We move to the number-five sefirah, which is the central sefirah on the Pillar of Severity, and therefore the most severe place on the Tree. It is Gevurah, called “severity.” It has also been called Pachad, “fear and trembling.” Finally, it means “judgment.” The word judgment has two meanings. One suggests that discrimination needs to be exercised. How much soft ice cream shall I eat? There has to be containment here. But there is also the implication on the Tree of Life that judgment means being evaluated—judged by God.
Remember always that we are created in God’s image. So our left shoulder and arm are the left shoulder and arm of God. It’s the left hand with which God smites us. It’s the most severe place on the Tree. And it’s associated astrologically with the fiery planet Mars. Gevurah has been called the Great Limiter. Why, in a spiritual system, do we have to have this energy on the Tree? Isn’t spiritual study supposed to be uplifting? Why introduce this harsh energy? Why? Because it’s there! Do you know anybody who has gone through life without experiencing agony? Have you gone through your life so far without experiencing the anguish of Gevurah? It’s impossible. Cardinal to Kabbalistic thinking is the understanding: As above, so below. As below, so above. It’s here—so it’s on the Tree. We’re experiencing it in our lives; therefore, it’s reflected in the Tree of Life. It’s part of the universe. That’s the way it is, unfortunately. Unfortunately? Perhaps. Really, this depends on our perspective.
In mystical Judaism, there is a concept called Gilgul, which means “reincarnation.” For those of us who believe that the soul’s journey extends beyond the life of a single body, a host of questions arise. Let us, for the purposes of our discussion, restrict ourselves to just one of these: Given the facts of pain, deterioration, loss, and death to which we are exposed on the earth plane, why does the soul reincarnate?
One answer suggests that between incarnations the soul (self, spirit, or higher consciousness) looks down at the havoc wrought by it’s behavior during its most recent incarnation and despairs at the ramifications of its choices. It sees how its infractions of karmic law have led to imbalances in the universe, and it cannot rest until it avails itself of the opportunity to make it right. The soul carefully chooses the incarnation that will make it possible to redress balance and correct evils that have resulted from the infractions.
It is at the place of Gevurah that these corrections are made. From the perspective of ego, personality, Gevurah is the place of fear and trembling, the dark night of the soul. But from the perspective of spirit, Gevurah offers the greatest, if the most severe, blessings of the entire Tree. Without its harsh judgment, how could we restore balance? The incarnation—with all of its sorrows—would be wasted.
We can consider from this point of view what is arguably the most misunderstood line of the entire Bible: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. From the viewpoint of our ego consciousness, this is retributive justice. But from a higher view, isn’t this simply a statement of the law of karma? Aren’t we hearing a rule of thumb about how the universe operates? Gevurah, then, is the corrector to breaches of karmic law. If we take the right shoulder and the left shoulder, which are represented by Chesed and Gevurah, and bring them together on the middle pillar, we arrive at the place of the throat chakra, which is the place of communication.
We move next to Tiferet, the sixth sefirah on the Tree, and Tiferet means “beauty.” Tiferet, as you can see, is the exact center of the Tree. And since we’re dealing with a system in which balance and symmetry are so important, you can well understand why Tiferet is called beauty. It is perhaps the most beloved of the sefirot. It is the place where all of the brilliant energies from the higher sefirot and all of the dark energies—the good, rich nutrients of earth that move upward through the Tree—meet. Here soul and body, self and ego, higher consciousness and personality come together. The angels can’t come down this far because they are disincarnate, and the animals can’t come up this far because they lack the necessary conscious awareness. Tiferet, associated astrologically with the Sun and with the heart chakra, is the place of our humanity.
It is also the place of the Messiah. It represents Mount Sinai where, after forty years of wandering, the man Moses climbed to the summit of the mountain. God, satisfied that Moses had come as far as he could, descended as far as was needed for Torah to be given.
Tiferet is also referred to as the place of the sacrificed god. In the Christian religion, it is often called the place of Christ consciousness. Because it was not enough, in the Christian system, for Jesus to say, “Gee, I really feel sorry for all those guys down there. I’d really like to save them. How about it, God?” It didn’t work that way. Jesus had to come down into the world and sacrifice himself in order to save it.
God chose to make Himself incarnate in the person of Jesus so that He could experience what it is to be in a body, what it feels like to wear a crown of thorns, to be crucified, to have one’s side pierced. He had to know from within a body the rage of righteousness, the stench of a leper colony, the loneliness of Gethsemane.
Tiferet is the descent of the divine into the realm of the human, which we see in all mythologies. Orpheus was the love of Euridice, who was tempted down into the underworld by Hades, the god of that realm. Orpheus couldn’t call her from a safe place above the earth: “Hey, Euridice, come on back!” He had to go down into hell to get her. He had to place himself in danger in order to save her.
Tiferet is the place of the wounded healer, a concept on which all the twelve-step programs—AA, Narcanon, Overeaters Anonymous, for example—are based. You’ve got to have been there to help somebody who’s there now. You can’t do it from a detached place. You can’t do it from a safe place.
If I get up in front of an AA meeting and say, “Well, look, I’ve never had a problem with alcohol, but I’d like to tell you what I think about drinking,” I’m going to be booed right out of there, as well I should be. Nobody cares what I think. What do I know? What could I know?
Tiferet is the place of the Bodhisattva, the one who has achieved nirvana and returned in order to help those who have not yet reached that place of peace. It is the place of the guru. It’s the place of the one who, through the loving heart, brings human experience to the help of others.
Finally, Tiferet is the place of paradoxes. It is the place where life is death and death is life. If we cling to life—the life of the ego and the life of our conscious minds—that spells our death. What do we do then, when consciousness comes to an end? We lie in a coffin. Clinging to that kind of life, that ego, that everyday, conscious life, is our death. But death is life. If we’re willing to make the sacrifice of ego consciousness, then we like Jesus will have life everlasting.
Tiferet, as we can see, is a complicated and marvelous place, the place of perfect balance of spirit and matter. It gives a new meaning to the phrase so popular these days, “Get centered.” Tiferet offers us the best way to get centered.
Now we move from Tiferet to Netzach, and in so doing, leave the olam of Beriah, the realm of creation, and enter Yetzirah, the olam of formation. We’re back on the male, energetic side of the Tree. Netzach means “victory” and represents feeling, emotion, and the flow of energy. It is associated with the top of the right hip and the planet Venus. Every relationship, every creative project, every undertaking is energized by Netzach.
We move from Netzach to the eighth sefirah on the Tree, called Hod. What would you think we would need to balance all the feeling, all of the emotion from Netzach? Hod refers to that much maligned part of us called the logical, thinking mind.
Now the mind has gotten a bad rap, I think, because people are aware of the problems it can cause when we use it to the exclusion of other parts of ourselves. The mind, as we all know, makes a fine servant but a poor master. We don’t want the logical part of us making all our decisions and running our lives. But we certainly want clarity when we’re working through issues, analyzing, solving problems.
I don’
t want to be in my logical, thinking mind when I’m listening to Brahms or the sounds of the waves on the shore. But I don’t want to be in my ecstatic mind when I’m analyzing my finances. And I certainly don’t want to be in my mystical state when I’m preparing a lecture. When we’re trying to communicate, we need our logical minds. Hod means “glory,” or “splendor”—which in itself provides insight into mystical Jewish values. The crowning glory and the splendor of the human being is Hod, the mind.
Hod is both the principle and the function of intellect, and it can involve us in deceit, intrigue, illusion, and skepticism. There is that negative side to Hod. But those problems arise for us when? When we get out of balance! There’s a reason why Hod is balanced by Netzach just as there is a reason why Netzach is balanced by Hod. We need both. If we cut ourselves off from our intuition and emotion, we can get involved in illusion, obsession, and deceit. These can occur when the mind doubles back on itself. But if we keep the mind in balance, then it becomes a wonderful servant.
Hod is associated with the planet Mercury, the quick mercurial communicator of the gods. Mercury, the Roman equivalent of Hermes, was the messenger of the gods. In terms of our bodies, Hod is associated with the top of the left hip. The tops of the right and left hips, represented by Netzach and Hod, come together at the place of the solar plexus.
Now we move to the final sefirah in the olam of Yetzirah or formation, Yesod. Yesod is called “the foundation,” and it is associated with the unconscious. What a good name for the unconscious: the foundation. There’s a great deal of psychological truth to that. What we believe, not in the fancy front part of our minds but deep, deep in our unconscious, is what our lives will express. What we hold unconsciously is what will manifest in our lives and what will prove to be the foundation of our lives. I may drive a Rolls Royce and wear designer clothes and live in a mansion in a swanky part of town, but deep inside myself I may not feel very good. I may feel that I’m not very bright, or not so good looking, or not as accomplished as my brother, or whatever. If in my unconscious I feel unworthy, my life will manifest that belief, and sooner or later I’ll crack up the Rolls Royce, lose the house, and destroy every good relationship. I’ll find a way to squirrel every career opportunity. If I believe deep in my unconscious that I’m no good, that I don’t deserve good things, I will find a way to be unhappy all my life. There are people who go through grieving periods, through terrible trials, but within themselves have a sense of their own goodness. Their foundation is positive and strong, happy and joyful, and that is what their lives manifest. Such people are resilient because they know they deserve good things—abundance and success.
You know, it’s really interesting. When I worked in the advertising industry, I sometimes dealt with people who had learned all the new feminist jargon. They would never refer to their secretaries as “girls” and would always be careful to say “Ms.” rather than “Miss” or “Mrs.” But fundamentally they were sexists in their hearts, and you could feel it and see it in the way they treated people.
Again, on the surface, I may not approve of anger and have no conscious awareness of my anger. But if unconsciously I am filled with rage, am I going to come across as a loving person? Probably not! I may say the right things, but I’ll say them through gritted teeth. What we have in our unconscious is the foundation that will manifest in our lives. It’s as simple as that.
Yesod represents our instinct. It is below the place of Hod, intellect. It represents our libido, our desires, and our intuition. Some of you crafty people have already figured out that in the astrological system it would be related to the Moon. It is associated in the chakra system with the axis between the base of the spine and the genitals. There’s a reason why we need to combine these, because the final sefirah, Malchut, represents a departure from the chakra system which I think many of you will find fascinating.
Malchut is the tenth of the sefirot, and it means “the kingdom.” It is associated with the planet Earth, this planet on which we live. It is the material, the incarnate. Malchut is the only sefirah in the olam of Assiyah, the world of action. And Malchut, in terms of the body, refers to the soles of the feet. Why? Because without our feet, as Kabbalist Stephan Hoeller says, we aren’t going anywhere. Without our feet, there is no action.
Here we have an area in which Kabbalistic thinking markedly departs from the Eastern systems. Kabbalistically, the planet Earth, the real world as we know it, the incarnate material world, is not maya. It is not illusion. It is not a distraction. It is extremely important. That is why it is called the kingdom.
We are not here only to sit cross-legged and chant and meditate. Part of the time, sure, but not all of the time. Part of the time we’re meant to get out there and do something, make things happen.
Judaism traditionally raises the question, “How are we to live in the presence of God?” I know how I used to behave when I was a school teacher and the principal came to visit the classroom. I know how I used to behave when I was selling advertising space for magazines and my publisher would come out from New York. I wanted to be prompt, look my best, and make sure that my appointments were all lined up properly. He was just a publisher. But God is God, and He’s always in town. How are we to live in the presence of God? The traditional Jewish answer is threefold: prayer, study, and good works. Where do we pray? We pray in Malchut. Where do we study? We study in Malchut. And where do we perform good works? Where is the only place in which it’s possible to do good? Malchut! This planet Earth, where we are right now.
Now we can reraise the question of why, among the four olams (the world of emanation, the world of creation, the world of formation, and the world of action), is there only one sefirah in the world of action? The answer is, because it is so important. I would go so far as to say that the first nine sefirot are like the first nine months of a being’s life—gestation. Pregnancy is meant to be followed by birth. Anything which does not find its way past the first nine sefirot is stillborn. Whatever the potential is, whatever the power is, if it doesn’t find expression in this world, on this Earth, who profits by it?
There is work to be done in this world. There are homeless people who need to be sheltered. There are hungry people who need to be fed. There are scientific discoveries crying out to be made. Somebody’s got to find a cure for AIDS; somebody’s got to find a cure for cancer. We need energy sources that will protect our planet, ways to ease drought, famine, and poverty.
These gifts are not going to be carried by a choir of angels descending upon us, singing “Glory, Glory, Glory, God Almighty!” They will be provided by scientists working in their labs so long that they are a little “pitty,” people who need a shower so badly that you wouldn’t want to socialize with them. People obsessed by their work. It’s all going to happen right here on planet Earth with all of its limitations, created by human beings with all of our limitations, and with our feet, like the roots of the Kabbalistic Tree, in the earth. Malchut may be the densest sefirah, through which the light has the most trouble passing, but it is also the strongest. It’s where the work of the world gets done. And it is so important, this world of ours, that it has an olam entirely to itself.
It is our hope in these studies not to find a particular spot on the Tree with which we particularly identify and say, “This where I want to be. This is where I am going to stay. This is the best place, and I’ve now achieved it. I’m never leaving.” We don’t say this because we can’t. That’s not the way the universe functions, and that’s not the way life is. We know that from our personal experiences. How many of us have reached a point over and over and over again where we feel that we have finally learned the truth, or we have finally worked out the relationship, or we have finally decided on the most rewarding way to spend our time—just before everything changes? Wherever we are, however desirable and long sought the place, if we are standing with our knees locked, we will fall over because the universe is not static. The universe is always in motion. Wh
at we need to do is keep the weight on the balls of our feet so that whatever it is the universe offers us, we are in a position to respond to it. And sometimes that requires being in a severe place, or being in a painful place on the Tree and in our lives.
This constitutes the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. As we turn our attention to the Tarot, we can only be amazed at the ways in which these two totally distinct and disparate systems of thought converge, leading us to a single great teaching.
For a start, we must be struck by the fact that there are ten sefirot on the Tree of Life and ten pip, or numbered cards, in each suit of the Tarot. This numerical association alone invites us to connect the ace through ten of each suit with the sefirah corresponding to its number. Keter, as the first sefirah on the Tree, corresponds to the aces, for example, while the fifth sefirah, Gevurah, lays claim to the fives, Hod to the eights, and so on. We will find as we explore these connections card by card that the associations do not seem to be those of chance. Rather, there seems to be an intentionality, a rightness, even a clear fit in some cases between the sefirah and card that share the same number.
This synchronicity, in Jungian terms, benefits the student of Tarot in a number of ways. First, it separates the forty pip cards from the sixteen court cards, making each more conceptually manageable. Instead of being accosted by fifty-six random images to memorize, we begin with forty that break neatly into four groups of ten. Ten cards numbered one through ten, each of which seems to have a sefirah governing it, is a reader-friendly proposition compared to fifty-six disorganized images clamoring for our attention.
Tarot and the Tree of Life Page 6
