The next Sephirah is Tiphareth. It is represented by the Sixes,
Wands:Victory, Cups:Joy, Swords:Earned Success, Pentacles:Material Success.
The sixth path is called the Mediating Intelligence and serves to
equilibriate the lower six Sephiroth leading down into Malkuth.
It represents two spiritual experiences, Vision of the Harmony of things,
and the Mysteries of the Crucifixion, which in all practical applications is
that of sacrifice...and here sacrifice is not really to do with any specific
harm or hurt to ourselves, or any destruction or loss of loved one, things,
and or ourselves. It has more to do with *change* and the transmutation of
energy from one form to another. Energy can not be created or distroyed, only
transmuted from one form to another. And this type of *surrender* of one form
of energy so that we may progress to another, or "change" is the sacrifice
that we want to be concerned with.
Tiphareth is very complicated, and because it is the most important
Sephirah, being right in the center of the lower, or macrocosm of the tree,
it is viable to understand those beneath it to understand it.
On our bodies, Tiphareth is located in the solar plexus....it represents
the Sun. Without the sun life could not exist......and without Tiphareth,
the whole tree, "life" would not work, because in Tiphareth the unmanifest
BEGINS to become manifested.
As above Tiphareth are Gerburah, Chesed, Binah, Chokmah, Kether. So, below
Tiphareth, are Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and finally, the manifested incarnations
on the physical Earth in our physical bodies, in Malkuth.
In brief; Netzach is "intuition", the artist, concerned with the Nature
forces and elemental contacts; Hod is "intelligence" the scientist, involved
with ceremonial magic and occult knowledge; Yesod is "the astral body" of our
incarnate, our psychicistic and etheric double; and at the bottom physical,
grounded in Earth at Malkuth.
Here is the dicotomy. From the begining of the Divine in Kether, the Tree
is worked from top to down.......when we, as our physical selves, work the
Tree, we must work the Tree from the bottom upward. Exoteric religion goes
no further up the tree than Tiphareth and has no understanding of the
mysteries of Binah, Chokmah or Kether, nor the modes of metabolism of the
archangels Geburah and Chesed (Gedulah).
The three pillars of the Tree.....Severity on the left, Consciousness the
"Middle Pillar" and on the right Mercy. The middle is always concerned with
consciousness, and the two sides are the modes of operations of force, the
active and passive powers. Many *magical* students become concerned only with
the middle pillar and forget the workings of the other two..........
So in review: In the supernal macrocosmic Sephirath we have bipolar
Kether, the Divine energy, top of "Consciousness", the virtue of attainment
and completion of the Great Work, and be noted that there is no vice here,
pouring out and over into Chokmah (+) the main dynamic force, virtue of
devotion (again no vice) at the top of Mercy combining with Binah (-), the
top of Severity, the sanctifying intelligence whence faith emanates, where
force is moulded into form, where the virtue is Silence AND the vice is now
advarice. Energy travels in a zigzag downward through the invisible Daath
over into the micocosom Sehpirah, begining with the process of *metabolism* -
Chesed (+) with virtue of obedience, wisdom and Love and vices of bigotry,
hypocricy, gluttony, tyranny; the Cohesive or Receptive Intelligence because
it contains all the Holy Powers, and from it emanate all the spiritual
virtues with the most exalted essences, into Geburah (-) the discipliner,
virtue of Courage and vice of destruction, the Radical Intelligence. The
energy then decends into *Tiphareth*(+) the middle of the Tree, with virtue
Devotion of the Great Work (in correspondence to Kether as "Completion of the
Great Work" (as Tiphareth is related to Kether as son is to father), and vice
is that of Pride.
Then onward and zigzaging into Netzach (-) into Hod (+) onto Yesod (-) ending in Malkuth.
Tipareth
Tipareth is the grand mediator of the tree. It is the sixth sephirah and
is called the "Mediating Intelligence" and is in the center of the pillar of
equilibrium and consciousness; the middle pillar. According to Fortune the
middle pillar is essentially the pillar of consciousness, just as the two
side pillars are the active and passive pillars. It is not until we come to
Tipareth (from Gedulah and Geburah) that we get a clear cut, individualized
consciousness. It is represented by the sixes, victory, joy, earned success,
material success.
It is called the sphere of the sun, the symbol of manifesting
solar-spiritual energy, and is viewed as the sun being the central point of
our existence, and corresponds to our solar plexus. The sun is the symbol of
gold and money which is the objective representation of the externalized life
force. Money is the symbol of human energy and all money is the result of
some one's energy at some time or another. Tipareth is refered to as the son
of Kether, as Jesus is to have been to God. I found it so interesting to
learn the correlation between the Sun and the concept of western secular God.
The Egyptians worshiped Ra, the Sun, as the male omnipotent being. The
Helenics worshiped Helios, the Sun God. The halos around the heads of Christ,
saints and angles come from the solar rays placed around the head of Helios
and his entaurage in Greek art. It appears that man made the Goddesses and
Gods in his own image, and in the classic Grecian stype, Zeus is deplicted as
a handsome bearded man, cloaked in a shroud at times, which resonates
throughout all the pictures of what Jesus is said to have looked like.
In Tipareth, God is made manifest in form and dwells among us, or comes
within range of human consciousness. Until now we only had abstract symbols
with which to understand the Divine forces with. It is interesting that
Fortune writes "exoteric religion goes no farther up the Tree than Tipareth,
as it has no understanding of the mysteries of creation as represented by the
symbolism of Kether, Chokmah, and Binah, nor the modes of the Dark and Bright
Angles, Geburah and Gedulah, or the mystery of consciousness and the
transmutation of force of the invisible Daath."
The four Sephiroth below Tipareth represent the personality, or lower
self, and the four above are the individuality or higher self. Kether being
the Divine Spark or nucleus of manifestation.
Tipareth is forever attempting to bring the tree into equilibrium and
serves as the spoke of the wheel of life. It serves as a focusing point of
all the sephiroth, a center of transition or transmutation between the higher
supernal worlds and the Earthly manifested world of Malkuth. This sphere is
called the Christcenter since the Christian religion has it's focusing point
here. The pantheistic faiths, such as Greek and Egyptian, center in Yesod,
the psychic center; the metaphysical faiths, such as Buddhist and Confucian,
aim at Kether, the metaphysical center. Tipareth is essentially mystical and
is referred to as the Redeemer because it is forever striving to redeem and
reunite the lower sephiroth to the higher ones.
This is the center of illumination and deals in the introduction of the
mind to a higher mode of consciousness than that which is built up out of
sensory experience. The experience is a mystical experience that gradually
builds up a body of images and ideas that are lit up and made visible when
enlightenments take place.
