The books of Rabbi Abraham Abulafia
אוצר עדן גנוזOtsar Eden Ganuz · אוצר עדן גנוז: A treatise in three parts of ten — Otsar, Eden and Ganuz — written, Abulafia says, to make wise those who fear the Name and think on His name alone, and completed in Messina for his student R. Saadia, as a memorial of what he had learned before him. He names it after its three parts. Otsar follows Sefer Yetsirah, from the ten sefirot to the twelve simple letters; Eden sets out the secret of intercalation — new moons and seasons, fixings and postponements, and the months, portions and festivals whose signs he builds on his own name, נתחדש על פי אברהם; Ganuz speaks of names, of the letters of the Explicit Name and the hidden names, up to the secret of the true action that changes the nature of the parts of creation by the power of speech. After the thirty parts he adds a seal within a seal, so that the book's parts make thirty-two paths of wondrous wisdom; there he tells who brought him this far, and the seven ways in which every verse is read.אור השכלOr ha-Sekhel · אור השכל: A treatise in ten parts, written at the request of two companions — R. Abraham the Maskil and R. Nathan the Discerning — to profit beginners in the contemplation of the Explicit Name and show them the way to its knowledge. It takes its title from the First Cause, the light of the intellect, which Abulafia calls the fencer of every breach; his first part carries that name. The ten parts climb from the fence of deeds and commandments through the secret of the holy tongue and the letters of creation, the divine names and the letters of the unique Name, the turning of the letters — permutation, substitution, weighing, gematria — and the pronouncing of the Name with its vowels, to the tenth, the form of prophecy: the attainment of the Active Intellect, and the influx that compels whoever receives it to speak and to write. The letters marking the ten parts spell the author's own name, which he sets out in the colophon: Abraham the Sefardi, son of Samuel Abulafia, may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing.איש אדםIsh Adam · איש אדם: A commentary on the book of Raziel that opens with the birth of Ish Adam to Maruya: at times an explanation "letter by letter, word by word", at times "the permutation of one word among the words", and at times a skipping of what is hinted before or after — in the book itself, in the one before it or the one after it. Ish Adam, it says, "is known to be Ashmedai permuted", and Raziel "is the one called Ish Adam"; the place names Raziel reversed it straightens for the reader — Qarsasta into Saraqusta, Nagura into Aragon — "for all the Torah and all speech is straight and reversed". The commentary follows the book in order: the four powers, of which the fourth "taught the ways of attainment and permuted the Name and revolved it"; Raziel's account of his seclusion and of the way he taught "in the knowledge of the Name"; and four verses whose initial letters spell mishpat reversed, with four circles — "truly the arrangement of the Explicit Name" — until Raziel returns "to the ways of prophecy" and "ends his book with the consolation of Israel and Jerusalem". At its close: "so we finish this book here and begin Sefer ha-Berit".אמרי שפרImrei Shefer · אמרי שפר: A treatise on the knowledge of the Explicit Name alone — its power, its workings and its properties, and that no other name has any share in it — written by an author who calls himself Zechariah, to revive, he says, the souls of the few who will understand it. He explains its name, Imrei Shefer, "goodly words": in it he sets a burning fire in the hearts of fools and kindles the hearts of the enlightened. He divides it into three discourses on the opinions of the sages of his generation, three gates on the opinion of the ancient sages of Israel, and three parts on what all the prophets hold; after them comes the general knowledge, the mainstay, he says, of the whole book: what the knowledge of the Name is and the reward and punishment for remembering and forgetting it, why man was created and why the Torah was given, then the ten sefirot in world, year and soul, and the ways of permuting the letters of Sefer Yetsirah — the way that brings the soul to prophecy. He writes, he says, in the year 51, after twenty-one years of composing books on this knowledge, among them Or ha-Sekhel, Gan Na'ul, Sefer ha-Hesheq and Pardes ha-Sefer.גט השמותGet ha-Shemot · גט השמות: A treatise on the names, whose whole intent is to warn those who hold books of names of the forgeries in their hands — not to believe them until they know what they rest on — and to confirm the true names. Since it puts the counterfeit names away it is called Get ha-Shemot, a bill of divorce of the names; its sign, gimel and tet, is the initials of its two opening verses, "Open my eyes, that I may behold" and "The law of thy mouth is better unto me", and at its close it adds a further secret of the name: the three souls of the lower beings and the nine spheres above. It first draws the form of the sensible world, treats the intelligible and the body and soul in brief, and then comes to the names it promised: the Explicit Name and its cognomen Adonai, the ten names that are not erased, the ten separate intellects, and the names of persons in the Torah. Even so, it warns the reader not to destroy a name whose meaning he does not know, since whoever destroys one of the holy names is punished for it.גן נעולGan Na'ul · גן נעול: A treatise Abulafia wrote to one he calls my son and my brother, who had asked him in writing for a commentary on Sefer Yetsirah and on the alphabets that issue from it. Since, he says, not everything can be explained in a book, he speaks with him in a few heads of chapters. After an introduction that opens on the verse "Wisdom crieth aloud in the streets", he hints at some traditions of Sefer Yetsirah and of the alphabets, under its two matters, the knowledge of the ten sefirot and of the twenty-two letters: the sefirot by their names, from Justice, nearest to man, to Thought, the supernal crown; engraving and hewing, weighing, substitution and permutation of the letters; the ten sefirot explained from the secrets of the ten plagues; the ways of the alphabets and the 231 gates; and the forty-two-letter Name that issues from Bereshit, "for in it is redemption", on which the book closes. Sefer Yetsirah, he says, he has already expounded in a commentary "a little long and much abridged", and he looks to the consolation of Zion in the year fifty.המלמדHa-Melammed · המלמד: A treatise in gates that follows the words of the Rav in the Guide of the Perplexed, citing its chapters, from the Explicit Name to the necessary, the possible and the impossible. The text opens in mid-sentence, its gates numbered from the twenty-sixth to the thirty-second; at its close it calls itself the treatise ha-Melammed and "the first part of the Priestly Blessing, called Melammed", and says it gave the reason for those names at the head of the book, which is not in the text. The gates pass from the madness of the amulet-writers and the rule that whoever is not versed in permutation does not know the Name, to the speech of God to the prophets, the tablets and the script, the four causes, riding, and eternity and creation, until the last gate completes the treatise and announces a second part. After its close a further discourse is appended, on the alphabet and on the attributes of mercy and judgement, which its writer says is copied from the words and books of his holy master.חותם ההפטרהHotam ha-Haftarah · חותם ההפטרה: A commentary on the Haftarah of Raziel ben Shalviel, followed by Hotam ha-Haftarah, the seal the author set for all the books to explain in it the excellence of the knowledge of the Explicit Name. The commentary says the book is not counted by number because it is called half a book, and that Haftarah is an external name for it: within, it is called only "this book," though it is included to be called Sefer ha-Besorah. It expounds the vision Raziel saw in the secrets of the Explicit Name, the Name of 216 letters; the seal opens with the secret of Elohim, the four forms of the Name and its vowels, surveys the Name permuted and hinted at in Sefer ha-Yashar, Sefer ha-Hayyim, Sefer Edut, Sefer ha-Berit, Sefer Ish Adam and Sefer ha-Melits, and ends with the arrangements of the five holy names that are not erased. At its close the author says he meant it to profit one perfect and excellent person, who to him is weighed against ten thousand thousand fools.חיי הנפשHayyei 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.חיי העולם הבאHayyei ha-Olam ha-Ba · חיי העולם הבא: A commentary on the Explicit Name, addressed to its reader as "my son", from which he is to understand all the ways of prophecy and the ways proper to master and disciple in permutation and in pronouncing. It is so called because its permuted Names win those who prophesy the life of the world to come; with the name goes "the secret of the number of the letters of Jerusalem", the ten arrangements of the seventy-two-letter Name turning within it. From the chain of the Names, the seventy-two-letter down to the four-letter Name, "the root and the principal", it turns first to the long Name: the fifty-four names from its four corners, its ten ways in circles, the three beginnings of the kabbalah — letters, permutation, vowel-points — and a key to the innermost chambers: the pronouncing of the Name with its vowels, breaths, movements of the head and limbs of the body, the circles of the supreme Name, and chapter headings of the forty-two-letter Name. The first letters of the poem at its head spell שם המפורש יהוה, the Explicit Name; those of the poem at its close, רזי חיי העולם הבא, the secrets of the life of the world to come.מפתח החכמותMafteah ha-Hokhmot · מפתח החכמות: The first of the five keys under which Abulafia gathers the secrets of the Torah, one for each of its five books — this one the key to Genesis. It was written at the request of seven sages of the isle of Sicily, in Messina and Palermo, and for two causes, divine and human: the nearness of the end-time, and the want of sages of the wisdom of kabbalah today. Each part is called a key, since his way is to hand over keys that open the locked gates; the five are the keys of the wisdoms, the names, the sacrifices, the sefirot and the rebukes. He first collects the general principles of the twelve portions of Genesis by their plain sense, sets a preface on the three ranks — the righteous, the pious and the prophets — and their three ways, the plain sense, the hidden philosophical way and the way of the names, which is the kabbalah, and then goes back over the portions by the way of wisdom and the way of kabbalah, in permutations and gematria. The seven ways, he says, he has already treated in Otsar Eden Ganuz and in his commentary on Sefer Yetsirah, and at the close he also calls the book Sefer ha-Hokhmot.מפתח הספירותMafteah ha-Sefirot · מפתח הספירות: The fourth of five books — the fourth Humash, as it calls itself — running from parashat Bemidbar Sinai to Mas'ei, and composed, Abulafia says, for nothing but to reveal the ways of attaining prophecy. It explains its name: a hearer will think there is nothing of the sefirot in it, but when their secret is disclosed he will see that this comprehensive name suited most of its contents — for those numbered in the census, as the third book had already hinted, are sefirot. It opens with the preliminaries promised in the book Vayikra: three foundations — the creation of the world, the existence of the Torah and the essence of the Names — and the view of two sects on the sefirot against his own, which follows his received tradition and is the faith of the third sect. At parashat Hukkat he grants that the secret of the red heifer he will not write but only hint at; the book before this one he calls the Book of Sacrifices, and he promises to say more at the head of the next.מפתח הרעיוןMafteah ha-Ra'ayon · מפתח הרעיון: A treatise Abulafia says he composed "to give life through it to the souls of those who seek wisdom", gathering in it "the whole of speech" and what it needs of Sefer Yetsirah. He calls it Mafteah ha-Ra'ayon, the key of thought, "for by it the sealed thoughts are opened", and the initials of the poem at its head read "the whole of speech, by Abraham son of R. Samuel, called Abulafia". It shows a way to tell the necessary, the possible and the impossible apart in the soul's attainment, by kabbalah and by inquiry; passes to the secret of language — name, word and action; the twenty-two letters and five vowels; the secret of the unique Name and its letters yod, he, vav as depth, breadth and length — and draws the shapes of the twenty-two letters from alef to tav, each with its name and number. Last it takes up the matter "for whose sake I prefaced all the shapes" — that the letter-forms of the nations are not prophetic — and the text stops after its first lines.מפתח השמותMafteah ha-Shemot · מפתח השמות: The second of the five keys, on the book of Exodus, composed, Abulafia says, for none but those who would prophesy. Its name is given where he reaches the seventy-two-letter Name: that, he says, is the key after which he called this second Humash the Key of the Names, in which are the keys of the Name. It follows the portions of Exodus but dwells on four: at Shemot, intention, will and choice as the beginning of prophecy, the revealed and the hidden names, and the twenty-two-, forty-two- and seventy-two-letter Names; at Vaera, Bo and Beshalah, the plagues and the pronouncing of the Name with its breathings; the seven remaining it gathers together and shortens, its intention, he says, being to wake the hearts of the sleeping. He grants that readers may take this book and those after it for compositions rather than commentaries, and says he would not have completed the remaining four had the seven he called the seven lamps not entreated him by letter; the next he calls Mafteah ha-Korbanot, and at its close his words break off.מפתח התוכחותMafteah ha-Tokhahot · מפתח התוכחות: A commentary on the fifth book of the Torah, Mishneh Torah (Deuteronomy), the fifth of the keys its author wrote on the five books, composed, it says, not to set out the plain sense of the commandments but to rouse the reader to a few matters from the secrets of the Torah and the reasons of the commandments. It explains its name at the opening: he called it the Key of the Reproofs because Moses began the book with reproofs and ended with them. It follows the portions from Eleh ha-Devarim to Ve-Zot ha-Berakhah, dwells on prophecy longer than on anything else in it, and ends by joining the first verse of the Torah to its last. Having finished the fifth book and with it the whole Pentateuch, it closes with what it calls a thread, petil, on which to hang all five keys, handed to the seven companions who, it says, were the cause of the work; the five books, it adds, were written by the way of the ten sefirot, and it has abridged the way that cannot be written down but only passed on by mouth.מצרף השכלMatsref ha-Sekhel · מצרף השכל: The author's preface to his commentary on the seven prophetic books of his master Raziel, written, he says, after a dream commanded him to expound them by their hidden sense and not by the plain way at all. The author, who calls himself Abubrahim the Small, counts six whole books — Sefer Melits, Sefer Ish Adam, Sefer ha-Berit ha-Hadashah, Sefer ha-Edut, Sefer Hayyim and Sefer ha-Yashar — and one called "Haftarah", half a book, and names his commentary Matsref ha-Sekhel, the crucible of the intellect, "whose secret is the dwelling of the intellect"; it was not composed, he says, for anyone not refined in it. The preface hints briefly at the secret of the life of the world to come as he believes it, and distinguishes three kinds of commentary — the corporeal, the mixed and the spiritual — answering to three sects, and what is unlike any of the three: the secrets of the Names, which no book can explain, only hint at. He sets it as a key to every book in the divine and human sciences, and passes from it to the commentary on the first book, Sefer Melits.נר אלהיםNer Elohim · נר אלהים: A book in heads of chapters on "the hidden things of speech" and the rolling of the letters, written by its author for a reader he calls "my son"; its intent, in its own words, is "to hint the way proper to reading, for the knowledge of the rolling on which all our intent rests, and after it the secret of the commandments". It calls itself Ner Elohim, and the verse of its name — "the lamp of God is the soul of man" — stands at its head and returns in the second rolling of the vowels as the sign of נ"ר. From the secret of the priestly blessing it passes to the letters by their places in the mouth, to the vowels and to the melody, and from these to the rolling of the letters with the four-letter Name, which it calls "the root of all formation"; after them the secret of all the commandments and the secret of circumcision, "a foundation for all the commandments", and last the hints of Sefer Yetsirah — which it says at its close it did not mean to explain, but to make known how its author hinted in it the way a man is bound to walk when he wishes to follow after the attainment of God.ספר האותSefer ha-Ot · ספר האות: A small book, written by an author who names himself Zechariah at the Lord's command — "write for yourself this book, which disputes the thoughts of the sages of Israel who boast" — to reveal in it the great secret of the Name, and sent to Sefarad. Its name is given in the vision that closes it, when an old man seated on a throne of judgment commands, "write what you have seen in a book and call its name Sefer ha-Ot"; the sign is sealed in blood and ink on the forehead of a man from the west. The book opens with twenty-two sentences in the order of the alphabet in which the author swears by the Name, writes out the great and terrible Name explicitly, tells of Zechariah the herald sent to his people, bears witness to the war in the heart between the blood and the ink, and closes with the vision of three warriors who are three kings. The author also calls himself Berakhyahu son of Shalviel, and the old man, whose name is Yehoel, names him Roiel the seer; the book was sent, it says, "in the year 48".ספר הבריתSefer ha-Berit · ספר הברית: A commentary on Raziel's Sefer ha-Berit ha-Hadashah, greatly abridged, its author says, and comprised in the verse yimlokh — the last of the three forms of the song — which is the aim of all the intentions. His intention in it is to permute more permutations than in the other books, because the book is entirely full of permutations; and the author is not the commentator, though his name is as the name of his master — "and there is no doubt that if he is I, I too am he." From the verse he draws the secret of the movement of the lulav, and Yakhin from the first and last letters of yimlokh and ye'amen; in the book itself he counts an alphabet of the lament in twenty-two verses by atbash straight and twenty-two reversed, and the pointings of the strange names in four parts — before the lament, of the lament, of the song, and after it. At its end he gives the seal of the book in the initial letters of the verses — ברדהואל בן דבש מאל ספרדי מן תוטילה של נבדה — and announces that Sefer ha-Edut begins here.ספר החייםSefer ha-Hayyim · ספר החיים: A commentary on Sefer ha-Hayyim, which says it has comprised for its reader most of the book's secrets according to its author's intention — one intention in all his books, the knowledge of the Name, which cannot be reached without the ways of the permutation of the letters. The book is called Sefer Hayyim, it says, on account of "hai hai", and its secret is the unique Name; it is sam hayyim, an elixir of life. It opens on the book's first verse — "Raziel said: the spirit of the Lord of hosts stirred my spirit" — and on the initial letters of the verses in which the author told his name, his father's name and his lineage: "I am Abraham son of Samuel Abulafia"; tells of the four beginning students who joined Raziel at Pinon, that is Capua; sets out the two writings and their solution; and skips on to the other names and to the secrets of the vowel points. It stops without dwelling further on the names, which the author intends to explain, with the twelve-letter Name, at the end of Hotam ha-Haftarah, and announces that he will begin Sefer ha-Yashar.ספר החשקSefer ha-Hesheq · ספר החשק: A treatise in three parts, each holding three small parts, which Abulafia wrote for "a man who desires", Saadia bar Isaac, and with him the young Jacob bar Abraham, "to perfect in it the small world". He called it "by the name ha-Hosheq, to strengthen desire in him", finds by gematria that hashuq, the desired, is "the source of life", and names himself Na'atiel ben Raziel ben Shelaviel. The first part sets out the seventy-two-letter Name in its arrangements and "the received way of pronouncing the seventy-two-letter Name" — head, middle, end — after an introduction on desire; the second turns the Name in a second arrangement and sets the permutation of the letters as the "easy way" prophecy taught, while its small parts treat the speech of the mouth and of the heart, and the ten desires. The division in three answers the three kinds of letters — in the book, in the mouth and in the intellect; the third part he promises is not in the text, which closes with the words "may God grant that what is missing from the book be revealed soon".ספר הישרSefer ha-Yashar · ספר הישר: A commentary on Sefer ha-Yashar, the first book Raziel wrote in the form of prophecy, and the sixth and last of the author's commentaries. Raziel, it says, called it Sefer ha-Yashar, whose secret is "a Name, an upright song, a prayer", after the deed he named the Name of the Serpent; in it he is called by his first name, Berakhyahu ben Shelaviel. Going through the book not in order but by leaps, the commentary takes up the places Raziel lists, from Tsarfat and Sefarad to Dibon and Akko, whose hidden intent is the organs of the body; the vision in which he attained the secret of the Name and the secret of prophecy; and the four words with which he sealed his book, the four-letter Name at their head: the knowledge of the Messiah and the wisdom of the Redeemer. At its end the author speaks a little of the secret of prophecy, meaning to complete the matter in Hotam ha-Haftarah, a seal to Raziel's six books.ספר המליץSefer ha-Melits · ספר המליץ: A commentary on Sefer Melits, the book of Raziel the prophet, whom the commentator calls his teacher and master, and which the divine intellect roused him to write. Of the name it says that every counsellor is a melits, and that the book is so called for Sinim, the city in which it was composed. The commentary passes over Raziel's words opening after opening: his counsel to the new king, the human intellect, in its war against Satan, the great king; a vision of three planets as three kings at war; the tree of knowledge, named life, as a round ladder called the balance of the world and the scales of man; the rebuke of the dwellers of Sinim; and the Name it calls Elyon, set out in a table. The commentator, who gives his own name as Abu-Brahim, says he will conceal and reveal as his master did; with this book, the last of the seven, he opens the commentary on all of them, to be sealed by the Haftara, and closes by announcing that Sefer Ish Adam is to follow.ספר העדותSefer ha-Edut · ספר העדות: A commentary on Sefer Edut — by its own account the fourth book of the commentary and the third of the composition, after Sefer ha-Yashar and Sefer ha-Hayyim. Its opening tells that Raziel, coming to Rome when the Pope had ordered him burned should he come to speak with him, secluded himself, saw visions and composed the book then, calling it Sefer Edut — a testimony between himself and God, he having given his soul to death for love of His commandment, and a testimony about God, who saved him from the hand of his enemies. The commentary says that most of the visions Raziel saw are built on the Explicit Name and on the renewal of its revelation in his days; it expounds them by the hidden way, explains the particulars of the parables only where necessary, and closes: "I have abridged for you the secrets of Sefer Edut as far as I was able." It also discloses that Raziel set two hidden verses in the initial letters of the verses, with a reversed alphabet sealed with the seal of emet and the Name of forty-two letters, and that "in a vision" is Abraham, "and that is the name of Raziel."סתרי תורהSitrei Torah · סתרי תורה: A commentary on the secrets of the Guide of the Perplexed, in three parts, written by Abulafia at the entreaty of four youths of his school, its two aims the cause of the life of the intellective soul and the service of God from love. It is called Sitrei Torah because with the Guide's secrets it also reveals some secrets of the Torah according to his tradition; at its head stand the openings of all 177 chapters of the Guide and the thirty-six secrets received from his teachers, each then written in its place with the chapters in which it is hinted. The first part, Orah Hayyim, sets out fourteen secrets from image and likeness to the confusion of the religions; the second, Mekor Mayim Hayyim, twelve, from potency and act to prophecy; the third, Tokhahat Hayyim, ten, from the secrets of the Torah to the service of God from love, the root and end, it says, of the whole treatise. The author names himself Raziel son of Samuel Abulafia, and at the close he sets the Guide before the reader as Gan Eden by the count of its chapters and this commentary as ziv ehad by the count of its secrets.שומר מצוהShomer Mitsvah · שומר מצוה: A treatise in three gates on the commandment of the priestly blessing, written by Abulafia for his pupil R. Solomon ha-Kohen, son of R. Moses ha-Kohen the Galilean, who asked for it so as to know what he does in blessing the people, and to reveal some secrets of the Torah on the knowledge of the Name. Its name is the verse it opens with, "He that keepeth the commandment shall know no evil thing": "keeper", because one higher than the high watcheth, and "commandment" with it, after "to dress it and to keep it", study and commandments. Its gates open on the blessing's three verses: the first expounds it by the plain sense, wisdom and the prophetic kabbalah, and permutation in writing, speech and thought; the second the traits of character, the forty-two-letter Name and who may receive it; the third the attribute of peace, the lifting of the hands, and, at its end, tsitsit and tefillin. The colophon, signed "Abraham the prophet", dates it to the twenty-fifth of Adar, 5047 of the creation.