The diagram of the Tree of Life is a Map of the Universe. It represents every force and factor in the manifested universe and the soul of man. It give correlation of these two with each other. It puts them diagrammatically so that the relative positions of each unit can be clearly understood and the relations between them established. Tree of Life is a compendium of science, philosophy, psychology and theology.
The way of learning of the student of Natural Science and that of the student of Qabalah is diametrically opposite. The former builds up synthetic concepts. The latter analyses abstract concepts. Yes, it is true that before we understand the abstract concepts, there has to be someone who does the job of analysis and the synthesis. It is believed by the Rabbis that this job was done by the early Qabalist who were Angels. Beings of another order of creation other than humanity gave Qabalah to Chosen People.
Qabalist formulates a concrete symbol perceptible to the naked eye and lets it represent the abstract reality that only a trained human mind can grasp. Symbols are like the terms in the algebraic equations. These are used in almost all the religions of the world as objects of meditation. We have God-forms in the Egyptian system, Phallic symbols in some faiths, Cross in Christendom and so on. Uninitiated persons use these symbols as a means of concentrating the mind. They then introduce into it certain thoughts, calling up certain associated ideas. They stimulate certain feelings. This is not so with the initiate. He use the symbol-system in a different way. He use it as a term in algebra. By means of this method, he attempts to read the secrets of unknown potencies. The initiate uses the symbol as a means of venturing into the Unseen and Incomprehensible.
The symbol which initiate uses is a composite symbol. Tree of Life is such a composite symbol. When the initiate meditates on the Tree of Life, he discovers that there are definite relations between its individual parts. Some of these parts he may know something. Some others he intuits the meaning or makes a guess or the reasoning from what he knows. The minds leaps from one known to another known. Metaphorically speaking, in so doing it traverses certain distances. It is like a traveler in a desert. He may know the location of two landmarks. He then makes a forced march between them. He would not have dared to do this had he not known the location of each of these two landmarks. In the process of his journey, he not only reaches from point A to point B, he also gets himself acquainted with the land in between these two points. In such repeated journeys, the traveler explores much of the desert.
The Quabilistic system of notation follows a similar method. The mysteries it reveals are unthinkable. Even so, the mind, tracking from symbol to symbol, like our example of a traveler in the desert, gets to know something about them. By such continuous process of meditating on a thing, the concept of it is realized. Just as words are necessary to express thought, in a similar manner, symbols help us to convey and understand the intuition. Symbols precede the elucidatin. Therefore Qabalah is a growing and living system. It is not a historic dead monument. It naturally follows that we can get much more from the Qabalistic symbols today than there was at the time of the old dispensation. This is because of the fact that today our mental content is more richer in ideas than the ancient times.
Sephirah Yesod has the forces of growth and reproduction. The understanding of it for a biologist of modern world is much more than the rabbi of ancient world. Everything that has to do with growth and reproduction is resumed in the Sphere of the Moon. This Sphere on the Tree of Life is set about with Paths leading to other Sephiroth. The biological Qabalist can deduce certain definite relationship between the forces subsumed in Yesod and those represented by the symbols assigned these Paths. When he meditates on these symbols, he gets to understand the relationships. This is not possible when only the material aspect of things is considered. When he begins to practically work out these ideas in the material of his studies, he realizes that there are hidden therein some important clues. In a similar manner, on the Tree of Life, one things leads to another. The secret meaning of hidden causes is revealed out of the proportions and relations of the various individual symbols which constitute this mighty synthetic glyph.
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