A Few Facts Concerning the Kabbalah
The Kabbalah existed as a doctrinal system before the Hebrew Sacred Scriptures.
The scope of this science was the creation—its aim, to teach man the meaning and value of his own life.
It was written, after the method of those days, in the oracular form; that is to say, each doctrinal statement was greatly condensed, according to established rules, and expressed in alphabetic symbols, or word-signs, either of which represented several words, that it might be read in more ways than one.
Hence, each written formula was a memoria technica and reminded the reader of the doctrine that had been communicated to him with it.
But as a memoria technica it embodied the full Kabbalistic doctrine in a concentrated m form; and this was why it could, and was intended to be read in more ways than one.
Now the Kabbalistic method of teaching—which was the scientific method of the day, and therefore not peculiar to the Kabbalists—was to adapt their doctrine to the capacity of the mind of its would-be recipient.
Hence they imparted it as a simple narrative of order and sequence to the cursory inquirer; as a statement of method and design to the advancing student; and as a full expression of the meaning of the whole to those willing and able to receive the same.
Under the oracular system of writing, these several forms were comprised in a single formula, so that in reading the Kabbalah the cursory inquirer found his simple narrative of order and sequence; the advancing student the further statement of method and design; and the instructed Kabbalist the full expression of the entire doctrine.
And yet each of these several classes of readers read the same scientific formulas.
Each of these formulas was thus a scientific, it might even be said an artistic, composition; while the method of writing, through which they were expressed, was a genuine art, requiring skilful and practised scribes.
In consequence of this, learning to read was in those days not a mere mastering of the alphabet and orthography of a language that was understood, as is the case now. On the contrary, knowledge of the alphabet was but a preliminary, the reading of each separate work having to be imparted, word by word, to the student by one fully instructed in the same— because the vowel-sounds were withheld from the text; and no one could impart the full teaching of the Kabbalah who was not versed therein—each having but the power of communicating the reading he had received.
Now, the several readings of the Kabbalah were idiomatic readings; that is to say, each in succession was a natural reading of the formula—a reading which could suggest itself to, and might be seized by, a duly qualified earnest and persevering student, as there was nothing forced or arbitrary about it.
The peculiarity of this system is thus seen to have been that it was a natural system, just as the science handed down with it was a natural science. Nor is this surprising, for the primitive Kabbalists dealt solely with natural science, and their teaching was an exposition of the teachings of nature.
The objection to the oracular method of writing was, that doctrines so handed down were liable to be misunderstood, misconceived, and misinterpreted by those not familiar with them, or reading them through pre-conceived views; and hence to be misrepresented, mutilated, and corrupted, and then superseded by, and lost sight of, in supplanting, personating, counterfeits. And this is precisely what happened to the Kabbalah.
In the course of time the primitive Kabbalah passed into the hands of spiritualising teachers—teachers under the control of spirit guides.
These, taking a wholly different spiritual view of creation, spiritualised, personified, and finally deified the natural forces and agents of the primitive Kabbalah; and so reinterpreting them, embodied its mutilated fragments in their writings, to transfer to these the authority of the venerable and venerated records they thus appropriated and preserved; and this was how the Kabbalah found its way into the Hebrew Sacred Scriptures.
This course was suggested to them by the oracular form of the Kabbalistic formularies» in which one doctrine was underlying another so that looking for, they were able to persuade themselves they could discern, and believed they had discovered, the spiritual sense they sought, which they henceforth claimed to be the original teaching; but the difference between their renderings and the gcnuin0 Kabbalistic readings was, that the pure idiomatic utterances of the primitive Kabbalists disappeared in arbitrarily-devi90 adaptations.
To carry out this change, the spiritualising Kabbalists were obliged to modify the archaic text of the ancient Kabbalah, and the modifications they introduced formed the groundwork <... continues on page 11-78 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ A Few Facts Concerning the Kabbalah by M.D., London Spiritualist, No. 453, April 29, 1881, pp. 196-97
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 453, April 29, 1881, pp. 196-97