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What is Kabbalah?
Kabbalah (various spellings of this word are quite acceptable) comes from a Hebrew word meaning 'tradition'. It denotes a tradition within
Judaism which focuses on mystical interpretations of the scriptures and esoteric
doctrines about the actual being of God, and claims to date back to oral teachings from the biblical patriarch Abraham. It has played
an important role in Kabbalistic teachings, especially those of certain Jewish sects, in particular, Hasidism. However, Kabbalah did
not materialise in Western Europe until about the 11th century AD.
Christian D. Ginsburg tells us in Kabbalah: Its Doctrines, Development and Literature, Kabbalah is ‘A system of religious philosophy, or
more properly of theosophy,
which has not only exercised for hundreds of years an extraordinary influence on the mental development of so shrewd a
people as the Jews, but has captivated the minds of some of the greatest thinkers of Christendom in the 16th and 17th centuries, . . .’
There have been many important writers, mystics, and rabbis within the tradition of Kabbalah, Isaac Luria, Moses de Leon and Abraham Abulafia being three historically
important Kabbalists, while in the 20th century, Gershom Scholem did much to advance the serious study of Kabbalah. His books
Kabbalah and On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead are important works for anyone who wishes to study this subject.
In more modern times, many celebrities have claimed, and still claim to have to studied Kabbalah, which has certainly done its reputation no harm and may even
have helped to promote it, but their 'studies' bear little resemblance, if any, to true Kabbalism.
As a subject Kabbalah is vast and extremely complex, but I have genuinely attempted to keep it as brief and simple as possible, at the same time
ensuring that all salient points have been covered. To this extent, I have divided it into two basic sections:
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The speculative branch of Kabbalism had its origins in Babylonia,
but what really caused great advances was the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation). There were obviously many other works of importance
relating to speculative Kabbalism, but not one of them had such a dynamic effect as this particular book. The actual birthplace of this branch
of Kabbalism was 12th century Provence, but it attained its height in Spain during the 14th century.
Considerable difficulties have arisen when scholars have tried to trace the sources of speculative Kabbalism in Provence. What is known is
limited, and has been obscured by traditional Kabbalistic legends, which seem to credit Isaac the Blind as its originator. One thing we do
know for certain is that the earliest literary work of speculative Kabbalism was titled Masekheth Atsiluth (Treatise on Emanation), written
by Jacob ha-Nazir sometime during the early 12th century. Kabbalah was not a topic of general study when this book was published, for only
a select few were privy to its secret doctrines. The 'Treatise on Emanation' added to the limited knowledge of the doctrine of the
Four Worlds through which
God manifested Himself (the first three of these worlds had already been intimated upon in the Sefer Yetzirah).
Speculative Kabbalism concerns itself only with the Maaseh Bereshith (The History of Creation), and the operations of the spiritual nature
of the universe. This branch of Kabbalism attempts to discover how that dimension interweaves or 'meshes' with our own mundane world,
while attempting to find an answer to, 'How can mankind find a place in both of these dimensions at the same time?'
Kabbalists believed that the written word of God was a direct result of His inspiration and as a consequence Scripture contained within itself the fundamental nature of His
being. By the same token they believed that since God is hidden, so too was there a hidden meaning beneath the divine words of Scripture
with the truth waiting to be discovered. Incidentally, who has not read
The Bible Code
by Michael Drosnin?
The following table shows the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet (also known as The Sacred Alphabet) along with some, but far from all, of the major correspondences
of its letters (see Aleister Crowley's Liber 777 for further enlightenment). M, D or S before a letter indicates its division into Mothers,
Double and Simple letters.
When written large, the value of a letter is increased by a factor of 1000, thus a large Aleph is counted as 1000, a large Beth
as 2000 and so on. There are no vowels in the Hebrew language, just what are known as semi-vowels (A, H, V, I). Diacritical marks are sometimes used
to indicate vowels, but as a rule of thumb the correct pronunciation of a word is down to memory alone. Note that there are two versions of
some letters; Kaph, Mem, Nun, Pe and Tzaddi are all written differently when they appear at the end of a word from when they
appear at the beginning or in the middle of that word. In all cases with the exception of Mem, the final version has a 'long tail'.
As shown above, the alphabet comprises 3 Mother Letters, 7 Double Letters and 12 Simple Letters.
The 3 Mother Letters, Aleph, Mem and Shin, represent:
The 7 Double Letters, Beth, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Pe, Resh and Tau, represent:
This leaves 12 Simple Letters, He, Vau, Zain, Cheth, Teth, Yod, Lamed, Nun, Samekh, Ayin, Tzaddi and Qoph, which represent:
To uncover the hidden meaning behind the words of Scripture, Kabbalists employed three separate methods of interpretation – Gematria, Notarikon and Temura. The first made use of the fact that every Hebrew letter has a numerical value assigned to it, while the other two employed intricate forms of abbreviation and substitution or permutation of these letters and numbers. It is highly recommended that you read Christian D. Ginsburg's Kabbalah: Its Doctrines, Development and Literature for further explanation and examples of the following methods of substitution/permutation.
Gematria, Notarikon & Temura
GematriaGematria is actually considered by some Kabbalists to be a 'science' which begins with substituting the letters of a word for their numerical equivalents. Having determined the numerical value of a word Kabbalists look for correspondences between that word and others of the same numerical value. Thus one word can represent several different ideas, one such example of this being taken from Genesis chapter 49, verse 10: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be." Kabbalists took one phrase of this verse 'until Shiloh come' to be a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah. Using Gematria, 'until Shiloh come' IBA ShILH produces a numerical total of 358: The following examples are displayed in Hebrew in the way they are written in that language, i.e. right to left. For example, I B A is depicted as A B I, and Sh I L H is depicted as H L I Sh.
They also discovered that the word 'Messiah', which is MShICh, also totals 358 - a coincidence?:
Following on from this they also discovered another very interesting statement in Numbers chapter 21, verse 9: "And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived." The serpent of Moses is known as 'NaChaSh' NChSh:
There is obviously no limit as to what can be determined by applying Gematria. Two of the greatest exponents of this system were Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia in the 13th century, and Aleister Crowley in the 20th. Should you wish to study Gematria, I would recommended that you try to obtain a copy of Crowley's 'numerical dictionary' known as Liber 500 (Sepher Sephiroth).
NotarikonNotarikon is a system which uses abbreviation in two different ways:
Using the first form, and taking the question Moses asks in Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 12, "Who shall go up for us to heaven?" MI IOLH LNV HShMILH:
We find the answer to this question by taking the first letter of each word which gives us . . .
. . . MYLaH, the Hebrew word for circumcision. If we now look at that original question again and take the final letters of the question to form a name . . .
. . . we get:
YHVH, the name of God, the Tetragrammaton. Thus the answer to the question is within that question if Notarikon is used, that answer being the circumcised shall reach God.
TemuraTemura is a more complicated system of permutation which involves interchanging upwards of twenty-five letters according to specific rules. First of all, write one half of the Hebrew alphabet in reverse and then place it on top of the other half written in the correct order as shown:
Kabbalists discovered in Jeremiah chapter 25, verse 26 "... and the king of Sheshak shall drink after them." Then, using Temura, they discovered in chapter 51, verse 41 that Sh(e)sh(a)k is another word for B(a)b(e)l:
Note that 'K' (kaph) For further enlightenment on the above methods of substitution/permutation it is suggested that you read Christian D. Ginsburg's Kabbalah: Its Doctrines, Development and Literature. Christian David Ginsburg (1831-1914) was a prominent Bible scholar and student of the Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh). This is an excellent book, which not only explains the permutations described above, but which throws doubt on many early Kabbalistic publications and their supposed authors. I highly recommend it if you are serious in your wish to study Kabbalah.
One of the greatest exponents of Gematria during the late 19th and early 20th centuries was Aleister Crowley, one such example concerning the name Abram in the Bible.
The name of this patriarch was changed to Abraham, an explanation of this being given in the Confessions of Aleister Crowley
(at the time Crowley had just 'found' the Lost Word):
“When Jehovah selected a family to be the father of Israel, he changed the name ABR(a)M (Father of Elevation)
into ABR(a)H(a)M (Father of a Multitude),
and by way of compensation changed S(a)RI (Nobility)
into S(a)R(a)H (Princess)."
He continues: "There are several other similar stories in the Bible. A change of name is considered to indicate a change of nature. Further, each name is not arbitrary; it is a definite description of the nature of the object to which it is attached. By a similar process, I am certain of my results in the matter of the Lost Word, for the Found Word fulfils the conditions of the situation; and furthermore, throws light on the obscure symbolism of the entire ritual.”
So, the question now is, "Do you need to understand Hebrew to be able to understand Kabbalah?" There is absolutely no doubt that at least a basic knowledge of Hebrew can and definitely will make a huge difference to any study. Any Jewish Kabbalist would insist that it is impossible to study Kabbalah without a knowledge of Hebrew, and the majority of Hermetic Kabbalists do learn some, but even so there are many practical exercises and ritual techniques which can be used with just a smattering of the language.
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Kabbalah is an esoteric system of an interpretation of the Biblical Scriptures based upon a tradition claimed to have been handed down orally
from the patriarch Abraham. Despite its claimed antiquity, the earliest known instance of this system appears to be in the 11th century in
France, from where it spread, most notably, to Spain. There were undoubtedly precedents, however, as Kabbalistic elements can be found
in the literature of much earlier 
The two principal sources of Kabbalism are the Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Creation) and the Sefer Zohar (The Book of
Enlightenment or The Book of Splendour). In a series of monologues, the Sefer Yetzirah develops the doctrine of the Sephiroth (the powers
which emanate from God through which the universe is created and its order sustained), supposedly delivered by Abraham, using the primordial
numbers of the later Pythagoreans in a system of numerical interpretation. It was probably written in the 3rd century AD. The Zohar
consists of mystical commentaries and homilies on the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible). It was written by Moses de Leon
(13th century AD) but he attributed it to Simon ben Yohai, a great scholar of the 2nd century AD. However, Christian D. Ginsburg, in
Kabbalah: Its Doctrines, Development and Literature, throws considerable doubt on the claims to antiquity of these two books with his solid
reasoning.
Further to the use of the three methods of substitution, it was established that the tetragrammaton (depicted at the top right of the page)
symbolises the 'four-letter' name of God - Yod, Hé, Vau, Hé, as does the image to the left, representing
Practical Kabbalism, on the other hand, concentrated on the Maaseh Merkabah (The History of the
Divine Throne or Chariot). The Maaseh Merkabah centred on the mystical adoration of the Throne Chariot of God (as described in
Ezekiel Chapter 1, verses 26-28). This passage was to serve as the keystone for the first and incidentally the longest phase of
Jewish mysticism, Merkabah mysticism, covering the period from around 100 BC to 1000 AD. It reads: 'And above the
firmament was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone, and upon the likeness of
the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above it. This was the appearance of the
likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that
spake’.
Although he was married and financially secure, Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534 – 1572) adopted the life of a recluse while still in his early twenties and became engrossed
in the study of the Zohar,
which had recently appeared in print for the first time. he secluded himself in an isolated cottage on the banks of the Nile,
devoting seven years of his life to meditation. He supposedly visited his family only on the 'Shabbat' (day of rest/Sabbath), seldom speaking, but
whenever he did,
always in Hebrew. Luria became a visionary, having frequent discussions with the prophet Elijah by whom he claimed to have been initiated
into 'awe-inspiring' doctrines; he also claimed that his soul ascended to heaven and conversed with the great teachers of the past in his sleep.
These Sephirotic lights manifest themselves in three triads, each triad representing a particular value as originally contained in
the Ain-Soph. The first triad is composed of the Sephiroth, Kether, Chokmah, and Binah, and is the most important of the three
triadic divisions of the Sephiroth, symbolising the dynamic function of a thought process 'in front of' the world, and therefore
an archetypal model. It represents the thought processes of God!
Some Kabbalists are of the opinion that the first form shaped, etched or produced by the ray of light which emanated from Ain-Soph was not the Sephiroth, but
the body of Adam Kadmon, from which the Sephiroth then flared out. According to Luria,
In the configuration of Adam Kadmon, Kether, the Crown, is where the head is located. Chokmah, Wisdom, is his brain, and Binah, Intelligence,
his heart. These first three Sephiroth are considered to constitute the head and its functions, Binah, being that which unites
the first two Sephiroth in this instance. The heart was originally considered by a majority of people to be the origin of thought, i.e.
one should think with one’s heart. The head was for rationalisation and judgment, but the heart was the organ with which one thought, and
through which one based one’s actions.