Kabala is another spelling of Cabala, or Kabbalah: a Jewish mystical tradition. It is a way of reading holy texts for a hidden inner life — symbols, numbers, and a picture of how God meets the world. Later books and teachers carried it forward, and writers who like hidden or magical teachings borrowed the name too, so in English Kabala or Cabala can mean the Jewish teaching or a more mixed “secret wisdom” use. The spelling is a mess on purpose: Kabbalah is what you will meet most often now; Cabala is an older English form; Qabalah often marks the magical stream; Kabala is just one more way to write the same word. Though actually, it is not a secret club of politicians — that is a cabal, a cousin-word that went off and changed its job.