Zohar: Introduction: The Occult Origin of Alhim

This is an excerpt from the Zohar, the central text of Jewish Kabbalah, presented as a rabbinic dialogue between Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai and his disciples. The passage interprets Isaiah 40:26 ("Lift up your eyes on high and behold who hath created these") through the lens of mystical Hebrew wordplay, focusing on the words *Mi* (Who), *Mah* (What), and *Aleh* (These). The central argument is that the divine name *Elohim* (God) is not a simple name but a compound formed by joining *Mi* and *Aleh*, revealing that the unknowable, hidden God (*Mi*) became expressible only through creation (*Aleh*) — the two are cosmologically inseparable. A distinctive claim is that the worshippers of the golden calf inadvertently referenced this same mystery when they cried "Aleh is thy God," since the conjunction of *Mi* and *Aleh* into *Elohim* was already embedded in the structure of creation. The text also develops a masculine/feminine polarity between *Mi* (upper, concealed) and *Mah* (lower, manifest), with the divine name serving as the hinge between transcendence and the created world. Readers drawn to Kabbalistic linguistics, the mystical interpretation of Genesis and Psalms, or the theology of divine concealment and revelation will find this a dense but representative sample of classical Zoharic thought.

Zohar: Introduction: The Occult Origin of Alhim

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