Chokhmah, wisdom, is the second Sefirah and the head of the right column. The kabbalists describe it as a point: the flash of an idea before it unfolds, the seed before the tree. Job asks: "Where is wisdom to be found?", but the Hebrew can be read "wisdom is found from nothing," me-ayin, and the Zohar reads it thus: Chokhmah is born from Ayin, from the Nothing which is Keter, from what is too high to be grasped. It is the first "something."
Elijah places it in the body: "Chokhmah is the brain, it is the thought within." The masters break the word into koach mah, "the power of what": what is still undefined, being in potential before any form. It is the Father in the language of the partzufim, and Binah the Mother; from their union the seven lower Sefirot are born. Deuteronomy speaks of "the hidden things" that belong to G-d: Elijah applies this verse to Chokhmah and Binah.
Chokhmah does not appear in the verse of Chronicles, which begins lower down. The Psalm, on the other hand, names it everywhere: "How many are Your works, L-rd; You have made them all with wisdom." It is this verse that Cordovero places at the head of his chapter.
The trait to cultivate, according to the Tomer Devorah, flows from this verse. The supernal Wisdom "is spread over all that exists," though it is "hidden and greatly exalted." Likewise, writes Cordovero, a person's wisdom should "be present in everything," and he should "teach so as to be useful to people, to each according to their strength"; whatever of his wisdom he can pour onto the other, let him pour it, "without any cause preventing him." Then he gives the image of the two faces of Chokhmah: one turned upward, toward Keter, which receives; the other turned downward, toward the Sefirot, which watches over them. A person too has two faces: his seclusion with his Creator to increase and repair his wisdom, and the time when he teaches it. And he adds a measure: give to each "according to the measure of his intellect," without exceeding what the other can bear, for the Sefirah above adds nothing beyond the capacity of the one who receives.
The same chapter widens wisdom into mercy toward all beings: let his compassion "be spread over all creatures," let him neither despise nor destroy them, for the supernal Wisdom is spread over everything, "the mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the speaking"; one uproots a plant or kills an animal only for a need, and in the most merciful way, for this is permitted only to raise them from one level to the next. Wisdom, for Cordovero, is not the quantity of what you know, but the way what you know spreads as good over what surrounds you.
Keep the order: receive first, in silence; then give, according to the capacity of the one who receives. A Chokhmah that did not flow downward would be a point without a tree.
