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Judaism
Judaism is a monotheistic religion based on principles and ethics embodied in
the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), as further explored and explained in the Talmud and
other texts. Judaism is among the oldest religious traditions still being
practiced today. Jewish history and the principles and ethics of Judaism have
influenced other religions, such as Christianity, Islam and the Bahá'í Faith.
In modern Judaism, central authority is not vested in any single person or body,
but in sacred texts, traditions, and learned Rabbis who interpret those texts
and laws. According to Jewish tradition, Judaism begins with the Covenant
between God and Abraham (ca. 2000 BCE), the patriarch and progenitor of the
Jewish people. Throughout the ages, Judaism has adhered to a number of religious
principles, the most important of which is the belief in a single, omniscient,
omnipotent, benevolent, transcendent God, who created the universe and continues
to govern it. According to Jewish tradition, the God who created the world
established a covenant with the Israelites and their descendants, and revealed
his laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the
Written and Oral Torah. Judaism has traditionally valued Torah study and the
observance of the commandments recorded in the Torah and as expounded in the
Talmud.
The Kabbalah
The first questions which the non-qabalistical reader will probably ask
are: What is the Qabalah? Who was its author? What are its sub-divisions? What
are its general teachings? And why is a translation of it required at the
present time?
I will answer the last question first. At the present time a powerful wave of
occult thought is spreading through society; thinking men are beginning to awake
to the fact that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of
in their philosophy;" and, last but not least, it is now felt that the Bible,
which has been probably more misconstrued than any other book ever written,
contains numberless obscure and mysterious passages which are utterly
unintelligible without some key wherewith to unlock their meaning. THAT KEY IS
GIVEN IN THE QABALAH. Therefore this work should be of interest to every
biblical and theological student. Let every Christian ask himself this question:
"How can I think to understand the Old Testament if I be ignorant of the
construction put upon it by that nation whose sacred book it formed; and if I
know not the meaning of the Old Testament, how can I expect to understand the
New?" Were the real and sublime philosophy of the Bible better known, there
would be
fewer fanatics and sectarians. And who can calculate the vastness of the harm
done to impressionable and excitable persons by the bigoted enthusiasts who ever
and anon come forward as teachers of the people? How many suicides are the
result of religious mania and depression! What farragos of sacrilegious nonsense
have not been promulgated as the true meanings of the books of the Prophets and
the Apocalypse! Given a translation of the sacred Hebrew Book, in many instances
incorrect, as the foundation, an inflamed and an ill-balanced mind as the worker
thereon, what sort of edifice can be expected as the result? I say fearlessly to
the fanatics and bigots of the present day: You have cast down the Sublime and
Infinite One from His throne, and in His stead have placed the demon of
unbalanced force; you have substituted a deity of disorder and of jealousy for a
God of order and of love; you have perverted the teachings of the crucified One.
Therefore at this present time an English translation of the Qabalah is almost a
necessity, for the Zohar has never before been translated into the language of
this country, nor, as far as I am aware, into any modern European vernacular.
The Qabalah may be defined as being the esoteric Jewish doctrine. It is
called in Hebrew QBLH, Qabalah, which is derived from the root QBL, Qibel,
meaning "to receive." This appellation refers to the custom of handing down the
esoteric knowledge by oral transmission, and is nearly allied to "tradition."
As in the present work a great number of Hebrew or Chaldee words have to be
used in the text, and the number of scholars in the Shemitic languages is
limited, I have thought it more advisable to print such words in ordinary Roman
characters, carefully retaining the exact orthography. I therefore append a
table showing at a glance the ordinary Hebrew and Chaldee alphabet (which is
common to both languages), the Roman characters by
which I have expressed its letters in this work; also their names, powers, and
numerical values. There are no separate numeral characters in Hebrew and Chaldee;
therefore, as is also the case in Greek, each letter has its own peculiar
numerical value, and from this circumstance results the important fact that
every word is a number, and every number is a word. This is alluded to in
Revelations, where "the number of the beast" is mentioned, and on this
correspondence between words and numbers the science of Gematria (the first
division of the so-called literal Qabalah) is based. I shall refer to this
subject again. I have selected the Roman letter Q to represent the Hebrew Qoph
or Koph, a precedent for the use of which without a following m may be found in
Max Müller's "Sacred Books of the East." The reader must remember that the
Hebrew is almost entirely a consonantal alphabet, the vowels being for the most
part supplied by small points and marks usually placed below the letters.
Another difficulty of the Hebrew alphabet consists in the great similarity
between the forms of certain letters--e.g., V, Z, and final N.
With regard to the author and origin of the Qabalah, I cannot do better than
give the following extract from Dr. Ginsburg's "Essay on the Kabbalah," first
premising that this word has been spelt in a great variety of ways--Cabala,
Kabalah, Kabbala, &c. I have adopted the form Qabalah, as being more consonant
with the Hebrew writing of the word.
"A system of religious philosophy, or, more properly, of theosophy, which has
not only exercised for hundreds of years an extraordinary influence on the
mental development of so shrewd a people as the Jews, but has captivated the
minds of some of the greatest thinkers of Christendom in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, claims the greatest attention of both the philosopher and
the theologian. When it is added that among its
captives were Raymond Lully, the celebrated scholastic metaphysician and chemist
(died 1315); John Reuchlin, the renowned scholar. and reviver of Oriental
literature in Europe (born 1455, died 1522); John Picus de Mirandola, the famous
philosopher and classical scholar (1463-1494); Cornelius Henry Agrippa, the
distinguished philosopher, divine, and physician (1486-1535); John Baptist Von
Helmont, a remarkable chemist and physician (1577-1644); as well as our own
countrymen, Robert Fludd, the famous physician and philosopher (1574-1637); and
Dr. Henry More (1614-1687); and that these men, after restlessly searching for a
scientific system which should disclose to them 'the deepest depths' of the
divine mature, and show them the real tie which binds all things together, found
the cravings of their minds satisfied by this theosophy, the claims of the
Kabbalah on the attention of students in literature and philosophy will readily
be admitted. The claims of the Kabbalah, however, are not restricted to the
literary man and the philosopher; the poet too will find in it ample materials
for the exercise of his lofty genius. How can it be otherwise with a theosophy
which, we are assured, was born of God in Paradise, was nursed and reared by the
choicest of the angelic hosts in heaven, and only held converse with the holiest
of man's children upon earth. Listen to the story of. its birth, growth, and
maturity, as told by its followers.
"The Kabbalah 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 Qabalah 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 law-giver 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 Kabbalah. No one, however, dared to write it down, till
Schimeon Ben Jochai, who lived at the time of the destruction of the second
temple . . . . . 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 ZHR, Zohar,
splendour, which is the grand storehouse of Kabbalism."
The Book of Concealed Mystery
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