The Redemption of the Universe - the Cosmological process

Lurianic Kabbalah presents a series of stages, occuring over the following thousands of years (remember this is still a biblical chronology, in which the history of the entire cosmos takes no more than seven thousand or so years). Our present age is one in which there is both good and evil, and the body and vitalising soul, which are the sources of the "evil inclination", have dominance over the spiritual soul. All this is in order to give man the opportunity to choose between them. However, as the Lurianic Kabbalist Moses Luzzatto explains:

"...at the end of this era of choice, the soul will be empowered to rise from its low estate to triumph over the body, to purify it in successive stages, until its transformation is so complete that the two may unite as one. At the perfect union, all possible bodily defects will vanish. Illumined by the Light of the soul, and utterly bound to it, the corporeal part of man will finally return to...its source." [Moses Luzzatto, General Principles of the Kabbalah, p.146]

These stages constitute essentially the reversal of the process of emanation. In the first stage, the body is raised to the condition of things prior to the "Breaking of the Vessels"

". In the next stage, the body will be subordinate to the soul. This corresponds to the "Bound World" where all the Lights are united in one vessel. Finally, the total spiritualisation of the body corresponds to the original emenation from the world of Adam Kadmon." [Ibid]

The final stage is the Messianic period.

"...(I)n the days of the Messiah the supervision will emerge from Z'O's second stage of maturity...(G)reat Light will envelop matter, to the extent that the matter itself will be sanctified, and prophecy will spread to all Israel..." [p.192]

The Lurianic scholar Rabbi Levi I. Krakovsky, goes further and identifies the Messiahic principle with the World of Adam Kadmon itself: "the new most powerful light of Adam Kadmon" (that will redeem all the worlds "...is the light of the Messiah.

go to Adam Kadmon and the Light of Redemption

Here we see the esoteric interpretation of the Apocalyptic or Messianic vision. As such, it is obviously much more credible, because it is not bound to a childish literal physical interpretation. The "Messiah" becomes Adam Kadmon, the first emanation of the Godhead. And a complex dynamic of the raising of the subtle or occult worlds (Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah) preceeds the ultimate redemptive Descent of the Light.

Lurianic Cosmology

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page uploaded 12 November 1998