Treatise on the Emanations on the Left

The Treatise on the Emanations on the Left, written by Rabbi Isaac ha-Cohen of Castille in 1265, is the Jewish/Kabbalistic entry point of the elite Zoroastrian archetypes.

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

"The formulation of the powers of evil as an independent enemy of the divine, and the description of human life as being conducted in a dualistic universe in which evil and good are in constant struggle, is the contribution of the kabbalah to Jewish worldview. There are some indications of an intensified conception of evil in the Book Bahir and in the works of the early kabbalists in Provence, but the first kabbalistic dualistic system was presented in a brief treatise written by Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, entitled Treatise on the Emanations on the Left. This treatise, written in Castile about 1265, describes a parallel system of seven divine evil powers, the first of which is called Samael and the seventh, feminine one is called Lilith. While both of these figures have a long history in Jewish writings before Rabbi Isaac, it seems that he was the first to bring them together and present them as a divine couple, parallel to God and the shekhinah, who rule over a diverse structure of evil demons, who struggle for dominion in the universe against the powers of goodness, the emanations on the right....He claimed to have used various ancient sources and traditions, but it seems that they are fictional ones, invented by him to give an aura of authority to his novel worldview. He used older sources, including the writings of Rabbi Eleazar of Worms, but changed their meaning and inserted his dualistic views into them...Unlike Rabbi Ezra of Girona, he did not find the root of evil’s existence in the events in the Garden of Eden and human sin. Evil evolved from the third sefirah, binah, as a distorted side effect of the process of emanation. It continues throughout the history of the world, and will come to an end in the final, apocalyptic struggle between Samael and the messiah. The last pages of this treatise are dedicated to a detailed description of the final battles between angels and demons, and the ultimate triumph of the messiah. Thus, this treatise is the first presentation of a dualistic concept of the cosmos in kabbalistic literature, and at the same time it is the first to describe messianic redemption in terms of the kabbalistic worldview. Earlier kabbalists hardly paid any attention to the subjects of messianism and redemption; only in Rabbi Isaac’s treatise do we find the first integration of kabbalah and messianism, a phenomenon that later became central to the kabbalah and a main characteristic of its teachings."

This dualistic conception mostly ignored until it was written into the Zohar by Rabbi Moses de Leon, and later published by Gershom Scholem in the 1920s and 1930s. This corruption (?) later became an important and central idea in kabbalah.

An interesting research question is whether or not Rabbi Isaac may have been a member of a secret fraternal brotherhood.

Footnotes

References