Samael

Samael is the eighth Qlipha, the shadow of Hod, the sphere of Splendor. Its name is read as "the poison of God", a false splendor of deceit and lies.

In the scheme followed here it is ruled by Adramelech, a god of the Sepharvites named at 2 Kings 17:31 as one to whom children were burned in sacrifice, a figure later absorbed into Christian and grimoire demonology as a high-ranking demon, in some classifications one associated with pride or false honors. This shadow Samael is not to be confused with the planetary archangel Samael of Mars, who bears the same name and is a far older and more ambivalent figure in Jewish tradition, appearing in rabbinic and later Kabbalistic literature both as the accusing angel who tests Job and, in some strands, as a consort of Lilith; the qliphothic Samael narrows that older, more complex figure to a single shadow role opposite Hod. Spellings and rulers of the shells vary by source; the material is presented academically.

Hod is attributed to Mercury, the planet of intellect and communication, and Samael's poison and false splendor are read as Mercury's clarity turned to deliberate deceit, speech and reasoning used to mislead rather than to inform.

Sources Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.) with The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie

The concept of the qelippot is a genuine part of classical Kabbalah, but the tidy scheme of ten named "shadow sephiroth", each with an assigned ruling demon, is largely a later construction. It was elaborated by Christian Kabbalists, given systematic form in the ceremonial magic of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and developed further in twentieth and twenty-first century "Left-Hand Path" and Thelemic writing. The demons named as rulers, such as Adramelech for Samael, are drawn from earlier Jewish, Christian and grimoire demonology and mapped onto the scheme after the fact.

Luria's own kelippot, as set out in Hayyim Vital's Etz Chaim, number four rather than ten: three described as "completely impure" and a fourth, kelippat nogah, a translucent or glowing shell understood as a mixture of good and evil rather than pure evil, through which the ordinary permitted things of the world are said to pass. A one-to-one shell for every sephirah, with Samael as Hod's specific opposite, does not appear in that Lurianic material in this form; it is the later systematizers, working chiefly from S. L. MacGregor Mathers's unpublished paper on the Qlippoth, who built the fully sephirothic ten-fold tree the modern list now presents. The system is presented here as a documented strand of esoteric thought, described in historical terms; the demons are not asserted to be real, and nothing here is offered as instruction or as the teaching of any single religion.

Sources Major Trends in Jewish MysticismGershom Scholem with The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic FellowshipLawrence Fine