The Five Emanations

---

Horden calls the place we go after death, the Sphere of Universal Communion. We are no less spheres of communion here than we are there. Here his message sounds very much like the Law of Attraction and the work of Abraham-Hicks. When we change our moment-to-moment thoughts, we change our personal power, success and luck…..

The Five Emanations are soul-thoughts that orient the personality to the compass points of the spiritual landscape…. They allow us to lean into the coming moment with a more open-minded, open-hearted and dynamic personality. As an immortal spirit, are these the thoughts, feelings and memories I choose for eternity? Keep your feet on the path that will allow you to consistently answer irrevocably and resoundingly, Yes! What is most important is not how others are treating me — What is most important is how I am treating others…. This has nothing to do with the fact that others wrong me — this has everything to do with gaining freedom from feeling wronged.

When I am doing that, I am not centered. My partner in relationship had an affair. After 15 years, I had based my entire sense of identity on the way my partner treated me. In this case, the sense of betrayal and loss of self caused an intense period of confusion and disorientation. Results are feelings of outrage and righteous indignation that makes anger and resentment seem like justifiable responses. Even if those reasons can be addressed rationally, there is still an emotional component that is often reticent to admit that it is already talking to itself all the time.

Repeating the same thoughts over and over, reacting to events in the same habitual way day in and day out, entertaining the same memories, most of which are based on pain and loss — the personality keeps the moment-to-moment awareness overwhelmed with the sense of a personal history in order to maintain the continuity of its artificial identity. Always be alert to any opportunity to be of benefit to the Whole! To be of encouragement and inspiration to and from all we touch is True Power. The Soul and the Universe are constantly pouring bliss into the other. The Soul is Well-Being. The Soul is Happiness.

Explore the Universe of opportunities before you without losing your bearings! The Soul has enough forever. Life is about creating something meaningful with others. Once I learn to serve my soul within all matter and life, no thought can distance me from the sacredness of All; I will then have a new vision of the unfolding moment. All beings depend on Understanding and Memory for their immortality salt water ; while in these bodies we depend on our personality fresh water.

Sense merging like a drop of water into the Ocean of Life! Go with the Flow! Consistently choose the path of nonresistance! Keep my mind focused on Goodwill toward All! Turn situations of unmet needs into wellsprings of benefit! Find my way by feel! My life thus becomes Improvisational. Matter itself is Spirit.

If I treat everything as living spirit that is how it responds to me. Address each thing in creation as a person in order to become more sensitive to the Immortality of All! Accept my own Nobility and Ennoble everything I touch! In authentic alliances all members are treated as a being of unknown potential, which they truly are. To be charismatic is to bless and to be blessed. Absurd because the unexpected comes disguised as nonsense. Magic because we know without knowing how we know. Causes, which underlie everything at the same time, produce effects in other times and places.

Each personality is a microcosm of the whole of Humanity.

The original reference to the sefirot is found in the ancient Kabbalistic text of Sefer Yetzirah , "The Book of Formation", attributed to the first Jewish Patriarch, Abraham. The sefirot are ten emanations, or illuminations of God's Infinite Light as it manifests in Creation. In later Jewish literature, the ten sefirot refer either to the ten manifestations of God; the ten powers or faculties of the soul; or the ten structural forces of nature. In Cordoveran Kabbalah, the forces of creation are considered as autonomous forces that evolve linearly from one another.

By contrast, in Lurean Kabbalah the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria , the sefirot are perceived as a constellation of forces in active dialogue with one another at every stage of that evolution. Luria described the sefirot as complex and dynamically interacting entities known as partzufim , each with its own symbolically human-like persona.

Keter, the Crown, is the first sefirah. It is the superconscious intermediary between God and the other, conscious sefirot. Three different levels, or "heads", are identified within Keter. In some contexts, the highest level of Keter is called "The unknowable head", [4] The second level is "the head of nothingness" reisha d'ayin and the third level is "the long head" reisha d'arich. These three heads correspond to the superconscious levels of faith, pleasure and will in the soul.

In its early 12th-century dissemination, Kabbalah received criticism from some rabbis who adhered to Jewish philosophy , for its alleged introduction of multiplicity into Jewish monotheism.

Navigation menu

The seeming plurality of the One God is a result of the spiritual evolution of God's light, which introduced a multiplicity of emanations from the one infinite Divine essence. This was necessary due to the inability of mankind to exist in God's infinite presence. This is stressed in Kabbalah in order to avoid heretical notions of any plurality in the Godhead. One parable to explain this is the difference between the "Ma'Ohr" "Luminary"-Divine essence and the " Ohr " "Light" He emanates, like the difference between the single body of the sun and the multiple rays of sunlight that illuminate a room.

In Kabbalah, there is a direct correspondence between the Hebrew name of any spiritual or physical phenomenon and its manifestations in the mundane world. The Hebrew name represents the unique essence of the object. This reflects the belief that the universe is created through the metaphorical speech of God, as stated in the first chapter of Genesis.

The Five Emanations: Aligning the Modern Mind with the Ancient Soul

Kabbalah expounds on the names of the sefirot and their nuances, including their gematria numerical values , in order to reach an understanding of these emanations of God's essence. In the 16th-century rational synthesis of Moses ben Jacob Cordovero Cordoveran Kabbalah , the first complete systemisation of Kabbalah, the sefirot are listed from highest to lowest: In the subsequent 16th-century transcendent Kabbalistic scheme of Isaac Luria, the sefirot are usually listed by omitting Keter and including Da'at the conscious manifestation of the superconscious Keter.

This difference of opinion reflects an earlier Medieval debate regarding whether Keter is the first sefirah, or the Ohr Ein Sof Infinite light itself. Luria includes Keter in the list only in relation to the inner light of the sefirot. In his usual list of the sefirot as formed attributes vessels , Keter is considered too lofty to include: The first development that enabled the sefirot to unite in cooperation was the interinclusion within each of them of a further subset of the 10 sefirot, bringing them to a total of one hundred inter-included sefirot.

In Kabbalistic interpretation, the seven emotive sefirot similarly inter-include to form 49 seven times seven emotional states.

See a Problem?

So, for example, Chesed contains Chesed within Chesed loving-kindness within loving-kindness , Gevurah within Chesed might within loving-kindness etc. Likewise, there is Chesed within Gevurah loving-kindness within might, typified by a restriction performed out of love, like a father punishing a child , Gevurah within Gevurah might within might , etc. This is the Kabbalistic interpretation of the mitzvah Jewish observance of Counting of the Omer between the festivals of Passover and Shavuot.

Shavuot commemorates the receiving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. During this 49 day period Kabbalah teaches the benefit of focusing on the aspect of the 49 inter-included sefirot that is related to each particular day of the Omer. On each day of the Omer, a person would examine each of their spiritual qualities, as a rectification process of Teshuva Return to God , as preparation for reliving the acceptance of the Torah on Shavuot.

Two alternative spiritual arrangements for describing the sefirot are given, metaphorically described as "Circles" and "Upright". Their origins come from Medieval Kabbalah and the Zohar. In later, 16th-century Lurianic Kabbalah , they become systemised as two successive stages in the evolution of the sefirot, during the primordial cosmic evolution of Creation.

This evolution is central to the metaphysical process of tikkun fixing in the doctrines of Isaac Luria. One diagrammatic representation depicts the sefirot metaphorically as successively smaller concentric circles, radiating inwards from the surrounding Divine Omnipresence.

The Four Worlds of the seder hishtalshelus "Chain of Progression" , or with the addition of the highest Fifth World Adam Kadmon , can be depicted in this diagram, starting with the highest and proceeding towards the centre of the circle to our lowest, physical realm.

In each World the 10 sefirot radiate, as 10 successive steps in the downward chain of flow towards the next, lower realm. This depiction shows the successive nature of each of the 10 sefirot, as a downward chain, each more removed from Divine consciousness. The surrounding space in the diagram is the Infinite Divine reality Ein Sof.

The outermost circle in the teachings of Lurianic kabbalah is the "space" made by the Tzimtzum in which Creation unfolds. Each successive World is progressively further removed from Divine revelation, a metaphorically smaller, more constricted circle. Emanation in each World proceeds down the 10 sefirot, with the last sefirah Malchut-Actualisation of the Divine plan of one World becoming, and being shared as, the first sefirah Keter-The Divine Will of the next, lower realm. The vertical line into the centre of the circle represents the path of downward emanation and constriction, from the initial first Ohr light of the "Kav" Ray in Lurianic doctrine.

The most important and well known scheme of depicting the sefirot arranges them as a tree with 3 columns. The Right column represents the spiritual force of expansion. The Left represents its opposite, restriction. The Middle column is the balance and synthesis between these opposing tendencies.

Emanationism

The connecting lines in the diagram show the specific connections of spiritual flow between the sefirot, the "22 Connecting Paths", and correspond to the spiritual channels of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Kabbalah sees the Hebrew letters as channels of spiritual life force. In Kabbalistic theology, these letters remain the immanent spiritual forces that constantly recreate all existence. The paths divide into 3 Categories, shown in this diagram by their different colours, corresponding to the 3 types of letter.

An alternate depiction of the sefirot is in the form of a man. The first sefira represents the head, the next three represent the cavities of the brain, the fourth and fifth sefirot represent the arms, the sixth sefira is the torso, the seventh and eighth are the arms, the ninth is the sexual organ, and the tenth is the all-embracing totality of this image. This man is also divided into two, with the right column being made up of the male sefirot and the left, the female sefirot. Kabbalah, the central system in Jewish mysticism, uses subtle anthropomorphic analogies and metaphors to describe God in Judaism , both the God-world relationship, and the inner nature of the Divine.

These include the metaphor of the soul-body relationship, the functions of human soul-powers, the configuration of human bodily form, and male-female influences in the Divine. Kabbalists repeatedly warn and stress the need to divorce their notions from any corporality, dualism, plurality, or spatial and temporal connotations.

As "the Torah speaks in the language of Man", [10] the empirical terms are necessarily imposed upon human experience in this world. Once the analogy is described, its limitations are then related to, stripping the kernel of its husk, to arrive at a truer conception. Nonetheless, Kabbalists carefully chose their terminology to denote subtle connotations and profound relationships in the Divine spiritual influences. More accurately, as they see the emanation of the Material world from the Spiritual realms, the analogous anthropomorphisms and material metaphors themselves derive through cause and effect from their precise root analogies on High.

Describing the material world Below in general, and humans in particular, as created in the "image" of the world Above is not restricted in Rabbinic Judaism to Kabbalah, but abounds more widely in Biblical , Midrashic , Talmudic and philosophical literature. Classical "proof texts" on which it bases its approach include, "From my flesh I envisage God", [12] and the Rabbinic analogy " As the soul permeates the whole body Nonetheless, it too has its limitations, needs qualification, and breaks down if taken as a literal, corporeal comparison.

Its limitations include the effect of the body on the soul, while the World effects no change in God; and the distinct, separate origins of the soul and the body, while in relation to God's Omnipresence, especially in its acosmic Hasidic development, all Creation is nullified in its source.

The Yosher -Upright configuration of the sefirot arranges the 10 sefirot into a Partzuf interrelationship, where each sefirah relates and mediates the influence of the others. This metaphor for Divine interrelationships on High is arranged in the schematic relationship of a human soul, because alone amongst all Creation, Adam -Man is held to encapsulate all harmonized forces, while animals and angels embody only singular instinctive drives. The significance of this, as well as the full meaning of the Partzufim reconfiguration of the sefirot, emerges only in 16th century Lurianic Kabbalah, where the Yosher -Upright arrangement, the Partzufim and the souls of Israel represent the secondary World of Tikun-Rectification, while angels, animals and the root origins above of the Nations of the World embody the primordial World of Tohu-Chaos.

Lurianic Kabbalah applies the verse, "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them" to this reconfigured Tikun-Yosher arrangement. In the Yosher scheme, Divine principles are described through the soul faculties of Man, with Binah-Understanding and Malkuth-Kingship-Shechinah-Indwelling Divine Presence, encapsulating the Divine Feminine in Creation, the principle of receiving, nurturing and pregnant internalization.

Separation and interruption of the Shefa-Flow of Divine vitality into this World is caused by human sin. Unification and revelation is opened by human benevolence, so that in Kabbalah human encapsulates the whole spiritual cosmos and upholds the Heavens. The 16th century Sefad Kabbalistic Renaissance ennacted the prayer before performing Mitzvot Jewish observances, uniting Tiferet-Beauty, central principle in the male emotions Zeir Anpin with Malkuth-Kingship, the feminine Shechinah:.

The four Hebrew letters of God's essential Divine name known as the Tetragrammaton correspond to the ten sefirot. The point-like nature of the yud corresponds to the sefirah of chochmah, which is likened to the initial spark, or point of potential through which a new insight enters reality. The cusp, or tip of the yud reaches upwards and alludes to the super-conscious root of chochmah, which resides in Keter.

This corresponds to the sefirah of Binah, which expands and develops the seminal point of wisdom chochmah into a detailed idea.

The gematria of the letter vav is 6, corresponding to the six emotive sefirot from loving-kindness to foundation. Despite the particular geometric depiction of the Yosher scheme, through each soul faculty in the body, physical human organs also reflect the supernal Divine forces on High, as the scheme of Yosher underscores the inter-relationship of the sefirot as a unit or body. In this context, the physical upright standing of humans contrasts with the horizontal forms of animals. The correspondence of the sefirot with the physical organs of a human:. Isaac Luria reinterpreted and recast the whole scheme of Kabbalah in the 16th century, essentially making the second of two different versions of the Kabbalah: However, he understood his new doctrine as no more than a new revelation-teaching of the true meaning of the Zohar.

Lurianic Kabbalah became the dominant Kabbalistic system, displacing Cordovero's, and afterwards the Zohar was read in its light. Lurianic Kabbalists sought to integrate this with the Cordoverian scheme, seeing both as true, but describing different aspects "Worlds" of the Divine process. Medieval Kabbalah depicts a linear descending hierarchy of Divine vitality, the sefirot emerging from the Ein Sof to enact Creation.

Lurianic Kabbalah describes enclothing processes of exile and redemption in the Divine flow, where higher levels descend into lower states, as souls to spiritual bodies. The first emanation in Creation leads to spiritual shattering of Divinity in a definitive "catastrophe" Shevirat HaKeilim - "The Shattering of the Vessels" , and the exile of its "sparks" into the descending created realms.

Cordovero had reconciled previous opinions of the sefirot by describing each as Divine Ohrot "lights" invested in 10 spiritual Keilim "vessels" , adapted by Luria to his scheme. In Lurianic Kabbalah, the first vessels of the sefirot shatter due to the sublime intensity of the light. Because each of the sefirot act as independent forces, Isaac Luria's attribution of the Iggulim independent "Circles" arrangement of the sefirot without cooperation, their immature vessels are weak.

From the destruction of this primordial realm, the World of Tohu "Chaos" , is built the subsequent World of Tikun "Rectification" , characterized by lower lights and stronger vessels. The sublime lights of Tohu withdraw into the Ein Sof, while their sefirot vessels shatter down Creation. Sparks of the original high lights remain attached in exile to the descending fragments, and the Messianic task is the redemption of all the holy sparks of Tohu. In the World of Tikun in contrast, the sefirot vessels are mature, stronger and act together in harmony. This systemised the classic concept of the Partzufim as the secondary, evolved arrangements of the sefirot in Creation.

And God said let there be Light", the ability of the harmonised sefirot of Tikun to reveal Divinity and enact stable Creation. The Lurianic doctrine of the shattering of the emotional sefirot vessels describes the esoteric meaning of Genesis Edom is described in Genesis as the descendents of Esau. In the Kabbalistic scheme, this is identified with unrectified Gevurah - Severity, the source of the vessels of the World of Tohu - Chaos.

The eight kings listed who reigned in Edom before any king of Israel, embodied the eight sefirot of Daat to Malchut in the World of Tohu , the vessels that shattered. Of each it says they lived and died, death connoting the soul-light of the sefirot ascending back to its source, while the body-vessel descends-shatters. Attached to the broken vessels are the holy residues of the former light as Nitzot - "Sparks" of holiness, sustaining Creation by the Divine flow of Will. The sparks are the creative force of the sefirot down the Four Worlds.

The unabsorbed residue of the broken vessels in our physical, lowest World Assiah becomes the realm of Kelipot impurity. And the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. The four realms of our created existence are together called the World of Tikkun "Fixing". In Tikkun, the sefirot evolve into new arrangements, where they can unite. The different realms Tikkun are characterized by lower lights and stronger vessels. Subsequent to the interinclusion of the 10 sefirot within each other, in Lurianic Kabbalah they then develop into " partzufim " "personas".

In the Zohar, Shimon bar Yochai expounds upon the spiritual roles of the partzufim, by talking about them as independent spiritual manifestations. Lurianic Kabbalah focused on the role of the Parsufim as the fully evolved stage of the primordial evolution of the sefirot, in the beginning of Creation.

Instead of each of the 10 sefirot merely including a full subset of 10 sefirot as latent potential forces, the first stage of their evolution, in the Parsufim the sefirot become fully autonomous and interrelated. The name of each partzuf denotes that the sefirah from which it derived, has now become an independent scheme of 10 fully functioning sefirot in the "Upright" Yosher form of "Man".

• A Conjura (Portuguese Edition)
• Synthesizing Quantitative Evidence
• Létrange cas du Docteur Jekyll et Mister Hyde: édition intégrale (Fantastique et Horreur) (French Edition)
• The Secrets of Cold Calling
• Reminiscence