Footnotes

This method was pointed out to me some years ago by Frater Nubem Eripia m, who claimed to have just discovered it. The method of construction as given in Libe r 777, although producing a correctly proportioned Tree, does not show the generating circles, and is not nearly so simple in use.

The neatest formula indicating the exact proportions of the Vesica is a s One is to the Square Root of Three. This also is very symbolic for it shows the Unity in its relation to a certain aspect of the Trinity, while since the numbers represented are 1 and 3, it is s trongly suggestive of 13 = AChD = Unity.

The above is actually more accurate mathematically than 15:26, for the proportion 1 to the square root of 3 = 1.732, while 15:26 = 1.733. But there is always likely to be some slight difference between mathematical accuracy and a general Magical formula, as witn ess the word ALHIM which suggests Pi as 3.1415 whereas 3.1416 is more correct. I hardly know of a magickal formula in fractions unless it be 6/50 = 0.12, for which see Liber Leg is and Comment.

"Architecture is frozen music" is the saying of Frederich Schlegel. And if this saying is anywhere significant surely it is so in relation to the polyphonic music and Go thic architecture. In each there is the progressive playing of part against part, the building up of member against member, each structure completed only to point to a still incomplete superstruc ture, joining in the endless aspirational upward sweep of the whole. Arch rests upon arch, flyin g butress upon butress, pinnacle rises above pinnacle, -- everywhere there is a balance not quite attained, a symmetry not quite perfected, -- and by and by we realize that no Gothic church can ever be completed; its beauty is its eternal promise, its endless upward flight. Is not this the very image of a contrapuntal music, and of its supreme expression in the fugue?" -- Hartle y Burr Alexander, Nature and Human Nature.

Since writing the above, a new literal translation of the Sepher Yetzir ah, by Mr. Knut Stenring, has appeared. I quote a part of his rendering of the above verse, sin ce it includes a reference of great importance to the theory in hand: "Three -- Water from Air: He wrote and formed therein twenty-two letters, from the formless and void -- mire and clay; He designed them as a platband, He hewed them as a wall, He covered them as a building, He poured snow over them and it became earth, even as it is written: 'He saith to the snow: Be thou the earth' (Job xxxvii, 6)."

This reference to snow is quite startling in light of what follows in t he present treatise.

Chaos or Matter is potentially a prism which refracts the great Light-S ource, splitting up the Supernal Light into stars, or the Supreme Consciousness into Ideas. As m atter or substance becomes organized and develops mind, its power as a prism grows. As w e clarify our minds they become as living, organic prisms which act with increasing precision and detail. The more definite and authentic our ideas, the more accurate and mathematical, the more will they focus Light from the Supreme, till 'sleeping stars' slip on their livery of lig ht. The more exact the form, the closer the correspondence between the Son (or Form, Prism, Expression , Becoming) and the Father (or Light, Life, Live, Understanding). -- J.S. Forrester-Brown, "The Two Creation Stories."

Here, of course, the "Mystic Rose" is referred to, but since writing th e above an interesting passage from Dr. Oken's work "Abriss der Naturphilosophye" Gottinge n 1805, has been brought to my attention. He writes, page 65, " -- on the whole all plants are only metamorphoses of the Syngenesis. Here is united, what in others is only blossom ing disconnectedly. The importance of the number five, so unchangeably sacred to pl ants, will yet have to find its solution in the Mathesis; without any doubt it lies hidden und er the Dodecahedron consisting of Pentagrams, as the crystallized sphere." This startl ing confirmation of what followed upon my own researches. Achad.

See the preceding footnote.

Another confirmation comes from Dr. Karl von Eckharshausen, Aufschlusse zur Magie, Munich 1791, Vol. 4., Page 333. "As God contains All in the Spiritual, so does the Materia Prima, as typus, contain all in the Corporeal. The little parts of the Material are pyramidical, triangular, tetera, dodecahedra -- always the image of the intellectual."

Another reference from The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II. Page 39, may be of interest here. After mentioning the form of the Tree of Life, given in the Sacred Mysteries of the Mayas and Quiches, Madame Blavatsky continues: "This represents the same idea as the Sphi rothal Tree, ten in all, yet when separated from the upper triad, leaving seven. These are t he celestial fruit, the ten or one, ten born of two invisible male and female seeds, making up 12, or the Dodecahedron of the Universe." This indicates that Madame Blavatsky has an idea that the Dodecahedron had some connection with the Qabalah, but evidently no comprehensi on of the solid prismatic sections, necessary for the building of this most perfect many- sided figure. She also remarks, Vol. II, Page 485, "The Dodecahedron lies concealed in the perfec t cube," say the Kabalists. I wish she had said which Kabalists; but the cube was always taken a s the true symbol of Matter and this obscure reference seems to indicate that if one understood m atter, he would discover its structure to be that of the Dodecahedron. Achad.

Our multiplied and progressed "Tree" may well be considered as the "Gar den of Eden," but perfected in man's conception since all the "trees" are reflections of the One Tree of Life, the IDEA of which is concealed in the midst of the Garden.

These matters will be dealt with in "The Alpha and Omega of Initiation" to be published later.