Chesed, the fourth Sephirah, is most often translated as Mercy, or Loving Kindness. The translations include : Mercy, grace, piety, beauty, good-will, favour, benefit, love, kindness, charity, righteousness, benevolence, to do good, to show oneself kind, to insult, reproach. Thus, in general it signifies the "giving forth" aspect of the Universe or the "merciful king" aspect of God.
Chesed is also called GDVLH, (Gedulah), meaning Greatness or magnificance, and is referred to under this aspect in the line of the "Lord's Prayer" which states "Thou art the Power and the Glory" (veh Gedulah, veh Geburah). The section of the Lord's Prayer which states "Thou art the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory" is related to the Tree of Life as;
Thou Art "Ateh" Kether
the Kingdom, "Malkuth" Malkuth
the Power "veh Geburah" Geburah
and the Glory ` "veh Gedulah" Chesed
This statement is made in the lesser and greater banishing rituals of the Pentagram, with an appropriate gesture pointing to the crown of the head, below the feet, and the left and right shoulders as the Kabbalistic Cross.
The God-name of Chesed, AL means also "unto, towards", and again refers to the dynamic aspect of God, or the expansive force of the Cosmos. Chesed is the first and most active of the Sephiroth below the Abyss in that it is the explosion into manifestation, or Chockmah in a lower order.
In context of the Psyche, Chesed is, as Dion Fortune puts it, "the formulation of the abstract principle which forms the root of any activity" Thus, the abstract principle of "settlement", Maslow's "survival motivator" is above the Abyss, but may manifest at the level of Chesed, and be first presented to ordinary awareness, when one is looking at purchasing a house. At the level of Chesed, the mind begins to formulate a sense of what the house will be when one has finished renovating it. The path connecting this formulation to awareness in Tiphareth is that of the Hermit, which in this sense represents the "guide" or "way" one is going to follow to achieve the realisation of this formulation.
In formulating this principle, Chesed is reflected in Yesod, the foundation, by images, (Chesed = ChSD = 72, which can be broken down as 7 + 2 = 9, the number of Yesod). The images then drive our actions (Malkuth), powered by the dynamic desire of Netzach, receiving its influence direct from Chesed itself.
Chesed is the grand driving force of the Universe, and is often received as "love, grace or mercy in mystical experience. The experience of rapture (from the Latin, rapere, meaning to 'carry away') is appropriate to Chesed, and is again denoted by the solitary "Hermit" Tarot card which connects Chesed to the Tiphareth (awareness) of the contemplative. Thus the myths of rape by the Gods, for example Leda and Zeus as a Swan (the bird of Kether) depict the various ways in which our awareness is taken away from us when we truly contact the divine, transcendent level of the Universe. The mystical passion, the height of all human devotion, is also applicable here.
Utilising the experience of Chesed, the Adept is aware of the underlying, and here only just accessible, patterns and archetypes, behind the apparent world (Malkuth), symbols (Yesod) and his consciousness (Tiphareth). Fortune warns that functioning in Malkuth alone is blindness, functioning in Yesod alone is to be deceived by projections, and functioning in Tiphareth alone holds the danger of confusion of context. That is, experiences are taken as a direct dealing of God with the individual rather than as symptoms of progression to be further transcended. Geburah brings with it discernment so that one's own position is realised and, later, Chesed provides the key to the whole Psyche before the whole Psyche itself is flung into the Abyss.
The grade of Adeptus Exemptus is assigned to this Sephirah, signifying that the Adept has transcended his notion of Self as Tiphareth (awareness) and has moved towards the Abyss. Exempt from guilt, from sin, from all human concerns that are born of our illusionary perception of time and space, he turns to face the Great Divide. The path of the "Wheel" Tarot Atu runs down from Chesed, symbolising that the Adept at this stage has broken his illusionary attachment to apparent cause and effect, and has become the hub of the Wheel (a foreshadowing of the perfect state of Chokmah, above Chesed, where the Magus is simultaneously the movement of the wheel and the stillness of the hub in unbroken unity with the flow of the Universe).
Chesed is the source of magical syncronicity, and is thus an important Sephirah for Magicians working ritual or otherwise. It provides a means of magic more mystical than practical, the latter being the province of the Adeptus Major in Geburah.
The numerical value of Chesed is "4", which is the number of manifestation, and the number of the four dimensions of space and time. Thus Chesed is the source of time, and the expansion of the Universe in time. Chesed is the first of the manifest Sephiroth, and is represented by the four-sided pyramid. This completes the sequence from the Ain Soph Aur : No Space (Ain), Point (Kether), Vector/Direction (Chockmah), Space (Binah), and Time (Chesed).
The axiom of Maria Prophetissa applies to Chesed, "One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth". Chesed is the Kether of the Manifest, Jupiter as the Demiurge, the Gnostic creator God.
The Fours of the Tarot represent the action of Chesed in the four worlds as follows :
Four of Wands Atziluth Perfected Work
Four of Cups Briah Lord of Pleasure
Four of Swords Yetzirah Rest from Strife
Four of Pentacles Assiah Lord of Earthly Power
The Atziluth of Chesed is the both the completion and source of all manifest power. The fire of all that may be called energy plays here, but as Crowley notes, "it is also referred to Venus in Aries, which indicates that one cannot establish one's work without tact and gentleness".
At the level of Briah, it can be noted that the number four, the number of Chesed, is also a number of limitation and restriction. The equal-armed cross is not the cross of the four elements redeemed by Spirit, the fifth element, and is in some ways a full-stop to progress in the creation process. It is only once the process continues that Chesed can function as a source of power.
In Yetzirah, the astral world, Chesed functions as the archetype of authority and religion, with again the danger of stagnation as dogma, convention and compromise.
In Assiah, Chesed is the establishment of the Universe in the dimensions, and the generative archetype (reflected in the procreative and generative aspects of Netzach at a further stage of the creative process). Chesed in Assiah signifies security, authority, and the solidity of the material plane.
The Yetziratic text of Hod states that its root is in Chesed, and from this, as Dion Fortune indicates, can be modelled a number of the processes of Magic. As Chesed is taken to be the sphere of the Secret Masters, who are taken by many magicians to guide the process of manifestation from higher planes through human adepts, it is to be approached with due consideration.
If Meditation and contemplation (the stilling or focusing of the thought processes), and ritual or ceremony can be assigned to Hod, then through the awareness freed thereby (Tiphareth) we can regain Chesed, the grand waystation of the Universe as it pours into manifestation, and align ourselves to that flow.
A simple rite of Magic involving the Egyptian Goddess Ma'at, who can be attributed to Chesed, designed by Maggie Ingalls demonstrates this procedure, by the meditation (Hod) on a flame (Tiphareth) and a feather (Chesed), which combined with a suitable Mantra links the practitioner to the "Ma'at Current", which is none other than the evolutionary and stochastic current of the Universe. The Hermit card also resumes this symbolism, and perhaps should be drawn bearing a quill, not a staff.