Chymical Wedding

Immanion Press/Megalithica Books is currently compiling essays for an anthology on cultural appropriation in modern Paganism and occultism. While I don’t have enough material to make a submission, this caught my eye and I had to comment.While I have no real problems with cultural appropriation as such (as long as it’s done with respect and honesty rather than attention-seeking hucksterism), I still must make a point that Hermetic (or so-called Western) Kabbalah is not an example of cultural appropriation. Kabbalah is not a strictly Jewish phenomenon, and to claim that it is, is to miss out on a rich and diverse historical development.

Kabbalah as we know it didn’t exist until the late medieval period, or perhaps the very early Renaissance (depending on where you draw the line; there are a number of historical systems). There were other forms of Jewish mysticism prior to the development of Kabbalah, such as Hechaloth (a.k.a. Merkavah). Kabbalah itself is actually a very synchretic system, even if you’re only examining “kosher” Kabbalah: it borrows liberally from Neoplatonism, Pythagorean mysticism, the various Greek mystery schools, and Gnosticism (pre- and post-Christian). That’s just a handful of the major influences upon Jewish mysticism around the time of Christ, and if extended forward to the historical birth of Kabbalah (sometime in the 13th century or so) we find even more influences: early Islamic mysticism, Hermetic and Islamic alchemy, and Christianity itself. Kabbalah is thus a “brain trust” of some of the best and brightest of spiritual traditions throughout Western and Middle Eastern history, and not a purely Jewish or even mostly Jewish intellectual property.

If anything, Hermetic Kabbalah (at least as it has manifested in certain branches of the Hermetic tradition) has simply changed focus back to more classical ideas. In Hermetics, the primary focus of Kabbalah is as a system of letter and number mysticism and magic, while in Judaism, Kabbalah is mostly a method of organizing one’s prayers and meditations in a progressive format. Personally, my Hermetic practice has been vastly improved by a study of Jewish Kabbalah, but I do not consider either one of them to be “the original” considering the non-Jewish source material that originally went into it.

We humans like to make things a lot more difficult than they really are. We do this by shifting awareness from one aspect of a situation to another, generally away from the obvious and toward as many irrelevant details as we can possibly find.

In matters of mystical and magical efforts, we tend to make this mistake moreso than in any other arena of human action. Magic and mysticism are essentially simple things (though “simple” is not the same as “easy”) and, when treated as such, we can break down much of the difficulty we face.

The essence of meditation is No-mind (or “Vacancy of Mind”). This causes problems for more people than any other form or aspect of meditation. Most instruction on the subject of meditation is vague on the point of how, exactly, we are supposed to clear our minds and keep them clear. The most common method given is to focus our attention on one thought, and one thought alone, for long enough to completely dissolve our minds into that one specific thought. Then, after the point of conscious absorption, we simply remove even that one all-encompassing thought leaving us a complete internal blank.

While this method does work, and I consider it to be the best and most direct method for initially learning Vacancy of Mind, it will only serve as an inroad to the vast and empty realm of No-mind meditation. So how to continue? I have found, through years of practice and the recent working of Franz Bardon’s system of magico-mystical attainment, that the simplest way is often the best. In this case, the simplest method which I have discovered returns us to awareness. Our awareness is the first part of ourselves over which we must gain absolute control, for attention/awareness is the key to all of the arts and sciences of consciousness.

Once you have mastered the ability to free your mind of thoughts by absorbing awareness into a single thought and then removing it, you must move on to keeping your mind empty. This is not a matter of “thinking of nothing” or “concentrating on not thinking”. Those approaches, while common, are counter-productive and in fact throw up further obstacles. Instead, whenever a thought impinges upon your inner silence, quickly and aggressively remove your attention from the offending thought. That’s it. It’s that simple. Whenever a thought pops into your head, as they inevitably will, just stop paying attention.

It takes time to master this method, as it takes time to master anything of importance, but it is ultumately worth it. Meditation is the single most important discipline (which to many magicians and mystics is a dirty word) to personal, magical, and spiritual development. Not only does it strongly develop self-discipline better than almost anything else, but it also serves as the most portable method of trance induction, among more ethereal benefits which go largely unrecognized by many post-modern magical practitioners.