Kabbalah

Origin and history

The word Kabbalah comes from the Hebrew root q-b-l meaning "to receive": it is the wisdom received from teacher to disciple in initiatory chain. Although there are mystical antecedents in Judaism since antiquity (the Merkabah literature of the 1st century, the Sefer Yetzirah of dating between the 2nd and 8th centuries), Kabbalah as a structured tradition emerged in 13th century Provence and Catalonia with the founding texts Bahir and Zohar.

The Sefer ha-Zohar ("Book of Splendour"), attributed by tradition to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (2nd century) but in reality compiled in 13th century Spain by Moses de León, is the central work. The Castilian and Catalan Sephardic Kabbalah, after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492), refuged in Safed (Galilee) where it flourished in the 16th century with Isaac Luria, founder of the Lurianic Kabbalah which is the most widespread form today.

The Tree of Life and the Sephirot

The central diagram of the Kabbalah is the Tree of Life (Etz Chayim): 10 emanations of the divine (sephirot) connected by 22 paths. The 10 sephirot, from top to bottom: Keter (Crown), Chokmah (Wisdom), Binah (Understanding), Chesed (Mercy), Gevurah (Severity), Tiferet (Beauty), Netzach (Eternity/Victory), Hod (Splendour/Glory), Yesod (Foundation), Malkuth (Kingdom). Each sephira is a divine quality and a step on the spiritual ascending path.

The 22 paths between sephirot correspond to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet AND, in the Christian Kabbalah of the Renaissance and esoteric (Eliphas Levi, Crowley, Dion Fortune), to the 22 major arcana of the tarot. This Hermetic-Kabbalistic correspondence between Hebrew letters, paths of the tree and major arcana is one of the foundations of Western esoteric tarot since the 19th century.

Living Kabbalah

Kabbalah was for centuries an oral tradition reserved for advanced rabbis (it was even said it could not be studied before age 40). Today there are several streams: orthodox Kabbalah studied in religious Judaism; popular Kabbalah diffused by groups such as the Kabbalah Centre (Madonna among its students); Christian Kabbalah of esoteric and tarot influence; contemporary mystical Kabbalah integrating Jungian psychology. Each stream has its way of practising — but all share the diagram of the Tree of Life as central work map.