Terms used in Kabbalah

by Matt Slick

1. Book of Adam, the - The supposed extra-biblical account of Adam's life after the Garden of Eden. It consists of fables.
2. Ein Sof - the Unknowable God
3. Gamatria - the mathematical value of words. In both Hebrew and Greek, letters also serve as numbers. Therefore, every word has a gematria, a mathematical value.
4. Hemetic axiom - whatever is done in heaven is done on earth.
5. Judaism - The religion of the Jews.
6. Kether - The Pinnical, the crown, in the Tree of Life.
7. Metatron - the celestial being who dwells next to the throne of God's glory and is sometimes referred to as "the son of man."
8. Midrash - a compilation of Jewish commentaries of the Old Testament Scriptures that was gathered between 400 and 1200 A.D.
9. Mishnah - a collection of oral interpretations of the first five books of Moses.
10. Mysticism - the belief in other realities beyond our perception that can be accessed by subjective experience. Also, the practice of intellectual and spiritual apprehension of those other realities through various experiences such as meditation, altered states of consciousness, etc.
11. Pentateuch - The first five books of in the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
12. Pilpul - Dialects and debate
13. Rabbi - A male who is trained in Jewish law.
14. Sefher Yetzirah - The Book of Creation, the Book of Formation, that appeared between the 3rd and 6th centuries A.D. It is a very important book in Kabbalistic teaching.
15. Sephirot - creative force as distinguished in the Tree of Life.
16. Synagogue - A place of religious meeting for Jews.
17. Talmud - a collection of commentaries used to explain the Mishnah (the oral law).
18. Tanahk - the collected writings of the Old Testament: Nebiim (Prophets) and Ketubim (Writings).
19. Tetragrammaton - The four letters that comprise the name of God as revealed in the Hebrew Old Testament. The English equivalent would be YHVH.
20. Torah - Primarily this refers to the first five books of the Bible, the written law: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Secondarily, is sometimes used to include the rest of the Old Testament books. The Torah came directly from God to Moses.
21. Tree of Life - a pictorial representation of the 10 primary aspects of God's nature through which the descending creative power is manifested in the physical world.
22. Vipassana - in Buddhism, the practice of intense silence for extended periods that leads to an altered state of consciousness.
23. Yeshiva - an institution of Jewish higher learning.
24. Zohar - the book of splendor.1

• 1. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/gloss.html.