Kabbalah Unveiled D 159
Phillips was able to construct a sort of Jacob's Ladder, or what he calls
a Cosmic Tree of Life, consisting of ninety-one interconnected tetrac-
tyses, much like the scaffolding for a skyscraper. From this Cosmic Tree
he was able to generate numbers that to him clearly define the math-
ematical laws of nature and the cosmos, including numbers that occur
regularly in quantum physics. Not only did he find the twenty-six
dimensions of space-time predicted by quantum mechanics clearly
encoded in the geometry of the trees by Jehovah, God-name of
Chokmah, whose numerical number is twenty-six, but he also found a
correspondence between the seven sephiroth of Construction (which
manifest in the creation world) and the ten dimensions of space-time
predicted by superstring theory. From all of this Phillips concluded that
superstring space-time is structured according to the pattern laid down
in the Tree of Life.
One of the remarkable properties of the basic Tree of Life is that just
as the DNA molecule encodes the biological information needed to
grow a human body from a single cell, so, too, the geometry of a single
tree, when encoded by the tetractys, contains the complete structure of
a Cosmic Tree of Life. Encoded in the geometry, the part contains the
whole.
As discovered by physicists Green and Schwartz in 1984, the num-
ber 248 characterizes the mathematics of those forces of nature that
create stable, material forms such as atomic nuclei and atoms. And the
number 248 and its double, 496, characterize the mathematical sym-
metry of the forces, other than gravity, that act between superstrings.
Phillips found both numbers clearly encoded in the pentagram or five-
pointed star.
The followers of Pythagoras, says Phdips, wore the pentagram to
recognize one another as members of a fiaternity.Traditionally the pen-
tagram symbolizes the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. If
its edges are dvided into four points to symbolize the Pythagorean
tetrad of one, two, three, four, and if a point is added for the center, the
number thirty-one is obtained, which, says Phdbps, has remarkable
properties: as the number of the God-name El of El-Chesed, the first
sephirah of Construction and the fourth sephirah in the Tree of Life, it