**Eliyhau opened and said, "Your head is upon you like the Carmel mountain".** In order to access the dimension of redemption from within the brokenness of the world, by transcending the historical time of exile and entering the space of the eternal now of redemption, Eliyahu turns to speak to the Goddess in first person, and quotes a verse from Song of Songs. It is a fascinating and difficult verse\! Let's see the verse in context (The Song of Songs 7:1-8): *Translation by Robert Alter:* > Turn back, turn back, O Shulamite, turn back, that we may behold you…How fair your feet in sandals, O daughter of a nobleman. The curves of your thighs like wrought rings, the handiwork of a master. Your navel a crescent bowl, let mixed wine never lack\! Your belly a mound of wheat hedged about with lilies. Your two breasts like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. Your neck like an ivory tower, your eyes like pools in Heshbon by the gate of the town of grandees. Your nose like the tower of Lebanon looking out toward Damascus. **Your head upon you like Mount Carmel, and the locks of your head are purple. A king is caught in the tangle**. Here is that final verse in the original (Song of Songs 7:6) **רֹאשֵׁ֤ךְ עָלַ֙יִךְ֙ כַּכַּרְמֶ֔ל וְדַלַּ֥ת רֹאשֵׁ֖ךְ כָּאַרְגָּמָ֑ן מֶ֖לֶךְ אָס֥וּר בָּרְהָטִֽים׃** *Tiqqunei Hazohar's* description of the Goddess is largely structured around this description of the female lover in the Song of Songs. However, while in the Song of Songs she is described from foot to head, in *Tiqqunei Hazohar,* She is described from head to foot. When Eliyahu calls out to the Shekhinah and says "Your head is upon you like the Carmel Mountain", I think we are meant to imagine ourselves at the foot of the mountain, gazing up from far below at the vast height of the Goddess, who towers above us. Here Her head is compared to the top of a great mountain. Later on, her hair will be described as the stars of the night sky. Imagine yourself at Her feet, looking up at Her head high above. What do you feel here? **Oh bride\! How beautiful is your head in tefillin, which are glory upon your head about which it is said (Yechezkel 24:17) "Your glory rests upon you", the straps hanging down from this side and from that side.** Looking up, you see that Her head is adorned with Tefillin. "Glory on your head", the phrase from Ezekiel 24:17, is understood in the Talmud (Brachot 17b, for example) as referring to the Tefillin of the head. This is Biti Roi's description of this and the next few lines of our passage in her book *Love of the Shekhina \- Mysticism and Poetics in Tiqqunei ha-Zohar \[Hebrew, here in my translation\]* (pg.332): "The description before us combines several images overlaid one upon another: The picture of the head of woman with light colored hair woven into an image of agricultural blossoming, grape vines and green leaves, and together forming the surprising portrait of the bride, the Shekhinah, laying Tefillin, with the straps of the Tefillin dangling down on the two sides of Her head like curls of hair or leaves." **What were once curly locks of *black* hair, "black as a raven", behold they are now green as the Carmel, like the green vines of the Carmel.** As we gaze up at the Goddess together with Eliyahu and Rabbi Shimon, Her image shifts and we behold Her through the prism of exile, when She shares our downtroddenness, and this is symbolized in Her hair (or the Tefillin straps) being black. But then the image shifts again, and we re-enter the now beyond historical time \- the dimension of eternal redemption (often symbolized by Binah, the divine Mother) \- and in this moment Her hair (or Her Tefillin straps) turn from black to green, like grape vines on the Carmel Mountain. Look up at Her with Her green hair or Tefillin\! The sky frames Her lofty head. ***Once*** **You were the poorness of exile, the prayer of the downtrodden, signified by the Tefillin \[תפילה\] worn on the weak arm, in which the poor are wrapped in exile, as it is written (Psalms 102 1), "the prayer \[תפילה\] of the downtrodden in which he cloaks himself",** Then the image shifts back, and again we see Her through the prism of exile. In earlier layers of the Zohar, the Shekhinah is associated with the Tefillin worn on the left arm, which is called in the Talmud, "the weak arm", because She is passive, and receives Her power from the Tefillin of the head, associated with the Holy Blessed One. But in a radical move, here in *Tiqqunim*, this association of the Shekhinah with the weak arm is understood as true only in exile, whereas in the now of redemption She is associated with the Tefillin of the head. ***but now*** **about You it is written (Song of Songs 7 6\) "The hair on Your head is a royal purple, the king is lost in those flowing locks"*,* these are the four chambers of the brain, the four compartments of the Tefillin \[of the head\]…** The image shifts back into the Goddess in the time of redemption. Now Her hair is royal purple, for She is the Queen, adorned in the glory of the Tefillin of the head. The King, the Holy Blessed One, upon whom she passively depended during exile, is now "lost in those flowing locks". Robert Alter translated this above as "A king is caught in the tangle". "Locks" and "tangle" both refer to Her hair. The Hebrew word translated as "tangle" and "locks" in the verse, רהטים, can also mean troughs (hollowed out vessels from which cattle drink). In the Zohar, this word is understood to mean "compartments". The compartments in which the King, the Holy One Blessed be He, is trapped are the four compartments of the Tefillin of the head. It seems like the head of the Goddess contains, or is structured like, the Tefillin of the head. If in earlier Zoharic symbolism, as we saw, She as the Tefillin of the weak arm was dependent upon the Holy Blessed One (who was symbolized by the Tefillin of the head), now \- in the redeemed present, the Holy Blessed One still plays His part, but He is contained within Her. **…these are the four chambers of the brain, the four compartments of the Tefillin \[of the head\], which are *I will be* \[אהיה; *alef, heh, yod, heh; numerical value of 21*\], and also in the hand, *I will be,* which together make the sum of 21 remembrances\[of the name Y-H-V-H\] in the *Tefillin* of the head, and 21 remembrances in the *Tefillin* of the hand, which combine to be the sum of *I will be, I will be;*** When Moses encounters Y-H-V-H at the burning bush and is commanded to act as Hir emissary to the Israelites, Moses asks who he should say sent him. Y-H-V-H responds: שמות ג יד: וַיֹּ֤אמֶר אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה **אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה** וַיֹּ֗אמֶר כֹּ֤ה תֹאמַר֙ לִבְנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל **אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה** שְׁלָחַ֥נִי אֲלֵיכֶֽם׃ JPS 2023 trans. And commentary: > And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh,” *\***Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh** Meaning of Heb. uncertain; variously translated: “I Am That I Am”; “I Am Who I Am”; “I Will Be What I Will Be”; etc.* continuing, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh *\***Ehyeh \-** “I Am” or “I Will Be.”* sent me to you.’” *Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh:* I will be that I will be. Or I am that I am. The Hebrew root is usually understood to be היה, the same root as יהו"ה and also הויה (which means "being"). A note on this name: I feel like this name means that Moshe encountered the truth of himself and the world, he faced *I will be that I will be* with no false narratives and bullshit. That's why from this moment on, he lived his life differently, as a servant of God. The effort to encounter God in this way requires taking stock of what's happening inside us; noting the order of powers in us \- what really motivates our behavior? Why do we act and re-act as we do? I feel like *I am that I am* involves shedding false narratives, maybe all narratives, about ourselves, so that we can inquire: *Who are we and what are we for?* *I will be that I will be* is also name of God associated with Keter, the highest and most transcendent Sefirah, the first stirring of any form of revealed divinity outside the absolute singularity of ein sof. In the vision of the Goddess, the holy name *I will be that I will be* symbolizes the manner in which the masculine Holy One Blessed be He, symbolized here by the letters Y-H-V-H, is comprised in Her countenance. The numerical value of the Hebrew letters that spell *I will be* is 21, which is the number of times that the name Y-H-V-H appears in the passages from the Tanakh that are written on the parchment inside the Tefillin, which She wears on Her head and on Her arm. (Or which are, perhaps, part of Her body.) I imagine the silhouette of the Goddess wearing Tefillin, and the transcendent name *I will be that I will be* shines out from within the boxes, or out from Her head and arm, and illuminates all of the space around Her. The powers of the Holy One, Y-H-V-H, and the transcendent One, *I am that I am,* are a power within Her and a halo around Her. Her visage itself spells the name *I will be I will be*, as if the letters *alef, heh, yod, he* emanate out from Her head and arms. How is it that the Goddess, who is usually associated with the *sefirah* of Malkhut, below the Holy One (Tiferet / Y-H-V-H), and far below Keter (*I will be that I will be*), comes to contain within Herself all of the masculine and most transcendent powers? It feels to me like the Goddess is both Daughter and Mother, not only Malkhut, the consort of the Holy Blessed One, but also Binah, his mother. The masculine powers are not absent or silenced; based on the description later on, they are activated, turned-on and empowered; they flow within Her and animate Her, She channels them into us and the world. In the name אהיה אשר אהיה *I will be that I will be*, "*I will be*" appears twice: Once for the two times that Y-H-V-H appears in the Tefillin of the arm, and once for the Tefillin of the head. In between the two *"I will be*"s is the word *that*, in Hebrew אשר *asher*. The author changes the order of the letters, so that now they spell *rosh* ראש, which means "head", and then says that we call this head "Y-H-V-H" and he is trapped in Her Tefillin. It feels to me that when the word אשר *that* is read as ראש *head*, we are meant to look up at the head of the Goddess, to see that there Y-H-V-H, the Holy One, is activated in רהטי מוחא, the cavities of Her brain; the compartments of the Tefillin.