Westcott W.W. - The Kabalah

The members of the Blavatsky Lodge of the Theosophical Society are all to some extent students of philosophy and religion, and although they are associated into a Lodge chiefly to master the Secret Doctrine, which has been expounded to them in so learned and yet so interesting a manner by Madame Blavatsky, yet some portion of their time and attention may with advantage be spent in a comparison between the Secret Doctrine and other ancient theologies, faiths and philosophies.

Being fully persuaded of the good to be thus derived, I have been desirous of taking advantage of any opportunity that has fallen in my way, of calling attention to the dogmas of the old Hebrew Kabalah. I had the good fortune to be attracted to this somewhat out-of-the-way and recondite study, at an early period of my life, and I have been able to spare a little time in subsequent years to collect some knowledge of this Hebrew religious philosophy: my information upon the subject has been kept up by my membership of more than one of the present day Rosicrucian Societies, in one of which I have been Præmonstrator of the Kabalah; and in these studies I have had the advantage of the kindly help of my friend, Brother MacGregor Mathers, who is well known in London as the Translator and Editor of three books of the Zohar, which is the chief storehouse of Kabalistic doctrine. Yet the Kabalistic books are so numerous and so lengthy, and so many of them only to be studied in Rabbinic Hebrew and Chaldee, that I feel to-day less confident of my knowledge of the Kabalah than I did ten years ago.

I had the honour last year of delivering a lecture to this Lodge on the far-reaching scheme of the development of Man, with especial relation to the first three Root Races of mankind in the Fourth Round, as taught in the Secret Doctrine. It was then suggested that with the descent of Mind into the well-developed material Man of the mid-point between the third and fourth Races, there ensued an incarnation of some truly great Minds who brought down to the nascent humanity the Wisdom of the more spiritual beings who possessed a mental grasp of the knowledge of the Worlds, and of the true history of the Origin and Destiny of man. Theosophists suppose that this teaching has formed the basis of the “Wisdom Religion” which has been preserved in every age until now. We believe that Adepts have existed in many lands through all the centuries of change, juvenescence and decay of races and nations: we doubt not that much of the primeval knowledge has failed to be assimilated by the successors of these sublime 466teachers; but on the other hand there may have been a coincident rearrangement of facts and notions, by means of which a clear stream of the truth concerning the origins of human religions and human knowledge has reached even down to our own time, and that some glimpses of the Secret Doctrine still existing in the fastnesses of Central Asia have been offered for our acceptance. To such as hold this belief, the existence of other systems of religious philosophy which are found to present points of similarity to the Secret Doctrine is explained by the suggestion that they come from the same ancient stock, at some period of the history of man which may be unknown to us; and that lapse of time, and remoteness of dwelling of the custodians of the similar, but more or less divergent, systems will explain at once the similarity and the differences, especially if we suppose that the descent of the divergent system has been marred by the failure, at some period, of the possessors to attain such a stage of moral, mental and spiritual purity, as to enable them to continue to draw inspiration from the fountain-head. The connection with the true source once broken, the gradual decadence of a philosophy is easy of conception.

Whether there ever existed such a nexus between the Primary Kabalah and the Wisdom Religion may never be known, but a study of Kabalistic books does show that a gradual degradation has been going on in the philosophy since mediaeval times. Some of the writings of the latest Rabbis sadly differ from the purer and more ancient treatises. Whatever may be the origin of this philosophy, it is undeniable that the most ancient Rabbis did claim a prehistoric date for its conception: and being Hebrews, who no doubt were prominent in the study and the practice of the Exoteric Law of Moses, they claimed for it as distant an origin as they allowed to man himself. They asserted its origin to be from Adam himself, the first human being of their cosmogony, and they asserted that he was instructed by angels sent by the Deity, whom they exoterically described as Jehovah Elohim, he who they said put the Soul into Man, and made him a living and thinking being. Here then we have a parallel. The Secret Doctrine suggests that the earliest thinking men were taught by Solar Spirits of sublime order, the Rabbis said that their Kabalah, their esoteric doctrine – in contrast to their Pentateuch, their exoteric religion – was given to their earliest man by angelic beings coming from their Creator.

It must be confessed that the origin of the Kabalah is lost in the mists of antiquity; no one even professes to demonstrate who was its author, or who were its earliest teachers. Considerable evidence might be adduced to show that its roots pass back to the Hebrew Rabbis who flourished at the time of the Second Temple. Of its existence before this time I know of no evidence. One of the chief books, the Sepher Yetzirah, is ascribed to Abraham: but modern criticism, which is hardly disposed to grant the existence of Abraham, does not of course assent to this ascription.

It has been suggested that the captivity of the Jews in Babylon led to 467the formation of this philosophy by the effect of Chaldean lore and dogma acting on Jewish tradition. No doubt in the earliest stages of its existence the teaching was entirely oral, and became varied by the minds through whom it filtered in its course: there is no proof that any part of it was written for centuries after; and it was kept curiously distinct both from the Exoteric Pentateuchal Mosaic doctrine, and from the ever-growing Talmudic commentaries. The Mishnah and Gemara, which form the Talmud, seem to have grown up in Hebrew theology without combining with these recondite doctrines of the Kabalah. In a similar manner we see in India that the Upanishads, an esoteric series of treatises, grew up alongside the Brahmanas and the Puranas – exoteric instructions designed for the use of the masses of the people.

With regard to the oldest Kabalistic books still extant, a fierce controversy has raged among critics for the last century. The critics of course all unite in denying the asserted era of each work, and all unite in proving that the assumed author is the only possible person who could not have written each one in question. But these critics show the utmost divergence of opinion the moment it becomes necessary to fix on a date or an author: so much more easy is destructive criticism, than the acquirement of real knowledge.

Let us take a rapid glance at the extant literature on our subject. By common consent the oldest treatise is the Sepher Yetzirah, or “Book of Formation”, attributed to Abraham the Patriarch. This is a most curious philosophical scheme of creation, drawing a parallel between the origin of the world, the sun, the planets, the elements, seasons and man, and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, dividing them into a Triad, a Heptad and a Dodecad; three mother letters A, M, and Sh, referred to primeval Air, Water and Fire; seven double letters referred to the Planets and the seven-fold division of time, &c., and the twelve simple letters referred to the months, zodiacal signs, and human organs.

Modern criticism tends to the statement that the existing ancient versions were compiled about a.d. 200. The Sepher Yetzirah is mentioned in the Talmuds, both of Jerusalem and of Babylon, and is written in the Neo-Hebraic language, like the Mishnah.

We must next consider the Zohar, or “Book of Splendour”, a collection of many separate treatises on the Deity, Angels, Souls, and Cosmogony. This is ascribed to Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai, who lived a.d. 160, who was persecuted and driven to live in a cave by Lucius Aurelius Verus, co-regent with the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Some considerable portion of the work may have been arranged by him, and condensed by him from the oral traditions of his time: but other parts have certainly been added by other hands at intervals up to the time when it was first published as a whole by Rabbi Moses de Leon, of Guadalajara in Spain, circa 1290. From that time its history is known. Printed editions have been issued in 468Mantua, 1558; Cremona, 1560; and Lublin, 1623; these are the three famous Codices of the Zohar in the Hebrew language. For those who do not read Hebrew, the only practical means of studying the Zohar has been the partial translation into Latin of Baron Knorr von Rosenroth – published in 1684 under the title of Kabbala Denudata – until the English edition of the treatises – Siphra Dtzenioutha or “Book of Concealed Mystery”; Ha Idra Rabba, “Greater Assembly”; and Ha Idra Suta, “Lesser Assembly”; translated and edited by MacGregor Mathers, and published by Redway.

These three books give a fair idea of the tone and style and material of the Kabalistic Book of the Zohar, but they of course do not include a view of the whole subject.

Other famous treatises are:

“The Commentary on the Ten Sephiroth”, by Rabbi Azariel ben Menachem, 1200 a.d.; “The Alphabet” of Rabbi Akiba; the “Book of Enoch”; “The Palaces, Pardes Rimonim, or Garden of Pomegranates”; “Otz ha Chiim, or Tree of Life”; “Rashith Ha Galgulim, or Revolutions of Souls”; and especially the writings of the famous Spanish Jew, Ibn Gebirol, who died a.d. 1070, and was also called Avicebron.

The teaching of the Kabalah has been considered to be grouped into several schools, each of which was for a time famous. I may mention: – The School of Gerona, 1190 to 1210, of Rabbi Isaac the Blind, Rabbi Azariel, and Rabbi Ezra. The School of Segovia, of Rabbis Jacob, Abulafia, Shem Tob, and Isaac of Akko. The School of Rabbi Isaac ben Abraham Ibn Latif. The School of Abulafia and Joseph Gikatilla. The School of Zoharists of Rabbis Moses de Leon, Menahem di Recanti, Loria and Vital.

But in the main I may say that there were two opposing tendencies among the Kabalists; the one set devoted themselves entirely to the doctrinal and dogmatic branch: the other to the practical and wonder-working aspect. The greatest of the wonder-working Rabbis were Isaac Loria, who died in 1572; and Sabbatai Zevi, who curiously enough became a Mahommedan. Both of these departments of Occult Rabbinic lore have still their living representatives, chiefly scattered individuals; very rarely groups of initiates are found. In Central Europe, parts of Russia, Austria, and Poland, there are even now Jews, known as wonder-working Rabbis, who can do strange things they attribute to the Kabalah, and things very difficult to explain have been seen in England, at the hands of students of Kabalistic rites and talismans.

The commentaries, many series deep, overlaying each other, which even now exist in connection with the old treatises, form such a mass of Kabalistic lore as to make it an impossible task to grasp them; probably no man in this country can say what doctrines are not still laid up in some of these works; but in the main it may be stated that the Kabalah indicates philosophical conceptions respecting Deity, Angels, and beings more spiritual than man, the human Soul and its several aspects or parts;

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concerning pre-existence and re-incarnation, and the several worlds or planes of existence.

Then the practical Kabalah teaches the relations between letters and numbers and the modes of their inter-relation; the principles of Gematria, Notaricon, and Temura; the formation and uses of the divine and angelic names as amulets; the formation of Magic Squares; and a vast fund of allied curious lore, which, with the Tarot, formed the basis of Mediaeval Magic.

For those who do not wish to read any Kabalistic work as a whole, but rather to glean a general view of the Philosophy, there are two standard works, one in English by Dr. Ginsburg, a very complete and concise résumé of the doctrines; and one in French by Adolph Franck, which is more discursive and less thorough. These works should be read by every beginner.

Many points of the teaching of the “Secret Doctrine” are not at all touched on by the Hebrew system, or are excluded by differences of a fundamental nature: such are the cosmogony of other worlds, or of our own in earlier Rounds, than the present (unless the destroyed Worlds of Unbalanced Force refer to these); the inviolability of law, as Karma, is not a prominent feature; and the number of rebirths is limited generally to three. Some small part of the Kabalistic doctrine is found in the Talmud, but in this collection of treatises there is a grossness that is absent from the true Kabalah and the Esoteric Eastern system: such are the theories of the debasement of men into animal forms; and of men reborn as women, as a punishment^[1] for earthly sins in a previous life: see Rabbi Manasseh in the Nishmath Chiim, or “Breath of Lives”.

But it must be remembered that many of the doctrines to which we may justly take exception are limited to the teachings of but a few Rabbis: and that the differences between the doctrines on a given point are sometimes very great; as is shewn by a comparison of the books of the Rabbis of different eras and schools. Some of the Kabalistic teaching has also never been printed nor published, and has been handed down even to this day from master to pupil only: there are some points, not found in any Hebrew Book, which I myself have received in our Rosicrucian and G. D. Hermetic Lodges; and I may not therefore be able to supply chapter and verse for all I may say about the Kabalah, or for all that I may answer in response to your questions. An attentive study of some of these old mystical Hebrew Books discloses the existence of intentional “blinds”, to use H. P. B.’s expression, when it is intended to confine certain dogmas to certain students fitted to receive them, and to preserve them from promiscuous distribution.

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A glance at the doctrines of the Kabalah may be most suitably commenced with the consideration of the ideas of the Divine.

I must premise that although these Kabalists were Hebrews – teachers of the Pentateuchal laws and dogmas to the people as an Exoteric Religion – yet their Esoteric conception of Godhead has nothing, or next to nothing, in common with the God of Genesis or other part of the Old Testament. The supreme being of the Kabalah is found to be demonstrated after two manners; at one time the Inconceivable Eternal Power proceeding by successive emanations into a more and more conceivable existence; formulating his attributes into conceptions of Wisdom, Beauty, Power, Mercy and Governance; exhibiting these attributes first in a supernal universality beyond the ken of all spirits, angels and men, the World of Atziluth; then formulating a reflection of the same exalted essences on the plane of the Pure Spirits also inconceivable to man, the World of Briah; again is the reflection repeated, and the Divine Essence in its group of exalted attributes is cognisable by the Angelic Powers, the Yetziratic World; and then finally the Divine abstractions of the Sacred Ten Sephiroth are by a last emanation still more restricted and condensed than the latter, and are rendered conceivable by the human intellect; for Man exists in the Fourth World of Assiah in the shadow of the Tenth Sephira – the Malkuth or Kingdom of the World of Shells.

Small wonder then at the slightness of the ideal man can form of the Divine.

At other times we find the metaphysical abstract laid aside, and all the wealth of Oriental imagery lavished on the description of their God; imagery although grouped and clustered around the emblem of an exalted humanity, yet so inflated, so extravagantly magnified, that the earthly man is lost sight of in the grandeur and tenuity of the word painting of the Divine portrait. Divine anthropomorphism it may be, but an anthropomorphism so hazy by means of its unapproachable grandeur, that the human elements affording the bases of the analogy quite disappear in the Heavenly Man of their divine reveries.

Permit me to afford to you an example of one sublime deific dream.

“In this conformation He is known: He is the Eternal of the Eternal ones; the Ancient of the Ancient ones; the Concealed of the Concealed ones, and in his symbols he is knowable although he is unknowable. White are his garments, and his appearance is as a Face, vast, and terrible in its vastness. Upon a throne of flaming brilliance is He seated, so that he may direct its flashing Rays. Into forty thousand worlds the brightness of his

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skull is extended, and from the Light of this brightness the Just shall receive four hundred worlds of joy and reward in the existence to come. Within his skull exist daily thirteen thousand myriads of worlds; all draw their existence from Him – and by Him are upheld. From that Head distilleth a Dew, and from that Dew which floweth down upon the worlds, are the Dead raised up in the lives and worlds to come.”

The God of the Kabalah is “Infinite Existence”: he cannot be defined as the “Assemblage of Lives”, nor is he truly “the totality of his attributes”. Yet without deeming all Lives to be of him, and his attributes to be universal, he cannot be known by man. He existed before he caused the Emanations of his essence to be demonstrated, he was before all that exists is, before all lives on our plane, or the plane above, or the World of pure spirits, or the Inconceivable existence; but then he resembled nothing we can conceive, and was Ain Suph, and in the highest abstraction Ain alone, Negative Existence. Yet before the manifest became demonstrated, all existence was in him, the Known pre-existed in the Unknown Ancient of the Ancient of Days.

But it is not this dream-like aspect of poetic phantasy exhibited in the Kabalah that I can farther bring to your notice. Let us return to the Philosophic view of the attributes of Deity, which is the keynote of the whole of the doctrine.

The primary human conception of God is then the Passive state of Negative Existence AIN – not active; from this the mind of man passes to conceive of AIN SUPH, of God as the Boundless, the Unlimited, Undifferentiated, Illimitable One; and the third stage is AIN SUPH AUR – Boundless Light, Universal Light – “Let there be Light” was formulated, and “there was Light”. The Passive has just put on Activity: the conscious God has awaked. Let us now endeavour to conceive of the concentration of this effulgence, let us formulate a gathering together of the rays of this illumination into a Crown of glorified radiance, and we recognise Kether – the First Sephira, first emanation of Deity, the first conceivable attribute of immanent manifested godhead. The devout Rabbi bows his head and adores the sublime conception.

The conscious God having arisen in his energy, there follow immediately two further emanations, the Trio subsiding into the symbol of a radiant triangle. Chokmah, Wisdom, is the name of the Second Sephira; Binah, Understanding, is the Third Sephira – the Supernal Triad is demonstrated.

Then follow Chesed, Mercy; and its contrast Geburah, Severity; and the reflected triangle is completed by the Sixth Sephira Tiphereth, Beauty: considered as a triangle of reflection with the apex Below. The third Triangle may be considered as a second reflection with the apex below; it is formed of the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Sephiroth Netsach, Victory; Hod, Splendour; and Yesod, Foundation. 29 Finally, all these ideals are resumed in a single form, the Tenth Sephira Malkuth, the Kingdom – also sometimes called Tzedek – Righteousness.

Almost as old as the Kabalistic doctrine of the Sephiroth, or Emanations, is the peculiar form in which I have combined them, it is the form of the symbol of the Heavenly Man in one aspect – or of the Tree of Life in another aspect.

This diagram resumes all Kabalistic ideas, and is an emblem of their

Six diagrams of the Sephiroth and their correspondences.

views on every subject. Every deific conception can be there demonstrated; the constitution of the Angelic Hosts, the principles of Man’s Nature, the group of Planetary Bodies, the Metallic elements, the 30 Zigzag flash of the Lightning, and the composition of the sacred Tetragrammaton.

Diagram of the Sephiroth with Hebrew labels.

This Decad of Deific Emanations is to be conceived as first formulated on the plane of Atziluth, which is entirely beyond our ken; to be reproduced on the plane of pure spirituality Briah; to exist in the same decad form in the World of Yetzirah or the Formative plane; and finally to be sufficiently condensed as to be cognizable by the human intellect on the Fourth Plane of Assiah, on which we seem to exist. From our point of view we may regard the Tree of Life as a type of many divine processes and forms of manifestation, but these are symbols we use to classify our ideals, and we must not debase the divine emanations by asserting these views of the Sephiroth are real, but only apparent to humanity.

For example, the Kabalah demonstrates the grouping of the Ten Sephiroth into Three Pillars; the Pillar of Mercy, the Pillar of Severity, and the Pillar of Mildness between them: these may also be associated 31 with the Three Mother Letters, A, M, Sh, Aleph, Mem and Shin. Then again by two horizontal lines we may form three groups and consider these Sephiroth to become types of the Three divisions of Man’s Nature, the Intellectual, Moral, and Sensuous (neglecting Malkuth the material body) thus connecting the Kabalah with Mental and Moral Philosophy and Ethics. By three lines again we consider a single group of the Sephiroth to be divisible into Four Planes, corresponding to the Four Planes upon each of which I have already said you must conceive the whole Ten Sephiroth to be immanent. By a series of Six lines we group them into Seven Planes referable to the worlds of the Seven Planetary powers, thus connecting the Kabalah with astrology. To each Sephira are allotted a special title of the Deity, an especial Archangel, and an army of Angels; connecting the Kabalah with Talismanic Magic. To show the close connection between the old Kabalistic theology, and the Lower Alchemy, each Sephira becomes the allegoric emblem of one of the metals: and there is a special Rabbinic volume named asch metzareph entirely concerned with Alchemy; its name in English meaning is “Cleansing Fires”.

These Ten Sephiroth are thought of as being connected together by Paths, or Ways of Wisdom, twenty-two in Number, shown thus on the Diagram; they are numbered by means of the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, each of which, as is well-known, being equally a letter and a number. The 22 Paths, added to the 10 Sephiroth from the famous 32 Ways of Wisdom, which descending by successive Emanations upon Man, enable him to mount up to the Source of Wisdom passing successively upward through these 32 paths. This process of mental Abstraction was the Rabbinic form of what the Hindoo knows as Yoga, or union of the human with the divine by contemplation and absorption of mind into a mystical reverie.

The Human Soul is again conceived of as distributed through several distinct forms of conscious manifestation related to these Ten Sephiroth: the precise allotment which I have received I am not at liberty to disclose; but the several Kabalistic treatises give several groupings which are all relevant one to the other, the most usual one being a triple division into Nephesh, the Passions referred to Malkuth; Ruach the Mind, Reason, and Intellect referred to the group of six Sephiroth lying around the Sun of Tiphereth; and Neshamah the spiritual aspirations associated with the Supernal Triangle.

Frequently quoted Kabalistic words are: – arikh anpin, Macroprosopus, the Vast Countenance which is a title of the Crown – Deity supreme. Zauir anpin, Microprosopus, the Lesser Countenance is the central Tiphereth; a conception that has much in common with that of the Christian Christ, the Son of God. Binah is the Supernal Mother – Aima. Malkuth is the Inferior Mother, the Bride of the Microprosopus.

The Four Letters Yod, Hé, Vau, Hé, or as we say IHVH, of the name, 32 we call Yahveh, or Jehovah, are allotted and distributed among the Sephiroth in a peculiar manner: so that even if to some Jewish Exoteric teachers “Jehovah” is the name in especial of the so-called Passive Principle, or Female aspect of Binah – and that this did at times degenerate into the worship of the Groves – yet this stigma does not attach to the Kabalistic conception of the Tetragrammaton, that dreadful name of Majesty which might never be uttered by the common people, and whose true pronunciation has been for many centuries confessedly lost to the Jews.

Time will not permit me to extend much farther this paper on the doctrines of the Kabalah; but I may say that the teachings include the following dogmas.

(1.) That the supreme Incomprehensible One was not the direct Creator of the World.

(2.) That all we perceive or know of is formed on the Sephirotic type.

(3.) That human souls were pre-existent in an upper world before the origin of this present world.

(4.) That human souls before incarnation dwell now in an upper Hall, where the decision is made as to what body each soul shall enter.

(5.) That every soul after earth lives must at length be so purified as to be reabsorbed into the Infinite.

(6.) That two lives are taught, by many Rabbis, to be necessary for all to pass; and that if failure result in the second life, a third life is passed linked with a stronger soul who draws the sinner upward into purity.

(7.) That when all the pre-existent souls have arrived at perfection, the Fallen Angels are also raised, and all lives are merged into the Deity by the Kiss of Love from the Mouth of Tetragrammaton – and the Manifested Universe shall be no more.

This short summary of the Kabalah is necessarily very imperfect, omitting altogether many points of great importance, and is no doubt tinctured by my own personal views, which it is very difficult to eliminate from such an essay. But I hope I have succeeded in making you understand that the system is a serious and consistent attempt at a philosophical scheme of the constitution of a universe and its creation, and one of too important a nature to be set aside with the contempt of modern criticism, which is but too apt to condemn as folly any teaching which it does not choose to stamp with its seal of orthodoxy. Many of its doctrines are of course insusceptible of proof, many run counter to the prejudices of public opinion, but these are not reliable evidences of error. Much of the system may be erroneous, but if this be so, there is no standard by which it can be fairly judged – unless indeed there be yet the Wisdom Religion within our attainment, and unless the “Secret Doctrine” of our honoured teacher in this Institution be the demonstration of that Wisdom; for I am not prepared to accept its condemnation at the hands of any other tribunal.

W. Wynn Westcott, M.B., F.T.S.

Footnotes

↑ If not as punishment, yet the majority of female lives are harder to bear than male lives; possibly male and female lives are alternate, and complementary to each other, each supplying needful experiences.

[v8-p469-n1-1] If not as punishment, yet the majority of female lives are harder to bear than male lives; possibly male and female lives are alternate, and complementary to each other, each supplying needful experiences.

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