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My idea is to reimagine the mythos of Kabbalah. I will call it the Hidden Kabalah. To presume that the image of the Tree of the GRA which has Da’at as the fourth sefirah and Malkuth as a minor insignificant piece of fruit hanging off the upper 10 sefirah’s of Divine power was the Hypothetical Sefiroth. The original plan of Ayn Sof. The Sefiroth before the Big Bang that created the universe we live in.  However, with the mythos of Luria and the shattering of the spheres the power shifts. According to my Hidden Kabalah the shattering starts with Da’at. And when the process of emanation and creation was hastily resumed without Da’at, the result is the configuration we live in. It is the Tikkun Olam Sefirot. The result is the Sefirot that includes within the 10 is Malkuth which can be called ‘Queendom’. This is the tree in need of Tikkun Olam. The Divine Power is now all contained within Malkuth. Ayn Sof is an totally empty shell devoid of active power. It is only the source that was drained in creation and emanation. It thus can be removed from the picture.  According to my Hidden Kabalah mythos, power is in reality bottom up. The many, humanity, need to ignite Malkuth to fire up the rest of the sefiroth. If done correctly in acts of Tikkun Olam, these acts of goodness, truth, beauty, and justice have the potential to bring healing and harmony to the cosmos, to humanity and to the Divine itself.
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From The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts by Isaiah Tishby, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1982.
Pages 423-429 “The traditional Jewish view, both biblical and rabbinic, was that religious faith involved the absolute subordination of the world and its inhabitants to the perpetual and all-encompassing direction of God…During the Middle Ages, however, the religious attitude of the Jews were deeply influenced by widespread philosophical ideas that saw God solely as the First Cause, and removed Him from any involvement in the ordinary process of events in animate or inanimate life. Most Jewish philosophers strongly opposed this point of view, and tired to maintain and substantiate the traditional Jewish concept. The Zohar contains a fierce polemic against those who deny divine providence, and who substitute chance as an important factor in the affairs of the world and in the destiny of mankind.” Pg 423. “I [Isaiah Tishby] have shown in the previous introduction how the Shekhinah is given the character of a personal ruler in her role as the consort or the supernal mother. She is active in the direction and maintenance of the world, distributing reward and punishment by means of her agents and messengers. …This situation continually changes, and the forces come down on the side of punishment or favor, depending on the vagaries of activity in the lower world. These changes, however, are not merely the result of strict justice or exact calculation, nor the simply the manifestations of an autocratic will, as the traditional concept of divine direction would have them; for the influence of the lower worlds is also considered to have a dynamism of its own. The intentions and acts of man also bring certain forces into play. His good deeds form a positive, constructive, beneficent force, and his bad deeds engender a negative, destructive, maleficent force. Those forces flow upward, and as ‘a stimulation from below’ (itarula dilitala) they affect the balance in the interrelationships of the divine powers. The forces of good deeds increases the power of Love [Hesed], and the force of bad deeds increase the power of Judgment [Din]. Therefore man is a partner with God in the conduct of the world, and the actual work of direction is a result of the cross-influence of the upper and lower forces.” P 424 “One may therefore describe her [Shekhinah] as a kind of storehouse of divine powers. In her direction of the world she activates the forces that are stored up within her, and distributes them in the form of life and sustenance to the realms below.” P425 “The chief roles in the dynamic process of activating and using the divine powers are assigned to tow sefirot: Binah (the upper river) and Yesod (the lower river). They work as parallel forces, Binah directing the sefirot that are below it, and Yesod directing the worlds by means of the Shekhinah. The mystery of Yesod’s dynamism is expressed in sexual symbols. …Male and female, Yesod and Malkuth, which are both channel and storehouse of the divine powers, constitute on entity like the unity of the source and the well. This unity is destroyed during exile, when the female is taken away from the male, as a result of the sins of the world. Then the direction of the world is impaired, because the channel of influence is sealed and the dynamic forces cannot act in the lower realms. Only remnants of the influence, which had previously been sown in the garden of the Shekhinah, exist in order to sustain the world. Were it not for these remnants the world would turn into chaos for it is the flow of the divine forces that basically controls and sustains it.” P 426. “The basic and more frequently occurring idea is that the world of emanation is built up on a threefold pattern, two completely opposite extremes with a force in the middle that holds the balance between them. …The first triad, where existence and intermingling of opposites are beyond the reach of perception, is that of Hokhmah, Binah, and Da’at, and this branches out into the chief central triad of Hesed, Gevurah [Din] and Tiffereth, which comprise the attributes of Love, Judgment, and Mercy. The last triad consists of Netzach, Hod, and Yesod, which are subdivisions of these attributes, while Malkuth, by virtue of its position represents the totality of all the attributes. Love and Judgment are two fiercely hostile forces in this system, each trying to overthrow and annihilate the other. A compromise has to be effected in this struggle by the attribute of Mercy, whose natural role is to moderate extremes and to mix them together in a single whole.” Pp 427-428 “Here in lies the tremendous responsibility of mankind, for it is man that has the wherewithal to harmonize the opposite powers and to effect a balance between them, and it is his actions that can turn the scale toward innocence or guilt. The consequences of man’s actions are not confined to the reward or punishment that might come to him personally, for there is a kind of collective responsibility. The actions of individuals are combined together and it is their total influence that determines the way in which the whole world is governed. …Man’s involvement in the direction of the world, which is one of the basic tenets of kabbalistic doctrine, imposes upon him a very heavy responsibility. He has continually to see himself as part of the complex of the opposing forces in the Godhead and in the cosmos, and it s part of his task to help to moderate the extremes, and so to bring peace to the Godhead and to the world.” Pp 428-429 From The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts by Isiah Tishby, 1982, pp269-270
“Most of these terms were not selected for their intrinsic worth, nor were they originally arranged in a unified systematic order to indicate the nature of the sefirot. This is particularly obvious in the choice of the names of the seven lower sefirot, six of which were based on 1st Chronicles 29:11 ‘Yours, O Lord is the greatness and the power, and the beauty, and the victory, and the majesty…Yours is the kingdom.’ That is to say, that the origin of these names was exegetical, and intrinsic to the subject in hand. Therefore, in their original form they were basically terms of praise and glorification, which do not say a great deal about the nature of the individual sefirot.” “But if we introduce certain specific variations, that is if we change Keter into Razon (Will) and Tiferet into Rachamim (Mercy)—names frequently found in the Zohar—and if we use, as was customary, Hesed (Love) instead of Gedulah [Greatness], then we have a much more useful arrangement.” Also, the variations of Din (Judgment) and Pachad (Fear) as variations of Gevurah (Power) reveal that sefirahs nature and importance. The Rabbis, both the philosophically inclined and the mystically inclined, were impressed with and influenced by the Greek philosophers Plato, and the neo-platonic thinkers, as well as the teachings of Aristotle.
Aristotle stated in his logic the basic principles of Greek grammar and thought. The idea that there are only two choices and that these two choice are an oppositional position. This idea and attitude was embodied in first three ‘laws’ of logic as presented by Aristotle. These first three laws are the Law of Identity, A is A; the Law of Non-Contradiction, A is not non-A, and the Law of Exclusions of the Middle Ground, there is no transition from A to not-A. What this means is that the Greeks, and those who built upon them—Western Civilizations and cultures, recognized that all things can be listed into pairs, into dualities. Each of these pairs could be organized into groups and interrelated. With the application of a pair of value judgments you create a cultural bias. The value judgment pairs are the pairing of good vs. bad or good vs. evil, or right or wrong. By the application of these value judgment pairs all the other list of paired opposites become judged as well. So you ended up with this situation: Light vs Dark Male vs Female Immaterial vs Material Spirit vs Matter Spirit vs flesh Mind vs body Changeless vs change Deathless vs Death Immortal vs mortal Divine vs Human Sun vs Earth Sun vs Moon White vs Black Heaven vs Earth Above vs Below One vs Many Where everything listed on the left is good and everything listed on the right is bad or evil. This dichotomy became embedded into the mindset and world view of the Western World and influenced all who it touched. The rabbis were no exception. They adopted this perspective and gave it a Jewish spin. Maimonides spent the totality of his book The Guide for the Perplexed with the intention and reconciling Aristotle’s philosophy and the teachings of the Rabbis. Though Maimonides had no qualms for disagreeing with Aristotle and explaining how the Jewish perspective differed, and of course, he, Maimonides, considered more complete if not more accurate. For Aristotle God was The Prime Mover and the One reminiscent of Plato’s concept. This God was immaterial, changeless, immortal, and pure thought as well as purity of thought. God was thus the exact opposite of human beings, who were material, subject to change, mortal, and were physical and full of many conflicting thoughts, many based in humanities physical substance being and needs. God was to be above all the other lesser unmoved movers- the planets, and other entities. But God as the Prime Mover was the source of all movement. For Aristotle God to be pure in thought would mean it could not be contaminated by any impurities. Hence could not consider the impurities of the physical world and of physical humans. God could, would, and must only contemplate perfection such as its self. Maimonides had one additional concept about God that Aristotle did not have. The singular difference was that for Maimonides the Torah, aka TaNaK, based difference was that God was incomparable. God was unique and different than anything else. All created beings were similar in a variety of manner and ways. But God, being above and the Creator was above and beyond and not like anything else in all of existence. God is unique and thus One, beyond equal. Maimonides agrees with Aristotle and even uses his reasoning of God of Pure Intellect to explain Maimonides idea of prayer as it is explained in The Guide. Since God contemplates only its own perfect self, it takes no notice of changing, physical and impure humans. Pray changes us but has no effect on God itself. It was this attitude of God being untouched by human concerns and prayers that the mystical Rabbis rebelled against. Though they accepted the rest of Maimonides and Aristotle. The philosophic idea of God and the mystical idea of God was merged into explaining what is known by Ayn Sof. The only difference is that in the Kabbalah humanity can interact with some aspect of the Infinite Divine. This would be by means of Ayn Sof’s creation and emanation called the Sefirot. Source material: From: Aristotle’s Concept of God by Stanley Sfekas (https://heptapolis.com/aristotles-concept-god and can also be found at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286412818_ARISTOTLE'S_CONCEPT_OF_GOD) [Stanley Sfekas (Greek: Στάνλεϋ Σφήκας; born 1942) is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Indianapolis. (https://heptapolis.com/cv/stanley-sfekas)] Moses Maimonides’s idea of God. By Warren Zev Harvey (From https://www.academia.edu/39364549/Warren_Zev_Harvey_Maimonides_Monotheism_Between_the_Bible_and_Aristotle_in_Ada_Taggar-Cohen_et_al._eds._Proceedings_of_the_7th_CISMOR_Conference_on_Jewish_Studies_Kyoto_Doshisha_University_2013_56-67) From: http://www.mesora.org/prayer.html |
Garshom Yaron aka Gary Jaron has been exploring the Occult Qabalah and the Rabbinic Kabbalah since he was a teen.
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