Masters and Magicians

The Kabbalah in British Occultism, 1860 - 1940

Liz Greene (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

480 Seiten

2016
University of Wales Press (Verlag)
978-1-78316-812-5 (ISBN)

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The growth of the occult 'underground' is one of the most fascinating features of late 19th and early 20th century British society. After decades of neglect, a growing body of scholarship is now dedicated to various aspects of Victorian and Edwardian magical practices and personalities, in an effort to understand why such a powerful cultural current could emerge simultaneously with the rise of modern science, and why it continues to exercise such a pervasive influence in many contemporary spiritualities. The books, articles, letters, and diaries produced by major figures in the occult revival, such as Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune, reveal the centrality of the Jewish Kabbalah in occultist thought and practice. However, the ways in which these individuals, and the secret societies they founded, sourced and utilised Jewish esoteric lore are largely ignored in current research. Current scholarship generally assumes that 'occultist' Kabbalah is a modern reinvention of older traditions, with little relationship to its Jewish roots.This assumption ignores the documented contributions of Jewish scholars and Kabbalists to the occultists' work, and there is little, if any, in-depth comparison of the ideas expressed by British occultists and the Jewish Kabbalistic literature of the medieval and early modern periods.
And why was the Jewish Kabbalah was so compellingly attractive to non-Jewish occultists at a time of turbulent social and scientific change, when religious, political, and racial anti-Semitism constituted a normative attitude in many circles of British society? This book provides a new, exciting, and penetrating analysis of how and why the Jewish Kabbalah was adopted and integrated, rather than reinvented or recreated, by important figures in the British occult revival, and why it remains a dominant theme in the spiritual currents of the twenty-first century.

Liz Greene is a tutor at the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, University of Wales Trinity St. David, and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Bristol.

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION. The case of the missing Kabbalah Methodologies, monomyths, and metanarratives Literature review Definitions of terms CHAPTER TWO THE 'GREAT SECRET': ELIPHAS LEVI AND THE HEBREW ROOTS OF THE VICTORIAN OCCULT REVIVAL A visit to a magus 'Le petit romantique' Rescuing the divine sparks: the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria Levi's Kabbalah and the alchemical opus The 'psychologisation of the sacred' The power of the letters Levi and the Jews How the Kabbalah crossed the Channel CHAPTER THREE MASONIC MYSTERIES: WILLIAM WYNN WESTCOTT AND HIS 'ROSICRUCIAN' KABBALAH The rhizome and the flower The creation of the SRIA The Kabbalah and the Craft The Kabbalah and the 'Rosie Cross' Hermes and the Jews John Dee and his Jewish angels Westcott and the goddesses: the Kabbalahs of Anna Kingsford and H. P. Blavatsky The 'Magical Mason' and his Kabbalah Westcott and the Ashkenazi CHAPTER FOUR IN THE NAME OF YHVH: SAMUEL LIDDELL MACGREGOR MATHERS AND THE RITUAL MAGIC OF THE GOLDEN DAWN A meeting at the museum The name of the rose Mathers and the grimoires The astral magic of the Golden Dawn Close encounters of the elemental kind The Jewish scholars and the occultists The Kabbalah according to S. L. MacGregor Mathers CHAPTER FIVE ARTHWAIT AND THE BEAST: MYSTICISM AND SEXUAL 'MAGICK' IN BRITISH OCCULTISM The mystic and the magus Waite's Kabbalistic 'mysticism' Waite's 'Mystery of Sex' The Kabbalah according to A. E. Waite The Kabbalah according to Aleister Crowley Sex, 'magick', and the Jewish messiahs The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor The 'man with two souls' Crowley's maggid and The Book of the Law The battle of the Tarots CHAPTER SIX WHEN SHE WAS 'JUNG AND EASILY FREUDENED': DION FORTUNE'S 'PSYCHOLOGICAL' KABBALAH Between the wars The occult psychologist Freud, the Hasidim, and the Lurianic Kabbalah Fortune's Jungian archetypes The Kabbalah according to Dion Fortune Fortune's 'occult novels' Fortune's Kabbalistic legacy CHAPTER SEVEN CONCLUSION 'Is Kabbalah Jewish?' Defining the Kabbalah The 'pluralistic hermeneutic' GLOSSARY OF HEBREW WORDS

Erscheint lt. Verlag	16.5.2016
Reihe/Serie	Sophia Centre Studies in Cosmology and Culture
Zusatzinfo	26 black and white images
Verlagsort	Wales
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Judentum
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Weitere Religionen
ISBN-10	1-78316-812-9 / 1783168129
ISBN-13	978-1-78316-812-5 / 9781783168125
Zustand	Neuware