Kabbalah and the Transmission of the Gnostic Spirit (Part 1)
Kabbalah and the Transmission of the Gnostic Spirit (Part 1)
The burning of Jewish magic books and Christian resistance against the gnostic revolutionary spirit: From antiquity to the Reformation
Author’s Note: The history of kabbalah and its impact on modern world is complex and dense to say the least. This essay series will be a departure from my usual quick “clickbaity” content that gets straight to the point. The subject of kabbalah deserves a much deeper dive than what can be conveyed in a Twitter thread or quick 3 minute newsletter, yet I also attempt to present its teachings and broader history as concisely as possible. This will filter out those who can’t sustain focus long enough to advance their knowledge acquisition through rumination and reflection. The subjects covered in this series are rabbit holes in themselves and there is no quick and easy way to understanding their depth.
In many instances, the word kabbalah is transliterated as Cabala (also Cabbala) to distinguish it from the Jewish form and from Hermetic Qabalah. For the purposes of this article, I will maintain the spelling of Kabbalah since it is describing the transmission of the tradition itself.
Knowing the Spirit of the Age
Learn to know the spirit of the age, study it, so whenever possible you will be able to avoid its influence.
☩ St. Ignatius Brianchaninov ☩
Since its spread throughout Europe, kabbalistic teachings have remained the lifeblood of western esotericism. In its contemporary form, Kabbalah is commonly thought of as a celebrity cult religion practiced by the likes of Madonna, Ashton Kutcher, Lindsey Lohan and many other red bracelet wearers, even though it is inseparable from Judaism.1 Kabbalah's origins itself are cryptic and often inaccurately understood along with its teachings. But despite its recent exoteric form of new age spirituality for Hollywood gentiles, kabbalistic thought is what empowers the spirit of the age and its revolutions throughout the modern west.
The spirit of the age is the mind of the times. It is the postmodern inversion of Orthodoxy, presenting itself as a secular religion with its own amorphous dogmas and doctrines that change with the currents of revolution. In the absence of Christian mysticism, the pursuit of theosis was replaced with a gnostic synthesis of mysticism that came in the form of Christian Kabbalah. As postmodern philosophy slowly consumed the remnants of western Christianity, we are now left with the kabbalistic spirit that permeates every aspect of the modern world.
If we don’t revolt against the spirit of the age, we will acquire this mind of the times. This revolutionary kabbalistic spirit which opposes the mind of the Church is the ultimate inversion of true revolution; the active opposition to the ways of the world and even further, against our own flesh. The spiritual war between succumbing to the spirit of the age vs acquiring the unchanging mind of the Fathers.
In Florovsky’s call to return to the Fathers is an appeal to acquire the mind of the Church (phronema) and synthesize it with the contemporary world through the Christian way of life. The continuity of the Patristic mind is rooted in the tradition of the Church, as evidenced in the transmission of the Gospel itself as “received” and “delivered”2, beyond the authority of both men and angels, unlike kabbalah.3 Stăniloae’s view is that the transmission of the Gospel is not formal, “but one that is charismatic and experiential, passed on from one generation to the next ‘in words of fire’”4
That Which is Received
Throughout history, the oral transmission of kabbalah itself has been encoded to preserve its secret teachings and prevent the novice from its spiritual power. As Heiromonk Job (Gumerov) warns us, "this esoteric theosophical teaching is completely alien in spirit to the Holy Scriptures, for the Divine truth contained in the Holy Bible has as its goal the salvation of all mankind. Therefore, there can be no talk of any secret knowledge.5 The Church is the memory of God where the divine manifests in the material. It is the repository of truth made known by the public transmission of the Gospel to all, revealed to all the world in the incarnate Word, not hidden in secret.
The cryptic nature of these secret teachings alone should bear testament to any Orthodox Christian that there is no salvific truth to be found. Since the god of kabbalah is a false god, references to God as described in Kabbalah should not be confused with the one true Triune God. While in Orthodox Christianity, God the Word became flesh in Jesus Christ, kabbalah is an inversion of Logos with Adam Kadmon as the embodiment of all divine manifestations, the “primordial man” who is the “mediator between God and creation”.
The teachings of kabbalah are as mysterious and esoteric as its history of transmission. Kabbalah combines elements of Babylonian magic, numerology and astrology with Judaic teachings believed to be transmitted in an uninterrupted chain leading back to Moses.6 In Hebrew, kabbalah means “reception” or “that which is received”, which was transmitted by spoken word for millennia as Oral Torah, then committed to written word following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
The two main books that make up kabbalah are Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Creation) and Zohar (Book of Splendor). If you are familiar with the occult story of Joseph Smith's discovery of the golden plates, the origin of the Zohar might ring a bell. The legend starts with a 2nd century Judean rabbi by the name of Shimon bar Yochai, the most renown disciple of Rabbi Akiva who was regarded as the "Chief of Sages" in the Babylonian Talmud.
Jewish mysticism in its kabbalistic form was itself born in secrecy. While in hiding from the Romans for 14 years inside a cave in Galilee, he spent his time in deep meditation. During a 40 day fast, Shimon had a vision of the future revealed to him by Metatron, who according to the Jewish apocryphal book 3 Enoch, is Enoch himself after his transformation into an angel. Kabbalists who hold to Shimon's authorship of the Zohar claim his teachings were kept hidden through the centuries to protect novices from their spiritual dangers. Many began using his mystical practices anyway and went insane as a result. Some even died from being unable to withstand the dangerous spiritual forces, likely being killed by demons if these stories are true.
Early kabbalists mimicked Shimon's ascetic practices and used meditation to spiritually ascend through a reimagining of Ezekiel's vision. These meditative trances in Jewish mysticism are an inversion of Orthodox Christian acetic prayer, assuming oneself as chosen for special divine revelation instead of an unworthy sinner praying for God’s mercy.
The kabbalists believe that heaven is blocked off by gates guarded by menacing angels (like amulets) that mystics must pass through before reaching God. Using the power of words, all 72 of the angels’ names must be known and repeated a precise number of times, as if saying the passphrase of a schizophrenic cryptographer. Access into the throne room imparts the ultimate gnosis in the secrets of God's thoughts.
Every narrative, event and law written in the Zohar is believed to be an encoded revelation of God's inner being. Oddly enough, one of these secrets involves the nature of God's body and sexuality. The Zohar is primarily used to decode the hidden meanings contained in the book of Genesis, such as the belief that it was Adam who expelled God from the garden. This interpretation maintains that we are still in the garden but don't realize it because it is us who expelled God. Being the first display of chutzpah, the Zohar teaches that humans can issue verbal commands to God himself with the power of words. Perhaps this partly why there has been such great efforts to gate-keep the Zohar's understanding for the spiritual elite.
The kabbalistic tradition is transmitted through magical words of power, which is a prominent belief in kabbalah and more notably intertwined beliefs with ancient Judaism. As evidenced in the abstinence of speaking the Shem HaMephorash, the "explicit name" of God is used to describe the Tetragrammaton, or the 72-fold divine name that Moses uttered to part the Red Sea. The Jews’ refrain to utter the "Sublime Name" of God "first arose in a foreign, and hence in an "unclean" land, very possibly, therefore, in Babylonia" and lest the name is not desecrated by heathens.
This unspeakable name was called the “wonderworking word” by German humanist Johann Reuchlin and believed to contain the power to cast out demons when spoken. Judah Monis, the 18th century Harvard professor responsible for introducing kabbalah to American universities, thought of the speaking the Shema as unlocking the Garden in a cosmic unification by mystical intercourse. The use of erotic language in kabbalistic magic is a concept that will resurface later in kabbalistic concept of sefirot.