The Truth behind Virgo (Elul)

 

Traditionally, the month of Elul is a time for repentance (“Teshuvah” in Aramaic), for Elul is followed immediately by Rosh Hashanah and the Days of Awe.  Elul is dedicated to introspection and self-scrutiny, which involves taking a closer look at what has happened over the past ten months.  At this time each year, Jews around the world gather to ensure their destinies on the Day of Judgment.

 

But Kabbalah teaches that Elul has even greater purpose and meaning. According to the Zohar, for example Teshuvah is not simply the asking for forgiveness and absolution from the Creator.  Moreover, the holiday of Rosh Hashanah is intended for all the peoples of the world, not just the Israelites.  Indeed, all of the Torah's hidden wisdom and all kabbalistic festivals exist for humanity as a whole.

 

A conventional understanding of repentance suggests that wrongful behavior is acceptable throughout the year, because on Rosh Hashanah we can simply step into the nearest synagogue and ask for forgiveness.  In this way, we can supposedly evade the consequences of whatever we may have done over the past 12 months.  Neither the civil nor criminal justice systems offer such reprieve, but we expect the Creator to be satisfied with merely a request for forgiveness as a basis for a blanket absolution?  But can we really expect pardon for our sins based on the murmuring of prayers on a certain holiday?  In fact, this is not the way to right the wrongs of the past year.  So what is “the correct path” in which Kabbalah can lead us?  What is the true meaning of Teshuvah? 

 

The Zohar’s cryptic answer is this: “When the Hei goes back to the Vav.”  A correct interpretation of this passage informs us that all the damage we may cause over the course of a year takes place only because we have disconnected from the Creator’s Light.  In Aramaic, Teshuvah is actually Tashuv-hei.  The Hei, as the last of the four letters that make up the Hashem’s name, – which should connect with the Name’s  first three letters, altogether representing the Tree of Life.  Through this union we may merit the revelation of Light that will facilitate the correction of the damage we have caused. 

 

We do not need force or violence to destroy chaos, nor can we destroy it by those means.  Even the defeat of the Nazi regime in the Second World War by the combined strength of the Allied Forces did not succeed in driving chaos out from the world.  Wars, disease, accidents and hardship remain in the daily experience of all humanity to this very day.  Over the generations, there have been many wars and revolutions whose purpose was to free the masses and offer them the possibility to live happily.  This purpose was never fully realized, despite the military victories.  The problems that are ascribed to dictatorships continue even after the dictator’s fall. 

 

Here the teachings of the Zohar are striking in their simplicity:  Do not fight the darkness, for your battle against darkness has no chance of success.  Instead, turn on the Light and the darkness will disappear.  Dedicate your efforts to the revelation and dissemination of Light through the spiritual work of Teshuvah.  Bringing the Creator’s Light into our lives is the only way to remove all aspects of chaos. 

 

In order to understand this, we first need to examine a few aspects of the month of Elul and the sign of Virgo.

 

The internal quality of the sign of Virgo is virginity, meaning originality and ingenuity.  A virginal thing is something that has not gone through any change or been influenced by any external forces, something that remains completely intact.  Abraham the Patriarch chose to use this name for the sign that directs the Light to the entire universe for one month in order to hint at the internal quality of the sign, thereby helping us to connect to its Light and reveal it in the world.  A superficial and intellectual look at the world is bound to offer us the faulty conclusion that the Creator planned for the world to be chaotic.  The Zohar reveals to us that the entire purpose of Creation was to solve the problem of chaos and the sign of Virgo is one of the solutions.  The Creator designed the energy of Virgo to be an active channel for the revelation of Light during the month before Rosh Hashanah.  It is, after all, a way to prepare us for the Day of Judgment – but not just for the sake of awakening regret within us over the wrongdoings of the past year.  Obviously, it is not enough to say “Sorry, I apologize for what I have done.”  We must accept full responsibility for our actions as well.  None of us have the right to hurt anyone else, certainly not because of the short visit to the synagogue that will wipe the slate clean on Rosh Hashanah.  We have all come to this world in order to correct our past lives.  Only together can we complete our global correction.

 

In a previous incarnation, we all took advantage of the opportunity we were given to draw Light to ourselves, each one of us on our own.  This time, we have met up again in order to correct this by converting our desire to receive for the self alone into a desire to receive for the sake of sharing with others, out of true care and concern for our neighbors.  There is no question that in order to achieve control over our destinies, we must all transform our consciousness of desire to receive for the self alone into a consciousness of sharing. 

 

But once we have understood and accepted this idea, what are we to do?  The Zohar tells us that when Abraham the Patriarch provided us with the cosmic calendar, he informed us that the month of Elul is controlled by the sign of Virgo.  In practical terms, this means that the month of Elul provides us with the opportunity to achieve control over our lives and to form our destinies.  In this month, under the influence of Virgo, we are able to go back in time to those moments in which we erred, and erase those moments along with the chaos they can bring into our lives. 

 

During Elul, therefore, we are able to cleanse our behaviors and return them back to a virginal state.  At the same time, this also restores the environment that gave rise our past mistakes to a virginal state.  In this way, both the chaos and setting in which it occurred are cleansed of all negativity.  This is the full meaning of “Back to the Future” – a movie categorized as science-fiction, but from a kabbalistic perspective it concerns a very practical aspect of our existence in the universe.

 

Not only was the universe created with the capability to move forward and backward through time, but it is a Mitzvah to initiate this journey as part of our spiritual connection to the month of Elul and to the act of Teshuvah.  Kabbalah has been familiar with time travel for more than 4000 years, while physicists have seriously considered this phenomenon only in the last 100 years.  Physicists recently have speculated that under certain conditions, elementary particles are able to travel beyond the speed of Light.  The wisdom of Kabbalah explains that the keys to this process have been concealed for 2000 years, and are only now being revealed before our very eyes.  But in order to truly make use of this wisdom, a technical understanding of Teshuvah is required. 

 

We must understand the process of time travel and the means by which we can actualize this travel.  On Shabbat, for example, we can access the time machine called “Brich Shmae.”  By means of this special excerpt from the Zohar, we can travel back to Mount Sinai in an instant, beyond the speed of Light.  Students of Torah, of course, are already used to this idea: we make this same journey every Shabbat.  In the month of Elul, we make similar journeys through the power of the sign of Virgo, in order to undo our negative actions in the past.  This is the only way to remove their influence over our behavior in preparation for Rosh Hashanah.  Furthermore, it is crucial to do so, for no one in the world can avoid submitting a personal account on this Day of Judgment.

           

Even though we cannot escape the submission of our personal account of all our past actions on Rosh Hashanah, we are given a gift by special means described by Abraham the Patriarch and explained by Rav Shimon Bar Yochai that enables us to correct our mistakes in advance. 

 

Teshuvah, therefore, is not a required gesture on our part, but a gift, a unique opportunity to correct the historical process and remove any aspect of chaos from the annals of the universe as well as from our own personal lives.

 

What exactly takes place during the Teshuvah process?  Our destiny is determined by the negativity that was brought into the universe on the very day of our wrongdoing.  By removing the negativity via Teshuvah, the day on which the negativity was created in the past becomes a turning point for bringing positive energy to our lives.  Quite literally, we have the power to go back in time and transform negative events into positive ones, to change history through the influence of thought, to remove suffering from our lives, and to balance the accounts that remain open between ourselves and others over the course of our lives.  The Creator has not abandoned or deserted us.  He has given us a complete system with which we can control our destinies, and the more we understand this system, the better it works for us. 

 

We are not aware of the tremendous importance of our actions, and we waste the merit and responsibility that is placed in our hands as long as we live in this world.  The Maggid of Mezerich said, “The amount of Light that a person reveals is the amount manifested of his soul's power.”  Our sages saw the gravity of a solitary action.  Especially in the month of Elul, we are charged to do every positive action possible, and it is important that each action comes to fruition out of sharing consciousness, of concern and responsibility for the destiny of the entire world.  If we merit this understanding and remember it the year round, this will be a year that is changed for the better.

By Rav Philip Berg

 

to learn more about Ellul, you can listen to the two audio:  www.desiretoshare.com/zodiac.htm