As Above, So Below: Parshat BaMidbar

Parshat BaMidbar describes the encampment of the 12 Tribes around the Mishkan. This configuration, identical for each of the 42 times they made camp in the wilderness, is Israel's Sacred Mandala, our Power Generator.

This grouping as described in BaMidbar Chapter 2, reflects "below" the skies "above", the arrangement of the Zodiac.

Recall that no enemies ever attacked Israel when they were encamped in this circle - not a square! Squares have corners and one cannot see around a corner without a mirror. Apologies to the commentators of previous generations who tried to draw the encampment as a rectangle or square - they were incorrect. All pre-modern, nomadic peoples everywhere make camp in a circle, not a square (go ahead sociologists and historians, look it up and try to prove me wrong).

As the constellations of the zodiac surround the earth, the twelve tribes encamped surrounding the tabernacle.

The repetition of this sacred and specific pattern was reenacted forty-two times as detailed in the Book of Numbers by the generation in the desert. This repetition may have served to embed this cosmic pattern into a symbolic primal identity point during the process of developing tribal consciousness during the forty years of wandering.

The 42 times the Israelites encamped in mirror-image of the order of the zodiac may have been a primitive version of what the medievalists would later call the drawing down of rūhaniyyāt, spiritual energy which manifests as powerful energetic emanations above attracted by a “sympathetic” image below. The graphics here illustrates the order of the encampment and how it corresponded to the order of the zodiac.

There's an inherit power to this order which is lost when the Israelites broke camp and traveled. They were vulnerable during travel, this is when Amalek attacked the stragglers at the rear of the camp in its travel configuration.

The lessons for us today is this: There is power in unity, G*d loves diversity, and there is dignity in the wise and orderly gathering of individual identities together for a single cause.

Pictured here is my own "info-graphic" of the 12 Tribes around the Mishkan, as well as illustrations of how the Zodiac corresponds to the Tribal array as described in BaMidbar Chapter 2.

Fun Fact: The 12 Tribes as illustrated by the Choshen Mishpat, the breastplate of the High Priest / Kohen Gadol, and the 12 Tribes as illustrated in the encampment differ. Why? Because the Choshen Mishpat has them in order of birth, and the Tribal Encampment below AND the astrological array above has them in the Kabbalistic order (which is Levi separated from the 12, and Joseph's portion given over to Ephraim & Menashe). This is implied in the Sefer Yetzirah as well as explicitly mentioned in the earliest Midrashic references to the associations between the Tribes and Constellations and is the order of the Arizal.

What is the significance of this difference? The Tribes in their birth order are fixed upon the heart of the High Priest, and therefore symbolically upon the heart of G*d. They don't change or move. This represents the eternal and unchanging bond of love between Am Yisrael and HKBH.

The Tribes in their encampment order are dynamic; they make camp 42 times over the 40 year sojourn through the desert, ALWAYS in the same array, with Yehuda to the east, Ephraim to the west, Dan to the north, Reuven to the south, etc. "As above, so below", the constellations above mirrored the encampment below. During those years in the desert, the former slaves grew up, grew old, died off, more were born, and a number of significant events occurred detailed in the Torah, including the rebellion of Korach. The Kabbalistic order is dynamic as well, facilitating development, maturity, and relationship. It's where and how we live as Children of Israel, throughout time and history.