An introduction to Kabbalah part 2

An introduction to Kabbalah Part Two:What is kabbalah part 1

Kabbalah..what is Kabbalah? Yes by now I am sure everyone here has heard of Kabbalah due to Madonna. Now Madonna’s group are but 1 form of kabbalah there are many forms.

"Torah is a lamp, kabbalah is a flame upon the lamp illuminating the way" --old jewish saying

The word Kabbalah means "received wisdom" or "to receive", strictly speaking it refers to oral teachings. It is a Hebrew word. Thus like the Hindu word UPANISHAD it can be used to refer to ANY oral teaching, yet today the word kabbalah is generally only associated with "one" thing.

The word kabbalah is often used to show a Jewish kabbalah. Just as there are many forms of Kabbalah there are many ways of spelling the word. In fact Kabbalah can be spelt in over 30 different ways. Most popularly this manifests as :

Kabbalah ---judaic
Cabbalah ---Christian
qabalah ---Hermetic

Though thre are no strict rules, as with any translation (and transliteration)from language to language such problems occur, in this case hebrew to english.

As to the origins of QBLH (kabbalah)this is a strongly debated subject. The main arguments are that Kabbalah only originated around the 12th to 16th century. Others argue that Kabbalah is far older and is Jewish. Going back to Jewish texts that are 1 or 2 century BCE. Still others argue ..along with new evidence from sights such as Qmran (the place of the "dead sea scrolls")that QBLH is far older than even the Jews, and much like the jews have been doing for millenia, they intergrated it into their beliefs from their time in egypt.

My self I tend to lean to the egypytian argument. Now whether you agree with that or not is unimportant. For the purposes of this series of articles we shall suppose that QBLH is not the property of any one culture.

How can we draw these conclusions?

QBLH was and is strongly influenced by Judaism, Gnosticism (manykinds...particularly essenes and manicheanism)Christianity,Hermeticism, Platonic thought (neo and platonic)andIslam..essentially Sufi thought.

There is even a Rastafarian form of QBLH called Salomonic or Solomonic ..named after Solomon. Today we even see modern "neopagan" qblh, how affective this form is I do not know.

For those wishing more:
http://www.kheper.net/topics/Kabbalah/Kabbalah.htm

until next time.