The Mystical Qabalah - Dion Fortune 2000

Binah, The Third Sephirah

TITLE: Binah, Understanding. (Hebrew—Beth, Yod, Nun, He.)

VIRTUE: Silence.

MAGICAL IMAGE: A mature woman. A matron. VICE: Avarice.

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

YETZIRATIC Text: The Third Intelligence is called the Sanctifying Intelligence, the Foundation of Primordial Wisdom; it is also called the Creator of Faith, and its roots are in Amen. It is the parent of faith, whence faith emanates.

Titles Given To Binah: Ama, the dark sterile Mother. Aima, the bright fertile Mother. Khorsia, the Throne. Marab, the Great Sea.

GOD-NAME: Jehovah Elohim.

Archangel: Tzaphkiel.

ORDER Of Angels: Aralim, Thrones.

MUNDANE CHAKRA: Shabbathai, Saturn.

Spiritual Experience: Vision of Sorrow.

Correspondence In Microcosm: The right side of the face.

SYMBOLS: The Yoni. The Kteis. The Vesica Pisces. The cup or chalice. The Outer Robe of Concealment.

TAROT CARDS: The four Threes.

THREE Of WANDS: Established Strength.

Three Of CUPS: Abundance.

Three Of SWORDS: Sorrow.

Three Of PENTACLES: Material works.

COLOUR IN ATZILUTH: Crimson.

BRIAH: Black.

YETZIRAH: Dark brown.

ASSIAH: Grey flecked pink.

1. Binah is the third member of the Supernal Triangle, and the task of its elucidation will be both extended and simplified because we can study it in the light of Chokmah, which balances it on the opposing Pillar of the Tree. It is never possible to understand a Sephirah if we consider it apart from its position on the Tree, because this position indicates its cosmic relationships; we see it in perspective, as it were, and can deduce whence it comes and whither it goes; what influences have gone to its making, and what it contributes to the scheme of things entire.

2. Binah represents the female potency of the universe, even as Chokmah represents the male. As already noted, they are Positive and Negative; Force and Form. Each heads its Pillar, Chokmah at the head of the Pillar of Mercy, and Binah at the head of the Pillar of Severity. It may be thought that this is an unnatural distribution; that the Supernal Mother should preside over the mercies, and the male force of the universe over the severities. But we must not sentimentalise these things. We are dealing with cosmic principles, not personalities; and even the symbols under which

they are presented give us insight if we have eyes to see. Freud would not have quarrelled with the attribution of Binah to the head of the Pillar of Severity, for he has a great deal to say about the image of the Terrible Mother.

3. Kether, Eheieh, I Am, is pure being, all-potential but non-active; when a flowing-forth of activity takes place from it, we call that activity Chokmah; it is this descending stream of pure activity which is the dynamic force of the universe, and all dynamic force belongs to this category.

4. It must be remembered that the Sephiroth are states, not places. Wherever there is a state of pure, unconditioned being, without parts or activities, it is referred to Kether. Thus into these ten pigeon-holes of our metaphysical card-index system we can sort our ideas of the whole of the manifested universe without the necessity of removing any object from its place in nature as it appears to our understanding. In other words, wherever we see pure energy functioning, we know that the underlying force is that of Chokmah; this enables us to see the intrinsic identity in type of all manner of phenomena which at first sight appear entirely unrelated; for we learn by the Qabalistic method to refer them according to their type to the different Sephiroth, thus enabling ourselves to link them up with all manner of cognate ideas according to the system of correspondences explained on a previous page. This is the method of the subconscious mind, which it pursues automatically; the occultist trains his conscious mind in the use of the same method. Incidentally we may note that whenever individuals are working directly off the subconscious, as occurs in artistic genius, in lunacy, and in dream or trance, this method is used.

5. It may seem strange to the reader that this digression concerning Chokmah should be included under the heading of Binah, but it is only in the light of its polarity with Chokmah that Binah can be understood; and equally, we shall have a great deal more to add to our explanation of Chokmah now that we have got Binah to compare it with. Each of the Pairs of opposites throws light on the other and is incomprehensible alone.

6. But to return to Binah, the Qabalists state that it is emanated by Chokmah. Let us translate this statement into other terms. It is an occult maxim, which is, I believe, confirmed by the researches of Einstein, though I have not the knowledge necessary to correlate his findings with the esoteric doctrines, that force never moves in a straight line, but always curve vast as the universe, and therefore eventually returns whence it issued forth, but upon a higher arc, for the universe has progressed since it started. It follows, then, that force proceeding thus, dividing and redividing and moving at tangential angles, will eventually arrive at a state of interlocking stresses and some manner of stability; a stability which tends to be overset in course of time as fresh forces are emanated from it into manifestation and introduce new factors with which adjustment has to be made.

7. It is this state of stability, which is arrived at by the interacting forces when they act and react and come to a standstill, which is the basis of form, as is exemplified in the atom, which is nothing more nor less than a constellation of electrons, each of which is a vortex, or whirlpool. The stability thus achieved, which, be it noted, is a condition and not a thing in itself, is what Qabalists call Binah, the Third Sephirah. Wherever there is a state of interacting stresses which have achieved stability, the Qabalists refer the condition to Binah. For instance, the atom, being for all practical purposes the stable unit of the physical plane, is a manifestation of the Binah type of force. All social organisations on which the dead hand of unprogressiveness weighs heavily, such as the Chinese civilisation before the revolution, or our older universities, are said to be under the influence of Binah. To Binah are attributed the Greek God Chronos (who is none other than Father Time) and the Roman God Saturn. It will be observed the importance attached to time, in other words to age, in these Binah institutions; only grey hairs are venerable; ability alone carries little weight. That is to say, only those who are congenial to Chronos can succeed in such an environment.

8. Binah, the Great Mother, sometimes also called Marah, the Great Sea, is, of course, the Mother of All Living. She is the archetypal womb through which life comes into manifestation. Whatsoever provides a form to serve life as a vehicle is of Her. It must be remembered, however, that life confined in a form, although it is enabled thereby to organise and so evolve, is much less free than it was when it was unlimited (though also unorganised) on its own plane. Involvement in a form is therefore the beginning of the death of life. It is a straitening and a limiting; a binding and a constricting. Form checks life, thwarts it, and yet enables it to organise. Seen from the point of view of free-moving force, incarceration in a form is extinction. Form disciplines force with a merciless severity.

9. The disembodied spirit is immortal; there is nothing of it that can grow old or die. But the embodied spirit sees death on the horizon as soon as its day dawns. We can see then how terrible must the Great Mother appear as She binds free-moving force into the discipline of form. She is death to the dynamic activity of Chokmah; the Chokmah-force dies as it issues into Binah. Form is the discipline of force; therefore is Binah the head of the Pillar of Severity.

10. We may conceive that the first Cosmic Night set in, the first Pralaya, or sinking of manifestation to rest, when the Supernal Triangle found stability and equilibrium of force with the emanation and organisation of Binah. All was dynamic before; all was forth-rushing and expansion; but with the coming into manifestation of the Binah aspect there was an interlocking and stabilising, and the old dynamic free flow was no more.

11. That such an interlocking and consequent stabilisation was inevitable in a universe whose lines of force ever move in curves is a foregone conclusion. And we can see, if we observe how the Binah-state was the inevitable outcome of the Chokmah-state in a curvilinear universe, that time must move through epochs in which either Binah or Chokmah predominate. Before the lines of force had completed their circuit of the manifested universe and begun to return upon themselves and interlace, all was Chokmah, and dynamism was unrestricted. After Binah and Chokmah, as the first Pairs of Opposites, had found equilibrium, all was Binah, and stability was immovable. But Kether, the Great Emanator, continues to make manifest the Great Unmanifest; force flows in upon the universe, and the sum of force is increased. This inflowing force oversets the equilibrium that is arrived at when Chokmah and Binah have acted, reacted, and come to a stop. Action and reaction commence again, and the Chokmah-phase, a phase in which dynamic force predominates, supervenes upon the static condition which is Binah, and the cycle proceeds once more; equilibrium between the Pairs of Opposites being arrived at in a more complex form—on a higher arc, as it is called from the evolutionary point of view—only to be overset again as the ever-emanating Kether weighs down the balance in favour of the kinetic principle as opposed to the static principle.

12. It will thus be seen that if Kether, the source of all being is conceived of as the highest good, as it inevitably must be, and the nature of Kether is kinetic and its influence is for ever inclined towards Chokmah, it inevitably follows that Binah, the opposite of Chokmah, the perpetual opposer of the dynamic impulses, will be regarded as the enemy of God, the evil one. Saturn-Satan is an easy transition; and so is Time-Death-Devil. Implicit in the ascetic religions such as Christianity and Buddhism is the idea that woman is the root of all evil, because she is the influence which holds men to a life of form by their desires. Matter is regarded by them as the antinomy of spirit in an eternal, unresolved duality. Christianity is ready enough to recognise the heretical nature of this belief when it is presented to it in the form of Antinomianism; but it does not realise that its own teaching and practice are equally antinomian when it regards matter as the enemy of spirit, and as such to be abrogated and overcome. This unhappy belief has caused as much human suffering in Christian countries as war and pestilence.

13. The Qabalah teaches a wiser doctrine. To it, all the Sephiroth are holy, Malkuth equally with Kether, and Geburah the destroyer with Chesed the preserver. It recognizes that rhythm is the basis of life, not a steady forward progress. If we understood this better, how much suffering we should save ourselves, for we should watch the Chokmah and Binah phases succeeding each other, both in our own lives and the lives of nations, and would realise the deep significance of Shakespeare’s words when he says:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.”

14. Binah is the primordial root of matter, but the full development of matter is not found till we arrive at Malkuth, the material universe. We shall see repeatedly in the course of our studies that the Three Supernals have their specialized expressions on a lower arc in one or another of the six Sephiroth which form Microprosopos. It is repeatedly said of these that they have their roots in or are reflections of the higher triad, and these hints have a deep significance. Binah links with Malkuth as the root with the fruit. This is indicated in the Yetziratic text of Malkuth, in which it says: “She sitteth upon the throne of Binah.” It is for this reason that a hard and fast attribution of the gods of other pantheons to the different Sephiroth is impracticable. Aspects of Isis are to be found in Binah, Netzach, Yesod, and Malkuth. Aspects of Osiris are to be found in Chokmah, Chesed, and Tiphareth. This comes out clearly in Greek mythology, wherein the different gods and goddesses are given descriptive titles. For instance, Diana, the moon-goddess, the virgin huntress, was worshipped at Ephesus as the Many-breasted; Venus, the goddess of female beauty and of love, had a temple where she was worshipped as the Bearded Venus. These things teach us some important truths. They teach us to look for the principle behind the multiform manifestation, and to realize that it assumes different forms on different levels. Life is not quite so simple as the uninformed would like to believe.

15. The meaning of the Hebrew names of the second and third Sephiroth are Wisdom and Understanding, and these are curiously balanced one against the other as if the distinction were of primary importance. Wisdom suggests to our minds the idea of accumulated knowledge, of the infinite series of images in the memory; but Understanding conveys to us the idea of a penetration into their significance, a power to perceive their essence and interrelation, which is not necessarily implicit in wisdom, taken as intellectual knowledge. Thus we get a concept of an extended series, a chain of associated ideas, in relation to Chokmah, which at once correlates with the Chokmah symbol of a straight line. But in regard to Understanding we get the idea of synthesis, of the perception of significances which comes when ideas are related one to another, and superimposed, metaphorically speaking, one upon another in evolutionary series from the dense to the subtle. Thus does the idea of the binding-together Binah-principle come once again to our minds.

16. These are subtle ways of mind-working, and may appear foolishness to those unaccustomed to the initiate’s method of using his mind; but the psychoanalyst understands them and appreciates them at their true significance; and so likewise does the poet when he constructs his cloud-capped towers of imagery.

17. The Yetziratic Text stresses the idea of faith, the faith that rests on understanding, whose parent is Binah. This is the only place where faith may rightly rest. A cynic defined faith as the power of believing what you know isn’t true; and this appears to be a fairly accurate definition for the manifestations of faith as they appear in many uninstructed minds, the fruit of the discipline of sects unenlightened by mystical consciousness. But in the light of that consciousness we may define faith as the conscious result of superconscious experience which has not been translated into terms of brain consciousness, and of which, therefore, the normal personality is not directly aware, though it nevertheless feels, possibly with great intensity, the effects, and its emotional reactions are fundamentally and permanently modified thereby.

18. In the light of this definition we can see how the roots of faith may indeed rest in Binah, Understanding, the synthetic principle of consciousness. For there is a form aspect to consciousness as well as to substance, and that aspect we shall consider in detail when we come to the study of Hod, the basal Sephirah of Binah’s Pillar of Severity. Thus we see yet again how the Sephiroth link up among themselves, and the illumination that comes from observing their interrelationships.

19. The statement that the roots of Binah are in Amen refers to Kether, for one of the titles of Kether is Amen. This clearly declares that although Chokmah emanates Binah, we must not pause there when seeking origins, but move back to the fount of all as it rises from the Unmanifest behind the Veils of Negative Existence. This concept is brought out very clearly by the Yetziratic Text of Chesed, wherein it says, speaking of spiritual forces: “They emanate one from another by virtue of the primordial emanation, the highest crown, Kether.”

20. We must not be misled or confused in this respect by the fact that the Yetziratic Text of Geburah declares that Binah, understanding, emanates from the primordial depths of Chokmah, Wisdom. Binah is in Kether as well as Chokmah, “but after another manner.” In pure being, formless and partless though it is, are the possibilities of both force and form; for where there is a positive pole, there is necessarily the correlative aspect of a negative pole. Kether is forever in a state of becoming. In fact, I have been told by a Jewish Qabalist that the real translation of Eheieh, the God-name of Kether, is “I will be,” not “I am.” This constant becoming cannot remain static, it must overflow into activity; and that activity cannot forever remain uncorrelated within itself; it must organise; some manner of adjustment of interlocking stresses must be arrived at; thus we have the potentiality of both Chokmah and Binah implicit in Kether; for be it said yet again that the Holy Sephiroth are not things, but states, and that all manifested things exist in one or another of these states, and contain an admixture of these factors in their make-up, so that the whole of the manifested universe can be sorted out into its appropriate pigeon-holes in our minds when the glyph of the Tree is established there. Indeed, when once that glyph is clearly formulated and well established, the mind uses it automatically, and the complex phenomena of objective existence sort themselves out in our understanding. It is for this reason that the student of occultism who is working in an initiatory school is made to learn the principal correspondences of the Ten Holy Sephiroth off by heart, instead of being allowed to depend upon tables of reference. It has often been objected that this is an intolerable waste of time and energy, and that reference to the tables of correspondences, such as Crowley’s “777” is quite as good. But experience proves that this is not the case, and that the esotericist who sets himself to this discipline and rehearses them daily, as the Catholic tells his rosary, is amply repaid by the subsequent illumination he receives as his mind automatically sorts out the innumerable changes and chances of mundane life on to the Tree, thus revealing their spiritual significance. It must always be borne in mind that the use of the Tree of Life is not merely an intellectual exercise; it is a creative art in the literal meaning of the words, and faculties have to be developed in the mind even as manual skill is acquired by sculptor or musician.

21. The Yetziratic Text specifically refers to Binah as the Sanctifying Intelligence. Sanctification conveys the idea of that which is holy and set apart. The Virgin Mary is held to be intimately associated with Binah, the Great Mother; and from this attribution the mind is led on to the idea of that which brings forth the All but retains its virginity; in other words, whose creativeness does not involve it in the life of its creation, but which remains apart and behind as the basis of manifestation, the root-substance whence matter arises. For although matter is held to have its roots in Binah, yet matter as we know it is of a very different order of being to the Supernal Sephirah in which its essence lies. Binah, the primordial formative influence, the parent of all form, is behind and beyond manifesting substance; in other words, is ever-virgin. It is this formative influence underlying all form-building, this tendency for curving lines of force to correlate and achieve stability, which is Binah.

22. These two basal Sephiroth of the Supernal Triad are especially referred to as the Father and Mother, Abba and Ama, and their magical images are those of the bearded male and the matron, thus representing, not the sex attraction of Netzach and Yesod, who are represented as maiden and youth, but the mature beings who have mated and reproduced. We must always distinguish between magnetic sex attraction and reproduction; they are by no means one and the same thing; Oft are they even different levels or aspects of the same thing. Herein is an important occult truth which we will consider in detail in due course.

23. Chokmah and Binah, then, represent essential maleness and femaleness in their creative aspects. They are not phallic images as such, but in them is the root of all life-force. We shall never understand the deeper aspects of esotericism unless we realise what phallicism really means. It most emphatically does not mean the orgies in the temples of Aphrodite that disgraced the decadence of the pagan faiths of the ancients and brought about their downfall; it means that everything rests upon the principle of the stimulation of the inert yet all-potential by the dynamic principle which derives its energy direct from the source of all energy. In this concept lie tremendous keys of knowledge; it is one of the most important points in the Mysteries. It is obvious that sex represents one aspect of this factor; it is equally obvious that there are many other applications of it which are not sexual. We must not allow any preconceived concept of what constitutes sex, or a conventional attitude towards this great and vital subject, to frighten us away from the great principle of the stimulation or fecundation of the inert all-potential by the active principle. Whosoever is thus inhibited is unfit for the Mysteries, over whose portal was written the words, “Know thyself.”

24. Such knowledge does not lead to impurity, for impurity implies a loss of control that permits forces to override the bounds that Nature has set them. Whoso has not control of his own instincts and passions is no more fitted for the Mysteries than he who inhibits and dissociates them. Let it be clearly realised, however, that the Mysteries do not teach asceticism or celibacy as a requirement of achievement, because they do not regard spirit and matter as an irreconcilable pair of antinomies, but rather as different levels of the same thing. Purity does not consist in emasculating, but in keeping the different forces to their proper levels and in their proper places, and not allowing one to invade another. It teaches that frigidity and impotence are just as much imperfections, and therefore pathologies of sex, as is uncontrolled lust that destroys its object and debases itself.

25. Every relationship of manifested existence involves the Binah and Chokmah principles, and because sex is such a perfect representation of these it was used as such by the ancients, who were not troubled by our timidities on the subject, and took their metaphors from the subject of reproduction as freely as we take ours from the Bible. For to them reproduction was a sacred process, and they referred to it, not with ribaldry, but with reverence. If we want to understand them, we must approach their teaching on the subject of the life-source and life-force in the same spirit in which they approached it, and no one whose eyes are not blinded by prejudice, or who does not stand in the shadow thrown by his own unsolved problems, can fail to realise that our present-day attitude towards life would be both saner and sweeter for a leavening of pagan common sense and discernment.

26. The principles of maleness and femaleness as manifested in Chokmah and Binah represent more than mere positivity and negativity, activity and passivity. Chokmah, the All-begetter, is a vehicle of primal force, the immediate manifestation of Kether. It is, in fact, Kether in action; for the different Sephiroth do not represent different things, but different functions of the same thing,

i.e. pure force welling up into manifestation from the Great Unmanifest which is behind the Negative Veils of Existence. Chokmah is pure force, even as the expansion of petrol as it explodes in the combustion-chamber of an engine is pure force. But just as this expansive force would expand and be lost if there were no engine to transmit its power, so the undirected energy of Chokmah would radiate into space and be lost if there were nothing to receive its impulse and utilise it. Chokmah explodes like petrol; Binah is the combustion-chamber; Gedulah and Geburah are the back and forth strokes of the piston.

27. Now the expansive force given off by petrol is pure energy, but it will not drive a car. The constrictive organisation of Binah is potentially capable of driving a car, but it cannot do so unless set in motion by the expansion of the stored-up energy of petrol vapour. Binah is all-potential, but inert. Chokmah is pure energy, limitless and tireless, but incapable of doing anything except radiate off into space if left to its own devices. But when Chokmah acts upon Binah, its energy is gathered up and set to work. When Binah receives the impulse of Chokmah, all her latent capacities are energised. Briefly, Chokmah supplies the energy, and Binah supplies the machine.

28. Consider now the maleness and femaleness of this Pair of Supernal Opposites as reflected in the act of generation. The spermatozoa of the male are incapable of more than the briefest life; they are the simplest possible units of energy; once that energy is expended, they dissolve. But the reproductive mechanism of the female, the womb that bears and the breasts that feed, are capable of bringing this handed-on life to independent life of its own; and yet all this elaborate machinery must lie inert till the stimulus of the Chokmah-force sets it in action. The female reproductive unit is all-potential, but inert; the male reproductive unit is all-potent, but incapable of bringing to birth.

29. Most people think that because maleness and femaleness as they know them on the physical plane are fixed principles determined by structure, that the potent and the potential are rigidly bound to their respective mechanisms. Now this is an error. There is a continual alternation of polarity on every plane except the physical. And indeed, among primitive types of animal life there is even an alternation of polarity on the physical plane. Among higher types, and especially the vertebrates, polarity is fixed by the accident of birth, save in hermaphroditic anomalies, which can’t be regarded as other than pathological, and in which only one sex is ever functionally active, whatever the apparent development of the other aspect may be. It is a knowledge of this continual interplay of polarity which is one of the most important secrets of the Mysteries. It is in no sense homosexuality, which is a perverted and pathological expression of this fact that breaks out as a disorder of sexual feeling when the law of alternating polarity is not rightly understood.

30. Briefly, although his actual mode of reproduction on the physical plane is determined for every individual by the configuration of his body, his spiritual reactions are not so fixed, for the soul is bi-sexual; in other words, in every relation of life we are sometimes positive and sometimes negative, according to whether circumstances are stronger than we are, or we are stronger than circumstances. This is clearly indicated in the proverb, that the grey mare is sometimes the better horse. It also comes out clearly in the fact that Netzach (Venus-Aphrodite) is the basal Sephirah of Chokmah’s Pillar. We thus get the female nature showing a different polarity on different levels, for in Netzach she is as positive and dynamic as she is static in Binah.

31. All this is not only bewildering intellectually, but also confusing morally, and even at the risk of being accused of fostering all manner of abnormalities, I must try to make the matter clear, for its practical implications are so far-reaching.

32. It has been said by the Rabbis that each Sephirah is negative in relation to the one above it by which it is emanated, and positive in relation to the one below it which it emanates. This gives us the key; we are negative in our relationships with that which is of a higher potential than we are; and we are positive in our relationships with that which has a lower potential. This is a relationship which is in a perpetual state of flux, and which varies at every separate point at which we make our innumerable contacts with our environment.

33. For the most part, the relationship between a man and a woman is not entirely satisfactory to either party, and they have either to put up with incomplete satisfaction in their relationship under the compulsion of religious or economic pressure, or supplement elsewhere their incompleteness, with as a rule a recurrence of the previous conditions when once the novelty has worn off. It is to be observed that under such circumstances it is only in novelty that sexual satisfaction at its highest is to be found; and novelty is a thing which requires constantly to be renewed, with disastrous results to sexual economics.

34. The trouble is, that while the male gives the physical stimulus which leads to reproduction, he does not realise that on the inner planes he is by virtue of the law of reversed polarity, negative, and is dependent for his emotional completeness upon the stimulation given by the female. He is dependent upon her for emotional fertilisation, as is clearly shown in the case of any highly creative mind, such as Wagner or Shelley.

35. Marriage is not a matter of two halves, but of four quarters, uniting in balanced harmony of reciprocal fecundation. Binah and Chokmah are balanced by Hod and Netzach. There are goddesses as well as gods for man to worship. Boaz and Jakin are both pillars of the Temple, and only when united do they produce stability. A goddess-less religion is half-way to atheism. In the word Elohim we find the true key. Elohim is translated “God” in both Authorised and Revised Versions of the Holy Scriptures. It really ought to be translated “God and Goddess,” for it is a feminine noun with a masculine plural termination affixed. This is an incontrovertible fact, in its linguistic aspect at any rate, and it is to be presumed that the various authors of the books of the Bible knew what they meant, and did not use this peculiar and unique form without good reason. “And the spirit of the male and female conjoined principles moved upon the surface of the formless, and manifestation took place.” If we want equilibrium instead of our present condition of unequal stresses, we must worship the Elohim, not Jehovah.

36. The worship of Jehovah instead of the Elohim is a Potent influence in preventing us from “rising on the planes,” that is to say from obtaining supernormal consciousness as Part of our normal equipment; for we must be prepared to Shift our Polarity as we shift level, for what is positive on the Physical Plane becomes negative on the astral, and vice versa. Also, as practical occult work always involves the use of more than one plane, either simultaneously, as in invocation and evocation, or in succession, as when we correlate the levels of consciousness after psychic work, the negative factor must always have its place in our work, both subjectively and objectively.

37. This again opens up new aspects of the subject, how many people realise that their own souls are literally bi-sexual within themselves, and that the different levels of consciousness act as male and female towards each other?

38. Freud declared that the sex life determines the type of the whole life. Probably, fundamentally, the life as a whole determines the type of the sex life; but for practical purposes his manner of putting it is true; for while it is not possible to straighten out a tangled sexual life by operating upon life as a whole—for instance, no amount of wealth or fame is any adequate compensation if this fundamental instinct be thwarted—it is quite possible to straighten out the whole life-pattern by disentangling the sex life. This is a matter of practical experience, and does not need to be reasoned from a priori grounds. No doubt it is for this reason, learned by practical experience of the workings of the human consciousness, that the ancients made phallicism such an important part of their rites. Actually, it is a very important factor in the ceremonial aspect of the worship of moderns also, but recognition of the significance of the symbols employed traditionally has been repressed from consciousness.

39. Freudian psychology supplies the key to phallicism and opens a door that leads into the Adytum of the Mysteries. There is no getting away from this fact in practical occultism, unpalatable as it may be to many; and it explains why so many magical enterprises are sterile.

40. These matters are highly recondite secrets of the Mysteries, of which we moderns have lost the keys; but the experience of the new psychology, and its allied art of psychiatry, has abundantly proved the soundness of the basis on which the ancients built when they made adoration of the creative principle and of fertility an important part of their religious life. It is a matter of well-established experience that the person who has dissociated his or her sexual feelings from consciousness can never get to grips with life on any level. This fact is the basis of modern psychotherapy. In occult work the inhibited, repressed person tends to unbalanced forms of psychism and mediumship, and is totally useless for magical work in which power has to be directed and handled by the will. This does not mean that either total repression or total expression is necessary for magical working, but it does most emphatically mean that the person who is cut off from his instincts, which are his roots in Mother Earth, and in whose consciousness in consequence there is a gap, cannot be an open channel through which power can be brought down the planes into manifestation on the physical level.

41. I shall no doubt be abused and misrepresented for my frankness in these matters; but if no one will come forward and bear the odium of speaking the truth, how is the wayfaring man to find his way in the Mysteries? Are we to maintain a Victorian attitude in the lodge which has everywhere been abandoned outside it? Someone must break these false gods made in the image of Mrs. Grundy. I am inclined to think, however, that any loss I may sustain on this account will be small, for it would not be possible to train or to co-operate with the kind of person who is thrown into a panic by plain speaking? Do not let it be thought that I am inviting anyone to participate with me in phallic orgies, as it will probably be said that I am doing. I am merely pointing out that the person who cannot see the significance of phallic worship from the psychological point of view has not got enough brains to be of very much use in the Mysteries.

42. Having given considerable space to the elucidation of the Binah principle functioning in polarity with Chokmah, for not otherwise can it be understood, for it is essentially a principle of polarity, we can now consider the significance of the symbolism assigned to the Third Sephirah. This falls into two divisions—the Great Mother aspect and the Saturn aspect, for both these attributions are given to Binah. She is the mighty Mother of All Living, and she is also the death principle; for the giver of life in form is also the giver of death, for form must die when its use is outworn. Upon the Planes of form, death and birth are the two sides of the same coin.

43. The mother aspect of Binah finds expression in the title of Marah, the Sea, which is given her. It is a curious fact that Venus-Aphrodite is represented as being born of the sea-foam, and the Virgin Mary is called by Catholics Stella Maris, Star of the Sea. The word Marah, which is the root of Mary, also means bitter, and the spiritual experience attributed to Binah is the Vision of Sorrow. A vision which calls to mind the picture of the Virgin weeping at the foot of the Cross, her heart pierced by seven swords. We also recall the teaching of the Buddha that life is sorrow. The idea of subjection to sorrow and death is implicit in the idea of the descent of life to the planes of form.

44. The Yetziratic Text of Malkuth, already referred to, speaks of the Throne of Binah. One of the titles given to the Third Sephirah is Khorsia, the Throne; and the angels assigned to this Sephirah are called the Aralim, which also means thrones. Now a throne essentially suggests the idea of a stable basis, a firm foundation, upon which the wielder of power takes his seat and cannot be moved. It is, in fact, a thrust-block which takes the back-pressure of a force as the shoulder takes the kick of a rifle. The great guns used for long-distance ranging have to be bedded in a mass of concrete in order that they may resist this back pressure of the charge that drives the shell forwards; for it is obvious that the pressure on the breech of the gun must equal the pressure on the base of the shell when the gun goes off. This is a truth which our idealising religious tendencies are inclined to ignore, with a consequent weakening and invalidating of their teaching. Binah, Marah, matter, is the thrust-block which gives dynamic life-force its secure basis.

45. Out of the resistance to spiritual force, as we have already noted, comes the idea of implicit evil, which is so unjust as Binah. This comes out very clearly when we consider the ideas that rise up in association with Saturn-Chronos. There is something sinister about Saturn. He is the Greater Malefic of the astrologers, and anyone who finds a square to Saturn in their horoscope regards it as a heavy affliction. Saturn is the resister; but, being a resister, he is also a stabiliser and tester who does not allow us to trust our weight to that which will not bear it. It is an illuminating point that the Thirty-second Path, which leads from Malkuth to Yesod and is the first Path trodden by the soul striving upwards, is assigned to Saturn. He is the god of the most ancient form of matter. The Greek myth of Chronos, which is simply the Greek name for the same principle, looks upon him as one of the Old Gods; that is to say, the Gods that made the Gods. He was the father of Jupiter-Zeus, who was saved from him by a cunning device of his mother, for Saturn had an unpleasant habit of eating his children. In this myth we get again the idea of the bringer into life as the giver of death. As we have already noted, Saturn with his reaping-hook readily becomes Death with his scythe. It is very interesting to note the reentrant curves of these chains of associated ideas in connection with each Sephirah, for we cannot but see how the same images crop up again and again in every train of ideas that we pursue, even when we start from ideas as apparently divergent as the mother, the sea, and time.

46. To each planet is assigned a virtue and a vice; in other words, each planet may be, in the words of the astrologers, well or badly aspected, well or ill dignified. We cannot go through life without noting that every type of character has the vices of its virtues; that is to say, its virtues, carried to extremes, becomes vices. So it is with the seven planetary Sephiroth; they have their good and bad aspects according to the proportions in which they are represented; when there is lack of equilibrium owing to the unbalanced force of a particular Sephirah, we experience the evil influences of that Sephirah; for instance, Saturn ate his children! Death began to destroy life before it had fulfilled its function. No Sephirah, therefore, is wholly and solely evil, not even Geburah— which is destruction personified. They are all equally indispensable to the scheme of things as a whole, and their relative good or evil influence depends on their being where they are wanted, in the right proportions, neither too much nor too little. Too little of the influence of a given Sephirah leads to unbalance on the part of its opposite number. Too much becomes a positively evil influence a poisonous overdose.

47. The virtue of Binah is said to be Silence, and its vice Avarice. Here again we see the Saturn influence making itself felt. Keats speaks of “grey-haired Saturn, silent as a stone,” and in these few words the poet conjures up a magical image of the primordial age and silence of the Saturnian influence. Saturn is indeed one of the Old Gods and is concerned with the mineral aspect of earth. He is throned upon the most ancient rocks where no plant grows.

48. It is this silence which has ever been held to be an especially desirable virtue in women. Be that as it may, and no doubt her tongue is her most dangerous weapon, silence indicates receptivity. If we are silent, we can listen, and so learn; but if we are talking, the gates of entrance to the mind are closed. It is the resistance and receptivity of Binah which are her chief powers. And out of these virtues comes the vice which is constituted by their overplus, the avarice which denies too much and would withhold even that which is needful. When this prevails, we need the generous Gedulah-Geburah, Jupiter-Mars influence to slay the old god, the slayer of his children, and reign in his stead.

49. The magical symbols of Binah are said to be the yoni and the Outer Robe of Concealment, the latter is a gnostic term and the former an Indian one, meaning the genitals of the female, the negative correspondence of the phallus of the male. The less well-known term Kteis is the European equivalent. In Hindu religious symbols the yoni and lingam appear with the greatest frequency, for the idea of life-force and fertility is a prime mover in their faith.

50. The idea of fertility is the main motif in the aspects of Binah that manifest in the world of Assiah, the material level. Life not only enters into matter for discipline, but it also issues thence triumphantly, increased and multiplied. The fertility aspect, balancing the Time-Death-Limitation aspect, is essential to our concept of Binah. Time-Death puts his sickle to the wheat of Ceres, and both are Binah symbols.

51. The idea of the Outer Robe of Concealment clearly suggests matter; and the shrouding herein of the Inner Robe of Glory of the life-principle. How clearly do these two ideas, taken together, convey to us the concept of the body ensouled by the spirit; its Inner Robe of Spiritual Glory concealed from all eyes by the outer covering of dense matter. Again and again, as we meditate upon these mysteries, do we find illumination from the apparently fortuitous collection of symbols assigned to each Sephirah. We have seen already in our study that no symbol stands alone, and that any penetration on the part of the intuition and the imagination serves to reveal long lines of interlacing connections between them.

52. The four Threes of the Tarot pack are the cards assigned to Binah, and indeed the number three is intimately associated with the idea of manifestation in matter. The two opposing forces find expression in a third, the equilibrium between them, which manifests on a lower plane than its parents. The triangle is one of the symbols assigned to Saturn as the god of densest matter, and the triangle of art, as it is called, is used in magical ceremonies and it is the intention to evoke a spirit to visible appearance on the plane of matter; for other modes of manifestation the circle is used.

53. The Three of Wands is called the Lord of Established Strength. Here again we have the idea of power in equilibrium, which is so characteristic of Binah. Wands, be it remembered, represent the dynamic Yod force. This force, when in the sphere of Binah, ceases to be dynamic and becomes consolidated.

54. Cups are essentially the female force, for the cup or chalice is one of the symbols of Binah and is intimately allied with the yoni in esoteric symbolism. The three of Cups is, therefore, at home in Binah, for the two sets of symbols reinforce each other. The three of Cups, which is aptly named Abundance, represents the fertility of Binah in her Ceres aspect.

55. The Three of Swords, however, is called Sorrow, and its symbol in the Tarot pack is a heart pierced by three swords. Our readers will recall the reference to the sword-pierced heart of the Virgin Mary in Catholic symbolism, and Mary equates with Marah, bitter, the Sea. Ave, Maria, stella maris!

56. Swords are, of course, Geburah cards, and as such represent the destructive aspect of Binah as Kali, the wife of Siva, the Hindu goddess of destruction.

57. Pentacles are cards of Earth, and as such are congenial to Binah, form. The three of Pentacles, therefore, is Lord of Material Works, or activity on the plane of form.

58. It will be observed that, just as the planets have their influence reinforced when they are in those signs of the Zodiac which are called their own houses, so the Tarot cards, when the significance of the Sephirah coincides with the spirit of the Suit, represent the active aspect of the influence; and when the Sephirah and the suit represent different influences, the card is malefic. For instance, the fiery Sword card is a card of evil omen when it finds itself in the sphere of influence of Binah.

59. And finally to sum up. I have written of Binah at this length because with her is completed the Supernal Triad and the first of the Pairs of Opposites. She represents not only herself but also the functioning partners, for it is impossible to understand any unit on the Tree save by reference to those other units with which it interacts and equilibrates. Chokmah without Binah, and Binah without Chokmah, are incomprehensible, for the pair are the functional unit, and not either of them separately.