very link in the
chain, and can establish relations with all spiritual powers, from the
superessential One to the lower spirits or "daemons." The
philosopher-saint, who had explored the highest regions of the
intelligence, might hope to dominate the spirits of the air, and
compel them to do his bidding. Thus the door was thrown wide open for
every kind of superstition. The Cabbalists followed much the same
path. The word Cabbala means "oral tradition," and is defined by
Reuchlin as "the symbolic reception of a Divine revelation handed down
for the saving contemplation of God and separate forms.[338]" In
another place he says, "The Cabbala is nothing else than symbolic
theology, in which not only are letters and words symbols of things,
but things are symbols of other things." This method of symbolic
interpretation was held to have been originally communicated by
revelation,[339] in order that persons of holy life might by it
attain to a mystical communion with God, or deification. The
Cabbalists thus held much the same relation to the Talmudists as the
mystics to the scholastics in the twelfth century. But, as Jews, they
remained faithful to the two doctrines of an inspired tradition and an
inspired book, which distinguish them from Platonic mystics.[340]

Pico de Mirandola (born 1463) was the first to bring the Cabbala into
Christian philosophy, and to unite it with his Neoplatonism. Very
characteristic of his age is the declaration that "there is no natural
science which makes us so certain of the Divinity of Christ as Magic
and the Cabbala.[341]" For there was at that period a curious
alliance of Mysticism and natural science against scholasticism, which
had kept both in galling chains; and both mystics and physicists
invoked the aid of Jewish theosophy. Just as Pythagoras, Plato, and
Proclus were set up against Aristotle, so the occult philosophy of the
Jews, which on its speculative side was mere Neoplatonism, was set up
against the divinity of the Schoolmen. In Germany, Reuchlin
(1455-1522) wrote a treatise, _On the Cabbalistic Art_, in which a
theological scheme resembling those of the Neoplatonists and
speculative mystics was based on occult revelation. The book
captivated Pope Leo X. and the early Reformers alike.

The influence of Cabbalism at this period was felt not only in the
growth of magic, but in the revival of the science of _allegorism_,
which resembles magic in its doctrine of occult sympathies, th