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The Holy Living Creatures

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The Holy Living Creatures

Chaioth ha-Qadesh, the "Holy Living Creatures", is the angelic host assigned to Kether, the Crown, the first and highest sephirah of the Tree of Life. The name derives from the chayot, the living creatures of Ezekiel's vision (Ezekiel 1), and it belongs to the Kabbalistic list of angelic hosts, one for each sephirah, rather than to the nine choirs of Pseudo-Dionysius. In the systematisation used here, associated with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, each sephirah is paired with a divine name, an archangel and such a host of angels; Chaioth ha-Qadesh stands at the summit as the host of Kether. The material is presented as a documented feature of the Kabbalistic and ceremonial tradition, not as the doctrine of any single religion.

Ezekiel's vision (Ezekiel 1:5-14) describes four chayot, each with four faces, a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle, and four wings, moving with the sound of rushing water beneath a throne of sapphire; later Jewish and Christian tradition frequently conflated these living creatures with the cherubim of the same prophet's later vision (Ezekiel 10) and with the four creatures of Revelation 4:6-8, even though Ezekiel himself describes them in two separate visions using different, though overlapping, language, a conflation that long predates the Kabbalistic assignment of Chaioth ha-Qadesh to Kether described here.

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