#hebrew mysticism

[hiddurmitzvah]

I made this print by using an old archaic photographic tecnique called cyanotype (or sun/blue print) for the phylosophical and mystical poem by Szilárd Borbély, the The Sequence of Three Secrets (A Három Titok Szekvenciája), which is a part of his series called Hasidic Sequences, where he reflects on Hasidic teachings and beliefs in literary form.

You can purchase this original and only one, signed copy through my Etsy if you like it.

Here's my english translation of the poem, below there is the hungarian original.

Taub Eizik from Kalev, a pupil of the Seer of Lublin said that there are three types of secrets in the world. One is is like this Self-Consciousness, which

that everyone carries within himself because of their previous lives. And have no idea what it is. And don't understand why hide it from others, because it is

hidden from itself too until he dies again. The second secret, is like a light hiding in the mind, nesting in the depths of the skull

until it knows the essence of speech: in the letters of writing the faint glimmer of the primordial light that has come to us from the beginning of creation

that gleams in the depths of life. When the Self begins to read a book written in human language, Finally, the third secret is that of the

one who says: I. While he sorts the stones at the beginning of the path waiting for you, already prepared the unturned stones by the entrance gate

and then reads the engraved for the greatest secret is the stone that only means the Self. And it does not say, Amen.

[exlibrisarchive]

[todaysjewishholiday]

23 Tammuz 5784 (28-29 July 2024)

The 23rd of Tammuz is the yahrzeit of the pivotal kabbalist Moshe ben Yaakov Cordovero, who died in 5330 at the age of 48.

Not much is known about his early life, not even the place of his birth. The surname Cordovero implies ancestry from the Andalusian cultural center of Cordoba, but his birth was thirty years after the decree of expulsion of Jews and Muslims. He at times spelled his name in a Portuguese fashion, but it is improbable that he ever lived there as the expulsion of Jews from Portugal took place a mere five years after that of Aragon and Castile.

By the time he entered the historical record he was residing in Ottoman Palestine in the city of Tzfat just as it became a center of Jewish mysticism. There, he became a student of Joseph Karo, the author of the Shulkan Arukh, and Shlomo Allabetz, author of Lecha Dodi. With Alkabetz as his chavruta, Cordovero began a study of Kabbalah with the Zohar at the age of 20, and composed one of the first systematic syntheses of the kabbalah with other strands of the Jewish theological tradition, which he titled the Pardes Rimonim (orchard of pomegranates). He was soon widely known as a kabbalistic sage and disciples flocked to him from throughout the Jewish world. While up to this point he’d been an instructor of halakha at Tzfat’s Portuguese yeshiva, he soon organized another yeshiva specifically for the many kabbalists who flocked to Tzfat to study with him, and wrote a great number of additional mystical texts, some of which did not see widespread publication for over four hundred years.

His most famous student was Isaac Luria, who became the center of Tzfat’s mystical community soon after his teacher’s death and expounded a large number of novel concepts in the two years between Cordovero’s death and his own. Luria’s vision altered kabbalistic Judaism so completely that every since the main stream has been known as Lurianic Kabbalah as it follows his teachings. But it was Cordovero who systematized the prior writings and gathered the community that would help Luria’s concepts take shape and spread widely.

Cordovero was outlived by his mentors Joseph Karo and Solomon Alkabetz. A large number of legends surround his life and that of Isaac Luria.

[wonderingwarlockofthenight]

Raziel/Gallitsur

"God is my Mystery", “Secret of God” and "Keeper of All Magic”

Archangel of secrets, mysteries, mysticism and wisdom

[santmat]

John the Baptist's Wilderness Vegetarian Diet Explained - Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcast

Not A Caveman Fixated on Bugs and Bees After All: John the Baptist's Wilderness Vegetarian Diet - Locust Beans Not Bugs - An Exploration of Early Christian Writings and Scholarly Texts Today on This Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcast.

Nevermind the old Sunday school notion of John the Baptist being some weird caveman dude dining on bugs! John may have a tarnished caveman reputation of eating locusts and honey out in the wild, but this is really a story about copyists mistranslating a Greek word as "locust" ('a-k-r-i-d-e-s') instead of "carob" ('e-g-k-r-i-d-e-s'). (Henry Ford: "Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young." Albert Einstein: "Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.")

Since my original research on this topic, a couple more early Christian apocryphal writings have come to light, have been made available in English. These add to the surprisingly large collection of vegetarian references in early Christian writings regarding the diet of John the Baptist. New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. III, by Tony Burke was published and some John the Baptist books are included. In one of the earlier volumes there was a John the Baptist text made available for the first time in English that has a vegetarian passage regarding John's diet in the wilderness. Included in the third volume are, The Birth of Holy John the Forerunner, and, The Decapitation of John the Forerunner, both containing plant-based passages about John's diet consisting of "locusts from the tree" (in the Middle east called "the Saint John's Tree", and "Carob Tree") and "wild honey", also "an abundance of bread and wild honey dripping from a rock". Clearly there was an understanding in early Christianity that this was referring to locust beans (carob pods), not insects. Carob pods do look a bit like locusts hanging from tree branches, hence the name. Locust beans can be ground up and used to make a kind of Middle eastern carob flour flat bread. There's a "cakes dipped in honey" reference in the Gospel of the Ebionites. The wild "honey" was not from bees but sticky desert fruit of some kind. So, as you'll hear being documented during this pod...cast, there are all these plant-based references to John's diet coming from many different sources, and scholars have noticed and discussed these: "Probably the most interesting of the changes from the familiar New Testament accounts of Jesus comes in the Gospel of the Ebionites description of John the Baptist, who, evidently, like his successor Jesus, maintained a strictly vegetarian cuisine." (Professor Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew) "His [John the Baptist's] food was wild honey that tasted like manna, like a cake cooked in olive oil." (The Other Gospels, Accounts of Jesus from Outside the New Testament, by Bart Ehrman)

John the Baptist was a prophet with large number of followers in Israel and Transjordan regions. After his passing, several of his successors headed what became various rival Nasoraean (Nazorean) sects, one of those being Jesus and the Jesus movement. "Again Jesus said to his disciples: Truly I say to you, among all those born of women none has arisen greater than John the Baptizer." (Matthew 11:11, George Howard's translation of Shem-Tob's Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, described as "the oldest extant Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew") 

John the Baptist's Wilderness Vegetarian Diet Explained - Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcast - Listen and/or Direct MP3 Download @:

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@ the Podcast Website With Buttons That Go To All the Popular Podcast APPS - Wherever You Follow Podcasts:

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/john-the-baptists-wilderness-vegetarian-diet-explained/id1477577384?i=1000635517078

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May the Blessings Be,

James Bean

Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcasts

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Sant Mat Radhasoami

A Satsang Without Walls

https://www.SpiritualAwakeningRadio.com

[sagescented]

Rejecting the legalistic approach of traditional rabbinical Judaism, the Baal Shem Tov [Israel ben Eliezer] and his followers emphasized the power of simple, heartfelt prayer. This attitude is reflected in teaching stories regarding the Aleph Beit.

In one of them, a poor Jewish farmer was riding his horse into town to pray at the synagogue for Yom Kippur. But a heavy fog settled on the countryside and he could not find his way. As darkness fell, he was lost in a forest and was going to spend Yom Kippur night there by himself.

This farmer didn’t have a prayer book. And he didn’t know the prayers by heart. Filled with anguish, he cried out, "Oh, God, what can I do? How can I pray to You"? Then he remembered the alphabet he had learned in his childhood. He said, "I know. I will recite the letters of the Aleph Beit and You, Holy One, You know all the words, You can put the letters together to form the right prayers for Yom Kippur". So, all that night he repeated the letters over and over.

From A New Oracle of Kabbalah: Mystical Teachings of the Hebrew Letters, published 2015; Richard Seidman (My Ko-Fi Here)

[chicagognosis]

Topic: Kabbalah: The Legacy of the Initiates

Time: Oct 9, 2023 07:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Spiritual initiates from every religion have existed, conveying their teachings through diverse scriptures, allegories, and symbols. The Jewish mystics were no different. However, their knowledge was codified in such a way as to provide accessibility and insight for those who were trained to read, interpret, and understand with an awakened consciousness. This lecture builds on [Kabbalah: The Doctrine of Soul and Spirit](https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/kabbalah-the-doctrine-of-soul-and-spirit), describing how five elements of Medieval Judaism can inform our understanding of initiatic life, specifically through Aggadah (narrative tradition), Halakah (Jewish law), Piyyut (liturgical prayer), Merkavah mysticism (the science for creating the soul), and The Sefer Yetzirah (a profound scripture of magical, initiatic import).

To freely register, visit:

[wisdom-and-such]

"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name." --Tao Te Ching

Compare with 10th century Jewish Philosopher Maimonides in his ' The Guide for the Perplexed ' :

" G-d's existence is absolute...

Consequently it is a false assumption to hold that He has any positive attribute; for He does not possess existence in addition to His essence ;

it therefore cannot be said that The One may be described as an attribute.".

[brother-hermes]

FOR THOSE STUDYING SEFER YETZIRAH

“With 32 wonderous ways of wisdom, YAH, the Lord of Hosts, the G-d of Israel, the Living G-D (El SHADAI), Omnipotent G-D, extolled, Dweller up above whose habitation is eternity.”

-Sefer Yetzirah Opening Line

Sefer= Text

Sephar= Number

Sippur= Communication

I highly recommend learning to read Hebrew. While there is value in theoretical knowledge of a text like Sefer Yetzirah it is of far greater value to actually meditate on the text. Unfortunately, it’s almost next to impossible to meditate on the text without a rudimentary understanding of the original language.

Repeating the Names attributed to Adonai in the opening lines in prayer- almost like a mantra- before engraving YHVH on your heart is a beautiful process. As it says:

“His Name high and holy engraved His name, covenanted, drilled, and created his universe in 32 mysterious paths of wisdom through 3 Sepharim; (book, counting, telling)”

The Tetragrammaton literally holds the key to existence and entire books have been written on how it can be used as a mantra to deepen our understanding of our place in the Divine. Some of you may even have seen Hashem stacked vertically into the shape of a human being. (Macrocosm and Microcosm right) This lesson is shrouded in the next lines of the text:

“Ten Sephiroth (numbers) made of Nothingness

“Twenty-two foundation Letters.

“Of these 22 letters, 3 are called "Mothers," 7 called "Doubles" and 12 are called "Simple" letters.

“Ten Sephiroth as the number of ten fingers five paralleling 5 the Covenant set in the middle the way of the tongue makes the word the Naked Word.”

There is vowel intonation of the Divine Name that will literally vibrate within your being the more you do it. It’s a really simple mantra too:

Honestly, I started here. Before I even began digging through the sephirot and reading about Kabbalah. (in fairness, aRabbi shared a copy of Aryeh Kaplan’s Meditation and the Bible with me as a precursor to joining his study group but still) Start with deep study of the Torah. Read the Books of the Law. Read the Prophets. Set time aside for vowel intonations before you read. It will change your entire perspective on the Bible.

To Christian’s specifically: Yeshua almost always quoted the Prophets. Remember, He didn’t set out to start a new religion. He was a Rabbi with a very specific form of Helakhah. If you spend just a little bit of time amongst- I recommend members of the Reform Movement- people who practice Judaism you’re entire perspective will shift. What Yeshua taught becomes incredibly clear once it’s viewed from a Second Temple Period perspective.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

[knoxvillerose-blog]

Rare Kabbalah Books - Very Good Condition

Very Good Condition

[council-of-beetroot]

When I first heard this, my thought was why does his title sound like the Hebrew for book ספר sefer. I looked on the wiki and it said this is likely a misspelling somehow of seraf שרף I have no idea how though although japanese is difficult when it comes to foreign words. If you don't know Hebrew, and are confused by why the letters are different it's because ש and ס both make an s sound (ש can make a sh sound too) while ף is the final form of פ p/f

So my guess is they will either go with sefer/safer or go seraf. Really depending

Seraf makes more sense but Sefer sounds better to me personally even if it sounds nonsensical.

Crying because what is the actual translation of セーファ・セフィロス????

Because セーファ on its own means ‘safer’ but put it with セフィロス (Sephiroth) and you get:

セーファ・セフィロス - Safa Sephiroth

セーファ・セフィロス - Cepha Sephiroth

セーファ・セフィロス - Sefa Cephillos // Sefa Sephiroth.

so is it ‘Safer Sephiroth’ or something entirely different and there was a translation error.

I wonder what they'll call it in Part 3...

[creature-wizard]

Scams, Hoaxes, Conspiracy Theories, & Cults Everyone Should Know About

Jilly Juice: Jillian Mai Thi Epperly claimed drinking sixteen cups of her super salty cabbage concoction each day could regrow missing limbs and cure everything from cancer to homosexuality. In reality, overdosing on so much salt caused followers a host of health issues that Epperley dismissed as "healing symptoms."

Nonhuman Body Hoax: Jaime Maussan attempted to pass off mummified human remains as nonhuman beings to the Mexican government. (This isn't even Maussan's first hoax, by the way. He has a history.)

Love Has Won: Amy Carlson, a woman who'd walked out on her own children, started a New Age cult in which she presented herself as "Mother God," the creator of the universe. She claimed to be in contact with dead celebrities and alien beings, and taught a conspiratorial worldview. As her health declined, she attempted to treat herself with colloidal silver and alcohol, and her behavior became increasingly abusive. When she finally died, her followers sincerely believed she would return to life and kept her body in a sleeping bag. (She did not return to life.)

Seed Faith Offerings: Reverend Gene Ewing came up with the perfect get-rich-quick scheme to prey on desperate Christian believers: tell believers that if they "sowed seed" by giving money to him, God would bless them with even more money in the future. He made millions of dollars from these donations, while most of his followers never saw the miraculous returns they were promised.

William Walker Atkinson: In the early 20th century, William Walker Atkinson wrote around one hundred books, many of which he wrote under various pseudonyms. Some of these pseudonyms included alleged Hindu mystics. That's right - this guy was practicing literary brownface to sell his mystical ideas.

The LDS Church: In the 19th century, a man named Joseph Smith claimed that an angel had told him where to dig up a set of golden plates that were supposedly written by ancient Hebrews who'd come to North America. Smith even had eleven close associates who vouched for the plates' existence. Yet the script they were allegedly written in bore no relation to actual ancient scripts of the Near East, and the the names the locations in the books he "translated" were very obviously derived from placenames he would have been familiar with. (For example, Oneida/Onidah.) Oh, and actual archaeology and DNA studies have discredited pretty much everything from this guy's weird racist narrative.

Fake Cancer, Fake Cure: Wellness entrepreneur Belle Gibson claimed that she'd cured her brain cancer with natural remedies. Gibson never actually had cancer in the first place.

Medbeds: Back in 2020, QAnons and QAnon-adjacent people started circulating claims that a new form of healing technology was about to become available to the public within the next several months or so. Depending on who you asked, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and even the Galactic Federation of Light were involved. The time of their supposed unveiling came and went, and what do you know, there are still no functioning medbeds used in actual medicine.

COVID Vaccine Zombies: Conspiracy theorists have been claiming the government practices high-tech mind control for ages now. One recent iteration of this is a conspiracy theory claiming that people who'd received COVID vaccinations would have malicious DNA code activated by 5G on October 4, 2023, turn into zombies, and riot. The time came and went, and no zombie outbreak happened.

Ms.Scribe: In the early 2000s, a Harry Potter fan known as "msscribe" or "Ms.Scribe" faked her own harassment through a number of sockpuppets, with the apparent goal of becoming friends with some Harry Potter fandom bigwigs. She manipulated the fandom for a few years until the deception was finally uncovered.

[todaysjewishholiday]

5 Tammuz 5784 (10-11 Tammuz 2024)

The fifth of Tammuz 3167 is the date the kohen Yechezkel gives for his first vision by the banks of the Chebar River in Babylon in the first chapter of Sefer Yechezkel:

I looked and saw a windy storm approaching from the north and a huge cloud with flashing fire, glowing brightly all around with the color of gleaming amber from within the fire. Inside, there appeared to be four living creatures that looked like human beings; but each one had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight, with feet like calves’ hoofs. They glittered like burnished bronze. Beneath their wings they had human hands on their four sides. The four of them had faces and wings as follows: they touched one another with their wings; they did not turn when they moved, but each one moved straight forward; as for the appearance of their faces, they had human faces in front, each of the four had a lion’s face on the right, a bull’s face on the left, and an eagle’s face in back— thus their faces. As for their wings, each had two that stretched upward and joined those of others, and two more that covered their bodies. Each of them moved in the direction of any of its faces; in whichever direction the spirit wanted to go, they went, without turning as they moved —thus the appearance of the living creatures. With them was something that looked like fiery coals burning the way torches do, with the fire flashing here and there between the living creatures; the fire had a brilliance, and out of the fire went lightning. The living creatures kept speeding here and there like flashes of lightning. As I gazed at the living creatures, I saw wheels on the ground, one next to each of the four-faced living creatures. All four wheels looked the same: their inner parts gleamed like beryl, and their structure seemed to be that of a wheel inside a wheel. When they moved, they could go in any of the four directions without turning as they moved. Their rims were tall and fearsome, because the rims of all four were full of eyes all around. When the living creatures moved, the wheels moved along with them; and when the creatures were lifted off the ground, the wheels went with them.

Yechezkel, who has already been taken captive by the Babylonian army and resettled in a camp outside Eretz Yisroel, then sees HaShem’s Throne and is called to warn the house of Israel in advance of the destruction of Jerusalem.

Yechezkel’s visions of heaven are deeply tied to his role as a kohen who has now been separated from the beis hamikdash, warning that it will soon be destroyed completely. In the absence of the temple as the dwelling of HaShem on earth, the Jewish people will encounter G-d through mystical encounters with the heavenly throne, rather than through pilgrimage to HaShem’s earthly dwelling.

Yechezkel’s visions influenced Judaism not only through their moral weight, but by introducing this concept of the the Merkavah, or heavenly chariot. During the Babylonian exile and then again after the Roman demolition of the second temple, descriptions of the heavenly merkavah and mystical ascents through heavenly realms to the divine throne became a major part of Jewish spirituality, and a way to navigate the loss of the sacrificial structure of temple Judaism.

Eventually the Kabbalah would develop, with its tree of sefirot, and come to supplant the Merkavah tradition as the dominant mystical tradition in Judaism. But Yechezkel’s visions still loom large in Judaism and throughout the Abrahamic tradition. You many even have recognized Tumblr’s favorite “biblically accurate angels” appearing in the passage quoted above. Yechezkel the exile kohen still shapes how this world imagines heavenly messengers.

[chanaleah]

it’s pretty ironic how much anti-zionists quote Emma Lazarus

“None of us are free until all of us are free!” Like yes girl that quote is generally accredited to Emma Lazarus, who was a Zionist and ALSO was speaking about Jewish refugees fleeing antisemitic violence in Russia

Anyways Emma Lazarus is my favorite poet so here’s some facts about her while I wait in an airport for my flight to take off

She was descended from Sephardic Jews who fled the inquisition and settled in the Americas in the 1600s

Most of her poems revolved around Jewish themes

She wrote the famous poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty, “The New Colossus”

She volunteered with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society helping Jewish refugees from Russia get settled in the US

She was a Zionist over a decade before the modern Zionist movement was founded, and advocated for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Eretz Yisrael and wrote essays against antisemitism

And here is a passage from my favorite Emma Lazarus poem, “In Exile”

Strange faces theirs, wherethrough the Orient sun / Gleams from the eyes and glows athwart the skin. / Grave lines of studious thought and purpose run / From curl-crowned forehead to dark-bearded chin. / And over all the seal is stamped thereon/ Of anguish branded by a world of sin, / In fire and blood through ages on their name, / Their seal of glory and the Gentiles' shame.

Freedom to love the law that Moses brought,/ To sing the songs of David, and to think / The thoughts Gabirol to Spinoza taught, / Freedom to dig the common earth, to drink / The universal air—for this they sought / Refuge o'er wave and continent, to link / Egypt with Texas in their mystic chain, / And truth's perpetual lamp forbid to wane.

If you want to read more here is an article I can recommend you: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/emma-lazarus

[santmat]

My Lost Books of the Bible article @ Medium!

dead sea scrolls nag hammadi library new testament apocrypha gospels gnostic gospels books of enoch ebionites gospel of the hebrews gospel of thomas coptic apocrypha

christian mysticism