As shown in Part one of this essay Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code
relies heavily on the Gnostic doctrine of a Divine Feminine Principle, Sophia,
that informs man of his own divine nature, who is the true,( but denied by the
Catholic Church), object of worship for humanity. At the end of Mr. Brown’s
fantasy, he points to the "foot worn path" in Rosalyn Chapel,
(Scotland) tracing out the intersection of two opposing triangles ∆, representing "the blade" (m), and ∇ "the chalice" (f) as "the key" to
universal understanding. This configuration t known as the Magen David, is not, as
commonly supposed, a religious symbol of Biblical Judaism, but is a universal
"magical" sign that entered into both Jewish and Arabic common usage in
the Christian middle ages. According to Jewish historian, Gersholm Scholem, it
first became popular among the Kabalists of
KABBALAH
Printer’s
mark, Seder Teffilot,
Introduction
Kabbalah, simply stated, according to Gershom Scholem, the world’s
greatest authority on the subject, is a form of Gnosis that underlies certain
"Jewish mystical theology." The Fundamental tenets of Kabbalah, according
to Scholem, are as follows: "Over and above disagreements on specific
details that tend to reflect different stages in the Kaballah's historical
development, there exists a basic consensus among kaballists on man's essential
nature...At opposite poles, both man and God encompass within their being the
entire cosmos. However, whereas God contains all by virtue of being its Creator
and Initiator in whom everything is rooted and all potency is hidden, man's
role is to complete this process by being the agent through whom all the powers
of creation are fully activated and made manifest. What exists seminally in God
unfolds and develops in man… Because he alone has been granted the gift of free
will, it lies in his power to either advance or disrupt through his actions the
unity of what takes place in the upper and lower worlds... his principal
mission is to bring about Tikkun Olam or restoration of
this world and to connect the lower with the upper." 1. The
concept of tikkun, or restoration, involves the problem of evil, and
again according to Scholem, "the root of evil resides within the Ein-Sof
(hidden God) itself." Evil, therefore, for the kabbalist is simply the sitra
ahra or "emation of the left" and at the end of time, through the
process of man's work of tikkun even the devil, "Samael will
become Sa'el, one of the 72 holy Names of God". ... "In Greek
this is called apokatasis (sic)"..."To use the neoplatonic
(Plotinus) formula, the creation involves the departure of all from the one and
its return to the one." 2.
A Brief History
Although many adepts claim that the Kabbalah, or secret oral
tradition, goes back to Moses or even Adam, Scholem places its practical
beginnings in the
Once again, according to Scholem, the development of Kabbalah was
coeval with Hellenistic syncretic religion and Gnosticism. Both Hellenistic Gnosis
and Rabbinical Gnosis were based on the theory that there are spiritual
emanations of God (Aeons and Archons for the Greek, Sephirot
for the Hebrew) which fill the primordial cosmos. These, if properly understood
and harnessed lead back to the deity. Historically, the esoteric teachings
contained in the Kabbalah passed from such groups as the Essenes, or
The influence of the Kabbalah on segments of Christian thinking has
flourished since the Renaissance. It was openly quoted in the works of such
influential thinkers as Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Reuchlin, Agrippa of
Nettesheim, Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, the Franciscan Friar, Francesco Giorgio
of
The
Doctrine – Dialectical Monism
In a much simplified exposition of the basic Kabalistic doctrine, all begins with Ein-Soph ( alt. Ayn- Soph, En-Soph) the infinite, or literally without measure. Like the Gnostic "God beyond god" or Pleroma, it contains within its essence both the active and passive ( male and female, good and evil) principles in their full potential. In the beginning, before there was anything, the eternal source, Ein-Soph contracted itself within and then filled the subsequent void with emanations of its own essence. This contraction and expansion is called the Zimzum. (See: Fig. 1,(Left) Illustrations - following the text)
According to the Zohar (Book of Splendor), what was engraved first on the void were the words: "Let there be light." in the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Subsequently, El Gadol (Great God) emerged from the primal ether on the right as the masculine principle and Elohim (Darkness) emerged on the left as the feminine principle. Then appeared the actual "Light" signifying "that the Left was included in the Right and the Right in the Left." 9. From the initial point of light streamed forth, in concentric circles, ten mystical numbers or paths known as Sephiroth. The names of these Sephiroth are as follows: Keter (Crown); Binah (Intelligence); Hokmah (Wisdom) Gevurah (Justice); Gedullah (Greatness); Tiferet (Beauty); Hod (Honor); Nezah (Victory); Yesod (Foundation); and Malkhut (Kingdom). These Sephiroth would come to form Adam Kadmon the celestial archetypal man.
Adam
Kadmon
This was not the Adam of the Bible but a cosmic prototype for all of
reality akin to the Neo-Platonic Demiurge. The Sephiroth may also
be displayed as the descending Azilut –"emanations" - which
form the "Tree of Life." (Fig. 2 –6, Illustrations)
The first three Sephiroth: Keter (Crown); Binah (Intelligence); and Hokhma (Wisdom) received the "Light" and contained it. (See the three faces in the diagram above) Thus the divine essence is preserved in a tripartite interrelationship, or immanent "Trinity" within the mind of Adam Kadmon, the macrocosm and within the mind of individual man, the microcosm. The following seven Sephiroth could not contain the light and shattered, forming shards of coagulated energy (matter) called Kelippot. Again, following the Neo-platonic or Gnostic doctrine, the farther the Sephirah lies from the center, the denser the matter. Malkhuth, therefore, as farthest away from the center, forms the earthly kingdom or the feet of Adam Kadmon. (See again: Fig.1, )
Through the break up of the Sephiroth, the equilibrium and unity of God has been destroyed. The "light" and the "dark" of the primal Light have been separated and it is the obligation of man to re-establish both his own inner unity or wholeness and the wholeness of God. To accomplish this project called Tikkun, The Jewish people as Knesset Israel have the predominant role. According to the Kabbalah, from the earliest Spanish manuscripts onward, the Jewish race has seen itself as the representative of the Shekhinah, ** (see below) the feminine principle split off from God, reminiscent of the Gnostic Sophia. 10. According to kabalistic (Hasidic) Tradition it is said: "Just because of this split, God needs man, whose task it is to reunite the riven opposites within the divine personality itself. From this point of view the exile of the Jewish people receives deep and special meaning. For this exile of the people corresponds in the `upper world, so to speak, to an exile of the Shekinah (supposed feminine half of God) who went into exile with them. The return of the Jewish people from exile therefore means, in Jewish mysticism, the redemption of the Jewish people; it is above all an earthly image, and likeness of an inner-divine drama of redemption, of the homecoming of the Shekhina to God... So while man needing redemption strives to restore the disturbed world order, he is at the same time working toward the redemption of God and his union with the Shekhinah and thus toward the restoration and realization of the wholeness of God." 11. A tradition also holds that the final Masiach, messiah, who will achieve Tikkun Olam, concordia discors or "world harmony," will be a manifestation of the Shekinah, i.e., female.
Within the overall historical perspective and purpose of the Kabbala i.e. the ultimate complete unity of God and creation, there are two fundamental problems to be resolved. First is the relationship of the individual human being to God and second the problem of evil.
For the Kabalistic initiate, while awaiting the final restoration of
history, there are various techniques available for personal spiritual
development. One is meditation on the mysteries of the Sephiroth called Kavvanah
and another involving numerology is called Gematria. The technique of Kavvanah
involves mental concentration on the combinations of the sacred names which
pave the way for ecstatic union with the divine source, Metatron, (alternately
known as the prince of God's countenance, Prince of this world, Angel of light,
or ones own true self). 12. This
union is mystically known as Zivvug ha-Kadosh, or coupling face to face,
which is said to produce an internal harmony of the restrictive (passive)
powers of Din and the out flowing (active) powers of Rahanim.
Once again one finds Concordia Discors, or Coincidentia Oppositorum,
the fusion of opposites as object of the endeavor. 13.
Seen in this light, the parallel between Kabbalah and the Eastern Religions is quite obvious. It is, of course, the resolution in harmony of the passive Yin and the active Yang according to the Tao which produces the "enlightened" state where "all duality merges into oneness, a noble path that leads to contentment and peace." 14. In reality, according to Gershom Scholem, "the Techniques of `prophetic Kabbalah' that were used to aid the ascent of the soul, such as breathing exercises, the repetition of the Divine Names, and meditation on colors, bear a marked resemblance to those of both Indian Yoga and Muslim Sufism." 15. Gematria on the other hand, involves the belief that the Hebrew alphabet is the first emanation of Ayn-Sof and that the arrangement of these 22 letters, according to their numerical value, make up the seventy-two sacred names of the All Holy as well as the cosmos. Gematria can be used for the concordance of Biblical texts and messianic prophecy as well as in calling up spirits. 16. This latter property may be employed, at least in theory, both for good and for evil. The manipulator of spirits, (good or evil) is called a Ba’al Shem or master of the divine names. 17. According to legend, in the 16th century, Rabbi Loewe used Gematria to create a fearsome creature called the Golem to protect the Prague Ghetto.
The problem of evil for the Kabalistic is complex, as, if all comes from and
is contained in the Ayn Sof what man calls evil must be intrinsic to the
divine nature. What is it, then, in the divine nature that may be called
"evil"? Once again, according to Scholem: "The
determining factor is the estrangement of created things from their source of
emanation, a separation which leads to manifestations of what appears to us to
be the power of evil. But the other [evil] has no metaphysical reality ...
outside the structure of the Sephiroth ... the Sepher Gevurah as
`the left hand of the Holy One blessed be He,' and as `a quality whose name is
evil' … has many offshoots in the forces of judgement, the constricting and
limiting powers of the universe"
Cutting through the flowery rhetoric, it would appear that Evil, for the Kabalist, is any force that restricts or limits (divine) human freedom and creativity. It [evil] reverts to that part of God which is designated, " Pure judgement, untempered by any mitigating admixture, [which has] produced from within itself the sitra ahra (the other side)… The `emanation of the left.' " 18. According to Nathan of Gaza, the grand apologist of 17th century Shabbetean Kabbalah The first light was entirely active [creative] and the second light entirely passive [restrictive] immersed in the depths of itself. "The root of evil is a principle within the Ayn-Soph itself which holds itself aloof from creation and seeks to prevent the forms of light which contain thought from being actualized, not because it is evil by nature but only because its whole desire is that nothing should exist apart from Ayn-Soph." For the Kabalistic, of whatever school, neither good nor evil, exist as such. Whatever meaning there is to existence involves Tikkun or the restoration of harmony and balance between the forces of expansive light and restrictive darkness until all is once again absorbed in the Ayn-Soph.
These speculations, it seems, are the inevitable result of dialectic opposition in a monistic system. The argument is as follows: If the universe is an overflowing or projection of God, (See Plotinus Ennead 5) and the universe contains what man calls "evil," then "evil" is contained in the nature of God. If, however, God is all good, then evil is not evil, it is but the dark side or foil of good. There is, in fact, no other possible logical solution to the problem of evil in a universe produced by emanation rather than creation from nothing. As man develops his own inner divine potential (individually and collectively) as an emanation of God there must be a balance of the progressive and the restrictive within the person and society to attain the ideal. This was, of course, the "enlightenment" proposed by Leibnitz in his Théodicée. 19. This form of thinking has impacted Western thought from the 16th century to the present.
In terms of eschatology, the imanentist theology of the Kabbalah must
inevitably lead to the doctrine of Apokatastasis the reintegration of all
spiritual emanations, active and passive, "good" and
"evil," into the divinity at the end of time. If God is all, then God
can not leave part of himself out side of himself forever. This is precisely
what the Kabbalah predicts with its doctrine of Tikkun Olam.
After myriad reincarnations, the souls of all men, * as well as of angels and
demons, will form once again the unity of God. As the forces of creative light
expand in man and dark judgement is absorbed, so also shall it be with God. It
is even said, as stated above, that the
Arch Devil Samael will be transformed at time's end to Sa’el one
of the 72 holy Names of God.20
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
*It should be noted that there is some dispute among Kabalistic writers as to whether all sons of Adam or
only Jews have within them the "divine spark" or Neshama which
would allow re-incorporation to the Ein-Sof. According to the Zohar,
only Jewish people come from the "holy side" or sitra di-kedusha
from which the divine spark proceeds. Non Jewish people are products of the
"other side" or sitra ahra and do not have the
"divine" neshama but only the animal soul called nefesh
and a spirit of cognitive ability called the ruah. 21.
_ ** The word Shekinah, simply said, does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. The term MiShKaN, from which the word Shekinah is derived, refers to the Sanctuary in the wilderness not the being that dwells therein. As Feminist Hebrew scholar/Rabbi, Lynn Gottlieb in her book, She Who Dwells Within, points out, "The word Shekinah first appears in the Mishna and Talmud (ca 200 CE), where it is used interchangeably with WHVH and Elohim as names of God…. By 1000 CE, the very mythologies so suppressed in the Bible erupted in the heart of Jewish mysticism, known as the Kabul, and Shekinah became YHVH’ wife, lover and daughter." This word only entered into common usage among Jewish thinkers in Medieval Spain where "Kabalistic" (Gnostic) mysticism took root from the writings of Moses de Leon in the Sefer ha-Zohar or Book of Splendor (c. 1280 AD).
As explained by Daniel Matt in his Essential Kabbalah, "In
Kabbalah, Shekhinah becomes full-fledged She: …the feminine half of God."
This doctrine spread through Southern Europe to
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
An interesting addendum is that of Polish "convert"
from Judaism to Catholicism, Jacob Frank. Frank first claimed himself to be the
Messiah in Poland in 1756 as part of a Kabalistic Trinity made up of Attika
Kadisha (The Holy Ancient One), Melika Kadisha ( The Holy
King –Messiah), and the Shekhinah (feminine earthly half of the
divinity). As he was persecuted by the Orthodox Jewish community for his
bizarre faith and orgiastic initiations, he and many of his followers came into
the Catholic Church precisely to introduce a feminine, or earthly, element, the
Shekhinah, into the Christian Trinity under the guise of the Blessed Virgin
Mary. (Secretly present in his own daughter Eva, but to be made manifest in the
last days as a ultimate feminine Messiah) 22
***************************
Gnosticism
and Kabbalah in the Modern World
In the No. 2 - 2003 issue of 30 Days magazine there is an article by Italian theologian, Massimo Borghesi, which, while singling out Kabalist Shabetai Zevi at the beginning, had the following to say regarding Gnostic dualism in general that is significant to this study:
" The Serpent, the tempter, appears in the guise of the liberator, the
one who raises man beyond good and evil, beyond the God of old, foe of freedom.
The last two hundred years have rediscovered the ‘the liberator principle of
the world [affirmed] by the Ophite sect’, a principle foreshadowed in the
notions of Shabbatai Zevi with his Messiah consigned to the
‘serpents’"… "Hegel, with his dialectic of the negative, was
to give rich theoretical guise to this idea. Man must sin, must come out of
natural innocence to Become God. He must realize the promise of the serpent:
must know like God, good and evil. This knowledge ‘is the origin of sickness,
but also the fountainhead of health, it is the poisoned chalice from which man
drinks death and putrefaction, and at the same time the wellspring of
reconciliation, since to posit oneself as wicked is in itself the overcoming of
evil’." …[Jakob] Bőhme, according to Hegel, ‘struggled to
understand in God and from God the negative, evil, the Devil ‘. God is the
unity of contraries, of anger and love, of evil and good, of the Devil and his
contrary, the Son. On this view Christ and Satan become in some way brothers,
sons of the one Father, parts of him, moments in his polar nature." … This
is an idea set down by Carl Gustav Jung in his esoteric Septem
Sermones ad Mortuos written in 1916, circulated as a monograph among his
friends and never published. The text, which borrows conceptually from the
Gnostic Basilides, affirms the ‘pleroma’ nature of God, composed from
pairs of opposites of which, God and devil are the prime manifestations."
… "Everywhere at work – Romano Gurdini wrote in 1964 – there is the
fundamental Gnostic idea that contraries are polarities: Goethe, Gide,
and C.G. Jung, Th [omas].
Mann, H[erman]
That Kabalistic thought continues alive and flourishing in the modern world,
one may add the favorable words of Jorge Luis Borges regarding "The
Kabbalah" presented in his 1984 (English translation) Seven Nights:
"Borges takes us on an intellectual stroll through "The
Kabbbalah." In it he considers the necessity of evil, and its
justification, theodicy. … He cites the Two Libraries of Leibnitz: one
containing 1,000 copies of only the one perfect book, the Aeneid; the
other boasting only one copy of this perfect book. The999 imperfect books of
the second make it superior. Evil is in the variety, but variety is
necessary for the world." (Emphasis added) … "The lesson of the
Kabbalah, Borges tells us in his succinct if disparate, essay, is in the
doctrine the Greeks called apokatastaisis: that all creatures, including
Cain and the Devil, will return, at the end of great transmigration’s, to be
mingled again with the Divinity from which they once emerged." 24
*******************************************************************************************
Marashal McLuhen, in a review of a book, Melville’s Quarrel with God, by Lawrence Thompson, (Princeton University Press, 1952) , offers the following thoughts.
"The theme of this book is interpreted by McLuhen as follows:
‘My suggestion is that Billy Budd should be viewed as Melville's most subtle triumph in triple-talk; that it was designed to conceal and reveal much the same notions as are expressed years earlier in Moby Dick and Pierre and The Confidence-Man: that Melville came to the end of his life still harping on the notion that the world was put together wrong and that God was to blame and that only the self- profiting authoritarians pretend otherwise, in order to victimize the stupid . . . . his chronic anti- Christian pessimism did not abate during the forty- five years which elapsed between Confidence-Man and Billy Budd.’
Phrased that way, Melville's case sounds typical enough. Spelt out by Professor Thompson, however, this very typical attitude of our time is shown to have profound historic dimensions. Melville's diabolism, like that of Byron, Blake, Milton, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, was directly linked to the old gnostic tradition of the Ophites and Parsees. God and the devil are one. But only the enlightened, the illuminate, know this. For the populace another version of the facts is expedient. Writing in Blackfriars of Karl Marx (July-August, 1952) Father Victor White provides a handy description of the myths of Marxist religion and counter-religion which corresponds exactly with the politics of the Marquis de Sade and with the views of Herman Melville -- namely that conventional religion and secular humanism are a swindle to put a benign countenance on the devil-god of reality. Through revolution and tribulation men can perhaps mend the hideous defects of the dualistic divine being. Mankind can be the saviour of a helplessly malignant deity. From this point of view, the greater the criminal, the greater his efficacy as saviour. The error of our age has been to regard its diabolical figures and politics as the fruit of impersonal causes and to disregard the historic continuity of devil-worship, with its perennial appeal to the ambitious intellects of every age. Our situation enters its present phase with the eighteenth century 'attack' on belief in the personality of the devil. As Father White points out, Marxism does not repudiate religion, but channels it against Christianity: ‘Marxism, in short, only denies God in the sense of setting on record that He is, in our society, in practice denied and ineffectual, and in the sense of echoing the Satanic assurance, 'You shall be as God'. Its power against contemporary Christianity lies in the fact that it has stolen Christ's thunder . . . . But just because it is the ape of God and His Christ, the Christian must see in Marxism a supreme embodiment of the Antichrist . . . ’ "
*************************
Harry V. Jaffa, political analyst and devotee of John Locke, in a 1996 speech at Claremont McKenna College in California made the following cryptic yet revealing comment regarding ex “Trotskyite” and now “Neo Conservative” guru, Irving Kristol: “Irving Kristol is the very incarnation, if not the apotheosis of the sensible man, always saying sensible things about the political issues of the day. He reminds us of Disraeli’s character (Colinsby ?) who said “Sensible men are all of the same religion,” and when asked what that was answered, “Sensible men never tell.”
In light of the above essay and Borghesi’s, Borges’ and McLuhan’s observations regarding the affiliation of modern man to the dual “devil-god” hypothesis and the perennial appeal to the ambitious intellects, it is not inopportune to speculate as to the nature of the religion of the “Sensible men” such as Mr. Kristol to which Mr. Jaffa refers and perhaps himself adheres.
The illustration shown below, from Irving Kristol’s 1992 article in the Washington Times, is most revealing to this effect. Without going into an in depth analysis, please note the following telltale signs or elements of the drawing. First is the key at the bottom with the Masonic “G” at the center of its handle. This “key” unlocks the message. The sacred “Book of Life” is open above to the left (stage right). It is not the Bible – there is no cross on the cover - but a symbolic (Kabalistic)“tree of life.” At the upper right (stage left) is a cup (chalice) ringed with hearts – above and below- signifying the triumph of emotional “love” over the rational discernment of “Good and Evil.” The central oval, in fact, displays the “mystery” of the dual “God.” On the left, (stage right) a tower ascends to heaven (Outside the enclosed cosmos) and on the right (stage left) a descending rock formation visually mimics its opposite image. The “miner” at the bottom examines (discovers?) the descending “reverse image” while a man with artificial wings hovers in anticipation to ascend to the divine realm.
Let the viewer draw his/her own conclusion.
NOTES
1. Gershom Scholem, Kaballah (New York: Dorset Press:1974) p.226,227
2. Ibid., 126-128, 227
- Gershom Scholem Kabbalah
(New York, Dorset Press, 1987) p. 3 - 5. The
- Ibid. pp. 5-12
- Ibid. Pp. 8-22 The book of Genesis, for example, is treated as an esoteric explanation of the entrapment of the soul in matter in its descent from the world of Azilut into the world of creation Beriah and the book of Exodus, by contrast, begins the work of liberation and re-ascent of the soul to the spiritual order.
- N.B. ibid. 284, 327 - 332 According to Scholem, after the false Messiah, Shabbetai Zevi converted to Islam in 1666 many of his followers (known as Doenmeh – apostates) did so as well. According to the 18th C. Polish Shabbatean, Jacob Frank, the raison d’être of these conversions would appear to be as follows: "under the `burden of silence' the true believer, who has God in his secret heart, should go through all religions, all rites, and established orders without accepting any and indeed annihilating all from within and thereby establishing true freedom. Organized religion is only a cloak to be put on and thrown away on the way to the `sacred knowledge,' the gnosis of the place where all traditional values are destroyed in the stream of `life'." In this regard it should be noted that the Doenmeh indulged in orgiastic sexual activity especially during the spring festival Hag ha-Keves. Scholem also acknowledges that this movement influenced the universal upheavals of the eighteenth century as for-runner of the Enlightenment, Jacobinism and Freemasonry. He cites as some of the acknowledged Doenmeh of history: the majority of Kemal Ataturk's `Young Turk' movement and the founder of Polish Messianism, the poet Adam Mickiewicz.
- Ibid. pp. 197 – 201
- Albert Pike .Morals and Dogma of Free Masonry (Charleston, Southern Jurisdiction Publication, 1871) pp.581-800
- The Zohar I Sperling
and Simon, trans. p. 70, cit. June Singer Androgyny Toward a New Theory
of Sexuality (New York: Anchor, 1977) p. 153 N.B. This concept
is fundamental to understanding of the Kabbalah as thus can be seen the initial
mixing of light and darkness, male and female, good and evil as the
initial act of the "One God," and the Kabalist can pronounce
with impunity the traditional Jewish Shema –"Shema Ysrael Adonai
Elehenu, Adonai Ehad" "The Lord is God, The Lord is One."
- Scholem pp. 88 –168
- Siegmund Hurwitz Psychological Aspects of Early Hasidic Literature Timeless Documents of Soul (Evanston, IL: North Western University Press, 1968) pp. 202 - 203 cit. Singer, p. 160
- Scholem p. 180
- Ibid. pp. 141, 143, 161, 162,, 167, 194
- Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai The Teaching of Buddha (Tokyo, Japan,1970 ) p. 62
- Ibid. p. 125, See also Malcolm Godwin Angels, An Endangered Species (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990) entry for Metatron pp. 59 –61
- Scholem p. 180
- Ibid. pp. 337 – 343
- Ibid. p. 310
- Ibid. p. 127
- Ibid. p. 128
- Bid. Pp. 156 – 157
- Genesis 1:1-2 "Berishit Barra Elohim" "In the beginning God created the heavens and earth…" The verb barra in Hebrew means to create from nothing. It is only used for the divine act at the beginning of time. From this Biblical account comes the traditional orthodox Jewish version of creation called Torah di – Beriah as opposed to the Kabalistic Torah de Azilut or world of emanations. In both traditional Jewish and Christian theology, God is worshipped as a personal, omnipotent, omniscient, creator who is other than his creation. For the Roman Catholic, the formula may be stated as follows: "(Deus) … est re et essentia a mundo distinctus, et super omnia praeter ipsum sunt aut concippi posunt ineffabiliter excelsus."Vatican I caps. I, ca 1-4) "(He …is really and essentially distinct from the world...and ineffably raised above all things which are outside of Himself or which can be conceived as being so."
- Scholem, p. 302
- Anthony Kerrigan, Review of Seven Nights, Jorge Luis Borges (New Directions: NY, 1984) in Winter 1987- The University Bookman, Ed. Russell Kirk
Bibliography
(Some, by and large, easily available books consulted for this essay and of use to serious students of the subject)
Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Dorset Press, 1987)
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1995)
Zohar (New York: Schocken Books, 1995)
Leonard R. Glotzer, The Fundamentals of Jewish Mysticism The Book of Creation and its Commentaries (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1992)
Daniel C. Matt, The Essential Kabbalah The Heart of Jewish
Mysticism (
Adin Steinsaltz, The Thirteen Petalled Rose A Discourse on the Essence of Jewish Existence and Belief (New York: Basic Books, 1980)
The Essential Talmud ( Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1992)
Rachel Elior, The Pardoxical Ascent to God The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasdism (Albany, NY: State of New York University Press, 1993)
Edward Hoffman, The Way of Splendor Jewish Mysticism and Modern Psychology (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1992)
Mordachai Rotenberg, Dialog with Deviance The Hasidic Ethic and Theory of Social Contraction (New York: University Press of America, 1993)
Pinchas Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine Symbolization and Theurgy in the Later Strata of the Zohar (Albany, NY: The State University of New York,1993)
Lyn Gottlieb, She Who Dwells Within A Feminist Vision of a Renewed Judaism (San Francisco, CA: Harpers San Francisco, 1995)
Matityahu Glazerson, Building Blocks of the Soul Studies on the Letters and Words of the Hebrew Language (Nortrhvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc. 1997)
Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Charles Scribner, 1958)
Francis A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, `1984)
The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Ark Paperbacks, 1983)
The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Boulder, CO: Shambala, 1978)
Karen Silvia De León-Jones, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996)
Kathleen Raine, Yeats The Tarot and the Golden Dawn (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1976)
June Singer, Androgyny Toward a new Theory of Sexuality (New York: Anchor Press, 1976)
Carl Gustav Jung, Opera Omnia esp. A Psychological Treatise on the
Doctrine of the Trinity (
Illustrations
Fig.1 (left) Adam
Kadmon depicted as Cosmic Christ on
the schematic Tree of Life. The Kabalistic Trinity – Atika Kadisha (Holy
One of Old), Meleka Kadisha (Holy King), and the Shekhinah (Feminine
presence of God) are above Christ’s head empowering him to bring the divine
down to Earth, Malkuth (Right) The Ayn
Soph contracts and the expands to fill the void with the divine presence, Zim
Zum. The further out from the center, abode of the binary god, Ayn Soph,
the denser the material shards, Kelipoth until one reaches the
firmament, Malkuth at the outer circle.
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Fig.2- Descent of the "Divine Fire" down through the "Tree of Life" to reach and divinize – Malkuth - the Earth |
Fig. 3 - 13th Century Jewish depiction of the "Tree of Life" |
Fig.4- "Tree of Life" from the 12th C.
Liber Figurarum of "Catholic’
mystic, Joachim da Fiore
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Fig. 5 - 16th C. Masonic –
"Johanite"- engraving of Christ as Adam Kadmon "Cosmic
Christ" corresponding to the Sephirotic "Tree of Life."
Note the split black and white (good & evil) "Ayn Soph"
at the top and the seven branched Menorah dominating the lower world
of Malkuth.
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Fig. 6 - Drawing from the notebook of
Rosicrucian, George Pollexon, c.1894 showing the Kabalistic "Tree of
Life." Note the androgynous Adam Kadmon (Christ Figure) on the
Cross-, drawing from both pillars – Jachin & Boaz representing the
male and female forces of both God, Ayn- Soph and the Cosmos. The
"God of Light" above and the "Dragon" Satan below are
united on earth Malkuth represented as the naked woman with flowers
springing up around her. Pollexon was a member of the "Kabalistic Order
of the Golden Dawn" along with poet W.B. Yeates who signed and was known
among his colleagues in the society as "Dedi" or "Demon est
Deus Inversus"
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Fig. 7 – In the political realm, the working out of Tikkun Olam is the "Dialectic." Both Hegel and Marx were influenced by Kabalistic and the concepts of "Thesis" –"Antithesis"-"Synthesis" closely follows the "Tree of Life" in binary confrontation of the forces of Din (authoritarian judgmental oppression) vs. Hessed or Rahanim (merciful progressive liberation) working toward synthesis and perfection of the Earthly Kingdom, Malkuth through. The resolution of opposites |
Fig. 8 – The great lie and true Luciferian nature of Kabbalah is shown in the "icon" above. From the upper right hand corner, a red angel falls, ejected from heaven, downward into the cosmos. According to esoteric legend, it was one or more of these angels that imparted the secret knowledge (Kabbalah) to man. Below the angel is shown a man with three triangles superimposed over him. These represent the three configurations or triads that form the sefirot or vessels of the tree of life. Each sefira, according to the Kabbalah, is a level of attainment in knowledge or balance between the pillar of judgment Din and the pillar of mercy Hessed ( See: Fig. 7 at left) that will lead to enlightenment and harmony. Across at lower right, however, we see a terrified man possessed by the demon (central third eye and reptilian tail). At upper right, heavenly judgment, corner, a black hand covers over and annihilates man. |
Fig. 8 - Ultimately the Essential
Symbol of the Kabalistic Tikkun Olam is the occult (not Biblical)
"Seal of Solomon" representing the Coincidentia Opositorum
(Fusion) of Good and Evil to form the "Complete God"
by
Élephias Lévi, 33° Histoire de la Magie 1861
Kabbalah
and Freemasonry
Freemasonry,
A.K.A."The Brotherhood," or "the Craft," is a curious
mixture of the medieval stone masons guild and various underground speculative
currents of esoteric and occult thought that blossomed throughout
The roots of so called "speculative" masonry, as suggested above,
are to be found in the secretive movements that had existed for centuries in
In contrast to the English Grand Lodge Masonry with its
"religious" overtones, as described above, there also exists a
distinct, but linked, European Grand Orient Masonry based on the
"Deist" or even, since the declarations of 1777, openly atheist
philosophy of the French Enlightenment. Virtually all the precursors of the
French Revolution, Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, and Robespierre were Grand
Orient Masons. Generally speaking, the goal of the Grand Orient Lodges has been
to openly confront the Roman Catholic Church with its hierarchical structure of
government topped by the Pope in
The Church, from the beginning, has fought back against Freemasonry with all of its strength. There have been dozens of warnings and encyclical letters issued by the Holy See regarding the dangers of Masonry. The foremost of these is that of Pope Leo the XIII titled Humanum Genus, published in 1884. In this document the Pope clearly states that the conspiratorial society of Freemasons shelters "the partisans of evil" and is, at its root, "Satanic" in nature. * According to the 1917 Code of Cannon Law, article #2335, to belong to a Freemasonic Lodge was grounds for automatic excommunication Latae Sententiae. (The act itself bringing the penalty without formal accusation.) Although no longer grounds for ipso facto excommunication, Cardinal Ratzinger reiterated the incompatibility of Masonry and Catholicism in 1985.
While the ostensible goals of Freemasonry are philanthropy and human development, the true goal is philosophic and ultimately religious. Masonic author, Albert Pike (Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, 1859 -1891) sets the record straight in his authoritative Morals and Dogma of Freemasonry. According to Pike, following the system of the medieval Jewish Kabbalah (oral tradition), Freemasons are bound to no one particular religion, but worship the "Complete God." This "God," Pike points out, again according to the Kabbalah, is comprised of both good (expansive) and evil (restrictive) principles, personified by, God and the devil. It should be noted, however, that in Albert Pike's twisted mind, as put forth in his July 4, 1889 letter to the Masonic supreme councils, Lucifer is the expansive, pleasure loving "good" god, and Adonai (the Judeo-Christian God) is the restrictive, judgmental mean spirited deity. As Pike further explains to the Apprentice Mason, once again in his Morals and Dogma, "The pavement (of the Lodge), alternatively black and white, symbolizes the Good and Evil principles of the Egyptian and Persian creeds. It is the warfare between...Light and Darkness, Freedom and Despotism, Religious Liberty and the Arbitrary Dogmas of a Church that thinks for its votaries and whose Pontiff claims to be infallible..." In the final chapter of this book titled Prince of the Royal Secret Pike informs us, " The Evil is the Shadow of the Good and inseparable from it. The Divine Wisdom limits by equipoise the Omnipotence of the Divine Will or Power, and the result is Beauty or Harmony."
The "secret" then for the individual Freemason, following the
Serpent's lie that, "You shall be as gods," is to work out for
himself the balance or harmony of good and evil in his own life to achieve his
own divine perfection. "Man is a God in the Making", Manly P.Hall,
33° The Lost Keys of Free Masonry
Collectively the external goal of Masonry is for an emancipated mankind to
rebuild "
Élephias
Lévi 33° Histoire de la Magie 1861
* Pope Leo XIII: "The race of man, after its miserable fall from God,
the Creator and giver of heavenly gifts, "through the envy of the
devil," separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one
steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other for things which are
contrary to virtue and truth. The one is the
H.R.A