The Essential Works of Kabbalah. Bernhard Pick

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Название The Essential Works of Kabbalah
Автор произведения Bernhard Pick
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isbn 4064066388744



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would partake with him of the Sabbath meal. According to the story, he did as he promised, as by means of the Cabalistic mysteries he effected his escape, and an ass was executed in his stead, and he himself was suddenly transported into Nachmanides's house! From that time Nachmanides became a disciple of the Cabala, and was initiated into its mysteries, the tenets of which pervade his numerous writings, especially his commentary on the Pentateuch.

      To the first half of the twelfth century belongs fhe Massecheth Asiluth or "the Treatise on the Emanations," supposed to have been written by Rabbi Isaac Nasir. From the analysis given by Jellinek (Auszvahl kabbalistischcr Mystik, Part I, Leipsic, 1853) we learn that the prophet Elijah propounded that

      1. "God at first created light and darkness, the one for the pious and the other for the wicked, darkness having come to pass by the divine limitation of light.

      2. "God produced and destroyed sundry worlds, which, like ten trees planted upon a narrow space, contend about the sap of the soil, and finally perish altogether.

      4. "The world was founded in wisdom and understanding (Prov. iii. 13), and God in his knowledge originated fifty gates of understanding.

      5. "God created the world—as the book Jezirah already teaches—by means of the ten Sephiroth, which are both the agencies and qualities of the Deity. The ten Sephiroth are called Crown, Wisdom, Intelligence, Mercy, Fear, Beauty, Victory, Majesty and Kingdom; they are merely ideal and stand above the concrete world" (pp.2, 3).

      The conversion of Todros ben Joseph Halevi Abulafia (1234-1304) to the Cabala, gave to this science a great influence, on account of Abulafia's distinguished position as physician and financier in the court of Sancho IV, King of Castile. The influence of Abulafia, whose works are still in manuscript, can be best seen from the fact that four Cabalists of the first rank ranged themselves under his banner and dedicated their compositions to him. These four Cabalists were Isaac Ibn Latif or Allatif, Abraham Abulafia, Joseph Gikatilla, and Moses de Leon, all Spaniards.

      Mysteries of the Cabala.—Isaac Ibn Latif (about 1220-1290), starting with the thought that a philosophical view of Judaism was not the "right road to the sanctuary," endeavored to combine philosophy with Cabala. "He laid more stress than his predecessors on the close connection between the spiritual and the material world—between God and his creation. For the Godhead is in all, and all is in it. In soul-inspiring prayers the human spirit is raised to the world-spirit (sechel hapoel), to which it is united 'in a kiss,' and, so influencing the Deity, it draws down blessings on the sublunar world. But not every mortal is capable of such spiritual and efficacious prayer; therefore the prophets, the most perfect men, were obliged to pray for the people, for they alone knew the power of prayer. The unfolding and revelation of the Deity in the world of spirits, spheres and bodies Allatif explained by mathematical forms. The mutual relation thereof is the same as "that of the point extending and thickening into a line, the line into the plane, the plane into the expanded body."

      A disciple of Abulafia was Joseph Gikatilla of Medina-Celi, who died in Penjafiel after 1305. He, too, occupied himself with the mysticism of letters and numbers, and with the transposition of letters. His writings are in reality only an echo of Abulafia's fancies: the same delusion is apparent in both. Gikatilla's system is laid down in his Ginnath egos, i. e., "Garden of Nuts," published at Hanau, 1615; and Shaare ora, i. e., "the Gate of Light," first published at Mantua, 1561, in Cracow, 1600, and translated into Latin by Knorr von Rosenroth in the first part of his Kabbala Denudata, Sulzbach, 1677-78.