On the Nature and Origin of the Doctrine of Emanation among the Kabbalists

A decorative printers' vignette or horizontal ornament at the top center of the page, consisting of symmetrical stylized leafy flourishes or scrollwork.

be more clarified: and thus all the more welcome is every effort by which the same is not only clarified, but also simultaneously sheds light upon many other related subjects.

Anyone who has devoted diligence and reflection to the fragments of the ancient religions and light-systems: religious or philosophical systems where light is the primary metaphor for divinity or creation, common in ancient Persian and Gnostic thought of the Orient, will find that Kabbalistic emanation is fundamentally no different from that which was formerly common to the entire Orient, and which prevailed from India to Arabia, Syria, and Egypt; but he will also find that this system—according to which all things, like light from light, spirit from spirit, life from life, descend from the Being of Beings: a mystical designation for the ultimate Divine source or God itself—cannot be recognized from any kind of relics of the ancient Orient and Occident: the Western world, particularly the Greco-Roman sphere in such purity, scope, and coherence as it actually lies within the most proven writings of Hebrew Kabbalism (so far as they have become known), or can easily be drawn from them.

These writings indeed provide, as I am convinced, all the essential and peculiar ideas one needs to understand and fundamentally explain the fabulous traditions original: "Tradita" — specifically referring to the body of traditional or oral lore handed down through history of an Orientalism that is as simple as it is multifaceted.

But whence comes the phenomenon of a doctrine of this kind among a people in whose sacred writ- The sentence continues on the next page; the catchword "ten" at the bottom right will complete the word "Schriften" (writings).