Concealed and Revealed God

nature of the Divine prompted kabbalists to envision two aspects to God:

(a) God in essence, absolutely transcendent, unknowable, limitless Divine simplicity, and

(b) God in manifestation, the revealed persona of God through which He creates and sustains and relates to mankind. Kabbalists speak of the first as Ein/Ayn Sof (אין סוף “the infinite/endless”, literally “that which has no limits”). Of the impersonal Ein Sof nothing can be grasped. The second aspect of Divine emanations, however, are accessible to human perception, dynamically interacting throughout spiritual and physical existence, reveal the Divine immanently, and are bound up in the life of man. Kabbalists b believe that these two aspects are not contradictory but complement one another, emanations revealing the concealed mystery from within the Godhead.The Zohar reads the first words of Genesis BeReishit Bara Elohim – In the beginning God created as “With the level of “Reishit-Beginning” the Ein Sof created Elohim-God’s manifestation in Creation: .

“At the very beginning the King made engravings in the supernal purity. A spark of blackness emerged in the sealed within the sealed, from the mystery of the Ayn Sof, a mist within matter, implanted in a ring, no white, no black, no red, no yellow, no colour at all. When He measured with the standard of measure, He made colours to provide light. Within the spark, in the innermost part, emerged a source, from which the colours are painted below; it is sealed among the sealed things of the mystery of Ayn Sof. It penetrated, yet did not penetrate its air. It was not known at all until, from the pressure of its penetration, a single point shone, sealed, supernal. Beyond this point nothing is known, so it is called reishit (beginning): the first word of all…””

The structure of emanations has been described in various ways: Sefirot (Divine attributes) and Partzufim (Divine “faces”), Ohr (spiritual light and flow), Names of God and the supernal Torah, Olamot (Spiritual Worlds), a Divine Tree and Archetypal Man, Angelic Chariot and Palaces, male and female, enclothed layers of reality, inwardly holy vitality and external Kelipot shells, 613 channels (“limbs” of the King) and the Divine souls in man. These symbols are used to describe various parts and aspects of the model

 

Next – Role of Man in the world