Qabbalah: The Philosophical Writings of Solomon Ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol

"Ibn Gebirol was a Spanish Jew, mistaken by most writers in the subsequent centuries for an Arabian philosopher. Regarded as an Aristotelian, many of his works were condemned by the University of Paris, and his name remains to this day but very little known outside the circle of learned Kabalists. Mr. Myer has undertaken to vindicate this mediaeval scholar, poet, and mystic, and has fully succeeded in doing so. Identifying the lore given out by this forgotten sage with the universal ‘Wisdom Religion,’ our author thus points out that the mystical theosophy and the disciplina arcana of the Hebrew Tannaïm has been found by the latter in the schools of Babylon. Later this Wisdom was embodied by Shimon ben-Yohaï, the chief of the Tannaïm (the initiated), in the Zohar and other works, now lost. That which is the most important to Theosophists, however, is the fact that the author vindicates in his learned work the assertions ... that the source of all Kabalistic ideas and doctrines, as embodied in the Zohar, are to be traced to Aryan [a title of the Hindu rishis] rather than Semitic thought. In truth these ideas are neither Akkadian, Chaldean, nor yet Egyptian originals. They are universal property, common to all nations."—H. P. Blavatsky (review, 1889) "Qabbalah (Heb.). The ancient Chaldean Secret Doctrine, abbreviated into Kabala. An occult system handed clown by oral transmission; but which, though accepting tradition, is not in itself composed of merely traditional teachings, as it was once a fundamental science, now disfigured by the additions of centuries, and by interpolation by the Western Occultists, especially by Christian Mystics. It treats of hitherto esoteric interpretations of the Jewish Scriptures, and teaches several methods of interpreting Biblical allegories. Originally the doctrines were transmitted “from mouth to ear” only, says Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, “in an oral manner from teacher to pupil who received them; hence the name Kabbalah, Qabalah, or Cabbala from the Hebrew root QBL, to receive." "Kabalist. From Q B L H, Kabala, an unwritten or oral tradition. The kabalist is a student of “secret science”, one who interprets the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabala, and explains the real one by these means." "Gebirol, Solomon Ben Yehudah. Called in literature Avicebron. An Israelite by birth, a philosopher, poet and Kabbalist, a voluminous writer and a mystic. He was born in the eleventh Century at Malaga (1021), educated at Saragossa, and died at Valencia in 1070, murdered by a Mahommedan [Muslim]. His fellow-religionists called him Salomon the Sephardi, or the Spaniard, and the Arabs, Abu Ayyub Suleiman ben ya'hya Ibn Dgebirol; whilst the scholastics named him Avicebron. Ibn Gebirol was certainly one of the greatest philosophers and scholars of his age. He wrote much in Arabic and most of his MSS. have been preserved."—Theosophical Glossary