Adam Kadmon

In Kabbalistic cosmogony Adam Kadmon is the persona produced when a ray of divine light penetrates the vacuum created by God's contraction (tzimtzum). It occupies the threshold of creation and is either presented as the first of the Four Worlds or as the immediate projection prior to the emergence of the Four Worlds (Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, Asiyah). Different kabbalistic systems vary in emphasis: classical/Zoharic schemata present an ordered emanation from Ein Sof through Adam Kadmon, while Lurianic accounts locate Adam Kadmon immediately after tzimtzum and before subsequent dynamics such as the shattering (shevirah).

Kabbalistic descriptions emphasize light and schematic form rather than material features. Adam Kadmon is depicted first in technical imagery as ten concentric circles (igulim) issuing from the divine ray and then as an anthropomorphic, upright form (yosher) that 'enclothes' that light. Sources stress that it is 'divine light without vessels' — a realm of potential and schematic patterning rather than a physical human body. Later poetic receptions sometimes borrow metaphors (e.g., fragmentation) from Lurianic themes, but such images are interpretive rather than primary doctrinal descriptions.

Adam Kadmon functions ontologically as the structural, formative principle or template for the sefirotic configuration and the subsequent worlds. It is non-agentive in the mythic sense: its 'function' is to embody divine intention (linked to Keter) and to be the pattern from which emanations and manifest realms are organized. In Lurianic contexts Adam Kadmon is related to the pre-tzimtzum ray and to the sequence of processes (projection, shevirah, tikkun) by which creation becomes manifest.