basic concepts - alef-bet

[bananabrain]

as a jumping off point, i propose that we look at the building blocks of kabbalah - the 'alef-bet'. the obvious place to start is with the first letter, the alef.

http://www.inner.org/hebleter/alef.htm

which details some of the jewish mystical thought that centres around this letter. for a more general correspondance, you can take a look here:

http://www.webcom.com/hermit/page/gematria.htm

alef has no sound. it is said that the revelation at sinai was made with a single alef, which was not so much heard as seen - the text literally says 'and the people SAW the sounds'.

alef is also the most anthropomorphised letter in jewish thought - it is told that alef was thought to be 'humble' because it did not ask G!D to make it the first letter of the bible - as a reward, it was given 'pole position' at the start of the 10 commandments - the first letter of 'anochi' (I) it is a reminder that all sounds begin with silence and as such is a really good letter on which to meditate.

alef is considered to be that which expresses the Divine Image in human form - in this way, it can be expressed as ,|' which can be interpreted as two eyes and a nose - thus this letter is in the physical makeup of all human beings. i personally consider it a letter of balance - make one eye white and the other black and the centre line the border between black and white - you end up with something not a million miles away from the taoist yin-yang symbol. see?

feedback? questions?

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Revelation]

All righty I have a question.

I understand that the Hebrew letters are sacred. I am also familiar wth the fact that the letters are commonly written two ways (and I dont know the hebrew word for this)

One way they are written is the way we commonly see them: the facny, clligraphy script. This is the way they are written in the Torah.

The other way, though, is just the common everyday writing form.

Are both sets of letters sacred, and if not, why not, and does it matter which set I learn to use in my own studies?

[mol]

Good question, rev. Also, are there any good resources on the net right now for the study of the hebrew language?

Or maybe a good book recommendation?



Now:

I can see the YinYang symbolism clearly with the alef. Also, it seems a reference again to "As Above, So Below" because of the two yud's and how they are placed. One is pointing up....the other down.

Comments.

[Revelation]

I agree with that Mol. Also, as the Yud is representative of the masculine aspect of God, Chokmah, with one pointing up and one pointing down, it seems to remind us (me, at any rate) that the divine light flows both ways, up and down, and that everything is contained within it.

[mol]

Originally posted by Revelation
I agree with that Mol. Also, as the Yud is representative of the masculine aspect of God, Chokmah, with one pointing up and one pointing down, it seems to remind us (me, at any rate) that the divine light flows both ways, up and down, and that everything is contained within it.

And connection....

Reading a little more on that wonderful website bb pointed us too...I realized that the alef was more than just the two yud's, the two yud's are connected together by the vav (which actually corresponds to connection . I find that very fascinating.

So we could think of the vav as being a connector. It bonds the link of the two yud's and provides the balance ?

[bananabrain]

in fact there are quite a few scripts. there's the ancient written script that you'll see in archaeological treatments of this, which is a kind of protohebrew that developed out of cuneiform, which i don't think is of vast relevance to kabbalah - i think it's in a table in the kaplan edition of sefer yetzirah though. that's not really my area, so i'll stay out of that. the main script you're talking about is called 'ashurit', which is exclusively used for sacred texts and is written calligraphically by a qualified sofer (scribe) and this is the one that pretty much all the kabbalistic interpretations refer to. additionally, there's modern hebrew handwriting script, which has a lot in common with arabic in the way the letters are formed and is a lot more cursive (and obviously sans-serif!) plus if you look at rabbinic commentaries, often they're written in this weird-looking form of ashurit known as 'rashi script' after the famous commentator - i think this enables them to be distinguished from sacred writings. the same alef-bet, obviously, is used for both hebrew and aramaic. ashurit also 'supports' 'tagin' or 'crowns', little scribal embellishments to the letters, from which additional laws are derived.

so in answer to your question, learn ashurit first, because it's the simplest and it'll be a long time before you need to know anything else!

as far as net resources go, i would recommend http://www.judaism.about.com, from where you should be able to find loads of online tutorials about biblical hebrew and the letters.

i'm glad you can see the yin-yang in the alef. as far as i'm aware, this is a 'chidush' (new insight) of my own, which i'm quite proud of. a yud, incidentally, can also be a hand - and a vav, an arm. so you're quite right - it is a connector. as far as a book recommendation is concerned, lamdin does a good biblical hebrew primer, although it is a biggie.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Revelation]

Jesus Christ is the Vav. At least if you're Christian :p
Seriously. Jesus Christ is Tifaret--the midpoint between God and Man. And, he is the only way to come to God. He's tyhe connector. :)

Ok, so Christian Kabbalah isn't any fun, but still. Its a useful image.

[mol]

Wow. The about.com Judaism website has a wealth of info. Thanks for the link. I will dive into that this weekend.

Speaking of alef...and of the comment that the yud can also be considered an arm, etc. Could we also say that it represents the diversity of parts it takes to make the Whole?

I dont know if I am getting that across correctly...I will wait and see how everyone takes that statement.

[Revelation]

I think that's what the entire Tree represents.

[mol]

Parts making up Parts making up the Tree. Makes me wonder what the Tree is part of?

[Revelation]

Well if you include the three veils with the Tree....that's everything. That's No-Thing, thats God, that's time, that's space, and that's absence of space, and absence of time.

That's what I find so incredible about Kabbalah. It accounts for everything including no-thing.

[bananabrain]

yes, the christian kabbalists (and the hermetists i think) have noticed that if you add a 'shin' to the middle of the Tetragrammaton you get 'YHShVH', which is how you spell 'yehoshua', which is joshua, which is one reading of the name of the fellow normally known as jesus. this, incidentally, makes the name 'yeshua' a nonsense, if you ask me, but try telling that to messianics. maybe they identify it as something like the link between abram and abraHAm - there's just the extra 'heh' in the name. i suppose one might call this the pentagrammaton or something, allowing you, incidentally, to link it to the pentagram as the fivefold path up the ToL. although he is commonly identified with Tiferet, the fifth sefirah from the bottom up (although not from the top down), nobody has ever explained why this is apart from 'he's the midpoint'. from my point of view, though, the difference is the 'Shin'. there is an interesting aside to the internal consistency of the trinity, here - the shin is a letter with three heads! (although on some types of tefillin it has four, symbolising the world to come)

go look here: http://www.inner.org/HEBLETER/shin.htm for some more things. you will note that the shin can be considered as three (or four) vavs with yuds on top. incidentally, mol the vav is the connector, not the yud. the yud is the endpoint of giving - this is why it represents the hand - the word 'YaD' is also a hand in hebrew, whereas the vav is the arm. what you will also find is that although it is possible to find christian significance in kabbalah, this is not necessarily 'evidence' that they are 'right', as many evangelists seem to think - judaism and kabbalah do not require jesus to square the circle, as it were; there is a saying 'kabbalah achin, kabbalah acher' - 'there is this kabbalah tradition, but there is also that kabbalah tradition'. this means that for every way of seeing it there is also another way of seeing it. this is why the 'mekubal' bit is important - it very much depends who you learn it from. this is why i am clear that i am speaking from the point of view of 'classical' or 'traditional' jewish approaches to kabbalah.

it is exactly this sort of thing that makes it necessary for kabbalah to be somewhat hidden for jews - there is an obvious danger that the young, naive, ignorant or untutored from our community (thus 40, married and really grounded in traditional Torah study and practice) could get the wrong end of the stick and become apostates - it wouldn't be the first time. you need to be really secure in your identity and with your roots in jewish soil before you are ready to deal with this kind of area. obviously you guys have an advantage over us here in that a) you're approaching it in a spirit of open inquiry and b) you don't have to be looking over your shoulder all the time to check that you're still rooted. the only reason i'm able to discuss this here in this comparative way is that i'm relatively secure and grounded in jewish life and practice.

incidentallyfrom a christian point of view, it can be said that a similar attitude of 'watch out, that's a bit dodgy' can be discerned to the sexual aspect of vav as a connector, if it is applied to jesus. personally, i'd have thought that if it was to be linked to the name yod-heh-shin-vav-heh, then tiferet would be associated with the shin, instead of the vav, or a five-letter Divine Name instead of the Tetragrammaton as it is, but there you are. plus, i'd expect the shin path (20 i think of the 22) to be connected to tiferet instead of between hod and malchut, or the vav path to be connected, whereas that's between hochma and chesed. go figure.

the tree is the only part of it that we can see. you can see the tree that we perceive as part of a tesselation - ie the whole tree is only the tree of malchut. so it is possible that all that we perceive is only one facet of the entire pavement of sapphire (SaFIR in hebrew) and that there is a lot more between keter and EIN-SOF than we realise - although the fact that we can't get at it or even perceive it would pretty much make it effectively EIN-SOF anyway!

b'shalom

bananabrain

[mol]

Thank you for the continuing explanation...

And by the way, bb...I know the vav is the connector. ;)

[bananabrain]

sorry, i got that the wrong way round - it's not that vav is a connector, its that yud *isn't*, as far as i can tell - although feel free to argue, of course! yud's an end-point of the connection, the outstretched hand at the end of the arm, etc, etc.

do excuse me!

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Revelation]

Actually, BB, Jesus Christ as Tifaret makes total sense to me.

Tifaret is at the heart of the Tree. It is neither material nor ethereal, but rather it is reflection of both--what is to come, and what has come before. Also, as the second triad stresses the coming togheter to give birth, (as opposed to the important notion of separation stressed in the supernal triad), Mercy and Strength coming together to create BEauty...it just seems to make inherent sense to me. Also, as Tifaret is the Sun, and Christ is the Sun (lets face is, Christ was "born" at Yule, right along with the Sun King. Hardly coincidental).Also, from since the Vav from the tetragrammaton lies in tifaret, ths is the sphere that the "son of god" appers in.

i dont know. but it makes a lot of sense to me, apart fromt he fact that "its the midpoint".

[bananabrain]

obviously, being jewish, my opinion on this is bound to be slightly cautious, you understand - but it always seems a bit, well, *keen* to shoehorn the poor bloke into things. like i say, i'll have to plead 'kabbalah achin kabbalah acher' to this one. i shall have to check what the jewish sources say about this one, but they're unlikely to be complimentary, as most of them are mediaeval and that period is where you'll find the nastiest polemics on either side.

personally, i don't really have a problem with the idea as long as nobody uses it as the thin end of the wedge. if it works for you to have JC as your 'way', then it is hardly for me to gainsay it! the thing that would worry me if i was a christian would be the syncretic aspects of JC and the sun-god. he is a sticking point in jewish-christian relations, but i recently read a text by the neo-chasidic rebbe zalman schachter-shalomi where he came up with a way of reconciling the different approaches without either having to capitulate. i'll go look it up. it's in 'paradigm shift', a HUGELY influential work which i heartily recommend.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[bananabrain]

excuse me everybody, have made big mistake. having checked my sources properly now, it appears that 'yod-heh-shin-vav-heh' is *not*, repeat not how you spell 'yehoshua' or the 'yeshua' variant of it, so i made a mistake and i'm sorry. so everything i said about the five-letter Divine Name is probably arse and bollocks.

however, it *does* appear that they *are* both spelt yod-[heh]-shin-vav-AYIN, which *is* a similar root to the word connoting 'salvation' - although that's still not a conclusive connection to JC, actually. interestingly, it does make the statement "I am the way, the truth and the Light. No one comes to the Father but through me" (john 14:6) make sense. if JC's given name *was* yehoshua, he could be alluding to the implication of his name without necessarily claiming a special intercessionary role. in other words, what he looks to *me* like he's saying is 'nobody comes to G!D but through *yod-[heh]-shin-vav-AYIN*', which is completely consistent with judaism, but does NOT mean he identifies this word with *himself personally*, unless he is also implying that that is exactly the path that he himself personally took - this may well be the path through tiferet, but i haven't seen any textual support for this idea, i'll leave it to the christians if they feel like it.

[as far as i'm concerned, this interpretation works for me because it's reported speech reported in greek as far as i know. it is possible from where i sit that the aramaic sentence he actually spoke could well have been the one i came up with (which is fairly ambiguous) but that in the translation people assumed that he meant himself personally because that's the interpretation that was taken during translation, because the aramaic would have been ambiguous and possibly confusing. so, basically, it's not anything like conclusive, but it isn't necessarily wrong either. we just don't know cos all we've got is a translation of a reported speech, in other words hearsay. anyway, that's how it seems to me, but christian mysticism is SO not my strong suit.]

you see how confusing this stuff can be? there was i going completely off on one - that's why you need to know exactly where your anchor is.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[mol]

And where you are throwing the anchor. ;)

[bananabrain]

an anchor can be a bugger of a thing if it hits someone else in the head...

bb

[mol]

Originally posted by bananabrain
an anchor can be a bugger of a thing if it hits someone else in the head...

bb

Now how about the next letter.....

[Myst]

*bump*

Just found this, fascinating info!