according to the Hebrew style, has a very distinct signification from that wherein we understand it in our language. The Hebrew cabbala signifies tradition; and the Rabbins, who are called cabbalists, study principally the combination of particular words, letters, and numbers, and by this means pretend to discover what is to come, and to see clearly into the sense of many difficult passages of scripture. There are no sure principles of this knowledge, but it depends upon some particular traditions of the ancients; for which reason it is termed cabbala.
The cabbalists have abundance of names which they call sacred; these they make use of in invoking of spirits, and imagine they receive great light from them. They They tell us, that the secrets of the cabbala were discovered to Moses on mount Sinai; and that these have been delivered to them down from father to son, without interruption, and without any use of letters; for to write them down, is what they are by no means permitted to do. This is likewise termed the oral law, because it passed from father to son, in order to distinguish it from the written laws.
There is another cabbala, called artificial, which consists in searching for abstruse and mysterious significations of a word in Scripture, from whence they borrow certain explanations, by combining the letters which compose it: this cabbala is divided into three kinds, the gematria, the notaricon, and the temura or thumurah. The first whereof consists in taking the letters of a Hebrew word for ciphers or arithmetical numbers, and explaining every word by the arithmetical value of the letters whereof it is composed. The second sort of cabbala, called notaricon, consists in taking every particular letter of a word for an entire diction; and the third, called temura, i.e. change, consists in making different transpositions or changes of letters, placing one for the other, or one before the other.
Among the Christians, likewise, a certain sort of magic is, by mistake, called cabbala; which consists in using improperly certain passages of Scripture for magic operations, or in forming magic characters or figures with stars and talismans.
Some visionaries among the Jews believe, that Jesus Christ wrought his miracles by virtue of the mysteries of the cabbala.
CABALISTS, the Jewish doctors who profess the study of the cabbala.
In the opinion of these men, there is not a word, letter, or accent in the law, without some mystery in it. The Jews are divided into two general sects; the karaites, who refuse to receive either tradition or the talmud, or anything but the pure text of scripture; and the rabbinites, or talmudists, who, besides this, receive the traditions of the ancients, and follow the talmud.
The latter are again divided into two other sects; pure rabbinites, who explain the scripture in its natural sense, by grammar, history, and tradition; and cabbalists, who, to discover hidden mystical senses, which they suppose God to have couched therein, make use of the cabbala, and the mystical methods above mentioned.