1
The starting-point of the grades of the evil side, which is the beginning of the outside grade, assumes the shape of the head of a male riding on a camel. This is the starting-point of a thick darkness which spreads out.
2
The darkness is caused by a smoke issuing in the midst of the fury of the evil side, which fury becomes intensified, begetting other furies, and furies upon furies, one riding on top of the other, and representing the male and the female principles.
3
When the smoke begins to spread, through the pressure of the nucleus, it takes the form of a winding and dangerous serpent.
4
The first result of its spreading is a grade which, after much moving up and down, settles into the grade called “shadow”, being a shadow on the place called “death”; and when the two are combined they are called “the shadow of death”.
5
The lower and outer starting-point is enveloped in darkness and is far removed from the holy and central Point. The darkness round the lower point is black and yet not black, having no hue which can be discerned by the eye.
6
It is of the same kind that prevailed in Egypt, regarding which it says: “they saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days” (Ex. 10, 23); also, “even darkness which may be felt” (Ibid. 21).
7
Now this starting-point was ramified into seven grades. The first grade is a darkness that displays three hues: that of smoke, of fire, and that of blackness.
8
The smoky hue is the apparition of the evil seducer who seduces mankind to stray from the path and to be rebellious. In allusion to such it is written: “There shall no strange god be in thee, neither shalt thou worship any strange god” (Ps. 81, 9). The first half of the verse refers to the male principle, the second to the female principle.
9
The fiery view is that aspect of the evil power which brings about slaughter, bloodshed, and destruction amongst mankind. For there is in the world causeless and purposeless slaughter and bloodshed, as well as slaughter and bloodshed in the course of war. The first proceeds from the male principle of the evil powers, the second from the female principle. The male aspect is concerned in mere bloodshed, whereas the female aspect is at the root of mutual wars of people against people; and all such wars proceed from the female principle.
10
Finally, the black hue is the apparition of the evil power that presides over the infliction of wounds and bruises on the bodies of men as well as over crucifixions and strangulations.
11
The second grade emerges out of the darkness,
12
and branches out into three hundred separate directions, although they all are absorbed within each other, as it were.
13
They roam abroad to inflict evil on the world, to execute justice openly for sins committed by men in secret.
14
The fourth grade is like a ruddy conflagration, and is also concerned with the shedding of blood among men. It gives the authority to the lower powers for the slaying of mankind. It is to the lower powers in the relation of soul to body. For the soul cannot act save through the medium of body. It is the aspect of the male, which can only act through the female principle, to wit, the lower POWERS.’1Here follows in the text a long dissertation on the Hekaloth (temples), or halls of the angels, which is not based on an exposition of the Scriptures.