Thaumiel is number 1 of the ten Qliphoth (Hebrew qelippot, "shells" or "husks"), the "adverse" or shadow counterparts of the ten sephiroth of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. It is treated as the dark reflection of Kether, and in the demonological lists of this tradition its ruling spirits are given as Satan and Moloch. The underlying idea of the qelippot, the shells that surround and conceal the divine light, is developed at length in the Zohar, which more often uses the broader term Sitra Achra, "the Other Side," for the demonic realm as a whole, and above all in the sixteenth century Lurianic Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, where the "breaking of the vessels" scatters divine sparks that become trapped in the shells.
The two ruling names carry their own older history. Moloch is a Canaanite deity named in the Hebrew Bible in connection with child sacrifice (Leviticus 18:21, 2 Kings 23:10) and long predates any qliphothic scheme; Satan begins in the Hebrew Bible as ha-satan, "the accuser," a courtroom role rather than a proper name, and only later Jewish and Christian literature reads it as a single adversarial figure. Their pairing at Thaumiel, "the twins of God," is read as fitting Kether's own unity split into contending duplicate crowns. This entry describes Thaumiel as a figure of that documented esoteric tradition.