Place all four traditions on an evidence-based chronology.
A guided route through Hidden Scrolls
06
Eight weeks · two to three hours per week
Study in
sequence.
A self-directed course for readers who want more than scattered facts: primary texts, historical method, weekly questions, comparative exercises, and a final evidence brief.
Sequence protects meaning. Study the historical setting and primary language of each tradition before asking what it shares with another.
Learning outcomes
What you will be able to do.
The course develops historical judgment alongside textual and symbolic literacy.
Distinguish Kabbalah, Cabala, and Qabalah without denying their connections.
Read one source closely before generalizing about a tradition.
Identify translation, shared inheritance, analogy, and later synthesis.
Explain why “Gnosticism” and “Jewish mysticism” are useful but contested categories.
Build comparisons that preserve religious setting, power, and difference.
The complete syllabus
Eight weeks of guided inquiry.
Each module pairs source reading with questions and one concrete research exercise.
01
Week 01
Method, categories, chronology, primary and secondary evidence
How to study a hidden tradition
Read
- Atlas: Research method
- Connections: relationship key
- King or Williams on the Gnosticism category
Ask
- Who is naming the tradition?
- Is a claim historical, internal, analogical, or modern?
- What evidence would change the conclusion?
02
Week 02
Ezekiel, apocalyptic ascent, Hekhalot, Merkavah, Sefer Yetzirah
Jewish mystical foundations
Read
- Ezekiel 1
- Selections from Hekhalot literature
- Sefer Yetzirah
- Kabbalah guide: precedents
Ask
- What is seen, heard, guarded, or transmitted?
- How do throne, palace, angels, letters, and names function?
- When does an earlier source become “Kabbalah”?
03
Week 03
Bahir, Provence, Girona, Castile, Zohar, sefirot, Shekhinah
The medieval Kabbalistic revolution
Read
- Selections from the Bahir
- Zohar I:1a–b
- Kabbalah guide: medieval emergence and divine life
Ask
- How does Torah become a map of divine life?
- What holds multiplicity and unity together?
- How do exile, gender, Sabbath, and prayer become cosmic symbols?
04
Week 04
Abulafia, Cordovero, Luria, Vital, tzimtzum, vessels, sparks, devekut
Ecstasy, Safed, repair, and Hasidism
Read
- Kabbalah guide: practice
- Tomer Devorah selections
- Lurianic overview
- Tanya or Likutei Moharan selections
Ask
- How do technique and theosophy differ?
- What changes in sixteenth-century Safed?
- How does Hasidism internalize or popularize Kabbalistic ideas?
05
Week 05
Pico, Mithridates, Reuchlin, Hebrew learning, Christology, concord
The Christian Cabalistic translation
Read
- Pico’s Cabalistic Conclusions
- Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica selections
- Cabala guide: contact and power
Ask
- What entered through translation?
- What new Christian conclusion was imposed?
- Can protection of Jewish books coexist with supersession?
06
Week 06
Lévi, Golden Dawn, tarot, astrology, ritual, grades, modern Qabalah
The occult correspondence machine
Read
- Golden Dawn overview
- A correspondence table from 777
- Qabalah guide: Tree as matrix and Jewish debt
Ask
- Who assembled the correspondence?
- Which elements are Jewish, Christian, Hermetic, astrological, or modern?
- What does ritual do for its practitioners?
07
Week 07
Category debate, Sethian and Valentinian texts, Nag Hammadi, rewritten Genesis
Gnostic myths, rituals, and ancient readers
Read
- Secret Book of John
- Gospel of Truth or Gospel of Philip
- Gnosticism guide: sources, schools, ritual, and Judaism
Ask
- Which text and school are we describing?
- How is Genesis rewritten?
- What evidence points to ritual or communal practice?
08
Week 08
Transmission, analogy, Hermetic maxim, divine feminine, rupture, restoration
Comparison without collapse
Read
- Connections Atlas in full
- One primary passage from each tradition
- One academic disagreement
Ask
- Which parallels are historical and which are structural?
- Where do creator, cosmos, body, and religious practice differ?
- What remains genuinely unresolved?
Final project
The evidence brief.
Replace a sweeping claim with a concise, transparent, and defensible historical argument.
State the claim
Write the popular claim exactly and identify every tradition it invokes.
Build the chronology
List the earliest secure evidence for each relevant text, term, person, and image.
Name the relationship
Choose documented reception, shared inheritance, structural analogy, later synthesis, or unresolved dispute.
Read primary evidence
Quote or paraphrase a short passage from each side in its literary context.
Represent disagreement
Identify at least two scholarly interpretations and explain what evidence separates them.
Conclude with confidence
Label what is established, plausible, disputed, analogical, or unsupported.
Your course companions