Kabbalah

"The curious symbol-system known to us as the Tree of Life is an attempt to reduce to diagrammatic form every force and factor in the manifested universe and the soul of man; to correlate them one to another and reveal them spread out as on a map so that the relative positions of each unit can be seen and the relations between them traced. In brief, the Tree of Life is a compendium of science, psychology, philosophy, and theology."

"In the literature, there is considerable discussion regarding the term Kabbalah (). Most authorities state that it comes from the root Kabal (), meaning "to receive." Abulafia takes this a step further, maintaining that a mystic is called a Kabbalist because he has received (Kibel, ) the tradition from either the prophets or those who received from them."

"We are seized with admiration when we penetrate the sanctuary of the Cabala, by the sight of a doctrine so logical, so simple, and at the same time so absolute. The necessary union of ideas and of signs; the consecration of the most fundamental realities with primitive characters, the trinity of words, of letters and of numbers; a philosophy as simple as the alphabet, profound and infinite as the Verb; theorems more complete and illuminating than those of Pythagoras; a theology which we summarize by counting on our fingers; an infinity that could be held in the hollow of a child's hand; ten numbers and twenty-two letters, a triangle, a square, and a circle: those are the whole of the elements of the Cabala."

"The word "Qabalah" is derived from a Hebrew root (QBL) meaning "to receive". The legend is that this philosophy is a knowledge of things first taught by the Demiurgos to a select company of spiritual intelligences of a lofty rank who, after the Fall, communicated its divine injunctions to Mankind—who, in reality, were themselves in incarnation. It is also denominated the Chokmah Nistorah, "The Secret Wisdom", so-called because it has been orally transmitted from Adept to Pupil in the Secret Sanctuaries of Initiation."

"The process which the Kabbalists described as the emanation of divine energy and divine light was also characterized as the unfolding of the divine language. ... They speak of attributes and of spheres of light; but in the same context they speak also of divine names and the letters of which they are composed. ... The elements of the divine language appear as the letters of the Holy Scriptures. Letters and names are not only conventional means of communication. They are far more. Each one of them represents a concentration of energy and expresses a wealth of meaning which cannot be translated, or not fully at least, into human language."