what's up guys my name is paul claremont welcome back to my channel today i'm going to give you a basic overview of the mysterious kabbalah spelled with a q what is its purpose the structure of the tree of life including the tens of the road and 22 paths and last i'll explain how to make sense of it all using an important feature called the three trinities let's do it so first what is kabbalah this is an ancient judaic system of spiritual development with the end goal of attaining god realization enlightenment it provides tools for meditation and contemplation like the tree of life diagram as well as a whole mosaic of other symbols associations and mysteries to allow the seeker to progressively develop the mind on the down low it can also be used for magic but we're not going to get into that today the original system is spelled with a k but i'm going to be working with what's called hermetic kabbalah distinguished with a q which basically just means the mystery schools over the ages combine the original hebrew system with the symbols and concepts of many other systems such as astrology alchemy and polytheistic religions so i'll be referencing this book written in 1935 by dion fortune who was a british occultist in the golden dawn lineage highly recommended last it's important to know that hermetic kabbalah in its practiced form has been a secret spiritual tradition throughout the ages behind the scenes and only became recently revealed in a publicly accessible way within the last 100 years or so oh yeah it's an exclusive mystery club dion fortune tells us that mastering this system not only gives us the keys to cryptic tanakh and biblical scriptures like genesis isaiah and ezekiel but also refers to it as the yoga of the west a spiritual system that perhaps more adequately suits our western lifestyle and disposition now that you're thoroughly interested let's get into the tree of life here's a basic overview of the structure so you know what's going on when you see it printed on t-shirts and jewelry on spiritual internet ads or even in the synagogue it's important to start with the fact that above the tree before it even begins we have the unmanifest which in this system is split into three parts called the veils of negative existence not negative meaning bad but like hidden below the water's surface or below the x-axis for you math fans these veils are ein complete nothingness like beyond the concept of nothing and sof the limitless which is nothing uh in the sense that we think of it and i'm so for limitless light unending light so this is all in the hebrew language out from the unmanifest come the ten cepherote a name you might recognize from final fantasy vii and these are the ten circles you see here cepherote translates as emanations and together they represent the blueprint of the human mind body and spirit when viewed at the microcosmic level but also depict the universe itself when viewed at the macro level as above so below so it's inclusive of all existence this chart begins with primordial consciousness at keter the crown and progressively evolves following a lightning bolt pattern towards physicality the body the world and all that down in malcoot the kingdom everything in between are factors of various kinds within the mind and consciousness the job of the seeker is to evolve their consciousness from mundane worldly third density consciousness down in malcoot all the way back to the crown where god realization occurs and this would be like satori or nirvana in buddhism each of these ten forces and factors has its own alternate titles symbols deities and so on designed to evoke further understanding for example bina which literally means understanding is also called the supernal mother corsia the throne and mara the great sea some associations it has are the archangel zafkiel beholder of god and the planet saturn the giver of form another example further down on the tree is hode which means glory associated with archangel michael whom we all know and love the planet mercury and the egyptian god thoth last i'll briefly mention that there's actually a secret 11th sephirah called knowledge and it's more of a useful convention than a real sephirah it's invisible and doesn't actually appear on the tree but i'll explain a bit more about that later when i describe the three trinities as for the second basic part of the tree of life you'll notice that there's also 22 paths that connect these 10 cepherate there's actually 32 paths according to the classic safari yetzera the book of formation because the first ten sneakily count as the tens of heroes themselves but for practical uses we only think of the actual 22 connecting lines as paths these paths represent the gradual raising of one's consciousness towards the supreme where by contrast the cephei represent definitive stages of evolution the divine infrastructure and as a seeker you can either seek enlightenment directly by going straight up the middle column i think this would be paths like bhakti yoga the devotional path or you can follow the more scenic route of the occultist by exploring the paths of the other two columns on your way up which has its own cool benefits in terms of mind power like this steph you wrote the paths also have their own symbolism from three main categories one of the 22 hebrew letters one of the 22 tarot major arcana and either one of seven planets the four elements or 12 zodiac signs the planet earth is implied since we live on it so it doesn't appear on the tree for example the 25th path tifaret to yusud is represented by the 14th atu called art which many of you know as temperance and this card sentence from the thoth tarot happens to include the other two path symbols as well the hebrew letter samek and the zodiac symbol sagittarius and what's the point of all these symbols they give the seeker a clue as to the energy that the path embodies which is a helpful tool for meditation because as deon fortune says symbols are the language of the mind and we can invoke insight in a way that normal thought can't accomplish by meditating on the relationship between different factors on the tree and each of these 22 paths represents the equilibrium between two different sephirah so by gaining knowledge about the two joining sethira you can enhance your mind's meditation on the path this process not only expands your mind and wisdom but it can apparently help you resolve in real life whatever personal challenges are represented by that path challenges that pertain to one's own psyche similar to how it's popular now to use other mental techniques that target the subconscious like visual visualization affirmations and even hypnosis we do them because we're pretty sure that they'll help give momentum to our conscious efforts towards attaining whatever goal and then we see the real results play out okay now i'm going to explain a bit more what's going on with this overall tree of life symbol there's several important ways of organizing these cepherot but the first that you should know is grouping these cepheids into three triangles or three trinities called the supernal triangle the ethical triangle and the astral triangle the first is the most exalted and fundamental one so i'll explain that one a bit more in depth to show you some basic principles the supernal triangle is made up of ketter the crown hokma wisdom and bina understanding like i said keter is primordial consciousness the root of being rasheed hagilgalim the first swirlings it's the crown chakra and the gateway to god and the next two sephirah are kind of like expansions on that idea showing it in three aspects similar to the holy trinity in christianity where the son and the holy spirit are extensions of the father different aspects of the same thing in practice this holy trinity idea corresponds differently on the tree as i'll show soon these three supernals are above the reach of human consciousness which is why they have an epic title they're like a access point or hub connecting to the infinite and as such are represented above an important line called the abyss to cross over this line through your spiritual practice would mean god realization to some degree stream entry at minimum non-returner and arahant as the levels are called in buddhism or in mystery schools like argentium astrum these same grades are called magister templi magus and ipsissimus so below this abyss line is where duality and phenomena really begin beyond just the level of divine template and potential now here's what's going on with all these fun little shapes i keep talking about ketter first flows out into hokma wisdom and then flows out into binah understanding to understand this in terms of polarity positive and negative first we have a positive flowing out from a singularity just like how on the macro level the big bang exploded out of an apparent point of nothingness and began this universe now we're in hokma the supernal father and sphere of the zodiac it's pure kinetic energy like an explosion then over time negative polarity begins to become manifest over in binah which is comparable to the built-in physics of that universe that expanding universe having the tendency to coalesce the outflowing energy into individual particles and matter so bina is the root concept of form not form itself but the root idea or tendency that eventually makes it possible so in terms of polarity positive polarity flows out negative polarity draws inward you can finally see the significance of the stephie wrote titles when you measure them against this line of thinking seeing that they're not just arbitrary but are designed to evoke more insight wisdom being intuitive knowledge about what's right what's real how things work it's a positive outflowing influence of knowing like when you're in the presence of a sage but with this wisdom you can't necessarily explain the reasoning behind why you know these things so then we take a hike over into binah where understanding is a concretizing of that wisdom into a form that can then be skillfully explained to others as knowledge so as you can see these names mirror the idea of the fundamental forces i just described last if you remember that false saphira i mentioned da'at knowledge it's positioned right on the abyss it's the union of hokma and bina and the reflection of keter i don't know too much about it but to me the fact that it's called knowledge and in this position represents the idea of the creator being able to know itself and also the root of everything that can be known the next triangle is the ethical triangle of gesed gebura and t threat mercy severity and beauty it's not so much about worldly ethics though i think it's just called this because it accurately reflects the nature of these cepheuds for example mercy and severity are the forces of that builds up harmonious organized structures and the force that destroys or breaks down harmful unneeded structures but these are still fundamental forces in the higher mind or nature you could say kevaret the equilibrium between the other two and yes the final fantasy vii character tifa is likely or definitely another reference to kabbalah here it's right at the border where the highest normal consciousness can go right over another line we call peroquet the veil of the temple you could call this christ consciousness or enlightened consciousness what we call the sun in christianity in other words this is the experience of god in manifestation embodying the higher self within the personality for this reason i also associate tifaret with positive samadhi in zen buddhism which is samadhi in the experience of everyday life and also jhana and theravada buddhism the lowest triangle of netsach hod victory glory and the foundation is called the magical or astral triangle encompassing subconscious mind and other subtler mind forces like the force of desire and emotion in netzach and the mind's intellectual function in hode as the name suggests this is the plane where form really begins though at the subtle level of ideas thought forms and images it corresponds to etheric astral matter and is important for use in magical workings and last malcoot the kingdom by itself not in a triangle is physicality and normal sensory consciousness the world made up of the four elements and this is the part of the tree where we finally get to play frisbee and go to the grocery store so that's it for my intro video on kabbalah there's obviously a lot more going on with this system than what i shared here so i'll be sure to turn this into a series and release more videos building upon this subject if you like that idea let me know by giving this video a thumbs up and be sure to subscribe to my channel and hit the notifications bell so you can learn more about spiritual topics just like this one peace you