The  sephirothic Tree of Life presents a metaphor where  creation 
takes  place  in ten steps and there is the suggestion  that  ten 
potencies (or emanations, or vessels, or garments, or crowns) are 
involved.  There  is  an alternative picture where  the  creation 
takes  place  in  four steps;  this model  is  called  "the  Four 
Worlds". The four worlds can be mapped onto the Kabbalistic Tree, 
and the two models have become complementary. 

The four worlds are

Atlizuth - the world of emanation or nearness
Briah - the world of creation
Yetzirah - the world of formation
Assiah - the world of making

The names of three of the four worlds can be found in Isaiah 43.7 
where  the  Lord  (speaking through the  mouth  of  the  prophet) 
states:

"...for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, 
I have made him."

It is interesting to compare the Kabbalistic four worlds with the 
neoplatonic scheme of Plotinus [ ], where we find a similar four-
fold division into the One, the Divine Mind, the All-Soul and the 
Sensible World. A comparison can also be made with the "celestial 
hierarchies"  of  the gnostic Psuedo-Dionysus,  where we  find  a 
super-celestial  world of the Nous,  the Real;  a celestial  (and 
potentially  hostile)  world  of  the  demiurge,   guardians  and 
Archons;   and  the  sub-lunary  world  of  the   elements.   The 
Kabbalistic   model  of  four  worlds  shares  with  both   these 
alternative and older views an attempt to bridge the gap  between 
the  perfection of a transcendent Godhead and the finiteness  and 
imperfection of the material world - it would seem inevitable for 
metaphysical speculation to attempt to bridge the gap between the 
two extremes.

Atziluth is the world of pure emanation,  the outflowing light of 
God which we see refracted through the glass of consciousness  as 
the  ten lights of the sephiroth.  "To emanate" is to  "flow  out 
from",  and Atziluth is the world which flows directly out of the 
infinite and unknowable En Soph. The word atziluth can be derived 
from the root ezel,  meaning "near by",  empasising the closeness 
of  this world to the hidden,  unmanifest En Soph.  Another  term 
used  to  describe  the nature of the  emanation  is  hamshakhah, 
"drawing  out",  with the suggestion that the emantion is only  a 
part of something greater, just as we draw water from a well. 

The  sephiroth  as  an expression of the Holy Names  of  God  are 
normally  attributed to Aztiluth and this is an  indication  that 
early  Kabbalists  viewed the pure energies of the  sephiroth  as 
being   exceedingly   remote,    and   inaccessible   to   normal 
consciousness.  The  world of Atziluth is remote from  the  world 
where  it  is possible to form representations of  the  sephiroth 
(Yezirah), and this tells us that the pictures of the sephirothic 
Tree  normally  employed for communication  and  instruction  are 
representations of something unimaginable and incommunicable:  we 
must  constantly  remember  that the map is  not  the  territory. 
Intellectually we know that sunlight is composed of a spectrum of 
colours, and even young children can draw a picture of a rainbow, 
but we do not see the colours in sunlight directly. We do not see 
the colours until the light is refracted in a shower of rain  and 
it is worth bearing this in mind when considering the  importance 
(or otherwise) of the sephirothic correspondences.

     Atziluth is the world of closeness or nearness to  God,  the 
world where one is bathed in the undifferentiated light.  In  the 
terminology  of  the Merkabah mystics,  it is the  world  of  the 
Throne. There is very little that one can usefully say about it.

Briah  is  the  world  of creation,  creation  in  the  sense  of 
"something  out of nothing".  The author of the Bahir  makes  the 
amusing observation that as light is an attribute of  God,  light 
did  not have to be created,  but was formed,  "something out  of 
something";  darkness,  on the other hand,  was not a part of God 
and had to be created.  This ties in with the Kabbalistic  notion 
of contraction,  or tzimtzum,  the idea that for the creation  to 
proceed  there had to be a space where God was not.  If one  also 
supposes that the ultimate nature of God is good,  then one  must 
also conclude that evil was created, that the goodness, light and 
peace of God were deliberately withheld in some measure to create 
the  universe,  and this reflects the separation of  Kether  into 
Chokhmah and Binah, the right and left sides of the manifest God. 
This  is  a  key kabbalistic  idea:  the  negative  qualities  of 
existence,  the  rigour  and severity of God as depicted  by  the 
lefthand  Pillar  of the Tree of Life,  are not the result  of  a 
malevolent  third  party - a diabolical anti-God  fouling-up  the 
works. They are the very essence of the creative act.
 
     The  suggestion  that the fundamental creative act  was  the 
creation  of  evil  is  not  (for  obvious  reasons)  given  much 
prominance  in Kabbalistic literature,  but hints to this  effect 
can be found everywhere.  The Bahir uses the metaphor of gold and 
silver to make the point that the essence of the creative act was 
"holding back". That which was held back was so much greater than 
that which was given,  and so that which was given,  the mercy of 
God,  is associated with silver,  while that which was held back, 
the severity of God,  is associated with gold. The essence of the 
creative act was the withholding of God, and nowhere have I found 
a  suggestion that an entity other than God was involved -  there 
is no demiurge in Kabbalah.  The essence of the creative act  was 
separation.  One becomes two,  Kether becomes Chokhmah and Binah, 
and  in  this  primary  duality can be  found  the  root  of  all 
dualities. 


When  I  first began thinking about Briah,  and I tried  to  make 
sense of the word "creation",  I assumed that something  tangible 
was created, and I found I could not differentiate the end result 
from  formation - a rose is a rose whether it is created  out  of 
nothing  or grown in a garden.  Does it matter whether I  make  a 
cake  miraculously by conjuring it out of nowhere,  or whether  I 
make it synthetically by mixing ingredients and baking them in an 
oven?  I  presume  both  cakes will  taste  the  same.  Synthetic 
creation,  the  creation  of  "something  out  of  something"  is 
commonplace,  but miraculous creation is not, and if Briah is not 
the  world  of  synthetic creation  (which  belongs  properly  in 
Yetzirah), then what does it represent?

The creation which takes place in Briah is differentiation;  that 
is,  Briah predicates the *possibility* of creation. The creation 
which  takes  place in Briah is *not* the  creation  of  anything 
tangible,  but the creation of those necessary (but abstract  and 
definitely  intangible) conditions which make creation  possible. 
It  is  difficult  to find a good example  without  resorting  to 
abstract  forms  of theoretical physics which attempt  to  answer 
questions  concerning "why is the universe the way it  is?",  but 
the nature of Briah is elusive unless the attempt is made, and so 
I will make the attempt. 

Pottery  is  a  creative  activity,   the  creation  of  new  and 
completely original forms out of clay and it is clearly synthetic 
creation.  A potter wants to make a jug to hold water.  Note  the 
use  of the word "make";  jug making is an activity  which  takes 
place in Assiah,  the world of making. The potter may incorporate 
some  novelty of design into the jug he or she is about to  make, 
and if this novelty is sufficiently unusual we might consider the 
design  itself to be creative - this is an example of  Yetziratic 
creativity.  
     Let  us now go back through history to a remote time in  the 
past  when there were no jugs.  Should the creation of the  first 
jug be regarded as truely creative in the Briatic  sense,  rather 
than synthetically creative in the Yetziratic sense?  I would say 
that  the creation of the first jug would have been an  evolution 
from  past  experience;  there must have been  an  experience  of 
"containment"  which  was almost certainly derived  from  cupping 
hands  to drink water,  or from drinking water held in  pools  in 
rocks.  The  idea for the first pottery jug was almost  certainly 
derived  from a prior experience of using a variety of  artifacts 
to contain water, and all of these artifacts would have in common 
the quality of "containment".  Containment would not be  possible 
without  the basic physical properties of the world we  live  in, 
such  as  the  existence  of  individually  identifiable  objects 
extended  in space with a specific shape.  The abstract  physical 
properties themselves would not be possible without...what?  What 
was it that determined the most abstract properties of the  world 
and  made  it possible for us to conceive of  containment  as  an 
abstract  property?  In the terminology of Kabbalah,  this  takes 
place in Briah;  the world of creation creates the conditions for 
form  by  providing  differentiation and  identity.  This  is  an 
abstract concept,  and difficult to grasp;  Wittgenstein put  his 
finger  on the problem when he observed that the solution of  the 
riddle of life in time and space lies outside time and space.

Traditionally,  Briah  is  the world  of  the  archangels;  these 
attributions vary greatly from period to period,  and from writer 
to writer. The author uses the attributions given in Chapter ???.  


Yetzirah is the world of formation where complex forms are  built 
synthetically,   "something  out  of  something",   what  I  have 
previously called synthetic creation. We are not yet in the world 
of tangible things;  to use an analogy I gave when describing the 
sephira Yesod,  we are more in the world of bottle moulds than  a 
world of glass bottles,  and more accurately still,  in the world 
where one designs bottle moulds for glass bottles.

Yetzirah  is  a  curious world,  because its  contents  are  both 
intangible and real.  Money is an example of an abstraction  that 
people will kill over. Criminal law is something clearly abstract 
and  synthetic in nature,  but not something to meddle  with  too 
often. Several times in these notes I have attempted to point out 
the  "real but intangible" nature of mathematical  objects,  with 
computer  programs  being  the  most  important   examples;   the 
development of virtual reality systems drives home the point that 
there  is a world of objects which are not real in the  sense  of 
being physical, but they are real in another sense: they are real 
in the sense that they can be differentiated in some way, real in 
the sense of having specific properties and behaviour.  The world 
of  intangible  but  differentiated objects  is  the  world  that 
Kabbalists call Yetzirah,  and it is a world that spans  thought, 
from  slippery  abstractions  like  beauty  and  truth  down   to 
something as specific and detailed as an engineering blueprint.

It  is difficult to write about Yetzirah because it contains  the 
whole of human culture;   our myths, legends, music, poetry, law, 
cultural behaviour, literature, sciences, games, and so on; these 
fall into the "intangible but real" category - things which  have 
no substance but which constitute our inheritance and define  our 
experience of being human. It is a kind of "mind-space" where all 
the  forms  ever  conceived can be found,  a space  where  it  is 
possible  to  interact with form.  One of  the  most  interesting 
developments  in  recent  times is the  realisation  that  it  is 
becoming  possible to bridge the gap between Yetzirah and  Assiah 
using  computer technology,  and the term "cyberspace" is  widely 
used  to describe this idea.  Computer programs have  become  the 
medium  for  turning form into something that can  be  shared;  a 
program  which  defines a jug in all its respects  allows  us  to 
share  the form of the jug without any potter having to  get  her 
hands dirty.  It isn't a real jug,  and it won't hold real water, 
but it can hold the form of water,  the Yetziratic representation 
of  liquidity,  and  I could pour Yetziratic "water"  out  of  my 
Yetziratic  "jug".  The  fact that we can share the  form  of  an 
object without having to *make* it (and this is increasingly  the 
way industrial designers work today) means that humans will  have 
the  ability  to interact in Yetzirah (as magicians  have  always 
done) without any form of magical training. Writing was the first 
breakthrough  in recording the contents of Yetzirah and  it  gave 
the  contents an independent (if  static)  existence.  Cyberspace 
will  be  an even greater breakthrough in that it will  not  only 
record the contents, it will enable us to bring them to life in a 
limited way. Yetzirah is in the process of "becoming real".

The  world  of Yetzirah is traditionally the realm of  the  Angel 
Orders,  but  like the Archangels,  the attribution  to  specific 
sephiroth vary greatly from writer to writer.

Assiah  is  the world of making,  the world where  forms  "become 
real".  The  essential  quality  of the "world  of  making"  that 
permits  us  to  make things is  stability,  the  fact  that  the 
material world has stable properties and behaves in a predictable 
way.  Our sciences are an outcome of this predictability -  there 
would  be  no science if there were  no  stable  properties.  Our 
technology  is an outcome of our scientific  knowledge,  and  our 
ability  to make increasingly complex artifacts is an outcome  of 
our  technology.  If I make a chair at lunchtime,  then (left  to 
itself) it will still be a chair at dinnertime, and it won't be a 
towel,  a giraffe, or an igloo. An ounce of gold remains an ounce 
of gold.  A pound of lead weighs the same on each successive  day 
of the week. It is this stability and predictability which allows 
us  to have a shared experience of the world.  If you  place  the 
pound of lead on the chair I made at lunchtime,  then I will find 
the same pound of lead on the same chair at dinnertime,  and both 
of  us can behave with some confidence that this will  indeed  be 
the case.  An unstable world where you leave a pound of lead on a 
chair, and I find a hedgehog in a goldfish bowl, and this happens 
in a completely unpredictable way would not,  in my opinion, be a 
world  of  shared experience - each person would have  their  own 
individual and private experience of the world, and we would have 
a world more resembling Yetzirah than Assiah.

The  stability  and predictability of Assiah forms  the  rock  on 
which  we have build our material culture of "things" -  millions 
of  different  types of thing  -  screws,  nails,  tools,  books, 
hairbrushes, trouser presses, shoes, pens, paper ... list goes on 
almost  indefinitely.  It is interesting to ask whether any  life 
could be sustained in a world with less stability; we know living 
organisms   have  a  distressing  tendency  to  die  when   their 
environment changes.  It is also interesting to speculate whether 
life  could  exist  in a more  predictable  world,  and  we  must 
consider the possibility that our world is unpredictable in  ways 
we  do  not  appreciate because we have no  other  experience  to 
compare with. Perhaps there are more predictable worlds which are 
too  predictable and mechanical for life - I am reminded  of  the 
Zoharic  myth of the kings of Edom,  the kingdoms of  "unbalanced 
force" which contained a preponderance of Din, judgement and were 
destroyed.  If this is so,  then it is probable the properties of 
the  Assiah  we  know  and  love are  necessary  in  a  deep  and 
fundamental way.  
     I have a somewhat mystical perspective that the godhead, the 
root of existence, had an urge to become conscious of itself, and 
the  cosmogenic  descriptions in Kabbalah,  of  which  the  "four 
worlds" model forms a part,  are an attempt the show the necessary 
steps  for  this to take place,  with Assiah being  a  final  and 
necessary  step.  The  problems  of  living  in  a  finite  world 
suffering  the  attendent  ills of the flesh  has  lead  to  some 
prejudice  against  Assiah,  but there is  nothing  "wrong"  with 
Assiah.  What  we perceive to be its imperfections are  necessary 
components of its perfection. Everything is right with Assiah; if 
there is a flaw in the creation,  it is that when "God wished  to 
behold God" and ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge it did not 
become conscious of its own nature.  It was seduced by the beauty 
of Assiah,  overwhelmed by the miracle of its own making, and the 
Yetziratic consciousness,  which should have united the worlds of 
Assiah  and  Briah,  turned  away from  Briah  and  faced  Assiah 
exclusively, creating the Abyss.

The four worlds can be related to the sephirothic Tree, and there 
are  many  ways of doing this.  There is general  agreement  that 
Atziluth  corresponds  to Kether,  Briah to Chokhmah  and  Binah, 
Yetzirah to the next six sephiroth,  and Assiah to Malkuth.  This 
is  too simple however.  The four worlds represent four  distinct 
"realms" of consciousness,  and there is more in this idea than a 
simple  attribution  to  sephiroth.  Out  of  the  many  ways  of 
presenting  the  four worlds I will present two schemes  which  I 
consider to offer more in the way of real,  useful substance than 
other  schemes  I  am familiar with.  There  is  no  question  of 
"rightness"  or "wrongness" - any map,  unless it is  grossly  or 
maliciously   misleading,   is  bound  to  contain  some   useful 
information. It is a question of how useful the map is, and in my 
opinion the following attributions of the four worlds to the Tree 
are  outstandingly useful and enrich the basic  sephirothic  Tree 
considerably.  The first attribution relates the four worlds to a 
single Tree;  the second makes use of four separate Trees and  is 
called "The Extended Tree". 


The  first  attribution  begins with a  small  amount  of  simple 
geometry,  and  if you have not done this before then it is  well 
worth doing.  Draw a vertical line on piece of paper.  At the top 
of  the line place the needle of a pair of compasses and  draw  a 
circle  with a diameter approximately half that of the length  of 
the line.  Without altering the compasses,  draw a second  circle 
where the first intersects the line.  Repeat this for the  second 
circle,  and  then for the third.  You now have a line  and  four 
intersecting  circles.  Label  the  centre of  the  first  circle 
"Kether",  the  second "Daath",  the third "Tiphereth",  and  the 
fourth "Yesod".  It should be obvious where to place Malkuth, and 
the  rest  of  the sephiroth can be placed  at  the  intersection 
points of the four circles.

The  four circles represent the four worlds.  The  first  circle, 
Atziluth,  is centred on Kether,  reaches up into the Unmanifest, 
takes  in Chokhmah and Binah,  and reaches down to Daath.  It  is 
entirely  on  the other side of the  Abyss.  The  second  circle, 
Briah,  is centred in Daath, reaches up as far as Kether and down 
as far as Tiphereth,  and takes in Chokhmah,  Binah,  Chesed  and 
Gevurah.  The third circle, Yetzirah, is centred in Tiphereth and 
reaches  from  Daath to  Yesod,  and  includes  Chesed,  Gevurah, 
Netzach and Hod,  the six sephiroth traditionally associated with 
Zoar Anpin,  the Lesser Countenance or Microprosopus.  The  final 
circle is centred in Yesod and reaches from Tiphereth to Malkuth, 
taking in the sephiroth Netzach and Hod. This is shown in Fig X.

Note that most sephira can be found in more than one  world,  and 
this  is an important point:  the worlds *overlap*.  There  is  a 
subtle  but  real distinction between Hod in Assiah  and  Hod  in 
Yetzirah.  The  sephira  Tiphereth can be  experienced  in  three 
distinct ways,  depending on whether one's vantage point is  that 
of  Assiah,   Yetzirah  or  Briah.  These  are  not  intellectual 
distinctions,  and an example would be the ways in which one  can 
experience Tiphereth as the King of Assiah, as the Sacrificed God 
of  Yetzirah,  or  as the Child of Briah (refer  to  the  magical 
images for Tiphereth).

  

The  worlds overlap,  but they are distinct,  almost like  social 
strata which co-mingle but are nevertheless clearly defined.  The 
upper  middle-class  nineteenth  century  household,   with   its 
"upstairs" and "downstairs",  is a good example of two completely 
distinct  but  co-mingling strata.  There are ways of  trying  to 
articulate this,  but they obscure as much as they reveal;  I was 
taught  that  in  going from one world to the  next  there  is  a 
"polarity switch",  so that one might regard Assiah as  negative, 
Yetzirah as positive,  Briah as negative once more,  and Atziluth 
as  positive.  This  idea can be related to  the  Tetragrammaton, 
where  the  Yod corresponds to Atziluth,  He  to  Briah,  Vau  to 
Yetzirah,  and  He final to Assiah:  this points a finger at  the 
deep relationship between Briah and Assiah. Just what a "polarity 
switch"  might be I leave to the reader to explore - there is  no 
way I could attempt to describe this.
 
The  second scheme for representing the four worlds is  based  on 
the tradition that each of the four worlds contains its own Tree, 
and  these are sometimes shown strung out with the Kether of  the 
world below intersecting the Malkuth of the world above.  This is 
not a very illuminating arrangement,  and there is an alternative 
arrangement  called "the Extended Tree" which will  require  some 
more draughtmanship to appreciate.  Use the "four circles" method 
for  drawing a Tree described earlier,  and draw  four  identical 
Trees on clear acetate film; an even better method is to draw the 
Tree  once  and photocopy it four times onto acetate -  any  copy 
bureau  should  be able to do this.  Now observe  that  the  Tree 
contains  two diamond shapes which I will call  (incorrectly,  as 
it happens,  but it is a useful convention) "the upper face"  and 
"the  lower  face".  The upper face is bounded by  the  sephiroth 
Kether, Chokhmah, Binah and Tiphereth; the lower by the sephiroth 
Tiphereth, Netzach, Hod and Malkuth. Now take your four identical 
transparencies,  label them from Atziluth to Assiah,  and lay the 
lower  face of Atziluth over the upper face of Briah,  the  lower 
face of Briah over the upper face of Yetzirah, and the lower face 
of Yetzirah over the upper face of Assiah.  You should now have a 
single,  large  Tree,  some  times called  "Jacob's  Ladder"  for 
reasons which should be obvious when you look at it.

The  Extended Tree makes clear the dynamics of the  four  worlds, 
and is probably the most useful Kabbalistic map you are likely to 
find.  It  provides a map of the four worlds,  and a  method  for 
representing the sephirothic correspondences for each world,  and 
it  shows  how  the  worlds   overlap  and  interpenetrate.   The 
representation  of  the  four  worlds on  a  single  Tree  (given 
previously)  is  consistent  with  the  Extended  Tree,  but  the 
Extended Tree is considerably more useful in that it provides the 
Kabbalist  with  a  powerful new map - it is like  going  from  a 
large-scale  map  of  a whole country to a  series  of  detailed, 
overlapping small-scale maps.

The worlds of overlap are Yetzirah and Briah, and in these worlds 
the sephira Hod overlaps the sephira Binah,  the sephira  Netzach 
overlaps  the sephira Chokhmah,  and the sephira  Yesod  overlaps 
Daath.  When one makes the polarity switch from one world to  the 
next,  then one sephira becomes another;  for example,  Binah  in 
Assiah,  the  "Intelligence"  of the body,  becomes  the  Hod  of 
Yetzirah,  the capacity for abstraction. The mystery of Daath can 
be fathomed by flipping to the world above,  where it becomes its 
Yesod.  The  king who wears the crown (Kether) of Assiah  becomes 
the Sacrificed God of Yetzirah in Tiphereth, and is reborn in the 
Malkuth of Briah as the Child.

The  four worlds should not be viewed as an  arbitrary  four-fold 
"graduation" of the Tree,  with little additional content.  There 
is  a  great deal of experiential worth in this  scheme,  and  it 
reflects real and important changes in consciousness which can be 
observed  in practice.  This is one of several holistic views  of 
the  Tree that concentrates less on the sephiroth and  paths, and 
more  on its deep structure.  I must emphasise that the  Extended 
Tree  is  not another piece of pretty Kabbalah for  the  armchair 
Kabbalist to indulge in, and I say this because there is tendency 
for  many  who  study  Kabbalah to  become  lost  in  the  pretty 
patterns. The Vision of Splendour  is the curse of those who like 
pretty  patterns.  To  use the Extended Tree  effectively  it  is 
necessary  to  have integrated the model of  the  sephiroth  into 
one's   internal   awareness,   and  be  capable   of   observing 
(relatively)  subtle changes in consciousness - it  is  pointless 
having an exceedingly detailed map when one is too  short-sighted 
to observe the countryside as it passes!  For this reason I  will 
say no more about the extended Tree.

I  have  stated  that  the four  worlds  represented  "realms  of 
consciousness",  and in support of this view Kabbalah contains  a 
view  of  the  soul which integrates with  the  four  worlds.  My 
interpretation of the word soul is firstly,  that it is a vehicle 
for a particular kind of consciousness,  and secondly, it carries 
with it the connotation of individuality or uniqueness, so that I 
can imagine my souls as encapsulating,  in different realms, that 
which is unique to me.

In Kabbalah there are five parts to the soul.  The sephira  Binah 
is the Mother of souls,  the letter associated with Binah is  He, 
and the number associated with He is five. The five souls are:

Yechidah - uniqueness
Chiah    - vitality
Neshamah - breath     soul proper
Ruach - wind-spirit   intellectual spirit
Nephesh - soul        vital spirit/soul

The attribution to the four worlds is 

Briah - Neshamah
Ruach - Yetzirah
Nephesh - Assiah

The  precise difference between Yechidah,  Chiah and Neshamah  is 
unclear; Kaplan gives the following attribution:

Yechidah - Kether
Chiah - Chokhmah
Binah - Neshamah

For practical purposes only the Nephesh,  Ruach and Neshamah need 
be considered,  and the bulk of the discussion will refer to this 
trio.

The Nephesh is the animal soul,  the "soul of the body".  Animals 
possess this soul, and as human beings are animals, we share this 
inheritance.  The Nephesh is concerned with the needs of the body 
- hunger, pleasure, rest, sexual satisfaction, social status etc. 
In many cultures,  if a person is asked where their soul resides, 
they will not point to their head: they point to their heart. The 
Secret of the Golden Flower provides a description of the  animal 
soul:

"This heart is dependent on the outside world.  If a man does not 
eat  for one day even,  it feels extremely uncomfortable.  If  it 
hears  something terrifying,  it throbs;  if it  hears  something 
enraging it stops;  if it is faced with death it becomes sad;  if 
it sees something beautiful it is dazzled."

Note  the  close identification with the body and  its  feelings. 
Kabbalists believe the Nephesh comes into being when we are born, 
and it decays with the body when we die.  According to widespread 
belief, women are more attuned to the body soul than men, and the 
Nephesh is sometimes depicted as being feminine;  whether this is 
simply  sexual  stereotyping must remain an  open  question.  The 
Nephesh is associated with Assiah,  the world of making, and this 
emphasises its close link with the material world,  and the  body 
itself.

The  Ruach is the rational soul,  and is associated with  air  or 
wind  (the  word  literally means air),  and with  the  world  of 
Yetzirah. Traditionally, the Ruach was not seen as something that 
one was given automatically;  in the words of Scholem,  it was  a 
"post-natal  increment".  It  is the case that some  people  live 
almost exclusively according to physical needs,  and others spend 
a  great  deal  of  time  finding  a  rational  basis  for  their 
behaviour,  but  I  do  not think there is  any  evidence  for  a 
discontinuity,  and  I  think we must assume that  the  Ruach  is 
everywhere  present in some measure.  What can be said is that  a 
level  of  consciousness represented by Ruach exists  in  varying 
degrees from person to person.  The Ruach is based on the ability 
to  create  abstract  models of the  world  in  conciousness  and 
reflect  on  them,  so that while a hungry Nephesh might  grab  a 
whole pizza and consume it without a moments thought,  the  Ruach 
might  reflect on the activity of pizza-eating in the context  of 
"Do unto others..." and conclude that sharing it might be a  Good 
Thing.  We see here the basis for morality, the ability to make a 
conscious choice between good and evil,  and it is here that  the 
Ruach  is elevated above the Nephesh in the eyes  of  traditional 
Kabbalah.  This ignores the possibility that the Ruach might well 
knock  the  Nephesh over the head (making an  impeccable  ethical 
case,  well argued) and not only grab the whole of the pizza, but 
attempt to corner the market in Mozarella.

If  we ignore the questionable value of being able to reflect  on 
the morality of our decisions, we are still left with the ability 
to reflect;  we have the ability to reflect on ourselves, perhaps 
even to reflect ourselves, and create a "self-image". The Nephesh 
lacks this ability to reflect upon itself - I have never seen  an 
adult cat study itself in a mirror. Because the Ruach can reflect 
upon itself,  and create a self image, it can become an entity in 
its own right, perhaps even dissociating itself from the body and 
its  needs,  perhaps  even producing someone who feels  guilt  at 
indulging  in  the "sins of the flesh".  We find the  "spiritual" 
person  who cannot accept their physicality and lives in hope  of 
achieving  a  mythical  dreamland.  We have  millions  of  people 
reflecting  upon themselves and concluding that they are  "wrong" 
in some way - the wrong shape,  the wrong size, the wrong colour, 
the wrong age, and other people trying to manipulate our language 
to  fix a problem that is unlikely ever to go away in  a  culture 
hedged around with so many taboos - sex,  death,  danger, natural 
religious  expression,  pain.  It  is unlikely that  someone  who 
thinks  they are the wrong size is going to ever feel good  about 
themselves as long as they view the body as a means to an end,  a 
vehicle,  a carriage which conveys them through life,  a  fashion 
accessory.  There  are  strong taboos  connected  anything  which 
points too directly towards our physical and animal nature. 



My  own  view of the Ruach is profoundly  negative.  Our  culture 
develops  this single aspect of consciousness to such  an  absurd 
degree  that the Ruach is incapable of forming a sensible  notion 
concerning either the Nephesh or Neshamah,  and turning its  face 
away from both the lower and higher worlds, becomes obsessed with 
its own creations. The Ruach has a tendency to reduce the body to 
an  object  and often lives a life completely at  odds  with  the 
needs of the Nephesh.  Where there is a spiritual aspiration, the 
Ruach produces a monstrous and bloated reflection,  "itself-made-
perfect",  and  aspires towards this caricature  of  itself.  The 
Ruach  is  a patchwork monster,  a grotesque  reflection  of  its 
creator,  and it lurches about the world trying to make sense  of 
what  is happening,  sometimes playing like  a  child,  sometimes 
leaving a trail of destruction.  It is the king that needs to  be 
slain, the god that must be sacrificed.

The  Neshamah is the Breath of God.  In the Bible it states  "And 
the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,  and  breathed 
into  his nostrils the breath of life;  and man became  a  living 
soul".  The  "breath  of life" is the Neshamah,  and  unlike  the 
Nephesh  and the Ruach it is a gift from God,  and the source  of 
our  ability to intuit the realm of the  divine.
     It is difficult to write about the Neshamah. The Ruach tends 
to idealise the Neshamah, and in the absence of a genuine contact 
projects a distorted reflection of itself. An attempt to describe 
the Neshamah encourages the creation of such reflections.

A characteristic of the World of Briah,  to which the Neshamah is 
attributed,  is  that it is beyond space and time,  and from  the 
point of view of those living in space and time the Neshamah  has 
an  eternal quality of being...just being.  It is the hub  around 
which the wheel of personality turns.  As we live our  lives,  we 
change, but something at the centre of our being does not change. 
The magician Aleister Crowley wrote about "True Will",  and while 
this concept is no easier to grasp than the Neshamah,  both refer 
to  a part of us that exists outside of the ebb and flow of  life 
in  the mundane world.  Writing about the  three  souls,  Crowley 
comments:

"The  Neschamah is that aspiration which in most men is  no  more 
than a void and a voiceless longing.  It becomes articulate  only 
when  it  compels the Ruach to interpret  it.  The  Nephesch,  or 
animal soul,  is not the body itself; the body is excremental, of 
the  Qlippoth  or shells.   The Nephesch is that  coherent  brute 
which  animates  it,  from the reflexes to the highest  forms  of 
conscious  activity.  These again are only cognizable  when  they 
translate  themselves  to  the Ruach.  The Ruach  lastly  is  the 
machine of the mind converging on a central consciousness,  which 
appears to be the ego. The true ego, is however, above Neschamah, 
whose occasional messages to the Ruach warn the human ego of  the 
existence of his superior. Such communications may be welcomed or 
resented, encouraged or stifled."

The relationship between the Neshamah and the Holy Guardian Angel 
is  unclear.  What  can  be said is that  in  many  cases  people 
approach  Neshamah through the medium of an entity which acts  as 
an intermediary between the Ruach and the Neshamah.  There is  no 
doubt  that  in many cases the HGA is the Ruach's  own  idealised 
projection,  but  that does not invalidate the notion that it  is 
capable  of linking the two levels of consciousness.  The HGA  is 
associated  with the sephira Tiphereth,  the point on the  Pillar 
of Consciousness where Briah overlaps with Yetzirah.

A  discussion of souls carries with it,  far more so than any  of 
the Kabbalalistic framework discussed so far,  the temptation  to 
indulge  in  metaphysical speculation.  Traditional  Kabbalah  is 
filled with this,  and there is much speculation on the origin of 
souls,  the nature of souls, the fate of the soul, reincarnation, 
and  so  on.  This traditional material is  adequately  presented 
elsewhere:   I   feel  public  speculation  on  such  topics   is 
counterproductive  as  it simply provides more material  for  the 
never-ceasing elaborations of the Ruach.

In  Kabbalah  there is a view that if there is a  defect  in  the 
creation,  it  is a result of separating that which  should  have 
been united.  I have made my views on the Ruach clear,  that here 
is  a  level  of consciousness which has turned  inwards  and  no 
longer  carries  out  its task of mediating  between  higher  and 
lower.  A  trace of this attitude can be found in  the  quotation 
from  Crowley  above,  where one can detect a  negative  attitude 
towards both the body and the Nephesh.  In the main, Kabbalah has 
a very positive attitude towards living in the world;  the world, 
far  from  being  the "dead matter"  of  the  Neoplatonists,  was 
infused with the Shekhinah,  the indwelling presence of  God.  In 
some  traditions one sees people turning away from the world  and 
mundane life and seeking a "world of the spirit". In Kabbalah the 
world and God are two poles of the same thing, and the purpose of 
the Kabbalist is to bring God into the world,  and take the world 
back  to God.  I say this to emphasise an  important  point:  the 
Neshamah  is  not  higher  than the  Nephesh,  the  body  is  not 
something divorced from spirit.  These are ideas which create the 
separation the Kabbalist tries to overcome. The world, the souls, 
and  god are links in a chain,  and there is no higher or  lower, 
spiritual or mundane - they are all parts of the same thing. 


Plotinus,  "The 
Enneads", Penguin Books 1991