Tree of life (Kabbalah)
[2] Simo Parpola asserted that the concept of a tree of life with different spheres encompassing aspects of reality traces its origins back to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the ninth century BCE.
[2] The Assyrians assigned moral values and specific numbers to Mesopotamian deities similar to those used in Kabbalah and claims that the state tied these to sacred tree images as a model of the king parallel to the idea of Adam Kadmon.
[2] However, J. H. Chajes states that the ilan should be regarded as primarily indebted to the Porphyrian tree and maps of the celestial spheres rather than to any speculative ancient sources, Assyrian or otherwise.
[16] The nodes are also associated with deities, angels, celestial bodies, moral values, single colors or combinations of them, and specific numbers.
[17] Thus, in the year 1516, Reuchlin's diagram came to appear on the cover of the Paolo Riccio's Latin translation of Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla's Gates of Light.
Finally, several versions from unknown artists introducing 21 and 22 paths appeared in the posthumous print editions of Moses Cordovero's Pardes Rimonim between 1592 and 1609.
According to 20th-century occult writer Aleister Crowley, Kircher designed his diagram in a syncretic attempt to reconcile several distinct ideas.
This heavily annotated version, self-termed Sefirotic System, introduced more innovations: abstract concepts, divine names, the 22 Hebrew letters for each path, and new astrological symbols.
It is not always pictured in reproductions of the tree of life, but is referred to universally as Ohr Ein Sof (Hebrew: אֵין סוֹף אוֹר, romanized: endless light).
This is why another correspondence for "Binah" is the idea of suffering because the "supernal" maternal energy gives birth to a world that is inherently excluded from that divine union.
Since man is invested with a mind, consciousness in the Kabbalah is thought of as the fruit of the physical world, through whom the original infinite energy can experience and express itself as a finite entity.
[26] After the energy of creation has condensed into matter, it is thought to reverse its course back up the tree until it is once again united with its true nature, Keter.
Thus the Kabbalist seeks to know himself and the universe as an expression of God and to make the journey of return using the stages charted by the spheres, until he has come to the realization he sought.
[26] In Hermetic Qabalah, the Tree of Life is a fundamental concept and symbol that represents the structure of the universe and the spiritual and metaphysical path to enlightenment.
It is often depicted as a diagram composed of ten interconnected spheres (called sephiroth) and 22 connecting paths, which together form a pattern resembling a tree.
The path emanates from the Ein Sof, the boundless source of divinity, begins at Kether (the crown) and ends at Malkuth (the kingdom), where the physical world manifests, and symbolizes "the logos which unifies them.
