What is Kabbalah?

• Kabbalah is Hebrew for ‘receive’. You’ll often see the word in the foyer of Israeli hotels. That doesn’t mean there’s a mystical conference being held there, they’re just trying to direct you to Reception!
• Its original spelling is QBLH but most modern traditions use a “K” instead of a “Q.”
• Kabbalah is the Jewish mystical tradition—an oral tradition which, legend says, came down to us from the days of Adam and Eve via Abraham and Sarah, Moses, David, Deborah, Esther and Jesus.
• As an oral tradition, it is best taught face-to-face through question and answer. That’s one reason why books on Kabbalah can be so hard to understand.
• Kabbalah may be Jewish in origin but it is simply one version of a system which explains Universal Truth. A Kabbalist, a Sufi, a Buddhist and anyone who has studied the mystical origins of their own tradition would understand each other perfectly.
• Kabbalah teaches that the purpose of creation is for ‘God to behold God’—in effect, God wishes to have a baby. Each human soul is one cell in the body of this ‘baby’ which has the name of Adam Kadmon. We will all be perfected in the end—though it may take most of us a few thousand lifetimes.
• Kabbalah believes that there is always a Messiah alive in the world—one person who is Anointed by God. Some of them are better known than others but Jesus, Buddha and Mohammad were all Anointed Ones. There have been women too—Queen Esther was the first known female Messiah.
• There are two main strands of Kabbalah: in the 16th century, this ancient tradition was re-written by a Rabbi in Safed, Israel, called Isaac Luria. This ‘new’ system became the Kabbalah of the Hasidic Jews and of the Kabbalah Center.
• The difference between the two systems is that the older one (now known as the Cordoveran Tradition from its codifier, Moses ben Jacob Cordovero) believes that God created the world perfect. The newer, Lurianic, tradition believes that God made a mistake during creation. The Tree of Sapphires teaches the older system—that ‘God saw that it was very good.’
• Kabbalah has been used for magic over the centuries and has, in some places, got itself a bad name. Magic here is defined as using sacred knowledge to create what humanity wants; not what God wants for us. This is Not A Good Idea… it is missing the point for a start—and it tends to come back and hit you on the back of the head when you least expect it.
• Kabbalah uses two structures to explain itself: the Tree of Life and Jacob’s Ladder. These are 12th century interpretations of the Menorah in the Temple in Jerusalem and they are the bits of the Tradition that look seriously complicated. However, if you like the idea of Kabbalah, you’ll be surprised how easily you get the hang of them.