Kabala, The : A Hebrew and Jewish system of
theosophy. The word signifies''doctrines received from
tradition." In ancient Hebrew literature the name was used
to denote the entire body of religious writings, the
Pentateuch excepted. It is only in the early middle ages
that the system of theosophy known as Kabalism was
designated by that name. We will first consider the Kabala
as a literary production before proceeding to examine it
in the light of a hand-book of Hebrew occultism. The main
sources which went to the making of the Kabala are the
Sepher Yesirah or Book of Creation, which is a combination
of mediaeval mysticism and science. The date of origin of
this work has been matter of great argument, but it is
perhaps safest to say that it seems to be earlier than the
ninth century A.D. The Bahir or brilliant is first quoted
by Nahmanides, and is usually attributed to his teacher,
Ezra. It owes much to the Sepher Yesirah, and to a great
extent foreshadows the Zohar, which is a commentary on the
Pentateuch, including eleven dissertations on that book,—
the most important of which are the Book of Secrets, the
Secret of Secrets, the Mysteries of the Pentateuch, and
the Hidden Interpretation. It pretends to the authorship
of Simon ben Yohai in the second century, and it is
alleged that he drew his sources from traditional
dialogues between God and Adam in Paradise. It is further
stated that it was
discovered in a cavern in Galilee where it had been hidden
for one thousand years. It has been proved almost beyond
doubt, however, that it was written in the thirteenth
century, and the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders is
alluded to. It is also believed that Moses de Leon, who
died in 35, and who circulated and sold the Zohar, was
himself its author. At the same time there is no doubt
that it enshrines a large number of very ancient and
important Hebrew traditions. The matter contained in the
Kabala deals with the nature of God, the sephiroth or
divine emanations, of angels and of man. God, known in the
Kabala as En Soph, fills and contains the universe. As he
is boundless, mind cannot conceive him, so in a certain
mystical sense he is non-existent. The doctrine of the
sephiroth is undoubtedly the most important to be met with
in the pages of the Kabala. To justify- his existence the
Deity had to become active and creative, and this he
achieved through the medium of the ten sephiroth or
intelligences which emanated from him like rays proceeding
from a luminary. The first sephiroth or emanation was the
wish to become manifest, and this contained nine other
intelligences or sephiroth, which again emanate one from
the other—the second from the first, the third from the
second, and so forth. These are known as the Crown,
Wisdom, Intelligence, Love, Justice, Beauty, Firmness,
Splendour, Foundation and Kingdom. From the junction of
pairs of sephirolh, other emanations were formed : thus
from Wisdom and Intelligence proceeded Love or Mercy and
from Mercy and Justice, Beauty. The sephiroth are also
symbolical of primordial man and the heavenly man, of
which earthly man is the shadow. They form three triads
which respectively represent intellectual, moral, and
physical qualities: the first, Wisdom, Intelligence and
CroWn ; the second Love, Justice and Beauty; the third
Firmness, Splendour and Foundation. The whole is circled
or bound by Kingdom, the ninth sephiroth. Each oi these
triads symbolises a portion of the human frame: the first
the head; the second the arms; the third the legs. It must
be understood that though those sephiroth are emanations
from God they remain a portion, and simply represent
different aspects of the One Being.
Kabalistic cosmology posits four different worlds, each of
which forms a sephiric system of a decade of emanations,
which were verified in the following manner : the world of
emanations or the heavenly man, a direct emanation from
the En Soph. From it is produced the world of creation, or
the Briatic world of pure nature, but yet not so spiritual
as the first. The angel Metatron inhabits it and
constitutes the world of pure spirit. He governs the
visible world and guides the revolutions of the planets.
From this is formed the world of formation or the Yet/siratie
world, still less refined, which is the abode of angels.
Finally from these emanates the world of action or matter,
the dwelling of evil spirits, which contains ten hells,
each becoming lower until the depths of diabolical
degradation is reached. The prince of this region is
Samael, the evil spirit, the serpent of Genesis, otherwise
" the Beast." But the universe was incomplete without the
creation of man; the heavenly Adam, that is the tenth
sephiroth, created the earthly Adam, each member of whose
body corresponds to a part of the visible universe. The
human form, we are told, is shaped after the four letters
which constitute the Jewish tetragrammation, Jhava, thus,
the letters J h a v a . The souls of the whole human race
pre-exist in the world of emanations, and are all destined
to inhabit human bodies. Like the sephiroth from which it
emanates, every soul has ten potentces, consisting of a
trinity of triads—spirit, soul, cruder soul or neptesh.
Each soul, before its entrance into the world consists of
male and female united into one being, but when it
descends to this earth, the two parts are separated and
animate different bodies. The destiny of the soul upon
earth is to develop the perfect germs implanted in it,
which must ultimately return to En Soph. If it does not
succeed in acquiring the experience for which it has been
sent to earth, it must re-inhabit the body three times
till it becomes duly purified. When all the souls in the
world of the sephiroth shall have passed through this
period of probation and returned to the bosom of En Soph,
the jubilee will commence; even Satan will be restored to
his angelic nature, and existence will be a Sabbath
without end. The Kabala states that these esoteric
doctrines are contained in the Hebrew scriptures, but
cannot be perceived by the uninitiated; they are, however,
plainly revealed to persons of spiritual mind.
Next considering the Kabala as occult literature, we find
it stated that the philosophical doctrines developed in
its pages are found to have been perpetuated by the secret
method of oral tradition from the first ages of humanity.
" The Kabala," says Dr. Ginsburg, when explaining the
story of its birth, " was first taught by God Himself to a
select company of angels, who formed a theosophic school
in Paradise. After the Fall the angels most graciously
communicated this heavenly doctrine to the disobedient
child of earth, to furnish the protoplasts with the means
of returning to their pristine nobility and felicity. From
Adam it passed over to Noah, and then to Abraham, the
friend of God, who emigrated with it to Egypt, where the
patriarch allowed a portion of this mysterious doctrine to
ooze out. It was in this way that the Egyptians obtained
some knowledge of it, and the other Eastern nations could
introduce it into their philosophical systems. Moses, who
was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, was first
initiated into the Kabala in the land of his birth, but
became most proficient in it during his wanderings in the
wilderness, when he not only devoted to it the leisure
hours of the whole forty years, but received lessons in it
from one of the angels. By the aid of this mysterious
science the lawgiver was enabled to solve the difficulties
which arose during his management of the Israelites, in
spite of the pilgrimages, wars, and frequent miseries of
the nation. He covertly laid down the principles of this
secret doctrine in the first four books of the Pentateuch,
but withheld them from Deuteronomy. Moses also initiated
the seventy Elders into the secrets of this doctrine, and
they again transmitted them from hand to hand. Of all who
formed the unbroken line of tradition, David and Solomon
were the most deeply initiated into the Kabala. No one,
however, dared to write it down till Schimeon ben Jochai,
who lived at the time of the destruction of the second.
After his death, his son, Rabbi Eleazar, and his
secretary, Rabbi Abba, as well as his disciples, collated
Rabbi Simon Ben Jochai's treatises, and out of these
composed the celebrated work called Z H R, Zohar,
Splendour, which is the grand storehouse of Kabalism."
The history of Kabalistic origins, however, is as has been
shown almost wholly fabulous, and no evidence worthy of
the name can be adduced in its support. The mysticism of
the Mishna and the Talmud must be carefully distinguished
from that of the Kabalistic writings, as they are
undoubtedly of very considerable antiquity. But the Kabala
has certain claims upon the modern student of mysticism.
Its philosophical value is not depreciated by its modern
origin, and it is regarded by many as an absolute guide to
knowledge in all the most profound problems of existence.
Its thesis is extensive and profound, but examination
unfortunately proves it to be merely a series of dogmatic
hypotheses, a body of positive doctrine based on a central
assumption which is incapable of proof. This tradition,
says Eliphas Levi, wholly reposes on the single dogma of
magic, that the Visible is for us a proportional measure
of the Invisible: In fact it proceeds by analogy from the
known to the unknown. At the same time, it is a most
interesting effort of the human mind.
Mediaeval magic was deeply indebted to Kabalistic
combinations of the divine names for the terms of its
rituals, and from it it derived the belief in a resident
virtue in sacred names and numbers. Certain definite rules
are employed to discover the sublime source of power
resident in the Jewish scriptures. Thus the words of
several verses in the scriptures which are regarded as
containing an occult sense, are placed over each other,
and the letters are formed into new words by reading them
vertically; or the words of the text are arranged in
squares in such a manner as to be read vertically or
otherwise. Words are joined together and re-divided, and
the initial and final letters of certain words are formed
into separate words. Again, every letter of the word is
reduced to its numerical value, and the word is explained
by another of the same quantity. Every letter of a word
too is taken to be an initial of an abbreviation of it.
The twenty-two letters of the alphabet are divided into
two halves, one half is placed above the other, and the
two letters which thus become associated are interchanged.
This a becomes /, b, m, and so on. This cipher alphabet is
called albm from the first interchanged pairs. The
commutation of the twenty-two letters is effected by the
last letter of the alphabet taking the place of the first,
the last but one the place of the second and so forth.
This cipher is called atbah. These permutations and
combinations are much older than the Kabala, and obtained
amongst Jewish occultists from time immemorial.
Lastly, it should be pointed out that the Kabala has been
condemned nowhere more strongly than among the Jews
themselves. Jewish orthodoxy has always been suspicious of
it, and as Mr. A. E. Waite has well said: " The best
lesson we can learn from it is the necessity of
scrupulously separating the experimental knowledge of the
mystics from their bizarre fields of speculation."
