Tria Prima
Tria Prima Podcast Episode 6: Freemasonry and Qabalah

Tria Prima Podcast Episode 6: Freemasonry and Qabalah

In episode 6 of the Tria Prim Podcast Jake, Jaime and Pat discuss Freemasonry and how it might intersect with Hermetic Qabalah. Jaime explain how he became interested in the Qabalah and the differences between Qabalah and Kabbalah.

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Episode 5 Transcript

This trascription is produced using voice to text. We provide the transcript as a listener aid and to give Google something to index.  It may contain errors. The software is by no means perfect. If in doubt, refer to the actual audio.

Pat Shannahan 0:04
Welcome to the tree of Prema podcast, the podcast about Freemasonry and the esoteric tradition. On I’m Pat, I’m with.

Jake Trayer 0:13
I’m with, I’m Jake, I’m with Jake.

Jaime Paul Lamb 0:16
In addition to being with Jay

Jake Trayer 0:18
I am both with and am Jake.

Jaime Paul Lamb 0:21
I am Jamie Paul lamb. And hey, can I say real quick that we um Well, I I know I speak for all of us when I say that we’re very excited that we have a new book out. So Tria prima when Jake set up DLS the when he when he set up the LLC, I have LSD on the mind, because we’re talking about PD Newman’s new book, which is regarding dimethyltryptamine or DMT, which is the the most powerful hallucinogen known to man. And he traces the lineage or the transmission of dimethyltryptamine. from at least through john D and Edward Kelley, and the Royal Society in England and into early Freemasonry, if you can believe that. So have fascinating story. And, and I was going to say Jake said, set our tree or prima up our LLC as a publisher, so because of that, we felt a it’s a great idea to put out some books preemptively.

Jake Trayer 1:43
Yeah. Yeah. To the analog console.

Jaime Paul Lamb 1:46
He thought ahead. So let’s give it up for Jake.

Jake Trayer 1:50
Everybody give a for me.

Jaime Paul Lamb 1:52
Great job.

Jake Trayer 1:53
Um, the reason for all this? Yeah,

Jaime Paul Lamb 1:54
so Jake, did everything cat and I did nothing. And and Jake, made it so we we were able to put out some books, which is

Jake Trayer 2:06
a really cool book. Where can we get

Pat Shannahan 2:09
it’s on sale right now on Tria prima.co. Or on Amazon. The name of the book is angels in vermillion by PD Newman. And PD is if you’re if you’re a regular reader of the blog, PD as a regular contributor. He’s he’s written a bunch of articles on our site. And we’re just really excited that he’s kind of the first book, the author of the first book that we’re putting out there. Beautiful. So

Jaime Paul Lamb 2:33
what what were you guys thinking? What were we talking about tonight? Again, I

Pat Shannahan 2:38
think we were we were talking about doing Kabbalah in its intersection with Freemasonry.

Jake Trayer 2:46
Yeah. All right, here we go. Yeah, so one take everybody knows rules.

Jaime Paul Lamb 2:50
Exactly. Yeah. And just to reiterate, the rules are that we don’t pre plan this stuff. We literally just have a conversation. And Pat is an entered apprentice still at this point, because of COVID. You know, we had to things got set back a bit. Jake is the secretary of Ascension lodge number 89 here in Phoenix, Arizona. I am currently the senior Ward and moving to the east here and on another month or so, to Ascension lodge number 89. And so, tonight, we’re going to talk about our today or whenever you’re listening to this, we’re going to talk about Freemasonry and Kabbalah Pat, so you being an entered apprentice, maybe not having as much exposure to Kabbalah. What is your kind of understand what does that even mean? What What do we mean when we say, the Kabbalah? What does that mean to you? To me?

Pat Shannahan 3:56
This is something I’ve been kind of reading about on my own. And I guess I, I see it as kind of the the mystical side of Judaism. I guess that’s the way I’m, I’m interpreting it as of now. And then ever changing interpretation of of that.

Jaime Paul Lamb 4:19
So what might that have to do with Freemasonry in your mind? At the moment?

Pat Shannahan 4:28
I’m not I’m really not totally sure.

Jaime Paul Lamb 4:31
You know, I wouldn’t have known how to answer that question either, even right now, but in me asking you, I thought to myself, what does it have to do? And my first thought was, you know how in Freemasonry, we use extra scriptural sort of narratives and personas and things like that, like the building of King Solomon’s temple and some of the personas around that and some of these narratives and And a lot of Old Testament stuff, right? When I think of Kabbalah, I think one of its main kind of applications is to unpack the esoteric meaning of the exoteric scripture. So, when when one would apply qabalistic methods such as demetria, which is a numeric numerology of sorts, to more no terracon and these other sort of methods that are what you what you would say exegetical methods right there, the way you approach scripture hermeneutically interpretively, and since Freemasonry, partakes of this kind of these old testament narratives and personas and things like that, and we know that Kabbalah is generally applied to the Torah and accepted Jewish etc, you know, these this source Judaic literature, right? Why would we not apply qabalistic methods to our work as masons, since it contains so much of the this, all these old testament sort of ideas and concepts and things like that? So, I guess to sum that up, right, what is Kabbalah? Is it not like maybe at once a and, Jake, I hope you jump in here to like, is it not one at once sort of a mystical approach to Judaism as well as a, an interpretive tool by which we can gain deeper meaning from Scripture.

Jake Trayer 7:14
Yeah, or even further an interpretive tool to gain more meaning from

Jaime Paul Lamb 7:19
license plates or whatever in the world.

Jake Trayer 7:21
Sure, right. Yeah. So I mean, I’ll say that like, pre Freemasonry in my life, I saw Freemasonry as sort of an impenetrable, mystical group. And that’s kind of how I see cobble ism now or the Kabbalah now it seems like this sort of, the more I read, source qabalistic stuff. The more I feel like I really, I don’t know that much. So it’s, it’s interesting in that regard, that the, the texts have had so much commentary and put out about them now, which is cool, because we get to, we get to read through tons of commentary. So a lot of a lot of, and so you, you say, you know, to glean extra meaning from Scripture, or take that further license plate this or that. Some, some groups outside of Judaism have taken that to the point that it’s become its own sort of flavor of Kabbalah, right. So like hermetic hermetic Kabbalah, or Christian Kabbalah. So it’s been applied in some regards, or, or by some groups so heavily, that it’s kind of become its own thing that can be studied on its own that

Jaime Paul Lamb 8:50
has its own sort of history, which is pretty cool. It’s almost its own methodology and its own cosmology, right? And it’s and it doesn’t necessarily need to be applied to Judaic source material as it initially was. But it’s sort of widened its scope to encompass Christianity, Freemasonry, and whatever we choose to apply it to, you know, what I think is, is pretty important just to set right away is like to set this tone right away is that a lot of people might ask, Well, what does that have to do with Freemasonry? Well, it doesn’t say Kabbalah anywhere in the first three degrees. It’s nowhere in our ritual, etc, etc. And just to quickly offer up a couple of things about that. Of course, this isn’t an appendant body sort of thing. But if you look into the Scottish Rite and Albert Pike’s work and morals and dogma specifically, he makes qabalistic References every other page, essentially, I mean, it’s just so ubiquitous in his work and in the work of the Southern jurisdiction of not so much the northern but the southern jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite. And of course, Invitational bodies, such as the sokkia, tesoros, and christianna are the Masonic rosicrucians. The other thing that I think, excuse me that I think is worth mentioning, is that William Preston, I’m essentially the architect, the chief, our architect of our ritual, as we know it today, was a member of the Kabbalah club in London, two, do you know that? I did not know. Yeah, so he was a kabbalist, a member of the Kabbalah club. And I know Newman’s speaking of Newman in his new book, he has a paper on qabalistic influence on the entered apprentice degree. Yeah. So there are certainly connections to be made. So when we, on this episode are talking about Kabbalah, in the vicinity of Freeman’s, sorry, in the vicinity of Freemasonry, we’re not there’s there is a basis upon which we’re building this conversation. That’s not just, you know, cherry picking out of nowhere.

Jake Trayer 11:29
Yeah. And just as an aside, if we can get that paper, we should link it under this. Yeah, with this episode, because we try to put relevant literature and whatnot in the description, so we should try to track that down. So

Pat Shannahan 11:43
we can we’ll share it with Yeah, we can put it on. Yeah, publish it on the site.

Jake Trayer 11:48
Yeah. So my first exposure to Kabbalah was, was like q cabal, you know, hermetic Kabbalah? I think so I went at it. Historically, speaking, kind of backwards, I guess. Again, I don’t I’m like the most unqualified individual to be talking about I’m certainly no expert, but from my perspective. And I really didn’t. You know, I heard about it early on in my Masonic career, but I really didn’t get into a lot of this stuff. Taro Kabbalah, astrology till late in my not, you know, till a few years ago, really. And I think my first exposure and in a book was Paul foster case, and a coal fundamentals or I remember buying going on Amazon, because I was in a lodge in Chandler. And there was a few guys that have mentioned some of his, like, lineage sort of groups that still exist. The Bo ta meets up at the temple and Phoenix here. I think they still do, right. Yeah, so I heard about Paul case, through all these guys picked up a few of his books, and immediately confused, but really enamored.

Jaime Paul Lamb 13:17
Brother,

Jake Trayer 13:18
Paul foster brother Paul foster case, that’s right, amazing. I’m quite enamored with all of the all of the verbiage. And this, I don’t know this really interesting and cool sort of metaphysical image that started to get, like, painted in my mind by these guys who were writing very, I guess I said in penetrable early is pretty deep stuff. Like, it’s not like I really understood it. It was kind of like an art piece to me at first, like it was, I knew it was beautiful, and it was really cool. But really didn’t understand it. You know, sometimes you look at a painting or something that’s abstract, and, you know, it kind of resonates with you, and it’s sort of beautiful to you, but necessarily it doesn’t quite have meaning yet, maybe to you, I felt like that I felt like it was sort of this beautiful piece of art, which intrigued me enough to keep to keep studying. And I guess the more I learned the more I I felt that it was both at the same time, and again, this is this is colored by my coming into it from the hermetic qabalistic sort of point of view of Kabbalah with a cue that it was a sort of a map of, of creation. On and you know, we talked about this the other night, a map of creation, creation, meaning like ongoing creation to like the ongoing machine of creation and life and death and all that stuff

Jaime Paul Lamb 14:58
you’re talking about. Not tree of Life, right? Not a kabbalistic tree of life.

Jake Trayer 15:03
Right? Yeah. And at the same time, sort of a pathway to reintegration with source. So it was this interesting outlining of how source manifests itself in 3d space or whatever, you know, all the way down to the material plane. And then kind of how to kind of how to, I guess, reverse engineer that back into source? In in a really dense way, because as far as I know, that I guess it’s so hard to say the xo hard aside, because that’s a massive text. But the promo qabalistic stuff. There’s not a lot of it’s, it was an It was just an oral tradition. And I believe, right, quite quite a long time even before that. The sepher

Jaime Paul Lamb 16:09
yetzirah. And the here,

Jake Trayer 16:11
yeah, not huge pieces of literature, you know, they’re relatively easy to get through, probably get through them in a couple days or whatever, right. Maybe not thoroughly, but yeah, that I think the the more you, the more you study, and now again, there’s different perspectives, there’s kind of the Christian take, or the the Jewish take, or the more Western esoteric, kind of generalized take at it. What I found is that, that it it, it made me feel the mystery tradition more than the more pragmatic or scientific sort of alchemical or architectural sort of take by the Masons, that mystery tradition, Kabbalah was more kind of metaphysical and spiritual feeling to me are a little more tugged at the heart a little more and a little less at the mind. And an interest if that makes any sense. And it still kind of does To this day, I think,

Pat Shannahan 17:21
how’d you get introduced to Kabbalah? JAMIE?

Jaime Paul Lamb 17:24
Well, yeah, it was before I became a Freemason. So reading Manley p Hall, teaching the secret teachings of all ages. Yeah. So he kind of dealt with it in there. Now

Pat Shannahan 17:41
those he was my first introduction to it as well.

Jaime Paul Lamb 17:43
Yeah, you know, what’s weird, though, is that Um, so yeah, that was my introduction to Kabbalah and really Freemasonry and rosicrucian ism, and even hermeticism and stuff. I didn’t, I didn’t know a whole lot before coming into my copy of secret teachings. But I can say that, looking back now at the Kabbalah in as it is portrayed in secret teachings, I gotta say, and I hate to do this, but I gotta say that Manley p halls Kabbalah is as jacked up, as you’re likely to find, you know, it is so Goofy, so weird. So I’m like, frankly, sort of off course, you know, it’s a really strange like, like, but Manley p Hall. And I don’t want to really get into this too much. But like, he was great at like, digesting some information and then just jiving you know, just like talking. And when he delivered all of those lectures that you hear that you can still get mp3 is of or used to get cassettes of them and things. When he delivered those lectures at the philosophical Research Society and those feelings Los Angeles, he would sit in a chair with no notes, nothing. And he would just like, just spit knowledge, you know, like, he would just kind of like improv these entire things, right, he might have a little bit of an idea of what he was going to talk about. So if it was some qabalistic thing, and it’s coming from Manley p Hall, you can bet that he was just kind of riffing on some stuff, and filling in the blanks and kind of making stuff up as he went. And that isn’t, you know, and you see that in a lot of these transcripts from Manley p Hall. I’m not dissing the guy, you know, but I am saying that the more you find out about Kabbalah, and frankly, Freemasonry because he wasn’t even a mason when he wrote secret teachings When you find out about Kabbalah and Freemasonry and you know, hermeticism and magic, like for example, Manley p Hall had had an extremely puritanical view of magic, ceremonial magic. You know, he was like, a really strange, puritanical view, you know? Anyway, so you could tell that he was just kind of riffing off the cuff, you know, and it was transcribed maybe by somebody else later, but um, that’s my digression not to bash Manley p Hall. Again, he did end up becoming a mason in the 50s much after much later after writing his, his his work on masonry. years after that, but it Yeah, his kabbalists jacked up. But um, so that was my first exposure to come up to Kabbalah. And it wasn’t until, you know, deeper into my experience in Freemasonry, that that I started to poke around, you know, like Dion fortune and me, you know, 20th century occultism and stuff like that, where you’ve where you’ll find, you know, Golden Dawn sort of stuff, you know, where you’ll find hermetic Kabbalah. Now there’s something that I think we should address right away is and Jake brought this up. He’s talks about Kabbalah with ACU or Christian Kabbalah with a see, you know, so generally, the distinction is made that when you’re talking about hermetic Kabbalah, the sort of syncretized version of Kabbalah, your your spelling that with a QQAB a LH, when you’re talking about Jewish Kabbalah, just in the Judaic tradition, generally, you will see that spelt with a K K BB A l h, when you see it in the context of the Florentine neo platanus, for example, or in the Renaissance context, that you see it in chercheur. Or, sorry, I got something in my throat, when you see it in curvature, or you see it in Pico, or you see it around the Renaissance, even in

a grip on places like that, it’ll be in its latinised spelling, which is with a C, that is C A B, A l, A, Kabbalah, all of them are Kabbalah, different manifestations, different spellings, and they kind of have their own flavor, right. So the Kabbalah that William Preston would have come in contact with would have been the latinized Kabbalah of the Florentine Neale platanus, which is to say C A B, A L. A, Kabbalah with a C, and that is kind of the what, what would have been on deck in his time in the 18th century, right. So, on the heels of people like Pico della Moran mirandola, on the heels of people like Heinrich Cornelius,

Pat Shannahan 23:38
what was Archer and stuff? What were the focus of that? Ben? What How would that have? Like, what would some of those mean ideas?

Jaime Paul Lamb 23:49
So it would have been, there would have been two things about that. And those more, let’s reduce it to two things. So when you’re talking about Kabbalah, in general, you’re talking about the qabalistic cosmology, which is best exemplified by the tree of life. You know, it’s a glyph that has this concatenation of basically planets or, or mythological archetypes, that are referred to as sepharose. Right. And they are arranged on this tree in this cosmological model. Right. And it’s not only cosmological, but it is also cosmic gonna call because it it sort of says, the means by which existence kind of came into being right. So there’s this cosmic gonococcal as well as the cosmological meaning to that glyph the tree of life, but the other sort of pertinent side of Kabbalah, and I think It’s the earlier side is that it is a method by which you can find deeper meaning in Scripture, initially in Scripture, but of course, elsewhere, you know, you can watch The Breakfast Club from a qabalistic perspective and kind of glean meaning out of that, you know, I mean, it’s it’s an interpretive technique, right that you could apply to from a license plate, like we said before to any film or book, you know, it’s widely applicable, but its initial application was by using things like demetria. Know, Tara, Khan, and Tamara, for example. So Tamara is, if I’m, if I remember correctly, it’s the Kabbalah of nine chambers. I think that’s two more Yes. The Kabbalah of nine chambers. So this is a little deep to talk about right now. But it’s it’s these it’s a it’s a transposition of letters based on this certain nine selled chamber that you use. Hard to explain right now. But it’s, but it is a it’s sort of a substitution cipher almost, you know, almost like a pigpen cipher. And you can use it to, you know, the pigpen the regular Masonic cipher. So, it’s almost like that it’s nine cells, though, and you can use it to get deeper meaning out of words by running it through this essentially an algorithm right? Or something this kind of cryptic program. But but then no, Terra Khan is like, for instance, I N r II is a no Terra Khan, it’s almost like just a net and an acronym sort of deal. So, by using these acronyms are by unpacking these acronyms, you’re able to, or you can take any word, for example, turn it into an acronym, and take its, let’s, let’s say you took the word alpha, right, you would have an Aleph alimed, a PE, and another. All F, right. So you would basically reverse letters of the Hebrew alphabet, exactly, you would reduce the word into its component letters and then sort of crunch data from there. And then the most common one is ganatra. So demetria is a alphanumeric system where preceding the Arabic numerals, you know, that we as we know them, you know, 1234, whatever. alphabets like the Phoenician, the Greek and the Hebrew did not have a numerical system, right? They, they used the letters of the alphabet as signifiers for numerals as well. So all f was one bet was to gimel was three, etc, etc. So, um,

so through the so you could, you could, for instance, take words out of the, the Torah, take a word out of it, and each word had a numerical value, you know. So that’s what I mean about the the more exegetical component of Kabbalah. It’s an interpretive method, and there are at least three that we just discussed, you know, ganatra No, Terra, Khan and Tamara, there are at least three modes by which we can use these qabalistic methods to glean deeper meaning from Scripture.

Jake Trayer 29:10
You know, in one way, taking good Mattrick because, like Jamie said, that’s kind of most prevalent one on one I’m most familiar with. Not only does each word in each letter have its own numerical value, but you’ll see a lot of cabalists associate words that have the same value. Right. So you’ll that’s kind of how they start to derive meaning between different things is by comparing separate parts of say, you know, or a scripture that might add up to the same value, or they will equate or bundle words to get or let’s say So let’s say there’s a sentence where a few kind of important words, have certain values, they’ll sort of pull from other other places all together that that share a common value, to start to apply meaning to that thing, outside of the context of the sentence or paragraph that it was in. So, I mean, that’s what we’re saying you could do that with, you could really do that with anything, right? You could read through Moby Dick and do that, in theory

Jaime Paul Lamb 30:36
will take take the title of Moby Dick, you got meme? I even bet yard that’s Moby. Let’s just say to put it in English transliteration. To take the word Moby, you would have meme. I mean, iein, or lean or whatever. Bet. And yet, for the why. So what do you have there? For ma’am? You have 40 and help me tally this. You’ve got 40? For iein, you have 74? Bet you have to? And for you, do you have 10. So that’s 80 220 222. So the dimetric value of the transliteration of the word Moby is 122. You know, so that is to say, other words that have a value of 122 can be said to have an occult sympathy with the word Moby. Yeah, yeah.

Jake Trayer 31:48
Yeah. And you could do that with an entire sentence in theory, or more, more, and I’m sure many people have, I thought there was a. So maybe there’s something else outside of what’s it called? Tamara. Yeah, I thought that one was the expansion of words into sentences, and that there was another that was kind of the reverse of that.

Jaime Paul Lamb 32:14
thought those were both no terracon.

Jake Trayer 32:18
Both no territory. Okay. Yeah. So

Jaime Paul Lamb 32:20
when you take an appalam, like,

Jake Trayer 32:22
put this the 72. letter name, letter name? Yeah. That was no terracon. Right. That I think led to that.

Jaime Paul Lamb 32:33
I think you could say that. Yeah. Yeah, so that is the it’s in Exodus there. Yeah, I couldn’t, I could join them parting of the it’s in the sequence during the parting of the Red Sea. When Moses parts the Red Sea, there is reference to these 72 letter name of God, right. And it’s a qabalistic kind of formula, it winds up in a in a doesn’t

Jake Trayer 33:04
each line have like the same value or like that. There’s

Jaime Paul Lamb 33:08
I don’t remember exactly what but I know it ends up in the sefer raazi l, is where you read about that, particularly in terms of the sefer raazi l deal split specifically with that sequence, the Red Sea sequence and in Exodus O, which is a great point, bringing it back to Freemasonry, is that, again, we’re talking about a sequence in Judaic sacred literature, right. And it’s qabalistic meaning or it’s, or it’s called, or a qabalistic vantage point from which to look at the material, right. So, in Freemasonry, again, we, we kind of partake of some of these narratives and personas, right? So it makes sense, from a certain perspective, to apply a qabalistic exit Jesus, or sacred interpretation to the material, because it’s coming from the same place where we initially applied Kabbalah qabalistic methodology to begin with, you know what I mean? Does that make sense? Yeah. Well, let me see if I could say that one more time. One more time. In Freemasonry, we use words, narratives, people, and various elements that we find in particularly the Old Testament, right?

Jake Trayer 34:55
So now I understand.

Jaime Paul Lamb 34:56
So we partake of Allah. That stuff for the father of our work, if I can put it so kind of bluntly like that, right? we partake of that to kind of in our work, right, so Kabbalah being an exegetical method has been applied to Judaic scripture throughout it’s it’s time, right I mean, that’s what it was built for basically as a system. So why would we not use that same exegetical method and apply it to the work that we do in Freemasonry? Because it’s coming from the same course. Yeah. You know, yeah. So it’s uniquely fitting for us. It’s not something like, Oh, hey, let’s talk about Freemasonry, you know, VSA V, professional wrestling, or something like that. It’s not this disjointed thing, let’s not let’s talk about Freemasonry, as to how it pertains to, you know, the maintenance of a motor vehicle. You know, that’s not, that’s, that’s, that’s incongruent. But it is not incongruent, to say, hey, let’s talk about this work in Freemasonry through the lens of Sure. qabalistic exit Jesus, because it actually applies.

Jake Trayer 36:28
Yeah, and we’re given like, ultra specific in some points, bits of, you know, that apply to each degree bits of, of the Bible that pertain to each, each degree or that we open the Bible to during each degree. So I mean, up, there’s even good starting points that are pretty clearly laid out for us, if you wanted to, I guess, jump into some of that. So Kabbalah and the Tree of Life specifically, have also become, and you mentioned that syncretized hermetic Kabbalah, it’s become a great filing cabinet for associations. So, you know, as all these traditions have added to, and pulled from qabalistic theory, I guess, they’ve just continually added to this tree of life filing cabinet that kind of contains on each of its constituent parts, a bunch of generally accepted associations, which is nice and tidy and makes memorizing that stuff, kind of nice and easy. And it’s also become a great way to initiate someone. And a, what’s the word I’m looking for, in a progressive sort of way?

Jaime Paul Lamb 38:10
It’s also like to unfold

Jake Trayer 38:13
information to someone in a progressive way.

Jaime Paul Lamb 38:17
And it’s like a Rosetta Stone. Right. So So, and here’s what I mean by that is, let’s say you were interested in Tarot and astrology or Tarot, astrology, and classical mythology, you know, or comparative mythology. You could use the tree of life as a sort of, because of the correspondences on the tree of life. And when I say the tree of life, I’m talking about 10, Sephora. And and what 2022 net to vote. These are the paths between the Sephora. So there are 22 paths, and 10 emanations, right, which is what Sephora means. And they’re on this glyph right. And each let’s take those 10 Sephora, for example. Those correspond to the PIP cards of the Tarot, you know, like, every Ace corresponds to cat there. Every like five, let’s say, you know, five of clubs, five of diamonds, whatever. Every five corresponds to Gabor, you know, a certain Sephora or Sephora, the singular. So and then the paths also correspond, those 22 paths correspond to the 22 cards of the major arcana of the Tarot. Each of them have a corresponding path, right?

Jake Trayer 40:12
And that are in the Hebrew

Jaime Paul Lamb 40:14
and letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Now, and also a corresponding zodiacal sign. And each of these Sephiroth have a corresponding planet. You know, like for instance, most of them yeah, net sock is Ooh, well, let’s run through them. So malkuth is the earth you sewed is the moon hode is mercury netzach is Venus. tifereth is the Sun kabara is Mars has said is Jupiter. Bina is Saturn hochma is the sphere of the fixed stars and Zodiac. And then you get to catheter which is just like this. I guess you could look at it as sort of the any head or the sort of premium mobiel what they would call it in the neoplatonic model. So there’s, there’s a planetary correspondence. And because of that there’s a mythological correspondence, you know, like you think of Venus, then you’re definitely talking about Aphrodite, and you’re talking about Ishtar, and you’re talking about a Nana. You know, you’re talking about all the Newseum archetypes Lucifer

and Lucifer because of the you know, the the morning star the evening star of Venus right? Lucifer has sparrows, etc.

Pat Shannahan 41:41
It seems like this is something you can just keep diving deeper and deeper and deeper. Where Where do you suggest people go to start? I mean, where’s the first couple steps that you you can take

Jaime Paul Lamb 41:54
God, I would want to say the sefer yetzirah by itself, not even,

Jake Trayer 41:58
I would have no preface No, like,

Jaime Paul Lamb 42:00
no, I would have like maybe two years ago, I would have said Dion fortune or Paul foster case are one of the usual suspects that in western occultism that we talk about. But anymore, I seriously would direct people to pro qabalistic source literature like to sepher yetzirah.

Jake Trayer 42:20
Yeah, when you read like the commentary on some of the best translations. Yeah, they basically say, start here, read all the way through without, you know, they all kind of say like, don’t stop, don’t pause, just read through. Don’t even like think about it before you try to break this apart, analyze and get methodical with it just like just read this text and let it meet you on it, or you meet it on its term. That’s

Jaime Paul Lamb 42:50
experiential, right. And it’s the and that’s the, that’s Freemasonry as well. Do you read Duncan’s ritual before you take the degrees? Hopefully not. Yeah,

Jake Trayer 43:00
that’s, that’s a good point.

Jaime Paul Lamb 43:01
You In fact, just go in and you have you have a visceral, unmediated experience with the material. Yeah. And, and I’m, I’m finding that Kabbalah is the same sort of thing like, like to learn about that. You, you, you approach it, you apprehend it on its own terms, you know, that is to say, in situ?

Jake Trayer 43:28
Yeah, the source for all of the associates. So if you That’s true. I mean, I could see how if you were fresh into this, and you just picked up hermetic Diem fortunes, mystical mystical Kabbalah, it’s so out of context, because you’re just flipping through associations, essentially. And it’s Sunday and commentary that she’s put together. Now, they are the generally accepted ones. But still, well, it’s like I said earlier, before I got into Freemasonry, it seemed like this impenetrable thing, but then the ritual gave me all that context for all the things that I’d heard of, or the associations that I had been told to like fit in, into and onto. So in the same way, as you were saying, and I agree, that actually the associations and all that you know, all this stuff, and those filing cabinets really are are have nowhere to go without some foundational experience with the sefer yet seraphs,

Jaime Paul Lamb 44:30
you know what he means by filing cabinet when he says, The Cabal, the tree of life as a filing cabinet,

Jake Trayer 44:39
just a great storehouse for each of its parts, you know, the Ceph, the Sephora and those pathways, like we just laid out, have become this excellent way to store associations to

Jaime Paul Lamb 44:52
organize correspondence, right.

Jake Trayer 44:55
So um, so that’s what I mean by that, but yeah, totally. Now I wouldn’t like jump into the Zohar. Because you’ll you could read that for the rest of your life. Right? But yeah protocol ballistic stuff for sure bust through some of that. But what would you suggest maybe after that, you know, whose commentary would you start with?

Jaime Paul Lamb 45:20
Okay.

Jake Trayer 45:21
Well that’s See that’s kind of I think, more what we want to know

Jaime Paul Lamb 45:25
I definitely have an answer for that I feel 100% about here and that is Samuel little MacGregor Mathers, Introduction to Kabbalah data, new data. So, Rosen Roth, did a Latin translation of select books from the Zohar. And Samuel little MacGregor Mathers who was a Freemason and a rosicrucian and a member of founding member of the hermetic order the Golden Dawn, he in London in 1887, right. He at some point in the 1880s, translated Rosen rots Latin translation of the Select books from the Zohar. And this was Zohar his book was called Kabbalah day new data day new data meaning unveiled day new Did you know so like, as so the the majors English translation was Kabbalah unveiled? on new Did you know? So Kabbalah unveiled has an introduction that I believe is the pinnacle of like, and it goes through all those exegetical methods. It’s not complicated. It’s a completely approachable introduction. He goes from start to finish. And it’s really if you, I would say, if you’re going to read one thing that is not source qabalistic material or pro qabalistic material, I would go straight to Mater’s introduction on Kabbalah de new data. The other one I would go to is Crowley’s essay on Kabbalah in that usually accompanies 777. So when you get 777, which is a popular book of hermetic correspondences, etc, that Alister Crawley of 20th century British occultist, he put together this book of correspondences, and there’s an essay that’s included in 777. I forget exactly what it’s called. But it is also a very thorough introduction to hermetic Kabbalah that I think is invaluable. So either one of those two, if you’re not going to read source qabalistic material, I would go straight to Mathers introduction to Kabbalah data data, or I would go to Alastair Crowley’s essay, whose title escapes me, but it’s in 777, which is an easily obtainable

Pat Shannahan 48:21
work. And we will link to all these in the show notes and on the on the website. So yeah, you don’t have to go look too far for

Jake Trayer 48:30
I’ll also say that for defend, Paul case a bit, I haven’t found really anybody else yet that is provided as much good modria or has analyzed as much symmetry as that guy. Yeah, his works great, pretty incredible how much he poured into that aspect of Kabbalah all the connections he’s made. So that stuff too if you’re interested in the kind of the mechanics or the some of this associations between I mean, it goes over lots of stuff

Jaime Paul Lamb 49:12
and to tie it back to masonry. Paul Foster, a Freemason, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers of Freemasons.

Jake Trayer 49:20
Yeah, almost everyone we’ve talked about

Jaime Paul Lamb 49:22
and karolyi was at least an irregular Mason. But there’s now here’s just a little digression. There’s a reason to and I can’t spell out this argument right now. But there is an argument to be made that croley as to curlies regularity in Freemasonry. So there there is a claim to that. That, again, I can’t spell it out right now, but somebody should look into that because it’s coming to question though he was made a mason at some point. Wait clandestinely, there’s there’s in fact a claim that to his regularity as well. And maybe I’ll find that and I’ll try and link it to the

Jake Trayer 50:12
also in England, or I

Jaime Paul Lamb 50:15
think so he did some stuff in Mexico. So he did some high degree stuff in Mexico, that’s that, you know, that picture that you see him where he’s wearing this mishmash of, like, you know, Scottish Rite Stuff, or every may Sonic thing that you have, and I’m gonna put it on right now. And you take my picture. That’s kind of what it looks like. It’s stuff like nobody would wear all at once, because it’s so out of context. But that was his Mexico adventure, from what I understand. Anyway. So yes, masons have had an interest in Kabbalah. Since Preston, which is to say the beginning, you know, the beginning of at least, at least Preston. So the beginning of really just known speculative masonry, like early 18th centuries. What else?

Pat Shannahan 51:18
Think that prevents the heart.

Jake Trayer 51:19
This is a hard topic. Yeah, this is a, it can go down a bunch of roads.

Pat Shannahan 51:25
This is definitely one that we’re going to have to park to. Yeah, kind of well, or, or start to kind of chapter out where we’re like, we do an episode on demetria we do an episode on the tree of life. You know, I think they’re all you know, they’re all all those that were brought over. It’s definitely a good broad overview. It’s definitely got me curious, and I’m gonna check out some of those books you mentioned.

Jake Trayer 51:52
That’s almost kind of what we we’ve done with each episode. So far, we’ve chosen these really big topics. And we could expand so much on any of them if we want to get specific and I’m sure that’s what we’re gonna end up having to new.

Jaime Paul Lamb 52:06
Oh, I’m sure judging by some of the other groups we made. And I’m sure we could take anything as simple as the the Hebrew letter. Hey, for example, and probably make an hour out of that. You know, just talking about that one letter and its correspondences. I don’t want to get into it right now. But I’m sure we I my wheels.

Jake Trayer 52:33
Yeah, so I would say, where are we at? timewise. We get Oh, yeah, we’re good. We get I mean, I would say that. That it is a valuable thing to delve into as a Mason, I think it would add to your experience in masonry, if you at least checked it out. Maybe if you read some of that product qabalistic material, like Jamie suggested, start at the source and just see how, see how it maybe emerges in your Masonic experience, if any of the interesting literature that’s been translated down to us by brothers finds its way in a meaningful way into your Masonic experience. I bet it would.

Pat Shannahan 53:25
Alright, well, I think that that that wraps up episode, I think number seven, number seven, so nice job guys. Seven

Jaime Paul Lamb 53:33
Zane. Seven is the symmetric value of the Hebrew letters I. So this is the sword, the sword

Jake Trayer 53:46
real time

Jaime Paul Lamb 53:48
real time Kabbalah by Jamie lamphere.

Jake Trayer 53:52
All right. All right. We’ll see you guys next one.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Tria Prima Podcast Episode 6: Freemasonry and Qabalah
Pat Shannahan