Angels and Other Mysteries of the Tree of Life (Izvor Collection, Volume 236)

Summary 'Think for a minute about what electricity is and how we use it, and you will have some notion, however approximate, of God. We use electricity to light and heat our houses, and power all kinds of machines and appliances, but we have to be very careful of how we handle it, for it is easy to cause an accident. Direct contact with an electric current can be fatal. In order to harness and use it without danger, we have to channel it through transformers. The same can be said of God: God is like a pure current of electricity which has to pass through transformers before it reaches us. And the transformers that God uses are the countless luminous beings that populate the heavens, known to tradition as the choirs of angels or angelic hierarchies. It is through them that we receive divine life; it is through them that we can be in contact with God. The knowledge contained in `Angels' enables seekers to make real spiritual progress. It sheds a new light on the cabbalists' Tree of Life, describing its ten regions with the colours and divine qualities they represent and the virtues and forces they help us to develop within ourselves. Each region is associated with one of the ten names of God, corresponding to a divine attribute and inhabited by an order of luminous spirits under the leadership of an archangel. `Meditate faithfully on the Tree of Life and your thoughts will no longer stray haphazardly. By referring frequently to the Sephirotic Tree you will be lighting your inner lamps, and those lamps will not only illuminate you, they will purify and strengthen you; they will also make you more beautiful and alive.'