kabbalah is harmless mysticism, in that it gives a mystical worldview.. and mystical answers to things
another way to look at it, is it tries to explain the physics of the spiritual realm
Judaism demands that we keep sabbath, it's in the bible. We do it because G-d wants us to But what does keep it do cosmically/in the spiritual realm?
Why did this person die after he apologised to somebody? kabbalah might answer that in a previous life he did a certain sin and didn't apologise, and was tested again in this life, and he fulfilled his mission at that moment.
That's the kind of material in the kabbalistic books.
Outside of classic books. You have some excessive stories about the lives or events surrounding one rabbi, or another rabbi, from hundreds of years ago, when kabbalists were greater e.g.
A terrible decree has been passed. A great kabbalistic rabbi prays very deeply, all his students see and crowd around him in awe, they have never seen him pray so hard. 8 hours later he stops, and says "it's fine now". They ask him what happened. He says "He started praying, his soul went up, he spoke to this angel, and that angel, and the prosecuting angel, and he represented the jewish people in the heavenly court, and he got help from eliyahu hanavi(elijah the prophet), and they efeated the prosecuting angel. And G-d lifted the evil decree.
Whether one takes it seriously or not is another matter. You can't test these things. A rabbi who knows a bit about kabbalah, said that good and evil were both alot stronger hundreds or thousands of years ago. The stories certainly lifted the spirits of the jewish people in times of distress.
Now we veer off from the torah question..
It's possible that groups like the illuminati or the masons might steal some symbols from different religions, particularly mystical ones, and merge them all together into one big nonsense.
They have nothing to do with some religious mystic, and kabbalah isn't very secret, not anymore anyway, with the internet - there are legitimate websites. I have heard of some of the things secret societies do. I saw a documentary on one of them where they got a camera in and recorded. It looked like a crowd, seated, watching a burning of some thing shaped like a human body wrapped up. Many powerful people were there. Bilderberg or something. The society themselves had to explain it, they said it was a theatre show of some ritual burning , some weird thing. And locals said they were urinating over trees. If it is true, then the most you have to worry aout is that
a)powerful people are meeting up to plan things
b)the social activities they engage in are nuts, and show them to be not mentally stable
But don't sit there worrying that they are really working "magic" while at some brief retreat.
Even if magic was possible, there's no way these people are going to be experts in it.
And regarding masons. If there is a problem with them, it's hidde at the highest of highest levels.
Lots of really decent people are free masons. So there's a theory that maybe they choose them to cover up the really bad people higher up. Apparently Arafat for example, was a free mason.
Thing is, I know somebody whose relative is very upstanding and decent, and he's a grand wizard of some sort, with a big robe.
Alot of doctors and accountants and lawyers and judges.. often people that have really made it, they are offered the chance to be a free mason, to join a group.. And they share contacts of who is a good builder , who is a good client.
And I know another guy - jewish - who has a brilliant mind, has lots of high powered jobs which he does simultaneously with ease. And after acheiving all this success, he was asked if he wanted to be a mason. He asked what it involved, and he was told he'd just have to do some rituals. He said no.. He had enough rituals already, with all the jewish prayers and festivals!
I had a manager once that was a free mason, he was quite open about it. One guy in the office was really puzzled about it.. So he showed him his diary, he said "read that". He had to learn it to be part of the society. It was written in some other code/language. It's a good question, why ar ethey secret. They are harmless though at most levels. Maybe at the arafat level it gets ugly though! There are degrees of free mason.
Tamar Yonah has been looking into this New World Order thing.. Heads of state trying to remove borders. Big people obsessed with money, trying to solve the whole middle east crisis by removing borders and making trade, and thinking that if the arabs are making lots of money they'll be so busy making money they'll stop hating israel. These people are dangerous idiots. All they want is money and they assume everybody is like them, selling their principles for money.