Kabbalah · R' Avraham Abulafia · 15th c. · Italy · Codex · Prophetic Kabbalah · Banned Work · Letter Permutations

אור השכל — לרבי אברהם אבולעפיה

Or ha-Sekhel — R' Avraham Abulafia's prophetic Kabbalah

Italy, early 15th c. · Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana — Vat.ebr.233 (Polonsky Foundation digitization)

Or ha-Sekhel ("The Light of the Intellect") is the magnum opus of R' Avraham Abulafia (1240–c.1292) — the Spanish-born ecstatic Kabbalist whose prophetic-mystical system, built around the meditation on divine names and letter permutations, made him one of the most original and most persecuted figures of medieval Kabbalah. Banned in his own day by the Rashba for predicting messianic dates and audaciously attempting to convert the Pope, Abulafia's writings were nonetheless preserved by his disciples and continued to shape every later mystical school that practiced focused contemplation of the Tetragrammaton — the Arizal, R' Chaim Vital, and the Hasidic tradition included. This early-15th-c. Italian copy is held at the Vatican Apostolic Library and was digitized through the Polonsky Foundation Project. A downloadable PDF facsimile is also available.