Drawing upon Judaism, Kabbalah is a mystical tradition that centres on receiving knowledge of God and guidance for everyday living.
Think of lhe mystical religion Kabbalah and many will immediately picture the singer Madonna. As one of a number of celebrities to embrace its ancient wisdom in recent years. she has sought to study and understand Kabbalah's deep teachings, often in the face of great critidsm. Through her efforts. people have leained of some aspects of the religion. not least the strand of red-string bracelet that many contemporary followers wear to ward off the evil eye.
But Kabbalah is no celebrity fad nor is it by any means a newfangled religion. It's the theology of the Jewish people and the spiritual study of unseen laws governing the universe from the perspective of Judaism. Those who follow it have done so because they believe it gives them a great understanding into the workings and the structure of the human soul. lndeed, its origins are said to stretch back to the Holy Scriptures, to Adam. the first man.
According to Kabbalistic tradition. Adam was both the spiritual and biological ancestor of humans and he was also androgynous. He was split into two halves after eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil but then received his teachings for mankind through the Archangel Raziel. the Keepei of Secrets. Kabbalists believe man and woman must merge in marriage to form a full soul. More than that. tradition teaches the souls of all humans combine to form one soul which is that of Adam.
Abraham also figures highly in Kabbalah, as he does in Judaism as a whole (he is seen as the founding father of the Covenant). Traditional Kabbalists believe Abraham who lived around 1.700 BCE, received the truth of Kabbalah and wrote the Sefer Yetzirah, the earliest extant book on Jewish esotericism and the first Kabbalistic text. For that reason, it has become a primary source for students of Kabbalah and it also reinforces Abraham's view that God is One.
Such beliefs were cemented by the prophet and teacher Moses who ascended Mount Sinai and received the Commandments from God along with the Oral Torah. The latter contained the laws, statutes and legal interpretations that had not been noted in the Written Torah (the Five Books of Moses) and the Kabbalistic truths they contained paved a spiritual levei of existence that explored the nature of the soul. Bodies were seen as temporai y; souls ever-lasting. Fuiidainemally. Kabbalah became a way for Judaism to understand God and receive his knowledge.
To that end, Jews souglit to pass down their knowledge through the generations, even though rhey had suffered from oppression throughout the Roman Empire. From about 100 BCE to 1000 CE, for instance, Merkabah mysticism had ernerged as a school of early Jewish mysticism and the mystics focused on the Bcok of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible. The first chapter centred on prophet Ezekiel's vision of riding to the heavens in a divine chariot. Mystics sought to interpret the meaning of the vision and what ít said and revealed about God.
The idea manifested itself in a study called ma'aseh merkabah which taught that the path to God was strewn with obstacles and encouraged Jews to train their minds in order to connect on an ernotional as well as physical level. Meanwhile, maaseh bereshit emerged as a mystical understanding of verses in the book of Genesis.
It interpreted the first chapter as a dichotomy of upper and lower worlds split between God and humans. Kabbalah grew from both studies as followers sought to question and probe more deeply. to look beyond the surface of whatever was presented to them.
Kabbalah. however, did not reach maturity until the 13th century and it was from this point on that the ideas truly spread, thanks to its switch from an oral tradition to one that was written. The most famous work o Kabbalah, the Zohar, ernerged. Written in Aramaic, it was revealed by Spanish Kabbalist Moses de León who claimed it was the work of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, a Jewish writer who lived in the second century. As with the Talmud - the texts of which included the ma'aseh merkabah and ma’eseh bereshit - it ended up standing alongside both the Talmud and the Torah as important pillars of the wisdom writing of the Children of Israel in Kabbalah tradition.
But what was it? The Zohar was a series of books that commented on the mystical aspects of the Torah, exploring the nature of God and the human soul as well as good, evil and sin. It looked at the structure of the universe and its origins and it became vitally important for students. The Zohar was also greatly signiiicant for the Jews badly affected by the Alhambra Decree of 1492, which saw them forced to convert to Christianity or be expelled from the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon on the orders of the joint Catholic monarchs of Spain.
Such was Kabbalahs intensity, however, that those seeking to understand had to be aged over 40 (this is due to the first major written collection of the Oral Torah, the Mishnah. speaking of 40 as being the best age for understanding [Ethics of the Fathers 5:24]). It was also preferable for students to be married, which again was seen as a sign of maturity and experience. There was a debate, too, over who actually wrote the Zohar with academics since claiming it to be the work of Rabbi Moses de León. Regardless. Judaism became a more inner experience for many.
Much of that was down to Jewish mystic Rabbi Isaac who transformed the study before his death in 1572. Key to his interpretation was tzimtzum, the understanding that only God existed before the creation and that began the process of creation by contracnng his mfinire lighr to make room for a finite, pluralistic world. This work was passed on thanks to Rabbi Chaim Vital who put the teachings down in writing.
From that emerged the ten sefirot that made up the Kabbalah Tree of Life (that is, the spiritual attributes in which The Infinite God is revealed including primary will, wísdom, understanding, judgement. lovingkindness, might, beauty, glory, victory, connection, sovereignty and the Divine Presence). Such teachings were later adapted by occultist and western esoteric movements, with the Renaissance seeing Christian Kabbalah emerge thanks to a growing appetite interpreting Christianity from a mystical point of view.
Christian Kabbalah reinterpret the doctrine of Jewish Kabbalah by linking the atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ to the ten sefirot. In the Christian Kabbalahs Tree of life, the three topmost spheres became connected to the Trinity. the rest concerning themselves with Earth. Hermetic Qabalah then arose from a desire to find proof of Christian doctrine in Hebrew mysticism. It not only drew upon Kabbalah but also pagan religions, western astrology, gnosticism, neoplatonism, tantra and alchemy. By combining different beliefs and thoughts, it promoted a syncretic world view.
Although Hermeticists saw Qabalah's origins in classic Greece rather than Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah found its way into Hermetic tradition from the 15th century. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa wrote Three Books of Occult Philosophy which explored the beliefs of Western Esotericism. It looked at the subjects of ritual magic, spells, ceremonial procedures and Kabbalah among others and approached them from the perspective of a scholar.
Hermetic Qabalah's emphasis was on the power of a magician to make ever so slight alterations in the higher realm, and the cards that made up Tarot replaced the ten sefiror in the Tree of Life. Orphism and Egyptian mythology were added during the 17th century and its influence grew among non Jewish scholars. They felt it could uncover hidden connections since they believed anything would take the place of the ten spheres and 22 paths of the Tree of Life. It posits that the universe is best understood by numbers and so draws upon rhe work of Pyrhagoras.
Even so, Luria's initial influence continues to this day (and that's quite aside from Madonna writing a song called Isaac in 2005 many believed was about him). The Kabbalah Centre, led by Rabbi Philip Berg as the most influential and it is dedicated to bringing the wisdom of the religion to the world Jewish Kabbalists continue to believe that they are able to repair between the upper and lower worlds by detaching the divine light connecting good with evil and that by observing the commandments it will lead people from exile to redemption.
Syncretism
Hermetic Qabalah combined diverse beliefs and blended practices of various schools of thought. In sharing concepts with Jewish Kabbalah and drawing on alchemy, pagan religions. Western astrology, gnosticism and more, it created a new system and was a prime example of what is termed religious syncretism.
Detractors, including Orthodox Christians, say syncretism relies not on the Scriptures but on the whim of humans, drawing on influences affecting a culture. They say it makes a religion illegitimate. but there's a compelling argument that all religions are syncretic to some degree-. many pagan symbols, for example. were adopted by Christianity between the second and fourth centuries.
Indeed, the religion of Judaism has also arguably absorbed outside religious influences (Jewish fundamentalists. however. say it has not). Meanwhile, Giovanni Pico delia Mirandola, an Italian Renaissance nobleman and philosopher, founded the tradition of Christian Kabbalah through a syncretic view of Kabbalah. Hermeticism, Aristotelianism, Platonism and Neoplatonism.
Other syncretistic movements mclude gnosticism which blends aspects of Oriental mystery religions, the dualistic religion founded in the third century, Manichaeism, and Sikhism which draws on elements of Hinduism and Islam. Aside from religion. it should be noted that syncretism is also common in other expressions of culture. including literature and music.
Written by David Crookes in "All About History - History of the Ocult" pp. 31-34. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.