GENESIS 01:An Alchemical Take

    “Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything
    has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same;
    opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree;
    extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes
     may be reconciled.”
-The Kybalion

We’re all familiar with the Creation Epoch, but how often do we really get to breakdown the way God works here? You guys know from previous posts why I feel it all starts with the utterance of the plural name of God, Elohim, but why is it important?

Almost immediately we see a reference to “a mighty wind,” in Gen. 1:2 Ruach (רוח) – literally, the Spirit of God. Yes. That’s the Holy Spirit- Ruach HakoDesh ( רוח הקודש)- or the Divine Feminine. Great, but why is this so crucial in our understanding the metaphysics of the creation epoch?

“Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; gender manifests on all planes.”

-The Kybalion

Alchemically speaking, gender exists on all levels of creation. The infinite Ein Soph exacted His will, or desire to create, and breathed His very Spirit into the cosmos. Ruach represents said Spirit and Yahweh represents said desire. However these are Natures, they’re both parts of a perfected being permeating throughout the Cosmos. They’re not separate. Our friends to the East think of Yin and Yang much in the same way.

Alchemists saw the play between forces of light and dark being absolutely vital to existence actually being. They believed everything only exists because opposing forces exist. The heavenly light-waters described by Moses in Genesis were no different.

Rock with me here. There are 7 days of creation total. On 6 of those days God creates through this alchemical process of Polarity- seemingly opposite things are actually one and the same at varying degrees. Essentially, Nature is comprised of a passive and an active essence vibrating in a Divine Flux.

• 1RST DAY-          …light is divided from darkness…
• 2ND DAY-            …waters are divided from waters (above to below)…
• 3RD DAY-            …land is divided from the sea…
• 4TH DAY-            …day is divided from the night…
• 5TH DAY-            …created fish in sea, birds in air (below to above)…
• 6TH DAY-            …human beings are created, both male and female…
• 7TH DAY-            …G-D rests and polarity is reconciled (unified)…

Granted, once it’s pointed out we can easily see how medieval alchemists tied the creation epoch to the Emerald Tablet of Thoth and The Tree of Life but there’s a more subtle code being conveyed alongside the obvious. One that has lead countless mystics on their inner journeys of transformation.  It’s the rule of 3 and the triune nature beyond what we perceive as duality.

Sure we can see day and night easily enough but what of the fluctuations between? What of dusk and dawn? What of the spectrum within the polarity? What we see as varying degrees.

In the Sefer Yetzirah: Book of Creation In Theory and Practice Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan explains the Three Mothers in the most clarified manner possible. The Sefer Yetzirah tends to be incredibly cryptic in it’s sharing of divine wisdom. Anyways…

The 3 Mother’s– Air, Fire, Water are absolutely vital to understanding the framework alchemists were working in centuries later. See, the Heavens are created from Fire– think of Heraclitus soul substance. Earth formed from Water- think of a womb. Air– the breathe- is the force that mediates between the two.

Scientifically speaking, fire is energy, water is matter, and air is the space that allow the two to interact. Deeper understanding, fire is the electromagnetic force through all which matter interacts. The atomic nucleus, however, consists of light physical charges which would repel each other if only electromagnetism existed. There must therefore exist another force which would bind the nucleus together.

He goes on to explain this same concept in regards to seasons- warm, cold, neutral. Reason being is these elements represent the axis in the unitary symmetry. That’s a really fancy way of explaining it but he was a physicist before he was a Rabbi.

Anyways, that’s the basic framework for the metaphysics. The triangle is a mystic symbol of stability. It represents divine balance. When God rests, polarity is reconciled within the Universe. Now we may get whiplashed around by hot and cold, light and dark because of our likes and dislikes, but the universe is a cosmic unity. It follows its cycles and rhythms without any of the hang ups we have.

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