Since we started writing Madame D.C. -Three Voyages, we have been studying the ancient art and knowledge of The Kabbalah, which is one of the most exciting fields of so-called Esoteric Sciences. We must humbly confess that we are almost as ignorant as we were when we started, Thank God. We are introducing the subject today for our Supernatural, Superstition and She series ( like we had previously done for Astrology) with a transcript of a dialogue between two characters of that novel. On one hand, we have Father Mauro, a callous Catholic priest who is burdened with the task of pursuing a Dreadful Monster from Antiquity in the dark alleys of Venezia, and on the other hand Saul. a Jewish artisan of Cannaregio who gave him a timely providential refuge in his shop when he was about to be annihilated one very scary night. They spoke like thus:
-“What are all those folios? They look so old,” said Father Mauro to Saul, pointing at a stuffed bookshelf in his study after breakfast on Monday. As Father Stefano took care of the plumbing issue, he went to visit him.
-“Oh…those? They’re very ancient Kabbalah manuscripts,” Saul said, “they’re come from the defiant yeshiva of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato—”
-“Really? How did you get them?”
-“Funny…As a payment for an extensive upgrade of all the golden mobilier of a late nobleman’s mansion in Lake Garda… His British widow dismissed them as credulous charlatanism—she wanted to get rid of the whole lot.”
-“Who was Luzatto?”
-“Mmm…He was a Talmudic scholar that openly taught the Kabbalah in the eighteenth century… He was persecuted and had to flee to Holland.”
-“Why did they criminalize his teachings?”
-“See…The Jewish Kabbalah is a set of teachings to explain the relationship between an unchanging, eternal ‘Ein Sof’ and our mortal, finite world…It has been studied by many, not only Jewish scholars…Some of its tenets pre- date all the modern religions, forming the backbone of our social bodies… That precious knowledge had been transmitted orally by the patriarchs and prophets, becoming more popular around 10th Century BC—”
-“Fine…But why did it have to go underground?”
-“Our Jewish homeland was conquered many times…The Sanhedrin decided to hide it in order to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.”
-“Only from the outside? Or from the inside too?”
-“Both….Our leaders feared that its unsupervised use by all the disseminated Jewish communities in the planet might lead to some dangerous ways…” The priest took a sip of his espresso. “What kind of wrong ways?”
-“They’ve always dreaded two bloody deviations—” The priest cocked an eyebrow. “Which ones?”
-“First, the emergence of a charismatic leader that might claim the Messiah’s mantle like Sabbatai Zevi had done in the seventeenth century… He agitated the masses with the fallacious promise of a new Millennia and the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple… With the tacit complicity of all the Jewish leaders, the Sultan eventually captured him and forced his conversion to Islam.”
-“Aside from apostasy, what’s the other blasphemy?”
-“That there’s actually a duality in the Universe, a supernatural counterpart to God….One good system constantly fighting against the evil one—‘
-“And?” the priest asked, grinning. “What’s your opinion?”
-“God’s design gives us a choice—we must decide which one we follow.”
This article reminded us that the good folks of The Kabbalah Centre of Miami kindly gifted us a nice book in the Miami Dade Book Fair; we will contact them again to register in one of their classes so we can more appropriately write about this subject for our readers and fans across the globe.
Note. This statue of a Sleeping Lady sits at the coastal boulevard in Carrasco, Montevideo, Uruguay. It was used by our daughter Noël Marie to prepare the gorgeous front cover of Madame D.C.
Stay distant. Stay safe. Stay beautiful.
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