Queer Qabala Playlist: Kether

Each week between now and the publication of Queer Qabala: Nonbinary, Genderfluid, Omnisexual Mysticism & Magick (pre-order now!), I’ll be sharing a playlist I made about one of the spheres on the Tree of Life, and will be giving you a tiny sneak preview of that sphere’s chapter in the book.

This week’s playlist is for Kether, the first sphere on the Tree of Life, which represents ultimate unity and pure potential. The vibe of this playlist is one of hope, togetherness, and looking forward. It kicks off with a fantastic remix of astronomer Carl Sagan, called “A Glorious Dawn.” You can listen to the Kether playlist on YouTube and Spotify.

Here’s a snippet from the Kether chapter of Queer Qabala: Nonbinary, Genderfluid, Omnisexual Mysticism & Magick:

The magickal image for Kether is of a bearded king in profile. Modern Qabala scholars point out that showing a masculine character in profile hints at the flip side being feminine in nature, showing this sphere as a higher reflection and source of the combined powers of Chokmah as divine masculine and Binah as divine feminine. This idea is another one of those aspects of the Tree of Life that made me go, Wow, Qabala is incredibly queer.

That hidden half of the face also reminds us that Kether contains the potential for all; therefore, it includes the potential for all manifested and unmanifested genders, sexes, and sexualities. In that regard, Kether is the queerest of the spheres, containing the potential for queer identities we can’t even conceive of. “If you manifest all of me, I shall become queerer than you can possibly imagine,” says Obi-Wan Kether. It is all genders, all sexualities, all sexes possible: the ultimate omnigender, omnisexual being. We can look at Kether from another queer perspective, though. We can see Kether as a purely agender, asexual being: Kether exists before energy and before form, before any sort of expression, and we established in the Netzach chapter that Kether, like most spheres in the Tree of Life, exists before gender or sexuality can be differentiated. Further, Kether, by itself, emanates all three pillars and all the other nine spheres: in other words, Kether reproduces asexually.

Kether is everything and all possibilities, and yet it is also the absence of any expression or identification. Frankly, I can’t think of anything queerer than that.

Queer Qabala: Nonbinary, Genderfluid, Omnisexual Mysticism & Magick

Bonus meme I made from the snippet above: