Who is God? That's what Moses asked when he encountered God in the desert through the vehicle of the burning bush. Moses asked what he should answer when the Israelites asked who sent him (Moses) to redeem them from slavery. God's answer: AHYH AShR AHYH, or phonetically, Ehieh Asher Ehieh (Exodus 3:14). Some qabalists use AHYH as a God name for one of the spheres on the Tree of Life. But in fact, AHYH isn't really a name at all. It's a statement. It has been variously translated as "I am" or "I will be." The entire sentence translates to "I am that I am" or "I am who I am" or "I will be what I will be" etc. But whatever translation is used, AHYH is not really a name. It's a statement merely of being.
The absence of a name is an important
thing. When we name a thing, a person, or any sort of being, we
automatically define it. Not only do we say what it is; by
implication, we say what it is not. My name is Marc H.
Gerstein. That's very limiting. You can list billions upon billions of
people you know who are not writing these words. Marc is generally a
male name; so you already have a good idea of something about Marc.
The name Marc is likewise incompatible with many ethnicities. So
there are more things you can assume I probably am not. There's much
limitation that is expressed by nothing more than a name. (Note, too,
that a graven image, prohibited in the Ten Commandments, is still more
limiting.)
But you may respond
that God does have a name; lots of them. Even if Ehieh
isn't really a name, what about YHVH, or Adonai, etc. These
are other God names that are attributed by some qabalists to various
spheres of the Tree of Life. What about Elohim? That's the
one who is identified in Genesis 1:1 as the creator of the
heavens and the earth. (For the record, in Hebrew, the suffix "IM"
means plural, the way "s" does in English. So Elohim really
means "the Gods." The Gods? How many are there? Isn't Judaism
supposed to be monotheistic?)
For a clue as to what's
happening here, we can look to the Zohar's description of
creation - the Big Bang, so to speak. Zohar I, 15a starts by
telling us that "At the very beginning the King
made engravings in the supernal purity. A spark of blackness
emerged...." Skipping some complex description about the
progress of this spark, we'll fast forward to a statement that "it was not known at all, until from the pressure of
its penetration a single point shone, sealed, supernal. Beyond this
point, nothing is known, and so it is called reshit (the
beginning): the first word of all." So a point, a "zohar" (a
brilliance) emerged from something unknowable. Then, the text moves
quickly to a fascinating proposition.
The first sentence of
the Torah, BRAShYTh BRA ALHYM ET HShAMYM VET HAyRTz has been
long translated in the King James Bible as "In the beginning,
God created the heavens and the earth." The word BRAShYTh is, indeed,
held to have some relationship to the idea of a beginning, although
proposed translations have changed since the days of King James.
Modern alternatives include "When the beginning" or "With beginning".
The second word, BRA, does mean created. And of course, ALHYM means
"the Gods." What about BRA ALHYM? In some languages, the subject
normally precedes the verb, while others are more flexible.
Traditional translations simply assume flexible verb/subject sequence
and assume the BRA ALHYM really means "God (or, the Gods) created" But
in a portion of the Zohar, the sequence is read more
strictly: BRA ALHYM means "created the Gods." So BRAShYTh BRA ALHYM
now means, "With beginning created the Gods." Just a bit more
linguistic smoothing give us the following translation of Genesis
1:1: "With beginning, __ created the Gods, the heavens and the
earth." Who created the Gods? It's never stated. It's not knowable.
This is a very radical proposition: That
which most in the Judeo-Chrisitan world thought of as the supreme
being, the prime creator, the source, is no such thing. Instead,
Elohim is something that was created by someone/something
else. This is a theme we'll come back to later in the Tree of
Life. For now, it would be a good idea to start getting comfortable
with these ideas: You cannot conceive the true God. No human mind can
do that, and no human language can describe it. The best we can do is
conceive of aspects of the true God. Qabalists often refer to the
prime source/creator as AYN SVPh (ain soph) which means "without
limit" or "limitless" or "infinite." (The "King" described by the
Zohar as making the first engravings in the supernal purity is held to
refer to as AYN SVPh.)
There's another qabalistic phrase
dealing with God: AYN SVPh AVR (ayn soph aur), which means "limitless
light." Remember gematria from Chapter
2? Lets try some. AVR = 207 (A=1 plus v=6 plus R=200). AYN SVPh is
also = 207 (A=1 plus Y=10 plus N=50 plus S=60 plus V=6 plus Ph=80).
Hence we have a gematria-based mystical link between the idea of
infinity and light. For the record, we have another modest linkage
based on the code 207: RBH (R=200 plus B=2 plus H=5), which means
"much" or "is great." What we now have is light. A lot of light. LOTS
and LOTS of light! Infinite light. So what does this infinite light
do? Just hang around being bright? Let's try some more gematria.
ARAH = 207 (A=1 plus R=200 plus A=1 plus
H=5). Translation: "I will appear" or with different vowel markings,"I
will see." ADBR = 207 (A=1 plus D=4 plus B=2 plus R=200). Translation:
"I will speak." VNQVMH = 207 (V=6 plus N=50 plus Q=100 plus V=6 plus
M=40 plus H=5). Translation: "And let us arise." So it's not in the
nature of this infinite light to sit around just being. It will see,
it will appear, and it will speak. In other words, this light is
inherently active.
Digressing for a moment, various new-age
channeled teachings see the prime source/creator (what qabalists refer
to as "infinite light") as a universal consciousness, and running
throughout this modern material is the idea that it is the very nature
of this consciousness to create, to evolve, to grow. It cannot
stagnate; such a condition is alien to its nature.
Back to the infinite light. Notice that
the creative expressions are in the future tense. I will do this. Let
us do this. Always in the future. But this infinite light is, by the
very quality of its infinity, beyond time. It always was. It is. It
will always be. And yet, it's always looking ahead. "I will...."
Rabbi David Cooper, in God is a Verb (Riverhead Books, ISBN
1-57322-055-8), explains that God isn't a static thing that launched
creation and then stayed behind at the starting line. God is a
process of never-ending creation. God isn't a noun; it's a
verb; the idea of "God-ing."
The above exercise in gematria shows us
that one of the creative things this infinite light will do is
"speak." As we'll see later on, when we go further into Genesis 1,
when infinite light speaks, it's not idle chatter. The ten sayings of
creation are the ten spheres of the Tree of Life.
Before closing this section, I'll offer
some food for thought that will be explored further in later posts:
(1) Back to ALHYM, and the other god names. These are attributes of
AYN SVPh. Working with attributes of the unknowable is something
we'll return to with the spheres of the Tree of Life. (2) The number
207 is a recurring one when describing this "Godly" source. Reducing
the number to a single digit, as numerologists are inclined to do,
leaves us with 9, corresponding to the ninth sphere of the Tree of
Life, which is named "Foundation" and is associated with the human
reproductive organs, the sources from which physical life springs.
I won't necessarily go into this much
detail in all future QB series posts. But I did want to do so here,
to follow up the last post on methodology, to show how the raw
materials of qabala, the Torah, the qabalistic texts, the Hebrew
alphabet, and the numbers can be tied together to produce the various
qabalistic ideas and doctrines, and even how centuries-old qabalistic
ideas can mesh with late-20th century new-age thought (there will also
be occasion to spotlight similarities between qabala and classic
Eastern teachings).
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