PROPHETIC/ECSTATIC ; 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. ---, Chagigah 2a

A great secret [concerning a teaching in Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 27:1]: “Great is the power of the , 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 to a 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

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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 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

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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.

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---Abraham Abulafia, 13th c. manuscript translated by , 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.

Cover yourself with your tallit, put on your head and arm, that you may be filled with awe of the Shekhinah which is near you...Cleanse your clothes, and if possible, let all your garments be white, for this is most helpful in leading the heart to the fear and love of God. If it be night, kindle many lights, until all is bright.

Then take ink, pen and a tablet, and remember that you are about to serve God in joy and with gladness of heart. Now begin to combine a few or many letters, to permute and combine them rapidly until your heart is warm. Be mindful of their movements and of what emerges in the process. And when you feel that your heart is warm and when you see that by combining letters you can grasp new things, which by tradition or by your own reason you would not be able to know, and when you are thus prepared to receive the influx of Divine power which flows into you, then turn all your true thought to envision God and His

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exalted angels in your heart as if they were human beings sitting or standing near you; feel yourself like an envoy whom the king and his ministers are sending on a mission, and he is waiting to hear something about his mission, be it from the king himself or from his servants.

Having imagined this very vividly, turn your whole mind to understand with your thoughts the many things conjured up in you through the letters imagined. Ponder on them as a whole and in all their detail, like one to whom a parable or a dream is being related, or who meditates on a deep problem in a scientific book, and try thus to interpret what you will hear, that it may as far as possible accord with your reason...

And all this will happen to you after you have flung away tablet and quill, or after they have dropped from you because of the intensity of your thought. Beware: the stronger the intellectual influx within you, the weaker will become your outer and inner parts. Your whole body will be seized with strong trembling, so you will think that surely you are about to die, because your soul, overjoyed with its knowledge, will leave your body. And be ready at this moment consciously to choose death, and then you will know you have come far enough to receive the influx. And then, wishing to honor the glorious Name by serving it with the life of body and soul, veil your face and be afraid to look at God...Then return to your bodily needs, rise and eat and drink a little, or refresh yourself with a fragrant odor, and restore your spirit to its place until another time, and rejoice at your lot and know that God loves you! ---Abraham Abulafia, Chayyei Ha-Olam Ha-Ba (“The Life of the World to Come”)

The masters of the Kabbalah of the have thought that they would unify the Name of God and avoid any belief in the ; but [instead] they have caused His Decadization [‘Issruhu]. Just as the gentiles say that He is three and the three are one, so also some of the Kabbalistic masters believe and say that the Godhead is ten sefirot and the ten are one. Therefore they have multiplied God at His maximum, and they compounded Him in the most extreme manner, since there is no multiple greater than ten. ---Abraham Abulafia, V’zot Li-Yehudah (“This [Blessing] For Judah,” Deut. 33:7)

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This is the mystery of how to pronounce the glorious Name. Make yourself right. Meditate in a special place, where your voice cannot be heard by others. Cleanse your heart and soul of all other thoughts in the world. Imagine that at this time, your soul is separating itself from your body, and that you are leaving the physical world behind, so that you enter the future world, the source of all life distributed to the living. This [the future world] is the intellect, which is the source of all wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, emanating from the King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He...Your mind must then come to join His mind, which gives you the power to think. Your mind must divest itself of all thoughts other than His thought. This becomes like a partner, joining you to Him through His glorious, awesome Name.

You must therefore know precisely how to pronounce the Name...When you begin the pronounce the Aleph with any vowel, it is expressing the mystery of unity. You must therefore draw it out in one breath and no more. Do not interrupt this breath in any manner whatsoever until you have completed the pronunciation of the Aleph. Draw out this breath as long as you extend a single breath. At the same time, chant the Aleph, or whatever other letter you are pronouncing, while depicting the form of the vowel point.

The first vowel is the Cholem [the sound of “o”], [a dot] above the letter. When you begin to pronounce it, direct your face toward the east, not looking up or down. You should be sitting, wearing clean, pure white robes over all your clothing, or else wearing your tallit over your head and crowned with your tefillin. You must face east, since it is from that direction that light emanates to the world.

With each of the twenty-five letter pairs, you must move your head properly. When you pronounce the cholem (long “o” sound), begin facing directly east. Purify your thoughts, and as you exhale, raise your head, little by little, until when you finish, your head is facing upward. After you finish, prostrate yourself on the ground. Do not interrupt between the breath associated with the Aleph and the breath associated with the other letter in the pair. You may, however, take a single breath, and it may be long or short. Between each pair of letters, you may take two breaths without making a sound, but not more than two. If you wish to take less than two breaths, you may do so. After you finish each row of letters, you may take five breaths, but no more. If you wish to take less,

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you may do so. If you change anything or make any mistake in the order in any row, go back to the beginning of the row. Continue until you pronounce it correctly.

Just as you face upward when pronouncing the cholem, face downward when you pronounce the chirek (ee sound). In this manner, you draw down the supernal power and bind it to yourself. When you pronounce the shurek (long “u” sound), do not move your head upward or downward. Instead, move it straight forward (neither lowering or raising it). When you pronounce the tzere (long “a” sound), move your head from left to right. When you pronounce the kametz (ah), move it from right to left.

In any case, if you see any image before you, prostrate yourself before it immediately. If you hear a voice, loud or soft, and wish to understand what it is saying, immediately respond and say: Speak, my Lord, for Your servant is listening (I Sam. 3:9). Do not speak at all, but incline your ear to hear what is being said to you. If you feel great terror and cannot bear it, prostrate yourself immediately, even in the middle of pronouncing a letter. If you do not see or hear anything, do not use this technique again all that week...

If you feel that your mind is unstable, that your knowledge of Kabbalah is insufficient, or that your thoughts are bound to the vanities of the time, do not dare to pronounce the Name, lest you sin all the more. ---Abraham Abulafia, Or ha-Sekhel (“The Light of the Intellect”)

There are four categories of [the study of] Torah: (a) the simple narrative level, the material enclothement of the Torah; (b) the study of the law and midrashic lore, in their literal sense; (c) the study of the “pleasant Kabbalah” such as the secrets explicated by the ...for all of the midrashim and mishnayot, as well as all the laws and commandments, contain inner secrets and pleasant secrets; and (d) the spirituality of the letters, their essence and combination, one within the other. ---Moshe Cordovero, Rimonim, Sha’ar ha-Otiyot (“Gate of Letters”, Gate 27), ch. 1

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