Jewish Magic Before The Rise Of Kabbalah

Author : Yuval Harari
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Page : 604 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2017-04-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780814336311

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Jewish Magic before the Rise of Kabbalah by Yuval Harari Pdf

“Magic culture is certainly fascinating. But what is it? What, in fact, are magic writings, magic artifacts?” Originally published in Hebrew in 2010, Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah is a comprehensive study of early Jewish magic focusing on three major topics: Jewish magic inventiveness, the conflict with the culture it reflects, and the scientific study of both. The first part of the book analyzes the essence of magic in general and Jewish magic in particular. The book begins with theories addressing the relationship of magic and religion in fields like comparative study of religion, sociology of religion, history, and cultural anthropology, and considers the implications of the paradigm shift in the interdisciplinary understanding of magic for the study of Jewish magic. The second part of the book focuses on Jewish magic culture in late antiquity and in the early Islamic period. This section highlights the artifacts left behind by the magic practitioners—amulets, bowls, precious stones, and human skulls—as well as manuals that include hundreds of recipes. Jewish Magic before the Rise of Kabbalah also reports on the culture that is reflected in the magic evidence from the perspective of external non-magic contemporary Jewish sources. Issues of magic and religion, magical mysticism, and magic and social power are dealt with in length in this thorough investigation. Scholars interested in early Jewish history and comparative religions will find great value in this text.

Author : Author Series Editor Yuval Harari
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 604 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2021-10
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0814348815

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Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah by Author Series Editor Yuval Harari Pdf

A comprehensive study of Jewish magic in the late antiquity and the early Islamic period-the phenomenon, the sources, and method for its research, and the history of scholarly investigation into its nature and origin.

Author : Yuval Harari
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Jewish magic
ISBN : 0814336302

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Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah by Yuval Harari Pdf

A comprehensive study of Jewish magic in the late antiquity and the early Islamic period-the phenomenon, the sources, and method for its research, and the history of scholarly investigation into its nature and origin.

Author : Gideon Bohak
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2011-02-24
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0521180988

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Ancient Jewish Magic by Gideon Bohak Pdf

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.

Author : Joshua Trachtenberg
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2012-10-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780812208337

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Jewish Magic and Superstition by Joshua Trachtenberg Pdf

Alongside the formal development of Judaism from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, a robust Jewish folk religion flourished—ideas and practices that never met with wholehearted approval by religious leaders yet enjoyed such wide popularity that they could not be altogether excluded from the religion. According to Joshua Trachtenberg, it is not possible truly to understand the experience and history of the Jewish people without attempting to recover their folklife and beliefs from centuries past. Jewish Magic and Superstition is a masterful and utterly fascinating exploration of religious forms that have all but disappeared yet persist in the imagination. The volume begins with legends of Jewish sorcery and proceeds to discuss beliefs about the evil eye, spirits of the dead, powers of good, the famous legend of the golem, procedures for casting spells, the use of gems and amulets, how to battle spirits, the ritual of circumcision, herbal folk remedies, fortune telling, astrology, and the interpretation of dreams. First published more than sixty years ago, Trachtenberg's study remains the foundational scholarship on magical practices in the Jewish world and offers an understanding of folk beliefs that expressed most eloquently the everyday religion of the Jewish people.

Author : Lyam Thomas Christopher
Publisher : Llewellyn Worldwide
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9780738708935

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Kabbalah, Magic, and the Great Work of Self-transformation by Lyam Thomas Christopher Pdf

Advancing to higher levels of ritual magic with purpose and power requires an exaltation of consciousness-a spiritual transformation that can serve as an antitode to the seeming banality of modern life. Based on Kabbalistic techniques, the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and an Hermetic tradition spanning nearly two thousand years, this innovative new work introduces the history of the Golden Dawn and its mythology, the Tree of Life, Deities, demons, rules for practicing magic, and components of effective ritual. A comprehensive course of self-initiation using Israel Regardie's seminal Golden Dawn as a key reference point, Kabbalah, Magic and the Great Work of Self-Transformation guides you through the levels of the Golden Dawn system of ritual magic. Each grade in this system corresponds with a sphere in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and includes daily rituals, required reading, written assignments, projects, and additional exercises. Knowledgeable and true to tradition, author Lyam Thomas Christopher presents a well-grounded and modern step-by-step program toward spiritual attainment, providing a lucid gateway toward a more awakened state. Finalist for the Coalition of Visionary Resources Award for Best Magick/Shamanism Book

Author : Moses Gaster
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 100 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 1896
Category : Angels
ISBN : NLI:1867289-10

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חרבא דמשה by Moses Gaster Pdf

Author : Shahar Arzy,Moshe Idel
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2015-01-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780300152364

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Kabbalah by Shahar Arzy,Moshe Idel Pdf

"In this original study, Moshe Idel, an eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism and thought, and the cognitive neuroscientist and neurologist Shahar Arzy combine their considerable expertise to explore the mysteries of the Kabbalah from an entirely new perspective: that of the human brain. In lieu of the theological, sociological, and psychoanalytic approaches that have generally dominated the study of ecstatic mystical experiences, the authors endeavor to decode the brain mechanisms underlying these phenomena. Arzy and Idel analyze first-person descriptions to explore the Kabbalistic techniques employed by most prominent Jewish mystics to effect bodily reduplications, dissociations, and other phenomena, and compare them with recent neurological observationsand modern-day laboratory experiments. The resultant study offers readers a scientific, more brain-based understanding of how ecstatic Kabbalists achieved their most precious mystical experiences. The study further demonstrates how these Kabbalists have long functioned as pioneering investigators of the human self"--

Author : Rabbi Lawrence Kushner
Publisher : Crown
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2007-10-09
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780767924139

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Kabbalah by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner Pdf

Sometime, somewhere, someone is searching for answers . . . . . . in a thirteenth-century castle . . . on a train to a concentration camp . . . in a New York city apartment Hidden within the binding of an ancient text that has been passed down through the ages lies the answer to one of the heart’s eternal questions. When the text falls into the hands of Rabbi Kalman Stern, he has no idea that his lonely life of intellectual pursuits is about to change once he opens the book. Soon afterward, he meets astronomer Isabel Benveniste, a woman of science who stirs his soul as no woman has for many years. But Kalman has much to learn before he can unlock his heart and let true love into his life. The key lies in the mysterious document he finds inside the Zohar, the master text of the Kabbalah.

Author : J. H. Chajes
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2012-03-07
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780812201550

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Between Worlds by J. H. Chajes Pdf

After a nearly two-thousand-year interlude, and just as Christian Europe was in the throes of the great Witch Hunt and what historians have referred to as "The Age of the Demoniac," accounts of spirit possession began to proliferate in the Jewish world. Concentrated at first in the Near East but spreading rapidly westward, spirit possession, both benevolent and malevolent, emerged as perhaps the most characteristic form of religiosity in early modern Jewish society. Adopting a comparative historical approach, J. H. Chajes uncovers this strain of Jewish belief to which scant attention has been paid. Informed by recent research in historical anthropology, Between Worlds provides fascinating descriptions of the cases of possession as well as analysis of the magical techniques deployed by rabbinic exorcists to expel the ghostly intruders. Seeking to understand the phenomenon of spirit possession in its full complexity, Chajes delves into its ideational framework—chiefly the doctrine of reincarnation—while exploring its relation to contemporary Christian and Islamic analogues. Regarding spirit possession as a form of religious expression open to—and even dominated by—women, Chajes initiates a major reassessment of women in the history of Jewish mysticism. In a concluding section he examines the reception history of the great Hebrew accounts of spirit possession, focusing on the deployment of these "ghost stories" in the battle against incipient skepticism in the turbulent Jewish community of seventeenth-century Amsterdam. Exploring a phenomenon that bridged learned and ignorant, rich and poor, men and women, Jews and Gentiles, Between Worlds maps for the first time a prominent feature of the early modern Jewish religious landscape, as quotidian as it was portentous: the nexus of the living and the dead.

Author : David J. Collins, S. J.
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 810 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2018-12-20
Category : History
ISBN : 1108703070

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The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West by David J. Collins, S. J. Pdf

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 U.S. 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.

Author : Edward L. Goldberg
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2011-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781442613331

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Jews and Magic in Medici Florence by Edward L. Goldberg Pdf

In the seventeenth century, Florence was the splendid capital of the Medici Grand Dukedom of Tuscany. Meanwhile, the Jews in its tiny Ghetto struggled to earn a living by any possible means, especially loan-sharking, rag-picking and second-hand dealing. They were viewed as an uncanny people with rare supernatural powers, and Benedetto Blanis—a businessman and aspiring scholar from a distinguished Ghetto dynasty—sought to parlay his alleged mastery of astrology, alchemy and Kabbalah into a grand position at the Medici Court. He won the patronage of Don Giovanni dei Medici, a scion of the ruling family, and for six tumultuous years their lives were inextricably linked. Edward Goldberg reveals the dramas of daily life behind the scenes in the Pitti Palace and in the narrow byways of the Florentine Ghetto, using thousands of new documents from the Medici Granducal Archive. He shows that truth—especially historical truth—can be stranger than fiction, when viewed through the eyes of the people most immediately involved.

Author : Peter Levenda
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2008-06-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780826428509

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Stairway to Heaven by Peter Levenda Pdf

The idea of heavenly ascent, while popularized in Jewish mysticism, is neither a unique nor recent one. Expertly tracing its origins back to the ancient Middle East, Levenda unearths ascent literature in Africa, India, and China, discerns a common connection in the heavens themselves, and determines that this connection has been sorely neglected in contemporary scholarship. Because scholars treat the "heavens" as metaphorical, it is necessary to recreate the physical context of the culture under discussion in order to better understand it. For the benefit of the reader, Levenda offers two useful concepts for his investigative journey: a "map," whereby he means the cosmological system to better understand the mystical technologies of each culture investigated, and a "vehicle," the method by which the individual equipped with special knowledge is able to navigate the culture's particular cosmology. With these two tools, Levenda travels from the worlds of ancient Egypt and Babylon to the Hebrew Bible, to Jewish and Christian kabbalists, to Daoists in ancient China, to Hindu Tantra and Haitian Vodoun, and, finally, to nineteenth and twentieth century European occult societies.

Author : Elisheva Nesher
Publisher : Weiser Books
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2022-11-01
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9781633411845

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Casting Lots by Elisheva Nesher Pdf

“In Casting Lots, Elisheva Nesher does not just present the system of using the aleph-beit to cast lots for spiritual guidance and wisdom, she also shows the range of divine beings and spiritual practices in ancient Canaan/Israel, as well as the modern polytheist revival. There is a warmth and generosity here towards all sides that we all can learn from.” —Rachel Pollack, author of Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom and A Walk Through the Forest of Souls Lots are an ancient Hebrew form of divination and magic that may also be used for healing, blessing, cursing, meditation, and spiritual interaction. A set of lots contains twenty-two small discs, each one bearing one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In a manner similar to runes, these lots are then cast and interpreted. Though lots were once so common that explanations of how to cast them were unnecessary, over the centuries their methods and uses fell into obscurity. In this practical guide, author and seer Elisheva Nesher has reconstructed the ancient art of lot casting for modern times. Her book contains explanations for each of the twenty-two lots and explores their meanings, both mystical and mundane. It also includes detailed instructions on how to cast, as well as craft your own set of lots. In addition to divination, Casting Lots explores the magical gifts of the lots as well as how to use them to contact and interact with the Hebrew spirits, such as Asherah. A brief guide is included for those unfamiliar with these spirits. Casting Lots is a complete instruction manual for mastering the art of lot casting.

Author : Steven Gimbel
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2012-05-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9781421405544

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Einstein's Jewish Science by Steven Gimbel Pdf

This volume intertwines science, history, philosophy, theology, and politics in fresh and fascinating ways to solve the multifaceted riddle of what religion means - and what it means to science.