Practice · 8th century
Hekhalot literature and the heavenly chariot
The visionary ascent of the mystic through seven celestial palaces to the divine chariot.
What it isThe Seal of the Chariot presents protected descent through heavenly palaces as a way to behold the divine King.
The FindingIn 2013, Boustan placed the earliest Genizah Hekhalot manuscripts between the eighth and eleventh centuries.
Being · Jewish Mysticism · 6th century
Ancient Rite, Modern Legend
A man of clay brought alive by letters: mute, obedient, and dangerous the moment its maker forgets.
Who they wereIn the Polish telling Jacob Grimm printed in 1808, Aemaeth, truth, is written on its forehead. Rub out the first letter and Maeth, dead, remains: it falls back to clay.
The FindingThe Prague golem's earliest known printing is an 1834 footnote in a German novel, 225 years after Judah Loew died. Its best-known plot is Yudl Rosenberg's, 1909.
Being · Jewish Mysticism · 200 CE
Talmud and Zohar (13th Century)
God's indwelling presence in rabbinic Judaism; in Kabbalah, the feminine tenth sefirah.
Who they wereIn Kabbalah the Shekhinah is Malkhut, the divine bride in exile, whose reunion with the Holy One human devotion and ethical deeds help to bring about.
The FindingScholem (1962) found the Shekhinah's feminine character in no pre-Kabbalistic source; it emerges in Sefer ha-Bahir, redacted in southern France around 1180.
