The Three Other Worlds Page 14

This excursion into the World of Emanation has given us as good an approximation of the list of Divine Names as we could hope to get. More than likely, there was not a single, official list, considering that Qabbalism spanned some ten centuries and its devotees ranged from Baghdad to Spain. Consequently, it would be unreasonable, given such a large time-frame and such great distances, to expect universal agreement on a speculative subject such as the Divine Names. This of course does not give us the right to manufacture our own list of Divine Names, and we would be reluctant to offer the present list if it were based soley upon our specualtions. However, the fact that at least six of the names in our reconstructed list were the only ones ever assigned in the order given here does speak in favor of our results. Besides, considering the inconsistent nature of the available information, the most we can be sure of is that there was some sort of systematic development of the two roots: Yah and El. Consequently, we have used this "systematic development" as the guidelines for our reconstruction while, at the same time, relying upon the most commonly accepted of the Divine Names assigned to each of the spheerote.
The Divine Names given here represent the spheerote of the highest of the four worlds, the World of Emanation, which is the immediate consequence of the Divine Will. In the second world, the World of Creation, the ten spheerote are represented by the ten Archangels, again taken from Jewish tradition. In addition, each of these Archangels ruled over an army of angels, and each of these represents one of the ten spheerote in the third world, th World of Formation. Furthermore, each of these angelic armies inhabits one of the ten celestial stations (the Heavenly Spheres, as they are called): the spheres of the earth, the seven astrological planets, and the two higher celestial spheres, those of the stars and the "Empyrean". And in fact these ten heavenly realms represent the spheerote in the lowest world, the World of Action. As we see, then, each of the ten spheerah of the Archetypic World has four lower reflections, one in each of the Four Worlds. For instance, from the spheerah Crown emanates the spheerah of the Divine Name Yahweh Eloheem, the spheerah of the Archangel Michael, the spheerah of the host Malakeem ('Kings'), and spheerah of the planet Shemesh, the Sun. Taking these spheerote in reverse order, as they might be viewed by the Chariot mystics, the Sun is inhabited by an army of angels called Kings whose leader, the Archangel Michael, rules under the authority of the name Yahweh Eloheem. And this pattern—of the celestial station, the angelic host, the Archangel, and the Divine Name—is repeated for each of the other spheerote, to complete the Four Worlds.

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