Hermetic Kabbalah

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Qabalistic Sefirot with references to astrology and tarot

The Hermetic Kabbalah is an occult - esoteric movement with roots in Gnosis , Neoplatonism , Hermetics and Christian Kabbalah . To distinguish it from the Jewish Kabbalah and the Christian Kabbalah, which is sometimes written in Cabala , a spelling with Q, in particular the form Qabalah , is used.

description

Hermetic Kabbalah takes a more universal approach than the original Jewish Kabbalah and is therefore broader and more difficult to define than Jewish and Christian Kabbalah; In the Hermetic Kabbalah, various esoteric aids, such as tarot cards, astrology and numerology , are used to ascend in the world of the ten Sephiroth . While the Jewish Kabbalah is based on the study of the Torah and its commentaries on gaining knowledge of God, the Hermetic Kabbalah places its emphasis on magic as a means of union with God. The ten Sephiroth are identified with ten degrees of magical initiation. The boundary between Christian and Hermetic Kabbalah is not always clear, as elements of Christian elements can be found in works that are sometimes assigned to Hermetic Kabbalah (for example in Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim ) and vice versa (for example Athanasius Kircher ).

history

John Dee, around 1600

The beginnings of Hermetic Kabbalah can be seen in John Dee and Robert Fludd . Hermeticists were receptive to Kabbalah because it had analogies with Platonic ideas. Representatives of a current known as occult philosophy, such as Agrippa and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola , tried to develop philosophies that assimilate Hermetic, Hebrew and Classical knowledge, and to unite this fusion with Christian theology . Despite their esoteric character, the hermetic and cabbalistic ideas underlying occult philosophy were initially well received in Renaissance Europe. Historian Frances A. Yates even considered occult philosophy to be the central driving force behind the Renaissance itself. It is probably no coincidence that occult philosophy, which emphasized unity, became popular during the Reformation and the Renaissance; possibly it and its association of sources as diverse as classical wisdom, magic, Hebrew Kabbalah, and Christianity were expected to provide a solution to the religious and political schism of the time. While the scholastic Middle Ages demanded faith and piety, the Renaissance demanded individual striving and the search for knowledge; the hermetic tried to unite knowledge and belief. However, towards the end of the 16th century, Christian occultists like Agrippa and John Dee were suspected of their theurgy , and as part of the Counter-Reformation the reaction against Renaissance Neoplatonism and associated occult currents also grew . The Christian Kabbalah, which initially served to legitimize occult thought, has now been devalued because of the occult association and associated with witchcraft. Dee and Giordano Bruno were discredited because of their philosophy; the former spent his final years in poverty, the latter was burned in 1600.

The Hermetic Kabbalah flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries. Century and moved away from Christianity, sometimes to an anti-Christian orientation. In the 19th and 20th centuries published several works of the French occultist Eliphas Levi , reproduced falsified the Kabbalistic teachings and never realistically reproduced the works of other authors, while Arthur Edward Waite tried to correct display of Kabbalah, but not the Hebrew and Aramaic powerful and therefore adopted errors from Jean de Pauly's falsified translation of the Zohar in his work The Secret Doctrine in Israel .

literature

  • Brother Achad (aka Charles Stanfield Jones, 1886–1950): QBL Or The Bridge's Reception - Being A Short Qabalistic Treatise On The Nature And Use Of The Tree Of Life With A Brief Introduction And A Lenghty Appendix [1] . The magician and poet was one of Aleister Crowley's favorite students.
  • Franz Bardon : The key to true Kabbalah ; Wuppertal: Rüggeberg, 1998.
  • Aleister Crowley : 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings.
  • Dion Fortune : The Mystical Kabbalah ; Hamburg: Aurinia, 2004; ISBN 3-937392-00-9 . The classic of esoteric Kabbalah, good introduction.
  • Éliphas Lévi (aka Alphonse Louis Constant): Les mystères de la Kabbale ou l'harmonie occulte des deux Testaments ; Paris: Ed. de la Maisnie, 1977; ISBN 2-85707-021-7 .
  • Papus (aka Gerard Encausse): The Kabbala In the translation by Prof. Julius Nestler (with a foreword by Dr. Gerold Necker). Revised and scientifically supported by Michael Tilly . 3rd edition Marix-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-937715-61-2 . Study from the perspective of a Christian university professor and occultist of the late 19th century.
  • Alan Richardson: Introduction to the Mystical Kabbalah. Secrets of the tree of life ; Basel: Sphinx-Verlag, 1982; ISBN 3-85914-307-7 . Entry into ritual magic like the Golden Dawn .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Walter Martin, Jill Martin Rische, Kurt van Gorden: The Kingdom of the Occult . Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee 2008, ISBN 978-1-4185-1644-4 , pp. 144–147 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed May 20, 2012]).
  2. ^ Israel Regardie : A Garden of Pomegranates: Skrying on the Tree of Life . Edited and Annotated with New Material by Chich Cicero and Sandra Tabatha Cicero. 3. Edition. Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, MN 2004, ISBN 1-56718-141-4 , pp. XIII .
  3. ^ Anthony J. Elia: An Historical Assessment of the Narrative Uses of the Words "Kabbalah," "Cabala," and "Qabala / h": Discerning the Differences for Theological Libraries . In: Theological Librarianship: An Online Journal of the American Theological Library Association . tape 2 , no. 2 . American Theological Society, December 2009, ISSN  1937-8904 , pp. 12 ( atla.com [accessed May 20, 2012]). An Historical Assessment of the Narrative Uses of the Words “Kabbalah,” “Cabala,” and “Qabala / h”: Discerning the Differences for Theological Libraries ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link became automatic used and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / journal.atla.com
  4. ^ Israel Regardie: A Garden of Pomegranates: Skrying on the Tree of Life . Edited and Annotated with New Material by Chich Cicero and Sandra Tabatha Cicero. 3. Edition. Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, MN 2004, ISBN 1-56718-141-4 , pp. 138 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed May 20, 2012]).
  5. ^ A b c Anthony J. Elia: An Historical Assessment of the Narrative Uses of the Words “Kabbalah,” “Cabala,” and “Qabala / h”: Discerning the Differences for Theological Libraries . In: Theological Librarianship: An Online Journal of the American Theological Library Association . tape 2 , no. 2 . American Theological Society, December 2009, ISSN  1937-8904 , pp. 13 f . ( atla.com [accessed May 20, 2012]). An Historical Assessment of the Narrative Uses of the Words “Kabbalah,” “Cabala,” and “Qabala / h”: Discerning the Differences for Theological Libraries ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link became automatic used and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / journal.atla.com
  6. ^ Michael T. Walton: Hermetic Cabala in the Monas Hieroglyphica and the Mosaicall Philosophy. Gray Lodge, archived from the original on August 7, 2010 ; accessed on May 20, 2012 (English).
  7. ↑ Andrew Duxfield: Doctor Faustus and Renaissance Hermeticism . In: Sara Munson Deats (Ed.): Doctor Faustus . A critical guide. Continuum, London et al. 2010, p. 100 .
  8. ↑ Andrew Duxfield: Doctor Faustus and Renaissance Hermeticism . In: Sara Munson Deats (Ed.): Doctor Faustus . A critical guide. Continuum, London et al. 2010, p. 98 .
  9. ↑ a b Andrew Duxfield: Doctor Faustus and Renaissance Hermeticism . In: Sara Munson Deats (Ed.): Doctor Faustus . A critical guide. Continuum, London et al. 2010, p. 108 .
  10. ↑ Andrew Duxfield: Doctor Faustus and Renaissance Hermeticism . In: Sara Munson Deats (Ed.): Doctor Faustus . A critical guide. Continuum, London et al. 2010, p. 107 .
  11. ↑ Gershom Scholem : The Jewish mysticism in their main currents (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft . Volume 330 ). 1st edition. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1980, p. 3 (English: Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism . Translated by Gershom Scholem and Nettie Katzenstein-Sutro).
  12. ↑ Arthur Edward Waite : Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah . Kessinger Publishing, 1992, p. 400 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed May 20, 2012]).
  13. ^ Don Karr: The Study of Christian Cabala in English . 2012, p. 68 f . ( digital-brilliance.com [PDF; accessed on May 20, 2012]).
  14. ↑ Gershom Scholem : The Jewish mysticism in their main currents (=  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft . Volume 330 ). 1st edition. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1980, p. 232, 419 (English: Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism . Translated by Gershom Scholem and Nettie Katzenstein-Sutro).