What Is Kabbalah?

Although the exact origins of Kabbalah remain shrouded in mystery, myth and legend, it was first known to the world as a form of Jewish mysticism and magick. According to Jewish legend and the early mythology of kabbalists themselves, Moses recieved the secrets of kabbalah at the same time that he received the ten commandements. According to this story the 10 commandements were to be passed to everyone, whereas the powerful secrets of kabbalah were to be passed to oral tradition amongst the select few with the wisdom to recieve it. There are of course many more prosaic alternatives to thos origins myth, the most likley one being that the body of teaching that become known as kabbalah built up over many years from the work of many men, probably drawing on many different traditions outside of orthodox Judiasm, and reframing these in a way that was compatible with it.

Ultimately the precise origins are not important. What is know is that in its early days it represented the esoteric heart of Judiasm. It was said that whilst the Torah represented the body of Judaism - the exoteric religion available and accessible to all - the kabbalah was it's soul - the esoteric path of direct spiritual experience accessible only to the wise. Whereas the Torah focussed on easily understood dogma, rules for living, and the shared rituals of religious community, Kabblah provided a set of tools for the wise seeker to directly experience the divine for themselves, and to harness its power. The literal translation of the word Kabbalah is 'to recieve' and it was literally thought of as the method through which you directly recieve the revelation of spiritual truth for yourself.

Over time these practices fell out of favour with the Jewish orthodoxy. They were placed under greater and greater restrictions, and were then eventually all but forgoten. Although today we can see a great deal of renewed interest in the subject from within Judiasm, the modern revival of Kabbalah actually came from outside the Jewish community.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there was a great deal of interest in esoteric spiritual teachings of all kinds. Many forms of eastern mysticism were first introduced to the western world around this time, and the practice of many forms of mysticism and magick were rediscovered and revived, from Kabblah to Wiccan witchcraft.

Over the subsequent decades the study and practice of Kabbalah grew in popularity. However, although this modern formaulation was based on the same core concepts and drew largely on the same source materials, it took on a distinclty different character.

Unshackled from its association with the Dogmas of Judaism people quickly realized that the strengths of Qabalah lay in its versatility, flexibility and universality. roups of people as diverses as Pagan witches, Christians and occultists all began to draw on its philosophy and on its techniques, and to find relevance within them for their own traditions, ideas and beliefs.

Within this melting pot of ideas the growing new incarnation naturally became associated with the concept of the 'perennial philosophy'. According to this idea there exists a common thread, an underlying source of spiritual truth from which all of the worlds major religions have sprung. Kabbalah then began to be seen as a way to access this source directly, regardless of what beliefs you may have, or whether you have any beliefs at all. Arguably this approach to the subject reached its peak with the work of Aleister Crowley, who described the tree of life - a central concept to kabbalists - as a 'spiritual filing cabinet' and sought to show the commonalities of all the world's religions through 'tables of correspondences' published in his book 777, which used the tree of life as a way of classifying religious concepts, symbols and experiences.

Some people make the disctinction between the original Jewish and modern non-aligned traditions through the varient spellings of Kabbalah (Jewish), and Qabalah (hermetic, or non-aligned). There is even another form spelled Cabala, which refers to the Christian tradition. This use of varient spellings to denote different traditions seems to me to be very useful, because they have today become wuite different, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to have caught on very well and not everyone sticks to it. One of the reasons for that is because of pure commercialism. For example, I personally would belong to those who would use the Q spelling, but I used the K in this article because so many more people are familiar with it. I didn't really like the idea of spending an evening writing an article that no-on would read, just for the sake of changing a single letter in a word. Many people who publish books seem to think in the same way, using the most popular spelling so as to get sales.