The holy kabbalah : a study of the secret tradition in Israel

This comprehensive and well-documented guide to the arcane Jewish tradition of mysticism was written by one of Britain's foremost writers on occult subjects. Waite's extensive and lucid history embraces the literature of the Kabbalah (including the Sepher Yezirah and Zohar and their central ideas), its foremost interpreters, its impact on Christian scholars, and its reputation as "the secret tradition."

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LibraryThing member Porius

I think Waite puts it best:
It remains to say that while the age of records is of large consequence on the historical side and so has been considered at length, the antiquity of Kabbalistic Tradition cannot be an essence of the consideration, having regard to the purpose set forth in these prefatory

words. The implications of one's own standpoint must be acknowledged in the logic of things, and the essence of the texts at their highest is all in all for me and not their date of authorship. The plays passing under the name of Shakespeare would be no less immortal plays and greatness of greatness in the world of literature, were it proved beyond challenge to-morrow that they were written by Bacon or the stableman of the Globe Tavern. So also if Sepher Ha Zohar is not of time immemorial but belongs to the 13th Century, which almost certainly it does not in the root-matter, my investigation is not stultified. There remains the question of values, the question of life and essence. If the Tradition has warrents herein, 700 years will suffice for its age at need. But if it has none, it can be a matter of curious research only, supposing that it is 7000 years old. The myths of Babylon remain Babylonian myths even if they are older than Genesis; and if the Strange Tale of a Garden, with which Genesis opens, holds something within it which belongs to the Spritual Deep, to the authentic legends of the soul, it signifies little enough if the figurative myth concerning the Fall od Man is a century or an age later than the BOOK OF THE DEAD.

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