#sefiroth

[Sefer Yetsirah or the Book of Creation—which represents a theoretical approach to the problems of cosmology and cosmogony]’s chief subject-matters are the elements of the world—Sefiroth, as the book calls them—and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. These together represent the mysterious forces whose convergence has produced the various combinations observable throughout the whole of creation; they are the ‘thirty-two secret paths of wisdom,’ through which God has created all that exists. These Sefiroth are not just ten stages, or representative of ten stages, in their unfolding; the matter is not as simple as that. But ‘their end is in their beginning and their beginning in their end, as the flame is bound to the coal—close your mouth lest it speak and your heart lest it think.’