This is great! Thank you for this concise explanation. It is an excellent place to start. I have studied the Cabala for years but I always feel like I am starting at Square 0, The Fool...
There is also Dion Fortune's (also of the Golden Dawn though she left it and started the Society of the Inner Light) excellent The Mystical Cabala. I am just now delving into Gareth Knight's (a student of Dion Fortune) A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism. Feel free to DM me with any questions.
Happy solstice to you all. The WMT Cabala you explicate here, found in the Golden Dawn traditions, takes what was originally a mystery religion with its roots in Graeco-Roman mysteries (Christianity) that made use of elements of Judaism, and resolves and redeems it and its manifest contradictions, making something extremely powerful and grand, a true Path for those who follow it. However, I have a caveat: I have studied the Hebrew language and Jewish mysticism a fair amount. While it is true that the great early theorizers of Jewish Kabbalah focused on those things you mention, it is far from accurate to say it is only that. It is as deep, though in many ways more inaccessible than the WMT Cabala. It is a genuine path for practice. Viz. the recent writings of Aryeh Kaplan, for starters. I don't pretend to be qualified to practice it as given (not Jewish, not fluent in Hebrew and Aramaic, etc.), and I have spend decades with the WMT Cabala and know its virtues. Just seems right, however, to put in a word for my good friends working and striving on that path.
I have no doubt there is much to be learned from more traditional judaic Kaballah, but of course one should not need to learn another language to access the divine. Thank you though for the Kaplan reference. I am studying various perspectives on the cabala.
I know nothing of the occult and doubt that I would study it, but I am glad you included the final few paragraphs separating the body of it from Crowley. A fitting end for an evil man.
Crowley was much less evil than he made himself out to be, but trolling society about it, society was and is happy to project on him a lot of the evil of society. More insufferable idiot than evil.
This is great! Thank you for this concise explanation. It is an excellent place to start. I have studied the Cabala for years but I always feel like I am starting at Square 0, The Fool...
Thank you! It is always good to return periodically to zero though, as the fool is like pure spirit :)
Super helpful! I’ll definitely check that book out. It helped give me a clear and condensed view of a topic that I have a very muddy understanding of.
There is also Dion Fortune's (also of the Golden Dawn though she left it and started the Society of the Inner Light) excellent The Mystical Cabala. I am just now delving into Gareth Knight's (a student of Dion Fortune) A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism. Feel free to DM me with any questions.
Happy solstice to you all. The WMT Cabala you explicate here, found in the Golden Dawn traditions, takes what was originally a mystery religion with its roots in Graeco-Roman mysteries (Christianity) that made use of elements of Judaism, and resolves and redeems it and its manifest contradictions, making something extremely powerful and grand, a true Path for those who follow it. However, I have a caveat: I have studied the Hebrew language and Jewish mysticism a fair amount. While it is true that the great early theorizers of Jewish Kabbalah focused on those things you mention, it is far from accurate to say it is only that. It is as deep, though in many ways more inaccessible than the WMT Cabala. It is a genuine path for practice. Viz. the recent writings of Aryeh Kaplan, for starters. I don't pretend to be qualified to practice it as given (not Jewish, not fluent in Hebrew and Aramaic, etc.), and I have spend decades with the WMT Cabala and know its virtues. Just seems right, however, to put in a word for my good friends working and striving on that path.
I have no doubt there is much to be learned from more traditional judaic Kaballah, but of course one should not need to learn another language to access the divine. Thank you though for the Kaplan reference. I am studying various perspectives on the cabala.
Happy winter solstice to you too!
I know nothing of the occult and doubt that I would study it, but I am glad you included the final few paragraphs separating the body of it from Crowley. A fitting end for an evil man.
Thank you for your support!
Crowley was much less evil than he made himself out to be, but trolling society about it, society was and is happy to project on him a lot of the evil of society. More insufferable idiot than evil.
I get the impulse. May engage a bit in that myself.