Asprem Kabbalah Recreata

[The Pomegranate 9.2 (2007) 132-153] ISSN 1528-0268 (Print) doi: 10.1558/pome.v9i2.132 ISSN 1743-1735 (Online)

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2007, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW.

Kabbalah Recreata: Reception and Adaptation of Kabbalah in Modern Occultism

Egil Asprem

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Abstract

In the early twentieth century, certain elements of the Kabbalah were trans-formed by being given new interpretations and uses in the context of what I term the ‘programmatic syncretism’ of modern, fin de siècle occultism. In so doing I focus specifically on one text by Aleister Crowley, which I consider the full-blown example of the phenomenon in question. The text demon-strates how the occultists’ Kabbalah functions first and foremost as a classi-ficatory tool and a mnemonic system, mainly for practical use in magical rituals. That use is part of a reinterpretation of the Kabbalah in the modern occult revival, mainly from Eliphas Levi through the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, culminating in the works of Aleister Crowley. It is my intention that this focus will not only shed light on a process of reinterpre-tation peculiar to fin de siècle occultism, but also on the processes charac-teristic of religious innovation in the modern age in general.

Introduction

In the opening pages of Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, probably the seminal study of Jewish Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem states that it is time to reclaim the study of Kabbalah from ‘Christian scholars of a mysti-cal bent’. He goes on with a particular attack on the ‘brilliant misunder-standings and misrepresentations of Alphonse Louis Constant’ and the ‘highly coloured humbug of Aleister Crowley and his followers’.1 Later on in the volume, Crowley is mentioned again with the comment that ‘[n]o words need be wasted on the subject of Crowley’s “Kabbalistic” writings’.2 There is no doubt that Scholem’s work was highly admirable and pertinent considering the state of research on Jewish mysticism in

1. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1974), 2. 2. Ibid., 353.

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Asprem Kabbalah Recreata 133

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his own days. However, a side effect of Scholem’s ‘purist’ approach to Kabbalah has been that many interesting receptions of Kabbalah that from a Jewish perspective are strongly heterodox have been overlooked and understudied by academic scholarship. Thus, it seems to me that today it is more interesting from a scholarly perspective to do the exactopposite of what Scholem did. In this articleI will therefore reclaim the study of Kabbalah from the purist approach of Scholem and consequent scholars, and focus instead on an idiosyncratic modern, non-Jewish reception of it—that of modern occultist Kabbalah. Still contrary to Scholem, I will especially consider Aleister Crowley’s writings on Kabbalah. More specifically, the aim of this article is to analyse how certain elements of the Kabbalah were transformed by being given new interpre-tations and uses in the context of what I term the ‘programmatic syn-cretism’ of modern, fin de siècle occultism. In so doing I will focus specifically on one text by Aleister Crowley, which I consider the full-blown example of the phenomenon in question. With this text as a vantage point I will consider the function Kabbalah is given first and foremost as a classificatory tool and a mnemonic system, mainly for practical use in magical rituals. In addition, I seek to give an account of the preceding process of reinterpretation of the Kabbalah in the modern occult revival, mainly from Eliphas Levi through the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, culminating in the works of Aleister Crowley. It is my intention that this focus will not only shed light on a process of reinterpre-tation peculiar to fin de siècle occultism, but also on the processes charac-teristic of religious innovation in the modern age in general.

1. Theoretical Preliminaries: Modernity and fin de siècle Occultism

In 1890 the first edition of James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough appeared in print in England. The book, with its coloured accounts of long-forgotten myths, creative interpretations and comparisons of stories from all over the world, captivated the readership of the literate middle class of Victorian society. For the first time in history cultural data from such vastly disparate contexts as ancient Egypt and pre-Christian Scandinavia, the cultures of Mesopotamia and African tribes in Nigeria, Roman and Greek, Aztec and Zulu myths were made available, compared and published in the same volume. Frazer’s tome was a symbol of its age, bearing the unmistakable marks of modernity. Although the very concept of ‘modernity’ has been much discussed

134 The Pomegranate 9.2 (2007)


and criticized,3 I will here adopt a quite loose and heuristically appropriate use of it, mainly following Anthony Giddens’s theorizing on the subject.4

Most important for this study, modernity is marked by globalization, not only of commerce, but of local traditions and culture as well, by the rationalization of society, the growth of sciences and the idea of progress.All these tendencies were characteristic of the Victorian era, and Frazer’s magnum opus can be seen as symptomatic of them. The tendency towards globalization through the colonial enterprise of the Victorian era had led to a proliferation of ethnographical accounts and printed editions of original texts in translation from foreign cultures. Industrialization had made printing cheaper and the social economy stronger, leading to the proliferation of knowledge and a marked increase in literacy rates. Furthermore, the belief in a grand narrative of progress, an evolutionary and epistemological optimism particularly connected with the notion of unified science gained wide currency.5 All of this was reflected in The Golden Bough, which was the outcome of a cross-cultural comparison only made possible by globalization, disseminated in the population only through the industrial production of books and increased literacy, and containing an evolutionary periodization of culture, gradually becoming more advanced—a distinct mark of the grand narrative of progress. These social and cultural characteristics are also reflected in the cultural innovations of the modern occult currents that blossomed at the end of the century. It is not a coincidence of history that Frazer published the first edition of The Golden Bough in 1890, two years after the formation of the leading lodge of occultism at the time, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Frazer’s daring comparisons of cross-cultural data on religion and magic, and The Golden Dawn’s eclectic doctrinal compo-sitions, can be seen as belonging to the same fin de siècle atmosphere.6

3. There are countless publications on the nature of modernity and its various phases. Some important discussions include: Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000); Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990); Giddens, Modernity and Self Identity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991); Jürgen Habermas, ‘Modernity—An Incomplete Project’, in Postmodernism: A Reader, ed. Thomas Docherty (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), 98-109; Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge(Manchester: Manchester University Press). 4. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity. 5. The locus classicus of this aspect of modernity is Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition. 6. An unparalleled discussion of the rise of comparative religion as a response to modernization is available in Hans Kippenberg, Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). Kippenberg shows how scholars in the modern period reconstructed religious history and made it accessible



Central to my argument is that the occult ‘revival’, or the emergence of occultism proper in the nineteenth century,7 which we identify in Eliphas Levi, and more outspoken in the late Victorian context through the Golden Dawn and the works of Aleister Crowley, is also intimately connected with the notion of modernity outlined above. For instance, I follow Alfred Vitale when he says that:

Culturally, some of the most important changes in the modern era enhanced the occult process, such as increased access to global cultures (especially those in the ‘East’) through new text translations and colonial accounts, the impact of the bourgeoning fields of psychiatry, anthropology, comparative religious studies and sociology…8

Writers and practitioners of Victorian fin de siècle occultism represent an aim towards reinterpretation and recontextualization of the available set of religious and esoteric data, filtered through the eyes of modernity. They stand within the framework of the modern grand narrative, with its quest for a universally valid, scientistic Truth, as compared to the particularism of pre-modern society. Resounding with the motto of Aleister Crowley’s later esoteric periodical The Equinox, the aim remained religion, while the method now was science:

Leaning towards a scientific approach, M[odern] W[estern] O[ccultism] developed its own quasi-empirical presuppositions about religious experi-ence and esoteric traditions based on comparative research and pragmatic experimentation. One result of this approach was the notion that if it is possible to grade religions in terms of their qualitative values, as if for example Hinduism presented a more practically refined system of religion than Christianity, it could be possible that another religious system (i.e., Western occultism) could be even more refined and pragmatically superior. And if religion can be refined, it might be engineered through improvement in the workings of its components; much like machinery improves not only by design, but also by construction.9

This improvement through construction gives rise to the concept which will be much at the forefront of this article: programmatic syncretism.

as an object for study. This process was invaluable to the rise of modern occultism, which has to be seen in parallel to it. 7. See Wouter Hanegraaff, ‘The New Age Movement and the Esoteric Tradition’, in Gnosticism and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. Roelof van Den Broek and Wouter Hanegraaff (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 375. 8. Alfred Vitale, ‘“The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion” A Systematic Model for the Academic Study of Modern Western Occultism’, http://www.aseweb .org/Papers/vitale.htm (accessed 28 November 2006), 41. 9. Vitale, ‘The Method of Science, the Aim of Religion’, 42.

http://www.aseweb.org/Papers/vitale.htm




Movements like the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society treated the newly available cultural data with a deliberately syncretistic attitude,relating cultural data regardless of time and space, but with a programmaticbasis, always with the aim of improving the sum outcome. Shortly put, programmatic syncretism was the chief method employed for construct-ing a pragmatically better and more refined esoteric system. This concept automatically triggers a couple of other theoretical points pertaining to the current study. The employment of programmatic syncre-tism is closely connected with what Olav Hammer has called ‘religious creativity’.10 In Hammer’s discussion of how new religious movements and esoteric positions (rhetorically) construct new doctrines this concept delineates particularly the creativity needed for novel reinterpretation of existing material, such as scriptural passages. As Hammer writes, this is the constructive creativity which springs from questions like ‘[h]ow “should” these passages be interpreted? Why have other denominations “misinterpreted” them? What conclusions should one draw from the “true” meaning that has been discovered?’11 In a programmatic syncretism the creative answers to these questions will unexpectedly be found in the language of comparison, cross-reference and combination of material disembedded from their original contexts, in search for a universal, perennial truth underlying the particular phenomena. The comparative methodology of Frazer is applied, but in place of Frazer’s sceptical agenda we find here an esoteric, perennialist agenda. The main argument of this article will show how disembedded elements of the Kabbalah, through an instance of religious creativity, are put to the forefront of this novel occult methodology, as the very matrix which makes the innova-tions possible.

1.1. The Treatment of Texts in Modern Occultism In his article Alfred Vitale provides a six-step model for the formation of occult doctrinal sets from pre-existing cultural data. This model comprises identification of pure esoteric sets, deconstruction into functional parts, extrication of functional parts and re-integration into a unique system, proselytization of the system and data integrity (making the system ‘whole’).12 The first four of these steps are of interest here, as they pertain to the treatment of primary sources and the religious creativity involved in constructing new doctrinal sets in modern occultism. In fact one should

10. Olav Hammer, Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 43-44. 11. Ibid. 12. Vitale, ‘Method of Science, Aim of Religion’, 58-59.



note that these four steps—the process starting with identification of existing esoteric data in available sources, deconstruction of them into self-sustained functional parts (like ritual practices or functional bits of information, like astrological correspondences), extrication or disembed-ment from the original cultural contexts and re-integration into a new system—can actually be seen as the step-by-step method of what has here been called programmatic syncretism. When I now move on to the material I will show how this process is implemented and identify the specific role kabbalistic elements are given in it.

2. The Reception of Kabbalah in the Programmatic Syncretism of Modern Occultism

2.1. Aleister Crowley’s Liber 777 – Programmatic Syncretism par excellence In 1909 in London a very peculiar book appeared for the first time, bearing a correspondingly peculiar title: 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Expliciandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicum Sanctissi-morum Scientiæ Summæ.13 Although published anonymously, the book was written by the British occultist Aleister Crowley,14 who had parted with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and formed his own magical order, the Astron Argon15 (A A ), around 1906. For the outsider the content of Liber 777 must have seemed just as alien as its title, as it simply contained numerous diagrams filled with information taken from various religious, esoteric and mythical systems, neatly aligned as to form an

13. Which approximately translates to ‘777, or the symbolical preface to the explication of the system of the sceptico-mystical path, the fundament of the whole science of the most holy’. See Aleister Crowley, Liber 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley, ed. Israel Regardie (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1977). 14. Biographical information on this controversial yet extremely influential figure has often tended to fall into the categories of condemnation, sensationalism or hagiography. Over the last few years, however, we have finally seen a change, especially with the biographies authored by Lawrence Sutin and Richard Kaczynski. See Kaczynski, Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley (Tempe, AZ: New Falcon Publications, 2002); Sutin, Do What thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley (New York: St. Martin Press, 2000). For a good overview and discussion of all the available biographies, see Marco Pasi, ‘The Neverendingly Told Story: Recent Biographies of Aleister Crowley’, Aries 3.2 (2003): 224-45. 15. The Greek has a double connotation, giving the English translation ‘the Still and Shiny Star’. This is hinted at in Crowley’s esoteric poem ‘One Star in Sight’, where we read: ‘One star can summon them to wake / To self—star-souls serene that gleam / On life’s calm lake.’



elaborate system of cross-cultural correspondences. While the almost 200 columns were ‘context-specific’ (i.e. entitled ‘Roman gods’, ‘Buddhist meditations’, ‘Magical powers [Western Mysticism]’ and so forth), the rows of the diagrams were patterned on the sefirotic ‘Tree of Life’, with its 10 sefirot and 22 ‘paths’ or letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The point thus was to show an intricate system of symbolical correspondences across geographical, temporal and cultural space, as well as with objects (like precious stones, plants and perfumes), animals, colours and psycho-logical states. In short, I would argue that Liber 777 represents the cultural information processing of programmatic syncretism in its fullest blossom-ing, combining functional parts from as disparate contexts as Norse mythology and Daoism. What is more interesting for this discussion is that all this encyclopaedic knowledge, all the disembedded functional parts, have been classified in accordance with elements from the Kabbalah. Thus sefirotic Kabbalah, particularly as formalized by the followers of Isaac Luria in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, has itself been disembedded from its cultural context and re-embedded as a taxonomical device. In the appendix to his revised edition of Liber 77716 Crowley defines Kabbalah (or ‘Qabalah’ in his transcription) in seven theses, variously as

a. A language fitted to describe certain classes of phenomena… b. An unsectarian and elastic terminology by means of which it is possible to

equate the mental processes of people apparently diverse… c. A system of symbolism which enables thinkers to formulate their ideas

with complete precision and to find simple expression for complex thoughts…

d. An instrument for interpreting symbols whose meaning has become obscure, forgotten or misunderstood…

e. A system of omniform ideas so as to enable the mind to increase its vocabulary of thoughts and facts through organizing and correlating them…

f. An instrument for proceeding from the known to the unknown on similar principles to those of mathematics…

g. A system of criteria by which the truth of correspondence may be tested with a view to criticizing new discoveries in the light of their coherence with the whole body of truth.17

It is notable that in these defining theses the reference seems to be almost exclusively to the sefirotic system, described with words like

16. Written in 1922, but not published until 1955: Aleister Crowley, 777 Revised vel Prolegomena Symbolica ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Expliciandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicum Sanctissimorum Scientiæ Summæ (Neptune: London, 1955). 17. Aleister Crowley, ‘What is Qabalah?’, in 777 Revised.



‘language’, ‘terminology’ and ‘system of symbolism’. The only notable exception is perhaps point (f), where Crowley seems to be thinking of the various arts of kabbalistic hermeneutics, notably gematria, notaricon and temurah.18 But also this point fits the broader picture—the Kabbalah is seen as purely technical, as a methodology and a taxonomic system. In this definition one has already excluded vast parts of what was included in ‘classical’ Jewish Kabbalah, as it emerged in Provence and Spain during the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, and rendered in works as Sefer ha-Bahir and the Zohar.19 The Jewish Kabbalah of this time was very con-servative in nature, continuing earlier Jewish traditions as the aggadah, or mythical, narrative tradition, and halakhah, the strict practice and obser-vance of Talmudic law and religious norms.20 The Kabbalah scholar Arthur Green sees the kabbalistic enterprise in Sefer ha-Bahir and the Zoharas being predominantly occupied with balancing these earlier dimensions of the Judaic tradition, especially the narrative tradition, with a more mystical, speculative philosophical current, stemming much from the earlier proto-kabbalistic work Sefer Yetsirah.21

The definitions given of Kabbalah in Liber 777 then already reflect the three-step re-embedment process discussed by Vitale. One (seemingly) self-consistent functional part has been identified (i.e. the sefirot) and disembedded from its original context (Jewish Kabbalah) only to be reinserted into its new context (modern occultism) to there serve as the classificatory matrix of its programmatic syncretism. The new use of this kabbalistic set is also hinted at in definition (b), ‘[a]n unsectarian and elastic terminology by means of which it is possible to equate the mental processes of people apparently diverse…’ Kabbalah as a terminology is clearly seen as the comparative tool fitted at revealing the true and unchanging philosophia perennis underlying and connecting all disparate and ‘apparently diverse’ particular cultures. The ‘unsectarian’ nature attributed to it is also notable; Kabbalah is not seen as essentially Jewish,

18. I.e. the arts of interpretation by numerical translation of letters and words (gematria), identifying each letter in a word as standing for a word itself, thus forming a ‘hidden’ sentence (notaricon) and the transposition and substitution of letters to find or form new words (temurah). Gematria was particularly emphasized by Crowley and other modern occultists, a lasting proof of which can be seen in the compendium Sepher Sephirot—a systematic list of Hebrew words listed by their numerical value (reprinted in Crowley, Liber 777 and other Qabalistic Writings). 19. For a good overview, see Arthur Green, ‘Introduction’, in The Zohar: Pritzker Edition ed. Daniel C. Matt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), I, xxxi-lxxxi. 20. Ibid., xxxiv-xxxv. 21. Arthur Green, ‘Teachings of the Kabbalists: The Ten Sefirot’, in A Guide to the Zohar (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 37.



but points at a universal, unifying truth inherent to all traditions. It should be noted that this universalization of an originally quite sectarian tradition can be seen as a reinterpretation that is inherently modern. To give a better picture of the transformation of Kabbalah that has taken place, I will briefly sketch the origin and use of the sefirotic system in its Jewish contexts, before I go on to show how its reconstruction gradually took place in the new context of modern occultism. After this retrospective excursion I will return again in section 3 to Aleister Crowley’s schema and show some aspects of how the new, recreated kabbalistic set is put into use.

2.2. The Sefirot: Sefer Yetsirah, Sefer ha-Bahir, Zohar and Isaac Luria The word sefirot itself is a Hebrew neologism which first appeared with the short and cryptic tract called Sefer Yetsirah, usually rendered The Book of Creation or Formation in English. The book has proved difficult to date, but a convincing argument reiterated by Steven Wasserstrom suggests that it was written in Baghdad intellectual circles in the ninth century.22

The mystical speculations it contains on letters and their pronunciation suggests that it was heavily influenced by the Arabic grammarians of the time.23 Perhaps even more interesting is the claim that a central aspect of the text, the inference of and speculation on the three ‘mother letters’, shin, mem and aleph, may actually be a Jewish appropriation of the letter-mysticism of Shi’a Islam at the time, where the letters mem, ayin and shinare used as the trinitarian symbolism of Muhammad, Ali and Salman Pak.24

Be the precise historical origin of these elements as it may, the fact is that the Sefer Yetsirah is the first text in a (partly) Jewish context to introduce a heavily abstract cosmology, consisting of the ‘thirty-two paths of wisdom’ made up of the ten sefirot and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The sefirot are described as ‘ineffable’ entities without beginning or end, ruled by God.25 The twenty-two letters are described as vehicles of creation. They are divided into three groups, where the three mother letters just mentioned give rise to the three elements air, water and fire. A group of seven ‘double-letters’26 are used by God to

22. Steven M. Wasserstrom, ‘Sefer Yesira and Early Islam: A Reappraisal’, Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 3 (1993): 8. 23. Ibid., 14. 24. Ibid., 4. 25. See the Sefer Yetsirah, chapter I. 26. Phonetically, these Hebrew letters (bet, gimel, dalet, ket, peh, resh, tau) have double phonetic values (soft and hard).



bring forth the seven planets, and twelve ‘single-letters’27 create the twelve zodiacal signs.28 Although these relations will be heavily exploited in modern occultism as a part of the indexing of material on the Tree of Life, in the Sefer Yetsirah itself they seem first and foremost to be part of a cosmo-gonic speculation. The sefirot also made their way into later kabbalistic speculation, and are central to the teachings of the Bahir and the Zohar mentioned earlier. The sefirotic system in Catalonian and Castilian Jewish Kabbalah func-tions both as a speculative emanatory cosmology, a divine revelation of sorts,29 and as a hermeneutical framework where passages of the Torah are ‘opened up’ by reference to the dynamics of the sefirot to reveal again the flow of the divine emanations.30 Also in the teachings of Isaac Luria (1534–1572), whose school systematized and depicted the sefirotic system as the Tree of Life in the first place, the sefirot have a quite determined function. In Lurianic Kabbalah the sefirot are embedded in Luria’s rather original cosmogony, known as tsimtsum, and his original answer to the ‘problem of evil’ through the cosmic cataclysm known as the ‘breaking of the vessels’.31 The use of the sefirot in the programmatic syncretism of modern occultism implies disembedding the system from all these contexts.

2.3. Formation of the Kabbalah as a Matrix for Programmatic Syncretism 2.3.1. Eliphas Levi. The fundament of the programmatic syncretism which we have seen in its fullest blossoming in Liber 777 can at least be traced back to the 1854 edition Dogme et rituel de la haute magie, written by the French occultist and renegade catholic priest Alphonse Louise Constant (better known under his Hebraic pseudonym Eliphas Levi Zahed).32 The book’s agenda is, as its title suggests, to set forth the dogma and ritual of

27. Letters with single phonetic value. 28. Chapters IV-V. 29. Green, ‘Introduction’, xlvi. 30. Ibid., lxii. 31. Gershom Scholem, ‘Isaac Luria and his School’, in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1961), 260-67. For more information on Luria and the kabbalistic school of Safed, Palestine, where he was a rabbi, see Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and his Kabbalistic Fellowship(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003); Eliahu Klein, Kabbalah of Creation: The Mysticism of Isaac Luria, Founder of Modern Kabbalah (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2005). 32. For a relevant biography on this vastly influential French occultist, see Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1974). See also James Webb, The Flight from Reason. Volume 1 of The Age of the Irrational (London: Macdonald, 1971).



magic. What is interesting for this discussion, however, is that in doing this Levi draws heavily on kabbalistic symbolism, even structuring each of the chapters of the book on the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. While there is no real subtlety in this arrangement, it still signi-fies a move towards arranging information along the kabbalistic Tree of Life in a way which we find more clearly in the content of the book. In the chapter of Dogme et rituel devoted to Kabbalah, for instance, Eliphas Levi interestingly attributes the various cards of the Tarot to the sefirot,the twenty-two Hebrew letters and the letters of Tetragrammaton, and speaks of the Tarot as a ‘kabalistic alphabet’.33

As we saw in the introduction, the distinguished Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem dismissed Levi’s innovation, describing it as ‘supreme charlatanism’.34 Nonetheless, this novel conjoining of previously unrelated material to the sefirotic Tree demarcates the beginning of the function Kabbalah is given in the programmatic syncretism of the modern occult current to follow him. It is perhaps interesting to note that certain contemporary Kabbalah scholars, most notably Boaz Huss, recently have started to contest Scholem’s at times very polemical works on Kabbalah.35

Consciously or not, there is an ideological dimension to much of Scholem’s writing, some of which can even be identified as a variety of orientalism. One of the implicit moves Scholem does is stating that ‘authentic Kab-balah’ does not exist in the modern world, thus marginalizing contem-porary Jewish mystics, while glorifying the ‘authentic past’ of the Orient.36

Another move specifically important to us here is that Scholem wanted to define Kabbalah as an exclusively Jewish phenomenon (although belonging to past history), automatically excluding and discrediting non-Jewish receptions such as the modern esoteric reception.37 The point is that the distinctions and polemics are done on ideological rather than

33. Eliphas Levi, Transcendental Magic: Its Dogma and Ritual, trans. A.E. Waite (York Beach: Weiser Books, 2001), 100-103, 385-92. 34. Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Meridian, 1974), 203. 35. See, for instance, Boaz Huss, ‘Ask no Question: Gershom Scholem and the Study of Contemporary Jewish Mysticism’, Modern Judaism 25 (2005), 141-58; Huss, ‘“Authorized Guardians”: The Polemics of Academic Scholars of Jewish Mysticism against Kabbalah Practitioners’, in Western Esotericism and Polemics, ed. Olav Hammer and Kocku von Stuckrad (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). For another relevant discussion of Scholem’s scholarship, see Steven M. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 36. Huss, ‘Ask no Question’, 148. This is a common strategy in orientalist discourse: while the Orient is portrayed as descending from an enchanted, mystical past, its contemporary inhabitants are often seen as degenerate and foolish. 37. Huss, ‘Authorized Guardians’, 11-13.



scholarly ground. As mentioned earlier, this has unfortunately led to a situation where later scholars have been reluctant to examine a wide array of interesting cultural phenomena in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The ‘supreme charlatanism’ of Eliphas Levi would go on to have a deep impact on the later British occult movement, and through them on what has later evolved to western popular culture in general. Eliphas Levi had an enormous impact on the British Victorian occultists who formed the Golden Dawn.38 His ideas about the Kabbalah and the Tarot were no exception. Levi’s attribution of the twenty-two Tarot trumps to the twenty-two paths of the sefirotic Tree was taught in the Golden Dawn’s fourth ‘knowledge lecture’, pertaining to the grade of Philosophus.39 The impact of this can also clearly be seen in the Rider/ Waite Tarot deck, which went on to greatly popularize Tarot and even influence the later New Age movement. Due to the distinctions made by Scholem and followed by subsequent scholars of the Kabbalah, all these connections have been left largely unexplored by serious scholarship. The kabbalistic endeavours of Eliphas Levi also had other aspects worthy of brief mention here. In 1870 Levi wrote what was purported to be a French translation of the Zohar, under the title Livre des splendeurs(first published 24 years later).40 However, the volume does certainly not contain the old Castilian Jewish text.41 Rather, the first part of it is a con-fused translation of the zoharic piece Idra Rabba, which is a commentary on the Sifra Di-Zeniuta, although Levi manages to publish it under the wrong title.42 The second and third parts are even totally unrelated with the Castilian Kabbalah of the Zohar. The second part of the book, entitled ‘La gloire chrétienne’, is an essay on the similarities between the lives of Krishna and Christ,43 and the third is an idiosyncratic kabbalistic analysis of certain Masonic myths, entitled ‘L’étoille flamboyante’.44 The work is then appended with Levi’s own kabbalistic teachings. Except for the kabbalistic interpretation of Freemasonry, this work did not go on to

38. McIntosh, Eliphas Levi, 143-44. 39. Israel Regardie, ed., The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1989), 71-73. 40. Eliphas Levi, Le livre des splendeurs (Paris: Chamuel, 1894) 41. Which in its full original encompasses 1,600 folio pages in three volumes. See Green, ‘Introduction’, lx. 42. Levi confuses the title with the Idra Suta, which Andreas Kilcher somewhat mockingly notes is just another sign of Levi’s ‘philological incompetence’. See Andreas Kilcher, ‘Verhüllung und Enthüllung des Geheimnisses. Die Kabbalah Denudata im Okkultismus der Moderne’, Morgen-Glantz 16 (2006): 357, 359. 43. Levi, Le livre des splendeurs, 105-58. 44. Ibid., 159-226.



influence the Victorian occultists in any explicit way. However, I think it is interesting to recognise Livre des splendeurs at least as a symbol of the extensively fuzzy and eclectic conception of Kabbalah in the early forma-tive years of modern occultism. There is also one other aspect of this pseudo-zoharic work which calls for attention. There is great evidence that the only actual zoharic piece in the selection has been translated not from the original Hebrew and Aramaic work, but rather from the Latin edition of Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata.45 Levi explicitly revered Rosenroth’s work as being the kernel of zoharic and kabbalistic wisdom altogether.46 This may seem trivial, but the point is that Levi’s expressed reverence and extensive reference to the Kabbalah Denudata paved the way for the reception of Knorr von Rosenroth’s work in esoteric high-degree Freemasonry, especially the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA) through Kenneth Mackenzie, and from there into the esoteric milieu that gave birth to the Golden Dawn.47 It is to this reception we shall now turn.

2.3.2. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its Kabbalistic Sources. In1887, one year prior to the official foundation of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, together with the Theosophical Society probably the single most influential occult lodge ever,48 two kabbalistic texts surfaced in London: Kabbalah Unveiled, translated and annotated by Samuel Liddell Mathers,49 and Sefer Yetzirah, published by William Wynn Westcott.50 The two were both Freemasons and occultists, members of the SRIA and

45. Both internal philological evidence as well as evidence from the interpretation the text is given as Lurianic suggests this. In addition, Levi later expressed great reverence for the Kabbala Denudata. See Kilcher, ‘Verhüllung und Enthüllung des Geheimnisses’. 46. Ibid., 355. 47. Ibid., 362. 48. The standard historical surveys of the Order and its activities include: Robert A. Gilbert, The Golden Dawn: Twilight of the Magicians (Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press, 1983); Gilbert, The Golden Dawn Companion: A Guide to the History, Structure, and Workings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (York Beach: Weiser Books, 1986); Gilbert, Golden Dawn Scrapbook: The Rise and Fall of a Magical Order (York Beach: Weiser Books, 1998); Mary K Greer, Women of the Golden Dawn (Rochester: Park Street Press, 1994); Ellic Howe, The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887–1923 (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1978); Regardie, Golden Dawn. 49. S.L. MacGregor Mathers, trans., The Kabbalah Unveiled. Containing the Following Books of the Zohar. 1. The Book of Conceiled Mystery. 2. The Greater Holy Assembly. 3. The Lesser Holy Assembly (London, 1887). 50. William Wynn Westcott, Sepher Yetzirah: The Book of Formation (London: J. M. Watkins, 1911).



leading figures in establishing the Golden Dawn in 1888. Kabbalah Unveiled was a translation of three tracts from Rosenroth’s Kabbalah Denudata,while the second text was translated from the sixteenth-century Latin version of Sefer Yetsirah by Pistorius. While I have already given an account of the main content of the Sefer Yetsirah, I will now spend some words on Rosenroth’s Kabbalah Denudata, and what we should make out of its importance in forming modern occultism’s reception of Kabbalah in general. Christian Knorr von Rosenroth51 (1639–1689) was one of several philoso-phers, artisans and intellectuals who, during the latter half of the seven-teenth century, was invited to join the court of Prince Christian August at Sulzbach.52 Knorr became Chancellor of Sulzbach in 1666 and led some-thing of a cultural golden age there until his death. His own scholarly work was very diverse, covering the writing of hymns, theological exegeses, statesmanship, alchemy and astronomy, and translation and annotation of natural magical material and of the Kabbalah. As Allison Coudert writes, philosophy, philology, theology, poetry, drama and natural philosophy all came together in Knorr’s mind, and were part of a ‘larger quest to rediscover the primordial wisdom possessed by Adam before the fall’.53 This was expressed in his take on zoharic Kabbalah as well, of which the Kabbalah Denudata stands as his major contribution.54

The Kabbalah Denudata itself is a compilation of tracts and texts translated by Knorr, gathered from a great variety of different sources. In it we find, for instance, zoharic texts, Lurianic tracts as well as letters from Knorr’s own days dealing with kabbalistic interpretations. Inspired by the inter-pretation of Kabbalah given by the medieval Spanish Christian mystic Raymond Lull, Knorr saw the exegetical methods of the Kabbalah as the via regia to universal knowledge, a way to interpret not only the Holy Scriptures, but also the ‘Holy Book of Nature’.55 We should also note his particular interest for combining Kabbalah with alchemy, which was

51. The most relevant biographical discussions on Knorr are in: Alison Coudert, The Impact of Kabbalah in the 17th Century (Leiden: Brill, 1999); Kurt Salecker, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636–1689) (Leipzig: Meyer & Müller, 1931). See also the various publications of the Morgen-Glantz journal. 52. Allison P. Coudert, ‘Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy and Esotericism at the Court of Sulzbach’, in Ésotérisme, gnoses et imaginaire symbolique: Mélanges offerts à Antoine Faivre, ed. Richard Caron et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 30. 53. Ibid., 31. 54. Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata seu doctrina hebraeorum transendentalis et metaphysica atque theological (Sulzbach: Zunner, Johann David II, 1677–1684). 55. Ibid., 34.



also a significant influence on the later occult movements.56 In other words one could say that the Kabbalah of Rosenroth is filtered through the lenses of the (proto-) scientific endeavours in early modern Europe, becoming a tool of general epistemology for the growth of knowledge rather than exclusively a tool for theological and biblical exegesis. It should be kept in mind that it is this already slightly perennialist take on Kabbalah, already filtered through the non-Jewish context of early modernity that the modern occult current encounters zoharic Kab-balah. Whenever the Zohar is referred to in modern occultism, it is the Kabbalah Denudata which is implied. I think it is worth noting that Rosenroth’s work, which is basically the only acquaintance with kabba-listic doctrine in modern occultism, already possesses a distinct move towards synthesis. It seems plausible that this shortened the step towards conceiving the Kabbalah as a classificatory device and the matrix for a programmatic syncretism.

2.3.3. Programmatic Syncretism in the Golden Dawn. The germ of the par-ticular outlook programmatic syncretism took in the Golden Dawn can be found in the order’s founding documents: the so-called cipher manu-scripts.57 The origin of these documents, written in a cipher taken from Johannes Trithemius’s Steganographia, has been a matter of dispute both within the order itself and in the documentary literature about the order. Much evidence points towards the aforementioned Kenneth Mackenzie,58

although I will not go further into this discussion here. I will simply treat the documents as being peculiar to the order itself. After all, it was the Golden Dawn, utilizing the documents’ content, which gave them his-torical significance. The cipher manuscripts lay down the pattern for the order’s program-matic syncretism. In them we find Eliphas Levi’s attribution of the Tarot to the paths of the Tree of Life, conjoined with the astrological attribution of the Hebrew letters seen in Sefer Yetsirah (twelve signs of the zodiac, seven planets and the elements air, water, fire), as well as geomantic

56. A visible reference exists in the fact that William Wynn Westcott translated one of the alchemico-kabbalistic treatises from Kabbalah Denudata to English. See Westcott, Aesch mezareph or Purifying Fire: A Chymico-Kabalistic Treatise Collected from the Kabala denudata of Knorr von Rosenroth (London, New York, 1894). 57. An electronic edition of the manuscripts is now made available. See J. S. Kupperman, ed., ‘The Cipher Manuscript’, http://www.hermetic.com/gdlibrary/ cipher/index.html (accessed 11 November 2006) 58. Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 224.

http://www.hermetic.com/gdlibrary/cipher/index.html




figures and alchemical principles.59 Furthermore, the grades of initiation into the order are here attributed to the sefirot. Thus, when the material was worked through and systematized by Samuel Liddell Mathers, and made into an operative vehicle of magical initiations from 1892 onwards,60

the knowledge lectures given to initiates would have the following progression: in the first lecture one would memorize the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, their numerical value and the meaning of their name, as well as the ten sefirot, the signs of the zodiac, planets, elements, and the symbols of these.61 The second lecture would attribute other kabba-listic concepts, like Hebrew divine names, archangelic names and angelic choirs to the sefirot,62 while the actual conjoining of the planets, zodiacal signs, elements, geomantic figures and Tarot cards to the letters and sefirotare taught in lecture three and four.63 The fifth and last lecture brings up speculations on correspondences between the four letters of the Tetra-grammaton with the four elements, archangels, compass directions and so forth,64 but the sefirotic attributions are also expanded here with alchemical metals and the qelipot (or qlippoth in the Golden Dawn’s own transcription),65 as well as attributions of colours66 and to the parts of the microcosm, that is, the constitution of the human body and psyche.67

From the sheer progression of these lectures, it is clear that the Tree of Life as a model for classification is the very pattern of the programmatic syncretism which the other inferred elements express. Even other kabba-listic ideas are subsumed to the structure of the sefirot and the Hebrew letters. The whole novel system thus seems to be a reshuffling of old cards, with one element of the Kabbalah coming out on top, and the others finding their place in accordance with it.

3. Utilizations of the New System

To return to Aleister Crowley’s system, it was born from the ruins of the

59. Kuppermann, ed., ‘The Cipher Manuscript’. 60. Godwin, Theosophical Enlightenment, 224. 61. Regardie, ed., The Golden Dawn, 50-52. 62. Ibid., 64. This arrangement seems to be based on a table in the second book of Cornelius Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia, with slight alterations in some of the columns. See Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy: Completely Annotated with Modern Commentary, ed. Donald Tyson (St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 2003), 288-89. 63. Regardie, ed., The Golden Dawn, 67-73. 64. Ibid., 80. 65. Ibid., 82. 66. Ibid., 99. 67. Ibid., 100-106.



Golden Dawn material after its schism at the turn of the century and taken further in the direction I have pointed out. As mentioned in section 2.1, in Liber 777 Aleister Crowley heavily expanded on the system of corre-spondences given in the Golden Dawn. In the early years of the twentieth century Crowley had departed for a journey around the globe, visiting among other places Mexico, Japan, Ceylon, India, Burma and Egypt.68

While in Cairo he studied Sufism and Arabic under an unnamed sheik.69

While in Ceylon he spent six weeks with the old friend from the Golden Dawn, Allan Bennett, involving intense study of yoga and yogic prac-tices.70 He also engaged in a more intimate relation with Buddhism in general during his visit, and would subsequently consider himself a Buddhist for many years. It is perhaps also interesting to note that in the years that passed between the heydays of the Golden Dawn and the writing of Liber 777James Frazer had published the second edition of The Golden Bough in 1900, and the twelve volumes of the third edition from 1906 and onwards,71 once again bringing comparison of geographically and tem-porally unconnected cultural data to the minds of literate Europeans. In the preface to Liber 777 Crowley writes:

the only man worthy of our notice is Frazer of the Golden Bough. Here again, there is no tabulation; for us it is left to sacrifice literary charm, and even some accuracy, in order to bring out the one great point. This: That when a Japanese thinks of Hachiman, and a Boer of the Lord of Hosts, they are not two thoughts, but one.72

While acknowledging and appreciating Frazer’s collection of data, Crowley is dissatisfied with the presentation of it. In Liber 777 then, Crowley seeks to tabulate this knowledge: that is (with the terminology of Alfred Vitale), deconstruct the textual information into functional parts, extricate the parts and reintroduce them into the new system—which is that of the kabbalistic ‘pattern’ inherited from the Golden Dawn synthesis. This will enable him to bring out ‘the one great point’: the universal, perennial wisdom underlying the disparate traditions. The result is 191 columns with cross-cultural data rearranged according to kabbalistic terminology.73

68. Sutin, Do What thou Wilt, 80-117. 69. Ibid., 119. 70. Ibid., 95. 71. Robert Fraser, ‘Note on the Text’ to The Golden Bough: A New Abridgement,James George Frazer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), xl. 72. Crowley, Liber 777 and other Qabalistic Writings. 73. Here we recall again definition (b) from Crowley’s appendix (see ch. 2.1).



But how is this reshuffled deck of old cards utilized? A quick look at the magical system of Aleister Crowley reveals the answer: The new tabulated body of knowledge is chiefly used as a mnemonic device for use in magical rituals. Crowley himself is quite clear about this:

If we take an example, the use of the tables [of 777] will become clear. Let us suppose that you wish to obtain knowledge of some obscure science. In column xlv [‘Magical powers’], line 12, you will find ‘Knowledge of Sciences.’ By now looking up line 12 in the other columns, you will find that the Planet corresponding is Mercury, its number eight, its lineal figures the octagon and octagram, the God who rules that planet Thoth, or in the Hebrew symbolism Tetragrammaton Adonai and Elohim Tzabaoth, its Archangel Raphael, its choir of Angels Beni Elohim, its Intelligence Tiriel, its Spirit Taphtartharath, its colours Orange (for Mercury is the Sphere of the Sephira Hod, 8) Yellow, Purple, Grey and Indigo… You would then prepare your Place of Working accordingly. In an orange circle you would draw an eight-pointed star of yellow, at whose points you would place eight lamps. The Sigil of the Spirit…you would draw in the four colours with such other devices as your experience may suggest… [I]f it be his [the mage’s] wish to master one particular idea, he must make every material object about him directly suggest that idea… In other words, the whole magical apparatus and ritual is a complex system of mnemonics.74

I suppose it could not have been illustrated and stated much clearer. It should, however, be noted that this ‘recreated Kabbalah’ is also utilized in Crowley’s system in connection with his idea of a scientific method for occult and magical practice. The correspondences of Liber 777 cannot only be used for inducing certain connotations, but also for checking them when the magician has had his visions. This point is clearly made by Crowley in his short essay ‘Notes for an Astral Atlas’,75 where he explains the practice of ‘astral travels’ and ritually induced visionary experiences:

the Magician must then make a careful record of every vision, omitting no detail; he must then make sure that it tallies in every point with the correspondences in Book 777 and in ‘Liber D’ [Sepher Sephirot]. Should he find (for instance) that, having invoked Mercury, his vision contains names whose numbers [by gematria] are Martial, or elements proper to Pisces, let him set himself most earnestly to discover the source of error, to correct it, and to prevent its recurrence.76

74. Crowley, ‘Liber O vel Manus et Sagittæ’, in Magick. Liber ABA. Book Four. Parts I-IV (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1997), 614. 75. Crowley, ‘Notes for an Astral Atlas’, in Magick, 499-512. 76. Ibid., 505.



I think this use of the recreated kabbalistic system explains to us the meaning of Crowley’s definition (g) in the appendix to the revised edition: ‘[Kabbalah is a] system of criteria by which the truth of correspondence may be tested with a view to criticizing new discoveries in the light of their coherence with the whole body of truth’.77 This is the kabbalistic method of experimental testing in Crowley’s ‘scientific illuminism’. The practical system of checking results is given another central function in Crowley’s ‘sceptico-mystical’ path as well. Since the grade structure of his magical order A A is also attributed to different sefirot, and thus integrated in the elaborate system of correspondences, it becomes possible to check if claimants to a particular grade have actually attained the specific results associated with the grade. For instance, an Adeptus Minor should attain to the specific mystical visionary experience of the ‘Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel’.78 If the acclaimed adept does not in fact show signs of having done so (i.e. in the records every student is required to keep), he should not be considered to have attained the grade. Thus we see that the use of this kabbalistic system functions as well to uphold something of a magical meritocracy,made possible only by the quantification, tabulation and testability of esoteric data.

4. Conclusions

The function and use of Kabbalah in modern occultism is inherently marked by modernity itself. Through the processes of modernization a vast corpus of religious and esoteric data from different localities and epochs became available to the occult currents. Influenced by the rising sciences, this body of data was also approached in a new way: clinging to modernity’s grand narrative of progress through science, occultists consciously applied syncretistic methods in order to reveal the universal truths underlying particular cultural systems, and improve the esoteric system they themselves worked with. In modern occult writers these features of modernity gave rise to what has here been termed program-matic syncretism. In it original features of the Kabbalah were dismantled from their contexts and turned into something else: a taxonomic matrix for arranging and systematizing other data recognized as esoteric. It is this drive towards arrangement of data, in search of the universal philosophia perennis underlying the particular traditions that makes the

77. Crowley, ‘What is Qabalah?’. 78. See Liber 777, tables xlv, cxxi, and Crowley, ‘One Star in Sight. A Glimpse of the Structure and System of the Great White Brotherhood A A ’, in Magick, 494.



whole syncretistic enterprise of the modern occultists programmatic. The recreated Kabbalah thus plays the key role in this program. It becomes the denominator of wisdom, and the symbolism used for its ‘scientific’ quantification. But it is not just a reshuffling of old cards for its own sake we have witnessed. There also emerged a whole system of practical utilizations of the tabulated knowledge. In Aleister Crowley, we mainly recognized two functions: one to construct, the other to check magical operations. Thus emerges another feature characteristic of modernity, pertaining to the role of science and scientific thinking. The new kabbalistic system plays a major role in fulfilling the motto of Crowley’s magical order: the aim of religion, the method of science.

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