Fundamentals of Qabbalistic Cosmogony-j

* * * The Zohar is a genesis of light; the Sepher Yetzirah is a ladder of truth. Therein are expounded the two-and-thirty absolute symbols of speech--being numbers and letters. Each letter produces a number, an idea and a form, so that mathematics are applicable to forms and ideas, even as to numbers, in virtue of an exact proportion, and a perfect correspondence. By the science of the Sepher Yetzirah, the human mind is rooted in truth and in reason; it accounts for all progress possible to intelligence by means of the evolution of numbers. Thus does the Zohar represent absolute truth, while the Sepher Yetzirah furnishes the method of its acquisition, its discernment and application." ( History of Magic .) By placing man himself at the point D 10, his true constitution is revealed. He exists upon four worlds, only one of which is visible. It is then made evident that his parts and members upon the material plane are, by analogy, hierarchies and intelligences in the higher worlds. Here, again, the law of interpenetration is evidenced. Although within man is the entire universe (the 43 spheres interpenetrating D 10), he is ignorant of its existence because he cannot exercise control over that which is superior to or greater than himself. Nevertheless, all these higher spheres exercise control over him, as his functions and activities demonstrate. If they did not, he would be an inert mass of substance. Death is merely the result of deflecting the life impulses of the higher rings away from the lower body. The control of the transubstantial rings over their own material reflection is called life , and the spirit of man is, in reality, a name given to this great host of intelligences, which are focused upon substance through a point called the ego , established in the midst of themselves. X 1 is the outside boundary of the human Auric Egg, and the entire diagram becomes a cross section of the constitution of man, or a cross section of the Kosmic constitution, if correlated with the universe. By the secret culture of the Qabbalistic School, man is taught how to climb the rings (unfold his consciousness) until at last he returns to AIN SOPH. The process by which this is accomplished is called the Fifty Gates of Light . Kircher, the Jesuit Qabbalist, declares that Moses passed through forty-nine of the gates, but that Christ alone passed the fiftieth gate. To the third edition of the Sepher Yetzirah translated from the Hebrew by Wm. Wynn Westcott are appended the Fifty Gates of Intelligence emanating from Binah , the second Sephira. The source of this information is Kircher's Œdipus Ægyptiacus . The gates are divided into six orders, of which the first four have each ten subdivisions, the fifth nine, and the sixth only one. The first order of gates is termed Elementary and its divisions areas follows: (1) Chaos, Hyle, the First Matter; (2) Formless, void, lifeless; (3) The Abyss; (4) Origin of the Elements; (5) Earth (no seed germs); (6) Water;(7) Air;(8) Fire;(9) Differentiation of qualities; (10) Mixture and combination.