Binah, Understanding

Three: Water from Breath.
With it He engraved and carved 22 letters
From Chaos and void,
mire and clay.
He engraved them like a sort of garden,
He carved them like a sort of wall,
He covered them like a sort of ceiling
And He poured snow over them and it became dust as it is written,
"For to snow He said, 'Become earth.'"[1]
— Sepher Yetzirah

Binah is the Mother of Form, the form part of the duality of force and form. (Force is Chokmah.) It constrains the creativity that comes out of Chokmah, introducing the possibility of boundaries, and is the root of separation, without which there can be no distinction made between one thing and another.

Binah and its brother, Chokmah, are the key to illumination. Sepher Yetzirah tells us, "Understand with Wisdom, be wise with Understanding" (I:4). Wisdom (nonverbal thought) can only be experienced — explained, made accessible to us — when it is clothed with Understanding (verbal thought). Wisdom without understanding, or understanding without wisdom, is empty. The Magician must learn to shift between them, oscillating between verbal Binah understanding and nonverbal Chokmah wisdom.