Thelemistas QBL | The Ari Tree

The Ari Tree

the Ari tree layout The Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria, was a Sixteenth Century C.E. Jewish mystic and scholar. He expounded a layout of the Tree of Life different from both the usual Hermetic Qabalah and the Gra. The Ari's layout, which you can see here, is the one generally used in Jewish expositions about Sefer Yetzirah and the Bahir.

This is the arrangement of Sephiroth we normally associate with the Tree, but you will notice some radical differences in the paths. First, perhaps most significantly, there is a path connecting Binah with Chesed; and so there are paths associated with the entire path taken by the Flash in its descent. This path and the one connecting Chokmah to Geburah are missing from the Hermetic Tree; and the paths in that tree connecting Malkuth with Hod and with Netzach are missing here.

Too, most of the paths are assigned to different letters. This and the Gra Tree hold to the idea that mother letters connect the left and right Pillars and doubles reach up the Pillars; but the Gra holds that simples connect between adjacent Pillars whereas the Ari breaks that pattern. Ari and Gra also disagree in their assignation of letters to paths.

You can explore these paths further by reading about Adam Kadmon.

Which one is "right"? Not my place to say, though I will say that this is my favored arrangement. See how this arrangement places ר, which we equate with the Sun, reaching up toward Tiphareth, the Sephirah we associate with the Sun. Ari and Gra share this arrangement, but see here too how ה and ו, two letters of the Ineffable Name, communicate between the Supernals: ה (indicating "breath") from Kether to Chokmah; and ו (indicating "phallus") from Kether to Binah.