so i’ve been pretty personal in the last few posts. gross. we’re not doing that this time around. no, today, we’re gonna prove, despite our strong condemnation of the Israeli government and its actions in gaza, that we are NOT anti-semitic. how are we going to do that? by demonstrating our knowledge of the jewish mystical tradition known as kabbalah!

in kabbalistic tradition, the supreme being, God in the highest form, is a principle incomprehensible to the human mind. through the kabbalistic process of reuniting with the Godhead, many practitioners, even the most advanced, fail in the final transition, and fall into madness. only by systematically shedding all that is cognizable can the practitioner approach God undifferentiated and undifferentiatible. this is the Ein Sof, אין סוף, the Limitless, that which is without Boundary. even the Ein Sof is one step removed from an even more ultimate being, Ein, Nothingness, a totalizing fullness of No-thing. for some ill-understood reason, this pleroma is moved, and in moving introduces discontent. the fullness draws inward. withdrawing inward from its full extension, Ein Sof becomes the central point in a symbolic circle; in the area between the circle and the center lies the Abyss, but an Abyss likened unto the Waters of Creation, a “crystalline chaotic sea.” once withdrawn into Ein Sof, Ein Sof withdraws and limits itself even further, into the Ein Sof Aur, the Limitless Light. when the Limitless Light undergoes tzimtzum, or contraction, space opens up in which finite existence may emanate from the infinite. this gives rise to first of the ten sefirot, or emanations of God. this first emanation is Kether, or Crown, the highest sefira. Kether is not the Godhead itself but the closest a practitioner in the finite world can hope to arrive at union with the Godhead, for it is the first manifestation out of the primordial undifferentiated, and the light of God descends from the infinite Abyss into materiality from this crown point, Kether.

the sefirot are each aspects of the Supreme Divine being. all that is in the sensible world is an expression of some mixture of these emanations. the sefirot are arranged in 3 columns and in 4 planes on the Tree of Life, a diagram of the mind of the Divine which you’ve probably seen:

emanating from Kether, on the right hand side, atop the Pillar of Mercy, is Chokmah, or Wisdom. Wisdom is the Great Father, the total experience of Kether and the Ein Sof in undifferentiated harmony, a holistic grasp of Reality. this unified recognition of the the Ein Sof as manifested in Kether then further differentiates from what was the Monad of Divinity; this differentiation is necessary for the Supreme Being to come to a rational understanding of itself. Understanding requires categorization, ratiocination, which breaks up the perfect harmony of Wisdom in Chokmah. Understanding is the third sefira, Binah, atop the left, feminine pillar, the Pillar of Severity.

the Kabbalah is an account of this process of fragmentation, of how the perfect unity of God was broken apart and scattered into the material world. the Kabbalists sought an explanation, for how this fragmentation came to be, as well as a method, for reconciling the shattered pieces of God with their original perfection. the scattered pieces of God in their totality make up the shekhinah, or the dwelling place, and the shekhinah strives to reunite these scattered aspects with the Ein Sof: the rectification of this fragmentation is known as tikkun. this rectification sounds like it’d be wonderful. who wouldn’t want to be reunited with the Divine Source of all creation? but as with much Jewish theology, there’s a dark implication: one way, perhaps the most effective way, to achieve such a reunification is via death. by extinguishing the manifestations that keep us trapped in the material realm, then the Divine Light within can dissolve back into the primordial All of the Ein Sof.

a much more arduous means for divine reunion is by painstakingly retracing the path that the Divine Light takes down from the Ein Sof to the shekhinah. After Binah, we move out of the plane of water into the plane of air. Chesed sits beneath Chokmah, on the Pillar of Mercy. Chesed is Love, the undying, unconditional, never-ending Love of God, and the devotion of the faithful for God. But balanced against Chesed, on the Pillar of Severity, is Gevurah, Strength, the unwavering judgement of God, the justification for the punishment of sin. the corresponding sefirot that sit opposite one another on the Tree of Life express the duality of divine forces: rational understanding is in a sense an inversion of intuitive wisdom, as the severity of judgement is the negative aspect of all encompassing love. were we to venture some syncretism, we might suggest that the Pillar of Mercy is yin and the Pillar of Severity is yang, though that would be confusing things a bit, since traditionally yin is feminine and yang is masculine.

next, from Gevurah, we find ourselves at a point along the middle column, the sefira with the most direct connections to the other sefirot on the Tree of Life. because of this, this sefira is associated with integration, of the synthesis for the various aspects of the Divine within the realm of actuality (the three sefirot at the top of the Tree of Life exist in an archetypal realm, a realm of potentiality). the sixth sefira is Tiferet, or Beauty. Tiferet is a reflection of Kether: it is not the perfect Monad emanating from the Ein Sof itself, but it is the integrated center of the sefirot in the realm of actuality. from Tiferet we descend to Netzach, Victory, the persistence of the Divine through and beyond Time. here as we approach the bottom of the Tree of Life, the sefirot more directly relate to the material realm, and in particular man. Netzach and its complement Hod are methods by which humanity may begin to tap into their connection with the Divine order of the Kosmos. meditating on the perpetuity of God is an important early stepping stone back up the Tree of Life towards union with the Godhead.

Hod translates as Splendor, or Glory. Hod is the hard work of submitting to God’s omnipotence. the connotation of Hod is one of grinding, of surrendering, of accepting the burden that there is nothing greater than God. prayer is associated with Hod; attempting to conquer the obstacles between oneself and Divine union is critically egotistical, but surrendering to the fact of the obstacles opens up the path of humility. Hod also embodies that force which breaks things down and makes them cognizable via language and reason: it is the mundane reflection of Binah, which is the understanding the Divine has of itself.

from Hod the Light descends into Yesod, or Foundation. Yesod facilitates the connection between the upper creative realms and that which is created in materiality. Yesod condenses and transmits the Divine Light as it has passed through the previous eight sefirot; it is associated with the phallus. The Divine Light is deposited into Malkuth, or Kingdom, namely the finite Kingdom of God as it is experienced by us.

(technically things are much more complicated than that; some sources posit that there are actually 4 realms, each with their own Tree of Life through which the Divine Light descends, meaning that there’s actually 40 sefirot.)

for the Kabbalistic mystic, union with the Godhead is achieved by working backwards up the Tree of Life, from Malkuth to Kether. the pathway I’ve described above is the “path of the flaming sword”; tracing it on the Tree of Life makes a lightning bolt pattern, and it can be seen as an allegorical flash of electricity enlivening otherwise inert material into something living. there’s lots of shit I didn’t cover here, mostly because I’m still not super clear on it: the contrast between the lesser and greater face of God, the archetypal man Adam Kadmon, the evil qlippoth that encase the sefirot on the inverted Tree of Death. this was kind of useful for me so maybe later posts will have me clarifying these more advanced topics to myself.