In the north of Israel, in Galilee, there is a settlement of Pkeein, known for the fact that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai lived there 2 thousand years ago. The narrow streets of the village lead to a spring from which Rabbi Shimon and his son Elazar took water for 13 years, during which they hid from the Romans in a cave above the village. It was in this dwelling that the rabbi allegedly wrote his famous book "Sefer ha-Zohar" ("Book of Radiance"), in which he outlined the foundations of the teachings of Kabbalah.
Many researchers believe that Bar Yohai only systematized the ideas of his predecessors and transmitted them orally to his students. No wonder the word "Kabbalah" means "tradition." It is a secret esoteric doctrine passed down from teacher to student.
32 paths of wisdom
The roots of Kabbalah go back to the Hellenistic era, when countless teachings and beliefs roamed the countries of East and North Africa, many of which date back to ancient pagan cults and mysteries. Moving in the 3rd century from Palestine to Babylon, the Kabbalah gave birth to another "celebrity" - the anonymous manuscript "Sefer Yetzirah"
("The Book of Creation"), This essay discussed issues of cosmology and cosmogony. "Sefer Yetzirah", in particular, explained how to decipher the world order using 32 ways of wisdom: 22 Hebrew letters and 10 "primary numbers" (Sefirot).
The emphasis of Kabbalah on alphanumeric balancing act suggests that its roots are connected with the numerology of Ancient Egypt. There was a legend that at the beginning of time the solar god Ra created the cosmos with the help of words of power, and the knowledge of these words gives the initiate infinite power. Fragments of mathematical calculations used by the Egyptian priests have also come down to us. For example, the sign of the Eye of Horus, or "ouj", consisted of a series of hieroglyphs representing fractions, the sum of which was 63/64. If we flip this ratio and divide 64 by 63, we get one of the greatest secrets of the Egyptians - a number known as the Pythagorean comma.
Similar digital wisdom is set forth in Sefer HaZohar: God created the world by manipulating the words of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament). These letters have magical properties, and their combinations open the horizons of hidden meaning. For example, each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value (Aleph = 1, Bet = 2, and so on). The word "father" in Hebrew has a numerical value of 3, and the word "mother" - 41. The word "child" corresponds to the number 44, that is, the sum of the numbers of mother and father. Or, for example, the numerical value of the phrase "The Garden of Eden" is 144, and the phrase "The Tree of Knowledge" is 233. If we divide 233 by 144, we get the value of the golden ratio with precision to the fourth decimal place.
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In fact, the book "Sefer ha-Zohar" was created no earlier than 1280 by the Spanish rabbi Moses of Leonsky, who wrote it on behalf of the ancient teacher Shimon bar Yochai. The book is a commentary on the Pentateuch (Torah). She and Sefer Yetzirah became the founding works of the Kabbalists.
According to the ideas of the latter, the Divine principle is something boundless and inexpressible. The entire material world is "radiated" from God through His emanations. In order to reconcile this pantheistic mysticism with Scripture, the Kabbalists insisted on the use of an allegorical method of interpretation. "Woe to those," says the Book of Radiance, "who sees the shell of the Torah, not its soul!.. The stories of Scripture are only a cover for divine secrets accessible to the mind of the initiate."
With a nail on the head
In the middle of the 13th century, the Spanish Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia added a number of wise writings, in which, in particular, he strengthened the idea of the creative word of God. One of his treatises, The Sacred Magic of the Jew Abraham, taught with the help of spells to cause a storm, raise the dead, walk on water and seek female love. From that time on, Christian theologians, sorcerers and astrologers became interested in Kabbalah. The latter, especially the street fortune tellers, willingly used the "mind" of letters and numbers in their daily work, collecting tribute from gullible listeners.
Despite the persecution by the Christian Church, by the end of the Middle Ages, Kabbalism flourished in Western Europe, and people themselves represented the adepts as sorcerers in long robes and wizard hats. But those in the know understood that the Jewish mystics are most interested in the knowledge of the laws of the surrounding world, the principles on which the entire universe is "supported". Kabbalists puzzled over fundamental questions: what is God? What is the purpose of creation? How does God interact with the world and man? Does human suffering make sense? They very much wanted to penetrate these secrets in order to try to "replace" God themselves and to control "the forces of nature" instead. In other words, they were not so much magicians as philosophers, alchemists, and even scientists.
Many legendary stories have survived. One of them tells about Rabbi Yehiel, a great Kabbalist and consummate physician who lived during the reign of the pious French King Louis Saint (XIII century). When night fell, a shining star overshadowed Yehiel's dwelling, the light of which was so dazzling that it was almost impossible to look at it. The lamp never went out without the knowledge of the owner and was never filled with oil or other substances. More than once, morbid curiosity made the onlookers persistently pound on the door, and then the rabbi would hit a nail hammered into the wall of the office and extract a spark simultaneously from the head of the nail and the knocking head. It seemed to the shocked intruder that the earth opened beneath him, and he fell.
One day, a whole crowd of hostile people gathered at the entrance to Yehiel's cabin, shouting curses and threats. The most arrogant and brave of them beat violently on the door. The rabbi pressed on his nail, and in the blink of an eye the besiegers fell on each other with shouts. From fear, they completely lost their orientation in space and were no longer able to resume attacks.
Saint Louis, a devout Catholic, nevertheless wished to get to know Yehiel, invited him to his court, where he had long conversations with him. He was completely satisfied with his explanations and protected the old man from enemies and ill-wishers. But the facts themselves may indicate that the rabbi discovered electricity, or at least was familiar with the basic ways of using it.
As for the story of the Prague Golem, a clay "zombie" brought to life by the supposedly magical art of Rabbi Yehuda Loew ben Bezalel, according to researcher Daniel Kluger, it has no reliable basis. Until the 20th century, there was not a single story, not a single legend connecting the Golem with Rabbi ben Bezalel. But since the latter was known as a great magician, the Austrian writer Gustav Meyrink, in imitation of the then famous novel about Frankenstein, in 1914 created his work about a monstrous monster, calling the book "Golem", where he reunited two legendary characters.
Sorcerer's Kitchen
Kabbalists at all times have been engaged in alchemy, physics, and magic. They were desperate experimenters, and the Torah was presented as a kind of cosmic cookbook, in which each letter embodies one of the ingredients of the world. Kabbalah interprets the Pentateuch as a huge collection of encrypted messages. Many Christians wanted to understand their opponents.
Saint Jerome, church leader (in the 4th century), author of the first official translation of the Bible (Vulgate) and an expert on Kabbalah, claimed that in it “you will find many things that seem incredible and lie beyond the boundaries of possible, which, nevertheless, are true . Among the followers of Kabbalah is the great physicist Isaac Newton. He even became convinced that the secrets of life were encoded numerically in the fabric of nature (perhaps anticipating the discovery of DNA and RNA). Kabbalah influenced the Christian thinkers of the Renaissance and the development of new European philosophy and even musical culture. Recent research has shown that Johann Sebastian Bach composed some of his beautiful compositions, giving each note the meaning of a letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
Irina STREKALOVA