Introduction to the Tree of Life, (part 3)

[Revelation]

[random]

I can't wait...

[Silver Venus]

Originally posted by Revelation
Hod is power clothed in sweetness--it is, in some ways, catching flies with honey. Hod can be manipulative--it allows us to use "gentle strength" to bend others to work our will.


Thats a great way to describe Hod!! :D

I thought that they were all thought of as astral planes? ~ you could visit each sephira astrally through meditation?

Thank you Rev, once again ~ you have shed allot more light on this brilliant subject!
I cant wait to read a little more of a book I have got tonight (I have been meaning to read it in ages..) and hopefull after my research I will be able to add allot more input into the next lessons...
:sunny:

[bananabrain]

...i'm not sure you could understand the sefirot as astral planes, really. they are aspects of the Divine, yes, but they are not to be understood as separate entities, deities, places, dimensions, or anything like that, as far as i am aware. the sefer yetzirah speaks in its first chapter of ten 'SeFiROT BLI MaH', which kaplan translates as 'sefirot of nothingness', explaining that 'bli', meaning 'without' and 'mah', normally meaning 'what', here have the sense of 'without that which is', meaning that they do not 'exist' in the conventional sense. as rev points out, everything you can experience with your senses and deduce with the available scientific laws is part of the sefira of malkhut. each sefira contains the entire Tree in microcosm, incidentally - thus we are actually in 'malkhut of malkhut' here. even had you the spiritual power to ascend to 'keter', it would still only be keter she'be'malkhut.

as an IT geek, i prefer to think of the sefirot as an interface - the middleware, if you like, by which EIN-SOF, beyond keter she'be'keter emanates down into malkhut of malkhut and back up again. in fact, for the CORBA heads out there, i'd possibly go as far as to say that each sefira could be considered an 'object broker' within the tree 'architecture'. (for those of you into gematria, incidentally, i believe there are seven levels in TCPIP - at least the basic version - while the fully extended version has ten. go figure - you couldn't make it up!)

this is one of the reasons judaism is leery of ascribing anything like a personality or image to any of the sefirot - it could lead to idolatrous worship of the interface rather than That which causes the interface to Be, what is known in islamic terms as 'ShIRQ' - rather like the idea that i have occasionally seen expressed in non-jewish circles that the Shechinah is a goddess, female and separate from a 'male' G!D. of course, gnostic dualisms have influenced kabbalah from its historical inception, but if you're coming at it from a jewish point of view, as i am, you need to make it absolutely clear that there can be no question of the Unity of the Infinite Divine, no matter how this is manifested.

b'shalom

bananabrain