On the Nature and Origin of the Doctrine of Emanation among the Kabbalists

or gifted. Originally, everything was spirit. The entire emanation original Greek: "απορροια" (aporrhoia); a term used in Neoplatonism and Kabbalah to describe the flow of light from the Divine existed in the form of spirits and in the simplest eminence of spirituality. However, the fact that there are now "different stages of things," according to which spiritual power is modified in decreasing degrees, has its basis in an original revolution, which the Kabbalists call the fall of the first seven kings who fell into disorder This refers to the "Breaking of the Vessels" (Shevirat ha-Kelim), a central concept in Lurianic Kabbalah where the divine vessels could not contain the light and shattered, creating the potential for evil and material existence. From these, the Creator of all good—or the Firstborn of the hidden God—chose the light or good and brought it into the order of the four worlds *) of which the three upper ones contain purely well-ordered spiritual powers united in love and pure harmony; the fourth, however, contains only the husks or Cortices original: "Cortices" (Latin for shells/husks), known in Hebrew as Kelipot, which represent the shards of the shattered vessels that conceal the divine light of the spirit world, which act against each other as pure extremes, like fire and water.

In addition, the physical world has an outer covering, namely coarse matter, from which the corporeal world and the human body are formed. This "shell of shells" original: "cortex corticum" is intended to last only for a certain time, until everything spiritual that lies trapped or bound within it has been extracted or set free; for according to the principles of the Kabbalists, no stone or grain of dust is without spirit and life.

*) The later Kabbalists call them Mind of Mind, Mind, Spirit, and Soul original: "Mens mentis, Mens, Spiritus und Psyche (נפש/Nefesh)".