethyr
Notes on Kabbalah
32
Working with the physical elements in Malkhut
is one of the most important areas of
applied magic, dealing as it does with the basic
constituents of the real world. The physical elements
are tangible and can be experienced in a
direct way through recreations such as caving,
diving, parachuting or firewalking. Our bodies
themselves are made from physical matter, and
there are many meditational exercises which
can be carried out using the elements as a basis
for work on the body. For example, concentration
on the element of fire can be used to resist
the bodily effects of cold. If you can stand his
manic intensity (Exercise 1: boil an egg by force
of will) then Bardon [1] is full of many ideas on
this subject.
Malkhut is often associated with various
kinds of intrinsic evil. To understand this attitude
(which I do not share) it is necessary to
confront the same question as thirteenth century
Kabbalists: can God be evil? The answer to this
question was (broadly speaking) “yes”, but
Kabbalists have gone through many gyrations
in an attempt to avoid what was for many an
unacceptable conclusion. It was difficult to
accept that famine, war, disease, prejudice, hate,
or death could be a part of a perfect being, and
there had to be a way to account for evil which
did not contaminate divine perfection. We
know that our physical existence is a mixed
experience: perhaps the problem was something
to do with our embodiment in physical matter?
This viewpoint is akin to sweeping evil under
the carpet, and in the case of Kabbalah the carpet
has tended to be Malkhut. Malkhut became
the habitation for evil spirits.
If one examines the structure of the Tree without
prejudice, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion
that evil is quite adequately accounted for;
there is no need to shuffle evil to the lower
periphery of the Tree like a cleaner without a
dustpan. The emanation of any sephira from
Chokhmah downwards can manifest as good or
evil depending on circumstances and the point
of view of those affected by the energy
involved. This appears to have been understood
even at the time of the writing of the Zohar,
where the mercy of God is constantly contrasted
with the severity of God, and the author makes
it clear that one tendency has to balance the
other - you cannot have the mercy without the
severity.
On the other hand, the severity of God is persistently
identified with the rigours of existence
(form, finiteness, limitation), and while it is true
that many of the things which have been identified
with evil are a consequence of the finiteness
of things, of being finite beings in a world of
finite resources governed by natural laws with
inflexible causality, it not correct to infer (as
some have) that form itself is intrinsically evil.
The notion that form and matter are intrinsically
evil, or in some way imperfect or not a part
of God, may have reached Kabbalah from a
number of sources. Scholem comments [39]:
“The Kabbalah of the early thirteenth century
was the offspring of a union between
an older and essentially Gnostic tradition
represented by the book “Bahir”, and the
comparatively modern element of Jewish
Neo-Platonism.”
There is the possibility that the Kabbalists of
Provence (who wrote or edited the Bahir) were
influenced by the Cathars, a late form of Manicheanism.
Whether the source was Gnosticism,
Neo-Platonism, Manicheanism or some combination
of all three, Kabbalah has imported a
view of matter and form which distorts the view
of things portrayed by the Tree of Life, and so in
some interpretations Malkhut ends up as a kind
of cosmic outer darkness, a bin for all the dirt,
detritus, broken sephira and dirty handkerchiefs
of the creation. Form is evil, the Mother of
Form is female, women are most definitely and
indubitably evil, and Malkhut is the most
female of the sephira, therefore Malkhut is most
definitely evil...quod erat demonstrandum. Or
so it was concluded by some.
By the time we reach the late 19th. century
and the time of S.L. Mathers and the Hermetic
Brotherhood of the Golden Dawn, there is a
complete Tree of evil demonic Klippot underneath
Malkhut as a reflection of the “good” Tree
above it. This may have something to do with
the fact that meditations on Malkhut can easily
become meditations on Binah, and meditations
on Binah have a habit of slipping into the Abyss,
and once in the Abyss it is easy to trawl up
enough junk to imagine one has “discovered”
an averse Tree “underneath” Malkhut.
This view of the Klippot, or Shells, as active,
demonic evil has become pervasive, and as people
put more energy into the demonic Tree, the
less there is for the original. Abolish the Klippot
as demonic forces, and the Tree of Life comes
alive with its full power of good and evil. The
following quotation from Bischoff [3] (speaking
The Sephiroth
33
of the Sephiroth) provides a more rational view
of the Klippot:
“Since their energy [of the sephiroth]
shows three degrees of strength (highest,
middle and lowest degree), their emanations
group accordingly in sequence. We
usually imagine the image of a descending
staircase. The Kabbalist prefers to see
this fact as a decreasing alienation of the
central primeval energy. Consequently
any less perfect emanation is to him the
cover or shell (Qlippah) of the preceeding,
and so the last (furthest) emanations
being the so-called material things are the
shell of the total and are therefore called
(in the actual sense) Klippot.”
This is my own view; the shell or Qlippah of
something is the accretion of form which it
accumulates as energy comes down the Lightning
Flash. If the shell can be considered by
itself then it is a dead husk of something which
could be alive - it preserves all the structure but
there is no energy in it to bring it to life. One can
imagine a man who walks into ten shops and in
each shop he buys a coat and puts it on. By the
time he arrives in the tenth shop he is so laden
down by coats he can hardly move. Are the
coats evil? Are they demonic? Or are they just
coats, dead things, coverings?
With this interpretation the Klippot are to be
found everywhere: in relationships, at work, at
play, in ritual, in society. Whenever something
dies and people refuse to recognise that it is
dead, and cling to the lifeless husk of whatever
it was, then you find a Qlippah. The Qlippah of
Malkhut is what you would get if the Sun went
out: stasis, life frozen into immobility.
In keeping with the belief that matter is evil,
Malkhut has not one but two vices. The first vice
of Malkhut is Avarice, not only in the sense of
trying to acquire material things, but also in the
sense of being unwilling to let go of anything,
even when it has become dead and worthless. It
is common to find people who cling to the past
by surrounding themselves with artifacts and
memories, rather than living in the present.
The other vice of Malkhut is Inertia, in the
sense of “active resistance to motion; sluggish;
disinclined to move or act”. It is visible in most
people at one time or another, and tends to
manifest when a task is new, necessary, but not
particularly exciting, when there is no excitement
or “natural energy” to keep one fired up,
and one has to keep on pushing right to the finish.
For this reason the obligation of Malkhut is
(has to be) self-discipline.
The virtue of Malkhut is Discrimination, the
ability to perceive differences. The ability to perceive
differences is a necessity for any living
organism, whether it is a bacterium able to
sense the gradient of a nutrient, or a youngster
working out how much money to wheedle out
of his parents. As Malkhut is the final realisation
of form, it is the sphere where our ability to distinguish
between differences is most pronounced.
The capacity to discriminate is fundamental to
our survival. It is so important that it works
overtime and finds boundaries and distinctions
everywhere - “you” and “me”, “yours” and
“mine”, distinctions of “property” and “value”
and “territory” are intellectual abstractions on
one level (i.e. not real) and fiercely defended
realities on another (i.e. very real indeed).
The quality of discrimination specific to Malkhut
is often defined as the ability to discriminate
between “the real and the unreal”. I am not
going to attempt a definition of real and unreal,
but it is the case that much of what we think of
as real is unreal, and much of what we think of
as unreal is real, and we need the same discrimination
which leads us into the mire of irrelevant
distinctions to lead us out again.
Some people think skin colour is a real measure
of intelligence...but many do not. Some people
think gender is a real measure of ability;
many do not. Many people judge on appearances;
some do not. There is clearly a difference
between a bottle of beer and a bottle of urine,
but is the colour of the bottle important? What is
important? What differences are real, and what
differences matter? How much energy do we
devote to things which are “not real”. Should I
care about “property” and “territory” and “status”,
and if I do care, to what extent. Where do I
start caring, and where do I stop caring (i.e.
drawing the line). Am I able to perceive how
much I am being manipulated by a fixation on
unreality? Are my goals in life “real”, or will
they look increasingly silly and immature as I
grow older? For that matter, is Kabbalah “real”?
Does it provide a useful model of reality, or is it
the remnant of a world-view which should have
been put to sleep centuries ago?
One of the primary exercises for an initiate
into Malkhut is a thorough examination of the
question “What is real?”. The ability to discrimiNotes
on Kabbalah
34
nate, to find important differences which have
been glossed over, to ignore differences which
are superficial and irrelevance, is absolutely
vital to the kind of self-analysis which forms a
basis for the initiatory techniques described
later in this book.
There is no easy way to acquire discrimination
and there is no easy way to divide reality
into the real and the unreal. One way is to study
the mechanics of perception and cognition in
the company of other people, to take common
beliefs such as “what goes up must come down”
or “all men are rapists”, and to try to understand
how we form internal models of the
world from the information presented to us. It is
useful to discuss this with other people, because
their model of a situation will almost certainly
differ from your own. A possible written source
is the work of Arthur Korzybski, usually
labelled “General Semantics”, which attempts
to make people aware of the distinctions
between their internal models of reality and the
world on which they are based. There are
doubtless other, equally useful ways of
approaching the problem of “what is real”.
The Spiritual Experience of Malkhut is variously
the Knowledge and Conversation of the
Holy Guardian Angel (HGA), or the Vision of
the HGA, depending on whom you believe. I
will place my money on the Vision of the HGA
in Malkhut, and the Knowledge and Conversation
in Tipheret.
What is the HGA? According to the Gnosticism
of Valentinus, each person has a guardian
angel who accompanies that individual through
their life and reveals the gnosis; the angel is in a
sense the “divine Self”. This belief is a part of
the Kabbalistic tradition I received, so some part
of Gnosticism lives on. It is also a part of the
Jewish tradition, which records many attempts
to contact a maggid, or spiritual teacher.
The current tradition concerning the HGA
almost certainly entered the Western Esoteric
Tradition as a consequence of S.L. Mather’s
translation [28] of The Book of the Sacred Magic of
Abramelin the Mage, which contains full details
of a lengthy ritual to attain the Knowledge and
Conversation of the HGA. This ritual has had an
important influence on twentieth century magicians;
it is often attempted and occasionally
completed. The purpose of contacting the HGA
is to establish a genuine and fulfilling link with
a source of knowledge or wisdom which comes
from within, and is not dependent on buying
the latest book or meeting a fashionable guru.
The powers of Malkhut are invoked by means
of the names Adonai ha Aretz and Adonai Melekh,
which mean “Lord of the World” and “The
Lord who is King” respectively.
The power is transmitted through the world
of Creation by the archangel Sandalphon, who
is sometimes referred to as “the Long Angel”,
because his feet are in Malkhut and his head in
Keter, which gives him an opportunity to discuss
the state of the Creation with Metatron, the
Angel of the Presence.
The angel order of Malkhut is the Ishim or
Ayshim, sometimes translated as the “souls of
fire”, supposedly the souls of righteous men
and women.
In concluding this section on Malkhut, it
worth emphasising that I have chosen deliberately
not to explore some major topics because
there are sufficient threads for anyone with an
interest to pick up and follow for themselves.
The image of Malkhut as Mother Earth provides
a link between Kabbalah and a numinous archetype
with a deep significance for some. The
image of Malkhut as physical substance provides
a link into the sciences, and it is the case
that at the limits of theoretical physics one’s
intuitions seem to be slipping and sliding on the
same reality as in Kabbalah. The image of Malkhut
as the sphere of the elements is the key to a
large body of practical magical technique which
varies from yoga-like concentration on the bodily
elements, to nature-oriented work in the
great outdoors. Lastly, just as the design of a
building reveals much about its builders, so
Malkhut can reveal a great deal about Keter -
the bottom of the Tree and the top have much in
common.
Yesod
Yesod means “foundation”, and the sephira
represents the hidden infrastructure whereby
the emanations from the remainder of the Tree
are transmitted to the sephira Malkhut. Just as a
large building has its air-conditioning ducts,
service tunnels, conduits, electrical wiring, hot
and cold water pipes, attic spaces, lift shafts,
winding rooms, storage tanks, and a telephone
exchange, so does the Creation; the external,
visible world of phenomenal reality rests (metaphorically
speaking) upon a hidden foundation
of occult machinery.
The Sephiroth
35
Meditations on the nature of Yesod tend to be
filled with secret tunnels and concealed mechanisms,
as if the Creation was a Gothic mansion
with a secret door behind every mirror, a passage
in every wall, a pair of hidden eyes behind
every portrait, and a subterranean world of forgotten
tunnels leading who knows where. For
this reason the Spiritual Experience of Yesod is
aptly named “The Vision of the Machinery of
the Universe”.
Many Yesod correspondences reinforce the
notion of a foundation, of something which lies
behind, supports and gives shape to phenomenal
reality. The magical image of Yesod is of “a
beautiful naked man, very strong”. An image
which springs to mind is that of a man with the
world resting on his shoulders, like one of the
misrepresentations of the Titan Atlas (who actually
held up the heavens, not the world). The
angel order of Yesod is the Cherubim, the
Strong Ones; the archangel is Gabriel, the
Strong or Mighty One of God, and the Godname
is Shaddai el Chai, the Almighty Living
God. The idea of a foundation suggests that
there is a substance which lies behind physical
matter and “in-forms it” or “holds it together”,
something less structured, more plastic, more
refined and rarefied, and this “fifth element” is
often called aethyr.
I will not attempt to justify aethyr in terms of
current physics (the closest concept I have
found is the hypothesised Higgs field). It is a
convenient handle on a concept which has enormous
intuitive appeal to many magicians, who,
when asked how magic works, tend to think in
terms of a medium which is directly receptive to
the will, something which is plastic and can be
shaped through concentration and imagination,
and which transmits their artificially created
forms into reality. Eliphas Levi called this
medium the “Astral Light”. It is also natural to
imagine that mind, consciousness, and the soul
have their habitation in this substance, and
there are volumes detailing the properties of the
“Etheric Body”, the “Astral Body”, the “Causal
Body” [33], [34] and so on. It is always questionable
whether one should take such ideas literally,
but there is value in working with the kind
of natural intuitions which occur spontaneously
and independently in a large number of people -
there is often power in these intuitions. It is a
mistake to invalidate them because they sound
cranky.
When I talk about aethyr or the Astral Light, I
mean there is an ideoplastic substance which is
subjectively real to many magicians, and explanations
of magic at the level of Yesod revolve
around manipulating this substance using
desire, imagination and will.
The fundamental nature of Yesod is that of
interface; it interfaces the rest of the Tree of Life
to Malkhut. The interface is bi-directional; there
are impulses coming down from Keter, and echoes
bouncing back from Malkhut. The idea of
interface is illustrated in the design of a computer
system.
A computer runs programs. You can load up
a game program and interact with it as if it was
a little world in its own right, driving cars or flying
planes or blowing up bridges with air-toground
missiles. If the monitor it switched off,
the program continues to run. You can unplug
the joystick or the keyboard or the mouse, and
the program will still be there, but you cannot
interact with it any more. People who have tried
to install computer software will know that it
often doesn’t work unless you install the correct
“drivers” to interface the program to your
peripheral devices. A computer is nothing more
than a source of heat and repair bills unless it
has peripheral interfaces and device drivers to
interface the world outside the computer to the
world “inside” it; add a keyboard and a mouse
and a monitor and a printer, install the appropriate
driver software, and you have opened the
door into another reality.
Our own senses have the same characteristic
of being a bi-directional interface through
which we experience the world, and for this reason
the senses correspond to Yesod, and not
only the five traditional senses; the “sixth sense”
and the “second sight” are given equal status.
Yesod is also the sphere of instinctive psychism,
of clairvoyance, precognition, divination and (to
some extent) prophecy. It is also clear from
accounts of lucid dreaming (and the author’s
personal experience) that we possess an ability
to perceive an inner world as vividly as the
outer, and to Yesod belongs the inner world of
dreams, daydreams and vivid imagination. One
of the titles of Yesod is “The Treasure House of
Images”.
To Yesod is attributed Levanah, the Moon,
and the lunar associations of tides, flux and
change, occult influence, and deeply instinctive
and sometimes atavistic behaviour - possession,
Notes on Kabbalah
36
mediumship, lycanthropy.
Although Yesod is the foundation and it has
associations with strength, it is by no means a
rigid scaffold supporting a world in stasis.
Yesod supports the world in the same way that
the sea supports all the life which lives in it, and
just as the sea has its irresistible currents and
tides, so does Yesod. Yesod is the most “occult”
of the sephiroth, and next to Malkhut it is the
most magical, but compared with Malkhut its
magic is of a more subtle, seductive, glamorous
and ensnaring kind. Magicians are drawn to
Yesod by the idea that if reality rests on a hidden
foundation, then by changing the foundation
it is possible to change the reality. The
magic of Yesod is the magic of form and appearance,
not substance; it is the magic of illusion,
glamour, transformation, and shape-changing.
The most commonplace but sophisticated
examples of this are to be found in modern marketing,
advertising, image consulting, and in
what politicians refer to as “spin”. I do not jest.
My tongue is not even slightly in my cheek. The
following quote was taken from this morning’s
paper [40], in an article about the importance of
corporate image:
“The majority of people continue to misunderstand
and think that it is just a logo,
rather than understanding that a corporate
identity programme is actually concerned
with the very commercial
objective of having a strong personality
and single-minded, focused direction for
the whole organisation, “ said Fiona Gilmore,
managing director of the design
company Lewis Moberly. “It’s like planting
an acorn and then a tree grows. If you
create the right foundation (my italics) then
you are building a whole culture for the
future of an organisation.”
I don’t know what Ms. Gilmore studies in her
spare time, but the idea that it is possible to
manipulate reality by manipulating symbols
and appearances is entirely magical.
Although the corporate changes are cosmetic,
those responsible for creating a corporate image
argue that a redesign of a company’s uniform or
name is just the visible sign of a much larger
transformation. The same article on corporate
identity continues as follows:
“The scale of the BT relaunch is colossal.
The new logo will be painted on more
than 72,000 vehicles and trailers, as well
as 9,000 properties. The company’s 92,000
public payphones will get new decals,
and its 90 shops will have to changed,
right down to the yellow door handles.
More than 50,000 employees are likely to
need new uniforms or “image clothing”.
Note the emphasis on image. The company in
question (British Telecom) is an ex-public
monopoly with (at the time of writing) an
appalling customer relations problem, so it is
repainting its vans and changing the colour of
its door handles! This is Yesodic magic on a
gigantic scale.
Image manipulators gain most of their power
from the mass-media. The mass-media correspond
to two sephiroth: as a medium of communication
they belong in Hod, but as a
foundation for our perception of reality they
belong in Yesod. Today most people form their
model of what the world (in the large) is like via
the media. There are a few individuals who
travel the world sufficiently to have a model
based on personal experience, but for most people
their model of what most of the world is like
is formed by newspapers, radio and television.
That is, the media have become an extended (if
inaccurate) instrument of perception. Like our
“normal” means of perception the media are
highly selective in the variety and content of
information provided, and they can be used by
advertising agencies and other manipulative
individuals to create foundations for new collective
realities. For example an advertising agency
may attempt to manipulate your perception of a
product by manipulating its image. Some products
are nothing more than image. It is well
known that the material cost of many very
expensive perfumes is negligible:. What is being
sold is image, and this is widely acknowledged.
While on the subject of changing perception
to assemble new realities, the following quote
by “Don Juan” [5] has a definite Kabbalistic flavour:
“The next truth is that perception takes
place,” he went on, “because there is in
each of us an agent called the assemblage
point that selects internal and external
emanations for alignment. The particular
alignment that we perceive as the world is
the product of a specific spot where our
assemblage point is located on our
cocoon.”
One of the titles of Yesod is “The Receptacle of
the Emanations”, and its function is precisely as
described above - Yesod is the assemblage point
which assembles the emanations of the internal
The Sephiroth
37
and the external.
In addition to the deliberate, magical manipulation
of foundations, there are other important
areas of magic relevant to Yesod. Raw, innate
psychism is an ability which tends to improve
as more attention is devoted to creative visualisation,
focused meditation (on Tarot cards for
example), dreams (e.g. keeping a dream diary),
and divination. Divination is an important technique
to practice even if you feel you are terrible
at it (and especially if you think it is nonsense),
because it reinforces the idea that it is permissible
to “let go” and intuit meanings into any pattern.
Many people have difficulty doing this, feeling
perhaps that they will be swamped with
unreason (recalling Freud’s fear, expressed to
Jung, of needing a bulwark against the “black
mud of occultism”), when in reality their minds
are swamped with reason and could use a holiday.
If Yesod is related to perception, then divination
is about perceiving something meaningful
where others see random patterns. The future
isn’t in the pattern of tea leaves, it is in the patterns
triggered in our minds when the treasurehouse
of images is stimulated. Divination is like
letting Yesod off the leash, free to run around
and sniff out rabbits. Any divination system can
be used, but systems which emphasise pure
intuition are best (e.g. Tarot, runes, tea-leaves,
flights of birds, patterns on the wallpaper,
smoke - I heard of a Kabbalist who threw a
cushion into the air and carried out divination
on the basis of the number of pieces of foam
stuffing which fell out).
Because Yesod is a kind of aethyric reflection
of the physical world, an image of and precursor
to reality, mirrors are an important tool for
Yesodic magic. Quartz crystals are also used,
partly because of the traditional use of crystal
balls for divination, but also because quartz
crystal and amethyst have a peculiarly Yesodic
quality in their own right. The average New
Age shop filled with crystals, Tarot cards, silver
jewellery (lunar association), perfumes, dreamy
music, and all the glitz, glamour and glitter of a
magpie’s nest, is like a temple to Yesod.
Mirrors and crystals can be used passively as
foci for receptivity, but they can also be used
actively for certain kinds of aethyric magic -
there is an interesting book on making and
using magic mirrors which builds on the kind of
elemental magical work carried out in Malkhut
[6].
Yesod has an important correspondence with
the sexual organs. The correspondence occurs in
three ways. The first way is that when the Tree
of Life is placed over the human body, Yesod is
positioned over the genitals. The author of the
Zohar is quite explicit about “the remaining
members of the Microprosopus”, to the extent
that the relevant paragraphs in S.L. Mather’s
translation of “The Lesser Holy Assembly”
remain in Latin to avoid offending Victorian
sensibilities.
The second association of Yesod with the genitals
arises from the union of the Microprosopus
and his Bride. This is another recurring theme in
Kabbalah, and the symbolism is complex and
refers to several distinct ideas, from the relationship
between husband and wife, to a highly
metaphorical view of an internal process within
the body of God: e.g [29].
“When the Male is joined with the
Female, they both constitute one complete
body, and all the Universe is in a state of
happiness, because all things receive
blessing from their perfect body. And this
is an Arcanum.”
or, referring to the Bride:
“And she is mitigated, and receiveth
blessing in that place which is called the
Holy of Holies below.”
or, referring to the “member”:
“And that which floweth down into that
place where it is congregated, and which
is emitted through that most holy Yesod,
Foundation, is entirely white, and therefore
is it called Chesed. Thence Chesed
entereth into the Holy of Holies; as it is
written Ps. cxxxiii. 3 ‘For there Tetragrammaton
commanded the blessing, even life
for evermore.’”
It is not difficult to read a great deal into paragraphs
like this, and there are many more in a
similar vein. Suffice to say that the Microprosopus
is often identified with the sephira Tipheret,
the Bride is the sephira Malkhut, and the point
of union between them is obviously Yesod.
A third and more abstract association
between Yesod and the sexual organs arises
because the sexual organs are a mechanism for
perpetuating the form of a living organism. In
order to come close to the abstract sense of what
is happening in sexual reproduction it is necessary
to take an odd and seemingly irrelevant
Notes on Kabbalah
38
diversion by asking the question “What is a
computer program?”.
A computer program indisputably begins as
an idea: someone decides they want to write a
program to do something. Like a story or a
song, a program is not a material thing, but it
can be written down in various ways; as an
abstract specification in set theoretic notation
akin to pure mathematics, or as a set of recursive
functions in lambda calculus, or it could be
written in several different high level languages
- Pascal, C, Prolog, LISP, ADA, BASIC etc. Are
they all they same program? A story or a novel
can be translated into several different languages
- French, German, Russian; do we accept
each different translation as being “the same
story”? If I read a novel by Tolstoy in English,
am I reading the same story as a person who
reads the same novel in Russian? Most people
would say “Yes”, despite the fact that the actual
text is completely different. The same issue
arises with music: if I play “Amazing Grace” on
a tin whistle and you play it with a mouth
organ, is it the same tune? Despite the fact that
the instruments sound different, most people
would say yes. It is clear that we have definitions
of identity which go much deeper that the
superficial appearances of a thing.
Computer scientists have wrestled with this
problem of identity. They have tried to show
that versions of a program written in two different
languages are in some deep sense functionally
identical. It isn’t trivial to do this because it
asks fundamental questions about language
(any language) and about meaning, but it is possible
in limited cases to produce two apparently
different programs written in different languages
and assert that they are identical. Whatever
a program is, it seems to exist, like a novel
or a song or a story, independently of any particular
language.
So what is the program, and where is it? I
don’t know. We only recognise the existence of
programs or stories or song when we express
them in some way, by writing or singing. Suppose
we write a program down. We could do it
with a pencil. We could punch holes in paper.
We could plant trees in a pattern in a field. We
can line up magnetic domains. We can burn
holes in metal foil. I could have it tattooed on
my back. We can transform it into radically different
forms by passing it through other programs
designed to transform it from one
language to another. This is the same as a novel,
which can be written on paper, or inscribed on
sheets of metal, or baked into clay tablets. A
novel obviously isn’t tied to any physical representation
either. What about the computer a
program runs on? Well, it could be a conventional
one made with electronic chips etc.....but
there are lots of different kinds and makes of
computer, and they can all run the same program.
You can walk into a computer games
shop and buy the same computer game to run
on several radically different types of computer.
It is also quite practical to build computers
which don’t use electrons - you could use
mechanics or fluids or ball bearings - all you
need to do is produce something with the functionality
of a simple abstract device called a
“Turing machine”, and that isn’t hard. So not
only is a program not tied to any particular
physical representation, but the same goes for
the computer itself, and what we are left with is
two puffs of smoke. On another level this is
crazy; we know computers are real, they do real
things in the real world, and the programs
which make them work are obviously real
too....aren’t they?
We could now apply the same kind of scrutiny
to living organisms, and the mechanism of
reproduction. We could take a good look at
nucleic acids, enzymes, proteins etc., and ask
the same kind of questions. Where is the human
being in a strand of DNA? A human being isn’t
in the chemicals any more than the program is
in its code or a novel is in the printed words: the
form of the human being is somehow represented
by a pattern, and the chemicals in DNA
are just one way of expressing that pattern. The
technology now exists to read the pattern in
DNA, encode it so that the pattern can be sent
down a telephone, and turned back into DNA at
the other end. At some point the form of a
human being was flying down a telephone wire.
What I am suggesting is that if you try to get
close to what constitutes a living organism you
end up with another puff of smoke, and a handful
of chemicals which could just as well be ballbearings
or marks in clay or the notes from a tin
whistle....
The thing (form) that is being perpetuated
through sexual reproduction is something quite
abstract and immaterial; it is an abstract form
preserved and encoded in a particular pattern of
chemicals. If I was asked which was more real,
The Sephiroth
39
the transient collection of chemicals used to
encode our genetic information, or the abstract
form itself, I would answer “the form”.
But then, I am a Kabbalist, and I would say
that. I do find it astonishing that there are any
hard-core materialists left in the world. All the
important stuff seems to exist at the level of
puffs of smoke, what Kabbalists call form.
Roger Penrose, one of the most eminent mathematicians
living has this to say [30]:
“I have made no secret of the fact that my
sympathies lie strongly with the Platonic
view that mathematical truth is absolute,
external and eternal, and not based on
man-made criteria; and that mathematical
objects have a timeless existence of their
own, not dependent on human society
nor on particular physical objects.”
“Aha!” cry the materialists, “At least atoms
are real.” Well, they are until you start pulling
them apart with tweezers and end up with a
heap of equations which turn out to be the linguistic
expression of an idea. As Einstein said,
“The most incomprehensible thing about the
world is that it is comprehensible”, that is, capable
of being described in some linguistic form.
I am not trying to convince anyone of the
“rightness” of the Kabbalistic viewpoint. What I
am trying to do is show that the process
whereby form is impressed on matter (the relationship
between Yesod and Malkhut) is not
arcane, theosophical mumbo-jumbo; it is an
issue which is alive and kicking. There are hard
and unresolved philosophical questions about
the nature of form and its relationship to matter
which have been ignored for too long. The
closer we get to “real things” (and that certainly
includes living organisms), the better the Kabbalistic
model looks (that form precedes manifestation,
that there is a well-defined process of
form-ation with the “real world” as an outcome).
To return to where we left off, to the correspondence
between the sephira Yesod and the
genitals, sexual intercourse is about transferring
genetic information. Genetic information is the
complete description of the form and functioning
of an organism. It isn’t the bottle, but it is the
mould from which many bottles come.
The Illusion of Yesod is security, the kind of
security which forms the foundation of our personal
existence in the world. On a superficial
level our security is built out of relationships, a
source of income, a place to live, a vocation, personal
power and influence etc, but at a deeper
level the foundation of personal identity is built
on a series of accidents, encounters and influences
which create the illusion of who we are,
what we believe in, and what we stand for.
There is a warm, secure feeling of knowing
what is right and wrong, of doing the right
thing, of living a worthwhile life in the service
of worthwhile causes, of having a uniquely
privileged vantage point from which to survey
the problems of life (with all the intolerance and
incomprehension of other people which accompanies
this insight). Conversely, there are feelings
of despair, depression, loss of identity, and
existential terror when a crack forms in the illusion,
and reality shows through - what Castaneda
calls “the crack in the world”.
The smug, self-perpetuating illusion which
masquerades as personal identity at the level of
Yesod is the most astoundingly difficult thing to
shift or destroy. It fights back with all the
resources of the personality, and it will enthusiastically
embrace any ally which will help to
shore up its defences - religious, political or scientific
ideology; psychological, sociological,
metaphysical and theosophical claptrap (e.g.
Kabbalah); the law and popular morality; in
fact, any beliefs which give it the power to
retain its identity, uniqueness and integrity.
Because this parasite of the soul uses religion
(and its esoteric offshoots) to sustain itself they
have little or no power over it and become a
major part of the problem.
There are various ways of overcoming this
personal demon (Carroll [4], in an essay on the
subject, calls it Choronzon), and the two I know
best are the cataclysmic and the abrasive.
The first method involves a shock so extreme
that it is impossible to be the same person again,
and if enough preparation has gone before then
it is possible to use the shock to rebuild oneself.
In some cases this doesn’t happen. It is
observable that many people with very rigid
religious beliefs talk readily about having suffered
traumatic experiences, and the phenomenon
of hysterical conversion among soldiers
suffering from war neuroses is well known. In
some cases the cataclysmic method is a valid
method for bringing about initiation, but it may
produce severe trauma, depending on the person
and the nature of the shock.
The other method, the abrasive, is to wear
Notes on Kabbalah
40
away the demon of self-importance, to grind it
into nothing by doing (for example) something
for someone else for which one receives no
thanks, praise, reward, or recognition. The task
has to be big enough and awful enough to
become a demon in its own right and induce
feelings of compulsion (I have to do this), helplessness
(I’ll never make it), indignation (what’s
the point, it’s not my problem anyway), rebellion
(I won’t, I won’t, not any more), more compulsion
(I can’t give up), self-pity (how did I get
into this?), exhaustion (Oh no! Not again!),
despair (I can’t go on), and finally a kind of submission
when one’s demon hasn’t the energy to
put up a struggle any more and simply gives
up. Both techniques, the cataclysmic and the
abrasive, are legitimate and time-honoured
tools of initiation.
The Virtue of Yesod is independence, the ability
to make our own foundations, to continually
rebuild ourselves, to reject the security of comfortable
illusions and confront reality without
blinking.
The Vice of Yesod is idleness. This can be contrasted
with the inertia of Malkhut. A stone is
inert because it lacks the capacity to change.
People however can change ... and can’t be
bothered. At least, not today.
Yesod has a dreamy, illusory, comfortable,
seductive quality, as in the Isle of the Lotus Eaters
- how else could we live as if death and personal
annihilation only happened to other
people?
The Klippotic aspect of Yesod occurs when
foundations are rotten and disintegrating and
only the superficial appearance remains
unchanged - Wilde’s story of Dorian Gray
springs to mind. We also see something like this
in traumas where the brain is damaged and the
person is dead as far as their social existence is
concerned, but the body remains and carries out
basic instinctive functions.
Organisations are just as prone to this as people.
Hod & Netzach
“Objects contain the possibility of all situations.
The possibility of occurring in
states of affairs is the form of an object.
Form is the possibility of structure.”
Wittgenstein
“Since feeling is first who pays any attention
to the syntax of things will never
wholly kiss you.”
E.E. Cummings
The title of the sephira Hod is sometimes
translated as Splendour and sometimes as
Glory. The title of the sephira Netzach is usually
translated as Victory, sometimes as Endurance,
and occasionally as Eternity. Although there
have been many attempts to explain the titles of
this pair of sephiroth, I am not aware of a convincing
explanation.
The two sephiroth correspond to the legs and
like the legs are normally taken as a pair and not
individually. They complement each other but
are not opposites any more than force and form
are opposites. This pair of sephiroth provide the
first example of the polarity of form and force
encountered when ascending back up the lightning
flash from the sephira Malkhut. Form and
force are thoroughly mixed together at the level
of Hod and Netzach: the force aspect represented
by Netzach is differentiated (an example
of form) into a multitude of forces, and the form
aspect represented by Hod acts dynamically (an
example of force) by synthesising new forms
and structures. Both sephiroth represent the
plurality of consciousness at this level, and in
older texts they are referred to as the “armies”
or “hosts”. To understand why they are referred
to in this way it is necessary to look at an archaic
aspect of Kabbalistic symbolism whereby the
Tree of Life is a representation of kingship.
One of the titles of Tipheret is Melekh, or
king. This king is the child of Chokhmah (Abba,
the father) and Binah (Aima, the Mother) and
hence a son of God who wears the crown of
Keter. The kingdom is the sephira Malkhut, at
the same time queen (Malkah) and bride
(Kallah). In his right hand the king wields the
sword of justice (corresponding to Gevurah),
and in his left the sceptre of authority (corresponding
to Chesed), and he rules over the
armies or hosts (Tzabaot), which are Hod and
Netzach.
The use of kingship as a metaphor to convey
what the sephiroth mean obscures as much as it
reveals, but it is an unavoidable piece of Kabbalistic
symbolism, and the attribution of Hod and
Netzach to the “armies” does capture something
useful about the nature of consciousness
at this level: consciousness is fragmented into
innumerable warring factions, and when there
is no rightful king ruling over the kingdom of
the soul (a common state of affairs), then the
The Sephiroth
41
armies elect a succession of leaders from the
ranks, who wear a lopsided crown and occupy
the throne only for as long as it takes to find
another claimant. I will have more to say about
this.
A psychological interpretation of Hod is that
it corresponds to the ability to abstract, to conceptualise,
to reason, to communicate, and this
level of consciousness arises from the fact that in
order to survive we have evolved a nervous system
capable of building internal representations
of the world.
I can drive around London in a car because I
possess an internal representation of the London
street system. I can diagnose faults in the
same car because I have an internal representation
of its mechanical and electrical systems and
how they might fail. I can type this document
without looking at the keyboard because I know
where the keys are positioned, and your ability
to read what I have written pre-supposes a
shared understanding about the meaning of
words and what they represent.
Our nervous systems possess an absolutely
basic ability to create internal representations
out of the information we perceive through our
senses. It is also an absolutely basic characteristic
of the world that it is bigger than my nervous
system. I cannot possibly create accurate, internal
representations of the world, and one of the
meanings of the verb “to abstract” is “to remove
quietly”. This is what the nervous system does:
it quietly removes most of what is going on in
the world in order to create an abridged and
abstract representation of reality with all the
important (important to me) bits underlined in
highlighter pen. This is the world “I” live in: not
in the “real” world, but an internal reality synthesised
by my nervous system.
There has been a lot of philosophising about
this, and it is difficult to think about how our
nervous systems might be distorting or even
manufacturing reality without a feeling of
unease. I am personally reassured by the everyday
observation that most adults can drive a car
on a busy road at eighty miles per hour in reasonable
safety. This suggests that while our synthetic
internal representation of the world isn’t
accurate, it isn’t at all bad.
Abstraction does not end at the point of building
an internal representation of the external
world. My nervous system is quite content to
treat my internal representation of the world as
yet another domain over which it can carry out
further abstraction, and the subsequent new
world of abstractions as another domain, and so
on indefinitely, giving rise to the principal definition
of “abstraction”: “to separate by the operation
of the mind, as in forming a general
concept from consideration of particular
instances”. As an example, suppose someone
asks me to watch the screen of a computer and
to describe what I see. I have no idea what to
expect.
“Hmmm...lots of dots moving around randomly...
different colour dots...red, blue, green.
Ah, the dots seem to be clustering...they’re
forming circles...all the dots of each particular
colour are forming circles, lots of little circles.
Now the circles are coming together to form a
number...it’s 3. Now they’re moving apart and
forming another number...its 15...now 12..9..14.
They’ve gone..........that was it..3, 15, 12, 9, 14. Is
it some sort of test? Do I have to guess the next
number in the series? What are the numbers
supposed to mean? What was the point of it?
Hmmm..the numbers might stand for letters of
the alphabet...let’s see. C..O..L..I...N. It’s my
name!”
The dots on the screen are real - there are real,
discrete, measurable spots of light on the screen.
I could verify the presence of dots of light using
a light meter. The colours are synthesised in the
retina of my eye; different elements in my eye
respond to different frequencies in the light and
give rise to an internal experience we label
“red”, “blue”, and “green”. The colours do not
exist in the light: they exist in my perception of
light, created by the eye itself. The circles do not
exist: given the nature of the computer output
on the screen, there are only individual pixels,
and it is my nervous system which constructs
circles. The numbers do not exist either: it is
only because of my particular upbringing
(which I share with the person who wrote the
computer program) that I am able to distinguish
patterns standing for abstract numbers in patterns
of circles e.g
Notes on Kabbalah
42
And once I begin to reason about the meaning
of a sequence of numbers I have left the real
world a long way behind: not only is “number”
a complex abstraction, but when I ask a question
about the “meaning” of “a sequence of
numbers” I am working with an even more
“abstract abstraction”. My ability to happily
juggle numbers and letters and decide that there
is an identity between the abstract number
sequence “3, 15, 12, 9, 14” and the character
string “COLIN” is one of those commonplace
things which any person might do. It illustrates
how easy it is to become completely detached
from the external world and function within an
internal world of abstractions which have been
detached from anything in the world for so long
that they are taken as real without a second
thought.
In parallel with our ability to structure perception
into an internal world of abstractions
we possess the ability to communicate facts
about this internal world. When I say “The cup
is on the table”, another person is able to identify
in the real world, out of all the information
reaching their senses, something corresponding
to the abstraction “table”, something corresponding
to the abstraction “cup”, and confirm
the relationship of “on-ness”.
Why are the “cup” and “table” abstractions?
Are they not real? They are abstractions because
the word “cup” (or table) does not uniquely
specify any particular cup in the world. When I
use the word I am assuming the listener already
possesses an internal representation of an
abstract object “cup”, and can use that abstract
representation of a cup to identify a particular
object in the context within which my statement
was made.
We are not normally conscious of this process,
and don’t need to be when dealing with simple
propositions about real objects in the real world.
I think I know what a cup is, and I think you do
too. If you don’t know, ask someone to show
you a few.
Life becomes a lot more complicated when we
deal with complex abstractions that are defined
purely by agreement with other people and
have no real-world referent. What is a “contract”,
a “treaty”, a “loan”, “limited liability”, a
“set”, a “function”, “marriage”, a “tort”, “natural
justice”, a “sephira”, a “religion”, “sin”,
“good”, “evil”, and so on (and on).
We reach agreement about the definitions of
these things using language. In some cases, for
example, a mathematical object, the thing is
completely and unambiguously defined using
language, while in other cases (for example
“good”, “sin”) there are no universally accepted
definitions. Life is further complicated by a
widespread lack of awareness that these internal
abstractions are internal. It is common to
find people projecting internal abstractions onto
the world as if they were an intrinsic part of the
fabric of existence, and as objectively real as the
particular cup and the particular table I referred
to earlier. Marriage is no longer a contract
between a man and a woman; it is an estate
made in heaven. What is heaven? God knows.
And what is God? Trot out your definitions and
let’s have an argument - that is the way such
questions are answered.
A third element which goes together with
abstraction and language to complete the
essence of the sephira Hod is reason, and reason’s
formal offspring, logic. Reason is the ability
to articulate and justify our beliefs about the
world using a base of generally agreed facts and
a generally agreed technique for combining
facts to infer valid conclusions.
If reason is considered as one out of a number
of possible processes for establishing what is
true about the world we live in, for establishing
which models of reality are valid and which are
not, then it has been phenomenally successful.
In its heyday there were those who saw reason
as the most divine faculty, the faculty in humankind
most akin to God, and that legacy is still
with us - the words “unreasonable” and “irrational”
are often used to attack and denigrate
someone who does not (or cannot) articulate
what they do or why they do it.
There is of course no “reason” why we should
have to articulate or justify anything, even to
ourselves, but the reasoning machine within us
demands an “explanation” for every phenomenon,
and a “reason” for every action. This is a
characteristic of reason - it is an obsessive mode
of consciousness. Another characteristic of reason
is that it operates on the “garbage-in, garbage-
out” principle: if the base of given
propositions a person uses to reason about are
garbage, so are the conclusions - witness what
two thousand years of Christian theology has
achieved using sound dialectical principles
inherited from Aristotle.
The Sephiroth
43
The sephira Hod on the Pillar of Form represents
the active synthesis of abstract forms in
consciousness, and abstraction, language and
reason are prime examples. In contrast, the
sephira Netzach on the Pillar of Force represents
affective states of consciousness that influence
how we act and react: these are variously
designated as needs, wants, drives, feelings,
moods and emotions.
It is difficult to write about affective states, to
be clear on the distinction between a need and a
want on one hand, or a feeling or a mood on the
other. I find it particularly difficult because the
essence of sadness is being sad, the essence of
excitement is the feeling of excitement, the
essence of desire is the aching, lusting, overwhelming
feeling of desire, and being too precise
about defining feelings is in the essence of Hod,
not Netzach.
These things are incommunicable. They can
be produced in another person, but they cannot
be communicated. It is possible to be clinical
and abstract and precise about the sephira Hod
because an abstract clinical precision captures
that aspect of consciousness perfectly, but when
attempting to communicate something about
Netzach one feels tempted to try to communicate
the feelings themselves, a task more suited
to a poet or a musician, an actor or a dancer.
Please accept this unfortunate limitation in what
follows, a limitation not necessarily present
when Kabbalah is learned at first hand from
someone.
Netzach is on the Pillar of Force, but in reaching
Netzach the Lightning Flash has already
passed through Binah and Gevurah on the Pillar
of Form and so it represents a force conditioned
and constrained by form; when we talk about
Netzach we are talking about the different ways
force can be shaped and directed, like toothpaste
squeezed out of a tube. The toothpaste we
are talking about is something I will call “life
force” or “life energy”. As a rule, when I have a
lot of it I feel well and full of vitality, and when I
don’t have much I feel unwell, tired, and vulnerable.
To continue the somewhat phallic toothpaste
metaphor, the magnitude of pressure on the
tube corresponds to my vitality; the direction in
which the toothpaste comes out corresponds to
a need or a want; and the shape of the nozzle
corresponds to a feeling. All three factors, pressure,
direction and nozzle determine how the
toothpaste comes out; that is, we could say that
there are three factors giving a form to the toothpaste
(or life-energy).
It may seem sloppy and unnecessarily metaphysical
to imply that all needs, wants and feelings
are merely conditions of manifestation of
something more basic, some “unconditioned
force”, but Kabbalah is primarily a tool for
exploring internal states, and there are internal
states (certainly in my experience) where this
force is experienced directly with much less differentiation,
hence the need for clumsy metaphors
involving toothpaste.
Textbooks on psychology define a need as an
internal state which results in directed behaviour,
and discuss needs such as thirst, hunger,
sex, stimulation, proximity seeking, curiousity
and so on. These things are interesting, but for
virtually everyone such basic and inherent
needs are in the nature of “givens” and don’t
provide much individual insight into the questions
“why do I behave differently from other
people?”, or “should I change my behaviour?”,
or more interesting still “to what extent do I (or
can I) influence my behaviour?”. In addition to
inherent needs it is useful also to look at needs
which have been acquired (that is, learned), and
for convenience I will call them “wants”
because people are usually conscious of “wanting”
something specific.
To give some examples, a person might want:
• to buy a bar of chocolate.
• to go to the toilet.
• to own a better car.
• to have a sexual relationship with someone.
• to live forever.
• to be thinner (more muscular, taller, whiter,
browner...).
• to read a book.
• to gain social recognition within a particular
group.
• to win in sport.
• to go shopping.
• to go to bed.
Not only are these “wants” the sort of thing
many people want, but these “wants” can all
occur concurrently in the same person. Some
wants may have been simmering away on a
back burner for years, but there can be an astonishing
variety of pots and pans waiting for an
immediate turn on the stove. The average person’s
consciousness zips around the kitchen like
Notes on Kabbalah
44
a demented short-order cook, stirring this dish,
serving that one, slapping a pot on the stove for
a few minutes only to take it off and put something
else on, throwing whole meals in the bin
only to empty them back into pots a few minutes
later. The choice of which pot ends up on
the hot plate depends largely on mood and accident.
Some people may plan their lives like military
campaigns but most don’t. Most people have far
more wants than there are hours in the day to
achieve them, and those which are actually satisfied
on a given day is more a function of accident
than design. Careers are thrown away
(along with status and security) in a moment of
sexual infatuation; the desire to eat struggles
against the desire to be slim; the writer retires to
the country to write the great novel and does
everything but write; the manager desperately
tries to finish an urgent report but finds himself
dreaming about a car he saw in the car park; the
student abandons an important essay on
impulse to go out with friends.
A thread of energy is randomly cycled around
an arbitrary list of needs and wants to produce
the mixed-up complexity of the average person.
Each activity is quickly replaced by another as
the person attempts to reconcile all his wants
and drives. Unfortunately there is no requirement
that wants should be internally consistent
or complementary; some wants can be in direct
opposition, such as the desire to smoke and the
desire to give up smoking.
Each want can be treated as a distinct mode of
consciousness - I can eat a slap-up meal one day
and thoroughly enjoy it, while the next day I can
look in the mirror and swear never to touch
another pizza again. It is as if two separate
beings inhabited my body, the one who loves
pizzas and the one who wants to be thin, and
each makes plans independently of the other.
Only the magical glitter dust of unbroken memory
sustains the illusion that I am a single person1.
When I view my own wants and actions dispassionately
I can conclude that there is a host
or army of independent beings jostling inside
me, a crowd of artificial elementals individually
ensouled with enough of my energy to bring
one particular desire to fruition. I cope with the
semi-chaotic result of mob rule by using the traditional
remedy: public relations.
I put together internal press releases (various
rationalisations and justifications) to convince
myself, and others if need be, that the mess was
either due to external circumstances beyond my
control (I didn’t have time last night), the fault
of other people (you made me angry), or inevitable
(I had no choice, there was no alternative).
In cases where even my public relations don’t
work I erect a shrine to the gods of Guilt and
make little offerings of sorrow and regret over
the years.
This is normal consciousness for most people.
It is a kind of insanity. Every day new wants are
kicked off in response to media advertising or
peer pressure, and old wants compete with each
other in a zero-sum game. Wants rush to and fro
on the stage of consciousness like actors in the
closing scenes of Julius Caeser - alarums and
excursions, bodies litter the stage, trumpets and
battle shouts in the wings, Brutus falls on his
sword, Anthony claims the field - perhaps this
is why the sephira is called Victory!
Having said this, I should point out that it is
not desire or wants or drives which create the
insanity - Kabbalah does not place the value
judgement on desire that Buddhism does (that
desire is the cause of suffering, and by inference,
something to be overcome). The insanity
arises from mob-rule, from the bizarre internal
processes of justification, rationalisation and
guilt, and from the identification of Self with the
result. I will return to this when discussing the
sephira Tipheret, as the mis-identification of
Self with an arbitrary mob is a key element in
the discussion on Tipheret.
It is worth noting that the idea that the human
mind is a collective is increasingly the orthodox
scientific position. This arises from a number of
separate lines of enquiry. Researchers working
on artificial intelligence find this an appealing
model, and this viewpoint has been expressed
by Marvin Minsky, one of the most influential
pioneers in the field, in his Society of Mind. The
leading cognitive scientist Daniel Dennet also
describes this idea in Consciousness Explained [9],
which he terms the “Many Drafts” model of
consciousness, and contrasts it with the popular
view which he terms the “Cartesian Theatre”
1. If memory blackouts did occur, one might
quickly conclude that separate personalities
were present. Something of this nature
occurs in trance, possession and mediumistic
states.
The Sephiroth
45
model. Studies of lesions in the brain have provided
detailed evidence of the many bizarre
ways in which cognition can be affected by
organic defects, and Oliver Sacks provides popular
and moving observations from several case
histories in The man Who Mistook his Wife for a
Hat [37]. Lastly, detailed evidence from a wealth
of neurophysiological studies using modern
scanning equipment is providing precise maps
not only of the localisation of brain function, but
many of the modular inter-relationships.
Netzach also corresponds to our feelings,
emotions and moods, because this background
of “psychological weather” strongly conditions
the way in which we think and behave. Regardless
of what I am doing, my energy will manifest
differently when I am happy than when I
am not. Sometimes moods and emotions are
triggered by a specific event, and sometimes
they are not: free-floating anxiety and depression
are common enough, and free-floating happiness
may be less common but it happens.
There are hundreds of words for different
moods, emotions and feelings, but most seem to
refer to different degrees of intensity of the
same thing, or the same feeling in different contexts,
and the number of genuinely distinct
internal dimensions of feeling appears to be
small. Depression, misery, sadness, happiness,
delight, joy, rapture and ecstasy seem to lie
along the same axis, as do loathing, hate, dislike,
affection, and love. It is an interesting exercise
to identify the genuinely, qualitatively different
feelings you can experience by actually conjuring
up each feeling. I have tried the experiment
with a number of people, and you will probably
find there are less than 10 distinct feelings.
The most immediate and personal correspondences
for Hod and Netzach are the psychological
correspondences: the rational,
abstract, intellectual and communicative on one
hand and the emotional, motivational, intuitive,
aesthetic, and non-rational on the other. The
planetary and elemental correspondences mirror
this: Hod corresponds to Kokab or Mercury,
and the element of Air, while Netzach corresponds
to Nogah or Venus, and the element
Water.
The Virtue of Hod is honesty or truthfulness,
and its Vice is dishonesty or untruthfulness.
One of the consequences of being able to create
abstract representations of reality and communicate
some aspect of it to another person is that
it is possible to misrepresent reality, or to put it
bluntly, lie through your teeth.
The Illusion of Hod is order, in the sense of
attempting to impose one’s sense of order upon
the world. This is very noticeable in some people
- whenever something happens they will
immediately pigeonhole it and declare with
great authority “it is just another example of
XYZ”. A surprising number of people who
claim to be rational will claim “there’s no such
thing as (ghosts, telepathy, free lunches,
UFO’s)” without having examined the evidence
one way or the other. They are probably right,
and I have no personal interest either way, but it
is not difficult to distinguish between someone
who carefully weighs the pros and cons in an
argument and readily admits to uncertainty,
and someone with a firm and orderly conviction
that “this is the way the world is”.
The illusion of order occurs because people
confuse their internal representation of the
world with the world itself, and whenever they
are confronted with something from the real
world they attempt to fit it into their internal
representation in a way that avoids having to
reorganise anything.
The illusion of order (that everything in the
world can be neatly classified) relates closely to
the Klippot of Hod, which is rigidity, or rigid
order. As children we start out with an open
view of what the world is like, and by the time
we reach our late teens or early twenties this
view has set fairly solid, like cold porridge -
there are few minds more full of certainties than
that of an eighteen year old.
A good critical education sometimes has the
effect of stirring the porridge into a lumpy
gruel, but it gradually starts to set again (unless
the heavy hand of fate stirs it up), and by middle
age most people have an inflexible view of
the world. It is generally recognised, particularly
in the sciences, that a deeply ingrained
sense of “how things are” is the greatest obstacle
to progress. This is why computer geniuses
are often depicted as alienated adolescents - it is
a symbol of the need for intense adaptability in
one of the fastest changing and most complex
areas of technology.
If you hear some kids listening to music and
find yourself thinking “I don’t know what they
find in that noise!” then it’s happening to you
too. If find yourself looking back to a time when
Notes on Kabbalah
46
everything was so much better than it is today
and find yourself declaring “nostalgia isn’t
what it used to be” then you will know that the
porridge has set very cold and very stiff. Rigid
order is not only having a firm view of “how the
world is”; it is also losing the capacity to change,
it is becoming frozen in a particular view of
things, like a fly trapped in amber.
The Vision of Hod is the Vision of Splendour.
There is regularity and order in the world - it’s
not all an illusion - and when someone is able to
appreciate natural order in its abstract sense, via
mathematics for example, it can lead to a genuinely
religious, even ecstatic experience. The
thirteenth century Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia
developed a rigorous system of Hebrew letter
mysticism based on the letters of the Hebrew
alphabet, their symbolic meanings, and their
abstract relationships when permuted into different
“names of God”. Many hours of intense
concentration were spent combining letters
according to complex rules which generated
highly abstract symbolic meanings and insights,
leading to ecstatic experiences.
The same sense of awe can come from mathematics
and science - the realisation that gravitational
dynamics in three dimensions is
geometry in four dimensions, that plants are living
fractals, that primes are the seeds of all other
numbers; these simple insights are just as likely
to lead towards an intense vision of the splendour
of the world made visible through the eye
of the rational intellect.
The Virtue of Netzach is unselfishness, and
its Vice is selfishness. Both the Virtue and the
Vice are an attitude towards things-which-arenot-
me, specifically, other people and living
creatures.
If I was surrounded by a hundred square
miles of empty desert then my attitude to other
living things wouldn’t matter, but I am not, and
nothing I do is without some consequence; my
own needs, wants and feelings invariably have
an effect on people, animals and plants, who all
want to live and have some level of needs and
wants and feelings too. Unselfishness is simply
a recognition of others’ needs. Selfishness taken
to an extreme is a denial of life, because it denies
freedom and life to anything which gets in the
way. Selfishness is the principle that my needs
come first. Netzach lies on the Pillar of Force
and is an expression of life-energy, so to deny
life is a perversion of the force symbolised by
Netzach, hence the attribution of selfishness to
the Vice.
The Vision of Netzach is the Vision of Beauty
Triumphant. Whereas the Vision of Splendour
corresponding to Hod is a vision of complex
abstract relationships, symmetry, and mathematical
elegance, the Vision of Beauty Triumphant
is purely aesthetic and firmly based in the
real world of textures, smells, sounds, and colours,
an appropriate correspondence for Venus,
the goddess of sensual beauty.
Suppose two housebuyers go to look at a
house. The first is interested in the number of
rooms, the size of the garage, the house’s position
relative to local amenities, the price, the
number of square metres in the plot, and
whether the windows are double-glazed. The
second person likes the decoration in the
lounge, the colour of the bathroom, the wisteria
plant in the garden, the cherry tree, the curving
shape of the stairs, and the sloping roof in one of
the bedrooms. Both people like the house, but
the first likes various abstract properties associated
with the house, whereas the second likes
the house itself. Suppose the same two people
buy the house and decide to do ritual magic.
The first person wants white robes because
white is the colour of the powers of light and
life. The second wants a green velvet robe
because it feels and looks nice. The first reads
lots of books on how to carry out a ritual, while
the second sits under the cherry tree in the garden
and does something which feels right at the
time.
The first person has continued to make
choices based on an abstract notion of what is
correct, while the second makes choices based
on what feels right. Both are driven by an internal
sense of “rightness”, but in the first case it is
based on abstract criteria, while in the second it
is based on personal aesthetic notion of beauty.
The Vision of Beauty Triumphant has a compelling
power. It is pre-articulate and inherently
uncritical, and at the same time it is immensely
biased. A person in its grip will pronounce
judgement on another person’s taste in art, literature,
clothes, music, decor or whatever, and
will do it with such a profound lack of self-consciousness
that it is possible to believe good
taste is ordained in heaven. This person will
mock those who surround themselves with
rules, regulations, principles, and analysis, the
“syntax of things” as E. E. Cummings puts it,
The Sephiroth
47
and instead exhibit a whimsical spontaneity, a
penetrating (so they believe) intuition, and a
free spirit in tune with ebb and flow of life.
There are those who might complain about
their astounding arrogance, fickleness, unreliability,
and the never-ending flow of unshakable
and prejudiced opinions delivered with a magisterial
authority, but those who complain are
(clearly) anal-retentive nit-pickers and don’t
count. For a total immersion in the nightmare of
a purely aesthetic vision one should read Oscar
Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey.
The Illusion of Netzach is projection. We all
tend to perceive feelings and characteristics in
other people which we find in ourselves, and
when we guess right it is called “empathy” or
“intuition”. When we guess wrong it is called
“projection”, because we are incorrectly ascribing
our feelings, needs, motives, or desires to
another person and interpreting their behaviour
accordingly. It is as if we were “projecting” our
own feelings onto the world like a film projector.
Some level of projection is unavoidable, and
at best it can be balanced with a critical awareness
that it can occur. Nevertheless, projection is
insidious. Projection usually “feels right”, and
the strength of feeling associated with a projection
can easily overwhelm any intellectual
awareness.
One of the most overwhelming forms of projection
accompanies sexual desire. Why do I
find one person sexually attractive and not
another? Why do I find some characteristics in a
person sexually attractive but not others? In my
own case I discovered that when I put together
all the characteristics I found most attractive in a
person a consistent picture emerged of an “ideal
person”, and every person I had ever considered
as a possible sexual partner was instantly
compared against this template. In fact there
was more than one template, more than one
ideal, but the number was limited and each template
was very clearly defined, and most importantly,
each template was internal. My sexual
(and often many other feelings) about a person
were based on an apparently arbitrary internal
template.
This was crazy. I found my sexual feelings
about a person would change depending on
how they dressed or behaved, on how well they
“matched the ideal”. It became obvious that
what I was in love with did not exist outside of
myself, and I was trying to find this ideal in everyone
else. Each one of these “templates” was a
living aspect of myself which I had chosen not
to regard as “me”, and in compensation I spent
much of my time trying to find people to bring
these parts to life, like a director auditioning
actors and actresses for a part in a new play. If a
person previously identified as ideal failed to
live up to my notion of how they should be ideally
behaving then I would project a fault on
them: there was something wrong with them!
Madness indeed.
The Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung recognised
this phenomenon and gave these idealised and
projected components of our psyche the title
“archetype”. Jung identified several archetypes,
and it is worth mentioning the major and
most influential, as they can often be found in
cases of projection.
The Anima is the ideal female archetype. She
is part genetic, part cultural, a figure molded by
fashion and advertising, an unconscious composite
of woman in the abstract. The Anima is
common in men, where she can appear with riveting
power in dreams and fantasy, a projection
brought to life by the not inconsiderable power
of the male sexual drive. She might be meek and
submissive, seductive and alluring, vampish
and dangerous, a cheap slut or an unattainable
goddess. There is no “standard anima”, but
there are many recognisable patterns which
have a powerful hold on particular men. Male
sexual fantasy material (found on the top shelf
in newsagents for example) is amazingly predictable,
cliched, and unimaginitive, and contains
a limited number of steroetyped views of
women which are as close to a “lowest common
denominator anima” as one is likely to find.
The Animus is the ideal male archetype, and
much of what is true about the Anima is true of
the Animus. There are differences; the predominant
quality in the Anima is her appearance and
behaviour, while the predominant quality in the
Animus is social power and competence. In the
interests of sexual equality it is worth mentioning
that female romantic fantasy material is also
amazingly predictable, cliched and unimaginitive,
and contains a limited number of stereotype
views of men which are as close to a
“lowest common denominator animus” as one
is likely to find.
The Shadow is the projection of “not-me” and
contains forbidden or repressed desires and
Notes on Kabbalah
48
impulses. In most men the Anima is repressed
and in most women the Animus is repressed,
and so both form a component of the Shadow.
However, the major part of the Shadow is composed
of forbidden impulses, and the Shadow
forms a personification of evil. Much of what is
considered evil is defined socially and the communal
personification of evil as an external
force working against humankind (such as
Satan) is widespread.
The Persona is the mask a person wears as a
member of a community where a large proportion
of his or her behaviour is defined by a role
such as doctor, teacher, manager, accountant,
lawyer or whatever. Projection occurs in two
ways: firstly, someone may be expected to conform
to a role in a particularly rigid or stereotyped
way, and so suffer a loss of individuality
and probably incur a degree of misplaced trust
or prejudice. Secondly, many people identify
with a role to the extent that they carry that role
into all aspects of their private lives. This “projection
onto self” is a form of identification - see
the section on Tipheret.
The archetype of Self at the level of Hod and
Netzach is usually projected as an ideal form of
person: that is, someone will believe that he or
she is highly imperfect, but it is possible to
attain an ideal state of being in which this same
person is kind, loving, wise, forgiving, compassionate,
in harmony with the Absolute, and
other pick’n’mix saintly attributes. This projection
of perfection will fasten on a living or dead
person, who then becomes a hero, heroine,
guru, or master, with grossly inflated abilities.
This projection may also fasten on a vision of
“myself made perfect”. The projected vision of
“myself made perfect” is common (almost universal)
among those seeking “spiritual development”,
“esoteric training”, and other forms of
self-improvement, and in almost every case it is
based on an abstract ideal. The person affected
by this condition will probably insist that the
human ideal has actually existed in certain rare
individuals (usually long dead saints and gurus,
or someone who lives a long way off), and that
is the sort of person he or she wants to be.
It should be comical, but it isn’t. There is more
to say about this and it will keep till the section
on Tipheret.
The Klippot or shell of Netzach is habit and
routine. When behaviour, with all its potential
for new experiences and new ways of doing
things, becomes locked into patterns which
repeat over and over again, then the life energy,
the force aspect of Netzach is withdrawn and
what remains is the dead, empty shell of behaviour.
Just as the Klippot of Hod is rigid order,
the petrification of one’s internal representation
of reality, so the Klippot of Netzach is the petrification
of behaviour.
The God Names of Hod and Netzach are Elohim
Tzabaoth and Jehovah Tzabaoth respectively,
which mean “God of Armies”, but in
each case a different word is used for “God”.
The name “Elohim” is associated with all three
sephiroth on the Pillar of Form and represents a
female (metaphorically speaking) tendency in
that aspect of God1.
The Archangels are Raphael and Haniel. The
Archangel of Hod is sometimes given as
Michael, but many authors prefer Raphael
(Medicine of God) by reason of the association
of Mercury with medicine and healing. Besides,
Michael has perfectly good reasons for residing
in Tipheret, as his name is often interpreted as
“who is like unto God”, and Tipheret is a reflection
of Keter.
This sort of thing can give rise to an amazing
amount of hot air when Kabbalists meet. For
those who wonder how far back the confusion
goes, Robert Fludd (1574-1607) plumped for
Raphael, whereas two hundred years later Francis
Barrett, author of The Magus, prefered
Michael. The co-founder of the Golden Dawn,
S.L. Mathers, went for both depending on which
text you read.
Kabbalah isn’t an orderly subject and those
who want to impose too much order on it are
falling into the illusion of ... I leave this as an
exercise to the reader.
The Angel Orders of the two sephiroth are the
Beni Elohim, meaning Children of the Gods,
and the Elohim, sometimes translated “Gods
and Goddess”. There is no suspicion of polytheism
here - the names reflect the idea of “Hosts”
and the plurality of consciousness.
The triad of sephiroth Yesod, Hod and
Netzach comprises the triad of “normal consciousness”
as we normally experience it in ourselves
and most people most of the time. This
1. The elucidation of God Names can become
phenomenally complex and obscure, with
long excursions into gematria and textual
analysis of the Pentateuch, and this is a
quagmire I have determined to avoid.
The Sephiroth
49
level of consciousness is intensely magical; try
to move away from it for any length of time and
you will discover the strength of the force and
form sustaining it.
It is not an exaggeration to say that most people
are completely unable to leave this state,
even when they want to, even when they desperately
try to. The sephira Tipheret represents
a state of being which unlocks the energy of
“normal consciousness” and is the subject of the
next section.
Tipheret
“Nothing is left to you at this moment but
to burst out into a loud laugh”
From “The Spirit of Zen” by Alan Watts
The sephira Tipheret lies at the heart of the
Tree of Life, and like Rome, all paths lead to it.
Almost. Tipheret has a path linking it to every
sephira with the exception of Malkhut. If the
Tree of Life is a map then the sephira titled
Tipheret, Beauty, or Rachamin, Compassion,
clearly represents something of central importance.
What does it represent?
Can you imagine in your mind’s eye what it
might be? Do you feel anything within you
when you contemplate Tipheret? If asked could
you define what it stands for? Well, if you can
do any or all of these things you are almost certainly
barking up the wrong Tree. As Alan
Watts comments [42]:
“The method of Zen is to baffle, excite,
puzzle and exhaust the intellect until it is
realised that intellection is only thinking
about; it will provoke, irritate and again
exhaust the emotions until it is realised
that emotion is only feeling about, and
then it contrives, when the disciple has
been brought to an intellectual and emotional
impasse, to bridge the gap between
second-hand conceptual contact with
reality, and first-hand experience.”
The sephira Tipheret presents the student of
Kabbalah with a conundrum. Whatever you say
it is, it isn’t; whatever you imagine it to be it
isn’t; whatever you feel it might be, it isn’t. It is
an empty room. There is nothing there. The
modes of consciousness appropriate to Hod,
Yesod and Netzach respectively are not appropriate
to something which is clearly and unambiguously
shown on the Tree as being distinct
from all three. So what is it?
The student is told that the Virtue of Tipheret
is Devotion to the Great Work. What is this
“Great Work”? The student is told solemnly
that in order to find the answer he or she should
obtain the Spiritual Experience of Tipheret,
which is the Knowledge and Conversation of
the Holy Guardian Angel. So the student runs
off and duely reports (after some work in the
library perhaps) that the Great Work is the raising
of a human being to perfection. Or it is the
saving of the planet from industrial pollution.
Or it is the retrieval and perpetuation of knowledge,
or perhaps it is the spiritual redemption of
humanity. The student then burns enough
frankincense to pay off the Somalian national
debt, records endless conversations with the
Holy Guardian Angel in his or her magical
record, and impresses all and sundry with an
unbending commitment to the Great Work.
This enthusiasm, commitment, personal sacrifice
and sense of moral purpose leads to the
development of a special kind of person: someone
who might be referred to colloquially as “a
complete arsehole”. A person thus afflicted can
become pious, preaching, and judgemental, a
humble servant of the highest powers, but with
a blind spot of intolerance. Those who inhabit
the vicinity of such moral incandescence may
have reason to recall that the Vice of Tipheret is
self-importance and pride.
A student might spend years running around
in circles, bringing to the planet the benefits of
advanced spiritual consciousness, and this
seems to be a necessary exercise. People need to
sweat various personal obsessions out of their
systems, and the empty room of Tipheret is an
excellent set on which to act out a personal
drama. If the devotion to the Work is genuine,
and if Tipheret and the HGA are invoked with
passion and determination, then sooner or later
the hand of fate intervenes and the student has
the shit knocked out of him or her in a big way.
An attempt to penetrate the nature of Tipheret
does seem to bring about that state which the
Greeks called “hubris”, an overweening arrogance,
self-importance and pride, and eventually
the inevitable happens and one’s life comes
crashing down around one’s ears.
The resulting mess varies from person to person.
In some people every idea about what is
important is turned upside down, while in others
an emotional attachment to habits, lifestyle,
possessions or relationships turns to dust. The
daemon of the false self is dealt a massive blow
Notes on Kabbalah
50
and sent reeling, and in that moment there is a
chance for real change and the dawning of the
golden sun of Tipheret.
This is my personal interpretation the word
“Initiation”. There is a state of being represented
by the sephira Tipheret which is absolutely
distinct from what most people
experience as normal consciousness. Once
attained, the change is irreversible and permanent
and it causes a permanent change in the
way life is experienced. When it occurs it is recognised
instantly for what it is ... as if every cell
in one’s body shouted simultaneously “So that’s
all there is to it!”
This state has been widely documented in
many parts of the world, and Alan Watts’ book
[42] is as guarded and explicit on the subject as
any worthwhile book is likely to be.
The symbolism of Tipheret is three-fold: a
king, a sacrificed god, and a child. This threefold
symbolism corresponds to Tipheret’s place
on the Extended Tree (see Chapter 8), where it
appears as Keter of Assiah, Tipheret of Yetzirah,
and Malkhut of Briah, and to these three aspects
correspond the king, the sacrificed god, and the
child respectively.
One interpretation of this symbolism is as follows:
if the kingdom is to be redeemed then the
king (who is also the son of God - see below)
must be sacrificed, and from this sacrifice comes
a rebirth as a child. This is a metaphor of initiation.
It is also markedly Christian in symbolism,
an aspect many Christian Kabbalists have not
failed to elaborate upon, but it would be a mistake
to make too much out of the apparent
Christian symbolism. The king, the child and
the son are synonyms for Tipheret in the earliest
Kabbalistic documents (e.g. the Zohar), and the
introduction of divine kingship and the sacrificed
god into modern Kabbalah probably owes
more to the publication of “The Golden Bough”
[14] in 1922 than it does to Christianity.
The theme of death and rebirth is an important
element in many esoteric traditions, and
provides continuity between modern Kabbalah
and the mystery religions and initiations of the
Mediterranean basin. The initiatory rituals of
the Golden Dawn [35], an organisation which
did much to reawaken interest in Kabbalah,
were loosely inspired by the Eleusinian mysteries
of Demeter and Persephone - at least to
extent that the Temple officers were named after
the principal officers of the Eleusinian mysteries.
The Golden Dawn Tipheret initiation was,
like most Golden Dawn rituals, a witch’s brew
of symbolism, but it was strongly based on the
mysteries of the crucifixion and the resurrection
- at one point the aspirant was actually lashed to
a cross - and took place in a symbolic reconstruction
of the vault and tomb of Christian
Rosenkreutz. The following extract [35] gives
the flavour of the thing:
“Buried with that Light in a mystical
death, rising again in a mystical resurrection,
cleansed and purified through Him
our Master, O Brother of the Cross and
the Rose. Like Him, O Adepts of all ages,
have ye toiled. Like Him have ye suffered
tribulation. Poverty, torture and death
have ye passed through. They have been
but the purification of the Gold.”
Gold is a Tipheret symbol, being the metal of
Shemesh, the Sun, which also corresponds to
Tipheret. Gold is incorruptible and symbolises a
state of being which is not “base” or “corrupt”.
It is a symbol of initiation, of a state of being
compared to which normal consciousness is corruptible
dross.
I do not wish to go any further into this kind
of symbolism - there is a great deal of it. It is
possible to write at great length and succeed in
doing little more than losing the reader in a web
of symbolism so dense and sticky that the inner
state one is pointing at becomes a sterile thing of
words and symbols. I wanted to provide an idea
of how a large amount of exotic symbolism has
accreted around Tipheret, but that is all. The
state indicated by Tipheret is real enough, and
the lashing comfortably-off, middle-class aspirants
to a cross in a wooden vault at the local
Masonic Hall and prattling on about poverty,
torture and death is somewhat wide of the
mark.
In the traditional Kabbalah the sephira
Tipheret corresponds to something called Zoar
Anpin, the Microprosopus, or Lesser Countenance.
There is also something called Arik
Anpin, the Macroprosopus, or Greater Countenance,
and this is often used as a synonym for
the sephira Keter. The symbology connected
with the Greater and Lesser Countenances is
extremely complex: the “Greater Holy Assembly”,
one of the books of the Zohar, is largely a
detailed description of the cranium, the eyes,
the cheeks, and the hairs in the beard of both the
Greater and Lesser Countenances.
The Sephiroth
51
In a crude sense the Macroprosopus is God,
and the Microprosopus is man made in God’s
image, hence the symbolism, but this is too simple.
The Microprosopus is also the archetypal
man Adam Kadmon, a mystical concept which
should not be confused with a real human
being. Adam Kadmon is androgynous, male
and female, Adam-and-Eve in a pre-manifest,
pre-Fall state of divine perfection. The symbology
of the Macroprosopus, Microprosopus, and
Adam Kadmon appears to exist independently
of the concept of sephirothic emanation, and it
is probably fair to say that the former was more
highly developed during the Zoharic period of
Kabbalah, while the latter is used almost exclusively
at the present time - I have yet to encounter
a modern Kabbalist with much practical
insight into the thirteen parts of the beard of the
Macroprosopus.
Another rich set of symbols associated with
Tipheret comes from the divine name of four
letters YHVH, usually anglicised as Jehovah or
Yahweh. The letter Yod is associated with the
supernal father Chokhmah, and the letter He is
associated with the supernal mother Binah. The
letter Vov is associated with the son of the
mother and father, and is both the Microprosopus
and the sephira Tipheret (sometimes Daat).
The final He is associated with the daughter
(and bride of the son), the sephira Malkhut.
Tipheret is thus the “child” of Chokhmah and
Binah, and also “the son of God”. In Hebrew the
letter Vov can represent the number 6, and in
Kabbalah this refers to Chesed, Gevurah,
Tipheret, Netzach, Hod and Yesod, the six
sephiroth which correspond to states of human
consciousness and hence also to the Microprosopus.
With a typical Kabbalistic flexibility they
can also stand for the six days of Creation1.
The illusion of Tipheret is Identification.
When a person is asked “what are you”, they
will usually begin with statements like “I am a
human being”, “I am a lorry driver”, “I am Fred
Bloggs”, “I am five foot eleven”. If pressed further
a person might begin to enumerate personal
qualities and behaviours: “I am
trustworthy”, “I lose my temper a lot”, “I am
afraid of heights”, “I love chessecake”, “I hate
dogs”.
It is common for people to identify what they
are with the totality of their beliefs and behaviours.
Often they will defend the sanctity of
these beliefs and behaviours to the death - a person
might have behaviours which make their
life an utter misery and still cling to them with a
grip like a python. This inability to stand back
and see behaviour or beliefs in an impersonal
way produces a peculiar ego-centricity. The
sense of personal identity is founded on a set of
beliefs and behaviours which are largely unconscious
(that is, a person may be unaware of
being grotesquely selfish, or pompous, or attention-
seeking) and at the same time seem to be
uniquely special and sacred.
When behaviour and beliefs are unconscious
and incorporated into a sense of identity it
becomes impossible for someone so afflicted to
make sense of other people. Such a person cannot
take into account aspects of his or her
behaviour that are unconscious, and so is unaware
of the impact on other people. For example,
if I am selfish, but unaware of this, I will
need to invent explanations for why other people
dislike me. I may need to fabricate a world
of explanations to explain behaviour in other
people which is a direct result of my (unconscious)
selfishness.
The sense of identity becomes a kind of
“Absolute” against which everything is compared,
and judgements about the world become
absolute and almost impossible to change, even
when we realise intellectually the subjectivity of
our position.
Referring to this projection of the unconscious
onto the world Jung [20] comments:
“The effect of projection is to isolate the
subject from his environment, since
instead of a real relation to it there is now
only an illusory one. Projections change
the world into one’s unknown face.”
In summary, the illusion of Tipheret is a false
identification with a set of beliefs or behaviours.
It can also be an identification with a social
mask or Persona, something discussed in the
section on Netzach. So we return to the original
question: “what are you?”. Is there an answer?
If the answer is to be something which is not an
arbitrary collection of emphemera then you are
not your behaviours - behaviour can be
changed; you are not your beliefs - beliefs can be
changed; you are not your role in society - your
role in society can change; you are not your
body - your body is continually changing.
Out of this comes a sense of emptiness, of hol-
1. This symbolism was incorporated into the
glyph on the title page of this book.
Notes on Kabbalah
52
lowness. The intellect attempts to solve the koan
of koans “Who or what am I?”, but has no
anchor to hold on to. Is there no centre to my
being, nothing which is me, no axis in the universe,
no morality, no good, no evil? Do I live in
a meaningless, arbitrary universe where any
belief is as good as any other, where any behaviour
is acceptable so long as I can get away with
it? This sense of emptiness or hollowness is the
Klippot or shell of Tipheret, Tipheret as the
Empty Room with Nothing In It. The psychologist
C.G. Jung [21] provides a memorable and
moving description of how his father, a country
parson, was progressively consumed by this
feeling of hollowness and spiritual aridity.
There can be few fates worse than to devote a
life to the outward forms of religion without
ever feeling one touch of that which gives it
meaning.
The God Name of Tipheret is Jehovah Aloah
va Daat, or simply Aloah va Daat. It is often
translated as “God made manifest in the sphere
of the mind”. The Archangel is sometimes given
as Raphael, but I prefer the attribution to
Michael, long associated with solar fire. His
name “Who is like God” reinforces the upper/
lower relationship between Keter and Tipheret.
The angel order is the Malachim, or Kings.
To cover all of the traditional material related
to Tipheret is to cover most of Kabbalah.
Tipheret is at the centre of a complex of six
sephiroth which represent a human being. This
is not a modern interpretation, an “initiated”
interpretation of obscure medieval documents.
Kabbalah has always been deeply concerned
with the dynamics of the relationship between
God and the Creation, between God and a
human being, and the descriptions of the Macroprosopus
and Microprosopus in the Zohar are
a bold attempt to grasp something ineffable
using a language built from the most immediate
of metaphors: the human body.
According to both the Bible and to Kabbalah, a
human being is in some sense a reflection of
God. To the extent that Kabbalah is an outcome
of genuine mystical experience, it is a description
of the dynamics of the relationship between
a human being and God, and more importantly
it is a description of something real. Even if you
don’t like the look of the word “God” (I don’t)
Kabbalah is trying to express something important
about a relatively inaccessible dimension of
human experience. Tipheret is a reflection of
Keter and represents the “image of God”, the
“God within”, whatever you take that to mean.
Tipheret is a symbol of centrality, balance,
and above all, wholeness. It can be an empty
room, a gaping emptiness, or it can be the heart
and blazing sun of the Tree. It is the symbol of a
human being who lives in full consciousness of
the outer and the inner, who denies neither the
reality of the world nor the mystery of self-consciousness,
and who attempts to reconcile the
needs of both in a harmonious balance.
Gevurah and Chesed
“The chief foundations of all states, new
as well as old or mixed, are good laws and
good arms; and because there cannot be
good laws where there are not good arms,
and where there are good arms there
must needs be good laws, I will omit
speaking of the laws and speak of the
arms.”
Machiavelli
“God is the great urge that has not yet
found a body but urges towards incarnation
with the great creative urge.”
D.H. Lawrence
The title of the sephira Gevurah is translated
as “strength”, and sometimes as “power”. The
sephira is also referred to by its alternative titles
of Din, “justice”, and Pachad, “fear”. The title of
the sephira Chesed is translated as “mercy” or
“love”, and it is often called Gedulah, “majesty”
or “magnificence”.
Gevurah and Chesed lie on the Pillars of
Form and Force respectively, and possess a
more definite and generally agreed symbolism
than most of the sephiroth. Chesed stands for
expansiveness and the creation and building-up
of form, what can very appropriately be
referred to as anabolism, and Gevurah stands
for restraint and both the preservation of form,
and the breaking-down (or catabolism) of form.
Within the symbolism of the Kabbalah the
most explicit and concrete expression of form
occurs in Malkhut, the physical world, and as it
takes a conscious being (e.g. thee and me) to
comprehend the world in terms of forms which
are built-up and broken down, so Chesed and
Gevurah express something vital about our conscious
relationship with the external, material
world. When I see something beautiful being
created I may well think this is “good”, and
The Sephiroth
53
when I see the same thing being wantonly
destroyed, I would probably think this is “bad”.
This type of thinking pervades early Kabbalistic
writing. In his commentary on the Bahir,
Aryeh Kaplan writes [23]:
“The concept of Chesed-Love is that of
freely giving, while that of Gevurah-
Strength is that of restraint. When it is
said that Strength is restraint, it is in the
sense of the teaching “Who is strong, he
who restrains his urge”. It is obvious that
man can restrain his nature, but if man
can do so, then God certainly can. God’s
nature, however, is to do good and therefore,
when He restrains His nature, the
result is evil. The sephira of Gevurah-
Strength is therefore seen as the source of
evil.”
The Zohar also contains many references to
the “rigorous severity” of God (another synonym
for Gevurah) and its being the source of
evil in the creation. However, when one considers
that the creation and uncontrolled growth of
a cancer would correspond to Chesed, and the
attempts of the immune system to contain and
destroy it would correspond to Gevurah, it
should be clear that it is not useful to consider
creation and destruction purely in terms of
good and evil. It is useful to look at a living,
organic system as a balance between these two
opposed tendencies, and in Kabbalah the Creation
is pictured as a living, organic system: the
Tree of Life.
The most vivid metaphors for Chesed and
Gevurah come from a time when European
societies were ruled by kings and queens, when,
in principle at least, the ultimate authority and
power in society rested in a single individual.
Chesed corresponds to the creative aspects of
leadership, and early texts are one-sided in
characterising this by love, mercy and majesty.
Gevurah corresponds to the conservative
aspects of leadership, to the power to preserve
the status-quo, and the power to destroy anything
opposed to it.
These two aspects go hand-in-hand. Try to
change anything of consequence in society, and
someone will invariably oppose that change. To
bring about change it is often necessary to have
the power to over-rule opposition. Consensus is
an impossibility in society - there will always be
someone whose opinions are at best ignored
and at worst suppressed. Chesed and Gevurah
represent respectively the kingly obligation to
seek what is good for the many, and the power
to judge and punish those opposed to the will of
the king. The following description of Margaret
Thatcher comes from Nicholas Ridley, a minister
in her cabinet [36]:
“She governed with superb style, carrying
every war into the enemy’s camp,
seeking to destroy rather than contain the
opposition, and determined to blaze a
radical trail. But she never let power corrupt
her; nor did she ever fail to be compassionate
and kind as a human being.”
Whether this description is accurate or not is
irrelevant to this discussion. What it does do is
capture in two sentences something essential
about the traditional image of a great leader: the
balance between power, strength and militancy
on one hand, and humanitarianism, compassion
and caring on the other. This is very much a
model of divine kingship (or queenship!): a king
who loves and cares for his people and seeks to
bring about “heaven on earth”, but at the same
time punishes transgression, and fights for and
preserves what is good and worth preserving.
Kabbalists thought of God in this way. God
loves us (so the argument goes), and the mercy
and benignity of God is represented by the
sephira Chesed, but at the same time God has
made his laws known to humankind and will
judge and punish anyone who opposes these
laws. Read the book of Proverbs in the Bible if
you want to enter into this view of reality.
Many modern Kabbalists have a more jaundiced
view of leadership than medieval Kabbalists,
and certainly do not see Chesed as purely
the love or mercy of God. In the twentieth century
we have seen a succession of leaders harness
their vision, creativity and leadership to
the four Vices of Chesed, which are tyranny,
bigotry, hypocrisy and gluttony. It takes an
uncommon skill and vision not only to contemplate
the annihilation of entire races, but to create
a structure in which this happens. How
many people would dream of a socialist utopia
where traditional communities are forcibly bulldozed
and replaced by dilapidated concrete
slums? How many people have the power to
make this happen?
You may not like this kind of leadership, but it
is still leadership, and in its own way it is
inspired. A leader may be inspired by a vision,
and may have the power to bring that vision
into reality, but it is also a fact that the result can
become a new definition of evil. Good and evil
Notes on Kabbalah
54
are not static qualities with fixed meanings; in
every generation there are exemplars who
define for the whole of society the meaning of
the words in new contexts. Tamerlane may have
built pyramids from human skulls, but what
did he know about asset stripping?
Tyranny, bigotry, hypocrisy and gluttony, the
vices of Chesed, are the meat and drink of daily
newspapers. Tyranny is leadership without
authority, an illegitimate or unconstitutional
leadership usually oiled with large helpings of
cruelty, the Vice of Gevurah.
Bigotry is a quick and easy way to drum up a
power base: find a minority group in society,
emphasise and magnify to grotesque proportions
the differences between them and the rest
of society, and use the natural fear of the strange
or unfamiliar to do the rest.
Hypocrisy can be found in religious leaders
who denounce normal human behaviour as a
sin, sin comprehensively in private, and use
genuine religious aspirations as in excuse to line
their pockets. Hypocrisy can be found in those
who talk about the dictatorship of the proletariat
in public and buy their luxury goods from
exclusive party shops - the collapse of state
socialism in Europe has revealed the full extent
to which pious utterances about social equality
were a cover for almost limitless privileges for
the few.
Gluttony is over-consumption, an appetite
well in excess of need, and one has only to
remember Imelda Marcos’s wardrobe to get the
idea. It is virtually a fashion among modern
tyrants to siphon billions of dollars into Swiss
bank accounts - the scale on which men like Idi
Amin Dada, Ferdinand Marcos, Baby Doc
Duvalier, Mengistu, and Saddam Hussein (to
name but a few) were able to beggar nations for
their own personal advantage goes so far
beyond any rational measure of human need it
is hard to comprehend.
When one looks at the worst twentieth century
tyrants, men who were directly responsible
for the deaths of thousands or millions of people,
it is hard to find any Einsteins of evil. One is
struck by the sheer ordinariness of these men.
Clever, manipulative, politically adept, lucky,
exceptional in their ability to climb to the top of
the heap, successful in grasping and holding
power, but not conscious, plotting allies of a terrible
dark power. Behind the brutality, murder,
torture, imprisonment, and the apparatus of
oppression one can see a very human vulnerability,
self-importance, vanity, folly, insecurity,
and greed.
The vices of Chesed are the vices of all the
other sephiroth writ large - power magnifies a
vice until it becomes a ravening monster. A man
with rigid and unbending views on human
morality will do no harm if he has no audience,
but give him enough power and he will put
society in chains which might last a thousand
years. A greedy man with enough power can
loot an entire country. A petty and irrational
bigot with enough power can enslave or annihilate
whole races. They say power corrupts, but
this is not so; corruption is already within all of
us, and we lack only the necessary authority
and power to unleash our own personal evil on
the world.
The moral is that power needs to be tempered
by mercy and love, and the correspondences for
Chesed emphasise this so strongly it is easy to
for a novice to ignore the appalling negative
qualities of Chesed - power without restraint,
indiscriminate destruction, everything in excess.
The Virtue of Chesed is humility, the ideal of
leadership without self- importance and all its
accompanying vices. The Spiritual Vision of
Chesed is the Vision of Love, love and caring for
all living things, and the desire to find a way (be
it ever so small - remember humility) to make
the world a better place.
There is a strong message in the positive correspondences
for Chesed: without humility and
love, leadership and power become the instruments
of self-importance, and the petty vices of
human nature are transformed into monsters of
evil which terrorise the human race.
The illusion of Chesed is Right, in the sense of
“being right”. It is difficult to lead if one sits on
every fence and wavers on every question, but
no-one is ever right with a capital “R”, and anyone
who seeks the reassurance of Being Right is
evading the essence of responsibility.
The Klippot of Chesed is ideology, not in the
philosophical sense, but in the common-use
sense of “political ideology”. The rationale
behind this is that it is very easy to take a creed,
or a doctrine, or a dogma, or whatever, and use
it as a platform for leadership. When you see a
politician (or a religious leader) being interviewed
on television, and the response to every
question is just the same old empty jargon, the
same old formulae, the same old evasions, the
The Sephiroth
55
same old arguments and irrefutable assertions,
and you feel you have heard the same thing a
dozen times before out of a dozen different
mouths, then you are listening to the dead,
empty shell of leadership.
The sephira Gevurah is as often misunderstood
as the sephira Chesed. The planet associated
with Chesed is (appropriately) Tzedek,
Jupiter, leader of the gods; the planet associated
with Gevurah is Madim, Mars, the god of war
and destruction. The magical image of Gevurah
is a king in a chariot, or conversely a mighty
warrior.
Most novices (particularly young men) take
this imagery at face value and envision Gevurah
as a very forceful, violent and destructive
sephira, and cannot understand why it is positioned
on the pillar of form. Almost all novices
will attribute the emotion of anger to Gevurah.
It is worth recalling from Chapter 3. a traditional
Kabbalistic view [39]:
“It must be remembered that to the Kabbalist,
judgement [Din - judgement, a title
of Gevurah] means the imposition of limits
and the correct determination of
things. According to Cordovero the quality
of judgement is inherent in everything
insofar as everything wishes to remain
what it is, to stay within its bounderies.”
This is a statement about form. The form of
something determines what it is, in distinction
from everything else, and when it no longer has
that form, it no longer is. Take a table tennis ball
and squash it; it stops being a table tennis
ball...it stops being a ball. Something still exists
in the world, but its form as a ball has been
destroyed. Take these notes and randomly jumble
the letters; the letters still exist, but the notes
are gone. These notes are contained in the form
of the letters; destroy the form of the letters and
the notes are also destroyed.
Everything in the world is its form. We cannot
see the natural substance of the world; we cannot
see atoms, and even if we could, we would
see protons, neutrons and electrons arranged in
different forms to create the chemical elements.
It has taken physicists most of this century to
deduce that the protons, neutrons and electrons
are not the “true” stuff of the world, and underneath
there might be “quarks”, “leptons” and
“gluons” arranged in different forms to create
the fundamental particles. Is that the end? Are
quarks and gluons the “true stuff”, the raw, primal
gloop which carries all form? No-one
knows.
Sometimes I think, in common with the earliest
Kabbalists, that Malkhut sits upon the
throne of Binah, and at no point will we find the
raw gloop of Malkhut. Someone will write
down an equation and show the properties of
quarks and gluons are a natural consequence of
the form of the equation, and the form of the
equation is one of those things beyond any possibility
of explanation. “Look” we will say, “The
form of all things is a potential outcome of this
one equation. The mother of everything that
exists can be written down on a piece of paper.
Look, here it is!”
There is a deep mystery in form. The world is
not made of things, but of patterns. In our
minds we accept the reality of these patterns,
and forget that the sweet, white stuff we put in
our tea and coffee is just one of an infinite
number of patterns of carbon, hydrogen and
oxygen. Carbon is just one of a large number of
combinations of protons, neutrons and electrons,
and so on. We forget that War and Peace is
just one of an infinite number of combinations
of letters of the alphabet. The patterns are our
reality, and I suspect that only the patterns are
real - there is nothing more real than patterns
waiting to be discovered. I have read graduate
texts on quantum electrodynamics and quantum
chromodynamics, and I find no grey gloop1
mentioned anywhere.
The view of reality in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
[43] has a deeply Kabbalistic (if one-sided) flavour,
the Vision of Splendour of Hod in a distilled
form:
“If I know an object I also know all its
possible occurrences in states of affairs.
(Every one of these possibilities must be
part of the nature of the object). A new
possibility cannot be discovered later. If I
am to know an object, though I need not
know its external properties, I must know
all its internal properties. If all objects are
given, then at the same time all possible
states of affairs are also given. Each thing
is, as it were, in a space of possible states
of affairs. ........
Objects contain the possibility of all situations.
The possibility of its occurring in
states of affairs is the form of an object.”
1. My personal translation of the Greek word
hyle, the formless substance that embodies
form.
Notes on Kabbalah
56
(my italics)
I have digressed this far into the nature of
form because I do not believe it is possible to
understand either Chesed or Gevurah in depth
without understanding the importance of form
in Kabbalah, and when talking about form I am
not “talking mystical”. Modern science is
responsible for the increasing primacy of form
over substance, because form can be studied,
articulated, comprehended, while substance
retreats into the dark shadows of the CERN
accelerators and remains elusive.
Programmers work with form; they shape
programs out of forms with the same inquisitive
delight as a glass-blower handling a blob of
molten glass. They talk about objects, and
behaviours, and classify objects in hierarchies
according to behaviour. They create new objects
with a given abstract behaviour; they leave
unwanted objects to be tidied up by the “garbage
collector”.
There is much more which can be said about
this, but as many people are not programmers
and most programmers do not admit to being
Kabbalists, I must leave this as a trail to be followed.
The important point is that when I talk
about form I find similar thinking in chemistry,
physics, computer science, and Kabbalah; the
world of human beings is perceived in terms of
form, and form is created and destroyed. That is
what Chesed and Gevurah represent.
The sephira Binah is the mother of form. That
is, Binah contains within her womb the potential
of all form, just as woman in the abstract
contains within her womb the potential of all
babies. The birth of form takes place in Chesed,
and that is why Chesed corresponds to the
visionary. The preservation and destruction of
form takes place in Gevurah, and that is why
Gevurah corresponds to the warrior.
In most societies a warrior takes second place
to the Law. The Law comes first, and the warrior
swears to defend both the Law and the
country. This may sound a little idealistic, but if
one takes the trouble to listen to a few oaths of
allegiance (e.g. British Police, British Army,
Soviet Army) one should find that the essence is
to obey, uphold and defend. Nothing about violence,
destruction, mayhem or anger. The
essence of Gevurah is to uphold and defend - as
Cordovero says, “the quality of judgement is
inherent in everything insofar as everything
wishes to remain what it is, to stay within its
boundaries”. If Cordovero had the jargon he
might have talked about “the immune system of
God”.
The Virtues of Gevurah are courage and
energy. There is a saying among managers that
“any fool can manage when things are going
well”. The acid test of management is to have
the courage to tackle, and essentially destroy,
organisations (forms) which no longer work,
and to have the energy to keep going against the
inevitable opposition.
The Vice of Gevurah is cruelty. Power is
seductive, and destruction can be pleasurable.
The spiritual experience of Gevurah is the
Vision of Power, and the Illusion is invincibility.
I don’t think these need any explanation.
The Klippot of Gevurah is bureaucracy, in the
common-use sense of a system of rules and procedures
which has become an end in itself. My
most memorable experience of this was the time
I went into a social security office to ask
whether they could issue me with a social security
number.
“You’ll have to take a ticket and wait,” said
the woman behind the counter.
“But you only have to tell me yes or no,” I
protested.
“You’ll have to take a ticket and wait!” she
snapped.
So I took a ticket and waited for twenty minutes.
When my turn came I asked the question
again. “Can you issue me with a social security
number here?”
“No! Next please!”
This is probably not the best example of the
dead hand of bureaucracy at work, as it contains
a certain amount of intentional cruelty, but we
have all encountered endless forms which have
to be filled in, pointless procedures which have
to be observed, interminable delays and so on.
The essence of bureaucracy is that there is real
power behind it, otherwise we wouldn’t suffer
the indignities, but the power is locked up and
everyone is rendered impotent by the forms of
bureaucracy.
Gevurah is a hard sephira to work with, as
Kabbalistic magicians often discover to their
cost. There is absolutely no place for emotion,
no place for excess, no place for ego. The warrior
works within the Law, and ignorance of the
Law is not an excuse. If you don’t know what
the Law is, don’t work with Gevurah. Most people
are sloppy in thinking about problems, and
The Sephiroth
57
take what appears to be the simplest and superficially
most convenient solution. Gevurah is
clinically exact, and if you invoke Gevurah you
are invoking well above the level of emotion,
particularly your emotions, and as you judge, so
will you be judged. When you invoke on the Pillar
of Form cause and effect will follow without
the slightest regard for your feelings. All computer
programmers who have sweated throughout
the night with a programming error of their
own making know the truth of this in their
bones.
Associated with Chesed and Gevurah are
two tendencies which are so pronounced, readily
observed, and deeply rooted that I have
called them the Power myth and the Annihilation
myth, where I use the word myth in the
sense that there is pre-existent, archetypal script
in which anyone can play the role of protagonist.
The Power myth features a protagonist who
seeks power because power means control. Everything
is specified and controlled down to the
finest detail to eliminate every possibility of discomfort,
surprise or insecurity. The world
becomes an impersonal mechanism designed to
provide for every demand. The natural world is
destroyed to reduce its unpredictability and
untidiness. All knowledge is subverted to control.
Personal relationships are restricted and
formalised to minimise intrusion or any possibility
of personal hurt, and are modelled to
increase self-importance. Anyone who won’t
play can be removed or suitably punished. The
protagonist lives at the centre of the world.
In the Annihilation myth the protagonist lives
for the Cause. The Cause is the most important
thing in life. The protagonist prays to be
released from the thrall of ego and self- importance
that he may better serve the Cause with
every atom of his soul. “Yea, I am nothing”, he
whispers, “Less than the smallest worm in the
ground compared with the glory of the Cause. I
humble myself before the Cause. I live only to
serve the Cause.” Pain, suffering and death are
mere adornments for the ever-lasting glory of
the Cause. The Cause might be the Beloved, the
Revolution, the Great Work, the Mistress or
Master, or God (to name only a few).
Examples of both these myths in practice are
legion; two examples are the package-holiday
tourist as an example of the Power myth, and
many Christian mystics as an example of the
Annihilation myth. Both myths can be observed
in glorious, infinitely repetitive, and predictable
detail in S&M fantasies.
The God name associated with Chesed is “El”,
or Almighty God. The archangel is Tzadkiel, the
“Righteousness of God”. The angel order is the
Chashmalim, or Shining Ones. In Ezekiel, chashmal
is a substance which forms the splendour of
God’s countenance, and as chashmal is the modern
Hebrew word for electricity, I find it useful
to think of the Chashmalim in terms of crackling
thunderbolts - this goes well with the Jupiter
correspondence.
The God name associated with Gevurah is
Elohim Gibor. All the sephiroth on the Pillar of
Form use Elohim in their God names, and in
this case it is qualified by “gibor”, a word which
expresses the qualities of a great hero - strength,
might, and courage. The name is sometimes
translated as “God of Battles”. The archangel is
is sometimes given as Kamiel/Camael, and
sometimes as Samael.
Samael, the “Poison of God” is an angel with a
long history - see [16], and is essentially the
Angel of Death. Samael is not the first choice of
angel to invoke when working Gevurah - work
on Gevurah is tricky at the best of times - and
the Angel of Death does not mess around. Neither
does Kamiel, but there is marginally more
scope for making mistakes! The angel order is
the Seraphim, or Fiery Serpents.
Chesed and Gevurah are the sceptre and
sword of a king. There are many statues of
medieval kings in British cathedrals which
show a king seated with the sceptre of legitimate
authority in one hand and the sword of
temporal might in the other. In Kabbalah the
King corresponds to the sephira Tipheret, the
union of Chesed and Gevurah. This is a symbol
of a human being in relationship to the world.
At the bottom of all initiations is the full consciousness
that we are kings and queens with
the freedom and power to do anything we
please, and total responsibility for the consequences
of everything we do. Somewhere
between the extremes of power and love each
one of us has to find our own balance of right
and wrong. Somewhere in a garden, a Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil still grows, and
still bears fruit.
Notes on Kabbalah
58
Daat and the Abyss
“When you look into the abyss, the abyss
also looks into you”
Nietzsche
“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of
being - like a worm”
Sartre
In modern Kabbalah there is a well developed
notion of an Abyss between the three
supernal sephiroth of Keter, Chokhmah, and
Binah, and the seven lower sephiroth. When one
examines the progress of the Lightning Flash
down the Tree of Life, then one finds that it follows
the path structure connecting sephiroth
except when it makes the jump from Binah to
Chesed, reinforcing the idea of a “gap” or “gulf”
which has to be crossed. There is an implication
that there is an aspect of the godhead which is
remote from normal human experience, and
this inaccessibility is emphasised with a dark
divide.
The notion of an Abyss is extremely old and
has found its way into Kabbalah in several different
forms, some of which I will attempt to
disentangle, and in the course of time they have
been mixed together into the notion of “the
Great Abyss”. The Great Abyss is one of those
things so necessary that like God, if it didn’t
already exist, it would have to be invented. Like
any limit or boundary it temps people to cross
it, and it exerts a perennial fascination.
One of the earliest intimations of the Abyss
comes from the Bible:
“And the earth was without form, and
void; and darkness was upon the face of
the deep.”
Kabbalists adopted the view that there was a
time before the creation characterised by Tohu
and Bohu, namely Chaos and Emptiness [16];
the significant point is that even before the creation
we have something that has the qualities of
an Abyss. It is difficult to paint a picture without
a canvas; it is difficult to shine a light without
darkness, and it is conceptually awkward to
create a universe without an abysmal backdrop
of some kind.
Another idea mentioned several times in the
Zohar [28] is that there were several failed
attempts at creation before the present one.
These attempts failed because mercy and judgement
(e.g. force and form) were not balanced.
The resulting detritus of these failed attempts
accumulated in the Abyss. Because the fragments
or shells (Klippot) of the shattered worlds
were the result of unbalanced rigour, severity,
or judgement they were considered evil, and the
Abyss became a repository of evil spirits not
dissimilar from the pit of Hell into which the
rebellious angels were cast. One is also
reminded of the rebellious Titans in Greek
mythology, who were buried as far beneath the
Earth as the Earth is beneath the sky.
A story which contributed to the notion of the
Abyss was the legend of the Fall. According to a
Kabbalistic interpretation of the Biblical myth,
at the conclusion of the act of Creation there was
a pure state, denoted by Eden, where the primordial
Adam-and-Eve-conjoined existed in a
state of divine perfection. There are various esoteric
interpretations about what the Fall represents,
but all agree that after the Fall, Eden
became inaccessible, and Adam and Eve were
separated and took on bodies of flesh here in the
material world.
The Fall is a story about separation from an
ideal state, of separation from a world of nearness-
to-God, and it is natural to think of this as
an exile into darkness. A similar myth of separation
from God and exile in a world of matter
(and by extension, limitation, finiteness, pain,
suffering, death - manifestations of the rigours
or evil inherent in God) precedes Kabbalah and
can be found in the Gnostic legend of Sophia,
the divine Wisdom exiled in matter. This idea of
separation or exile from divinity mirrors very
closely the way in which the Abyss divides the
sephiroth representing a human being (Yesod to
Chesed) from the sephiroth representing God
(Binah, Chokhmah and Keter).
Isaac Luria (1534 -1572) introduced a new element
into the notion of the Abyss with his novel
development of the idea of tzimtzum or contraction.
Luria wondered how it was possible for
the En Soph, the hidden God, to create something
out of nothing if there wasn’t any nothing
to begin with. If the En Soph (no-end, the infinite)
is everywhere, then how can we be distinct
from the En-Soph? Luria argued that creation
was only possible because a contraction in the
En Soph had created an emptiness where God
was not, that En Soph had chosen to limit itself
by a withdrawal, and this showed that the principle
of self-limitation was a necessary precursor
to creation. Not only did this explain why
the Creation is separate from the hidden God,
but it emphasised that the principle of limitation
The Sephiroth
59
was inherent in creation from the very beginning.
Limitation and finiteness, the separation of
one thing from another, what early Kabbalists
referred to as the severity or “strict judgement”
of God was a puzzling quality to introduce into
the Creation, given that it is the source of suffering
and evil in an abstract and impersonal
sense. Luria’s concept of tsimtsum suggested
that there was no possibility of creation without
limitation, that the root of evil lies in the essential
nature of the creative act.
Luria elaborated on the Zoharic myth of prior
worlds with a description of shevira, the “breaking
of the vessels”. When the ray of creative
light came out of the En Soph and entered the
space created by tzimtsum, it ignited the three
supernal sephiroth, and they were able to contain
the force of the light; however, the seven
sephiroth below were shattered by the force,
and the shells (remembering that the sephiroth
are often depicted as garments or vessels, form
enclosing force) fell into the abyss. Most of the
light was able to return to its source, but some
fell with the shells into the abyss, where it
remains to this day, trapped in the realm of the
Klippot.
Pull together various ideas of the Great Abyss
and one ends up with something like a vast, initially
empty arena, like a Roman amphitheatre,
where the drama of the Creation was enacted.
The mysterious En Soph played a brief role as
director from the imperial box, only to retire
behind a veil at the conclusion of the performance,
leaving behind a huge power cord snaking
in from the unknown region beyond the arena,
and plugged-in to a socket at the rear of the
sephira Keter. The lights of the sephiroth blaze
out and illuminate the centre of this vast arena.
At the periphery of the arena, far from the lights
of manifestation, there is a deep darkness where
all the cast-off detritus and spoil of the creation
was deposited by weary angels and left to rot. A
strange life lives there.
The situation was more-or-less as described
above when in 1909 Aleister Crowley decided to
“cross the Abyss” and added to the mythology
of the Abyss with the following description [7]:
“The name of the Dweller in the Abyss is
Choronzon, but he is not really an individual.
The Abyss is empty of being; it is
filled with all possible forms, each equally
inane, each therefore evil in the only true
sense of the word - that is, meaningless
but malignant, in so far as it craves to
become real. These forms swirl senselessly
into haphazard heaps like dust devils,
and each chance aggregation asserts
itself to be an individual and shrieks ‘I am
I!’ though aware all the time that its elements
have no true bond; so that the
slightest disturbance dissipates the delusion
just as a horseman, meeting a dust
devil, brings it in showers of sand to the
earth.”
I was struck when reading this by the similarity
between Crowley’s description above and
the section on Hod and Netzach in which I
described the chaos of a personality under the
control of the “hosts” or “armies” of those two
sephira, where a host of forms of behaviour
compete for the right to be “me”. Crowley continues:
“As soon as I had destroyed my personality,
as soon as I had expelled my ego, the
universe to which it was indeed a frightful
and fatal force, fraught with every
form of fear, was only so in relation to the
idea ‘I’; so long as ‘I am I’ all else must
seem hostile. Now that there was no
longer any ‘I’ to suffer, all these ideas
which had inflicted suffering became
innocent. I could praise the perfection of
every part; I could wonder and worship
the whole.”
Crowley appears to equate crossing the Abyss
with a loss of ego, a component of many mystical
experiences. He suggests the Abyss is a place
where consciousness becomes encapsulated and
separated from the rest of life, the point at
which the duality of “me and not-me” occurs.
Whether the word “crossing” is meaningful
when describing changes in awareness or consciousness,
whether the mystic encounters one
Abyss or many, and whether Crowley’s interpretation
is a good and meaningful one, are all
questions which should not be taken for
granted. There are interpretations of the Tree
where there are several “Abysses” (see Chapter
7), and in this interpretation it is possible to
define an abyss as “a discontinuous change in
consciousness”.
Another twentieth-century Kabbalist who
added to the ever-expanding notion of the
Abyss was Dion Fortune, in her theosophical
work The Cosmic Doctrine [13]. The form of this
work appears to have been inspired by H.P. Blavatsky’s
The Secret Doctrine, and certainly lives
up to Fortune’s claim that it was “designed to
Notes on Kabbalah
60
train the mind, not to inform it.”
Fortune describes three processes arising out
of the Unmanifest (i.e. En Soph). Ring Cosmos is
an anabolic process underlying the creation of
forms of greater and greater complexity. Ring
Chaos is a catabolic process underlying the
destruction and recycling of form. Ring-Pass-
Not is a limit where catabolism turns back into
anabolism. She visualised this as three great
rings of movement in the Unmanifest, with the
motion associated with Ring Cosmos spiralling
towards the centre, the movement of Ring
Chaos unwinding towards the periphery, and
the dead-zone of Ring-Pass-Not defining the
outer limit of Ring Chaos. The point at which
Ring Chaos is bounded by Ring-Pass-Not is the
point where everything is reduced to its simplest
components, an abyss of unbeing, a cosmic
compost heap where form is digested under the
dominion of the Angel of Death and turned into
something fertile where new growth can take
place.
The similarity between Fortune’s description
of Ring Chaos and what in programming is
called a “reference-counting garbage collector”
is interesting, given that she was writing in the
1930’s. Many programming languages allow
new programming structures to be created
dynamically, thus allowing the creation of more
and more complex structures (forms). At the
same time there is a mechanism to reclaim
unused resources so that the system does not
run out of memory or disc space, and the normal
scheme is that if a structure is not referenced
by any other structure, recycle it. In
Fortune’s language, if you want to destroy
something, you
“make a vacuum round it. You prevent
opposition from touching it. Then, being
unopposed, it is free to follow the laws of
its own nature, which is to join the motion
of Ring Chaos.”
There is an intuition here that things which
are not “connected” (in a metaphysical sense) to
the rest of the universe are reclaimed by joining
the circulation of Ring Chaos and are recycled
back into the Unmanifest. This is the abyss of
un-being, the collapse of our individual Trees
back into Keter and the extinction of Keter in the
unknowable voidness of the En Soph.
A final example of an abyss is one which differs
from previous examples in that it brings to
the fore the relationship between us, the created,
and the Unmanifest, the En Soph itself.
Kabbalistic writers agree that the Unmanifest is
not nothing; on the contrary, it is the hidden
wellspring of being, but as it is “not manifest
being” it combines the words “not” and “being”
in a conjunction which can be apprehended as a
kind of abyss. Scholem [39] discusses this “nothingness”
as follows:
“The primary start or wrench in which
the introspective God is externalised and
the light that shines inwardly made visible,
this revolution of perspective, transforms
En Soph, the inexpressible fullness,
into nothingness. It is in this mystical
“nothingness” from which all the other
stages of God’s gradual enfolding in the
Sefiroth emanate, and which the kabbalists
call the highest Sefira, or the
“supreme crown” of Divinity. To use
another metaphor, it is the abyss which
becomes visible in the gaps of existence.
Some Kabbalists who have developed this
idea, for instance Rabbi Joseph ben Shalom
of Barcelona (1300), maintain that in
every transformation of reality, in every
change of form, or every time the status of
a thing is altered, the abyss of nothingness
is crossed and for a fleeting mystical
moment becomes visible.”
It should be clear from the previous examples
that the Abyss is a metaphor for a number of
intuitions or experiences. It is useful to make the
following distinctions:
• the Abyss of nothingness
• the Abyss of separation (from God)
• the Abyss of knowledge (Daat)
• the Abyss of un-being (or un-becoming)
The perception that being and nothingness go
hand-in-hand is something Sartre studied in
great depth [38], and many of his observations
on the nature of consciousness and its relationship
to negation or nothingness are among the
most perceptive I have found. His arguments
are lengthy and complex, and I do not wish to
summarise them here other than to say that he
viewed nothingness as the necessary consequence
of a special kind of being he calls “beingfor-
itself”, the kind of being we experience as
self-conscious human beings.
The Abyss of separation can be experienced as
a separation from the divine, but it can also be
experienced quite acutely in one’s relationships
with others and with the physical world itself.
Much of what we perceive about the world and
other people is an illusion created by the
The Sephiroth
61
machinery of perception. Strip away the trick,
Yesod becomes Daat, and a yawning abyss
opens up where one is conscious less of what
one knows than of what one does not, and it is
possible to look at a close friend and see something
more alien, remote and unknown than the
surface of Pluto. This experience is closely
related to the Abyss of knowledge, which is discussed
in more detail in the discussion on Daat
below.
The Abyss of un-being is the direct perception
that at any instant it is possible to not-be. This
perception goes beyond the contemplation or
awareness of physical death; it is the direct
apprehension of what Dion Fortune calls “Ring
Chaos”, that un-being is less a state than a process,
that at every instant there is an impulse, a
magnetic attraction towards total self-annihilation
on every level possible. The closer one
moves towards the roots of being, the closer one
moves towards the roots of un-being. The final
annihilation of the duality of being and nothingness
brings one back to the mystery of the En
Soph.
Daat means “Knowledge”. In early Kabbalah
Daat was a symbol of the union of Wisdom
(Chokhmah) and Understanding (Binah). The
book of Proverbs is rich mine of material on the
nature of these three qualities, material which
forms the basis of many ideas in the Zohar and
other Kabbalistic texts. For example, Proverbs
3.13:
“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom,
and the man that getteth understanding....
She is a tree of life to them that lay
hold upon her: and happy is every one
that retaineth her. The Lord by wisdom
hath founded the earth; by understanding
hath he founded the heavens. By his
knowledge the depths are broken up, and
the clouds drop down the dew”
And Proverbs 24.3:
“Through wisdom is an house builded;
and by understanding is it established:
And by knowledge shall the chambers be
filled with all pleasant and precious
riches.”
In the Bahir [23] and Zohar [29] Daat represents
the symbolic union of wisdom and understanding,
and is their offspring or child. The
Microprosopus, often symbolised by Tipheret,
is also the symbolic child of Chokhmah and
Binah, and there is some room here for confusion.
According to the Zohar however, Daat has
a specific location in the Microprosopus, namely
in one of the three chambers of the brain, from
where it mediates between the higher
(Chokhmah and Binah) and the lower (the six
sephiroth or “chambers” of the Microprosopus -
see the reference to Proverbs 24.3 above).
I have often puzzled about the difference
between wisdom, understanding and knowledge,
and it was not clear to me why knowledge
is the natural outcome of wisdom and understanding.
When I read Proverbs that I realised
that wisdom was being used in the sense of
something external, something which is received
from someone else.
As children we were told “do this” or “don’t
do that”, and often couldn’t question the wisdom
of the advice because we lacked the understanding.
I once had a furious row with my
father about building a liquid fuel rocket engine
in our house, using petrol and hydrogen peroxide
as the propellant. In retrospect it does seem
like a remarkably well conceived plan for burning
down a house. My father flatly refused to let
me do it. I couldn’t understand the problem - I
was going to be careful.
I now know, because I understand the stupidity
of what I was trying to do, the wisdom of his
refusal. His advice was wise; he understood the
nature of the risk far better than I did. I didn’t
understand the risk, so what now seems like
good common sense seemed like uncompromising
obstruction. I didn’t know what I was doing
because I didn’t understand the risk, and so my
father’s wisdom fell on deaf ears. Received wisdom
cannot be integrated into oneself unless
there is the capacity to understand it, and having
understood, it becomes real knowledge
which can be passed on again as wisdom to
someone else.
For early Kabbalists the ultimate wisdom was
external. It was the wisdom of God the Father as
expressed in the Torah, and by attempting to
understand this wisdom (and that is what Kabbalah
was) they could arrive at the only knowledge
truely worth having. The story of my
argument with my father is like the person who
struggles to come to terms with the wisdom of a
Holy Book, who rejects its commandments
because they lack the wider understanding of life
and the purpose of creation, and in consequence
is incapable of knowing God. Perhaps that is
why Daat is not a sephira: the separation of wisNotes
on Kabbalah
62
dom and understanding results in an absence of
knowledge of God.
One of the unattributable pieces of Kabbalah
I was taught was that Daat is the hole left
behind when Malkhut fell out of the Garden of
Eden. If you examine the derivation of the Tree
of Life in Chapter 2. closely you will see that I
have based some of it on this observation. The
development of the notion of Daat as a “hole”
appears to have originated this century. Gareth
Knight, for example [25], provides a complete
set of correspondences for Daat, most of which I
dislike personally, but one at least is appropriate:
he gives the magical image of Daat as Janus,
god of doorways. Kenneth Grant [15], with his
florid imagination, sees Daat as a gateway
through to “outer spaces beyond, or behind, the
Tree itself” dominated by Klippotic forces.
There is a deep correspondence between
sephiroth in the lower face of the Tree and
sephiroth in the upper face - this idea is developed
later in a chapter on the Four Worlds. If
you examine the symmetries of the Tree, you
should see why Malkhut, Tipheret and Keter
are linked, why Hod and Binah are linked, why
Chokhmah and Netzach are linked, and most
importantly for the purposes of this discussion,
that there is a correspondence between Yesod
and Daat.
These are not just simple geometric symmetries.
They express some important relationships
which are experientially verifiable, and in
terms of what makes most sense in Kabbalah
and what does not, these relationships are
important. Daat and Yesod, at different levels,
are like two sides of the same coin. Jam the
machinery of perception as I said above, and
Yesod can become Daat.
The following quotation is taken from an
bona-fide anthropological article [27] attempting
to explain some of the characteristic features
of cave art:
“Moving into a yet deeper stage of trance
is often accompanied, according to laboratory
reports, by an experience of a vortex
or rotating tunnel that seems to
surround the subject. The external world
is progressively excluded and the inner
world grows more florid. Iconic images
may appear on the walls of the vortex,
often imposed on a lattice of squares, like
television screens. Frequently there is a
mixture of iconic and geometric forms.
Experienced shamans are able to plunge
rapidly into deep trance, where they
manipulate the imagery according to the
needs of the situation. Their experience of
it, however, is of a world they have come
briefly to inhabit; not a world of their own
making, but a spirit world they are privileged
to visit.”
This will come as no surprise to anyone who
has read Michael Harner’s “The Way of the Shaman”
[18]. There on page 103 (plate 8) is a beautiful
picture of the tunnel vortex, complete with
prisms. When I first saw this picture I was surprised
and recognised it instantly from my own
meditations. When I showed it to my wife her
reaction was the same. The tunnel-vortex
appears to be an important ingredient of magical
and mystical experience, and it appears in a
very precise context. In Kabbalah the shamanic
tunnel would be attributed to the 32nd. path
connecting Malkhut to Yesod; this path connects
the real world to the underworld of the
imagination and the unconscious, and is commonly
symbolised by a tunnel. However, using
the symmetry of the Tree, this path also corresponds
to the path connecting Tipheret across
the Abyss, through Daat, to Keter. The tunnel/
vortex at this level is no longer subjective,
because this level of the Tree corresponds to the
noumenal reality underpinning the phenomenal
world, and links individual self-consciousness
to something greater. Just as Yesod represents
the machinery of sense perception, so Daat can
flip over to become the Yesod of another level of
perception, not sense perception, but something
completely different that seems to operate out
of the “back door” of the mind; this is objective
knowledge, what is sometimes called gnosis.
To conclude this section I would like to
indulge in some speculation as to why there is a
quasi-sephira called Knowledge located by convention
in the Abyss. Why?
As I programmer I am continually aware of
the gulf between abstract ideas, such as the
number two and its physical representations in
the world. Here are a few different ways of representing
the same abstract idea:
2, II, .., two, deux, oo, blurg
The number two can be represented in an infinite
number of ways. The final representation in
the list, “blurg”, is a way of writing “two” in a
new language I have just invented. Now that I
have said this you can use it in your arithmetical
The Sephiroth
63
calculations. For example, 1+1 = blurg.
Only when you share some understanding of
my language can you begin to guess that a particular
mark in the world represents the number
two, and the situation is even worse than it
might seem. A basic theorem of information
theory states that the optimum way of expressing
any piece of information is one where the
symbols occur completely randomly. I could
take this paragraph, pass it through an optimal
text compressor and the same piece of text
would be indistinguishable from random garbage.
Only I, knowing the compression procedure,
could extract the original message from
the result.
Whatever we call information appears to exist
independently of the physical world, and uses
the world of chalk marks, ink marks, magnetic
domains or whatever like a rider uses a horse.
To me the gulf between the abstraction (the
number 2) and its physical representation (the
various marks I can make) is irreconcilable.
Between the physical world and the world of
the mind is an abyss.
I do not believe I am indulging in “new physics”
or anything vaguely suspect - this is meat
and drink to the average programmer, who
spends most of his or her time transforming
abstractions from one symbol set to another.
Let us take a slightly different approach
which leads to the same place from the opposite
direction. There is a mathematical proof that
there is no largest prime number. I know that
proof. No dissection of my brain will ever reveal
the proof to someone who does not know it.
I am prepared to bet a large quantity of alcohol
that it is theoretically impossible to find this
information in my head; the proof that there is
no largest prime number will never be extracted
even if you assume a neurologist capable of
mapping every atom in my brain. Evolution
tends towards optimality, and I think the proof
of this theorem will be encoded optimally to
look like random garbage. Perhaps someone
will discover the chemical Rosetta Stone which
enables the perfect neurologist to decode the
information in my brain but it seems unlikely to
me even in principle. The ideas in my head, like
the number 2, exist independent of the chemical
marks used to represent them, and while I can
tell you what they are, you will not find them in
your microscope.
There is an abyss here. It is an abyss of knowledge.
There is a gulf between the world where
we make arbitrary physical marks to represent
abstract notions, and the abstract notions themselves.
You cannot know the contents of my
mind by probing it with physical instruments.
In Kabbalah this particular abyss is called the
abyss of Assiah; it is the first in a series of
abysses. The next abyss is the abyss of Yetzirah.
There are further abysses, and this should be
clearer when I discuss the Four Worlds and the
Extended Tree. The Abyss and Daat go together
because the Abyss sets a limit on what can be
known from below the Abyss; the abyss is an
abyss of knowledge, and Daat is the hole we fall
into when we try probe beyond. Can the nature
of God be expressed in terms of anything
human? No. God is as human as a cockroach, as
human as a lump of stone, as human as a star, as
human as empty space. So how can you know
anything about God? You have as much chance
of finding God using the apparatus of reason as
the neurologist has of finding my mind with a
scalpel.
Only when Daat flips over to become the
Yesod of another world can you know anything
about it, but unfortunately the fiery speech of
angels is like leprechaun’s gold: by the time
you’ve taken it home to show to your friends,
you’ve nothing but a purse of dried leaves.
Binah, Chokhmah, Keter
The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the
Lord
The triad of Binah, Chokhmah and Keter are a
Kabbalistic representation of the manifest God.
A discussion on this triad presents me with a
problem. The problem is that while I have used
the word “God” in many places in these notes, I
have done so with a sense of unease, understanding
that the word means so many different
things to so many people that it is effectively
meaningless. I have chosen to use the word
“God” as a placeholder for personal experience,
with the implicit assumption that the reader
understands that “God” is a personal experience,
and not an ill-defined abstraction one
“believes in”. This view is not novel, but there
are still many people who are uncomfortable
with the idea of experiencing (as opposed to
“believing in”) God.
A second assumption implicit in the use of the
word “God” as a placeholder, is that it stands
only for experience; your experience, and hence
Notes on Kabbalah
64
your God, is as valid as mine, and as there are
no formal definitions, there is no scope for theological
debate or dispute. This leaves me with
nothing more to say.
However.....these notes were intended to provide
some insight into Kabbalah, and it would
be odd, having begun to write them, to turn
around and say “sorry, I won’t say anything
about the three supernal sephiroth”.
I think I have to say something. Balanced
against this is my original intention, at every
stage in these notes, to relate the objects of discussion
to something real, to make a personal
contribution by adding my own understanding
to the subject rather than pot-boiling the same
old material. I cannot see how to put flesh on
the bare bones of the supernal sephiroth without
discussing my own conception of God and
whatever personal experience I might have.
I am loth to do this. To begin with, it isn’t fair
on those people who study and use Kabbalah
(many Jewish) who do not share my views, and
secondly, remembering the parable of the blind
men and the elephant, impressions of God tend
to be shaped by the part one grabs hold of, and
how close to the bottom you are.
Like it or not, my explanations of the supernal
sephiroth are going to be lacking in substance. I
can only ask you, the reader, to accept that the
primary purpose of Kabbalah has always been
the direct, personal experience of the living
God, a state Kabbalists have called devekut, or
cleaving to God, and the way towards that
experience comes, not from a studious examination
of the symbolism of the supernals, but from
the practical techniques of Kabbalah to be discussed
in a later chapter.
The title of the sephira Binah is translated as
“understanding”, and sometimes as “intelligence”.
The title of the sephira Chokhmah
translates as “wisdom”, and that of Keter translates
as “crown”. These three sephiroth are
often referred to as the supernal sephiroth, or
simply the supernals, and they represent that
aspect of God which is manifest in creation.
There is another aspect of God in Kabbalah, the
“real God” or En Soph. Although En Soph is
responsible for the creation of the universe, En
Soph manifests to us only in the limited form of
the sephira Keter.
An enormous amount of effort has gone into
“explaining” this process: a book on Kabbalah
[32] in my possession devotes eight pages to the
En Soph, twelve pages to the supernal trio of
Keter, Chokhmah and Binah, and five pages to
the remaining seven sephiroth, a proportion
which seems relatively constant throughout
Kabbalistic literature.
Briefly, the hidden God or En Soph crystallised
a point which is the sephira Keter. In most
versions (and this idea can be found as far back
as the Bahir [23]) the En Soph “contracted”
(tsimtsum) to “make room” for the creation, and
the crystallised point of Keter manifested within
this “space”. The sephira Keter is like a seed
planted in nothingness from which the creation
springs, and some Kabbalists draw the Tree of
Life “upside down” to show Keter at the bottom
of the Tree, rooted in the soil of the En Soph,
with the rest of the sephiroth forming the trunk,
branches and leaves. Another metaphor shows
Keter connected to the En Soph by a “thread of
light”, a metaphor I used somewhat whimsically
in the section on “Daat and the Abyss”,
where I portrayed the Tree of Life as a lit-up
Christmas tree with a power cord snaking out of
the darkness of the En Soph and through the
abyss to Keter.
Like the Moon, Keter has two aspects, manifest
and hidden, and for this reason its magical
image is that of a face seen in profile: one side of
the face is visible to us, but the other side is
turned forever towards the En Soph.
Keter has many titles: Existence of Existences,
Concealed of the Concealed, Ancient of
Ancients, Ancient of Days, Primordial Point, the
Smooth Point, the Point within the Circle, the
Most High, the Inscrutable Height, the Vast
Countenance (Arik Anpin), the White Head, the
Head which is not, Macroprosopus. Taken
together, these titles imply that Keter is the first,
the oldest, the root of existence, remote, and its
most accurate symbol is that of a point. Keter
precedes all forms of existence, precedes all differentiation
and distinction, precedes all polarity.
Keter contains everything in potential, like a
seed that sprouts and grows into a Tree, not
once, but continuously. Keter is both root and
seed. Because it precedes all forms and contains
all opposites it is not like anything. You can say
it contains infinite goodness, but then you have
to say that it contains infinite evil. Wrapped up
in Keter is all the love in the world, and
wrapped around the love is all the hate. Keter is
an outpouring of purest, radiant light, but
The Sephiroth
65
equally it is the profoundest stygian dark.
And it is none of these things; it precedes all
form or polarity, and its Virtue is unity. It is a
point without extension or qualities, but it contains
all creation within it as an unformed
potential. The Zohar [29] is filled with references
to Keter, and it is difficult to be selective, but the
following quote from the “Lesser Holy Assembly”,
is clear, simple, and subtle:
“He (Keter) hath been formed, and yet as
it were He hath not been formed. He hath
been conformed so that he may sustain all
things; yet is He not formed, seeing that
He is not discovered.
When He is conformed He produceth
nine Lights, which shine forth from Him,
from his conformation.
And from Himself those Lights shine
forth, and they emit flames, and they rush
forth and are extended on every side, like
as from an elevated lantern the rays of
light stream down on every side.
And those rays of light, which are
extended, when anyone draweth near
unto them so that they may be examined,
are not found, and there is only the lantern
alone.”
Polarity is contained within Keter in the form
of Chokhmah and Binah, the Wisdom and
Understanding of God, and Kabbalists have
represented this polarity using the most obvious
of metaphors, that of male and female.
Chokhmah is Abba, the Father, and Binah is
Aima, the Mother, and the entire world is seen
as the child of the continuous and never-ending
coupling of this divine pair. The following passage
is taken again from the “Lesser Holy
Assembly”:
“Come and behold. When the Most Holy
Ancient One, the Concealed with all Concealments
(Keter), desired to be formed
forth, He conformed all things under the
form of Male and Female; and in such
place wherein Male and Female are comprehended.
For they could not permanently exist
save in another aspect of the Male and
Female (their countenances being joined
together).
And this Wisdom (Chokhmah) embracing
all things, when it goeth forth and shineth
forth from the Most Holy Ancient
One, shineth not save under the form of
Male and Female. Therefore is this Wisdom
extended, and it is found that it
equally becometh Male and Female.
ChKMH AB BINH AM: Chokhmah is the
Father and Binah is the Mother, and
therein are Chokhmah, Wisdom, and
Binah, Understanding, counterbalanced
together in the most perfect equality of
Male and Female.
And therefore are all things established
in the equality of Male and Female, for
were it not so, how could they subsist!
This beginning is the Father of all things;
the Father of all Fathers; and both are
mutually bound together, and the one
path shineth into the other - Chokhmah,
Wisdom, as the Father; Binah, Understanding,
as the Mother.
It is written, Prov. 2.3: ‘If thou callest
Binah the Mother.”
When They are associated together They
generate, and are expanded in truth.
And concerning the continuing act of procreation:
“Together They (Chokhmah & Binah) go
forth, together They are at rest; the one
ceaseth not from the other, and the one is
never taken away from the other.
And therefore is it written, Gen 2.10:
‘And a river went forth from Eden’ - i.e.
properly speaking, it continually goeth
forth and never faileth.”
A river or spring metaphor is often used for
Chokhmah, to emphasise the continuous nature
of creation. The primary metaphor is that of a
phallus - Chokhmah is the phallus which ejaculates
continuously into the womb of Binah, and
Binah in turn gives birth to phenomenal reality.
Phallic symbols - a standing stone, a fireman’s
hose, a fountain, a spear, belong to Chokhmah,
and womb symbols - a cauldron, a gourd, a
chalice, an oven, belong to Binah. In an abstract
sense, Chokhmah and Binah correspond to the
first, primal manifestation of the polarity of
force and form. To repeat a metaphor I have
used previously, Binah is a hot-air balloon, and
Chokhmah is the roaring blast of flame which
keeps it in the air.
The metaphor is not completely accurate:
Binah is not form: she is the Mother of Form -
she creates the condition whereby form can
manifest. The colour of Binah is black, and she is
associated with Shabbatai (“rest”, from the
same root as Shabbat, the Sabbath), the planet
Saturn.
The symbolism of Binah is twofold: on one
Notes on Kabbalah
66
hand she is Aima, the fertile mother of creation,
and on the other hand she is the mother of
finiteness, limitation, restriction, boundaries,
time, space, law, fate, and ultimately, death. In
this form she is often depicted as Ama the
Crone, who broods (like many pictures of
Queen Victoria) in her black widow’s weeds on
the throne of creation. One of the titles of Binah
is Khorsia, the Throne. The magician and Kabbalist
Dion Fortune had a strongly intuitive
grasp of Binah, not just as a sphere of a particular
kind of emanation, but as the Great Mother
herself, as the following rhyme from her novel
Moon Magic [11] shows:
“I am she who ere the earth was formed
Was Rhea, Binah, Ge.
I am that soundless, boundless, bitter sea
Out of whose deeps life wells eternally.
Astarte, Aphrodite, Ashtoreth - Giver of
life and bringer in of death;
Hera in heaven, on earth Persephone;
Diana of the ways, and Hecate - All these
am I, and they are seen in me. The hour of
the high full moon draws near; I hear the
invoking words, hear and appear -
Shaddai El Chai and Rhea, Binah, Ge - I
come unto the priest who calleth me - “
One of the oldest correspondences for Binah is
the element of water, and she is called Marah,
the bitter sea from which all life comes and must
return. She is also the Superior or Greater
Mother; the Inferior or Lesser Mother is the
sephira Malkhut, who is better symbolised by
nature goddesses of the earth itself - e.g. the
trinity of Kore, Demeter, and Persephone.
The Tree of Life has many goddess symbols,
and it is not always easy to see where they fit:
• Binah is the Great Mother of All, with symbols
of space, time, fate, spinning, weaving,
cauldrons and other womb-like symbols.
• Malkhut is the Earth as the soil from which
life springs, matter as the basis for life, the
spirit concealed in matter, best symbolised
by goddesses of this earth, fertility and vegetation.
• Yesod in its lunar aspect is the Moon, a hidden
reality with the ebb and flow of secret
tides, illusion, glamour, and sexual reproduction,
and is sometimes in invoked in the
form of a lunar goddess - Selene, Artemis
etc.
• Gevurah is on the Pillar of Form. The whole
Pillar has a female aspect, and Gevurah is
sometimes invoked in a female form as Kali,
Durga, Hecate, or the Morrigan, although it
must be said that all four goddesses also
share some correspondences more appropriate
to Binah.
• Netzach has the planet Venus as a correspondence,
and its aspect of sensual pleasure,
luxury, sexual love and desire is
sometimes invoked through a goddess such
as Venus or Aphrodite.
The Spiritual Experience of Binah is the
Vision of Sorrow. As the Mother of Form Binah
is also the Mother of finiteness and limitation, of
determinism, of cause and effect. Every quality
comes forth hand-in-hand with its opposite: life
and death, joy and despair, love and hate, order
and chaos, so that it is not possible to find a firm
anchor in life. For each reason to live I can find,
buried like a worm in an apple, a reason not to
live. The Vision of Sorrow is a vision of a life
condemned to tramp along the circumference of
a circle, forever denied a view of the unity of the
centre. At its most extreme the creation is seen
as an evil trick played by a malign demiurge, a
sick, empty joke, or a joyless prison with death
the only release. The classic vision of sorrow is
that of Siddhartha Gautama. Tolstoy records
[19] a terrible and enduring psychic experience
which contains most of the elements associated
with the worst Binah can offer - it drove him to
the very edge of suicide.
The Illusion of Binah is death; that is, the
vision of Binah may be compelling, but it is onesided,
a half-truth, and the finiteness it reveals is
an illusion. Our own personal finiteness is an
illusion.
The Klippot of Binah is fatalism, the belief that
we are imprisoned in the mechanical causality
of form, and not only are we incapable of changing
or achieving anything, but even if we could,
there wouldn’t be any point. Why try to be
happy - happiness leads inexorably to sadness.
Why try to build and create - it all ends in decay
and ruin soon enough. As the fatalistic author of
Ecclesiastes says, all is vanity.
The Vice of Binah is avarice. Form is only onehalf
of the equation of life - change is the other
half - and to try to hold onto and preserve form
at the expense of change would be the death of
all life.
The Virtue of Binah is silence. Beyond form
there are no concepts, ideas, abstractions, or
words.
The Sephiroth
67
The Spiritual Experience of Chokhmah is the
Vision of God Face-to-Face. The tradition I
received has it that one cannot have this vision
while incarnate; that is, one dies in the process.
Perle Epstein [10] records the story of a Chasidic
Rabbi whose custom it was to bid farewell to his
family each morning as if it was his last - he
feared he might die of ecstacy during the day. In
the Greater Holy Assembly [29], three Rabbis pass
away in ecstacy, and in the Lesser Holy Assembly
the famous Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai passes
away at the conclusion.
There is a fairly widespread belief that to look
on the naked face of God, or a God, means
death, but fortunately there is no historical evidence
to suggest that the majority of Kabbalists
died of anything other than natural causes.
Having said this, I would not like to underplay
the naked rawness of Chokhmah; unconstrained,
unconfined, free of form, it is the creative
power which sustains the universe. It
contains, equally balanced, your life and your
death, and as you have your life already, to talk
of death is not melodramatic.
The Illusion of Chokhmah is independence.
At the level of Binah we seem to be locked in
form, separate and finite, but just as death is
seen to be an illusion so ultimately is our independence
and free-will. We seem to be independent,
and we seem to have free-will, but at
the level of Chokhmah we draw our water from
the same well.
The Virtue of Chokhmah is good, and the Vice
is evil. Regardless of your definition of good or
evil, Chokhmah encompasses every possibility
of action, circumstance and creation, and modern
Kabbalists no longer try to believe God is
only Good, and Evil must reside elsewhere.
Medieval Kabbalists liked to hedge their bets,
but one has only to plumb the bottomless
depths of personal good and evil to find they
spring from the same place.
The Klippot of Chokhmah is arbitrariness.
The raw, creative, unconstrained energy of God
at its most primal and dynamic can seem utterly
arbitrary and chaotic, and some authors [e.g.
[4]] have seen it this way. This removes the
“divine will” from the energy and leaves a
blind, directionless, and essentially mechanical
force which is unbiased in any direction - creation
and destruction, order and chaos, who
cares? The Kabbalistic view is that this is not so.
Chokhmah contains form (as Binah) in potential,
and it is not correct to view Chokhmah as a
purely chaotic energy. It is an energy biased
towards an end - “God’s Will”, for lack of a better
description.
The Spiritual Experience of Keter is Union
with God. My comments on the Spiritual Experience
of Chokhmah apply also to Keter.
The Illusion of Keter is attainment. We can
live, we can change, but there is nothing to
attain. Even Union with God is not attainment;
we were always one with God, and knowing that
we are changes nothing of any consequence. So
long as we live, there is no goal in life other than
living itself. As the Kabbalist Rebbe Nachman of
Breslov said [10]:
“No matter how high one reaches, there
is still the next step. Therefore, we never
know anything, and still do not attain the
true goal. This is a very deep and mysterious
concept.”
The Klippot of Keter is Futility. Perhaps the
creation was a bad idea. Maybe the En Soph
should never have emanated the point-crown of
Keter. Perhaps the whole of creation, life, the
entire, ghastly three-ring circus we are forced to
endure is nothing more than a complete waste.
The En Soph should suck Malkhut back into
Keter, collapse the whole, crazy house of cards,
and admit it was all a big mistake.
The God-name of Binah is Elohim, a feminine
noun with a masculine plural ending. When we
read in the Bible “In the beginning created
God...”, this God is Elohim. The name Elohim is
associated with all the sephiroth on the Pillar of
Form, and is taken to represent the feminine
aspect of God. The God-name of Chokhmah is
Yah (YH), a shortened form of YHVH. The Godname
of Keter is Eheieh, a name sometimes
translated as “I am”, and more often as “I will
be”.
The archangel of Binah is Tzaphqiel. I have
been told this means “Shroud of God”, but I
have not been able to verify this. If it does not
mean “Shroud of God”, it most certainly
should! The archangel of Chokhmah is Ratziel,
the Herald of the Deity. According to tradition,
the wisdom of God and the deepest secrets of
the creation were inscribed on a sapphire which
is in the keeping of the archangel Ratziel, and
this “Book of Ratziel” was given to Adam and
handed down through the generations [16]. A
well-known medieval manuscript with this title
Notes on Kabbalah
68
actually exists. The archangel of Keter is Metatron,
the Archangel of the Presence. According
to tradition Metatron was once the man Enoch,
who was so wise he was taken by God and
made a prince among the angels.
The angel orders of Binah, Chokhmah and
Keter can be derived directly from the vision of
Ezekiel. In the Biblical text, Ezekiel describes
successively the Holy Living Creatures, then the
great wheels within wheels, and lastly the
throne-chariot (Merkabah) of God. The vision of
Ezekiel had a great influence on early Kabbalah,
and it is no coincidence that the angel order of
Binah is the Aralim, or Thrones, the angel order
of Chokhmah is the Auphanim or Wheels, and
the angel order of Keter is the Chiaoth ha
Qadesh, or Holy Living Creatures. The forms of
the Chiaoth ha Qadesh - lion, eagle, man and ox
- have survived to this day in many Christian
churches, and can be found on the “World” card
of most Tarot packs.
It is difficult to grasp the nature of Chokhmah
and Binah from symbols alone, just as it is difficult
to grasp interstellar distances, or the heat
output of a star, or the number of stars in a galaxy,
or the number of galaxies visible to us. The
scale of the physical universe observed by
astronomers is staggering; there are something
like a hundred stars in our galaxy alone for every
person on this planet.
When I think of Chokhmah and Binah I
attempt to think of them on this scale. The physical
universe where we have our home, considered
as Malkhut, is vast, mysterious, and
contains inconceivable energies. To consider the
Father and Mother of creation on any less a
scale seems arrogant to me. Which brings us to
the question “Can one experience, or be initiated
into, the supernal sephiroth?”.
If the Kabbalah is to be considered as based
on experience, and not an intellectual construction,
then the answer has to be “yes”. The supernals
represent something real. What do they
represent? Is it possible to “cross the Abyss”?
The answers to these questions depends on
which Kabbalistic model one chooses to use,
and precisely how one interprets the Tree of
Life. For the sake of argument I have chosen
three alternative models:
• Model A: the sephira Malkhut represents
the whole physical universe; the sephiroth
from Yesod to Chesed (the Microprosopus)
represent a sentient, self-conscious being;
the supernals represent the God of the
whole universe, God-in-the-Large.
• Model B: the Tree of Life is a model of
human consciousness; the supernals represent
the God within, God-in-the-Small.
• Model C: the Tree of Life exists in the four
worlds of the creation, namely Atzilut,
Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiah. When talking
of “the Tree”, we are talking about the tree
of normal human experience, “the Tree of
Yetzirah”; “The Abyss” is in fact “the Abyss
of Yetzirah” only.
All three models can be found in Kabbalistic
writing, and it is rarely clear which version an
author is using at any given time. I admit the
fault myself. Model A differs radically from
Models B and C. Model A is an all-embracing
model of everything, whereas in Models B and
C the Tree has been applied recursively to a
component of the whole, namely a human being
considered a divine spark. This is a valid (if confusing)
Kabbalistic technique: take a whole, and
find a new Tree in each of its components and
apply the method recursively until you generate
enough detail to explain anything. This idea is
summed up in the aphorism: “there is a Tree in
every sephiroth”.
Is it possible to experience the supernals in
Model A? Is it possible to be at-one-ment with
the God of a billion, billion suns? I would say
that it is only possible to experience them at a
remove via the paths crossing over the Abyss
from Tipheret; that is, as a living, incarnate
being my consciousness rises no further up the
Pillar of Consciousness than Tipheret (or Daat),
and it is only possible to apprehend the supernals
via the linking paths. To experience the
consciousness of Binah in this model would be
tantamount to being able to modify the physical
constants of nature - Planck’s constant, the
speed of light, the Gravitational constant, the
ratio of masses of particles etc. - the consequences
don’t bear thinking about! To experience
Chokhmah would be to experience the
force which underpins a billion galaxies. I do
not believe even the most arrogant twentieth
century magician would claim to have achieved
either of these initiations - the continuing existence
of the planet is probably the best evidence
for that!
Model B is a model of the Microprosopus (e.g.
a human being) as a complete Tree. There is some
The Sephiroth
69
evidence in the Zohar that the author thought
about Macroprosopus and Microprosopus in
precisely this way, with references to “the
greater Chokhmah” and “the lesser
Chokhmah”. Model C is substantially similar to
Model B, but cast in a slightly different mould.
With this interpretation it is certainly possible
to consider “the lesser Chokhmah” as an accessible
state of consciousness, but “the Greater
Chokhmah” remains as in Model A; that is, we
can experience the God within, “God-in-the-
Small”, and experience our essential unity with
all other living beings considered as “Gods-inthe-
Small”, but beyond that lies a greater mystery,
that of “God-in-the-Large”. We may each
be a chip off the old block, but individually we
are not identical with the old block.
This discussion may seem arcane, but there is
a natural tendency in people to exalt spiritual
experience to the highest level, which does
nothing more than inflate and devalue the currency
of the language we use to describe these
experiences. The universe is too large, too mysterious,
and too full of infinite possibilities of
wonder for anyone to claim a full initiation into
Malkhut, far less Keter.
Lastly, it is worth asking “what is God?”.
What does the Kabbalistic trinity of Keter,
Chokhmah and Binah represent in reality? I
have deliberately avoided mentioning an enormous
amount of Kabbalistic material on these
three sephiroth because it is not clear whether it
contributes to a genuine understanding. How
useful, for example, is it to know that the name
Binah (BINH) contains not only IH (Yod, He),
the letters representing Chokhmah and Binah,
but also BN, Ben, the son? There is a level of
understanding Kabbalah which is intellectual,
and capable of almost infinite elaboration, but it
leads nowhere.
What experience or perception does the word
“God” denote? If there is nothing which is not
God, why are so many people searching for
God? Why do so many people feel apart from
God?
I was browsing in my local occult bookshop
recently, a shop which contains a catholic selection
of books covering Eastern religions, astrology,
Tarot, shamanism, crystals, theosophy,
magick, Celtic and Grail traditions, mythology,
Kabbalah, witchcraft, and so on. I am not sure
what I was looking for, but despite a couple of
hours of browsing I certainly did not find it.
What did strike me was the extent to which so
many of these books were written to make
human beings feel good about themselves.
There is a smug view permeating occult literature
that “spiritual” human beings are a little bit
more “advanced” or “developed” than the
pack, that they are “moving along the Path”
towards some kind of “enlightenment”, “cosmic
consciousness”, “union with God”, “divine
love”, or one of many more fantastic and utterly
sublime goals. It is all so empowering and
affirming and cosy. Even in the less starry-eyed
and gushy works the view is predominantly,
almost exclusively human- centred, and I found
it difficult to avoid the impression that the universe
was designed as a foam-padded playground
for human souls to romp around in.
There is more than a little truth in Marx’s statement
that religion is the opium of the people,
and a cynic might justify a claim that occultism
and esoteric religion are little more than a security
blanket for unfortunate people who cannot
look reality in the face.
Where are the books which say:
“You are an insignificant speck in a universe
so vast you cannot even begin to
comprehend its scale.
All human experience and knowledge is
parochial, insignificant and largely irrelevant
on a universal scale, and your personal
contribution even more so.
Your occult pretensions amount to nothing
and are carefully designed to protect
you from any experience of reality.
There are no Masters or Powers, no Secret
Chiefs, no Inner Plane Adepti, no Messiahs,
and God does not love you.
The only thing you possess is your life,
and with it the joy and mystery of living
in a universe filled to the brim with life,
where little is known and much remains
to be discovered.
When you die, you are dead.”
I do not concur with this position in its
entirety, but it is a valid position to adopt, and
one which is not strongly represented in esoteric
and occult literature. Why not? Perhaps people
do not want to buy books which say this.
I will venture an opinion which reflects my
own experience; as such it has no general validity,
but it is worth recording nevertheless.
I believe that many of the religious, esoteric
and occult traditions currently extant are unconsciously
designed to protect human beings from
Notes on Kabbalah
70
experiencing God and lead towards experiences
which are valid in themselves but which are
biased towards feelings of love, protection,
peace, safety, personal growth, community and
empowerment, all wrapped up in a strongly
human-centred value system where positive
human feelings and experiences are emphasised.
Far from leading people into some kind of congruence
with the reality of the world, religious
beliefs can act in the opposite direction. I believe
that people are apart from God by choice, that
they cannot find God because they do not want to.
It is difficult to justify this belief without
resorting to an onion-skin model of the psyche,
that underneath the surface, unsuspected and
virtually inaccessible, is a layer which does its
best to protect us from the existential terror of
confronting things as they really are.
As a child I was terrified of the dark. The dark
itself was not malign, but I was deeply afraid,
and in my case it was fear which determined my
relationship with the dark, not any quality of
the dark itself. So it is with God - it is our deeply
buried and unrecognised fear which determines
our relationship with God. We read books, go to
the cinema and theatre, argue, invent new
things, throw parties, play games, search for
God, live and love together, and bury ourselves
in all the distractions of human society in a frenetic
and unceasing effort to avoid layers of fear
- fear of solitude, fear of rejection, fear of disease,
decay and disintegration, fear of madness,
fear of meaninglessness, arbitrariness and futility,
fear of death and personal annihilation.
When we avoid contact with the terrible emotions
evoked, so we insulate ourselves from
genuine experience.
Like an audience in a cinema, we can live in
the absorbing fantasy world of twentieth century
human society and forget that it is dark,
cold and raining outside in the street. Like the
cinema audience we will have to leave our seats
sooner or later. Underneath all our fears is the
fear of opening the door which conceals an
awful truth: that we were never truly separate
from God, that the Abyss is of our own making,
and that we have wilfully, and with great
energy and persistence, chosen not to know this.
The Letters & the Paths
71
6
The Letters & the Paths
According to the Sepher Yetzirah there are
thirty two paths of wisdom: these are the ten
sephiroth and twenty-two paths. The twentytwo
paths connect the sephiroth on the Tree of
Life into a symmetrical lattice or network. It is
natural and intuitive to regard the sephiroth as
“places” and the paths as “connections” or
“transitions” between places, as if the Tree was
a space-station-like structure of ten rooms and
twenty-two corridors.
Whether this simple intuition is accurate is
open to question. The paths could equally well
denote relationships and symmetries between
sephiroth, just as lines drawn between people
can be used to denote marriage or sexual partners,
similar birth dates, or astrological signs,
food preferences, home towns or any one of a
large number of potential relationships between
individuals. In a possible confirmation of this
view there are interpretations of the structure of
the Tree which emphasise groupings of three
sephiroth, usually referred to as “triads”, and
larger-scale views of the Tree such as the Three
Pillars and the two Faces also suggest that the
“paths as corridors” interpretation is not the
whole story.
In a volume devoted to the paths [25], Gareth
Knight takes the intuitive view that “while a
Sephira stands primarily for an objective state, a
Path is the subjective experience one undergoes
in transferring consciousness from one Sephira,
or state, to another”. Dion Fortune [12] interprets
a path as the “equilibrium of the two
Sephiroth it connects”. Halevi [17] takes the
view that as the Tree is a structure based on balance,
an impulse of imbalance causes changes to
propagate throughout the Tree, and the paths
describe how imbalances are propagated and
equilibrated, according to a process of thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis. In his commentary on
the Sepher Yetzirah, Kaplan [24] comments that
early Kabbalists viewed the thirty two paths as
different states of consciousness. All of these
views on the nature of the paths contain useful
insights.
It is difficult to discuss the twenty two paths
without discussing the Sepher Yetzirah, because
it is from the few enigmatic chapters of the Yetzirah
that much of the material associated with
the paths is drawn:
Ten Sefirot of Nothingness
And 22 Foundation Letters:
Three Mothers,
Seven Doubles
And Twelve Elementals.
It was the Yetzirah which established the
twenty two paths as the twenty two letters of
the Hebrew alphabet, it was the Yetzirah which
grouped the letters into three, seven and twelve
(like the paths on the Tree), and it was the Yetzirah
which established a large number of correspondences
traditionally associated with the
paths. The primary association of each path on
the Tree of Life is a letter from the Hebrew
alphabet, and from the correspondences given
in the Yetzirah a host of further correspondences
follow. For this reason the study of the
traditional correspondences for the paths begins
with the Hebrew alphabet.
The Letters
The Hebrew alphabet is composed of twentytwo
letters. Many Kabbalists believed (and still
believe) these letters are the instruments used
by God to create the world. They are innately
sacred and contain within them all the mysteries
of creation.
According to Hebrew Legend as recorded in
the Aggadah, the Torah (the first five books of the
Bible) pre-dated the creation of heaven and
earth and formed a kind of architectural blueprint,
written in letters of black fire on white
fire. In the Zohar there is a story told of how the
letters of the Hebrew alphabet individually petition
God for the privilege of being the first letter
in the Torah (the honour went to the letter Beth).
The mysterious and holy names of God, which
Notes on Kabbalah
72
represent the manifestations of God in the Creation,
can be expressed directly with this primordial
script.
Devout Jews believe in the sacredness of the
Torah as the revelation of God’s word, and it is a
small step from this to the belief that a person
who understood the power of the letters and
who knew how to form the divine names in the
mind and on the tongue, had some measure of
divine power (although its use for personal gain
was roundly condemned by Kabbalists in the
orthodox rabbinic tradition). To Kabbalists the
letters glow with life and meaning, dancing in
patterns, combining and recombining to spell
out the secrets of the hidden realm of the divine.
The power of the divine name lives on in many
popular stereotypes of the mage, the sorcerer
and the magician.
Can we take seriously the claim that the
Hebrew script is the original language of the
creation? Must we leave this claim as a matter of
faith, or can we look at it rationally? Should we
care whether a belief like this is rational - after
all, reason is our servant, not our master.
For myself, I cannot accept this as a matter of
faith. We live on a planet with many cultures,
many religions, and many sacred scripts, some
with an equal claim to being the original language
of the creation (Sanskrit for example). It is
difficult for a rational person to take this kind of
claim seriously. How many original and divine
languages of creation can there be? No doubt
there are beings on a planet several dozen light
years away who also believe something similar
about their script. It is not impossible that the
script of a small tribe in Palestine might be the
original language of creation, but in the face of
many competing claims this does seem unlikely.
It is possible to try to ignore this issue by writing-
off Kabbalistic letter and word mysticism as
an historical dead-end, in the same way that we
no longer believe that the world is flat and we
no longer believe the sun goes around the earth.
The problem with doing this is that Kabbalah is
absolutely permeated with a belief in the
sacredness of the word; it is at the heart of Kabbalah.
To take the sacredness of words and letters
out of Kabbalah would be like pulling the
petals off a flower.
For a long time I stuck my head in the sand,
unwilling to admit the validity of letter mysticism,
but as a result of some personal experiences
I began to wonder whether Kabbalists
were saying something about language in general,
about a mystery they had comprehended
and experienced through the agency of the
Hebrew alphabet. I wondered whether many
languages, not just Hebrew, conceal something
deeply magical and mysterious about the nature
of consciousness and our experience of the
world. This was a view I could sympathise with
but in order to explain this I will need to make a
digression into the world of the computer programmer.
Why computer programming?
Because computer programming is the most
sophisticated method we have for building a
simulacrum of the world employing pure language.
Anyone who has played the computer games
readily available from any high street shop will
know how far programming has advanced in
providing a simulation of reality. For the price
of a home computer anyone can experience
many of the complexities of flying an aeroplane,
driving a racing car, or commanding a tank. The
versions available in the high street are only
games, but we know that highly advanced and
much more realistic simulators are used for
training pilots, soldiers and astronauts.
This advance has been made within the last
fifteen years, and there is no reason why programmers
should not continue to provide more
and more sophisticated simulations, to the point
where we may begin to have serious arguments
about “reality”. The significant point is that we
can build highly detailed and realistic simulations
of reality. That this should be possible is
far from obvious. The more one thinks about it,
the less obvious it becomes. How this is possible?
The original authors of this success were
physicists. Since the Renaissance individuals
have been slowly accumulating more and more
information about the detailed physical properties
of the world. There is the apocryphal story
about how Galileo climbed the Leaning Tower
of Pisa to find out whether a heavy object would
fall faster than a light object (it doesn’t). Tycho
Brahe (who wrote an important text on magic)
spent years plotting the orbits of planets using
crude instruments. The slow accumulation of
information about the behaviour of falling
objects was codified by Isaac Newton (another
Hermetic Kabbalist) in his Laws of Motion.
Kepler (inspired by the mysticism of the Platonists)
used Brahe’s data to show that planetary
orbits were elliptical, and Newton went on to
The Letters & the Paths
73
deduce the Law of Gravity from Kepler’s work.
Newton, and many others, studied how light
propagates, how it reflects off surfaces and how
it refracts through glass.
Physicists were able to provide compact
descriptions of these phenomena using mathematics,
and most of the content of a modern university
course in physics consists of learning
how the behaviour of the world can be
expressed in a mathematical form, and how to
predict how things will behave in known circumstances.
You may not have thought that advanced
mathematics was a language, but it is.
This is the foundation of computer simulation.
Programmers are able to incorporate the
mathematical descriptions of the real world into
programs to produce life-like graphics. Programmers
purloin the mathematical transformations
used in perspective geometry, so that
solid, three dimensional objects seen on a
graphics display “look right” as they move
around. Programmers use the laws of motion to
describe how objects move. Programmers use
the laws of reflection and refraction to model
the effects of light sources, so that scenes have
shadows and shading just as in real life. The
result of all this effort might be an aeroplane
flight simulator program.
What programmers do is to take existing
mathematical descriptions of how the world
behaves and use them in their programs. The
fact that it works so well demonstrates that
something essential about the appearance and
behaviour of the world has been captured in a language
and communicated from one group of people
(physicists and mathematicians) to another group
(programmers).
The situation can be summarised as follows:
1.We can observe the world we live in and
express certain regularities of behaviour
(and the natural world is very regular) using
a the language of mathematics.
2.We can use that language to recreate the
behaviour of the world and so produce
increasingly realistic computer simulations
which look like the world and behave like
the world.
This is extraordinary. It is remarkable that we
should be capable of modelling the world, a
capability as extraordinary as the fact of selfconsciousness.
Why should language have anything
to do with the way the world looks and
behaves? It is sometimes assumed that the primary
purpose of language is social and it
evolved because a group that communicates is
better at surviving. We can imagine a situation
two million years ago where a species of primates
used their grunts and howls to coordinate
their hunting, and gradually evolved language
because it made them better at doing things
than they were without language.
It is a big step however, from being able to say
“my finger hurts” or “hand me my mammoth
spear” to being able to simulate an aerial dogfight
using differential calculus and affine transformations.
Why should a series of noises
uttered my a tribe of jumped-up monkeys have
anything at all to do with the laws of the physical
world? This fact is remarkable and it is so
remarkable that it has caught the attention of
most thoughtful physicists. Einstein was astonished
that we can describe the world with the
language of mathematics. To the novice the fact
that we can describe how the world behaves is
just one of those things. To the most famous and
erudite physicists it is a genuine mystery. Most
things in life are like that: don’t bother them and
they won’t bother you, but once you start taking
a good hard look and ask why, the house of
cards collapses.
There is a possibility, and I offer it as a
hypothesis: that language and rationality
evolved because our brain and nervous system
are adapted to “the way the world is” in the
same way that a leopard has spots and a polar
bear is white. Like other animals we have
evolved a colouring appropriate to our environment,
and this colouring is much more than
skin-deep.
We know how well our bodies are adapted.
The electro-optical system in my eyes is far
superior to the best broadcast quality television
cameras, and my liver routinely carries out
chemical processes that would earn me a Nobel
prize if I knew how it did it. Our bodies are
warehouses of biochemical and physical knowledge
we have only begun to explore. The extent
of our adaptation to the world goes far beyond
our current ability to comprehend. Why should
the extent of our adaptation stop at physiology
and go no further? If our bodies (and our cells,
and our genes) are a complex apparatus
evolved to make sense of the world, and we
take for granted the excellence of the eye or the
ear or the liver in doing their jobs, then why not
Notes on Kabbalah
74
the brain? If the eye is a survival adaptation to
light, and the ear a survival adaptation to
sound, then what is language? What is self-consciousness?
What is rationality?
My hypothesis is that language is something
more than a series of grunts to expedite hunting,
and perhaps, like the eye and the ear and
the liver, it is an evolutionary adaptation to the
“way the world is”. But ... if we examine the
evolutionary adaptations an animal has made
then we can say something about its environment.
Perhaps there is something about the
deep structure of reality to which we have an
adaptation. Our senses are an adaptation to the
phenomena of the world; are our minds are an
adaptation to a deeper structure, a form behind
the appearance?
This might explain why physicists have had
so much success in modelling how the world
works. My hypothesis is that human beings
developed linguistic ability for precisely the
same reason that a leopard has spots, or a
giraffe has a long neck: abstraction, reason and
language are the ultimate survival adaptations
because they are the keys to something. At a
superficial level they are the keys to unlock
technology - in the course of time physics
becomes engineering, and engineers build our
planes and our cars and our computers. But
there may be more.
I suspect that at the roots of language there is
something as deeply hidden as the pea under
the forty mattresses of tired and restless princess,
something a rational mystic working
beyond the limits of rational consciousness
might grasp. Study the eye and one can learn
about optics; study the roots of language at the
roots of consciousness, and what might one discover
about the world?
Kabbalists were unusual mystics because they
lived in the community and contributed to it.
They were married men with families to support
and businesses to run. Many were masters
of Jewish law and tradition and responsible for
settling disputes in the community. At a time
when books were rare and expensive, they were
literate men who memorised vast tracts of the
Torah and Talmud. Many were multi-lingual and
were as familiar with the literature of Islam as
they were with the literature of Christianity.
Some (such as Nachmanides) were required to
defend their communities against hostile attack
in public “disputations” with leading scholars.
In the main, these men were the leading intellects
in their communities. They were trained to
read the Torah and to appreciate the arguments,
discussions and nuances of interpretation that
had accumulated over the centuries. As experts
on law and tradition they were required to provide
judgements on fine points of law, and
developed a lawyer’s insight into the subtleties
of language. They were mystics whose lives
were dominated by language. They believed in
the sacredness of their language and found a
deep mystery in it, a mystery with its origin in
the farthest roots of awareness.
Whether the Hebrew alphabet and language
have a particular and peculiar quality to be
found in no other language must remain an
open question. For myself I cannot take this simply
as a matter of religious belief. However, I no
longer dismiss the possibility that Kabbalists
found deep secrets in their letter meditations, in
their practice of tzeruf (letter permutations), and
in their contemplations of the sacred names of
God.
A physicist who studies the human eye can
unlock many of the secrets of optics, and it does
not seem unreasonable that a person who follows
the trail of language back to its source in
the roots of consciousness might discover something
fundamental about the world itself. With
this interpretation the Biblical statement that
man is made in the image of God makes sense.
The words of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes
Trismegistus state something similar: “that
which is below is like that which is above, and
that which is above is like that which is below”.
The maxim that the microcosm is a reflection of
the macrocosm no longer sounds like mystical
mumbo-jumbo. It is stating something which
should be obvious: not only are our bodies
sophisticated instruments, but so are our minds,
and our self-consciousness is a key whereby we
can comprehend the world1 by comprehending
ourselves. It no longer seems to me to be an
unreasonable hypothesis to say that the mind is
1.I am treading on the toes of the famous German philosopher
Hegel here, who argued that all history could be
viewed as an ongoing process of self-revelation within
God. If the world and ourselves are an embodiment of God,
a close inspection of either will lead us back to the same
place. There are many points of contact between Kabbalah
and Hegel, not least of which is his well known dialectic of
thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This was a well-known
technique of scriptural interpretation, and a process amply
illustrated in the structure of the Tree of Life.
The Letters & the Paths
75
an evolutionary adaptation to reality, and language
is a key to its comprehension.
The letters of the Hebrew alphabet are all consonants.
Even letters such as alef and ayin which
at first sight appear to be vowels are not.
The written language did not originally show
the vowels; these were added between the seventh
and tenth centuries by the Masorites, a
group which standardised the texts of the Bible.
Because the text was sacred and could not be
altered, the vowels were indicated by adding
various dots and dashes above and below the
consonants.
The consonants represent different ways in
which the pure sound of the larynx is modulated
by movements in the mouth and throat.
The vowels are shaped by the consonants. This
resembles the duality of force and form which I
presented at in the first chapter as the basic
duality underpinning the Kabbalistic worldview.
If the vowels are the water in a river, then
the consonants are the guiding riverbank. If the
vowels represent the desire to win at chess, then
the consonants are the rules of the game. The
letters of the Hebrew alphabet can be viewed as
twenty-two ways of shaping sound, as representations
of form. This view is given substance
in the Yetzirah [24]:
Twenty-two Foundation letters:
He engraved them, He carved them,
He permuted them, He weighed them,
He transformed them,
And with them, He depicted all that was
formed and all that would be formed.
Twenty-two Foundation letters
He engraved them with voice
He carved them with breath
He set them in the mouth
In five places
Alef Chet He Ayin in the throat
Gimel Yud Kaf Kuf in the palate
Dalet Tet Lamed Nun Tav in the tongue
Zayin Samekh Shin Resh Tzadi in the
teeth
Bet Vav Mem Peh in the lips.
In the Sepher Yetzirah the consonants were not
treated as arbitrary tokens, as individually uninteresting
components of words. Each letter had
a unique role in the formation of everything in
the world, as if “formation” was a twenty-two
dimensional space with a letter allocated to each
axis. They are classified according to the way in
which they are shaped in the mouth. This suggests
(unsuprisingly) that the primary key to
understanding the letters is in their sounds,
individually and in combination. Each sound
corresponds to an aspect of formation, and
when this is understood and the correct internal
connections are made, the letters can be used in
various combinations in magical procedures.
Each sound becomes a trigger for an aspect of
consciousness which is active in determining
the form of reality.
A complex and dangerous exercise along
these lines documented in Kabbalistic literature
is the formation of a golem, or artificial being.
The use of letter combinations and vowel
sounds leads into complex, and by all accounts
dangerous, meditative and magical practices
called Chokhmah ha-Tzeruf, the science of letter
combinations. The leading exponent of this
method was Abraham Abulafia (1240-1295),
who used these techniques to access a level of
ecstatic consciousness where prophecy occurs.
Abulafia is one of the most unusual and interesting
of Kabbalists because he is one of the few
Kabbalists to leave (relatively) detailed accounts
of practical meditative techniques, the publication
of which evoked considerable hostility
from his contemporaries, to the extent that Abulafia
was forced to move his residence on a
number of occasions. Abulafia believed himself
to be in possession of the same meditative techniques
used by the Biblical prophets and produced
several manuscripts containing
inspirational material received while in high
meditational states. He writes with authority
and clarity, and the descriptions of altered states
and their characteristics to be found in his
works (and in works of his disciples) have a
convincing stamp of authenticity.
Abulafia states that there are two principle
techniques in Kabbalah: meditations on the ten
sephiroth, and a more powerful technique
based on the twenty-two letters. His technique
was the latter, and he appears to have been the
heir to an authentic tradition concerning the
practical application of the Sepher Yetzirah. His
techniques are complex and require a good
knowledge of Hebrew and gematria, as well as
the ability to sustain concentration throughout
lengthy meditations; they are not appropriate
Notes on Kabbalah
76
:
Aleph Ox 1
Beth House 2
Gimel Camel 3
Daleth Door 4
He Window 5
Vau Peg, nail 6
Zain Weapon 7
Cheth Fence 8
Teth Serpent 9
Yod Hand 10
Kaph Palm (of hand) 20 (500)
Lamed Ox-goad 30
Mem Water 40 (600)
Nun Fish 50 (700)
Samekh Prop 60
Ayin Eye 70
Peh Mouth 80 (800)
Tzaddi Fish-Hook 90 (900)
Qoph Back of Head 100
Resh Head 200
Shin Tooth 300
Tau Cross 400
Table 12: The Hebrew Alphabet
Mothers Doubles Elementals
Aleph Beth He
Mem Gimel Vau
Shin Daleth Zayin
Kaph Cheth
Pe Teth
Table 13: Yetziratic Groupings
The Letters & the Paths
77
::
Resh Yod
Tau
Lamed
Nun
Samekh
Ayin
Tzaddi
Qoph
Table 13: Yetziratic Groupings
Mother Sound Element Season Body
Aleph Breath Air Spring &
Autumn
Chest
Mem Hum Water Winter Belly
Shin Hiss Fire Summer Head
Table 14: Mother Letters
Double
Planet Day Quality Body Direction
Beth Moon Sunday Wisdom
Folly
R. eye South
Gimel Mars Monday Wealth
Poverty
R. ear North
Dalet
h
Sun Tuesday Fertility
Barreness
R. nostril
East
Kaph Venus Wednesday
Life
Death
L. eye Up
Pe Mercury
Thursday
Dominance
Submission
L. ear Down
Resh Saturn Friday Peace
War
L. nostril
West
Table 15: Double Letters
Notes on Kabbalah
78
:
:
Tau Jupiter Saturday Grace
Ugliness
Mouth Centre
Table 15: Double Letters
Elemental
Foundation
Zodiac Month Body Direction
He speech Aries Nissan R.foot Up.E
Vau thoug
ht
Taurus Iyar R.kidney
NE
Zayin motio
n
Gemini Sivan L.foot Lo.E
Cheth sight Cancer Tammuz
R.hand Up.S
Teth hearing
Leo Av L.kidney
SE
Yod action Virgo Elul L.hand Lo.S
Lamed coition
Libra Tishrei gall
bladder
Up.W
Nun smell Scorpio Cheshvan
intestines
SW
Samek
h
sleep Sagittarius
Kilsev pancreas?
Lo.W
Ayin anger Capricorn
Tevet liver Up.N
Tzaddi
taste Aquarius
Shevat stomach
NW
Qoph laughter
Pisces Adar spleen Lo.N
Table 16: Elemental Letters
Double Planet
Beth Mercury
Gimel Moon
Daleth Venus
Table 17: Golden Dawn Attributions
The Letters & the Paths
79
Kaph Jupiter
Pe Mars
Resh Sun
Tau Saturn
Table 17: Golden Dawn Attributions
Notes on Kabbalah
80
for a beginner. The practical technique given in
these notes (ritual invocation of sephiroth
through the divine names of God, combined
with meditation on the correspondences and
their significance in everyday life) is simpler to
acquire but effective if persevered with.
Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a
numeric value. Some letters have two numeric
values depending on whether they occur in the
middle or at the end of a word. Each letter also
has a literal meaning (for example, the letter
`Shin’ literally means `a tooth’). These letters are
given in Table 12. The Yetzirah groups the letters
into 3 mothers, 7 doubles, and 12 elementals as
shown in Table 13. In the Yetzirah the three
mothers have the correspondences shown in
Table 14.
The correspondences for the seven doubles
are in Table 15. The seven doubles are also associated
with seven universes, seven firmaments,
seven lands, seven seas, seven rivers, seven
deserts, seven weeks, seven days of creation,
seven years, seven sabbaticals, and seven jubilees.
The correspondences for the twelve elementals
are in Table 16.
Different versions of the Sepher Yetzirah contain
different correspondences for many letters;
the correspondences above are from the Gra
version as listed by Kaplan [24], who should be
referred to for alternatives.
It should be noted that the well-known
Golden Dawn correspondences for the paths
differ from all the sources listed by Kaplan
when it comes to allocating the planets to the
double letters. In the Golden Dawn scheme the
double letters were written in increasing numerical
order and allocated to the planets in order
of increasing exaltation, as shown in Table 17.
This collection of correspondences is all very
well, but what do they tell us about the Tree of
Life? How do they fit on the paths as they are
drawn, and can we ascribe a meaning to them
which complements the rich and well-developed
correspondences associated with the
sephiroth? Herein, as the saying goes, lies a
mystery.
A commonly accepted scheme is the Golden
Dawn attribution of letters to paths (Figure 12),
but it suffers from a glaring deficiency: the
Hebrew letters are divided into 3 mothers, 7
doubles and 12 elementals, and the paths on the
Tree are divided into 3 horizontals, 7 verticals
and 12 diagonals. Tradition (for example, the
attribution according to Isaac Luria) follows this
by matching mothers to horizontals, doubles to
verticals, and elementals to diagonals. The
Golden Dawn scheme does not.
Given that the geometric structure of the Tree
appears to be a direct interpretation of the text
of the Yetzirah, this strikes me as somewhat perverse!
The Golden Dawn scheme has been much
used, much written about, and one cannot deny
that many people have found it useful, but it is
open to the criticism that something vital has
been lost along the way, and I think it would be
a mistake to approach Kabbalah with the view
that the Golden Dawn attribution of letters to
paths is beyond question.
Doubtless, many readers will have reached to
point of asking (like the author!) “well, what is
the right answer!”.
I do not know.
There are many possible answers. A traditional
attribution like that of Isaac Luria (Figure
13) might seem like a safe bet, but in the absence
of keys to these attributions they must remain
cryptic - it is a large step from the bare bones of
an attribution to building a workable internal
representation of that attribution, and there are
few pointers to help.
The Paths
There are two well-known schemes for
organising the paths on the Tree. The first
scheme is the scheme used throughout these
notes, and I will refer to it as the “normal”
scheme. It is the older of the two, and can be
seen in Figure 12. The second scheme is attributed
to the Safed school of Moses Cordovero
and Isaac Luria, and can be seen in Figure 13.
Both schemes differ only on the placing of two
paths: in the “normal” scheme there are paths
connecting Hod and Netzach to Malkhut, while
in the Lurianic scheme these paths do not exist,
and instead there are paths from Chokhmah to
Gevurah, and from Binah to Chesed.
In both schemes there are three horizontal
paths, seven vertical paths, and twelve diagonal
paths. Does the division into 3, 7 and 12 signify
anything useful? What can we deduce purely by
looking at the Tree itself?
The three horizontal paths connect sephiroth
which (in a sense) represent polar opposites -
force and form (Chokhmah and Binah), creation
The Letters & the Paths
81
and destruction (Chesed and Gevurah), and at a
lower level (Netzach and Hod), force and form
once more. It is this division of unity into polar
opposites which energises the Tree.
The seven vertical paths create the three vertical
pillars of the Tree and communicate a quality
of force, form or consciousness down the
appropriate pillar through levels of increasing
form.
The diagonal paths connect a side pillar with
the central pillar. Each path connects a balanced
state to an unbalanced state, or vice versa
depending on the direction it is traversed.
The following presentation on the paths is
original and uses a method which is not often
employed in modern Kabbalah, although something
similar can be found in some manuscripts
of the Sepher Yetzirah. The method is to examine
Figure 12: The Letters on the Tree
The Tree of Emanation -
Golden Dawn Attributions
Keter
(Crown)
1
Chokhmah
(Wisdom)
Binah
(Understanding)
Tipheret
Chesed
Hod
Gevurah
Yesod
Malkhut
Daat
(Knowledge)
(Mercy)
(Beauty)
(Glory)
(Strength)
(Foundation)
(Kingdom)
(Intelligence)
(Splendour)
(Love)
2
4
6
5
8
9
10
3
En Soph
Netzach
(Victory)
(Firmness)
7
Notes on Kabbalah
82
and describe the change in consciousness
caused by traversing a path from one sephira to
another. This is well worth attempting as it can
clarify one’s understanding of the sephiroth,
and it illustrates the dynamics of moving consciousness
around the Tree. This is a practical
exercise of great value, and rather than view my
exposition as an attempt to be definitive (it is
not), you should view it as illustrative of a practical
meditative technique.
My first step was to strip each sephira from its
symbols in an attempt to describe, in modern
language, the essence of the sephira in as succinct
a form as possible. This is not so difficult:
the Tree is profound, and like many profound
symbols (and much of modern physics), it can
be reduced to a remarkably simple form.
The next step was to meditate on the two
sephira at either end of a path, and to make the
transition in consciousness as many times as it
took to capture the essence of the transition. The
nature of the transition depends on the direction
Figure 13: The Letters on the Tree
Isaac Luria’s Tree of Return
Keter
(Crown)
1
Chokhmah
(Wisdom)
Binah
(Understanding)
Tipheret
Chesed
Hod
Gevurah
Yesod
Malkhut
(Mercy)
(Beauty)
(Glory)
(Strength)
(Foundation)
(Kingdom)
(Intelligence)
(Splendour)
(Love)
2
4
6
5
8
9
10
3
En Soph
Netzach
(Victory)
(Firmness)
7
The Letters & the Paths
83
in which one traverses the path, and in the
examples below I have tended to consider one
direction only.
It is important in an exercise like this to have a
deep familiarity with the sephiroth - not only
with the symbols and correspondences, but
with the underlying essence of a sephira as it
underpins consciousness. An awareness of this
essence is achieved by invocation of the sephirothic
powers as outlined in the chapter on
Practical Kabbalah. If you want to carry out this
kind of exercise yourself, I would recommend
using simple ritual and invocation of the sephiroth
as a precursor.
The characterisation of the sephiroth is given
in Figure 14.
Keter is Unity.
Figure 14: The Paths
Unity
Unconditioned
Possibility
Self
Ego
En Soph
of
Boundaries
Response
to
Boundaries
Appreciation
of
Boundaries
Consciousness
Creativity
Conditioned
Creativity
Response
to
Creativity
Diversity
Loss
of
Self
Fear of God
Given
Authority
Adulation -
the fan
Inspiration
Values
Models
Abstraction
&
Classification
Re-valuation
Partiality
Action
&
Reaction
Loss
of
Self
Initiation
Defense
Duality
The Intelligible
Return Revealing
Turbulence
Preservation Innovation
Choice
Phase Change
Right
Notes on Kabbalah
84
Chokhmah is Unconditioned Creativity, the
divine creative emanation in its purest form.
Although Chokhmah is unconditioned, it contains
within it the possibility of structure as
Binah.
Binah is the Mother of Form and the possibility
of boundaries. By boundary I mean the idea
of difference, differentiation, form or structure
in the abstract. A boundary contains the idea of
separation - The One becomes Many. Binah is the
most abstract root of differentiation.
Chesed is Conditioned Creativity. It inherits
the creative impulse of Chokhmah but cannot
depart from the constraints imposed by Binah.
Binah limits what is possible, and the creativity
of Chesed must operate within these limits.
Gevurah is Response to Boundaries. The primary
Gevuric concern is transgression. Cross
the line and according to tradition, the Severity
of God will find you. The boundaries are everwhere:
in the 613 mitzvot (commandments) of
Judaism, in criminal law, in accounting rules
and tax regulations, in social convention, and in
the rules of soccer. Break the rules, and a Gevuric
consciousness somewhere will call you to
account.
Tipheret is Self-Consciousness. The Unity of
Keter is sundered into the plurality of individual
consciousness. Because consciousness is
separate, it becomes concerned with its own
boundaries, self-definition, unique identity.
This narrative of identity coalesces and solidifies
as the ego.
Netzach is Response to Creativity. The creative
impulses of Chesed are evaluated at the
level of basic emotional reponse and accepted or
rejected. John F. Kennedy’s proposal that the
USA should place a man on the moon is an
example of how creative proposals and
impulses coming from Chesed can galvanise
thousands into saying “Yes - we will do that!”.
Hod is Appreciation of Bounderies. Novels,
drama, dance, opera, music, fine art, law, culture,
myth, and the entire corpus of human scientific
knowledge, provide domains for
consciousness to explore and become absorbed
in, even lost in. It is the bounderies between
things that define what a thing is, and as consciousness
chooses one thing over another so it
learns to value and appreciate bounderies.
Yesod is Ego. The Ego is differentiated from
Self by the inflexible affective responses of
Netzach, the unquestioning intellectual fixations
of Hod, and the treadmill of perception.
Consciousness spins a web to run around on
and becomes trapped in the web of its own
manufacture.
Malkhut is Diversity, the culmination of a
process of differentiation and increasing structure
that begins with the Unity of Keter.
This characterisation of the sephiroth is succinct
but captures the essence of how the unity
of Keter is broken up and expressed through a
process of formation, so that force is increasingly
constrained going down the pillar of force,
form becomes increasingly defined going down
the pillar of form, and consciousness increasingly
fragmented going down the pillar of consciousness.
When the Tree of Life is stripped of
myth, allegory, symbol and a dense web of Biblical
allusion, this is what remains, and this
essence can be found in the Kabbalah from the
earliest times.
The motivation behind this exegesis is the
idea of separation. The Kabbalist wishes to cleave
to God, but is separate. Each morning the Kabbalist
of old would declare that the God of Israel
is One, but the world we live in clearly contains
a plurality of forms. The structure of language,
so vital to the Kabbalist, creates sharp boundaries
where we might perceive a continuum. The
Kabbalist seeks to repair the fallen state of the
creation by carrying out unifications (yichudim).
Everywhere one looks in the traditional Kabbalah
one finds a constant awareness that the creation
is a long way from the unity of God, that
things have become separated, and that the
process down the lightning flash to Malkhut
represents an increasing alienation from God.
At the very limit of this alienation are the
husks, the Klippot, the world of unclean shells
who embody in the meaning of the word Klippot
(shell, husk, as in the covering of a nut) the idea
of a separation.
When I use the word “boundary” I am thinking
along these lines - a conceptual separation of
one thing from another.
An analogy I find useful is the breakup of a
smooth (laminar) fluid flow into a whirling
chaos of vortices that become increasingly
detailed as the flow proceeds. Examples are the
flow of air over an aircraft wing, smoke from a
cigarette, or the flow of water out of a tap. There
is only a smooth flow of air, and yet it spins into
large vortices, and these into progressively finer
The Letters & the Paths
85
vortices, until the air becomes a confused mess
of movement on every scale. As the doggerel
goes:
“Big whorls have little whorls
That feed on their velocity,
And little whorls have smaller whorls
And so on to viscosity.”
Nowhere is there anything but air (or water),
and yet the movement of one part relative to
another creates structure, and when we look we
can see boundaries. The movement of a turbulent
fluid (for example, a rising plume of smoke)
forms an excellent meditation. This is the best
metaphor I know of to illustrate how something
can be one and many at the same time.
And now to the paths .....
Yesod to Malkhut - Loss of Self
I find bookstores intimidating. Each book is a
large investment in time, experience, and often
identity - a person may encapsulate a lifetime in
one text. When I am faced with so many opinions
(often contradictory), I experience a deepening
sense of stress and nausea and oppression
as waves of otherness erode my sense of self.
Something similar happens in a large shopping
mall, where I can become so absorbed in external
variety I become unconscious of myself.
Malkhut is otherness. Normally we experience
it from the viewpoint of the ego, which
cushions the feelings of otherness by reducing
the external world to a manageable size - family,
a few friends, the workplace, and a sprinkling of
books, films and TV programmes selected to
reduce the stress of the unfamiliar.
Almost all of the world is outside of ourselves,
but we cannot see it when it threatens
the autonomy of the ego. The historical parallel
to this initiation was the switch from an anthropomorphic
model of the universe, with man at
the spiritual centre of creation, to the heliocentric
model where human beings are an accident
of evolution.
This path is a Copernican revolution in consciousness.
Hod to Malkhut - Models
The structure of human perception makes it
difficult to see things as they really are. This
problem appears in philosophy as the problem
of the “thing-in-itself” - what we see is a product
of a complex perceptual process, and not the
thing-in-itself. The philosopher Kant asserted
that we could never perceive the thing-in-itself -
our experience of the world would be necessarily
conditioned by fundamental “categories” of
perception, such as the perception of things
embedded in time and space.
In addition to such basic categories of perception
there are models that are part of the social
consensus at a given time. At the present time
these include “male”, “female”, “solid”, “liquid”,
“global warming” and so on. Although
these are approximations, such models are useful
and so they persist until something better
comes along.
The initiation of this path is the conscious
awareness of what Korzybski called “awareness
of abstraction”, the process of turning the diversity
of Malkhut into something the individual
human consciousness finds tractable. Part of
this awareness is understanding the social categories
of perception we individually use to
pigeon-hole the world, and also how we communicate
these personal models as “the truth”.
Netzach to Malkhut - Values
Value is a human construct. Malkhut is
devoid of values. The popular myth of Richard
the Third on the field of Bosworth, that he lost
the battle because his horse lacked a horseshoe
nail, equates that one missing nail with the price
of an entire kingdom, hence Shakespeare’s “My
kingdom for a horse!”.
The value of things depends on personal and
social circumstances. We have all experienced
times when something insignificant - a safety
pin, a piece of string, a drawing pin, a pair of
tweezers, five more minutes, a nail, becomes
paramount.
This path is about the instantaneous feelings
aroused by things. These feelings colour our
experience of the world like a paint-by-numbers
kit - we unconsciously associate value with everything
we experience. Much behaviour follows
on from this unconscious valuation, and so we
are motivated by forces that are often beyond
our control. This is of course the basis for advertising,
which tries to create positive valuations
for products and services.
Hod to Yesod - Abstraction and Classification
This path relates to the path from Hod to Malkhut,
as both are about imposing structure upon
an unknown world. The path from Hod to Malkhut
attempts to see the world as it “really is”,
Notes on Kabbalah
86
but this path includes the internal world of the
imagination. It is considerably richer.
You are in bed at night and you are woken by
a noise. You strain to hear further sounds, and
you do. Your fear of intruders latches on to
these noises, and you begin to construct a scenario
where an armed intruder is attempting to
gain entry into the house. Each further noise
adds weight to the developing narrative, and
you begin to react emotionally - breathing
quickens, heart pounds.
We have all experienced fear in the night, and
the last time it happened to me it was a badger
hunting for food down the side of the house. I
was prepared for a life-or-death struggle with a
potential assailant. I could have arrived at the
correct answer, but my senses had been filtered
through an imaginary scenario and I had constructed
the wrong answer.
The essence of this path is understanding how
perception is an active process, and our beliefs,
imagination, prejudices, fears, desires and so on
influence how we construct the world from our
senses.
A large part of what we “know” is learned
from other people. The mass-media functions as
a kind of giant, extended Yesod, feeding millions
simultaneously to create an artificial “consensus
reality”. Much of what is received
through the media is accepted without question,
so when I hear that X is a dangerous terrorist,
my automatic response is to accept this information.
With increasing age I grow cynical and
understand that most information is manipulation,
but I do not have time to deconstruct every
piece of information that comes my way, and I
do feel a need to be informed.
What is important is not the search for objective
truth, but the realisation that we are not
automata, and we are not constituted for objectivity.
Netzach to Yesod - Action and Reaction
When someone you know well appears with a
new hairstyle, there is a moment of unfamiliarity
and surprise, and then a reaction. The process
of evaluating and reacting to new stimuli is
continuous and we are barely aware of it most
of the time. The verbal awareness (whether honest
or not) comes later, and may take some time,
as when tasting a new food, or smelling a perfume.
Netzach to Hod - Choice
There is a saying that “feelings tell us what to
think”. The justification for this is that a purely
rational being would be incapable of making
choices in many real-life situations. There
would be too many choices, and too little data
on which to evaluate these choices. One sees
this sometimes in the workplace - a very analytic
person may be good at drawing up lists of
choices, each choice with its pros and cons, but
may find it difficult to choose one option over
another. Someone with a more defined “gut
feel” can skim through the list and say “we’ll go
with that one”.
The future is only lightly constrained by the
present. At one time it was thought that the
mechanics of the world were deterministic, that
the future could be predicted exactly from the
present, but now we know that this is not so.
Complex systems tend to evolve on the edge of
chaos, where minute differences can make a
profound difference to their future state. At the
level of human beings and human society, freewill
and choice determine the form of the world
we live in.
The path between Netzach and Hod is one of
the three horizontal paths corresponding to the
three mother letters (aleph, mem, shin) in the
Hebrew alphabet. These paths express duality,
the dynamics of force and form. The tension of
manifestation is expressed through these paths:
they are literally the “mothers of form”.
Whenever a person is presented with a choice,
and chooses, he or she determines the future of
the world.
Tipheret to Hod - Right
The consciousness associated with Tipheret
can observe the workings of the psyche without
being absorbed into its function. There is a
detachment of being from modes-of-being.
When consciousness moves into Hod, that
detachment is lost. Consciousness is dominated
by the structure of things, by definitions, by
boundaries, by rules, by the articulation of what
is and what is not.
I could have named this path “articulation”,
but articulation is rarely a shopping list, and is
usually an articulation of what is. That is why I
called this path “right” - consciousness falls out
of an uncommitted state into a state where it
articulates “what is”; that is, what is right or
correct, and what is wrong, unfounded, misThe
Letters & the Paths
87
guided, irrational, incorrect.
Tipheret to Netzach - Re-evaluation, partiality
This path is the affective mirror of the path
from Tipheret to Hod. Consciousness ceases to
observe the process of valuation and becomes
absorbed into it. It ceases to observe feelings
and experiences them directly.
There is a loss of consciousness. This is usually
unavoidable. This is the point at which
many mystical systems come unstuck. It is easier
to be detached from emotional evaluation
and partiality in highly controlled, highly isolated
situations (e.g. in a monastery), but it is
harder in domestic situations involving (for
example) one’s children. One has to care, has to
make choices. For myself, I feel that detachment
is misguided, that making choices is the most
important thing we can do in our lives. What we
can do, and should do, is make sure important
choices engage as much of our being as possible,
that we take our feelings back to Tipheret, once,
twice, many times if we have the luxury of time,
to re-consider the value we place on things. We
should do the same with our past actions, and
that way we can learn to act with wisdom, and
not from impulse.
Tipheret to Gevurah - Preservation
Gevurah is God’s judgement and severity. It
is the energy which maintains and preserves,
and corresponds to the immune system in the
human body.
If the movement from Tipheret to Hod is
about articulating what is correct and incorrect,
right and wrong, reasonable and crazy, then the
movement from Tipheret to Gevurah is a more
pronounced movement in a similar direction, to
where these principles descend from the sphere
of the divine and are articulated and preserved
in society.
The movement from Tipheret to Gevurah is a
commitment to preserving and defending
something. If consciousness has been properly
centered in Tipheret then this commitment
might be something to do with (for example)
human rights, equality, discrimination, fairness
and so on.
Tipheret to Chesed - Innovation
The idea that human beings are equal is a
bizarre innovation. It certainly is not obvious, as
human beings differ in almost every respect -
tone of voice, agility, knowledge, skills, height,
weight and so on. Even identical twins differ in
many ways.
This idea was not subscribed to in classical
times. It does not resonate in many cultures
today. Nevertheless, this idea has become pervasive
throughout the Western world.
In order to see human beings as equal we
need to see each one as containing some essence
that is more important than all the obvious differences
between people. People like to be different,
like to be unique. We need to ignore the
surface and focus on an identity that lies below
the surface.
The assertion of human equality is grounded
in religious perception, and is based not on the
equality of soma or psyche, but on the existence
of a divine principle manifesting through each
one of us. It is this internal divinity that makes
us equal.
I see the original articulation that “all human
beings are equal” as an example of movement
from Tipheret to Chesed. A spiritual insight,
based on the direct perception of the spiritual
essence of each person, is declared publicly and
in the course of time creates a massive shift in
global human consciousness. Our human rights
legislation is now rooted in this basic belief in
human equality.
Tipheret to Binah - The Intelligible
“The Intelligible” is a term that derives from
the Platonic school of philosophy that was current
in the classical world from the time of Plato
to the closure of the Platonic Academy in Athens
by the emperor Justinian nearly 1000 years
later.
It signifies that which can be apprehended
through the eye of the rational intellect.
The development of technology is the most
tangible evidence that there is a substructure of
constancy in the natural world which we can
learn through various investigative disciplines -
physics, chemistry, biology, geology etc. This
“substructure of constancy” is far from being
obvious, and it is only within the last few hundred
years that we have begun to elucidate the
deep underlying principles.
There is a view that science is a social construct,
that the various theories and explanations
that compose science are the outcomes of
social processes that maintain various groups in
positions of power and authority. There may be
some truth in this some of the time, but our abilNotes
on Kabbalah
88
ity to create complex, almost magical artifacts
such as mobile telephones and computers
shows how flawed this view can be. These artifacts
exist because our theories and explanations
are sufficiently congruent to nature at a
very deep level.
In other words, there does seem to be a constant
world underpinning the fluctuating and
often opaque phenomena of the natural world.
To the scientist and mathematician there is a
real sense of wonder and beauty in being able to
penetrate this world. In my own experience it
does feel like being in possession of another eye
that can see deep within nature.
This is one interpretation of the ancient association
of Malkhut (the inferior mother) and
Binah (the superior mother), that Binah is the
structure of the Intelligible that gives rise to the
appearance of reality that we perceive as Malkhut.
At one level the experience of the Intelligible
occurs as the Vision of Splendour in Hod. At
another level it is the kind of sublime mystical
union described by the more mystical of the Platonic
philosophers, and it is this experience I
have associated with this path.
Tipheret to Chokhmah - Fear of God
In Proverbs it states that “The beginning of
wisdom (chokhmah) is the fear of the Lord”.
Every person feels the power and immensity,
the unpredictability, the beauty and danger of
the sea. How much more then can we experience
the immensity of God’s outpouring?
We are finite beings with small minds and
limited concerns. As one moves from the root of
personal identity in Tipheret towards the fount
of cosmic manifestation, our personal frailty
and insignificance becomes apparent.
Tipheret to Keter - Loss of Self
Keter and Malkhut are duals by tradition, different
views of the same thing. Perception is
active, and it is an act of will whether one perceives
One or Many. The Many is concealed
within the One, and the One is concealed within
the Many.
For this reason the path from Tipheret to Malkhut
(through Yesod) and the path from
Tipheret to Keter (through Daat) are also duals.
The experiences are superficially different, but
when experienced in depth they are the same.
Gevurah to Hod - Defence
This path is the transition from appreciating
boundaries (Hod) to responding to them (Gevurah).
Many important boundaries are defined
socially. When someone tramples over these
boundaries they will discover that boundaries
are not only defined intellectually, they are
maintained by force.
Chesed to Netzach - Adulation, the Fan
This path is the emotional response to creativity,
but it is creativity experienced at second
hand. We all know how it feels to experience the
creativity of another person. The feeling is often
very intense, a wave of adulation that can be
quite irrational.
Gevurah to Chesed - Turbulence
In the introduction to this description of the
paths I used turbulence in a fluid as a metaphor
for emergent complexity, a metaphor of the
process for how One can become Many.
Turbulence also applies to the human
domain, to the process of social change, which is
balanced between forces which try to change
the status-quo, and forces which try to keep
things as they are.
This path contains both ideas: at the higher
level it is the outflowing of Chokhmah into
Binah; at the lower level it is this process as it
takes place in human society.
Binah to Gevurah - Duality
Binah is the mother of form, the root of distinction.
Movement down this path is an awareness
of separation, of the separation of one thing
from another, the root awareness of being different
and distinct.
The development of this awareness is noticable
in children as they become aware of siblings,
possessions, and personal space. “It’s mine!” is
the dominant cry. This path really is the “root of
all evil”.
Chokhmah to Chesed - Inspiration
Genuine creativity feels divine. That is the origin
of the word inspiration - it means “breathing
into”, the sense that a divine force has
intruded. There was a time when poets would
invoke the gods for inspiration.
Chokhmah to Binah- Phase Change
I have used the metaphor of turbulence in a
fluid to describe how One becomes Many. The
The Letters & the Paths
89
path from Chokhmah to Binah is the root of all
duality and manifestation. I imagine a hose
pumping water into a swimming pool -
Chokhmah is the hose (traditionally the image
was a spring or fountain) and Binah is the pool
(traditionally the image was the sea, or supernal
waters).
All metaphors are limited, and I have struggled
to find a more eloquent metaphor for this
path. There is a phenomenon well-known in the
science of complex systems known as emergent
order. An example might be the growth of snowflakes,
or frost patterns on a window, or amethyst
crystals in a geode, or clouds in the sky.
Emergent order tends to occur at a critical point
where a system is in transition from one state to
another. This transition is known as a phase
change. A phase change is usually characterised
by chaos.
The advantage of emergent order, critical
points and phase change as metaphors is that
these are general concepts that have proven to
be extraordinarily productive in science. I propose
them as clues for further investigation.
They are probably as close as we can come intellectually
at this time to comprehending the transition
from Chokhmah to Binah.
Binah to Keter - Return
A word often used in the mystical concept of
return is teshuvah. A Lubovitcher Rebbe
explains:
“Teshuvah emphasises return. A Jew is
inherently good and wishes to do good; it
is only because of various reasons for
which he is either not responsible or only
partially responsible that he committed
an evil act. But inherently he is good.
And this is the essence of teshuvah, to
return to one’s source and origin, to one’s
inner self, and to reveal one’s inner self so
that it will be the proprietor of one’s life.
That is why teshuvah is applicable to all,
even to the righteous. It means that the
Tzaddik is also constantly trying to return
to his inner self and to reveal it. And
teshuvah is equally pertinent to the sinner,
because no matter how low he has fallen
he always has recourse to teshuvah since
he does not have to create anything new
but only to return to his innermost self.”
There is also the sense that “God wishes to
know God”, and all revealing in manifestation
returns once more to the source. Each impulse
of manifestation is reified in Malkhut, and its
impact is distilled through consciousness and
returned. The act of living consciously and morally
achieves this purpose, the implication being
that living is its own purpose. The closer we
raise our consciousness to the source, the more
we can return our experience of life. This, more
than anything, dignifies life, dignifies even the
worst suffering, and permits us to find great joy
even in pain, illness and death.
Keter to Chokhmah - Revealing
The path from Keter to Chokhmah is the
beginning of the revealing that is life. We cannot
know all its mysteries. I suspect that God does
not know either, that life is its own revealing,
the fabric of tomorrow woven from the threads
of today. Meaning and purpose are emergent
and transitory. They are ephemera we construct,
narratives we weave around our projects
to sustain the ego.
Our true dignity is in how we live, in how we
reveal our own beings.
Notes on Kabbalah
90
The Tarot and the Tree
91
The arguments concerning the relationship
between the Tarot and Kabbalah have produced
so much heat it could keep the inhabitants of
Moscow comfortable through a Russian winter.
The facts are relatively straightforward, but the
myth is so compelling, it refuses to lie down and
be dead.
The myth, in its most basic form, is that the
Tarot cards are a repository of archaic occult
wisdom. This is not an immediately obvious
premise ... one could just as easily argue that the
cards were primarily a form of entertainment
adapted to divination.
The basic outline was proposed by a French
scholar Antoine Court de Gebelin, writing
c.1780, who proposed that the cards were a relic
of ancient Egyptian wisdom. With further elaborations,
the following myth emerged (and it
must be said that there is not the smallest shred
of documentary evidence to support it).
The sages of the ancient world were concerned
that occult knowledge would be lost to
humankind forever. The profound secrets of
ancient Egypt, font of esoteric wisdom, would
be lost. It was a difficult time - ignorant foreigners
were invading the Nile valley and using the
priceless scrolls in the library of Alexandria to
warm bathhouses (or light cigarettes or roll
joints or whatever).
These keepers and guardians of wisdom met
in a conclave and decided to conceal their
knowledge in a form that would preserve it for
all time: as a pack of playing cards for entertainment
and gambling. The cards were given to
nomadic folks, gypsies, who were believed to
come from Egypt. The English name for Romanies
is in fact a contraction of Egyptian. The
gypsy folk spread this knowledge around
Europe and continue to use the cards for fortune-
telling and divination.
The myth was added to when another Frenchman
called Alliette observed that there are 22
Tarot trump cards, and 22 letters in the Hebrew
alphabet, and so the Tarot must contain the
secret keys to unravelling the wisdom of Kabbalah.
This idea was given huge impetus by the
highly influentual French occultist Alphonse
Louis Constant (1810 - 1875), who wrote under
the pen-name Eliphas Levi. In his Dogme et Rituel
de la Haute Magie, Levi provides his version
of the relationship between Tarot Trumps and
Hebrew letters as shown in Table 18. There are
two things to note about this arrangement.
Firstly, the Trumps are associated with the letters
according to the normal printed numbering
of the Trumps, and the normal lexicographic
ordering of Hebrew letters. The second thing is
that the Fool card, which is unnumbered, has
been inserted between 20 (Judgement) and 21
(The World).
Ten years after Levi’s death, the Hermetic
Brotherhood of the Golden Dawn was founded
on the basis of mysterious cypher manuscripts,
which contained, among other things, an association
of Hebrew letters to the Tarot trumps as
shown in Table 19. So what has changed? Well
... the Fool has been moved to the beginning of
the sequence, and all the Trumps (except the
World) bump up by one letter. The G.D.
arrangement also interchanges Strength/Fortitude
with Justice to make the astrological correspondences
“fit”.
There have been claims that the Levi scheme
is an exoteric scheme which deliberately conceals
the true system, and the G.D. scheme is
part of an initiated tradition. Neither of these
arrangements can be considered rocket science.
Both schemes have strengths and weaknesses.
For example, in the traditional Marseille Tarot,
one of the figures falling from the Blasted Tower
is distinctly in the shape of an Ayin, and Levi
points this out. Several other correspondences
look very sound - the Chariot and Zain
(weapon), Justice and Cheth (fence - separation,
division). Levi makes a strong case for his
scheme, and it remains popular in France.
The G.D. scheme also has strong arguments in
its favour. One of the strongest arguments is
that some of the most influential Tarot pack
designs, such as the Colman-Smith/Waite pack
7
The Tarot and the Tree
Notes on Kabbalah
92
: :
Table 18: Levi’s Attributions
Trump Letter Meaning
Juggler Aleph Ox
Female Pope Beth House
Empress Gimel Camel
Emperor Daleth Door
Pope He Window
Vice & Virtue Vau Peg, nail
Chariot Zain Weapon
Justice Cheth Fence
Hermit Teth Serpent
Wheel Yod Hand
Strength Kaph Palm (of hand)
Hanged Man Lamed Ox-goad
Death Mem Water
Temperance Nun Fish
Devil Samekh Prop
Tower Ayin Eye
Star Peh Mouth
Moon Tzaddi Fish-Hook
Sun Qoph Back of Head
Judgement Resh Head
Fool Shin Tooth
World Tau Cross
Table 19: Golden Dawn Attributions
Trump Letter Meaning
Fool Aleph Ox
Magician Beth House
High Priestess Gimel Camel
Empress Daleth Door
Emperor He Window
Heirophant Vau Peg, nail
Lovers Zain Weapon
Chariot Cheth Fence
Fortitude Teth Serpent
Hermit Yod Hand
Wheel Kaph Palm (of hand)
Justice Lamed Ox-goad
Hanged Man Mem Water
Death Nun Fish
Temperance Samekh Prop
Devil Ayin Eye
Tower Peh Mouth
Star Tzaddi Fish-Hook
Moon Qoph Back of Head
Sun Resh Head
Judgement Shin Tooth
World Tau Cross
The Tarot and the Tree
93
(also called the Rider/Waite pack) have been
based on this system. A large number of books
have been written “explaining” how marvellously
appropriate this scheme is.
An example is Aleister Crowley’s Book of
Thoth, subtitled Egyptian Tarot, published in
1944 shortly before Crowley’s death. Crowley
perpetuates the myth that the Tarot cards are
the lost books of Thoth, god of occult wisdom, a
repository of occult lore handed down from
ancient Egypt. There is internal evidence that
Crowley knows well that this is not the case, but
he goes on to state:
1. The origin of the Tarot is quite irrelevant,
even if it were certain. It must stand or fall as
a system on its own merits.
2. It is beyond doubt a deliberate attempt to
represent, in pictorial form, the doctrines of
the Qabalah.
It must be said that the evidence becomes
stronger as the cards are pictorially deconstructed
and reconstructed to fit the esoteric
outlook of the author. Levi, Waite, Crowley,
Case and many others have reconstructed the
cards according to personal prejudice, so that
the “doctrines of the Qabalah” become exceedingly
flexible, all-embracing and elastic. I have
provided a diagram of the Tree of Life with the
Colman-Smith/Waite trumps superimposed,
and this can be found overleaf.
In detail, the problem with the Golden Dawn
interpretation of the Tarot is this. It depends
heavily on the assignment of Hebrew letters to
Tarot cards, astrological signs and planets to
Hebrew letters, and Hebrew letters to paths on
the Tree of Life.
The assignment of cards to letters does not
have universal agreement, and several schemes
have been proposed - Gareth Knight provides a
useful summary of several of these in Volume 2
of A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism.
The assignment of Hebrew letters to astrological
signs and planets is based on the Sepher Yetzirah,
but this is a very old work with many
variant editions, and the choice made by the
G.D. is certainly not authoritative.
Lastly, the G.D. assignment of Hebrew letters
to the Tree of Life is idiosyncratic and somehow
loses sight of a common factor in all traditional
attributions: that the Hebrew letters are split
into 3 mothers, 7 doubles, and 12 elementals,
and the paths on the Tree can be divided into 3
horizontals, 7 verticals, and 12 diagonals. I do
not regard this as a trivial defect in the system.
None of this would matter if it was not for the
fact that the G.D. system has become the dominant
framework for modern Hermetic Kabbalah,
and there are many, many books which
explain Kabbalah in its terms. It is virtually
canonical. The Tarot Trumps are highly eloquent
and numinous symbols, and for many
people the G.D. assignation of Trumps on the
Tree of Life define Kabbalah, so that Crowley’s
point becomes self-fulfilling - the Tarot is an
attempt, in pictorial form, to represent the doctrines
of Kabbalah ... but it is a novel, ersatz
Kabbalah using reconstructed cards that sprang
into existence at the turn of the 19th. century.
More than anything this has created a substantial
divergence between Kabbalah in the Jewish
tradition, and what many people now refer to as
Qabalah, the modern G.D. variant.
It is usually a mistake to lie down in front of a
bandwagon, so I will say no more. What I will
say is that late Victorian enthusiasm for Tarot as
a repository of ancient occult wisdom owes
more to romanticism than fact. The earliest
cards date from the mid 15th. century. The idea
that they encode the doctrines of Kabbalah does
not seem even vaguely credible in light of what
is know about the history of Kabbalah.
The history of the Jews in Europe from the
time of the Crusades until the Renaissance is
one of relentless, violent, and often murderous
persecution. The Nazis did not invent antisemitism
- they merely refined it. Jews were
routinely denied civil rights, rights of residency,
and participation in most forms of economic
activity. Murder, forced expropriation of property,
theft, restrictions on movement, forced
conversion, and expulsion were routine. For
example, the Black Death was widely believed
to be caused by Jews poisoning water supplies,
and this was the cause of many massacres and
much torture. Volume IV of Graetz’s History of
the Jews reads like a 400 year holocaust.
Jewish culture, traditions, and religion were
despised to the point of total intolerance. In
response, Jews became self-protective. There
was little mixing of cultures, and even something
as important as the Hebrew language,
which one might consider essential for studying
the Bible, was little studied in Christian institutions,
and Jews were reluctant to teach it. Study
Notes on Kabbalah
94
The Tarot and the Tree
95
and teaching of Kabbalah was limited even
among Jews. The idea that medieval Jews
would set down the doctrines of Kabbalah on
playing cards for public circulation, given the
religious prohibition on graven images, is
absurd. Completely barking mad.
In his introduction to the Bison Books edition
of Johann Reuchlin’s De Arte Cabalistica, the
prominent scholar Moshe Idel find no evidence
of a Christian tradition of Kabbalah before Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), who
lived at approximately the same time and same
place (Northern Italy) as the emergence of the
first Tarot decks. The reality is that the dissemination
of Kabbalah among a learned non-Jewish
elite in Renaissance Italy comes later than the
first Tarot decks, with most of the substantial
exegesis and translation taking place in the
early part of the 16th. century.
However, there is the coincidence of time and
place. We cannot rule out the possibility that a
Jewish convert with a knowledge of Kabbalah
was involved at some level in the design of an
early Tarot deck. Converts such as Guglielmo
Raimondo Moncada, a.k.a. Flavius Mithridates
(c. 1450 - 1489), and Paul Ricci were important
as teachers and translators at the end of the
15th. and beginning of the 16th. century.
I think the reasonable conclusion is that
unsubstantiated claims about the hoary antiquity
of the Tarot should be taken with a pinch of
salt. If Tarot cards date prior to the 15th. century,
they almost certainly do not contain the
doctrines of Kabbalah, and if they date from the
15th. century (as reputable histories maintain),
they may contain some Kabbalah, but probably
at a superficial, dilettante level.
This exercise of pouring cold water on the
myth of the Tarot should not convince you that I
have any anything against the combination of
the Tarot and Kabbalah. On the contrary - the
Tarot provides a wonderful set of visual images
in a (relatively) standard form.
There is a nearly forgotten science, a science of
the imagination, described by the scholar Francis
Yates in her acclaimed The Art of Memory,
which is based on systems of vivid and interrelated
symbols. These systems are often
referred to as “memory theatre.” Such systems
were common up to the time of the Renaissance,
and employed by many important thinkers, but
the scientific reformation effectively eliminated
this kind of imaginative science. The Hermetic
Kabbalah is one of the few places where it survives.
The Tree of Life, with all its many correspondences,
is an excellent example of a memory theatre,
and the Tarot greatly enriches it. The
imaginative space that the combination of the
Tarot and the Tree of Life provides is rich,
detailed, immensely productive in analysing
consciousness. What is important is to put the
horse before the cart, to avoid reconstructing the
Kabbalah in the image of a reconstructed Tarot.
There are many productive ways to use the
Tarot in Kabbalah, and my intent is simply to
caution the reader against too much immersion
in what has become a G.D. orthodoxy.
I would like to provide an example of the
Tarot on the Tree which is valuable, intuitive,
and does little violence to either the Kabbalah or
the Tarot. The approach is essentially that
described by Dr. Alan Bain in his Keys to Kabbalah,
and it is a method of using the Tarot on the
Tree which I have used in my personal work
over many years.
The purpose of this particular scheme is narrative:
it describes the progress of a typical candidate
in the mysteries according to a reverse
lightning-flash progress up the Tree of Life. This
accords with the practical approach adopted in
these Notes, that initiations into the sephiroth
are resolved during everyday life. That is, one
cannot claim to have understood the nature of a
specific sephira until one has experienced its
effect on consciousness as part of going about
daily life.
This narrative provides an indication, often a
remarkably good and accurate indication, of the
kinds of mishap that can occur, and of the challenges
that must be met in order to make
progress up the Tree. It is a Kabbalistic Pilgrim’s
Progress, with the Tree of Life as the territory,
the Tarot as the story, and the aspirant to the
mysteries as the pilgrim.
The Tarot Trumps are arranged on the Tree in
an ascending lightning flash order as shown
overleaf, and the sephiroth are included in this
arrangement. The Fool is placed on Malkhut,
and the Trumps ascend the lightning flash in
traditional order. When there are paths
descending from a sephira (e.g. Hod), these
paths are filled in before proceeding along the
lightning flash.
This scheme will immediately raise the hackThe
Tarot and the Tree
96
The Tarot and the Tree
97
les of anyone who thinks the Trumps belong
only on the paths ... but it works, works well,
and contains several subtle and unexpected surprises
that are at least as illuminating as the
G.D. version. Trust me.
The sequence begins with the Foolish Man in
Malkhut. Not a divine fool, not a holy madman
filled with the breath of the holy spirit. Just a
Foolish Man or Woman, the sort of person who
doesn’t know important things and makes foolish
mistakes because of this. This Foolish Person,
seeking relief from the trials of ignorance, is
the actor in the story which now begins.
Malkhut - Foolish Man
Anyone who acts in ignorance of important
facts is likely to make mistakes. It isn’t a good
idea to buy shares in a company which is about
to announce that it is trading in the red - you
will lose money.
We all make mistakes in areas such as money,
sexual partners, trust, vehicles, emotions and so
on. It virtually impossible not to. Teenagers
enter into adult life with an unshakable arrogance
and self-determination that means that
each person is doomed to go through most of
the standard repertoire of upsets and disappointments.
In this we all begin adult life as
Foolish People - there are too many important
“facts” about life we learn only through the
experience of making mistakes.
In this narrative Malkhut is the everyday
world of unchallenged assumptions, of habits
and routines, of unexamined ideas, all the clutter
of the ages that leads us into folly. The Foolish
Man or Woman who makes a conscious
choice to leave behind this world must find a
way to begin.
Malkhut to Yesod - Magician
Archimedes decided he could move the world
with a lever if only he could find a fulcrum. His
problem was that the fulcrum was outside the
world ... so where was it?
The problem with unexamined ideas is finding
a perspective from where one can examine
them. Habits and routines need to be replaced
with something else. The problem facing the
Foolish Man is peculiarly hard because he lacks
even the knowledge that would help him begin.
The best he can do is put together a collection of
bits and pieces which he believes (or is assured)
will be efficacious. The card shows him standing
proudly before a table covered with recent
acquisitions, totems of efficacy.
He hasn’t a clue what to do with them of
course.
It is natural for many people to think of the
magician as figure of power, control, authority.
These are precisely the words used in Hi-Fi
magazines to sell speakers to men.This is the
vocabulary of the beta male looking to establish
himself as an alpha. The things on the magician’s
table are boy-toys, power totems. The
joke is that the Magician has changed nothing
within himself, and can only posture with his
fine collection of artifacts. Look at the exact analogue
of this card, The World. The figure is
female, the totems on the table have become the
four elemental powers, and the woman dances
in harmony with them. The contrast between
external totems and internalised competence
could not be greater.
The original title of this card was Le Bateleur,
a mountebank figure, a fairground trickster, a
sleight-of-hand artist. This is not a card of
power, control and authority; it is a card of
superficial illusions. The Foolish Man has progressed
in understanding that there are things
he can use to improve his position, but they are
still external, and he lacks the understanding to
do anything other than posture with them.
Yesod - High Priestess
At some point the (aspiring) magician will tire
of toys and tricks and look for a genuine tradition
capable of real teaching. Whether he will
find a suitable tradition depends on luck and
judgement - there hundreds of groups and
organisations offering inner knowledge, healing,
self-actualisation, and spiritual truths.
The High Priestess is the outward face of
occult knowledge - mysterious, glamorous, forbidding,
hieratic. She sits between the two pillars
of the Temple, and behind her is the veil of
the Temple concealing the Holy of Holies1. In
another reading, the veil is the veil of Isis, the
1. The “Holy of Holies” is also a kabbalistic
metaphor for the female sexual organs, an
association that is clear both in the card
and in the traditional correspondences for
Yesod.
Notes on Kabbalah
98
division between phenomenal and noumenal
reality, between the exoteric and the esoteric.
The High Priestess represents the first, outer
initiation into a group or organisation. The Foolish
man or woman now enters into some kind of
learning or training.
Yesod to Hod - Empress
The Empress represents fertility and growth.
The Foolish Man pulls back the veil to the
unknown and is confronted with a new world
that awaits discovery.
He goes to lectures, attends group meetings,
sits at the feet of his guru, purchases books from
specialist occult suppliers, learns a new vocabulary,
visits power sites, chants, meditates, practices
arcane concentration exercises, masters the
footwork, goes on a vision quest, dances his animal,
and meets many interesting people who
give the impression of knowing a lot more than
they are prepared to tell.
Hod - Emperor
The Foolish Man is now a Very Knowledgable
Man. He has acquired the vocabulary.
The Emperor card does not represent real
empire. The Very Knowledgable Man has no
empire - he has a vocabulary and a superficial
understanding of various concepts, but looking
back at himself as the Foolish Man he feels superior
to his old self, and he feels superior to all
the other Foolish Men and Women who have
not passed through the veil.
Inwardly he feels that the world would benefit
from his newly acquired spiritual consciousness,
and is already reappraising the world,
thinking “I would do this” and “they should do
that”. He feels like Solomon, feels that the world
should come before his throne seeking advice
and opinions, but does not recognise the superficiality
of his new knowledge - that it is “head
learning”, and ungrounded in deep experience.
Hod to Malkhut - Heirophant
The Emperor and Hierophant are two sides of
the same coin. As the Emperor, the Foolish Man
has mastered the vocabulary (and perhaps the
entire literary corpus) of a new discipline. He is
Solomon within the empire of his own head,
and at some point he will want let the world
know what he has learned.
At this point he will turn into the Hierophant,
preaching the gospel to all the other Foolish
Men and Women down there in Malkhut. Perhaps
he will write a book, or give public lectures,
or appear on a TV chat show.
If he has enough charisma he may appear
utterly convincing, completely in command of
all the relevant concepts, able to cite chapter and
verse where necessary.
Hod to Netzach - Lovers
The Foolish Man has now acquired a body of
new knowledge, but this knowledge is onesided.
It is so one-sided, it would be better to
call it information - the Foolish Man is
informed, but not truly knowledgable.
Being informed is useful when competing in
quiz shows, or writing entries for an encyclopedia.
It may be the foundation of a career in
academia. There is an experiential dimension
that is missing, like the schoolchild who can
recite all the yearbook facts about Argentina but
has never visited the country.
In Hebrew most nouns are derived from verb
roots. When, in the book of Genesis, it, states that
“Adam knew his wife Eve”, the word used for
“knew” is yada (Yod, Dalet, Ayin), the verb root
for knowledge, Daat. There is an ambiguity here
between sexual intercourse and the more
abstract idea of knowledge. This is revealing
and fruitful ambiguity.
The path between Netzach and Hod is a
reflection on a lower plane of the path between
Chokhmah and Binah (see the Extended Tree).
The interaction between Chokhmah and Binah
is most commonly represented in traditional
Kabbalah as the sexual interaction between a
man and a woman, between Abba the Father
and Aima the Mother, the primordial lovers.
The emanation of the union of Chokhmah and
Binah is Daat, Knowledge, so the Biblical ambiguity
in the story of Adam and Eve is preserved
in the upper face of the Tree of Life.
This is the secret of the Lovers card. The lovers
are Adam and Eve, who have just eaten the
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and have been
initiated into the joy and misery of physical
existence. Their coupling, their “knowing” of
each other, perpetuates physical existence.
The knowledge represented by Daat is not
information; it is the dynamic, operational
The Tarot and the Tree
99
knowledge embodied in the experience of physical
existence, and is something infinitely richer
than mere information. It is the difference
between a book on baby care, and a baby. Information
is dead; Daat is living knowledge. One
should recall that Daat is an upper plane reflection
of Yesod, the sphere of Shaddai el Chai, the
Living God.
The Lovers card is in many respects foundational
for an understanding of the Tree of Life,
as it represents the dynamics of separation, unification,
polarity, and manifestation. The
dynamics are those of a boat moving through
water, where the boat is Chokhmah, the water is
Binah, and the turbulent, swirling wake that
remains is Daat. The experience of this path is
one of the foundational initiatory experiences.
Human beings are, to a greater or lesser
extent, selfish and self-centered. The Foolish
Man, in the guise of Emperor and Heirophant,
may have become an information adept in some
domain, but this knowledge is detached from
the infinite swirling complexities of real life,
where nothing is ever clear, precise or exact. The
Foolish Man tries to make the world conform to
what he has learned, and does not realise that
he has become Procrustes, who invited travellers
to sleep in his bed. If they were too short he
stretched them, and if they were too long he
trimmed their legs to fit.
A major source of dissonance is other people,
who may not give two figs for the Foolish Man
and his wonderful, intricately consistent knowledge
of existence. It may work for him, but not
for them. They see him trying to foist a load of
nonsense on them, and tell him to go away.
There are many variations on this, but the
essence of the situation is emotional conflict.
Other people, in their near infinite variety, place
the Foolish Man in a position of conflict, and he
begins to recognise the limitations of the onesize-
fits-all approach to knowledge. He is confronted
with his emotional responses to other
people, and their emotional responses to him,
and perhaps for the first time he begins to realise
the necessity to add other people to his
worldview - not just intellectually, but acknowledging
that the difference between him and
them is an important and essential part of the
equation.
To an extent the Emperor is unthroned - he
now acknowledges, at a deep level, the existence
and autonomy of others, and his invincible
sense of a universal order as understood by
himself is upset by the realisation this experience
is largely subjective and personal1.
Netzach - Chariot
The Greek philosopher Plato wrote a dialogue,
Phaedrus, where he likened the human
soul to a chariot drawn by two winged horses.
One horse is noble, and drawn to the spiritual
realms of reason, truth and beauty, while the
other horse is ignoble and drawn towards sensuality
and base appetites.
Many modern Tarot packs have based their
depiction of the chariot upon this allegory. In
the Colman-Smith/Waite pack the horses are
two sedate-looking sphinxes coloured white
and black to make the association with “good”
and “evil” impulses more apparent. Even the
much older Marseilles pack has dozy horses of
differing colour, so the association with Plato’s
allegory may not be modern.
The Foolish Man has now reached a point
where he has begun to understand a fundamental
truth of human nature - that feelings tell us
what to think. There is no solution to any problem
involving people that does not make allowance
for the mutable character of human
feelings and passions. Purely rational utopias
are undone.
This was the great initiation of the Lovers
path, and it is reinforced here as he tries to bring
the horses under control. He may retain rational
and utopian ideals, but he is conscious of the
near irresistible forces which condemn him (and
other people) to repeat the same old mistakes -
smoking, dieting, relationships, greed and so
on.
The horses are not reined. He is all dressed
up, but the chariot shows no signs of moving
very far.
Netzach to Malkhut - Justice
The Foolish Man may be having difficulty in
balancing his own nature, but his awareness of
imbalance makes it easy for him to spot imbalance
in others. He is struggling to bring his
horses to rein, so other people ought to be doing
1. This experience has been characterised in
postmodern social theory as a “loss of narrative”.
Notes on Kabbalah
100
the same thing.
This period is one of intensely judgemental
feelings. The Foolish Man has come some way
on the path, and can bring considerable experience
to bear on the problems of other Foolish
Men and Women who are still down there in
Malkhut. He compares their blind fumblings
with his own conscious strivings, and sees how
clearly they would benefit from his experience.
The situation is similar to that of the Hierophant
(in a symmetric position) - he looks down into
Malkhut, but whereas the Hierophant was content
to hold out the promise of hidden knowledge,
the Foolish Man now feels fully equipped
to judge, to preside over situations like Solomon
in his wisdom.
The problem at this point is that the Foolish
Man is under the influence of the illusion of
Netzach, which is projection. He believes he is
seeing and judging objectively, but he is not. On
the subject of projection the psychologist C.G.
Jung comments:
“While some traits peculiar to the shadow
can be recognised without too much difficulty
as one’s own personal qualities, in
this case (projection) both insight and
goodwill are unavailing because the cause
of the emotion appears to lie, beyond all
possibility of doubt, in the other person.”
He also adds:
“As we know, it is not the conscious subject
but the unconscious which does the
projecting. Hence one meets with projections,
one does not make them. The effect
of projection is to isolate the subject from
his environment, since instead of a real
relation to it there is now only an illusory
one. Projections change the world into a
replica of one’s own unknown face”.
Netzach to Yesod - Hermit
At some point the Foolish Man will estrange
many of his acquaintances through judgemental
behaviour. When he began he was dazzled by
the glamour of the High Priestess, but now he
realises the people around him are not the fountains
of occult wisdom he thought they were.
They are just people, with the moral confusion,
emotional ambiguity, and personal shortcomings
of people everywhere. What he thought
was attainment looks suspiciously like ego.
At this point he finds himself alone. This is
often an intensely traumatic period of time. He
may have invested years in a philosophy,
school, tradition, or group, and now it is all
over. The dreams remain - the Hermit still carries
the light - but they are seen to be unattainable
with a particular group of people.
It is a time for recovery, for reassessment, for
prioritising, for “chewing the cud”. Often it is a
time for recrimination, for continued judgments.
There may be a feeling of being deeply
burned and scarred. If the Foolish Man can
escape the tendency to blame others for everything
that has happened then he may be able to
take the Death path to Tipheret. It is just as
likely that after a time alone he picks up the
pieces and starts once more in Yesod.
Yesod to Tipheret - Wheel of Fortune
The Wheel is allocated to the path from Yesod
to Tipheret, but shares Yesod with the High
Priestess - it is, in a sense, “upper Yesod”.
Buddhists use the Wheel of Samsara to symbolise
the recurrence of situations through
many, many lifetimes: births, deaths, weeping,
pain, suffering, loss. In the tale of the Foolish
Man the Wheel symbolises the recurrence of
similar situations throughout a lifetime. The situations
recur because the foolish man is unaware
how his personality shapes his
relationship with his environment (which
includes other people) and so must construct
explanations for the things that happen that
portray him as an innocent victim of circumstance.
An example is an alcoholic who finds himself
in recurring situations - violence, debt, illness -
because of his drinking, but who does not or
cannot change his behaviour. Something similar
can happen with jealousy, greed, lust, selfishness,
dishonesty and so on, but the more subtle
the vice, the less willing the Foolish Man is to
admit to it, and so he is condemned to suffer its
consequences.
It is not the vice that is the issue. It is the
unwillingness to take responsibility for the situations
it causes. People use three primary mechanisms
to evade responsibility: rationalisation
(Hod), identification (Tipheret) and justification
(Netzach) to evade responsibility.
Rationalisation is the process of providing
seemingly rational explanations for behaviour
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101
which is anything but rational. A person who is
late for work because they slept in after a night
on the tiles is hardly likely to admit it- they may
explain the battery on the car had gone flat, or
there was traffic congestion. This is more of an
untruth than a true rationalisation.
The mark of rationalisation is that the explanations
usually convince no-one other than the
person doing the rationalising. Intractable habits
often come with long and complex rationalisations,
and the person with the rational excuses
may become self-righteous and indignant when
they are challenged.
Justification tends to work by comparison -
behaviour is justified by another person’s
behaviour. A good example is the elder child
who has hit a younger sibling - “but he hit me
first” is the usual cry.
Identification is the most insidious. The person
justifies his or her behaviour on the basis of
belonging to a particular group or type. A man
might respond aggressively to a problem
because he identifies so strongly with a stereotype
maleness that he cannot conceive of an
alternative.
In each case behaviour is seen as necessary.
There is no alternative. This the foundation of ego
conscious, an identification with behaviour. A
change of behaviour is equated to a loss of identity
and hence is fiercely resisted.
When core behaviour remains unchanged in
the face of so-called “spiritual development”,
negative situations will continue to recur, and
each time they do, a similar pattern of blame
will occur, usually through rationalisation or
justification.
This is the Wheel. The Foolish Man spends
time alone in the wilderness, meets another
glamorous High Priestess, becomes the
Emperor once more, full of new ideas, traverses
the Lovers path, fights to gain control of his
Chariot, spends more time as the Hermit in the
wilderness, and is dumped back into Yesod
again.
Some people go round and round this circuit
for years. These are the eternal aspirants, the
“joiners”, people who join groups, go through
the full rinse and spin cycle, then fall out in acrimony.
There is always something wrong with
every system.
The Wheel is not entirely a static situation.
Each time round brings some wisdom, some
insight.
What is important is that a person begins to
recognise that he or she is an accident, a fortuitous
collection of behaviours, opinions, excuses,
prejudices and knee-jerk responses which are
not necessary in any sense. If a person clings to
this random collection of psychic flotsam and
jetsam he could continue to go around on the
wheel for a lifetime, always seeking a spiritual
growth that never happens. It often takes a
strong shock to bring about a major change to a
person, a shock that acts as a catalyst for psychic
change and growth. Losing one’s job, a death,
the end of a relationship, a furious row, illhealth
- these are the catalysts that can cause the
Foolish Man to stop seeing his ego comforts as
necessary.
Tipheret - Strength
Tipheret to Hod - Hanged Man
Tipheret to Netzach - Death
Tipheret and the paths to Tipheret are discussed
together because it is difficult to discuss
the place without discussing the process. To an
extent, Tipheret is process.
In the section on Tipheret I explained that
Tipheret is difficult to describe because it is like
an empty room. It is precisely because there is
nothing in it that Tipheret differs from other
sephiroth.
Yesod has something in it - that is why it is a
foundation, that is what gives it its strength.
Where would we be without some instincts,
drives, motivations to get us through the day?
Whether our drives are right or wrong is to
some extent irrelevant - at least we do something.
The ego may be a random, historical collection
of behaviours, but that is better than no behaviour.
The strength of Tipheret is utterly different
from that of Yesod, which is based on fixed
behaviours viewed as necessary behaviours.
There are no fixed points in Tipheret; behaviours
are mutable and situational, and while the
ego can ape this attitude, it is betrayed by its
lack of fluidity in real predicaments. The
strength of Tipheret is appropriateness - behaviours
are fluidly matched to situations, and not
the other way around (which is effectively what
happens when rationalisation reconstructs
events and rewrites history to satisfy the ego).
Notes on Kabbalah
102
The paths to Tipheret are major upsets. It usually
takes a significant shock to knock the ego
off the rails for long enough for the Foolish Man
to see alternatives.
The path from Hod is the Hanged Man. Fixed
ideas are turned on their heads. Grand intellectual
schemes turn to dust and ashes. What
appear to be irrefutable, universal truths suddenly
lack substance, and their inverse propositions
seem just as valid. Rationality is betrayed.
The path from Netzach is Death. There is an
end to deep emotional attachments. The classic
divorce scenario, where a man loses his partner,
children, home and even car is an example.
Leaving an occult group can be almost as traumatic,
as is the failure of a teacher-pupil relationship.
Neither the Hanged Man or Death paths are
enough in themselves to sustain the massive reevaluation
of values needed to leave ego
behind. It can take years of introspection and a
willingness to brave many novel emotional and
intellectual circumstances before the strength of
Tipheret appears. These are triggers only. The
apparently indestructible vessel of the ego hits
an iceberg of circumstance and begins to
founder. Unlike the Titanic, its sinking is not a
mathematical certainty, and the crew will perform
impossible feats of valour to keep her
afloat, creating vast rafts of rationalisation, justification
and identification to buoy her up.
Tipheret to Gevurah - Temperance
Tipheret is process, not place or state. The
Foolish Man learns to treat each novel situation
as an opportunity to remake himself. He no
longer has a fixed sense of identity, he no longer
identifies with his gender, his social group, his
social roles, his nationality, his age, or any convention
that tells him what he ought to be. His
identity is defined by moral purpose. He
decides what he believes to be the best possible
outcome for all concerned in each new situation
he finds himself in, and adapts himself to
achieve that outcome.
This is a difficult path. There are few guidelines,
and each situation is handled as it comes.
The Foolish Man uses all that he has learned so
far to deal with real life. When anger is needed
he is angry. When compassion is needed, he is
compassionate. When reason is required, he is
reasonable. When tears are the only response,
he cries. When endurance is appropriate, he
endures.
He can no longer salve his wounds with
rationalisation or justification. He is exposed to
his faults and failures. There is no retreat from
his inadequacies. All he can do is review himself
constantly, asking constantly “what is better”.
There is no best, but there is always something
different, something that might be better. He
constantly re-invents himself in the light of
changing situations.
The Temperance card shows an angel pouring
a liquid from one container to another. The
Foolish Man is now fluid, lacking any defined
sense of what or who he is. He adapts himself to
each new situation, and as circumstances
change, he moulds himself, keeping what he
likes, rejecting anything that serves no purpose.
This fluidity, this constant re-invention, will
seem threatening to people who understand
that he is capable of attempting anything he
chooses to. The only restraint is his innate moral
sense of right and wrong, the sense that other
people matter, what Kant characterised in his
categorical imperative as treating people as
ends, not as means. There are risks however ...
Gevurah - Devil
The Foolish Man has abandoned ego games
and ego trips, abandoned petty politics and
scheming, abandoned intrigue and emotional
games. All of this now seems like social theatre,
and the vanities of his personality are like
flimsy stage sets, an illusion of substance that no
longer has the power to convince.
His motivations have changed. He works quietly
and steadily on his projects, and does whatever
it takes to ensure their success. He will
make the tea and coffee while others reap the
glory if that is what it takes.
He may not notice that people have begun to
look up to him in a way he has never experienced
before. He is so unconcerned with vanity
that he cannot see that people have begun to
look to him for advice, for help, for praise.
Some people can spend their whole lives
manoeuvring for power, but what they achieve
may be tawdry. They may be mocked, even
despised behind their backs.
We know that behind the figureheads of any
organisation are people who are the real hearts,
who are admired because they are good at what
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they do. These are people who excite a genuine,
unqualified, and often universal admiration
because of their skill, commitment, dedication
to the task, and essential humility. Sometimes
people like this lack the charisma and the knack
for political intrigue, and take the rear seat by
choice. The Foolish Man finds himself in a different
position.
The Foolish Man senses his awakening
power, and accepts power as a new challenge.
He never sought this power - it sought him, a
truly novel situation. He finds that if he chooses
to lead, people will follow him.
This is an important moment on the path. At
the beginning of his path the Foolish Man
dressed in his robes and played at being the
magician. He had no genuine power - it was a
conceit. During his time on the Wheel he may
have intrigued and found a transitory sense of
importance, but there was little lasting satisfaction
in it - the power that people grant can easily
be taken away. There is always a deep insecurity.
Now he is in a completely novel situation,
because the power that comes from inner composure
can never be removed, except perhaps in
illness and death.
This marks the point at which solitary personal
development ends. The Foolish Man does
not exist in isolation, and understands now that
too much introspection is a kind of cowardice,
that one can only grow so far in isolation from
the world. He understands that his personal
spiritual growth is linked to his ability to thrive
in larger situations, not only accepting power
and responsibility, but using power in pursuit
of his goals.
The idea of the solitary mage is more of a
schizoid fantasy than a reality. A person is free
to act in isolation only to the extent to which he
is ineffectual or harmless. The real power in this
world exists in extended social groups, and
always has - an individual matters only so far as
he has a congregation who will support his
views.
The Foolish Man now comes into his full
inheritance of free-will, and its attendant problem:
what to do with it? In the past his psyche,
its needs, and its goals, were an accident of history
and circumstance, but now he can no
longer hide behind the shield of “necessity”. He
is aware that his decisions are made in full consciousness,
that other people look to him for
guidance, and he takes full responsibility for
outcomes. This is a heady brew to drink. He is,
in a very general sense, satanic. He has free-will,
and he is unencumbered by moral baggage. He
is potentially a great power for good, or a terrible
power for evil. He is free to chose.
In traditional Kabbalah the sephira Gevurah
is the root of the powers of the “left side”, and
the seat of the “evil inclination”. Its angel is
often given as Samael, sometimes interpreted as
“poison of god”. If God is One, then the root of
evil is duality, the separation of that which
should be united.
It hard for us, living in a world of duality, to
know what is good and what is evil, or to act
without doing as much evil as good. The Foolish
Man finds himself mired in uncertainty and
ambiguity - he thought he was acting for God,
but finds himself unwittingly chained to the
devil.
Gevurah to Hod - Blasted Tower
The Foolish Man has chosen to play in highstakes
card games. He finds that he is no longer
a master of his own destiny ... he gave that up
when he stopped contemplating his navel,
threw his chips down on the table, and picked
up a hand of cards. The other players in the
game are just as smart as he is.
Many people who look for occult training
have no experience of the big games being
played in this world, games which can determine
the quality of life for millions of people. It
is easy to ignore Palestine or biotechnology or
abortion or global warming or computer networking
or disease or million other issues
because they are not “spiritual”. Aren’t they? If
the entire universe is a manifestation of God,
then in what way is human misery not a spiritual
issue?
The Foolish Man finds that the problems of
existence are not being solved by angels or spiritual
masters: they are being solved by himself
and a host of other people, and not everyone
has risen above selfishness. It is a high-stakes
game, and bad things can happen.
The Foolish Man may come unstuck. It happens.
All rock climbers accept that they are
going to fall off the rock. All aeroplane pilots
accept that they may crash. Motorcyclists fall off
their bikes. We see politicians fall from grace
with monotonous regularity. Politicians cannot
all be venal; we must accept that many begin
Notes on Kabbalah
104
with the best intentions, but are tempted in various
ways, and make mistakes.
The Blasted Tower is a terrible experience that
can throw the Foolish Man back onto the Wheel.
If he has retained his integrity he may climb
back swiftly, but if he has been corrupted by the
experience of power, and many are, he may not
recover.
Gevurah to Chesed - Star
A common metaphor in traditional Kabbalah
is that of the river which waters the whole of
creation. It flows from a spring in Chokhmah
and brings life to all the spheres.
The Star card echoes this idea In its original
form in may have portrayed the yearly Nile
flood, associated with the goddess Isis and the
rising of the star Sothis (Sirius, the Dog Star).
The yearly flood brought water and fertile silt
and enabled Egypt to become on of the great
cradles of civilisation.
The card emphasises the inter-relatedness of
life, that no thing lives in isolation. We are all
dependent on external sources of sustenance.
We may not be able to draw precise lines of
good and evil, but we do know that all life
needs life, and no universal philosophy based
on predation or destruction can possibly succeed
in the long term.
The Foolish Man emerges from the struggles
of Gevurah and finds reassurance in this
insight. For a time he despaired of finding any
moral foundation for action. He began to question
the value of doing anything. Now he
returns to drink from the waters of life, and
replenish his soul.
The Foolish Man becomes aware of a larger
picture. When his perceptions were dominated
by dualities, by a profound sense of right and
wrong, he was effective, but he was always
exposed to rational doubt. The things he fought
for and the things he opposed were like lines
drawn on the surface of water.
In the larger picture there is only life, and the
need to preserve as much of its balance and
diversity as possible. He begins to see both sides
of every issue, but is not longer paralysed by
questions of “either this or that”. He sees that
truth is also process, an evolutionary dynamic
that never stands still in any one place.
The Foolish Man is now approaching a place
reached by few people. His consciousness is no
longer dominated by hard boundaries, by divisions
between things, by a clear sense of identity,
by strong feelings of right and wrong.
Neither is it moved by fixed sentiment, nor
swayed by transient emotion. His goals remain
clear, but his methods become inscrutable.
Chesed - Moon
If the Foolish Man reaches Chesed (and he
may not) it will be because he is able to articulate
something that transcends himself. He finds
a medium in which to express himself, and in
doing so he captures something that can be
shared by many. He becomes a conduit.
He could be a writer, a demagogue, an artist,
a dancer, a poet, a businessman, a scientist, or a
guru. What matters is that for a time he is able
to grasp and articulate something unique. He
opens his mind to the unknown, and gives birth
to something new.
The Moon card is downright spooky. It shows
two dogs howling at a huge moon raining drops
of liquid which have been interpreted as blood.
In the distance are two pylons forming a gateway
with a clear road marked. In the foreground
in a pool with a lobstery creature
emerging.
In this interpretation the gateway is Daat, and
the moon belongs both to Daat and the overlapping
Yesod of Briah. The Foolish Man has traversed
a path which has led from the limited
world of his Ego to the greater world of his Self.
He has gone beyond himself and taken part in
human society. Now he finds the path goes
beyond the place where humanity currently is.
He finds himself on the edge of the abyss, staring
into the congealing futures of the human
race and all living things. The possibilities for
tomorrow unroll before him. This is a genuinely
scary place to be.
There are individuals who propel themselves
to the boundaries of human thought and
expression. In many cases this happens through
circumstance rather than intent, and the lives of
deeply creative people are often blighted with
abusive relationships, loss, alienation, mental
illness and drugs. By exploring beyond the currency
of thought and expression, these individuals
are a driving force in the evolution of
humanity - the novelty that they express
becomes the commonplaces of the next generation.
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105
The Foolish Man is in the rare position of
driving himself to the edge of the abyss by
intent. He has chosen to be there. Whether he
hooks any large fish from the deeps depends on
his talent and nerve.
Chesed to Netzach - Sun
The world is full of celebrities who had their
day of glory and who have been trying to milk
the moment for decades. Sustained creativity is
unusual, but one-hit wonders are not.
Creativity is a bird that roosts where it will,
and at the smallest disturbance it flies off and
preens its feathers on another branch. This is
hard for the Foolish Man; one moment he is
being hailed for his unique contribution to
human existence - he is in the papers, he is on
the lecture circuit, he appears on talk shows -
and then he finds himself on the slow slide into
obscurity.
The Sun card recalls the minor movie or theatre
celebrity who keeps his press clippings, his
billboards, his autographed pictures, and all the
tangible proofs that he was “big in his day”. He
lives in a declining circle of admirers who
remember. For decades he basks in the warm
glow of his salad days.
If the Foolish Man tries to milk the creative
moment he falls off the path and begins a long,
slow descent back onto the Wheel and the warm
sentimental glow of Netzach. It can be a terrible
journey - one should recall how Margaret
Thatcher fell from being the dominant force in
British politics into complete irrelevancy within
a couple of years.
Chesed to Tipheret - Last Judgement
Business leaders at the top level of business
rarely stick around in one position for more
than four or five years. It is acknowledged that
even the most creative leaders can make only a
limited contribution for a limited time, and then
it is time to hand on the torch and let someone
else have a turn. Many of our most important
institutions (such as government) acknowledge
that particular people are right for a particular
moment, and leaving the reins of power in the
hands of people who have gone past their creative
best is asking for stagnation, complacency,
and abuse of power - the vices of Chesed are
tyranny, gluttony, hypocrisy and bigotry.
The Foolish Man has to know the right time to
stand down. If he does not, he goes down the
Sun path - there is a brutal inevitability at this
level. He has to clear his desk, pack his bag, say
goodbye to chauffeur and the courtesy car,
shake hands with the administrative staff, and
join the undistinguished masses once more.
This path is like the Hermit path below it, but
many times more traumatic. Compared with the
public life he has lead, it really is a little death, a
sepulchre.
When the Foolish Man steps down he subjects
himself to a stringent self-assessment. He has to:
Gevurah and Chesed are unbalanced extremes
and he will have done many things which, on
reflection, he wishes he had not. This is the Last
Judgement - a balancing up as the centre of
gravity of his life returns to Tipheret.
Tipheret to Daat - World
The Foolish Man may go around the Tipheret
- Gevurah - Chesed - Tipheret loop many times.
This is a higher order analogue of the lower
Yesod - Hod - Netzach - Yesod cycle which I
characterised as “being on the Wheel”. He may
have many opportunities to experience the
Blasted Tower or Wheel paths.
If he is fortunate he will experience, just as he
did on the Wheel, a new possibility of consciousness.
This is what Kabbalists call
neshamah, the divine part of a human being, the
part that according to tradition, survives death.
The path from Tipheret through Daat to Keter
on the Yetziratic tree corresponds to the path
from Malkhut to Yesod on the Briatic tree. The
Foolish Man is revealed once again as ... the
Foolish Man, setting out to ascend the Tree of
Life. At one level he has achieved everything,
but at another level he has achieved nothing.
This is characteristic of major changes of consciousness
- all the insights and achievements
one has struggled for are revealed as pointless
or worthless or deluded or an artifact of blindness
- “I once was blind but now can see” as the
song goes.
This path is the higher-level analogue of the
Magician path, but observe the differences. The
Magician is a static male figure, his props are
laid out on a table in front of him, and although
he waves a wand, it appears to be more for
show than anything else.
The World card is a dancing female figure.
Notes on Kabbalah
106
She dances within the realm of the four elements,
denoted by the bull-lion-eagle-man figures
at each corner.
Real knowledge cannot be laid out on a table.
It is operational within the wholeness of the
human psyche, and the dancing figure shows
how completely the lessons of the paths have
been absorbed and internalised to the point
where the challenges of existence have become a
flowing dance.
Symmetries
This method of presenting the Tarot on the
Tree has a surprising narrative coherence, and it
is a narrative that seems to accord well with personal
experience. This is as much as one can
expect from any narrative: that it tells a memorable
story, possesses internal coherence and
provides a measure of subjective usefulness.
The idea that this scheme “fits well” onto the
Tree evokes some resistance in me, because I do
not think any scheme is intrinsically better than
any other, for reasons given above. However ... I
do think this scheme fits well on the Tree, and I
am not the first to have made this observation -
Dr. Alan Bain, in The Keys to Kabbalah, speculates
that the Colman-Smith/Waite pack may have
been designed with this scheme in mind, and
finds internal evidence in the design of the cards
to support this idea
When the Tree is examined from Malkhut, the
Foolish Man sees the Hierophant on the left, the
High Priestess in front of him, and Justice to the
right of him. Each of these figures is seated
between two pillars and suggests that no
approach is possible without passing through
the pillars of the temple (a duality reflected in
the Tree itself).
In the Magician card (Malkhut to Yesod) the
tokens of the four elements are present on the
table in front of the Magician. In the Wheel card
(Yesod to Tipheret) they are now represented as
figures surrounding the wheel, suggesting that
the Foolish Man has now become aware of these
forces in his environment, but is still subject to
their uncertainties. In the World card (Tipheret -
Daat - Keter) contains the four elements as in
the Wheel, but the dancing figure suggests a
harmonious and balanced relationship.
Bain also notes that the Lovers card (Hod -
Netzach) shows the sun of Tipheret over the
two figures, and the Star (Gevurah - Chesed)
likewise shows the star of Keter (variously,
Daat, as several modern writers have identified
Daat with the star Sirius).
Another significant oddity is that the placement
of the cards reflects the original Tarot
numbering when Justice was 8 and Strength
was 11 - that is, the pre-Golden Dawn numbering.
The Golden Dawn numbering looks completely
odd in this scheme, as interchanging
Strength with Justice does considerable damage
to the picture.
The cards do not cover every path, and this
must seem to be an objection, but observe which
paths are not covered. This scheme operates up
to the abyss, just where one would expect the
narrative to end. When one crosses the abyss
one begins again as the Foolish Man in a new
world and on a new Tree. There is a natural correspondence
between this scheme for Tarot, and
the Extended Tree arrangement of the Four
Worlds - they seem to be made for each other.
Conclusion
The use of Tarot in Kabbalah is a relatively
modern innovation that can be traced to the
18th. century French occult revival. It is not
present in the Jewish tradition. Given that one
understands that one is not dealing with ancient
knowledge, and that there are many variant
schemes, the Tarot is a useful addition to Kabbalah,
and many people find it so. Much of the
reason for this lies in the vivid imagery of the
cards - they are rich in symbols, and capable of
generating many kinds of useful and memorable
narrative.
The debate over the “correct” attribution is
something of an artifact of a peculiar Victorian
mentality, and should be ignored - we are all
postmodern now, and revel in multiple interpretations.
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8
The Four Worlds
The sephirothic Tree of Life presents a metaphor
where creation takes place in ten steps and
there is the suggestion that ten potencies (or
emanations, or vessels, or garments, or crowns)
are involved. There is an alternative picture
where the creation takes place in four steps; this
model is called “the Four Worlds”. The four
worlds can be mapped onto the Kabbalistic
Tree, and the two models have become complementary.
The four worlds are:
• Atzilut - the world of emanation or nearness
• Briah - the world of creation
• Yetzirah - the world of formation
• Assiah - the world of making
The names of three of the four worlds can be
found in Isaiah 43.7 where the Lord (speaking
through the mouth of the prophet) states:
“...for I have created him for my glory, I
have formed him; yea, I have made him.”
It is interesting to compare the Kabbalistic
four worlds with the Neoplatonic scheme of
Plotinus [31], where we find a similar four-fold
division into the One, the Divine Mind, the All-
Soul and the Sensible World. A comparison can
also be made with the “celestial hierarchies” of
the gnostic Psuedo-Dionysus, where we find a
super-celestial world of the Nous, the Real; a
celestial (and potentially hostile) world of the
demiurge, guardians and Archons; and the sublunary
world of the elements.
The Kabbalistic model of four worlds shares
with both of these alternative and older views
an attempt to bridge the gap between the perfection
of a transcendent Godhead, and the
finiteness and imperfection of the material
world - it would seem inevitable for metaphysical
speculation to attempt to bridge the gap
between the two extremes. How can God be
perfect when the world is so patently flawed? A
solution to the problem of irreconcilable
extremes is to postulate a continuum, to make
each extreme an end to the same piece of string.
The four worlds represent an attempt to bridge
the gap, but in doing so they represent something
more complex than a simple continuum
connecting two extremes.
Atzilut - Emanation
Atzilut is the world of pure emanation, the
outflowing light of God which we see refracted
through the glass of consciousness as the ten
lights of the sephiroth. “To emanate” is to “flow
out from”, and Atzilut is the world which flows
directly out of the infinite and unknowable En
Soph. The word Atzilut can be derived from the
root ezel, meaning “near by”, emphasising the
closeness of this world to the hidden, unmanifest
En Soph. Another term used to describe the
nature of the emanation is hamshakhah, “drawing
out”, with the suggestion that the emantion
is only a part of something greater, just as we
draw water from a well.
The sephiroth, viewed as an expression of the
Holy Names of God, are normally attributed to
Aztiluth and this is an indication that early Kabbalists
viewed the pure energies of the sephiroth
as being exceedingly remote, and
inaccessible to normal consciousness. The world
of Atzilut is remote from the world where it is
possible to form representations of the sephiroth
(Yezirah), and this tells us that the pictures
of the sephirothic Tree normally employed for
communication and instruction are representations
of something unimaginable and incommunicable:
we must constantly remember that the
map is not the territory.
Intellectually we know that sunlight is composed
of a spectrum of colours, and even young
children can draw a picture of a rainbow, but
we do not see the colours in sunlight directly.
We do not see the colours until the light is
refracted in a shower of rain and it is worth
bearing this in mind when considering the
Notes on Kabbalah
108
importance (or otherwise) of the sephirothic
correspondences.
Atzilut is the world of closeness or nearness
to God, the world where one is bathed in the
undifferentiated light. In the terminology of the
Merkabah mystics, it is the world of the Throne.
There is very little that one can usefully say
about it.
Briah - Creation
Briah is the world of creation, creation in the
sense of “something out of nothing”. The author
of the Bahir makes the amusing observation that
as light is an attribute of God, light did not have
to be created, but was formed, “something out
of something”; darkness, on the other hand, was
not a part of God and had to be created. This ties
in with the Kabbalistic notion of contraction, or
tzimtzum, the idea that for the creation to proceed
there had to be a space where God was not.
If one also supposes that the ultimate nature of
God is good, then one must also conclude that
evil was created, that the goodness, light and
peace of God were deliberately withheld in
some measure to create the universe, and this
reflects the separation of Keter into Chokhmah
and Binah, the right and left sides of the manifest
God.
This is a key kabbalistic idea: the negative
qualities of existence, the rigour and severity of
God as depicted by the lefthand Pillar of the
Tree of Life, are not the result of a malevolent
third party - a diabolical anti-God fouling-up
the works, a spiteful Satan wandering around
the creation looking for trouble. They are the
very essence of the creative act.
The suggestion that the fundamental creative
act was the creation of evil1 is not (for obvious
reasons) given much prominance in Kabbalistic
literature, but hints to this effect can be found
everywhere. The Bahir uses the metaphor of
gold and silver to make the point that the
essence of the creative act was “holding back”.
That which was held back was so much greater
than that which was given. The mercy of God in
the creation is only a small part of God’s mercy,
and so corresponds to silver, because the more
valuable part was held back by the judgement
or severity of God
The essence of the creative act was the withholding
of God, and nowhere have I found a
suggestion that an entity other than God was
involved - there is no demiurge in Kabbalah.
The essence of the creative act was separation.
One becomes two, Keter becomes Chokhmah
and Binah, and in this primary duality can be
found the root of all dualities.
When I first began thinking about Briah, and
I tried to make sense of the word “creation”, I
assumed that something tangible was created,
and I found I could not differentiate the end
result from formation - a rose is a rose whether
it is created out of nothing or grown in a garden.
Does it matter whether I make a cake miraculously
by conjuring it out of nowhere, or
whether I make it synthetically by mixing ingredients
and baking them in an oven? I presume
both cakes will taste the same. Synthetic creation,
the creation of “something out of something”
is commonplace, but miraculous creation
is not, and if Briah is not the world of synthetic
creation (which belongs properly in Yetzirah),
then what does it represent?
The creation which takes place in Briah is differentiation;
that is, Briah predicates the possibility
of synthetic creation. The creation which
takes place in Briah is not the creation of anything
tangible, but the creation of those necessary
(but abstract and definitely intangible)
conditions which make synthetic creation possible.
It is difficult to find a good example without
resorting to abstract forms of theoretical physics
which also attempt to answer questions concerning
“why is the universe the way it is?”, but
the nature of Briah is elusive unless the attempt
is made, and so I will make the attempt.
Pottery is a creative activity, the creation of
new and completely original forms out of clay
and it is clearly synthetic creation - clay is a prerequisite.
A potter wants to make a jug to hold
water. Note the use of the word “make”; jug
making is an activity which takes place in
Assiah, the world of making. The potter may
incorporate some novelty of design into the jug
he or she is about to make, and if this novelty is
sufficiently unusual we might consider the
design itself to be creative - this is an example of
Yetziratic creativity. The design is intangible; it
must be expressed in some way (using clay or
whatever) but the thing we regard as creative
isn’t the tangible jug, because anyone can make
a rudimentary jug out of clay, but the design
1. Gnostics explicitly demonise the creator embodied in the jug.
god for this reason.
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109
Let us now go back through history to a
remote time in the past when there were no
jugs. Should the creation of the first jug be
regarded as truely creative in the Briatic sense,
rather than synthetically creative in the Yetziratic
sense?
I would say that the creation of the first jug
would have been an evolution from past experience;
there must have been an experience of
“containment” which was almost certainly
derived from cupping hands to drink water, or
from drinking water held in pools in rocks. The
idea for the first pottery jug was almost certainly
derived from a prior experience of using a
variety of artifacts to contain water, and all of
these artifacts would have in common the quality
of “containment”. Containment would not
be possible without the basic physical properties
of the world we live in, such as the existence
of individually identifiable objects extended in
space with a specific shape. The abstract physical
properties themselves would not be possible
without...what?
What was it that determined the most abstract
properties of the world and made it possible for
us to conceive of containment as an abstract
property? In the terminology of Kabbalah, this
takes place in Briah. The world of creation creates
the conditions for form by providing differentiation
and identity. This is an abstract
concept, and difficult to grasp. Wittgenstein put
his finger on the problem when he observed
that the solution of the riddle of life in time and
space lies outside time and space.
Traditionally, Briah is the world of the archangels.
The attributions of archangels to specific
sephira vary greatly from one historical period
to another, and from writer to writer. The
author uses the attributions given in Chapter 3.
Yetzirah - Formation
Yetzirah is the world of formation where
complex forms are built synthetically, “something
out of something”, what I have previously
called synthetic creation. We are not yet in the
world of tangible things; to use an analogy I
gave when describing the sephira Yesod, we are
more in the world of bottle moulds than a world
of glass bottles, and more accurately still, in the
world where one designs bottle moulds for
glass bottles.
Yetzirah is a curious world, because its contents
are both intangible and real. Money is an
example of an abstraction that people will kill
over. Criminal law is something clearly abstract
and synthetic in nature, but not something to
meddle with too often. Several times in these
notes I have attempted to point out the “real but
intangible” nature of mathematical objects, with
computer programs being the most important
examples. The development of virtual reality
systems drives home the point that there is a
world of objects which are not real in the sense
of being physical, but they are real in another
sense: they are real in the sense that they can be
differentiated in some way, real in the sense of
having specific properties and behaviour. The
world of intangible but differentiated objects is
the world that Kabbalists call Yetzirah, and it is
a world that spans thought, from slippery
abstractions like beauty and truth down to
something as specific and detailed as an engineering
blueprint.
It is difficult to write about Yetzirah because it
contains so much, because it contains the whole
of human culture; our myths, legends, music,
poetry, law, cultural behaviour, literature, sciences,
games, and so on. These all fall into the
“intangible but real” category - things which
have no substance but which constitute our
inheritance and define our experience of being
human. It is a kind of “mind-space” where all
the forms ever conceived can be found, a space
where it is possible to interact with form.
One of the most interesting developments in
recent times is the realisation that it is becoming
possible to bridge the gap between Yetzirah and
Assiah using computer technology, and the
term “cyberspace” is widely used to describe
this idea. Computer programs have become the
medium for turning form into something that
can be shared. A program which defines a jug in
all its respects allows us to share the form of the
jug without any potter having to get her hands
dirty. It isn’t a real jug, and it won’t hold real
water, but it can hold the form of water, the
Yetziratic representation of liquidity, and I
could pour Yetziratic “water” out of my Yetziratic
“jug”. The fact that we can share the form
of an object without having to make it (and this
is increasingly the way industrial designers
work today) means that humans will have the
ability to interact in Yetzirah, as magicians have
always done, without any form of magical training.
Writing was the first breakthrough in recordNotes
on Kabbalah
110
ing the contents of Yetzirah and it gave the contents
an independent (if static) existence.
Cyberspace will be an even greater breakthrough
in that it will not only record the contents,
it will enable us to bring them to life in a
limited way. Yetzirah is in the process of
“becoming real”.
The world of Yetzirah is traditionally the
realm of the Angel Orders, but like the Archangels,
the attributions to specific sephiroth vary
greatly from writer to writer.
Assiah - Making
Assiah is the world of making, the world
where forms “become real”. The essential quality
of the “world of making” that permits us to
make things is stability, the fact that the material
world has stable properties and behaves in a
predictable way. Our sciences are an outcome of
this predictability - there would be no science if
there were no stable properties.
Our technology is an outcome of our scientific
knowledge, and our ability to make increasingly
complex artifacts is an outcome of our technology.
If I make a chair at lunchtime, then (left to
itself) it will still be a chair at dinnertime, and it
won’t be a towel, a giraffe, or an igloo. An ounce
of gold remains an ounce of gold. A pound of
lead weighs the same on each successive day of
the week. It is this stability and predictability
which allows us to have a shared experience of
the world. If you place the pound of lead on the
chair I made at lunchtime, then I will find the
same pound of lead on the same chair at dinnertime,
and both of us can behave with some confidence
that this will indeed be the case. An
unstable world where you leave a pound of lead
on a chair, and I find a hedgehog in a goldfish
bowl, and this happens in a completely unpredictable
way would not, in my opinion, be a
world of shared experience - each person would
have their own individual and private experience
of the world, and we would have a world
more resembling Yetzirah than Assiah.
The stability and predictability of Assiah
forms the rock on which we have build our
material culture of “things” - millions of different
types of thing - screws, nails, tools, books,
hairbrushes, trouser presses, shoes, pens, paper
... list goes on almost indefinitely. It is interesting
to ask whether any life could be sustained in
a world with less stability given that we know
living organisms have a distressing tendency to
die when their environment changes. It is also
interesting to speculate whether life could exist
in a more predictable world, and we must consider
the possibility that our world is unpredictable
in ways we do not appreciate because we
have no other experience to compare with.
Perhaps there are more predictable worlds
which are too predictable and mechanical for
life - I am reminded of the Zoharic myth of the
kings of Edom, the kingdoms of “unbalanced
force” which contained a preponderance of Din,
judgement and were destroyed. If this is so,
then it is probable the properties of the Assiah
we know and love are necessary in a deep and
fundamental way. I have a somewhat mystical
perspective that the godhead, the root of existence,
had an urge to become conscious of itself,
and the cosmogenic descriptions in Kabbalah, of
which the “four worlds” model forms a part, are
an attempt the show the necessary steps for this
to take place, with Assiah being a final and necessary
step.
The problems of living in a finite world suffering
the attendent ills of the flesh has lead to
some prejudice against Assiah, but there is
nothing “wrong” with Assiah. What we perceive
to be its imperfections are necessary components
of its perfection.
Everything is right with Assiah; if there is a
flaw in the creation, it is that when “God wished
to behold God” and ate the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge it did not become conscious of its
own nature. It was seduced by the beauty of
Assiah, overwhelmed by the miracle of its own
making, and the Yetziratic consciousness, which
should have united the worlds of Assiah and
Briah, turned away from Briah and faced Assiah
exclusively, creating the Abyss.
The Four Worlds & the Tree
The four worlds can be related to the sephirothic
Tree, and there are many ways of doing
this. There is general agreement that Atzilut corresponds
to Keter, Briah to Chokhmah and
Binah, Yetzirah to the next six sephiroth, and
Assiah to Malkhut. This is too simple however.
The four worlds represent four distinct
“realms” of consciousness, and there is more in
this idea than a simple attribution to sephiroth.
Out of the many ways of presenting the four
worlds I will present two schemes which I consider
to offer more in the way of real, useful
substance than other schemes I am familiar
The Four Worlds
111
with. There is no question of “rightness” or
“wrongness” - any map, unless it is grossly or
maliciously misleading, is bound to contain
some useful information. It is a question of how
useful the map is, and in my opinion the following
attributions of the four worlds to the Tree
are outstandingly useful and enrich the basic
sephirothic Tree considerably. The first attribution
relates the four worlds to a single Tree; the
second makes use of four separate Trees and is
called “The Extended Tree”.
The first attribution begins with a small
amount of simple geometry, and if you have not
done this before then it is well worth doing.
Draw a vertical line on piece of paper. At the
top of the line place the needle of a pair of compasses
and draw a circle with a diameter
approximately half that of the length of the line.
Without altering the compasses, draw a second
circle where the first intersects the line. Repeat
this for the second circle, and then for the third.
You now have a line and four intersecting circles.
Label the centre of the first circle “Keter”,
the second “Daat”, the third “Tipheret”, and the
fourth “Yesod”. It should be obvious where to
place Malkhut, and the rest of the sephiroth can
be placed at the intersection points of the four
circles.
The four circles represent the four worlds. The
first circle, Atzilut, is centred on Keter, reaches
up into the Unmanifest, takes in Chokhmah and
Binah, and reaches down to Daat. It is entirely
on the other side of the Abyss. The second circle,
Briah, is centred in Daat, reaches up as far as
Keter and down as far as Tipheret, and takes in
Chokhmah, Binah, Chesed and Gevurah. The
third circle, Yetzirah, is centred in Tipheret and
reaches from Daat to Yesod, and includes Chesed,
Gevurah, Netzach and Hod, the six sephiroth
traditionally associated with Zoar Anpin,
the Lesser Countenance or Microprosopus. The
final circle is centred in Yesod and reaches from
Tipheret to Malkhut, taking in the sephiroth
Netzach and Hod. This is shown in Fig X.
Note that most sephira can be found in more
than one world, and this is an important point:
the worlds overlap. There is a subtle but real distinction
between Hod in Assiah and Hod in
Yetzirah. The sephira Tipheret can be experienced
in three distinct ways, depending on
whether one’s vantage point is that of Assiah,
Yetzirah or Briah. These are not intellectual distinctions,
and an example would be the ways in
which one can experience Tipheret as the King
of Assiah, as the Sacrificed God of Yetzirah, or
as the Child of Briah (refer to the magical
images for Tipheret).
The worlds overlap, but they are distinct,
almost like social strata which co-mingle but are
nevertheless clearly defined. The upper middleclass
nineteenth century household, with its
“upstairs” and “downstairs”, is a good example
of two completely distinct but co-mingling
strata.
There are ways of trying to articulate this, but
they obscure as much as they reveal; I was
taught that in going from one world to the next
there is a “polarity switch”, so that one might
regard Assiah as negative, Yetzirah as positive,
Briah as negative once more, and Atzilut as positive.
This idea can be related to the Tetragrammaton,
where the Yod can correspond to
Atzilut, He to Briah, Vau to Yetzirah, and He
final to Assiah: this points a finger at the deep
relationship between Briah and Assiah1. Just
what a “polarity switch” might be I leave to the
reader to explore - there is no way I could
attempt to describe this.
The second scheme for representing the four
worlds is based on the tradition that each of the
four worlds contains its own Tree, and these are
sometimes shown strung out with the Keter of
the world below intersecting the Malkhut of the
world above. This is not a very illuminating
igure 15:The Tree and the Four World
Atzilut
Briah
Yetzirah
Assiah
1. Yod normally corresponds to Chokhmah, He to Binah, Vau to
Tipheret and He to Malkhut - this gives another way to attribute
the four worlds to the Tree..
Notes on Kabbalah
112
arrangement, and there is an alternative
arrangement called “the Extended Tree” which
requires some draughtmanship to appreciate.
Use the “four circles” method for drawing a
Tree described earlier, and draw four identical
Trees on clear acetate film; an even better
method is to draw the Tree once and photocopy
it four times onto acetate - any copy bureau
should be able to do this. Now observe that the
Tree contains two diamond shapes which I will
call (incorrectly, as it happens, but it is a useful
convention) “the upper face” and “the lower
face”. The upper face is bounded by the sephiroth
Keter, Chokhmah, Binah and Tipheret; the
lower by the sephiroth Tipheret, Netzach, Hod
and Malkhut. Now take your four identical
transparencies, label them from Atzilut to
Assiah, and lay the lower face of Atzilut over
the upper face of Briah, the lower face of Briah
over the upper face of Yetzirah, and the lower
face of Yetzirah over the upper face of Assiah.
You should now have a single, large Tree, sometimes
called “Jacob’s Ladder” for reasons which
should be obvious when you look at it
The Extended Tree makes clear the dynamics
of the four worlds, and is probably the most
useful Kabbalistic map you are likely to find. It
provides a map of the four worlds, and a
method for representing the sephirothic correspondences
for each world, and it shows how
the worlds overlap and interpenetrate. The representation
of the four worlds on a single Tree
(given previously) is consistent with the
Extended Tree, but the Extended Tree is considerably
more useful in that it provides the Kabbalist
with a powerful new map - it is like going
from a large-scale map of a whole country to a
series of detailed, overlapping small-scale maps.
The worlds of overlap are Yetzirah and Briah,
and in these worlds the sephira Hod overlaps
the sephira Binah, the sephira Netzach overlaps
the sephira Chokhmah, and the sephira Yesod
overlaps Daat. When one makes the polarity
switch from one world to the next, then one
sephira becomes another; for example, Binah in
Assiah, the “Intelligence” of the body, becomes
the Hod of Yetzirah, the capacity for abstraction.
The mystery of Daat can be fathomed by
flipping to the world above, where it becomes
its Yesod. The king who wears the crown
(Keter) of Assiah becomes the Sacrificed God of
Yetzirah in Tipheret, and is reborn in the Malkhut
of Briah as the Child. It is essential to draw
the diagram for yourself, study the overlaps,
and think about the significance. There is too
much material for a series of introductory notes
such as these.
The four worlds should not be viewed as an
arbitrary four-fold “graduation” of the Tree,
with little additional content. There is a great
deal of experiential worth in this scheme, and it
reflects real and important changes in consciousness
which can be observed in practice.
This is one of several holistic views of the Tree
that concentrates less on the sephiroth and
paths, and more on its deep structure.
I must emphasise that the Extended Tree is
not another piece of pretty Kabbalah for the
armchair Kabbalist to indulge in, and I say this
because there is tendency for many who study
Kabbalah to become lost in the pretty patterns.
The Vision of Splendour is the curse of those
who like pretty patterns. To use the Extended
Tree effectively it is necessary to have integrated
the model of the sephiroth into one’s
internal awareness, and be capable of observing
(relatively) subtle changes in consciousness - it
is pointless having an exceedingly detailed map
of a region if one is too short-sighted to observe
Figure 16:The Extended Tree
The Four Worlds
113
the countryside as it passes! For this reason I
will say no more about the extended Tree.
The Souls
I have stated that the four worlds represented
“realms of consciousness”, and in support of
this view Kabbalah contains a view of the soul
which integrates with the four worlds. My interpretation
of the word soul is firstly, that it is a
vehicle for a particular kind of consciousness,
and secondly, it carries with it the connotation
of individuality or uniqueness, so that I can
imagine my souls as encapsulating, in different
realms, what is unique to me.
In Kabbalah there are five parts to the soul -
the sephira Binah is the Mother of souls, the letter
associated with Binah is He, and the number
associated with He is five. The five souls are:
• Yechidah - uniqueness
• Chiah - vitality
• Neshamah - breath, soul proper
• Ruach - wind-spirit, intellectual spirit
• Nephesh - soul, vital spirit, soul
The attribution to the four worlds is:
Briah - Neshamah
Ruach - Yetzirah
Nephesh - Assiah
The precise difference between Yechidah,
Chiah and Neshamah is unclear; Kaplan [] gives
the following attribution:
Yechidah - Keter
Chiah - Chokhmah
Binah - Neshamah
For practical purposes only the Nephesh,
Ruach and Neshamah need be considered, and
the bulk of the discussion will refer to this trio.
The Nephesh is the animal soul, the “soul of
the body”. Animals possess this soul, and as
human beings are animals, we share this inheritance.
The Nephesh is concerned with the
needs of the body - hunger, pleasure, rest, sexual
satisfaction, social status and so on. In many
cultures, if a person is asked where their soul
resides, they will not point to their head: they
will point to their heart. The Secret of the Golden
Flower [22] provides a description of the animal
soul:
“This heart is dependent on the outside
world. If a man does not eat for one day
even, it feels extremely uncomfortable. If
it hears something terrifying, it throbs; if
it hears something enraging it stops; if it is
faced with death it becomes sad; if it sees
something beautiful it is dazzled.”
Note the close identification with the body
and its feelings. Kabbalists believe the Nephesh
comes into being when we are born, and it
decays with the body when we die. According
to widespread belief, women are more attuned
to the body soul than men, and the Nephesh is
sometimes depicted as being feminine; whether
this is simply sexual stereotyping must remain
an open question. The Nephesh is associated
with Assiah, the world of making, and this
emphasises its close link with the material
world, and the body itself.
The Ruach is the rational soul, and is associated
with air or wind (the word literally means
air), and with the world of Yetzirah. Traditionally,
the Ruach was not seen as something that
one was given automatically; in the words of
Scholem, it was a “post-natal increment”. It is
the case that some people live almost exclusively
according to physical needs, and others
spend a great deal of time finding a rational
basis for their behaviour, but I do not think
there is any evidence for a discontinuity, and I
think we must assume that the Ruach is everywhere
present in some measure. What can be
said is that a level of consciousness represented
by Ruach exists in varying degrees from person
to person - it is not present by default in equal
measure.
The Ruach is based on the ability to create
abstract models of the world in consciousness
and reflect on them, so that while a hungry
Nephesh might grab a whole pizza and consume
it without a moments thought, the Ruach
might reflect on the activity of pizza-eating in
the context of “Do unto others...” and conclude
that sharing it might be a Good Thing. We see
here the basis for morality, the ability to make a
conscious choice between good and evil, and it
is here that the Ruach is elevated above the
Nephesh in the eyes of traditional Kabbalah.
This ignores the possibility that the Ruach
might well knock the Nephesh over the head
(making an impeccable ethical case, well
argued, that the Nephesh has forfeited the pizza
because no-one had said Grace, and besides, noThe
Four Worlds
114
one so greedy deserves a whole pizza) and not
only grab the whole of the pizza, but attempt to
corner the market in Mozarella.
If we ignore the questionable value of being
able to reflect on the morality of our decisions,
we are still left with the ability to reflect; we
have the ability to reflect on ourselves, perhaps
even to reflect ourselves, and create a “selfimage”.
The Nephesh lacks this ability to reflect
upon itself - I have never seen an adult cat study
itself in a mirror. Some of the great apes do have
this ability - they appear to be “self-aware”.
Because the Ruach can reflect upon itself, and
create a self image, it can become an entity in its
own right, perhaps even dissociating itself from
the body and its needs, producing someone
who feels guilt at indulging in the “sins of the
flesh”. We find the “spiritual” person who cannot
accept their physicality and who rejects the
body and its “evil lusts” in favour of a purer,
“more spiritual” existence.
We have millions of people reflecting upon
themselves and concluding that they are
“wrong” in some way - the wrong shape, the
wrong size, the wrong colour, the wrong age. It
is unlikely that someone who thinks they are the
wrong size is going to ever feel good about
themselves so long as they view the body as a
means to an end, a vehicle, a carriage which
conveys them through life, a fashion accessory.
In our culture there are strong taboos connected
with anything which points too directly
towards our physical and animal nature, which
can be seen in attitudes to clothing, to death, to
sex, to self-mutilation.
My own view of the Ruach is profoundly negative.
Our culture develops this single aspect of
consciousness to such an absurd degree that the
Ruach is incapable of forming a sensible notion
concerning either the Nephesh or Neshamah,
and turning its face away from both the lower
and higher worlds, becomes obsessed with its
own creations. The Ruach has a tendency to
reduce the body to an object and often lives a
life completely at odds with the needs of the
Nephesh. Where there is a spiritual aspiration,
the Ruach produces a monstrous and bloated
reflection, “itself-made-perfect”, and aspires
towards this illusory caricature of itself. The
Ruach is a patchwork monster, a grotesque
reflection of its creator, and it lurches about the
world trying to make sense of what is happening,
sometimes playing like a child, sometimes
leaving a trail of destruction. It is the king that
needs to be slain, the god that must be sacrificed.
The Neshamah is the Breath of God. In the
Bible it states “And the Lord God formed man
of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living
soul”. The “breath of life” is the Neshamah,
and unlike the Nephesh and the Ruach it is a
gift from God, and the source of our ability to
intuit the realm of the divine. It is difficult to
write about the Neshamah. The Ruach tends to
idealise the Neshamah, and in the absence of a
genuine contact projects a distorted reflection of
itself. An attempt to describe the Neshamah
encourages the creation of such reflections, so I
will desist.
A characteristic of the World of Briah, to
which the Neshamah is attributed, is that it is
beyond space and time, and from the point of
view of those living in space and time the
Neshamah has an eternal quality of being...just
being. It is the hub around which the wheel of
personality turns. As we live our lives, we
change, but something at the centre of our being
does not change. The magician Aleister Crowley
wrote about “True Will”, and while this concept
is no easier to grasp than the Neshamah, both
refer to a part of us that exists outside of the ebb
and flow of life in the mundane world. Writing
about the three souls, Crowley comments [7]:
“The Neschamah is that aspiration which
in most men is no more than a void and a
voiceless longing. It becomes articulate
only when it compels the Ruach to interpret
it. The Nephesch, or animal soul, is
not the body itself; the body is excremental,
of the Klippot or shells. The Nephesch
is that coherent brute which animates it,
from the reflexes to the highest forms of
conscious activity. These again are only
cognizable when they translate themselves
to the Ruach. The Ruach lastly is
the machine of the mind converging on a
central consciousness, which appears to
be the ego. The true ego, is however,
above Neschamah, whose occasional messages
to the Ruach warn the human ego of
the existence of his superior. Such communications
may be welcomed or
resented, encouraged or stifled.”
The relationship between the Neshamah and
the Holy Guardian Angel is unclear. What can
be said is that in many cases, people approach
The Four Worlds
115
Neshamah through the medium of an entity
which acts as an intermediary between the
Ruach and the Neshamah. There is no doubt
that in many cases the HGA is the Ruach’s own
idealised projection, but that does not invalidate
the notion that it is capable of linking the two
levels of consciousness. The HGA is associated
with the sephira Tipheret, the point on the Pillar
of Consciousness where Briah overlaps with
Yetzirah. The method of invoking the HGA as a
way of contacting the Neshamah is legitimate.
A discussion of souls carries with it, far more
so than any of the Kabbalistic framework discussed
so far, the temptation to indulge in metaphysical
speculation. Traditional Kabbalah is
filled with this, and there is much speculation
on the origin of souls, the nature of souls, the
fate of the soul, reincarnation, and so on. This
traditional material is adequately presented
elsewhere. I feel public speculation on such topics
is counterproductive as it simply provides
more material for the never-ceasing elaborations
of the Ruach.
In Kabbalah there is a view that if there is a
defect in the creation, it is a result of separating
that which should have been united. I have
made my views on the Ruach clear: here is a
level of consciousness which has turned
inwards and no longer carries out its task of
mediating between higher and lower. A trace of
this attitude can be found in the quotation from
Crowley above, where one can detect a negative
attitude towards both the body and the
Nephesh. In the main, Kabbalah has a very positive
attitude towards living in the world, for
the world, far from being the “dead matter” of
the Neoplatonists, is infused with the Shekhinah,
the indwelling presence of God.
In some traditions one sees people turning
away from the world and mundane life and
seeking a “world of the spirit”. In Kabbalah the
world and God are two poles of the same thing,
and the purpose of the Kabbalist is to bring God
into the world, and take the world back to God.
I say this to emphasise an important point: the
Neshamah is not higher than the Nephesh, the
body is not something divorced from spirit.
These are ideas which create the separation the
Kabbalist tries to overcome. The world, the
souls, and god are links in a circular chain, the
Ourouboros, and there is no higher or lower,
there is no spiritual or mundane - they are all
parts of the same thing.
The Four Worlds
116
The Great Work
117
“For God doth know that in the day ye eat
thereof, then your eyes shall be opened,
and ye shall be as gods, knowing good
and evil.”
The term “The Great Work” is not a term to be
found in the literature of traditional Kabbalah,
but it is a term which has come to be associated
with traditional Kabbalistic ideas. Two key
ideas underpinning the Great Work are:
• the universe we live in is not as it should be.
In some way it is “damaged”, and only a
conscious and deliberate effort on the part
of the created will restore it to its intended
state. Also, as a consequence...
• we live in ignorance of our true estate. We
know not what we are. In the words of the
poet W.B. Yeats, “Consume my heart away;
sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal,
It knows not what it is...”
The Great Work is the attempt to undo the
damage, and it consists of two parts. The first
part is the preservation of knowledge and techniques
which enable individual human beings
to awaken and recover the knowledge of their
true nature. The second part is the deliberate
efforts undertaken by these awakened individuals
to restore the world to what it should have
been.
There is nothing explicitly Kabbalistic about
this idea of the Great Work - similar ideas have
occurred at many times and places - but the idea
that the creation is not what it should have been
is one of the key elements of Kabbalistic speculation,
and the belief that it is possible for individual
human beings to help to repair the
damage and restore the creation was and is one
of the key motives underlying Kabbalistic practice.
The extent of Kabbalistic speculation has been
so extensive that it is difficult to extract simple
explanations for why human beings do not
understand their true nature, or why the creation
is flawed. It is unreasonable to expect simple
explanations for something which lies
outside the domain of intellectual speculation,
and perhaps it is unreasonable to expect an
explanation of any kind, agreeing with Wittgenstein
that “the sense of the world must lie outside
the world”; those who go beyond the world
cannot be expected to bring back answers which
mean anything to those who are in it. Given this
caveat, the following discussion on the Great
Work is based on several traditional ideas, but
the synthesis is mine. Those who wish to delve
into centuries of speculation within a strictly
Judaic tradition are referred to Scholem [39].
A great deal of Kabbalistic speculation begins
with the Biblical story of Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden. This story is not to be taken literally;
it is usually taken as an allegory to be
interpreted within the context of general Kabbalistic
ideas concerning the Creation. The Garden
represents the Creation as it should be, the Creation
as it was before the Fall.
Before the Fall, Adam and Eve were conscious,
but not self-conscious - they did not
know that they were naked. The sin of Adam
and Eve was to eat from the Tree of Knowledge
of Good and Evil, and in doing so they became
self-conscious; they understood what they had
done, became afraid, and hid themselves from
God. As a consequence God made coats of skin
to clothe them and they were ejected from the
Garden to become human beings - animals who
join sexually to produce offspring, animals who
die. The return to Eden and the Tree of Life was
barred.
The Biblical story mentions two trees in the
garden: the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge
of Good and Evil. For some Kabbalists the
Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge were
one tree until Adam and Eve picked the fruit,
causing the two to separate, so that the Tree of
Life became the right pillar of the sephirothic
Tree, and the Tree of Knowledge became the
9
The Great Work
Notes on Kabbalah
118
left, and the Tree of Life as we now see it is not
the original Tree as it was before the fruit was
picked. The sin of Adam was the sin of separation,
the sin of creating a division between
knowledge and life.
The Biblical story can also be interpreted as a
story of the growth of self consciousness. There
was a time when humans lived unselfconsciously
among the animals, a time when
humans were animals, and that state was shattered
by the growth of self-consciousness. The
self-conscious creature, terrified by the naked
consciousness of the One, and in danger of slipping
back into the One, hid itself away from
God and the Cherubim who wielded fiery
swords were servants of its own making. The
self-conscious creature, in an attempt to
strengthen its fragile identity, anchored itself to
the left side of the Tree, the Tree of Knowledge,
and set about building the structures and
abstractions which have resulted in our complex
and confused society.
There is a relative unanimity among Kabbalists
that the left side of the Tree is the source of
evil. To be fair, it is also the source of good, as it
is impossible to have one without the other, but
the problem of evil was the major preoccupation.
Let us suppose a rich man walks past a
beggar in the street. The rich man thinks:
“If I give to this person, then logically I
ought to give to all equally poor people,
for all are equally miserable and equally
deserving. I do not have enough money to
feed every poor person, and my poverty
will not solve the problem of poverty, so
really there is no point in giving.”
This kind of rational thinking belongs on the
left side of the Tree. Suppose the wealthy man
decides to give something. How much should
he give? Everything he has? This unlikely. He
will give a little and hold back the rest. This
“holding back” is the quality of Din, Judgement,
and Kabbalists have seen God as the wealthy
man who gives a little and holds-back much. In
the Bahir the left side of the Tree was associated
with gold, and the right side with silver, to
make the point that God gave silver, but held
back something more valuable. The Creation
could not stand the full force of God’s light, and
so it was held back, and as a consequence each
one of us has inherited the ability to hold back.
Let us continue with the story of the rich man
and the beggar. Why does the beggar have so
little? The beggar has so little because there are
laws of property. Laws belong on the left side
(Hod). The beggar cannot take what is not his
because there are authorities to uphold the law,
and they also belong on the left side (Gevurah).
There are well-defined procedures for transferring
property; work is one of these. These welldefined
procedures also belong on the left side
(Gevurah, Hod). If the beggar does not “fit-in”,
then he must take what comes by chance, or live
outside the law.
In every case we see what we would regard as
an inequitable situation as being created and
sustained by qualities associated with the left
side of the Tree. Fortunately there are also laws
(left side) which provide some minimal provisions
for the poor, which is evidence that good
is not completely divorced from evil. How did
these laws come about? I believe that in most
people the left and right pillars are not completely
divorced; they meet on the middle pillar
to produce Rachamim, compassion.
In the previous example the evil of poverty
was a side-effect of a structure of laws largely
designed to protect property. When one puts a
fly in a jar and seals the lid, then sooner or later
the fly will suffocate. The effect of confining the
fly is that the fly dies. There is no evil in the jar,
and if evil is to be found anywhere it is in the
hand that screws the lid tight, or in the mind
that conceives of ways of killing. In the same
way, the left side of the Tree provides the structure
for evil, it is not in itself evil. Structure provides
the means for people such as you and me
to create evil, but there is no suggestion that
some kind of metaphysical evil is involved.
Some Kabbalists have gone further and suggested
just that. The suggestion that powers of
evil exist is usually based on the belief that the
Creation involved, or even required, an excess
of the quality of Din or Judgment. In the Zohar
the first attempts at creation were unbalanced,
and the power of Din overflowed and shattered
the worlds. The fragments fell into the Abyss to
become the realm of the Klippot, powers which
are the result of unbalanced Din, and hence evil
in the sense that unbalanced Judgement and
Severity are evil. Isaac Luria further dramatised
these events with extraordinary elaborations:
the first three sephiroth were able to contain the
light of God, but the remaining seven were shattered
in an event known as “the breaking of the
The Great Work
119
vessels”, and in the catastrophe some of the
light was carried into the Abyss and became
trapped in the realm of the Klippot. The four
worlds were dislocated, and Assiah slipped into
the realm of the Klippot. In Luria’s view we are
immersed in a world where evil has a primordial
origin.
Other Kabbalists have stressed that, regardless
of the catastrophic origin of evil, its continued
existence is based on an unbalanced flow of
energy down the left side of the Tree, and it is
this steady drip of unbalanced force which
nourishes the Sitra Achara, or Other Side. It is
human evil which creates this unbalance. In a
definition reminiscent of the classic definition of
dirt, Gikatilla defined evil as an entity which
was not in its rightful place - sand is fine on a
beach, but not in engine oil - and there are powers
which have a rightful place in the world but
which are evil in the wrong context. Kabbalistic
views of evil cover the entire spectrum, from the
surprisingly sophisticated view of evil as a
structural and necessary part of creation, to a
low superstitious belief in a hierarchy of evil
demons.
The exact nature of the Great Work is no simpler
to explain than the problem of evil itself,
and if one takes it to be the attempt to restore a
defect in the creation, then its nature will
depend on what one believes that defect to be.
There is no simple view of the Great Work, but
there are a number of clear threads to follow.
The first thread is to re-unite what has become
separate, and the place to begin is in one’s own
nature. When one re-unites the elements of
one’s being, then one becomes capable of transmitting,
of acting as an agent between the
higher and the lower. This is an important Kabbalistic
idea. The purpose of Kabbalah is not a
personal quest for self-realisation; it is a conscious
decision to play a part in uniting the
higher and the lower, not only in oneself, but
more importantly still, in the world. If it is part
of the essential nature of God to give, then
someone who only receives and does not give
cannot be like God or understand the nature of
God. To know God one must not only receive,
but give out in direct measure. Likewise, if
“God wished to know God” as some authors
have maintained, then one must fulfil the purpose
of creation by making this possible.
There is a tradition that Keter and Malkhut
play a complementary role in sustaining the
Tree of Life. So long as Malkhut only takes from
Keter, and does not give back, it is not like God.
Once Malkhut begins to give back to Keter, a
continuous loop of impulse and reflection is created,
Malkhut will become like God, and “God
will know God”. It is our role, as creatures of
matter, to create this bridge and make the creation
self-conscious. In Jewish Kabbalah this
process is called “tikkun” or reintegration, and
is best known from complex speculations of
Isaac Luria.
Scholem states [39]:
“The object of this human activity, which
is designed to complete the world of
tikkun, is the restoration of the world of
Asiyyah to its spiritual place, its complete
separation from the world of the kelippot,
and the achievement of a permanent,
blissful state of communion between
every creature and God which the kelippot
will be unable to disrupt or prevent.”
This all sounds very grand. It is an enterprise
which appeals to those with an idealistic and
crusading temperament. Unfortunately, one
cannot repair the design faults in machine by
giving it a fresh coat of paint. The Tree of
Knowledge is not going to be reunited with the
Tree of Life unless it is re-united in ourselves,
and when one looks at conditions in the world
today one sees an ever-accelerating dive into the
knowledge of Assiah and a disregard for the
condition of the human soul.
This section on the Great Work may seem
more than a little metaphysical, lacking in concrete
ideas, and this is intentional. If conventional
religion has a fault, it is that it tends to
produce relatively homogeneous and often
politically active groups of people who are convinced
they know what is good and what is evil,
what is right and what is wrong. Great tyrannies
can and do arise from this. People want to
know what life is about, and latch onto anything
which gives their life a greater meaning, and it
is dangerous to be prescriptive about the Great
Work because this feeds the messianic urge in
most of us to make the world “a better place”.
For one person to supply to another person a
reason for living is the antithesis of the Great
Work, which is to understand it for oneself. If
each of us is a little piece of God, and “God
wishes to know God”, then the whole is to be
found in the sum of the parts, and each part has
Notes on Kabbalah
120
its own role to play. No-one has the authority to
define the Great Work for another.
The Klippot
121
The word “qlippah” or “klippah” (plural
“Klippot”) means “shell” or “husk”.
The idea of a covering or a garment or a vessel
is common in Kabbalah, where it used, at various
times and with various degrees of subtlety,
to express the manner in which the light of the
En Soph is “encapsulated”. For example, the
sephiroth, in their capacity of recipients of light,
are sometimes referred to as kelim, “vessels”.
The duality between the container and the contained
is one of the most important in Kabbalistic
explanations of the creative moment.
The word “klippah” is an extension of this
metaphor. A klippah is also a covering or a container,
and as each sephira acts as a shell or covering
to the sephira preceding it in the order of
emanation, in a technical sense we can say the
Klippot are innate to the Tree of Life. Cut a slice
through a tree and one can see the growth rings,
with the bark on the outside. The Tree of Life
has 10 concentric rings, and sometimes the klippah
is equated to the bark. The word is commonly
used to refer to a covering which
contains no light: that is, an empty shell, a dead
husk.
It is also the case that the Klippot appear in
Kabbalah as demonic powers of evil, and in trying
to disentangle the various uses of the word
it becomes clear that there is an almost continuous
spectrum of opinion, varying from the technical
use where the word hardly differs from
the word “form”, to the most anthropomorphic
sense, where the Klippot are evil demonesses in
a demonic hierarchy responsible for all the evil
in the world.
One reason why the word “klippah” has no
simple meaning is that it is part of the Kabbalistic
explanation of evil, and it is difficult to
explain evil in a monotheistic, non-dualistic religion
without incurring a certain complexity....
If God is good, why is there evil?
No short essay can do justice to the complexity
of this topic. I will indicate some of the principle
themes.
The Zohar attributes the primary cause of evil
to the act of separation. The act of separation is
referred to as the “cutting of the shoots”. What
was united becomes divided, and the boundary
between one thing and another can be regarded
as a shell. The primary separation was the division
between the Tree of Life (Pillar of Mercy)
from the Tree of Knowledge (Pillar of Severity).
In normal perception the world is clearly
characterised by divisions between one thing
and another, and in this technical sense one
could say that we are immersed in a world of
shells. The shells, taken by themselves as an
abstraction divorced from the original, undivided
light (making another separation!) are the
dead residue of manifestation, and can be identified
with dead skin, hair, bark, sea shells, or
shit. They have been referred to as the dregs
remaining in a glass of wine, or as the residue
left after refining gold. According to Scholem
[39], the Zohar interprets evil as “the residue or
refuse of the hidden life’s organic process”; evil
is something which is dead, but comes to life
because a spark of God falls on it; by itself it is
simply the dead residue of life.
The skeleton is the archetypal shell. By itself it
is a dead thing, but infuse it with a spark of life
and it becomes a numinous and instantly recognisable
manifestation of metaphysical evil. The
shell is one of the most common horror themes;
take a mask, or a doll, or any dead representation
of a living thing, shine a light out of its eyes,
and becomes a thing of evil intent. The powers
of evil appear in the shape of the animate dead -
skulls, bones, zombies, vampires, phantasms.
The following list of correspondences follows
the interpretation that the Klippot are empty
shells, form without force, the covering of a
sephira:
Keter Futility
Chokhmah Arbitrariness
10
The Klippot
Notes on Kabbalah
122
Binah Fatalism
Chesed Ideology
Gevurah Bureaucracy
Tipheret Hollowness
Netzach Routine, repetition, habit
Hod Rigid order
Yesod Zombieism, robotism
Malkhut Stasis
A second, common interpretation of the Klippot
is that they represent the negative or averse
aspect of a sephira, as if each sephira had a Mr.
Hyde to complement Dr. Jekyll.
There are many variations of this idea. One of
the most common is the idea that evil is caused
by an excess of the powers of Din (judgement)
in the creation. The origin of this imbalance may
be innate, a residue of the moment of creation,
when each sephira went through a period of
imbalance and instability (the kingdoms of
unbalanced force), but another version
attributes this imbalance to humankind’s propensity
for the Tree of Knowledge in preference
to the Tree of Life (a telling and precognitively
inspired metaphor if ever there was one...).
The imbalance of the powers of Din “leaks”
out of the Tree and provides the basis for the
sitra achra, the “other side”, or the “left side”
(referring to pillar of severity), a quasi or even
fully independent kingdom of evil. This may be
represented by a full Tree in its own right,
sometimes by a great dragon, sometimes by
seven hells. The most lurid versions combine
Kabbalah with medieval demonology to produce
detailed lists of demons, with Samael and
Lilith riding at their head as king and queen.
A version of this survives in the Golden Dawn
tradition on the Klippot. The Klippot are given
as 10 evil powers corresponding to the 10 sephiroth.
I referred to G.D knowledge lectures and
also to Crowley’s “777” [8] and found several
inconsistencies in transliteration and translation.
Where possible I have reconstructed the
original Hebrew, and I have given a corrected
list.
Keter Thaumiel: Twins of God (TAVM,
tom - a twin)
Chokhmah Ogiel: Hinderers (? OVG - to draw
a circle)
Binah Satariel: Concealers (STR, satar- to
hide, conceal)
Chesed Gash’khalah: Breakers in Pieces
(GASh Ga’ash - shake, quake KLH, khalah -
complete destruction, annihilation)
Gevurah Golachab: Flaming Ones (unclear)
Tipheret Tagiriron: Litigation (probably
from GVR, goor - quarrel)
Netzach Orev Zarak: Raven of Dispersion
(ARV, orev - raven ZRQ, zaraq - scatter)
Hod Samael: False Accuser (SMM,
samam - poison)
Yesod Gamaliel: Obscene Ass (GML,
gamal - camel? alt. ripen?)
Malkhut Lilith: Woman of the Night (Leilah
- Night)
Most of these attributions are obvious, others
are not. The Twins of God replace a unity with a
warring duality. The Hinderers block the free
expression of the God’s will. The Concealers
prevent the mother from giving birth to the
child - the child is stillborn in the womb. The
Breakers in Pieces are the powers of authority
gone berserk - Zeus letting fly with thunderbolts
in all directions. The Flaming Ones refer to
the fiery and destructive aspect of Gevurah.
Lilith is the dark side of the Malkah or queen of
Malkhut.
Why Samael is placed in Hod is unclear,
unless he has been christianised and turned into
the father of lies. In Kabbalah he is almost
always attributed to Gevurah, sometimes as its
archangel. Yesod is associated with the genitals
and the sexual act, but why Gamaliel is unclear
to me. I could easily concoct fanciful and perhaps
even believable explanations for the attributions
to Tipheret and Netzach, but I prefer
not to.
In “777” Crowley also gives Klippot for many
of the 22 paths. If the transliterations and translations
are as accurate as those for the sephiroth,
I would be tempted to reach for my lexicon.
The G.D. teachings on the Klippot are minimal
in the material in my possession, but a great
deal can be deduced from those fascinating
repositories of Kabbalistic myth, the twin pictures
of the Garden of Eden before and after the
Fall. There are so many mythic themes in these
pictures that it is difficult to disentangle them,
but they seem strongly influenced by the ideas
of Isaac Luria, and it is now time to describe the
third major interpretation of the Klippot.
Luria’s ideas have probably received more
elaboration than any others in Kabbalah. The
man left little in a written form, and his disciThe
Klippot
123
ples did not concur in the presentation of what
was clearly a very complex theosophical system
- this is a subject where no amount of care will
ensure consistency with anyone else.
Luria made the first step in the creation a
process called “tzim tzum” or contraction. This
contraction took place in the En Soph, the limitless,
unknown, and unknowable God of Kabbalah.
God “contracted” in a process of selflimitation
to make a “space” (in a metaphorical
sense, of course) for the creation. In the next
step the light entered this space in a jet to fill the
empty vessels of the sephiroth, but all but the
first three were shattered by the light. This
breaking of the vessels is called shevirah. The
shards of the broken vessels fell into the abyss
created by contraction, and formed the Klippot.
Most of the light returned to the En Soph, but
some of it remained in the vessels (like a smear
of oil in an empty bottle) and fell with the Klippot.
Scholem [39] describes the shevirah and the
expulsion of the Klippot as cathartic; not a blunder,
an architectural miscalculation like an inadequately
buttressed Gothic cathedral, but as a
catharsis. Perhaps the universe, like a new baby,
came attached to a placenta which had to be
expelled, severed, and thrown out into the
night.
One way of looking at the shevirah is this: the
self contraction of tzim tzum was an act of Din,
or Judgement, and so at the root of the creative
act was the quality which Kabbalists identify
with the source of evil, and it was present in
such quantity that a balanced creation became
possible only by excreting the imbalance. The
shevirah can be viewed as a corrective action in
which the unbalanced powers of Din, the broken
vessels, were ejected into the abyss.
Whether cathartic or a blunder, the shevirah
was catastrophic. Nothing was as it should have
been in an ideal world. The four worlds of Kabbalah
slipped, and the lowest world of Assiah
descended into the world of the shells. This can
be seen in the G.D. picture of the Eden after the
Fall. Much of Lurianic Kabbalah is concerned
with corrective actions designed to bring about
the repair or restoration (tikkun) of the creation,
so that the sparks of light trapped in the realm
of the shells can be freed.
The final word on the shells must go to T.S.
Eliot, who had clearly bumped into them in one
of his many successful raids on the inarticulate:
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;”
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost,
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
Notes on Kabbalah
124
Practical Kabbalah
125
“But just as I was going to put my feet
into the water I looked down and saw that
they were all hard and rough and wrinkled
and scaly just as they had been
before. Oh, that’s all right said I, it only
means I had another smaller suit on
underneath the first one, and I’ll have to
get out of it too. So I scratched and tore
again and this underskin peeled off beautifully
and out I stepped and left it lying
beside the other one and went down to
the well for my bathe. “
“Well, exactly the same thing happened
again. And I thought to myself, oh dear,
how ever many skins have I got to take
off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So
I scratched away for the third time and
got off a third skin, just like the two others,
and stepped out of it. But as soon as I
looked at myself in the water I knew it
had been no good. “Then the lion said -
but I don’t know if it spoke - “You will
have to let me undress you.” I was afraid
of his claws, I can tell you, but I was
pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay
flat down on my back and let him do it.”
“The very first tear he made was so deep
that I thought it had gone right into my
heart. And when he began pulling the
skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve
ever felt. The only thing that made me
able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling
the stuff peel off.”
C.S. Lewis
From an historical and traditional perspective
the practical techniques of Kabbalah include
techniques of mysticism and (to a lesser extent)
magic to be found the world over, and include
complex concentration and visualisation exercises,
meditation, breath control, prayer, ritual,
physical posture, chanting and singing, abstinence,
fasting, mortification and good works.
Many different combinations of practice have
been used at different times and places over a
period of nearly two thousand years, and it is
clear from the variety of approaches that practice
grew as much out of the temperament of the
individual Kabbalist as it did from a long historical
tradition. From time to time an outstanding
teacher would appear, and a school would
form, but these schools tended to be short-lived,
and one is struck more by the diversity and
individuality of the different approaches, than
by (what is often presumed) a chain of masters
handing down the core of a secret tradition
through the centuries.
A problem with trying to find an authentic
tradition of Kabbalistic practice is not only is it
difficult to identify just what such a tradition
might be (given the diversity of approaches
over the centuries), but more importantly, the
keys to many of the practical techniques have
been lost. In her book on Kabbalah [10], Perle
Epstein makes a number of wry comments
about the state of Kabbalah in Judaism today,
and regrets the loss of a practical mystical tradition.
Outside of Judaism the situation is little better.
Kabbalah has become an element in the syllabus
of many traditions, but its practical
application is often limited to exercises such as
pathworking. It is instructive to examine the
Golden Dawn initiation rituals [35] as an example
of what happens when Kabbalah is boiled
up with a mixture of ingredients drawn from
Greek, Egyptian, Rosicrucian and Enochian
sources - there is a pervasive smell of Kabbalah
throughout, but it rarely amounts to a meal.
The following description of Kabbalistic practice
makes no attempt to be comprehensive; on
the contrary, I have chosen only those practices
with which I am personally familiar. This will
be unsatisfactory to those readers with an academic
or historical interest, but these notes were
intended to have a practical value, and I see no
value in trying to describe techniques I have not
used. For the reader who wishes to take a
broader view, Perle Epstein provides a useful
introduction to the breadth of Kabbalistic prac-
11
Practical Kabbalah
Notes on Kabbalah
126
tice, and the personalities that have shaped Kabbalistic
thought.
I am fully aware there will be those who
would not wish to associate the name “Kabbalah”
with the practices I am about to describe -
although I am not Jewish, I respect the beliefs of
those who are - but at the same time there is a
great deal of variety in nearly two thousand
years of Kabbalah, and one living tradition is
worth at least as much as several dead traditions.
There is no right or canonical tradition of
Kabbalistic practice, and never has been1.
The practice of Kabbalah as I will describe it is
underpinned by the theosophical structure I
have outlined previously in these notes. First
and foremost comes the belief that there is a
God. The ultimate nature of God is neither
known nor manifest to us, but just as light can
be passed through a prism to produce a rainbow
of colours, so God manifests in the creation
as ten divine lights or emanations, usually
referred to as sephiroth.
Each of one of us is a part of God, a microcosm,
a complete and functioning simulacrum
of the whole, and so God similarly manifests
within us as ten divine lights. Because we can
look in the mirror of our own being and see the
reflection of the macrocosm, it follows that selfknowledge
shades imperceptibly into knowledge
of God; and also, as the whole of creation
is an emanation of God, so self-knowledge
moves the centre of consciousness away from a
subjective awareness of reality towards an
objective and non-dualistic union with everything
that is.
The second key idea is that the emanations or
sephiroth are aspects of the creative power of
God. On a macrocosmic scale, the creation is
seen as the continuing outcome of a dynamic
process in which creative energy manifests progressively
through the sephiroth; at a microcosmic
and personal level the same process is at
work, and this is the Kabbalistic interpretation
of the notion that we are “made in God’s
image”. By understanding the elements which
comprise our own natures, by going far enough
inside ourselves to understand the energy and
dynamics operating within our own consciousness,
so we touch the same energies operating in
the universe. When we have touched these energies
we can call on them and influence the flow
of creative energy. A name for this process is
“magic”. I prefer “theurgy”, as there is no
power that comes from anywhere but God.
Traditionally these energies are called upon
by name, and are characterised in concrete ways
- because we are human beings there is a natural
tendency to anthropomorphise these energies
and call upon them in the form of ‘angels’ or
other supernatural beings. The list of correspondences
given in Chapter 4 of these notes
provides some ideas as to how these energies
are likely to be observed at a level where we are
most likely to observe them.
The Kabbalistic Tree of Life is an abstract representation
or map describing the creative
energy of God and the process of manifestation.
The Kabbalist learns to use this map to understand
the dynamics of creative energy; from this
point of view it is a key to applied magical
work.
And that is it, in essence. How literally you
take these assumptions is up to you. My attitude
resembles that of the engineer Oliver Heavyside,
who didn’t care whether his self- invented
mathematical methods made sense to mathematicians
(they didn’t), as long as his calculations
produced the right answers (they did). I will
talk about angels and archangels and names of
God, powers and sephiroth and invocations,
and leave it to you to make your own sense of it.
But to return to the discussion of practical
Kabbalah ... one can identify two major kinds of
practical work arising out of the assumptions
above.
From the idea that we are made in the image
of God we can conclude that by knowing ourselves
we can (in some degree) know God; this
leads to practical work designed to increase selfknowledge
to the greatest degree possible, a
process I will refer to as initiation. The emphasis
of initiation is primarily mystical.
From the idea that we can call upon aspects of
the creative energy of God to change reality we
arrive at practices intended to increase personal
power, practices which many people continue to
refer to as magic.
Kabbalah has divided along these two paths,
1. The popularisation of Kabbalah within
Judaism is often carried out today by ultraorthodox
Chassidim. I appreciate and
respect their perspective, but their presentation
and emphasis is not always historic
or representative. Many are not familiar
with the long history of Hermeticism.
Practical Kabbalah
127
and I believe it is accurate to say that traditional
Jewish Kabbalah is predominantly mystical,
with the emphasis on union with God, while
non-Jewish Kabbalah is predominantly magical.
It is easy to sit in judgement of these two
approaches, and many authors have done so. To
seek for union with God is to seek to do God’s
will. The world-wide mystical agenda is composed
largely of the subjugation of ego and the
replacement of personal wilfulness with divine
union. Magic is seen to be predominantly wilful,
and so shares the original Satanic impulse of
pride and rebellion against the divine will. It is
easy to conclude that mystical union (devekut, or
“cleaving to God”) is the true goal, and magic
an “egocentric” and wilful aberration of consciousness.
It is difficult to provide a rational counter to
this argument: to be rational is to fail to appreciate
the ineffability of mystical insight, and to
argue is to demonstrate Satanic wilfulness - one
is condemned out of one’s own mouth.
Nevertheless, there is a middle way between
the two extremes, and in what follows the mystical
process of initiation is combined with the
use of magical techniques in a blend which I
believe captures the best of both approaches.
The approach is primarily theurgic. Although
the trappings of ceremonial magic are used, the
ultimate power behind all invocation is God.
The manifestations of God’s creative power
may be imagined as sephiroth, angels, or spirits,
but this is a conscious decision not to fight the
all too human need for concrete symbols. There
is only God.
I have chosen to describe the process of initiation
first because I have a romantic notion that
an ethical sense grows out of self-knowledge. I
follow that with a discussion of some general
magical techniques.
Initiation
One of the meanings of the word “initiation”
is “the process of beginning something”. What
is one beginning? One is committing oneself to
find answers to certain questions. What questions?
The questions vary, but they are usually
fundamental questions about the nature of life
and personal existence: “why is the world the
way it is?”, “why am I alive, and what is the
purpose of being alive?”, “what lies behind the
phenomenal world?”, “why should I continue
living?”, “what is good and what is evil?”, “how
should I live?”, “is there a God?”, and “how can
I become rich, famous and sexually attractive
without expending any effort?”.
It happens (for no obvious reason) that there
are many people who cannot escape the nagging
conviction that some or all of these questions
can be answered, and the same people are
determined to wring the answers out of somebody
or something. The situation resembles a
cat in a new house. The poor creature will not
rest until it has explored every nook and cranny
from the attic to the crawlspace. So it is with certain
people; they look out on the world with
cat’s eyes, and metaphysical and philosophical
questions are like dark openings into the attics
and crawlspaces which lie behind the phenomenal
world of the senses.
It happens that every question, when followed
with enough determination, leads back to
the questioner. What is the precondition for
knowing anything? Our own souls are the attics
and crawlspaces of existence, and so in the end
we forced to look within, and know ourselves.
This is the first aspect of initiation, the belief
that we can find answers to difficult existential
questions by increasing our self-knowledge.
There is another aspect to initiation. The first
aspect is the desire to know oneself. The other
aspect is the desir