CABALA
the Bible, in the Hegada, Mid even in ike SMw Koma^ ire at once taken from the Deity, and yet literally ex- plained ; while the aacrificial institations, the precepts, and the ritual of the Bible and Talmud, receive at the aame time a profound spiritual import. The Cabala in its present state is therefore a hermeneutical sys- tem, which, in part at least, was instituted to oppose the phUosophical school of Maimonides (q. t.).
The relationship between the Cabala and ^eo-Pla- tonism is apparent. The Cabala elevates God above being and thinking, and likewise denies all divine at- tributes; so does Neo-Platonism. The Cabala, like Neo-Platonism, places intelligent principles or sub- stances between the Deity and the world. The Cabala teaches that tiie Sephirothy which emanated ttcm God, are not equal to God ; Neo-Platonism teaches that the substances, thought, spirit, and nature (vovq, ^HoCly *nd ^<nc)t which proceeded from one being, are not equal to their origin (ptne Jeov U t6 wpothv rif /uivavri); and the Cabala has adopted the very same classification of the Sepkiroth into the three great spheres of intelli- gence, animation, and matter. The comparison lie- tween the emanation of the Sepkiroth from the En- Soph^ and the rays proceeding from light to describe immanency and perfect unity, is the same as the Neo- Phitonic figure to illustrate the emanations from the one Being (olov U ^ayrbc rrjv iK airrov ^rcpiXa/it^tv). The doctrine of the Cabala, that moet of the souls which enter the world have occupied bodies upon this earth before, is Neo-Platonic (comp. Zeller, Gesck. der PkUotophie, III, ii, 944). See Neo-Platomism.
y. Later Processes of Cabalism, — In the hands of the younger disciples of the cabalistic science, the se- cret Imowledge was not only studied in its philosoph- ical bearing, but also, and even rather, under two new aspects (which were not mentioned by their predeces- sors, and which carried it fiuiher than it went at first, though by this we do not mean to say that it received any positively novel additions), namely, the practiccU application and the hermeneutical method. We find that in olden times secret philosophical science and magic went hand in hand. The sorcerer mentioned ki Acts xiii was called by the Arab name of tt^*^?, the iecretf i. e. learned ; in Acts xix we read of books of magic which were at Ephesus ; the sporadic mentions made of the Cabala in the Talmud are accompanied by descriptions of miracles. When R. Chahina and R. Oshia studied the book of Jezirah, we are told in the treatise Sanhedrim of the Gemara, they also made each time a three-year-old cow, and lived thereon. It is no wonder, then, if the Jewish cabalists of the latter part of the Middle Ages transmitted the conception of their science to their Christian adepts, not only as speculative (H'^S^^I?), but also as practical (n*^ip^P), i. a|in plain English, that they connected with it the iderthat a true cabalist must at the same time be a sorcerer. It is self-evident, however, that we must here distinguish between theosophic overstraining and mere juggling, although in actual practice the differ- ence may sometimes have been hard to perceive. The effects hoped for or believed in magic were accordingly transmitted outwardly through amulets, talismans, exorcisms, images, signs, and such things, consisting of certain writings, names of angels, or mysterious letters, whose connection, however, always leads back to the name of God. This last, unpro- nounceable to tiie unconsecrated, but known to the cabalist, whether it consist of four (rn!T»), twelve, or fbrty-two letters (numbers which result from combina- tions from tiie Sephir system), was, as such, called D^ ttJ'^Ban, the declared name; and he who knew how to use it was a D^n 7^3, or mcuter of the name. The well-known implements of magic, such as Solomon's keys, the shield of David, etc., owe their origin to tliis line of ideas. Amateurs will find a very entertaining
[ CABALA
account of these things in Eisenm^ger's Enidedtes Judenthum^ in Schudt's Jewish Curiosities, and other works of the same character. See Amulbt.
The exegetical ingenuity of the Cabala is interest- ing to the theologian. The principle of the mystic in- terpretation of Scripture is universal, not particular to such or such schools, as every one will perceive in Church histoiy, and even in the history of Greek lit- erature. We find it in Philo, in the New Test., in the writings of the fathers, in the Tabnud, and in the Zo- har; and the more it departs tnm the spirit of the sa- cred text, the more had the latter to be brought to its support by distortions of its meaning. For sudi ope- ration there are no known rules except the exigencies of the case and the subjective mass of the sense. See Mysticism. In the mean time, the Jews had already, by the arbitrary character of their alphabet, arrived at all manner of subUeties, of which we have already iso- lated examples in earUer writings, but which were es- pecially established as a virtoosoship in post-Zoharic times. From this arose the following species of caba- listic translbnnation : Ist K^'^DrSi, Gematria (yiwpt- rpia),i.e. the art of discovering the hidden sense of the text by means of the numerical equivalents of the let- ters. For example, in the first and last verses of the Hebrew Bible are found six K*s, which, according to this method, means that the world is to last 6000 years. The numerical equivalent of the first word of Genesis is 918, which is also the number given by the words *ns; Jrnin^ (by the law He formed t(, L e. the world), fti>m whence it follows that the law existed before the creation, and that the latter was accomplished through the former. If the second word of Genesb (K*na) be added to the first, the result is 1116, which is also the equivalent of M^nS ttjm OMi'-ia (m the hegimung of the year it was created)^ by which is known that God created the world in the beginning of the year — that is, in the season of Autumn. The antiquity of this method is already shown in Rev. xiii, 18, where the solution must be ciphered out with the aid of the He- brew (or Greek) alphabet. It is also considered as Gematria when Biblical numbers — for instance, di- mensions of buUdings — are expressed in letters, and words again made of them. Still later came specol*- tions on the greater, smaller, inverted, and suspended letters found in the Masoretic text ; for instance, Deut vi, 4; Gen. ii, 4; Num. x, 85; Judg. xviii, 80, in which some deep meaning is looked for, although Uiey may perhaps have originally been but peculiar marks to aid memory. 2d. The particularly so-called '* fig- urative" (n-»^n!i:8) CabaU, l^pl^nais, Notaritou (from Lat. notare, to extract), consists in friuning with each letter of a word several new ones, e. g. tram the first word of Genesis six can thus be framed: M'na, he made; r^p*;, the frmament ; y^^ the earth; D^^l^, the heavens; D^, the sea ; Diiin, the abyss. We thus learn the correct scientific nature of the universe, be- sides the proper meaning of the text. Again, it coo. sists in taking the first letters of several words to form a new one: e. g. Deut. xxx, 12, naj?»n wk'ni^ •>», who shaU bring us to heaven? Answer : hb'^p, eireum-' cision, 8d, h'^^TSin, Temurah (jpermtUation'), the ana- gram, of two kinds. The simple is a mere transposi- tion of the letters of a word : e. g. we thus learn that the angel in Exod. xxiii, 23 C^3K^^, my angel) was the angel Michael (^K3iQ). The more ingenious kind is that by which, according to certain established rules, each letter of the alphabet acquires the signification of another : as Aleph that of Tan, both that of Ayin. Then, again, the letters may be read forward and backward (which constitute the alphabet of Athbcuh^ tt3§nK), or the first letter that of the tweUth, the seo-