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Tag: Daniel Feldman

November 15, 2014

Shiva, Kali, Illusion, Brahman

“The Shaivites envision the pure consciousness of Vast Face as Shiva, and the energy of that consciousness as His consort the Goddess Kali.

The Vedantic philosophy of advaita (non-duality) regards all Name and Form as illusory, and the Brahman (i.e. the Ayn) alone exists.

[Many] Buddhists perform variations of Vast Face meditation practices taught by Gautama Buddha (regarded as the eighth incarnation of Vishnu by Hindus) and other bodhisattvas (souls who reach enlightenment but remain incarnate to teach and help others awaken).

The Buddha practiced jnana yoga (lit. union through direct perception of the Ayn) and taught ashtanga yoga (lit. eight-limbed yoga of concentration and discrimination).

He sat under the Bodhi Tree, renouncing all experiences on all planes of existence. Seeing that all the koshas (Sanskrit words for shells of embodied existence) were empty, he perceived the ultimate Truth of Pure Being in nirvana.

The Vast Face Taoists follow “quietist practices” that lead them to Stillness in the Tao. The principal mood, or bhava, of Vast Face Yoga is called the “shanti bhava” peaceful mood).”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg.  172-3.

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November 15, 2014

The Name

“… As mentioned earlier, almost all the root mantra in the Mystical Qabala involve the One Small Face Name.

The Name … is called the “Shem HaMeforesh” or “Brilliant Name of Fire.” It is often simply referred to as “HaShem” (lit. “The Name”), reflecting its central importance. The Name … is conventionally translated in scriptures as “Lord.” Within the context of Hebrew grammar, the word … is usually cited as a future tense third person form of the verb root  (lit. “to be”). Some regard the word as a composite that combines the past, present, and future tense forms of the verb root.

Orthodoxy has proclaimed the pronunciation of the letter-formula as a Name to be blasphemous. When the Name is encountered in the Torah or when chanting prayers, religious Jews will either pause in silence out of respect or substitute another power name, traditionally “Adonai” ( lit. my Master).

In the Latin Vulgate edition of the Tanakh, Jerome set the precedent of changing the pronunciation of the Yod to “J” and using the vowels from Adonai to produce the anglicized variation “Jehovah.” Jehovah is the way that most contemporary non-Jews pronounce the Name. The Name … is sometimes pronounced “Yaweh,” reflecting the tradition that the High Priest in the Temple of Jerusalem made a monosyllabic pronunciation of the Name … on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement).

The halachic prohibition specifies to avoid pronouncing the four letters … as a Name. If one is inclined to follow their prohibition, one can use the Atziluthic version wherein the letters are considered to be standing alone, and therefore pronounced individually–“Yod” (as in “code”), “Heh” (as in “day”), “Vav” (as in “love”), “Heh.”

The Atziluthic version can be regarded as the most powerful way of pronouncing the Name …”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg.  168.

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November 15, 2014

Is the Universe Infinite?

“…one of the continuing debates among astrophysicists regards whether or not the universe is closed i.e. will not expand forever.

On the one hand, the model of a closed universe holds that there is sufficient mass in the universe so that the Big Bang explosion will gradually slow down and reverse due to the pull of gravity. In this model, all the mass of the universe involutes back into its unimaginably small and dense original condition until another quantum shift precipitates another explosion.

On the other hand, there are those who contend that the supernova data on distant galaxies confirms that there is insufficient mass for the reversal to occur, and that the negative expansion energy of space is causing our universe to expand forever.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg.  131.

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November 15, 2014

Seven

“Through them are said to have formed seven planets, seven days of the week, and seven orifices of the eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth.

“Seven double letters: Beyt Gimel Dalet Kaf Pey Resh and Tav are the foundation.

He engraved them, He hewed them out, He combined them, He weighed them at opposites, and He formed through them: seven stars in the universe, seven days in the year, seven gates in the body of male and female….and through which He engraved seven universes, seven heavens, seven earths, seven seas, seven rivers, seven Sabbatical years, seven Jubilees, and the Holy Temple.

Therefore He cherished the seventh ones under all the heavens.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pp. 130-1.

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November 15, 2014

Incarnations of the Divine

“Buddhism provides detailed descriptions of the incarnations of the Buddha, and of the one to come called Maitreya.

The sage Lao Tze, to whom is ascribed the Tao Te Ching, was the revered divine incarnation who sired the development of Taoism.

And Zoroaster was the messianic wellspring who transmitted the Zend Avesta and originated the tradition passed down through the Farsis.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg.  111-2.

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November 15, 2014

Awakening

“Some Messiahs appear to be completely or partially veiled from awareness of their true identity until awakened to it by a Perfect Master who has incarnated to do so, or through a supra-conscious experience of the Divine.

Master Mosheh was dramatically changed by his experience of the “Burning Bush.”

The Qur’an also tells us that Master Mosheh was “guided” by Al Kidr, often referred to as the “Green One” or “The Jew.”

The Perfect Master John baptized Master Yeshuvah in the Holy Spirit.

The monk Tota Puri struck the Bengali avatar Sri Ramakrishna in the center of his forehead with a sharp rock. It immediately sent him into a nirvikalpa samadhi that lasted for six months and culminated twelve years of intense spiritual practices, after which Ramakrishna commenced his activity as a World Teacher.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg.  107.

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November 15, 2014

The Ineffable

“From here go out (i.e. extrapolate) and think what the mouth is unable to speak and the ear is unable to hear.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg. 96.

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November 15, 2014

Awaiting the Prophet Elijah

“The Qu’ran is the final revelation of the Lord (as Allah) to the children of Abraham. It was transmitted through the Prophet Mohammed, the “Seal of the Shemite prophets.”

The only prophet yet to come is the reappearance of Eliyahu (Elijah), who will herald the final messianic advent of Allah as “The Last,” which the Qu’ran calls the Day of Judgement” (Yom Ah-Din).

The Qu’ran encompasses 6,666 verses in 114 titled surahs (chapters) of varying length.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg.  71.

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November 15, 2014

Secret Teachings

“Despite later distrust and suppression by Pauline orthodoxy, mysticism flourished in the early church.

Master Yeshuvah taught one set of teachings openly to the public, and another set of secret teachings privately to his most advanced disciples. The Gospels themselves attest to this, and Clement of Alexandria wrote about such a secret teaching as late as the third century CE.

Of all the Christian mystical literature, the most enigmatic and passionately discussed is the Revelation of John. It opens with a description of John’s vision of the Ancient of Days with fiery eyes and a two-edged sword coming from his mouth, etc.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg.  71.

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November 15, 2014

Leviathan

“The Yosher is a distinctly anthropomorphic form of the Name.

It is encircled by the Leviathan of Vast Face, described as a “snake devouring its tail.”

The Leviathan acts as a circular “fence” around the Yosher and defines the field of superimposition.

It also displays the ubiquitous mystical principle that “the end is contained in the beginning.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg.  66.

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September 30, 2014

Metatron

“The most prominent Merkabah sections describe the ascension and transformation of Enoch ben Yared into Metatron, known as “The Youth” to whom the Lord revealed the deepest secrets, and whom the Lord made the “operational manager” of this universe.

Metatron, chief of the angels, is referred to in the Tanakh (notably in Proverbs 22.6 and Job 32.6), as well as the Zohar (I.223b).”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg. 65.

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September 30, 2014

The Books of Enoch

“The most prolific descriptions of the Merkabah appear in the Books of Enoch. Enochian literature takes its name from Enoch son of Yared. Enoch was a “righteous man in his generation” and “walked with Elohim.”

It is believed that in ancient times there may have been as many as 100,000 volumes of Enochian literature, nearly all of whose last remains were lost in the fiery destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria. This literature was virtually unknown from the fourth (when banned by Hilary, Jerome, and Augustus) until the late nineteenth century CE, when three manuscripts deemed as authentic Enochian material were discovered.

Two of the manuscripts, I Enoch and III Enoch, were in Ethiopian translation: these were found in what was once Abyssinia, the domain of King Solomon’s infamous lover, the Queen of Sheba. The third manuscript, called II Enoch and the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, was preserved in two Slavonic versions: these were found in Russia and Serbia.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg.  64.

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September 29, 2014

The Sefer HaShmoth (Book of Names)

“…The Sefer HaShmoth (Book of Names)…is a book of Divine Names…it is a valuable key that can help open locks guarding the mysteries that lay hidden in Hebrew (and Arabic) qabalistic books, and provides Names of Power by which one can light the entire Tree. Secondly, it is the primary source of “Angelic Tree Language,” comprised of one series of Tree-maps that allude to distinctly different paths of ascension through the planes of consciousness and a second series that allude to different stations of perfected souls who have completed the ascension.”

“It is said that Adam gave the book to his son Seth and it was then passed down the generational line to Enoch son of Yared. When Enoch ascended and “walked with Elohim,” he took the book with him. The Sefer HaShmoth came back into the world again with the Covenant of Abraham. Abraham gave the book to Ishmael, Isaac, and his offspring by his concubines. Isaac’s copy was handed down to Master Mosheh (Moses) and was later sealed in the vault of the first Temple of Jerusalem. Buried in the Temple vault, access to the book was limited to those who had the psychic skill to “see/read” it in Yetzirah (Astral World of Formation), and the strength to survive the impact of its power without shattering their shells.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg.  60.

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September 28, 2014

Seeking the Garden of Eden Alphabet

“The letterforms of the Sinatic and Ezra Hebrew alphabets bear little physical resemblance to one another, though they share the same twenty-two-letter format and have the same names for the letters.

Hence, the Sinatic Hebrew letter Alef transliterates with the Ezra Alef, the Sinatic Beyt with the Ezra Beyt, and so forth. Sinatic letterforms are basically built from the letters Alef and Ayin. Ezra Hebrew letter forms are built upon variations of the letter Yod.

Both alphabets have letters which overtly or covertly contain other letters, such as the Tav contained in the Sinatic Alef or the Beyt contained in the Ezra Alef (as described in the Sefer Bahir).

Unlike the Ezra alphabet, Sinatic does not have final letters, which were developed much later as a means of showing separation between words in crowded scrolls. The final letters became significant in the Ezra alphabet when given extended numerical value in gematria or qabalistic numerology.

The sudden appearance of the original Hebrew was paralleled several hundred years later by the sudden appearance of Brahmi Sanskrit in the Indus Valley.

Sinatic and Brahmi have many similar letterforms, and both were replaced by later alphabets claimed in present times to be the originals (i.e. Sinatic replaced by Ezra and Brahmi replaced by Deva Negari).

Some Qabalists and Tantrikas maintain that there is a parent alphabet, called the “Gan Aden Alphabet” (Garden of Eden), from which both Hebrew and Sanskrit are derived.

[ … ]

There is also said to be a Gan Aden Torah, an unbroken sequence of letters that may be broken into words and sentences in innumerable ways.

Hence, the written Torah is one such “translation” of the unbroken letter sequence, minus the letters and anusvara that were not included in the Hebrew alphabet.

A book called the Tiqunim HaZohar (“Perfections of Splendor”) discusses seventy ways of translating the first six letters of the Torah.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg. 57.

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September 28, 2014

Sinatic Hebrew an Alphabetical Representation of Sumerian Cuneiform?

“…there is extensive archeological evidence of a much older Hebrew alphabet, called Gezer or Sinatic (after Mount Sinai), as the original and most ancient Hebrew.

Sinatic Hebrew is in fact the oldest known alphabet, suddenly appearing about the time of Abraham (circa 1850 BCE). The original Sinatic Hebrew became virtually extinct after the decimation of Lachish circa 701 BCE.

The Sinatic alphabet could have evolved as an alphabetic representation of the twenty-six Sumerian cuneiform ciphers, the world’s oldest known non-alphabetic language.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabala: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001, pg. 56.

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September 28, 2014

Time is Relative

“…time is relative and subject to compression and expansion.” (…) “it can then be said that the Hebrew calendar of seven thousand years spans the entire life of this universe in matter, which is currently estimated to be twenty billion years.

The implication of this idea is that the sequence of events in Torah B’reshith, all of which are assumed to occur in one plane of existence, actually manifest as a nonlinear space-time sequence occurring in more than one plane. Time-space is exponentially expansive in each successive plane of existence.

Perhaps the reader has had the experience of an elaborate dream that seemed to span a long period of time, maybe years, only to wake up  and find out that it actually occurred in a matter of minutes. Consider the oft-told story of a person seeing their entire life “pass before their eyes” in a near-death episode.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabalah: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001. Pg. 50-1.

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September 28, 2014

Mantra & Yantra

“The meditation practices employed by both Mystical Qabalists and Tantrikas involve a coordinated use of mantra and yantra. Mantra are sequences of Divine Names having great intrinsic power to transform consciousness, and yantra are visualizations that correlate directly and specifically to the mantra. Anthropomorphic descriptions of the Lord hvhy are usually allusions to mysteries and to states and stations of consciousness.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabalah: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001. Pg. 49.

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September 28, 2014

Shiva & Shakti

“When the Aryans invaded Northern India in the fourteenth century BCE, they encountered a dark-skinned people inhabiting the Sandya Hills above the Indus Valley, for whom the Tantric traditions and rituals of Shiva/Shakti were centuries old.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabalah: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001. Pg. 46-7.

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September 28, 2014

Tantra

“Another theory postulates that these children of Abraham emigrated east to India over long established sea or overland trade routes, where they established the monotheistic religion of Shiva/Shakti long before the invasion of the Aryans down from the Persian steppes. (…) In India, this religion is called Tantra, and is often referred to in the West as “the Tantras.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabalah: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001. Pg. 46.

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September 28, 2014

La Illaha Il Allah

“The silent and oral recitation (dikhr) of the “Affirmation of Unity” (La Illaha Il Allah), which is the root mantra at the foundation of Islam, is a core practice of all Sufis. The various orders can often be distinguished by the way that they do this.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabalah: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001. Pg. 45.

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September 28, 2014

Sufism

“…Sufism is generally eschewed and viewed with suspicion by the Sunnite and Shiite Islamic orthodox authorities.”

“…the Sufis have a rich and prolific mystical literature filled with sublime mystical allusions and brilliant allegories.”

(Ah. Rumi was a Sufi master. I did not know that.)

“Western alchemy was derived in great measure from the writings of a number of Sufis concerning the mystical analogy of the purification and transformation of metals into the stone of unity, known as the “Philosopher’s Stone.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabalah: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001. Pg. 43.

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September 28, 2014

Kabbalistic Influences on Freemasonry

In the seventeenth century CE, the center of the Christian Cabala moved to England and Germany, where its status was boosted by the theosophical writings of Jacob Boehme and the landmark qabalistic compendium of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth.

Von Rosenroth and Athanasius Kircher extrapolated the qabalistic allusion of Adam Kadmon to be a reference to Jesus as the primordial man in Christian theology. In the final phase in the development of the Christian Cabala in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became permeated with alchemical symbolism and conjoined with the emerging doctrines of theosophy. This in turn greatly influenced the development of Freemasonry.

–Daniel Feldman, Qabalah: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001. Pg. 41.

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September 28, 2014

Edenic Origins of the Kabbalah

“The Qabalah is traditionally traced back to Adam and Eve.”

[ … ]

“The disciplines of the Mystical Qabalah are distinct from those practiced by magicians, wizards, and sorcerers who seek to acquire creative and/or destructive power, depending on what paths they traverse on the Tree of Life.

The occult disciplines of wizards and magicians are often called the Practical, Hermetic, or Magical Qabalah. Practical Qabalah has its roots in the “Thirteen Enochian Keys” of Enoch son of Qain, along with a highly admixture of material taken from Egyptian, Mesopotamian and other non-Hebrew sources.

It is important not to confuse Enoch son of Qain with Enoch son of Yared. The former Enoch was the grandson of Adam and the son after whom Qain was said to name a city.

Enoch son of Yared was the great, great, great, great grandson of Adam, and the one who “walked with Elohim” and was transformed into Metatron.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabalah: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001. Pg. 33-4.

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September 28, 2014

Seeking the Original Kabbalah

“By the Mystical Qabalah, we are referring to an ancient mystical transmission that preceded and supersedes any of the religious vessels through which it has been subsequently filtered and adapted.

These vessels include the Israelite Hebrew, Rabbinical Judaic, Mystical Christian, Sufi Islamic, and possibly even the North Indian Tantric.

Each of these vessels has framed the universal teachings of the Mystical Qabalah within the context, language, and cultural milieu of their respective dispensations. Each version is unique and beautiful, to be respected and celebrated.

But no single one of these vessels can legitimately claim to be the orthodox authority for these teachings.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabalah: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001. Pg. 14.

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July 17, 2014

On Enoch and the Angel Metatron.

“The disciplines of the Mystical Qabalah are distinct from those practiced by magicians, wizards, and sorcerers who seek to acquire creative and/or destructive power, depending on what paths they traverse on the Tree of Life. The occult disciplines of wizards and magicians are often called the Practical, Hermetic, or Magical Qabalah.

Practical Qabalah has its roots in the “Thirteen Enochian Keys” of Enoch son of Qain, along with a highly admixture of material taken from Egyptian, Mesopotamian and other non-Hebrew sources.

It is important not to confuse Enoch son of Qain with Enoch son of Yared. The former Enoch was the grandson of Adam and the son after whom Qain was said to name a city.

Enoch son of Yared was the great, great, great, great grandson of Adam, and the one who “walked with Elohim” and was transformed into Metatron.”

–Daniel Feldman, Qabalah: The Mystical Heritage of the Children of Abraham, 2001. Pg. 33-4.

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