Library Generation Tables - Cabbalistic

Most cabbalistic works are medieval in origin; there are others, however, with a modern resurgence of interest prompting further titles. While many early sources are Jewish, various modern groups have adopted the Cabbala to their own purposes – from the Golden Dawn, to the New Age, to Madonna – so new works about the Cabbala are continually appearing.

Cabbalism is a form of Jewish mysticism which exoterically deals with the nature of the universe and its construction. Primarily it deals with the notion that creative powers are embodied within certain layers of being known as “sephira” (sing. “sephiroth”) and that the power of God welled over spilling through all of these layers in turn finally creating the universe. In order to commune with God, the mystical practitioner must move back upwards through these layers to reach the Divine. Central to this practise is the Hebrew alphabet which – lacking vowels – has a numerical association in Cabbalism which allows to mystic to work the “Tree of Life” – the arrangement of the sephira – like some kind of spiritual toolbox.

This correlation between numbers and letters – a transformative system called “gematria” – translates across many fields of mystical endeavour and cabbalistic interpretations of astrology and the Tarot – in fact any system of western or eastern esoteric thought – has been accomplished at one time or another. Cabbalistic works can be found in many other types of libraries, so the Keeper can feel free to throw a work from this list into any one of the others presented.

01-10%	Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin
11-20%	De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum
21-30%	The Golden Dawn
31-40%	I Ching
41-50%	The Key of Solomon
51-60%	The Occult Sciences
61-70%	The Sixth & Seventh Book of Moses
71-80%	Steganographia
81-90%	The Tarot: A Treatise
91-00%	The Zohar

The I Ching

The I Ching, or ‘Book of Changes’, is one of the five noble books of Confucian thought. Legend has it that the Yellow Emperor derived the I Ching from observing the markings on the shell of a turtle while he was bathing in a river. The combinations of broken and unbroken lines led him to write 64 prophecies based on the interpretations of these sequences. Each series of lines (or hexagram) is composed of six stacked horizontal bars comprising yang lines (unbroken) or yin lines (broken), with a gap in the centre. These hexagrams fall into two different camps: either ‘fixed’ or ‘moving’, according to the interpretation. Contemplation of these 64 verses is said to aid in the process of attaining enlightenment and to allow the philosopher to better evaluate the world and his place within it. The writing is dense and abstruse, with a multiplicity of interpretations.

However, given the possibility of generating the hexagrams by ostensibly arbitrary systems, people came to believe that the book was a means of divination. Originally, yarrow stalks were tossed from a bamboo container and the way they fell determined which hexagram was pertinent to the questioner’s predicament. This mode of random determination was later replaced during the Han Dynasty by the better expedient of tossing six coins to determine the appropriate hexagram; the corresponding verse was thought to be pertinent to the questioner’s situation. Strict Confucians disdain this use of their sacred text as they believe that a person’s destiny depends upon their own good conduct and not upon outside forces; the divinatory use of the book became strictly a marketplace service peddled to the peasant Chinese...and to gullible foreigners.

In one of his rare scholarly moments, Aleister Crowley translated the I Ching into English, complete with annotations designed to make the work relevant to his Thelemite theories of ‘magick’. Unlike many of his other translations, it fortunately does not attempt to ‘improve’ upon the original text.

The Tarot: A Treatise

This is a standard work on the symbolism and methods of divination of the tarot deck and, as such, closely resembles many other such works. It is significant for its use of Cabbalism in interpreting the imagery and also because it was written by Étienne-Laurent de Marigny, a famous New Orleans mystic and friend of Randolph Carter. Whether it has any significant Mythos content is a decision left up to the Keeper.

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