“There can be little doubt in my opinion that the famous stanzas of the mysterious Book Dzyan on which Mme. H.P. Blavatsky’s magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine, is based owe something, both in title and content, to the pompous pages of the Zoharic writing called Sifra Di-Tseniutha. The first to advance this theory, without further proof, was L.A. Bosman, a Jewish Theosophist, in his booklet The Mysteries of the Qabalah (1916) p. 31. This seems to me, indeed, the true ‘etymology’ of the hitherto unexplained title. Mme Blavatsky has drawn heavily upon Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata (1677-1684), which contains (vol. II, pp. 347-385) a Latin translation of the Sifra Di-Tseniutha. The solemn and magniloquent style of these pages may well have impressed her susceptible mind. As a matter of fact, H.P.B. herself alludes to such a connection between the two ‘books’ in the very first lines of Isis Unveiled (vol. I, p. 1) where she still refrains from mentioning the Book Dzyan by name. But the transcription used by her for the Aramaic title shows clearly what she had in mind. She says: “There exists somewhere in this wide world an old Book… It is the only copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew document on occult learning-the Siphra Dzeniuta-was compiled from it.” The Book Dzyan is therefore nothing but an occultistic hypostasy of the Zoharic title. This ‘bibliographical’ connection between fundamental writings of modern and Jewish theosophy seems remarkable enough.”

This quote comes from the famous Major Trends In Jewish Mysticism (reviewed elsewhere) of the first Kabbalistic scholar Gershom Scholem (1897-1982). This book is a compilation of lectures that Scholem held and was first released in 1941. Scholem is justly regarded as the authority on the subject of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah and the first scholar to approach the subject scientifically. This even resulted in a vividly renewed interest in the Kabbalah that continues to the present day. Kabbalah is not really the subject of this article though.

The Stanzas Of Dzyan

Everybody who knows a little bit about modern Theosophy, a movement that we mostly owe to madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1854-1918) (HPB in short), has heard about the Stanzas Of Dzyan. A book -according to HPB- that is the most ancient text, containing the core-knowledge of humanity. On these stanzas her most famous work The Secret Doctrine is based. All this information you can already find in the quote from Scholem.

Scholem says that these stanzas are a rework of a book from the Jewish Zohar (the Sepher ha-Zohar or Book of Splendour). In this idea he follows the suggestion of a Jewish Theosophist, but he doesn’t give a any evidence. The quote -by the way- is actually a note to a lecture about the Zohar and not a subject that Scholem has really written about. Too bad, probably because I am very curious where he bases his idea on.

The Sifra Di-Tseniutha

What else does Scholem say about the Sifra in his Major Trends? Around page 160, Scholem speaks about the books of the Zohar, since this is a compilation of texts. As b) Scholem mentions the Sifra and translates the title as Book Of Concealment. The Sifra is “a document of only six pages containing a sort of commentary on passages from the first six chapters of Genesis from a single section in the synagogical division of the Torah. Its style is highly oracular and obscure, not a single name being mentioned, and only the briefest allusions are made to the various doctrines, while no explanation or any sort are vouchsafed.”

The Sifra is not mentioned all that often in Major Trends. A few short notes about it can be found on page 254 (“one of the most difficult parts of the Zohar“), page 166 (the Sifra is much alike the Aramaic sections of the Midrash Ha-Neelam) and page 185 (the Sifra was one of the first parts of the Zohar to be completed).
The Midrah Ha-Neelam is spoken about in length, but that is not really interesting for the subject.

Don Karr

I have used the excellent “bibliographical survey” of Don Karr about the Christian Cabala for my article about this subject. In this text of Karr he mentions the ‘HPB controversy’. He quotes and follows Scholem, refers to a compilation of texts of HPB that was released under the title Kabalah and Kabalism (I haven’t been able to trace it myself) stating three believes of HPB about the Kabbalah:
1. “Kabalah” was inferior to “our (Eastern) septenary system”;
2. kabbalistic writings “all suffered corruptions in their content by sectarian editors”;
3. there was “evidence of occult knowledge in the West,” even though HPB saw fit to expose “[its] limitations” and points to “the misleading character of Kabalistic symbolism”.

Karr continues to mention a mistake of HPB. She mentions the Zohar and the Sepher Dzeniutha (there are different spellings) as if they were two books. Karr also says “HPB had but a cursory knowledge of the subject from easily traceable sources.” “If one takes a lenient view, HPB’s sources could be blamed for the bulk of her errors for many of these had indeed “suffered corruptions in their content by sectarian editors.” These sources are:
1. “from Pico to Knorr von Rosenroth, Christian cabalists believed that with kabbalist methods rightly used, Jews could be shown the “thruth” behind the Old Testament and won over to Christ”;
2. Eliphas Levi, who “[n]ever made an independent statement upon any historical fact in which the least confidence could be reposed,” and who “never presented the sense of an author whom he was reviewing in a way which could be said to reproduce that author faithfully” (A.E. Waite, The Holy Kabbalah, p. 489).
3. S.L. MacGregor Mathers, who was also dependent upon Rosenroth and Levi;
4. Isaac Myer, whose earnest study contains many errors, some of which even HPB did not commit, as for example, Myer’s mix-up of the roles and order of the sefiroth, calling binah the second and hokhmah the third (Myer, Qabbalah, pp. 259-63).”

HPB’s sources

Scholem writes that HPB draws “heavily upon Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata (1677-1684)”. It is Don Karr who points to the sources more specifically, but also in Karr’s writing I find no evidence for the link between the two books in the title of this article. Some more investigation can be done here. There is an excellent and extremely detailed index of The Secret Doctrine from the hand of John P. van Mater. I have used it to find referrals to different subjects that can be of interest here. Let us start with Scholem’s pointer, Rosenroth:
Christian Knorr von Rosenroth is only mentioned a few times in The Secret Doctrine, his translation of books of the Zohar under the title Kabbala Denudata is mentioned by HPB four times and another writing called Liber Mysterii twice.

Karr’s pointers then:
Pico isn’t mentioned at all, Eliphas Levi numerous times (on page I.243 HPB uses him as Kabbalist authority), Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and his translation of Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata under the title The Kabbalah Unveiled eight times and one time an unpublished manuscript of Mathers.
Isaac Myer is used much, much more by HPB and she even calls his books “excellent” (I 374).

Other keywords I looked for are “Kabbala, Kabala, Cabala, Qabbalah” with a great many hits, “Kabbalist(s)” which also results in an impressive list; “Kabbalistic”, about twenty hits, Adolphe D. Franck, seven times; Christian D. Ginsburg, two times; Johannes Reuchlin and his De Arte Cabbalistica, two times; Guillaume Postel, one time and Isaac Luria, two times.
If you (re)read my article about the Christian Cabala, you will see some familiar names, so HPB seems to have known the Christian Cabalist literature quite well. Better than Jewish Kabbalist literature?

Other interesting referals are of course Kabbalistic texts:
- Sepher Yetsirah: 15 times;
- Zohar: numerous times;
- Siphra’ di-Tseni’utha‘ (Dzeniouta in tx): 21 times.

Mathers

One thing caught my attention, being the mention of the “unpublished manuscript” of MacGregor Mathers (1831-1891). I had never figured that these two might actually have known eachother. It didn’t take a very long search for the answer of this question. The biography of Mathers on the website of The Golden Dawn has some interesting info from Mather’s wife. She says that Mathers met HPB at an early age (they differ 23 years) and he was impressed by her. Still he soon found out that he had different ideas from HPB and the two went separate ways.

Yet, I ran into another thing on the page of the Golden Dawn. It is said that two of the founders of their order were members of the Theosophical Society of HPB, being Mathers and W.W. Westcott!! This seems more than just a brief meeting.

Some more investigation of Mathers therefor. Mathers’ The Kabbalah Unveiled is available on different pages in html or pdf. In the introduction Mathers explains the Kabbalah and its history, but refers almost only to Christian Cabalist writings (just as HPB). It is Mathers who says that Pico used the Sifra and as we saw, not HPB. Further Mathers says that his The Kabbalah Unveiled contains translations of a) Siphra Dtzenioutha; b) Idra Rabba Qadisha (or greater holy assembly) and c) Idra Zutra Qadisha (or lesser holy assembly).

Mathers and HPB knew eachother, this is for sure. It is very well possible that the two had influence on eachother, but I haven’t been able to find out the exact relation between the two. Was HPB Mathers’ teacher or quite the other way around, or did they have a tight/loose relation and only met to exchange their writings? In any case, Mathers was not the only Kabbalist that HPB knew and I don’t know if she got to know the others from Mathers or by herself.

The Secret Doctrine

Using the Van Mater index, I checked The Secret Doctrine to find out what HPB writes about a few subjects. A few interesting points:
- in book I, page XLIII (original numbering) you can read that the “very old book” that HPB opens Isis Unveiled with (see quote Scholem) is the source of the Kiu-Ti, the Sifra and even the Sepher Yetsirah. That is not all. Also the Shu-King (“the original Bible of China”), the original books of Thoth-Hermes, the Puranas from India, the Chaldean Book Of Numbers and the Pentateuch “are derived from the one little source-book”. HPB does make the link herself, but the other way around;
- a few times HPB refers directly to Mathers’ translation of the Sifra, like on page I 342 and II 504 and here and there also to other parts of the same book, such as the Ha Idra Rabba Qadisha (II 625) that HPB mentions;
- on page II 626 (note) HPB says that the Chaldean Book Of Numbers is the key to the otherwise hardly understandable Sifra.

There are two very clear statements about Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denundata to be found within The Secret Doctrine. HPB says that Rosenroth’s Latin is distorted (I 391), but also that Rosenroth’s text is “a puzzle, not a guide” (I 215). Did she try to cover her sources or is this her actual opinion? It at least seems to imply that HPB knew both Rosenroth’s Latin text as Mathers’ English translation of it.

The information above makes it quite clear that there must be a link between the two texts, but the discussion is which is the oldest.

“The Stanzas Of Dzyan” and “The Sifra di-Tseniutha”

I made a textual comparison. I have been reading both texts, put them aside eachother and tried to find conformities. I may not be the right person for such a task, but here are the results.

The Stanzas are a very Eastern text about creation with many strange names and terms that were most known to orientalists of the time of HPB (she says). The Sifra is a very Kabbalistic text speaking about creation in the form of the building of God’s body. This is the first conformity, both texts speak about the creation of the physical world.

On to the texts themselves then. In the beginning there are verses that are quite alike, just read these parts:
Sifra I.2 “For before there was equilibrium, countenance beheld not countenance.”
Dzyan I.2 “Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration.”

Sifra I.3 “And the kings of ancient time were dead, and their crowns were found no more; and the earth was desolate.”
Dzyan I.6 “The seven sublime Lords and the seven truths had ceased to be, and the universe, the son of necessity, was immersed in Paranishpanna, to be outbreathed by that which is and yet is not. Naught was.”

Sifra I.5 “This equilibrium hangeth in that region which is negatively existent in the Ancient One.”;
Sifra I.6 “Thus were those powers equiponderated which were not yet in perceptible existence.”;
Dzyan I.7 “The causes of existence had been done away with; the visible that was, and the invisible that is, rested in eternal non-being — the one being.”

Sifra I.7 “In His form existeth the equilibrium: it is incomprehensible, it is unseen.”;
Dzyan I.8 “Alone the one form of existence stretched boundless, infinite, causeless, in dreamless sleep; and life pulsated unconscious in universal space, throughout that all-presence which is sensed by the opened eye of the Dangma.”.

If these sentences are comparable, I could take a few more from the beginning of the two texts.

Other similarities:
- The number seven is prominent in both texts;
- Both texts seem to speak about two worlds or two creations (or seven?), the Sifra literary (I.18), Dzyan speaks about the “first divine world” (V.4);
- Sifra I.23 says “six worlds follow afresh”, can we compare this to the “he created six” (Sifra I.16) that HPB uses several times in The Secret Doctrine?;
- Explaining the Stanzas HPB uses a drawing from Eliphas Levi (I.242) which looks an awfull lot like Mathers drawing in the first chapter of the Sifra;
- Both Rosenroth and HPB refer to “The Mantuan Codex” several times;
- Both texts use asterixes (***) in places a name could not be given.

Differences:
- Thirteen is an important number in the Sifra but I haven’t found in the Stanzas;
- In the Sifra physical creation already starts in I.8, but in Dzyan no earlier than V.5;
- Both texts are short, but the Sifra has three books, of which the last two have little or nothing to do with what you can read in the Stanzas.

I can mention a few other points in favour of Scholem’s theory though:
- On page I.239 of The Secret Doctrine HPB quotes the Sifra to explains a stanza (but doesn’t say which verse);
- The Sifra refers to Genesis/Bereshit (I.20+21 i.e.) which really undermines HPB’s remark that it is an ages old text based on an even older text. She may say that the source-text also inspired the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), but that doesn’t explain how the Sifra refers to the correct verse in the present-day counting. Also I can mention referrals in the Sifra to Ezekiel (I.30 i.e.) which is not one of these first five books;
- The “seven sublime lords” (see above) are seven creative spirits also called Dzyan Chohans, Elohim or archangels, to use HPB’s own words. Also the “builders” of stanza II.1 and “Fohat” of V.2 are much alike the Elohim to me:
- Dzyan V.4 speaks about “the seventh — the crown”, kether?

All in all more in favour of Scholem’s theory than I initially expected. Definate proof? Well, that goes a little far for me.

But, should anyone who reads this have more info, leave your comment. If you are looking for more information, follow the links that are to be found within the text. Kabbalah.com also has a commentary on every book of the Zohar (if you subscribe), which you may want to read.

-basic text 29/10/03-
-first adaptation 31/10/03-
-second adaptation 2/11/03-

There were also many Jews in Spain and the Jewish alchemist Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204 better known as Maimonides) compiled the text that we now know as the Mishnàh. This word means ‘repetitions’ and the text contains explanations of the Thorah. It seems that Maimon was a re-compiler or maybe only a translator, because the second century Rabbi Judah ha-Nassi is (also) regarded as the compiler of the Mishnàh. The Thorah are the first five books of the Jewish bible (the Old Testament of the Christians) and the word means ‘doctrine’.
Moses of Léon (1250-1305) wrote (or compiled) a large book about the Thorah that we came to know as the Sepher Zohar or the ‘book of splendour’. This book claims to be the writings of a second century wiseman and is mostly regarded the most important Kabbalistic text that contains every aspect of the tradition (which is the translation of the word Kabbalah by the way). There are even people who claim that Kabbalism came into being in this time and with the Zohar, but not everybody agrees with this.
Another major Kabbalistic text that originated in the Muslim environment in Spain are the Sepher Yetzirah or ‘book of creation’ which describes the ten emanations of god, or the “sephiroth” and however it does not give the drawing, describes the well-known ‘tree of life’ (see left and particularly the article “Etz Chayyim”).
However there are people who say that Kabbalism originates in this 12th century climate, this is not entirely true.

The Hebrew characters for the word are , qof-beth-lamed-heh, or , kaf-beth-lamed-heh from right to left. Since ancient Hebrew doesn’t have any vowels and the consonants can be transcribed to our letters in different way, there are many ways of writing the word. I usually use “Kabbalah”, but it may just as well be “Kabala”, “Cabala”, “Qabala”, “Quabalah” or even “Quobele” if you like (we also don’t know how ancient Hebrew was pronounced). It is generally accepted that there are two kinds of Kabbalah, the speculative Kabbalah or ‘Jehunieth’ and the practical Kabbalah or ‘Maassieth’. The first is of course of a more philosophical nature, the second is involved with magic and Jewish word-games (“Gematria” and Notaricon”, maybe enough to say about them for a separate article). Kabbalah is mostly based on the ancient Jewish texts, such as the Thorah, the Talmud (‘instructions’), Mishnah, Gemarah (supplement to the Mishnah), etc., but mostly on the Thorah.
Written in Hebrew the Thorah contains text and numbers, since every Hebrew character is also a number. When you count the value for a certain word or piece of the text, other words with the same value are closely aligned (this is actually “gematria”). This is an example of practical Kabbalah on the Thorah.
When speaking of God, there is a striking similarity with the gnostic worldview. Kabbalists say that the God from the Bible isn’t the highest God, but a creator-God. The highest Divinity is endless, eternal, unlimited and uncomprehendable and named “En-Soph”. The Sephirotic tree is a schematic reproduction of creation. En- Soph is above and all around and the 10 sephiroth are as said 10 emanations of It. The tree can be splitted in three parts of which the top three sephiroth form the highest of the three worlds, the next three sephiroth the second highest, the next three the third and the last sephiroth “Kliphoth” (“hell” so to say) or the material plane.
Of course there is a lot to say about this, but that is not really the purpose of this article.

Jewish mysticism is mostly based on the vision of Esechiel from the Old Testament. The tradition is called “Merkavah mysticism” that developped for a long long time until a new impulse came in the 12th century Spain and ‘real Kabbalism’ came forth. Kabbalism quickly spread through the Jewish world, but also the west got infected. Western occultists and in particular Ramon Lull (1235 – 1315) and the Italian school of Cosimo de Medici (1389 – 1464) gave birth to the “Christian Cabala” that is mostly written like this to divide it from the orthodox Jewish Kabbalah (and later the ceremonial magical (Crowlegian) Qabalah), which is of course based on the Jewish Kabbalah, but with more astrological and western esoteric influences. These two developped quite seperately from eachother, especially after the time that the Christians reconquered southern Europe from the Muslims and both the Muslims and the Jews were killed or driven out. What we here in the west mostly get is (fairly) Christian Kabbalah and the serious Jewish literature is mostly unavailable in western languages. Still it is an extremely interesting field for investigation, probably enough to fill a life-time.

In this article I want to tell a few things about the Etz Chayyim or Tree Of Life. “Etz Chayyim” is actually the title of the 1959 book by Vital Chayyim (“vital life”?) and is quoted often in Leet’s book.

I will start with a version of the tree of life with which most of you will be familiar I suppose. It has the 10 sephiroth with the names in Hebrew and in with Latin letters and the 22 paths numbered with the letters of the Hebrew alphabeth. The image may need some information for some of you.
The circles are called “sephiroth” (plural of “sephira”) and according to the “Sepher Jetziràh” (“Book Of Forms” one of the major Kabbalistic texts) the sephiroth are the 10 lights that God sent out of his middle. “Sephiroth” is therefor often translated as “lamps”. As mentioned there are 10 sephiroth that got the names that you can see if the picture. Then there are 22 paths connecting the sephiroth which got the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabeth, which each also represent a number, these are not the numbers of the paths though!

What is less known, is that there are more versions of the tree of life, as you can see when you click on the picture on the left. This time you also get the translations of the names of the sephiroth. You may wonder what this 11th sephira “Da’at” is doing there. This is actually not a sephira, but is often mentioned anyway and it will come back later if this article. The difference between the two trees are obvious, the two paths from the sephiroth Hod and Netzach to Malkuth have been replaced by two paths from Binah to Chesed and Chokhmah to Gevurah. I do not intend to write at length about the reasons for this, but some of the logic behind it comes back later on. The picture comes from Leet’s book (-2- see below article) who named the first version the “Cordovero Tree Of Emanation” and the second the “Luria Tree Of Return”. Mozes Cordovero (1522-1570) was best known for his Kabbalistic poetry and his version of the tree is the best-known. Isaac Luria (1533-1572) is one of the greatest reformers of Kabbalism and generally accepted as being the founder of the new Kabbalism or Chassidism, which is more practically oriented in contradiction to Cordoveros theorethical / mystical Kabbalism.

This article is intended to be not more than a very brief and superficial introduction to the Tree Of Life and I do not think myself an expert enough to do anything more than to try to raise your interest and cause you to get your hands on a few books as well. The doctrine of the tree is one of the two pillars of Kabbalism, so I will have to leave a great many things out to avoid writing an entire book. Just a few lights here and there that will hopefully be a starting point for you.

A nice subject is the geometry of the Tree. Geometry is an important and interesting, but difficult, Kabbalistic subject. Many writers have tried to show the geometry of the tree, but so far I have seen nothing really convincing for why and how the tree looks like it does. The simplest explanation is as follows:
The size of the tree and the location of the sephiroth in the middle pillar have proportions of 1:1:2, shown in the form of three circles. The sephiroth on the left and right pillar lay on the crossing of the circles. This indeed allows you to quickly draw a tree with the help of a compass and ruler, but it seems a bit too simple for me.

Another version at least appears to be more ‘Jewish’, since it involves the ‘star of david’ or hexagram:

The same circles in the middle pillar and four extra circles around the triangles that form the hexagram. In my opinion this version doesn’t add too much to the previous, but a nice detail is that there is also room for the “En Soph” (circle above the Kether sephira) which is the Kabbalistic “God” who is of course above his creation.
If you look well, the hexagram is also in the tree itself, which actually brings a more logical geometry in my eyes.

Hm, not much left in the small picture. This is where Leonora Leet gets her sayso and she has some nice theories that I hadn’t ran into before.
I might have (should have?) started with a simpler version of this picture, but if you look well, you will see a rather large hexagram in the middle of the picture of which the triangle Hod, Netzach, Malkuth forms the lowest triangle. This hexagram allows the tree to rotate around it’s Da’at sephira forming a sixfold tree that is usually called “tree of knowledge” after the Da’at axis which translation is knowledge.
If you look well again, you can see that with only the large hexagram which forms the tree (actually these are three hexagrams, of which the middle in size stands dianogal on the smallest), only one version of the tree can be made, being the Luria tree. The so called Sabbath star consists of even more hexagrams than three and eventually both versions of the tree can be found in the lines of the Sabbath star. I find this geometry of the tree quite appealing. Try to find the logic and draw the Sabbath star yourself. If starts with a small hexagram (between the six upper sephiroth) that is ‘caugth’ in a larger diagonal hexagram, etc., but it also involves some shoving.

Then the last version that I want to show you, which I also found in Leet’s book. This time she based her design on descriptions from the Sepher Jetsiràh. It is even more complication to draw than the previous, but again you can clearly see all the hexagrams inside.
Again both versions of the tree are possible.

Yes I know the information is superficial and in Leet’s book you will get much more in depth information, but trying to find a some things yourself may also be quite usefull. Besides, Leet uses information from various different sources, making the geometry even more difficult than it is when you only see the drawings like present here.

Now, based on the tree I will shortly touch upon a two Kabbalistic doctrines, namely that of the ‘worlds’ and that of the ‘Parzufim’, giving you a small insight in theoretical Kabbalism.

In Kabbalism there are usually four worlds recognised, being Atsiluth, or world of emanation, Beriah or world of creation, Yetsirah or world of formation and Asiyah, the world of making and I named them from high to low. The ascribed sephiroth are three trios and a lonely Malkuth in Asiyah.
Atsiluth is said to be the world or Godly archtypes, Beriah houses the archangels, Yetsirah houses Metratron and 10 ranges of angels and the lowest world the souls in exile, us so to say.
Closely related are the 4 aspects of the soul, again from high to low being Neshamah, Ruach, Nephesh and material ‘soul’ (body?) of which I couldn’t find the Hebrew name, but it belongs to the world of Asiyah, which is the created world as we know it. The other three are a divine state (Neshamah), the moral of the human being as Ruach and Nephesh representing desire. Because of the lack of English equivalents the different aspects of the soul are usually referred to as “Ruach soul”, “Nephesh soul”, etc.
Naturally the sephiroth (especially those from the middle pillar) can be used for reaching higher states of consciousness, for example by means of contemplation, for example meditating on the sephira tiphereth (beauty) aiming for higher standards in moral and/or reaching the second-highest states of consciousness.

Another doctrine that can be hinted at with the tree of life in mind is that of the “Partsufim” or faces. The highest sephira Kether/crown is identified with the Partsuf “Arich Anpin” or big/long face (sometimes referred to as ‘old man’). The second sephira Chokmah/wisdom is the Partsuf “Ab” or “Abba” (father) and Binah/understanding “Imma” (mother). The last sephira Malkuth or kingdom represents the last Partsuf “Nukvah”.
There is also a “small face” formed by the remaining six sephiroth from the worlds of Ruach and Nephesh.
I haven’t been able to find much information about the Partsufim (yet), but if En-Soph, the unknowable, endless Divinity is above the tree of life (as we saw in the second geometry drawing), then the Arich Anpin much be a andronygus divinity causing Creation and the coming together of the male and female aspects of nature represented by Abba and Imma Creation itself, or the most material form of it.

Afterall I suppose that there is much more to tell about the tree of life, but for myself I haven’t really found out what it is exactly what the designer of it meant with it. Somehow it is a geometric drawing depicting the human body and soul, often compared to the Eastern doctrine of the Chakras, sometimes it is used to explain something about the divinity or the 4 worlds, while at other times a tree is placed in each of the 4 worlds. A remarkable point is that it even makes a good starting-point to learn/remember the Hebrew alphabeth, because if you take the 3 horizontal paths (chokmah-binah, chesed-gevurah and netsach-hod), they get the three so called “mother letters” of the Hebrew alphabeth (aleph, mem, shin or a, m and sh), 7 vertical paths with the 7 “double letters” and 12 diagonal paths for the remaining letters, making 22 in total.
I must say though that not many writers/drawers use the letters and paths like that and also the tree that I used in the article, just started with aleph in the right upper ‘corner’.

Naturally there is much more about Kabbalism than just the tree, but I just wanted to give you a small glimps of a mysterious, difficult, but very interesting tradition. A glimpse that will hopefully make some of you interested in one of the esoteric traditions of the West. And if you have a revelation about meanings, explanations or possible theories, I will be happy to hear so.

To close off I want to suggest a wonderfull internetpage which can serve perfectly for a beginning Kabbalist. It is an interactive research of various aspects of Kabbalism with much stress on the tree, the meaning of the sephiroth, etc. Once you get used to the manner of navigating, this page can keep you busy for hours and even direct you to some original insights.
Visit www.borndigital.com/tree/index.html if you are interested.

Book referrals:
-1- “Kabbalah” by Charles Poncé
-2- “The Secret Doctrine Of The Kabbalah” by Leonora Leet
-3- “Tarot And Kabbala” by Rufus C. Camphausen (1993 no longer available, for 1 and 2 see bookreviews section)

“… and He had 10 rays of light come out of His middle, lights that
shine with light that in nature is derived from Him and that
spreads the light of a shiny day everywhere.”

<19/4/01>

a word of advice: you may want to read my articles about “the philosophical renaissance in italy” and “the occult renaissance” first to put things in a wider perspective and for background information. also i have more articles about the jewish kabbalah which you may want to read first.

Never had I consulted so much literature for one article. First I thought that there was hardly any information about the Christian Cabala, but digging deeper I found out that there is quite some literature about the subject. Often as a (small) part of another investigation (such as Renaissance magic or Jewish Kabbala) but also as a separate subject. Unfortunately these books are not always too good and mostly virtually unavailable. Most literature I had to get from different libraries throughout the country and of course the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam. At the bottom of this article you will find titles that I used and which you may want to look for. Often like with the Christian Cabalists themselves, older investigations are copied with mistakes and everything, but sometimes investigators of the Christian Cabala came to very different conclusions.

My aim for this article is to give you a general idea of the history of the Christian Cabala separately and combined with that of the Jewish Kabbala and their mutual influences; and to compare some ideas from both traditions to give you an idea of where the differences and similarities are.
Asterixes refer to the bibliography below, under *further*reading*. Also I give alternative writings of names of people that I mention. It doesn’t look too great, but it will help you a lot when you start your own searches.

Short history the Kabbala

Of course I can’t start to speak of the Christian Cabala when you have no information about the original version. A short article within these pages may be helpful and also the longer one about the Tree of Life (Etz Chayyim). Maybe some book reviews can be helpful as well.

Here follows a very short account to refresh you memory and/or to introduce you to the world of Jewish mysticism.

The word “Kabbala” means “tradition” and in Hebrew contains of three letters (normally from right to left) KBL (kaf, bet, lamed). I have the idea that the spelling can differ in time and context and sometimes it is QBL (qof, bet, lamed), but so far I haven’t seen a text in Hebrew with the actual word really in it.

Ancient Hebrew had no vowels so it is hard to fill them in sometimes. Also the transliteration of letters is different, others will tell you that it is caf, bet, lamed, so you can imagine that ancient Hebrew words are written differently. This is the reason that you often see “Kabballah”, “Kabbalah”, “Cabala”, Qabbalah or whatever variety you can think off. The most common way of writing is “Kabbala”. Early Christian Cabalists usually wrote “Cabala” which is the reason that many people took over this manner of writing to keep the Jewish “Kabbala” from the Christian “Cabala”. Also there is also the magical (Crowleyan) “Qabbala”.

The Jewish Kabbala -very bluntly put- is the result of two mystic traditions, the ‘Mercavah’ (chariot) and ‘Hechaloth’ (hallway) traditions that developed towards the Kabbala from the 3rd century on. ‘Mercavah’ comes from the chariot in Esechiels vision and the ‘Hechaloth’ are the hallways that the mystic has to pass on his/her way ‘up’. Kabbala came to flourish especially in Spain in the late Middle Ages en the early Renaissance and in time two kinds of Kabbala developped, the practical and theoretical, or magical and mystical if you like.

The Kabbalists focus on the sacred Hebrew books of the Torah, also called Pentateuch which are the five books of Moses and thus the first five books of our Old Testament. These date from ancient times and contain instructions for daily life.
The study of these books resulted in the Talmud which means ‘study’ or ‘instructions’. There is a Palestine Talmud dating from the 3rd or 4th century and a Babylonian Talmud written in the 5th century. The Talmud falls apart in two books, first the Mishnah (‘repetition’ or teachings about the Torah) and second Gemarah (or ‘expansion’, an explanation of the Mishnah).
Then in the 3rd to 6th century we get the first writing that would be regarded as a Kabbalistic, the well known Sepher Yetsirah or ‘book of formation’.
Another well-known Kabbalistic text is the Sepher ha-Zohar or the ‘book of splendour’ which first circulated around 1280 and nowadays it is generally thought that it was written by Moses de Leon (1240-1305), but is said to go back to the teachings of the 2nd century Shimon bar Yochai (135-170).

Kabbalism kept developing also in the time that Renaissance eclectics started to form a Christian version of it. Two people that I have to mention in this development are Moses ben Josef Cordovero (1522-1570) and Isaac ben Solomon Luria (1534-1572). As a matter of fact these two late-Kabbalistic figures were the originators of the two major Kabbalistic schools of today. The first worked mostly on the intellectual level and worked out the speculative Kabbala to an understandable system. Luria was more of a mystic. Cordovero’s major work is the Pardes Rimmonim (‘a garden of pomegranates’ – 1591) and his major teachings involve the four levels of understanding the Zohar. 1) Literal; 2) figurative; 3) moral and 4) esoteric/mystical. Luria was the one developing the doctrines of ‘tsimtsum’ (or ‘zimzum’) or God’s withdrawal from creation. This idea was later developed to the idea of the ‘breaking vessels’ or how the upper sephira of the Kabbalistic Tree (Kether) breaks and flows over into the second two, which break, etc. It must be noted that Luria wasn’t much of a writer and his teachings mostly found their ways into the world by his students, especially Hayim ben Josef Vital (Chayim, Hayyim – 1542-1620).
These scratches of information should be just about enough information to continue with the Christian Cabala.

A history of the early Christian Cabala

Giovani Pico (or Picus) della Mirandola (1463-1494) claimed to be the first Latin scholar to study the Kabbala (in his Apologia (‘defence’) of 1487) and many investigators of the Christian Cabala have followed him in this opinion. Actually Pico wasn’t the first Christian Cabalist as Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) found out. Scholem writes: “In fact, a whole chain of facts prove that converted Jews were producing “Christian Kabbalist” arguments long before Pico. Pico was the first Christian of non-Jewish origin, but by no means the first Christian, to go through this kind of process.” (*Dan | p.24)

As early as the 13th century Raymund (or Raymundus, Raimundus, Ramon) Martini (1220-±1284) wrote in his Pugio Fidei (‘dagger of faith’ – completed after 1278, but not published until 1651) that the Talmud and Midrash (a more ‘literary’ version of the Mishnah) had Christian influences and argued that this fact could be used as Christian propaganda to try to convert Jews. This very idea would become one of the main reasons for Christian Cabalists to study the Jewish tradition a few centuries later.
The well-known Kabbalist Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (1240-1292) was the one who systemised the jungle of Jewish letter/word-games and already made ‘Christian’ word plays that would later become popular under Christian Cabalists. I will come back to this later.
The first Jew to be really converted to Christianity was Abner of Burgos (1270-1348) who became Alfonso of Valladolid in 1320. Strangely enough he had visions of shifting around letters like Abulafia had.

In the time that Pico was born, many Jews lived in Europe under the tolerant reign of the Muslims. Especially Spain and southern France were crowded with Jews living together with Christians and Muslims. This resulted in fertile crossbreeds. Not for nothing the major Kabbalistic books were written in Spain in this period. When Christians started to win back territory from the Muslims, times got more difficult for the Jews as well. The idea rose that when Muslims were removed anyway, why not kick out the Jews within the same operation (they were -according to Christians- not only heretics, but also responsible for the plague!)? This process was going on in Pico’s early years. Jews were driven away from different places from 1477 on until the big expulsion from Spain in 1492. However many Jews indeed did leave, others thought of another solution: conversion to Christianity. This way they could stay were they were, study Jewish writings as sources of the Christian faith and most of all, continue their Kabbalistic studies (in secret).

A very strange thing is that on one hand Jews were kicked out of the major cities all over Europe, but on the other hand there was an interest in Jewish scriptures upto extraordinary high ranks in the Christian hierarchy. It is said that no other than pope Sixtus IV (1414-1484) ordered for translations of Kabbalistic books and most of them are still in the Vatican library until the present day! The translations were made by the Jewish convert Samuel ben Nissim Abulfarash (1226-1286) who after his conversion named himself Gugliem Raimundo Moncada, but is best known under the name Flavius Mithridates. Mithridates told the pope that with the Kabbala he could prove the Christian truths.

The same man was the Jewish friend that taught Pico the Hebrew and Chaldean languages. He translated many Kabbalistic and non-Kabbalistic works for Pico and Scholem argues (*Dan | p.20) that the translations in the Vatican library were not made for Sixtus, but for Pico himself! Mithridates (whose father was already a translator of Hebrew books) was Pico’s main source of Jewish writings and Pico didn’t receive the most common Kabbalistic books either! The best-known Kabbalist whose writings Pico read were those of the earlier mentioned Abulafia. Non-Kabbalistic writings that Mithridates translated for Pico include the Bible-commentaries of Menahem Recanati (late 13th to early 14th century). Because there were not that many more texts that Pico read, Joseph Blau* (1909-1986) states that Pico’s knowledge of Kabbala was extremely limited. In a way this may be true, but Philip Beitchman* and Scholem* prove at least a bit otherwise.

Mithridates also introduced Pico to the Sepher ha-Bahir (‘book of brightness’) for example, which Pico is said to have studied in Hebrew. Bahir is a strange Kabbalistic work from the Provence from after 1150. The book became important in the Christian Cabala because it forms the link between the Jewish esoteric tradition and neoplatonism and gnosticism. It is formed of various ancient Kabbalistic texts and introduced Kabbalists to the idea of ‘gilgul’ or reincarnation.

Another teacher of Pico’s was still a Jewish Kabbalist in the time the two met: Yahonan Alemanno who the Jewish scholar Josef Perles (1835-1894) saw as the most probable person for Pico’s mysterious teacher Dattilo or Dattylus, who wrote a lot about magic, but published only one book. Dattilo based himself on the Kabbalist with many names who is best known for his commentary on the Sepher Yetsirah: Josef ben Shalom Ashkenazi alias Josef the Tall alias Abraham ben David of Posquières alias Rabad (±1125-1198).

The last big influence of Pico that I want to mention is Paulus (or Pablo) de Heredia (1408-1486). De Heredia was a convert who had the very irritating habit that Christians seem to have had for a few centuries already: falsifying Jewish texts and using these forgeries as arguments. However Mithridates and Pico’s other teachers probably mentioned this fact to him it seems that the writings of De Heredia had quite an influence on the thinking of the young Pico who may or may not have known him personally.

Christian Cabalist approach of Judaism

The early Christian Cabalists had a unique approach to Judaism and their esoteric teachings. They were not original in the idea that Judaism was a form of pre-Christianity, but definitely a new view was that Judaic teachings were valuable for Christianity. Judaism was not wrong and Christianity right, in fact, there was more truth in Judaism than Christians had always said. This very fact made Christianity as follower of Judaism even better! The idea of Pico and especially John (Johannes, Johan) Reuchlin (1455-1522) was that all ancient traditions together form the hardcore truth of Christianity, especially two. As Reuchlin wrote in a letter to pope Leo X (1475-1521) (a sprout of the De Medici family, see my article about the Philosophical Renaissance): “But this task [bringing Pythagoras to the Germans] could not be accomplished without the Cabala of the Jews, because the philosophy of Pythagoras had its origins in the precepts of the Cabala, and when in the memory of our ancestors it disappeared from the Magna Graecia, it lived again in the volumes of the Cabalists.”

But not only Kabbalist writings were regarded valuable. As we saw before Pico also had translations of non-Kabbalistic Jewish literature. Mithridates also translated works of esoteric theological Jewish writers such as Rabbi Judah ben Samuel He-Chasid of Regensburg (‘the Chasid’ – ?-1217) and Rabbi Aleazar ben Judah ben Kalonymus of Worms (±1176-1238). He did this in particular for another fan of these writers Cardinal Egidio (Ægidius) da Viterbi (Viterbo – 1465-1532) and later Reuchlin seems to have had access to Viterbi’s library. Judah and Eleazar wrote a lot about the Talmud and Midrash from which Christian Cabalists also found many quotes in books of Recanati and Josef ben Abraham Gikatilla (or Gikatilia, Gicatila – 1248-1325). They couldn’t tell apart the theological Talmud commentaries from ‘real Kabbala’. This ignorance was one of the bigger differences between Jewish and Christian Kabbalists: the Cabalists had only scatters and had no knowledge of what was from the Talmudic traditions and what from Kabbalistic. This is not entirely true though, Reuchlin -as Hebraist- later in his life tried to used this half-faked ignorance to save as many Jewish books as he could (he was asked which ones should be burned) by saying that some Talmudic works (which were evil in the eyes of the Christians) were Kabbalistic (which were allowed for containing Christian truths).

Translations of Hebrew texts

A very interesting subject in the Christian approach to Jewish works is which works were translated in languages that could be read by Christians and when. There were a few people who started to make translations of Jewish writings at a remarkably early time.

I of course mentioned Mithridates a few times already, so I won’t bring him up again. It becomes more interesting when we turn to the major Kabbalistic texts. Large sections of the Zohar have been translated by Guillaume Postel (1510-1587) but these were not published during his life. They did circulate as manuscripts and were known to most Christian Cabalists of his time. The Hebrew Zohar itself wasn’t published until 1558 (under protest), but Postel had translated parts of it before that. The same goes for Postel’s translation of the Sepher Yetsirah. This translation was published in 1552 when the Hebrew version had yet to come. Many translations of this short but primary text would follow. An interesting version is the 1642 printing of Jo(h)annes Stephanus Rittangel(us) (1606-1652), which has both the Hebrew text and a Latin translation. Postel’s translation was by far not the first. One “master Isaac” made a translation to Latin as early as 1480 which we will run into a few paragraphs furtheron.

Joseph Blau* didn’t think too highly of most Christian Cabalists. An exception was the convert Paul(o) Ricci(o) (Ric(c)ius, originally Paulus Israelita – ±1470-1541). He not only knew a respectable amount of texts, but also the less well-known texts and he was the first to systemise the Christian Cabalist doctrines. Ricci was a fervent translator and his best-known translation is that of the Sha’are Orah of Gikatilla as the well-known Portae Lucis (‘gates of light’ – 1516). The title page of this work had the first depiction of the Kabbalistic tree outside a Jewish text. The work speaks about the gates of understanding which also will be dealt with later.

Another convert that knew “his sources’ sources” (*Beitchman | p.49) was Pietro (Colonna) di Galatini (Petro Galatino 1460-1540). As with many Jews later, Cabala caused his conversion to Christianity. To show the Christian truth in Jewish texts he wrote the book De Arcanis Catholicae Veritatis (‘about arcane Catholic truth’- 1518). Herein you can find translations of parts of the Zohar, a summary of a text on the ‘Shema Israel’ prayer by Paulus de Heredia and other important texts.

Johannes Pistorius (1546-1608) was one of the councillors of the Hermetic emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) of Prague. Pistorius’ “Christian Cabalist Bible” the Artis Cabalisticae (1587) contains translations of what he regarded a the most important Cabalist writings: two books of Paul Ricci De Coelesti Agricultura (1514 – a compilation of texts including Portae Lucis); De Verbo Mirifico and De Arte Cabalistica of Reuchlin (see later); the 1480 translation of the Sepher Yetsirah; commentaries of Archangelus (Puteus) de Burgonova (Burgonovo | ?-1571) on Pico’s Cabalistic conclusions (which were in fact written by his teacher Francesco Giorgi(o) (Venetus) (Franciscus Giorgius / Zorzi – 1466-1540) but Archangelus published them after Giorgi’s death under his own name); and more.

The best-known compilation of Kabbalistic and Cabalistic texts if of course the Kabbala Denundata (part I 1677, part II 1684) of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636-1689) which came out very late in the Renaissance, but is still regarded as the most important Christian Cabalist book. Its translations include parts of the Zohar (some of the more mysterious parts), the earlier mentioned Pardes Rimmonim of Cordovero, the Sepher ha-Gilgulim (‘book of the transmigration of souls’ – 1684) by Hayim Vital and other translations. Further a dictionary, explaining diagrams and in some editions a text by a friend of Knorr’s: Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (a.k.a. Peganius – 1577-1644).
Of course these are not the only titles that I could mention, but at least you have an idea. Often translations were parts of writings of Christian Cabalists which I will turn to shortly now.

Christian Cabalist ideas and writings

A good introduction to this chapter is a quote from Scholem which I took from the book of Blau: “Jewish mysticism is concerned with the interpretation of the idea of God as He himself is creation, revelation and redemption. The Christian interpreters of Cabala attempt to fuse the specifically Christian concept of the Divine act of redemption through Jesus with the concepts of creation and revelation common to both Judaism and Christianity.” (*Blau | p.21)

Christian Cabalists saw Christian truths in the Jewish doctrines, especially that of the Kabbala. They started to look for similarities, information that they could use and since it proved that there were Jews who followed the path via Kabbala to Christianity, soon the idea rose that Cabala may be a very good way to convert Jews. So then effort was made to prove that Christianity exists in Jewish texts and that (therefore) Christianity is the follower-up and improvement of Judaism. All this without losing the respect for Judaism itself by the way.

The first Christian Cabalist Pico didn’t write a whole lot of Cabalistic texts. His well-known 900 conclusions that he wanted to defend before the church, contain 47 Cabalist conclusions and the 72 derivative theorems thereof. The first 47 are quotes from a variety of works and the 72 are Pico’s own theories based on the quotes. These conclusions were fanatically copied and explained by followers of Pico, but seldom with much originality or new ideas. Pico’s other main Cabalistic work is his Heptaplus (‘more than seven’? – 1489) which Blau calls a “hardly Cabalistic account of creation.” (*Blau | p.28), but which definitely has a Cabalistic content as we will see later.

The early Jewish converts that I spoke of before gave an example of the ‘conversional’ methods of Christian Cabala. An example that I hopefully will be able to explain without giving the Hebrew text: In the Song of Songs there is a passage saying ‘in his shadow’. One of the Jewish word-games involves shifting around letters (‘temurah’) by which way Abulafia rearranged the Hebrew text into ‘his cross’ making the statement that the text could be explained as ‘in the shadow of the crucified’. Maybe strange for us modern men, but something of an argument in those times when you wanted to prove that Christianity can be found within the Torah! ‘

Shortly after Pico followed John Reuchlin who travelled to Florence to meet Pico. Their meeting was short and formal, but the two had a lot of ideas incommon. Reuchlin saw Cabala as “paradisal knowledge that was lost after the fall but [which] could be divined, if not regained, through quiet contemplation on the Hebrew letters, self-absorption and the love of God” (*Dan | p.134). He wrote two Cabalistic books. The first was published in 1494 and called De Verbo Mirifico (‘about the wonder-working word’). It is written in the form of a discussion. At the time of publishing Reuchlin wasn’t much of an expert in Kabbala and Blau even calls him “a beginner rushing to print” (*Blau | p.49). Still the book has its values and is interesting for some of the ideas that would become important in the Christian Cabala. The most eye-catching thing is the play with the tetragrammaton. This term literally means “four-letter-word” and is written thus: YHVH. It is usually either given as “Jahwe” or “Jehova”, but in fact unpronounceable, or better said, the original pronunciation has been lost. The best way to refer to it is to call it the ‘tetragrammaton’, which means ‘four-letter-word’.
In his book Reuchlin divides history in three parts like in the Talmud: First there was the age of the patriarchs or of nature (‘tohu’ or chaos in the Talmud) and the three-letter name of God (ShDY or Shaddai). Then there was the age of the Old Testament (the Talmudic age of the law or Torah) and the tetragrammaton YHVH. Thirdly was the age of the New Testament (of the Messiah or of bliss) and the complete name of God (YHShVH). Thus forming the wonder-working ‘pentagrammaton’ (five-letter word) that can be written “Joshua” or Jesus Christ. The latter, Reuchlin described as the first creation, the Logos, to be represented by the highest sephiroth Kether.
Further the Verbo says that Hebrew is the original language in which God spoke with men and that it therefore has magical powers, especially when rendering names of God.
The book isn’t too penetrating and contains some obvious mistakes. I doubt Reuchlin will have forgiven himself for giving an incorrect sephirothic tree.

20 Years passed before Reuchlin wrote his next Kabbalistic work De Arte Cabalistica (1517). In this time he became ‘Hebraist’, expert in the language and culture of the Jews. He wrote as first non-Jew a (not too good) book on Jewish grammar (Rudimenta Hebraica – 1506) and was asked his opinion about Jewish texts when the Jews had fallen from grace. He read a lot of Kabbalistic works, but to Blau’s* opinion he puts too much stress on Gikatilla.
Whereas De Verbo Mirifico was plainly to convey information, in De Arte Cabalistica Reuchlin tried to interweave the Jewish concept that language itself is divine. Here for he comes with more ‘serious’ Jewish word games than before.
De Arte Cabalistica is again a discussion, this time between a Cabalist, a Pythagorean and a Muslim. As we saw earlier, Reuchlin saw two traditions particularly as the source and truth of Christianity, one of which is the Cabala, a “sublimated form of alchemy”, the other the Greek classical philosophy. The Arte was written after the controversies and at the time of the burning of Jewish texts. Reuchlin tried to prove their Christian content, to prevent further losses. Both the Jews and the Christians had their four elements, also Kabbalists follow Aristotle (384-322BC) and practise mathematics. Furtheron Reuchlin distincts natural philosophy (‘opus Bereshit’) from spiritual science (‘opus Mercavah’) working respectively on the intellectual and sensible planes and there you have two worlds are higher than our earth. Another thing that would become popular is turning the Jewish expectation of the Messiah in such a way that He has already come in the halfgod Jesus Christ. Greek philosophy is compared to the Cabala, a good example of this comes from another writer. Giorgi said that Aristotle’s 10 categories can be identified with the sephiroth.

Reuchlin also explains some typically Kabbalistic concepts which made his book an introduction for Latin readers. First the idea of the Kabbalistic tree. This tree has 10 sephiroth and 22 ‘paths of wisdom’, the connections between the sephiroth. Each path is assigned with a letter from the alphabet (alephbeth). Often you read about the 32 paths of the tree, this number includes the sephiroth.
Also there is the earlier mentioned concept of the ’50 gates of Binah’ which “were necessary to creation” (*Blau | p.56) and are linked with the third sephiroth Binah. This name can be translated as ‘understanding’. The 50 gates are 50 levels of understanding God.
Counting their number together with the number of the 22 paths of wisdom, you get another mystical number: 72. Not for nothing Pico had 72 Cabalistic ‘theorems’, it is the number of the names of God which can be drawn from three verses of Exodus. The verses 19, 20 and 21 of chapter 14 have 72 letters each, something that caught the eye of early Jewish mystics. They wrote the verses under eachother (the second in reversed order) resulting in 72 three-letter names of God. From these you can also make the names of 72 angels. The number 72 itself can also be found within the tetragrammaton (Y+YH+YHV+YHVH=10+ 10+5+ 10+5+6+ 10+5+6+10 = 72).

Inside and outside Reuchlin’s book we can find more of similar ‘proofs’ of Christian doctrines in Jewish texts. Take alone the highest angel Metratron who was often identified with the Son (first creation, Logos, highest sephiroth, etc.), but Jews also identified him with God. This last is the conclusion of another Kabbalist letter game called ‘gematria’. The numerological value of the name Metratron is the same as that of the God-name Shaddai: 314.

Another Christian play of Jewish origin is the following. The first word of the Hebrew Bible is “Bereshit” (BRAShYT – in the beginning). The word game of ‘notaricon’ says that every first (or last) letter of every word of a sentence gives a word that says something about that sentence. This also goes the other way, one word could be a sentence. In our example “BRAShYT” could be a sentence, for example: “In the beginning Elohim saw that Israel would receive the law”. In Hebrew the first letters of this sentence form “BRAShYT”, so the Bible says that the people Israel receive the Torah. A Christian Cabalist would make another sentence of the same word, for example: “Son, Spirit, Father, their Trinity, complete oneness”. There you have it! Christian doctrines in the Jewish Bible! These plays seemed to have been able to let Jews embrace the Christian faith. It was like getting on the Jews with their own methods.

So now I have mentioned the trinity. There is more to say about this concept. Already in 1292 the Franciscan Arnoldo de Villanova (1235-1315) said that there are three different letters in the tetragrammaton which thus represents the trinity.
And so Christian Cabalists did their utmost to bring proof of the trinitarian concept in Jewish texts. Pico -for example- said that the first three sephiroth kether-hokhmah-binah represent the trinity, Reuchlin calls God a threefold principle unity and Giorgi found the trinity in the Jewish names of God AHYA (Eheieh which Giorgi identifies with the Father), YHVH (for the son) and ADNY (Adonai for the Holy Ghost). Three other holy names are folded into a trinity by Reuchlin: He (He), Eheih (I am) and Esh (fire).

The number three also comes back in the threefold division of the world: elemental, celestial, supercelestial / intellectual. These three can be found in the Heptaplus of Pico, De Verbo Mirifico of Reuchlin and De Harmonia Mundi of Giorgi. Pico says that the first is our black pit of darkness (earth), the celestial is the world of light and in the heavens light and darkness are in balance (*Secret | p.41).

Another three: the three souls of the Jews ‘nephesh’, ruach’, ‘neshamah’ which can be compared to the threefold soul of the Renaissance. Giorgi -for example- talks about these three souls in his De Harmonia Mundi. He speaks about the high, low and middle soul in his long poem. The middle soul is the mediator, the breath of life or ruach. The high soul is the divine soul, the immortal neshamah; and the lower soul, the animal soul or nephesh.

Some things were consciously or unconsciously not taken over from Jewish Kabbalistic sources or only partly. Unconscious reasons can be that the Christian Cabalists didn’t know the full range of Kabbalistic literature. Another thing is that the sources of the Cabalists weighted heavily on the minds of them. Dan himself writes in his book that 1. the sources of the Christian Cabalists (Recanati, Samuel, Eleazar) didn’t emphasize these elements or even rejected them (Abulafia); 2. Christian Cabalists were more interested in finding Pythagoras, Plato and Christianity inside Kabbala than in Kabbala itself; 3. some concepts didn’t fit very well with Christian doctrines (*Dan | p.65/66).

An example of the last point is the Kabbalistic (sometimes downright Gnostic) dualism. Pico had a fairly un-Christian Cabalistic conclusion, being number XIX: “The letters of the name of the evil demon who is the prince of this world are the same as those of the name of God -the tetragrammaton- and he who knows how to effect their transposition can extract one from the other.” (*Beitchman | p. 67). But after this it was mostly done with the dualism of the Christian Cabalists.

Other elements that didn’t make it to the Christian Cabalist doctrines were the overtly feminine sexuality of the sephiroth Shekinah and Malkuth and the pleroma of the sephiroth.

With later Christian Cabalists things didn’t get any better. Christian Cabalists mostly followed Pico and Reuchlin who already often tapped from secondhand sources. Just a handfull of Christians got to learn with a Jew and learned Hebrew, but often didn’t come much further than the books they learned the language from.

Cabala +

It is already hard to say where Jewish Kabbala starts and begins. It involves much more than these few things that I have written about. Take alone the magical side of it. Angel magic, Golems, finding the true name of God for the highest knowledge. Also some Christian Cabalists meddled with magic, often continuing the traditions of pre-Cabalistic natural magic. Other Cabalists didn’t want anything to do with magic and had a theoretical approach (like you have practical and theoretical Jewish Kabbala as we saw earlier). I don’t think anyone has ever tried (or will try) to give all embracing definition of the term Kabbala or Cabala. Still you can see that Cabala (whatever it is) gets mixed with other arts. The most well known is the art of poetry and play. Poetic cabalistic writings such as De Harmonia Mundi and Jean Thenaud’s (?-1542) La Saincte et Trescrétienne Cabala (‘the holy and very Christian Cabala’) inspired poets and play writers like Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616) to incorporate Cabalistic themes in their own writings.

Other reworkings of Cabala can be found in the works of magicians like Johann Trithemius (1462-1516), Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) and John Dee (1527-1608). The first and the last were primary ‘angel magicians’ which is a subject I am currently writing an article on. Agrippa is best known for his compendium of Renaissance occultism De Occulta Philosophia libri tres (‘three books of occult philosophy’ – 1531). In his theoretical work he speaks about “cabalie” in book three (ceremonial magic) which art is quite well written. Also in his defensive writing De Vanitate Scientiarum (‘about the vanity of all arts’- 1526) he shortly gives good information about several arts.

Cabala even made it to science. The earlier mentioned Knorr and his friend Van Helmont introduced Cabala to well-known early scientists like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646 – 1716) and John Locke (1632-1704).
I will not speak about all this (here). Some of the books below do, some do extensively, so if you are interested. A fact remains that in time the ‘sharp edges’ of Cabala disappeared and some ideas remained in our thinking (without us knowing most of the time) because of sources we never suspected having such a background. Pretty soon after the Renaissance there is not much trace of the Cabala and nowadays Christian Cabala is mostly regarded as a Renaissance phenomenon, while Jewish Kabbala keeps developing until the present day. Blau goes as far as calling Christian Cabala: “a fad of no lasting significance.” (*Blau | foreword). I don’t agree with him entirely and also later investigators don’t agree with Blau negative approach, but it is true that the original version definitely outlived the Christian version.

*Further*reading*

Here follows a survey of the literature that I used. It is almost all literature about the subject available. Four books in particular form the core of my information, but I can assure you that all of the titles below have been under my attention. Unfortunately for all titles except Beitchman, you will have to find a library that has them…

The oldest modern investigation of the Christian Cabala is the book is The Christian Interpretation Of The Cabala In The Renaissance (1944) by Josef Leon Blau. In a way an interesting book, but he has a very negative approach. Blau wrote a nice history with Pico, Reuchlin, Ricci and the like, but completely misses the point on a few subjects. A great bibliography though and a good introduction, but be sure to read more recent works which often build further on this book and but with a less negative approach.

In 1958 there was the work Die Christliche Kabbala of Ernst Benz with the revealing subtitle “ein Stiefkind der Theologie” (“a stepchild of theology”) with a nice overview. Nothing smashing, but especially for its time interesting.

A very small work is La Kabbala. Kabbala Juive et Cabala Chrétienne (‘the Jewish and Christian Cabala’ – 1977) of L. Gorny. Interesting for being written so early, but not adding much to the later releases.

Another quite well known but not too good book is Spanish Christian Cabala of Catherine Swietlicki (1986) dealing only with “the works of Luis de León, Santa Therese de Jesús and Juan de la Cruz”. Swietlicki has also written a few other titles that I haven’t been able to see.

A brilliant book that is unfortunately no longer available is as an account of an exhibition and symposium at Harvard University in 1996. The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish mystical books and their Christian interpreters (1997) edited by a student of the late Gershom Scholem: Joseph Dan. The book contains the superb article by Scholem for the first time in English about the origins of the Christian Cabala under the title The Beginnings Of The Christian Kabbalah. Further a great article by Dan himself about Reuchlin, Francesco Zorzi (Giorgi) by Giulio Busi and articles by Klaus Reichert, Allison P. Caudert and Hillel Levine. With enormous distance the best book about the subject which I had the pleasure to read for this article.

A third book that I used is the not-too-great Alchemy Of The Word: Cabala of the Renaissance (1998) by Philip Beitchman, but which is the only book that is still available. It heavily leans on Blau (and also Scholem, Secret, Waite and Yates), but disproves many of Blau’s ideas and highly enlarges the information. All in all a helpful book, but it also misses vital points and is not too well written. His Bibliographica Kabbalistica with descriptions of works is helpful, but by no means unique.

The Impact Of The Kabbala In The Seventeenth Century of A. Coudert (1998) mainly deals with F.M. van Helmont and his influences and influence.

A Frenchman who did groundbreaking work was François Secret. He wrote several books about the Christian Cabala, Paul Ricci, Guillaume Postel, Sabbatai Sevi, Pico and other Renaissance subjects (such as superstition, Mesmer, talismans, literature and alchemy, etc.). Unfortunately all but two are not available in another language than his native one. I found one title in English and one in Dutch. Three titles that I used are Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens de la Renaissance (‘the Christian Cabalists of the Renaissance’ – 1985) and the Dutch Hermetisme en Kabbala (1990) which Secret wrote for an exhibition of our Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica and speaks of a great many old and less old works. Lastly another book with a similar title Hermétisme et Kabbale (1992). I own a copy of the Dutch exhibition bundle, which has been very helpful.

One of the first academic investigators of the Kabbala was of course the late Gershom Scholem (1897-1982). He wrote mostly about the Jewish Kabbala, but included large sections about the Christian variants in some of his books, his best-known even: Major Trends In Jewish Mysticism (1941) and Kabballah (1978).

Even an occultist as Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1947) in his book The Holy Kabbalah (1929!) has extensive sections about Christian Cabalists.

Translations

Most books were written in Latin, a language that many of us no longer master. Some of the works from the Renaissance have been made available in English, such as:

The Kabbala Denundata of Knorr (1677+1684 in two parts) partly as The Kabbalah Unveiled by Samuel L. MacGregor Mathers (1887!) which can even be read online .

The well-known book De Arte Cabalistica (1517) of Reuchlin is also translated to English by Martin and Sarah Goodman in 1983 as On The Art Of The Kabbala.

Rabbi Josef Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah (1280) has been translated to Latin by Ricci as Portae Lucis (1587) and later to Gates Of Light (1994) by Avi Weinstein.

Naturally many more titles are available. For a great overview of these I suggest you surf to the excellent article The Study Of The Christian Christian Cabala by the artist Don Karr which gives virtually all information about articles, books, translations, etc. available. PDF-file.

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