The Mystical Qabalah - Dion Fortune 2000

Kether, The First Sephirah

TITLE: Kether, the Crown.

(Hebrew—Kaph, Tau, Resh)

MAGICAL IMAGE: An ancient bearded king seen in profile.

Situation On The Tree: At the head of the Pillar of Equilibrium in the Supernal Triangle.

YETZIRATIC TEXT: The First Path is called the Admirable or Hidden Intelligence because it is the Light giving the power of comprehension of the First Principle, which hath no beginning. And it is the Primal Glory, because no created being can attain to its essence.

Titles Given To Kether: Existence of Existences. Concealed of the Concealed. Ancient of Ancients. Ancient of Days. The Primordial Point. The Point within the Circle. The Most High. The Vast Countenance. The White Head. The Head which is not. Macroprosopos. Amen. Lux Occulta. Lux Interna. He.

GOD-NAME: Eheieh.

Archangel: Metatron.

ORDER Of Angels: Holy living creatures. Chaioth ha Qadesh.

MUNDANE CHAKRA: Rashith ha Gilgalim. Primum Mobile. First Swirlings.

Spiritual Experience: Union with God.

VIRTUE: Attainment. Completion of the Great Work.

VICE: —

Correspondence In Microcosm: The Cranium. The Sah. Yechidah. The Divine Spark. The Thousand-petalled Lotus.

SYMBOLS: The point. The crown. The swastika.

TAROT CARDS: The four Aces.

ACE Of WANDS: Root of the Powers of Fire.

ACE Of CUPS: Root of the Powers of Water.

ACE Of SWORDS: Root of the Powers of Air.

ACE Of PENTACLES: Root of the Powers of Earth.

Colour in Atziluth: Brilliance.

BRIAH: Pure white brilliance.

Y ETZIRAH: Pure white brilliance.

ASSIAH: White, flecked gold.

1. Kether, the Crown, is placed at the head of the Middle Pillar of Equilibrium, and from it depend backwards the Negative Veils of Existence. I have already written concerning the use of these Negative Veils as a background to thought, so I will not repeat myself upon this point, but remind the reader that Kether, the First Manifest, represents the primal crystallisation into manifestation of that which was hitherto unmanifest and therefore unknowable by us. Concerning the root from which Kether springs we can know nothing; but concerning Kether itself we can know something. It may be for us at our stage of development the Great Unknown, but it is not the Great Unknowable. The mind of the magus must compass it in his higher visions. In my own experiences with the operation known as Rising on the Planes, which consists in carrying consciousness up the Middle Pillar by means of concentration on the successive symbols and the Paths, Kether, on the one occasion when I touched its fringe, appeared as a blinding white light, in which all thought went completely blank.

2. In Kether there is no form but only pure being, whatever that may be. It is, one might say, a latency only one degree removed from non-existence. Such concepts must necessarily be vague, and I am ill-equipped to give them such definiteness as they might possess, but I am quite satisfied that we should recognise grades of becoming, and that the crude differentiation of Being and Nonbeing does not represent the facts. With manifested existence there come into being the pairs of opposites; but in Kether there is no division into the pairs of opposites, which must wait for their manifestation till Chokmah and Binah are emanated.

3. Kether, then, is the One, and existed before there was any reflection of itself to serve it for an image in consciousness and set up polarity. We must believe that it transcended all known laws of manifestation by existing alone, without reaction. But when we speak of Kether it must be remembered that we do not mean a person, but a state of existence, and this state of existing substance must have been utterly inert, pure being without activity, until the activity began which emanated Chokmah.

4. The human mind, knowing no other mode of existence than that of form and activity, has the greatest difficulty in obtaining any adequate concept of an entirely formless state of passivity which is nevertheless most distinctly not non-being. Yet this effort must be made if we are to understand cosmic philosophy in its fundamentals. We must not draw the Veils of Negative Existence in front of Kether or we shall condemn ourselves to a perpetual unresolved duality; God and the Devil will for ever war in our cosmos, and there can be no finality to their conflict. We must train the mind to conceive the state of pure being without attributes or activities; we may think of it as the blinding white light, undifferentiated into rays by the prism of form; or we may think of it as the darkness of interstellar space, which is nothing, yet contains the potentialities of all things. These symbols, dwelt upon by the inner eye, are a greater aid to the understanding of Kether than any amount of exact philosophical definitions. We cannot define Kether; we can only indicate it.

5. It is a continual surprise and illumination to discover the extraordinary significance of the hints contained in the tables of correspondences, and the manner in which they lead the mind on from concept to concept when pondered upon. The First Sephirah is called the Crown, be it noted, not the head. Now the Crown is something superimposed upon the head, and this gives us a clear hint that Kether is of our cosmos, but not in it. We also find its microcosmic correspondence in the Thousand-petalled Lotus, the Sahasrara Chakra, which is in the aura immediately above the head. This, I think, teaches us clearly that the innermost spiritual essence of anything, whether man or world, is never in actual manifestation, but is always the underlying, behind-standing basis or root whence all springs, belonging in fact to a different dimension, a different order of being. It is this concept of the different types of existence which is fundamental to esoteric philosophy, and must always be borne in mind when considering the invisible kingdoms of the magician, or operative occultist.

6. In the Vedanta philosophy Kether would undoubtedly equate with Parabrahman, Chokmah with Brahman, and Binah with Mulaprakriti. In the other great Systems of human thought Kether equates with their primary concept and may be taken as the Father of the Gods. If for them the universe originated in space, then Kether is the Sky God. If it originated in water, Kether is the primordial ocean. Always we find in connection with Kether the sense of formlessness and timelessness. The gods of Kether are terrible gods which eat their children, for Kether, although the parent of all, reabsorbs the universe back into itself at the end of an epoch of evolution.

7. Kether is the abyss whence all arose, and back into which it will fall at the end of its epoch. Therefore in exoteric myths associated with Kether we find the implication of non-existence. In esoteric concepts, however, we learn that such a concept is erroneous. Kether is the intensest form of existence, pure being unlimited by form or reaction; but it is existence of another type than that to which we are accustomed, and therefore it appears to us as non-existence because it conforms to none of the requirements we are accustomed to think of as determining existence. This concept of other modes of existence is implicit in our philosophy and must ever be borne in mind, for it is the key to Kether, and Kether is the key to the Tree of Life.

8. The Yetziratic Text descriptive of Kether, like all the sayings of the Sepher Yetzirah, is a hidden saying. It calls Kether the Hidden Intelligence, and this appellation is confirmed by several other of the titles given to Kether in Qabalistic literature. It is the Concealed of the Concealed, the Inscrutable Height, the Head which is not. Here again we get confirmation of the idea that the crown is above the head of the Celestial Man, Adam Kadmon; that pure being stands behind manifestation and is not absorbed into it, but rather emanates or projects it. As we express ourselves in our works, so does Kether express itself in manifestation. But a man’s works do not constitute his personality, but are the expression of its natural activity. So it is with Kether; its mode of existence is not manifested, but is the cause of manifestation.

9. We have hitherto considered Kether in Atziluth, that is to say, as its essential and primal essence. We must now consider Kether as it appears in the three other Kingdoms distinguished by the Qabalists.

10. Each Kingdom or plane of manifestation has its primary form; matter, for instance, is in all probability primarily electric, and this is expressed by the esotericists as the etheric sub-plane which lies behind the four elemental planes of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water; or in other words, the four conditions of dense matter, solid, liquid, gaseous, and etheric.

11. The Qabalists conceive of the Tree as existing in each of the four Kingdoms of Atziluth, pure spirit; Briah, archetypal mind; Yetzirah, astral picture-consciousness; and Assiah, the material world in both its dense and subtler aspects. The operations of the forces of each Sephirah are represented in each world under the presidency of a Divine Name, or Word of Power, and these words give the keys to the operations of practical occultism upon the planes. The God-name represents the action of the Sephirah in the world of Atziluth, pure spirit; when the occultist invokes the forces of a Sephirah by the God-name, it means that he desires to contact its most abstract essence, that he is seeking the spiritual principle underlying and conditioning that particular mode of manifestation. It is a maxim of White Occultism that every operation should commence with the invocation of the God-name of the Sphere in which the operation is to take place. This ensures that the operation shall be in harmony with cosmic law. The balance of natural force is not lightly to be overset. It is essential to the safety of the magician that he should conduct his operations in accordance with cosmic law; therefore he must seek to understand the spiritual principle involved in every problem and work it out accordingly. Every operation, therefore, must have its final unification or resolution in Eheieh, the God-name of Kether in Atziluth.

12. The invocation of Deity under the name of Eheieh, that is to say the affirmation of pure being, eternal, unchanging, without attributes or activities, underlying, maintaining, and conditioning all, is the primary formula of all magical working. It is only when the mind is imbued with the realisation of this endless unchanging being of the utmost concentration and intensity that it can have any realisation of limitless power. Energy derived from any other source is a limited and partial energy. In Kether alone is the pure source of all energy. The operations of the magician that aim at the concentrating of energy (and what operations do not?) must always start with Kether, because here we touch the upwelling force arising from the Great Unmanifest, the reservoir of limitless power. It is through Kether, from the Great Unmanifest hidden behind the Veils of Negative Existence, that power is drawn. If we draw power from any specialised sphere of nature, we are, as it were, robbing Peter to pay Paul. The power has come from somewhere, and gone somewhere, and it has to be accounted for at the final reckoning. It is for this reason that it has been held that the magician pays in suffering for what he wins by magical means. This is true if his operation is performed in any of the lower spheres of nature; but if it starts in the Kether of Atziluth, he is drawing unmanifest force into manifestation; he is adding to the resources of the universe, and provided he keeps the forces in equilibrium, there need be no untoward reaction and no payment in suffering for the use of the magical powers.

13. This is a point of tremendous practical importance. Students have been taught that the Three Supernals, Kether, Chokmah, and Binah, are beyond the range of practical working so long as we are in incarnation. True, they are beyond the range of brain consciousness, but they are the essential basis of all magical calculations, and if we do not work from this basis we have no cosmic foundation, but are poised between heaven and earth and find no place of rest or security, but must ever maintain the magical stresses that keep the astral forms in being.

14. The great difference between Christian Science and the cruder forms of New Thought and Auto-suggestion is that it starts all its workings in the Divine Life; and utterly irrational though its attempts to philosophise its system may be, its methods are empirically sound. The occultist, and especially the practitioner of ceremonial magic, if uninstructed in this discipline, tends to start his operation without any reference to cosmic law or spiritual principle; consequently the astral images he forms are like foreign bodies in the organism of the Celestial Man, or Macrocosm, and all the forces of nature are spontaneously directed towards the elimination of the foreign substance and the restoration of the normal equilibrium of stresses. Nature fights the magician tooth and nail; consequently, whosoever has resorted to unconsecrated magic may never lay down his sword, but must always be on the defensive in order to maintain that which he has won. But the adept who starts his work in the Kether of Atziluth, that is to say in spiritual principle, and works that principle downwards to its expression on the planes of form, employing power drawn from the Unmanifest for this purpose, has made his Operation a part of the cosmic process, and Nature is with him instead of against him.

15. We cannot hope to understand the nature of Kether in Atziluth, but we can open our consciousness to its influence; and its influence is very powerful and gives a strange sense of eternity and immortality. We may know when the invocation of Eheieh in its pure white brilliance has been effectual, because we shall find ourselves realising with complete conviction the utter impermanence and insignificance of the planes of form and the supreme importance of the One Life which conditions all form as clay in the hands of the potter.

16. Meditation upon Kether gives us an intuitive realisation that the issue of an Operation does not matter in the very least. “Let the dirt play with the dirt if it pleases the dirt.” Once that realisation has been obtained we have lordship over the astral images and can turn them this way and that as it pleases us. It is only when the operator cares nothing for the outcome of the operation on the physical plane that he attains to this complete lordship over the astral images. He is concerned simply and solely with the handling of forces and the bringing of them through into manifestation in form; but he does not care what form the forces may ultimately assume, he leaves that to them; for they will assuredly assume the form that is most consonant with their nature, and thus be truer to cosmic law than any design which his limited knowledge could assign to them. This is the real key to all magical operations, and their sole justification, for we may not turn the universe round and about to suit our whim or convenience, but are only justified in the deliberate work of magic when we work with the great tide of evolving life in order to bring ourselves into fullness of life whatever form that experience or manifestation may take. “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly,” said Our Lord, and that should be the word of the magician. Life, and life alone, should be his word, and not any specialised manifestation of it as Wisdom, Power, nor even Love.

17. Those who have followed the preceding discussion point by point may now be able to see some significance in the cryptic words of the Yetziratic Text assigned to Kether. The words “Hidden Intelligence” convey a hint of the unmanifest nature of the existence of Kether, which is confirmed by the statement that “No created being can attain to its essence”; that is to say, no being using as its vehicle of consciousness any organism of the planes of form. When, however, consciousness has been exalted to the point where it transcends thought, it receives from the “Primal Glory” ’the power of comprehension of the First Principle’; or in other words, “Then shall we know even as we are known.”

18. Eheieh, I Am That I Am, pure being, is the God-name of Kether, and its magical image is an ancient bearded king seen in profile. The Zohar says of this ancient bearded king that he is all right side; we do not see the magical image of Kether full-face, that is to say complete, but only partially. There is an aspect which must ever be hidden from us, like the hidden side of the moon. This side of Kether is the side that is towards the Unmanifest, which the nature of our manifested consciousness prevents us from comprehending, and which must ever be a sealed book to us. But accepting this limitation we may gaze in contemplation upon the aspect of Kether, the profile of the ancient bearded king, presented to us reflected downwards into form.

19. Ancient is this king, the Ancient of Ancients, the Ancient of Days, for he was from the beginning, when countenance beheld not countenance. A king he is, because he rules all things according to his supreme and unquestioned will. In other words, it is the nature of Kether that conditions all things, because all things are evolved from it. Bearded he is, because in the curious symbolism of the rabbis every hair of his beard has significance.

20. The manifestation of the forces of Kether in Briah, the world of archetypal mind, is said to be through the archangel Metatron, the Prince of Countenances, who tradition avers was the teacher of Moses. The Sepher Yetzirah says of the Tenth Path, Malkuth, that “it causes an influence to flow from the Prince of Countenances, the archangel of Kether, and is the source of illumination of all the lights of the universe.” Thus plainly do we learn that not only does spirit flow out into manifestation in matter, but matter by its own energy draws spirit into manifestation, an important point for the practitioner of magic, for it teaches him that he is justified in his operations and that man is not required to wait upon the word of the Lord, but may call upon God to hear him.

21. The angels of Kether, operating in the Yetziratic world, are the Chaioth ha Qadesh, Holy Living Creatures, and their name carries the mind to the Chariot Vision of Ezekiel and the Four Holy Creatures before the Throne. The fact that the four aces of the Tarot, assigned to Kether, are regarded as representing the roots of the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water further bears out this association. We may look, then, to Kether as the fountain-head of the elements. This concept clears up many occult and metaphysical difficulties that occur if we limit their operation to the astral plane and regard elementals as little better than devils, as some schools of transcendental thought appear to do.

22. The whole question of the angels, archons, and elementals is a very vexed and very important one in occultism, because its practical application to magic is immediate. Christian thought can tolerate with an effort the idea of archangels, but the ministering spirits, the messengers who are flames of fire, and the heavenly builders, are alien to its theology; God, alone and in an instant, made the heavens and earth. The Great Architect of the universe is also the bricklayer. Not so does esoteric science. The initiate knows the legions of spiritual beings who are agents of God’s will and the vehicles of creative activity. It is through these that he works, by the grace of their ruling archangel. But an archangel cannot be conjured by any spell, however potent. Rather is it that when we effect an operation of the Sphere of a particular Sephirah, the archangel works through us for the fulfilment of its mission. The art of the magician therefore lies in aligning himself with cosmic force in order that the operation he desires to perform may come about as a part of the working of cosmic activities. If he be truly purified and dedicated, this will be the case with all his desires; and if he be not truly purified and dedicated, he is no adept, and his word is not a word of power.

23. It is interesting to note that in the World of Assiah the title of the Sphere of Kether is Rashith ha Gilgalim, or First Swirlings, thus indicating that the rabbis were acquainted with the Nebular Theory before science was acquainted with the telescope. The manner in which the ancients deduced the basic facts of cosmogony by purely intuitive means and the use of the method of correspondences, centuries before the invention and perfection of the instruments of precision which enabled modern man to make the same discoveries from another angle, must be a matter of perpetual amazement to anyone who comes to the traditional philosophy unbiased.

24. As above, so below. The microcosm corresponds to the macrocosm, and we must therefore seek in man the Kether above the head which shines with a pure white brilliance in Adam Kadmon, the Heavenly Man. The rabbis call it the Yechidah, the Divine Spark; the Egyptians call it the Sah; the Hindus call it the Thousand-petalled Lotus. But under all these names we have the same idea—the nucleus of pure spirit which emanates but does not indwell its many manifestations upon the planes of form.

25. It is said that never while in incarnation can we rise to the consciousness of Kether in Atziluth and retain the physical vehicle intact against our return. Even as Enoch walked with God and was not, so the man that has the vision of Kether is disrupted so far as the vehicle of incarnation is concerned. Why this must be is readily discerned when we remember that we cannot enter into a mode of consciousness save by reproducing it in ourselves, just as music means nothing to us unless the heart sings with it. If therefore we reproduce in ourselves the mode of being of that which has neither form nor activities, it follows that we must free ourselves from form and activity. If we succeed in doing so, that which is held together by the form-mode of consciousness will fall apart and return to its elements. Thus dissolved, it cannot be reassembled by returning consciousness. Therefore when we aspire to the Vision of Kether in Atziluth we must be prepared to enter into the Light and come not forth again.

26. This does not imply that Nirvana is annihilation, as an ignorant rendering of Eastern philosophy has taught European thought; but it does imply a complete change of mode or dimension. What we shall be when we find ourselves ranked with the Holy Living Creatures, we do not know, and none who achieved the vision of Kether in Atziluth have returned to tell us; but tradition avers that there are those who have done so, and that they are intimately concerned with the evolution of humanity and are the prototypes of those supermen concerning whom all races have a tradition; a tradition which, unfortunately, of recent years has been cheapened and debased by pseudo-occult teaching. Whatever these beings may or may not be, it is safe to say that they have neither astral form nor human personality, but are as flames in the fire which is God. The state of the soul which has attained Nirvana may best be likened to a wheel that has lost its rim and whose spokes have become rays that penetrate and interpenetrate the whole creation; a centre of radiation to whose influence no limit is set save that of its own dynamism, and which maintains its identity as a nucleus of energy.

27. The Spiritual Experience assigned to Kether is said to be Union with God. This is the end and aim of all mystical experience, and if we look for any other goal we are as those who build a house in the world of illusion. Anything that holds him back from the straight path to this goal is felt by the mystic to be a bond that binds, and as such to be broken. All that holds consciousness to form, all desires other than the one desire—these are to him evils, and from the standpoint of his philosophy he is right, and to act otherwise would invalidate his technique.

28. But this is not the only test which the mystic has to face; it is required of him that he shall fulfill the requirements of the planes of form before he is free to commence his withdrawal and escape from form. There is a Left-hand Path that leads to Kether, the Kether of the Qliphoth, which is the Kingdom of Chaos. If he embarks upon the Mystic Path prematurely it is thither he goes, and not to the Kingdom of Light. To the man who is naturally of the Mystic Path the discipline of form is uncongenial, and it is the subtlest of temptations to abandon the struggle with the life of form that resists his mastery and retreat back up the planes before the nadir has been rounded and the lessons of form have been learnt. Form is the matrix in which the fluidic consciousness is held till it acquires an organisation proof against dispersal; till it becomes a nucleus of individuality differentiated out of the amorphous sea of pure being. If the matrix be broken too soon, before the fluidic consciousness had become set as an organised system of stresses stereotyped by repetition, consciousness settles back again into formlessness, even as the clay returns to mud if freed from the supporting restraint of the mould before it has set. If there is a mystic whose mysticism produces mundane incapacity or any form of dissociation of consciousness, we know that the mould had been broken too soon for him, and he must return to the discipline of form until its lesson has been learnt and his consciousness has attained a coherent and cohesive organisation that not even Nirvana can disrupt. Let him hew wood and carry water in the service of the Temple if he will, but let him not profane its holy place with his pathologies and immaturities.

29. The virtue assigned to Kether is that of Attainment, the Completion of the Great Work, to use a term borrowed from the alchemists. Without completion there can be no attainment, and without attainment no completion. Good intentions weigh light in the scale of cosmic justice; it is by our completed work that we are known. T rue, we have all eternity in which to complete it, but complete it we must, even to the final Yod. There is no mercy in perfect justice save that which gives us leave to try again.

30. Kether, viewed from the standpoint of form, is the crown of the kingdom of oblivion. Unless we have realisation of the nature of the life of the pure white light we shall have little temptation to strive for the Crown which is not of this order of being at all; and if we have this realisation, then are we free from the bondage of manifestation and can speak to all forms as one having authority.