Hishtalshelus: Each world is made up of ten sfiros, there are 4 worlds, they evolve into each other
-
When God decided to create the world, He didn’t just go straight from Infinity into our physical world. He went through a process of contracting His energy into a more containable form, and began to enter the realm of otherness. He had to do this many times, and there are countless contractions, and different forms of contraction, that the Alter Rebbe says they are beyond count. However, there is a basic outline of how God went from Infinite to physical. This process is called Seder Hishtalshelus - the order of devolution.
-
There are four worlds: (you don’t have to say them, you can just show them)
-
Atzilus - Emanation
-
Briah - Creation
-
Yetzirah - Formation
-
And Asiyah - Action
-
Each world is comprised of ten sfiros - ten particular attributes (you don’t have to say them, you can just show them)
-
Chochma
-
Binah
-
Daas
-
Chesed
-
Gevurah
-
Tiferes
-
Netzach
-
Hod
-
Yesod
-
Malchus
-
Each one evolves from the one that came before it: Chochmah - the power of thought, gives rise to Binah - the power to think things through. Binah gives rise to Daas, the power of really understanding something. Each sfirah evolves into the other, till we come to Malchus.
-
Malchus plays a dual role: completing the world it is found in, and giving birth to the new world below it to start the process again. Completing Atzilus, and giving birth to Briah.
-
It is hard to depict this reality, because it is not a higher then lower world spatially, rather, it goes from a higher level of spirituality to a lower one.
-
There are endless more details that fill hundreds of books describing seder hishtalshelus. We hope this has been an informative overview, and that it leads you down the path of exploring hishtalshelus further.