Mystical systems
Da'at
Direct answer
Da'at: Da'at, Hebrew for knowledge, is a station on the Tree of Life placed on the middle line below Keter, which some systems count among the ten sefirot and others do not.
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At a glance
- Also called
- daath, daat kabbalah, daath tree of life, hidden sephirah
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Sephiroth, Keter, Chokmah, Binah
Da'at, Hebrew for knowledge, is a station on the Tree of Life placed on the middle line below Keter, which some systems count among the ten sefirot and others do not.
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What does Da'at mean?
The classical list of the sefirot runs from Keter to Malkhut and has no place for Da'at. It enters when the kabbalists ask how wisdom and understanding, Chokhmah and Binah, come together and pass downward. Da'at is the name for that joining. In the Bible the word is used for intimate, direct knowing, and the kabbalists keep that sense: knowledge that binds the knower to the known.
Schemes that include it leave out Keter, on the ground that the crown is too hidden to be counted, so the number remains ten. The Hasidic school of Chabad takes its very name from the initials of Chokhmah, Binah and Da'at. On diagrams it is often drawn as a dotted circle, to show that it is not a sefirah quite like the rest.
On the tree of the hidden arts: The Tree of Life.
What sets Da'at apart
Da'at is the one name on the Tree whose status is itself the teaching. It is a relation and not a source: where each sefirah gives out something of its own, Da'at only joins what stands above it and carries it down the middle line. The kabbalists therefore give it two faces, a higher one that unites wisdom with understanding and a lower one that links the mind to the emotions. In the Hermetic systems the same spot was reinterpreted as a gap, the place where the Tree is broken, which is close to the reverse of its Jewish sense.
- Hebrew: knowledge, in the sense of knowing by direct contact
- Position: the middle line, below Keter and above Tiferet
- Counted when: Keter is left out, so that the sefirot still number ten
- Chabad: an acronym of Chokhmah, Binah and Da'at
- Hermetic spelling: Daath, set over the Abyss
Often mistaken for something else: Binah is understanding, the working out of an insight in detail; Da'at is the further step of being joined to what is understood, so that it shapes feeling and conduct.
The story behind Da'at
The Sefer Yetzirah insists on ten sefirot, not nine and not eleven, and that rule shaped every later count. Da'at gained its settled role in the Kabbalah of Safed in the sixteenth century and in Lurianic writings. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, who founded Chabad and published the Tanya in 1796, made the trio of wisdom, understanding and knowledge the basis of his teaching on the mind. Hermetic writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries respelled it Daath and set it over a gulf they called the Abyss.
Why Da'at matters
Da'at explains why some Trees show eleven circles and why lists of the sefirot do not always agree, without supposing an error in either.
How to read Da'at
In Jewish teaching it is read as the faculty that turns an idea into conviction, and in Hermetic work as a threshold between the upper three and the lower seven.
Da'at in practice: an example
A teacher might say that a person has understood a truth in Binah but that only in Da'at does it reach the heart and change how they act.
Where readings of Da'at go wrong
The Abyss and the notion of Daath as a false or shadow sephirah belong to modern Hermetic authors, not to Jewish Kabbalah.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- daat meaning, daath, daat kabbalah, daath tree of life, hidden sephirah
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What does Da'at mean?
It is Hebrew for knowledge. On the Tree of Life it names the union of Chokhmah, wisdom, and Binah, understanding, and the channel by which they reach the lower sefirot.
Is Da'at one of the ten sefirot?
Not in the standard list. Some systems count it and omit Keter, so the total is still ten. Others show it as an extra point that is not a sefirah in the full sense.
Why is Da'at shown as a dotted circle?
Diagram makers use a broken outline to mark that it differs in kind from the ten. It is treated as the outward face of Keter or as a meeting point, and not as an eleventh emanation.
