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Dear Sherry:
Thank you for writing The Refiners Fire!
The short answer to your question is that Kabbalistic Mysticism is a Jewish tradition based on a mixture of myth, magic, numerology and astrology - something that God abhors and considers to be in the same category as witchcraft, tarot card reading, and fortune telling as they, in essence, strive to answer questions or find solutions to that for which only God has definitive answers. The Bible tells us how God feels about these things:
People who are into Kaballah and the Zohar are caught up in mysticism; something which only leads people away from the Truth of the Bible. Kaballists and their ilk don't deal with Yahweh, the God of the Bible but, rather, with the god of mysticism - a movement which, as far as Judaism is concerned, started in the Middle Ages with Spanish Jews who spread their ideas throughout the Jewish world and caused people to ignore the obvious meaning of the Scriptures through the use of Numerology and other practices. In order to understand Yahweh, we only need to accept what the Bible teaches and to employ Bible hermaneutics - allowing the Scripture to interpret Scripture. Traditions of man, including the traditions of the Kabbalah, only serve to lead us astray.
Isaiah 47:13-14 "All the counsel you have received has only worn you out! Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you. Surely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them up. They cannot even save themselves from the power of the flame. Here are no coals to warm anyone; here is no fire to sit by."
Deuteronomy 17:2-5 says that those who worshipped the sun, moon, or stars were to be stoned.
Leviticus 20:6 says God will separate himself from those who go after mediums and familiar spirits.
Deuteronomy 18:10-12 says that practicing witchcraft, sorcery, soothsaying, interpreting omens, making spells, and being a medium or spiritist, are all terrible sins to God.
Deuteronomy 18:9-11 says, "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft..."
Kabbalistic Mysticism is difficult to describe and has a very complicated history that was originally oral in nature (as was the Talmud, which is the "Oral Torah"), and committed to writing during the Middle Ages in books such as the "Zohar". Many of these writings were alleged to be secret ancient writings or compilations of secret ancient writings.
The bottom line is: Anything that cannot be found in the Bible, is NOT the true Word of God, and should be viewed with a healthy amount of skepticism. This includes Kabbalistic Mysticism which CANNOT BE FOUND IN THE BIBLE (the Book that GOD "breathed" into being), and any other oral stories and traditions passed down through the generations. Most people know what happens to oral stories: they get skewed and twisted over time and are simply not reliable.
In order to show how difficult and involved the man-made idea of Kabbalah is, we've borrowed the following in-depth information from the traditional Jewish website, Judaism 101:
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...Like most subjects of Jewish belief, the area of mysticism is wide open to personal interpretation. Some traditional Jews take mysticism very seriously; it is an integral part of Chasidic Judaism, for example, and passages from kabbalistic sources are routinely included in traditional prayer books. Other traditional Jews take mysticism with a grain of salt. One prominent Orthodox Jew, when introducing a speaker on the subject of Jewish mysticism, said basically, "it's nonsense, but it's Jewish nonsense, and the study of anything Jewish, even nonsense, is worthwhile."
Mysticism and mystical experiences have been a part of Judaism since the earliest days. The Torah (the first five books of Moses) contains many stories of mystical experiences, from visitations by angels to prophetic dreams and visions. The Talmud (Oral Torah) considers the existence of the soul and when it becomes attached to the body. Jewish tradition tells that the souls of all Jews were in existence at the time of the Giving of the Torah and were present at the time and agreed to the Covenant. There are many stories of places similar to Christian heaven and purgatory, of wandering souls and reincarnation. The Talmud contains vague hints of a mystical school of thought that was taught only to the most advanced students and was not committed to writing.
In Hebrew, the word Kabbalah does not have any of the dark, sinister, evil connotations that it has developed in English. For example, the English word "cabal" (a secret group of conspirators) is derived from the Hebrew word Kabbalah, but neither the Hebrew word nor the mystical doctrines have any evil implications to Jews.
According to Kabbalah, the true essence of G-d is so transcendent that it cannot be described, except with reference to what it is not. This true essence of G-d is known as Ein Sof, which literally means "without end," which encompasses the idea of His lack of boundaries in both time and space. In this truest form, the Ein Sof is so transcendent that It cannot have any direct interaction with the universe. The Ein Sof interacts with the universe through ten emanations from this essence, known as the Ten Sefirot.
These Sefirot correspond to qualities of G-d. They consist of, in descending order, Keter (the crown), Chokhmah (wisdom), Binah (intuition, understanding), Chesed (mercy) or Gedulah (greatness), Gevurah (strength), Tiferet (glory), Netzach (victory), Hod (majesty), Yesod (foundation) and Malkut (sovereignty). The middle five qualities are mentioned explicitly and in order at I Chronicles 29:11: Yours, O L-rd, is the greatness (gedulah), the strength (gevurah), the glory (tiferet), the power (netzach), and the splendor (hod). I have seen this passage translated in widely varying ways, but the Hebrew corresponds to the names of the Sefirot in order. The Ten Sefirot include both masculine and feminine qualities. Kabbalah pays a great deal of attention to the feminine aspects of G-d. The Sefirot are commonly represented in a diagram (that basically resembles a star chart - You can see it at the website mentioned above). This diagram is commonly known as the Tree of the Sefirot or the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. There is great significance to the position of these various attributes and their interconnectedness.
The Sefirot are not separate deities, as some might think by taking this too literally. They are intimately a part of G-d, and yet they are in contact with the universe in a way that the Ein Sof is not. The Sefirot connect with everything in the universe, including humanity. The good and evil that we do resonates through the Sefirot and affects the entire universe, up to and including G-d Himself....
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