Chapter I
What it means
Kabbalists teach that God in himself, the Ein Sof, “the Infinite”, is beyond all knowing. God becomes known through ten sefirot In Kabbalah, the ten powers through which the hidden God becomes known and acts in the world. Glossary, qualities or powers that flow out from the hidden source and shape the world. Drawn as ten circles linked by paths, they form the Tree of Life.
The tree has three columns: a right column of love and mercy, a left of judgement and power, and a central column of balance between them. Because humans are made in God’s image, the same pattern is read as a map of the soul, and the mystic’s task is to bring its forces into harmony.
Chapter II
Where it comes from
The term sefirot first appears in the Sefer Yetzirah, an early text of Jewish mysticism. The doctrine was developed in Provence and Spain in the 12th and 13th centuries, above all in the Zohar. Diagrams of the sefirot appear in manuscripts from the late Middle Ages and spread widely in print from the 16th century, when the Kabbalists of Safed, notably Moses Cordovero and the school of Isaac Luria, developed the doctrine further.
From the Renaissance, Christian scholars and later Western occultists adopted and adapted the diagram.
Chapter III
Where you see it today
The Tree of Life is studied in Kabbalistic and Hasidic circles, appears in Jewish art and jewellery, and is widely reproduced, often far from its original meaning, in popular spirituality.