The House of 22 Stones
On the Possible Combinations of the Letter Paths on the Tree of Life, and the Improbability of the Baphometric Result
The Kabbalistic Tree of Life is one of the most familiar glyphs in Western Occultism. The tree consists of 10 nodes in a regular array, called Sephiroth, and 22 connecting lines between them representing the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. Together these are known as the 32 Paths of Wisdom.
The Sephiroth are representative of both the decad of the numbers One through Ten as well as representing different emanated aspects of an ultimately unknowable but absolutely unitary Creator. In the corpus of Kabbalistic works, and especially in the parts of Kabbalah that were taken and Christianized in the works of European Occultists such as Mirandola, Reuchlin, Kircher and the anonymous authors of the Solomonic Grimoires known as the Goetia, most of the focus is on the Sephiroth and the different aspects of God (or occasionally demons) they represent. While there are differing interpretations of the meaning of the Sephiroth (and the attributes and correspondences they may or may not possess), in the various Trees of Life they are all shown in a logical descending order from top to bottom, one to ten.
(This focus is also reflected in Hebrew Kabbalistic thought as Lurianic methodology became the dominant trend in Kabbalah in the late 16th/early 17th Centuries).
Much less attention in the Modern Era is given to the paths of the Letters, and even less to the assignment of specific letters to the various paths. The pattern of letter assignments that is overwhelmingly in use in occult circles to this day derives from the diagram of the tree published in the book Œdipus Ægyptiacus by Athanasius Kircher in 1652. Kircher was a polymath and Jesuit scholar and generally regarded as the wisest man of his time, barring Descartes. In Œdipus Ægyptiacus, a study of comparative religions and Egyptology, Kircher published his (completely incorrect) translations of hieroglyphics and promulgated an ongoing and Universal (one could even say... Catholic) religion from ancient times that flowed through Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Chaldeans, Kabbalah, and Alchemy - a religion culminating in the triumph of Christ and Christianity, because what could be more Jewish than Jesus? In the third volume, discussing Kabbalah, Kircher published his version of the Tree of Life.
The Tree as shown in the book (and for the most part in use to this day) has the Sephiroth in a standard descending order and in a classic Kabbalistic arrangement of three columns, with some commonly used God names and attributes. Each Sephiroth is shown as well with the names of the complete set of Sephiroth ringing each individual node - showing a familiarity with the advancements in the Kabbalistic thought of the school of Isaac Luria, with the conception that each Sephirah contains all the other Sephiroth within it - an almost holographic representation*. What is unique to the Kircher Tree however, is the arrangement of the Hebrew Letters on the the connecting paths between the Sephiroth.
The use of the Kircher Tree (and especially its direct descendent - the Tree used by the Golden Dawn) and his attributions of the letters to those paths is so prevalent in Modern Occultism that it seems few are aware that it is not only not definitive, but not at all a common usage in Hebrew Kabbalah. The closest I have come to finding any Kabbalistic imprimatur for Kircher’s letter and path assignments is a comment by Professor Moshe Idel (Emeritus Max Copper Professor in Jewish Thought at Hebrew University) in the excellent book “A History of the Occult Tarot” by Decker and Dummett, that the arrangement is “in accordance with known Kabbalistic Traditions”. Which, as far as I can tell is very polite Academia-ese for "He just made that shit up". In many, many years of study, I have yet personally to find a single Hebrew sourced Kabbalistic diagram that is in accordance with the Kircher tree.
Most tree of life diagrams from Hebrew manuscripts that even have the letter/paths noted, utilize a pattern that is derived from the Sefer Yetzirah, though that does not arrange them in the same manner as the Tree of Life [ed. note: see Trees of Life 1] . In the chapters on the Alphabet, one of the ways the letters are categorized is into three groups – the “mothers” consisting of Aleph, Mem and Shin; the “doubles” consisting of Beth, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Peh, Resh and Tav; and the “singles” Heh, Vav, Zayin, Cheth, Teth, Yod, Lamed, Nun, Samekh, Ayin, Tzadde and Qoph. That is, a group of three letters, a group of seven letters and a group of twelve letters. These, accordingly, in most Hebraic versions of the Tree, are assigned respectively to the three horizontal paths, the seven vertical paths and the twelve diagonal paths found on the tree diagram. Indeed, it is likely that these divisions are the reason that the Sephiroth are arranged in the manner that they are, with three columns with those specific connections in the form know as The Tree of Life, in the first place. The Divisions of letters are assigned attributions respectively: for the three primordial elements of Air, Water and Fire; the seven mutable heavenly bodies; and the twelve astrological signs (among other things). There are a few variations in placement of the specific letters of the mothers and the doubles (and one significant variation in the placement of the single letters in the version of the tree promulgated by Isaac Luria) within those constraints in the various Hebrew presentations of the Tree, but for the most part those variations are minor rather than structural, as they all follow the basic divisions as found in the Sefer Yetzirah.
The Kircher tree on the other hand, utilizes a top-down placement of the letters to the connective paths, in general going from highest to next highest Sephiroth, on down the tree in order of the Alphabet. But even in this, the application of the letters to the paths is extremely inconsistent: the arrangement of the first four letters, Aleph, Beth, Gimel and Daleth follow the top-down, higher-sephiroth-to next-lowest-sephiroth pattern exactly, Aleph connects Sephiroth 1 and 2, Beth 1 - 3, Gimel 1 - 6 and Daleth 2 - 3. However, in the next four letters the pattern goes awry; Heh connects Sephiroth 2 and 6, and then Vav connects 2 to 4 (when the logical arrangement would be the opposite of that). Zayin matches this alteration by connecting 3 and 6 and then Cheth connects 3 and 5. The next five letters conform to the original pattern, but then the three paths descending from the sephirah of Tiphareth change the pattern once more: Nun connects Sephirah #6 to 7 properly, but then Samekh goes from 6 – 9 and Ayin from 6 – 8. (This last is specifically noted in Aleister Crowley’s short story The Wake World as “a very great mystery”).
The Kircher Tree with Paths
That the Kircher tree and its specific patterns became fully cemented in the Western hermetic tradition as THE Tree is primarily because of its use in the syncretic and overarching system of the Golden Dawn in the late 19th/early 20th century, and its continued use by Crowley and Kenneth Grant. At this point it is the background framework for most systems that utilize the Tree of Life, including most, if not all, Qliphothic orders. Crowley went so far as to disown his own prophesied “magickal child” (Charles Stanfield Jones) who discovered the "secret key" of Liber AL, partly because of Jones’ experimentation with differing arrangements of the Hebrew letters on the paths of the Tree, comparing the movement of any letter as compounded instantly by 21 other mistakes, so dearly did Crowley hold to Kircher diagram.
But was Crowley right to stay true to this arrangement? Had Kircher, who went so far to claim that the "True" Kabbalah stemmed from Adam himself (and not from the usual attribution to Abraham or Moses, thus neatly excising the Jews from the picture). Had this Jesuit scholar discovered the one and only correct way to arrange the Hebrew Alphabet on the Tree (not to mention his direct identification of Tiphareth as the Christ)? An arrangement that became the sine qua non of the Occult World?
Nay I say! Nay a thousand times!
In fact, there are a lot of ways that the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet can be applied to the specific paths between Sephiroth, and by a lot I mean specifically, 1,124,000,727,777,607,680,000 ways.
In the Sefer Yetzirah, Chapter 4, verse 16 of the GRA version, runs the following stanza:
שתי אבנימ בונות שני בתימ
שלש אבנימ בונות ששה בתימ
ארבע אבנימ בונות ארבעה ועשרימ בתימ
חמש אבנימ בונות מאה ועסרימ בתימ
שש אבנימ בונות שבע מאות ועשרימ בתימ
שבע אבנימ בונות חמשת אלפימ וארבעימ בתימ
מכאנ ואילכ חא והשוב מה שעינ הפה יצול לדבר ואינ האוזנ יכולה לשמוע
Two stones build two houses
Three stones build six houses
Four stones build twenty-four houses
Five stones build one hundred and twenty houses
Six stones build six hundred and twenty houses
Seven stones build five thousand and forty houses...
From here depart and contemplate what the mouth cannot utter and the ear cannot hear
What this is referring to is the number of arrangements that are possible when you have a specific number of objects (two or three or four, etc). This is called a factorial and is written in math talking as n! (with n being a variable whole interger... 2!, 3!, 4! etc). As is quickly apparent, the number of possible combinations increases quite rapidly. The rather large number referenced above is 22! Which is the number of possible ways to arrange the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet with no repeats - 22 possible letters in the first spot x 21 in the next x 20 in the next x 19 in the next and on down to 1, resulting in 1,124,000,727,777,607,680,000 possible combinations of letters. That is a number that is roughly analogous (within an order of magnitude or so) with the number of all the stars in all the galaxies of the visible universe. A sextillion count house made of 22 stones.
With this in mind, the likelihood of the arrangement of the Kircher Tree - the one nearly universaly used as THE arrangement of the Tree of Life in the Modern Era - being the one and true and only correct version seems quite unlikely. Obviousy, it's my version that is correct.
No, I jest. While mine is definitely more correct, it too couldn't possibly be the one and only true and correct pattern... (or could it?)
I am of course, still jesting (am I?). I mean, even though I am devoting an entire website and untold years of contemplation, attention and research to the version of the Tree I came up with, I shan't lay claim in a Crowlean fashion to the conceit that I have actually stumbled on The Truth, no matter how much it appears that I indeed may have.
The question to be answered in regard to a symbol such as The Tree, is whether or not things like the pattern of the letters even matter... and if they do, in what way? The best I can come up with is to determine whether or not the arrangement of letters is Information Rich - does the arrangement add or subtract to the understanding of the totality of the symbolic intent? Can informatoin regarding the symbol as a whole be extrapolated from the given pattern? If the intent, like the Tree, is to present a depiction of the totality of the Universe, it does seem each part should contribute to that whole, a syzygy rather than mere agglomeration.
The pattern presented in the Sefer Yetzirah, a division to the three horizontals, seven verticles and twelve diagonals, does have the advantage of historicity... and very possibly is the basis of why the Tree is laid out in the manner that it is, but does not really offer any information as to why those particular divisions are as they are - it works well because it fits the Tree perfectly because the Tree was designed so that would be the case - a tautology of reasoning.
The arrangement of the Kircher Tree for all that it doesn't really follow a particularly discernable pattern, does have some interesting features - most notably that the lightning path of descent from Kether to Malkuth adds to 777, a number whose gematria equals both AChTh RVCh ALHIM ChIIM and AaVLM HQLIPVTh - "One is the Spirit of the Living God" and "The World of Shells (Qliphoth)". Cool huh? Another is that the three horizontal paths on the Kircher Tree (Daleth, Teth and Peh) total to 93, a number that is intrinsic to the system that Crowley developed, being the number of the Greek words Thelema (Will) and Agape (Love). Do What thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the Law and Love is the Law, Love Under Will and all that. One would think that that would get hyped up a bit, but I once pointed that out to a rather highly placed Thelemist and he hadn't ever noticed that was the case... leading one to think that perhaps the arrangement of the letters on the Tree might not be as important to the Thelemic system as old Uncle Al was making it out to be...
Even among Hebrew Kabbalists who use the Tree there is variation. The Tree promulgated by the followers of Isaac Luria - up to and including the modern Chasidim - do use the Yetzirahian (Yetziraic?) divisions of letters, but the diagonals don't follow alphabetic or celestial order and the pattern of the paths is slightly different. The paths from Netzach and Hod to Malkuth have been removed and paths from Chokmah to Geburah and Binah to Chesed have been added. This creates an intersection in the middle of the "Abyss", the space below the three supernal Sephiroth and above the lower seven, the space usually reserved for the non-Sephirah Sephirah of Da'ath. Instead of the letters Zayin and Cheth that one might expect using a right-to-left, descending alphabetic order, there is the letters Zayin (7) and Qoph (100)... which along with the (expected) Daleth (4) on the vertical path, plants a very conspicuous 111 in the center of the Tree..
The pattern of the Baphometric Tree, derived from a few basic assumptions and intuition, I believe does convey information that adds to understanding of the Tree as a whole - a pattern that is information rich, meaningful in and of itself, and like any good theorem or postulate, suggests new and novel interpretations and paths of inquiry. Deep study of any pattern of letter-paths would undoubtedly come up with meaningful Gematria (sort of the nature of that beast) of some sort or another, and with a sextillion and a handful of variations there are more than enough patterns that there could be a special Tree for everyone with room to spare (a lot of room) but there are features of the Baphometric Tree however, that I do feel make it very special indeed...
* As mentioned above there is a concept in Kabbalah the each of the Sephiroth contains within themselves all of the others in a technically infinite regress, that there can be a Kether of Malkuth or a Yesod of Geburah of Hod of Netzach and so on - but even it it were just one set, if each sephirah on the tree each has within it a complete tree of its own - each one containing all ten Sephiroth - that implies each of these subordinate Trees also has a set of 22 letters as well. Thus a full Tree would have the master set of 22 letter-paths, and ten subordinate sets, for a total of 11 sets. So the number of possible combinations across a thus modified tree would be 1,124,000,727,777,607,680,000 to the 11th power - or:
If one extrapolates that with a full modified tree in each of four extant Kabbalistic worlds (that of Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah and Assiah) you would then take the full tree to the 4th power… so the number of possible combinations of letter-paths for the full cycle would then be:
That is 1.7128923394859650449981… x 10 to the 926th power, which is some 800+ orders of magnitude larger than the current estimate of the total bits of information in the known universe.