CHAPTER 6
Magic and Mystic Ascent
Rabbi as miracle worker
THE RABBI WAS REGARDED as an incarnation of the Torah. “The disciple
revered the master as a living Torah and humbled himself before him as
before God,”126 writes Jacob Neusner. The rabbi shows us “the human
face” of God, and his deeds (not just his teachings) were
studied as a standard for daily living.
Although they were holy and “like God,” the rabbis were always regarded as human beings like all others, and this quality was the source of their strength as role models for the community. The rabbi was not considered to be a supernatural ascetic, removed from the hustle and bustle of daily life; instead, he reached out to the people and asked the people to become godly. In fact, there was a strong rabbinic bias against asceticism.
The rabbis in both Palestine and Babylonia acted as spiritual guides to the people not only on how they could please God and live their lives ethically and morally (which requires effort, self-control, and inner struggle!), they were also sought out as miracle workers – for healing, predicting the future, ensuring good harvests and marriages, and to ensure fertility. Most people lived in the thrall of superstition, and they believed that the rabbis had power over evil spirits and demons and knowledge of spells and curses.
The Jews had a well-deserved reputation among the Greeks and the Romans as practitioners of magic and miracles, especially healings. Judean society in the first century bce and the first century ce was marked by the presence of numerous predictors of the future, holy men, and healers. Many rabbis of the third and fourth centuries in both Israel and Babylonia were believed to be endowed with extraordinary powers. In some cases these figures are said to be “prophets” or to possess the gift of prophecy.128
It was believed that the rabbis got their authority from their deep knowledge of Torah. Neusner emphasizes frequently that this did not only mean intellectual expertise, but the knowledge of the “secrets” of the Torah, particularly special esoteric names of God, which gave them supernatural powers.
The rabbis authenticated their claim to power not only by their teaching of Torah, but also by their knowledge of the secrets of creation – including the names of God by which miracles may be produced, and the mysteries of astrology, medicine, and practical magic – and by their day-to-day conduct as a class of religious virtuosi and illuminati.… They were seeking totally to reform the life of Israel so that it would conform to the Torah as they taught it.129
People were afraid to displease the rabbis as they believed the rabbis had the power to hurt them. From a positive angle, they depended on the rabbis to intercede with God on their behalf. But that same influence over God could also be used in a negative way, to hurt or kill someone, it was believed. Often people would visit the graves of past rabbis and worship there, because they were believed to possess the supernatural powers of the departed rabbis.
Rabbis, it shall be seen, could create and destroy men because they were righteous, free of sin, or otherwise holy, and so enjoyed exceptional grace from heaven. It follows that Torah was held to be a source of supernatural power. The rabbis controlled the power of Torah because of their mastery of its contents. They furthermore used their own mastery of Torah quite independent of heavenly action. They could issue blessings and curses, create men and animals, and were masters of witchcraft, incantations, and amulets. They could communicate with heaven. Their Torah was sufficiently effective to thwart the action of demons. However much they disapproved of other people’s magic, they themselves were expected to do the things magicians did.130
Magic per se, defined as the illegitimate use of “divine” powers, was frowned upon in ancient Jewish society, and there are many negative references to magic in rabbinic literature. This in itself should tell us that its practice was common, but the rabbis did not see themselves as magicians. They believed they were using the holiness of the Torah to fulfill the will of God, the one supreme being, and they separated themselves from the magic of Zoroastrian or other “pagan” holy men who (according to the rabbis) used the powers of demons and spirits. In effect, however, as many inscriptions have shown, they may have been doing very similar things.
To the extent that magicians were considered disreputable, no faithful community would regard its holy men as magicians. But where magic was an expected and normal trait of religious virtuosi, everyone supposed that the holy men of the community could produce magic. What was “Torah” or perhaps “white magic” to Jews may have been witchcraft or black magic to gentile neighbors.131
Thus the rabbis’ status as holy men derived to a great extent from their use of “magical” or supernatural powers for healing and miracles. Theurgy is a polite name for the use of certain techniques to obtain control over divine powers, a type of magic. It is not known precisely what the rabbis did as their theurgy, but it is believed to have included intensive study of Torah, concentration exercises, repetition of certain names of God, focused prayers, perhaps the concentrated performance of certain rituals. The “theurgical skills were regarded as an authentication – although not the only one – of the fact that rabbis were holy men, or saints, or righteous.”132 In a practical, functional sense, the rabbi’s personal merit and supernatural powers were as important as his learning and teaching of scriptures. What was extraordinary about the rabbi was “his mastery of a body of theurgical learning, the power of which rendered him exceptionally influential both in heaven and earth.”133 “Healing arts, exorcisms, incantations – these all testified to the grace of God no less than did mastery of Torah or other forms of saintliness. The rabbis took pride in their theurgical attainments, which, they said, were made possible by Torah.”134 Study was regarded as a divine force that gave them supernatural powers.
It was believed that the rabbis’ study of holy texts and their other practices gave them knowledge of the structure of the universe, including all the upper heavenly realms, the essence of God and his secret names, the angelic hosts, demons, and the ascent in the chariot; blessings, spells, omens, curses, dreams, divining, astrology; and the use of magical formulae and prayers.
Neusner comments on the nexus between miraculous powers and virtue in all of ancient society:
The ascription of supernatural power must … be seen as a primary attribute of leading masters in the schools. It is the attribute which most closely paralleled those of the “divine-man” of antiquity – a man believed to embody divine power and virtue – for the unity of faith, wisdom, and unusual ability was everywhere taken for granted. “Knowing” and “doing” were in no way separable; the rabbi’s “wisdom” derived from Torah, and so did his supernatural, or magical, skills. To no one in antiquity could such a conception have been alien.135
The power of numbers, letters, and names
There were probably several stages in the development of practices
related to the name of God in Judaism. In the Bible, when we read that
the prophets trusted in the name of the Lord, taught remembrance of the
name, or meditated on the name, it would seem that they were referring
to an ineffable divine essence, a vibration beyond language, the essence
of God himself, a truly unpronounceable name that can be apprehended
only in a state of higher consciousness. It is a name only insofar as it
is a way of pointing to his divine presence, his creative and sustaining
power, his all-encompassing existence which fills the entire creation.
The beauty and purity of the references to God’s name in the Bible imply
that it is an essence beyond any use of language.
Bless the Lord, O my soul;
And all that is within me, bless His holy name.
PSALMS 103:1
O Lord, our Lord,
How glorious is Thy name in all the earth!
PSALMS 8:2
I called upon Thy name, O Lord,
out of the lowest dungeon.
LAMENTATION 3:55
This name is also called God’s word, mimra (utterance) or song, the divine creative power, his voice or command, on which we can meditate within:
By day the Lord will command His lovingkindness,
and in the night His song shall be with me.
PSALMS 42:9
Looking comparatively at other mystical traditions, we find that meditation on this inner or unspoken name of God is sometimes used as a means of attaining God-realization. For example, in the Surat Shabd Yoga teachings of India, one is taught a method of uniting one’s soul with the dhunatmak nam (the name of unutterable sound) – a divine essence and not a name at all. This name is considered to be the true spiritual expression or manifestation of God himself, and is not the external, spoken varnatmak nam (the name made of syllables).
It is possible that a practice of meditating on the unutterable name originally existed among the prophets and was later lost, when outer name practices – even of esoteric names – developed in Judaism. People would have been aware that the Bible spoke of meditating on the name, hearing the word of God, and so forth, and would have sought to understand what that name practice was. By the second century BCE, probably even earlier, people had come to believe that there was power in God’s outer names, and they identified that power with magical manipulations and uses of the letters of written and spoken words and names. The four-letter name YHWH, called the ineffable name, was considered too holy to be uttered by anyone except the high priest at the Temple, and that only once a year.* It is believed that after the destruction of the Temple, or even earlier when the priesthood was discredited, knowledge of the esoteric names passed into the hands of laymen – the rabbis. In talmudic times the number of these supposedly ineffable names grew. There were 12-letter, 24-letter, 42-letter, and 72-letter names and many more, created from an almost infinite number of combinations of the letters of YHWH, all of which were thought to have esoteric significance. Even the descriptive names of God used in the Bible (Almighty, El Elohim, Tseva’ot [Sabaoth], Adonai) were used by Jewish and Christian mystic adepts in incantations and charms.
Joshua Trachtenberg, in his path-breaking book Jewish Magic and Superstition, traces the evolution of this practice. He explains that the Greeks had ascribed numerical and symbolic values to the letters of their alphabet as early as the eighth century bce and the concept had spread across the Mediterranean following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE. It was from this influence that the Jews began to use the letters of the alphabet to designate numerical values. Meanwhile, the Egyptians had developed a practice of creating meaningless syllables (often called barbarous syllables and words) for magical incantations. Both practices penetrated Judaism, and by the second century ce during the time the Mishnah was being composed, the Pythagorean concept of the creative power of numbers and letters was quite well known among the Jews. In fact, the famous sage of the Mishnah, Rav (about 200 CE), said of Bezalel (the legendary architect of Solomon’s Temple) that “he knew how to combine the letters by which heaven and earth were created.”136 It was thought that the creation literally took place through language, by God combining and manipulating the letters and words of the Hebrew alphabet. When the Bible said that God created the universe through speech, this was understood to mean that he did so by using the spiritual origin or root of the letters of the alphabet. Techniques to use the alphabet for concentration in meditation, as well as for predictions, charms, and spells, also developed. The Jewish mystics of the centuries that followed used this lore as a foundation of many of their practices.
The use of the names of God and the angels was viewed as especially powerful, and occupied the primary place in the hierarchy of names to be used in such meditative and magical practices. “Instinct [instilled] with the very essence of omnipotence, they were surrounded from early times with an aura of superlative sanctity and awe.”137
The invocation of angelic names in Jewish magic may be regarded as in part the parallel to the pagan invocation of many deities, and in part as invocation of the infinite [personified] phases and energies of the one God. Both Jewish and pagan magic agreed in requiring the accumulation of as many names of the deity or demon as possible, for fear lest no one name exhaust the potentiality of the spiritual being conjured.138
The merkavah and the power of names
It would seem in hindsight, from our vantage point fifteen to twenty
centuries later, that the rabbis of antiquity had several missions and
spheres of activity: They were the legal advisors and adjudicators, the
guides to proper moral and ethical behavior to the entire Jewish
population. They wanted control over the Jewish way of life in all
social spheres, to ensure it conformed to the Torah, with an aim to
create a perfect people and hasten the messiah’s coming. That was one
aspect. But many of them also were actively teaching and sharing their
mystic practices of merkavah (chariot) travel within confined circles of
rabbis and disciples, in secret from the rest of their society.
How did they attain the level of merkavah travel, raising their consciousness to higher realms within? When we read that through their intense study of Torah and their prayers they gained power over supernatural forces, we have to ask what that study and prayer consisted of. In some cases it could have been simply a level of deep concentration; in other cases it would have been the manipulations of the names of God. It is likely that, by fully immersing their minds in these name- repetition exercises, they were able to come in touch with the spiritual realms and gain some psychic powers, although the rabbis ascribed these powers to the holy names themselves and their various permutations, which were used as magical formulae. These practices gave the mystics the mental concentration that enabled them to leave the confines of the physical body and ascend to spiritual realms. In their ascent, through their concentration, they gained certain powers to perform miracles, to heal the sick, and so forth, which they used in their ministry to the common people. They had visions of God and attained knowledge of “divine secrets.”
In addition to its meaning of “chariot,” the term merkavah carries the meaning of combination or assembly; thus the merkavah practice was not only a description of the inner ascent, but a clue to the method they used to experience it, in which they used the alphabet as building blocks of the chariot. Interestingly, in modern Hebrew, ma’aseh merkavah means anything that is made up of a combination of separate elements.
The journey to the throne realm of God is first described in detail in the account of the vision of the prophet Ezekiel of the sixth century BCE, who ascended through the various heavens on a chariot made of angels whose wings created transcendent sounds, accompanied by supernal lights and colors (Ezekiel 1). Earlier, the Bible narrated a brief account of the ninth century bce prophet Elijah ascending alive to the heavens in a chariot of fire at the time of his death (2 Kings 2:11–12). Ascent in the chariot also appears in the Qumran literature. Similarly, Isaiah described the awe-inspiring experience of the ascent of his consciousness to the angelic throne region of God. The existence of these texts attests to the use of the language of the chariot by mystics even earlier than the rabbinic period. Although there has been no link established concerning the actual practices of Isaiah and Ezekiel in biblical times with those of the Jews of late antiquity, some six to ten centuries later, it is possible and probable that the esoteric tradition was transmitted secretly from master to disciple throughout all those years.
Joseph Dan, the well-known historian of Jewish mysticism, writes that the practice of merkavah mysticism is the first documented mystical movement in Judaism:
While the problem of the mystical nature of some biblical texts, prophetic or poetic, and some parts of apocrypha literature, is mainly a problem of definition, there seems to be little doubt that, from a historical point of view, the first major mystical phenomenon in Jewish culture known to us is the appearance of the heikhalot and merkavah literature. This literature is not the work of a lonely mystic, but a historical school, which probably developed throughout a period of several centuries, and had a profound impact upon later Jewish mysticism.… [Some of] this literature is attributed consistently in our sources to a group of tanna’im, the mishnaic sages, most prominent among them being Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha, Rabbi Nehuniah ben ha-Kanah and Rabbi Eliezer the Great.139
There are not many references in the Talmud to the merkavah, but when the rabbis do mention the practice, it is generally to warn of its dangers. In one well-known story, Rabbi Akiva (the moral teacher and political martyr of the second century) and his companions entered the king’s pardes (orchard, garden) – a metaphor for the supernal regions of God, the state of higher spiritual consciousness.
Our rabbis taught: Four entered an orchard and these are they: Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Aher and Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva said to them: “When you reach the stones of pure marble, do not say: ‘Water, water!’ For it is said, ‘He that speaketh falsehood shall not be established before mine eyes’” (Psalms 101:7). Ben Azzai gazed and died. Of him Scripture says: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (Psalms 116:15). Ben Zoma gazed and was stricken. Of him Scripture says: “Has thou found honey? Eat as much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it” (Proverbs 25:16). Aher cut down the shoots. Rabbi Akiva departed in peace.140
The passage is quite esoteric and difficult to comprehend. Entering the orchard or garden of the Lord, the king, is easily understood as an allusion to the vision of ascent on the merkavah. Descriptions of the entry to the sixth realm in other heikhalot literature can help us understand the allusion to water and marble: countless waves appear to be dancing and scintillating, although “in reality there is not a drop of water there, only the sparkling ‘atmosphere’ given off by pure shining marble.”141 This perhaps refers to the mystic falling prey to illusions of one sort or another on his inner journey and getting misled. The concept may be parallel to the Indian term maya, “illusion.” Thus Akiva is warning them not to get caught by this visual illusion as the Lord will not tolerate “falsehood.”
Ben Azzai gazed and died, perhaps meaning a physical death – as the spiritual illumination was too powerful and his body could not bear it. Yet he was still regarded as a hasid, a saint, so perhaps this referred to his transcending the physical body rather than his physical death. Ben Zoma, it is believed, lost his sanity, as his mind couldn’t handle the visions he saw, all of which were overwhelming and some of which were terrifying. Aher (meaning “other” or heretic) was the name given to Elisha ben Abuyah, who became consumed by doubts after his inner experience, as he thought he saw two powers in heaven – God and the chief angel, Metatron (the transformed Enoch). Thus it is said that he cut down the shoots of the king’s trees in the orchard, a metaphor for the doubt that undercut his faith. Only Akiva entered in peace and returned in peace.
It is Akiva who takes the mystical journey through the heikhalot and returns with divine wisdom, an understanding of the mystery of God. In the text known as the Lesser Heikhalot, the entire account of Rabbi Akiva’s ascent in the merkavah is told in detail. He is depicted traveling through the seven heavenly realms to the divine throne, on which sits a divine figure of astronomical proportions whose infinite body is covered with the letters of the divine names. This figure is called the Shiur Komah (measure of His stature), which is also the name of an early anonymous mystical text attributed to Rabbi Akiva.* Through this metaphor the author teaches that God is his infinite holy name which fills the entire creation.
The description of the Shiur Komah is based on a mystical interpretation of several verses from the scroll of the Song of Songs of the Bible:
My beloved is white and ruddy,
distinguished among ten thousand.
His head is like the finest gold, his locks are wavy,
and black like a raven.
His eyes are like doves by the water courses,
washed with milk, and fitly set.
His cheeks are like a bed of spices, like fragrant flowers;
his lips like lilies, distilling liquid myrrh.
His hands are like circlets of gold set with emeralds;
his belly is like polished ivory overlaid with sapphires.
His legs are like pillars of marble,
set upon sockets of fine gold;
His countenance is like Lebanon, excellent like the cedars.
His mouth is most sweet; and he is altogether lovely.
This is my beloved, and this is my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem.
SONG OF SONGS 5:10–16
Because of their mystical understanding of these passages and, indeed, of the entire scroll, Rabbi Akiva and his followers taught that the Song of Songs was the holiest part of the scriptures. The similarity between the form of God that Akiva saw on his inner journey and the description of God in the Song of Songs reveals why he held this biblical text in such high esteem and why he and his followers used it in their mystic practice.142
Before a person could embark on the merkavah, he had to purify himself. He had to give up all types of negative behavior and be faithful to all the commandments laid out in the Bible and the Talmud. Rabbi Hai Gaon (939–1038) wrote of the prerequisites to attempting the merkavah practice, and of the required posture and concentration techniques.
You may perhaps know that many of the sages hold that when a man is worthy and blessed with certain qualities and he wishes to gaze at the heavenly chariot and the halls of the angels on high, he must follow certain exercises. He must fast for a number of days, he must place his head between his knees whispering softly to himself … certain praises of God with his face towards the ground. As a result he will gaze in the innermost recesses of his heart and it will seem as if he saw the seven halls with his own eyes, moving from hall to hall to observe that which is therein to be found.143
A disciple of Hai Gaon’s comments in his master’s name that through this practice, the mystics had a contemplative vision of the merkavah, in the innermost recesses or “chamber of their heart.” He says: “They did not ascend on high but rather in the chamber of their heart they saw and contemplated (ro’in ve-tsofin be-hadre libban) like a person who sees and contemplates something clearly with his eyes, and they heard and spoke with a seeing eye (eyn ha-sokheh) by means of the holy spirit.”144 In other words, according to Hai Gaon, these early mystics took their attention, their mind, to their “seeing eye” – what in modern times is sometimes is called the “third eye” – and penetrated within themselves to a higher state of consciousness where they would have the mystic vision.
The texts tell us that they figuratively “ascended” or “descended” to the spiritual regions on a chariot made of glorious lights, colors, sounds, music, and other heavenly, nonphysical creatures. Scholars don’t know why it was often called a descent – perhaps out of humility, because the practitioner prepared himself for God’s effulgence to flow down to him, rather than him ascending to God’s level, which was perceived as arrogance.* The traveler would traverse several realms, called palaces or sanctuaries (heikhalot), until he reached the highest level, the throne region. Sometimes the chariot itself would become the throne, on which the vision of God’s “being” or presence would appear. As the chariot journey is also the journey within oneself in contemplation in the “innermost recesses of the heart,” so the throne becomes the seat of one’s soul.
As the meditator advanced, he would meet various angels, some of whom were gatekeepers to the various stages. He would repeat certain words or formulae or names of God, or give them a “seal” to gain entry to those realms. The commentator Rashi (eleventh century) says that they “ascended to heaven by means of a divine name,” i.e., by using name techniques.145
On the throne would be seated either God himself or one of the angels. During the journey the meditator would be taken upwards while hearing the beautiful music of the angels singing hymns of praise to God. In some accounts, it was the prayers of the Jews that were ascending to God. One of the hymns the mystic would hear was the biblical passage from Isaiah’s vision of God seated on his heavenly throne, surrounded by angels singing, “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is filled with his glory” (Isaiah 6:3). The passage may have been repeated by the mystics in a mantra-like fashion during their meditation.
In these visions, God would be seated on his throne and the angels would place the crown on His head. The crown was made of the hymns of praise sung by the angels and the prayers that ascend to God. This is a poetic metaphor for the transformation of audible sound and music (prayer and hymns) into the inner divine music or sound through spiritual transport to the level of the holy spirit. Mystics of non-Judaic traditions have also called this inner, nonsensory sound the unstruck music, music of the spheres, and audible life stream. Some Jewish mystics also describe the crown as being made of the actual names of God, or the letters of the names. This alludes to Jewish meditation practices of concentrating on letters and names of God, which were believed to ascend to the divine realms where they adorn the Lord.
In some accounts the crown takes on more importance than the angels. It gets larger and larger as it ascends to the highest throne region, becoming alive, as it were. The augmentation of the crown relates to the belief in the theurgic effect of the prayers on the deity itself – as if the prayers of the human beings, or repetition of the divine names, has the power to augment the divine power or deity itself. The knowledge of God that the mystic would gain in his vision of God enthroned and crowned is often called the secret of divinity (sod ha-elohut).
The Greater Heikhalot (Heikhalot rabbati) is the most important document of the heikhalot and merkavah mysticism, and was probably written in the sixth century by an anonymous mystic who used the character of Rabbi Ishmael to describe his inner experiences. Ishmael lived in the second century ce and was one of the early rabbis who wrote the Mishnah.
Said Rabbi Ishmael: What song should be sung by one who desires to contemplate the mysteries of the chariot, to enter upon it in peace and return in peace?
The greatest of his rewards is that it brings him into the celestial chambers and places him before the divine throne and he becomes knowledgeable of all future events in the world: who will be thrust down and who will be raised up, who will be weakened and who will be strengthened, who will be impoverished and who will be made affluent, on whom will be decreed death and on whom life, from whom will be taken away an inheritance and to whom will be given an inheritance, who will be endowed with Torah and who with wisdom.146
In another passage from the Greater Heikhalot, when Rabbi Ishmael takes his attention into a meditative state, an angel shows him a vision of the great sufferings that will befall the Jewish people as a result of the Roman persecutions of the Jews. He is very disturbed, but then another angel tells him of the ultimate deliverance by a messiah symbolized as King David.
I said to him: Noble, heavenly majesty, perhaps there is no longer hope for the Jews? He answered me: My friend, come and I will take you to the hidden chambers of consolation and deliverance. He took me into the hidden chambers of consolation and deliverance and I saw groups of angels weaving robes of deliverance and making crowns and setting in them precious stones, and pounding all kinds of spices and preparing wines for the righteous in the hereafter.
I saw one crown especially distinguished; the sun and the moon and twelve constellations were set in it. I said to him: Noble, heavenly majesty, for whom is this special crown? He said to me: It is for David, king of Israel. I said to him: Noble, heavenly majesty, show me the honor due to David. He said to me: Wait, my friend, three hours, until David, king of Israel, enters, and you will see him in his glory.147
Rabbi Ishmael sees the inner light, which he describes as streaks of flashing light; then he sees various types of angels or beings (ofanim or wheels, serafim or angels, and the holy hayot or creatures). In eloquent poetic phrasing he talks of the inner lights as the treasure houses where snow is stored, as clouds of glory, as the stars, as flaming fire, as stormy sound, and so forth. Ultimately he sees David wearing the most beautiful radiant crown, signifying the divine light emanating from him. David sits on the fiery throne facing the throne of God.
After David entered the heavenly Temple he found a fiery throne set for him, forty miles long in height and twice the length and twice the width. David seated himself on the throne facing the divine throne, all the kings of the house of David sat before him, and all the kings of the kingdom of Israel sat behind him. Then David stood up and chanted songs in praise of God, the like of which no one in the world ever heard before. When David began and said: “The Lord will reign forever,” the chief angel Metatron and his angelic host responded: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts,” The hayot offered praise saying: “Praised be the Lord from His place.” The heavens recited: “The Lord will reign forever.” The earth chanted: “The Lord is King, the Lord was King.” All the kings of the house of David joined in the chant: “The Lord will be King throughout the earth.”
Said Rabbi Ishmael: When I came and disclosed all this from the proceedings from the throne of glory, all my colleagues rejoiced and arranged a day of celebration.148
The mystic uses the image of angels singing in unison and answering one another to express the beauty of the sound to be heard within. The angelic singing mimics the sound of the Levites and priests singing hymns of praise to God in the Temple.
In another chapter, the question is asked: What is the secret of the merkavah?
What is it like [to know the secret of merkavah]? It is like having a ladder in one’s house [and being able to go up and down at will]. This is possible for anyone who is purged and pure of idolatry, sexual offenses, bloodshed, slander, vain oaths, profanation of the Name, impertinence, and unjustified enmity, and who keeps every positive and negative [biblical] commandment.
Rabbi Ishmael said: Rabbi Nehuniah ben ha-Kanah said to me: son of the Proud Ones, happy is he and happy is the soul of everyone who is purged and pure of those eight vices, for Totarkhiel-YHWH, and Surya his servant despise them.149
These are the eight prerequisites before one can take the merkavah journey, which is likened to climbing a ladder. Rabbi Nehuniah (who was an early rabbi in the mishnaic times) plays a major role in the Greater Heikhalot as the guide of Rabbi Ishmael. He also figures in some later mystical texts, so he may have been a renowned mystic of antiquity. The angels mentioned are Totarkhiel-YHWH, who is considered the chief angel and has YHWH, the most holy name of God, attached to him, and Surya, who is called the angel of the divine presence. Rabbi Ishmael expresses dismay, as no one is free of all these vices. Rabbi Nehuniah gives him a way out, by which the mystics can still experience the secrets of the supernal realms and the creation.
He then said to me:… Go and bring before me all the courageous members of the group [havura] and all the mighty ones of the academy [yeshiva] so that I may recite in their presence the secrets and mysteries which have been suppressed, [the] wonders and the weaving of the tractate upon which the betterment of the world, the setting [of the world] on its path, and the beautification of heaven and earth depend, for all the ends of the earth and the universe and the ends of the upper heavens are bound, sewn, and connected, dependent upon it [the secret knowledge]. And the path of the heavenly ladder whose one end is on earth and whose other end is in heaven at the right foot of the Throne of Glory [depends on it too].150
The mystics would often practice their meditation in a group, called a havura, a pattern to continue through the entire trajectory of Jewish mystical practice for many centuries. The next passage describes them coming together as Rabbi Nehuniah explains the process of the merkavah ascent and descent.
Then, the [following men] came: Rabban Simon ben Gamaliel, Rabbi Eliezer the Great, Rabbi Elazar ben Damah, Rabbi Eliezer ben Shamua, Rabbi Yohanan ben Dahavai, Hananya ben Chanichai, Jonathan ben Uzziel, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Judah ben Baba. We [all] came and sat before him while the mass of companions [haverim] stood on their feet, for they saw that globes of fire and torches of light formed a barrier between them and us. Rabbi Nehuniah ben ha-Kanah sat and set in order for them [the whole group] all the matters of the merkavah: the descent to it and the ascent, how to descend, who should descend, how to ascend, and who should ascend.151
Rabbi Ishmael then travels through the various palaces, or heikhalot, finally reaching the seventh palace. In each palace he shows his seals to the guards at the gate. At the seventh palace he has to show his great seal and the “awesome crown” to the terrifying guards. The guards
then conduct him before the Throne of Glory. They bring before him all types of music and song, and they make music and a parade before him until they raise him and seat him near the cherubim, near the wheels [ofanim], and near the holy hayot. He sees wonders and powers, majesty and greatness, holiness and purity, terror and meekness and righteousness, at the same time.
Rabbi Ishmael said: All the haverim [initiates] liken this to a man who has a ladder in the middle of his house, who ascends and descends on it and there is no creature who stops him. Blessed are you, Lord, God who knows all secrets and is the Lord of hidden things. Amen. Amen.152
We then read the overwhelming description of the initiate’s experience at the seventh palace. The image of the brilliance of the light from the eyes of the holy hayot might be a symbolic way of describing the darting light that he seeks, like flashes of lightning.
As soon as that man [the initiate] entreats to descend to the merkavah, Anaphiel the prince opens the doors of the seventh palace and that man enters and stands on the threshold of the gate of the seventh palace and the holy hayot lift him up. Five hundred and twelve eyes, and each and every eye of the eyes of the holy hayot is hollow like the holes in a sieve woven of branches. These eyes appear like lightning, and they dart to and fro. In addition, there are the eyes of the cherubim of might and the wheels of the Shekhinah, which are similar to torches of light and the flames of burning coals.
This man then trembles, shakes, moves to and fro, panics, is terrified, faints, and collapses backwards. Anaphiel, the prince, and sixty-three watchmen of the seven gates of the palace support him, and they all help him and say: “Do not fear, son of the beloved seed. Enter and see the King in His magnificence. You will not be slaughtered and you will not be burnt.”153
He bursts forth in a hymn of praise, which is an acrostic with a hypnotic rhythm. It brings him into a trance-like state. Possibly this duplicates one of the repetition practices that created the concentration needed to raise one’s consciousness on entering the inner realms. The hymn is an endless repetition of praises for God as king.
Illustrious King, glorious King, masterful King, blessed King, chosen King, luminescent King, distinguished King, heroic King, sublime King, omniscient King, remarkable King, disciplining King, splendiferous King, majestic King, affluent King, eternal King, aristocratic King, infinite King, memorable King, worthy King, radiating King, living King merciful King, pious King, valuable King, chaste King, righteous King, esteemed King, redeeming King, astounding King, adorned King, worshiped King, sympathetic King, commanding King, fervent King, comprehending King, possessing King, prosperous King, gilded King, faithful King, resplendent King, secretive King, wise King, modest King, benevolent King, patient King, embellished King, rescuing King, virtuous King, joyous King, radiant King, sanctified King, esoteric King, commended King, revered King, compassionate King, moderate King, attentive King, tranquil King, serene King, ornamented King, perfect King, supportive King. Blessed be He.
They give him strength. Immediately, they blow a trumpet from “above the vault which is over the heads of the hayot” (Ezekiel 1:25). And the holy hayot cover their faces and the cherubim and the wheels turn their faces away and he stands erect, turns, and poses himself before the Throne of Glory.154
God is a “king adorned and ornamented with embroidery of hymns.” The description of the angels’ chants that follows, and the love and devotion that inspires them to chant these hymns, appear to be an attempt to describe in words the great glory and awesomeness of the experience of God’s ineffable presence. The chants are probably meant to mimic the spiritual music heard within. Possibly, these were also encrypted phrases which were used in the meditation practices. The text of the Heikhalot rabbati could have been used as a manual for meditation as well as a description of the inner journey. We will give another example of these hymns of praise.
As soon as he stands before the Throne of Glory, he begins to chant the hymn that the Throne of Glory recites every day: a prayer, laud, song, blessing, praise, extolment, exultation, appreciation, acknowledgment, victory, melody, meditation, homage, joyfulness, celebration, rejoicing, worship, gracefulness, modesty, luster, magnification, faithfulness, righteousness; virtuous, treasured, decorated, valorous, jubilant, elated, superior, contented, restful, consoled, tranquil, serene, peaceful, benevolent, invincible, valued, compelling, compassionate, graceful, magnanimous, elegant, embellished, adored, revered, merciful, luminescent, resplendent, privileged, brilliant, phenomenal, crowned, glittering, far-reaching, distressed, miraculous, liberating, redolent, illuminating, royal, remedying, daring, dynamic, grandiose, precious, powerful, commanding, valiant, pleasurable, majestic, splendorous, courageous, heroic, sanctified, chaste, pure, proud, eminent, magnificent, royally dignified; honor and splendor to Harariel-YHWH, Lord of Israel, a King who is adorned and ornamented with embroidery of hymns, the One who is beautified in splendor, esteemed in glory, reverence, and beauty, abundant in majesty, an awesome crown whose name is sweet to Him and whose memory is pleasing, and a beautiful crown. To Him they give thanks. He is exquisite, and His palace glorifies Him. His attendants sing pleasingly to Him, and the righteous [sing pleasingly] of His power and wonders:
King of the king of kings, God of Gods, and Lord of Lords,
Who is surrounded with chains of crowns,
Who is encompassed by the cluster of the rulers of radiance,
Who covers the heavens with the wing of His magnificence,
And in His majesty appeared from the heights,
From His beauty the deeps are kindled,
And from His stature the heavens are sparked.
His stature sends out the lofty,
And His crown blazes out the mighty,
And His garment flows with the precious.
And all trees shall rejoice in His word,
And herbs shall exult in His rejoicing,
And His words shall drop as perfumes,
Flowing forth in flames of fire,
Giving joy to those who search them,
And quiet to those who fulfill them.155
More and more poetic descriptions of God’s love and greatness and perfection follow. It is a shame we cannot include them here, but these quotations give a good example of the kind of mystic practice this havura of rabbis were engaged in.
The Nag Hammadi scrolls discovered in a cave in Egypt in 1945 reveal that there were some mutual influences and borrowings between merkavah mysticism and ancient gnosticism. But it is not known if the mystics themselves ever met. The fear of gnostic “heresies” among the Christians gave the impetus for suppression of mystic practices in Christianity, and it is thought that the same atmosphere of suppression and secrecy also affected the Jewish attitudes to these mystical practices. Gershom Scholem, considered the greatest Jewish scholar of mysticism in the twentieth century, explains why an atmosphere of secrecy prevailed:
We are dealing with organized groups which foster and hand down a certain tradition: with a school of mystics who are not prepared to reveal their secret knowledge, their “Gnosis,” to the public. Too great was the danger, in this period of ubiquitous Jewish and Christian heresies, that mystical speculation based on private religious experience would come into conflict with that “rabbinical” Judaism which was rapidly crystallizing during the same epoch. The Greater Heikhalot show in many and often highly interesting details that their anonymous authors were anxious to develop their Gnosis within the framework of halakhic [legal] Judaism, notwithstanding its partial incompatibility with the new religious spirit; the original religious impulses active in these circles came, after all, from sources quite different from those of orthodox Judaism.156
However, the teachings did spread, through the travel of people and manuscripts. It is known that copies of the heikhalot texts and merkavah mystics’ writings were brought from Babylonia to Italy and Germany in the eighth and ninth centuries, where they would inspire other lineages of Jewish mystics.
The Sefer yetsirah
Sefer yetsirah (The Book of Formation) is one of the most
important works of Jewish mysticism, though it is very short and cryptic
– only two thousand words in all. It was probably written in the first
or second century ce (though some scholars date it as late as the ninth
century) by an anonymous Jewish mystic who wanted to present a mystical
alternative to the Genesis story of creation. He also gives the
conceptual rationale behind the use of letters and names in mystic
ascent.
The author explains that the creation took place through thirty-two paths, which are made of the ten numbers and twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, all of which derive from Wisdom, which is the primal inexpressible name, word, or utterance. It is this spirit which alone permeates all the worlds of the creation and gives them life. These are also the paths through which one can return to God and attain divine union and knowledge. They link the divine with the human and the human to the divine. Sometimes this is explained as the flow of the divine energy from Nothing (ayin, beyond substance, spirit) to Being (yesh, substance, physical being); the reverse of the flow is the mystic’s ascent from the level of Being to Nothing.
With thirty-two mystical paths of Wisdom engraved Yah*
the Lord of Hosts
the God of Israel
the living God
King of the universe
El Shaddai
Merciful and Gracious
High and Exalted
Dwelling in eternity
Whose name is Holy –
He is lofty and holy –
And he created His universe
With three books [sefarim], namely:
with text [sefer]
with number [sefar/cipher]
and with narrative/communication [sippur].157
Through a play on words with the Hebrew root s-f-r he states that the Lord created the universe through three “books” or dimensions: letters, numbers, and narrative. Narrative suggests the flow or immanence of the divine will in the creation, as in the passage from Psalms, “And the heavens declare (mesaprim) the glory of God” (19:2). Also implied are other aspects of meaning of s-f-r: spheres or dimensions, and the luminosity of sapphire (sapir), used in the Bible to convey the sense of spiritual light.
Twenty-two foundation Letters:
He engraved them, He carved them,
He permuted them, He weighed them,
He transformed them,
And with them, He depicted all that was formed
and all that would be formed.158He [God] made a covenant [with Abraham]
between the ten fingers of his hands,
And this is the holy tongue [the Hebrew language].
He bound the twenty-two letters on his tongue,
And the Blessed Holy One revealed to him their mystery:
He drew them in water,
ignited them with fire,
agitated them with breath,
burned them with the seven planets,
and directed them with the twelve constellations
[the signs of the zodiac].159
The Hebrew alphabet and numerals were understood as having a divine source. Each letter has its counterpart on a spiritual plane; the physical letter is a hint to a particular spiritual vibration. Therefore, human language is a lower reflection of the abstract divine “language,” speech, or utterance through which the creation took place. (“And God said, Let there be light,” as Genesis 1:3 states, for example.) The Hebrew alphabet that we can see or speak conceals, and hints at, a higher spiritual form of those letters and numbers. In this cryptic fashion, the Sefer yetsirah explains the divine source of language: that each letter and number in its spiritual, nonmaterial “form” is related to human language.*
What is powerful and important is that through this symbolism the author is not only describing how the divine being brought forth the creation through his “utterance” of the spiritual or causal (archetypal) letters or sounds. He is also informing us that the physical letters provide a connection to the higher reality and can provide a path leading back to it. By meditating on the letters or syllables made from the letters it was believed that one could connect with the higher vibration or spiritual source of the letters. The deconstruction of the names into their component letters was a way of rising beyond meaning, beyond physical language.
Later, the Ba’al Shem Tov, first of the hasidic masters in the eighteenth century, taught that “in each and every letter there are worlds and souls and divinity,” and that one needs to create an opening or a window in the physical letters through which the spiritual light may shine and allow one to reach the spiritual.160
The rabbis engaged in these methods to ascend from physical language to the spiritual realm, deconstructing and recombining the letters of various names of God, and meditating on the combinations and permutations. Through these techniques, they would achieve concentration and experience various degrees of mystic transport, as we saw with the merkavah mystics.
In terms that seem a direct continuation of the Sefer yetsirah but written nineteen centuries later, another hasidic master, Meshulam Feibush of Zbarazh, also writes of the connection and relation between the letter techniques of the mystics and the creative power of God:
When a human being recalls the letters he shakes the upper vitality. And when he wholeheartedly cleaves in his mind to the Name, blessed be He, he reanimates the vitality that has been emanating from the highest Thought until it is ready to be spoken and put in the mouth of the human, and through the words of the prayer he yearns for the name, blessed be He, and by it he blows the letters back up to their source.161
Sefer yetsirah contributed to the development of a mystical vocabulary and terminology that would have a profound impact on later generations. The term sefirot in all its meanings became the cornerstone of kabbalistic symbolism. The teachings of later mystics were often presented in the form of commentaries on the Sefer yetsirah.