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Abraham Abulafia PROPHETIC/ECSTATIC KABBALAH; ABRAHAM ABULAFIA (Deut. 16:16: Three times a year--on the Feast of Unleavened Bread, on the Feast of Weeks, and on the Feast of Booths—-all your males shall appear (yei- ra’eh) before the Lord your God in the place that He will choose.) Yochanan ben Dahavai said in the name of Rabbi Yehudah: A man who is blind in one eye is exempt from appearing (at the Temple on the Pilgrimage festivals, as it is said: yir’eh (He will see), yei-ra’eh (He will be seen). [Both words are represented with the same letters. Thus the text lends itself to the following interpretation:] As He comes to see, so He comes to be seen; just as (He comes) to see with both eyes, so also (He is) to be seen with both eyes. ---Talmud, Chagigah 2a A great secret [concerning a teaching in Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 27:1]: “Great is the power of the prophets, who make the form resemble its Former.” We have already explained what seems to be the meaning of this secret, but I then found a passage from one of the earlier authors on this subject, and my heart urges me to record it, for it offers an explanation of the foregoing. The following is the text of that account. The deeply learned Rabbi Nathan, of blessed memory, said to me: “The complete secret of prophecy to a prophet consists in that suddenly he sees the form of his self standing before him, and he forgets his own self and ignores it...and that form speaks with him and tells him the future. And according to this our sages said: “Great is the power of the prophets who make the form [appearing to them] resemble its Former.” And the learned sage, Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, of blessed memory, said: “The one who hears [at the time of prophecy] is a human being, and the one who speaks is a human being.” And another learned man wrote the following: “It occurred to me, by the power of combination [of letters of the holy Names of God] and by solitary meditation, that I encountered that light which accompanied me, as I have discussed in the book Sha’arei Tzedek (written by a student of Abulafia). But to see my own form standing before me: this I was not granted, and this I cannot bring about.” Yet another learned man writes the following: “And I, the young one, know and acknowledge with full certainty that I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, and I have not the holy spirit and I do not make use of the heavenly voice; these things have not been vouchsafed to me, and I have not taken off 1 my garment or washed my feet. Nevertheless, I call heaven and earth to witness--as the heavens are my witness and my Guarantor is on high!--that one day I was sitting and writing down a kabbalistic secret, when suddenly I saw the form of my self standing before me, and my own self disappeared from me, and I was forced and compelled to cease writing.” Likewise, while we were composing this book, and adding the vowel points to the Four-Letter Name, strange objects appeared before our eyes, like the image of red fire at sunset, until we were confused and stopped. And this happened to us several times while we were writing. ---Shushan ha-Sodot, a 16th c. collection, Moses of Kiev, pp. 171-172; text approx. 1300 ...If you are wise and love God with all your heart, reflect on the root from which you were hewn. Know that you have been taken from the Throne of Glory and been endowed with the light of reason and created in God’s image, and brought into existence by the grace of His Being, and your coming here has not been purposeless. Return therefore, for the Holy One of Israel has redeemed you and His holy Name is your glory. Hearken therefore, my son, to these words of mine. Bind them upon your neck, write them upon the tablets of your heart. They will be a jewel of grace upon your head and a necklace around your throat. Trust in God, not in man, for cursed is he who trusts in man. Strive day and night to meditate on the Torah of the Lord, the Torah of Moses, the man of God, the Divine wisdom. Read the prophetic books with understanding. Sing the words of the Writings. Study the sayings of the Sages of blessed memory with a clear and alert mind. Gaze with Divine intelligence into the works of the Kabbalists. Here you will discover that which you seek and you will see that they all cry out in protest against the absence of wisdom, against unworthy deeds, and against limited understanding. For not a single word contains neither wisdom nor understanding nor knowledge nor word nor deeds, in the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, and all the words of the rabbis. After you have done this, set your heart to know the glorious and tremendous Name of God, praised be He. Engrave it upon your heart never to be erased. For in this connection the rabbis say that the sacred Names are not to be erased. Since they point to a picture of God, how then can that which depicts be erased 2 since He who is depicted can never be erased? Never utter the Names without concentration but sanctify them, know them, and reflect that they are the angels of all being and the angels of God sent to you in order to raise you higher and higher and elevate you over all the nations upon earth... Now the time has come to elevate you in the stages of love so that you become beloved on high and delightful here on earth. First, begin by combining the letters of the Four-Letter Name. Gaze at all its combinations. Elevate it. Turn it over like a wheel which goes round and round, backwards and forwards like a scroll. Do not leave it aside except when you observe that it is becoming too much for you because of the confused movements in your imagination. Leave it for a while and you will be able to return to it later. You can then make your request of it and when you attain to wisdom do not forsake it. For the initial letters and the final letters, the numerical values, the notarikons (abbreviations), the combination of letters and their permutations, their accents and the forms they assume, the knowledge of their names and the grasping of their ideas, the changing of many words into one and one into many, all these belong to the authentic tradition of the prophets. By means of these, God will answer when you call upon Him, for you belong to His family. And now, my son, the secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him and to them will He make His covenant known. He will make known His covenant to the man who fears Heaven and whose covenant is perfect... ---Abraham Abulafia, from manuscript The strings touched with the right hand or the left hand vibrate, and the experience is sweet to the ears, and from the ears the sound travels to the heart and from the heart to the spleen (i.e., source of emotion). The joy is renewed through the pleasure of the changing melodies, and it is impossible to renew except through the process of combinations of sounds. The combination of letters proceeds similarly. One touches the first string, that is, analogically, the first letter, and the right hand passes to the others, to the second, third, fourth or fifth strings, and from the fifth it proceeds to the others. In this process of permutations new melodies emerge and vibrate to the ears, and then touch the heart. This is how the technique of letter combinations operates...And the secrets which are disclosed in the vibrations rejoice the heart, for the heart then knows its God and experiences additional delight. 3 ---Abraham Abulafia, 13th c. manuscript translated by Gershom Scholem, Ha- Kabbalah shel Sefer ha-Temunah v’shel Avraham Abulafia, ed. J. Ben-Shlomo, p. 208. ...just as his Master (the “agent intellect”) who is detached from all matter is called the Knowledge, the Knower and the Known, all at the same time, since all the three are one in Him, so shall he, the exalted man, the master of the exalted Name, be called intellect, while he is actually knowing; then he is also ‘the known’ like his Master, and then there is no difference between them, except that his Master has His supreme rank by His own right and not derived from other creatures, while he is elevated to his rank by the mediation of the creatures. ---Abraham Abulafia, Commentary on Sefer Ha-Yashar (“Book of the Upright”) Be prepared to meet your God, O Israelite! Make yourself ready to direct your heart to God alone. Cleanse the body and choose a special place where none will hear your voice. Sit in one place...and do not reveal your secret to any man. If you can, do it by day in your house, even if just a little, but it is best if you complete it during the night. When you prepare yourself to speak to the Creator and you wish Him to reveal His might to you, be careful to detach all your thoughts from the vanities of this world.
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