Kindle Notes & Highlights
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.
At first, Christian Kabbalah was a public movement seeking recognition by the Catholic Church. The Church never accepted it, and finally suppressed it, but it was perpetuated in esoteric movements including Rosicrucianism,15 Freemasonry,16 and Martinism.
In order to focus spiritual and mental powers, one must take into account the time and astrological environment.
Ten sephiroth arose from the Void: ten and not nine, ten and not eleven. Discern them with Wisdom and Intelligence. Examine them, interrogate them. Make each thing correspond to their essence. Their number is ten and they are infinite.
Ten sephiroth arose from the Void, as well as twenty-two fundamental letters: three Mothers, seven Doubles (Double Letters), and twelve Simples (Simple Letters), each containing the Breath of God.
God chose three letters from among the Simples and set them in His great name: YHV.
Twenty-two fundamental letters (three Mothers, seven Doubles, and twelve Simples) have been engraved with the voice of God, carved with His Breath, and reunited in five places: Aleph, Heth, He, Ayin; Gimel, Yod, Kaph, Qoph; Daleth, Teth, Lamed, Nun, Tav; Zayin, Samekh, Shin, Resh, Tsade; Beth, Vav, Mem, and Pe.
Aleph, Heth, He, and Ayin are pronounced with the base of the tongue and the throat. Beth, Vav, Mem, and Pe are pronounced between the lips and with the tip of the tongue. Gimel, Yod, Kaph, and Qoph are pronounced with the back of the tongue. Daleth, Teth, Lamed, Nun, and Tav are pronounced with the tip of the tongue and the throat. Zayin, Samekh, Shin, Resh, and Tsade are pronounced between the teeth, with the tongue rounded and pushed toward the outside.
The Seven Doubles rest on life, peace, wisdom, wealth, fecundity, beauty, and domination.
God made the letter Gimel rule over wealth, crowned it, exchanged it with the others, and formed with it Jupiter in the universe, the first day in the year, and the right eye in humans, male and female.
The seven gates in humans, male and female, are the two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and the mouth.
Simples
Simples,
God carved, sculpted, combined, weighed, and conveyed the twelve simple letters, and He formed with them twelve constellations in the universe, twelve months in the year, and twelve organs in humans, male and female.
The Twelve Simples were distributed into three allies, three enemies, three animators, and three destroyers. The three allies are the heart, ears, and eyes. The three enemies are the liver, gall bladder, and tongue. The three animators are the two nostrils and spleen. The three destroyers are the two orifices and mouth. And God, the trusted King, rules over all of them from His holy dwelling for all of eternity.
God made the letter Vav rule over thinking, crowned it, combined it with each of the others, and formed with it Taurus in the universe, the month of Iyar in the year, and the right kidney in humans, male and female.
God made the letter Zayin rule over motion, crowned it, combined it with each of the others, and formed with it
Gemini in the universe, the month of Sivan in the year, and the left foot in humans, male and female.
Marcheshvan
Simples.
God set a rule of ten, three, seven, and twelve in the Tali, Cycle, and Heart.
Simples
absence of smell.
absence of taste.
The three enemies are the tongue, liver, and gall bladder. The three allies are the eyes, ears, and heart.
Three things are good for the ear: a blessing, glad tidings, praise. Three things are bad for the eye: adultery, the evil eye, and a roving eye. Three things are good for the eye: humility, the appreciative eye, and true sight. Three things are bad for the tongue: defamation, denunciation, and hypocrisy. Three things are good for the tongue: silence, controlling the tongue, and truth.
THE LEGEND of a Lost Word—of a key to creation by means of which all 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.
their doctrines the priesthood then claimed that Ptah created the universe by thought.
To be more explicit, the thoughts, the
ideas of Ptah, were transformed into a spoken word by him, and by means of that word the thought was object...
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The following quotation is from an ancient inscription by the Ptah priesthood: “It came to pass that heart and tongue gained power over every member, teaching that he [Ptah] was [in the form of the heart] in every heart and [in the form of the tongue] in every mouth, of all deities, all people, all cattle, or reptiles, [all] living, while he [Ptah] thinks and while he comm...
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Egyptologists inform us that the ancient Egyptians used the word heart to mean mind or intelligence. Also, reference to the tongue alludes to the spoken word, the authoritative word by which all thoughts became objectified—made reality.
More simply put, the letters of the language, whether written or spoken, are elements of a potential power which brings into existence the very thing they represent. They are not symbols as in other languages, it was thought, but integral units of cosmic or divine energy.
The articulate word of creative power, the spirit and the word are what we call the holy spirit.”
With most early cultures, the deities were thought to be anthropomorphic. They were, therefore, conceived to have humanlike qualities. If the deities created, they would use similar functions and attributes to those of humans. In other words, they would think and plan, but how would they objectify their ideas? What would cause it to have reality? Simply, how would thoughts become things? The vocal command carries force, the voice can be heard, it can be felt, and it may move persons to act, to bring about material things that will conform to the idea behind the spoken word.
Ain Sof creates and sustains the world by emanating the Infinite Light (Ain Sof Or), which flows downward giving rise to a series of ten Sefirot. Each Sefirah is a different attribute or function of Divinity as it manifests at each successive level.
In Kabbalah, the masculine-feminine polarity relates to the direction of this flow, giving and receiving.
is also called the Shekhinah (from the Hebrew root meaning “to dwell”), “The Divine Presence.”
For the Kabbalist, it is not sufficient to perform the commandments in a casual or automatic way. One has to have the proper Kavanah, that is, the proper mental intention and focused mind in order to have an effect upon the upper realm.
theurgical
Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet is also a number, and each word has a number value equal to the sum of its letters. In the Kabbalistic system of Gematria, any two words or phrases that have the same number value share a deep connection, and are in some way equivalent.
The numerical value of YHVH is 26, and the numerical value of Adonai is 65. Uniting these two names yields the sum of 91. The letters of the Hebrew word Amen (Alef Mem Nun) also add up to 91. Being aware of this numerical equivalence, whenever one says “Amen” at the end of a prayer or blessing using the proper Kavanah/intention, one is mentally uniting the Divine Names YHVH and Adonai, and theurgically uniting the Holy One and His Shekhinah.
In Christian Kabbalah, the Hebrew letter Shin is inserted into the middle of 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.”
antiquity. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a particular esoteric teaching emerged in Provence and northern Spain with the Book of Illumination (SeferBahir), composed by Isaac the Blind (fl. 1190–1210).
This Kabbalah interpreted the sefiroth as powers of God arranged in a specific structure.
The sephiroth are the ten names or expressions of God, and the created universe is seen as the external manifestation of these forces.
The ten sephiroth are arranged in a cosmological system known as the Tree of Life, whose structure provides for twenty-two pathways between the various spheres.
