«Sefer Yetzirah» and the «Etz ha-Chayim»

«Sefer Yetzirah» is a cornerstone of Jewish mysticism and translates «The Book of Formation» in English and the «Etz ha-Chayim» is what it's all about: «The Tree of Life». What it is exactly is hard to say, I kind of see it as a sort of mind map for everything Hebrew. A sort of mental index containing the keys to uncover hidden sides of many things. From seeing the structure of the Hebrew language, enabling you to learn Hebrew in a new and exciting way, to being a roadmap in an age old wisdom tradition, or as a companion on the way of reaching philosophical enlightenment, or for that matter to help you memorising combinations and guards for marshal arts and cane fighting.



Many of you have probably seen illustrations like the one above showing the mystical Tree of Life (the one above is from Wikipedia and shows the Tree of Life according to the «Bahir», another important book in the schools of Kabbalah. But few of you know how to make your own, even if that is the whole point with the «Sefer Yetzirah», to read the instruction and draw the Tree, to fully understand the structures and numbers and letters described in the book and elsewhere. Below you can see a diagram I made the other day showing the few steps of drawing up the «Etz ha-Chayim». The book on its own is rather cryptic and may read like gibberish to most at first and second and even third glance. But learn these few techniques below, and the book will open up and you will see more clearly the rationality of the Hebrew language, the cosmological and philosophical concepts included, and how it contains a valuable source of manna and wisdom, and seeing what a truly remarkable system it is factoring and rationalising everything down to a simple geometric figure you can draw in less than a minute, given you have a square and compass and some kind of stylus.



The quote in red is from «Sefer Yetzirah» ch.5 and the drawing in red to the far right shows a cane fighter in the first station. You can read the book lots of places online and places like amazon.com and bookdepository.com have several different ones, and it's translated to most languages and well, you shouldn't have much difficulties finding yourself a copy. All you need is to discover the system and break the code. You'd do fine, I'm sure. Below are two 19 c. versions from sacred-texts.com

==> www.sacred-texts.com... (translated by W.W. Wescott, 1887)
==> www.sacred-texts.com... (translated by Isidor Kalisch, 1877)

Kabbalistic stick fighting? If i had the secrets of creation at my fingertips i dunno if i would go.around whacking people

a reply to: dashen

Well, I doubt you could build a nation without an army, and back in the days, war meant eh going around and whacking people with sharpened canes of bronze and steel....

I would rather use my kabbalah laser beam vision

a reply to: dashen

Then you could probably do with "the finger of God", apparently it is a ray of light that God used to write his law into the stone slates for Moses, and presumably the very same "finger of God" that God supposedly destroyed the tower of Babel with (in Talmud I think).

Id give em the finger . Seems legit

originally posted by: dashen
Id give em the finger . Seems legit

Aye. In ancient Egypt they saluted each other by showing the middle finger. And you wouldn't wanna show a Persian the