venicebard said:
Interestingly, on p. 68 she intuits that the son (vau or 4-9) generated by divine unification within the soul during prayer (union of 1-2 and 3, yod and heh) is none other than one's higher self: now this is close to the truth, in that the self's three parts in Atzilut are 8-9-10 and project themselves onto nature clear over to 4, the beginning of manifestation, so the vav-heh of the Name, taken as 4-10, does establish the self (which then undergoes the catastrophe of its doer allowing itself to be distracted by the senses from its own thinker and knower, without whose guidance it cannot act responsibly in the dark present instant, since the senses report only the past).
There is a slight problem with this interpretation, in that it is in their original emanation that the Sefirot extending to 10 establish the high self (or simply the self, the conscious self), while the 'divine unification' she refers to, that alluded to in the Partzufim (vast countenance 1, father -2, mother -3, son -4-5-6-7-8-9, and 'female' -10), are seemingly associated (in Lurianic Kabbalah) with the
tikkun or restoration, meaning the
ascent of the Tree in Yetzirah! (the commonly pictured Tree, with 3 male, 3 female, and 4 neutral stations). Yet this ascent back up the types does lead eventually to the reunification of the self (meaning the reawakening of the doer to the rest of the self's existence), so it is not a serious problem.
Moving right along, on p. 108f she makes a
very interesting suggestion, namely that the 3-letter roots in Hebrew may have something to do with mapping of objects in 3 dimensions, or (since Hebrew thought is dynamic not static and roots mostly verbs not nouns) a wave pattern's "frequency, amplitude, and phase." This is something I am going to have to think about carefully now that I am studying these roots: how to characterize the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd positions
in these roots.
On pp. 150ff, she shows grammatically why yod as Abba (2) may be associated with the first person singular,
ani (ending in yod and an "ee" sound) being 'I', heh as Imma (3) with the second person singular,
atah (ending in heh and an "ah" sound) being 'thou' (masculine), and vav as Ze'ir Anpin (4-) with the third person singular,
hu (ending in vav and a "oo" sound) being 'he' (masculine). She derives this from an identification of the first two plus the
first person
plural 'we',
anachnu, with the three parts of the Hebrew prayer service. These, the three letters of the Tetragrammaton, she associates with the midpoint and two extremes of the vowel spectrum, which is quite apropos.
Of course she disappoints me considerably with phrases like, "When man was still more mammalian than human" (p. 159), showing she 'buys' the neo-Darwinian myth and thus misses the
main point of the Adam Qadmon teaching (that the Idea or Form
upright sentience is the eternal 'attractor', and that there will always be beings at various distances from that goal, including some far
far closer to its realization than we humans are).
But then she will awe me with her perspicacity when she says things like (p. 160): "Thus it would appear that the Hebrew language, liike the Greek and the English, was originally composed of letters signifying both vowels and consonants. In addition to the three Tetragrammaton letters, which still appear in many Hebrew words as signifiers of the three main long fowels, there are also the two now-silent letters of Aleph and Ayin, which also are often signifiers of vowels in Hebrew words, the former as in Adonai and the latter as in Sh'ma." I would not expect her, of course, to catch the fact that zayin also was probably originally the vowel
i (or that teyt corresponds to the
bardic vowel Aa). She also tries to bring the Chakras into her system, something I have not even attempted.
In discussing the Hexagram, she brings up the fundamental quote attributed to Maria the Jewess: "One becomes two, two becomes three, and by means of the third and fourth achieves unity: thus two are but one."
Something I am very happy you made me look at my notes again for is that she states on p. 217 that "many authorities consider the
Sefer Yetzirah to be referred to under the term Ma'aseh Bereshit[/i] in the Mishnah, redacted in 204 C.E." This shows that the naming of it after the 3rd or Yetzirah world was a later overlay, a blind, and that it does indeed, as I have ever maintained, describe the Sefirot in the 2nd or Beriyah world -- that of Creation -- not the 3rd (that of Formation). This is obious to
me from the fact that here they form pairs, not triplets as in the common Tree.
In discussing the Hexagram's points' relation to the days of creation (diagram p. 226), she correctly pins fire to the uppermost point (and triangle pointing thereto) and the shamanic upperworld, water to the lowermost point (and triangle pointing thereto) and the shamanic lowerworld. And on p. 240, she points out that it is the 3rd or Yetzirah world "where a kabbalistic tradition places the Garden of Eden and the transgression of Adam."
All in all, much that is useful, but not the huge breakthrough I was hoping to find.