2 - Adoil outside the cosmos: God before and after Creation in the Enochic tradition

Summary

… vessels shattered and collapsed, for they were not able to contain the light expanding and emanating from within them … the saints in their death transform these sparks of holiness.

Chaim Vital, Etz Chaim

Unlike other early Enochic writings, the 2 (Slavonic) Apocalypse of Enoch depicts a unique story of primordial creation, revealing an elaborate course of events that preceded the visible creation of the world. The importance of this mystical account is underlined by the fact that it was delivered to the seventh antediluvian hero by God himself. Chapter 25 of 2 Enoch recounts how, at the end of the patriarch's celestial tour to the Throne of Glory, the deity unveils to the seer that prior to the visible creation he had called out from nothing the luminous aeon Adoil to become the foundation of the upper things. The account describes the enigmatic event of Adoil's disintegration in the course of which the aeon becomes the cornerstone of the visible creation upon which the Deity establishes his Throne. Here, similar to the depictions found in the Lurianic Kabbalah, the bursting of the primordial vessel of light is envisioned as the first creative act of the deity that gives life to the visible order of everything.

Even more striking is that this primordial act of establishing the visible reality is then paralleled in the later chapters of the Slavonic apocalypse that focus on the eschatological demise.