Just the Gist

• It’s all about the forces

• Understanding the Language of the Branches

• New meanings of old stories

• Demystifying the language of The Zohar

To understand Kabbalah texts, you have to understand the language that it’s written in. No, you don’t have to learn Hebrew, but you do need to understand the way Kabbalistic texts use stories to present ideas. Stories about people and the world become metaphors for concepts and ideas in the Upper Worlds.

The language of Kabbalah describes how forces from the Upper Worlds act on the objects of this world. Stories and the ideas behind them show how the universe is structured. When read in this way, stories about this world—the stories in the Bible, for instance—take on new meanings.

In this chapter, you start to understand how to unlock Kabbalah knowledge. You see that the roots and branches of Kabbalah language bring out more in the stories than generally meets the eye.