1. One simply cannot understand the Western Esoteric Traditions w/o a basic knowledge of the Qabalah, from freemasonry to Rosicrucianism, The Qabalah is core to these traditions.

2. In its most broad definition, Qabalah means "that which is received." It is used to specifically denote a body of passed down esoteric knowledge rooted in the Torah, though Qabalah has escaped the confines of Judaism.

3. The Qabalah is a broad field, so I will be taking some time here and there to talk about it, bit by bit, looking both at how it developed & how it influenced the world at large, from our government structure to how it feeds conspiracy theories.
Stay tuned.

4. To differentiate between the 3 main wings of the Qabalah, people have started using Kabbalah to denote Jewish Qabalah, as it is the preferred spelling of the likes of Gershom Scholem when writing about it. Cabala, based on the Latin spelling is used to denote Christian ...

5. Qabalah because most of the texts on it were written in Latin. Qabalah is the preferred spelling method of the Golden Dawn material and is therefore used to describe what is commonly called 'Hermetic Qabalah', or Qabalah that falls outside of the strictly Judeo-Christian ...

6. ... systems. The Q spelling is also used to denote all of the subsets as one entity. This separation of spelling makes discussing the systems much less confusing if all parties agree on the terminology.

7. Etymologically, "kabbalah" means collectively: "that which is received" though it generally denoted received knowledge. The word generally connoted religious knowledge, including even reading the Torah.

8. Of course, in a deeply religious culture, it is hard to separate a general education from religious studies. To read the Torah, one must first understand the sacred symbols with which it was written: The Aleph-Bet.

9. In the Kosher world, Kabbalah generally included but was not limited to: biblical exegesis, extra-biblical legend & lore, cosmology, prayer and mystical methods.

10. In many respects, the classical body of these things which we think of as "Kabbalah" is very much a product of the Hellenistic world. The cosmology upon which it relied was heavily influenced by Neoplatonism, for instance.

11. Gematria, a part of what is called the "Literal Kabbalah" or the study of letters and text, displays the Hellenistic and possibly directly Hellenic influence upon the Kabbalah.

12. The Greeks had a system they called Isosephia, which calculated the numbers of names & words based on the numerical value of the letters of the alphabet much like what we call gematria, now the cover word for such systems generally.

13. They did things like build temples with the number of columns matching the value of the deity to which it was dedicated. The Hebrews seem to have taken this concept & named it Gematria, which is a Hebraism of geometria, the Greek word "geometry".

14. It is possible that the idea for such existed prior to it being named through Hellenistic education but either explanation leads to a Hellenistic influence of some sort.

15. What the Christians took and called "Cabala" was mostly just the cosmology and the literal methods. They plopped Jesus right into the center of the Tree of Life, Tifaret, Beauty, the solar archetype.

16. It is primarily that which the Christians took as the Cabala that defines what gentiles think of as Qabalah. This Christian Cabala permeated the Western Esoteric Traditions (WET), including Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry.

17. By the time of the modern Freemasons, the Qabalah had been mythologized as some great secret tradition passed down from God to the angels and down to mankind. To be clear, those legends arose from Jewish traditions, but the Masons seem to have taken the legends a bit...

18. ... more mystic-conspiratorial type fashion.
As close to the "official Freemasonry take" on the Qabalah as you can get would be the entry for it in Albert Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry.

19. For those interested, I am including shots of the entry from my 1917 edition. Don't worry, I won't be testing on it. Those who want the meat of the situation, just read the section The Dogmatic Kabbalah starting on p. 441.

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24. This is just the entry specifically on the "Kabbalah" as a concept. The whole book is filled throughout with expansions on the details of things Qabalistic.

25. The fact that Freemasonry openly embraces "The Kabbalah" - or Jewish occultism - has definitely fed into the crypto Judaism accusations leveled against the Freemasons. This all allows them to be wrapped up in antisemitic conspiracy theories.

26. This doesn't seem like such a big deal until you realize that the American Revolution was actually a Masonic conspiracy against the British. That's no conspiracy theory. That is conspiracy fact. Occult-minded Masons ran the Revolution and set up our government.

27. The government of the United States is divided into 3 hierarchical worlds. The federal at the top, state and then municipality. The populace is Malkut, at the bottom of the Tree. The government of each of these worlds is divided into trinities.

28. The Executive branches in these 3 worlds forms the Middle Pillar. The Legislative and the Judicial form the two opposing pillars so important to Masonic symbolism. If you can't figure out which is which, think of "Justice".

29. Freemasonry is not aligned to any religion. It only requires that you believe in some form of divine creator. A Freemason may be Christian, Jewish or even Hindu. There were Jewish Masons, in my family even, but Freemasonry is by no means a Jewish cabal.

30. Freemasonry likes to say that they are not a secret society, but rather a society with secrets. They have, however, spawned many secret societies and organizations.

31. One important one in the history of western occultism is the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Rosicruciana_in_Anglia

32. This was a Rosicrucian organization exclusive to master masons of the United Grand Lodge of England.
A desire arose within the group to create a group that included women.

33. It seems obvious to the casual observer why a group named after a pair of symbols as obviously sexual as a rose & a cross that they should have reason to want to include women.

34. Anyhow, through some shady connection to some German group, they chartered a new group called (drum roll please!) The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
The Golden Dawn was the singular most important occult group in the western tradition.

35. Membership included many writers, both of fiction and the occult. William Butler Yeats was a prominent member, as were a number of horror writers, including allegedly Bram Stoker.

36. On the occult writing side there were founding members William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell Mathers. Mathers is responsible for many of the common translations of classic Grimoires available in bookstores.
He was an interesting character.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Liddell_MacGregor_Mathers

37. Most notoriously, Aleister Crowley was a member. Let's not get into him at the moment.
Dion Fortune (also writing psychology under her real name: Violet Firth), Evelyn Underhill and Arthur Edward Waite.

38. Waite is responsible for the world's most popular Tarot deck, the Rider-Waite deck.
Crowley's deck is also one of the most popular.
In fact, it can easily be said that Golden Dawn influence dominates the Tarot field.

39. To list the well published occult writers connected to some splinter faction of the Golden Dawn could take scores of tweets just listing them by name.

40. Waite wrote volumes on esoteric Freemasonry and I have read little of it, because he is boring and dry as all hell to read.
Crowley liked to make fun of him with columns like "Wisdom While You Waite".

41. After rereading Mackey's entry given previously,
I decided to read Waite's chapter on "Kabalistic Tradition
and Masonry" in his A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry.

It is quite interesting to read while assuming the perspective of an antisemite.

42. "...that Order of Knights Templar which speculation has always accredited with wthe design of restoring Zion.
From this source something also has been acquired by High Grade Masonry..."

43. Here is the chapter in full. It is tedious reading, but you can skim it to see the general tone.

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49. So, by now we can see how it seems easy for the Masons to have gotten wrapped up in antisemitic conspiracy theories and why "Masonic Zionist Satanists" is a thing in conspiracyland.

50. In the conspiracy world, we should fully expect them to be called "Satanic" but anyone looking carefully will note that "Luciferian" is a common substitute. It is common to see the accusation leveled that "Masons worship Lucifer".

51. When pressed, anyone saying this who can defend their statement usually responds by talking about "that Albert Pike quote". Before delving into that, let's first look at Albert Pike.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Pike

52. Pike wrote a lot on Masonry. He is particularly known for Morals and Dogma, his semi-psychotically rambling 861 page text elaborating in the symbolism of the Masonic degrees. It is filled with Qabalah and pagan mythology.

53. Pike was also a Confederate Civil War general, & that is held against Freemasonry by many. Of course, there were Masons on both sides.

54. Unfortunately "the quote" can be one of two. The first, which seems the most damning, is almost certainly fake. It contradicts his writings & someone admitted to making it up. We can, therefore, skip that & move on to the other, which is merely out of context.

55. "Lucifer!, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! It is he who bears the light"
This sounds bad out of context, but read the preceding sentence.

56. The Wikipedia page entitled "Masonic conspiracy theories" seems like a good overview of the subject should anyone want to explore further - not that we are done here, of course. We still have a long way to go in this thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonic_conspiracy_theories

57. It should be clear by now why Masonic symbolism is very much the stock in trade of conspiracy theory "reality". The Qabalistic underpinnings of the symbols both lead to their commonplace nature in WET culture as well as feeding the Crypto Judaism theories.

57. First and foremost is actually a group of related symbols. These are the All Seeing Eye, the Triangle and the Letter G. The Eye in the Triangle is well known from the Great Seal of the United States, which is featured on the Dollar Bill.

58. The Triangle or trinity has been symbolic of divinity since at least the times that created the mythologies to which we can now look back upon in art & writing.
In ancient mythologies, most notably the Hindu, a triangle pointed down reflected female divinity while ...

59. ... a triangle pointed up represented masculine divinity. Hindu art is quite explicit in connecting the image of the descending triangle to the pubic area of the female body. Shown here are Hindu/Sakta visual expressions of the Divine Feminine.

60. The Hexagram, which is two interlocked triangles, one pointing upward and one pointing downward, represents the interplay of the masculine and feminine divinities or aspects of the divinity.

61. That aside for now, we can say that the Eye In the Triangle is generally always in an upright pointing triangle and represents divinity as a masculine force. Specifically, we can say that it is the masculine creator god (the Chesedic or Jupiter complex) that destroys the ...

62. ... formless void of the feminine Chaos serpent and builds the universe from her body. Think of Marduk and Tiamat as a good illustration of the mythological construct. This Creator God is the Great Architect of Freemasonry.

63. As we have discussed previously in this thread, the only religious qualification to become a Freemason is a belief in this Great Architect or Divine Creator in some form either of organized religion or personal belief.

64. While we can easily talk about the Masonic meaning of the Eye in the Triangle, there is no evidence of which I am aware that the symbol was used in Masonry before it was used in the design of the Great Seal.

65. They definitely made use of the All Seeing Eye, but not in a triangle. This symbol was used in church architecture as a symbol of the omnipresence and omniscience of the Holy Trinity. Of course, Masons love to pretend that their organization goes back further than it does ...

66. ... & claim that they were the ones building all those churches, but that does not reflect history and even the more honest Masonic sources will admit that.

67. The image of the All Seeing Eye by itself has most definitely been central to Masonic imagery, so we will get back to triangles later & just concentrate on the Eye itself. Again, the closest thing to an official stand on the matter would be Mackey.

68. Waite's entry on the subject is rather short for the usually rambling, verbose & ponderous Waite.

69. These writings designed for public consumption can be compared w/ the entry in Carl H. Claudy's Introduction to Freemasonry vol. 3: Master Mason, which I assume should have been collected upon the death of its recipient, but rather ended up in a book barn in rural PA in 1992.

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71. As an aside, some have made a big deal of pointing out that is the Masons are Kabbalistic, their use of the eye as a symbol should be looked at in relation to the Qabalah.

72. Now, this requires an aside explanation of a topic into which I do not want at present to delve too far into as it will take more than a passing mention to explore fully.
The modern tarot card deck is an expression of Qabalistic principles.

73. This explains why, incidentally, the Tarot is so dominated by Golden Dawn types. The 22 Major Arcana cards represent the archetypes represented by the 22 Hebrew letters. The name of the letter Ayin means "eye". It corresponds to the Devil card in the Tarot.

74. This tidbit has been used by conspiracy mongers as evidence that the Freemasons, in elevating the symbol of the eye to paramount as the creator, are worshipping The Lord of This World (Ba'al Zeboul), the Devil.

75. While not going into the detail of the greater scheme of the Tarot, let's look deeper into this connection between the Eye as a sacred letter in the Hebrew Aleph Bet connected to the Devil image explicitly, in a system practiced by Masonic occult groups.

76. Let's face facts here, whatever you think of secret Satanism accusations, all of these Freemason writers who wrote about the Tarot knew full well the eye/Devil connection and continued in an organization that is *really* into eye symbolism, representing the Creator, no less.

77. Aleister Crowley's chapter on the subject in The Book of Thoth is a fun bit of esoteric word salad, a lot of which won't make sense unless you have been steeped in the technical terminology of the WET.

78. I'm only going to give the 1st page so Bill doesn't send an army of lawyers with cease and desists over their copyright claims. Never trust an occult group run by lawyers.

79. Israel Regardie was Aleister Crowley's personal secretary. He was never in the Golden Dawn but had access to all of Crowley's papers. He was responsible for publishing the first actual GD papers to see the light of day.

80. Regardie wrote quite a bit on the Qabalah and the GD system of magic. He was straightforward and explained things in almost overly simplistic terms. His book A Garden of Pomegranates was considered the basic handbook on the subject, which we generally put as the 1st book...

81. ... in reading lists for people wanting to study the Qabalah/WET. The 2nd was Dion Fortune's, btw. "Ignore the fact that it is put out by the same publisher that pushes Silver Ravenwolf", we used to say. In their sea of dreck, Llewellyn put out a few books important to...

82. ... understanding the WET. So, in the interest of pursuing the traditional explanation of the connection from someone wrapped up in masonic-based occultism, we should turn first to Regardie's GoP.

83.

84. It is interesting that this is marked as the 26th path.
Anyone up to their knees in Qabalistic basics knows that 26 in the number of the Ineffable Name, the Tetragrammaton, IHVH (יהוה). (Yod=10+Heh=5+Vau=6+Heh=5)=26.

85. It also seems interesting that Regardie first associates the Eye (Ayin) w/ the Eye of Shiva, as Shiva is often oversimplified as "Destruction" in the "Creator/Preserver/Destroyer" take on the Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva cycle.

86. It does work well with the general perception of Siva as all-pervasive in Shaivite Hinduism. "All is Shiva, Shiva is All."

He then goes on to associate it with Khem (The Black), whose name, black, is the root of Khemet, the old native name of Egypt.

87. The biggest problem with Khem is that like so many other things in the old Egyptology that masonic occultism is based, is essentially fiction. There was no god named "Khem" (Black).

It was just a mistranslation.

So let it be written.

88. The god in question was really Min. Min is an old god. The most well-known thing about him is his cock. He is represented as an ithyphallic humanoid, usually with his left hand holding his erect member. As should be obvious, he was a bit of a fertility god.

89. Min was a desert god. He was associated with agriculture and the life one could eke out of the wastelands. The Greeks associated him with Pan, god of the woods, which would also make him the Greek equivalent of a wasteland god.

90. Their main, most obvious connection was their association with phallic power. The common image of the Devil card in these circles is basically the Eliphas Levi Baphomet. Baphomet has been connected to Pan and the association is hard to argue against.

91. An old Thelemite friend, ex O.T.O., pointed out to me that the transliteration of Baphomet into Hebrew (בפמט) could yield 131 through Gematria which would be equal to the isosephic value of Pan (Παν) & also the gematraic value of Samael (סמאל), the "Poison of God" & the ...

92. ... primary Adversary of God in the classical Kabbalistic writings, the King of the Demons and husband of Lilith.

131 is also related by the WET crowd to 5 as 1+3+1=5, bringing in the Martial archetype (Gevurah) and the Pentagram.

93. I could go on for days elaborating on the details in the short passage in GoP, but let's move on & leave ourselves with plenty to go back to.

I'd like to move on to Paul Foster Case.

94. Case was not in the original Golden Dawn, but it is alleged that he ran an organization in the United States, chartered from the original G.D.. I see no evidence or reason to doubt those claims. Case was also a Freemason & wrote on masonic symbolism as well as on the Tarot...

95. ... and a book, The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order, which I have never read & probably never will, though it sits in my library with copies of all his other books. He is considered one of the essential authors for understanding the G.D. system.

96. Case will be very important to this thread in relatively short order, and as he has written rather extensively on the Tarot, it seems natural to look to him for more elaboration on the matter at hand.

97. The following in the chapter on the Devil card from his Tarot: Key to the Wisdom of the Ages.

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