The word "occult" comes from the Latin occultare meaning "covered" or "hidden". "Kabbalah" means "what has been received". The name comes from the legends of its revelation to man. This is a traditional Eastern European version of the story. I will relate a number of others in class. You may notice that this is told in the first person, and the name of Moses is never mentioned. This is traditional.
"After G-d brought our people out of Egypt, we traveled through the desert until we came to Sinai. There we sat in the shadow of the holy mountain, and one among us climbed to the highest point. He came there into the presence of the G-d of Israel, who had brought us out of bondage. The Lord spoke to him first of the things that man must do, and must not do; these are the ten commandments, carved into stone by the hand of the Almighty God. The Lord then spoke further, revealing to man what he could do. The Lord told of the creation of the universe, of the structure and beauty thereof. He spoke of the place of man within His creation, and of the amazing capaity of the spirit of man to at once be of G-d and of creation. He told us of the soul, and the path of her ascent to Him. All these things and more he spoke, and they were the Revelation of the Lord, the Kabbalah.
"Then, he climbed down the mountain, in order to give us the news of the Lord's revelation. However, when he reached the bottom, he was angry with the way he found us, and he cast down the tablets of stone, and they broke. He repented, and gave unto us the Law. But, the secret wisdom of the Kabbalah he kept for the sons of Aaron. To the priests alone was the Kabbalah given, and they have passed it down, father to son, since the time of the exodus, just as the Torah is passed down from generation to generation, ever the same, but always new."
Legends aside, it extremely difficult to trace the origins of the written Kabbalah. The actual word "Kabbalah", and the notion of sephirotic emanation (see the chapter titled "Foundation") are both credited to Isaac Luria (often refered to as "The Holy ARI, of Blessed Memory"), a 12th century Rabbi. Around the same time, a Spanish Rabbi by the name of Moses de Leon began to circulate a small booklet of kabbalistic wisdom. His claim that he was not the writer of these documents, and that they were rather the visions of a now long-dead mystic, dictated to him in secret caves was doubted at the time, and remains much in dispute today. Nonetheless, more followed, and the small booklet grew into an immense, cryptic, and beautiful work known as the Sepher ha-Zohar, or The Book of Splendour.
It is on this 12th century foundation that most of the material for the course is drawn. I have also tapped the older and more fundamental (yet vastly less accessible) tradition of the Sepher Yetzirah or the Book of Foundation. It's origins are unclear, but it appears to be a written record of a far older oral tradition. The date of it's first appearance is unknown, but it was definately in wide circulation (among Jewish mystics) by the early 6th century CE. Most scholars place its authorship between 100 and 400 CE. Additionally, I will attempt to provide modern work and commentary in the field, from both Jewish and Hermetic sources.
I will not dwell on the history of the kabbalah here, as a great deal of information is available at other sources. I will cover the material in more detail in class.
All this, however, tells us little about what the Kabbalah is. That is a more difficult question than it may seem, for the Kabbalah has, and continues to be, many things to many people. The Kabbalah is a system of Jewish mysticism, and a foundation for much of the western mystery tradition. The Kabbalah is a language for things hidden, and a system for organizing great bodies of disparate knowlege. The Kabbalah is, above all other things, an ever-evolving story about Self, and World, and G-d, and our relationship through life together.
The Kabbalah teaches us that Creation is an eternal act of magick, that if the emanation of life from above paused for but a moment, than all of creation would instantly end. The world is left undone, and the kabbalist, in a very real and meaningful way, brings about its further completion with every act of will. The word in hebrew for this is "tikkun", "restoration", and the Kabbalah is a call to action, a method of healing a fallen world. "Inheritor of a Dying World, we call thee to the Living Beauty. Wanderer in the Wild Darkness, we call thee to the Gentle Light. Long hast thou dwelt in Darkness. Quit the Night and seek the Day." Kabbalah is a plan for doing just this; it is a map from Darkness into Light. It is not the only map, and I cannot say if it is the best one, but it is the one that I know, and the one that brought me out of the Wild Darkness. It is, and of this I have no doubt, the method and the language of my True Will, and my part to play in the Great Work.