THE CREATIVE GODHEAD

The Hermetic texts tell us that the celestial bodies of the gods consist of heads alone in the place of bodily frames. They also tell us that a head means a “sphere.” Therefore, the great god known as Cosmos was viewed as having a spherical form representing the head of creation—the creative godhead.

This creative godhead, this vast cosmic sphere, is filled with luminous mind stuff. It corresponds to the spherical field of sattva cognized on the scale of the thirty-third layer above the half measure, with the field of sattva being compared to the brain of the creative godhead and the imperishable thirty-third layer of the metaphysical Logos corresponding to the skull.

This understanding is consistent with the Hebrew tradition of kabbalah in which the imperishable spine of Adam Ouila, the first archetypal man, is represented by the 22 + 10 = 32 geometric elements of the diagrammatic Tree of Life. In this system, the highest of the ten sephiroth—Kether, the Crown—represents the thirty-second layer in the ascending direction. More specifically, it symbolizes the crown of the cosmic spine, the atlas upon which rests the cosmic head or skull. This cosmic head itself corresponds to the thirty-third aspect of the Tree of Life—the uncreated whole that exists above and beyond its thirty-two created parts or the thirty-third layer of the metaphysical Logos, which upholds the superuniversal field of sattva, the cosmic brain.