QABALAH · LESSON 1 OF 8 · 14 MIN · FREE
Jewish Kabbalah, Christian Cabala and the Hermetic Qabalah of the magicians — three traditions, one tree.
Qabalah (also Kabbalah, Cabala) comes from the Hebrew qabbalah, "receiving" — a tradition handed down. Three related but different streams share the name. Knowing which is which will save you a great deal of confusion.
Qabalah (also Kabbalah, Cabala) comes from the Hebrew qabbalah, "receiving" — a tradition handed down. Three related but different streams share the name. Knowing which is which will save you a great deal of confusion.
Kabbalah is the mystical tradition of Judaism, and remains a living religious path with its own teachers.
In 1486 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola proposed 900 theses in Rome, declaring that Kabbalah confirmed Christian truths. Johannes Reuchlin followed with De arte cabalistica (1517), and Agrippa wove Hebrew names, letters and number squares into his Three Books of Occult Philosophy. In 1677–84 Christian Knorr von Rosenroth published Latin translations of Zohar texts as Kabbala Denudata.
The French magus Éliphas Lévi linked the twenty-two Hebrew letters to the twenty-two tarot trumps in the 1850s. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888) made the Tree of Life the framework for its whole system: grades, colours, gods, tarot, planets and elements. MacGregor Mathers translated parts of Knorr's Latin as The Kabbalah Unveiled (1887), and Dion Fortune's The Mystical Qabalah (1935) became the standard modern introduction.
The spelling Qabalah with a Q is often used for this magical stream.
Hermetic Qabalah borrowed from Jewish Kabbalah, often loosely, and gave its terms new meanings. When you meet a claim such as "the Kabbalah says…", ask which Kabbalah. Treat the Jewish tradition as a living faith, not a quarry, and the magical tradition as what it is: a powerful Western system with its own history.
Start with The Tree of Life in Western Ceremonial Magic if you have not met the ten sephiroth yet.
Draw a simple Tree of Life from memory: ten circles, three pillars. Label what you can. Keep it — you will add the letters and paths as the track goes on.
4 questions — choose an answer to check it.
1.What does the Hebrew word qabbalah mean?
2.Where and when was the Zohar written?
3.Which Renaissance scholar's 900 theses (1486) launched Christian Cabala?
4.Which 16th-century teacher in Safed taught tzimtzum, the shattering of the vessels and tikkun?
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