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GOD OF SECRET
Qabalah and Kabbalah
In Judaic Kabbalah, the ten essences refer to the ten aspects of the Divine Personality. They make up the world of Atzilut, high above the phenomenal world. As in the Christian cosmology, there is an unbridgable ontological gulf between even the knowable God (the ten Sefirot) and the Creation. The Kabbalist devotes himself to understanding the Sefirot, and by doing so he arrives at an understanding of, and an approach to, the nature of God.
In Hermetic, magickal, Qabalah in contrast, the ten sefirot ("sephiroth") pertain to ten aspects of what could be called the astral or magical world. In contrast with dualistic theism, but in keeping with a neoplatonic and emanationist understanding, they are the ten intermediate stages between the indescribable infinite or Absolute (En Sof, or "Ain Soph") and the mundane reality. They are identified with ten grades of magical initiation, the seven planets of traditional astrology (with the lowest sefirah, Malkhut, representing the Earth, and the two highest the fixed stars and the sphere of God) and with a numerological analysis of the numbers one to ten. The twenty-two paths which link the ten sefirot are identified with one of the twenty-two Hebrew letters and twenty-two Major Arcana tarot trumps). Thus, not only each sefirah has a particular archetypal meaning, but each path as well, making thirty-two archetypes altogether. By the proper means therefore it is possible to invoke any of these fundamental essences. To this end, the Golden Dawn occultists from Mathers on drew up long and elaborate tables of correspondences, listing the precise colour, animal, perfume, precious stone, mythological beings, and so on. Crowley's book "777" (which may or may not be a plagiarisation of a manuscript circulated by Mathers, with Crowley's additional notes) give a comprehensive list of these tables of attributes.
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TEN SEFIROTH
The Ten Sefiroth According to the teachings of Mathers, Fortune, Crowley, and others, the cosmos is divided into ten fundamental archetypal essences; the ten sefirot (or "sephiroth"), which are organised in three pillars. The Sefirot as understood in the Golden Dawn system are not so much attributes or structures of the body of God (only remnants of the original Jewish theology remained), as occult or psychic powers or archetypes, which were secondarily located within the human body. Mathers also divided the Sefirot into three triads, which he called the "astral", "moral", and "intellectual", the lowest sefirot meanwhile representing the physical world. This system of ten sefirot and twenty-two paths is used as a stylised "map" of consciousness in ritual magic of the "Golden Dawn" tradition And while this form of Qabalah is certainly a workable magical system, it bears little similarity to the original Jewish metaphysic from which it was ultimately derived during the Renaissance.
Non-Jewish associations
In Western occultism, Binah is seen to take the raw force of Chokhmah, and to channel it into the various forms of creation. For example, in a car, you have the fuel and an engine. While Chokmah is the fuel, pure energy, Binah is the engine, pure inert mechanism. Either one without the other is useless.
In its role as the ultimate Object, as opposed to Chokmah as the Subject, its role is similar to the role of Shakti in Indian mysticism. It is feminine, because it literally gives birth to the whole of creation, providing the supernal womb, with Chokmah providing the raw energy.
The name of God associated with Binah is Jehovah Elohim, the archangel that presides over it is Tzaphkiel, the order of angels that resides in it are the Aralim ( the Thrones ) and the planet associated with it is Saturn.
The aspect or attribute of being associated with the feminine, is why Binah is often associated with various occult things that reflect the females. It is related to the Yoni, and to the womb. It is related to the priestess card in the tarot (according to Arthur Edward Waite's "Pictorial Key to the Tarot") and Liber 777 associating it with Isis, Cybele, Demeter, Rhea, Woman, The Virgin Mary, Juno, Hecate, Yoni, The Three Threes of the Tarot, etc. etc. etc.
Occultists have tried to compare the sephirah with the Chakras of Indian mysticism, and one such comparison is in comparing both Binah and Chokmah with the Ajna chakra, which is where both Shiva and Shakti are united.
For its negative opposite on the Tree of Death, it has Sathariel.
In the correlation of Binah with Shakti and Chokmah with Shiva, Shakti is the animating life force whereas Shiva is dead, a corpse, without her energy.
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