Notes on Editions of Sefer Yetzirah in English

societasmagica.org

From the book: The Tree and the Tarot (published with Dreams and Divinities), 2024

The Sefer Yetzirah is the oldest Hebrew Esoteric text. Its impact on the European occult in particular the Tarot, is undeniable.

As far as my memory reaches I remembered to have interpreted the EΓΩ-pronoun as a core of a name for the PIE-sky-god DYAUS. In the Provencal language the personal pronoun of the first person singular is IÉU, which may be located inside the sky-god's word DIÉUS. The Provencal language may have inherited this concept from a common idea, which is found in Saadia Gaon's detailed comments on the Sefer Yetzirah, which describes the 5 categories in the alphabetic structures. Four versions (“Saadia”, “short”, “long”, “Gra”) of the Sepher Yetzirah are translated in English in Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation in Theory and Practice by the author: Aryeh Kaplan, whose detailed interpretations explain various linguistic mechanisms.

The medieval expression of Jewish esotericism known as Kabbalah is distinguished by its imaging of the divine as ten hypostatic sefirot that structure the Godhead and generate the cosmos. Since Gershom Scholem, the preeminent twentieth-century scholar of Kabbalah, declared the term sefirah (sg.) as deriving from "sapphire"pointedly rejecting its connection to the Greek σφαῖρα-scholars have paid scant attention to the profound indebtedness of the visual and verbal lexicon of the kabbalists to the Greco-Arabic scientific tradition. The present paper seeks to redress this neglect through an examination of the appropriation of the diagrammaticiconographical and rhetorical languages of astronomy and natural philosophy in medieval and early modern kabbalistic discourse. This study will place particular emphasis on the adoption-adaptation and ontologization of the dominant schemata of these most prestigious fields of medieval science by classical kabbalists, what it reveals about their self-understanding, and how it contributed to the perception of Kabbalah as a "divine science" well into the early modern period.

The Sefer Yetzirah ("Book of Creation" or "Book of Formation") is the most ancient, mystic, systematic and speculative Jewish text. Due to its enigmatic nature, complexity, the use of an obscure and cryptic language, in addition to its brevity (less than 2000 words in its longest version), the Seref Yetzirah throughout history has been interpreted and perceived in many different ways. 1 As far as its origins are concerned, the text presents Babylonian elements when discusses through the mystic use of letters and numbers. At the same time, the concepts of the creation of the various sounds is derived from ancient Egypt and the division of the letters into three classes of vowels can be traced back to the Hellenistic culture. 2 According to some scholars such as Bacher and Zunz, the Yetzirah has been written around the VIII century during the geonim era. 3 However, due to the linguistic and conceptual nature of the book, Sholem states that its main part must have been written between the III and the VI century. Nowadays we have two different versions of the Yeztirah: a short one, the Sefer Yetzirah itself and a longest version that sometimes is being published as an appendix to the text. Both versions already existed in the X century and in both of them the book is divided in six different chapters of mishnayot or halakhot 4 which, in turn, are composed of dogmatic statements made by the author. Few Biblical verses are being quoted in the text. The main focus of the Sefer Yetzirah pivots on cosmology and cosmogony with an exceptional mystical character. The book highlights a strong connection to the Jewish speculative thinking concerning the Divine Knowledge (hokhmah) that created the world by means of "32 secret ways of knowledge": "Ten are the numbers, as are the Sephiroth, and twenty-two the letters, these are the Foundation of all interpret the book, such as Eleazar of Worms, Moses b. Jacob Cordovero, Isaac Luria, Elijah b. Solomon of Wilna, Isaac Ḥaber, Gershon Enoch b. Jacob, among the others. 12

Harvard Theological Review, 2020

The medieval expression of Jewish esotericism known as Kabbalah is distinguished by its imaging of the divine as ten hypostatic sefirot that structure the Godhead and generate the cosmos. Since Gershom Scholem, the preeminent twentieth-century scholar of Kabbalah, declared the term sefirah (sg.) as deriving from “sapphire”—pointedly rejecting its connection to the Greek σφαῖρα—scholars have paid scant attention to the profound indebtedness of the visual and verbal lexicon of the kabbalists to the Greco-Arabic scientific tradition. The present paper seeks to redress this neglect through an examination of the appropriation of the diagrammatic-iconographical and rhetorical languages of astronomy and natural philosophy in medieval and early modern kabbalistic discourse. This study will place particular emphasis on the adoption-adaptation and ontologization of the dominant schemata of these most prestigious fields of medieval science by classical kabbalists, what it reveals about their s...

Jacques Gaffarel between Magic and Science, edited by Hiro Hirai, 2014

Jacques Gaffarel is best known for his Curiositez inouyes in which he discusses Persian talismans, the horoscopes of the Patriarchs and the reading of the stars. The first part defends « Oriental » religion and philosophy, focusing on ancient Hebrew traditions in particular, the second considers Persian talismans in relation to natural and astral magic, the third part discusses the « horoscope of the patriarchs» or astrology of the ancient Jews, and the final, fourth part concerns itself with how to read the stars and other heavenly phenomena. Gaffarel discusses the origins of these various traditions and argues that they are neither diabolical, nor hostile to Christianity. In the introduction to Curiositez, Gaffarel justifies his choice of the book’s title by reminding his reader that the curiosities he is discussing, obscure even to their originators, the Jews, are indeed « unheard of » by most Christians, due to their ignorance of the Hebrew language. During the course of these discussions Gaffarel displays his personal knowledge of Hebrew and with it an interest in a doctrine that was a relative newcomer to the Christian West, the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah. This, too, is discussed under the assumption that it is in no way hostile to Christianity, indeed it is presented as a subject that can only serve to deepen a Christian’s knowledge of his own religion and guide him on the path to salvation. Further reading of Gaffarel’s publications reveals a protracted interest in the subject of « Oriental » Jewish Kabbalah and its more recent Occidental mutation, Christian Cabala, concerning which he has been recognised as one of the most prolific authors. This essay shall provide some evidence of the French scholar’s familiarity with the subject.