The Yahweh contradiction

[Nau7ik]

The quote I used was from Israel Regardie’s Garden of Pomegranates. I believe he was using the same sources, Reuchlin and Mirandola, but Regardie is not too kindly towards the Christian cabbalists. He was defending the Qabalistic / Hebrew philosophy and criticizing the attempts to fit the Christian trinity into the Tetragrammaton, which Regardie says does not work. As YHVH represent the Father, Mother, Son, Daughter principles. Shin being the Holy Spirit. The Christian trinity lacks the Daughter.

So Regardie adopted some Christian cabbalistic symbolism despite criticism. "Father" in Holy Trinity is a name for God (God itself transcends distinction between sexes). The meaning of YHVH can be multifaceted but no facet can fully contain the Infinite Creator ... Besides that there is also a lot of triadic symbolism - the three pillars for example (and three triades inside pillars). Another triad in Jewish Kabbala is Ayin, Ein Sof, Ohr Ein Sof.

Yeah I agree, the very name is limiting and should be regarded as a magical formula, as least that’s how Regardie would consider it. We can see the Father, Mother, Son, and Daughter by way of the Tree of Life and the four worlds: Father- Kether, Chokmah in the world of Atziluth, Mother- Binah in the creative world, Son- Tiphareth in the Yetziratic world, then the Daughter- Malkuth in world of Assiah. The four court cards of each suit in the Tarot can be interpreted this way. That is, King Queen, Knight, Princess as representing YHVH, within the respective element, such as Knight of Swords (air) being being the Vav of Tetragrammaton in the world of Yetzirah. The ten cards of the suit being representative of each of the Sephiroth.

Anyway, let me defend Regardie’s point of view with his own words:

From my point of view, to attend to the problem itself, there cannot possibly be the slightest connection between the two philosophic formulations which have been at the foundation of virulent controversy. Because, let me insist most strongly, the two schools under consideration speculate upon two entirely different topics. According to the Church, the various aspects of the Trinity are, severally, all One in God. Despite this, however, so Athanasius tells us, each individual Person, in itself, is God.

Not so according to the Qabalah. Ain Soph is the Infinite; Eternity, transcendent and immanent. It cannot even be said to be One, since it is Zero; the One is an attribute as we have already seen of manifestation and limitation. Those Sephiroth which bear such titles as Father and Mother cannot, per se, under any circumstances, be God or Ain Soph. The Zohar teaches distinctly that the Sephiroth are simply kechleem, vessels or channels through which the Divine forces of creative evolution manifest themselves. The Sephiroth to which Father and Mother are allocated are not Ain Soph. Permeated and sustained by the Infinite Life though they always are, they are realized to be but manifestations.

The real solution of the would-be comparison is, in point of fact, a remarkably simple one, since there can be no comparison at all. So simple is this solution that insofar as I am aware it has escaped those who revel in logical hair-splitting and argument. The ideas in the minds of the early Church Fathers and the Doctors of the Law were not in accord. The Church taught of Three Persons who are eternally the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

I cannot understand that this metaphysical formulation has any other than the most remote relationship to the Qabalistic concept of the Tetragrammaton, the four-lettered name of God. It’s allocations are the Yod and the first Heh, the Father and the Mother in Transcendence; and the Vav and Heh final, the Son and the Daughter, twins, below. In other words, this Holy Family consists not of Three individuals, but of Four. It should be quite obvious to even the merest tyro in philosophy that two distinct systems are here being propounded, the one having little or nothing to do with the other. The defence raised by Dr. Abelson is, therefore, no defence at all, since he is endeavoring to demonstrate that the Jews have not borrowed from Christians. Actually this question does not enter the controversy.

There has been one final attempt to attach a fourth person to the Christian Trinity in the shape of the mystical body of Christ which is the Roman Catholic Church. So feeble a last resort indeed casts reflection upon the minds in whom it originated.