CHESMAYNE
Kaballah
Hebrew: ‘tradition’. Originally transmitted
orally, mystical in nature and consisting of secret doctrines, centering on mysteries
hidden in the Jewish Scriptures by special discovered methods of interpretation. This secret doctrine of the Jewish faith was
called the cabala and its students were called initiates (the high
priests). The priests learned the
esoteric part of their religion and the people learned the exoteric
version. The Kabbalah -
also known as kabala, cabala - means in Hebrew “reception”
in the meaning of “received tradition”.
The term historically referred to all Judaism’s oral law such as the
words of the ancient prophets from the bible.
A body of esoteric teaching,
its name meaning ‘the received’, from a Hebrew root QBL, ‘to receive’. Rabbinic tradition claims Qabalah was taught to Adam by the archangel
Gabriel and thereon passed orally ‘from mouth to ear’. Judaic in origin, it absorbed Persian,
Egyptian, Greek, Neoplatonic and Gnostic elements. About AD 1280 the Spanish Qabalist Moses ben
Shemtob de Leon issued the ‘Zepher ha Zohar’ (Book of Splendor), a vast
commentary on the Pentateuch (the Bible’s first five books), claiming it as the work of the mythic
Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, said to have died in ecstatic trance, 1,200 years
earlier. Deviating from orthodox
Judaism, it initiated the growth of Qabalah into a flexible, sophisticated symbolic
system which offers many techniques for training the mind,
evoking spiritual powers and correlating different disciplines, philosophies, mythologies and
pantheons. Central to the system is the
Tree of Life - a glyph, symbol or psychic map which has been called ‘a
ground plan of the universe and
the soul of man’. Qabalah claims that
positive existence emanates from a negative state of limitless undifferentiated
being (Ain Soph), from which emanates the Tree, on it the ten sephiroth
(spheres: states of being) which, connected by twenty-two
Paths, embrace creation in all
its forms, from Kether to Malkuth, high to low, a process visualised as Divine Energy plunging
from one sephirah to the next in a zigzag: the ‘Lightning
Flash’. The psychologist Edwin C.
Steinbrecher developed a system of cross references between the Tarot, astrology, alchemy,
and the Western Mystery Tradition ie: Judaeo-Graeco-Christian spiritual
heritage of the West. The Kabbalah has
been referred to as ‘The Yoga of the West’.
Its origin has been obscured but stories state that it was received by
Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation and has always been shrouded in an
aura of secrecy for protection. It has
been transmitted by a single complex image, the ‘Otz Chiim’, ‘The Tree of Life’
(esoteric Judaism) and not through books (which may be lost or burnt), nor through a lineage of teachers. Buddhism has ‘The Wheel of
Life’. It is a symbolic code that may
be unlocked by using the correct keys. It is the symbol system ‘par
excellence’ (layer after layer of symbolic mind-language). It has been conceived as a building (castle). Kaaba: (Arabic: ‘a cube’). Ancient stone building said to have been
built by Ishmael and Abraham and part of the Great Mosque at
The Tree is
divided into three Pillars
Passive (left), Active (right), and Middle. To seek the ‘
01 Kether Crown 02 Chokmah Wisdom 03 Binah Understanding 04 Chesed Severity 05 Geburah Mercy 06 Tiphareth Beauty 07 Netzach Splendour 08 Hod Victory 09 Yesod The Foundation 10 Malkuth The Kingdom
01 Kether, the Crown,
fount of creation, the universal point where vital energy pours in from the
unmanifest. The Limitless Light/cosmic
egg/zero (symbol of the absence of qualities, sign of
infinite and eternal conscious energy).
The Void. These energies
activate in:
02 Chokmah, Wisdom, powerhouse of
force, symbolizd by phallus, straight line, tower. Initiating action, Chokmah stands under
Kether at the head of the Pillar of Merch (Right). Duality. Through it the energy flashes to:
03 Binah, Understanding, Great Mother,
primal ocean at the head of the Pillar of Severity (Left). Fertilised by and taking in the pure energy
of Kether and Chokmah, Binah manifests the idea of form. This supernal trinity
stands above the Abyss separating Idea from Form. Straddling the Abyss (Middle Pillar) is the
hidden, numberless sephirah, Daath, associated with Sirius and
with confidence in the future.
Triangle, created by three points.
From Binah through Daath the energy powers:
04 Chesed, Mercy, the
four-square principle of organization and worldly rule (Jupiter). The Square (four points). Here it forms subtle material blueprints,
then crosses to:
05 Geburah, Severity, Mars,
(pentagram) where Chesed’s forms are destroyed, assessed and refracted down
to:
06 Tiphareth, Beauty, Christ-consciousness
(Cube/hexagon). This, the Tree’s
central sephirah, mediates what is above with what is below. From it, the energy pours on to:
07 Netzach, Venus,
its symbol a beautiful naked woman.
Here Tiphareth’s coherent love rays out into nature in all her forms, creating natural forces
perceived by human imagination as gods and goddesses. From Netzach the lightning
flashes over to:
08 Hod, Glory, Mercury, hermaphroditic Intellect
(octave). Here, formless truths
descend from the higher sephiroth into the mind. From Hod the energy plunges
transversely to the Middle Pillar, to:
09 Yesod, Moon,
etheric foundation of physical being, its forces coordinating the emergence of
physical form, source of psychic, unconscious and reproductive energies. And so on down to:
10 Malkuth, the kingdom of
earth, the nadir of creation. This is no damnation. Qabalah, unlike some other philosophies,
holds that spirit must descend into deepest matter, that our destiny must be
realized in Malkuth, or further progress is impossible. In this, Qabalah agrees with Christianity,
though reaching its conclusions not through faith but gnosis (knowledge).
Between the ten Sephiroth are 22 inter-connecting Paths numbered 11 to
32. The Tree is also divided into three Triangles
(1-2-3), (4-5-6) and (7-8-9). Its
purpose is to vivify your mind.
Another complete symbolic system, wholly
adequate in itself. As in the most
ancient symbolism known, this basic structure of life is depicted as a tree,
the Tree of Life, with its fruit, the ten Sephiroth, or blazing spheres of
consciousness. The Tree of Life is to
be lived rather than looked at. The
Kabbalists rate intellect (8 Hod) lower in their scale of values than creative imagination (7
Netzach). As Einstein
said, ‘imagination is more important than knowledge’. They place intellect on the feminine pillar,
making Knowledge/Theory purely receptive, while creative imagination is active
and masculine. The Tree of Life is a
tree with three branches to either side, as found on Ancient Sumerian cylinder
seals. The Tree of Life is probably
related to, if not inspired by the biblical account of the Seven Days of Creation, which play an important role in
the symbolism of the Kabbalah.
Sephiroth (derived from ‘safar’, to count) refers directly to numbers,
One/Many. The colours of
the Sephiroth refer to experiences on the level of pure mind, pure life in
contrast with matter. The point of
origin (‘eyn sof’, the infinite). The
Sephiroth can be arranged as a wheel, as a lightning
flash from above down to earth,
or as a ladder reaching up from earth to heaven, or as a single vertical axis with
twin pillars to either side.
Cabala (also caballa, kabala, kaballa, Kaballah,
qaballah, etc.)
The Cabala is a collection of esoteric writings of
various rabbis and a few
medieval Christians, consisting of mystical and numerological
interpretations of Hebrew scriptures. The
authors of the Cabala treat every letter, word, number, and accent of Scripture
as if it were a secret code containing some profound but hidden meaning put
there by God for some
profound and hidden purpose, including prophecy. The Cabala also provides methods of
interpretation of the occult marks on paper that the less spiritually gifted
take to be mere words to be understood either literally or figuratively. The purpose of the Cabala is apparently to
read God’s mind and thereby become one with the divine.
Like all other mystical works and movements, cabalists
believe that the only world worth knowing is the divine realm “above” and that
one’s life on earth should be spent trying to understand the mystery of the
“upper level”. This transcendental quest represents to the
atheist a rejection of the earthly realm of facts, suffering, uncertainty and
impotence in favor of a fantasy realm of the imagination and a sharing in eternal
bliss and omnipotence. To philosophers such as
Nietzsche, mysticism is nihilism’s expression of the will to power. Those who are part of the esoteric group are
made to feel powerful and superior to outsiders by the magic of their fanciful
imaginations.
See related entry on the Bible Codes
further reading
Kabbala
(Catholic Encyclopedia)
Shraga Berg's Kabbalah Center
exposed by Rick Ross
