Warren Kenton

Warren Kenton, who later published as Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi, was a British writer and teacher focused on Kabbalah. Born in London to a Sephardi Levite family, he pursued art studies before engaging with Kabbalah at age 25. He began teaching in 1969 and traveled extensively to study and lecture on the subject, particularly the Toledano Tradition. Halevi authored 18 books on Kabbalah, astrology, and stagecraft, and was a founding member of the Kabbalah Society. His teachings reached a global audience through lectures and workshops across continents. He passed away in London in 2020 at the age of 87.

Born Warren Derek Kenton in London on January 8, 1933, he came from a British Jewish family with Sephardi Levite heritage. Following his family's relocation during World War II, he studied art at Saint Martin's School of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts. After his formal education, Kenton continued his artistic pursuits, undertaking commissioned work. His career also involved diverse roles, including work in hospitals, theatre workshops, and the Royal Opera House. He also contributed to graphic design and taught at institutions like RADA and the Architectural Association.

Halevi began his self-study of Kabbalah at 25, believing in spiritual guidance. He commenced teaching in 1969, initially by posting notices inviting interested individuals to his group meetings. His studies led him to explore various Kabbalistic centers across Europe, North Africa, and Israel, with a particular focus on the Toledano Tradition. This tradition, stemming from Sephardi Kabbalah, developed in medieval Spain and France. Halevi's approach incorporated Neoplatonic emanationism, explaining the creation process through the Sephirot. He was a fellow of the Temenos Academy and lectured internationally, teaching on every continent and at numerous institutes, including the New York Open Centre and the Jungian Institute of Santa Fe.

As a prolific author, Halevi published 18 books, including works on Kabbalah, astrology, and a Kabbalistic novel, alongside earlier writings on stagecraft. His work on the Toledano Tradition gained recognition and has been translated into sixteen languages. Halevi was also a founder of the Kabbalah Society, dedicated to studying early Kabbalah from Provence and Spain. His teachings influenced notable figures such as King Charles III, poet Kathleen Raine, and artist Charles Thomson. While appreciated by many, his work was also noted by a professor of Kabbalah as an example of how Kabbalah had been adopted by some New Age authors.

“This dilemma is captured in ancient notions of balance and harmony; notions that are, for example, expressed in many guises in that wonderful Kabbalistic diagram of the Tree of Life. As the Temenos Fellow, Warren Kenton, so beautifully explains in his lectures to the students of the Academy, the teaching of the Tree of Life is that the "active" and the "passive" aspects of life, which on their own may lead to imbalance and disharmony, must be, can only be, brought together in harmony by the influx into our lives of the Divine and the Sacred. Whether or not we interpret this image as an explanation of an outer or an inner orientation, it is in this way, and only in this way, that the forces, or characteristics, of expansion and constraint can be brought into balance.”

“A feature of this author's system not found in others (although doubtless it is traditional though not universally taught) is the beautiful way in which the interfaces of each 'world' overlap with the one above (or below). Thus, the highest experiences of the physical world overlap the lower part of the next world (the psychological]: and again psyche's highest experiences of the individual soul coincide with spiritual regions of the transpersonal world of universal forms. So from illumination to illumination we reascend the 'ladder' by which each of us 'came down to earth from heaven'. The awe-inspiring sublimity of the Kabbalistic universe at once convinces and comforts. It is our destiny to descend and to fulfil some task, learn some lesson in the natural world; as it is to follow the path of return, to reascend from world to world, no matter how many lifetimes this may take us before we return to our true home, 'the kingdom of Heaven'.”

“Special thanks to Selina Marshall + Warren Kenton for showing me that all I'd need was inside me.”

“I studied Kabbalah under a teacher called Warren Kenton, who said there was a lot of humour at the spiritual level, and I think that's true.”