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Paul Laffoley
(b. 1943, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

(17) DAATH [eleventh of eleven]
30” V. x 30” H.
Acrylic paint ,India ink, blood, and letters on acid free board
2001

Daath is called The Empty Sephirah and is located on the Middle Pillar of The Tree of Life between KETHER [The Crown] and TIPHARETH. DAATH means Gnosis or knowledge obtained by entering The Abyss. In contemporary physics DAATH is comparable to the infamous BLACK HOLE – the Abyss of Transition to another world. It represents the digit 0 [nothing] , as opposed to the number 10.
To pass through the DAATH is as treacherous for the Soul as passing through a blac k hole would be for the body.
In terms of the cosmology of the QABALAH [which is similar to that of the Ptolemaic System] it consists of forty nested worlds divided into four sets of ten worlds. /The transition from one system to another is represented as a DAATH – the absence of a Sephirah.
The four worlds are :

1. ATZILUTH – the boundless world of emanations
2.BRIAH – the archangelic world of creations
3. YETZIRAH – the hierarchal world of formations
4.ASSIAH – the physical world of substance or action

It is the nature of these worlds to interpenetrate each other making three DAATH, but the final DAATH contains the QLIPHOTH – the evil entities sometimes called shells or demons. DAATH are , therefore, the inverse of SEPHIRAHJ.
The blood spot in the center of DAATH as a diagram is obtained by making a quick knife slash to your throat.

"As a non-Jew and an artist, my interest in the Kabbalah stems from my lifetime study of the occult in general. Specifically, my interest derives from my reading Of authors such as Manly P. Hall, Aleister Crowley, and Israel Regardie. In addition, I discovered that many artists of the 1920's (including Marcel Duchamp) were self- initiates in the Kabbalah. My entry point of study will not be the alpha numeric Codes associated with the Kabbalah (the Gematria, the Notariqon, or the Temurah), but the major diagram of the divine emanation - The Tree of Sephiroth. Each of the globes are almost complete cognates of higher dimensions of space and time that we might read of in contemporary physics."
-Laffoley 1998