Thoth Tarot Reference

Ain Soph Aur - The Three Veils of Negative Existence

The Tree does not begin with the first sephirah. Before Kether, three veils of negative existence precede the manifest: Ain (Nothing), Ain Soph (The Limitless), and Ain Soph Aur (The Limitless Light). These are not sephiroth. They have no positive existence - only the pure potential for it. Ain Soph Aur has been described as a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Through Kether, the unmanifest presses into being, flowing down through all ten sephiroth in the order of their emanation. Everything on the Tree is still this same undifferentiated light, stepped down and given form.

The Three Triads

The ten sephiroth organise into three triads, with Malkuth standing alone at the base.

The Supernal Triad - Kether, Chokmah, and Binah - represents the deepest levels of existence, above and beyond anything we would recognise as individual experience. Below it lies the Abyss, and the Abyss is not merely a boundary. It marks a radical discontinuity: the gulf between what is archetypal and what is manifest, between unity and the illusion of separation. Every serious Qabalistic tradition treats the crossing of the Abyss as the most perilous transition on the Tree.

Below the Abyss, the Ethical Triangle - Chesed, Geburah, and Tiphareth - governs the realm of spirit within the manifest universe. (The name is Dion Fortune's.) Here the abstract principles of the Supernals take on character and relation: mercy and severity, expansion and limitation, balanced in the beauty of Tiphareth at the centre.

The Magical Triangle - Netzach, Hod, and Yesod - is separated from the Ethical Triangle by the Veil of Paroketh. This is the astral realm, the workshop where the forces that shape the material world operate before anything solidifies into fact. Below it, Malkuth stands alone as the manifest world itself - the only sephirah you can touch.

The Three Pillars

The same ten sephiroth also arrange into three vertical pillars, and this second reading reveals the Tree's fundamental polarity.

The Pillar of Mercy (right) carries Chokmah, Chesed, and Netzach - the active, expansive, dynamic principle. The Pillar of Severity (left) carries Binah, Geburah, and Hod - the receptive, constraining, formative principle. Neither pillar is good or evil; both are necessary. Unchecked mercy is as destructive as unchecked severity.

Between them runs the Pillar of Equilibrium, carrying Kether, Tiphareth, Yesod, and Malkuth. This is the reconciling principle - a synthesis that transcends both outer pillars. The central pillar is sometimes called the Pillar of Mildness, and the path of spiritual ascent runs along it.