Thread: Kabbalah — what's the fascination??

According to the History Channel documentary, Secrets of Kabbalah (DVD), both Madonna and Britney Spears are involved in the pursuits of Kabbalah.

So, I looked into it. According to the Discovery Channel documentary, Royal Secrets - Volume 2: Madmen / Murderers / Sorcery / Warmongers (VHS Tape), the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (r. 1576-1612) was heavily involved in Kabbalah. He participated in the "black arts". For example, he hired certain 'doctors' to help him cast murderous spells designed to assassinate his enemies — in ceremonies that involved animal sacrifice. He was eventually deposed by his brother Matthias due to his increasingly bizarre behavior, and obsessive fixation with alchemical potions and elixers.

http://www.untitledtheater.com/Golem%20Facts.htm


Just what exactly are people getting into w/ this 'Kabbalah'?? The remarkable behavior of Madonna and B. Spears recently leaves one to wonder whether Kabbalah is a positive influence on peoples' lives.

I have, among my circle of acquaintances, a few people who not only dabble in the occult, they actually earn their living by it. I can tell you that this is one voracious fad, that feeds on anything it can find. In the early days of the occult revival that came out of England (the 60s) they were grabbing everything and anything that wasn't Christian and saying, "See?" Kabbalah is only one of the latest, as they have mined Celtic and Hindu sources to bits. They tend to shy away from Northern European stuff, due to the association with the Nazis, but there is growing acceptance of heathenism. They tried glomming onto Native American stuff, but they don't understand most of it and the indigenous folks fought against cultural appropriation. Polynesian, Sicilian, Appalachian, whatever vein they find gets mined in turn. This is just one of them, in my opinion. It's a very freestyle spirituality, still very fast-growing in most areas. Every ethnicity and time period has an occult tradition in its shadows.