Source books
Books
Start by searching for a title or author. Open Filters to narrow the list by tradition, the role a book played, whether a free edition is available, or how much public attention it receives. Last, choose date or name order. Every choice stays in the address, so you can bookmark the result or send the same list to someone else.
36 books of 370 · oldest first
Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah 36
-
Late antiquity; the tradition is attested by the 2nd century, the surviving texts are later (contested)
Shi'ur Qomah
An enumeration of the measurements of the divine body, given in figures so vast they defeat comprehension, which is generally taken to be the point of them.
-
Possibly the earliest Merkavah text; date contested
Re'uyot Yehezkel
A mystical midrash on the single verse Ezekiel 1:1 that enumerates what Ezekiel saw, and gives an unusually detailed account of seven heavens with their names, dimensions and...
-
Final redaction 5th–6th century CE; Byzantine or Babylonian provenance contested
3 Enoch
Third Enoch is a central source for the tradition in which Enoch is elevated and transformed into Metatron. It develops Metatron's heavenly offices and titles, including Prince...
-
5th–9th century CE (redaction; contested)
Hekhalot Rabbati
The longest and best known Hekhalot text follows R. Ishmael and R. Akiva through seven guarded palaces, where seals and divine names open the way. The journey is called a...
-
5th–9th century CE (contested); some material argued to be older
Hekhalot Zutarti
Shorter, denser and more magical than the Greater Palaces, turning on the disclosure of divine names. It carries the water vision: the warning that when the one who descends...
-
Late antiquity, 5th–9th century CE (contested)
Ma'aseh Merkavah
The most liturgical of the Hekhalot texts: a collection of prayers and hymns inside a dialogue between R. Ishmael and R. Akiva, which embeds the ascent instructions in recited...
-
probably 3rd–6th centuries CE
Sefer Yetzirah
Ten sefirot, twenty-two letters, thirty-two paths. Its division of the letters into three Mothers, seven Doubles and twelve Simples is the structural rule every later tree is...
-
appears c. 1176; incorporates older material
Sefer ha-Bahir
Fragmentary, deliberately obscure, and the earliest place the ten sefirot appear as divine potencies.
-
early 13th century
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah
The earliest kabbalistic commentary on Sefer Yetzirah that can be attached to a named teacher. It does not point at the Text this site holds for Sefer Yetzirah: that row is the...
-
first half of the 13th century
Commentary on the Ten Sefirot
Thirteen questions and answers, written to defend the sefirot against the objection that a perfectly simple God can have no parts. The defence is Neoplatonic and the vocabulary...
-
completed in the Land of Israel, c. 1267–1270
Commentary on the Torah
A mainstream biblical commentary carrying brief kabbalistic allusions, flagged as 'by way of truth' and deliberately left unexplained.
-
1273
Book of Redemption
An early prophetic work articulating his understanding of revelation.
-
1280
Life of the World to Come
One of his clearest manuals of ecstatic technique involving letters and divine names.
-
1280
Secrets of the Torah
A commentary on Maimonidean philosophy interpreted through mystical methods.
-
Late 13th–early 14th century
Tikkunei Zohar
Seventy interpretations of the first word of Genesis, and the home of the Patach Eliyahu — the passage beginning 'Elijah opened' that maps the sefirot onto the parts of a body,...
-
principally late thirteenth century; circulated from the 1280s
Zohar
A vast mystical commentary on the Torah concerned with the sefirot, divine masculine and feminine dimensions, cosmic symbolism, evil, souls and mystical interpretation.
-
1285–86
Treasury of the Hidden Eden
An extensive synthesis of his prophetic Kabbalah.
-
c. 1285–88
Book of the Sign
A highly visionary prophetic work.
-
late 13th century
Sha'arei Orah
Gates of Light: the ten sefirot expounded through the divine names, taken from the lowest gate upward. The source this site reads for the names on the Jewish tree.
-
1291
Words of Beauty
Among the latest datable products of his career.
-
Basel, 1494
De Verbo Mirifico
On the Wonder-Working Word: a dialogue arguing that the name of Jesus is the pronounceable form of the Tetragrammaton. Christian Cabala's founding argument, and its founding...
-
Augsburg, 1516
Portae Lucis
A free Latin translation of part of Sha'arei Orah, and the book through which Christian Europe first read a kabbalistic classic in its own language. Its title page shows a man...
-
Hagenau, 1517
De Arte Cabalistica
On the Art of Kabbalah: three books of dialogue, and the first full European account of the subject as a subject. It is where a Latin reader could find out what the sefirot were...
-
written 1548; printed Kraków 1592
Pardes Rimonim
Orchard of Pomegranates: thirty-two gates systematising the whole inheritance. Its seventh gate enumerates the twenty-two channels this site's Hermetic tree draws, and then...
-
Early 17th century; printed Peremyshl 1896–1898
Ohr HaChammah
A commentary on the Zohar assembling the readings of the Safed kabbalists. It is cited here for one thing it does that its sources do not: it states the mapping of the seven...
-
compiled from Luria's teaching, c. 1573–1620; printed 1782
Pri Etz Chaim
Vital's arrangement of the Lurianic teaching on prayer and the commandments, and the source this site cites for the seven weeks of the Omer.
-
Sulzbach 1677; Frankfurt 1684
Kabbala Denudata
Kabbalah Unveiled: Latin translations of Zoharic and Lurianic material with dictionaries and commentary. The channel through which the nineteenth-century revival, and then the...
-
1887
The Kabbalah Unveiled
Translation of portions of Knorr von Rosenroth's Latin Kabbala Denudata, making Zoharic material accessible in English.
-
English translation, 1887
Sepher Yetzirah
Helped make a foundational Kabbalistic text available to English-speaking occultists.
-
1913
-
1913
-
1926
-
1929
The Holy Kabbalah
A massive if idiosyncratic history and interpretation of Kabbalah from a mystical-Christian perspective.
-
1974
Kabbalah
Scholem's one-volume survey of Kabbalah: a historical essay on the basic ideas followed by encyclopaedia entries on texts, figures and terms.
-
undated
-
undated
The Sword of Moses
apocryphal book of ancient Hebrew magic