The Three Pillars

In attempting to classify the universe, we tend to try to divide things into groups of opposites: positive and negative, light and dark, male and female, passive and aggressive, Yin and Yang. For any one of those classes, however, you can find things that don't fit — that are neither positive nor negative, or which at least in theory are male and female. Even Yin and Yang have a balancing principle, Tao, that joins them.

In its layout, the Tree reflects that three-way division.[1] Moreover, it shows us that the entire concept of division happens after we have already parted from the Infinite.

We define its three pillars as -

• Mercy, the right pillar, having positive or generative principles.
• Severity, the left pillar, having negative[2] or receptive principles.
• Balance, the middle pillar, having balancing or mediating principles.

The Flash that created the Universe first emanates from the Infinite in Kether, the topmost Sephirah of the middle pillar; and at the end of its descent it ends in Malkuth, also in the middle pillar. The universe is a balance of forces. It begins in balance: no division has yet been seen. And it ends in balance: the last result of division is a convergence.

In between, the power swings between polarities, states of being that we classify in one of those three ways and thus assign to one of the three pillars. Those polarities also align themselves into Triads, and the Triads themselves also fall generally into one of the pillars. The Tree is reflections, and reflections of reflections, and reflections of reflections of reflections,[3] world without end, Amen.

This three-way division also finds its expression in the Hebrew alphabet. The Aleph-Bet has three "mother" letters, its (approximate) beginning, middle, and end letters, that represent those three states, by way of the three Hebrew elements. Shin (ש) is fire, thesis; Mem (מ) is water, antithesis; and Aleph (א) is air, synthesis.

Sefer Yetzirah relates these mother letters to the pillars by implication, when it says in verse 2:1:

The three Mother Letters are Alef, Mem, Shin. Their foundation is a pan of merit, a pan of liability, and the tongue of decree deciding between them.

Read more about:

mother letters | Discordians | reflection

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