Symbolic Study of the Tarot and the Tree of Life

Forgot to put the colour of the path in Yetzirah.

It is cold light blue

This is a test

Week 62: Path between Binah and Kether in Yetzirah


Doing some catching up. This is the exploration of last week.

Color of the path in Yetzirah: Grey

It is hard to find an image that can represent the path between Kether and Binah.

Picture by Roman Okopny:


Letter: Beth

I – The Magus: “This card is referred to the letter Beth, which means a house, and is attributed to the planet Mercury. The ideas connected with this symbol are so complex and so multifarious.

But Mercury is the Path leading from Kether to Binah, the Understanding; and thus He is the messenger of the gods, represents precisely that Lingam, the Word of creation whose speech is silence.

Mercury, however, represents action in all forms and phases. He is the fluidic basis of all transmission of activity; and, on the dynamic theory of the Universe, he is himself the substance thereof. He is, in the language of modern physics, that electric charge which is the first manifestation of the ring of ten indefinable ideas, as previously explained. He is thus continuous creation.

Logically also, being the Word, he is the law of reason or of necessity or chance, which is the secret meaning of the Word, which is the essence of the Word, and the condition of its utterance. This being so, and especially because he is duality, he represents both truth and falsehood, wisdom and folly. Being the unexpected, he unsettles any established idea, and therefore appears tricky. He has no conscience, being creative. If he cannot attain his ends by fair means, he does it by foul. The legends of the youthful Mercury are therefore legends of cunning. He cannot be understood, because he is the Unconscious Will. His position on the Tree of Life shows the third Sephira, Binah, Understanding, as not yet formulated; still less the false Sephira, Da'ath, knowledge.

From the above it will appear that this card is the second emanation from the Crown, and therefore, in a sense, the adult form of the first emanation, the Fool, whose letter is Aleph, the Unity. These ideas are so subtle and so tenuous, on these exalted planes of thought, that definition is impossible. It is not even desirable, because it is the nature of these ideas to flow one into the other. One cannot do more than say that any given hieroglyph represents a slight insistence upon some particular form of a pantomorphous idea. In this card, the emphasis is upon the creative and dualistic character of the path of Beth.

In the traditional card the disguise is that of a Juggler.

This representation of the Juggler is one of the crudest and least satisfactory in the medieval pack. He is usually represented with a headdress shaped like the sign of infinity in mathematics (this is shown in detail in the card called the Two of Disks). He bears a wand with a knob at each end, which was probably connected with the dual polarity of electricity; but it is also the hollow wand of Prometheus that brings down fire from Heaven. On a table or altar, behind which he is standing, are the three other elemental weapons.

"With the Wand createth He.
With the Cup preserveth He.
With the Dagger destroyeth He.
With the Coin redeemeth He." Liber Magi vv. 7-10."

The present card has been designed principally upon the Graeco-Egyptian tradition; for the understanding of this idea was certainly further advanced when these philosophies modified each other, than elsewhere at any time.

The Hindu conception of Mercury, Hanuman, the monkey god, is abominably degraded. None of the higher aspects of the symbol are found in his cult. The aim of his adepts seems principally to have been the production of a temporary incarnation of the god by sending the women of the tribe every year into the jungle. Nor do we find any legend of any depth or spirituality. Hanuman is certainly little more than the Ape of Thoth.

The principal characteristic of Tahuti or Thoth, the Egyptian Mercury, is, firstly, that he has the head of the ibis. The ibis is the symbol of concentration, because it was supposed that this bird stood continuously upon one leg, motionless. This is quite evidently a symbol of the meditative spirit. There may also have been some reference to the central mystery of the Aeon of Osiris, the secret guarded so carefully from the profane, that the intervention of the male was necessary to the production of children. In this form of Thoth, he is seen bearing the phoenix wand, symbolising resurrection through the generative process. In his left hand is the Ankh, which represents a sandal-strap; that is to say, the means of progress through the worlds, which is the distinguishing mark of godhead. But, by its shape, this Ankh (crux ansata) is actually another form of the Rose and Cross, and this fact is perhaps not quite such an accident as modern Egyptologists, preoccupied with their attempted refutation of the Phallic school of Archaeology, would have us suppose.

The other form of Thoth represents him primarily as Wisdom and the Word. He bears in his right hand the Style, in his left the Papyrus. He is the messenger of the gods; he transmits their will by hieroglyphs intelligible to the initiate, and records their acts; but it was seen from very early times that the use of speech, or writing, meant the introduction of ambiguity at the best, and falsehood at the worst; they therefore represented Thoth as followed by an ape, the cynocephalus, whose business was to distort the Word of the god; to mock, to simulate and to deceive. In philosophical language one may say: Manifestation implies illusion. This doctrine is found in Hindu philosophy, where the aspect of Tahuti of which we are speaking is called Mayan. This doctrine is also found in the central and typical image of the Mahayana school of Buddhism (really identical with the doctrine of Shiva and Shakti).

The present card endeavours to represent all the above conceptions. Yet no true image is possible at all; for, firstly, all images are necessarily false as such; and, secondly, the motion being perpetual, and its rate that of the limit, c, the rate of Light, any stasis contradicts the idea of the card: this picture is, therefore, hardly more than mnemonic jottings.”
(The Book of Thoth)

Picture of the card:

Week 63: Path between Chokmah and Kether in Yetzirah


And this is the exploration of this week that started last sunday.

Color of the path: Blue emerald green

The fool is the Alpha and Omega when one puts the major arcana in a circle. Will he fall down the cliff or walk on the stars with his next step?


Letter: Aleph

0 – The Fool: “This card is attributed to the letter Aleph, which means an Ox, but by its shape the Hebrew letter (so it is said) represents a ploughshare; thus the significance is primarily Phallic. It is the first of the three Mother letters, Aleph, Mem, and Shin, which correspond in various interwoven fashions with all the triads that occur in these cards, notably Fire, Water, Air; Father, Mother, Son; Sulphur, Salt, Mercury; Rajas, Sattvas and Tamas.

The really important feature of this card is that its number should be 0. It represents therefore the Negative above the Tree of Life, the source of all things. It is the Qabalistic Zero. It is the equation of the Universe, the initial and final balance of the opposites; Air, in this card, therefore quintessentially means a vacuum.

In the medieval pack, the title of the card is Le Mat, adapted from the Italian Matto, madman or fool; the propriety of this title will be considered later. But there is another, or (one might say) a complementary, theory. If one assumes that the Tarot is of Egyptian origin, one may suppose that Mat (this card being the key card of the whole pack) really stands for Maut, the vulture goddess, who is an earlier and more sublime modification of the idea of Nuith than Isis.

There are two legends connected with the vulture. It is supposed to have a spiral neck; this may possibly have reference to the theory (recently revived by Einstein, but mentioned by Zoroaster in his Oracles) that the shape of the Universe, the form of that energy which is called the Universe, is spiral.

The other legend is that the vulture was supposed to reproduce her species by the intervention of the wind; in other words, the element of air is considered as the father of all manifested existence. There is a parallel in Anaximenes' school of Greek philosophy.

This card is therefore both the father and the mother, in the most abstract form of these ideas.

This is not a confusion, but a deliberate identification of the male and the female, which is justified by biology. The fertilized ovum is sexually neutral. It is only some unknown determinant in the course of development which decides the issue.

It is necessary to acclimatise oneself to this at first sight strange, idea. As soon as one has made up one's mind to consider the feminine aspect of things, the masculine element should immediately appear in the same flash of thought to counterbalance it. This identification is complete in itself) philosophically speaking; it is only later that one must consider the question of the result of formulating Zero as "plus I plus minus I". The result of so doing is to formulate the idea of Tetragrammaton.

The Fool is of the gold of air. He has the horns of Dionysus Zagreus, and between them is the phallic cone of white light representing the influence from the Crown [Kether: see the position of the Path of Aleph on the Tree of Life.] upon him. He is shown against the background of air, dawning from space; and his attitude is that of one bursting unexpectedly upon the world.

He is clad in green, according to the tradition of Spring; but his shoes are of the phallic gold of the sun.

In his right hand he bears the wand, tipped with a pyramid of white, of the All-Father. In his left hand he bears the flaming pine- cone, of similar significance, but more definitely indicating vegetable growth; and from his left shoulder hangs a bunch of purple grapes. Grapes represent fertility, sweetness, and the basis of ecstasy. This ecstasy is shown by the stem of the grapes developing into rainbow - hued spirals. The Form of the Universe. This suggests the Threefold Veil of the Negative manifesting, by his intervention, in divided light. Upon this spiral whorl are other attributions of godhead; the vulture of Maut, the dove of Venus (Isis or Mary), and the ivy sacred to his devotees. There is also the butterfly of many-coloured air and the winged globe with its twin serpents, a symbol which is echoed and fortified by the twin infants embracing on the middle spiral. Above them hangs the benediction of three flowers in one. Fawning upon him is the tiger; and beneath his feet in the Nile with its lotus stems crouches the crocodile. Resuming all his many forms and many- coloured images in the centre of the figure, the focus of the microcosm is the radiant sun. The whole picture is a glyph of the creative light.

Picture of the card:

[Wolfgang]

Enjoyed reading some of your studies, thank you for sharing!
I did similar pathwork, spending a couple of weeks on each path doing my meditations on the new moon and full moon. I had amazing integrative shamanic journeys each time and then experienced the changes over the period of time dedicated to the path. I believe I spent a year doing that. Then it was clear it was time to change my focus.

Tell me, did you have a lot of imagery in your meditations... And did you notice how much darkness is present as well as light?

[andrewaustin]

This is fantastic, thank you for doing this!

Hello Wolfgang,

Nice to read and feel your presence, it is the first time our path cross in this life.

When I was 17, I did spend a year paying attention on how the 28 cycles of the moon affected my consciousness each day and also affect subconsciously the people around. Must say women by their constitution a pretty much more aware of the effect of those cycles than men are.

This form of endeavour may be associated to Yesod in Assiah, week 3, in this exploration I am redoing.
https://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/s...d.php?t=130738

So much to explore in this world.

As for darkness and Light, I do not make any difference between them anymore. Darkness just being fear of Light. It is a way the Unborn found to be conscious of Itself, I feel.

In my meditations on this exploratory path, I mostly feel the energies or consciousness associated to each path and sephiroth, they are just to me different ways for the Unborn to manifest His rainbow Beingness.

To me it is more than a simple coincidence that our path crosses at this point. You have things to teach me as I will be leaving the exploration of the World of Air, mind, to dive in 10 days into the exploration of the World of water, deep inner feelings or emotions.

Regards

Originally Posted by Wolfgang

Enjoyed reading some of your studies, thank you for sharing!
I did similar pathwork, spending a couple of weeks on each path doing my meditations on the new moon and full moon. I had amazing integrative shamanic journeys each time and then experienced the changes over the period of time dedicated to the path. I believe I spent a year doing that. Then it was clear it was time to change my focus.

Tell me, did you have a lot of imagery in your meditations... And did you notice how much darkness is present as well as light?

Originally Posted by andrewaustin

This is fantastic, thank you for doing this!

Thank you Andrewaustin,

And welcome to SF.

Regards,

[Wolfgang]

Originally Posted by Legrand

Hello Wolfgang,

Nice to read and feel your presence, it is the first time our path cross in this life.

When I was 17, I did spend a year paying attention on how the 28 cycles of the moon affected my consciousness each day and also affect subconsciously the people around. Must say women by their constitution a pretty much more aware of the effect of those cycles than men are.

This form of endeavour may be associated to Yesod in Assiah, week 3, in this exploration I am redoing.
https://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/s...d.php?t=130738

So much to explore in this world.

As for darkness and Light, I do not make any difference between them anymore. Darkness just being fear of Light. It is a way the Unborn found to be conscious of Itself, I feel.

In my meditations on this exploratory path, I mostly feel the energies or consciousness associated to each path and sephiroth, they are just to me different ways for the Unborn to manifest His rainbow Beingness.

To me it is more than a simple coincidence that our path crosses at this point. You have things to teach me as I will be leaving the exploration of the World of Air, mind, to dive in 10 days into the exploration of the World of water, deep inner feelings or emotions.

Regards

I bet you had some interesting observations on these cycles!

That is a very eloquent way to describe light and dark and I absolutely agree. In my work I have seen the most beautiful seeds of truth come to light and grow from tilling the soil, which means getting dirty. I love my analogies 😆
I do however believe structures that are created and used for many years begin to take on a life of their own and people uphold these structures in a certain way. I would describe it as a morphic field. As an example this would perhaps explain why reiki symbols hold the power that they do because people use them and they become charged, they are also connected to conciousness. Same goes for the tree of life and it's symbols.
While I know that my experience of studying this particular structure happened to be a great opportunity for me to release fear and break contracts with the mystery schools, I also recognize this structure to have some ideals that keep it from being as fluid as I believe energy practice is these days, because things have shifted, and have some oppressive hierarchical tendencies. That's not to say it doesn't have a wealth of knowledge to be explored or that it's 'bad'... and perhaps the same could be said about any structure, but that's what I was referring to, when I was talking about 'darkness'. There is definitely a limitation of language and it can be tricky to describe and talk about the nuances.

It's definitely been a theme in my life to deconstruct these structures, which I believe is immensely beneficial when doing emotional alchemy. I'm so excited for you to dive into that!

Week 64: Kether in Yetzirah and the Ace of Swords

General Symbolic of Kether:

The top of the building! The apex of the Middle Pillar where we can go no further, except to enter the unknown territories of the Veils of Negative Existence (in case of success) or to start again in Malkuth (in case of failure).

When ascending the Tree, Kether is the highest point of balance between the two Pillars. It is there that we can leave the Tree to enter the Unmanifested Ain Soph Aur and reach the Light from which we do not return.

Kether is. To reach Kether, we have since Malkuth worked hard, pruning, scouring the slag that had gathered on the divine spark within us. To reintegrate the first sepiroth, we don't have to do or believe in something, but be something. We must pass from one state of existence to another.

Let's not make the mistake of imagining Kether as located in the distance. It is in fact the closest sephirah to our real being. The Malkuth/Kether loop is complete when we "enter the kingdom of Heaven that is within us".

Kether means "Crown" in the royal sense of the word, but also the summit of any height, be it a mountain or a pillar.

Alchemist iconography shows the spirits of the planets receiving their light in the form of a crown from the hands of their king, the sun. In Yoga, and also in Islam, the crown of the head is the point through which the soul escapes from bodily limitations to ascend to the supra-human states. In Hindu mode, this is the Sahasrâra padma (lotus of a thousand petals).

Out of the boundless light comes a flash of lightning. Kether is the point from which this lightning flashes. It is the first stage of the condensation of Ain Soph, the first crystallization of what has not yet been manifested. There, God is a pressure.

In Kether, no form exists. Only the being in itself is present, which we can imagine as a blinding white light, undifferentiated in rays by a prism.

Kether is reached when we manage to conceive an existence without attributes, dimensions or parts.

The Central Pillar sums up our history. Man fell all the way to Malkuth, becoming a creature of the earth. As we raise our vision, we encounter Yesod and the mind. Higher still, we reach the Sun and converse with the Holy Guardian Angel (the Self). Finally, looking beyond the stars and nebulae, we seek the source of life. Beyond Kether lies our immortality. Communicating with this soul (Tiphereth) and then identifying with it (crossing the abyss) are the necessary steps to conscious immortality.

If in the Old Testament Elijah is taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire, the ascension of Christ (body, soul and spirit) into heaven is an evangelical attestation of this concept. He "spiritualized" himself to the point of gradually disappearing from the disciples level of existence.

Kether in Yetzirah: HAIOTH HA QODESH

Color: Bright white

Cefalù Cathedral - Wonders of Sicily


HAIOTH HA QODESH (Holy Beings or Holy Animals) is the expression used to designate the tetramorph formed by the four animals: the bull, the lion, the eagle and the man. The origin of this symbol can be found in the vision of Ezekiel.

The Four Beasts of the Apocalypse take up the features of Ezekiel's four beasts: "In the middle of the throne and around it stand four beasts, with eyes in front and behind. The first beast is like a lion; the second beast is like a young bull; the third beast is like a man's face; the fourth beast is like a flying eagle. The four Beasts, each bearing six wings, are studded with eyes all around and within" (4, 6-8).

These strange animals are reminiscent of the Assyrian Kâribu (a word from which the animals of the Ark of the Covenant seem to derive their origin), a human head, lion's body, bull's paws, and eagle's wings, whose statues guarded the palaces of Babylon. Since St. Irenaeus, tradition has made them the symbols of the four evangelists.

The lion is named in Jacob's prophecy to his sons: "Judah is like a young lion"; it symbolizes fire, strength, will.

The bull is named in Leviticus as the animal of the burnt offering; it represents the earth, the labor.

The eagle is the vehicle of blessed souls to the original source. It is the Air, the power of elevation.

Man is knowledge, spiritual intuition, Water.

The central spirit can be mapped to the Aether, the Quintessence (fifth essence).

The four HAIOTH or axes of Creation spring from the Throne that became Char, like lightning running in all directions. They are the primordial and orderly lightnings. They are also called "Those who move the wheels".

All other spirits or angels are grouped below the HAIOTH, which determine the four supreme cardinal points of space. From the HAIOTH proceed the four Elements, as well as all the other quaternary elements that condition existence.

The Holy Beings are to Kether what the Ophanim are to Chokmah, what the Seraphim are to Geburah, what the Kerubim are to Yesod. Different levels of manifestation of the same quaternary.

We cannot visualize form without form, or force without force and we can only visualize such creatures in symbolic terms. Ezekiel's description gives them a radiant aspect, while John's remarks give them a quality of omniscience and omnipresence. The vision (described by Ezekiel) of a winged wheel bearing the all-seeing eye confirms such an interpretation.

The term HAIOTH refers to life at the animal level. Today we can say all of God's creatures including every living entity, but the HAIOTH are angels and not mortals made perfect. Life as such, beyond all forms. A cell is an animal by itself, and the Holy Beings are the cells of the body of God.

The Ace of Swords – Root of the powers of Air:

“The Ace of Swords is the primordial Energy of Air, the Essence of the Vau of Tetragrammaton, the integration of the Ruach. Air is the result of the conjunction of Fire and Water; thus it lacks the purity of its superiors in the male hierarchy, Fire, Sol and the Phallus. But for this same reason it is the first card directly to be apprehended by the normal consciousness of Mankind. The errors of such cards as the 7 and 10 of Cups are yet of an Order altogether higher than the apparently much milder 4 of Swords. The study of the subtle and gradual degradation of the planes is excessively difficult.

In nature, the obvious symbol of Air is the Wind "which bloweth whithersoever it listeth". It lacks the concentrated Will of Fire to unite with Water: it has no corresponding passion for its Twin Element, Earth. There is indeed, a notable passivity in its nature; evidently, it has no self-generated impulse. But, set in motion by its Father and Mother, its power is manifestly terrific. It visibly attacks its objective, as they, being of subtler and more tenuous character, can never do. Its "all-embracing, all-wandering, all-penetrating, all-consuming" qualities have been described by many admirable writers, and its analogies are for the most part patent to quite ordinary observers.

But, it will instantly be asked, what of the status of this Element in the light of other attributions? In the Yetziratic World, is not Air the first element to follow Spirit? Is not Vayu the first emergence of the phenomenal from the arcane obscurity of Akasha? How may one reconcile the doctrine of Mind with the fact that Ruh, or Ruach, actually means Spirit itself?

"Achath Ruach Elohim Chiim" (777) means "One is the Spirit (not Air) of the Gods of the Living"?
And is not Air, the element attributed to Mercury, also most properly the Breath of Life, the Word, the Logos itself?

The student must be referred to some less raw, cursory, elementary and superficial Treatise than this present bat-eyed, penguin- winged, bluebottle-brained buzzing. Nevertheless, although Air is in no system the lowest, and so cannot claim benefit of clergy from the doctrine that Malkuth automatically resolves into Kether, the following reference seems not wholly to lack either cogency or pertinence.

The Ruach is centred in the airy Sephira, Tiphareth, who is the Son, the first-born of the Father, and the Sun, the first emanation of the creative Phallus. He derives directly from his mother Binah through the Path of Zain, the sublime intuitive sense, so that he partakes absolutely of the nature of Neschamah. From his father, Chokmah, he is informed though the Path of Heh', the Great Mother, the Star, our Lady Nuit, so that the creative impulse is communicated to him by all possibilities soever. [How strikingly this fact confirms the counterchange of IV and XVII, above fully expounded: as a link between Chokmah and Tiphareth, the Emperor would have no great significance, and this exquisite doctrine of the Three Mothers would be lost.] Finally, from Kether, the supreme, descends directly upon him, though the Path of Gimel, the High Priestess, the triune light of Initiation. The Three- in-One, the Secret Mother in her polymorphous plenitude; these, these alone, hail him thrice blessed of the Supernals!

The card represents the Sword of the Magus (see Book 4, Part II) crowned with the twenty-two rayed diadem of pure Light. The number refers to the Atu; also 22=2 X II, the Magical manifestation of Chokmah, Wisdom, the Logos. Upon the blade, accordingly, is inscribed the Word of the Law, This Word sends forth a blaze of Light, dispersing the dark clouds of the Mind.”
(The Book of Thoth)

Picture of the card: