Adam Kadmon

Adam Kadmon is a phrase in the religious writings of Kabbalah meaning "primordial man". The oldest mainstream rabbinic source for the term Adam ha-Ḳadmoni is Numbers Rabbah x., where Biblical Adam is styled, not as usually Ha-Rishon ("the first"), but "Ha-Kadmoni" ("the original"). In Kabbalah, Adam Kadmon ("above") is the first of the comprehensive Five spiritual Worlds in creation, distinguished from Biblical Adam Ha-Rishon ("below"), who included within himself all future human souls before the sin of the Tree of Knowledge. The spiritual real of Adam Kadmon represents the sephirah (divine attribute) of Keter ("crown"), the specific divine will and plan for subsequent creation.

In the Lurianic systemisation of preceding Kabbalah, the anthropomorphic designation for Adam Kadmon describes its arrangement of the latent future sephirot in the harmonised configuration of man. However, Adam Kadmon itself is divine light without vessels, including all subsequent creation only in potential. This exalted anthropomorphism denotes that man is both the theocentric purpose of future creation, and the anthropocentric embodiment of the divine manifestations on high. This mythopoetic cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis enables the "Adam soul" to embody all human souls; the collective Yechidah ("singular") soul essence in Adam Kadmon, and the collective Neshamah ("soul") revealed soul in the Biblical Adam Ha-Rishon in the Garden of Eden.

Adam Kadmon is comparable to the Anthropos of Gnosticism and Manichaeism, and Purusha in the Upanishads. There is also a similar concept in Alevi and Sufic philosophy called al-Insān al-Kāmil (الإنسان الكامل), the perfect or complete man.