Starter Soul

It is interesting how in the act of fertilization is really multi-leveled; built upon a series of male and female intimacies, one after another. Tracing them backwards, there’s the intimate union of the parental DNA, preceded by that of the parental chromosome strands, as they twist, twine and embrace. Preceded by this there’s the union of the sperm and egg, which is of course preceded by the intimacy of the parents themselves.

Now can this intimacy be traced even further back, within some male and female elements of the parents’ themselves? Remember, male and female is not just a body type. It’s a magnetic polarity which is found within each and every aspect of the emanated and created reality, tracing back to the earliest moments when a contraction happened within the Infinite Light. It’s truthfully, a relative relationship. What’s male in one setting can be female in another and vice versa. So within our own bodies and souls, we have relative male and female components.

The Kabbalistic work called “Tal Orot” (Part I, Chapter 4:1) states that an embryo gets a “starter soul”. The author, Rabbi Ya’akov Meir Shpielman, further explains that the father and mother each contribute a small part of their own soul to start the fetus. These components combine to form the total “starter soul” of the fetus. Once the fetus grows sufficiently, it receives its own individual soul and then the “starter soul” serve as a “garment” around the child’s true soul from that point onward throughout life.

Now what contained the two halves this “starter soul” in the parents before they merged to become the “starter soul” of the fetus? Based on chapter 2 of “Likutei Amarim Tanya” and elsewhere in “Tal Orot”, it seems to me that the patrilineal component of the “starter soul” is found in the sperm. Based on the same pattern of thinking, it makes sense that the matrilineal component of the “starter soul” is found in the ovum; as polarities tend mirror each other. So, what happens on one side of the equation can be reasonably accepted as happening on the other side of the equation as well.

In the case of the sperm, its component of “starter soul” is said to form in the father’s mind, the seat of the soul, and then travel down the vertebrae of the spine into the testes. It makes sense to me, that at this point something in the testes gets fertilized with animating life force from the father’s component of the “starter soul”. I do not know whether these are actual sperm cells or early stage cells which will later become sperm cells. However, this seems to indicate a male and female intimacy of sorts occurring between the mind and the testes.

I would presume, based on the mirror image principle that the same pattern occurs in ovaries of the mother. Her mind fertilizes her ova with her own component of “starter soul”. This too is an act of male and female intimacy within her body. Except that it’s not constantly occurring within her because she’s born with every egg she will eventually release throughout life; whereas, with a male, the sperm is being constantly replenished. As a result, this act of intimacy needs to be constantly reenacted.

I was told that scholars believe that Judaism got it’s notions of embryology from the ancient Greek philosopher Galen, who thought of sperm being created in the brain and then traveling down the spinal column to be discharged into a female womb which only acts as a kind of soil to augment the growth of the male seed. In this model the real producer of the sperm is the male brain, which infuses the sperm with all of its true hereditary components. In contrast, the woman makes no essential hereditary contribution to the child. I am just repeating what I was told and take no responsibility for its full truth.

However, just because Kabbalists may have used Galanic terminology to express themselves, does not mean that Kabbalists necessarily fully bought Galen’s perspective. I think they were much too sensitive to matters of male and female polarity to believe that a woman does not contribute a mirror image of what the man contributes to a fetus, just as the author of Tal Orot had expressed. Besides, the sperm traveling down the spine can be interpreted to refer to an electric flow and/or chemical secretion released by the father’s brain, embodying a component of “starter soul”. This flow and/or secretion then fertilizes something in the testes with life force; acting as a kind of “sperm of sperm”.

The Kabbalists’ usage of the wisdoms of their day as possible models and modes of communication does not necessarily mean that they strictly interpreted reality in accordance with them.  In fact, I would imagine that they were prone to employ flexibility when dealing with extra-Torah sources.

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