Tiphereth – The Sixth Sphirah of the Tree of Life and the divine name YHVH (Jehovah / Yahweh)

No-one really knows how this name is pronounced for sure. It is said to be the name which was used by the priests of Israel to invoke their god into their temple. In myth once a year the High Priest would go into the temple and say this name only that one time. To waste the name by using it at another time would be total sacrilege.

The name is frequently called the Tetragrammaton which is just Greek for “composed of 4 letters”. The word tetragrammaton over the years has become powerful in its own right trough association with the unutterable name. See below where it is split into syllables surrounding Solomon’s star as seen in grimmoires.

YHVH often appeared with similar vowels as those used for the word Adonai (my Lord), which is pronounced instead of directly saying the name to avoid blasphemy. These consonants and the vowels for Adonai rendered its pronunciation Yehovah or Jehovah. Because the name was only spoken once a year in an invocation of the “God” of Israel and Judah in the Temple the pronunciation has totally been lost to us, but a note in Coptic magical papyri suggests the pronunciation was “Yao-we” (ιαωουηε). This has encouraged the pronunciation of “Yahweh” or it might simply be a word that happens to contain every vowel from the Coptic language. What does this name mean? Well we looked at AHYH which means I am. If we were to make it into the third person (“He is”) instead of (“I am”) then it would be YHYH. When a verb like this has Yod (“Y”) as a middle letter in various verb forms it would be common for this to be substituted for a Vav (“V”) so it is possible where AHYH means “I am / I shall be”, YHVH could be “He be”.

This name consists of 4 characters and is often drawn to have a connection to the 4 worlds of the Qabalah. These are Atziluth (the world of the first “emanations” from “God”), Briah (the world of “creation”), Yetzirah (the world of “formation”) and Assiah (the world in which Action takes place). I don’t know if this connection is valid, but again we have a name through goes throughout all of reality and is ordered in the order of descending spirit. Some say the name is related to the alchemical marriage, I’ll try and write about that in another article at some point for the purpose of this article, it is the union of different parts of the soul. The letters can be related to the four Court Cards of the tarot. Y – King, H – Queen, V- Prince, H – Princess. The lower more corporeal part of the soul closely linked to the flesh is connected with the Princess final H and this is united with the higher intelligence or holy guardian angel which is connected with the Prince and the V. The marriage exalts the Prince and Princess to the thrones of the King and Queen, the divine essence and the spirit. Crowley also suggests in Liber ABA on the formula of the Tetragrammaton that they will re-enter the womb. So it could be concluded that this name invokes this power achieving the purpose of alchemy.

YHVH is composed of 4 Hebrew letters. It is common in certain practices of Qabalah known as Gematria to relate Hebrew letters to numbers based on where they appear in the Alphabet. These letters are related to 10 + 5 + 6 + 5 which add up to 26. 26 is double 13 which is a commonly referenced in examples of Gematria as associated with AHBH (love) and AKhD (oneness). Though I often find Gematria to be a bit of a stretch personally this could suggest the name hides within itself the power of love and oneness and this power is invoke by use of the name. This connection is raised by a famous Rabbi Abulaffia. Who also said that name is made up of two parts united (made into oneness) by love.

The name YHVH appears in the divine name associated with Tiphereth YHVH Eloah ve-Daath.

It is also worth noting that the sphiroth in the middle pillar Kether, Tiphereth, Yesod, Malkuth have numbers 1, 6, 9 and 10 which add up to 26 so once again we have another interpretation of the this divine name which encompasses the descent of God’s manifesting power into the material.

Theologist Johann Eichorn postulated that the first 5 books of the bible come from a few different fragmentary types of texts. Like it was cobbled together from different sources and presented as one whole. While this view is disputed it gives us interesting unique knowledge concerning the names. This is called the documentary hypothesis. After a few years of development, the sources became referred to as the deutronomist source, the pirestly source and two others which reflect the names of God. the “Jahwist” literature preferring the name YHVH for god and “Elohist” literature preferring the names El and Elohim for God at least until the point Moses goes up the mountain where it changes to YHVH. It is worth noting that scholars have noticed a connection between scriptures that refer to God using YHVH with a more physical idea of God. You see descriptions as follows:

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

Jahwist scripture has a more direct image of god. Elohist scripture Moses bring down the plagues on pharaoh where Jahwist version he just prays and YHVH comes directly to do it. Angels appear far less in Jahwist scripture as God acts directly without need of intermediaries. The name YHVH is even popular in the Elohist scripture after god reveals himself as “I am that I am” (AHYH AShR AHYH). Jahwist scripture is estimated to date to about 850 BCE.

In her writing, Dion Fortune equates Kether, Tiphereth and Yesod to the holy trinity of Christianity. Kether being the father, Tiphereth being the son and Yesod is the holy spirit.