The first mother letter is Aleph א, which symbolizes the wind, air, and is the beginning of Eheieh אהיה, the name of God related to Kether.
The second mother letter is Shin ש, which symbolizes fire. The letter Shin ש is made like the head of a trident. Shin is formed by three Iods י; Shin ש, or fire, also symbolizes the three primary forces. Genesis states:
And a river went out of [the first] Eden [Daath] to water the garden [Yesod, the second Eden]; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. —Genesis 2:10
The river that comes from the first Eden in order to water the garden (Yesod, the second Eden) is Chokmah.
The letter Aleph א is above, related to the air. Even within us, the air enters through the nostrils and goes into the lungs; that air is the letter Aleph א.
The heart is the organ that takes care of the blood. The blood is formed in the area where we eat and with the help of the spleen, which transforms the energies that we take from the atmosphere while we sleep. The spleen takes a lot of solar light to transform into red cells. The liver pushes what we call the impure blood, the venous blood, which is not purified. That blood goes into the heart; the heart takes the air we breathe and purifies the blood with the oxygen. This is how Aleph א purifies the blood. When the lungs purify the impure blood, it returns into the heart as purified blood.
In Hebrew, the word blood is Dam דם Daleth-Mem. When you put the letter Aleph א (air, oxygen) before Dam דם, you form the word Adam אדם. As was explained, Aleph א is the air we breathe; it is the air that we put into the blood to purify it. So, Adam אדם is the outcome of the purified blood. In the blood is where we find Adam in potentiality. This is why it is written in Genesis 2:5:
For Jehovah Elohim [Binah] had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not Adam אדם to till the ground [המדא adamah, physicality].
Jehovah Elohim (Binah) did not put Adam in activity yet.
However, the man, the Adam in potentiality, is symbolized in the blood, and the blood is symbolized with the letter Shin ש (fire).
In Kabbalah, when we place the letter Shin ש in the heart, we see how Shin ש relates to the second triangle on the Tree of Life: Chesed, Geburah, and Tiphereth, which are the Spirit, Divine Soul, and Human Soul.
The letter Shin ש (with its three Iods י) relates to the man made in the image of God (א aleph). This image of God is Shin ש, which the book of Genesis relates to three Sephiroth: Chesed is Abraham, Geburah is Isaac, and Tiphereth is Jacob. These three patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—represent the triangle of the letter Shin ש. The letter Shin ש emerges from the mixture of fire with air.
The blood is the vehicle of the fire. Fire with air is Adam. Shin ש represents Chokmah, because Chokmah, the second Sephirah of the Holy Trinity, the Son, rules the heart (Tiphereth). This is why you find in Christianity that the Son, the Christ, is always pointing to the heart with a lot of fire. The Son (the Nous atom) with a lot of fire is the blood purified by the oxygen. This is why it is also said that the Father and the Son are one, so the blood becomes one with the air, with oxygen, when the lungs purify the blood and returns it into the heart with life. This is why Christ—incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth—said:
I am [Eheieh] the way, the truth, and the life [Chaim]: no man cometh unto the Father [Kether], but by me. —John 14:6
Thus, the life of our body is in the heart.
In our physical bodies, the purified blood is the river that descends from Daath (the upper Eden) to water the garden (Yesod, the lower Eden); it is Chokmah, the letter Shin ש, the Son, which in the heart becomes one with Aleph א, the wind, Kether, the Father.
However, as solar light, Chokmah descends from Atziluth through Eden, which is the Sephirah Daath, which is “delight” in Briah. This is why it is stated in The Zohar that the river that comes out from Atziluth in order to water Yesod, the lower Garden of Eden, is Chokmah, which is the Son, the second aspect of the Holy Trinity. The Son is “I will be.” In other words, the universe exists because of Chokmah, Hebrew for “wisdom.” This is why the first word in Genesis, תישארב bereshith, which is usually translated as “in the beginning,” can also mean, “in wisdom,” or “through wisdom.” The second Hebrew letter, ב beth, relates to the second Sephirah, Chokmah. Be-Re-Shith [ב רא שית] means “in wisdom.” The beginning is with Chokmah, wisdom.
Mem מ is the third mother letter. The blood circulates through the whole body, finally crystallizing as the sperm and ovum in the testicles and ovaries. The ovum and the sperm are the outcome of the purified blood, which, of course, relates to all the organs and glands that we have in the organism. So, the genitalia is the final destination of the Solar Christic force that enters into the body.
The river from the upper Eden, which in this case is flowing through the blood in our body, enters into the lower Eden and becomes our sexual force. The lower Eden is the Sephirah Yesod, the sexual force. Thus, the sexual force comes from “delight,” the upper Eden, and becomes pleasure in the lower Eden. Remember that delight is above and pleasure is below; delight is the Father and Mother above; pleasure is Adam and Eve below. The two polarities below are always represented in the two testicles or the two ovaries, relating directly to man and woman.
The two polarities always relate to Adam and Eve; yet, above, Adam and Eve are Jah-Havah, Abba and Aima, Father and Mother in Daath. This is how we have to visualize and comprehend that Chokmah, the fiery river, enters into Daath and creates through Abba and Aima.
Who are Abba and Aima? In Briah (creation) they are the duality of the Holy Spirit (Binah). They emerge from the river, which is the Son, Chokmah, in Atziluth. The Father says, “I Am the One that I Am.” The Son says, “I will be,” and in order to be, Chokmah expresses himself through Binah, which is “Asher.” Thus, Chokmah is the one that will be, through Binah.
The river Chokmah, which will be, goes down through Binah, and becomes the duality of the Holy Spirit in Daath.
Mem מ is the third mother letter. In Kabbalah, Mem מ symbolizes water; the Holy Spirit is the letter Mem מ.
Aleph א is air, shin is in the heart and is fire, and Mem is water. The word Mayim מים (waters) is written with the letter Mem, since this letter symbolizes water in Kabbalah. If you write the letter Shin ש in the beginning of Mayim מים you then form the word Shamayim שמים. Shamayim שמים is made with Shin ש (fire) and Mayim מים (water) and means “fiery water,” yet is translated in the Bible as “heaven.”
Genesis states that in the beginning God created the heavens: Shamayim שמים; this is how it is written in Hebrew. Shamayim means the fiery water from above, and the “fire” of that fiery water is represented by the letter ש shin. Shin is Chokmah in the heart and is the blood purified by the א air of heaven. This is why when we point to heaven, we point above the heart.
The letter Shin ש has the three primary forces that are represented in the second triangle, which is—Adam אדם, the blood (Dam דם) purified by the letter Aleph א. Aleph א is the air, the wind, God above, and also has the three primary forces. Yet, the mother letter in Yesod, the lower Eden, does not have these three symbolic primary forces; instead, the letter Mem symbolizes duality, because Mem is written in two ways: opened Mem מ and the closed Mem ם.
These are two forms of Mem: ם and מ; behold here the duality.
The Sephirah Binah, which is always related with water, expresses itself as duality through the letter Mem. The closed Mem ם represents the potential activity of Binah, the Holy Spirit. When the Mem is open מ it means that the water is flowing, pouring out to create. So, the letter Mem above and the letter Mem below are Father and Mother, because Binah’s two creative waters are related to the sexual force. When we talk about the water, we always talk about the two forces; this is why the book of Genesis states:
And a river [ש shin, Chokmah, fire] went out of [shamayim] Eden [Daath] to water [through mem, mayim, the Holy Spirit] the garden [Yesod, the second Eden]; and from thence it [the opened mem] was parted, and became into four heads. —Genesis 2:10
Many Kabbalists state that Chokmah is the Father, and Binah is the Mother. This is wrong, because the duality of Father and Mother is in Kether, Chokmah, and Binah, and they express themselves as creation through Binah, which is Jehovah Elohim. This is why the book of Genesis states very clearly, “and Jehovah Elohim planted a garden.” Nevertheless, within Jehovah Elohim are Chokmah and Kether, since the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one.
As an example: if we want to have a child, we need our sexual force, and, when we go into the sexual act, we connect the genitalia of male and female. The sperm and the ovum, female and male, are formed with the blood, with our thoughts, what we eat, etc.
When we are in the sexual act, we are not only connected by the sexual organs, but our hearts and heads are also there, working through our sexual organs.
In other words, when the Holy Spirit is performing his creation, the Son in the heart is there, and the Father in the head is also there.
Our three brains symbolize the three primary forces above: we have the Father in the head, the Son in the heart, and the Holy Spirit in the sexual glands.
This is how we the three primary forces create. We see this through the mother letters:
- Aleph א: air, related to the head
- Shin ש: fire, related to the heart
- Mem מ: water, related to sex
The only difference between man and woman is in the sexual organs. The rest is the same. Thus, the difference between man and woman is represented in the duality of the letter Mem ם/מ. This is why we as Gnostics always insist that the first Garden of Eden is the abode of Abba and Aima Elohim, Father and Mother, which is the duality of Binah, Jehovah Elohim, as the Bible states clearly:
So Elohim created Adam in his own image, in the image of Elohim created he him; male and female created he them. – Genesis 1: 27
Thus, by understanding the meaning of Elohim, we understand ourselves too, because the river that comes from above, from “delight,” the upper Garden of Eden, is the source of life, of Yesod, the garden of Eden below.
Concerning Malkuth, Genesis 13:10 states:
And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it [Malkuth] was well watered every where, before Jah-Havah destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of Jah-Havah, like the land of Egypt [Mizrayim], as thou comest unto Zoar.
Thus, physically speaking, we have said that this physical body Malkuth is a garden; yes, it is indeed a garden made by the Holy Spirit. So, when Genesis 2:8 states:
And Jah-Havah Elohim planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
What Genesis is stating is that through the man and the woman, by means of the sexual act, Jah-Havah Elohim planted a garden: a physical body (even as the garden of Jah-Havah Elohim, like the land of Egypt—Mizrayim) in the womb of the woman.
