Dan/maleness and femaleness on the Tree

[Guest guest]

Dan Berkow, PhD wrote:

>

> "Dan Berkow, PhD" <berkowd

>

> Hi Antoine -

> It's been a long time ago that I went through a study of the Tree

> of Life in Qabala. Here is my understanding, perhaps

> clouded by the intervening years of nonstudy, of some of this:

> Hod is female, meaning intellect, and Netzach is male, associated

> with passion.

 

Hello Dan,

 

Your expression of the Tree is very Hod and beautiful. Hod, or the

intellect, being feminine as you write, may explain the deep attraction

men have for this form of expression, over Netzach.

 

In my understanding each sephiroth is a bindu surrounded by a different

mandala, which creates the specificity of that sephiroth. In this way,

each sephiroth also contains the Tree within. Hod, in being Hermess and

Aphrodite, becomes Hermaphrodite or androgine in Hod. And the "bindu"

that the "mandala" of Hod "points" to, could be seen as this, from a

bible perspective:

 

"When you will make the two beings as one, and you will make the inside

as the outside and the outside as the inside, the up as the down! And if

you make the male and the feminine in one, so that the male is not male

anymore and the female not feminine anymore, then you will enter the

kingdom" (Thomas, logion 17-18)

 

There are reasons that intellect (Hod)

> and power (Geburah or Godolah) are associated with the female side

> and passion (Netzach) and love (Chesed) associated

> with the male side. It has to do with contraction and expansion.

> Study of the tree, for me, culminated with an awareness of the

> contractive and expansive aspects of energy working, seeing these

> throughout all, thus a maleness and femaleness to any being or event.

> Each sephirot (sphere or realm of energy transformation),

> whether it is "male" or "female" has both a male and female aspect,

> as each sephirot receives and gives energy.

> Through maleness and femaleness, energy transforms continually.

>

> Chokmah is male and associated with wisdom, Briah is female and

> associated with understanding. The maleness of wisdom and

> femaleness of understanding have to do with the unity of

> conscious and unconscious, time and space, to come together at

> Kether, the all-containing point - which emanated Chokmah and Binah.

> The Tree is within and around us, and we "travel back" along the

> path by which we emanated, finding the Source that is us.

> This journey is within ourselves, within the present, within Infinity.

>

> The fact that there is, historically, a social

> association of maleness with power, control and intellect and

> femaleness with passion and love, is, according to the Tree,

> part of our social problem and confusion.

 

I do believe that the social problem that you refer to, comes from

history, more than in the way we resolve our opposite in entering the

"bindu" in a Hod-dic way, or in others words enter the kingdom from Hod.

 

One of those many historical source is in the way that is read that Eve

was born from Adam, without the help of a woman. Also this other one of

the Christ being born of the woman without the help of a men. And this

power in the husband and wife, inner or outer, to fusion in one Hod-dic

flash.

 

Quite confusing indeed this gender stuff before the key to the kingdom

of Hod is felt in a Netzach-ic way.

 

Antoine

 

 

 

 

 

Please also remember

> that each individual "contains" the entire Tree. So we are all

> male/female and neither. The meditation suggested by the

> structure of the Tree is the Middle Way between the opposites -

> the way through Yetzirah, the dream/astral, to Tipheret, beauty/the Heart,

> through Da'ath, knowledge within the abyss, and Kether, the

> single point - bindu in the Hindu representation. Moving

> through Kether to the reality that can't be articulated -

> through ayn soph aur (limitless light), to ayn soph (limitlessness)

> to ayn (pure "no-thing").

>

> Love, Dan