All Things Kabbalah

[Roni]

This is a continuation of a conversation that began from one of three performances by Roni's in another thread, which led to a discussion about Kabbalah.

--Carol

the first few Hebrew words...not sure. What were they?

That's the very beginning of creation, according to the Torah (book of "Genesis"):

"Bereshit bara Elohim et ha-shamaim vet ha-arez"
"In the beginning God created the sky and the earth" (literally: "the land")

 

[Artyczar]

Ah. They were familiar. I almost said the Firmament, but maybe that wasn't in the bunch.

 

[Roni]

They were familiar ...

So, are you knowing the language a bit?
I would love to, but never really got into it, being lazy and not gifted and etc.
My approach so far, however, is limited to what you basically need to know for a minimum-understanding of Kabbalah. (That's where my interest in the language came from and it was way before Madonna made the subject a popular fashion.)

 

[Artyczar]

My knowledge of it is exactly the same as yours and for the exact same reasons. I have been loosely studying Kabbalah for a while now. (The Kabbalah that Madonna and Sandra Bernhardt did was part of a cult--led by Stephen Berg who I believe wound up in jail, not the same thing as real Kabbalah.)

I took one Hebrew class so I know how it works as far as grammatically, but I don't know much more.

 

[Roni]

exactly the same as yours and for the exact same reasons. I have been loosely studying Kabbalah for a while now

That's cool as hell. Maybe not the right thread (or even the right forum) to exchange on topics as such.
You decide being the host.

With Tarot and Kabbalah, my first encounter's been in the 80s at age 16.
[and I was lucky to find a fine teacher who was NOT into the common kitsch of esoterics.]

Just then (around 1987?) the German translation of Israel Regardie's books about "The Golden Dawn" was published in 3 volumes [guess what it meant to a teenager to save the pocket-money for this].

So, yes and all in all, the kabbalistic tradition where I came from, has been "The Golden Dawn" [NOT Crowley!!!], Papus (especially!), Dion Fortune (very late in my case, but a fine knower of the hermetic Kabbalah).

Being a scientific person, I've meanwhile also read works by Gershom Sholem as well as original Jewish kabbalah-writings, like [ONLY PARTS of !!] the Sefer Jezirah, Sefer Bahir, the Zohar as it's been translated by Knorr von Rosenroth in the 17th century; and parts from Luria. Also attended (ca 6 yrs ago?) a seminar at our university given from the professor of Judaistic-studies.

I would LOVE to exchange with you about the Kabbalah - maybe not necessarily here.
Let me know.

 

[Artyczar]

Looks like you know more than me, but maybe I know a few things you might now know either--you never know. We can exchange talks, maybe on another thread. Nothing wrong with it, especially since we've both addressed it in our art. I will create a thread somewhere else.

 

[Artyczar]

Hope you found this now that it's been moved here to the Creativity Forum.

I really want to hear how you came to study Kabbalah. I'd love to talk a bit about how I found my way to it too, but I have to admit, it will expose a lot of vulnerable things about me. Very vulnerable and embarrassing things. I have talked about many of these in my book, which I realized is published, but it's not the same thing as specifically posting it on a forum. Yet, I sort of want to. I'm not sure where to start except to give you the context that, before I "discovered" Kabbalah, I was trapped in the cult of Scientology for 20 years prior from ages 11 or 12, til about 31. I'm ashamed of having to admit to something as stupid as that, but it's true. After I left, I can at least feel extremely confident to say I am an expert in the subject of cults, and how they work, how they persuade their members, and the socio-psychological tactics that are used to keep people in and believing. It's just unfortuneate that it took ten years of deep study to learn this while readjusting to society.

As you may or may not know, unbeknownst to the members of Scientology, Hubbard founded all of Scientology on Crowley's version of the Luira Calabah. I wouldn't know that until years after I left.

 

[xie-kitchin]

...Also, I've studied tarot and through that am a bit aware of Kabbalah, but I'm not up to speed on the Hebrew you're using in this. My girlfriend's also into Crowley's work...

 

[Roni]

ok, now since we're set here, let's get away from my performance and back to kabbalah, will we?

before I "discovered" Kabbalah, I was trapped in the cult of Scientology for 20 years prior from ages 11 or 12, til about 31.

This is quite shocking. At such a young age, I suppose your membership there came through your parents, right?

maybe I know a few things you might now know either

I'm sure you do. Looking forward to it.
Do you remember your first encounter with it or what was the first really good book you read about it?

I really want to hear how you came to study Kabbalah.

Basically, I've summed it up in the above post #5.
Of course in between phases of study since age 16 till now, there have been plenty of years with no kabbalah or esoteric or hermetic at all. Plenty!

 

[Artyczar]

I think this thread is a cleaned up as I can get it and we can continue this conversation? I hope!

Yes, it is shocking to most people that I got into the cult at such a young age and assume it was through my parents, but it wasn't. I think because of my shitty home life with my parents I was drawn to Scientology. At the time, it seemed to have answers and it definitely had structure. I got into it through my older brother who was introduced to it through a family of celebrities.

I'm not sure of my very first encounter, or why I got interested in Kabbalah. After I left the cult, I was really fucked up. I knew I wanted to go back to a shul of some sort since it was something that made me feel safe when I was a small child with my great grandmother and my mom's family. I'd always identified as a Jew, but didn't truly know what that meant. I had a pocket Torah of my grandmothers that was all in Hebrew and someone told me that all the letters also had numeric meanings. Seeing the movie Pi, also made me curious.

The shapes of the letters were interesting to me and when I found out they had mystical meaning, I looked them up on line and found the Bal Shem Tov writings and pretty much studied the hell out of them from his teachings. Then I started taking classes at a temple that taught Jewish Mysticism and the Sephirot. That's when I started reading books by Nachman of Breslov. Blew my fucking mind. Have you read him?

 

[xie-kitchin]

Whoops, now I see everything got shuffled around!

I don't have much more to contribute here, but I'll say I'm not surprised by the Kabbalah/Hubbard connection. He knew Jack Parsons, did he not? He seems to have generally been part of that weird West Coast esoteric/occult culture of the time, and pulled from a lot of that stuff. CoS mythology always reads like SF rehashing of Gnostic mythologies to me.

 

[Roni]

Bal Shem Tov [...] I started reading books by Nachman of Breslov. Blew my fucking mind. Have you read him?

I knew the Baal Shem Tov only by name and Nachman not at all.
Chassidim wasn't in my focus, eben though it's one of the main research-subjects of the professor at our Judaism department at Bamberg University, Susanne Talabardon, who even recently published a book about it (in German). But I've only been to her lectures on Kabbalah and some on the Hebrew Bible, esp the Torah.

Other than you, I'm not at all familiar with Jewish life and my knowledge goes only very superficial around parts of the history and developement till the Babylonian Exile or maybe 70 CE (the year the second Temple was destroyed).

Since my interest in Kabbalah emerged from esoteric/hermetic roots rather than Jewish ones, my approach was different than yours.
Hence my early reading of Regardie, Papus, Dion Fortune, etc.
I did not know it as a teen, but their ideas of the Kabbalah have been pretty limited to fit their interests and needs.
On the other hand, however, my later studies through Sholem and a few of the original texts showed that "Hermetic Cabbalah" is NOT - as one might assume - a screw-up (or Christian-bias) of the original. In fact, the many schools inside the Jewish context (Abulafia, Moshe de Leon, Gikatilla, Luria, Cordovero, etc) differ so much against each other, that these differences are bigger, than those between "Jewish" Kabbalah and "Hermetic" Kabbalah.

Since you wrote, that Nachman, who I never read, blew your mind: Would you tell me/us a bit about his approach to the subject? (I've only just constulted wikipedia on him.)

 

[Artyczar]

Well, the approach blew my mind because the deepest of the mysticism is hidden in simple fables. Anyone could get it on a level that works for them, as you said, thus its extremely existential. By way of the Torah, there is Jewish life that can be practiced in every day life. There is the "law" and there is the "meaning." Every letter has more than one meaning. Every name in the Torah has more than one meaning. Every part of the Tree of Life has many, many meanings. It's how one wants to look at them and incorporate those meanings into their Jewishness.

Nachman's tales have hidden meanings, just like the Torah's stories have them, only Nachman is relating them to the very top of the Sephirot. The knowing, and the not knowing. The truth of the very beginning, the thing, and the NO-thing. It's kind of hard to explain what I learned from those stories because I learned them in conjunction with the classes I took that taught the different meanings of the Hebrew letters and how the Sephirot relates to the Torah. I wasn't learning or agreeing with Chasidism. It was just another tool/view to see with. Nachman was enlightened in ways more than his students and followers might have been aware.

As for books, there are The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, which is a good one, but I started with The Seven Beggars: https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Rabbi-Nachman-Bratslav-Selections/dp/1592643000

I'm probably not explaining it well, or with the best clarity, maybe because it was personal to me. It didn't occur to me what exactly Hubbard stole from this stuff until something clicked in all this. When I was just a kid, there were tenants that sold me on Scientology. Had I known he was stealing straight from the whole first world story (tzimtzum) thing, I wouldn't have handed over my will little by little. I thought he invented this stuff! I thought HE knew how light became to be and was enlightened as all hell, but he was a fucking con artist and it took me 20 years to figure that out.

When I left, I went through years of deprograming myself by debunking every word that ever came out of him. If it was anything that made sense, I would find out where he pulled it from, or who figured it out before he did so I could render him absolutely idiotic in my mind.

Come full circle, I started learning this Kabbalah stuff, almost by coincidence and realized that it was what he got involved with in Pasadena with Crowley and Jack Parsons before inventing Scientology. It was just second generation Qabalah, lifted from Crowley who lifted it himself and taught his "Do what thou wilt" philosophy, which is exactly what Hubbard was all about.

Blah blah blah...this got long!

 

[Roni]

The truth of the very beginning, the thing, and the NO-thing. It's kind of hard to explain [...]

I understand, I think, that you're talking about the "Ain Sof", the "No-Border", "No-End", "Infinite", coming to Existence (be it through the "Zimzum" [Luria] or simply[?] by creating the "Adam Kadmon" from which then the Sephiroth emanate), right?

These are ideas, that I find intriguing and even intuitively accessible. [sic!]
Also, I would say, that these very ideas, that I've just mentioned, do not collide (much?) with the common Jewish doctrines about the ONE God (in the middle-ages, where Kabbalah started). If I might say so.
I guess, if the Kabbalah's claims about the very VERY beginning wouldn't go further than that, it might not have been recognized as something special or much different.

Remarkably the Hermetic Kabbalah (where I came from initially) doesn't go back further indeed. Inside Hermetic Kabbalah, everything behind the border of Kether (the "Non-existing-Existence", the "Ain Sof") can Not be specified (or talked about in other than negative terms; similar to Plotin's "The One"-entity).
BUT:
The original Jewish Kabbalah went beyond that!
Who would ever thought?


By that, I'm referring especially to the "ZOHAR", namely the "Sitre Torah" about "Bereshit" ("In the beginning" = the very start of creation / the beginning of the book of "Genesis")
[in any 3-volume-edition of the "Zohar", the whole part should be found in: Vol.1 / leave 15a till 22a]

There we find claims - referring to the very first words of creation "Bereshit bara Elohim ..." - that even God (as WE know Him! - by His name "Elohim") has been created. And he has been created through "Bereshit", the "beginning" [of course by HIM, the ONE true God].

This idea even goes back, at least, to the first (or second, depending on your answer to the question, if the "Sefer Jezira" is a kabbalistic or proto-kabbalistic work) book of Kabbalah:
The "Sefer Bahir".
In its §8 we find the statement, that the VERY first thing, that He has created, has been, what the universe needs [according to Gershom Sholem's comment on the Bahir, which was his PhD, this means the Torah], and then God [Elohim] and then heaven and land.

If I might say so.

 

[Artyczar]

I am aware of the Zohar and was taught about that, a bit, and I suppose, with my own personal gatherings from comparing the Torah (Genesis) with my learning about the story with the light and the vessels, and all that, (tzimtzum), I came to getting somewhere near this same realization on my own (possibly?) one week when reading about the Firmament. It occurred to me, around that time, I guess when I was doing a direct translation of Genesis--taking parts of the Hebrew and directly translating it all over the internet, then comparing it to translations on Chabad.org, I saw how God was not unlike us at all, and that he too should have been made up of the "everything," like the parts of the big bang, or the Light, or what have you.

Before I went over these things for the second or third time, I did a short study of the first 10 or so letters in the alphabet in the desert and kept a short blog about it for my Exodus Project that starts about here. It's pretty amateur, but it was where my head was at in 2014 on this stuff.

Can you direct me to anything on the web regarding this info on Gershom Sholem's comments on the Bahir about the first created universe where God was created after the fact?

 

[Artyczar]

I also made a bunch of Sephirots in watercolor that year and here is one that looks kind of interesting to me now. I sure knew a lot more about some of this stuff back then than I do right now--ha ha ha! But I wish I had made the horizontal line that should have been placed just below the section (daath) to differentiate the upper and lower "worlds," or where there is enlightened knowledge above that line. I have to look at all my class notes, but...something like that.

 

[Roni]

realization on my own (possibly?) one week when reading about the Firmament. It occurred to me ...

Things like this do happen.
Could it be, that this is why you've thought the "Firmament" was in my Hebrew writing? Because you have a special relationship to it due to your experience?

taking parts of the Hebrew and directly translating it all over the internet

Not sure, if I understand this right: Are you having the texts translated through an internet-algorithm?
If, so, [I do not mean to diminish your studies, but] I - personally - wouldn't rely on such a source.

My recommendation would be, if you may ask, to look for a "scientific" translation (for example in German this means NOT to use Luther's, even though the language is fine, but either the "Zurich"-translation or the "Elberfelder"-translation).
And then:
combine it with a "translinear"-translation. This is the most true to the original Hebrew.
It has 3 lines:
(1) the Hebrew letters (2) the pronounciation of them (3) the word-by-word translation [right-to-left].

As an example, I'm attaching the first 2 pages of the German edition:

Can you direct me to anything on the web regarding this info on Gershom Sholem's comments on the Bahir

Unfortunately not; because I have it as an old-school printed book which is a German edition.
(He grew up in Germany, so it was his first language. This PhD of his, btw, was not only a comment, but also a whole translation of the "Bahir" into German! Some sort of PhD, eh?)

Of course, what I could do is scanning the part from the book for you. But, as I said, it's in German.


By the way, I'd be pleased, if you'd show my above post about the "Very beginning" to your rabbi or whoever is the expert of your choice, so that I know, if I'm totally wrong here or on spot.
[They should have a recognizing laugh on my phrase "If I might say so".]

 

[Roni]

Of course, what I could do is scanning the part from the book for you. But, as I said, it's in German.

Ah, whatever, I just did it (not scanning, just a quick-cell-phone-shot for now, but readable - and marked the relevant passages in red):

 

[Roni]

here is one [...] I wish I had made the horizontal line that should have been placed just below the section (daath)

Yes, maybe drawing an indication of "the gap" would've been a nice idea. I can imagine it, and maybe not "crossing" the drawing, but behind the paths, so they remain undisturbed (and the letters still placed in their position).

I must confess, that I never had a close relationship to "Da'at". Could be sort of self-containment to not "disturb", what is intentionally hidden. I don't know. But what I found interesting and enlightening, was Your comment on it accompanying the drawing:
"I personally see the Daath as a representation the self (you) or (me), trying to learn enough information to touch upon what there is to know about the unknowable."
That's a striking view.

 

[Roni]

that starts about here.

Have just read this entry, where you wrote: "Aleph is not the first letter of the Torah. [...] Beit is the very first letter of Genesis."

There is a nice kabbalistic story about, how all the letters of the Alephbeth come to God, asking to start creation with them - beginning with "Tav" and moving forward.
Each letter is dismissed, till "Beth" comes and gets the approval to be the first letter of creation. After hearing that, the letter "Aleph" is too modest to apply and to award the letter for its modesty, God uses it to start the words no 3 and 4 of creation with it (after no 1 and 2 starting with Beth).
It must be on the web somewhere. It's pretty famous, I think.