Part 10 · Chapter 15

The Ari's Text

And when the sparks of holiness were sorted out in the secret of the thirty-two Elohim, as mentioned, the rest of the sparks descended below. And these remaining sparks are the secret of the Malchut in each of the first thirty-two paths, for Elohim is the secret of MI ELEH: MI is the secret of GAR, included within Bina, and ELEH is the secret of VAK. For the GAR and the VAK in each and every path of the first ones of the judgments were sorted to the side of holiness; however, the Malchut in each and every path of the first ones became waste below, since it is last in every path, and could not be sorted. And this is "and the earth was without form and void," for it is the earth in each and every path.

Inner Light

This commentary hasn't been matched to individual seifim yet — items are shown in reading order, and the number beside each one counts the notes themselves, not the seifim of the Ari's text.

Not matched to a seif

1The GAR and the VAK in each and every path of the first ones of the judgments were sorted to the side of holiness; however, the Malchut, etc.: For the thirty-two paths, taken all together, each one of them is included of ten Sefirot, as above. And only the nine first Sefirot in each and every path were sorted to the side of holiness; however, the Malchut in each and every path became waste below and could not be sorted, and remains in the secret of chaos and void. And you must grasp here that the thirty-two paths are thirty-two discernments of screen and coarseness, each one of which has within it enough to bring out a level of ten Sefirot. However, in those thirty-two paths, the bottom Hey was included in every single path; and you also know that the discernment of the screen, from the discernment of the bottom Hey, had already been refined in the secret of the departure of the Alef of AK, and was never renewed again. Hence, wherever the coarseness of the bottom Hey was found, it was in the discernment of coarseness without a screen — and this is the principal cause of the breaking, that the lights could not clothe in those vessels because of the mixture of the bottom Hey in every discernment of them. Therefore the first clarification of the seven kings is the clarification of the thirty-two paths, so that they be clean of that discernment of the bottom Hey. And this clarification is called the thirty-two Elohim in the account of Creation, whose meaning is thirty-two paths in the discernment of the nine first ones within them — for the Malchut was sorted out and separated from them, and became waste below; that is, the discernment of Malchut of the quality of revealed judgment, which was without a screen at the time of Nekudim, and which caused the breaking of the vessels, as above. And study well above, page 486, the passage beginning, “the dross.”
And you must know that just as these thirty-two paths comprise all eight kings — that is, all the clarifications in the worlds until the days of the Messiah, as above — so too, together with this, there is no small discernment that rises to receive its correction in Atzilut without needing to divide and be clarified through all these thirty-two paths — that is, to clarify from it the nine first ones in each and every path, and to bring down from it the discernment of Malchut in each and every path. This is because of the original mixture that was at the time of Nekudim, a mixture that was absorbed into every single detail that could possibly be divided. Hence every small discernment among them, when it begins to be clarified and raised from BYA to Atzilut, must separate from it the ten kingships that had been mixed into it, and so it must necessarily divide into thirty-two paths, in order to bring down the last discernment in every path, which are the aforementioned kingships. Therefore it is regarded that in every discernment that rises as MAN from BYA there are 320 sparks, which come by the clarification of the thirty-two paths of wisdom mentioned above, which clarifies from them the nine first ones in every path, and brings down from them the discernment of Malchut in every path. Hence every ascent of MAN is called by the name of 288 sparks — that is, by way of the clarification, namely thirty-two times the nine first ones, whose number is 288. And the thirty-two sparks in the ten kingships descend from them in the secret of waste, and they are called the heart of stone, as will be explained below.