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In Hebrew, "Golden Calf" is Egel HaZahav: Ayin-Gimel-Lamed עגל He-Zayin-He-Bet הזהב.
Ahava: Alef-He-Bet-He אהבה is the root
for love in
the sense of friendship and affection.
The word Egel means not only calf, but also circle or round. Ayin ע itself
is also a circle, an eye, and a wellspring. Gimel-Lamed גל is also the root
for circle.
There's a special quality to gold which is not generally known. At the
molecular level, gold is drawn to itself. It's homophilic. The essence
of gold, the metal, is "self-love".
Emergent qualities, including the miracles in Torah, require Great
Assemblies (or assemblies of spiritually great people). Moshe was only
able to get to the top of Sinai, where Torah emerged, because of the
integrity of the Hebrew/Israelite community/camp that surrounded him.
When Moshe came down, he expected to find a minyan of people who loved
each other (as opposed to loving themselves), and who were upright and
thus also loved God and looked to (were in awe of) the Lord.
This would have been a Great Minyan, a Great Assembly, a Great Knesset (Kaf-Nun-Samek-Tav כנסת) of loving individuals
fit to
carry and maintain the emergent miracle, Nes (Nun-Samek נס) of Torah. The "burning bush", Sneh (Samek-Nun-He סנה) uses the same root letters as Nes נס miracle.
What Moshe found was a mistake. Instead of waiting patiently for Torah
"on one foot", in the light of the Golden Rule, the people looked
instead to the Golden Calf. Instead of Ahavah אהבה,
they
looked to HaZahav הזהב. Instead of gathering
themselves
into a "minyan of spiritual gold", they assembled and melted their
jewelry, and watched the gold gather itself into a lifeless metallic
pool – Egel, Ayin-Gimel-Lamed עגל –
called the
Golden Calf.
Instead of looking up to Hashem – the (metaphoric) Golden Transcendent
"Sun"* – and thus receiving the Shefa Tal, which allows for free will
and choice and thus breaks the wheel of karma, they slid back onto the
wheel of karma on the earth-plane, in the shadow of Pharaoh who did not
know Hashem.
Gold, when it applies to our spiritual achievements, is desirable, and
this gold leads us to love Ahavah אהבה of
each other and
to love of God.
Gold, when it applies to the mechanical world, binds us to the wheel of
karma by its exclusive self-love – its narcissism.
The Golden Rule tells us not only that "what goes around comes around",
but also that "what is above can be what is below". Without
apprehension of the Hashem-Elokim axis that provides novelty, we are
forced to circle ourselves endlessly in our own self-image, unable to
break the wheel of karma or learn from history. The geometric metaphor
for this narcissism is carried by the logarithmic spirals, and in
particular by the so-called golden spirals and/or Fibonacci golden
pseudo-spirals, which form the dead trace of history confined to the
wheel of endlessly repetitive karma. This is Egypt, Mitzraim מצרים , constriction, i.e., flatness confined to the earth-plane.
It is
a realm without Hashem, so it lacks the Shefa Tal and thus lacks free
will and volition. A person in such a situation is bound and helpless,
and unable to escape. The word Shin-Tet-NunSofit שטן is
"the expression of being bound forever." This is the meaning of SaTaN,
the narcissist, the exact opposite of what it takes to form a minyan.
We do not live in a flat world (Egypt), limited and bound to the law of
karma. We live in a world where it is our job to unify Hashem (the
"Sun") and Elokim (the "Shield"), as we proclaim in the Sh'ma, in this
full, thick, 3-D and 4-D reality of opportunity limited only by our
imagination and the extent of our loving-kindness.
* "Hashem-Elokim is a sun and a shield" (Ps. 84:11); thus, Hashem is like a Transcendent Sun.
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