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Posts: 2018
Jan 23 04 5:36 PM
Quote:Kether is typically seen as the "beginning," or the "source" from which everything else springs. Numerologically, it is associated with the number one. It's considered the first stage in the process of manifestation, or creation, or emanation. For a basic view of Kether, it's possible to stop right here. But we can look more closely at Kether and see some interesting subtleties. Let's start with the name of the sefira; kether, which translates in English to "crown." This establishes a link to the idea of higher authority or supreme power and is consistent with idea of divinity or Godliness. Indeed, some see Kether as actually representing God, or at least as close to God as we can get on the tree of Life. But think back to the framework I previously presented in which the sefirot are seen as filters that enable us to perceive aspect of God and/or tools used by God to create. In that context, we'd have to say that no individual sefira, even Kether, is any more or less divine than any other. So we really wouldn't want to point to Kether and say that this particular sefira is God, or even the closest approximation we can get to God.
Quote:Now that we know we're part of a perpetual process of evolution, which part of that process does Kether represent? Here are a few clues. Remember that the word Kether translates to "crown." Crown isn't part of the King's head. It's something worn on top of the head; something that stands apart from the King himself. Before analyzing this, let's look at some more correspondences. Kether corresponds to the first of the divine "sayings" of creation from Genesis 1:1. There is room for debate regarding the exact method of counting, but one noted authority, Aryeh Kaplan, equates Kether to the very first sentence of the Torah, commonly translated as "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (The point I'm making here holds up even under alternative translations presented earlier.) Kether also corresponds to the first of the "Ten Commandments." Again, there's room to debate methods of counting, but it is reasonable to relate Kether to "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage." If we look at these three things together, what we see is something in the nature of a preamble, or a prologue; an overall introduction; something that sets the stage for everything else. The crown is an identifier; it tells us who/what the king is and what the king can do; what he's all about. The first creative saying from Genesis and the first Commandment likewise tell us who God is and suggest what he can do. So we can start by saying that Kether introduces the idea of creative potential the way an overture introduces us to a musical performance, or the way a preface introduces us to a book.Kether, the imminent actualization of the potential for all things, is the point of connection between the complete unknowable wholeness of God, and those aspects of God that we are able to perceive via the sefirot.
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