EsoteriaA library of sacred & hidden knowledge
Liber XX · Kabbalah

Liber XX · Kabbalah · Chapter I: Angels & Divine Names

The Sword of Moses (Harba de-Moshe): A Hebrew Book of Names

The Sword of Moses (Harba de-Moshe) explained: the Hebrew manual of divine names and angel adjurations, Gaster's 1896 edition, its uses, dating and legacy.

8 min read 1,867 words Updated

The Sword of Moses (Hebrew-Aramaic Harba de-Moshe) is a Jewish magical handbook that presents a long chain of secret divine and angelic names — the "sword" — as a revelation once given to Moses, followed by well over a hundred short instructions for using sections of it to heal, protect, divine or harm. Its date is debated: scholars place it somewhere between late antiquity and the tenth century, which makes it one of the key witnesses to practical Jewish magic before the rise of Kabbalah.

What the Sword of Moses Is§

The title is a metaphor. The "sword" is not a weapon but a sequence of names, many of them unpronounceable strings of letters, which the text claims God revealed so that the righteous could defend themselves and act in the world. Whoever possesses the names correctly, and has prepared in a state of purity, can "draw" the sword by reciting it, and the angels appointed over it are bound to obey.

The work therefore belongs to a broad current in Jewish tradition that regarded the names of God as charged with creative force. The rabbis already spoke of the four-letter Name, and of names of twelve, forty-two and seventy-two letters, whose knowledge was restricted to the worthy (see the seven names of God). The Sword of Moses turns that reverence into a working manual. Its attribution to Moses draws on an old reputation, visible also in the Greek magical papyri and in Greek and Roman writers, of Moses as the supreme master of sacred power (see Moses as magician). The catalogue entry for the text is at The Sword of Moses.

Moses Gaster's 1896 Edition and the Manuscripts§

The modern history of the book begins with Moses Gaster (1856–1939), the Romanian-born scholar who became Haham (chief rabbi) of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in London and assembled one of the great private collections of Hebrew manuscripts. In 1896 he published the Hebrew-Aramaic text from a late medieval manuscript in his possession, with an English translation and introduction, first in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and then as a separate book, The Sword of Moses: An Ancient Book of Magic. Much of his collection later passed to the John Rylands Library in Manchester and to the British Library.

Gaster argued for a very early date, placing the core of the work in the first centuries of the common era and comparing it with the Greek magical papyri and with Gnostic texts. His edition had flaws — he worked from limited manuscript evidence, and his translation smoothed over difficult passages — but it made the text known to scholars of religion and, indirectly, to occultists who read his English version.

A century later Yuval Harari of Ben-Gurion University produced a critical edition (published in Hebrew in 1997) based on a wider range of manuscripts and fragments, together with a detailed study of the book's structure, language and setting. Harari later published an English translation with introduction, and his work underlies most current discussion. He showed that the text exists in versions that differ in detail, a common situation for practical handbooks that were copied, used and adapted rather than preserved as fixed scripture.

Structure: Revelation, Purification and the Sword of Names§

Harari describes the book as having several distinct parts, a structure that helps explain how it worked.

The narrative of revelation§

The work opens with an account of how the names were revealed. It belongs to a family of Jewish traditions in which Moses, ascending Sinai, received not only the Torah but also hidden knowledge from the angels, including names that the angels themselves guarded. In this frame the sword is a divine gift, and using it is not rebellion against heaven but the exercise of a privilege granted to the worthy.

The rite of preparation and adjuration§

Before the sword can be used, the practitioner is told to prepare through a period of purity: abstaining from impurity, fasting, immersing and praying over several days. He then adjures the angels set over the sword, binding them by oath with the names of God to serve him. This part closely resembles the adjuration rites of the Hekhalot literature, in which the "Prince of the Torah" and other angelic princes are compelled to descend and grant knowledge (see Merkavah and Hekhalot mysticism). The language is that of command rather than petition, reflecting a confident belief that the right names compel even exalted beings.

The sword itself§

The central section is the sword proper: a very long series of names and letter combinations, divided into numbered segments. Some elements are recognisable divine names or angelic names ending in -el; many are opaque strings whose origins scholars can only partly trace, possibly including distorted Greek words and permutations of Hebrew letters. To the user, opacity was part of the point. The names were believed to be the actual language of heaven, effective whether or not they could be understood.

The Practical Recipes§

The last and longest part is a list of applications, each specifying a purpose and the section of the sword to be used, sometimes with simple material accompaniments: words recited over water or oil, or written on an object or amulet. Harari counts well over a hundred such entries in the fullest versions.

Their range is wide and very concrete. Many concern health: remedies for diseases of the eyes, head, skin and bowels, fevers, and difficulties in childbirth. Others aim at protection from demons and evil spirits, from enemies and robbers, and from dangers on the road or at sea. Some promise knowledge — the opening of the heart to remember Torah study, or the revelation of answers in dreams. Others concern favour and love, catching a thief or winning a case. A number are aggressive, seeking to harm, bind or sicken an opponent; the handbook shows no embarrassment about this, which is typical of practical manuals in many cultures.

The recipes are brief and formulaic, and they say nothing of moral conditions beyond the initial purification. Historians treat them as evidence of what people feared and wanted, not as reliable descriptions of results. They also show that "magic" in this setting was not a separate realm from religion: the same divine names used in prayer and in the liturgy of angels were also tools for daily needs.

Dating the Sword of Moses and Its Place in Jewish Magic§

Dating such a text is notoriously difficult. Handbooks of names were copied and expanded over centuries, and their language may be older or younger than any surviving copy. Gaster's early dating is no longer widely accepted. Harari and others have argued that the work in its known form belongs to late antiquity or the early medieval (Geonic) period, perhaps between the fifth and tenth centuries, in the Land of Israel or Babylonia. The site's timeline uses "c. 10th century (date debated)" to reflect this uncertainty.

One important external witness is a celebrated responsum attributed to Hai Gaon (939–1038), head of the academy of Pumbedita, answering questions from the Jews of North Africa about the power of names. It mentions a work called Harba de-Moshe among books of names known in his time, which shows that a text of this title was in circulation by about the year 1000.

The Sword of Moses belongs to a recognisable family of sources. Sefer ha-Razim ("Book of Mysteries"), reconstructed by Mordecai Margalioth in 1966, organises angelic powers through seven heavens and gives rites for enlisting them. The Hekhalot texts combine heavenly ascent with adjuration. The Aramaic incantation bowls of Sasanian Iraq invoke the same kinds of names against demons, and the fragments of the Cairo Genizah preserve hundreds of later amulets and recipe books. Gideon Bohak's survey of ancient Jewish magic treats this whole body of material as evidence of a lively practical tradition, largely distinct from, but not opposed to, rabbinic learning (see practical Kabbalah).

Reception: From the Geonim to Modern Occultism§

The rabbinic authorities who knew of such books took differing views. Hai Gaon's responsum is cautious and sceptical about some popular claims while acknowledging the existence of the literature. Later legal and philosophical writers, most famously Maimonides, condemned the use of names and amulets as foolishness. Yet the copying of name-books continued, and the techniques of the Sword of Moses flowed into the broader stream of medieval Jewish magic, later grouped under the heading of practical Kabbalah. The idea of Moses as lord of secret names also passed into Christian magic and, in the nineteenth century, into popular grimoires such as the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, though those works have no direct textual link to the Hebrew original.

In the twentieth century Gaster's English translation was reprinted and read by occultists interested in "Jewish" or "Mosaic" magic, often without his scholarly apparatus. For historians, by contrast, the book's value lies in what it reveals: a sophisticated system in which purity, angelic hierarchy and the creative power of language were brought together for practical ends.

Frequently asked questions§

What is the Sword of Moses?§

It is a Hebrew and Aramaic magical handbook, also called Harba de-Moshe, consisting of a narrative of revelation, a rite for adjuring angels, a long chain of secret names called the "sword", and a list of practical uses for sections of those names.

When was the Sword of Moses written?§

Its date is debated. Moses Gaster thought it came from the first centuries CE; most later scholars, following Yuval Harari, place it in late antiquity or the early medieval period, and a work of this name was known by about 1000 CE.

Is the Sword of Moses part of Kabbalah?§

Not strictly. It predates the classical Kabbalah of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and belongs to the earlier tradition of Jewish name-magic and angel adjuration, though later writers grouped such material under practical Kabbalah.

Who first published the Sword of Moses?§

Moses Gaster published the text with an English translation in 1896. Yuval Harari's critical edition of 1997 and his later English translation are the standard scholarly versions.

Sources and further reading§