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To: alt.necronomicon,alt.magick.serious,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick
From: Al Smith 
Subject: Re: QBL. still NOT kosher proves one thing
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 19:26:59 GMT

Gnome d Plume wrote:
> On 12 Apr 2002 10:38:39 -0700, evil_salvator@yahoo.com
> (-three,four,evil salvator) wrote:
> 
> 
>>That jews worldwide are feeling the heat and are getting ready for a
>>serious lambasting. When something like QBL. is discussed, it brings
>>the worst out of jews. I made a simple statement with history & common
>>sense and I was accused of being a 'troll', 'sock puppet',
>>'antisemetic' (whopee!), etc.
>>Why? Because jews are getting closer to being found out...i.e.,
>>PROTOCOLS OF ZION bears its ugly face/nose once more. Before its all
>>over we will see jewry take a good lashing because jews feel they are
>>untouchable. Soon israel will be destroyed by its Arab neighbors. jews
>>are feeling it now in France, and in the USA they are getting it as
>>well.
>>When you tell me that jews do the QBL. good, and I ask how does
>>'rabbis explaining the number of god's hairs' helps us to understand
>>more...nobody answers with facts. Nay, they whine like they are being
>>carried off to an oven.
>>jewry NEVER did anybody good.
>>~I rest my case~
>>BTW, "Magick without Tears", Crowley, chapter 73 explains to us how he
>>felt about jews too.
>>;)
> 
> 
> *****If you had posted this only on alt.magick I would  ignore it
> because most of us here can see right through it to where you are at.
> But because you have cross-posted it to several newsgroups it requires
> an answer--and not just from a Jewish magician. I am a Pagan magician
> and I have even developed a Pagan (Canaanite) version of the Hermetic
> Qabalah. I have even been critical of Moses in past posts because
> he--as an Egyptian magician--withheld Egyptian transcendentalism from 
> his version of monotheism. In my circle we don't even use a Jewish
> tetragrammaton--so, with all that said, I am going to surprise you by
> stating that you are completely wrong and a bigot in the bargain. Why?
> Because for all its Greek, Gnostic and Assyrian roots the Jewish
> Kabbalah (and the subsequent Hermetic Qabalah) is certainly Hebrew and
> certainly Jewish. It may well have been, as some writers have
> suggested, a substitute for the lost Arc of the Covenant during the
> Captivity and the Diaspora.  It flowered in the early middle ages in
> Southern France and Spain based on an earlier work (circa 300 a.d.)
> the *Sepher Yetzirah.* Although the Greco-Egyptian Gnostic Marcus
> seems to have developed the first alphabetic-celestial analog, the
> *Sepher Yetzirah* is the first complete "Kabbalistic" system of
> alpha-numeric mystical correspondences. It is the model against which
> all magickal/mystical systems must be measured--and in comparison to
> which most fall far short. This seminal work was followed by the
> *Sepher Bahir* and *The Zohar* in the medieval period. These three
> works then became the source for the later European "Hermetic
> Rosecrucian Qabalah" on which our magickal tradition is based. The
> Jewish Kabbalistic structure of the Tree of Life was an ingenious
> combination of Assyrian cosmology, NeoPlatonic emanation theory and
> Jewish Merkabah mysticism. It was (and is) a work of genius conceived
> and developed by Jewish Kabbalists. Sure, we can pick it apart and
> show where the various elements and themes originally derived from,
> but to use this elegant syncretism as a means to discredit its Jewish
> origin  would be like saying that Alexander Graham Bell did not invent
> the telephone because he used existing theories and components to
> design and construct it. Western mysticism ( and especially magick )
> owe a tremendous debt to the Jewish rabbis who created the invisible
> Arc of the Covenant. And even though the original Jewish Kabbalah was
> designed to serve the Jewish community (and still does)  the
> universality of its profound design was so elegant that, like the
> Bible itself, it burst the bonds of Jewish culture and was adopted by
> the Gentiles. We should view it as a glorious gift from our Jewish
> friends, not as something they stole from earlier cultures. If we want
> to modify our non-Jewish version of it, as the renaissance
> "Rosicrucians" did, and I have subsequently done-- that's our
> privilage--so long as we give credit where credit is due. The very
> word, no matter how you spell it (Kabbalah, Qabalah, or Cabala) is of
> Jewish origin. If we don't respect their gift how can we ask others to
> respect our various modifications of it? ******
> 
> Gnome d Plume
> http://members.aol.com/CHSOTA/welcome.html

Can I jump in? I missed the first part of this thread, but the 
Kabbalah is a subject dear to my heart. Of course the Kabbalah is 
Jewish. It's one of the great esoteric achievements of the Jewish 
people, just as hatha yoga is one of the great esoteric 
achievements of Hindu culture.

The thing is, there are two forms of Kabbalah. One is studied and 
practiced by serious Jewish men in the Hebrew language, as a part 
of their religion, and maybe of their magic, and the other is 
studied and practiced by usually not-so-serious non-Hebrew 
speaking men and woman of European heritage. The first form relies 
on the numerical analysis of biblical texts and the chanting of 
holy names, whereas the second form is focused mainly on the Tree 
of Life -- a graphic symbolical arrangement of the ten lights or 
Sephiroth by which the universe was emananted from God.

For most people working in the modern Western magical tradition, 
the Tree of Life is the whole of the Kabbalah, whereas for Jewish 
Kabbalists it is only a small part of the Kabbalah. Much of the 
structure associated with the Tree in modern magic is not derived 
from the Jewish Kabbalah at all, but from the European occult 
tradition.

The magical Kabbalah is a kind of hybrid of the traditional Jewish 
  Kabbalah and modern esoteric theory as descended from the magic 
of the Greeks.

The situation is further confused by the influence that Greek, and 
through the Greeks, Egyptian, esoteric thought had on the creators 
of the Jewish Kabbalah. The central concept of ten emanations in 
Sepher Yetzirah is probably derived from Greek philosophy -- 
ultimately, from the ideas of Pythagoras about numbers (and where 
Pythagoras got his ideas, nobody knows, but they may have come 
from futher East). After the destruction of the Second Temple and 
the scattering of the Jews, Jewish esoteric thought was heavily 
influenced by the ideas of other cultures, so it was inevitable 
that the Kabbalah, though a wholly Jewish creation, would also be 
influenced by such things as Greek philosophy.

I just wanted to point out that there are two Kabbalahs -- a 
wholly Jewish one, and a modern, magical Kabbalah mainly used by 
non-Jews. Also, that merely because a system of thought is based 
on what came before it, that does not make it less legitimate. 
Every system of belief that has ever existed has been based on 
what went before it.