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This illustration of an armillary sphere is from a treatise on astronomy, Sefer mareh ha-ofanim (The Appearance of the Heavenly Beings), by Solomon ben Abraham Avigdor. The treatise was mostly a…
Amulets for the evil eye; tested. Write on either a kosher or deerskin parchment, on a day of [reading from] the Torah, before eating anything. And calculate in that hour which day it is and which…
The rule of the aforementioned fifth and sixth items, which concern going to bed and rising. It is stated and summarized from what has been said in the past, that sleep being so harmful…
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…
Nevertheless, I saw from the first that many people would open their mouths wide against me [see Psalms 22:14] and speak arrogantly against me and think it a sin on my part for my having written based…
This illustration of the (Aristotelian) cosmos appears in an eighteenth-century manuscript of Neḥmad ve-na‘im (Nice and Pleasant), David Ganz’s posthumously published book on astronomy.
This foldout calendar is a beautifully illuminated feature that appears in a sefer ‘evronot. Works of this genre were Jewish calendar handbooks for calculating the dates of religious holidays 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…
Do you know what sign I am? Aries. What’s that? And? So, what do you think? No big deal? And do you know what my conflict is? The drama? Yes, the drama of my life. Misery. What do you say? Now, just…
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…
