Each issue of the Rosicrucian Digest provides members and all interested readers with a compendium of materials regarding the ongoing flow of the Rosicrucian Timeline. The articles, historical excerpts, art, and literature included in this Digest span the ages, and are not only interesting in themselves, but also seek to provide a lasting reference shelf to stimulate continuing study of all of those factors which make up Rosicrucian history and thought. Therefore, we present classical background, historical development, and modern reflections on each of our subjects, using the many forms of primary sources, reflective commentaries, the arts, creative fiction, and poetry.
This magazine is dedicated• to all the women and men throughout the ages who have contributed to and perpetuated the wisdom of the Rosicrucian, Western esoteric, Tradition.
May we ever be •worthy of the light with which we have been entrusted.
In this issue, we explore• the tradition received from Kabbalah, from its ancient beginnings to its practical application in the present day.
Rosicrucian Digest No. 2 2012 Page ii No. 2 - 2012 Vol. 90 - No. 2 Peter Kingsley, Ph.D. “Paths of the Ancient Sages: A Pythagorean History” Kabbalah: A Brief Overview 2 Giulia Minicuci and Mary Jones, S.R.C.Joshua “P Maggid,ythagoras Ph.D., the FRC Teacher: From Samos to Metapontum” Official Magazine of the Introduction to the Sefer Yetzirah 8 Worldwide Aryeh Kaplan Rosicrucian Order Sepher Yetzirah 11
The Legend of the Lost Word 17 Established in 1915 by the Supreme RuthGrand Phelps, Lodge S.R.C. of the English“The SchoolLanguage of Pythagoras”Ralph M. Lewis, FRC Jurisdiction, AMORC, Rosicrucian Anonymous Park, San Jose, “The CA Golden95191. Verses of Pythagoras”Three Kabbalistic Meditations from 20 the Sepher Yetzirah AntoineCopyright Fabre 2012 d’Olivet, by the Supreme “EGrandxcerpt from Examination of the Golden Verses” Lodge of AMORC, Inc. All rights Julie Scott, SRC Hughreserved. McCague, Republication Ph.D., of F.R.C.any portion “Pythagoreans and Sculptors: The Canon of Polykleitos Melanieof Rosicrucian Richards, Digest M.Mus., is prohibited S.R.C. “PMasculineythagoras and FeminineMusic” Symbolism in 27 without prior written permission of the Kabbalah Lisa publisher.Spencer, M.A.O.M., S.R.C. “The Neo-Pythagoreans at the Porta Maggiore in Lloyd Abrams, Ph.D., FRC Rome” ROSICRUCIAN DIGEST (ISSN #0035–8339) is published bi-annually Jeanfor Guesdon, $12.00 per S.R.Cyear, single copies $6.00,“Silence” Pico della Mirandola and the Cabala 35 by the Grand Lodge of the English Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, D. Phil. FraterLanguage X, Jurisdiction,“Music AMORC, of the Spheres and Pythagorean Numerology” Inc., at 1342 Naglee Ave., San Jose, Ben CAFinger, 95191. POSTMASTER:“Apollonius: Send Man orThe Myth?” Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix 41 Ralphaddress M. Lewis,changes F.R.C.to ROSICRUCIAN “Reviewing Christian our Acts” Rebisse, FRC DIGEST at 1342 Naglee Ave., San Jose, CA 95191–0001. Staff of the Rosicrucian Research LibraryThe Kabbalah:“A Pythagorean Secret Tradition Bookshelf” of the West 44 Papus
Kabbalah and Contemporary Cosmology 48 Daniel C. Matt, Ph.D.
Page 1 Kabbalah: A Brief Overview Joshua Maggid, Ph.D., FRC
here are strong connections with traditional Jewish Kabbalah out of their Kabbalah in Rosicrucianism and religious context and presents them as TMartinism, and Kabbalah remains a collection of practical techniques for an important aspect of the teachings of finding happiness, fulfillment, prosperity, the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC and the relationships, etc. Traditional Martinist Order. In this article, Another common way of classifying Joshua Maggid, a longtime Rosicrucian and different types of Kabbalah is according to Martinist who has studied Kabbalah for many the kinds of activities involved. years, presents a brief overview of Kabbalah, including Jewish, Christian, and Hermetic “Theoretical Kabbalah” or “Theosophical Kabbalah. Kabbalah” includes a system of metaphysics, a description of the inner For those beginning to learn about it, workings of Divinity and how it interacts Kabbalah can be difficult and confusing. with the material world, and methods of Different books say different things. Any deriving esoteric interpretations of the two books on Kabbalah may address Holy Scriptures.3 completely different topics, or they “Meditative Kabbalah” consists of a may provide conflicting definitions and wide variety of practices aimed at attaining interpretations of the same material. In higher states of consciousness, exploring the addition, authors use different English spiritual realm, encountering the Divine, spellings for the same Hebrew terms. and receiving new spiritual insights.4 This One reason for this is that there are is also referred to as “Mystical Kabbalah” several different systems or traditions and “Prophetic Kabbalah.” that all refer to themselves as “Kabbalah.” “Practical Kabbalah” refers to theurgy There is Jewish Kabbalah, Christian and magic, attempting to influence the 1 Kabbalah, and Hermetic Kabbalah. Divine Realm and produce practical Christian and Hermetic Kabbalah borrow effects in the material world. To some concepts, terms, and techniques from extent, however, these distinctions can be Jewish Kabbalah, but they may use them somewhat arbitrary. Some modern authors differently, and they incorporate elements in the Hermetic or Magical tradition from other traditions. Even within see magic more as a system of spiritual traditional Jewish Kabbalah, because it development rather than an exercise of has existed over many centuries and in personal power.5 different parts of the world, there have developed a variety of different systems, Jewish Kabbalah 2 Rosicrucian schools, and methods. In recent years, Some authors apply the word Digest there has also appeared a kind of “New “Kabbalah” to all of Jewish mysticism, No. 2 Age Kabbalah,” which takes elements of going back thousands of years, including 2012 Page 2 the Merkavah tradition and even the of the Zohar were first circulated in Spain Biblical prophets. Others reserve the term by Rabbi Moshe de Leon in the 1290s. He “Kabbalah” for the specific form of Jewish claimed that he found them, and that they mysticism that began around the twelfth were written by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and thirteenth centuries CE in southern in the second century CE. Academic France and in Spain. That was when the scholars generally believe that the Zohar word “Kabbalah” was first used to refer to was actually written by de Leon himself, these writings and activities. or possibly by a group with which he was Merkavah Mysticism (The Work of associated. It may have incorporated or the Chariot) is sometimes classified as expanded upon earlier oral traditions. pre-Kabbalistic or as Early Kabbalah. Its Mostly written in a form of Aramaic, dates are usually given as starting around much of the Zohar is extremely arcane and the second century BCE and continuing notoriously difficult to understand. for about a thousand years. These mystics would meditate and send their souls upward, proceeding through a series of seven holy palaces or chambers. Each chamber provides a different spiritual experience. They hoped to eventually reach the seventh and highest chamber and receive a divine vision like the one described by the prophet Ezekiel [1:1-28]. The Sefer Yetzirah6 (The Book of Formation) is often called the oldest Kabbalistic text.7 It describes in detail how God used the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet to create everything in the universe. When properly interpreted, it can also be read as a meditation manual that describes a number of meditation techniques using the Hebrew letters. Traditionally attributed to the Biblical Statue of Moshe de Leon in Guadalajara, Spain. patriarch Abraham, the origin of the Sefer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_de_leon Yetzirah is unknown, but some date it to around the second or third century CE. In the sixteenth century, the city of The Sefer ha Zohar8 (The Book of Safed (Tzfat), in what is now Israel, was a Splendor) is generally acknowledged to be major center of the flourishing of Kabbalah. the most important Kabbalistic writing. Many important figures emerged in Safed Not a single book, but a collection at that time, but the most influential figure of books, the Zohar contains esoteric for Kabbalah was Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534- interpretations of the Holy Scriptures and 1572), often referred to as “the Ari” or descriptions of the inner workings of the “the Arizal.” He provided a new approach Divine Realm. Much of it is in the form of to understanding and interpreting the stories about Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and Zohar, and he constructed a very detailed his companions, traveling around the Holy description of the creation of the universe, Land and discussing the hidden meanings the divine emanations, and the process of of the scriptures. Manuscripts of portions reincarnation.9
Page 3 During the European Enlightenment Giovanni Pico della Mirandola of the eighteenth century, science and (1463-1494) had books on Kabbalah rationality came to the fore, and interest translated from Hebrew into Latin, and in mysticism diminished. In Judaism, he also wrote books on Kabbalah. He the failure of the messianic Sabbatean argued that the Catholic Church should movement in the seventeenth century incorporate Kabbalah and magic into had discredited Kabbalah in the eyes of Christian theology. Pico believed that, by many, and mysticism generally lost its employing Kabbalistic methods of esoteric appeal. While Kabbalah was attacked interpretation, he could use the Hebrew and suppressed by the dominant forces, Scriptures to prove the truth of Christian a form of Kabbalah was perpetuated by teachings such as the divinity of Jesus the Hassidic movement starting in the and the doctrine of the Trinity. One of eighteenth century in Eastern Europe. his famous “Nine Hundred Theses” was: Hassidism conveyed Kabbalah in a “There is no science that assures us more somewhat popularized form that allowed of the divinity of Christ than magic and for encountering the Divine in nature Cabala.”11 and everyday life rather than exclusively through scriptural study and complex meditative techniques. Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) was a Jewish philosopher and historian who founded the modern academic study of Kabbalah. Born and raised in Germany, he later emigrated to what is now Israel, where he became the first Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Scholem, and the students he trained and influenced, helped to make Kabbalah widely available to the lay public.
Christian Kabbalah
In the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, during the European Renaissance, Kabbalistic writings were translated from Hebrew into Latin and Statue of Giordano Bruno in the Campo dei Fiori in became widely available to Christian Rome, where he was burned at the stake in 1600. http://www.glebedigital.co.uk/blog/?p=999 scholars. Kabbalistic concepts and methods were adopted by some Christian Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), a theologians, giving rise to what is Christian scholar who studied Greek and called Christian Kabbalah.10 Christian Hebrew, was influenced by the work of Kabbalists also assimilated aspects of the Pico della Mirandola. He wrote books Hermetic and Platonic writings, which in Latin on Kabbalah12 and argued that were also translated into Latin during this Kabbalah should be accepted by the period, associating Christian Kabbalah Church because it proved the truth of Rosicrucian with Hermetic magic and Neoplatonist Christian teachings and could be used to Digest No. 2 theurgy. convert Jews to Catholicism. 2012 Page 4 Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Hermetic Kabbalah Nettesheim (1486-1535) drew extensively In the seventeenth and eighteenth from Kabbalah throughout his Three Books centuries, as it developed in underground of Occult Philosophy,13 a very influential esoteric movements, Christian Kabbalah compendium of Western occultism and gradually incorporated more pagan magic. elements and alchemical symbolism. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was a By the late nineteenth century, the Dominican friar who studied the works term “Hermetic Kabbalah” was used to of Pico, Reuchlin, and Agrippa, and wrote distinguish it from the Christian Kabbalah several books himself.14 He traveled around of the Renaissance. Europe trying to find a royal patron who Alphonse Louis Constant, writing would support him in his quest to have the under the name of Eliphas Levi (1810- Church adopt Kabbalah and magic. Bruno 1875), connected the cards of the Tarot did not find the support he sought, and he deck with the letters of the Hebrew made the mistake of returning to Rome, Alphabet, the ten Sefirot of the Kabbalistic 19 where he was arrested by the Inquisition Tree of Life, and the Sefer Yetzirah. and burned at the stake for heresy in 1600. One of the most familiar names from that era is Dr. Gerard Encausse, known Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636- as Papus (1868-1916). He was involved 1689) translated parts of the Zohar and in several esoteric societies and was a co- other Kabbalistic works from Hebrew into founder of the Ordre Martiniste (Martinist Latin in a compendium called Kabbala Order) and the Kabbalistic Order of the Denudata (The Kabbalah Unveiled). Rose-Croix, whose membership was At first, Christian Kabbalah was a limited to Martinists who had attained public movement seeking recognition the S.I. degree, and was structured by the Catholic Church. The Church around three degrees named Bachelor never accepted it, and finally suppressed of Kabbalah, Master of Kabbalah, and it, but it was perpetuated in esoteric Doctor of Kabbalah.20 His books include movements including Rosicrucianism,15 The Qabalah: Secret Tradition of the West.21 Freemasonry,16 and Martinism. The best known and most influential In her history of The Occult Philosophy in of the hermetic occult societies was the the Elizabethan Age, Frances Yates says that Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, “‘Christian Cabala’ and ‘Rosicrucianism’ which was founded in England in the may be synonymous.”17 She goes on to late 1800s. Its focus was Ceremonial say that Magic, and it included considerable The philosophy of Christian Kabbalistic material along with other Cabala as expressed by Giorgi and mystical and magical traditions.22 S. L. Agrippa is very close to the so-called MacGregor Mathers, who was one of the Rosicrucian philosophy, as expressed order’s founders, translated Knorr von in the Rosicrucian manifestos and Rosenroth’s Kabbalah Unveiled from Latin by Robert Fludd . . . We can now into English.23 better understand the history of Dion Fortune (1890-1946) was a Rosicrucianism by linking it with the member of several esoteric and occult history of Christian Cabala as carried groups, and later formed her own into the Elizabethan age.18 organization, called “The Fraternity of the Inner Light” (later renamed “The Society of the Inner Light”). Her most famous and influential book is The Mystical Qabalah.24 Page 5 Conclusions Because of the wide variety of ideas and There are strong connections practices that have been included under with Kabbalah in Rosicrucianism and the term “Kabbalah,” when reading books Martinism, and Kabbalah remains an on this topic, it can be very helpful to important aspect of the teachings of the identify the specific tradition and branch Rosicrucian Order, AMORC and the of Kabbalah that the author is presenting. Traditional Martinist Order.
ENDNOTES
1. In books on Christian Kabbalah, “Kabbalah” is 10. Joseph Dan, ed., The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish generally spelled with a “C” (e.g., Cabala), probably Mystical Books & Their Christian Interpreters because the original sources were written in Latin. (Cambridge: Harvard College Library, 1997). Hermetic Kabbalah books tend to spell it with 11. S. A. Farmer, trans., Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 an initial “Q” (e.g., Qabalah). Books on Jewish Theses (1486) (Tempe: Medieval & Renaissance Texts Kabbalah most often use the initial letter “K,” & Studies, 2008), 497. possibly because of early books written in German. 12. Johann Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah: De While these conventions are not always observed, an Arte Cabalistica, trans. Martin and Sarah Goodman author’s spelling can often be a clue to which system (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993). the book is presenting. For the sake of simplicity, 13. Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, Three except for direct quotations from other sources, only Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. James Freake, ed. the spelling “Kabbalah” is used in this article. & annotated by Donald Tyson (St. Paul: Llewellyn 2. For a general survey, see Perle Epstein, Kabbalah: The Publications, 2000). Way of the Jewish Mystic (Boston: Shambhala, 2001). 14. Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic For a brief and accessible historical synopsis, see the Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, DVD, Decoding the Past: Secrets of Kabbalah (The 1991). History Channel, 2006). 15. Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the 3. E.g., Kim Zetter, Simple Kabbalah (Conari Press, Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge, 2001), 197- 2000; distributed by Red Wheel/Weiser, York Beach, 205. ME). 16. Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment 4. E.g., Aryeh Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah (York (London: Routledge, 2002), 262-277. Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1982). 17. Yates, Occult Philosophy, 105. 5. E.g., Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah (York 18. Ibid., 195. Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1984). 19. Eliphas Levi, The Book of Splendours: The Inner 6. Isidor Kalisch, trans., Sepher Yezirah: A Book on Mysteries of Qabalism (York Beach, ME: Samuel Creation (San Jose: Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, Weiser, 1984), 130-131. 2002). Aryeh Kaplan, trans., Sefer Yetzirah: The Book 20. Christian Rebisse, Rosicrucian History and Mysteries of Creation, rev. ed. (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, (San Jose: Grand Lodge of the English Language 1997). Jurisdiction, AMORC, 2005), 138. 7. E.g., Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, ix. 21. Papus, The Qabalah: Secret Tradition of the West, trans. 8. Arthur Green, A Guide to the Zohar (Stanford: W. N. Schors (York Beach, ME: Red Wheel/Weiser, Stanford University Press, 2004). Daniel C. Matt, 2000). trans., The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, multiple vols. 22. Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn (Woodbury, MN: (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004- ). Llewellyn Publications, 1989). 9. Hayyim Vital, The Tree of Life: Chayyim Vital’s 23. S. L. MacGregor Mathers, trans., The Kabbalah Rosicrucian Introduction to the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria. Volume Unveiled (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006). Digest I: The Palace of Adam Kadmon, trans. Donald 24. See note 5. No. 2 Wilder Menzi and Zwe Padeh (New York: Arizal 2012 Publications, 2008). Page 6 Scala Philosophorum Cabalistica Magia. From the Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians of the 16th and 17th Centuries, hand colored by H. Spencer Lewis.
Page 7 Introduction to the Sefer Yetzirah Aryeh Kaplan As a graduate student, Aryeh Kaplan was described in a scientific Who’s Who as the most promising young physicist in America. He later devoted himself to writing and teaching of the Torah. During his short lifetime (he died suddenly in 1983 at the age of forty-eight), Rabbi Kaplan wrote more than fifty books. In the text that follows, Rabbi Kaplan introduces us to the extraordinary Kabbalistic work, the Sefer Yetzirah.
Material excerpted from the book SEFER YETZIRAH: THE BOOK OF CREATION © 1997 by The Estate of Aryeh Kaplan. Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC, Newburyport, MA and San Francisco, CA. Orders may be placed at www.redwheelweiser.com or by calling 800.423.7087. he Sefer Yetzirah is without question form is based largely on the Zohar, is the oldest and most mysterious concerned mostly with the dynamics of Tof all Kabbalistic texts. The first the spiritual domain, especially the worlds commentaries on this book were written in of the Sefirot, souls, and angels. This the tenth century, and the text itself is quoted branch of Kabbalah reached its zenith in as early as the sixth. References to the work the writings of the Safed school in the appear in the first century, while traditions sixteenth century, and the vast majority of regarding its use attest to its existence even in published texts belong in this category. Biblical times. So ancient is this book that its Meditative Kabbalah deals with the origins are no longer accessible to historians. use of divine names, letter permutations, We are totally dependent on traditions with and similar methods to reach higher states regard to its authorship. of consciousness, and as such, comprises a Equally mysterious is the meaning kind of yoga. Most of the main texts have of this book. If the author meant to be never been published, but remain scattered obscure, he was eminently successful. It in manuscripts in the great libraries and is only through the most careful analysis, museums. Some of these methods enjoyed studying every word with its parallels in a brief renaissance in the mid 1700s with Biblical and Talmudic literature, that its the rise of the Hasidic movement, but haze of obscurity begins to be penetrated. within a half century they were once again There have been many interpretations largely forgotten. of the Sefer Yetzirah. The earliest The third category of Kabbalah— commentators tried to interpret it as a the magical—is closely related to the philosophical treatise, but their efforts meditative. It consists of various signs, shed more light on their own systems than incantations, and divine names, through on the text. The same is true of efforts to which one can influence or alter natural fit it into the systems of the Zohar or later events. Many of the techniques closely Kabbalists. Efforts to view it as a book resemble meditative methods, and their on grammar or phonetics are even more success may depend on their ability to unsuccessful. induce mental states where telekinetic In general, the Kabbalah is divided or spiritual power can effectively be into three categories, the theoretical, channeled. As with the second category, Rosicrucian 1 Digest the meditative, and the magical. The the most important texts have never been No. 2 theoretical Kabbalah, which in its present printed, although some fragments have 2012 Page 8 been published. One of the best examples wisdom, and be wise with understanding.” of these is the book Raziel. Rather than have the text oscillate between Careful study indicates that Sefer the third person and the imperative, it Yetzirah is a meditative text, with strong would certainly be more logical to read magical overtones. This position is it all in the imperative. TheSefer Yetzirah supported by the earliest Talmudic thus becomes an instruction manual for a traditions, which indicate that it could be very special type of meditation… used to create living creatures. Especially What we therefore have in Sefer Yetzirah significant are the many reports and appears to be an instructional manual, legends in which the Sefer Yetzirah is describing certain meditative exercises. used to create a Golem, a sort of mystical There is some evidence that these exercises android. The methods of the Sefer Yetzirah were meant to strengthen the initiate’s appear to involve meditation; and it concentration, and were particularly is highly possible that it was originally helpful in the development of telekinetic written as a meditative manual. A major and telepathic powers. It was with these twelfth century philosopher thus states powers that one would then be able to that it does not contain philosophy, but perform feats that outwardly appeared divine mystery.2 This comes across very to be magical. This is supported by the clearly in the commentary of one of the Talmudical references, which appear to greatest Kabbalists, Isaac the Blind (1160- compare the use of Sefer Yetzirah to a kind 1236), who stresses the meditative aspects of white magic.5 An important thirteenth of the text. century commentator writes that students It is also particularly evident in a very of Sefer Yetzirah were given a manuscript of ancient manuscript of the Sefer Yetzirah, the book Raziel, a magical text containing dating from the tenth century or earlier. seals, magical figures, divine names, and The introductory colophon states, “This incantations.6 is the book of the Letters of Abraham our The Text father, which is called Sefer Yetzirah, and when one gazes (tzafah) into it, there is The Sefer Yetzirah is a very small and no limit to his wisdom.”3 …The Hebrew concise book. In its Short Version, it is word tzafah does not denote mere physical only some 1,300 words long, while the gazing, but mystical meditative insight. Long Version contains approximately This very early source would therefore 2,500 words. The Gra Version contains support the position that Sefer Yetzirah was around 1,800 words. So short is the text, meant to be used as a meditative text. that one of the earliest fragments appears The commentaries which treatSefer to have the entire book written on a single Yetzirah as a theoretical text read much page.7 There is speculation that the original of it in the third person: “He combined,” source may have contained as few as 240 “He formed,” and the like. According to words.8 this reading, the text is referring to God’s The present text contains six chapters, creation. In many cases, however, the and in some editions, these are said to grammatical form more closely resembles parallel the six orders of the Mishnah.9 the imperative.4 The author is telling the Some ancient sources, however, state that reader to “combine” and “form” as if he was the book contains five chapters, and it actually giving instructions. In many other seems likely that the present fifth and sixth cases, the text is unambiguously instructive, chapters were combined as one in these as in such passages as, “if your heart runs, texts.10 The earliest commentator, Saadia return to the place,” and, “understand with Gaon, in a somewhat different version, Page 9 divides the book into eight chapters.11 Kabbalistic literature, with the exception The text is presented dogmatically, of the Bahir.13 Of all the chapters, this one without substantiation or explanation. seems the most obscure, and it is difficult In the first chapter in particular, it is to decide if its emphasis is theoretical or solemn and sonorous, reading like blank meditative. verse poetry. Very few Biblical passages This chapter concludes with a stanza are quoted, and with the exception linking the Sefer Yetzirah to Abraham. It of Abraham, no name or authority is is this quote that serves as a source to the mentioned. tradition that the book was authored by The book seems to be divided into four the Patriarch. basic parts. The first chapter introduces ENDNOTES the Sefirot, speaking of them at length. 1. This is discussed at length in myMeditation and After this, however, there is no mention Kabbalah, and Meditation and the Bible (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser). whatsoever regarding the Sefirot in 2. Kuzari 4:27. subsequent chapters. This had led to some 3. Barceloni, p. 100. This is in the British Museum, speculation that the Sefer Yetzirah might Ms. 600. See M. Marguliot, Catalogue of Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the British Museum, Vol. 2, actually be a combination of two (or more) p. 197. Also in the Vatican, Ms. 299, and the British earlier texts. Museum, Ms. 752. Another account also states The second chapter consists of a that Rava and Ray Zeira gazed (tzafah) in the Sefer Yetzirah for three years (Barceloni, p. 268). general discussion about the letters of 4. Thus, in a number of places in the text, the word Tzar the alphabet. It clearly appears to be is used instead of Yatzar. This is more easily read in introducing their use in a meditative the imperative than in the third person past. 5. Sanhedrin 67b, Barceloni, loc. cit. Also see Shulchan context. Also introduced in this chapter Arukh, Yoreh Deah 179:15, Sifsey Cohen 179:18; are the five phonetic families and the 231 Tshuvot Radbaz 3:405. Gates. Again, neither the phonetic families 6. Yehudah ben Nissim ibn Malka, Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah (Oxford, Ms. 1536), quoted in George Vajda, nor the Gates are ever again mentioned in Juda ben Nissim ibn Malka, philosophe juif marocain, the text. (Paris, 1954), p. 171; Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah Chapters three to five discuss the three and its Symbolism, (New York, 1969), p. 177. There is some question as to whether this Raziel is the divisions of the letters, “mothers, doubles, same as the published edition. Abraham Abulafia and elementals.” These are related to the also mentions having studied this book, see Sheva “universe, soul, and year,” presenting a Netivot HaChakhmah, in A. Jellinek, Philosophie und Kabbalah, (Leipzig, 1854), p. 21. fairly detailed astrological system. In these 7. A.M. Habermann, Sinai 10:3b (1974) with regard to chapters, the entire thrust of the book is Geniza fragment Taylor-Schechter 32:5. This is the changed, and they contain virtually no hint Saadia Version, which is the longest. 8. Yisrael Weinstock, “LeBirur HaNusach shel Sefer whatsoever of its meditative aspects. This, Yetzirah,” Temirin 1:20, note 41, 1:16, note 31. however, can be explained by a principle 9. See Ne’edar BaKodesh, Shaarey Tzion. found in many later Kabbalistic texts. In 10. Barceloni, p. 105. In the Pistoris translation, chapters five and six are combined, as well as in order to focus spiritual and mental powers, many manuscripts. See Weinstock, loc. cit., note 33. one must take into account the time and The divisions inDonash and Chakamoni were put astrological environment.12 in by the printer, and do not exist in the original manuscripts. The sixth chapter again does not 11. Saadia Gaon, Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, translated appear to have a clear connection to the into Hebrew by Yosef Kapach (Jerusalem, 1972), p. earlier parts of the book, although in the 34. 12. See Introduction to Raziel; Shimushey Tehillim Long Version, it is presented almost as in Tshuvot Rashba 413; R. Moshe Cordevero, a commentary. Here, for the first time, Commentary on Zohar Shir HaShirim (Jerusalem, Rosicrucian are introduced the concepts of the “axis, Ms. 4 74), in G. Scholem, Kitvey Yad BaKabbalah, p. Digest 233-4. No. 2 cycle, and heart,” ideas which are not 13. See Bahir, Ed. Reuven Margolios (Jerusalem 1951), 2012 discussed any place else in Hebraic or Nos. 95, 101, 106. Page 10 Sepher Yetzirah The Long Version Translation from a Rosicrucian Manuscript
Chapter 1 1-1. By thirty-two mystical Paths has been a depth of West, a depth of North and a established the Wisdom of YHVH Sabaoth, depth of South. The sole God, the faithful God of Israel, living Elohim, almighty God, King, rules over all from His holy dwelling, high and supreme, living for all eternity. forever and ever. His name is holy. He created His universe by three measures (number, text, and 1-7. Ten sephiroth arose from the Void; commentary), ten sephiroth in the Void, and their appearance was like an endless flash of twenty-two fundamental letters. lightning. The Word of God travels through them constantly, and when He speaks such 1-2. The sephiroth are ten in number, like a whirlwind, they bow before His Throne. the ten fingers, five opposite five. They form the sole Covenant of the central Axis. 1-8. Ten sephiroth arose from the Void, as well as twenty-two fundamental letters: three 1-3. Ten sephiroth arose from the Void: ten Mothers, seven Doubles (Double Letters), and not nine, ten and not eleven. Discern them and twelve Simples (Simple Letters), each with Wisdom and Intelligence. Examine them, containing the Breath of God. interrogate them. Make each thing correspond to their essence. Their number is ten and they 1-9. Ten sephiroth arose from the Void by the are infinite. Utterance of Elohim. His throne is eternally established. Blessed be His name, He who 1-4. Ten sephiroth arose from the Void: perpetually enlivens the worlds, forever and Restrain your heart so as not to think of ever, with His Voice, Breath, and Word. them; restrain your mouth so as not to speak of them. And if your heart throbs, recall 1-10. With the Wind coming from the what is written: “And the Holy creatures ran Breath, God carved and sculpted the four and returned.” Thus shall the Covenant be directions of the Heavens: East and West, concluded. North and South. The Divine Breath is in each of them. 1-5. Ten sephiroth arose from the Void: their end resides in their beginning and their 1-11. With the Waters coming from the beginning in their end, like a flame in a Breath, God carved and sculpted the Chaos burning coal. Learn, meditate, and realize and Void from clay and mud. He traced that God is unique, that the Creator has no them as a kind of garden and sculpted peer. Facing the One, what is there to count? them like a wall. Chaos is a blue line which encircles the world. The void consists of 1-6. Ten sephiroth arose from the Void: spongy rocks, buried in the abyss from ten in number, they determine a depth of whence the Waters emanate. Beginning and a depth of End; a depth of Good and a depth of Evil; a depth of High 1-12. With the Fire coming from the Waters, and a depth of Low; a depth of East and God carved and sculpted the Throne of Page 11 His glory, and confided it to the Seraphim, For nothing is superior in goodness than Ophanim, and Angels. Over these three delight (oneg) and nothing is worse in evil angelic choirs He established his abode, thus than plague (nega). it is written: “He has made His angels spirits, His ministers a flaming fire.” 2-3. Twenty-two fundamental letters were carved by God, sculpted, weighed, and 1-13. God chose three letters from among combined. He changed them, formed with the Simples and set them in His great name: them the soul of everything which was YHV. With it, He sealed the six directions. formed and the soul of everything which will He turned toward the Height and sealed it be formed. with YHV. He turned toward the Depth and sealed it with YVH. He turned toward the 2-4. God weighed and combined Aleph Front and sealed the East with VYH. He with all the letters and all with Aleph, Beth turned toward the Rear and sealed the West with all and all with Beth, and so on with with VHY. He turned toward the Right each of them. Thus, all the letters arose and sealed the South with YVH. He turned from 231 Gates and emanated from one toward the Left and sealed the North with Name. HVY. 2-5. God formed the Primordial Substance from Chaos and extracted being from nonbeing. He hewed great Pillars from imperceptible Being. Chapter 2
2-1. Twenty-two fundamental letters (three Mothers, seven Doubles, and twelve Simples) have been engraved with the voice of God, Chapter 3 carved with His Breath, and reunited in five 3-1. places: Aleph, Heth, He, Ayin; Gimel, Yod, The Three Mothers, Aleph, Mem, and Kaph, Qoph; Daleth, Teth, Lamed, Nun, Shin, rest on the scale of merit and on the Tav; Zayin, Samekh, Shin, Resh, Tsade; scale of duty, and the Word balances them. Beth, Vav, Mem, and Pe. 3-2. The Three Mothers form a great, and Aleph, Heth, He, and Ayin are pronounced mystical secret, hidden, and sealed by six with the base of the tongue and the throat. rings. From them emanates fire, water, and Beth, Vav, Mem, and Pe are pronounced air. They are also divided into male and between the lips and with the tip of the female. tongue. Gimel, Yod, Kaph, and Qoph are pronounced with the back of the tongue. 3-3. The Three Mothers formed in the Daleth, Teth, Lamed, Nun, and Tav are universe air, water, and fire. The heavens pronounced with the tip of the tongue and were created from fire, Earth from water, the throat. Zayin, Samekh, Shin, Resh, and and Breath from air which establishes the Tsade are pronounced between the teeth, balance between the two. with the tongue rounded and pushed toward the outside. 3-4. The Three Mothers formed in the year heat, cold, and mildness. Heat was created Rosicrucian 2-2. Twenty-two fundamental letters were from fire, cold from water, and mildness Digest joined together by God in a Circle of 231 from the air, which establishes the balance No. 2 Gates, a Circle which sways to and fro. between the two. 2012 Page 12 3-5. The Three Mothers formed in man the opposite of fecundity is sterility, the opposite head, belly, and chest. The head was created of life is death, the opposite of domination is from fire, the belly from water, and the dependence, the opposite of peace is war, the chest from the air which establishes the opposite of beauty is ugliness. balance between the two. 4-2. The Seven Doubles, not six, not eight, 3-6. The Three Mothers carved, sculpted, are similar to six sides and six directions, and combined through God. And with and the Holy Temple is in the center, them, He sealed the three Mothers in the supported by God. Universe, three Mothers in the year, and three Mothers in humans, male and female. 4-3. God carved, sculpted, exchanged, weighed, and combined the seven double 3-7. God made the letter Aleph rule over letters, and formed with them seven the air, crowned it, exchanged it with others, planets in the universe, seven days in the and formed with it the air in the universe, year, and seven gates in humans. moistness in the year, and the chest in humans, male and female. 4-4. God made the letter Beth rule over wisdom, crowned it, exchanged it with the God made the letter Mem rule over water, others, and formed with it Saturn in the crowned it, exchanged it with the others, universe, Shabbat in the year, and the mouth and formed with it Earth in the universe, in humans, male and female. coldness in the year, and the belly in humans, male and female. 4-5. God made the letter Gimel rule over wealth, crowned it, exchanged it with the God made the letter Shin rule over fire, others, and formed with it Jupiter in the crowned it, exchanged it with the others, and universe, the first day in the year, and the formed with it the heavens in the universe, right eye in humans, male and female. heat in the year, and the head in humans, male and female. 4-6. God made the letter Daleth rule over fecundity, crowned it, exchanged it with 3-8. With Aleph, God formed the breath, the others, and formed with it Mars in the air, mildness, the chest, and language which universe, the second day in the year, and establishes the balance. With Mem, He the left eye in humans, male and female. formed the waters, Earth, coldness, the belly, and the scale of merit. With Shin, He 4-7. God made the letter Kaph rule over formed fire, the heavens, heat, the head, and life, crowned it, exchanged it with the the scale of duty. others, and formed with it the Sun in the universe, the third day in the year, and the right nostril in humans, male and female.
4-8. God make the letter Pe rule over Chapter 4 domination, crowned it, exchanged it with the others, and formed with it Venus in the 4-1. The Seven Doubles rest on life, peace, universe, the fourth day in the year, and the wisdom, wealth, fecundity, beauty, and left nostril in humans, male and female. domination. They express themselves in a double sense, a structure soft and hard, 4-9. God made the letter Resh rule over strong and weak. The opposite of wisdom is peace, crowned it, exchanged it with the folly, the opposite of wealth is poverty, the others, and formed with it Mercury in the Page 13 universe, the fifth day in the year, and the 5-3. God carved, sculpted, combined, right ear in humans, male and female. weighed, and conveyed the twelve simple letters, and He formed with them twelve 4-10. God made the letter Tav rule over constellations in the universe, twelve months beauty, crowned it, exchanged it with the in the year, and twelve organs in humans, others, and formed with it the Moon in male and female. the universe, the sixth day in the year, and the left ear in humans, male and female. 5-4. The Twelve Simples were distributed into three allies, three enemies, three animators, 4-11. The seven planets of the universe are: and three destroyers. The three allies are the Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, heart, ears, and eyes. The three enemies are Moon. The seven days in the year are like the liver, gall bladder, and tongue. The three the seven days of the week. The seven gates animators are the two nostrils and spleen. in humans, male and female, are the two The three destroyers are the two orifices and eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and the mouth. mouth. And God, the trusted King, rules over all of them from His holy dwelling for 4-12. With Beth, God formed Saturn, all of eternity. Shabbat, the mouth, life and death. With Gimel, He formed Jupiter, the first day, the 5-5. God made the letter He rule over right eye, peace and war. With Daleth, He speaking, crowned it, combined it with each formed Mars, the second day, the left eye, of the others, and formed with it Aries in the wisdom and folly. With Kaph, He formed the universe, the month of Nisan in the year, and Sun, the third day, the right nostril, wealth the right foot in humans, male and female. and poverty. With Pe, He formed Venus, the fourth day, the left nostril, fecundity and 5-6. God made the letter Vav rule over sterility. With Resh, He formed Mercury, the thinking, crowned it, combined it with each fifth day, the right ear, beauty and ugliness. of the others, and formed with it Taurus in With Tav, He formed the Moon, the sixth the universe, the month of Iyar in the year, day, the left ear, domination and servitude. and the right kidney in humans, male and female.
5-7. God made the letter Zayin rule over Chapter 5 motion, crowned it, combined it with each of the others, and formed with it Gemini in 5-1. The twelve Simples rest on seeing, the universe, the month of Sivan in the year, hearing, smelling, speaking, tasting, and the left foot in humans, male and female. coition, motion, anger, laughing, thinking, joy, and sleeping. 5-8. God made the letter Heth rule over seeing, crowned it, combined it with each 5-2. The twelve Simples, not eleven, not of the others, and formed with it Cancer thirteen, form the twelve diagonal limits in the universe, the month of Tamuz in the between the six directions; the upper limit of year, and the right hand in humans, male the East; the Northeast limit; the lower limit and female. of the East; the upper limit of the South; the Southeast limit; the lower limit of the South; 5-9. God made the letter Teth rule over the upper limit of the West; the Southwest hearing, crowned it, combined it with each Rosicrucian limit; the lower limit of the West; the upper of the others, and formed with it Leo in the Digest limit of the North; the Northwest limit; and universe, the month of Ab in the year, and the No. 2 the lower limit of the North. left kidney in humans, male and female. 2012 Page 14 5-10. God made the letter Yod rule over 5-17. With He, God formed Aries, Nisan, working, crowned it, combined it with each the right foot, sight and blindness. With of the others, and formed with it Virgo in the Vav, God formed Taurus, Iyar, the right universe, the month of Elul in the year, and kidney, hearing and deafness. With Zayin, the left hand in humans, male and female. God formed Gemini, Sivan, the left foot, smell and the absence of smell. With Heth, 5-11. God made the letter Lamed rule over God formed Cancer, Tamuz, the right coition, crowned it, combined it with each hand, speech and silence. With Teth, God of the others, and formed with it Libra in formed Leo, Ab, the left kidney, taste and the universe, the month of Tishri in the the absence of taste. With Yod, God formed year, and the gall bladder in humans, male Virgo, Elul, the left hand, action and inertia. and female. With Lamed, God formed Libra, Tishri, the gall bladder, coition and sterility. With Nun, 5-12. God made the letter Nun rule over God formed Scorpio, Marcheshvan, the smell, crowned it, combined it with each of small intestine, motion and paralysis. With the others, and formed with it Scorpio in the Samekh, God formed Sagittarius, Kislev, universe, the month of Marcheshvan in the the stomach, serenity and anger. With year, and the small intestine in humans, male Ayin, God formed Capricorn, Teveth, the and female. liver, laughter and tears. With Tsade, God formed Aquarius, Shevath, the esophagus, 5-13. God made the letter Samekh rule intelligence and stupidity. With Qoph, God over sleeping, crowned it, combined it formed Pisces, Adar, the spleen, sleep and with each of the others, and formed with insomnia. it Sagittarius in the universe, the month of Kislev in the year, and the stomach in humans, male and female. Chapter 6
5-14. God made the letter Ayin rule over 6-1. Three Mothers; seven Doubles; twelve anger, crowned it, combined it with each of Simples. These are the twenty-two letters by the others, and formed with it Capricorn which Sabaoth, the God of Israel, Elohim in the universe, the month of Teveth in the living and supreme, living for eternity, whose year, and the liver in humans, male and Name is holy, formed All that was, is, and female. shall be.
5-15. God made the letter Tsade rule over 6-2. There are twelve letters below, seven tasting, crowned it, combined it with each letters above, and three letters upon the of the others, and formed with it Aquarius seven. God established His dwelling above in the universe, the month of Shevath in the three, but He has no second and governs the year, and the esophagus in humans, alone in His universe, because He is One, male and female. and His name is One. 6-3. There are three Mothers and their 5-16. God made the letter Qoph rule offspring, seven subjects and their host, and over laughing, crowned it, combined it twelve diagonal limits. The faithful witnesses with each of the others, and formed with of this are the universe, year, and humanity. it Pisces in the universe, the month of Adar in the year, and spleen in man, male 6-4. The sephiroth in the universe are ten and female. and twelve: fire, air, water, seven planets,
Page 15 and twelve constellations. The sephiroth in 6-10. The seven Doubles have for the year are ten and twelve: cold, hot, mild, correspondences: Saturn, Shabbat, and seven days, and twelve months. mouth. Jupiter, first day, and right eye. Mars, second day, and left eye. Sun, third 6-5. God set a rule of ten, three, seven, and day, and right nostril. Venus, fourth day, and twelve in the Tali, Cycle, and Heart. The Tali left nostril. Mercury, fifth day, and right ear. in the universe is like a ruler on the human Moon, sixth day, and left ear. throne, the Cycle in the year is like a ruler in his or her empire, and the Heart is like a 6-11. The twelve Simples have for ruler in war. correspondences: Aries, Nisan, right foot, sight, and blindness. Taurus, Iyar, right 6-6. As a general rule, certain principles kidney, hearing, and deafness. Gemini, Sivan, combine with others, are exchanged with left foot, smell, and absence of smell. Cancer, others, and are opposed to others. If certain Tamuz, right hand, speech, and silence. ones exist, others do not, and if some others Leo, Ab, left kidney, taste, and absence of exist, certain ones do not. But all are linked taste. Virgo, Elul, left hand, action, and with the Tali, Cycle, and Heart. inertia. Libra, Tishri, gall bladder, coition, and sterility. Scorpio, Marcheshvan, small 6-7. God has made one correspond to intestine, motion, and paralysis. Sagitarrius, the other, and the other to the one: good Kislev, stomach, serenity, and anger. is opposed to evil, and evil is opposed to Capricorn, Teveth, liver, laughter, and tears. good. Good proceeds from good, and evil Aquarius, Shevath, esophagus, intelligence, proceeds from evil. Good discerns evil, and and stupidity. Pisces, Adar, spleen, sleep, and evil discerns good. Good is preserved for insomnia. the good, and evil is preserved for the evil. 6-12. The three enemies are the tongue, liver, 6-8. When Abraham, our blessed father, and gall bladder. The three allies are the eyes, came, he looked, lived, probed, understood, ears, and heart. The three animators are the carved, sculpted, exchanged, formed, teeth, nose, and spleen. The three destroyers thought, and became fruitful. The Lord of are the two lower orifices and mouth. All, may His name be blessed for eternity, revealed Himself to him, kissed him on 6-13. Three things are good for the ear: a the head, and called him: “Abraham, My blessing, glad tidings, praise. Three things beloved.” He made a covenant with him are bad for the eye: adultery, the evil eye, and and his descendants, and placed His glory a roving eye. Three things are good for the on him. He made a pact between the ten eye: humility, the appreciative eye, and true fingers of his hands, attached the twenty-two sight. Three things are bad for the tongue: letters on his tongue, and revealed to him defamation, denunciation, and hypocrisy. their mystery. He plunged them into water, Three things are good for the tongue: silence, burned them by fire, tossed them about controlling the tongue, and truth. with the breath, inflamed them by the seven planets, and guided them toward the twelve constellations.
6-9. The three Mothers have for correspondences: heaven, fire, heat, and Rosicrucian head. Air, breath, mild, and chest. Earth, Digest No. 2 water, cold, and belly. 2012 Page 16 The Legend of the Lost Word
Ralph M. Lewis, FRC
Ralph Maxwell Lewis served as the Imperator of the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC for forty- eight years, from 1939 to 1987. In this article, he explores the power of the word, in various traditions, including Kabbalah.
HE LEGEND of a Lost Word—of a key to creation by means of which Tall reality was set into motion—is thousands of years old. Part of the legend is allegorical, and part of it is due to a primitive conception of the efficacy of the spoken word as an energy by which humans are motivated. A similar power, therefore, is attributed to a First Cause, or deity. The first reference to a teleological or mental cause of creation and the relating of it to the spoken word goes back to the Memphite period of Egypt, about 4000 BCE. The chief Memphite deity was Ptah, who headed a pantheon of lesser deities. At first the priests of the Memphite mystery school proclaimed that Ptah was the patron god of the artisans and craftspeople of Egypt. Centuries later the priests developed a Ralph Maxwell Lewis. more profound metaphysical conception [Ptah] thinks and while he commands with respect to Ptah. He then became the everything that he desires.” artisan, the creator of the universe. In their The mouth of Ptah “which pronounced doctrines the priesthood then claimed that the names of all things....” Ptah created the universe by thought. To be more explicit, the thoughts, the ideas Egyptologists inform us that the of Ptah, were transformed into a spoken ancient Egyptians used the word heart to word by him, and by means of that word mean mind or intelligence. Also, reference the thought was objectified, that is, became to the tongue alludes to the spoken reality. word, the authoritative word by which The following quotation is from an all thoughts became objectified—made ancient inscription by the Ptah priesthood: reality. “It came to pass that heart and We can presume that somewhere tongue gained power over every in these ancient mysteries there were member, teaching that he [Ptah] was syllables, sounds, mantras which were [in the form of the heart] in every heart thought to have special universal powers and [in the form of the tongue] in every for the creation of worldly things. mouth, of all deities, all people, all We are, of course, familiar with the cattle, or reptiles, [all] living, while he statement in the Bible, John I. “In the Page 17 beginning was the Word, and the Word Let us quote a few examples from the was with God, and the Word was God.” Sepher Yezirah. In Chapter 1, Section 8, we Was this statement in the New Testament find, “The spirit of the living God, praised an echo of the doctrines of the Ptah and glorified be the name of Him who priesthood of centuries before? lives to all eternity. The articulate word of creative power, the spirit and the word are From the Kabbalah what we call the holy spirit.” We now turn to the Kabbalah, or Then in Chapter II, Section 6: “He metaphysical doctrines of the Jews. The created a reality out of nothing, called Sepher Yezirah, one of the chief books the nonentity into existence and hewed, of the Kabbalah literally means “Book as it were, colossal pillars from intangible of Creation” or cosmogony. When the air....He predetermined, and by speaking original of this book was written is not created every creature and every word by known. Hebrew scholars have established one name. For an illustration may serve different periods for its origin. The exact the twenty-two elementary substances by time is lost in the shades of antiquity. the primitive substance of Aleph.” However, a more or less general opinion holds that the book came into existence Powerful Mantras about the beginning the second or third The Hindu mantras consisting of century of the [Common] era. combinations of vowel intonations are The book teaches that the First Cause, attributed specific powers in affecting “eternal and all-wise, almighty, is the the human emotions and stimulating origin and center of the whole universe.” the psychic centers, and even in having From this First Cause all Being emanated. certain therapeutic value. Of course, as The book further relates that thought, Rosicrucians, we know that the vibrations speech, and action are an inseparable unity of the human voice in specific combinations in the Divine Being. The Hebrew language of vowels can induce psychical conditions and its characters correspond mostly to of an exhilarating nature in a person. the things that they designate, and thus With most early cultures, the deities “holy thoughts, Hebrew language and its were thought to be anthropomorphic. reduction to writing, form a unity which They were, therefore, conceived to have produces a creative effect.” humanlike qualities. If the deities created, More simply put, the letters of the they would use similar functions and language, whether written or spoken, attributes to those of humans. In other are elements of a potential power which words, they would think and plan, but brings into existence the very thing they how would they objectify their ideas? What represent. They are not symbols as in other would cause it to have reality? Simply, how languages, it was thought, but integral would thoughts become things? The vocal units of cosmic or divine energy. command carries force, the voice can be heard, it can be felt, and it may move Sepher Yezirah persons to act, to bring about material It is frequently observed by Jewish things that will conform to the idea behind and Christian theologians that the the spoken word. Consequently, it was an Marcionite Gnostic system as well as that easy matter to assume that the deities, in Rosicrucian of Clementines of the second century creating, did likewise, that their voice was Digest No. 2 contain many analogies and parallels to the medium to convert the idea into a 2012 the Sepher Yezirah. thing. Page 18 In the traditions of the various cultures state of consciousness and response to the there was believed to be a fiat, a Word that occasion. had the vibratory efficacy to have originally We can hold to the view in our modern brought the Cosmos into existence. It world that a single word uttered did was further held that this word had been not create all of reality out of nonentity. known to humankind but, somehow, in the vicissitudes of time and in the degradation However, we do hold to the cosmological of humanity it became lost. Mystically concept that the basic or primary reality is and factually certain words, when uttered, a vibratory energy. It is a spectrum or scale are most beneficial to be heard as sounds. of energy out of which all things manifest. Primitive people learned of the value of Our interpretations of the sensations and these sounds in their exclamations and the realization we have of such vibratory cries of pain, pleasure, surprise, anger, energy are not exact archetypes of it. In and so on. In the ancient mystery schools other words, we do not experience directly certain intonations of mantras were used absolute reality but only those effects to prepare the initiate to attain the proper which they have on our consciousness.
Page 19 Three Kabbalistic Meditations from the Sepher Yetzirah
Julie Scott, SRC
In this article, Grand Master Julie Scott presents three Kabbalistic meditations, using tech- niques from the Sepher Yetzirah.
ccording to the Rosicrucian and the number two, etc. When letters are teachings, the Sepher Yetzirah, the combined to form a word, then each word Aoldest of all Kabbalistic texts, is has a numerical value too, based on the a meditation manual. Dr. Isidor Kalisch, total of the numeral letters in that word. translator of the Sepher Yetzirah edition A list with each Hebrew Letter, its published by the Rosicrucian Order, Name, Meaning or essence/essential AMORC,1 describes it as a metaphysical energy, and Number is presented in Chart essay. Aryeh Kaplan writes, “What we No. 1. therefore have in Sefer Yetzirah appears to be an instructional manual, describing certain Chart Hebrew No. 1. Alphabet Hebrew Alphabet. 2 meditative exercises.” Letter Name Meaning Number Some of the meditation techniques in Alef Ox 1 the Sepher Yetzirah include combining the Bet House 2 Hebrew letters in chants, gazing upon their Gimel Camel 3 form, and creating images of the letters in Dalet Door 4 our minds and with our hands. Hay Window 5 We will experiment with these techniques below. Vav Hook 6 The Hebrew Letters Zayin Weapon 7 Chet Fence 8 The twenty-two Hebrew letters are believed to contain or exude the Tet Snake 9 essential energy of what they represent. Yud Hand 10 For example, Mem represents water and Kaf Palm of Hand 20 the essence or character of water. Dalet Lamed Ox Goad 30 represents a door and the essential energy or power of a door. The purpose of certain Mem Water 40 Kabbalistic meditations is to manifest or Nun Fish 50 activate the associated essential energy or Samekh Prop 60 power, within us and around us. Ayin Eye 70 Also, the shape of each letter has Pay Mouth 80 significance and can speak to us on a more than intellectual level. Many Kabbalistic Tzaddi Fish Hook 90 meditations include working with the Kuf Back of Head 100 shapes of the Hebrew letters. Resh Head 200 Rosicrucian Each Hebrew letter functions as a Shin Tooth 300 Digest numeral as well as a letter. Alef is a letter No. 2 Tav Cross 400 2012 and also the number one, Bet is a letter Page 20 Combining the Hebrew letters from left to right, although Hebrew is read The 231 Gates Meditation from right to left. We have also included a When we combine each of the twenty- pronunciation guide – Chart No. 3. two Hebrew letters with all the rest (for While listening to the recording of example, Alef Bet, Alef Gimel, Alef Dalet, the 231 Gates meditation, chant along etc.) we create the 231 Gates. or just gaze upon the letters – each letter From the Sepher Yetzirah: individually, as they are combined, or 2:2 “Twenty-two fundamental letters around the spherical mandala as they are were joined together by God in a Circle spoken. Or chant them on your own. of 231 Gates, a Circle which sways to and fro.” You may also choose to draw the lines 2:4 “God weighed and combined Alef on the blank sphere below connecting with all the letters and all with Alef, Bet each letter with the others, either in silence with all and all with Bet, and so on with or while they are being chanted. each of them. Thus, all the letters arose from 231 Gates and emanated from one Name.” Sometimes the 231 Gates are illustrated in the mandala below. If we place the Hebrew letters at equal points around a circle and connect each letter with every other letter, the lines connecting them create this design.
Allow plenty of time and privacy for this meditation. While doing this open yourself to any impressions you may receive. Creating images of the Hebrew letters – in our minds Intense focus and visualization are The 231 Gates. important aspects of many meditation You will find a recording of the 231 practices, including the Rosicrucian Gates meditation online at http://www. techniques of concentration and rosicrucian.org/publications/. contemplation, and many Kabbalistic To make it easy to follow along with exercises. this meditation, we have created Chart No. The Sepher Yetzirah provides 2, which shows the letter combinations instructions on how to deeply focus and with the Hebrew letters written in English. visualize the Hebrew letters, thus attuning For ease of reading, this chart is written with their power or energy. Page 21 The 231 Gates Read down each double column (pairs of letters), starting at the left.
Alef Bet
Alef Gimel Bet Gimel
Alef Dalet Bet Dalet Gimel Dalet
Alef Hay Bet Hay Gimel Hay Dalet Hay
Alef Vav Bet Vav Gimel Vav Dalet Vav Hay Vav
Alef Zayin Bet Zayin Gimel Zayin Dalet Zayin Hay Zayin Vav Zayin
Alef Chet Bet Chet Gimel Chet Dalet Chet Hay Chet Vav Chet Zayin Chet
Alef Tet Bet Tet Gimel Tet Dalet Tet Hay Tet Vav Tet Zayin Tet Chet Tet
Alef Yud Bet Yud Gimel Yud Dalet Yud Hay Yud Vav Yud Zayin Yud Chet Yud Tet Yud
Alef Kaf Bet Kaf Gimel Kaf Dalet Kaf Hay Kaf Vav Kaf Zayin Kaf Chet Kaf Tet Kaf Yud Kaf
Alef Lamed Bet Lamed Gimel Lamed Dalet Lamed Hay Lamed Vav Lamed Zayin Lamed Chet Lamed Tet Lamed Yud Lamed
Alef Mem Bet Mem Gimel Mem Dalet Mem Hay Mem Vav Mem Zayin Mem Chet Mem Tet Mem Yud Mem
Alef Nun Bet Nun Gimel Nun Dalet Nun Hay Nun Vav Nun Zayin Nun Chet Nun Tet Nun Yud Nun
Alef Samekh Bet Samekh Gimel Samekh Dalet SamekhHay SamekhVav Samekh Zayin Samekh Chet Samekh Tet Samekh Yud Samekh
Alef Ayin Bet Ayin Gimel Ayin Dalet Ayin Hay Ayin Vav Ayin Zayin Ayin Chet Ayin Tet Ayin Yud Ayin
Alef Pay Bet Pay Gimel Pay Dalet Pay Hay Pay Vav Pay Zayin Pay Chet Pay Tet Pay Yud Pay
Alef Tzaddi Bet Tzaddi Gimel Tzaddi Dalet Tzaddi Hay Tzaddi Vav Tzaddi Zayin Tzaddi Chet Tzaddi Tet Tzaddi Yud Tzaddi
Alef Kuf Bet Kuf Gimel Kuf Dalet Kuf Hay Kuf Vav Kuf Zayin Kuf Chet Kuf Tet Kuf Yud Kuf
Alef Resh Bet Resh Gimel Resh Dalet Resh Hay Resh Vav Resh Zayin Resh Chet Resh Tet Resh Yud Resh
Alef Shin Bet Shin Gimel Shin Dalet Shin Hay Shin Vav Shin Zayin Shin Chet Shin Tet Shin Yud Shin
Alef Tav Bet Tav Gimel Tav Dalet Tav Hay Tav Vav Tav Zayin Tav Chet Tav Tet Tav Yud Tav
Chart No. 2.
Rosicrucian Digest No. 2 2012 Page 22 Kaf Lamed
Kaf Mem Lamed Mem
Kaf Nun Lamed Nun Mem Nun
Kaf SamekhLamed SamekhMem Samekh Nun Samekh
Kaf Ayin Lamed Ayin Mem Ayin Nun Ayin Samekh Ayin
Kaf Pay Lamed Pay Mem Pay Nun Pay Samekh Pay Ayin Pay
Kaf Tzaddi Lamed Tzaddi Mem Tzaddi Nun Tzaddi Samekh Tzaddi Ayin Tzaddi Pay Tzaddi
Kaf Kuf Lamed Kuf Mem Kuf Nun Kuf Samekh Kuf Ayin Kuf Pay Kuf Tzaddi Kuf
Kaf Resh Lamed Resh Mem Resh Nun Resh Samekh Resh Ayin Resh Pay Resh Tzaddi Resh Kuf Resh
Kaf Shin Lamed Shin Mem Shin Nun Shin Samekh Shin Ayin Shin Pay Shin Tzaddi Shin Kuf Shin Resh Shin
Kaf Tav Lamed Tav Mem Tav Nun Tav Samekh Tav Ayin Tav Pay Tav Tzaddi Tav Kuf Tav Resh Tav Shin Tav
Page 23 2:3 “Twenty-two fundamental letters Creating images of the Hebrew letters – were carved by God, sculpted, weighed, with our hands and combined.” After doing the exercise above mentally, This technique engraves the letters in take color pencils or pens and do the same our minds, then carves them – filling our thing on the pages of this magazine (or entire consciousness. make copies) – engrave, carve, permute, Chart No. 4 (on page 26) shows each weigh, and transform the letters so that of the twenty-two Hebrew letters. Choose they fill your entire consciousness. one and focus on its shape. Close your eyes While doing this open yourself to any and see it clearly in your mind’s eye. impressions you may receive. See the letter carved out or ablaze Now bring the letters to life by creating with color and life against a contrasting a three dimensional work of art. background. Then see the background First choose one of the Hebrew letters carved out or ablaze with color and life and become thoroughly familiar with its behind the empty image. Now choose corresponding numerical value, essence, another letter and do the same thing. pronunciation, and form. Various charts While doing this open yourself to any with this information are presented in this impressions you may receive. magazine for your reference. PronunciationChart No.Guide 3. Pronunciationfor the Hebrew Guide Letters for Hebrew Letters. t Alef AH-lef k Lamed LAH-med c Bet BET n Mem MEM d Gimel GIH-mel b Nun* NUN* s Dalet DAH-let x Samekh* SAH-mekh* v Hay HAY g Ayin AH-yin u Vav VAHV p Pay PAY z Zayin ZAH-yin m Tzaddi TSAH-dee j Chet* CHET* e Kuf* KUF* y Tet TET r Resh RAYSH h Yud* YUD* a Shin SHIN f Kaf KAHF , Tav TAHV *Note: "ch" and "kh" to be pronounced as in the German "Bach" and the Scottish "loch." Rosicrucian *Note: “ch” and “kh” to be pronounced as the German “Bach” and the Scottish Digest “lo"U"ch .”to “U”be pronounced to be pronounced as the as "oo"the “oo” in "bin oo“book"k” and and "l “look."ook.” No. 2 2012 Page 24 Then create a work of art based on If you have found these meditations your experience of this letter. Allow time interesting, then you may find the for this creation to manifest. Make it as Rosicrucian and Martinist lessons dealing three dimensional as possible. Stand it up, with Kabbalah especially inspiring and hollow it out, carve it, engrave it, and add beneficial. other qualities such as sound or smell. While doing this open yourself to any impressions you may receive. Author’s Note: Many thanks to Lloyd Abrams, Ph.D., FRC for creating the original charts for After you have completed this work of this article and for serving as a most helpful art, deconstruct it within twenty-two days advisor for this issue of the Rosicrucian Digest. of completion, returning as many of its parts back to nature as possible. The Rosicrucian and Martinist teachings include many Kabbalistic lessons, meditations, and exercises. In fact, ENDNOTES Kabbalah is one of the most important 1. Isidor Kalisch, Sepher Yezirah, A Book on Creation, (San Jose: Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, 2002). sources contributing to the Rosicrucian 2. Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation, teachings and even more so to the Martinist (Newburyport, MA and San Francisco, CA: Red teachings. Wheel/Weiser, 1997).
Ten Sephirot on the Cordoba Synagogue's east wall. Spain. Photo Roy Lindman.
Page 25 The Hebrew Alphabet
Rosicrucian Digest No. 2 Chart No. 4. The Hebrew Alphabet. 2012 Page 26 Masculine and Feminine Symbolism in Kabbalah1
Lloyd Abrams, Ph.D., FRC Lloyd Abrams, Ph.D., FRC, serves on the Editorial Board of the Rose+Croix Journal (www. rosecroixjournal.org) and is an instructor for Rose Croix University International. He has presented many programs and workshops on Kabbalah. In this article, he explains many of the core Kabbalistic concepts and relates them to masculine and feminine symbolism in Kabbalah.
hen dealing with intangible unity—neither masculine nor feminine. spiritual or metaphysical While Ain Sof is absolute unity, the world is Wconcepts, it is helpful to make characterized by duality, pairs of opposites, use of symbols and metaphors derived from polarities. The archetypal symbol for familiar everyday experience. Kabbalah has this in Kabbalah is the masculine and been described as “an alphabet of symbols in feminine. It is the archetype of contrasts which a spiritual language is constructed.”2 or pairs of opposites. Human gender is Two important symbolic terms in Kabbalah only one concrete manifestation of this are “masculine” and “feminine.” While more general concept. not specifically denoting men and women, The Sefirot Kabbalistic symbolism draws upon some aspects of these terms to communicate by Ain Sof creates and sustains the world analogy certain characteristics of spiritual by emanating the Infinite Light (Ain Sof concepts and processes. Or), which flows downward giving rise to a series of ten Sefirot. Each Sefirah is a In Kabbalistic tradition, especially different attribute or function of Divinity in the Zohar and the teachings of Isaac as it manifests at each successive level. Luria (1534-1572), while the essential In Kabbalah, the masculine-feminine nature of Divinity is neither masculine polarity relates to the direction of this nor feminine, some of the ways in which flow, giving and receiving. Specifically, the Deity manifests and relates to the it relates to giving and receiving Divine world are differentiated from one another Light. This symbolism is based on the by being conceptualized symbolically as process of procreation. The father gives his either masculine or feminine. In addition, seed to the mother. The mother receives the processes which create and sustain the seed into the womb, where it takes on the universe are understood in symbolic the form of the new creature. Giving is terms drawn by analogy from human thus associated with the masculine and reproduction. receiving is associated with the feminine. Kabbalah makes a distinction between In one sense, then, each Sefirah can be the essential nature of Divinity and its seen as both feminine and masculine— various emanations and manifestations. feminine in relation to the preceding The essential nature and highest aspect Sefirah, from which it receives the Light, of the Divine is Ain Sof, which means and masculine relative to the next lower infinite, limitless or unbounded. Ain Sof Sefirah, to which it gives the Light.3 In transcends all categories of thought. It general, however, each Sefirah is identified is an unknowable, formless and infinite as either masculine or feminine.
Page 27 1 KETER Crown
3 2 BINAH CHOKHMAH Understanding Wisdom
5 4 GEBURAH CHESED Severity Mercy 6 TIFERET Beauty
8 7 HOD NETZACH Splendor Victory
9 YESOD Foundation
10 MALKHUT Kingdom Rosicrucian Digest No. 2 2012 The 10 Sefirot Page 28 The father’s seed is without form, undifferentiated. It is in the womb of the mother that the embryo takes on form and differentiates into various organs and limbs. Formlessness is therefore associated with the masculine, and Form is associated with the feminine. As the Infinite Light flows downward from Ain Sof, the Sefirot serve as vessels to receive and hold the Light. At each successive level of emanation, the vessels become more and more “dense” and the Light is more and more veiled, eventually culminating in our material world. Light tends to expand infinitely in all directions, while vessels contain and restrict things within boundaries. Therefore, the masculine is associated with expansiveness while the feminine is associated with restriction. The Ancient of Daysby William Blake. In Kabbalistic terminology, all of these pairs of opposites or complimentary Abba (Father). The Partzuf of Binah concepts are symbolized by the archetype (Understanding) is Ima (Mother). It is said of the masculine and the feminine: giving that Chokhmah impregnates Binah with and receiving, formlessness and form, light the Light, and Binah then gives birth to all and vessel, expansiveness and restriction. the lower Sefirot. Abba and Ima personify The Partzufim this idea. It is the metaphorical sexual union between Abba and Ima, Father and Partzufim (faces) are anthropomorphic Mother, that generates the downward flow representations of different aspects of of Light that gives birth to the seven lower Deity. They are personifications of the Sefirot.5 functions of the Sefirot. Isaac Luria drew upon terms and concepts from the Zohar The next Partzuf is Zeir Anpin (Small and constructed an elaborate system of Face, Microprosopus). The term “Small Partzufim to describe in detail how the Face” is in contrast to the “Large Face” Sefirot relate to each other and to our of Keter. In a way, Zeir Anpin is a lower world.4 counterpart or reflection of Arikh Anpin. Zeir Anpin consists of the next six Sefirot: The Partzuf of the first Sefirah, Keter, Chesed (Mercy), Geburah (Severity), is called Arikh Anpin, translated as the Tiferet (Beauty), Netzach (Victory), Hod Long Face or Large Face. Christian and (Splendor), and Yesod (Foundation). Hermetic Kabbalah often use the Latin These six Sefirot have been associated with translation of this term, Macroprosopus. the six days of Creation described in the Keter is also personified as Atika Kadisha first chapter of Genesis. This is consistent (the Holy Ancient One) and as Atik Yomin with the metaphor of the sexual union of (the Ancient of Days). Abba (Chokhmah) and Ima (Binah) as the The second Partzuf, associated with creative act giving rise to everything below the Sefirah Chokhmah (Wisdom), is them. Page 29 Arikh Anpin 1 Large Face human souls, which descend to join with KETER Crown the physical bodies produced by the union of the earthly husband and wife. Ima 3 2 Abba BINAH CHOKHMAH Mother Father Understanding Wisdom When Shekhinah unites with Her partner, Tif´eret, souls issue from the gushing river of Yesod. Stimulated by Her passion from below, the stream of souls flows into Her.7 “And a river went forth from 6 The Holy Zeir Anpin TIFERET One, Eden to water the Garden.” [Genesis Small Face Beauty Blessed 2:10] From the union of the male Be He and female—meaning, of course, in the transcendence—come all souls which animate men. The inference is that the Eden-river is that of life, or synonymously it is the river of souls, and in this case we shall understand Nukva 10 Shekhinah that the Higher Eden is the place of Female MALKHUT Kingdom Divine Nuptials, while the Garden which was watered by the river was The 5 Partzufim the place of nuptials below. . . At the Although it consists of all six of these moment of the union of the Spouse Sefirot, Zeir Anpin is usually represented and Bride all souls came forth from the by the single Sefirah, Tiferet.6 The union celestial river.8 of Abba (Father) and Ima (Mother) gives rise to Zeir Anpin, so Zeir Anpin (Tiferet) is The Holy One and His Shekhinah also called “The Son.” It is also referred to In this system, the relationship between as “The Holy One, blessed be He.” Tiferet and Malkhut crucially affects the The Partzuf of the tenth Sefirah, state of our world. When the Holy One, Malkhut (Kingdom), is Nukva, “The blessed be He, and the Shekhinah join Female.” Nukva is also referred to as the together in sexual union, this increases the Bride of Zeir Anpin, who is the Bridegroom flow of Divine Light and blessings into or the Spouse. As Malkhut is the aspect our world. But when they turn away from of Deity that dwells within the material each other, the flow of Light and blessings world, it is also called the Shekhinah (from diminishes, and the influence of evil gains the Hebrew root meaning “to dwell”), strength in the world. Human actions “The Divine Presence.” can affect the actions of these Partzufim So there are two male-female pairs (as below, so above). Sinful behavior of Partzufim: Abba and Ima, Father and causes the Holy One and the Shekhinah Mother, whose coupling emanates the to turn away from each other. They can lower Sefirot, and Zeir Anpin and Nukva, be induced to turn toward each other and the Son and His Bride, whose coupling join together when we live in accordance causes the Divine Light and its blessings to with the Divine Will by fulfilling the Rosicrucian flow into our world. commandments. (There are a total of 613 Digest In the imagery of the Zohar, the union commandments in the Torah, the first five No. 2 of Tiferet and Malkhut also gives birth to books of the Hebrew Bible.) 2012 Page 30 SEFIRAH PARTZUF OTHER NAMES DIVINE NAME Keter Arikh Anpin Atika Kadisha, Atik Yomin Ehyeh Crown Large Face Holy Ancient One, Ancient of Days Chokhmah Abba Yah Wisdom Father Binah Ima Elohim Understanding Mother Tiferet Zeir Anpin Kudsha Berikh Hu, Son, Spouse YHVH Beauty Small Face The Holy One blessed be He Malkhut Nukva Shekhinah, Bride Adonai Kingdom The Female The Divine Presence
Table No. 1: Name Correspondences.
The world as first created was a true as by sins in general, can be restored Garden of Eden because the blessed by the kabbalistic performance of the Holy One and Shekhinah were “face to commandments.10 face,” joined in constant embrace like He and they (the Kabbalists in that of Hokhmah and Binah. Divine particular) share in the task of restoring blessing thus coursed through the cosmic oneness, of bringing divine system without interruption, flowing male and female face to face with one through all of Shekhinah’s “hosts” and another so that the lights might shine “palaces” into an idealized lower world throughout the universe, so that the as well. Only Adam and Eve’s sin . . . waters of life might flow through Her disturbed this initial harmony. Since to nourish and sustain all the worlds the expulsion from Eden, the union of below.11 Tif’eret and Malkhut, or Blessed Holy “The uniting of the blessed Holy One and Shekhinah, has been sporadic One and His Shekhinah” became for the rather than constant, dependent upon Castilian Kabbalists the overwhelming the balance of human virtue and goal of the religious life, and virtually 9 transgression. all of the commandments were viewed 12 The harmonious relation between as part of this effort. Tifereth and Malkhut, or, as this relation For the Kabbalist, it is not sufficient was more commonly called, “Yihud to perform the commandments in a casual Kudsha Berikh Hu u-Shekhintei” (the or automatic way. One has to have the unification of the Holy One, blessed proper Kavanah, that is, the proper mental be He, and His Divine Presence), is intention and focused mind in order to crucial for the welfare of the world. have an effect upon the upper realm. Only when the union between the Prior to performing a commandment, in two divine powers is achieved can the order to achieve the necessary conscious influx stemming from the Eyn Sof (the intention and focus, the Kabbalist recites infinite one) be transmitted to the a formula that begins: “For the sake of lower world. This harmony, which was unification between The Holy Blessed One disturbed by the primordial sin, as well and His Shechinah . . .”13 Page 31 Another way to induce the Holy One the four Hebrew letters Alef Dalet Nun and the Shekhinah to join together is for Yud (ADNY). Uniting these two Divine a husband and wife to engage in sexual Names with properly focused intention relations in a manner consistent with (Kavanah) theurgically unites Tiferet with the commandments and with the proper Malkhut, the Holy One blessed be He with theurgical intention (Kavanah). The the Shekhinah. husband identifies with the Holy One, blessed be He, and the wife embodies the Shekhinah, the feminine Divine Presence in the world. The human pair performing the sexual union is able to induce a state of harmony above. The sexual act is conceived as fraught with theurgical powers. With most of the kabbalists, this human act both reflects the higher
structure and influences it. Therefore, Tetra- 6 The Holy marriage and sexual union have a grammaton TIFERET One, Beauty Blessed tremendous impact on the upper Be He worlds. . . Marriage and sex were transformed into a mystery that reflects a mysterious marriage above, whose success is crucial for both the divine cosmos and the lower universe.14 The Zohar contains glorious descriptions of the correspondence between the upper union and the Adonai 10 lower union, assuring the reader that MALKHUT Shekhina his coupling with his wife, carried out Kingdom within the proper halakhic rules and bounded as well by mystical intention, One way to unite the names YHVH is potentially a holy and cosmos- and Adonai is to unite (add together) redeeming act, one that unites the their numerical values. Each letter of the sefirot and draws a holy soul to come Hebrew alphabet is also a number, and into this world.15 each word has a number value equal to the sum of its letters. In the Kabbalistic Uniting Divine Names system of Gematria, any two words or Each of the ten Sefirot symbolizes the phrases that have the same number value manifestation of Divinity on a different share a deep connection, and are in some level in the sequence of emanations, and way equivalent. The numerical value of each Sefirah carries a different Divine YHVH is 26, and the numerical value of Name. The Divine Name associated with Adonai is 65. Uniting these two names Tiferet is the Tetragrammaton, composed yields the sum of 91. The letters of the of the four Hebrew letters Yud Hay Vav Hebrew word Amen (Alef Mem Nun) also Hay (usually rendered in English as add up to 91. Being aware of this numerical Rosicrucian Digest YHVH). The Divine Name associated equivalence, whenever one says “Amen” at No. 2 with Malkhut is Adonai, composed of the end of a prayer or blessing using the 2012 Page 32 proper Kavanah/intention, one is mentally The Pentagrammaton uniting the Divine Names YHVH and In Christian Kabbalah, the Hebrew Adonai, and theurgically uniting the Holy letter Shin is inserted into the middle of One and His Shekhinah. the Tetragrammaton (YHVH) to produce a five-letter name (Yud Hay Shin Vav Hay), which is a variant spelling of Jesus’ Hebrew name, Yeshua (alternatively pronounced Yeheshua or Yehoshua). This five-letter name is called the Pentagrammaton, and it is considered to be Jesus’ secret name, the “wonder-working word.”16 Shin is the first letter of the Hebrew word Shekhinah and could therefore Another way to unite the names be used to symbolically represent the YHVH and Adonai is to combine their Shekhinah. The shape of the letter Shin letters into a single eight-letter name. also resembles an altar with three lit This is done by taking one letter at a time candles, the Rosicrucian symbol for the alternately from each name until all eight Divine Presence, which is also called “the letters have been interleaved into a single Shekinah.” Combining Shin with YHVH new name that symbolically unites Tiferet to form the Kabbalistic name of Jesus and Malkhut. When saying “Amen” with (YHShVH) could therefore be seen as the proper intention at the end of a prayer another way to represent the unification or blessing, the combined eight-letter of Tiferet and Malkhut, the Holy One and name can be internally visualized and His Shekhinah, the transcendent Deity and mentally intoned, thereby theurgically the Divine Presence in the world. inducing the unification of the Holy One and the Shekhinah. There are two forms of this eight-letter name. For blessings, which descend from above, alternate letters are taken first from YHVH and then from Adonai. For the Kadish prayer, which sends praise upward from below, letters are taken first from Adonai and then from YHVH.
Construction of the Pentagrammaton.
Amen for Blessings. Pentagrammaton on the title page of (Hebrew is written from right to left.) “The Light of Martinism.”
Page 33 The Shekinah in the Grand Temple, Rosicrucian Park, San Jose, California.
ENDNOTES 1. There is no universally accepted method for spelling In the Tree of Life diagram, Tiferet is the only Sefirah Hebrew words using the English alphabet. In direct that is directly connected by paths to the other five. quotations from other works, the original author’s Tiferet is Sefirah #6. It is also associated with the spelling has been retained, trusting that the reader third letter of the Tetragrammaton, Vav, which has will not be troubled by the resulting inconsistencies the numerical value of six. See Vital, Tree of Life, 60. in spelling. 7. Daniel C. Matt, trans., The Zohar: Pritzker Edition. 2. Henrietta Bernstein, Cabalah Primer: Introduction to Vol. III (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), English/Hebrew Cabalah (Marina del Rey: DeVorss 274. & Company, 1984), 17. 8. A. E. Waite, The Holy Kabbalah: A Mystical 3. “According to a sixteenth-century kabbalist [R. Interpretation of the Scriptures (New York: Citadel Moshe Cordovero], the whole process of emanation Press, 1995), 392-393. can be described as the successive impregnations and 9. Arthur Green, A Guide to the Zohar (Stanford: births of the sephirot from one another, beginning Stanford University Press, 2004), 75. with Causa Causarum and ending with the last 10. Idel, “Sexual Metaphors,” 207. sephirah.” Moshe Idel, “Sexual Metaphors and Praxis 11. Green, Guide, 52. in the Kabbalah,” in The Jewish Family: Metaphor and 12. Ibid., 130. Memory, ed. David Kraemer (New York: Oxford 13. S. P. Berg, The Kabbalistic Daily Prayer Book: Siddur University Press, 1989), 210. T’filah L’ani For Weekdays (New York: Yeshivat Kol 4. Hayyim Vital, The Tree of Life: Chayyim Vital’s Yehuda Press, 1999), 31. Introduction to the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria. Volume I: 14. Idel, “Sexual Metaphors,” 207-208. The Palace of Adam Kadmon, trans. Donald Wilder 15. Green, Guide, 115. Menzi and Zwe Padeh (New York: Arizal Publications 16. Moshe Idel, “Introduction to the Bison Book Inc., 2008). Edition,” in Johann Reuchlin, On The Art of the 5. “The seven lower sephirot were generated out of Kabbalah: De Arte Cabalistica, trans. Martin and the union between Hokhmah and Binah, the seven Sarah Goodman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska sephirot being commonly considered the ‘sons’ of the Rosicrucian Press, 1993), xix. G. Lloyd Jones, “Introduction,” in higher sephirot.” Idel, “Sexual Metaphors,” 210. Art of the Kabbalah Art of Digest Reuchlin, , 17. Reuchlin, No. 2 6. It seems appropriate to use Tiferet to represent these the Kabbalah, 77 and 353. Sefirot Tiferet 2012 six . is centrally located among the six. Page 34 Pico della Mirandola
and the Cabala
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, D. Phil.
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, D. Phil., Oxon, (1953-2012), was an eminent professor of Western Esotericism at the University of Exeter (http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/exeseso/) and co-founder of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. In this article, Professor Goodrick-Clarke introduces us to the extraordinary influence of Pico della Mirandola and the Cabala on Western thought. From pp. 41 - 46 of The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction, “Italian Renaissance Magic and Cabala” by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, ©2008. Reprinted with permission of Oxford University Press (www.oup.com).
iovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463- was the pupil of the Jewish philosopher Elia 1494), a young contemporary of del Medigo. At this time he was in touch G*Marsilio Ficino developed an even with humanist scholars in different places, more powerful variety of Renaissance magic and he visited Florence repeatedly, where by introducing the Jewish Kabbalah into he met Ficino. He spent the following Western thought. Pico’s wealth, nobility, years at home and on various visits, while personal charm, and handsome face have continuing the study of Greek. In 1486, he combined with his precocious brilliance and returned to Florence, but, after becoming early death to make him one of the famous involved in a strange love affair, he moved figures of the Renaissance. Unlike Ficino, to Perugia, where he studied Hebrew the retiring cleric and scholar, Pico led a and Arabic under the guidance of several varied life within the few years granted to Jewish teachers, including the mysterious him. His ambitious claims for Renaissance Flavius Mithridates.1 magic initially brought him into conflict This period marked the beginning of his with various theologians, and his work interest in the Jewish Kabbalah, a medieval was condemned by Pope Innocent VIII. mystical and speculative tradition that He is most famous for his Oration on the claimed an ancient origin but was in fact Dignity of Man (1487), which proclaims the much influenced by Neoplatonism. Pico’s centrality, importance, and freedom of man Christian Cabala (the Latin term was usual in the universe. among Renaissance Christian writers) was based on the tradition developed by Jews in Pico was a younger son in the family of Spain during the Middle Ages. Although the counts of Mirandola and Concordia, the Jews were not finally expelled from who ruled as feudal lords over a small Spain until 1492, their persecution by territory in northern Italy. Destined by his the Catholic authorities there had already mother for a Church career, he was named encouraged many to flee to France and papal protonotary at the age of ten and Italy. Pico learned the Kabbalah direct began to study canon law at Bologna in from the Spanish Jew Flavius Mithridates 1477, at age thirteen. Two years later, he and others. This cultural transfer of Jewish commenced the study of philosophy at the wisdom from the West comparable to the University of Ferrara, subsequently moving earlier import of Greek learning from the in 1482 to the University of Padua, one of East enabled Pico to immerse himself in the leading Aristotelian centers. Here he this Jewish mystical and magical system. Page 35 This medieval Jewish Kabbalah was system and are themselves arranged in based on the ten sephiroth and the twenty- hierarchies. Similarly, there are also bad two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The angels or demons, organized in hierarchies doctrine of the sephiroth was first laid down corresponding to their good opposites. in the Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzirah), Jewish Kabbalistic mysticism was also dating back to the third century A.D., connected with the Scriptures through when Greek Jews were also receptive to three kinds of exegetical techniques based the Neoplatonist currents of late antiquity. on manipulations of the words and letters In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, of the Hebrew text, known as gematria, a particular esoteric teaching emerged in notarikon, and themurah. These ideas Provence and northern Spain with the Book derived from the Ginnat Egoz (Garden of of Illumination (Sefer Bahir), composed Nuts), written in 1274 by the Castilian by Isaac the Blind (fl. 1190–1210). This Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla (ca. 1247- Kabbalah interpreted the sefiroth as powers 1305), a pupil of the famous Kabbalist of God arranged in a specific structure. Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (1240— TheBahir was also the first text to describe ca. 1292), who had introduced an ecstatic the sefiroth as a “tree of emanation,” which Kabbalah whereby the sefiroth led on to from the fourteenth century onward was the mystical contemplation to the Divine depicted in a detailed diagram widely Names of the Creator. These exercises were familiar today as the Tree of Life. The typically mystical, but there was also a Bahir also aided the development of magical side to Kabbalah. As a means of speculative Kabbalah based on the sefiroth approaching the sephiroth, seventy-two as cosmic principles arranged in a primal angels could be invoked by a person who group of three major emanations above knew their names and numbers, and these a lower group of seven. The doctrine was were also efficient if Hebrew words, letters, developed further in the Book of Splendor or signs were suitably arranged. (Sefer Zohar), written in Spain during the Pico discerned a wonderful symmetry thirteenth century, which represents the between the Kabbalah and Hermeticism. tradition adopted by Pico. Thesephiroth The Egyptian lawgiver Hermes Trismegistus are the ten names or expressions of God, had revealed mystical teachings, including and the created universe is seen as the an account of Creation which hinted at external manifestation of these forces. This his knowledge of Moses’ wisdom. In Pico’s creative aspect of the sephiroth links them view, the Kabbalah offered a further body to cosmology, and there is a relationship of mystical doctrine, supposedly derived between the ten sephiroth and the ten from the Hebrew lawgiver, and a parallel spheres of the cosmos, composed of the view on cosmology. Armed with a greater spheres of the seven planets, the sphere of knowledge of Hebrew than any other non- fixed stars, and the higher spheres beyond 2 Jewish scholar and his burning interest these. in the Kabbalah, Pico set down a new The ten sephiroth are arranged in a synthesis of Hermetic-Cabalistic magic in cosmological system known as the Tree twenty-six “Magical Conclusions.” of Life, whose structure provides for Here Pico dismissed medieval magic as twenty-two pathways between the various the work of the devil but praised “natural spheres. These pathways correspond to magic” as a legitimate establishment of links Rosicrucian the letters of the Hebrew alphabet but between heaven and earth by the proper Digest also denote angels or divine spirits which use of natural substances as recommended No. 2 act as intermediaries throughout the by the principles of sympathetic magic 2012 Page 36 (Magical Conclusion 1). He went on to recommend Orphic incantations for magical purposes (Magical Conclusion 2), evidently referring to Ficino’s magic, whose practices he already knew well through the Academy at Florence.3 Flushed with confidence in the powers of Cabala, Pico then described the limitations of Ficinian practice. Pico regarded Ficino’s natural magic as a weak and ineffective form of magic unless it was combined with Cabala (Magical Conclusion 15). Similarly, he held that no powerful magic could be performed without a knowledge of Hebrew (Magical Conclusion 22) and even dismissed the Orphic singing for magical operations in the absence of Cabala (Magical Conclusion Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. 21). In his Cabalistic Conclusions and Apology (1487), Pico distinguishes between invoking them in the powerful Hebrew various forms of Cabala. “Speculative language or by magical combinations Cabala” he divides into four types: first, of the sacred Hebrew alphabet. Just as the mystical manipulation of letters, there are superior spirits on these higher followed by the exploration of the three planes, higher spiritual beings, great worlds—the sensible or terrestrial world, demons also inhabit these regions. Pico the celestial world of the stars, and the solemnly warns the cabalist to work in a supercelestial world of the sephiroth and spirit of piety (Magical Conclusion 6). In the angels.4 his seventy-two Cabalistic Conclusions, These latter categories were of prime Pico demonstrates his detailed knowledge importance to Pico’s magic. Pico asserts of the Jewish system. He writes that the that this kind of Cabala is a “way of Cabalist can communicate with God capturing the powers of superior things” through the archangels in an ecstasy that and is “the supreme part of natural magic.” may result in the death of the body, a way Whereas natural magic aims no higher of dying known as the “Death of the Kiss” than the terrestrial world and the stars, (Cabalistic Conclusion 11). He sets out Cabala can be used to operate beyond in a table which shows the correspondences the supercelestial spheres of the angels, between the ten spheres of the cosmos and archangels, the sephiroth, and God. the ten sephiroth (Cabalistic Conclusion Natural magic uses characters, but Cabala 48). He also describes the states of the uses numbers through its use of letters soul in relation to the meanings of the ten (Magical Conclusion 25). Natural magic sephiroth (such as unity, intellect, reason) uses only intermediary causes, the stars. and traditionally links the highest sephiroth with the lowest in a circular arrangement Cabala goes straight to the first cause, God 6 himself (Magical Conclusion 26).5 (Cabalistic Conclusion 66). Pico elaborates in his Apology how The Oration on the Dignity of Man cabalists may use the secret Hebrew Pico’s famous Oration on the Dignity of names of God and names of angels, Man was written as an introduction to his Page 37 the power to be reborn into the higher forms. Pico opens the Oration with the quotation: “A great miracle, Asclepius, is man.” Whereas the Fathers of the Church had placed man in a dignified position as the highest of terrestrial beings, as a spectator of the universe, Pico was citing the Hermetic text Asclepius with its promise of man’s equality with the gods: “Man is a miracle, a living thing to be worshipped and honored: for he changes his nature into a god’s, as if he were a god. . . . Conjoined to the gods by a kindred divinity, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (middle) with Agnolo Poliziano (right) he despises inwardly that part and Marsilio Ficino (left). Cosimo Rosselli, Chiesa di S.Ambrogio, of him in which he is earthly.”8 Firenze (1484 – 86). http://www.pico-kabbalah.eu/ Introducing the contents nine hundred theses, which he took with of his nine hundred theses, Pico him to Rome in 1486 in order to engage in a ranges over all the philosophers and great public debate. The Oration has rightly mysteries he has studied. A keynote of been regarded as a masterpiece of rhetoric, his philosophia nova is an attempt to celebrating the newfound independence establish a concordance or correlation and confidence of Renaissance man. Pico’s between all ancient philosophies in statement marks the sea-change between support of a pristine theology (prisca the medieval mind and the modern mind, theologia). A tribute to his precocious the tremendous growth in man’s sense of learning (he was only twenty-four), autonomy and dignity which had grown up the names of the Latins Duns Scotus, with humanism. The Oration also rejects Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, as inadequate the traditional grounds for Franciscus de Mayronis, Albertus Man’s importance in the world: his reason, Magnus, and Henry of Ghent are or his place as the microcosm. Pico claims followed by the Arabs Avicenna, that Man’s true greatness lies in his freedom Averroes, and al-Farabi. Further to become whatever he wants to be. Both back among the ancients he invokes animals and angels have their fixed place in the Greek Peripatetics and then the the universe and are powerless to change Neoplatonists Plotinus, Porphyry, their natures. But God gave to Man, alone Iamblichus, and Proclus. At the very of all creatures, no fixed abode, form, or source of the ancient wisdom stand function. Free of such limitations, he has Pythagoras, Mercurius Trismegistus, the power to change and develop, to make Zoroaster, and the “Hebrew Cabalist and mould himself.7 wisemen,” whose knowledge, Pico Rosicrucian What was the ultimate goal of man’s asserts, was later detected by al-Kindi, Digest existential freedom? Imagining God Roger Bacon, and William of Paris.” 9 No. 2 addressing Adam, Pico attributes to Man However, the great themes of Magia 2012 Page 38 and Cabala echo through the Oration. of man’s ability to operate on the mundane The “ancient theology of Hermes world through the knowledge and Trismegistus” and “the occult mysteries application of correspondences between of the Hebrews” offer the prime means the higher and lower worlds. As Frances of man’s promotion to the divine Yates has suggested, this attitude anticipates realms. “As the farmer weds his elms the exploration and confidence of natural to vines, even so does the magus wed science. However, their emphasis on the earth to heaven.” TheOration alludes hierarchy of spiritual intermediaries in to esoteric knowledge known only to the form of attributes, letters, numbers, the few. Pico speaks of occult Hebraic transmutation of the soul indicate that law, vouchsafed only to initiates, and he this philosophy of nature was intimately recalls the symbolism of the sphinxes bound up with religious experience and on Egyptian temples, indicating that an approach to God. Renaissance magic is mystic doctrines should be kept secret thus a form of sacred science. from the common herd.10 Pico’s subsequent career was turbulent. As soon as he published his nine hundred *Editor’s Note: This article is the second half of theses, several Roman theologians raised the chapter entitled “Italian Renaissance Magic an outcry about their heretical character, and Cabala” in The Western Esoteric Traditions: and Pope Innocent VIII appointed a A Historical Introduction by Nicholas commission to examine them. Pico was Goodrick-Clarke. The first half of the chapter, summoned to appear several times before published in the Rosicrucian Digest, Volume this commission, and several of the theses 90, Number 1, 2012, introduced readers to were condemned. Undaunted, in May the Neoplatonism of Renaissance Florence and 1487 Pico published, together with part the eminent Neoplatonist, Marsilio Ficino. of the Oration, an apologia defending the condemned theses. This challenge involved him in fresh difficulties, and bishops with inquisitorial powers were appointed to deal with his case. In July, Pico made a formal submission and retraction to the commission, and in August the pope issued a bull condemning all the theses and forbidding their publication. Lorenzo de’ Medici interceded for Pico with the pope, and Pico was thereafter permitted to live in Florence under Medici protection. On 17 November 1494, the day the armies of King Charles VIII of France entered Florence, Pico died of a fever. He was thirty-one.11 Ficino and Pico were seminal figures in the revival of Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, magic, and Kabbalah in Renaissance No. 54, Opus Mag. Cab ii. Europe. Their interest in the power of sympathetic and Cabalistic magic to effect changes in nature signal a new appreciation Page 39 ENDNOTES 1. Frances Yates offers a summary chapter on Pico’s life the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486), Medieval and and contribution to Kabbalistic magic in Giordano Renaissance Studies 167 (Tempe: Arizona State Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, pp. 84-116. University Press, 1998). Cf. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the 4. F. A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Renaissance, pp. 54-71. For his Jewish teacher, see pp. 91, 95. Chaim Wirszubiski ‘s introduction to his edition of 5. Ibid., pp. 96-97. Flavius Mithridates, Sermo de Passione Dei (Jerusalem, 6. Ibid., pp. 98-102. 1963) and his article “Giovanni Pico’s Companion to 7. The Oration on the Dignity of Man is discussed by Kabbalistic Symbolism,” in Studies in Mysticism and Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Renaissance, pp. Religion, presented to G. G. Scholem (Jerusalem, 65-68. See also the full English translation of the 1967), pp. 353-362. text and commentary by Kristeller in The Renaissance 2. For a helpful account of the historical development of Philosophy of Man, edited by Ernst Cassirer, Paul Jewish Kabbalah as a current of Western esotericism, Oskar Kristeller, John Herman Randall (Chicago: see Kocku von Stuckrad, Western Esotericism, pp. University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 215-256. 31-41. Definitive studies of are offered by Gershom 8. Kristeller, Renaissance Philosophy of Man, p. 223; the Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Penguin/ Meridian, quotation refers to the sixth passage in the Asclepius 1978), and Origins of the Kabbalah, edited by R. J. in Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Werblowsky, translated by A. Arkush (Princeton, N Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English J .: Princeton University Press, 1990); Moshe Idel, Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, Conn.: Yale 1992), p. 69. University Press, 1988); The Early Kabbalah, edited 9. S. A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West, pp. 204-205, by Joseph Dan, translated by R. C. Kiener (New offers an outline of Pico’s first 400 theses which York: Paulist Press, 1986). trace philosophy from the Latin scholastics back 3. Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Renaissance, pp. to the harmonious ancients and “Hebrew Cabalist 61f, takes up the theme of Pico’s syncretism and wisemen.” This quasihistorical survey reflects Pico’s interest in establishing “concordance” (Faivre’s fifth insistence on correspondences within an emanational characteristic of esotericism) between the Kabbalah cosmology. Cf. Oration, in The Renaissance Philosophy and the Bible within a prisca theologia identified with of Man, pp. 242-249. Rosicrucian Hermes and Zoroaster. A substantial monograph on 10. Kristeller, Renaissance Philosophy of Man, p. 250. Digest Pico’s thought with special reference to his Roman 11. Kristeller, Eight Italian Philosophers of the Renaissance, No. 2 debate and the full text of his nine hundred theses pp. 56-57. 2012 is offered by Stephen Alan Farmer, Syncretism in Page 40 The Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix
Christian Rebisse, FRC
In his book, Rosicrucian History and Mysteries, Christian Rebisse describes the many traditions that contributed to what would become the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC and to some extent the Traditional Martinist Order. The excerpt below briefly describes the history of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix and its founders who greatly influenced both traditions.
The Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix. Seated in front, from left to right, are Papus, Joséphin Péladan, and Stanislas de Guaita.
hile Joséphin Péladan was During this period, the friendship savoring the success of his between Josephin Péladan and Stanislas de Wfirst novel, his brother Adrien Guaita took shape, and upon the advice died on September 29, 1885, poisoned by of the writer, the latter got in touch with a medicine improperly measured by his Firmin Boissin. On August 12, 1886, pharmacist. An article announcing his death, Stanislas de Guaita informed Joséphin that in the journal Le Messager de Toulouse, he had received a long and learned letter described him as a Rosicrucian. The text from his friend “Bois+sin.” The way in was signed “a Catholic R+C.” Behind this which he wrote this name, with a cross in signature we must see Firmin Boissin, the its center, is strange, and it is interesting editor-in-chief of this journal. Let us add to note that after this correspondence that the latter knew the photographer Clovis Stanislas de Guaita signed his letters with Lassalle, whom he met through the printer the expression “R+C” and called Joséphin Paul Édouard Privat. In turn, H. Spencer Péladan “my dear Frater.”1 Can it be Lewis was to meet Clovis Lassalle many years concluded that he had been received into later in Toulouse. the order by Firmin Boissin?
Page 41 Events seem to have come to a head at its august traditions resolved to restore it this time. Many occultists then living in by consolidating it on new foundations ... Paris were members of the Theosophical and now life cycles throughout the mystical Society, but they remained disappointed by body of the rejuvenated colossus.”2 its excessively Eastern teachings. Included Thus, moving from Toulouse to Paris among them was Gérard Encausse (1865- (1887-1888), the restored Rose-Croix 1916), better known as Papus. As a student became the Kabbalistic Order of the of medicine he had the opportunity to work Rose-Croix. This order was directed by a with Dr. Jules Luys, who had done some supreme council of twelve members, of research in hypnosis at La Charité Hospital whom six remained unknown, their role in Paris. It was there that he met Augustin consisting of rebuilding the organization Chaboseau (1868-1946), with whom he if it were to be dissolved for any reason soon reorganized the Martinist Order. whatso ever. Among those who were In 1888, after the death of its president, members of the “Council of Twelve” Louis Dramart, the French division of at one time or another, let us mention the Theosophical Society fragmented. He Stanislas de Guaita, Joséphin Péladan, published his Traité élémentaire de science Papus, A. Gabrol, Henry Thorion, F.-Ch. occult (Elementary Treatise on Occultism; Barlet, Augustin Chaboseau, Victor-Émile 1888), a book with which he wanted to Michelet, Sédir, and Marc Haven. The restore Western esotericism and to put order was structured around a hierarchy occultism on an equal basis with subjects of three degrees acquired by examination taught in the universities. (Bachelor of Kabbalah, Master of Afterwards, in September 1889, Kabbalah, Doctor of Kabbalah), and entry Pierre-Gaëtan Leymarie (1817-1901), who directed the spiritist movement since the death of Allan Kardec, organized an international spiritist and spiritualistic congress in which Papus, F.-Ch. Barlet, Augustin Chaboseau, and Chamuel participated. This important event allowed occultists to free themselves from the Theosophical movement, especially as the journal L’Initiation, launched by Papus and his friends in October 1888, began to experience some success. Seeking to place itself under the auspices of a secular tradition, the occultists attempted to make Rosicrucianism and Martinism the pillars of a new temple that they wished to erect. Joséphin Péladan and Stanislas de Guaita were associated with this project, and at the time when the Rose-Croix was ebbing away in Toulouse, they made the decision to restore it. “The ancient order of the Rose-Croix being on the point of Joséphin Péladan. Rosicrucian Digest going dormant, three years ago [the author No. 2 wrote in 1890], when two direct heirs of 2012 Page 42 into the order was reserved to Martinists reproached Papus for his taste in occultism having achieved the S.I. degree. and magic. Along with Abbé Alta, one of the eminent members of the Kabbalistic The Rose-Croix of the Temple and the Order of the Rose-Croix, Joséphin Grail reproached Papus for confusing occultism and esotericism. On February 17, 1891, Thanks to the journalL’lnitiation, the Péladan wrote a letter to Papus, published order became well known, and before in the April issue of the journal L’lnitiation, long a troop of eager occultists came that severed their relationship. knocking at the temple door. Stanislas Heir to a tradition that he felt was on de Guaita, who lived like a hermit in his the verge of losing its mission, Péladan first floor apartment on Trudaine Avenue, decided to work along different lines and allowed Papus to organize matters. But thus founded in May 1891 the Order of the capricious personality of an artist such the Rose-Croix du Temple et du Graal as Joséphin Péladan was hardly suited (also called the Order of the Rose-Croix for associating with such a strong-willed Catholique du Temple et du Graal), which organizer as Papus. The latter wanted he had already outlined in Le Vice suprême, to open up the order and broaden it. In his first novel, in 1884. In June 1891, he contrast, Joséphin Péladan wanted to designated himself as the Grand Master reserve access to carefully selected initiates of this new order, using the name of Sâr and was not at all in accord with the Mérodack Péladan. This event was given Masonic aspect that Papus wanted to considerable space in many articles for Le impose upon the order. The positions of Figaro, and this great publicity profoundly these two men were reconciled only with irritated Papus and his friends who difficulty, especially as Joséphin Péladan denounced Péladan’s split.
ENDNOTES 1. Lettres inédites de Stanislas de Guaita au Sâr Joséphin Péladan, edited by Édouard Bertholet and Émile Dantinne (Neuchatel: Éditions rosicruciennes, 1952). 2. Stanislas de Guaita, “Au seuil du mystère,” Essais de sciences maudites (Paris: Geroges Carré, 1890) p. 158.
Symbol of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix.
Page 43 The Kabbalah: Secret Tradition of the West
Papus
Gérard Encausse, MD (1865-1916), better known by his mystical pseudonym, Papus, was one of the co-founders of the Martinist Order and the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix (1888). As noted in the article on page 41, the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix was structured around a hierarchy of three degrees acquired by examination – Bachelor of Kabbalah, Master of Kabbalah, and Doctor of Kabbalah. The following text is an excerpt from the book written by Papus entitledThe Kabbalah: Secret Tradition of the West. Translation by the staff of the Rosicrucian Digest.
Papus.
The Kabbalah 1 Theoretical Kabbalah ow we come to the superior part The theoretical part has been of the tradition, to the Secret considered from quite different points NDoctrine or Kabbalah, the of view by the authors who examine this veritable soul of this tradition. question. Let us briefly examine the most It can be seen from the table given important principles of their work. (Table No. 1) that the theoretical part of The first group of researchers, the most the Kabbalah is the only section known to numerous, follows the divisions given by Rosicrucian us, the practical or magic parts still being the Kabbalists themselves. This is the plan Digest No. 2 kept secret, or scarcely being touched upon followed by Mr. Ad. Franck in his fine 2012 in some rare manuscripts. work (1843), by Eliphas Lévi (1853), and Page 44 Papus: Epistemology of The Kabbalah
Traditions Word.—Writing.— connected with the How to read and MATERIAL part of write the text. MASSORA the text. Some mysterious (Fixation of the text). meanings of the sacred characters.
BODY Legislative part. Primitive tradition THE LAW of Moses and the great MISHNAH Diverse rules. prophets. TALMUD Customs. (General Code of Ceremonies. Commentaries on THE LAW) Civil life. this tradition. GHEMARAH LIFE (Jurisprudence)
Bereschit. Generation, Traditions mystical constitution connected with the Religious and and relationship of the SEPHER YETZIRAH SPIRITUAL part of philosophical part. 3 worlds. (Theoretical the text. Kabbalah); Various TRADITIONS Various (Explanation of the THE SECRET DOCTRINE Mercavah. Mystical connected with the TORAH. connected with the text). THEORY study of the divine world ZOHAR Esoterism of the and its relationships. THE KABBALAH Bible. SOUL Synthetic hieroglyphism. Evolution. — Division. (Virtually nothing Mystic transposition of the published). letters and numbers. TAROT
Magic manuscripts PRACTICE attributed to Solomon. CLAVICULA (Practical Kabbalah) (Practical magic). (Schemamphoras)
Table No. 1. by Mr. Isidore Loeb (entry Cabbale in the Other writers, such as Mr. S. Munk Grande Encyclopédie). divide the Kabbalah in the following The principal subjects of mystic fashion: speculation of the time are the work of KABBALAH the chariot (maasse mercaba), by allusion 1. Symbolic Mystic calculations to Ezekiel’s Chariot, and work of creation Themurah (maasse bereschit). Gematria The work of the chariot, which is also Notarikon the great work (dabar gadol), discusses the 2. Positive, Dogmatic Angels and demons beings of the supernatural world, God, Divisions the powers, the fundamental ideas, the Trasmigration of souls “heavenly family” as it is sometimes called; 3. Speculative and Sephiroth, etc. the work of creation discusses generation metaphysical and the nature of the terrestrial world. As can be seen, Mr. S. Munck tends Here is this division: toward the old division adopted by certain Kabbalists, notably Kircher. KABBALAH: Maasse Mercaba ZOHAR (work of the chariot) But the most complete division, in Maasse Bereschit SEPHER our opinion, of the Kabbalah is that YETZIRAH of Molitor: this is the one which we (work of creation) ourselves have adopted in the general Page 45 KABBALAH THEORETICAL BERESCHIT First degree. Sepher Yetzirah. Historical Legends. Haggadah. MERCABA Second degree. Zohar. Practical morals. PRACTICAL Virtually nothing written Third degree. MAGICAL Mystical doctrine. MANUSCRIPTS (Clavicula) (Practical magic.)
table given previously, for it has the merit These two conditions call for the of conforming in a general way to the initiation of a disciple, regardless of age or generally adopted divisions while going status; it sometimes happened that a father beyond them, complementing them as it would instruct his children while they were by the recognition of a practical part. were very young. Traditional teaching, triune like human This high tradition is calledKabbalah nature and human needs, was at the same (in Hebrew, KIBBEL, to join together). time historical, moral, and mystical; thus Within its exterior form the word conceals the sacred writing contained a triple sense: the aptitude of the soul to conceive supernatural ideas. 1. The literal, historical sense The Kabbalah was divided into two (pashut), which corresponds to parts: the theoretical and the practical. the body and to the square of the 1. Patriarchal traditions on the temple; sacred mystery of God and the 2. Moral teachings (drusch), to the divine persons; soul or the sacred; 2. On spiritual creation and the fall 3. And last, the mystical sense (sod), of the angels; which represents the spirit and 3. On the origin of chaos, matter, the holy of holies. and the renovation of the world The first, composed of certain during the six days of creation; stories taken from the lives of the 4. On the creation of the visible ancient patriarchs, was transmitted from person [humanity], his fall, and generation to generation, like so many the divine ways leading to his popular legends. It is found scattered reinstatement. here and there in the form of comments, Otherwise stated, it treated: in Biblical manuscripts and Chaldean • The work of creation (Masse paraphrases. Bereschit). The moral sense looked at everything • The heavenly chariot (Mercabah) from a practical point of view, while the The work of creation is contained in mystical, rising above the visible transitory the Sepher Yetzirah. world, hovered unceasingly in the sphere We were responsible for the first of the eternal. French translation of this book (1887). Rosicrucian The mystical sense thus required a Since then, a new translation has appeared, Digest No. 2 secret discipline, exacting an uncommon more developed, thanks to more complete 2012 piety of soul. originals, made by Mr. Mayer-Lambert. Page 46 We recommend this very serious work have space here to give a translation of this with great enthusiasm. Only one regret: book (translations already exist in Latin the absence of a bibliography which would and in English), let us be content with the have been most useful for all concerned. excellent summary of Mr. Isidore Loeb in So that the reader may, in so far as the Grande Encyclopédie (entry Cabbale). possible, supplement our translation, which is to be found further on, we The Zohar is a cabbalistic provide here a table below summarizing commentary on the Pentateuch; the supplementary developments of the it is not certain that we possess Sepher Yetzirah. We have modified the it in its original form, and the relation of the planets and the days of the form we do possess may be the week, since the earlier relations seem to us work of several people. It is a vast to have been erroneously established due compilation including, along with to a poor understanding of the connection the ideas of the writer or writers, between the order of the planets and the other more or less ancient works, order of the days. The Egyptian clock such as the Book of the Secret, The given by Alliette (Etteila) clearly shows the Great Assembly, The Lesser Assembly, source of this error. The Book of Heavenly Tents, The The work of the heavenly chariot is Faithful Shepherd, The Discourse of contained in the Zohar. Since we do not a Young Man [Person], and others. LETTER UNIVERSE YEAR MAN MORAL WORLD Temperate (spring or Alef AIR Atmosphere Chest Rule of Equilibrium (autumn א Mem WATER Earth Winter Stomach Plane of Fault מ Shin EARTH Heaven Summer Head Plane of Worth ש Bet Saturn Saturday SATURDAY Mouth Life and Death ב Gimel Jupiter Sunday THURSDAY Right eye Peace and Misfortune ג Dalet Mars Monday TUESDAY Left eye Wisdom and Foolishness ד Kaf Sun Tuesday SUNDAY Right nostril Richness and Poverty כ Pay Venus Wednesday FRIDAY Left nostril Culture and Barrenness פ Resh Mercury Thursday WEDNESDAY Right ear Grace and Unsightliness ר Tav Moon Friday MONDAY Left ear Domination and Servitude ת Hay Aries March Liver Sight and Blindness ה Vav Taurus April Bladder Hearing and Deafness ו Smell and Absence of Zayin Gemini May Spleen Smell ז Chet Cancer June Loins Speech and Muteness ח Tet Leo July Right kidney Fulness and Hunger ט Yud Virgo August Left kidney Coitus and Castration י Lamed Libra September Large intestine Activity and Powerlessness ל Soundness of Step and Nun Scorpio October Small intestine Lameness נ Anger and the Removal Samekh Sagittarius November Right hand of the Liver ס Laughter and the Ayin Capricorn December Left hand Removal of the Spleen ע Thought and the Tzaddi Aquarius January Right foot Removal of the Heart צ Kuf Pisces February Left foot Sleep and Languor ק Page 47 Kabbalah and Contemporary Cosmology: Discovering the Resonance
Daniel C. Matt, Ph.D.
Daniel C. Matt, Ph.D., one of the world’s foremost authorities on Jewish mysticism, served as Professor of Jewish Spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California for more than twenty years. He received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University and has also taught at Stanford University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
This article is based on Dr. Matt’s bookGod and the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony between Science and Spirituality, published by Jewish Lights. Dr. Matt is also the author of The Essential Kabbalah and of the multi-volume annotated translation of the Zohar entitled The Zohar: Pritzker Edition. Reprinted with permission of the author.
n the beginning was the big bang, mix of matter produced by cycles of stars fourteen billion years ago. The – stars forming and exploding. We along Iprimordial vacuum was devoid of with everything else are literally made of matter, but not really empty – rather, in a stardust. state of minimum energy, pregnant with The Earth took shape and began potential, teeming with virtual particles. cooling down about four and a half Through a quantum fluctuation, a sort of billion years ago. By about a billion bubble, in this vacuum, there emerged a years later, various microorganisms had hot, dense seed, smaller than a proton, yet developed. Exactly how, no one knows. containing all the mass and energy of our We do know that earth’s early atmosphere universe. In less than a trillionth of a second, was composed of hydrogen, water vapor, this seed cooled and expanded wildly, faster carbon dioxide and simple gases such as than the speed of light, inflating into the size ammonia and methane. In such a climate, of a grapefruit. The expansion then slowed organic compounds may have synthesized down, but it has never stopped. spontaneously. In its first few seconds, the universe Or perhaps life drifted to Earth in the was an undifferentiated soup of matter form of spores from Mars or from another and radiation. It took a few minutes for solar system in our galaxy or another galaxy things to cool down enough for nuclei to in the universe. However life began, all its form, and at least 300,000 years for atoms forms share similar genetic codes and can to form. For eons, clouds of gas expanded. be traced back to a common ancestor. All Huge glimmering balls of hot gas formed living beings are cousins. into stars. Deep within these stars, nuclear We humans like to think of ourselves as reactions gave birth to elements such as the pinnacle of creation, and it is true that carbon and iron. When the stars grew old, we are the most complicated things in the they exploded, spewing these elements into universe. Our brain contains one hundred Rosicrucian the universe. Eventually this matter was billion cells, linked by one hundred trillion Digest recycled into new solar systems. Our solar synaptic connections. Yet we are part of No. 2 2012 system is one example of this recycling, a the evolutionary process, descended from Page 48 bacteria who lived three-and-a-half billion growing exponentially in time. Each baby years ago. In our mother’s womb each universe is born in what can be considered of us retraces the entire developmental a big bang – or should we say a little bang? span from amoeba to human being. Our – a fluctuation of the vacuum followed by species – Homo sapiens – is a primate that inflation. developed in Africa, splitting away from If Linde’s speculations are correct, the chimpanzee line about seven million perhaps we should translate the years ago. We still share with the chimps opening words of Genesis not as “In 99 percent of our active genes. If you’ll the beginning...,” but “In a beginning, pardon the expression, we are an improved God created heaven and earth.” In fact, ape. this represents a more literal rendering The big bang is a theory, not a fact. To of the original Hebrew: Be-Reshit: “In a cosmologists, it offers the most convincing beginning.” explanation of the evolution of the Science has no consensus on the universe, “the best approximation to truth ultimate origin. Some theories espouse that we currently possess.” It may be proven a well-defined beginning; others, like wrong. More likely, it will eventually Stephen Hawking’s, do not. But both be enfolded within a larger theory. The suggest a radically new reading of Genesis. scientific consensus is that the big bang If God spoke the world into being, the theory is correct within its specific domain: divine language is energy; the alphabet, the evolution of our universe from perhaps elementary particles; God’s grammar, one-billionth of a second after its origins the laws of nature. Many scientists have up to the present. Whatever happened sensed a spiritual dimension in the search before that first fraction of a second lies for these laws. For Einstein, discerning the beyond the limits of the theory. The term laws of nature was a way to discover how “big bang” suggests a definite beginning God thinks. a finite time ago, but the theory does not But does the universe have a purpose? extend that far. The ultimate origin of the Is there meaning to our existence? Why universe is still unfathomed. should we live ethically? Here, cosmology One version of the theory, known as cannot help us very much. Darwin eternal inflation was developed by Andrei intensifies our problem. Are we different Linde. This version portrays a universe from other animals? Can we transcend that, by continually reproducing itself, violence and savagery? As the wife of an attains immortality. Our universe is just Anglican bishop remarked, upon hearing one of countless baby universes, one of of Darwin’s theory: “Descended from apes! countless inflating, self-reproducing balls My dear, let us hope that it is not true; but or “bubbles.” In each of these bubbles, if it is, let us pray that it will not become the initial conditions differ and diverse generally known.” Her comment echoes kinds of elementary particles interact in the fear that knowing the true nature of unimagined ways. Perhaps, different laws our ancestors threatens to unravel the of physics apply in each. social fabric. Not all the domains inflate into large We have lost our myth. A myth is a bubbles, but those that do, like ours, story, imagined or true, that helps us make dominate the volume of the universe and our experience comprehensible by offering sprout other bubbles in a perpetual chain a construction of reality. It is a narrative reaction. The entire universe is a tree of life, that wrests order from chaos. We are not a cluster of bubbles attached to each other, content to see events as unconnected, as
Page 49 inexplicable. We crave to understand the precise plan for creation, worked out in underlying order in the world. A myth advance. By an intricate and unrepeatable tells us why things are the way they are and combination of chance and necessity, where they came from. Such an account is humanity has evolved from and alongside not only comfortable, assuring and socially countless other forms of life over billions of useful; it is essential. Without a myth, there years. Ultimately, our evolutionary history is no meaning or purpose to life. There is is uplifting: It enables us to see that we are just vast emptiness. part of a wholeness, a oneness. Myths do more than explain. They To be “religious” means, in the words guide mental processes, conditioning how of a contemporary physicist, to have an we think, even how we perceive. Myths intuitive feeling of the unity of the cosmos. come to life by serving as models for This oneness is grounded in scientific fact: human behavior. On Friday evening, as We are made of the same stuff as all of my family begins Shabbat (the Sabbath), creation. Everything that is, was, or will I sometimes imagine God, having created be started off together as one infinitesimal the world in one very packed week finally point: the cosmic seed. taking a break. According to the Bible, Life has since branched out, but this Shavat va-yinnafash, “God rested and was should not blind us to its underlying refreshed.” This mythical image enables unity. The deepest marvel is the unity me to pause, to slow down and appreciate in diversity, the vast array of material creation. By observing Shabbat, I am manifestations of energy. Becoming aware imitating the divine. Order re-emerges out of the multifaceted unity can help us of the impending chaos of life. learn how to live in harmony with other What do we do when the myths of human beings and with all beings, with all tradition have been undone, when the our fellow transformations of energy and God of the Bible seems so unbelievable? Is matter. there really someone “up there” in control, If the big bang is our new creation charting the course of history, reaching myth, the story that explains how the down to rescue those in need, tallying universe began, then who is God? “God” up our good and bad deeds for reward is a name we give to the oneness of it all. and punishment? Many people have shed How can you name oneness? How the security of traditional belief; they are can you name the unnamable? The Jewish more likely to experience a gaping, aching mystical tradition, the Kabbalah, offers a void than the satisfying fullness of God’s number of possibilities. One is Ein Sof, presence. If they believe in anything, literally: “there is no end.” Ein Sof is the perhaps it’s science and technology. And Infinite, or, to borrow a phrase from the what does science provide in exchange for Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, the God this belief? Progress in every field except beyond God. for one: the ultimate meaning of life. Some Sometimes the kabbalists use a more scientists insist that there is no meaning. radical name than Ein Sof. This is the name As one leading physicist has written, “The ayin – nothingness. We encounter this more we know about the universe, the bizarre term among Christian mystics as more it is evident that it is pointless and well: John Scotus Erigena calls God nihil; meaningless.” Eckhart, nihts; St. John of the Cross, nada. The big bang is a contemporary To call God “Nothingness” does not mean Rosicrucian Digest Creation story. Energy turns into matter, that God does not exist. Rather, it conveys No. 2 which turns back into energy. There is no the idea that God is no thing. God animates 2012 Page 50 all things and cannot be contained by any Physicists call this point a singularity: of them. God is the oneness that is no an infinitely dense point in spacetime. A particular thing, no thingness. singularity is both destructive and creative. This mystical nothingness is neither Anything falling into a singularity merges empty nor barren; it is fertile and with it, losing its identity, while energy overflowing, engendering the myriad forms emerging from a singularity can become of life. The mystics teach that the universe anything. The laws of physics do not apply emanated from divine nothingness. to the split second in which energy or mass Similarly, as we have seen, cosmologists emerges. speak of the quantum vacuum, teeming According to the thirteenth-century with potential, engendering the cosmic kabbalist, Moses de Leon, seed. This vacuum is anything but empty —a seething froth of virtual particles, The beginning of existence is the constantly appearing and disappearing. secret concealed point. This is the How did the universe emerge out beginning of all the hidden things, of prolific nothingness? According to which spread out from there and Kabbalah and classical big bang theory, emanate, according to their species. this transition was marked by a single From a single point you can extend the point. dimensions of all things.
Visible View of Pillar and Jets HH 901/902. NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI). Page 51 As emanation proceeds, as God begins infinitesimal point from which the cosmos to unfold, the point expands into a circle. flashed into existence. Similarly, ever since the big bang, our One kabbalist, Shim’on Lavi, universe has been expanding. We know understands expansion as part of the this thanks to the astronomer Edwin rhythm of creation: Hubble, who measured the speed at which With the appearance of the light, other galaxies are moving away from us. the universe expanded. In 1929 Hubble determined that the farther a galaxy is from us, the faster it is With the concealment of the light, moving away. The universe is expanding the things that exist were created in all in all directions. It’s not that the universe their variety. is expanding within space. Space itself is This is the mystery of the act of expanding. Creation. The most dramatic consequence of One who understands will Hubble’s discovery is what it tells us about understand. the origin of our universe. Just play the Hubble tape in reverse: If the universe is When light flashed forth, time and now expanding, that means it was once space began. But the early universe was much smaller. How small? According to an undifferentiated soup of energy and classical big bang theory, if we go back matter. How did matter emerge from far enough in spacetime and retrace the the stew? The mystic writes that the light paths of the galaxies and their formation, was concealed. A scientist would say that the entire mass-energy of the universe energy congealed. Matter is frozen energy. contracts into the size of a singularity – the No nucleus or atom could form until some
Rosicrucian Digest Hubble’s Largest Galaxy Portrait Offers a New High-Definition View. NASA, ESA, K. Kuntz (JHU), F. Bresolin No. 2 (University of Hawaii), J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Lab), J. Mould (NOAO), Y.-H. Chu (University of Illinois, 2012 Urbana), and STScI. Page 52 energy cooled down enough that it could in Galilee, the most famous kabbalist who be bound and bundled into stable particles ever lived – Isaac Luria – pondered creation of matter. and asked himself, “What came before?” Einstein discovered the equivalence of He believed there was only Ein Sof, God as mass and energy. Ultimately, matter is not infinity. But if Ein Sof pervaded all space, distinct from energy, but simply energy how could there be room for anything that has temporarily assumed a particular other than God? Luria concluded that the pattern. Matter is energy in a tangible first act of creation was not emanation, form; both are different states of a single but withdrawal: “Before the creation of continuum, different names for two forms the universe, Ein Sof withdrew itself into of the same thing. its essence, from itself to itself within itself. Like the physicist, the mystic, too, Within its essence, it left an empty space, is fascinated by the intimate relation of in which it could emanate and create.” matter and energy, though the mystical This istsimtsum, which literally description is composed in a different key. means “contraction,” but here suggests Material existence emerges out of ayin, withdrawal, a withdrawal by which God the pool of divine energy. Ultimately, the made room for something other than world is not other than God, for this divine God. The primordial void carved out energy is concealed within all forms of by tsimtsum became the site of creation: being. Were it not concealed, there could no larger than an infinitesimal point in be no individual existence; everything relation to Ein Sof, yet spacious enough to would dissolve back into oneness, or house the cosmos. But the void was not nothingness. really empty: It retained a trace, a residue Around the middle of the sixteenth of the light of Ein Sof, just as the vacuum century in the mountaintop city of Safed preceding the big bang was not completely empty, but rather in a state of minimum energy: pregnant with creative potential and virtual particles. As Ein Sof began to unfold, a ray of light was channeled into the void through vessels. Everything went smoothly at first, but some of the vessels, less translucent, could not withstand the power of the light. They shattered. Most of the light returned to its infinite source, “to the mother’s womb.” But the rest, falling as sparks along with shards of the shattered vessels, was eventually trapped in material existence. Our task, according to Kabbalah, is to liberate these sparks of light and restore them to divinity. By living ethically and spiritually, we raise the sparks and thereby bring about tikkun, the “repair” or mending of the cosmos. If the vessels had not broken, our world of multiplicity would not exist. We exist because we have lost oneness.
Page 53 Modern cosmology has a theory that To us today, the fundamental parallels the breaking of the vessels: the forces of nature appear distinct: gravity, theory of broken symmetry. electromagnetism and two other forces Symmetry can be unstable. Picture known as the strong and weak nuclear yourself at an elegant wedding dinner, forces. The balance between these forces sitting with a dozen other guests around determines the existence and behavior a circular table. Champagne glasses have of everything in the visible universe. been placed precisely between each dinner Originally all four forces were linked, and plate and the next: perfect right-left today scientists dream of finding a single symmetry. A waiter fills the glasses with set of equations describing all four. By champagne and everyone sits, waiting for colliding subatomic particles, physicists someone else to lift a glass. You’re a little have discovered that at extremely high thirsty and, realizing that the pink bubbles temperatures the differences between the will not last forever, you decide to take a forces begin to disappear. sip. But which champagne glass should One more act of imagination. Imagine you pick? Not fully versed in the rules of yourself journeying back in time, closer etiquette, you could as easily choose the and closer to the moment of the big glass to your left as the one to your right. bang. The further you go, the hotter and Either way, as soon as you reach for one or denser the universe becomes, and broken the other, the symmetry is broken. Unless symmetries are restored. You go back everyone else does what you do, someone millions and billions of years. Finally you will have to reach across the table to get a reach the tiniest fraction of time a physicist glass. can imagine: 10-43 second after the big Let’s take a more mundane example. bang, a ten-millionth of a trillionth of a Imagine that you’re holding a handful of trillionth of a trillionth of a second after sharpened pencils, just snug enough that the beginning. Earlier than this is hard they stand on their points. Now let go. For to probe, because the density of matter a moment, the pencils remain balanced becomes so great that the structure, and and rotationally symmetrical. Looking perhaps the meaning, of space and time down from above, you see a perfect circle break down. At this point, all interactions of pencil erasers. But the symmetry is between the fundamental forces are quickly broken, as the pencils fall into a indistinguishable. Perfect symmetry. tangle of thick pickup sticks. How did the symmetry of the beginning The pencils are a metaphor for the become so disguised over the course of universe. The jumble of fallen pencils is time? As the universe expands and starts to the universe today, while the symmetrical cool, its radiation and particles lose energy. bundle is the universe in its original state. The various forces become distinct. One of the challenges of science is to Meanwhile, matter is also losing its discover the symmetry hidden within the oneness. By the time the universe is just tangle of ordinary life. one billionth of a second old, there are four The universe began in an extremely forces and two dozen kinds of elementary hot state of utmost simplicity and particles. This fracturing of symmetry symmetry. As it expands and cools, this creates the particles of matter and energy perfect symmetry is broken, giving rise found today around us – and within us. Rosicrucian Digest to the world of diversity and structure we Perfect symmetry sounds alluring, but No. 2 inhabit. it is sterile. If the primal force had not broken 2012 Page 54 Shevirat haKeilim – Shattering of the Vessels. Original oil painting by Victoria Franck Wetsch, SRC. into four forces, the universe would be a inner space, challenging us to retrace our very different place, if it existed at all. Tiny path to oneness and to live in the light of deviations from complete uniformity now what we discover. give rise to nuclei, atoms and molecules; As we have seen, the Jewish mystics then galaxies, stars, planets and people. We picture divine sparks in every thing that exist today in our present condition, with exists. A scientist would say there is energy all our flaws and imperfections, because of latent in subatomic particles. The spiritual broken symmetry, just as Kabbalah teaches task is to raise the sparks, to restore the that our jumbled, blemished reality derives world to God, to become aware that every from the breaking of the vessels. single thing we do or see or touch or Broken symmetry and the breaking imagine is part of the oneness, a pattern of the vessels are distinct theories, each of energy. Raising the sparks is a powerful generated by a different approach to the metaphor; it transforms religion from a list question of the origin of the universe: of dos and don’ts or a list of dogmas into Yet, their resonance is intriguing. The spiritual adventure. human mind has devised alternative God is not some separate being up strategies – scientific and spiritual – to there. She is right here, in the bark of a tree, search for our origin. The two are distinct, in a friend’s voice, in a stranger’s eye. The but complementary. Science enables us world is teeming with God. Since God is to probe infinitesimal particles of matter in everything, you can serve God through and unimaginable depths of outer space, everything. In looking for the divine understanding each in light of the other, spark, we discover that what is ordinary is as we grope our way back toward the spectacular. The holy deed is doing what beginning. Spirituality guides us through needs to be done now. Page 55 The world is fractured, and God needs both human and divine. Without trusting us to mend it. By mending the world – another person, we cannot love; without socially, economically, politically – we trusting others, we cannot build and mend God, whose sparks lie scattered sustain community. But how can we trust everywhere. the cosmos, or this God of oneness? But we shouldn’t fool ourselves. There We can trust that we are part of will never be a complete tikkun, a complete something greater: a vast web of existence mending of the world. Things will never be constantly expanding and evolving. When perfect. Society will never be completely we gaze at the nighttime sky, we can ponder just. How will it all end? Is there a Messiah that we are made of elements forged within coming to redeem us? Messiahs captivate stars, out of particles born in the big bang. our imagination because the world is We can sense that we are looking back so unfair, history is so fickle. When the home. The further we gaze into space, the Messiah comes, we are told, everything further we see back into time. If we see a will be set right: good will finally triumph galaxy ten million light years away, we are and evil will be eliminated. That would be seeing that galaxy as it was ten million years nice, but is it the way things work? ago: it has taken that long for its ancient What is the long-range future of our light to arrive here. Beyond any star we planet, according to science? Here’s the will ever identify, beyond any quasar, forecast: lies the horizon of spacetime, fourteen Our sun is about five billion years billion light years away. But neither God old – middle aged and reliable. But five nor the big bang is that far away. The big billion years from now, the hydrogen fuel bang didn’t happen somewhere out there, in the sun’s core will run out. The core outside of us. Rather, we began inside the will sag while the atmosphere of the sun big bang; we now embody its primordial will mushroom, engulfing several of its energy. The big bang has never stopped. closest planets, probably including Earth. Gradually, most of this atmosphere will And what about God? God is not an fall away, leaving a hot, dense ball of inert object or a fixed destination. There is no matter. definite way to reach God. But then again, Life will not necessarily come to an you don’t need to reach something that’s end. By then, human beings, or whatever everywhere. God is not somewhere else, type of intelligent life evolves from us, will hidden from us. God is right here, hidden have developed the technology to move to from us. We are enslaved by routines. another, safer solar system. Rushing from event to event, from one Meanwhile, here we are. We still have chore to another, we rarely let ourselves quite a while until the year 5 billion. There pause and notice the splendor right in front will be no final perfection. No one has of us. Our sense of wonder has shriveled, arranged the future ahead of time; nothing victimized by our pace of life. is preordained. Chance will play a leading How, then, can we find God? A clue role in the way things unfold, as it always is provided by one of the many names of has. We should learn to negotiate with Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God, the chance. We should work on mending our divine presence. In Kabbalah She is called own brokenness, our social fabric, our ocean, well, garden, apple orchard. She is planet as best we can. also called zot, which means simply “this.” Rosicrucian What kind of God can we believe God is right here, in this very moment, Digest No. 2 in? The Hebrew wordemunah, “belief,” fresh and unexpected, taking you by 2012 originally meant trust and faithfulness, surprise. God is this. Page 56 Salvator Mundi. From the Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians of the 16th and 17th Centuries, hand colored by H. Spencer Lewis.
Printed on 100% recycled post-consumer fiber using soy-based ink. Page 57