(1) A Mystical System Rooted in Antiquity

Legendary Beginnings

"The Qabalah may be defined as being the esoteric Jewish doctrine. It is called in Hebrew QBLH, Qabalah, which is derived from the root QBL, Qibel, meaning 'to receive'. This appellation refers to the custom of handing down the esoteric tradition by oral transmission, and is nearly allied to 'tradition'."
"The Qabalah was first taught by God himself to a select company of angels, who formed a theosophic school in Paradise. After the Fall the angels most graciously communicated this heavenly doctrine to the disobedient children of earth, they furnish the protoplasts with the means of returning to their pristine nobility and felicity. From Adam it passed over to Noah, and then to Abraham, the friend of God, who emigrated with it to Egypt, where the patriarch allowed a portion of this mysterious doctrine to ooze out. It was in this way that the Egyptians obtained some knowledge of it, and the other Eastern nations could introduce it into their philosophical systems. Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, was first initiated into the Qabalah in the land of his birth, but became most proficient in it during his wanderings in the wilderness, when he not only devoted to it the leisure hours of the whole forty years, but received lessons in it from one of the angels. By the aid of this mysterious science the law-giver was enabled to solve the difficulties which arose during his management of the Israelites, in spite of the pilgrimages, wars, and frequent miseries of the nation. He covertly laid down the principles of this secret doctrine in the first four books of the Pentateuch, but withheld them from Deuteronomy. Moses also initiated the seventy elders into the secrets of this doctrine, and they again transmitted them from hand to hand."
- McGregor Mathers, Introduction to The Kabbalah Unveiled

"In exactly the same way, when the true interpretation of the Law according to the command of God, divinely handed down to Moses, was revealed, it was called the Kabbalah, a word which is the same among the Hebrews as 'reception' among ourselves; for this reason, of course, that one man from another, by a sort of hereditary right, received that doctrine not through written records but through a regular succession of revelations....In these books principally resides, as Esdras with a clear voice justly declared, the spring of understanding, that is, the ineffable theology of the supersubstantial deity; the fountain of wisdom, that is, the exact metaphysic of the intellectual and angelic forms; and the stream of knowledge, that is, the most steadfast philosophy of natural things."
- Pico della Mirandola

"The goal of the Kabbalah is to obtain a complete understanding of God, the universe and their inter-relationships. It strives to achieve this understanding through the use of symbols and analogies, particularly the Jewish holy books."
- Simcha Kuritzky, "Kabbalistic Magic" Part IV

To Jewish mystics, every letter in the Hebrew alphabet was a channel to the life force of God and possessed of sacred meaning. Hebrew numbers were also represented by letters so that names and words had numerical values. Finding associations of words with the same value revealed a complex series of hidden meanings beneath the text of the Torah, the book of law attributed to Moses. In fact, the entire Torah can be considered to be a single long word spelling out one of the names of God. The significance of the name of God goes back to ancient Egypt where knowing the name of a god allowed one to gain power over that god.

"Strange and sometimes obscure are the names given to God, the King who thrones in His glory. We find names such as Zoharariel, Adiriron, Akhtaricl,' and Totrossiyah (or Tetrassiyah, i. e. the Tetras or fourfoldness of the letters of God's name YHWH?), names which to the mystics may have signified various aspects of God's glory. In this context it is well to remember that the chief peculiarity of this form of mysticism, its emphasis on God's might and magnificence, opens the door to the transformation of mysticism into theurgy; there the master of the secret 'names' himself takes on the exercise of power in the way described in the various magical and theurgical procedures of which this literature is full. The language of the theurgist conforms to that of the Merkabah mystic. Both are dominated by the attributes of power and sublimity, not love or tenderness. It is entirely characteristic of the out-look of these believers that the theurgist, in adjuring the 'Prince of Divine Presence,' summons the archons as 'Princes of Majesty, Fear and Trembling.' Majesty, Fear and Trembling are indeed the key-words to this Open Sesame of religion."
- Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941/1961) pp. 56-57

The Kabbalah "uncovers many of the infinite layers of the secrets of life, of Creation, of the soul, of the heavenly spheres.
It penetrates beyond the garments and the body of the Torah.
It is the very core and soul of Torah, the ultimate revelation of Divinity - exposing the inner meaning, effects and purpose of Torah and mitzvot.
The illumination emanating from the Kabbalah ignites the soul of man, setting it on fire in the awareness of a deeper and higher reality. Its study and insights are themselves mystical experiences.
The Kabbalah is all this - but always and exclusively within the context of Torah."
- "The Authenticity of Kabbalah"

Prophets and Visions
The early plebeian Israelites were Canaanites and Phoenicians, with the same worship of the Phallic gods - Bacchus, Baal or Adon, Iacchos - Iao or Jehovah'; but even among them there had always been a class of initiated adepts. Later, the character of this plebe was modified by Assyrian conquests; and, finally, the Persian colonizations superimposed the Pharisean and Eastern ideas and usages, from which the Old Testament and Mosaic institutes were derived. The Asmonean priest-kings promulgated the canon of the Old Testament in contradistinction to the Apocrypha or Secret Books of the Alexandrian Jews - kabbalists."
- H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled

"Early Hebrew prophecy and Bacchism are similar in some aspects. The Qabbalists called the Holy Spirit, the mother, and the Church of Israel, the daughter. Solomon engraved on the walls of his Temple, likenesses of the male and female principles, to adumbrate this mystery; such it is said, were the figures of the cherubim. This was, however, not in obedience to the words of the Torah. They were symbolical of the Upper, the spiritual, the former or maker, positive or male, and the Lower, the passive, the negative or female, formed or made by the first."
- Isaac Myer, The Qabbalah

"Each soul and spirit prior to its entering into this world, consists of a male and female united into one being. When it descends on this earth the two parts separate and animate two different bodies. At the time of marriage, the Holy One, blessed be He, who knows all souls and spirits, unites them again as they were before, and they again constitute one body and one soul, forming as it were the right and left of one individual."
- The Hebrew Zohar

"'And when They are conjoined together, They appear to be only one body.'
"Hence we learn that the Masculine, taken alone appeareth to be only half the body, so that all the mercies are half; and thus also is it with the Feminine.
"'But when They are joined together, the (two together) appear to form only one whole body. And it is so.'
"So also here. When the Male is joined with the Female, They both constitute one complete body, and all the Universe is in a state of happiness, because all things receive blessing from Their perfect body. And this is an Arcanum."
- The Kabbalah Unveiled

"...The earliest Jewish mystics who formed an organized fraternity in Talmudic times and later, describe their experience in terms derived from the diction characteristic of their age. They speak of the ascent of the soul to the Celestial Throne where it obtains an ecstatic view of the majesty of God and the secrets of His Realm. A great distance separates these old Jewish Gnostics from the Hasidic mystics one of whom said:' 'There are those who serve God with their human intellect, and others whose gaze is fixed on Nothing.... He who is granted this supreme experience loses the reality of his intellect, but when he returns from such contemplation to the intellect, he finds it full of divine and inflowing splendor.' And yet it is the same experience which both are trying to express in different ways."
- Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941/1961) p. 5

The earliest visionary experiences centered on the throne-chariot of God (merkabah).

"The Rabbis of the Talmud speculated on these mysteries, particularly when they were commenting on Genesis and the visions of Ezekiel. [See 'References in Pharisaic Circles'.] The speculations were later embroidered by new ideas that entered Jewish thought from the Syriac Greeks, the Zoroastrian Babylonians, and the Gnostic sect of the Byzantium Christians. From these foreign and domestic concepts and myths, the Jews wove into their mysticism ideas of upper and neither worlds, angels, and demons, ghosts and spirits - ideas that had been unknown or of little importance to the Jews until then."
"By the first century it had become a proper subject for scholarly study. Philo Judaeus speculated on the Platonic idea of emanations as intermediaries between God and the physical world. The Roman philosopher Plotinus (205-270) traveled in the East and returned to combine Indian, Persian, Greek, and Jewish mystic theories into a systematic structure of these emanations."
- Harry Gersh, The Sacred Books of the Jews

According to Plotinus (205-270 AD), "there are stages in the soul's ladder of ascent. The first includes purification, the freezing of the soul from the body, and the practice of the cardinal virtues. In the second the soul rises above sense-perception to Nous through contemplation. A third and higher stage, already ineffable, leads to union with Nous. Finally there is the climax of the whole ascent in mystical and ecstatic union with the One."
- John Ferguson, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions

"He will lapse again from the vision: but let him again awaken the virtue which is in him, again know himself made perfect in splendor; and he shall be again lightened of his burden, ascending through virtue to Nous, and then through wisdom to the Supreme."
- Plotinus

"As the Kabbalah evolved, it came to share certain ideas with other ancient mystical systems, including those of the Gnostics and Pythagoreans. The Kabbalah did not restrict itself solely to instruction on the apprehension of God but included teachings on cosmology, angelology, and magic."
- Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects

"Many of the basic ideas and principles found in the Kabbalah are also found in Gnosticism because both were in the Eastern Mediterranean near the time of Christ. Both attach an importance to knowledge, called the 'gnosis' or the knowledge of God. This knowledge does not come from rational thinking but is inspired by God. As in Gnosticism, sin is not considered to be wrong doing but ignorance which separates humankind from God. The knowledge, specifically the 'gnosis', unites humankind to God - to know God is to be God. Those sharing this 'gnosis' are the elect; they are the enlightened ones who share the knowledge of God, although they may not lead perfect lives."
- Alan G. Hefner, "Kabbalah"

"Thou shalt have no business with secret things."
- Apocryphal Book of Ben Sirach 3:22 (2nd century BC)

Kabbalism "is distinguished by renewed interest in purely cosmogonic speculation, whose spirit often enough is entirely Gnostic. In the earlier literature - certainly during the phase represented by the Hekhaloth -theoretical questions have no place; its spirit is descriptive, not speculative, and this is particularly true of the best examples of this genre. Nevertheless it is possible that there was a speculative phase in the very beginning and that the famous passage in the Mishnah which forbids the questions: 'What is above and what is below? What was before and what will be after?' refers to theoretical speculation in the manner of the Gnostics who strove after 'the knowledge of who we were, and what we have become, where we were or where we are placed, whither we hasten, from what we are redeemed.'
- Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941/1961) p. 74

(2) Documents from the Talmudic Era

Spelling and Pronunciation Conventions

Hechalot / Hekhaloth ends with a "t" as there is no "th" sound in modern Hebrew.

Merkavah / Merkabah is written with the letter Bet (without a dot inside) and is pronounced as the English letter "v".

Sfirot / Sphirot is written with the letter Peh (without a dot inside) and pronounced as an "f". The letter is often written as "ph" because there is no "f" in Hebrew.

Both Merkavah and Hekhalot contain the letter Khet which has no equivalent in English. (It is not pronounced as it is written "kh" but has a guttural sound.)
(Thanks to Liora Bernstein)

The Origins of Hekhalot Literature
"Not only have the seers perceived the celestial hosts, heaven with its angels, but the whole of this apocalyptic and pseudepigraphic literature is shot through with a chain of new revelations concerning the hidden glory of the great Majesty, its throne, its palace...the celestial spheres towering up one over the other, paradise, hell, and the containers of the souls."
- Baldensperger, Die messianisch-apokalyptischen Hoffnungen des Judentums, p. 68

"The Hekhaloth were different 'chambers' or 'halls' through which mystics advanced during meditation."
- Alan G. Hefner, "Hekhaloth"

A reference to imagery of the Hekhalot can be found in the apocryphal Fourth Book of Ezra, written around the end of the 1st c. CE.

"O Lord who inhabitest eternity, whose eyes are exalted and whose upper chambers [hekhaloth] are in the air, whose throne [merkavah] is beyond measure and whose glory is beyond comprehension, before whom the hosts of angels stand trembling and at whose command they are changed to wind and fire..."
- 4 Ezra 8:21-22a

"The Hekhalot literature is a bizarre conglomeration of Jewish esoteric and revelatory texts produced sometime between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The documents have strong connections with earlier apocalyptic and gnostic literature and claim to describe the self-induced spiritual experiences of the 'descenders to the chariot' that permitted these men to view Ezekiel's chariot vision [the Merkavah] for themselves, as well as to gain control of angels and a perfect mastery of Torah through theurgy."
"This material is of particular interest for the study of divine mediation and mystical/revelatory experiences, because the Hekhalot documents claim to detail actual practices used to reach trance states, gain revelations, and interact with divine mediators."
- James R. Davila, "Hekhalot Literature and Mysticism"

Baruch Halperin "observes that, by reciting given texts from the hekhalot literature, the student was able to achieve the same results as those who actually experienced the ascent."
- Dr. Steven S. Tuell, "Deus absconditus in Ezekiel's Prophecy"

According to Sitrey Tefila ve-Hekhalot (Mysteries of Jewish Prayer and Heavenly Palaces) Hekhalot literature frequently served as the inspiration for liturgical texts of the Talmudic period

"The outstanding documents of the movement appear to have been edited in the fifth and sixth centuries when its spirit was still alive and vigorous. It is difficult to establish exact dates for the various writings, but everything points to the period before the expansion of Islam. The world reflected in this literature has evoked in the mind of more than one scholar comparisons with the pattern of Byzantine society. But there is no reason for assuming that the descriptions of the celestial throne and the heavenly court simply reflect the mundane reality of the Byzantine or Sassanid court, if only because the roots of their central theme go much too far back for such an hypothesis. At the same time there can be no reasonable doubt that the atmosphere of these writings is in harmony with contemporary political and social conditions.
"All our material is in the form of brief tracts, or scattered fragments of varying length from what may have been voluminous works; in addition there is a good deal of almost shapeless literary."
- Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941/74) p. 44

The Scribes
"The only sustained effort to locate the community behind the Hekhalot literature has been made by David Halperin [Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel's Vision, 1988]. He argues, on the basis of a passage found in some manuscripts of the Sar Torah text (paras. 304-305), that the 'people of the land,' the uneducated people who were held in contempt by the rabbis, made theurgic use of the myth of the ascent of Moses to seize the Torah from heaven, and that the result was the Hekhalot literature."
"I propose then, that the composers of the Hekhalot literature were a group of professional scribes who lacked formal rabbinic training and whose socio-economic position probably suffered as a result. They envied the superior station of the rabbis and defied them with another skill common in their own profession -- magic. The 'descenders to the chariot' (the only self-designation they have given us) were familiar with and no doubt transmitted, augmented, and used the Jewish magical literature. But they also developed a strain of magical praxis that from an anthropological perspective is closer to shamanism than anything else. They were, to paraphrase Hultkrantz ['A Definition of Shamanism', Temenos 9 (1973) 25-37], social functionaries who, with the help of guardian spirits, attained ecstasy in order to create a rapport with the supernatural world on behalf of the members of their group. According to their beliefs they used theurgy to compel angels to take them to the otherworld and to give them an infallible knowlege of Torah. They in turn passed on the power from their experiences to their community (which on various levels seems to have been as narrow as a circle of adepts and as broad as the human race)."
- James R. Davila, "Hekhalot Literature and Mysticism"

"Hekhalot texts do tend to summon angels (never God, I believe) in a very premptory way, and they ask for various types of esoteric wisdom and theurgic power."
- James R. Davila, "Ancient Magic (The Prayer of Jacob)"

"According to an account given in the 'Greater Hekhaloth', which one is tempted to correlate with a similar passage at the end of the Fourth Book of Ezra, it was even the custom to place scribes or stenographers to the right and left of the visionary who wrote down his ecstatic description of the throne and its occupants."
- Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941/1961) p. 63

"He [the Lord] answered me and said, 'Go and gather the people, and tell them not to seek you for forty days. But prepare for yourself many writing tablets, and take with you Sarea, Dabria, Selemia, Ethanus, and Asiel -- these five, because they are trained to write rapidly; and you shall come here, and I will light in your heart the lamp of understanding, which shall not be put out until what you are about to write is finished. And when you have finished, some things you shall make public, and some you shall deliver in secret to the wise; tomorrow at this hour you shall begin to write.'"

"And on the next day, behold, a voice called me, saying, 'Ezra, open your mouth and drink what I give you to drink.' Then I opened my mouth, and behold, a full cup was offered to me; it was full of something like water, but its color was like fire. And I took it and drank; and when I had drunk it, my heart poured forth understanding, and wisdom increased in my breast, for my spirit retained its memory; and my mouth was opened, and was no longer closed. And the Most High gave understanding to the five men, and by turns they wrote what was dictated, in characters which they did not know. They sat forty days, and wrote during the daytime, and ate their bread at night."
- 4 Ezra 14:23-26, 36-42

The End of a a Living Movement
The unedited texts of the oldest documents, the "Lesser Hekhaloth" are full of voces mysticae. "Every secret name seemed to provide a further piece of protective armour against the demons-up to the point where the magical energy was no longer sufficient to overcome the obstacles which blocked the way to the Merkabah [throne-chariot of God]. This point is really the end of the movement as a living force; from then on it degenerates into mere literature."
- Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941/1961) p. 51

"For my friend [Rabbi Akiba], who endures the suffering of ascending and descending to the merkabah, I have fixed a blessing [to be recited] three times a day in the heavenly court and in the earthly court. I will love and I will redeem any household where it is repeated"
- Hekhalot Zutarti

"The implication seems to be: Akiba made the hazardous journey; stay-at-homes who recite the appropriate formula can share, vicariously, in its benefits."
- Baruch Halperin, 'A New Edition of the Hekhalot Literature,' JAOS 104 (1984): 550

"...In the Merkabah mysticism with which we are dealing here, the idea of the Shekhinah ['light of God'] and of God's immanence plays practically no part at all. The one passage in the 'Greater Hekhaloth' which has been adduced as proof of the existence of such conceptions is based on an obviously corrupt text. The fact is that the true and spontaneous feeling of the Merkabah mystic knows nothing of divine immanence; the infinite gulf between the soul and God the King on His throne is not even bridged at the climax of mystical ecstasy.
"Not only is there for the mystic no divine immanence, there is also almost no love of God. What there is of love in the relationship between the Jewish mystic and his God belongs to a much later period and has nothing to do with our present subject. Ecstasy there was and this fundamental experience must have been a source of religious inspiration, but we find no trace of a mystical union between the soul and God. Throughout there remained an almost exaggerated consciousness of God's other, nor does the identity and individuality of the mystic become blurred even at the height of ecstatic passion. The Creator and His creature remain apart, and nowhere is an attempt made to bridge the gulf between them or to blur the distinction. The mystic who in his ecstasy has passed through all the gates, braved all the dangers, now stands before the throne; he sees and hears - but that is all. All the emphasis is laid on the kingly aspect of God, not his creative one..."