The origin of the Kabbalah centers around a short book titled "Sefer Yetzirah" (Book of Creation). The origin dating of the book is unknown but it is known to have been used in the tenth century, but may have been composed as early as the third century. The book tells that God created the world by the means of thirty-two secret paths of knowledge which are the ten "sephirots" and the twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. It is believed the ten sephirots were originally thought as referring to numbers but later representing emanations from which the cosmos was formed.
Each of the ten emanations within the sephiroth is called a "sephirot," and together they form what is called the Tree of Life. This Tree is the central image of Kabbalistic meditation; for again, each sephirot describes a certain aspect of God, and taken together as the sephiroth they form the sacred name of God. The Tree also describes the path by which the divine spirit descended into the material world, and the path by which humankind must take to ascend to God.
Another basic teaching shared by Gnosticism and the Kabbalah was that the divine spirit, or the soul, had descended from God and became trapped in the human body or matter. This
was a prevalent theory shortly after time of Christ within the Mediterranean area. This and other religious teachings exemplify how such teachings can reflect the beliefs of the peoples of the time.
The first nine sephirots form three triangles with the sephiroth with the tenth sephirot forming the foundation or base. When meditating upon the sephiroth the Kabbalist can concentrate upon any one of the three images which the triangles are said to represent. The images are analogous to God's relationship to humakind and the world. The first triangle represents in impregnation of the female by the male thus creating the world and child, the second triangle represents the development of the world and child, and the third triangle is the adult person or the finished product of the world.
The triangles also depict the human body: the first triangle is the head, the second is the trunk and arms, the third being the legs and reproductive organs which is based on the analogy of the relation between man and God.
An illustration of the sephiroth or Tree of Life is as follows:
- Kether, the supreme crown, (God)
- Chokmah, wisdom
- Binah, understanding
- Chesed, mercy, greatness
- Geburah, strength, rigor
- Tiphareth, beauty, harmony
- Netzach, victory, force
- Hod, splendor
- Yesod, foundation
- Malkuth, kingdom (world)
