The Tree of Life - Intention and Belief

Magical Golden Dawn

THE TREE OF LIFE
Part Two - Intention and Belief

"In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" according to the Book of Genesis. Several creation stories start out in the same vein. The words are different, but the concept is the same. Some say God first created the light and the dark. Others say the first creation was male and female, masculine and feminine energies.

The Heavens are boundless, endless. They go on forever. Earth is bounded, finite. It's a definite thing and well-defined.The more we study the early creation stories, the more we become convinced the first creation was to create matter and energy.

According to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, matter and energy are two different expressions of the same thing. Matter and energy can each be converted into the other. More than that, everything in the whole known Universe is either matter or energy and the sum total of all the matter and all the energy is the Universe.

This sounds like: "In the beginning was God, and God thought about matter and energy and God was matter and energy." All the matter and energy that ever was or ever will be is here now, and all that matter and energy is The Creator. The Creator is probably more than all the matter and energy, but all that matter and energy are The Creator.

There's nothing in this story to tell us which came first, matter or energy. Consequently every religion has a theory based on the major culture of that religion. Christianity teaches man came first. So do all the major Western religions. Most Pagans believe the All-Mother, or Great Mother came first.

Gnostics are not in agreement about this either. Some are in the "Man-came-first" camp while others stand firm knowing "Woman-came-first." Science says they came together, one cannot exist without the other.

The Big Bang started out as a point of combined mass and energy and the energy of that primal explosion is still propelling that matter through space. Matter and energy work together. You can't have one without the other. They both live and act together within The Creator and they are The Creator.

Energy is boundless force and it expands forever. This isthe "Heaven" of the first creation. This is the masculine principle called "Force."

Matter is form. It restricts and confines energy. This is the "Earth" of the first creation. This is the feminine principle called "Form."

The Creator is both form and force, matter and energy, masculine and feminine. All the matter and energy, force and form, are The Creator but the Creatoris more than just that.

Most of the ancient writings about the creation allude to the male and female archetypes rather than explicitly naming them. For example, Genesis refers to this phase of creation as "God created the heavens and the earth." The Jerusalem Talmud explains this as a process of the one Creator God dividing Itself into two things of opposite polarity. Usually this is explained as being the Void which is of negative polarity and the Substance. Christian theologians consider the Angelic World to be the Heavens and Manifestation to be the Earth.

Eastern philosophers look at creation in very much the same way. Brahman, the one Creator God, became theMale and theFemale principle without diminishing Brahman. In thisphilosophy the One became Three in One. That's pretty close to theWestern concept of the Trinity. The Two, male and female, cannot exist without the One, but the One is self-existent with or without the Two.

The other interesting thing about the Two is that one cannot exist without the other. The Male Archetype cannot exist without both the Creator Archetype and the Female Archetype. The Female Archetype cannot exist without both the Creator Archetype and the Male Archetype. The Creator Archetype can exist with or without the Male and Female Archetypes.

In many religions, the GreatMother gave birth to her husband and together they gave birth to all that exists. In others, the male came first as in thestory of Adam and Eve. In the Qabalah, the Creator (which may be called the Great Mother or the Great Father) came first. The Creator separated Itself into two parts while retaining the whole of Itself. These two parts are the Mother of All Things and the Father ofAll Things. They are theLight and the Darkness, the Positive and the Negative, the Male and the Female Principles, the Male and Female Archetypes.

There really is no discussion about which came first, the man or the woman. The answer, accordingto the Qabalah,is they came together. One Archetype cannot exist without the other. They are opposites, and when they come together they are The Creator. But the mystery is that even if they don't come together, the Creator exists in Its fullness and is not diminished in any way.

The Great Mystery has a very simple explanation. If the Male and Female Archetypes exist in the Mind of the Creator, then it makes sense that the Creator is not diminished. If the Mind of the Creator is that which gets divided, then it makes sense thatneither the Male or FemaleArchetype can exist without the other. These Archetypes are opposites and to think of the attributes of one is to define the attributes of the other.

The Creator is The One Mind and creation is in the Mind of the Creator.

That's the great secret of all the Western and Eastern Mysteries. Everything is Mind. Everything is The Creator. Nothing exists outside the Mind of the Creator. Everything exists within the Mind of the Creator. We are all brothers and sisters in the creation of all that exists. We're all in this same Mind together. We're all interconnected not only to our friends but to our enemies. We're connected to all the plants, animals and minerals in this world. Everything is The Creator.

The Creator is unconditional love, all knowing, all powerful, present everywhere and in all things. This is the archetype that is The Creator. It's the root of the Air Element.

The Father archetype is outgoing energy that moves away from the source. It expands in all directions as it moves. This energy is a force that moves things. Because it moves, we call it positive. The Father archetype is all about intention, the desire to do something, the ability to conceive it, the resolve to do it and the energy to finish what is started. It's the root of the Fire Element.

The Mother Archetype is ingoing and does not move. It is inert but collects energy inside itself. It's a form that contains things, and because of this we call it negative. The Mother Archetype is all about receptivity, the capacity to feel it, the inertia to contain it, the ability to remember it and the ability to love it forever. Mother is the root of the Water Element.

On the Tree of Life, the Creator occupies the top-most sphere. All energy moving down through the Tree of Life originates in this top-most sphere. The Father Archetype occupies sphere number two on the right-hand side of the Tree of Life as you're looking at the Tree. The Mother Archetype occupies sphere number three on the left-hand side of the Tree of Life as you're looking at the Tree. These two spheres are located below the first sphere. All three are interconnected so as to form a triangle with The Creator Archetype at the top. The sphere for Father is called Intention (Chokmah) and the one for Mother is called Belief (Binah).

This triangle is called the Triangle of Air. It's also called the World of Air because everything in this world is thoughts and ideas. Nothing else exists in this world except thoughts and ideas. It's the Archetypal World or the World of Archetypes. It's also called the Spiritual Triangle among several dozen other names.

Some authors consider the Archetypal World to be the Trinity of God the Creator, Father God and Mother God. In Christian Gnosticism this trinity is often called Father-Mother-Creator God or Creator-Father-Mother God. It's also called Creator-Mother-Father God. The three spheres in this triad can therefore be labeled Creator God, Father God and Mother God in that order. The Creator Archetype, Father Archetype and Mother Archetype is another way of saying the same thing as is Creator-Male-Female Archetypes. Awareness, Intention and Belief are the definitions of these three concepts.

Several authors assign different Judeo-Christian God names to these spheres. The most common assignment of Divine Names is Eheieh to Kether (Creator), Yah to Chokmah (Father) and Yod Hey Vav Hey Elohim to Binah (Mother). Eheieh is often translated as "I am That I am" or as "I am What I am." Yah is Father God, Yod Hey Vav Hey is the Tetragrammaton normally rendered as Jehovah or Yahweh, and Elohim is Father and Mother God. Some claim Elohim is a singular male God and plural female Goddesses.

Your assignment, should you decide to experiment with the World of Archetypes, is to assign one God or Goddess from the pantheon of your choice to each of the spheres in this trinity. It's important to preserve the sequence of Creator-Male-Female Archetype for these first three spheres. But the name of the Deity assigned to each is entirely up to you.

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