The Kabbalah Unveiled — S. L. MacGregor Mathers (from Knorr von Rosenroth's Latin) (1887)

• 38. There are three qabalistical veils of the negative existence, and in themselves they formulate the hidden ideas of the Sephiroth not yet called into being, and they are concentrated in Kether, which in this sense is the Malkuth of the hidden ideas of the Sephiroth. I will explain this. The first veil of the negative existence is the AIN, Ain = Negativity. This word consists of three letters, which thus shadow forth the first three Sephiroth or numbers. The second veil is the AIN SVP, Ain Soph — the Limitless. This title consists of six letters, and shadows forth the idea of the first six Sephiroth or numbers. The third veil is the AIN SVP AYR, Ain Soph Aur = the Limitless Light. This again consists of nine letters, and symbolizes the first nine Sephiroth, but of course in their hidden idea only. But when we reach the number nine we cannot progress farther without returning to the unity, or the number one, for the number ten is but a repetition of unity freshly derived from the negative, as is evident from a glance at its ordinary representation in Arabic numerals, where the circle o represents the Negative and the 1 the Unity. Thus, then, the limitless ocean of negative light does not proceed from a centre for it is centreless , but it concentrates a centre , which is the number one of the manifested Sephiroth, Kether, the Crown, the First 'Sephira ; which therefore may be said to be the Malkuth or number ten of the hidden Sephiroth. (See Plate II.) Thus, u Kether is in Malkuth, and Malkuth is in Kether.” Or, as an alchemical author of great repute (Thomas Vaughan, better known as Eugenius Pkilalethes) says,*
• * “ Euphrates ; or, The Waters of the East.”

o

INTRODUCTION.

apparently quoting from Proclus : “ That the heaven is in the earth, but after an earthly manner ; and that the earth is in the heaven, but after a heavenly manner.” But inasmuch as negative existence is a subject incapable of definition, as I have before shown, it is rather considered by the Qabalists as depending back from the number of unity than as a separate consideration therefrom ; wherefore they frequently apply the same terms and epithets indiscriminately to either. Such epithets are “The Concealed of the Concealed,” “The Ancient of the Ancient Ones,” the “ Most Holy Ancient One,” &c.

39. I must now explain the real meaning of the terms Sephira and Sephiroth. The first is singular, the second is plural. The best rendering of the word is “ numerical emanation.” There are ten Sephiroth, which are the, most abstract forms of the ten numbers of the decimal scale — i.e., the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Therefore, as in the higher mathematics we reason of numbers in their abstract sense, so in the Qabalah we reason of the Deity by the abstract forms of the numbers ; in other words, by the SPIRYTh, Sephiroth. It was from this ancient Oriental theory that Pythagoras derived his numerical symbolic ideas.

40. Among these Sephiroth, jointly and severally, we find the development of the persons and attributes of God. Of these some are male and some female. How, for some reason or other best known to themselves, the translators of the Bible have carefully crowded out of existence and smothered up every reference to the fact that the Deity is both masculine and feminine. They have translated a feminine plural by a masculine singular in the case of the word Elohim. They have, however, left an inadvertent admission of their knowledge that it was plural in Gen. iv. 26 : “ And Elohim said : Let Us make man.” Again (v. 27), how could Adam be made in the image of the Elohim, male and female, unless the Elohim were male and female also ? The word Elohim

KABBALAH.