Klippot.קליפותFour corruptions.
What does fire become when it forgets warmth.
What does the well become when it forgets to give.
Before the four, the breaking.
The light came down into vessels too narrow for it.
They broke. The light went one way;
what had held it, another.
Passion, turned.
It was light, once. It was warmth.
The same heat — the same source —
set against the room it once kept.
In a personגאווה · כעסpride, anger
The well, reversed.
It rose to meet me. It nourished.
What once gave breath
learned to take it back.
In a personתאווהappetite
Effort, refusing.
Stable. Held. A foundation.
The ground that held
has learned the shape of refusing.
In a personעצבות · עצלותsorrow, sloth
Breath, withheld.
It filled the room. It made it a room.
The space you used to move
where you used to be.
In a personדברים בטליםempty words
The fifth, between.
Not wholly shell. Not wholly light.
The one husk thin enough to see through —
what is lifted from it, rises.
The shell is not the spark. What was warm is warm still — somewhere
a witness keeps the count.
Notes & sources
- The breaking. Shevirat haKelim — Isaac Luria, as recorded by Ḥayyim Vital in Etz Ḥayyim. The vessels shatter; their shards become the klippot, and sparks of the light fall with them.
- Four shells. Ezekiel 1:4 — a storm wind, a great cloud, a fire flaring up, and a brightness (נגה) round about it. The tradition reads the first three as wholly dark, and the fourth, nogah, as the shell between.
- Elements in a person. Vital, Sha’arei Kedusha I:2; Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya ch. 1: from fire, pride and anger; from water, the appetite for pleasure; from air, idle and boastful speech; from earth, sloth and sorrow.
- What can be lifted. Tanya ch. 7 — what lies in klipat nogah is raised when it is turned toward the good. The sparks are counted at two hundred eighty-eight (רפ״ח).