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Sixth of Ten, and the Sphere of Tiphareth

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Sixth of Ten, and the Sphere of Tiphareth

Maimonides ranks the malachim sixth of ten in the Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 2:7. The Golden Dawn table assigns them to Tiphareth, the sixth sephirah, which sits at the centre of the Tree of Life and is the point at which the higher spheres and the lower ones meet.

The pairing follows the numbering, as all of them do, but it is one of the few in the table that a commentator can make something of without straining. A rank whose whole definition is being sent between two parties, placed at the sephirah that mediates between above and below, reads as a fit rather than as a coincidence. Whether the compilers noticed the fit or arrived at it by counting is not recorded, and the honest answer is that the two sequences would have produced the same result either way.

In the Dionysian scheme the corresponding name, Angels, is ninth and last, closest to human beings, and the reasoning there runs the opposite way: the messengers are the rank that actually reaches people, so they are placed lowest. Sixth from the top in one system and ninth from the top in the other is a substantial disagreement about the same word, and it survives untouched in the reference works that print both lists on facing pages without comment. Anyone building a correspondence from those pages inherits the disagreement without being told it is there.

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