Ten Sephiroth

Western civilization is based primarily upon the moral code given on Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments received by Moses. These laws underpin the conduct of practitioners.5 This has been distilled into what is sometimes called the morality of the masters, stated as a right relationship to the Source of life and right relationships to the rest of life. The Ten Commandments also have inner, or esoteric, implications related to the Ten Sephiroth that are just as binding upon those who would receive the divine wisdom ... 

Each human being is a complete refection of the universe there is no other outside needed to effect that completion. A woman is not one half of the Tree awaiting an exterior male to come along and complete it—or vice versa. Neither does Enlightenment occur in pairs. AH the ten Sephiroth, all the worlds, all the principles and potencies are present in totality within every individual. That s what being a microcosm means Individuality may emphasize certain aspects more than others, but that doesn t mean the quiescent aspects are absent. Each human is an image or expression of the divine. 

When, in the preliminary exercises preceding the actual practice, practitioners build up the Tree of Life in their aura, the paths are formulated as a consequence, since they are subjective reactions to the objective power of the Sephiroth. The Fountain Breath exercise then unifies the influences of all the Paths and the Sephiroth. This happens because there is only One Power that flows through all the paths and manifests in a ten-fold aspect as the Sephiroth, the outpouring of the Most Holy One that is Mezla, grace, by which the worlds are nourished and sustained. For grace is not some abstract poetic metaphor, but an actual etheric, astral, and spiritual substance. Alchemy names it the water that burns and the fire that flows. It is the First Matter. 

Figure 12. This diagram shows the Concealed Paths as well as the usual twenty-two Shining Paths, diagrammatically teaching that each single Sephira is united to all the other Sephiroth of the Tree. The Sephiroth are not ten separate things, but ten interdependent aspects of the One Majesty, ten facets of the luminous Jewel of Eternity.

In the twelfth century Jewish mystics used gematria in their meditations to find the secret names of God. They hoped to use these empowered names in their magical assent to heaven and to attain gnosis. Ten names or qualities of God were discovered and these were assigned to the 10 sephiroth on the Tree of Life. These qualities can be translated into English as ... 

The Qabalah is presented symbolically in the form of The Tree of Life. The Tree contains ten centers or spheres, called the Sephiroth, which are connected by twenty two paths. Taken together, they are said to constitute the thirty two paths of secret wisdom. 

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