Chapter from my book: Demons of Eleusis.
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.
