Mafteah 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.