The Tree of Life and its parts

This section covers Kabbalah as a structured system: the ten sephiroth, the emanations through which the infinite is held to unfold into creation; the twenty-two paths that join them; the Hebrew letters attached to those paths; the four worlds through which emanation descends; the parts of the soul; and the qliphoth, the shells or husks of the inverse tree.

Kabbalah arose in medieval Jewish mysticism, chiefly in Provence and Spain from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with the Sefer Yetzirah and the Zohar among its foundational texts. From the Renaissance it was taken up by Christian scholars and, later, by the Western esoteric orders, who mapped tarot, astrology and much else onto its diagram.