The Sefer Yetzirah Study – Chapter 3

“He placed them in a circle like a wall with 231 Gates”

Leicester 2003 (Birmingham) – Bath 2004 (Cardiff 2004)

Having established our Foundation and the intent behind the study of the letters, we continued with the Sefer Yetzirah. In this section of the commentary I will outline the instructions of the text and the interpretation of the theory behind them and then in the practical section I will list some of the results of working with them.

The text reads “22 Letters of Foundation” and this was taken to mean the Letters “of Yesod”, which constitutes the first Sefira of Yetzirah and acts as the bridge between the real world and the world of imagination “Yetzirah.” Yesod is our Sefira of unification, outlined above, the place where physical combines with mental, where spiritual combines with material. The letters were to be seen as symbols of distinct types of spiritual/mental energy, force or kinesis relating to the 3 elements, the 7 planets and the 12 signs of the zodiac. Since Yesod, Yetzirah, is often considered as male (Zeir Anpin / Ben meaning Son) and Malkuth as female (Nuqba, fallen daughter) it was theorised that the letters were in fact vehicles of impregnation and the spiritual energy or force would find material manifestation.

The text reads “stand them in a circle like a wall with 231 gates” and Aryeh Kaplan’s advice is to visualise each letter as infinitely big, a whole universe of that particular Yetziratic idea in its own right. The letters then were perceived as “stonehenge” like blocks standing around the circumference of our Sefira Yesod and interconnecting with each other and the centre of the circle via their own direct opposite.

We, as students, imagined that we were in the centre of this circle and, facing Alef to begin with, rotated our visualisation through a depiction of infinite letters over a period of between a fortnight and a month per letter. I want to point out that times of meditation were not dictated by astrological concerns at this point of the study although in hindsight it is something I believe should probably have been considered. The duration of the study was more dictated by the exhaustion of the students with the analysis and visualisation of a particular letter.

The text instructs the student to use various methods to obtain insight into the letters using verbs such as “carve, engrave, permute, weigh, probe, etc” Pottery and stonework were major influences behind the choice of these verbs but these material sciences must be applied in the spiritual world; hence the construction of an infinite letter in the mind means contemplating the desgin of the letter, making a mould of it within the imagination, filling this mould and then using the implement created to probe the imagination with. The substance that the letter is formed out of and which it hews into is the stuff of thought, which some understand as Logos, or raw meaning, and some see as Azoth or the astral light, it is however, our one substance acquired in Ch 1 and the substance of “sefira” (i.e. Yesod) itself.

Two important considerations before continuing into the practical section of Ch 2 of the SY were the necessity of working in a group of students and under or with some kind of spiritual master. Firstly the importance of groupwork is down to validation of the experience through discussion which reduces the sense of madness (or losing touch with the self) and a deepening of the experience through the sharing of ideas and experiences. Secondly the importance of the spiritual master is to rescue the students when, as legend says, they ‚”sink into the earth up to the waist” – Since revelations within a study of this kind can be truly earth-shattering it is sensible to have a model of success to cling to and to aspire towards and the three main recommendations for this would be Trismegistus, Jesus and Elijah.