Kabbalah - Mysteries of Kabbalistic Thought

1 Origin of Jewish Mysticism

According to adherents of Kabbalah, the origin of Kabbalah begins with the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible). When read by a Kabbalist, the Torah's description of the creation in the Book of Genesis reveals mysteries about God's creation of the universe, Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and a Tree of Life, the interaction of these creations with the Serpent which leads to disaster when they eat the forbidden fruit, as recorded in Genesis 2.

Jacob's vision of the ladder to heaven is another example of a mystical experience. Moses' experience with the Burning bush and his encounters with God on Mount Sinai, the prophet Ezekiel's visions are all evidence of mystical events in the Tanakh, and form the origin of Jewish mystical beliefs.

Early forms of Jewish mysticism can be found in some parts of the Talmud and the midrash literature, but we have no extant texts from that period of history. In the medieval era Jewish mysticism greatly developed with the appearance of the mystical text, the Sefer Yetzirah. Jewish sources attribute the book to the biblical patriarch Abraham. This book became the object of the systematic study of the elect who were called baale ha-kabbalah (בעלי הקבלה "possessors or masters of the Kabbalah"). From the thirteenth century onward Kabbalah branched out into an extensive literature, alongside of and often in opposition to the Talmud.

Kabbalah teaches that every Hebrew letter, word, number, and accent of the Hebrew Bible contains a hidden sense; and it teaches the methods of interpretation for ascertaining these meanings. One such method is as follows:

Torah (first five books of the Bible) is an encoded message with hidden meanings. Specifically, kabbalists traditionally have taught that Kabbalah is the secret part of the law given to Moses on Mt.Sinai. Gemetria is a method for discovering hidden meanings in Torah. It is basically a system whereby each Hebrew letter is given a numerical value so that procedures may be used to decode underlying messages of the text.

For example, one procedure is as follows: each syllable and/or letter forming a word has a characteristic numeric value. The sum of these numeric tags is the word's "key", and that word may be replaced in the text by any other word having the same key. Though the application of many such procedures, alternate or hidden meanings of scripture may be derived. Similar procedures are used by Islamic mystics, as described by Idries Shah in his book, "The Sufis".

Orthodox Judaism rejects the idea that Kabbalah underwent significant historical development and change.