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Kabbalah & Joseph Smith: Ideas and Notes
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Research By Eugene Seaich
SURVIVALS OF THE TEMPLE CULT IN KABBALISM. After the destruction of the
Temple in A.D. 70, pious Jews did not suddenly abandon their quest for a
vision of God's Face, but developed it into a mystical tradition which many
continued to practice in private. The object, as before, was to see what
the prophet Isaiah had seen in the Temple (Isa. 6:1-3). But the fact that
Ezekiel and Daniel had also seen this vision outside of the Temple, and that
they left popular accounts of it in Scripture (Ezek. 1:4-26; Dan. 7:9-14),
shows that independent mystical experiences were thought to be possible,
even prior to the loss of the Jerusalem Sanctuary.
Just how this tradition of mystical experience was passed down to medieval
Jewish visionaries is presently unknown, though the researches of Gershom
Scholem have made it certain that it had its roots in the pseudepigraphic
and apocalyptic traditions of the late Second Temple period. After the
destruction of the Sanctuary and the Temple priesthood, these had gone
"underground," until they reemerged once again in the writings of the German
Hasidim 1150-1250),and in the treatises of thirteenth century Spanish
Kabbalists:
Subterranean but effective, and occasionally still traceable, connections
exist between these later mystics and the groups which produced a large
proportion of the pseudepigrapha and apocalypses of the first century before
and after Christ. Subsequently a great deal of this unrecognized tradition
made its way to later generations independent of, and often in isolation
from the schools and academies of the Talmudic teachers. We know that in
the period of the Second Temple an esoteric doctrine was already taught in
Pharisaic circles. The first chapter of Genesis, the story of Creation
(Maaseh Bereshit), and the first chapter of Ezekiel, the vision of God's
throne-chariot (the "Merkabah"), were the favorite subjects of discussion
and interpretation which it was apparently considered inadvisable to make
public...It seems probable, however, that speculation did not remain
restricted to commentaries on the Biblical text. The hayyoth, the "living
creatures," and other objects of Ezekiels's vision were conceived as angels
who form an angelologic hierarchy at the Celestial Court... One thing
remains certain: the main subjects of the later Merkabah mysticism already
occupy a central position in this oldest esoteric literature, best
represented by the Book of Enoch. The combination of apocalytic with
theosophy and cosmogony is emphasized almost to excess: "Not only have the
seer perceived the celestial hosts, heaven with its angels, but the whole of
this apocalyptic and pseudepigraphic literature is shot through with a chain
of new revelations concerning the hidden glory of the great Majesty, its
throne, its palace...the celestial spheres towering up one over the other,
paradise, hell, and the containers of the souls."802
Indeed, these apocalyptic and pseudepigraphic writings had been filled with
the heavenly visions of seers like Enoch,803 Abraham804 and Ezra,805 which
appear to have been part of an oral tradition paralleling the traditions of
the priest-hood and the Temple,806 and which had already been the topic of
specula-tion amongst individual mystics during much of the Second Temple
period. It was the Mishna (Hagigah, 2:1) which gave these speculations the
name of ma'aseh merkabah, referring to the vision of God's glory seated upon
the Cherubic Throne (merkabah).807 Yet these must have been at least as old
as the Wisdom of Sirach (ca. 190 B.C.), which refers to the different
creatures which Ezekiel saw in his famous vision (49:8). Scattered
references to the Merkabah are also found in the pre-Christian Qumran
literature, describing the angels who congregate about the Throne of God,
and telling how to gain access to their company.808
These continued with even greater frequency to be the subject of
various midrashic and Talmudic works.809 BT. Hagigah, 13a, for
example, contains a legend (ascribed to the first century) concerning the
____________________
802Scholem, MTJM, 42-3; his quote is from Baldesperger, Die
messianisch-apokalyptischen Hoffnungen des Judentums.
803See especially 1 Enoch, 14, which describes the visionary ascent to the
Throne.
804See the Apocalypse of Abraham, in Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament
Pseudepigrapha, I:681-705; also The Testament of Abraham, in ibid.,
I:871-902. Compare also "Appendix 2: The Book of Abraham," below.
805See Fourth Ezra; the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra; Vision of Ezra;
Quotations of Ezra; the Revelation of Ezra; all in Charlesworth, ed., op.
cit., I:517-604.
806D. S. Russell, Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic, 173-4.
807See pp. 790-91, above. Actually, merkabah means "chariot" or "wagon,"
which was the traditional form of the Heavenly Throne.
808See Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (1968 revision), 42,
210-11; Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered
(N.Y. and London, 1992), 11, 37-9; Carol Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath
Sacrifice,
59-72. The latter is especially valuable for its detailed analysis of the
Qumran cult of participation in the worship of the Heavenly Temple.
809For a complete list, see Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem, 1974),
373-5.
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dangers of hashmal (KJV "amber," Ezek. 1:27), or the "light" which emanates
from the Heavenly Throne, and which one might encounter while studying the
secrets of the Merkabah. Folios 13a-15b further speak of esoteric theurgic
techniques used by the rabbis during the third century for achieving
heavenly access to the Throne; Paul's visionary experience in the New
Testament, however, shows that such ascents were already known during the
first century.810
Once the Temple was actually destroyed, whole treatises discussing these
independent methods of ascending to the Merkabah began to appear. From at
least the fourth century onwards, and possibly even from the second and
third,811 we encounter a growing number of important works describing the
structure of the cosmos, the several levels of heaven, the angels who
inhabit them, and ritual methods for personally reaching and communicating
with the Divine Being seated at their center. The best known of these
include the treatises known as the Lesser and Greater Hekhaloth, (hekhaloth
being the "palaces" or "mansions" surrounding the Heavenly Throne).812 The
Greater Hekhaloth is especially significant because it contains the oldest
extant description of the "Body of God" (shi'ur komah), as it appears on the
Throne. Of special interest is the book which was published as 3 Enoch,
describing in great detail the prophet Enoch's ascent to the Merkabah and
what he saw there.813
The shi'ur komah describes the dimensions of God's "Body" in particularly
gigantic terms. These dimensions were ultimately derived from a gematric814
interpre-tation of Psalm 147:5 ("Great is our Lord, and mighty is his
power"), the arithmetic value of which in Hebrew is "236." When multiplied
by "10,000 leagues," this gave a vast, cosmic picture of the Deity, which 1
Enoch had characterized as well--nigh "infinite":
I have seen the measure of the height of the Lord, without dimension and
without shape, which has no end (13:8).
____________________
810Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert (New Haven and London, 1990), 36.
811Scholem, Kabbalah, 374. Scraps of a second or third century midrash on
the subject have also been found in the Cairo Geniza.
812Compare John 14:2: "In my Father's house are many mansions."
8133 Enoch, or The Hebrew Book of Enoch, ed. Hugo Odeberg, reprint (New
York, 1973).
814See note 470, p. 710, above.
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God's form, on the other hand, was based primarily on descrip-tions
of "the Beloved" found in Song of Songs (5:11-16),815 showing that
these mystics still thought of God in "nuptial" terms. German Kabbalists of
the 11th and 12th centuries in fact still referred to the "Body" as the
kerub meyuhad ("Special Cherub"),816 an obvious reference to the Embracing
Cherubim who had symbolized God's Presence in the Jerusalem Temple. It is
most significant that this kerub meyuhad was again considered to be an
"emanation of God's glory" (i.e. Wisdom), and that it still contained within
itself two contrasting "attributes," i.e. God's "holiness" and God's
"sovereignty," just like Philo's description of the male-female "Powers" in
the Holy of Holies.817 Shi'ur komah descrip-tions also included the veil
concealing God's appearance from ordinary mortals, and which was said to be
embroidered with the archetypes of everything that is ever to be created.818
Ascent to the Merkabah was guarded by angelic "doorkeepers," to whom one
had to reveal the "secret names of God" before being allowed to pass by.819
The one who correctly responded was admitted through an area called pardes,
the heavenly "Garden of God" (cf. Rev. 2:7), where the "palaces" or
hekhaloth began. The word hekhal, however, had an even more fundamental
meaning than this, referring to that portion of the Temple in front of the
Holy of Holies. The Temple-provenance of this heavenly setting is further
shown by the fact that the angels were usually heard intoning the
Tri-Sanctus ("Holy, Holy, Holy," 3 Enoch, 35:4-6; Greater Hekhaloth, 9:2-3),
which the
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815Scholem, Kabbalah, 14-17.
816Ibid., 40-41. As Joseph Dan points out in his recent study of Gershom
Scholem, the "Special Cherub" is located at the lower end of the divine
glory (Gershom Scholem and the Mystical Dimension of Jewish History, N.Y.,
1988, 110), so that it corresponds even more closely to one of the two
cherubim which Philo placed at the lower end of the Light-Stream.
817See p. 822, above.
818The most obvious and well-known of such "archetypes" were those
universal symbols of the builder's power, the square and compass, which
appear in so many medieval cathedrals and churches, and which the Freemasons
retained as symbols of God's creative power. Whether or not these appeared
on the "veil" of the shi'ur komah "Temple" is presently unknown.
819Such names have been part of Jewish mystical tradition since at least
the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many recently unearthed talismans, magic
jars, amulets and written inscriptions show how widespread was the notion of
controlling the angels with "passwords" having theurgic value. See
especially Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and
Talmudic Tradition.
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prophet Isaiah heard while worshipping in the First Temple (Isa. 6:3).
Other relics of the old Temple cult, especially the tradition of Wisdom's
Light-Stream, began to reemerge in the mysti-cism of the Sefer Yetzirah
("Book of Creation"), a short, but seminal work written sometime between the
third and sixth centuries.820 It will be recalled that the fiery "River of
Glory" which emanates from the Merkabah became in the Philonic Mystery a
seven-fold "Light--Stream," which was "refracted" into the seven articles in
the Holy of Holies. In apocalyptic Judaism, this seven-fold "Light-Stream"
would become a series of "angelic" intermediaries linking God with his
Crea-tion. In Christian Gnosticism, these "intermediaries" would become the
various "aeons," or devolving personifications of the powers within God's
radiant "fulness" (see "Appendix 1: Gnostic Texts and Mormonism," below).
In Merkabah mysticism, however, the Light-Stream would be viewed as an
outpouring of divine "attributes" (middoth), such as "knowledge,"
"fruitfulness," "righteousness," etc., all constantly intertwining,
recom-bining, and eventually "crystallizing" into matter as the building
blocks of creation.821 The Sefer ha-Bahir, consisting mainly of material
inherit-ed from the gaonic period (7th to 11th centuries), tied these divine
middoth to the "aeons" of the Gnostics, so that one pictured them as a
living organism of light, arranged into a descend-ing series of divine
"potencies," the lowest eventually becoming "exiled" in the physical world,
just as Israel had become exiled in foreign lands.822 The Bahir, harkening
back to the symbolic language of Qumran, visualized this descending process
as an inverted "vine" or "tree," whose roots remain above in the
Transcendent, but whose leaves and branches reach down into the realm of
matter.823 Preexistently, this divine "tree" constituted what would be
known as the "Body of Adam Kadmon" ("Primordial Man"), pictured on the one
hand as an unfolding of God's own Hidden Being, but on the other as the
Archetype and Precursor of earthly humanity.824
From these early medieval speculations on the devolution of the
Light-Stream there finally developed the famous Kabbalistic doctrine of
____________________
820Scholem, Kabbalah, 26-7.
821The "emanation theory" of Neo-Platonism undoubtedly played a role in the
intellectual explication of this doctrine.
822Scholem, Kabbalism, 21-22, 313-15. 823See pp. 377-9, above.
824Scholem, MTJM, 214-5.
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the sephiroth, those "divine attributes" which the Sefer Yetzirah defined as
the constituent "letters" and "numbers" of Creation, and the Sefer ha-Bahir
as the heavenly logoi ("words", "voices," "lights," "powers," etc.) which
are immanent in the cosmos. But to the Kabbalists of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, the sephiroth were nothing less than the stages of
God's own descent into the living cosmos, manifested as a series of
male-female polarities,825 each in sexual conjunction, and each giving birth
to the next in a continuous procreative process.
According to legend, however, there suddenly came a "shattering of the
vessels" within this preexistent, organic process, much like the apocalyptic
"War in Heaven," so that a portion of Adam Kadmon's light was lost ("a part
of God separated from himself"); in this way, its individ-ual "sparks"
became scattered in matter as the "exiled Shekhinah," or the present
Community of Israel.826
But we also recall that Philo had viewed the descending Light--Stream as a
"Royal Road," along which the Wise Man could reascend and return to God (p.
850, above). For the Kabbalist, too, the sephiroth served as a "ladder"
(the sullam ha-aliyah, or "Ladder of Ascent"), along which one might climb
upwards by means of the proper prayers, meditation, calling upon the secret
names of God, experiencing mystical states of ecstasy, etc., each sephirah
or "rung" corresponding to some "virtue" which he incorporated into his
personal life. As he accumulated these divine virtues, he became
reintegrated into the mysterious life of Adam Kadmon, his final goal being
devekuth, or "cleavage" to God (pp. 788-9, above). This reintegration of
the scattered "sparks" was known as tikkun, or the restoration of the primal
harmony which had originally existed between heaven and earth.
Ascent up the "Sephirotic Ladder," however, was not haphazard, for it had
to be accompa-nied by special kawwanoth ("intentions") or "mental
concentrations," each designed to channel one's spiritual energy into the
hoped-for result. According to Isaac the Blind (ca. 1200), the most basic
kawwanah was
to conjoin God in his "letters" and to bind the ten sephiroth in
Him...conjoining him mentally in his true structure.827
____________________
825Compare the "syzygies" of Jewish-Christianity and Gnosticism. See p.
836, above; also "Eternal Marriage," below.
826This is no longer the first-century Jewish "Shekhinah," who is simply
God's Spirit, but that portion of God which is immanent within men, i.e. the
individual spirits of Israel.
827Scholem, Kabbalah, 175.
==================================
Joseph Gikatilla (thirteenth century) further explained this by saying that
when God created the earth, everything had been in perfect harmony; the
channels between the higher and lower regions were open, and God had filled
everything from above to below. Because of Adam's sin, howev-er, this order
was turned to disorder, and the lowest sephirah (called "Kingdom") became
"exiled" on earth as the "Shekhinah," or the spiritual principle which
presently resides in Israel.828 Each mystic's ascent up the "Sephirotic
Ladder" would be a stage in the tikkun of the disordered Adam Kadmon, and a
step toward the reunification of God
and his Shekhinah;829 for this reason, it became the principle kawwanah of
every individual Kabbalist.
But ascent along the Light-Stream and its male-female sephiroth also had to
be accompanied by the mystic's personal conformity to the male-female image
of God. Devekuth to God, in short, required devekuth to a wife, or as the
Zohar succinctly put it,
God's Presence cleaves to the man, but thanks only to his union with a wife
(I.50a).
This of course went back to the ancient Jewish belief that
He who does not marry thereby diminishes the image of God (Tosefta,
Yebamoth, 8:4).
Therefore, "man and woman are commanded to marry and beget children, for it
is written, Male and Female created He them" (M. Yebamoth, 6:6).830 All
life is in fact created and sustained by this archetypal, preter-natural
sexuality, reaching all the way down from the Source at the top to the
husband and wife below.831 Even the "exiled" portion of Adam Kadmon is
pictured as a "Bride," or "Queen," while
____________________
828Scholem, MTJM, 236, 233.
829Scholem in fact writes that the whole purpose of Torah is to lead the
Shekhinah back to her Master, and to unite him with her (MTJM, 275). This
corresponds exactly to the Ephesian and Colossian tasks of reuniting "all
things in Christ, whether in heaven or on earth" (Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:20).
830I.e. they are commanded to marry because they were created sexually in
God's image.
831This means that Adam Kadmon is restored one couple at a time. The
reconstruction of his primal harmony was viewed "genealogically" by Lurianic
Kabbalists, who believed that even various heroes of the Bible struggled to
achieve tikkun. Among these heroes were 'original souls' (neshamot
mekkoriyyot) who comprised a great and powerful psychic collectivity, and
who were capable of great powers of concentration. Whereby the whole world
stood to benefit. But there were also various private souls who could
achieve a tikkun only for themselves, "souls descending from a single ‘root’
who had special relations of affinity and were especially able to help each
other" (Scholem, Kabbalah, 163). These "psychic collectivities" greatly
resemble the linking of families by the priesthood to form eternal family
lines in LDS doctrine. See D&C 128:18: "The earth will be smitten with a
curse unless there is a welding link of some kind or other between the
fathers and the children...that a whole and complete and perfect union shall
take place."
==========================
the upper and supernal portion is characterized as a "Bridegroom" or "King."
The latter thus reaches longingly down through the ninth sephirah (Yesod,
the "Foundation" or "Phallus") toward his wandering Shekhinah, who at the
same time reaches passionately upward toward her "Hus-band." In this way,
the life of the world comes constantly into being, and is sustained by its
divine, sexual tensions, all part of a cosmic process which Gershom Scholem
has described in the language of the hieros gamos. Though we quoted from
this description in an earlier place (p. 778, above), it is of sufficient
importance that it deserves to be reproduced here in its complete form:
The hieros gamos, the "sacred union" of the King and Queen, the Celestial
Bridegroom and the Celestial Bride, to name a few of the symbols, is the
central fact in the whole chain of divine manifestations in the hidden
world. In God there is a union of the active and the passive, procreation
and conception, from which all mundane life and bliss are derived ...One of
the images employed to describe the unfolding of the Sefiroth pictures
them...as the offspring of mystical procreation, in which the first ray of
divine light is also the primeval germ of creation; for its ray which
emerges from Nothing832 is, as it were, sown into the "celestial mother,"
i.e. into the divine Intellect, out of whose womb the Sefiroth spring forth,
as King and Queen, son and daughter. Dimly we perceive behind these
mystical images the male and female gods of antiquity, anathema as they were
to the pious Kabbalist.833
Special rituals called yihudim ("unifications") were designed to promote
this marital unification of the "King" and "Queen," rituals whose
antecedents can be traced back to Semitic prehistory (pp. 725-7, above). It
was especially believed that human intercourse at midnight on the Eve of the
Sabbath, when God and his Shekhinah were wont to mate on high, would help to
bring about their reunion, for
every true marriage is a symbolic realization of the union of God and the
Shekhinah.834
————————————————————
832That is, Ein Sof, the "Infinite God," who is beyond all human
categories.
833MTJM, 227.
===============================
At the same time, by being united in true love, and with the proper
kawwanah, the bodies of the mystic and his wife could become a living
"chariot" (merkabah) for the Shekhinah, "like the Holy Beasts835 which carry
the throne of honor."836 In this way, the Shekhinah came to dwell between
the righteous couple during their intercourse (BT. Sotah, 17a), just as it
had done between the Cherubim in the ancient Temple (Ex. 25:22). At the
same time, the Zohar tells us, the union of husband and wife caused the
Heavenly Partners to generate human spirits, showing that the marriage of a
Heavenly Father and Mother once stood behind the monotheistic euphemism of a
"marriage" between the King and his Matronit, i.e. between God's male and
female "aspects":
When a pious earthly couple perform the act, by doing so they set in motion
all the generative forces of the mythic-mystical universe. The human sexual
act causes the King to emit his seminal fluid from his divine male genital,
and thus to fertilize the Matronit, who thereupon gives birth to human souls
and an-gels.837
This conjugal act appears to have been the continuation of a Sacred
Marriage rite which is documented already in the Talmud; there it is said
that Torah scholars performed marital intercourse at Friday midnight in
order to greet the Sabbath, and to imitate the marriage of God and his
Shekhinah.838 The idea of simultaneously causing God to generate souls also
appeared as the Talmudic doctrine of "dual paternity" (pp. 199-200, above);
the same doctrine was in fact hinted at by Origen in the third century, who
wrote in Contra Celsus that "it is good to keep close the 'secret of a King'
(Tobit, 12:9) in order that the doctrine of the entrance of souls into
bodies not be thrown before the common understanding, nor what is holy given
to the dogs" (5.29).
Yet in spite of its great antiquity, the "Secret of a King" was still
practiced by Kabbalists in Safed and Jerusalem in the sixteenth century of
our era, who likewise had marital congress at precisely midnight,
____________________
834Ibid., 235; Scholem's emphasis.
835I.e. The Cherubim.
836Y'hiel Mikhael Epstein, Seder T'fillah Derekh Y'share (Offenbach, 1791),
10b, 23b, 24b. Quoted in the third edition of Patai's The Hebrew Goddess
(Detroit, 1990), 186.
837I:12b; in Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (original edition), 195-6.
838See Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, 140. One of the
passages referred to includes BT. Ketuboth, 62b, but he does not specify the
others.
=============================
again in order to bring about the union of the "King" and "Queen," and to
cause new souls to be generated for their offspring.839 On the next
morning, they dressed in white robes and went into the fields (an "exodus"
into the desert?) to greet God's "Bride." Back at home, they gathered their
families around the table, which they circum-ambulated with bundles of
myrtle,840 praising the housewife as an incarnation of the Heavenly Mother.
The evening meal was then partaken as a "Wedding Feast" in honor of the King
and his Bride, after which the great Wedding Hymn of Isaac Luria was sung,
celebrating in intimate detail the hieros gamos of the Heavenly Father and
his Female:
I sing in hymns to enter the gates of the field of apples841 of holy ones.
A new table we lay for her, a beautiful candelabra sheds its light on us.
Between left and right the Bride approaches in holy jewels and festive
garments.842 Her husband embraces her in her foundation (yesod, sexual
organs), gives her fulfillment, squeezes out his strength.843 Torments and
cries are past. Now there are new faces and souls and spirits... Bridesmen,
go forth and prepare the bride...to beget souls and new spirits...She has
seventy crowns,844 but above her is the King, that all may be crowned in the
Holy of Holies.
The special reference to the "Holy of Holies" again betrays the original
Temple-provenance of the rite; indeed, it has been said that the Jewish home
(rather than the synagogue) was the true successor to the Temple,
____________________
839See A. E. Waite, The Holy Kabbalah, reprint (N.Y., 1960, p. 381).
Gershom Scholem says of Waite that his work "is distinguished by a real
insight into the world of Kabbalism" (MTJM, 212), though his historical and
philological discussions are virtually worthless. Herbert Weiner, in 9½
Mystics: the Kabbalah Today (N.Y., 1969), records evidence of this same
practice in the eighteenth century (1740), when a Jerusalem community
covenanted that its husbands and wives would "band together as one person
for the sake of unifying the holy One, blessed be He, and his shekinah, to
give pleasure to our creator...the only exception being that each one of us
shall have his wife separate unto himself" (94-5).
840Compare p. 705, above.
841The Shekhinah, or the feminine principle of the cosmos; based on a
Talmudic phrase from BT. Tacanit, 29a, characterizing that which is
particularly pleasant. In this metaphor the "apple trees" especially denote
the higher sephiroth which flow down into Shekhinah to fertilize her and
exert their influence through her. See Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its
Symbolism, 140.
842See pp. 773-5, above.
843Compare the passage from Zohar Hadash, pp. 819-20, above.
844A relic of the seventy bene ha'El in the ancient Semitic pantheon, and the seventy members of Israel who went into the world (Ex. 1:5).
==========================
which otherwise ceased to exist for the Jews after A.D. 70. Thus, though the Temple had been physically destroyed, there continued to exist in the memory of pious Jews an imperishable recollection of the prehistoric pattern of Temple-worship, with its path of purification, illumination and union that lay concealed in it. For when the perfected soul of mankind "rises like incense from the golden altar of the heart and passes through the most inward curtains of his being to the holy of holies within," then the two cherubim who stand guard over the Ark of the Covenant (of the heart) "are united in the presence of the One, in Whom the soul recognizes its eternal life and its own union with Him. Henceforward the soul is called the eternally 'living' (hayah), the 'one and only' (yehidah),"845 the perfect. The Light has come like veritable tongues of fire upon all who reach the centre of the temple find there the seat of God in the heart of His Creaation.846
____________________
845Because it has become united with the "One God" in the Holy of Holies: "A soul is divinized by ascending...to a region above the heavens...(where) there is no place but God" (Philo, Questions on Exodus, 2.40).
846John Matthews, in John Matthews, ed., At the Table of the Grail (London,
1984), 88.
847See pp. 835-6 and 909, above.
848Quoted by Patai, in the third edition of his The Hebrew Goddess, 207.