Kabbala
At the start of the 1900’s the “Fathers of Psychology” were visiting seances in France searching for reasons why trance channelling was happening. Flournoy’s expose of a channeller of a Martian entity was well documented. The world of the ‘inner’ of human beings was a journey that was wide open to scholars at this time. There were not the restrictions on psychology that the first world war period and later 19th Century Religious institutions would sentence it to. There was a lot of free-range thinking and exploring taking place at this time.
In a university in Cambridge the dreaded 666 beast, Alistair Crowley was working on his own thesis - looking for correlations of frequencies in order to have some control over his life perhaps, and/or his place in his world. No phenomena during this period was a “no go” for free thinkers and scholars. The paranormal was simply part of that, which could now be studied, and these people could find out if there was anything there worthy of further research. Speaking in tongues was a widespread phenomena and one that was also researched at this time. Theosophists too were researching all manner of telepathy, remote viewing, clairvoyance, astral travelling and more. If you think this is far fethced you may be surprised to know that there is a link between Buddhism (a philosophy that has enjoyed widespread growth in our own time) and Theosophy. As in most things what you hear about is usually far removed from any serious reality about most things. Ideas get shrouded in words that convey fear and isolation. What it means to be a Human Being, fully alive and free thinking is usually sacrificed for some Order of the day. Paradoxically, this Order is part of what it is to be Human and also has is place!
The Kabbala, as far as I could gather in my own research, dates back as far as Babylon in pre-biblical times. Close to where Bagdad sits today a place called Chaldea seems to have been the home of a great deal of philosophy and shared teachings that comprised the philosophies of the early Jews, the Ancient Greeks, and many other thinkers of this time. Trade routes historically allow for such convergences of ideas.
‘click to enlarge’
The Kabbala (or Cabbala, or Kabbalah) is still studied in Universities today. It is also studied by Occult Magicians for whom the Western Magick Tradition is born from Crowley’s work. Like any body of history rarely do we take one person’s view, or even the view of a school of thought. Like anything we develop ideas and find uses for things for as long as those uses exist. Kabbalistic ideas are found in a great deal of philosophies perhaps because of the mathematical formula it encompasses that lends itself to so many applications! Plato’s works reveal many correlations of Kabbalistic thought.
Some of you may have stopped reading this as soon as I mentioned Alaistair Crowley’s name for fear of devil worship or anti-Christ ideas. Unfortunately, Crowley’s life and the reputation of his work was ruined by drugs, rendering most of it unacceptable for further research for many people. But the formula he used to tie his work together existed long before he did and still does. The Western Magick Tradition offers many people avenues into research that was not acceptable in mainstream study. However, it is okay to study these topics at university today and these topics are indeed being studied!
Why has university study been such a great source of mystery to those who have never attended a university? This is a sad reflection on our society and one that hopefully our Internet Age will address! When you go to university most of your study is self study. Your lecturers and tutors will not do the work for you. They will guide you down your chosen path and encourage you to become a discerning free thinker. This is indeed an honour to be able to spend your time in this manner. It is also a Human right! In England, when you study at university you are said to “read” the subject. “I Read Physics” etc is how you may refer to your university studies. University level study is about reading - reading and more reading. Then forming arguments based on your readings, and entering your own questions about what you are reading, to create your own research strand - culminating in your own thesis, or written book, which becomes part of someone else’s reading if you have worked well to formulate cogent ideas in it. How can we move this idea into the public stream? And what has this got to do with the Kabbala?
The Mystical Kabbala was an early Jewish text that mainstream Judaism outlawed. Father of Psychoanalytical Psychology, Sigmond Freud was Jewish and was one of his time who as dissuaded from working with the Mystical Kabbala.
My point is that the Order of any era is restrictive. In my book “Start Where You Are” I ask you to recognize your own cognition, and the cognition of each of us, as being necessarily restrictive - an Order itself. This Order is necessary so that we can FORM ideas that set a SECURE WHOLE for us to exist at any given time. However much you study at some point you will have to form your learning into a logical (not necessarily cogent) group of ideas by which you run your human life. Then use the question to expand upon your existing form.
If you look at the Kabbala in this way you can see the movement of ideas on the right pillar shifting to the left to form those ideas. So it is no surprise that our history is full of ‘fixed ideas’ and people that held fast to these fixed ideas, arguing only within the parameters of the arguments that justified them. This is part of what being human is about! And the Kabbala model is simplistically perfect for us to show this Human make-up!
Energy moves through the connecting lines. We are at number 6 - Self. This is also referred to as the Christ Centre, and if you are open to Catholic ideas (and Catholic means Universal) then naming it thus will correlate with Jesus Christ as God who became Human. There is nothing anti-Christ about the Kabbala. In this light it is very much pro-Christ! People have formed ideas of Order that they can choose to live their lives by. However, in making the Form or ideology they choose to equal the only Truth they cease their own Human experience in preference for robotic existence. We need order and will do anything to find it, even follow Despot’s with their limited views. If we can use the Kabbala to understand our Human potential then we will find a model that is at the very least a pneumonic device that will continually remind us that even when we feel our world is stuck beyond redemption, there is always redemption - as long as it is our world view and not one of drugs and alcoholic sacrifice. I cannot stress enough that drugs kill Human Beings long before their bodies have died. When you open your chakras with drugs and alcohol you are choosing not to have a Human experience. When you make this choice then other entities can and may choose to have what you have discarded. If you don’t know what to do when you are ‘out there’then you will have a lot of work to do on the other side to get back to where you were!
The highest high you can get is the Human Condition! Give it a try before you look for your adrenalyn rush elsewhere.
Now we are going to look at lots of different ways of using Kabbala to help us enjoy being Human Beings! Maybe you can think of other ways too. I’d love to hear them.
