The Essential Works of Kabbalah. Bernhard Pick

by which he is able to investigate the real nature of things and understand the laws governing the universe in which, as a part, he lives and moves and has his being. In proportion that he has attained to the knowledge of nature, and extracted from her the secrets of his being, so has he succeeded in ridding himself from the errors of the past and marched with slow though steady steps towards a higher plane of life and thought, which, having gained, brighter and grander vistas of higher truths present themselves, inviting him to further research and investigation which, though attended with errors and mistakes, have been corrected by experience--the test of all true knowledge and the great and universal teacher of mankind. For this reason the history of philosophy may be described as the epitome of human errors and mistakes, of erroneous opinions and misconceptions; of cosmological systems based upon inadequate notions and imperfect inductions; all of whist had their day and then vanished into oblivion, the tomb of creeds, the grave of specious systems and dogmas that were unable to subsist and endure because they were not the true expositions of human life and destiny. To trace their origin and investigate their beginning is not without profit and advantage to those students who, comparing past and present systems of religion and philosophy, are thus able to divine and cull therefrom the truth that makes us free, that expands the mind and qualifies us to behold and view things not as they seem to be, but as they are in themselves; so that we catch glimpses of her majestic form not as in a glass darkly, but face to face.

      In our preceding remarks on The Zohar, we gave in brief outline the substance of its teachings on the dogma of man's origin and existence, and his relationship to the Creator and the universe; teachings which in their nature and character are so different from the ordinary views both of Jews and Christians, that the question naturally rises, how was it that such a system of philosophy arose and became propagated amongst a nation whose conceptions of the Deity and Creation are so diametrically and radically dissimilar, as light to darkness? How came it about that a people so conservative in their religious notions, fostered within itself a feeling amounting almost to veneration for the teachings of The Zohar, or Kabbalah, as they were termed, as is evidenced by a long list of Jewish Rabbis, honored and still held in esteem for their great learning, piety and scholarly attainments'?

      The answer to these questions compels us to take a comparative view of those systems of eastern philosophy amidst which Kabbalah sprang up and manifested such a vigorous growth as to outlast many of its competitors in the power and influence it has exercised over the minds of the thoughtful and studious. Ere, however, we do this, we shall have to dismiss, and put aside as erroneous, the common tradition that Kabbalah is of divine origin; first imparted to Moses on Mount Sinai, and then handed through him to the seventy elders, which could not be for the reason just advanced, that its teachings and philosophy are opposed to and bear scarcely any resemblance to Jewish theology. This being the case, we have to consider to what system of philosophy Kabbalah was related in the time that Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochai first taught it. We may reduce these to four, viz., the Platonic philosophy; that of the Alexandrian School in Egypt; of Zoroaster in Persia; and of the Brahmins in India.

      Though there is in some respects a striking analogy between Platonism and Kabbalah, yet, after a comparison of their distinctive leading tenets, we are forced to the conclusion that Kabbalah did not originate from Platonism. In both systems the Logos, or Divine Wisdom, is the primordial archetype of the universe and acts a mediatorial part between the divine idea and the objects that are the manifestation of it. In both are to be found the dogmas of pre-existence, reminiscence, reincarnation and metempsychosis, so that some Kabbalists have supposed Plato to have been a disciple of Jeremiah the prophet, in order to account for this rather remarkable and coincident similarity of ideas. There are, however, great differences between the two that make it impossible to assert that the one is a copy of the other. The Kabbalists believed in one primal substance, Spirit. Plato acknowledged two, spirit and matter, the intelligent cause and the created material produced. Neither can the Kabbalistic Sephiroth be reconciled with the ideas and doctrine of Plato or his teaching respecting those forms or archetypes of things which existed in the divine Mind from eternity. Those ideas, according to him, abide in that Mind, are inseparable from it, are the divine Intelligence itself, and are the prototypes of all existing things; whereas the Sephiroth are divided into two classes and figuratively set forth as masculine and feminine, proceeding alike from the eternal fountain En Soph, then combining themselves in a common personified power called the Son, from whom they again become distinguished in a new and further form of development. It is impossible to compare this doctrine with Plato's triad of the Father, the Son, and the Soul of the World, without perceiving that Kabbalah and Platonism can never be identified and considered as one. We must therefore seek its origin from some other source than the Platonic philosophy.

      Some writers have sought to prove that Kabbalah took its rise from what is known as the Alexandrian School of philosophy. the home of Neoplatonism. Here, again, though there are great resemblances and close coincidences between them, as, God is the immanent ground and substantial source of all being--all goes out from him and all returns to him again. They both recognize the necessity of a trinity and also agree in regarding the universe as a divine manifestation, also in their doctrines concerning the Soul and its final return to God; yet if there has been any copying we are warranted in supposing that the Neoplatonists copied and took from the Kabbalists. Kabbalah was developed in Palestine. Its very language, its composition and direct association with rabbinical institutions set this beyond doubt. The Jews of Alexandria held but little intercourse with their brethren in Palestine and never entered into intimate relations with the rabbis either of Palestine or Babylon, who were greatly averse to Greek wisdom and learning and forbade that children should be instructed therein. Whilst the Palestinian Jews detested and despised Greek philosophy, they took kindly and received Kabbalah, which was held in honor and esteem long years before Neoplatonism was ever thought of or appeared as a system of philosophy. It has also been said that Kabbalah was either directly or remotely the result of the teachings of Philo Judaeus, who resided at Alexandria at the beginning of the Christian era. This assumption, after a strict analysis of Philo's works cannot be drawn nor substantiated, inasmuch as they are totally and altogether opposite in their principles and systems of philosophy. Philo is more Platonic than Kabbalistic in his ideas. For instance, he posits the Platonic dualism; God, and a creation which once had a beginning, an active principle, divine Intelligence; and a passive one, matter pre-existent, shaped and conformed to an idea conceived in the divine Mind. "God," he says, "is not only the Demiurgos or Architect of the world, but also its Creator, calling all into creation by an act of his will, and as he pervades the universe by his presence in order to sustain it, he may therefore be said to be the place of the universe, for he contains within himself all things. He himself is the world, for God is All." To explain these assertions, he proceeds: "God is the unapproachable and incomprehensible Light. No creature can behold him--but his image shines forth in his thought, the Logos, through which we can become acquainted with him." But to this first manifestation of the divine Being, Philo, like Plato, gives an hypostatic or personal character. He is God's first begotten. This first or elder Logos produces another Logos who exerts a creative power of which the world is a manifestation. In the exposition of his ideas of creation, we meet with many interspersed remarks on the nature of angels which are very different from the ideal principles as represented by the Kabbalistic Sephiroth. In his discourses on man, Philo distinguishes between the intellectual and the sensuous soul, which latter he affirms has its seat in the blood. In attempting to ascend to the intuition of divine and spiritual truth, it may be well, as he teaches, for the mind to occupy itself at first with merely human knowledge, just as the body requires milk before it can be capable of strong meat. But in the direct effort to obtain an insight into higher or heavenly truth, it is necessary to curb or place the senses in abeyance and let the intellect exercise itself independently of them altogether. When, however, such knowledge is attained, it is not by mere dint of mental labor or by the aid of philosophy, but by direct illumination from the Divine. He also believed in the possibility of the mind to attain intuitive perceptions of Deity himself, at the same time laying great stress on the exercise of faith, which he calls "the queen of all virtues." Faith lifts the veil of sense and conducts the spirit of man to an union with God, which has been exemplified more or less in the lives of all great mystics of ancient and modern times. From the study of early Christian and Gnostic writings, we arrive at the same conclusion, that though there may be found similarities