The world that we live in is in fact the Shadow of the Almighty Yes, the very world we live in, this very world that we call home is in fact, the Shadow of the Almighty. Just as we were created in the shadow and image of God, the Zel Elohim, the world itself is the Shadow of God. This has ramifications in many ways, for our theology, for our practice, and for our understanding of ourselves, and how we interact with this world. # A Beautiful Meditation There's a beautiful meditation that helps us to see this. I like to do this meditation on days when everything seems dark and I am feeling a little lost. It grounds me in the world, in the Light and Shadow of God and helps me appreciate this wonderful world in which we live. In brief, you sit and you imagine a brilliant light source surrounding you shining all around you, as figures come in and move. In-between where those shadows overlap they create this kind of holographic image of the things in front of you. And that's an interesting way of visualizing this idea. If you want to try this meditation for yourself, check out, Rabbi David A.Coopers’s The Handbook of Jewish Meditation Practices (p. 160-162). It is an powerful experience to sit in this amazing light and contemplate the world around us as nothing more than shadow and light. # Everything is Light Our cosmos was born from light. The photon carried this creative energy into being and gave rise to the first hydrogen protons and through billions of years of stellar evolution, the very atoms that form our world, our bodies, everything that is. According to the sages and saints, the world began when God decided to create a it, but first they had to make room. So God constricted into themself. 1, 2, 3 times. From the Ein, to the Ein Sof, to the Or Ein Sof, from the Limitless, to the Limitless Nothing, to the Infinite Light. This constriction made a space for the cosmos, a place that could be filled with a new creation. And that creation is us. This is what we see in the first chapter of Genesis when we see that the world was Tohu va-Vohu, the world was empty, and without form. This is the space that was carved out for our world. Come into being: > “Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep. God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters. God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw the light, and saw that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness. — Genesis 1:2-4 And if we've listened to the gospel of John > “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that has been made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn’t overcome it. — John 1:1-5 This light from the outer edges of God shown in to the waters of creation, into this realm, where all that we behold in the vastness of space and made everything that we are. We could read this literally as the big bang, that moment where all the energy of creation thundered into the world, but the mystics tells us that creation didn't stop there. And this light of God is constantly flowing into the world. # The Ever Greening Light of God It's [[the light of God]] that animates, that creates, and that breaks down. It has that light of God that makes everything that is. This is the Zel Shaddai, The Shadow of the Almighty. This world, this desk, this chair, this room, the material that makes up our bodies. All of this is the shadow of God, and as such [[the light of God]] can manipulate it. It can change it, can restore it, and tear it down. This is the very thing that has manipulated through magic, through prayer, through praise. This is the power of [[Word of God|Dabhar]], the spoken, enacted word that gives rise to all things. It's why we say our rituals out loud. That's why we say our prayers out loud, the spoken, enacted word has power because in so doing, we are casting more shadows into this divine shadow and changing its structure, changing how the light bends, and shapes everything that is here. And it's fundamental at least to the school of thought that I have operated in for a very long time to understand this basic tenant, because so many people think that what they are doing is trying to force God to make changes. They beg, they plead to the Almighty so that the thing either will happen or won't happen, or they become a wizard and they wave your magic wand and Huzzah, force change onto the universe. That is not how any of this work. The universe is a sea of probabilities. It is a sea of possibilities that could or could not happen. Our words, our actions, our deeds, [[the light of God]] that moves through the world, the grace of God, that darkness of God, all of these things affect how those probabilities sort themselves out. So when we are putting our intentions into the world, when we're putting our prayers into the world, when we're doing our rituals, our prayers, our workings, we are in fact trying to push the odds into our favor. That's what these things do. There's a lot of light and a lot of darkness constantly showering into this world from all sides. I'm putting it out into the world. My husband is putting it out into the world. Our neighbors are putting it out into the world. It's constantly around us. And that doesn't even get into any of the incorporeal entities that are around us. Understanding that is what we are doing is adjusting the odds, nudging the odds to be more in our favor, to have a more favorable outcome, you will be much more effective in the workings that you do. You will find much more fulfillment in the work because you will not be seeing the world as some divine candy machine where you insert your one prayer token. You turn the wheel and the candy comes out because that's not how any of this works. We are shining our light. Other things are shining their light. Other things are casting shadows, and all of that falls into this realm that we call home, into the Zel Shaddai into the Shadow of the Almighty and changes the results of how things work. So yes, it is possible in theory, to move mountains and to do all of the great works that we read about in legend. But all of the energies have to align just right for those miracles to occur. More often than not, we're cleansing and purifying the energy around us so that the light God can shine strong in the world that we live in a little bit, that we inhabit. Don't lose sight. # Don’t get lost in these Analogies Too many people get lost in the analogies that are used for magic, and the various mystical arts, we are not here to remove all darkness because darkness is the via negativa, the way of silence, the, one of the aspects we encounter of God. The light is also an aspect of God and learning to see both of those in the world and learning how to work with both of those in this world is vital. So this is where naming comes in to effect the world because names help us understand the world as we are interacting with it. So let us begin with the world as it is, the Zel Shaddai, the shadow of God.