Qliphoth

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Qliphoth." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/categories/qliphoth.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Qliphoth. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/categories/qliphoth

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-qliphoth,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Qliphoth},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/categories/qliphoth},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The qliphoth are the shells or husks of Kabbalah: the residue of a prior, failed creation, treated in Lurianic Kabbalah as the source of impurity and evil. Later Western occultism arranged them into an inverse Tree of Life with ten qliphothic spheres mirroring the ten sephiroth and assigned demonic rulers to each, an elaboration that goes well beyond the Jewish sources. This category presents the occult scheme while noting that it is a later construction.

Facts

Origins

Origin of the Name

From the Hebrew qelippot, husks or shells - what is stripped off a fruit and thrown away. The name is the Jewish sources' own and it is an image of waste, not a title. 2

Whose Classification This Is

In Jewish sources the qelippot explain the presence of evil: the husks clinging to the sparks of holiness and, in Lurianic teaching, the residue of the shattering of the vessels. They are an account of impurity, not a numbered set to be cultivated. 3Jewish Kabbalah

Whose Classification This Is

The inverse Tree of ten qliphothic spheres, each mirroring a sephirah and each given a ruling demon, is a modern occult construction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It goes well beyond the Jewish sources and belongs to the currents that took it up. 1Modern Western occultism

Contested Use

Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

The word qelippot belongs to Jewish Kabbalah, where it names an explanation of evil. The left-hand-path system modern occultism built under the same name is a separate thing, and the shared word is not evidence of a shared doctrine. 1

Overview

Size of the Traditional Set

Ten qliphothic spheres, one shadowing each sephirah 1Modern Western occultism: the inverse Tree

Learn More

The shells of the inverse tree

The qliphoth (or klippot) are the shells or husks of Kabbalah: in Lurianic teaching the residue of a prior, failed creation whose vessels shattered, treated as the source of impurity and evil, the dross clinging to the sparks of holiness that the work of tikkun seeks to redeem. In the Jewish sources they are chiefly a way of accounting for evil, not a system to be cultivated.

Later Western occultism arranged the qliphoth into an inverse Tree of Life with ten qliphothic spheres mirroring the ten sephiroth, each with a ruling demon, and made this "shadow tree" a subject of study and, in some left-hand-path currents, of deliberate practice.

From theodicy to occult scheme

The atlas keeps the layers distinct: in Kabbalah proper the qliphoth explain the presence of evil and impurity in a world of divine emanation, whereas the elaborated ten-sphere inverse tree with its demonic rulers is a modern occult construction, developed by writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and taken up in left-hand-path magic.

The entries give each qliphah its position on the inverse tree, its ruling demon, and its qualities, noting which material is traditional and which modern. The sephiroth the qliphoth shadow are treated in their own category, and the demonic rulers connect to the goetic material.

Cross-Tradition Connections