#moshe idel

[arcane-offerings]

Moshe Idel. Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid. Ktav Publishing House, 2019. Hardcover Augmented Edition. 430 pages. 

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[perkwunos]

By parasemantic hermeneutics I understand the interpreter’s recourse to the assumption that even those elements of the text that are not commonly thought to convey a message in its original ancient context did so in a hidden manner. The size of letters, the graphics of the Torah scroll, the spaces between letters, are all interrogated in order to elicit even more recondite secrets.

…

Parasemantic aspects seem to be much more idiosyncratic. They resort to textual elements which, though significant in the interpretive discourse, are not accepted as such by the ancient context and presumably by many of the interpreters’ contemporaries. The semantic inchoateness of the interpreted material is therefore much greater. The choices made by the interpreter are fairly random and, more crucially, it is the syntactic structures of the text that vanish. In fact, in many cases even the structure of one word disintegrates because of the emphasis put on its separate components. … even the white aspects of a text may become the starting point for speculation. Even more dramatically than in postmodern theories of hypertextuality, the order of the narrative has been severely attenuated in many Kabbalistic forms of interpretation, thereby allowing connections that are more nominal than syntactic. Emerging from a deep immersion in the biblical text, the numerous affinities established between different components of the Bible, conceived of as a hypertext, do not obliterate the ordinary sequence of letters, although the sequence is often ignored during the interpretive process. Neither did the widespread custom of creating literary collages by appropriating verses from different parts of the Bible (especially Psalms) for the daily Jewish liturgy involve any problematic attitude toward the biblical text.

Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections, Kabbalah and Interpretation

[magica-pseudoacademica]

[S]ince the twelfth century, another type of magic entered Judaism, stemming basically from Arabic sources, which can basically be described as astro-magic. This means that the astral world, planets and stars are conceived of as inhabited by what are called spiritual powers, whose different characteristics distinguish between these sidereal bodies. The magical aspects consist of a series of rituals that correspond to the features of the astral bodies, and are capable of drawing down and making use of those powers. In many cases talismans are used to attract those planetary powers. This literature is documented in the Hellenistic period and in many medieval Arabic sources, some of which had an impact on various authors in Judaism.

Moshe Idel, “Jewish Magic in the Middle Ages” in Angels and Demons: Jewish Magic Through the Ages (2010)

[arcane-offerings]

Moshe Idel. Primeval Evil in Kabbalah: Totality, Perfection, Perfectibility. Brooklyn, NY: KTAV Publishing House, 2020. Hardcover. 468 pages.

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[arcane-offerings]

Moshe Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (Brooklyn, NY: Ktav Publishing House, 2019). Hardcover. Augmented Edition. 430 pages. https://www.ebay.com/itm/254657939398

[magica-pseudoacademica]

The multifarious nature of Saturn, more than that of other planets [...] attracted a much wider audience and for centuries was able to persist in a more or less metaphorical manner in terms like "saturnine". Sectors of the intellectual elite who adopted Saturnian qualities as relevant for understanding Judaism were attracted by some of the qualities they were imagined to secure: depth of wisdom and the knowledge of secrets. It should be pointed out that unlike the more widespread astral myths and the rituals related to them, namely the solar, the lunar or the Mercurian mythologies, Saturnian mythology is related to a far less visible planet, and thus connected to a more elitist vision of reality. From many points of view it is less related to rituals, the Sabbath being one of the few rituals attributed to the ancient Jews as worshippers of Saturn.

Moshe Idel, Saturn’s Jews: On the Witches’ Sabbat and Sabbateanism (2011)

[magica-pseudoacademica]

Not originally part of the manner in which Jews imagined their identity in ancient times and early medieval ones, in the high Middle Ages, astrology, in some elite types of Jewish literature, becomes an interesting way to explain both the nature of the Jews and their place in the cosmic order. Pre-medieval linkages were found exclusively in non-Jewish sources, since the prevailing rabbinic assumption was that Jews are not dominated by planetary or astral bodies. In non-Jewish sources linkage is prevalently part of negative associations with the planet, and thus of Jews as well. Later on the connection between these two subjects is often related to a third one, which was understood to serve as a link between them: the Sabbath day, a day holy to Jews, the seventh day, and the one upon which the planet Saturn was conceived of as presiding.

Moshe Idel, Saturn’s Jews: On the Witches’ Sabbat and Sabbateanism (2011)

[improvisedliturgy]

In short, in a long series of Kabbalistic discussions, the divine Feminine is considered to be the teleological cause for the emanational process, an approach that sometimes transvaluates Her lowest position in the vertical systems of ten divine powers. Although commonly considered as the last among those powers, She certainly was not regarded as the least of them; this is the significance of Her privileged status, as She was depicted as the telos of the entire divine activity. Although the biblical account of the creation of the woman does not include the explicit motif of her being the telos, it nevertheless contains the assumption that she was created last, as she was described as having been derived from Adam. This inference became a starting point for later deliberations about woman as telos, being understood as the last but not the least.

Moshe Idel, The Privileged Divine Feminine in Kabbalah