The Tetragrammaton compressed into its first two letters—Yod and He—Ya (יה) is the Divine Name assigned to Chokmah in Assiah, the world of action. It is not a title of static majesty but a name of generation: the outpouring of seminal Wisdom that initiates all form. The two letters, Yod (י) and He (ה), are the active principle and its first receptive vessel, the father and the mother conjoined as a single vocable. In recitation it is pronounced Yah, as in the Hallelujah (Hallelu-Yah).

Position on the Tree of Life

—Path 16, the second Sephirah, Chokmah, in the world of Assiah. Chokmah is the first radiance that proceeds from Keter, the point of undifferentiated unity. Here that radiance takes on the character of a thrust, a dynamism, a seed. Ya is the name of that thrust in the densest of the four worlds—not the pure abstract Wisdom of Atziluth, but Wisdom brought down into the realm of shells and bodies. This position is step 16 of Liber 777, row V.*.

Astrological and planetary correspondence

In the system of Liber 777, Chokmah corresponds to the Zodiac, the circle of the heavens divided into twelve signs. Ya, as the Name of Chokmah in Assiah, therefore partakes of the zodiacal nature: a continuous cycle of outflowing power that differentiates into all modes of existence. No single planet rules this name; it stands before planetary limitation, the sphere of the stars themselves.

Historical context

The name Yah appears in the Hebrew Bible as a poetic and liturgical form of YHWH. It occurs in the refrain of the Psalms (“Hallelu Yah”), in the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:2: “Yah is my strength and song”), and as an element in theophoric names such as Isaiah (Yesha’yahu) and Elijah (Eliyahu). Its use in the Bible already suggests a name for the God of Israel in his aspect of creative and saving power.

In post-biblical Jewish mysticism, the two-letter Name is associated with the Sephirah Chokmah. The Zohar explains that the union of Yod and He produces the first articulation of the divine name—before the Vav and final He bring the full structure of six and ten. The Bahir considers the Yod a point and the He a house, their joining the beginning of all extension. The two letters are also the first two letters of the Tetragrammaton, representing the mental and constructing worlds according to later Kabbalists.

Christian Kabbalah of the Renaissance, especially the works of Johann Reuchlin and Athanasius Kircher, identifies the two-letter Name with the Father in the trinitarian reading of the Tetragrammaton: Yod as the Father, He as the Spirit proceeding from him. Some esoteric orders (Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) utilized the Name for invocations connected to the Sephirah Chokmah and the astral light.

The Masons, particularly the Royal Arch degrees, use the name Jah as a part of the compound Grand Omnific Royal Arch Word, representing the Tetragrammaton broken and reunited. In The Equinox, Crowley renders the name with its Hebrew letters and describes it as “the creative fiat uttered in the abyss.”

Place in the table

In Liber 777, row V, column 16, «Ya (יה)» is the God-Name in Assiah for the second Sephirah. It stands as the active counterpart of the silent crown—Ekheye on Keter—and as the root of all subsequent divine names, from Yekhova Elokhim on Binah to Adonay kha-Arets at Malkuth.