The First Spark Draws the Circle of Creation

Creation begins with a mark cut into hidden light.

Zohar, Bereshit 1:1-3 describes the King's will awakening before the world has shape. The King is God hidden in the language of mystery. A hard spark engraves the supernal light. It enters the center of a circle that has no color at all, not white, not black, not red, not green. Only when measure begins do colors appear.

This is not a simple beginning. The Zohar imagines creation as the first act of boundary. The Endless Light is not reduced, but a place is marked where worlds can become possible. The spark is hard because form requires pressure. Something must be inscribed before anything can be seen.

Then a fountain breaks open from inside the spark. Shades and colors begin to flow downward. What was concealed becomes a pattern. What was beyond all image becomes the first hint of a world that can hold image, difference, and relation.

The Zohar's creation myth is therefore not chaos defeated by force. It is hidden light accepting measure. Before trees, angels, seas, or human beings, there is this first wonder: the infinite makes room for a circle, and the circle learns how to shine. Creation begins as permission for difference to appear.

With the beginning of the manifestation of the King's will, that is, when the King desired to emanate and create the world, a hard spark made an engraving upon the supernal light. This hard spark, which emanated from the most concealed of all concealed things from the secret of the Endlessness Light took a shapeless form. The spark was then inserted into the center of a circle that was neither white nor black nor red nor green, nor any color at all. When it began its measurements, it created colors that shone into the empty space and the engraving. From within the spark - This hard spark - a fountain spouted, from which the shades down below received their colors.

From the most concealed of all concealed things, from the secret of the Endlessness Light, emanated two faces: One cleaved and the other did not cleave. Its atmosphere was unknown until forceful blows split Atik, and a concealed supernal point shone. Beyond this point, nothing is knowable and, because of this, it is called by the name Beginning, which means the first of the sayings.