Tuesday 4 February 2014

Abraham Abulafia: Meditations on the Divine Name


Abraham Abulafia: Meditations on the Divine Name

Abulafia creatively combined Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and the ancient Sefer Yesira into an integrated method of concentrating on the Divine Name that opens the path to fulfilling the soul's deepest spiritual longings. Intense practice of Abulafia's meditative techniques propels the attentive soul into a state of awakened receptivity where the active divine influence can reach down to meet and illuminate the human intellect.

Abulafia was unique amongst Jewish mystics in providing precise instructions for personal spiritual practice. This improved second edition translates meditations from three of Abulafia's major mystical handbooks "that reveal the true knowledge of the Divine Name" as Abulafia puts it. These particular texts achieved a wide underground circulation amongst Jewish mystic elites despite a severe rabbinical ban on Abulafia promulgated by Shlomo ben Adret. For example: -Abulafia's "Life of the World to Come" (extant in more manuscript copies that the Zohar!) is quoted in Yehuda Albotini's "Sulam HaAliya". -Selections from Abulafia's "Light of the Intellect" were printed in Moshe Cordovero's "Pardes Rimonim". -Abulafia's "Book of Desire" is quoted in the fourth, censored part of Chaim Vital's "Shaarei Kedushah". Abulafia's meditations have intrinsic moral prerequisites that guard against their misuse. These techniques can provide short, liminal leaps into revelatory states of consciousness and the adept needs a kind of measured boldness to attempt this.

Abulafia repeatedly emphasizes returning back and integrating these threshold experiences into one's daily life. Abulafia was an eclectic thinker who absorbed and adapted Sufi and even Yogic influences into his mystical toolkit. While the affinities between Abulafia's methods and the Hekhalot rituals are obvious, they also have interesting structural similarities to Graeco-Coptic magical invocations like those found in PGM XIII 646-1077. Translating Abulafia is an impossible task. These gleanings hope to prompt deeper study of Abulafia's oeuvre that can provide a rich breviary of numerically equivalent concepts and rigorous linguistic interpretations to ponder and apply in one's spiritual path.

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