Kabbalah

From Jewish Magic to Gnosticism by Attilio Mastrocinque

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJGW2UANWRE

https://angelmillar.com/2017/05/12/kabbalah-and-freemasonry-greg-kaminsk...

thank you all for coming out today I 00:01 appreciate it very much my name is Greg 00:03 Kaminski for those of you don't know me 00:05 and our topic today is Renaissance 00:08 Cibola and its influence upon the craft 00:13 so I am also the creator and host of the 00:17 occulta personality podcast that a cult 00:20 of personality net lots of interesting 00:24 interviews about esoteric subjects 00:26 including Templar ISM and Freemasonry 00:28 and other things I'm also a student at 00:35 Harvard Extension school in Medieval 00:37 Studies and I've been interested in 00:41 learning about Western esotericism 00:44 since 2006 and masonry since 2009 so why 00:53 am I talking about this to you today I 00:56 have a philosophical interest in the 00:59 subject as well as spiritual interests 01:02 and academic interest from my medieval 01:06 studies as well as a personal interest 01:09 because growing up my family's Jewish 01:13 and they basically forced me into Hebrew 01:17 school at age 10 I didn't really want to 01:21 go was after school it was pain in the 01:23 butt but every so often we'd hear about 01:27 this thing called the Kabul law which 01:29 was strictly forbidden and you weren't 01:31 allowed to talk about it or study it or 01:33 do anything and people who did were 01:35 doing something they shouldn't so when 01:38 you tell an adolescent something like 01:40 that of course the natural inclination 01:42 is to find out more so that's where it 01:47 all started this presentation is based 01:52 on research from a thesis proposal I 01:54 worked on last year that was tentatively 01:58 titled the Kabul lava 01:59 anomalous utilization of a Jewish 02:01 esoteric tradition within Christian 02:04 Renaissance progressivism aside from 02:08 being like overly long academic title 02:11 that's not making much sense 02:13 I think you'll kind of get the gist of 02:16 it as we go through here that we're 02:18 going to be looking at the Cabo la notte 02:20 is just sort of in a box it's in Contra 02:26 look at it in context and see how it 02:29 affects things around it so I want to 02:32 set some expectations today Qabalah is 02:37 ancient 02:38 it's very arcane it requires a teacher 02:41 it requires initiation it's really only 02:47 accessible to religious Jews but the 02:51 reason for that is not so much of a 02:54 discrimination type thing it's mainly 02:56 because you have to know Hebrew and you 02:59 have to be familiar with the Torah and 03:01 the Talmud which are the main religious 03:05 texts because the Kabbalah and the 03:07 tradition it comes from is constantly 03:09 referring back to those so you shouldn't 03:13 expect to walk out of here understanding 03:15 what the Kabbalah is or how it all works 03:17 because it's a lifetime study just like 03:20 Freemasonry is so some definitions 03:28 esotericism is generally the study of 03:33 philosophies and practices that are 03:36 believed to originate from a spiritual 03:39 center and require initiation and 03:43 teaching in order to be able to 03:45 understand and use them Western 03:48 esotericism is a specific form of it 03:52 mainly characterized by its use of the 03:58 Kabbalah whereas other esoteric systems 04:01 in the east 04:02 use their own traditions so Qabalah this 04:07 is the Hebrew spelling here we have 04:12 different iterations of it in English 04:14 trying to attempt to distinguish the 04:17 various permutations of Qabalah so when 04:21 we spell it with the k' that indicates 04:23 it's the Jewish traditional esoteric 04:27 Cibola with a/c that's the Christian 04:30 Qabalah and with the Q that's the 04:33 hermetic Qabalah which should be used in 04:35 things like ceremonial magic or Tarot 04:38 and things of that nature 04:41 Gnosticism is a religious philosophy 04:47 that is heavily promotes an idea of 04:52 dualism the dualism can take many forms 04:56 but it's always there 04:58 matter and spirit light and dark good 05:00 and evil but the main one is the idea 05:04 that there is a greater God and a lesser 05:09 God which they would refer to as the 05:11 Demiurge oftentimes so the Demiurge is 05:15 the creator of the world and the 05:18 Demiurge thinks that he is the greater 05:20 god not knowing that there is something 05:22 above him that's the general gist of it 05:26 in a couple sentences hermit ism comes 05:30 out of the corpus Hermeticum the 05:33 philosophies generally from Alexandria 05:37 in Egypt 05:40 there's a what I would call like a 05:42 mitigated dualism in hermit ism because 05:45 it is very much involved it promotes 05:50 this idea of a microcosm macrocosm 05:53 relationship so rather than a good God 05:56 and a lesser not-so-good God it's more 05:59 of the idea of the universe or the 06:01 universal mind and the human or man is 06:06 sort of a reflection not always clear of 06:10 that universal mind and then we have 06:13 neoplatonism arguably older than the 06:18 other to neoplatonism is a philosophy 06:22 that comes out of Plato but the general 06:27 gist of it is there is one God or one 06:32 divinity and it's all about unity or 06:34 unification or a singularity so the one 06:37 is penultimate and there's no 06:40 lesser gods or dualism involved there at 06:43 all but the stories that they employ 06:47 these three Gnosticism hermit ism and 06:50 you know Platon ISM are similar and you 06:53 can find similarities and the 06:54 characteristics of the stories and the 06:56 ideas they promote so what is the Kabul 07:02 exactly so it's a Jewish esoteric 07:06 tradition it probably began in a second 07:10 between the first second centuries ii o 07:13 2nd and 4th century CE II but it was 07:15 until the 12th century that it emerged 07:18 publicly in Europe and Spain and France 07:20 and then in Italy it's primarily 07:23 concerned with ideas of the creation of 07:26 the universe and the creation of 07:29 humanity and how those two things are 07:31 related Christian intellectuals became 07:36 completely enamored of the Kabbalah and 07:40 within it they found evidence of the 07:43 truth of Christian faith as they saw it 07:46 there were many different teachings 07:49 stories ideas that to them reinforced 07:53 the idea of Christ as the Messiah the 07:59 Trinity the Holy Spirit and various 08:03 other things and it wasn't long before 08:06 this Christianized Qabalah was blended 08:09 with things like astrology magic and 08:12 alchemy they believed the Kabbalah was 08:16 the original ancient esoteric tradition 08:20 that all the ancient mysteries came out 08:23 of now we know today that's not true but 08:25 even up until the 1800s people believed 08:28 this so I talked about the different 08:32 spellings we have different spellings of 08:35 Kabbalah based on the different 08:37 permutations of it Jewish Christian and 08:40 hermetic so Kabbalah means reception 08:46 that's what the word actually means 08:48 as in a tradition received from mouth to 08:52 ear because it was a mainly an oral 08:55 tradition and it's just a historical 08:59 example of religious esotericism there's 09:03 many examples throughout the world and 09:05 this is just a specific one this quote I 09:13 thought was really interesting because 09:15 it comes from a Masonic source and it's 09:18 talking about the Kaaba law in relation 09:20 to masonry he says the Kaaba law is 09:23 divided into two kinds practical and 09:26 theoretical practical is occupied with 09:28 the construction of talismans and 09:30 amulets and is of no interest to 09:32 Freemasonry either goes on to talk about 09:35 the Kabbalistic books the practices and 09:40 then he gets down to the bottom which is 09:43 our important section it talks about 09:45 this literal Kaaba law is divided into 09:47 gamma Triano Taric on and Tamura these 09:50 are three techniques we'll talk about in 09:52 a minute and this was made use of in the 09:56 writing that mackey termed the advanced 09:57 degrees of masonry and these more 10:00 properly should be termed the additional 10:02 degrees of concordant Masonic bodies the 10:05 Kabbalah plays no role in regular craft 10:08 masonry now on one level this statement 10:12 is exactly correct on a very superficial 10:17 level that's totally true but if we dig 10:20 a little bit below the surface I think 10:23 you'll find that this is not completely 10:27 accurate so what do I mean when I say 10:31 influence the capacity to have an effect 10:33 on the character development or behavior 10:36 of someone or something so 10:40 Cibola we can trace it to at least the 10:43 1st 2nd century probably maybe older 10:46 speculative Freemasonry to at least the 10:49 17th century again probably older 11:07 maybe didn't like my dating 11:20 okay so we know the kaabah law is older 11:23 than at least speculative masonry but 11:28 i'm not here to tell you about different 11:31 ideas of how Qabalah is responsible for 11:36 the origins of Freemasonry I'm not here 11:38 to tell you that there's no real 11:41 evidence to that we can back that up 11:44 with at all but we can observe 11:47 similarities between Kabul on 11:50 Freemasonry that can be seen as coming 11:52 from a similar esoteric current similar 11:56 philosophies and the people that held 11:59 these philosophies so we can say that 12:04 the people who developed Freemasonry 12:06 were likely very interested in the Kaaba 12:08 law based on historical facts records of 12:11 library titles and the philosophies that 12:16 the Kabbalah engenders also seem to be 12:20 present in Freemasonry and that's really 12:23 the crux of what I'm going to be talking 12:26 about so just some background on the 12:31 Kabbalah 12:32 in case you're not familiar there are 12:35 some key texts I know I said it's an 12:37 oral tradition but it's also contained 12:42 within these texts that are considered 12:44 foundational to it 12:46 the Sepher Yetzirah the book of 12:48 formation the sefar how bahir the book 12:51 of brilliance and the zephyr has o har 12:53 the book of splendor these are the three 12:56 major works 12:57 so the Sepher Yetzirah historically the 13:00 first and oldest kabbalistic texts there 13:03 are many versions of it obviously was 13:05 handwritten this is before the printing 13:07 press it defined creation in terms of 13:11 the Hebrew alphabet which also 13:13 represented numbers in ancient times so 13:18 this is the first time in the West where 13:22 we're seeing the story of creation laid 13:25 out using numbers geometrically 13:30 so that's very important so these 13:33 elements of geometry are incorporated in 13:36 descriptions of the Tree of Life the 13:38 cube of space and these secret 13:40 attributions of the Hebrew alphabet 13:42 we'll talk more about the Tree of Life 13:44 in just a minute the BA here presents 13:52 innovation under the guise of ancient 13:55 tradition this is an important point 13:58 because we will see that in Western 14:03 esotericism 14:04 this idea is revisited over and over 14:08 again even in Freemasonry the BA here 14:12 contains an exegesis on the first 14:15 chapters of the book of Genesis kind of 14:17 redefining what this story actually is 14:20 talking about yeah it's like biblical 14:29 hermeneutics it's like finding in the 14:33 allegory within the story so yeah so 14:39 these commentaries explain mystical 14:42 significance of Bible verses shape the 14:44 letters the vowels on the Hebrew letters 14:47 and some of the statements in the Sepher 14:50 Yetzirah and the use of sacred names now 14:56 the Zohar is a little bit more 15:00 controversial than the other two books 15:02 first of all it's the foundational texts 15:05 of the Kabbalah and even more than the 15:08 other two despite the fact that it 15:10 publicly emerged last now this is a 15:16 tricky point it's most likely that the 15:19 Zohar was assembled by a man named Moses 15:21 de Lyonne in a thirteenth century Spain 15:25 however Kabbalists claimed that simeon 15:31 been Yohai actually composed the zohar

15:34 in the first century academic scholars 15:40 insists that moses de Lyonne is the true 15:43 off 15:43 because there's stories of people you 15:46 know traveling to his where he lived and 15:50 finding his widow and asking her about 15:52 the book and you know where's the 15:54 original drafts that he copied and she 15:57 was like what original this is it you 16:00 know he wrote it what are you talking 16:03 about but despite that legends persist 16:08 that this text originated in Israel or 16:11 Palestine and was smuggled out of the 16:14 Holy Land by the Knights Templar so take 16:19 that as you will the Zohar reveals man 16:23 is the mediator between heaven and earth 16:25 and that man's thoughts and actions can 16:29 affect the very saif wrote or spheres of 16:31 the Tree of Life and that the Torah the 16:35 main holy book has fourfold level of 16:38 mystical meaning there's a superficial 16:40 level and then you have three more 16:44 levels beyond that the ultimate being 16:48 sowed which is the secret interpretation 16:52 now the Zohar has this interesting 16:54 aspect to it where it portrays the 16:59 Godhead or divinity as complex and that 17:02 it incorporates gender it has male and 17:05 female aspects and they this is yo hey 17:08 Val hey Jehovah and the Shekinah the 17:14 male and the female aspects and they 17:17 must be joined in Union in order to 17:21 maintain the harmony of the universe and 17:26 so the there's a scholar named moshe 17:29 adel he characterized this as dai theism 17:32 and this process of Union he calls Theo 17:35 errata sysm and he uses that term vary 17:41 with it's very valid because in the book 17:45 there's many ideas about this the bride 17:48 and the bridegroom their mystical union 17:52 and it's you know this union is 17:54 portrayed in a sexual 17:55 manner and the Kabbalists had a 17:59 tradition that you know they would have 18:01 sex with their wives on the Sabbath 18:03 night as a way of welcoming God 18:06 essentially so this is really a huge 18:12 part of the Zohar's is introducing the 18:16 Sacred Feminine this idea of Union that 18:19 the analogy of erotic love and union of 18:26 God and man this is the Hebrew alphabet 18:31 if you're not familiar with it sometimes 18:34 they call it the flame alphabet because 18:37 the main letter yud here which is 18:40 considered like the seed of all the 18:43 other letters you can kind of see that 18:44 shape expressed in all of the others as 18:48 well 18:53 so there's some key concepts in Kabul 18:58 ISM to be aware of three veils the idea 19:04 of that as I said the Godhead or 19:08 divinity is complex it's not necessarily 19:11 a single thing it's got various aspects 19:13 so what they said is that you have three 19:18 veils that are like hiding the ultimate 19:20 ultimate God or divinity if you will 19:24 Ain Ain soph and iene so far or the name 19:29 of these veils iene literally means no 19:34 thing so it's not nothing in the sense 19:38 it's more of like it's the absence of 19:41 thing this if you will Ain soph is 19:47 translated as beyond limit or without 19:49 limit and ain't so far is limitless 19:53 light so those are the three veils 19:56 before you even get to the Tree of Life 19:58 which sort of unfolds from creation into 20:02 the world we live in now so that's 20:06 called AIT's hyeme The Tree of Life I'll 20:09 talk more about that in just a minute 20:11 you have this idea of Adam Kadmon the 20:15 primordial man just somewhat different 20:18 than Adam and Eve we'll talk about Adam 20:23 Kadmon in a minute the tetragrammaton 20:27 which is the four lettered name of God 20:29 yad hey you had hey Eve of hey there's 20:35 the idea of the Shekinah which is the 20:38 feminine aspect of the divine then you 20:42 have this concept of the pentagram at on 20:44 this was introduced with Christian Kabul 20:47 ISM where they introduced a letter into 20:51 the middle of the four letter name of 20:53 God talk about that you have concept of 20:57 four worlds between say heaven and earth 21:01 and corresponding levels of human 21:04 consciousness that 21:06 that go along with these worlds and then 21:09 there's this idea of gamma trio which is 21:11 kind of central to how people use these 21:13 texts and derive a lot of this 21:17 interesting information I want to talk 21:21 about the Tree of Life here's an early 21:28 Hebrew example and you can see that it's 21:34 not always depicted exactly the same way 21:36 these spheres are called sefirot they 21:40 each have a specific meaning I'll talk 21:42 about in a minute but you can see over 21:45 time it's been depicted in different 21:47 ways generally there are ten spheres but 21:54 the way they are arranged and a path 21:55 connecting them are not always static 21:59 this is the generally accepted model or 22:04 one of them the paths again are not 22:07 always the same but it gives you a good 22:08 idea of the names of the spheres and 22:11 what they represent so if we start at 22:13 the top crown we have hope my wisdom 22:17 veena understanding medulla mercy 22:22 Devorah power 22:24 Tiferet beauty net suck victory code 22:27 glory you sowed foundation malkov the 22:32 kingdom which is often represented as 22:35 the earth plane that we exist in would 22:38 be the kingdom 22:44 this model could also be represented in 22:48 as concentric circles descending to the 22:51 center or you may you could arrange it 22:55 another way but the idea is it's a way 22:57 to sort of categorize and diagram 23:02 something that generally you can't even 23:07 really speak of coherently because 23:09 language really fails in a lot of ways 23:12 this is the generally accepted model of 23:16 the Tree of Life from Christian Coble 23:18 ISM this one was devised by a jesuit 23:21 named Athanasius Kircher and became the 23:27 main central glyph in christian kabul 23:31 ISM and western esotericism generally 23:35 see these are the way 210 spheres are 23:38 arranged the paths and again there's 23:45 different arrangements you can construct 23:49 but generally the idea is you have a 23:53 certain system and you would diagram in 23:55 a certain way 24:03 here we have a different depiction of 24:07 the same model that was used by Paul 24:09 foster cases of builders of the atom and 24:12 here you've got the corresponding colors 24:15 added as well as the Tarot keys that go 24:19 with the Hebrew letter that corresponds 24:21 to the path between the spheres here you 24:31 see the Tree of Life derived from the 24:34 Flower of Life design and this is an 24:40 interesting one devised by Charles 24:43 Dansville Jones where he's trying to 24:46 depict multiple trees sort of 24:52 concurrently growing out of one another 24:54 so this whole sphere is now couth but 24:58 it's sprouting one tree here another 25:00 tree here another tree here sort of ad 25:03 infinitum so the way you can conceive of 25:07 these models is can be kind of fractal 25:11 eyes and here's just another depiction I 25:18 like this one because in this one you'll 25:19 notice there's pillars 25:22 there's actually three pillars in this 25:25 Tree of Life design they call this the 25:30 pillar of mercy pillar of severity and 25:33 the middle pillar or pillar of 25:35 moderation and the spheres on each side 25:41 sort of correspond with those ideas as 25:44 well severity mercy and moderation 25:52 yes oh here you have Jake in a pillar of 25:54 Mercy and Boaz pillar of severity 26:03 okay so Adam Kadmon this is the idea of 26:07 the original man primordial man not yet 26:10 separated from God so there's no even 26:13 concept of me and everything else or 26:19 seer and seeing you know there's there's 26:22 no separation at all the Adam Kadmon is 26:27 represented by the Tree of Life so it 26:29 kind of anthropomorphic sizes divinity 26:32 makes it human and it also means that 26:36 humanity is in a sense divine or can be 26:41 sort of seen in that way the 26:46 tetragrammaton this is the four-letter 26:48 name of God yad hey Bob hey from right 26:51 to left now one of the reasons that 26:56 people speculate that the Kabbalah is 26:59 older than they think 27:02 is this four-letter name of God yo hey 27:07 Bob hey this is from the Torah this is 27:09 very ancient but you see it written 27:12 vertically what it symbolizes is man 27:17 essentially Yoda is the head hey is the 27:21 shoulders and arms evolved is the torso 27:23 for this last hey is the waist and the 27:27 legs so you have an essentially this 27:32 idea encoded in Judaism right from the 27:36 beginning so mmm 27:39 Coble is immed iddin emerge until the 27:42 Middle Ages but the tradition or 27:45 Inklings adumbration zuv it were there 27:49 all along 27:56 okaythis Shekinah the word literally 28:01 means the dwelling or settling place of 28:04 God so you can see how it's seen as 28:07 feminine God goes into it and dwells 28:11 there so an image of the Qabalah the 28:15 Shekinah is the most overtly feminine 28:19 sphere which is the kingdom mal couth 28:23 and this idea of the relationship 28:28 between malkov and the 6s wrote which 28:31 proceeded her above is sort of the flow 28:35 of divine energy in the world and says 28:37 she is like the moon reflecting the 28:39 divine light into the world so again in 28:47 Judaism as a exoteric religion you don't 28:53 have the idea of any kind of feminine 28:56 aspect of God but here you do now 29:03 in the Christian Kabbalah they had this 29:08 idea called a pentagram Etan so they 29:10 took the four-letter name of God and 29:12 they inserted the Hebrew letter scheen 29:16 right into the middle of it now Sheen 29:20 often corresponds to the idea of fire or 29:25 spirit so they said by placing that in 29:28 the middle or the heart of the 29:31 Tetragrammaton and they created a name 29:35 that was indicative of Christ and they 29:39 would say it was Yeshua or meaning Jesus 29:43 in a sense and that may be a stretch but 29:48 for their purposes it worked because 29:52 they were looking to represent Christ 29:54 within this system and sort of elevate 29:59 his status to you know maybe not the 30:04 same as the Tetragrammaton but certainly 30:07 as a recognizable way to portray it and 30:13 they saw this as reinforcing the truth 30:18 of Christ in Kabul ISM any questions 30:24 about that I know it may be strange idea 30:28 if you've not come across this before 30:32 here is the pentagram Etan Illustrated 30:36 this is probably the best one so you 30:39 have the yo hey Val hey here and then yo 30:43 th involve hey depicted in the flaming 30:47 heart around it says Christos and I 30:53 believe it says Jesus here and on the 30:56 left side it says Emanuel which I 30:59 believe is the Lord is with us 31:08 so there's also the concept of four 31:12 worlds within the Cibola absolute the 31:16 world of emanation 31:17 briea the world of creation yet sir the 31:21 world of formation and ASEA the world of 31:24 action so how did what does this mean 31:27 exactly so if we're conceptualizing it 31:32 absolute it would be like if that would 31:35 be foreseeing the need to not be 31:37 standing all the time briea would be the 31:41 concept of a chair yet surra would be 31:45 every instance of any chair ever 31:48 possibly conceivable and ASEA would be 31:52 the chair you're sitting in right now so 31:55 it's kind of different levels of 31:57 conceptualizing reality there's levels 32:04 of consciousness that correspond to 32:06 these levels of reality ajita the 32:09 singularity that's like Adam Kadmon 32:12 knowing God being in union with the 32:14 divine and you have haya which is 32:17 translated as life it's aspect that 32:21 gazes upon the divine light of absolute 32:24 knowing what God is not 32:26 neshama translated as breath or soul 32:30 contemplates the divine energy in the 32:33 light of Brya communion with God as 32:35 creator of the world's intellect it's 32:38 often equated with Ruach spirit love and 32:43 awe for God and emotion nephesh the body 32:47 related to natural or animal instinct 32:50 and you can see how these kind of 32:52 correspond with those four worlds I'm 32:58 going to talk a little bit about gamut 33:00 Rhea I mentioned briefly in ancient 33:05 times Hebrew letters and numbers were 33:07 you the same they didn't have Arabic 33:09 number systems so the letters would have 33:12 to represent numerical values and what 33:15 that means is you can take a word or a 33:18 phrase 33:19 and derive a numerical value from it and 33:22 you can take that value and compare it 33:25 with other words and phrases of the same 33:27 value to determine a relationship 33:29 between them so a prominent example in 33:33 the Torah they use is na Hache which 33:35 means Serpent and Moshiach which means 33:38 Messiah they both equal three hundred 33:40 and fifty eight so that should give you 33:42 a clue that the story of Genesis is 33:46 again on one of those more secretive 33:49 levels of interpretation saying 33:51 something completely different than the 33:54 superficial level essentially is saying 33:57 that the serpent is the one that gives 33:59 knowledge and is the savior of humanity 34:01 in that sense or it could it be 34:05 interpreted that way yeah exactly with 34:17 least four levels of interpretation 34:19 you're going to have at least four 34:21 different distinct and possibly you know 34:25 disagreeable interpretations so the 34:32 primary modes of practice for Kabbalah 34:36 there's generally three mystical which 34:40 is religious contemplative meditative 34:42 and possibly ecstatic its intellectual 34:48 which is what we're mostly concerned 34:50 with this is hidden secrets of nature 34:53 gematria eschatology or the study of the 34:56 end times 34:57 alchemy geometry ciphers and codes 35:01 symbolism and then you have the 35:03 practical which is Theor G thaumaturgy 35:06 which like ceremonial magic astrology 35:10 divination folk magic so these are 35:14 generally very distinct types of 35:19 practices and pursuits so how did it get 35:25 from Judaism to Christianity I think 35:28 this is a really interesting point 35:33 mainly because of the Spanish 35:35 Inquisition Jews in Spain were being 35:38 persecuted they were forced generally to 35:40 convert to Catholicism or to flee so you 35:45 had a lot of Kabbalists in Spain and 35:49 they relocated to Italy which was 35:51 similar climate similar language some of 35:55 them had converted to Christianity some 35:57 converted publicly but weren't really 36:00 Christians and then you had others who 36:02 just remain Jews and we suffered for it 36:08 but what was going on in Italy is you 36:11 had these Hellenistic philosophies 36:14 neoplatonism hermit ism they were being 36:16 brought in from Byzantium from the east 36:19 and in the same intellectual groups that 36:23 were studying the corpus Hermeticum and 36:26 the writings of Plato and other Neo 36:28 platanus they were also learning the 36:31 Kabbalah from these Jewish converts and 36:35 exiles from Spain and what happened is 36:40 that they realized that a lot of these 36:42 philosophies came they came from 36:45 different traditions but it seemed like 36:46 they were conveying very similar ideas 36:50 you know ideas like in order to become 36:56 closer to the divine you have to become 36:59 farther away from earthly things you 37:03 know just general teachings that they 37:05 recognized were very much in accord with 37:07 each other so you had Marcy Leo fechino 37:13 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola johannes 37:16 Rosslyn they were among the first 37:19 non-jews who learned Hebrew and the 37:22 Kabbalah in order to adapt it to 37:24 Christian purposes here we have some 37:30 pictures of some of these gentlemen mrs. 37:32 Raymond lull he was a Spaniard you can 37:36 see he was in the 11th and 12th century 37:40 and he was one of the first Kabbalists 37:44 in a 37:45 since he was very much concerned with 37:49 the idea of codes and cyphers and he 37:55 developed a thing called the Lully and 37:58 wheel which is a wheel with letters on 38:01 it that you could kind of arrange to 38:03 divine information Marcy liova Chino is 38:09 a Catholic priest but he also ran a 38:14 philosophical circle in Florence and 38:17 taught magic and Kabul ISM and all these 38:20 things and he managed to evade any kind 38:24 of persecution because he was very quiet 38:26 about it and didn't ruffle anybody's 38:29 feathers and he was still a priest and 38:31 still professed his Christian faith but 38:35 here we have Pico della Mirandola Pico 38:40 was not under the radar he was 38:44 flamboyant brash in-your-face he was 23 38:49 years old when he challenged the world 38:53 to a debate in the Vatican about his 900 38:57 theses which were all about religion and 39:00 magic and Kabbalah and the veracity of 39:04 these things to prove Christianity the 39:09 Vatican of course didn't let that happen 39:12 they banned his 900 DCs but his oration 39:17 on a dignity of man which was the sort 39:21 of introduction to his 900 these-- still 39:25 remains as like the foundational 39:29 proclamation of Renaissance humanism 39:32 because he ended he he very 39:40 he's very I guess almost angrily talking 39:47 about how man is of such amazing 39:52 capability that he has the ability to be 39:55 like an animal like a plant or like a 39:58 God you know simply by choosing the way 40:01 that he acts and the thoughts that he 40:03 follows and where he puts his his mind 40:07 essentially Peco understandably died at 40:12 a young age 40:14 possibly foul play involved but he was 40:23 the one that really got everybody 40:26 excited about this kabbalah and using it 40:31 and basically saying you know if the 40:34 jews don't recognize the truth of 40:36

40:34 jews don't recognize the truth of 40:36 Christianity in their own esoteric 40:38 tradition we're just going to take it 40:41 from them and we're going to use it 40:43 ourselves because they have no business 40:44 with it if they can't see that and that 40:47 was his general position here we have 40:51 Johan Royce 'ln he actually came to 40:54 study Hebrew and Qabalah with Pico and 40:57 Pecos teachers before he went back to 40:59 Germany and he's almost synced 41:05 single-handedly responsible for a 41:08 movement in Germany known as Christian 41:10 who Bray is 'm this was part of 41:13 Renaissance humanism where they sort of 41:18 looked back to classical sources for 41:20 inspiration one of those being the 41:22 Hebrew Bible so he actually in Germany 41:26 managed to save copies of the Torah and 41:28 the Talmud from destruction and if it 41:31 hadn't been for him it's possible that 41:33 those works would have been lost at 41:35 least in Germany which is kind of 41:39 shocking and come to find out that 41:42 Christian who Bray is 'm itself was so 41:45 popular that they would have lectures at 41:47 universities in Germany it would be 41:49 standing room only you'd have hundreds 41:52 of people lying 41:53 outside the door trying to get in to 41:55 hear it and this isn't even Kabul ISM 41:58 this is strictly learning Hebrew and the 42:00 Old Testament so it was a very popular 42:04 movement in you know I there's a 42:08 definitely a relationship between the 42:10 Protestant Reformation and this desire 42:12 to look for other sources of religious 42:15 inspiration here we have heinrich 42:21 cornelia cornelius agrippa of Neda Sean 42:24 he's responsible for writing the three 42:29 books of a cult philosophy that are 42:31 generally regarded to be the main books 42:35 of Western esotericism and the third 42:37 book is actually all about Kabbalah now 42:42 what a lot of people don't talk about is 42:44 that years after this book was published 42:49 he wished he had never published it and 42:52 sort of renounced his interest in magic 42:55 and divination and Kabul ISM and all of 42:58 these things whether that was publicly 43:02 to kind of save his reputation and 43:06 fortune I don't know but it seems likely 43:09 that he did kind of regret his forays 43:14 into those waters and became much more 43:19 of a mainstream religious person but the 43:25 cat was already out of the bag so here 43:28 we have John Dee he was the advisor to 43:30 Queen Elizabeth the first of England 43:33 court astrologer considered probably the 43:37 most intelligent and learned man of his 43:39 time the largest library of his time and 43:44 I'm going to talk about him more in a 43:46 minute but he's a key figure because um 43:49 he was the one that recognized that the 43:52 Qabalah and the techniques used with the 43:56 Hebrew alphabet could be applied to 43:58 numbers to Latin to greek to english and 44:01 it was not just confined to hebrew and 44:05 thereby judaism 44:09 here we have Giordano Bruno he actually 44:13 he was the anniversary's execution was 44:16 February 17th he was burned at the stake 44:19 by the civil authorities in Rome after 44:23 being accused of heresy by the church 44:28 many of the ideas that he espoused had 44:33 to do with the possibility of life on 44:36 other planets or the existence of other 44:39 planets or the earth going around the 44:41 Sun but he also had ideas about Cobble 44:45 ism and he was fascinated by these ideas 44:49 of codes and working with these lowly 44:52 and wheels that I mentioned from Raymond 44:54 Loewy so he's another key figure in 44:58 promoting Christian Coble ISM here we 45:01 have Christian nor von Rosen Roth and 45:04 his bigwig he was the one who published 45:10 the first Latin translation of the Zohar 45:13 under the title of the Kabbalah day new 45:17 Dada or the kabbalah unveiled and it's 45:20 from him that many german and english 45:23 kabbalists Christians learn the Kabbalah 45:28 so there's some key translators and 45:31 teachers who pictures we don't have 45:35 surprisingly Flavius Mithra Dottie's 45:38 also known as Guglielmo Raimondo mon 45:42 Konda he was the main teacher and 45:45 translator of Kabbalah for Pico della 45:47 Mirandola and his work still sits in the 45:52 Vatican Library much of it on catalogued 45:55 there was another Johan and Aleman Ben 45:58 Isaac so these two were the primary ones 46:03 that translated and taught cobble ISM to 46:06 the Italians 46:11 okay so why did Christians adapt to 46:13 Jewish Kabbalah during a time of extreme 46:16 religious intolerance incorporating it 46:18 into their own esoteric traditions and 46:21 incorporating it is probably not an 46:24 accurate description it's more again 46:26 appropriated it and it became the 46:28 foundation of esotericism in the West so 46:32 why is it so special 46:36 well first reason is it comes from a 46:38 monotheistic religious faith every other 46:42 esoteric system that these people in 46:45 Europe had ever been exposed to didn't 46:48 write think of you know esoteric 46:52 Hinduism think of esoteric Buddhism with 46:58 you know deities all over the place the 47:02 Greek mysteries Egyptian Persian you 47:05 know none of them are really 47:07 monotheistic in an acceptable way 47:09 Judaism was now again they saw Jewish 47:15 Kabbalah as the most ancient original 47:18 wisdom tradition we know today that's 47:21 not accurate 47:22 but they believed it to predate the 47:26 Egyptian Persian Greek mysteries so to 47:29 them they felt like they'd found the 47:31 source of everything in fact they 47:35 probably found the most recent 47:37 descendent of these things but it's hard 47:41 to know it was a living tradition so 47:44 there were people still teaching it 47:46 still practicing it is still connected 47:50 you know to a living exoteric tradition 47:54 - so it's accessible now the Christian 48:00 and the hermetic Qabalah 48:01 they had basically a complete system 48:05 that they could take you know that 48:07 described the moments you know but fire 48:09 to creation all the way till now so and 48:15 they were able to adapt it and change it 48:18 to fit their preferences 48:22 and that included belief in Christianity 48:26 and Jesus as the Messiah in addition 48:30 this also gave them a shield behind 48:33 which they could still explore all the 48:36 Neoplatonic Gnostic and hermetic ideas 48:38 that they wanted because they were kind 48:42 of under the umbrella of Kabul ISM 48:45 because that's again the most ancient 48:48 tradition even though it's not to them 48:50 you know it was so how do we account for 48:58 becoming so important you have a 49:01 confluence of circumstances you could 49:05 look at it as sort of like a divine 49:07 event you know where the system happens 49:09 to be available right at the moment that 49:11 these people are looking for something 49:13 you know the Spanish Inquisition expels 49:16 all these Kabbalists Italy the Italians 49:18 are getting into hermit ISM and 49:21 Neoplatonism and Gnosticism again and 49:23 there it is again it's fully existing 49:30 system it's monotheistic and the last 49:33 one is really important is it promotes 49:37 philosophies that were at the time very 49:40 progressive now that one is a little odd 49:45 because we keep talking about ancient 49:47 tradition but again if you remember this 49:51 idea of sort of introducing innovation 49:54 under the guise of ancient tradition 49:57 this is what we're talking about so some 50:01 of the philosophies promoted by the 50:03 Kaaba law so number one humanity's 50:06 importance humanity's importance is but 50:11 most because your thoughts and actions 50:15 can bring the cosmos into balance or 50:19 throw everything out of whack secrecy in 50:24 general but more specifically that 50:27 secrets of nature are hidden and may be 50:29 revealed to the wise if correspondences 50:34 between 50:35 things in nature that might not 50:36 otherwise be related you know one ID 50:40 like is gold and the Sun silver in the 50:45 moon so metals planets herbs parts of 50:50 the human body astrology signs you can 50:53 connect all of these things by certain 50:56 qualities they possess that seemed to be 50:58 in Concord so and they also did this 51:03 with other religious philosophies they 51:05 saw agreement on some level between 51:08 religious philosophies I think most 51:13 people you talk to who study esoteric 51:18 ideas and practices find agreement 51:21 between different schools and their 51:23 teachings and then you have this idea of 51:26 dualism monism non-dualism and these are 51:29 these ideas introduced by Gnosticism 51:32 hermit ism neoplatonism and they're all 51:35 found in kabul ism in different places 51:38 they expire expressed differently but 51:42 they're all there other philosophies 51:47 include science via alchemy which 51:49 eventually you end up with chemistry and 51:52 physics now whether that's a devolution 51:54 or evolution of alchemy that's a whole 51:58 other presentation emanation ISM so this 52:03 is the idea that divinity sort of 52:05 emanates down into creation and sort of 52:07 this tree of life idea starting from the 52:10 top and sort of unrolling like a curtain 52:13 and this gives rise to I you know ideas 52:16 of creationism as well as more 52:18 scientific explanations of the origins 52:21 of the universe so it's like two sides 52:23 of the same coin ideas of sexual 52:28 mysticism and a Sacred Feminine and last 52:32 messianism which could be interpreted as 52:36 utopianism or ideas want you know for 52:39 social reform and in some cases 52:41 revolution depending on a situation 52:48 so concurrent historical developments 52:52 that are happening with Christian 52:55 Kabbalah so Christian Kabul has not been 52:58 developed in a vacuum the same time this 53:01 is going on you have Renaissance 53:03 humanism which again is like humans are 53:06 more important than we previously may 53:09 have ascribed looking back towards more 53:13 ancient sources for wisdom which gives 53:16 rise to Christian who bray ISM the 53:19 Scientific Revolution again the secrets 53:22 of nature will be revealed to the wise 53:25 more individual liberty and 53:27 responsibility again this idea that your 53:30 very thoughts and actions can affect the 53:32 balance of the cosmos and political 53:36 revolution again this utopianism social 53:39 reform gives rise to an time anarchic 53:43 'el revolutions so just as an example 53:50 here we have Francisco I Madero leader 53:53 of night the 1910 Mexican Revolution he 53:57 was a devoted and accomplished Spiritist 54:00 so he spoke to the dead and they 54:04 supposedly advised him you know as the 54:06 leader of the revolution but who do we 54:10 find behind the scenes dr. Heinrich 54:14 Arnold crumb Heller 54:16 maderos personal physician and advisor 54:21 well known for his connections to 54:24 European Masonic circles as well as 54:27 famous esotericist like Pappas Theodore 54:31 Royce Aleister Crowley and many others 54:33 so here's the leader of the revolutions 54:38 personal advisor now it's not enough 54:42 that the leader of the revolutions a 54:44 Spiritist but his advisor is in contact 54:49 with the upper echelons of European 54:52 masonry and secret societies 54:57 now am i saying that the secret 55:00 societies in these Masonic groups were 55:02 responsible for the Revolution I am not 55:04 saying that what I am saying is that 55:08 people like crumb Heller and Madero 55:11 because of their interests in esoteric 55:14 ideas and philosophies they were 55:16 interested in reforming society that 55:21 took the form of revolution in this case 55:23 but obviously you know for most people 55:25 it doesn't 55:29 okay so approaches to understanding the 55:31 relationship between Kabul on 55:33 Freemasonry you could look at this just 55:37 scholarly examining prominent Masons in 55:40 their writings for references to Kabul 55:42 ISM you could take a philosophical 55:45 approach examine Masonic symbolism and 55:47 ritual for examples of Kabbalistic 55:49 correspondences which usually would be 55:52 Gemara involving mystical numbers 55:55 symbolism but my approach is to look at 55:58 the philosophies and practices promoted 56:01 by Kabbalah and how those are related to 56:08 things I find in masonry because I think 56:11 there's a number of important ones now I 56:18 just want to mention Albert Pike this is 56:20 a good example of a more scholarly 56:22 approach where you'd look for prominent 56:25 Masons and their references to the 56:27 Kabbalah where he tells you right morals 56:30 and dogma the primary tradition of the 56:32 single revelation has been preserved 56:34 under the name of the Kabbalah by the 56:36 priesthood of Israel the Kabbalistic 56:38 doctrine which was also the dogma of the 56:41 Magi and of Hermes is contained in a 56:44 Sepher Yetzirah the Zohar and the Talmud 56:46 according to that doctrine the absolute 56:48 is the being in which the word is the 56:51 word is that uh pterence and expression 56:53 of being in life so he's essentially 56:58 telling you that that same idea that the 57:01 Kabbalah is where all the ancient 57:04 mysteries come from and how they are all 57:07 preserved 57:09 wrong on the first point correct on the 57:13 second it is where they're all preserved 57:16 in modern times 57:23 now he goes on to talk more about 57:26 Kabbalistic doctrine I'm not going to 57:28 read this to you but again morals and 57:30 Dogma especially in the 28th degree in 57:34 that book the night of the Sun Prince 57:37 edit he has a lecture of the kabbalists 57:40 right in the degree and in my opinion I 57:46 think others of the southern 57:49 jurisdiction Scottish right degrees that 57:51 is the most esoteric of all of them so 57:58 sources in forming Pike's lecture of the 58:01 Kabbalists the Sepher Yetzirah of 58:04 formation and John Dee's Moniz 58:07 hieroglyphic us because he essentially 58:10 John D essentially talks about geometry 58:14 the numbers one through ten their 58:17 properties and the dignities and 58:20 essentially how they are related to 58:22 geometry and D did essentially that same 58:26 type of thing in his monus hieroglyphic 58:28 us book except he also describes the 58:32 formation of the planetary symbols at 58:35 the same all wrapped up together 58:40 so in this explanation of this is a 58:44 scholar writing about John Dee's Monas 58:47 hieroglyphic as he says two doctrines of 58:49 the Coble are clearly apparent the first 58:52 is the Kabbalistic cosmogony the early 58:55 Kabbalistic works Sepher Yetzirah book 58:57 of formation presents and concise form 59:00 the basic tenants of the Kabbalistic 59:02 creation which the monus reflects the 59:05 second doctrine is a method of 59:07 scriptural exegesis developed by 59:09 Kabbalists the techniques of no tarik on 59:12 serif and gamma tree are the primary 59:14 means of interpretation the view of 59:19 creation presented in the Sepher 59:21 Yetzirah emanation through a series of 59:24 symbols numbers letters and words all 59:26 aspects of the Hebrew alphabet were 59:28 conceived of as the intermediaries 59:30 between God and the created world the 59:34 Ruach Elohim 59:35 spirit of God was the source of three 59:38 lesser emanations air water and fire 59:40 these were identified with the letters 59:43 Aleph mem and Sheen from these three 59:46 mother letters arose six other 59:48 emanations which completed the heavenly 59:50 realm they were light in depth east and 59:53 west north and south so it mentioned no 60:00 Taric on serif' and Gomorrah and the 60:04 Tarkan's the art of decomposing words 60:06 and treating letters as abbreviations 60:09 for other words and ideas so an example 60:12 of this is the very first word in the 60:15 Old Testament is ber a sheet translated 60:20 as in the beginning but if you break it 60:24 down letter by letter it would be in the 60:26 beginning God saw that Israel would 60:28 accept the law so again that's like a 60:32 secret interpretation of you know 60:35 encoded meaning secrets of nature will 60:38 be revealed to the wise so serif is 60:42 division or transposition of parts or 60:45 letters of a word into all possible 60:48 permutations so again if we take that 60:51 same word for a sheet to be with 60:53 beginning Nisour in the beginning it its 60:57 yield Bray he created sheet six 61:00 he created six so it supports this 61:04 doctrine of creation by emanation and 61:08 not just in six days it's also the six 61:11 fears above mal couth so it's there 61:16 these things again is very arcane and a 61:19 lot of this stuff ties together yeah 61:22 sure 61:27 we're talking about the three then we 61:36 get the six is that the idea that yeah 61:39 for three letters I left my machine than 61:42 the other six other imitations is that 61:44 similar to what they were saying on that 61:48 two slides later yeah creation of a six 61:53 yes it's very similar and it's also 61:56 quick it could also be if you remember 61:58 the tree of life you could also remember 62:00 the three at the top Keter bina Hoch MA 62:04 and then the six below it are like is 62:07 the wheel of creation yeah 62:18 okay so Gamache ria this is the most 62:20 important technique so this is letters 62:23 as numbers so in Genesis you have the 62:26 words lo three men stood by him they 62:29 have the numerical value of 701 in 62:31 Hebrew as and that's the same as the sum 62:35 of the names of me Kai L Gabrielle and 62:38 Raphael so the conclusion is that the 62:41 three men were actually the three 62:43 Archangels so again it's like the secret 62:46 interpretation of the holy text 701 62:53 sorry go back here's 701 is the actual 62:58 phrase lo three men stood by him so if 63:03 you took the Hebrew words for that 63:05 phrase and added them added the value up 63:08 it would be 701 and the same with the 63:12 names of mikail Gabriel and Raphael so 63:15 these are some of the Hebrew 63:17 representation of all day yeah yeah yeah 63:27 so if you look back at that first yeah 63:34 those are the numbers that's it yeah and 63:39 there's online gamma trio calculators 63:42 and things if you need to look up a word 63:50 okay so again this idea in the jadi was 63:55 really came out with was that this these 63:58 techniques are not limited to Hebrew you 64:01 can apply them to numbers you can apply 64:05 them to other languages and you can 64:09 derive meaning from them so because he 64:15 he he figured out the astronomical 64:18 symbols using these techniques from 64:21 nothing to the seven planetary symbols 64:24 or 64:25 actually he even had one that was a 64:27 combination of all of them that 64:30 he was expressed special meaning he 64:35 imbued them with immortal life and he 64:37 even talks in them in the text about 64:40 numbers in this idea of formal number 64:42 and a number is a concept which is 64:45 different than you know a number of 64:47 things that you're counting 64:49 so he really extrapolated these 64:53 techniques from Kabul ISM into 65:00 geometrical ways of understanding the 65:03 creation I know it seems that kind of 65:06 strange to like look back on it now but 65:08 you know not having ever had anything 65:11 like that prior it was a very you know 65:13 profound idea okay so here's where you 65:18 get to the meat of everything what are 65:20 the concepts familiar to Kabul ah and 65:22 masonry okay both claim heritage to the 65:26 ancient wisdom of Israel although each 65:29 tradition considers that heritage to be 65:32 superficially different they both 65:37 promote the improvement of the world 65:39 through the improvement of the 65:41 individual both use Hebrew including 65:47 letter and word manipulations you have 65:52 the idea of three pillars in both as 65:55 well as other iterations of the number 65:58 three and the geometry of triangles of 66:00 various types you have extensive use of 66:05 metaphysical diagramming like the tree 66:08 of life or in masonry you have trestle 66:11 boards secrecy initiation and oath 66:17 taking are characteristic of both I want 66:23 to talk for a minute about secrecy this 66:27 is a really important point by a scholar 66:31 named router Hannah Grove where he talks 66:34 about the emphasis on secrecy and where 66:37 that sort of comes from 66:40 he says the increasing emphasis on 66:43 secrecy and concealment within the 66:45 ancient wisdom discourse of the 66:46 Renaissance resulted largely from a 66:48 confluence of traditional sources and 66:50 authorities the main factors have been 66:53 the basic notion of Christianity as the 66:56 hidden core of ancient paganism the 67:00 understanding of the pris key theology 67:02 as press key poet I hiding the truth 67:06 under the guise of mythological fable 67:08 frequent allusions and platonic 67:11 Orientalists authors to the need for 67:13 secrecy oral transmission from master to 67:16 disciple initiations into mysteries 67:19 reserved for the few concepts of 67:21 symbolism and allegory as alternatives 67:24 to Aristotelian logic and discursive 67:26 language the dialectics of concealment 67:29 and revelation central to Jewish 67:31 Kabbalah the very nature of the new 67:34 exegetical techniques as tools for 67:36 revealing hidden dimensions of sacred 67:38 texts 67:39 not to mention personal taste for 67:41 mystery mongering and authors and to all 67:45 these the very simple but basic one of 67:47 caution being perceived as an apologist 67:49 of paganism Judaism or the magical arts 67:52 could be dangerous so here we have a 67:58 really good summation of where this need 68:01 for secrecy comes from this is all of 68:04 them right there but the Kabbalah is a 68:07 contributing factor clearly ok so here 68:14 we have more things familiar to both 68:16 both Qabalah and Freemasonry are 68:19 concerned with religious texts and ideas 68:21 but not formal religion or formal 68:25 theology nor religious practice they're 68:28 really concerned with in the 68:29 interpretation of religious texts and is 68:32 specialized interpretation that's really 68:35 exclusive you also have progressive 68:39 ideas about like-minded men having an 68:41 opportunity to meet regardless of social 68:44 class education religion political 68:46 ideology race etc this obviously we know 68:51 this in masonry but 68:53 the very fact that the Jewish Kabbalists 68:56 and converts were able to sit down with 68:59 someone like count 69:01 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola you know 69:04 aristocrat extraordinaire from Italy 69:10 that's unusual in those circumstances 69:14 and it was all because they had that 69:17 knowledge that was it 69:19 so another similarity is this symbolism 69:23 of light we're familiar with so Albert 69:28 Mackey talks about this that this symbol 69:31 of light is predominant in all ancient 69:33 mysteries the very names of the 69:37 Kabbalistic books you know the book of 69:39 brilliance the book of splendor you know 69:41 they're obsessed with this idea of light 69:44 as represent a representation of the 69:47 divine so it became synonymous with 69:51 truth and knowledge and darkness became 69:54 synonymous with falsehood and ignorance 69:58 so more items both Freemasonry and Kabul 70:04 are concerned with this idea of creation 70:07 Kabbalah of the creation of the cosmos 70:10 and the first man and Freemasonry with 70:13 the creation of the Temple of Solomon 70:16 again superficially different things in 70:20 reality not so much geometry is the key 70:26 to describing the creation of the cosmos 70:28 and the signature of divinity or the 70:30 Great

to describing the creation of the cosmos 70:28 and the signature of divinity or the 70:30 Great Architect again we see that NASA 70:32 for yet Sura extended through John Dee's 70:35 Monas hieroglyphic us and you know of 70:38 course it's in masonry introducing 70:43 innovation under the guise of ancient 70:45 tradition well we know Kabul ISM does 70:47 this we know masonry does this 70:50 Anderson's constitutions I think is a 70:54 really first prominent example of this 70:56 where you have Anderson introducing 71:00 legends or myths of the origin of 71:03 masonry you know back to 71:05 temple back to ancient Egypt etc etc so 71:18 this idea of concordance we've seen this 71:21 before where there's agreement if some 71:25 on some level there's agreement where 71:27 you see this 71:29 Gnosticism neoplatonism hermit ism 71:32 mysteries of the ancient world the idea 71:36 is that they promote you can find some 71:38 agreement certainly in the Kabbalah and 71:41 certainly in Freemasonry the idea of 71:47 promoting social reform or philanthropy 71:50 again you know we've seen this with 71:52 Kabul ISM and certainly present in 71:54 masonry you know and more probably a lot 71:58 more recognizable in masonry displays 72:04 the social reform we talked a little bit 72:06 of social reform of philanthropy well 72:09 philanthropy I guess would be more 72:10 masonic but you know in Kabul ISM 72:15 essentially you know if you see a need 72:20 that you can fill your duty is to you 72:23 know and if it's something that should 72:25 be done your duty is to do it and you 72:29 know to to help your neighbor to help 72:33 your friend to you know to basically to 72:37 take up the slack where you can you know 72:44 because essentially by doing so you're 72:46 keeping the universe and harmony 72:53 perspective one of the beers in 72:56 freemason 72:57 like catalog is this idea of a person 73:02 centric so theme of power in other words 73:05 the individual by themselves can be a 73:09 powerful force as opposed to having to 73:13 rely on the institution's around you 73:14 like ready to church right but but when 73:20 it's done sort of without referring or 73:28 consulting with the ancient wisdom 73:30 itself it becomes corrupt essentially 73:35 and we'll see examples of that in just a 73:37 minute well most people I think would 73:46 say those are generally positive things 73:50 oh yeah but it really it does kind of 73:52 depend on your perspective right 74:06 religious yeah so this is that this is 74:09 an interesting point you raise because 74:10 this is again very much anti traditional 74:14 this is like innovation under the guise 74:17 of an ancient tradition we're 74:18 introducing an very innovative idea well 74:22 the reason that was is because the 74:24 Kabbalah was developed by Jews who were 74:26 generally in exile wherever they were 74:30 they were the other you know they 74:33 weren't they may have had some Authority 74:36 you know individually but as a whole 74:39 they had none no power whatsoever so 74:42 you're looking at a dispossessed group 74:44 of people who are looking for a esoteric 74:48 philosophy that's like a life raft that 74:50 can support them being stateless being 74:53 you know uncertain future you know 74:57 occasional outbursts of violence against 74:59 them you know so the the tradition that 75:03 they develop is very anti traditional in 75:05 a lot of ways I know it may not seem 75:07 that way at first but you're right this 75:10 emphasis 75:11 on the prominence of humanity in the 75:14 scheme of things is very anti 75:17 traditional in a lot of ways and what 75:20 you see eventually is humanism you know 75:23 and it becomes like more of secular 75:25 humanism rejecting religion rejecting 75:28 the very religious traditions which gave 75:30 it birth and now we have more modern 75:34 ideas of about religion and family and 75:39 societal institutions and all these 75:42 things that have you know essentially 75:45 been undermined in a lot of ways by more 75:48 innovative you know individual centric 75:52 philosophies I would say so again 75:57 another aspect that these have in common 76:00 is derision and hatred from 76:02 fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists 76:05 so I want to look at some different 76:08 examples of things that yeah yeah okay 76:22 so there's a lot of antipathy towards 76:27 Kabul ISM and Freemasonry so some of the 76:32 scandals which bring about this type of 76:34 sentiment again nothing's happening in a 76:39 vacuum here Kabul ISM have two distinct 76:43 examples of Kabbalists that gathered 76:46 large followings both of them claimed in 76:50 individually that they were the messiah 76:52 the savior of the world and they come to 76:56 you know basically make everyone's life 76:58 much better so people you know sold 77:02 their possessions you know join you know 77:06 this cult essentially and in both cases 77:10 the civil authorities forced these 77:13 people to convert Sabbat eyes v was 77:16 forced to convert to islam and jacob 77:18 frank converted to catholicism and their 77:20 followers did as well 77:23 so what happened as a result is that is 77:27 many Jews against a Kaaba laws forbidden 77:32 it's no good people who practice it or 77:35 no good look at what happens you just 77:37 it's just a disaster we're not going to 77:40 touch this stuff it's it's not worth it 77:42 and that's the attitude many Jews have 77:45 to this day about it 77:49 Freemasonry we have similar type 77:52 examples where you have people who 77:54 believe they're doing the right thing 77:57 for whatever reason they think they know 78:00 what's best taking action and then 78:04 everyone suffers as a result of it in 78:07 Freemasonry have the Morgan affair if 78:09 you have a disappearance and suspected 78:11 murder of Masonic revealer William 78:13 Morgan which gave birth to the 78:17 anti-masonic political party which was 78:19 the largest and still is to this day was 78:22 the largest third party movement in this 78:24 country was huge 78:28 and the memory of that lingers more 78:33 recently you had this p2 Lodge in Italy 78:36 which is a renegade Masonic Lodge they 78:38 were involved in embezzling money from 78:40 the Vatican Bank with possible 78:43 underworld connections I think no likely 78:46 very likely underworld connections so 78:50 again and they actually murdered one of 78:54 the guys in London and hung them under 78:56 Blackfriars Bridge but these things give 79:00 masonry I think well they make people 79:07 see masonry in a different way than most 79:09 masons see masonry if you not if you've 79:13 not had any contact with Freemasonry or 79:16 a Mason and you know about these things 79:20 your opinions probably going to be 79:21 negative the same with the Kabbalah you 79:25 know if you know about sabotage V and 79:27 Jacob Frank but you don't know about any 79:29 of the wonderful teachings or anything 79:32 you're 79:32 piñon is going to be this is this is 79:35 for people who are crazy or have nothing 79:39 better to do with their time looking for 79:42 trouble and that's true and and every 79:49 religion in every school or group has 79:52 examples of scandals that arise you know 79:56 they give them a black eye but my point 80:00 is really that that Kabul on Freemasonry 80:03 again have you know similarly similar 80:05 type of things happen and the the way 80:09 they're seeing by some people is again 80:12 similar you know it's similar negative 80:17 opinions you haven't bought up the use 80:20 of the pillars in the Tree of Life the 80:23 image you have shown before is that a 80:26 Kabbalistic source or is that somebody 80:30 trying to make an analogy between the 80:32 two I'm not sure are those pillars 80:36 commonly used within the Kabbalistic 80:38 teachings they're referred to as pillars 80:42 yeah but they're not drawn as like that 80:46 that was a highly stylized drawing with 80:49 yeah referred as pillar of mercy a 80:53 pillar of severity yeah yeah oops so I 81:00 thought I actually had that as a as a 81:02 thing that three pillars anyway that's a 81:05 definite you know that goes along with 81:08 you know this metaphysical diagramming 81:12 the three pillars in masonry the three 81:16 pillars and the Tree of Life you know it 81:20 to me that's more of a superficial sort 81:23 of commonality because when I dig below 81:26 the surface there's there's not a whole 81:29 lot there with like some of these ideas 81:31 I think you dig below the surface and it 81:36 just it's like it you know the bottom 81:39 just keeps falling out you know it never 81:41 stops you can keep finding more examples 81:44 of things like this utopian 81:46 ISM messianism utopianism I think that's 81:49 a huge one 81:50 the idea of secrets of nature being 81:52 hidden and revealed to the wise that's 81:54 huge in both Adam Kadmon Catalan seems 82:07 like that's also an underlying concept 82:08 in masonry of that idea of man's 82:10 connection to divinity and through 82:13 studying through you know that he talked 82:16 earlier on about the sort of four layers 82:19 of yeah sort of connection Frenchman 82:23 sort of material animal right the spit 82:28 of spiritual sort of loving God knowing 82:31 God 82:33 you know I think that's a first in 82:38 masonry that's a very he makes it very 82:41 strong yeah 82:43 and that you're right that the concept 82:45 of the ash floors mirrors that so I 82:53 don't want to end on a bad note so I 82:55 wanted to talk a little bit about Martin 82:57 ISM if somebody were looking for the 83:02 most authentic form of Christian Cobble 83:09 ISM that you could it's accessible this 83:13 is it Martin ISM it's a form of esoteric 83:15 Christian chivalry based on the 83:18 teachings of Martinez DePasquale and 83:21 Louie claude de saint-martin 83:26 it's sort of a combination of 83:28 Kabbalistic theour ji or ceremonial 83:33 magic and Christian mysticism louis 83:38 claude de saint-martin wrote as the 83:41 unknown philosopher and a lot of his 83:43 writings talk about this idea of 83:45 reintegration of man with all rectifying 83:49 the fall from the Garden of Eden most 83:52 Martinus orders require their members to 83:55 be a master mason prior to applying for 83:58 initiation so and again 84:01 Martin ISM is one of a handful of the 84:03 purest surviving lineage of Christian 84:05 Cobble ISM along with European 84:07 Rosicrucianism and the Western 84:09 laboratory alchemical tradition neither 84:13 of which of those is as accessible as 84:16 Martin ISM European Rosicrucianism 84:20 despite what is on internet is not that 84:24 accessible and the laboratory alchemical 84:27 tradition again because of its very 84:30 nature is not very accessible but but 84:33 they do heavily incorporate Christian 84:36 Coble ISM Martin ISM is just a lot 84:40 easier to get involved with 84:47 so thank you thank you though English (auto-generated)