MUGI – My Unique Gift Idea

For those just coming around, there are two basic types of Kabbalah:

-Kabbalah iyunit, “contemplative Kabbalah,” which seeks to explain the nature of G-D and the nature of existence, through intellectual and meditative techniques.

-Kabbalah ma’asit, “practical Kabbalah,” seeks to alter the nature of existence and change the course of events through ritualistic techniques. Sometimes practical Kabbalah involves summoning a spiritual force, like an angel, and commanding them to perform a certain act or function in reality.

Viewed as mystical-minded early modern shamans, the 17th-18th century ba’alei shem attended to Ukrainians, Jews, and members of the Polish szlachta. They used the 72 names of G-D and angels and the names of Satan and evil spirits, to try and restore social order or provide some personal security.

These mystics mediated between empirical reality and divine realms, this world and the netherworld, spirits and living beings, employing both magic remedies and mystical devices, popular Kabbalah, local folk herbal remedies and traditional Hebrew acronyms, encrypted Biblical verses and amulets. They also resorted to the cutting edge devices of the contemporary Polish natural medicine based on the alchemy of Paracelsus and found in the local East European pharmacies.