Secret Wisdom of the Qabalah
page 44
It is energy and the order within energy - the Balance of the Forces. Isaac Myer writes The harmony is represented by the circle, by the serpent, an emblem of both Satan and Wisdom, with its tail in its mouth. In the physical universe it is the luminiferous aether, the vital caloric, the electro-magnetic azoth. It is the ambient fluid which penetrates, permeates, vitalizes all Things, the ray detached from the glory of the sun, fixed by the weight of the atmosphere, and crystallized by the central attraction, to our earth. In the words of the erudite Yehudah ha-Levi (A.D. 1140): “There is not any life without motion, nor motion without inspiration, no inspiration without struggle, no struggle without opposition; oppositions are everywhere essential, but the 27 Divine power conciliates every opposition.� (Sepher Khozari, Part IV, para. 25.)
Satan, as we call this power, is in fact the Tree of Life of our world, that free will which for its very existence depends on the clash of the positive and negative forces which in the moral sphere we call good and evil. Satan is therefore the Shekinah of Assiah, the World of Action, the perpetual activity of the Divine Essence, the Light which was created on the first day and which in the form of consciousness and intelligence can produce an overpowering brilliance equal to the intensest darkness. Satan is also the Flaming Sword which brought light from heaven. (See Diagram 3.)
Diagram 3: The Flaming Sword