Samizdat

Publishing the Forbidden. All Rights Reserved. © Samizdat 2014-2023.

Category: Yod

November 15, 2014

The Name

“… As mentioned earlier, almost all the root mantra in the Mystical Qabala involve the One Small Face Name.

The Name … is called the “Shem HaMeforesh” or “Brilliant Name of Fire.” It is often simply referred to as “HaShem” (lit. “The Name”), reflecting its central importance. The Name … is conventionally translated in scriptures as “Lord.” Within the context of Hebrew grammar, the word … is usually cited as a future tense third person form of the verb root  (lit. “to be”). Some regard the word as a composite that combines the past, present, and future tense forms of the verb root.

Orthodoxy has proclaimed the pronunciation of the letter-formula as a Name to be blasphemous. When the Name is encountered in the Torah or when chanting prayers, religious Jews will either pause in silence out of respect or substitute another power name, traditionally “Adonai” ( lit. my Master).

In the Latin Vulgate edition of the Tanakh, Jerome set the precedent of changing the pronunciation of the Yod to “J” and using the vowels from Adonai to produce the anglicized variation “Jehovah.” Jehovah is the way that most contemporary non-Jews pronounce the Name. The Name … is sometimes pronounced “Yaweh,” reflecting the tradition that the High Priest in the Temple of Jerusalem made a monosyllabic pronunciation of the Name … on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement).

The halachic prohibition specifies to avoid pronouncing the four letters … as a Name. If one is inclined to follow their prohibition, one can use the Atziluthic version wherein the letters are considered to be standing alone, and therefore pronounced individually–“Yod” (as in “code”), “Heh” (as in “day”), “Vav” (as in “love”), “Heh.”

The Atziluthic version can be regarded as the most powerful way of pronouncing the Name …”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg.  168.

Leave a comment
September 28, 2014

Seeking the Garden of Eden Alphabet

“The letterforms of the Sinatic and Ezra Hebrew alphabets bear little physical resemblance to one another, though they share the same twenty-two-letter format and have the same names for the letters.

Hence, the Sinatic Hebrew letter Alef transliterates with the Ezra Alef, the Sinatic Beyt with the Ezra Beyt, and so forth. Sinatic letterforms are basically built from the letters Alef and Ayin. Ezra Hebrew letter forms are built upon variations of the letter Yod.

Both alphabets have letters which overtly or covertly contain other letters, such as the Tav contained in the Sinatic Alef or the Beyt contained in the Ezra Alef (as described in the Sefer Bahir).

Unlike the Ezra alphabet, Sinatic does not have final letters, which were developed much later as a means of showing separation between words in crowded scrolls. The final letters became significant in the Ezra alphabet when given extended numerical value in gematria or qabalistic numerology.

The sudden appearance of the original Hebrew was paralleled several hundred years later by the sudden appearance of Brahmi Sanskrit in the Indus Valley.

Sinatic and Brahmi have many similar letterforms, and both were replaced by later alphabets claimed in present times to be the originals (i.e. Sinatic replaced by Ezra and Brahmi replaced by Deva Negari).

Some Qabalists and Tantrikas maintain that there is a parent alphabet, called the “Gan Aden Alphabet” (Garden of Eden), from which both Hebrew and Sanskrit are derived.

[ … ]

There is also said to be a Gan Aden Torah, an unbroken sequence of letters that may be broken into words and sentences in innumerable ways.

Hence, the written Torah is one such “translation” of the unbroken letter sequence, minus the letters and anusvara that were not included in the Hebrew alphabet.

A book called the Tiqunim HaZohar (“Perfections of Splendor”) discusses seventy ways of translating the first six letters of the Torah.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg. 57.

Leave a comment
September 14, 2014

Names of God and the Sefirot

“Most kabbalists integrated the biblical names of God into the system of the sefirot. Thus, for instance, the tetragrammaton–the biblical name of God written in four letters, YHVH, which in Hebrew, it is forbidden to pronounce–was interpreted as presenting the first sefirah, keter, in the almost-hidden little point above the first letter, yod, which represents the second sefirah, divine wisdom (hokhmah).

The first letter, he, is the binah, followed by the vav, which represents the number six, and thus relates to the six central sefirot from hesed to yesod. The last he represents the female entity, the shekhinah …

It can be stated that the system of the sefirot is viewed by most kabbalists to represent the hidden, secret name or names of God …

Kabbalists utilized the names that were used by pre-kabbalistic esoterics, including the names of twelve, forty-two, and seventy-two letters, and integrated them into this system.”

–Joseph Dan, Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction, 2006, pp. 44.

Leave a comment
August 16, 2014

On Metatron

“Unlike the other Spheres, which have one archangel each, Malkuth has two. The first of them is named Metatron, and is also the archangel of the first Sphere, Kether. Alone of the Archangels, his name has no meaning in Hebrew (in point of fact, it is a Hebrew form of Mithras, the name of a Roman savior god of Persian origins). For reasons that will be discussed later on, Metatron is known as the Prince of Countenances; he represents a secret link connecting the highest and lowest of the Spheres.”

“Cabalistic traditions make a distinction, a useful one, between the aspect of Metatron assigned to Kether and that assigned to Malkuth, a distinction that involves a different spelling of the archangel’s name. Metatron in Malkuth is held to be the transformed Enoch, taken bodily into heaven according to the Biblical myth, and to function as a celestial scribe recording all the acts of humanity. His name was spelled MThThRVUN…Metatron in Kether, by contrast, is seen as a transcendent power, the “Lesser Tetragrammaton” created before the birth of the universe, and his name is spelled with an additional Yod, MIThThRVN….In either form, Metatron may be visualized as an angelic figure of pure light.”

The second archangel of Malkuth is named Sandalphon. As Metatron expresses the spiritual energies coming into Malkuth from above, Sandalphon expresses the spiritual energies of Malkuth itself; these two angels are usually paired in the traditional symbolism, and are associated with the two angelic figures atop the Ark of the Covenant, Metatron on the right hand, Sandalphon on the left. As Metatron is linked with Enoch, Sandalphon is often equated with Elijah, the other Old Testament figure who is said to have ascended directly into heaven.

Despite this and the meaning of the name, Sandalphon is often represented as female; she is called the Reconciler for Earth, and the Celestial Soul of Earth. She represents the driving force of evolution, the constant upward striving toward the spiritual on the part of every created thing. As the counterpart to the bright radiance of Metatron, she is sometimes envisioned as a luminous figure clad in dark garments.”

–John Michael Greer, Paths of Wisdom, the Magical Cabala in the Western Tradition, 1996, pg. 99-100.

Leave a comment
%d bloggers like this: