Note 11 — I.
Reading edition
The different worlds which successively emanated from the En Soph and from each other, and which sustain the relationship to the Deity of first, second, third, and fourth generations, are, with the exception of the first (i.e., the World of Emanations), inhabited by spiritual beings of various grades. “God animated every part of the firmament with a separate spirit, and forthwith all the heavenly hosts were before him. This is meant by the Psalmist, when he says ( Ps. xxxiii, 6 ) ‘By the breath of his mouth were made all their hosts.’ (Sohar, iii, 68 a.) These angels consist of two kinds—good and bad; they have their respective princes, and occupy the three habitable worlds in the following order. As has already been remarked, the first world, or the Archetypal Man, in whose image everything is formed, is occupied by no one else. The angel Metatron (מטטרון) occupies the second or the Briatic World ( עולם בריאה), which is the first habitable world; he alone constitutes the world of pure spirits. He is the garment of שדי i.e., the visible manifestation of the Deity; his name is numerically equivalent to that of the Lord. (Sohar, iii, 231 a.) He governs the visible world, preserves the unity, harmony, and the revolutions of all the spheres, planets and heavenly bodies, and is the Captain of the myriads of the angelic hosts11 who people the second habitable or the Jetziratic World (עולם היצירה), and who are divided into ten ranks, answering to the ten Sephiroth. Each of these angels is set over a different part of the universe. One has the control of one sphere, another of another heavenly body; one angel has charge of the sun, another of the moon, another of the earth, another of the sea, another of the fire, another of the wind, another of the light, another of the seasons, &c. &c.; and these angels derive their names from the heavenly bodies they respectively guard. Hence one is called Venus (נגה), one Mars (מאדמים), one the substance of Heaven (עצם השמים), one the angel of light (אוריאל), and another the angel of fire (נוריאל.) (Comp. Sohar i, 42, &c.) The demons, constituting the second class of angels, which are the grossest and most deficient of all forms, and are the shells (קליפות) of being, inhabit the third habitable or Assiatic World (עולם עשיה). They, too, form ten degrees, answering to the decade of Sephiroth, in which darkness and impurity increase with the descent of each degree. Thus the two first degrees are nothing more than the absence of all visible form and organisation, which the Mosaic cosmology describes in the words תהו ובהו before the hexahemeron, and which the Septuagint renders by ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος. The third degree is the abode of the darkness which the book of Genesis describes as having in the beginning covered the face of the earth. Whereupon follow seven infernal halls (שבע היכלות) = Hells, occupied by the demons, which are the incarnation of all human vices, and which torture those poor deluded beings who suffered themselves to be led astray in this world. These seven infernal halls are subdivided into endless compartments, so as to afford a separate chamber of torture for every species of sin. The prince of this region of darkness, who is called Satan in the Bible, is denominated by the Kabbalah, Samaël (סמאל) = angel of poison or of death. He is the same evil spirit, Satan, the serpent, who seduced Eve.12 He has a wife, called the Harlot or the Woman of Whoredom (אשת זנוניﬦ), but they are both generally represented as united in the one name of the Beast (חיוא. Comp. Sohar, ii, 255–259, with i, 35 b.)