THE
CABALA
And
now let's turn back to the Jews. We had left them well convinced
of the existence of one unique God.
They were very respectful of this supreme being and they did not
dare divide it up like the Chinese did; but this did not prevent
them from continuing to observe with extreme care all of the qualities
which they perceived in the world with the aim of improving their
knowledge of their divinity by studying his external appearance.
They did not, therefore, concern themselves with the description
of the universe based on the fundamental particles of which it
was composed, but tried instead to describe the different aspects
of reality as the result of a mixing together of different qualities.
The qualities which they had recognized in reality were, as they
called them:
| 1)
will of God that creates everything |
| 2)
time |
3)
movement
4) thickness
5) depth |
}the
three dimensions |
| 6)
height |
| 7)
The opposition of forces (good and evil) |
This theory (together with numerous others which are more or less
probable) led the Jews to convince themselves that it was possible
to classify the perceivable qualities of the universe according
to 7 fundamental categories.
This seemed to them extremely appropriate also because 7 is a
number with which they could divide a lot of things. The lunar
cycle s divisible in four phases of 7 days (waxing moon, first
and second quarter, waning moon, first and second quarter) and
the same goes for the female menstrual cycle; and animal can be
divided into 7 parts, 4 paws, a head, a body and a tail; the head
has seven holes, 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils, and a mouth, and
there are 7 things in the universe: god, the earth, water, the
sun and the moon, the stars and the sky.
Reasoning among these lines they arrived at the conclusion that
man was able to perceive 7 basic qualities and that, by subdividing
reality according to this scheme, they would be that man was able
to perceive 7 basic qualities and that, by subdividing reality
according to this scheme, they would be better able to understand
the particularities of things. Later on they expanded on this
subdivision which they had found to be too limited. Perhaps by
way of analogy with the three dimensional structure of matter
and the tripartite composition of the phenomenon of contradiction
(2 opposing forces that define a context) they chose to further
subdivide by 3 the 7 original qualities, thus arriving at an enumeration
of 21 more partial qualities. To these 21 qualitative subdivisions
they added a 22nd figure (the zero) to indicate the superior quality
of God which is beyond the ability of man to perceive and codify.
This idea of a universe which is divisible into 22 qualities is
quite ancient and has come down to us under the name CABALA.
The
differences between the roads followed by the Chinese and the
Jews lies in the fact that, while the Chinese tried to discover
the secrets of the internal structure of matter, the Jews tried
to deconstruct the concrete qualities of reality in order to codify
its fundamental diversity. To appreciate the importance of this
difference in approach it is enough to realize that it is responsable
for the fact that the Chinese and the Jews developed two different
ways of writing.
In fact the Chinese invented ideogrammatic writing which breaks
down words into logical meanings and then translates then into
sequences of signs, while the Jews considered the totality of
the sounds that make up the language and then divided them into
the 22 basic sounds which, arranged sequence, reproduce the words.
The Chinese constructed a theoretical model of the internal structure
of the elements which constitute reality. The Jews elaborated
a model of the different functions that the basic elements perform
in their reciprocal relationships.
