How to Study Kabbalah: An amaeture's Primer

I have no credentials, but I am going to take a shot at this.

Here is my primer on how to study Kabbalah. I will demostrate by example rather than give instructions. Following, is a simple game the instructions will teach you how to play the game.


The game of TTT.

To start the game of TTT you must fist cnt the gmb.

Step 1:

cnt a lne x 3

Step 2:

cnt a lne x 3 sideways.

After you have Cnt the gmb you may play:

The first pyr will cnt an X in a sre defined by the gmb.

The second pyr will cnt an O in a sre defined by the gmb in which there is no X or O

The first pyr to get X x 3 or O x 3 in a lne wins the game.


Those who understand TTT will understand, and those who do not, will require more study.






Now I will tell you that TTT stands for Tick-tack-toe. Go over and read the instructions, does it make sense? Can you spot something wrong in the instuctions?



Welcome back. Now, I will tell you that "lne" means a line. Do the instructions make more sense?

Now, "cnt" = construct. However it also means "draw" - Can you now find two ways to play this game, do you get two different images of how this game works? (perhaps in one game you use a pen and paper, another version you use blocks or wood?)

Maybe we are still missing information? What is gmb? As some of you have probabbly guessed allready, "gmb" means Gameboard.

A "pyr" means Player. Notice how in one case the "first pyr" is a specific person, however later in the text we discover that "first pyr" is also, anyone who completes the task first.

The last undefined term is "sre" which means Square. Now that you know what "sre" means you can better know how to "cnt the gmb" so that it creates squares.

A semi hidden term, that may be understanble to most, but some people might miss it, in that they have to learn these new symbols is that lowecase x 3 means.. Do it 3 times.


This is how you study Kabbalah. First you read it, and you ignore that which does not make sense, but you keep it in your mind. Then later on you learn new terms, and things begin to make sense that you read previously. However, sometimes these terms have more than one meaning, and you go back and read the multiple meanings in the text.

For example in my simple game, it says draw a line 3 times, it means up and down, but later when it tells you how to win, a line can also be diaongal.

Now if somebody did not know -anything- about tic-tac-toe, odds are they would play this game incorrectly, because the instructions are sparse and not complete. You need the background of the game and culture, and in Kabbalah's case, Judaism and Halacha.. to make sense of it all.

Hope that helps.