Sephiroth

Wisdom

KOKH-mah

Also Known As The Supernal Father · Supernal FatherOriginal Term Abba Father, the Zoharic title.

Origin 1270 to 1300

Chokmah means Wisdom, the second Sephirah, the head of the Pillar of Mercy on the right side of the Tree of Life. Its divine name is Yah, its archangel is Ratziel, and its angelic order is the Auphanim, the Wheels; its sphere is Mazloth, the Zodiac and the fixed stars (in the modern planetary scheme it is often linked with Uranus). It is the first stirring of force out of the unity of Kether: dynamic, outpouring, masculine energy, the primal Father.

As a sphere of experience Chokmah is pure creative impetus, the great flash of will and vitality before it takes any shape, which is why it is called the Supernal Father whose seed pours into the Supernal Mother, Binah. It is symbolized by the straight line, the phallus, and the number two, and it holds the top of the Pillar of Force. It is the well of undirected energy that every lower Sephirah draws upon and gives form to.

Facts

Origins

Origin Period

1270 to 1300 1Zoharic Kabbalah

Origin Periodthe subject's own account

1888 to 1900 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Origin Period

200 to 600 CE 1Sefer Yetzirah, where the ten sefirot are first enumerated

Origin Period

Chokmah appears among the Sefer Yetzirah's original ten Sephiroth of Nothingness, a text Scholem places between the second and sixth century CE and which survives in recensions that do not agree in every particular. 1

Origin Period

Chokmah's place in the now-standard system of ten Sephiroth, with the specific divine name, archangel and planetary associations recorded on this page, crystallizes in the Zoharic literature that Scholem locates in Castile between 1270 and 1300. 1

Origin Periodthe subject's own account

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, fixed Chokmah's place within its own ceremonial correspondence system by 1900, the scheme this atlas follows for Chokmah's Golden Dawn associations. 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Place of Origin

Sefer Yetzirah tradition, late-antique Near East 1

Place of Origin

Sefirotic system developed in Provence and Castile 1

Place of Origin

Western correspondences added in London 1

Language

Biblical Hebrew 1

Language

Aramaic 1

Attributions

Ruling Planetthe subject's own account

The Zodiac (Mazloth) 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Divine Namethe subject's own account

Yah 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Incensethe subject's own account

Musk 3Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Gemstonethe subject's own account

Star Ruby and Turquoise 3Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Plantthe subject's own account

Amaranth 3Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Queen Scale Colourthe subject's own account

Gray 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Tree of Life Pillarthe subject's own account

Pillar of Mercy 2

Identity

Position

2 of 10 1

Also Known As

Chokmah 1

Learn More

Chokmah, Wisdom

Chokmah, Wisdom, is the second sefirah and the first of the active emanations, the point at which the undifferentiated potential of Kether bursts into dynamic, outflowing force. In the imagery of the Tree of Life it heads the right-hand pillar, the Pillar of Mercy, and is the supernal masculine, the primordial father, Abba, whose creative impulse is received and given form by Binah, the supernal mother, across the abyss. Its divine name is Yah, a short form of the ineffable name of God.

Chokmah is wisdom not in the sense of accumulated knowledge but of the first flash of pure creative energy, the lightning-stroke of insight before it is shaped into understanding. As with all the sefirot, its place in the scheme is fixed by the Sefer Yetzirah and developed in the medieval Kabbalah of the Zohar; Chokmah and Binah together with Kether form the three supernal sefirot, set apart from the lower seven by the abyss, the gulf that separates the divine ideal from the created world below.

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

Chokmah and the Western Correspondences

In the correspondence system of the Golden Dawn and Liber 777, Chokmah is traditionally assigned not to a single planet but to the sphere of the Zodiac or the fixed stars, the Mazloth, fitting for the sefirah of primal outgoing force just below the Primum Mobile of Kether; its colour is grey, and it corresponds to the four Twos and the four Kings or Knights of the tarot suits. This atlas, following a common twentieth-century modernisation, assigns the outer planet Uranus to Chokmah, an overlay later than the original 1888 scheme, made once the planets discovered after the eighteenth century were fitted into a system built for the seven classical planets. Both attributions are Hermetic rather than Jewish.

The distinction matters throughout the Tree: the sefirah Chokmah, its name Yah, and its role as supernal father belong to Jewish Kabbalah, developed over centuries from the Sefer Yetzirah through the Zohar to the Lurianic system of sixteenth-century Safed, whereas the planetary, colour and tarot correspondences are the work of the Victorian Hermetic Qabalah and its later revisers.

Wisdom

2 entries

Hierarchy

Auphanim

Wisdom

Cherubim

Wisdom

Connections

Associated With

Grey

Grey is the colour of Chokmah in the Queen and Emperor scales of the Golden Dawn's four Qabalistic colour scales. The scales are that order's system; classical Kabbalistic literature does not assign a fixed palette to the sephirot.