SMOKE & CLOUDS OF GOD's GLORY IN THE VIRTUAL TEMPLE
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A short essay about the medium of theophany in the Past and the Future Temples
Smoke
and Clouds of the Glory
of God in the Virtual/Light
Dr. Yitzḥaq Ḥayut-Man
The
evidence to the presence of habitation of the Lord - Shekhinah –
in the Sinai Theophany (Exodus 24:15-18),
in the Tabernacle and in the
On the other hand, it is possible to define a
main function of the
Levine (1996; about Menaḥem Haran's book about ancient Near East Temples) shows
that while the ancient temples were considered the earthly abode of a god, it
was not necessarily his/her permanent abode, and that deity had to be invoked
to descent and come to the temple. The Bamot (Altars) mentioned
several times in the Bible were like the landing-places for the deity, and the
altars with their rising smoke were thought to occasion and precipitate the
descent of the god. The cloud of Glory that entered the shrine was evidence for
the appearance of the God of Israel in the Tabernacle and in Solomon's
The clouds of Glory in the Tabernacle and above it are surely connected to the Pillar of Cloud and Pillar of Fire that accompanied the Children of Israel in the Sinai desert (Exodus 13:20-21). Already in the exodus, the pillar of smoke appeared and separated between the Israelites and the Egyptians. When the Tent of Assembly was built, the cloud appeared above it, whether as a sign for Moses' authority or as a signal to travel or to camp. (In the Temple of Solomon, where it was no longer possible to count on the Pillar of Smoke and Pillar of Fire, there were built two symbolic pillars – Yakhin and Bo'ạz). It is apparent that the appearance of the pillar of smoke and the fire were means of telecommunications, quite similar to what was common at the time of smoke signals and torches.
The word 'Glory' appears 177 times in the NT. At times, it is coupled with clouds. “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Mat 24:30 and 64, also Mark 15:62) - the Glory can assume almost any form.[2]
Future Clouds of Glory
The cloud and the smoke are not only past phenomena, but are also a prophecy for the future: "And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of Mount Ẓiyyon (Zion), and upon her assemblies, a cloud of smoke by day, and a shining of a flaming fire by night; for upon all the Glory shall be there a canopy. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat... " (Isaiah 4:5-6). We also mentioned the future "Coming of the Son of Man in the Clouds of Heaven".
We are examining the possibility of preparing
a
In Sefer Yetsirah (the stem book for all the subsequent Qabbalah literature) there appears a shrine that is set in the midst of a five-dimensional space of "World-Year-Soul", and the acronym of these dimensions is known as Ạshan – namely Smoke (עולם-שנה-נפש – עש״ן). The explanation is that many "Space-Time-Soul" events can be summed as kind of drops that hover as a cloud in five-dimensional space – or even inside a kinetic three-dimensional space of a viewing facility that enables the observation of these drops as they form stable or changing spatial patterns – a 3D screen, or a "Cloud Chamber, if you like. Ray Kurzweil (1999) discusses future production of clouds of tiny 'Nano-robots" that can assume any shape or form.
Interestingly, in Hebrew "my cloud" - Ạnani (ענני) – is the same as "answered me" (Ạnani baMerḥav Yah - "Yah answered me in the open space" - Psalm 118:5) and like the evocative Ạneni (same Hebrew spelling) meaning "answer me!". Through that cloud, there is a possibility of question and answer, which may be expressed in the equation of form between forms in the lower smoke and the higher Clouds of Glory.
The
raising of the sacrifice to heaven as smoke is, mystically speaking, a
situation of annulment (Bitul) - it turns the material into
fine dust that combines with the air, the wind or “Spirit” (Ru’aḥ) - and
this annulment enables the cleaving to God and the redemption. The sacrifice is
"the bonfire of vanities". The performance of the sacrifice produces
a smoke that rises to heaven as if it was an offer of food, or the savor of
food, for God. The Ạqedah, the obeying to the command of Lekh
lekha, the Crucifixion, and possibly the Hejirah of Mohammad, are
examples of sacrifice and annulment. The Psalms are focused upon the Temple
service and say "Let my
prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of
my hands as the evening sacrifice (Psa 141:2)."
The raising of the sacrificial cloud and of the incense in the inner altar creates smoky fog that enables to observe the Light Show. For example, laser beams projected to the sky remain invisible unless there is dust in the air, and especially clouds or smoke.
The Smoke (ẠShaN)
Letters of the Lord YHWH
These are the letters of the Divine Speech through which heaven and earth were formed. These are the marks of sounds in the five-dimensional space (in which "time stands still") described in Sefer Yetsirah. As the Sforno commentary (for Exodus 36:8) states "The Ark (of the Covenant), the most special of the temple implements, was made by Beẓal'el, who was the greatest of them all, as the sages of blessed memory said: Beẓal'el knew how to combine the letters by which heaven and earth were created" (Berakhot 55a).
It is said of both the tabernacle and the Temple "and the House will be filled with smoke". With the medium of the smoke it was possible to observe – as it is written about the theophany by Mount Sinai and the receiving of the Decalogue about which it was written (Exodus 20:15) "All the people perceived the thundering, and the lightning, and the sound of the shofar, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they were shaken, and stood afar off". The smoke enabled the visual presentation of the Divine Speech as Cymatics-schematic forms of letters of "standing time" in the five-dimensional space of His world, may His Name be blessed. Interestingly, the prophets mentioned such impression of the temple. One said: “Strike the Kaftor that the thresholds may shake" (Amos, 9:1), while the other said: "and the thresholds shook at the voice of him that cried and the House will be filled with smoke" (Isaiah 6:4). In modern Hebrew, “Kaftor” means button!
For example, the work of Stan Tenen[3] enables us to read the Hebrew and Arabic letters as different specific projections of the same basic universal form (of a characteristic, smoke-like, coil that fits upon the face of a torus, and which issues inwards from the vertex of the tetrahedron) that take place in three dimensions.
It is possible to present the plan of the shrine of the Dome of the Rock[4] as a space that represents, through visual associations and architectural flow of spaces, the Divine Mouth from which issues prophecy in the form of Arabic (and also Hebrew) smoke-letters. It is possible to regard the designed space of this Holy throne as the sound box by which the proclamations of God would be heard, while the letters of the speech would flash and scintillate. It is quite possible that this was the intention of the designers[5]. In any case, nowadays we can build models of that shrine (and of the Tabernacle) in terms of "Heikhal haShem” - "The Shrine of the Holy Name" - in which there would appear and shine from the smoke letters – of the sounds of the Names and of the Souls.
What Jews call "The Shrine of the Holy Name" (Heikhal haShem) is actually "The Temple of YHWH". The very Name "YHWH" is also a diagram and a map of the connection between the worlds, which we have defined by spatial dimensions. The lower H'e corresponds to the World of Ạssiyah and/or the Sefirah of Malkhut, marks the outside perimeter of the shrine for activity of circumambulation (haqafot) – and is in the form of a 2D plane; the W'aw of the Name corresponds with the World of Yeẓirah and/or the six Sefirot from Yesod to Ḥesed and especially the Sefirah of Tif'eret, is for the middle circle of the shrine – and it acts as the addition of a line perpendicular to the 3D cube; the upper H'e corresponds to the world of Beri'ah and/or the Sefirah of Binah, is over the Holy Rock and the surface of the inner space of the shrine - and is of the stature of 4D Hyperspace; the topmost Y'od, which corresponds with the World of Aẓilut and/or the Sefirah of Ḥokhmah, corresponds with the upper part of the inner space of the shrine – and it's structure and decoration represent the (32) points of contact (or portal) to 5D hyper-hyper-space.[6]
Moreover, the graphic forms of the Letters of the Tetragrammaton in the 'Assyrian' or 'Square' (Merubaạ) script resembles, and is employed to denote, a 0D (fulcrum) Point (the letter Y'od); a 1D Line Link (the letter W'aw); a 2D surface (the letter H'e) or a 3D cell (the letter H'y in another 'filling' (Miluy). There are 12 permutations of the letters of The Name, which can be shown in this context to describe 12 operators for connecting elements in 5D spaces. These 12 names/operators are associated with the Twelve Tribes of Israel and with 'The Twelve Camps of the Shekhinah'.
Bibliography:
Elad, Amikam: Why did 'Abd al-Malik Build
the Dome of the Rock? A re-examination of Muslim Sources.
Hayut-Man, Yitzhaq: The Truth about Judas
– Mysteries of the Judas Code Revealed.
Kurtzweil, Ray: The Age of Spiritual Machines.
Levine, Baruch (NY University) Mythic and Ritual Projection of Sacred Space in Biblical Literature. Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Vol. 6, 1996.
[1] In the recently-published old Gnostic "Gospel of Judas", Judas is described by Jesus as 'The thirteenth' – who is then trained through appearances of light figures in clouds, see Hayut-Man 2008.
[2] The Greek for "Glory" in this verse is δοìξα doxa, meaning – dignity, honor, praise, worship. The same word is used in Matt. 4:8 “Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them".
[3] See Stan Tenen's work at www.meru.org.
[4] The Hebrew original of this text used a word game whereas the Dome of the Rock is Kipat haSela, the acronym makes KeS, which means "Throne". Indeed, the Arabic calligraphy at the ceiling of the Dome contains the Qur'anic description of the Throne of God.
[5] During the few decades that the Dome of the Rock was ceremoniously operated (by the Umayyad Caliphs), the inner service was performed by Jews who burned there incense, that could be smelled through the city, and they opened it to the public on Mondays and Thursdays – the weekdays for reciting the Torah portion of the week. See Elad, 1992).
[6] The letters of YH that relate to the inner space are
always joint together ("union of Abba and Imma
– Father and Mother). The pattern at the ceiling of the Dome of the Rock
represents this union. It is based on a 32-fold symmetry. The 4D hypercube has
32 edges, whereas the 5D hyper-hypercube as 32 vertices. One form is the dual
of the other. It is also worth noting that the Gematria value of the Divine Kavod
– Glory – is 32, the number of 'figures' (and the dual paths between the 32
figures). 32 is also the Gematria of LeV – (One) Heart.
See further development and application for the Coming epiphany at: http://www.global-report.com/thehope/a36-preparing-the-coming-epiphany
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