The eleventh path is the Scintillating Intelligence. because it is the essence of that curtain which is placed close to the order of the disposition, and this has a special dignity given to it that it may be able to stand before the face of the cause of causes.The Path of Aleph .. the path of the Ox ... links absolute unity with the power which is its most basic expression. In Kabbalistic theory it is the first of all relationships and it relates to all the other paths in something of the way what an original relates to its copies. It is the interaction between unity and power; between essence and the act which derives from that essence.
The eleventh path has a quality of completeness and universality which is not found elsewhere on the tree. As it forms part of a relationship with the Supernal Triad, the path of Aleph can ony be grasped in an abstract sense; much like the perfect circles and infinite lines of geometry, which can be imagined but never drawn ... the perfect creative image in the mind's eye which can be perceived and seen at the back of the mind ... but sadly cannot be reproduced by the mortal artist as the geometry of the image is lost in the process of perceiving the creative image.
The two qualities ... the universal and the abstract have a dominant role in the symbolism and the meaning of the Path of Aleph. Every relationship on the Tree and thus in the Kabbalistic universe can be seen as a specific form ... a form defined and limited in a particular way ... of this one primal interaction.
Similarly, each of the symbols of the path itself points toward some other other path or sphere on the Tree, as though seeking examples of a process too general to describe in any other way. In pathworking, entities and experiences of the path do not follow predictable patterns. It in truth eludes definition just as Kether, the sphere at the higher end of the tree eludes any act of perception at all.
Aleph means Ox which is the bull which has been castrated, which is of particular significance to this path. Oxen are extremely strong but the strength does not express itself in a sexual manner. The non-sexual nature of the Ox makes a useful symbol of a relationship in which polarity does not function. There is polarity on the path in one sense, for the relationship between Kether & Chokmah itself forms a polarity .. but polarity plays no part in the tree's structure until both Chokmah and Binah have been emanated. On the Path of Aleph, which traces the beginning of the Lightning Flash, the earliest phases of creation ... phases in which the process of polarity does not yet dominate ... still echo.
The Tarot correspondence of this path is The Fool, its placement controversial in occult circuits ... because the Path of Aleph is perceived as the source of all paths, The Fool can be placed anywhere on the tree of life. The term fool was a professional title ... fools or jesters had a valued place in the court of kings during medieval times. Behind their entertainment identity is a much older function ... one of a shamanistic tradition which saw madness as the close kin of trance, or wisdom and of transformation ... the fool, the madman, the innocent came from outside the conventional order of things at once threatening that order and offering it insights it could not reach on its own.
The Mythological Principle is that of 'The Child of the Primal Void' ... which represents a figure, who like the primal bull, tends to appear at the beginning of creation myths ... without parents, without origin, it appears in dark water or mist, with all the powers of the universe present inside itself. Like the Path of Aleph itself, it appears in many forms and evades full understanding in all of them.
