(07-13-2024, 07:38 PM)Maxmars Wrote: I think it's because 'zero' (0) is not a number, it's a concept.

(07-31-2024, 08:11 AM)Nerb Wrote: If zero is not a number, how can ten be anything other than a ONE?

Zero is THE origin, and the spaces between it and anything else is also important because they hold no definition so have incredible potential.

Labels have and will always limit human thinking.

(07-12-2024, 12:21 AM)CCoburn Wrote: This is the Hermetic depiction of this tree of life:

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The above and below axiom is fitting for this two-dimensional depiction, but in an actual three-dimensional cosmological setting the within and without would be more appropriate as in actuality this is an expanding spherical model from an initial singular dimensionless point – a primordial point.

Quote:...there are the four worlds of the seder hishtalshelut—four aeons, four olamim—and within each of them the powers proceed according to their natural hierarchy. First, on high, there is Atzilut, the world of emanation, the radiance of incomprehensible wisdom; and then from that great perpetual lightning bolt descends Beri’ah, the first creative world, the aeon where the souls and the angels of the Most High as yet have no form but are conscious of themselves purely as wisdom born of wisdom; from there descends Yetzirah, the olam of form into which the spiritual realm above flows ever downward, and which in turn emanates and impresses itself upon the physical world below itself, Assiah, the region of action. But, of course, in and through all these worlds the divine Sefirot emanate according to the fixed hierarchy of their powers and manifestations, until they reach the lowest level of all, the Malkuth—the ‘Realm’—of this material order. At the very apex of the Sefirotic tree is the Keter, the ‘Crown,’ the first emanation of Ein Sof, in which as yet there is no division of knower from known … no estrangement of the One from itself but only pure knowing … the walled paradise of divine innocence, into which no eye with plural vision may peer. From there, however, the divine power manifests itself by division into the male and female principles—the agent and patient manifestations—that form the nuptial syzygies from which the lower emanations are born. And each higher level is then in turn the agent power in regard to the patient power below. This is the mystery of the great love of the higher for the lower, and the burning desire of the lower for the higher, which in scripture is expressed as a mystery, under the veil of the story of the sons of the Most High smitten by the loveliness of the daughters of men, and descending to take them as wives....

From Keter proceed Chokmah and Binah, Wisdom and Understanding, and the one sires upon the other the Sefirah called Da’at, Knowledge; here Keter knows itself not simply under the aspect of the fused oneness of Ein Sof, but as a distinct duality of knower and known. These are the three levels—the ‘Crown’ and the syzygy it emanates—of the divine intellect that presides above all the worlds. From there, what descends are the divine affects or drives: Chesed and Gevurah, Lovingkindness and Might, the fruit of which is Tif ’eret, Adornment; then Netzach and Hod, Eternity and Glorious Majesty, giving birth to Yesod, the Foundation; while below the Sefirot there is only Malkhut, the ‘Realm,’ the purely feminine patiency underlying things … the barren womb waiting to be made fertile by the descent of divine life … the dark waters upon whose surface the eternal splendors shine.