jmd said:
For an online study of the Tree of Life, I would recommend Halevi's site:
Kabbalah Society.
Interesting diagram (I've seen it before), with each new Keter at the previous Tiferet. There are other ways, too, that four triadic Trees have been linked or interlaced.
But this whole approach is a misconception stemming from not understanding the demarcation between suits: individualness (Staff), duality (Sword), treaty/triadicity (Cup), and the four elements of nature/body (Coin, round [medicine wheel with cardinal directions marked by rocks?]). It is AMAZING to me that the rabbis, instead of taking the obvious course and making the number a world is in sequence its organizing principle (since previous worlds underpin its reality) have contorted themselves something awful trying to make ‘consistent’ the diverse descriptions of Sefirot given in
Bahir,
SY, and
Zohar. There IS interaction amongst them; but each is organized differently. (Rabbinical contortions hinge on the preposterous claim that one emanated at one point in one text is actually emanated at another point (different numbered emanation) in another text! when what is most important ABOUT the Sefirot is their order.)
One last thing: that site is honest, at least, in attributing its tradition to Spain, when it is clear the earliest flowering of Qabbalah was in Provence (school of Isaac the Blind), it being there the
Bahir was first made public (12th century). That one parent was Merkabhah (Throne-chariot tradition) is clear from Ezekiel's wheels being the key explaining the 'discrepancies' between versions. That the other parent was British bardic tradition is clear from the refinement (actually reconstruction) of the older alphabetic tradition evidenced by the trumps of the Tarot of Marseilles, and by a few clear passages of the
Zohar. (They are few and far between, but astounding.)