KETER: THE CROWN The first sphere on the Tree is so high that the Kabbalists called it Nothing. Last week I promised to walk the Tree one sphere at a time. We start at the top: Keter, כתר, the Crown. Now count. כתר: 20 + 400 + 200 = 620. Tradition reads 620 as 613 + 7: the 613 commandments of the Torah plus the 7 commandments of the rabbis, as if every law were one jewel in a single crown. Keter has its own name of God: Ehyeh, אהיה, from the burning bush in Exodus 3:14, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh." 1 + 5 + 10 + 5 = 21. It does not mean "I am," a fact. It means "I will be," a promise. The Kabbalists of Gerona, in 13th-century Catalonia, began calling the highest sphere Ayin, Nothing: so far above thought that no attribute fits it. Around 1290 the Zohar's Idra gave it a face, Arikh Anpin, the Long Face, the patient one, whose eye never closes. In the 18th century the Hasidic circle of the Maggid of Mezritch noticed the letters. אין, ayin, nothing, and אני, ani, I, are the same three letters: 1 + 10 + 50 = 61. The self is nothing, rearranged. The Golden Dawn (1888) gave Keter the Primum Mobile, the first motion that turns every other sphere, and the four Aces of the Tarot. Tonight Venus, the brightest planet, is lost in the Sun's glare, three days from passing between us and the Sun. The brightest thing in the evening sky is there and can't be seen: a fair picture of Ayin. Next week: Chokmah, Wisdom. What would you be if you weren't "I"? As above, so below. ⛈️