The Tree of Life II - Qabalah is the New Black

Those of you who have been following the work on this site will know that it is about harmonizing the Tree of Life with both traditional sources and modern biochemical understanding.

Kabbalistic Tradition states that the paths on the Tree of Life are associated with the elements, planets and zodiac signs, the three elements being related to the three horizontal paths, the seven planets to the seven vertical paths and the twelve zodiac signs to the twelve diagonals.  Within this rule the Kabbalistic authorities disagree on what should exactly go where, for instance should Shin be the topmost horizontal or should the letter Beit be associated with the Moon or Saturn.

In creating the Saadia Array I have followed the simplest and most logical method of attribution along with the associations in the Saadia edition of the the manuscript Sefer Yetzirah.

The elements are in the order they appear in the Sefer Yetzirah and in the Alefbeit - Air (Alef -1st horizontal), Water (Mem - 2nd horizontal), Fire (Shin - 3rd horizontal)

The planets are in the Chaldean order and associated with the doubles in the order the appear in Alefbeit - Saturn (Beit, top central vertical),  Jupiter (Gimel, top right vertical), Mars (Dalet, top left vertical), Sol (Kaph, central central vertical), Venus (Pe, bottom right vertical), Mercury (Resh, bottom left vertical) and Moon (bottom central vertical).

The zodiac paths are in the order that they appear in the zodiac (Aries - Pisces) associated with the order they appear in the Alefbeit (Heh - Qoph) and distributed from top to bottom with Aries-Taurus at the ''top'' and Aquarius-Pisces at the ''bottom''.  This manifests the Zodiac man in the Aura

YOU - ON QABALAH

When we say ''top'' we mean towards Keter and when we say ''bottom'' we mean towards Malkuth, but the spatial directions along with the dimension of time and the observer (the Ten Depths of the SY) are associated with the Ten Sefirot.  There is some discrepancy between sources for these attributions but the six spatial directions are often associated with the central six Sefirot of Zeir Anpin.

The complete Saadia Array* then looks like this:

Looking at this array we can see that the planets are astrologically harmonized with the depths, for example - Sol runs between the depth of East and the depth of West, East through Saturn into the depth of Future and our Death, West through Moon returning to the past of our Birth*.  We can see the traditional beneficent expansive fortuitousness of Jupiter in its position between the Depth of Good and the Depth of South. Similarly the malefic Mars between the Depth of Evil and the Depth of  Cold.

Looking to the right of the diagram you will see the correspondences for cellular consciousness.  The idea is that consciousness is rooted in our cells, and our DNA, and that the structure of our consciousness is congruent with the structure of the cell.

Unfortunately there is not time to go into a detailed exegesis of this at the moment but I will provide some examples.  

Endosomes are the transport system of the cell - you can imagine them as cargo boxes carrying material from the blood to the various facilities within the cell.  As we know Jupiter as Gimel (Camel) represents the camel caravans so important to life in earlier times.  Endosomes then facilitate the ''trade'' between cells and the blood itself.

Lysosomes are the defence system of the cell - they are also little containers but their cargo is the lytic enzyme known as lysozyme.  When material is passed into these containers the lysozyme breaks down that material into its constituent molecules - this may be as routine as waste disposal or as militaristic as the destruction of invading bacteria/viruses.  Of the basic organelles of the cell these are those most appropriate to the powers of Mars.

Lets look at Aries and Libra as our examples of the cellular correspondences of the Zodiac signs as Mr Coppock suggests they are important at the moment because of events in space.

ARIES

Aries is associated with the replication fork which is the beginning stage of the cell cycle and fundamental to the process by which cells replicate themselves.  It is wisely associated with Aries not only by virtue of it being the ''Spring'' of life, but also because the spiral horns of Aries echo the spiraling force of replication which emerges from the replication fork.

REPLICATION FORK

REPLICATION FORK

LIBRA

Libra then, is rightly associated with the processes that occur in the splicing of mRNA whereby introns (DNA regions coding for ''nonsense'') are removed and exons (meaningful regions) are brought together for the purpose of transcribing proteins.  What is most fascinating about these associations is how the zodiac glyphs exactly resemble our modern biochemical understanding of these processes. 

mRNA splicing

The information in the Cellular Correspondences of the Saadia Array can supplement the detailed physiognomy we have already laid out on this site.  The pathway between certain characters is not only a pathway between various endocrine glands on the physiological level but a pathway within each cell.  If we can identify someone as being on the path between Chokmah and Chesed (somewhere in between an ''Ignorant Fool'' and a ''Shellfish'') we know that not only will the hormonal area emphasized be serotonin and the immune self recognition system but also endosomes on the cellular level.  Whilst I appreciate this is complicated for the dabbler it is of immense practical value in healing***.

*Pathways with Hebrew Letters for Saadia Array

**Obviously this Saadia Array can be used alongside the Metabolism of Time - the head is in the future because the brain is pre-empting the next event, second guessing the flow of time, the ''food'' we eat, or the experiences we have, are ''digested'' and when all nutrition is removed the ''faecal matter'' is the past (that we have not stored as memories in our genitals i.e. for passing on genetic memory).  In order to fully integrate the Saadia Array with the Metabolism of Time one must resolve the mystery of Daat.

***The physiological problem highlights the cellular problem highlights the personality problem.  This still does not resolve the human quandary of whether it is better to be a suffering somebody or a smiling nobody.