My Turn
by Judith Laura

Detail from the cover of Judith Laura's book, Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century: from Kabbalah to Quantum Physics, the first book to examine both Jewish Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah from a feminist perspective and to re-envision their central symbol, the Tree of Life, to its Goddess roots. For more info on the book, click here.

Is There Gender Equity in Hermetic Qabalah?

The following is excerpted with the author's permission from Goddess
Spirituality for the 21st Century: From Kabbalah to Quantum Physics,
© copyright 1997 by Judith Laura. All rights reserved.

Many people on various Pagan paths are drawn to study Qabalah, a form of Western mysticism. At first glance it may seem like a good fit. Qabalah includes both female and male divine images as part of the sefirot (Hebrew, plural; singular, sefirah), also called emanations, which occur on the Tree of Life, long a Goddess symbol. But a closer look at Qabalah reveals problems for those who seek gender equity in spiritual life, reject hierarchies, and see spirit immanent in the material world.

Hermetic Qabalah, the basis of the Western mystical or "mystery" tradition, took its most widely known form in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Great Britain and to a lesser extent continental Europe and the United States and gave the world several influential teachers including Arthur E. Waite, Aleister Crowley, and Dion Fortune. The Golden Dawn grew out of Rosicrucianism and Masonic Lodges of the 1800's. One motivation for its formation may have been the inclusion of women, who were banned from the lodges.(1)

The beliefs of the Golden Dawn were a pastiche of Jewish Kabbalah, Egyptian and Greek traditions and deities, and Christianity. Their practices were interwoven with the use and symbolism of Tarot, a deck of 78 illustrated cards. Parts of the Order's rituals appear similar to today's Wiccan practices.

The Golden Dawn used the kabbalistic tree in a way it had never been used in Judaism: as a model for its organizational hierarchy, which had "secret chiefs" at the top, public chiefs such as Samuel L. "MacGregor" Mathers a little further down, and the rest of the membership scattered beneath. The Order retained the Jewish concept of creation emanating from the top of the Tree of Life down, but those studying Qabalah climbed up the Tree from the bottom, beginning with a feminine sefirah named Malkut. Though we might hope this signaled a more naturalistic concept of the Tree, this was not the intent. Rather, it meant that the person, ignorant of mystical truth, has to start at the bottom of the ladder, the location of matter--the material world. Each sefirah was seen as a step closer to spirit, in a system that looked with disdain on the Earth and matter.

Among the deities recognized in Golden Dawn rituals were the goddesses Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor. For example, in one ritual, a priestess wearing a mask of Hathor says: "I am the Ruler of the Mist and Cloud, wrapping the Earth as it were with a garment, floating and hovering between Earth and Heaven. I am the Giver of the Mist, the Veil of Autumn, the successor of the dew-clad Night." Yet while allowing female deities, the ritual is quick to assert the supremacy of the Father God: "For in the whole Universe shineth the [goddess] Triad, over which the [Paternal] Monad ruleth." Ritual material also states: "And the Great Goddess bringeth forth the vast Sun and brilliant Moon, and the wide Air, and the Lunar Course and the Solar Pole.... And above
the shoulders of the Great Goddess is Nature in Her vastness exalted." Yet the same ritual affirms: . . . "all things are subservient through the Will of the Father of All."(1)

The feminine sefirah Malkut is described as the evil part of the Tree of Good and Evil. She is related to the element earth, and as such is "the receptacle" of air, fire and water. Because of her earthiness or closeness to the material plane, Qabalists considered Malkut to contain evil, which needs to be purged by fire and water.

To Malkut were assigned several Christian personifications: the three "holy Women" (i.e., the Marys) at the foot of the cross; also just Mary, Mother of Jesus; and also Eve. The representation of Malkut as the three Marys could be seen as a reference to the triple Goddess. The symbolism of Mary and Eve, however, contain more negative connotations. For example: " the Son should be crucified on the Cross of the infernal Rivers in Daath [an upper, "invisible" sefirah]; yet to do this He must descend to the lowest first, even unto Malkuth and be born of Her." The implication here is that Malkut/Mary is "lowly," as is woman, but that in order to fulfill his mission, Christ had to lower himself to be born of woman.

Adam and Eve 1504, engraving by Albrecht Durer, ccourtesy of CGFA

And though Golden Dawn rituals at times referred to Eve as "Mother of all," and "the Great Goddess," she is seen as shirking in her duty to support three qabalistic pillars by "being tempted by the Tree of Knowledge," and thereby bringing about the Fall. In earlier Jewish kabbalistic doctrine, Adam brought about the fall, or cosmic catastrophe, by mistaking Malkut for all of divinity. In Hermetic Qabalah, Eve/Goddess herself causes the catastrophe, which becomes something that happens to Adam. Though, in a way, this could be seen as a positive step, since it bolsters the importance of the divine female's responsibility and at least gives the female power enough to cause a cosmic catastrophe, the ultimate effect of this shift is stronger theological support for misogynist viewpoints.

The three pillars–middle, right, and left–that Goddess Eve was supposed to be supporting contain the sefirot. The middle pillar mediates between the right and the left pillars. The right pillar, symbolic of Adam, is considered active, masculine, and positive; the left, symbolic of Eve, is considered passive, feminine, and negative.

From a Goddess spirituality point of view, this stereotyping of feminine as negative and passive and masculine as the positive and active is detrimental to women and inaccurate.

The Golden Dawn offers a graphic description of the place of the serpent, as well as the status of female deity, in its depiction of the Tree before and after "the Fall." Its drawings show that before the Fall, atop the tree (specifically atop the middle pillar), in an enlarged sefirah bearing the wings of Isis, was none other than the crowned Goddess. With a sunburst over her midsection (encompassing her womb), she stands atop a crescent moon labeled "Supernal Eden." A nude crowned and bearded male figure is below her on the center pillar (just below the sefirah related to Tifaret, considered the Christ center in Hermetic Qabalah). The area at the height of the man's legs between the pillars is labeled "the knowledge of good." He stands just above a crowned nude female figure who supports the right and left pillars from below. She stands atop a sefirah at the location of Malkut, which contains the eight-headed serpent. This area is labeled "The knowledge of evil,"and emphasizes the Golden Dawn's location of evil in the feminine Malkut, even before the Fall.

In contrast, the drawing of the Tree after the Fall shows a large circle containing three sefirot represented by a crown (Keter); a crowned, bearded male head shown full face on the right (Hokmah), and a crowned female head (Binah) on his left, shown in profile, turned away from him. The eight-headed serpent has broken free of its containment in the Malkut-like sefirah, running amok as up as far as the location of the Tifaret, about halfway up the Tree. A lightening bolt and Hebrew letters representing the Holy Name separate the serpent from the three upper sefirot. On the middle pillar, the head and shoulders of a crownless woman are shown touching the area from which the serpent has escaped. Above her, among the snakes, is the head and shoulders of a crownless man.(2)

The Golden Dawn explanation of the "before" depiction is that the three top sefirot--Keter, Hokmah and Binah–could be described similarly to the biblical book of Revelations' depiction of "a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of the twelve stars." Those familiar with Goddess spirituality will recognize this vision of the Great Goddess. The Golden Dawn interpreted the crown with 12 stars as Keter. The man whose arms are outstretched is Adam and the woman in Malkut is Eve. After the fall, the union of the sefirot is shattered, separating the lower from the upper sefirot; and evil, symbolized by the serpents, is let loose on the Tree.

Yet the Golden Dawn has, perhaps unintentionally, given us a picture of "the Fall" as the fall--or the catastrophic cessation--of Goddess worship. For in the "before" drawing, we see the Goddess as the sole divinity, understood to also contain the male god (or the masculine face of Goddess!). When she is recognized and honored, both man and woman are also crowned with honor, an honor connected to their sharing responsibility for the wholeness of divinity and for the well-being of creation. After "the Fall," which also can be seen here as the fragmentation of the Goddess, male and female can no longer be understood as full bodies--full people; they are depicted either as just heads or heads and shoulders. That is, without the wholeness of the Goddess, humans cannot be integrated spirit, intellect and body; they are only "talking heads,"--intellect only. Further, as shown at the top of the tree, woman and man--even in the divine world--do not see each other fully, there is a rift between them.

In her writings, the early 20th century Qabalist known as Dion Fortune added her interpretations to the original Golden Dawn material. The philosophy of Qabalah she set forth, particularly the interpretations of the sefirot, form the basis of the system most widely used by today's Qabalists, including those practicing in many metaphysical, New Age and Pagan groups.

Though many of these concepts are problematical from the standpoint of today's Goddess thought, we can certainly say that Fortune's heart was in the right place. We can almost see her struggling with attitudes rampant in her time such as a disdain for nature that includes seeing nature and spirit as opposites and related misogyny. Yet these attitudes remain in her teachings.

For example, Fortune describes the topmost sefirah, Keter, as having no form-- as "pure being" but not a person, a unity. However, Fortune presents Keter's representative image as male: an ancient bearded king. She compares Keter to the "Father of the gods," "the Sky God."

She says that the paired upper sefirot (Binah, feminine, and Hokmah in both Jewish Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah, masculine, despite the fact that in Proverbs and other biblical references the Hebrew Hokmah is translated as Wisdom and Sophia and considered female) need to be understood as polarities. Hokmah, the Supernal Father, is unorganized force, an "outflowing of boundless energy, "The Great Stimulator of the Universe." Fortune says "The Father [Hokmah]...is the giver of life; but the Mother [Binah] is the giver of death because her womb is the gate of ingress to matter..." Here, reflecting the social and religious beliefs of her time, Fortune couples disdain for matter with disdain for the physical womb--and by extension, women. Because Binah opposes Hokmah's dynamic impulses, Binah is seen as the "enemy of God,the evil one." Fortune says, however, that Qabalah teaches a "wiser doctrine: that all sefirot are holy."(3)

Though we certainly agree with this wiser doctrine, we also object to the female/feminine being portrayed as the location of evil--or of being in opposition to "God"-- and we emphatically object to Hokmah's change from female to male in both Hermetic Qabalah and Jewish Kabbalah.

Hermetic Qabalah is open to many different paths, it strives to incorporate the female divine (as well as the male); yet it has not gotten rid of sexist patriarchal stereotypes. These stereotypes assign negative/passive qualities to the female and positive/active qualities to the male; they separate matter from spirit, tinging matter with an evil quality--a tinge that extends to the female/feminine, which is equated with matter.

Though various contemporary teachers have tried to update Qabalah, sometimes by relating it to Wiccan concepts or Jungian psychology, this work is incomplete because it continues to accept Kabbalah/Qabalah's underlying patriarchal polarities, hierarchies, and stereotypes. For, as we have come to understand, for example with the traditional Christian concept of Mary as passive, empty vessel, it does little good to incorporate the concept of the female/feminine in divinity, if that concept reinforces the stereotype of women as tinged by evil (which must be kept under control), and passive--empty vessels waiting to be filled by male "emanations."

Notes
1. Torrens, R.G. The Secret Rituals of the Golden Dawn. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser Inc.,1973.
2. Torrens, pp. 262, 285. The "Before" and "After" portrayals linked to here differ slightly from those in Torrens. For example, the first linked graphic doesn't include labels and the second linked graphic shows nearly the whole body of the man, whereas the earlier Torrens version doesn't. This is not to criticize either version, but just to point out the differences.
3. Fortune, Dion. The Mystical Qabalah. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser 1984 and 1993 (previously published in England in 1935).

Graphics Credits
+ Detail from cover design by Kathy Holbrook for Judith Laura's book Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century: from Kabbalah to Quantum Physics. Used with author's permission. All rights reserved.
+ Adam and Eve, Albrecht Durer, courtesy of CGFA.