1. Introduction
Many within the rabbinical community are adherents of Jewish mysticism, more commonly known as Kabbalah. Other followers of Kabbalah include the Secret Society of Freemasons, who have always been on a quest to recover the lost meaning of the Holy Tetragrammaton (יהוה) as God’s lost “Building Secret.” As Master Masons, George Washington, James Monroe, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Andrew Jackson, and Harry Truman, to name a few, sealed their oath with יהוה. At least 15 American presidents are known to have been Freemasons, while 10 are known to have been Master Masons. Here are two relevant Freemason passages describing this “Great Word.”
“From year to year no longer did the High Priest pass behind the veil and pronounce the Great Word on the other side of the curtain of palms and pomegranates. It came about in the course of the centuries that the true way of its pronunciation passed even from the memory of the elders. Therefore ‘until time and circumstances should restore the genuine,’ they continued to do of necessity... the substitution of Adonai for Jehovah…the Tradition with its whole heart looks for that day to come when Israel shall be taken out of exile...declared in the hearing of all who have come out of great tribulation into the inheritance of Zion” (Waite, 1970: pp. 418-419).
Here is an older Freemason text that attempts a verbal explanation of this “Great Word”:
יהוה contains the mystery of the Trinity, as the ancient Jews who lived before Christ testify in their traditions. For by “י” they understand the origin of all things. By “ה” they mean the Son, by whom all things were made. By “ו” which is a conjunction copulative, they understand the Holy Ghost, who is the love which binds them together, and proceeds from them. And further that “ה” refers to the two natures of Christ, the divine and human (Macoy, 1869: p. 554)
Unfortunately, verbal explanations that attempt to describe יהוה will always fall short of their goal because the nature of language is simply not rigorous enough to accomplish that task. The author of this article has recovered a rigorous mathematical exposition of the Holy Trinity of Hebrew letters in יהוה. That said, however, some would consider it blasphemous to suggest that a mathematical/scientific conceptualization of יהוה exists that is capable of eliminating the ambiguities of language, culture, and religious dogma. If such an explanation did exist, wouldn’t it imply that God could be brought into a laboratory for empirical verification or falsification—a patently absurd notion—or is it?
Perhaps the most articulate use of language to describe the Book of Creation’s encrypted “Abrahamic” mathematics can be attributed to Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572). Rabbi Luria is considered the father of modern Kabbalah, largely due to his interpretations of two key Kabbalistic texts. The first of these texts is the Zohar, an extremely accessible 13th-century Aramaic text. The second text is the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation), a much older and considerably more esoteric text. Rabbi Luria is one of the few Kabbalists to attempt a verbal explanation of the Book of Creation’s mathematical constructs as the key to Abraham’s teachings. The Zohar admits that it is unable to reveal the “deep and hidden things that issue from God’s thought and are taken up by the Voice [of God] which are not disclosed til the Word [יהוה] reveals them” (Zohar, 1984: 32a). It further states that these “deep and hidden things” define “secret paths that cannot be discovered” (Zohar, 1984: 30b). This paper will attempt to demonstrate that the Zohar’s “secret paths” can indeed be discovered as the mathematics and physics of vibration that emanates from the “Voice of Elohim” in Genesis 1, and from the “Hand of Yahweh” in Genesis 2.
Rabbi Luria was never able to decipher the Abrahamic mathematics that is encrypted in יהוה, but he made a noble attempt to verbally and symbolically describe that mathematics by introducing four popular Kabbalistic concepts: Tzimtzum (Contractions of Divine Light), Shevirat Hakelim (Breaking of the Vessels), Tikun (Reordering), and Partzufim (Configuration of God’s Ten Divine Emanations). Rabbi Luria’s use of language introduces ambiguities that could only be clarified by the Book of Creation’s mathematical יהוה template known as the “231 Gates.” It is fair to speculate that most people who lived during the time of Abraham (ca. 1800 BCE) and Moses (1350 BCE) would not have been sufficiently educated in mathematics. As a result, the true religion of Abraham was communicated to the masses in the Torah’s easy-to-understand stories, parables, metaphors, allegories, and symbols. The inaccuracies and ambiguities of language have resulted in conflicting and ambiguous interpretations of God and Creation. Without the benefit of Abraham’s teachings, there has been a lack of clarity about the nature of God and Creation that has contributed significantly to a long history of religious exclusivity, competitive hatred, and war.
The key to wisdom can be found in Proverbs 1, which is attributed to King Solomon. In this proverb, Solomon warns us not to take creation stories too literally, but rather, to search for wisdom within the Hebrew Bible’s many allegories, parables, and riddles.
5Let the wise man hear and increase learning. The understanding man shall acquire wise counsels6 to understand an allegory and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.”
There is a tradition that Abraham understood the Torah seven generations before Moses wrote it. This article explores exactly how Abraham’s 231 Gates mathematics guided the hand of Moses as he translated Abraham’s mathematical “Oral Law” into the “Written Law” of the Torah. Moses kept the oral tradition of Abraham’s mathematics alive and pristine by encrypting it all within the “Word of God” יהוה.
Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla (1248-1305) is one of Judaism’s most prominent Kabbalistic authorities on the textual exegesis and hermeneutics of the Torah, and his writings suggest that Abraham’s early knowledge of the Torah is based on Abrahamic gnosticism, i.e., יהוה mathematics. In his Sha'are Orah (Gates of Light), Gikatilla appears to understand this when he writes that “The entire Torah is like an explication of and commentary on, the Ineffable Name of God [יהוה]” (Scholem, 1974: p. 171; Gikatilla, 2011: p. 6).
2. Applying Abraham’s “Oral Law” to the “Written Law”
of the Torah
Before revealing Abraham’s lost mathematical details, this paper will address three academic issues that challenge the Book of Creation’s authenticity. First among them is the notion that no one has ever plausibly linked the Book of Creation directly to the Hebrew Bible. Until now, no direct and plausible links have ever been recovered between these two texts. However, one would naturally expect the “father of the faith” to have significantly influenced the holy books of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. A second objection emphasizes the fact that no archaeological evidence has ever been discovered to verify that Abraham was anything more than just a Biblical character. Of course, a lack of archaeological evidence does not prove that Abraham did not exist as a historical entity. If it can be demonstrated that the Book of Creation’s Old Babylonian teachings are tightly coupled to the Torah, then it is fair to say that the Book of Creation’s teachings were espoused by whatever person history has come to know as Abraham. A third objection to the text’s authenticity comes from philologists. The world’s language experts are convinced that the Book of Creation could not be authentic because it was written in Biblical Hebrew. This Semitic Abjad alphabetic script dates to a period no earlier than 400 BCE, roughly 1400 years after the Biblical timeline for Abraham.
It is important to recognize Biblical Hebrew as one of several historical 22-consonant Semitic Abjad alphabetic scripts. Each of these 22 consonants is also assigned a numeric value, so reciting an Abjad alphabet is essentially equivalent to counting. If one were to add up the numerals that correspond to the consonants of a given word, each word would acquire a specific numeric value. The relationship between Hebrew letters and numbers is known as gematria. It is important to understand that any given word would acquire the same numeric value no matter which of the historical Semitic scripts was in use, including Biblical Hebrew (ca. 400 BCE), Aramaic (700 BCE), paleo-Hebrew (1000 BCE), Phoenician (1200 BCE), proto-Canaanite (1550 BCE), and proto-Sinaitic (1850 BCE). Proto-Sinaitic would have been in use during the Biblical timeline for Abraham (ca. 1850 BCE). If an earlier version of the Book of Creation is ever recovered by archaeologists, then whatever script that text is written in would essentially reveal the same underlying mathematical/musical content as what can be deciphered from the current extant text.
Many religious clerics and scholars consider Elohim and Yahweh to be effectively equivalent (Smith, 2002: pp. 32-25). However, once the Book of Creation’s deciphered mathematical/musical content is applied to Genesis 2, the profound differences between Elohim and Yahweh can finally be revealed. Elohim explains the lost meaning of Genesis 1, whereas deciphering Yahweh's encrypted mathematics explains the lost meaning of Genesis 2. Understanding these differences begins with Exodus 6:3, which tells us that Abraham knew God as אלוהים (Elohim), whereas Moses knew God as יהוה (Yahweh).
“God said to Moses, ‘I am the Lord [יהוה]. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty [El Shaddai], but by my name the LORD [יהוה] I did not make myself fully known to them.’”
Since Abraham knew God as Elohim, and Moses knew God as Yahweh, it is logical to wonder why an “Abrahamic” text like the Book of Creation would encrypt the 231 Gates mathematics in יהוה (Yahweh) rather than in אלוהים (Elohim). As already stated, Abraham’s teachings consisted of Old Babylonian Base-60 mathematics (ca. 1800 BCE) that was passed on to later generations as part of an oral tradition of mathematics associated with Abraham. Eventually, that tradition took on the imprimatur of the “Oral Law” that God taught Moses on Mount Sinai. If Moses had received two stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, it is at least equally important that Moses also received the entire mathematical context for those commandments. As a result, Moses was able to shape and structure the entire Torah narrative as “Written Law” based on the mathematical יהוה template of Abraham’s “Oral Law.”
Proverbs 1 advises the reader to search for wisdom within the Hebrew Bible’s many allegories, parables, and riddles. Unfortunately, it omits any specific instructions that identify which Biblical creation allegories and riddles need to be solved. Thankfully, the Book of Creation specifies the relevant allegories and riddles in its first two passages.
Book of Creation 1.1
With 32 mystical paths of Wisdom engraved Yah...He is lofty and holy ---
And creates His universe with three books (Sepharim),
with text (Sepher), with number (Sephar), and with sound (Sippur).
Book of Creation 1.2
Ten Sefirot of Nothingness and 22 Foundation Letters:
Three Mothers, Seven Doubles, and Twelve Elementals.
At the end of the first verse cited above, the reader is advised to study creation texts, like the Book of Genesis from the perspective of three different layers of meaning: text, number, and sound. The first passage also informs us that creation was “engraved” with “32 mystical paths of Wisdom,” while the second passage breaks down these “32 mystical paths” into 10 Sefirot of Nothingness and 22 Foundation Letters. We are then told that the 22 Foundation letters break down into 3 Mothers, 7 Doubles, and 12 Elementals. Each of these defines a separate mathematical riddle that can only deciphered after constructing the 231 Gates from the Book of Creation 2.5, as cited below. The resulting 231 Gates became the foundation of Abraham’s mathematical “Oral Law” that Moses would later encrypt in יהוה as the underlying mathematical template that shaped and structured the “Written Law” or Torah.
Book of Creation 2.5
How? He permuted them, weighed them, and transformed them,
Alef with them all and all of them with Alef, Bet with them all and all of them with Bet.
They repeat in a cycle and exist in 231 Gates.
It comes out that all that is formed and all that is spoken emanates from one Name.
The mathematical and sonic details that solve each of the riddles mentioned in the Book of Creation 1.1, 1.2, and 2.5, can be found in the author’s first book (Schatz, 2007). The author also attempts to establish that the 231 Gates documents history’s oldest string theory table as history’s first “Theory of Everything.” Abraham’s Book of Creation referred to this “Theory of Everything” as the “Living God” (Schatz, 2012: p. 107). Abrahamic string theory completely reconceptualizes our notions of God and the Intelligent Design of Creation in mathematical and scientific terms. The Book of Creation’s string theory sheds light on Genesis 2: 1 - 3, and Genesis 2: 1 - 3 sheds light on Genesis 1 as a “rainbow of sounds and colors” embodied by the Sabbath that emanates from the “Voice of Elohim.” This article will then apply the Book of Creation’s string theory to Genesis 2: 4 - 25, and in doing so, it will demonstrate the most relevant mathematical details that Moses encrypted in יהוה, as well as the most relevant religious stories and symbols that this יהוה template shapes and structures throughout the Hebrew Bible.
For those who consider it blasphemous to suggest that God and Creation were originally conceptualized in terms of mathematics and physics, it could not be considered blasphemous if Abraham’s 231 Gates could be tightly coupled to the Torah. If the “Secret of the Torah” has indeed been recovered, as this paper claims, then perhaps it will contribute to ending the children of Abraham’s exile from God, making the prophecy of Exodus 19:6 possible “And you shall be to Me a kingdom of princes and a holy nation”.
3. The Wise Men of Athens
There are two renowned Jewish scholars, Leo Baeck (1873-1956) and Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), who were both convinced that the Book of Creation could only be deciphered by applying the Pythagorean mathematical/musical tradition (Scholem, 1974: pp. 26-27) better known as the “Harmony of the Spheres” or “Music of the Spheres” (Godwin, 1993). The “Music of the Spheres” also surfaces in the writings of Maimonides (1135-1204), one of Judaism’s greatest philosophers and rabbinical scholars.
According to Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, the ancient sages were convinced that the metaphysical “Secrets of the Law” could somehow be recovered from the “Music of the Spheres” (Maimonides, 2007: V2, Chapter VIII, p. 163). In his writings, Maimonides admitted that he was unable to find that critical connection, and further, he writes that Judaism’s great loss of metaphysical secrets resulted from the cultural norm of restricting Judaism’s most precious knowledge to a learned few.
“Nothing but a few remarks and allusions are to be found in the Talmud and the Midrashim, like a few kernels enveloped in such a quantity of husk, that the reader is generally occupied with the husk and forgets that it encloses a kernel” (Maimonides, 2007: V1, Chapter LXXI, p. 108).
The rabbinical community would, no doubt, find it difficult to fathom how the “wise men of Athens” could hold the key to deciphering the Kabbalistic inner meaning of the Torah. Pythagoras is said to have learned his mathematics in Egypt, but in his book, Unexpected Links between Egyptian and Babylonian Mathematics, Jöran Friberg, an authority on the history of mathematics, points to the Old Babylonian period associated with Abraham as the true source of this mathematics:
“...when the Greeks themselves claimed that they got their mathematics from Egypt, they can really have meant that they got their mathematical inspiration from Egyptian texts with mathematics of the Babylonian type” (Friberg, 2005: p. 270).
Maimonides would have been relieved to learn that it was an Abrahamic oral tradition of Old Babylonian mathematics that had been passed on to Pythagoras by way of Egypt.
We begin our explanation of the “Music of the Spheres” by comparing an alphabetic character’s numeric value to another alpha-numeric value, thus juxtaposing two alpha-numeric characters as an integer ratio that can also be written as a fraction. Each integer ratio then generates a specific musical tone, and each of these integer ratio tones integrates into three different types of mathematical progression (arithmetic, harmonic, and geometric) to form the 231 Gates table.
Although Aristotle studied with Plato, Maimonides was convinced that Aristotle did not believe in the “Music of the Spheres.” Thanks to two years of independent study with college mentor Dr. Ernest McClain, it became clear that several of Plato’s Dialogues accurately referenced Abraham’s numbers as the key to creation (McClain, 1978; McClain, 1974). Plato’s stories are also mathematical allegories, but they are very different than the Torah’s stories and allegories. Somehow, Plato discovered the same underlying 231 Gates mathematical blueprint. Maimonides acknowledged that the Jewish people had lost almost all knowledge of their metaphysics, so he decided to steer the Jewish people away from Platonic metaphysics and toward the Talmud’s Aristotelian logic. Since Pythagoras was born only a few years after Seraiah was murdered, it is possible that Pythagoras never learned the mathematical details of the 231 Gates table. Nevertheless, Ernest McClain’s writings demonstrate that Plato’s Dialogues owe a great debt to the 231 Gates table. Despite its Old Babylonian origins, about 1200 years before the birth of Pythagoras, the 231 Gates table is often referred to as the “Pythagorean” or “Lambdoma” Table.
Knowledge of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle was conveyed to the early Church fathers during the Early Middle Ages (ca. 5th to 10th c. CE) by a scholar named Boethius. Boethius’ efforts shed considerable light on the Dark Ages. As a result, the “Music of the Spheres” blossomed into the “Seven Liberal Arts” educational system during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It consisted of the Quadrivium’s four mathematical disciplines: arithmetic, harmonics, geometry, and astronomy; and the Trivium’s three language disciplines: rhetoric, dialectic, and discourse. Learning the Quadrivium required a student to master each mathematical discipline separately, but they were then expected to somehow integrate these disciplines into a holistic view of reality, i.e., the “big picture” of Creation. Once that “big picture” could be grasped, a student was expected to master the Trivum’s language disciplines to communicate the Quadrivium’s complexities to others. There was a strong belief that knowledge of the Seven Liberal Arts would provide the “open sesame” to many ancient religious and philosophical “wisdom texts.” Since knowledge of the 231 Gates is said to have been lost since 586 BCE, any student of the Liberal Arts would have had to intuit how these four mathematical disciplines integrated into Creation’s “big picture.” It is fair to say that Plato was likely the last Kabbalist to understand the “Music of the Spheres.” Once the 231 Gates table was lost to posterity, it most likely resulted in far fewer Renaissance men or polymaths being educated during this period. To this day, the Seven Liberal Arts are not being properly taught in today’s universities.
In response to Maimonides’s statement that “Nothing but a few remarks and allusions are to be found in the Talmud and the Midrashim,” one of the few revealing “secrets” that survived in the Talmud is the Gemara tractate Chagigah (12a). This tractate states that “Rav Yehuda said that Rav said: ‘Ten things were created on the first day of Creation.’” Chagigah’s “ten things” created on Day 1 is a reference to the Ten Sefirot of Nothingness mentioned in the Book of Creation 1.2. It has also been linked to the Biblical creation of light on Day 1 in Genesis 1, and to the first Hebrew letter of יהוה in Genesis 2, which is the letter Yod = 10 = “י”. Further evidence of these “ten things” can also be found in a tractate of the Mishnah known as Pirke Avot (Ethics of the Fathers). Although this tractate focuses on Judaism’s ethical and moral principles, it includes important references to God’s ten utterances. These ten utterances structure the inner vibrational essence of all objects and beings in creation (Hebrew: pnimiyut).
1The world was created with ten utterances. What does this come to teach us? Certainly, it could have been created with a single utterance. However, this is in order to make the wicked accountable for destroying a world that was created with ten utterances, and to reward the righteous for sustaining a world that was created with ten utterances. 2There were ten generations from Adam to Noah. This is to teach us the extent of Gd’s tolerance; for all these generations angered Him, until He brought upon them the waters of the Flood. There were ten generations from Noah to Abraham. This is to teach us the extent of Gd’s tolerance; for all these generations angered Him, until Abraham came and reaped the reward for them all. 3With ten tests our father Abraham was tested and he withstood them all in order to make known how great was our father Abraham’s love.
4. Tardemah, the “Chosen People,” and the “Promised Land”
There are two main aspects defining Abraham’s theological teachings that are encrypted in יהוה as his true birthright. The first of these recovers the underlying mathematical יהוה template that shapes and structures Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. The second main aspect of Abraham’s teachings reveals the “pronunciation” of יהוה as a mathematical instruction set intended to teach Biblical High Priests, Prophets, and Anointed Kings how to enter the altered state of consciousness known as Tardemah (“deep sleep” or “trance”). Pronouncing יהוה was never intended to be a verbal pronunciation. By entering this altered state of consciousness throughout their lifetime, a High Priest would ultimately learn to purify their body and liberate their soul. Their liberated soul could then pass through the veil that separates them from the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. Once their disembodied soul passed through the symbolic “veil” between life and death, they would enter the Holy of Holies. Once within the Holy of Holies, the High Priest would say a prayer, greatly amplified by the power of Tardemah, for the people of Israel to be inscribed into the Book of Life for another year.
The word Tardemah appears only seven times in the Hebrew Bible, and each usage provides additional insight into how God reaches into mankind’s consciousness. Tardemah is mentioned for the first time in Genesis 2: 21 - 22, which describes how God put Adam into a “deep sleep” so He could use Adam’s “rib” as the mathematical model of the 2/3 ratio necessary to create Eve (Figure 1). Genesis 15: 12 is only the second time the word Tardemah is used. In this instance, it refers to a sacred “trance” or hypnagogic meditation state that would transform Abram into the holy man Abraham, and Sarai into Sarah when the letter Heh = “ה” = 5, corresponding to the Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh), was added to their names.
If we assume that the first Biblical holy men, Enoch and Noah, also knew how to enter this enhanced state of Tardemah, we might then speculate that Enoch and Noah were “pronouncing” an earlier, but effectively equivalent, “Word of God.” Archaeological evidence to support this hypothesis appears in two of the author’s earlier papers (Schatz, 2022; Schatz, 2023). Tardemah provides the meditative intent (Hebrew: kavanah) necessary to transform oneself into a holy being. Kavanah is also necessary when a Jew performs any of the Torah’s 613 mitzvot (commandments). Without the appropriate meditative intent, those commandments would
Figure 1. Creating Eve from one of Adam’s (2:3 ratio) ribs.
most likely be considered “empty mitzvot.”
In Genesis 25: 5 we are told that “Abraham gave all that he possessed to Isaac,” including his material wealth and the land of Canaan. It appears to be this passage that has led many to conclude that Isaac’s Jewish descendants are God’s “Chosen Ones.” After Isaac fathered Jacob, Jacob was renamed Israel by one of God’s angels. Isaac’s inherited land of Canaan then became known as the land of Israel. Genesis 25: 5 has enabled many to incorrectly assume that the geographic land of Israel is synonymous with Heaven’s “Promised Land.” One can only enter the “Promised Land” through Tardemah. In addition, Genesis 17: 7 teaches us that God’s “Chosen People” are not exclusively Jewish.
In Genesis 17: 7, יהוה establishes His Covenant with “Abram and his seed.” In other words, all “children of Abraham” must be included as “Chosen Ones” who stand to inherit Abraham’s true birthright. Abraham’s descendants include his first-born son, Ishmael, as well as the 12 princes of Arabia that he fathered. Of course, it would also include his second-born son, Isaac, and the 12 princes of Israel who were Isaac’s grandchildren. Genesis 25: 6 tells us that we must also include among his descendants the children of the concubines that Abraham took after Sarah’s death. There is a rabbinical tradition that Abraham gave these children the “divine gifts” of wisdom, prophecy, and healing, before sending them East to become founders of the Eastern faiths.
The animosity that exists today between Jews and Muslims appears rooted in the denial of Ishmael’s right to inherit as Abraham’s firstborn, according to the laws of primogeniture as stated in Deuteronomy 21: 15 - 17. Abraham’s teachings were lost during the three generations that followed the death of Abraham’s great-grandson Joseph. By the time Moses was born, there was no one alive who could teach Moses Abraham’s mathematics. God was therefore compelled to bring Moses up to the mountaintop to teach him the “Oral Law,” i.e., Abraham’s “Oral Law,” which included the 231 Gates table and Tardemah.
After descending the mountain, Exodus 4:10 tells us that Moses was reluctant to become the first High Priest of the Tabernacle due to a speech impediment, so he taught his brother Aaron the “Secret of Knowledge” that he learned from God. Aaron then became the first High Priest in a lineage that would last about 750 years, until the time of Seraiah. Once the common ground of Abraham’s teaching was lost, Christianity and Islam decided to follow their own prophets, so they broke with Judaism.
The three Abrahamic faiths inherited the great symbol of Abraham’s Tardemah practice, which is “Seven Circuits Around the Sacred Cube” (Figure 2(c)). What has been lost are Abraham’s mathematical instructions meant to teach the children of Abraham how to enter the state of Tardemah to gain entry to the spiritual high ground of Heaven’s “Promised Land.” “Crossing the Jordan” is a Biblical metaphor describing the death of one’s physical body, ideally liberating one’s soul to the “Promised Land.” When Seraiah “crossed over” into the Holy of Holies, the liberation of his soul would be considered a simulation of death rather than an actual death. Compare this to Aaron’s two children, who did not return to their physical bodies after their efforts to perform Tardemah were unsuccessful. In this case, their attempts at a simulation of death resulted in actual death.
Judaism’s expectations for a Messiah (Hebrew: Moshiach; Greek: Christos; English: Anointed One) to physically lead the Jewish people out of their exile from God and back to the material, geographic land of Israel, is an unrealistic faith-based expectation. Once any of Abraham’s direct descendants mastered Tardemah as a lifelong practice, they would earn their angelic wings, i.e., the two letters Heh = “ה” = 5 (ה__ה) within יהוה. A mastery of Tardemah would empower their wings to raise their “Holy Ghost (Vav = “ו” = 6) to the Godhead (Yod = “י” = 10). It bears repeating that mastering Tardemah is the only way to enter the spiritual high ground of Heaven’s “Promised Land” (Figure 2(a)).
For the Jewish people, Abraham’s Tardemah practice is symbolized by the mitzvot of laying Tefillin, which binds the sacred cube of one’s heart and mind to God by wrapping a leather strap seven times around one’s arm. The Hajj in Mecca also symbolizes Abraham’s Tardemah as one of the Five Pillars of Islam. A Muslim pays homage to Abraham and then circumambulates the sacred cube of the Ka’bah seven times. Christians don’t have a corresponding sacred practice, although the last pages of the New Testament’s Book of Revelation describe a “New Jerusalem” descending from Heaven, heralded by 7 angels blowing 7 tone circles through their trumpets (Figure 2(c)). Christianity’s returning savior would presumably teach Abraham’s Christian children how to enter Heaven’s “Promised Land” through Tardemah, rather than physically lead Christians back to a geographic Israel.
5. Recovering the “Secret of the Torah” from Genesis 2
Genesis 2: 1 - 3
1Now the heavens and the earth were completed and all their host. 2And God completed on the seventh day His work that He did, and He abstained on the seventh day from all His work that He did. 3And God blessed the seventh day and He hallowed it, for thereon He abstained from all His work that God created to do.
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Figure 2. (a) Tardemah every sabbath, sabbatical, and jubilee to liberate the soul’s caduceus; (b) Tardemah through 3 paths, 7 aspects of the soul, and 12 aspects of the body; (c) Abraham’s true birthright: the 231 gates table mathematics plus Tardemah; (d) Realizing Tardemah within the three abrahamic faiths.
Genesis 1 walks the reader through the six Days of Creation. The unique nature of the Sabbath is not discussed until Genesis 2: 1 - 3. After applying the 231 Gates to this passage, Elohim (אלוהים) is in plural form because it refers to a rainbow of 6 sounds and colors that refracts through a raindrop from the “White Light of El (אל).” The “White Light of El” originates in the upper left-hand corner of Figure 3(a) (God = 1/1). El (אל) becomes Elohim (אלוהים) when “The One” utters Ten Sefirot of Nothingness. Figure 3(b) and Figure 3(c), as well as Figure 1, demonstrate how 10 sequential numbers, along with their reciprocals, generate the 7 sounds and colors of the Sabbath rainbow.
After creating the 231 Gates table from the Book of Creation 2.5, we apply it to Genesis 2: 1 - 3, which teaches us that Elohim’s ten utterances define a harmonic progression that became the “X” axis of the 231 Gates table, later known within the Kabbalistic tradition as the Kav. Figure 3(a) also illustrates how the “22 Foundation Letters” define a “Y” axis as an arithmetic progression that is reciprocal to the “X” axis harmonic progression.
Genesis 1: 6 - 7 immortalizes Figure 3(a) as we begin construction of the 231 Gates with a metaphor describing a “division of the waters above from the waters below.” Exodus 14: 16 - 21 further dramatizes Figure 3(a) as Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea to facilitate Israel’s escape from their Egyptian captors.
Since the Hebrew word Sefirot translates to Counting, “The One” emanates 10 sequential integers ranging from 2 to 11. There is no number 11 in the Hebrew alphabet, nor in any of history’s earlier 22-letter Semitic Abjad alphabets. As a result, each historical alphabet would count sequentially from El (“The One”), continue with 2, and proceed sequentially until the number 20. When God said “Let there be light,” “The One” counted 10 additional sequential numerals, for a total of 11 numerals. As stated, these 11 numerals form the “X” axis of the 231
Figure 3. (a) Harmonic & arithmetic progressions of “light” and “darkness”; (b) Modern harmonic series w/11th integer; (c) “White Light” refracts as a rainbow.
Gates, but the confusion between 10 or 11 numerals has prevented most scholars and clergy from correctly deciphering the 231 Gates. The “Y” axis of the table requires a similarly tricky exposition of the 22 Foundation Letters. To decipher the “Y” axis from these 22 Foundation Letters it is important to keep in mind that 10 Sefirot * 22 Letters = 220 Gates whereas 11 Sefirot * 21 Letters = 231 Gates. Kabbalistic scholars appear to have been misled by the fact that 231 Gates would require a mathematical table with the dimensions of 21 × 11 = 231 Gates. The table’s “Y” axis must therefore utilize only 21 of the 22 Foundation Letters if it is to satisfy our table’s size requirement. What possible justification could there be for omitting one of the 22 Foundation Letters? In the Book of Creation, we read that “God made the letter Tav (ת) = 400 to form the Sabbath in the Year” (Kaplan, 1990: p. 176), and we know that God did not create on the Sabbath (Schatz, 2007: p. 37). The “X” axis defines all that is Light and Good in the universe, while the “Y” axis gradually descends into Darkness to define the inner vibrational essence of Evil. The Day 2 matrix in Figure 4 integrates 21 rows of reciprocal harmonic and arithmetic progressions, gradually constricting the divine light with each additional row. The creation of Darkness and Evil is associated with the table’s final row. The reciprocity of harmonic and arithmetic progressions depicted in the “Heavenly Firmament” (Figure 4), models the material aspects of one’s being, as reciprocal to the spiritual aspects of being.
Just as any electric current has both electric and magnetic components, the Voice of Elohim’s ten utterances contain both harmonic and arithmetic components. A modern, scientific version of Figure 3(a) can be found in Figure 3(b), which collapses the “X” axis harmonic progression and reciprocal “Y” axis arithmetic progression into a single harmonic series with its two components evident as the
Figure 4. “Secret paths” harmonizes “waters above” & “waters below”.
reciprocals of frequency: a measure of time, and wavelength: a measure of space.
Genesis 2: 4 - 6
4These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, on the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven. 5Now no tree of the field was yet on the earth, neither did any herb of the field yet grow, because the Lord God had not brought rain upon the earth, and there was no man to work the soil. 6And a mist ascended from the earth and watered the entire surface of the ground.
Yahweh’s first creation was based on a specific type of geometric progression characterized by a common ratio of equal intervals that derives from the first four prime numbers (2, 3, 5, and 7) functioning as the key subset of Elohim’s ten utterances. These four geometric progressions of common prime number ratios define God’s “Building Secret” that has been sought after for so long by Freemasons. Genesis 2:4-6 allegorizes this mathematics as four underground springs that generated “a mist that ascended from the earth and watered the entire surface of the ground.” Yahweh created four primordial elements as the “Building Blocks” of Creation by transforming each of the first four prime numbers into a numerical base raised up to a higher exponential power. They were allegorized as the four-headed angelic Seraphim. Since the inverse of exponents defines logarithms, then for any real number x: x = log2n <==> 2x = n
Genesis 2: 7
7And the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and He breathed into his nostrils the soul of life, and man became a living soul.
As we continue to plot numbers and sounds on our Cartesian-like matrix, the completed 231 Gates table is depicted in Figure 5(b) as creations of Days 3 through 6. During this period, the “Hand of Yahweh” metaphorically reaches down from His highest realm in the upper left corner of the 231 Gates (=1/1) to “engrave” the geometry of time and space as the inner vibrational essence of man’s physical realm. The completed 231 Gates table in Figure 5(b) integrates three types of mathematical progressions: arithmetic, harmonic, and geometric. The geometric “lines” depicted in Figure 5(b) are not, in fact, linear. Imagine them instead as multi-dimensional constructs emanating through 3-dimensional space and 4-dimensional time. For example, Figure 6(b) depicts these “lines” as 3-dimensional “twin serpents” constructed from the primordial elements of Earth and Water.
The mathematical progressions in Figure 5(b) can be defined as a sequence of mathematical means strung together. Most people are familiar with finding an arithmetic mean as finding the average of several numbers. An arithmetic mean between two algebraic numbers is (a + b)/2, so the arithmetic mean between 10 and 20 would be 15, and the distance between 10 and 15 on a number line is the same as the distance between 15 and 20. Therefore 10, 15, 20 defines an arithmetic progression. An arithmetic progression of more than two numbers will always
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Figure 5. (a) The four primordial elements: A mist of underground springs; (b) Harmonic, arithmetic & geometric progressions in 231 gates
have equal increments, e.g., 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc. Most people are less familiar with how to determine a harmonic mean. A sequence of harmonic means would result in a harmonic progression. Once again, we would start with two algebraic numbers: a and b, but this formula takes twice the product divided by the sum, or 2ab/(a + b). For example, the harmonic mean of 6 and 12 is (2 × 6 × 12)/(6 + 12) = 144/18 = 8. In Figure 5(b), geometric progressions are finally integrated into the 231 Gates table. A geometric mean preserves ratio rather than distance. The geometric mean between two algebraic numbers: a and b, is the square root of their product. The geometric mean between 5 and 20 is √100 = 10, which generates the integer ratios 5:10 and 10:20. Both are reducible to a common ratio of 1:2.
Yahweh created Adam from the primordial elements of Earth (powers of 2) and Water (powers of 3). If the table in Figure 5(b) is drawn correctly, what looks like a pyramid of two inner geometric “lines” are multi-dimensional symbols with their source emanating from “The One God” in the upper left-hand corner. Each “line” then passes through the common ratios of 2:3, 4:6, and 6:9 as well as through their reciprocal ratios of 3:2, 6:4, and 9:6. The elements of Earth (powers of 2) and Water (powers of 3) are symbolized in Figure 6(b) by the twin tree-serpents of Adam’s appetites that lead man downward toward evil and sin. The pyramidic outer geometric “lines” of Water and Wind define the “World Body” that contains and raises the soul’s twin serpents to the Godhead “on Wings.” These multi-dimensional “lines” pass through common ratios of 3:5 and 6:10, as well as their reciprocal ratios of 5:3 and 10:6. The Hebrew word ruach translates to either breath, spirit, or wind. When creating Adam, יהוה breathed the Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh) into his nostrils to create the vibratory essence of Adam’s angelic wings that would lift the twin serpents of Earth (=2x) and Water (=3y) as the essence of Adam’s bodily appetites (Vav = “ו” = 6 or 2 * 3) up to the Godhead on the “Winds” of his angelic wings, wings that are defined by the two letters Heh = “ה__ה” in יהוה.
Genesis 2: 8 - 9
8Yahweh planted a garden and placed Adam in the Garden.
9Yahweh planted the Tree of Life at the center of the Garden, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to the east (Figure 6(a)).
Genesis 2: 10 - 14
10And a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it separated and became four heads. 11The name of one is Pishon; that is the one that encompasses all the land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12And the gold of that land is good; there is the crystal and the onyx stone. 13And the name of the second river is Gihon; that is the one that encompasses all the land of Cush. 14And the name of the third river is Tigris; that is the one that flows to the east of Assyria, and the fourth river that is the Euphrates.
The Four Rivers of Eden described in Genesis 2: 10 - 14 (Figure 7) “nourish” the Garden of Eden with the same four primordial elements that make up the “mist” fed by the four underground springs described in Genesis 2: 4 - 6 (Figure 5(a)).
Genesis 2: 15 - 17
15Now the Lord God took the man, and He placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to guard it. 16And the Lord God commanded man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat. 17But of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it, for on the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die.”
If Adam ate the forbidden fruit Yahweh warned him that he would surely die even though Adam was currently blessed with angelic wings and eternal life in Heaven. Yahweh implied that Adam would lose his angelic wings, and be subject to the mortal frailties of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth. Eating the forbidden fruit would give Adam “Knowledge of Good and Evil” but that would make him unfit for Heaven because no Heavenly innocent should know such things.
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(b)
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Figure 6. (a) Two trees in the garden; (b) Creating twin serpents of Adam’s soul from the tree of knowledge; (c) יהוה breathed the angelic wings of Adam’s soul into his nostrils.
Genesis 2: 18 - 20
18And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man is alone; I shall make him a helpmate opposite him.” 19And the Lord God formed from the earth every beast of the field and every fowl of the heavens, and He brought [it] to man to see what he would call it, and whatever the man called each living thing, that was its name. 20And man named all the cattle and the fowl of the heavens and all the beasts of the field, but for man, he did not find a helpmate opposite him.
Genesis 2: 18 - 20 provides us with the underlying reason for Elohim’s creation of all creatures on Day 5 -- to provide Adam with a helpmate.
Genesis 2: 21 - 22
21And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man, and he slept, and He took one of his ribs, and He closed the flesh in its place. 22And the Lord God built the rib that He had taken from man into a woman, and He brought her to man.
Genesis 2: 21 - 22 is significant because it is the first occurrence of the word
Figure 7. The four rivers of Eden.
Tardemah (“deep sleep” or “trance”). Yahweh puts Adam into a “deep sleep” that enables Him to “borrow” one of Adam’s 2: 3 common ratio “ribs” (Figure 1) to create Adam’s perfect helpmate, Eve, thus replicating the Image of God that defined Adam’s soul.
Genesis 2: 23 - 25
23And man said, “This time, it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called ishah (woman) because this one was taken from ish (man).” 24Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25Now they were both naked, the man and his wife, but they were not ashamed.
The second time that Tardemah is used in the Torah is in Genesis 17:7. In this passage, יהוה established His Covenant with Abram and his seed, including the 12 princes of Israel, the 12 princes of Ishmael, and the children of his concubines after Sarah’s death. Once the Holy Spirit (Hebrew: Ruach HaKodesh) is added to Abram and Sarai’s respective names, they both earned their angelic wings; Sarai became Sarah, and Abram became Abraham, and since “they became one flesh” Sarah and Abraham were able to ascend or descend to the Godhead on the two wings of a Caduceus (Figure 2(a)).
Enoch is considered the first Biblical holy man and “Great Scribe.” The writings of 1st-century Judeo-Roman historian Flavius Josephus suggest that Enoch carved the “Secret of Knowledge” into the “Pillars of Enoch.” The author argues that these legendary pillars were inadvertently discovered by archaeologists at Göbekli Tepe, dating from 9,600 BCE (Schatz, 2022; Schatz, 2023). These pillar carvings included a Luwain hieroglyphic logogram containing the first “Word of God,” (Seyfzadeh & Schoch, 2019) which the author has deciphered as effectively equivalent to the mathematics of יהוה. An earlier Base 60 Sumerian version of the 231 Gates Table (Schatz, 2023) reveals that there is essentially one set of mathematical constructs that model the seven days of a Creation week within monotheism, as well as polytheism’s seven gods of Creation. Not only does the 231 Gates provide common ground for the three Abrahamic faiths, but an earlier Sumerian version of this table (Schatz, 2023) sheds new light on establishing a common ground for interfaith discussion between monotheists and polytheists.
Ezekiel 1: 19
In addition to the Caduceus described in Figure 2(a) as mankind’s main vehicle for liberating the soul from its captivity in the body, the 231 Gates Table also models a Caduceus-like “Chariot” that carries the Tardemah practitioner up to the Godhead while riding in the “Mercy Seat” of Ezekiel’s Chariot (Figure 8(a)). In Ezekiel 1, the “Workings of the Chariot” (Hebrew: Ma’aseh Merkabah ) are modeled by the same four primordial elements as “Building Blocks” of Creation: Earth (powers of 2), Water (powers of 3), Wind (powers of 5), and Fire (powers of 7).
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Figure 8. (a) The key to Jewish mysticism encrypted in the “workings of the chariot”; (b) The spirit of יהוה is in the four “crosscut” wheels of the chariot
6. The “Divine Gifts” of Tardemah: Wisdom, Healing,
and Prophecy
Wisdom. As already mentioned, Proverbs 1 is said to describe the “Wisdom of Solomon.” This proverb warns us not to take Biblical creation stories too literally, but rather, to search for wisdom within creation’s many allegories, parables, and riddles. “
5Let the wise man hear and increase learning. The understanding man shall acquire wise counsels 6to understand an allegory and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.”
Fortunately, the Book of Creation specified all the riddles necessary to interpret the underlying mathematics and physics of Biblical creation. Bringing the “Wisdom of Solomon” to bear on Scripture has shed new light on the meaning of God and Creation.
Healing. Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla described a Kabbalist’s power to heal based on “linguistic manipulation” rather than on the integer ratios of ancient string theory as documented in the “231 Gates.” Gikatilla describes “the magic power inherent in the letters” without realizing that Hebrew script is just the latest of many earlier Semitic Abjad alphabets that were capable of defining the integer ratios emanating from the “Voice of God” that spread to the “boundaries of creation.” In his book, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla Hermeneutics, Elke Morlok cites Rabbi Gikatilla:
“The mystic becomes the true physician who may find the appropriate remedy for every kind of malady. He activates the magic power inherent in the letters and operates with the dynamic energy thus activated by linguistic manipulation” (Morlok, 2011: p. 103).
This paper attempts to demonstrate that there is considerably more to Kabbalistic gematria than “linguistic manipulation” if one hopes to harness a mystic’s “magical power” to heal.
Prophecy. Historically, the word abracadabra is an incantation used by magicians to cast spells or perform magic. In his Book of Words, Lawrence Kushner writes that abracadabra derives from Aramaic avara k’davara (אברא כדברא), which means “I will create as I speak” (Kushner, 2013: p. 11). According to the Book of Creation, when יהוה creates as He speaks, Uttering His name creates Time, the Universe, and the Soul. Since mankind was created in the Image of God, man inherited Yahweh’s ability to create, albeit on a much smaller scale. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan describes the “magic of creation” as follows:
“Careful study indicates that the Sefer Yetzirah is a meditative text with strong magical overtones. This position is supported by the earliest Talmudic editions which indicate that it could be used to create living creatures. Especially significant are the many reports and legends in which the Sefer Yetzirah is used to create a Golem, a sort of mystical android” (Kaplan, 1990: p. x).
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines the word Golem as a shapeless mass, describing their origins as lumps of clay that were formed into figures and brought to life using a charm or a combination of letters forming a sacred word. The Kabbalistic tradition suggests that a Golem could be activated by an ecstatic experience induced by the ritualistic use of various letters of the Hebrew alphabet (Idel, 1990: p. 296). Here is an explanation from the Jewish Encyclopedia:
“It was supposed to be created by the aid of the ‘Sefer Yeẓirah’... by a combination of letters forming a ‘Shem’ (any one of the names of God). The Shem was written on a piece of paper and inserted either in the mouth or in the forehead of the golem, thus bringing it into life and action” (Singer, 1901-1906).
A more accurate understanding of this concept is provided by Gershom Scholem, a leading authority on Jewish mysticism. Scholem describes a Golem as the basis of prophecy. He writes “In a number of places prophecy is defined as the experience wherein a man sees the form of his own self standing before him and relating the future to him” (Scholem,1974: p. 181; Kaplan, 1978: p. 109). Once the Golem is liberated, a person’s divine gifts begin to manifest. As that person continues to “polish their soul” through Tardemah, their Golem is purified and liberated as a Shechinah (“Divine Presence” or “Image of God”).
7. Conclusion
With one notable exception, religious scholars and clerics have remained completely unaware of the Book of Creation’s Abrahamic mathematics. In addition to the author of this article, the only other person known to have deciphered the mathematics of the 231 Gates table directly from the Book of Creation was a 19th-century German judge and music theorist named Albert von Thimus (1806-1878). After reading a draft of the author’s first book on this subject (Schatz, 2007), Dr. Siegmund Levarie, the late Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the City University of New York, invited me to his home. Dr. Levarie informed me that I was the only living person to have deciphered the 231 Gates from the Book of Creation. Considering the task’s complexity, and more than 50 years of effort, it was difficult for me to accept that someone else successfully deciphered the Book of Creation. Dr. Levarie took me upstairs to his library where we paged through a rare, elaborately bound German text entitled Harmonikale Symbolik des Altertums (Harmonic Symbolism in Antiquity). Dr. Levarie told me that it took him 35 years just to locate this beautiful coffee table book. It soon became clear that Professor Levarie knew and understood what he was looking at. von Thimus was likely the first to decipher the 231 Gates table from the Book of Creation, just as this author was able to do more than 150 years later (von Thimus, 1868: pp. 400-401). Since this von Thimus text has never been translated into English, it remains unclear whether von Thimus was able to successfully apply the 231 Gates to the underlying structure of Biblical allegory as this author was able to do. In a previously published article, the author provides details describing how Abraham’s underlying mathematical string theory table has shaped and structured Genesis and Exodus (Schatz, 2022).
This article attempts to reveal the “Secret of the Torah” by deciphering the mathematical instruction set that has been encrypted in יהוה and then allegorized in Genesis 2. This great secret has been lost to civilization for the last 2600 years. The Quran 87: 18 - 19 references the “Scrolls of Abraham” as among the religious scriptures of Islam, but they are believed to have been either lost or destroyed. The Old Babylonian Base 60 oral tradition of Abrahamic mathematics defines the “true religion of Abraham” that preceded the birth of Moses, Christ, and Muhammad by many generations. The Arabic term ḥanīfiyyah refers to the “true religion of Abraham” (Al-Qattan & Ghul, 1982: p. 29). Recovering Abraham’s mathematics and Tardemah practice defines the true Abrahamic birthright that offers the promise of peace to a world shaken to its core by competing religious dogma, exclusivity, and hatred. It is clearly time for the world to find common ground in Abraham’s teachings.