This is a light and reader-friendly guide to beginners in Kabbalah, covering everything from the history of Kabbalah to how this wisdom can help resolve the world crisis. The book is set up in three parts. Part 1 covers the history, facts and fallacies about Kabbalah plus introduces its key concepts. Part 2 explains all about the spiritual worlds and other neat stuff like the meaning of letters and the power of music. Part 3 covers the implementation of Kabbalah at a time of world crisis.

"The Book of Zohar" (The Book of Radiance) is an ageless source of wisdom and the basis for all Kabbalistic literature. Since its appearance nearly 2,000 years ago, it has been the primary, and often only, source used by Kabbalists. For centuries, Kabbalah was hidden from the public, which was considered not yet ready to receive it. However, our generation has been designated by Kabbalists as the first generation that is ready to grasp the concepts in The Zohar. Now, we can put these principles into practice in our lives. Written in a unique and metaphorical language, "The Zohar" enriches our understanding of reality and expands our worldview. However, this text should not be read in an ordinary fashion. We should patiently and repeatedly read and think about each sentence as we try to penetrate the authors feelings. We should read it slowly and try to extract the nuances of the text. Although the text deals with one subject only --how to relate to the Creator --it approaches it from different angles. This allows each of us to find the particular phrase or word that will carry us into the depths of this profound and timeless wisdom.

Beginning in the fifth century A.D., various Indian mystics began to innovate a body of techniques with which to render themselves immortal. These people called themselves Siddhas, a term formerly reserved for a class of demigods, revered by Hindus and Buddhists alike, who were known to inhabit mountaintops or the atmospheric regions. Over the following five to eight hundred years, three types of Hindu Siddha orders emerged, each with its own specialized body of practice. These were the Siddha Kaula, whose adherents sought bodily immortality through erotico-mystical practices; the Rasa Siddhas, medieval India's alchemists, who sought to transmute their flesh-and-blood bodies into immortal bodies through the ingestion of the mineral equivalents of the sexual fluids of the god Siva and his consort, the Goddess; and the Nath Siddhas, whose practice of hatha yoga projected the sexual and laboratory practices of the Siddha Kaula and Rasa Siddhas upon the internal grid of the subtle body. For India's medieval Siddhas, these three conjoined types of practice led directly to bodily immortality, supernatural powers, and self-divinization; in a word, to the exalted status of the semidivine Siddhas of the older popular cults. In The Alchemical Body, David Gordon White excavates and centers within its broader Indian context this lost tradition of the medieval Siddhas. Working from a body of previously unexplored alchemical sources, he demonstrates for the first time that the medieval disciplines of Hindu alchemy and hatha yoga were practiced by one and the same people, and that they can only be understood when viewed together. Human sexual fluids and the structures of the subtle body aremicrocosmic equivalents of the substances and apparatus manipulated by the alchemist in his laboratory. With these insights, White opens the way to a new and more comprehensive understanding of the entire sweep of medieval Indian mysticism, within the broader context of south Asian Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Islam. This book is an essential reference for anyone interested in Indian yoga, alchemy, and the medieval beginnings of science.

The greatest contemporary Kabbalists, Rav Yehuda Ashlag, and his son and successor, Rav Baruch Ashlag provide an eye-opening answers to life's most fundamental question: "What is the meaning of my life?" Based on their interpretations of 'The Book of Zohar', and 'The Tree of Life', we can now learn how to benefit from the wisdom of Kabbalah on a day-to-day basis. In addition to authentic texts by these great Kabbalists, this book offers illustrations that accurately depict the evolution of the Upper Worlds as Kabbalists experience them, as well as several helpful essays to enhance our understanding of the texts. Rav Michael Laitman, Ph.D., Rav Baruch Ashlag's personal assistant and prime student, compiled all the texts a Kabbalah student would need to attain the spiritual worlds. In his daily lessons, Rav Laitman bases his teaching on these inspiring texts, thus helping novices and veterans alike to better understand the spiritual path we undertake on our fascinating journey to the Higher Realms. If you truly seek the meaning of life, your heart will lead you through the writings of these great Kabbalists, who wrote them from their hearts to yours. Through their words, you will discover lifes essence and power, and your own eternal existence.

The Kizilbash were at once key players in and the foremost victims of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict that defined the early modern Middle East. Today referred to as Alevis, they constitute the second largest faith community in modern Turkey, with smaller pockets of related groups in the Balkans. Yet several aspects of their history remain little understood or explored. This first comprehensive socio-political history of the Kizilbash/Alevi communities uses a recently surfaced corpus of sources generated within their milieu. It offers fresh answers to many questions concerning their origins and evolution from a revolutionary movement to an inward-looking religious order.

'We will change things from within' Sherin Khankan is a pioneer, founding the first mosque for women in Europe and leading the way for a more progressive form of Islam. In this remarkable work, she shares her journey growing up between east and west to then becoming one of the first female imams in Europe. Addressing controversial issues such as radical Islamic groups, the right of Muslim women to divorce and the patriarchal structure of Islam, this is an eye-opening and empowering manifesto for change.

How the Ottomans refashioned and legitimated their rule through mystical imageries of authority The medieval theory of the caliphate, epitomized by the Abbasids (750-1258), was the construct of jurists who conceived it as a contractual leadership of the Muslim community in succession to the Prophet Muhammed's political authority. In this book, Huseyin Yilmaz traces how a new conception of the caliphate emerged under the Ottomans, who redefined the caliph as at once a ruler, a spiritual guide, and a lawmaker corresponding to the prophet's three natures. Challenging conventional narratives that portray the Ottoman caliphate as a fading relic of medieval Islamic law, Yilmaz offers a novel interpretation of authority, sovereignty, and imperial ideology by examining how Ottoman political discourse led to the mystification of Muslim political ideals and redefined the caliphate. He illuminates how Ottoman Sufis reimagined the caliphate as a manifestation and extension of cosmic divine governance. The Ottoman Empire arose in Western Anatolia and the Balkans, where charismatic Sufi leaders were perceived to be God's deputies on earth. Yilmaz traces how Ottoman rulers, in alliance with an increasingly powerful Sufi establishment, continuously refashioned and legitimated their rule through mystical imageries of authority, and how the caliphate itself reemerged as a moral paradigm that shaped early modern Muslim empires. A masterful work of scholarship, Caliphate Redefined is the first comprehensive study of premodern Ottoman political thought to offer an extensive analysis of a wealth of previously unstudied texts in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish.

"My heart wandered through the world
constantly seeking after my cure,
but the sweet and delicious water of life
had to break through the granite of my heart."

When the words of Rumi enter your heart, something softens, breaks, and is subtly reborn. That he wrote the words seven hundred years ago in a medieval Persian world that bears little resemblance to ours makes their uncanny resonance to us today just that much more remarkable. Here is a treasury of daily wisdom from this most beloved of all the Sufi masters--both his prose and his ecstatic poetry--that you can use to start every day for a year, or that you can dip into for inspiration any time you need to break through the granite of your heart.

Wide-ranging essays on Moroccan history, Sufism, and religious life Al-Hasan al-Yusi was arguably the most influential and well-known Moroccan intellectual figure of his generation. In 1084/1685, at the age of roughly fifty-four, and after a long and distinguished career, this Amazigh scholar from the Middle Atlas began writing a collection of short essays on a wide variety of subjects. Completed three years later and gathered together under the title Discourses on Language and Literature (al-Muhadarat fi l-adab wa-l-lughah), they offer rich insight into the varied intellectual interests of an ambitious and gifted Moroccan scholar, covering subjects as diverse as genealogy, theology, Sufism, history, and social mores. In addition to representing the author's intellectual interests, The Discourses also includes numerous autobiographical anecdotes, which offer valuable insight into the history of Morocco, including the transition from the Saadian to the Alaouite dynasty, which occurred during al-Yusi's lifetime. Translated into English for the first time, The Discourses offers readers access to the intellectual landscape of the early modern Muslim world through an author who speaks openly and frankly about his personal life and his relationships with his country's rulers, scholars, and commoners. A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

In the study of Judaism, the Zohar has captivated the minds of interpreters for over seven centuries, and continues to entrance readers in contemporary times. Yet despite these centuries of study, very little attention has been devoted to the literary dimensions of the text, or to formal appreciation of its status as one of the great works of religious literature. The Art of Mystical Narrative offers a critical approach to the zoharic story, seeking to explore the interplay between fictional discourse and mystical exegesis. Eitan Fishbane argues that the narrative must be understood first and foremost as a work of the fictional imagination, a representation of a world and reality invented by the thirteenth-century authors of the text. He claims that the text functions as a kind of dramatic literature, one in which the power of revealing mystical secrets is demonstrated and performed for the reading audience. The Art of Mystical Narrative offers a fresh, interdisciplinary perspective on the Zohar and on the intersections of literary and religious studies.

This mirror for princes sheds light on the relationship between spiritual and political authority in early modern Egypt This guide to political behavior and expediency offers advice to Sufi shaykhs, or spiritual guides, on how to interact and negotiate with powerful secular officials, judges, and treasurers, or emirs. Translated into English for the first time, it is a unique account of the relationship between spiritual and political authority in late medieval / early modern Islamic society.

A finalist for the 2020 National Jewish Book Award for scholarship--a broad, systematic account of one of the most original and creative kabbalists, biblical interpreters, and Talmudic scholars the Jewish tradition has ever produced "Beautifully written, Moshe Halbertal's groundbreaking book is exceptional in its capability to penetrate to the heart of Nahmanides's thinking and worldview. An admirable achievement."-Adam Afterman, Tel Aviv University "Magisterial. . . . Halbertal displays here his well-established talent for making abstruse ideas accessible to a non-specialist readership."-Los Angeles Review of Books' Marginalia Rabbi Moses b. Nahman (1194-1270), known in English as Nahmanides, was the greatest Talmudic scholar of the thirteenth century and one of the deepest and most original biblical interpreters. Beyond his monumental scholastic achievements, Nahmanides was a distinguished kabbalist and mystic, and in his commentary on the Torah he dispensed esoteric kabbalistic teachings that he termed "By Way of Truth." This broad, systematic account of Nahmanides's thought explores his conception of halakhah and his approach to the central concerns of medieval Jewish thought, including notions of God, history, revelation, and the reasons for the commandments. The relationship between Nahmanides's kabbalah and mysticism and the existential religious drive that nourishes them, as well as the legal and exoteric aspects of his thinking, are at the center of Moshe Halbertal's portrayal of Nahmanides as a complex and transformative thinker.

"Allan Nadler has performed a great service by bringing the Mithnagdim more to light. The spiritual universe that he has unearthed with erudition, imagination, and care is now more accessible to students of Jewish history and of religion in general." -- Yehudah Mirsky, New Republic

"In many ways Nadler's work defines the model of a first-rate monograph on an important subject... It is lucidly argued and carefully drafted. The technical achievement of figuring out what is going on in difficult texts matches the intellectual achievement of framing the whole in terms that bear consequence for a wide audience interested in the history of Judaism within the history of religion -- work that makes a difference, indeed a huge difference." -- Jacob Neusner, Conservative Judaism

The Faith of the Mithnagdim is the first study of the theological roots of the Mithnagdic objection to Hasidism. Allan Nadler's pioneering effort fills the void in scholarship on Mithnagdic thought and corrects the impression that there were no compelling theological alternatives to Hasidism during the period of its rapid spread across Eastern Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. In Nadler's account, Mithnagdism emerges as a highly developed religious outlook that is essentially conservative, deeply dualistic, and profoundly pessimistic about humanity's spiritual potential -- all in stark contrast to Hasidism's optimism and aggressive encouragement of mysticism and religious rapture among its followers.

"In reconstructing the 'faith of the Mithnagdim, ' Nadler introduces us to a remarkable universe of individuals and ideas. His pioneering reconstruction of Mithnagdic thought marks a turning point inour understanding of a crucial moment in Jewish history. From now on, anyone interested in the development of modern Judaism will have to take into account what he has done." -- Jay Harris, Commentary

"Nadler's work is a significant contribution to Jewish intellectual history and has wider significance in that it is also the first attempt to come to terms with thinkers who, until now, have been greatly misunderstood. It would not be surprising if Nadler's book became the impetus for much further research in this area." -- Marc B. Shapiro, Journal of Jewish Studies

"Nadler's book opens up a whole area of investigation in the history of Jewish religious thought... Nadler totally revises our image of Mithnagdism and establishes it as an extremely important movement. He deals with a whole array of basic theological and religious issues -- divine immanence, prayer, asceticism, worldliness, and enlightenment. It is required reading for anyone interested in Jewish religious thought." -- David E. Fishman, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

"Nadler has presented us with an important, interesting, and readable work for anyone seeking a better and more balanced understanding of Judaism in the modern age." -- Joshua Adler, Jerusalem Post

In this book, Patton E. Burchett offers a path-breaking genealogical study of devotional (bhakti) Hinduism that traces its understudied historical relationships with tantra, yoga, and Sufism. Beginning in India's early medieval "Tantric Age" and reaching to the present day, Burchett focuses his analysis on the crucial shifts of the early modern period, when the rise of bhakti communities in North India transformed the religious landscape in ways that would profoundly affect the shape of modern-day Hinduism. A Genealogy of Devotion illuminates the complex historical factors at play in the growth of bhakti in Sultanate and Mughal India through its pivotal interactions with Indic and Persianate traditions of asceticism, monasticism, politics, and literature. Shedding new light on the importance of Persian culture and popular Sufism in the history of devotional Hinduism, Burchett's work explores the cultural encounters that reshaped early modern North Indian communities. Focusing on the Ramanandi bhakti community and the tantric Nath yogis, Burchett describes the emergence of a new and Sufi-inflected devotional sensibility-an ethical, emotional, and aesthetic disposition-that was often critical of tantric and yogic religiosity. Early modern North Indian devotional critiques of tantric religiosity, he shows, prefigured colonial-era Orientalist depictions of bhakti as "religion" and tantra as "magic." Providing a broad historical view of bhakti, tantra, and yoga while simultaneously challenging dominant scholarly conceptions of them, A Genealogy of Devotion offers a bold new narrative of the history of religion in India.

This book reflects on Western humanity's efforts to escape from history and its terrors--from the existential condition and natural disasters to the endless succession of wars and other man-made catastrophes. Drawing on historical episodes ranging from antiquity to the recent past, and combining them with literary examples and personal reflections, Teofilo Ruiz explores the embrace of religious experiences, the pursuit of worldly success and pleasures, and the quest for beauty and knowledge as three primary responses to the individual and collective nightmares of history. The result is a profound meditation on how men and women in Western society sought (and still seek) to make meaning of the world and its disturbing history.

In chapters that range widely across Western history and culture, "The Terror of History" takes up religion, the material world, and the world of art and knowledge. "Religion and the World to Come" examines orthodox and heterodox forms of spirituality, apocalyptic movements, mysticism, supernatural beliefs, and many forms of esotericism, including magic, alchemy, astrology, and witchcraft. "The World of Matter and the Senses" considers material riches, festivals and carnivals, sports, sex, and utopian communities. Finally, "The Lure of Beauty and Knowledge" looks at cultural productions of all sorts, from art to scholarship.

Combining astonishing historical breadth with a personal and accessible narrative style, "The Terror of History" is a moving testimony to the incredibly diverse ways humans have sought to cope with their frightening history.

Thirteenth-century Sufi poet, mystic, and legal scholar Muhyi al-Din ibn al-'Arabi gave deep and sustained attention to gender as integral to questions of human existence and moral personhood. Reading his works through a critical feminist lens, Sa'diyya Shaikh opens fertile spaces in which new and creative encounters with gender justice in Islam can take place. Grounding her work in Islamic epistemology, Shaikh attends to the ways in which Sufi metaphysics and theology might allow for fundamental shifts in Islamic gender ethics and legal formulations, addressing wide-ranging contemporary challenges including questions of women's rights in marriage and divorce, the politics of veiling, and women's leadership of ritual prayer. Shaikh deftly deconstructs traditional binaries between the spiritual and the political, private conceptions of spiritual development and public notions of social justice, and the realms of inner refinement and those of communal virtue. Drawing on the treasured works of Sufism, Shaikh raises a number of critical questions about the nature of selfhood, subjectivity, spirituality, and society to contribute richly to the prospects of Islamic feminism as well as feminist ethics more broadly.