Kabbalah and the Protestant Revolution
The Esoteric Reformation of the New World
Read Time: 25 minutes
Authors Note: This article is part one of an ongoing series on the esoteric spirit of the modern west. The list of citations are available behind the paywall and can be accessed here for free subscribers. A collected work will soon be made available to paid subscribers and for purchase with Bitcoin.
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Introduction
It is a fundamental mistake to think of the Protestant Reformation as a mere rebellion against the corruption of the Roman papacy. The Reformation is an ongoing Kabbalistic revolution that has fragmented Christendom into thousands of pieces—imposing the worst catastrophe upon Western civilization. It led to the destruction of Christian tradition, the birth of Freemasonry, the spread of nominalism, and the creation of the antichrist Zionist state.
However, it is also a mistake to think of Kabbalah as mere mystical Jewish teachings. Kabbalah is a collection of revolutionary esoteric political doctrines to “repair the world” and establish both a spiritual and material Jewish utopia. An admission of this can be found in the words of Dr. Michael Laitman, host of the largest Kabbalah website in the world, where he states:
The wisdom of Kabbalah, as defined by the greatest Kabbalists, is a method to correct man and the world…
If Kabbalah will spread amongst people, then we will avoid all the catastrophes, we will merit both this world and the world to come, and both of these worlds will unite into one…Only the dissemination of Kabbalah will save the world.1
Achieving world repair, known as Tikkun Olam, is the primary aim of Kabbalah. It is a universal revolutionary blueprint to overthrow the Christian order by rearranging the material world through the magic of social engineering, technology and institutional control. This alchemical transmutation of mankind into a new “primal man,” known in Kabbalah as Adam Kadmon, is the manifestation of the Antichrist, created through the merging of opposing forces and systematic revolution. As the world's preeminent scholar of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem, notes:
From the dust of this cosmic catastrophe the universe is reconstructed through the Primordial Adam Kadmon, who is the creator of the earthly Adam. From Ein Sof, “healing, constructive lights” go forth from the forehead of Adam Kadmon.2
After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70AD, the Jews were scattered from Palestine and found their new textual architecture in the form of the written word. According to the Sefer Yitzrah, the “Book of Creation” in Kabbalah, the numbers and spheres of the ten Sefirot “constitute a kind of cosmic DNA code.”3 This represents the framework of the Kabbalistic understanding of reality, with the Sefirot as a skeleton of the universe that shapes the creation of this new man in the construction of the Jewish messianic kingdom of the antichrist.
Jewish influence is inseparable from revolutionary movements and heresies in the Christian world; and the religious anarchy of Protestantism provided a fertile soil for it to take root. The Protestant movement is the longest lasting revolution in world history, advancing history itself towards the end of the age.
In this article, I will uncover some prominent themes, figures, historical events and doctrines in which the inner esoteric spirit of the Protestant revolution has transmitted and contributed to the mystical reshaping of Western civilization and humanity.
The Revolution Will Be Judaized
Like all ancient Christian heresies, judaizing never dissolved, but continued its transmission in new forms throughout history. The early Church Fathers strongly condemned the judaizers of their time, notably seen in St. Ignatius of Antioch’s letter to the Magnesians, where he declared, “It is absurd to profess Christ Jesus, and to judaize. For Christianity did not embrace Judaism, but Judaism Christianity, that so every tongue which believeth might be gathered together to God.”4
Nearly a century before Luther’s Reformation, the Jewish financed Hussite revolution led by Jan Hus, gained cooperation with the Jews in Bohemia due to their shared affinity with Judaism and undermining the authority of the Catholic Church.5 In fact, the Hussites were among the first sectarian movements to practice Sola Scriptura and strongly oppose the veneration of saints.
Hus was eventually burned at the stake by secular authorities after the Council of Constance declared him a heretic, but his teachings would later influence Luther, who even wrote prefaces to a number of Hus's works. To this, Newman concludes that “the Hussite Reformation from its inception to its decline bore marks of Jewish and particularly Old Testament influence.”6
By 1517, the Jews who controlled the spice trade began reinvesting their profits into the printing industry, quickly weaponizing print technology as a profitable means of subverting the Reformation.7 Their secret trafficking of unauthorized and heretical biblical translations helped them gain a significant advantage in the war with Spain while promoting the Reformation and weakening the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church.
It is no coincidence that the Reformation emerged while the Medici banking family, who funded the Renaissance, simultaneously introduced Hermetic and Jewish esoteric literature into classical learning.8 The Renaissance thus birthed a new syncretic religion of Christian Kabbalah which began to flourish in the late 15th century, championed by Catholic humanist Johann Reuchlin and Italian proto-Protestant Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.
Both Reuchlin and Pico were so deeply entrenched in Kabbalah that any degree of influence they transmitted should be understood as Kabbalistic, whether direct or indirect. E. Michael Jones writes on the very danger in this transmission:
Christianity enabled Reuchlin to derive from Kabbalah a universal esoteric science which incorporated pagan, Jewish, and Christian elements, but once that esoteric science was derived, it threatened to replace Christianity as the true religion.9
Christian Kabbalists were drawn to the Jewish esoteric notion that Hebrew is a divine language possessing inherent mystical power; the tongue through which God created existence, communicated with Moses, and engaged with celestial beings. But they also saw it as a means of legitimizing Christianity, tying it to an esoteric Renaissance tradition called prisca theologia, which is the belief that the most ancient theology is the truest.10
Renaissance historian Frances Yates maintains that Christian Kabbalah should be understood as a euphemism for judaizing Protestantism, adding:
Christian Kabbalah was not a recapitulation of the Jewish tradition, but its creative re-molding, a metamorphosis engendered by newly aroused religion-making vision. Though it would be too bold to judge Gnosticism a legitimate historical parent, this movement was arguably encouraged and fostered by distant transmissions and legacies of the old heresy.11
Considering Yates specialized in esoteric studies, the language she used here was almost certainly intentional. This “creative re-molding” is a Kabbalistic manipulation of Christianity through ritual magic to reshape the material world, which manifests in the internal nature and external transmission of Protestant thought in the following two ways. First, in the internal emphasis on salvation as an alchemical process of self-enlightenment through the transmutation of a new man. Second, as external actions to hasten eschatological events by replacing the old Christian order with a new messianic Jewish kingdom on earth.
While the Christian Kabbalists sought to legitimize Christian doctrine looking back through prisca theologia, Christian Hebraists such as the Hussites looked forward by studying Jewish texts and rabbinical traditions as part of an eschatological mission to convert Jews to Christianity. Yet, even in the Hebraist’s application of seemingly non-mystical rabbinical texts contains an esoteric Jewish understanding of reality, which likely played no small role in Philip Walsh’s claim that “the Reformation drew its lifeblood from rational Hebraism.”12
One Hebraist who all three primary reformers shared a common influence from was a well known converso and Franciscan monk named Nicholas of Lyra. Zwingli especially had several Hebraist colleagues, including his teacher Jacob Ceporinus, a former student of Reuchlin. According to Newman, “From Pico, it is certain that Zwingli borrowed considerably”13 to describe numerous mysteries in the Old Testament, such as his Kabbalistic application of the "Ineffable Name.”
It’s safe to say Yates is correct in stating that this remolding of Christianity is nothing more than a new manifestation of the ancient judaizing heresy. But with the power of a new technology, Gutenberg’s information machine would accelerate the spread of this ancient heresy at an unprecedented rate, sparking the Reformation as the first viral movement in history.
Luther’s Esoteric Revolt and the Alchemy of Sola Scriptura
The Reformation’s esoteric foundations were laid in Nuremberg through a Rosicrucian lodge led by Johann von Staupitz, the master of a Kabbalistic secret society whose members included key supporters of Luther’s revolution. As Luther’s patron,14 Staupitz infused Jewish mystical thought into Lutheran theology before its inception. And to embrace his new revolutionary identity, Luther even changed his name from "Luder" to "Luther", a derivation of “Eleutheros", meaning Liberator.15
As to the title of “Liberator”, Homouth suggested otherwise, claiming “Luther was a slave to the leader of the Nuremberg lodge,” alluding to his letter to Staupitz where he lamented; “You leave me too much, because of you I felt like a weaned child about his mother... I cried bitterly.”16 This spiritual bond allowed Staupitz to guide Luther toward revolution, as evidenced in a table talk documented in 1539 where Luther accused Tetzel and Staupitz of driving him against the Pope.17 Although both Staupitz and Reuchlin first supported the Reformation, they later withdrew and remained loyal to the Catholic Church.
By the time Luther recognized the Kabbalistic influence of the Nuremberg lodge, the damage had already been done. As Homouth points out:
Even if Luther broke with the lodge system in 1525 because he correctly recognized the Jewish / Kabbalistic background as the emancipation movement of Judaism (see his hate speeches against the Jews), this no longer had any influence on the further course of events; it was too late then; because the work of division of the church was successfully completed.18
While Luther rightly opposed to the “Kabbalistic foolishness” of his contemporaries and later wrote the infamous polemic On the Jews and Their Lies, in his Commentary on Galatians, he referred to his newly conceived doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide) as “true Cabala.”19 To be clear, it is highly likely that Luther was not referring to the teachings of Kabbalah, but the use of the Hebrew language to decode the mysteries of the Scriptures; a common belief among the Christian Kabbalists of his time.
Nevertheless, in light of Luther’s sola fide doctrine, it is interesting to see how over time it developed into a kind of Kabbalistic ritual magic among modern evangelicals to make a mere profession of faith and be saved; as if the words themselves contain an inherent mystical power to regenerate the individual by simply speaking them.
Another notable esoteric influence in the development of Luther’s theology can be seen in his writings where he referred to prisca theologia and mentioned alchemy as symbolic of the Christian resurrection of the dead:
The science of alchemy I like very well, and, indeed, 'tis the philosophy of the ancients. I like it not only for the profits it brings in melting metals, in decocting, preparing, extracting, and distilling herbs, roots; I like it also for the sake of the allegory and secret signification, which is exceedingly fine, touching the resurrection of the dead at the last day.20
The doctrine of Sola Scriptura implies the Kabbalistic notion that the Scriptures are alchemically encoded with mystical wisdom, which can only be decoded by the individual interpreter acting as the “key” to unlock their true meaning.21 Moshe Idel is among many Jewish philosophers to point to this notion in describing Kabbalah as “the keys sacrosanct, even in the eyes of the Jew, that could unlock the gates of the mysteries of the Scriptures, demonstrating Christian truths using Jewish rules.”22
Likely due to mere coincidence, it is at least interesting that a similar metaphor was used by Fr. Seraphim Rose to describe Luther’s new normative authority of biblical interpretation, observing that:
“It opened the gate to total subjectivism in religion. And thereupon he gives us a key also to today because this same principle, the individual —whatever I believe, whatever I think has a right to be heard — then becomes the standard. He himself finally achieved some kind of dogmatic system and tried to force it on his followers. But the very idea which he fought for was that each individual can interpret for himself; and therefore from him come sects.”23
The spawning of new sectarian movements was also a result of Luther turning the Protestant churches into Talmudic debate halls, as Jones writes, “with evangelical theologians acting as rabbis” arguing over biblical interpretations. He adds that Luther, although outspoken against the other judaizing reformers, “consulted rabbis to construct his text, and that text was, therefore, skewed in favor of judaizing.”24
By 1534, Lutheranism had won over Reuchlin’s birthplace of Württemberg while it was flourishing with Hermeticism, later giving rise to the Rosicrucian Order; the symbolism of the rose and cross is likely due to the influence of Lutheranism on Rosicrucianism. Most Rechulinites later became Lutherans, and “the flame that Reuchlin kindled, Luther fanned into a raging inferno in which the Talmud and the Reformation were merged into each other.”25 David Walsh writes that during this era:
The influence of the Enlightenment, to the extent it had made itself felt in Württemberg, was integrated with a theosophic philosophy of nature and a speculative pietism which was concerned with the progressive revelation of the divine structure of history.26
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Württemberg continued to be a central hub for the esoteric tradition, described by Justinus Kerner as "the homeland of haunted and spectral doings" and "a very goblin's nest" due to its narrow valleys and old castles.27 Hermeticism profoundly influenced G.W.F. Hegel, another Württemberg native, who developed connections with the Freemasons and Rosicrucians. Philosopher Glenn Magee notes that “some of the more famous claims of Hegel's historical dialectic are to be found in the Kabbalist and Joachimite mystical traditions.”28
Following Luther’s revolution, the esoteric tradition in Württemberg maintained a long and rich history spanning several centuries, still present today. Such is the case for the various societal transformations that occurred wherever revolutionary Protestant activity flourished.
The Death of the Old Order and Rise of the New Gods
Every anti-Christian revolution throughout modern history included some form of iconoclastic destruction in its wake. The Jacobins, the Judeo-Bolsheviks, the Spanish anarchists; all carried out the physical destruction of the old Christian order to construct their new chiliastic vision. The Protestant revolution was certainly no exception. Yet, because of the inherently sectarian nature of Protestantism, iconoclasm was opposed by Lutherans while violently carried out by the Zwinglians and Calvinists throughout parts of Europe.
Out of the main three Protestant reformers, the Swiss theologian Ulrich Zwingli was the most educated in Hebraic studies. As it turns out, Zwingli’s sect was also the most aggressively iconoclastic. Newman confirms the Judaic influence of Zwingli’s iconoclasm in the reformer’s own words: “The Jews do not carry images, neither do the Zwinglians nor Calvinists.”29 It is no mystery that Zwingli’s iconoclastic zeal derives from his obsession with rabbinical thought; for which Luther and many Swiss Catholics rightly labeled him a judaizing heretic.
It’s quite common even among Protestant historians to describe the iconoclastic revolt with the recurring language of the “old order” being destroyed. Here Philip Schaff includes how Zwingli was true to his principles of Reformation and not even the cross of Christ was exempt from the iconoclastic fury:
”The old order of worship had to be abolished before the new order could be introduced. The destruction was radical, but orderly…the churches of the city were purged of pictures, relics, crucifixes, altars, candles, and all ornaments, the frescoes effaced, and the walls whitewashed so that nothing remained but the bare building to be filled by a worshiping congregation.30
On paper, Calvin took a less rigorous approach to the abolition of holy images. While he strongly opposed the inclusion of holy images in Protestant worship, even calling the depiction of the cross an abomination,31 he did not explicitly advocate for iconoclasm and instead encouraged a more peaceful removal of Christian images. However, the Calvinists justified their violent iconoclastic crusades of 1566 with Calvin’s doctrines and were never explicitly condemned by the reformer.
It is commendable that Luther, in this regard, opposed such extreme iconoclasm. Why then, was the destruction of Christian images not held as a consensus position among all three reformers, despite their mutual appeal to a clear reading of Scripture? Perhaps for Zwingli and Calvin, the clarity of Scriptures came not from a clear reading of Exodus 20:4, which does not detail what constitutes a graven image, but from the Babylonian Talmud which does clarify: “It is forbidden to make complete solid or raised images of people or angels, or any images of heavenly bodies except for purposes of study.”32
The iconoclastic fury of the Calvinists represents not only a material abolishment of the old Christian order, but the establishment of a new order where the individual is the new god. In the words of Fr. Seraphim Rose:
This is the meaning of Humanism and Protestantism: get rid of the religious tradition, the Orthodox tradition so that the new god can be born... just as the individual god is being born also the world now becomes divine.33
The New American Religion of Puritan Kabbalah
From the moment the pilgrims arrived in New England, Kabbalah began to make its way through academic institutions and Puritan congregations, laying the foundation of a new mystical American ethos. Despite the colonial Jewish population being minuscule, Kabbalah had such a profound impact on the early founders that Ogren claims it to be the “fabric of American Protestantism.”34
Historian D. Michael Quinn also supports the notion that esoteric studies were flourishing among early American institutional leaders, claiming:
Many of New England’s practicing alchemists were Yale and Harvard graduates who continued their experiments into the 1820s. These alchemists served as chief justice of Massachusetts, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, president of Yale College, and president of the Connecticut Medical Society.35
Kabbalistic thought in America spread through several key figures, including renowned Puritan minister and Harvard president Increase Mather, along with his son Cotton. The elder Mather's interest in Jewish mysticism was particularly sparked by the Sabbatean movement led by Sabbatai Zevi in the 1660s, which was largely responsible for transmitting Lurianic Kabbalah throughout Europe. Cotton Mather even went on to develop the teaching that Native Americans were of Jewish ancestry, an idea so influential it later became a core doctrine of Mormon theology.
The first American Kabbalistic manuscript was written in 1688, titled The Cabala of the Jews, authored by the Scottish Quaker George Keith. The manuscript revealed that Keith had been deeply influenced by Christian Kabbalists in England, particularly through his association with the Cambridge platonist Anne Conway and her circle at Ragley Hall. Keith’s manuscript eventually made its way into the Mather family papers, demonstrating how Kabbalistic ideas circulated among colonial America's religious elite.
Oddly enough, Keith’s manuscript was written as a polemic against Lutheran Kabbalist Jakob Böhme and early continental Theosophy, which itself was influenced by Kabbalah. It also includes a summary describing much of how Luranic Kabbalah was adopted in Protestant circles in the late 17th century, and features the oldest known diagram of the sefirot (tree of life) in North America.
Another key figure is Harvard’s first Hebrew instructor, Judah Monis, who referred to himself as the “last Jew and first congregationalist in the line of an authentic transmission of Kabbalah into the colleges of America.”36 Monis's baptismal discourses were filled with Kabbalistic language and doctrines to accommodate Jewish converts. He became a major influence on later Congregationalist ministers like Yale’s president Ezra Stiles.
Both Monis and Stiles focused intensely on the Shema as a theurgic recital of unification combining its three-fold repetition of divine names with Kabbalistic numerology (Gematria) to affirm the Trinity, an idea that derives from the Christian Kabbalists of the Renaissance. Gematria is the alchemical rearranging of letters and words to ascribe new meaning (temura) in the same way that Kabbalists aim to magically reshape reality. This method is used to “decode” Christian mysteries throughout Monis’s document titled “Nothing But the Truth,” which ironically contains nothing but judaizing heresy.
Regarding this schizophrenic approach to biblical interpretation, Heiromonk Job Gumerov reminds us:
This occult numerical and alphabetic magic has nothing to do with the meaning of Scripture. Biblical texts do not continue any code or cipher. Parables, images and symbols – are just means that return the deep theological truths of our salvation, different to express in human language.37
While Kabbalistic tradition understood these symbols as pointing to the ten sefirot, or emanations, the esoteric Puritans synthesized them with Christian theology. Monis and the Christian Kabbalists before him understood Adam Kadmon to embody an “outer and inner Christ”, using the Nishmat Christi theurgic prayer to unify the so-called “messianic spark” within all mankind.
At Yale, President Ezra Stiles regularly attended synagogue services in Newport and studied Kabbalistic texts with visiting rabbis. Stiles envisioned Yale as parallel to the great yeshivas of old and sought to incorporate Jewish learning into American college education, once stating that he felt Kabbalistic learning was “worthy to be transplanted into the colleges of America.”38
Stiles even corresponded with Benjamin Franklin in London to request copies of the Zohar. Thomas Jefferson further reveals the continued influence of Christian Kabbalism among the founding fathers, as he wrote in his 1813 letter to John Adams:
To compare the morals of the old, with those of the New Testament, would require an attentive study of the former, a search through all its books for its precepts, and through all its history for its practices, and the principles they prove. As commentaries too on these, the philosophy of the Hebrews must be enquired into, their Mishna, their Gemara, Cabbala, Jezirah, Zohar, Cosri and their Talmud must be examined and understood, in order to do them full justice.39
The founding fathers also incorporated the Kabbalistic concept of Shekinah, the “feminine half of God”, in their initial Great Seal design proposed by Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams, immediately after signing the Declaration of Independence. The seal featured Moses parting the Red Sea, with “Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Cloud, expressive of the divine Presence and Command.”40 Ogren argues this placement of the Shekinah was intentional and evidenced by the influence of Jewish mystical thought of both Franklin and Jefferson. Although it was rejected by Congress, the original seal depicts the notion held by the early American Pilgrims that it was the Shekinah that guided them through the Atlantic.
Six years later, Congress would go on to approve Charles Thomson’s Great Seal which also contains a Shekinah cloud above the bald eagle, featuring even more mystical Jewish symbolism than Franklin’s. Inside the Shekinah, there are thirteen stars creating a hexagram, a Kabbalistic symbol representing the “primal transsexual” Adam Kadmon, who embodies “the union of male and female forces (Shekinah).”41 As legend has it, the inclusion of this occult symbol was George Washington’s debt owed to Haym Salomon for financing the Revolutionary War, who wanted nothing more than to pay tribute to the Jewish people.42
These esoteric symbols we carry with us on our currency to this day should serve as a reminder that the American ethos was not established upon anything that resembles apostolic Christianity, but a form of Christian Humanism synthesized with revolutionary Kabbalistic doctrines.
The Shekinah Question
The presence of Shekinah as a doctrine in modern evangelical theology sheds light on how fragments of Kabbalistic influence remain in Protestant thought to this day. But to understand the Protestant adaptation of this doctrine at the core of Kabbalah, we must first uncover both its esoteric meaning and its symbolic role in the creation of the new world.