One of the divisive points between Judaism and Christianity is Judaism is in a sense more Gnostic. Thus Rabbis did and still do write material that is treated as valid spiritual doctrine, and they question and break down their holy cannon to see the wisdom in it. Not because they don’t believe in it, not from their own thinking, but because they believe you can know the presence of God, where Christianity seems to focus heavily on the idea of God as unknown and unknowable outside of the church.

Sounds so familiar, presence of God. More spiritual then religious in that sense. Yes. I see your view, and I studied Judaism first before I left my faith of origin.

Kabbalists acknowledge what are called three pillars. Three direct paths of emanation from God, but they don’t believe that people necessarily go on one path. The three pillars are mercy, severity, and what is just the middle pillar, the point of balance. Although meditation is criticised in many orthodox churches, there was and is a practice of it in Kabbalism, and evidence of its practice as well as advocation of it in the Bible. It’s believed in Kabbalism that meditation is ascending the middle path, neither going in your soul to severity or compassion.

There is another observation in Kabbalism not related to meditation. They refer to it as the path of the flaming sword. Do you recall this from the Bible? It was a guardian to the place that in Judaism is known as the orchard or garden of Eden. That is basically the Jewish idea of heaven, but it’s also a pattern in the Sephirot (ten emanations of God). Going from the state of mind of the kingdom or ego, to the sphere of Gods power, to mercy then balance than severity again. Ascending up the ten Sephiroth with the ultimate goal being a return to the unity or reconciliation with God that Adam knew. Which is implied heavily in the Old Testament, and to a degree even in the New Testament though it is altered in it.

This is the path you follow through your lives as you evolve spiritually? As you engage Kabbalistic practices, yes. It is seen that you can speed up your evolution.

It speeds up the evolution by one consciously accepting the paths, as apposed to the corporeal path of pain and suffering. Yes, though in Kabbalism, and the practice of Gematria, that can reveal hidden truths. They see even the corporeal existence is one of Gods emanations, and that the choice to see it as the only power was one of the sequences of choices we have to make to atonement, or rather “at-one-ment”.

In Kabbalah there is some difference even in the concept of the angelic powers. Some seeing them only as metaphor, and some seeing the presence of angels as a natural expression or emanation of God on those levels. But each of the ten spheres is linked to an arch-angel, seen as the intelligence or governing presence of life as it relates to that sphere of existence. So the argument is the angel is an actual servitor of God, or just the presence of God on that level, seems to a degree semantic, but has lead to a lot of controversial derivative thought. Many of the “hermetic” schools of practice either adopted the Kabbalistic model, or already had it depending on what view you adopt. Some connect it to the Jewish contact with the nation of Egypt. Even the modern tarot imagery has this same connection to both Egypt and the Kabbalah, or seems to have.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~