Jewish-Christian-Islamic Mystical Encounters In Early Renaissance Western Europe
Jewish-Christian-Islamic Mystical Encounters In Early Renaissance Western Europe

Summary/Abstract: "Kabbalah was born from a need to restore myth within religion. By recovering magic, astrology and alchemy, Kabbalah attempted to return to an ancient model, particularly under the circumstances in which the present provided sufficient grounds for dissatisfaction. The same thing happened, in the same manner and for the same reasons, in the Christian West. The Renaissance people strived, in their turn, to recover the ancient magical, astrological and alchemical traditions, in order to give Christianity an esoteric side, even if imported. It was only natural that they should have found in Kabbalah a ready-made model, which they could simply apply to the Catholic and Protestant doctrines, so that was what they did. Unlike magic, astrology and alchemy, taken over from the Antiquity through the intermediation of Neoplatonic Hermeticism, in which the Jewish influence was indirect, the notions of Kabbalah were taken over as such, and applied to Christianity as a key for decoding the sacred text."[...]

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