YHVH:

Oh! But Yaweh, (Jehovah, or YHVH, as he’s variously called) is a tricksy little devil!

A lot has been written on YHVH from so many valuable and unexpected sources that its hard to talk about anything genuinely new. I’m going to be talking about some familiar ideas here, but I’ll try and capture as well, some new light.

Yaweh appears in Genesis, very much like the demiurge, described by the Gnostics, as a creator – following the entire creation myth of Genesis 1, seemingly re-creating and begetting all of the same sorts of things as his predecessor. He builds a garden, and from it, he draws up Adam – the primal man. His first appearance comes in Genesis 2:4, in the following passage:

Genesis 2: 1“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.” 2:2″And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.” 2:3″And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” 2:4 “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,” 2:5 “And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.” 2:6″But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.” 2:7″And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

In all of the instances above, when the text reads Lord God, the Hebrew text reads, “YHVH ALHIM” (Yod+Heh+Vav+Heh) (Aleph+Lamed+Heh+Yod+Mem).

ALHIM, is the sole name given in verses 2:2 and 2:3, which refer specifically to the creation account of Genesis 1.

[A note on this creation to bear in mind for later, relating to the Sethian version of this creation in Secret John: the Creation of the ALHIM ends on the Seventh day. Or rather, on that day, the ALHIM cease to be spoken of alone. At the close of that creation, a new God is born and they together become the hybrid, YHVH AHLHIM (Above). This new god is transliterated into English as Lord, a name denoting through its etymology, a hierarchy, as in its Old English root, hlaford – meaning “Master of a household, ruler, superior.”

This idea is not dissimilar to the Hebrew conception of the Logos, as described by Philo of Alexandria as: “‘the man of God’ or ‘the Shadow’ of God that was used as an instrument and a pattern of all creation. The Logos converted unqualified, unshaped preexistent matter, which Philo describes as ‘destitute of arrangement, of quality, of animation, of distinctive character and full of disorder and confusion,’ into four primordial elements, ‘for it was not lawful for the all-wise and all blessed God to touch materials which were all misshapen and confused'” (Logos to Trinity -Hillar pg. 51). This is just hinting at a tentative connection of YHVH to the Demiuge of the Greeks and the different Gnostic sects that I’ll explore more in my next post.]

The Hebrew people believed that the name YHWH was too sacred, and too powerful to be spoken by anyone save those priests who have been properly prepared to receive it. Crowley gives, I think, an apt description of this general preparedness in his note to the vibration of God names in Liber O (MTP. Sect. 3).

(Remember to first, assume the god-form of the chosen deity)

From the hand of YHVH (Yod in hebrew means “Hand”) will come the first children, Adam and Eve, as well as NChSh, the Serpent (whom Blavatsky, and others will flatly identify with this figure of YHVH, as well as the first “son”, Cain.)

Of this first appearance of the divine name and its manifestations, the Zohar (Pritzker Edition) says, about the line: “when they were created, (Bet+Heh_Bet+Resh+Aleph+Mem) (Gen. 4:2 above)“ that it is an anagram for the name of the Hebrew patriarch, “From Abraham” (Bet_Aleph+Bet+Resh+Heh+Mem).” which name is discussed at length. Daniel Matt, the Zohar’s editor gives the following note: “‘through Abraham,’ indicating that the world was created for his sake.” As these two names (ALHIM and Abraham) are simultaneously formed, “Life was generated and the complete Name emerged, unlike before . . . All remained suspended until the name of Abraham was created. Once that name was complete, the holy name was completed, as the verse concludes: on the day that YHVH ALHIM made earth and heaven (Gen 2:4).”

Remember a note in a previous blog from Blavatsky:

“*Abraham and Saturn are identical in astro-symbology, and he is the forefather of the Jehovistic Jews.”

Through the emergence of this primal father (Patriarch: Abraham) within the Chaos of Creation (Tohu and Bohu “Without Form and Void”) -the world was given form. The implication, if I am understanding it correctly, is that YHVH is the image, or form upon which the Universe is built. Like a blue-print.

The Kabbalah of course confirms this association in its doctrine of the 4 worlds, where the first world, of the supernal sephiroth is given to the letter Yod. The second world, the world of Creation is given to the first Heh. The third world of Formation is given to the Vav, and finally the physical world to the final Heh.

-Note that Abraham enumerates to 248, and that it begins with the word “Ab” which enumerates to 3 (The number of supernal sephira), and in Hebrew means “Father, (Aleph+Bet), as in Gen. 2:24 “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” If we remove “Ab,” the father from this name, subtracting 3, it leaves 245-the number of Adam Qadmon, the Primal Man. Abraham can then be read as, (God “The Primal Triad” conjunct with “Mankind” -the Son, “Male and Female.”)

[Notice the sequence of the numbers, 2, . . . , 4, 5]

In another cognate note: the Supreme Creator God of the Gnostics, as it is sometimes described, IAO, is often explained as a Greek version of the Hebrew YHVH.

[EDIT:] It occurs to me, that it might be a good idea to note that YHVH, the letters of the name are attributed to the four elements as such:

Yod to Fire – Heh to Water – Vav to Air – Heh(final) to Earth

The two letters Yod and Vau, are given to the masculine or positive elements, and the two Heh’s to the two feminine or passive elements. These elemental attributions will become key to understanding the two gods of Genesis and their relationship to astronomy – (The Subject that this entire study is building towards.)

In an interesting tie-in to the composition of “The Elohim,” the editors of the Harper Collins Bible Dictionary (pg. 274), in the entry under “El”, where they explore the history of the God from Ugarit in the 2nd millennium BC. to its adoption into the Israelite literature notes that YHVH was not originally worshipped as such by the Israelites:

“Israelite tradition recognized the primacy of El worship. When the Priestly writer introduces the divine name Yahweh into his narrative [Exod. 6:2-8], he shows that Yahweh was known at first as El Shaddai. The Priestly writer often uses the name El Shaddai for Israel’s God. The Bible speaks of ‘El, the God of Israel’ [Gen. 33:20], and when it is recognized that the name Israel is a compound including the divine name El, the importance of El in the early religion of Israel becomes clear.

The relevant passage is in Exod. 6:3, where God speaks to Moses: “And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty (El Shaddai), but by my name JE-HO-VAH was I not known to them.”

YHVH is a name peculiar to the Israelite decedents of the Patriarchs.

[The association of Yahweh with El, in so prominent a place in the text, makes me want to read “EL,” as “YHVH” when I read “EL-H-IM”.

ELIM, (Aleph+Lamed+Yod+Mem) [Distinct from ELHIM], means “Gods,” and enumerates to 81. Remove the “EL” from EL-H-IM, and replace it with YHVH and you get (Yod+Heh+Vav+Heh) 26 + (Heh)_Yod+Mem) 55 which likewise enumerates to 81.]

YHVH, before the exile, was a very different character. Wikipedia actually has a really great and thorough article up now detailing his varied history.