Chokmah, Wisdom

The sphere itself

Chokmah is the first thing that happens after Kether.
In the Crown everything is one piece. In Chokmah it moves, and the moment it moves there are two things instead of one: the force, and the direction it is going.
The old books call it the active, outgoing wisdom, and they describe it as lightning. Sudden, bright, and gone before you have finished looking at it.

I think of Chokmah as the idea before anyone asked for it.
The flash that arrives in the shower. The answer that turns up whole while you were thinking about something else.
It has no shape yet. Shape is the job of Binah, across the Tree on the left, and the two of them together are the whole creative act.

Your name here

When your Kabbalah number is 2, your name sits on Chokmah.
If you have read The Number 2 page you may be expecting the gentle diplomat, the one who keeps the peace.
This is a different 2 altogether, and it is worth saying so before you read on.

Ideas arrive in you with a quality of suddenness.
Insight comes whole. Your mind works like a receiver, catching things that seem to have formed somewhere else and simply landed.

Your inner life is fast and charged, whatever your outer pace looks like.
Ideas move through you quickly and you get restless in slow rooms that cannot keep up.

And you carry force.
The urge to make, to start, to say the thing out loud is strong in you. It is part of why you cannot sit still in a static situation for long.

Strengths

Your main gift is the flash that opens what was closed.
When a group has been stuck for an hour you are the one who says the sentence that moves it, and you may not even know where the sentence came from.
Teachers, writers, artists, inventors and readers of all kinds carry this signature.

Your second gift is presence.
Your energy moves whatever room you walk into, and stale situations come unstuck when you turn your attention to them.

When your Pythagorean numbers also carry a 2, the two sit together in an interesting way. You can look cooperative and easy on the surface while carrying real initiating power underneath, and people are often surprised by what you start.
When only the Kabbalah 2 is present, you are more forceful than the Pythagorean description of a 2 would ever suggest.

Challenges

The first shadow is brilliance without follow through.
Many inspirations, few finished pieces. Lightning on its own produces a lot of light and not much warmth.
The discipline that matures Chokmah is marrying the flash to the slow work of finishing.

The second is depending on the flash.
There are dry weeks between the strikes, and the untrained Chokmah does nothing in them, waiting for the next one.
Most of the work that lasts gets done on the days when nothing arrives.

The third is impatience with slower minds.
Quick insight can curdle into contempt for people who work things through step by step.
Remember that your flash is worth nothing until someone gives it a shape, and that someone is usually one of the slow ones.

In love and work

In love you need a partner who is not frightened by your speed and who will not try to dim it.
You also need one who can catch what you throw and hold it steady while you go on to the next thing, because the Chokmah person without a Binah person nearby leaves a trail of half built things.
Choose someone who finishes.

In work you belong at the start of things.
Research, design, creative direction, the first draft, the new venture, the opening move.
Hand the long middle to people who are good at it and stay close enough to answer their questions.

The lesson under both is the responsible use of inspiration.
Receive the lightning. Then do the slower thing. Then do it again.

On the Tree

Four paths touch Chokmah.
Aleph comes down from Kether and carries The Fool. Daleth runs across to Binah and carries The Empress. Heh runs down to Tiphareth and carries The Emperor. Vav runs down the right hand pillar to Chesed and carries The Hierophant.
The Twenty Two Paths page has the whole set.

The four Twos sit on Chokmah, one of each suit, the first choice after the Ace.
In the Tree of Life Spread, Chokmah is card 2, the first spark of force, what drives you and sets things going.

Across the traditions

The Number 2 page describes the Pythagorean 2, the partner and the peacemaker, and the contrast with this sphere could hardly be sharper.
The two systems arrive at different numbers for the same person, so read both pages and see which one you recognise.
The tradition gives Chokmah the whole zodiac. The Signs pages in Western Astrology walk through all twelve, and your Sun sign is the piece of that wheel you were handed.

What was the last idea that arrived in you whole, and what did you do with it?

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

Related pages
The Tree of Life Spread