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The Letters of Black Fire

A conversation with Kabbalist, Steve Pope

Stephen Pope is a teacher of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition that is also known as the Tree of Life, Etz Ha-Hyim in Hebrew. He teaches the way of inner relationship with the Hebrew letter-numbers, allowing them to be known and experienced as living realities within each person. This ancient approach to biblical Hebrew is passed on in the oral tradition and has been preserved within certain early kabbalistic texts, such as the Sephir Yetzirah, the Book of Formation, and the Sephir HaBahir, The Book of Brilliance.

“Kabbalah is not about believing anything,” he says. “It is not about finding some ultimate truth that can be pinned down. When we open to the spiritual wisdom within the Hebrew letters and their sacred texts, the creative patterns of the universe can unfold for us as a continuous revelationmulti-dimensional, timeless, seeking to be known within each person.”

By tradition, the sacred Hebrew texts of the Torah are said to be written in letters of black fire upon white fire—a profound image of creative wholeness, beyond any duality or opposition of what we perceive through our minds as darkness and light.

—Eleanor O’Hanlon

Read the conversations here…