/lit/ - Literature

>>20681449
Do you have the Zohar?

you don't mess with the zohar

>>20681460
Only Volumes 1 and 4 at the moment but I recently found a site that has the full set for a discount and ordered it.

>>20681468
I want to know what item 30 in the corrections chapter says.
https://youtu.be/L9Bme9IUjgQ?t=21

>>20681585
Kabbalah or Qabalah?

Well how much do you know about Kabbalah already?
Have you read the Torah? Have you read the Sefer Yetzirah? Are you familiar with the way Jewish commentaries are formatted?

>>20681791
>Have you read the Torah?
Yes, I have an extensive library of Biblical commentary already, though from a Christian perspective.

>Have you read the Sefer Yetzirah?
No. I did give it a look but it seems like it's focused purely on gematria which I am not interested in.

>Are you familiar with the way Jewish commentaries are formatted?
What do you mean? Like the Talmud? A little bit, but I'm not all that familiar with the Jewish tradition at all which is why I'd like to delve a bit deeper.

>>20681842
Nice. Go back and give the Sefer Yetzirah a second go, it'll only take half an hour or so but it's important to know the direction of Jewish mysticism before the Zohar arrived. It also built upon some other branches of mysticism like Merkabah mysticism and Hekhalot literature.
The Zohar is structured a lot like the Talmud, and in fact it was ascribed to one of the authors of The Talmud (though it's almost certainly a 13th century thing).
You don't need to read The Talmud but the structure of it is important, instead of the Christian tradition of one person writing all their thoughts down, the Jewish tradition is to posit an idea and then a whole bunch of people argue over it and tell stories about it. The Zohar is very much in that tradition.
If you have the Pritzker Zohar then it's very well annotated but check out books by Gershom Scholem to get a rounded view of the history that birthed Kabbalah.

>>20681897
And here's a chart I saved from here that's also very decent.

I own one copy of the zohar that didn't come with 50 million volumes am I missing anything?

I would start with Schloem. The Great Courses course on Mysticism isn't the greatest, but the Jewish section is ok as a historical overview of the evolution of Merkabva mysticism and Kabbalah too.


More of a primer if you don't know much but want to get a background while driving or doing chores.

>>20681927
Solid chart