Quabala

Kabbalah; (translated from the Hebrew - "received tradition".) The word used to describe the ancient Jewish mystical tradition - based around esoteric interpretation of the old testament - is also applied to the Christian or Western Kabbalah which can be found at the root of many western esoteric mystery orders. At its best it is a system of esoteric philosophy, psychology and cosmology that encourages any aspect of existence to be assimilated and related to any other on many levels.

The form of Jewish mysticism, sometimes referred to as Classical Kabbalah, began in France, in the thirteenth century, but flourished in mediaeval Spain. It contains elements of both Gnosticism and Neo-platonism, and is more concerned with the nature and structure of all creation from the divine to the material worlds, than with ecstatic experience

Kabbalah deals with the ten sefirot of the tree of life, emanating from the infinite through which the universe is created and maintained. The mutual interaction of these sefirot and their individual natures are seen both as expressing the nature of divinity and as archetypes for all of creation.

The Tree of Life describes the descent of the divine into the manifest world, and methods by which divine union may be attained in this life. It can be viewed as a map of the human psyche, and of the workings of creation.

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