The Kabbalah Deck: Pathway to the Soul

By Edward Hoffman

An introduction to the Jewish mystical tradition that’s become a source of wisdom and guidance for people around the world.

The mystic tradition of the Kabbalah is no longer exclusively for people of the Jewish faith. Embraced by dreamers, seekers, and believers alike, this ancient source of wisdom and spiritual guidance offers a practical method for attaining tranquility and fulfillment in everyday life.

This unique ebook provides an engaging way to explore Jewish mysticism. With pages devoted to meditation and divination as well as an exploration of the tenets of this ancient practice, Kabbalah: Reference to Go offers the spiritual key to unlocking endless joy and inner peace with feet still firmly planted in this world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780811873147

Book preview

introduction

As never before, the Kabbalah—Judaism’s mystical tradition—is experiencing a tremendous rebirth of interest in the modern world. People of many different backgrounds and faiths are actively exploring this ancient system of knowledge about the human soul, the universe, and our relation to the divine. The Kabbalah’s insights into inner growth and fulfillment in daily life are proving to be not only poetically inspiring, but personally relevant as well. Such global appeal, even in our high-tech era, isn’t really surprising, for Jewish mystics have always viewed this sacred tradition as relevant to men and women of every generation.

And yet, there are definite reasons why the Kabbalah is now striking a particularly receptive chord. For one thing, we more clearly see the limitations of natural science and scientism—that is, viewing science as a religion. A half century after the horrors of World War II, only the most naïcan still insist that scientific progress by itself will lead to a peaceful humanity; a strong ethical awareness is essential. At the same time, it’s become more apparent that the world’s great religious traditions are neither obsolete nor irrelevant, but rather speak to us in a timely manner.

Within the Jewish community, the Kabbalah has finally won its long-deserved respectability, due partly to the influential writings of Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem in modern Israel. Though striving with very different goals in mind, both were intellectual giants who clearly showed that mystical beliefs and practices have always been vital to Judaism. As a direct result, virtually all major universities now offer courses on the Kabbalah, albeit with an emphatically historical approach. Gone forever are the days when even Jewish history books ignored this sacred tradition or offered only a few, condescending words about it.

Responding to this new academic recognition, as well as to the changing spiritual needs of individual Jews, synagogues and adult-learning classes teaching the Kabbalah have become so acceptable as to be almost mainstream. In a manner unthinkable even a few years ago, rabbis, cantors, and lay educators are eagerly recruiting lecturers to explain what the hoopla surrounding Jewish mysticism is all about.

Perhaps ironically, the growth of psychology has also heightened interest in the Kabbalah and its relevance to understanding our inner world. With the exception of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, the key psychological founders were almost all anti-religious in their outlook. Under the influence of Sigmund Freud, nearly all social scientists rejected spiritual interest as the mark of the emotionally immature. For in Freud’s view, religion had nothing positive to offer, and mystical experience was simply a delusional regression to the womb. This contemptuous attitude dominated for many decades.

Fortunately, the emergence of humanistic and transpersonal psychology has sparked a major change in attitude. Since the late 1960s, a growing number of counselors, therapists, and educators have been affirming that spirituality is an authentic—and vital—aspect of human nature. As theorist Abraham Maslow aptly commented,The new image of the human psyche states that each of us has a higher nature and that this higher nature composes a basic part of our essence. Originating the term peak-experience to describe our loftiest, most sacred moments in life, Maslow called for a new embrace of religious wisdom through the ages.

For the past twenty years, I’ve heeded Maslow’s call and focused specifically on Judaism. Beginning with my first volume in this field, The Way of Splendor, I’ve sought to show how Jewish spiritual and mystical teachings can enhance our everyday lives in innumerable ways. In later books including Sparks of Light (co-authored with Rabbi Zalman M. Schacter-Shalomi), The Heavenly Ladder, Opening the Inner Gates, and most recently, The Hebrew Alphabet: A Mystical Journey, I’ve presented additional Kabbalistic notions about the human soul and specific techniques, such as meditation, self-examination, and dreamwork, for better actualizing our inner potential.

Despite the encouraging reception these works have received, I’ve increasingly felt the need for an entirely new resource— one that would make the Kabbalah more dynamically personal and interactive. This format would certainly not replace classic study, but significantly complement it by providing a more experiential pathway into the proverbial garden of Jewish mystical guidance.

To this end, I’ve created The Kabbalah Deck. It’s been designed for two specific and not unrelated purposes. The first is for contemplation and sacred study, and the second is for divination. Both relate to the Thirty-Two Celestial Paths of the Kabbalistic system. Later in this book, we’ll focus specifically on a variety of different exercises emanating from this basis for individual actualization, but for now, let’s take a look at its essence.

THE THIRTY-TWO CELESTIAL PATHS

Throughout its vast history, the Kabbalah has presented many fascinating teachings about our relation to the divine. Undoubtedly, among the most important—and intriguing—is that for each of us, thirty-two distinct pathways to the divine exist. The more clearly we understand these pathways, the greater our joy and fulfillment. Jewish sages and mystics have consistently identified the pathways as comprising the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the ten attributes of God known as the Sefirot in an array called the Tree of Life.

As far back as the fifth century C.E., the foundation of Jewish mysticism, known as the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation), explicated this notion. Written anonymously in the Land of Israel, this fascinating text declares,With thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom, the Names of the Holy One are engraved, and this world was created with number, speech, and story. Incorporating fascinating metaphysical teachings that had long flourished in oral tradition, the Sefer Yetzirah succinctly described how these forces combine and interplay to sustain everything in the cosmos. Its repeated phrase for those seeking divine knowledge was: Know, think, and visualize.

Over the ensuing centuries, Jewish mystical adepts continued to revere and study these revelatory aspects. For instance, the twelfth-century Bahir (Book of the Clear Light) poetically remarked, "A king had a beautiful garden, and in it were