JEWS AND THE AFTERLIFE
By Stephan Borowski Pickering
The
literature is enormous.
Ever since 1312 BCE (Sinai), Jews have always known there
is life-after-life...that 'death' is a biological process
having nothing to do with who we are as Spirit beings in
physical bodies. However, it should be noted that there
are Judaisms, but not a monolithic 'Judaism'. This holds
true for concepts of Spirit worlds. In the Second Temple
period, the ideas of mal'akim / angelos became more prominent;
what we would call clairvoyants now were quite common, although
repressed in certain circles.
My own
specialty as a Jewish scholar are the pre-5th century CE
texts known as merkavah / hekhalot -- the 'how-to' manuals,
as it were, on how to travel to Spirit (meditative prayer
and thinking, astral projections), what is called 'path
jumping', kefitzat ha-derekh. What was then seen/heard of
Spirit realms...well, here we have a plethora of inconsistent,
sometimes hyperbolic, always masculinist texts called 'apocalyptic'
with few exceptions -- the exception being the Greek Testament
of Job, based upon a Hebrew mss. now lost, which tells of
Job's three daughters wearing special garments and speaking
the 'language of angelos'. I am convinced this was written
by a womanist, a kohenet, a priestess.
From the 70 CE burning of Yerusalaim by the Romans, and
the subsequent genocidal repression of Jews by the 'church',
to the early 20th century, concepts of life-after-life have
never been uniform. These were, often, tied in with views
of the Spirit realms by kabbalists (and the quieter practitioners
of what is called 'magick'). Only in the last 25 years,
has there been an upsurge in scholarly research...
Following the 1933-1945 Destruction, the
Shoah, clairvoyants within the Jewish world are coming forth
(I am thinking of Joanne Gerber and Rebecca Rosen)...at
long last, breaking the strangle-hold of what I consider
antisemitism (and ignorance of the sources) among spiritists
(no doubt influenced by the Jew hatreds of Swedenborg).
Most the leading Chassidic rebbes since
the 1700s have been mediums / clairvoyants, 'wonder' Light
workers, bridges to There...some profoundly telepathic.
In the early 13th century, Rabbi Yitzhak the Blind was such
a telepath, being able to look at a person and, like Mr
Holmes, being able to immediately deduce a precise extrapolation.
It was R. Yitzhak who called 'reading' an aura, or the mind,
hargashat ha'avir, 'reading the air', i.e. aether, Spirit
connexions...
These are the best introductory sources:
Rabbi Elie Spitz, 2000. Does the soul
survive? A Jewish journey to belief in afterlife, past lives,
& living with purpose (Jewish Lights Publishing),
245pp
Rabbi Spitz's book should be read
by all who studied Victor's writings...
Rabbi Simcha Raphael, 2009. Jewish views of the afterlife
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd edn.), 533pp
Rabbi Simcha Raphael, 2009. Afterlife: medieval Judaism.
in volume 1 of Encyclopedia of the Bible & its reception
Rabbi Simcha, who has helped
me considerably in my own research, provides a monumental
compendium of all of the relevant early texts.
Rav DovBer Pinson, 2006. Jewish wisdom on the afterlife:
the mysteries, the myths, & the meanings (Q&A
Books), 291pp
Rav Pinson is a practicing kabbalist
in Brooklyn...
Rabbi Aaron M. Schreiber, 2009. Quantum physics, Jewish
law, & Kabbalah: astonishing parallels, their theological
implications (The Rivka & Aaron M. Schrieber Family
Foundation, Inc.), 212pp
Rabbi Schreiber is a phenomenal theoretician
of Light...this book is difficult to obtain (costing nearly
$300 at some sources), but if a copy can be obtained, I
cannot overpraise it...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
STEPHAN BOROWSKI PICKERING / Chofetz Chayim benAvraham
Torah G-ddess Yehudi Apikores Ishi / Philologia Kabbalistica
Speculativa Researcher
JANE PICKERING BOROWSKI
Empath Medium, Co-Editor & Publisher
THE KABBALAH FRACTALS PROJECT
2333 Portola Drive # 4
Santa Cruz, California 95062-4250
stephanpickering@cs.com
IN PROGRESS: Dialects of a synaesthetic heart: poetics for
Faline Pickering (23 January
1949 -- 24 August 2008)
IN PROGRESS: Alfred Russel Wallace's KING KONG: the semioptics
of Willis O'Brien
IN PROGRESS: Mutanda Dinosaurologica: in memory of Samuel
Paul Welles (9 November
1909 -- 6 August 1997)
TWIN FLAME IN THE QUANTUM HOLOGRAPHIC STRING MULTIVERSE
TO:
JANE PICKERING BOROWSKI, MY WIFE
PARTNER IN THE UNIVERSE TO: FALINE PICKERING, MY BELOVED
QUANTUM AQUARIUS
BROTHER IN THE UNIVERSE TO: KITTY CALEENE PICKERING, MY
SISTER
...the comprehension that I strove for turned into something
that resisted conceptualization all the more emphatically
the older I became; for it revealed a secret life, one which
I had to acknowledge as being impossible to conceptualize,
and which seemed portrayable only through symbols.
-- REB GERSHOM SCHOLEM
One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking
of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking
of the infinite. ...Reality is not always probable, or likely.
-- JORGE LUIS BORGES
G-d is all that exists, but not all that exists is G-d.
-- R. MOSHE CORDOVERO
Egil Asprem & Kennet Granholm, eds., 2013. Contemporary
esotericism (Equinox Publishing), 470pp
ADDITIONAL READING
Contemporary esotericism provides a broad overview and assessment
of the complex world of non-Jewish Western esoteric thought
today. Combining historiographical analysis, with theories
and methodologies from the social sciences, the volume explores
new problems. and offers new possibilities for the study
of non-Jewish esoterica
1. Contemporary Esotericism: Introduction, Egil Asprem,
University of Amsterdam, & Kennet Granholm, Stockholm
University
PART I: TRADITION
2. Constructing Esotericisms: Sociological, Historical,
and Critical Approaches to the Invention of Tradition, Egil
Asprem & Kennet Granholm
3. Inventing Africa: Esotericism and the Creation of an
Afrocentric Tradition in America, Fredrik Gregorius, Pennsylvania
State University
4. Secret Lineages and De Facto Satanists: Anton LaVey's
Use of Esoteric Tradition, Per Faxneld. Stockholm University
5. Perennialism and Iconoclasm: Chaos Magick and the Legitimacy
of Innovation, Colin Duggan, University College Cork
PART II: POPULAR CULTURE AND NEW MEDIA
6. Occulture is Ordinary, Christopher Partridge, Lancaster
University
7. From Book to Bit: Enacting Satanism Online, Jesper Aagaard
Petersen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology,
Trondheim
8. Accessing the Astral with a Monitor and Mouse: Esoteric
Religion and the Astral located in Three-Dimensional Virtual
Realms, John L. Crow, Florida State University
9. The Secrets of Scientology: Concealment, Information
Control, and Esoteric Knowledge in the World's Most Controversial
New Religion, Hugh B. Urban, Ohio State University
10. Hidden Knowledge, Hidden Powers: Esotericism and Conspiracy
Culture, Asbjorn Dyrendal, Norwegian University of Science
and Technology, Trondheim
PART III: ESOTERIC TRANSFERS
11. Discursive Transfers and Reconfigurations: Tracing the
Religious and the Esoteric in Secular Culture, Kocku von
Stuckrad, University of Groningen
12. Radical Politics and Political Esotericism: The Adaptation
of Esoteric Discourse within the Radical Right, Jacob Christiansen
Senholt, Aarhus University 13. New Age Spirituality and
Islamic Jihad: Paulo Coelho's Manual of the Warrior of Light
and Shamil Basayev's Manual of the Mujahid, Eduard ten Houten,
University of Amsterdam
14. Deep Ecology and the Study of Western Esotericism, Joseph
Christian Greer, San Francisco Corvid College
PART IV: LEAVING THE MARGINS
15. The Secular, the Post-Secular, and the Esoteric in the
Public Sphere, Kennet Granholm
16. Psychic Enchantments of the Educated Classes: The Paranormal
and the Ambiguities of Disenchantment, Egil Asprem
17. The New Kids: Indigo Children and New Age Discourse,
Daniel Kline, University of Amsterdam
18. A Small Town Health Centre in Sweden: Perspectives on
the Western Esotericism Debate, Liselotte Frisk, Dalarna
University
19. Entheogenic Esotericism, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, University
of Amsterdam
20. A Deliciously Troubling Duo: Gender and Esotericism,
Jay Johnston, University of Sydney
Bibliography Index
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