Confused???

Huck

Ninamagic said:
Still... very gratefull for all your help, BUT....

if you, Huck, tell me that for instance Gerschom Scholem's idea of kabalah 'has not much to do with Tarot', then whose idea has??

My point is: I'm very interested in knowing more about and understanding kabalah, but my main interest is tarot, and therefore I would prefer to know about who to read in that case...

It's not that I don't want to read all the books you recommend, it's just that, living in Denmark... They don't exist, not even in a library. I would have to order and buy them all and my finances unfortunately don't allow that...

In one of the articles of Gershom Scholem one can read that Christian Kabbala did not add much to Kabbala than just the suggestion, that Tarot has had an early connection to Kabbala.

He has the "back to earth" approach, and I love that ... for Jewish Kabbala he had in research history a similar function like Michael Dummett for Tarot, if you know this name. ... and this means, back to the documents. Even Jewish "really" kabbalists didn't love him really for that ... similar as "real" Tarotists didn't love Dummett.

.... reading Scholem can spare a lot of time.

If you've a lack of money, try a University library, if they've the dictionary there, that I mentioned, then you've long biographies of even humble kabalists, a 100 (?, at least rather long and very good) pages article by Scholem to the point Kabbala, each important text in a single point in the dictionary, and each special difficult word (and there are a lot of them) explained, all at hand. Then you could study as long you desire and it might easily happen, that you think, it is too much ... The dictionary has great pages, each book is rather thick and there are about 15 of them ... one learns a lot about Jewish culture generally.

There is a good Jewish dictionary online, I didn't test it for its qualities for Kabbala, but some articles, that I studied, seemed to have a good quality ....

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com

.... but it seems, that it is from 1901-1906, so it can't be very good, as with Gerschom Scholem a lot of progress in this field was achieved and Scholem is of a later date.

Whose idea of Kabbala has something to do with Tarot? Modern (19th century) thinkers like Eliphas Levi and Golden Dawn and all what followed them, based either upon unsubstantiated historical conclusions, which is bad, or the ultimate freedom of any thinker to make a system in the way, that the thinker likes, which at least is a free creative idea. Then the thinker can say, "this is kabbala, as I understand it" and - to cite Gerschom Scholem again - "actually any kabbalist had his own system" or similar in this sense, and there you can see: This freedom has a great tradition ... :)
 

Nina*

Hey again...

Huck... I think I (perhaps, maybe, a little :eek:) ) understand what you mean. Anyway I do understand, that if I REALLY want to learn about Kabalah, I have to go all the way and learn from the 'source'.

What I don't understand is: if Kabalah's references to tarot is really not there (that is: not to be read about) how come it's discussed in so many threads here? Is it because that when you have really LEARNED about Kabalah, then you'll understand the similiarities?? Or don't you Kabalah-guys use tarot at all ;o) ?

Nina
 

Huck

Ninamagic said:
Hey again...

Huck... I think I (perhaps, maybe, a little :eek:) ) understand what you mean. Anyway I do understand, that if I REALLY want to learn about Kabalah, I have to go all the way and learn from the 'source'.

Nina

Hi, magical Nina,
the 'source' would be too much for you and me. It's old Hebrew or Aramaean and that's probably too difficult. Scholem was a scholar and capable with this languages and with great difficulties and very good ways to archives etc. it was possible to him to awake a lot of these old texts to new life and meaning again.
It was not so, that Kabbala was always totally interesting to the Jewish people. They had an intensive phase with it from ca. 1500 - 1750 AD (not all of them, but a greater number) and then they realised (not all of them, but a greater number), that this is all rather old stuff and there was a modern life with new demands and interests. And Kabbala started to become forgotten in a similar way as Christian Western world freed itself - ALSO - from medieval believe, superstition and not uptodate opinions about life and everything. So these kabbalistic scriptures, produced 100 and some more years earlier, became uninteresting as old books become once uninteresting, when they're read often enough.
Jewish people forgot about Kabbala, more or less only in the undeveloped Eastern European countries some structures of it survived. This is the story of 18th century.
In 19th century, however, Christian thinkers started to get a free religious mind, short before, during and after French revolution, free of a stubborn Christian thinking. They could think of other believes and believers in other terms now - this were not "only pagans", which must be conquered, but this were interesting ethnological objects, there were rich archeological fields to discover and lots of insights to develop. The universities started to get some freedom.
The intellectuals discovered, discovered and discovered and it was unavoidable, they also had to discover Jewish Kabbala (naturally not all of them, but some of them, at the beginning naturally only few of them).
So a Western-Christian adaption of Kabbala could happen, something, which already had been tried by earlier scholars in 16th and 17th century, but this were only intellectuals with not very much influence. Some of the researchers developed a sort of kabbala-enthusiasm - Scholem comes to the conclusion or better suspicion, that somehow these enthusiasts have the merit, that Kabbala was not completely forgotten. He judges them from his superior viewing more than 100 years later (more than 100 research years later, better informations, better books, better access to archives etc.) as "not really knowing, what the object was", but he is fair enough to see this point.
Jewish persons more or less didn't participate - to these modern intellectuals Jewish Kabbala was not interesting enough - simply old stuff and not old enough to be interesting again. Scholem was then the generation, to which Kabbala was interesting enough and he found a rich field, cause others had avoided the theme before. So he could become a great scholar with it - especially as the ex-Christian enthusiasts of 19th century had the handicap of foreign culture and foreign language.
No, I don't suggest the sources to you. But Scholem, a man who was in near touch to the sources with a modern understandable language, is good readable.

Ninamagic said:
Hey again...

What I don't understand is: if Kabalah's references to tarot is really not there (that is: not to be read about) how come it's discussed in so many threads here? Is it because that when you have really LEARNED about Kabalah, then you'll understand the similiarities?? Or don't you Kabalah-guys use tarot at all ;o) ?

Nina

Oh, many people, who haven't read Scholem, believe in a Tarot-Kabbala context, and those, who know about it's unrealism, can still "creative" use it in a personal way. But perhaps you ask this themselves ... I'm not a Kabbala-guy.
I just read some books in my youth, first Tarot-Kabbala books from Papus and Crowley and some others, later then Scholem, and I remember well in my personal development, that reading Scholem meant to become free from nonsense ... :) to me, at least. He just opens the historical perspective in the theme kabbala. He shows, that the mysterious kabbala is a man-made mental structure, which took its natural way through time and space - comparable to other, not so mysterious mental structures, Western philosophy for instance, with similar development difficulties (not all philosophs had the same opinion, indeed, and not all kabbalists had the same opinion :))

Have a nice way
 

jmd

As Huck mentioned earlier, some Rabbinical criticisms of Scholem also abound - yet what he did for Kabalah is indeed provide a similar service as principally Dummett has given Tarot.

Earlier, Huck also writes that 'So a Western-Christian adaption of Kabbala could happen, something, which already had been tried by earlier scholars in 16th and 17th century, but this were only intellectuals with not very much influence' - with this I would have to somewhat disagree.

Perhaps the many protagonists were indeed 'intellectuals', but it is these which were highly influential in ever broadening circles of influence.

For example, in the mid-16th century Postel began an influence which spanned not only in time for at least a century, but also spatially throughout Europe.

As an example - and an example only it is - Marion Kuntz opens her important study on Guillaume (ie, William) Postel thus:
  • 'Guillaume Postel was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable and interesting scholars and thinkers of the sixteenth century. His knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic was rare among his contemporaries, as was his study and use of the Rabbinical, Cabalistic and Islamic literature preserved in these languages. His attempt to harmonize Christian, Jewish and Mohammedan thought give him an important place in the history of religious tolerance, whereas his prophecies about a universal religion and a universal monarchy seem to anticipate more recent ideas of a world state and of general peace. In his prophecies, Postel assigned a unique role to himself and to a pious lady whom he had met in Venice and whom he lavishly praises in all his later writings [which numbers in the thousands of pages in the Vatican library alone, by the way]. Admired and respected by many contemporary scholars and princes in France, Italy and Germany, he also aroused the suspicions of the religious and political authorities of his time [because, I would claim, influential] who considered him dangerous but mad and thus spared his life, but confined him to a monastery for many years. His numerous writings survive in [now] rare editions and manuscripts, and the later copies of some of his works show that he continued to be read and to exercise much influence down to the eighteenth century.'
(my emphasis throughout)

Of course, this does not totally negate Huck's point, but rather shows that Kabalistic thought had clearly, from a relatively early time, been used outside of the 'strict' orthodox Jewish enclaves.

Of course, the later E. Levi, and later still altered GD-variety of Kabalistic usage forms not the central important foci of Kabalah, hence also why I too would also recommend - as I have in earlier threads - Scholem in addition to Kaplan and Idel.

Halevi is also a wonderful and modern (and living) re-interpretation of some of the key concepts in Kabalah, mainly from a perspective I personally consider quite psychologically oriented.
 

Fluffmeister

I think some of the confusion about whether Kabbalah and tarot are connected is because there are various sorts of Kabbalah. It is of Jewish origin, and a fundamental part of Judaism; however, I suspect most of us on here are really more aware of "hermetic" Kabbalah (often spelled Qablah) as espoused by the Golden Dawn. Hermetic Qabalah certainly uses tarot - most Orthodox Jews, however, do not.

I like the Golden Dawn system - it works for me, and I although I like the Thoth deck and am tempted to get it, I use the Golden Dawn New Ritual Tarot deck.

I like it because it ties in astrology, tarot and the qabalah - each card has the astrological symbolism related to that card.

For an example, I've got a picture of the Star card on my website:

www.zaalberg.freeserve.co.uk/tarot.htm
 

Huck

Great and small Kabbala

Historical great influential Kabbala was, when in 1666 (or 1665 ?)Shabbetai Zevi rode 7x around Jerusalem and claimed to be the Messias, and then Jews all around Europe started to sell their business to have a journey to Jerusalem, cause they thought, that the time has come, and when even 80-90 years after this a long process took place in Hamburg, Germany, between Embden and Eybeschütz and the matter is about if one of them is Shabbetaist or not. This is great influence.

Something similar we cannot observe with Christian Kabbala. We've other great movements. Luther standing in Worms, claiming: "Here do I stand and I can't do else ..."and about 10 years later Rome burning and 100 years later a 30-years long war in Germany. This is very influential.

Postel taking a trip in the Orient to spy for King Francois cannot compete.

Reuchlin, called the first German Kabbalist, has its major influence cause his resistance against the Cologne Dominicans, which tried to prolong the Spanish prosecution of Jews in Germany - practical humanity and some acceptance of the "other culture", probably caused by his specific interests (he was a scholar and he had learnt their language, so he couldn't stay and act as stupid as his contemporaries).
Historical important was, that he was defended by German humanists in "Dunkelmännerbriefen" and that this prepared the resistance of Luther. His kabbalistical writings and engagement stayed of minor importance.

And Luther was - by no means - very friendly to Jews.

... well, I think, it's correct to say, that Western Kabbala in 16th and 17th century stayed an adventure of few intellectuals.
Naturally, book-printing caused intellectual exchange in all dimensions, so it couldn't stay hidden, that there existed something like Kabbala, but I doubt, that it got "unusual great" interest from Christian scholars.

Influential was the expulsion from Spain, 1492. It caused, that intellectual Jews spread all over Europe. Reuchlin's defense of Jews is just a small consequence between others just from this.