Kabbalah Group in SF, Week of May 11, 1995
This was our first week as a Kabbalistic group, following several weeks in which we had talked about various topics regarding alchemy. We had decided to spend a lot more time on Kabbalah once we learned about alchemical Fire, Water, Air and Earth.
This first week, we studied the Mother letters and their Alchemical attributions of Fire, Water, Air, Earth. We first concentrated on Fire.
The letter
yud
represent alchemical fire. We spent some time drawing it, with the
appropriate turn or kick.
We then studied how the Mother letter
shin
can be thought as made up of three
yud's,
or as a boat with a guide in it. This makes clear its Alchemical attribute
of Fire.
The Mother letter which represents alchemical Earth is
mem ,
which we also drew for a while.
We also studied the Arabic forms for yeh, sin and mem, in beginning, middle and end.
It is useful to study the Arabic letters since some roots of Kabbalistic words have lost their meaning in time, and this might be retrieved from the similar Arabic word.
We ended by studying the third and last Mother letter,
aleph
and the related Arabic aleph. This represents Alchemical Air.
We finished by talking a bit about how the Mother letters give birth
to the other letters. Thus,
shin
rotates and gives rise to
he.
Mem
looses its twiddle on the left side, which is really a
yud.
Finally,
aleph
morphs into a
vav.
Hence we get the Holy Name,
Yud, He, Vav, He. We talked a bit about
the alchemical aspect of the Name and its alchemically
feminine /masculine balance,
with Fire and Air being assigned masculine attributes,
Water and Earth feminine.
