Judaism & the Art of "Magic"
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Following is an assertion that was made by a reader of this forum and my response follows. I thought to include this as a post because there is quite a bit of information that I know some of you will be interested in. This individual challenged my meditation on first of the 72 Divine Names video I had posted earlier to this forum. He essentially claims that it is witchcraft and evil. This is typical of those people who are coming from a Christian background as they are bringing their non-Jewish mindset with them into these matters.
ASSERTION: The idea of using 72 names is a practice of "magic", these names are the result of a combination of letters and are called Shemhamphorasch. Shemhamphorasch is the set of 72 words of 3 letters each, formed from the split of the "Tetragrammaton" (YHVH) in 72 shares. Mistiscismo, magic ... practices prohibited in the Torah!
* Exodus 22:18
The witch will not leave live.
The witch will not leave live.
* Leviticus 19:31
Do not turn to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek, to be defiled by them. I am your Elohim Shehmaa.
* Leviticus 20: 6
When someone turns to mediums and familiar spirits, to prostitute himself with them, I will set my face against him and will cut him off from among his people.
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MY RESPONSE: There are some very basic errors in your approach which you have outlined. These errors are typical of those who do not possess an ability to read the Hebrew text of the Torah much less interpret the text and do not understand the overall context of the narrative. The first verse you quoted is a great illustration of this: “You shall not suffer a witch to live” (Ex. 22:17). This is a commonly mistranslated and erroneously applied verse which has been bastardized by various language translations. First the Hebrew can quite correctly be read as simply: “You shall not live by sorcery.” This is a very good way to convey this verse and dramatically alters the meaning in the ears of the reader. However, let’s examine this a bit more before I just make the assertion that its been falsely translated. The word “witch” reflects a medieval Christian concept as the term witch originates in this context. There wasn’t a “witchcraft” of ancient times per-se (this is important to point out so as not to disparage modern practitioners of a modern art under the guise of Wicca). The Hebrew word is ‘mechashefim’ and translates more appropriately as sorcerer in a feminine sense. In Biblical Hebrew black sorcerers were referred to as mechashefim (feminine) or kashafim (masculine). Both of these words come from the root ‘kashaf’ which means to ‘enchant or bewitch’ and describes a person who commits acts of evil, dark magic and curses. Cursing people was quite common in ancient times and kashafim were summoned routinely to curse an opposing military on the field of battle. The contextual meaning is someone who manipulates someone else to act against their own will, to impose one’s will on another in order to cause harm. It is this act of kashaf which is being forbidden by the Torah and not just a general blanket statement of all so-called acts of magic. Remember Moses had a magical competition with the Egyptian priests and Joseph utilized a cup of divination. A clear answer to this issue is presented in the Talmud which gives us the definition of an evil sorcerer:
“Rabbi Yochanon said: Why are they called sorcerers (kashafim/mechashafim)? – Because they oppose the Heavenly Agencies” (Sanhedrin 67b). In other words, a sorcerer is one who acts against the powers of Heaven and thus in conflict with the Divine Will. In all of this there is no actual prohibition of “magic” rather the Israelite's practiced their magic under the guise of their God and the nations were considered inferior and cultic in their own magical rites as they didn’t acknowledge the YHVH deity of the Hebrews.
The Talmud delineates 3 types of magic – 2 of which are forbidden. The first is black magic which the Talmud states is the art of the kashafim, the second is stage magic or the art of illusion which is forbidden if one uses it to deceive people into believing its real, the third is white magic and these are the techniques applied for spiritual purposes such as healing and the study of Creation.
Now that I have laid this foundation let me explain what this meditation on the Names of God is actually about. The mastery of Kabbalah and its practical application is done by one known as a Baal Shem (Master of the Name), in other words he is one who knows how to apply the Divine Names (the whole Torah is a Divine Name) according to the universal laws of causation and effect. In the meditation I have presented the letters and their combinations are used in a specific sequence like a mantra in order to deepen ones meditative state by affixing the consciousness upon a specific intent.
So now we should clarify what we mean by the term ‘magic.’ This word has a rather silly connotation which hearkens back to the time of the Dark Ages when men were ruled by superstitions. Truthfully though in our age of reason and scientific rationalism we have not only verified phenomena associated with the age-old ideas of magic but we have been able to explain it rather well in the context of consciousness research. In the non-scientific age the world was viewed as being mechanistic and ruled by evil agencies which were in conflict with the Divine agencies in order to win the soul of man. Today we understand that these notions are infantile and silly and we perceive that the world is an inner projection of our own psychological state. We also know that consciousness is non-local and through many experiments we have determined that our mind is continually creating our reality moment by moment. Physicists are now being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual.” (R.C. Henry, “The Mental Universe” ; Nature 436:29,2005)
Research out of the Institute of Noetic Studies was conducted which included a number of meditation practitioners and was initiated to determine the effect of meditation upon perturbations in the wave-function. The study found that factors associated with consciousness significantly correlated in predicted ways with perturbations in the double slit interference pattern. So what does this mean? It means that consciousness and our physical world are intertwined and that the observer CREATES reality. This study also demonstrated that meditators had a greater ability to willfully alter reality than non-meditators.
What was once referred to as magic in times past we now understand as the Quantum Enigma. Most people unconsciously go through life never realizing that they are victims to their own perceptions but the meditator is one who willfully engages his life on the mental level and can legitimately change reality in accordance with the higher perceptions that one attains – this is the essence of spiritual evolution.
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