Kabbalah is gnostic in nature as it claims to have hidden knowledge about the world, that's accessed through initiation and gnosis. Jewish mysticism is influenced by neoplatonism and hermeticism.
Kabbalah is gnostic in nature as it claims to have hidden knowledge about the world
Kabbalah (aka Cabala) is an evolution of the oral traditions of Judaism found in the Talmud and the Midrash. But, it is much more than that. It is an adoption of middle platonic and neoplatonic philosophy together with the Gnosticism of early Christianity in what is called emanation theories. The idea that there is a highest God that is infinite, invisible and incomprehensible but cannot be divided since it is perfection. If you were to create something other than that God it would be no longer God because God is perfect and to separate from God is to become imperfect. That is, to move away from goodness, beauty and truth and to move away from unity.
The emanation downward is viewed as a catastrophe because it is separation from the Monad. It is distance and it moves progressively downwards towards the hell of nothingness, the evil of matter. And now I'm getting more into the Gnostic and the cabbalistic conception of matter than the Greek. The Greeks viewed it more as a deprivation of goodness to get away from God. But in Judaism, it is viewed as an actual evil force, that there is an evil force of chaos of matter and it's not simply the deprivation of good but it is the alternate aspect of God itself and it is actually the highest aspect of God. They believe that to view primordial chaos formless emptiness and darkness were the first emanation of God before the light. And Kabbalah is unique in this interpretation.
So, in Kabbalah they adopted all of this emanation from the Greeks that formed the universe and the ambition of Greek philosophy. And Plato said that these emanations travel down seven planets to the earth. And the soul since it is an emanation also travels down seven planets to the earth. The goal of the philosopher, the goal of the practitioner in Judaism is to return back and to hop back up those seven planets which become the Sefirot of Kabbalah to return to God, to return to the divine realm and reunite with God and have a mystical ecstatic reunion with God. So the emanation is reversed and it becomes the return. And the return in Judaism is called tshuva. So they are trying to return everything back to God. Now in Judaism, this creator god, the demiurge was revealed by the Gnostics to be a lesser (evil) god that they rejected.
There were Christians who became involved in the evolution of Kabbalah Pico della Mirandola is a prominent one. Johann Reuchlin is another one. And they started to set up apologetics for Judaism to Christians whereby they could ingratiate themselves to Christians and begin to enter into the Christian church and then Judaize it. Jacob Frank was very much a Judaizer of Christianity and he exposed what the Talmud said but he was very much into Kabbalah. The cabalists became very popular because they were sort of wizards and magicians and con artists.
Kabbalah is gnostic in nature as it claims to have hidden knowledge about the world, that's accessed through initiation and gnosis. Jewish mysticism is influenced by neoplatonism and hermeticism.
Kabbalah (aka Cabala) is an evolution of the oral traditions of Judaism found in the Talmud and the Midrash. But, it is much more than that. It is an adoption of middle platonic and neoplatonic philosophy together with the Gnosticism of early Christianity in what is called emanation theories. The idea that there is a highest God that is infinite, invisible and incomprehensible but cannot be divided since it is perfection. If you were to create something other than that God it would be no longer God because God is perfect and to separate from God is to become imperfect. That is, to move away from goodness, beauty and truth and to move away from unity.
The emanation downward is viewed as a catastrophe because it is separation from the Monad. It is distance and it moves progressively downwards towards the hell of nothingness, the evil of matter. And now I'm getting more into the Gnostic and the cabbalistic conception of matter than the Greek. The Greeks viewed it more as a deprivation of goodness to get away from God. But in Judaism, it is viewed as an actual evil force, that there is an evil force of chaos of matter and it's not simply the deprivation of good but it is the alternate aspect of God itself and it is actually the highest aspect of God. They believe that to view primordial chaos formless emptiness and darkness were the first emanation of God before the light. And Kabbalah is unique in this interpretation.
So, in Kabbalah they adopted all of this emanation from the Greeks that formed the universe and the ambition of Greek philosophy. And Plato said that these emanations travel down seven planets to the earth. And the soul since it is an emanation also travels down seven planets to the earth. The goal of the philosopher, the goal of the practitioner in Judaism is to return back and to hop back up those seven planets which become the Sefirot of Kabbalah to return to God, to return to the divine realm and reunite with God and have a mystical ecstatic reunion with God. So the emanation is reversed and it becomes the return. And the return in Judaism is called tshuva. So they are trying to return everything back to God. Now in Judaism, this creator god, the demiurge was revealed by the Gnostics to be a lesser (evil) god that they rejected.
There were Christians who became involved in the evolution of Kabbalah Pico della Mirandola is a prominent one. Johann Reuchlin is another one. And they started to set up apologetics for Judaism to Christians whereby they could ingratiate themselves to Christians and begin to enter into the Christian church and then Judaize it. Jacob Frank was very much a Judaizer of Christianity and he exposed what the Talmud said but he was very much into Kabbalah. The cabalists became very popular because they were sort of wizards and magicians and con artists.