Frater Barrabbas Author Literary Tour - Part 4 - Magical Qabalah for Beginners

 

After I had successfully placed four published books in the public domain, which is what DGRM and MARM consisted of at that time, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at writing a book that was not wedded to my previous opus, “Pyramid of Power,” since both of these books were a product of that original work. I also wanted to publish a book through either Weiser or Llewellyn, the biggest occult book publishers at that time. I felt that I would get a lot more notoriety being an author with books published in either of those publishing firms. These were my thoughts back in early 2010.

Since I personally knew the acquisitions editor for Llewellyn, having met her at Pantheacon gatherings and briefly talking to her, I thought that I would try my luck with that publishing company first. When talking to her, she told me that they were looking for authors to publish books in a “For Beginners” series, and one major unfilled entry that they had was the Qabalah. Of course, I sort of shuttered at first about taking on such a writing project, but then I realized that I already had a lot of writings on the Qabalah. As part of the background education for the Order I had written up some documents for the Qabalah and had passed them around to my fellow members. These documents were written poorly and did not have my current style of writing, so they would need to be revised and rewritten. However, that was better than having to start with no writings at all.

I was able to put together a table of contents quite easily to scope out what I wanted to write, but then I realized that not only were some of my ideas out of date, some of them contained information that was incorrect or inaccurate. I also lacked a standard set of practices and rituals, and I did not have a very good understanding of the history of the Qabalah. So, I began a period of research that lasted for several months while I also worked on rewriting the sections of text that I had previously poorly written. This has become the typical pattern when embarking on writing a book. What I think I know and have used for many years can be either stale or actually erroneous. I had a number of erroneous ideas and perspectives on the Qabalah that needed some deep research to bring them into a much more accurate presentation. It was an excellent learning situation, and I added considerably to my existing knowledge of the Qabalah as a result of that research. I submitted my first manuscript version in April 2012, and a month or so later, had my final version. The book came out in print in January, 2013.

Despite all of that rewriting and researching, I had to rewrite whole chapters of that book after I submitted it to Llewellyn. The marketing staff at Llewellyn had problems with the more advanced writing style and conceptual narrative that I used, and the subject matter was thought to be too complex or difficult for a beginner. What I didn’t want to do was write a book “Qabalah for Dummies” that was too simplistic to be useful for most occultists and ritual magicians. I wanted to write a book that presented the basic concepts to my readers, but also included more advanced ideas and practices for the more advanced student.

The book, as it was finally sent to the printers, took a middle ground between beginner and advanced students that I felt would be more engaging and interesting to someone who already knew something about the subject area, but wanted to proceed to a more advanced perspective. I feel that I was correct in taking that writing approach, although a few readers left negative reviews because they had assumed that the book was really a beginners guide. I don’t really feel bad about that, since the Qabalah is a very complex topic and if you are going to approach it as a magical discipline then simplicity and a shallow purview must be replaced with a more complex and deeper presentation. The Qabalah is not really a topic to be tackled by the uninformed nor the rank beginner, so it is in a similar position as Enochian magic or grimoire magic - it is not for actual beginners. So that is how the book “Magical Qabalah for Beginners” was developed.

Here is the advertisement for the book, as it is currently written on the back of the cover.

Discover the history and theory of Qabalah as well as its practical ritual uses. Explore the five basic but essential parts of Qabalah: the ten Sephiroth, the twenty-two paths, the Four Worlds, the Three Negative Veils, and the Tree of Life.

The Qabalah is the symbolic key to the Western Mystery tradition. Gain invaluable insights into all occult systems including high magic, Tarot, astrology, alchemy, hermetics, and more. In Magical Qabalah for Beginners, Frater Barrabbas shows ritual magicians, Pagans, and occult students how to incorporate the Qabalah into practice, using tables of correspondences, numerology, acronyms and formulae, sigils and ciphers, contemplation, and the theurgy of ascension. Now is the time to penetrate the mystical properties of Qabalah and make them work in your life.

I also had some good reviews from a few individuals who read the printer’s galley version, and these were included in the book. I guess that Llewellyn had to have some kind of good word, or ‘bon mot,’ for my book to get people excited or curious enough  to purchase and read it. The book “Magical Qabalah For Beginners” is still in print, and has sold over 4,000 copies. It is also available in Polish and Russian.

All of that research, writing and rewriting served an important purpose. It made me much more knowledgeable about the Qabalah than I had ever been in the past. As a system, it is complete and without the need for any ancillary practices or studies. You can be a magical Qabalist, but it would seem that being a Qabalist and a ritual magician might be either redundant or a contradictory approach to an applied occultism. That was one thing I discovered.

Writing that book also had another curious effect on me. I lost my passion for the Qabalah when I discovered that to truly function as a Qabalist you had to have sacred scriptures to act as your foundation. Qabalah is not practiced in a vacuum. It should always be focused on revealing the occult truths and magical capabilities within that sacred literature. Also, such a practice elevates the linguistic paradigm of mystical and magical practices, basing it on the power of words and their companions, numbers. I found that lacking a sacred literature was a real deficit in the study and practice of the Qabalah. That lessened my interest in the Qabalah, and I found other magical practitioners were coming to the same conclusion.

It seems almost blasphemous to say that I believe now that the Qabalah is over utilized and contrived in its current occult formulation. One of most important things that I have said about the Qabalah is that the mystical Jewish community created the Kabbalah to add and augment the Talmud as an esoteric commentary on the Tenach, or Hebrew Bible. That is what the Zohar represents to the Jewish study of the Kabbalah. It is the crown jewel, since from that commentary and analysis much of the mystical and magical elements of Judaism has its roots. It is a mystical, occult and magical Talmud, founded on the sacred writings of the Jewish Bible.

If a religion has a sacred body of writing then a Qabalah can be fashioned to develop and gather occult insights into the mystical foundation of that religion. This is true of religions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Hinduism. Thelema has Liber Al, the Book of the Law, so it would qualify as well. Qabalah is founded on a sacred written language, so Hebrew, Greek, Latin (Vulgate), Arabic, Farsi, Sanscrit and English would represent that sacred language. Since Liber Al is written in English there is a place for an English Qabalah, too.

What is missing in this list is a language and sacred book for Witches and Pagans. While the Chaldean Oracles probably comes the closest to functioning as a kind of sacred writ for modern Pagans, there is nothing for modern Witchcraft. The Chaldean Oracles exist as quoted fragments related by other contemporary and later authors and no complete version of the full text has been found. It is possible (but doubtful) that Neoplatonism might be the answer for a mystical and philosophical discipline that could be reconstituted and used by modern pagans, yet it is even less likely to be relevant for practicing Witches.
 
The same could be said about the ancient Egyptians, since nearly all of their sacred literary work contains a large volume of magical spells with only some myths and stories passing down through the ages to us. What was sacred to the Egyptians was magical spells that could obtain for them immortality and life beyond death, and they seemed to mix religion and magic quite freely, so there never was anything like a Bible for the ancient Egyptians. In fact despite the dominance of Amun-Ra in the later dynasties of ancient Egypt, there was never actually a single unified religious faith throughout the history of that land, until Christianity came, and then later, Islam.

The lack of a definitive sacred book is also likely true with many of the ancient western polytheistic religions that academics have examined. Books may have been written for priests to perform priestcraft (although little of any of that remains today), and the absence of such an organized clergy in the Greco-Roman period made the Jewish Tenach that appeared after the end of the Temple period a unique contribution to organized religion, especially when it was translated into Greek. Christianity followed suit, the Gnostics were prolific writers of sacred texts, and so did Islam later on.

Zoroastrianism and Hinduism have had a religious literary tradition for nearly 3,000 years, and the Zend Avesta and the Vedic texts are probably distantly related, both linguistically and doctrinally. Zoroaster reformed his creed, and the Vedic texts were complimented with books called the Upanishads. It might be difficult to formulate a Qabalah for those two faiths, but it would not be impossible, as the later heretical cult of Zurvan attempted to do with Zoroastrianism.

What this simple requirement does is leave modern Pagans and Witches out in the cold when it comes to the Qabalah. We have no sacred writings and no sacred language, so the very foundation of a Qabalistic system would evade us. The Tree of Life glyph, based on the Hebrew alphabet and numbering system, would be somewhat useful; but as a model of eschatology it is limited and not very insightful to a pagan or a witch. I have found that the three or four layered world perspective of traditional Shamanism more useful as a model of the natural and spiritual worlds than the Tree of Life. Additionally, the Hebrew Kabbalah does not use the Tarot as a method for characterizing the twenty-two paths, and if a Christian-Greek alphabet were used then two more pathways would have to be derived in a Christian Tree of Life glyph representing that system.

What is left, then, are the many tables of correspondences, based on the 32 paths (Sephiroth and Pathways) or their various sub-structures. Many of the full 32 path-based tables of correspondences are somewhat awkward and not particularly useful, while the ones that are based on the numbers 4, 7, 10 and 12 are much more useful since they can be readily used to build correspondences for the elements, planets, prime numbers and the signs of the zodiac. These tables are also handy for building correspondences for the full Tarot deck, which is probably one of the most powerful magical systems in use today. It stands by itself and doesn’t need the Qabalah to give it meaning and purpose.

Then we come to the topics of Gematria, Notariqon and Temurah. Gematria is the numerological method for equating numbers with words through the art of adding up the letter number values as found in a Hebrew word. Using the Greek alphabet might also be helpful, and there is an association of number values to Greek letters, since they were once used to write numbers when the Hindu-Arabic system of numeration had not yet been invented. It was likely the Greeks who developed this methodology and the Jews found it eminently useful in their Kabbalah.

The key to Gematria is to develop a book of words (Sepher Sephiroth) that has all of the relevant words found in the sacred text attributed to their letter numeric value, and the book is ordered by numbers to group them together. Without such a book, the process is not as revealing and it has the fault of being quite narrow, showing where connections make sense while avoiding those that make no sense whatsoever. A perusal of Crowley’s book Sepher Sephiroth shows that while some numbers have interesting connections, others are practically meaningless in their obscurity.

While I have found Gematria to be a clever curiosity, I have never found it as a useful method of proving a semantic correlation between word concepts. Authors like Kenneth Grant have over-used Gematria to formulate occultic proofs that are as flimsy as the paper they are written on. I think that Gematria has been overused by Grant and some others, since it should only focus on strategic religious terms, and then it also suffers from the noise of correlations that are irrelevant or meaningless.

Notariqon is the art of building and exploding acronyms and Temurah is the art of letter substitution. I have used Notariqon in building letter and word formulas to bind the segments of rituals together into a seamless whole, but it is just a process of building clever acronyms - there is nothing sacred or mysterious about it. These letter number technologies are interesting and at times, clever, but I have not found them very insightful. Perhaps if I had a sacred text to use them against I would discover all sorts of amazing and fascinating mysteries, but I don’t have such a book and so the greater appreciation of the Qabalah is unavailable to me.

After all of these considerations, I do still find the Qabalah useful and since I have incorporated it into my magical workings, it is still relevant to me. Yet I have found that the overuse and even abuse of the Qabalah to be disappointing. There are many other mystical and occult systems to use in the workings of magic. Sometimes not using any system will yield results that are more straightforward and less convoluted than having to add a thick and sometimes awkward layer of Qabalah to a magical working or process for esthetic reasons. These are, of course, just my opinions.

The book “Magical Qabalah for Beginners” is not only recommend by me, the author, but also by other occultists. The large number of sold copies should be an indicator that this book is worth having and reading. It is, however, not really for beginners, despite what the title of the book says.

Frater Barrabbas    

A Brief History of the Qabbalah - Part 3

This is part 3 of the three part history of the Qabbalah. I hope that you enjoyed it. 

5.  Classical Qabbalism. From the 11th through the 17th centuries C.E. This period saw a four phase migration that witnessed periods of intellectual blossoming in Provence, Moorish and Christian Spain, Safed in Palestine, and finally, returning to Europe at the advent of the Renaissance. During this period there were also some calamities that afflicted various Jewish cultural centers, such as the Albigensian Crusade (1209 - 1229), the sack of Baghdad by Ikhanate Mongol forces in 1258, and the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492.

Despite the calamities that forced the Jewish peoples to relocate from one place to another, the study and spread of Qabbalah became much more wide-ranging than at any other time.  It was also a period that saw an extensive development and evolution of ideas, when the Qabbalah started to become a solidified discipline, acquiring many of the features that occultists today would recognize. During this period, the study of Qabbalah supplanted previous forms of Jewish theology, and for a time, completely dominated Jewish religious thought. However, even as the Qabbalah became more accessible to Jewish lay scholars (and even Christian academics), it was still the provenance of a select few, even though that exclusivity began to evaporate by the beginning of the 16th century.    

Provence: It was in this location that the classical Qabbalah had its true birth. Various writings, speculations and insights assembled from sources in the East (Baghdad) and from Germany (Worms) were used to write the first true Qabbalistic work, called the Sefer ha-Bahir, which was ostensibly an occult form of the Midrash, consisting of various commentaries on verses from the Torah, particularly those of a decided mystical or mythical nature. Many of the various speculations begun in the geonic period are given a greater development in the book of Bahir, particularly, the concept of the Shekinah as a distinct entity. Provence was where rabbinic culture achieved a high state of development, and many pagan philosophical works were translated, most notably by Judah ibn Tibben, and many of these translated works were from neoplatonic sources. It is here that gnostic speculation was fully wedded with neoplatonic philosophy within a Jewish religious framework. Qabbalistic practices focused on an emphasis of seeking communion with the Deity through meditation on the sephiroth and their occult analogues. Also, the concept of the Ain-Soph was developed as a way to explain the manifestation of the finite material world through the agency of an infinite and unmanifest Godhead. From Provence, the Qabblah spread to Spain via Catalonia.

Gerona, Toledo and Castile - Spanish Qabbalah: It was in Spain that the Qabbalah acquired its more modern qualities, and it was here that the Qabbalah split into three distinct schools, and where some of the scholars sought to bridge that split. Gerona was the first location to flower, establishing the basic structure and tenets that became the Classical Qabbalah. It was in Gerona that ecstatic tendencies were renewed and propagated. From this foundational school, two other opposing perspectives began to dominate the practice and teachings of Classical Qabbalah. On the one side presided what could be called the rational school of Qabbalah (Isaac ibn Latif), where its adherents sought to describe it through a more philosophical and mystical interpretation, removing the more occult elements and seeking to use a system of devotion and contemplation to realize the various tenets. They taught that the adherent should contemplate on the sacred names and letters to produce mystical states resulting in prophecy. The other side (Isaac ha-Kohen) was characterized by a school declaring the opposite perspective, that of gnostic theosophy, occult speculation and the deliberate practice of theurgy. It is from this more occult school that the speculations of a Tree of Evil (demonic emanations) began to be developed, which included the developing of a more systematic hierarchy of angelic and demonic spirits, as well as equating the Logos (as found in Greek philosophy) with a new angel called Metatron.

Zohar: this was the first successful attempt at producing a Qabbalistic Midrash. Moses de Leon wrote this monumental work in around 1281 as an attempt to mediate these three different schools into a single unified one, producing a work that merged rational philosophy with gnostic and occult insights and tenets. This work consisted of a vast multi volume set of homiletics on the Torah, the books of Song of Songs, Ruth and Lamentations. These were not comprehensive commentaries, but instead focused on strategic passages. The Zohar had the effect of producing a kind of uniquely Jewish theology, (even though it was wedded to tenets that were particularly uncanonical), and this helped to bring it into the mainstream of Jewish thought.

Safed: When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, many of them found their way to Safed in Palestine, and also Italy. It was in Safed that Qabbalah acquired its messianic and apocalyptic qualities, and these were wedded to the core of its beliefs and tenets. It was also here that the Qabbalah found its greatest teacher and intellectual exponent (Isaac Luria) and began its powerful and compelling spread throughout the Jewish diaspora.

Isaac Luria Ashkenazi - the “Ari” Lion - (1534 - 1572): It was Luria who brought all of the various strains of Spanish Qabbalah together to synthesize it into a powerful modern religious system. Many of the idiosyncracies and philosophical problems in the Qabbalah were brilliantly and completely resolved by the writings and teachings of Luria. It was Luria who developed the concept of the sephiroth as divine personas, arranged them into three pillars (creating a cosmogonic dialectic) and saw them as the dynamically changing and evolving manifestation of the will and mind of the Deity. He also developed the notion of the four qabbalistic worlds, and resolved the issue of how the infinite unmanifest Godhead was able to create a finite material world through the mysterious artifice of contraction, concealment and veilings - the generation of a vacuum of empty space before creation.

Luria also developed the speculation that became the qliphoth, discussed the shattering of the six lower sephiroth above Malkuth (allowing for the incursion of evil), and the attribution of a mythic and psychological drama associated with the redemption of spiritual “sparks” of the individual human entity, now divided into four specific parts of the soul. His teachings had a powerful messianic quality, where he predicted that the messiah was immanent, and that event would also begin the ending of the world as the messiah recollected all of the spirits of humanity and delivered them up to the Deity. After his death, Luria’s teachings, for a time, eclipsed all other teachings and became part of the Jewish mainstream. The messianic tensions found in his teachings, along with his various vague apocalyptic pronouncements, ultimately produced the heresies of the aborted Shabbatai Zevi messianic crusade (b. 1670 - d. 1730).      


6.  Period of Transference. From the 15th through 18th centuries. There are many indicators that Christians and occultists had been distilling the Jewish Qabbalah beginning from the time that it had emerged into Europe during the middle ages. An examination of Agrippa’s work, the “Occult Philosophy,” demonstrates that by 1531, the entire corpus of the Qabbalah (particularly the practical and occult practices) had already been thoroughly translated and dispersed by academics throughout most of Europe. This would lead one to conclude that various contents of the Zohar and the writings of Luria had been leaked or deliberately shared with sympathetic Christian scholars and occultists. It is also likely that various Jewish magical practices and techniques had also been appropriated by individuals in Christian circles. How and exactly when this occurred is unknown, but it was likely the impetus for the development of the Solomonic system of ceremonial magick.  However, it was not until the year 1671 that Christian Knorr Von Rosenroth translated and published four books of the voluminous Zohar in Latin, making it available to nearly anyone who had at least a rudimentary education. Additionally, Rosenroth also published other translated Qabbalistic writings, and these included works by Luria. It’s also likely that the spread of the Qabbalah within the Christian community also facilitated the spread of Qabbalah within the European Jewish community.

Decline of Jewish Qabbalah: After the failed messianism of Shabbatai Zevi, the Jewish Qabbalah began to slowly decline in the 18th century. It would seem that the harsh lesson of Shabbatai Zevi, and the obvious heterodoxic nature of the Qabbalah, caused it to become increasingly rejected by various orthodox groups, with the exception of the Hasidic Jews, where it continued to be practiced through the 19th century and even later.  


7.  The Modern Occult Qabbalah. From 19th to 20th centuries.  In the mid 19th century, the scholarship of Eliphaz Levi, Papus and MacGregor Mathers determined the current structure of the  Qabbalistic Tree of Life, and attributed the Tarot Trumps to the 22 Letters associated with the Pathways. MacGregor Mathers reintroduced the discipline of the practical Qabbalah, and translated the works of Von Rosenroth into English. Mathers was also responsible for either publishing or translating the Lesser and Greater Key of Solomon, the Grimmoire of Armadel, the Enochian magical system of Dr. John Dee, and the Sacred Book of Abramelin the Mage. The teachings of the Magickal Fraternity that he established (Golden Dawn) has influenced many subsequent students of the Qabbalah, including Aleister Crowley, W. E. Butler, Israel Regardie, Dion Fortune, William Grey, Gareth Knight and Kenneth Grant.

Mather’s ground breaking work was taken up and developed by other occultists, who thereby brought it into the mainstream of occult beliefs and practices in the 20th and 21st centuries. Most notable for their contributions was Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune and Israel Regardie, who distilled and advanced the basic Qabbalistic knowledge of the Golden Dawn so that it became more of a meta-system than a repository of Jewish gnostic and theosophic speculation. Like Mathers, these individuals intrinsically wedded the Qabbalah to the practice of Western Magic. Aleister Crowley was the first to publish the Golden Dawn Qabbalistic writings on gematria, tables of correspondence as well as his own writings and interpretations, and expounded on the Tarot as an adjunct to the Qabbalah, producing his own Tarot deck (Book of Thoth).

Dion Fortune blended many extensive theosophical speculations into the Qabbalah, and Paul Foster Case blended the Tarot with the Qabbalah, so that the Tarot was defined and given its meaning solely through Qabbalistic symbolism. W. E. Butler and Gareth Knight, who were both students of Dion Fortune, produced a correspondence course on the Qabbalah, and Knight later wrote a ground breaking text book (Practical Qabalistic Symbolism), one that most modern occultists have read and studied. William Grey wrote a concise work (Ladder of Lights) and established himself as one of the truly gifted occultists of the 20th century. He went on to write many more books about ceremonial magick and the Qabbalah. Israel Regardie developed and refined the Golden Dawn teachings of the Qabbalah, first put forward by Mathers and his associate, Westcott. Kenneth Grant sought to develop and integrate the qliphoth with the sephiroth, referring to it as the backside of the Tree of Life, and thus show the integral relativity of both the lefthand and right-hand occult paths.


Recap of the Overall Evolution of the Qabbalah

The first stage of the evolution of the Qabbalah concerned itself with various attempts to depict and conceptualize the powers and majesty of the Deity. It was not an idle process, since it was meant to allow for greater access and individual conscious assumption of the mysterious Hebrew Godhead. These intentions were hidden within mysticism, but early Judaism contended with the doctrine of an invisible and unknowable Deity amidst a plethora of highly represented pagan deities, both gods and goddesses. The concept of Elohim (gods) as one of the representations of this Deity clearly shows the probable amalgamation of many deities into the one, ultimately called Yahweh. The Hebrew nation did not become truly monotheistic until later in their history (possibly 6th or even 5th century B.C.E), and so there was always a tendency for polytheism inherent in Judaism. When the orthodox doctrine of monotheism (there is only one God) finally became enforced, the tendency to polytheism found other avenues, particularly in the areas of mysticism and the illicit practice of ritual and ceremonial magick. Access to the powers and glories of a monotheistic Deity was expressly forbidden by the cannon of the law and established traditions, but the Merkabah and Heikhalot systems of mysticism and magick certainly allowed speculation and practices that were essentially heretical in nature.

The impact of Greek philosophy and Gnosticism on Jewish thought has been little noted in Jewish mystical circles, particularly in regards to the origins of the Qabbalah. While it is certainly true that Jewish writers such as Philo were later discredited and ignored by the scholars of the Talmudic period, non Jewish systems of theosophy and theurgy continued to invade the fringes of Jewish thought. The core doctrines and beliefs of the Qabbalah were developed long after similar speculation had already been written down and established in philosophical and gnostic circles. Still, the Qabbalah was a very tight synthesis of traditional Jewish thought and Greek philosophy; but it remained on the fringes of scholastic writings and the established traditions and liturgies of the rabbinic culture until the late Renaissance. It was almost as if one had to be both a Jew and a Qabbalist, since they were not synonymous. The middle ages saw great Qabbalistic works written, such as the Zohar, but there were other works created, like the Sword of Solomon, the Sepher ha-Ratziel, and the Book of Abramelin, which represented the magickal practices of the Qabbalah. These magickal works, or grimoires, and their associated theosophical and occult speculation represented a problem with the emergence of the Qabbalah as a system of Jewish theology. It was due largely to these and other excesses that Judaism narrowed its accepted practices, which lead to the eventual abandonment of the Qabbalah as a Jewish religious tradition. The Jewish Qabbalah was just too prone to uncanonical practices and heresy, and seemed to advocate highly unacceptable religious speculation.

During the late middle ages, the doctrines and beliefs of the Qabbalah began to filter into the scholarly world of Christian Europe, and by the 19th century, it had been completely taken over and made into an occult doctrine. The greatest contributions to the works of the Qabbalah were made in the middle to late 19th century, and these were made by individuals who were not practitioners of Judaism. Certainly, the evolution and derivation of the Qabbalah from its Hebrew source did not allow it to be easily reintegrated into Jewish religious doctrine, and so there are now at least two versions of the Qabbalah, since the resurgence of its study in the present age was promoted first by adherents of the Hasadim, and then by others, which caused some orthodox and reformed Jews to return to and expand on the earlier writings of Isaac Luria, and many others.

Modern occultists are divided as to whether the Qabbalah should be used for meditation and contemplation only, or with the inclusion of ritual and ceremonial magick. Certainly Mathers and Crowley proposed the full incorporation of the Qabbalah when they wrote their books, formulated their rituals and ceremonies, and taught these practices to their students; but others have moved away from the practice of magick as being too controversial and prone to heretical practices and derivations. Still, for practicing ritual magicians, the Qabbalah is of critical importance. I would therefore recommend that it should be studied and mastered by all occult students, used in meditation, contemplation and employed to construct magickal rituals and ceremonies. I am recommending such an extensive use so that the various symbolic archetypes and spiritual hierarchy might become internally available to the seeker to experience and fully realize in a very direct and immediate fashion. In this manner, the Qabbalah becomes a real and living process that illuminates the spiritual and allegorical domains, and reveals the various qualities of the Deity and the fate of humankind. Therefore as a practice, it will lead to the highest possible states of spiritual illumination.

I hope this brief historical analysis has assisted you in realizing that the Qabbalah is an ever evolving discipline that has undergone a considerable amount of change and revision over the centuries. However, formulations of a kind of gnostic inspired theosophy as well as the continued use of the Qabbalah in various methods and techniques of ritual and ceremonial magick have been a constant factor in the evolution of this discipline. Anyone who seeks to divorce the heterodoxic nature of the Qabbalah, or to refute its use and application in forms of theurgy are promoting an egregious falsehood that belies its history, essential nature and practical use.

Frater Barrabbas