Chapter VII · 1 min read
The Lower Havayah
An audacious title read through bittul
The phrase “Lower הֲוָיָ״הHavayahThe customary respectful designation used in Chassidic writing for the four-letter Divine Name, avoiding its pronunciation and its decorative use.Glossary” can still be useful if we understand what “lower” means.
It cannot mean Havayah divided into an upper deity and a lower deity.
Rather, it can describe the Divine Name as reflected toward lower worlds through created mediation.
The Name above articulation.
The Name as it enters relation.
The Name carried.
The Name transmitted.
The Name as governance becomes inhabitable by levels beneath.
In this sense, Metatron stands at a threshold.
He receives from above.
He administers below.
He is a panim turned toward the worlds without becoming the Essence behind the face.
A face reveals the person.
A face is not the totality of the person.
A garment takes the form of the one wearing it.
A garment is not the wearer.
A voice reveals thought.
The sound is not the thinker.
A throne reveals kingship.
The throne is not the King.
This architecture lets us read the Zoharic and Kabbalistic associations of Metatron as לְבוּשׁlevushGarment. That which makes light bearable to a receiver without being the light's origin. The wearer is not the garment.Glossary, garment, without diminishing him.
A garment is intimate.
It touches.
It moves with what it clothes.
It makes something otherwise inaccessible visible in a form the recipient can encounter.
But its entire dignity lies in not claiming the body within it as its own.
This is Metatron.
The lower receives the higher.
Then the lower becomes capable of carrying the higher downward.
Not as ownership.
As fidelity.