Entry Search Sort Alphabetize Clear Newest

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV

There is in Jewish Aggadah the story of "The Four Who Entered The Orchard". A cautionary tale of madness, blood-soaked revenge and lust-filled depravity that would be shocking even to the modern ear... Or perhaps, of one of the most famous Rabbis of the 1st century CE and his three students, who, utilizing the techniques of the Merkabah Mysteries ascended (descended?) unto the highest peaks of esoteric knowledge and transcendence and witnessed the Throne of Glory of the Most High itself.

As the legend has it, upon witnessing the Divine awefullness [sic - but really the original meaning of the word], the young but eminent religious jurist Simeon ben Azzai - who was so pious that when expounding upon Scripture he would be wreathed in flames of righteousness - keeled over and died on the spot. His companion and fellow student, Shimon ben Zoma, interpreter and scholar extraodinaire, survived the experience, but was irrevocably driven insane - lost forever in the Abyss of his own mind. Elisha ben Abuyah - a distinguished Rabbi in his own right - either beheld the Angel Metatron upon the Throne and was so powerfully affected by the experience that he declared that there was not One but Two Powers In Heaven - and became apostate, or was so unable to reconcile the vision of the unsullied perfection of the Divine Glory with the suffering of the Jewish people under the heel of the Roman occupation that he renounced his belief in a just God altogether, becoming a heretic for all times - ever after to be known only by the epithet "Acher" (AChR) - The Other.

The only one who escaped the experience "unscathed" was the greatest of all the Tannaim, Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef - who was known as the Rosh la-Hakamim, The Head of all Sages - the only one who could reconcile the Waters above with the Waters below, being able to see that the Palace of the Most High, The Throne of Glory, and the world and all its contents were not Many, but One. As it is said in the tale, he entered and departed, in Peace.

*It is recorded that Rabbi Akiva (and in some versions, Simeon ben Azzai as well) was subsequently martyred by the Romans in retribution for the uprising of the Jewish people after the destruction of the Second Temple, and it was Acher's witnessing of the dismembered tongue of one of the other martyrs - Rabbi Hutzpit, a reknowned linguist and interpreter - lying discarded in the road after his flayed body had been dragged through the streets of Jerusalem, that caused him to maybe doubt that IHVH had everybody's best interests at heart. Akiva was allegedly killed by being raked repeatedly with iron combs, never crying out, and all the while reciting the Shema ("Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God, is One"). Whoohoo! Romans!

The word for orchard in Hebrew is PRDS פרדס - Pardes, stemming from the Persian (Avestan) word of the same meaning, is usually translated following the Greek and Latin as "Paradise". In addition to its use in that uplifting story, the word, using the technique of Notarikon, is used as an acronym for four methodologies of Scriptural and Kabbalistic exegesis:

• PShT Peshat - meaning "simple" or "surface" and referring to the plain or lliteral meaning.
• RMZ Remez - which means "hint" or "indication" which is taken to be the symbolic or allegorical meaning.
• DRSh Derash - meaning "to seek" or "inquiry". The homiletic (educational narrative) and comparitive meaning.
• SVD Sod - "secret" or "esoteric". The revealed or mystical meaning.

In Kabbalah the conceit is that only those who have embarked on the practice of Kabbalah (for Kabbalah is not just learned, but done), only those who have descended (ascended?) on the Chariot from on high and plumbed the depths of the first three systems (which represent the exoteric face of Judaism - the words of the Tanakh, the symbols and concepts thus represented, and applications of those meanings and concepts), that are steeped in the received (the word Kabbalah means "reception") knowledge, only then will the secrets - the SVD nature be revealed, the gates of the Palaces thrown wide. The magick unleashed.

The value of the word PRDS is 344, which the combined value of the three horizontal pats on the Baphometric Tree, comprised of the letter-paths of (from top to bottom) Shin, Daleth, and Mem - 300, 4, and 40.

344 also has the various meanings of BARTz ADVM , In the Land of Edom, and HVA SVP MAaVLM , It is Never Ending. It is RZIAL HMLAK The Angel Raziel (who bequeathed the secrets of the Universe in his most mysterious of books). MIM MRVCh , the Third Emanation of the Sefer Yetzirah, and thus a cognate of the Sephirah Binah, and thus Creation itself. It is ADM + ChVH + AaZAZL + NAaMH - Adam and Eve and Azazel and Na'amah - the first Man and Woman and the Bearer of Sins and His Bride. It is ShMD: Destruction.

It is, or rather the Horizontal paths are, however, only three - and if we are using our metaphor of the Orchard above, perhaps only representative of three of the four exegesical methods. Nor, like the Lightning Path or the Three Pillars of the previous chapters, do the Horizontal paths tell a complete story - all of the Sephiroth are not encompassed. The Secret perhaps is missing. Something that encompases both the duality of the separated (and suffering) world of Acher, and the unbroken line of connection, the royal generation of ongoing creation, the ultimate One, of the dying Akiva... the 1-0-1 of the middle pillar... the fourth.

When the 101 of the Middle pillar is added to the 344 of the Horizontal paths the result is 445*, which appopriately enough is the value of both ThVLDH, the Hebrew for "generations" and of AaVLM HHPRDH - The World of Separation - this BITh ABL House of Mourning we inhabit. Thus tying in once again the unified faith of Rabbi Akiva and the alienation of the despairing Acher. KL NShMH All Souls (each and every one) are caught between the two. Is it only the KCh HThAVH Power of our Desires that keep us going? (Lust is a great motivator after all). Or do we create for ourselves AaVLM AChR KLLI Another World in General (a reference to the Qliphoth)? Do we have to choose between MTTRVN + SMAL Metatron and Samael? Is SVD ShLMH Solomon's Secret, the SVD HShLILH the Secret of Negation, or is SVD HMShL The Secret of the Parable actually the SVD NQVDH HQDMVNH Secret of the Primordial Point?

Next: The Tree 528, Part VI. Nuts and Nogah - The Bittersweet Skin

* There is actually another grouping of Letter-paths that encompass all of the Sephiroth that is already in play. That of the Diagonal paths (which was my base assumption in the orginal formulation of The Tree). Interestingly enough the sum of the Diagonal paths is also 445! It's like I am actually onto something here!