Daath: Knowledge
In Hebrew , the word for knowledge, or Gnosis, is Daath [דעת]. It is usually spelled in English as daat, da’ath, or Daath. This is a kind of special knowledge that is unique to the Consciousness. It is not related to the intellect. It is not related to belief. It is not in the form of thoughts, words, ideas, concepts, theories, dogmas, books, etc. Rather, it is a kind of conscious knowledge related to the soul, that has to be put into practice so that this special, internal knowledge can grow and build upon itself, and elaborate the creation of the soul.
When we look for the doorway to our own real knowledge, our own real Gnosis, if we come from a Christian or a Jewish background we find that doorway symbolized in the book of Genesis, or Bereshit, the first book of the Bible. That doorway is symbolized in the Garden of Eden as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil [עץ הדעת טוב ורע]. The Tree of Knowledge is Daath. It is the tree of Gnosis, the Tree of Knowledge.
“And the Lord God caused to sprout from the ground every tree pleasant to see and good to eat, and the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden, and theTree of Knowledge of good and evil.” – Genesis / Bereshit 2:9
In Kabbalah, when we study theTree of Knowledge it is symbolically represented in the great void between the first and second triangles on the Tree of Life.
When the Tree of Life is superimposed over the body of a man, Daath corresponds to the throat. In Genesis, God creates through the throat, using his Word (Logos). This is symbolized in every religion:
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. – Genesis / Bereshit 1:3
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. – John (Christian)
I (Osiris) brought my own name into my mouth as a Word of Power, and I forthwith came into being under the form of things which are and under the form of Khepera (Creator). – The Book of Knowing the Evolutions of Ra, and of Overthrowing Apep (Egyptian)
In a year he (Prajapati) desired to speak. He uttered ‘bhurbhuva svar’. ‘Bhur’ which means earth; ‘bhuva’ which became figment and ‘svar’ which became the sky… with his mouth he created the gods. – The Satapatha Brahmana (Hindu)
This is the beginning of the ancient Word… the potential and source for everything done. – The Popol Vuh (Mayan)
In Hebrew , דעת Daath is spelled with three letters: ד Daleth, ע Ayin, and ת Tav. The twenty-two Hebrew letters symbolize and encode the entire path to awaken theConsciousness and to have the direct experience of God, the entire path to become a fully-developed soul, what someone might call a buddha or an angel.
Daleth: The Door
Daath is the doorway to God, and we know that is true because the first letter of Daathis Daleth [ד], which symbolizes a door. Daleth is the fourth letter of theHebrew alphabet, and carries the value of the number four. It is also a symbol of a doorway.
It is through the Tree of Knowledgethat Adam and Eve were expelled from of Eden. They went through the door of Daath. They made a mistake. They disobeyed the commandment of Jehovah. Because of that, they did not take the benefits of Daaththat were intended for them. Instead, they reaped pain. They ate of the forbidden fruit and went through the doorway of Daath, but into the wilderness, into suffering and death. They descended to a low state, a state of existence burdened by death and suffering.
The first letter Daleth summarizes what Daath is all about. It tells us that this special knowledge is a doorway. This doorway is like any door: you can go through it in two directions. It depends on how you enter and what your will is: how you use the doorway. That is why Daathis called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, because there are two potential outcomes of using this door.
Here we have to clarify that the words good and evil in the context of Daath are not as simple as the dualistic notion of right and wrong, or good and evil, in the way we always think of it. It is not limited to that sense of duality. It is much richer and deeper than simply “good” and “bad,” like the way a child thinks of good or bad, or the way we think of our morals or ethics as good or bad, or the good and bad guys in the movies. That form of thinking is very limited. It is dualistic, it is intellectual. It does not encompass how nature actually works. Nature in itself is not good or bad, it just “is.” Nature functions according to laws, and Daath is the same. Daath expresses certain laws, and by application of the knowledge (Daath), we arrive at certain consequences, or results.
Ayin: The Experience
The second letter of Daath isAyin [ע]. Ayin is the sixteenthHebrew letter, and it symbolizes “to see, to know, to experience.” It symbolizes the eyes and how we perceive.
Tav: The Covenant
The third letter Tav [ת] symbolizes a covenant, a seal. It is the twenty-second letter, the final letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So, it is the seal or completion of the twenty-two letters. The twenty-two letters contain all the knowledge in symbolic form, and the Tav is the synthesis of them all. It is the completion, the end, the seal, the covenant. When you sign a contract and somebody seals it at the end, that is Tav.
The letters of Daath say: Daleth is the doorway, Ayin is the way to see, and Tav is the end of the work. The word Daath contains a message. Through the knowledge you can arrive at the vision, the insight, the perception of the complete path, of all the work, of all creation. The twenty-two letters symbolize and encompass all the laws that manage everything that exists. Daath is the science to perceive it, to access it.
The doorway can go two ways. That is why in Jeremiah it says:
“Thus saith Jah-havah, ‘Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.’”
This explains the good and evil (Tob and Ra in Hebrew ) of Daath: the way of life and the way of death. This is a better way to think about good and evil. We tend to think of evil as a guy in a red suit carrying a pitchfork. That idea has nothing to do with reality.
In Gnosis, we use the term evil to describe devolving forces. Anything that we would call evil is something that is degenerating, something that is descending, something that is antithetical to the Spirit. We call good that which elevates the Spirit, that which is ascending. But, there is another path that is beyond good and evil. This is something beyond the limitations of that dualistic notion, and Daath can lead us to that which is beyond both: but only after completing the path of Tob (good).
In the Hebrew word Daath, we see this character ע Ayin in the middle, which has two Iods at the top of its shape, and those two Iods look like a pair of eyes. That symbolizes the duality of the potential outcome ofDaath: two kinds of vision, two kinds of perception that result from knowledge. In the Bible, the result of that doorway of Daath is symbolized in two kinds of people: prophets and diviners. The prophets in the Bible have the vision of God. They see purely what God shows them. But the diviners see impurely. They see “through a glass darkly.” They see, but they see a lie. There is a difference between them, but the diviners do not see the difference. That is the scary part: someone who has awakened the Consciousnessthrough the knowledge of Daath, sees, but do they know how they see? This is where the science ofDaath becomes the Path of the Razor’s Edge. It is something very delicate. This why we need to study the science very deeply.
http://gnosticteachings.org/courses/daath-the-tree-of-knowledge/695-daath-the-doorway-to-knowledge-1.html
Grand Temple of Horus Behdety 