The Living Tree: Practical Qabbalah and the Great Work
A 12-week live course with Jake Kobrin
The Living Tree
Practical Qabbalah and the Great Work
A live, practical, initiatory journey up the Tree of Life, from the ground of your ordinary life to the centre of your purpose. You can learn the Tree and its rituals from a hundred books. This course teaches the magick too, but its real work is application: every sphere becomes practical change in your body, your finances, your relationships, your creativity, and your purpose. Taught entirely live. Built around real practice. Designed to change how you live, not just what you know.
The Tree of Life as taught in the Hermetic Qabbalah: ten spheres, twenty-two paths, one map of the whole of human experience. Public domain.
Saturdays, 11:00 AM Pacific · 2 PM Eastern · 7 PM London · 8 PM Berlin
January 9 to March 27, 2027 · 12 live classes · 90 minutes each · on Zoom
Enrollment is open now. Early bird tuition ends December 6.
Tuition tiers: enroll earlier, pay less
Enroll by Sunday, December 6, 2026
or 3 monthly payments of $215
Enroll by Friday, January 1, 2027
or 3 monthly payments of $285
January 2 to 8, 2027
or 3 monthly payments of $355
Payment plans cost a little more than paying in full, shown plainly, no surprises. After this first run, The Living Tree will be offered at its regular price of $1,295.
If you are new to Qabbalah, start here
Qabbalah is the veritable key of magick. It is the core system underneath nearly the whole Western mystery tradition: the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was built on it, Aleister Crowley built Thelema on it, and Israel Regardie and Dion Fortune carried it into the modern world. If you have ever been drawn to tarot, astrology, ritual, or ceremonial magick, you have been touching pieces of this system, usually without the map that connects them.
The Living Tree is that living tradition, updated for the twenty-first century. Not a museum piece and not an abstraction: a real initiatory map you can follow step by step and sphere by sphere, and apply directly to the life you are living right now. Your body and your money. Your dreams and your relationships. Your work and your purpose.
Not just another Qabbalah course
You can learn the Tree of Life from a book. You can learn the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram from a video. There are a million books and courses that will teach you the correspondences sphere by sphere until you can recite them, and most of them stop there. The Living Tree teaches the magick too: the symbolism, the rituals, the pathworkings, the daily practice. But the magick is not the point by itself. The point is what it does to your life.
That is what makes this course different. Every sphere is also a domain of your actual life, and the teaching goes deep into both at once:
Earth magick, and your material life: physical health and fitness, finances, your home, and your environment.
The astral foundation, and your inner life: dream work, astral projection, sacred sexuality, attachment dynamics, and how you do relationships.
The mind: memory, language, and the habits and systems you live by, taken apart and rebuilt.
Venus, and your creative life: art and creativity, desire, and devotion.
The Sun, and your purpose: True Will, and the Great Work of your life, named and planned.
Most Qabbalah courses give you the map. This one makes you walk it, in the temple and in the kitchen, in the journal and in the bank account, until the Tree is not something you know. It is something you live.
Magick is a map of human potential
People hear the word occult and imagine hidden information. Secrets. Forbidden books. But occult simply means hidden, and what is hidden is usually not forbidden knowledge. It is the deeper structure of your own mind, your habits, your fears, your desires, and the forces shaping your life beneath the surface.
The Tree of Life is a map of that structure. Its ten spheres describe the major dimensions of human experience: the body, the imagination, the intellect, desire, identity, compassion, power, and transcendence. Its twenty-two paths describe the transformations that connect them.
Most people study this map as abstract philosophy. The Living Tree teaches you to walk it. Across twelve weeks, you will work through the six lower spheres of the Tree, Malkuth to Tiphareth, the ground of the self, through four kinds of learning at once: knowledge, ritual, embodiment, and integration. Every sphere changes something concrete in your actual life. Your health and money. Your dreams and relationships. Your thinking. Your creativity and desire. And finally, at the centre of the Tree, your purpose.
This is Qabbalah as it was meant to be used: not as an escape from ordinary life, but as a way of becoming more conscious within it.
Robert Fludd drew the Tree as a living tree in 1619, the spheres hanging like fruit from a radiant crown. Utriusque Cosmi, public domain.
Every sphere is taught four ways
Most courses hand you information and leave you to it. Here, the teaching is built to land in your body, your habits, and your week. Each sphere is approached through four movements:
The symbolism, correspondences, myths, and inner logic of the sphere, taught clearly enough to use.
A guided working for that sphere, performed together in class: invocations, pathworkings, and ceremonial practice you repeat through the week.
Practical assignments in ordinary life: the body, the home, money, dreams, conversation, creativity. The sphere stops being an idea and becomes a change.
Journaling, group reflection, and a passage practice that seals the sphere before you climb higher.
Jake in ritual. The practices in this course are the practices he actually keeps.
Clear about what this is, and what it is not
The Living Tree teaches Hermetic Qabbalah: the Western esoteric tradition shaped by Renaissance Hermeticism, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie, and Dion Fortune. It openly distinguishes that tradition from traditional Jewish Kabbalah, and treats Jewish sources with respect rather than pretending the two are the same.
The course is initiatory in structure: sequenced, progressive, and sealed with passage work at each stage. It confers no formal grades, makes no promises of spiritual attainment, and belongs to no order. What it offers is rarer than a title: a real method, practiced in real company, over real time.
You will never be asked to disclose anything about your personal life. Every practice is an invitation, and you choose your own depth.
The journey, week by week
Before the first class you will take the Personal Tree Assessment, a guided self review of five domains of your life. You will take it again at the end, and see in plain terms what twelve weeks of practice moved.
Week 1 · The Threshold
Why a map changes the territory it describes. What the Tree is and where it comes from, Malkuth to Kether and back again. Why a symbolic system changes the mind that uses it. You will learn the Qabbalistic Cross and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, choose your journal, and write your intention for the course: the first entry in your Book of the Great Work.
Weeks 2 to 3 · Malkuth, the Kingdom
Guiding question: can I be fully here? Malkuth is the earth sphere: the body, physical health and fitness, money and finances, the home, food, sleep, and the material basis of a magickal life, the sphere the rest of the Tree stands on. You will learn its symbolism and its earth element magick (the four elements, Archangel Sandalphon, the Holy Guardian Angel contacted through the physical world), then do the unglamorous work that makes everything else possible: a full life assessment across body, money, and environment; a serious physical practice; financial order; and the deliberate redesign of one real space in your home. The two weeks close with an Earth dedication: a simple ritual consecrating your material life as the foundation of the Work.
Weeks 4 to 5 · Yesod, the Foundation
Guiding question: what moves beneath my awareness? Yesod is the Moon sphere: dreams, the unconscious, sexuality, habit, and the astral patterns your conscious mind rides on. You will keep a structured dream journal, learn to distinguish an ordinary dream from a symbolic one and a symbolic one from noise, begin the practice of astral projection, meet the shadow directly, and study sacred sexuality and your own patterns in relationship: attachment dynamics, projection, and what you keep choosing. Casting off begins here, the conscious identification and release of automatic patterns. The passage is a lunar working, meeting the guardian of your own unconscious.
Weeks 6 to 7 · Hod, Splendour
Guiding question: can I see clearly and communicate truthfully? Hod is Mercury: mind, language, memory, learning, and the stories you use to explain yourself to yourself. You will study the correspondences as a working filing system for reality, train memory and attention, and take apart the limiting narratives running your life, then write truer ones. Hod is also the sphere of honest speech, so this is where the course turns to the hard conversations you have been postponing. The passage is a Mercury working: invocation of clear sight and honest speech.
Weeks 8 to 9 · Netzach, Victory
Guiding question: can I feel completely and create from desire? Netzach is Venus: creativity, art, beauty, emotion, erotic energy, and devotion. You will examine what you actually desire beneath what you were taught to want, make art as a magickal act whether or not you call yourself an artist, and build a personal devotional practice directed at what genuinely moves you. This is the sphere where intellectual practitioners stall, because Netzach cannot be understood, only felt. The passage is a Venus working: an offering made from real feeling.
Week 10 · The Portal
Standing where the lower Tree meets the light. Before the final ascent, you study the nine paths that weave the lower spheres together, the actual circuitry of the personality:
How physical conditions shape dreams and the unconscious
Embodied intelligence; how the body informs thought
Physical desire, attraction, and creative embodiment
How unconscious patterns shape desire and relationship
Dreams and intuition as a channel of guidance
Where thinking and feeling collide, and how you communicate desire
Renunciation of false identity; the Devil as a mirror
The central ascent: Art, balance, and the arrow of aspiration
Transformation through feeling; Death as change
You will learn the Middle Pillar exercise, assess the balance of your own lower Tree, and complete a guided pathworking through the Veil of Paroketh, the threshold between personality and soul.
Weeks 11 to 12 · Tiphareth, Beauty
Guiding question: who am I, truly, and what am I here to do? Tiphareth is the Sun at the centre of the Tree: the integrated self, the Holy Guardian Angel, True Will. Everything before this was preparation. You will study the symbolism of the sacrificed and risen gods, undertake a structured True Will inquiry, identify the contribution only you can make, and design your final project, The Great Work of My Life: a concrete plan connecting your purpose to the life you actually live. The course closes with a solar dedication ritual, a formal commitment to the work ahead, and the second Personal Tree Assessment, so you can see your own movement across the Tree.
The Sun, Atu XIX, from Jake's New Aeon Tarot: the destination of the course, the self in its own light.
The daily practice
Twenty to thirty minutes a day, every day of the course. Small, consistent, and cumulative:
Two minutes. Balancing and centering the sphere of sensation.
Five minutes. Clearing and establishing your space, inner and outer.
Ten minutes, on the current sphere or simple breath awareness.
Five minutes, in your Book of the Great Work. This record becomes the evidence of your transformation.
Alongside it: one weekly embodiment assignment per sphere, and the readings and reflections in the course workbook.
Everything you receive
For scale: Jake's one-to-one coaching is $250 a session. The Living Tree gives you eighteen hours of his live teaching, eight guided workings, the full written course, and a working community for twelve weeks, for less than the cost of three private sessions, and less again at early bird.
Who this is for
This course is for you if you have read about magick and are ready to practice it; if you want a symbolic map that connects your spiritual life to your body, your money, your relationships, and your work; and if you are willing to give a real practice twenty honest minutes a day.
It is not for you if you are collecting occult information without intending to change anything; if you want awakening without effort, or advancement without honesty; or if you are looking for therapy. The Living Tree is practical spiritual work, not a substitute for mental health care.
No prior experience is required. Experienced practitioners will find the structure, the community, and the passage work deepen what they already do.
About your teacher
Jake Kobrin is a multidisciplinary artist, primarily known for his psychedelic and esoteric paintings of complex and precise detail. He has practiced magick for more than two decades. His work draws on the occult, mystery school, and mystical traditions of Western esotericism, as well as the Eastern spiritual traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, animism, and tantra. He is one of the few psychedelic artists with a formal classical art education, having studied classical realist drawing and painting at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy, with further study in Vienna and San Francisco.
Teaching is a central part of his practice. He teaches online courses in magick, tarot, and visionary art, leads workshops on practical magick, and founded the Inner Arts Collective, a community for students of the inner arts, and the Temple of the Eternal Muse, an art collective and magical order. He has presented and exhibited internationally, including at Boom Festival in Portugal and Ozora in Hungary, and is a speaker at Witchcon. His book The Path Within: Ritual Magick and the Gateway to Self-Mastery was published by Crossed Crow Books. He is also a podcaster, writer, tattoo artist, musician, and designer. He grew up in the redwood forests near San Francisco, lived for many years in Ubud, Bali, and is currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area, traveling widely for his art and teaching.
The Living Tree is the course he has been building toward for years: his own practice, structured so other people can walk it.
His book: The Path Within
The Path Within: Ritual Magick and the Gateway to Self-Mastery (Crossed Crow Books).
The Living Tree grows out of the same work Jake set down in his book. The Path Within is an extensive guide to the practice of magick for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike, joining history, philosophy, and practical work into a disciplined path of personal empowerment and transformation. Theory is paired with practice throughout, Jake's own story is woven through the teaching, and interviews with contemporary masters place one practitioner's path inside a wider living conversation.
Paperback, 390 pages, published by Crossed Crow Books in May 2025. Reading it is not required for the course, since the course teaches the practice live, but many students read alongside the weeks.
Why tuition is lower for this first class
January 2027 is the first time The Living Tree has ever been taught. This first class learns it live as it is being taught, asks the questions that shape it, and walks this path before anyone else. In exchange for being first, tuition is the lowest it will ever be. When the course is offered again, the price will be $1,295.
The tiers are simple: the earlier you sign up, the less you pay. Early bird $595 until Sunday, December 6, 2026. Regular tuition $795 until Friday, January 1, 2027. Final enrollment $995 from January 2 until the class begins on January 9. Every tier includes everything on this page. At checkout, choose pay in full or the payment plan. The plan costs a little more, and the exact amounts are printed on this page and at checkout. Nothing is hidden.
Scholarships: a small number of places are reserved for people who are seriously committed to this work and face a genuine financial barrier. Email info@jakekobrin.com with a few honest lines about your situation and what you intend to bring to the class.
Questions
Is the course really live?
Yes. Every class is taught live on Zoom, Saturdays at 11:00 AM Pacific, with time for questions and discussion. Recordings are posted afterwards.
What if I miss a class?
Watch the recording and do the week's practice. The embodiment assignments are where the course happens anyway; class gives them their frame.
How much time does it take each week?
The 90-minute class, 20 to 30 minutes of daily practice, and roughly an hour of reading and assignments. About four hours a week, total.
Do I need experience with magick or Qabbalah?
No. The course starts at the threshold and builds. If you can keep a journal and keep a promise to yourself, you have the prerequisites.
Is this a Golden Dawn initiation?
No. It is initiatory in structure and serious in intent, but it confers no grades and belongs to no order. It is Jake's own synthesis of the Hermetic tradition, taught openly.
When does enrollment close?
January 8, 2027, the day before the first class. Early bird pricing ends December 6, 2026.
The Tree is living. Walk it.
First class · Saturdays 11:00 AM Pacific · January 9 to March 27, 2027
Enrollment closes January 8. Early bird $595 until December 6.