About This Site

This Hermetic Kabbalah site was created in 1995. The domain name “digital-brilliance” derives from one of the earliest texts on Kabbalah, the 12th. century Bahir, often translated as “brilliance”.

In the late-80s I had been involved in editing the Kabbalah FAQ for the Usenet group alt.magic. At that time I was unhappy at the way discussions about Kabbalah often became contentious. People from the Hermetic tradition often knew nothing about the Jewish tradition, and vice-versa. I wanted a site that was not affiliated to any particular tradition, group or commercial interest.

Some things have changed since the early ’90s. There has been a flood of excellent scholarly publications on Kabbalah. The Western Esoteric tradition is now a subject for academic study, and a number of scholars are publishing excellent new material. For a time there was an explosion of media interest in Kabbalah, and Kabbalah was misrepresented as a glitzy show-business cult. It seems the scales always have to balance, information vs. misinformation.

The site was completly revised and updated in 2011, and now again in 2024. The purpose of the site is still to provide a broad and non-partisan view of Kabbalah.

About Colin Low

Colin Low was born in Scotland in 1951 and attended schools in Scotland, Nyasaland (now Malawi), and Australia. He graduated in physics and went on to study star formation at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. His entire professional life has revolved around computers, variously as a consultant, university lecturer, and as an industrial researcher. He has authored several academic papers and is named as inventor on many patents. He is now retired.

Colin has three sons, who make him feel very proud.

Kabbalah has been a life-long passion. He began to take an interest in 1968, and studied and practiced it informally in a number of small groups before meeting a teacher in 1978. He studied and worked with her until her death in the early 90s.

Colin is the chair of the Rockwax Foundation, a UK-based charity formed in 2011 to keep alive Hermetic and Kabbalistic traditions through public lectures, publications, and small-group teaching.