Afia mala biography of abraham

This is the third experience. The fourth experience is characterized mainly by fear and trembling. Abulafia emphasizes that trembling is a basic and necessary step to obtain prophecy Sitrei Torah, Paris Ms. For Abulafia the fear is followed by an experience of pleasure and delight. Only after passing these successive experiences does the mystic reach his goal: the vision of a human form, which is closely linked to his own physical appearance and generally experienced as standing in front of the mystic.

Addressing his students and followers in Sefer haKheshek , Abulafia further elaborates the scenario:. Yet he explicitly put it, as he has also explained in another book, Sefer haYei haOlam haBa : "And consider his reply, answering as though you yourself had answered yourself" Oxford Ms. In Sefer haOt , Abulafia describes a similar episode, but from an explicit self-perspective:"I saw a man coming from the west with a great army, the number of the warriors of his camp being twenty-two thousand men […] And when I saw his face in the sight, I was astonished, and my heart trembled within me, and I left my place and I longed for it to call upon the name of God to help me, but that thing evaded my spirit.

And when the man had seen my great fear and my strong awe, he opened his mouth and he spoke, and he opened my mouth to speak, and I answered him according to his words, and in my words I became another man pp. Abulafia's subterranean influence is evident in the large number of manuscripts of his major meditation manuals that flourished down to the present day until all his works were finally published in Mea Shearim in Jerusalem during the s.

According to Besserman's The Shambhala Guide to Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism , Abulafia's "prophetic approach to meditation included manipulating the Hebrew letters in a nondenominational context that brought him into conflict with the Jewish establishment and provoked the Inquisition. In Italy, however, his works were translated into Latin and contributed substantially to the formation of Christian Kabbalah.

In the Middle East, ecstatic Kabbalah was accepted without reservation. After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Spanish theurgical Kabbalah, which had developed without any significant influence from ecstatic Kabbalah, was integrated with the latter; this combination became, through the book Pardes Rimmonim by Mosheh Cordovero, part of mainstream Kabbalah.

Later on, mystical and psychological conceptions of Kabbalah found their way directly and indirectly to the Polish Hasidic masters. The influence of ecstatic Kabbalah is to be seen in isolated groups today, and traces of it can be found in modern literature e. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Singer, Isidore ; et al.

The Jewish Encyclopedia. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. Spanish Kabbalah teacher This article includes a list of general references , but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations.

March Learn how and when to remove this message. Abraham Abulafia's "Light of the Intellect" , Vat. Although he always holds Maimonides in the highest estimation, and often makes use of sentences from his writings, he was as little satisfied with his philosophy as with any other branch of knowledge which he acquired. He thirsted after the highest.

He was of a communicative disposition, able and eager to teach others. He wrote industriously on cabalistic, philosophical, and grammatical subjects, and succeeded in surrounding himself with numerous pupils, to whom he imparted much of his own enthusiasm. This book, and particularly the commentary and method of the German mystic, Eleazar of Worms, exercised a deep influence upon him, and had the effect of greatly increasing his mystical bent.

Letters of the alphabet, numerals, vowel-points, all became symbols of existence to him, and their combinations and permutations, supplementing and explaining one another, possessed for him an illumining power most effectively to be disclosed in a deeper study of the divine names, and especially of the consonants of the Tetragrammaton.

With such auxiliaries, and with the observance of certain rites and ascetic practises, men, he says, may attain to the highest aim of existence and become prophets; not in order to work miracles and signs, but to reach the highest degree of perception and be able to penetrate intuitively into the inscrutable nature of the Deity, the riddles of creation, the problems of human life, the purpose of the precepts, and the deeper meaning of the Torah.

His most important disciple, and one who carried his system further, was the cabalist Joseph Chiquitilla. The pope, then in Suriano, heard of it, and issued orders to burn the fanatic as soon as he reached that place. Close to the inner gate the stake was erected in preparation; but not in the least disturbed, Abulafia set out for Suriano and reached there August While passing through the outer gate, he heard that the pope had succumbed to an apoplectic stroke during the preceding night.

Returning to Rome, he was thrown into prison by the Minorites, but was liberated after four weeks' detention. He was next heard of in Sicily, where he appeared as a prophet and Messiah. This claim was put an end to by a letter to the people of Palermo, which most energetically condemned Abulafia's conduct. It was written by R. Solomon ben Adret, who strove with all his power to guide men's minds aright in that trying time of hysterical mental confusion.

Abulafia had to take up the pilgrim's staff anew, and under distressing conditions compiled his "Sefer ha-Ot" The Book of the Sign on the little island of Comino, near Malta, In he wrote his last, and perhaps his most intelligible, work, "Imre Shefer" Words of Beauty ; after this all trace of him is lost. Abulafia calls his cabalistic system "prophetical cabala," distinguishing it thus from that of his predecessors, which he considers of lower grade, because it satisfied itself with the characterization of God as En-Sof "the Being without end" , with the Sefirot as vague intermediaries, and with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and because its method remained essentially speculative.

Such is only a preliminary and inferior grade of knowledge; the highest goal is prophetism, assuring men a certain degree of community with God. In this the letters of a word are to be considered not only as letters, giving the sound, but as numerals, the sum of which may be replaced by the equal sum of other letters, producing, of course, a new word, which must prove to be identical in significance, or at least allied, with the first word whose sum it equals.

Thus Abulafia calls himself sometimes and sometimes , because the total of the letters in each of these words equals , which is likewise the total of the letters in his own given name. In one place, desiring to call himself "Berechiah," he misspells it in order to make it aggregate Steinschneider, "Cat. Munich," No. His view of prophetism or the prophetic gift as the highest goal seems to indicate the influence of Judah ha-Levi's "Cuzari," but his idea of the nature of prophecy itself is rather in accord with Maimonides.

Abulafia's influence upon the further development of the Cabala was rather of a retarding than a fostering nature. He gave it a visionary turn.

Afia mala biography of abraham

He was the first one, too, to allow the Christian idea of the Trinity to show a faint glimmer in the Cabala. This mystical tradition deeply impacted him, leading him to study the Book of Creation and perceive profound meaning in letters, numbers, and other symbols. He experimented with various combinations of these symbols and gradually gained a following in Castile.

In the s, Abulafia traveled to Greece, disseminating his teachings on Kabbalah and Maimonides' "Guide for the Perplexed. He was briefly imprisoned but later released. Later, Abulafia actively preached as a self-proclaimed Messiah and prophet in Messina and Palermo. However, his actions angered the Jewish community, and they sought the intervention of Solomon ben Abraham ibn Adret of Barcelona, an authority on suppressing false Messiahs.

Royalty has some passing fascination, but for no really good reason. And winning entertainment awards never really gets my attention. But my son has always had an ear for interesting music. Very early, around 2 years old, he latched onto Japanese Taiko drums. One year, around 3 years old, on vacation in California, my son was owed a souvenir. We were at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art a place I practically grew up at and they had a musical selection you could listen to in their gift shop.

My son wanted to have the ear phones put on him. He picked it himself, with no input from the rest of us, but it suited my tastes as well. His favorite song was called "Segne" by a woman from Togo. He loved it so much he had practically memorized the lyrics despite having no idea what they meant: Same song, different video, perhaps more typical of Afia Mala's personality: The song has stuck with him since and became rapidly a favorite for me as well.