Alternative Religion/ Library

The Fourth World of Assiah is filled with the lowest beings, the Evil Demons, Kliphoth or Qliphoth, the cortices or shells, and with all so-called material objects, and to this world belong men, the Egos or Souls imprisoned in earthly human bodies. This world also has its ten grades, each one more far from the higher forces and forms, each one more dark and impure. First come THU, Tohu, the Formless; and BHU, Bohu, the Void, thirdly ChShK, the Darkness, of the early universe, and from these our world was developed and now exists; then come seven hells, whose dwellers are evil beings representing all human sins; their rulers are Samael or Satan the angel of death, and Lilith, the Asheth Zenunim, the Woman of whoredom, and this pair of demons are also called "The Beast," see Zohar ii. 255; Samael had also an incommunicable name, which was IHVH reversed; for Demon est Deus inversus.

The whole universe only became complete with the creation of Man, called the Microcosm, the Earthly Adam; a copy of "The Archetypal Man" after another manner; he has principles and faculties and forms comparable to all the Sephiroth and Worlds, although his material body dwells on the Assiatic plane.

From God, the Angels and the World, let us pass to consider more fully what the Kabalah teaches about Man, the human Soul or Ego.

It has already been explained that the Doctrine of Emanation postulates successive stages of the manifestation of the Supreme Spirit, which may be regarded as existing on separate planes. Now the Ten Sephiroth condense their energy into a formulated Four-parted group of Three Spiritual planes, and a plane of so-called Objectivity, or of Matter. These Ten Sephiroth, and the planes, each contribute an essence which in their totality, in ever-varying proportion, constitutes Man. At his origin there was formulated what the scientists might call "Archetypal Man," and what the Kabalists named Adam Kadmon, ADM QDMUN. Primeval Man, the Greek protogonos. Successive stages of beings of this type pass along the ages through a descending scale, offering the individual every variety of experience, and then along an ascending scale of re-development until human perfection is attained, and ultimate reunion with the Divine is the result of the purified Soul having completed its pilgrimage.

Before we consider Man in his present state we must note the views of the Kabalah upon Man in his primal state.

Man was the final Word of Creation, he was a résumé of all forms, and so transcended the angels in his faculties. The first man had no fleshy body, no material envelope: Adam and Eve were clothed only in ethereal forms, and were not subject to appetites or passions, they dwelled in Light in the GN OiDN, Garden of Aidin, of Eden, of pleasant peace (Zohar ii. 229b). The man and the woman before their descent to this world were as one,--androgynous; at incarnation they were separated into sexes. The first human pair broke the first commandment, they sinned and were doomed to a complete descent into matter; the Lord God made them "coats of skin," He gave them material bodies, and with these came the need of food, and the passions required to bring forth a succession of earthly bodies.

Yet man is still the copy of God on earth; his form is related to the Tetragrammaton of Jehovah IHVH, for in a diagram, Yod is as the head, Heh the arms, Vau the body, and the final Heh the lower limbs: (see Zohar ii. 42a). The first pair were tempted by Samael, the allegorical Personality of the lower tendencies, which give the craving to experience earth life and take a part in its continuous changes of force and form. They did what they knew would imperil their purely psychic existence, they sank fully into material forms, they took on the grossness of Malkuth, and so were separated from the Sephirotic Tree, from the Higher Potencies, which have no taint of matter. All matter is ever changing its form, and so their bodies must be changed; their bodies died, and so must the bodies of all incarnated Egos; at death the personality passes away to a rest, and then to a further experience of life, or to a sphere of punishment, or to a realm of bliss.

In their earthly forms they brought forth bodies like their own, and God sent down other souls to dwell in them, to experience earth life, its sins and sufferings; and to pass a probation by which they also might fall, but yet may rise to regain a share of man's lost estate and finally to rise up through the Sephiroth to a reunion with the Divine Essence.

Remember that the Sephirotic Crown was First, then came Chokmah, a masculine Potency, and then Binah, a feminine one; from their union arose the created universe of angels, men and earth: but 'as above so below,' so we have in Genesis a Man formed, then succeeds a Woman, and from them all others.

In the " Commentary on the Creation of Genesis," still allegorical like Genesis itself, it is stated :--"There is in Heaven a treasury called GUP, Guph, and all the Souls which were created in the beginning, and hereafter to come into this world, The Holy One placed therein: out of this treasury The Holy One furnishes children in the womb with Souls."

A further commentary in symbolic language narrates how The Holy One perceiving a child's body to be in formation, sends for a suitable Ego to inhabit it.

"The Holy One, blessed be He, beckons to an Angel who is set over the disembodied souls, and says to him, 'Bring me such a soul': and this is being always done since the world began; the soul appears before the Holy One and worships in His presence, to whom the Eternal One says :-- ‘Betake thyself to this form.' Instantly the soul excuses himself, saying, 'Oh Governor of the World, I am satisfied with the world in which I have been so long: if it please Thee, do not force me into this foul body, for I am a Spirit.' The Holy One, blessed be He, answers: 'The world I am about to send thee into is needed for thee, it is to pass down through it that I formed thee from myself.' And so the soul is forced to incarnate and sink into the world where matter will imprison him, where he must suffer, but where he may overcome and from whence he must rise again. The Zohar adds the statement: "and whatever the man learns and displays on earth life, he knew before his incarnation."

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