Concept slug: adam_kadmon
First introduced: Op. 12
Last advanced: Op. 97
Appearance count: 9 chapters
Adam Kadmon (אדם קדמון, "Primordial Man") is the first ordered emanation — the Tree of the Four-Letter Name, the original Likeness of Man, the central tree under which all other worlds are garments. AK is the cosmogonic structure that fills the chalal the Tzimtzum opened.
AK is implicit throughout the early structural-Sefirot chapters (Op. 12 mentions the Likeness of Man explicitly). It is named formally at Op. 31 (the entire governmental order is ordered under the Four-Letter Name; AK = the Tree of the Four-Letter Name). Op. 32–35 unfold AK's anatomy: the radiance, the apertures (which prefigure Op. 70's koneniyut), the branches.
Op. 35 closes the AK unit and launches Nekudim with the cliff-edge claim that the vessel is already absorbed within the lights breaking forth from AK's branches.
Op. 54 (the new MaH (gematria 45) radiation comes from AK's Forehead); Op. 59 (the joining of MaH and BaN (gematria 52) — radiations of AK) carry AK into the Repair unit.
Op. 74 (Atik Yomin = Malchut of Adam Kadmon clothed in Atzilut); Op. 96 (Atzilut sits under Adam Kadmon — the chain AK → Atik → A"A → Atzilut); Op. 97 (AK as the meta-frame of the three governmental modes). The AK-as-meta-structure runs throughout the named-Partzuf walk.
AK travels closely with the Four-Letter Name and the four expansions (AK = the Tree of the Four-Letter Name; the four letters map to AK's structure), Likeness of Man (AK is the original Likeness), Atik (Atik = Malchut of AK clothed in Atzilut — the bridge into Atzilut), and the four expansions AV (gematria 72)/SaG (gematria 63)/MaH/BaN (radiations from AK's sensory organs, Op. 34).
AK is the first thing in the post-Tzimtzum cosmos. Every later structure (Atzilut, Beriyah, Yetzirah, Asiyah, Atik, A"A, Abba and Imma, Zeir Anpin (Z"A), Nukva) is a garment of AK or operates under AK. The book's cosmogonic architecture has AK at its summit; the chain of clothing-and-development runs from AK downward through every named Partzuf to the operational level of Z"N.