Nut Ink. Mini reviews of texts old and new. No fuss. No plot spoilers. No adverts. Occasional competency.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Total Kabbalah (2007)

Author: Maggy Whitehouse | Page Count: 224

If you’ve ever wanted to explore what the tree of life is all about you could trawl the internet for free or you could cough up some cash and start here, get it from someone who lectures in it and has studied it for many years.  The book gives background, general principles and a guide to practical applications.  It’s fully illustrated throughout which helps with visualisations and the repetition helps your mind keep placements and associations; on the flip side some of the illustrations are there for no real purpose and are tenuously linked to the text.
Elsewhere it glosses over a lot of things, both the Tarot and Numerology is mentioned but as each could easily fill a book by themselves they are shuffled to the side and it suffers for that.
The author is a Christian and while she attempts to keep the text relevant to all faiths, or no faith, there are a number of times the Christian perspective takes over completely, particularly at the beginning and the end.  The middle section is mostly non-biased and it’s there that we find the interesting parts; it’s where you feel like a student studying a textbook and not just a casual reader.
Half the book justifies the cost and the other half is interesting but will have no further interest after reading once.  It will have little use to someone already versed in the Kabbalah but for newcomers or those with just a cursory interest it is easily assimilated and easy to understand.

3 large format with pages as thick as backing boards out of 5

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