Perhaps the central feature of Jewish mystical speculation about the universe is the concept of the Tree of Life. Since the Kabbalah's inception, its adepts have devoted tremendous attention to elaborating this complex and imaginative topic. Jewish mystics have always preached that for the cosmos to exist, some of the primordial divine force had to be withdrawn into itself to form a primal space or vacuum for matter to come into being. This was known as the act of tsimtsum which originated out of the incredible radiance of the formless Ein Sof ("Infinite") - led in a step-by-step fashion to the distribution of 10 primordial energies. Historically, these have been depicted in various diagrams, the most favoured being the 'Tree of Life.'

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