Adam Kadmon
Jewish mythology (rabbinic–kabbalistic) · numen · Jewish mythology (rabbinic–kabbalistic) traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Adam Kadmon, the primordial or supernal man, is the great anthropos of Kabbalistic cosmogony. In the Zohar he is the archetypal human pattern upon which both the divine emanations and the material world are modelled; in the Lurianic system he is the first configuration to arise within the void left by the tzimtzum, God's self-contraction, the initial vessel through which the light of Ein Sof, the Infinite, flows into being. From the lights that issue from his features the sefirot and the worlds take shape, and the catastrophe of the shattering of the vessels unfolds within him. He is carefully distinguished from Adam ha-Rishon, the first earthly man, being a metaphysical rather than a bodily being.
Domains
- cosmogony
- primordial chaos
Powers
- channels the light of the Infinite into creation
Epithets
- אָדָם עִלָּאָה — the supernal manZohar, Idra Rabba (3:135a) (primary)
Sources
- Adam Kadmon is the primordial supernal man of the Kabbalah, the first emanation from Ein Sof that mediates between the Infinite and the created worlds, distinct from the earthly first man.: Zohar, Idra Rabba and Tikkunei Zohar (primary); Chaim Vital, Etz Chaim, Sha'ar 1 (secondary); Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (Keter, 1974), pp. 137-140 (secondary); Howard Schwartz, Tree of Souls (Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 12-15 (secondary)