Bahir Verse 118

We continue the idea started by the appearance of the King's fountain in an earlier verse of the flow of spirit-energy through thought-ideation into the realized evidence produced by the demonstration of form.

118. Yod is the Ten Sayings with which the world was created. What are they? They are the Torah of Truth, which includes all worlds. What is the Shin ? He said: It is the root of the tree. The letter Shin is like the root of a tree.

Commentary: Yod is the number ten through which are derived the ten sephiroth of the passing of ideation into structure. The Torah of Truth refers to those lightning flashes of inspiration that connect us with the whole of creation where all worlds are entered into and uncovered.

The Shin is the creative force as in the rising of the kundalini energy in the spine of the body. The root of the tree or the mulahadra chakra in Eastern myticism is where the life force emanates from. Shin does appear to be shaped like the root of a tree with three branches reminding us of the center, left and right columns of the Sephiroth. The letter Shin is engraved on both sides of the head tefillin. On the right side, the shin possesses three heads, while on the left side it possesses four heads. The three-headed shin is the shin of this world while the four- headed shin is the shin of the World to Come. The slowly burning coal possesses the inner flame of Shin which when blown upon produces the flame. One of the meanings of the word Shin is change. The coal signifies changelessness while the inner flame is the change with this eternal fire. There at the root of the tree all the changes are inner in nature building themselves into the outer forms which emerge each spring. As mentioned before this flame inside the coal or contained at potential in the root of the tree continuously comes forth to guide our way into this world. All things are born of the eternal yet all emerge as new. This seeming paradox is at the heart of creation where the essence of a thing remains the same through constant transformations. So it is true of the tree of life that sends it fruit forward into our world and into the next while remaining the same all the while.