KABBALAH
During the later middle ages, if anyone referred to "The Secret Doctrine" he would have meant the Kabbalah. But what was Kabbalah?
Kabbalah means "tradition", "transmitted teachings", so it is unlikely to have been a new creation in the medieval period. Did it originate in the Hellenistic world and exist as an oral tradition for a thousand years? Or was it perhaps millennia old - as old as Abraham?
Either way, the Zohar (the Book of Splendour) was written by Rabbi Moses de León, in Spain, in the thirteenth century, and in it, for the first time, the many strands and varieties of mystical thought that make up Kabbalah are codified and systematised.
One of Kabbalah's basic questions is, how can God, who is perfect, be connected or associated in any way with this imperfect world? It is the same question that was asked in the Hellenistic world by the (unothodox Christian) Gnostics, and later by the (also unorthodox Christian) Manicheans and Cathars. God, being perfect, is above creation: He does not "exist", in the sense that everything which exists has a cause, a context; there must be a First Cause but He/She cannot, by definition, exist in the same sense that everything else exists. So the Kabbalists, like the earlier Gnostics, posited a something - or a series of somethings - between creation, the world we know, and Ein Soph, the godhead without beginning and without end that we can never know. These "somethings" are the ten sephiroth, the emanations of God.
We can get the idea by looking at the first three. At the top is Kether. Kether is Ein Soph, the godhead itself, above and beyond existence, but here made manifest and usually depicted as a bearded king. Immediately below Kether, and deriving from it, to its right and to its left, are the Sephiroth named Hokhmah and Binah. Hokhmah (wisdom), the life-giving spirit, the creative force, begins the right, the masculine side, and Binah (understanding), the Mother, begins the feminine left-hand side. These three form the first triad. Note that Hokhmah is also the sacred phallus or lingam of Hindu theology, and Binah the equally sacred yoni, the vagina, or chalice or grail. And so on, through the ten emanations, till we come to Malkuth, the world.
The Fall, or incarnation, or reincarnation, involves a working-down through these emanations (each of which represents a world it is possible to visit by means of astral or shamanic travel). Mysticism is finding one's way back up through these worlds and achieving union with God again: this is what Kabbalah is all about. It is primarily, like the ancient mystery religions, a system for achieving union with the Divine.
Another good introduction, shorter, simpler, but not so comprehensive, not so engaging, as Prophet's book, is Principle of the Qabalah - which starts by explaining the difference between Kabbalah, Cabala and Qabalah!
