system
A chat on 4chan
human
Where do I start with learning more about Kabbalism? Is there a primer book or such that explains all the different doctrines such as Practical Kabbalism, Occult Kabbalism, Lurianic Kabbalism and so on?
gpt
Yeah it's called Wikipedia.
Kaballah is divided into:
Jewish Kabbalah (this can be divided into 3, seen below with the ones that have an '-')
-Theosophical Kabbalah (The classic theoretical kind, what you get in the Zohar)
--Lurian Kaballah (The version developed by Isaac Luria, can be seen as a continuation of the Theosophical kind)
-Estatic Kabbalah (By Abraham Abulafia, it's meditative and prophetic)
-Practical Kabbalah (White/High Magic, is only practiced by a very small ammount of Kabbalists, i think it's banned now? Dunno)
Christian Kabbalah (Dead since 17th century, got integrated into Hermetic Kabbalah)
Hermetic Kabbalah (The kind we tend to talk about here)
You can look up the 'Kabbalah Primary Texts' on wikipedia and just read those to learn the Jewish kind, and the Hermetic kind you can learn from reading books in the MEGA here like Mystical Qaballah and Garden of Pomegranates
human
I'm aware of the abundance of books in the MEGA, but I'm unsure as to where to start, which of the schools are more valid (if we can even say that), what are their primary differences and so on. I'm thinking of starting with Ayeh Kaplan but a Youtube channel called ESOTERICA says that he can be a bit anachronistic? I just want to start from the proper beginning, get a good view on the different schools and their differences, and move on with what feels the most viable for me. I'm a gentile after all, wouldn't want to spend a shitload of time on a No-Goys-Allowed sort of school.