Elements Of The Qabalah In Ten Lessons
Letters by Eliphas Levi
Lesson II The Qabalah - Goal and Method
In studying the Qabalah, one should strive to arrive at a profound peace by means of tranquility of mind and peace of heart.
Tranquility of mind is an effect of certainty; peace of heart comes from patience and faith.
Without faith, science leads to doubt; without science, faith leads to superstition. Uniting them brings certainty, but in so doing they must never be confused with each other. The object of faith is hypothesis, and this becomes certitude when the hypothesis is necessitated by evidence or by the demonstrations of science.
Science establishes facts. From the repetition of facts, it presupposes laws. The generality of facts in the presence of such and such force demonstrates the existence of laws. Intelligent laws are necessarily imposed and governed by intelligence. Unity within the laws presupposes the unity of legislative intelligence. This intelligence, which we are forced to imagine, only seeing it at work in external manifestations, and which we can in no way define, is what we call God!
You receive my letter; there is an obvious fact. You recognize my handwriting and my thoughts and you conclude from this that it is indeed I who have written to you. This is a reasonable hypothesis, but the necessary hypothesis is that someone wrote the letter. It could be counterfeit, though you have no reason to suppose it is. Were you to suppose so, groundlessly, you would b making a very doubtful hypothesis. Were you to claim that the letter, fully written, fell from the sky, you would be making an absurd hypothesis.
Here is, then, according to Qabalistic method, how certitude is formed:
| Evidence | |
| Scientific demonstration | certitude |
| Necessary hypothesis | |
| Reasonable hypothesis | probability |
| Doubtful hypothesis | doubt |
| Absurd hypothesis | error |
By keeping to this method, the mind acquires a veritable infallibility, for it affirms what it knows, believes what it must necessarily suppose, admits reasonable suppositions, examines doubtful ones, and rejects those which are absurd.
All the Qabalah is contained in what the masters call the thirty-two roads and the fifty gates.
The thirty-two roads are thirty-two absolute and real ideas attached to the signs of the ten arithmetical numbers and to the twenty-two letters of the Hebraic alphabet.
Here are the ideas:
Numbers
| 1 | Supreme power | 6 | Beauty |
| 2 | Absolute wisdom | 7 | Victory |
| 3 | Infinite Intelligence | 8 | Eternity |
| 4 | Goodness | 9 | Productivity |
| 5 | Justice or harshness | 10 | Reality |
Letters
| Aleph | Father | Lamed | Sacrifice |
| Beth | Mother | Mem | Death |
| Gimel | Nature | Nun | Reversibility |
| Daleth | Authority | Samekh | Universal being |
| He | Religion | Pe | Immortality |
| Vav | Liberty | Ayin | Balance |
| Zayin | Ownership | Sadhe | Shadow and reflection |
| Cheth | Distribution | Koph | Light |
| Teth | Prudence | Resh | Recognition |
| Yod | Order | Tav | Synthesis |
| Kaph | Force |