The 231 Gates of Initiation

by Rawn Clark (Author)

Sometime around the middle of 1998, during my work with the original Eight Temples Meditation
Project, I “discovered” that both the Western Hermetic and Hebrew Tree of Life symbols held
within them exactly 230 geometric shapes of a certain nature. Along with this discovery came the
realization that these 230 shapes, plus the Tree as a whole, held a direct correlation to the 231
“Gates” mentioned in the Sepher Yetzirah and throughout Kabbalistic literature. So I began
drawing these “231 Gates” by hand on paper... And as I drew, I explored... The following couple of
years were spent in extensive exploration of all these Gates and eventually in 2002 I published
“Book 231” online. At the same time, I created the “32 Paths of Wisdom Tarot” and wrote an
article titled “The 32 Paths of Wisdom” which was published in the Autumn 2002 Journal of the
Western Mystery Tradition. The main theme of this article was to illustrate the differences
between the Western Hermetic and Hebrew versions of the Tree of Life and present the Hebrew
Tree in the context of a Western Hermetic path of initiation. And then, in 2005, the “32 Paths of
Wisdom” article and Tarot were integrated with the 231 Gates of the Hebrew Tree and I digitally
published “The 231 Gates of Initiation” for the first time online. This present edition in paperback
differs quite a bit from the 2005 digital edition. First of all, my understanding of the Tree of Life
has deepened considerably since 2002, especially my understanding of how and why the planets
are attributed to the Hebrew Letters. As a result, some of the planetary attributions have been
corrected in this version. Secondly, I have removed 99% of the Hebrew words and substituted
their English equivalents in an effort to make the Tree symbol much more accessible.