CABBAGE-TREE. See ANPIRA. CABBALA (Med. Lat., Neb. gabbaleth, re ception, as of traditional doctrine, from gibbel, to receive, accept, admit). The designation of a mystical system of philosophy which arose among the Jews at the beginning of the com mon era, as a reaction against the sober and austere form assumed by Rabbinical Judaism. It attained a great vogue after the Twelfth Century, spread among Christian scholars in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries, and still prevails among the Jews of eastern Europe, though now dying out. Its adherents claimed that their doctrine rested on a revelation made to Abraham, and, according to others, to Adam through the angel Raziel. The teachings were orally transmitted to the days of Moses, who in turn transmitted them to Joshua. By Joshua they were communicated to the seventy elders, and since that time passed down without inter ruption through chosen individuals until cir cumstances arose which rendered it desirable to convey the mystic lore in permanent written form. There are two written sources recognized by the Cabbalists—(I) the Sefer Jezirah, 'Book of Creation,' and (2) Sefer 'Lobar, 'Book of Light,' commonly known as the Zoltan. The former is ascribed to Rabbi Akiba (died A.D. 135) ; the latter to Simeon ben Jochai, a pupil of Akiba. The Sefer ,Tezirah is couched in a Hebrew similar to that found in the Mishnah, but the work now extant under that name can not date back earlier than the Eighth Century, and may be considerably later; the Zohar, writ ten in a rather obscure Aramaic, belongs to the Twelfth or Thirteenth Century of our era, and was probably composed by Moses de Leon of Spain. The Sefer Jezirah consists of a series of monolognies ascribed to Abraham, in which the patriarch sets forth how he came to the recognition of the true God, and then establishes in a series of aphorisms the harmony between created things on the one side, the thirty-two ways of wisdom, the ten fundamental numbers, and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alpha bet on the other, as manifested by the divine will. A Sefer Jezirah is referred to in the Baby lonian and Jerusalem Tahnuds; but while it can hardly be identical with the book now extant nnder that name, yet our Sefer Jezirah repre sents a point of view which is not far removed from the tendency manifested in certain por tions of the Talmud itself to interpret the doc trines of Judaism in a mystical sense. Ezekiel's vision of the heavenly chariot drawn by cheru bim (see CuEncul, and the mysteries of creation as described in Genesis, furnished the points of departure for mystical speculations regarding the divine nature. The dangers involved In
suell speculations were recognized by the rabbis, and yet we find the best of them prone to in dulge in them. The significance attached in the Sefer .Tezirah to the letters of the alphabet is paralleled by the principle of Gematria (the term for the numerical sum of the letters com prising a word), which is recognized in the Talmud as an exegetical principle. The Sefer Jezirah, however, passes far beyond the current of mystic thought to he detected in the Talmud. It endeavors to explain all things as an emana tion of the one Being, and that nothing exists but this Being and its manifestations. Passing still further, it endeavors to show the evolu tion of one Being itself, which, becoming, con scious of itself, is transformed from a virtual into an actual Being, capable of manifesting it self. The manifestations of its Being are of two kinds—as thought and as word. As thought it is the general intelligence; as word it includes the general as well as the specific ideas, dis tinguished from one another and expressed by combinations of the letters of the alphabet. The teachings of the Sefer Jezirah may be summed up as follows: (1) There are four fundamental principles, one always the emanation of the other. (a) The first is the breath of the living God, without beginning or end; (b) breath of breaths, a condensation of the primeval breath; (e) primeval waters, an emanation of the breath of breaths; (d) primeval fire, arising from the primeval waters. (2) Everything in the universe forms an external circle. Prime val elements are combined and again dissolved. (3) In all manifestations the law of contraries prevails. These doctrines are more fully devel oped, considerably amplified, and set forth in great detail, in the Zohar, which has been prop erly designated as the Bible of the Cabbalists. The name is based on Dan. xii. 3, with which the book begins. The Zohar is in the form of a homiletical commentary on the fifty-four divisions into which the Pentateuch is, according to Jewish tradition, divided. The Old Testa ment characters and events are not interpreted in a literal sense, hut everything is viewed as symbolical. Mystical thoughts arc woven into the sacred name of God, each letter being spe cially taken up, and even the vowels and accents do not escape this process of interpretation. There are various older books than the Zohar in which the Cabbalistic doctrines are set forth, and numerous later ones; but there is none which enjoys such authority among Cabbalists.