The Ari: Isaac Luria (1534-1572)

Decided to post since kabbalah poster girl Madonna seems a bit misguided on this issue and a number of other issues but let's not go there ...

The Ari was a brilliant young kabbalist who was the first to create a modern method of study for the new souls of his generation:

The necessity of changing this method arose only in the 16th century. The Kabbalist who created the new method for the new type of souls in his generation was named the Ari (full name – Isaac Luria Ashkenazi (1534-1572). As he writes in the Preface to his teaching, “starting from this moment and on, everybody willing to study Kabbalah can do so because starting from this time all souls descending into this world are able to attain the root of their origin and upon finishing their correction not to return to our world again.”

Excerpt from: Researching Man and the World

The second period of the development of Kabbalah is very important to the Kabbalah of our generation. This is the period of “the Ari,” Rabbi Yitzhak Luria, who created the transition between the two methods of Kabbalah study. The first time the pure language of Kabbalah appeared was in the writings of the Ari. The Ari proclaimed the start of a period of open mass study of Kabbalah.

Excerpt from: The History of Kabbalah and the Zohar