We’re going to need to do some serious backtracking here and explain the whole notion of “worlds”, of which Adam Kadmon is the first of the five primary ones, if we’re to understand what we’re about to come upon.
We’ve discussed the various “worlds” — Olamot–before and will do so again [1], but for now consider these fundamental remarks about them by R’ Ch. Vitale in Sha’arei Kiddusha (3:1).
He starts off with the notion that God “emanated five ‘worlds’”, with “each acting as a ‘soul’ to another” which we’ll explain below. The first is termed “Adam Kadmon which is mentioned in Tikkunei Zohar [2] and is referred to as the Tzachtzachot (“the [realm of the] lucid and luminous lights”) by the Gaonim [3]; the second is the world of Atzilut (of Emanation [see Numbers 11:17 and Ecclesiastes 2:10]); the third is the world of Briah (of Creation); the fourth is the world of Yetzirah (of Formation); and the fifth is the world of Assiyah (of Action)”[4].
R’ Vitale remarks that “these five worlds are termed (i.e., they embody) a single Tetragrammaton” (which has resonance with Ramchal’s remarks in Petach 31). And he indicates that “since, due to its sublimity and to the fact that it’s (only) represented by the ‘tip’ of the י (as cited above, and as opposed to an entire letter, which further underscores its sublimity),… we (usually) only speak of the (other) four” in our discussions. And he declares that the greatest of them, Adam Kadmon, “incorporates all of them and is … (their) root”.
Here’s how the worlds act as “souls” to one another, as cited above. “The higher world is engarbed in the lower one like a soul (could be said to be engarbed or ensconced) in a body”. (A good analogy to this would be to the hand of the puppeteer that’s ensconced in the puppet while animating it.) He adds that “this (formation) is true throughout and in every instance — including this lowly world” which is also animated by a higher world, “and the lot of them thus serve as garments to the Ein Sof (which thus functions as) the Soul of all (other) souls”.
His final point, for our purposes, is the fact that “just as the Lights (i.e., Sephirot in this statement but also applicable to Partzufim or Olamot) develop in descent formation (from highest to lower, to lower yet, and to lowest) and are each an amalgam of the rest of the ten Sephirot, each individual Sephira is likewise divisible by thousands and hundreds-of-thousands (i.e., by an infinite number of component parts)”.
At bottom, then, we’re presented with five “worlds”, the first of which is often not discussed because it’s so sublime, though it acts as the animating force behind the lot of them (and is itself animated by Ein Sof), and which are all intimately interconnected by an infinite number of component parts and include this world which, while material, is rooted in sheer Godliness.
We’ll next see how Ramchal understands this.
Notes:
[1] See note 48 to Section 3, and Petach 38 below and elsewhere below.
[2] See Tikkunim 19, 70 as well as elsewhere there.
[3] See the discussion in Pardes 11:1.
[4] See Isaiah 43:7 for reference to the last three.
(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org
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