Cabala of the Hebrews

The ‘Cabala Hebraeorum’ is the fourth ‘class’ of the second tome of Kircher’s Oedipus Aegyptiacus, a lengthy treatment of Jewish mysticism within his survey of the wisdom of the ancient nations. Kircher, who knew Hebrew and consulted Jewish converts and printed Kabbalistic works, defines Kabbalah, divides it into its branches and explains the ten sefirot, the divine names, the seventy-two-letter name and the techniques of gematria, notarikon and temurah. He also prints a table of forty-two angels and an influential Latin version of the ‘Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom’, a short text associated with the Sefer Yetzirah, with his own commentary. His famous engraving of the sefirotic tree, with twenty-two connecting channels, became the model for the Tree of Life diagrams used by later Christian and occult Kabbalists, including the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Kircher’s attitude was ambivalent: he admired what he saw as an ancient symbolic theology related to Egyptian wisdom, but he condemned ‘practical’ Kabbalah and its use of names for magical purposes as superstition. The online excerpts give the preface, the definition and division of the Kabbalah, the table of angels and the thirty-two paths, with English renderings of some passages. The section matters both as a link in the Christian reception of Kabbalah and as the visual source of the modern Hermetic Tree of Life.

What it contains

• Preface and definition of Kabbalah and its divisions
• The ten sefirot and the sefirotic tree diagram
• Divine names, including the name of seventy-two
• Gematria, notarikon and temurah
• Table of forty-two angels
• The Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom with Kircher’s commentary