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This elaborate Italian kabbalistic manuscript depicts the inner processes of the divine (the sefirot) in the shape of a tree (in Hebrew, ilan), or tree of life. Visualization plays an important part…
Born and raised in Oran, Algeria, the talmudic scholar Jacob Sasportas served as rabbi of Tlemcen. Forced to flee Morocco due to political unrest, in 1647 he embarked on a life of wandering. In 1664…
This page from a kabbalistic manuscript depicts the inner processes of the divine (the sefirot). Visualization plays an important part in kabbalah, and these diagrams provided a divine cartography…
These pages come from the same manuscript of a midrashic commentary. The first image depicts the inner processes of the divine emanations (the sefirot). Visualization plays an important part in…
This manuscript copy of Sefer ha-kavanot (The Book of [Kabbalistic] Intentions [in Prayer and Performance of Precepts]) by Ḥayim Vital was written in Meknes, Morocco. The kabbalists in Safed stressed…
According to the colophon, Natan Hammerschlag’s Ilan de-adam kadmon (Sefirotic Diagram of the First Man) was copied from the writings of Ḥayim Vital, the most prominent disciple of Isaac Luria…
The art of chiromancy (palmistry), which divines a person’s nature and often his or her future by examining the palm and fingers (and sometimes forehead), dates back to the ancient Near East and…
This early printed amulet from Germany, meant as protection for a woman in childbirth, is adorned with woodcuts illustrating the Hebrew months of the year. The main panel, framed by images of the…
This remarkable manuscript of practical kabbalah was written in Eastern Europe in the mid-eighteenth century; at the end of that century it was owned by the Radvil Hasidic dynasty. In contrast to…
These illustrated pages are from a manuscript copy of Sefer goralot (Book of Lots), a treatise on geomancy, which was a method of divination popular in the medieval world. The text was attributed…
