Anita Kraft - The Qabalah Workbook for Magicians [1 MOBI, 1 EPUB] (Qabalah)

Book Description
The Qabalah Workbook for Magicians is the perfect guide for the practicing magician who wants a greater understanding of Qabalah concepts and practice. Created by Anita Kraft, one of the world's most respected Qabalist teachers, this workbook teachers readers how to practice Qabalah using tarot, plants, stones, perfumes, the zodiac, and other magical sources. Kraft show how to work through the Sephiroth-- the ten attributes or emanations of Qabalah--for greater understanding and illumination.

Drawing on occult works, including those of Israel Regardie, Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, and Lon Milo DuQuette, as well as dozens of Herbrew texts and manuscripts, the practicing magician can understand the Tree of Life and other Qabalistic concepts. Kraft has spent more than twenty years creating and perfecting a method by which "Qabalah is experiential as is mysticism and magick. If all you do is read, you are not a mystic, magician, or Qabalist. You must do!" writes Kraft.


Review by Freeman Presson:

The Qabalah Workbook for Magicians aims to be a follow-on to Lon Milo DuQuette’s The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford, serving as a first workbook. It covers the Sephiroth, and gives the beginnings of a master table of correspondences for each one, with room for the student to add more. The recommended use is to work through the book, spending about a month on each Sephirah. This will complete the path of manifestation from Kether to Malkuth. It is then suggested that one could return up the Tree in the next 9 months, gaining new insights along the way.

The primary method given is to contemplate the correspondences of each Sephira, and make and maintain an altar for the Sphere of the Month, spending some time each day with it. Questions and suggestions are provided to guide the student in doing the work and making it personal.

Traditionally, this is how everyone comes to understand the Sephiroth: by contemplating the various kinds of objects, processes, and experiences which fall under the influence of each one.

One of the major themes of Chicken Qabalah is that the Kabbalah/Qabala/Cabalie/QBL/Gabalis/What-the-cluck1 is not something static, but is a process that happens anew between the tradition and each student. This is certainly a reasonable starting point for modern (Hermetic) Qabalists. The present book continues that emphasis. I am going to pretend I am blissfully unaware of the scornful opinions of certain traditionalists, even to the point of imagining that LMD2 made up the story of the spitting Rabbi as a cautionary tale: for to get involved in such unworthiness is surely as damning as originating it would be.

I like the idea of making and using altars for such purposes. I already do it for my talismanic works: I have a little space set aside to keep all of my celestial and elemental talismans (when they’re not riding around on my person), with appropriate statuary, candle, etc. I think of the works of the talismanic art as being part of the Hermetic practical Qabalah, anyway. I am sure the process as outlined in the Workbook would be very helpful if undertaken with the proper diligence and reverence.

I don’t believe the book says this explicitly, but it hit me while reading it, so I will give Kraft part-credit: the act of setting up and consecrating an altar for a very specific spiritual work like this is the same kind of magical act as creating a talisman: one is making a vinculum3 by drawing together symbols and objects related by tradition and by synthemata4, and ensouling it with either the influence of a particular known spirit helper, or with one that is being synthesized for the present purpose (pause for a collective gasp from all who thought A. O. Spare invented that).

Thinking about that should help anyone (possibly even me) keep from doing such things slap-dashedly. MsSVig