Part 11 · Chapter 8

The Ari's Text

And if you consider, you will understand that in the first three months, which is the time when the fetus becomes recognizable — as our sages said, and as will be explained below — the lights of Hesed, Tifferet and Yesod were corrected in them, since Tifferet and Yesod are in the middle line, which is mercy, and therefore they were corrected first, together with Hesed, which is the right line.

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 lights of Hesed, Tifferet and Yesod, etc., are in the middle line, which is mercy, and therefore they were corrected first, together with Hesed: You already know that the essence of the coupling is in the phase of the middle line, as above, in the adjacent item. And this is the rule: that the phase of the old vessels and the sparks that ascend for correction in the Ibur [impregnation] are reckoned to the two lines, right and left — the right corrected by the whiteness from Aba, and the left by the redness in Ima — however, the matter of the coupling itself, made upon the coarseness that the sparks corrected in the redness of Ima raised up, is reckoned as the middle line, which inclines neither to the right nor to the left, for now this coarseness, which was at first in the phase of the left, attained a virtue and a great praise like the substance of the Sefirot on the right side, for the greater the coarseness, the greater the stature of ten Sefirot it reveals, as is known, and the increase of coarseness now, in the coupling, is for an increase of praise and virtue. Therefore the coarseness, at the time of the coupling, is reckoned as the phase of the middle line. And it corrects, in its stature of coupling, all the vessels and sparks of ZA, which are the two lines, right and left, and this is why it is said that the beginning of the correction reaches the middle line, which are Tifferet and Yesod, and afterward they also correct the two lines at the extremities; indeed, the right line, which is the substance of the 288, sorted in the secret of the whiteness of Aba, since it does not need correction on its own account, for it is entirely clean and pure of all dross even before the coupling upon the coarseness is made, is therefore reckoned as though it had already been corrected before the middle line. However, this is only from the phase of the judgments and the dross; but from the phase of the attainment of the stature of the coupling, it begins mainly from the middle line, as above. And remember this.
And the matter of the 288, in the secret of the four Names — AB, SAG, MA, and BON of ZON — which fell to BYA with the breaking, is a very lengthy matter, and I have already explained them well in my books Panim Meirot and Panim Masbirot on Etz Chaim, from page 580 to page 207. See there.