The souls against the worlds — a correspondence that does not quite close

The standard Lurianic mapping, and this app ships both of its columns already:

nefesh ← Assiyah · ruach ← Yetzirah · neshamah ← Beriah · chayah ← Atzilut · yechidah ← Adam Kadmon.

⚠ Note what has to happen for that to come out even. There are four worlds in the phrase "the four worlds", and five soul-levels — so the fifth is paid for by promoting Adam Kadmon, which this app's own entry calls a fifth world above the four, into the row. The arithmetic works. It works because a term was added to make it work.

That is not a scandal, and it is not an accident either — it is how a system absorbs an older list it did not generate. The five names came from a fifth-century midrash counting a body; the four worlds came from a wholly separate line of speculation about emanation; and the join between them was made later, by people who had both on the desk.

It also carries real weight downstream. Sha'ar ha-Gilgulim — shelved here — is built on it: which level of soul returns, which is added in ibbur, which was never in the body to begin with. You cannot read the transmigration material at all without this row.