The Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah

By Arthur Edward Waite
Published in 2008
Hardcover


Originally published in 1902, this book is a comprehensive discussion of Kabalah, its origin, and its impact on other traditions. It also briefly discusses some of Kabalah's most well known students. Its chapters include the following:

• Post-Christian Literature of the Jews
• Doctrinal Content of the Kabalah
• Source and Authority of the Kabalah
• Written Word of Kabalism First, Second, and Third Period
• Some Christian Students of the Kabalah (Including Raymond Lully, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, William Postel, The Rosicrucians, Robert Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, Ralph Cudworth, Saint-Martin, Eliphas Levi, and Papus)
• Kabalah and Other Channels of Esoteric Tradition (Magic, Alchemy, Astrology, Freemasonry, Tarot and Mysticism)

From the back cover:

Kabalistic literature rose up among the Jews during the Christian centuries which succeeded their dispersal and the destruction of their Holy City. It offers a strong contrast to the sacred scriptures of Israel, which are direct, beautiful and simple, while Kabalism is involved and obscure. The Kabalah connects with literatures which are greater than itself and with pregnant issues of history. It is part of the history of philosophy, and as such it once entered into the thought of Europe. It is responsible, broadly speaking, for all that strange tissue of symbolism and ceremonial which made up the magic of the Middle Ages; at a later period it sought to transform alchemy; it tinctured many of those conventional practices and beliefs which we term superstition generically, and the guise in which we know them is therefore chiefly a Kabalistic guise. If we might dare to suppose for a moment that behind magic, behind alchemy, behind astrology there is any mystery of secret and real knowledge, then it is entitled to peculiar respect, because, by the hypothesis of some of its defenders, it is through this seemingly impassable literature that the road to the secret lies.