by Marcus Katz
The Barber
6. Tiphareth
Disputers (The Litigation)
Airy Powers
Belphegor
The Flayer
7. Netzach
Dispersing Ravens
Furies, or Seminaries of Evil
Baal
Those Kindling the Funeral Pyre
8. Hod
Deceivers (The False Accuser)
Sifters, or Triers
Addramalech
The Venom of God
9. Yesod
Obscene Ones (The Obscene Ass)
Tempters, or Ensnarers
Lillith
He who Bears a Burden
10. Malkuth
The Evil Woman (The Woman of the Night)
Wicked Fouls bearing rule
Nahema
The Moaners
EXERCISES
1. Take ten events and attempt to note down the Klippothic aspect(s) of the event, if any. For example, a mother's overweening pride of her daughter's accomplishments, a machine which was calibrated incorrectly and snaps a pipe it was meant to bend, or the noise of a car, which does not directly contribute to its forward motion.
2. Sit in a comfortable position and try to focus on one particular image, say a circle. Each time another thought or image arises, rather than trying to ignore it, follow it back to whatever concern generated it, acknowledge that that too is part of yourself, and then return to the original contemplation. Repeat this and observe what effect this has on the arising of extraneous thoughts.
Gematria: The Numerology of the Kabbalah
Gematria is one of the rules for interpreting the Torah, and is at root a system of numerology. It is defined by Scholem as "explaining a word or group of words according to the numerical value of the letters, or of substituting other letters of the alphabet for them in accordance with a set system”.[88]
As we have seen, all Hebrew letters are equally values and words, so for example the letter Aleph, signifying "A", also means "one", as well as being a word meaning "ox". This allows the letters to be taken as symbols expressing different aspects of the Universe, either as separate entities, or when combined together in words.
One use for Gematria is in devising systems of mnemonic reminders of Kabbalistic doctrine, such as utilised by Eleazar of Worms. Thus, the numeration of the word Avavah, ‘love’ being equal to that of Achad, ‘unity’ (both being thirteen) recalls to the Kabbalist that love of God is unity with God. As the two words then total together to twenty-six, which is the value of YHVH, the Tetragrammaton, then this indicates further that God is composed of Unity and Love. Indeed, it is with particular reference to the names of God to which Gematria is pointed, as the names are considered divine and incomprehensible.
Although some Kabbalists decried the use of Gematria, other authors such as Abulafia dealt with Gematria so deeply that their works need decoding rather than merely reading.
It is said that the Torah is likewise written, and that apparent mistakes in the original Greek and Hebrew texts are not mistakes, but rather spellings and variations necessary to ensure the numbers underlying them were correct. As many Occultists have used Gematria to support their own models and approaches, it is essential that where it is recognised, it is tested.
The magician Aleister Crowley utilised Gematria as a testing of spirits whilst pathworking or travelling the Aeythrs in vision. That is, he would ask his scryer to present the entity to be tested with a question or a number, and the entity would be expected to reply appropriately. Thus, if a pathworking was in the realm of Hod, and a young boy had appeared, he might be asked about the workings of Mercury. If he replied with a number which was later discovered to be that of the word ‘swiftness’, his other responses would be considered valid. The theory is basically that the false spirits will not know the Gematria appropriate to the working as they are not consistent themselves with the correspondences being worked.
There are many forms of Gematria - one list gives seventy-two forms, and Moses Corovero listed nine major systems.
The most basic method is simply taking the value of the letters of a word and adding them up, then considering all the other words that total to the same value. For this purpose, many Occultists keep and maintain a Sepher Sephiroth or 'Book of Numbers', which functions as a numerological dictionary. The main numbers used by Crowley are to be found in many of his works, the most important numbers being 31, 93, 418 and 666. Crowley produced his own lists based on the Golden Dawn teachings, and published these as 777. He also produced Liber MCCLXIV, a dictionary based on Greek words and phrases and their numerations.
As examples, a few numbers from a personal Sepher Sephiroth are given below:
10: Value of Yod; DAH (To fly, soar); BDD (To be secluded); AT (Soothsayer); ADH (To steam, rise skyward); Grade Password of Chesed; 1+2+3+4; Number of Malkuth; Number of Wheel tarot card
11: ChG (To make a circle) (Festival, feast); GCh (To break through); ChBA (To hide oneself); Crowley's number of Magick, "energy tending to change"; Number of Justice tarot card
12: GDH (Goddess of Fortune); AVH (Desire, longing); VV (The letter Vau, meaning pin, hook, fastening); HVA (He himself); Number of Hanged Man tarot card
13: BHV (Emptiness, chaos); ABDH (Destruction, abyss); DVG (Fisher); VHB (Pool); AChD (One, unity); AHBH (Love); 9+3+1=111 base 3; Number of Death tarot card
Another method of Gematria is to square each value, thus AGD, meaning "to bind together", becomes 12+32+42=26=YHVH, the Tetragrammaton binding the four elements. This particular method, as some of the others, result in large numbers.
Perhaps one of the safest rules to apply to Gematria work was given by Nahmanides, who said, "no-one may calculate a Gematria in order to deduce from it something that occurs to him".[89] That is, avoid the temptation to produce Gematria to shore up one's own rocky beliefs. If an equation does not mean much to you, it might be worth pursuing to develop new knowledge and widen one's system, rather than merely constraining it within existing expectations.
Gematria can produce many avenues of enquiry and exploration, and there are many books on more general numerology available on the market. I offer two examples of applying simple number systems to Kabbalah and Gematria to highlight aspects of the Sephiroth; the Binary system and the Numbers of the Grade System.
The Binary System
The Binary system, or base two, works by denoting all numbers in terms of ones and zeroes. In order to achieve this, rather than decimal, which works in terms of ones, tens, hundreds and so forth, base two works in columns of powers of two. These can be attributed to the Sephiroth in succession to reveal the following meanings:
Kether/1 = Value of Aleph
Chockmah/2 = Value of Beth
Binah/4 = Value of Daleth; also 2+2 and 2*2
Chesed /8 = AHB (To love)
Geburah/16 = AIH (Hawk)
Tiphareth/32 = IChID (Oneness); Number of Sephiroth + Paths
Netzach/64 = NVGH (Venus)
Hod/128 = ChLTz (To deliver, loose)
Yesod/ 256
Malkuth/512
The Grade Passwords
These words, listed in Crowley's 777, were chosen to equal numbers which are produced by simply adding cumulatively, i.e. 1, 1+2=3, 1+2+3=6, 1+2+3+4=10 and so forth. In each case I provide a brief commentary as to how this sequence of numbers and corresponding words can add to our layered understanding of the grades of the Tree of Life. I will provide for each Sephirah a brief contemplative phrase as to the creative process being played out down the Tree, and the initiatory/learning process up the Tree, based on this Gematria.
Kether 1 Value of Aleph
Creative: From unity all things proceed.
Initiatory: To unity all things return.
Chockmah 3 AB (Father, source)
Creative: The source of all things is the seed.
Initiatory: We return to the source as a child becomes a parent.
Binah 6 GG (Covering of al
tar); HA (Existence, airhole)
Creative: All experience is shaped by what exists underneath and beyond all experience.
Initiatory: We look through our worship to that which is worshipped.
Chesed 10 BDD (To be secluded); DAH (To fly, soar)
Creative: The divine withdraws itself even as it expands.
Initiatory: We remove ourselves from ourselves as we ascend.
Geburah 15 GZH (Shearing, fleece)
Creative: Nothing is wasted.
Initiatory: We lose all that protects us when there is nothing that we fear.
Tiphareth 21 VDAI (Certainty)
Creative: In the centre, it is all true.
Initiatory: The Adept experiences that which is being experienced.
Netzach 28 HChIH (The beast)
Creative: All that lives, lives.
Initiatory: We are more than our own nature.
Hod 36 IChIDH (Oneness)
Creative: In thought, everything is resolved to one thing.
Initiatory: As we work, we come to aspire to unity.
Yesod 45 LVT (Covering, veil)
Creative: All existence is the veil of that for which light is but a veil.
Initiatory: We dream our self and must awaken.
Malkuth 55 KLH (Bride), DVMH (Stillness, Realm of Death)
Creative: In this moving likeness of eternity, we are wedded to the divine.
Initiatory: The mystical life will be both wedding and funeral.
EXERCISES
1. Begin a loose-leafed folder of lined paper, and write down the margin the numbers one to about nine hundred, allowing two or three lines for each number. Then, using the values given in the table, calculate out the total value of words relating to the Tree of Life. We have already given several calculations for the titles of the Sephiroth and so forth, and these can be noted in your own Sepher Sephiroth, or 'Book of Numbers'.
Purchase or loan from a library a Hebrew-English dictionary and even better a Bible in Hebrew and English. Select words of interest and add them to their appropriate values in your folder. Note if certain numbers have themes of words. Add to this dictionary as you advance your studies, and perhaps you will find numbers being presented to you in dreams, or sets of letters which then turn out to have significance in your own personal dictionary
The Twenty-Two Paths
Each Sephirah (which is the singular form of the word of which Sephiroth is the plural) is a phase of evolution, and in the language of the Rabbis they are called the Ten Holy Emanations. The paths between them are phases of subjective consciousness, the Paths or grades (Latin, gradus, step) by which the soul unfolds its realisation of the cosmos. The Sephiroth are objective and the Paths are subjective.
Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah, p. 37.
Kabbalah differentiates between the essential nature of the Sephiroth and the Paths, but also maintains their similarity in the divine process by referring to the whole system as thirty-two Paths. We have seen already in earlier chapters on the tarot how the paths represent the initiatory process and in this chapter we will look specifically at the nature of each path in terms of the Tree and the Sepher Yetzirah. We will look at the paths in sets as these groupings allow us to see some of the intricate patterns between the paths in their functioning together as a whole.
As we have seen, the immediate difference between the Sephiroth and the Paths is represented by the glyph of the Tree, which most often indicates the Sephiroth as spheres or concentric circles, and the Paths as lines or channels. We should be reminded that the word Sephirah, the plural of which is Sephiroth, does not mean ‘sphere’, in fact being more accurately translated as a ‘numerical emanation’, and it is important to recall that, like the models of molecules we see in school chemistry books, the Sephiroth or the Paths are not ‘things’, and neither do they have shapes.
Be that as it may, we must depict the process that Kabbalah describes as best we can, and as a network of open circles connected by channels we can demonstrate important properties of the universe. In an early version of what is now known in science as “string theory”, small particles were modelled by an “S-Matrix theory”, and were seen as intermediate states in a network of interactions, where the lines of the matrix were "reaction channels" through which energy flows.[90] In part, it attempted to show that particles are events and not things. Equally, we must see Kabbalah as a dynamic process, a verb and not a noun.
The Interaction Region inside the circles of an S-matrix is "blurred and unspecified" as one scientist put it, just as we might see it in Kabbalah. The Sepher Yetzirah says this of the Sephiroth:
Their end is lost in infinity. The word of God moves in them; leaving and returning ceaselessly like a whirlwind, they execute the divine word in an instant...[91]
The paths, on the other hand, as Kircher puts it, are "luminous roads by which one can attain the hidden centres".[92] That is to say, the paths are the observable symptoms of the process depicted by the Sephiroth, but only through our knowledge of the paths can we come to appreciate the nature of the Sephiroth, which in themselves remain unknowable.
In a sense, we are in the position of playing a cosmic version of the children's' game of Battleships, where it is the crosses we make on the sheet of guesses every time we choose a position where the battleship is not which eventually outline the shape of the hidden vessel.
Magical Initiation is the process of removing the guesses and that which is left, as Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes put it, "however improbable, must be the truth," or at least, certainly narrow down the area which is the truth. The algebra of initiation is that of exhaustion, division and subtraction, not of addition and multiplication.
The classic text dealing with the Paths is that found in the Sepher Yetzirah. However, it reads very much like a series of unintelligible Zen Koans and it may be that they are most accessible by prolonged meditation and intuition, rather than a full-frontal analytical attack.
I offer here a few notes as to their relationships in terms of the Pillars and the Triads. I have used the Golden Dawn correspondences for any tarot references. It should also be noted that the descriptions offered by the text of the Sepher Yetzirah seem to describe some Paths in their descending context and functions, and others in their ascending context. It may be that the Sepher Yetzirah was pieced together from fragmentary notes of larger, oral, commentaries.
Illus. Tree of Life with Path Numbers.
The Pillar of Severity
The Pillar of Severity is composed of Paths 18 and 23, which both indicate the formative nature of the Pillar. Path 18 is described as the "House of Affluence", from which are drawn hidden meanings. This refers to Binah, from which the Path runs, as understanding, and Geburah, as discernment. With these qualities, one can discover the secret arcana or mysteries of universal processes.
The lower Path on the Pillar is that called the "Stable Intelligence", and is "the cause of consistency in all the numerations". This quality comes from the interaction of Geburah, with its defining nature and Hod, with its aspect of reverberation. The stability referred to is depicted in the tarot card attributed to this Path, which is that of the Hanged Man, which shows both judgement, in the gallows, and reverberation, in the hanging or pendulum symbol.
The Pillar of Mercy
The Pillar of Mercy is composed of Paths 16 and 21, the first of which is the "triumphal" or "eternal" Path, connecting Chockmah and Chesed. As the Sephiroth of this Pillar symbolise the expansive, "force" aspect of the Universe, we can see this Path shows the observable results of this expansion. Netzach, into which the twenty-first path leads, is also called "Victory", and of the path it is said that it "rewards those who seek". As Chesed means "loving kindness", and has the same qualities as the magnamanious planet-God Jupiter, this fits with the description of the Path as "receiving divine influences and by benediction influencing all things that exist".
The Middle Pillar
The Middle Pillar
of Equilibrium has three paths which compose it, being Path 13, 25 and 32. In descending order, Path 13 is called "inductive of unity", path 25 the path of "trial", and path 32 the "Governing Intelligence".
The lower path, path 32, is seen in its cosmological aspect as governing the "operation of the seven planets". The tarot card attributed to this path is that of the "Universe", and its meaning is synthesis, indeed some cards show the planets as part of the symbolism of the card. In terms of the ascending process, the Path connects the world of events around us (Malkuth) with our own personality (Yesod) through the ego, and beliefs. Thus, the nature of our beliefs governs our awareness of the seven planets, as symbols of the seven Sephiroth below the Abyss.
The Path leading from Yesod to Tiphareth, one of whose symbols is the crucified god-man, is aptly described as the "first temptation by which god tests the devout". The last temptation is made on upon the cross of Tiphareth and is powerfully portrayed in the film, The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988).
Once Tiphareth has been gained, then for the first time we are brought into direct contact (although still existing in a dualistic or separated mode) with Kether, through Path 13. This path is described as the "substance of glory, it makes known truth to every spirit", and is depicted in this function in Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck ‘High Priestess’, which is attributed to this path. He does warn that "It is important for high initiation to regard Light not as the perfect manifestation of the Eternal Spirit, but rather as the veil that hides that Spirit”.[93]
The Triads
(i) The Paths denoting the activity resulting as the interaction between Kether, Chockmah and Binah are that of Path 11, Path 12 and Path 14. Their names reflect their proximity to the "limitless light" of Ain Soph Aur, being entitled:
