CABALA
3
CalttUillc Diagrams of the ^^ Sephiroth.**
pemnoe of these three fonns, the Sephirotk are so ar- ranged that the three triads and the middle pillar are to be dlstfaignished in each one of them.
4. Prooetgeg of the Ditme DevdopmemU—Tha&b Sepki- mky or God through them, created the lower and vis- ible worid, of which everything has its prototype in the opper world. '* The whole world is Uke a gigan- tic tree ftdl of branches and leaves, the root of which it the spiritual world of the Scjthiroth ; or it is like a firmly miited chain, the last link of which is attached to the upper world ; or like an immense sea, which is bemg constantly filled by a spring everlastingly gush- ing iorth its streams.*' The Sephiroth, through the di- vine power immanent in them, uphold the world which they have created, and transmit to it the divine mer- des by means of twelve channels (nl'lilS). This tnmsmisekHi of the divine mercies can be accelerated by prayer, sacrifices, and religions observances ; and the Jewish people, by virtue of the revelation, and /the 613 commandments given to them (see Schools), IhsTe especially been ordained to obtain these blessings (7B1D) for the whole world. Hence the great myste- ries of the Jewish ritual (M^^'&rin "I'lD); henee the profound secrets contained in every word and syllable of the formulary of prayers ; and hence the declara- tion that *'the pious constitute the foundation of the worid" (dbi5 liO^ p*^??). Not only does the En- 8opk reveal himself through the Sephirothf but he also becomes incarnate in them, which accounts for the an- thropomorphisms of Scripture and the Hagada, Thus, when it is said that **God spake, descended upon - earth, ascended into heaven, smelled the sweet smell of sacrifices, repented in his heart, was angiy," etc., or when the Hagadic works describe the body and the manskis of God, etc., all this does not refer to the EB^Sopk, but to these intermediate beings. These SepkMk again became incarnate in the patriarchs, e. g. 8€pkira 4, love was incarnate in Abraham ; 6, powtr hi Isaac ; 6, beauiy in Jacob ; 1, firmness in Mo- ms; 8, splenior in Aaron ; ^.foundatUm in Joseph ; 10, in David; and they constitute the chariot
5. The psychology of the Cabala is one of its most important features. All human souls are pre-ezistent in the worid of the SepUrotk, and are, without an ex- ception, destined to inhabit human bodies, and pursue then' course upon earth for a certain period of proba- tion. If, notwithstanding its union with the body, the soul resists all earthly trammels, and remains pure, it ascends after death into the spiritual kingdom, and has a share in the world of Sepluroth, But if, on the contrary, it becomes contaminated by that which is earthly, the soul must inhabit the body again and •gun C^a**?, i^ab-ift) tiU it is able to ascend in a pu- ri^ state, through repeated trial (restricted by Kach- Bsmdes and the later cabalists to three transmigra- tions). The apparently undeserved sufferings which
CABALA
the pious have sometimes to endure here below are simply designed to purify their souls. Hence God*B justice is not to be impugned when the righteous are afiUcted and the wicked prosper. This doctrine of the transmigration of souls is supp<nrted by an appeal to the iqjunction in the Bible, that a man must marry the widow of his brother if he died without issue, inas- much as by this is designed, say the cabalists, that the soul of the departed one might be bom again, and fin- ish its earthly course. Vecy few new souls enter into the worid, because many of the old souls which have already inhabited bodies have to re-enter those who are bom, in consequence of their having polluted them- selves in their previous bodily existence. This retards the great redemption of Israel, which cannot take place till all the pre-existent souls have been bora upon earth, because the soul of the Messiah, which, like all other souls, has its pre-existenoe in the world of the sphrits of the Bepkirothy is to be the last bom one at the md of datfs^ whidi is supported by an appeal to tiie Talmud {Ytbamoih^ 68, a). Then the great jubilee year will commence, when the whole pleioma of souls (niTaVSn ^seiK), cleansed and purified, and released from earth, shall ascend, in glorious company, into heaven. See Metbmpstchosis.
lY. Origin^ DaU, Design, and Relations of the Cabala. — ^The rise of Cabalism is involved in great obscurity. The Jews ascribe it to Adam, or to Abraham, or to Moses, or to Ezra, the last being apparentiy counte- nanced by 2 Esdr. xiv, 30-48. The opinions of Chris- tian writers are as variously divided ; and the Cabala is such a complex whole, and has been aggregated to- gether at such distant periods, that no general judg- ment can apply to it In its crude form it is undoubt- edly to be attributed to the authors of the books Jezi^ rah and Zohar above named, and therefore cannot be assigned an earlier date than these writings. Its ftill- er and more mature doctrines, however, as above de- lineated, are due to the speculations of later masters of this schooL The account of this theosophy has been greatiy obscured by modem writers, who, in thieir description of the Cabala, confound its doctrines with the JeuM ntysttcism propounded in the works called the AlphcAei ofR.AIaba (M'^pa) S^ Kn^^a M^ft^, or fita'^p:? S^ n*l'^niX), the Description of the Body of God (niaip ^la^^^lD), and the Delineation of the heaven- ly Temples (ni^D'^n). Even the book Jezirah does not contain the doctrines of the Cabala as above ex- pounded. All these productions, and others of a sim- ilar nature so frequently quoted by writers who give an analysis of the Cabda, know little or nothing of the Sephirothy and of the speculations about the En- Soph, or the being of Qod, which constitute the essence of the Cabala. Nevertheless, these works are unq^s- tionably to be regarded as having induced the more re- fined speculations of the Cabala, by the difiiculty in which they placed the Jews in the south of Fnmce, and in Catalonia, who believed in them almost as much as in the Bible, and who were driven to contrive this S3r8tem whereby they could explain to themselves, as well as to their assaOants, the gross descriptions of the Deity, and of the plains of heaven, given in these Ha- gadic productions. Being unable to go to the extreme of the rigid literalists of tiie north of France and (Ger- many, who, without looking for any higher import, impUcitiy accepted the difficulties and anthropomor- phisms of the Bible and Hagada in their most literal sense ; or to adopt the other extreme of the followers of Mflimonides, who rejected altogether the Hagadic and mystical writings, and rationalized the Scriptures, it may be conjectured that Isaac the blind contrived, and his two disciples, Ezra and Azariel of Zerona, de- veloped the modem system of Cabalism (about 1200- 1280), which steers between these two extremes. By of the Bephiroth all the anthropomorphisms in