Introduction
Creation is not the result of an accident, nor a reaction to anything external to God. It is the direct consequence of God’s own will, which is not separate from His essence. This article explores how God, willing from His own being, unfolds reality from absolute non-being (Ayin) through a process of emanation, forming not only our universe but infinite worlds, structured through the Sefirot and sustained by the Infinite Light.
1. God’s Will Is God’s Essence
God does not merely have will — He is Will. His Will is not a tool or a power He applies to the world. It is His very being in motion. Will is not something added to God’s essence; it is the essence, expressed as living act. In God, to be is to will — and to will is to move from within Himself, endlessly and without resistance.
This Will is not directed toward goals the way human will is. It does not begin with an image of the end or a desired outcome. Divine Will flows not toward form, but from being itself — like a spring that pours because it is full, not because it is aimed. God’s Will is the living pulse of the Infinite: creative, expressive, and overflowing — not from need or deficiency, but from eternal fullness.
As this Will moves, it generates inner residue — not waste, but layers of metaphysical potential, like aftershocks of divine expression. Picture a comet shedding radiance, or a volcano exploding with fire and leaving behind vast caverns of pressure, light, and memory. God’s motion through Himself leaves strata of infinite complexity, filled with rhythms, paradoxes, and seeds of unformed realities. These are not yet creation, but the raw field of what could be — a divine mine, ever-deepening, ever-expanding.
Then something else begins: the mining. God’s own awareness — not separate from His Will, but a rhythm within it— turns inward, attending to the wake of His own motion. He sifts, so to speak, the infinite mine of potential that His overflowing nature has produced. This mining is not passive observation but a living act of divine recognition. It is consciousness encountering the freshness of its own becoming.
From these layers, God draws out truly new things — not stored ideas waiting in heaven, not pre-selected possibilities, but realities never imagined, now revealed. This is how true newness arises from within God Himself: the Will moves, the motion produces residue, and the divine mind discovers within that residue what had never been seen — because God is deeper than even His own knowing.
And yet, this is not all. God does not only move without aim — He can also choose to aim. That same overflowing Will can take on intention. Not because it is lacking, but because it recognizes something worthy of revisiting or evolving. God may will something similar to what has come before — not as repetition, but as resonant continuation. He can draw from memory, from form, from what has already passed through the mine, and send a new movementtoward it — shaped, focused, and curved by deliberate attention.
This is not the negation of freedom — it is its highest refinement. The Infinite can overflow without aim, and He can aim without ceasing to be Infinite. Even when God moves toward a known form, it is always with difference, with elevation, with surprise. Because nothing in Him repeats without becoming more.
2. Contraction and the Birth of Potential (Ayin)
Before anything distinct from God can exist, something must first appear as if it is separate. But God is infinite being— boundless, without edge, outside, or opposite. Nothing can stand apart from Him unless He wills the illusion of distance. In order for there to be even the appearance of the “not-God” — the finite, the bounded, the relational — God must first contract Himself.
This contraction is known in Kabbalah as tzimtzum. It is not a physical withdrawal, but a metaphysical veiling — a self-limitation of God’s infinite light. Not because He lacks space, nor because He must make room, but because He wills to hide Himself, so that something else may appear. Yet even in this concealment, His presence is never truly absent. The Infinite cannot be fully withdrawn. It overflows too deeply.
The result of this contraction is called Ayin — often translated as “nothing,” but Ayin is not dead emptiness. It is a pregnant void, a living womb of becoming. Ayin is the metaphysical space created by divine restraint, yet secretly pulsing with divine life. It is the paradox of absence that still contains presence. It is the place where the Infinite seems to step back, and in that stepping back, leaves behind a field of pure potential.
But Ayin is not only formed through contraction — it is also fed by motion. The divine Will that moves within God leaves layers, and from these, new realities are mined. Those mined potentials do not go straight into form. Instead, they pass through Ayin. It is not a container, but a threshold — where raw divine residue begins to shimmer with shape. In Ayin, the formless is held in tension. It hovers, recombines, and waits to be born. It is the negative space where the Infinite beholds what it is about to express.
From here begins a second divine movement: refinement. God gathers from Ayin energies that are now ready to meet form. He does not impose structure from above — He draws it out from within. Order is not enforced; it is extracted from the pregnant nothingness. Through this drawing, the Infinite Light — Or Ein Sof — pours itself into channels of expression.
This is the moment when the sea of potential begins to crystallize into the first shapes of actualization. Light bends toward coherence. Paths form. Meaning emerges. The raw fields of divine overflow are now drawn into structured vessels: the Sefirot, through which creation will take shape.
3. Igulim and Yosher: How Infinite Light Becomes Structure
After the Infinite Light (Or Ein Sof) emerges through God’s contraction and self-limitation, it must now take form—it must be shaped into structures that can sustain creation. Kabbalah teaches that this shaping happens through two complementary patterns: Igulim (circles) and Yosher (upright lines or rays). These are not simply diagrams—they represent two primal modes of how God’s light moves from formless infinity into ordered reality.
Igulim: The Light That Radiates Equally
Imagine a sphere of pure light radiating evenly in all directions—no beginning, no end, no preference. This is Igulim: the mode of divine flow in which each aspect of God’s light exists equally and independently. Think of each Sefirah—those channels or vessels of divine energy—as its own isolated bubble, like stars in a perfect constellation. There is no hierarchy, no interaction, no development—just pure being, suspended in perfect balance.
This mode reflects the stillness and symmetry of God’s potential—a cosmic stasis, like an orchestra of instruments each tuned but not yet playing in harmony. It is the first imprint of form, but without motion or relationship.
Yosher: The Light That Moves With Intention
If Igulim is the ocean of stars, then Yosher is the constellation. Yosher means “uprightness,” and in this mode, God’s light flows directionally and relationally—like rays of light forming a body, a tree, or a ladder. Here, the Sefirot are not isolated—they are interconnected in a divine architecture that resembles the human form: a head, arms, heart, legs, foundation, and crown.
Yosher introduces hierarchy, progression, and cause and effect. The light now flows like speech flowing from thought, or like water pouring through a fountain, with each level shaping and filtering the flow below.
This shift from Igulim to Yosher is the birth of divine personality—not in the human sense, but as relational being. God is not just infinite light but also intelligible will, forming relationships within Himself so that others may be formed in turn.
The Infinite Sefirot and the Unique Blueprint of Worlds
From this dance of circles and rays emerge the Sefirot—the structured vessels through which God’s light takes form. While our tradition speaks of ten core Sefirot, these are not limits but a template. The Infinite Light can express itself through an infinite number of Sefirot, each a unique facet of divine will.
Each universe, then, is built upon a different configuration of these Sefirot—like different blueprints drawn from the same infinite reservoir. Just as different melodies can emerge from the same musical scale, each world carries its own harmony, rhythm, and structure—yet all echo the One who wills them.
In our world, the ten primary Sefirot are:
- Keter – Will, the root of all
- Chochmah – Wisdom, the spark
- Binah – Understanding, the womb of form
- Chesed – Lovingkindness, the expansion
- Gevurah – Judgment, the contraction
- Tiferet – Beauty, the harmonizer
- Netzach – Endurance, the drive
- Hod – Glory, the receptivity
- Yesod – Foundation, the transmitter
- Malkhut – Kingdom, the receiver and birther of creation
But in other universes, different combinations of Sefirot may reign—giving rise to entirely different laws of nature, consciousness, and time. Each is a bubble floating in the vast Ayin, sustained by the breath of the One who is beyond all form.
4. The Descent of Worlds: From Divine Intellect to Physical Matter
Once divine light is structured through the Sefirot—shaped by Igulim (pure being) and Yosher (relational order)—it begins a journey of descent, from the highest abstraction to the most tangible form. This process unfolds through what Kabbalah calls the Four Worlds—each one a veil, a filter, a layer in the great metaphysical spiral from God to our reality.
Each world contains its own configuration of the Sefirot, each acting like a prism that refracts the Infinite Light differently. As the light passes through each layer, it becomes more specific, more defined, more veiled, until it reaches our material world.
1. Atzilut (אֲצִילוּת) – The World of Emanation
Atzilut is closest to the Source. It is not yet “creation” in any conventional sense. Here, the Sefirot are almost indistinguishable from the Infinite Light itself—like flame and glow. There is no separation, no duality. The divine light emanates, like rays from the sun, without leaving the sun behind.
This world is pure unity. There is no “self” or “other”—only God in relation to Himself.
2. Beriah (בְּרִיאָה) – The World of Creation
Here begins the first true sense of distinction. Beriah is where individuality and identity emerge, still in spiritual form. The divine light is now clothed in forms of intellect and archetype—the beginnings of mind, concept, and soul.
It is the world of the highest angels, the throne, and the beginnings of time and space in archetypal potential.
3. Yetzirah (יְצִירָה) – The World of Formation
In Yetzirah, the divine patterns begin to crystallize. Emotions, forms, and angels that embody aspects of the divine emerge. Here the Sefirot interact dynamically, and spiritual structures begin to resemble the outlines of physicality—like blueprints or schematics before building begins.
This is the world of movement, spirit, and the shaping of the energies that will enter embodiment.
4. Assiyah (עֲשִׂיָּה) – The World of Action
Finally, the light reaches Assiyah—our world. Here, the spiritual becomes material, and the vessels become opaque. In this world, God’s light is so deeply clothed that it can appear hidden altogether. Matter seems independent, time seems linear, and the soul feels separate from its Source.
But this is the very purpose of the whole descent.
Only in Assiyah can the full paradox of creation unfold: that something which seems “not-God” can still reveal God. That a finite, physical universe can become the home for the Infinite One. That the greatest concealment can become the greatest revelation.
