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This article is about the esoteric western mystical tradition. For Jewish Kabbalah see Kabbalah.


Hermetic Qabbalah ( from the Hebrew קַבָּלָה "reception"), is a western, esoteric, mystical tradition which is a precursor to the neo-Pagan, Wiccan and New Age movements which draws on a great many influences, most notably; Jewish Kabbalah, western astrology, tarot, alchemy, pagan religions (especially Egyptian and Greco-roman), neoplatonism, gnosticism, the Enochian system of angelic magic of John Dee, hermeticism, rosicrucianism, freemasonry, and tantra. It differs from the Jewish form in being a more admittedly syncretistic system. However it shares many concepts with Jewish Kabbalah.


Conception of God[edit]

A primary concern of Hermetic Qabbalah is the nature of god, though its conception of god is quite different from that presented in the monotheistic religions. An important difference is that there is not the strict separation between god and man which is seen in the monotheisms. Hermetic Qabbalah holds to the neoplatonic conception that the manifest universe, of which material creation is a part, is comprised of a series of emanations. These emanations arise from Ayin (negativity) which is the uncreated, unmanifest, unknowable (by man) source of all being, and the first of the three planes of negative existence. Following Ayin, i.e. moving toward manifestation, is En Soph (the limitless), then Or En Soph (the limitless light).

The Sephirot[edit]

The Sephirotic tree showing the lightning flash and the paths.

The Sephirot, also Sefirot, (סְפִירוֹת), singular: Sephirah, also Sefirah (סְפִירָה) "enumeration" in Hebrew. The sephirot are conceptualised somewhat differently in Hermetic Qabbalah to the way they are in Jewish Kabbalah. See Sephirot for the Jewish conceptualisation.

From Or En Soph crystallises Kether, the first sephirah of the Hermetic Qabbalistic tree of life. From Kether emanate the rest of the sephirot in turn, viz. Kether (1), Chokhmah (2), Binah (3), Daath, Chesed (4), Geburah (5), Tiphareth (6), Netzach (7), Hod (8), Yesod (9), Malkuth (10). Daath is not assigned a number as it is considered a hidden sephirah.

Each sephirah is considered to be an emanation of the divine energy (often described as 'the divine light') which ever flows from the unmanifest, through Kether into manifestation. This flow of light is indicated by the lightning flash shown on diagrams of the sephirotic tree which passes through each sephirah in turn according to their enumerations.

Each sephirah is a nexus of divine energy and each is given a number of attributions. These attributions enable the Qabbalist to form a comprehension of each particular sephirah's characteristics. This manner of applying many attributions to each sephirah is an exemplar of the diverse nature of Hermetic Qabbalah. For example the sephirah Hod has the attributions of; Glory, perfect intelligence, the eights of the tarot deck, the planet Mercury, the Egyptian god Thoth, the archangel Michael, the Roman god Mercury and the alchemical element Mercury. The general principle involved is that the Qabbalist will meditate on all these attributions and by this means acquire an understanding of the character of the sephirah.



The Tarot[edit]

The tarot forms an important part of the Qabbilistic system. While the sephirot describe the nature of god, the paths between them describe ways of knowing god. As the sephiort are numberd in turn, so are the paths numbered.

Meditate on the cards to understand the sephirot.


Hermetic Order Of The Golden Dawn[edit]

Hermetic Kabbalah probably reached its peak in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a 19th-century organization that was arguably the pinnacle of ceremonial magic (or, depending upon one's position, its ultimate descent into decadence). Many of the Golden Dawn's rituals were published by the occultist Aleister Crowley, and were eventually compiled into book form by Israel Regardie. The credibility of Crowley is inconsistent though, as many of the rituals published were actually manipulated versions. Regardie however developed a much better reputation through his own research, practice and publications after he broke with Crowley.


Crowley is probably the most widely known exponent of Hermetic Magic or Magick as he preferred to render it. Although popular within certain groups, especially the Thelemic orders he founded (such as the O.T.O.), Crowley is not without critics. Notwithstanding this a number of his writings are still widely used today, even outside the Thelemic orders he founded. Perhaps the most widely used of these is Liber 777 which is mostly comprised of a set of tables of correspondences. Which is to say, tables showing various parts of ceremonial magic and Eastern and Western religion and relating them to thirty-two numbers representing the ten spheres and twenty-two paths of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The attitude of syncretism embraced by Hermetic Kabbalists is plainly evident here, as one may simply check the table to see that Chesed (חסד "Mercy") corresponds to Jupiter, Isis, the colour blue (on the Queen Scale), Poseidon, Brahma, and amethysts.

Dion Fortune, a fellow initiate of the Golden Dawn, disagreed with Crowley.

Samael Aun Weor has many significant works that discuss Kabbalah within many religions, such as the Egyptian, Pagan, and Central American religions, which is summarized in his work The Initiatic Path in the Arcana of Tarot and Kabbalah.


Keep[edit]

Title page of first edition of the Zohar, Mantua, 1558 (Library of Congress).









Rework[edit]

The Hebrew word Sefirah (סְפִירָה) literally means "Numbering" or "Numeration". Sefirot is the plural, "Numerations". Sometimes, Jewish midrashic interpretations reread the Hebrew letters of this word to mean "Spheres" or "Narrations".

Ten Sefirot as Process of Creation According to Kabbalistic cosmology, Ten Sefirot (literally, Ten Numerations) correspond to ten levels of creation. These levels of creation must not be understood as ten different "gods" but as ten different ways of revealing God, one per level. It is not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes. While God may seem to exhibit dual natures (masculine-feminine, compassionate-judgmental, creator-creation), all adherents of Kabbalah have consistently stressed the ultimate unity of God. For example, in all discussions of Male and Female, the hidden nature of God exists above it all without limit, being called the Infinite or the "No End" (Ein Sof) - neither one nor the other, transcending any definition. The ability of God to become hidden from perception is called "Restriction" (Tsimtsum). Hiddenness makes creation possible because God can then become "revealed" in a diversity of limited ways, which then form the building blocks of creation.

Ten Sefirot and Physical Sciences The Ten Sefirot mediate the interaction of the ultimate unknowable God with the physical and spiritual world. Some students of Kabbalah suggest that the Sefirot may be thought of as analogous to fundamental laws of physics. God's "Restriction" (Tsimtsum) within the spritual levels is often compared with the Big Bang in the lowest physical level. Just as the resulting gravity, electro-magnetism, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force allow for interactions between energy and matter, the Ten Sefirot allow for interactions between God and creation. (Compare Theory of Everything.)



  • Yetzirah יצירה "Formation, Creation", also known as Hilkhot Yetzirah "Customs of Formation" The first commentaries on this small book were written in the 10th century, perhaps the text itself is quoted as early as the 6th century, and perhaps its linguistic organization of the Hebrew alphabet could be from as early as the 2nd century. Its historical origins remain obscure. It exists today in a number of editions, up to 2500 words long (about the size of a pamphlet). It organizes the cosmos into "32 Paths of Wisdom", comprising "10 Sefirot" (3 elements - air, water and fire - plus 6 directions and center) and "22 letters" of the Hebrew alphabet (3 mother letters, 7 double letters plus 12 simple letters). It uses this structure to organize cosmic phenomena ranging from the seasons of the calendar to the emotions of the intellect, and is essentially an index of cosmic correspondences.


  • Zohar זהר "Splendor" - the most important text of Kabbalah, at times achieving even canonical status as part of Oral Torah. It is a mystical commentary on the Torah, written in Medieval Aramaic. There is an academic consensus regarding the medieval authorship of the Zohar but most traditional Kabbalists agree amongst themselves that the oral author of the Zohar was Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and the text was scribed by Rav Abba, a student of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. The academic opinion is that Rabbi Moshe de Leon wrote it himself (or perhaps with help) before he published it in Spain in the 13th century. He claimed to discover the text of the Zohar (in a vision?) and attributed it to the 2nd century Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai who is the main character of the text. The text gained enormous popularity throughout the Jewish world. Though the book was widely accepted, a small number of significant rabbis over the subsequent centuries published texts declaring Rabbi Moshe invented it as a forgery with concepts contrary to Judaism. However, many of these Rabbis were not Kabbalists themselves. This was a major point of contention made by a community among the Jews of Yemen, known as Dor Daim (a religious intellectual movement that called for a return to a more Talmudic based Judaism). While organized into commentaries on sections of the Torah, the Zohar elaborates on the Talmud, Midrash Rabba, Yetzirah, the Bahir, and many other Rabbinic texts. To some degree, the Zohar simply is Kabbalah.


  • Pardes Rimonim פרדס רימונים "Garden of Pomegranates" - the magnum opus of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, published in Spain in the 16th century and the main source of Cordoverian Kabbalah, a comprehensive interpretation of the Zohar and a friendly rival of the Lurianic interpretation. Among other important books by Rabbi Moshe Cordovero is Tomer Devorah.


  • Ets Hayim עץ חיים "Tree of Life" - useful text of the teachings of Rabbi Yitzhak Luria (also known as the Ari), collected by his disciples, principally Chaim Vital (the Ari published nothing himself). It is a popular interpretation and synthesis of Lurianic Kabbalah. It was first published in Tsfat Israel in the 16th century in a form entitled Shemonah She'arim (eight gates): this arrangement is still authoritative among Sephardi and Mizrahi Kabbalists. The term Etz Hayim refers to a three-part re-arrangement published later in Poland, and used by Ashkenazim.
  • Sulam סולם "Ladder", also known as Zohar Im Perush Ha-Sulam "Zohar with the Explication of the Ladder" - a translation of the Zohar into Hebrew that includes parenthetical comments. Despite being a late text by a modern Kabbalist, it is widely distributed. Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag wrote and published it in Israel in 1943. In the Sulam, the text of the Zohar includes parenthetical notes that explain some of the cryptic metaphors found in the Zohar, according to the interpretive tradition of Rabbi Yitzhak Luria. Much of the Zohar remains meaningless without the Sulam, and virtually every student of Kabbalah must at some point refer to it.


Theodicy: explanation for the existence of evil Kabbalistic works offer a theodicy, a philosophical reconciliation of how the existence of a good and powerful God is compatible with the existence of evil in the world. There are mainly two different ways to describe why there is evil in the world, according to the Kabbalah. Both make use of the kabbalistic Tree of Life:

  • The kabbalistic tree, which consists of ten Sephiroth, the ten "enumerations" or "emanations" of God, consists of three "pillars": The left side of the tree, the "female side", is considered to be more destructive than the right side, the "male side". Gevurah (גבורה), for example, stands for strength and discipline, while her male counterpart, Chesed (חסד), stands for love and mercy. Chesed is also known as Gedulah (גדולה), as in the Tree of Life pictured to the right. The "center pillar" of the tree does not have any polarity, and no gender is given to it. Thus evil is really an emanation of Divinity, a harsh byproduct of the "left side" of creation.
  • In the medieval era, this notion took on increasingly gnostic overtones. The Qliphoth, (or Kelippot) (קליפות the primeval "husks" of impurity) emanating from the left side were blamed for all the evil in the world. Qliphoth are the Sephiroth out of balance. The tree of Qliphoth is usually called the kabbalistic Tree of Death, and sometimes the qliphoth are called the "death angels", or "angels of death". References to a word related to "qlipoth" are found in some Babylonian incantations, a fact used as evidence to argue the antiquity of kabbalistic material.
  • Not all Kabbalists accepted this notion of evil being in such intimate relationship with God. Moses Cordovero (16th Cent.) and Menassseh ben Israel (17th Cent.) are two examples of Kabbalists who claimed "No evil emanates from God." They located evil as a byproduct of human freedom, an idea also found in mythic form in Rabbinic traditions that claim most demons are either the "dead of the flood" or products of human sexual incontinence.



Kabbalistic understanding of God

Ein Sof(in-finite) and the emanation of angelic hierarchies (Universes or olamot עולמות)

Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) teaches that God is neither matter nor spirit. Rather God is the creator of both, but is himself neither. But if God is so different than his creation, how can there be any interaction between the Creator and the created? This question prompted Kabbalists to envision two aspects of God, (a) God himself, who in the end is unknowable, and (b) the revealed aspect of God that created the universe, preserves the universe, and interacts with mankind. Kabbalists speak of the first aspect of God as Ein Sof (אין סוף); this is translated as "the infinite", "endless", or "that which has no limits". In this view, nothing can be said about this aspect of God. This aspect of God is impersonal. The second aspect of divine emanations, however, is at least partially accessible to human thought. Kabbalists believe that these two aspects are not contradictory but, through the mechanism of progressive emanation, complement one another. See Divine simplicity; Tzimtzum. The structure of these emanations have been characterized in various ways: Four "worlds" (Azilut, Yitzirah, Beriyah, and Asiyah), Sefirot, or Partzufim ("faces"). Later systems harmonize these models.

Some Kabbalistic scholars, such as Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, believe that all things are linked to God through these emanations, making us all part of one great chain of being. Others, such as Schneur Zalman of Liadi (founder of Lubavitch (Chabad) Hasidism), hold that God is all that really exists; all else is completely undifferentiated from God's perspective. If improperly explained, such views can interpreted as panentheism or pantheism. In truth, according to this philosophy, God's existence is higher than anything that this world can express, yet He includes all things of this world down to the finest detail in such a perfect unity that His creation of the world effected no change in Him whatsoever. This paradox is dealt with at length in the Chabad Chassidic texts.






Number-Word Mysticism Gematria:As early as the 1st Century BCE Jews believed Torah (first five books of the Bible) contains encoded message and hidden meanings. Gemetria is one method for discovering hidden meanings in Torah. Each letter in Hebrew also represents a number - Hebrew, unlike many other languages, never developed a separate numerical alphabet. By converting letters to numbers, Kabbalists were able to find hidden meaning in each word. This method of interpretation was used extensively by various schools. An example would be the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria[1].

There is no one fixed way to "do" gematria. Some say there are up to 70 different methods. One simple procedure is as follows: each syllable and/or letter forming a word has a characteristic numeric value. The sum of these numeric tags is the word's "key", and that word may be replaced in the text by any other word having the same key. Through the application of many such procedures, alternate or hidden meanings of scripture may be derived. Similar procedures are used by Islamic mystics, as described by Idries Shah in his book, "The Sufis".


Divination and Clairvoyance A small number of Kabbalists have attempted to foretell events or know occult events by the Kabbalah. The term Kabbalah Maasit ("Practical Kabbalah") is used to refer to secret science in general, mystic art, or mystery. However, within Judaism proper, the foretelling of the future through magical means is not permissible, not even with the Kabbalah. However, there is no prohibition against understanding the past nor coming to a greater understanding of present and future situations through inspiration gained by the Kabbalah (a subtle distinction and one often hard to delineate). The appeal to occult power outside the monotheist deity for divinative purpose is unacceptable in Judaism, but at the same time it is held that the righteous have access to occult knowledge. Such knowledge can come through dreams and incubation (inducing clairvoyant dreams), metoscopy (reading faces, lines on the face, or auras emanating from the face), ibburim and maggidim (spirit possession), and/or various methods of scrying (see Sefer Chasidim, Sefer ha-Hezyonot). 


Gnosticism and Kabbalah

Gnosticism frequently appears as an element of Kabbalah. Gnosticism - systems of secret spiritual knowledge, or some sources say - — that is, the concept Chochmah (חכמה "wisdom") - seems to have been the first attempt on the part of Jewish sages to give the empirical mystic lore, with the help of Platonic and Pythagorean or Stoic ideas, a speculative turn. This led to the danger of heresy from which the Jewish rabbinic figures Rabbi Akiva and Ben Zoma strove to extricate themselves.

Original teachings of gnosticism have much in common with Kabbalah:

  1. Core terminology of classical gnostics include using Jewish names of God.
  2. Mainstream Gnostics accepted a "Jewish Messiah" as a key figure of gnosticism
  3. A Key text of Gnosticism - Apocryphon of John - mentions 365 powers who created the World. 365 is a number of recurrent interest in the Dead Sea Scroll (the solar year figured prominently in their thinking).

However there are also aspects of Gnosticism at odds with Kabbalah. Most glaring is the fact that within most of the Christian Gnostic groups the Jewish creator God was looked down on. This ranged from somewhat sympathetic pity for what the Gnostics felt was a deranged abortion, to outright identification of the Jewish God to evil incarnate.

Criticisms Dualism One of the most serious and sustained criticisms of Kabbalah is that it may lead away from monotheism, and instead promote dualism, the belief that there is a supernatural counterpart to God. The dualistic system holds that there is a good power versus an evil power. There are (appropriately) two primary models of Gnostic-dualistic cosmology. The first, which goes back to Zoroastrianism, believes creation is ontologically divided between good and evil forces. The second, found largely in Greco-Roman ideologies like Neo-Platonism, believes the universe knew a primoridal harmony, but that a cosmic disruption yielded a second, evil, dimension to reality. This second model influenced the cosmology of the Kabbalah.

According to Kabbalistic cosmology, the Ten Sefirot correspond to ten levels of creation. These levels of creation must not be understood as ten different "gods" but as ten different ways of revealing God, one per level. It is not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes. While God may seem to exhibit dual natures (masculine-feminine, compassionate-judgmental, creator-creation), all adherents of Kabbalah have consistently stressed the ultimate unity of God. For example, in all discussions of Male and Female, the hidden nature of God exists above it all without limit, being called the Infinite or the "No End" (Ein Sof) - neither one nor the other, transcending any definition. The ability of God to become hidden from perception is called "Restriction" (Tsimtsum). Hiddenness makes creation possible because God can become "revealed" in a diversity of limited ways, which then form the building blocks of creation.

  • Later Kabbalistic works, including the Zohar, appear to more strongly affirm dualism, as they ascribe all evil to a supernatural force known as the Sitra Ahra ("the other side") that emantes from God. This "left side" of divine emanation is a kind of negative mirror image of the "side of holiness" with which it was locked in combat." [Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 6, "Dualism", p.244]. While this evil aspect exists within the divine structure of the Sefirot, the Zohar indicates that the Sitra Ahra has no power over Ein Sof, and only exists as a necessary aspect of the creation of God to give man free choice, and that evil is the consequence of this choice - not a supernatural force opposed to God, but a reflection of the inner moral combat within mankind between morality and one's basic instincts.


  • According to Kabbalists, humans cannot (yet) understand the infinity of God. Rather, there is God as revealed to humans (corresponding to Zeir Anpin), and the rest of the infinity of God as remaining hidden from human experience (corresponding to Arikh Anpin). One can have a reading of this theology which is totally monotheistic, similar to panentheism; however one can also have a reading of this theology which is essentially dualistic. Professor Gershom Scholem writes "It is clear that with this postulate of an impersonal basic reality in God, which becomes a person - or appears as a person - only in the process of Creation and Revelation, Kabbalism abandons the personalistic basis of the Biblical conception of God....It will not surprise us to find that speculation has run the whole gamut - from attempts to re-transform the impersonal En-Sof into the personal God of the Bible to the downright heretical doctrine of a genuine dualism between the hidden Ein Sof and the personal Demiurge of Scripture." (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism Shocken Books p.11-12)


Rabbi Leon Modena, a 17th century Venetian critic of Kabbalah, wrote that if we were to accept the Kabbalah, then the Christian trinity would indeed be compatible with Judaism, as the Trinity closely resembles the Kabbalistic doctrine of sefirot. This critique was in response to the fact that some Jews went so far as to address individual sefirot individually in some of their prayers, although this practise was far from common. This interpretation of Kabbalah in fact did occur among some European Jews in the 17th century. To respond, others say that the sefiros (To clarify for the reader not accustomed to the jargon, Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum says "The names of God are the Ten Sefiros of which the kabbalists spoke. The Ten Sefiros are ten kinds of revelation of God's powers that are accessible to us: these are His Ten Names, as explained in the Zohar and Sefer Yetzirah") represent different aspects of God. In order, the first six are Chesed (kindness), Gevurah (might). Tiferes (harmony), Netzach (victory), Hod (splendor), and Yesod (foundation). The German Jews may have been praying for and not necessarily to those aspects of Godliness.



References[edit]


See also[edit]


Sources[edit]

  • Aivanhov, Omraam Mikhael THE FRUITS OF THE TREE OF LIFE (The kabbalistic Tradition), ISBN 2-85566-467-5
  • Kaplan, Aryeh Inner Space: Introduction to Kabbalah, Meditation and Prophecy. Moznaim Publishing Corp 1990.
  • Scholem, Gershom, Kabbalah, Jewish Publication Society.
  • Dominique Aubier, Don Quijote, Profeta y cabalista, ISBN 84-300-4527-9
  • Wineberg, Yosef. Lessons in Tanya: The Tanya of R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi (5 volume set). Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, 1998. ISBN 082660546X
  • The Wisdom of The Zohar: An Anthology of Texts, 3 volume set, Ed. Isaiah Tishby, translated from the Hebrew by David Goldstein, The Littman Library.

External links[edit]

Jewish/Hebrew Kabbalah[edit]

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Language Resources for the Student of Traditional Rabbinic Kabbalah]

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