Michael A. Morgan translates Mordecai Margaliath’s text of Sepher Ha-Razim, a fourth century CE magical text, into English. Sepher Ha-Razim includes a story about the book’s transmission from the angel Raziel to Noah eventually down to Solomon, six sections describing the nature, function, magical praxis and angelic inhabitants of six of the heavens, and the divine throne in the seventh heaven. With parallels to Talmudic passages, Enochic literature, and Hekhaloth literature, Sepher Ha-Razim sheds light on Greco-Roman magic in general and more specifically Jewish life in the early centuries CE.
Michael A. Morgan translates Mordecai Margaliath’s text of Sepher Ha-Razim, a fourth century CE magical text, into English. Sepher Ha-Razim includes a story about the book’s transmission from the angel Raziel to Noah eventually down to Solomon, six sections describing the nature, function, magical praxis and angelic inhabitants of six of the heavens, and the divine throne in the seventh heaven. With parallels to Talmudic passages, Enochic literature, and Hekhaloth literature, Sepher Ha-Razim sheds light on Greco-Roman magic in general and more specifically Jewish life in the early centuries CE.
Sepher Rezial Hemelach is the longawaited first English translation of this famous magical text a translation from the ancient Hebrew in the rare and complete 1701 Amsterdam edition. According to Hebrew legend, the Sepher Rezial was presented to Adam in the Garden of Eden, given by the hand of God, and delivered by the angel Rezial. The myth thus suggests that this is the first book ever written, and of direct divine provenance. A diverse compendium of ancient Hebrew magical lore, this book was quite possibly the original source for later, traditional literature on angelic hierarchy, astrology, Qabalah, and Gematria. Moses Gaster mentions this in his introduction to The Sword of Moses (1896) suggesting that the Sepher Rezial could be a primary source for many magic and qabalistic books of the Middle Ages. Sepher Rezial Hemelach is a compilation of five books: "The Book of the Vestment," "The Book of the Great Rezial," "The Holy Names," "The Book of the Mysteries," and "The Book of the Signs of the Zodiac." It includes extensive explanatory text on the holy names of God, the divisions of Heaven and Hell, the names and hierarchy of the angels and spirits, as well as symbolic interpretations of both the Book of Genesis and Sepher Yetzirah. It also includes material on astronomy, astrology, gematria, and various magical talismans, most notably those used for protection during childbirth. In his introduction, Steve Savedow details the history, bibliographical citations, and lineage of this famous work. He lists the old and rare manuscripts still in existence, and provides a bibliography of other reference works for study of the Western esoteric tradition.
This is the first translation with commentary of selections from The Zohar, the major text of the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. This work was written in 13th-century Spain by Moses de Leon, a Spanish scholar.
Gideon Bohak gives a pioneering account of the broad history of ancient Jewish magic, from the Second Temple to the rabbinic period. It is based both on ancient magicians' own compositions and products in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek, and on the descriptions and prescriptions of non-magicians, to reconstruct a historical picture that is as balanced and nuanced as possible. The main focus is on the cultural make-up of ancient Jewish magic, and special attention is paid to the processes of cross-cultural contacts and borrowings between Jews and non-Jews, as well as to inner-Jewish creativity. Other major issues explored include the place of magic within Jewish society, contemporary Jewish attitudes to magic, and the identity of its practitioners. Throughout, the book seeks to explain the methodological underpinnings of all sound research in this demanding field, and to highlight areas where further research is likely to prove fruitful.
This book presents twenty chapters by experts in their fields, providing a thorough and interdisciplinary overview of the theory and practice of magic in the West. Its chronological scope extends from the Ancient Near East to twenty-first-century North America; its objects of analysis range from Persian curse tablets to US neo-paganism. For comparative purposes, the volume includes chapters on developments in the Jewish and Muslim worlds, evaluated not simply for what they contributed at various points to European notions of magic, but also as models of alternative development in ancient Mediterranean legacy. Similarly, the volume highlights the transformative and challenging encounters of Europeans with non-Europeans, regarding the practice of magic in both early modern colonization and more recent decolonization.
Deities, demons, and angels became important protagonists in the magic of the Late Antique world, and were also the main reasons for the condemnation of magic in the Christian era. Supplicatory incantations, rituals of coercion, enticing suffumigations, magical prayers and mystical songs drew spiritual powers to the humain domain. Next to the magician's desire to regulate fate and fortune, it was the communion with the spirit world that gave magic the potential to purify and even deify its practitioners. The sense of elation and the awareness of a metaphysical order caused magic to merge with philosophy (notably Neoplatonism). The heritage of Late Antique theurgy would be passed on to the Arab world, and together with classical science and learning would take root again in the Latin West in the High Middle Ages. The metamorphosis of magic laid out in this book is the transformation of ritual into occult philosophy against the background of cultural changes in Judaism, Graeco-Roman religion and Christianity. This volume, the first in the new series Groningen Studies in Cultural Change, offers the papers presented at the workshop The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period held from 22 to 24 June 2000, and organised by Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra. The papers have been written by scholars from such varying disciplines as classics, theology, philosophy, cultural history, and law. Their contributions shed new light upon several old obscurities; they show magic to be a significant area of culture, and they advance the case for viewing transformations in the lore and practice of magic as a barometer with which to measure cultural change.
The Gospel of Thomas preserves a core of authentic Aramaic sayings of Yeshua older than the earliest Christian writings. When they are isolated from the second-century Gnostic framework, they reveal many of Yeshua's inner-circle kabbalistic teachings. Scholars can restore much of the pre-kabbalistic tradition of Yeshua's era through sources like the Sepher Yetzirah, Sepher Ha-Razim, and the haggadah preserved in the Mishna, Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, Philo of Alexandria, and the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. These were the Holy Scriptures of Essenes, Zadokites, and other messianic Jews of the period, including Yeshua and his disciples. The Psalms they chanted in worship and Shabbat Seder were not just those of our Old Testament, but the messianic Odes of Solomon and others preserved in Enochian and apocalyptic scripture. A study of this forgotten sacred literature allows modern scholars to understand and reconstruct the oral Kabbalah of Yeshua embedded in the Gospel of Thomas.
