At the core of Kabbalah is a tetrad — a hierarchical tetrad, the tetrad — most compactly expressed in the Tetragrammaton — ???? — Yod – Hey (1) – Vav – Hey (2).
The Olamot, the four worlds — Atzilut (Emanation), Beriyah (Creation), Yetzirah (Formation), Assiyah (Actualization) — correspond to each of these letters, as does our own selfhood across these four worlds — the distinctive kind of subjective presence and participation in each of the worlds. One very important kind of participation — increasingly important as one ascends from the actualizing world of Assiyah toward Atzilut — is modes of understanding, exemplified in four modes of understanding scripture, the hermeneutic tetrad PaRDeS. These definitions come from Nissan Dovid Dubov’s Inward Bound:
- Pshat – Simple interpretation corresponds to the world of Assiyah. (Hey 2)
- Remez – Allusionary interpretation corresponds to the world of Yetzirah. (Vav)
- Drush – Homiletical interpretation corresponds to the world of Beriah. (Hey 1)
- Sod – Secret/mystical interpretation corresponds to the world of Atzilut. (Yod)
At this point, I’d call these modes, respectively: factual, literary, revelatory, transformative.
The reason these hermeneutic modes matter to me, apart from the simple fact that hermeneutics is intrinsically fascinating, is that these modes of understanding are, I believe, our best and most tangible access to what otherwise might seem grand abstract speculations on unknowable metaphysical ultimates.
We “know” Yetzirah and its relationship to Assiyah because we have understood truths belonging to each, in a manner suited to each. We know how to read literary fiction and lose ourselves in its imaginary, vividly populated, poetic space, while bodily seated in an actual chair in an actual room. And when we have turned our attention from our book, stood up and looked around actual places, we have experienced how the mood, tone and coloration of our book clings to the world around us. Two parts of ourselves are activated together, and sometimes this feels like a restoration of inner integrity.
If you understand the experience of the scenario I just described, imagine taking this kind of experience as indicative of realities that elude the comprehending grip of factual knowledge.
Try to entertain the possibility that the materialism most educated people take for granted is only one possible mode of understanding, optimized for predicting and controlling the behavior of physical matter — but that this mode of understanding comes with tradeoffs, namely a loss of meaning and purpose. The cost of a materialist metaphysic is nihilism.
A materialist will conceptualize my scenario (of the experience of being absorbed in reading) physically and biologically. It will be all about evolution, organisms, societies, economies, brains, neurons, paper, ink, molecules, atoms, quarks, energy, etc., and, in doing so, they will close off myriad incommensurable modes of understanding. These modes of understanding, however, are the very channels that open us to feeling our belonging in creation. No amount of fairness or justice, affordance of dignity, acknowledgment of our various self-classification in this or that social identity can do anything to replace this lost meaning. And indulging in carnal or political pleasures or passions, provides only temporary relief, and eventually none at all. Addictions all terminate this way.
Placing material reality, and political realities in broader contexts of reality and ways of knowing, and giving each its own full due validity — science works, and justice is good! — allows us to develop higher selves who open us to the source of all meaning.
If we do not do this, we will become increasingly capable of controlling material reality, but increasingly alienated from who we are or why we should care about anything. We will rely on stimulating animal rage in order to even feel our own selfhood through that thick numbness that engulfs us. This is why I am one of the increasing numbers who advocate a return to religion, though I believe that many, perhaps most, of the loudest religion advocates are as clueless about religion as those who despise and oppose religion.
So, again, we know the Olamot, who are the various levels of emanation of the Absolute / One / Ein Sof by how we, ourselves, are present in them, and we know our presence through our participation — most tangibly through how we understand and the contents of our understanding. Our participation across the Olamot activates and unites our selves — highest to lowest — together and within their source, bathing our lives and worlds with meaning and light. So we know reality, ourselves and our relationship to God (in God’s own hierarchical Allness — ???? ) — all together, inseparably.
So:
- In Assiyah, Nefesh (vital soul) animates as the Pshat / factual mode of understanding. (Hey 2)
- In Yetzirah, Ruach (spirit) animates as the Remez / allusionary (literary) mode of understanding. (Vav)
- In Beriah, Neshema (breath of life) animates as the Drush / homiletic (revelatory) mode of understanding. (Hey 1)
- In Atzilut, Chayah (living one) animates as the Sod / mystical (transformative) mode of understanding.
One more related idea… A mistake I have been making is confusing the Sefirah/Sefirot associated with each world for the world itself. Or worse, the idea of the Sefirah, for the Sefirah, for the world.
The kinds of ideas beings like ourselves can have, ideas that are defined conceptual objects, belong only to the world of Assiyah. Actual, physical objects are confined to Malkhut in Assiyah, and the rest are mental or emotional objects.
When we try to think worlds above Assiyah, the best we can do is contemplate mental objects that imperfectly correspond to and transmit meaning from being beyond objective knowledge.
So, it is by conceptual objects of the Sefirot that we begin to understand higher worlds. By Yesod, Hod, Netzach, Tif’eret, Gevurah and Chesed we can conceptually approximate and receive the superformal meanings of Yetzirah. By Binah, we can conceptually approximate and receive the meaning of Beriyah. By Chokhmah we can conceptually approximate and receive the meaning of Assiyah. This is (I think) why we speak of Sefirot corresponding to or predominating among worlds.
In all of this, of course, I may very well be wrong, especially where I say, parenthetically, “I think”. I’m being cautious, where I am aware of a need for caution. I don’t know why I bother, though. Our deepest errors are never where we expect them.
All these understandings, of course, make me insanely happy, which always compels me to letterpress something beautiful and holy.
I’m thinking of a reference card, connecting the Tetragrammaton to the four Olamot, each linked to a Sefirot, to the levels of soul, to the hermeneutic modes of PaRDeS.
This is a first, rough, highly inadequate draft. I’m going to consult with a rabbi to ensure everything is correct, both the ideas and the Hebrew. And I’m going to work at improving and perfecting its beauty and clarity.
This is the deepest and fastest change in understanding I’ve experienced since 2011, when my world was inverted, razed and reconstituted by Bruno Latour.
I’m no longer a philosopher at all. I have great respect for objective knowing, even more for objective praxis, but both are positively dwarfed by my respect and love for what transcends objective truths and the realities we can know by objective means.
I’m no longer a philosopher. Perhaps I never was one. What I am is a Kabbalist, still novice.