So yesterday, I presented what a Gra-style Tree looks like, interposed upon an extended Flower of Life Pattern. Today I'm taking the concept to the next stage and showing the 22 Paths as the mystic in me visualized they spilled down during creation, in four stages which I color-coded to help with visualization. The three horizontals, aka the Mother Letters or Tria Materia I used horizontal lines for. You can imagine those channeling the energy both "left" and "right" at the same time, fusing rather than cascading down like the others for which I used lightning bolts for.
I am not doing anything to shift the placement of any sephiroth from The Gra's own diagram. The only thing different about this model from The Gra's is how I'm about to describe the pacing of the paths and the sequence of the emanations "sparking". I'm calling them proto-emanations with the idea that it isn't until Elohim is done with everything and says "This is Good" and goes to take a nap that creation is created enough for each sephirah or plane of existence to really work; no aspect of creation will take its complete form until all 32 paths and all four worlds are worked in by the Creator.
There is at least one Pre-Creation stage as well. Or rather, there's at least one process that happened which led to the creation of Kether in the first place. And that is when the ineffable
AIN became the just as ineffable AIN SOPH... Absolute Nothing became Absolute Everything and there was a pre-Creation binary. Here is a paper called "
Before the Beginning" which features Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi (probably my favorite modern Kabbalist author). It does the idea so much more justice than a Chicken Qabalist like me ever could. Because Ain Soph is everything but Kether is The Source, the Monad, the Unary, that "Every Thing That Exists" whereas Ain Soph is simply "Everything" including things that don't exist.
... I take Negative Existence on faith. I take it on faith from reading science that anti-matter and bizarre quantum things beyond my kenning exist; I take it on faith from reading Kabbalah and parallel metaphysical systems that negative existence exists.
But as a content creator, I focus only on post-creation and things that exist.
So on the subject of taking things on faith? Put aside what QBL conventionally says about how creation was formed one path at a time starting with Kether to Chokmah, the Chokmah to Binah. This is just a different model and one that in my opinion makes more sense and also keeps true to the underlying ternary principle. And this is the model of Creation looking at it from within the world of Atziluth; this is the Tree of Atziluth, just concepts about conceptual or metaphorical or spiritual reality vs. the Tree of Assiah, which would be the "Big Bang" or actual tangible creation as it happened with physics.
Stage 1 (Red) Kether bursts into existence from the Ain-Ain Soph-Ain Soph Aur and immediately channels itself into conceptual Force (Shin, Yang, Cardinal), conceptual Form (Mem, Yin, Fixed), and conceptual Both-Neither (Aleph, Harmony, Mutability). On the Tree of Life, the channel that is Force creates Chomah which we picture on the right side when looking at the Tree on a page or screen. ~Exactly~ as this happening
(not before or after because the concept of time doesn't exist yet.. we're before time as humans can reckon it, that .0000000000000000000001 or whatever it is of a second talked about in the Big Bang) the channel that is Form creates proto-Binah and the channel that is Both-Neither is getting ready to help proto-Chokmah and proto-Binah with creation what comes next.
Stage 1 (Red aka Atziluth) has 3 flashes and 1 solid line to create a ternary of flashes and a total of four paths (the first quaternary) because before Stage 2 can commence, the Supernal Triangle seals itself with that path between Force and Form.
Stage 2 (Orange) has proto-Binah emanating into proto-Tipareth as well as preparing for Proto-Geburah while proto-Chokmah is emanating into proto-Tipareth as well; Tipareth explodes into glorious being and becomes a less ephemeral but not yet tangible reflection of Kether, because it has some manner of force/form from parental p-Chokmah p-Binah and like them, has a direct channel from Kether, one that is distinct from theirs and allows it to be the closest of the emanations or planes of existence to like Kether itself, more than either of them.
Stage 2 (Orange aka Yetzirah but only as Yetzirah exists within Atziluth so it does not have traits it will accumulate in the other Worlds..
and I know... this pushes human comprehension, all things truly Kabbalah do) has 4 flashes and 1 solid line to create a quaternary of flashes and a total of five paths (the first quinary) while blessed Tipareth is by its nature the first senary even if it is now fourth and not sixth in order of manifestation; it is still the embodiment of the hexagram, the six-petaled rose, the Star of David, etc. because it is the "heart" of the upper half of the Tree.
Stage 3 (Green) follows the same pattern as before and again, all of it is happening at the same time, there is no temporal sequence because the concept of the temporal sequence doesn't exist yet.. which will start when Elohim gets to Hod. In a sense, the Alef-Bet are being formed as concepts Alef doesn't equal one yet because math as humans math won't exist until there are humans to think up math. the Alef-Bet are being formed as concepts but they won't have glyphs because glyphs and letters as humans draw them won't exist until there are humans to draw them. They won't have sounded as humans utter and make sounds (Elohim's voice transcends human capacity of what sound is because Elohim doesn't use a voice to speak or ears to hear) until there are living creatures with the capacity to hear and communicate.
Stage 3 has 7 seven flashes I made green and I arbitrarily made the path yellow to demonstrate it reflects the concept of Aleph (mutability, primal air) just like the middle pillar itself but seven yellow flashes are harder to see. The seven flashes create a septenary of flashes and there are a total of eight paths (an octal).
Stage 4, the final stage in which Malkuth is going to form and we get to actual tangible reality at the culmination has 5 flashes happening simultaneously and the last of the triangles are sealed. The Astral Triangle points up with Yesod at nadir; the triangle of human experience points down with Malkuth at the nadir.
But the human experience, the way the Tree of Life is experienced by a human and the way energy flows in the microcosm of a human conscious would not follow this same model of stages and how energy flowed via the Alef-Bet in the concept of creation with spiritual or archetypal reality.
And that Gra-based Tree is something I will show my ideas about some other time.
This isn't more or less "true" than the conventional approach to Creation. What it is though, is a way that better expresses the underlying concepts of the numerical principles which are what the 3-7-12 structure of the Alef-Bet used in the Sepher Yetzirah and elsewhere before and after. It is better "spiritual math"
