The Origins of Evil and Qlippoth in the Divine - Kabbalah - w/‪@drangelapuca

How does Kabbalah explain the origins of Evil? Famous for the Sefirot, Kabbalah also introduced the notion of the Shattering of the Vessels, the demonic Klippot (husks/shells) and the nightmare reality of the Sitra Achra (the Other Side) to explain the origins, nature and destiny of Evil. But how did these ideas develop? In this weeks' episode - a special collaboration with ‪‪@drangelapuca‬ I'll be tracing the development of how early Kabbalah understood evil: as part of the Divine Perfection, Evil thoughts of the Divine that become demons, Primordial worlds created and destroyed in the process of Creation, or a Divine Catharsis by which the coming-to-be of both God, the Sefirot and the Cosmos require a shedding of Primaeval Evil. Join me Friday as Dr. Puca explores contemporary Qliphothic Magic and I turn to the mysterious origins of Evil in the early Kabbalah.

Check out Angela's video -    • Qliphotic Magic explained with@TheEso...  

[Laird]

My summary of the key points of the video:

Speculations about evil in early Kabbalah generally take three distinct forms:

1. Naturalistic: evil existed prior to goodness; goodness is predicated on evil.
   
2. Greater harmony: any existence at all is predicated on both goodness and evil existing.
   
3. Evolutionary/cathartic: evil is an inevitable outcome of the coming into being of the Cosmos; it is a kind of dross or refuse thrown off during that process.
   

Some specific speculations as kabbalistic thought evolved were that:

• The thoughts of God both good and bad gave rise to angels and demons (respectively). Evil flowed out of the mind of God as an ontological substance.
  
• The lamp of darkness - the initial impulse of divine will - struck the divine thought, which threw off a shower of sparks, purifying the divine mind of primordial dross and refuse which was thrown off as evil (the sparks).
  
• The divine underwent a sort of symmetry collapse, throwing off sparks, until it became oriented face to face, generating the sefirot and our Cosmos along with evil.
  
• Evil is an expression of an inverse realm of the ten emanations of the divine; an inverse sefirot. Their hypothesised location varied.
  
• The ten kings mentioned in Genesis were ten previous worlds (universes) that preceded the sefirot and this world; those worlds are the evil trash on which our world was built.
  
• Evil is the backside of the sefirot as a logical correlative.
  
• Good = actuality; evil = potentiality (steresis): both are required for the generation and production of the universe.
  
• Potentiality was sometimes linked with negativity or pure nothingness: light is born out of a primordial darkness, a "rich privation" - nothingness as a something. A bounded void then was the structure into which light was drawn forth, leaving behind the refuse of evil.
  
• This leads to the metaphor of "the shell proceeds the fruit": the chaff comes before the wheat; in fact, the chaff protects the wheat.
  
• Thus, purity is achieved from impurity. As the forging of a sword throws off sparks, so does the violent becoming of the universe throw off sparks of refuse (evil).
  
• This world is so close to the previous ten worlds of impurity that sickness, foulness, and death constantly threaten it.
  

These lines converged and were systematised as the hypothesis that the existence of primeval privation, impurity, and purgation are an act of divine perfection via the formation of the sefirot and the Cosmos. In the work of Isaac Luria this became Kabbalah as it is now known: the myth of the Breaking of the Vessels, the qlippoth, the Sitra Achra from the sphera of the Beri'ah, and the theurgical process of redemption.

My question:

Evolving speculative thought is better than devolving speculative thought, but no guarantee of truth. How can we assess how close to truth this evolved system of thought actually is?

My summary of the key points of the video:

Speculations about evil in early Kabbalah generally take three distinct forms:

1. Naturalistic: evil existed prior to goodness; goodness is predicated on evil.
   
2. Greater harmony: any existence at all is predicated on both goodness and evil existing.
   
3. Evolutionary/cathartic: evil is an inevitable outcome of the coming into being of the Cosmos; it is a kind of dross or refuse thrown off during that process.
   

Some specific speculations as kabbalistic thought evolved were that:

• The thoughts of God both good and bad gave rise to angels and demons (respectively). Evil flowed out of the mind of God as an ontological substance.
  
• The lamp of darkness - the initial impulse of divine will - struck the divine thought, which threw off a shower of sparks, purifying the divine mind of primordial dross and refuse which was thrown off as evil (the sparks).
  
• The divine underwent a sort of symmetry collapse, throwing off sparks, until it became oriented face to face, generating the sefirot and our Cosmos along with evil.
  
• Evil is an expression of an inverse realm of the ten emanations of the divine; an inverse sefirot. Their hypothesised location varied.
  
• The ten kings mentioned in Genesis were ten previous worlds (universes) that preceded the sefirot and this world; those worlds are the evil trash on which our world was built.
  
• Evil is the backside of the sefirot as a logical correlative.
  
• Good = actuality; evil = potentiality (steresis): both are required for the generation and production of the universe.
  
• Potentiality was sometimes linked with negativity or pure nothingness: light is born out of a primordial darkness, a "rich privation" - nothingness as a something. A bounded void then was the structure into which light was drawn forth, leaving behind the refuse of evil.
  
• This leads to the metaphor of "the shell proceeds the fruit": the chaff comes before the wheat; in fact, the chaff protects the wheat.
  
• Thus, purity is achieved from impurity. As the forging of a sword throws off sparks, so does the violent becoming of the universe throw off sparks of refuse (evil).
  
• This world is so close to the previous ten worlds of impurity that sickness, foulness, and death constantly threaten it.
  

These lines converged and were systematised as the hypothesis that the existence of primeval privation, impurity, and purgation are an act of divine perfection via the formation of the sefirot and the Cosmos. In the work of Isaac Luria this became Kabbalah as it is now known: the myth of the Breaking of the Vessels, the qlippoth, the Sitra Achra from the sphera of the Beri'ah, and the theurgical process of redemption.

My question:

Evolving speculative thought is better than devolving speculative thought, but no guarantee of truth. How can we assess how close to truth this evolved system of thought actually is?

If the speculative thought is evolving then maybe it's closer to the truth by definition.
"The devil is god when he's drunk" - leonard cohen

[Laird]

If the speculative thought is evolving then maybe it's closer to the truth by definition.

By one definition, yes. By the definition I had in mind though, "evolving" thought just means thought that is becoming more sophisticated and coherent, but sophisticated and coherent thought can still be spectacularly wrong.

"The devil is god when he's drunk" - leonard cohen

Hey, some of us are happy, benevolent drunks - most of the time. (I quit back in February last year).