Abraham Carved Letters from Air and Fire

Abraham was counting on his fingers, and the count would not come out any other way. Ten, and not nine. Ten, and not eleven. Ten measures with no matter in them at all, twenty-two letters of foundation underneath, and no permission anywhere in the teaching to round any of it off.

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Then it opened.

The whole depth of the thing came at him the way lightning opens a plain at night, all of it at once and none of it for long: a depth of beginning and a depth of end, a depth of good and a depth of evil, above and below, east and west, north and south, and standing over every one of them a single Master ruling from His own holy dwelling, to the eternity of eternities. Abraham reached. The measures ran out from the word that sent them and came back to it, out and returning and out again, the way breath does, and they went past him in both directions and did not stop for him.

He was left standing in the dark with his hands out and nothing in them.

Air Engraved Out of Spirit

What he had been shown starts with something cut out of almost nothing. God engraved air out of spirit. Not built it and not poured it: cut it, the way a mason cuts, taking away everything that was not going to be air. Then out of that air God carved the twenty-two letters of foundation, three of them mothers, seven doubles, twelve plain, and air is the first of them, so the letters and the breath that says them came out of the same block.

Abraham's hands moved while he watched. Empty hands at his sides, doing the small pointless work of a man who cannot help copying a cut he is seeing made.

Mud and Loam, Laid Like a Garden Bed

Water came next, engraved out of the air, and out of the water God carved tohu (formless void) and bohu, which do not stay abstract for a single line. Mud and loam. Wet dirt, and the heavier stuff under it.

Then three verbs that belong to a working yard rather than a heaven. God engraved them like a garden bed, erected them like a wall, covered them like pavement. Trenches cut into flat ground, a course of stone going up, slabs laid over the top so the whole thing would take weight.

Nothing in it was grand, and that was the part Abraham could not get past. The beginning of the world was a job of digging and walling and paving, done in that order, by somebody who knew what would settle and what would not.

Fire, and the Throne Cut Out of It

Out of the water came fire, and out of the fire came the household.

The throne of glory was cut first. Then the serafim, then the ofanim, then the holy living creatures, then the ministering angels, all of them carved from the same fire in the same pass, so that the burning things around the throne and the throne itself are one piece of work and not a court assembled from elsewhere. From the three of them, air and water and fire, God founded His own dwelling. He makes the winds His messengers, and burning fire His servants (Psalms 104:4).

Servants. Abraham held onto that word, because it settled a question he had been carrying around under a very crowded sky.

Saturn Was a Made Thing

The letters went out and did work, and the work has addresses.

The letter bet, strongest in wisdom, was crowned and combined and formed into Saturn out in the universe, into the first day of the week in time, and into the right eye in a human face. Gimel, strongest in health, made Jupiter, and the second day, and the left eye. Dalet, strongest in fertility, made Mars, and the third day, and the right ear. Kaf, strongest in life, made the sun, and the fourth day, and the left ear.

Abraham went out under those stars afterward, and the arithmetic had changed on him. Saturn is a made thing. It was crowned out of a letter and set going, the same way the wind is a messenger and the fire is a servant, and a servant does not receive petitions. The bright things overhead were not the parliament. They were the staff.

And whatever letter had been used on Saturn had been used again, in the same pass, on the right side of his own face.

Five Against Five

He kept waiting for the lightning to come back and hold still, and it did not, because holding still is not what it does. The measures rush to His saying like a whirlwind and throw themselves down before His throne, and a man standing underneath that gets a flash and then the plain again.

So he stopped reaching upward and looked at what was already on him.

Ten fingers. Five against five, and the covenant of the One fixed in the middle of them, in the word of the tongue and in the cut of the flesh. The count was not out there at all, or not only out there. It had been issued to him in his own body, one hand's worth on each side, and the same four letters that had gone into the planets had gone into his two eyes and his two ears, so the sky and his own skull were carrying the same marks in the same hand.

The teaching had told him to understand with wisdom and be wise with understanding, to examine the measures and get what he could out of them, and then to give the matter back to its Maker and put the Maker back in His own place. He had taken that as an instruction about the sky, since the sky was where the lightning had been. It turned out to be an instruction about handing something back, which a man can only do if he is holding it, and he was holding it.

He closed his hands. The lightning did not come again that night, so he went on counting in the dark, where the count was.