BRAShITh

[solomon levi]

One could write a book about the mysteries behind and within this word.
I will only mention a couple here.
If you are familiar with the work of Carlo Suares, you find a very interesting translation
of the autiots (letter-numbers) which pertain to manifesting the Spiritus Mundi in an empty vessel.

First, for those unfamiliar with this word, it may be transliterated Berashith. It is the first word
in the Bible and is commonly translated as "In the beginning". It is also the first word of the Gospel of
St. John which reads, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
But a kabbalist might read these words as "BRAShITh was the Word, and BRAShITh was with God, and
BRAShITh was God." And the same with Genesis: "BRAShITh ALHIM (Elohim) created the heaven
and the earth."

One thing to be noticed is that BRAShITh is a RASh (the autiot 'R') within a BITh (the autiot 'B').
The hieroglyph for 'B' means "house, dwelling", and the hieroglyph for 'R' means "the head", but more
significantly for us, we will interpret 'R' as the solar glyph as one can see by its Tarot association and its use
in languages (Ra, Re). So we see this as the solar force captured within a dwelling/vessel.


Let's look at the application according to Suares' translation of the autiots.

B - the archetype of all dwellings, containers, vessels
R - the cosmic container of all existence
A - the unthinkable abstract principle of intermittent, pulsating life-death,life-death...
Sh - cosmic movement, the "breath of God"
I - the temporal manifest existence; the partner and antagonist of timeless unmanifest Aleph
Th - the cosmic resistance to the life-breath that animates it. without this resistance life could not come into existence.

We see interesting correspondences when we substitute their planetary, zodiac and elemental glyphs:
B - mercury
R - sun
A - air
Sh - fire
I - virgo
Th - saturn/earth


Another significant item is noticed upon further study of the autiot 'B'.
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/stickyj/HebrewBet.jpg

For kabbalists, the side which has the opening of the "vessel" faces north.


I realise that this post may not seem significant to some, but it is not meant to be simply
read and understood/grasped, but meditated upon.

[solomon levi]

Another way to divide and interpret this word is BRA ShITh: "The 6 created".
I like that with all the cubic stone implications and the 6th sephira.

Here's another great quote from Carlo Suares:
"It is the purpose of all ciphers to invest a few signs with much meaning. A peculiarity of the Book
of Genesis is that it begins with a very strict and close code and gradually develops and unfolds its
fifty chapters through symbols and allegories and finally through semi-historical tales.
In the severity of its beginning, in its first chapter, in its first verse, in its first sequence of letter-numbers,
is the seed, and in the seed is the whole. This whole can be (and is expected to be) grasped in the
Bayt-Raysh-Aleph-Sheen-Yod-Tav of Bereshyt. This sequence is in the Revelation and is the
Revelation, and those who grasp it are in the Revelation and are, in action the Revelation itself.
It is in effect a formula, or rather a fundamental equation of the interplay between Aleph and Yod.
Aleph, timeless pulsation life-death-life-death, is shown in the first three graphs BaytRaysh-Aleph in
its surging motion of creative energy, and Yod, the evolutionary process of existence is held, so to
speak, between the hammer of cosmic metabolism, Sheen, and the anvil of its resistant container, Tav.
The complete schema goes beyond a mere formula affirming the equivalence of those two terms; its
sweeps beyond every duality by amalgamating Aleph and Yod and making them one. The very
formulation of that equation is therefore its solution. In spite of being introduced by means of an
intellectual approach it can project in us the essential game of life and existence if we will allow it to
break up our every-day linear way of thinking."
- Carlo Suares, The Cypher of Genesis

[Bel Matina]

While I certainly respect and practice this sort of bibliomancy and the genuine insights that can arise from it, I feel obliged to raise a word of caution here. What Suares is doing here, what he states as his thesis, is digging into the sandbox of Qabballistic symbols that he can't place in context and using them more or less as fridge magnet poetry to express his own gnosis. There's nothing wrong with that. Nor is there anything wrong with the other, related activity he describes: digging through a font of unfamiliar wisdom for the sparks of your own that light to fill the gap between them. This is fundamentally bibliomancy, but as much as some authors deride "psychism" and "petty mediumship" it is precisely the unfamiliarity of the text that leaves these great big gaps for your undigested gnosis to fill. A great example is that Resh - Re - Ra - Sol thing you quoted, which gives him a nice place to start working alchemy into all of that. There no word for sun that I know of that even contains the letter resh in any language that I know that used the phonecian alphabet. Re means sun in ancient Egyptian, but that doesn't really have anything to do with Qabballah. Re is a word in Hebrew, but it means bad or evil, and that doesn't really fit in quite so well.

So let me say unequivocally that this is a valid pursuit of wisdom, that this is wholly and fully valid gnosis. Let me also say that this is not Qabballah. Let me give voice to my inner troll and say that your Qabballah is weak. Let me follow that up by saying we can fix that pretty easily.

First get your hands on Aryeh Kaplan's Meditation and Qabballah. It's a handy overview of the different streams within Qabballah over the two millenia regarding which it's meaningful to speak of it: there are several, and some of them are at odds and mutually unintelligible. Some are extinct in any proper sense, their texts and practices dispersed to the others. Qabballists by and large are even more tight-fisted with their secrets than alchemists are; most of them belong to extremely insular orthodox communities, and of those most are Chasidim, which is to say they belong to the youngest and most popularized stream of Qabballah. Many of the oldest and most venerated texts exist only in manuscript; it's not that they're rare, it's that the owners won't allow them to be copied for publication. Kaplan is one of the few authors who speak about these things openly in context; he gets away with it by being cryptic in his translations/commentaries and open only on topics where he doesn't directly reveal any of the mysteries. Thus Meditation and Qabballah: it provides the context for his otherwise impenetrable text commentaries.

I'll give you a bit of a spoiler, though: The first stream of Qabballah he describes is a form of astral magic practiced while the temple still stood. It required the ashes of a particular temple sacrifice as part of it's ritual preparation, and so within a couple centuries of the destruction of the temple they ran out and the tradition more or less died completely. The texts survived, and remained widely read, so elements were progressively borrowed over the generations, but on the whole at that time it appears to have been replaced by the tradition represented by the Sefer Yetsirah, a third or fourth century text (though the earliest surviving manuscripts are from the tenth century) which appears to be compiled from three separate books. Kaplan says in his introduction to it that the first two appear from their wording to be manuals for meditation, while the third appears not to be so. The first gives an esoteric account of the ten digits, each emerging from the previous, placing them as the instruments of God's creation without reference to the letters. The second is something of an esoteric phonology manual, giving an account of their numerical emergence from a single principle and placing them as the instruments of God's creation, without mention of the sefirot or reference to the ten digits. The third is a practical manual of Hellenic Astrology, quite familiar to modern students, with both the previous systems worked into its native numerology. I don't think I have to dwell excessively on the significance of Alexandria, or the fact that until the medieval period it had one of the largest Jewish populations of any city in the world, largely assimilated to the local culture in terms of their habits, thoughts, nearly everything except their manner of worship. Suffice it to say that in my limited opinion a modern student of Alchemy, provided they've studied a bit of the language, has as much reason to think they might find this book accessible as a modern student of Qabballah; if the Qabballist has been instructed in a dogmatic reading layered with the baggage of later traditions, then the Alchemist may be at an advantage.

That all being said there's much esoteric fun to be had with the first chapters of genesis, and particularly with the sentences that detail the state of being prior to the creation. It's full of lovely tricks of vocabulary and phrasing that lend a lot of depth to it, and since it details the evolution of a cosmology that's as much microcosmic as macrocosmic it's not ungermane to our art.

I wanted all of this to be a preface to a bit about what I love about the breshith chapter - and there's a lot - but I find I've run out of steam. I particularly recommend looking in to the term th'hom used to describe the state prior to creation, which appears to be etymologically a masculine version of the word Tiamat. Bara is also a special verb of creation that is only used when God creates something out of nothing, and in certain Qabballistic contexts. So yeah neat stuff. Maybe this post ought to go in another thread; if someone has suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

[chrysopoeia]

It is probably unrelated but interestingly, there is a word 'řeš' with carons over the 'r' and 's', pronounced 'resh' with a special trill of the tongue on the 'r' which is a word in a western Slavic language. Not a noun for 'sun' but it comes from a verb which expresses activity (movement). In this case 'řeš (to)' means 'do something (about it)' or 'address (it) / deal with (it)'.

[solomon levi]

Hi Bel Matina :)

"A great example is that Resh - Re - Ra - Sol thing you quoted, which gives him a nice place to start working alchemy into all of that. There no word for sun that I know of that even contains the letter resh in any language that I know that used the phonecian alphabet. Re means sun in ancient Egyptian, but that doesn't really have anything to do with Qabballah. Re is a word in Hebrew, but it means bad or evil, and that doesn't really fit in quite so well."

That's not a quote. That's me. :) I worked it into alchemy. All of that is me and my kabbalistic studies
and personal contemplations except the letter/autiot attributes in the first group which are Suares.
The second group are tarot according to Golden Dawn.

You are correct. It is weak kabbalah to mix those two. And I have more to learn.
Before I had finished the first paragraph of your post, I was searching online for astrological
attributes to the tarot, and the first link I clicked on actually took me to a site which reconstructed
the kabbalah/tree of life and tarot according to the sepher yetsirah, as Suares intended - I didn't
even know this was a site based on Suares. So nice for me - still have the google fairy watching
over me. (just a joke sort of - my own intuition).
So I'm studying now, revising and updating, and will include your recommendation.
Thank you very much!
Please don't dismiss Suares on my account. He is truly genius. If you haven't read him, you may find
you like him even more than Kaplan. He was fully aware of the astrology of the Sefer Yetsirah.
When I read him, I see directly that he is a seer, seeing presently, if that makes any sense to you.

So I have lots to do! Would love to talk and hear more anytime.

[solomon levi]

There are ways to associate the sun with Resh - head - aries = sun exalted.
Also head = chief - the chief "planet" in our solar system = sun...
I could find others because I'm creative, but Bel Matina is right (for me).

BTW, the new correspondences, if interested, would be:

B - saturn
R - mercury
A - air
Sh - fire
I - virgo
Th - moon

The sun is represented by Kaf, not Resh; 20, not 200.

BTW #2, Ra means bad or evil. The solar number is 666. :)
But Ra doesn't mean evil energetically, according to the autiot (Suares).
Resh Ayin = cosmic container moving into undetermined potential.
This is "bad" for people in/identified with bodies.
Conversely, Tov (Good), Tav Vau Bith = cosmic resistance impregnates the archetypal container.

So good = rigid and bad = shattering rigidity
Without shattering rigidity, we are imprisoned in the known.
The Bible is full of stories of people who shattered rigidity.
This is how we evolve.

Resh Ayin is the root of "beloved" as well as "evil".

This all may seem circumstantial, but it's how my spirit leads me.
Resh Ayin = 270 also = KLI MPTz, vessel (smashing) hammer; Ra = vessel/container shattering tool.
Ra, as mercury/Magician instead of sun/Sun does make more sense.
Well, it's all interpretation. If we take Luria and the light shattering the vessel...

This theme is reiterated in the sefer yetsirah:
"There is nothing in good higher than delight (ONG);
There is nothing in evil lower than plague (NGO)."
The root of Oneg means pliable, tender, gentle, comfort...
The root of Nega means to touch, to strike, to injure...
I've already introduced Ayin (O) as undetermined potential.
Nun is individual existence; Gimel is the archetype of organic movement.
So good/delight = undetermined potential into individual existences in organic movement; undetermined potential moving into matter.
Evil/plague = individual existences organic movement towards undetermined potential - the other direction.
Ra shatters Tov; Nega strikes Oneg... the energetic reading of the autiot in the Bible tell a story of evolution by striking against comfort/rigidity/security/the known.


Another reiteration - Cain killed Abel. Cain is bad, Abel is good and god-pleasing.
But if god secretly wants us to evolve, to rebel, to disobey, to smash rigidity...
Without going further into autiot at this point, Cain kills vanity. Abel is translated vanity in Ecclesiastes.

God hardens (rigidity) Pharoah's heart for Moses. If he wanted Moses to have comfort, wouldn't he have softened it?

God doesn't take the cup away from Jesus - he sends him to the cross. etc, etc...

Anyway, check it out for yourselves if you like.

ps - refrigerator magnets! brilliant! :)

[Andro]

Refrigerator Magnets! Brilliant! :)

This one receives a high placement in my 'Top 10 Chart' of Philosophical 'Double Meanings' :)


Resh Ayin is the root of "beloved" as well as "evil".

Also the root for 'Friend', 'Companion', 'Colleague', etc...

[Bel Matina]

Lovely, Solomon, just lovely!

Here, let me share with you a chapter from the Sefer Yetsirah. I was about to write the whole thing in Hebrew, but then why. Here's my translation, based on Kaplan's:

Ten counts ex nihilo.
Ten and not nine.
Ten and not eleven.
Understand with wisdom
And be wise with understanding
Observe in/with them
And investigate from them
Make a thing stand on its creator (bore)
And make a creator (yotser) sit on his foundation

Binah means literally separation. The synonymy of separation and understanding occurs in quite a few languages.
Chokhmah means wisdom in the sense of knowledge or intelligence. The sort of wisdom that comes from experience. In a word: gnosis.

Briyah creates organically. Etymologically it's related to the idea of "healing" or "succoring"
Ytsirah creates mechanically. It brings parts that already have an identity together and turns them into something new.

Enjoy!

[solomon levi]

That's amazing! I'm warping between the two.
There's a lot of information packed in that little stanza.
I love it!

Once, in a dream/vision, I was simultaneously writing and reading in the same book.
That's what this reminds me of - acting on and acting through these sephira.

[solomon levi]

Here's a nice intro to Suares, if interested:
http://www.duversity.org/PDF/THE%20CIPHER%20OF%20GENESIS.pdf

[Bel Matina]

Ah. Yes, that is a genuine Qabballist, and not bound by the insularity of the Chasids etc.

I should warn you, though, that the starting point metaphysically for Qabballists is that God created the world by speaking (Hebrew, of course), hence the switch-out of the Hebrew letters for Platonic numbers. This leads to the assumption that certain things are ontologically (or at least semantically) primitive which are... not. Kaplan was aware of the outsider perspective, which is why I tend to recommend him.

If you want to get seriously into Qabballah, I would recommend studying at least the historical context and development of the Jewish sacred texts. There are layers of different approaches, all of which are both referenced to as cipher material and inform the thinking of the authors. For example, by the Roman period, there was an extensive and highly structured tradition of exegesis, and understanding it sheds a lot of light on how gematria was used didactively.

[solomon levi]

This leads to the assumption that certain things are ontologically (or at least semantically) primitive which are... not.

I'm not sure what you mean. Can you give an example?

I don't see God as a creator, and the "speaking" isn't words coming "out of" God, but Aleph or ALHIM morphing and involving and evolving,
God being both transcendant and immanent as Aleph-Bith, Aleph-Yod, Aleph-Tav...
How's that sit with you, Bel Matina?

[Bel Matina]

I'm not sure what you mean. Can you give an example?

A good one is that for all Qabballists is present the dogmatic trap that Hebrew is a perfect language and without flaw, the literal instrument of God's creation. This leads pretty much inevitably either to taking one's didactic conflations seriously as an article of faith or to pretending one does to the broader community. Suares looks good, but without reading more of his writing I can't in good faith vouch for him. I suspect you have the judgement to separate the wheat from the chaff.

More broadly I was cautioning that many of the didactive tagmata of Qabballah are informed not only by the contents of Hebrew scripture but the historical forces that generated them. A little bit of background will do a lot of putting things into context.


I don't see God as a creator, and the "speaking" isn't words coming "out of" God, but Aleph or ALHIM morphing and involving and evolving,
God being both transcendant and immanent as Aleph-Bith, Aleph-Yod, Aleph-Tav...
How's that sit with you, Bel Matina?

Withholding comment on the gates, which challenge me to stretch my personal grasp of Qabballah, I completely agree with you. I don't personally carry the baggage of adherence to doctrine, though I did grow up hearing it and it's shaped my understanding of the root. For me, it affects less the structure of things than what I pay attention to. I have to assign new meaning to ideas like the word of God, the name of God, the Torah, mitzvos, etc.

[Andro]

the dogmatic trap that Hebrew is a perfect language and without flaw, the literal instrument of God's creation.

Aramaic is more ancient than Hebrew, and much more 'magical', so to speak. Even a 'common' phrase in Aramaic sounds like some sort of spell :)

(I had the chance to hear stuff written in Aramaic, and it had a strong effect on me, even if I couldn't understand the actual 'meaning' of the words.)

[Bel Matina]

Aramaic is more ancient than Hebrew, and much more 'magical', so to speak. Even a 'common' phrase in Aramaic sounds like some sort of spell :)

Don't fall into a dogmatic trap yourself :)

In fact, in both an objective and esoteric sense, no language is more ancient or magical than any other. Each language is born new every generation, and even within a generation will shape itself to the circumstances it comes in contact with. No matter what language you speak, what can't be spoken can't be spoken :)

The tonality of language divorced from its meaning can communicate surprisingly much. I suspect what moved you had more to do with whoever rendered it for you and what the text meant to them than the circumstance of the language it was in. I find the mysticism of unknown languages very moving as well, though as a linguist I tend to then dive into the unknown language, destroying the mystery and replacing it with a gnosis that, and this is a very personal thing, I find more satisfying.

I was tempted to flame here, since historical linguistics is an obsession of mine, and, historically speaking, the birth of Aramaic marks the death of Hebrew.

I do find the way Hebrew is spoken in modern Israel pretty grating. It's more or less a fusion of the accents of all the languages people used to speak, with the main component being German, and after that French. It does away with all the symmetries of Tiberian phonology, and generally speaking makes me want to claw my ears off. Again, very personal :)

[Andro]

I was tempted to flame here, since historical linguistics is an obsession of mine, and, historically speaking, the birth of Aramaic marks the death of Hebrew.

It appears that the earliest written records of both Hebrew and Aramaic are from around 1000 BCE.

But you are the one admitting to have an obsession with historical linguistics, so I may have been linearly mistaken. If so, thanks for the correction.
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I certainly feel that some languages are more 'magical' than others, and also that many languages have mutated over linear time from intuitive/archetypal towards more 'logical' and specified.

I see it as a cycle thing. 'The Ages of Man', etc...

I also sense how languages that are more archetypal/magical, can also be somehow 'better' at expressing 'what can't be spoken' (like pure principles and archetypes, for example).

My own background is more shamanic/magical/musical/incantational rather than historic/linguistic/academic. So I may well see/hear things differently. This doesn't make it dogma IMO.

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Are you aware of the concept of the 'Bird Language'? If yes, I'd be curious to hear your angle on it...
_____________________________________________


I was tempted to flame here

And lead thyself not into temptation :)
----------------------------------------------

Thanks for your input!

[solomon levi]

A good one is that for all Qabballists is present the dogmatic trap that Hebrew is a perfect language and without flaw, the literal instrument of God's creation. This leads pretty much inevitably either to taking one's didactic conflations seriously as an article of faith or to pretending one does to the broader community. Suares looks good, but without reading more of his writing I can't in good faith vouch for him. I suspect you have the judgement to separate the wheat from the chaff.

More broadly I was cautioning that many of the didactive tagmata of Qabballah are informed not only by the contents of Hebrew scripture but the historical forces that generated them. A little bit of background will do a lot of putting things into context.



Withholding comment on the gates, which challenge me to stretch my personal grasp of Qabballah, I completely agree with you. I don't personally carry the baggage of adherence to doctrine, though I did grow up hearing it and it's shaped my understanding of the root. For me, it affects less the structure of things than what I pay attention to. I have to assign new meaning to ideas like the word of God, the name of God, the Torah, mitzvos, etc.

Okay. I think we're pretty similar in these regards then.
I'm not one to "believe" anything. I love Suares because reading him, or reading
the Bible according to his cipher, opens up the universe to me. I take what I personally
see "seriously" because it truly alters my perception and awareness, and i share it
in case it benefits others. But I understand more now why alchemists wrote for other alchemists. ;)
It takes gold to make gold, etc. I hope that doesn't sound conceited. I don't know how much I know.
I just know what I know. And alot of knowing happens through not-knowing, not-identifying.
For me, seeing is a better word than knowing; perceiving directly - not a matter of the eyes.

I especially resonate with "assign new meaning to ideas like..."

[Bel Matina]

Androgynus - Aramaic originated as the local west semitic dialect of the Syrian desert, and spread with populations deported across the Assyrian Empire. Consequently it became a koine in that empire and its successors, all the way up to the muslim conquest. It seems to have rapidly localized and replaced local semitic languages/dialects, absorbing much of their vocabulary. They were all close enough that you could look at it upside down, with the local languages adopting Aramaic accents and speech patterns, rather than being replaced. There's room to argue, but the good money is on Hebrew being dead for quite a while before the oldest extant manuscripts, passed down in liturgy like Latin. Some people even think that many books of the bible were originally written in Aramaic and back-translated to Hebrew.

Languages, including the language of birds, tend to specialize on a topic of interest. Different languages make it easier to communicate accurately about different things - it's hard to beat the language of birds for talking about the Root, but picture light conversation about the weather with it! Unsurprisingly I have a lot more to say about the nature of language in this regard, but I'll have to start a new thread for it.

Solomon -

I do believe we are quite a bit more similar than different, in that regard.

Every tradition has its own little language going. With Qabballah versus Alchemy, I only mean to warn you that you're liable to be tripped up by the familiarity of the topic. It's like hearing Yiddish knowing only normal German - you'll understand it, but they like to throw in a bunch of Hebrew everywhere to keep you on your toes.

Fortunately, there's piles and piles of modern literature exploring who wrote the bible, what they meant, and how it was understood every step of the way. Since most of the context you need is the Talmud and the exegetic tradition it culminates (unfortunately mostly not included - the Dead Sea Scrolls contain the bulk of what survives of the earlier part) I recommend looking into it.

Do enjoy!

[Salazius]

When you have to command a tiger, you have a whip and you speak GERMAN.

Some say that french is so romantic ... language of love.

Tonality AND the meaning plus glosolalia (inflexion of the voice, babies are very very sensitive to it, and generaly we don't speak to them with a normal soind voice, like when you say harshly "no !!" or or with interest "what ?", when you use irony, etc)

Whatever the language we use some are then, more or less effective for the purpose we seek.

Don't speak a demon with French if he is in his agressive mode ! Use german tonality instead ....

Just my 2cts.