The Tree of Life, being a representation of the Ten Spheerote of the Book Of Formation, symbolizes what these latter in turn represent, the octahedron, though in a cryptic form. It seems the later Qabbalists developed the ideas of the spheerote in such a manner as to conceal the original structure. The writings of these later Qabbalists are masterpieces of dissemblance aimed at protecting the secret doctrines of the mystics from the uninitiated (although in fact the six directions are explicitly mentioned in the opening sections of the Zohar). Consequently, the Tree of Life contains the octahedron merely implicitly, and it is only by prolonged exegesis of the texts that one can extract this geometrical matrix. Nonetheless, persistent study of the texts reveals that the three spheerote of the top triad represent the three axes of the octahedron, while the six spheerote of the lower two triads represent the six vertices. And there is also a secret spheerah--Daath, or Knowledge--which can be said to represent the seventh point, in the center of the octahedron. The bottom spheerah, which is the World of Action, is sometimes said to be the world of the Four Elements: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. This reference to the elements connects this spheerah with the four classes of the twelve Zodiacal signs--i.e., Fire signs, Water signs, etc.--and thereby with the "twelve oblique borders" of the Book Of Formation.¹⁶ And of course, these twelve borders are the twelve edges of the octahedron.