Alongside the Kabbalah of the sefirot
that gains momentum, and is rapturous and productive from the end of the 12th and
into the 13th centuries. In the second half of the 13th
century we have the masterpiece of the Kabbalah of the sefirot, the Zohar,
at the same time, alongside that kabbalistic movement,
another movement develops that its instigator,
its main character, is a man called Abraham Abulafia. Abulafia himself separates this Kabbalah
from the Kabbalah of the sefirot and refers to it as the Kabbalah of names
or prophetic Kabbalah, two titles, and we'll discuss this movement,
which has had a significant impact on the history of Jewish mysticism. He really is a fascinating character,
excitable, a very prolific man, who was born in Zaragoza in 1240.
He studies at home. When he was 18, his father died,
and he gets basic Jewish education, about the Bible, the Mishnah.
He doesn't belong the the Rabbinic world. He never becomes a distinct wise
scholar as other kabbalists had, some of them we've talked about,
such Nachmanides. He receives a basic Bible
and Mishnah education. When we was 18, as
he was wont to do, he traveled a lot, he
embarked many journeys. After his father's death, the leaves Spain
to discover the Sambation in the east, he travels to the Land
of Israel, to Syria, following regional wars
that take place there. He travels around the
area, arrives to Acre. From Acre, he moves on
the Greece and Italy. During those years,
when he's in Greece and Italy, he is intensely immersed with
The Guide for the Perplexed. His writing about The Guide for the
Perplexed is very interesting. He writes several commentaries
about The Guide for the Perplexed, and he reads it as a mystic. When we talked about
The Guide for the Perplexed we saw that it also have
a mystical reading. It is possible that the silence that
Maimonides recommends and leads towards ultimately leads to some
profound mystical reflection. And Abulafia, who is deeply influenced
by The Guide for the Perplexed, and basically, and
we should remember, this distinction between philosophy
and mysticism is never clear-cut. It cannot be clear-cut. There are distinct mystic-philosophers, there are mystics that are deeply
versed in philosophical traditions, And Abulafia is intensely immersed
with The Guide for the Perplexed. He goes back to Spain. And in 1270, according
to his descriptions, he studies Kabbalah
in Barcelona. There, we should remember, is the circle
of Nachmanides and his disciples, This is a place where Kabbalah
is practiced very intensively. He reports, he describes a teacher
that we don't know much about, Barukh Togarmi, who was
his Kabbalah teacher. He works on commentaries on
Sefer Yetzirah ("Book of Creation") Then he has an experience
that profoundly separates him from the world of the kabbalists,
and that experience is prophetic. Remember that as we've said,
Abulafia belongs to that movement, in a way he is the founder of the
movement called prophetic Kabbalah, and he describes a
prophetic experience. He describes a prophetic experience
that because of that he makes innovations in the "secret" theory
that are well-beyond what was acceptable in 13th-century kabbalistic doctrines. I will now read a passage from his pamphlet where he describes his experience.
He says, "And he called my name, 'Abraham, Abraham,'
and I said, 'Here I am." He alludes here to the patriarch
Abraham when we was called by God. "And he will teach me justice, "and wake me as a someone
who woke up from sleep, "to compose things anew, such things
have not been composed in my time." Please understand, he comes into
conflict here with traditions that maintain that Kabbalah is a
tradition that nothing is added to it, that it's not allowed
to be added to. Here he describes
himself as a prophet that makes kabbalistic innovations. Remember, and we talked about it back
when we discussed the views of the Sages, The Jewish world has
sealed prophecy. Prophecy has vanished after the
destruction of the Temple, since the Temple was destroyed. There is a concern about the
anarchistic, uncontrollable elements of the prophetic voice. Here we have a mystic
who declares that he is a prophet. And then he says,
"And I forced my will and attempted "what is slightly beyond my ability." This experience is beyond the regular
limits of human consciousness. And he describes a struggle. "Seeing my generation refer to me
as a heretic, his prophetic pretensions
has made him a heretic. "For I in truth have
done God's work, "and as the imagination of the
people who walk in the dark "and for that and people like them
they sink into the abyss." Those people who attack
me for being a heretic, they sink into the abyss, "they would have been happy
to be able to sink me too "with their absurdities and the
darkness of their deeds." Those people who are in the dark would've been happy if I
joined their darkness. "But I will never do so, "for I will not leave the path of truth
for the path of falsehood." We already have an interesting phenomenon of a kabbalist who claims to
have prophetic revelations and is at the heart
of a polemic. I'd like to note,
it's very interesting. By the way, we have a direct
testimony of his polemicist. it's related to the prophetic phenomenon,
and his polemicist is the most exalted expert of the
Halachah in Barcelona at the time, Rashba, Rabbi Shlomo ibn Aderet,
who is a disciple of Nachmanides, who was also a kabbalist, in another kabbalistic tradition
of the Kabbalah of the sefirot. And a pamphlet is
sent to Rashba, by the way, a bit later
in Abulafia's life, when Abulafia returns to Italy,
he is in Sicily, and a pamphlet is sent from Sicily
to Rashba where he is asked what to do with this person
who reveals prophetic secrets? What do you say about his books?
What do you say about his writings? Remember, Rashba is the most senior
authority in the Jewish world of the late 13th century, and Rashba writes very
harsh things about him. He says, "and one of them was that villain,
the name of the wicked will rot, "that Abraham,"
Abraham Abulafia. He describes all kinds of
prophets that travel the world. Here is a Rabbinic figure who
is supposed to be the censor of the Jewish spirit of the age, and he says, here, on
of them is a villain. "The name of the wicked will rot"
is a very harsh expression. It's Abraham "who has made himself
a prophet and messiah in Sicily." By the way, we have a very
interesting comment here, Abulafia has a messianic self-awareness
that will shortly get to, he is both a prophet
and a messiah. "And in his falsehoods he seduces
some of the Sons of Israel. "And had I not closed the door
to him with God's compassion with most of the writing
of the holy communities," meaning, I've already taken
actions against this man, he may have acted against him
already in Barcelona, he says, had I not done that and organized
some community excommunication of him, "he almost started inflicting
with his imaginary and false ideas, "which were as wisdom to a fool
and which he studied in amazement for days, "where he practiced taking from
Scripture and the Sages in gematria, and infuses them with things
that are slightly true, taken from the books of wisdom." We have a very central rabbinic figure who describes a severe conflict
with Abulafia regarding two things: Regarding his
prophetic-messianic pretension and also regarding
particular doctrines, his theories, which Rashba describes as
something that look like wisdom to a fool but it's nonsense that he
has practiced for years. So we have an interesting conflict. We should return to this topic
because it goes way beyond this moment. It's a very interesting moment in
the history of Jewish thought, the history of
Jewish philosophy, of conflict between the prophetic
voice with Halakhic authority. We see that the cessation of prophecy
has a profound conservative principle. By the mere fact, by the way,
before a person's words are examined, once they declare themselves a prophet,
they place themselves under a threat of censorship, of silencing,
as Rashba is running against him. And this pamphlet that we read earlier
is already a reply pamphlet by Abulafia who is at the center
of a polemic. Abulafia leaves Spain.
It may have been related to those actions taken
against him in Spain, that Rashba says that he had taken
at an earlier period. He goes back Italy. In Italy he spends the rest
of his days, apparently. In 1280 he does something very unusual,
maybe typical of the man. Due to his messianic
consciousness, he goes to Rome in order
to meet with the Pope. Remember that in Jewish messianic views, when the messianic age begins,
Nachmanides, by the way, Rashba's rabbi, writes in his polemic
with the Christians, he describes the Jewish
messianic views, and says there will be a point where the
Messiah will come to the Pope and tell him – Let my people go. There is a repetition of Moses'
confrontation with Pharaoh. And Abulafia, who views himself
as a messianic figure, which is amazing, in terms of
how he conceives of himself, goes to meet to Pope
and puts his life at risk. It's not a simple matter, for an unknown
Jew without any communal authority to appear before the Pope and defy
him that soon he will be dethroned in favor of the renewed Jewish redemption. This Pope, Nicholas III,
probably to Abulafia's good fortune, dies when Abulafia reaches
the gates of Rome. Abulafia is imprisoned for about
a month and then released. he had a reckless and
tempestuous streak. During this period in Italy he
has a study, he has disciples, and we composes most of
his kabbalistic writings, a very prolific oeuvre of texts. What is at the core of
Abulafia's mystical world? There is a text where Abulafia says all I'm interested in is to
untie the knots of the seals. I'd like to talk about his expression,
because it's a very interesting expression in the history of mysticism.
What are the knots of the seals? What is it to untie
the knots of the seals? Our consciousness,
according to Abulafia, is trapped in the space
of our senses. When we ask,
what occupies our sensual space? All kinds of objects that
we see in the world, that our thought revolves
around and about them, and it is dictated by or trapped
within this world of impressions. And as in the general
history of mysticism, part of the mystical way
is to expand consciousness to conceptions, to
conscious perceptions, to a conscious state to is beyond
the given material prison where consciousness is located. And Abulafia unties, he
releases the soul, the mind, from its grasp of the temporal
onto other spaces of consciousness that produce revaluations in spiritual
spaces that are much more profound than the given state of the regular
consciousness that we all have. In a way, we're all busy with...
how should we call it? In life maintenance. We're all trapped in a
very specific mental space and the potential of our
mind is much more vast, and mysticism as basically an expansion
of this mental potential. How do we do that?
And this is Abulafia's unique contribution as Jewish mystic, and maybe in the
history of mysticism in general. Consciousness requires another
object that is far more sublime, which doesn't trap the mind
within this corporeal space And this object is not abstract truths. It's not, OK, let's now constantly
think about mathematics. Because an abstract truth also
has an affixation in it. And Abulafia's thought object
is the language, or the letter, the Hebrew language.
This is very interesting. It's basically meditation,
sharp meditative exercises, and soon we'll discuss them in detail, that are all concerned with the
Hebrew letter, the Hebrew language, combinations of letters.
And so he describes his Kabbalah as the Kabbalah of names,
and it's also a prophetic Kabbalah because through this meditation
on names and their combinations, the mind gets to a state of spreading out, of an expansion in which it also strives towards or
aspires to an abundance of revaluations that leads to new realizations. Understand to the big problem
for mystics such as Abulafia is to shed, shedding off the
envelope that seals the I. And he describes a linguistic technique.
Why language? Language is, first of
all, an abstract object. As an objects, it's not located anywhere,
it cannot be trapped. By the way, language as a metaphor
or a medium of the divine being is very interesting
because it is everywhere and it's also nowhere. it also has an infinite dimension of
permutations, inflictions, combinations. Also, in this view, language is not
perceived as a conventional object. In other words, when we say,
and it's central to Abulafia's view of language,
and in Kabbalah in general, when we say the word "kiss'e" (chair) the word doesn't denote chair
because we all agreed to it, or in Medieval language, those who
claimed that language is conventional, we've agreed, it's a convention,
we could've used other names, it has other names,
in other language we'd say "chair" a stool, a recliner. It has many names.
All of those names are conventional. According to Abulafia, the affinity
between a word and an object is internal, it's essential, especially in Hebrew,
which is the language of the deity, it's the language of divine thought, it's the language that constitutes
the infrastructure of the universe. Here we need to remember that
another religious dimension of language as a medium
within that linguistic Kabbalah is the idea that language
is a creating force it can create, it sets
the world the way it is. "And God said, let there be light."
The word has the power to create being. At the heart of the language,
the language's apex, there is The Word,
the most abstract name, the foundation of the entire being
from which every language draws it's entire meaning,
and that's the Tetragrammaton, YHWH. Ultimately,
at the apex of mystical life within this linguistic view, there is meditation, reflection
on the name of the being. Everything that exists in the world
is meaningful because it is part of a name, The Name,
which incorporates the entire being and the entire language.
I'd also like to note, that's one of the most interesting
things in Abulafia's view, that those things are true
not just for Hebrew. Any human linguistic expression exists and is alive
if it partakes or draws on, or is a form
of translation of Hebrew. He uses an expression in one
of his interesting texts, in a book called The Book of the Letter,
Abulafia writes: "We need to melt,"
an interesting expression - to melt, "all languages into
the holy language, "so that any speech by a speaker
with their mouth and lips, "will be considered as though it was
composed from the holy letters, "which are the 22 letters." In other words, if you speak
Latin or Spanish or Arabic, and you understand, despite the fact that
the number of letter of these languages is sometimes a lot
more than 22 letters, the 22 Hebrew letters,
you must understand that they are all expansions of the Hebrew language,
The Language, and you, as a mystic language speaker,
you must melt, bring this language
to its original source, dismantle it from its translated shell,
bring it to the Hebrew, and meditate through it.
It's a very interesting view, all languages descend from a
source language, which is Hebrew, and at its core there is
the Tetragrammaton, YHWH. One fascinating technique
that Abulafia employs, he has a mystics guide books
where he describes the mystical method of the Kabbalah of names he talks about.
He talks about combinations. What the mystic in fact does
in their mental expansion exercises, the mystic combines letters.
They combine letters, they keep combining letters. By the way, those letters
are very abstract elements. They don't have to be words
with one meaning or another. The particular structure of a letter,
the letter itself, one letter, is already a nucleus of meanings,
and the combinations of letters create an inner motion of the mind,
expansion of the mind. And in one of his texts that is
called Gan Naoul (Locked Garden) where he uses an
interesting analogy between what he refers to as
letter combinations and music. And here we get a very
interesting analogy with a familiar
human experience, our musical experience. We experience music,
there is an expansion of the mind, By the way, music is also
an abstract element. Nachmanides writes in one of his texts
that we have nothing finer than music. This voice that is present
but intangible. And when he describes his letter
combination technique in Locked Garden, he says the following: "Know that the combination is similar
to what is audible to the ear," this letter combination is similar
to what we hear with our ears. "For the ear hears and
the voices combine according to the form of
melody and syllable." "And the testimony"
- its indicator, "harp and violin that
combine their sounds," It's an orchestra already. "And with the combination of sounds, the
ears discern transition and exchange, "and the strings that are hit with the
right hand and the left hand move, "carry the sweet
sound to the ears, "and from there, the sound moves on to the
heart, and from the heart to the spleen." For us, a spleen is a organ
that can be discarded, but that wasn't the case
in the mental psychology in the mental life
of the Medieval world. Then he describes the ecstasy,
it's an ecstasy. He says, "and in the meantime,
the joy renews, "through the pleasure of the
transition of melodies, and it cannot be renewed except
through the form of combinations." Music is combinations that
move across music scales with symphonic processes of internal
spiritual motion that expands the soul. And then he compares it with his
technique, and he says the following: "And so it is with combinations,
to roll out the letters with the pen," He sits with a pen and rolls out letters.
"In the form of letter combinations." Now he gives an example.
You take the letter Aleph, Mem, Shin. And you combine them:
"AMS, ASM, MSA, MAS, SAM, SMA, "and so on and and all
those that are similar." We have techniques of
linguistic combinations that expand the mind, where consciousness is dedicated
to the divine thought itself, and those combination produce a
course of prophetic revelations, of prophetic illuminations,
that occur once the mind is expanded following those meditative exercises. By this way, this method that
Abulafia expands and demonstrates, in many texts it also
includes the numerical values of the letters and their
numerical combinations, because there is a relation
between a letter and a number. It has radical implications on the
scripture hermeneutics technique. Because the Torah,
and we mentioned it when we discussed the kabbalists'
conception of the Torah, in the kabbalistic world, the Torah itself
is perceived as the name of the deity or as a thread of
the deity's names in which the basic unit is not
the word, but the letter, and Nachmanides, and we've discussed
his conception of the Torah, says, yes, it is possible to describe the
Torah in the same sequence of letters, but a different
division into names. Instead of "In the beginning, God Created,"
we would have said, "God will create in the mind," and so on.
We would divide the letters differently. Abulafia takes it, if you will,
another step forward. For him, the letter is the
building block of the holy text, but the order is coincidental. There is an exegetical method where,
using the letter combination technique, you write a different text not by dividing the existing sequence
of letters into different words, but by scrambling the letters. It's possible, for example,
to move the letter Aleph, which is the third in the word
"In the beginning" (Bereshit) to the beginning of the word. Actually, the text as a semantic
unit that coneys a message, completely loses its
semantic stability. We have here a view, if you will,
that completely deconstructs the text and creates an immense
space of meanings that far exceeds the direct
meaning of the text. We can see why someone like Rashba, when he reads a text by Abulafia,
when he's a brought a text and he sees this medium
of recomposing words as an exegetical method that
is backed by a prophetic claim, and he knows that it will
completely destabilize the stable structure
of tradition. And he wants to completely
shut down this phenomenon. If Abulafia wanted to untie
the knots of the seals, Rashba wants to seal this issue
and completely shut it down. Abulafia's guide books describe things, and in this respect they
are precious, rare, in terms of the history of Jewish mysticism,
because he describes processes of what we call
"the mystical experience." At the core of its view,
of what he calls the prophetic Kabbalah, transforming the mental state, there is a process of a very
profound mystical experience. I'd like to read a long
text and explain it because it really is a
very interesting moment in the history of Kabbalah,
it will echo later in the Kabbalah, in the history of the Kabbalah, where Abulafia directs the student
to a process of initiation toward the supreme mystical experience. This text is from one of
Abulafia's important guide books, called "Life of the World to Come." It starts with the following sentence: "It is known that in
divine prophetic Kabbalah "that when the educated
sage combines them," we mentioned the combination of letters,
"the holy spirit will rest on him." He has a revelation. "And this will be your sign:" Now he says, this is the
sign, this is the path. "When you study those holy letters
in truth and in faith," meaning, you meditate
on the holy letters, "in truth and in faith"
means with a clean mind, "and when you combine them, the start
with the end and end with the start, "start with middle,
and middle with start..." "and so you will study all of it
in this method "roll all of its letter forward
and backward in many tunes." There is also a musical element here. "He will start slowly, "and then it will
become faster when he gets used to it, "until he is fluent in
exchanging combinations, "and he should also be fluent in
the secret of the Torah and wisdom "so he will recognize what appears
in his combination rolls. "and his heart will awake when he meditates
on the mental divine prophetic painting." So this person, who already
has an understanding of the secret of the divinity, knows how to recognize in
the combinations that occur, which are seemingly automatic combinations, contents from which he can
construct intelligible ideas. "At first, what will arise from the
combination, in his seclusion, "will cause him fear
and make him tremble, his hair will stand and
his organs shocked." Now the body is in ecstasy. "Then, if he is fortunate, the spirit
of living God would rest upon him." And here he quotes a verse: "the spirit
of the Lord shall rest upon him, "And the spirit of the
Lord shall rest upon him, "the spirit of wisdom
and understanding, "the spirit of
counsel and might, "the spirit of knowledge and
of the fear of the Lord;" Now there is a very
interesting passage. He says, "He will think as though
his entire body is anointed "from head to toe in ointment "and he will be God's
anointed and messenger "and he will be called
the Angel of God "and he will be named after his teacher,
who is Shaddai "also called Metatron,
the Angel of the Presence." I'd like to talk about this text,
he says, this person who is
undergoing this experience believes his is anointed
with ointment, as though he undergoes a purifying
ritual, that he is a messiah. There is an image of internal salvation,
any person is their own messiah. He is anointed with the
ointment of this ritual, and there is a
metamorphosis here, of his identification with the deity,
the name of the deity is within him, he is now called the Angel of God,
and his name is as his teacher's here he alludes to a very important figure
in the history of Jewish mysticism, Metatron, the Angel of the Presence,
and the name of the deity is within him. Another text that explains more in detail, and in some way, more daringly,
this world of mystical experience, which, as we've said, isn't very common
in the writings of Jewish mystics, and it again describes the initiation
and the process of revelation. He says the following: "Be ready for
you God Israel, prepare yourself, "dedicate your heart
and purify your body." So far, pretty general statements.
Now come the specific instructions: "And choose a special place where your
voice will not be heard by anyone." It's the start of very
familiar seclusion techniques. "And be alone, and one,
and secluded, without any other. "And sit in a room or an attic
and reveal your secret to no one." You should first of all
physically remove yourself from the world that is closing you down,
locks you in mental contents that you should expel
from your consciousness. "And if you could that in a house
that is slightly dark, do so." A little bit of darkness, shaded
or mystical lighting, if you will. "Indeed, it is recommended
to do at night, "and make sure to clear your mind
from the absurdities of the world "while you are preparing yourself
to speak with your maker, "and you ask that he
will tell of his might, "and cover yourself in prayer shawl
and wear phylacteries, "on your head and hand,
if you are so able to, "to be in fear and awe of the
Shekhinah that is with you, "during that time." Meaning, you clear
your consciousness from all other thoughts, you cover yourself
in a prayer shawl, wear phylacteries, by the way, it's at night,
that's interesting, and you sit there. "And clean yourself
and your clothes, "and if you are able to do
so, wear only white clothes." You're wearing white,
which symbolizes, if you will, it's the symbol of the color that is all
colors together without being a color. "Because it is very beneficial
for the sense of awe and love. "And if it's at night, light many candles
until they light your eyes well, "And then take in your hand ink and
pen with happiness and good heart," You take ink and pen. "And begin combining few
letters with many." Start in an automatic
technique of combination. "And turn them and roll them quickly
until your heart warms from their rolls, this rolling creates an effect
that warms your heart, an internal ecstatic
consciousness of expansion. "And pay attention to your motion
and the result of the rolls." While you're doing the motion,
pay attention to the contents that those automatic rolls
of letters produce. "And when you feel inside that your heart
has warmed from the combinations very much "and you have gained new
insights from them," you understand, or your
consciousness is discovering and experiencing new contents, "which you haven't been
able to humanly perceive." Those contents are unfamiliar,
they are new. "And didn't know by yourself
from the intellectual study." Meaning, those contents are beyond
the tradition and beyond cognition. "and you are already ready
to receive the abundance." Then you will know that there
is a moment of revelation. "And the abundance abounds you, "and arouses many things
one after the other," In that moment, you are in an
increasing abundance of contents. "Prepare your true thought," in this moment you will
prepare your true thought, "to paint the Name, may
his name be blessed." Here you achieve the
apex of that meditation, which is the name of the deity. And you paint the blessed name,
and you are now a part of that entourage when you draw the deity
and its higher angels. "To draw them in your heart as
though they are human beings, standing or sitting next to you, "and you are among them, like the king's
messenger whose slaves want to send away." And there is a description of
entering into a divine angelic space. And he goes on to describe the cognition
that a person achieves in that state. And then there is a more profound moment
in terms of the revelation, a detailed description of that experience.
He says: "And you will have all that "after you discard the tablet
and the pen from your hands. "or that they fall of themselves "due to your many thoughts
or out of sheer happiness." So at that point you're not
busy with the writing, with the automatic letter combinations,
they are being done of themselves. "And know that what
will become stronger," Sorry. "And know that all that
will become stronger for you, "the great mental abundance," the more the consciousness expands, "your external and internal
organs would weaken." You will feel
weakness in the body. "And your body will begin to
shake vociferously." To tremble. Some kind of... "Until you think for yourself that
anyway you will die at that time. It's a near-death experience. "For your soul will separate
from your body out of joy "for obtaining it and
knowing what you know "until you choose death
over life in your mind, "because death happens
only to the body." At that moment you realize, you are released from
the fear of death because you realize that death
is a physical occurrence, that at that point
consciousness is extracted from the physical existence
into a very vast state. "And for this reason, the soul will
live the Resurrection for eternity. "And then you know that you arrived at
the virtue of receiving the abundance." We have here a vivid and sharp
description of an experience that is described as initiation,
seclusion, wearing white, dedicating and purifying the thought,
at first by writing letter combinations, which expand the mind in the
revelation of new contents that reach its climax
in the dedication, albeit the term dedication
doesn't appear here, but the core of the matter here
is the idea of dedication, where there one anticipates
their moment of death so it doesn't look
intimidating at all. Death is a moment that you choose. Therefore, we have here
a different mysticism. Note we don't have sefirot here. It's mysticism of names,
of revelations. where the I breaks from from
it's narrow given situation. And here, following Moshe Idel
who studied this movement, we'd like to discuss
several characteristics of the figure of
Abraham Abulafia that pertain to the history of
Jewish mysticism in general. First of all, as we've said, it's
goal is prophetic, ecstatic. That's one thing. It's technique, it's medium,
is not the commandments. It's, if you will, an anomic Kabbalah. It's not in the nomos,
in the law. Because the Kabbalah of the sefirot, that core of that Kabbalah
is the commandments, the act of the commandment, and it's aim is not the
mystic's mystical experiment, but rather to fix the divine system
through observing the commandments. Here, we don't
have commandments. The commandments, again, Abulafia doesn't reject the
authority of the Jewish law, he only posits a
technique beyond it, which is far more than the individual
observing of the commandments, an anomic technique of
letter combination. So we have a different focus
of the mystical work, not on the world
of commandments, with a different trend,
ecstatic, prophetic, that in many ways, its
leaders are figures that don't come from the heart
of the rabbinic tradition. They are not experts
in Jewish Law. They are also, as we
have seen with Abulafia, come into conflicts with the
traditional authorities out of their own mystical power. And from that point onward,
we have Jewish mystical movement – a movement that cultivates techniques,
different types of mysticism, here it's letter combination,
we have breathing practices, we have color visualization,
but we should remember one thing that Abulafia does hold at the center of that
mysticism's consciousness, and that's the meditation of
the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, which is, if you will, the absolute object of reflection
for the Jewish mystic. So we have a different movement,
which grows, by the way, at the same time, during the same years when
the Kabbalah of the sefirot, which deals with theurgy, with amendment
through the commandment, develops. We have a man, Abulafia,
disciples, a developing movement that
lives somewhat underground. By the way, one could also be,
we should understand that those division are not schematic. A person could be a part
of the classical Kabbalah, the Kabbalah of the sefirot, and practice Abulafia's techniques. In this context, the boundary between
magic an mysticism is very fine because through these names, which for Abulafia describe
processes that provide knowledge, but those names are potent,
they are powerful. Abulafia himself, in his different texts,
acknowledges the magical implications, the magical potential
within this technique. Therefore, we have a movement
of a different Kabbalah, the prophetic Kabbalah, and Abulafia is its foundation. Since we are in an
introductory course, and this is always the limitation
of an introductory course, we could have had an
entire seminar or class and the transformations of this tradition
in the history of Jewish mysticism But it was important, as part
of an introduction course, to offer its main character and his original and unique view that is related to names,
letters, language, and how this linguistic technique
leads to prophetic revelation.