God can be a very negative word for many living in the secular West. It conjures up authority, even fear, empty religious ritual and forms of worship that leave us cold. We are told that God is omniscient and omnipotent, knowing everything, able to do anything. We are given, from art and culture as well as religious imagery, an image of a kindly old gentleman sitting on a golden throne, on clouds surrounded by white gowned, winged angels. God, we are told, controls and knows everything, yet it appears that God can't or won't intervene to stop the most horrendous crimes and injustices. It seems that God cannot create a stone which He cannot lift. And God is a He!

In the past, some tried to suggest that God simply made the world and then left it up to its own devices. Others took God out of the equation altogether.

The Bible actually uses seven different words to describe God. Given that it also declares that God is One, it seems obvious that in Biblical thought God is a complex, multifaceted experience that human beings needed to understand conceptually rather than figuratively.

The rabbis of the Talmud created other words to use for God that would preserve the sanctity of the Biblical names but go further in clarifying the nature of God. For example, there was Ribono Shel Olam, Director of the Universe, and Makom, place--any place and every place and no place.

Kabbalah went much, much further in multiplying the "names" for God so that God would permeate every aspect of human activity. Kabbalah saw God in everything. It was intoxicated with the Divine in a passionate, even sensual way. But to explain how God can be everything and yet beyond, it developed a further layer of terminology.

Ein Sof, No Limit, is one of a series of terms that was favored by mystics. It conveys the endless, limitless, non-material nature of God. But this is something than material beings cannot hope to relate to. (As God says to Moses, "No man can see me and live.") So Ein Sof has to shrink, so to speak, into a state that we humans can experience. These "emanations" are, in turn, represented by other "names", such as Atik Yamin, which means Ancient of Days, primordial, beyond time, or Zeir Anpin, Small or Restricted Face, meaning that we only experience one small aspect of the Ein Sof. These are not different Gods, but simply different facets that humans encounter.

These are just the most popular of a range of relatively new terms that helped explain the various facets and manifestations of a very complex issue--the nature of the Divine. None of these has a gender, and none is meant to be anything more than a way of talking about this infinite force or experience that encompasses everything.

Since all of these are beyond the limits of human conception, the rabbis of the Talmud developed the idea of Shechina, Divine Presence, Holy Spirit, a channel through which the non-material could be "transformed" or "translated" so as to be able to communicate with humanity.

The Kabbalists accepted this notion, but then started working backwards from Shechina to try to get "inside" the Divine, as well. By using the idea of Sephirot to describe the various facets and images of God, they tried to explain the many ways the Divine appears to us and the contradictory messages that we receive.

So we take the very same template we used in relation to humans and apply it to God. God as Ein Sof is beyond us, but God as Elohim is the way we encounter the Divine. However, it is important to know at the outset that the Sephirot are not like, say, The Trinity. They are not a description of Ein Sof but rather a way in which we limited humans can make sense of how Ein Sof reaches across the gulf that separates us, to communicate. They are simply reference points to the way we humans conceptualize. They help us understand the complexity of the spiritual world. They help us understand how it is that things happen in seeming contradiction to Divine laws. They guide us towards the essence of true spirituality.

The process of creation, as described in the Zohar, works like this. Ein Sof exists as everything. At a moment in time, Ein Sof starts the process of creation by sending out a beam of pure light or energy which combines with Elohim (God interacting with the material world) to produce our universe and everything in it. The actual terminology describes this as a process of fertilization. The process of creation required Ein Sof to place layers and curtains of matter on top of Elohim that disguise the true nature of matter that has been created by mixing Divine Energy (light) with matter.

According to a later opinion, associated with the Arizal, Ein Sof withdrew the most powerful presence to create a space of reduced Ein Sof transcendence in which He created perfect vessels. These vessels then exploded, causing the world to become a mixture of sparks (good) and shards (bad).

In contrast with the philosophical world, which spoke of Creatio Ex Nihilo, "creating out of nothing", the mystic sees creation out of Ein Sof into Elohim in such a way that we are all the children, the creation, of Elohim. In that sense, we and the world we live in are all part of one essential unifying spirit. If we humans only see matter, then we are not seeing properly, because we are seeing only the surface.

The Sephirot, then, describe the way Elohim interacts with matter and with humanity.

It is important to realize that the Sephirot do not describe either Ein Sof or Elohim, but are confined to describing how Elohim interacts with the world, the way in which we relate to Elohim and Elohim relates to us.

Keter

The crown, Keter, is not the crown of Ein Sof; it is the closest the abstract world can get to conceptualizing the totally non-physical force which we humans call Elohim. It is the summit of our capacity to understand. But it only makes sense if we take it together with the other Sephirot and distill them all down through Malchut into the Presence of God, Shechina.

Divine Will flows into our world through the letters and words of the Torah. They are the vehicle of Divine interaction with the Sephirot. The Sephirot, each linked to the Hebrew alphabet, are the way Elohim reaches us. We, in turn, can retrace the steps back towards the top by using the letters as guides and clues. This is why the letters are so important.

But the letter combinations are only one way of communication between Elohim and humans. Divine Will can express itself through every one of the Sephirot individually and separately or together and in union. The Sephirot represent facets of Elohim and also their mirror images within us humans. We humans rarely function with all our Sephirot in balance and union, which is why the "actions" and "will" of Elohim often seem so obscure and even contrary to us.

Bina & Chochma

Bina, understanding, and Chochma, wisdom, are two creative forces that need to be combined to activate the other Sephirot. In the process of creation (of anything), the structure has to be combined with the function. The car can be made but it must be driven. Elohim creates and sustains by activating these two elements. Together they execute the Divine Will. Sometimes this happens aggressively through Gevurah. Sometimes it works through Chesed, kindness and softness.

Gevurah & Chesed

Gevurah is pro active action, sometimes even aggression. Chesed is softness, kindness, veering sometimes towards passivity. The earth and its crust are creations of Ein Sof. Sometimes in "allowing" it to expand, things may be destroyed. This to us seems like aggression on anything that gets in the way. Yet from a "natural" point of view the earth is only doing what it has always been "commanded" to do. When something like this happens, we need to redouble our Chesed, in order to compensate.

The balanced way of dealing with life is through a combination of the both Gevurah and Chesed, but this may not always be possible. Sometimes our own prior actions, and sometimes external circumstances, prevent us doing the "right" action. And sometimes, of course, we have to overreact to correct an extreme, as in a just war. By minimizing the counterforces we project against Elohim, we can minimize the negative impact upon ourselves of any Divine Will that may appear to conflict with our own.

Tifferet

Tifferet represents love, beauty and emotion. It is essential for any action. So whether Elohim sits in judgment (Gevurah), or extends mercy (Chesed), love, beauty suffuses everything. As the Haazinu Song of Moses says, "as a father corrects a favored child". This emotion of Elohim suffuses the whole process of life, regardless of whether we are in receipt of one aspect or another. Everything in terms of Elohim is good. Only the external, human perception may be flawed or incomplete.

Tifferet is the root of human aesthetic creativity. Products of human creativity can, in themselves, be beautiful and good even if the motivation for creating them was wrong. So beautiful art or music may impress us even if the artist or the composer is corrupt and evil. This happens when the creative energy of Tifferet is not being balanced or harmonized with other Sephirot.

Hod & Netzach

As Elohim appears in human life, it is either to charm, convince, win over, love, or it is to conquer, defeat, control. These are the two "thighs", Hod and Netzach.

Hod, is splendor, it wins us over through its magnificence. It also represents satisfaction, contentment with one's lot in life.

Netzach, victory, is ambition. It is both "victory" and "eternity". It is the means whereby Elohim overcomes human inadequacy or the conflicts that may arise between humans, between humans and the natural world, and between humans and the Divine world. It achieves its goals through its great power.

We humans tend to be impressed by extravagance, aggression and power, so we need to be trained, or to train ourselves, to appreciate the other more hidden, withdrawn qualities of Hod.

Both qualities are required to achieve reconciliation. Both qualities are to be found in Elohim. We have the challenge to look and see which is the right path to choose.

Yesod

Yesod is the most controversial of the Sephirot. Its association with sex is understandable in the human context, but how so in the Divine ? Yesod is the essential link, connection between one body, one spirit, one idea and another. There is no evil in the act of union itself. There is only strength and beauty, Hod and Netzach, in the union of Yesod. Anything negative that derives from such union could only come from the misapplication, the misuse, the human deviation from the straight and pure.

Sexuality is the highest level of physical union and delight. It is this that we must emulate in uniting with the Divine. Just as sexual pleasure can be selfish and fail to create unity and harmony, so, too, can our attempts to unite with the Divine. If we cannot so direct ourselves to unite with another human, how can we claim to be able to unite with "Heaven"? Just as sexuality requires discipline and direction and control to make it more physically satisfying and pleasurable, so too our love and union with Elohim requires similar control, restraint, and giving of ourselves. Just as in human sexuality heightened pleasure is achieved by integrating Yesod into the totality of our physical and mental processes, so too in union with Elohim we must interconnect all the Sephirot.

Malchut

The only impression we are capable of achieving of Elohim, itself, is a union of all the Sephirot interconnected. When Moses asked God to "show me your glory," he had already spoken to God, experienced and seen God at work. But now he realized that what was lacking was this overall comprehension of every aspect of the Divine, combined and in harmony.

Only when this is achieved can we hope to have a relationship, and this is what the last Sephira, Malchut (rule) means. Elohim can only relate to us if we accept the authority. We can only accept, truly, if we understand. We can only understand through the Sephirot. This then leads to the presence of the Shechina--the feminine, comforting, and loving presence, symbolized in Jewish mystical narrative as the dove, the cooing, caring, sensitive symbol of peace.

All of this is to provide you with an introduction to the idea of the Sephirot, as a basis for further exploration through the text of Sefer Yetzirah. There is a tradition that Sefer Yetzirah contains the secrets of creation and to master it will enable one to create a Golem, as in the myth associated with Rabbi Loewe of Prague. This is neither my interest nor my aim. I see Sefer Yetzirah as being concerned simply with bringing man and God closer together.

In meditation, one is simply walking into the comforting, soothing arms of Elohim. There can be nothing more reassuring than the knowledge that this idea of spiritually coming home is the end at which all meditation aims.

I want to stress that there is nothing to be afraid of, as long as one practices Kabbalah as expressed through its primary texts and is not misled into confusing magic or witchcraft or superstition with Kabbalah. There is no secret or dangerous agenda in true Kabbalah (though I cannot speak for those who try to use it in a manipulative way).

Nothing in the Kabbalistic tradition brings one into contact with negative or evil forces, as long as one is connecting with the straight path to Elohim. Put simply, if one has an open door to the company president one need not go through security, private secretaries, or vice presidents to communicate. Indeed, the traditional antidote to fear or anxiety about negative forces was always to connect directly to Elohim through saying the Shema, accepting the authority and protection of the Ultimate Power.

But all of this assumes a grounding in Torah and mitzvot. Attempting a Kabbalistic approach to God without the knowledge of Torah and commitment to observance is spiritually unbalanced and ineffectual.

Go to Previous Chapter: The Sephirot and Humanity




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