THAT THEY MAY BE CALLED TREES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS...(Isaiah 61:3).
In all of the following pages of this work, interpretations will be based on the many various Faces, or transformations of the Sacred Oracle (the Tree of Life), several of which follow here on this page. For those of you dear readers who are not already familiar with the doctrines of Kabbalah, or with the basic structure of the Tree of Life, we simply suggest that you push on until it becomes familiar to you. Please be assured in your journey that this symbol of the Universal World Tree as it is sometimes called, is a very ancient one, and that the ideas ensouled and embodied in it have been passed down through hundreds and hundreds of generations, literally from the time of Adam to our own, and from one end of the earth to the other. (Psalm 19:1-6)...
"(FOR THESE THOU HAST PLANTED A TREE) which blooms with flowers unfading, whose boughs put forth thick leaves, which stands firm-planted for ever, and gives shade to all...(whose branches tower) to heaven, whose roots sink down to the abyss.
All the rivers of Eden water its boughs; it thrives beyond (all bounds), (burgeons beyond all) measure. (Its branches stretch) endless across the world, and (its roots go down) to the nethermost realm.
Moreover, there shall well forth for them a fountain of Light, a perpetual spring unfailing. Howbeit, in its (fiery) sparks all (infamous) men shall be burned; it shall be a flame devouring the guilty, until they are destroyed." The Book of Hymns, The Dead Sea Scriptures, by Theodor Gaster, p.168.
It is our intention here to access these ideas (if Heaven allows...It does), in the hope of gaining an interpretation of the things that are unfolding in the world around us in our own time. (For those of you who are storming the gates of Caesar's new global order, trying to bring them down, please continue in your efforts. But also be aware that God is rising up everywhere in the world to assist you. And just as you can not accomplish your ends without God's great assistance, you can not begin to understand the things that are happening in the world around you without access to God's oracles. God, in essence already part of the action, wants to be part of the conversation). We must soon awaken to the meaning of those things that are unfolding in the Earth, realize that we must eventually stop trying to change this present political order (it is impervious to change), stop investing it with our energies, come out of it and begin to create anew. All things are ready...Revelation, chapter 18...KJV).
In addition to the seminal works of Gershom Scholem and the scholarship of A. E. Waite (The Holy Kabbalah, A Study of the Secret Tradition in Israel...), there are some very excellent introductions to the subject of the Tree of Life in print, and of easy access. Among them are Daniel C. Matt's The Essential Kabbalah, and Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi's Adam and the Kabbalistic Tree, but I would recommend Heavenly Powers, Unraveling the Secret History of the Kabbalah, by Neil Asher Silberman.
THE EAST
THE WEST
Those familiar with the doctrines of the Kabbalah, and with the corresponding structure of the Tree of Life, will immediately notice that the Left and Right arms of the Christ-figure (which is not to be perceived literally) are not connected to what should be considered the Left and Right sides of the Oracle. It is not the Christ-figure that must be turned around, or juxtaposed however, but the structure of the Tree of Life. This, so that the Left Arm is situated in its appropriate place on the Lefthand Pillar, which extends from Hokhmah (Wisdom) through Hesed (Love, or Mercy) to Netsah (Endurance or Victory); and the Right Arm on that side which extends from Binah (Understanding) through Din (Power), (and sometimes called Geburah, Severity, or Judgment) to Hod (Majesty or Glory).
This correction must be made to compensate for the realization that in the "letter" of the Torah God placed His hand over the eyes of Israel and showed them His back parts only. (Exodus 33:11-23). While in the Spirit of Revelation two thousand years ago the Angel of Divine Presence appeared to them, as He did to Moses, Face to Face. (Malachi 3:1-3; Matthew 11:10); (1 Corinthians 13:11,12); (Revelation 6:16; Rev.10:1; Rev.22:4).
The Mystery of the Cross...(1 Corinthians, chapter 1...KJV).
Below: The outstretched arms and legs of a man form a square and a circle: the square symbolizes the solid physical world and the circle, the spiritual and eternal. Man bridges the gap between these two worlds. Leonardo da Vinci, The Magical Proportions of Man
The Four descending worlds of Emanation, Creation, Formation and Action.
"Man is the measure of all things" only insofar as he reflects the principles inherent in the Celestial Man of Light, who, in turn, is a reflection of God. (Please see Ezekiel 1:5). The proportions of the human body reflect these principles in an admirable fashion, and in the above illustration the kabballistic sephira are shown in their correct position, while the four circles correspond to the elemental continuum of Greek cosmology. The lower three circles relate to the Pythagorean and Platonic division of the soul, the three worlds in man. As Plato observes in The Republic, true self mastery is obtained by "bringing into tune those three parts, like the terms in the proportion of a musical scale, the highest and lowest notes and the means between them with all the intermediate intervals." In traditional cosmology, humanity actualizes this function of mediation on a universal level, binding together intelligible and sensible, eternal and temporal, Mind and matter.
Matthew King, a Lakota Wisdomkeeper put it another way in Noble Red Man, by Harvey Arden:
THE THREE POWERS OF THE WORLD
God put Three Powers into the world for us to use. We need them all. We Indians know all three. It took us a million years to find them.
There's the Material power, the Spiritual power, and the Supernatural power. The material power is the goodness of this Earth. The spiritual power is the goodness of human beings. The supernatural power is the goodness of God, the Great Spirit. The Three powers are all separate. They're not connected. It's the job of human beings to make that connection.
We connect the Three Powers with our prayers, with our ceremonies, with our deeds. Every good deed is a pillar of the Creation. Every prayer holds up the world. Our ceremony, our Sun Dance, keeps the Universe in harmony by connecting the Three Powers.
In the circle of reality, no race or family of man stands above any other. As we learn to submit not only to the oracles of God, but to each other in particular, each individual and each family (from every direction of human consciousness, West, South, East, and North) stands in harmony with every other. On any particular day souls from Three directions sit at the feet of those from the Fourth, to discover the Wisdom of God that comes from that direction. On the next day another Three sit at the feet of another Fourth, to learn the Wisdom that springs forth from that direction. The circle is complete when all have sat at the feet of every other, and when the Wisdom of God is expounded from all the corners of the Earth. Only then can we realize the Presence of God in the midst of all.
Many books were written during the centuries leading up to the time of Christianity, and many, besides our familiar canon of scriptures, were written since that time. Some of them were published abroad for all to read, and others of them were reserved for the elect. Many of those books that were reserved, were also later hidden, so that the dark ones who came afterwards could not erase or uninterpret them to fit their own worldly sense of things.
And told him many wonderful things, and shewed him the secrets of the times, and the end; and commanded him, saying,
THESE WORDS SHALT THOU DECLARE, AND THESE SHALT THOU HIDE.
Lay up in thy heart the signs that I have shewed, and the dreams that thou hast seen, and the interpretations which thou hast heard...
And the next day, behold, a voice called me, saying Esdras, open thy mouth, and drink that I give thee to drink.
Then I opened my mouth, and, he reached me a full cup, which was full as it were with water, but the colour of it was Fire (Is not my word like fire)?
And I took it, and drank: and when I had drunk of it, my heart uttered Understanding, and Wisdom grew in my breast, for my spirit strengthened my memory.
And my mouth was opened and shut no more.
The Highest gave understanding unto the Five...and they wrote the wonderful visions of the night that were told, which they knew not.: and they sat Forty days, and they wrote in the day, and at night they ate bread...
Among those that were published openly are the Four primary Gospels with the Book of Acts at the Center (but even these were sealed books...Isaiah 29:10,11; Revelation 5:1). .
In Forty days they wrote two hundred and four books.
And it came to pass, when the Forty days were fulfilled, that the Highest spake, saying, THE FIRST THAT THOU HAST WRITTEN PUBLISH OPENLY, THAT THE WORTHY AND UNWORTHY MAY READ IT:
BUT KEEP THE SEVENTY LAST, THAT THOU MAYEST DELIVER THEM ONLY TO SUCH AS BE WISE AMONG THE PEOPLE:
FOR IN THEM IS THE SPRING OF UNDERSTANDING, THE FOUNTAIN OF WISDOM, AND THE STREAM OF KNOWLEDGE ...(2 Esdras 14:5-8, 38-47; Malachi 3:15-18...KJV).
