The Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah
by Arthur Edward Waite
1902

From whatever point of view it may be approached, the Kabalah is of importance: it connects with literatures which are greater than itself and with pregnant issues of history. It is part of the history of philosophy, and as such it once entered into the thought of Europe. It is responsible, broadly speaking, for all that strange tissue of symbolism and ceremonial which made up the magic of the Middle Ages; at a later period it sought to transform alchemy; it tinctured many of those conventional practices and beliefs which we term superstition generically, and the guise in which we know them is therefore chiefly a Kabalistic guise." Contents: Post-Christian Literature of the Jews; Doctrinal Content of the Kabalah; Source and Authority of the Kabalah; Written Word of Kabalism First, Second and Third Period; Some Christian Students of the Kabalah, Raymond Lully, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, William Postel, The Rosicrucians, Robert Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, Ralph Cudworth, Saint-Martin, Eliphas Levi, Papus; Kabalah and Other Channels of Esoteric Tradition, The Kabalah and: Magic, Alchemy, Astrology, Freemasonry, Tarot and Mysticism.