Download or read book Studies in the Zohar written by Yehuda Liebes and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the "Book of Splendor" (Sefer ha-Zohar), the greatest achievement of Kabbalah and one of the most influential sources of Western mysticism. This book offers a new interpretation of the Zohar, analyzing both its theoretical content and its historical context; it also brings the theory and the history together by indicating the personal and autobiographical elements in the Zohar's teachings. The author delves into the issues of the messianic elements of the Zohar, the way it was written, and its relationship to Christianity, Gnosticism, and Talmudic literature.

Download or read book Hidden Intercourse written by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-12-31 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From rumours about gnostic orgies in antiquity to the explicit erotic symbolism of alchemical texts, from the subtly coded eroticism of medieval kabbalah to the sexual magic practiced by contemporary occultists and countercultural translations of Asian Tantra, the history of Western esotericism is rich in references to the domains of eros and sexuality. This volume, which brings together an impressive array of top-level specialists, is the first to analyze the eroticism of the esoteric without sensationalism or cheap generalizations, but on the basis of expert scholarship and attention to textual and historical detail. While there are few other domains where the imagination may so easily run wild, the various contributions seek to distinguish fact from fiction--only to find that historical realities are sometimes even stranger than the fantasies. In doing so, they reveal the outlines of a largely unknown history spanning more than twenty centuries.

Download or read book Origins of the Kabbalah written by Gershom Gerhard Scholem and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the publication of The Origins of the Kabbalah in 1950, one of the most important scholars of our century brought the obscure world of Jewish mysticism to a wider audience for the first time. A crucial work in the oeuvre of Gershom Scholem, this book details the beginnings of the Kabbalah in twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France and Spain, showing its rich tradition of repeated attempts to achieve and portray direct experiences of God. The Origins of the Kabbalah is a contribution not only to the history of Jewish medieval mysticism, but also to the study of medieval mysticism in general. Now with a new foreword by David Biale, this book remains essential reading for students of the history of religion.

Download or read book The Wisdom of the Zohar written by Isaiah Tishby and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 1989-09-01 with total page 1653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A classic, a landmark in modern Hebrew letters. Beautifully written and deeply learned ... the appearance of the long-awaited English translation is a cause for celebration.' - Elliot Ginsburg, Journal of Religion

Download or read book Absorbing Perfections written by Moshe Idel and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 686 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging discussion of Kabbalah—from the mystical trends of medieval Judaism to modern Hasidism—one of the world’s foremost scholars considers different visions of the nature of the sacred text and of the methods to interpret it. Moshe Idel takes as a starting point the fact that the postbiblical Jewish world lost its geographical center with the destruction of the temple and so was left with a textual center, the Holy Book. Idel argues that a text-oriented religion produced language-centered forms of mysticism. Against this background, the author demonstrates how various Jewish mystics amplified the content of the Scriptures so as to include everything: the world, or God, for example. Thus the text becomes a major realm for contemplation, and the interpretation of the text frequently becomes an encounter with the deepest realms of reality. Idel delineates the particular hermeneutics belonging to Jewish mysticism, investigates the progressive filling of the text with secrets and hidden levels of meaning, and considers in detail the various interpretive strategies needed to decodify the arcane dimensions of the text.

Download or read book Messianic Mystics written by Moshe Idel and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2000-05-01 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the worl'ds leading scholars of Jewish thought examines the long tradition of Jewish messianism and mystical experience.

Download or read book Venturing Beyond Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-25 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism is an investigation of the relationship of the mystical and moral viewed through the prism of the kabbalistic tradition. Elliot R. Wolfson's analysis focuses in particular on the multi-layered corpus of Zohar, the major sourcebook of theosophic symbolism that has informed the variegated evolution of kabbalastic thought and practice."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Language Eros Being written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 1256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This long-awaited, magisterial study-an unparalleled blend of philosophy, poetry, and philology-draws on theories of sexuality, phenomenology, comparative religion, philological writings on Kabbalah, Russian formalism, Wittgenstein, Rosenzweig, William Blake, and the very physics of the time-space continuum to establish what will surely be a highwater mark in work on Kabbalah. Not only a study of texts, Language, Eros, Being is perhaps the fullest confrontation of the body in Jewish studies, if not in religious studies as a whole. Elliot R. Wolfson explores the complex gender symbolism that permeates Kabbalistic literature. Focusing on the nexus of asceticism and eroticism, he seeks to define the role of symbolic and poetically charged language in the erotically configured visionary imagination of the medieval Kabbalists. He demonstrates that the traditional Kabbalistic view of gender was a monolithic and androcentric one, in which the feminine was conceived as being derived from the masculine. He does not shrink from the negative implications of this doctrine, but seeks to make an honest acknowledgment of it as the first step toward the redemption of an ancient wisdom. Comparisons with other mystical traditions-including those in Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam-are a remarkable feature throughout the book. They will make it important well beyond Jewish studies, indeed, a must for historians of comparative religion, in particular of comparative mysticism. Praise for Elliot R. Wolfson: "Through a Speculum That Shines is an important and provocative contribution to the study of Jewish mysticism by one of the major scholars now working in this field."-Speculum

Download or read book Revelation and Mystery in Ancient Judaism and Pauline Christianity written by Markus N. A. Bockmuehl and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 1990 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Cambridge, 1987.

Download or read book On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead written by Gershom Scholem and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2011-03-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Scholem's treatment is complex and stylistically brilliant as he systemically analyzes the history and intellectual background of these critical ideas. Highly recommended."--Library Journal.

Download or read book Roads of Excess Palaces of Wisdom written by Jeffrey J. Kripal and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-12 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Blake once wrote that "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." Inspired by these poetic terms, Jeffrey J. Kripal reveals how the works of scholars of mysticism are often rooted in their own mystical experiences, "roads of excess," which can both lead to important insights into these scholars' works and point us to our own "palaces of wisdom." In his new book, Kripal addresses the twentieth-century study of mysticism as a kind of mystical tradition in its own right, with its own unique histories, discourses, sociological dynamics, and rhetorics of secrecy. Fluidly combining autobiography and biography with scholarly exploration, Kripal takes us on a tour of comparative mystical thought by examining the lives and works of five major historians of mysticism—Evelyn Underhill, Louis Massignon, R. C. Zaehner, Agehananda Bharati, and Elliot Wolfson—as well as relating his own mystical experiences. The result, Kripal finds, is seven "palaces of wisdom": the religious power of excess, the necessity of distance in the study of mysticism, the relationship between the mystical and art, the dilemmas of male subjectivity and modern heterosexuality, a call for ethical criticism, the paradox of the insider-outsider problem in the study of religion, and the magical power of texts and their interpretation. An original and penetrating analysis of modern scholarship and scholars of mysticism, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom is also a persuasive demonstration of the way this scholarly activity is itself a mystical phenomenon.

Download or read book written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by Harvard Semitic Studies. This book was released on 1988 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Kali s Child written by Jeffrey J. Kripal and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-10 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholar Jeffrey J. Kripal explores the life and teachings of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a 19th-century Bengali saint who played a major role in the creation of modern Hinduism. The work is now marked by both critical acclaim and cross-cultural controversy. In a substantial new Preface to this second edition, Kripal answers his critics and addresses the controversy.

Download or read book Golem written by Moshe Idel and published by Suny Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Idel's thesis is that the role of the golem concept in Judaism was to confer an exceptional status to the Jewish elite by bestowing it with the capability of supernatural powers deriving from a profound knowledge of the Hebrew language and its magical and mystical values.

Download or read book Alef Mem Tau written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-04-05 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alef, Mem, Tau also discusses Islamic mysticism and Buddhist thought in relation to the Jewish esoteric tradition as it opens the possibility of a temporal triumph of temporality and the conquering of time through time."

Download or read book Hidden Wisdom written by Gedaliahu A. Guy Stroumsa and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the problem of esoteric traditions in early Christianity, their origin and their transformation in Patristic hermeneutics, in the West as well as in the East. It argues that these traditions eventually formed the basis of nascent Christian mysticism in Late Antiquity. These esoteric traditions do not reflect the influence of Greek Mystery religions, as has often been claimed, but rather seem to stem from the Jewish background of Christianity. They were adopted by various Gnostic teachings, a fact which helps explaining their eventual disappearance from Patristic literature. The eleven chapters study each a different aspect of the problem, including the questions of Gnostic and Manichaean esotericism. This book will be of interest to all students of religious history in Late Antiquity. Revised and extended paperback edition. Originally published in 1996. Please click here for details.

Download or read book Along the Path written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1995-07-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates the complexity of Jewish mysticism in the history of religions. The author provides a morphology of the deep structures of thought that emerge from the basic texts of Jewish mysticism. Combining the most sophisticated philological and phenomenological methods, he explores fundamental issues.