Kabbalah

The mystical heart of Judaism, mapping the hidden inner life of God.

c. 1200 CE → · Spain & Provence · Abrahamic

Kabbalah is the central tradition of Jewish mysticism, flowering in medieval Spain with the Zohar, which reads the Torah as a veil over the inner life of God, described through ten emanations called the sefirot. The later Lurianic school framed creation as a cosmic shattering and the human task as tikkun, the repair of a broken world. Its symbolism reached far beyond Judaism to shape Western esotericism as a whole.

Key figures

• Moses de León (compiler of the Zohar)
• Isaac Luria (later mystic)

Texts

• The Zohar
• The Sefer Yetzirah

Beliefs

• Ten emanations (sefirot) through which God acts
• Hidden meaning within the Torah
• Repair of the world (tikkun)

Rituals

• Contemplative study of sacred texts
• Meditative prayer
• Ethical refinement

Grew from

• Judaism

Connections in the atlas

• The Sephardic dispersal
• Rabbi Akiva
• Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation)
• Safed (Tzfat)
• Lilith
• Metatron’s Cube
• ? Who wrote the Zohar?
• Prague Old Town and Josefov
• The sacred marriage
• Medieval and Renaissance European astrology
• ▶ Mystics of the three faiths
• The Self