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Eighth of Ten, and the Sphere of Hod

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Eighth of Ten, and the Sphere of Hod

Maimonides ranks the bene elohim eighth of ten in the Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 2:7, and the Golden Dawn table assigns them to Hod, the eighth sephirah, whose name means splendour and which stands at the foot of the pillar of severity.

The rank sits directly below the elohim in both the Maimonidean sequence and the sephirotic pairing, which puts the sons immediately under the name they are formed from. That is the one relationship in this part of the list legible from the names alone, and it is worth noticing precisely because so little else in the sequence is.

Everything else about the placement follows from counting. Hod carries a large set of associations in Golden Dawn material, and none of them derive from the passages in Genesis or Job in which the phrase actually occurs. Reading the rank through those associations produces a coherent account that belongs to the modern system and not to the older material, and the atlas keeps the two apart: the scriptural question of what the phrase named is recorded on one side, and a position in a nineteenth century correspondence table on the other.

There is no Dionysian choir corresponding to this rank, and the atlas records no equation with one. A reference work that supplies a Greek name here is completing a grid rather than reporting a transmission.

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Source Divinity Atlas Long-Form Articles, First Edition
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Divinity Atlas Long-Form Articles, First Edition
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