Sepher Yetzirah (c.

400 ev)
•  Considered the foundational document of Qabalah
•  Exists in several versions
•  The date of authorship is unknown; scholarly opinion
varies widely, from about 200 aev to 500 ev or later. It is
mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, which was “sealed”
in about 500 ev.
•  According to tradition, it was secret wisdom imparted to
Abraham by God and transmitted orally until it was
written down in the early centuries of the vulgar era
•  The first published version was in Arabic, by Saadia ben
Josef Gaon, while he was still living in Egypt (TPQ 916
ev).
 Sepher Yetzirah (c. 400 ev)
•  Introduces several important concepts:
–  The Sephiroth – although these are not named
–  God creating the universe with the Hebrew alphabet and its
permutations
–  Correspondences between Hebrew letters and elements/
planets/signs of the zodiac (later used by the GD)
•  Aryeh Kaplan says that the SY (among other things) is a
manual for meditation
•  An early and persistent opinion was that the SY could be
used to create a Golem (or other living creature)
•  Part of the strangeness of the book is that it is not
particularly characteristic of Jewish thought during the
time of its apparent authorship
 France/Spain
•  The Bahir (c. 1174)
•  Isaac the Blind (1160-1235)
•  Azriel of Gerona (1160 – 1238)
•  Nahmanides (1194 – 1270)
•  Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (1240-1291)
–  Wrote several manuals for meditation using permutations,
Hebrew letters
–  Tried to convert the Pope to Judaism
•  Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla (1248 – 1305)
–  Ginnat Egoz (1274) Gematria, notariqon, temurah
–  Sha'are Orah (12??) “Gates of Light,” Divine names
•  Isaac ben Samuel of Acre (12?? - 13??)
–  Tried to purchase the manuscript of the Zohar
 The Zohar (1271)
•  Means “Splendor” or “Radiance”
•  Claims to have been written by early 2nd century
Talmudic scholar Shimon bar Yochai
•  Probably written by Moses de Leon (1250-1305)
–  According to Isaac of Acre, he tried to purchase the manuscript
of the Zohar from Isaac’s Widow after his death, and she said he
had written it himself.
–  Probably preserves orally transmitted material far older than the
time it was written
•  Written in Aramaic as opposed to Hebrew
•  Very long work – 1700 pages, as long as the whole
Talmud.
•  Considered the primary sourcebook for all subsequent
Theoretical Qabalah
 Practical Qabalah
•  Sefer Raziel HaMalakh
•  Medieval manual of Graeco/Hebrew Magick, copies start
appearing in the 1200s
•  Probably composed/edited by Eleazar Rokeach of
Worms (1176 – 1238)
–  Associated with a mystically inclined sect called Chassidei
Ashkenaz, many of whom emigrated to Spain in the 1300s
•  Based at least in part on an earlier work called Sepher
Ha-Razim, extant in papyrus fragments discovered in
Cairo
•  Contains lists of angels and instructions for rituals
•  This is the prototype of many of the Medieval grimoires
like the Goetia, Abramelin, etc.
–  Abraham the Jew from The Book of Abramelin was from Worms
 Christian Cabala
•  Relatively soon after the publication of the Zohar,
qabalah came to the attention of early Renaissance
scholars. The focus of this attention was using the
Hebrew qabalah to justify Christianity.
•  Pico Della Mirandola (1463-1494)
•  Johann Reuchlin (1455 – 1522)
–  De Arte Cabbalistica (1517)
–  Origin of the YHShVH formula
•  Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1487-1535)
–  De Occulta Philosophia (1528)
•  Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680)
–  Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1654)
The Tree of Life by Philippe
D’Aquin, published in 1625 in his
Interpretatio Arboris Cabbalisticæ
(1625), on which Kircher’s tree
was based.
 Christian Cabala
•  Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636-1689)
–  Kabbala Denudata (1684)
–  Translated several works that had not been published in English
before, parts of the Zohar, etc.
•  S. L. MacGregor Mathers
–  The Kabbalah Unveiled (1887)
–  Only translated about 5% of von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata
•  A.E Waite
–  The Holy Kabbalah (1929)
–  Actually, believe it or not, quite a good book!
 Safed School
•  Moses Cordovero (1522-1570)
–  Pardes Rimonim (1548)
–  First true synthesis of qabalistic thought and literature into a
coherent whole
•  Isaac Luria (1534-1572)
–  A.k.a. “The Ari” or “Arizal”
–  Didn’t publish anything himself, but left many of his writings (or
purported writings) to his students.
•  Chaim Vital (1543-1620)
–  Chief student of Luria
–  Etz Chayim (late 1590s), considered Luria’s work, but stolen
from Vital by his brother in law.
•  Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman (1720-1797)
–  a.k.a. “The Gra”
 Safed School
•  Israel Sarug Ashkenazi (15?? – 16??)
–  Another student of Luria, brought the Lurianic Kabbalah to Italy
•  Abraham Cohen de Herrera (1570 – 1635)
–  One of his essays is translated in Kabbalah Denudata
–  One focus of his work was to reconcile Lurianic Kabbalah with
Neoplatonism, Christianity & Islam
 Pre-Qabalah Qabalah
•  Pythagoreanism
–  The tetractys
–  Pseudo-Iamblichus
•  The Theology of Arithmetic
•  Plato
–  Timaeus
•  Neoplatonists
–  Plotinus
•  Enneads
–  Iamblichus
•  De Thaumaturgia
•  The Greek Magical Papyri
 The Eastern Qabalah?
•  The Great Treatise from the I-Ching could certainly be
considered a work of Theoretical Qabalah
–  Explains how the Yin and Yang are permuted to produce
manifest reality, so it is an “account of the cosmic process”
–  Has a hierarchical structure – yin/yang, bigrams, trigrams,
hexagrams
–  The Chinese Sage, Shao Yong
(1011-1077) founded a school of I-
Ching interpretation called the
“symbol and number school” that
explicitly depended on
mathematical/geometric
symmetries of the I-Ching
 The Modern Qabalah?
•  Liber Trigrammaton
•  Buckminster Fuller (1895- 1983)
–  Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
•  “We are now synergetically forced to conclude that all
phenomena are metaphysical; wherefore, as many have long
suspected-like it or not-life is but a dream.”
•  Keith Critchlow
–  Order in Space
•  Particle Physics?
–  Haim Harari has a “preon” theory of particles called “rishons,”
“tohu” and “bohu” (“chaos” and “void” from Genesis) that
compose all other particles
The baryon decuplet – this geometric//permutational
symmetry allowed Murray Gell-Mann to predict the
existence of the Omega particle before it had been
observed.