#even the golden dawn was just europeanized tantra
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I fucking hate how wicca is one of the first things people think about when you talk about magick with someone.
#magick#anti wicca#fuck wicca#i hate it so much#your just golden dawn with some more cultural appropriation mixed in#even the golden dawn was just europeanized tantra#plus some stealing from jewish people#like all good Europeans
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Kabbalah Ultimate Guide: Key to Your Inner Power (2021)
Kabbalah (also called Kabalah, Cabala, Qabala) is a Jewish tradition that deals with the essence of God. It is frequently translated as "mysticism" or "occult knowledge." Kabbalists believe that God works in mysterious ways, whether it's through a sacred text, an experience, or the way things work. Kabbalists, on the other hand, believe that actual knowledge and understanding of that inner, unfathomable process is possible, and that this knowledge can lead to the deepest connection with God.
The Zohar, a compilation of written, mystical interpretations on the Torah, is regarded as Kabbalah's foundation. The Zohar, written in ancient Aramaic and medieval Hebrew, is meant to lead Kabbalists on their spiritual path, assisting them in achieving greater degrees of communion with God.Kabbalistic philosophy is frequently regarded as Jewish mysticism. Its adherents prefer to see the Creator and Creation as a unified whole rather than separate entities, and they yearn for closeness to God. Because of the tremendous mystical sense of connection that Kabbalists believe exists between God and humans, this longing is extremely strong. Every person's soul has a hidden part of God that is waiting to be unveiled. Even mystics who hesitate to express such a strong merger of God and man find divinity pervading all of Creation, blurring the lines between God and the universe. Moses Cordovero, a Kabbalist, writes: “The essence of divinity can be discovered in everything, and nothing exists save It....It exists in each existent.”
History of Kabalah:
Throughout history, historians of Judaism have identified numerous schools of Jewish esotericism, each with its own set of interests and ideas. The Kabbalah as it was known in the 12th and subsequent centuries. To avoid the pitfalls inherent in mystical experiences, Kabbalah has traditionally been primarily an oral tradition in which entrance into its teachings and rituals is conducted by a personal tutor. Insofar as it claims secret knowledge of the unwritten Torah (divine revelation) that was transmitted by God to Moses and Adam, esoteric Kabbalah is also "tradition." Though the Torah remained the central foundation of Judaism, Kabbalah provided a means of directly addressing God. It therefore provided Judaism a theological dimension, while some saw its mystical approaches to God as dangerously pantheistic and heretical.The origins of Kabbala can be traced back to Merkava mysticism. The euphoric and mystical contemplation of the heavenly throne, or "chariot" (merkava), seen in a vision by Ezekiel, the prophet, began to grow in Palestine in the first century CE (Ezekiel 1). SeferYetzira ("Book of Creation"), the first known Jewish treatise on magic and cosmology, was written between the third and sixth centuries. It presented creation as a process involving God the Creator's 10 divine numbers (sefirot; see sefira) and the Hebrew alphabet's 22 letters. They were claimed to make up the "32 paths of secret wisdom" when taken together.
The 12th-century Sefer ha-bahir (“Book of Brightness”), a significant tract of early Kabbala, had a deep and enduring influence on the development of Jewish esoteric mysticism and on Judaism in general. The Bahir not only understood the sefirot as playing a role in the creation and maintenance of the universe, but he also incorporated concepts like soul transmigration (gilgul) into Judaism and strengthened the foundations of Kabbala by giving it with a rich mystical symbolism.The Sefer ha-temuna (“Book of the Image”), published in Spain in the following century, established the concept of cosmic cycles, each of which provides a divine attribute-based interpretation of the Torah. As a result, Judaism was portrayed as a religion with changing truths, with a different Torah for each cycle, or eon. Spain also produced the legendary Sefer ha-zohar ("Book of Splendour"), a book with a sanctity rivaling that of the Torah itself in some places. It included mystical theories on evil, salvation, and the soul, as well as the mystery of creation and the roles of the sefirot. After their exile from Spain in 1492, Jews were more interested than ever in messianic expectations and eschatology, and Kabbala gained widespread acceptance.
Lurianic Kabbala also had a considerable impact on the ideas of modern asidism, a social and theological movement that emerged in the 18th century and continues to thrive in small but substantial Jewish communities today.By the mid-16th century, Safed, Galilee, had established itself as the undisputed center of Kabbala, and it was here that one of the greatest of all Kabbalists, Isaac ben Solomon Luria, spent the last years of his life. Luria's influence was only equaled by that of the Sefer ha-zohar, according to Gershom Gerhard Scholem, a modern Jewish Kabbala scholar.The “withdrawal” (tzimtzum) of divine light, so creating primordial space; the sinking of illuminating particles into matter (qellipot: “shells”); and a “cosmic restoration” (tiqqun) that the Jew achieves via an intensive mystical life and unrelenting combat against evil. Shabbetaianism, a 17th-century Jewish messianic movement, was justified using Lurianic Kabbalism as justification.
The name "Kabbalah" technically refers to literature that first appeared in medieval Spain and southern France in the 13th century. However, outside of academics, the name "Kabbalah" is used to refer to all types of Jewish esotericism.Kabbalah was a popular and widely practiced esoteric knowledge tradition until the start of the modern period, however there were restrictions on the age and relative piety of initiates. It included ancient Talmudic investigations of biblical subjects, stories of ecstatic descents to God's throne, massive creation myths, tremendous messianic zeal, and forms of pietistic ritual and practice that gave rise to groups that still affect Judaism today.Following the haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, many Jews saw the Kabbalah as at best an embarrassing relic of a more credulous era, and it fell into contempt among Europe's increasingly secular Jews. The Kabbalah, on the other hand, has recently witnessed a huge renaissance, with widespread secular and religious interest in it and certain schools reaching out to non-Jews in unprecedented ways.
Difference between Kabbalah vs Hermetic Qabalah?
Now lets see what is Hermetic Qabalah it is a type of Kabalah Hermetic Qabalah is a Western esoteric tradition incorporating mysticism and the occult (from Hebrew (qabalah)'reception, accounting'). The essence of divinity is a key preoccupation of Hermetic Qabalah, whose idea differs significantly from that of monotheistic religions; in particular, there is no rigid division between god and humanity as observed in monotheisms. The Neoplatonic belief that the manifest cosmos, of which material creation is a part, arose as a sequence of emanations from the godhead is held by Hermetic Qabalah.It is the ideology and framework that underpins magical organizations like the Golden Dawn, The lemic orders, and mystical-religious societies like the Builders of the Adytum and the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, as well as the Neopagan, Wiccan, and New Age movements. The Hermetic Qabalah is the foundation for left-hand path orders like the Typhonian Order to study Qliphothic Qabalah. In the European Renaissance, Hermetic Qabalah evolved alongside and merged with Christian Cabalistic participation, evolving into Esoteric Christian, non-Christian, or anti-Christian schools in the contemporary age. It is influenced by a variety of sources, including Jewish Kabbalah, Western astrology, Alchemy, Pagan religions, particularly Egyptian and Greco-Roman (from which the term "Hermetic" is derived), neoplatonism, gnosticism, John Dee and Edward Kelley's Enochian system of angelic magic, hermeticism, tantra, and tarot symbolism. Although Hermetic Qabalah differs from Jewish Kabbalah in that it is a more openly syncretic system, but it shares many concepts with Jewish Kabbalah.The Neo-Platonic, Sufi, Hermetic, and Christian Mystical Sources have enhanced the main system, which is known as the Hermetic Qabalah. Qablah is more than just a collection of facts. It's a technique for teaching the mind to think practically and in relational terms. Aspirants can use this technique to awaken their awareness and solve the ultimate questions about nature, God, the Universe, and man's soul.In the European Renaissance, Hermetic Qabalah evolved alongside and merged with Christian Cabalistic participation, becoming variously Esoteric Christian, non-Christian, or anti-Christian across its various schools in the modern day. It is influenced by a wide range of sources, including Jewish Kabbalah, Western astrology, Alchemy, Pagan religions, particularly Egyptian and Greco-Roman (from which the term "Hermetic" is derived), neoplatonism, gnosticism, John Dee and Edward Kelley's Enochian system of angelic magic, hermeticism, tantra, and tarot symbolism.
Mystic Kabbalah & Esoteric knowledge:
Jewish mysticism is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of theories about the Godhead, as well as practices and beliefs that go beyond the requirements of traditional Judaism. The term Kabbalah refers to a type of Jewish mysticism that emerged in Provence and Catalonia in the 12th century CE. It was concerned with the inner structure and processes occurring within the divine realms, the metaphysical dynamics of which the Kabbalists attempted to influence.
This phenomenon was distinct from the older Ashkenazic mystical traditions, which were primarily concerned with rigorous piety and interpretive techniques applied to official Jewish texts in order to reveal their hidden layers of meaning. It was also distinct from magical traditions, which were primarily concerned with subduing supernatural forces and harnessing them to effect physical change. What these various strands of hidden Jewish traditions have in common is a belief in the supernatural power of language.
The Hebrew language has a divine origin, according to Jewish tradition. God creates the world in Genesis by pronouncing his will; thus, language has the ultimate creative potential. From antiquity to the present, this viewpoint has served as the foundation for the majority of Jewish mystical and magical traditions. One of the earliest Jewish mystical texts of Hellenistic provenance, Seferyetsirah, which scholars date between the 2nd and 7th centuries CE, describes the process of creation as taking place through the 22 Hebrew letters and ten cardinal numbers.Early on, SeferYetsirah received magically oriented interpretations that explained how to imagine and possibly repeat the divine process of creation by manipulating the Hebrew alphabet, resulting in the creation of a golem. Giving a golem a name was thought to animate and control its body, while erasing the name was thought to annihilate the creature.
Any name and its designated object are directly linked in Jewish mystical tradition, so the name reflects the nature of its object. Every entity has a linguistic equivalent – a name, and God is no exception. The highest form of knowledge in some medieval Ashkenazic mystical works, as well as in some types of later Kabbalah, concerns the divine realms, with the names of angels and the divine being the most important.
Abulafia's prophetic Kabbalah required extensive physical and mental preparations, as well as years of study by each potential practitioner. Although it required a thorough understanding of the accompanying procedures, the use of names in Jewish magic was far more democratic. Anyone could follow a procedure detailed in multiple manuals or cookbooks, and success was solely dependent on strict adherence to the formulae. As a result, divine, angelic, and even demonic names were used for a variety of purposes. Manuscript sources abound with spells and adjurations demonstrating the widespread popularity of all types of magic among Jews, whether therapeutic (aimed at healing), learned (aiding in knowledge and memory), or even aggressive (used to subdue a person to someone else's will).
While the majority of mystical and Kabbalistic teaching was aimed at understanding and influencing the supernatural realm, magic was thought to provide immediate effects in the physical realm. Interestingly, many medieval and early modern manuscripts contain both Kabbalistic and magical texts, confirming the widely held belief that language was capable of affecting changes on various levels of creation and beyond. Each miscellaneous Kabbalistic manuscript captures a complex web of connections between speculative (elite) Kabbalah and practical (popular) Jewish magic.
The Jewish mystical tradition is rich and diverse, and Jewish mysticism has manifested itself in a variety of ways. Moshe Idel, a scholar, categorizes Jewish mysticism into two broad categories: moderate and intense. Moderate mysticism is philosophical in nature. It is an attempt to comprehend God and God's world, with the ultimate goal of influencing and changing the divine realm. This type of mysticism incorporates many aspects of traditional Judaism, such as Torah study and commandment observance, and imbues these activities with mystical significance. Intensive mysticism, on the other hand, is primarily experiential. In order to communicate with God, intensive mystics engage in nontraditional religious practices such as chanting and meditation.
The first forms of Jewish mysticism appeared in the first millennium's early centuries. The most common early form was Merkavah mysticism. Merkavah mystics sought to comprehend and experience the vision of the divine throne described in the first chapter of Ezekiel's biblical book. Another type of early mysticism was concerned with delving into the mysterious methods by which God created the world. The most important work of creation mysticism, SeferYetzirah, describes the creation of the world through the arrangement of letters and numbers.
Traditional mystical concepts continue to pervade mainstream Jewish thought (for example, the concepts of tikkun ha-olam, or world repair, and tzimtzum, God's self-limitation), and texts of mystical origin have infiltrated Jewish liturgy (including LechaDodi, the Friday night hymn welcoming the Sabbath, and other liturgical poetry). Furthermore, academic study of Jewish mysticism has flourished in recent decades, owing largely to the work of a single scholar, GershomScholem. Scholem discovered and interpreted numerous mystical manuscripts, shedding light on the origins and evolution of Jewish mysticism.
Can Kabbalah used for healing!
Sharon Brock's Kabbalah, a branch of Jewish mysticism, has regained popularity after a brief surge in the 1970s. But are its tenets relevant to health-care providers? Dr. Tsvi Bar-David, an interfaith chaplain in San Francisco, believes the answer is unequivocally yes. On May 12, he explained to UCSF students how health care providers can use Kabbalah facets to heal. The UCSF Jewish Students Association sponsored the lecture.Kabbalah, which means "to receive" in Hebrew, is a nearly 2,000-year-old belief system about the nature of divinity, the creation of the world, and the role of humans. Kabbalah, as described in the 13th-century book The Zohar, or "Book of Splendor," includes meditative, devotional, mystical, and magical traditions, which is why it is considered an esoteric offshoot of Judaism. Bar-David took a practical approach to Kabbalah in his lecture, explaining how the Ten Sefirots of Light and Darkness can be used for healing. The Sefirots are three-dimensional conceptual spheres that are specifically arranged in a treelike formation in a theoretical space between heaven and earth.
The other spheres are arranged in this contraction-versus-expansion pattern, implying that happiness is attained by striking a central balance between the two sides. The concept of wisdom - or layer of wisdom - is balanced between Binah, which means orderly intelligence and analysis, and Chochmah, which means boundless knowledge and insight. Waiting is a concept or layer that balances Hod, which means restraint and reflection, with Netzach, which means persistence and steadfastness. On a clinical level, the spheres can be used as diagnostic categories, according to Bar-David.Health care providers can assess where their patients fall on this map and recommend behaviors to mitigate the problem. For example, if a woman shows smothering love to her husband and becomes co-dependent, she is displaying too much Chesed and needs to restore balance by setting boundaries, or Gevurah. "Balance is the key to happiness," says Bar-David. "A significant part of healing occurs when patients have the words to describe their behavior and how they are feeling." This map establishes a common language of communication "According to Kabbalists, this map represents the path that the world took when it was created, beginning with the top layer, EinSof, which is the infinite divine and beyond human comprehension; moving down to the first sphere, Keter, which means the will or desire to be a parent; and continuing to the Yesod, or male sexual energy; and the Schechinah, or female sexual energy. Another basic tenet of Kabbalah is that man was created in the image of God. As a result, when people heal themselves, they are also healing God, every other person on the planet, and the earth itself, according to Bar-David. "When I am able to heal my own wounds,'I'm also helping the world and repairing God,' said Bar-David, adding that "from a Kabbalistic standpoint, the journey of health is a very different journey."
Can practicing Kabbalah bring you closer to God!
Every human action on earth, according to the Kabbalah, has an impact on the divine realm, either advancing or impeding the union of the Shechina and the Holy One, blessed be He. God is not a static being, but a dynamic becoming. God is incomplete and unrealized without human participation. It is up to us to actualize the divine potential in the world.
God needs us. Be aware that God fashioned everything and is within everything. Flashes of intuition will come and go and you will discover a secret here. If you are deserving, you will understand the mystery of God on your own.In the flow of the holy spirit, one feels the divine life force coursing the pathways of existance, through all desires, all universe, all nations, all creatures. By cleaving in love and full awareness to the source of life, the soul shines from the supernal light, and all feelings, thoughts and actions are refined. The essence of faith is an awareness of the vastness of Infinity.
Conclusion:
According to Kaballah Not transcending the body, but bringing body and spirit together is the highest spiritual achievement. To do so, however, you must let go of the beliefs that erect barriers around the Infinite and recognize the body as a source of holiness in and of itself. Kaballah is basically a holy process of connecting with got and finding out ones inner self and connection with magical power that one has on himself. It is a spiritual connection that can heal you physical and mental health by connecting with god. That finds the god who is inside everyone of us. And it creates the believes on oneself and the connectivity between god and us. And makes you believe that god is within us and we can interact with him whenever we want we just need to focus and find it out in our inner self.
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Hey, @bax16, I was wondering if you had any suggestions for hermetic art sources or other esoteric works with unique art? I'm pondering getting some ink. Your wide range of topics makes me think you'd have some good suggestions.
Screenshotted because tungle cuts off asks when you answer em :T
@momentspause I suppose that depends on what you mean by hermeticism! Capital H Hermeticism proper has a long history, just slightly longer than Christianity. It started off as a syncretic mystery cult in Hellenistic Egypt, as the worship of the wisdom deity Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice Great Hermes), who came about as a merger of Hermes and Thoth. Aesthetically, its art would've been very visually similar to others of its time and place, the only distinguishin features bein its symbolism and iconography, which is true for the other cults and religions as well.
It then proceeded to evolve with the times throughout western history. Consequently it went through many, many, many philosophical, theological, and aesthetic changes.
It died out towards late antiquity with the strong Christianization of all major centers of the Roman empire (Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria (Egypt), Syria, etc), but had a big revival startin in the late middle ages and into the renaissance when neoclassicism was all the rage. This is when we get folks like John Dee and Roger Bacon, with their explicitly magical runes and circles and magical angelic languages and sigils and spirit conjurations (albeit couched very much in terms of Christian piety, faith, ritual purity, and predetermination. Not all of it was Hermeticism either. A big part of it was just the continued natural evolution of a long tradition of Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic natural philosophy, which contained a lot of stuff we consider magical hocus pocus like astrology and necromancy and economics).
As the renaissance gave way to the reformation and the age of enlightenment, philosophy started developin a rift between the theological, the scientific, and the metaphysical, and what had previously been seen as the interaction between the theological and scientific parts of philosophy (that is, magics, charms, curses and cures, etc) came to be seen as uncouth superstition no enlightened man would entertain. Hermeticism faded with this trend again until 19th century romanticism and the concurrent western European preoccupation with all things gothic and grotesque brought it back into the limelight. This is where we get folks like Aleister Crowley, the Rosicrucians, and the Golden Dawn, with their seances and demon sigils and revealed grimoires and magick-with-a-ks. From then on, it never really faded away completely even to the modern day. Wicca, neopagan movements, and chaos magic are all direct developments of the 19th century incarnation of an antique Ptolemaic mystery religion.
Phew. That was a long journey. But that was for Hermeticism proper. If you're just talkin about general mysticism, well lots of major religions have those, rangin from the revered and the feared (Kabbalah from medieval Sephardic Judaism), to the slightly heterodox (Sufi Islam, which gets treated differently dependin on the sect and the people in power), to the downright heretical (Tantra in the context of most major Hinduisms. Unlike the western conception of it as Sexy Ritual Magic Hehe ;) , it's actually a set of transgressive magical practices that heavily violates Indian social orthopraxy, and involves deliberately becomin ritually impure by partakin in things like meat, sex, and, supposedly, cannibalism). You also have syncretic religions like Yazidism, which probably came about as an Islamified Zurvanism (a heretical branch of Zoroastrianism from when it was the Persian religion); Manichaeism, a syncretism of Zoroastrianism in Christian and Buddhist guise; and many, many others.
That was a long ass diatribe, but the point is that religions and religious movements rarely make art truly unique to themselves. There's always an underlyin cultural backdrop from which they get their themes and icons and assumptions, which they then adapt to suit their needs. It's why we can have depictions of Jesus on the cross, while ancient chinese Christians had their shinin "Buddha" seated in lotus position in front of a cross.
That bein said, I'd always been a fan of Arabic calligraphy, Irish illuminated manuscripts, and Aztec calendar glyphs. I'm not great with sources, but that might be worth lookin into, if only to craft your own personal symbolism with a unified aesthetic to your likin 😊
#hope this helps???#haha#sorry if it was long and ranty#I don't get to talk about this stuff much and it's fascinatin
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