Hayyei ha-Nefesh · חיי הנפש

A treatise in three parts on thirty-six secrets of the Torah gathered from the Guide of the Perplexed, written, it says, to give life to the intellectual soul and to remove the evil opinions from the hearts of those who study the Guide; of each secret it writes only the heads and the roots. It takes its name, it says, because in it whoever truly wishes to attain the life of the soul will attain it; the same name belongs to the eighth secret of the first part, after which he named the whole work. The three parts, answering to the three parts of the Guide, are named after the three days called holy: the day of Mo'ed, fourteen secrets from image and likeness to the confusion of the religions; the day of Sabbath, twelve, from potentiality and actuality to prophecy; and the Day of Atonement, ten, from the secrets of the Torah to the worship of God from love, with which the Guide's author sealed his book and he seals his own. After the colophon the volume carries a second text, opening on the verse "a refining pot for silver and a furnace for gold", about a pupil who had of the sefirot nothing but their names.