can someone explain to me what a kabbalah is or where i can learn

checked the sticky and the books there are all dead
i dont know if they're a good place to start anyway

>>16983683
Kabbalah is a form of Hebrew mysticism that seeks to bring a sort of union between the practitioner and the On High. It developed after the Hekhelot/Merkava traditions, picking up steam around after the Genizah fragments until it's more well known form (Lurianic Kabbalah, via Zohar, etc) developed around 1000 in Spain and Italy.

There are hundreds and hundreds of resources. These days I like David Chaim Smith. Aryeh Kaplan is good too. Lots of people start with Israel Regardie.

There's a link to a mega over in the /omg/ with a folder devoted entirely to the Kabbalah.

First of all Kabbalah is a science.
It's a shit tier one.
But to answer your questions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7DX2xKdArY

Seek for Laitman teachings.

>>16983689
at the risk of sounding like a total noob, what's /omg/?
>>16983691
this looks like a great video, cheers
how is kabbalah a science? why is it a shit tier one?

>>16983715
Occultism and Magick General:
>>16982915

It's a weird Jewish mixture of Hermetics and Platonism.

>>16983686
What? A link in the best sticky of 4chan history is dead? IMPOSSIBLE!

>>16983724
People always say this but the Neoplatonism and Hermetics really didn't take off until Luria. Before that, it was really just a tribal contemplation metric.

I don't find much of anything in the Hekhelot literature that really mirrors either Hermetics or Neoplatonism.

>>16983722
why do you have an occultism and magick general on /x/ thats like having a history general on /his/ or a random general on /b/

>>16983683
used to take mad classes on religious topics in university, one class was called "kabbalah and jewish mysticism"
honestly, the teacher was pretty biased (he loved kabbalah), so that's why I'm providing background for the information I'm about to share, anyway, here's some basic points i remember

-lots of religions have a public-facing standard version of the tradition AND a less-well-known esoteric mystical tradition
-kabbalah is the mystical tradition of jews
(kind of forget this "origins" part and was never THAT clear on it, but)
-in the beginning was pure consciousness.
-it expressed itself by shining holy light down through this series of hyper dimensional crystals (OP pic related)
-the light is so powerful, that it shattered the crystals
-shards of light (the shattered crystals) are now scattered throughout the now-imperfect world (metaphorically / hyperdimensilonally, depending on what you believe)
-purpose of humans is to "collect the shards" and repair the world (by doing good deeds as prescribed by judaism and the kabbalists)
-mainstream jews will recognize the term "tikkun olam", a jewish tenet referring to our responsibility as people to "repair the world"
-mainstream jews probably haven't heard of other kabbalah-related traditions like basically astral projecting through holy chambers, communing with entities, etc
-OP's pic is the crystals, but it's also a VERY useful and ingenious tool for the ancient philosopher! it's used as a template on which to denote subjects and their relations, almost like an ancient infographic. usually names of facets of god are written in the bubbles, but i've seen it used to draw a sort of holistic outline to break down lots of topics

maybe someone has something to say about some of this

>>16983750
>almost like an ancient infographic
i should have written it's like an ancient version of those pics where you show what "what my friends think" "what my haters think" "what my parents think" "what i think" "what it actually is" etc.

>>16983749
Because the large majority of discourse on magic here is really really basic. I figure I can provide a large resource of fairly well respected materials that have been collected from multiple avenues as a community resource.

Also, there's more to the board than just magic.

>>16983764
that makes sense
ill post any more questions i have there then i guess
>>16983750
thanks i wanted something like this
this is really interesting i wonder where they get this stuff from

>>16983832
the focus of /x/ isn't the ACTUAL occult, although there's no problem with discussion of it

its core focus is spooky stories and shit but delusional ~magickicians~ needed somewhere to be schizophrenic together

>>16983832
glad i could be of help, i don't know where they came up with it, but it makes sense as a kind of gnostic-ish answer to the timeless question "why is the world so fucked?" (it was created imperfectly, OOPS!) and actually offers an optimistic take on what you can do about it (collect and repair those crystals by doing good deeds and living right).

plus it offered hours of late night entertainment!
Kabbalah scholars would stay up all night drinking coffee and debating in IRL versions of ancient middle-eastern /x/, so i think we here can all see how that was attractive to people

Qaballahfag here. I'm going to attempt to clear up a few things in this thread about Qaballah.

For the most part, you have solid info. However, what >>16983750 posted is merely an allegory taught to initiates to get them to solve. They're given the allegory, the teachings of numerical symbolism, and OP's pic. What OP posted isn't an infograph, but an occult linguistic tool. The pic is called a sephirot. What sephirots do is explain visually how each letter of a language is related to a concept of reality and how those concepts are connected to each other. Every language has a sephirot. The Hebrew one is just the one most often seen.

>>16983683
Look up Spirit Science on youtube, thank me later ;^D

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>>16985989
>Jew martians
all of my wut

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>>16983683

>>16986841
Ignorant profane.