The Tree of Life (Hebrew: עֵץ חַיִּים ʿĒṣ Ḥayyīm) is a diagram used in Kabbalah and various other mystical traditions. It is usually referred to as the Kabbalistic tree of life in order to distinguish it from the biblical tree of life and the archetypal tree of life found in many cultures.
Scholars have asserted that the concept of a tree of life with different spheres encompassing aspects of reality traces its origins back to Assyria in the 9th century BC. The Assyrians assigned values and specific numbers to their deities similar to those used by the later Jewish Kabbalah.
The beginnings of the Jewish Kabbalah are traced back by scholars to the Medieval Age, originating in the Bahir and the Zohar. Although the earliest extant Hebrew kabbalistic manuscripts dating to the late 13th century contain diagrams, including one labelled "Tree of Wisdom," the now iconic "Tree of life" emerged over the course of the fourteenth century. Scholars now believe that it should be regarded as primarily indebted to the Porphyrian tree rather than to any speculative ancient sources, Assyrian or otherwise.
The iconic representation first appeared in print on the cover of the Latin translation of Gates of Light in the year 1516. Scholars have traced the origin of the art in the Porta Lucis cover to Johann Reuchlin.
Description
The tree of life usually consists of 10 or 11 nodes symbolizing different archetypes and 22 paths connecting the nodes. The nodes are often arranged into three columns to represent that they belong to a common category.
In the Jewish Kabbalah, the nodes are called sephiroth. They are usually represented as spheres and the paths are usually represented as lines. The nodes usually represent encompassing aspects of existence, God, or the human psyche. The paths usually represent the relationship between the concepts ascribed to the spheres or a symbolic description of the requirements to go from one sphere to another.
The columns are usually symbolized as pillars. These pillars usually represent different kinds of values, electric charges, or types of ceremonial magic. The diagram is also used in Christian Kabbalah, Hermetic Qabalah and Theosophy. The nodes are also associated with deities, angels, celestial bodies, values, single colors or combinations of them, and specific numbers.
History
Paolo Riccio's son, Hyeronomius, actively exchanged letters and shared his father's work with Reuchlin before publication. Thus, in the year 1516, Reuchlin's diagram came to appear on the cover of the Paolo Riccio's Latin translation of Joseph Gikatilla's Gates of Light. The diagram only had 17 paths and, at the time, the concepts of 10 spheres and 22 letters were still distinct in the literature. In 1573, a version sketched by Franciscus Zillettus appeared in Cesare Evoli, De divinis attributis. This version introduced several innovations that would reappear in later versions: all the spheres were of the same size, the lines became wide paths, the spheres were aligned into 3 distinct columns, Malkuth was connected to three spheres, and astrological symbols for the known celestial bodies were used in conjunction with the Hebrew names to label the spheres. However, it also had only 17 paths, albeit distributed differently. Reuchlin's version was reprinted in Johann Pistorius' compilation of 1587. Finally, several versions from unknown artists introducing 21 and 22 paths appeared in the posthumous print editions of Moses Cordovero's Pardes Rimonim between 1592 and 1609. However, the diagrams with 22 paths lacked consistency with each other and none of them had the 22 letters. Between 1652 and 1654, Athanasius Kircher published his own version of the tree in Oedipus Aegyptiacus. Kircher might have designed his diagram in a syncretic attempt to reconcile several distinct ideas. This heavily annotated version, self-termed Sephirotic System, introduced more innovations: abstract concepts, divine names, the 22 Hebrew letters for each path, and new astrological symbols. Between 1677 and 1684, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth published Kabbala denudata. The first volume concluded with an apparatus featuring five ilanot, or kabbalistic trees, representing various aspects of Lurianic cosmology. Four of these were based on ilanot that had been designed by Jewish kabbalists over the preceding half century; one (his figures 8–12) was designed by Knorr on the basis of his reading of select passages of Naftali Hertz ben Yaakov Elchanan's 1648 work, Emek ha-melekh.