What is the Kabbalah?

 Chapter from my book: Demons of Eleusis.

WHAT IS KABBALAH?

 

The Kabbalah is commonly referred to as a collection of works which comprise a form of Jewish mysticism. QBLH meaning ‘tradition’ as in ‘Oral Tradition’ is principally comprised of three books: The Sefir Yetsira (Book of Formation), the Sefir ha-Bahir (Book of Illumination) and The Zohar (Splendour); the earliest of these - the Sefir Yetsira is attributed to Rabbi Akiva Ben Joseph who died, probably murdered by the Romans during the Third Jewish Revolt lead by the self-styled Messiah: Bar Kokhba. Although these key texts of the Kabbalah generally appeared in the 12th century onwards the attribution of these texts is much earlier, generally to the historically critical post Second Temple period though such attribution may be an artifice of mediaeval writers seeking perhaps a false authority for their writings and there is much ongoing debate among Jewish and mainstream scholars as to who really wrote these texts and when.

Interestingly we can observe at least two major breaks from Jewish orthodoxy in the Sefir ha-Bahir and this will very much become a theme I wish to focus on since this attempt to subvert Judaism from within by a secondary force which seems antagonistic to the Torah and wishing to destroy it despite claiming the contrary, is a key part of my thesis. The following excerpt shows the promulgation of a belief in reincarnation, an idea alien to conventional Judaism but which was a fundamental belief of the Pharisees who would later become the core of Rabbinical Judaism after the fall of the Second Temple and it is worth noting that the majority of Pharisees themselves were not of the lineage of Israel but were actually Edomites.  Reincarnation has historically been more commonly associated with Hinduism, Buddhism, and probably more pertinently here, the mystery religions of Ancient Greece:

“Why is there a righteous person who has good, and [another] righteous person who has evil? This is because the [second] righteous person was wicked previously, and is now being punished. Is one then punished for his childhood deeds? Did not Rabbi Simon say that in the Tribunal on high, no punishment is meted out until one is twenty years or older. He said: I am not speaking of his present lifetime. I am speaking about what he has already been, previously.”

This isn’t to dismiss reincarnation as a concept, merely to point out that it is inconsistent with Jewish religious tradition and to see that it is adapted by the key writers or compilers of the Kabbalah, shows that something which is alien to the Jewish tradition entered their religion and transformed it, I would say a whole package of alien traditions entered Judaism and turned it into something infinitely dangerous: a religion with an acquired arsenal of techniques from the Greek mystery religion to transform consciousness; if such techniques are used, out of context or within a framework which is not properly adapted to them, then the consequences can be extremely grave and such techniques can become extremely destructive to the people undergoing them and to the society as a whole which also becomes transformed. If additionally, these techniques are used as a weapon to actually subjugate and conquer a perceived enemy, which I believe to ultimately be the case, then whoever holds the key to these transformative techniques can dictate not only the physical reality which is experienced by those who are dominated by the secret esoteric machinery of the secret society’s mystery religion but can also dictate their spiritual reality, which is infinitely more insidious.

It would seem therefore that the doctrines of the Eleusinian mystery school, which taught reincarnation within the context of the Orphic religion, spread throughout Greek society and the ancient world of the Gentiles and was promulgated by luminaries such as Pythagoras and Socrates. The Orphic religion teaches that in order to achieve salvation or detachment from the wheel of birth and rebirth it is necessary to undergo a ritual purification called ‘telete’ while the uninitiated ‘amuetos’ must reincarnate indefinitely.

We can only guess what might have transpired during these ancient rites suffice it to say that with a combination of psychoactive compounds, extreme emotions and a sense of fear for one’s life, combined with witnessing extraordinary events being manifested with a variety of special effects and scientific knowledge known to the priesthood but not the initiate, then all sorts of illusions can be drawn on to strongly influence the mind of the initiate and no doubt, some real kind of revelation truly brought to bear.

The Kabbalah and Gnosticism.

Stalinism is the Perfection of the Rabbinical System.

The Oral Tradition is the claim that after Moses met God on top of Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments and the dictation of the Torah he also received an oral explanation or analysis of the Torah from God which Moses did not write down but that which was transmitted to Joshua, then from Joshua to the Elders, then to the Prophets and then to the members of the Great Assembly.

Nowhere in the Torah are there any references to this. Neither Moses nor any of the subsequent Old Testament prophets make any mention of an Oral Tradition. Indeed, the Bible is more than clear and prescriptive about adopting any kind of supplementary material:

“See that you do everything I command you; do not add to it or subtract from it.” Deuteronomy 12:32.

My belief regarding the Kabbalah is this and I will simply try to lay out my major thesis in all this:

How would you go about subverting something, a religion, system of morality, law and the worship of God: The Torah, committed to writing some three thousand years ago? You would do this by claiming some other ‘secret’ revelation which was not included in the original text.

The Kabbalah is not a mystical form of Judaism, it is a completely new gnostic religion which uses Judaism and specifically the Torah and the Hebrew alphabet of 22 letters, as its tenuous scaffolding upon which it creates a completely new imposter religion. The Zohar, using a literary device of a Rabbinical discussion plays semantic and gematria games with the words of the Torah in order to completely transform meaning in-line with the new gnostic theology of the Kabbalah

The Bible is replete with repeated admonition of Israel and threats of imminent judgement and punishment from God precisely for rejecting the written law of Moses. For instance, the passage from 2 Kings 17 is typical and almost a trope or cliché of the angry God:

“They devoted themselves to doing evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger. So the LORD was very angry with Israel, and he removed them from His presence. Only the tribe of Judah remained, and even Judah did not keep the commandments of the LORD their God, but lived according to the customs Israel had introduced.”

Jesus in confronting the Pharisees is continuing this great prophetic tradition of accusing the priesthood of forsaking the law and “making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down.”

Jesus refers to the ‘oral tradition’ as ‘tradition of the elders’ or the ‘tradition of men’.

In Mark 7 he specifically refers to the Oral Tradition:

“And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ And he said to them, ‘Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honours me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’

You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.’”

So what is this oral tradition? The Talmud is fairly well known for some of its excesses but let us examine the Mishnah which is the proto-Talmud, the originator and a way-marker on the path to the full development of The Talmud of the 5th Century AD. In fact, to be more accurate, the Talmud is really two major separate works: The Mishnah, written in the 2nd Century AD as a commentary on the Torah and the Gemara written in the 5th Century AD as a commentary on the commentary of the Torah and this is what most people understand as the Talmud as it contains all of the most dubious and quotable material.

The Perkei Avot or Ethics of the Fathers is a tractate of the Mishnah and outlines the key virtues required but some of the statements themselves are a little odd and one could well imagine that with further ‘commentary’ that is, subjected to the legalistic Rabbinical mindset, one could quite alienate anything good and true altogether and that is precisely what the Gemara achieves.

Take for instance the following advice from the Mishnah on the importance of study:

“Rabbi Yaakov would say: One who walks along a road and studies, and interrupts his studying to say, ‘How beautiful is this tree!’, ‘How beautiful is this ploughed field!’---the Torah considers it as if he had forfeited his life.”

See how profoundly this contrasts with CS Lewis’ more Christian conception earlier in this work of drawing closer to God simply by doing something innocent which one enjoys. The Rabbinical idea that study alone can teach virtue and draw one close to God, and that expressing joy and sincere pleasure at creation, is somehow contrary to this and ought to cause one to forfeit one’s life, makes one marvel at what kind of mind this would create were it to be taken seriously. It seems like the perfect way to alienate the young from God, making them afraid to rejoice, wonder and marvel at the beauty of the world. The God of the Oral Tradition is so far contrary to the God which is often described in the Old Testament:

“Gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” Psalm. 145:8.

Another strange comment from the Perkei Avot:

“Rabbi Shimon would say: ‘Three who eat at one table and do not speak words of Torah, it is as if they have eaten of idolatrous sacrifices; as is stated, ‘Indeed, all tables are filled with vomit and filth, devoid of the Omnipresent.’"

But the original phrase ‘indeed, all tables’ is from Isiah and is a reference to the ‘drunkards of Ephraim’ where Isiah is discussing what had become of all the lost tribes of Israel and had nothing to do with enforcing the Torah at the dinner table, but in the strange Rabbinical mind the original passage has been twisted to fit into a completely new context which was not the original Biblical intention. This is precisely the kind of thing Jesus was referring to when he said:

‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!’

So what the Talmud (that is the Mishnah and the Gemara) does is create a rigid net loosely based on an original Biblical phrase taken out of context to construct an unreasonable and even contrary condition. Far from bringing one closer to God it alienates the mind since God is radically redefined. Notice how the Torah is used by the Mishnah as both the justification for their oppressive Rabbinical interpretation and the cause:

“Anyone who forgets even a single word of this learning, the Torah considers it as if he had forfeited his life. Rabbi Dusta'i the son of Rabbi Yannai would say in the name of Rabbi Meir: ‘Anyone who forgets even a single word of this learning, the Torah considers it as if he had forfeited his life. As is stated, ‘Just be careful, and verily guard your soul, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen (Deuteronomy 4:9).’”

Some other strange pronouncements from the Mishah:

“One who is pleasing to his fellow men, is pleasing to G‑d. But one who is not pleasing to his fellow men, is not pleasing to G‑d.”

“Rabbi Akiva would say: Jesting and frivolity accustom a person to promiscuity. Tradition is a safety fence to Torah, tithing a safety fence to wealth, vows a safety fence for abstinence; a safety fence for wisdom is silence.”

So the Rabbis believe silent, sullen, obedient, mirthless and joyless people, enslaved by Rabbinical tradition under spiritual blackmail to tithe their wealth to the Rabbinical authorities are the kind which please God the most. I have to disagree and such an image conjures the kind of world of the Soviet or Communist system: grey, mirthless, and infinitely oppressed under a thousand rules controlling every moment of their lives. In this sense I would consider Stalinism to be a perfection of the Rabbinical system.

One can imagine what kind of people such strictures and impositions on the mind might be produced and Jesus was unequivocable in some of his choice epithets for the Pharisees who with the destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70AD would go on to create Rabbinical Judaism in the power and religious vacuum which the Romans had created: ‘hypocrites’ ‘children of Satan’ ‘child of Hell’ ‘full of greediness and wickedness’.

The Pirkei Avot contains the thoughts and maxims of the Rabbis and sometimes one is alarmed by the mentality which comes through and sometimes these saying raise a host of questions in themselves:

“Ten miracles were performed for our forefathers in the Holy Temple: No woman ever miscarried because of the smell of the holy meat. The holy meat never spoiled. Never was a fly seen in the slaughterhouse. Never did the High Priest have an accidental seminal discharge on Yom Kippur.”

The Rabbinical conception of a miracle is a strange thing indeed and perhaps indicates that very little of the miraculous, which is usually associated with the presence and activity of God, occurred during the Rabbinical period.

Something which did occur however, and is very interesting in itself particular in light of the context of the ministry and murder of Jesus Christ by the proto-Rabbinical authority: the Pharisees, was a cessation of the miracle of the white thread. The chief priest had, apparently since the time of Aaron himself, as mentioned in Leviticus 16:7, traditionally drawn lots with his right hand to choose which of two goats would be sacrificed as a sin offering for the Lord and which would be released into the wilderness ritually imbued with the sins of Israel as a ‘scapegoat’.

According to the Talmud:

“The Sages taught: During the tenure of Shimon HaTzaddi, the lot for God always arose in the High Priest’s right hand; after his death, it occurred only occasionally; but during the forty years prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, the lot for God did not arise in the High Priest’s right hand at all. So too, the strip of crimson wool that was tied to the head of the goat that was sent to Azazel did not turn white, and the westernmost lamp of the candelabrum did not burn continually.” Talmud 39b Seder Mo’ed Yoma.

The Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70 response to the First Revolt but 40 years prior to this something monumental apparently transpired which severed God’s favour and led to the apparent rejection of their Temple sacrifices. If we consider that Jesus was said to have been born sometime between 6-4 BC (this date coincides with Herod’s murder of the firstborn – though this event is slowly being written out of history if we look at the latest edits on the Wikipedia page which attempts to classify them even as a myth), was murdered at 33 years old then we have the approximate year of Jesus’ death at 30AD give or take a couple of years, precisely the time at which the miracles of the Temple ceased indicating that God no longer favoured them and rejected their sin sacrifices.

Jesus knew that the Oral Torah had the precise effect of not only subverting the original Torah but as Jesus says, actually breaking the commandments and making this the official teaching:

“Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven….For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven" Matthew 5:17-20.

Moshe ben Maimon born in 1138 or late 1137 known more commonly as Maimonides was heavily influenced by the Greek philosophers Aristotle and the Neoplatonist Plotinus. Neoplatonism emerged as a kind of cultural antidote to Christianity.

The trinity of the Kabbalah seems to be heavily influenced by Greek Gnosticism since it divides God’s presence in creation into three parts represented by three mother letters, A (Aleph) which represents Air; M (Mem) which represents Water, and Sh (Shin) which represents fire. Just as Ain Soph where Soph is a Greek word for limitation.

The following from the book of the Lesser Holy Assembly which makes up part of the Kabbalah, makes a reference to a specifically Pythagorean concept which later became a Gnostic one, and subsequently informed the Kabbalistic idea of Ain Soph: The Monad.

“And thus all the other Lights are sanctified, are restricted, and are bound together in the Unity or Monad, and are One; and all things are HVA, Hoa, Himself.”

Many heads of gnostic schools were identified as Hebrews by the Church Fathers, and Hebrew words and names of God were applied in some gnostic systems and research into the origins of Gnosticism shows a strong Hebrew influence traced to Alexandria and particularly from esoteric Hekhalot literature.

Maimonides was born in Islamic Spain and the rest of his life was spent living in different countries of the Islamic world. Maimonides was said to have outwardly practiced Islam during his life but secretly practised Judaism. He wrote the Yesodei haTorah where he used Rabbinical reasoning and a disingenuous appeal to the Torah to justify himself reframing the issue so that by denying his religion and becoming a Muslim, he was being righteous and to do the contrary would be breaking the commandments of the Torah, but in the typically Rabbinical reasoning by breaking the commandment he was following it:

“Should a gentile arise and force a Jew to violate one of the Torah's commandments at the pain of death, he should violate the commandment rather than be killed, because [Leviticus 18:5] states concerning the mitzvot: ‘which a man will perform and live by them.’ [They were given so that] one may live by them and not die because of them. If a person dies rather than transgress, he is held accountable for his life.” Chapter 5 Hilchot Yesodei Hatorah.

It seems that Maimonides didn’t quite have the courage of the convictions of his rabbi and mentor Yehuda Ibn Susan who accepted martyrdom or Kiddush Hashem rather than convert to Islam. Despite Maimonides choosing to quibble himself out of his integrity and devotion to his faith the precept of Kiddush Hashem or Sanctification of the Name had become the word for the martyrdom of Jews during the persecution of emperor Hadrian in the early 2nd Century AD.

He is also perhaps famously quoted by some critics of Rabbinical Judaism as being the author of the following from the Mishneh Torah of the 12th century:

“If a girl is older than three years and one day, she can be consecrated through sexual relations with her father's consent. Should she be below this age, if her father has her consecrated through sexual relations, the marriage bond is not established.”

He also wrote, or perhaps merely codified what was already in the Rabbinical Oral Tradition, that a bonding marriage can be established by anal intercourse, this is commonly called ‘sodomy’ in the Torah and is expressly forbidden:

“When a person consecrates through sexual relations, one may assume that his intent is on the conclusion of the relations; when the relations are concluded, the marriage bond is established. Regardless of whether the couple engage in vaginal or anal intercourse, the marriage bond is established.”

Some of the marriage regulations inscribed for glorious posterity by Maimonides boggle the mind at why such regulations had to be made in the first place:

“If, by contrast, [a man] consecrates [a woman] with the dung of an ox condemned to be stoned, the marriage is binding. Although it is forbidden to derive benefit from an ox condemned to be stoned, this prohibition does not apply to its dung. For the dung is considered of negligible importance when compared to the ox.”

Such a paragraph raises so many questions. Who would an ox need to be stoned to death? Why would someone consider ‘dung’ to be a fitting inducement to marriage and how common were these strange ‘dung’ transactions relating to affairs of the heart.

Other strange stipulations, well not that the stipulations are strange, but that such stipulations had to be made in the first place, are strange and make one boggle at the moral framework within which the Jews operated at that time in history:

“If a man established a condition with a woman at the time of marriage or divorce requiring her to engage in sexual relations with her father, her brother, her son or the like, it is as if he made a stipulation that she ascend to the heavens or descend to the depths, and his condition is of no consequence. For it is not within the woman's capacity to cause others to transgress and to engage in a forbidden sexual relationship. Thus, he has made a stipulation that she is incapable of fulfilling. This complies with regard to all similar instances.”

Also another of the moral codes of the Oral Tradition which Maimonides felt the need to record for posterity, the strange tale of the man who died from lack of sex, perhaps, who knows in this bizarre moral Twilight Zone we seem to have entered:

“When someone becomes attracted to a woman and is [love-]sick [to the extent that] he is in danger of dying, [although] the physicians say he has no remedy except engaging in sexual relations with her, he should be allowed to die rather than engage in sexual relations with her. [This applies] even if she is unmarried.”

One wonders what kind of doctors they had in those days who prescribed sex. One can well imagine that such a thing must have happened, that some woman was being emotionally blackmailed by a man who was in league with a doctor who made a pact to enable him to have his wicked way with her, under doctor’s orders.

All of this seems to hint at a dark sexual current which we will later see fully liberated in the books of the Kabbalah which is also considered to form part of the Oral Tradition and to have even been delivered by God to Adam himself. For instance Michael Laitman in his book explain the Zohar gives the following definition for the Hebrew term ‘Zivug’ which appears in the Zohar. Zivug means ‘life partner’ and is a curious term which comes from the Greek ‘zogen’ to join and it is curious how much Greek lexis and philosophy seems to have entered Jewish mysticism:

“The spiritual Zivug is an aspiration of the Upper One (ZA—male part) to pass the Light (pleasure) to the lower one (Malchut—female part). In doing so, both desires are completely selfless, as in the example of the guest and the host.”

Maimonides himself considered the presence of God in the Old Testament, and even the famous vision of Jacob’s ladder to be largely allegorical and not a representation of actual events. This is to cast aspersions of the integrity of the Bible itself and one can imagine that the only people who would want to do that did not themselves believe in the Bible but believed in something else. The ladder with the angels ascending and descending seen by Jacob in his vision, was according to Maimonides, only an allegory for the empires and their subjugation of his descendants. Maimonides states:

“Those who believe that God is One and that He has many attributes declare the Unity with their lips and assume the plurality in their thoughts.”

From the ‘My Jewish Learning’ website:

“That also means that, in Aristotelian terms, one cannot actually say ‘God is . ..’ and proceed to enumerate God’s attributes. To describe the Eternal One in such a sentence is to admit of a division between subject and predicate, in other words, a plurality.

Therefore, he concludes, one cannot discuss God in terms of positive attributes. On the other hand, one can describe what God is not. God is not corporeal, does not occupy space, experiences neither generation nor corruption (in the Aristotelian sense of birth, decay, and death.. Mai­monides’ conception of the Supreme Being is usually characterized as “negative theology,” that is, defining by the accumulation of negatives.”

For a so-called Jewish scholar and father of Rabbinical thought, to say that God cannot be discussed ‘in terms of positive attributes’ is a fundamental change in position. Radically different from the Old Testament theology and completely contrary to what Jesus taught. What benefit is it to teach God as an aloof force with no positive attributes, relegating right and wrong, good and evil, morality and immorality, piety and wickedness, to mere frames of reference unsupported by any larger deistic reality. It can only benefit those who wish to do evil and get away with it.

Even more strangely, the Zohar takes the imagery of the story of Jacob’s Ladder and turns it into a mystery pantomime. The ‘Initiation of Rabbi Hiya’ from the Zohar clearly indicates some kind of ongoing initiatory cult, initiatory cults have nothing to do with the history of the Israelites and their God who was always opposed to such activities:

“Then Rabbi Hiya saw his fellow students standing around the, masters and they wended their way to the celestial school. Some were ascending and others descending thither, and at their head was the great winged angel of the presence (Metatron), who was saying he had heard in the palace on high that the king, visits everyday and does not forget his lone and loved ones who are struggling towards the higher life unnoticed and unregarded by the world. At that moment three hundred and ninety worlds trembled and shook as with an earthquake. Stars as of fire descended from on high and fell into the great sea, whose ruler then stood up and swore by him that lives forever, that he would dry up all the waters of creation if ever the world and its powers should gather themselves against the children of light to destroy them.

As he ceased speaking, Rabbi Hiya heard a voice from heaven exclaiming: ‘Fall back! make room for the King Messiah coming to the school of Rabbi Simeon, whose students are all initiates and master teachers of the secret doctrine.’ Then came Messiah and visited all the celestial schools and confirmed the teachings and expositions of the mysteries given by their appointed instructors. As he entered the great assembly crowned with many crowns, all the great masters rose up and saluted. Turning to Rabbi Simeon, the emanation of whose light reached up to heaven, Messiah spake and said: "Blessed art thou, Rabbi Simeon, for thy mystic teachings are of the highest worth and valued and cherished by all. They only, along with those of Hesekiah, King of Judah, and Achiya, the Solonite, are marked and sealed with the approval of the holy one. I have come hither because I know that the angel of the presence visits no other school save yours."

What appears in the Mishah, and this together with the Gemara is quite different from the Old Testament and seems to inject a note of moral license and relativity. Such might be the recourse of a band of rogues who wished to continue their roguish ways despite clear instructions to the contrary. Moses is not here to testify and God appears unwilling to make a physical appearance and either countenance or deny this claim, though the last time he did and spoke through Jesus, things didn’t go well so understandably God has said his piece and will probably only remain as a curious on-looker to the tragedy of the human race. So in the absence of denials the Rabbinical authority seems to be accepted and much of modern Judaism is not in the Torah or the first five books of the Old Testament which most of us can read and readily understand and even sometimes accept the validity of some of the proscriptions made against such things as child sacrifice, commandments against practising homosexuality and the interdiction of murder, adultery and other such things which are generally understood to be useful laws for the benefit of civilised human society.

In the absence of Temple sacrifice (which we saw were no longer accepted by God in the 40 years subsequent to the murder of Jesus and the destruction of the Second Temple) the Sukkah Talmud seems to show how in the subsequent spiritual power-vacuum, divine authority has become a free-for-all with Rabbis’ vying for spiritual supremacy and appointing themselves, or being appointed ‘messiah’ level powers:

“And Ḥizkiya said that Rabbi Yirmeya said in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai: I am able to absolve the entire world from judgment for sins committed from the day I was created until now. The merit that he accrued through his righteousness and the suffering that he endured atone for the sins of the entire world. And were the merit accrued by Eliezer, my son, calculated along with my own, we would absolve the world from judgment for sins committed from the day that the world was created until now. And were the merit accrued by the righteous king, Jotham ben Uzziah, calculated with our own, we would absolve the world from judgment for sins committed from the day that the world was created until its end. The righteousness of these three serves as a counterbalance to all the evil deeds committed throughout the generations, and it validates the ongoing existence of the world.”

But to finish this strange chapter on some further strangeness, among the ‘classic texts’ of Jewish law and includes a chapter on how to go to the toilet. Since we’re here I might as well share those edifying joys with you. The 16th Century Shulchan Aruch, the last ‘great’ codification of Jewish Law has a chapter entitled Lavatory Conduct:

“One should also conduct himself modestly when entering a lavatory, uncovering himself only to the extent required and not even a moment before the time required. This should be done only when he is seated, and only a handbreadth from behind and — to allow for urination — two handbreadths in front…A woman should uncover nothing in front, and either a handbreadth or two handbreadths behind herself…In practice, one should uncover as little as possible.

If a person relieves himself in an open place that is not surrounded by partitions, he should face the south with his back to the north, or vice versa. He should not have his back to the west or to the east, out of reverence for the Divine Presence, which abides in the west, facing east. This is why the east is referred to as ‘the front’ and the west, ‘the back,’ as reflected in the verse, ‘You have hedged me behind and in front.’ The south is thus called the right, or teiman.

If there is a [private] corner one should relieve oneself there, provided no one else is present. If, however, there is another person there, even a non-Jew, it is forbidden to relieve oneself in his presence — i.e., if he is close enough to be observed, even if his uncovered body cannot be seen — for it is considered immodest to be observed from nearby.

Where possible, it is preferable to make a point of facing south with one’s back to the north, and not the opposite, so that one will not be easing oneself in the direction of Jerusalem and the site of the Beis HaMikdash. This applies in most of these countries that are located more to the north of Jerusalem than to the west, and even more so in those countries which are located directly to the north of Jerusalem.

When one urinates while standing, and many drops of urine will fall on his feet if he does not lift his organ, he is permitted to raise it by lifting his testicles. If the drops fall on his feet, he should clean them off immediately with his hands and not walk among people in this manner. He should not hold the organ itself to raise it, for ‘he who holds his organ is considered as if he brought a flood upon the world,’ lest he become aroused and emit seed wastefully. [This stringency applies] unless he holds the organ from the corona downward, i.e., towards the ground, for this will not arouse him. Alternatively, he may hold [the organ] with a thick cloth, for this too will not arouse him.

When a person is married, and his wife is in the same city as he is, and she is ritually pure, the letter of the law permits him to hold the organ even above the corona. Since he ‘has a loaf in his basket,’ he will not be stimulated to improper thoughts or to arousal. Nevertheless, pious behaviour dictates stringency.”

My final thoughts in this chapter are that when a people becomes so totally dominated by laws and rules in every little aspect of their life, they literally reach such a point of mental impotence that they need instructions on how to go to the lavatory.

The Mystery of the Alumbrados: Spectres in the Quiet Gloom.

 

The Mystery of the Alumbrados 

 Once again the word 'chew' has been substituted to circumvent Google censorship and shadow banning of this wesbite.

An interesting historical character to emerge from the gloom of the Jesuits is Miguel de Molinos. As a youth he was educated by the Jesuits and ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1652, joined the brotherhood of the School of Christ. He was sent to Rome where he became very influential and soon developed a powerful network of patrons including the exiled Queen of Sweden.

While in Rome he developed the ‘philosophy’ or perhaps more accurately, the heresy for which he has become recorded in history: ‘Quietism’, the details of which he thoroughly outlined in his book ‘The Spiritual Guide which Disentangles the Soul’.

The key point of the book is Miguel’s advocacy for what he terms ‘contemplation’ over the ‘meditation’ of the Jesuits. Meditation in his terms refers to the Jesuit techniques of visualising key scenes from the Bible, specifically the Passion of Christ and also visualising hell itself as we have just read in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignacio Loyola. The ostensible purpose of Molino’s Spiritual Guide was to teach man a method of drawing closer and knowing God by curtailing the activity of the mind and the personal will.

After a hitherto successful career in the church and Molinos’ doctrine of Quietism having become broadly accepted and not then considered heretical, something changed. Jesuits felt they needed to rebut the specific attacks made in the book about their methods of ‘meditation’ and there was a lively back and forth between Quietists and Jesuits as to which method was the best, whether the ‘meditation’ (which is more like a form of contemplation) of the Jesuits or ‘contemplation’ (which is really a form of meditation) of the Quietists. The Inquisition took an interest and investigating in 1681 declared the Spiritual Guide of Miguel de Molinos orthodox and compatible with the teachings of the Church. However, in 1685 the tide turned against him and he was arrested under instruction from French authorities and while many in Rome were sympathetic to Molinos in 1687 he confessed his errors to the Inquisition and died after spending nine years in prison. At his trial according to Britannica.com:

“Molinos defended sexual aberrations committed by himself and his followers as sinless, purifying acts caused by the Devil. He claimed they were passively allowed in order to deepen a quiet repose in God.”

Pope Innocent XI wrote of Molinos:

“….these doctrines were leading the faithful from true religion and from the purity of Christian piety into terrible errors and every indecency.”

The Catholic Herald online summarises thus:

“In that same year, however, he published his Spiritual Guide, which purported to lead the reader through the various stages of the spiritual life to perfection in this world, whereby one would remain perfectly passive before God as the highest state. Once there, a person need not fear sins committed under the temptations of the Devil, but should remain at peace, even after committing the vilest acts.”

This ‘doctrine’ if we can call it that, ought to recall what we have seen of the Kabbalah and the idea of ‘holy sin’ or sin even serving a useful purpose in making a person more righteous before God.

We even find this very dangerous idea had crept into the theology of Pope Gregory I to whom Molinos refers:

“That we may not make Poison of Physick, and Vices of Vertues, by becoming vain by ‘em; God would have us make Vertues of Vices, healing us by that very thing which would hurt us: So says St. Gregory.”

And Pope Gregory reaches this conclusion by some highly Kabbalistic logic worthy of Simon Magus himself:

“I'd like to look inside the fortified bosom of grace with how much God keeps us by the favor of mercy. Behold, he who exalts himself about virtue returns through vice to humility. But he who is extolled for his virtues, is wounded, not by the sword, but, so to speak, by medicine. For what is virtue but medicine? and what is vice but wound? Because, therefore, we treat the wound as a medicine, he makes the medicine of the wound, so that we who are smitten by virtue may be cured by vice.” 

It is all rather unfortunate because most of the early elements of the Spiritual Guide and the core of Quietism is basically a form of Zen meditation which is an extremely useful spiritual and psychological tool which can be used to experience other states of being once the mental chatter of the brain has been quietened, however this is not an idea original to Molinos and it is likely he learned about it in his studies and decided to adopt it as a plausible cover for his true aims which may have been deliberate subversion or at least, an excessive enjoyment of physical pleasures. The Catholic Herald reports how:

“Cardinal Benedetto Odescalchi and the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden became admirers (although the Queen regarded Fr de Molinos’s huge appetite for food with sceptical amusement).”

The true origins of Molino’s ‘Quietism’, or at least those to emerge in the West, are to be found in the works of a late 5^th Century Greek philosopher using the pseudonym of a 1^st Century Greek convert to Christianity by Saint Paul known as ‘Dionysius the Areopagite’. Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite as he is known was a philosopher who apparently was both a Christian and conversely, a Neo-Platonist. He expounded proto-Kabbalistic ideas which we can derive from the following from Corrigan & Harrington (2014):

“According to pseudo-Dionysius, God is better characterized and approached by negations than by affirmations. All names and theological representations must be negated. According to pseudo-Dionysius, when all names are negated, ‘divine silence, darkness, and unknowing’ will follow.”

A PHD thesis by R. A. Agnew for the University of Edinburgh comments on Pseudo-Dionysus linking his philosophy to the ‘Illuminati’:

“He, further, explains that Quietude and Silence are necessary, since ‘only like can know like’; and ‘God is peace’ and ‘Repose’, ‘the One all perfect source ... of the Peace of all’; and He is Silence ‘the angels are, as it were, the heralds of the Divine Silence’.

In silence then ‘let the intelligent soul transcend intelligence and it forgets itself ... Closed, ... mute and silent ... and sheltered, not only from exterior but also from interior impulses; he is made God.’ This is deification, the principle of Eckhart, the doctrine of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, and the teaching of the Illuminati.”

Kabbalistic Freemasonry

 

KABBALISTIC FREEMASONRY. 

Due to Google shadow banning of this website because of the inclusion of certain words, that word has been replaced by 'Chew'.

Official history records the first Freemasonic lodge was founded on the 24th June 1717 at the Goose and Gridiron alehouse in London but there has been a presence of Freemasonry prior to this date for several hundred years, perhaps it is only in 1717 that Freemasonry effectively began its slow emergence from the subterranean underground it had hitherto inhabited and commenced the next stage of its long term, millennial plan.

In his book about ‘The Hiram Key’ Freemason Christopher Knight states plainly that: “there appears to have been a significant Freemasonic infrastructure in place in London, well before 1646.”

1646 is a significant date because it is on this date that the first documented record of someone being initiated into Freemasonry was made. On 16th October 1646, antiquarian and member of the Royal Society and later founder of the Oxford Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at Oxford, Elias Ashmole in his dairy records:

"I was made a Free Mason at Warrington in Lancashire, with Coll: Henry Mainwaring of Karincham in Cheshire.”

At this date during the English Civil War Warrington was a stronghold of the Parliamentarians and Colonel Henry Mainwaring was a Roundhead Parliamentarian friend of Ashmole’s father-in-law. Ashmole was interested in Hermetic studies and Alchemy and published several books on the subject.

The following is from the website of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia which seems to be some kind of international rival to the largest Rosicrucian organisation in the word, the mighty AMORC founded in 1915 and preceded by the Societas Rosicruciana which was founded in 1865 by Robert Wentworth Little and recruits from among Master Masons while AMORC is a group which seems to require little more than the completion of an online application from and the payment of annual dues of £246. They seem to organise open-evenings at UK Friends House, UK headquarters of the Quakers opposite Euston Station in London and as a Quaker myself I am surprised that they are happy to throw their lot in with a quasi-Satanic Kabbalistic organisations like this one, but I also saw Benjamin Crème at Friends House going on about his daft Maitreya but I suppose he had to pay the Quakers for the use of the room and presumably they put the money to good use.

Quoting from the Societas Rosicruciana website:

“Some Masonic historians believe that modern Speculative Freemasonry owes much to the Rosicrucian movement. Certainly, the earliest recorded speculative Freemasons in England, Sir Robert Moray and Elias Ashmole, if not themselves Rosicrucians, were deeply interested in Rosicrucian philosophy and ideals – ideals that perhaps provided their motive for establishing The Royal Society. The Rosicrucian Society of England was founded in 1867 by the freemason Robert Wentworth Little and six other brethren following the discovery of certain manuscripts in the archives of Grand Lodge. Many eminent and scholarly masons have been members of the Order.”

Initiated into Freemasonry in 1771 the German poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1778 wrote five dialogues on Freemasonry entitled: "Ernst und Falk: Conversations for Freemasons."

From Secret Societies and Subversive Movements:

“The dialogues between Ernst and Falk throw a curious light on the influences at work behind Freemasonry at this period and gain immensely in interest when the identity of the two men in question is understood. Thus Ernst, by whom Lessing evidently represents himself, is at the beginning not a Freemason, and, whilst sitting with Falk in a wood, questions the high initiate on the aims of the Order. Falk explains that Freemasonry has always existed, but not under this name. Its real purpose has never been revealed. On the surface it appears to be a purely philanthropic association, but in reality philanthropy forms no part of its scheme, its object being to bring about a state of things which will render philanthropy unnecessary…As an illustration Falk points to an ant-heap at the foot of the tree beneath which the two men are seated. ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘should not human beings exist without government like the ants or bees?’ Falk then goes on to describe his idea of a Universal State, or rather a federation of States, in which men will no longer be divided by national, social, or religious prejudices, and where greater equality will exist.”

What is interesting again is that same refrain, the same tune and the same words, whether it be spoken by elite Chewish Freemasons or messages apparently beamed into people’s heads by aliens.

In the dialogues is the hint that Freemasonry is controlled by something far older and most Freemasons have no idea what is really happening or what they are involved with. And that as Falk himself as a Chew, does not attend Masonic lodges and that Freemasonry does not exist in an ‘outward form’ and he says:

“A lodge bears the same relation to Freemasonry as a church to belief."

And Webster Nesta’s comments:

“In other words, the real initiates do not appear upon the scene. Here then we see the role of the "Concealed Superiors."

It seems clear then that it is made explicit that Falk, as a Kabbalist Chew, is one of the elect ‘concealed superiors’ of Freemasonry, however he does not attend the lodges and exist as a ‘hidden master’.

The Freemason Andrew Michael Ramsey states that Freemasonry was created by the Crusader knights, stating that medieval crusaders, likely the Knights Templar, founded Freemasonry. But there is a myth of an even earlier foundation according to Freemason Henrik Bogdan in his paper entitled An Introduction to the High Degrees of Freemasonry:

“The name Heredon, more commonly spelled as Heredom (and sometimes as Harodim), is the name given to a mythical mountain supposed to exist north of Kilwinning, Scotland. According to a Masonic myth, associated particularly with Ecossais Masonry, the Masons were driven away from Jerusalem after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem and subsequently found their way to this mountain in Scotland. They remained on this mountain until the time of the Crusades.”

Lodge Mother Kilwinning is generally held to be the oldest Masonic lodge in the world and has its origins in the 12th Century, almost 500 years prior to Freemasonry’s supposed creation in London at the Apple Tree Tavern in 1716. Freemasonry in Scotland supposedly developed under the reign of King David I and the Heredom degree with a Rosy Cross degree originating in 1314 following the Battle of Bannockburn which has long been rumoured to have been decisively won in Scotland’s favour due to the intercession of a band of mysterious knights who may have been the Knights Templar.

One of the earliest known reference to the Rosicrucians was in a poem The Muses Threnodie from 1638 by Scotsman  Henry Adamson:

“For we be brethren of the Rosie Crosse,

 We have the Mason word, and second sight, 

Things for to come we can foretell aright..”

New book available now on Kindle and in paperback.

 New book now available on Amazon. Ebook and paperback now available.

 An investigation into the reality of the spirit world with reference to various published materials and the historical influence of the spirit-world within the European hermetic movement and secret societies.

Exploring the creation and the purpose of the Jesuits.

The secret of the Alumbrados. 

Decoding the Rosicrucians.

The TRUTH about UFO's.

Alchemy explained.

The Kabbalah exposed!

AND THE BIG WHY.......

Cults of the Kabbalah. From coming new book.

 

 

The ROAD TO ELEUSIS

                                                  The journey into mystery.

 

The Kabbalah is commonly referred to as a collection of works which comprise a form of Jewish mysticism. QBLH meaning ‘tradition’ as in ‘Oral Tradition’ is principally comprised of three books: The Sefir Yetsira (Book of Formation), the Sefir ha-Bahir (Book of Illumination) and The Zohar (Splendour); the earliest of these - the Sefir Yetsira is attributed to Rabbi Akiva Ben Joseph who died, probably murdered by the Romans during the Third Jewish Revolt lead by the self-styled Messiah: Bar Kokhba. Although these key texts of the Kabbalah generally appeared in the 12th century onwards the attribution of these texts is much earlier, generally to the historically critical post Second Temple period though such attribution may be an artifice of mediaeval writers seeking perhaps a false authority for their writings and there is much ongoing debate among Jewish and mainstream scholars as to who really wrote these texts and when.

Interestingly we can observe at least two major breaks from Jewish orthodoxy in the Sefir ha-Bahir and this will very much become a theme I wish to focus on since this attempt to subvert Judaism from within by a secondary force which seems antagonistic to the Torah and wishing to destroy it despite claiming the contrary, is a key part of my thesis. The following excerpt shows the promulgation of a belief in reincarnation, an idea alien to conventional Judaism but which was a fundamental belief of the Pharisees who would later become the core of Rabbinical Judaism after the fall of the Second Temple and it is worth noting that the majority of Pharisees themselves were not of the lineage of Israel but were actually Edomites.  Reincarnation has historically been more commonly associated with Hinduism, Buddhism, and probably more pertinently here, the mystery religions of Ancient Greece:

“Why is there a righteous person who has good, and [another] righteous person who has evil? This is because the [second] righteous person was wicked previously, and is now being punished. Is one then punished for his childhood deeds? Did not Rabbi Simon say that in the Tribunal on high, no punishment is meted out until one is twenty years or older. He said: I am not speaking of his present lifetime. I am speaking about what he has already been, previously.”

This isn’t to dismiss reincarnation as a concept, merely to point out that it is inconsistent with Jewish religious tradition and to see that it is adapted by the key writers or compilers of the Kabbalah, shows that something which is alien to the Jewish tradition entered their religion and transformed it, I would say a whole package of alien traditions entered Judaism and turned it into something infinitely dangerous: a religion with an acquired arsenal of techniques from the Greek mystery religion to transform consciousness; if such techniques are used, out of context or within a framework which is not properly adapted to them, then the consequences can be extremely grave and such techniques can become extremely destructive to the people undergoing them and to the society as a whole which also becomes transformed. If additionally, these techniques are used as a weapon to actually subjugate and conquer a perceived enemy, which I believe to ultimately be the case, then whoever holds the key to these transformative techniques can dictate not only the physical reality which is experienced by those who are dominated by the secret esoteric machinery of the secret society’s mystery religion but can also dictate their spiritual reality, which is infinitely more insidious.

It would seem therefore that the doctrines of the Eleusinian mystery school, which taught reincarnation within the context of the Orphic religion, spread throughout Greek society and the ancient world of the Gentiles and was promulgated by luminaries such as Pythagoras and Socrates. The Orphic religion teaches that in order to achieve salvation or detachment from the wheel of birth and rebirth it is necessary to undergo a ritual purification called ‘telete’ while the uninitiated ‘amuetos’ must reincarnate indefinitely.

We can only guess what might have transpired during these ancient rites suffice it to say that with a combination of psychoactive compounds, extreme emotions and a sense of fear for one’s life, combined with witnessing extraordinary events being manifested with a variety of special effects and scientific knowledge known to the priesthood but not the initiate, then all sorts of illusions can be drawn on to strongly influence the mind of the initiate and no doubt, some real kind of revelation truly brought to bear.

An example from the Christian era of the priesthood having special knowledge which gave them power over people would be the case of the monks of the 11th Century order of Saint Anthony. They were primarily based in France and would treat those who were suffering from Saint Anthony’s Fire or ergotism, that is the presumably accidental ingestion of the highly toxic ergot fungus as a result of its contamination with the local grain crop from which ergotised bread was made. It is surmised that the efficacy of the Order of Saint Anthony lay solely in their knowledge of what caused ergotism and that they simply cured their patients by removing them from the source of ergot in their diet by giving them bread which either grew in areas without an ergot infestation of by using grain which had been previously screened. The knowledge of ergot was something we have conjectured may have been known to the priesthood of the Eleusinian mysteries who may have deliberately used this agent as a psychoticant. Additionally, knowledge of the effects of ergot must have been known to early Iron Age societies in Europe since it has been found in the stomachs of those ritually murdered and placed in bogs. Drugging prior to ritual death was also common in South America where coca leaves and alcohol were used as a sedative in the transition of life to death, the purpose of their death being that they would then become ‘ancestors’ to spiritually watch over their people.

Another unusual and one might say heretical extract from the Sefer ha-Bahir, relates to the Biblical fall of man and this material has actually become somewhat accepted amongst certain circles of esoteric Christianity:

“The soul of the female comes from the Female, and the soul of the male comes from the Male. This is the reason why the Serpent followed Eve. He said, “Her soul comes from the north, and I will therefore quickly seduce her.” And how did he seduce her? He had intercourse with her.”

It is probably a stretch to consider the story of the Garden of Eden as anything more than an allegory for some other key events which may have taken place in the remote history of mankind in the area in which he seems to have developed all of the arts and from where human civilisation emerged. It is in the Middle-East and the area specifically between the Euphrates and Tigris which is where Eden was said to have been situated. But why the keenness to sexualise this story and introduce an element which had not previously been suspected? And why the need to claim that gender is something which also exists in the spiritual realm? What need would spirits have of being gendered since they presumably do not reproduce. This is a theme we will also see develop greatly: the overt sexualisation of the Torah and of spiritual matters in general.

Founder of the international Kabbalah foundation: Bnei Baruch, Michael Laitman claims that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai wrote the Zohar in the 2^nd century. Known as Rashbi, he was the most eminent disciple of Rabbi Akiva and was said to have compiled 3,000 years of Kabbalah and many of his sayings are found in the Talmud, although modern scholars doubt this.

Rabbi Akiva is renowned as one of the great Jewish sages or ‘tanna’ and the Sefir Yetsira is attributed to him although there are scholastic doubts as to this, although it is more plausible that he was the creator of the early divisions of the Mishnah. It was Akiva who gave the ill-fated Jewish military leader of the third and final Jewish revolt against the Romans Simon ben Kosevah the sobriquet Simon bar Kokhba, (son of the star: a reference to the messianic prophecy of an Israelite military leader referred to in Numbers 24:17) and considered him to be the long-awaited Messiah.

The revolt ended in 135AD with the wholesale slaughter of the Jews (with as many as half a million killed) and the razing of their towns and villages. It is probable that this event became the catalyst for their long-term programme of world domination and total subjugation of gentiles. Subsequent Talmudic opinion of Simon bar Kokhba considers him to be a ‘false-messiah’.

The Zohar appeared in 13^th century Spain and was published by Moses de Leon who ascribed it to Rashbi in mythical and unlikely terms. It is Rashbi who is credited with saying:

“The best of the gentiles merit death; the best of serpents should have its head crushed; and the most pious of women is prone to sorcery.”

There is also criticism of the Kabbalah, specifically the Zohar as being evidently written from a post Talmudic perspective and also some of the references in the text firmly place it in a 13^th century context.

For instance, the Zohar predicted the arrival of the Jewish Messiah in the 70th year of the 6th millennium: the 14th Century, and that he would be caught up in the wars between the Muslims and Christians. But since there were no Muslims in the 2^nd century it cannot have been written by Rashbi but clearly by someone contemporaneous with the activities of the crusading Christians. The crusader wars between Christians and Muslims had been waged for 200 years and were ongoing during the lifetime of Moses de Leon so it might have seemed a safe bet that they would continue into the future.

Unfortunately for the writer of the Zohar, whoever he was, but it was probably de Leon, the Crusader presence in the Holy Land effectively ended in 1291 with the Fall of Acre, so this constitutes a failed prediction and rebuffs any suggestion of the text being divinely inspired. These passages are generally not included with published versions of the Zohar (for obvious reasons) but they do make up the corpus of the written texts, but such failed predictions serve both to date the writing of the Zohar to sometime in the 13^th century prior to 1291 and also to discredit it as having any prophetic or revelatory value.

New excerpt from new book....coming soon.....very soon. Crowley, the meaning of the Rosicrucians, Bankers and the Secret Masters.

The ROAD TO ELEUSIS

                                                         The journey into mystery.

Beyond Crowley’s sordid self-serving sexual agenda, he reveals the same hidden purpose which we have seen exposed time and time again in this work, through the centuries, whether of the UFO contact cults, or Revolutionary agents and assassins or mystical Scientific societies of the middle-ages, Crowley writes:

“There are many magical teachers but in recorded history we have scarcely had a dozen Magi in the technical sense of the word. They may be recognized by the fact that their message may be formulated as a single word, which word must be such that it overturns all existing beliefs and codes.”

Crowley, the Rosicrucians, the Italian bankers and their change agents, the French and the Russian revolutionaries, the UFO cults, all controlled by the same force throughout time and space all dedicated to one theme: ‘overturning all existing beliefs’. We now live in the world where their programme is about to achieve its final goals bereft of the idealism which would have sustained those meddling and wrong-headed do-gooders of the past.

I found this quote during my research though I have forgotten the attribution and the internet search results being now so strictly filtered it is presently impossible for me to find out, but it perfectly encapsulates what has happened to the world and how everything has been subverted from within by the secret societies enacting this millennial old agenda, emerging slowly in the mediaeval period, informed by and secretly perpetuating Jewish mysticism amongst the elite of the West:

“To destroy Western society it is not necessary to teach evil in place of Christianity, it is just necessary to teach Judaism.”

Although Crowley was no doubt a most unpleasant man obsessed with his own pleasure at any cost, even to the lives and sanity of others, by sexualising the Kabbalah he was only exaggerating what was already implicit in the original texts. The fundamental problem with the Kabbalah is that it is obsessed with male and female forces and sees these as spiritual forces rather than merely physical ones. I suppose it is a matter of opinion but I do not see the spiritual world as having any gender. It ought to be evident that gender is a requirement of physical procreation in the physical world and can serve no purpose once physicality ends in the spiritual world. But according to the Kabbalah it persists and is primordial, emerging from the very point of contact from the great Ain Soph to the Kether. With the third Sefira Binah as being the ‘reflection’ of God, that is God seeing itself, then Binah is receptive and hence a feminine principle and is known in Kabbalah as the ‘mother’ archetype. Confusingly however each successive Sefira has an androgynous nature of both receiving and transmitting, receiving being a supposedly feminine principle and transmitting being a masculine one. 

The opening tractate of the Zohar is entitled The Rose and it could possibly be the true origin of the term Rosicrucian. In the Zohar the rose is revealed to be a symbol for Israel, would this make Rosicrucianism, that is, the rose and cross the first society of Christian Zionism? This analysis would make perfect sense.

“Rabbi Hizkiyah opened, ‘It is written, as a rose among thorns.’ That a rose is the Assembly of Israel. Because there is a rose and there is a rose, just as a rose among thorns is tinged with red and white, the Assembly of Israel consists of judgment and mercy. Just as a rose has thirteen petals, the Assembly of Israel is surrounded on all sides by the thirteen attributes of mercy.”

In the Zohar the masculine energies Chokmah (wisdom) impregnated Binah (understanding) with light to produce Tiferet or Beauty. To the Kabbalist the spiritual realm seems to be held together with constant repetitions of sexual energies, it is hardly any wonder then that we hear rumours of Freemasonry being little more than a cleverly disguised cult of the phallus in the style of the ancient Egyptian fertility mystery schools such as the allegory of the search for the poor Osiris’ lost penis.

In his 2008 book Essential Judaism, George Robinson writes:

“Hokhmah is the “sperm” that will impregnate Binah (Understanding) as the first step in the Creative process.”

“..it is the means by which Tiferet, the male principle of the Divine, impregnates Shekhinah or Malkhut, the female embodiment of the Divine. Yesod is the way in which Divine Creativity and Fertility are visited upon all creation. Yesod is associated with the phallus…”

The other danger is the insistence of the Zohar of literally embodying the fundamental spiritual powers of God in the human body. In the Zohar this is called the Microprospus or Damuth Adam, the primordial man, and might be more familiar as the pentagram which in reality is a stylised representation of the human body. So the various Sefirot are said to manifest at different points in or near the human body. I wonder if you can see where this is heading? The problem is that again, sex does not seem to be something merely physical but also primordial, in this belief system then, one can justify all kinds of sexual rites in the delusion that these are spiritual forces and therefore they escape any kind of ideas of modesty or morality, and these are precisely the errors the Ancient World fell into. Where the Gods of the Ancient World were merely expressions of man’s own nature, it was at least to Judaism’s credit that they insisted that God created Man in his own image and not the other way around. But the Kabbalah precisely does that, it takes the physical world and all its desires, emotions and polarities and thrusts them into the spiritual domain, up to the very highest levels until it reaches Ain Soph and ends in nothingness.

Master Mason and Rosicrucian, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers who co-founded the Golden Dawn along with William Westcott also authored a translation of some of the tracts of the Zohar which he translated from the Latin version of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth.

In his ‘Confessions’ Aleister Crowley wrote of the decline of the Golden Dawn and of Mathers himself and makes an intriguing allusion:

“…Mathers, of course, carried on; but he had fallen. The Secret Chiefs cast him off; he fell into deplorable abjection; even his scholarship deserted him. He published nothing new and lived in sodden intoxication till death put an end to his long misery."

According to one-time personal secretary to Aleister Crowley and populariser of the occult in the 1960’s Israel Regardie, the Kabbalah was handed down to Adam after the fall of Man and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Regardie is particularly scathing of religions, however he claims that Kabbalah does not belong to any religious traditions, and also has a soft-spot for Witchcraft. In his book he mentions Crowley, for whom he has ‘a tremendous respect’ unfortunately this respect would not last once Crowley accused Regardie of ‘pure theft’ when he edited a 4 volume work on The Golden Dawn and in a bitter feud revealed to the world that Regardie had once visited a prostitute in France and contracted gonorrhoea, neglecting to mention that it was Crowley who had ordered him to visit the prostitute in order to lose his virginity and overcome his inhibitions.

Although Crowley in his Confessions depicts Mathers as the true source of spiritual contact between Crowley and the entities he served:

"As far as I was concerned, Mathers was my only link with the Secret Chiefs to whom I was pledged. I wrote to him offering to place myself and my fortune unreservedly at his disposal; if that meant giving up the Abra-Melin Operation for the present, all right."

Mathers it seemed was in full psychic contact with various spiritual entities; Crowley reports how he would play chess against pagan Gods, the moves apparently being communicated to him and the ‘opponents’ pieces he would move on their behalf. One could still ascribe this to an over-active imagination I suppose, but is it likely that merely an overactive imagination is enough to influence the world on such a phenomenal cross-cultural and global scale, taking control of the highest echelons of the ruling secret societies and being the hidden hand behind the façade of our society?

A similar end awaited Crowley himself whose last words were reported to have been either: "I am perplexed, Satan get out!" or "Sometimes I hate myself" but Crowley’s reference to ‘Secret Chiefs’ having deserted Mathers is intriguing and possibly hints at some kind of ongoing psychic contact with a disembodied spiritual force.

In her book about occult societies Talking to Gods Susan Johnston Graf states that The Golden Dawn was:  “…the most important and influential Western organisation of its kind”. She gives a good summary of the general purpose and aim of the group:

“For a Golden Dawn initiate the work at hand was to make contact with the divine spark that was thought to reside in all humans…The Golden Dawn initiate was wanted to raise his or her consciousness to attain what is termed conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel. The practise of ritual magic in the Order of the Golden Dawn was an attempt to change consciousness and to control the imagination by active participation in psychic events.’