by Jay Weidner
FOUR
THE ANCIENT ILLUMINATED ASTRONOMY
HEBREW ILLUMINISM
In the divinely rebuilt New Jerusalem, as described in Revelation 21 and 22, the Tree of Life will stand on the banks of the river of the waters of life. This suggests that the new heaven and the new earth, promised to John in the Book of Revelation, would, in fact, be a literal return to the Garden of Paradise. The chiliasts thought so. They saw in this divine re-creation a chance to indulge in the innocent joys of a purified humanity. They quite naturally assumed that, since the re-created paradise had no Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—the original cause of the fall of man into sinfulness— there could be no such thing as sin in the New Jerusalem.
Origen and the other fathers of the early Church disliked this interpretation.1 But even they could not completely remove the idea of a transformed reality, complete with a transformed body, from the orthodox eschatology. The Gnostic view was that matter could be redeemed, or animated, by an apocalyptic event. The apocalypse, then, was a chance for the sparks of light to return to the Light. This Gnostic concept remained at the heart of the official orthodox apocalypse.2
Christianity emerged from the political turmoil of first-century Palestine, which was a truly apocalyptic moment in Jewish history. Christianity did not become a universalist religion until after the “end of the world” for the Jews, which occurred six and half centuries to the day after Nebuchadnezzar’s armies destroyed Solomon’s Temple when Roman forces under the soon-to-be-emperor Titus sacked and burned the Temple of Herod and drove the Jews from Israel. This was an end of the world far greater than the Babylonian captivity. Cyrus the Great allowed the Jews to return from Babylon after a generation or so. The New Babylon on the Tiber, Rome, never allowed the Jews to return. One thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight years, and many more apocalypses, would pass before a Jewish nation returned to Palestine.
We saw how Christianity slowly became an orthodoxy and then, miraculously, the imperial religion of the hated Romans. By the late sixth century, when the Church was firmly in the driver’s seat of the Roman military machine, Judaism was the only tolerated nonorthodox form of religion. This does not mean that the Roman Christians saw the Jews as equals—it was against the law to intermarry and for Jews to own real property such as land—but they were at least accepted as serving one useful function in society, that of scapegoats. Since the Christians could no longer blame the Romans for Christ’s death, the blame shifted to the Jews. This created the basic rationalization for one thousand years of Christian persecution. The origin of anti-Semitism lies in the Church’s institutionalization of the apocalypse.3
After the fall of the Temple in 70 C.E., the largest Jewish communities were centered in Alexandria in Egypt and the old city of Babylon, in Mesopotamia. Judaism was probably saved by the actions of Rabbi Johanen ben Zakkai, who had himself smuggled out of Jerusalem during the siege. A few Jewish communities remained in Palestine, most notably the spiritual community at Safed, near present-day Tel Aviv, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. The mystical Jews of Safed would retain their foothold in the Holy Land right down to the twentieth century.
Unlike Christianity, which renounced its mystical origins as heresy, Judaism retained a powerful connection with its mystical roots. Our earliest alchemical text, “Isis the Prophetess to Her Son Horus,” points to an Egypto-Hebraic source for its transformational philosophy. Interestingly enough, a Hebrew contemporary of the author of the “Isis the Prophetess” story, Rabbi Nehuniah ben HaKana, revealed to his students the magical technology behind these transformational processes. In the later centuries of the Diaspora, his teachings would form the basis of the traditional Kabbalah.
Compared to the anonymous author of “Isis the Prophetess,” Rabbi Nehuniah ben HaKana was a well-known and respected Jewish sage who had studied with Rabbi Johanen ben Zakkai. The few times his name is mentioned in the Talmud leave no doubt about the important position he occupied in the early Talmudic era; his mystical teachings inspired a whole generation of Jewish sages. From the perspective of our inquiry into the origins of alchemy, however, his importance lies in his authorship of the teaching document known as the Bahir.
The oldest and most influential of all kabbalistic texts, the Bahir, or “Illumination” (from Job 37:21—”And now they do not see light, it is illumination [bahir] in the skies,”) was also called the “Midrash of Rabbi Nehuniah,” to emphasize his authorship.4 This is unusual, since Rabbi Nehuniah is quoted only once, in the first verse. A Rabbi Amorai, however, perhaps a pseudonym for Rabbi Nehuniah, is cited nine times. The word amorai means “speakers” and indicates that he was the spokesman for a committee or group of sages. If this was Rabbi Nehuniah, then he was speaking for the whole tradition as well as his immediate group.
Although the Bahir is the primary text of the Kabbalah, it does not use that term. The word kabbalah, from the Hebrew root QBL, meaning “received” or “given,” came into fashion much later, when the teachings of the first-century mystics were indeed just “received traditions.” The sages of the Bahir preferred the more ancient term Maaseh Merkabah, literally “Workings of the Chariot.”5 The name connotes an active mystical experience as opposed to a received tradition. The Bahir combines the ideas of the work of creation, the animating of matter, with the radical concept of a celestial projection as a way to return to the divine source. By juxtaposing these ideas, the Bahir brings us closer to the secret at the heart of alchemy.
THE TELI, THE CYCLE, AND THE HEART: SERPENTS IN THE SKY
The key concept at the heart of Kabbalah is the Tree of Life, the Etz Chaim, which is described in kabbalistic creation texts such as the Sefer Yetzirah. As shown in figure 4.1, the Tree of Life is a diagram that pictures reality as the intersection of four great realms or levels of abstraction.
A geometric pattern emerges from the intersecting lines of the Tree like a moiré pattern in a holographic projection. Figure 4.2 shows twenty-two paths, processes, or states of becoming connecting ten localities, spheres, or sefirot. The entire diagram was thought to describe the nature of creation, God’s artistic technique, if you will. But its true importance to the sages was its application to the human condition.
Figure 4.1. The Tree of Life formed from the overlapping of four circles or spheres of abstraction.
As God is supposed to have made man in his image and likeness, so man was thought to contain, in microcosm, the entire Tree of Life. Some medieval Kabbalists used the concepts in the Sefer Yetzirah to create an artificial form of life known as the golem, according to the legends about this being from Prague and Warsaw. To Western esotericists, the Tree of Life functioned much like the kundalini diagrams of the Hindu mystics. By mapping the internal power centers, and then projecting outward and aligning them with the forces of nature, the magician sought to reenact the process of creation and so become, with God, a co-creator of the universe.
The sefirot and the paths are arranged in a few basic patterns (see fig. 4.3). The top three sefirot, Kether, Chokmah, and Binah (Crown, Wisdom, and Understanding), form a triangular motif that is then inverted and projected downward through the pattern. The first inverted triangle, Chesed, Gevurah, and Tiferet (Mercy, Strength, and Beauty), is repeated by the third and last triangle, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod (Victory, Splendor, and Foundation). The whole pattern is then resolved by, and enfolded into, the last sefirah, Malkuth (Kingdom).
Figure 4.2. The complete Tree of Life, showing the twenty-two paths and the planetary relationships of the sefirot. (Drawing by Darlene from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn)
Figure 4.3. The threefold pattern on the Tree.
Each of these triangular patterns represents one of the realms or levels of abstraction. The repetition of the pattern also creates three columns or pillars on the Tree, as shown in figure 4.4. From left to right, the three columns are Mercy, Transformation (note that this column connects Kether with Malkuth, heaven to earth), and Severity. The
se repetitions of three can also be seen as the three persons of the trinity, the law of threes, and the dialectical trio of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
The Bahir adds that portions of the celestial sphere can be equated with the spheres of each sefirah, or globe, on the Tree of Life. In verse 179 of the Bahir we learn that our physical world “is like a mustard seed in a ring.” In a sphere around the ring are the ten spheres and their animating statements, ten times the phrase “And God said . . .” is used in Genesis, which verse 179 locates in space around a center point, supposedly the mustard seed.6
Figure 4.4. The three pillars on the Tree.
We learned that there are Ten Spheres and Ten Sayings. Each sphere has its saying. It is not surrounded by it, but rather, it surrounds it. This [physical] world is like a mustard seed inside a ring. Why? Because of the Spirit that blows upon it, through which it is sustained. If this spirit were to be interrupted for even a moment, the world would be annihilated.7
This, of course, suggests the parable of the mustard seed found in Matthew 13:31–33 and Mark 4:30–32: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and planted in his field. Though it was the smallest of seeds, yet when it grows it becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.” In Matthew, Jesus goes on to relate the parable of the yeast, a metaphor for the kingdom of heaven as a transformative force that spreads throughout all matter. Matthew ends the section with another quote from Psalms, explaining why Jesus spoke in parables: “I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.”8
Verses 63, 95, and 106 of the Bahir describe the Tree that grows from this mustard seed in terms of the ancient ideas later written down in the Sefer Yetzirah and the Sefer Zohar, two books that are part of the Hebrew kabbalistic tradition.9 We must remember that works such as the Bahir were written for the initiated few; if we take them literally, we are sure to misunderstand their meaning.
63: The heart [lev] is thirty-two. These are concealed, and with them the world was created. What are these 32? He said: These are the 32 paths. . . .
95: The Blessed Holy One has a single Tree and it has twelve diagonal boundaries. . . . They continually spread forever and ever; they are the “arms of the world.” . . .
106: Rabbi Berachiah sat and expounded: What is the Axis [teli]? This is the likeness that I saw before the Blessed One. . . . What is the Sphere? That is the Womb. What is the heart? It is that regarding which it has been written “unto the heart of heaven.” In it are included the 32 mystical paths of wisdom.10
These verses from the Bahir make the pitfall of literality quite apparent. Attributed to Rabbi Amorai, the spokesman for the Bahir tradition as a whole, verse 95 reveals the structure of the Cube of Space and the jewel of the celestial Tree within it. This cubic structure, “the arms of the world,” is based on the ancient concepts of the axis, the sphere, and the heart. If we know the secret of their meaning, then this is one of the most straightforward verses in the Bahir. Without the key, however, it is merely an incomprehensible string of numbers. The very secret of alchemy lies in the symbolic images of the axis, the sphere, and the heart, which are an ancient, perhaps even pre-catastrophe, astronomical description of the cosmic mill.
The first three verses of the sixth chapter of Rabbi Akiva’s Sefer Yetzirah supply the key to this astronomical gnosis, although in an oblique fashion. The first verse informs us that as proof of the existence of the Tree of Life, the twelve, the seven, and the three, “He set them in the Teli, the Cycle and the Heart.”
These are Three Mothers . . . And seven planets and their hosts, and twelve diagonal boundaries a proof of this true witness in the Universe, Year, Soul and a rule of twelve and seven and three: He set them in the Teli, the cycle and the Heart.11
The secret lies in the mysterious word teli. It occurs in neither the Torah nor the Talmud, although it is used in the Bahir. There is considerable dispute among scholars as to its precise meaning. The only similar word in the Bible is a single reference to some kind of weapon in Genesis.12 Apparently, from the root of the word talah, “to hang,” it could have been some kind of bolo, or a weight suspended on a rope for throwing. This reading suggests that the Bahir is talking about the celestial axis around which the heavens rotate, a kind of imaginary string from which the celestial globe hangs, as well as a point around which the weight orbits as the bolo is swung.
But what is the string connected to? An ancient midrash, “The Prayers of Rabbi ‘In The Beginning,’ ” tells us that it “hangs [by a thread] from the fin of the Leviathan.” This ancient serpent can only be the constellation Draco, the Pole Serpent mentioned in Job 26:13, “By His Spirit the heavens were calmed, His hand pierced the Pole Serpent,” and in Second Isaiah 27:1, “On that day [the Day of Judgment] with His great sharp sword, God will visit and overcome the Leviathan, the Pole Serpent, and the Leviathan, the Coiled Serpent, and He will kill the dragon of the sea.” It is important to note that three such dragons are mentioned here.
To understand these words, we must look up at the stars. We can all find the Pole Star, Polaris, in the tail of Ursa Minor, the Little Bear. This marks our North Celestial Pole, directly above the North Pole of our planet. There is another pole in the sky, however, and that is the pole of the ecliptic, the path of the sun as it passes through the zodiac. The earth’s axis is tilted at 23.5 degrees away from the ecliptic. This tilt causes the celestial pole above our planetary pole to describe a great circle in the sky over long periods of time. For example, in 4500 B.C.E., Thuban, a star in the tail of Draco, marked the North Celestial Pole, which has, over time, shifted to Polaris.
The ecliptic pole, however, does not change, since the path of the sun through the sky never changes. Around this point, which has no star visible to the naked eye to mark it, is the constellation Draco, the Great Dragon, which spirals through all of the zodiacal signs. The stars appear to hang, talah, from it. Draco thereby becomes the Teli (fig. 4.5), which the Sefer Yetzirah (6:3) tells us, is over the universe “like a king on his throne.”13 This is perhaps an echo of an ancient form of worship of the God Most High identified with Baal, which predated the arrival of the Hebrews in Palestine. This serpent is also the serpent of the Garden climbing its way up the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the brazen serpent used by Moses to heal the plagues in the wilderness, and even Hermes’ caduceus staff.
The Gnostic Ophites, who worshipped the serpent in the Garden of Eden for giving us the gift of knowledge that provided an escape from the Demiurge, formulated the image of a snake spiraling around an egg. In simple terms, this is Draco coiled around the ellipse made by the movement of the North Celestial Pole. The Teli here would be the axis of the ecliptic poles through the head and tail of the dragon and the center of the celestial sphere. This is the first dragon, the Pole Serpent.
Figure 4.5. A, The constellation Draco in early Hebrew star charts; B, the Teli appearing as a serpent with gaping mouth. (From the commentary by Rabbi Eleazer Rok of Worms, 1160–1237)
There are, however, two other ways to interpret the dragon-axis of the Teli. Medieval Hebrew astronomers used the term teli to denote the inclination of the orbit of a planet from the ecliptic. In the case of the moon, this allows one to track eclipses. Eclipses occur only when the sun and moon arrive at the moon’s nodes, or the head and tail of the dragon to the ancient astronomers, at the same time, as shown in figure 4.6. This happens roughly every six months. Solar eclipses were seen as occasions when, metaphorically, the dragon caught and swallowed the sun for a period of time. The concept of ascending and descending nodes as an axis, the head and tail of the dragon, or Teli, was also used with the other planets. The major such Teli or axis for the sun is formed by its solstice standstills, which are also the points where the celestial equator crosses the ecliptic in this precessional epoch. This axis can be seen as the second dragon, the Coiled Serpent.
Figure 4.6. The lunar dragon per
ched between the two circles formed by the orbits of the sun and the moon. (From Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia)
And there is still another way to look at the concept of the Teli. If we think of the Milky Way as the Leviathan because of the way that it snakes across the night sky through the year, then this third Teli, yet another dragon-axis, becomes the galactic axis, running through the ecliptic from Scorpio/Sagittarius to Taurus/Gemini; see fig. 4.7. This is the third and final dragon. Like the ecliptic axis, the galactic axis is constant and unmoving. Between these two pillars, or perpendicular axes, lies the coiled dragon of precession, spinning slowly backward through time, moving one degree of arc every seventy-two years. Knowledge of the backward march of the precession caused by the earth’s tilt constituted the great secret of many ancient cultures as different as Greece and the Maya of Mexico.14
A Talmudic example makes this even clearer: “The storm wind hangs [talah] between the arms of God like an amulet.”15 The hanging is, of course, the Teli. The storm wind is the slowly backward-turning spiral of precession and a good metaphor for the mystical experience itself. The prophet Nahum (1:3) declares, “His way is in the whirlwind,” and Psalms 50:3 agrees that to experience God is to plunge into the tempest that surrounds Him. The arms of the universe are the unmoving Teli, the ecliptic and galactic axes, from which the initiatory spiral of the equinoxes is suspended like an amulet. It is hard to overestimate the value of the knowledge of one’s location in space and in time that these three axes provided. It would also seem as if these axes were creating an address for Earth, the purpose of which remains a mystery.
