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Chapter 6
Now, “One opposite the other Elohim made.” For just as the nefesh elokit (the soul from God) is made up of ten holy sefirot (divine channels) and clothes itself in three holy garments, so the nefesh of the sitra achra (the other side), from kelipat nogah (kelipah: a husk that hides holiness), which is clothed in the person’s blood, is made up of ten crowns of uncleanness. These are seven evil traits that come from four evil elements mentioned above, and the intellect that gives birth to them, which is divided into three. These three are wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, the source of the traits. For the traits follow the measure of the intellect. The child desires and loves small things of little worth, because his intellect is small and too short to reach things more precious than they are. So too he grows angry and wrathful over small things, and so it is with self-glory and the rest of the traits. And these ten unclean aspects, when a person thinks in them, or speaks, or acts, then his thought in his brain, his speech in his mouth, and the power of action in his hands and the rest of his limbs are called garments of uncleanness for these ten unclean aspects, which clothe themselves in them at the time of the act, or the speech, or the thought.
And these are all the deeds that are done under the sun, of which the whole is vapor and a chasing of wind. As it is written in the Zohar, Beshalach (Zohar II 59a), they are a breaking of the spirit, and so on. So too all the words and all the thoughts that are not for Hashem (God), nor for His will, nor for His service. For this is the meaning of the expression sitra achra. Its meaning is another side, which is not the side of holiness. The side of holiness is only a resting and a drawing down from the holiness of the Holy One, blessed be He. And the Holy One, blessed be He, rests only on a thing that is null before Him, blessed be He, whether in actual fact, like the upper angels, or in potential, like every person of Israel below, who has it in his power to be truly null before the Holy One, blessed be He, by giving over his nefesh for the holiness of the Name. Therefore the sages of blessed memory said (Mishnah Avot 3:6) that even one who sits and occupies himself with Torah, the Shekhinah (the divine presence) rests, and so on. And in every group of ten the Shekhinah rests forever.
But whatever is not null before Him, blessed be He, and is instead a thing separate by itself, does not receive life from the holiness of the Holy One, blessed be He, from the aspect of the inwardness of the holiness, its essence and its very being, in its own glory and in itself. It receives only from the aspect of the backs. These come down from level to level, through myriads of levels, in the downward chain of the worlds, by way of cause and what is caused, and many contractions, until the light and the life have lessened so much, a lessening after a lessening, that it can contract and clothe itself in an aspect of exile inside that separate thing, to give it life and to keep it in being, from nothing into a something, so that it will not turn back to being nothing and naught, as at the first, before it was created.
Therefore this world and all that fills it is called the world of the kelipot and the sitra achra. Therefore all the doings of this world are harsh and evil, and the resha’im (a rasha is a wicked person) prevail in it, as it is written in Etz Chaim, Gate 42, the end of Chapter 4. [Gloss: Even though there are within it ten sefirot of Asiyah (the world of action) of holiness, as it is written in Etz Chaim, Gate 43. And within these ten sefirot of Asiyah are ten sefirot of Yetzirah (the world of formation), and within them ten sefirot of Beriah (the world of creation), and within them ten sefirot of Atzilut (the world of emanation), and within those is the light of Ein Sof (the Endless), blessed be He. So the light of Ein Sof, blessed be He, fills all this lowest earth, through His clothing Himself in the ten sefirot of the four worlds, Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, as it is written in Etz Chaim, Gate 47, Chapter 2, and in the book Gilgulim, Chapter 20.]
Only, the kelipot are divided into two levels, one below the other. The lower level is three kelipot, wholly unclean and evil, and there is no good in them at all. In the chariot of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1:4) they are called “a storm wind and a great cloud,” and the rest of the verse. From them flow and are drawn the souls of all the nations of the world, and the lasting of their bodies, and the souls of all living beings that are unclean and forbidden for eating, and the lasting of their bodies, and the lasting and the life of every forbidden food from what grows, such as the barred fruit of a young tree and mixed growth in a vineyard, and so on, as it is written in Etz Chaim, Gate 49, Chapter 6. So too the lasting and the life of every act, speech, and thought of all the 365 commands of “you shall not do,” and their branches, as it is written there, at the end of Chapter 5.
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