Forms of the Plane · 3D
The Six Directions
Sefer Yetzirah’s sealed space
Sefer Yetzirah seals space in six directions around a Holy Palace at its centre, and binds it with twelve diagonal boundaries: the edges of a cube. Later Kabbalists set the sefirot in it: Chesed to the south, Gevurah to the north, Tiferet east, Yesod west, Netzach above, Hod below and Malkhut in the middle.
- Directions
- 6
- Boundaries
- 12
- Centre
- the Holy Palace
Turn it in your hands, strike it to hear the chord of its edges, slice it with a plane.
Facts
- The six directions are sealed with the six orders of the letters of the Name, Yod Heh Vav.
- Facing east, south is on the right: Chesed is the right hand and Gevurah the left, as on the Tree’s pillars.
- The seven double letters take the six directions and the centre; the twelve simple letters take the twelve boundaries, in the order the Gra’s version lists them.
- This is space built around the sefirot, not a solid Tree: seen from any side it does not cast the diagram.
History and meaning
Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Formation, is the oldest text of Jewish esotericism, perhaps of the first centuries CE. The mapping of sefirot to directions comes from the Zohar and the Ari, as Aryeh Kaplan gathers it in his commentary.
