Good day dear Hive community, I hope you had a great weekend and a pleasant start to the new month! In this article I would like to discuss alchemy and hope you will be able to learn new things.
Kabbalah is also understood as a mystical secret doctrine of Judaism and this doctrine consists of numerous different practices and writings which are connected with occult or spiritual practices and are also closely linked to the path of wisdom or enlightenment and among Kabbalists it is about recognizing the higher self and finding ways to improve oneself. The Kabbalah has also strongly influenced alchemy and in this context it was a lot about getting to the bottom of the magic of nature and looking at interrelationships between different things and so the Kabbalists dealt a lot with old writings, mysticism or numbers and firmly assumed that signs can be found everywhere when you start to read between the lines and furthermore, it was about observing certain material reactions and dealing with the transformation of metals or substances. Numbers in particular had an important meaning and it was suspected that there would be mystical messages behind certain numbers and if one begins to multiply, subtract or divide them one could discover hidden messages and the Kabbalists suspected that there must be numerous cryptographic messages there which would provide answers to various questions such as chaos or the cosmos. The mathematical rules were of course also linked to alchemical work steps and in order to be able to carry them out one of course first had to know how to add certain substances, multiply and so on to be able to convert them and the Jewish Kabbalah developed particularly strongly in the Middle Ages and a few centuries later this doctrine was increasingly divided and more different branches developed and it also united with other religions.
Geometry was also of great importance in the Kabbalah and there are some mystical discoveries to be made in various forms and there was a lot of importance to knowing exact materials or substances and expanding knowledge in the field and in addition to the occult practices, the Kabbalists also dealt a lot with the production of medicine and the accumulated knowledge about different material reactions had a huge influence on this development. Similar to other areas of alchemy, the Kabbalists were also of the opinion that nature is full of messages that one would have to find in order to receive answers and this philosophy has strongly influenced this secret teaching and it came to the fact that many metaphors have been created and because the Kabbalists had dealt a lot with magical practices they were not popular with everyone and were strongly attacked at certain times and were forced to carry out their work in secret and keep the knowledge as secret as possible. One of the most famous metaphors from the philosophy of the Kabbalah is probably the tree of life which consists of different spheres which are also known under the name sefirot and was also associated with the principle of seeing everything as a whole and the different spheres also describe the different stages of creation and are associated with the divine. The tree of life is also strongly linked to enlightenment as well as spiritual wisdom and the different spheres can also be considered as a kind of teaching which must be found in order to develop oneself into a higher being and to find the path of enlightenment or perfection.
Many thanks for stopping and I hope you could learn something new about alchemy! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens.