Sefer Yetzirah

Three Fathers and their descendants, and Seven Stars [another version: Conquerors] and their hosts, and Twelve Diagonal Borders. A sight for faithful witnesses to speak—World, Year, Person. An edict—Twelve [another version: Ten] and Seven and Three He appointed them: the Dragon Teli, and the Wheel, and the Heart. Three—Fire, Water, and Wind; Fire above and Water below, with Wind the edict deciding between them. A cipher to speak: The Fire carries the Water; Mem being quiet and Shin whistling, with Alef the edict deciding between them.

Teli is in the World like a king on his throne; the Wheel is in the Year like a king in the city; the Heart is in the Person like a king in war. God made all things as this one compared to that one: 1[Ecclesiastes 7:14] good compared to evil, better and best and a worse and worst. Goodness distinguishes evil and evil distinguishes goodness; goodness is kept for the good and evil is kept for the evil.

Three, but each one stands alone. 7 divided: Three opposite Three, with an edict deciding between them. Twelve stand in war: Three Friends, Three Foes, Three Lifegivers, and Three Executioners. Three Friends: the heart and the ears and the mouth. Three foes: the liver and the gall and the tongue. And EL, the faithful king, rules over them all: One over Three, Three over Seven, Seven over Twelve, and all of them fastened this one to that one.

And as soon as our father Abraham, peace be upon him, had viewed and witnessed and seen and searched and understood and carved and hewn and exchanged and formed, he raised up his hand. The Lord of All, Blessed Is He, revealed Himself to him. He returned him to his bosom and kissed him upon the head, and called him, “My beloved,” and cut a covenant for him and his seed. And they believed in Hashem, and He reckoned righteousness to him. He cut for him a covenant between his ten toes, and this is the covenant of circumcision; and his ten fingers, [the covenant of] the tongue. He bound to him the Twenty-Two Letters with His tongue and revealed to him their foundation. He dragged them in Water and lit them in Fire and shook them in Wind, and burned them in the Seven [Stars] and drove them in the Twelve Constellations.2Herein lies perhaps one of the most important and scandalous mysteries in the Sefer Yetzirah: It is as unclear in the Hebrew as it is in the English whether it is God or Abraham performing these deeds. The SY ends on a note of profound and shocking reversal; in all the rest of the Sefer Yetzirah, it is the letters which have been the agents of cosmic affectation and creation in the universe; only here, at the end, are they themselves now affected. Who is the one dragging the Twenty-Two Letters through the water and driving them through the cosmos—God, or man?