This is a serious post. The subject: Kabbalah

[LibraLiz1973]

Who here knows anything about it? What are your thoughts? Does anyone here study it? Do you have experience with it, or with someone who is or has studied it?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. If you are thinking...

Of hooking up with "The Kabbalah Center", I suggest you get your happy ass over to the Radar Magazine website and read a little.

[madrchsod]

2. do you have alot of money?

http://radaronline.com/
Radar Online

[norml]

3. It has to do with zero, the numbers one through ten, their correlations

and the paths between them. I'd recommend anything put out by the Theosophical Society or Llewellyn Publications. Aleister Crowley's book on the Tarot (The Book Of Thoth) has a lot of good information on Kabbalah. Kabbalah: An Introduction and Illumination for the World Today by Charles Ponce` published by Straight Arrow Books, is one of the best books on the subject. And stay away from Madonna's thing with the string, that's a scam.

[LibraLiz1973]

11. It's interesting to me that there is any

connection with Crowley; I've always been initerested in him

[norml]

12. Then you should definitely get Aleister Crowley's book on the Tarot

(The Book Of Thoth) and the Tarot cards that go with it.

[Book Lover]

4. Try this first

http://www.jewfaq.org/kabbalah.htm

This para from the above page says more clearly what I have been trying to say:

Readings in this area should be undertaken with extreme caution. There is entirely too much literature out there under the name "Kabbalah" that has little or nothing to do with the true Jewish teachings on this subject. Any book on the subject of practical Kabbalah should be disregarded immediately; no legitimate source would ever make such teachings available to a faceless mass audience. Books written by Christians should be viewed with extreme skepticism, because many Christian sources have reinterpreted Kabbalah to fit into Christian dogma.

[LibraLiz1973]

5. I don't just mean the Kabbalah center

There are other ways to study Kabbalah that have nothing to do with The Bergs.

It's sad that they seem to have gotten a defacto trademark on Kabbalah.

[haele]

6. Problem with discussing the Kabbalah -

You need to define what you're wanting to discuss.

My limited knowledge of the subject of the esotaric arts is that there are several versions and practices to the study of it.

First, there the Kabbalah of the Torah; the Jewish rabbinical mysteries, to which there are many rules that have to be met before you can even study them. (Mainly, you have to be able to meet the requirements to be a rabbi..) Even within that practice, there are several different schools of thought on what the study of the Kabbalah should mean to the one who studies it. I know of two rebbis that study. They don't like to talk about it to outsiders and will do so only if the discussion has something to do with a situation they have discovered during their studies, and they most certainly would consider it a blasphemey to introduce the subject to those who are looking for a new religion or mystery to study.

There is a Hermetic version, much like the Freemason and Golden Dawn mystery studies. I have met and discussed practice and philosophy with people who have considered themselves Kabbalists before it became popular amongst the less structured New Age and pagan/spiritualist types. If you're into the Goddess religions, Robert Graves (The White Goddess, The Golden Ass, King Jesus) and Dion Fortune have several readable books that give some ideas on Hermetic Kabbalism.

Much of the modern New Age interest in the Kabbalah comes from this version. Unfortunatly, as with many New Age studies, the faddists are trying to make money putting a spin on their own regurgitations of what they think the Kabbalah means.


Here's a good faq for your basic questions -

http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/faq.htm#DoINeedtobeJewish

The closer you get to the original writings, the closer you'll get to the original meanings and be able to translate what you find to meet your needs.

Good luck.

Haele

[norml]

7. haele's got it

And I'm in the middle category.

[sakabatou]

8. A few rules on true Kabbalah

1. You must be over 40 years of age
2. You must have a deep understanding of the Torah and Talmudic texts
3. You must draw conculsions for yourself from the afformentioned texts

I think there are a few more, but I don't really know much more.
Try searching up Athanasius Kercher

Some images:

[Lexingtonian]

9. depends

In isolation it's a complicated subject, with a whole variety of historical 'schools'. A not very readable but short book that covers the outline of the matter is Perle Epstein's 'Kabbalah-The Way of the Jewish Mystic'.

The material is intentionally cryptic and some of it is confused, some of much of it is corrupted. What is available in English translation can't possibly be as good as the Hebrew originals, in any case. A lot of it seems to be internal simplification, reducing mystical teachings (in the technical theological sense of the term mystical) to occultic teachings.

Kaballah isn't really detachable from Judaism. In a way it is a superior means or mode of interpretation of the Hebrew Bible/Tanakh; arguably it is a continuation of an interpretative tradition that until a certain point was not written down explicitly. Some things in Kaballah I take to be evidence that the mystic tradition that Kaballah is part of predates the setting of the canon of the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament). Or, as a theory: the organization- and some major part of the meaning- of the HB was guided by an interpretative principle that was conserved most overtly in what is now called Kabbalah.

If you want to really learn Kaballah, the most deeply respected masters and teachers are acknowledged to be people who stay very obscure, are Sephardi Israelis, and live in the vicinity of Jerusalem. I believe I met a woman from one of the most respected and secretive little groups once- well, she was a language teacher of mine for a brief time. But it's invitation only stuff. If you're not Jewish you probably aren't elegible, and young isn't good either.

The Kabbalah Centre and such are the pop psych versions of a few superficial teachings- the sort of basic discipline and life analysis, prayer, purgation and aspiration toward purity stuff. There are other, more hidden, schools of Kabbalah inside the U.S.- Chassidism binges back and forth between public and private teachings and expressions. But 'true' pursuit of the Kabbalah is so disruptive to life that it is traditionally forbidden to do so before age forty. The inward suffering of the thing taken as a life task is also too much for normal people, and not worth it for them.

I have only had a good look at a little Kabbalah material and overviews. Teachings of the sort- Zen, Sufism, Christian mysticism- tend to cover relatively similar material, so I don't find Kabbalah particularly enigmatic in context.

I do use the Kabbalah's Tree of Life idea or scheme somewhat in understanding my own spiritual life and there is a derivative book, Martin Buber's 'Ten Rungs of the Hasidim', that I consider a major guidebook along with others.

What is poignant about Kabbalah to me is the extraordinary passion and intensity, the enormous imaginative space involved relative to other traditions and yet the very human scale and demands. It's very practical in respects, like Zen.

[11cents]

10. Some books by Gershom Scholem:

"Kabbalah." "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism." "On the Kaballah and Its Mysticism." "Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah."

(The last is a biography of the Kabbalist and "false Messiah" Sabbatai Sevi -- a fascinating story in itself, but the book is also a good introduction to Kabbalah.)

None of these are easy reads, but Scholem was for many years considered the premier scholar on Kabbalah.

The Kabbalah Center is IMHO no more than a money-sucking cult a la Scientology.

[tishaLA]

13. I studied at the Kabbalah Center in LA

Just took a course. I'm Jewish and it was a natural part of Jewish studies, I think, to explore the mystical tradition associated with Judaism since time immemorial.

I'm not sure why people get upset with it or think it's a cult of some sort. Probably they don't know much about it.