CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH

~ The Received Text ~

ONCE DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS

 

CHAPTER III

"CHRISTIAN" KABBALAH

 

 

“If nothing else, the term ‘convert,’ as applied to Jews, must be viewed cautiously, in view of the concealed Judaism of the ‘Marranos,’ which continued for centuries.”—Elizabeth Dilling, The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today

 

The roots of the Kabbalah are in ancient Babylon where the southern kingdom of Judah was exiled in 586 B.C. Although the Babylonian captivity was limited to 70 years, only a remnant of Jews chose to return to Israel while the vast majority remained in Babylon, many preferring material comfort to the difficult task of rebuilding and resettling Jerusalem. No doubt there were those who also desired liberation from the restrictions of the Mosaic Law. Over the centuries, Jews from Babylon returned to Israel bringing with them the Babylonian mystery tradition which became an oral tradition taught to succeeding generations of Jews. In 70 A.D., the nation of Israel was again judged by God and carried captive to Rome whence the Jews were dispersed throughout what is now Europe.

After the destruction of the Temple, the center of Jewish religion shifted to Rabbinic authority. It was during the Middle Ages that the rabbis compiled and published the oral traditions of Babylon in various books which became the Kabbalah.  Having rejected the God of Israel who sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem them, the dispersed Jews came under the baleful influence of famous Talmudists and Kabbalists such as Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-72), who taught the doctrine of redemption as man’s reunion with an impersonal deity, Ein Sof, and its first ray of light, adam qadmon:

“Under Luria’s system, the tikkun implies two operations: on the one hand, the ingathering of the divine sparks that had fallen...; on the other hand, the ingathering of the holy souls imprisoned and subject to the anti-Adam,...the negative of the primordial man, adam qadmon, who is encountered in the domain of holiness...” (Marc-Alain Ouaknin, Mysteries of the Kabbalah, p. 201)

Rabbi Luria also taught the Jews to view their exile as a messianic mission to accomplish their own redemption as well as tikkun, the “perfecting of the world” by the Jews.

“The entire nation of Israel has a special function, namely to prepare the world for tikkun, bringing each thing to its rightful place; it has a duty to recover and assemble the sparks dispersed to the four corners of the earth. Consequently, the Jewish people must be exiled to the four corners of the earth. Exile is not mere chance, but a mission whose aim is repair and ‘sorting.’ In fact, repair is accomplished in the form of sorting—of separating good from evil, with the aim of the total separation of the domains of the holy and the impure, which became mixed together at the original breakage and the episode of the fruit of the Garden of Eden.

“The children of Israel are completely preoccupied with the process of the ‘elevation of the sparks,’ not only in the places where their feet touch the ground during their exile, but also within the cosmic exile into which they have been thrown internally, and which they gradually bring to an end through their actions.” (Marc-Alain Ouaknin, Mysteries of the Kabbalah, p. 203)

THE RENAISSANCE

In his history of The Occult Underground, James Webb described the Renaissance as a steady stream of occult traditions flowing into Christian Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries.

“...the gradual flow into Christian Europe of writings of a totally alien spirit to that of the Establishment greatly assisted the collapse of that Establishment during the period of the Renaissance and Reformation. The Eastern Empire is one obvious direction from which some such information could come. Everyone is taught that the Turkish capture of Constantinople sent scholars scurrying to the West in time to add their contribution to the revival of free intellectual speculation in Italy. There was another chink in the papal armor; and one which was much more frequently penetrated. This was the Arab world to the south of the Mediterranean, with its contacts with Sicily and especially with Spain...

“...riding on the back...of Aristotle, had come Neo-Platonism and other such doctrines, with their origins in the systems of thought which Christianity had conquered in the first few centuries after Christ. ...besides the intellectual position of Neo-Platonism, there arrived in Europe those more spectacular symptoms of the occultists’ tradition—alchemy, astrology, and magic. These attained the relatively exalted height they achieved during the Renaissance partly because of the association of the Hermetica with Neo-Platonic currents of thought which carried with them the intellectual prestige of Greek antiquity.” (Webb, pp. 209-211)

It was during the Renaissance that the Jewish Cabala merged with the occult Traditions that were inundating Western Christendom:

“Also swept up in this maelstrom of quasi-religious thought was the great Jewish body of mystical speculation known as the Cabala, one of the chief sources of later occult tradition. A composite body of knowledge alien to that approved by the Christian Establishment was, therefore, to hand when the Establishment hold on Europe was finally broken during the great crisis of the Renaissance and Reformation.” (Webb, p. 211)

During the Middle Ages, large numbers of Jews converted to Christianity, either under coercion as “Conversos” or willingly as “Marranos.”  The latter were baptized with the intention of infiltrating the Church, and the clergy, and thereby subverting the Christian religion with false doctrine.

“And in the assimilation of Jewish Cabalistic teaching into the framework of Christian mysticism, on the one hand, and occult Tradition on the other, the role played by converted Jews was of the greatest importance. The first Jewish convert to occupy himself with the Cabala was Abner of Burgos, who about 1320 became Christian under the name of Alfonso of Valladolid.  He contrived to identify the Cabalistic personage of Metatron—who is said to sit at God’s right hand—with the person of the Son in the Trinity. In Renaissance attempts to derive support from Traditional knowledge for the Christian position, this form of identification was continued. For example, Pico della Mirandola decided that the three highest Sefiroth—Kether, representing the Supreme Diadem, Hokmah, wisdom, and Binah, understanding—could be equated with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost...”  (Webb, p. 220)

Leading Cabalists such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, John Reuchlin and Cornelius Agrippa were funded by the wealthy Medici family which established a Platonic Academy at Florence. Sponsored by the powerful Medici, who also contributed four popes between 1513 and 1605, the neo-Platonist scholars turned Catholic converts and priests, conspired to infiltrate the Vatican and  managed to sell Jewish occultism to the Catholic hierarchy as ‘Christian Cabala.’

“In 1462, Cosimo de Medici gave [Marsilio] Ficino a villa near Florence in which to teach Platonic philosophy, and a manuscript of the Hermetica to translate which he had received two years earlier from a monk who brought it from Macedonia... Of native Italian Hermeticists, the most notable were Pico della Mirandolo and the remarkable Giordano Bruno.

“Bruno was burned for his Hermetic doctrines, and Pico was at one time condemned. Their mutual inspirer, Ficino—who turned priest in 1473—had conceived of Hermes and Plato as aids to persuading those to religion who would not accept Scripture alone. This reasoning appears eventually to be endorsed by the Church in the case of Pico, who joined to his Hermeticism a ‘Christian Cabala’ and concocted a universal system in which Cabalistic ideas played a considerable part. Although condemned by a tribunal, Pico’s synthesis was rehabilitated in 1493 by Alexander VI, whose recognition of the Cabalist as a loyal son of the Church seemed to give some authority to Pico’s position. It should be remembered in this context that Sixtus IV (Pope, 1471-84) had himself translated seventy Cabalistic books into Latin, and that the concept of the ‘Christian Cabala’ was not peculiar to Italian thought. Reuchlin, the foremost Orientalist of his time, and author of the first Hebrew grammar, came nearest in success to the attempt to transform the Cabala into Christian philosophy, although his pupil Widmanstadt considered Jewish tradition as ‘a Trojan Horse introduced into the Church.’

“But the Hermeticists and Cabalists of the Renaissance were always maintaining their orthodoxy. Agrippa stoutly protested what his contemporaries considered his doubtful Catholicity... Magic even penetrated to the papal closet. Pope Urban VIII, a firm believer in astrology,...used to irritate his cardinals by predicting the dates of their deaths... the renegade Dominican Tonmaso Campanella...practiced magic; and it seems fairly certain that he and the Pope were closeted together...taking measures against a dangerous eclipse of the moon that January.” (Webb, pp. 220-22)

Although the occult traditions which flooded Europe borrowed elements of Jewish mysticism, the Cabala provided a coherent system of esoteric knowledge that has maintained its preeminence among occultists to this day. 

“...While the earliest magical records known date back to 1800 B.C., the basis of ritual magic is contained in a collection of papyri originating in Egypt in the same period as saw the birth and elaboration of alchemy and the Hermetic writings. Such magical procedures are founded on elaborate ceremonies for conjuring up spirits and compelling them to work the magician’s will. While the idea of hierarchies of demons was given some countenance by the Neo-Platonists, the chief debt of the ritual magician is to Jewish mysticism... In the Middle Ages treatises like the Testament of Solomon give magic an explicitly Jewish origin...

“...The Jewish genius for complicated metaphysics and occult speculation has provided occultists with some of their most erudite Traditional sources of inspiration. The Cabala, itself a Jewish word for Tradition, embodies these sources. For the history of European occultism two Cabalistic books are important: the early (3rd to 6th century) Sefer Yetsirah, the Book of Creation; and the later (late 13th century) Sefer Ha-Zohar, the book of Splendor, probably written by Moses de Leon, and certainly in Spain.”  (Webb, pp. 216-17)

Assigning numerical values to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet was the scheme devised by the Cabalists to invent an extraordinary system of Gnostic speculation. This hypothetical pathway to union with the Godhead was illustrated in the Cabalistic “Tree of Life”— 

“Of the long and complicated story of Jewish mysticism it is only necessary to recall here that an important element is the correspondence between the letters in the Hebrew alphabet and a numerical value—and that on this typically ‘occult’ idea of ‘sympathies’ has been erected an amazing framework of speculation. “...There are stated to be ten Sefiroth—sets of forces, qualities, or the elements of creation—which in combination form the whole world. The concept was elaborated, particularly by the 13th century Zohar, into a mysticism by which the adept could ascend toward the Godhead by, as it were, absorbing into his being the qualities of all the Sefiroth in sequence. These supposed elements of creation can be drawn diagrammatically. The adept was supposed to work his way along the ‘paths’ from one to another until, having achieved full mystical knowledge of the whole of creation, he achieved knowledge of God.”  (Webb, pp. 216-19) One ploy of the so-called “Christian Cabalists” of the Renaissance was to illustrate the Trinitarian Godhead using the five upper sephiroth on the Cabalistic Tree of Life, which forms a pentagram.  By inserting the Hebrew letter Shin, which stands for Shekinah, the female Holy Spirit, into the Tetragrammaton (YHVH), they produced YHShVH or Jesus, who they claimed was the “divine androgyne.” Thus, they deceptively reasoned, the Cabalistic view of the androgynous Godhead could be used by the Catholic hierarchy to prove the divinity of Jesus Christ to those who would not accept Scripture:  “In the Jewish kabbalistic tradition, which borrows many Pythagorean ideas, the pentagram represents the five upper sephiroth on the Tree of Life... Christian Kabbalists of the Renaissance were especially enamored of the pentagram, which they viewed as a mystical proof of the divinity of Christ – to them, it symbolized Christ as the Holy Spirit manifest in the flesh. A favorite gematric feat was to add the Hebrew letter Shin (symbolizing fire and the holy spirit of pentecost) to the Biblical four letter name of God (YHVH, most commonly [and incorrectly] pronounced ‘Jehovah’) yielding YHShVH- Y’heshua, or Jesus...  “There are many connections between the pentagram and Christianity... The pentagram was associated with the five wounds of Christ, and because it could be drawn in one continuous movement of the pen, the Alpha and the Omega as one. It was also an expression of a secret Gnostic heresy, found hidden here and there throughout Christian history - a symbol of Isis/Venus as the secret goddess, the female principle. The most notable instance of this symbolism is in the Arthurian Grail romances, which are Gnostic and kabbalistic teachings disguised as tales of knightly quests.” (Fig. 1 & 2) (Alternative Religions)

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

 

Gnostic symbols of the androgynous godhead (Fig. 1 & 2) were immortalized by Renaissance artist Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” (Fig. 3), a figure which is prominent in the opening chapters of The Da Vinci Code. Author Dan Brown explained the symbolism of The Vitruvian Man inside a circle, which depicted the female womb, as male and female equality and harmony.  The setting was the scene of the murder of Jacques Saunière, the Curator of the Louvre and Grand Master of the Prieuré de Sion. The dialogue was between the Roman Catholic Captain Fache of the Paris Judicial Police and Harvard Professor of Symbology, Robert Langdon.

 

“The Vitruvian Man, Langdon gasped. Saunière had created a life-sized replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous sketch.

“Considered the most anatomically correct drawing of its day, Da Vinci’s The Vitruvian Man had become a modern-day icon of culture, appearing on posters, mouse pads, and T-shirts around the world. The celebrated sketch consisted of a perfect circle in which was inscribed a nude male...his arms and legs outstretched in a naked spread eagle.

“Da Vinci. Langdon felt a shiver of amazement. The clarity of Saunière’s intentions could not be denied. In his final moments of life, the curator had stripped off his clothing and arranged his body in a clear image of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

“The circle had been the missing critical element. A feminine symbol of protection, the circle around the naked man’s body completed Da Vinci’s intended message — male and female harmony.  The question now, though, was why Saunière would imitate a famous drawing.

“‘Mr. Langdon,’ Fache said, ‘certainly a man like yourself is aware that Leonardo da Vinci had a tendency toward the darker arts...’

“Misunderstanding breeds distrust, Langdon thought... Da Vinci...incorporated in many of his Christian paintings hidden symbolism that was anything but Christian—tributes to his own beliefs and a subtle thumbing of his nose at the Church...

“‘I understand your concerns,’ Langdon now said, ‘but Da Vinci never really practiced any dark arts. He was an exceptionally spiritual man, albeit one in constant conflict with the Church.’ As Langdon said this, an odd thought popped into his mind. He glanced down at the message on the floor again. O Draconian devil, Oh, lame saint!

“‘Yes?’ Fache said.

“Langdon weighed his words carefully. ‘I was just thinking that Saunière shared a lot of spiritual ideologies with Da Vinci, including a concern over the Church’s elimination of the Sacred Feminine from modern religion. Maybe, by imitating a famous Da Vinci drawing, Saunière was simply echoing some of their shared frustrations with the modern Church’s demonization of the goddess.’

“Fache’s eyes hardened. ‘You think Saunière is calling the Church a lame saint and a Draconian devil?’

“Langdon had to admit it seemed far-fetched, and yet the pentacle seemed to endorse the idea on some level. ‘All I am saying is that Mr. Saunière dedicated his life to studying the history of the goddess, and nothing has done more to erase that history than the Catholic Church. It seems reasonable that Saunière might have chosen to express his disappointment in his final good-bye.’” (The Da Vinci Code, Anchor Books, 2006, pp. 45-46)

 

The ‘modern Church’s ‘demonization of the goddess’ was understandable once Dan Brown went into particulars concerning the deviant sex rites of apostate Judaism which simulated the so-called “sacred marriage” between “Jah” and his female consort, Shekinah, in Solomon’s Temple.  According to The Da Vinci Code version of the Tetragrammaton, Jehovah is the union of the male god “Jah” with goddess, “Havah”, their union “Jehovah” being an ancient, androgynous name from which YHWH derived.  It was this blasphemy which the medieval Catholic Church condemned as heretical.

“...early Jewish traditions involved ritual sex. In the Temple, no less. Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah. Men seeking spiritual wholeness came to the Temple to visit priestesses —or herodules—with whom they made love and experienced the divine through physical union. The Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH—the sacred name of God—in fact derived from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre–Hebraic name for Eve, Havah.

“‘For the early Church,’ Langdon explained in a soft voice, ‘mankind’s use of sex to communicate directly with God posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base. It left the Church out of the loop, undermining their self-proclaimed status as the sole conduit to God. For obvious reasons, they worked hard to demonize sex and recast it as a disgusting and sinful act. Other major religions did the same.’” (The Da Vinci Code, p. 309)

Dan Brown omitted to mention the specific Biblical context of this “sacred marriage” rite that was performed by the elders in the Temple of Solomon.  The book of Ezekiel spares the reader explicit details of the base immoralities that accompanied the worship of Tammuz, the Sun god; they are simply called “abominations” and “perverseness” which polluted the Temple and the land of Israel. Note in Ezekiel 8 that Tammuz, who was worshipped by the Jewish women, was the Babylonian analogue of Adonis, who represented the Sun which the Jewish elders worshipped by facing toward the east with their backs to the Temple:

“Then said he unto me, Son of man, lift up thine eyes now the way toward the north. So I lifted up mine eyes the way toward the north, and behold northward at the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry. He said furthermore unto me, Son of man, seest thou what they do? even the great abominations that the house of Israel committeth here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary? but turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations. Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these. And he brought me into the inner court of the LORD's house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the LORD, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.  Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? for they have filled the land with violence, and have returned to provoke me to anger: and, lo, they put the branch to their nose.” (Ezekiel 8)

These abominations were so vile and offensive that God, in a watershed event, departed from His Temple and turned the kingdom of Judah over to the invading Babylonians.

“And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house. And he said unto them, Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain: go ye forth. And they went forth, and slew in the city. And it came to pass, while they were slaying them, and I was left, that I fell upon my face, and cried, and said, Ah Lord GOD! wilt thou destroy all the residue of Israel in thy pouring out of thy fury upon Jerusalem? Then said he unto me, The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perverseness: for they say, The LORD hath forsaken the earth, and the LORD seeth not. And as for me also, mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity, but I will recompense their way upon their head.” (Ezekiel 9:4-10)

The centrality of the so-called “sacred marriage” in the Jewish Kabbalah is affirmed in the introduction to The Holy Kabbalah by the famous Rosicrucian, A. E. Waite, creator of the popular Rider Waite Tarot Deck, the major Arcana of which is based on the meanings of the Hebrew letters as defined in the Kabbalah.

 

“To go back to the beginning, Kabbalism dates back into the most obscure past of Judaism. What are the distinguishing ideas of Kabbalism? It is first of all a theory of emanations. (‘degenerative monism’ it is called philosophically). The inscrutable Godhead fills and contains the universe. To become active and creative, God emanated ten sephiroth or intelligences. A special prominence is given to one of these emanations, who functions as a female principle in the Deity, a demiurge and a term to creation. This is the final emanation, Malkuth the Queen, the physical manifestation of Deity in the universe. She is thought of as a Divine Woman, the Bride of God (like the Shakti of Shiva). Finally, the ‘innermost secrets’ of the Kabbalah are what are ‘occult’ in all occultism, erotic mysticism and a group of practices of the sort we call yoga—autonomic nervous-system gymnastics. For the Kabbalist the ultimate sacrament is the sexual act, carefully organized and sustained as the most perfect mystical trance. Over the marriage bed hovers the Shekinah.” (Kenneth Rexroth, Introduction, The Holy Kabbalah, 2003, p. ix)

 

Daniel Matt wrote in his introduction to The Essential Kabbalah that Pico della Mirandola’s “science” (falsely so-called) of magic and Kabbalah laid the foundation for an entire genre of “Christian Kabbalistic literature.”  In his 900 Theses (1486), Pico “announced that his work was ‘derived from the fundamental ideas of the Hebrew sages, greatly strengthening the Christian religion.’ The theses contained the daring claim that ‘no science can better convince us of the divinity of Jesus Christ than magic and Cabala.’ Pico, therefore, claimed that he could prove the dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ on the basis of Cabalistic axioms.” (William Varner, “The Christian Use of Jewish Numerology”)

 

Pico’s promotion of Kabbalah as “science” was the Renaissance version of Gail Riplinger’s exhortation to study the “verifiable science” and “the new scientific field of letter meanings.” Pico is regarded as the founder of Christian Kabbalah and his 900 Theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy and magic became the foundational work for Christian Kabbalistic literature:

 

“Although Kabbalah emerged within Judaism, and has deeply affected Jewish thought and religious observance, its influence extends far beyond. Italian Renaissance humanist Pico della Mirandola immersed himself in Latin translations of Kabbalah, believing it to be the original divine revelation. Long lost and now finally restored, Kabbalah would enable Europeans to comprehend Pythagoras, Plato, and the secrets of the Catholic faith. Pico claimed that ‘no science can better convince us of the divinity of Jesus Christ than magic and the Kabbalah.’ His controversial, syncretistic 900 Theses drew heavily on Kabbalah and laid the foundation for Christian kabbalistic literature. Pico’s follower, Johannes Reuchlin, produced the first systematic work of Christian Kabbalah, De arte cabalistica.” (The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, p. 16)

Allision P. Coudert wrote in The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century that Pico and Reuchlin, like Gail Riplinger, “considered each letter a hieroglyph, whose shape revealed its meaning.” From this Kabbalistic principle the pseudo-Christian Cabalists of the Renaissance proceeded to argue that the Cabalistic way of interpretation, by shapes of letters, rather than the literal meanings of God’s words, proved Jesus divinity:

“...Pico believed that the Scriptures contained all there is to know, but like them he believed this in an essentially kabbalistic, not Christian, way. Instead of interpreting every Biblical verse according to its literal, allegorical, topological, and anagogic sense, as both Jews and Christians did, he accepted the specifically kabbalistic view of the Bible as a sum of building blocks which could be sorted and shifted to reveal divine mysteries. Pico was aware of the complicated rules for manipulating and permutating Hebrew letters described in the Sefer Yezirah and elaborated into a system by the twelfth century Spanish Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia.  Indeed, he uses these rules to great effect if we believe his kabbalistic conclusions, particularly the seventh one:

“No Hebrew Kabbalist can deny that the name Jesus, if we interpret it according to Kabbalist principles and methods, signifies God, the Son of God, and the wisdom of the Father through the divinity of the third person...

“Like Pico, Reuchlin was versed in the kabbalistic rules for permutating words and letters, and he considered each letter a hieroglyph, whose shape revealed its meaning. He was able to make his own great contribution to knowledge by means of the kabbalistic art of letter permutations. He transformed the Tetragrammaton into the Pentagrammaton, the wonder-working word JSHUS, or Jesus.” (Allision P. Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century, Brill Academic Publishers, 1999, p. 88)

Two centuries before Pico and Reuchlin, the Kabbalists were not so successful in their foxy scheme to invade the henhouse. The ecstatic Kabbalist, Abraham Abulafia, from whom Pico derived his Kabbalistic system, “came to see himself as playing a messianic role, and he actually attempted to meet with Pope Nicholas III in the summer of 1280, apparently to discuss theological and political questions. The pope condemned him to death by burning, but before the sentence could be carried out, the pope himself died. After a month in prison, Abulafia was released.” (Matt, The Essential Kabbalah, p. 12)

 

By 1493, the works of Pico had captivated Pope Sixtus IV who welcomed the Trojan horse – Kabbalah – into the Roman Church. Our report “Mystery Babylon: Catholic or Jewish?” deals at length with the medieval phenomenon of Jewish “Marranos” who converted to Christianity for the sole purpose of infiltrating the Catholic Church, and becoming priests in order to gain access to its hierarchy. An interesting aspect of these conversions was the Jews’ attraction to “Christian Kabala” which the Church had adopted “to persuade those to religion who would not accept Scripture alone.” (Webb, p. 220) In other words, by introducing “Christian Kabala” to the Church, the Jews could claim to be Christian while bypassing the New Testament which they rejected.

 

Pico’s disiple, John Reuchlin, who produced the first systematic work of Christian Kabbalah, accommodated the Jewish belief in one God by teaching that the Father (‘YHWH’) became the Son (‘Yehoshuah’ or ‘Jesus’) in the New Testament: 

 

“Reuchlin’s main contribution was a series of bold speculations on the names of God which ‘proved’ or illustrated the Incarnation. Human history, Reuchlin argued, divides into three periods. In the first, a natural period, God revealed Himself to the Patriarchs through the three-lettered name of ‘Shaddai’ (ydv,+s dy). In the period of the Torah, He revealed Himself to Moses through the four-lettered name of the Tetragrammaton (hwhy, yhwh). In the period of redemption He revealed Himself through five letters: the Tetragrammaton with the addition of the letter shin, thus spelling ‘Yehoshuah’ (hvwhy, yhw+sh) or ‘Jesus.’ Thus Reuchlin’s arrangement was able to combine the Jewish belief in three ages (that of the Chaos, that of the Torah, and that of the Messiah) with the tripartite Christian division of a reign of the Father, a reign of the Son, and a reign of the Holy Spirit. Whatever be the merits of Reuchlin’s interpretations, from his time on, no Christian writer who touched on Cabalism did so without using him as a source. ‘That the Christian Cabala was at all respectable is attributable to the respect in which Reuchlin’s work was held.’

“During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries a wave of conversions to Christianity induced by the Cabala took place among the Jews.” (William Varner, “The Christian Use of Jewish Numerology,” 1997)

 

The false doctrine that God the Father and God the Son are the same Person in effect eliminates the second Person of the Godhead and this new teaching would accommodate the Jewish rejection of the Triune Godhead based on their misinterpretation of Deut. 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.”  The Kabbalistic version of the Shema, according to Daniel Matt's The Kabbalah Unveiled, goes: “Hear, O Israel, Tetragrammaton our God is Tetragrammaton Unity.”

THE ELIZABETHAN RENAISSANCE

“The figure of the Renaissance man of learning is not complete if the place of the Magician is forgotten. Ficino was scholar, priest, and magician. Dr. Dee was a mathematician and cryptographer as well as spiritualist. Agrippa and Bruno moved with freedom through the learned centers of Europe.” (James Webb, The Occult Underground, p. 222)

The revival of Neo-Platonism was transitory, at least in its overt manifestation, as the continent of Europe resisted the occult invasion that threatened Western Christendom. 

“But after the turmoil of the transitional period had subsided the Traditions returned to their status as the interest of a tiny minority. They went underground – joined once more the Opposition – because during the crisis of the Renaissance and Reformation, Aristotle and the scientific method had won.” (Webb, p. 222)

After the Renaissance was suppressed on the Continent, John Dee brought the occult traditions to the royalty of England. According to Frances Yates’ The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, Dee presented himself to Queen Elizabeth as a “Christian Cabalist,” whose predecessors were the infamous Christian Cabalists of the Italian Renaissance.

     “The characteristic philosopher of the Elizabethan age was John Dee whose mathematical preface to the English translation of Euclid (1570) begins with an invocation to ‘Divine Plato’ and quotes Henry Cornelius Agrippa on the three worlds. Dee’s preface is the work of a Renaissance Neoplatonist organically connected with the Hermetic-Cabalist core of the movement… Dee quotes Pico della Mirandola on number, and follows Pico, Reuchlin and Agrippa in developing intensely the Pythagorean or mathematical side of the movement. His ‘mathematical’ preface, and his teachings in general, were immensely influential in stimulating the Elizabethan scientific Renaissance.

“As is well known, Dee was not only famous as a mathematician but also famous, or infamous, as a ‘conjuror’. How did he manage to reconcile his scientific and occult interests with his earnest claim to be a devout Christian and with his support of the Tudor Reformation? I believe that the answer to this question lies in realizing that Dee was a Christian Cabalist, supporting the ‘more powerful’ philosophy implicit in Neoplatonism as understood by Pico, Reuchlin, Giorgi, Agrippa and as developed in the Renaissance occult tradition.

“It is important to bear in mind the late date of the Elizabethan Renaissance. It begins to flourish at a time when, on the continent, the reaction against Renaissance Neoplatonism and its associated occultisms was growing greatly in intensity as part of the Counter-Reformation effort to apply a restrictive attitude towards Renaissance Neoplatonism. The building up of Queen Elizabeth I as a Neoplatonic heroine by [Edmund] Spenser [viz., The Faerie Queene] was in itself a challenge to the Catholic Counter-Reformation powers and their attitude to Renaissance philosophy.” (Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, Routeledge, 1979, pp. 88-9)

Following in John Dee’s footsteps as the Queen’s conjurer was Francis Bacon who wrote The New Atlantis, a narrative of a “Christian Cabalist utopia” founded on Baconian “science”, i.e. Cabala. Yates describes Bacon’s ‘Christian Cabalist country of Bensalem,’ over which reigned a King Salomon, obviously in the mold of King Solomon.  Francis Bacon was possibly a crypto-Jew, since “bacon” comes from “pigs” for which the pejorative term in Spanish is marrano.  The Christian Cabalist utopia of Bensalem, a prototype of America, was very congenial to its Jewish populace for obvious reasons.  Yates described the oxymoronic religion of the “Jew of Bensalem” as “Christian Cabalism.” Note that the symbol of Christian Cabalism is a red cross:

“I have argued in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment that Francis Bacon’s movement for the advancement of learning was closely connected with the German Rosicrucian movement, having a similar mystical and millennial outlook, and continuing in England the movement which, exported to Germany, was to be so disastrously checked in 1620 [by King James I]. I emphasized that Bacon’s New Atlantis, published in 1627, a year after his death, is full of echoes of the Rosicrucian manifestos, that Bacon is, in fact, defending the Rosicrucian movement and seeing his own movement for the advancement of learning as in continuity with it...

“The ideal state or city which Bacon describes was a Christian Cabalist community. They had the sign of the Cross (a red cross) and the Name of Jesus, but their philosophy was not normal Christian orthodox philosophy, of any persuasion. It was the occult philosophy, half suspected of being magical, really good-angelical, and more powerful than normal philosophies. Yes, certainly more powerful because it is the Baconian science. The program of learning and research set out in half-mythical, half-mystical, form in the New Atlantis is really the Baconian programme for the advancement of learning which finds a congenial setting in what one can now recognize as a Christian Cabalist utopia…

“‘…whereas they [the Jews] hate the name of Christ, and have a secret inbred rancour against the people amongst whom they live; these [i.e. the Jews of Bensalem] give unto our Saviour many high attributes and love the nation Bensalem extremely.

“‘And for the country of Bensalem, this man [the Jew] would make no end of commending it, being desirous by tradition among the Jews there to have it believed that the people thereof were of the generations of Abraham, by another son…and that Moses by a secret cabala ordained the laws of Bensalem which they now use, and that when the Messiah should come, and sit on his throne at Jerusalem, the King of Bensalem should sit at his feet…’

“The long discussion about the Jew of Bensalem, and of how though remaining unconverted, he assimilated completely to the country, is of great importance in the sequence of studies in this book. I suggest that the reason why he was able to assimilate with such enthusiasm was because Bensalem was a Christian Cabalist country.” (Yates, op. cit., pp. 203-5)

Sir Francis Bacon was the President of the Fraternity of the Rose Cross and the founder and first Grand Master of modern English Freemasonry. Mrs. Riplinger favorably quoted leading Rosicrucian Francis Bacon in two places, but failed to mention his name when the occasion demanded it:

“Bacon (1597) said, ‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed…’” (Awe, p. 43)

“Francis Bacon, a contemporary, described James as ‘a prince the farthest from the appearance of vain-glory that may be, and rather like a prince of the ancient form than of the latter time.’” (Awe, p. 571, citing B. Bevan, King James VI of Scotland & I of England)

“Other KJV Translators:… Contrary to contemporary myths, Shakespeare and Flood [sic Fludd] did not participate.” (Awe, p. 613)

Gail Riplinger’s third statement leaves a gaping loophole for Masonic claims that King James I turned over the 1611 Authorized Version to Francis Bacon for final editing. Surely Gail Riplinger is aware of the Masonic attack on the King James Bible which claims “that the whole scheme of the Authorized Version of the Bible was Francis Bacon’s.” Why then did she exclude William Shakespeare and Robert Fludd as KJV Translators, but not Francis Bacon, the leading Rosicrucian who, according to the following Masonic sources, incorporated Hermetic codes into the King James Bible?

“William T. Smedley writes. ‘It will eventually be proved that the whole scheme of the Authorized Version of the Bible was Francis Bacon’s.’” (Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic, & Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, p. clxvi)

“There are some nine or ten theological works by the former and two sermons by the [translators]. Unless the theory of a special divine inspiration for the occasion be admitted, it is clear that neither Bilson nor Miles Smith could have given the final touches to the Bible. And now a curious statement has come down to us. In 1609 the translators handed their work to the King, and in 1610 he returned it to them completed. James was incapable of writing anything to which the term beautiful could be applied. What had happened to the translators' work whilst it was left in his hands? James had an officer of state at that time of whom a contemporary biographer wrote that ‘he had the contrivance of all King James his Designs, until the match with Spain’ It will eventually be proved that the whole scheme of the Authorised Version of the Bible was Francis Bacon’s.” (William T. Smedley, The Mystery of Francis Bacon, “The Authorized Version of the Bible” 1611, Chap. XVII, 1910) 

“In England, the chief exponent of ‘Rosicrucian’ thought was John Dee’s disciple, Robert Fludd—who along with Frances Bacon, was among the conclave of scholars commissioned by King James to produce an English translation of the Bible...” (Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Freemasonry: Geometry of the Sacred, pp. 20-22)

“Dee’s disciple, Robert Fludd, was the chief proponent of Rosicrucianism in England, and Fludd along with Sir Francis Bacon and others were commissioned by King James I...to produce an English translation of the Holy Bible.” (Dennis Cuddy, Now is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order, citing Michael Baigent, op. cit.)

The same chapter of Gail’s book which does not rule out Francis Bacon as a Rosicrucian who “produced” the King James Version, also presents the bizarre scenario in which the unpublished manuscripts of the 1611 KJV were given to “learned men,” Bishops, and many other men throughout the kingdom who were allowed to alter the Translators’ work!  She wrote:

“Unlike any English Bible translation, either before or since, the translation was opened to all Christians, according to rules 11, 12, and 13. Men ‘throughout the kingdom,’ from pastors, to deans, to professors, to learned men to Bishops, to ‘any’ spiritual plowmen, who ‘have taken pains’ in their private studies of the scriptures, were asked to study the translation and ‘send such their observations…so that our said intended translation may have the help and furtherance of all…’ ‘[A]ny…man in the land’ could review the work. ‘To accomplish this review, each company made and passed copies of its work.’ ‘Manuscripts were prepared and sent out for the scrutiny’ of men ‘throughout the kingdom.’ This participation of all men ‘throughout the kingdom’ from ‘far and wide’ is unique. The KJV is the only translation to be screened before its publication by the body of Christ, not just by translators. ‘[T]he Bps. [Bishops] altered very many places that the translators had agreed upon…,’ noted Dr. Brett of the Old Testament Oxford Committee. Suggestions which ensued from the body of Christ at large from the ‘general circulation’ were examined and incorporated by the original committee. In December of 1608 King James requested that ‘the translation of the Bible shalbe finished and printed so soone as may be’ (Coming, p. 4; Bishop Bancroft cited in Alfred Pollard, Records of the English Bible, London: Henry Frowde by Oxford University Press, 1911, pp. 332-333, 53-55 et al.; Translating the New, pp. xxii, lxxxiv, xxiii, xii, xxvii et al.; EB, Bible, English, pp. 902-903 et al.).” (In Awe of Thy Word, p. 587)

The above quotation from In Awe of Thy Word is a hodgepodge of sentence fragments from “King James Instructions to the Translators” intermingled with portions of statements from various other sources, the titles of which are lumped together at the end to make the citation ambiguous. Using this familiar ploy, Gail has once again managed to misquote her source. Rules 10 through 13 of “King James' Instructions to the Translators of the Bible” are as follows:

10. If any Company, upon the Review of the Book so sent, doubt or differ upon any Place, to send them Word thereof; note the Place, and withal send the Reasons, to which if they consent not, the Difference to be compounded at the general Meeting, which is to be of the chief Persons of each Company, at the end of the Work.

11. When any Place of special Obscurity is doubted of, Letters to be directed by Authority, to send to any Learned Man in the Land, for his Judgement of such a Place.
12. Letters to be sent from every Bishop to the rest of his Clergy, admonishing them of this Translation in hand; and to move and charge as many skilful in the Tongues; and having taken pains in that kind, to send his particular Observations to the Company, either at Westminster, Cambridge, or Oxford.
13. The Directors in each Company, to be the Deans of Westminster, and Chester for that Place; and the King's Professors in the Hebrew or Greek in either University.
 

It is important to note that Gail deleted the word “learned” from rule 11 to make King James’ Instructions state that “‘[A]ny…man in the land’ could review the work.”  Also note that the role of “any Learned Man in the Land” was limited to offering his judgment upon request concerning any “Place of special obscurity” in the translation upon which the Company doubted or differed. Gail also rewrote rule 12, which limited “every Bishop” to sending letters to “the rest of his Clergy.” According to Gail, “Men ‘throughout the kingdom’” and “‘any’ spiritual plowmen, who ‘have taken pains’ in their private studies of the scriptures, were asked to study the translation and ‘send such their observations …so that our said intended translation may have the help and furtherance of all…’” (Awe, p. 587)

Based on her dishonest citation of the King James’ Instructions to the Translators, Gail proceeded to claim that just about everyone in Great Britain was invited to participate in the translation process: “This participation of all men ‘throughout the kingdom’ from ‘far and wide...’” and “The KJV is the only translation to be screened before its publication by the body of Christ.” 

Why is this an issue? Only “the clergy” received letters from the Bishops, who “admonished them of this Translation in hand ” and “moved and charged as many skilful in the Tongues; and having taken pains in that kind, to send his particular Observations to the Company, either at Westminster, Cambridge, or Oxford.” (Rule 12)  Substituting “learned men” of Great Britain in this capacity —men who were consulted solely regarding “places of special obscurity” (Rule 11)— allows for the unthinkable prospect that Francis Bacon and his “literary secret society” of the “Knights of the Helmet” were foremost among those who “had their hands all over the King James Version,” in the inimitable words of David Bay of Cutting Edge Ministries:

Is Gail Riplinger “defending the KJV,” as David Bay claims to do, all the while she leaves the door wide open for his false allegation that the King James Version was in the hands of Francis Bacon for a full year before its publication? 

CHAPTER IV

THE BIBLE CODES

 

PDF VERSION

 

NOTES:

“...Jehovah...implies, even in its Kabbalistical, esoteric meaning, an androgynous nature, YHVH, or one of a male and female nature. It is simply Adam and Eve, or man and woman blended in one, and as now written and pronounced, is itself a substitute.” (Theosophical Glossary, p. 156)

The Da Vinci Code also advocates canonization of the Gnostic Gospels which exalt Mary Magdalene as the Goddess and exalt the Mother Goddess as creator of the world by adding to the name of God, YHWH:

“The earliest Christian records...do not match up with the gospels in the Bible... The Gospel of Philip... the Gospel of Mary Magdalene... Jesus suspects He will soon be captured and crucified. So He gives Mary Magdalene instructions on how to carry on His Church after He is gone... According to these unaltered gospels, it was not Peter to whom Christ gave directions with which to establish the Christian Church. It was Mary Magdalene... ” (pp. 245-248)

 

“The root YHWH is radical of HWH, he-vau-he, meaning ‘being’ or ‘life’ or ‘woman’ which were interchangeable concepts in the ancient Middle East. These identical letters in Latin are E-V-E: Eve. So the central or inner meaning of the Tetragrammaton is Eve, the Mother of All Living.

“In the Gnostic Gospels this concept also is conveyed. The Wisdom of God, or the Divine Spirit and Mother, is believed the real creator of the world. Allegedly her son, who was called the demiurge, stole his power from his mother and with it created the world. The early Gnostics believed the demiurge was the God which the orthodox Christians adored and not the true God or Supreme Being which they symbolized as Iao.

“The Tetragrammaton had two versions. EHYH, the lesser-known one, comes from Hayya, another one of Eve’s many names, which designates the Goddess in her special connection to women in childbirth. On Samaritan phylacteries the male and female versions of the Tetragrammaton were intertwined.

“The Hebrew mystics embodied this sacred name of God into the lore of Kabbalism. The ‘ineffable name’ of God by which all the powers of the universe could be controlled. Further Kabbalistic thought holds that the name YHWH contained all the Forces of Nature, and since some thought it could be divided this was a indication according to Kabbalistic theory that God had lost His Shekina, his feminine part or the Great Mother, who, as believed by mystics, had to return before there would be peace or harmony in the universe.” (“Tetragrammaton”)

CONTEND FOR THE FAITH:

THE TEXTUS RECEPTUS