Christianity and the Tree of Life

[refugeeguru]

Asian spiritual traditions have links to 'our' western traditions. Some of the Asian spiritual power is demonic, but not all of it. Some of it is derived from spiritual knowledge, study, and years of hard work. And yes, they have their con-merchants too.

Am not sure if posting diagrams will work on the forum software, but I will make an attempt.

The first diagram demonstrates a link between the Garden of Eden story and Chinese tradition.



The next diagram is connected to the Noah's Ark story.




The next diagram moves a bit further south-east to India. Most Hindu mantras (or the ones I have encountered anyway), use Sh and M sounds. There are connections between those sounds, and the traditions that led to them, and the Bible, including the New Testament, eg Jesus' transfiguration on the mountain.





Will post some more, once I finish off the posts on Richard's 'Why I Quit Christianity' thread – am currently up to the 'Jesus was a dunce at Geography' one, with several more in the pipeline after that.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Hey there Peter,

Well, I'm glad to see the images worked!

I am familiar with the idea of the Gospel in the Chinese characters. I own the book called The Discovery of Genesis which went through a bunch of examples. I find it interesting but I don't have any sense of it as proof of anything. I'd have to do a lot more research to come to a conclusion.

The paths on the Tree of Life you posted are different than the tradition I learned. The paths from Binah and Chokmah are replaced with paths from Hod and Netzach in the tradition I learned. And many of the letter associations are different too. But the most important, the 32nd path leading from Malkuth to Yesod and corresponding to Tav is the same.

It's all very interesting and meant a lot too me back in the early 1990s. It played an important role in my spiritual growth until I became Christian and found that such things were rejected by almost all Christians. So I put it on the back burner and it faded from my memory. Now I'm not very interested in it because metaphysical systems like that are pretty much a playground where you can make up what you want.

All the best,

Richard

[refugeeguru]

The paths on the Tree of Life you posted are different than the tradition I learned. The paths from Binah and Chokmah are replaced with paths from Hod and Netzach in the tradition I learned. And many of the letter associations are different too. But the most important, the 32nd path leading from Malkuth to Yesod and corresponding to Tav is the same.

It's all very interesting and meant a lot too me back in the early 1990s. It played an important role in my spiritual growth until I became Christian and found that such things were rejected by almost all Christians. So I put it on the back burner and it faded from my memory. Now I'm not very interested in it because metaphysical systems like that are pretty much a playground where you can make up what you want.


Hi Richard,

The paths in the diagram I posted are the "standard" Jewish / Biblical ones - ie sometimes different from the ones floating around some (amateurish or phony) European occult traditions. And yes, the ignorant Christians reject it all, but the Tree concept underpins the whole of Christianity.

The top and bottom horizontal paths represent the two Christian baptisms. The vertical paths are the 7 Double letters, and the 12 diagonal paths are the 12 Simple letters -- or in Christian parlance, 7 deacons and 12 apostles.

Jesus had a go at the apostles after the feeding of the 5,000 for not understanding what had happened, but the "commentary" in the gospel says the problem was that "their hearts were hardened" -- unlike the crowd who were fed, and understood exactly what Jesus had done - and wanted to make King, because they DID understand. If the apostles, with their Jewish background did not understand, I probably shouldn't be surprised that Christians don't understand - or still, 2000 years later, have hearts that are so hardened.

Both Jesus' Hebrew name, and His Greek name are heavily connected to the Tree -- I will have to go hunting on my computer for some illustrations - will post them when I find them. But for now, I will post the diagrams re the Feeding of the 5,000. (And will do the ones for Genesis 15, and Genesis 1 in future posts too),

Regards,

Peter

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Hi Richard,

The paths in the diagram I posted are the "standard" Jewish / Biblical ones - ie sometimes different from the ones floating around some (amateurish or phony) European occult traditions. And yes, the ignorant Christians reject it all, but the Tree concept underpins the whole of Christianity.

The top and bottom horizontal paths represent the two Christian baptisms. The vertical paths are the 7 Double letters, and the 12 diagonal paths are the 12 Simple letters -- or in Christian parlance, 7 deacons and 12 apostles.

I am not aware of any "standards" in this field. I only know that there are different traditions. When you say it is "standard" what is your source?

I must say that the Tree of Life played a central role in my learning symbolic language back in the early 1990s. It will be interesting to dig into it again from a new perspective.

Have you read my thread called Looking for Dumbo? I think you will find it very informative. It is about how I received the Key to the Universe (32nd Path) in a dream back in 1991 when I first began studying the Tree of Life.

Have you read any posts by Bob May? He also is very much interested in the Tree of Life from a Christian perspective. I think you two might have a lot to talk about. He commented a lot on the Dumbo thread.

Jesus had a go at the apostles after the feeding of the 5,000 for not understanding what had happened, but the "commentary" in the gospel says the problem was that "their hearts were hardened" -- unlike the crowd who were fed, and understood exactly what Jesus had done - and wanted to make King, because they DID understand. If the apostles, with their Jewish background did not understand, I probably shouldn't be surprised that Christians don't understand - or still, 2000 years later, have hearts that are so hardened.

From my perspective, almost all Christians have corrupted their minds because they have been taught to believe that the Bible is the "inerrant and infallible Word of God." This is why it requires are radical rejection of all Christian dogmas before anyone can begin to see what the Bible actually states. But I still don't know what it really means. The problem is, as you know, that the Bible contains truckloads of crap and I doubt I'll ever be satisfied with any "explanations." I prefer to keep my mind clean by calling crap crap and rejecting it. The minds of Christians have been corrupted for so long that now they claim there would be no "moral absolutes" without the Christian God even as the say that genocide and slavery cannot be immoral because God commanded them!

So I have cleansed my mind of all the absurdity, and I am open to reevaluate the Bible with clean eyes.

Both Jesus' Hebrew name, and His Greek name are heavily connected to the Tree -- I will have to go hunting on my computer for some illustrations - will post them when I find them. But for now, I will post the diagrams re the Feeding of the 5,000. (And will do the ones for Genesis 15, and Genesis 1 in future posts too),

It will be interesting to see what you find.

All the best,

Richard

[duxrow]

Have you read my thread called Looking for Dumbo? I think you will find it very informative. It is about how I received the Key to the Universe (32nd Path) in a dream back in 1991 when I first began studying the Tree of Life.
From my perspective, almost all Christians have corrupted their minds because they have been taught to believe that the Bible is the "inerrant and infallible Word of God."
This is why it requires are radical rejection of all Christian dogmas before anyone can begin to see what the Bible actually states. But I still don't know what it really means. The problem is, as you know, that the Bible contains truckloads of crap and I doubt I'll ever be satisfied with any "explanations." I prefer to keep my mind clean by calling crap crap and rejecting it.
The minds of Christians have been corrupted for so long that now they claim there would be no "moral absolutes" without the Christian God even as the say that genocide and slavery cannot be immoral because God commanded them!

So I have cleansed my mind of all the absurdity, and I am open to reevaluate the Bible with clean eyes.

Richard

Fragments! Should WE understand?

Mark8:18 KJV -- Jesus speaking to his "twelve": "Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember? When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve.

And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven.

And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand?

Is this some kind of subtle arithmetic? Or should we understand how Jesus is THE WORD and the TRUE BREAD that has now been published throughout the world, both orally and in print, for such a long time that the fragments (what others have written about it) now exceed what He spoke...

So the multitudes went home and told their neighbors and others what Jesus had said, and soon the libraries were full of the accounts -- full of fragments!

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. John6:63

[refugeeguru]

[QUOTE=duxrow;43989]
Fragments! Should WE understand?

Mark8:18 KJV -- Jesus speaking to his "twelve": "Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember? When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve.

And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven.

Hi Duxrow,

Although the English says "baskets" in reference to both sets of fragments, the Greek is different - my rough translation is "12 baskets" and "7 Giant Picnic Hampers" (as in paradise for Yogi and Boo Boo). When St Paul escaped from Damascus, he was let down from the wall, in (same word) one of those "Giant Picnic Baskets".

The Large or Double sized baskets is a reference to 7 Double letters in the Hebrew Alphabet - eg in English, we use a P sound two ways - as in :

1. Pay
2. Phone

And in English we write in the h (as in "Phone" to get the soft sound, but in Hebrew, both sounds are written with the same letter - ie the Peh (Hebrew P) can generate two different pronunciations. The seven Hebrew letters that have that double pronunciation are known as "Double Letters".

Jesus as the "Word of God Incarnate" was manipulating the alphabetic Tree - the Word of God is composed of WORDS which are composed of LETTERS - Jesus' ability to manipulate the power of the structure in the Word of God / Alphabet, was something the crowd understood - so they wanted to take Jesus and make Him King, by force.

[refugeeguru]

I am not aware of any "standards" in this field. I only know that there are different traditions. When you say it is "standard" what is your source?

Hi Richard,

My source is God's layout of the Tree as specified in Genesis 1, and to to a lesser extent Genesis 15, and by King David, by Jesus in the Lord's prayer, by Abraham, and by about 3,000 plus years of rabbinic teaching.


The letter Shin is a picture of an upper molar - with a flat surface and three roots of the tooth sticking up. Because of its shape, the letter is associated with, and a symbol for, fire.

Mem, origin of our letter M - the two bumps on an m represent waves on the water - is a symbol for water.

The human body has three major systems - an electrical system, ie the nervous system and brain, concentrated in the head / brain. Fire is linked to electricity or energy, so Shin is associated with the head -- it figures, since that is where the teeth are.

We have an air processing system, centred in the chest and lungs. A (for air) or Aleph for the Hebrew word for air (almost the same as the English word) is associated with the chest.

And we have a digestive system which is liquid based - most of the digestive system is in teh abdomen, so Mem is associated with the abdomen.




Some occult & spiritual groups will cite the Tree as a convenient peg to hang learning on, so, perhaps in ignorance, they "fiddle" it -- but The Tree came from God -- it is the template for the human body, for the Torah, for Jesus' life's work, for His "Our Father" prayer, and for a map of Jerusalem. (I will post some more diagrams on that in coming posts).

But basically, if any group is teaching that Mem sits between Chochmah and Binah, and Shin between Hod and Netzach, they are either rank amateurs, or deliberately deceiving people. This is kind of "kiddy stuff", laid out in the opening 31 verses of the Bible - by "kiddy stuff", I mean it is absolutely basic, deliberately placed by God and Moses on page one / act one of the whole show.

As an example of how basic the Tree is, we can look at the words "Thy WILL be done, Thy KINGDOM come, .. for Thine is the KINGDOM, the POWER, and the GLORY ... Jesus was teaching, and praying a mini "Cook's Tour" of the Tree.



That is kind of the way Christianity works - Jesus teaches it, and the Church says "No way, we are not having a bar of that superstitious Jewish stuff".

So you probably have good grounds to reject it all and start again -- hopefully, my posts on the Tree (this thread) and one the 42 Letter name / Male & Female over on the Why I quit Christianity thread will help in your re-education (sounds like DHS and Club Fema! but . . . ) Am not sure if I will get you through Numbers 31, but I will endeavour to give you enough education to understand my answer/ explanation when it comes.



I must say that the Tree of Life played a central role in my learning symbolic language back in the early 1990s. It will be interesting to dig into it again from a new perspective.

Have you read my thread called Looking for Dumbo? I think you will find it very informative. It is about how I received the Key to the Universe (32nd Path) in a dream back in 1991 when I first began studying the Tree of Life.

Have you read any posts by Bob May? He also is very much interested in the Tree of Life from a Christian perspective. I think you two might have a lot to talk about. He commented a lot on the Dumbo thread.


I haven't read the other posts yet - will work through them over the next couple of weeks.

Will load in some more diagrams re the links between the Tree and Genesis 1 - using the Hebrew version, since there are a couple of variations from the Tree structure in some of the English translations. (Am not sure if teh Hebrew will be large enough to be legible, but the main point is the highlights in colour - ie to be able to count the number of times "God made", "God saw", and "God said" occur.

[Note that Verse 28 in English trips people up if they do teh count from teh English version -- because the Hebrew reads and God to them said rather than "and God said".]



God's Name - Elohim - 32 times in the account of the 6 Days of Genesis



God Made - the three horizontal lines


God Saw - the 7 Vertical lines

AND the layout of Genesis 1 in PICTURES:





(Had trouble loading the last couple of diagrams - will try in a separate post),

Regards,

Peter

[refugeeguru]

The two diagrams are the two that I could not load onto the end of the previous post:








And, getting a little more advanced, the three horizontal lines in the Tree are designated by the Letters of God's name:

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Hi Richard,

My source is God's layout of the Tree as specified in Genesis 1, and to to a lesser extent Genesis 15, and by King David, by Jesus in the Lord's prayer, by Abraham, and by about 3,000 plus years of rabbinic teaching.


The letter Shin is a picture of an upper molar - with a flat surface and three roots of the tooth sticking up. Because of its shape, the letter is associated with, and a symbol for, fire.

Mem, origin of our letter M - the two bumps on an m represent waves on the water - is a symbol for water.

The human body has three major systems - an electrical system, ie the nervous system and brain, concentrated in the head / brain. Fire is linked to electricity or energy, so Shin is associated with the head -- it figures, since that is where the teeth are.

We have an air processing system, centred in the chest and lungs. A (for air) or Aleph for the Hebrew word for air (almost the same as the English word) is associated with the chest.

And we have a digestive system which is liquid based - most of the digestive system is in teh abdomen, so Mem is associated with the abdomen.


Some occult & spiritual groups will cite the Tree as a convenient peg to hang learning on, so, perhaps in ignorance, they "fiddle" it -- but The Tree came from God -- it is the template for the human body, for the Torah, for Jesus' life's work, for His "Our Father" prayer, and for a map of Jerusalem. (I will post some more diagrams on that in coming posts).

But basically, if any group is teaching that Mem sits between Chochmah and Binah, and Shin between Hod and Netzach, they are either rank amateurs, or deliberately deceiving people. This is kind of "kiddy stuff", laid out in the opening 31 verses of the Bible - by "kiddy stuff", I mean it is absolutely basic, deliberately placed by God and Moses on page one / act one of the whole show.

I think that makes perfect sense. I wasn't talking about the horizontal lines. They have always been connected with the three "mother letters" Shin, Aleph, and Mem as far as I recall. I was talking about the other paths. The tradition I learned has three paths connecting Malkuth to Hod, Yesod, and Netzach. If you have any insights as to why one system is superior to the other, please let me know.

And the correlation with the alphabet is very different. How is that established?

As an example of how basic the Tree is, we can look at the words "Thy WILL be done, Thy KINGDOM come, .. for Thine is the KINGDOM, the POWER, and the GLORY ... Jesus was teaching, and praying a mini "Cook's Tour" of the Tree.


That is kind of the way Christianity works - Jesus teaches it, and the Church says "No way, we are not having a bar of that superstitious Jewish stuff".

I first learned about the connection between the Tree and the Lord's Prayer from Dion Fortune's Mystical Qabalah back in the 1990s.

I was happy to find the names of the 4th to the 8th Sephiroth listed in order in this passage, and ending in the tenth Sephirah Malkuth:

1 Chronicles 29:10 Wherefore David blessed the LORD before all the congregation: and David said, Blessed be thou, LORD God of Israel our father, for ever and ever.11 Thine, O LORD, is the greatness (Gedulah), and the power (Geburah), and the glory (Tiphareth), and the victory (Netzach), and the majesty (Hod): for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom (Malkuth), O LORD, and thou art exalted as head above all.

So the tree is indeed tightly connected with Scripture and the Lord's prayer.

So you probably have good grounds to reject it all and start again -- hopefully, my posts on the Tree (this thread) and one the 42 Letter name / Male & Female over on the Why I quit Christianity thread will help in your re-education (sounds like DHS and Club Fema! but . . . ) Am not sure if I will get you through Numbers 31, but I will endeavour to give you enough education to understand my answer/ explanation when it comes.

I am open to rethinking everything, but I am not inclined to "spiritualizing" the atrocities and immoralities and barbarisms of the Bible. I want to keep my mind clean and pure. I see no reason to try to justify garbage merely because it is in the Bible.

I must say that the Tree of Life played a central role in my learning symbolic language back in the early 1990s. It will be interesting to dig into it again from a new perspective.

Have you read my thread called Looking for Dumbo? I think you will find it very informative. It is about how I received the Key to the Universe (32nd Path) in a dream back in 1991 when I first began studying the Tree of Life.

Have you read any posts by Bob May? He also is very much interested in the Tree of Life from a Christian perspective. I think you two might have a lot to talk about. He commented a lot on the Dumbo thread.

I haven't read the other posts yet - will work through them over the next couple of weeks.

Will load in some more diagrams re the links between the Tree and Genesis 1 - using the Hebrew version, since there are a couple of variations from the Tree structure in some of the English translations. (Am not sure if teh Hebrew will be large enough to be legible, but the main point is the highlights in colour - ie to be able to count the number of times "God made", "God saw", and "God said" occur.

[Note that Verse 28 in English trips people up if they do teh count from teh English version -- because the Hebrew reads and God to them said rather than "and God said".]


God's Name - Elohim - 32 times in the account of the 6 Days of Genesis


God Made - the three horizontal lines


God Saw - the 7 Vertical lines

AND the layout of Genesis 1 in PICTURES:


(Had trouble loading the last couple of diagrams - will try in a separate post),

Regards,

Peter

That's excellent info. I'm glad you reminded me about it. I knew of the 10 occurrences of "and God said" from reading Kaplan's Sepher Yetzirah. I wasn't really aware of the other two patterns.

Have you considered the connection between the seven days and the Menorah? It also correlates with the Bible Wheel. This material is from chapter 3 of the Bible Wheel book (available online):

[refugeeguru]

Jesus' heart - its four chambers, and the Tree of Life

Hey there Peter,


It's all very interesting and meant a lot too me back in the early 1990s. It played an important role in my spiritual growth until I became Christian and found that such things were rejected by almost all Christians. So I put it on the back burner and it faded from my memory. Now I'm not very interested in it because metaphysical systems like that are pretty much a playground where you can make up what you want.

All the best,

Richard

I will expand on this in future posts -- the diagram has the Tree divided into four major sections, moved into the Five opposite Five, Male and Female halves, as described in Kaplan's writing. That configuration is a representation of God's name.

The four sections of the Tree represent the four chambers of Jesus' heart - something which Aryeh, naturally, never went near. The path of the Roman soldier's spear through Jesus' heart, and the new covenant he cut, are fundamental to Christianity -- but, as usual, the churches don't teach it, and few Christians have ever heard of it.