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These are the opening words of perhaps the most famous of all descriptions of how the Universe came into being.

One of the earliest preoccupations of Kabbalah was with understanding the profound implications of this veiled description of the Creation. Veiled it must necessarily be, because we cannot know the mind of God. But from what we know about our Universe and the way it works, we can deduce certain things about what happened at the very Beginning.

Physicists, as well as theologians, have tackled this problem throughout the history of recorded human knowledge and today are coming up with answers that bear an uncanny resemblance to the conclusions drawn from Kabbalah many centuries ago...

In the beginning, there was nothing. There was not even empty space, because space is a property of matter. There was no time, so even the words "in the beginning" must be misleading. There was nothing - that is to say No Thing - but there was God. The infinite absolute, the incomprehensible God, whose name is known to Kabbalists as Ain (אין) - nothingness.

And this God by his very nature is limitless, without end, or En Sof (אין סוף). God in his infinite love and wisdom filled the whole of this infinite existence with light: the En Sof Aur (אין סוף אור).

But God did not know himself, because he had no point of reference against which to compare himself. And so he created the Universe, so that it might act as mirror in which he would be able to perceive himself.

At this point, various accounts, even within the scope of the Kabbalistic tradition, differ. We can never, in fact, know the truth because we were not there when it happened. We can only conjecture. What is more, all accounts must be couched only in veiled or allegorical terms, because we have no language to describe the kind of things that were going on in this ineffable infinity. Why, then, should we even attempt to do so? The answer, it is argued, is because if one can understand even a tiny portion of the events that brought about the beginning of the Universe, then one will have a better understanding of the Universe as it exists today, and what is our place and our purpose in it. This page attempts to define one possible sequence of events, distilled from several Kabbalistic sources. One point on which all the sources are silent is, why should God have wished to see himself reflected, why did he see it necessary to create the universe as a mirror that he could hold up to himself? It is said that this silence is necessary, because is no sense can we presume to know the mind of God, and it is not our place to attempt to do so.

In order to create the Universe, it was necessary to create a space - a void - in which it could exist. To achieve this, the infinite God withdrew into himself a portion of himself, so creating an empty space - a bubble, if you like, within his own being. The parallel with the notion of the physical Universe as a fluctuation - a bubble - in the infinitely energetic pre-existing vacuum state is irresistible. But nothing can possibly exist where God is not, so the light of God must break through the boundary of the bubble and fill it with divine light anew. Once again, we can see the parallel of the newly formed physical Universe becoming filled with energy. The words of Genesis "and God said, let there be light" are held to represent this critical stage of creation. "And God said," because already in the act of creating the void, God has recognised his own existence, and therefore the existence of his divine will, which he may express solely with the power of a word. The idea of the ultimate power of words as tools to give us a handle on the Universe, is central to almost all branches of Kabbalah.

"And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good." Because God willed it, so it came to be. And God perceived the light and, because all was in conformity with his will, so it was good.

The divine light and love that flooded the Universe contained within its essence the image of all things that the Universe could and would contain, including the nature and being of mankind itself.

"And God said, let us create man in our own image" - Genesis.

"That which is below is like unto that which is above, and that which is above is like unto that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of the One" - the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegitus (often rendered "As Above, So Below").

This is why the presence of the divine light at this stage is sometimes called Adam Kadmon: the primordial Adam. The image of Adam Kadmon is the Tree of Life, so the Tree of Life is the image of the Universe, of everything in it and, ultimately, of ourselves.

The point at which the divine light enters the Universe, the point at which we are closest to intimate contact with God, is the apex of the Tree of Life, the Crown, Kether.

From here the energy flows naturally downwards through all the other elements of the Tree - which are all, in their way, manifestations of God - to the perfected physical form of the four elements which we recognise as the world we live in.

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