Talk:Tree of life (Kabbalah)

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Contents 1 Bibliography 2 Removed Michael Sharp reference 3 Unnanounced move 3.1 The standard term is Sephirot or Sefirot 4 Merge With Tree of Life 5 Dr. Simo Parpola??? 6 Simo Parpola 7 References 8 References 9 Three pillars

[edit] Bibliography

Could someone please add a short non-controversial bibliography to this article? Thanks. - Eyeresist 11:43, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed Michael Sharp reference

I removed this text from the entry "Michael Sharp perhaps provides a modernized account of the cosmology of Kabbalah in The Book of Light. Sharp even provides updated imagery for The Tree in the form of a Christmas tree like presentation of a collective, but individualized, unfolding of consciousness."

A. The Michael Sharp entry is marked for deletion. B. Who could give a flyin' f' about Michael Sharp? New age cultists pulling Kabbalistic interpretations out of their rears are not taken seriously by any legitimate scholars of Kabbalah. If you don't have a fluid working knowledge of Hebrew, Tanakh, Talmud, and Jewish civilizational history before you get to the Zohar, any attempt you make to understand it is a wasted one.

Mobius1ski 11:57, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unnanounced move

Ok, so where did this come from? User:IZAK recently performed a major move of the contents of the Tree of life (Kabbalah) article to Sephirot (Kabbalah), citing that the article was not about the tree of life, so much as it was about the sephirot. I have VARIOUS problems with this move.

1. This was a significant edit performed without warning or discussion, and that for this reason alone it should be rv and discussed before performing the move.
   • many people put a lot of effort into this article, and they deserve say in its position in the wikipedia
2. I disagree that the article is more about sephirot than kabbalah
   • The tree of life in kabbalah is used largely as an explanatory device to relate the sephirot, so talking about the tree necessitates a good deal of discussion of sephirot.
   • the following category's are specifically about the tree of life
     • The Pillars (it discusses the organization of sephirot into pillars within the tree)
     • non-traditional interpretations
     • in the occult
     • numerology
     • pop-culture
   • Technically, these sections could simply be moved to the tree article, but they currently stand in something of a flow in the original article.
3. The tree is represented in various traditions (see non-traditional interpretations).
   • If Tree of life (Kabbalah) Gets its own articles, then each interpretation deserves it's own full article as well; otherwise the wikipedia will be favoring the kabalistic interpretation over the others.
   • The other articles, will be standalone articles. Although they could techincally be linked to master-articles talking about the traditions they are founded upon, the tree is not a fundamental concept in all of these (if any).
   • It would not make sense for the kabbalistic article to treat the tree as a subtopic of sephirot when the others would be articles in themselvse. The encyclopedia will be better organized by giving an article to each. Therefore the original article needs to be restored.
4. Finally, the position of this article is impractical.
   • As it stands, the tree of life article is barely a stub and gives very little information about the tree of life.
   • In contrast, the Sephirot article talks in depth about the tree, but under the assumption that the reader understands that the article is about the sephirot as described by the tree. A reader who takes the initiative to investigate the master article may feel overwhelmed by information that they don't realize is necessary to the concept they are trying to understand.
   • Finally, A passive reader may feel discouraged from investigating the master article, feeling closure at having found the uninformative stub (tree of life). We will not be doing this reader justice, even if it was their decision to not investigate the topic further.

So that will probably be alot to read, but please at least skim my points, I feel they are valid. Shaggorama 08:02, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

See my comments here--◀Puck^talk▶

[edit] The standard term is Sephirot or Sefirot

The following is being cross-posted at Talk:Sephirot (Kabbalah).

As a rejoinder to the above:

• When the main subject of this article began two year ago, on 25 January 2004 it was named Sefirot (by User:Gtrmp and accepted by others) [1], as proven by the 14 redirects to its title.
• For almost two years it was similarly renamed and and/or redirected:
  • The Sephiroth on 27 January 2004 (by 24.1.178.20 and accepted by others) [2] .
  • Sephiroth (Kabbalah) on 4 April 2004 (by User:Cgranade and accepted by others) [3] with 16 redirects to its title
  • Sephiroth (in Kabbalah religion) on 20 April 2004 (by User:Snowspinner and accepted by others) [4]
  • Sephiroth (in Kabbalistic thought) on 26 April 2004 (by User:DopefishJustin and used by others) [5]
  • Sephirot on 9 May 2004 (by User:DopefishJustin and used by others) [6], with 10 redirects to its title.
  • S'firot on 24 June 2004 (by User:Gilgamesh and used by others) [7]
  • Sfirot on 24 June (by User:Gilgamesh and used by others) [8]
  • Sefirah on 24 July 2005 (by 4.131.35.26 and used by others) [9]
  • Sephirah (Kabbalah) on 11 May 2005 (by User:PinchasC and accepted by others) [10], with 30 redirects to its title.
  • Sefiroth on 8 January 2005 (by User:Gtrmp and used by others) [11] with 6 redirects to its title
  • Sephirah on (moved on 8 May 2005 to Sephirah (Kabbalah) by User:IZAK [12]), this one has 37 redirects to its title.

On the other hand, the topic as presented by the name "Tree of Life/life" has basically no commonly accepted usage. Regardless of advanced esoteric teachings and interpretations, the fact remains, and as proven from the above Wikipedia links and redirects, that the words and the topic as framed by the words "Sephirot" or "Sephiroth" or "Sefiroth" or "Sephirah" or "Sefira" MUST be given preference over any others because it's the only one in use. No-one, but a few scholars perhaps, uses it in any other way. Thus, there should be a separate article about "Tree of life" in relation to the Sephirot/Sefirot. Thank you. IZAK 07:06, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

You forgot Sepiroth. JaynusofSinope

[edit] Merge With Tree of Life

Can we merge the information on this page with the Tree of Life article? It seems to me like it's the same subject and item being described on two pages. The "Tree of life (Kabbalah)" could be written as a section on the Tree of Life article as "The Tree of Life in Kabbalah" TCorp 18:50, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, The article is merely small at the moment. The tree of life is highly complicated and controversial. 206.251.12.45

The article is still small, and it's been a year. This article should be rolled into Sephirot (Kabbalah) or Tree of Life. 216.254.4.195 23:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dr. Simo Parpola???

I think this entry is a bit overly complicated for something thats just conjecture. The tree of life article's main focus should be the tree of life as it is known. Not essay's about theories of origins. If your going to add a theory about the origin of the tree of life (which there are many) I think it should be brief and give an objective view of all the various theories about its origins. Parpolas theory is hardly orthodox and downright blasphemious to the Orthdox jewish belief.

On the contrary, I do not think that Dr. Parpola's paper is 'just conjecture'. It may however be blasphemous in Jewish eyes. This by itself does not validate its removal from the entry. It is a valid piece of scholarship and I vote for its inclusion. I think that the reason it seems a bit long is only in relation to this size of the article, which is rather brief. The various articles on Jewish Kabbalah, Christian Qabbalah and Hermetic Qabbalah are really in need of a serious overhaul as bits and pieces of the various subjects are all over the place. I am going to attempt a reworking of these articles but I can't promise it real soon. Morgan Leigh 02:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Simo Parpola

Simo Parpola was not a good place for this article. Although it may have been related to the tree of life. Many things can be related to the tree of life and there are thousands of authors with different hypothesis on origins and theories on the tree of life which would hardly be appropriate to put them ALL in the tree of life article especially since that would lead to a lot of authors using wikipedia to plug there own books. Thusly, it has been moved to Simo Parpola's own entry. Try to keep the article factual and less theoretical and hypothesis.

[edit] References

It would be nice if this article cited sources and contained a References section. Anyone who has worked on providing the information contained in this article, please try to add references to any sources you can.

In case you don't already know, the best way to cite sources is to use <ref> tags, as follows.

Statement.<ref>Source of statement</ref>

[edit] References

<references />

Thanks. sloth_monkey 14:06, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I would be more than happy to help edit this article with clean up and citation additions soon. Kephera975 17:40, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

It looks like most of the citations that I would have are mainly from Hermetic Kabbalah authors, but I do have one or two more traditional sources. Maybe someone else will be able to add more from the more traditionally Jewish Kabbalistic authors? Kephera975 17:52, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Three pillars

There is an incoming link to this page from Three pillars. Please verify, is that legitimate? There are no references to pillars on this page currently. Thanks. --Quiddity 16:52, 17 October 2007 (UTC)