The first phrase in the Bible is ‘In the beginning'. In Hebrew, it is Barashit בראשית. The first letter is beth ב and if one looks closely one will note that the beth ב is a very large beth. This opens two questions: Why is the first letter a beth ב and not aleph א and why is it enlarged? One would normally expect the first letter of the Bible to be the first letter of the alphabet, yet it begins with the second letter. Beth has a gematrical value of 2, meaning the beginning of the world of duality, and the end of singularity. It is the initiation of the process of Creation, the transformation of the ‘oneness’, described as ‘void and chaos’ in Genesis 1:2), into dualistic forms: light and darkness, Heaven and Earth, land and water and waters above the Earth and waters below the Earth, as described in the six days of Creation. Hence the letter beth ב, with its gematrical value of 2, indicates the process of Creation.
Moreover, the enlarged beth ב is not just for decoration or because it is the first letter of the Holy Bible but because it has a special meaning (See Fundamental of Gematria). In this instance, the large beth ב means a BIG BANG means the creation of a dualistic universe, in whatever form we understand it to have taken place. It was the division of the aleph א, the one - into two.
Why does the Bible not begin with the letter aleph א? Aleph א, the first letter of the alphabet, has a value of 1. The unity of the letter א symbolizes the one and only God, the Creator in a physical form and who existed before the creation. It represents the most primordial form of God, the power of the universe from which all things emanate. The aleph א always was, is, and will be.
The aleph א is the singularity, but if we examine the letter carefully, we can find duality inherent in the structure of the aleph א. It is a composite of three letters of the Hebrew alphabet, where the letter yod י on the upper right side and lower left side are linked by the letter vav ו across the center. The letter vav ו means a hook (See Table 1). Yod י has a value of 10 and is one decane above the value of aleph 1. Therefore, just as aleph א represents God in primordial form, so yod י represents God in conscious form. The letter aleph א with the two yods יי and a vav ו, therefore depicts the conscious form of God in Heaven and the conscious form of God on Earth, with the two forces drawn together by a hook.
Moreover, if one draws a circle around the letter aleph א one obtains the familiar yin-yang pictogram, which represents the world in its state of duality and in a state of change. In this pictogram, the circle around the pictogram is the universe and the two black and white halves contained in the circle represent the two states of universal opposites in the world, where the white half is yang and the black half is yin. The universal opposites may take many forms: yang is good, heaven, above, hot, male, and creative; yin is evil, earth, below, cold, female, passive, etc. The containment in the circle demonstrates the limitations of the dualistic world, so that if one of the opposites expands, the other, by default, contracts. For example, when there is more ‘good’ in the world, there is less ‘evil’, and vice-versa. The dynamics of yin and yang in the universe are the dynamics of change. If yang increases, then yin will diminish. However, as the yang increases, so the pressure of the yin upon the yang increases to a point that the force of the yang ultimately decreases. To extrapolate further: if ‘good’ increases in the world, then ‘evil’ will decrease; however, with the decrease, the ‘pressure’ of ‘evil’ will increase to the point where it counters ‘good’ and returns to dominance. Good exists because evil exists and vice versa. Without evil, good would not exist.
