Spellings of 'Kabbalah'

Daemon

Amaratzis Strikes Again!

Wrong again! Yes, there are those different types but all of them are spelled KABBALAH. The problem was, as I said before, that christians thought that Kuf was pronounced like a hard Q. It is not, so they got another idea. Kuf is pronounced like a soft C. It most certainly is not, so they made it hard C, which sort of works, but the proper spelling for all the different types is KABBALAH and I'd like to know where you got the idea that the different types have different spelling from.
 

Scion

Daemon, are you actually reading this thread's responses before you post?

While "the proper spelling for all the different types is KABBALAH," what we've been discussing is the recent praxis of spelling it variously based on context and usage... Here are the first few references that Google popped out:

http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/karr/ccinea.pdf
"The spelling varies: In this paper, Kabbalah, for the most part, refers to Jewish doctrine; Cabala refers to Christian developments...Those readers who enter an investigation of (Christian) Cabala after having studied (Jewish) Kabbalah may well become impatient at the outset with the misreadings and deformations characteristic of “Christian developments.” "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah: "The study of Kabbalah is widespread within non-Jewish Western Esoteric (or Hermetic) Tradition. In this context it is most often transliterated as Qabalah to differentiate it from the Jewish tradition"

http://www.flamelcollege.org/kabbalah.htm" "Kabbalah" is a Hebrew word meaning to receive inner wisdom from "mouth to ear" and for many centuries there were no formal writings on the subject. There are several spellings of the word and each has its own traditions. "Kabbalah" or "Kabala" refer to the original Hebrew teachings; "Cabala" refers to the Renaissance French Christian tradition; and "Qabala" or "Qabalah" refer to Hermetic, magical, or New Age interpretations."

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/7770/glossary.html
Caballa: Generally denotes the Renaissance adaptation of the Hebrew
system; the 'Christian Caballa' of Mirandola and Agrippa.

Kabbalah: The Hebrew system of alpha-numeric mysticism &c which deeply
influenced Western occultism from the Middle Ages up to the nineteenth
century 'Occult Revival'. Not identical to earlier forms of Jewish
mysticism which have often been confused with it, Kabbalah represents a
reinfusion of Gnostic and Neoplatonist ideas into European culture.

Qabalah: (a) Denotes the nineteenth century Hermetic revision of the
Christian Cabala. Insofar as it has no relation to any sacred text it is
to a large extent not a Cabala at all but a complex system of
correspondences relying on obsolete religious forms. (b) a generic term
with no necessary link to the Hebrew system, representing instead the
use of an alpha-numeric cosmological model to generate a ritual
language.


http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/kabbalah.html#1
"Three different versions of essentially the same teachings can be identified by three different spellings: Kabbalah, Cabala and Qabalah.
The Kabbalah is an essentially Jewish mystical or esoteric school. Although the Christian Church Fathers of the first century were demonstratably Kabbalists, mystical or gnostic elements within the Church largely disappeared within the first three centuries, only to reappear as a Christian Cabala during the Renaissance. A third, often hidden, stream of mystical Western philosophy absorbed many Egyptian, Jewish and Christian mystical elements and termed them the Qabalah. The Christian writers such as Agrippa, in his De Occulta Philosophia Libri III (1533), or Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and also the Catholic Church, spell it "Cabala," the Latin spelling transferred over to English. Contemporary neo-hermetists, following Mathers and Crowley, will use "Qabala" or some other derivitive."
 

venicebard

Daemon said:
The whole Q idea came from that the kuf is pronounced at the back of the throat like a Q. The former is correct, the latter is not. Q is actually pronounced at the front of the throat if you have any sense.
??? I gather this is an objection to qof being our Q? The decision was made when the alef-bet was formed: Q, Irish quert the ‘apple’ (a second or doubled K [C, if you’re Irish, which I’m not]), pictures in Phoenician and in English (meaning Latin) the fruit and stem thereof, while the square-Hebrew qof itself represents the shape of the womb, apple’s symbolic meaning (fruit), complete with the two openings linked thereto, navel and birth canal (facing left). [This is because its original station was virgo the virgin or womb, not pisces the back of the neck (or feet).]

jmd said:
. . . works such as 'Greek Qabalah' that have, in any case, adopted the term for reasons of partial overlap and popularity rather than intrinsic Kabalistic considerations (a better rendition would have been 'Greek Gematria' - but then, I doubt the book would have achieved the sales it deserved).
I agree. But to me that title does reflect and perhaps help perpetuate a common misconception that the two are linked or identical.
The lists of 'correlations' that many assign to the Tree of Life is not in itself Kabalah (nor 'Qabalah'), but rather assigned correlations, in the same manner that Tarot, Kabalah and Astrology remain independent, even if various correlations are proposed, suggested or even worked.
Exception, though, would be the correlations of the original tradition: one wouldn’t want, I think, to throw out the baby with the bath-water. The problem has always been to determine empirically—that is, by conjoining results of scholarship to common sense (always a rarity)—what that original tradition was and sprang from.

It can be established with complete solidity—based not just on what little the sages revealed but on the amazing patterns that fall into place once the assumption is made—that Tarot of Marseilles trumps are based not just on bardically numbered tree-letters but on these arranged as in Qabbalah, that is, as per the stipulations of Sefer Yetzirah (Merkavah tradition) distinguishing simples from doubles and mother-letters. This, then, leads inevitably to applying suit-symbols to worlds, and the fit there is also exact: in the case of the material or Asiyah world, coins or rounds indicate the physical cycles that form the ladder from today (10, or equatorial-diurnal revolution) to eternity (1, or that which is even longer than the great year, 2).

I have found, albeit at a depth frankly not normally reached these days, that the tradition (Qabbalah) embodied by the Kabbalah (what has survived) points inexorably to the origin of certain traditions in astrology. The simplest example (which therefore took me the longest to discover) is that the signs in which the planets are exalted in astrology show the three male-female pairs on the common Tree as opposites if we (1) follow the Hermetic manner of assigning planets to Sefirot, based on common sense (length of cycle), and (2) raise sol to its proper station at 2, where as great year—‘precession’—it compasses both year (6) and day (10), being the relationship between annual (ecliptic) and diurnal (equator). Hence 2/sol/gold and 3/Saturn/lead are exalted in aries/up and libra/down, respectively (duh) . . . 4/Jupiter/tin and 5/Mars/iron are exalted in cancer/forward and capricorn/back, respectively (jovial/gregarious/out-going versus martial/disciplined/drawn-in) . . . and 7/Venus/copper and 8/Mercury/mercury are exalted in pisces/approaching-up and virgo/approaching-down, respectively (for reasons not yet clear to me, other than that it is the approach to the first pair).
These, however, show similarities, not identity, in that neither Kabalistic considerations nor Greek or Nordic workings have exact overlaps, and certainly these do not have similar metaphysical nor theological (in this term's broader sense) considerations.
(I would disagree on the metaphysical part: certain precise poetic equivalents, such as Freyr/Fro=vron=Bran=fearn-the-alder=up/aries(corn-spirit)=samekh-the-head, are relevant, at the very least in that they add perspective, reveal the inner shape of the symbol referred to in the Qabbalistic ‘model’.)
I would suggest . . . there is a single Kabalah that various individuals have used in various ways, and have investigated from various perspectives - but the source, and the impulse, is the same, and at its edges spills over into non-Kabalistic considerations, whether these be historical, foundational, or suggested links to other systems.
Though in sync with the spirit of what you are saying, I do not agree that there is ‘a single Kabalah’, as it has split into fragments: Bahir, SY, Zohar, Abulafia, Luria, etc. (just witness my referring to samekh, according to shape and alphabet-calendar considerations, as the sign aries, while SY and alef-bet order place it rather at sagittary, the reason for its shift there being demonstrable, but not common knowledge). Much is taught today that is actually incorrect and stems from rabbinical speculation rather than Qabbalistic gnosis, such as the idea that eighth, the Tzaddiq/Yesod of the Bahir, is but a misplaced 9/Yesod from zoharic tradition rather than the place Yesod or Foundation actually is in the Atzilut world (as opposed to the Yetzirah world, where it is 9), as is proved by Bahir’s linking it to circumcision on the eighth day. It is quite apparent to me that the true inner teaching, the Qabbalah, had more to do with the inner workings of alchemy’s Great Work—tikkun, ‘restoration’—than with rabbinical theology alone, though once that deeper science is established, such things as the power of the Name become better understood, which led to its link to magic, a link embarrassing to many latter-day ‘Kabbalists’ because of poor imitations and a lack of deeper understanding.