"The study of the Name of God in its manifestations constitutes the basis of the Cabala. "Jehovah" is spelt in Hebrew with four letters, Yod, He, Vau, and He. These four letters have been given a symbolical meaning. The first letter expresses the active principle, initiative; the second, the passive principle, inertia; the third, equilibrium, "form"; and the fourth, result or latent energy.
The Cabalists affirm that every phenomenon and every object consists of these four principles, i.e., that every object and every phenomenon consists of the Divine Name. The study of this name (in Greek the Tetragrammaton or the word of four letters) and the finding of it in everything constitute the chief aim of Cabalistic philosophy.
What is the real meaning of this? According to the Cabalists, the four principles permeate and compose each and every thing. Therefore, by finding these four principles in things and phenomena of quite different categories, between which he had previously seen nothing in common, a man begins to see the analogy between these things. And gradually he becomes convinced that everything in the world is constructed according to the same laws, according to the same plan.
From a certain point of view, the enriching of the intellect and its growth consist in the widening of its capacity for finding analogies. The study of the law of the four letters, or of the Name of Jehovah, can therefore constitute a means for widening consciousness. The idea is quite clear. If the Name of God is really in everything (if God is present in everything), then everything should be analogous to everything else, the smallest part should be analogous to the whole, the speck of dust analogous to the Universe, and all analogous to God. "As above, so below."
Speculative philosophy arrives at the conclusion that the world undoubtedly exists, but that our conception of the world is false. This means that the causes of our sensations which lie outside ourselves really exist, but that our conception of these causes is false. Or, to put it in another way, it means that the world in itself, i.e., the world by itself, without our perception of it, exists, but we do not know it and can never reach it, because all that is accessible to our study, i.e., the whole world of phenomena or manifestations, is only our percept of the world.
We are surrounded by the wall of our own percepts and are unable to look over this wall into the real world. The Cabala aims at studying the world as it is, the world in itself. The other "mystical" sciences have precisely the same object.
In Alchemy, the four principles of which the world consists are called the four elements. These are fire, water, air, and earth, which exactly correspond in their meaning to the four letters of the name of Jehovah.
In Magic, the four elements correspond to the four classes of spirits—spirits of fire, water, air, and earth (elves, water-sprites, sylphs, and gnomes).
In Astrology, the four elements correspond, very remotely, to the four cardinal points, the east, the south, the west, and the north, which, in their turn, sometimes serve to designate various divisions of the human being.
In the Apocalypse, they are the four beasts, one with the head of a bull, the second with the head of a lion, the third with the head of an eagle, and the fourth with the head of a man.
And all these together are the Sphinx, the image of the four principles merged into one." [A New Model of the Universe by P D. Ouspensky]