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The human body, like that of the universe, is considered to be a material expression of ten globes or spheres of light. Therefore man is called the Microcosm—the little world, built in the image of the great world of which he is a part.
—manly p. hall, the secret teachings of all ages
Qabalah
Qabalah—also seen as Kabbalah or Cabala—is known most primarily as the esoteric doctrine of Judaism. The term’s Hebrew root QBL (Qibel) means literally “to receive.” So, in its simplest of definitions, Qabalah is a spiritual discipline of reception. Rabbi Gershon Winkler has described exactly what is being received in Qabalah: “‘Receiving,’ in turn, means being open to the ever flowing river of wisdom and insight, magic and enlightenment, that emanates unceasingly from what the kabbalah calls 
kud’sha b’reekh hu, meaning Sacred Wellspring.” 28
In essence, it is a system of initiation. And although it is associated primarily with Jewish mysticism, even Rabbi Philip Berg of the well-known Kabbalah Centre refers to it as “the spiritual heritage of all humankind.” 29 Qabalah has a long and complicated history, not all of it based upon traditional Jewish orthodoxy. Evolution works never in a sequence but rather like the weaving of a spiderweb. Many spiritual and ethnic traditions have touched upon or contributed to the narrative of Qabalah over the centuries.
Many mystics attribute ancient beginnings to the system of Qabalah. Their attribution of its inception comes directly from the divine order itself: God handed the system of Qabalah directly to Adam, from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, who eventually brought the mystical tradition to Egypt, where Moses himself became an initiate. Egypt is often considered one of the origin points of the mystery schools, where the processes of initiation were not only refined, but institutionalized. From there, Qabalah branched out to the Eastern nations and beyond, infiltrating many religious and philosophical systems across the planet.
This is one of many accounts ascribing the origins of Qabalah to Egypt, rather than it being strictly of Jewish ancestry. The genesis mythologies can dive even further into the oceans of imagination, with influences said to have stemmed also from Atlantis and Lemuria (if you are in to that sort of thing). Regardless of the actual historical record, it is the mythology that is important, for it carries the essence of the tradition into the work of the initiate.
Though the essential historical texts of Qabalah—the Zohar and the Sepher Yetzirah—are archaic and allegorical, centuries of academic interpretation have provided us with an accessible and comprehensive system of initiation. Indeed, Qabalah has become one of—if not the—key elements of the Great Work. The Zohar and Sepher Yetzirah, through layers of numerological symbolism and poetry, illustrate and elucidate in essence the most profound emblem in all mystery traditions: the Tree of Life.
The Tree
The Tree of Life is a symbol, or symbol composite, that can be viewed as a graph of the unseen universe, both inner and outer. As a diagram, it exhibits every component and ingredient in the soul, tracing each of its disparate parts together so that a reintegration of its parts can be obtained. It integrates psychology, spirituality, and science into a holistic design whose sole purpose is to better understand our cosmic heritage. The Tree of Life seeks to define the ineffable: the nature and purpose of the universe and the individual (which are both one and the same, as well as autonomous).
I ascribe the Tree of Life to be a roadmap—the roadmap—of consciousness, used to explore the nature of God, the Divine, the self, the soul, and all the myriad dimensions of being that exist in the unseen realms. On this roadmap, there are pathways and there are destinations, like any map would have. It is the role of the initiate to traverse this roadmap as on a journey of discovery.
The importance of symbology was stressed in an earlier chapter. This is because the Tree of Life is not only a symbol itself, but a composite—a symbol composed of multiple symbols. Meditation upon the exoteric design of the Tree of Life without the proper study in meaning behind it is equivalent to neglecting to fill the gas tank: you may have a pretty map but no means of getting started on your journey. Traditionally, it takes years (likely decades) of study before a Qabalistic initiation can be undertaken by an individual. Part of the job for an initiate in the mystery traditions is to be schooled in all the sundry parts and layers of the Tree of Life, to learn its esoteric abstractions before the exoteric can be realized.
As a composite symbol, the Tree of Life can be broken up into numerous assortments of patterns, motifs, and classifications. The first of these, which are an absolute requirement for understanding the Tree, is its basic infrastructure: the Sephiroth and Paths.
Sephiroth
The primary construction of the Tree of Life consists of ten circles or spheres, called Sephiroth (SEH-fear-oht). Referred to in the singular, one is called a Sephirah (SEH-fear-ah). The Sephiroth are stages, traditionally called emanations, of manifestation from which the Source of Creation (God) advances from its noumenal reality to a physical one. Conversely, the Sephiroth also represent the stages of the soul’s journey from material incarnation to union with the Divine.
The primal undergirding of any magical or mystical process is the act of creation itself. Imagine the Tree of Life as a flow process chart that represents the processing activity performed in the creation of the universe (and consciousness). In essence, the Tree of Life replicates the process of creation.
So, in following the flow of creation, the Sephiroth represent certain stages of the creative activity in the universe. To follow that flow within a sequence, one would trace that process of creation from top to bottom, each sphere, or Sephirah, being a phase in that process which establishes itself as its own emanation but then precedes the force of movement toward the next phase. The Sephiroth—as spheres, emanations, stages—indicate phases in the evolution of nonphysical existence (the Unmanifest) to physical existence (Manifest). Here then we see the metamorphosis of spirit into matter, the materialization of the physical world as indicated by the bottom Sephirah on the tree.
How then was the universe created?
In the Western world, it is perhaps common to recall the seven days of creation as portrayed in the account of Genesis in the Christian creation story. Of course, the Qabalists understand this is not to be taken literally, but as a metaphor for the creative process. In fact, certain Sephiroth on the Tree of Life even represent the creation story in the Torah, as described by Rabbi Berg: “The biblical account of the Seven Days of Creation describes the Lower Seven Sefirot.… The word ‘day’ is the cosmic code for Sefira, or a life-form intelligence, as deciphered in the Zohar.” 30
Qabalah is a natural creation story, even beyond the orthodox Judaic framework.
In Qabalah, everything is numbers. As many have stated both in and outside the world of science, mathematics is the language of the universe. It is no different in Qabalah. We cannot ever truly understand God, the Great Mystery; however, mathematics provides for us an abstraction with which we can at least get an impression of that mystery. To understand the Tree of Life as creation, we must gain some understanding of the Sephiroth and their numerical sequence. It would be helpful to understand the following as a creation story.
0: Ain Soph Aur
Before any number, of course, there is zero. So before creation, there was nothing, what is generally called the Unmanifest.
According to Qabalah, the Unmanifest is actually the true substance of reality. Anything other than the Unmanifest—the Sephiroth, the Manifest, the universe as we know it—is only a result of the Unmanifest, a shadow.
We can never truly know the Unmanifest. We can only attempt to ponder it through abstractions. Therefore, any language used to describe the Unmanifest can only be metaphor. This gives us insight already into working with the Tree of Life, for the further up the tree we go from matter into spirit, the more abstract the concepts. In fact, Dion Fortune was certain that the only possible way to have knowledge of the Unmanifest was through the auspices of geometry.
Her most complex work, The Cosmic Doctrine, is a channeled masterpiece that requires some advanced foundation in algebra before undertaking its reading. In it, she attempts to describe the Unmanifest. She describes, through analogy, how the Unmanifest became Manifest. It all started with the desire for movement. When that happened, two distinct factors were at work. Fortune writes,
When space moves two forces are at work:
(a) The force which causes it to move, being the desire of space for momentum.
(b) The force which had hitherto caused it not to move, being the desire of space for inertia. 31
Fortune talks of a tug-of-war pull between these two forces that causes a series of rings of movement that geometrically begin to build the foundational building blocks of the Manifest. She calls them the Ring Cosmos, the Ring Chaos, and the Ring-Pass-Not (which holds the balance between the two extremes of Cosmos and Chaos).
In traditional Qabalah, these are known in order as the Hebrew terms Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur. Put simply, their meaning implies the veiling of reality, of the Unmanifest from the Manifest, the three Veils of Negative Existence:
• Ain: Meaning “no-thing”; the only true speculation we can ever have of the nature of God.
• Ain Soph: Meaning “without limit”; God is beyond the nature of duality, male or female, good or evil.
• Ain Soph Aur: Meaning “limitless light”; the first known indication we can ever have of God is light brighter than any other, beyond our own conceptions.
If we can imagine these three aspects as the rings of Fortune’s mythology, we can conceive of a series of three concentric circles intertwined together in a gyroscope of movement.
This gyroscope-type movement, propelled by the immense force of gravity, concretizes and then forms a center. Thus, the first emanation materializes into the potential of the Manifest universe. Kether is the first Sephirah on the Tree of Life, represented of course by the number 1. Consequently, we can now conceptualize the manifestation of the Sephiroth in sequence, as depicted by their numerical values seen here:
Before studying each individual Sephirah, it is important to understand how they are formed from each other. All the Sephiroth come from the first, from Kether, which itself comes from the Unmanifest. Dion Fortune explains this cascading effect of the tree: “Let us conceive of Kether, then, as a fountain which fills its basin, and the overflow therefrom feeds another fountain, which in its turn fills its basin and overflows. The Unmanifest for ever flows under pressure into Kether, and there comes a time when evolution has gone as far as it can in the extreme simplicity of the form of existence of the First Manifest.” 32
All possibility, all the following Sephiroth, are formed then in the first Sephirah, in Kether. However, all that possibility is in its simplest, most pure, form; the following Sephiroth then lay out the process of breaking down that simplicity into more complex forms. This is the overall machination of the tree.
Our creation story continues. Let us now consider the individual Sephiroth, which will be explained in more detail later in this book.
1: Kether
Kether translates to “crown” in English, as it is the reigning Sephirah of all creation. It is the basic life force of all root forms in existence. It is the most androgynous of all the Sephiroth, as before Kether there was no duality. What is formed in Kether will be reflected throughout the rest of creation. In Kether, though, it is all one, all unity. There is no division in Kether. In essence, Kether is the highest essence of God that can be conceived.
2: Chokmah
Chokmah is Hebrew for “wisdom.” To begin the process of manifestation, Kether (God) could not create anything separate from itself, for all that is in existence is in Kether. However, it could reflect itself. Chokmah represents the first reflection of God; therefore, it represents the ultimate thrust or drive of spiritual Force into existence. Because of this, it is the prime masculine identity of the universe. It is the vision of God face-to-face with itself, now exemplified as Him. This denotes the holographic nature of reality … that the resulting manifestation of which we are aware is nothing but a reflection of a reflection of a reflection (ten-fold) of the only true reality: the Unmanifest, of which Kether is the only true reflection. Chokmah is the first attempt of Kether, of God, to disembark from its unity and understand itself through separateness, through disparity.
3: Binah
Binah means “understanding.” Chokmah could not really have been considered a masculine identity until it reflected itself as Binah, the prime feminine identity of the universe. If Chokmah represents the ultimate drive of spiritual force, then Binah encapsulates that Force and contains it into Form. Form in the esoteric arts is defined as an interlocking of free-moving Force into patterns that can then operate as a unity. All Forms inherent in the universe first beget their construction from Binah. With Binah, we get the first trinity found in almost all spiritual traditions; we get the intrinsic duality of manifestation. Without the concepts of both masculine and feminine, and the androgyny from which they spring, the material universe of the Manifest would not be.
4: Chesed
Chesed is Hebrew for “mercy.” In Chesed we begin to see prime imagery of godhood begin to formulate into being. Truly, we cannot as humans contemplate or experience in physical form the likes of Binah, Chokmah, and especially Kether. However, in Chesed are the prime images that we associate with God, most especially the benevolent All-father of numerous mythologies. Chesed is where the Will of God begins to move into manifestation, that Will being equated with the spiritual experience of universal love (which is far beyond our limited understanding of “love”).
5: Geburah
Geburah translates to “severity” in English. Here we see in the creation process the breaking down of the Will of God into the actual Forms which will be experienced in the Manifest. As was stated before, form makes its first appearance in Binah, but it is only experienced as the idea of Form. In Geburah we find the engine that actually produces the Forms of Manifested reality. Contrary to popular opinion, this is a harsh and severe process equated with the travails of birth; therefore, the image types of the Goddess are highly represented in this Sephirah.
6: Tiphareth
Tiphareth means “beauty.” Understanding Chesed as the center of masculine Force (Joseph) and Geburah as the center of feminine Form (Mary) the resulting birth would be the mediating balance of integration and regeneration (Christ). Tiphareth not only represents the mediation (and result of) Chesed and Geburah, but also of the whole of the entire Tree of Life. It is the central harmony of all things, the Golden Dawn of the Great Work. As the mediating intelligence for the tree, all sacrificial gods and mythologies hold their place in this sphere: to give of oneself and be of service is the root of the Great Work. Without that sacrifice, one cannot climb the tree. Tiphareth ensures that. This is the beauty of initiation. Tiphareth is the individuality of creation before it is then broken down into the more fractured aspects of existence, into personalities.
7: Netzach
Netzach is Hebrew for “victory.” As Forms are broken down in Geburah and receive their individual components in Tiphareth, in Netzach is the victory of achievement. Netzach is the celebration of diversity, but before ideas can come into full Form, they must be inspired. This is where creative imagination of the universe resides. Here is where poets and painters receive their muses, sparking the inspiration needed to begin the process of creation into Manifest.
8: Hod
Hod translates to “glory” in English. As the Force of imagination moves through the spheres, in Hod that inspiration is designed and fashioned so that it can be forged into a physicalized reality. Here is where the formulations of language, numbers, and philosophy find their root, so that ideas can be taken from the muses of Netzach to be brought forth into the Manifest. If Netzach is the place of heart, then Hod is the place of the mind. Within Hod, ideas are made concrete.
9: Yesod
Yesod means “foundation.” Just as Tiphareth is the equilateral result of Chesed and Geburah, so is Yesod to Netzach and Hod. Yesod is truly the foundation of all manifestation. It is the architectural undergirding of all physical reality. Together, Netzach and Hod make up the structural framework of what indeed becomes actual. Known as the “Storehouse of Images,” Yesod is the astral realm itself. Whatever exists has its skeleton in Yesod. As the primary Sephirah of magicians and alchemists throughout the ages, manipulation of Yesod results in the manipulation of matter itself. Yesod is the final fount of the creation process into the Manifest.
10: Malkuth
Finally, we come to Malkuth, the Manifest world. Malkuth means “kingdom.” Malkuth is here, this existence that we understand as “reality,” but is actually “actuality.” It is earth, the physical realm of matter and life. Though those who consider themselves “spiritual” seek to attain the higher realms of existence, it is really mastery over Malkuth that allows one to travel the higher realms unimpeded. In essence, the physical world holds the key to true spiritual development. Malkuth is the kingdom, the fully realized creation of God. Liberation from physical existence is not the goal of the Great Work; rather, a full immersion into the fabric of creation is necessary.
Perhaps the most vital mantra of Qabalah, if one were to remember nothing else, is that Kether is the Malkuth of the Unmanifest. Meditation upon this statement could take lifetimes. It is a realization that Malkuth and Kether are one and the same, just reflections of each other. When one seeks heaven—truly, heaven does exist here on earth—there are potentialities even beyond our own universe, as the crown of all creation is just a Malkuth for another entire different universe of which we have no understanding.
This axiom is highly reminiscent of the Hermetic phrase from the Emerald Tablet, as translated by the great Persian alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan: “That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one. As all things were from one.” 33
It is important to understand the flow of the Sephiroth is only sequential to our limited understanding of past, present, and future. The process of creation is not something that happened long ago but is an ongoing phenomenon that always exists within us, throughout us, and beyond us. However, because we operate within a consciousness that seems linear, it is helpful to look at creation via the Sephiroth in a series of stages. Each Sephirah contains within it the potentiality of the following Sephiroth that issue forth from it; it is as if each Sephirah represents a specific manifestation of creation. At the same time, each Sephirah is a reflection of those Sephiroth preceding it. That which is above is also below, and vice versa. Gurus and shamans from around the world have spoken widely of this concept and have said that time is not the sequential series of past, present, and future stages it appears to be. The key to understanding the Sephiroth is that they are currently in manifestation right now, even as you read this, and will continue to do so until the universe ceases to exist.
The Paths
As can be seen, the Sephiroth are connected by a series of lines that act as roadways of association among the emanations of creation. They allow travel throughout the tree, as well as a configuration of relationship that assists the individual in communing with the unseen. The paths between the spheres allow one to traverse the various stages on the Tree of Life, acting as subjective correspondences to the objective Sephiroth.
The paths help us understand that there is no stagnation within the tree. No Sephirah can be understood in and of itself, by itself; it can only be understood in relation to the other Sephiroth around it. Life itself is a multifaceted synthesis of relationships, as is the tree. Life is relationship; therefore, the paths represent our experience upon the tree, our experience within the dynamic landscape of the cosmos. Therefore, no one Sephirah on the Tree of Life can be understood in isolation; a Sephirah can only be understood in its relationship to the other Sephiroth around it, and the dynamic of relationships among them (the paths).
Atop the vestibule of one of the greatest mystery schools in ancient Greece, the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, was inscribed the maxim Gnōthi seauton, translated as “Know thyself.” Exploring the consciousness of one’s own being is the closest—and truly only—way of having a relationship with God. As Dr. Carl Jung had proposed time and time again, in more ways than one, over the course of his career, “The goal of psychic development is the self. There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self.” 34
This is even pointed out by the Christ, a Qabalist in his own right, in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. In now understanding the basics of the Tree of Life, including the meaning of Malkuth as the kingdom, a vital understanding can be gained from these verses: “Yeshua said, If your leaders tell you, ‘Look, the kingdom is in heaven,’ then the birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It’s in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. But the kingdom is inside you and it is outside you.” 35
The paths provide the thoroughfare of consciousness for us to be able to tread the three realms of the Ukhupacha, Kaypacha, and Hanaqpacha throughout the emanations of creation. They supply to us a wealth of information to ensure a fruitful initiation.
28. Gershon Winkler, Magic of the Ordinary: Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2000), 71.
29. P. S. Berg, The Essential Zohar: The Source of Kabbalistic Wisdom (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002), 3.
30. P. S. Berg, The Energy of Hebrew Letters (New York: The Kabbalah Centre, 2013), 53–54.
31. Dion Fortune, The Cosmic Doctrine (Boston, MA: Weiser Books, 2000), 20.
32. Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah (Boston: Weiser Books, 2000), 37.
33. The Emerald Tablet of Hermes & The Kybalion, ed. Jane Ma’ati Smith (Lexington, KY: Enhanced Ebooks, 2008), 8.
34. C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. Aniela Jaffé, trans. Richard Winston and Clara Winston (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 196.
35. Barnstone and Meyer, The Gnostic Bible, 3:1–10.