“1.4 Ten Sephiroth of Nothingness, Ten and not nine, ten and not eleven. Understand with Wisdom,
be Wise with Understanding. Examine with them and probe from them.
Make each thing stand on its essence and make the creator sit on his throne.
“1.7 There are Ten Sephirot of Nothingness:
Their end is embedded in their beginning and their beginning in their end, like a flame in a burning coal.
For the Master is singular, He has no second: And before One, what do you count?”
—- Sepher Yetzirah
The arrangements of the Sephirot in this Tree of Life construct use the ten characters of the Indian/Arabic Number system: 0.1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9, which are also called the Ten Ideal Numbers. This is not to be confused with the ‘ideal numbers’ of Kummer or Dedekind’s ‘ideals’ in ‘Ring Theory’. I know that there will be considerable push back for using these ten ideal numbers instead of the numbers one thru ten that everyone else uses. They will certainly argue that the ancient Hebrews used their letters to represent numbers and it didn’t have a letter for zero, therefore zero is not included. However, it did have tens and hundreds, and they did use the base ten system. Furthermore, the Kabbalah was developed at a time and in a place where the Arabic number system was certainly widely used in that culture, and the importance of using the zero would have been thoroughly understood by the Indian, Muslim, and Jewish merchants at that time. This might explain why the Ten Numbers were considered and analyzed independently from the 22 Letters in the Sepher Yetzirah.
The ten ideal numbers were chosen for this model because of the special attention in the Sepher Yetzirah to separate the consideration of the Ten numbers being discussed from the twenty-two Hebrew Letters. In the line “ten and not nine, ten and not eleven” gives a hint to the fact that it is not just a simple observation of the numbers one through ten, but of the ten Arabic/Indian Ideal numbers zero through nine. For although the ten ideal numbers culminate with the number nine, they are not just nine numbers since they begin with the non-quantitative number zero for a total of ten numerals. And although the number ten represents the first complete round of the Ten Ideals (1 signifying the first completed set of ideals and 0 the beginning of the next set), it is also not to be included because it is not one of the ten single digit ideal numbers, but rather the first double digit number, which if included would be a total of eleven numerals and not just the ten ideals. The reducing of the numbers down to their essence is alluded to in the line in the Sepher Yetzirah, “Make each thing stand on its essence and make the creator sit on his throne“.
Speaking in riddles and vague references was the norm with the esoteric traditions of the past, especially when dancing around the esoteric notions of zero and infinity. Since zero was not a thing that could be objectively described it was called a nothingness, and the ideal number spheres were called the ten sephiroth of nothingness. When they said, “Their end is embedded in their beginning and their beginning in their end” they are describing eternity; and when they said, “For the Master is singular, and has no second: And before One, what do you count?”, they are alluding to Zero without directly saying so, for before one you count down to zero. By doing this cleaver little shuffle of words they could trick the hasty and simple minded who lacked the ability to comprehend, or be trusted with, such sublime secrets as the notions of zero and infinity.
The emphasis on the Supreme Unity represented by the number Zero, as opposed to the quantitative singularity represented by the number One, suggests to the reader that there is much more to these statements than what might be seen by only having a simple materialistic world view of life, as opposed to, a more complicated and elusive spiritualistic view. They also suggest that if the reader sees what they are alluding to, then they should keep it silent, for therein lies the great secret of the Supreme Spirit of Unity, which is undefinable and infinite, as well as very powerful when someone understands how to use it. This is the same idea as the Pythagorean notion of the Monad, which he had also said is not to be confused with the quantitative number one, where the singularity of the ultimate unity of all gives rise to the manifested singularity of one like a reflection of itself as a unified whole; a universe.
Even the statement in the Sepher Yetzirah, “For the Master is singular, He has no second. And before One, what do you count?” may sound obvious to the quantitative thinker as referring to the number one, but to the qualitative thinker, a person who is aware of the Ten Ideal Numbers of the Arabic/Indian system, would understand how the qualitive number zero is the only number that is singularly different from all the other quantitative numbers. The nature of zero implies the same notion as the monad did for Plato. It implies the idea of infinity and eternity, however, because that which is non manifested cannot be defined or described in a material sense, it is only eluded too and danced around in riddles, incomprehensible to those who cannot conceive of nonmaterialistic notions. The container of all things is nothing, it is the emptiness of spacetime which holds all mater within it. In essence zero is the determined position within infinity from which all measurement is dependent upon in order to establish a relative distance or value. It can also represent the relevant point of view in spacetime that is neutral, neither positive or negative, past or future, odd or even, male or female; it is the impartial observer, the ever present now.
The mastery of the Indian/Arabic system of numbers was well known among the Jews long before the appearance of any Kabbalistic writings. The preponderance of many western researchers on insisting that a number system without zero was being discussed in this veiled book called the Sepher Yetzirah is presumptuous and completely ignores the fact that the Hebrew Kabbalah was conceived in a predominantly Islamic society. A society within which the Jews of that era would have studied, worked, and lived with the Indian/Arabic number system on daily basis: A system which called the number zero a sifr (cipher) or sephira. It also completely ignores an extensive history of the Jews as traders, not only between the west and near east, but as far east as India, where the use of zero had already been very well established in their mathematic and spiritual systems for centuries.
Zero is the ultimate Unifying Point, the neutral point between positive and negative, without which we would not be able to fully comprehend Spacetime, Light & Energy. Everything has to start at some point in Spacetime and the time and place of that beginning is a Zero point, and the inverse of the zero point is a never-ending number called infinity. Zero represents the pause or space which distinguishes the group of letters between the spaces as a word. Zero is also the beginning of the count that marks your birthday; we don’t say you were born at age one. Zero doesn’t change the nature of any number that it is added to or subtracted from, and it eliminates all quantitative value when it is multiplied or divided by. Yet it is the only qualifying source of the determinate value of all other numbers. In a since Zero defines all values by the common contrast of its’ relative placement as the origin point. The Pythagoreans called it the monad to clearly distinguished it as different from the quantitative one. There would be no calculus, or even any modern physics without its’ inclusion and consideration in mathematics.
The number twelve has been used in our clocks and calendars since they were developed in Babylon and are still used throughout the world today. The development of civilized cultures grew out of our ability to mark and measure significant moments in time and space, and to be able to predict recuring patterns of nature in order to be better prepared for an otherwise unpredictable future. These considerations of the recurring changes in our environment lead us to the use of the number twelve as a basis for measuring time and space in a manner that was not achievable by the use of the number ten alone. The number ten doesn’t divide easily into thirds or sixths and thereby lacks the ability to easily create harmonious musical tones in a structured space as well as a 12-part system can.
A little numerology trivia:
The number of the Biblical Beast is said to be the number 666. The only number group in numerology whose letters spell a name is the six’s group, which spells the name FOX.
Just saying, beware of the great deceiver posing as a righteous news network.
