It was necessary to bridge the gap between a
pure and perfect being and a manifestly impure
and imperfect world by a series of “steps” in
which the divine light was successively diluted.
The result shares something in common with
developments in Platonism, a system of philoso-
phy which was influential from classical Greek
times until the Renaissance. Platonism also tried
to resolve the same difficulty by postulating a
“chain of being” which bridged the gap
between the perfection of God, and the evident
imperfection of the world of daily life.
The most influential Kabbalistic document,
the Sepher ha Zohar or Book of Splendour, was
published in the latter half of the thirteenth cen-
tury by Moses de Leon (1238-1305 CE), a Span-
ish Jew. The Zohar is a series of separate
documents covering a wide range of subjects,
from a verse-by-verse esoteric commentary on
the five books of Moses (Pentateuch), to highly
theosophical descriptions of processes within
God. There are some who believe the Zohar
dates back to the Roman occupation of Pales-
tine, but many scholars believe it was written by
Moses de Leon and passed-off as an earlier text.
The Zohar has been widely read and was highly
influential within mainstream Judaism.
One of most interesting characters from the
early period was Abraham Abulafia (1240-1295
CE), who believed that God cannot be described
or conceptualised using everyday symbols. Like
many Kabbalists he believed in the divine
nature of the Hebrew alphabet and used
abstract letter combinations and permutations
(“tzeruf”) 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 conscious-
ness, failure to carry through the manipulations
correctly could have a drastic effect on the Kab-
balist. In Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism [39]
Scholem includes a fascinating extract from a
description of one such experiment. Abulafia is
unusual because (controversially) he was one of
the few Kabbalists to provide explicit written
details of practical techniques.
An important development in Kabbalah was
the Safed school of mystics headed by Moses
Cordovero (1522-1570 CE) and his successor
Isaac Luria (1534-1572 CE). Luria, called “The
Ari” or Lion, was a highly charismatic leader
who exercised almost total control over the life
of the school, and has passed out of history and
into myth as a saint. Emphasis was placed on
living in the world and bringing the conscious-
ness of God through into the world in a practical
way. Practices were largely devotional.
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries Judaism as a whole was heavily influ-
enced by Kabbalah, but two influences caused
its decline. The first event was the mass defec-
tion of Jews to the cause of the heretic and apos-
tate pseudo-messiah Shabbatai Tzevi (1626-1676
CE), an event Scholem calls “the largest and
most momentous messianic movement in Jew-
ish history subsequent to the destruction of the
Temple and the Bar Kokhba Revolt.” The Shab-
bateans included many prominent rabbis and
Kabbalists, and from this point on Kabbalah
became inextricably mired with suspicions of
heresy.
A second influence was the rise in Eastern
Europe of a populist Kabbalism in the form of
Chasidism, and its eventual decline into super-
stition (in the eyes of its rationalist opponents),
so that by the beginning of this century a Jewish
writer was able to dismiss Kabbalah as an his-
torical curiousity.
Jewish Kabbalah has vast literature of many
thousands of texts, most of which have not been
translated into English.
A development which took place almost syn-
chronously with the translation and publication
of key texts of Jewish Kabbalah was its adoption
by many Christian mystics, magicians and phi-
losphers. Some Christians thought Kabbalah
held keys that would reveal mysteries hidden in
the scriptures, others tried to find in Kabbalah
doctrines which might be used to convert Jews
to Christianity.
There were some who recognised in the Kab-
balah themes with which they were already
familiar in the literature of Hermeticism and
Neoplatonism. Renaissance philosophers such
as Pico della Mirandola were familiar with Kab-
balah and mixed it with Gnosticism, Pythagore-
anism, Neo-platonism and Hermeticism to form
a snowball which continued to pick up tradi-
tions as it rolled down the centuries. It is proba-
bly accurate to say that from the Renaissance
on, virtually all European occult philosophers
and magicians of note had a working knowl-
edge of some aspects of Kabbalah.
Non-Jewish Kabbalah has suffered greatly
from having only a limited number of source
texts to work from, often in poor translations,Introduction
3
and without the key commentaries which
would have revealed the tradition associated
with the concepts described. It is pointless to
criticise non-Jewish Kabbalah (as many writers
have) for misinterpreting Jewish Kabbalah.
After 500 years it should be recognised as a par-
allel tradition with many points of correspond-
ence and many points of difference.
Very little information has survived about the
Practical Kabbalah, but there is abundant evi-
dence that it involved a wide range of practices
and included practices now regarded as magical
- the fact that so many Kabbalists denounced the
use of Kabbalah for magical purposes is evi-
dence in itself (even if there were no other) that
the use of these techniques was widespread. It is
highly likely that many ritual magical tech-
niques were introduced into Europe by Kabba-
lists or their less scrupulous camp followers.
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. Its name and contents
suggest at the very least a Jewish influence. No-
one knows how old it is, but there is a reasona-
ble suspicion that its contents preserve tech-
niques 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 heav-
ily adulterated at times by Hermeticism, Gnosti-
cism, Neoplatonism, Pythagoreanism,
Rosicrucianism, Christianity, Tantra and so on.
The most important “modern” influences in
the English-speaking world are the French
magician Eliphas Levi, and the English “Order
of the Golden Dawn”. At least two members of
the Golden Dawn (S.L. Mathers and A.E. Waite)
were knowledgable Kabbalists, and three
Golden Dawn members have popularised Kab-
balah - Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie, and
Dion Fortune. Dion Fortune’s “Order of the
Inner Light” has also produced a number of
authors: Gareth Knight, William Butler, and
William Gray to name but three.
An unfortunate side effect of the Golden
Dawn is that while Kabbalah was an important
part of its “Knowledge Lectures”, surviving
Golden Dawn rituals are a syncretist hodge-
podge of symbolism in which Kabbalah seems
to play a minor or nominal role, and this has led
to Kabbalah being seen by many modern occult-
ists as more of a theoretical and intellectual dis-
cipline, rather than a potent and self-contained
mystical and magical system in its own right.
Some of the originators of modern witchcraft
(e.g. Gerald Gardner, Alex Saunders) drew
heavily on medieval ritual and Kabbalah for
inspiration, and it is not unusual to find modern
witches teaching some form of Kabbalah,
although it is generally even less well integrated
into practical technique than in the case of the
Golden Dawn.
To summarise, Kabbalah is a mystical and
magical tradition which originated nearly one
thousand years ago and has been practiced con-
tinuously during this time. It has been practiced
by Jew and non-Jew alike for about five hun-
dred years. On the Jewish side it has been an
integral and influential part of Judaism, and has
once more come into vogue after two centuries
of neglect
1
. On the non-Jewish side it has cre-
ated a rich mystical and magical tradition with
its own validity, a tradition which has survived
despite the prejudice generated through co-
existing within a strongly Christian culture.
The tradition continues, and in what follows
you will find an introduction to the tradition as I
received it, plus whatever personal insights I
am able to offer.
pure and perfect being and a manifestly impure
and imperfect world by a series of “steps” in
which the divine light was successively diluted.
The result shares something in common with
developments in Platonism, a system of philoso-
phy which was influential from classical Greek
times until the Renaissance. Platonism also tried
to resolve the same difficulty by postulating a
“chain of being” which bridged the gap
between the perfection of God, and the evident
imperfection of the world of daily life.
The most influential Kabbalistic document,
the Sepher ha Zohar or Book of Splendour, was
published in the latter half of the thirteenth cen-
tury by Moses de Leon (1238-1305 CE), a Span-
ish Jew. The Zohar is a series of separate
documents covering a wide range of subjects,
from a verse-by-verse esoteric commentary on
the five books of Moses (Pentateuch), to highly
theosophical descriptions of processes within
God. There are some who believe the Zohar
dates back to the Roman occupation of Pales-
tine, but many scholars believe it was written by
Moses de Leon and passed-off as an earlier text.
The Zohar has been widely read and was highly
influential within mainstream Judaism.
One of most interesting characters from the
early period was Abraham Abulafia (1240-1295
CE), who believed that God cannot be described
or conceptualised using everyday symbols. Like
many Kabbalists he believed in the divine
nature of the Hebrew alphabet and used
abstract letter combinations and permutations
(“tzeruf”) 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 conscious-
ness, failure to carry through the manipulations
correctly could have a drastic effect on the Kab-
balist. In Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism [39]
Scholem includes a fascinating extract from a
description of one such experiment. Abulafia is
unusual because (controversially) he was one of
the few Kabbalists to provide explicit written
details of practical techniques.
An important development in Kabbalah was
the Safed school of mystics headed by Moses
Cordovero (1522-1570 CE) and his successor
Isaac Luria (1534-1572 CE). Luria, called “The
Ari” or Lion, was a highly charismatic leader
who exercised almost total control over the life
of the school, and has passed out of history and
into myth as a saint. Emphasis was placed on
living in the world and bringing the conscious-
ness of God through into the world in a practical
way. Practices were largely devotional.
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries Judaism as a whole was heavily influ-
enced by Kabbalah, but two influences caused
its decline. The first event was the mass defec-
tion of Jews to the cause of the heretic and apos-
tate pseudo-messiah Shabbatai Tzevi (1626-1676
CE), an event Scholem calls “the largest and
most momentous messianic movement in Jew-
ish history subsequent to the destruction of the
Temple and the Bar Kokhba Revolt.” The Shab-
bateans included many prominent rabbis and
Kabbalists, and from this point on Kabbalah
became inextricably mired with suspicions of
heresy.
A second influence was the rise in Eastern
Europe of a populist Kabbalism in the form of
Chasidism, and its eventual decline into super-
stition (in the eyes of its rationalist opponents),
so that by the beginning of this century a Jewish
writer was able to dismiss Kabbalah as an his-
torical curiousity.
Jewish Kabbalah has vast literature of many
thousands of texts, most of which have not been
translated into English.
A development which took place almost syn-
chronously with the translation and publication
of key texts of Jewish Kabbalah was its adoption
by many Christian mystics, magicians and phi-
losphers. Some Christians thought Kabbalah
held keys that would reveal mysteries hidden in
the scriptures, others tried to find in Kabbalah
doctrines which might be used to convert Jews
to Christianity.
There were some who recognised in the Kab-
balah themes with which they were already
familiar in the literature of Hermeticism and
Neoplatonism. Renaissance philosophers such
as Pico della Mirandola were familiar with Kab-
balah and mixed it with Gnosticism, Pythagore-
anism, Neo-platonism and Hermeticism to form
a snowball which continued to pick up tradi-
tions as it rolled down the centuries. It is proba-
bly accurate to say that from the Renaissance
on, virtually all European occult philosophers
and magicians of note had a working knowl-
edge of some aspects of Kabbalah.
Non-Jewish Kabbalah has suffered greatly
from having only a limited number of source
texts to work from, often in poor translations,Introduction
3
and without the key commentaries which
would have revealed the tradition associated
with the concepts described. It is pointless to
criticise non-Jewish Kabbalah (as many writers
have) for misinterpreting Jewish Kabbalah.
After 500 years it should be recognised as a par-
allel tradition with many points of correspond-
ence and many points of difference.
Very little information has survived about the
Practical Kabbalah, but there is abundant evi-
dence that it involved a wide range of practices
and included practices now regarded as magical
- the fact that so many Kabbalists denounced the
use of Kabbalah for magical purposes is evi-
dence in itself (even if there were no other) that
the use of these techniques was widespread. It is
highly likely that many ritual magical tech-
niques were introduced into Europe by Kabba-
lists or their less scrupulous camp followers.
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. Its name and contents
suggest at the very least a Jewish influence. No-
one knows how old it is, but there is a reasona-
ble suspicion that its contents preserve tech-
niques 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 heav-
ily adulterated at times by Hermeticism, Gnosti-
cism, Neoplatonism, Pythagoreanism,
Rosicrucianism, Christianity, Tantra and so on.
The most important “modern” influences in
the English-speaking world are the French
magician Eliphas Levi, and the English “Order
of the Golden Dawn”. At least two members of
the Golden Dawn (S.L. Mathers and A.E. Waite)
were knowledgable Kabbalists, and three
Golden Dawn members have popularised Kab-
balah - Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie, and
Dion Fortune. Dion Fortune’s “Order of the
Inner Light” has also produced a number of
authors: Gareth Knight, William Butler, and
William Gray to name but three.
An unfortunate side effect of the Golden
Dawn is that while Kabbalah was an important
part of its “Knowledge Lectures”, surviving
Golden Dawn rituals are a syncretist hodge-
podge of symbolism in which Kabbalah seems
to play a minor or nominal role, and this has led
to Kabbalah being seen by many modern occult-
ists as more of a theoretical and intellectual dis-
cipline, rather than a potent and self-contained
mystical and magical system in its own right.
Some of the originators of modern witchcraft
(e.g. Gerald Gardner, Alex Saunders) drew
heavily on medieval ritual and Kabbalah for
inspiration, and it is not unusual to find modern
witches teaching some form of Kabbalah,
although it is generally even less well integrated
into practical technique than in the case of the
Golden Dawn.
To summarise, Kabbalah is a mystical and
magical tradition which originated nearly one
thousand years ago and has been practiced con-
tinuously during this time. It has been practiced
by Jew and non-Jew alike for about five hun-
dred years. On the Jewish side it has been an
integral and influential part of Judaism, and has
once more come into vogue after two centuries
of neglect
1
. On the non-Jewish side it has cre-
ated a rich mystical and magical tradition with
its own validity, a tradition which has survived
despite the prejudice generated through co-
existing within a strongly Christian culture.
The tradition continues, and in what follows
you will find an introduction to the tradition as I
received it, plus whatever personal insights I
am able to offer.
Ajándék az emberiségnek : A Kabbala tudománya különleges, mivel lehetővé teszi számunkra, hogy felfedjük azt, hogyan irányítsuk a természet két erejét: a megszerzés és adakozás erőit. A teljes természet ebből a két erőből áll. Mi láthatjuk őket mindenhol: plusz mínusz, adakozás és megszerzés. Ezen két erők kombinációja hozza létre életünk esszenciáját. A kövületi szinten atomokat, molekulákat, dipólusokat, kristály formákat, stb. építenek. A növényi szinten a plusz és mínusz kombinációja életet hoz létre, a plusz nyújtja a hasznos, szükséges dolgokat, míg a mínusz megszabadul a hulladéktól, mely lehetővé teszi a test életét és fejlődését. Az állati szinten a plusz és mínusz még nagyobbá, erősebbé válik, és azok egymással való kapcsolata nem csak azt okozza hogy hasznos dolgok belépnek, és káros anyagok távoznak, hanem mozgást, szaporodást, és a különálló állat egyéni életét is létrehozzák. Ez már egy különleges összegzése a két behatásnak. Azonban bármennyire ez egy paradoxnak tűnik, az emberi szinten mind a mai napig csak az egyik erő működött. Ennek eredményeképpen, bármely élvezet ami belépett, azonnal ki is lett oltva. Mindez azért van, mivel vágyunk önző, és nincs semmi esélyünk annak ellenállni, nem vagyunk képesek arra, hogy egy másik erőt állíthassunk annak ellenében, hogy mi kiüríthessük a káros anyagokat vágyainkból és gondolatainkból, szívünkből és értelmünkből, mely az emberi szinthez tartozik. Most egy második erő jelenik meg számunkra – a szívben található pont, mely önzőségünkkel szemben áll. Ez lehetővé teszi számunkra, hogy megformázzuk magunkat, hogy eldönthessük melyik gondolatokat és vágyakat vegyük magunkhoz, és melyiket tegyük kívülre. Ennek eredményeképpen, a több ezernyi vágyból és gondolatból mi képesek vagyunk egy új struktúrát összegyűjteni, és egy speciális szintet építeni magunkon belül, mely “Ember”-nek (Ádám), vagy “lélek”-nek van nevezve. Mindaz tíz Szfirából áll, és egy Parcuf-nak van nevezve – mely egy spirituális struktúra. Ez az amit megformálunk magunkon belül annak a ténynek köszönhetően, hogy a két erő végre elkezdett kifejlődni bennünk. Több százezer éven keresztül csak egy erő működött rajtunk az emberi szinten. Mi állandóan vágyaink és gondolataink által lettünk aktivizálva, melyek automatikusan felébredtek bennünk. Ez az ahogy eddig éltünk. De most, több milliónyi emberrel együtt a világban, mi egy valódi ajándékot kaptunk felülről – az adakozó vágyat a megszerző vágy mellé. És mi most egy új teremtményt kezdünk el formálni magunkon belül. Nekünk magunknak kell megépítenünk az emberi lényt magunkon belül. Ez az ember e világi létezésének teljes, és egyetlen célja. Egyébként mi lenne életünk értelme? Mi mást tehetünk itt? Ma mi az egész emberiséggel együtt haladunk előre. Mi vagyunk az elsők, és mások jönnek majd utánunk. Egyik napról a másikra új emberek ébrednek fel, és csatlakoznak ehhez a folyamathoz, hogy egy emberi lényt építsünk fel mindegyikőnkön belül. Te és én megtanuljuk hogyan váljunk emberré a szó valódi értelmében.
