Abulafia and Umberto Eco

Posted on December 23rd, 2007 in Religion, Books by Rodica

I was watching the other day a documentary about Kabbalah and at some point the name Abulafia came up.
Suddenly I remember where I’ve read it before: in Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum.
Interesting how things are connected in life.

In Foucault’s Pendulum Abulafia was the nickname of Belbo’s computer used by him and two other friend-editors to decipher the hidden coded manuscript alleged to contain the information on how the Templar Knights planned to take over the world.
When I’ve read the book, I was intrigued by the name, but that was all. I was too much preoccupied on trying to navigate the intrigue to give a second thought to this name. The book it’s not an easy reading but the journey through the labyrinth it’s quite interesting.

Who was Abulafia?
Abraham Abulafia (1240-1294) is the most important figure in the prophetic Kabbalah.
As opposed to the most known Kabbalist who lived a normal conventional family life, Abulafia was the wandering mystic and teacher, moving from town to town, spreading his teachings.
Abulafia teaches that, by using his methods of letter permutation, meditation, and free association, you can receive prophecy today. Naturally, the Thorah scholars are not quite happy with the mystical point of interpreting divine words.

Before my son was born, I tried to find a meaningful name for him. I came across a Kabbalarian analysis of names and it took me a few days to find one that seemed to work well with the last name and I liked as well. Nowadays everybody knows about artists embrassing Kabbalah, but without converting to Judaism, which is a point various rabbies are complaining about. Probably Abulafia opened Pandora’s box with his teachings.

Finally, what is Foucault’s Pendulum?
The Pendulum is made of a support, a wire and an iron ball that swings back and forth in a plane that is fix relative to the distant stars. Because of the Earth rotation, it will appear that the pendulum rotates anti-clockwise describing a full circle within 24 hours period.


My rambling about ‘The Secret’

Posted on October 28th, 2007 in Books by Rodica

I could foam at my mouth talking about The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.

And it’s not because I am green with envy for Rhonda Byrne’s genius , it’s because I still believe that the whole ‘Secret’ enterprise it’s nothing but a shameless pyramid scheme. Wonderfully staged by the publishers and endorsed by personalities like Oprah.
I lost my sympathy for Oprah long time ago. Since she became an ego maniacal. Why the heck does she have to be on the cover of every issue of her ‘O’ magazine? Is the magazine about her? I got the explanation that it’s her magazine and she can do what she wants. Really? Whatever! It’s not my rambling about Oprah, it’s about ‘The Secret’ endorsed by her.
That Rhonda Byrne has guts, I must admit it.
‘The Secret’ is like a modern version of the snake oil.
What bothered me a lot is the stupidity, blame-the-victim approach and the bullshit of her preaching.
Random abstracts from the book:
“The energy you put into the world — both good and bad — is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day.”

And another one:
“The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts.”

Let’s disclose the famous ’secret’: It is actually the ‘Law of Attractions’ Do good and good will come; think positive and positive will come.
But unlucky you if you are born in Darfur and are not able to think positive.
Maybe Rhonda and her con-partners could help stop the genocide; maybe they are intelligent enough to channel positive thoughts and get rid somehow of the warlords.The cherry on top of the cake: an article in The Vancouver Sun, featuring a 19 year old new mom, who just heard about the book from her parents (again, did not read it!), went to the store, bought the first lottery ticket of her adult life and won $2.5 million.
How would Rhonda explain that? As in: what about my positive thoughts and visualization of 2.5 million sitting comfortably in my bank account?
Hey, I sent gazillion of positive thinking about the money I need to be mortgage free and to be able to go with my family to a well deserved vacation!

The biggest ’secret’ is how did Rhonda manage to secure the best selling position with Amazon for over 30-something weeks?