Golachab
“The Burning Ones” · “The Flaming”
Shadow of Gevurah · Ruled by Asmodeus
Gevurah is severity, justice, force applied to purpose. The fifth Sephirah is the limiting principle, without which the unbounded mercy of Chesed would dissolve into chaos. Gevurah cuts away the surplus, judges, holds the form. There is cruelty in her nature, yet it is the cruelty of the surgeon, not the executioner. Her symbol is a sword in the hand, but the hand is governed by reason.
Golachab is that same quality stripped of reason. Fire without purpose. Destruction that no longer serves any order. Where Gevurah cuts to preserve what is viable, Golachab burns simply because that is its nature. “The Burning Ones” is not a metaphor; it is a description of a principle that cannot stop because it has no reason to stop.
Correspondences
| Hebrew name | גּוֹלָחָב |
| Translation | The Burning Ones; The Flaming |
| Shadow of | Gevurah (Severity, Force) |
| Ruling demon | Asmodeus |
| Number | 5 without a hand to hold it — fire that keeps burning |
| Quality | Destructive fire, wrath without justice, force without intent |
The nature of Golachab
Asmodeus appears in the Book of Tobit, in the Talmud and in many magical texts as one of the most “human” of the great demons: jealous, passionate, capable of something like desire. His link with Golachab reveals something important, since destruction here arises from blind intensity, not cold indifference. The fire of Golachab is passion from which the capacity to choose an object has been removed.
If Gha'agsheblah destroys through love, then Golachab destroys through force. The distinction matters: the Dark Tree has its own symmetry, its own logic. Each Qlipha is never arbitrary; it represents a specific distortion of a particular quality. Golachab is what becomes of justice when it loses wisdom.
The demonic ruler
Asmodeus (אַשְׁמְדַאי) is probably the eldest of the great demons, his name drawn from the Avestan Aeshma-daeva, “the demon of wrath” of the Zoroastrian tradition. In the Book of Tobit, Asmodeus kills the seven husbands of Sarah on their wedding nights, driven not by malice but by a blind passion that cannot bear another's touch on what it considers its own. King Solomon, according to legend, captured Asmodeus and forced him to help build the Temple, the only case in which destructive fire was bridled and directed, and even that required Solomon himself. In the Lemegeton Asmodeus is a king, one of the highest ranks, commanding 72 legions. → See the catalogue of rulers