Simple Kabbalah by Kim Zetter

Author:Kim Zetter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781609252052
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser Conari
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The alphabet can also be seen as a tool of creation because it helps put ideas or thoughts into words, it helps clothe ideas and lead them to expression, making them real. This suggests that the Hebrew alphabet was the tool for carrying the idea of Creation into being. But Kabbalists go beyond this by saying that letters and words actually create.

Linguists and philosophers have long wrestled with the idea that a word cannot be the created thing itself, but only a representation of that thing. According to Kabbalists, this is not the case with Hebrew. The word is the thing; the essence of the thing is tied to its name. This means that the word table, in Hebrew, shulchan, is closely tied to the object table, and that if the object were called something else, then it would also be something else and would no longer be a table. Something in the order of the letters that shape the word shulchan is the formula that creates the thing we know as a table. Alter the letters a little, create a different word, and you create a different object altogether. The Hebrew alphabet is seen by Kabbalists as a kind of code in which words are formulas for the things they express. In other words, the combination of different letters like m-a-y-i-m is a formula for water itself. Each letter represents a different energy or force that, when combined, create the thing the word expresses. This idea is also found in science, in which the elemental tables show how many things in the world can be reduced to a formula. Water, for instance, can be reduced to the elements of hydrogen and oxygen. Kabbalists are suggesting that in a similar way the Hebrew word for water, mayim, contains within it the recipe for making water. The combination of the elements represented by the Hebrew letters m-a-y-i-m can be used to conjure the forces that mix the elements of hydrogen and oxygen to create water. Everything that can be named can be broken down to a similar formula.

We can see the idea even more clearly when we remember that every Hebrew letter has a numerical equivalent. Take the word for water. If we say that the letters that comprise the word mayim represent the forces and elements that create water, we're saying also that the numerical equivalent does the same thing. We're living in an age in which genetic marking and genetic coding, which can reduce every one of us to a combination of elements and numbers, has made this much more plausible today than it must have been for the medieval Kabbalists.

We mentioned earlier that the Kabbalists kept many of their teachings secret and were selective in choosing disciples; this is one of the reasons for their secrecy. They believed that knowledge of these codes and the meditative practices that went with them could conceivably give someone the power to alter the forces of Creation. Indeed, some Kabbalists believe that this is partly what was going on when Moses divided the waters of the Red Sea.

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