Urth Net
Yesod, Briah
Did this get answered. Apologies if so:
3 quoted lines
At 02:27 PM 3/17/98 -0500, Alga wrote:
Thanks, John Bishop, for that useful and interesting URL. Now I have a question (mantis, please don't have a cow: I know you've already addressed this, but I wasn't paying enough attention). Briah is Heaven, and Tzadkiel is the Archangel of Justice, and also the angel who seems to be assigned to Yesod (although the chart says it ought to be Gabriel). Yesod is the ninth of ten parallel universes, is that it? And each angel looks after one universe? And then Apheta looks after our solar system (she is the mother of the New Son--er, Sun). Is this how it works?
Briah is earth; Yesod is the next higher plane. I think in Wolfe, that's all there is, so Yesod is (the equivalent of) heaven.
Briah comes from the Hebrew "B-riahh", which means bars or gate-bars, and comes from BRH meaning impassible. From the New International Dictionary of OT Theology and Exegesis, p. 746, "On the metaphorical level, as used in poetry, bars represent the impregnable (and so "stubborn" person, cf. Prov. 18:19), but also the limits beyond which one cannot go, as with the sea (Job 38:10) or the underworld (Jonah 2:6). In the cosmic context, bars point to the ordering of the world."
That would be the complex of meanings behind its usage in the cabalistic system. Briah is our own bounded world, on the other side of which are Yesodh and Abaddon.
Nutria