The underlying spiritual forms. The circular and straight or upright form: general and individual providence.
The Sefirot can be seen as circles (developmental chain, undifferentiated providence) or as upright lines (governmental order, three columns of Kindness/Judgment/Mercy). Both views are valid.
Op. 13 closes the Forms unit by stating one of Lurianic Kabbalah's defining structural distinctions. The same Sefirot can be viewed two ways. Klach's reader needs to know that neither view is the true view at the expense of the other. They are two valid presentations of the same underlying powers, suited to different aspects of the cosmic government.
The circles view (igulim) shows the Sefirot as concentric rings, each developing from the one inside it: Keter at the center, then Chochmah surrounding Keter, then Binah surrounding Chochmah, all the way out to Malchut at the outermost ring. Circles depict causal succession — the cosmogonic emergence of each Sefirah from the previous. The circles view also indicates general, undifferentiated providence: the cosmic government as a single undifferentiated whole, encompassing all that exists equally.
The upright lines view (yosher) arranges the Sefirot in three vertical columns. Right column: Chesed, Netzach (Kindness). Left column: Gevurah, Hod (Judgment). Middle column: Keter, Tiferet, Yesod, Malchut, with Daat sometimes named between Chochmah and Binah. The lines view depicts active governance — the three columns operate together, each Sefirah acting in coordination with the others through the column-structure.
Both views are of the same Sefirot. The circles are not one set; the lines are not another set; the same ten powers are being presented two ways. Each view illuminates something the other does not. Circles show how the Sefirot got to be where they are; lines show what they do once they are there.
The chapter also formalises a principle that has been operating throughout the Forms unit: every prophetic form is read by analogy to the corresponding form in the lower world (the sod hatemunah principle). When the prophet sees a body, the body is read by analogy to a human body — its head, limbs, organs taken as cosmic-anatomical pointers. Without sod hatemunah, the prophetic visions would be impenetrable; with it, every form becomes legible as a structural claim.
The circles-vs.-lines doctrine grounds the Tzimtzum unit's spatial architecture (Op. 24–30, where the chalal is discussed in circular terms and the Kav in linear terms). And the three-column upright structure becomes CHaDaR (Chesed/Din/Rachamim) — the operational governmental order of Zeir Anpin (Z"A) — at Op. 116 onward. Op. 13's two views are the structural grammar of every later operational chapter.