What are the Qliphoth?

Qliphoth (Hebrew קליפות, kelipot, singular kelipah, also spelled qlippoth or qlipoth) literally means "shells" or "husks." In Jewish mysticism they are the forces that wrap and conceal the divine light, as a shell hides the kernel of a nut. They make up the "other side" (Sitra Achra) opposite the ten Sephiroth. A fully worked-out "Tree of the Qliphoth" with ten named shadow spheres, by contrast, is a creation of Western occultism in the 19th and 20th centuries.

So anyone reading about the qliphoth meets two traditions that are often blended: Jewish Kabbalah, with the Zohar, Isaac Luria and Hasidism, and the Hermetic "Qabalah" of the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley and Kenneth Grant. This article keeps them apart.

The Qliphoth in Jewish Kabbalah

In the Zohar: the shell around the kernel

The Zohar (Spain, late 13th century) uses the image of a nut: holiness is the kernel, the qliphoth are the shells around it, created by God as protection but without light of their own. They stand for darkness and the powers of evil. The Zohar names individual counter-forces to the Sephiroth, such as Mashhit ("destroyer") opposite Chesed, Af ("anger") opposite Gevurah and Hemah ("wrath") opposite Tiphereth. It calls the realm of these forces, in Aramaic, Sitra Achra, "the other side."

In Isaac Luria: the shattering of the vessels

In Lurianic Kabbalah (Safed, 16th century, handed down by Chaim Vital) the qliphoth come from a cosmic catastrophe, the shattering of the vessels (Shevirat ha-Kelim): the first vessels of the Sephiroth could not hold the divine light and broke. Their fragments fell and became the shells. Sparks (nitzotzot) of the light cling to them, and the qliphoth live on those sparks. The human task is tikkun: through the commandments and conscious action the sparks are freed from the shells and raised. This builds on tzimtzum, God's withdrawal that opens the space for creation.

In Hasidism: the translucent shell

The Tanya of Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1797), the founding work of Chabad Hasidism, distinguishes two kinds: the three wholly impure shells, which contain no good, and kelipat nogah, the "glowing shell," in which good and bad are mixed. Everything permitted in daily life, food, work, possessions, belongs to kelipat nogah: used for good, its spark is raised. The teaching of the shells becomes an ethics of everyday life.

The "Tree of the Qliphoth" in Western occultism

The bridge to the West was the Latin collection Kabbala denudata by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1677–1684). Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers translated parts of it in 1887 as The Kabbalah Unveiled and read the qliphoth as the "Kings of Edom," worlds of unbalanced force. In the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn this became a system: one qliphah for each Sephirah, as its distortion. Aleister Crowley published the correspondences in Liber 777 (1909), and Kenneth Grant expanded them in Nightside of Eden (1977) into a "nightside" tree with paths of its own. Modern occultism often calls this structure the shadow tree or the "Tree of Death."

The ten qliphoth after the Golden Dawn and Crowley

The names are transliterated in many ways; the readings follow the Hermetic tradition:

Sephirah	Qliphah	Distortion
Kether	Thaumiel	the twins of God: division instead of unity
Chokmah	Ghagiel (Ghogiel)	the hinderers: blocked wisdom
Binah	Satariel	the concealers: closure instead of understanding
Chesed	Gha'agsheklah (Agshekeloh)	the smiters: boundless expansion
Gevurah	Golachab (Golohab)	the burning ones: cruelty instead of justice
Tiphereth	Thagirion (Tagiriron)	the disputers: discord instead of balance
Netzach	A'arab Zaraq (Gharab Tzerek)	the ravens of dispersion: desire without love
Hod	Samael	the accuser: deceit instead of insight
Yesod	Gamaliel	the obscene ones: distorted images of the unconscious
Malkuth	Lilith	the woman of night: entanglement in matter

This table is not in the Zohar and not in Luria. To understand the qliphoth in the Jewish sense, do not equate them with it.

Qliphoth as a mirror: the modern reading

Many present-day authors read the qliphoth psychologically: each shell shows a force of the Sephiroth without measure, kindness without limits, severity without compassion. That recalls C. G. Jung's "shadow," the part of the personality one does not want to see. The comparison comes from later authors, not from Jung himself. In this sense you can use the table as a set of questions:

Which force do you live strongly, for example generosity (Chesed) or discipline (Gevurah)?
What would it look like without a counterweight? That is its distortion.
Which Sephirah balances it? In Kabbalah, Chesed and Gevurah hold each other in balance, with Tiphereth mediating.

That is closer to the Lurianic idea than it seems: there too the aim is not to fight the shell but to free the spark inside it. Which Sephirah UmbraLux assigns to your birth date is shown by the Kabbalah by birth date calculator.

Frequently asked questions about the Qliphoth

What does Qliphoth mean?

Qliphoth (kelipot) means "shells" or "husks." In Kabbalah they are the forces that conceal the divine light. They have no light of their own and live on the sparks that cling to them.

Is there a Tree of the Qliphoth in Jewish Kabbalah?

Not in its worked-out form. The Zohar names individual counter-forces to the Sephiroth, and Luria speaks of the fragments of the broken vessels. The complete shadow tree from Thaumiel to Lilith comes from the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley.

What is the Sitra Achra?

Sitra Achra is Aramaic for "the other side." The Zohar uses it for the realm of impurity to which the qliphoth belong, the opposite side to holiness.

What is kelipat nogah?

Kelipat nogah, the "glowing shell," is in the Tanya the shell in which good and bad are mixed. Everything permitted in daily life belongs to it and can be raised by good use, unlike the three wholly impure shells.

Qliphoth, qlippoth or kelipot?

All three spellings mean the same Hebrew word קליפות. "Qliphoth" comes from 19th-century English occultism; scholarly transliterations are kelipot or qelippot.

Sources

The Zohar, Spain, late 13th century.
Chaim Vital: Etz Chaim, the teaching of Isaac Luria, 16th century.
Schneur Zalman of Liadi: Tanya (Likkutei Amarim), 1797, chapters 1 and 6–7.
Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah, Keter Publishing, Jerusalem 1974.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers: The Kabbalah Unveiled, 1887; Aleister Crowley: Liber 777, 1909; Kenneth Grant: Nightside of Eden, 1977.
Qliphoth on Wikipedia.
Shevirat HaKelim on Wikipedia.

Qliphoth: The Shells and Shadow Tree of Kabbalah