Kingdom

Malkuth, the Kingdom, is the tenth and last sefirah, the point at which the whole descending flow of the Tree of Life arrives in the created, material world, the physical universe, the earth, the body, the realm of ordinary experience. It stands at the foot of the central Pillar of Equilibrium, receiving through Yesod all that the nine sefirot above pour down, and it is the sphere in which the divine, having emanated through every stage, becomes fully manifest and tangible.

Malkuth is also identified in Kabbalah with the Shekhinah, the indwelling divine presence, the feminine aspect of God that dwells with creation and, in exile, shares its suffering; the reunion of the Shekhinah with the higher sefirot is a central longing of Kabbalistic devotion. Its divine name is Adonai ha-Aretz, the Lord of the Earth. Because Malkuth is the world we inhabit, it is both the lowest sphere and, paradoxically, the one closest to hand, the throne of the Kingdom and the ground beneath the feet. The sefirah belongs to the doctrine of the ten emanations named in the Sefer Yetzirah and developed through the Zohar and the later Kabbalah.

Sources The ZoharTraditionally attributed to Moses de Leon with Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation in Theory and PracticeAryeh Kaplan

Malkuth, standing below the planetary spheres, is assigned not a planet but the four elements and the sphere of the earth itself, the Cholem Yesodoth, the breaker of the foundations or the sphere of the elements. In the Golden Dawn system of 1888 and in Liber 777, its colours are the four earthy tones of citrine, olive, russet and black, and it corresponds to the four Tens of the tarot suits and to the four Princesses or Pages, the court cards rooted in the material world. Malkuth is where the tarot's Tens, the cards of completion and of the fullest material expression of each suit, come to rest.

As everywhere on the Tree, the sefirah Malkuth, its name Adonai ha-Aretz, and its identification with the Shekhinah and the created world are Jewish Kabbalah, the achievement of the living Jewish mystical tradition, whereas the mapping onto the elements, the tarot ranks and the magical colour scales is Hermetic Qabalah, the Western ceremonial adaptation formalised by the Golden Dawn. In Malkuth the whole scheme reaches the ground, and the difference between contemplating that descent and tabulating it for magic is the difference between the two traditions.