Gnostic Gospels, Lurianic Kabbalah, books of Hindu philosophy… and Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen has been an insidious presence in Western popular culture for nearly 50 years. After attaining fame in his native Canada as a poet and novelist in his 20’s, he began his career as a singer/songwriter playing in Greenwich Village coffee houses till he was discovered by legendary A&R man John Hammond. His song “Hallelujah” has been covered by over 300 different artists while performers like Judy Collins had legitimate pop hits covering Cohen compositions like “Suzanne.” Innumerable artists have claimed him as a key influence and no less a figure that Nobel prize winner Bob Dylan has sung his praises at length. What’s perhaps most remarkable about this is that a significant portion of his work, especially on his first five albums were couched in vocabulary taken equally from Neo-Platonic traditions including the Hebrew and Christian Qabalah and frank eroticism — not unlike our own Prophet. Or the editors of the Tanhakh. Expressions of the Divine and experience of sexual ecstasy are inextricably interwoven in song after song.

The October 17 edition of the New Yorker has a pretty marvelous feature on Cohen that some will find revealing regarding both his long, storied history (honestly, his life up to age 30 was already as mythic as most could hope to attain in thrice those years) and his current state of affairs. You can read the whole schmeggeggee here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/leonard-cohen-makes-it-darker

Meanwhile here’s a choice bit:

“To this day, Cohen reads deeply in a multivolume edition of the Zohar, the principal text of Jewish mysticism; the Hebrew Bible; and Buddhist texts. In our conversations, he mentioned the Gnostic Gospels, Lurianic Kabbalah, books of Hindu philosophy, Carl Jung’s ‘Answer to Job,’ and Gershom Scholem’s biography of Sabbatai Sevi, a self-proclaimed Messiah of the seventeenth century. Cohen is also very much at home in the spiritual reaches of the Internet, and he listens to the lectures of Yakov Leib HaKohain, a Kabbalist who has converted, serially, to Islam, Catholicism, and Hinduism, and lives in the San Bernardino mountains with two pit bulls and four cats.”

And here’s two favorite song lyrics (I could highlight the juicey bits but best you should figure out where Waldo is yrself)

Well I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
Well it goes like this:
The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Well your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to her kitchen chair
And she broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
HallelujahBut baby I’ve been here before
I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor
You know, I used to live alone before I knew ya
And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
And love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Well there was a time when you let me know
What’s really going on below
But now you never show that to me do ya
But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah [kinda close to Hriliu, yes?]

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya

And it’s not a cry that you hear at night
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah…