To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

The Christian Message / 85
most often as a Tree of Life composed of ten Sefīrōt, ten
‘‘numbers’’ or emanations from ’ēin sōf, the boundless,
making a tenfold universe. ‘‘Amid the insupportable brilliance’’
of ’ēin sōf ’ōr, boundless light, they visualized the
head of ’Ādām Qadmōn, Ideal or Archetypal Man, the first
of four Adams which manifest in four Worlds of descending
spiritual stature. The fourth Adam on the fourth world,
our earth, ushers in and becomes our present humanity. In
other words, on each of the four worlds a tenfold Tree of
Life, manifesting along with Archetypal Man, clothes itself
in ever more material forms. At length, the fourth world, is
able to sustain the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms;
and on this world humanity, from being originally asexual,
then androgynous, now functions as man and woman.*
In this manner the Zohar interprets the first few verses
of Genesis, commencing with God (really ‘‘gods,’’ ’elohīm),
forming from themselves the heavens (also plural in the
Hebrew) and the earth, which was formless and void until
the quickening when the Spirit of God (rūaḥ ’elohīm,
‘‘breath of the ’elohīm’’) fecundated the waters of space.
During the last 2,000 years the word god has come to
have a very narrow and fixed meaning in contradistinction
to the broad and fluidic connotation it enjoyed all through
the Graeco-Roman world and the Near East. At that time
the relationship between gods and humans was intimate,
*The reader is referred to the following sources: Major Trends in
Jewish Mysticism by Gershom G. Scholem, notably the chapter titled:
‘‘The Zohar II: The Theosophic Doctrine of the Zohar,’’ p. 202 ¤.;
The Zohar, translated by Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon, 5 vols.;
Qabbalah by Isaac Myer; Kabbalah: New Perspectives by Moshe Idel.