Shamans of Ashkenaz II: Working with Sheimot [Video Recordings]
A five-part workshop on practical Kabbalah, sheimot (sacred names), and Ba’al Shemkeit.
A Ba’al Shem (“A Master of the Name”) is one who trains in diverse lineages of Divine name practices. They know how to use each name for its appropriate purpose: ecstasy, healing, meditation, ascent, song, and spell. To revive their legacy today, we need to learn the story of each name, explore its power through traditional immersive practices, and update those practices to incorporate the insights & experiences of our contemporary moment.
Unlike the one word catchall of "God," Hebrew offers a mosaic of names used to invoke and disclose the mystery of the Divine. The Bible is an archive of ancient Divine names. When Jewish magic begins to flourish a few centuries later, its spells, amulets, and recipes surface new, cryptic, and angelic names. Kabbalists of the middle ages then make their own mystical magic with these names—they use them to map an ever-morphing godhead, mentally navigate that terrain, and enter into heightened states of consciousness. The Ba’al Shem combines all these models and specializes in the capacity of names to aid in healing, birth, and death.
If you are a healer, a birth or death doula, a scholar, an herbalist, a Rabbi, a poet, a person seeking new-ancient Jewish practices, or a curious learner and wish to take up this legacy of the Ba’alei Shem, this five-part practicum is a great start. We’ll workshop kabbalistic & magical practices, do deep dives into each Divine name’s history, and acquire the skills to develop our own name-practices.
This is an advanced, but accessible, practicum. It builds on the introduction to the Ba’alei Shem in Part I but does not require any other knowledge or prerequisite skills. If you were not part of that course, recordings of Part I are available for purchase & watching them is highly encouraged to help contextualize the topics and practices of Part II.
Come be a part of a Ba’al Shemkeit revival.
Schedule
Introducing Divine Name Practices: Between Magic & Meditation
The 42 Letter Name: Ascent, Amulet, and Song
The Core 4 Letter Names: YHVH & EHYH
70/72: The 70 Names of the Angel Metatron + the 72 Letter Name
From Aleph to Taf: Endlessness + Queering Gendered Divine Names