Jacob’s Ladder: Complementarity vs. Dialectic
This essay explains that the genuine dialectic is Jacob’s ladder, the double helix of angels and energy descending and ascending for us. It’s marital complementarity of wisdom and understanding is aped by the power obsessed theory of dialectics…
The Menorah of history will be complete on the “seventh day” in the grace and beauty that is the sovereignty of Israel. Sovereign Israel centered on its Temple, the interaction of chashmal on and for earth will link the last three letters of the Tetragrammaton to infuse the light of wisdom as symbolized by the ‘smallest’ letter throughout creation. (Zechariah 4:1-7; Narrett, the Road Map in Historical Context, op cit). This is Jacob’s ladder, the generative complemtarity of marriage above and below that the powers strain to displace with the homogenizing blender of their “dialectic” for World dis/order.
Our recent essays have discussed the revolutionary social and geopolitical goals built on the dialectic model of G.W.F. Hegel. We have explained that this model of “progression through contraries” was developed first and most extensively in the Modern West by the poet-philosopher William Blake (1757-1827). Blake’s “prophetic books,” as he termed them, beginning with the dialectically named and patterned Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) appropriate hundreds of personal and place names and story patterns from the Hebrew Scriptures and give them a Gnostic twist. In this way he not only is a seminal force in modernism and its last, self-negating spasm, post-Modernism but a scion of the West which is built by its appropriation and distortion of Judaic sources.
The West’s self-destruction stems from this original sin of “identity theft” and its endless efforts, continuing in the Road Map to bury the victim of the theft and witnesses to the original identity of their history and the truths they carry. Post-Modernism, a mocking critique of integrity and wholeness in every aspect of life, a handmaid of totalitarian rule over generic ‘persons’ is the rigor mortis of the perp in this primal identity theft, unique in the annals of civilization, the ultimate Machiavellian power grab. His emphasis on the primacy of appearances and power and on the manipulation of perception is the basis of the relativism that is the tool of the society scramblers and new hierarchs.
Often stolen, imitated, debased, impossible to improve on (it is the Creator’s life-process), the primacy and foundational substance of the Hebrew Scriptures pervades all temporal and spatial frames of reference, all disciplines and knowledge because it is rooted in the words and letters of Torah, the innermost substrate of existence, the DNA within the DNA of all there is. Despite those who appropriate and deform it, the genuine and essential dialectic inheres in the language and history of the Tanach and we will note a few aspects of this process here. 
The origin of creation’s dialectic is in the Name of the Eternal and Infinite One, what theologians call the “tetragrammaton,” the ineffable four-letter Name of the Creator. These four letters are an assemblage of the letters in the Hebrew phrase, central to Jewish liturgy translating as “He Was, He Is, and He Will Be” (hayaw, hoveh, v’yihiyeh). The primary name of the Creator of light and distinguisher of light from darkness, establisher of evening and morning in their successions and of the heavenly bodies by which we demark the temporal dimension actively integrates past, present and future, space and time, astronomy, math and biogenetics and more. The presence of the past activates and shapes the future in the essential and eternal dialectic that will not cease, the sages of the Mishna (“accounts” of Torah explication going back to Moshe’s teachings at the door of the Mishkan – “tabernacle”) and the Rambam tell us even in the era of Moshiach. Time in this sense will not, cannot cease for it is the essence of the primal “Name” of the Eternal One, a manner in which He ‘enters’ and shapes our world.
Note that the crystallization, the “effulgence of dew” of the Messianic era and the Moshiach themselves are the result of a dialectic. A man with the qualities and ability and soul of Moshiach is present in every generation of Israel but will be able to actualize his potential only when the level of the community of Israel (the Jewish people) is such that they desire and can recognize his liberating and revelatory gifts. The individual and society must interact and complete each other and this becomes possible to the extent that Israel the nation and people look to their sources: the Avot (forefathers), the Torah and the Creator whose plan is the math, science, social structure, teaching and joy of all worlds.
The letters of the Name themselves embody instructions, dialectic and syntheses too numerous to describe here. Suffice to say that they include the bridge, link and heart connect between the supernal understanding (binah), the integrating faculty that receives and arranges wisdom in a ‘family’ of creation with the earthly quality of royalty and sovereignty (malkhut). Malkhut is the crown of grace and beauty in that it receives all the essential qualities that emanate from the transcendent crown, the immeasurably small point from which the divine light within the darkness that enfolds the Creator sends its formative shower of letter-sparks to all worlds. The bridge letter in the Name indicates the six human qualities arranged from wisdom by understanding and that carry binah to royalty and malkhut Yisrael, a dominion not of empire or rule but of example, a radiant and ‘liquid’ light of which all will “buy and eat without money” and “drink the eternal kindnesses of David” (Isaiah 55 the prophetic reading for Torah portion Re’eh [“see!] which contains the repetition of the Shema, Israel’s basic statement of faith and devotion to the process of the Eternal One and is itself followed by the statement of Israel’s true boundaries within which this devotion must be practiced, Deuteronomy 11:18-25). This is the essence of human freedom (the ability to choose “the blessing or the curse”); faith, settlement, and sovereignty in the entire, integral land are inextricably linked like binah and malkhut, each of them indicated by the letter of sanctification, the hei (cf. Genesis 17:4-17).
Note that the American administration has ordered Israel to “reduce its footprint” in the Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria. This directly counters the instruction and process of the Shema and its parallel statement of geographic integrity noted above which states “every place where the soul of your foot shall tread shall be yours, from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the great river, the Euphrates River until the western sea.” This geographic position is alluded to in Jacob’s dream of “a ladder set earthward [from heaven] and its top reaching heaven and, behold! Angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” Here is the double helix and spiraling ladder of biogenetics in its full form, integrating heaven and earth in the pattern of quickening and arousal. It is linked, grounded, made down-to-earth like lightning touching down, in the gift of the land: “your offspring shall spread out powerfully, westward, eastward, northward, and southward and all families of earth shall bless themselves by you and by your offspring. Behold I am with you (Genesis 28:10-18). The blessing of and by Jacob and his offspring connects each person to the creative, awakening synthesis of the Creator whose ‘coordinates’ are in the Tetragrammaton. This creative-blessing is a key purpose of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem which commentators teach was the spot where Jacob laid his head to receive and dream this dream of the foundational dialectic.
Note further regarding the Name that the vav that links the hei of binah with that of malkhut, that links heaven “and what is above the heavens” with the earth indicates the six days of creation with their full temporal-spatial plenitude created by the letter-light seeds of the Hebrew aleph-bet. This process itself, these “beginnings” (bereishis, the first word of Scriptures; it states in psalm 119, “Your very first word is truth”) is the primal dialectic of the supernal light-within-darkness with the formless darkness of potentiality, their synthesis being all the worlds. The conflict-laden Greek terms, thesis and anti-thesis that Hegel and his followers use to denote dialectic are themselves deformed; their emphasis on conflict, disorder and war reflect the imperial, geopolitical designs of the appropriators of the Jewish idea which sees dialectic in terms of arousal and response, generative creation and fertility; a mutual quickening; a ‘partnership’ between Creator and man; integration and arrangement of discrete qualities and genders while maintaining their integrity and thus their powers.
There are two main levels that the darkness (or “shadow”) that contains the divine light enters and creates our world: one the individual (micro) and two the historical (macro). Nearly all translations of the sixth day state, “And God said let us make man in our image…” and in the next verse, “so God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (1:26-7). But the primary meaning of word, tzelem translated “image” is “shadow” which enhances the above discussion of the darkness, to our senses in which the supernal and infinite light of the Eternal One is. The primary translation of b’tzalmo is “with” or “in” His shadow and, similarly, b’tzelem Elokim “with” or “in” the shadow of God He created Him; male and female He created them…”
There are multiple syntheses in the individual dimension by which the creative and formative light enters the perceivable world b’tzelem Elokim and creates its crown, humankind. There is the dialectic of creation from nothing indicated by the Hebrew verb bara and the word for make in the sense of doing and completing (aseh) with the unmentioned mediating term, yetzira (“formation,” the essence of Kabbala and of the polarities and choices of human will and impulse) being implied. There is the implicit and profound dialectic of man and woman that is created from “nothing” (bara otam) after their making, doing and completion (na’aseh) as a species first is conceptualized and stated, so to speak. So the dialectic of making-completing with creating from light including separation into vehicles of wisdom and understanding, male and female, gives us the synthesis of marital companionship elaborated in the next chapter; it also gives the implied synthesis of every day knowledge and skill (da’at) which includes what we denote ‘religion.’ And as with the separation for periodic joining of the sexes this brings the first blessing and commandment, “to be fruitful and multiply…” As Nachmanides (the Ramban) wrote, “the idea of blessing relates to birth” (note on Genesis 17:16).
Intriguingly, pointedly, the Torah shows us the use of the primary meaning of tzelem, “shadow” in the passage where the Eternal One designates a man to direct the building of the Tabernacle in the wilderness, the place and ritual keyed to times and social order and responsibilities that bring sanctity to earth, the ultimate synthesis that is the purpose of Judaism, to sanctify and make intelligibly holy every day activities for the purpose of life abundant. The director of the building of the Mishkan is Betzalel:
Hashem spoke to Moshe, saying, ‘See, I have called by the name of Betzalel son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. I have filled him with a spirit Of God, with wisdom, insight and knowledge… (Exodus 31:1-3, ff)
The tabernacle is built in and with the spirit of God, by the shadow that contains the light of God (Uri = “my light”). The qualities filling the man who embodies the darkness, to our eyes from which the light of God’s holiness is revealed as the sanctifying synthesis of heaven and earth (which happens in ultimate form in the Temple on the Temple Mount) are precisely the organization of male wisdom by female understanding to for knowledge (chakhmah, binah, da’at) that are the metaphysical ‘triangle’ or synthesis of the supernal qualities that flow from the imperceptible ‘crown,’ the ‘tip of the yud,’ the tiniest of the Hebrew letters, the only one that floats above the line and, aptly, the first letter of the tetragrammaton. Betzalel, “in the shadow of God” integrates all the generative-receptive forces to create and organize and sustain life abundant.
On the macro-historical level, sefer yetzirah, the book of formations, the level of synthesis between the creation from nothing and the making-completion of humankind teaches, following the Talmud (Sanhedrin 97a, inter alia) that human history consists of three eras of two millennia each: Desolation (the sin in the garden; the immorality and violence [hamas] prompting the flood; and the arrogant drive for a world state and divine status embodied in the Tower of Babel that prompted the dispersion of the human family. Each millennium, including the seventh for the Sabbath of history is keyed by the quality of one of the sefirot in our earthly lives and by one of the “double letters” that in Hebrew can be pronounced hard or soft. The potential in the double letters assert human freedom (“see I have placed before you the blessing and the curse, therefore choose life…” that is, Torah) and indicate the breaking of a wave and its soft swirl off a beach back into the deep; each millennium ‘runs’ in and returns; like each of the six ‘days’ of creation which is its root, each begins in ‘evening’ and darkness and moves through dawn-sunrise to full day. The dialectic aspect is manifold and note that the double letters when written and pronounced give the words “concealed as disclosed,” or concealed, even “betrayed fertility” (beged k’prat). The ending, the seventh millennial day of history is encoded for grace and beauty and, if we mess up, as we are free to do, its flip side is horror. Of similar relevance, the sixth millennial day, whose twilight we now are entering by the Jewish calendar is coded for war or peace, hard or soft, thunder and lightning bolt or sweet dark silence containing light. For many reasons (see my lecture series of CDs on “the Road Map in Historical Context”) we find ourselves, toward the end of this sixth millennial day in an era of endless semi-war, of wars of attrition in which victory is not defined because their purpose is the burial of Israel that is meant to “arise and shine” and the glory of its teaching to illuminate the path of the nations. Instead we have the “long twilight war” evoked in 1946, planned long before and described by HG Wells (1933) of the twilight of history; a postmodern war that is neither war nor peace but constant instability. But this was foreseen and described by Zechariah who foresaw, by divine spirit that the murk would be dispelled by a “unique light, neither day nor night; toward evening, there will be light…”
The central branch or ‘hinge’ of history, the simile as or like that indicates the complementary covering and disclosing fertility written into history is encoded “life/death,” a statement of the freedom and responsibility the Creator has given us in grasping the true dialectic rather than in elaborating “materialist” ones meant to deform humans into servants of a god-STATE like Hegel, Marx, Wells or Huxley, a “goddess Humanity” like August Comte and the Positivists with their World Religion and hierarchy of sociologist-priests.
The interplay of darkness and flashing light and also the two ‘wings’ of human history spread from the central or fourth millennial day encoded for the polarities (depending on human choices, individual and national), when the Second Temple flourished, Israel was renewed and then both were desolated by Rome. This hinged and mirroring structure of history on the pattern of a Menorah and progressing in its fulfillment for life and good from chessed to Malkhut also appears in Ezekiel’s vision of the divine chariot and the living beings that are its ‘wheels.’ (Isaiah who prophesied from Jerusalem under a Judean king and by the Temple saw six wings on the seraphim in the holy fire, as the rush of their words sounded “holy, holy, holy is the Eternal One of hosts…” 6:1-4). The interplay of darkness and light is embedded in the word chashmal today translated “electricity.” Its roots suggest the hastening hurry or sensual disclosure of the word and fullness of the sound of creation. The Hebrew prophets give us in their vision of the living beings who are the wheels of the divine chariot and its storm of light from darkness, of silence and sound, the accounting, darkening and sensual, fertile self-exposure of the loving dialectic of creation, present every moment but glimpsed or sensed or understood rarely. This is also the pattern of history, the “sound of great waters, like a great camp, like the sound of the Almighty, the Sufficient One” who can be ‘seen’ only as the appearance [k’mare’ei] of a likeness [d’moot] of a likeness of a likeness of the appearance of an enthroned man surrounded with fire and brilliance. That was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Hashem” (Ezekiel 1:24-28). The sensual process of electric, glorious brilliance by which the universe is sustained as wisdom pours into understanding from the light in the enfolding darkness. It is a series of metaphors and images for us on which our minds can approach the light in darkness and bare and ‘hear’ (understand) the essential dialectic.
The image-making faculty, imagination (dimyon) must not be empowered or deified, as in Romanticism above the process it may reveal as a vehicle. When it does, the root links between imagery, delusion, soil and death may emerge, the clay foot of Edom.
Regarding the fruitful, creative dialectic that retains rather than collapses or mixes particulars (as does the “blender” of the State’s propaganda-education that molds “a world society” by collapsing all the living variety and specifics of creation) we make a final, essential point about the “shadow of God,” the infinitely fertile darkness in and from which the light of creation, formation and making dwells and emerges.
The shadow or image or likeness of God that is Man or humankind, male and female does not refer, except as metaphor (supra) to the adult human form visible to our eye and unaided senses but to the formative bio-genetic process. Our essence reflects the dialectic energy ‘enthroned,’ contained and hidden in creation and only occasionally disclosed or stripped for its fertile primacy to be clear. The essential dialectic of our being and the universe is better conceived as the spiraling chains of DNA, the triple helix and its triple aleph-bet of chromosome pairs from which we in fact unfold, as discussed regarding Jacob’s ladder, above. This is the aleph-mem-shin, the wisdom and understanding, the divinely imbued male and female energies with which “God made the firmament…the two luminaries” and creatures of earth, and from which strengthening we emerge imbued with the miraculous gift of divine light whose letter begins in immeasurable infinity, with God and ‘lower’ tip, still above the line of the world of sensory dimension pours its creative radiance into wisdom to be integrated and arranged in a plenitude by understanding that, with it forms a name of God that gives beauty in potential via the lower sefirot to all lower powers and qualities, centuries and millennia and disciplines that “know His Name” which is not that of the god of Edom, the Eternal One’s self-worshipping mutation and eclipse.
The chashmal is what even the greatest of prophets see as only “a shadow, appearance, and likeness of an appearance” of male and female enthroned in brilliance when in contact with the chashmal or inner-DNA of creation, the Eternal One’s essential dialectic. It is a movement of the Creator and creative force into and within creation, eternally.
From this glorious “Chariot of God” Hegel and Schopenhauer made their implacable World Will and Will of State-as-God now being crushed into giant regional blocks.
As the modern period, the dominion of Esau lurches toward it end, making, producing, confounding all things in its material-imperial process, its aping of the essential dialectic increases along with its war on it, and on its witnesses. This is inevitable since the dialectic of Esau reflects identity theft and ‘appropriation’; so all categories are inverted for evil. The fifth millennium (240-1240 CE) and era of Moshiach (240 - ?) was coded for the dominion of Israel and Torah, not of Edom. Edom is the reified image, the geopolitical mockery and dehumanizing dialectic in whose toils we are deformed: “evolution recalls the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis of Hegelian philosophy and the Marxist reconciliation of opposites [the State as master blender and “liquidator” of human individuals and thought].,, Indeed, dialectical materialism was the first radical attempt at an evolutionary philosophy” (Julian Huxley, the Purpose of UNESCO, 1947). Those whose purpose is “world unification” and “a single world culture” ape the harmonious but diverse world not homogenized into imposed uniformity (which is not unity and which suppresses wisdom and understanding as its proponents often have written) by propaganda, biometrics and operant conditioning but by the healing, nourishing liquid light of Torah pervading the world from the Temple in Jerusalem and informing the practices of the seventy nations with the essential dialectic, fertility and joy of the Creator.
The Menorah of history will be complete on the “seventh day” in the grace and beauty that is the sovereignty of Israel. Sovereign Israel centered on its Temple, the interaction of chashmal on and for earth will link the last three letters of the Tetragrammaton to infuse the light of the ‘smallest’ letter throughout creation. (Zechariah 4:1-7; Narrett, Road Map, op cit). This is the essential dialectic that the powers strain to displace.