Snarky comment

[jeregenest]

Unless you are priceoncairo or heron61 you don't get to lecture to me about Kabbalah or magic in gaming on a gaming related mailing list, unless your credentals are as impressive as clehrich. Just a suggestion if you want to remain in the "this guy might have something creditible" column. Respect my publishing credits!

Comments

[chrislehrich.livejournal.com]

Inquiring minds like mine want to know. Who was lecturing you, and what did they say? What had you said? No fair posting dope-slaps at people if we can't find out what they're being slapped for.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I pointed out that lnking Kabbalah to Summoning in nephilim was rather foolish, and done wtout clear thought and that summoning would benefit from either being directly decoupled from Kabbalah the was its currently handled. Especially since Kabbalah is, if you look at it in the Nephilim lense, a simplification of the Nephilim way of looking at things.

He proceeded to giv me a Kabbalah for dummies (with the attitude of "your so stupid") none of which was relevant to my point, utterly ignoring most of the important points or Christan cabala or alternate ways of looking at such things that have exised the last two millennia.

Thus he gets slapped, at least on my livejournal because I see no reason to point it out on the list that he's trying to get points aganst the guy who wrote the only game book dedicated to the subject.

[chrislehrich.livejournal.com]

[pedantry]
There ain't no Kabbalah two millennia ago
[/pedantry]

Summoning what, the Nephilim powers or something? The elements and stuff? I'm just wondering. And why is Christian Kabbalah relevant? Serious question, not a dismissal; I just don't know.

The current state of the field as I read it suggests that there are really three different strains of Jewish Kabbalah as of about 1500: the theosophical (sefirot, etc.), the ecstatic (Abulafia and rotations of names and so on), and the magical (basically angel- and demon-summoning, mostly the former). Almost nobody wants to write about the third, though E. Wolfson has some good stuff. Personally, my impression is that this is a very artificial and problematic division, but it's where things are now.

On Christian Kabbalah, it seems that most authors weren't all that clear on such divisions, quite possibly because they didn't entirely exist in the Jewish sources, but also of course because they generally had very sketchy familiarity with the sources. So for example Frances Yates used to think that Christian Kabbalists, by making Kabbalah into angel-summoning magic, were distorting it horribly; perhaps they were, but not by this token. She got everything she knew from Scholem, of course, who (as Idel points out) deliberately bends everything to be theosophical or irrelevant. Idel adds ecstatic material, esp. Abulafia, but still shoves aside the rest.

Can you remind me how Kabbalah works in Nephilim?

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

It doesn't really. Its the annoying link of Summoning = Kabbalah that I was pointing out. It had to do with another post. Never you mind.

[redtint.livejournal.com]

One would have to be a fool to argue with you in that field.