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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Kabbalah Unveiled," S. L. MacGregor Mathers presents a profound exploration of the esoteric traditions within Kabbalistic mysticism. Through his intricate translations and interpretations, Mathers combines vivid prose with a meticulous approach that seeks to unveil the hidden truths of the Kabbalah. Positioned within the early 20th-century occult revival, the book reflects a synthesis of historical scholarship and mystical insight, making complex concepts accessible while preserving their profound significance. Mathers's work serves as a gateway for readers to engage with the metaphysical dimensions of the Kabbalistic tree and its implications for the spiritual and philosophical inquiries of the age. S. L. MacGregor Mathers was a pivotal figure in the Western esoteric tradition and a founding member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. His diverse background in mysticism and linguistics, along with a deep commitment to exploring the arcane, shaped his desire to demystify the Kabbalah for a Western audience. Mathers's engagement with various mystical traditions laid the groundwork for his passion, illuminating the profound spiritual truths embedded in ancient texts. "The Kabbalah Unveiled" is an essential read for those seeking to delve into the mysteries of Jewish mysticism and its relevance today. Literature, philosophy, and spirituality intertwine, making this work invaluable for both scholars and enthusiasts of the occult. Readers will find themselves richly rewarded, uncovering the layered meanings behind the symbols of the Kabbalah, ultimately igniting a deeper quest for understanding. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The Kabbalah Unveiled
Table of Contents
Introduction
At its heart, The Kabbalah Unveiled pursues the audacious task of rendering the ineffable architecture of the divine intelligible through an intricate tapestry of symbols, numbers, and hierarchies, inviting readers to contemplate how concealed wisdom might be responsibly brought to light while respecting its secrecy, how metaphysical order can be spoken without diminishing mystery, and how disciplined interpretation negotiates the tension between revelation and restraint, so that the pathways of emanation, the relationships among spiritual principles, and the moral gravity of naming the sacred are approached with both rigor and reverence in a language accessible to new seekers.
Published in 1887 in English by S. L. MacGregor Mathers, The Kabbalah Unveiled is a work of religious and esoteric literature that presents translations and commentary on key Kabbalistic texts associated with the Zohar. Emerging amid a late nineteenth-century surge of interest in comparative religion and occult studies in the English-speaking world, it offered readers a gateway into materials that had previously circulated chiefly in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Latin. Rather than a narrative with characters and scenery, this book is set within the textual milieu of mystical exegesis, where metaphysical concepts are mapped in symbolic, often technical, language.
At its core, the volume gathers three treatises traditionally linked to the Zohar—the Book of Concealed Mystery, the Greater Holy Assembly, and the Lesser Holy Assembly—accompanied by Mathers’s introductions and notes. The reading experience is meditative and demanding: dense paragraphs, archaic turns of phrase, and intricate cross-references build a solemn, deliberate rhythm. Mathers writes in a formal, source-conscious voice, aiming to transmit rather than reinvent. Readers encounter a mosaic of propositions, images, and correspondences rather than a linear argument, and the mood oscillates between austere metaphysical analysis and lyrical evocations of unity, order, and the sanctity of language.
Central themes include emanation and the structured plurality within divine unity, expressed through the Sephiroth; the interplay of masculine and feminine aspects; the relation of macrocosm and microcosm; and the ethical implications of speech, intention, and interpretation. Much of the material wrestles with anthropomorphic imagery while insisting on its symbolic function, seeking to safeguard transcendence even as it employs body, number, and diagram. Readers are invited to consider how patterns, names, and relationships can mediate insight into origins and purpose, and how disciplined contemplation may reorder perception by binding cosmology and devotion into a single act of understanding.
Mathers based his English renderings primarily on the Latin compilations of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata, rather than directly from the Aramaic of the Zohar, and he supplements the translations with explanatory notes and terminological glosses. This mediation through Latin—along with the intellectual aims of a nineteenth-century editor—shapes tone, vocabulary, and emphasis. The result is both a doorway and a filter: a historicizing bridge that brought complex materials to new audiences, and a reminder that every act of transmission reflects choices about clarity, fidelity, and scope. Awareness of this lineage deepens appreciation of the book’s achievement and its limits.
For contemporary readers, the book matters as an accessible portal into a foundational mystical tradition and as a document of the history of ideas. It raises questions that remain urgent: how language frames experience of the sacred, how symbols function across cultures and eras, and how to balance openness with responsibility when approaching esoteric systems. It encourages patience, comparative reading, and intellectual humility, offering a disciplined alternative to sensational treatments of mysticism. In an age of accelerated information, its slow, patterned exposition invites sustained attention, rewarding readers who value meticulous reasoning joined to imaginative, reverent speculation.
Approached on its own terms, The Kabbalah Unveiled offers a rigorous initiation into symbolic thinking, not by simplifying its sources but by arranging them so study becomes possible. It equips readers with a conceptual map for exploring Kabbalistic cosmology and a set of interpretive habits—careful definition, cross-referencing, and structural awareness—that travel well beyond this text. Whether pursued for spiritual inquiry, scholarly orientation, or cultural literacy, the journey promised here is one of disciplined wonder: an invitation to read attentively, to think in patterns, and to recognize how veils can both conceal and reveal enduring meanings.
Synopsis
The Kabbalah Unveiled by S. L. MacGregor Mathers presents English translations of three pivotal Zoharic treatises—The Book of Concealed Mystery, The Greater Holy Assembly, and The Lesser Holy Assembly—preceded by a substantial introduction and explanatory notes. Drawing chiefly on Knorr von Rosenroth’s Latin Kabbala Denudata, the work provides access to complex Jewish mystical doctrines for readers without Hebrew. Mathers outlines the scope, sources, and limits of his undertaking, then arranges the material to move from foundational concepts to primary texts. The structure emphasizes clarity and continuity, guiding readers through definitions, symbolism, and technical vocabulary before the intricate symbolic discourses of the Zohar unfold.
In the introductory essays, Mathers summarizes core Kabbalistic principles. He sketches the doctrine of emanation from the hidden roots—Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur—into the ten Sephiroth, which pattern all existence. He explains the Four Worlds (Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah, Assiah), the three Pillars of the Sephirotic Tree, and the equilibrium of Mercy and Severity mediated by Mildness. The introduction situates divine names, attributes, and hypostases within this structure, emphasizing continuity between metaphysical concepts and symbolic imagery. It sets out the idea that creation, governance, and restoration are framed by ordered emanations, whose relationships the Zohar describes through densely layered, often anatomical, metaphors.
Mathers also defines the technical methods used by traditional commentators. He introduces Hebrew letter symbolism, the Tetragrammaton, and extended divine names such as the seventy-twofold Shemhamphorash. He outlines gematria, notarikon, and temurah as hermeneutic tools, and lists grades of the soul (Neschamah, Ruach, Nephesch) alongside angelic and demonic taxonomies. Conventions of transliteration and capitalization are explained to keep distinctions between persons, aspects, and worlds clear. These preliminaries are intended to equip the reader for the compressed language of the translations, where letters, numbers, and names serve as structural keys. Throughout, Mathers cross-references earlier authorities to anchor terminology and reduce ambiguity.
The Book of Concealed Mystery opens the translated corpus with a brief, aphoristic exposition of cosmogony. It treats the unknowable Ancient of Days as the veiled source from which the Sephiroth emerge. The text speaks of hidden heads, primal balance, and the commencement of differentiation into male and female aspects. It emphasizes that the universe arises through measured emanations rather than temporal creation ex nihilo. Compact sentences, often enigmatic, set out the themes of whiteness, skull, and beard as symbols of supernal mercy and concealment. The work outlines how the first equilibria give rise to orders of being, preparing the ground for the more expansive assemblies.
Within The Book of Concealed Mystery, letterforms and divine names articulate the process of manifestation. The arrangement and permutation of the Tetragrammaton signal phases of unfolding and contraction, while allusions to the three negative veils introduce degrees of transcendence. The text hints at the distribution of power through the Sephiroth and at the necessity of balance for cosmic stability. Fragmentary as it is, the treatise furnishes interpretive cues—especially regarding countenance, whiteness, and hair—that the later assemblies develop. Mathers’ notes clarify variant readings from Latin witnesses and indicate how Kabbalists map these images onto the Tree of Life and the fourfold world-structure.
The Greater Holy Assembly presents a narrative setting in which Rabbi Simeon ben Yochai teaches a circle of disciples. Its central focus is the Macroprosopus (the Ancient of Days), whose attributes are expounded through detailed descriptions of head, skull, forehead, eyes, nose, and beard. Each feature corresponds to specific modes of mercy, pardon, or judgment held in restraint. The treatise explains how the supernal countenance governs emanation without disturbance, and how concealment safeguards equilibrium. Through these correspondences, divine names and scriptural phrases are integrated into a systematic theosophy. The discourse establishes a template for reading anatomy as theology, aligning symbols with Sephirotic functions.
As The Greater Holy Assembly proceeds, attention turns to the Microprosopus (the Lesser Countenance), the configuration of the six central Sephiroth, and the relation to the Female, or Bride. The text discusses the unification of King and Queen as the restoration of balance between Mercy and Severity, ensuring right order in creation. It traces the descent of influence through worlds, specifies the roles of various divine names, and marks moments of heightened revelation within the assembly’s narrative. Episode and doctrine interweave, underscoring the gravity of the mysteries disclosed. The overarching conclusion is that harmony depends on proper conjunction of complementary aspects within the divine economy.
The Lesser Holy Assembly recounts a final convocation in which Rabbi Simeon delivers concluding teachings. It revisits the symbols of head and beard, reaffirms the supremacy of the Ancient of Days, and compresses the earlier expositions into a concentrated summary. Emphasis falls on the union of the Lesser Countenance with the Female, the channeling of blessing, and the pacification of severity. The narrative culminates in the teacher’s departure, framing the doctrines within a solemn, valedictory scene. The text thus closes the arc begun in The Book of Concealed Mystery: concealed origins, articulated attributes, and reconciled polarities that sustain cosmic order.
Mathers supports the translations with extensive annotations that cite classical sources, clarify technical terms, and align Latin renderings with recognized Kabbalistic usage. He indicates where readings vary and explains choices intended to preserve precision. The overall message of the volume is expository rather than argumentative: to present, in sequence, the Zohar’s theosophic doctrine of emanation, equilibrium, and unification. By moving from definitions to symbolic treatises and assemblies, the book offers a coherent pathway into complex materials. Its central conclusion is that the Zohar depicts a structured, balanced universe mediated by divine aspects whose ordered relations can be traced through names, letters, and images.
Historical Context
The Kabbalah Unveiled, published in London in 1887, translates portions of the Zohar through the seventeenth-century Latin of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. Although a Victorian product, its intellectual setting spans medieval Castile, where the Zohar surfaced in the late thirteenth century, early modern Italy, where it was first printed (Mantua and Cremona, 1558–1560), Ottoman Galilee, where Safed’s mystics flourished in the sixteenth century, and Protestant Germany, where Kabbala Denudata appeared (Sulzbach, 1677–1684). Mathers’s work thus occupies a crossroads: London’s fin-de-siècle occult revival engaging Jewish mystical texts shaped by Iberian convivencia, the 1492 expulsion, and Ottoman-era Lurianism, refracted through Christian Hebraism and Latin scholarship.
The emergence of the Zohar in late thirteenth-century Castile, traditionally associated with Moses de León (c. 1240–1305), occurred amid the waning phases of the Reconquista and the complex convivencia of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Towns like Guadalajara and Ávila housed learned circles conversant in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic traditions. The Zohar’s Aramaic theosophy traveled through manuscripts across Iberia and Provence before print. Mathers’s book is directly rooted in this milieu because it translates three core treatises (Sifra di-Tzeniuta, Idra Rabba, Idra Zuta) attributed to the Zoharic corpus, re-presenting the speculative cosmology, sefirotic structures, and anthropomorphic symbolism first formulated in that medieval Castilian context.
The first printings of the Zohar at Mantua and Cremona (1558–1560) fixed the text’s form and broadly disseminated it across Europe. Issued in competing editions under ecclesiastical scrutiny in the Italian states, these volumes transformed a manuscript tradition into a definitive canon, enabling its study from Poland-Lithuania to the Ottoman Empire. Printing fostered standardization of the Idrot and facilitated later translations. Without the Mantua and Cremona editions, Knorr von Rosenroth’s Latin excerpts could not have materialized, and thus Mathers’s English rendition in 1887 would lack a textual base. The book mirrors this print revolution by relying on the stabilized structure and numbering that emerged from these sixteenth-century Italian presses.
The expulsions of Iberian Jewry—Spain in 1492 via the Alhambra Decree and Portugal in 1496—routed scholars to the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and Italy. Safed in the Galilee, under Ottoman rule after 1517, became a center for Kabbalah with figures such as Moses Cordovero (1522–1570), Isaac Luria (1534–1572), and Hayim Vital (1543–1620). Lurianic doctrines of tzimtzum, shevirat ha-kelim, and tikkun reshaped Jewish theosophy and messianism. The Kabbalah Unveiled, though focused on Zoharic strata, engages with concepts assimilated by Lurianism; Mathers’s apparatus frequently reads the Idrot through later Safed formulations, showing how post-1492 diaspora dynamics reframed medieval materials into a system central to early modern Jewish spirituality.
Christian Hebraism and the seventeenth-century project of Christian Kabbalah culminated in Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata (Sulzbach, 1677–1684), which excerpted, translated into Latin, and commented upon Zoharic and Lurianic sources. Operating in a milieu that included Athanasius Kircher’s syncretism and courtly networks of the Holy Roman Empire, Knorr sought prisca theologia that harmonized scripture, Hermetism, and Kabbalah. Mathers translated directly from this Latin digest, not from Hebrew or Aramaic, inheriting both its selections and Christianized emphases. The Kabbalah Unveiled thus reflects the confessional politics of early modern scholarship, where Protestant and Catholic savants filtered Jewish sources for universal metaphysical schemes useful to European learned culture.
The messianic ferment surrounding Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) in 1665–1666—spanning Smyrna, Salonica, Jerusalem, and the diaspora—revealed Kabbalah’s social power. Fueled by Lurianic hopes after catastrophes such as the Khmelnytsky massacres (1648–1649), vast Jewish communities proclaimed Zevi the messiah before his Ottoman arrest and conversion to Islam in 1666. The shock recalibrated communal authority, rabbinic caution, and esoteric transmission. While Mathers does not narrate Sabbatean history, his focus on the Idrot’s theogonic drama resonates with the same symbolic arsenal that animated seventeenth-century messianism. The book’s presentation of sefirotic catastrophes and restorations indirectly reflects the historical memory of crisis, redemption, and disillusion embedded in early modern Kabbalistic reception.
Victorian Britain witnessed an occult and comparative-religion boom, alongside Jewish emancipation (notably the 1858 seating of Lionel de Rothschild in Parliament) and mass migration after the 1881–1882 pogroms in the Russian Empire. Organizations such as the Theosophical Society (founded 1875) and, crucially for Mathers, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1887–1888 by William Wynn Westcott, William R. Woodman, and Mathers) turned to Kabbalistic diagrams for ritual and symbolic systems. The Kabbalah Unveiled supplied English-speaking esotericists with structured material at that very moment. The book thus mirrors urban London’s fin-de-siècle climate: imperial cosmopolitanism, scientific positivism, spiritualism, and debates over Judaism’s place in public life converging in a vernacular presentation of Jewish mystical cosmology.
As a Victorian translation of a Jewish mystical canon, the book implicitly critiques reductive materialism, state-church triumphalism, and casual anti-Judaism by foregrounding a complex Jewish metaphysics equal to any European philosophical system. It exposes the era’s epistemic hierarchy, wherein Hebrew sources required Christian-Latin mediation to be heard, and thereby signals how knowledge moves through power. By popularizing Kabbalah for readers in 1887 London, Mathers challenges classed gatekeeping of scholarship and the racialized marginalization of Jewish thought, while also revealing the ethical peril of cultural appropriation. The work’s preoccupation with cosmic repair and justice offers a symbolic counterpoint to industrial inequality, imperial arrogance, and the social dislocations of late nineteenth-century Britain.
The Kabbalah Unveiled
INTRODUCTION.
I. THE first questions which the non-qabalistical reader will probably ask are: What is the Qabalah[1]? 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?
2. 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[2]. 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[4] has never before been translated into the language of this country, nor, as far as I am aware, into any modern European vernacular.
3. The Qabalah may be defined as being the esoteric Jewish doctrine.[1q] 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."
4. 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[3] (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.
5. 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.
6. "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.
7. "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."
8. The Qabalah is usually classed under four heads:
(α) The practical Qabalah.
(β) The literal Qabalah.
(γ) The unwritten Qabalah.
(δ) The dogmatic Qabalah.
9. The practical Qabalah deals with talismanic and ceremonial magic, and does not come within the scope of this work.
10. The literal Qabalah is referred to in several places, and therefore a knowledge of its leading principles is necessary. It is divided into three parts: GMTRIA, Gematria; NVTRIQVN, Notariqon; and ThMVRH, Temura.
12. Notariqon is derived from the Latin word nothrius, a shorthand writer. Of Notariqon there are two forms. In the first every letter of a word is taken for the initial or abbreviation of another word, so that from the letters of a word a sentence may be formed. Thus every letter of the word BRAShITh, Berashith, the first word in Genesis, is made the initial of a word, and we obtain BRAShITh RAH ALHIM ShIQBLV IShRAL ThVRH, Besrashith Rahi Eloim Sheyequebelo Israel Torah: "In the beginning the Elohim saw that Israel would accept the law." In this connection I may give six very interesting specimens of Notariqon formed from this same word BRAShITh by Solomon Meir Ben Moses, a Jewish Qabalist, who embraced the Christian faith in 1665, and took the name of Prosper Rugers. These have all a Christian tendency, and by their means Prosper converted another Jew, who had previously been bitterly opposed to Christianity. The first is BN RVCh AB ShLVShThM IChD ThMIM, Ben, Ruach, Ab, Shaloshethem Yechad Themim: "The Son, the Spirit, the Father, Their Trinity, Perfect Unity." The second is, BN RVCh AB ShLVShThM IChD ThOBVDV, Ben, Ruach, Ab, Shaloshethem Yechad Thaubodo: "The Son, the Spirit, the Father, ye shall equally worship Their Trinity." The third is, BKVRI RAShVNI AShR ShMV IShVO ThOBVDV, Bekori Rashuni Asher Shamo Yeshuah Thaubodo: "Ye shall worship My first-born, My first, Whose Name is Jesus." The fourth is, BBVA RBN AShR ShMV IShVO ThOBVDV, Beboa Rabban Asher Shamo Yesuah Thaubado: "When the Master shall come Whose Name is Jesus ye shall worship." The fifth is, BThVLH RAVIH ABChR ShThLD IShVO ThAShRVH, Bethulah Raviah Abachar Shethaled Yeshuah Thrashroah: "I will choose a virgin worthy to bring forth Jesus, and ye shall call her blessed." The sixth is, BOVGTh RTzPIM ASThThR ShGVPI IShVO ThAKLV, Beaugoth Ratzephim Assattar Shegopi Yeshuah Thakelo: "I will hide myself in cake (baked with) coals, for ye shall eat Jesus, My Body." The Qabalistical importance of these sentences as bearing upon the doctrines of Christianity can hardly be overrated.
13. The second form of Notariqon is the exact reverse of the first. By this the initials or finals, or both, or the medials, of a sentence, are taken to form a word or words. Thus the Qabalah is called ChKMh NSThRH, Chokhmah Nesethrah, "the secret wisdom;" and if we take the initials of these two words Ch and N, we form by the second kind of Notariqon the word ChN, Chen, "grace." Similarly, from the initials and finals of the words MI IOLH LNV HShMIMH, Mi Iaulah Leno Ha-Shamayima, "Who shall go up for us to heaven?" (Deut. xxx. 12), are formed MILH, Milah, "circumcision," and IHVH, the Tetragrammaton[7], implying that God hath ordained circumcision as the way to heaven.
14. Temura is permutation. According to certain rules, one letter is substituted for another letter preceding or following it in the alphabet, and thus from one word another word of totally different orthography may be formed. Thus the alphabet is bent exactly in half, in the middle, and one half is put over the other; and then by changing alternately the first letter or the first two letters at the beginning of the second line, twenty-two commutations are produced. These are called the "Table of the Combinations of TzIRVP," Tzirupa. For example's sake, I will give the method called ALBTh, Albath, thus:
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
K
I
T
Ch
Z
V
H
D
G
B
A
M
N
S
O
P
Tz
Q
R
Sh
Th
L
Each method takes its name from the first two pairs composing it, the system of pairs of letters being the groundwork of the whole, as either letter in a pair is substituted for the other letter. Thus, by Albath, from RVCh, Ruach, is formed DTzO, Detzau. The names of the other twenty-one methods are: ABGTh, AGDTh ADBG, AHBD, AVBH, AZBV, AChBZ, ATBCh, AIBT, AKBI, ALBK, AMBL, ANBM, ASBN, AOBS, APBO, ATzBP, AQBTz, ARBQ, AShBR, and AThBSh. To these must be added the modes ABGD and ALBM. Then comes the "Rational Table of Tziruph," another set of twenty-two combinations. There are also three "Tables of the Commutations," known respectively as the Right, the Averse, and the Irregular. To make any of these, a square, containing 484 squares, should be made, and the letters written in. For the "Right Table" write the alphabet across from right to left; in the second row of squares do the same, but begin with R and end with A; in the third begin with G and end with B; and so on. For the "Averse Table" write the alphabet from right to left backwards, beginning with Th and ending with A; in the second row begin with Sh and end with Th, &c. The "Irregular Table" would take too long to describe. Besides all these, there is the method called ThShRQ, Thashraq, which is simply writing a word backwards. There is one more very important form, called the "Qabalah of the Nine Chambers," or AIQ BKR, Aiq Bekar. It is thus formed:
300
30
3
200
20
2
100
10
1
000
00
0
000
00
0
000
00
0
Sh
L
G
R
K
B
Q
I
A
600
60
6
500
50
5
400
40
4
000
00
0
000
00
0
000
00
0
M final
S
V
K final
N
H
Th
M
D
900
90
9
800
80
8
700
70
7
000
00
0
000
00
0
000
00
0
T final
Tz
T
P final
P
Ch
N final
O
Z
I have put the numeration of each letter above to, show the affinity between the letters in each chamber. Sometimes this is used as a cipher, by taking the portions of the figure to show the letters they contain, putting one point for the first letter, two for the second, &c. Thus the right angle, containing AIQ, will answer for the letter Q if it have three dots or points within it. Again, a square will answer for H, N, or K final, according to whether it has one, two, or three points respectively placed within it. So also with regard to the other letters. But there are many other ways of employing the Qabalah of the Nine Chambers, which I have not space to describe. I will merely mention, as an example, that by the mode of Temura called AThBSh, Athbash, it is found that in Jeremiah xxv. 26, the word ShShK, Sheshakh, symbolizes BBL, Babel.
15. Besides all these rules, there are certain meanings hidden in the shape of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; in the form of a particular letter at the end of a word being different from that which it generally bears when it is a final letter, or in a letter being written in the middle of a word in a character generally used only at the end; in any letter or letters being written in a size smaller or larger than the rest of the manuscript, or in a letter being written upside down; in the variations found in the spelling of certain words, which have a letter more in some places than they have in others; in peculiarities observed in the position of any of the points or accents, and in certain expressions supposed to be elliptic or redundant.
16. For example the shape of the Hebrew letter Aleph, A (see Plate I.), is said to symbolize a Vau, V, between a Yod, I, and a Daleth, D; and thus the letter itself represents the word IVD, Yod. Similarly the shape of the letter He, H, represents a Daleth, D, with a Yod, I, written at the lower left-hand corner, &c.
19. Other examples of deficient and redundant spelling, peculiarities of accent and pointing, &c., will be found in various places in the ensuing work.
21. Taking the whole of these mystical anagrams in proper order, Picus makes the following sentence out of this one word BRAShITh:--Pater in filio (aut per filium), principium et finem (sive quietum) creavit caput, ignem, et fundamentum magni hominis fœdere bono: "Through the Son hath the Father created that Head which is the beginning and the end, the fire-life and the foundation of the supernal man (the Adam Qadmon) by His righteous covenant." Which is a short epitome of the teachings of the "Book of Concealed Mystery." This notice of the literal Qabalah has already extended beyond its proper limits. It was, however, necessary to be thus explicit, as much of the metaphysical reasoning of the ensuing work turns on its application.
22. The term "Unwritten Qabalah" is applied to certain knowledge which is never entrusted to writing, but communicated orally. I may say no more on this point, not even whether I myself have or have not received it. Of course, till the time of Rabbi Schimeon Ben Jochai none of the Qabalah was ever written.
23. The Dogmatic Qabalah contains the doctrinal portion. There are a large number of treatises of various dates and merits which go to make up the written Qabalah, but they may be reduced to four heads:
(α) The Sepher Yetzirah and its dependencies.
(β) The Zohar with its developments and commentaries.
(γ) The Sepher Sephiroth[5] and its expansions.
(δ) The Asch Metzareph and its symbolism.
24. The SPR ITzIRH, Sepher Yetzirah, or "Book of Formation," is ascribed to the patriarch Abraham. It treats of the cosmogony as symbolized by the ten numbers and the twenty-two. letters of the alphabet, which it calls the "thirty-two paths." On these latter Rabbi Abraham Ben Dior has written a mystical commentary. The term "path" is used throughout the Qabalah to signify a hieroglyphical idea, or rather the sphere of ideas, which may be attached to any glyph or symbol.
25. The ZHR, Zohar, or "Splendour," besides many other treatises of less note, contains the following most important books, of which the three first are translated in this volume:
(α) The SPRA DTzNIOVThA, Siphra Dtzenioutha, or "Book of Concealed Mystery," which is the root and foundation of the Zohar.
(β) The ADRA RBA QDIShA, Idra Rabba Qadisha or "Greater Holy Assembly:" this is a development of the "Book of Concealed Mystery."
(γ) The ADRA ZVTA QDIShA, Idra Zuta Qadisha, or "Lesser Holy Assembly;" which is in the nature of a supplement to the "Idra Rabba." These three books treat of the gradual development of the creative Deity, and with Him the Creation. The text of these works has been annotated by Knorr von Rosenroth (the author of the "Qabalah Denudata,") from the Mantuan, Cremonensian, and Lublinensian Codices, which are corrected printed copies; of these the Mantuan and Cremonensian are the oldest. A species of commentary is also given, which is distinguished from the actual text by being written within parentheses.
(δ) The pneumatical treatise called BITh ALHIM, Beth Elohim, or the "House of the Elohim," edited by Rabbi Abraham Cohen Irira, from the doctrines of Rabbi Yitzchaq Loria. It treats of angels, demons, elemental spirits, and souls.
(ε) The "Book of the Revolutions of Souls" is a peculiar and discursive treatise, and is an expansion of Rabbi Loria's ideas.
26. The SPR SPIRVTh, Sepher Sephiroth, or "Book of the Emanations," describes, so to speak, the gradual evolution of the Deity from negative into positive existence.
27. The ASh MTzRP, Asch Metzareph, or "Purifying Fire," is hermatic and alchemical, and is known to few, and when known is understood by still fewer.
28. The principal doctrines of the Qabalah are designed to solve the following problems:--
(α) The Supreme Being, His nature and attributes.
(β) The Cosmogony.
(γ) The creation of angels and man.
(δ) The destiny of man and angels.
(ε) The nature of the soul.
(ζ) The nature of angels, demons, and elementals.
(η) The import of the revealed law.
(θ) The transcendental symbolism of numerals.
(ι) The peculiar mysteries contained in the Hebrew letters.
(κ) The equilibrium of contraries.
29. The "Book of Concealed Mystery" opens with these words: "The Book of Concealed Mystery is the book of the equilibrium of balance." What is here meant by the terms "equilibrium of balance"? Equilibrium is that harmony which results from the analogy of contraries,[2q] it is the dead centre where, the opposition of opposing forces being equal in strength, rest succeeds motion. It is the central point. It is the "point within the circle" of ancient symbolism. It is the living synthesis of counterbalanced power. Thus form may be described as the equilibrium of light and shade; take away either factor, and form is viewless. The term balance is applied to the two opposite natures in each triad of the Sephiroth, their equilibrium forming the third Sephira in each ternary. I shall recur again to this subject in explaining the Sephiroth. This doctrine of equilibrium and balance is a fundamental qabalistical idea.
30. The "Book of Concealed Mystery" goes on to, state that this "Equilibrium hangeth in that region which is negatively existent." What is negative existence? What is positive existence? The distinction between these two is another fundamental idea. To define negative existence clearly is impossible, for when it is distinctly defined it ceases to be negative existence; it is then negative existence passing into static condition. Therefore wisely have the Qabalists shut out from mortal comprehension the primal AIN, Ain, the negatively existent One, and the AIN SVP, Ain Soph, the limitless Expansion; while of even the AIN SVP AVR, Ain Soph Aur, the illimitable Light, only a dim conception can be formed. Yet, if we think deeply, we shall see that such must be the primal forms of the unknowable and nameless One, whom we, in the more manifest form speak of as GOD. He is the Absolute. But how define the Absolute? Even as we define it, it slips from our grasp, for it ceases when defined to be the Absolute. Shall we then say that the Negative, the limitless, the Absolute are, logically speaking, absurd, since they are ideas which our reason cannot define? No; for could we define them, we should make them, so to speak, contained by our reason, and therefore not superior to it; for a subject to be capable of definition it is requisite that certain limits should be assignable to it. How then can we limit the Illimitable?
31. The first principle and axiom of the Qabalah is the name of the Deity, translated in our version of the Bible, "I am that I am," AHIH AShR AHIH, Eheieh Asher Eheieh. A better translation is, "Existence is existence," or "I am He who is."
32. Eliphaz Levi Zahed[6], that great philosopher and Qabalist of the present century, says in his "Histoire de la Magie" (bk. i. ch. 7): "The Qabalists have a horror of everything that resembles idolatry; they, however, ascribe the human form to God, but it is a purely hieroglyphical figure. They consider God as the intelligent, living, and loving Infinite One. He is for them neither the collection of other beings, nor the abstraction of existence, nor a philosophically definable being. He is in all, distinct from all, and greater than all. His very name is ineffable; and yet this name only expresses the human ideal of His Divinity. What God is in Himself it is not given to man to know. God is the absolute of faith; existence is the absolute of reason, existence exists by itself, and because it exists. The reason of the existence of existence is existence itself. We may ask, 'Why does any particular thing exist?' that is, 'Why does such or such a thing exist?' But we cannot ask, without its being absurd to do so, Why does existence exist?' For this would be to suppose existence prior to existence." Again, the same author says (ibid. bk. iii. ch. 2): "To say, 'I will believe when the truth of the dogma shall be scientifically proved to me,' is the same as to say, 'I will believe when I have nothing more to believe, and when the dogma shall be destroyed as dogma by becoming a scientific theorem.' That is to say, in other words: 'I will only admit the Infinite when it shall have been explained, determined, circumscribed, and defined for my benefit; in one word, when it has become finite. I will then believe in the Infinite when I am sure that the Infinite does not exist. I will believe in the vastness of the ocean when I shall have seen it put into bottles.' But when a thing has been clearly proved and made comprehensible to you, you will no longer believe it--you will know it."
33. In the "Bhagavadgîtâ," ch. ix., it is said: "I am Immortality and also death; and I, O Arguna! am that which is and that which is not."1 And again (ch. ix.): "And, O descendant of Bharata! see wonders in numbers, unseen before. Within my body, O Gudâkesa! see to-day the whole universe, including everything movable and immovable, all in one." And again (ibid.) Arguna said: "O Infinite Lord of the Gods! O Thou who pervadest the universe! Thou art the Indestructible, that which is, that which is not, and what is beyond them. Thou art the Primal God, the Ancient One; Thou are the highest support of this universe. By Thee is this universe pervaded, O Thou of the infinite forms . . . . Thou art of infinite power, of unmeasured glory; Thou pervadest all, and therefore Thou art all!"
34. The idea of negative existence can then exist as an idea, but it will not bear definition, since the idea of definition is utterly incompatible with its nature. "But," some of my readers will perhaps say, "your term negative existence is surely a misnomer; the state you describe would be better expressed by the title of negative subsistence." Not so, I answer; for negative subsistence can never be anything but negative subsistence; it cannot vary, it cannot develop; for negative subsistence is literally and truly no thing. Therefore, negative subsistence cannot be at all; it never has existed, it never does exist, it never will exist. But negative existence bears hidden in itself, positive life; for in the limitless depths of the abyss of its negativity lies hidden the power of standing forth from itself, the power of projecting the scintilla of the thought unto the utter, the power of re-involving the syntagma into the inner. Thus shrouded and veiled is the absorbed intensity in the centreless whirl of the vastness of expansion. Therefore have I employed the term "Ex-sto," rather than "Sub-sto."
35. But between two ideas so different as those of negative and positive existence a certain nexus, or connecting-link, is required, and hence we arrive at the form which is called potential existence, which while more nearly approaching positive existence, will still scarcely admit of clear definition. It is existence in its possible form. For example, in a seed, the tree which may spring from it is hidden; it is in a condition of potential existence; is there; but it will not admit of definition. How much less, then, will those seeds which that tree in its turn may yield. But these latter are in a condition which, while it is somewhat analogous to potential existence, is in hardly so advanced a stage; that is, they are negatively existent.
36. But, on the other hand, positive existence is always capable of definition; it is dynamic; it has certain evident powers, and it is therefore the antithesis of negative existence, and still more so of negative subsistence. It is the tree, no longer hidden in the seed, but developed into the outer. But positive existence has a beginning and an end, and it therefore requires another form from which to depend, for without this other concealed negative ideal behind it, it is unstable and unsatisfactory.
37. Thus, then, have I faintly and with all reverence endeavoured to shadow forth to the minds of my readers the idea of the Illimitable One. And before that idea, and of that idea, I can only say, in the words of an ancient oracle: "In Him is an illimitable abyss of glory,[3q] and from it there goeth forth one little spark which maketh all the glory of the sun, and of the moon, and of the stars. Mortal! behold how little I know of God; seek not to know more of Him, for this is far beyond thy comprehension, however wise thou art; as for us, who are His ministers, how small a part are we of Him! "
apparently quoting from Proclus: "That the heaven is in the earth, but after an earthly manner; and that the earth is in the heaven, but after a heavenly manner." But inasmuch as negative existence is a subject incapable of definition, as I have before shown, it is rather considered by the Qabalists as depending back from the number of unity than as a separate consideration therefrom; wherefore they frequently apply the same terms and epithets indiscriminately to either. Such epithets are "The Concealed of the Concealed," "The Ancient of the Ancient Ones," the "Most Holy Ancient One," &c.
39, I must now explain the real meaning of the terms Sephira and Sephiroth. The first is singular, the second is plural. The best rendering of the word is "numerical emanation." There are ten Sephiroth, which are the most abstract forms of the ten numbers of the decimal scale--i.e., the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Therefore, as in the higher mathematics we reason of numbers in their abstract sense, so in the Qabalah we reason of the Deity by the abstract forms of the numbers; in other words, by the SPIRVTh, Sephiroth. It was from this ancient Oriental theory that Pythagoras derived his numerical symbolic ideas.
40. Among these Sephiroth, jointly and severally, we find the development of the persons and attributes of God. Of these some are male and some female. Now, for some reason or other best known to themselves, the translators of the Bible have carefully crowded out of existence and smothered up every reference to the fact that the Deity is both masculine and feminine. They have translated a feminine plural by a masculine singular in the case of the word Elohim. They have, however, left an inadvertent admission of their knowledge that it was plural in Gen. iv. 26; "And Elohim said: Let Us make man." Again (V. 27), how could Adam be made in the image of the Elohim, male and female, unless the Elohim were male and female also? The word Elohim is a plural formed from the feminine singular ALH, Eloh, by adding IM to the word. But inasmuch as IM is usually the termination of the masculine plural, and is here added to a feminine noun, it gives to the word Elohim the sense of a female potency united to a masculine idea, and thereby capable of producing an offspring. Now, we hear much of the Father and the Son, but we hear nothing of the Mother in the ordinary religions of the day. But in the Qabalah we find that the Ancient of Days conforms Himself simultaneously into the Father and the Mother, and thus begets the Son. Now, this Mother is Elohim. Again, we are usually told that the Holy Spirit is masculine. But the word RVCh, Ruach, Spirit, is feminine, as appears from the following passage of the Sepher Yetzirah: "AChTh RVCh ALHIM ChIIM, Achath (feminine, not Achad, masculine) Ruach Elohim Chiim: "One is She the Spirit of the Elohim of Life."
41. Now, we find that before the Deity conformed Himself thus--i.e., as male and female--that the worlds of the universe could not subsist, or, in the words of Genesis, "The earth was formless and void." These prior worlds are considered to be symbolized by the "kings who reigned in Edom before there reigned a king in Israel," and they are therefore spoken of in the Qabalah as the "Edomite kings." This will be found fully explained in various parts of this work.
42. We now come to the consideration of the first Sephira, or the Number One, the Monad of Pythagoras. In this number are the other nine hidden. It is indivisible, it is also incapable of multiplication; divide 1 by itself and it still remains 1, multiply 1 by itself and it is still 1 and unchanged. Thus it is a fitting representative of the great unchangeable Father of all. Now this number of unity has a twofold nature, and thus forms, as it were, the link between the negative and the positive. In its unchangeable one-ness it is scarcely a number; but in its property of capability of addition it may be called the first number of a numerical series. Now, the zero, 0, is incapable even of addition, just as also is negative existence. How, then, if 1 can neither be multiplied nor divided, is another 1 to be obtained to add to it; in other words, how is the number 2 to be found? By reflection of itself. For though 0 be incapable of definition, 1 is definable. And the effect of a definition is to form an Eidolon, duplicate, or image, of the thing defined. Thus, then, we obtain a duad composed of 1 and its reflection. Now also we have the commencement of a vibration established, for the number 1 vibrates alternately from changelessness to definition, and back to changelessness again. Thus, then, is it the father of all numbers, and a fitting type of the Father of all things.
The name of the first Sephira is KThR, Kether
