People have asked me to explain the Sefirot. It is not something that can be explained. It is not an object of knowledge. The Sefirot must be entered and known-from. It is a subject of study.
The sefirot is the crystallization of a Jewish esoteric enworldment. First, it must be understood from a panentheistic perspective that situates all that can be given as real within a divine beyond-being that is essentially unknowable. However, this beyond-being occasionally births surprising new being from its own (apparent) Nothingness. Until we intuit and internalize this situation, none of the rest of the Sefirot can unfold in understanding. It remains a welter and waste of symbols — a perplexity that makes even simple ignorance seem lucid by comparison. But once this panentheistic enception is born in us, the understanding erupts forth and embraces the world, infusing it with meaning — or rather, revealing the meaning inherent within reality. We suddenly feel the necessity of balance in apparent opposites. We know that love without limits and limits without love destroy both self and other. We sense that unconstrained progress and static stability destroy all possibility of living, steady improvement. We recognize that tradition and institution must perpetually reform in order to live, and that these are needed for meaningful life.
Once this enworldment becomes given truth for us — once it isn’t a doctrinal fact-system, but a faith — a glance at the Sefirot is a prayer. We might be diffused by practical life, scattered, made vague and dull. But with a comprehending glance, lightning strikes from above and below, connecting above and below, with a flash of ascending and descending light. Descending: Where are you? Ascending: Here I am.
A sacred symbol is a visual prayer.
Ein sof – Unbounded – Unknowable, infinite beyond-being. To us, pregnant Nothingness — inexhaustible wellspring of surprise.
Keter – Crown – Finitude. The possibility of finite being, defined against but devoted to infinite beyond-being. The inner surface of tzimtzum. To us, the principle of panentheism.
Chokhmah – Wisdom – Intuition of All, as yet enfolded, undeveloped, charged with potential. To us, the flash of knowing, preceding knowledge. Enception.
Binah – Understanding – Unfolding knowledge. Alchemical “adaptation”. To us, intelligibility. Conception.
Chesed – Love – Grace, mercy, lovingkindness. Self-transcending We.
Gevurah – Power – Limitation, boundary, law. Self-defining Me/Us.
Tif’eret – Beauty – Balance, harmony, perfection, completeness, rightness. The bringing together of difference into wholeness.
Netsach – Eternity – Agency, initiative, command. Compulsion to take action, challenge, innovate, effect change.
Hod – Splendor – Devotion, receptivity, obedience. Inclination to accept, respond, participate, shelter, conserve.
Yesod – Foundation – Establishment, tradition, teaching and learning, dynamic stability.
Malchut – Kingdom – Meaningful world. Divine presence in given reality. Also, Shekinah, divine feminine.
