Isaac Luria

The teaching

Taught from what Hayyim Vital set down of his teaching in the Etz Hayyim and the Gate of Reincarnations, with his own Sabbath hymns.

What the withdrawal left

Luria's three acts, the withdrawal of the Infinite to make room for a world, the breaking of the vessels that could not hold its light, and the repair left to human hands, are taught in full on the page of The Zohar and Safed, under The Tree of Life. His pupil Hayyim Vital set down the rest of the teaching, and it begins with what the withdrawal left behind.

When the light withdrew, the space was not left wholly empty. A trace of it remained, the reshimu, as a vessel emptied of oil still keeps something of the oil. Into the space the Infinite sent a single line of light, and the worlds took shape along it in two ways at once: as circles, one within another like the skins of an onion, and as an upright figure along the line, in the form of a human being, the first man above, Adam Kadmon.

The kings who reigned and died

Before the world that now stands, Luria teaches, there was a world of chaos. Its powers came out as separate points, each standing alone, unable to give to another or to receive from it, and so they could not hold the light and broke. The Torah records them as the kings of Edom: And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel. Of each of the first seven it says that he reigned and that he died, and each death is the breaking of a vessel. Of the last no death is told and his wife is named, and with him, where male and female are joined, the repair begins.

The faces

In the world of repair the powers no longer stand alone but are gathered into faces, partzufim, whole figures that turn toward one another. The Long Face, Arikh Anpin, is the patience of the highest crown. The Father and the Mother, Abba and Imma, are wisdom and understanding. The Small Face, Ze'ir Anpin, holds the six powers of the middle, and his female, Nukva, is the kingdom, the Shekhinah. They look at one another, face to face or back to back; they are joined, conceive and bring forth; and through their joining the light flows down in measure.

The Small Face grows as a child grows: conceived in the Mother, nursed, and brought to full stature when the mind of the higher faces enters him. The prayers of each day follow that growth. In the morning prayer the Small Face and his female are raised from back to back until, at the standing prayer, they turn face to face, and every prayer said with its intention takes part in that turning.

Four worlds

Below the faces the light comes down through four worlds, each a seal pressed from the one above: emanation, where the powers are one with their source; creation, the world of the throne; formation, the world of the angels; and action, our own world, where the light is most hidden and the husks are most mixed with it. Every repair begins below, in the world of action, and goes up through the others.

The roots of souls

All souls were held in the soul of the first Adam, and when he sinned it shattered; its sparks fell among the husks, and every soul since is one of those sparks. Each belongs to a root, a branch of Adam's great soul, and the souls of one root are bound together, so that what one repairs helps the others and what one spoils burdens them.

A soul that has not finished its repair returns in another life to complete it. This is gilgul, the turning of the soul. Each soul must fulfil all the commandments over the course of its lives, and it comes back for what it left undone or to mend what it did wrong. The Gate of Reincarnations traces the roots of many souls through the figures of Scripture and the sages, so that a soul's present troubles are read as work left over from before.

There is also ibbur, impregnation. A righteous soul may come for a time to dwell in a living person beside that person's own soul, to help them fulfil some commandment or to complete some repair of its own, and then it leaves. Unlike gilgul, it comes not at birth but in the course of a life.

Intentions and unifications

Every word of prayer and every commandment, in Luria's teaching, is said with an intention, kavvanah, directed to particular names of God and to the faces and worlds those names govern, and the prayer books of his school print the intentions beside the words. Beyond them stand the unifications, yichudim, meditations that weave together the letters of two names of God with their vowels. He gave them to each pupil according to the root of his soul, some to be done at the graves of the righteous so as to join the pupil's soul to theirs. They were given by the master to each pupil in person, within a life of study and prayer, and the tradition keeps them for those it has prepared.

Love before prayer

Before prayer, he taught, a person takes upon himself the commandment thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, for prayer goes up as the prayer of the whole people, and a heart at odds with a neighbour divides what prayer is meant to join. His pupils bound themselves to love one another, to pray for one another's needs and to share one another's troubles, as if they were the limbs of one body.

Joy, anger and the Sabbath table

The presence of God, he taught, does not rest where there is sadness, and so the commandments are to be done in joy. Anger he judged harshly: in anger, he taught, the holy soul withdraws from a person and something lower takes its place, and the harm outlasts the anger.

The Sabbath is the height of the week, and he wrote three hymns for its three meals in the language of the Zohar. The meal of the eve belongs to the field of holy apples, the Shekhinah, the bride who comes in; the meal of the morning to the Holy Ancient One; and the third meal, late in the afternoon, to the Small Face. At each the table is laid and the hymn sung to welcome the face to which that meal belongs.