Light

About the Metaphors of Clothing and Nudity

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After the Fall, Adam and Eve, deprived of their ‘garment of glory’, discovered that they were naked.

Before that, they were clothed with the light of divine glory.

Double light, double splendor, that of being in glory, and that of glory clothing oneself.

That is why, later on, Job and Justice (or Righteousness) could be said to « clothe » each other:

“I clothed myself with Justice and she clothed herself with me”i.

Isaiah speaks of a ‘garment’ that saves and delivers: « For He has clothed me with a garment of salvation and wrapped me in a cloak of deliverance.»ii

The Jewish cabal of the Middle Ages associated the idea of ‘clothing’ with the Shekinah and the Torah.

« The Torah of Creation (torah da beria) is the garment of the Presence (chekinah). And if man had not been created, the Presence would have been left unclothed, like a poor man. Therefore, whoever commits a fault, it is as if he stripped the Presence of her adornment, and this is what Adam’s punishment consisted of. »iii

The Torah herself unfolds like a veil, she is covered with black darkness, and she is clothed with white light.

« See: darkness is the blackness of the Torah [the written lines] and light is the white of the Torah [what is between the lines].”iv

It is by the splendor of her light, by what can be read between the lines, that she is dressed, more than by what she hides.

The Torah can be read, whether in darkness or in light, but the Presence does not reveal or unveil herself. If naked, she would be the figure of exile itself.

« For that is what exile (galout) is, it is the unveiling of the nakedness of the Presence, which is expressed in the verse, ‘Because of your outbursts, your mother has been repudiated’. (Is 50:1) Because of the unveiling of the nakedness Israel has been exiled and the Presence has also been exiled: the Presence is naked.»v

Christianity, too, has considered the metaphor of a garment of salvation and glory.

When one is baptized, one « puts on Christ »vi.

Reciprocally, Christ put on humanity like a garment (« induere hominem »), as wrote St. Augustinevii. Christ was clothed in the divine form (forma dei), and he annihilated himself « taking the form of the servant (forma servi)viii » in order to « clothe man ». « Have you forgotten that it was written about Christ Jesus that before he was clothed with humanity (‘hominem fuisset indutus‘) he was in forma deiix?

Death is a second nudity, after the nudity resulting from the Adamic fall. But baptism is a new garment, which announces and prepares « the garment of immortality ». « Baptism has erased death from the flesh; that which is mortal has dissipated into the garment of immortality ».x

From all this, seems to emerge the idea that Human nature is fundamentally « naked ».

And this very nudity is stripped off, like a used clothe, at the time of death.

For the Greeks whom nudity hardly frightened, and whose beauty they much valued, the body is ‘the clothing of the soul’.

Contrary to Jewish and Christian thinkers, Greek philosophers « impatiently await the moment when the soul puts off this garment to show herself in her nakedness »xi.

But for Paul, nudity symbolizes death. « When death robs us, we become naked in righteousness; in this robbery by death the laying off of the garment, which began at baptism, is finally accomplished. »xii

However, death is the occasion to put on a new « garment », a new « tent », a « heavenly dwelling »xiii.

It is this new garment that represents true ‘life’, a life beyond ‘death’. What is this new garment? It is the spirit.

We will put on this ‘spirit’, at deathxiv.

Paul does not seek death, he wants life. He does not wish just a soul, bound to a mortal body. He wishes to possess something higher than the soul – and for him what is higher than the soul is the spirit, the pneuma.

In this sense, the garment is for Paul an overcoming of the primitive dualism between body and soul, between being clothed and being naked.

The metaphor of the garment thus becomes an expression of the supernatural, of the revelation of a divine reality that transcends the experiences of man’s life.

The water of baptism was already a kind of garment.

Yet we have to put on a second garment, – of glory, more radiant than the one worn by Adam and Eve in paradise.

It will « make the mortal element disappear in the garment of immortality.»xv

This ‘garment’ does not hide and cover, but reveals, illuminates, shines. It is made of glory, light, splendor.

In the beginning, when the Presence appeared, dressed in her splendor, then Word, Thought and Creation came on the great stage of the world. « He wrapped Himself in splendor – the supreme Right of Thought – to create the heavens. In that splendor, the beginning of all light, He created the heavens.» xvi

A passage from the Midrach Rabba evokes this moment of creative splendor, ‘the beginning of all light’, and of all thought:

« Tell me where was the light created? He replied, ‘The Holy One, blessed be He, wrapped himself in it as in a garment, and illuminated the whole world from one end to the other with all its glory. Then he added with a sigh: ‘There is a verse that says it explicitly: ‘You are clothed in splendor and majesty. You are clothed in light’xvii.» xviii

In the first chapter of Genesis, which recounts the first moments of creation, the word ‘light’, אוֹר, ‘or’, is mentioned five times in three of the opening verses (Gen 1:3-5).

These five quotations symbolically evoke the five books of the Torah according to the interpretation of the Midrach Rabbahxix. « God said, ‘Let there be light’xx » corresponds to Genesis. « And the light was » xxi refers to Exodus. « God saw that the light was good »xxii represents the Leviticus. « And God separated the light from the darkness » xxiii points to the Numbers. « God called the light day » xxiv refers to Deuteronomy.

Curiously, in the first chapter of his own Gospel, St. John mimics this repetition, with fifteen evocations of the ‘light’.

He uses seven times the word ‘light’, phôs (ϕῶς), in the first verses.

« Life was the light of men. » (Jn 1:4)

« The light shines in the darkness. » (Jn 1:5)

« He came to serve as a witness, to bear witness to the light. » (Jn 1:7)

« He was not the light, but he appeared to bear witness to the light. » (Jn 1:8)

« This light was the true light, which, when it comes into the world, enlightens every man. » (Jn 1:9)

Then, John evokes ‘light’ again eight more times, in a pronominal, personal or possessive form (in Greek αύτόν), or as the implicit subject of active verbs.

« She was (ἦν) in the world, and the world was made by her (αύτοῦ), and the world did not know her (αύτόν). » (Jn 1:10)

« She came to her family’s house, and her family did not receive her (αύτόν). » (Jn 1:11)

« But to all who have received her (αύτόν), to those who believe in her (αύτοῦ) name, she has given the power to become children of God. » (Jn 1:12)

What does such an accumulation of repetitions mean?

The light is one, but her shimmers, her glitters, her sparkles, her scintillation are legion.

Light, Or, is unique, but her true meaning is always in potency.

A passage from the Zohar sheds some light (if I may say) on this question, just by replacing the word ‘light’ with another question:

« When the abyssal light unfolded, her clarity gave hold to questioning, although it was still beyond the reach of all that is below. That is why she was called in an interrogative way, she was called Who. » xxv

We also read in Isaiah:

« Lift up your eyes to the heights, and see Who created this. » xxvi

מִי-בָרָא אֵלֶּה

Mi bara’ ellèh.

‘Who’ and ‘that’, these words are in a way ‘naked’, begging for a meaning.

« The words were elusive, for it was impossible to question the ultimate. Wisdom was composed of nothingness, she was so closed and so deep that she could not resist questioning, but no one could grasp anything of her.”xxvii

She was naked, – made of nothing.

She was clothed, – with splendor.

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iJob 29.14

iiIs 61.10

iiiThe Zohar. Genesis. My translation from the French translation by Charles Mopsik. Ed. Verdier. 1981. 23b p. 133

ivIbid. p. 133

vIbid. 27b p. 156

viGa 3.27 . See also Col 3,9; Ep 4,22; Rom 13,14.

viiAugustine. De diversis quaestionibus. 83 q. 73 (PL 40, 84)

viiiAugustine. De diversis quaestionibus. 83 q. 73, 2 (PL 40, 85)

ixAugustine. De anima et eius origine IV, 15 (21) CSEL 60, p. 402

xSaint Basile. Letter to Palladium. PG 32. 1033 b. Quoted by Erik Peterson. On the margins of theology. Cerf. 2015, p.41

xiErik Peterson. On the margins of theology. Cerf. 2015, p. 30

xiiErik Peterson. On the margins of theology. Cerf. 2015, p.56

xiii2 Co 5.1-2

xiv2 Co 5, 3

xvErik Peterson. On the margins of theology. Cerf. 2015, p.57

xviThe Zohar. Genesis. Ed. Verdier. 1981. 15b p. 96

xvii Ps 104:1-2

xviiiMidrash Rabba, 3.4

xixMidrash Rabba, 3.5

xxGn 1.3

xxiGn 1.3

xxiiGn 1.4

xxiiiGn 1.4

xxivGn 1.5

xxvThe Zohar. Genesis. My translation from the French translation by Charles Mopsik. Ed. Verdier. 1981. 30a p. 170

xxviIs 40.26

xxviiThe Zohar. Genesis. My translation from the French translation by Charles Mopsik. Ed. Verdier. 1981. 30a p. 170

« Only with you », אַךְ בָּךְ (akh bakh)

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–Chagall–

An (on purpose) unclear text of the Zohar evokes light, darkness, depth and night, and ties together these words in knots – in a web of warps and wefts.

Line after line, a veil of words is woven, – and, through the drifts that the Hebrew language encourages, this veil is also a sail, a wing, a shadow. i

Tight sentences, sealed signs, winged saltos.

A slow reading is required.

« It is said: ‘Light is sown for the righteous and for those who are upright in heart, it is joy’ii. The worlds will let their fragrance exhale and become one. But until the day of the world to come, the light will remain hidden, kept secret. This light came out of the heart of Darkness, which was carved by the onslaught of the All-Hidden One, so that from the hidden light a secret way to the darkness below took shape and the light could be deposited there. What is the darkness below? It is that which is called night and of which it is written, ‘As for that darkness, He called it night’.iii Tradition states the following verse: ‘He uncovers the depths from the darkness’.iv Rabbi Yossi explains it this way: For if you say that it is from this enclosed darkness that the depths are uncovered, know that all the supreme crowns are still hidden there and are also called ‘depths’. What then is ‘uncovered’? In fact, all the supreme things that are concealed are only revealed from the darkness of night, [and not from the Darkness Above]. Come and see: all the enclosed depths that emerge from the bosom of Thought and that the Voice grasps again are only revealed when the Word brings them to light. And what is the Word if not the Word? This Word is called Cessation (Sabbath) (…) This Word emanating from the dimension of darkness reveals the depths within it. It is written ‘From darkness’, that is, it comes from the dark realm, it has its source precisely ‘since’ the dark realm. » v

Gobbledygook? No. Dense compactness. And in this density, not everything is so sealed, so hidden, that no meaning emerge.

We discover that what is to be discovered here are not the supreme realities, but only the depths of the obscure Word, the depths that arise from Thought, brought to light by Words.

We also discover that darkness has more than one veil, and that every veil veils several nights.

There is the Darkness Below (which is ‘night’) and the Darkness Above (which is original darkness). There is the darkness of the depths and the darkness of emergence, the darkness of the sources, the darkness of the Word, the darkness of Thought, wrapped in their own abysses.

That is why it is written: « Let a veil separate for you the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. »vi

All of what is unveiled veil, by the same token, what is not yet unveiled.

This is also why it is written: « He takes the clouds for His chariot. »vii

The Zohar explains, in his inimitable style, that « Rabbi Yissa Saba divides the word ‘clouds’ (avim) into ‘av (opacity) and iam (the sea). The opacity which is the darkness from the left covers the sea. ‘He is moving forward on the wings of the wind’viii. This is the breath of the sanctuary of the Above which is, in the esoteric sense, the ‘Two golden cherubs’ix. It is written elsewhere: ‘He rode on a cherub and flew, and hovered on the wings of the wind’.x»xi

Let us note here, in passing, the paronomase, which is only possible in Hebrew, יִּרְכַּב / כְּרוּב , yrkav / kerouv (it overlaps / cherub). The psalmist is intoxicated with a love for game of words.

The wind, in Hebrew, is also the spirit (ruaḥ). The next verse of the psalm reveals where this flight of the spirit, this cherubic ride, goes:

יָשֶׁת חֹשֶׁךְ, סִתְרוֹ– סְבִיבוֹתָיו סֻכָּתוֹ
חֶשְׁכַת-מַיִם, עָבֵי שְׁחָקִים

« He made darkness His veil, His tent, darkness of water, cloud upon cloud. xii

The spirit goes and flies into darkness, – to veil itself from it, like a tent, or like if it were a dark water, a dense opacity.

Again, the question: « What then is ‘discovered’? »

It has been discovered that wings fly and veil, and that the farther the flight goes, the deeper the darkness is woven in which the wing-canopy becomes covered.

It has also been discovered that the more the mind enters the darkness, the more mystery is woven.

Are we any further along ?, will we ask again.

In a verse, also compact and strange, Isaiah lifts another corner of the veil :

אַךְ בָּךְ אֵל וְאֵין עוֹד אֶפֶס אֱלֹהִים

akh bākh El, v-éin ‘od éfès Elohim

« Only in You God, – and no other, no gods ». xiii

But why does the text say: « only in You God »?

We might rather have expected to read: « only You God »…

Why « in You » (בָּךְ, bākh)?

The word « You » is yet another veil.

You have to go into or with this « You », bākh.

For the Holy of Holies is veiled, closed.

And now the Temple itself is no more.

The journey is ever just beginning.

We have to ride the cherub, « with You », – bākh.

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iThe word אהפ means « wing, leaf, foliage, eyelid », אהופ « bird, plumage », hence, in derived form, « shadow », and עוף fly.

iiPs 97:11

iiiGn 1.5

ivJb 12.22

vZohar. Berechit II, 32a. Translated by Charles Mopsik. Ed. Verdier, 1981, pp. 179-180.

viEx 26.33

viiPs 104.3

viiiPs 104.3

ixEx 25.18

xPs 18:11

xiZohar. Berechit II, 32b. My translation from the French version by Charles Mopsik. Ed. Verdier, 1981, p. 184.

xiiPs 18:12

xiiiIs 45,14

Raw Light (A Tactical Psalm)

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Detail of blue mosaic at Bibi-Khanym (Bibi-Xonum) Mosque, Samarkand, Uzbekistan

In Samarkand, I picked the green fruits of an old tree.

All of them had given their juice, as every soul has its taste.

Who has seen in himself the moons, the cracks, the lava?

The grounded boats, the slumped sails, the hoped-for capes?

Like a dung beetle rising in the dune, I am a mirage.

You spread your absence everywhere.

What would I know of your presence?

You empty everything from your sky.

Today I love bread and salt.

Tomorrow I will be a friend of millet and wine.

I will lap up dreams and drink open waters.

Everything comes back one day, what use is time, for what memory?

Tonight I am ruin, dust, grave, gas, shard of earth, sandy port, blind worm, logical continuation.

Spastic heart, knotted throat, living soul.

I neither hide nor do I show. I wait for the slow one.

Already game, promised prey, drunk with nothing, I sing the shadow of a pean, the echo of an hallali.

Streams and rivers, horizontal leaks. On the horizon, the sea is so vertical.

On the pebble, water flows, far from thirst.

I don’t know the existence and the essence. I don’t know the weight of the mountains to come.

Of the possible heaps, the future number is very large.

My hands form a cup, filtering drunkenness, and the caress is a pain.

I didn’t believe in the flood, at the top of the hill, but it came, without words.

Beauty, joy, life: moons, curves, teeth, breaths, shadows.

Drink it all, and forget all that is missing and forgotten.

See: they see, and they do not see.

Give the pain a name of sweetness, a sure sign.

Cherish your peace. Hate that which kills.

Find the thread, and the eye of the needle, in the raw light.

Metaphysics of Hair

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Hair is one of the oldest metaphors ever devised by the human brain. It is also a metonymy. The hair, is on the head, at the top of the man, above his very thoughts, also links with the divine sphere (this is why the Jews cover themselves with the yarmulke). But the hairs also covers the lower abdomen, and announces the deep transformation of the body, for life, love and generation. Finally, the fertile earth itself covers itself with a kind of hair when the harvest is announced. Here again, the ancient genius combines the Divine, Man and Nature in a single image.

A hymn from the Veda combines these images in a single formula: « Make the grass grow on these three surfaces, O Indra, the head of the Father, and the field here, and my womb! That field over there, which is ours, and my body here, and the head of the Father, make it all hairy!”i

But hair has other connotations as well, which go beyond the simple metonymy. Hair, in the Veda, also serves as an image to describe the action of God himself. It is one of the metaphors that allow us to qualify it indirectly, as other monotheistic religions would do much later, choosing its power, mercy or clemency.

“The Hairy One carries the Fire, the Hairy One carries the Soul, the Hairy One carries the worlds. The Hairy One carries all that can be seen from heaven. Hair is called Light.”ii

iṚgVéda VIII,91

iiṚgVéda VIII,91

Two short Quotes about the Gates of Death

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Pir O Murshid Inayat Khan: « Why are you yourself the veil over the answer you seek? »

Seneca to Lucilius: « Then the secrets of nature will be revealed before you; this darkness will divide and the dazzling light will spring forth from all sides. Imagine what a magnificent glow there will be when so many stars unite their light. No shadow will tarnish this serenity (…) How will the divine light present itself to you when you see it in its place? »

A Jewish « Kenosis »

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How could an Almighty God, creator of the worlds, let himself be put to death by his own creatures? Mystery. To designate this lowering, this humiliation, this annihilation of the divine, Christianity uses the word kenosis, from the Greek verb kenoô, « to empty oneself, to strip oneself, to annihilate oneself ». This word was first used by the Epistle of Paul to the Philippiansi.

But the idea of God’s death is much older. It can be found in the centuries preceding Christianity in quite different forms, it is true, for example among the Greeks with the death of Dionysus killed by the Titans, but also among the Egyptians with the murder of Osiris and his dismemberment by Seth, his own brother.

Among Jews, with the concept of tsimtsum (from the Hebrew צמצום, contraction), there is also this idea of a « God who empties himself ». It is a concept of late appearance since it is due to Isaac Louria in Ari Zal (Safed, 16th century), who uses it to explain a point of Kabbalah :

Before the creation of the worlds, God was everything, everywhere, and nothing was without Him. But when God decided to create the worlds, he had to give them a place so that they could be. God withdrew his original light, or qadoum. In the void thus created, called reshimou (« imprint », from the verb rashama, « write ») a light emanated from God, or néetsal. This emanated light constitutes the olam ha-Atziluth, the world of Emanation. Then are generated the olam haBeryah or world of Creation, the olam haYetzirah or world of Formation and the olam haAssiya or world of Action, – which contains our world. The light emanating from it therefore undergoes several contractions, compressions, or « dissimulations », which are all tsimtsum.

This word comes from the verb צָמַם tsamam, which has a wide spectrum of meaning: « to put an end to, exterminate, silence, annihilate, compress, contract, squeeze, veil, hide, observe closely, define exactly, certify », which is described in Marcus Jastrow’s Dictionary of Targumim Talmud and Midrashic Literature (1926). From this rich range, the word tsimtsum probably brings out the harmonics.

Here are some of them, taken from a Kabbalah lesson by Baruch Shalom Alevi Ashlag. The reason why the emanated Light cascades through the four created worlds, Atziluth, Beryah, Yatzirah and Assiya, is that the « desire to receive » must at each step be increased accordingly. For there can be no divine creation without an equally divine desire to « receive » this creation.

In the beginning, there is an abundance of Light created, emanating from the divine essence. Correlatively there must be an abundance of desire to receive this light. But this desire to receive cannot appear in the world ex nihilo. Desire is itself created. It is called Kli ְכְּלִי , a word whose primary meaning is: « thing done, thing made ». It is also called, less metaphorically, Guf (« the body »). The Kli must « receive », « lock », « hold » the light in him (as the root verb כָּלַא indicates).

Here, a little aside. The Kli can be said to be a piece of furniture, a vase, a garment, a suit, a ship, an instrument or a weapon. Here again, all the harmonics of these various senses can undoubtedly be applied to make the Kli resonate in its role as a receptacle of light, – in its role as a soul, therefore. Sander and Trenel’s dictionary says that Kli comes from the root verb כֶּלֶה (kalah), a close word to ֶכָּלַא (kala’), already mentioned. The verb kalah offers an interesting spectrum of meaning: to be made, completed, ready; to be resolved; to disappear, to miss, to be consumed, to perish, to languish; to finish; to consume, to exterminate.

Believing that words serve as a memorial to millenary experiences, I would think that all these meanings apply in one way or another to kli in its possible relationship with light.

Divine light, falling into the different worlds, spreads and at the same time contracts, folds, or veils itself, to let the desire to be received by the Kli grow, by this receptacle, this desire, this soul or this « body », this Kli which is at the root of the created creature. The Kli, who was previously part of the Light, must now distinguish himself from it in order to receive it better; he must separate himself from it in order to desire it better. He desires it as Or Hokhma (the Light of Wisdom) or Or Haya (the Light of Life), or Or Hassadim (the Light of Mercy). The Kli is therefore determined according to the degree of expansion of the Light and also according to its degree of exit from it.

Wise men commented on these questions as follows: « There is crying in inner dwellings ».

This means that when the Light arrives in the lower worlds, and it does not find a Kli wishing to receive it, it remains « interior », unrevealed, and then « there is crying ». But when she finds a Kli who desires her, she can reveal herself on the outside, and then « vigour and joy are in His place », and everything becomes visible.

i Ph. 2, 6-9 « Lui, de condition divine, ne retint pas jalousement le rang qui l’égalait à Dieu. Mais il s’anéantit (εκένωσεν) lui-même, prenant condition d’esclave, et devenant semblable aux hommes. S’étant comporté comme un homme, il s’humilia plus encore, obéissant jusqu’à la mort, et à la mort sur une croix !  Aussi Dieu l’a-t-il exalté et lui a-t-il donné le Nom qui est au-dessus de tout nom. »