Kether

The 10 Sephiroth in the Tree of Life

Kether ( Hebrew כתר keter "crown") represents the highest Sephira (singular of Sephiroth ) in the tree of life of the Jewish Kabbalah . Kabbalists consider Kether to be the goal of the spiritual search. Kether is understood as pure divine being. One imagines the Sephira Kether to be so sublime that it is dubbed the Zohar , as "the hidden of all the hidden", which is completely beyond human understanding.

In the tree of life, Kether stands at the apex of a triangle with the two following Sephiroth Chochmah and Binah . This triad is known in its entirety as Atzilut ( Hebrew אֲצִילוּת = "nobility, sublimity, fire"). Kether represents the highest element of Atzilut, the first Kabbalistic and completely spiritual world conception of three further Kabbalistic world levels, which are referred to as "Beriah", "Jezirah" and "Assiah".

Statements by famous Kabbalists about Kether

Rabbi Mosche Cordovero (1522? - 1570) of Safed describes in his book Pardes Rimonim ( Garden of Pomegranates , 1548) Kether as the source of the 13 highest sources of mercy.

Influences in occult and esotericism

As occult occult - esoteric teaching with roots in pagan antiquity, the hermetics has taken up terms and concepts of the Kabbalah. This religious revelation and secret doctrine has roots in the Hellenistic syncretism of the Greek god Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth to Hermes Trismegistus , the forefather of alchemy . Hermetics as a synonym for the occidental teachings of alchemy, occultism and esotericism shaped the occidental scientific worldview into the 17th century.

Kether in occidental hermetics

The Christian Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola first combined the occult teaching of hermetics with the Jewish Kabbalah. He is considered to be the first Christian Kabbalist without Jewish descent who endeavored from 1486 to make the Kabbalah usable in a Christian-Western way. He commissioned the Jewish convert Flavius Mithridates to translate Jewish Kabbalah literature into Latin with the aim of bringing the Kabbalah, like all philosophical and religious teachings, together in the Christian world mission .

The correspondences (equivalents) for כתר ( keter "crown") in occidental hermetics:

God's name: Ehjeh (אהיה)
Archangel : Metatron
Host of angels: Chaiot ha-Qodesh (Living Sacred Creatures)
Tarot : The four aces of the minor arcana
Element : fire
Colors: in Atzilut - clear shine, in Beriah - brilliant white, in Jezirah - brilliant white, in Assiah - white with golden spots
Microcosm : Jechidah, the essence, the self
Human body: Above the head
Degree of initiation of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA): 10 ° = 1 (Ipsissimus)
Number: 1

literature

Aryeh Kaplan : Sefer Yezira . The book of creation in theory and practice. Verlag JR Ruther, Grevenbroich 1976, ISBN 3-929588-25-0 .

Individual evidence

↑ Chaim Wirszubski: Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism , Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1989, p. 64; Walter Andreas Euler: "Pia philosophia" et "docta religio". Theology and religion with Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola , Munich 1998, p. 27.
^ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke : The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-532099-2 , pp. 200 ( google.de [accessed on July 5, 2012]).

[1] Chaim Wirszubski: Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism , Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1989, p. 64; Walter Andreas Euler: "Pia philosophia" et "docta religio". Theology and religion with Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola , Munich 1998, p. 27.

[2] Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke : The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-532099-2 , pp. 200 ( google.de [accessed on July 5, 2012]).