The Sacred Geometry of the Tree of Life
Part One
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Yet there was another forbidden Tree in the garden, one neither Adam nor Eve ever got their upstart mitts on before they were shown the door and had the way back blocked by beast-headed angels with a flaming sword. The Tree of Life is the universal center in the stories of many cultures, the umbilicus connecting the navel of the world to heaven. It is also the center of a much more specific set of teachings, the Kabbalah of mystical Judaism. While its historical origins are unclear, some suggesting it came from Babylon during the time of the Jewish exile there, its trajectory can nevertheless be traced throughout many of the underground and sometimes outwardly heretical spiritual movements dotting Europe during and after the Renaissance. Jewish tradition affirms, however, it came from the mouth of God Himself to the ear of Adam, and has been handed down ever since.
The Tree is arranged in, and numerically assigned to, ten descending “emanations” (or spheres, worlds, or sephiroth) from the Absolute, each representing a more immanent stage of an ongoing process of divine genesis. From this perspective, the Seven Days at the genesis of Genesis can be extruded into an extra-temporal scheme of a ten-tiered production of the world, unceasing until the Final Judgment: outside of time and therefore ever-present.
Using a more universal matrix of meaning (geometry), coupled with the symbolic language of the implements of mysticism and the magician of the sacred, we can draw out some of the significance of the ten sephiroth, beginning with the first five for this installment:
I. Kether
Kether is assigned to the quality of the number 1. Kether, then, is a dot, a non-dimensional point, the primordial bindu of Hinduism, outside of both space and time and from which all arises, much like the primordial, infinitely-dense and infinitely-energetic singularity giving birth to the Big Bang according to the modern empiricist cosmology. Kether corresponds to the symbolism of the Crown (Kether is “Crown” in Hebrew) and the Lamp lighting the temple: the Crown is the traditional symbol of the sole locus of authority, unique and sovereign; and the Lamp, symbolizing the “one-and-only,” Absolute Godhead and the source of all illumination, provides a point-light-source which is, or should be, the sole light in the temple – all vectors converge on, or come from, that one point. Given that all polarities are resolved above the asymptotic abyss cleaving phenomenological (manifest) reality from that which is anterior to it, Kether is also to be identified with these vectors, just as any light source is effectively “immanent” in the photons it emits, and all points are still present in the vectors they define. This fact sheds some light on Aleister Crowley’s expression of the defining characteristic of Godhead, which is “To Go.” This is further shown in Geburah (see below).
II. Chokmah
The number 2, Chokmah, is defined by any given case of one of those vectors, two points, the line, which resembles the archetype of the Wand, or “Hollow Tube” by which the Magus draws fire down from the heavens (c.f. The Book of Lies, Ch. 15: “The Gun Barrel“), and projects his own Will outward into manifestation. The line is also the primordial phallus, the fructifying potency of the Absolute in a state prior to manifestation. As such, Chokmah is also Wisdom (the English translation of “Chokmah”), the same Wisdom which knows that the shortest route between two points (from inspiration to creation, for instance; or from beauty to love) is that self-same straight line.
The line is the glyph of the Divine Masculine, the seed-begetter, the ineluctable Logos that underlies and supports all logic, for instance, while yet being above and beyond it (because we are still above the abyss which separates “heaven” from “earth”, and therefore above the dichotomies and distinctions upon which the reasoning faculty depends for its toehold on the universe). The logos―Word―of the Highest Supernal (Kether) implies both a speaker and that which is spoken, a biune unity arising from the first exercise of the prerogative of Godhead (which, again, is “to go,” hence motion, a vector): “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (The Gospel of John, 1:1). Even thinking (bringing forth a word-image of the world) is, hence, activity. Where the point merely implied travel, because it is the position from which one begins, the line is travel and motion brought forward and made reality; it is a reality, however, in the sense that above the abyss there is no time, and so while the law of this sphere is the law of change (being the agent of creation), yet it is that change that is stability, the unswerving promise of immanence and transcendent duration.
III. Binah
The vector from Chokmah to Binah (“Understanding”)―which is 3―illustrates the two-dimensional plane, which is defined by three points, and which is also the simplest shape born of the union of multiple lines―a trinity of lines, and a trinity of their vertices. This is the birth of the triangle, and it is the first breach of the second dimension. Binah “veils” the entire supernal triad from the perspective below the abyss, and as such is itself a glyph of the entire triangle formed atop the tree with the three supernal spheres at its vertices. The triangle, when inverted, is also a glyph for the female sex, the κτείς (kteis) or vulva, the feminine potency which Binah shows in its function as the Great Mother and the magical and symbolic Cup of the theurgist―the upper two points being the sides of the container, and the bottom-most point being its depth. However, because we’re still above the abyss, we’re still beyond manifestation, and though a single plane can be conceptualized, it can never be experienced through the senses because it is still not extended into the third dimension. Binah is crucial for later developments because, being the nethermost of the Supernal Triad and the first sephira above the abyss, it establishes the “template” by which all below it manifests, being that all objects in the third dimension are the result of the intersection of four or more two-dimensional planes (the dimensions of length and breadth), and Binah is, quite literally, the mother of all planes. (In other words: from point, to line, to plane, to volume or that-which-is-defined-by-planes.) One might even consider the plane as the “mitochondrial (maternal) DNA” by which the Great Mother has left her imprimatur upon all manifestation.
IV. Chesed
Therefore, in the first sephira below the abyss, Chesed, corresponding to the number 4, we have the simplest object definable by the intersection of planes, the 4-sided tetrahedron, a shape bounded by four triangles. Chesed, though, being only extended into three dimensions, still occupies a vague niche in our universe, as it’s still unbounded by time. It is a glyph of the only relatively eternal and unmovable (and that which sees itself as absolutely so), the Demiurge or Aristotle’s Ummoved Mover, who is below the abyss yet outside of time and who, in dualistic Gnostic theology, mistakes himself for the universal point, Kether, and therefore feels compelled to insist that “There is no god but me,” despite the evidence of his own conscience – hence he is also “a jealous god.” Chesed is the architect of creation, using the triangle given to him by the Great Mother, a fact which William Blake clearly understood. “Mercy,” the traditional attribution of this sephira, is connection felt toward creature by creator; it is also the exercise of the fullness of dominion, rather than a reaction against its dearth (the difference between a king and a dictator).
V. Geburah
The next, Geburah, “Severity” or “Strength”―5, is the four-sided pyramid, which is a three-dimensional extrusion of the two-dimensional glyph typifying 5, the pentagram (pull the topmost point of a pentagram upward, perpendicularly to the plane of the original shape, and allow it to pull the remaining four points into the base of the pyramid thus formed). It is also the three dimensions brought into time, and thus a glyph of motion finally actualized―the volume of the tetrahedron, extended as it is in space, is given an additional coordinate, and, the coordinates of three-dimensional space being exhausted, the fourth coordinate of time must be invoked. The four points of the tetrahedron are laid flat as the base of the pyramid, and are given an additional direction to which to aspire―the point again, which shows that time is symbolic of Kether itself, in the sense of implying a beginning―all motion is either motion away from or toward the Source of all (being that all vectors converge on, or extend from, Kether). Geburah’s planetary attribution is Mars, the bringer of war: the additional differentiation of time further aggravates the descent from the original perfection of non-dimensionality, until―given that in the stream of time more than one existence is possible―there are multiple terms vying for the same original “spot” (nostalgia for Chesed, which is a shadow of nostalgia for Kether). This is the primal perspective which wonders “How can there be anything but ME?”, and reacts with fear, which is the genesis of fight-or-flight, and the basic premise of the human Ego.
To be continued…
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All artwork & photography
Copyright © 2009 Michael Lujan.
[...] forth the theme of symbolic geometry of the Tree of Life (Figure 1) begun with Part One of this series, the sephira of Tiphereth, being the manifestation of the “idea” of the [...]