Faces of the Goddess: 3 - Kabbalistic Maps

Jewish Mysticism, Rachel Elior

Mysticism, which transcends the boundaries of time and space and refers to a reality not grasped by means of ordinary human cognition, is one of the central sources of inspiration of religious thought. It is one of the phenomena that generate meaningful cultural changes in the course of history, not despite but because of the obscurity of the sources of its inspiration and their complexity. In the traditional world mystical creativity served as a primary channel for introspection and reflection, attributing primary meaning to subjective experience free of conventional limitations. The manifestations of a dynamic inner life and of individual expression need not conform to a specific time and place. Mysticism was the obvious route for breaking down concrete and abstract structures, developing an alternative perspective on reality, crystallizing new forms of authority and leadership, and expressing yearnings for freedom and change. A number of these causal factors, both known and unknown and springing from the domains of spirit and creativity, played a decisive role in moulding the religious and social history of the traditional world.

From A Guide to the Zohar (2004), by Rabbi Arthur Green, chapter 2: The Kabbalistic Tradition: a brief history

The secrets of Kabbalah were made public in the mid-twelfth century as a way to combat the influence of Maimonidean rationalism. The freedom and implied disinterest in human affairs of the philosophers' God frightened the mystics into coming of the deep esotericism that until then had restricted them to oral transmission of their teachings within closed conventicles of initiates. Their secrets were to serve as an alternative explanation of the Torah, one that saw Torah and its commandments as... having a cosmos-sustaining role in a view of the universe that made them absolutely essential. ... The special concentration on divine names played an essential part in early Kabbalah, setting on course a theme that was to be developed over many centuries of kabbalistic praxis. (p.21)

From Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah (2020), by Rabbi Jill Hammer: Chapter 1:2 - The Road Map, p.24

The phrase "nine and not ten" may also allude to other thought-systems that posit ten fundamental dimensions of reality. Saadya Gaon, the ninth-century Jewish sage and commentator on Sefer Yetzirah, notes that Aristotle recognized ten categories of reality (substance, quantity, quality, relation, space, time, possession, position, action, and passivity).

From A Guide to the Zohar (2004), by Rabbi Arthur Green, chapter 2: The Kabbalistic Tradition: a brief history

The speculative-magical tradition... reached medieval Jewry through the little book called Sefer Yetsirah and various other small texts, mostly magical in content, that are associated with it. Sefer Yetsirah has been shown to be a very ancient work, close in spirit to aspects of Greek esotericism that flourished in the late Hellenistic era. ... Its chief text contains the most abstract worldview to be found within the legacy of ancient Judaism. By contemplating the core meaning of both numbers and letters, it reaches toward a notion of cosmic unity that underlies diversity, of an abstract deity that serves as cosmic center, in whom (or perhaps better: in which) all being is rooted. The magical praxis is thus a form of imitatio dei ("imitation of God"), man's attempt to reignite the creative spark by which the universe has emerged from within the Godhead. Here we have the roots of... an essentially speculative and non-visual mysticism. ... In the twelfth century, the language and style of thought found in this work became central to the first generations of kabbalistic writing... (pp.13-14)

From Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah (2020), by Rabbi Jill Hammer: Chapter 1:2 - The Road Map, pp.12-13

The ten sefirot of Sefer Yetzirah are cosmic structures that provide a frame for reality. Together they form the frame within which creation takes place. ...

Ten Inscriptions
The word sefirot shares a root with the word sefer or book - samech-peh-resh - which means "to tell." ...

Sefirot (singular sefirah) is a term usually understood to mean "aspects" or "dimensions." Gershon Scholem derives the word sefirah from li'spor, to count, and identifies the sefirot as "ten primordial numbers": thus, the thirty-two paths include letters and numbers. Similarly, Yehudah Liebes understands the sefirot as "things that are counted," and believes they represent "the fructive and creative possibility of the infinite numbers." Yet the sefirot as they are listed are not only numbers, nor are they really "counted things" in the sense of a list where each thing relates specifically to its numerical position. Rather, the sefirot are sets of cosmic orientation points.

How, then, should we translate sefirot in the context of Sefer Yetzirah? Kabbalah scholar Giulio Busi notes a Talmudic use of the word sefirah that means "writing." This is a rare use of the word, but it is the only one that relates directly to the word sefer or book. Applying this meaning to Sefer Yetzirah, Busi suggests that the sefirot are acts of divine writing - in other words, they are inscriptions. Busi notes that the verbs used as the Divine interacts with the ten sefirot are chakak (engraved), chatzav (hewed), and chatam (sealed) - all of which make perfect sense in a context where the sefirot are acts of cosmic engraving or writing. Busi therefore translates eser sefirot belimah to mean "ten immaterial writings" - writings that define the boundaries of the universe.

From Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah (2020), by Rabbi Jill Hammer: Introduction, xxix

If one looks at the plain text, Sefer Yetzirah isn't consistent with later kabbalah. For example, the sefirot of Sefer Yetzirah are dimensional and/or elemental aspects of the universe: north, south, beginning, end, air, fire, water, etc. The sefirot of the Zohar (which doesn't mention the word sefirah though it uses the concept) are anthropomorphic: love, rigor, compassion, etc. They are dimensions of the universe, but they are personified in ways the sefirot of Sefer Yetzirah are not.
The Zoharic sefirot can manifest physically (as water, fire, etc) but they are primarily located in the hidden worlds; the physical world is a veil for the true reality. This is not true in Sefer Yetzirah. When Sefer Yetzirah speaks about the sefirot as water or air or time or space, it means to address actual water, air, time and space - the sefirot are physical entities, and there is no veil between them and us.

From A Guide to the Zohar (2004), by Rabbi Arthur Green, chapter 2: The Kabbalistic Tradition: a brief history

Multiplicity begins to arise so subtly within the One that its presence can barely be detected. Nothing is ever added to Ein Sof [Without End], but it ever so gradually reveals itself to contain an increasingly differentiated reality. The most important symbol of this reality is the discovery of the sefirot, the ten within the one. The oneness of God is absolute; it does not begin a series and can be followed by no "two." The "ten" of the sefirot does not follow the "one" of God but is contained in it, in the way that mathematical tenths are contained within the whole. The revelation of the tenfold nature of the Godhead is the tale of how the abstract deity of a mystical Neoplatonism came to be manifest as the personified God of the biblical-rabbinic tradition, and how that God's creation of the lower universe may be seen as standing within the continuum of the "great chain of being" that ceaselessly flows from the indescribable hidden source, allowing for the existence of all that is. (p.37)

From A Guide to the Zohar (2004), by Rabbi Arthur Green, chapter 3: Teachings of the Kabbalists: The Ten Sefirot

From A Guide to the Zohar (2004), by Rabbi Arthur Green, chapter 2: The Kabbalistic Tradition: a brief history

The earliest Kabbalists were fascinated with the origins of the sefirotic world, devoting much of their speculation to the highest sefirot and to the relationship of those sefirot to that which lies beyond them. ... The situation was quite different in the Castilian writings. Here the emphasis was placed not on the highest but on the lower parts of the sefirotic world, especially on the relationships between "right" and "left" and "male" and "female." The counter-balancing of demonic energies needed the strengthening of the right-hand power of divine love, and this could be awakened by human love of God and performance of the commandments. As these writings developed, it was fascination with the conjugal mysteries, reflected in the joining together of divine male and female, that overwhelmed all other symbolic interests. The uniting of the male sixth and ninth sefirot with the female tenth became the chief and in some places the almost unique object of concern and the way of explaining the religious life as a whole.

...

Perhaps influenced in part by renewed contact with more mythical oriented Ashkenazic elements, and in part reflecting also the romantic troubadour ethos of the surrounding culture, they wrote in a spirit far from that of philosophy. Here we find a strong emphasis on the theurgic, quasi-magical effect of kabbalistic activity on the inner state of the Godhead and on its efficacy in bringing about divine unity and thus showering divine blessing on the lower world. The Castilians' depictions of the upper universe are highly colorful, sometimes even earthy. The fascination with both the demonic and the sexual that characterizes their work lent to Kabbalah a dangerous and close-to-forbidden edge that undoubtedly served to make it more attractive, both in its own day and throughout later generations. (pp.25-26)

The ninth sefirah represents the joining together of all the cosmic forces, the flow of all the energies above now united again in a single place. In this sense the ninth sefirah is parallel to the second: Hokhmah began the flow of these forces from a single point; now Yesod, as the ninth is called, reassembles them and prepares to direct their flow once again. The life force that flows among and animates the sefirot is often described in metaphors of either light or water, the two primal substances that best reify free-flowing energy. But when the cosmic forces are gathered in Yesod it becomes clear that this flow is also to be seen as male sexual energy, specifically as semen, which the Greek physician Galen saw as originating in the brain (Hokhmah), flowing down through the spinal column (the central column, Tiferet), into the testicles (Netzah and Hod), and then into the phallus (Yesod). The sefirotic process thus leads to the great union of the nine sefirot above, through Yesod, with the female Shekhinah. She becomes filled and impregnated with the fullness of divine energy and in turn gives birth to the lower worlds, including both angelic beings and human souls.

The fulfillment of the entire sefirotic system.... lay in the union of these two final sefirot. Yesod is, to be sure, the agent or lower manifestation of Tiferet, the true bridegroom of the Song of Songs or the King who weds the Matronita, Shekhinah, the Grand Lady of the cosmos. But the fascination with the sexual aspect of this union is very strong, especially in the Zohar, and that leads to endless symbolic presentations of the union of Yesod and Malkhut, the feminine tenth sefirah.

From A Guide to the Zohar (2004), by Rabbi Arthur Green, chapter 3: Teachings of the Kabbalists: The Ten Sefirot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_ben_Abraham_Gikatilla

This whole - rather short - wikipedia page is well worth reading; it gives an overview of Gikatilla's other works. Here though is the biographical portion:

Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla (1248 – after 1305) (Hebrew: יוסף בן אברהם ג'יקטיליה, Spanish: Chiquitilla, "the very little one") was a Spanish kabbalist, student of Abraham Abulafia.

Biography

Born at Medinaceli, Old Castile (one of the former qualifying regions into which Spain was subdivided), Gikatilla was for some time a pupil of the kabbalist Abraham Abulafia, by whom he is highly praised; his kabbalistic knowledge became so profound that he was supposed to be able to work miracles, and on this account was called "Joseph Ba'al ha-Nissim".. (the Thaumaturge or literally Master of Miracles; Zacuto, Yuḥasin, p. 224a). Like his master, Gikatilla occupied himself with mystic combinations and transpositions of letters and numbers; indeed, Abulafia considered him as the continuator of his school (Adolf Jellinek, B.H. iii, p. xl). But Gikatilla was not an adversary of philosophy; on the contrary, he tried to reconcile philosophy with kabbalah, declaring that the latter is the foundation of the former. He, however, strove after the higher science, that is, mysticism. His works in general represent a progressive development of philosophical insight into mysticism. His first work shows that he had considerable knowledge of secular sciences, and that he was familiar with the works of Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Ezra, Maimonides, and others. He died at Peñafiel after 1305.

From Gates of Light: Sha'are Orah, translated by Avi Weinstein: Translator's Introduction

Gates of Light is an encyclopaedia of God's Names as well as a map which reveals the connections between the words in the Torah and the Names of God. Like a spiritual cryptographer, Gikatilla strips away the outer layers of meaning in order to arrive at the sod, the essence of what the Torah means. ...

Even though Kabbalah is an esoteric discipline, Gikatilla dares to make Kabbalistic concepts accessible. He offers a systematic, clear, detailed work which departs from the opaque and homiletical style of the Zohar - a mystical midrashic commentary on the Torah that became Judaism's mystical canon. In contrast, Gikatilla wants the Kabbalah of Gates of Light to be clearly understood. This may also explain why the Zohar became the dominant influence. [!!]. ... Writing Kabbalah in an accessible style and format may have been viewed as unacceptable, which explains why the Zohar is a work of wide renown while Gates of Light remains virtually unknown in traditional circles. It is ironic that one book is assured its place by its purported antiquity and opacity, while the other is relegated to relative obscurity by virtue of its freshness and clarity. (xvii-xviii)

From Gates of Light: Sha'are Orah, translated by Avi Weinstein: Historical Introduction, xxvi-xxviii

...Anthropomorphic imagery is crucial in understanding the relations among the system's components. The first nine Sefirot are viewed as a masculine structure, whilst the last, the Kingdom, is identified with the Shechinah, the Divine dwelling, the feminine counterpart of the celestial man.

...

Another crucial topic related to the Sefirot is the transmission of the Divine everflow [shefa] from the highest Divine instance to the mundane world. The Sefirot are at times conceived as Divine Essence or the vessels which contain it, or the instruments it employs in this world. In any case, the theosophical Kabbalists share the assumption of an inner harmony, a balance between the different Divine Powers, and especially the union between the lower Sefirot, Tiferet (Beauty) - in other versions Yesod (Foundation) - and Malchut (Kingdom). Maintenance of this unified and balanced relationship is conceived to be the Kabbalists' major concern, a goal to be achieved by performing the commandments.

...

Gikatilla differs from other Kabbalists in his ordering of the ten Sefirot and his emphasis on the centrality of their symbolic Divine Names. Most commentaries follow a descending path: they begin with the symbols of the first and highest Sefirah, Keter (Crown), or sometimes even with the Ayn Sof, the Infinite, and then list all the rest in an order which corresponds to the process of Creation or emanation. The culminating point is the lowest Sefirah, Malchut. Gikatilla adopted an ascending order of the Sefirot. ... Whereas the emanative process of Creation by stages of descent from the Infinite is the central concern of the theosophical Kabbalists, the mystic's return is the focus of the ecstatic Kabbalist.

From Gates of Light: Sha'are Orah, translated by Avi Weinstein: Translator's Introduction, xxx-xxxi

Catalonia was renowned as a centre of Kabbalah in the first part of the thirteenth century, whereas by mid-century and certainly by the end of the century, Castile had assumed a supreme role in the quantity and openness of its Kabbalistic writings. Most participants in this Kabbalah renaissance were Castillians, such as Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla and Rabbi Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon [whom academics suggest was instrumental in composing the Zohar]... Neither of them was a recognized expert in halakhah nor occupied an official position in communal life. As part of a secondary elite, they were free from rabbinic inhibition regarding the dissemination of Jewish esotericism and were more able to innovate than better-known personalities such as Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman (Nahmanides) and Rabbi Shlomo ben Avraham Aderet (the Rashba).

...

During the Renaissance, the first Christian Kabbalists recognized the importance of Sha'are Orah and quoted it extensively, using the 1516 Latin translation of Paulus Riccius, and the name Portae Lucis, which was printed in Pistorius's Ars Cabalistica [in Basel, 1578].