Sefirot
In the Sefir Yezira, the Sefirot are the "directions or dimensions" of the cosmos (north, south, east, west, up, down, beginning, end, good and evil).[1]
Related LP Terms
Kabbalah > Age of Redemption, Ain Soph, Ain Soph Aur, Breaking of the Vessels, Descent to the Chariot, Messiah, Mitzvah, Nejuda Reshima, Sefirot, Shekhinah, The Correction, The Withdrawal, Tikkun, Treatise on the Emanations on the Left
Non-LP Related Terms
Kabbalah > Age of Redemption, Ain Soph, Ain Soph Aur, Breaking of the Vessels, Descent to the Chariot, Messiah, Mitzvah, Nejuda Reshima, Sefirot, Shekhinah, The Correction, The Withdrawal, Tikkun, Treatise on the Emanations on the Left
Notes
According to Moses Cordover, the sefirot are made of a "somewhat courser divine light, which gives them 'shapes,' expressing their individuality and specific functions." [2]
The term was first used in the Sefer Yezira (The Book of Creation). The term, the ten sefirot on the Tree of Life are used to explain the cosmology of creation as an emanation emerging from The Fabric of Consciousness (i.e. God in Western monotheistic terms).
Discussions of the sefirot also appear in the Book Bahir, though apparently later commentators changed the original meanings,[3] noted below.
The sefirot are a unique feature of the Kabbalah and serve to distinguish a kabbalistic text from a regular Jewish text.[4]
"These sefirot are not divine powers; thirteenth-century kabbalists did not attribute this meaning to this term. The sefirot are described as the directions or dimensions of the cosmos (north, south, east, west, up, down, beginning, end, good, and evil), as well as the holy beasts of Ezekiel’s chariot, the stages of the emergence of the three elements (divine spirit, air or wind, and water and fire), and other characteristics that are unclear. The early commentators interpreted the sefirot as the ten basic numbers from one to ten. Most of the work is dedicated to a detailed description how the various letters and groups of letters served the process of creation and dominate the various aspects of the universe.[5]
There are multiple ways to read meaning into the Sefirot on the Tree of life. Joseph nnotes an anthropomorphic one. "The three upper sefirot represent the divine head, the next two are the right and left arms, the sixth is the body or the heart, which also represents the masculinity of this figure. The next two represent the legs; the ninth, the phallus; and the tenth represents a separate body, that of the female divine power....The image of the sefirot as a gigantic anthropomorphic figure is a central one in many kabbalistic works, including the Zohar, while other kabbalists tended to marginalize these terms and use more “logical” ones.[6]
"Another most prominent system found in most kabbalistic works is that of the sefirot representing the stages of divine emanation. Within the supreme, perfect, and infinite Godhead, the ein sof, a point began shining, expressing the divine will to create something beside itself ( keter). This will was transformed into a plan, a program for the future—this is divine wisdom (hokhmah). The third sefirah, binah, is portrayed in this system as the supreme fountain from which divine existence emerges; the will and the wisdom, which are just potentialities, are transformed here into actual emanated entities. The first two powers to emerge from binah are the modes by which existence is regulated: the right side, hesed, expressing love and mercy, and the left, din or gevurah, representing divine strict law and justice. They are united in the sixth sefirah, tiferet, creating a mixture that sustains an existence that cannot suffer just pure love or just pure justice. Nezah and hod represent lower forms of hesed and din, and the ninth, yesod, is the vehicle by which divine power is poured into the lower realms. The tenth, the feminine power, is the intermediary that transfers the divine flow to creation, and it is the power of divine revelation to creatures. The system of the sefirot is thus conceived as a demiurgic entity, a kind of detailed logos, which bridges the abstract, infinite Godhead and the functions needed to emanate the divine powers, endows them with their specific functions, and enables them to sustain and provide for all existence.[7]
"The kabbalists translated almost all the classical—biblical and talmudic—terms into their system of divine emanations."[8]
"Various kabbalists described the sefirot as personifications of ethical values that are combined by God in order to govern the world by them. Others emphasized the philosophical, pseudo-rational character of the system, presenting it as an almost neo-Platonic series of divine emanations. Others divided them or duplicated them into “worlds,” various layers of existence descending from pure divinity to more material, physical realms. Most kabbalists presented intricate combinations of these serifot and other elements.[9]
Joseph Dan. Kabbalah (Kindle Locations 696-699). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition. "
Footnotes
- ↑ Dan, Joseph. Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
- ↑ Dan, Joseph. Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. (Kindle Locations 1075-1077)
- ↑ Dan, Joseph. Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
- ↑ Dan, Joseph. Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
- ↑ Dan, Joseph. Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. (Kindle Locations 307-312)
- ↑ Dan, Joseph. Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. (Kindle Locations 658-661)
- ↑ Dan, Joseph. Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. (Kindle Locations 665-677)
- ↑ Dan, Joseph. Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. (Kindle Locations 686-687)
- ↑ Dan, Joseph. Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. (Kindle Locations 686-687)
