Qabalah
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The Qabalah is a Hebrew word meaning "received" - an oral tradition of knowledge passed on. The Qabalah can be seen in many different ways - an ancient Jewish saying is that "there are as many ways to Truth as human faces". Everyone has their own path, and each of us carries with us our own Qabalah. Like life itself, you can read about it, write about it and think about it - but at the end of the day it can't be taught, only experienced. |
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Qabalah is a Hebrew word, and so is spelt using Hebrew characters (written from right to left). Hebrew does not use vowels, and many of the consonants don't have a one-to-one correspondence with English. So Qabalah can be spelt Kabbalah, Cabala, Qabala...
Will Parfitt, in his book "The New Living Qabalah", (see bibliography) classifies the Qabalah into five parts:
Although Judaism, like Christianity, uses the Bible (except the New Testament) as its primary holy book, it assumes that the Bible is far more complex than it appears at face value. Judaism has a long history of writing commentaries on the Bible - the Talmud is one such set of writings.
The Qabalah has its own literary history - the earliest and most influential book is the Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Formation), which according to legend was written by Abraham, although it was probably written between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago. In this book, each letter of the Hebrew alphabet (there are 22) was assigned to either one of the three elements (Fire, Air, Water - Earth was considered to be a combination of all three, and not an element in its own right), one of the seven planets (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) or one of the twelve signs of the zodiac.
In 1280, the Spanish Qabalist Moses de Leon compiled the Zohar, or Book of Radiance. He probably wrote it himself, although he claimed it derived from the mystical writings of a second century Qabalist, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.
The Qabalah has a reputation for being "secret", but this secrecy only occurred as a result of persecution of Qabalists by Christians. Indeed, in the thirteenth century, the Spanish Qabalist Abraham Abulafia opened the practice to include Jewish women and non-Jews - a radical step.
