© Don Karr 20202

The Study of Christian Cabala in English: ADDENDA

Don Karr
For Parts 1, 2, and 3 of “The Study of Christian Cabala in English,” go to
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/Biblios/ccinea.pdf or
https://www.academia.edu/24035820/The_Study_of_Christian_Cabala_in_English_Addenda

© Don Karr 1995-2020 Email: [email protected]

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ADDENDUM A: ITEMS OF INTEREST – page 123

ADDENDUM B: SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PRINTED WORKS ON CHRISTIAN CABALA IN ENGLISH – page 155
ADDENDUM C: THE CONTENTS OF KABBALA DENUDATA WITH ENGLISH SOURCES – page 164
& SOME OTHER CABALISTIC CANONS IN LATIN – page 175
ADDENDUM D: THE PROBLEM OF LEONE EBREO’S DIALOGHI – page 177
ADDENDUM E: A SAMPLING OF BIOGRAPHICAL DATES – page 185
ADDENDUM F: REVIEWS – page 186

ADDENDUM A: Items of Interest

Abrahams, Israel. The Book of Delight and Other Papers (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication
Society of America, 1912).
Some of the brief notices in the section called “A Handful of Curiosities” might be of interest:
i. George Eliot and Solomon Maimon
ii. How Milton Pronounced Hebrew
iii. The Cambridge Platonists
Åkerman, Susanna. “The Forms of Queen Christina’s Academies,” in The Shapes of
Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, eds. Donald R. Kelley and Richard Popkin
[INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES, 124] (Dordrecht – Boston – London: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1991), pp. 165-188.
______. “Queen Christina’s Esoteric Interests as a Background to Her Platonic Academies,” in
Western Esotericism, Based on Papers Read at the Symposium on Western Esotericism Held at Ǻbo,
Finland, on 15-17 August 2007, edited by Tore Ahlbäck [SCRIPTA INSTITUTE DONNERIANI
ABOENSIS XX] (Ǻbo/Turku: Donner Institute in Religious and Cultural History, 2008).
______. Queen Christina of Sweden and Her Circle: The Transformation of a Seventeenth-Century
Philosophical Libertine [BRILL'S STUDIES IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY, 21] (Leiden: Brill, 1991).
“The life and works of Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-1689) have often been obscured behind a haze of
Iurid myths and legends. This book looks again at her notorious abdication of 1654, seeing it against the
background of her reputation as a "libertine", a heterodox religious thinker. Her subsequent conversion to

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Catholicism is therefore understood as a consequence of messianic and millenarian expectations during

those turbulent years, and her bizarre attempt in 1657 to become the ruler of Naples is revealed to be the
political wing of a comprehensive religious and intellectual philosophy.” (—from the Brill website –
https://brill.com/view/title/2071)
______. “Queen Christina’s Latin Sefer-ha-Raziel Manuscript,” in Judeo-Christian Intellectual
Culture in the Seventeenth Century: A Celebration of the Library of Narcissus Marsh (1638-1713),
[INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES, 163] edited by Allison P. Coudert, Sarah Hutton, Richard H.
Popkin, and Gordon M. Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999).
“The Latin copies of Sefer-ha-Raziel in particular shows (sic) a continuation of interest in Hebrew
angelology among Christian readers well after the great blooming of such concerns among Rosicrucian
authors in 1614-1620” (page 13). “The angelic doctrine of liber Raziel is taken up by a group of texts called
Claves Salomonis, magical texts that in conjunction with al-Magriti’s book of Arabic magic, Picatrix,
influenced Cornelius Agrippa” (page 18).
Also find Åkerman’s article, “The Forms of Queen Christina’s Academies,” in The Shapes of
Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, edited by Donald Kelley and Richard Popkin
[INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES, 124] (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991).
Allan, J. Mason. An Introduction to the Kabbalah, with Special Reference to the Kabbalistic
Elements in Freemasonry (rpt. Edmonds: Sure Fire Press = Holmes Publishing Group, 1994).
Allan’s 20-page introduction has a turn-of-the-century feel, though its date, save that of its recent
reprint, is not given. It is based on Ginsburg, Mathers, and, it would appear, Westcott.
Allen, Paul M. (comp/ed). A Christian Rosenckreutz Anthology (Blauvelt: Rudolf Steiner
Publications, 1968 and 2000).
This rich collection of writings and illustrations includes Ezechiel Foxcroft’s translation of The
Hermetic Romance, or the Chymical Wedding (1690); Thomas Vaughan’s translations of Fama
Fraternitatis and Confesio Fraternitatis (1652) and his Holy Mountain, A Rosicrucian Allegory; material
from Heinrich Khunrath (Amphitheater of Eternal Wisdom, 1609), Robert Fludd (BOOK IV of Summun
Bonum), Hinricus Madathanus (The Parabola, A Golden Tractate), Daniel Stolcius (Pleasure Garden of
Chymistry); four articles by Rudolph Steiner; some bibliographic pieces; and The Secret Symbols of the
Rosicrucians (1785).
There are numerous recent editions of and commentaries on The Chymical Wedding, two
noteworthy renditions:
(i) Knight, Gareth. The Rose Cross and the Goddess: Quest for the Eternal Feminine Principle (New York:
Destiny Books, 1985); in Part Three, pp. 89-111
(ii) Godwin, Joscelyn (trans). The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, introduction and commentary
by Adam McLean [MAGNUM OPUS HERMETIC SOURCEWORKS #18] (Grand Rapids: Phanes Press,
1991); this work calls itself “the first ever contemporary English translation.” With Fama Fraternitatis
and Confessio Fraternitatis, Godwin’s translation of Chemical Wedding is included in Rosicrucian Trilogy
(Newburyport: Weiser Books, 2016).
Aptekman, Marina. THE LANGUAGE AND THE LIGHT, THE KABBALISTIC ALLEGORY IN RUSSIAN
LITERATURE: FROM RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY TO POLITICAL MYTHOLOGY (Ph.D. dissertation,
Providence: Brown University, 2004) → Jacob’s Ladder: Kabbalistic Allegory in Russian
Literature (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011).
The dissertation’s first chapter, “Kabbalistic Philosophy: A Historical Perspective,” was hastily
assembled from too few sources. The book’s introduction, “Kabbalah Then and Now: A Historical
Perpsective,” improves upon the dissertation greatly, offering a better focused and more nuanced
background account.
As for the rest, matters of Russian Masonry and mystical literature are beyond my abilities to
appraise.

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The remaining three chapters analyze the place of kabbalistic allegory in Russian literature. … The
second chapter discusses the role of the kabbalistic allegory in the Masonic literature of the second half of
the eighteenth century. …The third chapter discusses the mutation of kabbalistic imagery in early
nineteenth century Romantic works, especially in the works by the authors who were interested in the
idea of universal science, such as Vladimir Odoevsky. … The fourth chapter of the dissertation analyses
the return of kabbalistic symbolism in the literature of the Silver Age [as represented by Symbolist and
Futurist writers]. … The mystical interpretation of the images of Wisdom and Adam Kadmon dominates
also in philosophical works of the Symbolist writers, especially in the works of Vladimir Soloviev.
(dissertation, PREFACE, pages 2-4)
Refer to the English translation of Soloviev’s Transformation of Eros: An Odyssey from Platonic to
Christian Eros, translated from the Russian by Richard Gill (St. Paul: Grailstone Press, 2004).
See below, under “Burmistrov,” “Kornblatt,” “Faggionato,” and “Leighton.”
Bardon, Franz. The Key to the True Kabbalah [Volume III of THE HOLY MYSTERIES]. German
original: Der Schlussel zur wahren Quabbalah, 1956; 1st English translation by Gerhard
Hanswille (Salt Lake City: Merkur Publishing, Inc., 1996).
The Key to the True Kabbalah is the final book of a four-volume set which includes (i) the preamble,
Frabato the Magician (1979), a “mystical” novel which amounts to the author’s spiritual
autobiography; (ii) Initiation into Hermetics (1956), a “course of magical instruction in ten steps”; (iii)
The Practice of Magical Evocation (1956), instructions for evoking spirits, complete with seals. All of
these titles were reprinted by Merkur.
The Key to the True Kabbalah treats its subject as a “cosmic language” linked by sympathetic
correspondence to colors, elements, musical notes, and so on, as well as analogous influences in the
akashic, mental, astral, and material realms. Guidelines for the magical use of one-, two-, three-, and
four-letter keys (combinations) conclude the work.
Many serious practitioners of magic(k) extol Franz Bardon. For instance, Donald Tyson says of
Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics, “[T]his is the best book of exercises designed to prepare the mind
for high magic that I have ever read” (—Ritual Magic, page 230). About The Practice of Magical
Evocation, Tyson says, “The best book that I have read on the ceremonial evocation of spirits” (—
Ritual Magic, page 234).
Often recommended to those for whom Bardon has proven difficult is Rawn Clark, A Bardon
Companion: Commentary Upon Franz Bardon’s Books (Olivier Dorche/Josuah Hutchinson Publishing,
2002); expanded second edition: A Bardon Companion: A Practical Companion for the Student of Franz
Bardon’s System of Hermetic Initiation (CreateSpace, 2010).
Baron, Salo Wittmayer. “Humanism and Renaissance” and “Protestant Reformation” =
CHAPTERS LVII and LVIII of A Social and Religious History of the Jews: Late Middle Ages and
Era of European Expansion (1200-1650): Volume XIII: INQUISITION, RENAISSANCE, AND
REFORMATION, 2nd edition (New York – London: Columbia University Press/Philadelphia:
The Jewish Publication Society, 1969).
In § “Humanism and Renaissance,” see especially the sub-segments “Kabbalistic Bridges” and
“Christian Kabbalism,” which give a quick history; and “Literary Battle Royal,” on Reuchlin’s
involvement in various aspects of the “Jewish question,” in particular his debate with Johannes
Pfefferkorn which grew into an international controversy.
Berg, Michael. The Secret History of the Zohar (Los Angeles: The Kabbalah Centre, 2008).
Berg’s blend of fact and fable contains a chapter entitled “The Zohar’s Influence on the
Renaissance, the Age of Discovery and Science” which discusses kabbalistic influence on Columbus
(via Abraham Zucato), Michelangelo, Newton, and Edison, along with the more usual “Christian
Cabalists” (Paracelsus, Dee, Pico, Reuchlin, von Rosenroth), and finally on to Ezra Stiles and
Albert Pike.

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Beyer, Catherine Noble. Finding God in the World: Approaches of the Renaissance Occult
Philosophers to the Nature and Value of Matter (London: Avalonia, 2016).
Relying on Frances Yates, D. P. Walker, and Christopher Lehrich, Beyer focuses on Ficino,
Agrippa, Fludd and Thomas Vaughan.
Birkel, Michael. “Immediate Revelation, Kabbalah, and Magic: The Primacy of Experience in
the Theology of George Keith,” in Early Quakers and Their Theological Thought: 1647-1723,
edited by Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2015), pages 256-272
Claiming the influence of Henry More, Keith converted from Presbyterianism to Quakerism.
“Keith’s thoughts on worship are related … to his understanding of immediate revelation by the Light
that is experienced in worship and also to his unique Christiology, since he identifies the Light with the
soul of Christ, the heavenly man. To these discussions Keith brought his skillfulness in dialectic theology
and his discoveries in Kabbalah.” (—page 258)
Bloom, Harold. The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1992).
Of particular interest is Bloom’s section on the Mormons: Chapter 5, “The Religion-Making
Imagination of Joseph Smith,” where Bloom states, “The God of Joseph Smith is a daring revival
of the God of some of the Kabbalists and Gnostics, prophetic sages who, like Smith himself,
asserted that they had returned to the true religion of Yahweh or Jehovah” (p. 99).
Further on Joseph Smith and Kabbalah, see below under “Owens” and “Quinn.”
______. Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (New York:
Riverhead Books, 1996).
After putting the recent popularity of angels in its place in a section called “Their Current
Debasement,” Bloom surveys some of the deeper and more abiding aspects of Western religious
concern by showing their roots, or likeness, in Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and Sufism. Bloom attempts
to salvage at least a few shreds of sublime speculation and spirituality from the kitsch of the new
age.
Bonfil, Robert. Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy [= Gle Ebrei in Italia nell’epoca del Rinascimento
(Florence: Sansoni, 1991)] translated by Anthony Oldcorn (Berkeley: University of
California, 1994).
Chapter V, “Jewish Culture, Hebraists, and the Role of the Kabbalah” (pp. 145-177), especially the
last three sections: “The Diffusion of the Kabbalah” (pp. 169-72), “Christian Hebraists” (pp. 172-5),
and “The Role of the Kabbalah in the Evolution of Jewish Culture” (pp. 175-7).
Burgeson, Sujan Jane. MYSTICAL SYMBOLISM IN TERESA OF AVILA AND CLASSICAL KABBALAH
(Ph.D. dissertation, Berkeley: Graduate Theological Union, 1997).
Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle is analyzed against (i) the merkabah tradition, (ii) Abraham
Abulafia’s “ecstatic” kabbalah, and (iii) the classical (theosophical) kabbalah of the Zohar and
Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah (Gates of Light).
Refer to The Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila, translated by Mirabai Starr (New York: Riverhead
Books, 2003) and Entering Teresa of Avila’s INTERIOR CASTLE: A Reader’s Companion by Gilliam T. W.
Ahlgren (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2005)
See below: “Deirdre Green.”
Burmistrov, Konstantin. “‘Ancient Wisdon under a Cloud of Suspicion’: Differing
Conceptions of Kabbalah in Russian Thought in the Late-Nineteenth to Early-Twentieth
Centuries,” in Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts, Volume Forty, edited by

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Daniel Abrams with guest editors Christian Wiese and George Y. Kohler (Los Angeles:
Cherub Press, 2018), pp. 183-200.
______. “Christian Orthodoxy and Jewish Kabbalah: Russian Mystics in Search for Perennial
Wisdom,” in Polemical Encounters: Esoteric Discourse and Its Others, edited by Olav Hammer
and Kocku von Stuckrad [ARIES BOOK SERIES: TEXTS AND STUDIES IN WESTERN MYSTICISM/6]
(Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2007).
“We see that Russian Freemasons of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and their
intellectual successors—Russian philosophers and theologians who lived a century later—turned to
kabbalah in order to solve problems which they felt were not adequately elaborated in Christian
Orthodox theology.” (—page 50)
______. “Kabbalah and Secret Societies in Russia (Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries),” in
Kabbalah and Modernity: Interpretations, Transformations, Adaptations, edited by Boaz Huss,
Marco Pasi, and Kocku von Stuckrad [ARIES BOOK SERIES: TEXTS AND STUDIES IN WESTERN
MYSTICISM/10] (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2010).
“There are two moments in the influence of kabbalistic ideas in Russia that are directly connected with
the development of secret societies. After the establishment of the first Masonic lodges in the middle of
the eighteenth century, Russians became acquainted with various ideas as works related to kabbalah. The
impact of these ideas especially intensified with the advent of Rosicrucian lodges in the 1780s. The first
period was interrupted with the official prohibition of freemasonry in Russia in the 1820s, but some
background Masonic activity continued until the 1850s-1860s. The second period, between the 1880s and
the 1930s, is characterized by an increased interest in the occult sciences, which culminates in the 1910s-
1920s. In the 1930s, most of the members of various secret societies and occult groups were arrested and
executed by the communist regime.” (—page 79)
______. “The Christian Kabbalah and Jewish Universalism,” in От Библии до
постмодерна: Статьи по истории еврейской культуры [From the Bible to Postmodern –
Articles on the history of Jewish culture] (Moscow: М.: Книжники, 2009), pp. 150-176; also at
https://www.academia.edu/32970405/Christian_Kabbalah_and_Jewish_Universalism.pdf
_______. “The Kabbalah as Primordial Tradition in Russian Secret Societies,” in Constructing
Tradition: Means and Myths of Transmission in Western Esotericism, edited by Andreas B.
Kilcher [ARIES BOOK SERIES: TEXTS AND STUDIES IN WESTERN MYSTICISM/11] (Leiden –
Boston: Brill, 2010).
Burmistrov, Konstantin; and Endel, Maria.1 “Kabbalah in Russian Masonry: Some
Preliminary Observations,” in Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts, Volume
Four, edited by Daniel Abrams and Avraham Elqayam. (Los Angeles [Culver City]: Cherub
Press, 1999).
“We will argue that the Russian Masons were deeply interested in kabbalistic matters. We will review the
basic kinds of Masonic manuscript texts related to the Kabbalah and some kabbalistic concepts which are
important to the Russian Masons. Finally, we will offer some preliminary reasons for this interest among
the Russian Mason” (from the article, p. 11).
It was the Christian Cabala, already subsumed into European Masonry, upon which these Russian
Masons drew.

1 Konstantin Burmistrov and Maria Endel are regular contributors to the Russian-language journal, TIROSH: STUDIES IN
JUDAICA (Judaica Rossica), which survived nine printed volumes (Moscow: 1998-2009) and has continued online. Later issues
are titled TIROSH: JEWISH, SLAVIC & ORIENTAL STUDIES. Volumes 6-19 (Moscow, 2003-2019) can be viewed at
http://sefer.ru/rus/publications/tirosh.php.

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______. “The Place of Kabbalah in the Doctrine of Russian Freemasons,” in Aries: Journal for
the Study of Western Esotericism, VOLUME 4, NUMBER 1 (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers,
2004).
“Two Principle trends may be identified in Russian freemasonry of the late 18 th-early 19th centuries:
rationalistic (deistic) and mystical” (p. 29). “The Order [of the Gold- and Rosy Cross] was founded by
Bernhard Joseph Schleiss won Loewenfeld (1731-1800) … [who] took an obvious interest in Kabbalah as if
following the traditions of the Sulzbach Christian Kabbalah [i.e., von Rosenroth and van Helmont] of
the late seventeenth century” (p. 31).
Burnham, Jack. Great Western Salt Works: Essays on the Meaning of Post-Formalist Art (New
York: George Braziller, 1974).
These essays, previously published in Artfurum and Arts magazines, include “Duchamp’s Bride
Stripped Bare: The Meaning of the ‘Large Glass,’” which discusses Duchamp’s work in relation to
Tarot images and the kabbalistic tree of life, and “Voices from the Gate,” which relates the Cabala
to an installation by Robert Morris entitled Hearing.
See also Burnham’s article on Duchamp, “Unveiling the Consort,” parts 1 and 2 in Artforum, March
and April 1971, vol. ix, nos. 7 and 8 (New York: Artforum).
Busi, Giulio. Mantua e la qabbalah / Mantua and the Kabbalah (Milano: Skira editore, 2001):
[CATALOGUE FOR THE EXHIBITION OF MANTUAN KABBALISTIC MANUSCRIPTS] (Mantova:
Palazzo della Ragione, September 2001; New York: Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò Center for
Jewish History March 2002).
The articles are in Italian and English. See in particular “The Mantuan Kabbalistic Workshop,” § 1.
THE HEBREW LANGUAGE AND THE MYTH OF THE RENAISSANCE: CRYPTOGRAPHY IN THE
STUDIOLO OF ISABELLA D’ESTE, and § 2. THE HUMANISTIC KABBALAH OF YOCHANAN
ALEMANNO.
Caiozzo-Roussel, Anna. “The Kabbalistical Origins of Saint George and Its Iconic
Metamorphoses in Islamic Art – Around Solomon: remarks on the image of a guardian angel
in the illuminated manuscripts of the Medieval East,” in How Jewish Mystical Thinking Shaped
Early Modern Europe: Cabbalistic Influences on Shakespeare, Cervantes, Rabelais and Others, edited
by Yona Dureau (Lewiston – Queenston – Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2014), pages
39-59.
Case, Paul Foster. The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order. An Interpretation of the Rosicrucian
Allegory and an Explanation of the Ten Rosicrucian Grades ([n.p.]: privately printed, 1927; 3rd
revised edition, San Marino: privately printed, 1933; 4th revised edition, York Beach: Samuel
Weiser, 1985 and subsequently).
In the manner of the Golden Dawn, Case connects the Rosicrucian grades with the sefirot of the
kabbalistic tree of life and groupings of tarot cards. Case’s distillations of Western occult doctrine
serve as the core teachings of an order which is still active: The Builders of the Adytum (BOTA) of
Los Angeles.
______. The Book of Tokens: Tarot Meditations. 22 Meditations on the Ageless Wisdom ([n.p.]:
privately printed,1928; 2nd edition → 10th edition, Los Angeles: Builders of the Adytum, 1947 →
1983).
“These unusual and beautiful Qabalistic meditations were inspirationally written by the
recognized world authority in Tarot and Qabalah, Dr. Paul Foster Case.” (from the PREFACE)

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Cavendish, Richard. The Black Arts (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967).
Chapter III, “The Cabala and the Names of Power,” offers a pretty fair introduction to Western
occult qabalah.
Chajes, Julie; and Huss, Boaz (eds.) Theosophical Appropriations: Esotericism, Kabbalah and the
Transformation of Traditions (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2016).
CONTENTS
Julie Chajes and Boaz Huss. Introduction
I. Theosophical Transformations
• Julie Chajes. “Construction Through Appropriation: Kabbalah in Blavatsky’s Early Works”
• Isaac Lubelsky. “Friedrich Max Müller vs. Madame Blavatsky: A Chronicle of a (Very) Strange
Relationship”
• John Patrick Deveney. “The Two Theosophical Societies: Prolonged Life, Conditional
Immortality, and the Individualized Immortal Monad”
• Tomer Persico. “A Pathless Land: Krishnamurti and the Tradition of No Tradition”
II. Kabbalistic Appropriations
• Boaz Huss. “‘Qabbalah, the Theos-Sophia of the Jews:’ Jewish Theosophists and their Perceptions
of Kabbalah”
• Eugene Kuzmin. “Maksimilian Voloshin and the Kabbalah”
• Andreas Kilcher. “Kabbalah and Anthroposophy: A Spiritual Alliance According to Ernst Müller”
• Olav Hammer. “Jewish Mysticism Meets the Age of Aquarius: Elizabeth Clare Prophet on the
Kabbalah”
III. Global Adaptations
• Shimon Lev. “Gandhi and his Jewish Theosophist Supporters in South Africa”
• Victoria Ferentinou. “Light from Within or Light from Above? Theosophical Appropriations in
Early Twentieth-Century Greek Culture”
• Karl Baier. “Theosophical Orientalism and the Structures of Intercultural Transfer: Annotations
on the Appropriation of the Cakras in Early Theosophy”
• Massimo Introvigne. “Lawren Harris and the Theosophical Appropriation of Canadian
Nationalism”
• Helmut Zander. “Transformations of Anthroposophy from the Death of Rudolf Steiner to the
Present Day”
Colquhoun, Ithell. The Magical Writings of Ithell Colquhoun, edited by Steve Nichols (Self-
published; © 2007 by Ithell Colquhoun and Steve Nichols). Available from LULU, on-line at
http://www.lulu.com/
The first four chapters of this collection are illustrated expositions on Golden Dawn-style qabalah,
under the general heading “The Crown and the Kingdom”: 1) “History of the QBL,” 2) “The Ten
Sephiroth,” 3) “The Twenty-Two Paths,” and 4) “The Four Hundred Desirable Worlds.”
Colquhoun (1906-1988) has received a fair amount of attention in recent years. Refer to
• Ferentinou, Victoria. “The Iconography of Coniunctio Oppositorum: Visual and Verbal Dialogues in
Ithell Colquhoun’s Oeuvre,” in Lux in Tenebris: The Visual and the Symbolic in Western Esotericism,
edited by Peter Forshaw (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2017), pages 363-396.
• Hale, Amy. Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (London: Strange Attractor Press, 2020).
• Ratcliffe, Eric. Ithell Colquhoun: Pioneer Surrealist Artist, Occultist, Writer and Poet (Mandrake of
Oxford, 2007 & 2016).
• Shillitoe, Richard. Ithell Colquhoun: Magician Born of Nature (Lulu.com, 2006, revised edition 2010).
Also, see Colquhoun’s Sword of Wisdom: MacGregor Mathers and the Golden Dawn (London:
Neville Spearman, 1975 & New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975).

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Copenhaver, Brian. “Scholastic Philosophy and Renaissance Magic in the De Vita of Marsilio
Ficino,” in Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 37 (The Renaissance Society of America, 1984), pages
523-554; and Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, Volume 11: RENAISSANCE MAGIC,
edited by Brian Levack (New York – London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1992), pages 51-82.
“Since the Enlightenment, the occultist tradition has lost almost all cognitive authority among educated
persons in the West, so much so that in our time an intellectual who seriously professed belief in magic
would thereby call into question his own seriousness. One of the reasons why magical beliefs have
become literally incredible is that we have discarded their philosophical foundations, but in Ficino’s day
the foundations were intact—indeed, Ficino and others were still extending them.” (RQ p. 524/AWMD p.
52).
Couliano, Ioan P. [= Ioan Petru Culianu] Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. [= Eros et Magie a
la Renaissance, 1484. Paris: 1984] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
Couliano approaches magic as (quoting his introduction) “a science of the imaginary” which was
believed to be capable of exerting “control over the individual and the masses based on deep
knowledge of personal and collective erotic impulses”; thus, “[w]e can observe in it not only the
distant ancestor of psychoanalysis but also, first and foremost, that of applied psychosociology and
mass psychology.” Couliano discusses Ficino, Pico, and Bruno.
_______. The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism
(HarperSanFrancisco, 1992).
Praised by Harold Bloom, Andrei Codrescu, and Mircea Eliade, this book describes itself as “the
first comprehensive account of the dualistic mythos that constitutes a crucial hidden dimension in
Western culture and radically challenges how we think about religion itself.” (—back cover)
Culianu, Ioan Petru. “Magic in Medieval and Renaissance Europe,” in Hidden Truths: Magic,
Alchemy, and the Occult, edited by Lawrence E. Sullivan. [RELIGION, HISTORY, AND
CULTURE: Selections from The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade—editor in chief] (New
York: Macmillan Publishing and London: Collier Macmillan, 1989).
See below under “Thorndike” where the rather harsh opening paragraph of Culianu’s article is
quoted.
Dan, Joseph. “Medieval Jewish Influences on Renaissance Concepts of Harmonia Mundi,” in
Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, vol. 1, no. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), and in How
Jewish Mystical Thinking Shaped Early Modern Europe: Cabbalistic Influences on Shakespeare,
Cervantes, Rabelais and Others, edited by Yona Dureau (Lewiston – Queenston – Lampeter:
The Edwin Mellen Press, 2014), pages 61-81.
Dan traces scientific and mystical ideas starting with the Sefer Yezirah, elaborations of tenth-
century commentaries on it, especially that of Shabbatai Donnolo, and developments of the Hasidei
Ashkenaz, in particular Eleazar of Worms. Dan shows how these commentaries “contributed to the
establishment of the concept of harmonia mundi as a dominant world-view in Europe in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, mainly in the context of the variegated phenomena which are sometimes
united under the general title ‘Christian kabbalah.’”
De Givry, Grillot. Picture Museum of Sorcery, Magic, and Alchemy [original French: Le Musee
des sorciers, mages et alchimistes. Paris: 1929], translated by J. Courtney Locke (Boston:
Houghton, 1931; rpt. New Hyde Park: University Books Inc., 1963); rpt. as Witchcraft, Magic
and Alchemy (New York: Dover, 1971).
Picture Museum… has been described as a “coffee-table book” of the Medieval and Renaissance
occult, which gives the false impression that it is a trivial work. It just happens to contain a lot of
illustrations.

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Decker, Ronald. The Esoteric Tarot: Ancient Sources Rediscovered in Hermetism and Cabala
(Wheaton – Chennai: Quest Books/Theosophical Publishing House, 2013).
“This book presents an interpretation that will surprise most Tarotists (those who are esotericists) and
most academics (those who are critics of the esotericists). My theory covers the evolution of the Tarot,
the connotations of its symbols, the symbols’ sources, and their transmission to the proper places at the
proper times.” (—INTRODUCTION, page 1)
The most interesting of Decker’s “rediscoveries” is taken up in his CHAPTER 11, “Numerical Cards
and Gikatilla’s ‘Gates.’”
Decker, Ronald; Depaulis, Thierry; and Dummett, Michael. A Wicked Pack of Cards: The
Origins of the Occult Tarot (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996).
A Wicked Pack of Cards discusses how Tarot came to be positioned at the core of the Western
esoteric tradition, focusing on its assumption by the French occultists J.-B. Alliette (= Etteilla),
Éliphas Lévi, Gerard Encausse (= Papus), and Paul Christian.
Decker, Ronald; and Dummett, Michael. The History of the Occult Tarot: 1870-1970 (London:
Duckworth, 2002).
History… picks up where Wicked Pack leaves off: tracing the developments of tarot down through
the descendents of the Golden Dawn, i.e., A. E. Waite, Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, C. C. Zain,
Paul Foster Case, etc.
Denning, Melita; and Phillips, Osborne. The Magical Philosophy. [5 vols.] (St. Paul: Llewellyn
Publications, 1974-1981), Volume III: THE SWORD AND THE SERPENT—COSMO DYNAMICS
(QABALAH AND MAGICAL ART).
The five-volume set represents the complete teachings of The Order of the Sacred Word, also
called Aurum Solis, a descendant of the Golden Dawn.
Duncan, A. D. The Christ, Psychotherapy and Magic: A Christian Appreciation of Occultism
(London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1969).
“We shall be concerned with the Qabalah as Gentile occultists have received it from the traditions
of Judaism,” states the preface. Duncan’s primary sources are Dion Fortune’s writings and Gareth
Knight’s Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism.
Dureau, Yona. “Venice as Europe’s Gate to Kabbalistical Knowledge,” in How Jewish
Mystical Thinking Shaped Early Modern Europe: Cabbalistic Influences on Shakespeare, Cervantes,
Rabelais and Others, edited by Yona Dureau (Lewiston – Queenston – Lampeter: The Edwin
Mellen Press, 2014), pages 185-208.
Dweck, Yaacob. The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
The fifth chapter, “A Jewish Response to Christian Kabbalah,” discusses Modena’s criticism of Pico
della Mirandola’s cabala. Modena’s problems with Pico for the most part follow his objections to
(Jewish) kabbalah more generally.
Eco, Umberto. Foucault’s Pendulum (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1989).
Eco’s snide novel follows three Milanese editors as they concoct, then investigate, then get caught
up in a grand esoteric conspiracy involving a twisted amalgam of secret societies and mystical
traditions. In this entertaining but ultimately anticlimactic tale, Eco’s well-studied ease with source
works of the Hermetic-Cabalist tradition is strutted about.
______. The Search for the Perfect Language (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers Ltd,
1995).

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Chapters include [2] “The Kabbalistic Pansemioticism” and [6] “Kabbalism and Lullism in Modern
Culture,” which includes a section on Giordano Bruno. Athanasius Kircher is given quite a bit of
attention in CHAPTER 7, “The Perfect Language of Images,” and John Dee is discussed in CHAPTER
8, “Magic Language.”
______. Serendipities: Language and Lunacy. [ITALIAN ACADEMY LECTURES, THE ITALIAN
ACADEMY] translated by William Weaver (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
This collection of essays is, in part, an extension of Eco’s Search for the Perfect Language, especially
CHAPTER 2, “Languages in Paradise.” There is a substantial section on Athanasius Kircher in the
third essay, “From Marco Polo to Leibniz: Stories of Intellectual Misunderstandings.”
Edlow, Rachel B. “BOTTE I AM A WOMAN”: JULIAN OF NORWICH, MEDIEVAL JEWISH
FOR
MYSTICISM, AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE DIVINE FEMININE (MA Thesis; Washington:
American University, 2005).
“A distinct textual link between Moses de Leon’s thirteenth-century Zohar and the fourteenth-century
Shewings of Julian of Norwich suggests Julian’s role in appropriating the ideas of her surrounding
cultures into her mystical writings. Building on both the principle of the Divine Feminine and the
allegorical nature of parts of the Zohar, Julian constructs a notion of God as Mother that combats the
misogyny of medieval Christian doctrine and secures her place as a woman writer in a male-dominated
Church, defending a role as visionary and writer for herself and for her female successors.” (—from the
ABSTRACT)

Ennemoser, Joseph. The History of Magic, 2 volumes, translated from the German by William
Howitt (German original, Munich: 1843; first English translation, London: 1854; rpt New
Hyde Park: University Books, 1970).
Ennemoser discusses “Cabbalah,” in VOLUME 1, PART 1, especially pp. 7-21, as derived from Franz
Joseph Molitor’s Philosophie der Geschichte oder ueber die Tradition (4 volumes, Muenster: Theissing,
1827-57). See The History of Magic, VOLUME 2, THIRD DIVISION, for accounts of Paracelsus, Baptista
van Helmont, Agrippa, Fludd, Kircher, Cagliostro, Swedenborg, and Böhme, among others.
Epstein, Perle. The Private Labyrinth of Malcolm Lowry: UNDER THE VOLCANO and the
Cabbala (New York – Chicago – San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969).
Private Labyrinth is the first “scholarly” book which I saw (in the early ’seventies) which drew a
distinction between “The Two Cabbalahs,” namely Jewish and Christian—including the late occult
“qabalah” of the Golden Dawn—without dismissing the latter out-of-hand, which, until relatively
recently, academics tended to do. Recall Scholem’s comments in Kabbalah, p. 203: “To this category
of supreme charlatanism belong the many and widely read books of Éliphas Lévi, Papus…, and
Frater Perdurabo…, all of whom had an infinitesimal knowledge of Kabbalah that did not prevent
them from drawing freely on their imaginations instead”; or in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, pp.
2 and 353: “From the brilliant misunderstandings of Alphonse Louis Constant, who won fame under
the pseudonym of Éliphas Lévi, to the highly coloured humbug of Aleister Crowley and his
followers, the most eccentric and fantastic statements have been produced purporting to be
legitimate interpretations of Kabbalism … No words need be wasted on the subject of Crowley’s
‘Kabbalistic’ writings in his books on what he was pleased to term ‘Magick,’ and in his journal, The
Equinox.”
Lowry’s letters suggest that Frater Achad (Charles Stansfield Jones) was a particular favorite of his.
In Epstein’s bibliography, however, some of the works listed as having been authored by Achad
were written by others. Achad indeed wrote The Anatomy of the Body of God and QBL, but he was
not, as Epstein has it, the editor of The Equinox or the author of Sepher Sephiroth (in The Equinox,
Volume 1, Number 8); these were Crowley’s works. Nor did Achad write “A Note on Genesis” (in
The Equinox, Volume 1, Number 2); this belongs to Allan Bennett. (All of these works are given
notice above in the present paper: PART 2.)

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Escarmant, Christine. “Rabelais and the Midrash or Writing with Kabbalistic Tools: The
Kabbalah of the Pantagruelists,” in How Jewish Mystical Thinking Shaped Early Modern Europe:
Cabbalistic Influences on Shakespeare, Cervantes, Rabelais and Others, edited by Yona Dureau
(Lewiston – Queenston – Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2014), pages 131-183.
Faggionato, Raffaella. A Rosicrucian Utopia in Eighteenth-Century Russia: The Masonic Circle of
N. I. Novikov [INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES, 190] (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005).
“Drawing a comprehensive and convincing picture of Russia’s assimilation of contemporary Western
intellectual values and traditions, Professor Faggionato offers some telling overall conclusions: the
process of Europeanisation, forcefully initiated by Peter the Great, coming on top of the church crisis of
the eighteenth century, resulted in an intellectual disorientation of the elites that threatened both the
social and political system. Masonic lodges and mystically oriented circles of the nobility sought ways to
reform and stability by blending traditional Christian spirituality with scientific insight into the
workings of Nature. Rosicrucian Hermeticism and esoterism were ready to offer them guidance on this
path.” (—Marc Raeff in the PREFACE to A Rosicrucian Utopia…)
Faivre, Antoine. Access to Western Esotericism [SUNY SERIES IN WESTERN ESOTERIC
TRADITIONS] (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).
“Book One” and “A Bibliographical Guide to Research” in Access… constitute something of a study
manual for Western Esotericism. “Book Two” presents a series of essays concerned with Franz von
Baader (the nineteenth-century Christian “gnostic”), Masonic and Rosicrucian doctrine, and
gnosis—old and new. Themes outlined in Access are followed up in Faivre’s Theosophy, Imagination,
Tradition: Studies in Western Esotericism [SUNY SERIES IN WESTERN ESOTERIC TRADITIONS]
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000).
Note also Faivre’s article, “The Notions of Concealment and Secrecy in Modern Esoteric Currents
since the Renaissance (A Methodological Approach),” in Rending the Veil: Concealment and Secrecy in
the History of Religions, edited by Elliot R. Wolfson (New York – London: Seven Bridges Press,
1999).
______. Western Esotericism – A Concise History, translated by Christine Rhone. [SUNY
SERIES IN WESTERN ESOTERIC TRADITIONS] (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2010).
A very rapid but intricately nuanced survey.
Fanger, Claire. “Mirror, Mask and Anti-self: Forces of Literary Creation in Dion Fortune
and W. B. Yeats,” in Esotericism, Art, and Imagination, edited by Arthur Versluis, Lee Irwin,
John Richards, and Melinda Weinstein (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2008).
“A part of my concern will be to show how the functions and processes of creative activity documented
by these authors may be mapped onto a set of essentially Freudian ideas, particularly those surrounding
narcissism.” (—page 161)
Forshaw, Peter J. “Oratorium—Auditorium—Laboratorium: Early Modern Improvisations on
Cabala, Music, and Alchemy,” in Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, VOLUME
10, NUMBER 2 (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2010).
Gnosis: A Journal in Western Inner Traditions, Number 3 - KABBALAH: EXPLORING THE ROOTS
OF MYSTICISM (San Francisco: The Lumen Foundation, Fall/Winter 1986-7).
Stock pop-Kabbalah stuff here: the overview, the Kabbalah-and-psychology piece, the interview
with Zalman Schachter, the recommended-reading piece (this one is particularly poor), etc., though
surprisingly sticking pretty much with Jewish Kabbalah. Pinchas Giller’s overview, though brief, is
nicely done; he discusses the tension between Kabbalah and Maimonidean rationalism. Giller’s
piece is, however, plagued by some distracting typos (e.g. “Rabbi Mose Cordovero” for Rabbi Moshe,

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or at least Moses, Cordovero”—page 11; “the brown of the skull” for “the crown of the skull” in an
account of the Zohar’s anthropomorphic descriptions of God—page 12).
Perhaps the most original article in the issue is Jay Kinney’s “A Higher Geometry: The Unique
Kabbalistic Research of the Meru Foundation.”
Articles on the kabbalah appear in numerous other issues of Gnosis. For an overview, see Wouter J.
Hanegraaff, “Kabbalah in Gnosis Magazine (1985-1999),” in Kabbalah and Contemporary Spiritual
Revival, edited by Boaz Huss [THE GOLDSTEIN-GOREN LIBRARY OF JEWISH THOUGHT, no. 14]
(Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2011), pp. 251-266.
Back issues of Gnosis are available through Fields Book Store:
https://www.fieldsbooks.com/cgi-bin/fields/s1/GNOM
Godwin, David. Godwin’s Cabalistic Encyclopedia: A Complete Guide to Cabalistic Magick, 2nd
edition (St, Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1989).
Dictionary would be more accurate. Hebrew and other words and names are listed alphabetically
(via English and Hebrew in two separate sections) and by numerical value. Terms scattered all
through Golden Dawn and surrounding material (planet, zodiac, and angel names; the goetic spirits
of the Lemegeton; tarot correspondences; etc.) are systematically set out and defined in this large
reference book. Crowley’s Sepher Sephiroth (from The Equinox, vol. 1, no. 8) is appended as well.
Goldberg, Edward. Jews and Magic in Medici Florence: The Secret World of Benedetto Blanis
(Toronto – Buffalo – London: University of Toronto Press, 2011).
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction (Oxford
– New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
See especially CHAPTER 2 “Italian Renaissance Magic and Cabala.”
_______. “Ramon Lull’s New World Order: Esoteric Evangelism and Frontline Philosophy,”
in Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, volume 9, number 2 (Leiden – Boston:
Brill, 2009).
Within this useful article, note in particular § THE ESOTERIC SOURCES OF LULL’S INSPIRATION
(pages 186-189), where Goodrick-Clarke warily writes, “Jewish Kabbalah provides another potential
source of Lull’s esoteric thought.” Oddly, Goodrick-Clarke makes no reference to Harvey Hames’
Art of Conversion (Brill, 2000) despite noting a later work edited by Hames, namely, Jews, Muslims,
and Christians In and Around the Crown of Aragon (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2004).
Grätz, H[einrich]. History of the Jews [English], 6 volumes, translated by Bella Lowy
(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1891-98; 2nd edition: New York:
Hebrew Publishing Company, 1926; rpt. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1940).
Volume 4, Chapter IX, “The Jews in Italy and Germany before the Expulsion from Spain,”
contains sections covering Pico and the “Predilection of Christians for the Kabbala”; Chapter XIV,
“Reuchlin and the Talmud,” discusses Reuchlin’s interests in Hebrew and Kabbalah and his dispute
with Johannes Pfefferkorn. On pages 81-83 appear some paragraphs regarding Abner of Burgos.
Green, Deirdre. Gold in the Crucible: Teresa of Avila and the Western Mystical Tradition
(Longmead: Element Books, Ltd., 1989).
Before Green’s 1984 article, “St Teresa of Avila and Hekhalot Mysticism” (in Studies in
Religion/Sciences Religieuses, vol. 13, no. 3), “the Jewish elements in [Teresa’s] book the Interior Castle
had not been noticed” (p. 85)—or, at least, not developed beyond passing mention. Since Green’s
article, St. Teresa’s connections with Cabala/Kabbalah have been taken up not only in Green’s Gold
in the Crucible but in Catherine Swietlicki’s Spanish Christian Cabala (Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 1986) and Sujan Jane Burgeson’s MYSTICAL SYMBOLISM IN TERESA OF AVILA (noted
above, page 97).

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Halevi, Z’ev ben Shimon [Warren Kenton] (listed chronologically—all of which have been
subsequently reprinted):
• An Introduction to the Cabala (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1972).
= Tree of Life: An Introduction to the Cabala (Rider & Co., 1972).
• Adam and the Kabbalistic Tree (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1974).
• The Way of Kabbalah (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1976).
• A Kabbalistic Universe (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1977).
• Kabbalah: Tradition of Hidden Knowledge (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1980)
• Kabbalah and Exodus (Boulder: Shambhala Publications, 1980).
• The Work of the Kabbalist (London: Gateway Books, 1984).
• School of Kabbalah (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1985).
• Anatomy of Fate: Kabbalistic Astrology (Bath: Gateway, 1986).
• Psychology and Kabbalah (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1987).
• School of the Soul: Its Path and Pitfalls (Boston – York Beach: Weiser Books, 1993).
• Kabbalah: The Divine Plan [THE HIDDEN WISDOM LIBRARY] (New York: HarperCollins,
1996).
Halevi’s series is quite popular among both Jewish and non-Jewish readers. Individual volumes
range from instructional to inspirational in that they present versions of Kabbalistic ideas while
suggesting ways to apply them toward spiritual growth. Specifically, The Work of the Kabbalist gives
practical advice for individual work, and School of Kabbalah suggests methods for developing group
work; on the other hand, the earlier Adam and the Kabbalistic Tree and A Kabbalistic Universe are
more theoretical. In The Tower of Alchemy (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1999), David Goddard
recommends A Kabbalistic Universe, The Way of Kabbalah, and The Work of the Kabbalist for the
gathering of “[t]he fundamental Qabalistic teachings…regarding the Qabalistic four worlds” (p. 41).
Hall, Manly P. Cabalistic Keys to the Lord’s Prayer (Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research
Society, Inc., 1964).
Hall connects phrases from the familiar “Our Father, Who art in heaven…” to the kabbalistic tree,
saying (pp. 12-13), “From the table of analogies between parts of the universe (i.e., the tree of the
sefirot) and the sections of the Lord’s Prayer, it is evident that the prayer is intimately related to the
divisions of the human soul.”
______. Man: Grand Symbol of the Mysteries [ESSAYS IN OCCULT ANATOMY], 6th edition (Los
Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society, 1972).
Man… is considered one of Hall’s two great works, the other being The Secret Teaching of All Ages
([1928] reprint: Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society, 1977).
Hames, Harvey J. “Exotericism and Esotericism in Thirteenth Century Kabbalah,” in
Esoterica: The Journal of Esoteric Studies, Volume VI (2004), edited by Arthur Versluis: on-line
at www.esoteric.msu.edu
“What follows is as much historiography as it is history, because the modern study of Kabbalah has a
plot with its own personalities, internal developments and ideologies which have influenced how
Kabbalah has been perceived historically” (—p. 102).
“Almost from the outset, Kabbalah has had a chequered history, as it has faced internal and external
criticism. As what was esoteric became exoteric, and though Kabbalah sort [sic] to portray itself as
conservative and not innovative, its claim for ancient roots and for not revealing anything new brought it
into conflict with other existing belief systems” (—p. 103).
“Thus, what is being suggested here is that the appearance of Kabbalah on the historical stage can only be
understood as an exoteric phenomenon. Jewish mysticism does not start with Kabbalah in the thirteenth
century but is part and parcel of the religious system for centuries previously” (—p. 106).

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_______. “Reason and Faith: Inter-religious Polemic and Christian Identity in the Thirteenth
Century,” in Religious Apologetics – Philosophical Argumentation, edited by Yossef Schwartz
and Volkhard Krech [RELIGION IN PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY 10] (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2004), pages 267-284.
Hammer, Olav. Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age
(Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2004).
“This study is concerned with a rarely studied sector of the history of religions: certain currents of
modern or post-Enlightenment Western Esotericism.” (—PREFACE, page xiii)
“This is my doctoral dissertation, on the ways in which contemporary religious movements legitimate
their claims. The data are taken from various related movements within the theosophical family, but the
strategies of legitimation apply more generally.” (—Olav Hammer: Personal Website > BOOKS, at
http://www.olavhammer.com/books/)
Hanegraaff, Wouter J. “Forbidden Knowledge: Anti-Esoteric Polemics and Academic
Research,” in Aries, NEW SERIES, vol. 5, no. 2 (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2005).
“I believe it would be too simple to attribute the traditional resistance of academics against the study of
Western esotericism merely to the fact that they reject its perspectives from their own ‘Enlightenment’
worldview, or even to the feeling that by taking such a field seriously one gives it some legitimacy.” (p.
248)
Hasselhoff, Görge K. “Self-definition, Apology, and the Jew Moses Maimonides: Thomas
Aquinas, Raymundus Martini, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Lyra,” in Religious Apologetics –
Philosophical Argumentation, edited by Yossef Schwartz and Volkhard Krech [RELIGION IN
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY 10] (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), pages 285-316.
Herrera, R. A. “Ramon Llull: Mystic Polymath,” in Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics and
Typologies, edited by R. A. Herrera (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1993).
Herrera offers a readable summary of Llull’s life and thought as culled from numerous primary and
secondary sources.
The Hermetic Journal, edited by Adam McLean: 1978-1992, available as downloads.
Go to THE ALCHEMY WEB BOOKSHOP > THE HERMETIC JOURNAL:
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/journal.html. Articles of interest include
• Bennett, G. S. (= Gavin). “The Celestial Dew and Kabbalistic Prayer,” No. 41, Autumn 1988.
• _____. “Daath, Kether and the Event Horizon,” Issue No. 37, Winter 1987.
• _____. “East of Eden: Biblical Knowing and the Inner Elixir within a Kabbalistic Speculum,”
1991.
• _____. “The Name of God and the Covenant of Abraham,” No. 37, 1987.
• _____. “Wood and Metal – Kabbalistic Orientation and Elementary Alchemical Returning,” 1992
• James, P. Harrill. “The Mythology of the Qabalah,” Number 17, Autumn 1982.
• Kirberg, Gisela (tr). “An Early Rosicrucian Text: Cabala: Mirror of Art and Nature,” No. 20,
Summer 1983.
• Knight, Graham. “Lilith and the Primal Water,” No. 40, Summer 1988.
• Krzok, Paul. “The 49 Powers in Kabbalah,” No.40, Summer 1988.
• _____. “The Sevenfold Kabbalah,” No. 37, Autumn 1987.
• McLean, Adam. “Kabbalistic Cosmology and its Parallels in the 'Big Bang' of Modern Physics,”
No. 39, Spring 1988.
• _____. “A Kabbalistic-Alchemical Altarpiece,” No. 12, Summer 1981.
• Nintzel, Hans. “Alchemy and Qabalah,” No. 12, Summer 1981.
• Prinke, Rafal. “De Cabal Alchymica or The Alchemical Tree of Life,” No. 14, Winter 1981.

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• Ronan, Stephen. “Theodorus of Asine and the Kabbalah,” No. 42, Winter 1988.
• Smyth, Violet. “A Key to the Letters of the Q.B.L.” No. 14, Winter 1981.
• Waterfield, Robin. “Kabbalistic and Pythagorean Theory” (Synopsis of a talk entitled Kabbalah
in Ancient Greece given by Robin Waterfield at the Saros Talks, Autumn 1988), 1989.
Holmes, Elizabeth. Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic Philosophy (New York: Haskell House,
1966).
Writes Holmes, “I have added to [L. C. Martin’s] researches in one direction mainly—that of
Henry Vaughan’s connection with the Hermetic or ‘occult’ philosophy which his brother
[Thomas] embraced and practiced, and so of the poet’s relations with his brother and possibly with
others of the Hermetic manner of belief, notably Jacob Boehme, but also Cornelius Agrippa,
Paracelsus, and others of obscurer name.” (—p. 1)
Hornung, Erik. The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West, translated from the German by
David Lorton [= Das esoterische Aegypten. Munchen: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagbuchhandlung]
(Ithaca – London: Cornell University Press, 2001).
Secret Lore traces strands which intertwine with our cabalistic ones, especially in such figures as
Athanasius Kircher, Ralph Cudworth, and Mme Blavatsky. One wishes that the use of Egyptian
lore by the Golden Dawn and its offshoots had been explored, but only passing mention is given.
See also Erik Iverson, The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition (Copenhagen:
GAD Publishers, 1961; rpt Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
Horus. A Guide to Qabalistic Astrology (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1977).
An apparent student of the works of Aleister Crowley, Horus sets up his own attributions of
planets for the sefirot on the tree of life, adding to the scheme Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (which,
for obvious reasons, were not included in the arrangement of the Golden Dawn).
Howlett, Davi. “Kabbalistical and Hebraic Writing Techniques in Anglo-Saxon Early Texts
and Artifacts,” in How Jewish Mystical Thinking Shaped Early Modern Europe: Cabbalistic
Influences on Shakespeare, Cervantes, Rabelais and Others, edited by Yona Dureau (Lewiston –
Queenston – Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2014), pages 9-37.
Huss, Boaz. “‘The Sufi Society from America’: Theosophy and Kabbalah in Poona in the
Late Nineteenth Century,” in Kabbalah and Modernity: Interpretations, Transformations,
Adaptations, edited by Boaz Huss, Marco Pasi, and Kocku von Stuckrad [ARIES BOOK SERIES:
TEXTS AND STUDIES IN WESTERN MYSTICISM/10] (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2010).
“I will show that [Abraham David] Ezekiel’s interest in kabbalah followed on his joining the
Theosophical Society [around 1882], and that theosophy was of a major bearing on his perception of
kabbalah and on his translation and printing venture [i.e., Idra Zuta or the Lesser Holy Assembly translated
from the Aramaic Chaldee into Arabic (in Hebrew characters, Poona: 1887].” (—page 169) [my brackets—
DK]

Idel, Moshe. Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, and Ladders (Budapest –
New York: Central European University Press, 2005).
Chapter 5, “The Neoplatonic Path for Dead Souls: Medieval Philosophy, Kabbalah and
Renaissance,” begins with a discussion of Neoplatonic Arabic texts then takes us through early
Kabbalah and the Zohar to Alemanno, Pico, Reuchlin, and Bruno.
______. “Hermeticism and Judaism,” in Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History
and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, edited by Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus
(Washington: Folger Books, 1988).

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This overview article touches on such topics as the comparison of the Hermetic animation of
statues with material in the Hebrew Enoch (3 Enoch, or Sefer Hekhalot), references to Hermes in
the works of Jewish philosophers, the influence of Yohanan Alemanno (one of Pico’s teachers), and
“the well-known initiation of Ferdinand of Aragon by Ludovico Lazzarelli.”
______. “Jewish Magic from the Renaissance Period to Early Hasidism,” in Religion, Science,
and Magic – In Concert and in Conflict, edited by Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Paul
Virgil McCracken Flesher (New York – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pages 82-
117.
______. “Jewish Thinkers versus Christian Kabbalah,” in Christliche Kabbala, edited by
Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2003).
“The main aims of this paper are, on the one hand, to survey the acquaintance of Jewish Kabbalists with
Christian Kabbalah and, on the other hand to point out the possible impact of Christian Kabbalah on
them in the Renaissance period and on scholars of Kabbalah in the twentieth century” (—pp. 49-50).
______. “Kabbalah, Hieroglyphicity and Hieroglyphs,” in Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of
Jewish Mystical Texts, Volume Eleven, edited by Daniel Abrams and Avraham Elqayam (Los
Angeles: Cherub Press, 2004).
See in particular § 3. HIEROGLYPHS AND CHRISTIAN KABBALAH, on Ficino, Pico, Reuchlin, Riccius,
Agrippa, and Dee.
______. “Man as the ‘Possible’ Entity in Some Jewish and Renaissance Sources,” in Hebraica
Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, edited by Allison
P. Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
“In what follows, I shall argue that a description of the Middle Ages as uniformly displaying a
mentalistic orientation is problematic. Yates’ view [that a change toward activism was inspired by the
Hermetica, magic and Cabala] more aptly describes those elite approaches that emerged under the aegis of
varieties of Aristotelian thought, as we see from Christian, Muslim and Jewish theological literature. In
other speculative corpora, which were dominated by astral thought and Neoplatonic and theosophical-
theurgical views, action (especially ritualistic action) is much more important.” (—pp. 33-34)

______. “Printing Kabbalah in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” in Jewish Culture in Early Modern

Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press /
Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2014), pages 85-252.
_______. “Prisca Theologia in Marsilio Ficino and in Some Jewish Treatments,” in Marsilio
Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, edited by Michael J. B. Allen and Valery
Rees, with Marin Davies [BRILL’S STUDIES IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY, volume 108]
(Leiden – Boston – Köln: Brill, 2002).
“To the extent that Ficino’s translations influenced Jewish Renaissance thought, it was mainly via the
introduction of the Platonic and Neoplatonic corpora. We may better understand Jewish reticence on the
syncretistic achievements of their Christian contemporaries if the non-conformist attitudes of Ficino,
Pico or Bruno are put in relief.” (—pp. 156-7)
Izmirlieva, Valentina. All the Names of the Lord: Lists, Mysticism, and Magic (Chicago –
London: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
In the first section of her book, Izmirlieva analyzes The Divine Names of (pseudo-) Dionysius the
Areopagite (1st century); in the second section, she studies the (Slavonic) amulet known as The 72
Names of the Lord (13th century). It is this second text which interests us here, for Izmirlieva
“demonstrate[s], over a large body of textual traces, that The 72 Names of the Lord has its roots in the
Gnostic Kabbalah and originates from a Kabbalo-Christian exchange that most probably took place
in Provence in the twelfth century” (—page 12).

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Johnson, K. Paul. Initiates of Theosophical Masters. [SUNY SERIES IN WESTERN ESOTERIC

TRADITIONS] (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).
______. The Masters Revealed. Madame Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge.
[SUNY SERIES IN WESTERN ESOTERIC TRADITIONS] (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1994).
Johnson’s books explore the sources behind the traditional facades revealing/concealing Theosophy
and Mme. Blavatsky. The Masters Revealed is especially valuable in connecting real people with such
mythical figures as the “hidden mahatmas,” who provided Blavatsky with her elite initiated hidden
knowledge.
See, however, Daniel H. Caldwell, K. Paul Johnson’s House of Cards? A Critical Examination of
Johnson’s Thesis on the Theosophical Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi (Tucson: [P.O. Box 1844], 1996),
which includes an appendix: “Comments by David Reigle on Johnson’s ‘Sengchen Tulku’
Chapter.”
Refer as well to Mark Bevir’s “The West Turns Eastward: Madame Blavatsky and the
Transformation of the Occult Tradition,” in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume
LXII, Number Three (Atlanta: Fall 1994), and Olav Hammer’s Claiming Knowledge, listed above.
Jones, Rufus M. Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Macmillan Company, 1914;
rpt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1959); see especially CHAPTER VIII, “Valentine Weisgel and
Nature Mysticism.”
Kalik, Judith. “Christian Kabbala and the Polish Jews: Attitudes of the Church to Jewish
Conversion and the Idea of ‘Jacob’s Return’ in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the
18th Century,” in Kwartalnik Historii Żydów / Jewish History Quarterly 4 (Warsaw: Zydowski
Instytut Historyczny, 2004), pp. 492-501.
“The influence of the messianic ideas and especially the idea of ‘return of the Jews’ or ‘Jacob’s return’
found the most profound expression among the German Pietists. This served as a background for their
interest in the Kabbala, which was considered to be a link between Judaism and Christianity beginning in
the 16th century. The book of the early Silesian Pietist Christian Knorr von Rosenroth Kabbala Denudata
published in the last quarter of the 17th century served as a scholarly basis for the massive use of the
Kabbala in missionary activity among the Jews in Germany and later in Poland.” (—page 493)
Karr, Don. Approaching the Kabbalah of Maat (York Beach: Black Jackal Press, 2013).
Approaching the Kabbalah of Maat focuses on Western occult developments of kabbalah in the latter
part of the twentieth century and includes an introduction to and transcription of the key
documents of three important, albeit obscure, Maat-oriented groups: Horus/Maat Lodge, Ordo
Adeptorum Invisiblum (OAI), and 416. For a more complete description and excerpts, go to either
of the following:
• http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/Maat/AKM.pdf
• https://www.academia.edu/31031361/Approaching_the_Kabbalah_of_Maat_excerpt_
Approaching… is supplemented by The Methods of Maat (—not yet published), which includes a
selection of significant OAI and 416 writings. For contents and excerpts from the introduction, link
to either of the following:
• http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/Maat/MoM.pdf
• https://www.academia.edu/30732386/Methods_of_Maat_2019_-_introduction
Kasdin, Simon. The Esoteric Tarot. The Key to the Cabala (Convent: The Emerson Society,
1965).
This small-press production describes the author’s unique tarot, showing roughly drawn cards, each
with a prominent Hebrew letter incorporated into the design, some with symbols of the chakkras—

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all quite different from the Golden Dawn-Waite-B.O.T.A. images. Kasdin acknowledges his
particular indebtedness to Pike, Case, and Blavatsky.
Katz, Jacob. Jews and Freemasons in Europe 1723-1939, translated from the Hebrew by Leonard
Oschry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970).
See especially Chapter III, “The Order of the Asiatic Brethren.”
Keyssous-Dreyfus, Anne. “From Benedetto Marcello’s Psalm to a Jewish melody by Charles
Valentin Alkan: An Overview of a Tune,” in How Jewish Mystical Thinking Shaped Early
Modern Europe: Cabbalistic Influences on Shakespeare, Cervantes, Rabelais and Others, edited by
Yona Dureau (Lewiston – Queenston – Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2014), pages 253-
278.
Kilcher, Andreas B. “Scientia cabalistica as Scientia universalis: Encyclopedism and Kabbalah in
the 16th and 17th Centuries,” in Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts, Volume
Five, edited by Daniel Abrams and Avraham Elqayam (Los Angeles [Culver City]: Cherub
Press, 2000).
Kilcher considers the use of Kabbalah as a model of encyclopedic knowledge, or metascience,
offering two possible forms: magical and mathematical.
King, Francis. Tantra for Westerners: A Practical Guide to the Way of Action (New York:
Destiny Books, 1986).
One of the more enlightened “arm’s-length” studies. See especially Chapter Three, “Shiva and the
Qabalistic Tree of Life,” and Chapter Five, “Chakras, Secret Traditions, and the Golden Dawn.”
Knight, Gareth. Experience of the Inner Worlds: A Course in Christian Qabalistic Magic
(Toddington: Helios Book Service Ltd., 1975).
A Christian application of Western occult qabalah by a student of Dion Fortune.
______. A History of White Magic (London: A. R. Mowbray and Co., Ltd, 1978; New York,
Samuel Weiser, 1979).
See especially “Renaissance Magi, Rosicrucians and Universal Reformation,” “Magic in the 18th
Century: Freemasonry, Mesmerism and Secret Societies,” and “Magic in the 19th Century: From
Somnambulism to the Golden Dawn.”
Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch. “Russian Religious Thought and the Jewish Kabbala,” in The
Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, edited by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Ithaca – London:
Cornell University Press, 1997).
This article focuses on Vladimir Soloviev, “the most influential thinker in the religious renaissance
at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries,” and his attempt to reconcile
kabbalah with “the quite different and sometimes hostile theology of Russian Orthodoxy.”
See also Kornblatt’s Divine Sophia: The Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov, including annotated
translations by Boris Jakim, Laury Magnus and Kornblatt herself (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2008).
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1964).
Chapters on Petrarch, Valla, Ficino, Pico, Pomponazzi, Telesio, Patrizi, and Bruno, with an
Appendix, “The Medieval Antecedents of Renaissance Humanism.”
Kuntz, Darcy. The Golden Dawn Source Works: A Bibliography [THE GOLDEN DAWN STUDIES
SERIES, Volume 4] (Edmonds: Holmes Publishing Group, 1996).

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This is a most inclusive and helpful bibliography of the books, articles, and MSS surrounding all
matters and members of the Golden Dawn, many of which concern Kabbalah/Cabala/Qabalah.
LaDage, Alta J. Occult Psychology. A Comparison of Jungian Psychology and the Modern Qabalah
(St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1978).
Quoting LaDage, “The purpose of this book is to describe, in as far as I understand it, some of the
inner correspondences between the Qabalah and the psychology of C. G. Jung.” LaDage’s primary
cabalistic source was Dion Fortune’s Mystical Qabalah, one of the classics of Golden Dawn-style
qabalah. It is interesting to compare LaDage’s book with David Bakan’s Sigmund Freud and the Jewish
Mystical Tradition, first published in 1958, reprinted as a Beacon Paperback (Boston, 1975).
Leighton, Lauren G. The Esoteric Tradition in Russian Romantic Literature: Decembrism and
Freemasonry (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994).
“Theosophy, mysticism, Cabalism, nonempirical science, and thaumaturgy flourished in the Russian
Enlightenment in the form of Rosicrucian mysticism and Masonic theosophy; the Novikov Freemasons
were clearly erudite in these branches of arcane knowledge. How adept the later romantics were,
however, is not clear. All that can be said for certain is that in the romantic period Masonic symbolism
and the arcane skills of thaumaturgy were welcome in arenas of social and political action like the
Decembrist affair, as well as in the larger arena of public journalism inhibited by ubiquitous censorship
and private discussion made perilous by surveillance.” (—p. 32)
Leighton’s references to “Cabala,” “Cabalism,” and, alas, “Cabalistics” betray a limited and faulty
understanding. Consider the following clause from Leighton’s discussion entitled “Gematria in
‘The Queen of Spades’ [Aleksandr Pushkin]”: “…other scholars assume that the yetzira are the
letters and the sephira numbers.” (—p. 190)
Lelli, Fabrizio. “Hermes Among the Jews: Hermetica as Hebraica from Antiquity to the
Renaissance,” in Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, Volume 2, Number 2 (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, Winter 2007).
“…this study and review of the literature introduces the topic of Hermetism and then describes its impact
on Jewish thought in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, with special attention to updating the
bibliography on Hebrew Hermetism.” (—page 112)
Llull Ramon. Doctor Illuminatus. A Ramon Llull Reader, edited and translated by Anthony
Bonner [MYTHOS: THE PRINCETON/BOLLINGEN SERIES IN WORLD MYTHOLOGY] (1985;
abridgement, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
Passages from The Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men, The Book of the Lover and the Beloved,
The Book of Beasts, and Ars Brevis, with an account of Lull’s thought and influence.
Love, Jeff. The Quantum Gods. The Origin and Nature of Matter and Consciousness (New York:
Samuel Weiser, 1976 and 1979).
Love presents “Qabalah” in the light of Samuel Bousky’s teachings. While no works by Bousky are
listed among Love’s references, Love does mention a “lecture given by Samuel Bousky at Bridge
Mountain Foundation, Ben Lomond, California, 1969.” This very ’seventies book includes sections
with titles such as “Matter is the Medium: Being is the Message,” “The Paramagnetic Fields of
Mind,” and “Emanation, the Specific Intentionality of a Quantum God.”
Three books by Samuel Bousky are circulating:
1. Mystical Heritage (Trinity Center: J & L Publications, 1992).
2. A Likely Story (Trinity Center: J & L Publications, 1993).
3. The Wizard of Oz Revealed (Weed: Writers Consortium, 1995).
Macdonald, Michael-Albion. The Secret of Secrets: The Unwritten Mysteries of Esoteric Qabbalah
(Gillette: Heptangle Books, 1986).

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This handsome eighty-page book reads as if it had been written a hundred years ago—and looks as if
it had been printed a hundred years before that. It is filled with the pomp, ceremony, and blunders
characteristic of post-Golden Dawn qabbalah books; this one even announces itself as “Publication
class A authorized for publication by the COA of the A.˙. A.˙.” The errors begin on the first page
of the INTRODUCTION (page ix), where Macdonald states, “Most historians place the origin of
written Qabbalah at about the same period as the Talmud, when the Hebrews lived in Babylon.” A
footnote compounds the problem by stating that this Talmudic period was “c, 30 B.C.E.”
Macdonald more-or-less admits to the irony of his title on page xi: “There are so many such books
[which ‘elabourate on the mysteries at great length’] available in our present Century that the term
‘unwritten’ can scarce be applied to [the ‘Unwritten Mysteries’] any longer.”
Machen, Arthur; and Waite, A. E. The House of the Hidden Light, edited by R. A. Gilbert
(Yorkshire/London: Tartarus Press/Ferret Fantasy, 2003; paperback reprint: North
Yorkshire: Tartarus Press, 2017).
Machen and Waite were members of the Golden Dawn. The meaning and purpose of this book has
been puzzled over for over 100 years now. Gilbert concludes his introduction, “…let The House of the
Hidden Light remain what it is: a record of a quest in which two men sought to find their souls by
way of earthly love, a quest in which, against all odds, they attained” (page xxxii). In other words,
the book is comprised of letters between Machen and Waite describing their Bohemian London
night-life, albeit heavily coded in occult language. The end flap warns, “It may not be the great
magical text that some had hoped for….” House was originally printed in 1904 in a limited run of
three copies; the 2003 edition was limited to 350—which may have been optimistic.
See Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Mysteries of Sex in the House of the Hidden Light: Arthur Edward
Waite and the Kabbalah,” in Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts, Volume Forty,
edited by Daniel Abrams with guest editors Christian Wiese and George Y. Kohler (Los Angeles:
Cherub Press, 2018), pp. 163-182.
Man, Myth & Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural, 24 volumes, edited by
Richard Cavendish. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1970; reprint edition, 12
volumes, edited and compiled by Yvonne Deutch (New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1983).
The look of Man, Myth, and Magic—that of twenty-four coffee-table books—is somewhat
contradicted by the names which appear on the list of contributors and its editorial advisory board:
Mircea Eliade, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, R. C. Zaehner, to name a few. Topics include AGRIPPA,
ALCHEMY, FRANCIS BARRETT, WILLIAM BLAKE, MME BLAVATSKY, JACOB BOEHME, GIORDANO BRUNO,
CABALA, ALEISTER CROWLEY, JOHN DEE, ROBERT FLUDD, DION FORTUNE, GEMATRIA, GOLDEN DAWN,
GOLEM, GRIMOIRE, HASIDISM, ÉLIPHAS LÉVI, LILITH, RAYMOND LULL, ISAAC LURIA, MAGIC AND
MYSTICISM, PENTAGRAM, RENAISSANCE, ROSICRUCIANS, AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE (article by Kenneth
Grant in vol. 24), RUDOLF STEINER, SWEDENBORG, TAROT, THRONE MYSTICISM, A. E. WAITE, and W.
B. YEATS.
Maxwell-Stuart, P. G. The Occult in Early Modern Europe. A Documentary History
[DOCUMENTS IN HISTORY SERIES] (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).
This valuable anthology includes a section entitled “Magic and Kabbalah” which gives translations
from Pico, Reuchlin, and Bodin, along with Manuel do Valle de Moura, Francisco Torreblan
Villapando, Andreas Libavius and Federico Borromeo. Elsewhere in the book one can find
numerous passages from Ficino, Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Campanella.
McGaha, Michael. “Naming the Nameless, Numbering the Infinite: Some Common
Threads in Spanish Sufism, Kabbalah, and Catholic Mysticism,” in Yearbook of Comparative
and General Literature, Volume 45/46 (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1997/1998), pages 37-
52.

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McIntosh, Christopher. The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason. Eighteenth-Century Rosicrucianism
in Central Europe and Its Relationship to the Enlightenment [BRILL’S STUDIES IN INTELLECTUAL
HISTORY, volume 29] (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992).
______. The Rosicrucians. The History, Mythology, and Rituals of an Esoteric Order
(Wellingeborough: Thorsons, 1980 and 1987; rpt. York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1997).
Rosicrucians, more of a “popular” work than The Rose Cross…, is of particular interest for its chapter,
“The Golden Dawn, Its Antecedents and Offshoots.” For an overview, see McIntosh’s article, “The
Rosicrucian Legacy,” in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited, listed below under “Ralph White.”
On a parallel strand, see McIntosh’s Astrologers and their Creed: An Historical Outline (London:
Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 1969), especially chapter 6, “From the Renaissance to the Age of
Enlightenment,” and chapter 7, “The Nineteenth Century.”
McKeon, Michael. “Sabbatai Sevi in England,” in AJS Review, Volume Two, edited by Frank
Talmage (Cambridge: Association for Jewish Studies, 1977).
“In the following discussion, I hope to establish the major significance of Sabbatai Sevi for England by
examining several questions—limited in comparison with those entertained by Sabbatai’s most profound
and exhaustive historian [i.e., Gershom Scholem]—concerning the English awareness of him 300 years
ago. How and in what form did the unparalleled developments in the Levant from 1665 to 1667 first
become known to English-speaking people? What contribution was made by the Sabbatian movement to
Christian eschatology and to the expectations aroused among devotees by the approach of the “wonderful
year” 1666? What was the range of response to the movement among English observers; what was its
ideological or sectarian meaning to contemporaries?” (—pp. 132-133)
McLean, Adam. The Magical Calendar. A Synthesis of Magical Symbolism from the Seventeenth-
Century Renaissance of Medieval Occultism [MAGNUM OPUS HERMETIC SOURCEWORKS #1]
(1979; rpt. Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1994).
The Magical Calendar is a grand chart, which amounts to a Hermetic-Cabalist-Magical
compendium, by Johannes Theodorus de Bry, who did the illustrations, so often reproduced, for the
works of Robert Fludd and Michael Maier.
Merkel, Ingrid; and Debus, Allen G. (eds.) Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History
and the Occult in Early Modern Europe (Washington: The Folger Shakespeare Library / London
– Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1988).
“The bulk of the papers … are grouped into three major sections: background of the Renaissance;
magic, philosophy, and science; and art and literature” (p. 9). Articles from this collection have
been cited elsewhere: see “Gosselin” (RE: Bruno), “Idel” (“Hermeticism and Judaism”), and
“Zambelli” (RE: Agrippa).
The New Art Examiner: East Coast Edition, volume 8, number 2: ART AND THE OCCULT
(Chicago: November 1980).
The title article is a brief survey of ideas and sources. Other articles on the issue’s special theme
include “Conjuring Devices: Art or Magic” by James Auer, “Crucibles of Beauty: Occult
Symbolism and Seven Chicago Women” by Joanna Frueh, “Esoteric Sources of Duchamp’s Dual
Paradise” by Jack Burnham, “The Circle: Ritual and the Occult in Women’s Performance Art” by
Arlene Raven, and “Where Did Anger’s Magic Go?” by Melissa Costello.
Newman, Louis Israel. Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements [COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
ORIENTAL STUDIES, vol. XXIII] (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925).
See § KABBALAH AND CATHARISM (page 175) and § THE KABBALAH IN MEDIEVAL CHRISTENDOM (page
176). § EXPONENTS OF THE THEORETICAL KABBALAH, discusses Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, and Arnold
of Villanova (pages 176-178) along with Abraham Abulafia and Raymond Lully; then to § THE

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PRACTICAL KABBALAH IN MEDIEVAL CHRISTENDOM (pages 183-185). Later §§ include ZWINGLI AND THE
KABBALAH (pages 488-490), ZWINGLI AND THE REUCHLIN AFFAIR (pages 490-492), SERVETUS AND THE
KABBALAH (pages 568-569), and LUTHER’S INTEREST IN HEBREW, KABBALAH AND THE RABBIS (pages
622-625).
Agobard (779-840), an anti-Jewish polemicist, comes in a bit early to have been influenced by what
we have determined to be kabbalah. Arnold (1240-1311), on the other hand, lived at the right time and
dwelled in the right neighborhood (Catalonia) to have brushed up against some kabbalah.
See Maurice Kriegel, “The Reckonings of Nahmanides and Arnold of Villanova: In the Early
Contacts between Christian Millenarianism and Jewish Messianism,” in Jewish History, Volume 26,
Issue 1 (Springer, 2012), pages 1-70: “A major stimulus for Arnold’s eschatological ideas was his
wrestling with messianic notions widespread among Jews, especially kabbalists.” (—from the
ABSTRACT)
Oberman, Heiko A. The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of the Renaissance and Reformation,
translated from the German by James. I. Porter. [= Wurzeln des Antisemitismus, 1981]
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984).
Nineteen historic personages figure into Oberman’s discussion. Along with Luther, Calvin, and
Erasmus, we find Reuchlin and his rival Johannes Pfefferkorn. Oberman writes (p. 29), “The
modern picture of Reuchlin as a friend of the Jews, for all its accessibility, simply does not stand up.
Reuchlin was firmly convinced of the collective guilt of the Jews….”
Ophiel [Edward C. Peach]. The Art & Practice of Caballa Magic (New York: Samuel Weiser,
1977).
The practical part of this book, written in Ophiel’s distinctive style (with its words in BOLD
CAPS followed by THREE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!), associates the elemental (tattwa)
images with the sefirot of the tree of life.
Owen, Alex. The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2004).
“The book is primarily directed towards arguing that occultism was constitutive of modern culture at the
fin de siecle; conversely, it seeks to trace the lineaments of “the modern” in the gestures and
presumptions of the occult. Most specifically, then, The Place of Enchantment sets out to show that this
new form of occult spirituality was a particular articulation of the diverse and often ambiguous processes
through which cultural modernity was constituted in Britain during the crucial years prior to the
outbreak of the First World War.” (INTRODUCTION—p. 16)
Owens, Lance. “Joseph Smith and Kabbalah: The Occult Connection,” in Dialogue: A Journal
of Mormon Thought, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Salt Lake City: Dialogue Foundation, Fall 1994, pages 117-
194).
“Joseph Smith and Kabbalah” is a most interesting piece. However, finding Volume 27 of Dialogue
is unlikely, even in a well-stocked library; occasionally a copy turns up at Amazon or AbeBooks.
Fortunately, there are two other sources for Owens’ work:
• the entire Dialogue article is online as part of the Gnosis Archive series at www.gnosis.org/jskabb1.htm
• a brief account, “Joseph Smith: America’s Hermetic Prophet,” is in Gnosis Magazine, Number 35, Spring
1995; this article is available on-line at http://gnosis.org/ahp.htm.
Refer to the critical review by William J. Hamblin in FARMS [FOUNDATION FOR ANCIENT RESEARCH
AND MORMON STUDIES] Review of Books, Volume 8, Issue 2 (Provo: Maxwell Institute, 1996). Also
see below: “Quinn.”
Ozaniec, Naomi. The Aquarian Qabalah: A Contemporary Initiation into a Secret Tradition
(London: Watkins Publishing, 2003).

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“Qabalah” gets its turn in Ozaniec’s series of books on such topics as meditation, the chakkras, tarot,
dowsing, etc. Ozaniec “worked with Gareth Knight and Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki,” placing her squarely
in the eclectic Western tradition derived from Golden Dawn. After referring to her work as “Qabala
Renovata,” an expression borrowed from William Gray, Ozaniec states, “While acknowledging the
Jewish origins of Qabalah, at the same time it is impossible to ignore non-Jewish influences which have
become incorporated into its fabric” (—page 7).
Parfit, Will. The Elements of the Qabalah (Longmead: Element Books, 1991; rpt New York:
Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1999).
This well-circulated book begins, “The Qabalah, at the heart of the Western Mystery Tradition, is
a way of personal development and self-realization based on a map of consciousness called the Tree
of Life.”
Pasi, Marco. “Oriental Kabbalah and the Parting of East and West in the Early Theosophical
Society,” in Kabbalah and Modernity: Interpretations, Transformations, Adaptations, edited by
Boaz Huss, Marco Pasi, and Kocku von Stuckrad [ARIES BOOK SERIES: TEXTS AND STUDIES
IN WESTERN MYSTICISM/10] (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2010).
“For both Blavatsky and the ‘Hermetic’ occultists Jewish kabbalah is understood as belonging more to the
‘West’ than to the ‘East’…. For Blavastsky … the status of Jewish kabbalah maintains a certain degree of
ambiguity, because of the presence of a broader and older kabbalah firmly posed in the ‘East’, from which
Jewish kabbalah is supposed to have originated.” (—pages 162-163)
Percival, W. Keith. “The Reception of Hebrew in Sixteenth-Century Europe: The Impact of
the Cabbala,” in Historiographica Linguistica, Volume XI (Amsterdam – Philadelphia: John
Benjamins Publishing Company, 1984).
“Reception…” is a summary article on Christian Europe’s encounter with Hebrew, discussing Sefer
Yesirah, the writings of Bible commentator and grammarian David Kimhi (116?-1235), Reuchlin,
Spanish humanist Antonio de Nebrija (1441-1522), Postel, and Swiss Hebraist Theodor Bibliander
(d. 1564).
Quinn, D. Michael. Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature
Books, 1987; revised and enlarged edition, 1998).
Quinn locates Smith’s sources for “Cabala” in adaptations of Johann Eisenmenger’s Traditions of the
Jews (original, 1711; English editions produced by John Peter Stehelin in 1743 and 1748), and John
Allen’s Modern Judaism (1816; 2nd edition: London: 1830). Quinn writes, “Smith’s apparent textual
indebtedness to the books by Eisenmenger and Allen also demonstrates that he had access to their
extensive discussions of the Cabala’s doctrine of the transmigration of souls.” (—page 303)
Quispel, Gilles. “Reincarnation and Magic in the Asclepius,” in From Poimandres to Jacob
Böhme: Gnosis, Hermetism, and the Christian Tradition, edited by Roelof van den Broek and Cis
van Heertum [TEXTS AND STUDIES published by the BIBLIOTHECA PHILOSOPHICA HERMETICA,
4] (Amsterdam: Bibliotheca Philosophica, Hermetica, 2000—distributed by Brill Academic
Publishers, Leiden).
In the section of this article entitled “Renaissance and magic,” Quispel writes:
Pico was wrong when he believed that Cabala came from Moses. But he sensed that the two currents
[Hermetism and Cabala] were essentially identical. In this he was right, because both Hermetism and
Cabala date from the same period of history, reflect the same culture, Hellenism, and originate in the
same climate, Alexandrian gnosis. (—pp. 224-5) [my brackets]
Only recently the texts found near Nag Hammadi in 1945 have shown that these Christian Cabalists [of
the Renaissance and Reformation periods], although completely ignored by modern scholars, were on the
right track. The Gospel of Truth, one of the first works of the Jung Codex, contains long speculations of
Jewish esoteric origin about Christ as the Name of God. And few scholars would deny nowadays that
according to the author of the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, Jesus is the embodiment of that secret

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Name: ‘Holy Father, keep them through thine own Name, which thou hast given me’ (John 17, 11). And
we see clearly that Paul sees Jesus as the Glory of God. Nay, even the mysterious title” ‘Son of Man’ has
been elucidated, now that so many works from Nag Hammadi call the Son of God: Man. Son of Man,
Aramaic bar anash, simply means ‘Man’ and indicates God who reveals himself in the form of a man. All
these insights were in nuce already there in the works of these Christian Cabalists. (—p. 226) [my
brackets—DK]
Rankin, Oliver Shaw. Jewish Religious Polemic of early and later centuries, a study of documents
here rendered in English (London: Edinburgh at the University Press, 1956).
PART III, POLEMIC IN LETTERS, discusses and translates letters of Johann Stephan Rittangel (=
Rittangelius, 1606-1652), “the Jew of Amsterdam,” known for his translation and commentary on
Sefer Yetsirah. The dispute in the letters centers on the interpretation of the Shiloh passage of
GENESIS 49:10. With typical irony, it is Rittangel who is the kabbalist, using Simeon ben Jochai of
the Zohar as his authority, whereas his Jewish opponent “appears to have had little more than
hearsay acquaintance with the Zohar and seems to have no leanings towards the mystic movement
among his people” (—p. 96).
Raphael. Pathway of Fire. Initiation to the Kabbalah (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1993) [=
La Via del Fuoco secundo la Qabbalah—‘Ehjeh ‘Aser ‘Ehjeh (Rome: Asram Vidya, 1978)].
“We have spoken of the ‘Pathway of Fire’ with reference to the Kabbalah, to Advaita Vedanta, and to
Asparsa Yoga. … [T]he ‘Pathway of Fire’…indicates the ‘Way’ along which to travel in order to realize
one’s own essence.” (—page 25)
Reed, Ellen Cannon. The Witches’ Qabala. Book One: THE GODDESS AND THE TREE (St. Paul:
Llewellyn Publications, 1985).
The Golden Dawn tree-of-life material is here done up for neo-pagans of various stripes. The old
cliché “only the names have been changed…” could describe Reed’s innovations.
Regardie, Israel. Ceremonial Magic. A Guide to the Mechanisms of Ritual (Wellingborough: The
Aquarian Press, 1980 and 1982).
“What is required is some familiarization with the contents of the ritual so that the on-going movement
may be perceived.” (—page 11)
Reichelberg, Ruth. “In Memoriam: Don Quixote and Kabbalah” (translation by Véronique
Dupuy), in How Jewish Mystical Thinking Shaped Early Modern Europe: Cabbalistic Influences on
Shakespeare, Cervantes, Rabelais and Others, edited by Yona Dureau (Lewiston – Queenston –
Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2014), pages 121-129.
“The following article traces the development of research led by Ruth Reichelberg concerning Cervantes
and the kabbalistic sense of his work, as well as the pursuit of this quest for sense by current researchers.
This text has been written in memoriam, from Ruth Rechelberg’s notes.” (—page 121)
Rodbøg, Tim. “Helena Petrovna Blavatsky’s Esoteric Tradition,” in Constructing Tradition:
Means and Myths of Transmission in Western Esotericism, edited by Andreas B. Kilcher (Leiden
– Boston: Brill, 2010.
“The exploration undertaken in this paper of a still largely uncharted area has shown that Blavatsky’s
conception of Theosophy was closely interrelated with an ideal of superior ancient knowledge.
Theosophy was narrated as the original primeval historical source of true wisdom handed down through
the ages—yet it was also described as transecendent and timeless.” (—page 175)
Roob, Alexander. Alchemy and Mysticism: The Hermetic Museum, translated by Shaun
Whiteside (Köln [Cologne]: Taschen, 1997).
There is no shortage of cabalistic diagrams and images here, especially in the section “Sephiroth”
(pp. 310-328). At 700+ pages, this is the most extensive collection of alchemical, Rosicrucian,
Masonic, and cabalistic images—a good proportion of them in color—at a reasonable price.

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Rossi, Paolo. Logic and the Art of Memory. The Quest for a Universal Language, translated with
an introduction by Stephen Clucas [= CLAVIS UNIVERSALIS: ARTI DELLA MEMORIA E
LOGICA COMBINATORIA DA LULLO A LEIBNIZ, Societa editrice il Mulino, 1986] (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, and London: Althone Press, 2000).
Refer especially to Chapter Three: “Theatres of the World,” and Chapter Four: “The Imaginative
Logic of Giordano Bruno.”
Further, see
• Coudert, Allison (ed.) The Language of Adam – Die Sprache Adams (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag,
1999).
• Eco, Umberto. The Search for the Perfect Language (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers Ltd,
1995).
• Knowlson, James. Universal Language Schemes in England and France, 1600-1800 (Toronto – Buffalo:
University of Toronto Press, 1975).
• Shumaker, Wayne. “George Dalgarno’s Universal Language,” in Renaissance Curiosa (Binghamton:
Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies, 1982).
Roth, Cecil. The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America,
1959; New York: Harper and Row, 1965).
See especially Chapter VI, “With the Humanists of Florence,” and Chapter VII, “The Christian
Hebraists.”
Ruderman, David B. (ed). Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque (New
York: New York University, 1992).
See the three articles in this collection by Moshe Idel: (i) “The Magical and Neoplatonic
Interpretations of the Kabbalah in the Renaissance,” (ii) “Particularism and Universalism in
Kabbalah, 1480-1650,” and (iii) “Major Currents in Italian Kabbalah between 1560 and 1660.” Herein
also find also David Ruderman’s “Hope against Hope: Jewish and Christian Messianic
Expectations in the Late Middle Ages.”
Salah, Asher. “Cazanova (sic) and Kabbalah: Neophytes and Jews, Freemasons and
Kabbalists in History of My Life by Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798),” in How Jewish Mystical
Thinking Shaped Early Modern Europe: Cabbalistic Influences on Shakespeare, Cervantes, Rabelais
and Others, edited by Yona Dureau (Lewiston – Queenston – Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen
Press, 2014), pages 209-252.
Sassoon, George; and Dale, Rodney. The Kabbalah Decoded: Mysteries of the Zohar (London:
Duckworth, 1978).
The Kabbalah Decoded gives translations of Sifre di-Tseniuta and the Idrot of the Zohar (i.e., the same
items which appear in S. L. M. Mathers’ Kabbalah Unveiled). Sassoon and Dale treat these texts as
technical manuals for assembling a “manna machine,” namely, a food production device which
could, for instance, have fed the Jews in the wilderness. This thesis is developed in detail in The
Manna Machine by the same authors (London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd, 1979).
Saurat, Denis. Literature and the Occult Tradition. Studies in Philosophical Poetry, translated from
the French by Dorothy Bolton (1938; rpt. New York: Haskell House, 1966).
The midsection of the book deals with “The Cabala”; passages from Jean de Pauly’s French
rendition (Paris, 1906-11) of the Zohar are quoted. Saurat believed that within the Zohar one could
find “the expression of occult doctrine” which “in a more or less diluted form, reached our poets”
(Spenser, Milton, Blake, Shelley, Whitman, Goethe, Nietzsche, Hugo, and others). The final
section, “The Philosophical Ideas of Edmund Spenser,” concludes with “Spenser and the Cabala.”

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Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm. Philosophia Perennis: Historical Outlines of Western Spirituality

in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Thought [INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES 189] (Dordrecht:
Springer, 2004).
Refer in particular to
§ 3.4. Raymond Lull’s Theology of Concepts
§ 3.5. Christian Cabala I: Giovanni Pico, Johannes Reuchlin, and Paulus Ricius
§ 3.6. Christian Cabala II: Jakob Böhme’s Doctrine of Qualities
§ 4.10. Ficino’s Angel and the Intellectus Agens
§ 4.11. Giovanni Pico: Pious Philosophy and the Dignity of Man
§ 4.12. Paulus Ricius’ Cabalistic Cosmos
§ 4.13. The Threefold Man of Paracelsus
§ 4.14. Jakob Böhme’s Theology of Creation
§ 4.15. Abraham Herrera’s Adam Kadmon
§ 5.3. The Book Yezirah and the Archetypes of the Alphabet
§ 5.9. De Vita Coelitus Comparanda: Ficino’s Cosmological Medicine
§ 5.10. On the Shadows of Ideas: Giordano Bruno’s Seminal Combinatories
§ 6.8. Giorgio Veneto’s Harmonia Mundi
§ 6.9. Agrippa’s Doctrine of Spiritual Elements
§ 6.10 The Dimensions of the Spirit: Nicolas of Cusa’s Conceptions of Space
§ 6.11 Giordano Bruno’s Infinite Space
Scholtz, Susanne. “Beyond Postmodernism? Esoteric Interpretations of Gen 1-3 by E.
Swedenborg, R. Steiner, and S. D. Fohr,” in Hidden Truths from Eden: Esoteric Readings of
Genesis 1-3, edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Susanne Scholtz [SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL
LITERATURE SEMEIA STUDIES; number 76] (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014), pages 169-196.
Schutz, Albert L. Call Adonoi. A Manual of Practical Cabalah and Gestalt Mysticism (Goleta:
Quantal Publishing, 1980).
______. Exodus—Exodus. The Cabalistic Bible. Part 1: The Enslavement of Israel and the
Coming of Moses (1985); Part 2: God’s Call (1986) (Goleta: Quantal Publishing).
Schutz, Albert L. and de Schaps, Hilda W. Kosher Yoga (Santa Barbara [Goleta]: Quantal
Publishing, 1983).
Within a discussion of the structure of Rudolph Steiner’s MYSTERIA ÆTERNIS (“Western Esoteric
Schools,” in Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, edited by R. van den Broek and
W. J. Hanegraaff [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998]), Daniel Egmond writes (p.
336),
…in the fourth ‘cultic’ degree (i.e., the first degree of the third section) the student was taught various
exercises that involved physical movements and the ‘vibration’ vowels. These exercises were combined
with the Masonic signs and ‘grips,’ and were taught to be the means by which the ‘subtle energies’ of the
body could be harmonized.
In a note (p. 345, n. 90) Egmond adds,
These exercises played also an important role in the O.T.O.; hence it is also possible that Steiner received
them from [Theodore] Reuss. … Another version of these exercises was published by Albert Schutz, Call
Adonoi (Goleta, 1980).
Seligmann, Kurt. The History of Magic (New York: Pantheon Books, 1948).
Seligmann’s History of Magic—also published as The Mirror of Magic—is often compared with de
Givry’s Picture Museum…, for it too is full of illustrations. Seligmann’s work is generally considered
the better of the two, and it is a bit more helpful for our line of inquiry, for it gets more into the
magic of antiquity and contains a special section on Cabala.

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Shirley, Ralph. Occultists and Mystics of All Ages (New Hyde Park: University Books, 1972).
Shirley sketches Apollonius of Tyana, Plotinus, Michael Scot, Paracelsus, Swedenborg, Cagliostro,
and Anna Kingsford.
Shumaker, Wayne. Natural Magic and Modern Science: Four Treatises, 1590-1657 [MEDIEVAL
AND RENAISSANCE TEXTS AND STUDIES, Volume 63] (Binghamton: State University of New
York, 1989).
The treatises discussed are (i) Bruno’s De Magia, Theses de magia, De magia mathematica; (ii) Martin
Delrio’s Disquisitionum magicarum libri sex; (iii) Campanella’s De sensu rerum et magia; (iv) Gaspar
Schott’s Magia universalis.
______. The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance. A Study in Intellectual Patterns (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1972 and 1973).
Shumaker’s study gives full accounts of astrology, witchcraft, magic, alchemy, hermetic doctrine,
with, alas, only a few fleeting mentions of Cabala—a strange omission considering the date of
Occult Sciences’ publication: after Walker’s Spiritual and Demonic Magic (1958) and Yates’ Giordano
Bruno (1964), both of which are mentioned in Shumaker’s “Bibliographical Note,” the latter being
referred to as “indispensable.” Given that he quotes Pico’s famous Conclusiones (on page 16), “No
science offers greater assurance of Christ’s divinity than magic and cabala,” one would expect
Shumaker to follow up.
Sirat, Colette. A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990).
See History… pages 308-312 on Abner of Burgos, pages 405-407 and 410 regarding two of Pico’s
teachers, Elijah Delmedigo and Johanan Alemanno (in § “Jewish Philosophers in Italy of the
Quattrocento”).
Stuckrad, Kocku von. Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric
Discourse and Western Identities [BRILL’S STUDIES IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY 186] (Leiden –
Boston: Brill, 2010).
Note § LINGUISTIC ONTOLOGIES IN CHRISTIAN KABBALAH within CHAPTER FIVE, “The Secrets
of Texts: Esoteric Hermeneutics.”
Sturzaker, Doreen and James. Colour and the Kabbalah (New York: Samuel Weiser, Inc.,
1975).
Correspondences of the “Flashing Colours” are given for the ten sefirot and the twenty-two paths in
the tradition of the Golden Dawn.
Suares, Carlo. The Cipher of Genesis. The Original Code of the Qabala as Applied to The
Scriptures (French, Geneva: Editions du Mont-Blanc, 1967; English, Boulder and London:
Shambhala Publications, 1978).
______. The Sepher Yetsira, Including the Original Astrology according to the Qabala and Its Zodiac
(French, Geneva: Editions du Mont-Blanc, 1968; English, Boulder and London: Shambhala
Publications, 1976).
See my description of Suares’ SY in “Notes on Editions of Sefer Yetzirah in English,” Part IV, page
37, at either
• http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/Biblios/syie.pdf or
• https://www.academia.edu/22875900/Notes_on_Editions_of_Sefer_Yetzirah_in_English

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______. The Song of Songs. The Canonical SONG OF SOLOMON Deciphered according to the
Original Code of the Qabala (French, Geneva: Editions du Mont-Blanc, 1969; English, Boulder
and London: Shambhala Publications, 1972).
Suares’ series covers “the three great cabalistic works”: Genesis, Sepher Yetsira, and The Song of
Songs. Suares does not consider Kabbalah to be mysticism but rather a science of cosmic energies,
though in a hidden code. Suares’ thesis rests on the belief that each Hebrew letter “denotes not only
a ‘letter’ but also a sign, a proof, a symbol and ever a miracle revealing its forgotten ontological
origin.” In a chapter which is repeated in all three books, Suares explains the letter-code as he has
discovered, or rather re-discovered, it.
Other items by Suares:
• “The Autiaut of Shekhina,” in Tree 3: Shekhinah, edited by David Meltzer (Santa Barbara: Christopher
Books, 1972).
• “The Code,” “Notes on Biology Functioning with the Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet,” and “Sepher
Yetsira,” in Tree 2: Yetsira, edited by David Meltzer (Santa Barbara: Christopher Books, 1971).
• “Esha-Hheva-Eve-Woman” and “The Book of Eve” in Maitreya 4: Woman (Berkeley: Shambhala
Publications, 1973).
• “I Am Cain,” in Maitreya 2: The Seeds of Liberation (Shambhala…1971).
• “I Am Cain II,” in Maitreya 3: Gardening (Shambhala…1972).
• The Passion of Judas: A Mystery Play (Shambhala…1973).
• The Resurrection of the Word (Shambhala…1975).
• The Second Coming of Reb YHShWH: The Rabbi Called Jesus Christ [= Memoire sur le retour du rabbi qu’on
appelle Jesus (Paris: Editions Robert Laffont, S. A., 1975)] (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1994).
• “What about ‘Ra’?” in Tree 4: Ra, edited by David Meltzer (Berkeley: [Tree Books], 1974).
Sutcliffe, Adam. Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge – New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2003).
Refer to Chapter 8, “Enlightenment and Kabbalah,” which contains the following segments:
PHILOSOPHY AND MYSTICISM: THE KABBALAH (sic) DENUDATA, GEORG WACHTER: SPINOZISM,
JUDAISM AND DIVINE PRESENCE, and MYSTICAL DEMARCATIONS AND CONFUSIONS.
Szulakowska, Urszula. “The Apocalyptic Eucharist and Religious Dissidence in Stafan
Michelspacher’s Cabala: Spiegel der Kunst und Natur, in Alchymia,” in Aries: Journal for the
Study of Western Esotericism, NEW SERIES, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Leiden-Boston-Köln: Brill, 2003).
“Cabala” here, as in von Welling’s Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum…, is Paracelsianism, i.e., alchemy, more
related to Khunrath and Maier than the “cabalists” of the current paper.
Tatlow, Ruth. Bach and the Riddle of the Number Alphabet (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991; rpt. 2006).
“It is extremely likely that Bach came across many different number alphabets. Techniques of gematria
were well known in his day and the [Hebrew] milesian alphabet [aleph = 1 to tav = 400] is used in at least
two books that he owned… Had Bach used a number alphabet to embed theological meaning into his
music through acceptable Cabbala Speculativa, he would almost certainly have used the cabbalistic
milesian number alphabet.” (Tatlow, pages 126-127 and 129)
Tenen, Stan. The Alphabet That Changed the World: How Genesis Preserves a Science of
Consciousness in Geometry and Gesture (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2011).
“Tenen examines the Hebrew text of Genesis and shows how each letter is both concept and gesture,
witht e form of the gesture matching the function of the concept, revealing the implicit relationship
between the physical world of function and the conscious world of the concept.” (—back cover)

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See my description of Tenen’s book in “Notes on Editions of Sefer Yetzirah in English” Part IV, at
either
• http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/Biblios/syie.pdf or
• https://www.academia.edu/22875900/Notes_on_Editions_of_Sefer_Yetzirah_in_English
Thorndike, Lynn. History of Magic and Experimental Science [HISTORY OF SCIENCE
PUBLICATIONS, New Series IV] (New York: Columbia University Press):
- VOLUME IV. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (1934; 4th printing 1966):
• Chapter LIX, “Magic in Dispute, I: Pico della Mirandola, Bernard Basin, Pedro Garcia”
• Chapter LX, “Magic in Dispute, II: Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples, Reuchlin, Trithemius”
- VOLUMES V & VI. The Sixteenth Century (1941, 4th printing 1966):
• Chapter VIII, “Agrippa and the Occult”
• Chapter XLIV, “Mystic Philosophy: Words and Numbers”
- VOLUME VII. The Seventeenth Century (1958; 2nd printing 1964):
• Chapter XX, “The Underground World of Kircher and Becher.”
History of Magic may yet be the most important single resource in its field, though these volumes
require perseverance. Here one finds raw material—lots of it—but Thorndike’s conclusions and
opinions should not be taken as the last word (rather like reading Grätz on kabbalah). However, the
late Ioan Culianu’s comments are too dismissive:
A history of magic during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance has yet to be written. New discoveries
and, above all, new interpretive viewpoints, have made obsolete the few existing syntheses, like those of
Lynn Thorndike, Kurt Seligmann, or Emile Grillot de Givry. Any scholar who still relies on these
works—especially on the first—is by no means better off than would be an anthropologist who relied
exclusively on James G. Frazer. (—“Magic in Medieval and Renaissance Europe,” in Hidden Truths:
Magic, Alchemy, and the Occult, edited by Lawrence E. Sullivan [New York: Macmillan, 1989], page 110.)
Fairer appraisals of Thorndike’s magnum opus appear in Claire Fanger’s introductory article in
Conjuring Spirits (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), pp. ix-x, and in Wayne Shumaker’s
comments in Natural Magic and Modern Science (Binghamton: State University of New York, 1989),
pp. 209-211.
Tishby, Isaiah. “Christian Kabbalah and Rabbi Aryeh Modena,” in The Wisdom of the Zohar:
An Anthology of Texts, arranged by Fischel Lachower and Isaiah Tishby, translated from the
Hebrew by David Goldstein (Oxford – New York: Littman Library – Oxford University
Press, 1989): Volume 1, III. b, pages 33-38.
Tomlinson, Gary. Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others (Chicago –
London: Chicago University Press, 1993).
In chapter 2, music historian Tomlinson sets “Agrippa versus Michael Foucault”; in Chapters 3, 4,
and 5, he discusses Ficino’s mixture of magic and music.
Trachtenberg, Joshua. “Europe Discovers the Kabbalah,” = CHAPTER 5 of The Devil and the
Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1943; Philadelphia – Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society, 1983),
pages 76-87.
Tyson, Donald. Ritual Magic: What It Is and How to Do It. [LLEWELLYN’S PRACTICAL MAGIC
SERIES] (St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1992).
Written for the would-be practitioner, Ritual Magic is in three sections: “Basics,” an expanded
survey of definitions and rationales; “Systems,” a quick history of magic; and “Practices,” which
includes chapters on preparations, instruments and two simple rituals. The final chapter, “The
Magician’s Library,” consists of a rather eclectic reading list in three levels of difficulty.

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______. Tetragrammaton. The Secret to Evoking Angelic Powers and the Key to the Apocalypse (St.
Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1995); reissued as The Power of the Word: Secret Code of the
Creation (Llewellyn, 2004).
Tyson covers the Tetragrammaton’s history, symbolism, and use from the Old Testament to the
Enochian magic of Dee and Kelley. The tour de force of the book is Tyson’s handling of the Twelve
Banners of YHVH (i.e., the twelve sequences in which the four letters can be ordered).
Vega, Amador. Ramon Llull and the Secret of Life, translated by James W. Heisig (New York:
The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003) = Ramon Llull y el secreto de la vida (Madrid:
Ediciones Siruela, 2002).
Vega’s study is a fine “single source” which concludes with substantial selections from Llull’s
writings. In the few discussions of cabala, Vega relies on Hames and Idel, suggesting that Llull’s ars
combinatoria was derived from “systems associated with the Cabala of Abraham Abulafia” (—page
81).
Versluis, Arthur. The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001).
Versluis discusses the influence of not just alchemy, theosophy, Rosicrucianism and Free-masonry,
but also Gnosticism and Swedenborg. Chapters are devoted to such luminaries as Poe, Hawthorne,
Melville (learn about the Gnosticism of Moby Dick), Alcott, Whitman, Dickenson, and others.
Alas, there is not much on Cabala.
Waldman, Felicia. “Christian Kabbalah as a Political Factor in European History,” in Studia
Hebraica 3, edited by Felicia Waldman (Bucharest: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 2003).
“Lacking its own sources, Christian esotericism took over a number of Jewish elements, adapting them to
its own vision. In these circumstances, the Jewish esoteric preoccupation with prophecy and Messianism
became, in the hands of Christian esotericists, a preoccupation with political changes. Of course, to say
that Kabbalah had a direct influence on politics would be an overstatement. Still, the influence that
Jewish mysticism exercised, through the Kabbalah, upon the (pseudo)philosophical doctrines providing
the bases of several political movements with a decisive long-term impact on mankind cannot be denied.”
(—INTRODUCTION, page 173)
______. “Jewish Influences in Medieval European Esotericism,” in Studia Hebraica 1, edited
by Felicia Waldman (Bucharest: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 2001).
“Between medieval Hermeticism and Kabbalah there is, however, a major difference. If, for the kabbalist
the demonic realm is important precisely so that he could keep it away during the process of restoration
of the original harmony and repair of the world (Tikkun Olam), for the Hermeticist this knowledge is
necessary so that he could conjure the demons and force them to take part in the magic act, whose finality
is not always positive.” (—page 97)
______. “Jewish Mysticism and 20th Century Science” (= “Jewish Mysticism and Modern
Science”), in Studia Hebraica 2, edited by Felicia Waldman (Bucharest: Editura Universităţii
din Bucureşti, 2002).
“One of the most interesting correspondences between mysticism and science can be found in Lurianic
Kabbalah and the modern scientific theories regarding the birth of the universe.” (—page 162)
Walker, D. P. The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the
Eighteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).
Ancient Theology is a series of articles examining the influence and use of the prisca theologia, ancient
theology, as derived from the Hermetica and related material, writings of the first four-hundred or
so years of the common era which were believed to be—until Isaac Casaubon’s “convincingly

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thorough scholarship (in 1614) showed otherwise”—of great antiquity and, indeed, the fountainhead
of the world’s religions and philosophies.
Wallis, R. T. Neoplatonism. SECOND EDITION; foreword and bibliography by Lloyd P. Gerson
(London: Gerald Duckworth Ltd – Indianapolis-Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company,
1995).
This second enlarged edition reprints Wallis’ 1972 classic, adding Gerson’s updated bibliography.
This work is included among our ITEMS OF INTEREST in light of the oft-repeated (in some circles,
oft-resisted) formula: “Kabbalah is simply Jewish Neoplatonism.”
Wasserstrom, Steven M. Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry
Corbin at Eranos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
“Whether as inspiration or as initiation, then, Christian Kabbalah cannot be avoided in any rounded
understanding of the rise (and decline) of the History of Religions. If there is an ‘untold story’ in the
present project, it may be located in the shared Christian Kabbalist sources of Scholem, Corbin, and
Eliade.” (—Wasserstrom, pages 50-51)
Webb, James. The Occult Underground (La Salle: Open Court, 1974; paperback rpt 1988)—a
revision of the author’s The Flight from Reason: The Age of the Irrational (London: MacDonald
and Co., 1971).
Webb treats the occult revival of the 19th century, including discussions of Mme Blavatsky (“…had
led an intriguing and perhaps scandalous life…”), Annie Besant (“…from the arena of social reform
rather than the jungles of Hindustan…”), Éliphas Lévi (“…the magus who remained faithful to his
mystical socialism…”), Josephin Peladan (“…Catholic and occultist, artist and clown…”), “Three
Messianists”: Adam Mickiewicz (“…at the College de France he discussed second sight…”), Andrei
Towianski (“…the archbishop of Paris alerted his clergy against him…), and J. M. Hoene-Wronski
(“…a misplaced Renaissance man…”)—these comments are picture captions (between pages 192 and
193) drawn from the text. Another characteristic quote: “Whereas Fabre d’Olivet might merely be
considered an eccentric, his disciple and plagiarizer, Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, was a fraud of the
highest degree” (p. 271). Cabala is mentioned and discussed frequently.
Webb’s companion volume, The Occult Establishment (LaSalle: Open Court, 1976), is a
“meticulously-researched history of occultism since 1918.” Along with some follow-up on such
figures as Mme. Blavatsky and Papus from the 19th century, The Occult Establishment covers a range
from Aleister Crowley and Rudolph Steiner to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Hitler, then on
to Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey.
White, Ralph (ed). The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited (Hudson: Lindisfarne Books, 1999).
White brings together papers presented at two conferences: “The Rosicrucian Enlightenment
Revisited” (September 1995) and “Prague, Alchemy, and the Hermetic Tradition” (August 1997).
The prologue consists of the two initial Rosicrucian manifestos: Fama Fraternitatis and Confessio
Fraternitatis. There follows a series of papers expanding upon—frequently challenging—Frances
Yates’ studies, especially The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. One paper “tells the wild tale of John Dee’s
mission in central Europe.”
Wilkinson, Lynn R. The Dream of an Absolute Language: Emanuel Swedenborg & French Literary
Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
“In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the notion of a language of nature exerted a
widespread appeal in European culture, among poets and literary writers, as well as philosophers.” (—
page 3)
Wind, Edgar. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1958;
enlarged edition, 1968).

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Pagan Mysteries… is a study of the sources for imagery in Renaissance art. Chapter One, “Poetic
Theology,” opens with a discussion of Pico. Wind notes that Pico believed that the myths and
fables of all Pagan religions “show[ed] only the crust of the mysteries to the vulgar, while
preserving the marrow of the true sense for higher and more perfect spirits”—such as Pico himself,
of course.
Winters, Dana. “Hermetic Cabalist Ritual in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus,” in
Journal for the Academic Study of Magic, Issue 5, edited by Susan Johnson Graf and Amy Hale
(Oxford: Mandrake of Oxford, 2009).
Zap Comix, No. 3. SPECIAL 69 ISSUE (San Francisco: Apex Novelties, 1968).
The front cover, rendered by San Francisco poster adept Rick Griffin, shows a lantern-wielding
beetle uttering “‫יהשוה‬.” Griffin’s spread inside the front cover displays the upper two-thirds of the
sefirotic tree, with banner-like lettering across the top reading, “AIN / AIN-SOPH / AIN-SOPH-AUR.”
In the midst of the comic, Griffin has another page showing the letters A O M saying “SEPHER
YETZIRAH!” “SEPHER HA ZOHAR!” and “APOCALYPSE!” respectively. It appears that Griffin
encountered Éliphas Lévi’s History of Magic—see page 61 of Waite’s translation (Rider, 1913 or
Borden, 1949 and 1963; the Weiser edition didn’t appear until 1971).
Zecevic, Patricia D. “The Divine Feminine in the Spanish Kabbalah and Wilhelm Meister,” in
Goethe 2000: Intercultural Readings of His Work…edited by Paul Bishop and R. H. Stephenson
(Leeds: Northern Universities Press, 2000).
“While there is no evidence to suggest that Goethe himself was a kabbalistic mystic, it is clear that he
drew on this tradition freely … Analysis of some key passages of his Wilhelm Meister, I suggest, makes
clear that the tactile, fluid simultaneity of the æsthetic discourse he employs in presenting his feminine
understanding of human sentiment justifies identifying it with the ecriture feminine the Kabbalah
exemplifies.” (—p. 65)
______. “Francisco López de Úbeda and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as Participants in the
Shared German-Spanish Traditions of Kabbalistic Rhetoric,” in The Lion and the Eagle:
Interdisciplinary Essays on German-Spanish Relations over the Centuries, edited by Conrad Kent,
Thomas K. Wolber, and Cameron M. K. Hewitt (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000).
“My argument in what follows is that a reading of the female voice in La Picara Justina and Wilhelm
Meister in the light of Irigaray’s theory of parler-femme reveals striking stylistic similarities in the two
novels, similarities that internal and external evidence suggests may well be the result of both López de
Úbeda’s and Goethe’s participation in the kabbalistic tradition of exploiting the literal bodiliness of
language in order to express the (Divine) Feminine. In essence, my suggestion is that the Kabbalah may
well be functioning here as the key intertext.” (—p. 158)
Zinberg, Israel. A History of Jewish Literature, Part Five: ITALIAN JEWRY IN THE RENAISSANCE
ERA, translated from the Yiddish by Bernard Martin (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College /
New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1974).
Described in Zinberg’s fifth volume are Jewish currents which influenced the formation of
Christian cabala (ref. Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Reuchlin, etc.)

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ADDENDUM B:
Seventeenth-century printed works on Christian Cabala in English2
[A catalogue of sources, title pages, & excerpts]
Cabbalism as a form of thought permeates much seventeenth-century literature; it is as
impossible to separate it sharply from other ideas of a particular author as it is to define
exactly the particular brand of Platonism he held. By the seventeenth century, cabbalism
had become so fused and intermingled with other ways of thinking that we look for it less
in defined doctrine and creed than in an attitude toward a question.
—Marjorie H. Nicolson, “Milton and the Conjectura Cabbalistica,” in
Philological Quarterly, Volume VI, Number 1 (Iowa City: University of
Iowa, 1927), page 1.

Agrippa von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius (1486?-1535):

• THREE BOOKS OF Occult Philosophy, WRITTEN BY Henry Cornelius Agrippa, OF
NETTESHEIM, Counseller to CHARLES the Fifth, EMPEROR of Germany: AND Iudge
of the Prerogative Court. Translated out of the Latin into the English tongue, By J. F.
London: Printed by R.W. for Gregory Moule, and are to be sold at the Sign of the three
Bibles neer the West-end of Pauls. 1651.
< TRANSLATION OF De occvlta philosophia libri tres (Cologne: 1533).
See Donald Tyson’s edition of Three Books of Occult Philosophy (St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications,
1992); and Three Books of Occult Philosophy or Magic: Book One – Natural Magic, edited by Willis F.
Whitehead, 1897 (rpt. New York: Samuel Weiser Inc., 1971).
There is a modern translation from the original Latin: Three Books of Occult Philosophy: Book 1,
Academic Edition, translated by Eric Purdue ([Cedar Rapids]: Renaissance Astrology, 2012).
Three Books of Occult Philosophy can be viewed on-line at Joseph H. Peterson’s Twilit Grotto site,
www.esotericarchives.com, and at the MSU Libraries Digital and Multimedia Center,
http://www.lib.msu.edu/branches/dmc/digital (search “Author”: Agrippa).
For studies treating H. C. Agrippa, see Part 1 of the current paper, pages 29-31, at http://www.digital-
brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/Biblios/ccinea.pdf. Note in particular
• Charles G. Nauert’s Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance Thought (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1965).
• Paola Zambelli’s “Magic and Radical Reformation in Agrippa of Nettesheim,” in Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Volume 39 (London: The Warburg Institute, 1976).

2 Many English titles of this era use the word cabala to mean “the secret machinations of a small group of persons,” namely
cabal. Some examples:
• Cabala, sive, Scrinia sacra : mysteries of state & government : in letters of illustrious persons, and great agents,
in the reigns of Henry the Eighth, Queen Elizabeth, King James, and the late King Charles : in two parts : in
which the secrets of Empire and publique manage of affairs are contained : with many remarkable passages no
where else published. London : Printed for G. Bedel and T. Collins ..., 1654.
• Birkenhead, John. Cabala, or, An impartial account of the non-conformists private designs, actings and wayes
: from August 24, 1662 to December 25 in the same year London : [s.n.], 1663.
• Lloyd, David. Cabala, or, The mystery of conventicles unvail’d : in an historical account of the principles and
practices of the nonconformists, against church and state : from the first reformation under King Edward the
VI. anno 1558. to this present year, 1664 : with an appendix of an CXX. plots against the present government,
that have been defeated by Oliver Foulis ... London : Printed for Thomas Holmwood, 1664.

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• Marc G. van der Poel’s Cornelius Agrippa: The Humanist Theologian and His Declamations
(Leiden – New York – Köln: Brill, 1997).
• Christopher I. Lehrich’s Language of Demons and Angels: Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy
(Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2003).

Brinsley, John (fl.1633 [1600-1665?]):

• THE CHRISTIANS CABALA, OR, SURE TRADITION : Necessary to be KNOWN
and BELIEVED By all that will be Saved : A Doctrine holding forth, Good Tidings of
Great Joy, to the greatest of all PENITENT SINNERS : With a CHARACTER of one
that is truly Such : As it was lately held forth to the church of GOD at Great
YARMOUTH. By John Brinsley, Minister of the Gospel there. LONDON, Printed for
George Sawbridge, at the Sign of the Bible on Ludgate-Hill, 1662.
In his commentary on I TIMOTHY 1:15, Clergyman Brinsley discusses the term cabala in connection
with the phrase “of all acceptation” (= “full acceptance” in The New English Bible):
Amongst the Jews there were many mysteries, Doctrines which they received from their
Fathers by way of Tradition. These they called by that Name of Cabala, … signifying
acceptio, a receiving of a thing, thereby meaning their Traditions, such Doctrines as by
word of mouth were conveyed unto them from their Forefathers. And these Mysteries,
these Traditions, were of high account among their Rabbies, their Doctors, and their
followers (even as others of like kind, are at this day in the Church of Rome), these they
studied and were versed in them. But our Apostle willeth Christians to take notice. What
was the true Cabala, the sure Tradition, which he here holdeth forth to them, as worthy of
their study above all others; even this great Mystery of Godliness, That Christ Jesus is come
into this world to save sinners.
(The Christians Cabala, pages 13-14).
A facsimile edition of The Christians Cabala was published by EEBO Editions/Proquest (Ann Arbor:
2011).

Conway, Anne (Anne Finch, Viscountess of Conway) (1631-1679):

• THE PRINCIPLES Of the most Ancient and Modern PHILOSOPHY CONCERNING
God, Christ, and the Creatures, viz. of Spirit and Matter in general, whereby may be
resolved all those Problems or Difficulties, which neither by the School nor Common
Modern Philosophy, nor by the Cartesian, Hobbesian, or Spinosian, could be discussed.
BEING A little Treatise published since the Author's Death, translated out of the
English into Latin, with Annotations taken from the Ancient Philosophy of the
Hebrews; and now again made English. By J. C. Medicinæ Professor. Printed in Latin at
Amsterdam, by M. Brown, 1690. And reprinted at London, 1692.
< TRANSLATION OF Principia philosophiæ antiquissimæ & recentissimæ de Deo,
Christo & creatura id est de spiritu & material in genere (Amsterdam: 1690)
Lady Conway obtained her knowledge of kabbalah—with its Lurianic cast—from van Helmont, who
was her personal physician, and from von Rosenroth’s Kabbala denudata.
Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, edited by Allison P. Coudert and Taylor Corse,
has been reprinted in the CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY series, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996.

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Regarding Conway, More, van Helmont, Knorr von Rosenroth, and Leibniz, see above, Part 1
(http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/Biblios/ccinea.pdf), pages 53-60, and refer to
• Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and their
Friends, 1642-1684, Collected from Manuscript Sources & Edited with a Biographical
Account By Marjorie Hope Nicolson, London: Yale University Press – Oxford University
Press, 1930; reprinted with additional material by Oxford University Press, 1992
• Sarah Hutton’s Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004)
• Sarah Hutton’s articles:
(1) “Henry More, Anne Conway and the Kabbalah,” in Judeo-Christian Intellectual Culture in
the Seventeenth Century: A Celebration of the Library of Narcissus Marsh (1638-1713), edited
by Allison P. Coudert, Sarah Hutton, Richard H. Popkin, and Gordon M. Weiner
[INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES 163, 1999]
(2) “From Christian Kabalism to Kabalistic Quakerism: the Kabalistic Dialogues of Anne
Conway, Henry More, and George Keith,” in Christliche Kabbala, edited by Wilhelm
Schmidt-Biggemann (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2003)
• Carolyn Merchant, “The Vitalism of Anne Conway: Its Impact on Leibniz’s Concept of the
Monad,” in Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume XVII, Number 3 (La Jolla: Journal of
the History of Philosophy, Inc., 1979)
• ______________, “Women on Nature: Anne Conway and Other Philosophical Feminists” =
CHAPTER 11 of The Death of Nature: Women Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980; rpt 1989 and 1990 (with a new preface).
• David Byrne, ANNE CONWAY: AN INTELLECTUAL PORTRAIT OF A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
VISCOUNTESS. (PhD dissertation, Claremont: Claremont Graduate University, 2005).
• Leslie Baker, THE ‘MASCULINE MIND’ AND THE WOMAN’S BODY: EXPLORING THE STRATEGIES
OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FEMALE PHILOSOPHERS ANNE CONWAY AND DAMARIS MASHAM TO
RECONCILE DOMESTICITY AND INTELLECTUALISM. (MA Thesis, Halifax: Dalhousie
University, 2008).

Fludd, Robert (1574-1637):

In Cabalistic interest, the [seventeenth] century begins with Robert Fludd whose so-
called Mosaicall Philosophy is an amplification of Agrippa’s Cabalism. Fludd was, in some
respects, akin to Pico, in that he tried to reconcile the Platonic and Aristotelian
philosophies. His attempt to do this was based upon the identification of the ten spheres
of Aristotelian cosmology with the ten Sephiroth, which are obviously Platonic—i.e.,
Neo-Platonic—in character.
(Joseph L. Blau, “The Cabala in English Literature,” page 158, noted below)
• MOSAICALL PHILOSOPHY Grounded upon the ESSENTIAL TRUTH OR ETERNAL
SAPIENCE. Written first in Latin, and afterwards thus rendered into English. By
Robert Fludd, Esq; & Doctor of Physick. LONDON, Printed for Humphrey Moseley, at
the Prince’s Armes in St. Paul’s Church-yard. 1659.
< TRANSLATION OF Philosophia Moysaica, in qua sapientia & scientia creationis &
creaturarum sacra veréque Christiana (vt pote cujus basis sive fundamentum est
unicus ille lapis angularis Iesus Christus) ad amussim & enucleaté explicatur,
avthore Rob. Flvd, alias de Flvctibvs. Govdæ, Excudebat P. Rammazenius,
bibliopola, 1638.
Cabala is given its most concentrated treatment in the Second Section of BOOK 2, starting at CHAP.
II, p. 171ff.

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Books One and Two of the Second section were reprinted in Adam MacLean’s MAGNUM OPUS
HERMETIC SOURCEWORKS series (No. 2; Edinburgh: 1979). Abridged versions of Fludd’s preface to
Mosaicall Philosophy and his chapter summaries are given in CHAPTER 8 of Robert Fludd: Essential
Readings, edited by William H. Huffman (London: Aquarian/Thorsons, 1992). The whole of Mosaicall
Philosophy has been reproduced by Kessinger Publishing Company (2003), and by Forgotten Books
(2017).
Further, refer to Huffman’s Robert Fludd and the End of the Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1988),
CHAPTER VIII: “The Mosaicall Philosophy: Fludd’s Original Synthesis” and my references above at
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/Biblios/ccinea.pdf, pages 45-47.

Helmont, Franciscus Mercurius van (1614-1699):

• A Cabbalistical DIALOGUE IN ANSWER To the Opinion of a Learned Doctor in
Philosophy and Theology, THAT THE WORLD WAS MADE OF NOTHING. As it is
Contained in the Second Part of the Cabbala Denudata & Apparatus in Lib. Sohar, p. 308.
&cc. Printed in Latin at Sultsbach, Anno 1677. To which is subjoyned A Rabbinical and
Paraphrastical Exposition of Genesis I. written in High-Dutch by the Author of the
foregoing Dialogue, first done into Latin, but now made English. LONDON, Printed
for Benjamin Clark in George-Yard in Lombard Street, Bookseller, M DCL XXXII.
< TRANSLATION OF AD FUNDAMENTA CABBALÆ Æto-Pædo-Melissææ
DIALOGUS Compilator. Cabbalistica Catechumenus, in Kabbalah denudata, Tom. I,
Pars secunda, pp. 308-313.
For the text in its entirety, see my transcription, “Francis Mercurius van Helmont’s Cabbalistical
Dialogue,” at http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/VanHelmont/index.php.

• TWO HUNDRED QUERIES Moderately propounded Concerning the DOCTRINE Of

the REVOLUTION OF Humane Souls, AND Its Conformity to the Truths OF
Christianity. LONDON, Printed for Rob. Kettlewell, at the Hand and Scepter over
against St. Dunstans Church in Fleetstreet. 1684.
Courteous Reader,
About two years since, the two hundred Queries following were Translated into the English
Tongue beyond the Seas, by a Lover and Searcher after hidden Truth, and were brought over to
be proposed to the Learned and Pious of this Kingdom, of whom the Proposer hath that esteem
which S. Paul had of the Noble Bereans, Acts 17. verse 10, 11, 12. and who being not inferior to
any of the European Nations, are capable to judge of such matters. Therefore it is with all
sincerity referred to their judicious and serious scrutiny and inquiry. And if so be this meets with
a favourable acceptance, there are two Treatises yet remaining which very probably may then see
the Light : the First treating of, and elucidating the chiefest points here mentioned, but after
another manner than is done in these Queries ; The other is a Latine Tract, the Title whereof is,
De Revolutionibus Animarum Tractatus primus e Manuscripto haud ita pridem ex
Oriente ad nos perlato, ex operibus Rabbi Titzchak Loriensis [read Yitzchak Luria—DK]
Cabbalistarum Aquilæ, latinitate donatus.
Farewel. (Two Hundred Queries, iii-vi)

The promise of this preface was fulfilled: van Helmont “caused” De Revolutionibus Animarum “to be
added” (so he states in Paradoxal Discourses, page 160) to Kabbala denudata, TOM. 2, Pars Tertia:
PNEVMATICA CABBALISTICA…, Tractatus Secundus, pages 243—478. The other Treatise is the chapter
“Concerning the Revolution of Humane Souls” in Paradoxal Discourses, which is listed below.

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See Coudert’s Impact for excerpts of 200 Queries: Qu. 40—42 (Impact, page 199), Qu. 64 (Impact, page
198), the first two-thirds of Qu. 142 (Impact, page 198), the opening of Qu. 148 (Impact, page 198), Qu.
151 (Impact, page 199), Qu. 161 (Impact, page 197) a portion of Qu. 200 (Impact, page 132, and re-quoted
on page 197—cited as pp. 163ff, but actually pp. 164-5). Refer also to Beitchman’s comments in Alchemy
of the Word, pages 201-207.

• “Concerning the Revolution of Humane Souls,” CHAP. IV. (pp. 105-161) of

THE Paradoxal DISCOURSES OF F. M. Van HELMONT, Concerning the Macrocosm
AND MICROCOSM, OR THE Greater and Lesser World, And their Union. Set down
in WRITING by J.B. and now Published. LONDON: Printed by J.C. and Freeman Collins,
for Robert Kettlewel, at the Hand and Scepter near S. Dunstan’s Church in Fleetstreet.
1685.
For a transcription of Paradoxal Discourses: CHAPTER IV in its entirety, go to
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/VanHelmont/index.php.

• SEDER OLAM OR, THE Order, Series, or Succession OF ALL THE Ages, Periods, and
Times OF THE WHOLE WORLD IS Theologically, Philosophically, and
Chronologically Explicated and Stated. ALSO The Hypothesis of the Pre-existency
and Revolution of Humane Souls. Together with the Thousand Years Reign of Christ
on the Earth, probably evinced, and deliver’d in an Historical Enarration thereof,
according to the Holy Scriptures. To which is also annexed, Some Explanatory
Questions of the Book of the Revelations of the like import. And an Appendix;
containing some Emendations and Explanations of divers Passages, in the two fore-
going Treatises, out of the Author’s Original Manuscripts and Papers. Translated out
of Latin by J. Clark, M. D. upon the Leave of F. M. Baron of Helmont. LONDON:
Printed for Sarah Howkins, in George-yard, Lumbard Street, 1694.
< TRANSLATION OF Seder olam ordo seculaorum, historica enarratio doctrinæ, anno
1693.
Refer to my full transcription of Seder olam at
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/VanHelmont/index.php.
A small portion of the Appendix to Seder olam (page 227, “Emend. And Explic.” to page 95, l. 5) appears
in Coudert’s Impact, page 253-4.

• “An APPENDIX of Several Questions with their Answers Concerning the Hypothesis of the
Revolution of Humane Souls,” in THE Divine Being And its ATTRIBUTES
Philosophically Demonstrated from the Holy Scriptures, AND Original Nature of
Things. According to the PRINCIPLES of F.M.B. of Helmont. Written in Low–Dutch
by Paulus Buchius Dr. of Physick, and Translated into English by Philangelus.
LICENSED Septemb. 25. LONDON Printed, and are to be sold by Randal Taylor, near
Stationers Hall. 1693. (pp. 203-232)
The Hypothesis being this, viz. That every individual of Mankind must several times
die and be Born again, in Order to the working out of their Salvation here in this
World…
(The Divine Being and its Attributes: APPENDIX, page 205)

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For my complete transcription of van Helmont’s APPENDIX to Divine Being, go to Colin Low’s
HERMETIC KABBALAH:
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/VanHelmont/index.php.

As the titles and excerpts above attest, “the revolution of humane souls” was among van Helmont’s
“chiefest” concerns, which connects with his incorporation of Lurianic kabbalah via the writings of
Hayyim Vital as rendered by Knorr von Rosenroth. With the kabbalistic concept of gilgul (roughly,
reincarnation, or transmigration), van Helmont found his beloved doctrine supported by authority of
the Bible.
Refer to Stuart Brown’s “F. M. van Helmont: His Philosophical Connections and the Reception of
His Later Cabbalistic Philosophy” (in Studies in Seventeenth-Century European Philosophy, edited by
M.A. Stewart, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). § II of Brown’s article, THE PUBLICATION OF VAN
HELMONT’S CABBALISTIC PHILOSOPHY, 1677-99, opens (page 104), “In the period after 1680, van
Helmont went out of his way to publish in English.”
For a full study, see Allison Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and
Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614-1698) [BRILL SERIES IN JEWISH STUDIES, 9] (Leiden: Brill
Academic Publishers, 1999).

More, Henry (1614-1687):

• Conjectura Cabbalistica. OR, A CONJECTURAL ESSAY OF Interpreting the minde of
Moses, according to a Threefold CABBALA: Viz. Literal, Philosophical, Mystical, or,
Divinely Moral. By HENRY MORE Fellow of Christ’s College in Cambridge. LONDON,
Printed by James Flesher, and are to be sold by William Morden Bookseller in
Cambridge, 1653.
Let us now take a general view of this whole Cabbala, and more summarily consider
the strength thereof; which we may refer to these two heads, viz. the nature of the Truths
herein contained, and the dignity of these persons that have owned them in foregoing Ages. And
as for the Truths themselves, first, they are such as may well become so holy and worthy
a person as Moses, if he would Philosophize; they being very precious and choice Truths.
And very highly removed above the conceit of the vulgar, and so the more likely
delivered to him, or to Adam first by God for a special mysterie.
Secondly, they are such, that the more they are examined, the more irrefutable they
will be found, so Hypothesis that was ever yet propounded to men, so exquisitely well
agreeing with the Phenomena of Nature, the Attributes of God, the Passages of
Providence, and the rational Faculties of our own minds.
Thirdly, there is a continued sutablenesse and applicability to the Text of Moses all
along, without any force or violence done to Grammar or Criticisme.
Fourthly and lastly, there is a great usefulnesse, if not necessity, at least of some of
them, they being such substantial Props of Religion, and great encouragements to a
sedulous purification of our mindes, the study of true piety.
(Conjectura Cabbalistica: “The Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala,” pp. 183-4)
In a letter to Anne Conway, More indicates the origins of his “3 fold Cabbala”:
Though the Conceptions in the Cabbala be most what my own, yett I do what I can in
my Defense to gette Godfathers [i.e., Pythagoras, Plato, and the Neoplatonists—DK] all
along to these births of my own braine, and so to lessen the odium of these inventions
by alledgeing the Authority of Auncient Philosophers and Fathers, and therefore the
Defense is longer then otherwise it had needed to have been, besides other Digressions I
thought fitt to make which are not so speculative as practicall, which liberty I take, as
haveing a designe so farre as I can to engage others to be good rather then Wise, or to

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ostentate my own skill and wisedome to the world. I am glad your Ladiship can so
easily reade them and so readily understand my Cabbalas with the Defense.
(f. 43. HENRY MORE TO ANNE CONWAY, in Conway Letters, collected by Marjorie
Hope Nicolson, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930: page 83)
Or, as bluntly put by Allison Coudert, “Conjectura Cabbalistica … had been written in virtual
ignorance of authentic kabbalistic texts” (Coudert, Impact, p. 232). With similar matter-of-factness, B.
J. Gibbons states, “[Leone] Ebreo’s Dialoghi [d’amore] are the obvious source of More’s Cabalism”
(Gender and Mystical Thought [Cambridge University Press, 1996] page 74; refer below to ADDENDUM
D: The Problem of Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi.)
Conjectura Cabbalistica is volume 2 of Henry More: Major Philosophical Works (in nine volumes), edited
by G. A. J. Rogers [series: THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS] (Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 1997).
Conjectura is summarized in A. E. Waite’s Holy Kabbalah, pp. 472-3 and discussed in Robert Crocker’s
Henry More, 1614-1687: A Biography of the Cambridge Platonist [INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES, 185]
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003): Chapter 12: “The Kabbalah and the Quakers: Anne
Conway, van Helmont, and Knorr von Rosenroth,” § 1, THE JEWISH AND THE ‘GREEK’ CABBALA. For
other pertinent works of More’s rendered in English, find the references in ADDENDUM C to this
paper on Kabbala denudata, APPARATUS IN LIBRUM SOHAR PARS SECUNDA, §10 (below).
For further examples of More’s writings on cabala, see Knots & Spirals: Some Brief Writings of Henry
More (from Kabbala denudata) at http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/KS/index.php.
Among the passages included is More’s prefatory letter (dated April 22, 1675) to his “Ad Clarissimum
ac Eruditissimum Virum N. N. De rebus in Amica sua Resposione contentis Ulterior Disquisitio”
[TO THE LUCID AND LEARNED HERO N.N. …WITH FRIENDSHIP IN RESPONSE TO THE CONTENT OF
THE PREVIOUS DISQUISITION (i.e., a compendium of R. Naftali Hirtz’ Emek ha-Melekh in 103 Theses)]
in English, appears on pages 173—176 of Kabbala denudata, tome 1 (Sulzbach: 1677).
Note the items by Sarah Hutton listed above (§ Anne Conway) and Hutton’s “More, Millenarianism,
and the Ma’aseh Merkavah,” in Everything Connects: In Conference with Richard Popkin: ESSAYS IN HIS
HONOR, edited by James E. Force and David S. Katz (Leiden – Boston – Koln: Brill, 1999). Refer to C.
C. Brown, “The Mere Numbers of Henry More’s Cabbala,” in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900,
Volume 10, Number 1 (Houston: Rice University, 1970).
Also, find the bibliography in Part 1 of the current paper, “17th CENTURY…,” § HENRY MORE, at
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/Biblios/ccinea.pdf, pages 56-57.

Vaughan, Thomas (1622-1666):

• MAGIA ADAMICA, OR The Antiquitie of Magic : AND The Descent therof from Adam
downwards, proved. Whereunto is added, a perfect, and full Discoverie of the true
Coelum Terræ, or the Magician's Heavenly Chaos, and first Matter of all Things. By
Eugenius Philalethes. LONDON : Printed by T. W. for H. BLUNDEN at the Castle in
Corn-hill, 1650.
• LUMEN DE LUMINE, OR A new Magicall Light, discovered, and Communicated to the
WORLD. By Eugenius Philalethes. GEN. I. 3 And God said, Let there be light. JOHN I.
Chap : Ver. 5. And the Light shineth in the Darknesse. Pythag. Ne loquaris Deo absque
Lumine. LONDON, Printed for H. BLUNDEN at the Castle in Corne-Hil. 1651.
Lumen de Lumine, edited by A. E. Waite, was republished, London: John M. Watkins, 1910.
Both Magia Adamica and Lumen de Lumine are included in The Works of Thomas Vaughan,
edited by A. E. Waite (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1919); reprinted, New Hyde
Park: University Books, 1968; and more recently reproduced by Kessinger Publishing (1997).

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Alchemist Vaughan describes two types of “Kabalah” in Magia Adamica: (1) the “true Kabalah,”
whose “truths were unknown to most of those rabbins whom [Vaughan had] seen, even Rambam
[Maimonides] himself,” and (2) the “inventions of some dispersed wandering rabbis” which consist
of “certain alphabetical knacks,” the varieties of which “are grown voluminous” (—Works…, edited
by A. E. Waite, page 167). Further, Vaughan speaks, following Sefer Yezirah, of the “The Literal
Kabalah… [which] hath Three Principles, commonly styled Tres Matres, or Three Mothers,” namely,
Aleph (air), Mem (water), and Shin (fire) (—Works…, page 168). Vaughan links the sefirot with Jacob’s
ladder, stating that this symbol “is the greatest mystery in the Kabalah” in that here one finds
“inferiors united with superiors” (—Works…, pages 169-170). Ultimately though, for Vaughan, “the
learning of the Jews—I mean their Kabalah—was chemical and ended in true physical performances”
(—Works…, page 171).
In Lumen de Lumine, Vaughan equates the supernal sefirot with the Son : hokhmah and Holy Ghost :
binah, and, by inference, the Father : keter (—Works…, page 295). He concludes
Now, Reader, I have unriddled for thee the grand, mysterious problem of the Kabalist.
“In the seven parts”—saith he—“there are two triplicities, and in the middle there
stands one thing. Twelve stand in battle array : three friends, three foes; three warriors
make alive; three in like manner slay. And God the Faithful King Ruleth over all from
the Hall of His sanctity. One upon three, and three upon seven, and seven upon twelve,
and all standing in close array, one with another.” (—Works…, page 305)
Refer to The Tantric Alchemist: Thomas Vaughan and the Indian Tantric Tradition by Peter
Levanda (Lake Worth: Ibis Press, 2015), where kabbalah is frequently mentioned, though only
in passing. “The Tantric Alchemist is a work on Alchemy as decoded by Tantra … and a work
on Tantra as understood by Alchemists.” The tantric connection of Vaughan—and his wife—
had been taken up before, as, for instance by Kenneth Rexroth in his introduction to the
reprint of A. E. Waite’s edition of The Works of Thomas Vaughan (noted above).

Villars, Abbé de (Nicolas-Pierre-Henri Montfaucon, 1635-1673)

• THE Count of GABALIS : Or, The Extravagant Mysteries of the Cabalists EXPOSED
In Five Pleasant Discourses On The Secret Sciences … Done into English, By P. A.
Gent [= Philip Ayres]. With Short Animadversions. London, Printed for B. M. Printer
to the Cabalistical Society of the Sages, at the Sign of the Rosy-Crusian, M DC LXXX
[1680].
< TRANSLATION OF Le comte de Gabalis, ou, Entretiens sur les sciences secretes (A
Paris: Chez Claude Barbin, au Palais sur le Perron de la Ste Chapelle., 1670).
So popular was this Paracelsian romp that there were, in fact, two English translations
published in 1680, the other being
• The Count of Gabalis: or, Conferences About Secret Sciences Rendered Out of French into
English. With an Advice to the Reader. By A.L.A.M. [= A. Lovell] (London: Printed for
Robert Harford, at the Angel in Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange, 1680).
Two editions also appeared in 1714; the title information of the second edition (#2 below)
provides a summary of Gabalis’ contents:
1. THE Count de GABALIS: Being a Diverting HISTORY OF THE Rosicrucian DOCTRINE OF
SPIRITS, VIZ. SYLPHS, SALAMADERS, GNOMES, and DÆMONS: Shewing their Various
Influence upon Human Bodies. Done from the PARIS Edition. To which is prefix’d Monsieur

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BAYLE’S Account of this WORK: And of the SECT of the ROSICRUCIANS. Qoud tanto
impendio abscontitur, etiam solummodo demonstrare, distruere est. Tertull. LONDON: Printed for
B. LINTOTT and E. CURLL, in Fleet-Street, 1714. Price 1 s.
2. The Diverting HISTORY OF THE Count de GABALIS: CONTAINING, I. An Account of the
Rosicrucian Doctrine of Spirits, viz. Sylphs, Salamaders, Gnomes, and Dæmons; shewing their
various Influence upon Human Bodies. II. The Nature and Advantages of Studying the
Occult Sciences. III. The Carnal Knowledge of Women to be renoun’d. IV. ADAM’s Fall not
occasion’d by eating the Apple, but by his carnal Knowledge of EVE. V. The Rise, Progress,
and Decay of Oracles. VI. A Parallel between Ancient and Modern Priestcraft. To which is
prefix’d, Monsieur Bayle’s Account of this Work, and of the SECT of the ROSICRUCIANS.
The Second Edition. LONDON : Printed for B. Lintott at the Cross-Keys, and E. Curll, at the
Dial and Bible, in Fleet-Street, 1714.
Count of Gabalis has been reprinted fairly frequently: see the recent edition, Comte de Gabalis, New
York: Cosimo, 2005—on the back cover of which it states, “Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton’s based his
strange novel, Zanoni upon this esoteric work. Alexander Pope in his dedication to The Rape of the
Lock, sings its praises.”
Refer also to Christopher McIntosh’s comments on pages 107 and 108 of The Rosicrucians: The History,
Mythology, and Rituals of an Esoteric Order (3rd edition, York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1997).



Bibliography for ADDENDUM B:

• Beitchman, Philip. Alchemy of the Word: Cabala of the Renaissance (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1998).
• Blau, Joseph L. “The Cabala in English Literature” = “The Diffusion of the Christian
Interpretation of the Cabala in English Literature,” in The Review of Religion, Volume VI,
Number 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942).
• Brown, Stuart. “F. M. van Helmont: His Philosophical Connections and the Reception of
His Later Cabbalistic Philosophy” in Studies in Seventeenth-Century European Philosophy,
edited by M.A. Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
• Coudert, Impact = Coudert, Allison. The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The
Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614-1698) [BRILL SERIES IN JEWISH
STUDIES, 9] (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1999).
• Nicolson, Marjorie H. “Milton and the Conjectura Cabbalistica,” in Philological Quarterly,
Volume VI, Number 1 (Iowa City: University of Iowa, 1927).
• Spector, Sheila. Jewish Mysticism: An Annotated Bibliography on Kabbalah in English (New
York/ London: Garland Publishing, 1984):
§ O: “Non-Jewish Kabbalah,” first division: “Primary Sources”
• Waite, A. E. The Holy Kabbalah (New Hyde Park: University Books, 1960):
Book X: “Some Christian Students of the Kabbalah”

This catalogue (ADDENDUM B) would not have been

possible without the able assistance of Hui-Ju Chen.

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ADDENDUM C:

The Contents of Kabbala denudata (KD) with Sources in English

TOMUS PRIMUS (Sulzbach: 1677):

KABBALA DENUDATA Seu Doctrina HEBRÆORUM
TRANSCENDENTALIS ET METAPHYSICA ATQUE THEOLOGICA [KABBALAH
UNVEILED OR THE TRANSCENDENTAL, METAPHYSICAL, AND THEOLOGICAL DOCTRINES
OF THE HEBREWS] OPUS Antiquissimæ Philosophiæ Barbaricæ variis speciminibus
refertissimum. IN QVO Ante ipsam Translationem Libri difficillimi, atq; in Literatura
Hebraica Summi, Commentarii nempe in Pentateuchum, & quasi totam Scripturam V.T.
Cabbalistici, cui nomen SOHAR Tam Veteris, quam recentis, ejusque Tikkunim seu
supplementorum tam Veterum, quam recentiorum, præmittitur APPARATUS ...
The frontispiece diagram (facing the title page) and the INSCRIPTIONES TITULI (a
poem—verso of title page—explaining the words Explicat, Alta videt, Lucet, Domat, Intrat,
which adorn the frontispiece) are translated into English on page 27 of Ernst Benz’
Christian Kabbalah (translated from the German by Kenneth W. Wensche, edited by
Robert J. Faas, St. Paul: Grailstone Press, 2004). Allison Coudert also translates the poem
in The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis
Mercury van Helmont (1614-1698) (HEREAFTER Coudert, Impact), page 138.

PRÆFATIO EDITORIS AD LECTOREM / Philebræum, Philochymicum, & Philosophum

[EDITOR’S PREFACE TO THE READER]
INDEX LATINUS MATERIARUM PARTIS Prioris
[INDEX OF LATIN MATERIAL IN THE FIRST PART]
INDEX LOCORUM S. SCRIPTURÆ VT
[INDEX OF THE LOCATION OF OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES]

1—740: APPARATUS IN LIBRUM SOHAR PARS PRIMA nempe LOCI COMMUNES

KABBALISTICI, Secundum ordinem Alphabeticum concinnati, Qui LEXICI instar esse
possunt [APPARATUS TO THE BOOK ZOHAR FIRST PART NAMELY KABBALISTIC
COMMON-PLACES, …ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED, …] i.e., a glossary offering
explanations and arrangements of names and divine epithets according to the sefirotic
degrees, derived from the Zohar, Moses Cordovero's Pardes Rimmonim, Gikatilla’s Sha’arei
Orah, various Lurianic writings, and Æsch Mezareph.
On the Zohar, see below (TOMUS SECUNDUS: Pars Secunda) and my “Notes on the Zohar in
English” at http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/Biblios/zie.pdf.
Cordovero’s Pardes Rimmonim has made its way into English: Pardes Rimonim: Orchard of
Pomegranates, Tomes 1-12, i.e., twelve volumes, Integral edition in English, Hebrew, and
Aramaic, translated by Elyakim Getz (I-VI), Sharron Shatil (VII-X), and Avraham Broide
(XI-XII) (Belize City: Providence, 2007-2010) or edited by Fabrizio Del tin ([n.p.]:
eUniveristy.pub, 2018); and Moses Cordovero’s Introduction to Kabbalah: An Annotated
Translation of His OR NE’ERAV translated by Ira Robinson (New York: Yeshiva University

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Press, 1994). Robinson refers to Or Ne’erav as “an epitome of Cordovero’s great systematic
theology of Kabbalah,” i.e., Pardes Rimmonim (—p. xi).
On Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah, or, Porta Lucis, see Avi Weinstein’s translation, Sha’are Orah,
Gates of Light (San Francisco, HarperCollins, 1994); the translation is from the original
Hebrew text, not from the Latin of Rosenroth.
Æsch Mezareph, a kabbalistic-alchemical tract “Translated by a Lover of Philalethes, 1714,”
is Volume IV of William Wynn Westcott’s Collectanea Hermetica (1894). Westcott’s
edition of Æsch Mezareph was reprinted by Occult Research Press (New York: 1956).
Collectanea Hermetica, vols. I-VII, was reprinted by Kessinger Publishing Company (Kila:
n.d.). Collectanea Hermetica, vols. I-X, was published by Samuel Weiser (1998); this special
collectors’ edition includes Westcott’s version of Sepher Yetzirah. On-line, find Adam
Forrest’s transcription of Westcott’s Æsch Mezareph at Adam Mclean’s ALCHEMY WEB
SITE: http://levity.com/alchemy/aesch.html.
Raphael Patai includes a translation of Æsch Mezareph in The Jewish Alchemists: A History
and Source Book (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994): Chapter Twenty-Six. “Esh
M’saref: A Kabbalistic-Alchemical Treatise.” See also Waite, Holy Kabbalah, pp. 424-8.
KD I, 1: 388-9 (PARAGRAPH 7) is translated in Coudert’s Impact, p. 126.

1—312: APPARATUS IN LIBRUM SOHAR PARS SECUNDA, CAJUS CONTENTA

EXHEBET VERSA PAGINA
[APPARATUS FOR THE BOOK ZOHAR SECOND PART, TABLE OF CONTENTS SHOWN ON
THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THIS PAGE]

1. 3—5: Excerpta ex Epistola quondam Compilatoris de utilitate Versionis Libri

Cabbalistici Sohar [EXCERPTS AND NOTES … ON THE ZOHAR]
The opening paragraph of this section is translated in Coudert, Impact, p. 114.
2. 6—13: Tabulæ duæ Synopticæ Kabbalistica [TWO SYNOPTIC KABBALISTIC
TABLES]:
i. The Sefirot (in the form of the “Tree of the sefirot”)
ii. KEY OF THE SUBLIME KABBALAH, ON THE ORDER OF DIVINE NAMES WITH
THE RESOLUTION OF DIFFICULT ENIGMATA OF THE BOOK ZOHAR

3. 14—27: Aditus tentatus rationem reddendi Nominum & Ordinis decem

Sephirotharum… [= Ratio Nominum & Sephirotharum, ACCOUNT OF THE NAMES
AND SEFIROT – Henry More]

4. 28—61: Tractus I. Libri Druschim, seu Introductio Metaphysica ad Cabbalam

Autore R. Jizchak Loriense (with notes) [TRACT I. BOOK OF DISSERTATIONS, OR
METAPHYSICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE KABBALAH OF ISAAC LURIA: Sefer ha-
Derushim]
A summary of LIBER DRUSHIM is given by Waite, Holy Kabbalah, pp. 414-416.
5. 62—72: Quæstiones & Considerationes Tractatum primum Libri Druschim
[QUESTIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS ON THE FIRST TRACT OF THE BOOK OF
DISSERTATIONS = Amica Responsio, FRIENDLY RESPONSE – Henry More]

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6. 73—99: … Amica Responsio ad D. Henricum Morum [FRIENDLY RESPONSE TO

DR. HENRY MORE – Knorr von Rosenroth]
Passages from Rosenroth’s Amica Responsio are translated in Coudert, Impact: KD I, 2:
74 (Impact, pp. 112-3), KD I, 2: 75 (Impact, p. 117), KD I, 2: 75 and 76 (Impact, p. 111)
7. 100—149: Tractatus de Anima R. Moscheh Korduero Pardes [TRACT ON THE SOUL
FROM MOSES CORDOVERO’S GARDEN: Pardes Rimmonim]
“Pardes Tract. 31 = Pardes Rimmonim, Part 31: The Thirty-First Treatise is called “The
Upper Soul” in Pardes Rimonim, Tome 12, translated by Avraham Broide ([n.p.]:
David Smith, LLC, 2016), pp. 57-122.
8. 150—172: THESES CABBALISTICÆ quod est compendium Libri Emek
hamMelech [KABBALISTIC THESES WHICH ARE A COMPENDIUM OF VALLEY OF
THE KING (in 130 Theses): Emek ha-Melekh]
See Waite, Holy Kabbalah, § “Naphtali Hirtz,” pp. 420-422; Naftali Hertz, Mystic Tales
from the EMEK HAMELECH, with commentary by R. DovBer Pinson (Brooklyn:
IYYUN Center for Jewish Spirituality, 2015); and Sharron Shatil, “The Doctrine of
Secrets of Emeq Ha-Melech,” in Jewish Studies Quarterly, Volume 17 (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2010), pages 358-395.
9. 173—224: Ad Clarissimum ac Eruditissimum Virum N. N. De rebus in Amica sua
Resposione contentis Ulterior Disquisitio. [TO THE LUCID AND LEARNED HERO
N.N. …WITH FRIENDSHIP IN RESPONSE TO THE CONTENT OF THE PREVIOUS
DISQUISITION – Henry More]
More’s prefatory letter on 173-176, (dated April 22, 1675) is in English. This letter
transcribed can be found in “Some Writings of Henry More,” at Knots & Spirals
within Colin Low’s Hermetic Kabbalah:
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/KS/index.php
10. 225—273: VISIONIS EZECHIELITICÆ Sive MERCAVÆ EXPOSITIO, Ex
Principiis Philosophiæ Pythagoricæ Præcipuisque Theosophiæ Judaicæ Reliqiis
concinnta [THE VISION OF EZEKIEL OR EXPOSITION ON THE CHARIOT,
THROUGH THE PRINCIPLES OF PYTHAGOREAN PHILOSOPHY (WHICH ARE)
HARMONIOUS WITH ANCIENT JEWISH THEOSOPHY – Henry More]
274—292: CATECHISMUS CABBALISTICUS, sive MERCAVÆUS, Quo, in
DIVINIS MYSTERIIS MERCAVÆ EZECHIELITICÆ Explicandis &
memoria retinendis DECEM SEPHIROTHARUM sus egregie illustratur [SUMMARY OF
THE KABBALAH, OR MERKAVAH, WHICH IS THE DIVINE MYSTERY OF EZEKIEL’S
CHARIOT EXPLAINED & ACCOUNTED (AND IS) EXCELLENTLY ILLUSTRATED BY
USE OF THE TEN SEFIROT—Henry More]

“Doctor Henry More’s short and faithful Paraphrase on Ezekiel’s Vision of the Mercava
(or Chariot of the God of Israel), representing emblematically the Kingdom of the Messiah,
and the Revolution of Souls thro’ the Four Worlds or States of Aziluth, Briah, Jetzirah, and
Asiah, from the Hebrew Text,” “Dr. H. MORE’S Expositio Mercavæ abridged,” “Dr. H.
MORE’S Explication of the Mercava of Ezekiel, in Fifty-two Answers to so many Questions,
abridg’d,” and “Catechismus Cabalisticus Mercavæus Sephirothicus” appear in English as
an appendix (pages 358-394) to R[alph James]. Cosway, A MISCELLANEOUS
METAPHYSICAL ESSAY: OR, AN HYPOTHESIS Concerning the FORMATION AND

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GENERATION of Spiritual and Material Beings …By an IMPARTIAL INQUIRER after

Truth [i.e., Cosway]; London: Printed for A. MILLAR, over against Catharine Street, in
the Strand. MDCCXLVIII, pp. 358-394.
A transcription of these passages can be found at Knots & Spirals within Colin Low’s
Hermetic Kabbalah:
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/KS/index.php
MERCAVÆ EXPOSITIO is summarized in Waite, Holy Kabbalah, pp. 471-2.
MERCAVÆ EXPOSITIO and CATECHISMUS CABBALISTICUS are discussed in Sarah
Hutton’s “More, Millenarianism, and the Ma’aseh Merkavah,” in Everything Connects:
In Conference with Richard Popkin – Essays in His Honor, edited by James E. Force and
David S. Katz (Leiden – Boston – Koln: Brill, 1999).
11. 293—307: FUNDMENTA PHILOSOPHIÆ Sive CABBALÆ ÆTO-PÆDO-
MELISSÆÆ EJUSTDEM [FUNDAMENTALS OF PHILOSOPHY OR THE KABBALAH
OF THE EAGLE-BOY-BEE—Henry More]

Passages from More’s Fundamenta Philosophiæ (KD I, 1: 302-4), are translated in

Coudert, Impact, pp. 236-7. Other §§ (KD I, 1: 297, 298, 300, 300-2) on More’s dream of
the eagle-boy-bee are translated in Coudert’s paper, “A Cambridge Platonist’s Kabbalist
Nightmare,” in Journal of the History of Ideas XXXVI:4 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1976), pages 648-50. More’s dream and its interpretation are also
discussed in Robert Crocker, Henry More, 1614-1687: A Biography of the Cambridge
Platonist [INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES, 185] (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
2003): Chapter 12: “The Kabbalah and the Quakers: Anne Conway, van Helmont, and
Knorr von Rosenroth,” § 1, THE JEWISH AND THE ‘GREEK’ CABBALA.
308—312: AD FUNDAMENTA CABBALÆ ÆTO-PÆDO-MELISSÆÆ
DIALOGUS [TO THE FUNDAMENTAL KABBALAH EAGLE-BOY-BEE DIALOGUE—
van Helmont]
An English translation of Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont’s dialogue in response
to More’s Fundamenta Philosophiæ was printed in 1682. The title page reads: “A
Cabbalistical DIALOGUE IN ANSWER To the Opinion of a Learned Doctor [i.e., Henry
More] in Philosophy and Theology, THAT THE WORLD WAS MADE OF NOTHING. As it
is Contained in the Second Part of the Cabbala Denudata & Apparatus in Lib. Sohar, p.
308. &cc. Printed in Latin at Sultsbach, Anno 1677. To which is subjoyned A Rabbinical
and Paraphrastical Exposition of Genesis I. written in High-Dutch by the Author of the
foregoing Dialogue, first done into Latin, but now made English. London, Printed for
Benjamin Clark in George-Yard in Lombard Street, Bookseller, MDCLXXXII.” See above,
ADDENDUM B, page 131-2, and my full transcription of “Francis Mercurius van
Helmont’s Cabbalistical Dialogue,” at
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/contributed/Karr/VanHelmont/index.php

APPARATUS IN LIBRUM SOHAR PARS TERTIA & QUARTA…PORTA

CŒLORUM …R. Abraham Cohen Irira …&… Arbores seu Tabulas Cabbalisticas
Universales… [APPARATUS FOR THE BOOK ZOHAR THIRD & FOURTH PARTS… (Abraham
Cohen Herrera’s) GATE OF HEAVEN…TREES OR UNIVERSAL KABBALISTIC DIAGRAMS…]
Prefatio Editoris ad Lectorum [EDITORIAL PREFACE TO THE READER]

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1—192: PORTA CŒLORUM [GATE OF HEAVEN]. (Philosophiæ Cabbalistica) = a

greatly abridged version of Abraham Cohen de Herrera’s Sha`ar ha-Shamayim, or
Puerta del Cielo.
Herrera’s Puerta del cielo found its way into Rosenroth’s Kabbala denudata through its
Hebrew version, Sha’ar ha-Shamayim, the original having been in Spanish. Rosenroth’s
rendition is far from a fair representation of Herrera’s original work—which Kenneth
Krabbenhoft offers in Abraham Cohen de Herrera: GATE OF HEAVEN (Puerta del cielo),
translated from the Spanish with Introduction and Notes (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
“Aboab [who executed the Hebrew translation] did not just translate [Herrera’s
works] but also radically altered the texts according to his own interpretation” (—The
Mystic Tradition [p. 21—noted below]); Rosenroth further condensed the work in the
process of putting it into Latin, emphasizing its philosophical passages.
Herrera’s Beit Elohim (originally Casa de la divinidad) also makes an appearance in
Kabbala denudata. (See below TOMUS II, PARS TERTIA: PNEVMATICA CABBALISTICA:
TRACTATUS I: Doctrina Hebræorum de Spiritibus.)
Further on Herrera:
• Altmann, Alexander. “Lurianic Kabbalah in a Platonic Key: Abraham Cohen
Herrera’s Puerta del cielo,” in (i) Hebrew Union College Annual 53, (Cincinnati: 1982);
and (ii) Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Isadore Twersky and
Bernard Septimus (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).
• Beltran, Miquel. The Influence of Abraham Cohen de Herrera’s Kabbalah on Spinoza’s
Metaphysics [THE IBERIAN RELIGIOUS WORLD, Vol. 2] (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2016).
• Krabbenhoft, Kenneth. “Kabbalah and Expulsion: The Case of Abraham Cohen de
Herrera” Krabbenhoft, Kenneth. The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and After, edited by
Raymond Waddington and Arthur Williamson. (New York – London: Garland
Press, 1994)
• ___________. THE MYSTIC TRADITION. ABRAHAM COHEN HERRERA AND PLATONIC
THEOLOGY. Ph.D. dissertation (New York: New York University, 1982).
• ___________. “Syncretism and Millennium in Herrera’s Kabbalah,” in Millenarianism
and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, Volume I: JEWISH MESSIANISM
IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD [INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES, 173], edited by
Matt Goldish and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
2001).
• Necker, Gerold. “Circle, Point and Line: A Lurianic Myth in the Puerta del Cielo,”
in Creation and Re-Creation in Jewish Thought [FESTSCHRIFT IN HONOR OF JOSEPH
DAN ON THE OCCASION OF HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY], edited by Rachel Elior
and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005).
• Yosha, Nissim, “Abraham Cohen Herrera: An Outstanding Exponent of Prisca
Theologica in Early Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam” in Proceedings of the Fifth
Symposium on the History of the Jews in the Netherlands, edited by Jozep Michman
(Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993), pp. 117-126.
• _______. “The Impact of Renaissance Writings on 17th-Century Kabbalist Herrera,”
in Accademia 3 (Paris: Société Marsile Ficin, 2001), pages 113-129.
• Waite. The Holy Kabbalah, pp. 422-3.
193—255: PARS QUARTA, quæ CONTINET EXPLICATIONEM ARBORUM
seu TABULARUM… [PART FOUR, A DETAILED EXPLANATION OF THE
(KABBALISTIC) TREE OR DIAGRAM…, in 16 figures]

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For this section in English, see Christopher Atton and Stephen Dziklewicz’
Kabbalistic Diagrams of Rosenroth, with an introduction by Adam McLean [MAGNUM
OPUS HERMETIC SOURCEWORKS, Number 23] (London: The Hermetic Research
Trust, 1987).3 Unfortunately, volumes in the HERMETIC SOURCEWORKS series were
run in limited editions of 250 copies. Some titles—alas, not Kabbalistic Diagrams—have
subsequently been reprinted.4
Extracts of Kabbalistic Diagrams appeared as (i) “The Kabbalistic Diagrams of Knorr
von Rosenroth,” in the Hermetic Journal, Issue Number 29 (Lampeter: Autumn 1985),
and (ii) “Palaces, Mansions and Shells in a Kabbalistic Diagram of Rosenroth”
translated by Christopher Atton and Stephen Dziklewicz, in The Hermetic Journal,
Issue Number 38 (Tysoe: The Hermetic Research Trust, Winter 1987)—both
introduced by Adam McLean.
Refer to LURIANIC DIAGRAMS: KABBALA DENUDATA VS ILAN HA-GADOL. LURIANIC
DIAGRAMS, which is appended to my paper, “Which Lurianic Kabbalah?” on-
line at Academia.edu:
https://www.academia.edu/30928619/Which_Lurianic_Kabbalah

3 For a French translation, find Fred MacParthy (trans./comm.), Les Figures Kabbalistiques de la Kabbala Denudata de
Christisan Knorr von Rosenroth: Selon la Kabbalah de Rabbi Isâac LOURIA (Brestot: Sesheta Publications, 2015): “Christian Knorr
von Rosenroth nous a légué un savoir qui, même à notre époque, n’a jamais été vraiment expliqué. Ainsi, ses XVI gravures
demeurent toujours aussi obscures aux yeux des non-initiés. Que représentent-elles exactement ? et d’où proviennent-elles ?
Voila ce que nous vous proposons de vous faire découvrir. Un voyage aux origines de ces 16 figures, introduisant et
expliquant le contenu de chacune d’elle à l’aide des textes originaux et des explications de Rosenroth.” (Sesheta Publications
Catalogue 2016, p. 11)
4See ADDENDUM A, “Items of Interest”: McLean. Until 2012, copies of Kabbalistic Diagrams were available from ALCHEMY
WEB BOOKSHOP < http://www.alchemywebsite.com/bookshop/Magnum_opus.html > MAGNUM OPUS BOOKS; these are
now sold out—link checked: 10-7-2012 and 12-28-2013.

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KABBALA DENUDATA:
TITLE PAGES

TOME I TOME II

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TOMUS SECUNDUS (Frankfort: 1684):

Id est LIBER SOHAR RESTITUTUS [WHICH IS THE BOOK ZOHAR RESTORED]; Cajus
content a pagina versamonstrabit. OPUS Omnibus genuinæ antiquitatis, & sublimiorom
Hebraicæ gentis dogmatum indagatoribus, nec non Hebraicæ & Chaldaicæ linguæ, & in
specie Idiomatis Terræ Israeliticæ, tempore Christi & Apostolorum usitati, Studiosis,
aliisque curiosis utilissimum, & vere Kabbalisticum…
1—38: Lectori Philebræo Salutem! [GREETINGS HEBREW-LOVING READERS!]
Translated excerpts of this preface to VOLUME 2: KD II, 1: 9-10 (Coudert, Impact, page
119), KD II, 1: 18-19 (Coudert, Impact, pp. 106-7).

PARTE PRIMA
1. 39—150: TRACTATUS PRIMUS: Synopsis dogmatum vulgatiorum totium libri
Sohar [SYNOPSIS OF THE BASIC DOGMA OF THE BOOK ZOHAR] … Libri Mareh Cohen
[VISION OF THE PRIEST] … Autore R. Jisaschar F. Naphtali Sacerdote [AUTHOR
Yi´sakhar Berman ben Naftali ha-Kohen] = 19 sections of Mareh Kohen
2. 151—346: TRACTATUS SECUNDUS: Introductio in dogmata profundiora (Libri
Sohar) [INTRODUCTION TO THE PROFOUND DOGMA (OF THE BOOK ZOHAR)] …
VALLEM REGIAM. R. Naphthali Hirtz, F.R. Jaacob Elchana [Naftali Hirtz,
Ya`akov Elhanan] = the first six sections of Emek ha-Melekh

PARS SECUNDA
1. 347—385: TRACTATUS PRIMUS: Siphra de Zeniutha…Liber Mysterii
2. 386—520: TRACTATUS SECUNDUS: Idra Rabba…Synodvs Areæ Magna
3. 521—598: TRACTATUS TERTIUS: Idra Suta…Synodvs Minor
S. L. MacGregor Mathers’ Kabbalah Unveiled (London: George Redway, 1887: rpt. New
York – York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1968 and subsequently) translates from Kabbala
denudata the three tracts of KD II, PARS SECUNDA: THE BOOK OF CONCEALED
MYSTERY, THE GREATER HOLY ASSEMBLY, AND THE LESSER HOLY ASSEMBLY.
Mathers’ translations can also be found at numerous sites on the Internet.
4. 1—144: TRACTATUS QVARTVS: (commentaries)
a. 3—47: Commentarius in Siphra de Zeniutha, Librum mysterii
= Lurianic commentary [ON THE BOOK OF CONCEALED MYSTERY]
from a manuscript of Hayyim Vital
A brief account of this commentary appears in Waite, Holy Kabbalah, pp. 416-7.
b. 47—144: Commentarius generalis in Librum mysterii & Synodos
= §§ 130—236 of Naftali Hirtz’ Emek ha-Melekh
Refer to Waite, Holy Kabbalah, § “Naphtali Hirtz,” pp. 420-422, and Mystic Tales
from the EMEK HAMELECH, with commentary by R. DovBer Pinson (Brooklyn:
IYYUN Center for Jewish Spirituality, 2015).
5. 145—186 TRACTATUS QVINTVS: Tres Tractatus initiales Libri Sohar = annotated
discourses with Lurianic commentary (Vital)
a. 146—154: DISCURSUS I.
b. 154—162: DISCURSUS II
c. 162—186: DISCURSUS III

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PARS TERTIA: PNEVMATICA CABBALISTICA… [KABBALISTIC (DOCTRINE OF

THE) SPIRIT]

1. 188—242: TRACTATUS I: Doctrina Hebræorum de Spiritibus = excerpts of Herrera’s

Casa de la divinidad (Beth Elohim, Domus Dei, [HOUSE OF GOD])
There is an English translation by Olen Rush of The Ten Impure Enumerations from
Abraham Cohen de Herrera’s Casa de la Divinidad (Oker Harim [Lulu], 2014). The
enumerations are tabulated in the CONTINET EXPLICATIONEM ARBORUM seu
TABULARUM at the end of Tome I of KD within the explanation of figura XVI. Rush
conjectures that The Ten Impure Enumerations “appears to be a transcription of an excerpt
from Maggid Meshearim by R. Yossef Karo z”l” (INTRODUCTION—pages not numbered),
which, while even noting an English edition, he admits, he has never seen!
2. 243—478: TRACTATUS SECUNDUS: De Revolutionibus Animarum [ON THE
REVOLUTION OF SOULS] = Sefer ha-Gilgulim, attributed to Hayyim Vital
Translated excerpts of De Revolutionibus Animarum: KD II, 3: 261 (Coudert, Impact, page
123), KD II, 3: 417 (Impact, page 122), KD II, 3: 419 (Impact, page 123). A summary of THE
BOOK OF THE REVOLUTION OF SOULS is offered by Waite, Holy Kabbalah, pp. 417-420.
Some of the contents of De Revolutionibus Animarum are approximated in Sha’ar haGilgulim
[THE EIGHTH GATE]: The Gates of Reincarnation, translated from the Teachings of Rabbi
Isaac Luria, 1534-1575, by Yitzchak Bar Chaim (Malibu: Thirty Seven Books Publishing,
2003), and Sha’ar haGilgulim: Gate of Reincarnations – An English Translation of the Arizal’s
work on reincarnation: Volume 1 – Chapters 1-35, Volume 2 – Chapters 36-40, translated and
annotated by Rabbi Pinchas Winston (Kiryat Yearim: Thirtysix.org, 2014).5
Note, however, that De Revolutionibus Animarum was translated from Sefer ha-Gilgulim,
(published in Frankfort: David Gruenhut, 1684—the same year as KD II), not Sha’ar ha-
Gilgulim, which is the last section, or “gate,” of Shemonah She’arim [THE EIGHT GATES],
Hayyim Vital’s Etz Hayyim as redacted by Vital’s son, Shmuel (Jerusalem: 1850-99).
Sefer ha-Gilgulim is in two sections: BOOK 1 (chapters 1—35) contains material similar to
Sha’ar ha-Gilgulim from well within the “Safed” line, which traces from Hayyim and
Shmuel Vital to Jacob Zemach, then to Meir Poppers. In BOOK 2 (chapters 36—77)
Poppers presents teachings which are not Lurianic, including material from the more
eclectic “European” line which drew from older kabbalistic traditions and Moses
Cordovero. Abraham Azulai, author of Hesed le-Avraham, also influenced this European
Lurianic kabbalah.6

5 On the Lurianic doctrine of transmigration, see also

• David M. Wexelman, The Jewish Concept of Reincarnation and Creation, based on the Writings of Rabbi Chaim Vital
[Sha’ar ha-Gilgulim, Sha’ar ha-Hakdamot, and Otsrot Hayyim] (Northvale – Jerusalem: Jason Aronson Inc., 1999):
PART 1. REINCARNATION
• CHAPTER NINE, “Metempsychosis, Mystical Fellowship, and Messianic Redemption” in Lawrence Fine’s Physician
of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003)
• DovBer Pinson, Reincarnation and Judaism: The Journey of the Soul (Northvale – Jerusalem: Jason Aronson Inc.,
1999).
6 Sha’ar ha-Gilgulim presents thirty-seven hakdamot, “introductions.”
For more detail on the development of Lurianic Kabbalah, see “Which Lurianic Kabbalah?” at
https://www.academia.edu/30928619/Which_Lurianic_Kabbalah

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3. 1—70: (appended to some editions of KD, van Helmont’s) ADUMBRATIO KABBALÆ

CHRISTIANÆ, Idest SYNCATABASIS HEBRAIZANS, Sive BREVIS APPLICATIO
DOCTRINA HEBRÆORUM CABBALISTICÆ AD DOGMATA NOVI FŒDERIS ;
PRO FORMANDA HYPOTHESI, AD CONVERSIONEM JUDÆORUM PROFICUA
[OUTLINE OF CHRISTIAN CABALA, THAT IS THE HEBRAIC CONCEPTION or BRIEF
APPLICATION OF DOCTRINES OF HEBREW CABBALISTS TO THE DOGMA OF THE NEW
COVENANT; TO FORM A HYPOTHESIS PROFICIENT FOR CONVERTING THE JEWS].
FRANCOFURTI AD MŒNUM, Sumtu JOHANNIS DAVIDIS ZUNNERI, Cassitero
JOH. PHIL. ANDREÆ. ANNO M DC LXXXIV.
CONTENTS:
CAPUT I. De variis universi statibus
[OF THE VARIOUS LEVELS (or STATES) OF THE UNIVERSE]
CAPUT II. De statu universi primo sive primævæ institutionis, ejusque efficiente
[OF THE FIRST STATE OF THE UNIVERSE OR OF THE PRIMORDIAL
INSTITUTION, AND OF ITS NATURE]
CAPUT III. De Medio primævæ productionis seu Adamo primo
[OF THE MEDIATOR OF THE FIRST PRODUCED, OR PRIMAL ADAM]
CAPUT IV. De Naturis Productis, & sine Productionis
[OF THE BEINGS PRODUCED & OF (THE PURPOSE OF) THEIR
PRODUCTION]
CAPUT V. De statu secutæ Destructionis
[OF THE SUBSEQUENT STATE OF DESTITUTION]
CAPUT VI. De statu modernæ Constitutionis
[OF THE STATE OF THE MODERN CONSTITUTION]
CAPUT VII. De Animarum Præexistentia in specie
[OF THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF THE SOULS EXPLICITLY SET FORTH]
CAPUT VIII. De Personis Divinitatis in specie
[OF THE DIVINE PERSONÆ (i.e., PARZUFIM) EXPLICITLY SET FORTH]
CAPUT IX. De status istius tertii Depravatione, sive De Laptu Animarum
[OF THE THIRD STATE OF CORRUPTION, OF THE FALL OF THE SOULS]
CAPUT X. De statu postremæ Restitutionis, ejusque Gradu primo
[OF THE SUPREME STATE OF RESTITUTION, & OF ITS FIRST STAGE]
CAPUT XI. De secundo Gradu Restitutionis Animarum
[OF THE SECOND STAGE OF THE RESTITUTION OF THE SOULS]
CAPUT XII. De duobus ultimus Restitutionis Messianæ Gradibus
[OF THE TWO ULTIMATE STAGES OF THE MESSIANIC RESTITUTION]

ENGLISH TRANSLATION: Francis Mercury van Helmont’s ‘Sketch of Christian Kabbalism’

translated and edited by Sheila Spector. Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2012. Also see Spector’s
summary of Adumbratio Kabbalæ Christianæ in “Wonders Divine”: The Development of
Blake’s Kabbalistic Myth (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2001), pp. 44-46.
A short declaration which prefaces Adumbratio is given in both Latin and English in
Coudert’s Impact, page 133, and in Coudert’s “The Kabbala Denudata: Converting Jews
or Seducing Christians,” in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews, eds. Richard H.
Popkin and Gordon M. Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), p. 89.
FRENCH TRANSLATION: Adumbratio Kabbalæ Christianæ, Traduit du latin pour la
premiere fois, edited by Gilly de Givry [BIBLIOTHEQUE ROSICRUCIENNE, 2. ser., no. 1]
(Paris: Bibliotheque Chacornac, 1899; reprinted, Milano: Arche, 1975).

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Added title page: ADUMBRATIO KABBALÆ CHRISTIANÆ; ou SYNCATABASE

HÉBRAÏQUE; ou Brève application des doctrines des Hébreux qabbalistes aux dogmes
de la nouvelle Alliance, dans le but de former une hypothèse profitable à la conversion
des Juifs / FRANCFORT-SUR-LE-MEIN / IMPRIME PAR JEAN-PHIL. ANDRE, POUR
LE COMPTE DE JEAN-DAVID ZUNNER 1684 / PUBLIÉ EN APENDICE À LA KABBALA
DENUDATA DE KNORR VON ROSENROTH.)

Reference editions for ADDENDUM C:

Rosenroth, Christian Frhr. Knorr v. Kabbala Denudata, two volumes.
[VOLKSKUNDICHE QUELLEN (FOLKLORE SOURCES): NEUDRUCKE EUROPAISCHER TEXTE UND
UNTERSUCHUNGEN (REPRINTS OF EUROPEAN TEXTS AND STUDIES)].
(Hildesheim – Zurich – New York: George Olms Verlag, 1974; reprinted 1999).
Knorr von Rosenroth, Christian, Freiherr (1636-1689). Kabbala denudata…
(Sulzbachi: Typis Abrahami Lichtenthaleri, 1677-1684).
Cornell University, Kroch Library: WITCHCRAFT BF 1600 .K72 v.2
[This call number should be changed to BM 525 .K6 1684]
On-line: “Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata, scanned from the Latin,” at BILL HEIDRICK’S CROSS
REFERENCES; go to http://www.billheidrick.com/Orpd/KRKD/index.htm.
[F. M. van Helmont] Adumbratio Kabbalæ Christianæ, Traduit du latin pour la premiere fois, edited by
Gilly de Givry [BIBLIOTHEQUE ROSICRUCIENNE, 2. ser., no. 1] (Paris: Bibliotheque Chacornac,
1899; reprinted, Milano: Arche, 1975).
Spector, Sheila (trans/ed). Francis Mercury van Helmont’s ‘Sketch of Christian Kabbalism.’
(Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2012).
Other works consulted:
• Bar Tzadok, Rabbi Ariel. Sefer HaGilgulim: The Book of Reincarnation from the Kitvei HaAri’zal
(2 cassette tapes) (Chicago: Yeshivat Benei N’vi’im, 1993—2003).
• Benz, Ernst. Christian Kabbalah: Neglected Child of Theology, translated from the German by
Kenneth W. Wensche, edited by Robert J. Faas (St. Paul: Grailstone Press, 2004).
• Coudert, Impact = Coudert, Allison. The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The
Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614-1698) [BRILL SERIES IN JEWISH STUDIES,
9] (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1999).
• Hutton, Sarah. “Henry More, Anne Conway and the Kabbalah: A Cure for the Kabbalist
Nightmare?” in Judaeo-Christian Intellectual Culture in the Seventeenth Century: A Celebration of
the Library of Narcissus Marsh (1638-1713), edited by A. Coudert, S. Hutton, R Popkin, and G.
Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999).
• _______. “More, Millenarianism, and the Ma’aseh Merkavah,” in Everything Connects: In
Conference with Richard Popkin – ESSAYS IN HIS HONOR, edited by James E. Force and David
S. Katz (Leiden – Boston – Koln: Brill, 1999).
• Idel, Moshe. Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism [THE KOGOD LIBRARY OF JUDAIC STUDIES 5]
(London – New York: Shalom Hartman Institute/Continuum, 2007): CHAPTER 5, § 3. THE
IMPACT OF CHRISTIAN KNORR VON ROSENROTH’S KABBALA DENUDATA.
• Scholem. Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1974, reprinted frequently).
• Spector, Sheila. “Wonders Divine”: The Development of Blake’s Kabbalistic Myth (Lewisburg:
Bucknell University Press, 2001).
• Waite, Holy Kabbalah = Waite, Arthur Edward. The Holy Kabbalah (New Hyde Park:
University Books, 1960).

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Some Other Cabalistic Canons in Latin7

Reuchlin, Johann
De arte cabalistica : id est, de divinae revelationis, ad salvtiferam Dei, et formarvm
separatarum contemplationem traditae, symbolica receptione, libri III, olim per ...
[Basileae? : Ex officina H. Petrina?, 1572?-73?] First published: 1517.

Reuchlin’s list8 of Kabbalistic texts (pp. 13v-14v):

1. On the Creation, i.e., Sefer Yezirah
2. Zohar
3. Ha Bahir
4. “Abraham Abulafia’s books on Kabbalah”
5. “Ramban’s distinguished commentaries” (Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, Nahmanides)
6. “the commentaries of Rabbi Moses ben Nahman’s “very learned pupil,” Rabbi
Menahem ben Benjamin Recanati”
7. Rambam, Guide of the Perplexed (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, Maimonides)
8. Joseph Gikatilla, The Gates of Righteousness, The Gate of Light, The Nut Garden
9. Sa’adia in Asia, Articles of Belief [= Beliefs and Opinions] (Sa’adia Gaon)
10. Abraham Ibn Ezra, The Mystery of the Law, The Unity
11. “a book of Rabbi Hamai bar Hanina … and another … called Speculations”
12. Azriel of Gerona, Explanation of Holiness
13. Rabbi Akiva, Names and Explanation of the Alphabet
14. Rabbi Ama, The Gate of Mysteries of Psalm 19
15. Azriel of Gerona, On Mysteries, Book of Abstruse Questions, and Little Book of the Cabala
16. Azriel of Gerona, On the Way Faith and Atonement
17. Rabbi Joseph Albo, The Roots
18. Rabbi Judah Halevi, Alkuzari [= Kuzari]
19. Jacob Cohen, commentary on Sefer Yezirah, including Rabbi Isaac [ben Samuel],
Explanation of the Name of God
20. Todros ben Joseph Abulafia, on “the ten Cabalistic enumerations”

7 It is interesting to note the list of books that Elijah del Medigo recommended to Pico della Mirandola:
…the Zohar, Yishaq of Acco’s Me’irot ‘enayim, Yosef Giqatilla’s Sa’are orah, the Commentary to the Torah by Menahem
Recanati, the Ma’areket ha-Elohut, and one (or more) unspecified Commentaries to the Sefer yesirah … the most evident
omission being Avraham Abulafia’s works. (—Giulio Busi, “‘Who Does Not Wonder at this Chameleon?’ The
Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,” in Hebrew to Latin, Latin to Hebrew: The Mirroring of Two
Cultures in the Age of Humanism [BERLIN STUDIES IN JUDAISM, 1], edited by Giulio Busi [Berlin: Institut für Judaistik,
Freie Universität Berlin / Torino: Nino Aragno Editore, 2006]), pages 172-173)
8 Some sources for Reuchlin that do not appear on his list:
• (anon.) Ruach Chen – Spiritus gratiae [= Spirit of Grace]
• (anon.) Hacadma
• Rabbi Levi ben Gersom, “on the difference between Gabriel and Michael”
• Paulus de Heredia, Be-Sefer Igeret ha-Sodot [= Book of the Epistle of Secrets]
• Jerusalem Targum
• Targum Jonathan

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Pistorius, Johannes
Artis cabalisticae, hoc est, Reconditae theologiae et philosophiae, scriptorvm : tomus I. In quo praeter
Pavli Ricii theologicos & philosophicos libros sunt latini penè omnes et hebraei nonnulli
praestantissimi scriptores ... opvs omnibvs theologis, et occvltae abstrvsae q've philosophiae
stuvdiosis pernecessarium ... ex D. Ioannis Pistorii.
Basileae : per S. Henricpetri M.D.XXCVII [1587]
Contents:
• Pavli Ricii (Ricci, Riccius, or Riccio): De coelesti agricvltvra libri IIII
• Rabi Iosephi (Gikatilla): De porta, i.e., Sha’are Orah
• Leonis Hebraei (Leone Ebreo): De amore dialogi tres
• Ionnis Revchlini (Johann Reuchlin): De arte cabalistica, libri III; De verbo mirifico, libri III
• Archangeli Bvrgonovenisis (Archangelus of Borgo Nuovo): Interpretationes in selectiora obscurioáq
cabalistarum dogmata
• Abrahami (Abraham the Prophet): De creatione & cabalistinis, hebraicè Sepher ierzira, liber, i.e., Sefer
Yezirah

Mithridates [incomplete]
List of kabbalistic works translated by Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada, or Mithridates, at the behest
of Pico della Mirandola, ca. 1486.
[KL#] = THE KABBALISTIC LIBRARY OF GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA.
[blue] = cited in Wirzsubski, Pico della Mirandila’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism.
• Abulafia - Liber Combinationum “Book of Permutations”
• Abulafia - Liber de secretis legis – “Book of the Secrets of the Torah” – Sitrei Torah
• Abulafia - Liber Redemptionis “Book of Redemption” – Sefer Ge’ulah
• Abulafia - Summa brevis Cabaale que intitulatur Rabi Ieude
• Axelrad - Liber Corona nominis bonis - “Book of the Crown of the Good Name”
• Azriel - Quaestiones super de decem Numerationibus - “Questions on the Ten Numbers (Sefirot)”
• Comentum Sepher Iesire
• Corona Nominis
• De Proportione Divinitatis – Ma’areket ha-’Elohut
• Gate of Heaven [KL5]
• Gikatilla - Expositio secretorum punctuationis – Sefer ha-Niqqud [KL4]
• Gikatilla - Portae Iustitiae – “Gates of Justice” – Sha’are Tzedek
• Great Parchment [KL1]
• Libellus de expositione nominis Tetragrammaton - “Brief Explanation of the Name Tetragrammaton”
• Libellus de expositione tredecim proprietatum - “Brief Explanation of the Thirteen Properties”
• Libellus de secretis legis manifestandis edicto a sancto doctore - “Brief Secrets of the Torah Manifesting the
Edict of the Holy Teacher”
• Liber Bahir - “Book of Brightness” [KL2]
• Liber de radicibus vel terminis Cabala - “Book of Roots and Bounds” – Sefer ha-Šorašim
• Recanati – “Commentary on the Pentateuch” [translation lost]
• Recanati - Liber de secretis Orationum et Benedicinum Cabale - “Book of the Secrets of Prayer…” (Perush ha-
Tefillot) [KL3]
• Shaar ha-shamayim

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ADDENDUM D:
The Problem of Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi
A BIBLIOGRAPHY WITH A SELECTION OF QUOTES

Was Leone a philosopher, a Jewish philosopher, or simply a writer with a

philosophical background? That question remains open to debate.
—Giuseppe Veltri, Renaissance Philosophy in Jewish Garb (2009),
page 61

Yehudah (or Judah) Abravanel (or Abrabanel) (146?-152?), called Leone Ebreo (Leon
Hebraeus, Leo the Hebrew) is best known for his Dialoghi d’amore (DIALOGUES ON LOVE),
written around 1500.
The Dialoghi were included in Johann Pistorius’ Latin compendium Artis cabalisticæ: HOC EST
reconditæ theologiciæ et philosophia, scriptores TOMUS I (Basle: 1587)—see “Some Other
Cabalistic Canons in Latin” (on the previous pages).
There are two English translations of the Dialoghi:
• The Philosophy of Love (Dialoghi d’Amore), translated into English by F. Friedeberg-Seeley and
Jean H. Barnes, with an introduction by Cecil Roth (London: The Soncino Press, 1937).
• Dialogues of Love [THE LORENZO DA PONTE ITALIAN LIBRARY], translated by Cosmos
Damian Bacich and Rossella Pescatori; introduction and notes by Rossella Pescatori (Toronto
– Buffalo – London: University of Toronto Press, 2009).

Indications of the problems surrounding Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi are reflected in the quotes
from the sources listed.

  

[Abravanel, Judah] Ebreo, Leone. The Philosophy of Love (Dialoghi d’Amore), translated into
English by F. Friedeberg-Seeley and Jean H. Barnes, with an introduction by Cecil Roth
(London: The Soncino Press, 1937); page 406 [P = Philo speaking]:
P. You know that the corporeal world proceeds from the incorporeal as the true effect from its
cause and creator. None the less the corporeal does not inherit the perfection of the spiritual, and
you may see how defective is the body compared with the mind. And if you find many
imperfections in the body such as dimension, division and, in certain cases, mutation and
corruption, you must not therefore conclude that these defects pre-exist in the intellectual causes,
but that they are in the effect only in so far as it falls short of the cause. Do not, therefore, believe
that the plurality, division and diversity in earthly things pre-exists in the Ideal knowledge of
them, for that which is one and indivisible in the divine intellect is multiplied ideally relative to
the parts of the world produced by it, and in relation to these parts the Ideas are many, although
one and indivisible with the divine intellect.

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Excerpts of the Soncino translation are posted on the Internet at

http://www48.homepage.villanova.edu/emmet.mclaughlin/Renaissance%20Philosophy.htm
Part A (pp. 205-229)
Part B (pp. 246-276)
Part C (pp. 298-355)
Part D (pp. 354-413)
Part E (pp. 414-468)
Beitchman, Philip. Alchemy of the Word: Cabala of the Renaissance (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1998); page 145:
Cabala in Leo the Hebrew’s widely known book On Love has had the reputation of being a matter
of image rather than substance, blending into a genre of Neoplatonic love poetry, with a tincture
of mysticism—accounting for its popularity, in several languages, during the Renaissance and
after.

Copenhaver, Brian P. “Doubt and Innovation,” in The Columbia History of Western Philosophy,
edited by Richard H. Popkin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); page 320:
Having read Ficino and Leone Ebreo, Bruno decided that the hero’s love is a frenzy for what
cannot be had but must always be pursued in a philosophical chase through sense, reason, and
mind, ever approaching but never attaining the light of the One.

___________. FOREWORD to Dialogues of Love (Toronto: 2009—noted above); page xiv:

Judah [Abravanel] could have known this text [Zohar (1:4a, 2:7b, 3:21b)]—and many others that
might illuminate his Dialogues—either from the Zohar itself or, more likely, from the Zoharic
commentary on the Pentateuch written around 1300 by Menahem Recanati. In the case of the
Cabala, however, God lives nowhere but in the details, in the intricate threads of symbols and
images from which the Cabalists weave their midrashim. General associations, such as those
suggested above between the Sefirot and the major agents of Judah’s cosmology, are often possible
but never conclusive.

Davidson, Herbert. “Medieval Jewish Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century,” in Jewish

Thought in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Bernard Dov Cooperman (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1983); page 125:
The label “Renaissance” is often affixed to Leone Ebreo’s philosophic activity. Although perhaps
applicable to Leone when considered as a litterateur, the label is highly doubtful where the strictly
philosophic sections of his work are concerned; and for that matter, it is debatable whether the
label “Renaissance” has any legitimate application at all for the history of European philosophy,
whether anything in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European thought deserves to be singled out
as distinctively “Renaissance” philosophy. …
When Leone first treats the subject of the dependence of the universe on its cause, his discussion
is wholly circumscribed by what he had learnt from Avicenna and Averroes.

Dethier, Hubert. “Love and Intellect in Leone Ebreo: The Joys and Pains of Human Passion;
Reflections on his Critical Panpsychism and Theory of ‘Extraordinary Reason,’” in
Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, edited by Lenn E. Goodman (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1992); page 353:

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Ordinary (practical) reason fluctuates between extremes, its goal being the preservation of life;
extraordinary (contemplative) reason disregards normal conventions of prejudice and often leads
to alienation and self-sacrifice. Comprising both disinterested love and the desire to “acquire” or
“attain” the beloved, its ambivalence is personified in the figure of Sophia*, the reluctant mistress
of the Dialogues. The ordinary reasonableness of the day to day world is challenged here by the
radical intransigence of a higher love, which bears with it a higher standard of reason. The
philosophically exalted blend of love and desire is the source of Philo’s* paradoxical desire to both
live and die. (Dethier’s parentheses.)
__________________________________
* The three Dialoghi are the conversations between Philo, the “lover,” and Sophia, the “beloved,” ≈
WISDOM.

Gibbons, B. J. Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought: Behmenism and its Development in England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); page 71:
An important source of Christian Cabalism was Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore, a popular work
throughout sixteenth-century Europe. The Dialoghi themselves are closer to Neoplatonism than
Jewish Cabalism, but they were thereby able to convey Cabalist ideas in a way accessible to
Renaissance Christian intellectuals.

Gluck, Andrew L. Judah Abrabanel’s Philosophy of Love and Kabbalah, with a foreword by
Menachem Kellner (Lewiston-Queenston-Lampeter: The Edwin Mellon Press, 2012); page
624:
Regarding Kabbalah, however, whatever obvious resemblances exist might perhaps have been the
result of common influences rather than direct dependence, though he was definitely
knowledgeable about and interested in Kabbalah. His explicit questioning of the legitimacy of
kabbalistic tradition is somewhat jarring alongside his apparently implicit assumption regarding
the legitimacy of other esoteric traditions (such as the Hermetic one). In fact, it seems strange
that he should specifically mention Kabbalah at all since so many other influences are left
unacknowledged. That might indicate a special fondness for or interest in Kabbalah or it might
reveal an especially critical stance towards it.

Hughes, Aaron. “Judah Abrabanel,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by

Edward N. Zalta (Winter 2005 Edition); on-line at
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2005/entries/abrabanel/
… given the evidence, an Italian original for the work seems most likely since (1) all the
manuscripts, including Mariano Lenzi’s edition of 1535, are in Italian; (2) it seems that Judah had
lived in Italy for close to twenty years by the time that he wrote the Dialoghi (more than enough
time for someone to gain an intimate knowledge of Italian, especially someone proficient in Latin
and Spanish vernaculars); (3) neither later Jewish authors, e.g., Azaria de’Rossi, nor non-Jewish
authors, e.g., Tullia d’Aragona, had any reason to suspect that it was written in a language other
than Italian; (4) if we assume the later date of 1511-1512, many non-Tuscan Italian authors of this
period called for the adoption of Tuscan as a literary language, owing primarily to the fact that
this was the language of Petrarch (1304-1374) and Boccaccio (1313-1375); and, (5) as for the question
of the Tuscan dialect of the work, many Italian printers of the early sixteenth century
“Tuscanized” Italian according to set criteria. Moreover, many Jewish authors in the fifteenth-
and sixteenth-centuries increasingly resorted to Romance vernaculars in order to attract a Jewish
audience (including conversos and ex-conversos), which no longer understood Hebrew.

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Idel, Moshe. “The Myth of the Androgyne in Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’Amore and its
Cultural Implications,” in Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts, Volume
Fifteen, edited by Daniel Abrams and Avraham Elqayam (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2006);
pages 78-9, 80:
In this article I will deal with the encounter between a Spanish Jewish thinker, Leone Ebreo
(Judah Abravanel), and the Platonic and Neoplatonic corpus translated and interpreted by
Marsilio Ficino. As important as the Spanish background was for his thought and for his modes
of acculturation in the Florentine Renaissance, it was the exposure to new material that sparked
the creativity that culminated in Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’Amore. The more inertial culture of Spain of
that period could not induce such an intellectual achievement. Nevertheless, and this is the main
point in my discussion below, the Spanish background served at times as a grid for reading of
even a seminal Platonic theme.
Leon Ebreo’s book Dialoghi d’amore is one of the few major Jewish philosophical contributions to
European thought written in the Middle Ages; it was written and printed in several Romance
languages decades before a Hebrew translation was made and printed. … Ebreo’s book can be
defined as the most accomplished Neoplatonic treatise in Judaism after ibn Gabirol’s magnum opus
Fons Vitae, composed because of his encounter with Florentine Renaissance.

_________. Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (London – New York: Continuum, 2007): Chapter
5, § 2. NON-CHRISTOLOGICAL SONS IN RENAISSANCE JEWISH THINKERS , page 515:
… Ebreo combines a Neo-Platonic emanational view of the emergence of reality with a view that
resorts to sexual imagery even when discussing the highest entities, an approach that may reflect
some form of kabbalistic theosophy. Though Ebreo was not a Kabbalist, at times he nevertheless
used kabbalistic views in his book. Hence, he was conceived of as a Kabbalist, his book was
printed in a collection of kabbalistic books entitled Ars Cabalistica, and he is quoted as a Kabbalist.

Ivry, Alfred. “Remnants of Jewish Averroism in the Renaissance,” in Jewish Thought in the
Sixteenth Century, edited by Bernard Dov Cooperman (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1983); page 247:
Ebreo is, however, more of an Aristotelian, and more of an Averroist, than he would care to
admit. Despite his insistence on the significance of love as a causal principle for the workings of
the universe, he is hard-pressed to offer a definition or description of love which is essentially
different from that of the intellect.

Kodera, Sergius. “The Idea of Beauty in Leone Ebreo (Judah Abravanel),” in The Jewish Body:
Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, edited by Maria
Diemling and Giuseppe Veltri (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2009); page 329:
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Dialoghi is the consistency with which Leone enacts the
idea that beauty, and the ravishment concomitant with it, is the necessary product of all human
mental activities. As God created man in his image, the perception of beauty is a crucial issue, for
the love generated by these mental images is modeled on the affection of the Godhead for His
Creation.

Lesley, Arthur M. “The Place of the Dialoghi d’amore in Contemporaneous Jewish Thought,”
in Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, edited by David B.
Ruderman (New York/London: New York University Press, 1992); page 170 and 174:

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The posthumous success of the [Dialoghi] with a wide audience, in Italian, Latin, Spanish, and
French, tends to obscure the question of why it was written in Hebrew, for a Jewish audience,
over thirty years before its publication in Italian.
Yehuda Abravanel, as a learned physician with eminent clients, as a member of a wealthy, well-
placed family, as an exile from Portugal and Spain, and as the son of the outstanding biblical
commentator and leader of the Spanish Jews, was a candidate for influence among Jews in Italy.

______. “Proverbs, Figures and Riddles: The Dialogues of Love as a Hebrew Humanist
Composition,” in Midrashic Imagination: Jewish Exegesis, Thought, and History, edited by
Michael Fishbane (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993); page 204-5:
The Dialogues of Love by Yehuda Abravanel has attracted more attention from historians of
Jewish philosophy than its influence on later Jewish thought deserves. …
The Dialogues of Love combines a variety of discourses that had not previously been juxtaposed in
a single text: the full curriculum of Maimonidean philosophy, neoplatonism based on an
acquaintance with authentic texts of Plato, astrology, Spanish Kabbalah, classical mythology, the
entire body of Midrash and Jewish Bible commentary, and humanist rhetoric.

McGinn, Bernard. “Cabalists and Christians: Reflections on Cabala in Medieval and

Renaissance Thought,” in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews [INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES,
138] (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994); pages 17-18 and 21-22:
Finally, Judah Abravanel (Leone Ebreo) had some contact with Pico [della Mirandola] between
1492 when Leone arrived in Naples as an exile from Spain and Pico’s death in 1494. The extent of
this acquaintance is difficult to determine, but may well have had an effect on Leone’s
masterwork, the Dialoghi d’amore. …
The Dialoghi are among the most remarkable products of Renaissance thought, arguably the most
systematic and penetrating account of that favorite Renaissance theme, the nature and role of
love. … [T]wo aspects of his [Leone’s] presentation deserve note here because of the light they
cast on the new situation in which [Jewish] Kabbalah found itself due to the challenge presented
by [Christian] Cabala. First, the communication of a good deal of Kabbalah in a work probably
written in the vernacular (and therefore accessible even to Gentiles) was surely unusual. Second,
and more important, Leone’s mingling of Kabbalah with a wide range of other systems of
thought—pagan, Christian and Jewish—is, as Moshe Idel has stressed, a new phenomenon among
Jews at the end of the fifteenth century.* Shlomo Pines said that Leone transformed Plato into a
Kabbalist.**
__________________________________
* Idel, Moshe. “The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of the Kabbalah in the Renaissance,”
page 108, in Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque, edited by David B.
Ruderman (New York: New York University, 1992).
** Pines, Shlomo. “Medieval Doctrines in Renaissance Garb? Some Jewish and Arabic Sources of
Leone Ebreo’s Doctrines,” page 369, in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Bernard
Dov Cooperman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).

Novoa, James Nelson. “Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore as a Pivital Document of Jewish-
Christian Relations in Renaissance Rome,” in Hebraic Aspects of the Renaissance: Sources and
Encounters, edited by Ilana Zinguer, Abraham Melamed, and Zur Shalev (Leiden – Boston:
Brill, 2011); page 76.

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From Lenzi’s dedicatory letter we know that the Dialoghi were published posthumously. What
state the text of the work was in when Leone was alive, his role in its transmission, his possible
interactions with early readers and editors of the work are, of course, a matter of speculation and
archival and textual evidence does not, so far, shed any definitive light on these matters.
Nevertheless, the unprecedented interest in a work by a Sephardic Jew in the first three decades
of the sixteenth century, which involved prominent members of the Sienese community in
Rome, southern Italian prelates, prestigious printers, expert copyists, the most important
humanists and literati of the moment, as well as some key figures in the impassioned debate as to
what language should be the norm for literacy and cultural expression in Renaissance Italy, is not
to be understated by any means.

Ogren, Brian. “Leone Ebreeo on Prisca sapienta: Jewish Wisdom and the Textual
Transmission of Knowledge” (pages 181-194), in Umanesimo e cultura ebraica nel Rinascimento
italiano, a curi di Stefano U. Baldassari and Fabrizio Lelli (Firenze: Angelo Pontecorboli
Editore, 2016), page 194.
As far as the textual evidence in the Dialoghi shows, Leone was neither a Jewish Hermetic thinker
nor a secret kabbalist. There is also no evidence that Leone was imbibing any insight from the
Zohar. At most, Leone was a Jewish Platonist, and part of his project was to reconcile Plato and
the Bible, as filtered through Rabbinic Judaism. To read Hermes and the Kabbalists too deeply
into his thought is to transform it, in a similar manner in which he transformed both the thought
of Plato and the narrative of the Bible.

_______. “On the Wisdom of Beauty—Leone Ebreo on Art and Creation” (pages 77-96), and
“Chaos and Divine Spirit—Leone Ebreo on Greek Mythology, Jewish Love, and Gendered
Creation of the Universe” (pages 151-168), in The Beginning of the World in Renaissance Jewish
Thought: MA’ASEH BERESHIT in Italian Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah, 1492-1535 [SUPPLEMENTS
TO THE JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT AND PHILOSOPHY, volume 27] (Leiden – Boston:
Brill, 2016); page 81.
Like his father Isaac and the rest of his older contemporaries discussed here [Pico della Mirandola
and Yohannan Alemanno], Leone indeed has recourse to the classical pairing of “the beginning”
with Wisdom; but unlike all of them, he seems to have completely neutralized the kabbalistic
elements involved in the discussion.

Peri, Hiram (Heinz Pflaum). “Leone Ebreo, Renaissance Philosopher,” in Studies in Jewish
Thought: An Anthology of German Jewish Scholarship, edited by Alfred Jospe (Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 1981); page 277 and 278:
The philosophy of Leone Ebreo contained in the Dialogues does not represent a system; its
structure is not architectonic but organic. It is the unfolding of an idea through the totality of that
which exists: the idea of love as the principle of being and as an ethical-religious norm. …
The era still had not attained an all-embracing framework of experience to give material support
and substance to the concept of the world. Hence all philosophers of the Italian Renaissance are
bold, contentious, unsystematic, contradictory, vague, fanciful, rich in ideas, and yet lacking one
central idea. In the midst of this chaotic deluge of ideas, Leone Ebreo occupies a unique place. He
is still sufficiently a son of the Middle Ages to be able to believe in the possibility of achieving a
universal philosophy, yet also close enough to the spirit of modernity to be able to replace the
rigid, spherically graduated cosmos of medieval speculation with a vital world structure held
together by emotion. Thus Leone’s conception of the world took from Scholasticism the

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hierarchical structure of the doctrine of emanation; from the spirit of the new era it derived the
concept of ensoulment through the universal principle of love; from Judaism it drew the
speculative ingredients (the theory of attributes, the doctrine of creation, eschatology); and from
Plato it adopted the theory of ideas.

Roth, Cecil. “With the Humanists of Florence” = CHAPTER SIX of The Jews in the Renaissance
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959); page 133:
There is a controversy of long standing regarding the language in which the work was written.
There is no reason why the erudite court physician, after ten years’ residence in Italy, should not
have been able to express himself in Italian. But the Dialoghi read a little stiffly, and there is
reason to doubt that this is the primary text: indeed, in a letter of 1543, the editor’s friend Claudio
Tolomei wrote that the published version in Italian fell short of the original clarity. A strong case
may be made out for imagining that they were written in Hebrew, of which language the author
had a complete mastery, as his poems show; but in that case the original has been lost, for the
Hebrew version now extant is palpably a translation—possibly from the pen of Leone Modena.
Modern Spanish authorities patriotically endeavor to win the original work (though not the
published Spanish versions) for the language of the country from which its author had been
ejected. But there is another possibility. The natural medium in which a Spanish Jew of the
period would have expressed himself on a non-Hebraic subject was Ladino, or Castilian written
in Hebrew characters. There is in fact in the British Museum a manuscript of the Dialoghi of this
sort which, though not contemporary, may conceivably represent the author’s original text.

Silberschlag, Eisig. From Renaissance to Renaissance: Hebrew Literature from 1492-1970 (New
York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1973); page 44:
The alleged conversion of Leone Ebreo to Christianity is a calumny which was probably invented
by one of his publishers in order to avoid persecution or to attract buyers for Dialoghi d’Amore or
both.

Sirat, Collette. A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990); page 408:
[Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore are] not a work of Jewish philosophy, but a book of philosophy
written by a Jew.

Veltri, Guiseppe. “Philo and Sophia: Leone Ebreo’s Concept of Jewish Philosophy,” in
Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy, edited by David B. Ruderman
and Giuseppe Veltri (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 2004); page 55—also
CHAPTER THREE of Veltri’s Renaissance Philosophy in Jewish Garb: Foundations and Challenges in
Judaism on the Eve of Modernity (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2009); page 60:
Julius Guttmann* maintained that Leone should be regarded as the “only truly Jewish
Renaissance philosopher,” an opinion shared by Carl Gebhardt,** who saw in him the last truly
Jewish philosopher before Spinoza, even a precursor of the latter’s pantheistic vision.
____________________________________
* Guttmann, Julius. Die Philosophie des Judentums (Munich 1933; reprint, Wiesbaden, 1985)
** Gebhardt, Carl (ed.) Leone Ebreo: Dialoghi d’amore, hebraische Gedichte (Heidelberg, 1929)

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Waite, A. E. The Holy Kabbalah (New Hyde Park: University Books, 1960); pages 429-430:
The interest in Leo the Hebrew can be only of a mystical kind, and it is on this basis presumably
that he was included by Pistorius in his ambitious and unfinished attempt to engarner the signal
treatises of Kabbalism. Even so, it is difficult to see that such a text has any title to a place among
the Secret Tradition of Israel. We look in vain for the essential doctrines of Jewish philosophy …
[T]here is only one direct reference to the Kabbalah in the whole three hundred folio pages which
the dialogues occupy in Pistorius…

Yavneh, Naomi. “The Spiritual Eroticism of Leone’s Hermaphrodite,” in Playing with

Gender: A Renaissance Pursuit, edited by Jean R, Brink, Maryanne C. Horowitz, and Allison
Coudert. (Urbana – Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991); pages 86 & 87:
To those of us who have learned about Renaissance Neoplatonism principally by studying Ficino,
perhaps the most striking feature of Leone’s Dialoghi is its depiction of a dualistic cosmos
governed by a system of universal hermaphrodism: Whereas eros is the copula mundi of
Neoplatonic cosmology, Leone explicitly depicts that copula as heterosexual copulation. … [T]he
heterosexual emphasis of the Dialoghi reflects it roots in the Hebraic tradition.

Zinberg, Israel. A History of Jewish Literature, Part Five: ITALIAN JEWRY IN THE RENAISSANCE
ERA, translated from the Yiddish by Bernard Martin (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College /
New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1974); page 17:
Isaac Abravanel insists in one of his letters that his elder son, Jehudah, is “doubtless the major
thinker of the present generation” [Otzar Nehmad, II, 58], and Jehudah himself declares proudly in
his previously mentioned poem [“Telunah Al Ha-Zeman”]: “My keen thought surpasses that of all
the scholars of Edom, who were like grasshoppers in my sight; I went to their schools and none of
them could compare with me.” It must be admitted that Abravanel did not greatly exaggerate his
importance.

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ADDENDUM E:
A Sampling of Biographical Dates
Names marked with an asterisk (*) have entries in Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism,
edited by Wouter Hanegraaff in collaboration with Antoine Faivre, Roelof van den Broek,
and Jean-Pierre Brach (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2005).
Raymon Llull* 1232-1316 F. M. van Helmont* 1614-1699
Moses de Leon 1240-1305 Ralph Cudworth* 1617-1688
Abraham Abulafia 124?-1291 Thomas Vaughan* 1622-1666
Joseph Gikatilla 124?-1305 Henry Vaughan 1622-1695
Dante* 1265-1321 Anne Conway 1631-1679
Abner of Burgos 1270-1348 John Brinsley fl. 1633
Pablo de Heredia 1405?-1486 Knorr von Rosenroth* 1636-1689
Ficino* 1433-1499 Leibniz 1646-1716
Alemanno 1434-1504 Swedenborg* 1688-1772
Lodovico Lazzarelli* 1447-1500 Oetinger* 1702-1782
Abraham Farissol 1452-1528 Samuel Falk* 1710-1782
Johannes Reuchlin* 1455-1522 Cagliostro* 1743-1795
Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples* 1455?-1536 William Blake* 1757-1827
Leone Ebreo b. ca. 1460 G. W. F. Hegel 1770-1831
Pietro Galatino* 1460?-1540? Francis Barrett* 177?-18??
Trithemius* 1462-1516 Albert Mackey 1807-1881
Pico* 1463-1494 Albert Pike 1809-1891
Francisco Giorgi * 1466-1540 Adolph Franck 1809-1893
Egidio da Viterbo* 1469-1532 Éliphas Lévi* 1810-1875
Augustin Giustiniani 1470-1536 Hargrave Jennings* 1817?-1890
H. C. Agrippa* 1486?-1535 W. B. Greene 1819-1878
Paracelsus* 1493-1541 H. P. Blavatsky* 1831-1891
Paulus Ricius fl. 1506-1541 C. D. Ginsburg 1831-1914
Arcangelo da Borgonuovo d. ca. 1570 Isaac Myer 1836-1902
Guillaume Postel* 1510-1581 Margaret Peeke 1838-1908
Jean Thenaud fl. 1511 Bernard Pick 1842-1917
Teresa of Avila 1515-1582 Walter Begley 1845-1905
Moses Cordovero 1522-1570 Wm. Wynn Westcott* 1848-1925
John Dee* 1527-1608 Vladimir Soloviev 1853-1900
Luis de Leon 1528?-1591 S. L. M. Mathers* 1854-1918
Isaac Luria 1534-1572 Arthur E. Waite* 1857-1942
Guy Le Fevre de la Boderie 1541-1598 Florence Farr 1860-1917
Juan de la Cruz 1542-1591 W. J. Colville 1862-1917
Hayim Vital 1542/3-1620 Sepharial 1864-1929
Pistorius 1546-1608 Frederick B. Bond 1864-1945
Giordano Bruno* 1548-1600 Papus (G. Encausse)* 1865-1916
Nicolaus Le Fevre de la Boderie 1550-1613 Aleister Crowley* 1875-1947
Heinrich Khunrath* 1560-1605 Paul Foster Case 1884-1954
Johannes Bureus 1568-1652 Frater Achad 1886-1950
Robert Fludd* 1574-1637 Dion Fortune* 1890-1950
Abr. Cohen de Herrera 157?-1639 Gershom Scholem 1897-1982
Jacob Böhme* 1575-1624 Manly P. Hall* 1901-1990
Athanasius Kircher* 1602-1680 Israel Regardie 1907-1985
Henry More* 1614-1687

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ADDENDUM F: REVIEWS
Sheila Spector’s
“Wonders Divine”:
The Development of Blake’s Kabbalistic Myth
&
“Glorious Incomprehensible”:
The Development of Blake’s Kabbalistic Language
Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2001; 213 & 202 pages
ISBN: 0-8387-5468-6 & 0-8387-5469-4
© Don Karr 2003
An edited version of this review originally appeared in
Esoterica: The Journal of Esoteric Studies, Volume V, edited by Arthur Verslius (2003),
online at http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeV/Reviews/Spector.html *

William Blake is sometimes illuminated but rarely explained by his sources,

because his fierce intellectual independence allows nothing to pass into his
work unchanged. It is therefore hazardous to accept prior analogues to his
ideas as sources, especially on the basis of mere conceptual analogy, and even
more hazardous to practice the kind of algebraic substitution in which Blake is
made to mean what a supposed source meant.
—Martin K. Nurmi, “Negative Sources in Blake,” in
William Blake: Essays for S. Foster Damon, edited by Alvin
H. Rosenfeld (Providence: Brown University Press, 1969)

____________________________________
* Compare my review with those of Dena Bain Taylor in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, Volume 38, Issue 2
(University of Rochester, 2004)—PDF at http://bq.blakearchive.org/38.2.taylor; and Mark S. Lussier in Romanitic
Circles (University of Maryland, 2005) at https://www.rc.umd.edu/reviews-blog/sheila-spector-glorious-
incomprehensible-development-blakes-kabbalistic-language—which, alas, has a “Security Risk” warning attached
to it.
 © Don Karr 20202

WITHIN THE IMPOSING MASS of Blake studies one finds few items which discuss the
use of kabbalah by Blake, even if esoteric currents are acknowledged as reflected in his
work. Where kabbalah is identified as an influence—or possible influence—the
connections, if developed at all, rarely go beyond simple part-for-part examples (e.g.,
Eden, Beulah, Generation, and Ulro as the kabbalistic “four worlds”). Mostly what
one finds are scattered highly speculative remarks or free-floating ascriptions where it
is neither specified nor clear what “kabbalah” (or “cabala”) refers to.1 Thus, most
welcome is a recent study which treats at length the influence of kabbalah on Blake:
Sheila Spector’s illustrated companion volumes: “Wonders Divine”: The Development of
Blake’s Kabbalistic Myth and “Glorious Incomprehensible”: The Development of Blake’s
Kabbalistic Language. Briefly, Spector’s thesis is this:
… even though he [Blake] explicitly, often even emphatically, rejected many
aspects of what might be called normative Christianity, he still found himself
trapped within what had become the oppressive archetypal framework he
repudiated, and it was only through a concerted life-long effort, first to
recognize the bonds, and then, to seek out alternate modes of thought, that
Blake was able, finally, to create his own system. But that new system,
contrary to popular belief, was not an original creation. Rather, when Blake
finally liberated himself from the exoteric myth structure that dominates
Western thought, he turned to its esoteric counterpart, the myth that, though
originating with Jewish mystics, had been adapted by Christian Kabbalists to
conform with their—and, in fact, with Blake’s—own brand of Christianity.
(—“Wonders Divine,” page 25)
Through the books, Spector reinforces her approach with such observations as
From the numerous failed attempts to explain these brief works [Blake’s
minor prophecies], it should be apparent that Kabbalism truly is a different
mode of thought, one not amenable to conventional methods of
interpretation, at least not without grossly distorting the text.
(—“Wonders Divine,” page 106)
It is important to establish at the onset that the kabbalah to which Spector refers
throughout her study is primarily the Christian interpretation of Lurianic kabbalah as
exemplified by Francis Mercury van Helmont’s Adumbratio kabbalæ christianæ, a
treatise appended to some editions of the second volume of Christian Knorr von
Rosenroth’s Kabbala denudata (2 volumes, Sulzbach: 1677-84). Hence, it is neither any
form of Jewish kabbalah (of which there is more of an array than is generally
acknowledged) nor the Christian cabala of earlier figures such as Pico della Mirandola,
Johannes Reuchlin, Francesco Giorgi, and Henry Cornelius Agrippa. Blake made use
of merkabah mysticism as well. So, too, in this article, “kabbalah” will refer to the
amalgam of merkabah, Lurianic kabbalah, and van Helmont’s Adumbratio which Blake,
according to Spector, subsumed.
Spector offers a stage-by-stage analysis of Blake’s absorption of kabbalistic concepts,
showing true incorporation—as opposed to reworking, gloss, or “mere conceptual
analogy.” As Spector presents it, kabbalistic elements and doctrines naturally
correspond to the characters, concepts, and methods in Blake’s writings, though, it
 © Don Karr 20202

must be admitted that, in reading Blake without benefit of Spector’s guidance, these
equivalences are not so obvious.
Both volumes are organized chronologically, starting with “Contexts,” then
discussing Blake’s work according to a four-fold scheme: Pre-Myth / Pre-
Intentionality, The Fact of Myth / The Fact of Intentionality, The Concept of Myth /
The Concept of Intentionality, and The Transcendent Myth / The Divine
Intentionality, myth being the focus of “Wonders Divine,” intentionality as reflected in
Blake’s use of language being the concern of “Glorious Incomprehensible.”
Spector contrasts the two studies in the opening lines of her similar introductions.
“Wonders Divine” begins
This is a book about Blake’s myth, defined as the structuring principle of
intentionality. Concerned with neither the mental state nor the facticity of an
object, intentional analysis focuses on the ways by which different levels of
consciousness establish relationships with their respective referents.
Spector argues accordingly that
the progressive transformation of Blake’s personal myth from a Miltonic to a
kabbalistic orientation reflects the evolution of the basic principles upon
which Blake’s intentional relationship was predicated
(“Glorious Incomprehensible,” page 21).
The introduction to “Glorious Incomprehensible” opens
This is a book about Blake’s language, defined as the external manifestation of
intentionality. Concerned neither with the mental state nor with the facticity
of an object, intentionality refers to the relationship between the subjective
consciousness and some kind of referent; and as its external manifestation, the
material language system can be said to manifest the kind of relationship that
has been established between a particular level of consciousness and its
corresponding referent.
Spector goes on to demonstrate
how Blake’s language evolved from an original state of pre-intentionality in
which he intuited some sort of relationship between language and thought, to
a conscious awareness of the fact of intentionality, through a reflexive
analysis of the concept underlying the material language system, and
culminating, ultimately, in what amounts to an attempt to create a new
language system, through which he might apprehend the “ultimate” referent.
(—“Wonders Divine,” page 19)
Somewhat like sections of a Lurianic text, Spector’s two volumes assume each other.
While these are tandem studies, with identical prefaces (“Blake as a Kabbalist”) and
closely parallel introductions (“Blake’s Problem with Myth” vs “Blake’s Problem with
Language”), it seems best to start with “Wonders Divine,” which, in focusing on myth,
offers the theosophical context into which Blake’s advance toward a concentratedly
mystical use of language, taken up in “Glorious Incomprehensible,” is set.
“Wonders Divine” starts off by providing the context and background of Blake’s
progress as it grew from his problems with the Christian formulation of Milton: the
 © Don Karr 20202

Doctrine of Original Sin, the Ransom Theory, and Eternal Damnation. Bringing
Jewish mysticism and kabbalah into the discussion at the outset, Chapters 1, 2, and 3
(“Contexts: The Myths of Eighteenth-Century England,” “From Calvinism to
Kabbalism: Transforming Myths,” and “Pre-Mythology: Miltonic Antecedents”)
include discussions of (i) Ma’aseh Merkavah, that is, speculation on visions of the
Divine Chariot; (ii) Ma’aseh Bereshit, the Work of Creation, which concerns the
occurrence and structure of the universe through such concepts as tzimtzum
(contraction), the sefirot, the four worlds, shevirat [ha-kelim] (breaking [of the
vessels]), the parzufim (“faces” or divine personae) and tikkun (restoration); and (iii)
the passage of all this into “the most fully delineated Christianized version of the
[kabbalistic] myth, the Adumbratio Kabbalæ Christianæ” (—p. 44) of F. M. van
Helmont, the contents of which are outlined (—pp. 44-46). The discussion then passes
to Blake’s early works and their critique of and struggle with Milton (e.g., “passive
obedience” [Milton] vs “active resistance” [Blake]) and Blake’s issues within himself
(e.g., the dilemma between the visionary and the rational). Early on, Blake postulated
the notion of the “Poetic Genius,” that potential within to apprehend the non-
corporeal world, as a critical part of his effort to subvert Milton’s “passive obedience”
and the Paradise Lost myth.
In Chapter 4, “The Fact of Myth: Contemporary Apocalypse,” we find Blake at the
stage where he passes from trying to renovate Milton to abandoning him. Here, too,
are the first inklings of kabbalah in Blake’s work, though these are tentative
expressions which may show only affinity or sympathy through some initial contact.
Evidence of direct influence is not firm, even if some features (given Blake’s use of
Hebrew roots) and passages are highly suggestive. This is also the stage at which
Blake passes from “fiction” to “prophecy.”
Spector’s pivotal Chapter 5, “The Concept of Myth: Psychomachia,” offers full—and
quite convincing—kabbalistic interpretations of Blake’s minor prophecies (The Song of
Los, The Book of Urizen, The Book of Ahania, and The Book of Los), tracing, as in the
earlier works, the pre-mythic state, the imposition of the dualistic (Miltonic) state,
the exposure of the errors of that dualistic state, and, finally, postulation regarding the
correction of this error. Spector, for instance, presents The Book of Urizen (—pp. 92-97)
as pressing Lurianic myth upon Milton’s two “falls” (from Paradise Lost), with
chapters kabbalistically organized according to the concepts of tzimtzum (God’s
contraction within Himself, Chapter 1), the consolidation of din (unmitigated
judgment, Chapter 2), and shevirat [ha-kelim] (the breaking [of the vessels], Chapter
3). Succeeding chapters of Urizen speak of the results of shevirah, eventually leading to
the process of tikkun (restoration) in the final chapter. The Book of Los is shown (—pp.
102-106) to be derived from van Helmont’s Adumbratio, for it passes from the three-
fold Lurianic structure (tzimtzum-shevirat-tikkun as given in The Book of Urizen) to van
Helmont’s four-fold structure: (i) The Primordial Institution, resulting in the
formation of Adam Kadmon (Primordial Man); (ii) The State of Destitution, namely
shevirah and the resulting excess of din; (iii) The Modern Constitution, on “Adam
Kadmon’s attempts to separate the shards of negation from the lights of purity”; and
(iv) The Supreme Restitution, tikkun, including “the restoration of all souls, the
capture of Satan, and the destruction of the shards.”
 © Don Karr 20202

Blake’s final stage is discussed in Chapter 6, “The Transcendent Myth: Kabbalism.”

The chapter begins (—page 107)
In the major prophecies [Vala/The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem], the
various kabbalistic motifs Blake had been experimenting with evolve into a
complex, multi-faceted myth whose archetypal structure provides the means
of reconciling the two dilemmas he had been grappling with throughout the
composite art: the function of Christ and the role of the prophet in the fallen
world.
Spector shows (—pp. 110-131) Vala/The Four Zoas to be structured according to the
sefirotic tree, beginning with the lowest, malkut, and ascending through a succession of
“nights” to the “Ninth,” hokhmah. Progress through the sefirot in ascending order is
rare in kabbalistic literature. The only other example which comes to mind is Joseph
Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah (1559), which was fairly well-circulated via the Latin
translation of Paulus Riccius, Porta Lucis, printed in Pistorius’ collection, Ars
Cabalistica, and drawn upon for the grand kabbalistic glossary in Kabbala denudata.
Blake could have been familiar with this.
In Spector’s report (—pp. 131-140), Blake’s work Milton develops the roles of “upper”
and “lower” man according to features of Adam Kadmon, Primordial Man, and Adam
Rishon, who descended into the corporeal world after shevirat. In Milton, Blake resolves
some of the problems of his previous efforts by incorporating the kabbalistic notion of
gilgul, the revolution (transmigration) of the soul—from pre-existence, through
incarnation and reincarnation, to transformation in the form of the ability to
apprehend the Divine Vision as symbolized by the merkabah (—page 132).
In Jerusalem (—pp. 140-168), Blake offers merkabah mysticism as the basis for
development and restoration (—page 146). Jerusalem transforms van Helmont’s four-
fold system into a kabbalistic narrative following the progress of the characters Los
and Albion (see comments below).
Many more parallels are discussed to demonstrate Blake’s incorporation of kabbalah.
Spector offers kabbalistic readings of Blake with an ease and assurance which suggest
their being foregone conclusions, which—one might forget reading this book—they
are not. But Blake’s cast of characters, his own array of parzufim if you will, so neatly
aligns with elements in the kabbalistic universe that Spector’s argument is impossible
to dismiss. The conclusion to “Wonders Divine,” “The Eternal Prophet,” begins
More than simply a collection of images and archetypes, the kabbalistic myth
provided Blake with the medium necessary for reexamining his vocation as
prophet.
“Glorious Incomprehensible” follows a parallel track to “Wonders Divine” through the
phases of Blake’s development. The background Spector provides in the first chapter
(“Contexts: The Languages of Eighteenth-Century England”) concerns the
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers and grammarians. Blake saw the
march of philosophy from Bacon (through Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, [James]
Beattie, and [Thomas] Reid) to [Dugald] Stewart as a descent, or degeneration. The
Cambridge Platonists are mentioned as something of an alternative. Blake didn’t have
much time for contemporary grammarians either, though he did draw from
 © Don Karr 20202

contemporary philologists, especially those who formulated theories regarding

English as being descended from ancient Hebrew. Spector seems to assume Blake’s
use of John Parkhurst’s works, e.g. Hebrew and English Lexicon, without Points.2
Chapter 2 is subtitled “Newton’s sleep,” the expression which Blake threw back at the
empirical thought which he would attempt to supersede. As in “Wonders Divine,” this
second chapter surveys Blake’s early prose, The Book of Thel, Tiriel, and Visions of the
Daughters of Albion. Spector discusses Blake’s early experiments with Hebraic roots
“which would eventually undermine the specious stability of conventional [English]
language system” as Blake progressively treated his derived terms with more
kabbalistic range and intention. In these early works, Blake often used Hebrew roots
for the names he invented; these names, however, are not simply translated words
with fixed denotations or connotations. Each suggests multiple meanings, or an
aggregate of meanings, which defy singular allegorical reference or, for that matter,
limitation on its mythic function. This technique, or process, in Blake becomes more
conscious in the stage described in Chapter 3, “The Fact of Intentionality: ‘And
twofold Always.’” Spector’s treatment of Songs of Innocence and of Experience reads like
a fractal reduction of the whole course of Blake’s development, which progresses from
pre-intentionality of the early works, as in “The Little Girl Lost” and “The Little Girl
Found,” through the notions of the “twofold vision,” as in “A Little GIRL Lost,”
toward the “Divine intention” of the major prophecies. Finally, “To Tirzah” predicts
the need to transcend the double vision and to move into higher modes of intentional
relationship. With the name Tirzah itself, Blake reached into the Bible, and, in the
manner of kabbalistic exegesis, attempted to get past its literal meanings in order to
uncover its essential reality—as he did with clusters of terms which were derived
from Hebrew roots or which could be subject to improvised Hebraic etymologies.
Still, Blake’s workings with the facts of intentionality proved in themselves limiting.
Blake’s next step was to move beyond fundamental principles of the language into its
theoretical basis, as in the title of Spector’s Chapter 4, “The Concept of Intentionality:
‘soft Beulahs night.’” Parallel to the corresponding Chapter 4 in “Wonders Divine,”
Spector discusses Blake’s pivotal four-part psychomachia, which again traces the whole
process: (i) The Song of Los represents pre-intentionality, the animal soul; (ii) The Book
of Urizen plots issues of the fact of intentionality via the split between the visionary
and the rational; (iii) The Book of Ahania “turns the concept of intentionality back on
itself”; and, lastly, (iv) The Book of Los expresses the need to transcend the material
system.
Regarding again a work commented on above in the discussion of “Wonders Divine,”
The Book of Urizen “dramatizes the process by which the Rational Soul forms the
material language system” (—page 115) setting Urizen’s—the rational component’s—
consolidation of language in coincidence and equivalence with Los’, the visionary
component’s, isolation. In the end, the concept of intentionality is postulated as the
means of transcending the restrictive effects of the language system. Demonstrations
of this are in Blake’s reinterpretations of names according to kabbalistic rather than
corporeal referents. An example:
 © Don Karr 20202

The most significant, both in terms of myth and vocabulary, is the name
Urizen. While probably coined as a kind of combination of the Greek for
“horizon,” the Hebrew for “curse/light” of the “counselor,” and the English
pun, “your reason,” now, the name is represented in terms of its occult core,
the resh-zayin (raz), “secret,” hidden within Urizen.
(—“Glorious Incomprehensible,” page 116)
The final minor prophecy, The Book of Los, exposes the fallacies underlying
conventional speech, but provides no alternative or transcendent system, one that
would promote the visionary faculty.
The major prophecies are taken up in Chapter 5, “The Divine Intentionality: ‘my
supreme delight.’” It is in this stage that Blake’s language is transformed, not solely
by his “conversion” to kabbalah but by his surrender to an apparent “external voice”
dictating to him from the spirit realm. The meanings of the familiar elements also
shift as Blake moves from allegory to mysticism.
If one turns to a standard discussion of Blake, one finds that “the giant Albion” is said
to represent “the collective being of the English nation,” and it is left at that. This
evokes an issue which Spector addresses a few places (see, in particular, the opening
of her conclusion to “Glorious Incomprehensible”): Conventional wisdom would have it
that Blake’s themes, his mythic structure, and his cast of allegorical characters are
more or less fixed, and that a character, such as Albion, should always refer to the
same thing. Hence, the conclusion drawn by such conventional wisdom is that
Blake’s use of these elements is inconsistent, if not arbitrary. Spector’s analysis, with
the aid of a kabbalistic (or, at least, Hebraic) reading, suggests something entirely
different.
In his early works, Blake used the word [Albion] fairly conventionally, at
first as a poetic name for England, and then, in America, exploiting the Latin
derivation to juxtapose the leprous Urizen, ally of Albion, against Red Orc,
champion of the Americas. But at some point during the composition of The
Four Loas, Blake seems to have recognized the deeper significance of the
lexeme. No longer a personification of the “Island White” (or a pun on the
Isle of Wight), Albion assumes the dimensions of an entirely original set of
roots, both found in normative Hebrew: aleph-lamed (’el, “God”), and beit-nun
(ben, “son”). As the newly discovered “son of God,” Albion is revealed to be
Everyman, Blake’s Adam Rishon, created or corporeal man, an indigenous
“Orc” who, analogous to the biblical prototype, embodies the individual, the
race and the land.
(—“Glorious Incomprehensible,” page 129)
Spector leads us to the culmination of Blake’s development, where Blake
creates a fully mystical language that, no longer interposing itself between the
subjective consciousness and the ultimate referent, finally serves as the vehicle
for achieving the via mystica.
(—“Glorious Incomprehensible,” page 169)
It will be interesting to see what the response of Blake scholars is to Spector’s
confident presentation. From the other side—that of the kabbalah specialist—one must
appreciate Spector’s care in circumscribing just which kabbalah she is talking about
 © Don Karr 20202

and her acknowledgement that, from a traditional Jewish standpoint, Blake’s

kabbalistic sources leave quite a bit to be desired, especially given that they were
written or translated by Christians either for Christians or for Jews to compel their
conversion.
Assuming that Spector’s thesis is correct—her argument and analysis are certainly
persuasive—one can uncover much of what lay behind the progress of Blake’s obscure
works as well as his methods in composing them.
—Don Karr

__________________________
1. See Spector’s article, “Kabbalistic Sources—Blake’s and His Critics’,” in Blake: An Illustrated
Quarterly 67, volume 17, number 3 (Winter 1983-84) for
(i) a brief review of scholars who broach the issue of kabbalah in connection with Blake,
(ii) a discussion of the problems surrounding the scholarly approach to kabbalah itself, and
(iii) a survey of sources of kabbalah which could have been available to Blake.
Spector’s other works include
• Jewish Mysticism: An Annotated Bibliography on the Kabbalah in English (New
York/London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1984)
• “The Reasons for ‘Urizen’” in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 21, no. 4 (Spring 1988)
• “Hebraic Etymologies of Proper Names in Blake” in Philological Quarterly 67, no. 3
(Summer 1988)
• “Sources and Etymologies of Blake’s ‘Tirzah’” in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 23, no.
4 (Spring 1990)
• “Blake as an Eighteenth-Century Hebraist” in Blake and His Bibles [LOCUST HILL
LITERARY STUDIES, No. 1], edited by David V. Erdman (West Cornwall: Locust Hill
Press, 1990)
• “Blake’s Milton as Kabbalistic Vision” in Religion and Literature 25, no. 1 (Spring 1993).
2. London: 1762; 3rd edition, London: 1792.
 © Don Karr 20202

Robert Wang
The Rape of Jewish Mysticism by Christian Theologians:
How the Modern Occult Movement Grew out of Renaissance Attempts
to Convert the Jews

Columbia [MD]: Marcus Aurelius Press, 2001; vi + 147 pages.

ISBN 0-9715591-0-4.

© Don Karr 2003

This review originally appeared in Esoterica: The Journal of Esoteric Studies, Volume
VI, edited by Arthur Verslius (2004),
online at http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeVI/Wang.html

[See a description and the preface of the book at www.marcusaureliuspress.com

(NO LONGER EXTANT—2009)]

IN SPITE OF the “assertive title” (the author’s term, page ii), The Rape of Jewish
Mysticism by Christian Theologians by Robert Wang is a rather drab summary of well-
known—and well-worn—sources. Wang does not make use of much scholarship since
Gershom Scholem (works cited from 1941 and 1974) on kabbalah (though there is
recourse to Moshe Idel, especially regarding Abraham Abulafia), Frances Yates (1964
and 1979) and François Secret (1964) on cabala, Charles G. Nauert (1965) on Agrippa,
Peter French (1972) on Dee, etc. The scope of the book is too limited: It starts too late
(nothing on Ramon Llull, thirteenth century) and ends too early (nothing on
 © Don Karr 20202

developments of the seventeenth-through-nineteenth centuries) to fulfill the promise

of its title. Moreover, Wang does not engage his thesis (i.e., the rape of Jewish
mysticism) except fleetingly anywhere in the book save the preface and the brief
conclusion.
The Rape of Jewish Mysticism does fairly distinguish the separate, if intersecting, paths
of Jewish kabbalah and Christian cabala. The first chapter (of three), “Beginnings,”
opens with a summary of Jewish mysticism up to the Zohar. The chapter is
interrupted by a few pages on the Hermetica and then returns to “The Early Hebrew
Kabbalists” (one paragraph), Isaac the Blind (three paragraphs), and Abraham
Abulafia (about four pages). Thereafter, we meet the familiar Renaissance figures:
Ficino, Pico, and Reuchlin. However, to tell the story from the beginning, Wang
should have begun his account of Christian appropriation of Jewish mysticism in the
thirteenth century—a century earlier than he did—with Ramon Llull, who was
apparently the first to incorporate kabbalah, or kabbalah-like ideas, into his system and
rhetoric with the aim of converting Jews. (Refer to Harvey Hames, The Art of
Conversion: Christianity & Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century, Leiden – Boston – Köln:
Brill, 2000.)
The second chapter, “After Reuchlin,” might be useful to those who cannot read the
French works of François Secret; the first half of the chapter summarizes material
from Les Kabbalistes chretiens de la Renaissance (Paris: Dunod, 1964) on Paul Ricci,
Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, Francesco Giorgio, and others. It then discusses Agrippa
(dependent on Nauert), followed by a return to Jewish kabbalah—that of sixteenth-
century Safed—with sections on Moses Cordovero and Isaac Luria.
The third chapter, “Occultism Established” (which actually starts by backing up a
few centuries) opens with a rapid account of the inquisition, passing to a segment
called “The Hold of Egyptian Magic on the West,” which leads us to “Giordano
Bruno and the Egyptian Gods.”1 Sketches of Athanasius Kircher and John Dee follow.
The coverage of Dee serves as a particularly noticeable example of Wang’s
dependence on a limited number of dated sources—in this case, Frances Yates’ Occult
Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), Peter J.
French’s John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1972) and two texts, A True and Faithful Relationship… (reprinted in Glasgow,
1974) and Monas Hieroglyphica (translated by C. H. Josten, published in Ambix XII,
1964). Wang failed to make use of a wealth of research since Yates and French, most
notably Nicholas H. Clulee’s John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion
(London and New York: Routledge, 1988), but including Robert Turner’s Elizabethan
Magic: The Art and the Magus (Shaftesbury: Element Books, 1989) and the numerous
texts translated and/or edited by Geoffrey James (1984), Gordon James (1995), and
Joseph Peterson (1985). A substantial number of works by and about Dee were
published in the ’eighties and ’nineties by both academic and popular—some occult—
presses.
The Rape of Jewish Mysticism comes to a premature halt with “Christian Kabbalah
becomes Rosicrucianism,” “The Fama Fraternitas,” and “Robert Fludd.” A coda
entitled “Rejected Jews” sidles up to the supposed theme of the book which is so
 © Don Karr 20202

energetically shouted by its title. Alas, there is little more here than restatements of
the obvious and speculations undermined by inadequate research: “Expulsions and
forced conversions were a deeply disturbing process…” (page 140); “Perhaps, indeed,
there were many ‘secret Jews,’ for whom the deeply meditative Christian Kabbalah
may have been a compromise” (page 141).
In the midst of the second chapter, Wang mentions S. L. M. Mathers’ and Aleister
Crowley’s compendium 777 (page 71), where he states that Francesco Giorgio’s lists of
correspondences is “an early precursor” of 777. This suggests that it is to the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn—which was headed by Mathers and which counted
Crowley among its members—that he is ultimately leading us, namely, to the British
occult of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Golden Dawn’s dogma and
ritual have indeed shaped Western occultism “as it is known today” (a phrase from
the back cover). Not only does Wang fail to inform us who Mathers and Crowley are,
but, as already noted, he stops his account short at Robert Fludd. (Nor does Wang
specify the nature of 777, which is table upon table of correspondences whose
organizing principle is the ten sefirot and the twenty-two paths, i.e. the twenty-two
Hebrew letters, of the kabbalistic “tree of life.”)
Wang’s omission of developments through the seventeenth-to-nineteenth centuries is
all the more puzzling given the book’s subtitle, How the Modern Occult Movement Grew
out of Renaissance Attempts to Convert the Jews. We could quibble over the meaning of
“modern” (as it might be broadly understood in a formula such as Biblical-Talmudic-
Medieval-Modern), but the full text of the back cover takes away any doubt about what
“modern” refers to here: “The extraordinary story of how, from the fourteenth
century on, Christian theologians used the essence of Jewish mysticism to prove the
divinity of Christ, and how that effort resulted in Christian Kabbalah, in
Rosicrucianism, and in all aspects of the Western occult movement as it is known
today.” Further, the last paragraph of Wang’s preface begins, “By the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, the assimilation of Jewish Kabbalah into Western occultism was
complete” (page vi).2 Add to this that Wang has written on the Golden Dawn’s
manner of Western occultism in books such as An Introduction to the Golden Dawn
Tarot (New York: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1979), The Secret Temple (New York: Samuel
Weiser, Inc., 1980), and Qabalistic Tarot: A Textbook of Occult Philosophy (York Beach:
Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1983—a new edition is now available from Marcus Aurelius
Press [2004]).
Were Wang at the very least to get us to Christian Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala
denudata (Sulzbach: 1677-8, 1684), he would have accounted for of the other key source
for “the Modern Occult Movement” as characterized by the Golden Dawn (the most
important single source being Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia—whether by way of
Barrett’s Magus or not). Indeed, from the Latin of Kabbala denudata, S. L. M. Mathers
translated to English three tracts from the Zohar (with von Rosenroth’s—and his
own—elaborations) under the title The Kabbalah Unveiled (1887; this title is still
available in several versions). Kabbala denudata was source to many other influential
occultists, the best-known being Mme. Blavatsky and Albert Pike.
 © Don Karr 20202

Along with the general shortcomings of the book, we must also endure its many ill-
conceived phrases: (referring to the Zohar) “The book … became shrouded in
mystery” (page 11); “The system of Abulafia was quite unique” (page 21); (about
Agrippa) “He was the turning point toward modern occultism” (page 76); and (also
about Agrippa) “… he became the leader of a relatively avant garde group of scholars
…” (page 80). All this and the topic-by-topic rehash from too few sources suggest a
hasty scholar writing at his material. Contrast Wang’s work with Philip Beitchman’s
Alchemy of the Word (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), where a
clear dependence on secondary sources does not stand in the way of a provocative and
nuanced discussion.
Some of Wang’s statements are simply wrong: (writing about Lurianic Kabbalah after
1590 in a section on Jewish developments) “Of course, Luria’s work was only of use to,
and understood by, a very small elite” (page 98); while Wang cites Scholem’s Major
Trend in Jewish Mysticism, he seems to have missed the second part of Scholem’s
“Seventh Lecture: Isaac Luria and His School.”3
There are also mistakes and omissions in the notes.
The need for an up-to-date introductory book on Christian Cabala has certainly not
been filled by The Rape of Jewish Mysticism. The fault is not with the effort to write a
“popular,” accessible book. There are a number of well-done works on Jewish
mysticism aimed at a general audience, e.g., Neil Asher Silberman’s Heavenly Powers:
Unraveling the Secret History of the Kabbalah (New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1998) and J.
H. Laenen’s Jewish Mysticism: An Introduction (Louisville – London – Leiden:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2001). Even more specialized books, such as Lawrence
Fine’s excellent study of Isaac Luria, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003) have been written so as not to exclude the
non-scholarly reader.

—Don Karr

Notes:

1. Erik Iverson’s Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphics in European Tradition, used by Wang in
Chapter 3, is dated 1993, the date of the Princeton BOLLINGEN MYTHOS Series reprint. It was
originally written in 1961. Now see Erik Hornung, The Secret Lore of Egypt and Its Impact on the
West, translated from the German [DAS ESOTERISCHE AEGYPTEN, 1999] by David Lorton
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).
2. What was, in fact, initially assimilated into Western occultism bore little resemblance to
Jewish Kabbalah.
3. Scholem states, “The Lurianic Kabbalah was the last religious movement in Judaism the
influence of which became preponderant among all sections of Jewish people and in every
country of the Diaspora, without exception.” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 3rd edition,
London: Thames & Hudson, 1955, pages 285-6).
 © Don Karr 20202

Menahem Recanati – Commentary on the Daily Prayers:

Flavius Mithridates’ Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text,
and an English Version
edited with introduction and notes by Giacomo Corazzol, two volumes, 860 pages
[THE KABBALISTIC LIBRARY OF GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA 3]
Giulio Busi, general editor - Torino: Nino Aragno Editore, 2008.

THE TWO GENEROUS VOLUMES of Commentary on the Daily Prayers serve several
purposes:
(1) The Hebrew text is a critical edition of Perush ha-Tefillot, “the last work he [Recanati]
undertook” (HEBREW SECTION: pages 1*-151*).
(2) As with the two previous monographs in the KABBALISTIC LIBRARY series, the Latin
translation of Commentary on the Daily Prayers by the Jewish convert Flavius
Mithridates (pages 163-373) presents an important kabbalistic source work for Pico.
(3) The English translation (pages 375-681)—from Mithridates’ Latin—is the first English
edition of any complete text by Recanati.*
Giacomo Corazzol describes Mithridates’ rendition of Commentary on the Daily
Prayers as a combination of strict word-for-word translation and glosses which
“provided Pico with a sort of textbook” on Jewish liturgy and kabbalah
(INTRODUCTION, page 108). But before taking up Mithridates’ Latin translation in
detail (pages 98-161), Corazzol offers a full discussion of the fourteenth-century
Italian kabbalist Menahem Recanati, his works and his sources (noting in particular
Ibn Malka’s Commentary on the Daily Prayers and Ya’aqov ben Ya’aqov ha-Kohen’s
Commentary on the Chariot), culminating in an analysis of Recanati’s theosophy and
theurgy (pages 17-97). While Recanati is often mentioned in studies of kabbalah, cited
along with “such seminal figures as Maimonides [and] Nahmanides” (Giller,
1993**—page 5), and referred to as an “important Italian kabbalist” (Fine, 2003†—page
103), nowhere else do we find anything like “[t]he detailed reconstruction presented
by Corazzol,” which, series editor Giulio Busi adds, “is even more important if seen
within the framework of Pico’s Conclusiones, since Count della Mirandola used
Recanati as a veritable encyclopedia for kabbalistic texts that he could not otherwise
read” (Busi’s PREFACE to Commentary on the Daily Prayers, page 11). Corazzol’s
introduction is the first comprehensive treatment of Recanati in English. ††
Recanati’s Commentary on the Torah has been shown to have been a key source for
Pico’s Conclusiones. Refer in particular to the numerous references in Chaim
Wirszubski’s Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge –
London: Harvard University Press, 1989), where, in identifying sources for points of
Pico’s kabbalah, Wirszubski quotes—in English—the Commentary on the Torah dozens
of times. These translations, however, are not rendered from Mithridates’ translation,
which “seems to have been lost almost completely” (Busi’s PREFACE, page 9), but
rather from Recanati’s Hebrew text. In contrast, the Commentary on the Daily Prayers
is quoted by Wirszubski, using Mithridates’ Latin version which is fully preserved,
only twice: on page 52, regarding the word AMEN, and on page 149 on “[t]he intrusion
of magic into the mysticism of prayer.” Thus, the present edition of the Commentary
on the Daily Prayers fills a major gap in Wirszubski’s study, just as the first volume in
 © Don Karr 20202

the KABBALISTIC LIBRARY series did: The Great Parchment (2004) published (in
Hebrew, Mithridates’ Latin, and English) for the first time a work not mentioned at
all by Wirszubski. I must hasten to add, however, that noting these lacunæ is not
intended to cast criticism upon Wirszubski’s remarkable pioneering work.
The theosophy and theurgy of Recanati’s commentaries are founded on the idea
that “the perfection of the supernal merkavah [the upper world] depends on the
perfection of the inferior man [the microcosm]” (Commentary on the Torah, fol. 51b, cited
in the INTRODUCTION, page 71 [my brackets—DK]). This contingent perfection can
be obtained through the perfection of one’s thought, speech, and action (or gestures) in
prayer, a “formula drawn by Recanati from the Sefer ha-Yihud” (INTRODUCTION,
page 74). Prayer is instrumental in the perfection process, for “[e]ach word of the
prayers [elaborated by the sages] is like a tessera [a glass or marble tile] of mosaic,
whose proper interpretation can turn into a milestone for setting out in the celestial
streets of emanation” (INTRODUCTION, page 80 [my brackets—DK]).
Giulio Busi concludes his preface (page 12),
Recanati’s Commentary on the Daily Prayers was apt to raise Pico’s interest, especially
since it offered a well-structured attempt to define a link between earthly liturgy and
intradivine life. While reading the Commentary, the Count must have immediately
perceived quite a few similarities with Neoplatonic theurgy, and Mithridates did his
best to put his pupil on the right track. It is therefore not surprising that Corazzol was
able to detect a most probable influence of Recanati’s Commentary on Pico’s Orphic
theses, which are replete with theurgical hints. To the daring Neoplatonic magician
that Pico was, the mystical sympathies between below and above sketched by the
Italian kabbalist issued a challenge that could only be accepted.

Readership: those interested in Jewish mystical theology, kabbalah, Christian

Hebraism and the Christian reception of the kabbalah, Medieval and Renaissance
religious and philosophical history, Neoplatonism, and European humanism.
—Don Karr
February 2009

__________________________________
* Along with the many passages from Recanati’s Commentary on the Torah translated in Wirszubski’s
Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter, a page-and-a-half excerpt from Commentary on the Torah (ff. 3r-v) is
given in English (pages 217-8) and Hebrew (page 233), and “thematically summarized” (pages 218-
9) in CHAPTER SEVEN, “The Beginning and End: Bereshit and the Sabbath,” in Crofton Black, Pico’s
HEPTAPLUS and Biblical Hermeneutics (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2006).
** Pinchas Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989).
† Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2003).
†† In Hebrew, there is Moshe Idel’s R. Menahem Rekanati, ha-mekubal (Tel Aviv, Schocken, 1998),
which is the first of an intended two-volume study. My thanks to Joel Hecker for calling this work
to my attention.
In English, note the paper by Sandra Debenedetti Stow, “The Modality of Interaction between
Jewish and Christian Thought in the Middle Ages: The Problem fo Free Will and Divine Wisdom
in Dante Alighieri and Menahem Recanti as a Case Study,” in Interaction between Judaism and
Christianity in History, Religion, Art and Literature, edited by M. Poorthius, J. Schwartz, and J.
Turner (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2009), pages 165-217.
 © Don Karr 20202

Yosef Giqatilla – The Book of Punctuation

Flavius Mithridates’ Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version
edited with Introduction and Notes by Annett Martini.
THE KABBALISTIC LIBRARY OF GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA, Volume 4
Giulio Busi, General Editor.
Torino: Nino Aragno Editore, 2010.

Sefer ha-Niqqud [= BOOK OF PUNCTUATION], from Joseph Gikatilla’s early “philosophical-

kabbalistic” period, is given in three versions: (1) a critical edition of the Hebrew text (the
short version used by Mithridates); (2) a transcript of the Latin translation of Mithridates;
and (3) an English translation from Mithridates’ Latin.
Sefer ha-Niqqud is a treatise on “The Mystical Connotations of the [Hebrew] Vowels,”
showing a play of influences, primarily between the scholasticism of Maimonides and the
metaphysics of Sefer Yesirah. The text bears comparison to Gikatilla’s Sha’ar ha-Niqqud, which
is the third section (of three) of his Ginnat Egoz,* which is also from his early period.
Yet another work by Gikatilla with a similar title, Sod ha-Niqqud on the secrets of the vowels,
is from his later “sefirotic,” or “theosophical-kabbalistic,” period.
Sefer ha-Niqqud commences with an introduction which
condenses the course of [Gikatilla’s] thought in a concise fashion … followed by a general
discourse on the vowels with respect to their effects on letters, the spheres and the unique
name of God. Thereafter the vowels holam, qamas hataf, qamas, suruq, hiruq, sere, segol, sva’
and patah are treated one by one in detail. The treatise concludes with a presentation of all
six combinations of the word ‘holam,’ that is to say hamal, lehem, lemoah, mahal and melah.
(—pages 58-59).
Within Sefer ha-Niqqud,
it was one of Giqatilla’s main concerns to show that the Hebrew vowels take part in the
theory of creation expressed in the Sefer yesirah because to him the vowels are the
guarantors of motion and thus the mainspring of the process of creation. (—page 87)
The vowels “transform [the letters’] potency into actuality.” (ibid)
At the opening of a subchapter on GOD’S UNIQUE NAME IN RELATION TO THE VOWELS (§
6), Martini offers this assessment (—page 118):
Giqatilla’s entire work, whether in his early philosophical-linguistic period or in his later
sefirotic phase, is determined by the extensive consideration of the unique name of God,
the tetragramm, and His other appellations such as Adonay, Elohim, or Eheyeh. The
concept of the tetragramm emerges as the center of Giqatilla’s thought, and this concept
of God’s unique name underwent interesting modifications, depending on the particular
philosophical or religious influences to which he was exposed. Hence, a detailed study of
the different perceptions that Giqatilla developed with respect to the tetragramm could
serve as a mirror of his intellectual development.**
__________________________
* See Schlomo Blickstein’s Ph.D. dissertation, BETWEEN PHILOSOPHYAND MYSTICISM: A STUDY OF THE
PHILOSOPHICAL-QABBALISTIC WRITINGS OF JOSEPH GIQATILA (1248-C.1322) (New York: Jewish Theological
Seminary of America, 1983), which focuses on Ginnat ’Egoz.
** This desideratum may be answered somewhat by Elke Morlok’s recent book, Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s
Hermeneutics (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).
 © Don Karr 20202

In § 7 of the introduction, ATTEMPT AT AN INTERPRETATION, Martini offers “a new

approach toward defining Giqatilla’s position within Spanish mysticism of the 13th century”
(—page 130), challenging conclusions of her predecessors along the way, e.g.,
Thus, according to Giqatilla, there is no conflict between allegorical and symbolical
interpretation of the Torah as Scholem assumed, for the mystic strives to exceed allegory
by accepting it as a method of harmonizing scientific knowledge with the Torah in order
to reach the symbol as an image of God’s very own essence. However, there is no
evidence for Idel’s thesis that Maimonides’ rational approach to ma’aseh bereshit and
ma’aseh merkava launched a positive or negative discussion within mystical circles in
Giqatilla’s writings—neither in his early works or in his later teachings. (—page 158)
Discussion of Gikatilla’s development from his early works to his later teachings is the core
of the introduction’s § 7, describing it as a “process of disengagement from Aristotelian
approaches” which “culminates in the Ša’are orah,” Gikatilla’s classic account of the sefirot.*
With what I will call an efficient subtlety, Martini traces the influences affecting this process
in detail.
Thus far, I have discussed only Martini’s introduction, which, like Giacomo Corazzol’s
introduction to Menahem Recanati’s Commentary on the Daily Prayers from the same series**,
constitutes a substantial (145-page) study not only of the featured text but of its author as
well.
Martini describes Mithridates’ Latin translation, identifying the “reading aids” supplied by
the translator to help Pico through passages which, in “pure translation” would have been
utterly opaque. Mithridates’ “clarifying comments…distinguish themselves for being concise
and faithful to the source.” (—page 174) There are, however, Mithridates’ more “interpretive
comments,” designed to prompt the interest of “Renaissance philosophers such as Ficino or
Pico” (—page 189), discussed in Martini’s § 3. THE ASCENSION OF THE SOUL TO THE
GREATEST FELICITAS. Further, there are Mithridates’ infrequent CHRISTIANIZING
INTERPOLATIONS (§ 4.), of which Martini remarks on two examples.

Martini’s analysis of the text shows how the concepts transmitted by the Latin versions of
works such as Sefer ha-Niqqud position themselves in the emerging Christian kabbalah of Pico
and Johannes Reuchlin, noting in particular Reuchlin’s notion of “the close affinity between
the kabbalah and Pythagorean doctrine.” (—page 188) Martini concludes, however, that “the
choice of the Sefer ha-niqqud for Pico’s kabbalistic library remains a riddle” (—page 218), for
other works, i.e., Ginnat Egoz and Sha’are Orah, “the latter actually having been recommended
to [Pico] by Del Medigo” (—ibid), would seem more fitting choices.
Readership: those interested in Jewish mystical theology, kabbalah, Christian Hebraism and
the Christian reception of the kabbalah, Medieval and Renaissance religious and philosophical
history, Neoplatonism, and European humanism.

—Don Karr, March 2011

_______________________
* In English, Gates of Light [SHA’ARE ORAH], translated by Avi Weinstein (San Francisco: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1994).
** Commentary on the Daily Prayers: Flavius Mithrdates’ Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version,
edited by Giacomo Corazzol [THE KABBALISTIC LIBRARY OF PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA, volume 3 – Giulio Busi,
general editor) Torino: Nino Aragno Editore, 2008.