Satariel

Satariel is the third Qlipha, the shadow of Binah, the sphere of Understanding. Its name is linked to concealment, the "concealers" or those who hide, for it is understanding withheld and truth veiled, also spelled Sathariel.

In the scheme followed here it is ruled by Lucifuge Rofocale, a name with a much more recent pedigree than most of the other qliphothic rulers: it has little presence in earlier biblical or classical grimoire demonology and instead originates in the eighteenth century French grimoire the Grand Grimoire, where Lucifuge Rofocale is named as the prime minister of Hell, summoned through a ritual of pact rather than through any Kabbalistic operation. Its adoption into the qliphothic scheme illustrates how freely the later systematizers of the ten-fold shadow tree drew on demonology of very different ages and origins, folk grimoire material alongside biblical and Talmudic figures, to fill out a structure the earlier Kabbalistic sources never populated with named individual rulers. Spellings and rulers of the shells vary by source; the material is presented academically.

Binah is attributed to Saturn, the planet of limitation, structure and time, and Satariel's concealment is read as Saturn's binding, form-giving force turned to secrecy, withholding understanding rather than giving it shape.

The concept of the qelippot is a genuine part of classical Kabbalah, but the tidy scheme of ten named "shadow sephiroth", each with an assigned ruling demon, is largely a later construction. It was elaborated by Christian Kabbalists, given systematic form in the ceremonial magic of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and developed further in twentieth and twenty-first century "Left-Hand Path" and Thelemic writing. The demons named as rulers, such as Lucifuge Rofocale for Satariel, are drawn from earlier Jewish, Christian and grimoire demonology and mapped onto the scheme after the fact.

Luria's own kelippot, as set out in Hayyim Vital's Etz Chaim, number four rather than ten: three described as "completely impure" and a fourth, kelippat nogah, a translucent or glowing shell understood as a mixture of good and evil rather than pure evil, through which the ordinary permitted things of the world are said to pass. A one-to-one shell for every sephirah, with Satariel as Binah's specific opposite, does not appear in that Lurianic material in this form; it is the later systematizers, working chiefly from S. L. MacGregor Mathers's unpublished paper on the Qlippoth, who built the fully sephirothic ten-fold tree the modern list now presents. The system is presented here as a documented strand of esoteric thought, described in historical terms; the demons are not asserted to be real, and nothing here is offered as instruction or as the teaching of any single religion.

Sources Major Trends in Jewish MysticismGershom Scholem with The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic FellowshipLawrence Fine