One
Form, Many Voices:
The
Names
of God according to Hebrew and Kabbalistic Traditions
There was an ancient admonition against naming God,
and the reason for this is one whose importance escapes the notice
of theologians and secular theorists alike: the unityBeing exists
outside of nounSpace entirely. This one ‘cannot
be named but that (the unityBeing) chooses to suggest a temporary
transport for mutual contact-convenience’. Even the common term
‘God’ is a deadly-dangerous token, for it ‘magnetically’
attracts to it meanings and bizarre denigrations (artifacts of semantic
translation and compression) which openly oppose the actual and accessible
realities of (the unityBeing). For this reason and others having to
do with tradition, many refer to ‘God’ with the name Ha-Shem,
which is to say ‘his name’. In this way they refer to
the one from whom all hope of names and naming arises, without presuming
that a solid or ‘nonChanging’ name for this being exists.
Each instant, the name of the Holy One is again unique
— just as we ourselves are — in perfect likeness with
our sources. But the danger of tokenizing the Name or Names of God
goes far beyond this — whatever metaphor we make for God radically
alters the meaning and connectivity of every
other metaphor we possess or assemble — whether or not
we ‘believe in God’ at all. This is the key matter that
the sages of the ancient religions were holding high to our attention
in an attempt to save us from the impossible perils of a single
fundamental error which could in fact destroy the planet, and our
species.
When we make tokens, we become increasingly like
the tokens we make, which are always ‘primitive reductions’
or ‘shavings’ of what they refer to. The idea of a ‘changing
name that is alive’ is a better way for us to understand that
‘this sort of being/way/thing’ was to be ever held in
precedence to ‘frozen framings’ or ‘idols’.
The goal was, is and must remain the constant preservation of direct
contact with reality and spirit — not endless copying of frozen
memoria.
These things said, various letters and phrases have
become vessels for the conservation of ancient transports to understanding.
Rather than being ‘names’ as we understand them, they
are more like general ‘calls’ — something a mother
might intone to call her infant — in reverse. By ‘name’
what is meant is more akin to ‘primordial associative archetype’
— a growing tree of poetic meanings and relations. A few of
them may in fact be very ‘close’ compressions of the holy
name — but they are still toys compared to what they hope to
lead us to through contemplation of their qualities, origins, assemblies
and function.
If we wish to understand the name of the unityBeing,
we must learn to find our way back to direct connectivity with this
One. These names are transports to that connectivity, and the contemplation
of them both as riddles as sacred reliquaries of impossible intelligence
and harmony is a fruitful pursuit for those who would know the origins
of time, life and space.
o:O:o
The
Common Names
Our English term is spelled G (7) O (15) and D (4), and is the most
commonly used and understood token of reference. We have a few other
names for this being, such as ‘The Lord’, or ‘Lord’
(12) (15) (18) (4), and the common english ‘translation’
of YHVH, (the name of 4 letters), is Jehovah. (10) (5) (8) (15) (22)
(1) (8).
These add up to 26, 49, 69 or (8, 13 = 4, and 15 = 6) respectively,
in an informal mapping of numbers to letters based on ordinal position
in the alphabet. The ‘summing’ is the product of an ancient
‘spiritual game’ of alphanumeropoetic decoding and encoding
— sometimes called gematria. In the simple method emulated above,
one adds the numbers in the sum, thus ‘reducing’ them
to their most basic ‘root’.
Let us examine their hebraic sources briefly:
God • El or Elohim.
40 10 5 30 1 = 86 = 14 = 5
The Full Value:
80 20 10 74 111 = 295 = 7
This is the ‘general name’ for the unityBeing in the
scriptures, and is the name used in the first statement of the first
book of the oneBook. I believe that it refers to unity first, and
something akin to ‘a primordial family’ as well. In a
personal appeal or private discourse with the unityBeing one might
use the form Eloi. Or Allah, in Arabic.
There are common arguments about the fact that the ‘im’
suffix indicates plurality in Hebrew. Such concerns are easily addressed:
the elementally transcendent unity of God has precedence in all matters
— and secondary to this, the plurality of the nominative token
expresses the sovereignty of the penultimate causal sentience. Since
‘there is neither thing nor being not included’ —
when God speaks, whatever may be speaks and reflects, resonating in
symmetry and magnification. Thus the voice of the One is the voice
of every element of source, lineage, cause, context or entity. A very
‘royal’ form of ‘we’.
The unity of God has solid precedence but there is more
than our idea of singularity here. The body of the unityBeing is a
transentient liquescence of unutterable profundity, ever-more brilliantly
and ever-more-uniquely emerging into manifestation in ever-more-perfect
forms, ‘dimensions’ and synchronies. How can a non-plural
form suffice for such a referent?
Lord • Adonay (or Adonai)
10 50 6 4 1 = 71 = 8
This name’s meaning is Master or Sovereign, but it has an addition
which renders it divine and unsurpassable. It is commonly substituted
for the mystical name YHVH in spoken language.
Jehovah • YHVH (or YHWH)
5 6 5 10 = 26 = 8
[click
image of this name to explore it’s gematria]
This name was revealed to Moses during the time of Exodus and was
not to be spoken by mortal tongues, but rather to be kept as a sacred
gift within the heart. This probably represents the first common instance
of a mystical name which was intended as a transport of direct contact,
rather than for use in common human terms or functions. It is not
meant to be spoken, for speaking it changes it in a way that
silently contemplating it does not. I do not believe ‘Jehovah’
is an accurate translation of this name though I’ve never heard
the pronunciation of it, I suspect it may be similar to Havayah.
o:O:o
The Monogrammaton: H or D
Hey (hei, heh, etc): Fundamentally, the unityBeing is
‘the breath of life’. This is an emanative and pancreative
gesture of adoring communion between the Garden across the Veil and
our universe of ‘manifestation’. Thus it is that many
of our pictures of the Sun show it with ‘a face’ and some
of our cartoons show the Sun as a puffy-cheeked entity ‘blowing’
on the clouds and land. These are caricatures which artfully recapitulate
ancient spiritual understandings about the relationship between the
Sun and the ‘breath of the Holy One’.
It can be said that ‘the breathing of the unityBeing’
is the whole wonder and purpose of all manifestation and existence.
This is remembered with a sound akin to that one might make when attempting
to fog up a mirror with breath. Silent, yet formative of a change
in the ‘reflector’. What happens to the mirror when we
fog it thus? Millions of perfectly unique yet perfectly reflectively
complete ‘droplets’ emerge between us and the reflector.
Each one will completely reflect ‘the one whose breath they
were’ and well as aspects of the surrounding context.
We probably don’t realize this, but the english
exclamation ‘Hey’ is actually the name for ‘all
that was is or shall be’. So when we use this exclamation, it
is as if we are appealing to all of timeSpace, even though the language
we use it in does not yet conserve this understanding. A
word is still a word, and the sound of the word can and often is made
as ‘Hey’. Thus too our colloquialisms, such as ‘Hey
Hey Hey’ (one of the 72 names of G_od) and even ‘Making
Hay’.
My understanding of Dallet is more personal, and may
openly contradict other understandings of which I am currently not
aware. To my eye, this letter comprises the cross. As ‘4’
we see two related ‘poles’ crossing in the middle. This
simultaneously‘infers’ the diamond and the circle. Stand
a flat cross on its southern pole and duplicate the horizontal pole,
spinning the new pole on the axis so that it remains in the plane
of what it duplicates and we have a three-dimensional cross, which
infers the dimensional magnifications of its previous shapes: A sphere,
and an octahedron. Dallet is ‘the four in one’ which is
an elemental character of how polarities emerge and are transcended
in manifestation — cognitive, ‘spiritual’, and material.
This is not the end of this mystery but instead the
beginning:
1. A cross of two bars, plus the diamond it infers,
gives us 2 + 4 = 6 angles plus a unifier (the infered circle) gives
us 7.
2. Extended into 3 dimensions, we get 8 + 3 + 1 = 12.
Reduced, this is 3.
These two numeric entities are of profound significance.
One acts as the remembrance of unification, and the other as the manifest
symmetry of this ever-newly-and-more-competely-arriving unification.
The Digrammaton: YH or YY
The Trigrammaton: YHV or IHV
In the view of the Sefer
Yetzirah,
this name in 6 unique combinations seals the 6 extremities of the
world[universe]. In some gnostic traditions this name is held as elementally
linked to the gesture of creation. These are the six directions of
the 3-dimensional cross.
13. He chose three letters from the simple ones, sealed them, purified
them, and set them in His great name YHV, and with them He sealed
up the six extremities. Five: He sealed height and turned upwards
and sealed it with YHV. Six: He sealed abyss, and turned downwards
and sealed it with YVH. Seven: He sealed east, and turned forward
and sealed it with HYV. Eight: He sealed west and turned behind, and
sealed it with HVY. Nine: He sealed south, and turned to the right
and sealed it with VYH. Ten: He sealed north, and turned to the left
and sealed it with VHY.
14. These are the ten sefirot beli-mah: Spirit of the
Living God, spirit from spirit, water from spirit, fire from water,
height, abyss, east, west, north, and south.
The Tetragrammaton: YHVH
o:O:o
The 7 Names:
El, Shaddai, Elohim, Adonay, Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, YHVH,
and Tzeba‘ot.
These are the names most commonly used for ‘God’
and in the Hebrew texts.
El • God
El Shaddai • ‘God Almighty’.
Adonay • Holy Lord, Celestial Sovereign, Panpenultimate
‘Father’
Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh • ‘I AM (all) I AM (BE-COMING)’
This name is first used in Exodus III: 14 when Moses asks God what
name he shall tell Israel to ‘name’ Alohim to them, YHVH
tells him He is the ‘God of their Fathers’. The emphasis
is on the ‘ever-arriving spirit of perfection’ which moves
all things in billions of ways at once, emerging from void like liquid
flowers. The ‘fast and multiple emergence dimensions’
is an elemental part of the meaning of this name. ‘I arrive,
exponentially more each instant, into local presence and accessibility’
or ‘All that becomes, becomes from my ‘breathing’
into us’. We see that God demands a name that moves and
sings and is not frozen in what it points toward! This name -must-
not be a noun!
YHVH: In Exodus VI: 3 God gives this ‘new name’
to Moses, telling him it has not been known before. This name is normally
‘read aloud’ as Adonay.
Tzeba‘ot: This word is the plural form of ‘host’
or ‘vast family’. An army or host of angels might be referred
to this way, and this translates to our English phrase ‘Lord
of Hosts’. The problem is that there are many meanings lost
in our understanding and translations. [insert scalarity example here]
The 8-Letter Name:
This name is formed by mixing YHVH with Adonay
The Name of 12 letters:
YHVH YHVH YHVH
Other 12-letter names exist, but since I was unable
to locate any dependable source for them, I will leave it to the reader
to seek them out.
33
