AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ve been following a lengthy academic debate in the online occult community about whether non-Jews should be “allowed” to engage in esoteric practices based on the Hebraic body of Kabbalistic knowledge as filtered though the Hermetic working model. Little mention is made of the fact that the Kabbalah itself was heavily influenced by Neo-Platonism as an early example of “cultural appropriation,” so claiming that it is a “closed” system is a meaningless gatekeeping gesture that is more religious than rational.

My entry into occultism occurred in 1972 via philosophical study of the Hermetic Qabalah that led to a deep (but fundamentally secular) dive into what I think of as the “rabbinical” Kabbalah, preceded by an earlier interest in astrology and followed by an abiding (to this day) fascination with the tarot. I was in my early twenties at the time and thoroughly immersed in the Golden Dawn literature that gave way to an even more profound exploration of Aleister Crowley’s writing.

From that perspective the Sepher Yetzirah made a lot of sense to me, but I hit a brick wall when trying to get my head around the Greater and Lesser Assemblies of the Zohar, so I left it there and concentrated on the (Kircher) Tree of Life as my framework, not only as conceptual architecture or “intellectual wallpaper” but as a living model of the Universe that supports both a logical and mystical worldview. I treated the two paths as mutually inclusive and never worried about inappropriate “borrowing.”

The Tree is customarily considered to be in a perpetual state of flux, delivering a steady outpouring (and bestowal) of spiritual vibration upon the material plane and subsequently reabsorbing that energy in preparation for a new cycle of manifestation. These tidal fluctuations of ebb and flow are typically enshrined in well-known metaphors as the downward or outbound “Path of the Flaming Sword (or Lightning Flash)” and the upward or inbound “Path of the Serpent (or Way of Return).”

For the practicing occultist, the second of these is the most important for sublimation of the Will, a fact that The Kybalion expounds upon at some length by identifying the goal as ascending to the “Mind of the ALL” for the purpose of ultimately reuniting with the unitary source at the biblical “End of Days” (or, putting it succinctly, withdrawing and being assimilated into the “One”). While it can be painfully redundant in its iterative style, The Kybalion is explicitly Hermetic rather than implicitly Hebraic in its esoteric thrust but draws from the same metaphysical well.

Tarot-reading and other forms of divination “come along for the ride” by offering symbolic handholds by which we can bootstrap our way up the Tree without becoming mired in ontological abstraction or mystical supposition. The assignment of the forty numbered Minor Arcana to the ten sephiroth in a “10×4” array is the most transparent (and therefore the most useful) from both a “Descent of Spirit into Matter” and a “repatriation” standpoint; the different methods for relating the sixteen court cards to four of the ten spheres of emanation are less satisfying but still workable; and the alignment of the 22 Major Arcana with the paths on the Tree is often unconvincing (for that reason I seldom use it in my own work, preferring elemental, astrological and numerological affiliations).

As I see it, this system of Qabalastic correspondences – along with the associated zodiacal and planetary correlations – is of limited value in practical prediction, and I apply it only when interpretation based on the established card meanings needs a jolt of uncommon inspiration, imagination and ingenuity. Then the insights derived therefrom can “save the day” for a faltering narrative as long as I translate them into querent-friendly language. Beyond that, they provide magnificent intellectual stimulation for the “armchair philosopher of tarot.”

For me, none of this is religious in nature although I appreciate the concept of a higher or cosmic consciousness in the Spinozan sense of “immanence.” Without naming Spinoza, The Kybalion also goes into this in excruciating detail with its model of the seven planes of being, each with seven sub-planes that have seven more iterations apiece. I thought the Kabbalah with its angelic hosts was extraordinarily complex, but this is mind-boggling, with little practical use once one moves past the common definitions of mineral, elemental, plant, animal, human, spiritual and transcendental “mind” other than the premise that they are all linked by vibratory energy of increasing subtlety that has been accorded a hierarchical structure of sentient awareness.

The assumption is that the average person is stuck somewhere between the fourth and fifth sub-plane of the human mental state with almost no chance of evolving in a single lifetime. Working with the Hermetic Qabalah – and specifically with its divinatory offshoots – seems to offer considerably more hope in this regard. Israel Regardie once wrote that humankind is “only potentially immortal,” and the ideal way to escape the wheel of reincarnation is to advance in the Hermetic disciplines of perfecting the Will and mastering the Ego.