Angela Puca AP: Hello everyone. I’m Angela and welcome back to my channel. Today I have a very special guest here with me on my channel. It’s Dr. Elliot Cohen from Leeds Beckett University. Elliot is a psychologist, his main area of expertise is psychology and the overlaps between psychology, especially trans-personal psychology and religion and spirituality.
So thank you very much, Elliot. Here’s Elliot. Now you have appeared in the video.
Elliot Cohen EC: Wow! Here I am.
AP: Thank you for being here Elliot.
EC: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
AP: So today we will talk about a very interesting topic which I really look forward to knowing more about and that is Qabalah.
EC: Mmm yes, Kabbalah the Hebrew word ‘to receive’.
AP: Okay, so first off I mispronounced it.
EC: No, no. Its fine Qabalah, Kabbalah its…
AP: The same.
EC: Yes, you know everyone will understand what you mean. You could say that in Israel and people would go, yeah Kabbalah,
AP: Okay, first off, since you mentioned that to me in a private message could you please explain to us the different spellings of Kabbalah. Of course, I will put the spellings on the screen so that people know what we are talking about. [QABALAH, KABBALAH, CABALA]
EC: Yes so, usually Kabbalah with a K, which is the Kabbalah that I was most familiar with is the traditional, Jewish, mystical practices and schools of thought, philosophy, prophecy and also the more, sort of, forbidden practical Kabbalah which many would relate to different magical practices and traditions which I’ll probably be saying a little bit more about later. But if it’s spelt with a K then usually it’s recognized that this is the Jewish tradition, going all the way back to some of those earliest texts like the Sepher Yetzirah, The Book Of Formation, the Sepher Bahir, the Sepher Zohar, The Book Of Splendour and these are, if you like, the core corpus or main texts of the Jewish mystical tradition. Of course, I should say that the main text of those first five books of the Bible, referred to as the Torah and, if you like, that’s the traditional Jewish roots, foundations of Kabbalah with a K.
But then, as I think in different chats, we have I mentioned that in Mediaeval times, the Renaissance you get various Hermetic schools, sort of occult traditions, that become interested in these esoteric Jewish writings and start to explore them, start to incorporate them into their Christian doctrines. So usually Cabala with a C, even today, often I’ll see more Christian Universalist approaches to Cabala will be spelt sometimes with a C, sometimes hermetic traditions will be spelled with a C or a Q. Usually, when I see it with a Q, [child sounds](oops, that’s my little one shouting the background) if you spell it with a Q (you hear a shout like that) and that means it’s usually a sort of magical tradition that magic with the K, as you said in a previous talk that you gave, so it’s not unusual to see it’s rendered in those different ways. So usually, for shorthand; if it’s with a K it’s usually referring to the traditional Jewish context if it’s with a C it could be Christian forms of Cabala, it could be more Universalist or even what some would refer to as New Age interpretations or incorporations and if it’s with a Q then, often, it can be either the Hermetic or magical traditions. Hopefully, that’s nice and clear.
AP: Yeah, yeah. It is very clear now. I didn’t know all that.
EC: But I think one of the things that always strikes me when I hear other people, who are not from the Jewish tradition to say, I’m a Kabbalist or I study Kabbalah, I’m always really surprised and I think that’s partly because of the way I was brought up and in relation to Kabbalah. Kabbalah, for most Jewish people, even today, it’s something quite distant, it’s something quite, well in many cases, forbidden. It’s occult, hidden, secret – not intended for the masses and you know just to give you a few points there are certain traditions let’s say they’re not fixed and fast laws or Halakkah, rules, and laws, but there were certain conditions before you could even begin to study Kabbalah. One was that you had to be over the age of 40. The other was that you have to be a man.
[Anglea pulls an ‘exasperated’ face]
Surprise, surprise, and the other you have to be married with children and the other was that, I think in the texts, that you need to have a full belly and what they interpreted from this is that you already had to be full of the existing, revealed, wisdom of Torah. You had to be fully compliant with the Halakah, the norms and regulations expected of you and if all those conditions were met, then you might be eligible to study this Kabbalah and so, usually, we’re introduced to it in those ways. It’s all these different conditions and then if that’s not enough, if that’s not enough to sort of you know put you off a bit there are these stories and you find them in the Talmud I think that’s one part in Sanhedrin.
So it’s a very famous story; it’s about what’s called the Pardes. Pardes was an ancient Hebrew word that means ‘orchard,’ I think. It, probably, etymologically has its roots in some ancient Persian Paradise, Pardes, you know, the Garden of Eden. Sometimes a word, a substitute word, a related word is Pardes. You are told that these four great Rabbis entered the Pardes and what does this mean? Pardes, in this sense, means – they enter this mystical divine reality but it could also be understood as they enter the PaRDeS. PaRDeS is an acronym if you like pa-r-d-s Pa for a Peshat, which means the simple, everyday, accessible, meaning of Torah, of the teachings. And then there’s Remez, which means like a hint. Going a little bit deeper there’s Derash, which might be the moral dimension and then there’s Sod, the last one, the S of Pardes which is secret, Sod is the secret. So, if you like, it’s a hermeneutic tool. It sort of gives you these levels of depth that you can interpret a text. So this is hermeneutics, exegesis – I’ve never been quite sure. It’s trouble, sometimes, the difference between those, they kind of blend into one another sometimes. But it could mean this, as well, that they delve into this depth.
But if you read the account, in the Talmud, it seems that they do enter this mystical realm, they sort of slip out of our dimension and into this heavenly, celestial realm, and what happens these great four Rabbis. We’re told they’re some of the greatest Rabbis of their time. I always remember the first one Ben Azzai, the Rabbi Ben Azzai. It says Ben Azzai gazed and died. That’s a great start, isn’t it? He gazed and died. The other one loses his mind. The other Rabbi becomes a heretic, he misunderstands the visions, the visions are all very, very cryptic and it gives you a little bit of what they saw in the Talmud. And it just doesn’t equate with reality, as we know it, and so some of these Rabbis, they couldn’t understand what they saw and one of them became, I think, like a polytheist maybe he’s sort of more Gnostic in terms of what he thought he saw. The only one, the only one Rabbi, and this is Rabbi Akiva, Akiva entered in peace and left in peace.
So of these great four Rabbis, one dies, one loses his mind, one becomes a heretic and only one enters in peace. And these are the stories that usually you shared. This is Kabbalah, these are the Kabbalah. You’re on that level.
AP: It’s like Kabbalah – the odds are not in your favour.
EC: Yes. Traditionally it was ‘leave this alone’ – this is for the great sages.
AP: Do you think that was a way of saying that it was a dangerous practice that only a few people had to…
EC: I think so, yeah and I think the danger was considered particularly in relation to what’s called practical Kabbalah. Now here we end up getting into some of the distinctions. So the kind of Kabbalah mode, that that I’ve become more familiar with and studied with different teachers has been mostly theoretical or philosophical. Has been mostly the hermeneutic type or exegesis; looking at the language of the Bible and kind of very playful way hermeneutics – sort of playful way interpreting a back and forth of meaning. And Kabbalah – one of my favourite teachers of Kabbalah, Professor Les Lancaster. Who was, actually, the first professor of transpersonal psychology in the UK but also a Kabbalist He refers to it, often, as ‘Kabbalah is a mysticism of language’ which I always found very, very beautiful. That it’s about the Hebrew letters and the different levels of reality and meaning. That there are letters within letters, words within words, and worlds within worlds. And it’s very, sort of, beautiful, once you start to navigate it, explore it and that’s the way Les Lancaster often taught it. It was a mysticism of language and it was, again, it had that kind of playful quality to it and it’s certainly not considered as risky, let’s say, as some of the other forms of practice.
So, for example, practical Kabbalah would be the use of some of these teachings, particularly the teachings around the Divine names, the names – the various names of the Divine, in Judaism, have kind of an awesome quality. So much so, that we don’t even say them. Even, if you like, some of the lesser names, if there are lesser names, we have substitutes for them. So instead of saying God, most Jewish people say HaShem, literally ‘the name,’ you know the great way to say, God. You can write God, in English. Particularly Orthodox people they write G, a little dash, and D. Why? It’s not even Hebrew, you know. It’s that level of safeguarding or what’s sometimes referred to as putting fences around to protect. So once you start getting to the Divine names, perhaps the most famous, the Tetragrammaton the four-letter name of God which became so popular in ceremonial magic.
You find it everywhere in ceremonial magic. It was seen as this powerhouse. This is, if you like, the name of creation and from this other names emerge and some names are even more secret. There’s a 72 letter name, there’s a 216 letter name, and the holiest, the holiest of names was apparently only recited out loud once a year in Jerusalem in the Temple by the Kohen Gadol.
You’ll notice my last name Cohen is supposed to be the name for priests, I’m, sort of, the lineage on my father and my mother side, actually, but they tend to focus more on the patrilineal, in this case, in terms of where your tribe comes from. Whether you’re Jewish or not, your Halachic status comes from your mother. In terms of what your tribe or lineage comes, usually, from your father. So my name Cohen is supposed to mean that I’m a Kohen, a priest and so my ancestors from 2000 or so years ago, particularly the Kohen Gadol, the high priest, so it’s very special allotted time, Yom Kippur, the holiest of holy times, in the holiest of holy places, Jerusalem, Temple in the holiest place, the Holy of Holies it was called. You’re getting the ‘holy’ emphasis here, and spoke the holiest of names and it was so holy that the people wouldn’t even want to hear it. They drown it out. The people around it, the Levites, the servants of the priests, and the other people at Temple would shout out, “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh” like “holy, holy, holy” to drown it out a bit because it’s too holy to hear. These words are considered so potent, so powerful they are the tools of creation and perhaps of destruction as well, so they have to be wielded with great care. And this is, I think, very much picked up on in the Hermetic tradition, in the magical traditions.
The power of words once. One of the spells we grow up with, even at children’s parties, with magicians of conjuring abracadabra – that comes from the Hebrew A’bara, bara meaning to create K’dabra- Dabar, through what I say. Literally, I create through speech – may what I say come to be abracadabra. So this ancient, Hebrew, Aramaic formula, I think, recognizes the potency, the power of these names and I think there’s something about the secrecy around these names that became – whenever you cover something, whenever something’s concealed it becomes an object of a fascination, of tension, of taboo, as well.
As all these prohibitions, of not saying the name, as my one of my favourite scenes in Life of Brian where a song, you’ve probably seen that one, where a song says something like, of course, you know that there’s no J in Hebrew so that’s fine anyway. But it’s I think, it illustrates the power, the power of words, the power of language, the power of writing as well, the writing of these names. If there’s a book where any of these names appear it can’t be disposed of. It has to be buried. Usually, they wait till someone – there’s a funeral, a Jewish funeral. They will bury the books because they have these names in. So I’m not surprised there were other people, non-Jewish traditions, that thought what are these names? What is this untapped power? Let’s find out what these secrets are and let’s try and incorporate them and use them for magical purposes, for the purposes of gnosis, of self-knowledge, knowledge of the Divine, knowledge of how to create, how to transform and I think this is something that comes from the tradition of Kabbalah with a K and Jewish tradition in general.
That was very much picked up on by the Hermetic tradition, the idea that there is the Divine spark within all of us. That people are, in the Torah, as human beings were a little less than the angels but there’s also the term B’tselem Elohim – in the image of the Divine. Human beings are essentially a divine, a microcosm. So you’ll see this in certain Kabbalistic diagrams; the Tree of Life or the Adam Kadmon, the primordial man, which is sometimes mapped on to this Tree of Life. You’re probably familiar with the Tree of Life.
AP: Yeah, I think that everybody who has ever been interested in esotericism knows what the Tree of Life is.
EC: Just to give you a sense of how, in a sense, how every day this was to me growing up – synagogues that I went to, as a child, and was Bar Mitzvahed in, in Leeds, was called Etz Chaim – the Tree of Life. So this is just where I went and I suppose this is where I started to become interested in Kabbalah. So we’ve got all these different sorts of prohibitions and I suppose from my own reason, how do you know, if you’ve got to be over 40 and married? How on earth did I encounter it in the first place and so young as well? I was 15-16 and the reason was because I had an interest, already, in the occult, the esoteric, and increasingly, the inverted commas, “the Eastern” as well. And because my room began to frighten my parents, it became filled with pentagrams and various sort of imagery; magical symbols and then, sort of, increasing Eastern symbols, and then Buddhas started appearing. They were a bit worried they consulted the Rabbi and the Rabbi said quick, get him some Kabbalah books. Quick get him into something a little bit more Kosher, a bit more, otherwise, he’s going to go way off.
AP: Would it be like saying; okay, since he’s interested esotericism he might as well do the Hebrew kind of…
EC: Exactly, and I suppose we were living at a time then, as well you know, about two, three centuries ago with the birth of, what’s referred to as, the Hasidic movement. Beginning with people like the Baal Shem Tov. The name Baal Shem Tov is fascinating, it’s usually thought of as a great person that renewed Judaism. Made it much more, much more spontaneous in terms of prayer – much more free, and much more mystical as well. The name, Baal Shem Tov, quite literally means Baal, meaning master, Shem Tov, of the good name. Which suggests that he had knowledge of the Divine names. This part’s not talked about as much he’s referred to as a wonder-worker, that he had all sorts of magical abilities the ability to juggle time – to play with time and space. The expression, sometimes used, is time juggling, which was one I was fascinated by. There’s a Rabbi friend of mine, actually, who gave it a fantastic, talk a few years ago, he looked at the name Ribbono Shel Olam, which literally translates as ‘master of space-time,’ This is one of the names that’s given to God, the master of space and time. So the idea is that if you could master the names, would it give you some, or more control over space and time? So you can see how tempting, maybe, some of this is and why they wanted to keep people away from what they call practical Kabbalah, actively applying this. Because we have all sorts of stories you find in the Talmud and in the Kabbalah itself.
And one that the people, perhaps, are most familiar with, is the famous story of the Golem of Prague. That’s the animation of a clay figure to protect the Jewish community of Prague by a Rabbi, Judah Loew, I think was the Maharal of Prague, who uses the Kabbalah, uses the Divine names to animate this figure of clay, this golem. He uses particular Hebrew words, the word that’s most famous that he uses is the word Emet which is like an on switch. It’s the first, middle, and last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It means truth and I get also if you add up the letters because each letter is also a number, it adds up to one of the Divine names. So it has all these different qualities to it.
AP: Yeah. And now there is still the belief that you can create a golem in the esoteric communities.
EC: Yes, I mean it’s seen in the books, the recipe books often found in one of the earliest kabbalistic texts the Sefer Yezirah, the book of formation. They’ve made an X-Files episode about this, years ago. This woman, whose husband is murdered, and she, to avenge him, she makes a golem and they show the whole process as they imagined it. At the end, when they want to deactivate the golem, they lick their finger and wipe off the Aleph which leaves the word Mem and Tav – Met which means dead, inert, inactive – like an off switch. So the stories of the golem; you only need to go to Prague today and see the way this story has become so much part of the tourist industry there. But there’s some weird stuff that goes on in terms of how this makes people think of the Jewish community and the associations which were prevalent in medieval times between Jews and sorcery. This became really, really problematic because, as I said, Kabbalah was the domain of so very few but here you have this idea that Judaism itself, in some way, is related to some sort of sorcery. Most people don’t know a lot about Judaism and most Christians, the only thing they know at that time, about Jews is that they’ve been excluded. They’re living these little Shtetls and ghettos they have this quality of oneness about them, they don’t believe in Jesus – as a result of that they’re seen as anti-Christ as a result of that they’re seen as “Antichrist“. It’s only a little jump from that. There you have this idea that the Jewish people are somehow sorcerers or even in league with the devil.
I mean in the Jewish tradition that there isn’t really this the same sort of developed Christian mythology about the devil or even Heaven and Hell in quite the same way but all of this was kind of projected onto all these fears. So you get, in terms of the history of anti-Semitism, you get these various blood libels, accusations, ridiculous accusations made against the Jews, they use the blood of Christian children in their rituals. Now blood isn’t even kosher you can’t use it – even if you’re eating meats you try and get rid of as much of the blood as possible. It was based on such fear and ignorance all these projections the Jew was essentially the Sorcerer, the Magus, this dangerous dangerous figure. They pray in this strange language, it isn’t Latin, you know, what is this text? So all these obsessions and if you look at the statue of Rabbi Judah Loew in Prague, he looks like this terrifying kind of sorcerer character. He doesn’t look like this sort of friendly, approachable Rabbi. Likewise, with some of the images of the golem, these monstrous images and so the image of the Jew in Prague, still, today, is one that kind of interwoven with fears and ideas of magic and sorcery.
Which again, if you place into the context of what I told you about Kabbalah, it’s very, very strange considering; one, how few people study it in the first place and then how almost no one would ever be encouraged to do the practical Kabbalah. There’s one Rabbi, one, and he died 10 -20 years ago, Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri. This is the only Rabbi I know of, and he was in his hundreds or something when he died, the only Rabbi I know of who was permitted to do the practical Kabbalah, to write amulets and these were always for things like the healing or for a couple to have a child. He was the only one I know of that actually a Rabbi said, yeah this guy this guy’s kosher, this guy’s okay for anyone else, you know, you don’t do this because how does this work. Well, I managed to get hold of one of his amulets so now I’ll send you a picture that you can sort of flash up during this you’ll see that it actually uses names of angels, very familiar, the same practice you’ll find in different forms of ceremonial magic.
AP: Even in Enochian magic they use a lot of…
EC: Yeah and you’ll see this in this amulet in this Kame’a that he’s written the names of certain angels to help. Now what he hasn’t done, and he was very clear that you don’t do this, is you don’t bind the angels in an oath. So if you’re working with, and in this case, working with angels. Certain, earliest stories of Solomon in terms of the building of the Temple, he’s working with angels and demonic forces and this kind of fired the imagination. So you get some text, like the Key of Solomon – The Greater and The Lesser Key – that’s all to do with angelic names and demonic names and various pentagrams and versions of Hebrew and divine names. But for this Rabbi, you’ll see that he just uses the angel’s names but he doesn’t bind them and the idea is, that if you want to help out, then please help out but I’m not going to bind you. Actually, I do know that, if you bind an angel or a demon they get a bit pissed off, and afterwards, once you’ve finished sort of the magic or the practical Kabbalistic requests, you have to deal with the aftermath. It’s a bit like riding a tiger, getting off is the hard part. So, as far as he was concerned, you don’t bind using oaths and this is, I think, still quite a big part of a lot of ceremonial magic like a binding. If you know the name, the secret name, you have power over it. So there is quite a lot of difference in the way this is used but I mean just in terms of angels so I think the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, Raphael – when you see ceremonial magicians and they’re casting their circles of protection. Often they’re using invoking these angelic entities and what’s interesting is how this is so much part of mainstream, not even esoteric, Kabbalah. When Jewish children and adults go to bed they will recite the bedtime-Shema. The Shema’s like the central statements of faith and Judaism.
“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”
“Shema Yisrael: Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad”
and as that sort of quality of oneness that you’re supposed to focus on. After that, there are some additional prayers and one of those is, essentially, calling the angels to the foot of your bed before you get to sleep.
I remember being absolutely fascinated when I stopped study some aspects of ceremonial magic was like it’s the angels again, they’re using them, they’re calling them and the only thing that was often missing was the reference to the Shekhinah, the Divine presence above. Usually, they just deal with the angels, the angelic forces which they’d also relate often to the elements. So you’d find this kind of more…
AP: Yeah, it’s like the four Archangels are related to the four corners and the four elements.
EC: So, you’d see that as well, They do this a lot in hermetic forms of Kabbalah and magical forms and it’s the magic of correspondence often. So, I mean, Crowley uses this, in hermetic you can use this. Each one of the Sefirot, the Divine attributes that’s shown in the Tree of Life has all these other associations. Now they have associations in the traditional sort of Kabbalistic traditions as well but they had all sorts of other things in Hermeticism, like, you might find this one now is associated with the goddess Sophia or this one’s associated with Isis or other Greek or Egyptian gods or goddesses. There’s a fair amount of astrology already in certain parts of Kabbalah – references to the planets – but again and this is a complicated area. You know that there are some versions of Jewish astrology but for the most part, again the idea is that, if you follow the various Halaqah, the Jewish ruling ritual, and that is supposed to protect you from the influences of the planets and this comes to the whole area called the Mazal, which can relate to stars and luck or fortune. Again, this is something that’s rarely spoken about but it is there. There’s quite a rich tradition of astrology, in that you’ll find in certain Jewish Cabbalists, even the more traditional, with a K, but it’s perhaps less explored.
I’ve got one of my Rabbi friends, Rabbi Aaron David Rubin. He has specialized in some of the ancient forms of Jewish astrology. So he’s certainly the expert there. He’s given talks in this in the past. But the idea here was that you don’t want to be under the influences of planets, you want to be free from them and so the idea was that if you can develop this perfect faith – this alleviates all these negative influences the evil eye or planetary influences. So, as you can see, there’s quite a lot of tensions.
AP: So, basically, there are a lot of differences between the traditional Kabbalah and how Kabbalah has been reinterpreted and adopted by ceremonial circles?
EC: Very much so. I mean even down to things like pronunciations of different names that probably that a Jewish person would never do, would be very, very cautious with that. You see them being used very freely and openly written and then used to invoke various angelic forces. I mean one of the first stories that I was seeing, that I remember, was from this Golden Treasury Of Jewish Tales I was read as a child and it forever got rid of that idea that angels were these wonderful, ethereal, beautiful… all the Cherubs, the Cherubim were these little chubby face babies – they were bloody terrifying. Every story, where an angel appears, the person faints or they freak out or they lose their mind. These terrifying celestial beings and there’s a picture, I remember, I’ll send you the picture since the bullet got kind of burned into my consciousness of these great Rabbis who are trying to conquer evil in the world and they call Sandalphon, the angel Sandalphon, and the picture of this angel and the Rabbi’s are all prostrated on the floor, turning their faces, they can’t even look, they’re absolutely terrified and they need to ask permission to recover their senses so they can either and even interact. Again, there seems to be within the non-Jewish traditions of Kabbalah they rush in where angels fear to tread, to borrow that old term. There seems to be a much more, yeah, just invoke this angel. It’ll be fine. Much more…
AP Yeah, because it’s an angel it’s not a demon so you’re gonna be fine. Maybe, in that case, it’s a Christian kind of interpretation we may say?
EC: Yeah, maybe. I mean they’re given a much more benign human appearance, I think, in Christian iconography. You know that they’re almost always winged human figures. They tend not to, you know… These descriptions of some of the angels, mind-blowing wheels within wheels or heads of lions and eagles and humans. Sometimes there is a bit of an overlap in terms of the appearance with the demonic. Some of the demonic entities are also described as having a human head, or the head of a bull or an eagle. So, being able to know the difference is quite different, it’s quite difficult as well. Something you’re warned a lot about. A term you hear, straight away, if you start studying the Zohar, it’s a term Achra Sitra, which translates as ‘the other side’ and this is slippery and this is when you might imagine you’re starting to get prophetic insights or powers or the power to heal and as always the question; where is that power coming from? Is it coming from the side of the Divine or is it coming from the Achra Sitra, which often imitates divine? So if you are having a book dictated to you by an angelic force, is it an angelic force, or is it actually demonic? Where does it come from?
P: So what’s the difference between angels and demons, since you mentioned that angels are not these benign figures? So what’s the difference then between angels and demons in Kabbalah?
EC: That’s an interesting question. The main difference, I think, is that everything is essentially under the Divine rule. There isn’t the same idea of independence and even some of the demonic forces, we’re told, and some they think, they also to study the Torah. There are also subservient to the Divine. It seems that the difference is their attitude towards humanity. They might have a more malevolent attitude, more jealousy. I mean, even at the beginning of creation, in certain discussions in the Talmud, you have certain that the Malikim, the angels, feeling a bit put out that you humans are being created but B’tselem Elohim, in the image of the Divine. Why are they being favoured in this way. Put in this garden. Given we’re told that Adam is almost co-creator in naming the creatures. We know the power of names in Kabbalistic texts, so this led to certain feelings, perhaps, of jealousy and this is sometimes related to the left-hand side of the Tree of Life. Related to Gevurah or judgments or restrictions – from this comes, what might refer to as, some of the more demonic forces, and these are often associated, I think, also with the tree of knowledge of good and evil, in contrast to the tree of life. That these are understood, often, as being the roots of some of the demonic forces that might seek to harm humans. So I think that tends to be something that’s approaching an answer, in terms of the distinction.
But yeah, in terms of the effect of encountering one, it’s still this encounter with the numinous sense of being overwhelmed. Something intruding into your reality that you’re rarely prepared for. Just as the four Rabbis entering the Pardes – you know that most of them are overcome. So there is this the sense of don’t explore too much in order to protect yourself and you don’t use these divine names or, if you do, you do so very, very carefully, very cautiously.
So most of what we have in Kabbalah today is, actually, you might say, a safer version in the form of what’s called Ḥăsīdus or Ḥăsīdut which came from the Hasidic tradition. They took Kabbalistic ideas and made them more accessible, approachable, relatable. They managed in that way, they moved away from some of the practices of using divine names and look to ordinary actions of a mysticism of everyday life, if you like, That every moment should be elevated and holy and sacred. So this became the fundamental core if you like of a Ḥăsīdut. It very much has it’s roots in, Kabbalah and Kabbalistic thought and thinking. But it doesn’t involve or concern itself with the practical aspects of Kabbalah even though it’s found it was called the Baal Shem Tov which, as I said before, suggests knowledge of the Divine names.
But many Rabbis will say if you pick up just an everyday prayer book, Siddur, and open it, you will find that all the prayers, most the prayers were composed by people that had Kabbalistic knowledge and who used various divine names, sometimes in acrostic forms or hidden within the text or within the prayer hidden in plain sight often. So, it’s there but it’s been rendered that’s in that sense sort of more safe than using it in a more practical ceremonial manner.
AP: Why do you think that Kabbalah appealed so much to people practising different forms of esotericism? Why do you think it’s so appealing and fascinating and has been implemented so much in these kinds of traditions?
EC: Yeah I think part ways to do with with the sense of its age, that it just seems so ancient, that some of these Kabbalistic teachings were told, were revealed to Adam. Some go all the way back to Abraham – these kinds of archetypal figures of the biblical narratives. And the idea that there is, beneath the Bible, beneath the revealed, that there is a concealed element too. So you find references to this sort of hidden knowledge, hidden texts and some of these again, I think a lot of this is very, very archetypal and it’s talking about types Jung was fascinated by Kabbalah and brings it into his ideas of alchemy, incorporates a lot of Kabbalistic language, particularly his Red Book which, itself, was the secret text until a few years ago. You know it was only recently published, his Red Book and then his Black Book is kind of own personal journey of individuation, an active imagination meeting these kinds of archetypal, Kabbalistic sort of entities and forms.
But I think there was something about this sense of antiquity, that it attracts people. And the idea that it was secret and the fact that even Jewish people themselves spoke about it with hushed tones gave it a sense of something that was, perhaps, taboo. Something that was concealed, esoteric, occult, forbidden. Asau(?) you’ll hear that word used certain times. Yeah, it is Asau(?) to practice this, it is Asau(?) to study this. Even so, certain things like studying Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot in the Kābôd(?). This was a restricted area of study. We’re not even talking about practical Kabbalah we’re talking about the more philosophical sort of theoretical. This, even, was restricted so you know just imagine what happens when you start to get to some of the good stuff. So, I think Hebrew itself, because of its age and because it was unknown to so many it had that sort of that quality.
I always imagined sometimes you know people look at tattoos have Chinese characters and they don’t really know what it means. it just looks amazing – it’s mystical at Eastern. I think it was perhaps something similar going on in the Renaissance and perhaps earlier with Hebrew. You know, what is this magical alphabet? This is the language that they believed the universe was created with – it’s the blueprint of creation. So what untapped powers are there in this language or in these liturgies in these divine names? So I think it was only a matter of time, really, before other traditions, if you like, became interested in and seized on these practices, these names. So I think it was it was partly to do with that sense of antiquity and idea that perhaps this is something really ancient. Perhaps this is the source, if you like, of many of these ideas.
AP: Similarly to why people now get interested so much in Shamanism because many practitioners believe that it’s the proto-religious form which comes before every religion.
EC: Yeah, and I think similar claims are made about Kabbalah. That it’s almost like it’s the primordial mysticism, if you like, it’s the one that comes first. I mean that’s very debatable. I mean this debate is to when you can actually pinpoint the beginnings of Kabbalah in the first place.
AP: It’s impossible to prove any of this…
EC: It’s something to do with that sense that it’s archaic, it’s ancient, it seems primordial and we don’t know a lot, really, about things like ancient Egyptian religion or magic. We really don’t know that much I know there are other, certain forms of Kemetic…
AP: Like Heka
EC: Yeah but you know I’ve noticed a lot of Hermetic practitioners or people interested in magic, well, they’ll refer to Moses as that great magician in the Egyptian hermetic traditions of course what they kind of play down a bit is that when that story is told in the Torah it’s given in a way to distinguish between divine, more theurgic forms of magic versus a mixture, perhaps, of what they write off as maybe conjuring or something that comes from the Achra Sitra, of the other side. They’re using Egyptian gods, pagan deities to do their bidding and of course, in the story, we should probably remember, this is when we start getting these images of staff swallowing staffs and snakes and a lot of it symmetry we end up seeing in alchemy as well. Alchemy is something we’ve spoken a little less off but you find even things like ‘as above so below’ well that’s something you find in the Kabbalah as well. It’s that central tenet, the sort of coming together, the blending, the union of the, if you like, Shechinah – the Divine Feminine with the Yesod, the Keter sense of the masculine and the feminine aspect of the Tree of Life, blending and coming together of findings, unification. The idea of unification is actually central and Kabbalah and Yichud, bringing together, almost, the disbursed fragments of divine names that have been broken up in the process of creation. Bring those back together this process was called Tikkun or Tikkun Olam – healing time-space.
Certain prayers or practices that we might say every day, and this isn’t even the Kabbalist, this is just the regular, the regular Jewish people, will just say, maybe at the start of one these rituals, a Shema Yichud? for the purpose of uniting, unifying the Divine name and then there might be a little formula that they say to join the Yud the Hey part of God’s name with the Vav and the Hey to bring those together. That certain actions that we have, in this world, make a real difference and I suppose this is one of the, what certain Christian groups would’ve seen as absolutely heretical, that God needs us, that human action, in a sense, it’s kind of like a partnership with the Divine through our actions in this world that that’s what it means by B’tselem Elohim, made in the image of the Divine.
AP: Is this heretic for… ?
EC: Well here’s the interesting thing. Yesterday’s heresies become today’s orthodoxies. So the Hasidim, of centuries ago, at the time they were Harams they were banned, they were seen as being these dangerous anti-rationalist, sort of crazy mystics- serve God with joy, that joy itself could be this form of Avodah Hashem, service to the Divine. They tended not to emphasize the scholarly, serious rationalism of some of the other, more mainstream, Jewish movements. So, at the time they were seen as the kind of dangerous renegades, in many ways, but over time that really kind of catches on. The kind of original Hasadim was this antinomian character in some ways. On one hand, yes, they do still carefully follow the Halaqa – the Jewish law but their attitudes towards it are much more, let’s say, playful, always emphasizing joy. Some of the other movements say the Musar movement, that was very, very popular in certain parts of Eastern Europe, I think Lithuania in particular, very serious, very sombre, not much smiling, and laughing. It’s a lot of self-recrimination and feeling bad and, you know, Hasidim, turn that on its head. So use these certain, contemporary Hasidic movements, like Lubavitch or Breslov, they’re really kind of happy people, dancing, singing, musicians really, really funny people. And at the core of what they’re doing is this Kabbalah that informs everything that they’re doing. The sense that there that their life needs to be part of this Tikkun, this effort of repairing of, healing the world.
So yeah it’s quite interesting to see that today’s… when we think of Orthodox, today when we think of the ultra-orthodox community we think of the Hasadim, we think of these people with the black hats, the fluffy hats, and the Payots on the side, of the hair and the beards. You know this tends to be what we think of and maybe…
AP: Yeah, I was asking especially because of what you said about the conception of God. That kind of exchange, that race between people and God. Sounds kind of erratic from a monotheistic point of view.
EC: On the other hand, there is still this kind of intimacy, even within the liturgy, Jewish people tend to refer to God as Avinu Malkeinu, Avinu like father, Malkeinu King. I think that kind of expresses polarity in terms of the way you relate and the way Hasidim relates to God. It’s very, very personal. I’ve been to places like Tsfat, which is actually where I bought my first kabbalistic books. That’s another story, that was an adventure in itself but you can hear sometimes these Kabbalists and Hasadim pray – a practice called Hitbodedut, where they pray out in the fields and the forests, out of the Synagogue, in nature. They’re encouraged to do so by the great Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. It was written from Ukraine and you hear them praying. When they speak to God and they’re saying ‘Tatty’, literally Daddy, Dad in a very, very intimate way of relating – like family you know just praying both in Hebrew the Lashon Kadesh – the holy language, but also in whatever vernacular they speak be it Yiddish or – usually Yiddish but even English. So there is very much that sort of intimacy.
I remember explaining this to a friend who was quite a well, not so much a friend because his beliefs, kind of, excluded me from his circle of friends. I think he saw me as a target to evangelize. He’s quite a fundamentalist Christian and I was trying to explain to him this language, of thinking of yourself as a child of the Divine. The Divine as being father or even mother, and that’s an interesting sort of development even in Kabbalah with a K, now, there seems to be much more emphasis on the Shechinah, the Divine feminine.
I’ve been studying Zohar with professor Daniel Matt and it’s very interesting, he’s really one of the new, great scholars of Kabbalah of this age and what’s interesting is how much students in the class are now talking about the Divine Feminine – the feminine aspects of the Divine. The way that we can reimagine, can restore, perhaps, some balance and that’s what Kabbalah, largely – the Tree of Life is essentially about balance. If you get balance you’re there, you know everything connects and that Tiferet, beauty at the centre that’s that harmony between the masculine and the feminine. But everything centres there, connects there. So that’s been very interesting, seeing how the emphasis changes, the text remains the same but the way we’ve read it changes over time. Where we place the emphasis is changing all the time so that’s been interesting to watch.
AP: Yeah, I think that’s quite true of every religion.
EC: I think so, I think so. You see it in Taoism. They would say know the masculine but keep to the feminine.
AP: There is a revival of the feminine aspect of the Divine I think that seems to be a trend across different religious movements.
EC: It is. Considering Jung’s work as well. He said; this is going to be the age where we need to recover, rediscover, integrate the anima. We need to stop excluding and repressing it. We need to properly integrate, incorporate it and I noticed that seems to be happening more and more in all different wisdom traditions – not just Kabbalah, Qabalah, how ever you want to say it.
AP: And what’s the meaning of… you sort of touched on it a bit but I wanted to I wanted you to expand more on the Tree of Life and what’s the philosophy and the meaning behind it in traditional Kabbalah as opposed to in ceremonial magic?
EC: Yeah, okay, in ceremonial magic it tends to do with correspondence and so that kind of magic and how this relates this planet, all…
AP: In astrology and the Tarot…
EC: In the traditional Kabbalistic tradition the Tree of Life, these are the Sefirot – the Divine attributes. It’s a way, the closest way we have to actually understand the Divine and to understand how to relate to the Divine to see these various qualities in balance and harmony. Qualities that we also possess both within mind, body, spirit – through different levels.
AP: Is it perceived as a progression from the tenth to the first?
EC: Yes, it’s sometimes termed ‘descent for the purpose of an ascent.’ It’s the process of creation is from the most unimaginable kind of abstract ideal to the physical concrete realities in this journey down the tree, through the four worlds. I’ll send you a little diagram you can probably flash up at some point. It starts from the most unknowable to our tangible reality if you like. All the way up from Keter or Ein Sof, the unending, infinite, eternal to Malchut, kingdom – this sense of foundation or presence. And so within this, the Divine qualities or attributes which we ourselves supposed to have as some quantum-like theurgy here, that we’re supposed to cultivate within ourselves and once we get the balance right we are more B’tselem Elohim, made in the image of the Divine. So you’ll notice that the Tree of Life – often it maps on to the human form. So you’ll be able to see that, hopefully, in the diagram that I send it, sort of, maps onto the body. This is Adam Kadmon, that primordial human, the blueprints for creation. So, again, it’s the creation of everything, time and space but it’s also about the creation of humanity and how a human is if you like, a microcosm, a microcosm image of the Divine within.
AP: How would they use the Tree of Life in traditional Kabbalah then? Would they use it in any way or is it just a way of depicting the creation and…
EC: In most theoretical, philosophical forms of Kabbalah it would be used mostly as a blueprint to better understand different divine qualities and attributes, different divine names; when they are used in the Torah, what this particular name means, which Sefirots it relates to. Always really careful, as well, to recognize that these aren’t separate gods or deities that they are parts of a whole. One way, one Rabbi explained to me, is it’s almost in the way that prism refracts light. It breaks up the white light into separate colours but it’s all part of that light, that one light, but the way you see it will differ according to our capabilities or what we’re able to receive – that’s what Kabbalah means, what we’re able to receive. So part of it is trying to harmonize, synchronize, resonate with this famous Tree of Life, with the Sefirot, to get the balance of these qualities right within ourselves. So…
AP: How would you do that I mean how would you use the Tree of Life?
EC: I’ll give you an example using three of the Sefirot. So let’s take the example of the right side of the Tree of Life. The Sefirot Chesed, which is often translated as loving-kindness which sounds very Buddhist. But since that quality of giving, of openness, and on the left-hand side, you’ll see the quality of Gevurah. Gevurah means, well it has lots of different meanings; one is restriction, judgements, strengths – it’s to do with limitation. So one side is about giving one side is about restriction, keeping your distance about boundaries. You can think of that as what happens if I don’t have the wisdom of balance. If I’m constantly giving and giving and giving and giving, I have nothing and I’m left with nothing to give. Or sense of contact – it’s an interesting one at the moment we’re living in [pandemic] times where we have to… wisdom tells us to keep separate to keep away from one another. So this is that wisdom, this knowing, in a sense, when to give, when to embody this loving-kindness, when to keep our distance, when to have that sense of restriction. That balance is Tiferet is beauty that harmony in between. I think you can probably hear my little one in the background. So that’s how the Kabbalists would understand this, they’re looking at these divine qualities and trying to recognize, realize, cultivate them within themselves, within their day-to-day lives.
AP: it is a form of, I wouldn’t say meditation, but rather a contemplation of the aspects of your life that you have to integrate in order to be whole and closer to the Divine, to your divine nature?
EC: Yeah, I mean, if you want to do it you’d probably find what we refer to as Jewish meditation. I think Aryeh Kaplan, in the sixties and seventies, he’s one of the first to use that term and it’s probably mainly because there’s a lot of Jewish people going East and he wanted to demonstrate that within your tradition, within Kabbalah you find meditation. So what’s called Jewish meditation today is often, actually, Kabbalah theoretical philosophical with some safer aspects of the practical. But there aren’t many people that teach this. A lot of what’s called Jewish meditation, today, might actually be kind of adapted forms of Buddhist or Hindu practice. But there are some forms that have their roots in the Biblical tradition in Sepher Yetzirah or the Zohar, these texts. There aren’t that many people that teach them. I think I should refer, recently, on my Facebook profile to one of my friends, who’s a Hasidic Rabbi, who’s actually, just recently, offering these classes, these teachings.
AP: Yeah, I saw that on your Facebook.
EC: Yeah, I think I don’t know how much of an audience there is for it but, you know, it’d be interesting to see. But if you wanted to encounter, how to integrate these. Particularly things, like the Tree of Life and these divine attributes that’s where you’d find it. You’d find it in what’s referred to as Jewish meditation today. These practices, various Kabbalistic and Hasidic practices, practices of Hasidut, this is where you find the practical application of it.
AP: That’s very interesting. Yeah, thank you very much for this interview, Elliot. It was really fascinating and I’m really sure that the members of the symposium will really enjoy this conversation together.
EC: Ok. Take care and be well.
AP: So this is it for today’s video. If you liked, it SMASH the like button, subscribe to the channel, activate the notification bell that you won’t miss any future video and, as always, stay tuned for all the academic fun.
Bye for now.
Dr Elliot Cohen’s Email: e.cohen@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
N.B. While every attempt has been made to identify the Hebrew and Yiddish words used, some spellings are questionable and have been identified with question marks.