Zohar - Book of Splendor - Its Importance to the Jewish Kabbalah - Pt. 2

Now that we have established the background for the Zohar, examining the vast array of Hebrew religious literature and some of the individuals who were responsible for writing it (like Simeon ben Yochai), we can now proceed to examine the various books of the Zohar. What we will see is that the author of this massive set of writings sought to emulate and copy the methodology of the Tannaim and Amoraim scholars of the past epoch to create a decidedly esoteric and occult interpretation of specific passages, mostly from the Torah and a few other strategic works. So the very first task that the author sought to achieve was to produce a qabbalistic midrash. Because only certain passages and books of the Tenakh were actually important or useful, the qabbalistic midrash was neither comprehensive nor complete. Other books followed, but the actual sequence of all of the books, which was preserved in the original collective manuscripts, was lost when the books were printed in the late 16th century. One thing that we need to keep in mind is that the Zohar is not a single book, but is actually a collection or body of qabbalistic literature. In printed editions, the Zohar is composed of five volumes: volumes 1 through 3 are called the “Sepher ha-Zohar al ha-Torah,” volume 4 is called “Tikkunei ha-Zohar,” and the fifth volume is called the “Zohar Chadash.” The Zohar Chadash is a collection of quotations and other discourses found in the manuscripts of the Sefed kabbalists, which were made and later collected after the main body of the Zohar had already been printed.

I have consulted Gershom Scholem’s book, “Kabbalah” to assemble the information of the contents of the Zohar and a basic synopsis of each book. As I have already indicated, the Zohar was a collection of books, mostly assembled and written by a single author, with some additions possibly made by either another author or the same one at the end of his writing career. You can find the actual source of the information that I used about the Zohar in Scholem’s book, starting at page 213 and continuing through page 243. I found Scholem’s brief commentary on the history and contents of the Zohar to be invaluable. Still, for those who desire to study the contents of the Zohar, the book “Kabbalah Revealed” is still available, and three nearly complete authoritative English translations are available from three sources: the first by Maurice Simon and published by Soncino Press, second, the Pritzker edition edited by Daniel Matt, and the Kabbalah Center version. Of these three, I would recommend the Soncino version or the Pritzker edition.


Books of the Zohar

1. Selective Midrash - The first and main part of the Zohar consists of a selective midrash, and is constructed in such a fashion as to resemble an authoritative midrash on the Torah. Each section begins with a Psalm or verse from the books of the Prophets and then breaks into the actual verse of the Torah in question, accompanied with various declarations from the main teacher, who is Rabbi Simeon ben Yochai, and an accompanied discourse from his companions (harrayya). Another teacher who is quoted in the various sections is Rabbi Eleazar ben Hyrcanus, who doesn’t appear in the other books of the Zohar. In these sections, sometimes the conversations occur while they are traveling, sometimes over meals or during a rest period, and sometimes at night before retiring. Often, the discourse jumps to topics completely unrelated to the actual verse from the Torah. While this qabbalistic midrash undoubtably was formulated to eventually cover all of the more important verses of the Torah, it is decidedly sparse and incomplete. The style of the conversations are immersed in a kind of travel narrative including all of the trivial occurrence that such a journey would entail, which is apparently contrived to disguise what is really discourses and the elucidations of qabbalistic ideas. A second part consists of a partial midrash on the biblical book, Song of Songs, which was traditionally an important book for qabbalists.

2. Sifra de-Zeni’uta (Book of Concealment) - This book focuses exclusively on the first sentence of Genesis, the Bereshit (In the beginning) and expounds on the qabbalistic ideas about creation. It is formulated “in short obscure sentences like an anonymous Mishnah,” according to Scholem.

3. Idra Rabba (Greater Assembly) - This book consists of a discussion of the mysteries of Adam Kadmon, the primordial and first created man. The dissertation is conducted by Simeon, with comments and questions inserted by his companions. According to Scholem, this book is of a superior quality and is the most structured and detailed discourse in the entire Zohar.

4. Idra Zuta (Lesser Assembly) - This book tells of the death of Simeon ben Yochai and expounds on the closing words to his followers. Scholem has compared this book with a qabbalistic version of the death of Moses. This book was often considered the final book of the Zohar, since it deals with the death of its main protagonist.

5. Idra de-Vei MashKena - This book describes a study session conducted by Simeon with his students concerning the nature and components of the tabernacle of the temple. It also expounds on the mysteries of prayer.

6. Heikhalot (Palaces) - This book expounds on the detailed descriptions of the Seven Palaces in the celestial Garden of Eden. These palaces can be accessed through meditation and prayer, and is the final resting place for the religiously pious after their death. It includes special prayers and the angelology associated with the seven palaces. There is also a brief exposition of the seven palaces of uncleanliness, which would represent the domains of Hell.

7. Raza de-Razim (Secret of Secrets) - This book is derived from an anonymous source based on the occult sciences of physiognomy and chiromancy - divination based on the outer human anatomy and palmistry.

8. Sava de-Mishpatim (Discourses of the Old Man) - Simeon and his companions encounter an old man on their travels who is actually Rabbi Yeiva, disguised as donkey driver. Much to everyone’s wonder, he delivers a discourse on the doctrine of the human soul based on a mystical interpretation of the laws of servitude in the Torah.

9. Yanuka (Child) - Simeon and his companions encounter a child prodigy, who is the son of Rav Hamnuna. The child teaches the companions about the great mysteries found within the humble sayings of grace after meals, and other matters.

10. Rav Metivta (Head of the Academy) - This book contains a narrative about a visionary journey lead by Simeon ben Yohai and his students, where he takes them to the Garden of Eden and therein they receive the teachings of one of the celestial heads of the academy about the world to come and the mysteries of the human soul.

11. Kav ha-Middah (Standard of Measure) - Simeon gives a discourse on the details of emanation as found in the prayer, the Shema, to his son. The Shema is the prayer that is recited twice daily: “Hear now, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”  

12. Sitrei Ottiyyot (Secrets of the Letters) - This books contains a discourse by Simeon on the letters of the divine name and how it is associated with the mystery of emanation.

13. This book has no official title, but contains an interpretation of the vision of the Chariot as found in Ezekiel, chapter 1.

14. Matnittin and Tosefta - These are a number of short sections that act as a mishnah of the Talmud and of the Zohar itself. Most of these sections begin with a heavenly voice heard by the companions followed by a short narrative discourse. The topics consists of summaries of the ideas of emanation and other key concepts found in the Zohar, These small sections are typically scattered throughout the Zohar to lend a greater authority to specific points made in the various books.

15. Sitrei Torah (Secrets of the Torah) - This book contains an analysis of specific verses in Genesis.

16. Midrash ha-Ne’lam (Esoteric Midrash) - The Esoteric Midrash functions as a subset of the main midrash (book 1), and consists of a mixture of short Hebrew and Aramaic expositions on strategic verses in the Tenakh. The topics are quintessentially qabbalistic, centered around themes that are the foundation of qabbalistic doctrines. It includes mostly sections from Genesis, compares the lives of the Prophets to the general fate of mankind, and includes the books of Ruth and the Song of Songs. This book was written mostly in Medieval Hebrew and parts of it may have been written before any of the other books.

17. Ta Chazei (Come and See) - This book consists of a number of expositions on the Bereshit, each beginning with the words, “Come and see!”

18. Ra’aya Meheima (Faithful Shepherd) - Faithful shepherd is a reference to Moses, which is used as a theme in this book. This book is considered a later edition to the corpus of the Zohar, and contains a qabbalistic interpretation of the Ten Commandments. Simeon and his companions, through the artifice of prayer, achieve a visionary encounter with Moses, and the various tannaim and amoraim who attend him. These various celestial spirits of the honored dead speak with the companions and teach them the mysteries of the commandments.

19. Tikkunei Zohar - (Chapters of Spendor) - This book contains many sections or chapters (tikkun) each of which expounds in a unique manner on the Bereshit of Genesis. It was designed to have 70 different sections, which would emulate the 70 aspects of the Torah, but in fact, there were many more. Even though the subject of each section is supposed to be about the Bereshit, the actual expositions digress and vary from the topic considerably, discussing items that do not appear in the main body of the Zohar. The Tikkunei is also considered a later edition to the Zohar, and is completely independent of it.

20. Numerous untitled fragments and short sections, some of which were not included in the printed editions of the Zohar, but do appear in the manuscript versions.

As you can see, the comprehensive Zohar is a massive work, but also one that is very consistent and tightly organized. Often there are pointers or references in one book that allude to a further discussion of a topic in another book, showing that the author wrote the Zohar using a disciplined layout of books and their contents. All of the books use the same method of composition and are constructed in an analogous manner. The style of writing is also consistent throughout, with the only exception being the Ra’aya Meheima and the Tikkunei Zohar, which are obviously written later by a different person. We will discuss that particular issue later in this article.


Sources, Historical References and Language Styles

Zohar text cites numerous literary sources, most of which are fictitious, and this has had the effect of burying the actual sources that the author used. Some of the actual sources are the Babylonian Talmud, the Midrash Rabbah and Tanchuma (three collections of Pentateuch haggadot), Midrash on the Psalms, the Targum Onkelos and several other authoritative books, some of which are no longer in existence. These sources are not captured word for word but are distilled or summarized into the peculiar literary style of the Zohar.

The sources of Jewish Kabbalah were, of course, the Sepher Yetzirah, Sepher ha-Bahir, Ma’yah ha-Chokmah, writings of Eleazer of Worms, Rabbi Ezra’s Commentary on the Song of Songs, the commentaries of Azriel of Gerona. Other influences were represented by a synthesis and distillation of the various ideas, doctrines, terminology and practices of the gnostic Jewish kabbalists of Castile. The ideas presented in the Zohar represents a distillation of the ideas of the Qabbalah from the Sepher ha-Bahir up to the writings of Joseph Gikatilla (Ginnat Egoz - 1274). It would seem that from the qabbalistic sources employed in the Zohar, that it was contemporaneous with qabbalistic thought of the late 13th century.

Additionally, there were numerous references to actual historical events and occurrences found sprinkled throughout the Zohar, such as the crusades and Arab rule in Jerusalem. Certain Jewish laws and customs cited are found only in late medieval Spain. This is also true pertaining to comments about medicine and pharmacological based remedies. Enough circumstantial information is imbedded in the text to fairly identify the cultural background of the Zohar as that of a nominally dominant Christian culture with various Muslim influences, which would fit the locale of Castile as the place where the Zohar was written.

From a linguistic perspective, the two languages used in the Zohar, which is Hebrew and Aramaic, have distinctive characteristics. The Hebrew, used mostly in the Midrash ha-Ne’lam, was particular to a type of unremarkable medieval Hebrew used in documents written in the late middle ages. This was due to the kind of special philosophical terminology that was employed in the text, which didn’t appear in the Hebrew language until long after the Geonic period.

However, the Aramaic is a peculiar synthetic form or imitation of that language, which appears to have been pieced together using idioms, phrases and words distilled from the Babylonian Talmud and various targumim (such as the Onkelos). It was obviously written by someone who was not at all fluent in Aramaic, but was very knowledgeable of Hebrew, and used that knowledge to synthesize an Aramaic language. While Aramaic and Hebrew are closely related, there are also a number of differences, such as the verb constructions, nouns and adjectives used; yet these differences proved to be stumbling blocks for the writer of the Zohar. New words were invented, syntax was confused, correct words were used incorrectly, and even errors and corruptions found in the copies that the author used were unwittingly passed on to the text of the Zohar.

So the language that the author used to compose the Zohar was highly synthetic and full of errors, which could hardly elevate it to the same literally level as the Sepher Yetzirah or the Sepher ha-Bahir - that would take a couple of hundred years to rectify. There was also the unsubtle phenomenon of borrowing Spanish and Arabic words to fashion Aramaic words, when no such Aramaic word was readily at hand. This peculiar version of Aramaic was, however, consistently used throughout the entire length and breadth of the work, strongly indicating that it was written by a single author. The two later books in the series (Ra’aya Meheima and the Tikkunei Zohar) are even more poorly written than the main body, both in regards to vocabulary and syntax. Thus, it would seem that the author of these two books attempted to emulate the peculiar style of the Zohar, and only partially succeeded.


Authorship

There are many myths and arguments about who was the true author of the Zohar, since such a declaration was omitted from any of the books. Some Jewish kabbalists believe that the author is either unknown or that it is, in fact, Simeon ben Yochai. However, it’s doubtful that the Zohar has an ancient source because it is was written in a contrived and synthetic form of Aramaic. Certainly, someone from the Geonic period or even earlier would have been completely fluent in Aramaic as well as Hebrew. Gershom Scholem, in his book “Kabbalah” provides, what I believe to be the definitive proof that the author of the Zohar was known to the Jewish kabbalists of late 13th century Spain.

According to the testimony written by Isaac ben Samuel of Acre, the Zohar was disseminated as individual manuscript books at various times to various people, and the writer was a man he personally knew named Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon, who died in 1305 CE. Isaac of Acre met Moses de Leon only a few years before his death, but he was a known author of many books in the Hebrew language, from 1286 until after 1293. He was friends with many contemporary kabbalists, and he supposedly exchanged manuscripts and other papers with them.

One interesting bit of evidence that was remarked upon by Isaac of Acre about the authorship of the Zohar was that the widowed wife of Moses de Leon, who resided in Avila, was asked to give as a present the ancient source document (used to write the Zohar) in exchange for her daughters’ hand in marriage to a man who was seeking a wife for his son. Moses de Leon’s widow had to sadly tell the man that no such source document existed, and that the entire Zohar was written by her husband independently of any original source (other than the ones we have sited above).

Another curious occurrence was that the parceled out manuscript copies of the Zohar were used by Moses de Leon’s contemporaries to build up their own work, and at the time, they didn’t consider it to be of an ancient provenance, which would have required some restraint or respect. It wasn’t until the 16th century that the Zohar was considered to be an important work to qabbalists. Additionally, a comparison of the Hebrew writing style and idiom used in Moses de Leon’s known manuscripts was identical to the Hebrew used in the Zohar, which could also identify him as the unknown author.

Taken together, the evidence seems to be quite definitive that Moses de Leon was the author of the Zohar. Various copies of this work were spread amongst many of his contemporaries, but it wasn’t until much later that anyone had all of the books of the Zohar assembled into a single work. The assembling of this work into a collective body was done nearly a hundred years later by Jewish kabbalists, but some of the collected manuscripts had sections that were either missing or omitted from others. In addition, it appears that a few sections may have been altogether lost and never recovered. The sequence of books that the final circulated manuscript collections maintained was unfortunately altered when the Zohar was finally printed in the 1570's. However, the Zohar was avidly studied and lionized by the Jewish and Christian qabbalists of the 16th and 17th centuries, even despite the fact that the Aramaic language it employed was obviously highly flawed. Perhaps some saw this anomaly as a sign that it was truly antique, while others likely saw it as an obstacle to fully comprehending its secrets, whether deliberate or incidental.


Summary   
   
The Zohar was the first successful attempts at producing a qabbalistic Midrash; prior to that great achievement, no one would have dared to have undertaken such an ambitious endeavor. It is apparent that Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon wrote this monumental work during the period between 1280 and 1286 as an attempt to distill at least two different philosophical schools (Gerona and Castile) into a single unified one, producing a work that merged rational philosophy with gnostic and occult insights and tenets.

As Gershom Scholem, in his book “Kabbalah” has so astutely declared: “The Zohar is the most important evidence for the stirring of the mythical spirit in medieval Judaism.”  (pg. 57)

And also:

“The mingling of these two currents - the Kabbalah of Gerona and the Kabbalah of the ‘Gnostics’ of Castile - became in the mind of Moses de Leon a creative encounter which determined the basic character of the Zohar. Instead of the brief allusions and interpretations of his predecessors he presents a broad canvas of interpretations and homiletics covering the whole world of Judaism.” (also pg. 57)

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 mystical based theology, even though it was also wedded to tenets that were particularly uncanonical.

Yet despite its irregularities and peculiar writing style, the Zohar helped overall to bring the Qabbalah into the mainstream of Jewish thought. This did not happen immediately, since the Zohar was fragmented for over a hundred years into the various books and sections elucidated above, until it was re-assembled and made available to qabbalists a few generations after Moses de Leon’s generation had passed away. The Zohar was an important foundation for the work that was to come later, in the Palestinian town of Sefed, where the brilliant diaspora of Spanish Jewish intellectuals came together to formulate the qabbalah that we would know and recognize today. Those great savants who built the Qabbalah of Cordovera and Luria owed a great debt to the obscure but daring writings of Moses de Leon and his Sepher Zohar, the Book of Splendor.

Whether or not we acknowledge the Tenakh and other Jewish literature as an important contribution to the sacred literature of the West, in order to understand the culture that we live in today, Jewish literature as well as Christian, represent an important keystone to an esoteric apprehension of the modern world. Even more important are the products of Jewish and Christian occultism, which underlie even the most ardent of modern pagan perspectives. To engage in ritual magick or even pagan mysticism, the tenets of Christian and Jewish occultism are as much a part of the melange of ideas and insights as any antique pagan philosophy, in fact, they are probably more important due to their relative proximity in time. Thus I can only assume that a modern pagan practice of ritual magick and witchcraft has within it occult elements of its predecessor religions, which are Christianity and Judaism, and they in turn, are built on the foundation of the pagan mysteries of antiquity.

Frater Barrabbas

Zohar - Book of Splendor - Its Importance to the Jewish Kabbalah - Pt. 1

Introduction

In my history of the Qabbalah series, I briefly touched upon the topic of the Zohar, but I now feel that it requires a more extensive and separate article. The reason for this reappraisal is because the Zohar was even more important to the formulation of the Qabbalah than the Sepher Yetzirah and the Sepher Bahir, although they were used as sources for it. The Zohar is the penultimate product of the Spanish Qabbalists, and it became the foundation for the final revisions and refinement that took place in Safed, Palestine, nearly three hundred years later.

The Zohar consists of mystical and gnostic interpretations of the Torah, which is the foundation and source for all Qabbalistic speculation. Others may propose a wholly Greek version of the Qabbalah, but without a body of holy scriptures like the Torah, that proposal is both weak and groundless. Of all the various religions of antiquity, only the Persians, Hindus, Sabians and the Hebrews had holy or revealed scriptures. Christians, and later, the Arabs, followed with their own holy scriptures, but the other religions of western antiquity had neither the need nor the impulse to create such written lore. It is the Torah that gives power and authority to the Qabbalah for both Jews and Christians, and the Zohar sought to vest the Qabbalah within the sanctity and power of those scriptures.

So now we must define the nature and contents of the Zohar and explain why it is important to those of the Abrahamic faiths. Modern pagans and wiccans might find this level of scriptural based detail to be irrelevant, and indeed it is certainly abstruse and not particularly important to someone who is following an earth-based spiritual system. However, since most of us live in societies where Christianity is dominant, the legacy of the Bible is part of our own world, whether we have reason to seek out its mysteries or not.

Our western culture is so suffused and saturated with Biblical references, myths and beliefs that even the most stubborn and focused pagan can’t avoid continually coming in contact with them. Modern pagans (such as myself) must acknowledge this legacy and perhaps even incorporate some of it into their spiritual considerations, even if it is done in an oblique manner. The reason that we must acknowledge and to some extent include some of the Bible myths into our spiritual considerations is that our own pagan myths are either weak or incomplete. Much has been lost over the last two millennia, and also, much has changed. Christian and Jewish myths still shape and move our culture, so we must address them in some manner, since they are also to be found operating even within our individual psychic deep structure.

I have assiduously avoided studying the Zohar myself, except where a specific topic from the Zohar has been elucidated in another work. I have had Mather’s book “Kabbalah Revealed” on my bookshelf for decades, but I have never been able to completely read it. As I will reveal later, the book “Kabbalah Revealed” has within it the very core of the Zohar, translated into Latin in the 17th century by the German mystic, Christian Knorr Von Rosenroth. This book had only three of the books of the Zohar translated, but for the occultist, they were the more important books, having only omitted the initial Zohar midrash from this main body of work. Thus the “Book of Concealed Mystery” and the “Greater and Lesser Assembly,” all three of which functioned as the very heart of the Zohar, were chosen and included in Rosenroth’s book, and later translated from Latin to English by Mathers, including the mistakes and typos from the original. 

 

It was likely that this work of translation, no small feat for a supposedly poorly educated man, forced Mathers to be intensely wedded to the Bible based Hebrew Qabbalah, even as he ventured into spiritual derivations of an Egyptian pagan revival. If we throw the corpus of Enochian magick of Dee into the melange of traditional lore, we can easily see why the Golden Dawn organization had problems digesting these various streams into a common and seamless whole. Many occultists today have the same problem, which is probably why I have avoided attempting to fully digest the Zohar and integrate its massive lore into my own spiritual and magickal practices. 

Before I get into discussing the various books and topics found inside the Zohar, I would like to briefly discuss the various parts of the literature associated with the Hebew bible. In order to really understand the Zohar, one must have a basic understanding of how the various books of Hebew religious literature were formulated and written down, since the Zohar sought to emulate that process with a decidedly mystical and even gnostic bias. I have not found a single book that has all of this information contained in it, and instead, I had to rely on numerous sources found on the internet, including Wikkipedia. However, checking the sources of these sites, I believe that I have compiled information that is reliable and more or less correct.

The Hebew Bible is called the Tenakh, and it consists of three essential parts. The first and most important part is called the Torah, which means “instruction.” Another name for this part of the Tenakh is the Pentateuch (five books), which is its Greek name, since the Tenakh was translated into Greek in antiquity to produce the Septuagint. The Torah contains the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, which consist of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The second part, in sequential order, is called the Khetuvim, which are the lesser books, such as the Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Joshua, Kings, Judges, and others, and the third part is called the Nevi’im, which are the books of the Prophets. The word Tenakh is an acronym for Torah, Nevi’im and Khetuvim, or TNKh. The cannon of the Hebrew bible was formulated and finalized sometime during the last two centuries BCE, during the Hasmonean kingship.

In addition to the Hebrew bible, there was also a considerable amount of orally transmitted lore regarding various legal considerations, traditions and even folklore. This oral lore was finally written up after the Bar Kokhba revolt in Judea (132 - 136 CE) because the rabbis feared that this knowledge would be lost if it weren’t committed to writing. Therefore, a new religious literature was redacted and completed around 200 CE by Judah ha-Nasi, and it was called the Mishnah, which means “repetition” (derived from the verb root ShNH, which means to “study and review”). Many rabbinical scholars worked on the Mishnah, where Judah ha-Nasi was only the last in a long line of multi-generational scholars, and they were called the Tannaim, or teachers. The Mishnah had a companion book called the Tosefta, which was a supplement to the Mishnah, having been structured in an identical manner. Often the Tosefta and the Mishnah agreed on a particular point of Jewish law, but other times the two books would arrive at different opinions about the same passage of the Torah.

Once the Mishnah was committed to writing, there were many comments and additional considerations that began to be associated with it, and these were compiled into another book, called the Gemara, which consisted of writings that presented a deeper and more thorough analysis of the contents of the Mishnah. The combination of the Mishnah and the Gemara was called the Talmud, which also contained a lot of historical information and foot notes about the associated scholarship (annotations, controversies and arguments) that went into the canonization of the Tenakh and the final formulation of the Mishnah. The rabbinical scholars of the Gemara were called the Amoraim, which means “those who say or tell about [the Laws].” Additionally, there were two Talmuds that were developed, the first in Palestine, which was called the Jerusalem Talmud, and the second in Babylon, which was appropriately called the Babylonian Talmud. Of these two Talmuds, only the Babylonian is complete, while the greater part of the Jerusalem Talmud was lost.

Another important book in the body of Jewish biblical lore was the Midrash, which means “to investigate or study.” The Midrash was a body of written lore that consisted of many homiletic commentaries and an in-depth analysis of various passages of the Torah. These textual analyses consisted of two kinds, those that were concerned with Jewish religious law (“halakha”), and those that were concerned with non-legal and homiletic themes, called “aggadah.” 

 

The writers of the Midrash was tasked with performing several different kinds of biblical analysis, and these were represented by a simple or literal interpretation (peshat), a deep textual analysis (examination of hints - “remez”), a comparative analysis (comparing different texts using the same words - “deresh”), an analysis of hidden meanings, mysteries or secrets (“sod”), and an examination of legal pronouncements (commentaries on various judgements - “din”). Of course, to perform a “dersh” analysis, one would need a concordance of Hebrew words used in the Tenakh, and there is such a concordance. The Midrash emphasized peshat, remez, deresh and sud for aggadic analysis, and din for halakhic analysis. The various books of the Midrash were focused on a single book of the Tenakh, and these were ultimately grouped together as ten midrashim called the Midrash Rabba, or Great Midrash.  One can easily see that the later qabbalistis would greatly expand and inflate the use of “sod” over all other methods. 

Medieval qabbalistic lore was concerned with mystical and therefore, a non-legal exegesis of the Torah, so it was based on the pattern of the Midrash, using the homiletic or aggadic method of “sod”to derive hidden or occult meanings from strategic passages of the Torah. A homiletic discourse is actually a fancy way of saying a sermon or a religious discourse of some kind. Obviously, qabbalists were interesting in writing sermons and religious discourses that presented their unique way of interpreting and revealing the hidden or underlying knowledge contained in specific biblical passages. Instead of fostering a comprehensive interpretation of the bible, qabbalists were only interested in certain passages that seemed to embody their essential beliefs concerning creation, ultimate cosmic destiny, the human soul, the after-life, and for some, the attributes of the cosmic messiah and the redemption of humanity. It is for this reason that the bulk of qabbalistic commentary was based on the first several verses of Genesis (Bereshit), where the story of how the Hebrew God created the universe is described.

The Tenakh was mostly written in Hebrew, but much of the commentary was written in Aramaic, although the Jerusalem Talmud was written in both Hebrew and Aramaic. In the Geonic period, when the Babylonian Talmud was being written, an authoritative Aramaic translation of the Tenakh was produced. These writings were called the “Targunim,” and they consisted of translated passages and Midrashic interpretations of the Torah (Targum Onkelos) and the Nevi’im (Targum Jonathan ben Uziel). There were also several targums that covered the books of the Kheturim. I am specifically mentioning these two collections of writings because the author of the Zohar used the Targum Onkelos extensively (and to a lesser extent, the Targum Jonathan ben Uziel) in composing the text of his book, including using various word structures, idioms and even borrowing some themes from those works. The Zohar was also written in Aramaic, as if to make it seem more antique and authoritative, as if it had been assembled during the Geonic period based on writings from an earlier epoch. A thorough analysis of the Aramaic used in the Zohar has shown that it was actually written by someone who was not fluent in that language and whose mother tongue was Spanish, as we shall later see.

One of the rabbinical scholars that had a hand in crafting the Mishnah, the Gemara as well as the Midrash was the legendary Rabbi Simeon ben Yochai. He was a known historical figure who was one of the members of the Tannaim. His work and life were recorded in the Talmud, but for some reason, the qabbalists of medieval Spain believed that he was the first qabbalist, and that his son, Eleazar, was the scribe who wrote down the qabbalistic lore that later became the Zohar. What historians do know about Simeon ben Yochai was that he lived during the first century after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and he was also the eminent disciple of the great Rabbi Akiva, who was the main religious scholar behind the composing of the Mishnah and the Midrash. Simeon was a religious legal scholar and helped to write some of the sections of the “Sifre” (commentary on Leviticus) and the “Mekhita” (commentary on Exodus), which were parts of the Midrash halakha, or legal exegesis of the Torah.

According to Talmudic legend, Simeon ben Yochai publically criticized the Roman government and was forced to flee for his life, along with his son, and remained in hiding for thirteen years. They both lived in a secluded desert cave for the duration of their forced exile, and miraculously, soon after they had arrived, there appeared a fountain of water outside the cave along with a sumptuous fruit tree, which kept them alive. During their exile, the two men spent their time reading and studying the Torah, and many interesting and unusual things happened to them there. These legends grew until it was said that the two men were the actual authors of the Zohar, with Simeon ben Yochai dictating, and his son, Eleazar, acting as scribe.

This brings us back to our subject, the Zohar. The actual author was never explicitly declared when the books were written and disseminated, and the main character featured in the Zohar narratives was Simeon ben Yochai, so many later qabbalists assumed that he was the original author. A book that claims a specific authorship that is false is known as pseudopigraphy, where the claimed author is often someone famous and far enough in the past for his role in the work to be indisputable, which also obscures the true author who wrote the work at a much later time. Since the date of the authorship of the Zohar is estimated at sometime after 1274 CE (we will cover how that was determined), it would be unlikely that Rabbi Simeon ben Yochai was the original author. It would be also highly unlikely that a religious legal scholar would also be a mystic who spent a large portion of his time writing quasi gnostic and theosophical works, the cave story notwithstanding.

The association of Simeon ben Yochai and his son, Eleazar, with the Qabbalah is entirely mythical, loosely based on Talmudic legends of his supposed exploits and intellectual excellence. While it is very curious that the Sepher Yetzirah might have been written during the Tannaic period when Simeon lived, it was also unlikely to have been authored by someone who was a rabbinical scholar. This is because the theme of the book consisted of a kind of heterodoxic speculation that would have been rejected by such individuals.

Still, for whatever reason, the author of the Zohar chose Simeon ben Yochai as the rabbinical master whose numerous sermons and discussions occurred while he traveled through parts of the Galilee with a group of intellectual companions. Oddly, some of these companions were historically known individuals who either formed part of the Tannaic or Amoraic groups of religious scholars. The exploits and symposium-like discussions between Simeon ben Yochai and his companions characterize each and every one of the themes of the books of the Zohar, regardless of the topic, with exception to the earliest work, the Midrash ha-Ne’lam, which featured other known rabbis. It is particularly unlikely that this group of ten men ever congregated together (some of them were from different time periods), nor would they have discussed such heterodoxic topics with each other. The format of the dialogues, which seem to imitate the kinds of discussions found in the Greek philosophical dialogues, were obviously fictional, artificially set up to aid in the discourse of qabbalistic doctrines and ideas.

Frater Barrabbas

Complete Topic List For Qabbalah

As I promised in a previous article, I am including a complete set of links to all of my articles on the topic of the Qabbalah, beginning with December of last year. I have placed these links in an order that will more easily facilitate, you, the reader, to select these articles by topical area and specific link. I will probably be adding a few other articles on the Qabbalah, but I think that I have most of the foundational topics already covered. I hope the “July is Qabbalah Month” series was informative and interesting for you, and that by now, you will see how important the Qabbalah is to anyone who aspires to a mastery of ritual and ceremonial magick.

Introduction to Qabbalah for Pagans and Witches - and Others

1. Part One.
2. Part Two
3. Is the Qabbalah Superfluous?


Twenty-two Pathways - in Six Parts

3. Part One.
4. Part Two.
5. Part Three.
6. Part Four.
7. Path Working.
8. Qliphoth


Qabbalah, Creation, Nature of Evil and the Four Worlds

9. Creation - part 1
10. Lurianic doctrine of Creation
11. Qabbalah of the Four Worlds and Human Spirit


History of the Qabbalah - Four parts

12. History part 1
13. History part 2
14. History part 3
15. History - Moses Cordovero


Practical Qabbalah - Various Topics

16. Qabbalah and Theurgy
17. Qabbalah and Non-Hebrew Languages
18. Tables of Correspondences
19. God Names - Analysis and History
20. God Names - Power and Use
21. Sacred Sexuality
22. Ascension, Transformation and Gnosis

Hope this link list helps you find all of the interesting topics recently posted here about the Qabbalah. You should be able to easily find any of the articles that you read and previously enjoyed, and you might even find some that you missed.

Frater Barrabbas

Tarot Trumps as Mediaeval Teaching Emblems

I have previously discussed how other alphabetic systems, which have more than 22 letters, could be accommodated by an expanded Tree of Life glyph and a Tarot deck with more than 22 Trumps. How one might go about adding additional trumps to the Tarot would be a fairly difficult operation if weren’t for the wonderful set of tables and commentaries provided by Stephen Skinner’s book “The Complete Magicians Tables.” According to Mr. Skinner, the various themes for the 22 trump cards of the Tarot were obviously taken from teaching emblems as originally derived in the middle ages.

Since literacy was something of a novelty (perhaps even to be equated with supposed magical abilities), much of the world functioned through the use of emblems, often painted on wooden signs or walls. These signs would denote the characteristics and services of various merchants, public houses, inns, and other social gathering places. Pictures brightly painted on signs placed in front of various cottages and buildings indicated what was being offered within to those who might not be intimately familiar with the local neighborhood. Emblems were used to indicate many things to a populace that was largely unlettered, and this also extended to the teaching of Christian theology and related concepts. We have in our art museums, special collections and universities many examples of these kind of teaching emblems, and in fact, there is an entire sub-genre of Italian and European art to facilitate the study and examination of these various paintings. Some of the earliest Tarot decks seemed to have made use of a variable number of these emblems, dressed up as the Tarot trumps, and they appeared to be related to at least six distinct emblem categories, although there may have been even more.

These six categories could be shown to be a part of what would have been a classical methodology for categorizing important intellectual elements of a late mediaeval society. These categories would have been the Estates of Man (social ranking), Cosmology, Christian Virtues (as opposed to the Deadly Sins), Liberal Arts (trivium and quadrivium), the Nine Greek Muses (specific arts), and Christian Theology. Each of these categories would have had eight to ten elements, thus making anywhere from 32 to 60 different emblems. Mr. Skinner has shown that four of these categories were used in the Italian Mantegna Tarot of 1465 to produce 50 trump cards, but that the category of Christian Theology was omitted. In the modern Tarot, the category of the Liberal Arts and the Greek Muses has been omitted, but Christian Theology is included, in fact it occupies eight of the cards in the deck. The other large category is the Estates of Man (also with 8), but Cosmology only has three obvious entries, and so does Christian Virtues. Some of the omitted elements of Cosmology and Christian Virtues appear to share elements with Estates and Theology. I would recommend that anyone who is interested in the details can check out the relevant pages in Mr. Skinner’s book (Tables T34 - T37 - p. 276, and the commentary found on pages 415 - 419).

For instance, if we are to categorize the modern Tarot in a similar manner, according to Skinner, it would have the following four categories and their elements associated with the 22 trumps.

Estates of Man (from lowest to highest):

• Fool/Knave/Beggar (Atu 0)
• Magician/Artisan/Merchant (Atu I)
• Lovers (Atu VI)
• Chariot/Knight (Atu VII)
• Empress (Atu III)
• Emperor (Atu IV)
• High Priestess/Female Pope (Atu II)
• Pope/Hierophant (Atu V)

Cosmology:

• Sun (Atu XIX)
• Star/Zodiac (Atu XVII)
• Moon (Atu XVIII)

Christian Virtues:

• Justice (Atu VIII)
• Fortitude/Strength (Atu XI)
• Temperance (Atu XIV)

Christian Theology:

• Hermit/Father Time (Atu IX)
• Wheel of Fortune/Luck (Atu X)
• Hanged Man/Crucifixion (Atu XII)
• Death (Atu XIII)
• Devil (Atu XV)
• Tower/Babel (Atu XVI)
• Last Judgement (Atu XX)
• World/Four Apostles (Atu XXI)

There are also some elements that are shared amongst the cards between the four categories. Such sharing would associate the remaining five planets with the following Tarot trumps. Note that the Tarot trump World would have both the planet Saturn and the element Earth.

• Magician - Mercury
• Empress - Venus
• Tower - Mars
• Wheel of Fortune - Jupiter
• World - Saturn/Earth

Four of the seven Christian Virtues are missing, and three of them could be shared between qualities associated with three roles in the Estates of Man. Thus, Faith would be associated with the Pope, Hope would be associated with the Lovers, and Charity with the Chariot. Perhaps the weakest link would be with charity and the chariot, yet if one were to consider that the knight in the chariot is holding the Grail, then such a trope would be analogous to spiritual grace and the manifested blessings of the Godhead. (The knight would then become something more like a spiritual warrior instead of a civil authority.) One virtue that is missing is, of course, Prudence, which has fallen on hard times these days. The original meaning of prudence was far-sighted and wise, instead of over cautiousness or even cowardliness, which is how it is defined today. Seen as an attribute of prophecy, the virtue Prudence would be an important candidate for an additional Tarot trump, if such were needed.

Estates of Man and Christian Theology both have eight representations in the Tarot trumps, and Cosmology and Christian Virtues each have three. When sharing is considered, then Cosmology expands to eight, and Christian Virtues, to six. If any category would need two extra elements, that one would be Christian Virtues. Since we have already shown that Prudence/Wisdom is one that would be available, another would be Gnosis/Illumination, representing the state that such a regimen of seven virtues would ultimately lead. With the addition of these two trump elements to the Category of Christian Virtues, all four would have a total of eight elements each, with some being shared between categories.

Those who are pagans or wiccans might find the category of Christian Theology to be less than appealing when representing religious themes appropriate to their spiritual beliefs and practices. Crowley’s Thoth Tarot deck has changed the Last Judgement with the theme Aeon, representing a more appropriate (and neutral) concept of an epochal related liminal or threshold crossing. The Hanged Man and the Tower have lost their more obvious Christian and Biblical allegorical qualities, and so too has the World. Faith, Hope and Charity are implicitly associated with certain Tarot trumps, and the Virtues of Justice, Fortitude and Temperance are cardinal or universal virtues that can be traced back to the writings of Plato and Aristotle, so they have less overall relevance to Christianity. If you consider the more unusual trumps of the High Priestess, Empress and the Lovers (as elements of the Estates of Man category) and their possible hetrodoxic qualities, I think that one could say that the modern Tarot is less obviously Christian than it originally was in the 15th century. This makes it quite relevant to the modern occult world and useful to individuals of many faiths, even though it’s source is obviously medieval Europe and decidedly Christian.

Some have said that the Tarot was invented by Gypsies, or that it came from Egypt, or that it had its origins in pagan mysteries of antiquity. Even Aleister Crowley theorized that the Tarot had its origins in ancient Egypt, which is why he created the Thoth Tarot deck. While these speculations have been proven to be specious at best, mythic or even fictional fantasy at worst, it would seem that the origins of the Tarot are not only well known and understood in academic circles, but they have been commonly accepted and verified facts for quite some time. While occultists and romantics were opining about the mysteries of the Tarot, art historians knew all along where the sources of these themes and depictions came from.

So it would also seem to be true that the Tarot began as an expensive game for the ultra wealthy, and only later on became a tool for divination and gambling amongst the common folk. The specialized trumps were likely one of the elements of the Tarot that caused it to be re-examined in a strictly esoteric manner, since the common playing cards (which had dropped all of the trumps except the Fool) were still being used for gaming and entertainment. Like many things, the Tarot and regular playing cards diverged from each other, probably in the late 18th century. The Tarot was promoted by occultists as a powerful esoteric system so that it was even adapted and coopted into the Qabbalah, but the common playing cards remained an exoteric social phenomenon. Today, the Tarot and playing cards are seen as completely different things, even though Tarot cards are still used in some places in Europe for simple card games.

Frater Barrabbas

Qabbalah and Power of the God Names

Sorry - this blog article was removed pending the publication of “Magical Qabalah for Beginners” published by Llewellyn Worldwide - you can find this material in that book, published on January, 2013.

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Qabbalah - Ascension, Transformation and Gnosis

 Sorry - this blog article was removed pending the publication of “Magical Qabalah for Beginners” published by Llewellyn Worldwide - you can find this material in that book, published on January, 2013.

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Qabbalah and Sacred Sexuality

One of the more supposedly interesting and fascinating themes that was proposed by various commentaries in the Zohar was the focus on sacred sexuality. This would have been, of course, a regimen of sexual activity completely in accord with orthodox rules and regulations concerning sex between married couples, yet colored with a symbology which would suggest that such activity emulates the unity of the Deity. We are not talking about the proper conduct of a husband and wife, which would be completely understood by a classical qabbalistic practitioner. What we are talking about is how that conduct could have a powerful symbolic provenance in regards to the Godhead polarities (and their union) as specifically found in the Tree of Life, and generally, in qabbalistic symbology.

It would seem that a qabbalistic practitioner would not only meditate, contemplate and perform other operations by himself, but he would also engage his spouse in some of these activities, so that when they would physically unite, it would briefly bring them into an ecstatic realization of the Godhead. Since there was a masculine and a feminine pillar in the Tree of Life, then the place of mediation (the middle pillar) would be symbolized in the perfect union of masculine and feminine attributes. Of course, it was also expected that the Jewish qabbalist would adhere to the strictest rules associated with bodily purity, which would require avoiding one’s wife at certain times (menstruation, pregnancy, and a period of time after postpartum), avoiding unlawful emissions of semen (either accidental or through masturbation), and to fast, perform regular ablutions (bathing), and many other practices and prohibitions.

Some of these prohibitions have been famously incorporated into the moral foundation of various laws that ban sodomy, prostitution and all other supposed unnatural forms of sexual congress. Masturbation isn’t illegal (it is considered immoral), but oral sex is illegal in some locales. These laws have been lionized by conservative Christians, strict followers of Islam, Orthodox Jews, and many others. However, since I am a pagan and a witch, I consider these various sexual prohibitions and rules to be highly unjust, unwarranted and completely irrelevant to my spiritual practices and beliefs. If others wish to enforce these prohibitions in their personal lives, then they may do so, provided that they don’t force their restrictive and repressive beliefs on the greater populace who don’t share their views. I also believe that laws which ban or discriminate against same sex relationships as well as victimless crimes (prostitution) should be eliminated. From the standpoint of civil liberties, I am a firm believer in allowing the populace to govern their own libidos between consenting adults without government interdiction or interference. (You could call me a radical in regards to social liberties, and in some ways, I admit that I am.) 

Therefore, I can honestly say that the various titillating tropes found in the Zohar are at best, mildly interesting, but certainly not compelling enough for me to attempt to read and somehow incorporate them into my spiritual work. In fact, since the Hebrew Bible is only marginally interesting to me personally and to my work, then a Midrash, which is an exegesis or commentary on that work, is not something that I need to study or intimately know (unless I have a lot of spare time). The essential Qabbalah has all of the symbols and qualities that I need to develop a profound perspective on sacred sexuality. Of course, my interpretation and use of the Qabbalah is guided by a pagan spiritual point of view, which tends to be polytheistic with a strong emphasis on being compassionate, non-judgmental and highly inclusive. I will, therefore, use the same perspective in determining a sexualized Qabbalah.

Now that I have set the stage to discuss a sexual interpretation of the Qabbalah, you might be wondering how we should proceed? If we have rejected the moral code of orthodox Judaism, then what do we put in its place. Obviously, approaching sexuality in a disciplined and spiritual manner should be the hallmark of a sexual Qabbalah. Otherwise, one’s spiritual practice would disintegrate into nothing more than a pathetic excuse for unrestrained libido. So if sex is your goal, then why bother sugar coating it with spiritual pretensions? It also tends to make sexuality into an overly complex and even boring proclivity. I will make the assumption that as the sexual act is heightened by symbolism, physical practices and through a program of rigorously controlled sexual activity, then the ecstatic result will be nothing short of profound. This is the underlying assumption that I will use in assembling this article. One other point that I would like to make is that because this is a brief article it will not be a comprehensive study of a system of western sexual mysticism and magick. A comprehensive study would require a fully developed book in its own right. What I am interested in providing in this article are a number of insights and suggestions, which will effectively guide any knowledgeable student into creating their own system.

Qabbalah has been, since its inception, a system and methodology primarily dominated by men. Therefore, all of the themes and the point of view have had a decidedly masculine perspective. The relationship of a male qabbalist to his study and practices was decidedly sexist, to say the least. While the practicing qabbalist, who would have been a married man, did peripherally involve his wife in his work, she was never to be taught any of the deeper meanings nor would she be engaged in the work as anything other than a worthy and respected assistant. Unlike alchemy and magick, there were no famous women qabbalists prior to the late 19th century, so we must assume that if any women studied this subject, it was either in secret or not at all. It was only when the Qabbalah became an occult tradition that women began to examine this discipline, and then only because women’s role in traditional society had expanded to the point of being on an equal parity with men.

For this reason, a modern approach to a sexualized Qabbalah must include women along with men, and that they must be equal partners and given the same consideration and respect. It should also be stated that where men and women differ from each other in terms of their physical bodies, there would also be some differences between their spiritual perspectives and associated practices. These differences can be great or small, depending on the cultural background associated with one’s gender. However, a woman has the potential to give birth to a living being, whether she is either willing or even physically capable, and a man is an important participant, initiator and helpmate in that process. Beyond these obvious differences, everything else is to be considered culturally and individually determined, since in reality, there are more than two genders, and therefore, more than two kinds of sexual preferences and types of pairing. I am not going attempt to examine all of these variations in this article, except to state that students will need to work these out for themselves. Therefore, I will assume that practicing qabbalists will either elect to work with a suitable partner or they will decide to work alone. Either approach can be accommodated by a true engagement with the practical Qabbalah.

If a qabbalist has decided to work with a partner, then that other person must be as engaged and committed to the work as his/her partner. They must be completely equal and committed to the work in order for the results to be uniformly consistent and rewarding. Goals associated with the individual student are therefore shared by both members of the pairing. An important point in working with partners is that their combined abilities and efforts will only achieve what the weakest member is able to achieve. This is why it is important for both of them to be equally zealous and engaged with the work, since the objective is for them to be capable of producing the same equal level of results. Imbalances in this kind of work can either thwart and frustrate the results, or it could cause some real problems, due to the inherent disharmony and dissonance that such an ill matched bond would produce. Perhaps this is the reason why some qabbalists prefer to work alone.

There are three considerations that must be thoroughly examined if one is to consider engaging in a regimen of sacred sexuality while studying and practicing the Qabbalah. Mixing these two major topics isn’t necessary, especially for someone who is just starting out or lacks a suitable partner. Qabbalah by itself is challenging enough to learn and master, and adding to it a level of sacred sexuality could make it far more difficult than most people could handle. It’s important for anyone who wants to integrate these two disciplines that they have a certain confidence and familiarity with them both. Lacking those two essential elements is certainly a recipe for disaster. If it takes the student an adequate period of time to be fully acquainted and knowledgeable about sacred sexuality before applying it to a study of the Qabbalah, then I believe that it would be time well spent.

The first consideration is that if the student is working with a partner, then they both must perform and independently engage in their practices and study in a regular and consistent manner. This is also true for solo practitioners. A constant, periodic and regular practice will produce the best results. Partners can perform their practices separately, and they can also perform them together. Eventually, they will perform all of their more important work together and act as a team, thereby assisting the process of reinforcing and objectifying everything that happens. The basic regimen consists of the following five operations (these have already been expounded upon).

1. Meditation session - cyclic and periodic - represents the essential foundation of the discipline.

2. Contemplation session - periodic - incrementally more frequently performed and for greater duration.

3. Pathworking - cyclic - performed first singly, then in partnership.

4. Invocation/Evocation - strategic - performed in partnership for specific angelic entites.

5. Godhead assumption - periodic - performed first singly, then later in partnership

The second consideration is that in the disciplines of contemplation and Godhead assumption, the practitioner should begin to engage in a sexual interpretation of the various qabbalistic symbolism. An important fact is that the Tree of Life is formulated through three pillars, creating a kind of dialectic process. Advanced techniques using these structures would consist of following the flow of masculine and feminine energies in the Tree of Life and observe how they are mediated in the Middle Pillar.

Sephiroth have specific sexual attributes, since they are masculine, feminine and also neutral. In Hebrew, a noun has only two genders (unlike Greek and Latin), so therefore, when one considers the gender of the name of one of the sephirah, it creates a complex fusion of genders. For instance, Chokmah is a feminine noun occupying the top place on the masculine pillar, so it would seem to indicate a blending or combining of genders, making Wisdom into a complex quality in regards to the Tree of Life. This same examination can be done to other sephirah as well, such as the planet Venus (Netzach) being associated with the masculine pillar, the Sun (Tiphareth) to the middle pillar (making it neutral), and Mercury (Hod) to the feminine pillar. All of these associations make for a very complex and integrated metaphysical system.

These complex symbologies imply that genders and polarities are much more complicated than one would suppose, and this would accord well with actual occurrences in the real world. Men behaving like women or women behaving like men is completely supported by the symbology of the Tree of Life, even though its original authors had not intended such an interpretation. To develop a system of a sexualized Qabbalah, students should very carefully and thoroughly examine the various subtle attributes of gender and polarity in regards to the Tree of Life. The full development of this analysis will greatly impact the disciplines of path working and Godhead assumption.

The third consideration is the nature and power of the Shekinah, and its importance in advanced qabbalistic work. The Shekinah, which means “place” or “presence,” symbolizes the actual materialized presence of the overall Godhead, known as the One. This entity is analogous to the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit or the Islamic concept of the Baraka. It is the tangible manifested blessing or grace of the Deity. It can be seen as both a spiritual aspect that blesses and manifests to an entire religious organization (analogous to an egregore), or as the individual intermediary between a person and their Deity. Thus, to the occultist, the Shekinah can represent (but is not limited to) an aspect of an individual’s higher self, known to qabbalists as the Yechidah. In fact, one of the most important goals that a qabbalist can accomplish is to invoke the Shekinah and make it become tangible. The personal Shekinah then becomes the embodiment of the mediator (Neschamah) between a person’s conscious self (as the Ruach) and his/her higher self (Yechidah), and facilitates their union.

How does one invoke the Shekinah into a materialized form? To accomplish this goal, we can perhaps take a few ideas from the Jewish qabbalists of four centuries ago. The most important factor is to create a spiritual environment that is both harmonious and favorable for the Shekinah to reside. Such a spiritual environment would be greatly determined by the qabbalist’s personal spiritual discipline and regular practices. Frequent and continual spiritual work are an important part of this process, but they are not exclusive to it. A qabbalist must not be an insular practitioner who performs his work in complete secrecy. Personal holiness is also associated with acts of spiritual service and charitable gifts to one’s community.

A true qabbalist not only performs her personal spiritual discipline in a regular and intense manner, but she also engages with her community, giving money to charities and offering herself to help others less fortunate. In other words, she presents a compassionate and engaged persona in regards to her fellow humanity. She will also live the spiritual code of the Qabbalah, and not engage in any behavior that she might consider as immoral or unethical. Being true to herself and acting as a force for the greater good in the community but also seeking the spirit of the Shekinah as if she were seeking for the veritable “lover within;” all of these practices are a prerequisite for the Shekinah to become fully manifested to the seeker. The key to fully manifesting the Shekinah is to approach it as a Godhead assumption, and to engage in that practice until the process becomes completely tangible and experiential. Achieving this goal is no small event, since it requires the greatest single effort from the student in order to be realized. Encountering the Shekinah symbolizes that the qabbalist is ready for the final stages in her spiritual and magickal regimen, so it is the key to this whole process.

These final steps represent where the two paired seekers focus their efforts on emulating the spiritual union of the ultimate Godhead. They join at all levels of their being with the Shekinah guiding them to that final blissful glory of total at-one-ment with the Deity. If a solitaire qabbalist is performing this work, then the Shekinah becomes his or her complete focus and surrogate spiritual mate. Either of these two types of practices will require the addition of five high level operations to be mastered in order for the seeker(s) to experience spiritual union. These five high level operations would consist of the following practices. It’s assumed that the practitioner is able to invoke and summon the Shekinah whenever needed, and this entity will be the medium that will facilitate full spiritual union with the Deity.

1. Paired meditation and contemplation - beginning with the mirrored Opening Self technique done to allow the other to touch, merge and enter into a whole unified embrace.

2. Contemplation on all of the symbols of union found in the Qabbalah, these would represent a completely sexualized variation of the Tree of Life, where the ultimate symbol is the joining of the archetypal female (Binah) with the archetypal male (Chokmah) to produce the symbolic child, which is an emulation of the One.

3. Charging and physically realizing the Tree of Life superimposed on the body, and then joining analogous sephirah from one body to another, thus linking them.

4. Assumption of polarized Godhead aspects, and witnessing and experiencing them in combination with each other. Focus is placed on the polarity of the masculine and feminine sephiroth (Chokmah to Binah, Chesed to Geburah, Netzach to Hod, and Tiphareth to Yesod). Each Godhead should be revealed, shared, worshiped and loved in turn, alternating between the paired seekers.

5. Assumption of Kether and Malkuth Godheads, alternating between the roles of the pair of seekers, and in that state, performing various actual physical techniques and positions for sexual union. This rite should be performed as a personal and intimate ceremony, with all the trappings of a spiritual wedding rite, with particular emphasis on physical consummation.

When a couple is able to perform all five of these incredible and powerful operations, then they will experience, over time, total union with the Deity. These steps and procedures are based upon analogous steps and procedures found in other traditions, such as Indian Tantra and a highly ritualized version of the Great Rite as found in traditional Witchcraft. It has analogues in both Western and Eastern Alchemy, as well as in Tantric Buddhism. Wherever ecstasy is the key to spiritual enlightenment, you can find these kinds of operations being used.

As you can readily see, adopting and fulfilling this regimen would complete the sole spiritual objective of achieving union with the Deity. However, being able to perform it in its entirety would be the most challenging thing anyone could possibly imagine. All sorts of interferences and issues would emerge to attempt to thwart such an achievement. While I am able to determine what these steps and stages would need to be in order to produce the desired results, I have yet to do them myself. I am certain that I would add other exercises and augment what I have written here, but the basic idea is quite sound and true.

Accomplishing this great work does not end the overall process of spiritual effort and work. In fact, it is only the beginning of a whole new set of tasks, all of which characterize the work of an enlightened being seeking to guide and help others to the same goal. Spiritual service would be the essence of what a student does when he or she has achieved enlightenment. All others things would suddenly diminish in importance, since doing the work of the Deity would become the seeker’s sole objective. Where that would lead to is anyone guess, but achieving that sublime state would at least answer the ancient questions in the Halls of the Mystery Temple,  “Who serves the Grail, what is its source and where does it travel?” I look forward to that day and time when I am faced with such an amazing set of questions.   

Frater Barrabbas

Qabbalah and the God Names

Sorry - this blog article was removed pending the publication of “Magical Qabalah for Beginners” published by Llewellyn Worldwide - you can find this material in that book, published on January, 2013.

FB

Qabbalah and Non-Hebrew Languages

Hebrew is the paramount language that is used in the Qabbalah, with perhaps some consideration for the Aramaic language. The original books written about the Qabbalah were either written in Hebrew or Aramaic, but both used the same alphabet consisting of twenty-two letters. Almost all of the sacred books of the Hebrew scriptures, including much of the apocrypha, were written in Hebrew, only a few books were written in Aramaic. Commentaries on the laws and the scriptures were mostly written in Aramaic, but still used the same alphabet. Thus, for this reason, the Hebrew alphabet was used to engineer the Qabbalah and drive the structure of the Tree of Life.

The relationship between the alphabet, language, holy scriptures, theology, theosophy, metaphysics, and magic were tightly bonded to create a unique system of occult contemplation and speculation. This combination has been powerfully reinforced due to the fact that the Qabbalah has thirty-two mystical paths that consist of the numbers 1 through 10 and the twenty-two letters, Aleph through Thav. It is a metaphysical system based on numbers and letters, so it is both language-based and also founded on the base-ten system of numeration. Even so, there is at most the possibility of maybe having 24 pathway slots in an expanded Tree of Life configuration, due to the fact that there is an overlap with the Elements and the Planets.

If we would consider a system where the elements of Earth and Spirit would be separate and distinct from Saturn and Fire, respectively, then it could be possible to have 24 distinct pathways, and therefore, the same number of letters. We have already discussed the possibility of at least two additional pathways (from Binah to Chesed, and Chokmah to Geburah), but that would likely be the most that even an ambitious student could readily justify in order to add to the structure of the Tree of Life. Further expansions would tend to clutter up the efficient structure of the Tree, and would force the erstwhile occultist to add additional Tarot trumps and path based correspondences. For this reason, it is likely that an accommodation of alternative language alphabets, such as Greek, Latin, Coptic, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic or even English, would be restricted to a system of Gematria, and not be included with an expansion of the Tree of Life. (This, of course, is my opinion, and others may feel free to dispute what I am declaring here.)

What this means is that the Qabbalah is a system that is based on the Hebrew alphabet, and that other language based variations would represent additional alphabetic to numeric tables. These tables would be used to acquire the numerations of strategic words and phrases as found in various holy scriptures and occultic writings, incorporating a form of Gematria.

I have found that the attempts at comparing other language based alphabets to the Sephiroth and Pathways of the Tree of Life to be cumbersome, awkward and completely unconvincing. They seem to me to be ultimately very contrived. I believe that if a student wants to base a qabbalah like occult system on another language, then he can do the work creating a new glyph, building up various tables of correspondences and the myriad of other elements required to fashion an occult meta-system and a foundational meta-knowledge base. Anyone who wants to do this monumental task, I wish them lots of luck - they’ll need it. It’s possible to do this, but just really difficult to accomplish. Perhaps the hardest part would be to convince enough people to use it so that it would be something more than just an occult “pipe dream.”

For myself, I have found that using the Hebrew language or alphabet as an occult language structure isn’t a problem, even though I am a pagan and a witch. That language is part of the foundation of my spiritual and occult heritage, which includes Greek and Latin as well. Since the Qabbalah was born out of a heterodoxic synthesis of Jewish gnosticism and pagan Greek philosophy, I can find elements in it that are necessary and important to my own work.

I don’t have to be either Jewish or Christian to find great value in the occult version of the Qabbalah. So for this reason, I am content to allow the qabbalistic system that I use to be defined by the Hebrew language and alphabet. It is also true that I have found many pagan elements in the Hebrew scriptures as well as in the Christian, so I have lulled myself into a comfortable state of being inclusive rather than exclusive. This attitude is unlike some of my pagan brothers and sisters, who feel that they must emphatically reject the whole of the Judeo-Christian cultural matrix in order to be truly pagan. I guess you could say that I am quite happy to be merely a Milquetoast kind of pragmatic heterodox in a world of extremes.

That brings me to my main subject, which is to use other languages besides Hebrew in formulating a system of Gematria. I would like to examine two of these languages, the first is Greek, and the second is Latin. The English Qabbalah is a special case, so I will also attempt to deal with that in a separate section. Since both Latin and Greek have important cultural and occult language foundations, and because there are plenty of holy scriptures and esoteric writings in these two language, then it might benefit me to have a system of reducing phrases or words written in these languages into a numeric value, and then comparing that numeric value to other words with a similar value. This is the nature of the tool of Gematria, and unless you have some kind of numerical lexicon, then it becomes much more difficult to find all of the significant words and phrases that might be relative. I will therefore write up a section for Greek, Latin and the English language systems of Gematria and refer the reader, wherever possible, to useful sources for finding a numerical lexicon, which is also called a “Sepher Sephiroth,” or Book of Numbers.

Finally, before I go on to these subjects, I would like to briefly say a few things about the overall usefulness of Gematria. I have seen this tool used in a brilliant manner to show an interesting connection between words and phrases, and I have seen it terribly abused to show the most tenuous and nonsensical of connections. Aleister Crowley used Gematria in a sparse, strategic and brilliant manner, and Kenneth Grant abused it, attempting to prove nearly anything that he wanted to prove, however absurd. After slogging through some of Grant’s worst books (and even a few of his better ones), and having to make sense out of an innundation of gematric proofs (and nothing else to back them up), I have to admit that my love affair with that tool was been worn very thin. I prefer Crowley’s method of using Gematria to add significance to an already proven connection, instead of using it to fish for connections. Also, while quite a number of words or phrases may have the same numeric value when determined through Gematria, only some of them are significant. I think that it is more of an art than a science to be able to select strategic gematric congruencies and use them in occult arguments, and it should be used in a manner that is transparent and obvious to the reader.

In my opinion, there is nothing more frustrating and exasperating than reading some occult bunk that is pasted over with a vast amount of numerological nonsense. I can appreciate strategic numeric congruencies that are straightforward, useful and obvious, but I think that it is something that should be used very selectively and carefully. Since Gematria seems to be so easy to abuse and overuse, I have found myself looking for meaning and significance in other sources, and avoiding it altogether. That being said, I would recommend to those who have a powerful urge to use this tool, that they should use it elegantly, wisely and only occasionally. Writing an occult paper, article or book that consists mostly of gematric proofs of congruency is guaranteed to make the author appear as a certifiable nut case.


Greek Qabbalah

Classical Greek has an alphabet consisting of 24 letters, and these were derived from the same source as the Hebrew letters, which was the ancient Phoenician alphabet. Recent speculation has shown that the Phoenician alphabet was derived as a single consonant syllabary from the ancient Egyptian system of writing, and unlike Cuneiform, both writing systems lacked vowels. Therefore, the main difference between the Hebrew and Greek alphabets is that all of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are consonantal, in other words, there are no vowels. The Greek alphabet has seven vowels, eight semi-vowels, and nine voiceless consonants, for a total of 24 letters. As I have stated previously, one could add two more pathways to the Tree of Life and accommodate all of the letters of the Greek alphabet, but maintaining the traditional structure ensures a miss-match between Greek and Hebrew. From a linguistic perspective, the Greek alphabet only has 17 consonants, while the Hebrew alphabet has 22, amplifying the mismatch between them. So it would seem that Semitic languages are consonant rich and vowel poor, and this is the basic definition of that language group, according to linguists. It also makes the mapping of Indo-European languages to Semitic languages difficult and unsatisfactorily incomplete.

The Classical Greek language is probably the only language that would deserve to have it’s own distinct version of the Qabbalah, including a glyph, Tarot cards and all that goes with it. This is because many of the crucial elements of qabbalistic mysticism and metaphysics can be found in Greek philosophy, occultism and magickal practices. Greek Gematria, which is known under the name of Isopsephy, has a very long and venerable history. Since a distinct numbering system was not yet invented, letters were often used as numbers, especially in the Greek language. Many of the Semitic languages, such as Hebrew, typically spelled out the name of numbers. Still, there appears to be a large body of evidence that isopsephy was invented well before the Jews discovered Gematria, and in fact, they may have borrowed it from the Greeks back in the Geonic period, when the focus of Jewish intellectualism was centered in Babylon. Where Gematria is often used to determine the numeric equivalencies of words or phrases already found in the scriptures, the Greeks seemed to prefer to craft or select words and phrases deliberately because of their numeric value.

Another interesting point is that the problem with overlapping correspondences, such as that which is found with Earth and Saturn, Fire and Spirit, completely disappears when using an alphabet that consists of 24 letters instead of 22. This point alone might illustrate that a more elegant system could be based entirely on the Greek language instead of Hebrew. What Hebrew has going for it is the Hebrew Bible, and its importance and relevance to the modern western world. Many significant myths and philosophical systems are based on Christianity and Judaism, and not on the pagan religious systems or philosophy of the Greeks and the Romans. Modern occultism owes a huge debt to Neoplatonism and Neopythagoreanism, as well as Stoic philosophy, and we could easily say that the foundation of the occult is much more Greek than it is Jewish. However, we live in a world where the many various strains of religion, philosophy and occultism are irreparably mixed together into a fusion of ideas, beliefs and practices, and it probably wouldn’t be easy or productive to attempt to separate them out for the sake of determining a purer source. For this reason, a Hebrew and a Greek Qabbalah are relevant and even interdependent.

The following is the Greek alphabet and its associated numerical values. You will notice that three values are missing. These numeric place holders were held by archaic letters borrowed from the Phoenician, which had no Greek phonetic value, and they were Digama (W) as 6, Qoppa (Q) as 90, and Sanpi (Sh) as 900. However, in deriving words or phrase numeric values from Greek letters (used in texts or sacred writings), these extra letters were not employed.

Alpha - A = 1       
Beta - B = 2       
Gamma - G = 3       
Delta - D = 4       
Epsilon - E = 5       
Zeta - Z = 7       
Eta - H = 8       
Theta - Th = 9           
Iota - I = 10       
Kappa - K = 20       
Lambda - L = 30       
Mu - M = 40       
Nu - N = 50
Xi - X = 60
Omikron - short O = 70
Pi - P  = 80
Rho - R = 100
Sigma - S = 200
Tau - T = 300
Upsilon - U = 400
Phi - Ph = 500
Chi - Ch = 600
Psi - Ps = 700
Omega - long O = 800

In addition to Isopsephy being older than Jewish Gematria, and the ease at which correspondences and symbolism are shown to match up with the 24 Greek letters, the other forms of the practical Qabbalah can also be found in Greek philosophic and esoteric writings, long before they were developed in the corresponding Jewish qabbalistic system. As Kieren Barry has so ably pointed out in his book “The Greek Qabalah,” which I do recommend, there isn’t much that the Jews didn’t apparently borrow from the Greeks when it came to the practical application of the Qabbalah. (Although we need to be careful in taking any author’s word on this subject, since some might have a personal axe to grind.)  

“The Greeks .. were also responsible for the development of other aspects of the literal Qabalah later used by the Jews, such as Qabalistic exegesis, alphabetic numerals, isopsephy, notarichon, and pythmenes or aiq beker.” (See Barry, p. 184)

So it would seem that Jewish Gematria is a version of Isopsephy, Notariqon is Notarichon and Temurah is a combination of cipher substitution and Pythmenes, both of these latter methods were known and used by the Greeks. The similarities are more than compelling, but shouldn’t be too surprising. Occultists and esoteric philosophers, not to mention human beings in general, have been borrowing and stealing ideas from each other since the beginning of our species. It would also seem to be a particular behavior in primates and even lower mammals. Great ideas have a capital and a life of their own, and seem to sprout legs at the earliest opportunity.

Having briefly gone over all of these interesting and fascinating esoteric practices that were a significant part of Greek philosophy in antiquity, it would seem that a complete Greek Qabbalah not only could be fully developed and expanded, it should become someone’s personal project. I look forward to seeing a future book with its own Tree of Life glyph, Tarot cards, Godhead names, spirit lists, and everything else that goes into a complete Greek Qabbalah. When that happens, I will happily transfer my allegiance to that system, but until then, I will use what I have.

You can find an excellent Greek concordance index of numbers and associated words in Mr. Barry’s book on pages 218 through 271. There is also another shorter version to be found in Stephen Skinner’s book, “The Complete Magician’s Tables,” from pages 293 through 295.     


Latin Qabbalah

Latin has an alphabet that has twenty-one native letters, and three letters added from the Greek alphabet, making a total of 24. However, two of the letters have no real associated words (“K” and “Y”), so conceivably, we could easily drop them and then have just 22 letters. It would seem that Latin, then, could actually be used in the Qabbalah without either changing the structure or having to add more pathways and tarot trumps. All that is required is to build a table showing where the Hebrew letter could be mapped to a Latin letter. Since there are five vowel letters in Latin (and none in Hebrew), this correspondence might be inconclusive, but we should give it a try.

Comparing the Latin alphabet to the Hebrew alphabet, we are able to match, somewhat conclusively but also somewhat loosely, all but three letters. We are left with Thav, Chet and Shin on the Hebrew side, and E, F and U on the Latin side. We could just cram them into the slots without any consideration and then pretend that the job is done, but then that would very sloppy and artificial. I might exchange the Latin H for Hebrew Chet, and place the Hebrew Heh with the Latin E. That only leaves two letters unmatched. On the slimmest of evidential considerations, we might match the Latin F with the Hebrew Shin, and the Latin U with the Hebrew Thav, and that would produce the table below. It isn’t a perfect match, and I am not completely happy with it, but it could be done, and this match between alphabets might also assist us in mapping English words to Hebrew.

A - Aleph
B - Beit
C - Kaph
D - Daleth
E - Heh
F - Shin
G - Gimmel
H - Chet
I - Yod
L - Lamed
M - Mim
N - Nun
O - Ayin
P - Peh
Q - Qoph
R - Resh
S - Samek
T - Teth
U - Thav
V - Vav
X - Tzadi
Z - Zain

One would assume that the numbering values would be the same as Hebrew, except for the letters that have a double value when they occur at the end of a word. There are Latin letters that have numeric values, but these don’t relate very well to a system of letter to number congruencies.

Another possible system is called the Latin Simplex Qabbalah (supposedly developed by Phyllis Seckler), and this system assigns the values of 1 to 22 to the letters in the alphabetic sequence. A simplex structure is analogous to the modern numerology approach, except that those letters with values over 9 have their two digits added together, thus collapsing them into a table of just nine values. Thus, the Latin D, which has a value of 4, would be the same as Latin O, which is 13 (1 + 3 = 4). Any of these methods would produce a decent index of numbers to words and phrases. One of the more obvious congruencies that I have found (off the top of my head) would be DEUS = HOMO = 45, and I am sure that there are a plethora of other congruencies. (I would recommend examining a source document from the periodical, the Black Pearl, Volume 1 , No. 1, Spring 1997.)


English Qabbalah

Probably one of the most controversial systems of qabbalistic gematria is to be found associated with the English alphabet. There have been a number of different systems proposed, and the Thelemites seem to have taken this a lot farther and more seriously than anyone else. The problem of establishing any kind of system with the English alphabet is that it contains 26 letters, one less than a perfect number that would allow it to be collapsed into just the numbers 1 to 9. Another issue is that the English alphabet has no history of ever being used as a numeric system, since it became popular only long after the adoption of the 10 based number system. I could also argue that sacred scripts in English are rare, at least the ones that aren’t a translation of another language (Hebrew, Greek or Latin). Without many original sacred scripts, it becomes difficult to build up a useful numeric to word or phrase concordance. The King James Bible is definitely not a useful source, and while there is a plethora of written material, much of it is secular based. This is where being a Thelemite gives an occultist an incentive for developing an English based gematria, since they have a sacred book written in English. That famous book is Liber Al vel Legis, or the Book of the Law.

I won’t go into the history of the Book of the Law, but I will mention two distinct passages that have motivated Thelemites to develop an English Qabbalah. The first is found in verse 2:55 - “Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet, thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto.” This apparent injunction motivated Crowley to write up an attribution of the letters of the English alphabet with the 27 specialized Trigrams, using the broken and solid lines of the I-Ching, with the addition of a dot for the Tao. These Trigrams were published in 1907 in a book entitled, “Liber Trigrammaton.”

That might have settled the whole matter, except that other readers of the Book of the Law were also puzzling over another passage, found in verse 3:76, which consists of a string of 28 characters, followed up by the oblique pronouncement, “What meaneth this O Prophet?” Some have stated that this string of characters is either a key or is the English Qabbalah. Several individuals have attempted to develop an English Qabbalah from this string of characters and numbers, with varying degrees of success. All of the systems thus derived require that one buys into and is a believer that the Book of the Law is sacred scripture and that its contents are spiritually and esoterically relevant. If an occulitst is not a Thelemite, or doesn’t believe that the Book of the Law is sacred, then a methodology based on it wouldn’t be acceptable.

There are a number of systems based on the 28 character string found in the Book of the Law, most notably, the ALW Cipher developed by Carol Smith, the Trigrammaton Qabalah, based on the Liber Trigrammaton and further developed by R. L. Gillis, Liber CXV, developed by Linda Faborio, “The Key of it All,” by David Cherubim, and the latest, by Samuel Vincent, “The English Qabalah.” I have given each of these systems a cursory examination, and they seem to be effective and are able to produce some intriguing congruent values; but all of them are complex and not intuitively obvious. If you aren’t a Thelemite, then these various methods are not going to be relevant or convincing.

Another method that I encountered and found to be simple enough is the one proposed by William G. Gray. In his version, he has correctly decided to omit the five vowels from consideration and has added a new letter from the Anglo Saxon (Thorn - Th), which allows him to perform an adequate match between the Hebrew and English consonantal alphabet. This is probably the most transparent method, but it still has the problems that we saw in matching the letters of the Hebrew and Latin alphabets. There are letters in Hebrew that don’t exist in English, and visa versa. Adding a Th to the English Alphabet might allow for a match with Thav (which really isn’t a “Th”, but an aspirated “T”), but throwing out the five vowels will orphan Aleph, Heh, and Ayin for the Hebrew alphabet, and cause problems matching the English C or K, J or Y, U, and W. It creates more problems than it solves. Perhaps the best solution would be to use the Latin alphabet, and fold the J and Y together with the I, the K with the C, and the W can be two V’s. This might be better, but it still is kind of contrived and weak.

I guess it all boils down to a couple of very simple solutions, and these are the ones that I use. Yes, I admit it, I am not such a fancy thinker or an afficionado for the latest fad. I want to use something that is easy to remember and works every time. One of the things that I typically do is to just map any word that I happen to be working with to its possible and corresponding Hebrew letters. Once that is accomplished, then I can either monkey around with Hebrew gamatric values and congruencies, or even better, I can compare the letters to their associated Tarot Trump cards, and then read the word like a Tarot card reading. Using this method, I have discovered all sorts of amazing things, and it really opens up the inner significance and occult meanings of special words, phrases or even the names of spirits and Godheads.

The other method that I use is very simple, and it is based on modern numerology. The alphabet is split into three groups of nine, with the last group having just eight elements, and they are all compared to the numbers 1 through 9. The attribution table looks like this -

A - B - C - D - E -  F - G - H - I
J -  K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R
S - T -  U - V - W -X - Y - Z
1    2     3    4    5    6    7    8    9

You take the letters of a word and then add them up, using the above key. Then you can either use the resultant value, or continue to add the numbers together until only a one digit number is left. The nine numbers can be compared to the nine planets of modern Astrology in order to further qualify their values. This is a simple technique, and it was one that I learned as a teenager. To get a person’s complete number, though, you should spell out their full name and include their numeric birth date. Using all of these elements in the calculation will ensure a unique number for the final product.

Other languages represent additional complexities, and we won’t be covering them here, but I am sure if one is really a big fan of obscure linguistics, that someone has written material for a gematria based on Coptic, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Sanscrit, and just about any other alphabet that you could imagine. Since I have a poor opinion of gematric proofs and I am not really very excited about numeric congruencies unless there is other information linking things, I am probably not the person to write about these subjects in any kind of extensive detail. Still, I hope that you have gotten a good overview and can make your own decisions about these techniques and their usefulness.

Frater Barrabbas