Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press

dark on her own but receivingand givingoff the light of the sun. She is
moon,
sea, into whom all waters ¯ow; the earth, longing to be fructi®ed by the
the
that falls from heaven. She is the heavenly Jerusalem, into whom the King
rain
enter; She is the throne upon which He is seated, the Temple or Taberna-
will
dwellingplace of His glory. She is also Keneset Yisra'el, the embodied
cle,
[or: Assembly] of Israel'' itself, identi®ed with the Jewish people.
``Community
tenth se®rah is a passive/receptive female with regard to the se®rot above
The
receivingtheir energies and beingful®lled by their presence within Her.
Her,
She is ruler, source of life, and font of all blessingfor the worlds below,
But
human soul. The kabbalist sees himself as a devotee of the
includingthe
She may never be worshiped separately from the divine unity.
Shekhinah.
this separation of Shekhinah from the forces above was the terrible sin
Indeed,
Adam that brought about exile from Eden. Yet it is only through Her that
of
have access to the mysteries beyond. All prayer is channelled through
humans
seekingto energize Her and raise Her up in order to effect the se®rotic
Her,
The primary function of the religious life, with all its duties and obliga-
unity.
is to rouse the Shekhinah into a state of love.
tions,
realms outside the divine proceed from Shekhinah. She is surrounded
All
immediately by a richly pictorialized host. Sometimes these surrounding
most
are seen as angels; at others, they are the maidens who attend the Bride
beings
Her marriage canopy. They inhabit and rule over variously described realms
at
``palaces'' of light and joy. The Zohar devotes much attention to describing
or
such palaces with names that include ``Palace of Love,'' ``Palace of the
seven
Pavement'' (alludingto the vision of God in Exodus 24:10), ``Palace of
Sapphire
and so forth. The ``palaces'' (heikhalot) of the Zoharic world are
Desire,''
derived from the remains of the ancient Merkavah or Heikhalot
historically
a tradition that was only dimly remembered by the Zohar's day.
mysticism,
placingthe heikhalot beneath the Shekhinah, the kabbalists mean to say that
In
visionary ascent of the Merkavah mystic was a somewhat lesser sort of
the
experience than their own symbolic/contemplative ascent to the
religious
of the se®rotic universe, one that ascended with the Shekhinah as She
heights
into the highest realms. While the inner logic of the kabbalists'
reached
thinkingwould seem to indicate that all beings, including the
emanational
universe, ¯ow forth from Shekhinah, the medieval abhorrence of
physical
with corporeality complicates the picture, leavingKabbalah
associatingGod
a complex and somewhat divided attitude toward the material world. The
with
in which we live, especially for the Zohar, is a thorough mingling of
world
and demonic elements. Both the holy imprint of the ten se®rot and the
divine
structure of multilayered qelippot, or demonic ``shells,'' are to be
frightening
within it.
found
Introduction
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