A bold line-by-line reexamination of the first 3 chapters of Genesis that reveals the essential nature of mind and creativity • Deconstructs each line of Genesis chapters 1-3 with esoteric methods derived from the oral teachings of the Kabbalah • Reveals the sefirot, the Tree of Life, as the Divine blueprint of the creative process • Explains how Genesis reveals the Divinity of mind and consciousness Hidden within the first three chapters of Genesis rests one of the greatest jewels of Western mystical literature. For millennia religious literalism has dominated our understanding of the Bible, imprisoning its subtle inner wisdom within the most coarse and superficial aspects of the narrative. Generations have been led to believe that Genesis 1-3 is only a primitive proto-cosmic history, a mythological explanation of the human moral disposition, a religious fairy tale. But by accepting the text as pure kabbalistic metaphor, the mystical content of Genesis springs forth, revealing the Divine nature of creativity as well as a new understanding of the human mind. Deconstructing each line of Genesis 1-3 with esoteric methods derived from the oral teachings of the Kabbalah, David Chaim Smith reveals how the ten sefirot, collectively known as the Tree of Life, are not simply a linear hierarchy. They are a unified interdependent whole with ten interactive functions, forming the template through which creative diversity manifests. Through acts of creation and creativity, the mind expresses its Divine nature. Through our Divine creative power, we are able to touch upon Ain Sof (the infinite), the lifeblood of all creative expression. Smith’s line-by-line examination of Genesis 1-3 reveals a complete model not only of Divine creativity but also of the predicament of the human mind, of the Divine nature of consciousness as well as our inability to recognize the mind’s Divinity. With this new interpretation, which removes the concept of a Creator God, we are able to transcend the contrasting notions of “being” and “non-being” at the heart of conventional habits of perception and awaken a new mystical understanding of Unity and the fathomless depth of Divinity.
"Deep Principles of Kabbalistic Alchemy" elaborates upon an array of symbols designed to guide the reader toward the ground of all phenomena, referred to as En (no) Sof (end) in kabbalah. The material is presented in clear yet esoteric terms, free from the common tendencies of psychologization, new-age dilution, and religious mythology. It is a rare opportunity for a deep consideration of profound mysteries that cannot be summarily addressed with conventional language and theoretical speculation, ultimately offering a living invitation into a rare and powerful style of mystical practice.
"Bath of Bright Silence" articulates a living practice derived from the thirteenth century Iyyun School of kabbalah called "The Thirteen Phases of Tikkun Kadmon." It describes a profound contemplative method in which the practitioner immerses within the infinite bath of luminous silence to crystallize both perception and whatever is perceived into the philosopher¿s stone. The immersion of vision in its wholeness results in a diamond-like clarity that shines beyond substance, dimension, and time ¿ posing the alchemical key that unlocks appearance and awareness as a single magical continuum of unutterable mystery.
The 13th century text, "The Fountain of Wisdom," is one of the most challenging works of the Kabbalistic tradition. Alongside this important text is a passage-by-passage commentary by David Chaim Smith, designed to address the working issues of the spiritual practitioner. "The Fountain of Wisdom" presents a labyrinth of psycho-aetheric symbols that map out the subtle atmospheres, textures, and resonances discovered through radical contemplative mysticism. The strange and beautiful imagery functions as a set of doorways through which the mind passes, allowing for discoveries that no other Kabbalistic text comes close to offering. The original 13th century text is included here in its entirety in a new English translation by Dr. Mark Verman, one of the pre-eminent scholar-translators of this generation.
Author David Chaim Smith offers a guide to the practice of mystical contemplation from the perspective of a highly unusual form of non-dual Kabbalah, unfettered by both religious mythology and psychological reductionism. The path articulates the ultimate quest for meaning, which seeks to pass through the clutter of the mind’s conceptual associations to nakedly and directly recognize the innate essentiality of all things known as the light of En (no) Sof (end), or the Infinite. Most mainstream conventional schools of Kabbalah hold such a radical aspiration to be inapproachable at best, and heretical at worst. • The work introduces six stages that articulate how the mind breaks through its own restrictive habitual reflexes to awaken to the ground of En Sof, which is the mind’s essential nature • Each stage is illustrated by the author’s own original works of art and line diagrams • Draws upon obscure sources such as the 13th-century Kabbalistic text Fountain of Wisdom, various alchemical and gnostic texts, and the writings of Isaac the Blind The author reveals how meaning never remains static--its nature is to move, transmit, and display--yet its precious potential becomes buried under layers of mental constructs. He explains how the mind’s habits and reflexes impose structures of containment that try to make sense out of phenomena, but these very structures actually obscure their essence completely. Smith’s experiential path to gnostic awakening reveals how, in the wake of the lesser concerns of the conceptual mind, primordial purity shines in resonances of vast poetic beauty, if a sensibility of wonder, awe, and delight is cultivated. Offering a step-by-step analysis to the ecstatic aspects of contemplative revelation, David Chaim Smith explores how to ride the razor’s edge of the paradox to coax the mind from the sleep of habituation towards the culmination of gnosis. Although the process is described within the traditional symbol system of kabbalah, its import is a truly radical exponent of extreme mysticism.
There are two ways of rendering the first line of Genesis: one way is exoteric, by Christian Bible interpreters; the other, Kabbalistic — divided into the Rabbinical, and the purely Kabbalistic or Occult method. Why Christians sing never-ceasing laudations to the Mosaic Jews, who repudiated all the other Gods, preserved the most phallic and, then, most impudently, proclaimed themselves Monotheists? Jesus ever steadily ignored Jehovah and went against the Mosaic commandments. He recognized his Heavenly Father alone, and prohibited public worship. Ralston Skinner’s numerical analysis of the first sentence of Genesis, on which hung in blind faith the whole Christian religion, shows that the Bible was made to yield Phallicism, and that alone. To know the full septenary significance of the Primordial Circle, the Pyramid and the Kabbalistic Bible must be read in the light of the figure on which the temples of India are built. Genesis cannot yield anything higher or more sublime than phallic elements, the root and the cornerstone of its dead-letter meaning. Anthropomorphism and Revelation dig an impassable chasm between the material world and the ultimate spiritual truths. The so-called “creation” of Genesis is not the Primary Creation, and the Elohim are not “God,” not even the higher Planetary Spirits, but the Architects of this physical planet and of man’s material body or encasement. The Elohim, far from being supreme or even exalted powers in Nature, are only lower Angels. This was the teaching of the Gnostics, the most philosophical of all the early Christian Churches. They correspond to the Prajapatis of the Hindus, the fashioners of man’s material and astral form only. Mathers censures the translators of the Bible, who have suppressed every single reference to the feminine form of Deity. With the Occultists of the East the “One and Changeless,” Parabrahman, the Absolute All, the ONE and Secondless, cannot be conceived as standing in any relation to things finite and conditioned. But what especially strikes the student of the Kabbalah is the malicious persistency with which the translators of the Bible have jealously crowded out of sight and suppressed every reference to the feminine form of the Deity. They have, as we have just seen, translated the feminine plural “Elohim,” by the masculine singular, “God.” They also concealed the fact that Ruah, “Spirit,” is feminine. It then follows that the Holy Ghost of the New Testament is a feminine Potency. In the Hebrew, as in the Greek alphabet, there are no distinct numeral characters, and consequently each letter has a certain numerical value attached to it. From this circumstance results the important fact that every Hebrew word constitutes a number, and every number a word. The conclusion of Mathers’ analysis of the Elohim is that they are not one, nor two, nor even a trinity, but an army of Creative Powers. Madame Blavatsky names the true Creators. The “First-Born,” or Logos, is not an Emanation, but an Energy inherent in, and co-eternal with, Parabrahman — the ONE. Thus it is not the ONE and Unconditioned, nor even Its reflection, that creates, but only the “Seven Gods” who fashion the Universe out of primordial Matter, vivified into objective life by the reflection into it of the One and only Reality. Jehovah is at best, the Heavenly Man or Adam-Kadmon, used by the self-created Spirit (Logos), as a chariot, a vehicle in His descent to the phenomenal world of gross matter. The Secret Doctrine and the Kabbalah are in perfect concordance in St. Paul’s Epistles. The Zohar is not a genuine production of the Hebrew mind. It is a veil over the Secret Doctrine. The Zohar is the repository and compendium of the oldest doctrines of the East, transmitted orally at first, and then written down in independent treatises during the Captivity at Babylon, and finally brought together by Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, toward the beginning of the Christian era. Modern Christianity is Paganism pure and simple, exoterically; and transcendental and practical Magic or Occultism, esoterically. The Solar Trinity is not Mazdean, but Universal, and as old as man. All temples in Antiquity were invariably made to face the Sun, their portals opening to the East. The last of the Solar Priests in Europe was the Imperial Initiate, Julian, now called the Apostate. He tried to benefit the world by revealing a portion of the great mystery of the Solar Trinity, and died for the same crime as Socrates. The Roman Catholic Church stands accused, not of worshipping under other names the Divine Beings worshipped throughout Antiquity, but of declaring idolatrous, not only the Pagans ancient and modern, but every Christian nation that has freed itself from the Roman yoke. Only the Philosophers, who studied Astrology and Magic, knew that the “Last Word” was to be sought in the Occult forces emanating from those constellations that are the physical bodies of Divine Beings.
The MATRIX OF WISDOM is all about God’s Ambiance residing in the soul of the individual. This volume is about unraveling the deep mysteries of God esoterically codified into the world’s sacred scriptures, literature, artworks, monuments and architecture in all times and climes via the ESOTERIC SCIENCE: i.e. the harmonious integration of the Seven Liberal Arts: Quadrivium (Four Mathematical Sciences) and the Trivium (Three Grammatical Arts) that are the foundations of the ancient Mystery Schools. The MATRIX OF WISDOM is a 10 x 10 matrix that is the original source material that wrote the sacred scriptures in all religious cultures around the world. From the mystical depths of this 10 x 10 matrix China created the I Ching and the Tao te Ching, Buddhism created their Stupas, Hinduism and Christianity builds their temples, cathedrals and churches, numerous cultures around the world built their pyramids based upon it schematics and the Native American Indians knew of it, Astrology and the Game of Chess were developed from it, and Pythagoras developed his mathematical theorems from it, and Freemasonry is founded upon it and the city of Washington DC is built on its esoteric design and this latter is provided for in the United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8; however, this matrix is never-ever discussed explicitly to the general public. Throughout this volume there will be a continuous tsunami of demonstrable evidence directly and indirectly challenging the status quo of academia and the orthodoxy of all religions around the world. The WORD OF GOD will be discussed mainly from the perspective of the Judaeo Christian Scriptures, the secret teachings of the Roman Catholic Church’s literature, artwork, monuments and architecture and Freemasonry symbolism designed into the landscape of Washington DC. The MATRIX OF WISDOM (spiritual waters of creation: i.e. sum total or all knowledge) is inherent in the psyche of every human being. The MATRIX OF WISDOM is a commentary or the MONAD, which is the soul’s raison d’être: i.e. God/Man Christ (Tao, Krishna, Buddha, Horus. etc.). When the soul comes into the world it splits into a two-part psyche: ego-consciousness and the unconscious mind and this knowledge is esoterically codified into the mythoi of the Judaeo Christian Scriptures; thus, the sacred scriptures of the world are all about explaining to the worthy initiate the dynamics of the soul and its psyche. The sacred scriptures are written first and foremost for the Born Again initiate; though, the average member of the laity has direct access to both its exoteric writings (REVEALED) and its secret esoteric teachings (COVERED). The inexplicable WORD OF GOD (HIDDEN): however, cannot be explained to another in the vernacular. The initiate can know of the ESOTERIC SCIENCE; however that does not avail him or her of the true understanding of the WORD OF GOD. Only God can communicate that unfathomable and inexplicable knowledge to the individual The ESOTERIC SCIENCE can somewhat prepare the worthy initiate for the spiritual Initiatic Visionary Experience, which is gifted only to those that are worthy and truly DESIRE to know the WORD OF GOD. The sacred scriptures around the world are written to explain the spiritual Initiatic Visionary Experience; furthermore, the sacred scriptures in their indigenous languages are the most scientific instruments on the face of the Earth; though, modernity will most likely dispute that fact ad nauseam.
Das gegen »Kahlheit der Aufklärung« (Hegel) gerichtete religiöse Interesse vieler Autoren der deutschen Romantik an Naturphilosophie, Magie und Pantheismus, an mystischer Sprachtheorie und Symbolik, an Theogonie und Kosmogonie lässt sie die Kabbala wiederentdecken. Die jüdische Mystik wird zur religiösen, philosophischen und künstlerischen Inspirationsquelle, aber auch zum Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher und weltanschaulicher Auseinandersetzung bei jüdischen und besonders christlichen Romantikern. Der bislang so gut wie nicht erforschte Zusammenhang und die Wechselbeziehungen von Kabbala, Wissenschafts-, Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte der Romantik waren 1991 Thema von zwei interdisziplinären Tagungen an der Universität Kassel und der Hebräischen Universität Jerusalem.
In this beautifully realized study, Peter Schäfer investigates the origins of a female manifestation of God in Jewish mysticism. The search itself is a fascinating exploration of the idea of a feminine divinity. And Schäfer's surprising but persuasive conclusions yield deeper understanding of the complex but frequently intimate relationship between Christianity and Judaism--and of the development of religious concepts more generally. Toward the end of the twelfth century, a small book titled the Bahir (Light) appeared in Provence. The first document of Judaism's emerging kabbalistic movement, it introduced a completely new view of God, one that included a divine potency that was essentially female. This female divinity was portrayed both as a mediator between Jews and God and as part of the Godhead itself. Examining Judaic history from the biblical Wisdom tradition to the Middle Ages, Schäfer finds some precedents for the Kabbalah's feminine divinity. But he cannot account for her forceful appearance in twelfth-century southern France without reference to the immediate Christian environment, particularly the flourishing veneration of the Virgin Mary. Indeed, twelfth-century Jews and Christians were simultaneously rediscovering the feminine as an aspect of the Godhead after having abandoned it in favor of either an abstract, disembodied God or an exclusively male one. In proposing that the medieval cult of Mary--rather than eastern Gnosticism--is the appropriate framework for understanding the feminine elements in Jewish mysticism, Mirror of His Beauty represents a sea change in Kabbalah and Jewish-Christian cultural studies. It shifts our attention from the Byzantine East to the Latin Christian West. And in contrast to histories that treat the development of Judaism and Christianity in isolation, it leads us to a fuller understanding of Jews and Christians living in proximity, aware of each other.
This volume brings together a collection of essays on Borges by leading scholar Jaime Alazraki. Together the essays constitute an introduction to important aspects of Borges' oeuvre, including the influence of the Kabbalah, structure and style in the fiction, Borges' poetry, and Borges' impact on Latin American literature.
