Lon Milo DuQuette - The Sepher Yetzirah of Rabbi Ben Clifford: The Magical Antiquarian Curiosity Shoppe, a Weiser Books Collection

About the Curator

Author of sixteen critically acclaimed books (translated into twelve languages) on magick and the occult, Lon Milo DuQuette is one of the most respected and entertaining writers and lecturers in the field of the Western Mystery Traditions. He is also a gifted singer-songwriter and recording artist whose material continues to inspire and provoke.

Since 1975 he as been a national and international governing officer of Ordo Templi Orientis, one of the most influential magical societies of the twentieth century. He is currently the O.T.O.'s United States Deputy Grand Master. He is an internationally recognized authority on tarot and western ceremonial magick. Although he takes these subjects very seriously, he tries not to take himself too seriously. This rare combination of scholarship and humor has earned him a unique and respected position in American spiritual and esoteric literature in the last twenty-two years.

DuQuette appears occasionally on television and radio as a guest expert on subjects involving the occult, and is arguably the most visible spokesperson for the arcane sciences. He is a contributor to the Magical Egypt DVD series and a host on the new series, The Great Work.

He is a faculty member of the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, and Robert Anton Wilson's Maybe Logic Academy.

He lives in Costa Mesa, California, with his wife of forty-four years, Constance.

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Check out the other offerings in our Magical Antiquarian Curiosity Shoppe Collection:

Zanoni

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

The Book of Jasher: Part Three

Lon Milo DuQuette

In the Court of the Dragon

Lon Milo DuQuette

The Grand and Noble Order of Button Busters

Lon Milo DuQuette

The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary

Councillor D'Eckartshausen

Light on the Path A Treatise Written for the Personal Use of Those Who Are Ignorant of the Eastern Wisdom, and Who Desire to Enter Within Its Influence

Mabel Collins

and more coming all the time

This ebook edition first published in 2012 by Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.

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Copyright 2012 by Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. All rights reserved.

Originally published by WEISER BOOKS an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC, 2001.

eISBN: 978-1-61940-092-4

Cover design by Jim Warner

The Sepher Yetzirah

AN ADDRESS BY

RABBI LAMED BEN CLIFFORD

TO THE STUDENTS AND FACULTY OF THE

ZERUBBABEL INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHICAL YOUTH

And said the Elohim, Let there be light: and there was light.
Genesis 1:3

I'M SURE MANY OF YOU students are asking yourselves why I am starting our study of Genesis with the third verse of instead of the first. The answer is simple. Verse 1 tells us squat! It informs us; In the beginning the Elohim created Heaven and Earth.3

Big deal! What the hell is an Elohim? Is it God? Translators of the English Bible seem to think so. Most versions read: In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth.

What happened to Jehovah? Isn't Jehovah God? Didn't Jehovah create Heaven and Earth? Hell no! Elohim did, and Elohim is a very peculiar word.

El4 is the root word for Deity. Eloh is a feminine singular, in other words, a female Deity (a Goddess); im is the plural ending for things that are masculine. Elohim, then, should be translated either Gods and Goddesses or Dual-Gendered Deity. Later on in verses 26 and 27 the Elohim even refer to themselves as plural, And said the Elohim, Let us make Adam in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the Earth. And created the Elohim Adam in the image of Elohim created they them, male and female created they them.

Surprised? So was everyone who had their hearts set on God not having a vagina and everyone who believed that Adam was an historical character, like General Custer, and not just a name for the human race. They were so upset when they discovered that in the beginning the Dual-Gendered Deity created Heaven and Earth that they made sure that Elohim and innumerable other special names would be translated God or Lord or Lord God or other such ambiguous masculine-sounding names.5

Besides this little titbit, verse 1 leaves us in the dark concerning what Heaven is, what Earth is, or how the Elohim went about creating these things. Verse 2 is even worse:

And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of Elohim moved upon the face of the waters.

If Earth was void and formless, where was all this water coming from? If the author was trying to be inscrutable, he sure did a damned good job of it.

Verse 3 finally gives us something we can dig our teeth into:

And the Elohim said, Let there be light: and there was light.

The key word here is said. That's how everything was createdthe Elohim talked everything into existence.6 The Elohim said it, and it was so. Obviously words are very important in the grand creation scenario. A word is a vibration, and vibration creates and sustains the universe. The atomic weight of the chemical elements is just another way of measuring their vibration. Molecules hold themselves together and bond with other molecules by the glue of their compatible vibrations. That's what is meant by the term the creative Logos, or Word. That's what John7 was talking about when he wrote, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Duh!

And what, my sleepy students, are words made up of? Letters! Our Hebrew alphabet (and what other alphabet would the Elohim dare use?) is made up of 22 sacred letters, and the story of their creation is not found in the Bible, but in a mysterious little masterpiece called the Sepher Yetzirah: The Book of Formation.

Several years ago, I personally had the extraordinary good fortune of being allowed to purchase the earliest known manuscript of this sacred work from a mysterious street vendor just outside of Hussan's Cantina in Ensenada, Mexico. I painstakingly translated it by carefully copying the Hebrew characters into my personal computer using the standard Hebrew fonts included in my word processing program. When I finished, I simply selected the entire text and globally changed the font to Times New Roman. To my amazement it translated exactly as you see it. A Qabalistic miracle.