Jewish Mysticism & Kabbalah

Jewish mysticism is one of the oldest continuous contemplative traditions in the West. It begins with the Merkavah and Hekhalot literature of late antiquity, in which adepts ascend through heavenly palaces toward the divine throne, and continues through the Sefer Yetzirah, the Bahir and the Zohar to the Lurianic Kabbalah of sixteenth-century Safed and the Hasidic revival of eastern Europe. This section covers the texts, teachers, doctrines and debates of that history, and also traces how Christian Cabalists and later Hermetic occultists borrowed and transformed Kabbalistic ideas such as the ten sefirot and the Tree of Life.