Levi

[flexibeast]

Today i read Eliphas Levi's Elements of the Qabalah, a series of letters in which Levi sets out his basic ideas about Qabalah. i found it to be a fascinating read, and a pleasant break from reading Crowley's Book of Thoth, which i've been finding to be rather dense. Levi writes:

The Qabalah, or traditional science of the Hebrews, might be called the mathematics of human thought. It is the algebra of faith. It solves all problems on the soul as equations, by isolating the unknowns.

and also notes, interestingly, that:

Without faith, science leads to doubt; without science, faith leads to superstition. Uniting them brings certainty, but in doing so they must never be confused with each other.

Levi summarises the Sephiroth thus:

God, then, in the supreme power or crown (Kether) which sits upon immutable wisdom (Chokmah) and creative intelligence (Binah); in him are goodness (Hesed) and justice (Geburah) which are the ideal of beauty (Tiphereth). In him are for ever victorious movement (Netzach) and the great eternal rest (Hod). His desire is a continual giving of life (Yesod) and his kingdom (Malkuth) is the immensity which populates the universe.¹

Other points of interest for me included some correspondences which i've not come across before (for example, Hod with 'Eternity', Yesod with 'Productivity', Nun with 'Reversibility' and Tzaddi with 'Shadow and reflection'), and his notions that "the Catholic-Christian dogma is entirely Qabalistic" and that "the Catholic religion is the only one which can justifiably be called natural, and yet, this is true, for it alone satisfies with any fulness at all this natural need of man, which is the religious sense."

So even though Levi believed that "religion, like humanity, is one, always progressing, always changing, always the same", he also apparently believed that some religions are betterer than others. :-)

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1. Compare I Chronicles 29:11 in the (KJV) Bible:

Thine, O LORD, is the greatness [lit. 'gedulah', which is sometimes used for the Sephirah Chesed], and the power [lit. 'geburah'], and the glory [lit. 'tiphareth'], and the victory [lit. 'netzach'], and the majesty [lit. 'hod']: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine ; thine is the kingdom [lit. 'mamlakah'; but the Sephirah Malkuth is usually given the English title 'Kingdom'], O LORD, and thou art exalted as head above all.