9(apple) MYSTICS

9(apple) Mystics is about ""The Kabbala Today"". The Kabbala, simply put (though Mr. Weiner does not put it simply) is an esoteric system of Scriptural interpretation according to which every jot, title, word and accent of the Scripture had an occult meaning discernible to the initiated Kabbalist. It is an ancient system, and one which has its practitioners today. The author's purpose is to relate Kabbalistic wisdom to contemporary problems. His method is to survey, by a series of nine ""confrontations"" with modern Kabbalists, the state of the art in the mid-twentieth century. What emerges is the image of a bona fide school of mysticism, specifically Jewish but with Christian ramifications, which engaged the attentions of scholars as distinguished as Martin Buber and of mystics as accomplished as the unfortunately named Abraham Kook. It is a curiously appealing system, as Weiner tells it, one which offers intellectual independence within a unified field theory, as it were, of creation. Readers with a taste for the occult, or even merely with a yen for the unusual, will find the author's exposition intriguing and stimulating despite the latter's intensely personal approach to his subject.