Psyche

   It is not through any excess of argumentation, nor through legal casuistry, nor through dialectical reasoning in the application of hermeneutic rules that the verb "to dwell" came to have such an exalted meaning as the Manifestation of Divine Presence in the life of man, or even the Divine Immanence in Creation. It is due to the fact that the Hebrew way of thinking has always been and still is an all-inclusive, analogical perception of the One in and with all that is. When we are true to that thiking and know its keys, as they are alive on the Autiaut, we are Qabalists, and the roots of the Jewish idiom, when such keys are applied to them, open the whole range of Manifestation to the searching minds.

   The root of Shaken (dwelling) or Shakan (to abide) is Ken, colloguially "Yes, this is so", with no meaning of its own: who says yes to whom, about what? But, as nearly always happens with ontological roots the idiomatic Ken suggests two opposites: something upright and honest, and something lousy as a worm. The beauty of the sacred language, when understood according to the original code, is that every schema has a full meaning of its own, in different spheres of manifestation. I will not repeat, here, the explanation of the code, that I have given so many times, in the Cipher of Genesis, in Tree II, in the Song of Songs and elsewhere: I will only give a reminder of it, as applied to our present subject.

   Ken: Kaf-Noun is 20.50 in the sphere of concrete existence, the lowest potential Energy (hence its degraded colloquial meaning) and 20.700 in the Cosmic Power (hence the colloquial uprightness). Kaf, 20, is my -- or anybody's -- bodily action.

    The assertion Ken links that action, either to the existential life of Noun 50 or to the universal Principle of Indetermination, Noun (final) 700. It is a positive option, a declared state of relationship either with the existential aspect of life or with the unknown Principle at stake in the universe. For the qabalist, it is both , because the qabalist's mind and body assert both spheres.

   When Sheen comes here as a prefix, there is a permutation of Sheen-Yod-Noun
(its complete spelling) into Sheen-Kaf-Noun: Yod, the general sign for existence becomes specified in Kaf. Sheen being cosmic, its final noun is always 700. Therefore Sheen's intervention in Ken divides it, as its intervention in Maim divides Shamain from Maim.

   Now we have two meanings for Shaken. Where Kaf resists the One Energy
acting as Sheen, it asserts any individual dwelling such as "my house, your house, anybody's house." Where Kaf yields to Sheen, the schema Sheken becomes Shekinah, (Sheen-Kaf-Yod-Noun-Hay), in which the final Noun becomes actual, incarnates in Yod, and is alive with Hay.

   The beauty of this schema is that projection in factual existence of the Cosmic Indetermination, Noun, 700. Thus Shekinah is indeed the dwelling in flesh of Sheen, the cosmic living Breath.

    But how has it come to be said, by the means of the schemata Ken, Sheken, Shekinah, that the universal organic Life dwells only in Israel? It is asserted by those very same schemata, slightly, altered into Sheen-Kof-Yod-Noun: Sekeen, a word that has come to mean colloquially simply knife. In fact, it is the cutting of flesh for the penetration into it of Sheen: the circumcision according to the Hebrew Covenant.

   (For the explanation of what circumcision at eight days really is, I must refer my readers, once more, to The Cipher of Genesis -- the chapter on circumcision.).