Kabbalah Library
Zohar for All, Volume 3
And Jacob Awoke and Said, “How Awful Is This Place”
64) “And Jacob awoke … and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know.’” “I did not know” is phrased as a conjunction and adhesion. Jacob said, “How did all this appear to me and I was not looking to know the Holy Name, “I”, “the Shechina,” to come under the wings of the Shechina and be a whole man?”
65) Each and every day, Rebecca saw the Shechina, who is called “I.” This was so because the Shechina was in her tent and she prayed there. When she saw this trouble in her intestines, it is written, “And she said, ‘If it is so, why am I for?’ And she went to inquire the Lord,” since she went out from this degree of “I” into a degree which is HaVaYaH. “I” is the name of the Shechina. This is why Jacob said, “But I saw all that and I did not know,” since he was alone and did not come under the wings of the Shechina.
66) Promptly, “He was afraid and said, ‘How awful is this place.’” This was said about the Shechina and about the token of the holy covenant.
67) And even though they are Yesod and Malchut, they are one. He said, “This is none other than the house of God.” This is the Yesod, which should be cancelled. “This is none” means it is none other than the house of God, the Nukva, to use her and to bear fruit in her, meaning to bestow blessings upon her from all the organs of the Guf [body] because Yesod is the gate to the entire Guf, which is Tifferet.
And it is written, “This is the gate of heaven,” Tifferet, meaning Guf, and it is called “heaven.” “This” is the gate of the Guf, the gate for imparting blessings below to the Nukva. It grips above, in heaven, Tifferet, and grips below, in the Nukva, which is called “a place,” as well as “the house of God.”
It grips above because it is written, “This is the gate of heaven,” where Yesod is the gate of Tifferet, called “heaven.” It grips below, as it is written, “This is none other than the house of God.” “This is none,” Yesod, is in “None other than the house of God,” the Nukva. Hence, “He was afraid and said, ‘How awful is this place.’” “This place” is the Nukva, and “this” is the Yesod. And people do not look after the glory of Yesod to be completed in it.
