The Mystical Qabalah - Dion Fortune 2000

Chesed, The Fourth Sephirah

TITLE: Chesed, Mercy.

(Hebrew—Cheth, Samech, Daleth.)

MAGICAL IMAGE: A mighty crowned and throned king.

SITUATION ON THE TREE: In the centre of the Pillar of Mercy.

YETZIRATIC Text: The Fourth Path is called the Cohesive or Receptive Intelligence because it contains all the Holy Powers, and from it emanate all the spiritual virtues with the most exalted essences. They emanate one from another by virtue of the Primordial Emanation, the Highest Crown, Kether.

Titles Given To Chesed: Gedulah. Love. Majesty.

GOD-NAME: El.

ARCHANGEL: Tzadkiel.

ORDER Of Angels: Chasmalim, Brilliant Ones.

Mundane CHAKRA: Tzedek, Jupiter.

SPIRITUAL ExPERIENCE: Vision of Love.

VIRTUE: Obedience

VICE: Bigotry. Hypocrisy. Gluttony. Tyranny.

CORRESPONDENCE IN MICROCOSM: The left arm.

SYMBOLS: The solid figure—Tetrahedron. Pyramid. Equal armed Cross. Orb. Wand. Sceptre. Crook.

TAROT CARDS: The four Fours.

FOUR Of WANDS: Perfected work.

Four Of CUPS: Pleasure.

FOUR Of SWORDS: Rest from strife.

Four Of Pentacles: Earthly power.

COLOUR IN ATZILUTH: Violet. Deep

BRIAH: Blue.

YETZIRAH: Deep purple.

ASSIAH: Deep azure, flecked yellow.

1. Between the Three Supernals and the next pair of balancing Sephiroth upon the Tree there is a great gulf fixed which is called by mystics the Abyss. The next six Sephiroth, Chesed, Geburah, Tiphareth, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod, constitute what Qabalists call Microprosopos, the Lesser Countenance, Adam Kadmon, the King. The Queen, the Bride of the King, is Malkuth, the Physical Plane. We have, then, the Father (Kether), the King, and the Bride, and in this configuration of the Tree there is profound symbolism and great practical importance in both philosophy and magic.

2. The Abyss, the gulf fixed between Macroprosopos and Microprosopos, marks a demarcation in the nature of being, in the type of existence prevailing upon the two levels. It is in the Abyss that Daath, the Invisible Sephirah, has its station, and it might aptly be named the Sephirah of

Becoming. It is also called Understanding, which might be further interpreted as Perception, Apprehension, Consciousness.

3. These two types of existence, Macroprosopos and Microprosopos, serve to indicate the potential and the actual. Actual manifestation, as our finite minds can conceive it, begins with Microprosopos; and the first aspect of Microprosopos to come into being is Chesed, the Fourth Sephirah, situated immediately below Chokmah, the Father, in the Pillar of Mercy, of which it is the central Sephirah. It is balanced across the Tree by Geburah, Severity; and this pair, Geburah and Gedulah, form “the Power and the Glory” of the final invocation of the Lord’s Prayer; the “Kingdom” being, of course, Malkuth.

4. As we have already seen, we can learn much from the position of a Sephirah in the pattern of the Tree; and from the position of Chesed on the Pillar of Mercy we see that it is Chokmah upon a lower arc. It is emanated by Binah, a passive Sephirah, and emanates Geburah, a catabolic Sephirah, whose Mundane Chakra is Mars with all his warlike symbolism, who is Saturn upon a lower arc.

5. From these things we can learn a great deal about Chesed. It is the loving father, the protector and preserver, just as Chokmah is the All-begetter. It continues the work of Chokmah, organising and preserving that which the All-Father has begotten. It balances with mercy the severity of Geburah. It is anabolic, or up-building, in contra-distinction to the catabolism, or down-breaking of Geburah.

6. These two aspects are very well expressed in the Magical Images assigned to these two Sephiroth. These Magical Images are both kings; that of Chesed a king on his throne, and that of Geburah a king in his chariot; in other words, the rulers of the kingdom in peace and in war; the one a lawgiver and the other a warrior.

7. The analogy of physiology gives us a clear understanding of the significance of these two Sephiroth. Metabolism consists of anabolism, or the ingesting and assimilating of food and its building up into tissue, and catabolism, or the breaking down of tissue in active work and the output of energy. The by-products of catabolism are the fatigue poisons which have to be eliminated from the blood by rest. The life-process is an everlasting up-building and down-breaking, and Geburah and Gedulah (another name for Chesed) represent these two processes in the Macrocosm.

8. Chesed, being the first Sephirah of Microprosopos, or the manifested universe, represents the formulation of the archetypal idea, the concretion of the abstract. When the abstract principle that forms the root of some new activity is formulating in our minds, we are operating in the sphere of Chesed. Let an example serve to make this clear. Supposing an explorer is looking out from a mountain over a newly discovered country and sees that the inland plains lying behind the coastal ranges are fertile, and that a river flows through these plains and makes its way to the sea through a gap in the mountain chain. He thinks of the agricultural wealth of the plains, transport down the river, and a harbour on the estuary, he knows that the scour of the river will have made a tunnel by which ships can come in. In his mind’s eye he sees the wharfs and the warehouses, the stores and the dwellings. He wonders whether the mountains contain minerals, and pictures a railway line alongside the river and branch lines up the valleys. He sees the colonists coming in, and the need for a church, a hospital, a gaol, and the ubiquitous saloon. His imagination maps out the main street of the township, and he determines to stake corner lots that he may prosper with the prosperity of the new settlement. All this he sees while virgin forest covers the coastal belt and blocks the mountain passes. But because he knows that the plains are fertile and that the river has come through the mountains, he sees in terms of first principles all the development that follows. While his mind is working thus, he is functioning in the sphere of Chesed whether he knows it or not; and all those who can also function in terms of Chesed and think ahead as he does, seeing the thing that must arise from given causes long before the first line is drawn on the plan or the first brick laid in the trench, are able to possess themselves of the valuable land where the wharfs must be built and the main street must run.

9. All the creative work of the world is done thus, by minds working in terms of Chesed the King seated upon his throne, holding sceptre and orb, ruling and guiding his people.

10. By contrast with this we observe the people whose minds cannot function above the level of Malkuth, the Bride of the King. They are the folk who cannot see the wood for trees. They think in terms of detail, lacking any synthetic principle. Their logic is never able to reach back to origins but is always materialistic. They are never able to discern subtle causes, and are the victims of what they call the caprices of chance. They are unable to discern subtle conditions, nor can they work out the line that primary impulses will follow, or can be made to follow, when these are coming down, or being brought down, into manifestation.

11. The occultist who does not possess the initiation of Chesed will be limited in his function to the sphere of Yesod, the plane of Maya, illusion. For him the astral images reflected in the magic mirror of subconsciousness will be actualities; he will make no attempt to translate them into terms of a higher plane and learn what they really represent. He will have made himself a dwelling in the sphere of illusion, and he will be deluded by the phantasms of his own unconscious projection. If he were able to function in terms of Chesed, he would perceive the underlying archetypal ideas of which these magical images are but the shadows and symbolic representations. He then becomes a master in the treasure-house of images instead of being hallucinated by them. He can use the images as a mathematician uses algebraic symbols. He works magic as an initiated adept and not as a magician.

12. The mystic functioning in the Christ-centre of Tiphareth, if he lacks the keys of Chesed, will also be hallucinated, but in a different and more subtle way. Upon this level he will read the magical images truly enough, referring them to that which they represent and giving them no values save as tokens, as St. Theresa has so clearly shown in her Interior Castle. He will fall into the error, however, of thinking that the images he perceives and the experiences he undergoes are the direct and personal dealings of God with his soul, instead of realising that they are stages on the Path. He will find a personal Saviour in the God-man instead of in the regenerative influence of the Christ-force. He will worship Jesus of Nazareth as God the Father, thus confounding the Persons.

13. Chesed, then, is the sphere of the formulation of the archetypal idea; the apprehension by consciousness of an abstract concept which is subsequently brought down the planes and concreted in the light of experience of the concretion of analogous abstract ideas. Equally, in its macrocosmic aspect, it represents a corresponding phase in the process of creation. Materialistic science believes that the only abstract concepts are those formulated by the mind of man. Esoteric science teaches that the Divine Mind formulated archetypal ideas in order that substance might take form, and that without such Archetypal ideas substance was formless and void, primordial slime awaiting the breath of life to organise into the crystal and cell. The latest researches in physics have revealed that every substance, without exception, has a crystalline structure, and the lines of tension that the psychic perceives as etheric stresses have been revealed by the X-rays.

14. A very important and very imperfectly understood part in the Mysteries is played by those beings who are generally called the Masters. Different schools define the term differently, and some include living adepts of a high grade among the Masters; but we consider that it is advisable to make a distinction between the incarnate and disincarnate Elder Brethren because their mission and mode of function are entirely different. The title of Master should therefore be given only to those who are free from the wheel of birth and death. In the terminology of the Western Esoteric Tradition the grade of Adeptus Exemptus is assigned to Chesed, the term Exemptus, or exempt, indicating that freedom from karma which liberates from the Wheel. I am fully aware that others may attach a different significance to the title, and that there are persons in incarnation who hold this grade. To these I reply that such persons, if the grade be a functioning one and not a mere empty honour, are karma-free and will not reincarnate. Such persons might justly be termed Masters, for their consciousness is of the grade of a Master, but as it is so necessary to make the distinction between incarnate and disincarnate adepts, it is better to qualify the classification by this minor distinction than to allow to humans a prestige which human nature is not fitted to bear. As long as an adept is incarnated he will be liable to human frailties in some degree, and to the limitations imposed by old age and physical health. It is not until he is free from the Wheel, and functions as pure consciousness, that he will escape from human bondage to heredity and environment; therefore the same reliance cannot be placed in him that can be placed in the true, disincarnate Masters.

15. A very important part of the work of the Masters is the concretion of the abstract ideas conceived by the Logoidal consciousness. The Logos, Whose meditation gives birth to worlds and Whose unfolding consciousness is evolution, conceives archetypal ideas out of the substance of the Unmanifest—to use a metaphor where definition is impossible. These ideas remain within the Cosmic consciousness of the Logos like the seed within the flower, because there is no soil therein for their germination. The Logoidal consciousness, as pure being, cannot upon Its own plane provide the formative aspect necessary for manifestation. It is taught in the esoteric traditions that the Masters, disincarnate consciousnesses disciplined by form but now formless, in their meditations upon the Godhead are able to perceive telepathically these archetypal ideas in the mind of God, and by realising the practical application of them to the planes of form and the line this development will follow, produce concrete images in their own consciousness which serve to bring the abstract archetypal ideas down to the first of the planes of form, called by the Qabalists, Briah.

16. This, then, is the work that the Masters perform in their special sphere, the sphere of the organising, up-building, constructive Chesed on the Pillar of Mercy. The work of the Dark Masters, who are quite different from the Black Adepts, is performed in the corresponding sphere of Geburah, on the Pillar of Severity, which will be considered in due course. The point of contact between the Masters and their human disciples is in Hod, the Sephirah of ceremonial magic, as is indicated by the Yetziratic Text, which declares that from Gedulah, the Fourth Sephirah emanates the essence of Hod. These hints given in the Yetziratic Texts concerning the relations between the individual Sephiroth are very important in practical occultism. Hod, then, may be taken as representing Chokmah and Chesed upon a lower arc, even as Netzach represents Binah and Geburah. This will be explained in detail when these Sephiroth are dealt with, but it must be referred to briefly now in order to make the function of Chesed intelligible.

17. We have now reached a point in the scheme of the Tree where the type of activity comes within the range of human consciousness. In the study of the preceding Sephiroth we were formulating metaphysical concepts. These concepts, although remote from immediate application to the life of form, are exceedingly important, for unless they are at the basis of our understanding of esoteric science we shall fall into superstition and use magic as magicians, not as adepts; in other words, we shall be unable to transcend the bondage of the planes of form and will be hallucinated and fall under the domination of the phantoms evoked by the magical imagination, instead of using them as the beads on the abacus of our calculations, which is as if the engineer used the slide-rule as if it were a foot-rule.

18. Chesed, then, reflects into Hod through the Christ-centre of Tiphareth, just as Geburah reflects into Netzach. This teaches us a great deal, for it indicates that for consciousness to rise from form to force, and for force to descend to form, it must pass through the Centre of Equilibrium and Redemption, to which are assigned the Mysteries of the Crucifixion.

19. It is to the Sphere of Chesed that the exalted consciousness of the adept rises in his occult meditations; it is here that he receives the inspirations which he works out on the planes of form. It is here that he meets the Masters as spiritual influences contacted telepathically, without any intermingling of personality. This is the true, and the highest mode of contact with the Masters, contact with them as mind to mind in their own sphere of exalted consciousness. When the Masters are seen clairvoyantly as robed beings, the colours of whose robes indicate their ray, they are being perceived reflected into the sphere of Yesod, which is the kingdom of phantasms and hallucinations. We are treading on precarious ground when we have to meet the Masters here. It is here that the anthropomorphic form is given to the spiritual inspiration which so misleads those psychics who cannot rise to Chesed. It is thus that the announcement of a spiritual impulse flowing out upon the world gets interpreted as the coming of a World Teacher.

20. As we come down the Tree into those spheres more within the range of our comprehension than the Three Supernals, we find the symbols associated with each Sephirah becoming more and more eloquent as they speak to our experience instead of causing us to reason by analogy.

21. The magical image representing Chesed is a mighty throned and crowned king; throned because he is seated in stability in a kingdom at peace, not going forth in his chariot to war, as is suggested by the magical image of Geburah. The additional titles of Chesed—Majesty, Love— bear out this concept of the benignant king, the father of his people; and the situation of Chesed in the centre of the Pillar of Mercy further bears out the idea of stability and ordered and merciful law, governing for the good of the governed. The title of the angelic host associated with Chesed—the Chasmalim, or Brilliant Ones—enhances the idea of the royal splendour of Gedulah, which is an alternative title frequently used for Chesed. The Mundane Chakra assigned to Chesed—Jupiter, the great benignity of astrology—confirms the whole chain of associations.

22. Upon the microcosmic, or subjective, side we find that the virtue assigned to this sphere of experience is that of obedience. It is only through the virtue of obedience that the subject can profit by the wise rule of Chesed. We have to sacrifice much of our independence and egoism in order to share in the amenities of organised social life. From this sacrifice and restriction there is no escape. In this sphere no more than in any other is impossible to eat one’s cake and have it. There is no such thing as liberty if liberty is to be interpreted as unrestricted self-will. The force of gravity resists us, if nothing else. Liberty might be defined as the right to choose one’s master, for a ruler one must have in all organised corporate life, else there is chaos. It is effectual and inspiring leadership that is the crying need of the world at the present time, and country after country is seeking and finding the ruler who approximates most closely to its national ideal, and is falling in as one man behind him. It is the benign, organised in the ordering Jupiter influence that is the only medicine for the world’s sickness; as this comes to bear, the nations will recover their emotional poise and physical health.

23. Conversely, the vices assigned to Chesed—bigotry, hypocrisy, gluttony, and tyranny—are all social vices. Bigotry refuses to move with the times or see another point of View, both fatal vices in racial relationships. Hypocrisy implies that we do not give ourselves whole-heartedly to the corporate life, but, like Ananias, keep back a part of the price. Gluttony exposes us to the temptation of taking more than our fair share of the common store, and is but another name for selfishness. And tyranny is that wrong use of authority which arises where there are taints of cruelty and vanity in the nature.

24. The correspondence in the microcosm is given as the left arm, which indicates a less dynamic mode of the functioning of power than that of the right hand which grasps the sword in the magical image of Geburah. The left hand holds the orb, which signifies the earth itself, and shows that all is held secure in the firm grasp of the ruler. Chesed, in fact, denotes firmness rather than dynamic strength and energy.

25. The mystical number of Chesed is said to be four, and this is often represented as a foursided figure, or tetrahedron. A talisman of Jupiter is always set up on such a figure. Another symbol of Chesed is the solid figure as understood in geometry. The reason for this is easily seen if one considers the geometrical figures assigned to the Sephiroth which have already been studied. The point is assigned to Kether; the line to Chokmah; the two-dimensional plane to Binah; consequently the three-dimensional solid naturally falls to Chesed.

26. But more is signified in this connection than a mere random series of symbols. The solid essentially represents manifestation as it is known to our three-dimensional consciousness. We cannot conceive of one- or two-dimensional existence save mathematically or symbolically. Chesed, as we have already noted, is the first of the manifested Sephiroth; therefore how naturally does the symbol of the solid figure come into line with the rest of its symbolism. The solid figure used for the purpose of symbolising Chesed is usually the pyramid, which is a four-sided figure, consisting of three faces and a base, thus expressing the numerological quality of Chesed.

27. There are many different aspects of the cross as a significant Mystery symbol, besides the Calvary Cross of the Christian Mystery, and each of these crosses represents different modes of the functioning of spiritual power, just as do the different forms of the Holy Names of God. The form of cross associated with Chesed is the equal-armed cross, which is symbolic of the four elements in equilibrium, and implies the ruling of nature by a synthesising influence which brings all things into balanced harmony.

28. The orb, wand, sceptre, and crook, all assigned to this Sephirah, express so perfectly the different aspects of the benign royal power of Chesed that they are in no need of elucidation.

29. The four Tarot cards that are placed on Chesed when the pack is set up for a divination carry out the ruling idea in the correspondence. The Four of Wands symbolises Perfected Work, thus representing admirably the achievement of the king in peace-time in his well-governed kingdom. The Four of Cups is called the Lord of Pleasure, and is in keeping with the title of Splendour assigned to Chesed and with the brilliancy of its angelic host. The Four of Swords indicates Rest from Strife, and agrees perfectly with the significance of the seated ruler. The Four of Pentacles is the Lord of Earthly Power, a symbolism so obvious that it needs no elucidation.

30. The consideration of the Yetziratic Text has been left to the last in this study, in order that the sequence of the symbolism, unfolding in such ordered relationship, might not be broken in upon. Moreover, this text contains so much significance that it is best studied when we are as fully equipped as possible with the cognate symbolism. Much that relates to the thing contained in this text, however, has already been studied as it came up for examination in relation to the preceding Sephiroth. I will not repeat this at length, but content myself with referring the student to those pages where the matters are dealt with in detail, thus avoiding needless repetition which otherwise is bound to occur in the study of such a subject as the Tree of Life, where different symbols represent the same potency upon different levels of manifestation or under different aspects.

31. “The Fourth Path is called the Cohesive Intelligence.” How clearly can we see the meaning of these words when we have learnt to look upon Chesed through the symbol of the king seated upon his throne, organising the resources and prosperity of his kingdom, and causing all things to be drawn together into an ordered whole for the common good.

32. It is also called the Receptive Intelligence in the Yetziratic Text, and this is borne out in the symbol of the left arm, which is assigned to this Sephirah in the microcosm.

33. Chesed “contains all the Holy Powers, and from it emanate all the spiritual virtues with the most exalted Essences.” The teaching implicit in this statement has already been elucidated in the previous exegesis under the concept of archetypal ideas.

34. “They emanate one from another by virtue of the primordial emanation, the Highest Crown, Kether.” These concepts have already been dealt with in relation to the Second Sephirah, Chokmah, when the overflowing of force from Sphere to Sphere was considered.