Abraham Abulafia

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Abraham Abulafia's Light of Intellect
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Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia ( Hebrew ) (born אברהם בן שמואל אבולעפיה, 1240 Saragossa , Aragón ; died 1291/92 Barcelona , Aragón) was a Sephardic rabbi , philosopher and founder of the Prophetic Kabbalah, the "ecstatic" current in the Kabbalah . He is considered one of the most important mystics of the 13th century. In 1284 in Sicily, after studying the Sephiroth doctrine, letter mysticism and the interpretation of God's names , he announced that the messianic hope of his people had been fulfilled in him. This was sometimes interpreted as if Abulafia saw himself as the Messiah. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, one of the most important Kabbalists of the 20th century, rightly points out, however, that “when Abulafia speaks of himself as the anointed, he is implying that he is enlightening, not that he is the promised Messiah. (...) Abulafia has never tried to claim a messiah role for himself ”. Until recently, only a few of Abulafia's numerous writings were available in printed form; most of the manuscripts were locked away in libraries and private collections. It was not until the late 1990s that his complete works were published in the original Hebrew text. His prophetic book Sefer Ha-Ot ("The Book of Signs"), which was written on the small Mediterranean island of Comino , is one of the few that was published at an earlier point in time, and therefore his best-known to this day.

biography

Early years and travel

In a very early childhood Abraham was taken by his parents to Tudela (Navarra) , where his father Samuel Abulafia introduced him to the Tanakh and the Talmud . In 1258, when Abraham was 18 years old, his father died, and Abraham Abulafia started a restless wandering life two years later. His first journey in 1260 was to the Holy Land to search for the ten Lost Tribes of Israel on the Sambation River . Because of the chaos in the Holy Land after the last crusade , Abulafia only got as far as Akko , Syria and had to turn back via Greece because of the chaos of war there between the Mamluks and the Mongols . He decided to go to Rome , but made a short stopover in Capua , where in the early 1260s he turned to the study of philosophy with ardent zeal , including in particular the major philosophical work Guide of the Indecisive by the medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides under the guidance of the philosophizing theologian and Doctor Hillel ben Samuel .

Although he always held Maimonides in high regard and often quoted sentences from his works, he was just as unsatisfied with his philosophy as he was with philosophy as a whole. Abraham Abulafia was eloquent, able, and eager to teach others. He diligently wrote Kabbalistic, philosophical and grammatical documents and succeeded in surrounding himself with numerous students to whom he conveyed his enthusiasm.

On his return to Spain he became the subject of a precognition , began to study a special direction of Kabbalah in Barcelona at the age of 31 (most important representative Baruch Togarmi ) and received a revelation with messianic undertones. He immersed himself in the study of Sefer Jetzira ("Book of Creation") and its numerous commentaries, which explain the creation of the world and man based on the combination of Hebrew letters. This book, especially the commentary on the book and the method of the German-Jewish mystic Eleazar von Worms , had a great influence on him and had the effect of strengthening his mystical inclination. The letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the numbers, the vocalization - all of these became symbols of existence for him and their combination, permutation, addition or explanation for the enlightening power to delve further into the study of the interpretation of God's names, especially the Tetragrammaton . With such help and with observance of natural rites or ascetic practices, according to Abulafia, man can reach the highest goal of his being and become a prophet ; not in the sense of working miracles and omens, but in order to reach the highest degree of perception and to be able to intuitively penetrate the great world behind the obvious: the riddles of creation, the problems of human life, the purpose of the principles of life and the deeper meaning of the Torah .

He soon traveled to Castile , where he spread his Prophetic Kabbalah among people like Moses of Burgos and his most important disciple, Josef Gikatilla . Around 1275 he taught the main philosophical work of Maimonides Leader of the Undecided and his Prophetic Kabbalah in some cities in Greece . In Patras in 1279 he wrote the Sefer ha-Yashar , the first of his prophetic books. In the same year he made his way back to Capua via Trani , Italy , where he taught young philosophy students.

Trip to Rome

Following his inner voice, Abraham Abulafia traveled to Rome in 1280 in order to convert Nicholas III to Judaism on the day before the Jewish New Year celebrations of the Jewish year 5041 (see Jewish calendar ) . (Pope) to obtain. The Pope heard about it and couldn't believe his ears. He immediately had Abulafia arrested and ordered him to be burned at the stake as soon as he met Suriano b. Reached Rome. But a few days before the planned execution, Nicholas III died. and Abulafia was released after 28 days in the Franciscan Quorum. From then on he was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church and he was forced to flee all over the Mediterranean.

Refusal and exile on Comino

Comino Island near Malta

In Messina Abulafia remained active as a prophet and messiah from 1281 to 1291. He had some students there, just like in Palermo . The Jewish community of Palermo, however, vigorously condemned his behavior and passed the matter on to Solomon Adret in Barcelona around 1285 , who devoted his career very much to calming the messianic hysteria of their days. Adret then wrote a letter against Abulafia. This controversy was one of the main reasons for the exclusion of Abulafia's prophetic Kabbalah from the Spanish Kabbalah schools.

Abulafia had to gather his pilgrims again, and under terrifying conditions he wrote his Sefer Ha-Ot on the small island of Comino near Malta in 1285–1288 .

In 1290, he fled back to Spain. It was there in 1291 that he wrote his last (and perhaps the easiest to understand) work, the manual on meditation Imre Shefer . He then died in Barcelona in 1291 or 1292.

to teach

Works

Abulafia's works were all created during the years 1271–1291. These are books, essays on grammar, and poetry, only thirty of which have survived.

Abulafia's most important works are:

  • Sefer ha-Geulah, 1st Commentary on Leader of the Undecided , 1273
  • Sefer Chayei ha-Nefesh, 2nd Commentary on Leader of the Undecided
  • Sefer ha-Yashar ("Book of the Righteous"), 1279
  • Sefer Sitrei Torah, 3rd Commentary on Leaders of the Undecided, 1280
  • Chayei ha-Olam ha-Ba ("The future life of the world"), 1280
  • Or ha-Sekhel ("Light of the Intellect"), 1285
  • Get ha-shemot
  • Maftei'ach ha-Re'ayon
  • Gan Na'ul, 1st Commentary on Sefer Jetzira
  • Otzar Eden Ganuz (Closed Garden), 2nd Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, 1285–1286
  • Sefer ha-Cheshek
  • Sefer ha-Ot ("The Book of Signs"), 1285–1288
  • Sefer-Maftechot ha-Torah, 1289
  • Imrei Shefer ("Words of Beauty"), 1291

His prophetic books, which he wrote between 1279 (in Patras ) and 1288 (in Messina ) and in which he interprets the Apocalypse as a means of spiritual processes of inner redemption ( Tiqqun ), are of special importance for understanding his messianology . The spiritualized understanding of the concept of messianism and salvation as an intelligent development represents a major contribution of messianic ideas in Judaism. As part of his messianic inclination, Abulafia became a powerful promoter of Kabbalah, both through word of mouth and in writing, to convince Jews and Christians of it.

In his first essays Get ha-Shemot and Maftei'ach ha-Re'ayon , Abulafia describes a Kabbalah language type similar to the early works of Rabbi Josef Gikatilla . In his later works, the founder of the Prophetic Kabbalah creates a synthesis between Maimonides' neo-Aristotelian understanding of prophecy as a result of the transformation of intellectual inflows into linguistic messages and techniques to arrive at such experiences of letter combinations and their pronunciation, breathing exercises, thinking about human beings Body parts, head and hand movements, concentration exercises. Some techniques come from the commentaries of the Sefer Jetzirah of the German Jews . Abulafia called his Kabbalah The Kabbalah of Names because of the different names of God in Judaism ( YHWH , Elohim, Adonai etc.), which all exist as a way of gaining prophetic experience. He named the Prophetic Kabbalah as the ultimate goal of this path. In his writings expressions of what is known as the mystical union of man with the otherworldly intellect can be perceived. Far less concerned with the theosophy of contemporary Kabbalists who were interested in theories of the 10 hypostatic Sephiroth (some he described as worse than belief in the Trinity in Christianity), Abulafia represented the kingdom of the beyond, especially the cosmic Intellectus agens , in linguistic terms as Language and letters.

In his later books Abulafia elaborated on a system of 7 interpretive paths, which he sometimes uses in his commentary on the Torah, and which starts with the simple mind and culminates in the interpretations of the individual letters, the latter has come up with as a path to prophecy. Abulafia developed a sophisticated language theory, which assumes that Hebrew represents less of a language than all written or spoken world languages, but rather ideal sounds and combinations of these ideal sounds. Hebrew as the ideal language includes all other languages. Dante Alighieri is said to have influenced him in developing this theory of language . In his works he uses ancient Greek , Latin , Italian , Arabic , Tatar and Basque words for the purpose of gematria .

Abulafia's meditation techniques

In his numerous works, Abulafia focuses on complex procedures to unite with the intellectus agens by reciting God's names , breathing techniques and liberating practices. Some of the mystical ways of Abulafia were adapted by the German Jews . With the metaphysical and psychological system of Maimonides, Abulafia sought a spiritual experience that would put him in a prophetic state similar (or identical) to that of the Nevi'im , the first prophets of Israel, who are known through prophecy in the Tanakh .

Abulafia proposes a method based on an incentive that changes continuously. His intention is not to relax consciousness through meditation, but to relieve it through a high level concentration that requires doing many things at the same time. He uses Hebrew letters for this.

Abulafia's meditation technique includes the following steps:

  • 1. Preparation: The initiate relieves himself by fasting, wearing the tefillin (phylacteries) and putting on clean white clothing.
  • 2. The mystic writes down specific groups of letters and their permutations.
  • 3. Physiological maneuvers: The mystic sings the letters in conjunction with specific breathing patterns and moves his head in the process.
  • 4. Mental conception of letters and human forms: The mystic imagines a human form and himself without a body. Then the mystic mentally “draws” the letters, projects them onto the screen by means of his imaginary imagination and mentally imagines the structure of the letters. Then he rotates the letters and turns them, as Abulafia describes in Imrei Shefer :

"And they [the letters], with their forms, are called the Clear Mirror, for all the forms having brightness and strong radiance are included in them. And one who gazes at them in their forms will discover their secrets and speak to them, and they will speak to him. And they are like an image in which a man sees all his forms standing in front of him, and then he will be able to see all the general and specific things. "

- Abraham Abulafia : Imrei Shefer, 1291

During the last step of the mental imagery, the mystic passes through a series of four experiences:

  • 1. Experience = illumination, in which light not only surrounds the body, but also penetrates it. It lets the mystic feel that his body and its organs have become light.
  • 2. Experience = the weakening of the body in an 'absorptive' way.
  • 3. Experience = feeling of exaltation of thoughts and imagination.
  • 4. Experience = fear and tremors

Abulafia emphasizes that trembling is a fundamental and necessary step in arriving at prophecy. In another place he writes: Your whole body will begin to tremble and your limbs will begin to shake, and you will feel enormous fear [...] and the body will tremble, like the rider who chases a horse is happy and cheerful, while the horse trembles beneath him .

For Abulafia, fear is the preliminary stage of experiencing joy and pleasure. This feeling is the result of the perception of another 'spirit' in the midst of his body, as he describes in his comment Locked Garden :

"And you will feel a different spirit awakening in you, which strengthens you, runs through your whole body and gives you joy."

- Abraham Abulafia : Otzar Eden Ganuz (Locked Garden), commentary on Sefer Jetzirah

Only after passing through this successive experience does the mystic achieve his goal: the vision of a human form resembling his own physical appearance. It increases when the mystic gets the impression through autoscopy that he is stepping out of his body and looking down on himself ( out-of-body experience ) or seeing his body in front of him ( double experience ): Then the double begins to speak to the mystic, him to teach the unknown and reveal the future. Abraham Abulafia describes this experience in many of his works. But at first it is not clear who this 'human figure' is, which the mystic sees before him by virtue of his imagination. If the dialogue between the mystic and the 'figure' continues, the reader understands in Abulafias Sefer ha-Cheshek that the human figure appearing to the mystic is his mystical 'I'.

Significance for the Kabbalah schools, aftermath and honors

Abulafia's Kabbalah inspired a series of scriptures belonging to his Prophetic Kabbalah , works that show how to achieve extremely mystical experiences. The most important of them are:

  • the Sefer ha-Tzeruf by an anonymous author, translated into Latin by Pico .
  • the Sefer Ner Elohim and Sefer Shaarei Tzedek by Rabbi Nathan ben Saadiah Harar.

Abulafia's subterranean influence is evident in the large number of manuscripts of his great meditation handbooks, which flourished to our day until all of his works were finally published in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem during the 1990s. His prophetic and messianic ambitions provoked a violent reaction on the part of Solomon Adret , who successfully prevented the influence of the “ecstatic” Kabbalah Abulafia in Spain. In Italy, however, his works were translated into Latin and contributed substantially to the formation of the Christian Kabbalah . In the Middle East , the "ecstatic" Kabbalah was accepted without hesitation. Clear traces of the Abulafia doctrine are evident in the works of Isaac ben Samuel of Acre and Chaim Vital . In Israel, Abulafia's ideas were combined with Sufi elements, apparently from the Kabbalah school of Ibn ¡Arab∆ . In this way, Sufi views found their way into the European Kabbalah.

After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the theurgic Kabbalah mixed with the "ecstatic" Kabbalah. This combination became part of the mainstream within the Kabbalah schools through the book Pardes Rimonim by Moses Cordovero . Chaim Vital brought Abulafia's views on the fourth unpublished part of his Shaarei Qedushah and the eighteenth-century Kabbalists of the Bet-El -Academy near Jerusalem studied Abulafia's mystic manuals. Later, mystical and psychological Kabbalah concepts found their way to the Polish Hasidim and also played an important role in Frankism . In modern literature (e.g. the poems of Yvan Goll ) there are traces of the “ecstatic” Kabbalah, especially since the publication of Gershom Scholem's research .

In Myla Goldberg's novel Bee Season , the 11-year-old girl Eliza Naumann is initiated into the works and techniques of Abraham Abulafia by her father after surprising success in the spelling competition , filmed in a US drama with the same name in 2005 .

In Umberto Eco's novel The Foucault Pendulum , a PC called Abulafia is the central subject of the plot.

In Richard Zimler's international bestseller The Kabbalist of Lisbon (1997), the narrator and his spiritual mentor make it clear that they are following the practices of Abraham Abulafia.

Abulafia's life also inspired artists such as Moses Feinstein (not Moshe Feinstein !) And Nathaniel Tarn, as well as a game by George-Elie Bereby; in art, paintings by Abraham Pincas and sculptures by Bruria Finkel as well as some pieces of music.

criticism

One of his great goals was the unification of Judaism with Christianity and then with Islam . Abulafia propagated that man could gain access to his innermost being in ecstasy. He wanted to help a mystical knowledge method, the so-called "street of concepts", to break through. This discipline completed the "Road of the Sefiroth " and rounded it off.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Aryeh Kaplan: Meditation and Kabbalah, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-929588-10-2 , p. 69 f.
  2. Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia - founder of the Prophetic Kabbalah ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Joseph Dan: The Heart and the Fountain . An Anthology of Jewish Mystical Experiences, Oxford University Press 2003, p. 10.
  4. Ms. Paris BN 777, fol. 49.
  5. Sitrei Torah, Paris Ms. 774, fol. 158a.
  6. Otzar Eden Ganuz, Oxford Ms. 1580, fols. 163b-164a; or Hayei Haolam Haba, Oxford 1582, fol. 12a.
  7. Oxford Ms. 1580 fols. 163b-164a.
  8. Sefer ha-Cheshek. New York Ms. JTS 1801, fol. 9a; British Library Ms. 749, fols. 12a-12b.