Fulgour said:
Sorry for the rookie question but can anyone
please explain why Qoph & Heth are positioned
on the Lurianic tree in the pathways shown:
http://www.kheper.net/topics/Kabbalah/Ari-tree.gif
I have to admit, right now I would see them
switched to be more logical in the groups...
It is well to be studying the Ari’s arrangement of paths. His is the only one I am aware of that actually places voiced and unvoiced equivalents (doubles) directly
opposite one another on the Tree. Don’t have my Kaplan
SY with me to check if it agrees concerning the simples. The mothers are given standard placement, of course, although how alef-as-horizontal bridges high and low thereby is subtle, since Mercy and Justice are as two hands, side by side. Yet up-head and down-loins do evoke them in that order when seen as
using one's head versus
lust.
Concerning the simples, by the logic of
from the littlest first followed by
to the littlest first, the order given in your link is:
heh-vav-zayin (does this sound familiar?),
teyt-qof-ayin,
cheyt-tzaddi-yod,
samekh-nun-lamedh.
The first three are the first three signs, by rearranged (alef-bet) order, while the
last three, taken according to
bardic order – meaning the Qabbalist-restored
pre-Semitic/Hamitic order,
before the vowels the Irish preserved were variously suppressed (in early Tifinag and
ogam consaine) or consonantized (in Egyptian,
later Tifinag, Libyan, and Semitic) – are the last three of the
middot, the 13 divine attributes, but
in reverse, being the last two signs plus return to the first or aries, but in the order aries-pisces-aquarius.
These three are the ones that are not yet
become Sefirot, because a self or capricorn – the direction
in, straight back towards self from other when
facing other – has only progressed as far as tenth, the Shekhinah in
man.
In case the two remaining groups are mixed sets, their respective positions (B = bardic, H = Habiru) are:
teyt (B-libra, H-leo), qof (B-virgo, H-pisces), ayin (B-leo, H-capricorn), and
cheyt (B-gemini, H-cancer), tzaddi (B-taurus, H-aquarius), yod (B-capricorn, H-virgo).
It can be seen from this that by position-in-series, the first two Bs and third H are related via triad. Interestingly, the H associated with the former are in each case consecutive signs, whereas the B associated with the latter simply follow ayin
to tenth sign capricorn or self-knowledge, yod’s proper sign (echoed in its being Hebrew 10).
Don’t know exactly what to make of all this except to see, in the first and last sets of three at any rate,
yet further indication the Ari knew more than he let on.
Fulgour said:
I notice that on the image in the above link
Teth & Samekh are also switched from the
two reference sources I was consulting...
Teyt-samekh are libra-aries, the central staff. Such reversal of polarity is the main device in the encoding of man’s Fall in bardic numbering and originates in duality’s (2’s) departure from Unity (1): bardic 2 (E, heh) switches about from second sign to eighth, the 30-degree arc of arrival there being attached to libra, the
opposite of Unity or aries (being a weighing of
2 things, which man’s psyche places
opposite rather than
within Unity). It is in
acknowledgement that this has happened that heh is added to Abram to make Abraham, methinks.
[Edited to add:] What said reversal might mean in the current context I cannot say, except to point out that in Hebrew teyt-samekh are the outer and inner ends of the fire triad's base, so the turn-about is precisely 90 degrees, in imitation of a here
horizontal alef 'bridging' high and low.