Nitzutzot

Nitzutzot-Sparks of Holiness and the purpose of Shevirah

This doctrine is the Lurianic esoteric meaning of Genesis 36:31 and I Chronicles 1:43: "These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." Edom is described in Genesis as the descendants of Esau. In the Kabbalistic scheme, the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob embody respectively Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferet. Chesed and Gevurah are imbalanced, while Tiferet is harmony between the two. Consequently, while Jacob fathered the 12 tribes of Israel, Abraham gave birth to Ishmael, and Isaac gave birth to Esau. Esau and Ishmael are the two spiritual roots for the Nations of the world. They are identified with unrectified Chesed and unrectified Gevurah respectively, Kindness and Severity of the world of tohu. In the Kabbalistic scheme, they are rectified in the universal Messianic era when all peoples will "go up to the mountain of the Lord" to follow the 7 Laws of Noah. The eight kings listed who reigned in Edom before any king of Israel embodied the eight sephirot of Da'at to Malkhuth in the world of Chaos: the shattered vessels. Of each, it says they lived and died, death connoting the soul-light of the sephirot ascending back to its source while the body-vessel descends-shatters. Attached to the broken vessels are residues of the light, Nitzutzot-"Sparks" of holiness, as all Creation only continues to exist from non-existence by the Divine flow of Will. The sparks are the creative force of the Sephirot down the Four Worlds, giving life to the broken vessels, that become the descending beings of each realm. As they descend, they subdivide innumerable times. The fragments contain only sparks of holiness, allowing them to become self-aware creations rather than being nullified in Divine light. The unabsorbed residue of the broken vessels in our physical, lowest World Assiah becomes the realm of impurity and evil. To Kabbalah, as Creation is enacted through Divine "speech" as in Genesis 1, so gematria (numerical value of Hebrew letters) has spiritual meaning. In the supernal World of Atziluth-Emanation, the origin of our spiritual Order of Worlds, the sparks of holiness are said to subdivide into 288 general-root sparks, read out from the rest of Genesis 1:2, "And the Spirit of God hovered over the waters." Merachepet-"hovered" splits into the number "288 died", the divided Divine sparks within the broken fragments.