The Canon · No. 062
Kabbalah
Jewish mysticism; the received tradition
c.12th c. CE (as a distinct tradition) – present · Abrahamic · Living · Provence, Spain, Safed, Eastern Europe; global
V. THE MEDIEVAL WORLD — c.500 – 1500 CE
How many
Not a denomination. Foundational to Hasidism and to much of modern Orthodox spirituality; also the source of most Western occult symbolism.
Who began it
No founder. The Sefer Yetzirah is ancient and unattributed; the Zohar presents itself as the work of the 2nd-century Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai but was almost certainly written by Moses de León in Castile around 1280. Isaac Luria (1534–1572) in Safed produced the version that dominates everything after him.
What it is for
To answer why an infinite, perfect God produced a finite, broken world, and what human beings are for within it.
What it worships
Ein Sof — the Infinite, without end, beyond all description and beyond even the word God. It relates to creation through ten sefirot, emanations or divine attributes, arranged in the Tree of Life: Keter (crown), Chokhmah (wisdom), Binah (understanding), Chesed (kindness), Gevurah (severity), Tiferet (beauty), Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malkhut or the Shekhinah, the indwelling divine presence, understood as feminine and as in exile with Israel.
What it holds
Lurianic Kabbalah is the great system. God, being everything, had to withdraw (tzimtzum) to make room for a world. Into that space he poured light, and the vessels meant to hold it shattered (shevirat ha-kelim), scattering divine sparks into the material world where they are trapped in husks. The human task is tikkun — repair, gathering the sparks by performing commandments with correct intention. This makes every ordinary religious act cosmically consequential, and it is a theology written by a community that had just been expelled from Spain and needed exile to mean something. Also: the four levels of scriptural meaning (PaRDeS), gematria, the doctrine that God created the world through letters, and reincarnation (gilgul), which mainstream medieval Judaism had not taught.
What it does
Study, traditionally restricted to married men over forty who had mastered Talmud first — a restriction now widely ignored. Kavanot, mystical intentions attached to ordinary prayers. Midnight vigils. Meditation on divine names. The Safed circle instituted the Friday-evening Kabbalat Shabbat service, including the hymn Lekha Dodi, which is now standard in synagogues everywhere, including ones with no mystical interest whatsoever.
After death
Gilgul, transmigration of souls, entering Judaism through Kabbalah and becoming standard in Hasidism. Souls return to complete unfinished commandments. Ibbur, a benevolent soul temporarily joining a living person, and dybbuk, a malevolent one — the source of the folklore. Ultimate destiny is the soul's reabsorption into the divine light and the final tikkun of all creation.
Its texts
Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation, ancient). Zohar (c.1280), in Aramaic. Bahir. Cordovero's Pardes Rimonim. Chaim Vital's Etz Chaim, recording Luria, who wrote almost nothing himself. Later: the Tanya (1797), the foundational text of Chabad.
Its branches
Theosophical Kabbalah (Zohar, sefirot); ecstatic Kabbalah (Abraham Abulafia); Lurianic Kabbalah; Hasidic Kabbalah, especially Chabad; Christian Cabala from Pico della Mirandola; Hermetic Qabalah in Western occultism.
Of note
Three different things share the name. Jewish Kabbalah is a Torah-observant mystical tradition. Christian Cabala is a Renaissance attempt to prove Christianity from it. Hermetic Qabalah is an occult system that borrowed the diagram and dropped the religion.
Its timeline
- c.2nd–6th c. CE Merkavah mysticism; ascent to the divine chariot.
- c.1150–1200 CE The Bahir appears in Provence; the sefirot are named.
- c.1280 CE The Zohar circulates in Castile.
- <strong>1492 CE</strong> Expulsion from Spain. The catastrophe that Lurianic Kabbalah is, in effect, a theological response to.
- 1534–1572 CE Isaac Luria at Safed; tzimtzum, shattering and tikkun.
- 1626–1676 CE Shabbetai Zvi proclaimed messiah on Lurianic grounds; mass movement across the Jewish world; he converts to Islam under Ottoman threat in 1666. The collapse discredits public messianism and makes rabbinic authorities deeply wary of Kabbalah.
- 1698–1760 CE The Baal Shem Tov; Hasidism turns Kabbalah into a popular, joyful, accessible piety.
- 1875–1947 CE Western occultists — the Golden Dawn, Crowley — appropriate the Tree of Life, detach it from Judaism, and combine it with tarot and astrology.
- 1969–present The Kabbalah Centre popularises a commercial version; mainstream Jewish authorities largely disown it.
Sources
Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.