Four Worlds - Yetzirah

Fulgour

Re: Yetzirah

Fulgour said:
[Yetzirah]
Water
Netzach - Hod - Yesod
Overlapping airy Briah's Chesed - Gevurah - Tiferet.

...or no?
 

smleite

When I think about Yetzirah, the angelic realm which substance is as plastic as water, where forms perpetually change (“nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed"), I see the beautiful angel of Temperance, and his serene face, commanding the constant ebb and flow of Yetziratic formations.

But I mostly have doubts.

Frank Hall said:
(...) It is a plastic, dynamic dimension; here, thought-forms come into increasing structural stability. (The final concretion is our world below.)

I would think the opposite. I mean, I would say Yetzirah is the “place” where thought-forms (or Azilutic principles and Beriatic archetypes if I am not mistaken), come into increasing structural INstability. Don’t Assiatic “objects” represent the most instable derivation of Azilutic principles, Beriatic archetypes, and Yetziratic formations - where, by the way, the very principle of instability is set? And isn’t it true that the progressively complex laws that rule them further confirm this?

Or am I confusing everything? I am very much in the beginning of my Kabbalah studies; so, please forgive me if I misunderstood the subject. Anyway, I find it very interesting that one cannot distinguish any “parts” that compose Fire and Air, but it is easier to see the drops that, together, form the element of Water, and even easier to see “every bit” of Earth’s grains and particles. Doesn’t that teach us something, even without the need to examine the way atoms behave in each case?

Silvia
 

venicebard

Very impressive!

smleite said:
When I think about Yetzirah, the angelic realm which substance is as plastic as water, where forms perpetually change (“nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed"), I see the beautiful angel of Temperance, and his serene face, commanding the constant ebb and flow of Yetziratic formations.
That’s an inspiring image. In my (minority-viewpoint, namely me) bardo-Qabbalistic approach to tarot, Temperance is the sign following ‘straight back’ (i.e. capricorn, aries being ‘straight up’) and symbolizes learning, teaching (her wings are ‘strapped on’ in the Marseilles) because it is what proceeds on from self (back towards me from forward or towards other): it is bardic L, 14, which is luis the rowan, used to tame bewitched horses (whose boughs shelter young of other species): 2nd of 13 months starting at yuletide, or the month enclosing the point aquarius. It is this on the wheel (the 3rd) that is the Yetzirah world, the world of the one-who-acts (us), whose ‘paradigm’ is learning, n’est ce pas?
...I would say Yetzirah is the “place” where thought-forms (or Azilutic principles and Beriatic archetypes if I am not mistaken), come into increasing structural INstability. Don’t Assiatic “objects” represent the most instable derivation of Azilutic principles, Beriatic archetypes, and Yetziratic formations - where, by the way, the very principle of instability is set? And isn’t it true that the progressively complex laws that rule them further confirm this?
What you say is very perceptive, and correct in my view: descent through the four worlds represents a concretizing of thought, but into temporary objects the thoughts outlive. People apparently are unaware that the 4 worlds are 4 rounds (Ezekiel’s wheels, though he didn’t invent them) of descending size (each half its predecessor’s height), the 1st centered atop the head of standing Adam Qadmon, the 4th the round of the womb (womb of time or physical world).

Plato in the Republic organized reality (definitively, if you ask me) into that which abides, that which abides and abides not, and that which abides not (eternity, finite duration, and fleeting present instant), determinative of what self can know, have opinion on, or must remain ignorant of, respectively. (Me, now) :) The one-who-acts, necessarily ignorant of the present instant in which it acts, is the part of self whose realm is the 3rd wheel (the Yetzirah world). The thinker (opiner) and knower occupy the 2nd and 1st wheels and would guide the one-who-acts... who instead follows the senses (darkness). The body is the 4th wheel: the womb represents (is) the physical world (the reason the sky is dark) – the present instant itself – whilst this 3rd wheel (whose thread we are on) is the one-who-acts, hovering near it. The 2nd is thoughts’ cycling about, the 1st the eternal, the known (unwavering).
Anyway, I find it very interesting that one cannot distinguish any “parts” that compose Fire and Air, but it is easier to see the drops that, together, form the element of Water, and even easier to see “every bit” of Earth’s grains and particles. Doesn’t that teach us something, even without the need to examine the way atoms behave in each case?
Yes, the worlds, being prototype fire-air-water-earth, determine these in the physical world: here all four wheels are present and manifest themselves (as opposed to Atzilut, where the other three are in potentia). The 1st wheel is Unity itself, in which there is distinction (distinguishable individual truths) but no actual separation, the latter coming about in addition to Unity, as it is still potential in Unity (space, potential separation, is ‘actualized’ by the matter in it)... so YEAH!

Carry on,
Gary
 

crazy raven

Is it also possible that the four worlds correspond to different levels of the Homo Sapien?

The physical, the emotional, the intellect and the spirit?

Crazy Raven
 

wizzle

Fire-water-air-earth not fire-air-water-earth.

Fulgour - no
 

jmd

Again, let us not presume that the GD is correct in its peculiar correlations.

It is but one suggested way of making correlations - correlations that are themselves not intrinsic to the four worlds, but rather derivatives based on particular ways of viewing these.
 

venicebard

wizzle said:
Fire-water-air-earth not fire-air-water-earth.
No, the worlds must correspond to the elements in their natural order, else they would not be worlds. What you are referring to, I believe, is the traditional order of elemental representation in the Name. What is evidently not known modernly is that the Name 'accesses' the four worlds in the order Atzilut(fire)-Yetzirah(water)-B'riyah(air)-Asiyah(earth), as is easily seen once the link between the worlds and the wheels of Ezekiel's vision is made clear. Of course MUCH concerning the power of the Name has been lost: it has been the trickiest yet in some ways most rewarding non-surviving doctrine to reconstitute, and it explains the 3-male 1-female court in TdM. The main male-female polarity in the Name turns out to be between yod and vav, not between yod and heh or vav and heh, these being secondary aspects within each half of the Name, there being a male half (yod-heh) and a female half (vav-heh). This polarity of the worlds fire (yod, Atzilut) and air (vav, B'riyah) is shown by the first pillar of the Throne being placed in the King of Clubs with the second pillar added to it in the Queen of Swords.
 

tink27

Just a thought?

Reading your posts, I couldn't help thinking of the four Ages of Man: Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron, these are worlds too.

Please note I possess no where near the knowledge you people have here.

I have read the Four Worlds were laid out into a kind of circular fashion a kind of 'Jacobs Ladder' but which was called the 'Fifty Gates'. Here we move from stages of chaos through the formations of the four elements to earth. We are told of the story of how the vegetable kingdom came out of the mineral world to be digested by the animal kingdom and up we travel the vertebrae. The next evolution is man near completion of his journey and becoming the image of God. Now we see the heavenly spheres and from here as I understand it the last gate, the portal if Ain Soph, the Endless Light.

Sorry to interrupt the flow here. I saw these four worlds and wanted to share this with you. I'll sneak out now. Thanks.

tink
 

venicebard

venicebard said:
What is evidently not known modernly is that the Name 'accesses' the four worlds in the order Atzilut(fire)-Yetzirah(water)-B'riyah(air)-Asiyah(earth), as is easily seen once the link between the worlds and the wheels of Ezekiel's vision is made clear.
I have since refined my understanding of the Name a bit. Based on data rabbis, may they be bless'd, evidently no-longer possess, my current theory is this.

In its creative (procreative) context, meaning used to wield power, the Name evokes fire-water-air-earth: this is based on the 'mystery of the three mothers' Sefer Yetzirah says the three letters yod-heh-vav were chosen in accordance with (or in accordance with which they were chosen). In shorthand: yod, the Light, is attached by desire, heh, to an object of nature, thus placing in vav's hands the gestation till physical exteriorization, heh, of the thought created by desire's attachment of the Light.

In the context of Lurianic tikkun or restoration, however, it is analysed according to how man can improve himself (and thus the world) by the process. In shorthand: the first heh appears in conjunction with yod (conjoined by the name Yah), so the world immediately affected is B'riyah, where the thought so-created lives. The descent towards exteriorization is a weight hanging over desire, so man must prepare, in Yetzirah--the world of forms, of mitzvot--for the exteriorization in Asiyah (second heh), so that our reaction to it is to acknowledge it as our own just destiny. This way, we can learn from the experience and free some of the Light bound up in the thought (to enlighten us, for it is self-contained and not lessened in the least by being so bound).

This is Gnostic thinking: freeing Light 'enslaved' by matter. It may sound strange to moderns, though.
...a male half (yod-heh) and a female half (vav-heh). This polarity...
An interesting aspect of this I discovered recently is that the heh in each half of the Name is the hand of the other given in the covenant of marriage, just as it was given to Abraham as a sign of the Covenant of circumcision. The especially ironic aspect of this is that the heh in the second half, which is evidently the female part of that half (as per the part of the tradition that did survive), is the hand of the male given her! This means it is his submission to the covenant of marriage--her hold over him (pleasant, it is to be hoped)--that is female to vav, and vav (this is a secret evidently not known for centuries) is the space for the male in the female (being six, the 'number of directions' of space).