One of the things that intrigues me most about Kabbalah is their understanding and belief in the existence of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. While my understanding of Kabbalah is still VERY much in it’s infancy, the preface of the Zohar seems to make clear that the Kabbalist believes in a sort of universal consciousness that divided itself, then divided itself again, and divided itself again, on and on in a continual process of creating new and different forms of consciousness all containing the same universal life force or consciousness at it’s core. In Kabbalistic thinking, even the very letters of the Hebrew alphabet are imbued with consciousness and in a way are living entities.
Though not specifically stated in the preface, essentially ALL forms of consciousness are one and the same (we have simply forgotten that we are part of the larger collective consciousness). We all come from a common source and all of us are simply forms or constructs split off from a larger universal consciousness. For the Kabbalist this is likely the true meaning of the words in Genesis that God made us in “his image”. We literally are a chip off the old block so to speak. In fact, I would argue that even the creator himself is a chip off a larger block and thus he is like us in that we all are part of the same universal consciousness. God is literally a part of the same consciousness as we are and this is why the serpent in the garden story was telling Eve that she was “like God”.
In keeping with a very old tradition and belief system, the Kabbalist also understands that even planets and constellations in the heavens are conscious entities. As a sentence from the preface reads: “Early Kabbalists were intimately familiar with the celestial bodies and regarded their movements across the heavens as physical expressions of extraterrestrial intelligence.” Furthermore it tells us that “They viewed the constellations and planets as intelligent entities, motivated by internal energies, which manifest on earth as the four elements – water, fire, air, and earth.” So you see, in Kabbalah (as many other ancient cultures), there is the belief that planets themselves are sentient entities with a consciousness. Mother earth for example may actually be a valid way of describing a planet that itself is sentient and conscious of it’s own existence.
It is for this reason that Kabbalists also believe in a form of astrology (that is that the position of the planets and constellations above influence thoughts and behaviors on earth). A Kabbalist for example tends to believe that the position of the stars and constellations at the time of ones birth does influence what type of person they will become as well as what their future will look like. There are conscious, intelligent entities in planets, stars, and constellations which interact with us on a daily basis here in our physical realm and help shape and guide our existance.
There is even intriguing evidence to suggest that the Bible’s depiction of the twelve tribes of Israel (each tribe of which is represented by a symbol) is actually a representation of the constellations in the Zodiac wheel. The blessings that each tribe received and their prophecies for their future may be seen as a form of ancient horoscope with the predictions for each’s future being based on their astrological sign.
While I’m not a staunch believer in astrology to the point that I will look up my daily horoscope and base my plans for the day off of something I read online, I have come to appreciate that certain “signs” people are born under do indeed tend to influence the type of person they become. I have come to appreciate that if you know nothing else about a person besides their astrological sign you can probably make some predictions of their behavior and personality purely based on that information alone. In addition I tend to feel that certain things come easier or harder for those born under various signs. While we all have free will to do what we choose, the path we choose would be much easier for us if we followed a path in line with the influences that shaped our creation at birth. These things make the study of Kabbalah for me worth examining more closely.