Worth a Read??

Rosanne

Could someone tell me if the is book has any merit?
The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalahby Leonora Leet.
It's subtitle is 'Recovering the Key To Hebraic Sacred Science'
On the back blurb it has endorsements by John Anthony West, Elliot R. Wolfson(Prof.Hebrew/Judiac studies NY University, Robert Lawlor author, Richard Smoley author.
Thank you. ~Rosanne
 

Rosanne

Bumpity Bump Bump- I do not want to spend to money unwisely :D ~Rosanne
 

venicebard

Rosanne said:
Could someone tell me if the is book has any merit?
The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalahby Leonora Leet.
I read about half of it, I think, before it got pushed off the top of my list: it's now something like 23rd -- well, about 15th of just non-fiction -- but still there. Naturally I had to see if she had something.

I would not say she didn't have something. It was not critical to my needs at that moment but not without merit. It is of course a bit presumptious of her to call it the secret, as she was unaware of any of those I have unearthed (through no fault of her own).

The thrust of it has to do (I'm going from memory but will return in days with it in my hand) with regular solids and polygrams and such, based in part on the diagram of the Tree. I guess the first half or so wasn't that memorable, as that's about all I recall -- oh, except that the part I did not get to yet includes correlation of the 'secret' with gauge theory, you know, quantum physics n' all that, which is half the reason I purchased it: the one thing about it is that it revealed a somewhat complicated structure, one I had a hard time following but seemed in order (sort of like physics itself, with its zoo of short-lived particles). I suppose the payoff is in the bits on physics, which I still want to get to (if nothing else for what it might reveal about relatively current particle theory).

Carry on.
 

Rosanne

Thanks VeniceBard-It is hard to know what is a valuable read about the Kabbalah, when one just has a smattering of knowledge. I want a clear no nonsense book, that has quality about it. I am not into flowery prose like Fortune and I am not mystical enough for Regardie yet- though I did enjoy some. I have spent money on crappy books- well I thought they were anyway :D The Library is of no use as I cannot recommend an author. ~Rosanne
 

kwaw

Rosanne said:
It is hard to know what is a valuable read about the Kabbalah, when one just has a smattering of knowledge. I want a clear no nonsense book, that has quality about it.

I'd recommend start with KABBALAH: A very short introduction by Joseph Dan which you should get easily at the library or for a very few dollars +p&p online from abebooks for example and then follow the books under whatever section most interests you in the further reading section at the back.

Kwaw
 

Rosanne

Thanks Kwaw-I have ordered it. I usually go to the bibliography at the back of books and look for books regarded in common in these- but that has not always been helpful. I needed a place to start and your recommendation helps. ~Rosanne
 

kwaw

Rosanne said:
Thanks Kwaw-I have ordered it. I usually go to the bibliography at the back of books and look for books regarded in common in these- but that has not always been helpful. I needed a place to start and your recommendation helps. ~Rosanne

Hope so. It is generally a historical survey; another excellent introduction which also includes some of the historical development but is more detailed in reference to practice [within Judaism today], in which of course articles of faith may take precedence over what may be known historically, I would recommend The Essence of Kabbalah by Brian L. Lancaster that I have seen for a couple of dollars second hand, and is only c.6 or 7 dollars new, or could probably be found at or otherwise easily ordered from your local library.

Kwaw
 

venicebard

Okay, a quick appraisal, based on having read and taken notes on 288 pages out of 412, having thus not yet read "Part 4: Synthesis of Sacred and Secular Science," which I look forward to reading in the not too distant future.

A few points caught my interest. She points out on pp. 21f that the Lurianic correlation of Tree with 'cosmic man' is based on the seated position with knees drawn up, evidenced by the genitals (9) being beneath the legs (7-8). She argues that the inner tradition arose from the priestly class after expulsion from Jerusalem, whereupon they no longer had their priestly duties and so transferred their efforts to transmitting the inner teachings. But she also contrasts prophets' concern for a holy society -- 'horizontal' focus -- to priests' focus on perfectability of the individual -- 'vertical' focus -- and points to the work especially of the prophets Elijah and Ezekiel, "prophets who can be directly linked to priestly practice" (p. 34).

She identifies the chariot of the latter's vision as having 4 levels: the Wheels, the Living Creatures, the Firmament, and the Throne. Thus she reveals she does not understand the vision on a fundamental level (in my estimation), else she would realize that the Living Creatures are present in all four wheels (faces of the beings these represent, indicating each wheel is a zodiac, with bull-lion-eagle-man), that the Firmament is in essence the 2nd of the wheels (first differentiation within the Monad or first wheel), physically expressed in the fourth, meaning the present instant or physical universe (womb of time), and that the Throne is really the bottom half of that same (2nd) wheel -- which is called the Throne world -- presaged by the 6th emanation in Atzilut (described in the Bahir), namely the approach to straight down (straight down being 7th, the Holy Palace): straight down is the direction of the point at which all four wheels are tangent, and on which the Throne rests. (Since the first wheel contains it, straight down in it represents the palace, the location of the Throne, yet what leads to this is the idea of the Throne in the 1st or archetypal world, evidently.)

On p. 36 she rightly interprets the vision as indicating "he who has achieved the mystical capacity to see the divine nature of his own higher self" (leading to "the later kabbalistic tradition that at the highest level of mystical ascent the face one sees on the Throne will be one's own"). On pp. 40f she points out that Mani had Jewish spiritual roots. She points out that Metatron represents the transfigured human as well (p. 65), having once been Enoch.

Interestingly, on p. 68 she intuits that the son (vau or 4-9) generated by divine unification within the soul during prayer (union of 1-2 and 3, yod and heh) is none other than one's higher self: now this is close to the truth, in that the self's three parts in Atzilut are 8-9-10 and project themselves onto nature clear over to 4, the beginning of manifestation, so the vav-heh of the Name, taken as 4-10, does establish the self (which then undergoes the catastrophe of its doer allowing itself to be distracted by the senses from its own thinker and knower, without whose guidance it cannot act responsibly in the dark present instant, since the senses report only the past).

I shall return in a moment and finish going through my notes.
 

venicebard

venicebard said:
Interestingly, on p. 68 she intuits that the son (vau or 4-9) generated by divine unification within the soul during prayer (union of 1-2 and 3, yod and heh) is none other than one's higher self: now this is close to the truth, in that the self's three parts in Atzilut are 8-9-10 and project themselves onto nature clear over to 4, the beginning of manifestation, so the vav-heh of the Name, taken as 4-10, does establish the self (which then undergoes the catastrophe of its doer allowing itself to be distracted by the senses from its own thinker and knower, without whose guidance it cannot act responsibly in the dark present instant, since the senses report only the past).
There is a slight problem with this interpretation, in that it is in their original emanation that the Sefirot extending to 10 establish the high self (or simply the self, the conscious self), while the 'divine unification' she refers to, that alluded to in the Partzufim (vast countenance 1, father -2, mother -3, son -4-5-6-7-8-9, and 'female' -10), are seemingly associated (in Lurianic Kabbalah) with the tikkun or restoration, meaning the ascent of the Tree in Yetzirah! (the commonly pictured Tree, with 3 male, 3 female, and 4 neutral stations). Yet this ascent back up the types does lead eventually to the reunification of the self (meaning the reawakening of the doer to the rest of the self's existence), so it is not a serious problem.

Moving right along, on p. 108f she makes a very interesting suggestion, namely that the 3-letter roots in Hebrew may have something to do with mapping of objects in 3 dimensions, or (since Hebrew thought is dynamic not static and roots mostly verbs not nouns) a wave pattern's "frequency, amplitude, and phase." This is something I am going to have to think about carefully now that I am studying these roots: how to characterize the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd positions in these roots.

On pp. 150ff, she shows grammatically why yod as Abba (2) may be associated with the first person singular, ani (ending in yod and an "ee" sound) being 'I', heh as Imma (3) with the second person singular, atah (ending in heh and an "ah" sound) being 'thou' (masculine), and vav as Ze'ir Anpin (4-) with the third person singular, hu (ending in vav and a "oo" sound) being 'he' (masculine). She derives this from an identification of the first two plus the first person plural 'we', anachnu, with the three parts of the Hebrew prayer service. These, the three letters of the Tetragrammaton, she associates with the midpoint and two extremes of the vowel spectrum, which is quite apropos.

Of course she disappoints me considerably with phrases like, "When man was still more mammalian than human" (p. 159), showing she 'buys' the neo-Darwinian myth and thus misses the main point of the Adam Qadmon teaching (that the Idea or Form upright sentience is the eternal 'attractor', and that there will always be beings at various distances from that goal, including some far far closer to its realization than we humans are).

But then she will awe me with her perspicacity when she says things like (p. 160): "Thus it would appear that the Hebrew language, liike the Greek and the English, was originally composed of letters signifying both vowels and consonants. In addition to the three Tetragrammaton letters, which still appear in many Hebrew words as signifiers of the three main long fowels, there are also the two now-silent letters of Aleph and Ayin, which also are often signifiers of vowels in Hebrew words, the former as in Adonai and the latter as in Sh'ma." I would not expect her, of course, to catch the fact that zayin also was probably originally the vowel i (or that teyt corresponds to the bardic vowel Aa). She also tries to bring the Chakras into her system, something I have not even attempted.

In discussing the Hexagram, she brings up the fundamental quote attributed to Maria the Jewess: "One becomes two, two becomes three, and by means of the third and fourth achieves unity: thus two are but one."

Something I am very happy you made me look at my notes again for is that she states on p. 217 that "many authorities consider the Sefer Yetzirah to be referred to under the term Ma'aseh Bereshit[/i] in the Mishnah, redacted in 204 C.E." This shows that the naming of it after the 3rd or Yetzirah world was a later overlay, a blind, and that it does indeed, as I have ever maintained, describe the Sefirot in the 2nd or Beriyah world -- that of Creation -- not the 3rd (that of Formation). This is obious to me from the fact that here they form pairs, not triplets as in the common Tree.

In discussing the Hexagram's points' relation to the days of creation (diagram p. 226), she correctly pins fire to the uppermost point (and triangle pointing thereto) and the shamanic upperworld, water to the lowermost point (and triangle pointing thereto) and the shamanic lowerworld. And on p. 240, she points out that it is the 3rd or Yetzirah world "where a kabbalistic tradition places the Garden of Eden and the transgression of Adam."

All in all, much that is useful, but not the huge breakthrough I was hoping to find.
 

venicebard

venicebard said:
She identifies the chariot of the latter's vision as having 4 levels: the Wheels, the Living Creatures, the Firmament, and the Throne. Thus she reveals she does not understand the vision on a fundamental level (in my estimation), else she would realize that the Living Creatures are present in all four wheels ..., that the Firmament is in essence the 2nd of the wheels ..., physically expressed in the fourth, ... and that the Throne is really the bottom half of that same (2nd) wheel ....
This was wholly unfair of me: she was simply basing her statement on Kabbalistic tradition evidently, and besides, when I think about it, there is a certain merit in visualizing things thus. The Wheels are the solid skeleton or structural body of things and culminate in the 4th wheel, that of physical becoming. The Living Creatures can be seen as particularly characteristic of the 3rd wheel (zodiac of seated torso), the one through which the seasons (at whose heart these four 'cross-quarter' signs reside) relate symbolically to man (spring springing up towards head aries, and so on). The Firmament, then, would be the prototype of the surroundings or 2nd wheel (made material in the 4th). And the Throne -- this being what is perhaps most instructive about this interpretation she presents -- would refer, by default, to the very first wheel: the standing 'spoke' (Upright Sentience itself). As I already said, this is the wheel in which the Throne does first appear, namely as the 6th emanation (in the book Bahir).
venicebard said:
All in all, much that is useful, but not the huge breakthrough I was hoping to find.
...at least as of p. 288 [I should have added].

It was in the midst of the geometrical stuff that I got bogged down and quit reading, it being way too complicated for my orderly little pedantic mind. (Much of the earlier stuff concerned concrete traditions and currents.) But I am sure it is the geometrical stuff on which she bases her correlation of it to particle theory, and indeed there may be more to what she says hereconcerning than I have been able to extract with my poor man's alembic. After all, even those who believe in Neodarwin, god of Ultrapedants, are capable of occasionally glimpsing important patterns in the structure of things.