Chapter Two of "The Turtle Talks Torah": Elijah the Prophet and the Heights of the Angels

Chapter Two: Elijah the Prophet and the Heights of the Angels

 

            One of the most illustrious and colorful figures in the traditions of the Jewish legends is Elijah the prophet, called Eliyahu in Hebrew.  At every Passover Seder ceremony in the Jewish festival cycle, the youngest child goes to the door with Elijah’s special cup of wine. The child sings for the hoped for return of the prophet who is said, according to the ancient Hebrew prophets, to return to the human world to herald in the time of the redemption. Legend also tells us that Elijah left in a chariot of fire, which brought him directly to the heaven world. In the ancient writings such as the pseudipigraphical books of Enoch, comets are considered fiery chariots that carry sacred messenger angels from heaven to Earth. It is also said within the legends, the aggadah of Jewish writings, that the soul of Elijah became an Ofan. This is an angel in the order of angels called the Ofanim or wheels. They are said to be the very beings that move the planets. In the book of Enoch, also called the Sefer Hechalot(Book of Palaces), we are given the height of the various types of angels in numbers of years “journey”. The height of an Ophan’s body is said to be a distance of 2500 years. This fact brings us to a very special connection to the Buddhist tradition, which we will develop and discuss, in a later chapter. It is from an ancient Buddhist sutra that states that the world will proceed through five stages of 500 years each(2500 years) before a new Buddha cycle or “Wheel of Dharma’ will renew the world.  We are also told in the Jewish legends that Elijah will be one member of an eight-member cabinet in charge of governing the world when we enter the era of redemption and Peace. (Ginsberg’s Legends of the Jews on Elijah). This “council” of eight lofty beings also is found in the Cheyenne medicine wheel tradition as the chiefs of natural law, the Shee Nah Meeah or balancers of existence(from H.Storm) in the twenty count of the developed medicine wheel of all that is(see image at the bottom)). This too has some connections to an interesting group of eight beings in Tibetan Buddhism, the celestial bodhisattvas, which we will discuss in the chapter on Vajrapani, a Buddhist Bodhisattva figure of great importance. Also in the Sepher Hechalot we are told that the height of the crown of one of the Seraphim is said to be a journey of five hundred two years. The sum of 2500 years(height of an ophan) and 502 years(crown of a seraph) is three thousand two years. In Jewish tradition it was three thousand years ago that King David built the foundation of the first Jewish temple, the Beith HaMikdash which his son King Solomon completed.

            The heights of the angels in years gives us an insight into a deeper level of the Jewish tradition as a wisdom school of initiation. There are types of ceremonies and prayers that connect one generation to the next and form an unbroken line of prayer involving the very blood of the people(covenant of Abraham), over many thousands of years. A deeper understanding of the worldview within the Kabbalah which will be discussed in a later chapter in more detail is essential to understand how ongoing rhythmic prayer connecting many hundreds of generations and thousands of years has a very special targeted efficacy for a certain purpose. This targeted journey of prayer is also hinted at in the text Sepher Yetzirah This is an ancient primer of Kabbalah. Here it says that the covenant of Abraham, called today the Bris milah-covenant of the flesh is “between the ten toes of the feet”. This is explaining a naming prayer form as connected to our journey- feet-walking-through time and over many centuries. Other midrashim/stories from Talmud and Zohar on the structure of creation also explain the journey in hundreds of years to go from one spherical heaven to another of the seven “heavens” that surround concentrically the Earth globe. The very purpose of the ongoing prayers of the Jewish wisdom tradition and the other great wisdom lineages around the Earth will be a main theme developed in this writing. The goal of this has a simple name in the Hebrew. It is called the Tikkun Olam. This originally was conceived to depict a work that will fully heal the Earth and the living world in a single great event, bringing in an era of unending peace and prosperity. It is now more popularly used as a verb form, to tikun the world, to help repair especially through mitzvoth, or good deeds. This “doing” of deeds and prayer is what we have been told would bring the event called Tikkun Olam, a healed world.

            The Jewish wisdom tradition involves a great body of ceremonial cycle and prayer forms that connect the people together throughout many generations. One of the very earliest of these prayer forms is seen as the covenant of the flesh, the Bris milah, which was given to the first true Jewish priest, our father Abraham, and as we will see as this story unfolds, how it also belongs especially to our Mother Sarah. This covenant is a naming ceremony involving the flesh and blood of our bodies. It changes us physically and It is geared to the number eight, performed at eight days, and this is an important rhythm that we will see, helps unfold the meaning of this magical work of ancient prayer.  When a naming prayer ceremony involving the blood and flesh is set to a rhythmic pattern, both the eight days of the octave of music as well as the Fibonacci series of numbers(to discuss in a later chapter) it takes on a growing efficacy as the tradition moves through time. In the Talmudic legends (legends of the Jews, Ginsberg) we are told that each of the seven heavens is a distance of five hundred years journey.(see image of seven heavens)

The heavens surrounding the Earth center from the book: On Mystical Shape of The Godhead by Sholem

The space between each heaven is also said to be a five hundred years walk and each heaven itself is  five hundred year journey. It takes five hundred years to get to the very first heaven. We can then calculate that it takes 3500 years to make it to the fourth heaven. It would take another 250 years to get to the very center of this “heaven” and “Temple”.This place, in the aggadah or legends, is said to house the supreme Beit HaMikdash or heavenly temple from which the waters of love flow to all the worlds. The Jewish tradition counts our naming covenant with HaShem, the creator, to the time of Abraham and Sarah, the Father and Mother of the Jewish people. They are said to have lived about 3750 years ago. This “journey” of 3750 years is a journey on a path of prayer that would help bring the waters of love to flow freely from the heavenly temple and bring the tikkun Olam, the world repair mentioned in the previous chapter. The deeper understanding of this naming covenant did not come into my own mind until my thirties, when I discovered that the eighth day of my own life, when I came into the covenant, was a calendar day of special significance in both the pagan European and the Christian sacred calendars. This has given me another direction to understand the big Why? of this form of prayer. I learned how the naming prayer form was an ancient form of “shamanic/aboriginal” prayer when I studied with a circle if indigenous elders. My entire life has been filled with “magic” and miracles and I perceive a big part of this personal orientation to stem from the synchronicity with the sacred calendars involving my own naming ceremony at eight days. All the various religious tradition that have grown from ancient wisdom lineages have particular types of naming ceremonies that also may harmonize so to say along with other religious calendars. This is especially true of the religious traditions that follow the sacred seven day week which has been an ongoing of wheel of  rhythmic prayer for many thousands of years.

From the English translation(Wescott version) of the ancient text Sepher Yetzirah that describes the naming covenant in chapter VI: 4. “After that our father Abraham had seen, and pondered over, investigated, and understood these things, he designed, engraved, and composed them, and received them into his power (hands). Then the Lord of all appeared unto him, made a covenant with him, and kissed his head, and naming him after his own name, called him his friend; and as it is written, completed a covenant with him and with his seed forever, who then believed on God, the Tetragrammaton, and it was imputed to him for righteousness.

God ordained a covenant between the toes of his feet, that of circumcision; and a covenant between the fingers of his hands, that of the Tongue(which is Torah, kabbalah and creativity). He bound the essences of the twenty-two letters on his tongue, and God disclosed to him the secrets of them. God has carried these through waters, He has borne them aloft through fire, and He has stamped them in the storms of the air; He has distributed them among the seven stars, and has assigned them to twelve celestial constellations. Amen.”

The efficacy of human generative blood and prayer forms is an ancient understanding. It has had horrible consequences when societies have gone to the horrific extreme of sacrificing the human life that is the most precious gift we are given. The test of the Jewish Patriarch Abraham in being asked to sacrifice his own son Isaac is found in close proximity in the Hebrew bible to the giving of the covenant of circumcision, a non-lethal form of using the precious fluid of life in a prayer form that directly connects the generative function through time with prayer and the promise of a world that is filled with the beauty of human life in step with the divine mystery. As many shamanic aboriginal “rites of passage” ceremonies it brings the individual into a complete presence/awakening in the moment by bringing all the senses into a heightened state of excitation.(see image of Mayan cave ceremony) This completely joins the person’s soul with their physical body and at a naming ceremony particularly in the presence of their greater community.. The beginning of the covenant of Abraham in time is a pivotal junction in the active work of the wisdom lineages of the temple/school, which is at the foundation of a world like ours. Many different peoples have been chosen for varied aspects of the great work that involves the making of a healed world. The Jews were chosen for this specific form of naming covenant and this is very much at the root of their unusual and at times extremely difficult history. The efficacy of this form of prayer is targeted I believe at the greater collective soul level of the community and all of humanity. It does not necessarily make the individual a more connected person so to say to the divine realms but it does so on a collective level over many generations and many centuries.

             The calculation from these ancient Jewish legends of the distance in years of the heaven world and the dimensions of great angelic beings in distances of years brings us to a new awareness of the function of the global prayer paths. This points us to a fundamental understanding of why a covenanted body of prayer, and people and the linear continuity in time has been such an important part of the work that is restoring the sacred Earth world. I began to study and learn of the wisdom tradition about Elijah and the kabbalah when I was about 11 years old in Hebrew school. There was the story of the rabbi’s enigma as it was first presented to me as a child in Hebrew School,  - “can God make a rock bigger than he can pick up”? an enigma that we were told was unanswerable and even dangerous to attempt to figure out!  A lot later - I learned the answer many years later. In brief the very huge rock is Tzedeq=righteousness and justice. It has been created by the Source of love, God, but it is our human task to help HaShem lift up this rock of justice here in our Earthly world. In fact this gets to the very purpose of creation in bringing the divine flow and presence into the most physical realms of the vast creation and to the human part and function of this drama.

Before I had learned the solution of this conundrum I was learning that the making of an initiate in the line of the legendary personage the Adam Baal Shem was possibly the making of my own life’s journey .The lineage of the Rabbi Adam Baal Shem is the more recent key name for a tradition of initiation that is intimately linked to a branch of the Kabbalah, the Jewish wisdom, called the practical Kabbalah. This knowledge involves the use of the mineral world, the metals and stones and plants and animals in relation to the work of tikkun Olam. This is the very most “classified” and whispered knowledge of Kabbalah. It may only come through direct revelation from the heaven worlds and the beings within these worlds. It is part of the teachings related to the sacred Chanupa/Pipe that the White Calf Woman gave to her Native American peoples where the Chanupa is an alchemical vessel that connects the human souls to the various other portions of the entire divine and physical realm which really are not ever fully separate..

The legend of the Rabbi Adam Baal Shem comes from the Hasidic body of teaching stories and legends which are also connected to the body of original Talmudic aggadah/legends. The Rabbi Adam is said to have discovered the original book of the angel Raziel, the angel of secrets who some say is also a form of the angelic Ophan,Eliyahu. This book was given to the first Adam by the angel. It was said to be made of sapphires and encased in gold. It contained all the secrets of the world and the myriads of beings in the various palaces and firmaments that make up the created world. The book has a specific procession of owners who have passed it on to each other from the first human. We will see later that this line of initiatic succession has an exact parallel with other aspects of the secret technology of the Jewish wisdom tradition, and the transmission of the Kabbalah itself. The Rabbi Adam found the book one day in a cave. This cave was connected to the other cave called Machpelah, where the biblical legends say that the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Jews are buried. The Rabbi took the book and brought it home with him. He learned how to pronounce the most revered name of HaShem and all the secrets of the most profound wisdom from studying it.  After many years, when he was about to die, the legend tells us the details of how he passed on this book to the next in line, the famous Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov. This man called the BESHT was the founder of the Hasidic movement in Judaism in the 1700s ce.

            . The teacher/rabbi’s in my early Hebrew school experience quickly rambled over the “kabbalah” part of the Jewish literature curriculum. The rabbi once said to the class that no one really knew what any of this “mystical” rabble meant anymore and no one could figure it out. In my eleven-year-old mind I thought, “I will figure this stuff out!” and my search for the “Kabbalah” began. I read everything I could about it all in my Jewish books and then went to a bookstore in NY to find the Sepher HaZohar/Book of Splendour. The old man in the store laughed me out of there saying with a wave of his hand that it was all too intellectual stuff for a lad like me to be concerned with. My first readings were mostly about the science and study of gematria - the number game that gives values to Hebrew letters and words.  The very first of an intellectual/conceptual “synchronicity stood out in my mind as I began my study. The value of the Hebrew word for serpent (Nachash) equals the value of the Hebrew word for Moshiach/messiah! Being a nature boy who loved searching out snakes in the woods and keeping them for pets, this little fact from gematria somehow amazed me and helped inflame a passion for learning more. The Messiah stuff was always a charged issue, being taken and transformed so radically and with grandiosity by the Christian world. There were so many questions in any child’s mind about this subject. In the Jewish tradition I learned each human being is a candidate to be this redeemer. It is for each of us to build this new renewed world of Peace together, to lift up that rock of justice in our world and be our own leaders in this journey.

 My interest in anything that had to do with snakes led me to a curious story. This was a Persian fairy tale that I read when young. It had the picture of a serpent finger ring and it is called Bahram and the Snake Prince. In reading the story one discovers that the ring pictured on the front is the ring of the King of Serpents and it was given over to the great magician king called Suleiman in the Islamic writings. This ring of Solomon is also mentioned in the pseudopigraphic writing called the Testament of Solomon, which dates to around the second century CE. In this story the Jewish King Solomon has a special ring with which he is able to summon all the demons and genii and find out information about them and then set them to work building the first temple, the Beith haMikdash. One being who is summoned by Solomon stands out apart from all the rest because he claims that it is a number made of three Hebrew letters that neutralizes his ‘evil” imbalance. He states that the three letters are the number 644. There are of course only three letters in the Hebrew alphabet (which also have numerical value) that could possibly make this number, Mem(40) - Daleth(4)- Mem(600)(final). I knew this right away because these are my own initials of both my English and Hebrew name. I had another example and synchronicity that meant to me that I was directly tied into an ancient lineage of initiation in the mystery schools I was now engaged in studying. I do believe that this kind of synchronicity may be found in the life of any individual that is called into this work of healing our world especially when it is rooted in ancient lineage traditions. The Sepher HaZohar also mentions the magical ring of King Solomon as functional to join the Shechinah fully with the physical Earth I have come to understand that the ring is the last in a series symbolically on one level that refers to kinds of technology that has four transformations throughout Jewish history and this will be further developed in the chapter of the ancient technology of the Jewish people.

             A most important and most famous prophecy about Elijah is from the book of the Hebrew prophet Malachi. He says in the beautiful language of the great prophets that the coming of Elijah will directly precede the arrival of the great and awesome day of the HaShem. He says that Elijah will cause the parents to turn to their children.... and the children to their parents. Elijah is a magical guardian of sorts who is also said to be present at every bris milah and naming ceremony of the children. What is amazing about him is that he can be found I have discovered to hold a very lofty station in other religious traditions besides the Jewish. In Islam he is called Kidr, or the green man, and he is a supreme magical being who can appear in distant places in the twinkling of an eye. He is a trickster and teacher of sorts who is highly revered and even feared for the divine work, which he carries out. In Christianity Elijah has played a very prominent part especially as the herald of the redemptive times  and the “great day of the Lord”. Some Christian tradition says that John the Baptist was an incarnation of his. In my own studies of Tibetan Buddhism I believe I have found the place of Elijah as the same personage called Vajrapani, the celestial bodhisattva among a circle of eight beings who is given the quality and function of magic and power. He travels at incredible speeds and distances and wields great power and performs spectacular feats of magic. His name implies that he has a special connection to the Vajra, which is a Sanskrit name for a diamond or jeweled thunderbolt wand. We will discuss this connection to the Jewish technology and the “Book of Raziel” made of sapphires,in chapter eight. In my own experience of the jeweled technology in the tradition of kabbalah, Elijah also has a close connection to these great mysteries of the “tools’ that interface between the physical Earth world and that of other dimensions not as apparent. It is this connection with instruments and sacred tools such as the pipe of the calf woman and the scepter of Aaron that reminded me of the Kokopellis on the rock walls from ancient New Mexico. Kokopelli is commonly called the humpbacked flute player and he is a common personage on the rock art and in the material culture of Native Americans of the southwestern US. Sometimes he has antennae, which connect him to the insect and animal world and the possibility of awareness between many realms. Stories about him from the oral traditions have him performing magical trans-human feats and travels at great speeds and distances.

Ancient petroglyph of Kokopelli

The part of his name KOKO in the Hopi language means god or divine being. He is undoubtedly connected to our magical and illustrious figure of Elijah who has a varied role in all the traditions in which he is found but is supremely a guardian of the initiates into the wisdom lineages that are responsible for bringing the beauty of the deepest wisdom of precious life into the earth world and human awareness. In Jewish tradition Elijah is also often connected to music sometimes a flute or violin play an important part of the legend about him.

            In my own experience on the side of the mountain in California when the sacred comet of Wohpe passed the Earth, this brilliant many faceted magical being who we call Elijah or Kidr, Vajrapani or Kokopelli showed himself with immense beauty and varied mystery and specifically at one point as the Tibetan Vajrapani bodhisattva form with the accompanying sound of the thunderbolt piercing the starry night sky and springtime soil. The coming of a star made of a spirit /soul fire was mentioned in the holy book of the Zohar where it speaks of these sacred comets,”Kochavim” with tails and in one place it says,

Sepher HaZohar: Terumah,folio II:146b:” When love, thus consummated according to these four directions, ascends aloft, it meets a celestial Chief who is appointed over one thousand nine hundred and ninety firmaments(1990) and over the outward flowing of the thirteen streams of pure balsam which descend from the mysterious supernal Dew: That outflow is called the “Mighty Waters”.”

I somehow knew the first time I read this in the 80’s that this was talking about the return of Eliyahu who is the celestial prince and his could happen in the year 1990. Now I have had discussions with a traditional Hasidic Jewish person who told me that the Jewish sages would never use a Christian/secular year in their writings. But what if that was the year that with coming of Eliyahu’s presence back into the world that the last of what is called the four exiles of the Jewish people, the “Roman/Christian exile” would end? That would be a year perhaps to include in celebration and hint at? The text of the Sepher HaZohar explains this year 1990 in two other forms also which we will discuss later for it reveals a hidden timeline that we have entered called the final forty years of ingathering or “kibbutz golios”.     

The core mystery within the Jewish tradition involves the human being in being able to complete the holy name of HaShem, the divine mystery within our physical world. The four letters of the holiest name in the Hebrew are said to each represent on one level one of the four human senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and and touch and also four of the soul interfaces we have with the divine. These are called, nefesh,ruach,neshamah,and chayah. In the image of the medicine wheel here I have these situated around the wheel with the fifth level at the center where we meet our origin and Source called Yechidah.

Twenty Count Earth Wheel fro Storm's book "Lightningbolt" with Hebrew soul names added by me

 Placed as the four quadrants of a wheel and developed from the center these four letters and senses surround the core of the wheel, which is the central mystery of the four-lettered unpronounceable name, called by many Christians Jehovah or Yahweh. In the Jewish tradition The Source of love, the deity has a name although it is one that is very difficult to pronounce as we usually pronounce words and names. Humanity is here to complete that difficult to pronounce sacred name and bring that Source of goodness into our Earth world.