Thread by @Narreddine

Tree of Zaqqum/Kabbalah🧵

An interesting Quranic symbol is the Tree of Zaqqum in Jahannam. Described as bearing the likeness of demons as fruit, that burn the stomach when eaten. The damned being forced by hunger to keep eating and can only quench their thirst by scalding water

This stands in contrast to Christ's concept of Living Water, where one drinks and is never thirsty again.
Druze interpret the Zaqqum spiritually, as sprouting from the chest, to be uprooted and replaced. They tie it to the Book of Daniel, to a prophetic dream where a tree is cut.

Exoteric Muslims have tied the Zaqqum tree to the Snapdragon plant seed pods as they look like demons at an angle. However snapdragons are not trees, they also bloom in pleasantly colored flowers.
Other thorny bitter plants have also been named Zaqqum, as real world counterparts.

Zaqqum tree is better explained as the antagonistic Kabbalah tree, The Tree of Qlipoth. The Tree of Material Superficialities, the Tree of Death. Qlipoth being the antagonists of the Sephiroth. The antagonists of the qualities of light/wisdom, that which pull the self downwards.

Here the fruits of the tree, Qlipoth, are literally the demons themselves, each harboring a sin or darkness that would drag in endless descent, in unquenchable material thirst. Hell.
By stepping over the demons, the upside down Qlipoth tree is climbed to the tree of life.

The Ten Qlipoth Demons:

The anti-crown -Moloch
Obstructer -Belial
Hider in holy clothing/pretender -Lucifer
Disturber -Astaroth
Divisive -Asmodeus
Rebellious/argumentative -Balphagor
Omen-spreading crow -Baal
Seducer/instigator -Adramelech
Vulgar -Lilith
Wicked -Nahaman

This shared Mystic concept of hell as a spiritual state, and gnostic understanding of antagonism between the two trees, light and darkness. Allows Hell not to be an eternal place of damnation, which would be incredibly unjust, but a conquerable transcendable abyss of the self.

@UnrollHelper