Kabbalah

Origin

Jewish mystical speculation reaches back to the Second Temple period, with the visionary literature of the Hekhalot (the "palaces" of God) and the Merkavah (the divine chariot of Ezekiel's vision). The Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation), a foundational short text on cosmogony through the twenty-two Hebrew letters and the ten sefirot, is variously dated between the 2nd and 6th centuries CE. The classical Kabbalah, however, emerges in Provence in the late 12th century with the Sefer ha-Bahir, and reaches its great flowering in 13th-century Spain. The supreme work is the Zohar (Book of Splendour), composed in pseudo-Aramaic by Moshe de Leon around 1280 but attributed to the 2nd-century sage Shimon bar Yochai.

The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 catalysed a new phase, centred on Safed in the Galilee. There, Moshe Cordovero (1522 to 1570) systematised the earlier teachings, and his student-successor Isaac Luria (the Ari, 1534 to 1572) developed the Lurianic Kabbalah with its doctrines of tzimtzum (divine contraction), shevirat ha-kelim (the breaking of the vessels), and tikkun olam (the repair of the world). Christian Hebraists from the late 15th century, beginning with Pico della Mirandola, adapted Kabbalah to a Christian framework. From the late 19th century, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn produced what is now called Hermetic Qabalah, integrating Kabbalah with tarot, astrology, and ritual magic.

Sefirot, letters, and worlds

The central diagram of Kabbalah is the Tree of Life, a structured arrangement of ten sefirot (emanations of the divine) connected by twenty-two paths. The ten sefirot, from above downward, are: Keter (Crown), Chokmah (Wisdom), Binah (Understanding), Chesed (Mercy), Gevurah (Severity), Tiferet (Beauty), Netzach (Victory), Hod (Splendour), Yesod (Foundation), and Malkuth (Kingdom). They are arranged in three columns (right, left, and middle, corresponding to mercy, severity, and equilibrium) and four worlds (Atziluth, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Assiah, corresponding to emanation, creation, formation, and action).

The twenty-two paths connecting the sefirot correspond to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Each letter is a divine creative power, and the combinations of letters in the Torah are held to encode the structure of reality. Kabbalistic exegesis applies several techniques to the sacred text: gematria (numerical value of letters), notarikon (acronymic reading), and temurah (letter substitution). The Lurianic system adds the doctrines of partzufim (divine personae), the broken vessels containing klippot (shells of fallen sparks), and the cosmic task of gathering the scattered sparks of holy light back to their source through prayer, ethical action, and contemplative practice.

In practice

Traditional Jewish Kabbalah is studied within the framework of observant Jewish life: Torah study, prayer, observance of the commandments, and Sabbath practice. The classical injunction is that one should not approach Kabbalah before the age of forty, after thorough grounding in Talmud and halakhah. Contemporary Jewish teachers such as Adin Steinsaltz, Yitzchak Ginsburgh, and the various Chabad and Bratslav schools offer accessible pathways. For non-Jewish students, the Hermetic Qabalah of Dion Fortune (The Mystical Qabalah, 1935), Israel Regardie, and the Golden Dawn tradition provides a usable system that does not require Jewish observance, though some scholars consider the appropriation problematic.

Begin with the Tree of Life. Memorise the ten sefirot, their positions, their attributes, and the paths between them. Meditate on each sefirah in turn. The Golden Dawn system of "pathworking" provides guided visualisations through the twenty-two paths. Combine with study of Tree of Life, sefirot, Hermeticism, and the tarot, whose Major Arcana the Golden Dawn assigned to the twenty-two paths. Avoid taking on the more advanced practices (divine names, angelic invocations) without competent instruction.

Symbolic depth

Kabbalah maps the relation between the infinite and the finite, between the unknowable divine (Ein Sof, "without end") and the manifest world of experience, through a series of ten gradations that are at once stages of cosmic emanation and dimensions of the human soul. The Tree of Life is simultaneously a portrait of God, of the cosmos, and of the human being. To climb the Tree is to undergo a journey of consciousness from the dense materiality of Malkuth to the unknowable unity of Keter, traversing the qualities of foundation, beauty, severity, and mercy along the way. The Kabbalistic vision is one of profound coherence: every aspect of reality is mirrored at every level.

In tarot, the twenty-two Major Arcana correspond to the twenty-two paths of the Tree of Life in the Golden Dawn attribution: the Fool to the path between Keter and Chokmah, the Magician to the path between Keter and Binah, and so on. The four suits of the Minor Arcana correspond to the four kabbalistic worlds and the four letters of the divine name YHVH: Wands/Yod/Atziluth, Cups/Heh/Beriah, Swords/Vau/Yetzirah, and Pentacles/final Heh/Assiah. The ten pip cards of each suit correspond to the ten sefirot. Continue with Tree of Life, sefirot, and the complete glossary.

Also known as

• Qabalah
• Cabala
• Jewish mysticism
• Zohar tradition
• received wisdom