Notes on Qliphotic Qabalah and Psychoanalysis W. García
During my research about both Qliphotic Qabalah and Psychoanalysis I have come to find many similarities and quite a lot of food for thought. In the next pages I will try to explain some of the results from my own reflections, as well as from my experience working with qliphotic powers and as patient and student of Psychoanalysis, to the best of my m y understanding of both fields.
The Qliphoth and their Origin In traditional kabbalistic treatises, the Qliphoth are used to represent the powers of chaos and disorder which disturb de world of man by questioning and disobeying the laws of God, and tempting mankind to do the same. The Qliphoth are then equated with evil, and are powers which the kabbalist should avoid or even actively act against. However, for the left-hand path adept, the Qliphoth also represent powers that can be used to destroy the individual’s limitations and blockings in their quest to reach whatever end one may have. In traditional Kabbalah, the Qliphoth can be seen as something to be redeemed, that is, impure elements of the universe which should be cleansed and sanitized in order for them to be pleasant to God and man; from a LHP perspective, on the other hand, the Qliphoth are powers representing the necessary antipole of Creation, that is, Chaos and disorder, principles which are necessary for keeping the universe in constant movement. The Qliphoth are deeply associated with the prehistory of our universe. From a kabbalistic and psychological perspective, the Qliphoth represent principles of disorder and chaos that exist beyond the limits of reason and divine light. Kabbalistic myths explain that the Qliphoth are the byproducts of past creations that were destroyed and their remains banished, in the same way someone will sweep the pieces of a broken vase under the rug. However, even if these are considered demonic forces and evil powers, these spheres were created from the same light that holds the holy side, and they are like the sephiroth in that the Qliphoth are also filled with life, energy and power, even if it has a negative polarity. According to Lurianic Kabbalah, God creates the universe through a process called tsimtsum (“contraction” or “withdrawal”). Before Creation, there was onl y God, and in and in order for something other than Him to have an independent existence, it was necessary to create a space devoid of Him, called tehiru. tehiru. In this emptiness, God manifested a lesser image of Himself, called Adam Kadmon, associated with the sephirah Kether, the point where divine light enters Creation and is poured in the sephiroth. The higher three sephiroth were able to hold this powerful light, but the lesser six didn’t, and thus shattered in many pieces. This even is called shevirat ha-kelim, ha-kelim, or the
“breaking of the vessels”. The fragments of the broken vessels fell to the lower part of the tehiru, creating the Qliphoth as anticosmic structures which are considered to be the root of all evil in Kabbalah. Another myth regarding the origin of the Qliphoth is found in the Treatise on the Left Emanations by Isaac ha-Cohen. Here it is explained that ours is the fourth in a series of worlds created by God. The three previous worlds were created using only the powers from the left emanations, and so they were absolutely rebellious and filled with evil intent, but also with desire to be independent. Because the demonic rulers of these worlds sought to cut down the Tree of Life and overthrow God, He destroyed them, and their remnants seek constantly to enter into our side of reality, a side in which light and darkness are equally mixed. A third perspective about the origin of the Qliphoth was formulated by Nathan of Gaza using ideas from the Lurianic view. According to him, the Qliphoth are originated from an impulse in God called or she-ein bo mahshavah, or “thoughtless light” which seeks to return everything to its origin in God. This light is opposed to the creative “thoughtful light” which sought to express through manifoldness. The thoughtless light is a negative of the thoughtful light, and as this takes the shape of Adam Kadmon, the other is shaped in a figure called Adam Beliyal. We can pair these lights with the two different inclinations found in man: the thoughtful light can be associated with the yetzer hatov or “good inclination” which is directed towards obeying God and keeping the Law, and the thoughtless light with the yetzer hara or “evil inclination” which moves one to disobey God and his Law. From a general view, the Qliphoth are considered as forces of evil created by a catastrophic event in the past, an event originated in a lack of balance in the operating forces in Creation, especially those of Severity and Mercy. The products of this catastrophe are banished into the Sitra Achra, and the kabbalist must free the sparks of light imprisoned within the Qliphoth so that they can reunite with God. However, their dark and disturbing nature make this a difficult work, one that most people won’t even dare to consider doing. This work is a katabasis, a descent into the darkness of the soul to know and free oneself from being a limited creation and become a ruler of one’s own forces.
An Overview of Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis is a therapeutic method formulated by Sigmund Freud in the late 1800s, based on his work with hysteric patients, which led to the discovery of an unconscious dimension of human experience which is directly unavailable to our conscious experience, but which can manifest in different ways, such as symptoms or similar formations, such as hallucinations in the case of psychotic structures. From a general view, Psychoanalysis is primarily a therapeutic method through which the patient (or “analysand”) is confronted with certain repetitive elements or themes from his or her
own discourse which can go unnoticed for the conscious mind. The work of the analyst is to actively listen to what the patient says (as well as what is not said) and return what is listened to the patient so that it can be clarified and consciously elaborated. Such repetitive elements and themes are held to have their origin in events from the earliest stages of life, and these events will shape the way an individual will relate with the world and themselves. Freud developed two models of the psyche: the first is comprised of three levels or layers called the conscious (what is available to our direct experience), the preconscious (what is not directly available but can become conscious with relative ease) and the unconscious (what is unavailable to our direct experience); the second model is comprised of three structures: the id (primal impulses and drives directed towards satisfaction and pleasure), the ego (a structure originated when certain parts of the id “realize” that satisfaction cannot always come immediately and thus is related to the “reality principle”) and the superego (the introjected laws and moral codes related to society). According to his theory, psychic conflict arises when a desire from the id seeks to be satisfied in a way that is incompatible with the regulations from the superego, thus making the ego feel anxious and insecure. The id can be satisfied by substitutes that are similar to that which is desired but forbidden by the superego, and does so in a variety of ways which depend on each individual’s psychic structure. However, since this satisfaction comes only from a substitute, the id will still seek to quench its thirst on the real thing, a thing that, according to Psychoanalysis, is unattainable by default. Being this so, the desire is continually repressed, and it continually seeks to return in the form of symptoms such as compulsive behaviors, addictions, perversions, hallucinations, etc. One of the goals of Psychoanalysis is that the patient overcomes their own resistances and get to a conscious, but partial, understanding of their life situations. Unlike other forms of therapy, such as Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Psychoanalysis focuses on the unconscious roots of the patterns which structure one’s life. By working with one’s own unconscious, one is confronted with what one apparently desires, or what one is supposed to desire, so that the real desire becomes clearer. This, however, tends to be a very long process, and in a world where people want quick solutions so that they can be productive, people will tend to turn to other, more timeeffective methods such as psychiatric drugs, denying themselves of the possibility of undergoing a process of getting to know themselves in a more profound way.
Psychoanalytic comments on Qliphotic Qabalah It may be clearer now how both Qliphotic Qabalah and Psychoanalysis can be linked, as both can be considered to be methods of seeking, encountering and dealing with one’s own unknown dimensions, especially those dimensions which are rejected for being incompatible with whatever values we’ve introjected.
The Qliphoth are the remnants from previous worlds created using the powers of the left side, the pole of separation and division. These unbalanced powers are banished from the dayside but continually seek to come into it to fulfill a goal which will depend on the individual’s interpretation of such kabbalistic myths. For instance, according to the Sabbatean view, the Qliphoth may be seeking to destroy the cosmic order because of being driven by a dark or anticosmic will rooted in the thoughtless light, that is, a desire to return everything to chaos. From a psychoanalytic perspective, this can be seen as an action driven primarily by the death drive, an unconscious impulse which moves us towards the reduction of stress – and considering that, in Psychoanalysis, life is inherently stressful, this means an impulse towards death, a return into nothingness. This motif is a common one in mysticism, and it always represents a desire to be (re)united with a primal power, most commonly God. This can be interpreted as a desire to return to the Mother, the primal womb in which the unborn baby is essentially free from any kind of stress, but also a state of complete dependence on its mother. However, as both historian of religion Mircea Eliade and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm note, it is possible for man to go through a second birth which is metaphysical, that is, initiation. This process represents a symbolic death after which the individual is reborn and introduced into a new order of existence, with every right and duty that comes with it. According to Fromm, a mature individual is characterized by having abandoned the security of the family home and going into the unknown to realize their own creative potential. While most right-hand path traditions include initiatorical structures, their goal seems to be still dissolution of their self into God-nothingness. On the other hand, the goal in the LHP is to go beyond this and attain a state of independence (kaivalya) from the laws of God in order for the adept to become a creator or a God. The Qliphoth are described as shadows from the prehistoric past of the universe, an idea which is also applied to the id and its most immature impulses. As we grow up, we find that some elements of our self are more socially acceptable than others. The behaviors and ideas that get rewarded and elicit positive reinforcement from parents and other figures are preserved and refined, while those which are shunned upon and punished are repressed – but they do not disappear. As we grow up, we tend to identify with this partial self we have come to build, while our other parts remain unconscious. A rational person can become a great scientist or a person with strong intellectual capabilities, but perhaps their emotions have underdeveloped, leaving them with a poor emotional life. This underdeveloped parts of ourselves are part of what becomes the Shadow self, according to Jung. This denied side continually seeks to manifest in our lives, and there are many accounts of usually calm people who snap and commit acts of great violence, after which they would say “I wasn’t myself”, and that would be true from a psychodynamic view: because all those elements (in this case, aggression) are repressed, the rational part of the individual can eventually lose control of those impulses, effectively becoming “possessed” by those drives. The Qliphoth are a name we can use to work with such repressed materials.
The doctrine of the two lights, the thoughtful and the thoughtless, is reminiscent of the distinction between our conscious and unconscious aspects. The thoughtful light represents an aspect of God seeking to manifest Himself through manifoldness and projection into the tehiru, while the thoughtless light is the aspect of God seeking to return everything into nothingness and the original chaos of the Ain Soph. This also reminds me of the two main drives Freud uses as main motivators for our actions: the life drive and the death drive. The first one is related to any action associated with self- preservation, creation and reproduction, that is, it’s an expansive drive; the second one is related to acts of destruction, including self-destruction. The life drive seeks to use whatever energy is available in the body, while the death drive comes into play when we have depleted such energy, forcing us to return to a state of quietness, sleep or death. So, the life drive is like the thoughtful light in that it seeks to expand itself throughout the cosmos, creating cosmic structures through manifoldness, while the death drive is like the thoughtless light, seeking to return everything into the original void. It’s worth noting that these are not separate, but united in one big drive. One would be led to think that the Qliphoth are related with the death drive only, but we must remember that they share the same divine origin as the sephiroth, and they even mirror the structure of the Tree of Life. This means that both drives are present in both sides of reality, and if anything, the life drive is even more powerful in the Sitra Achra. Since the holy side is conceived as a “finished structure”, regulated by divine laws, any outside element is rejected and banished again into the dark. These elements constitute disturbing forces that could endanger the delicate order held by the gods of light, which are symbols of consciousness, while the other is symbol of the unconscious. Ideally, a person ought to be able to handle the impulses coming from the id via creative processes, but in reality most people just deny those impulses and act as if they didn’t exist. The fact that the Qliphoth constitute a mirror-image of the Tree of Life is also reminiscent of the Lacanian formulation that says that the unconscious is structured like a language. While the holy side is related with the laws of logic and order, the other side can be thought of as a place without logic, but if we follow the Lacanian formulation it isn’t that there is no logic, but that its logic is to us absolutely alien. This is the “logic” of the id. And again, there are areas in our unconscious that are incapable of being represented. As we have seen, there are elements which can be seen as similar in qabalistic literature and in Psychoanalysis, but how about properly Qliphotic Qabalah? The key element through which I link both fields is one of the most important characteristics of the Left-Hand Path: antinomianism. This word refers to the questioning and eventual deconstruction of the laws and codes which are conceived as limiting for an individual. Antinomianism means “to go against the current”, and this is precisely what both the qliphotic qabalist and the analysand do. Qliphotic Qabalah could be considered a heretic (in the sense that heresy means “to take for oneself”) kind of Qabalah, through which the individual explores the dark dimensions of reality and works actively with forces and powers conceived as evil and dangerous from the traditional point of
view. The work here is not done to reunite Shekinah with God, or the soul with God, or to repair the sin committed by Adam and Eve, but to create a crack in this reality so that the banished and expelled elements can find their way into our side. However, this process is to be done in a progressive way, so that the individual is not completely drowned into the ocean o f chaos – doing so would be effectively a suicide, either physical or psychological, as an unbalanced individual can end becoming psychotic. The goal most commonly associated with Qliphotic Qabalah is apotheosis, the becoming of man into godhood, that is, the passing from being a creation to being a creator, and this is done once every knot or barrier that hinders the Will has been destroyed. This is also true for Psychoanalysis: the first sessions of therapy are focused on overcoming the unconscious resistances that may the patient feel uneasy about opening up to a complete stranger. Then, when the unconscious patterns start to arise, the real work begins. Working with the unconscious leads to liberation from some the latent psychic conflicts that affect the patient, and thus make him a freer individual with a greater amount of psychic energy to spend in more creative activities. With time, the patient comes to realize that most of his conflicts arise from wanting to live a life marked by the desire of others, such as one’s parents and society. Through psychoanalytic therapy, it is possible to discover one’s own desire, thus opening the possibility of leading perhaps not a happier life, but certainly a more authentic one. Through this kind of work, a patient is able to discover himself, but most importantly, to re-create himself from his own desire. While other forms of therapy such as CBT and psychiatric drugs can make these feelings disappear, the source of anxiety remains hidden in the unconscious. CBT and medical treatments can return a person to normality, but this brings the question: what is normality, but a statistic meant to describe a population of anonymous beings? Psychoanalysis proposes a method through which the person can, through a lengthy process, become more like themselves. Through Psychoanalysis, one can become acquainted with one’s own Desire, and sometimes this Desire will be in direct opposition to what society expects one to be. In today’s world, we are told that we should be happy, successful, powerful, but is that what one really desires? But most importantly, should we be told what to be?
Conclusion Qliphotic Qabalah and Psychoanalysis are ways I have found that work against the current in order for me to encounter parts of myself that I didn’t know were there. I see both as inherently antinomian methods which put one against what is believed to be right and wrong, good and evil, white and black, to come to the realization that we only perceive a little view of the whole spectrum of existence. One may be directed towards the Qliphoth in their quest for stronger experiences, and the need for these may come from an unconscious need to overcome a reality that is inherently unsatisfactory – and this is, I think, the whole idea. We live in a world that every day becomes more and more disenchanted, and so many people feel the urge to break from
this paradigm and bring forth a change in reality, from one in which one is a result from their circumstances, to another in which one is capable of dealing with life’s difficulties in a creative way. The way to break from this reality is let the forces of disorder into our life, so that it can be rejuvenated and the fire reignited. This process is a symbolic death, after which the individual rises again as autogenes, a self-begotten being that is free to build their own destiny. The Qliphoth are remnants from a past which resists to be forgotten, and that continually seeks to reenter the side of light, as if wanting to be recognized as a real and still existing part of Creation, just as our unconscious seems to want to tell us something through our symptoms.
Suggested readings: Sigmund Freud: Civilization and its Discontents; The Ego and the Id; Inhibition, Symptoms & Anxiety; Beyond the Pleasure Principle. C.G. Jung: Psychology and Religion; Psychology and Alchemy; Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self . Francoise Dolto: Séminaire de Psychoanalyse d’Enfants. Erich Fromm: Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis; To Have or to Be?; You Shall be as Gods. Mircea Eliade: The Sacred and the Profane; Images and Symbols. Gershom Scholem: Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Kabbalah. Joseph Dan: The Early Kabbalah. Thomas Karlsson: Qabalah, Qliphoth and Goetic Magic. Kennet Granholm: Dark Spirituality.
