by Marcus Katz
In the Golden Dawn system, Malkuth is the only Sephirah to be split into a four-colour scheme, to reflect the four elements operating separately in Malkuth. As we pass through these elemental grades in our spiritual journey, the Golden Dawn said these first initiations "in one sense, quit not Malkuth". We remain in manifestation throughout the spiritual journey.
In his examination of the numerological codes of the Kabbalah, Carlos Suarès brings together these ideas of 4, 40 and 400 and we can apply them to Malkuth:
The physical resistance of structures (4) finds its purveyor in the maternal waters (40) where all life originates. Tau (400) is the exaltation of the entire cosmic existence in its utmost capacity to resist life-death. The root DM is ‘blood’ in Hebrew, and the root MTh is ‘death’. Thus the two together express the complete cycle of existence.[81]
We can next explore the meaning of the letters composing the title, and move on from a purely numerological analysis. The extensions of the letters composing Malkuth and their meanings are as follows:
Mem: The element of water
Lamed: The process of learning, defining
Kaph: The concept of hollowness (as in weighing in the hand)
Vau: The objects of fastening, pin, hook
Tau: The making of a mark, a cross
From these meanings we might deduce that the Kingdom begins symbolically and actually in the primal waters (and the Kingdom of the conscious Self is but an island in the sea of the unconscious) and completes as the cross of the four elements, traditionally Earth, Air, Fire, Water, in the manifest world about us.
There is a more beautiful example of mystical symbolism that appears to have been written into the world when we take a more literal and simple analysis of the five Hebrew letters Mem + Lamed + Kaph + Vau + Tau that comprise the word Malkuth. These are literally Water + Goad + Palm of Hand + Nail + Cross. This may remind us of a particular mythic story and yet how can that be? The very letters used to denote our world contain within themselves the most fundamental story of a religious belief about this world.
The four elements and their crowning by Spirit as the fifth (to make the Pentagram, which redeems YHVH to YHShVH) are echoed in modern mathematical ideas such as the model used by Rudy Rucker (the four concepts of Number, Space, Logic, Infinity, and the fifth, Information), and in Quantum Physics there is a similar four-fold system (Electro-Magnetism, Weak Force, Strong Force, and Gravity). The pattern of four arising to five appears fundamental in our experience of the universe.
We can now see how Malkuth might be illustrated by our tarot. The cards to which the letters of Malkuth are assigned in the Golden Dawn system are:
Mem: The Hanged Man
Lamed: Justice
Kaph: The Wheel of Fortune
Vau: The Hierophant
Tau: The Universe
Malkuth, the kingdom, begins quite appropriately, with the Hanged Man, the card symbolic of initiation and sacrifice. It is even more illustrative in its Golden Dawn variant as the drowned giant, the slumbering aspect of the divine under the waters of creation. It was this version too that Waite used in his Waite-Trinick Tarot. The card also reminds us that awareness is drowned in that flood, and as is spoken in the Neophyte ritual of the Golden Dawn, "the light shineth in the darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not."
The next card of the sequence is that of Justice, or as Crowley re-titled it, Adjustment. The placement of this card on the Tree connects it between Geburah (discernment) and Tiphareth (awareness) on the path of Lamed (discipline). Following on from the initial Mem stage, we may see this step as the organisation and adjustment inherent in the universal processes.
Moving on from the process of continual adjustment, we add the spin of the Wheel of Fortune, that is to say, the action of time and the circular or spiral force that can be seen in everything from the DNA helix, the conch shell, a whirlpool, a body in orbit, or an entire galaxy. The hub of the wheel, the spokes and the rim also signify synchronicity, a term coined by Carl Jung to denote an accausal connecting principle in play within all things. It is in more simple terms, a revolution; of thought, action, or of any state.
These first few cards illustrate through correspondence an evolutionary process from the initiation of the beginning, through its organisation and regulation, into connection and movement. This is a fundamental and universal pattern played out in every layer of creation from the microscopic to the cosmological.
The next card in the sequence is that of the Hierophant, he who reveals the sacred things, and subtitled by the Golden Dawn as "the expounder of the Mysteries". The Hierophant in this context represents the interface between the individual and the world as it is shown in the previous cards. It might be summarised as; Nature, all things hid reveals. The card illustrates the revelation of reality when we closely examine nature and ourselves.
If we take this card as symbolic of the individual’s relationship with Nature in its widest sense, then that revelation is revealed to follow three principles to which the Hierophant must attain:
Awareness (Hanged Man)
Balance (Justice)
Synchronicity (Wheel)
These three principles place the Hierophant in the middle pillar of the Tree of Life as representing Tiphareth, the centre in which awareness and balance are attained and synchronicity becomes a constant and ever-present quality of the initiated life. It is also a constant revolution (Wheel) and adjustment (Justice) to change in awareness (Hanged Man) as the initiatory life.
In the final letter of the word Malkuth, we arrive at Tau which corresponds quite neatly to the World card, sometimes called the Universe. This self-referential termination of the sequence demonstrates the nature of the card itself and the whole synthesis of the previous cards in manifestation. The final letter is the final summation of the universe and all things within it. The Kingdom is complete within itself and this is the truth of the matter.
Umberto Eco writes of this as he concludes Foucault’s Pendulum:
Where have I read that at the end, when life, surface upon surface, has become completely encrusted with experience, you know everything, the secret, the power, and the glory, why you were born, why you are dying, and how it could have been different? You are wise. But the greatest wisdom, at that moment, is knowing that your wisdom is too late. You understand everything when there is no longer anything to understand.
Now I know what the Law of the Kingdom is, of poor, desperate, tattered Malkhut, where Wisdom has gone into exile, groping to recover its former lucidity. The truth of Malkhut, the only truth that shines in the night of the Sefirot, is that Wisdom is revealed naked in Malkhut, and its mystery lies not in existence but in the leaving of existence. Afterward, the Others begin again.
And with the others, the Diabolicals, seeking abysses where the secret of their madness lies hidden.[82]
In summary then, we can create a magical formula of our experience of the world through the letters that comprise its title, Malkuth. These can be then expressed as a process of Initiation; Adjustment; Revolution; Revelation and Synthesis. All things follow this one pattern and it is useful to recognise it underneath any question brought to us as tarot readers, as we ask at which stage of this process is the client, and at which stage is the situation?
Having looked at the Sephiroth in turn from Kether to Malkuth, we now turn our attention to several other concepts used within Kabbalah, beginning with the Klippoth, the shells of the creative process.
EXERCISES
1. Take any science, such as Maths, Economics, Physics, or some other methodology of studying the world around us, such as Sociology or Psychology, and examine its structure in terms of the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life.
2. There are many further aspects of Kabbalah that go beyond the scope of this present book. You may like to explore the following list of specific concepts to deepen your appreciation of Kabbalah beyond the Tree of Life.
Tzimtzum, the contraction of Ain Soph Aur to c
reate Kether, the first point.
Shevirat HaKelim, the shattering of the vessels.
Teshuvah refers to a returning - a rectification of action to Divine Will.
Tikkun, the state of perfection, and the spiritual process of reaching that state.
Kavanah, intention, any willed act, and a form of meditation in action.
The Klippoth: The Shells & Husks
… or perhaps the seashells – the qelippot, the beginnings of ruin – were slyly waiting in ambush somewhere.
“Slippery folk, those qelippot,” Belbo said. “Agents of the diabolical Dr. Fu Manchu. And then what happened?”
And then, Diotallevi patiently explained, in the light of Severe Judgement, or Gevurah – also known as Pachad, or Terror – the Sefirah in which, according to Isaac the Blind, Evil first shows itself, the seashells acquired a real existence.
“Then the seashells are in our midst,” Belbo said.
“Just look around you,” Diotallevi said.
Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum, pp. 219-20.
The word Klippoth [variously transliterated such as Qlippoth, Kellipot, etc.] is the plural of the Hebrew word spelt Qoph-Lamed-Peh-Heh, meaning shell, husk, skin, peel or rind. This indicates at once that the Klippoth are the shells or leftovers of a process, in the same way that an eggshell is related to an egg, or the peel related to an apple. In the cosmology of Kabbalah, these shells or envelopes were said to hold their original abode beneath the world of Assiah into which Adam descended at the Fall. Thus they are not only at the base of the Tree, but somehow below it, like a dark shadow or the husks on a threshing room floor.
Much of the development of this idea was made by Issac de Loria (1534-1572) who in his commentary on the Book of Concealment added his own viewpoint to the original Zoharic teachings on the Klippoth.
Commenting on the formation of the nations of the gentiles, Loria said that the recrements, the evil and rejected parts of the Edomite Kings (who existed in the void before the world was formed) are the cortices or shells which compose the adverse Adam Belial, or the "shadow" side of humanity. When Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit, their Fall confounded the Good and the Evil of the cortices, and after this Fall the nations of the world were produced from the shells. In this we can see some reflection of the politics of the age, and the history of the Jewish people, but also a commentary on the nature of the Pysche, which in its "fall" or attachment to the apparent world, forms many identities from the beliefs that in truth are the shells which separate us from recognition of our inherent "core".
The unbalanced forces of the Universe, the world in its void state, are considered under the symbolism of the Kings who reigned in Edom before a King was raised up to rule over the children of Israel, that is to say, before the emanation of the Microprosopus, or Lesser Countenance. This single King or state is that which reigns after the synthesis of the multiple fragmentary states of identity that flicker in and out in the constant picture-show of our awareness, each of which in its turn demands temporary rulership.
The Edomite Kings were seen by Loria as Sons of the Mother, the Pillar on the left hand, perfect Severity, but had no foundation in the Holy Ancient One. They are the "empty lights" dispelled by the Source of Lights which is concealed within the Mother.
Halevi states that the first origin of the concept of the Klippoth lies in the Kabbalistic model of the Universe itself being composed of a series of shells. The first kernel is the light of Ain Soph, with the first shell being Kether, enclosing Ain Soph. Then Kether becomes the kernel of the Shell which is Chockmah, and so on. Beyond the Malkuth of Assiah come the thickest of the shells, with hardly any of the light of Ain Soph in them.
In terms of the Practical Kabbalah, the 'husks' are depicted as the singular enemy of the Kabbalist. As Rabbi Chaim Vital (1543-1620) states, when talking about the decline in Kabbalistic practice:
... they [the practitioners] no longer make use of these techniques to ascend to the orchard ... people only make use of the techniques involving the Universe of Assiah. Since this is the lowest of the Universes, its angels have only a little good, and are mostly evil. Besides this, it is a level where good and evil are closely entwined, and it is very difficult to separate them. This does not bring any enlightenment, since it is impossible to perceive good alone, and one's perceptions are therefore a combination of good and evil, truth and falsehood. Even if one does gain some perception, it is truth intermingled with falsehood ... since one cannot purify himself, the uncleanness of the husks attaches itself to the individual who attempts to gain enlightenment by the practical Kabbalah.[83]
Therefore, "he who watches his soul should keep far from these things". Unfortunately, the rise of practical occultism in recent times has repeated the aforementioned error, and has taken the concept of the Klippoth into the realms of personified beings. Once this has been done, it is easy to see how practitioners may attempt to work with the Klippoth, and yet in reality be themselves worked by them.
In the glossary of his Magnum Opus, Magick in Theory and Practice, Aleister Crowley defines Klippoth as "shells or demons, the excrement of ideas", and it is this definition that has permeated the workings of such groups as the Typhonian Order with respect to the Klippoth. Indeed, in recent publications by the late Head of that Order, Kenneth Grant (1924 – 2011), the Klippoth are associated with the "shades of the dead whose names appear in the books of Dyzan, or Thoth, of the Necronomicon..." and similar grimoires.[84] The organisation of these entities into hierarchies is post-Zoharic, and found popularity with the publication of Francis Barrett's The Magus in 1801, which was composed of many tables indicating the structure of the Universe.
Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi points out that any event or being can become Klippothic if its central axis or reason for being is removed, causing imbalance in the system. Thus tradition is klippothic if it is merely blind observance of a form of ritual or belief which no longer unites with its original source. As such, tradition is indeed a shell or screen which separates us from reality, the wrapping and not the present itself. In a personal sense, when someone becomes obsessed as a result of a personality disorder, then the Klippoth are at work, as the individual then has no central point to come back to in order to regain themselves.
Another view of the Klippoth can be found in Roald Dahl's fantasy, Charlie and the Glass Elevator, where Willy Wonka's glass elevator, which, like the Chariot of the mystics, can travel through many worlds, passes through a shadowy place wherein exist hosts of grey wraithlike entities formed from all the uncompleted thoughts and hopes of mankind. Each time an individual thinks, "If only ...", they create a Klippothic world which begins to separate them from the actual world existing around them. If the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Physics is correct, then every time we make a decision, an infinite number of Klippothic worlds are created where that decision was not taken, and we must be careful to live in the world we have chosen.
Some authors see the Klippoth as simple reversals or negative polarities to each of the Sephiroth. Thus, Gray gives the Klippothic form of Malkuth as materialism, and that of Geburah as cruelty, and so on. The four elements themselves have Klippoth:
Fire: Arrogance
Air: Superfluous talk
Water: Cupidity
Earth: Melancholy
The Golden Dawn society had this to say in their Theoricus ritual:
Be thou therefore as prompt and active as the Sylphs, but avoid frivolity and caprice. Be energetic and strong like the Salamanders, but avoid irritability and ferocity. Be flexible and attentive to images like the Undines, but avoid idleness and changeability. Be laborious and patient like the Gnomes but avoid grossness and avarice.[85]
As well as a reversal of the personal aspect of the Sephirah, the Klippoth can represent a reversal of the essential nature of each of the Sephiroth. Thus, the Klippothic form of Kether is the "dual contending forces", which is the exact opposite to the idea of unity in Kether. The Goloc
hab, attributed to Geburah, are Giants, like volcanoes, symbolising tyranny or aimless destruction, rather than the precise discernment and functional cutting away which Geburah should bring to any process. Klippoth are thus a perversion of the original energy of a thing, a waste, imbalance, or something taken to an extreme beyond its natural purpose.
During Kabbalistic work, as the Baal Shem Tov (1698 - 1760) stated, "when an extraneous thought comes to you, this is a sign that you are being cast out. But if you are wise, you can use that thought itself to bind yourself to God all the more".[86] In the words of Maggid Devarav Leyaakov, "these thoughts do not come by chance, but in order that you elevate them to their root”.[87] This is an important part of Kabbalah in that nothing is seen as intrinsically evil, all being part of the one Tree.
The only evil is separation, and even this can be redeemed through the process of unification.
Names of the Klippoth by Sephiroth.
1. Kether
Dual Contending Forces (Twins of God)
False Gods
Satan/Moloch
The Finishers
2. Chockmah
Hinderers
Lying Spirits
Beelzebub
The Life-Cutter of God
3. Binah
Concealers (Hiding)
Vessels of Iniquity
Luciferge
One who Hides
4. Chesed
Breakers in Pieces (Smiters)
Revengers of Wickedness
Astaroth
Those that are Crooked
5. Geburah
Burners (Flaming Ones)
Jugglers
Asmodeus
