Suares: "Total process through which timeless Aleph becomes Yod which is of time. This process sets in motion
the organic functions of living beings. Existence is projected into the passive multitudes of resistence. These allow
themselves or do not allow themselves to be fertized after the manner of the living and the dead waters."
--Cipher of Genesis, page 79.
Bereshyt
Bara
Elohim
Aleph-Lammed-Hay-Yod-Mem
Aleph : infinite, timeless, intermittant, sign of the unknowable, creation
Lammed : organic movement, functional, existent
Hay : archetype of Life itself
Yod : existence, duration in time, foundation of actuality
Mem : maternal waters (Maim), projection of resistance into organic/existence, where it becomes the passive
creative matrix for existential life (Noun, 50)
Far from signifying some abstract conception of a "God," Elohim is an exact
equation for the total evolutionary life process in the universe. Again, the two partners,
Aleph and Yod, who made their appearance in Bereshyt, now in an organic, evolutionary role, driving the life process. Aleph (infinite unknowable consciousness)
sets in motion organic life (Lammed-Hay); existence (Yod) then proves fertile, or not (in Mem, the waters).
"In the beginning, God created ..." is an invitation to leave rational thought behind,
an invitation taken in almost every case. The unthinkability of this thought is rarely tested,
as Gershom Scholem points out in commenting on R. Isaac Luria's doctine of Tsimtsum:
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This paradox of Tsimtsum -- as Jacob Emden said -- is the only serious attempt
ever made to give substance to the idea of Creation out of Nothing. Incidentally, the fact that an idea
which at first sight appears so reasonable as "Creation out of Nothing" should turn out upon inspection
to lead to a theosophical mystery shows us how illusory the apparent simplicity of religious fundamentals
really is. Scholem, Major Trends, Schocken 1995, p.253
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Readers of English/Christian translations of the "Old Testament" (Hebrew Tanakh) may not always be aware of the actual Hebrew words
translated as "God" or "The Lord" or "The Almighty" and may miss the significance of the different usages.
There are many explanations for the usages of the two principle
sacred names the Old Testament, Elohim and YHVH.
In brief, Elohim is the evolutionary process, while YHVH is Life-In-Existence,
the goal of the involutionary process.
Elohim appears 32 times in Chapter 1 of Bereshit/Genesis.
Elohim
In Hebrew, Elohim is written in two alternative ways, according to the Qabala. Both terminate in MEM, but
this may take the value 40 or 600. The spelling is ALEPH-LAMMED-HAY-YOD-MEM. The number-schemata are therefore
either (1.30.5.10.40) or (1.30.5.10.600). We shall write the former as ELOHIM and the latter as ELOHIM .
Both words signify a projection into life on Earth of the Cosmic Drama of ALEPH playing the game against
YOD. Incidentally, the word YOD is spelt YOD-WAW-DALLET and means hand in Hebrew. Since DALLET conveys
the notion of resistance and response to challenge, the Hebrew meaning of hand could be rendered into
English by "that which holds its own ."
MEM (600) signifies the highest achieved state of VAV (6). Since VAV is fertility, impregnation or planting,
this MEM therefore symbolizes fruitfulness in the highest degree. Any achievement of cosmic significance
is indicated by 600.
LAMMED (30) is the projection into existence of movements of change; the transformation of what exists; transfer
or transmission through what exists.
Hence ELOHIM reads:
The unknowable power or energy (ALEPH) transmitted into and through the organic movement (LAMMED) of life
(HAY) plays out the game with its own projection (YOD) in existence as "the waters" (MEM) of the biosphere.
Hence MEM (40) states the process. ELOHIM with MEM (600) expresses that the highest state of achievement of
the process is in action: extending its scope, as it were, more and more. Through the action of ELOHIM
the "waters" of the biosphere teem and seethe with living things, all participating individually in the process
ELOHIM.
In ordinary usage, MEM (600) is the plural ending, indicating the notion of a numerical fruitfulness by which
the one becomes many, becomes a multitude.
The cosmic game is indicated, in code, in ELOHIM by the presence of ALEPH and YOD together.
Life (HAY) is in the middle, maintaining a precarious balance (precarious because the drama is hazardous)
between opposing impulses of ALEPH-LAMMED and YOD-MEM acting from either side. The drama is being played out
on the stage of life by two duelling actors. The fight is carried on through life and this is ELOHIM.
ELOHIM , therefore, expresses a simultaneous emanation of life and of its physical supports, as an
evolutionary process. It is not the deity it is supposed to be.
The juxtaposition of the letters ALEPH-LAMMED is a schema signifying that the energy of ALEPH acquires the power
to project changes in existence. Without this LAMMED, ALEPH is not able to become organically alive in HAY.
So ALEPH in isolation is like the enormous energy locked up inside the atomic nuclei, having an explosive potency
not yet released. ELOHIM without the HAY would symbolize an enormous density of existing things on the Earth
(YOD-MEM) locked in conflict with ALEPH-LAMMED, the timeless energy of ALEPH endowed with the potency to bring about
tremendous changes. The out-come of their conflict would manifest as cataclysmic upheavals succeeded by
comparative quiescence, the two alternating as the rallies of the game shifted it from one court to the other.
Historically, whole continents, seas and mountain-ranges appeared and disappeared again and again as the Earth
writhed between the hammer and the anvil of a doublefold energy, explosive and compressive. As we know from Earth
history, this situation persisted for the two thousand millions of years of geological time that preceded the action
of the biosphere as a reconciling force. At a certain moment, this conflict opened up the issue of ALEPH, and the
Earth was able to produce the archetype ADAM. The cycle of evolution of life commenced to elaborate the
living forms of the biosphere in order to resolve a further stage of the cosmic game playing itself out through
ELOHIM.
The letter HAY is in a central position amongst the nine archetypes, the remaining eight are equally balanced on
either sie -- four on one side, four the other. Life is a balancing factor in the cosmic game. It can transmit
an impulse of reconciliation. Through ELOHIM, the conflict can maintain a state of equilibrium which evolves
through stages of finer balance until a cycle of evolution is completed. Then a further cycle begins, and so
on. They are not cycles in time but simultaneous. Vegetable life and animal life coexist as different modes of
equilibrium whose seven-fold structure is exemplified in the biolgical classification of: Species, Genus, Family, Order,
Class, Phylum and Kingdom. This is the projection of ZAYN (7) into life on Earth (the Seventh "Day"). The cyclic
structure of vegetable and animal life, however achieved, is only a static, identical recurrence of the same modes
of equilibrium. In them, ALEPH is, as it were, taken around closed cycles again and again, indefinitely. The
cosmic game is being played out through an endless recurrence of the the same prototypes and not getting any further.
ALEPH can only burst out of this closed cycle into a further cycle in a human being : ADAM This is why,
in the book of Genesis, ADAM is described as "the living image" of ELOHIM. ADAM has with
him as the DALLET of his name the resistance which must respond to the challenge of the ALEPH driving towards a
further stage of fullfilment in MEM (600). In harmonizing these warring natures with him, he is ABRAM. In
succeeding and thereby gaining a new life, he becomes ABRAHAM.
Suares, Tree II
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The following scheme is ELOHIM :
Aleph/1 - Lamed/30 - Hey/5 - Yod/10 - Mem/600
Conversely, to separate is to recreate oneself. But how can everyday consciousness separate from its identifications with itself? In her effort to grasp and
pull herself together, should she reject the world of appearances, the way one strikes with unreality a heavy dream from which one awakens? Should it seek
a fixed, absolute, permanent, transcendent reality? No, says Tradition. In returning to what has been revealed since the Berechiytt, she adds that however
erroneous the representation that we have of things, their presence is real. She adds that the movement of 300 projected into the world of contingencies
is this movement itself realized: it is the Lamed = 30. In him, the consciousness separates from its representations and identifies itself again with it and
separates from it again and returns to it and, constantly renewed, is surprised that everything is always new. Thereby creation sees itself.
This threshold is difficult to cross; but, here, the Tradition is severe: AL (Aleph-Lamed) must be perceived as moving immanence, failing which this scheme
is rejected as having no meaning or deified. In either case, the revelation would be lost. On the other hand, the effective presence of 1-30 is life and
perception of life: HE = 5. A harmony is then produced, the mechanism of which escapes consciousness which is its center. Vital encounters, surprising
coincidences, situations that unravel as if by magic, blocked paths that open up: the field of action becomes magic where everything is fruitful and freed
from the conscious will. This is due to the Aleph, spontaneous, elusive, to the Lamed, vital movement, to the Hey which breathes life. Such is the
demiurgic ELOH. It is the man such as the text wants it (Genesis, III, 22). And the multiplication of the apparent miracles which occur (and no longer stop)
as soon as this movement is triggered, it is the Yod-Mem of Elohim, where the Aleph becomes Yod and the final Mem (600) is a sign of cosmic fertilization. In
the scheme of Elohim we do not find a 2, so that his action on the 2 has a magical aspect and that this force creator is constantly deified. This curious God
in the masculine plural (YOD-MEM is grammatically a masculine plural), finds itself projected into a transcendence, while these creative forces are on the contrary immanent.
La Kabale Des Kabales
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The second word in Hebrew is BARA. In Qabalistic depth understanding it means "ways of creation". Look at the word Bara--it is actually
Bar-Aleph--that is, child of Aleph! Or if you will, the ways in which the immense potentials of the Aleph are born into time and space,
how the high creative becomes immanent and actualized. In other words, birthing in a big way. So the text has as its true meaning,
"Principles Of Creation: How To Do It." Or like I said, Genesis 101 and 102.
The next word is the one that tells the tale for the word is ELOHIM, translated in English as God. ELOHIM is both a masculine
and a feminine word and is plural. But it means much more than that. Using some of the principles of projective language which
we have just explored, let's look at the nature of that word, ELOHIM.
The spelling is ALEPH - LAMMED - HAY - YOD - MEM. and the only letters that we have not looked at is the one MEM, which signifies
fruitfulness in the highest degree, that is, the creation of the biosphere. LAMMED means the channeling through which energy changes
can happen, thus ELOHIM means the immensities of energy and power (ALEPH) and channeled or transmitted through the organic movement
(LAMMED) of life (HAY) playing out the Cosmic Game with its own projection YOD in existence in the biosphere, MEM. The cosmic game
is indicated in code in ELOHIM by the presence of ALEPH and YOD together. Life, or HAY, is in the middle, maintaining the balance. With
ALEPH-LAMMED the spirit of creative energy on the one side, and YOD-MEM of the physical supports on the other. This is the nature of
an evolutionary process. In fact, that is the subtitle of this course. So what you have in the first three words is a catalogue listing
at the God-Training University or, if you will, God University, or if you really will, GU (GO GU!) GO GU is quite literally true if you
look at the history of the early stages of the world and what is implied in the name ELOHIM. For the juxtaposition of the putting together
of the letters ALEPH-LAMMED signifies that the energy of ALEPH acquires the power to project changes in existence. Without this Lammed or
channeling transformational force, Aleph is not able to become organically alive in HAY, life. So Aleph, without these other characters
or helpers, is a loaded, locked up nucleus, having an explosive potency not yet released.
Jean Houston
Powers of Genesis
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Scholem on Bereshyt Bara Elohim:
There are certain spheres of Divinity where questions can be asked and answers obtained, namely the spheres of
"this and that", of all those attributes of God which the Zohar symbolically calls Eleh, i. e., the determinable
world. In the end, however, meditation reaches a point where it is still possible to question "who", but no
longer possible to get an answer; rather does the question itself constitute an answer; and if the domain
of Mi, of the great Who, in which God appears as the subject of the mundane process, can at least be questioned,
the higher sphere of divine wisdom represents something positive beyond the reach of questioning, something which
cannot even be visualized in abstract thought.
Ihis idea is expressed in a profound symbol: the Zohar, and indeed the majority of the older Kabbalists,
questioned the meang of the first verse of the Torah: Bereshith bara Elohim, "In the beginning created God";
what actually does this mean? The answer is fairly surprising. We are "told" that it means Bereshith -- through
th medium of the "beginning," i. e., of that primordial existence which has been defined as the wisdom of
God,-- bara, created, that to say, the hidden Nothing which constitutes the grammatical subject of the word bara,
emanated or unfolded, -- Elohim, that is to say, its emanation is Elohim. It is the object,
and not the subject of the sentence. And what is Elohim? Elohim is the name of God,
which guarantees the continued existence of creation insofar as it represents the union of the hidden subject
Mi and the hidden object Eleh. (The Hebrew words Mi and Eleh have the same
consonants as the complete word Elohim). -- In other words, Elohim is the name given to God after the
disjunction of subject and object has taken place, but in which this gap is continuously bridged or closed.
The mystical Nothing which lies before the division of the primary idea into the Knower and the Known,
is not regarded by the Kabbalist as a true subject. The lower ranges of God's manifestation form the
object of steady human contemplation, but the highest plane which meditation can reach at all, namely
the knowledge of God as the mystical Mi (Who), as the subject of the mundane process, this knowledge can
be no more than an occasional and intuitive flash which illuminates the human heart, as sunbeams
play on the surface of water -- to use Moses de Leon's metaphor."
Gershom Scholem, Major Trends, Schocken, 1995, p.220
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See:
Belimah |
Bereshit |
Adam
| YHWY
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