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Mothers, Doubles, Simples Qabalists recognise four ‘Worlds’ that work together to make up the ‘Universe’. The Worlds are called Emanation, Creation, Formation, and Action. I will go into this in more detail later. The 22 Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet – the Paths of the Tree of Life – manifest in the World of Yetzirah, as events, forces, and energies. However, their actual status is unclear; many Qabalists believe they are co-eternal with God. I wouldn’t go that far. However, some letters have affinities with other Worlds. The three Mother Letters have elemental attributes;
These ‘elements’ are not those of the Periodic table, or the Four Elements of the Greeks, or the five so-called ‘elements’ of Taoism. They have strong affinities to the first World, Emanation (Atziluth, תוליצא).
Aleph – א – has the attribute of Air Mem – מ – has the attribute of Water Shin – ש – has the attribute of Fire These Letters can be regarded as manifestations of Atziluth; they represent the Divine Energies that brought the universe into being. Shin and Men can also be viewed as manifestations of Creation (Briah, הירב) The seven Double letters have planetary attributes; Beth – ב – Mercury Gimel – ג – Moon Daleth – ד – Venus Kaph – כ – Jupiter Peh – פ – Mars Resh – ר – Sun Tav – ת – Saturn These Letters can be regarded as manifestations of Briah; they represent the creative process. The twelve Simple Letters have Zodiacal attributes; Heh – ה – Aries Vav – ו – Taurus Zayin – ז – Gemini Cheth – ח – Cancer Teth – ט – Leo Yod – י – Virgo Lamed – ל – Libra Nun – נ – Scorpio Samekh – ס – Sagittarius Ayin – ע – Capricorn Tzaddi – צ – Aquarius Qoph – ק – Pisces These Letters can be regarded as manifestations of Yetzirah; These have proven useful and interesting to me over the years, individually and in various combinations. There are many patterns of association, none (as far as I have discovered) more profound or important than others. I retain a hope that there is a particular, special combination or meaning for the 12, but I haven’t seen it yet.
Mothers - 3, 4 or 5 Elements? Five? In Taoism there are five 'elements'; Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, Wood - although the word 'element' is unfortunate, as they do not have the same significance as the elements in the western tradition. Taoism does not base itself in the causal and generative philosophy beloved of Westerners, but in a transformative philosophy, where things move through the five phases, naturally and inevitably. They are not primal, (elemental) states, prior to and generative of the world, but stages through which everything progresses.Four? The Greeks derived Four Elements; Earth, Air, Fire and Water, from their observations that the primary qualities of matter, as they understood and observed, were whether it was wet or dry, and whether it was cold or hot. All sensory objects have these characteristics in some admixture. They observed that if you heated water with fire, it gave off steam (Air); if you burned wood, it gave off smoke (Air) and left an ash (Earth)If you draw these qualities (hot-cold, wet-dry) on the ends of a diagonal cross, and draw a vertical cross over it, the 'elements' that the Greeks felt must have generated these qualities can be placed between them (so that Fire is between hot and dry, etc.) See Diagram below. These should not be viewed as the 'fire' that we warm ourselves by, or the 'water' we drink; rather these familiar names were applied to unseen primal driving forces, which generate the world as we observe it.
The 'mistake' was in inferring that hot and cold are opposites, rather than measurements of the presence of heat; similarly with wet and dry. 'Earth', regarded in this light, merely reflects the absence of qualities, and 'Air' the presence of both Fire and Water.
In Qabalah, there are only three Elements: They are attributed to the Three Mother Letters - Aleph (Air) Mem (Water) and Shin (Fire). However, Air in this system is not a mixture (or synthesis) of the others, but a separate, single and prior Element, generating the other two. Once again, it is important to remember that we are not talking about the fire, water and air that we perceive around us, but primal entities or forces that precede and generate what we perceive. So Mem and Shin are similar concepts to Yin and Yang in Taoism; and Aleph corresponds to Wu Chi.On the Tree of Life, these Elements represent primal and transcendent influences. They may (and often do) have mundane meanings in particular contexts, but, if one dominates in someone’s makeup, it can produce the type of people described as ‘Saints’ or ‘Buddhas’. The Planetary Attributes A common (and apparently justified) criticism of using the Ptolemaic planets is the later discovery of Uranus and Neptune, thus invalidating the system. In fact, the criticism is invalid. The Ptolemaic system is flawed in many ways, especially when people infer or imply that the planets in some way control our behaviour; but the essence of the system is that human characteristics are divided between (or distributed among) the seven. A system based on 9 (or some other number) of planets might be better or worse, but the ‘Mercury’ in the new system would not be the same as the one in the Ptolemaic system; the Kaleidoscope has been moved, and a new pattern has been formed. On the Tree of Life, while retaining mundane or personal meanings, they work as a creative sequence that describes successful work and other processes. It is of such importance that a section will be devoted to this later in the series. The Zodiacal Attributes These work in beautiful and amazing combinations at times, and only experience will tell the ones for you. Word Combinations
One of the endlessly fascinating aspects of Qabalah is the way that the analaysis of the letters of a word will reveal so much about its meaning. For example, אםת, the Hebrew word for 'Truth', shows that truth has three aspects. Knowing something of the meaning of the individual letters reveals information not otherwise readily available. Later in this series we will see how Hebrew words relate to the Tree, and also how the Tree generates words that reveal its working and nature.
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A. Introduction to the Paths |
