What is Kabbala?

Hello Bradford:
I think you are right.Kabbalah has its own deep meaning and don t need Tarot link as also Tarot didn t.(Imean to relates them each other).
For me the clumsy misunderstood comes from Pico della Mirandola attempt to then Eliphas Levi irrespect and again clumsy Madonna approach to Kabbalah.
He died not knowing where place LE MAT he named as Shin...
We have 22 cards,21 named,21 numbered.
So we haven t 22 cards named and numbered.If 22 were the purpose they were 22 named and numbered.
So I strong believe there isn t any serious connection with the 22 Tarot cards.
Surely you best know that Kabbalh in it s origin was a Neoplatonic attempt at the syncretism times of Alejandria School ( Filon for example ).
Then Pico christianized it as Scholem strongly pointed it.
And from there comes for me the BIG clumsy error.

As I posted on another threads I want to add this here.Is a paragraph of A. C. Doyle novel "A Scandal in Bohemia"
I think is very useful as an approach to Tarot for example.

-Watson:"This is indeed a mystery," I remarked. "What do you imagine that it means?"

-Sherlock Holmes: "I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

My best regard to you.

Eugim

jmd said:

If 'experiencing' Kabalah through a text is sought, then, at the very least in terms of beginning, the Sefer Yetzirah (with the wonderful commentary by A. Kaplan) or a text solidly grounded in its foundation - such as the books by R. Ginsberg, Halevi, Scholem, or Idel...

or indeed the wonderful (deceptively 'simple') little book by Laibl Wolf: Practical Kabbalah.

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I must second jmd on this. Following his advice, I purchased both last year. I read the latter, and it is indeed wonderful.

(It doesn't say much about Keter, though, but some about Da'ath, that in other kabbalah books is left unspoken of. My guess is, that Keter is per se incomprehensible.)

Starting again, I read some of the paragraphs of the Sefer Yetsirah, my reading of this book is so very slowly, in tiny, tiny bits, but Kaplan does his job very well, I must say.

Gazel

ETA: I still am more interested in tarot, than in kabbalah, and for me the learning kabbalah is a key to understand the tarot. But I followed jmd's advice as to (try to) learn about kabbalah on it's own premises, and not an already established school of understaning of the correpondences between kabbalah and tarot, but kabbalah in it's purer, not "tarotised" form. And If one is to learn something in the process about the wisdom of the kabbalah too, it can only be seen as a win situation )

Good Morning,

I am new to this forum and happy to be here. Tarot comes alive when we work directly with the cards doing readings. Same for Kabbalah. I use both systems because it is clear to me they are each keys to a living body of information and wisdom. Using both systems gives me more depth and richness than either alone.

It's easy to get lost and overwhelmed in the rich vast body of Jewish mysticism literature. So treat it like when you were first learning tarot, when you did a card a day, and tried to connect it with what was going on in your life.

A good starting point to begin doing daily readings is using one of the two basic building blocks of the Kabbalah: the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and the 10 spheres on the Tree of Life.

I learn best with really interactive hands-on participation. Even knowing nothing about Jewish mysticism, I started with the Michael Munk book on the Hebrew Alphabet, and the Edward Hoffman cards in the Kabbalah Deck. The Hoffman book is really basic and although I quickly outgrew the summaries of the letters and sephiroth, the exercises are EXCELLENT, including drawing the Hebrew letters yourself, picking your favorite Hebrew letter and imagining it, seeing the letters in 3-d form. Get online and print 3-d images of the letters, they are readily available.

I used the Munk book for reading what each letter stood for in my "letter of the day" reading. Regarding the sephiroth, i started with the simple correlation to location on the human body, as a guide for addressing what was going on in my life, and whatever emotions or concerns to me "lived there."

To me one of the main advantages of the Kabbalah is it not only gives me detailed insight into what is going on in my life, but also a place to go for help in remedying it. Call it prayer, call it invocation, call it asking for guidance, but it works for me to go straight to the letter or sephiroth and ask for help.

So if the letter tzadi came up for me in the sphere of Hod (and my current concern is deciding whether to take a job offer), then that relates to increasing my ethical awareness around a situation at work, turning my will over to god's will instead of trying to force a solution, paying attention to work that brings me joy.

At a basic level, again knowing nothing, I would "pray" (or invoke or ask for guidance or whatever you want to call it) for guidance, direction, clarity, and assistance from both the letter tzadi and the sphere Hod. Simple talk, plain words, it gets the job done.

As you build relationship with each of the letters and each of the spheres, they become more alive to you, and more personal, and there are more elegant specific ways to address them, for instance each sphere has a team of helpers you can call by name.

ZenMusic said:

The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, by Daniel Matt
A wonderful translation, deeply annotated. The best English version (still in progress, so far the first four volumes have been printed)

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Matt is excellent reading. I think his Essential Kabballah is one of the best introductions to Kabballah, as it is a distillation of some of the best excerpts of the Zohar, and is an enjoyable read. There are so many introductory books that focus on the Tree of Life, Matt gives the essence of the mystery without rehashing the Tree of Life, which will be learned from other sources (like Dion Fortune, which I think is very insightful).

Another interesting read that I picked up in a used nook store is "9 1/2 Mystics: The Kabbala Today" by Herbert Weiner. Weiner takes the reader through enclaves of New York City and Israel, where we meet actual Jewish mystics of different persuasions. It is more like an ethnography, and you get a sense of the variety and depth of Jewish mysticism, which you don't get from authors that seem to only understand the Tree of Life glyph.

ZenMusic said:

maybe Kabbalah is just a trap.. to capture the mind, heart and soul for the Divine... to slowly release us from the other traps we'd fallen into.. to restore our soul, at the same time to restore God to Its position... and our relationship

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It has certainly captured my mind.

Brother Harmonius said:

Matt is excellent reading. I think his Essential Kabballah is one of the best introductions to Kabbalah.....

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I just finished the 4th volume of Matt's translation/commentary on the Zohar.

It's amazing. I first studied the Zohar (as a teen) with a wonderful Rabbi who translated word by word and explained as we read, reading Matt is almost the same experience, like having the Angel of Wisdom at your side..

without rehashing the Tree of Life, which will be learned from other sources (like Dion Fortune, which I think is very insightful).

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.. I think Dion Fortune's great and her "The Mystical Qabalah" has the most profound insights into the "method" of the Kabbalah.... insights I've never seen elsewhere..