Francis Warain,

picture frontispiece

in ‘La Théodicée de la Kabale’,

Editions Véga, 1949.

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With today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA, we continue our selections from Francis Warrain’s ‘La Théodicée de la Kabbale’, posthumously published by Editions Véga in 1949. This is part 4 & 5 out of 5 parts on the subject of The System of the Scale we have introduced in earlier posts. English translation from the original French by Via-HYGEIA. Original French runs from page 59 to 63. The transcription convention of the sephiroth’s names in English follows Rabbi Ariel Bar Tzadok’s usage, in his seminal ‘Walking in the Fire’. 1993-2007. Kosher Torah Publishing. This is the simple, luminous teaching of a very humble and wise man we have chosen to honor in this present series.

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The System of the Scale

Part IV-The Notion of Genders

We have just reviewed in the sephirothic Scale the balance established between the two opposites of a duality by the mean of a central column, then of a second balance between action and reaction, between above and below. The second balance does not lead into immobility, but to a perpetual and living exchange of relationships that maintain a connected and conservative order. The bilateral balance also must allow movement.

This Scale is not an ‘apparatus’ planted once and for all by means of fixed and equal weights on both sides. It is meant to weigh varied weights. Its two trays can both incline. Therefore, it is of use for discerning which of the two bodies is the heaviest. But this comparison is its most smallest property. The Scale’s main mission is to relate every weight to a standard, to establish a classification of all of the objects under the rule of the notion of weight. And this notion is at the very core of the notion of existence, because it expresses through the possibility of action. Through this function, the Scale symbolizes the highest Function of the Thought towards the relative; unifying, synthetizing and classifying the diverse according to the absolute scale of values.

Even though the two trays behave in the same manner towards of the weights that are  being placed, they do not play the same role. On one we place unknown weights of random objects; on the other one we place the standard. Hence the bilateral balance of the Scale realizes a double relationship: A relationship of coordination, reel somehow, that establishes balance and maintains it; and, also, a relationship of subordination, quasi ideal so to say, which is the evaluation of a variable object by a fixe standard. The first relationship deals with the state of things, the second focuses on the aims.

Now, the System of the Sephiroth, distributed according to the Scale, does possess this dual character. The linear series is not erased by the repartition in three columns and in superposed ternaries. The left remains subordinated to the right, and the right represents always more union and the left always more distinction. Therefore, even though the terms of the right and left columns are located upon the same level alike opposites poles, these very poles are differentiated, so that a current goes from one another in a definite direction.

Through the operation of the weighing, the polarity of the Scale is found differentiated, alike the electro-magnetic polarity that distinguishes positif and negative, right and left as well, that are dissymmetrical in the human being, in a mechanical point of view and in a fluidic point of view too. Finally, by this function difference between both sides, the Scale represents the great principle of sexuality. The male side (right side) is superior; it strives towards synthesis; the female side (left side) is inferior and strives towards analysis. And therefore between the principle of separation and the principle of union, the supreme combination is established, supreme preserver of the radical separation that leads towards the void, and of the confusion that leads to pantheism. We will not insist furthermore upon this question; due to its importance, it would lead us to get out of the frame that we have set for ourselves. Let’s notice only that thanks to that difference between both sides, the bilateral balance and the sustenance balance allow to avoid immobility and crystallization that would be nothing more than a negation of life. The two balances do combine; they allow a current to oscillate from one side to another and give rise to an ascending wave or a descending one, according to if we consider the elevation of the creature towards God, or the abasement of God towards the creature.

This differentiation of the right and the left corresponds to the relationship between the male and the female. It is, according to the Zohar (as seen in the publication of one of its recent translators /commentators in French, Jean de Pauly), ‘Something male and female‘. Now, the  relationship between male and female does not correspond exactly to the relationship between activity and passivity; the female being receptive and not passive; the male being essentially more dynamic than active. The operation is common to the male and the female; but they oppose themselves as action and reaction. And this encompasses at the same time a relationship of correlation and a relationship of subordination. The reaction presuppose action, but action is only achieved through reaction: the agent and the reactive are given in a correlative manner, as conditions of the result. But, the crossing of the conditions towards effectiveness is determined by the male; and the female (at least with humans and mammals) can do nothing before the male intervenes. Therefore, there is a combination of a balance and a curent.

The Zohar presents the modality of genders in the divine realm as intimately linked to the system of the Scale. But, in describing the Restitution that followed the breaking of the Vases. the Kabbalah of the commentators discusses genders as going through a series of different phases of harmonization, of which we will not here seek out the meaning. Let us just notice that the face to face situation could mean pure thought, conscious of itself. The back to back situation would mark the antithesis of the spiritual and the material reciprocally limiting themselves and not knowing each other; the face to back situation would express, one one side thought seeking to dominate matter, or on the other side matter aspiring to assimilate spirit. The breaking of the vases was provoked by the antagonism of the two characters of the Absolute and the Relative, identity and distinction. Through the play of the sexes, the system of the Scale will harmoniously combine these two characters; it will establish the face to face, the penetration of all things by the thought; and it is with these two degrees of intimacy that we are able to deduct from the principle of sexuality and which they are respectively marking the predominance of identity and distinction. The constant copulation, inherent to nature, characterizes the intimate and essential union that constitutes the Reality of the Absolute: it responds more directly to the Thought. Copulation alternating with separation marks the predominance of Relativity in which duality wins over unity; it corresponds more to Life. But, because the influence of the Absolute must be found at the very heart of the Relative, duality cannot prevail without organizing itself: therefore it tends to transform the correlation into subordination. At the heart of the Absolute, duality is maintained by evocating this subordination, but it remains then more erased.

The system of the Scale allocates according to their natural order the two relationships of the genders. It corresponds to the essential condition of the human being created both male and female, and from whom the female is extracted from the male. These two phases seem to correspond, the first one with the union of the Father and Mother, and the second one with the union of the King and the Queen. Above, Hokhma and Binah represent the Father and the Mother: their conjunction is constant. Since the constitution of the system of the Scale, they are always face to face. We could say that Da’at is their very copulation. It is so intimate and so immediate that the correlation erases the the direction of the current that is only remembered through the ranks of Hokhma and Binah in the linear order. Their engendered being, their fruit, Tiferet or the King, marks the synthesis of the two genders with the predominance of the male principle. Between the King, Tiferet and the Queen, Malkhut, the copulation alternates with separation, and the face to face with the back to back: the direction of the current predominates over the correlation that is happening in the union. And here, the mediating term is not like Da’at, the very fact of the copulation, but a distinct Sephira, Yesod, which represents the mediating organ of the Alliance.

Therefore, the correlation of the genders dominates where the copulation is inherent to the very nature of the partners; the male current towards the female becomes preponderant where the sexes subsist separated and do unite through an action.

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Part V-The Notion of Persons

It is to the notion of persons that the notions of male and female are the most directly attached. The Forbearing (literal translation is ‘long-suffering’) dwells in Keter, the Father has his seat in Hokhma, the Mother in Binah, the King in Tiferet, and the Queen in Malkhut. But this order is nothing but an adaptation of the order of the Persons to the order of the Sephiroth.

The influence of the notion of Persons is not limited to this and in the degrees of Sexuality in the system of the Scale. The three degrees of union of the genders are super-imposed in depth. The Forbearing penetrates the system of the Sephiroth from above towards below; He is worn (‘revêtir’ in French) until the level of Hokhma and Binah by the Father and the Mother. The King and the Queen cover (‘recouvrent’ in French) in the region that is located under Hesed and Gevurah.

This in-depth penetration marks the graduation of the relationship between the Absolute and the Relative through a mode more intimate than the preceding ones. The order from above to below, from right to left, and their combinations through a current exposes in an explicite manner the ternary which is constituted by Reality in its relationship with Thought: It distinguishes the polarity, the transcendence and binds them together. Here the relationship of the Absolute and the Relative is marked as a penetration, somehow organic, vital and fundamentally unifying. The Absolute is revealed through the Relative as its frame, the Relative being its casing. Thus is evoked, in the most intimate manner, the corporeal constitution of man: the bones and flesh. Woman is truly the bone of his bones and the flesh of his flesh, because at the three degrees of depth the notion of the sexes is represented.

This last relationship unfolds for us new metaphysical horizons. In everything that has preceded, we have supposed a relationship between the Absolute and the Relative: the whole sephirotic theory is established upon this notion. And yet the antinomy of the Relative and the Absolute is still standing in front of us. Between the Absolute and the Relative no relationship seems possible, because the Relative is nothing in front of the Absolute. Every relationship presupposes two terms, and here one of the terms vanishes in front of the other. This did not escape Saint Thomas (Note: Thomas of Aquino). He conceived this relationship as unilateral in some sort, and only having a reality on the Relative side. The creature refers itself to God, but God cannot be the subject of any real relationship in which the creature would be the term. Therefore, to elude what this idea represents of contradictions, we have spoken not of a relationship, but of a link between the Absoute and the Relative, that is of the virtuality of the relationship.

But, the wrapping in different degree of persons by the system of the Sephiroth find itself vivified and the history of the restitution of the Vases let us foresee the sublime solution that enables a relationship between the Relative and the Absolute.

The Relative, being nothing in itself, opposes to the Absolute a reaction that is nil. And the breaking of the Vases seems to indicate an impotent tendency, sole possible manifestation for the Relative when it is left to its own devices. It is then that the Absolute comes in some way in projecting itself deep towards the bottom of the Relativity, adopting its nature, incarnating in it in order to communicate the faculty to react towards the Absolute and at the same time remaining true its relative nature. And it is exactly that, it seems, that this in-depth penetration symbolizes, a crowning of the system of the Sephiroth:

From the absolute Thought the conditions of the Relativity flow; then the absolute Life comes to drop its seed of absolute into the deepest regions of the Relativity, and helps it to assimilate the in-flux emitted by the Thought.

Therefore, under the rays of the Supreme Sun, the system of the relationship rises as the Tree of Life, identifying as the Man-God and displays, as an organism, the synthesis of the essential faculties expressed by the Sephiroth.

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Finally, four notions are converging in the system of the Sephiroth:

1. The linear suite indicates the order that flows from the subordination of the Relative to the Absolute; it call for hierarchy.

2. The balance of the Scale, originating from the duality implied in the relativity, establishes it through correlation and brings the balance into existence.

3. The notion of the Genders is introduced through differentiation that brings the combination of the subordination & the correlation; it gives birth to the current and the oscillation.

4. The hierarchy of the Persons is then provoked through the transcendance of the Absolute; it accomplishes its immanence within the Relative.

And, therefore, the antinomy of the Relative and the Absolute finds itself resolved through the conjunction of the Thought and Life. Through the Sephiroth, the Absolute establishes the conditions of the Relativity; through the Persons, relativity finds itself actualized in the manner of the Absolute.

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Original French

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