Kabbalah

That diagram is the Tree of Life. It is the one picture I keep coming back to after many years of reading, because almost everything else I use can be laid on it. The tarot sits on it. The planets sit on it. The letters of your name land on it. Once you know its shape, a great many loose pieces start to hold together.

What the Tree of Life is

The Tree is a map of how anything comes into being, from the first idea down to the thing sitting on your kitchen table. It has ten spheres. Each one is called a sephirah, and the plural is sephiroth. They run from Kether, the Crown, at the top, down to Malkuth, the Kingdom, at the bottom, and they are joined by twenty two paths.

Read from the top, the Tree is a picture of an idea becoming real. Read from the bottom, it is a picture of a person working their way back up to what they are made of. I read it both ways, often in the same sitting.

The ten spheres stand on three pillars. The right hand pillar gives, expands and pushes forward. The left hand pillar shapes, limits and defines. The middle pillar holds the balance between them, and that is where most of the work of a life gets done.

Where it comes from, and what I do with it

Kabbalah is the mystical tradition that grew inside Judaism over many centuries and reached its classical form in thirteenth century Spain. I am not teaching that tradition and I would not pretend to. What I use is the Western esoteric Kabbalah, sometimes called Hermetic Kabbalah, the Tree as the tarot tradition picked it up in the nineteenth century and has used ever since, and I use it with respect for where it came from. The Learning Kabbalah page tells that story properly.

How I use the Tree

Three ways, and you have probably met one of them already.

The first is the Tree of Life Spread, ten cards on the ten spheres, read down the Tree and across its pillars. It is one of the most read pages on this site, and it is the Tree in action. If you have laid that spread, you have already worked with Kabbalah whether you knew it or not.

The second is the cards themselves. The twenty two Major Arcana sit on the twenty two paths, each one joining two spheres. The Minor Arcana sit on the spheres, the four Aces at Kether and the four Tens at Malkuth, with every rank in between on its own sphere. When I read a card, I know where it lives on the Tree, and that tells me what it is moving between.

The third is your name. Each letter of your name takes a Hebrew style number, the letters are added and reduced, and the result places you on one of the spheres. This is your Kabbalah number, and I read it in every full portrait beside the Pythagorean numbers. The two systems give different numbers for the same name, and I have found the pair tells me more than either does alone.

How this section is laid out

The pages run in the order I would teach them.

Learning Kabbalah is the place to begin. It covers where the tradition comes from, what I use and what I leave alone, and why a tarot reader bothers with any of it.

The Tree of Life walks through the ten spheres in order, the three pillars, the lightning flash that zig zags down from Kether to Malkuth, the hidden sphere Daath, and the planets the tradition gives each sphere.

The Twenty Two Paths takes the lines between the spheres one at a time, with the Hebrew letter and the Major Arcana card that belongs to each.

Kabbalah Numerology shows you the letter values and the arithmetic, with two worked names, so you can find your own number on the back of an envelope.

The Sephiroth gives each sphere its own page, Kether to Malkuth and Daath, and tells you who you are when your name lands there. Use those pages the way you would use a good dictionary, after you have done your sums.

Where to start

Read The Tree of Life first, slowly, with the diagram in front of you. Then go to the Tree of Life Spread and lay it. The spheres stop being words on a page the moment there is a card sitting on each one.

Then work out your Kabbalah number and read the page for your sphere. Notice what fits and what does not. You will learn more from your own name on the Tree than from anything I could write about anyone else's.

You will be your own teacher. All I will do is help you remember what you already know.

If you would like your own chart read, my readings are here.

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