Talk:Hermetic Qabalah

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Kabbalah (inactive)

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Transliteration of Hebrew

e are a few places in which I would transliterate slightly differently. In most cases that's not a big deal — there are many possible variations, none authoritative; I tend to use transliterations that reflect the original Hebrew spelling (e.g. 'ph' for letter Peh, 'ah' or 'eh' for final He, and not doubling consonants when representing a single hebrew letter). I don't think we need to offer multiple variations though, except perhaps for Qabalah, since it's a word used in the title.

The Tau you have transliterated as "t", which is indeed its pronunciation; I have however most often seen it transliterated as "th" for some reason, and Teyth (pronounced as "t") has most often been transliterated "th". I'm happy enough to do it the other way round, "t" for Tau and "th" for Teyth, since I don't know why it was so arse about face in the first place.

Now I find the transliteration Ayin, En Soph and Or En Soph rather odd. Firstly "Ayin" is a common transliteration for the letter name, and means "eye" or "fountain": OYN. The word here is quite different: Ain: AYN. That could confuse some people. Secondly, it's the same word as is later transliterated En, and we should really be consistent. Thirdly, I haven't seen the name ordered Or En Soph with the Or ("light") at the beginning; I've only ever seen it at the end as Ain Soph Aur. I suggest Ain, Ain Suph and Ain Suph Aur (Hebrew AIN, AIN SUP, AIN SUP AUR).

Nice work so far, by the way. Fuzzypeg ☻ 02:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I notice Tau is elsewhere in the article transliterated 'th' as in Kether and Daath. That's far more common than the other way round; I'll standardise it to that. We can always revert if you don't like it. Fuzzypeg ☻ 03:00, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Tau sound is 't' in Sephardi pronunciation, 'th' in Ashkenazi. The pronunciation of the letter 'a' is 'Ayin', but when the 'a' appears in the transliterated word, it's pronounced as 'Ein'. The transliterated spellings don't really matter as long as they're consistent in an article, though you'll find that there'll be differences when you're using a direct quote. Abafied 07:32, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When you speak of the letter 'a' it's quite unclear what you mean. Do you mean א (letter name אלף, 'Aleph, "Ox"), or do you mean ע (letter name עין, "Ayin, "Eye, Fountain")? Neither is exactly an "a" sound, since the first is a glottal stop and the second is a pharyngeal stop (in the pronunciations I was taught at least). However the letter Ayin doesn't appear in the transliterated word pronounced 'Ein'. It's Aleph that appears in that word. 'Ain, as in 'Ain Suph Aur, is spelt אין, and means "nothing". If it were spelt עין it would be pronounced slightly differently and would mean "eye". I normally use the convention of putting a single apostrophe before the a to denote a glottal stop (aleph) and a double apostrophe for a pharyngeal stop (ayin). That's why you sometimes see Daath spelt Da"ath.

I have forgotten the differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardic. I normally just pronounce how I was taught, so I'm having to revise a bit here. But I agree, any standardised transliteration will do, and we'll just put up with differences in quoted text. Cheers, Fuzzypeg ☻ 02:24, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings and salutations, I am probably going to put the cat among the pigeons here but... I think this very erudite and interesting talk of the correct transliteration of Hebrew might be moving into original research. Remember, this page is devoted to explaining Hermetic Qabalah as exemplified by those who have published regarding this particular path. Because of this I suggest that the transliterations set out in the books of the practitioners of this system be used. The obvious counter argument to this is that Hermetic Qabalah is not a static system but a living evolving thing and, as such, preferred transliterations may change. However I find myself leaning toward the former position. We are here describing a system as it is set down in the published works of its proponents. Some of these proponents had little or no Hebrew and this is reflected in their work. It is this work that we must conform to here if we are not to stray into original research.

Accordingly I suggest we go with the transliterations used by Fortune, Crowley, Regardie et al. In their writings. All of these use the transliterations which we find, for example in Fortune's The Mystical Qabalah i.e.

"The Qabalists recognise four planes of manifestation, and three planes of unmanifestation, or Negative Existence. The first of these is called AYIN, Negativity; the second, EN SOPH, the Limitless; the third, OR EN SOPH, the Limitless Light. It is out of this last that Kether is concentrated. These three terms are called the three Veils of Negative Existence depending back from Kether; in other words, they are the algebraic symbols that enable us to think of that."

Morgan Leigh 01:06, 11 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to mention that these transliterations are set out in Mathers' The Kabalah Unveiled and can be found at Mather's Table.

Morgan Leigh | Talk 01:58, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Morgan Leigh, I don't believe it's original research, since we are not trying to invent a method of transliteration off the tops of our heads, but are trying to choose the most appropriate method already established. No insult intended, but the example you cite is a pretty shocking example, since it transliterates the same word אין (meaning "not", "without", "nothing") two different ways (AYIN and EN) in the same sentence! The first version that it gives, AYIN, is doubly confusing because it is by far the most common transliteration for a quite different Hebrew word, עין, which is a very common word in Qabalah, being both the name of a letter and the word for "eye" or "fountain". I guess Fortune just confused the similar-sounding words, and demonstrated her poor grasp of Hebrew (she may have a better understanding of other areas of Qabalah). I believe the most common (and clearest) form of transliteration nowadays is that exemplified by either Paul Foster Case or Crowley. I don't have my books here, so I can't check for sure, but I think this is actually the form we have been using.

Also, this example is the only time I've ever seen OR AIN SUPH (by whatever transliteration) rather than the normal ordering of the words: AIN SUPH OR. That seems to be a bizarre attempt to make the words comply with English grammatical rules, literally "light (OR) without (AIN) limit (SUPH)". Cheers, Fuzzypeg ☻ 05:06, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Fuzzypeg, No offense is taken, in fact, I agree with you about the example. The reason I included it is exactly to show that Fortune had very poor Hebrew indeed. Maybe it is worth our writing something which mentions all this because this can be very confusing to new readers.

Morgan Leigh | Talk 10:35, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kabbalah in film and fiction

There is a section of the Kabbalah article, Kabbalah in film and fiction, which mostly is a list of films with Kabbalistic themes. Since the list seems more of Hermetic Qubalah interest, I am thinking of moving the list there....if there is no objection. Kwork 22:18, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The only obvious candidates for moving here are Promethea and Foucault's Pendulum. If you want to move these, feel free. Fuzzypeg ☻ 23:01, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that, almost without exception, they come under the heading of Hermetic (not Jewish) Kabbalah. But if it is not wanted here, I will simply remove it instead of moving it here. Kwork 11:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Tarot in Qabalah not a "proven fact"

How do you "prove" that Tarot is part of Qabalah? Well, a whole load of Qabalist authors say it is, so that's good enough for me. There's a basic problem with saying that anything is part of Qabalah, which is that there are different schools of thought and no single authority, however Tarot has, since the time of Eliphas Levi, been widely recognised as a key attribution of the paths of the Qabalistic Tree of Life.

There seems to be an underlying issue here, that a certain editor seems to be trying to distance tarot from occultism. This editor has made sweeping changes to any article that mentions tarot in an occult context, by explicitly calling it "occult tarot", and creating an Occult tarot page which is a redirect to the rather inappropriate article Tarot reading.

This editor doesn't seem to know much about occultism, but has reverted a few of my corrections nonetheless. Any help in educating this person would be much appreciated. Fuzzypeg ★ 05:39, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With all do respect, occultism is not the only aspect of tarot. The cards were made for a trick taking card game still played in Europe today. Information about tarot game playing is now becoming more common in the English speaking world. Tarot should not be treated exclusively in connection with the occult. The cards are also used for game playing. Wikipedia articles should reflect these facts. They should reflect a world wide view of the topic. The occult use of tarot cards should be specified as "occult tarot" Writers on the topic such as Michael Dummett, Jess Karlin and others have used this term. It should never be implied that the occult is the only aspect of tarot.Smiloid (talk) 08:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm aware of the history of tarot. I think you'll find that we're not treating tarot as exclusively the domain of occultism; you, however, are treating tarot as exclusively the domain of game-playing. This may originally have been true, but is now a false distinction. You're also falling over the English language in your hurry to sweep all uses of tarot that you find disagreeable into some other term, such as "occult tarot" or "tarot reading": it doesn't matter what the term is, as long as it's not your jealously guarded "tarot".

I could really use some input from other editors here; User:Smiloid has a major campaign going on here spanning a dozen articles, and he's just not listening to reason or evidence. Fuzzypeg ★ 01:14, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, for anyone who wants to join in, most of the discussion so far has been at Talk:Occult tarot. Fuzzypeg ★ 01:15, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have created a section on Talk:Tarot for voting on the proposed merge of Tarot reading and Tarot games into Tarot. Please go there to vote or comment further. Morgan Leigh | Talk 03:04, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hermetic Qabalah did not exactly absorb the tarot as implied by this article. This article does not acknowledge how this doctrine TRANSFORMED it. The association of tarot trumps with the Tree of Life has been an important pillar of occult tarot. Because it was very influential on the perception of tarot as a tool for the occult and divination, the article should place a greater emphasize on that.Smiloid (talk) 21:35, 13 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This article doesn't really say much at all on the subject of Tarot. There's a great deal of information that should be eventually added, and it all involves work tracking down references. Feel free to jump in and help! Fuzzypeg ★ 22:06, 13 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The original origins of or "true" nature of "Qabalah"

It should be noted that at least one author believes the origins of Qabalah are not in Hebrew/Jewish mysticism, but a western tradition originating in classical Greece with Indo-European cultural roots that was adopted and passed off by the Jewish mystics as their, or an adopted Egyptian, ancient tradition when in fact it is much newer and western or old Indo-European rather than Semitic / Hamitic. This would make "Hermetic Qabalah" then the true or rightful "Qabalah" (even though the word "Qabalah" itself is hebrew) over the Christian 'Cabalah' & Jewish 'Kabalah'

For example: with the decline of paganism Jewish theologians were able to incorporate the gematria and other systematized scheme of the 'tree of life' to their exclusive rites unmolested with their own concept and words in a monotheistic framework, and not be seen as suspect, when Christians would have been persecuted for doing such things as "pagans" due to the fact that this would have been something practiced among those enthic cultural groups before being weened to the monotheistic church. While the Jewish groups, being the people who didn't have such indigenous practice and were not suspect for being anything other than a monotheistic group, wouldn't have had the same social pressure if they did it. Besides being more secretive and cut off from the Christian majority in those parts and doing such only among themselves and even in within a select group. I don't think that's his exact argument but see for reference: "The Greek Qabalah: Alphabetic Mysticism and Numerology in the Ancient World, Kieren Barry, Samuel Weiser, 1999. ISBN 1-57863-110-6" ....it might be interesting to note that at least some adhere to the belief that "Hermetic Qabalah" is the original "Qabalah" in this article. 4.242.192.241 (talk) 13:23, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done. (As a follower of Jewish Kabbalah) I've been (often without loging in) writing up this page. I expanded the history section, beginning it with your cited Qabalah origins view, as you explained it above (also comparing it with traditional Jewish, and academic Jewish views). I hope I got the rest of the history additions right - a follower of Hermetic Qabalah should check the text - eg. including Cornelius Aggripa as a Hermetic Qabalist, adding Rosicrucianism and esoteric Freemasonary orders, adding Francis Barrett's The Magus, including Eliphas Levi's ceremonial magic revival as relevant to Hermetic Qabalah (Is it? I think so? due to his advocacy of Cabala?). The page needs more examples and figures in history. I hope I got the Renaissance connection of Hermetic Qabalah with Christian Cabala correct - it seems to me that only from the post-Renaissance and Enlightenment on did Hermetic Qabalah divorce itself from Christian Cabala, and become either esoteric Christian or non-Christian?

I added a new section title on the relationship of Hermetic Qabalah to Alchemy, Astrology and Magic - with an "empty section" fill request tag. I hope someone knowledgable can fill this in. The image I added shows that Cabala related to these other occult disciplines, I think? Minimally, this can be compiled by reading and pasting some sentances from Alchemy, Theurgy, Invocation pages etc. though I hope someone cam provide more explicit details. Eg. how exactly was Cabala related to Alchemy? There's a post on Talk:Kabbalah page that says it was:

"The article fails to describe the relationship between Kabbalah and Alchemy, even though the numerology of kabbalah is the algorythmical basis for the transmutational processes used in alchemy." (I replied to it there)

April8 (talk) 23:27, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Abyss?

How come there's no mention of the Abyss? There's a WP article on the Abyss in Thelema, but the concept did not originate with Crowley. Seems like a strange omission of such an important concept. --Smcg8374 04:23, 23 January 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smcg8374 (talk • contribs)

correction

I made a small correction to the text accompanying the image from Stefan Michelspacher's Speculum artis et Naturae. This image is not from 1654; the text was first printed in german in 1615 and in latin (including the shown image) in 1616. It now has the correct year, 1616. The Herzog August library has a photocopy available online of the 1616 latin edition should anyone wish to verify for themselves.

7 Vital Organs of Antiquity connected to 7 Classical Planets

Some alchemists (e.g. Paracelsus) adopted the Hermetic Qabalah assignment between the 7 vital organs and the 7 Classical planets as follows:^[1]

Planet	Organ
Sun	Heart
Moon	Brain
Mercury	Lungs
Venus	Kidneys
Mars	Gall bladder
Jupiter	Liver
Saturn	Spleen

- Benjamin Franklin 75.74.130.115 (talk) 16:38, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Cite error: The named reference BallParacelsus was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

User: Jayaguru-Shishya

The general tendency is that Jewish religion works will use the spelling "Kabbalah" for themselves while hermetic or western esoteric/"mystery tradition"/occultist works will use the spelling Qabala or Qabalah instead. Nevertheless this is only a general but not a universal characteristic and so one has to check the actual text and the author of a work in order to be able to identify it as "Jewish" or "Western occultist/esoteric". Lon Milo DuQuette is a prominent contemporary author within the hermetic occultist tradition who also aligns himself with and writes on Thelema. As such he has to be considered an author of Hermetic Qabalah even though he might have decided to include in the title of his work the spelling "kabbalah". It happens that i own all the works included in the bibliography of this article except the Paul A. Clark work. As such i know the texts in them but also i identify all of these authors as western esoteric/occultist since their other books tend to deal with subjects such as Thelema, ceremonial magick, talismans, tarot, hermeticism and related subjects. A very different perspective from, for example an author on Kabbalah such as Gershom Sholem, whose other works deal mostly with Jewish religion theology and history.--Eduen (talk) 21:32, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your response, Eduen! That clarifies a lot. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 20:41, 23 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Middle Pillar

Article needs a discussion of the pillars, especially the middle pillar and the concept of ascending it. Skyerise (talk) 18:42, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Major sourcing issues throughout: expert/secondary scholarship urgently needed

As valuable and appreciated as the work that has gone into this article so far is, there's a major problem throughout this article which is quite serious: it is written almost entirely off the back of what amount to primary texts of Hermetic Qabalah, each with very particular idiosyncratic worldviews. There is minimal reliance on scholarly secondary sources - or indeed genuinely secondary sources in general - throughout the article.

Of particular concern here is the Teachings section. Early twentieth-century esoteric authors such as Dion and Waite are cited directly in the article's account of Hermetic Qabalah, but are cited as if they are somehow third party sources who can state definitively what the doctrine of "Hermetic Qabalah" in general is to a secular audience. They are not and can not. For a secular, non-confessional encyclopedia, a religious/spiritual/esoteric/etc. author is an authority on themselves and themselves only. This section needs a rewrite which either recasts the ideas its describing as the ideas of the authors cited - not Hermetic Qabalists in general or in the abstract - or starts from scratch with providing the accounts of actual reliable scholarly sources. The way this article stands, it would be the equivalent of the article on Christianity citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church for its definition of Christianity, but phrasing it as "Christians [in general] believe X" instead of saying the "the Catechism of the Catholic Church says X".

That's the main big issue, but similar problems are peppered throughout. Kieran Barry is cited as though he were somehow an authority on the relationship between Qabalah and Gnosticism. He is not; he is a seeming arbitrarily-chosen occult writer with highly heterodox views, the relevance of which to the article is far from clear. The problem isn't the particular source here so much as the fact that the article in many places takes certain vague notions about the topic as a starting point and then "puts in" sources to try and construct and argument to legitimize the claim. This is not how you write an encyclopedia. It is entirely irrelevant whether a Wikipedia author thinks facts A, B, or C are true or untrue, or even whether they can forge a convincing argument proving facts A, B, or C. Wikipedia does not make arguments. The forms of claims it can legitimately make are extremely limited: Wikipedia can say "primary source A says X [citation]", "secondary source B argues X [citation]", or "X [citation to a reliable secondary secondary or tertiary source C, presuming C is sufficiently authoritative that its statement X is not reasonably disputed]". That's it.

If you cannot directly and appropriately source a claim, then the claim does not belong on Wikipedia. Some of the rather technical arguments about things like the nature of Ein sof, or whether such and such a view is panentheist, etc, on this talk page is indicative of the problem running through the article: counter-intuitive as it might seem, whatever any of us think or think we know about a given topic is irrelevant. We're not here to argue points of fact: we are here to ascertain the reliability of existing sources on the topic at hand, and synthesize those sources as reasonably and transparently as possible. Wikipedia does not record truth or produce knowledge, it aggregates sources as accurately as possible while remaining readable and informative.

There are some issues here are there with some of the early bits of the history section, but the later parts seem relatively sound.

The article needs either a drastic cull of content (which wouldn't be ideal) or substantial reworking from someone familiar with the current secondary scholarly literature on Hermetic Qabalah specifically. There is of course the problem that there may not be a whole lot of existing scholarly work on Hermetic Qabalah specifically. By "specifically", I mean to stress that scholarship on "Hermeticism" or "Kabbalah" or "Christian Cabalah" or "the influence of Hermeticism and Kabbalah on person X" is not scholarship on the particular construct of "Hermetic Qabalah". And I really do stress scholarly here, because very little other material in this area is at a sufficient remove from esoteric belief and practice to constitute a genuinely secondary source. --Pseudo-Pseudo-Dionysius (talk) 17:37, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Pseudo-Pseudo-Dionysius (like the nickname, by the way)! I hear you. Many, many Wikipedia articles are like this. This is not how they are supposed to be, also not according to Wikipedia's own core content policies (see WP:PSTS, WP:INDEPENDENT, etc.). But the trouble is finding someone familiar with the current secondary scholarly literature on Hermetic Qabalah specifically who we can also get to edit, and to keep editing Wikipedia. Experts tend to not stay here for long, because to be an expert and to edit Wikipedia one needs to have a humongous amount of patience (see WP:RANDY; WP:CHEESE). Most people don't. If I can give you one advice: don't focus to much on the bad stuff, but focus on WP:BOLDly improving what you can, working on what you find interesting to work on. It's no use to complain at talk pages: talk pages are there to discuss when there's a disagreement, but if you truly improve an article, most editors will be happy to ignore you. That sounds harsh, but sometimes it's rather a blessing. It's great fun to make Wikipedia actually better. The only true reward lies there. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:05, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Secondary Sources on Esoteric Topics

Just adding that it is challenging to find _primary_ information on esoteric topics and the internet is not a good source for this information. I would have to look and see if any universities study esoteric tops and/or occult practices. They are mostly hidden (the meaning of the word occult, e.g.: the Sun is occulted by the Moon during a solar eclipse) for a reason. Personally, I'm not sure Wikipedia should even try to cover these topics. At heart, they are scientific but that is occulted. Sorry. Couldn't resist. RoseSuna (talk) 02:41, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rose. While certainly this type of material is harder to find quality sources on than other religious topics, this sort of thing does exist: the academic study of Western esotericism is a tricky but rapidly-growing field.

The problem with esotericism and primary sources isn't really anything to do with "secrecy" as such: these ideas have long and wide paper trails. The problem is more so that the de facto primary texts in areas like Hermetic Qabalah invariably frame themselves as secondary texts: i.e. where someone like Dion Fortune is developing new ideas or reformulating older ones, she's framing them as ancient ones stretching back to Hermes or whoever else. This is sort of how modern (i.e. Renaissance to the present) esotericist/occultist discourse functions by definition. Ultimately, without sufficient evidence, 19th or 20th century texts about Hermetic Qabalah are primary texts making theological claims, not secondary texts making factual claims. Wikipedia is not in the business of interpreting primary texts: its job is to collate accurate, and where possible academic, secondary material.

The issue with the article isn't that Hermetic Qabalah is too unknowable by rational knowledge to write about. It's that:

a) what has been written in the article so far ignores basic scholarly standards and cites atypical religious texts as factual information,

b) from a scholarly perspective Hermetic Qabalah is (roughly) a 19th/early-20th development of previous Western esoteric systems - but its definition and boundaries are a bit fuzzy, so it's not easy to discern what needs to be included/excluded, and

c) there's not a whole lot of academic material that focuses specifically on the history of Hermetic Qabalah as an idea. Ultimately its a name for a cluster of interrelated occult systems of correspondences that use Kabbalistic ideas like the Sephirot as anchor points, but existing scholarship tends to focus on given historical movements (say, the Golden Dawn, Theosophy, etc.) over concepts like these. Pseudo-Pseudo-Dionysius (talk) 20:01, 14 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Slant Toward Crowley

This article, as well as a few others, relies heavily on the history and ideas of Alistair Crowley, at the exclusion of other lineages and ideas. I think there is a way that we can balance these out a bit, so that readers do not get the idea that modern Occultism/Hermeticism/Magic is mostly based on Crowley. Does anyone have any ideas? I think looking more into authors/organizations in the modern-day Golden Dawn groups & offshoots, as well as some others like Martinism, etc. are a good place to start. AnandaBliss (talk) 14:12, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[BallParacelsus-1] Cite error: The named reference BallParacelsus was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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