Forms of the Plane · 3D
Tree of Life in 3D
One shadow, many bodies
The flat Tree fixes where each sefirah sits across the page but never how deep, so every choice of depths stands the Tree up in space with the flat Tree as its exact shadow. Slide through the forms that tradition, esoteric writers and geometry have proposed. The Tree changes shape behind its shadow, which never moves.
- Forms
- 9
- Most equal paths
- 19 of 22
- Shadow
- exact
Turn it in your hands, strike it to hear the chord of its edges, slice it with a plane.
Facts
- Upright: the middle pillar stands straight in front and Mercy and Severity step back 2√2, just enough that all three triads are equilateral. Luria’s upright line, in three lines, right, left and middle.
- Golden Dawn: Catero and Küntz (Caduceus, 1996) made Keter to Tiferet a regular octahedron and the lower four a regular tetrahedron, joined by upright struts. Da’at falls at the octahedron’s empty centre.
- Octet: every sefirah is a point of the densest sphere packing, the lattice of the 64-tetrahedron grid. 19 of the 22 paths are equal, the most any 3D Tree can have, but the middle pillar bends at Tiferet.
- Cube tower and Double cube: the Flower of Life grid is a cubic lattice seen corner-on. The pillars become the edges of a column of cubes, and every path is a cube edge or a face diagonal.
- Star tetrahedron: the six around Da’at are a cube seen corner-on, the Egg of Life, and its two hidden corners both lie behind Da’at.
- Two octahedra: one around Da’at and one around Yesod, their spheres touching exactly at Tiferet.
- Prismatic: Frater Achad, in The Anatomy of the Body of God, saw the Tree as the front face of a triangular prism, the middle pillar its hidden core and a third pillar behind it.
- Caduceus: two strands wind a quarter turn per step of the grid about the middle pillar and pass through every sefirah.
- No 3D Tree can make all 22 paths equal: at best 19, and Keter to Tiferet, Tiferet to Netzach and Tiferet to Hod always differ.
History and meaning
No Jewish source gives the Tree a solid form. The diagram shows only where the sefirot stand toward each other, and each tradition that stood it up in space chose its depths for its own reasons.
Across the dimensions
- Its shadow Tree of LifeStand the Tree up: the outer pillars step back behind the middle pillar until each triad is an equilateral triangle. Face on, it casts the flat Tree.
