THE THE LEGEND LEGEND OF OF LILITH LILITH © ©

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The Legend of Lilith: The Origins of Evil and the Fall of Man
CHAPTER 6
BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE
“In the long run it is far more dangerous to adhere to illusion than to face what the actual fact is.”
Physicist David Bohm
“Genuine evil, the evil that can be experienced, imposes itself upon us in mythical images.”Gershom Scholem
ew people know that the words “devil” and “divinity” come from the same Indo-European word “devi (Goddess)
or “deva “(Elohim), which became daeva (devil) in Persian. The Old English divell (devil) can be traced to the
Roman derivative divus, divi: Elohims. Thus, it appears that from the beginning, Elohims and devils were often confused
with one another. As we study the Scriptures, we will discover that evil issues forth from Ayn Sof Itself, and is the logical
consequence of creation. Evil is to creation, and the individual finite existence that is creation’s essence, as the outside of
a container is to the space it contains. Evil is written into the idea of creation and woven into the fabric of the human soul.
According to the Zohar, the fragments of earlier worlds that had been destroyed because of untempered judgment are
shrouded in darkness and floating around our universe like debris from extinct volcanoes. 59 These fragments are the husks
(klippoth) which comprise a counterworld of unholiness called the Sitra Achra, which oppose the Divine realm of the Sefirot.
60 Our world was created only after the roots of evil had been purged from Ayn Sof. As such, the restriction and limitation
which was necessary for the creation of our world modified ; Din (judgment) was tempered with Chesed (kindness)
.The result was a world in which judgment and kindness are blended in the middah or trait of rachamim (compassion).The
world in which we live is a blending of good and evil.
This concept is important psychologically as well as axiological implications. In purging Itself of the roots of evil, Ayn
Sof gives rise to a dark realm, which parallels the Freudian repressed or the Jungian “shadow”. This purging, for Ayn Sof
and man has the results of the growth of the “Other Side” and the “shadow self”. In neither case is evil eliminated. The
attempt to purge oneself from evil simply relocates it into another part of the cosmos or human psyche. The result is repression
rather than expulsion. Ayn Sof’s catharsis of “Din” can actually be called a cosmic repression. This is because
Ayn Sof, in attempting to rid Itself of the unacceptable aspects of Its own essence (negativity, destruction, limitation) actually
crystallizes these negative aspects into a region of being that remains a part of Itself. The result is the growth of the
“Other Side’, a negative region within Ayn Sof, which shadows and fills our world with evil, negativity, ambiguity, and of
course –death. This Divine catharsis of judgment births a metaphysical parallel to the dark forces of the repressed unconsciousness
.To the ancient sages evil is a cosmic and psychological return of these repressed forces. Thus, we can see that
the “Other Side” is also within our own hearts, and it could not be otherwise, as without evil we would have no hearts, no
freedom, and no individual existence at all.
The Other Side is the dark side of space-time, a universe that is not brightly lit. The sub-atomic particles there vibrate at
a lower frequency than this world. This limits their realms form being seen by us. This also means that they are unable to
receive the higher frequencies from the realms of the fifth dimension of thought (good).This is the habitations of demons 61
59 The Zohar implies that the evil in our universe has its origins in the remnants of the previous worlds that were destroyed. Fragments
of these worlds remain mutilated and covered in darkness outside the Divine system. These fragments are the system from which the
Sitra Achra was constructed.
60 The evil in this physical world is made of the “waste material” or dung of the coarse klippoth; it is the sediment of the purifying
process in creation. It is sometimes called “vomit and filth”, which is the ultimate humiliation.
61 Sheid, Mazzik, Ruach Hara, Se’ir, Malach, Mashchit in Hebrew. Demonic powers wax and wane according to the time of day, the
week, the seasons, meteorological conditions, topographical features, and other factors. They frequent rooftops, outhouses, and drainage
gutters. They can also be attracted to places of religious worship.
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