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Kabbalah speaks of Head, Faces, Navel,
bowels and the like. These are all Parts of The Grand Man - Adam
Kadmon, The First, The Tree...The Manifestation of Ain Sof
(Einsof, God).
The Tree's many Parts are identified as Attributes - Sefirot - or Emanations of God. These Parts are Divine in origin and there is no part even now in all of creation that is not Divine in origin. He comes to reclaim His Own...to reconcile the World unto The Father.
"When the Desire arose in the Will of
The White Head to manifest Its Glory,
It arrayed, prepared, and generated from
the Blinding Flash
One Spark, radiating in 370 directions.
The Spark stood still.
A pure Aura emerged whirling and breathed
upon the Spark.
The Spark congealed and one Hard Skull
emerged, emanating to four sides.
Surrounded by this pure Aura, The Spark
was contained and absorbed.
Completely absorbed, you think?
No, secreted within.
That is how this Skull emanated to Its
sides.
This Aura is the secret of secrets of
the Ancient of Days.
Through the Breath hidden in this Skull,
Fire emanated on one side, and Air on the other, with the pure Aura standing
over this side and pure Fire over the other.
What is a Fire doing here?
It is not Fire, but The Spark surrounded
by the pure Aura illuminates 270 worlds,
and from Its side, Judgment comes into
being.
That is why this Skull is called The
Hard Skull."
"The sefirot (Emanation of God)
below Keter (The Top Skull), from Chokhmah to Yesod, are
referred to as the Impatient One (Ze'eir Appin - literally, 'Short-Face'
but meaning 'Short-tempered, Impatient'). Keter, The White
Head, the highest
sefirah, is pure compassion and is therefore described
as Arikh Anpin, 'Long-faced, Long-suffering, Slow to anger'.
The lower
sefirot are characterized by a tension between
different Aspects of the Divine:
right and left, love and rigor. Relative to Keter, they are
impatient.
"Looking back to His Source, the Impatient
One is soothed and manifests the compassion overflowing from Keter."
The Blinding Flash
"Aramaic, bozina de-quardinuta.
This is the Zohar's name for the First Impulse of Emanation proceeding
from Ein Sof, The Infinite, through Keter. The Flash
directs the entire process of Emanation, providing Its rhythm and measure.
The goal of meditation is to attain this Flash and participate in the flow
of 'Being'."
One Spark
"Aramaic, bad nizoza.
This
is the first point: Chokhmah, Wisdom."
One Hard Skull
"Binah ["Understanding"], Who proceeds
from the Spark of CHokhmah.
Four Sides
"The Four Sides (North, South, East
and West) symbolize four sefirot that emanate from Binah:
Din [Power], Hesed [Love], Tif'eret [Beauty] and
Shekhinah
[Presence].
Surrounded by Pure Aura
"CHokhmah is absorbed by Its Source.
It does not dissolve there but rather remains hidden and transmits the
Power of further Emanation to Binah."
The Breath
"Breathed by the Aura through The Spark
of
Chokhmah into the Skull of Binah."
Fire
"Din [Gevurah], the sefirah
of Judgment."
270 Worlds of Judgment
"Binah, the product of The Spark of Chokhmah, is the Compassionate Divine Mother. However, She includes within Herself the roots of Judgment and gives birth to Din, the sefirah of Judgment. 270 may be an allusion to ra, 'evil', which has the numerical equivalent of 270."
"The ten spheres are: "the Spirit, Air, Water, Fire, the four cardinal points of the compass, height and depth. These ten are all emanations from God: the Crown, the Wisdom, the Intelligence, the Love, the Power, the Compassion, the Steadfastness, the Majesty, the Foundation and the Kingdom. They are linked together as a vital organism, like a tree whose root is the Infinite, with the Kingdom as the Trunk, the Foundation as the point from which all the branches begin to spread, the Compassion (or Beauty) at the center and the Crown at the top. They are the Names which God gave to Himself and which make up the one great Name.
"The ten circles are known as sephiroth, the plural of sephira, meaning a number. They are interconnected in various ways...It is believed that the sephiroth exercise a mystical influence on one another via these connections."
"The ten sephirot were arranged
in a rigid hierarchy, and each lower sephirah grew out of the One
immediately above; that is, the second rank sephirah grew out of
the First, the Third out of the Second, etc. Thus, the first sephirah
had all the powers of the sephirot under him; the Second had Its
own Power plus all the Powers of the succeeding Eight, and so on.
They were:
1. Kether ("Crown"), also
called the Simple Point, because this initial and paramount sephirah was
unknown and all-embracing. Kether was know familiarly as the
Old One, the Ancient of Days (from Daniel 7:9), the White Head, or the
Long Face.
2. Hochmah, Chokhmah ("Wisdom")
was also known as Abba ("Father") and was the masculine outgrowth of the
Ancient One.
3. Binah ("Understanding
or Intelligence"), the highest feminine Emanation in the order of the sephirot,
also known as Ima ("Mother").
4. Hesed ("Kindness") is
also called Gedullah ("Greatness") and is masculine.
5. Geburah ("Power") is also
called Din (Justice) and is feminine.
6. Tipheret ("Glory" or "Beauty")
is both masculine and feminine because it is a combination of Hesed
and Geburah.
7. Netzah ("Firmness", "Might",
"Victory") is masculine.
8. Hod ("Splendor") is feminine.
9. Yesod ("Foundation")
combines Netzah and Hod. It is therefore masculine
and feminine.
10. Malkut ("Kingdom") has
no special attributes but is a kind of funnel through which the qualities
of the Upper nine sephirot are transmitted to the physical world.
It is therefore called Shekinah, the Spirit of God.
"The first nine sephirot were grouped
in threes, each triad including a masculine element, a feminine element
and a combining element. The first three sephirot represented
the World of Thought; the second, the World of Emotions and morals; the
third, the World of Nature. The tenth sephirot, Malkut, existed
alone as the harmony of all the other nine.
"This triune was paralleled by the Kabbalists'
version of the three-part soul, an idea expressed earlier by Plato, Aristotle,
the Bible, and the Talmud. The soul called Neshamah represented
the Intellect and corresponded to the first three sephirot.
The soul called Ruach represented the emotion and corresponded to
the Hesed-Geburah-
Tipheret triad. The soul
called Nephesh represented man's animal nature and corresponded
to the lowest triad of sephirot.
"Spiritual and psychological wholeness
is achieved by meditating on the qualities of each sefirah, by imitating
and integrating the attributes of God. The path is not easy.
Divine Will can be harsh: Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac
in order to balance love with rigor. From the Other Side, demonic
forces threaten and seduce.
The ecstasy of sefirotic contemplation,
however, seems reserved mostly for souls who have departed this world or
for the High Priest on the Day of Atonement. Souls of the living
who succeed in prayer delight in palaces below Shekhinah [the opening
to the Divine]. If especially devout, they may be raised to the level
of Yesod or attain a sefirotic vision, but the highest sefirot
are considered unapproach- able [indeed, one must be BROUGHT - apprehended
- higher. No one is worthy to attain. He...is...HOLY].
In fact, the "Zohar" forbids contemplation of Binah and what
lies beyond Her."