bradford said:
Venicebard-
I want to second this great observation of yours, but only for the planets,
without puling the zodiac into it. If you look at the WMT version of the
hexagram, with the planets assigned, Saturn is at the top, right where
Daath is. All the other planets follow the traditional arrangement. The
Magen David, properly Shield of David, has a place on the Tree in this
way.
If you want to see deeper into things, put what you call “the Tree” into proper perspective: it is one of four ‘Trees’, meaning the Sefirot have a distinct structure in each of four worlds. Naturally, in the third world (Yetzirah)—admittedly the one in which the Great Work (the
tikkun or ‘restoration’) is directly undertaken—they assume the form of triplicities. But in the first world (Atzilut), they are the individual powers described in the book
Bahir, the pairing there of the last two as ‘wheels’ and as ‘victories’ being the lead-in as it were to the form assumed in the second world (Beriyah), where Sefirot are generated in pairs of opposites, as described in the (deceptively named)
Sefer Yetzirah. In the fourth world, then, is the structure of physical cycles, based on the fourfold elemental structure as it pervades number. The common Tree, in triads, shows (among other things) the derivation of the current human form: 1-AQ (Adam Qadmon, sexless), 2-male and 3-female
unconjoined, 4-male and 5-female
conjoining to produce an agreed-upon result or offspring 6-neutral (conjoined), then 7-male and 8-female conjoining to produce the
not agreed-upon result or offspring 9-neutral (conjoined) and 10-neutral (conjoined), and we, assuming we have the requisite 10 fingers, are the sorry tail end of this development (and wouldn’t know where to find a sexless immortal if we wanted to).
I personally have always considered the assignment of Saturn to Binah
completely inappropriate, if not just plain stupid. Neptune makes more
sense, paired with Uranus at Chokmah. Saturn was the final planet until
the big telescopes came along, and thus came to symboloze our finitude
in the great night of time, the place where we end but project our illusions
to the contrary.
Understand the nature of the solar
system: it is the structure intermediating between a size-oriented (meaning of-necessity huge) electric grid, the stellar heavens—
representing fire or the purely determinative in matter—and our rock or focus—representing earth, the purely determined. Hence they group themselves into an airy layer (the gas giants) and a watery or fluid layer (the inner planets). Those with orbital periods greater than or equal to earth’s (meaning including earth’s own, the earthy
layer’s cycle being the diurnal one, that of the equator) are active, and those with orbital periods less than our year are passive. This last can be confirmed by careful deduction based on the Tree in Asiyah, and since this will show you the real link between the third Sefirah—called Binah in the Tree of triplicities or Yetzirah world—and the cycle of Saturn in the physical world or Asiyah, I shall briefly explain.
Taking the Tree as the ladder from the eternal, unified One to its individual ten-fingered ‘Presence’ (Shekhinah) in us, this manifests in the physical present as cycles of decreasing period. The One (first Sefirah) is the fiery layer, meaning the total energy contained in the stellar ‘grid’ (we’re following plasma cosmology here, not gravity-worshipping big-bangism), and this is conserved or eternal. And 10 represents earthly solidity, what can be held in the ten fingers, hence earth: the equator or diurnal cycle—“today” (symbolizing the opposite of the eternal, namely the present instant in which the doer or creator must act or create but which is dark to us because it comes and goes in an instant, allowing no contemplation of it in other words). Progressing upward in period from the day, the visible cycles are:
9 = month, the moon
8 = Mercury
7 = Venus
6 = the year
5 = Mars
4 = Jupiter
3 = Saturn
2 = the great year, the cycle of precession of equinoxes (roughly 26,000 years), which, though
physically caused by gyroscopic precession, actually
is the revolution of the
stellar heavens themselves about the zodiac of man (think about it)—not physical revolution in this case, which is defined as revolution
within the physical universe, but temporal revolution of that universe
around its center, man (
anthropos, or upright sentience). For from man’s perspective, paramount in Gnostic thinking, it is the seasons—the zodiac—that remain constant and the stars that revolve about
them.
The three unseen planets (or two unseen ‘planets’ plus the Kuyper Belt or whateveryacallit) function as counterweights to the rest, in that the
central frame of the solar system revolves such that they move retrograde
relative to it. Their presence can be ‘prophesied’, however, by noting that fire acts on all three remaining elements yet is a unity, the division of that activity into its three modes therefore having to wait till the airy layer. If names arise through destiny rather than serendipity, then Uranus would be fire’s acting on air, Neptune fire’s acting on water, and Pluto fire’s acting on earth.
As for active and passive planets, the second or airy layer extends to the square of 2 (2-3-4), the third or fluid layer to the square of 3 (5-6-7-8-9).
Air is acted on by fire and acts on water and earth. Hence 2, next to fire or one, is where it is acted on by fire and represents the highest cycle associated with the sun (2-precession is the relationship between 6-ecliptic and 10-equator): the sun, it turns out, is
not an active power at all but the focus or
receiver of stellar power (thus correcting modern cosmology’s mistaking it
for a star). This leaves 3-Saturn to act on the third or fluid layer and 4-Jupiter to act on the fourth or solid layer.
Water is acted on by fire, air,
and itself (this property derives from the geometric representatives of the four, point-line-angle-solid, among other things) and acts
on itself and earth. So 5-Mars, since 5 is numerically (that is, in digital sums) -4, acts on the fourth or solid layer, while 6-year, 6 being numerically -3, acts on the third or fluid layer. Then, we must switch to valence to make sense of things, valence being
nature’s ‘numerology’. For 7, 8, and 9 are -3, -2, and -1 in valence, respectively, and thus are where the fluid layer is acted on by the third, second, and first layers, the fluid, airy, and fiery respectively. This presents a pleasing harmony with nature in that the metals of 2-sol and 9-luna, gold and silver, are the best conductors and represent where fire or energy acts on their respective layers.
[The periodic table’s basic structure, at least, can be deduced from the simple understanding that in the human psyche duality has separated off from Unity. Thus 2-helium is a second pulling
opposite the first (rather than with it), hence they cancel out and are inert (zero valence). This creates tension between number and valence, in that the next one, 3, is +1 (1 valence electron available) in valence but +3 numerically. This tension in nature causes valence to ‘crush’ +4 and -4 into one number, 6-carbon (making it therefore capable of producing chains, on which organic matter is currently based), and again into 14-silicon, before valence and number are once again aligned, and the initial catastrophe then causes number and valence to periodically separate by 1 and go back into alignment till the next catastrophe, the rare earths, where atoms 57-71, centered in 8x8, all occupy one position, the one immediately below 7x7 and above 9x9 (in the old way of displaying the periodic table, by periods not series, which is much more revealing).
Hope
some of this, at least, helps (I guess I got carried away).