Ten emanations, twenty-two letters, four worlds, and a tradition that runs from a 3rd-century Hebrew cosmology text to a 19th-century London occult order — and back again, transformed. Seven pages tracing what Kabbalah actually says, where later Western esotericism agreed with it, and where it quietly invented something new.
Two traditions, one name. "Kabbalah" refers both to the historical Jewish mystical tradition (Sefer Yetzirah, Zohar, Lurianic Kabbalah) and to "Hermetic Qabalah" — the largely separate 19th-century Western esoteric system built from it by the Golden Dawn. This section keeps the two distinct throughout, since most popular content online does not.