Hayim Vital, Liqqutim Hadashim, pp. 17-18.
In this manner was the contraction of the light that gathered above as the place remained vacant. Then all the coarseness and thickness of the judgment that was in the light of Ein-Sof as a drop in the great ocean is clarified and separated, and it descends and is gathered in that vacated space, and an amorphous mass (golem) is made from the coarseness and thickness of the aforementioned power of judgment. This amorphous mass is surrounded by the light of Ein-Sof from above, below, and the four sides, and from this amorphous mass there emanated the four worlds. In his simple will to actualize his intention, the supernal emanator returned and caused a little of the light, which he withdrew at first, to go down upon the amorphous mass, but not all of it. Thus only a small portion of it went down, and this is the yod, in the manner of the shell preceding the kernel. The reference to the shell is explicable in terms of what Rashbi said that this is the core in relation to that and this is the shell in relation to that. That is, from the thickness and density of the power of judgment the mass is produced and from that the vessels are made afterward, and this is the secret of the land of Edom.
Translated by Elliot Wolfson in “Divine Suffering and the Hermeneutics of Reading- Philosophical Reflections on Lurianic Mythology,” in Suffering Religion, 101-162, Edited by R. Gibbs and E. R. Wolfson. New York and London- Routledge, 2002.
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