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To: alt.magick From: cal@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Colin Low) Subject: Re: Cabala and Psychology Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 11:43:49 GMT Tim Maroney (tim@toad.com) wrote: > In article lkeane@chat.carleton.ca (lloyd keane) writes: > >I am currently doing research for my MA and I was wondering if anyone can > >suggest some sources for applying Cabalistic concepts to psychology(aside > >from Dion). > That's the direction these inquiries always take. I think it would be > much more interesting to try to apply psychology to cabala. For > instance, the parts of the soul are interesting only in that they are > case studies of how pre-psychological cultures try to interpret their > own experience; they really have no direct value as modern > psychological models. Tim makes a good point here. In both cases, whether you apply Kabbalah to psychology or vice-versa, you need some "canonical model" to apply otherwise you end up applying shaving foam to a cream topping - lots of volume, not much substance, and a glorious mess when you get too close. In the case of Kabbalah, the canonical model does not exist. Are there five parts to the soul or three? How do they relate to the sephiroth? Even if you try to apply the concept of yechidah to psychology, can you figure out what it means in the first place? Sure, it is possible to homogenise this stuff, and I am as guilty of this as other people, but what you have then is modern street psychology, and the pre-psychological culture you are studying is the group of people like myself who haven't got around to applying psychology to Kabbalah.... If you are serious about this, and if you intend to pursue it with any kind of academic rigour, then you will have to abandon the idea of coherent Kabbalistic doctrines which can be applied. There are some relatively coherent presentations deriving from the Golden Dawn, but they reflect an extreme loss of genetic variability - the kabbalah as it derives from that branch was down to its last mating pair. Modern Jewish scholarship is churning out PhDs and it is abundantly clear that if you go looking for clear, well-defined doctrines, you will be looking for a long time. Colin
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