Die kabala pdf

New York: New American Library, Kabbalah also Cabala, Kabala, Qabalah A Jewish system of theosophy, philosophy, science, magic and mysticism founded on the Torah, developed since the middle Ages and comprising an important part of Western occultism. The kabbalah is a means for achieving union with God while maintaining an active life in the mundane world. In its role in Western Magic, the kabbalah is the science of letters, the universal language from which all things are created.

This science of letters is used to create words and sounds in Ritual. According to legend, the kabbalah was taught by God to a group of angels, who, after the Fall, taught it to man in order to provide man a way back to God.

Moses included it in the first four books of the Pentateuch, but left it out of Deuteronomy. He initiated 70 elders into the kabbalah, who continued the tradition of passing it down orally.

David and Solomon were kabbalistic adepts. Eventually, the wisdom was written down. The kabbalah is a body of writings by anonymous authors. The origins of the Sefer Yezirah date to the eight century. From its beginnings, the mysticism of the kabbalah was similar to that of gnosticism, including concepts on magic, cosmology and angels. The kabbalah holds that God is both immanent and transcendent; God is all things, both good and evil; all things make up the whole of an organized universe; and letters and numbers are keys to unlocking the mysteries of the universe see Gematria.

God, En Soph or Ain Soph, is boundless and fills the universe. From God come 10 emanations, called sephirot, of angels and men, that form the structure of the Tree of Life and represent aspects of the divine. The Tree of Life shows the descent of the divine into the material world and the path by which man can ascend to the divine while still in the flesh.

Each sephirah is a level of attainment in knowledge. The sephirot are organized in three triangles, with the 10th sephirah resting at the base. The triangles represent a portion of the human body: the head, arms and legs; the 10th sephirah represents the reproductive organs. The triangles are aligned on three pillars, on the right mercy the male principle , on the left Severity the female principle and in the middle mildness, a balance between the two.

The sephirot and their names and aspects are:. Chokmah, wisdom 3. Binah, understanding 4. Chesed, mercy, greatness 5. Geburah, strength, rigor 6. Tiphareth, beauty, harmony 7. Netzach, victory, force 8.

Hod, splendor 9. Yesod, foundation The cosmos is divided into four worlds: Atziluth, the world of archetypes, from which are derived all forms of manifestation; Briah, the world of creation, in which archetypal ideas become patterns; Yetzirah, the world of formation, in which the patterns are expressed; and Assiah, the world of the material, the plane we perceive with our physical senses.

Each sephirah is divided into four sections in which the four worlds operate. The sephirot also comprise the sacred name of God, which is unknowable and unspeakable. The Bible gives various substitutes, such as Elohim and Adonai. The four letters of YHVH correspond to the four worlds. The magical applications of the kabbalah were recognized as early as the 13th century. During the renaissance, alchemists and magicians used combinations of kabbalistic numbers and divine names in rituals and incantations.

The Tetragrammaton was held in great awe for its power over all things in the universe, including Demons. Beginning in the late 15th century, the kabbalah was harmonized with Christian doctrines to form a Christian kabbalah, the proponents of which claimed that magic and the kabbalah proved the divinity of Christ.

Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim included the kabbalah in his De Occulta Philosophia, published in , which resulted in its erroneous associations with witchcraft. Also in the 16th century, alchemical symbols were integrated into the Christian kabbalah. Jewish study of the Kabbalah peaked by the 19th century and then declined. The kabbalah formed part of the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. In some traditions of Witchcraft and Paganism, the Tree of Life is used for pathworking, magic intended for self-realization.

Branches of the Kabbalah There are four main, overlapping branches of the Kabbalah: 1. It is the realm of action in daily life. Demonology in the Kabbalah Most of the Demon lore is part of the Practical Kabbalah, a syncretic blend of Talmudic and Midrashic lore, and adapted Arabian, Christian, and Eastern European Demonologies and folk beliefs.

The Tree of Life The sephirot form the central image of kabbalistic meditation, the Tree of Life, a ladder map that depicts the descent of the divine into the material world, and the path by which humans can ascend to the divine while still in the flesh. Organization of the Tree Each sephirah is a state of consciousness and a level of attainment in knowledge: mystical steps to unity with God.

The sephirot and their names and aspects are: 1. Further Reading: Bardon, Franz. The Key to the True Kabbalah. Salt Lake City: merkur Publishing, Fortune, Dion. York Beach, me. Gray, William G. Paul, minn. Levi, Eliphas. Transcendental Magic. First published in First published Mathers, S.

The Kabbalah Unveiled. London: routledge and kegan Paul, Scholem, Gershom. Translated by James Freake. Noch immer oder erst recht behaupten sich im Spanish Literature. First published in The Gnostic Kabalistic Verb. Buscando a Dios en Las Tinieblas. En esta novela el autor trata por medios racionales de explicar la existencia de esa poderosa y desconocida fuerza que gobierna el universo.

Jerome spoke in his mystical interpretation of the alphabet as the sign. Even the symbol of Christianity, the cross, is plainly indicated in the Old Testament, either by the tree of life which God placed in the earthly paradise, or by the supplicating attitude of Moses when he spread his arms towards heaven to implore for victory of Israel over Amalek; or, finally, by the miraculous rod which changed the bitter waters into sweet in the desert Morah. According to Reuchlin, God manifested Himself to man under three different aspects during the three great religious periods ordinarily distinguished since the creation, and to each of these aspects there corresponds a name which characterizes Him perfectly.

Dating from that epoch Kabbalistic ideas became the object of more general interest, and they came to be regarded as serious and important not only in works of erudition, but also in the scientific and religious movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Cornelius Agrippa we find a dual personality; one, the author of "de Occulta Philosophia" published in Cologne in and , the enthusiastic defender of all the reveries of mysticism, the impassionate adept of all the fantastic arts; and the other, the discouraged skeptic who deplores the uncertainty and the vanity of the sciences.

On the contrary, by losing sight of the metaphysical side of the system, i. But Agrippa, the skeptic, Agrippa recovered from all his intoxications, and, so to speak, restored to the use of reason, recognized the rare antiquity of the Kabbalistic ideas and their relationship to the various sects of Gnosticism; 20 and it was also he who pointed out the resemblance between the diverse attributes recognized by the Kabbalists, otherwise called the ten Sefiroth and the ten mystic names spoken of by St.

Jerome in his letter to Marcella. De Occulta Philos. As far as I know, Postel was the first to translate into Latin the most ancient and the most obscure monument of the Kabbalah: "The Book of.

De Vanitate scient, c. Formation" Sefer Yetzirah , 21 a work ascribed at times by a fabulous tradition to the patriarch Abraham, at times even to Adam himself. As far as can be judged from this translation, which is as obscure as its text, it appears to us in general to be faithful. But nothing useful can be gathered from the commentaries which follow the text and in which the author, simulating the apostle of some new religion, uses his wealth of erudition to justify the deviations of an unruly imagination.

Postel is also credited with an unpublished translation of the Zohar which we have searched for in vain among the manuscripts of the royal library. Pistorius has set for himself a more useful and a more modest aim. He endeavored to unite in one single collection all the writings published on the Kabbalah or imbued with its spirit; but for unknown reasons he stopped his work when it was but half done.

Of the two enormous volumes which were originally to comprise the work, one was devoted to all the Kabbalistic books written in Hebrew, and, consequently, under the influence of Judaism; the other was devoted to the Christian Kabbalists, or to use the words of the author, "to those who professing Christianity are always distinguished by a pious and honest life, and whose writings, therefore, no one would repulse as Jewish ramblings.

But only the last volume appeared. This volume contains, besides the Latin translation of the Sefer Yetzirah and the two works of Reuchlin already mentioned, also a mystical, altogether arbitrary commentary on Pico de la Mirandola's theses, 24 a Latin translation of the work of Joseph of Castile which served as basis for "de Verbo Mirifico" and, finally, different treatises of two Jewish authors, one of whom was led by the study of the Kabbalah to embrace Christianity; this one Paul Ricci Paulus Riccius , the physician of Emperor Maximilian I; the other is the son of the renowned Abravanel, or Judah Abravanel, better known as Leon the Hebrew.

Paris, , 16mo. Tome I. Basel, , fol. Ricci, who paid more attention to the allegorical form than to the mystical foundation of the same traditions, contents himself by following Reuchlin's lead at a distance; and like him, he tries to demonstrate, by Kabbalistic procedure, all the essential beliefs of Christianity.

This is the character of his work "Of the Heavenly Agriculture. But unlike them he does not date back the tradition which he explains, to the patriarchs or to the father of the human race. He is content in the belief that these traditions were already in vogue at the time when Christ began to preach his doctrine, and that they have paved the way for the new covenant; for, according to him, those thousands of Jews who adopted the Gospel without abandoning the faith of their fathers were no others but the Kabbalists of those days.

I shall yet mention here Joseph Voysin, whose chief merit about the Kabbalah is that he faithfully translated from the Zohar several texts on the nature of the soul, 31 and then hasten to works more important at least because of the influence they exerted.

It is to be noted, though, that he is cited by Herrera among the Jewish philosophers philasophorum nostratium as Rabbi Judah Abarbanel. Porta coelor. II, ch. The first is a refutation of the philosophers who. Cabala cujus praecipui haud dubie fuere cultores primi hebraeorum Christi auditorum et.

IV, ad init. Israel filii Mosis de anima, etc. Adjectis commentariis ex Zohar; Paris,. His Theologia Judaeorum contains nothing of the Kabbalah. The name of Kirchner can not be spoken without deep reverence. He was a living encyclopedia of all the sciences. No science was entirely beyond his prodigious learning, and there are several, notably Archaeology, Philology and Natural Sciences, that are indebted to him for important discoveries. But it is also known that this remarkable scholar did not shine through those qualities which go to make up the critic and the philosopher, and that at times he exhibits even uncommon credulity.

Such is the character he shows all through his exposition of the doctrines of the Kabbalists. But, while conceding this imaginary authority and this fabulous antiquity, he despoils the work of its real merits. The profound and original ideas, the bold creeds the Kabbalah contains, and the striking views it darts into the foundations of every religion and morality, escape entirely his feeble perception, which is struck only by the symbolical forms, the use and misuse of which seem to exist in the very nature of mysticism.

The Kabbalah exists for him only in this gross envelope with its thousands of combinations of numbers and letters, its arbitrary ciphers, and, finally, its more or less fantastic procedure by means of which it forces the sacred script to lend such meaning as to find access to minds rebellious to all authority save the Bible.

The facts and the texts which I have brought together in this volume aim to destroy this strange point of view and, therefore, I shall not dwell upon it any longer. I will say only that Kirchner, just like Reuchlin and Pico de la Mirandola, knew but the works of the modern Kabbalists, the majority of whom halted midway on the road to wisdom at the dead letter and senseless symbols. On the subject occupying us, there is today no work more complete, more exact and more worthy of respect due to much labor and sacrifice, than that of Baron of Rosenroth or "the Kabbalah Unveiled.

It contains also either 32Oedipus Aegyptiacus, vol. II, part I. This work was published at Rome from to Franck, , 4to. And, finally, under pretext, and perhaps in the sincere hope of converting the adepts of the Kabbalah to Christianity, the author collected all the passages of the New Testament which show any resemblance to their doctrine.

Yet, there must be no illusion as to the character of this great work; like its predecessors it does not throw any more light on the origin, the transmission or the authenticity of the most ancient monuments of the Kabbalah. In vain, too, will one look there for a regularly ordered and complete exposition of the Kabbalistic system. It contains only such material which, perforce, must enter into a work of this nature; and, even when considered from this single point of view, it is not beyond the lash of criticism.

Although much too severe in some of his expressions, Budde was not unjust when he said: "it is an obscure and confused work in which the necessary and the unnecessary, the useful and the superfluous, are thrown together pell-mell, in the same chaos. With a better choice, his work might have been richer and less extensive. In fact, why did he not leave the dreams of Henry Morus, which have nothing in common with the mystic theology of the Hebrews, in their proper place, that is in the collected works of this author?

And I would say the same of the pretended Kabbalistic work of Herrera. This Spanish rabbi, remarkable for his philosophical erudition, was not content to substitute the modern traditions of the school of Isaac Luria 35 for the true principles of the Kabbalah; but he found also the secret of disfiguring these principles by mingling with them the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Avicenna and Pico de la Mirandola--in short, all that he knew of the Greek and Arabian philosophy.

Modern historians of philosophy have taken chiefly Herrera for their guide in the interpretations of the Kabbalah, probably because of the didactic order of his dissertations and the precision of his language.

And as such a guide has been accepted, no wonder that quite recent origin. Luria's school. Finally, since the author of the "Kabbalah Denudata" was not willing to adhere to the most ancient sources and to acquaint us through more numerous quotations with the originality and interesting facts hidden in the Zohar, why this predilection for the commentaries of Isaac Luria, which no one in possession of his reason can stand reading?

Would not the sacrifices and the laborious vigils which, by the author's own avowals, it cost him to bring to light those sterile chimeras, have been better employed upon the long chain of Kabbalists still too little known, beginning at Saadia, around the tenth century, and ending with the thirteenth century at Nachmanides? In this way, by including all the traditions composing the Zohar, we would have had before our eyes the entire chain of Kabbalistic traditions, starting with the moment when they were first written down until the point when their secret was completely violated by Moses de Leon.

Despite its gaps and its numerous imperfections, Rosenroth's conscientious labor will stand forever as a monument of patience and erudition, and it will be consulted by all who will want to know the products of thought among the Jews, or by those who wish to observe mysticism in all its forms and in all its results.

It is owing to his deeper knowledge of the Kabbalah, that this doctrine has ceased to be studied exclusively either as an instrument of conversion or as an occult science.

It has taken a place in philosophical and philological research, in the general history of philosophy and in rational theology which has attempted by its light to expound some of the difficult passages of the New Testament.

He was a doctor, a philosopher and, more than all, a Kabbalist. The first whom we see taking this direction is George Wachter, theologian and distinguished philosopher, who, because of the independence of his mind, was falsely accused of Spinozaism, and who was the author of an attempt to reconcile the two sciences to which he had consecrated equal devotion.

He foolishly challenged Wachter to imitate him and engaged with him in a correspondence from which sprang a little book entitled "Spinozaism in Judaism.

The book does not throw much light upon the nature or upon the origin of the Kabbalistic ideas, but it raises a question of the highest interest: Was Spinoza initiated in the Kabbalah, and what influence did this doctrine exert upon his system?

Until then it was the almost general opinion among scholars that there is quite a close affinity between the most important points of the science of the Kabbalists and the fundamental dogmas of the Christian religion.

Wachter undertook to demonstrate that these two orders of ideas are separated by an abyss; for, in his opinion, the Kabbalah is nothing but atheism, the negation of God and the deification of the world, a doctrine which he believed to be that of the Dutch philosopher and to which Spinoza gave a more modern form.

We need not investigate here whether the two systems, per se, are well or ill-judged, but whether there is some ground for the theory of their affinity or for their historical succession. The sole proof given for I do not count more or less far-fetched analogies and resemblances consists of two very important passages, indeed, one drawn from "Ethics," the other from Spinoza's letters.

Paul, like all the philosophers of antiquity, although I express myself in a different way, and I even dare to add: like all the ancient Hebrews, as far as can be judged by certain of their traditions which have been altered in. The passage from "Ethics" is still more decisive.

Having spoken of the unity of substance, Spinoza adds: "It is this principle which some of the Hebrews seem to have perceived as through a cloud when they thought that God, the Intelligence of God and the objects under the action of that intelligence, as of one and the same thing.

This is designated by the following terms: the thought, he who thinks and that which is thought of. God's way of knowing does not really consist in applying His thought to things outside of Himself.

It is by cognizing and knowing Himself that He also cognizes and knows all that exists. Nothing exists that is not united with Him and which He could not find in His own substance. He is the prototype of all Being, and in Him all things exist in the purest and most accomplished form; so that the perfection of the creatures is in this very existence by virtue of which they find themselves united with the source of their being; and in measure as they deviate from it, they sink from that sublime and perfect state.

What conclusion can be drawn from these words? Is it that the ideas and the Carthesian method, that the altogether independent development of reason, and above all, that individual estimates as well as the errors of genius, count for nothing in the most audacious conception of which the history of modern philosophy can give an example? This would be a strange paradox which we would not even attempt to refute. Moreover, it is easy to see by the very citations given as authority, that Spinoza had but a very summary and uncertain idea of the Kabbalah, the importance.

How could such a work be more atheistic than theistic? Would it not teach pantheism rather than one God distinct from the world? Above all, how had it taken in the "Ethics" the form of severe unity, the inflexible vigor of the exact sciences?

But we must do Wachter the justice to say that he modified his opinions considerably in a second volume on the same subject. Elucidarius Cabbalisticus, Rome, , 8 vo. Thus, according to him, Spinoza is no longer the apostle of atheism, but a true savant who, enlightened by a sublime science, recognized the divinity of Christ and all the truths of the Christian religion. The first Christians, the oldest fathers of the Church, had no other philosophy; 45 and it is this philosophy which led Spinoza upon the road of Truth.

The author stubbornly insists upon this point and makes it the centre of his researches. Though in its entirety very superficial, and at times far from accurate, this parallel between the doctrine of Spinoza and that of the Kabbalists.

It would be absurd to wish to apply this phrase to the Kabbalists in general. Hebraeorum sectarentur. Quos inter memorandus mihi est Benedictus de Spinoza, qui ex philosophiae hujus rationibus, divinitatem Christi atque circa veritatem universae religionis christianae agnovit.

That parallel led to an examination which proved that the theory which had caused so much surprise and scandal, the theory that God is an unique substance and the immanent cause and real nature of all that is, was not new, that it appeared already before, at the cradle of Christianity, under the very name of the religion.

But this idea is also met with somewhere in a no less remote antiquity. Where, then, is the origin of this idea to be looked for? Is it Greece, or Egypt of the Ptolomaeans that have given it to Palestine? Is it Palestine which found it first? Such are the questions which occupied the minds primarily, and such also is the meaning attached to the Kabbalistic traditions since that time by all save a few critics who are peculiarly attentive to nothing but form.

It is no longer a question of a certain method of interpretation applied to Holy Writ, nor of mysteries far beyond reason, which God Himself revealed whether to Moses, to Abraham or to Adam, but it is a question of a purely human science, of a system representing within itself the entire metaphysics of an ancient people, and, therefore, of great interest to the history of the human mind, once more a philosophical viewpoint that dislodged Allegory and Mysticism.

This spirit is shown not only in Brucker's exposition, where it is perfectly in place, but it seems also to be generally prevalent. Thus, in a learned association, the Society for the Investigation of Antiquities at Cassel, opened an academic competition on the following topic: "Does the doctrine of the Kabbalists, according to which all things are engendered by the emanation of the very essence of God, come from the Greek philosophy or not?

The work which carried off the prize--very little known and not deserving to be known--certainly does not cast any new light upon the very nature of the Kabbalah and what concerns the origin of this system, it contents itself with reproducing the most defaced fables.

Riga, , 8. It is less surprising when it is known that the author was of the sect of the Illuminati who, following the example of all such associations, dated its annals back to the very cradle of humanity. But Rational Theology--as it is called in Germany--that is that absolutely independent method of expounding the Holy Scriptures, of which Spinoza gave an example in his Theologic-Political tractat, made frequent use of the Kabbalah.

As I said before, it made use of it for the purpose of explaining divers passages in the letters of St. Paul which referred to the heresies of that day. It desired also to find therein the explanation of the first verses of the Gospel of St. John, and tried to make it useful either for the study of Gnosticism or for the study of ecclesiastic history in general. There soon appeared the school of Hegel which could not fail to make use of a system wherein it found, under another form, some of its own doctrines.

A reaction against this ever famous school was surely not slow in coming, and it is evidently under this sentiment that the useless work "Kabbalism and Pantheism" was written. The author of that little book strives to prove, at the expense of the evidence, that there is no resemblance between the two systems which he undertakes to compare; for it often happens that the passages which he uses as bases of his arguments are diametrically opposed to the deductions he draws from them.

Besides, as far as erudition is concerned, he is far inferior to most of the writers who preceded him; and does not surpass them either by criticism of the sources or by philosophic appreciation of the ideas, not-withstanding the pedantic attire and luxury of citations with which he pleases to surround himself. Finally, Herr Tholuck, a man who is justly entitled to eminent rank among the theologians and orientalists of Germany, recently also desired to contribute to this subject his knowledge and skilled criticism.

But as he concerns himself with one particular point, the origin of the. Tholuck, de Ortu Cabbalae, , p. Freystadt, Koenigsberg, Kabbalah, and as any appreciation of his opinions would demand profound discussion, I have reserved comment of him for the body of this work, as a more opportune time.

This refers also to all the modern writers, whose names, although deserving a place here, have as yet not been mentioned. Such are, in substance, the efforts made until now for the discovery of the meanings and the origin of the Kabbalistic books. I do not wish to have the conclusion drawn that all must be started anew again because one is struck only by those books which are incomplete.

On the contrary, I am convinced, that the labors and even the errors of such distinguished minds can not be ignored without punishment to those wishing seriously to study the same subject. Even were it possible, in fact, to approach the original monuments without any aid, it would, nevertheless, always be necessary to know beforehand the various interpretations which have been given to them to the present day; for each one of these correspond to a viewpoint well founded in itself, but which becomes faulty when one sticks to it exclusively.

Thus has the Kabbalah--to corroborate what has just been said and to sum up briefly the foregoing--been accepted by some who had in view only its allegorical form and mystical character, with mystic enthusiasm as an anticipated revelation of Christian dogmas; others took it as an occult art, struck by the strange figure, the queer formulas under which it loves to hide its real intention, and by the relations it incessantly establishes between man and all parts of the universe; others, finally, took hold above all of its metaphysical principles and tried to find therein an antecedent, either honorable or dishonorable, of the philosophy of their times.

It is easy to understand that with partial and incomplete studies governed by various prejudices, one can find all this in the Kabbalah without necessarily contradicting the facts. But, in order to have an exact idea and to find the place which it really holds among works of intelligence, it should be studied neither in the interest of a system, nor in the interest of a religious belief; on the contrary, one will endeavor for the sake of truth only, to furnish to the general history of human thought some elements as yet too little known.

This is the aim I desire to reach in the following work for which I spared neither time nor research. Although one finds in the Kabbalah a complete system on things of a moral and spiritual order, yet it can not be considered either as a philosophy or as a religion; I mean to say, it rests, apparently at least, neither upon reason nor upon inspiration or authority.

Like most of the systems of the Middle Ages, it is the fruit of the union of these two intellectual powers. Essentially different from religious belief, under the power, and one can say, under the protection of which, it was born, it introduced itself, thanks to peculiar forms and processes, unnoticed into the minds.

These forms and these processes would weaken the interest of which it is worthy, and would not always permit conviction of the importance which we believe to be justified in attributing to it, if, before making it known in its different elements and before attempting the solution of questions incident thereto, we do not indicate, with some precision, the place it occupies among the works of thought, the rank it should hold among religious beliefs and philosophic systems, and, finally, the requirements or laws which could explain the peculiar means of its development.

It is this we shall attempt to accomplish with all possible brevity. It is a fact, proven by the history of entire humanity, that moral truth, the knowledge which we can acquire about our nature, our destiny and the principle of the universe, were, at first, not accepted on the strength of reason or conscience, but by the effect of a power which was more active upon the minds of the people, and which has the general attribute of presenting to us ideas under a nearly material form, sometimes under the form of a word descended from heaven to human ears, sometimes in the form of a person who develops them in examples and actions.

This power, universally known as Religion or Revelation, has its revolutions and its laws; notwithstanding the unity that rules at the bottom of its nature, it changes its aspect, like philosophy, poetry and arts, with the centuries and countries. But, at what time and at what place this power may come to establish itself, it can not off-hand tell man all that which he needs to know, not even in the sphere of duties and beliefs which it imposes upon him, nor even when he has no other ambition but to understand it in so far as is necessary for his obeisance to it.

In fact, there are in all religions, dogmas which need to be explained, principles the consequences of which remain to be developed, laws without possible application, as well as questions totally forgotten which, surely, touch upon the most important interests of humanity. The work of answering to all those needs calls for great mental activity; and the intellect, therefore, is impelled to the use of its own powers by the very desire to believe and obey. But this impulse does not produce everywhere the same results and does not act upon all intellects in the same manner.

Some intellects will not yield any place to individual independence; they drive the principle of authority to its last consequences, and set up, side by side with written revelation where nothing but. Of such are the orthodox of all beliefs. Other intellects trust no one but themselves, that is to say, their power of reasoning to fill these gaps and to solve the problems in the revealed word. All authority other than that of the holy texts appears to them as an usurpation; or, if they do follow it, it is only when it is in accord with their personal feelings.

Finally, there is in this sphere a third class of thinkers--those who do not admit tradition or, at least, whom tradition and authority can not satisfy, and who certainly can not or dare not use reasoning. On the one hand they are too high-minded to admit the revealed word in a natural and historic sense which accords with the letter and spirit of the masses; on the other hand, they can not believe that man can dispense entirely with revelation, or that truth reaches him in any other way than by the effect of divine teaching.

It is principally by this method and by this tendency that the mystics are recognized. I do not say that mysticism did not show itself sometimes in a bolder form. At a time when philosophical habits had already held sway, mysticism finds in this very consciousness the divine action, the immediate revelation which it claims to be indispensable to man.

It recognizes it either in the feelings or in the intuitions of reason. Thus it is, to cite an example, how mysticism was conceived in the fifteenth century by Gerson. These three tendencies of the mind, these three ways of conceiving revelation and of continuing its work, are found in the history of all the religions that have struck roots in the human soul.

I shall cite only those religions which are nearest to us and which, therefore, we can know with more certainty. In the bosom of Christianity, the Roman Church represents tradition and authority in their highest degree of splendor. We find reason applied to faith not only in the majority of Protestant communions, among the defenders of the so-called rational exegesis, but also among the scholastic philosophers who were the first to subject religious dogmas to the laws of syllogism and who showed the same respect for the words of Aristotle that they showed for the words of the Apostles.

Who does not see symbolical mysticism with its arbitrary method and exaggerated spirituality in all the agnostic sects, in Origen, in Jacob Boehm, and in all who follow in their steps? But no one carried the system as far, nobody formulated it as frankly and as boldly as Origen whose name we shall yet meet in this book. If we glance at Mohammed's religion, if among the many sects it brought to light, we stop at those which show a decided character, we are immediately struck by the same spectacle.

The Sunnis and the Chiits, whose separation came from the rivalry of individuals rather than from a marked difference of opinion, equally defend the. Experientiis habitis ad intra, in cordibus animarum devotarum. Islamism had also its scholastic philosophers, known by the name of Motecallemin, 3 and it had also a large number of heresies which seem to have joined the doctrine of Pelagius to the rational method of modern Protestantism.

This is how a celebrated orientalist defined the latter: "All sects of the Mutazilahs agree generally in that they deny the existence of attributes in God, and they endeavor particularly to avoid everything that could injure the dogma of the unity of God; and then, in order to maintain the justice of God and ward off any idea of injustice from Him, they accord to man full liberty of his own actions and deny God all interference with them; finally, they agree in teaching that all the knowledge necessary to salvation is within the province of reason, and that it can be acquired solely by means of the light of reason before, as well as after, revelation.

The Karmates, whose existence dates from the year of the Hegira, embraced the system of allegorical interpretations and all the opinions serving as bases for mysticism. If we are to believe the author already quoted--who does nothing more than translate the words of an Arabian historian--"they called their doctrine the science of the inner faculties, and which consists in turning the precepts of Islamism into allegories and in substituting things founded on imagination for external observance, as well as allegorizing verses of the Koran and giving them forced interpretations.

The Karmathians hold that man's body, when standing,. So the p. Finally we come to Judaism, from whose breast, nourished by its spirit and its essence, sprang the two rival creeds already cited.

We have intentionally reserved the last place for Judaism, because it leads us naturally to our subject. Besides the Bible, orthodox Jews recognize traditions which receive from them the same respect as the precepts of the Pentateuch.

At first transmitted from mouth to mouth and scattered everywhere, then collected and edited by Judah the Holy 6 under the name of Mishnah; and, finally, prodigiously augmented and developed by the authors of the Talmud, they now leave not the smallest part to reason and liberty. Not only do they deny in principle the existence of these two moral forces, but they strike them with paralysis by usurping their places everywhere. They cover all actions from the expression of exalted moral and religious feeling to the vilest functions of animal life.

They have counted, regulated and weighed everything in advance. It is despotism of every day and of every instant against which one is inevitably compelled to fight with trickery if he does not want to substitute a higher authority in its place. The Karaites, who must not be confounded with the Saducees whose existence does not reach beyond the destruction of the second temple the Karaites are, in a way, the Protestants of Judaism; they reject, apparently, the tradition and pretend to recognize nothing but the Bible, I mean the Old Testament, for the explanation of which reason seems to them to be sufficient.

But others, without ceasing to be believers and admitting the principle of revelation, and who certainly form no religious sect, have succeeded in giving Reason a much greater and a much finer place in the domain of Faith. These are they who would justify the chief articles of their belief by the very principles of Reason; who would reconcile the legislation of Moses with the philosophy of their times, that is that of Aristotle, and who have founded a science entirely similar in its name and in its objects to the Arabian and Christian scholastics.

The first, and beyond a question the boldest of them, is the celebrated Rabbi Saadia, who at the beginning of the tenth century was at the head of the academy of Sura in Persia; and whose name is cited with respect. So that his entire body represents the thrice-holy name, Jehovah. Zohar, 2nd part, fol. History of the religious sects of Judaism. Those among the Jews who saw in the law only a gross exterior under which was hidden a mysterious meaning, much higher than the historical, literal meaning, divided themselves into two classes, the distinction of which is of great importance to the aim we have set.

To one class, the inner, spiritual meaning of the Scriptures was a philosophical system somewhat favorable, it is true, to mystic exaltation, but drawn from a source entirely foreign; it was, in short, Plato's doctrine a little exaggerated, as it was later on in the school of Plotinus, and mingled with ideas of Oriental origin. This is the character of Philo and all those who are customarily called "Hellenizing Jews," because, mixed among the Greeks of Alexandria, they borrowed from the latter their language, their civilization, and such of their philosophic systems as could best reconcile with the monotheism and religious legislation of Moses.

The others obeyed the impulse of their intelligence only. The ideas they introduced into the sacred books, in order to make it appear that they had found them there, and then to pass them on in the shadow of. From the first lines of the preface Saadia frankly places himself between two opposing parties; "those," he said, "who, because of incomplete researches and ill-directed meditations, have fallen into an abyss of doubt; and those who regard the use of reason as dangerous to Faith.

The Hebrew commentary attributed to Saadia is forged. Rapaport, Biography of R. The author puts these words in the mouth of Aristobulus, who could not have known the Kabbalah. These are the Kabbalists 11 whose opinions must be drawn from original sources to be known and justly appreciated; because, later, cultured minds supposed that they honored them by mixing them with the ideas of the Greeks and Arabians.

Those, who through superstition remained strangers to the civilization of their times, gradually abandoned the deep speculations of which they were the result, and conserved only the very gross means originally designed to disguise their boldness and depth.