Abraham Abulafia

Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (1240 -) is a Kabbalist and a leading figure of Jewish medieval. Unlike many Kabbalists of the time, we do know that through their work, we have an extensive biographical information thanks to the meticulous care to give qu'Aboulafia took elements of his life even within his works.

His life

Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia was born in Zaragoza in 1240 , he spent his youth in Tudela in Navarra. His father taught him study the Bible and its commentaries, grammar, the Mishna and Talmud. He studied medicine and philosophy , especially the works of Maimonides by which his thought will always be greatly influenced. Aboulafia write even a mystical commentary on the Guide for the Perplexed.

He soon began studying Kabbalah, and more particularly the Sefer Yetzirah which he read the twelve reviews. It then comes into contact with a group of Kabbalists mystic who taught him the three methods of interpretation of the Kabbalah: the notarikon (acrologie), the Gematria and Tserouf.

At the age of 31 years at Barcelona , he is touched by the prophetic spirit after obtaining knowledge of the True Name of God. He is then persuaded to have attained by meditation on the letters and numbers, prophetic inspiration and the rule of Messiah. He again left Spain in order to transmit the very essence of God that animated him, his knowledge. He wrote several books of prophetic sign that names the same numerical value as its true name: Zacharias , Raziel ...

He goes to the Middle East to discover the location of Sambata river beyond which it was assumed that the lost ten tribes remained. Indeed, according to the messianic tradition, the Messiah should seek and find the lost tribes to bring them in Palestine and thus reunite the people of Israel. The arrival of the Mongolians in the region and the ensuing unrest forced Aboulafia to leave for Europe and he spent ten years as well as Greece and Italy.

In 1280 , he traveled to Rome to appear before the Pope and discuss with him "on behalf of Jews "and convert to his doctrine and realize the Messianic work of the Messiah to unite the three branches to achieve the Abrahamic prophecy The End of Time. In this endeavor he was probably influenced by the writings of Ramban :

"When the end-time comes, the Messiah will come to the command of God to the Pope and ask for the release of his people, so only the Messiah will come really considered, but not before that. "

At the announcement of Aboulafia, Pope Nicolas III gives the order to stop Aboulafia and put to death. But the sudden death of Pope saved his life. Aboulafia chronicling the saga in his book The Book of Evidence.

His doctrine

Aboulafia does not deal with the simple tradition, but this Kabbalah Kabbalists who seek knowledge of God through the ten Sephiroth and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet , but stressed the profound essence of Sephiroth and denying them any material existence or amalgam as divine attributes.

There are four sources of knowledge:

• the five senses;
• ideas or abstract ten numbers (Sephiroth);
• the "universal consent";
• Tradition ( Kabbalah ).

However, the central point of doctrine and the ultimate goal of Abulafia is to "unseal the soul, to remove the knots that bind." This "undoing" is a way to reinstate the original state of oneness by releasing barriers between personal existence of the soul of the stream of cosmic life. The soul is, indeed, confined within the natural and normal human existence and the barriers protect against the flow of divine power and being able to take knowledge of the divine.

"The concerns of the physical world are obstacles on the path to enlightenment which must be disposed by ascetic discipline before engaging in the practice of meditation that leads to union with the divine. However, Aboulafia does not preach a complete negation of the body. It recognizes not only that the psychological well-being of the individual depends on the reintegration into the physical world, but also the mystical union itself is the subject of an experiment in terms of physical, even erotic. "

- Wolfson

We must help the soul to find a way to collect more than the forms of nature and the material world. Getting rid of the excesses of the ego is one of the first step towards this path, focus the mind on abstract spiritual matters and go beyond the gross appearance is another ... According Aboulafia, there must be a subject of spiritual concentration of the soul to guide it toward the "unknotting of knots" and he believes the best object of meditation is the Hebrew alphabet. Based on the non-corporeal and abstract writing, Aboulafia develops a theory of mystical contemplation on the Name of God. Aboulafia then spreads a new discipline he called Hochmah Tseruf-ha, "the science of the combination of letters," which is described as a "methodical guide" for meditation involving the study of literature and their spellings. He thus claims to make a mystical union with God through the arithmetic.

The role played by Sephiroth in the system Aboulafia can be summarized in the fact that the ten Sephiroth focus during meditation to enter all together in the highest, which is the Thought or the Crown and that is the root of all the other based itself in the En-Sof. The Sephiroth are understood as a Trinity Superior for the first three letters of the alphabet and the three principles of human life: the vital principle, the vegetative and rational principle. The Sephiroth are to Aboulafia channels through which impulses intellectual pours on the mystic and in so doing, they facilitate its accession to the Divine Name. Aboulafia decrypts the divine tetragrammaton YHVH () expression hawwayot yod, the ten species, which are separate intellects and internal states of mind.

Through a methodical meditation, this discipline provides a new state of consciousness. This method can be compared to the alterations of consciousness made based hallucinogens in order to gain access to fields of experience as an obstacle to understanding the reason. Aboulafia meanwhile compares this approach to music, taking the letters instead of notes in the scale. It develops a qualifying akin to the experiences of mystical union of Sufi Islam, and perhaps he was influenced in this direction during his travels in the Middle East? Anyway, we are witnessing a new form of mystical meditation as involving the study of letters and numbers through three channels: the Mivta or pronunciation, Miktav, writing, and Mahshav, thought, lanes that allow entry into a trance detaching the souls of his usual physical contingencies. Having tried this method, we can assure the reader that it works. We never got to union with God, because we do not seek, but the meditation of letters and numbers through the method Aboulafia achieves results similar to those encountered during held a Sufi or a psychotropic drug.

Aboulafia also uses two other methods: Dillug and Kefitsa, skip and a jump, designed to move from one association to another for meditation. These methods are similar to the methods of psychoanalytic associations. The jump can thus illuminate the hidden processes of the mind which issues the student of the natural sphere and can lead to limitations of the divine sphere. The spirit and constantly Aboulafia pushes the limits of rational understanding by adopting an attitude of reversal of opposites that identifies the qualities antagonists. Thus, for Aboulafia, the head is the tail, right left, the angel Satan. There is never a stasis in his thinking, since anything can become its opposite. Every thought is thus a step on a road that takes us even further after a temporary respite.

Aboulafia also advises during his meditations, perform breathing exercises and postures specific. His book The Light of the Intellect offers striking similarities to the treaties of Yoga. Thus, his method does offer a richness that few mystical Kabbalists can support and we would say that his method is very modern in terms of the popularity of Far Eastern philosophies. But it goes further because it puts humans into contact with God but also with himself.

Conclusions

For supporters of the prophetic Kabbalah, the ecstasy allows the student to meet his own self and also beyond this experience, to become its own Messiah. The man is in the presence of himself, his meditation gives him the mirror of his inner soul.

The Kabbalah of Abulafia is in this sense, practical Kabbalah is a form of magic. Indeed, the Kabbalah practice uses the power of names to act on the outside. Aboulafia, himself, understands his method as an "internal magic" which should aim to seek common domestic effects. He thus rejects any form of magic operative with goals from outside the Rights and intended solely to obtain material powers.

In this Way of interiority has chosen Aboulafia, the mystic and the magic, ecstasy, meditation and the prophetic, mingling with each other to form an original located outside the meditation of simple names.

Works

Works of Abraham Abulafia:

Hayy ha-ha-ba'olam - Life of the Next World.

Ve-li-Zoth Yehuda.

Guet-ha Shemoth - Divorce of the Names.

Or ha- skhl. The light of intellect.

Sefer Sha'ar ha-H'eshek. Book of the door of desire.

Sefer Imre Shefer. Book of rhetoric.

na'oul Gan.

Seva Netivot ha-Torah: French translation under the title: The Epistle of the seven channels, Shine, 1985. Philosophy imagination.

Sefer ha- 'Oth - The Book of the Sign.

Otzar Eden ha-ganouz. Book of hidden treasure of Eden.

Ner Elohim - The light of God. Text attributed to Abraham Abulafia.

Bibliography

• Moshe Idel, Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, Le Cerf, 1989. ( ISBN 9782204030212 )
• Chaim Wirszubski , Pico della Mirandola and the Kabbalah, followed by considerations on the early history of Christian Cabala by Gershom Scholem , translated from English and Latin by Jean-Marc Mandosio , editions of brightness, 2007. ( ISBN 9782841621323 )

See also

Related articles

• Kabbalah
• Symbolism of letters

External Links

• The major currents of Jewish mystical approach historical and philosophical evolution of the main currents of the Kabbalah, mostly from the book of Gershom Scholem.
• Elements of Kabbalah Introduction to key elements of the Kabbalah, the Sephiroth as the Gematria, the Tsrouf ...
• Abraham Abulafia and studies on the prophetic and practical Kabbalah.

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