Samael
“The Poison of God” · “The Blind God”
Shadow of Hod · Ruled by Adramelech
Hod, “Glory,” the eighth Sephirah, is the sphere of intellect, language, communication and precision. It is the Hermes of the kabbalistic tree: messenger, translator, the one who makes names answer to things. If Netzach is emotion and desire, then Hod is their articulation, their formation into words and structure. Here lives reason as instrument, cold, precise, serving truth.
Samael is the poison that has entered that instrument, since he turns reason into something that serves deception, not truth, words that carry the appearance of meaning, not meaning itself. In the Talmud (Bavli, Bava Batra 16a) Satan, the evil inclination, and the Angel of Death are named as one, and the midrashim, Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer (13) and Shemot Rabbah, bind the name Samael to that same role. This is the figure who, in the Book of Job, stands before God and demands the right to try Job. His nature is accusation, which is not lying so much as the use of precision as a weapon.
Correspondences
| Hebrew name | סָמָאֵל |
| Translation | Poison of God; in other readings — the Blind God |
| Shadow of | Hod (Glory, Intellect) |
| Ruling demon | Adramelech |
| Number | 8, in service of the lie |
| Quality | The poison of mind, false witness, intellect as weapon |
The nature of Samael
Samael is a name borne by several beings in different traditions. In the Talmud he is the angel of death, while in the Gnostic texts he becomes the blind demiurge, who created the material world in ignorance, and in Kabbalistic demonology he is the Prince of Darkness, husband of Lilith. This multiplicity is not a contradiction, since all these images are aspects of one principle, blind authority: a force that acts in complete certainty of its own righteousness, seeing no further than its own intent.
Samael's link to Hod, the intellectual Sephirah, is especially disquieting. Hod is the sphere of the mind, and its shadow is the mind poisoned, neither stupidity nor madness, but sharp, functioning intellect turned against truth.
The demonic ruler
Adramelech (אַדְרַמֶּלֶךְ, “Adar is the great king”) is mentioned in 2 Kings 17:31 as a god of the people of Sepharvaim, to whom they burned children, sacrificed in fire, just as to Moloch. In Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal (1818) Adramelech is Great Chancellor of Hell and keeper of Satan's wardrobe, conspicuously clerical titles for the one who formalises and decides in what guise power appears. Adramelech does not act directly; he services the action. That is a precise description of the Hod-shadow function of this Klipah: impeccably formal service to evil that works through the appearance of order. → See the catalogue of rulers