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Kabbalah's beginnings date to the Middle Ages, originating in the Bahir [4] and the Zohar. [5] Although the earliest extant Hebrew kabbalistic manuscripts dating to the late 13th century contain diagrams, including one labelled "Tree of Wisdom," the now-iconic tree of life emerged during the fourteenth century. [6]
The Hebrew word "Keter" (כֶּתֶר) translates to "crown". Since a crown is worn above the head, Keter symbolizes the highest level of the sefirot and the divine will in Kabbalah. Keter is also known as "Nothing" (אַיִן, ayin) or "The Hidden Light" (אוֹר הַגָּנוּז, Or HaGanuz), reflecting its abstract and ineffable nature.
Symbols associated with this sphere are a Bride (a young woman on a throne with a veil over her face) and a double cubed altar. Where Binah is known as the Superior Mother, Malkuth is referred to as the Inferior Mother. It is also referred to as the Bride of Microprosopos, where the Macroprosopos is Kether. [7]
In bringing Theosophical Kabbalah into contemporary intellectual understanding, using the tools of modern and postmodern philosophy and psychology, Sanford Drob shows philosophically how every symbol of the Kabbalah embodies the simultaneous dialectical paradox of mystical Coincidentia oppositorum, the conjoining of two opposite dualities. [55]
Sefirot (/ s f ɪ ˈ r oʊ t, ˈ s f ɪr oʊ t /; Hebrew: סְפִירוֹת, romanized: səfiroṯ, plural of Koinē Greek: σφαῖρα, lit. 'sphere' [1]), [2] meaning emanations, are the 10 attributes/emanations in Kabbalah, [3] through which Ein Sof ("infinite space") reveals itself and continuously creates both the physical realm and the seder hishtalshelut (the chained descent of the ...
As symbol, it was incorporated into the Greek Tetractys by Jewish Kabbalistic occult tradition as an evolving arrangement of ten letters. In gematria, YHWH has a numerical value of 72 (center image). The right image contains the Tetragrammaton in tetractys formation, accompanied by the late-Renaissance Pentagrammaton, below. Tree of Life (Kabbalah)
Chai as a symbol goes back to medieval Spain. Letters as symbols in Jewish culture go back to the earliest Jewish roots, the Talmud states that the world was created from Hebrew letters which form verses of the Torah. In medieval Kabbalah, Chai is the lowest (closest to the physical plane) emanation of God. [2]
Vital's Etz Chaim is the foundational work for the later Lurianic Kabbalah, which soon became the mainstream form of Kabbalah amongst both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jewry up to the modern period. This massive multi-volumed work circulated only in manuscript form among mystics for over 100 years, and was first published in 1782.