Download or read book A Historical Study of the Goddess of the Old Testament and Kabbalah written by Sorita D'Este and published by . This book was released on 2011-04 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "The Cosmic Shekinah," the authors present a concise history of the different influences of earlier wisdom goddesses on the development of the Shekinah. They show that from these ancient sources, the unnamed Wisdom Goddess and wife of God portrayed in the Old Testament and early Jewish wisdom literature arose.

Download or read book Mirror of His Beauty written by Peter Schäfer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-17 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this beautifully realized study, Peter Schäfer investigates the origins of a female manifestation of God in Jewish mysticism. The search itself is a fascinating exploration of the idea of a feminine divinity. And Schäfer's surprising but persuasive conclusions yield deeper understanding of the complex but frequently intimate relationship between Christianity and Judaism--and of the development of religious concepts more generally. Toward the end of the twelfth century, a small book titled the Bahir (Light) appeared in Provence. The first document of Judaism's emerging kabbalistic movement, it introduced a completely new view of God, one that included a divine potency that was essentially female. This female divinity was portrayed both as a mediator between Jews and God and as part of the Godhead itself. Examining Judaic history from the biblical Wisdom tradition to the Middle Ages, Schäfer finds some precedents for the Kabbalah's feminine divinity. But he cannot account for her forceful appearance in twelfth-century southern France without reference to the immediate Christian environment, particularly the flourishing veneration of the Virgin Mary. Indeed, twelfth-century Jews and Christians were simultaneously rediscovering the feminine as an aspect of the Godhead after having abandoned it in favor of either an abstract, disembodied God or an exclusively male one. In proposing that the medieval cult of Mary--rather than eastern Gnosticism--is the appropriate framework for understanding the feminine elements in Jewish mysticism, Mirror of His Beauty represents a sea change in Kabbalah and Jewish-Christian cultural studies. It shifts our attention from the Byzantine East to the Latin Christian West. And in contrast to histories that treat the development of Judaism and Christianity in isolation, it leads us to a fuller understanding of Jews and Christians living in proximity, aware of each other.

Download or read book She Who Spins the Coils of Creation written by Leslene della-Madre and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2023-06-28 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Leslene della-Madre’s book, She Who Spins Creation: Sacred Female Cosmology in the Electric PlasMA Universe, is essential medicine and a much-needed balm for the spirit in these perilous times of toxic masculinity, toxic capitalism, toxic patriarchy, and the perpetuation of the annihilation of women’s wisdom and power (also known as the Inquisition) in which female-embodied existence and wisdom continue to be silenced and every attempt to eradicate us, deny our culture, belittle and erase our knowledge continues to unfold. It is also a master class in how to excavate and reclaim female-embodied experience, wisdom, empowerment, and sovereignty. Della-Madre exposes the misogyny inherent in patriarchal myth and science—from physics to molecular biology—delving into the mysteries of matter, the mammalian egg, mythologies of female origins, the Electric Universe, plasMA cosmology, and much, much more. She invites us to awaken to the reality of a truly female cosmology that has always reflected “as above, so below”—and always will—but that has been denied and subjected to nearly complete erasure in numerous ways by male-dominated realities. In doing so, she invokes us to challenge the amnesia of the ages, question all we have been told about who we are, where we come from, and who we can become. She implores us to “feel our horns and wings again”, and reclaim a world in which we understand that we are all “electric plasMA beings”, intertwined and interconnected, “in tune with the cosmos, the greater organism.” This is the way to heal the violence that has been done to the Earth, Nature, and women by thousands of years of patriarchal colonization. This book is also a clarion call for action—for women to “re-member our magic and to seek guidance from the ancestral realms to help restore us to whole (holy)ness.” This profound book should be made into a documentary series." Mary Saracino, author, LAMBDA award finalist

Download or read book Reinstating the Divine Woman in Judaism written by Jenny Kien and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A GODDESS FOR WOMEN'S PRAYERS Goddesses in ancient religions were particularly significant for women's physical, social and spiritual well-being. Yet, the Divine Woman was discarded by the monotheistic religions. Arguing her importance for women, the author proposes returning the Divine Woman to Judaism. Textual, archeological and historical analysis reveal how the Canaanite Great Goddess Asherah played a major role as Jahweh's consort in the religion of biblical Judah and Israel. The author shows how this goddess has not entirely disappeared from modern Judaism - her analysis of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden and the story of Tamar and Judah reveals many traces of Asherah's worship and myths still in the Bible. The development of the menorah and the kabbalistic Tree of Life from Asherah's religious symbolism further illustrate the goddess' profound effect on Judaism. These findings are of great relevance for present-day feminist Judaism. Reintroducing the Divine Woman to Judaism may stimulate new ways of approaching biblical texts, religious practice and yearly festivals - ways that preserve their connection with Jewish tradition but also empower women.

Download or read book Ancient Secrets of Creation written by Fred Reiss and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2007-06 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sepher Yetzira is a second or third century Hebrew book that is considered to be the seminal work of Kabbalah because it is a mystical interpretation of the Old Testament's creation story, and Kabbalists delve beneath the surface of the Bible to understand the unspoken mysteries of how the world came to be. Ancient Secrets of Creation is a new translation and reinterpretation of Sepher Yetzira that provides the answers to questions about how God created the world, especially how the expression, "And God said" is used. Because of Sepher Yetzira's succinctness and the passage of time, its implicit meanings have been lost. However, this work provides a fresh understanding of Sepher Yetzira by rediscovering and clearly explaining those mathematical, scientific, philosophical, and theological foundations on which it rests. These include pertinent pre-Socratic Greek philosophies; the ideas of Plato, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Neopythagoreanism, and Neoplatonism; as well as the works of Philo of Alexandria, the Old Testament, and rabbinic understandings at the time that Sepher Yetzira was written. This translation and explication unlock the secrets hidden within the Hebrew-language text of Sepher Yetzira, the book that started Kabbalah.

Download or read book When God Had a Wife written by Lynn Picknett and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals the tradition of goddess worship in early Judaism and how Jesus attempted to restore the feminine side of the faith • Provides historical and archaeological evidence for an earlier form of Hebrew worship with both male and female gods, including a 20th-century discovery of a Hebrew temple dedicated to both Yahweh and the warrior goddess Anat • Explores the Hebrew pantheon of goddesses, including Yahweh’s wife, Asherah, goddess of fertility and childbirth • Shows how both Jesus and his great rival Simon Magus were attempting to restore the ancient, goddess-worshipping religion of the Israelites Despite what Jews and Christians--and indeed most people--believe, the ancient Israelites venerated several deities besides the Old Testament god Yahweh, including the goddess Asherah, Yahweh’s wife, who was worshipped openly in the Jerusalem Temple. After the reforms of King Josiah and Prophet Jeremiah, the religion recognized Yahweh alone, and history was rewritten to make it appear that it had always been that way. The worship of Asherah and other goddesses was now heresy, and so the status of women was downgraded and they were blamed for God’s wrath. However, as Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince reveal, the spiritual legacy of the Jewish goddesses and the Sacred Feminine lives on. Drawing on historical research, they examine how goddess worship thrived in early Judaism and included a pantheon of goddesses. They share new evidence for an earlier form of Hebrew worship that prayed to both male and female gods, including a 20th-century archaeological discovery of a Hebrew temple dedicated to both Yahweh and the goddess Anat. Uncovering the Sacred Feminine in early Christianity, the authors show how, in the first century AD, both Jesus and his great rival, Simon Magus, were attempting to restore the goddess-worshipping religion of the Israelites. The authors reveal how both men accorded great honor to the women they adored and who traveled with them as priestesses, Jesus’s Mary Magdalene and Simon’s Helen. But, as had happened centuries before, the Church rewrote history to erase the feminine side of the faith, deliberately ignoring Jesus’s real message and again condemning women to marginalization and worse. Providing all the necessary evidence to restore the goddess to both Judaism and Christianity, Picknett and Prince expose the disastrous consequences of the suppression of the feminine from these two great religions and reveal how we have been collectively and instinctively craving the return of the Sacred Feminine for millennia.

Download or read book The Essenes written by Christian D. Ginsburg and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2005-11-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every investigation into the causes of the phenomena both of mind and matter was strictly forbidden, because the study of logic and metaphysics was regarded as injurious to devotional life.-from The EssenesThe Essenes introduces us to the Judaic sect that contributed greatly to the spread of early Christianity. Drawing upon the Midrashim and the Talmud as well as the accounts of Pliny, Josephus, and other ancient writers, this tribute explores their rise and progress, their relationship to both Judaism and Christianity, and more.The Kabbalah is a guide to those wishing initiation into the mysteries of this esoteric doctrine and its extraordinary if veiled influence on Jewish culture over the centuries. Elementary but also comprehensive, it offers easy-to-understand explanations of matters of Jewish history and literature with which the lay reader may not be familiar.Here, in one volume, are two classic essays, dating from 1863 and 1864, on Jewish mysticism by one of the most prominent Hebrew scholars of the 19th century.Hebrew Massoretic scholar CHRISTIAN D. GINSBURG (1821-1914) was born in Poland but spent much of his literary life in England. He is also the author of The Song of Songs and Coheleth and Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible.

Download or read book The Hebrew Goddess written by Raphael Patai and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1990-09-01 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hebrew Goddess demonstrates that the Jewish religion, far from being pure monotheism, contained from earliest times strong polytheistic elements, chief of which was the cult of the mother goddess. Lucidly written and richly illustrated, this third edition contains new chapters of the Shekhina.

Download or read book The Evolution of the Shekinah written by Madonna Sophia Compton and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2013-06-25 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an examination of the divine feminine archetype in Jewish mysticism and Kabbalistic philosophy

Download or read book Mystery Babylon Unveiled written by Isaac Isaiah and published by Star of Elyon. This book was released on 2024-02-04 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mystery Babylon Unveiled: Lucifer the Queen of Heaven brings to light Bible scriptures which prove that the one known as Satan, the Devil, and Lucifer is in fact a WOMAN. It reveals how she is identified in the Bible as the Queen of Heaven and the Great Whore of Babylon. This book also brings forth incontrovertible historic evidence confirming that Lucifer was worshiped in the earliest recorded history as the Great Mother Goddess, and that she is still worshiped as such within the halls of secret societies today. Discover where the world's worship of the Goddess began and where it is headed, within the pages of this book.

Download or read book A History of the Goddess written by Edward Dodge and published by Keneh Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the rise of monotheism, the early Hebrews were pagan and the Old Testament tells the story of the divorce of God from his wife, the Mother Goddess. Many familiar Bible characters are reinterpreted in a fresh light; Moses, King Solomon, Jezebel, and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Bible stories are contrasted to the older goddess mythology from Mesopotamia about Inanna and Ishtar and the goddess mythology from Greece and Egypt.

Download or read book Kabbalah Magic and the Great Work of Self transformation written by Lyam Thomas Christopher and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 2006 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advancing to higher levels of ritual magic with purpose and power requires an exaltation of consciousness-a spiritual transformation that can serve as an antitode to the seeming banality of modern life. Based on Kabbalistic techniques, the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and an Hermetic tradition spanning nearly two thousand years, this innovative new work introduces the history of the Golden Dawn and its mythology, the Tree of Life, Deities, demons, rules for practicing magic, and components of effective ritual. A comprehensive course of self-initiation using Israel Regardie's seminal Golden Dawn as a key reference point, Kabbalah, Magic and the Great Work of Self-Transformation guides you through the levels of the Golden Dawn system of ritual magic. Each grade in this system corresponds with a sphere in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and includes daily rituals, required reading, written assignments, projects, and additional exercises. Knowledgeable and true to tradition, author Lyam Thomas Christopher presents a well-grounded and modern step-by-step program toward spiritual attainment, providing a lucid gateway toward a more awakened state. Finalist for the Coalition of Visionary Resources Award for Best Magick/Shamanism Book

Download or read book Origins of the Kabbalah written by Gershom Gerhard Scholem and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the publication of The Origins of the Kabbalah in 1950, one of the most important scholars of our century brought the obscure world of Jewish mysticism to a wider audience for the first time. A crucial work in the oeuvre of Gershom Scholem, this book details the beginnings of the Kabbalah in twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France and Spain, showing its rich tradition of repeated attempts to achieve and portray direct experiences of God. The Origins of the Kabbalah is a contribution not only to the history of Jewish medieval mysticism, but also to the study of medieval mysticism in general. Now with a new foreword by David Biale, this book remains essential reading for students of the history of religion.

Download or read book The Origins of Jewish Mysticism written by Peter Schäfer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-24 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Origins of Jewish Mysticism' offers an in-depth look at the history of Jewish mysticism from the book of Ezekiel to the Merkavah mysticism of late antiquity. The author reveals what these writings seek to tell us about the age-old human desire to get close to and communicate with God.

Download or read book Madame Blavatsky on the history and tribulations of the Zohar written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Occultists see in the Jewish Kabbalah alone the universal well of wisdom and find in it the secret lore of nearly all the mysteries of Nature. For them the Zohar is an Esoteric Thesaurus of all the mysteries of the Christian Gospel. The Esoteric language used by the Alchemists was their own, given out as a blind necessitated by the dangers of the epoch they lived in, and not as the Mystery-language, as used by the Pagan Initiates, which the Alchemists had re-translated and re-veiled once more. Some believe that the substance of the Kabbalah is the basis upon which Masonry is built, since modern Masonry is undeniably the dim and hazy reflection of primeval Occult Masonry, of the teaching of those divine Masons who established the Mysteries of the prehistoric and prediluvian Temples of Initiation. Others maintain that the numerical language of the Kabbalistic works teaches universal truths, and not any one Religion in particular. Those who make this statement are perfectly right in saying that the Mystery-language used in the Zohar and in other Kabbalistic literature was once the universal language of Humanity. But they become entirely wrong if to this fact they add the untenable theory that this language was invented by, or was the original property of, the Hebrews, from whom all the other nations allegedly borrowed it. The writings which pass today under the title of the Zohar of Rabbi Shimon are not authentic. Moreover, the lore found in Kabbalistic literature was never recorded in writing before the first century of the modern era. There was at all times a Kabbalistic literature among the Jews, though historically it can be traced only from the time of the Captivity. Yet, from the Pentateuch down to the Talmud, the documents of that literature were ever written in a kind of Mystery-language, a series of symbolical records which the Jews had copied from the Egyptian and the Chaldæan Sanctuaries, only adapting them to their own national history. Jews and Christians rely on a phonograph of a dead and almost unknown language. There are scholars who do not carry the now-known Hebrew square letters beyond the late period of the fourth century. The real Hebrew of Moses was lost after the seventy years’ captivity and ceased from that time to be a spoken language. The Lost Tribes of Israel is a pure invention of the Rabbis. Not only are there no proofs of the twelve tribes of Israel having ever existed, but Herodotus, the most accurate of historians, who was in Assyria when Ezra flourished, never mentions the Israelites at all; and Herodotus was born in B.C. It is now becoming apparent that the Kabbalah of the Jews is but the distorted echo of the Secret Doctrine of the Chaldæans, and that the real Kabbalah is found only in the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, now in the possession of certain Persian Sufis. Hebrew cannot be called an old language, merely because Adam is supposed to have used it in the Garden of Eden. Linguistic analysis shows that the old Egyptian tongue was only old Hebrew and that the two nations lived together for centuries. Before adopting the Chaldæan for their phonetic tongue, the Jews had already adopted the old Coptic or Egyptian. The Hebrew Scriptures had been tampered with and remodelled, had been lost and rewritten, a dozen times before the days of Ezra. In its hidden meaning, from Genesis to the last word of Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch is the symbolical narrative of the sexes, and an apotheosis of Phallicism under astronomical and physiological personations. The wise King of Israel who succeeded his father, King David, was noticed neither by Herodotus, nor by Plato, nor by Diodorus Siculus, nor by any writer of standing. The Bible as it is now (i.e., the Hebrew texts), depends for its accuracy on the authenticity of the Septuagint, written miraculously by the “Seventy” in Greek, and the original copy having been lost since, our texts have been re-translated backward into Hebrew. So little, indeed, was Hebrew known that both the Septuagint and the New Testament had to be written in Greek, a heathen language, and no better reasons for it given than that “the Holy Ghost chose to write the New Testament in Greek.” The new system of the Masoretic points has made the Hebrew characters a sphinx-like riddle for all. Punctuation is now to be found everywhere, in all later manuscripts, and by means of it anything can be made of a text; a Hebrew scholar can put on the texts any interpretation he likes. The Tower of Babel myth relates to enforced secrecy. Men falling into sin were regarded as no longer trustworthy for the reception of such esoteric knowledge and, from being universal, it became limited to the few. One of the chief Lords or Hierophants of the Mysteries of Yava-Aleim had confounded the languages of the earth, so that the sinners could understand one another’s speech no longer. There are two distinct styles, two antagonistic schools, plainly traceable in the Hebrew Scriptures — the Elohistic and the Jehovistic. The one taught strictly esoteric doctrines, the other theological doctrines. The Elohists identified their Deity, as in the Secret Doctrine, with Nature. The Jehovists made of Jehovah a personal God and used the term simply as a phallic symbol. The original Mosaic text have been tampered with and replaced by that of the later Levites, who practiced degenerate mysteries and veiled Pantheism under Monotheism. The Ain-Soph of the Chaldæans, and later of the Jews, is a copy of the Vedic Deity; while the “Heavenly Adam,” the Macrocosm which unites in itself the totality of beings and is the Spirit of the visible universe, finds his original in the Puranic Brahmā. The Zohar places Ain-Soph, or Absolute Unity, outside human thought and appreciation; and in the Sepher Yetzirah the Spirit of God (Logos, not the Deity itself) is called The One. The true meaning of the compound name of Jehovah (of which, unvowelled, you can make almost anything) is men and women, or humanity composed of two sexes. A Kabbalist traces Jehovah from the Adam of earth to Seth, the third “son,” or rather race, of Adam. Thus Seth is Jehovah male; and Enos, being a permutation of Cain and Abel, is Jehovah male and female, or mankind. Eve stands as the evolution and the never-ceasing “becoming” of Nature. If we call Jehovah by his divine name, then he becomes at best and forthwith “a female passive” potency in Chaos. And if we view him as a male God, he is no more than one of many angels. There are four Adams, one for each of the preceding Root-Races. Thus the Kabbalah, as we have it now, is of the greatest importance in explaining the allegories and “dark sayings” of the Bible. As an Esoteric work upon the mysteries of creation, however, it is almost worthless as it is now disfigured — unless cross-checked by the Chaldæan Book of Numbers or by the tenets of the Eastern Secret Science. We have shown that the “Hebrew Bible” exists no more and hat uninitiated have to content with the garbled accounts and falsified copies of the real Mosaic Bible of the Initiates. The Temple of King Solomon exists to this day as a stupendous living monument of Esoteric records, while the famous temple has never existed outside of the far later Hebrew scrolls. The letters in the Hebrew sacred scrolls are musical notes. In the Sanskrit language letters are continually arranged in the sacred ollas so that they may become musical notes. Thus the Devanagari are the speech of the Gods, and Sanskrit, is the divine language. Sanskrit is the perfect form of the most perfect language on earth; Hebrew, the roughest and the poorest. The six days of the week and the seventh, the Sabbath, are based primarily on the seven creations of the Hindu Brahmā, the seventh being that of man; and, secondarily, on the number of generation. The Sabbath is pre-eminently and most conspicuously phallic. The mystery of the woman, who was made from the man, is repeated in every national religion, and in Scriptures far antedating the Jewish. Genesis does not begin at the beginning. Neither the septiform chronology nor the septiform theogony and evolution of all things is of divine origin in the Bible. The Jews never had more than three keys out of the seven in mind, while composing their national allegories — the astronomical, the numerical, and above all the purely anthropological, or rather physiological key. This resulted in the most phallic religion of all, and has now passed, part and parcel, into Christian theology.

Download or read book Hebrew Myths written by Robert Graves and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The I, Claudius author’s “lightning sharp interpretations and insights . . . are here brought to bear with equal effectiveness on the Book of Genesis” (Kirkus Reviews). This is a comprehensive look at the stories that make up the Old Testament and the Jewish religion, including the folk tales, apocryphal texts, midrashes, and other little-known documents that the Old Testament and the Torah do not include. In this exhaustive study, Robert Graves provides a fascinating account of pre-Biblical texts that have been censored, suppressed, and hidden for centuries, and which now emerge to give us a clearer view of Hebrew myth and religion than ever. Venerable classicist and historian Robert Graves recounts the ancient Hebrew stories, both obscure and familiar, with a rich sense of storytelling, culture, and spirituality. This book is sure to be riveting to students of Jewish or Judeo-Christian history, culture, and religion.

Download or read book When God was a Woman written by Merlin Stone and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1978 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, archaeologically documented, is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Under her, women's roles were far more prominent than in patriarchal Judeo-Christian cultures. Stone describes this ancient system and, with its disintegration, the decline in women's status. Index; maps and illustrations.