Sephiroth

Foundation

YEH-sod

Origin 1270 to 1300

Yesod means Foundation, the ninth Sephirah, on the Middle Pillar of Equilibrium just above Malkuth. Its divine name is Shaddai El Chai, 'Almighty Living God', its archangel is Gabriel, and its angelic order is the Kerubim, the Cherubim; its planet is the Moon. It is the receptacle that gathers the emanations of all the Sephiroth above and transmits them, focused, into the material world of Malkuth.

As a sphere of experience Yesod is the astral plane, the subconscious, dream, and the reflected image: the storehouse of the unseen forces and imaginative patterns that underlie physical reality, the machinery behind the appearances. It governs the tides of instinct and the treasure-house of images, and it is the sphere the practitioner learns to purify so that what descends into manifestation is clear. It is symbolized by the number nine, the Moon, and the sexual and generative powers, and it is the foundation on which the visible world stands.

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 Periodthe subject's own account

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

Origin Period

Yesod 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

Yesod'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

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 Moon 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Divine Namethe subject's own account

Shaddai El Chai 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Incensethe subject's own account

Jasmine 3Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Gemstone

Quartz 3Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

the subject's own accountMoonstone appears as the stone for Yesod in many modern popular correspondence charts, but the Golden Dawn table itself gives Quartz. This record follows the table rather than the popular restatement.

Plantthe subject's own account

Mandrake and Damiana 3Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Queen Scale Colourthe subject's own account

Violet 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Tree of Life Pillarthe subject's own account

Pillar of Balance 2

Identity

Position

9 of 10 1

Also Known As

Yesod 1

Learn More

Yesod, Foundation

Yesod, Foundation, is the ninth sefirah, positioned on the central Pillar of Equilibrium directly below Tiphareth and directly above Malkuth, and it is the channel through which all the energies of the sefirot above are gathered and transmitted into the material world of the tenth sphere. It is the foundation in the sense of the base on which the created world rests, the reservoir and conduit of the divine influences, and it is traditionally associated with the Moon, with the astral or etheric level, with imagination, dream and the generative and sexual powers.

Yesod collects the flow of the whole Tree and focuses it downward, so that nothing reaches Malkuth except through it. Its divine name is Shaddai El Chai, the Almighty Living God. In the Kabbalistic scheme Yesod is the vital foundation and the sphere of the tzaddik, the righteous one who channels blessing into the world; it takes its place in the doctrine of the ten emanations named in the Sefer Yetzirah and developed through the Zohar, where its mediating and generative role between the divine and the created is a recurring theme.

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

Yesod and the Western Correspondences

Yesod is assigned the Moon, and the attribution is central to its symbolism: as the moon receives the light of the sun and reflects it to the earth, so Yesod receives the influences of the whole Tree, concentrated through the solar centre of Tiphareth, and transmits them to Malkuth, the material world. In the Golden Dawn system of 1888 and in Liber 777, Yesod's colour is violet, and it corresponds to the four Nines of the tarot suits, the nines being cards of fullness and completion just before the final tens.

The lunar pairing underlies the Western-esoteric reading of Yesod as the sphere of the astral light, of dream, imagination and the subconscious, the subtle level nearest the physical. As throughout, the sefirah Yesod, its name Shaddai El Chai, and its role as the foundation and channel of the divine flow are Jewish Kabbalah, whereas the mapping onto the Moon, a tarot rank and a magical colour scale is Hermetic Qabalah, the Victorian adaptation. The distinction is not pedantry: it separates a theology of divine emanation from a Western system of magical correspondence.

Foundation

1 entry

Hierarchy

Kerubim

Foundation

Connections

Associated With

Gabriel

Gabriel is set over Yesod, the sphere of Foundation and of the Moon, presiding over imagination and the images the mind builds the material world from.