The Kabbalah: its doctrines, development, and literature — John Shaqi
The Kabbalah: its doctrines, development, and literatureGinsburg, Christian D. (Christian David)
Religion
The Kabbalah: its doctrines, development, and literature
Ginsburg, Christian D. (Christian David)
Cabala
The different worlds which successively emanated from the En Soph and
from each other, and which sustain the relationship to the Deity of
first, second, third, and fourth generations, are, with the exception
of the first (i.e., the World of Emanations), inhabited by spiritual
beings of various grades. “God animated every part of the firmament
with a separate spirit, and forthwith all the heavenly hosts were
before him. This is meant by the Psalmist, when he says (Ps. xxxiii, 6)
‘By the breath of his mouth were made all their hosts.’ (Sohar, iii, 68
a.) These angels consist of two kinds—good and bad; they have their
respective princes, and occupy the three habitable worlds in the
following order. As has already been remarked, the first world, or the
Archetypal Man, in whose image everything is formed, is occupied by no
one else. The angel Metatron (מטטרון) occupies the second or the
Briatic World ( עולם בריאה), which is the first habitable world; he
alone constitutes the world of pure spirits. He is the garment of שדי
i.e., the visible manifestation of the Deity; his name is numerically
equivalent to that of the Lord. (Sohar, iii, 231 a.) He governs the
visible world, preserves the unity, harmony, and the revolutions of all
the spheres, planets and heavenly bodies, and is the Captain of the
myriads of the angelic hosts [11] who people the second habitable or
the Jetziratic World (עולם היצירה), and who are divided into ten
ranks, answering to the ten Sephiroth. Each of these angels is set over
a different part of the universe. One has the control of one sphere,
another of another heavenly body; one angel has charge of the sun,
another of the moon, another of the earth, another of the sea, another
of the fire, another of the wind, another of the light, another of the
seasons, &c. &c.; and these angels derive their names from the heavenly
bodies they respectively guard. Hence one is called Venus (נגה), one
Mars (מאדמים), one the substance of Heaven (עצם השמים), one the
angel of light (אוריאל), and another the angel of fire (נוריאל.)
(Comp. Sohar i, 42, &c.) The demons, constituting the second class of
angels, which are the grossest and most deficient of all forms, and are
the shells (קליפות) of being, inhabit the third habitable or Assiatic
World (עולם עשיה). They, too, form ten degrees, answering to the
decade of Sephiroth, in which darkness and impurity increase with the
descent of each degree. Thus the two first degrees are nothing more
than the absence of all visible form and organisation, which the Mosaic
cosmology describes in the words תהו ובהו before the hexahemeron, and
which the Septuagint renders by ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος. The third
degree is the abode of the darkness which the book of Genesis describes
as having in the beginning covered the face of the earth. Whereupon
follow seven infernal halls (שבע היכלות) = Hells, occupied by the
demons, which are the incarnation of all human vices, and which torture
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