Tipareth is the only sphere below the abyss which has a direct connection to the highest sphere of Kether, and it is also connected directly to every other sphere except for the lowest sphere of Malkuth; it is through this sphere that the divine spirit from Kether is poured forth throughout our being. The Sepher Yetzirah calls the consciousness of Tipareth ‘Sekhel Shefa Nivdal’ or Transcendental Influx Consciousness, and says this about it:‘It is called this because through it the influx of Emanation (Atziluth, from Kether) increases itself. It bestows this influx on all blessings, which unify themselves in its essence.’
Tipareth is the seat of our sense of self, the unifying centre around which our psyche is organized. It is the primal unity of Kether descended into the realm of plurality, where the singular point becomes the centre spot of a circle – the occult symbol of Sol. The eternal subject, the knower which is never itself known, of Kether becomes the individual subject of a single life – that spark of the limitless light which gives us life. In the symbol of Sol referred to above the centre spot represents the eternal unity, and the circle shows a perimeter, a definition of inside and outside, self and other; this leads to the paradoxical concept of the whole contained within the part which, as strange as it may seem, is a concept also to be found in the modern discipline of quantum physics.
The Buddhist doctrine that the individual self is an illusion is based on the fact that the most fundamental essence of the self – the point in the centre of the circle – is not unique in every individual, but is actually the shared essence of all things, the ‘prima materia’ of Kether. The Qabalistic tradition is distinguished from the eastern tradition because whereas Buddhism is a ‘direct path’ which seeks only to escape from the conditions of existence and be dissolved back into the spiritual essence, Qabalah is a magickal path which recognized the necessity of all ten spheres and twenty two paths, and seeks the perfection of the material conditions of existence rather than escape from them.
