Kabbalah
Introduction
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If a chemist from the twentieth century could step into a time-machine
and go back two-hundred years he or she would probably feel a deep
kinship with the chemists of that time, even though there might be
considerable differences in terminology, underlying theory, equipment
and so on. Despite this kinship, chemists have not been trapped in the
past, and the subject as it is studied today bears little resemblance to
the chemistry of two hundred years ago.
Kabbalah has existed for nearly two thousand years, and like any living
discipline it has evolved through time, and it continues to evolve. One
aspect of this evolution is that it is necessary for living Kabbalists
to continually "re-present" what they understand by Kabbalah so that
Kabbalah itself continues to live and continues to retain its usefulness
to each new generation. If Kabbalists do not do this then it becomes a
dead thing, an historical curiousity (as was virtually the case within
Judaism by the nineteenth century). These notes were written with that
intention: to present one view of Kabbalah as it is currently practised
in 1992, so that people who are interested in Kabbalah and want to learn
more about it are not limited purely to texts written hundreds or
thousands of years ago (or for that matter, modern texts written about
texts written hundreds or thousands of years ago). For this reason
these notes acknowledge the past, but they do not defer to it. There
are many adequate texts for those who wish to understand Kabbalah as it
was practised in the past.
These notes have another purpose. The majority of people who are drawn
towards Kabbalah are not historians; they are people who want to know
enough about it to decide whether they should use it as part of their
own personal mystical or magical adventure. There is enough information
not only to make that decision, but also to move from theory into
practice. I should emphasise that this is only one variation of
Kabbalah out of many, and I leave it to others to present their own
variants - I make no apology if the material is biased towards a
particular point of view.
The word "Kabbalah" means "tradition". There are many alternative
spellings, the two most popular being Kabbalah and Qabalah, but Cabala,
Qaballah, Qabala, Kaballa (and so on) are also seen. I made my choice
as a result of a poll of the books on my bookcase, not as a result of
deep linguistic understanding.
If Kabbalah means "tradition", then the core of the tradition was the
attempt to penetrate the inner meaning of the Bible, which was taken to
be the literal (but heavily veiled) word of God. Because the Word was
veiled, special techniques were developed to elucidate the true
meaning....Kabbalistic theosophy has been deeply influenced by these
attempts to find a deep meaning in the Bible.
The earliest documents (~100 - ~1000 A.D.) associated with Kabbalah
describe the attempts of "Merkabah" mystics to penetrate the seven halls
(Hekaloth) of creation and reach the Merkabah (throne-chariot) of God.
These mystics used the familiar methods of shamanism (fasting,
repetitious chanting, prayer, posture) to induce trance states in which
they literally fought their way past terrible seals and guards to reach
an ecstatic state in which they "saw God". An early and highly
influential document (Sepher Yetzirah) appears to have originated during
the earlier part of this period.
By the early middle ages further, more theosophical developments had
taken place, chiefly a description of "processes" within God, and a
highly esoteric view of creation as a process in which God manifests in
a series of emanations. This doctrine of the "sephiroth" can be found
in a rudimentary form in the "Yetzirah", but by the time of the
publication of the book "Bahir" (12th. century) it had reached a form
not too different from the form it takes today. One of most interesting
characters from this period was Abraham Abulafia, who believed that God
cannot be described or conceptualised using everyday symbols, and used
the Hebrew alphabet in intense meditations lasting many hours to reach
ecstatic states. Because his abstract letter combinations were used as
keys or entry points to altered states of consciousness, failure to
carry through the manipulations correctly could have a drastic effect on
the Kabbalist. In "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism" Scholem includes a
long extract of one such experiment made by one of Abulafia's students -
it has a deep ring of truth about it.
Probably the most influential Kabbalistic document, the "Sepher ha
Zohar", was published by Moses de Leon, a Spanish Jew, in the latter
half of the thirteenth century. The "Zohar" is a series of separate
documents covering a wide range of subjects, from a verse-by-verse
esoteric commentary on the Pentateuch, to highly theosophical
descriptions of processes within God. The "Zohar" has been widely read
and was highly influential within mainstream Judaism.
A later development in Kabbalah was the Safed school of mystics headed
by Moses Cordovero and Isaac Luria. Luria was a highly charismatic
leader who exercised almost total control over the life of the school,
and has passed into history as something of a saint. Emphasis was
placed on living in the world and bringing the consciousness of God
through *into* the world in a practical way. Practices were largely
devotional.
Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Judaism as a whole
was heavily influenced by Kabbalah, but by the beginning of this century
a Jewish writer was able to dismiss it as an historical curiousity.
Jewish Kabbalah has vast literature which is almost entirely
untranslated into English.
A development which took place almost synchronously with Jewish Kabbalah
was its adoption by many Christian mystics, magicians and philosphers.
Renaissance philosophers such as Pico della Mirandola were familiar with
Kabbalah and mixed it with gnosticism, pythagoreanism, neo-platonism and
hermeticism to form a snowball which continued to pick up traditions as
it rolled down the centuries. It is probably accurate to say that from
the Renaissance on, virtually all European occult philosophers and
magicians of note had a working knowledge of Kabbalah.
It is not clear how Kabbalah was involved in the propagation of ritual
magical techniques, or whether it *was* involved, or whether the ritual
techniques were preserved in parallel within Judaism, but it is an
undeniable fact that the most influential documents appear to have a
Jewish origin. The most important medieval magical text is the "Key of
Solomon", and it contains the elements of classic ritual magic - names
of power, the magic circle, ritual implements, consecration, evocation
of spirits etc. No-one knows how old it is, but there is a reasonable
suspicion that its contents preserve techniques which might well date
back to Solomon.
The combination of non-Jewish Kabbalah and ritual magic has been kept
alive outside Judaism until the present day, although it has been
heavily adulterated at times by hermeticism, gnosticism, neo-platonism,
pythagoreanism, rosicrucianism, christianity, tantra and so on. The
most important "modern" influences are the French magician Eliphas Levi,
and the English "Order of the Golden Dawn". At least two members of the
G.D. (S.L. Mathers and A.E. Waite) were knowledgable Kabbalists, and
three G. D. members have popularised Kabbalah - Aleister Crowley,
Israel Regardie, and Dion Fortune. Dion Fortune's "Inner Light" has
also produced a number of authors: Gareth Knight, William Butler, and
William Gray.
An unfortunate side effect of the G.D is that while Kabbalah was an
important part of its "Knowledge Lectures", surviving G.D. rituals are
a syncretist hodge-podge of symbolism in which Kabbalah plays a minor or
nominal role, and this has led to Kabbalah being seen by many modern
occultists as more of a theoretical and intellectual discipline, rather
than a potent and self-contained mystical and magical system in its own
right.
Some of the originators of modern witchcraft drew heavily on medieval
ritual and Kabbalah for inspiration, and it is not unusual to find
witches teaching some form of Kabbalah, although it is generally even
less well integrated into practical technique than in the case of the
G.D.
The Kabbalistic tradition described in the notes derives principally
from Dion Fortune, but has been substantially developed over the past 30
years. I would like to thank M.S. and the T.S.H.U. for all the fun.
Chapter 1.: The Tree of Life
At the root of the Kabbalistic view of the world are three
fundamental concepts and they provide a natural place to begin.
The three concepts are force, form and consciousness and these
words are used in an abstract way, as the following examples
illustrate:
- high pressure steam in the cylinder of a steam engine
provides a force. The engine is a form which constrains the
force.
- a river runs downhill under the force of gravity. The
river channel is a form which constrains the water to run in
a well defined path.
- someone wants to get to the centre of a garden maze. The
hedges are a form which constrain that person's ability to
walk as they please.
- a diesel engine provides the force which drives a boat
forwards. A rudder constrains its course to a given
direction.
- a polititian wants to change the law. The legislative
framework of the country is a form which he or she must
follow if the change is to be made legally.
- water sits in a bowl. The force of gravity pulls the water
down. The bowl is a form which gives its shape to the water.
- a stone falls to the ground under the force of gravity.
Its acceleration is constrained to be equal to the force
divided by the mass of the stone.
- I want to win at chess. The force of my desire to win is
constrained within the rules of chess.
- I see something in a shop window and have to have it. I am
constrained by the conditions of sale (do I have enough
money, is it in stock).
- cordite explodes in a gun barrel and provides an explosive
force on a bullet. The gas and the bullet are constrained by
the form of the gun barrel.
- I want to get a passport. The government won't give me one
unless I fill in lots of forms in precisely the right way.
- I want a university degree. The university won't give me
a degree unless I attend certain courses and pass various
assessments.
In all these examples there is something which is causing change
to take place ("a force") and there is something which causes
change to take place in a defined way ("a form"). Without being
too pedantic it is possible to identify two very different types
of example here:
1. examples of natural physical processes (e.g. a falling
stone) where the force is one of the natural forces known to
physics (e.g. gravity) and the form is is some combination
of physical laws which constrain the force to act in a well
defined way.
2. examples of people wanting something, where the force is
some ill-defined concept of "desire", "will", or "drives",
and the form is one of the forms we impose upon ourselves
(the rules of chess, the Law, polite behaviour etc.).
Despite the fact that the two different types of example are
"only metaphorically similar", Kabbalists see no fundamental
distiniction between them. To the Kabbalist there are forces
which cause change in the natural world, and there are
corresponding psychological forces which drive us to change both
the world and ourselves, and whether these forces are natural or
psychological they are rooted in the same place: consciousness.
Similarly, there are forms which the component parts of the
physical world seem to obey (natural laws) and there are
completely arbitrary forms we create as part of the process of
living (the rules of a game, the shape of a mug, the design of an
engine, the syntax of a language) and these forms are also rooted
in the same place: consciousness. It is a Kabbalistic axiom that
there is a prime cause which underpins all the manifestations of
force and form in both the natural and psychological world and
that prime cause I have called consciousness for lack of a better
word.
Consciousness is undefinable. We know that we are conscious
in different ways at different times - sometimes we feel free and
happy, at other times trapped and confused, sometimes angry and
passionate, sometimes cold and restrained - but these words
describe manifestations of consciousness. We can define the
manifestations of consciousness in terms of manifestations of
consciousness, which is about as useful as defining an ocean in
terms of waves and foam. Anyone who attempts to define
consciousness itself tends to come out of the same door as they
went in. We have lots of words for the phenomena of consciousness
- thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires, emotions, motives and so
on - but few words for the states of consciousness which give
rise to these phenomena, just as we have many words to describe
the surface of a sea, but few words to describe its depths.
Kabbalah provides a vocabulary for states of consciousness
underlying the phenomena, and one of the purposes of these notes
is to explain this vocabulary, not by definition, but mostly by
metaphor and analogy. The only genuine method of understanding
what the vocabulary means is by attaining various states of
consciousness in a predictable and reasonably objective way, and
Kabbalah provides practical methods for doing this.
A fundamental premise of the Kabbalistic model of reality is
that there is a pure, primal, and undefinable state of
consciousness which manifests as an interaction between force and
form. This is virtually the entire guts of the Kabbalistic view
of things, and almost everything I have to say from now on is
based on this trinity of consciousness, force, and form.
Consciousness comes first, but hidden within it is an inherent
duality; there is an energy associated with consciousness which
causes change (force), and there is a capacity within
consciousness to constrain that energy and cause it to manifest
in a well-defined way (form).
First Principle
of
/ Consciousness \
/ \
Capacity Raw
to take ________________ Energy
Form
Figure 1.
What do we get out of raw energy and an inbuilt capacity for form
and structure? Is there yet another hidden potential within this
trinity waiting to manifest? There is. If modern physics is to be
believed we get matter and the physical world. The cosmological
Big Bang model of raw energy surging out from an infintesimal
point and condensing into basic forms of matter as it cools, then
into stars and galaxies, then planets, and ultimately living
creatures, has many points of similarity with the Kabbalistic
model. In the Big Bang model a soup of energy condenses according
to some yet-to-be-formulated Grand-Universal-Theory into our
physical world. What Kabbalah does suggest (and modern physics
most certainly does not!) is that matter and consciousness are
the same stuff, and differ only in the degree of structure
imposed - matter is consciousness so heavily structured and
constrained that its behaviour becomes describable using the
regular and simple laws of physics. This is shown in Fig. 2. The
primal, first principle of consciousness is synonymous with the
idea of "God".
/ | \
Capacity | Raw
to take _____________ Energy/Force
Form |
\ | /
Matter
The World
Figure 2
The glyph in Fig. 2 is the basis for the Tree of Life. The first
principle of consciousness is called Kether, which means Crown.
The raw energy of consciousness is called Chockhmah or Wisdom,
and the capacity to give form to the energy of consciousness is
called Binah, which is sometimes translated as Understanding, and
sometimes as Intelligence. The outcome of the interaction of
force and form, the physical world, called Malkuth or Kingdom.
This quaternery is a Kabbalistic representation of God-the-
Knowable, in the sense that it the most primitive representation
of God we are capable of comprehending; paradoxically, Kabbalah
also contains a notion of God-the-Unknowable which transcends
this glyph, and is called En Soph. There is not much I can say
about En Soph, and what I can say I will postpone for later.
God-the-Knowable has four aspects, two male and two female:
Kether and Chokhmah are both represented as male, and Binah and
Malkuth are represented as female. One of the titles of Chokhmah
is Abba, which means Father, and one of the titles of Binah is
Aima, which means Mother, so you can think of Chokhmah as God-
the-Father, and Binah as God-the-Mother. Malkuth is the
daughter, the female spirit of God-as-Matter, and it would not be
wildly wrong to think of her as Mother Earth. One of the more
pleasant things about Kabbalah is that its symbolism gives equal
place to both male and female.
And what of God-the-Son? Is there also a God-the-Son in
Kabbalah? There is, and this is the point where Kabbalah tackles
...
ostres