A very brief history of Kabbalah and some of its books

[Carmen Elsa Irarragorri Wyland]

Kabbalah is said to have been  the knowledge of how to perform in this life, given by the Creator to Adam Kadmon in the Garden of Eden.

Now this Garden of Eden has never ceased to exist, it is there all the time, while we are living in what Kabbalists call the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or in other words the World of Duality in which we all live right now.

In the Garden of Eden, duality was not existent, and it was called the Tree of Life.

Why the Tree of Life? Because death was not known there.

It is the World of the Souls who are immortal and live forever, even if they incarnate one and a thousand lifetimes.

The creator spoke to Adam, since Intuition and the Man were one and the same thing, and explained that the moment that he would taste of the Tree of Good and Evil, he will surely die.

Therefore, Adam knew, yet his other side, Eve, was tented by the Serpent, our opponent and she listened to that voice, that told her that she would not die, and she did not immediately, neither did Adam, but they fell into incarnation and became clothed with mortal bodies.

(Now, this is my story, not Kabbalah's, but it is fashioned in the same way that Kabbalists explain everything, or using logic, and knowing how the higher laws really work).

Well since Adam had disobeyed, the Angels, that were not too happy with the creation of Man who would some day rule over them, hid the knowledge of Kabbalah from him.

The story goes that it was all written in a book  that is now known as the Book of the Angel Raziel, simply because this Angel, listened to the cries of Adam and returned the book to him, but Adam, once disobedient, always disobedient, failed to read it and follow it, and thus, the other  angels, hid it from him again.

I bought in Amazon.com a book named "The Book of the Angel Raziel", but it is really a fake, since the knowledge therein expounded is "hokey pokey", also known as BS.

It is really a book of Magic, but one that probably does not even work.

On the other hand, I do believe that the knowledge, not given to Adam, but that Adam knew while he was the real great spirit that he was (I should say, they were, since the name Adam is a Hebrew name that signifies "humanity", not just a single man). What happened to mankind, all of us, is that we forgot the wisdom that was inherent in us, when we were crucified into incarnation in this Realm of limitations, of duality and continual battle between the two sides of this reality.

Anyhow, Kabbalists claim, and it is known to be the case, that this wisdom was handed down from father to son, and from word of mouth, it was not written, ever before, until the time of Abraham.

Abraham was from the city of Ur in Chaldea, his father was a maker of idols and worshipped many Gods, as was the case in Mesopotamia at the time, but his spirit, which in the Torah is called the Creator, spoke to him, and he abandoned the beliefs of his father Terah, and left Ur, and began wandering and he lived as a nomad, therefore he studied the stars and all of creation, and he wrote the first Kabbalistic book, known as

"the Book of Formation"  or "Sefer Yetzirah".

It was mainly a treatise in Astrology,   

and he gave name, for the first time, to all the planets and the constellations and created the system of the Constellations that affected man and called them the signs of the Zodiac.

He also mentioned many things known to man then, that we do not know, now.

like the creation of a human being by another, and many other things, known tro him and not to us. But it is a very obscurely written book, and not too voluminous, either. I read it once, but lost it and then tried to read someone else' interpretation of it, and really got confused. 

However, that is the first book of Kabbalah known to Kabbalah students.

Then, according to the Zohar (the most important book of Kabbalah now), he gave all his knowledge to his son Isaac, and some knowledge to the sons of his concubines, whom he sent to the Far East.

Isaac gave his blessing (his knowledge) to Jacob, even though they belonged by right to Esau, ad him gave it to his twelve children, also known as the twelve tribes of Israel, since the angel of death changed his name from Jacob to Israel, which is a code name which has the initials of the Patriarchs or Chariots, which really are the Archetypes of humanity and the Tree of Life, known at the time of his life.

I is for Isaac, S is for Sarah, R is for Rivka and Rahel (Rebecca and Rachel), A for Abraham, E for Esau and L for Leah. 

Well, then cam Moses, who was an Israelite, but who lived at a time when they were no longer looked nicely upon in Egypt, and therefore his mother , to save him put him in the marshes of the River Nile and he was found by the Pharaoh"s daughter who raised him as her own child.

Now Moses was raised as an Egyptian, and he acquired the secret knowledge of the Egyptian initiates, but the Pharaoh had a staff that was given to him by Joseph, the son of Jacob or Israel, and he did not know how to use it.

Moses, however deciphered it, and it is said to have had the seventy two names of God (which are not really names, but qualities).

But he left Egypt because a man that he looked upon with an evil eye, since he had killed an Israelite, died or was fulminated with under Moses look and who people were looking for upon his disappearance, and were beginning to blame him, he left Egypt and went into Midia, where Jethro, a subject of the Pharaoh, ruled. He was a Midian Priest, and had many daughters, one of which became Moses wife, since it is said that they were Soul mates.

Again, Moses, also a prophet (one who listens to his inner voice), was able to teach a lot of people, as Abraham have done before and all the Patriarchs did, but he returned to Egypt and taught a whole nation, mostly the descendants of Israel, also called the Israelite.

Therein, the whole myth about the Israelite fly from Egypt and the opening of the Red Sea, and everything else, even to the giving of the Ten Commandments.

Well, the Kabbalits claim that we are them, that we are always the same people that reincarnate over and over, the same original Souls, that the events at Mount Sinai have not happened yet, they only happened in the Higher Worlds, but have not manifested yet in this reality, that the ten commandments are the ten dimensions, and so many different ideas of which most of mankind have never heard of.

However, many that were not Israelite, also came along with them, and they were called the "Erev Ravs" (the mixed multitude), and that they formed the Jewish Religion, or the veneration of the Golden Calf.

The Golden Calf, some say it was a computer that could give them the same answers that Moses gave, because of the Program they wrote, the idol worship is the belief in anyone else other than ourselves, thus, all religions are idol worship.

In any event, Moses is said was the greatest of Prophets, since  he always listened to his own inner voice, without ever doubting it.

But Moses passed on, and then came the Jews who kept the knowledge of Kabbalah to themselves and not to everyone of them, only to some Rabbis, and not others.

But this knowledge has always been known in the World of those who really listen to their inner voice and who take counsel from it.

However, there began to sprout teachers of the knowledge, and there is a long tradition of rabbis who knew and delved in the knowledge, amongst them a famous Rabbi Akiva,  and whose writings are still studied by all those that have acquired some of this knowledge.

He is said to have had 24,000 students, and they lived in the time of the destruction of the second temple, and were persecuted and killed by the Romans, and it is claimed that they died because of the lack of love for one another.

Out of the 24 thousand, only five survived, one of them may have been Jesus of Nazareth, but for sure, two of them were Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai and his son Eleazar.

They hid in a cave first for twelve years and later for one more year, for a total of thirteen.

But they gathered students, even though they were dwellers of the cave.

In the first meeting in the cave, there were ten students and Rabbi Shimon, their teacher, and that was called the Great Assembly, however, three of the students Ascended, right then and there and only seven were left.

And any further assemblage had been called the Little Assembly.

Rabbi Shimon, taught, but he never wrote anything, it was one of his student a Rabbi Aba, an scribe, the one that wrote what is now called the Zohar or "Book of Splendors" since Zohar means "radiant Light".

His teachings were based on the teachings of Moses, who would appear to him in the cave all the time and answer all his questions.

Some of the students, like, of course Eleazar, who was there with his father, all the time, would also see Moses, and many others would also visit and see him, as well.

They met as often as possible taking care not to attract anyone's attention to them, and they would meet two or three at the time and discus all the subjects of the Torah.

The whole teachings of the Zohar are an explanation and decoding of the Five Books of Moses, or the Pentateuch.

But it is not an easy book to read, and it needs its own decoding. I first read it in five books, one for each of the books of the Pentateuch, however now I have it in Aramaic, which was the language in which it was originally written an its translation into English, and there are 23 volumes.

I have another version, also, translated from Aramaic into Hebrew and it is 20 volumes.

Every time you read this book there is more light that comes to the fore and a greater understanding of the real meaning of everything.

At the turn of this century, there was a Rabbi, Jehuda Ashlag, who translated it into Hebrew and who translated some of the works of the Rabbi Isaac Luria, who was called the Ari, which in Hebrew means the Lion, and who taught just one student Hain Vital, and who claimed to be totally illuminated, and moved from Poland to Israel, to teach that one student so that he could put into writing his teachings, but Hain never did, instead his son did the job.

He wrote some of the deepest books, also, found in the perennial Kabbalah, like "The ten luminous emanations" a treatise on the work of creation, and many more books like "The thought of Creation" "And thou shall choose Life" "On World Peace" and "The Wisdom of Truth". He also wrote about the Weekly portions of the Torah, he was a great scholar, but never revealed the name of his teacher, he lived in poverty and wrote mainly in Restaurants where he would use the napkins as paper where to write.

He, also, taught one student, a Rabbi Yehuda Tzvi Brandwein, who created a Center of Kabbalah Teachings in Israel. It was a very small group, but one of his students, Rav Phillip Berg, an American, was placed in charge, upon his death, of the Center and his wife, Karen Berg, suggested to him that they needed to spread the teachings al over the World, since there would be no illumination in this World unless everyone knew the truth.

Therefore, they brought the teachings to America, first, then to Europe and now all over the World.

As I have mentioned it before, I had studied Kabbalah before, as part of the Curriculum of one of the Secret Societies that I belonged to for a while, and in conjunction with the study of Hermetic.

All the secret societies, including the Masons, study some principles of Kabbalah, since King Solomon, the son of David, was well versed in this wisdom, but he also used it for his own purposes, causing the destruction of the first Temple.

He learned how to control all of the Worlds, the upper ones as well as the lower ones, and angels and demons served him.

None of the secret societies is lacking in the knowledge of the Tree of Life and the several dimensions of the Universe.

Most of them, however, are only concerned with the life in this plane of existence.

Very few learn enough to reach the immortality to which we are all heirs.

These Kabbalah Teachings go beyond all of that, and its purpose is only to fulfill the purpose for which man was created.

None of the people with whom I have associated, has any other intent, and no one benefits selfishly for their own purposes and agendas.