Textual Makeup of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot: The Written Matter

Among his observations on MS Michael 473, Gershom Scholem noted that one textual unit that was copied on folios 27v–32v has parallels in two other manuscripts: MS NLI 28 251 and MS Michael Add. 18. This text, which encompasses a textual unit on the uses of ten sefirot—that is, of the decadic structure of divine emanation—was included by Scholem in his list of commentaries on ten sefirot at number 105. ^{Footnote 14} In MS Michael 473, this “commentary” on ten sefirot is featured within the third codicological unit that consists of thirteen regular quarto folios and sixty-four pages, written in mid-seventeenth-century Ashkenazi non-square script. ^{Footnote 15} This entire codicological unit forms a curious assemblage of brief kabbalistic texts and comments. It begins with a short treatise on the matters of reincarnation—whose authorship has been ascribed to Moshe Cordovero, a sixteenth-century kabbalist of Palestinian Safed—copied on folios 6r–19v. ^{Footnote 16} Then follows a selection of short pieces on sundry kabbalistic matters, commenting chiefly on liturgical texts and often quoted in the name of Isaac Luria, arguably the most influential kabbalist of early modernity, active in late sixteenth-century Safed. Finally, several passages of Ši‘ur Qomah, a late-antique mystical text on the dimensions of the godhead, form a textual unit that occupies folios 23v–27v. ^{Footnote 17} This assemblage of early mystical and later kabbalistic texts or excerpts thereof, which at first glance seems haphazardly ordered and thematically incongruous, ends with a text perhaps the most bizarre of all in this gathering—the anonymous commentary noted by Scholem, introduced by the scribe of MS Michael 473 as Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot (“The tradition/wisdom of ten sefirot”). ^{Footnote 18}

Opening with a square initial word of scribal invocation to the divine, the text of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot follows the preceding textual unit without any title or a page break. In its graphic layout, it forms two visually distinct parts. The first part sets forth the so-called traditions (qabbalot) about ten sefirot—divine energies or emanations that build up the godhead in the majority of kabbalistic theosophies or interpretations of metaphysics. These traditions relate to the first six sefirot of the ten (from Keter, the uppermost sefirah, down to Tif’eret, the middle, or sixth, sefirah). This first section of text formally retains some structural features characteristic of the genre of commentaries on sefirot. ^{Footnote 19} As such, it unfolds as a sequence of theoretical explications that pertain to the status and essential characteristics of each of the divine aspects, one by one and in descending order—that is, from the sefirah that is closest to the one that is farthest from the source of emanation. ^{Footnote 20} And yet, instead of the anticipated elucidation of the theosophical significance of each sefirah and the implications thereof for liturgy and other ritualistic acts of worship, the text of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot sets out with detailed instructions for practical procedures and linguistic formulas devised to harness the power of the sefirot in the material world for the benefit of its reader-practitioner. The text thus foregrounds the theosophical rationale for practical kabbalistic procedures to be enacted within the human realm, all associated and contingent upon the power of the relevant stratum of the godhead. In practice, Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot instructs a practitioner to reach to, draw down, and manipulate divine energy via the channel of divine names, with which each sefirah is correlated and whose power administers each of the procedures outlined in the initial part of the text. For instance, the passage that prescribes a practice to take vengeance over one’s enemies, recommends:

Figure 1

The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. MS Michael 473, folio 29r. Creative Commons licence CC-BY-NC 4.0.

After a series of similarly detailed descriptions of rituals and practical guidelines that pertain to the first six sefirot of the usual decadic structure of the godhead, the text continues with listing the divine and angelic names the practitioner ought to employ during the recommended procedure. Sequences of these names compose the second part of the text. They feature on the subsequent folios of the manuscript inscribed within circular shapes that represent sefirot graphically, with one or two of these shapes per page. The second part of the commentary thus consists of a series of circular schemes embodying the decade of sefirot, from the upper one to the lower one, and of complementary texts written around them. A form or two of Tetragrammaton, accompanied with a particular vowel pattern, heads each of the sefirotic circles. Apart from the Tetragrammaton, each circle also includes a textual formula for the adjuration of angels, with three to four angelic names per circle, that correlate with the divine name and the particular properties of the respective sefirah being referenced. ^{Footnote 23} These liturgical and adjuratory formulae ought to be enacted either in writing or vocally, per the reader’s understanding, during performances described in the first part of the text:

All three elements involved in the ritual performances advised by the text inside the circles—that is, the variant or variants of the vocalized Tetragrammaton, the name of respective sefirah, and the angelic names—are therefore jointly correlated in the formula, situated intertextually within biblical citations, as well as visually highlighted by the scribe across the entire textual unit. Additionally, next to each of the sefirotic representations there appears another prayer-adjuration, one that includes several further biblical passages, referring both to the power of the respective sefirah and to the angelic and divine names that appear in the adjuratory formula inscribed inside the sefirotic circle:

The prayer-adjuration and related biblical passages add a further explanatory layer to the recommended performances and draw on an early tradition of mystical ascents on high, granted to humans by angels on account of the adjuration of the proper name. Such visions were to endow the initiate with requested knowledge and wisdom, to be utilized particularly for public preaching and inspired writing, deemed enthused by prophetic spirit. ^{Footnote 26} These performances emerge here contingent on the power of the respective sefirah and the divine name, while situated within the textual web of biblical quotations that establish a scriptural anchor for the practical, often very technical, and quite unconventional rituals suggested in the first part of the text. So, the procedure related to Ḥoḵmah recommends baking a cake of wheat, sugar, and spices and eating a mouthful of it upon reciting the prescribed formula once a day and once a night, for fifteen consecutive days and nights, all while keeping one’s hands down, wearing clean clothes, and donning a prayer shawl. ^{Footnote 27} The same prayer formula is also claimed to be effective in a related procedure intended to impart knowledge to a youngster, for whom one should write an amulet, dissolve it in white wine, and give the liquid to the youngster to drink. A more intricate technique, the purpose of which is to gain the ability of preaching in public, engages the sefirah Binah by concocting a dough mixed with the flesh of a slaughtered white cock and consuming the prepared mixture at night with the first cock’s crow, ^{Footnote 28} after cleansing hands with rose water and on reciting the adjuratory formula of proper names. ^{Footnote 29}

Indeed, the matters of unusual rituals exposed in Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot may not meet the expectations of readers accustomed to the genre of kabbalistic commentaries on ten sefirot. The first portion of this text explores six performances, all of which voice a human concern with the acquisition of extraordinary abilities through the manipulation of powers associated with the sefirot. All but one of the procedures mentioned in the text recommend crafting amulets, thus concentrating on manual production and enactment of the artifact inscribed with divine names, made of buckskin for Keter and Tif’eret and of goat leather for Ḥesed and Geburah. There is no discussion of the significance of each sefirah within the theosophical order of divine emanation—apart from asserting the obvious sequence of sefirot—nor of the symbolic referents of the divine aspects and the dynamics of relations between them, topics that would customarily find their place in the various commentaries on the ten sefirot. Rather, this text focuses exclusively on ritual performances and their accompanying practical procedures and adjurations. The connection between specific performance and the corresponding sefirah rests on an elementary, even idiomatic, understanding of the aspects of decadic divine structure. And so, the highest of sefirot, Keter, controls the process of automatic writing; ^{Footnote 30} Ḥoḵmah, which stands for the attribute of divine wisdom, governs human memory and processes of acquiring eternal knowledge (or, “opening of one’s heart” for learning); ^{Footnote 31} Binah, the sefirah of the divine intelligence, safeguards the skill of preaching in public; ^{Footnote 32} Ḥesed, being the divine aspect of loving-kindness, provides respect and admiration in social contexts; Geburah, the fifth sefirah of harsh judgment, assumes the power of wreaking vengeance and administering punishment on enemies; ^{Footnote 33} while Tif’eret, the sefirah that stands for the male companion of Šeḵinah, or the lowest and female aspect of the godhead, brings about love between husband and wife. ^{Footnote 34}

Ten circular shapes that follow the textual exposition of six performances related to the sefirot form the axis of the commentary: they serve the purpose of visual aid for the reader that enables them to correlate properly each of the described procedures with the pertinent level of the godhead. The graphic facet of the commentary—that is, the representation of ten sefirot in circular shapes—draws together all of the parts of the text and emerges to be hermeneutically crucial for construing both the meanings and the enactments of the prescribed ritual performances, especially the amulets. Plausibly, the common idiom of visualizing and representing sefirot in a circular shape, found in the traditional imagining of sefirot in the form of spheres arranged into a more or less complex arboreal schema (’ilan ha-sefirot), and known from kabbalistic manuscripts from the thirteenth century onward, modeled the graphic imagery of the commentary. ^{Footnote 35} Likewise, the correlation between the names of sefirot and their qualities with the results of their practical employment, effected in the physical world, seems to have been a consequence of a common and almost rudimentary understanding of the entire decadic structure of the godhead and of divine aspects embodied by each of the ten emanations. ^{Footnote 36} The aim expressed in the first part of the text, in each individual qabbalah, is fulfilled through ritual performance, one that includes specific bodily preparations and/or technical devices carried out at a designated time and place. Nevertheless, the ritual efficacy of such performances hinges on the enacted formulae placed within the sefirotic circles, included in the second part of the text as it is laid out in MS Michael 473 and performed during the recommended ritual. The adjuratory formulae inscribed within and outside the spherical figures are designed to activate divine energy via the names of angels (“with the power of the holy and pure names inscribed in the circle of the sefirah”), each of which correlates to the relevant sefirah and therefore to the appropriate divine emanation with its attributes. Implicitly, the power that the sefirot channel via the angelic figures derives from the Tetragrammaton and its variant vocalizations. These variants feature in the text in the adjuratory phrases that invoke the higher power of the divine name (“by the esteemed name” or “by the power of the ineffable name, YHVH”), placed within the six introductory descriptions of performances, within the formulae around the circular designs, and on top of each of these circles.

The text inscribed in and around the circular designs in MS Michael 473 (fols. 29r–32v) supplies the written material—the adjuration formulae in their particular graphic form—for the performance of rituals (qabbalot) exposed in the opening part of the text (fols. 27v–29r), even though the latter pertains only to the first six divine emanations, leaving four formulae without descriptions of their corresponding ritual performances. The anonymous scribe who copied the text of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot in MS Michael 473 acknowledged this dissymmetry with a degree of surprise, stating: “I did not find more of this to copy.” This statement appears just after the exposition of the qabbalah of the sixth sefirah (fol. 29r) and before the scribe turns to the adjuratory formula around the circular shape of the first sefirah, Keter. In fact, there are a few other textual inconsistencies that are revealing in terms of the scribe’s way of reading and their sensitivity to the form and medium of the text being copied. According to the text, only after a practitioner has properly employed adjurations of angelic names related to a particular sefirah may they draw from its supernatural power. In addition to the names playing a crucial role in how the rituals are structured, they also take center stage in the formal layout of the commentary. The circular shapes representing sefirot, inscribed with divine and angelic names, form the axis of the text’s mise-en-page in MS Michael 473. The text references these names at all stages as the source of power for the adjurer and the moving force behind the rituals, but it does so with curious specificity: the supernatural “power of the sefirah” (כח הספירה) derives from “the holy and pure names written inside the circlet of the sefirah” (השמות הקדושים והטהורים הכתובים בעיגולת של ספירה), but also from those inscribed “on/in the sefirah …, outside” (השמות הקדושים והטהורים הכתובים על/בספירת … מבחוץ). Thus, the text self-references its own written and graphic shape—that is, names positioned in a certain way on the page—as much as it suggests to the reader a tangible reality of the powers it represents in a material format. In the end, the names are copied, as per the scribe’s expression “in” and “around” the sefirot, and not “in” and “around” the circular designs that merely represent the sefirot.

Similar formulations appear across the entire textual unit rather consistently, with reference to all the recommended procedures and prayers as inscribed in and around the ten circlets of sefirot, although with slight but telling variations. For instance, when copying the procedures for the second sefirah, the scribe noted the power of names related to it and “written inside the sefirah Ḥoḵmah” (fol. 28v), while skipping the word “circlet” (עיגול or,עיגולה‘igul or ‘igulah)—a slip of pen that may suggest a degree of collapse between the graphical and the metaphysical for the copyist. It seems it was already idiomatic by the late Middle Ages to visualize sefirot graphically as spheres, or render them two dimensionally as circles, and also to deploy such depictions to practical kabbalistic or magical ends. In effect, the material (and not symbolic) understanding of sefirot allows for the redeployment of their visual representation in practical contexts of all sorts. It is to this specific graphic convention that the copyist of MS Michael 473 related, and which he actively employed. But more than that, as the whole text references divine names embedded in and related to a specific graphic shape, it suggests to the reader that the textual layer achieves meaning and efficacy when enfolded in a specific formal arrangement. The construing of the text, as much as the ritual experience described within it, is effectively molded by a specific graphic convention, mediated by its material distribution at the heart of the textual unit. At that, the reader’s expectations ensuing from the formal features common to the genre of commentary on ten sefirot—indeed, the text establishes itself smoothly within the authoritative tradition referred to as qabbalat ‘eser sefirot, “the tradition of ten sefirot”—as much as from the text’s graphic disposition, shape the reading experience, even more so when the textual content does not easily conform to these convention-related expectations.

Of Sefirot, Angels, and Divine Names: Textual Precedents and Material Recontextualizations

An interrelation between divine names, sefirot, and angels manifests in practices aimed at harnessing supernatural power for all kinds of earthly purposes, analogous to that transpiring in the Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot, and appears in medieval textual traditions linked to a fourteenth-century kabbalistic Sefer Brit ha-Menuḥah (“The Book of the Covenant of Serenity”). ^{Footnote 37} This text comprises perhaps the most elaborate Jewish medieval attempt at providing a comprehensive theoretical framework for the kabbalistic concepts of language that underpin much of the practices related to utilizing divine names, in both contemporary and later kabbalistic contexts. Sefer ha-Geburah, one of the earliest layers that forms the textual tapestry of Brit ha-Menuḥah, is the closest parallel to the ideas recorded in the second part of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot. ^{Footnote 38} In essence, the so-called Sefer ha-Geburah consists of a short prayer-adjuration intended for use by those who wish to achieve exceptional learning abilities. The adjuration directed to summon the powers of ten angels dubbed “the ten [mighty] warriors” (‘Asarah ha-Gibborim) constitutes its central part, one that ought to be recited before any further performance. Remarkably, after a general invocation, each name of the ten angelic figures reappears in an adjuration formula while linked to one of the ten sefirot whose power or metaphysical status the angel represents. ^{Footnote 39} In the context of Sefer ha-Geburah, the adjuration of ten gibborim, the mighty warriors, sets out to make practical use of the ontological structure laid out in the earlier parts of the text, presented chiefly in the form of lists of distinct entities that build up the order of the universe. In the passages quoted above, the supernatural power flows from the center of this scheme (i.e., the ineffable divine name) down to the human worshiper, while mediated through the ten angelic figures. Each of these ten supreme angels features within the theosophical structure—that is, as a counterpart to one of the ten sefirot. The powers and abilities transmitted through angels toward the earthly realm correlate, although at times only loosely, with the idiomatic meaning and function of their names or of the name of a related sefirah. And so, for instance, the sefirah Ḥoḵmah (wisdom) provides the highest form of wisdom, the sefirah Binah (intelligence) furnishes one with the abilities of understanding, while the angel Refa’el (of Hebrew root ר-פ-א, to heal) affords good health. The adjuration thus addresses the Tetragrammaton, the preexisting divine name that underlies the whole of created reality, and whose power extends to the lower worlds via angels as conduits of its transmission, identified with sefirot. In this sense, sefirot and the ten angel-warriors appear coterminous if not identical, since—in the larger context of Sefer ha-Geburah, as well as other parts of Brit Menuḥah—both the sefirot and the ten angel-warriors essentially result from the first emanative stimulus of the divine and precede the created world. ^{Footnote 40}

Strikingly, the association of each sefirah with a specific angelic name in both the prayer-adjuration of Sefer ha-Geburah and Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot of MS Michael 473 is near-exact: thus, in both texts, the sefirah Keter counterparts the angel Yaho’el; sefirah Ḥoḵmah—(Ye)ḥaḵami’el; sefirah Binah—Nuri’el; sefirah Geburah—Gabri’el; sefirah Neṣaḥ—Pani’el/Pami’el; sefirah Hod—Aza’el/Asa’el; sefirah Yesod—Refa’el; and sefirah Malkhut—Bar(a)ḵi’el. ^{Footnote 41} This similarity suggests a close link between the two textual units, even if the angelic lineup in one of these texts is slightly more elaborate: each of the sefirot is paralleled in Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot, not with one central angelic name but with at least two or three. Moreover, parts of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot contain invocations of angelic names whose powers seem to be conferred to the worshiper directly, by the command of the angelic powers (“May it be your will, the holy and pure angels,” fol. 28v), who in turn receive nourishment from the source of power within the Tetragrammaton, via the dynamics of its vocalization. In both texts, the angelic, the sefirotic, and the divine names ought to be effectively adjured side by side and seem to play the same coercive role in the recommended adjuratory formulae. Indeed, the text of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot distributes both the angelic and the divine names derivative of Tetragrammaton equally within the circles of sefirot, which unambiguously suggests the notion of angels and sefirot as equal channels for the transmission of power that has its source and seat within the Tetragrammaton. Last, the focus on internal dynamics between sefirot, so characteristic of theosophical kabbalah in general and of the genre of commentaries on ten sefirot in particular, is not to be found in either Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot or early texts associated with Brit ha-Menuḥah, such as Sefer ha-Geburah, which instead focus entirely on the dynamics of the fluctuating vocalizations of the divine name and on the influence of these on the created world. ^{Footnote 42}

Both textual traditions, of Brit ha-Menuḥah and of the related Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot, are reminiscent of the medieval kabbalistic experiment of fitting two ostensibly different if not competing conceptualizations of the divine within one comprehensive metaphysical system, in which the theosophical idea of the ten sefirot overlaps with the intricate yet hierarchical angelology. ^{Footnote 43} This attempt, advanced textually in the fullest manner by Brit ha-Menuḥah, foregrounded the significance of sefirot and, crucially, their names as powers that operate in the universe either on a par with, and at times as, angels, within the boundaries delimited by the law of divine onomastics. Such an understanding of the sefirot as independent of their nuanced roles in the theosophical system of divine emanation—typical of medieval kabbalah of Spanish derivation, and as supra-angelic figures that conjoin the human and the divine realm, well-grounded in ancient Jewish mystical and magical vision of metaphysics—subsequently allowed for multifarious appearances of the sefirotic design in new and often unexpected literary contexts, particularly those practically oriented. These textual and performative traditions that appropriated a conceptualization of ten sefirot as angelic counterparts were fundamentally underlain by the view of the Tetragrammaton as a central symbol and overarching framework of the divine structure ready to be influenced and actively deployed by human agents.

Indeed, these kabbalistic textual traditions, especially in the form of smaller textual units and short excerpts of longer treatises, were deployed by scribes and readers in a number of ways in handwritten anthologies and compilations of practical character, where situatedness within new literary and material contexts often offered these texts radically distinctive meanings. ^{Footnote 44} And so, apart from its usual setting within the larger Brit ha-Menuḥah treatise, the text of Sefer ha-Geburah appears to have been independently copied into magical and practical kabbalistic manuscript compilations. This is, for instance, the case of a fifteenth-century collectaneum of Middle Eastern derivation, wherein Sefer ha-Geburah features among numerous traditions of linguistic kabbalah combined with magical texts and recipes (viz. NY Public Library MS 190 [formerly MS Sassoon 56]), in between excerpts from Sefer ha-Razim, short kabbalistic sodot (secrets) on divine names, and formulae of angelic adjurations. ^{Footnote 45} It is, however, the early modern Ashkenazi manuscript culture in which the texts of Brit ha-Menuḥah burgeoned, copied in full, excerpted into compilations, or abridged, especially into books of practical kabbalistic recipes and how-to books. The circulation of Brit ha-Menuḥah or parts of its textual layers in the early modern Ashkenazi compilations of kabbalistic and practical handbooks found its curious counterpart in the distribution of practical formulae that employ sefirot as entities that may be adjured and coerced by humans aiming to harness sefirotic powers for their own, often mundane, ends. One such exemplary practical handbook, a late seventeenth- to early eighteenth-century Ashkenazi product of mostly singular scribal and compilatory work, Oxford-Bodleian MS Opp. 485, comprises in its current form the full text of Brit ha-Menuḥah (following the printed edition of Amsterdam 1648), encompassed by an assemblage of recipes and short magical and kabbalistic textual units or excerpts thereof. Among the latter, there appear several textual pieces in which adjurations of ten sefirot were recommended for the practitioner for the purposes of annihilation of evil spirits and forces. These adjurations would be designed to affect the ten sefirot directly, as in formulae against powers of impurity addressed to them (“I adjure you, ten sefirot …,” fols. 239v–240r), and followed by formulations toward their counterpart angelic classes. Similarly structured adjurations feature in recipes against illnesses caused by sorcery, either of human (natural) or spiritual (preternatural) provenance, and resulting in the possession of a person by evil spirits, male or female (e.g., “We beseech you, ten sefirot, and ten classes [of angels], and ten [supreme] angels, with the names of angels,” fol. 227v). ^{Footnote 46}

Adjurations against evil forces that appear in the codex Opp. 485 refer also to a medieval kabbalistic idea of the emanation of the left side—that is, the mirror reflection of the sefirotic structure that sustains the powers of evil. ^{Footnote 47} This idea gained traction in the early to mid-seventeenth century, particularly in Ashkenaz, to some degree thanks to the circulation of texts accrued in compendia of Lurianic kabbalah, such as ‘Emeq ha-Meleḵ (first printed in Amsterdam, 1648), that entertained interest in explanations of the metaphysical status of evil. ^{Footnote 48} The recipes of MS Opp. 485 recommend invoking the names of ten classes of preexistent angelic figures in order to gain protection from their demonic counterparts that control the evil powers. In the same vein, some recipes in the codex advise adjurations of ten sefirot for the procedure of annihilating the influence of the left emanation (“I adjure you, ten sefirot, Keter, Ḥoḵmah, Binah, etc., so that the sefirot of impurity disappear,” fol. 230r, cf. also fol. 239v). A more practical and somewhat simpler recipe suggested that, in instances when a person needs to be ridden of evil spirits who possessed them, the names of ten sefirot should be written down in a bowl inside a drawing of the Star of David, followed by the verses of Ps 109:6 and 91:10 in reverse. The procedure concludes once the possessed person drinks from the bowl: the liquid wipes the text from the bowl’s surface and allows ingestion of the verses and the names of sefirot, whose power literally wipes the negative influences from the affected individual (fol. 419v, cf. also Oxford-Bodleian MS Opp. 432, fol. 150r, MS St Petersburg 326, fol. 34r).

The latter recipe, well-distributed in other Ashkenazi codices, is perhaps the most acute example of the materialization of sefirot in practical procedures that involve coercion of sefirotic powers by means of physical action, and not (or not only) via symbolic, mental, and intellectual effort on the part of humans. Equally well represented in the MS Opp. 485 are the adjuratory formulae that list ten supreme angelic figures “in charge of ten sefirot” (e.g., fol. 232v), that is, those that ought to be adjured in order to influence sefirot. These lists accurately reproduce the order of sefirot and the ten names of warrior-angels known from Sefer ha-Geburah, subsequently deployed in the text of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot. ^{Footnote 49} As the main textual unit that MS Opp. 485 holds is the full copy of Sefer Brit ha-Menuḥah, it seems only reasonable that smaller texts copied in the same compilation (and by the hand of the same scribe-compiler) would practically engage the theoretical spectrum of the text situated in the center of the compiled volume. The short formulae of adjurations of angels and sefirot, evidently extracted from texts belonging to Brit ha-Menuḥah and copied into the recipes in MS Opp. 485, are thus fully integrated within the sundry textual make-up of this Ashkenazi practical and kabbalistic manual.

Compiled Matter: Reading a Textual Unit Heterogeneously

Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot, the text in which the adjurations of sefirot (based on parts of Brit ha-Menuḥah) develop perhaps into the fullest literary form, is, to the best of my knowledge, preserved in three manuscripts, all of which display an integrating compilatory intent and at least partial Ashkenazi provenance. The Oxford-Bodleian MS Michael Add. 18 contains apparently the earliest of the still extant copies of the text, and also the shortest one. ^{Footnote 50} The manuscript consists of sixty-five parchment folios (sixty-five folios in foliation) forming a uniform codicological unit, of which 117 pages (up to fol. 59r) are written with fifteenth-century Sephardi non-square script. These pages have been used as material support for a portion of Ḥayyei ha-‘Olam ha-Ba’ of Abraham Abulafia, a key text of this medieval peripatetic kabbalist’s oeuvre that details the techniques of achieving a prophetic experience on meditating the seventy-two-letter divine name arranged into twenty-four units of nine letters each. ^{Footnote 51} Folios that had been left empty after the initial assemblage of the quires of the codex were, however, continuously filled with the text of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot written in an Italian-Ashkenazi script dating approximately to the early sixteenth century. The text smoothly begins on top of folio 59v. This textual unit consists of four folios, in its first part inscribed in Italian cursive script and in square script with clear Ashkenazi features deployed to highlight initial words and divine and angelic names. The same square script was also used to write the second part of the text that includes adjuration formulae, inscribed both within and outside the ten circular shapes of sefirot. The second part of text that contains the sequence of circles representing sefirot, with their surrounding prayer-adjurations, is clearly planned on the page and meticulously executed (fig. 2 below). ^{Footnote 52} The scribe’s choice of writing style and scribal register emphasizes the ritual character of the second part of the text, as the square script evokes the manner of representing canonical texts used for liturgical purposes. Even if of small size, the compilation of MS Michael Add. 18 appears entirely coherent. The later, Italian-Ashkenazi (likely, northern Italian) scribe based their copying project on the principle of transcribing texts that actively deploy divine names in kabbalistic performances, even if these performances were primarily intended to lead to dissimilar ends. ^{Footnote 53} The same scribe not only copied Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot, but also read and annotated the Abulafian Ḥayyei ha-‘Olam ha-Ba’ in the first part of the codex, placed two poetical pieces at the beginning and end of the volume, and finally adduced on its last page four short magical pieces that seek the divine name to achieve supernatural protective power over harming spirits. ^{Footnote 54} The overarching principle for the compilatory project, one that connects practical kabbalistic commentary on the deployment of angelic names and ten sefirot with the Abulafian text on performative uses of the divine name, can be read out of the scribe’s highlight on folio 54v, where their handsome manicula points to the line: “through the gradual emergence of the name you will comprehend everything that I mentioned to you on this matter, and through the knowledge of the name you will comprehend everything.” ^{Footnote 55}

Figure 2

The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. MS Michael Add. 18, folio 63v. Creative Commons licence CC-BY-NC 4.0.

The second of the manuscripts that contain Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot was almost certainly copied in Italy, in late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century Ashkenazi cursive script with a visible Italian influence (NLI 8^◦ 151).^{Footnote 56} In this volume, the graphic representation of sefirot is fully integrated within the flow of its explanatory textual parts. It contains circular shapes assigned to sefirot Keter, Ḥoḵmah, Binah, Ḥesed, Geburah, Tif’eret, and Neṣaḥ, with the figures of Yesod, Hod, and Malḵut missing; all the parts of the instructive text are, nevertheless, present in full. Here, the first part of the text describing six procedures related to the sefirotic circles, as well as adjuratory formulae, constitutes one cohesive textual block. Some of the graphic representations of sefirotic circles seem to be mere accompaniments to this textual block but do not constitute a hermeneutically independent and visually separate part of the text, to the point that the copyist seems to have had no awareness of the graphic elements that are clearly lacking, and which would have made some of the recommended procedures coherent. The compilatory intent of the entire one-hundred-folio manuscript, which was copied and compiled by a single scribe, transpires from the selection and order of the assembled textual units. The volume opens and closes with a series of recipes and adjurations (fols. 1r–34, 103v–107v, partially in Italian written in Hebrew script), whose larger part includes a practical guide to using three-letter components of seventy-two-letter divine names for various—mainly therapeutic and apotropaic—ends. Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot follows the introductory recipes in the compilation (fols. 34v–44r) and precedes an anthology of four astrological-magical and medical treatises, juxtaposed with magical and practical kabbalistic recipes.^{Footnote 57} All of the textual units in this codex seem to have been pulled together for a pragmatic reason: the compilation of texts exposes astrological, apotropaic, and medical character in such a manner that the textual pieces in the center of the codex provide a learned, theoretical backdrop for the practical guidelines and more quotidian recommendations for everyday lay use that enclose the whole compilation.

MS Michael 473 presents by far the most complex organizational enterprise. It is a composite manuscript—a manuscript formed of several originally separate codicological units, arranged together only at the stage of binding or rebinding the material. This process is normally carried out by first owners of manuscripts, and later by book collectors and librarians. In the case of MS Michael 473, the moment of putting all of its textual contents within one binding remains unknown; however, it had already assumed its current composite state before Moritz Steinschneider compiled a first brief description of the Michael Collection of Hebrew manuscripts in 1847, shortly after the death of their owner, Heimann Josef Michael, and before its transfer to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.^{Footnote 58} The arrangement of the current codex, now in modern binding, seems to preserve an arbitrary collection of codicological and paleographic units, written in four distinct hands. The largest of these units spans a mid-seventeenth-century compilation of magical fragments and recipes pooled together with a series of short early Ashkenazi mystical commentaries—predominantly on various divine names—and early kabbalistic sodot (“secrets”), distributed across the current volume in three separate segments. Two other sizeable units consist of an anonymous Seder ’Aṣilut (“The Order of Emanation”) and a commentary reminiscent of the teachings of Israel Sarug (fols. 28r–242v)—one of the main proponents of the kabbalah of Isaac Luria in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe—as well as a staggering collection of short moralistic instructions for kabbalistically oriented practices, also of Lurianic provenance, well integrated with various practical recipes and excerpts of magical texts (fols. 35r–93v, 183r–192v).^{Footnote 59}

Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot features in the codex Michael 473 in the third codicological unit (fols. 20r–32v), preceded by a part that holds a compilation headed ‘Inyenei qabbalah (“Matters of Kabbalah,” fols. 7r–19v). Crucially, the two neighboring codicological segments had featured together long before they reached the current composite arrangement, since both bear consistent signs of systematic reading and marking of noteworthy passages. While the earlier unit contains marginal annotations by the scribe of its main text, the second lacks such marginalia. However, both units contain identically shaped maniculae in brown ink of the same quality as that of the text of the second unit.^{Footnote 60} For one, these pointers highlight references to subject matters that occupy both codicological segments: on the one hand, the issue of the transmigration of parts of human souls (fol. 21r, emphasis in the text Šemu‘ah be-‘Inyenei ha-Gilgul, attributed to Moses Cordovero); on the other hand, the practical expiatory effect of the use of specific kavvanot (emphases within a collection of Lurianic provenance, fols. 17v, 18v, 22r, twice on 22v), grounded in the theory of the structural-ontological interrelation of sefirot with divine names (exposed on fols. 7r, 8r, 9v, 11r). Indeed, the reader who distributed the maniculae throughout texts in these two units responded with vivid interest to the issues that inform the everyday penitentiary performance, notwithstanding whether these originated within “Cordoverian” or “Lurianic” kabbalistic theories.

The passages that were highlighted most frequently in these two interrelated units of MS Michael 473 refer to the question of the ever-changing balance between the power of mercy and of stern judgment, embedded within the sefirotic ontologies, and which, within the human reality, manifestly incline toward the side of judgment (fol. 16r). In continuation with these highlights, the reader also marked up sections on receiving an additional soul (nešamah) on the night of shabbat that equally may be good or may be contaminated by evil and sin, leaving one’s constitution with a lasting negative imprint (fol. 21r).^{Footnote 61} Another of the spotlighted excerpts explains the idea of a dividing screen (masak) between each of the four upper worlds of the kabbalistic metaphysics, extending vertically from the source of emanation toward the material world, each of which prevents some of the divine light from fully penetrating into the lower world.^{Footnote 62} The reader’s mark, however, highlighted a sentence that clarifies that, in spite of the separating screen between the world of emanation (that is, the uppermost divine level of so-called aṣilut) and the world of making (i.e., the lowest, called ‘asiyah), there still exists a direct, even if fine, connection between the two (fol. 16v). This remark adds an instructive layer to the reading of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot, the text situated at the end of the two related codicological units. Here, the same manicula points to three passages on using the adjuration of sefirot that may directly impact the material reality, all apparently emphasized by the reader on the grounds of the connection between the upper and the lower worlds, despite an ontological divide between these two realms—an issue that drew their attention in the previous textual units. It seems not without reason that one of the maniculae in the margin of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot directs attention to the direct, practical use of the sefirah Geburah that stands for the aspect of divine judgment. According to the underscored text, in order to gain the upper hand over one’s enemies, it is necessary to engage the power of harsh divine judgment—and this was the predominance of harsh judgment in the material world that preoccupied the same reader in the texts assembled across several quires of the two codicological units.

Certainly, this motley of texts and excerpts annotated with the same maniculae but stemming from various kabbalistic and intellectual traditions need not have been initially—and some of them surely were not—interrelated, historically or otherwise. They were cogently put together by a reader (likely, the scribe of the second unit) who expressed much interest in the matters of evil and its rectification by humans, but equally so in accessing the supernatural powers to steer the divine structure, including its penchant toward stern judgment, in accordance with their needs. Thus, the collection of these textual units became less haphazard for the reader than it appears to the modern eye that is shaped by dominant narratives of the historiography of kabbalah and that has tended to separate the “practical kabbalistic sensu stricto” from other types of discourse ingrained in kabbalistic literatures,^{Footnote 63} or simply, to read textual units out of the contexts of their material genre. As it appears in early modern multitext codices of various origins—and kabbalistic codices are no exception to this fashion—one subject matter may be treated by texts grappling with it from various angles, be they conflicting or incongruous for a contemporary reader, across a given compilation. The reader’s responses lock this potential polyvalence of texts often by providing a unifying trait or by discerning some commonalities, thus overcoming the sense of interpretive unease. This was the case of the reader-scribe who marked off the margins of the two-unit compilation in MS Michael 473. By reshaping the literary and material aspects of the compilation for their own use and according to their own intellectual agendas, they co-composed the compilation’s textual identity, or one of its meaningful layers, thus partaking in a project of its collective textual authorship.^{Footnote 64}

Readings in Composite Matter

In this regard, it is not only the reader-maker of the text in its material format that assumes a role in the collective enterprise of its “authorship”; as parts of one textual entity that share common features, the compiled texts constitute that entity integrally as much as they are shaped by its particular organization. In this sense, the compiled matter displays an interdependent, collective identity, while conveying meanings specific to the time and culture of their copyists and contemporary readers. Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot—a text whose supposed origins reach the fourteenth century and the theologies of the divine name that much precede the medieval period—features in the compilation of MS Michael 473, while coherently and purposely continuing discourses on engaging with divine (sefirotic) powers. The theoretical basis of these discourses provides more speculative texts placed within the same compilation and ascribed by the copyists to Moses Cordovero and Isaac Luria—the two key figures of the kabbalistic panorama in early modernity. In effect, Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot and MS Michael 473 as a whole expose intellectual interests rooted in kabbalistic traditions of diverse provenance but textually reworked and materially redeployed according to reading interests manifest in the learning/scribal centers of mid-seventeenth-century Eastern and Central Europe. The clout of Moses Cordovero or Isaac Luria plays an important role in the politics of crafting textual matter, but neither one of these individuals stands as the only participant in the process of textual creation.^{Footnote 65}

The text of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot centers on a detailed description of rituals whose efficacy rests on ontological assumptions latent in kabbalistic theosophy that allow the practitioners to access the dynamics of the godhead directly and consequently to assume control over perceivable reality with the use of divine power. As marked out by the scribe who transcribed Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot in MS Michael 473, the text and its prescribed procedures depend on a particular graphic arrangement of the text, one that ought to be replicated in the performances of writing divine and angelic names and one that shapes the practitioner’s relation to the matters and powers referred to in the text. Even if not simply effecting it, the (material) form of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot in MS Michael 473 amplifies and highlights its potential performative import.^{Footnote 66} As any text is only available in its material form, and this particular text exists in three material renditions, the current article has set each of those three formats forth, highlighting the similarities and idiosyncrasies of their compilatory intent. As it appeared, locating Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot in its immediate material contexts enabled its “miscellaneous reading,”^{Footnote 67} which showcased various ways in which it was integrated into textual compilations and the role this textual unit achieved in codices oriented toward practical knowledge of all kinds.

The material format of multiple-text manuscripts (often labeled as collectanea)—especially uniform compilations of miscellaneous type that respond to a related range of topics—allows for the recontextualizing of traditions and shifting of purported thematic import of any individually conceived textual unit. So, for instance, pieces of text that belonged to Brit ha-Menuḥah and that underlay Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot were reworked into early modern recipe books as integral parts of practical (magical) and medical know-how (such as Opp. 485) in such a way that the kabbalistic and magical traditions effectively blended in semivernacular contexts. Likewise, the same traditions related to ten supreme angels and ten sefirot that developed into Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot featured in larger early modern compilations, especially those originating as miscellaneous compilations. This material format of compiled short texts and excerpts thereof enabled particular modes of textual consumption that could confront new and contemporarily dominant types of kabbalistic knowledge by blurring their literary and authorial boundaries. These heterogenous ways of reading and crafting texts not only resulted from the “unfixed” material format of a miscellaneous collectaneum that had the potential to be expanded and assembled by readers through binding and rejoining of quires (as was the case of MS Michael 473); rather, it made them possible.

It is through a reading of the textual unit of Qabbalat ‘Eser Sefirot as materially situated, trailing its scribe’s and early reader’s footprints, that we may recover a partial vestige of the otherwise lost compilatory intent behind the gatherings of MS Michael 473, and the layers of meaning that it had assumed and fashioned close to the time of its creation. Anonymous compilers’ and editors’ intentions in creating meaningful volumes are usually ambiguous in the case of nonuniform composite volumes, which to all appearances seem disorderly and unsystematic, especially as they underwent subsequent rebinding and repositioning of quires. And yet, active involvement in the contents of composite textual arrangements bestrides the layers of meanings anchored in the material form of the text, at times escaping the forethought of their producers, with that of their modern readers (both sides unfailingly conditioned, historically and culturally).^{Footnote 68} Each codex ensues from a historically embedded procedure predicated on certain epistemic and cultural presumptions. And so, multiple-text and composite manuscripts, aptly described by scholars as “corpus organizers,”^{Footnote 69} might be perceived as practical strategies of organizing and communicating the divergent corpora of knowledge that they carry and thus (re)produce in time. As objects of the transmission of kabbalistic knowledge, miscellaneous and composite volumes (collectanea) involve readings that reach beyond texts as individualized or idealized objects and toward their reframing within the compilatory context of each codex—a material evidence of decisions taken by those involved in their making and transmission. In the study of premodern Jewish kabbalistic literatures, appreciating texts from the perspective of their material genre offers a fresh hermeneutic of reading kabbalah as a multifaceted textual tradition, one that zooms in on how and why some of its layers circulated in miscellaneous cultural milieus across centuries.