“Before creation, Issac Luria taught, there had taken place a cosmic catastrophe called ‘the shattering of the vessels’. Sparks of divinity had gone tumbling helplessly into the demonic abyss. There the divinity must descent, to rescue its fallen fragments from the powers of darkness” – Halperin
“Whoever probes to find Her must break hidden winged shells and open gates” – Zohar, Va-Yhi [1:232b]
In kabbalistic cosmology, the divine feminine, known as the Shekinah, is in a state of oppression. She has been kidnapped and held hostage in the world of shells by the great dragon Satan, or Samael. In Kabbalah the forces of evil are referred to as “Kelipot” which means “shells,” as to imply that they are hollow husks that are not actually alive but trap life within them. The imbalance in the world is a reflection of the heavenly imbalance caused by the divine feminine’s captivity in the world of shells, the Kelipot. The world will gradually become more and more evil under the rule of the Kelipot until the Messiah arrives and defeats them once and for all, liberating the imprisoned Shekinah and returning the world to an Edenic state of paradise.
In the ritual of Yom Kippur a goat is sacrificed to “the other side,” the Kelipot, for the purpose of distracting the devil, who comes to consume the offering, allowing the Shekinah to escape his captivity and ascend to heaven for that day. Ha-Satan (The Satan) has a gematria value of 364, which the Kabbalists explain as meaning that Satan rules the world for 364 days of the year, every day except for Yom Kippur, when he is distracted by the offering the scapegoat.
I explain this in a post about Mario because that is the most famous story I know of about a Princess being kidnapped in a world of shell dragons until she is rescued by a messianic hero. These details are identical with the story told in The Zohar, where The Lost Princess, Shekinah, is held captive in the world of shells by the forces of darkness, who are symbolized as shells and dragons, just like Bowser and his hordes. These shells are broken and the great dragon is defeated by the Messiah, just as Bowser is defeated by Mario. Perhaps the ‘M’ on Mario’s hat stands for “Moshiach.”
The Messiah traverses the realms of Kelipot, breaking the shells and liberating the sparks of light that were trapped within them. This detail is also identical with the video game, where Mario travels through Bowsers kingdoms, defeating various reptiles in shells. When these dragons are defeated, the shell is broken and a star is collected. “Gathering the lost sparks” is a core concept in Lurianic Kabbalah, which sees this as a process of “repairing the world” known as Tiqqun Olam. The concept of liberating the sparks of light that fell into the world of shells, is closely connected to the liberation of the Shekinah who is held captive by these same shells, the forces of darkness who capture and feed off of the light because they have no light of their own. Both of these concepts have oddly specific parallels in the world of Super Mario, which can be seen as a metaphor for the great cosmic drama of the Messianic saga.
The Zohar speaks at great length about the divine essence emanating from the supernal spheres, depicted as a spring of water flowing from the heavens above into the world below, animating life. Each individual directs the flow of these waters through their conduct. Through righteousness the Kabbalist stimulates the supernal union of God and his Shekinah, through sin these waters spill over into the Kelipot, empowering the demonic realm. Every action plays a role in this cosmic drama, either delaying the eschaton or bringing it closer.
Mario being a plumber may not seem to have any Messianic implications, until we return to the concept of Tiqqun Olam, “repairing the world,” and consider that a plumbers job is to direct the flow of water and to repair the channels through which it flows. This is the perfect metaphor for the Lurianic Adept, who works to repair the flow of divine essence, fixing the world by properly conducting the divine essence, so as to stimulate the supernal union of the Shekinah rather than to nourish the Kelipot.
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