The unique Kabbalah

When I think about all the various spiritual systems out there, one sticks out in my mind as unique – strange even. This is the Kabbalah.

Now I’ll spare you the lore about the name and everything else. What I want to reflect upon is the strange unlikeliness of the Kabbalahs way of conceiving things.

In the Hebrew Bible, the name of the God of Israel consists of 4 letters; they are יהוה
That is, Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh. The name itself is grammatically related to the word Haya (to be) or “being”. What makes this interesting (or an interesting coincidence to sceptics) is that the Kabbalistic way of reading this name involves splicing reality into 4 realms of “being”. They are: Physical (which includes the body, the interoceptive sense of physical vitality) Emotional (a physically felt, yet distinctly “spiritual” experience) Thought (the stuff were always doing in our heads) and what can be called Unconscious.

The Hebrew letters which make up this name also have the intriguing property of being complementary. They are masculine (the Yod and Vav) and feminine (the two Heh’s). Another fortuitous coincidence lending logical coherency to this system. The masculine letters, number 1 and 3 in the sequential development of יהוה , would correlate with the unconscious, precognitive experience, and emotional experience. Alternatively, they can be thought of as realized and unrealized emotion. What stays latent in our personalities – in our minds, what we experience in our dreams, primes us to think or feel this way in just this situation – is the Yod – a little tick of a letter, which interestingly enough, makes a lot of pictographic sense. The Vav, on the other hand, is merely the elongation of the Yod: see the Hebrew letters above. Again, coincidentally enough, this letter accurately reflects the idea; the “elongation” of unconscious, precognitive experience is emotional expression: when feelings are felt “in the body” as opposed to being kept in and repressed in the mind.

The female letters, conversely, are repetitions of the same letter – the Heh. If the Kabbalah is weird at this point in it’s unusual consistency, then the Heh’s shape should correspond to it’s metaphysical meaning, making it even weirder. Again, it holds up. The first heh is “thought”. When we think, we seldom take into account the fact that thought is dictated by unconscious feeling. It takes awareness to be aware of that – and to carefully reflect on what you feel as you think. If the Vav represents the emotional expression of unrealized emotion (the yod), the heh (thought) is an internal experience of feeling, occurring in self communication (when we speak to ourselves), reflections on our environment, or against ourselves.

Feeling must be released – it must be felt in the body. The physical body and the experience of it’s vitality (life force) is the final heh. This Heh has a relationship to the Vav similar to the relationship of the first heh to the Yod. Thought emerges from unconscious feeling; action emerges from realized feeling. Both heh’s are “products” of some emotional energy, given shape and form in actual expression, whether as verbal thought, or physical expression.

The Kabbalah was devised (or formally enunciated) in the 11th century CE. Adherents claim it is actually much older, but was kept hidden by the sages, scribes and rabbis for thousands of years. If this claim has any attractiveness, it’s because the Kabbalah so neatly describes a central name of God in a grammatically and ontologically consistent manner.

It’s impossible to know whether there might be some revelatory significance to this esoteric system, but, it sure is interesting and sure does create mystery around this tradition.

reply to post by Astrocyte


Are you familiar with the traditional depiction of the term "YHWH"? It appears as a triangle. If you acknowledge the dual nature of the universe by taking TWO of those triangles and rotating one, you will find you have the star of David. The Flower of Life. Not to mention the numerical value of the word YHWH is 72, which, when doubled in the fashion I just described, results in 144. Intriguing, isn't it?

Not to mention the Greek transliteration of YHWH is Tetragrammaton, which can also be translated as a four sided force of gravity. Or a pyramid. Seriously, studying this stuff draws all sorts of parallels between Christianity other mystical religions. You have the shallow, single-minded iteration - and then you have the story behind the story behind the story, which reveals a MUCH larger picture.

Good stuff.

The mathematical basis of Kabbalah has now been rigorously established. See
smphillips.8m.com...
for the mathematical meanings of the Kabbalistic Names of God, Archangelic Names, Orders of Angels and Mundane Chakras of the 10 Sephiroth (download from buttons on the righthand side of the homepage. The research articles:
smphillips.8m.com...
and other webpages prove the isomorphism between the Otz Chiim and other sacred geometries and show how information about the nature and structure of superstrings as the microscopic manifestation of the Tree of Life blueprint is encoded in this and other sacred geometries.

Kabbalah is a system of UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE ABOUT ALL LEVELS OF REALITY. Only its language and metaphorical context is Jewish. But mathematics transcends all limitations of language and behind the public presentation of Kabbalah is a mathematics of holistic systems that conform to the divine paradigm. Hidden for centuries under many layers of deliberately obscure symbolism and biblical metaphor, the sublime, mathematical dimension of Kabbalah has now been revealed for the first time. The scientific connections of the Tree of Life and its various polygonal and polyhedral counterparts to the symmetry groups used in superstring physics, to musical theory, DNA and music have been established. The pure essence of Kabbalah is mathematical, and that is is why it has not been known up till now except in vague, unsatisfactory terms. I recommend this website for those who feel that their mathematical ability is up to meeting its intellectual challenges.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


The numerical value of YHVH is 26 (yod = 10, heh = 5, vav = 6, heh = 5).

72 is one of the permutations of the divine name using the Lurianic method of "expansion"; when each letter of the name is spelled out in full i.e. the Yod is spelled out Yod, Vav Dalet, etc. The letters of the name have 4 unique expansions; the highest one which corresponds to "wisdom" or Yod, equals 72. And then there are the correlations between the 72 of this expansion with the shemhamephorash, the "72 letter name of God" which is derived from three verses in Exodus where Moses parts the sea.

The Kabbalists really did devise an interesting system.

This entire thread is meant to point out the strangeness of it all. The books of Moses date back (according to contemporary biblical historical analysis) to around 1000 BCE. The Hebrew name of God, the tetragrammaton, appears around this time period. Sometime later, around the period of Ezra (400 BCE), Aramaic script was being used.

So we have 2 important facts: the name YHVH is ancient; it appears 2000 years before it was esoterically interpreted by the Zohar. The script used - Aramaic - appears 1400 years before it was kabbalistically interpreted.

Then, in the 11th century (the kabbalists even attribute a mystical significance to why it was revealed at this juncture), the name of God - which means "being" - was ontologically interpreted according to it's 4 distinct letters; God, or "being" appears in 4 distinct ways: in the experience of physical action and vitality; in the experience of emotion; in the experience of thought; and in unconscious precognitive experience.

This is a pretty neat ontological breakdown. In addition to this, the shapes of the 4 letters are accurate pictographic representations of their ontological concepts; A yod is small, indicating the paucity and obscurity of unconscious experience; it's there, but we can't "know" it in the 3 dimensional sense that we do thought. Thought, converely, does have a 3 dimensional substance, and this is reflected in the shape of the Heh. The Vav, emotion, is merely the elongation of emotive unconscious processes into realized emotional experience. But feeling something in the body as emotion is still incomplete; emotion wants to be physically expressed in some sort of action; whether that be talking, singing, dancing, moving, walking, etc; physical expression is the end result - the ultimate end point of this ontological development.

So grammatically, the name means being. Next, the pictographic representation of the Aramaic letters contain metaphysical coherency; Last, the kabbalistic meaning, the metaphysical significance of it all, holds up.

Given all of the above, it seems unlikely that this is all coincidence. There must have been a tradition reaching back into ancient times, into biblical times even, where the letters of this Hebrew name of God signified something tremendously meaningful and mystical. The Jewish practice of not pronouncing this name - that it is too holy and too arcane to be said, also lends credence to the overall tradition.

The Hebrew God - YHVH - is not some trifle primitive concoction, but rather, the product of a profound mystical theology - and that Gods name should not be spoken because "being" is too enigmatic, too ephemeral and unknown in its very nature to be "exposed" in language; that all we can really "know" of God is the experience of being; but to say it, to limit it with spoken language, is to reify it. Vision - the experience of seeing something, is akin to experience. Vision is very opaque; when we see things, sometimes we have a hard time putting into words what we see. But hearing is an altogether different experience; almost the opposite of seeing. Hearing adds substance, vitality, energy, and coherency to experience. By representing God through visual letters, the Kabbalists point out that being can be experienced, and even described ontologically. But language - understanding - is a level of comprehension that seems to be inherently beyond human capacity; we can know God spiritually, but we can't ever understand what he is in any logically consistent way.

Anyways, if anything, this shows how abstract ancient thinkers really were. They were thinking in ways that moderners - despite our technological prowess and scientific know-how - are woefully inept at appreciating.

AfterInfinity
If you acknowledge the dual nature of the universe by taking TWO of those triangles and rotating one, you will find you have the star of David.

Solomon. It's the star of Solomon. David had a menorah, as revealed to the Jews by God (if you believe in such legends).

reply to post by swanne


They are very closely connected.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Well... as much as is a son to his father.

The solomon seal is the inspiration behind freemasonry (the Temple of Solomon). That may be why the freemason seal can be overlaid over the six-pointed (solomon) seal.

Solomon seal:



Freemasonry seal (solomon seal added in red):



And the menorah as presented by GOd to the people:

reply to post by swanne


The star of Solomon is based on ideas that existed long before the menorah. Perhaps the menorah was invented as a reflection of such.

Astrocyte
....

The Hebrew letters which make up this name also have the intriguing property of being complementary. They are masculine (the Yod and Vav) and feminine (the two Heh’s). Another fortuitous coincidence lending logical coherency to this system. The masculine letters, number 1 and 3 in the sequential development of יהוה , would correlate with the unconscious, precognitive experience, and emotional experience. Alternatively, they can be thought of as realized and unrealized emotion. What stays latent in our personalities – in our minds, what we experience in our dreams, primes us to think or feel this way in just this situation – is the Yod – a little tick of a letter, which interestingly enough, makes a lot of pictographic sense. The Vav, on the other hand, is merely the elongation of the Yod: see the Hebrew letters above. Again, coincidentally enough, this letter accurately reflects the idea; the “elongation” of unconscious, precognitive experience is emotional expression: when feelings are felt “in the body” as opposed to being kept in and repressed in the mind.

The female letters, conversely, are repetitions of the same letter – the Heh. If the Kabbalah is weird at this point in it’s unusual consistency, then the Heh’s shape should correspond to it’s metaphysical meaning, making it even weirder. Again, it holds up. The first heh is “thought”. When we think, we seldom take into account the fact that thought is dictated by unconscious feeling. It takes awareness to be aware of that – and to carefully reflect on what you feel as you think. If the Vav represents the emotional expression of unrealized emotion (the yod), the heh (thought) is an internal experience of feeling, occurring in self communication (when we speak to ourselves), reflections on our environment, or against ourselves.

Feeling must be released – it must be felt in the body. The physical body and the experience of it’s vitality (life force) is the final heh. This Heh has a relationship to the Vav similar to the relationship of the first heh to the Yod. Thought emerges from unconscious feeling; action emerges from realized feeling. Both heh’s are “products” of some emotional energy, given shape and form in actual expression, whether as verbal thought, or physical expression.
...

Emphasis mine.

The Yod in the Sefirah Hokhmah is the masculine and father;
The first Hav (He) is the Binah, the feminine and mother;
The Wav (Vau) is the son of the union;
The final Hav (He) is his bride or Nakba.

Its been a while since Ive read on the subject of the Tradition

reply to post by Astrocyte


Kabbalah is allegory about allegory that defines metaphors in relation to other metaphors. The Secret Kabbalah which is transmitted only orally provides the real world meaning of the metaphors. If you don’t believe in supernatural forces, it should be obvious; Kabbalah is a code!