THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
	a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects.

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,talk.religion.misc,alt.satanism,alt.christnet.demonology,alt.mythology
From: Gnomedplume@aol.com (Gnome d Plume)
Subject: Re: The Spelling of.....QBL
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 19:06:50 GMT

On 20 Dec 2001 13:36:39 -0500, glass@panix.com (Robert Scott Martin)
wrote:

>In article ,
>Paul Hume  wrote:
>
>>I am afraid I have always been allergic to the notion that how one
>>spells qabalah in English has anything at all to do with ... well,
>>with anything at all.
>
>I simply confess to having little time for it since, like St. Gregory, "I
>am only attached to useful things, without caring about style or the use
>of prepositions or endings."
>
>> cabala => Renaissance classical mix with the alchemists, etc.
>
>Since this is far closer to my current herme[neu]tic method than any
>discussion of Greek gemetria, Akkadian trees of life or what have you,
>perhaps it's time to trot out the inevitable quote from Fulcanelli's
>PHILOSOPHICAL DWELLINGS as a lone voice of the *c*abala crying out in the 
>newsgroup:
>
>---
>
>The esoteric scope of Temperance lies entirely in the bridle which she 
>holds in her right hand. It is with this bridle that the horse is driven; 
>by means of this bit, the cavalier [cabalier, cabellero, or "cabalist"] 
>directs his mount as he pleases. So the bridle can be considered as the 
>essential instrument, the mediator placed between the will of the 
>"cavalier" and the progress of the "horse," toward the proposed objective.
>
>This means, of which the image has been chosen among the constituent parts 
>of the harness, is designated in hermeticism by the name of CABALA. So 
>that the special expressions of the bridle, that of restraint and of 
>direction, allow one to identify and recognize, under a single symbolic 
>form, Temperance and the Cabalistic Science.
>
>About this science, a remark is called for which, we believe, is all the 
>more founded because the uninformed student tends to confuse the hermetic 
>cabala with the system of allegorical interpretation which the Jews claim 
>to have received through tradition and which they call Kabbala. 
>
>In fact, the two terms have nothing in common, save their pronunciation. 
>The Hebrew Kabbala is only concerned with the Bible; it is therefore 
>strictly limited to sacred exegesis and hermeneutics. Hermetic cabala 
>concerns books, texts and documents of the esoteric sciences of [gentile] 
>Antiquity, of the Middle Ages, and of modern times. 
>
>While the Hebrew kabbala is but a process based on decomposition and 
>explanation of each word or letter, the hermetic cabala on the contrary is 
>a genuine language. And as the great majority of didactic treatises of 
>ancient sciences are written in cabala or as they use this language in 
>their essential passages; as the Great Art itself, on Artephius' own 
>confession, is essentially cabalistic, the reader cannot understand any of 
>it if he does not possess at least the first elements of the secret idiom.
>
>In the Hebrew kabbala, three meanings can be discovered in each sacred 
>word, hence there are three different interpretations or kabbalas. The 
>first, called Gematria, involves the analysis of the numeric or arithmetic 
>value of the letters composing the word; the second, called Notarikon, 
>establishes the meaning of each letter separately; the third, Temura 
>(variation, permutation), uses certain transpositions of letters. 
>
>[historiographical digression omitted -- while Fulcanelli's attempts to 
>date temura to Philo and the Neoplatonists are intriguing enough, they 
>have nothing to do with his conception of the "cabala"]
>
>Hermetic cabala is a precious key allowing whoever possesses it to open 
>the doors of the sanctuaries, of those "closed books" which are the works 
>of traditional science, to extract their spirit, to see their secret 
>meaning. 
>
>Known to Jesus and his apostles (it unfortunately caused St. Peter's first 
>denial), the cabala was used in the Middle Ages by philosophers, 
>scientists, men of letters and diplomats. Knights belonging to Orders and 
>knights-errant, troubadours, trouveres and minstrels, traveling students 
>of the famous school of magic at Salamanca, whom we call "Venusbergs" 
>because they were said to come from the mountain of Venus, discussed among 
>themselves in the "language of the gods," also called the "gay science" or 
>"gay knowledge," our hermetic cabala.
>
>Furthermore, it bears the name and the spirit of Chivalry, the true name 
>of which was revealed to us by Dante's mystical book. The Latin word 
>"caballus" and the Greek word "kaballes" both mean "pack horse"; our 
>"cabala" truly carries a considerable weight, the "pack" and "sum total" 
>of ancient knowledge and of medieval "chivalry" or "cabelery" or "cabala,"  
>the heavy baggage of esoteric truth transmitted by its intermediary 
>throughout the ages. It was the secret language of "cabaliers," "horsemen" 
>and "cavaliers." 
>
>[he goes on in this vein for some time]
>
>To know the cabala is to speak the language of Pegasus, the "language of 
>the horse," of which Swift expressively indicates in one of his 
>allegorical TRAVELS the effective value and the esoteric power.

******Robert:

This is marvelous! Thank you so much for researching it and posting
it. I still think we should presently (in English speaking countries)
go with the modern  "Qabalah" spelling for our Hermetic version, but
nonetheless, this by the venerable Fulcanelli puts the cap on our
argument. Thanks again!

Good Magick!
(Good Qabalah too)

Gnome d Plume
http://members.aol.com/CHSOTA/main.html