Talk:Hermetic Qabalah

message: :Qabalah/Cabala/Kabbalah is generally Panentheistic, as the Tree of Life 10 Sephiroth describe creation as an emanation from God's Being, through a hierachical chain of descending levels from the Infinite to the Finite. In this way, Jewish Kabbalists interpreted the philosophical concept of creation "Something from Nothing" in reverse: "Nothing-Ayin" is the Divine essence which appears as "nothing" from man's perspective. Therefore the phrase becomes emanationism not transcendent theism. From the Divine perspective, creation becomes actually nothing (included in God) from something. Jewish Kabbalah is strictly monotheistic - the sephiroth are never prayed to, while the various Names of God in Judaism are associated with the different Sephiroth. To avoid any plurality in God, the Judaic Sephiroth are seen as one unified light shining through 10 "different coloured" vessels. In Judaism, to pray to the Sephirot would be plurality/polytheism, while praying to the different Names of God is seen as praying through the Sephiroth - the different Names are directing prayers to the unified Ayn Sof light as it becomes "coloured" through the different Sephiroth vessels. Divine immanence (God's Being) fills creation through the sephiroth, but the sephiroth are nullified and unified in Judaism to their source, without any pluralism in God. In Jewish Lurianic Kabbalah, the new doctrine of Tzimtzum (primordial self-withdrawl of God from Creation) introduces paradox/ambiguity to this picture. God is absent from Creation (transcendent Theism) to allow independent finitude to exist. However, God's ray of light shines into the vacuum to begin and continually sustain Creation, so God is present in Creation (Panentheism). The ambiguity of this allowed some Jewish Kabbalists to be theistic/non-panentheistic by interpreting Creation through the Sephiroth as extended light from God (independent Creation) rather than God's direct presence/manifestation in Creation. However, in general, Kabbalah tends to Panentheism (especially in later Hasidic Judaism).
:Hermetic Qabalah, as far as I understand (?), is syncretic, relating the Sephiroth to polytheistic/pagan gods etc., as intermediate agents of the Divine. Judaism sees angels in similar function, without allowing prayer to them, though restricted Jewish Practical Kabbalah allows invocations if the motive is strictly for the sake of God (an impure motive would be too close to idolatry in Jewish Kabbalah). In Hermetic Qabalah, some schools, eg. Dion Fortune, also require pure motive in the esoteric-occultist worship of God - (I think?), while eg. Aleister Crowley's Thelema replaces worshipful intention of God with the true Will of Man (is this correct? Less/non Theocentric, more Anthropocentric?) What was the view of Dion Fortune to Aleister Crowley (a teacher of hers?)? If there is a fundamental difference of theological-moral direction between these two schools of Hermetic Qabalah (God-centred vs. Man-centred?), then the page should point this out and explain it, as these seem to be opposite schools in Qabalah? Are some schools of Hermetic Qabalah, such as Dion Fortune's Fraternity of the Inner Light esoteric Christian? While Aleister Crowley's Thelema is non/anti - Christian/Monotheist? If so, the article should point this out (confused laypeople might associate Qabalism with dark arts! Was Crowley Black Magick? Colin Wilson in The Occult book says that he denied being Black Magic, and was not magically malevolent). Was his system effectively polytheistic in practice (or theory?), while recognising the supreme God of gods? Is Hermetic Qabalah in general more polytheistic in practice (rather than theory?) than Jewish Kabbalah? Responses, and Explanations/clarifications of the article would be helpful. April8 (talk) 21:57, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Dion Fortune referred to MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley, but never knew any of them personally (cf. The Mystical Qabalah, which by the way is called La cábala mística in Spanish, A Cábala Mística in Portuquese, La Cabale mystique in French, Mistična kabala in Slovene, De mystieke kabbala in Dutch and Die mystische Kabbala in German, so the translators didn′t stick to the English distinction between Kabbalah/Cabala/Qabalah; I don′t speak most of these languages, I just checked the titles). --Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg, formerly active using the static IP adress 132.187.3.26. 09:34, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Panentheism, God, Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley

message: There is a section of the Kabbalah article, Kabbalah in film and fiction, which mostly is a list of films with Kabbalistic themes. Since the list seems more of Hermetic Qubalah interest, I am thinking of moving the list there....if there is no objection. Kwork 22:18, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The only obvious candidates for moving here are Promethea and Foucault's Pendulum. If you want to move these, feel free. Fuzzypeg☻ 23:01, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I think that, almost without exception, they come under the heading of Hermetic (not Jewish) Kabbalah.  But if it is not wanted here, I will simply remove it instead of moving it here. Kwork 11:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kabbalah in film and fiction 

message: How come there's no mention of the Abyss? There's a WP article on the Abyss in Thelema, but the concept did not originate with Crowley. Seems like a strange omission of such an important concept. --Smcg8374 04:23, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abyss? 

message: Some alchemists (e.g. Paracelsus) adopted the Hermetic Qabalah assignment between the 7 vital organs and the 7 Classical planets as follows:
Planet 	Organ
Sun    	Heart
Moon   	Brain
Mercury	Lungs
Venus  	Kidneys
Mars   	Gall bladder
Jupiter	Liver
Saturn 	Spleen
- Benjamin Franklin 75.74.130.115 (talk) 16:38, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: 7 Vital Organs of Antiquity connected to 7 Classical Planets

message: The general tendency is that Jewish religion works will use the spelling "Kabbalah" for themselves while hermetic or western esoteric/"mystery tradition"/occultist works will use the spelling Qabala or Qabalah instead. Nevertheless this is only a general but not a universal characteristic and so one has to check the actual text and the author of a work in order to be able to identify it as "Jewish" or "Western occultist/esoteric". Lon Milo DuQuette is a prominent contemporary author within the hermetic occultist tradition who also aligns himself with and writes on Thelema. As such he has to be considered an author of Hermetic Qabalah even though he might have decided to include in the title of his work the spelling "kabbalah". It happens that i own all the works included in the bibliography of this article except the Paul A. Clark work. As such i know the texts in them but also i identify all of these authors as western esoteric/occultist since their other books tend to deal with subjects such as Thelema, ceremonial magick, talismans, tarot, hermeticism and related subjects. A very different perspective from, for example an author on Kabbalah such as Gershom Sholem, whose other works deal mostly with Jewish religion theology and history.--Eduen (talk) 21:32, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your response, Eduen! That clarifies a lot. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 20:41, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  User: Jayaguru-Shishya 

message: Article needs a discussion of the pillars, especially the middle pillar and the concept of ascending it. Skyerise (talk) 18:42, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Middle Pillar 

message: As valuable and appreciated as the work that has gone into this article so far is, there's a major problem throughout this article which is quite serious: it is written almost entirely off the back of what amount to primary texts of Hermetic Qabalah, each with very particular idiosyncratic worldviews. There is minimal reliance on scholarly secondary sources - or indeed genuinely secondary sources in general - throughout the article. 
Of particular concern here is the Teachings section. Early twentieth-century esoteric authors such as Dion and Waite are cited directly in the article's account of Hermetic Qabalah, but are cited as if they are somehow third party sources who can state definitively what the doctrine of "Hermetic Qabalah" in general is to a secular audience. They are not and can not. For a secular, non-confessional encyclopedia, a religious/spiritual/esoteric/etc. author is an authority on themselves and themselves only. This section needs a rewrite which either recasts the ideas its describing as the ideas of the authors cited - not Hermetic Qabalists in general or in the abstract - or starts from scratch with providing the accounts of actual reliable scholarly sources. The way this article stands, it would be the equivalent of the article on Christianity citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church for its definition of Christianity, but phrasing it as "Christians [in general] believe X" instead of saying the "the Catechism of the Catholic Church says X".
That's the main big issue, but similar problems are peppered throughout. Kieran Barry is cited as though he were somehow an authority on the relationship between Qabalah and Gnosticism. He is not; he is a seeming arbitrarily-chosen occult writer with highly heterodox views, the relevance of which to the article is far from clear. The problem isn't the particular source here so much as the fact that the article in many places takes certain vague notions about the topic as a starting point and then "puts in" sources to try and construct and argument to legitimize the claim. This is not how you write an encyclopedia. It is entirely irrelevant whether a Wikipedia author thinks facts A, B, or C are true or untrue, or even whether they can forge a convincing argument proving facts A, B, or C. Wikipedia does not make arguments. The forms of claims it can legitimately make are extremely limited: Wikipedia can say "primary source A says X [citation]", "secondary source B argues X [citation]", or "X [citation to a reliable secondary secondary or tertiary source C, presuming C is sufficiently authoritative that its statement X is not reasonably disputed]". That's it. 
If you cannot directly and appropriately source a claim, then the claim does not belong on Wikipedia. Some of the rather technical arguments about things like the nature of Ein sof, or whether such and such a view is panentheist, etc, on this talk page is indicative of the problem running through the article: counter-intuitive as it might seem, whatever any of us think or think we know about a given topic is irrelevant. We're not here to argue points of fact: we are here to ascertain the reliability of existing sources on the topic at hand, and synthesize those sources as reasonably and transparently as possible. Wikipedia does not record truth or produce knowledge, it aggregates sources as accurately as possible while remaining readable and informative.
There are some issues here are there with some of the early bits of the history section, but the later parts seem relatively sound.
The article needs either a drastic cull of content (which wouldn't be ideal) or substantial reworking from someone familiar with the current secondary scholarly literature on Hermetic Qabalah specifically. There is of course the problem that there may not be a whole lot of existing scholarly work on Hermetic Qabalah specifically. By "specifically", I mean to stress that scholarship on "Hermeticism" or "Kabbalah" or "Christian Cabalah" or "the influence of Hermeticism and Kabbalah on person X" is not scholarship on the particular construct of "Hermetic Qabalah". And I really do stress scholarly here, because very little other material in this area is at a sufficient remove from esoteric belief and practice to constitute a genuinely secondary source.
--Pseudo-Pseudo-Dionysius (talk) 17:37, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Pseudo-Pseudo-Dionysius (like the nickname, by the way)! I hear you. Many, many Wikipedia articles are like this. This is not how they are supposed to be, also not according to Wikipedia's own core content policies (see WP:PSTS, WP:INDEPENDENT, etc.). But the trouble is finding someone familiar with the current secondary scholarly literature on Hermetic Qabalah specifically who we can also get to edit, and to keep editing Wikipedia. Experts tend to not stay here for long, because to be an expert and to edit Wikipedia one needs to have a humongous amount of patience (see WP:RANDY; WP:CHEESE). Most people don't. If I can give you one advice: don't focus to much on the bad stuff, but focus on WP:BOLDly improving what you can, working on what you find interesting to work on. It's no use to complain at talk pages: talk pages are there to discuss when there's a disagreement, but if you truly improve an article, most editors will be happy to ignore you. That sounds harsh, but sometimes it's rather a blessing. It's great fun to make Wikipedia actually better. The only true reward lies there. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:05, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Major sourcing issues throughout: expert/secondary scholarship urgently needed