Abraham Abulafia's "Mystical" Reading of the Guide for the Perplexed

Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 brill.com/nu Abraham Abulaijia’s “Mystical” Reading of the Guide for the Perplexed Nathan Hofer Department of Religious Studies, University of Missouri 221B Arts and Science Bldg., Columbia, MO 65211, USA [email protected] Abstract The Spanish kabbalist Abraham Abulaijia (d. 1291) wrote three Hebrew commentaries on the Guide for the Perplexed of Moses Maimonides (d. 1204). Abulaijia’s third and ijinal commentary, Sitrey Torah (The Mysteries of the Torah), is an uncovering and extended treatment of 36 “secrets” that he believed to be hidden within the text of the Guide. In this article I investigate the speciijicities of Abulaijia’s mystical hermeneutic as he applies it to the Guide and how this mystical system is made to ijit with Maimonides’ neoplatonic philosophy. I argue that Abulaijia’s commentary is not actually a mystical text in and of itself. Rather, he intends the mystical text to be generated within the mind of the reader, who is meant to join experientially the text of the Guide with Abulaijia’s commentary. The result is a paradoxical disclosure of secrets in which the linguistic mysteries must be disclosed discursively before they can become experiential mysteries to be disclosed mystically. Such a conception might offer scholars a new way of thinking about what constitutes a mystical text as well as problematizing the ways in which we categorize and analyze the “mystical.” Keywords Abraham Abulaijia, Moses Maimonides, Kabbalah, mysticism, philosophy Introduction1 Since the linguistic turn in the ijield of religious studies, many scholars of religion have moved away from comparative methodologies in favor of a more self-reflexive scholarship that is particularly attentive to the 1) In writing this article I have beneijited greatly from the astute insights and comments of David Blumenthal and Don Seeman. I would also like to thank the anonymous reader © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15685276-12341265 252 N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 constructed nature of our analytical categories (e.g. Smith 1982; Patton and Ray 2000). Phenomenological comparison can no longer be deployed uncritically and the very category of “religion” itself has become a focal point of contention (Asad 1993; Masuzawa 1995; McCutcheon 1997). Along these same lines, studies of mysticism have for the most part shifted away from the phenomenologically comparative and towards more historically rooted and contextualized investigations. Beginning with the pioneering work of scholars like Steven Katz (1978), the so-called “constructivist” school, and the work of Michel de Certeau (1986, 1995) in particular, scholars of mysticism have focused their attention on the cross-cultural viability of the category itself and the socially and historically contingent nature of various traditions scholars have chosen, for a variety of different reasons, to label “mystical.” Indeed, as Jantzen (1995) and King (1999) have both cogently argued, “the idea of ‘mysticism’ is a social construction, and . . . it has been constructed in different ways at different times” ( Jantzen 1995:12). Indeed, not only does the term qua category have a speciijically Christian genealogy that has changed over time, those semantic changes themselves have been the discursive sites of struggle for power and authority within the Christian tradition. Michel de Certeau (1986) has gone so far as to argue that the category itself was an invention of ecclesiastical elites in late medieval France designed to domesticate discordant religious voices within the larger body of “orthodox” Christianity. The label “mystic” (much like “heretic”) thus has had real social and political repercussions, both for those who wield it and for those for whom it is deployed. The work of these scholars and others like them has now made the uncritical deployment of “mystic” and “mystical” problematic to say the least. Thus, to continue to use these categories and retain any kind of analytical utility, scholars must be explicit about how and why they have chosen to use this particular category and not another, more local category, as well as evince an awareness of the baggage the category carries. One particularly interesting and consequential set of issues connected to this discussion is an anti-mystical, pro-philosophical bias many historians of religion have inherited from the Enlightenment who offered several important corrections. This work would not have been possible without them and any remaining errors are my own. N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 253 (King 1999:8–34). Central to this bias are the oppositional categories of (ir/non-rational) mysticism and (rational) philosophy, with the latter given more weight epistemologically. The development of this opposition owes much to post-Kantian epistemology, the privatization of religion, and the valorization of the “rational” as a discourse appropriate for the public sphere. Accordingly, philosophers are often seen as exemplars of logical, deductive, and dialectical thinking who can never be mystics whose epistemological assumptions and claims can never be satisfactorily supported by philosophical means; mystical epistemology is privately inaccessible while philosophical epistemology is publicly available (King 1999:13). A caveat to the history of this bifurcation is the concept of “philosophical mysticism” or “intellectual mysticism.”2 This category is an attempt to blur the line between philosophers and mystics in certain special cases. Thus Ibn Sīna (Avicenna, d. 1037) and Maimonides (d. 1204), whom historians generally place in the camp of Muslim and Jewish philosophers, respectively, are in this case conceptualized as philosophers whose philosophical systems included a post-philosophical turn to the mystical. While this is an interesting theoretical move, it nevertheless preserves the fundamental binary opposition between philosophy and mysticism because the mystical is superadded to the philosophical. At any rate, the philosopher/mystic cognitive binary is ultimately of serious consequence for scholars of religion as it inevitably frames the ways in which we classify and study different kinds of texts. In this way, the skills required and methods employed for reading “philosophical” texts are quite different from those required and employed for “mystical” ones. The problem, of course, is the potential violence that might be done a particular text by reading it as either mystical or philosophical, without due attention to the fact that the text in question may not ijit easily into either category, particularly given the historical context of medieval and non-Christian texts. Given that our contemporary categorization of certain medieval texts as either mystical or philosophical are often “creation[s] of the scholar’s study” (Smith 1982:xi), I would like to bring this discussion to one medieval Jewish thinker for whom the mystical and the philosophical 2) The earliest use of this term was Madkour 1934 and, subsequently, Gardet 1951. On more recent uses see Fakhri 1971, Blumenthal 2006, and Lobel 2006. 254 N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 were not oppositional at all. Rather, they were one and the same thing and he produced a type of literature that resists classiijication as either philosophical or mystical, or even philosophically mystical. The Spanish kabbalist Abraham Abulaijia (d. ca. 1291) is generally counted among the Jewish mystics because of his emphasis on experiential modes of knowledge acquisition. In addition to his more straightforward handbooks, Abulaijia wrote a number of commentaries on Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed in which he joins what we might typically call rational and non-rational, or discursive and intuitive, modes of thought and experience. Because of the unique way in which Abulaijia bridges these modalities, his writings provide an unusually salient opportunity to investigate the sometimes arbitrary boundary often posited between the mystical and the philosophical. In this article I will demonstrate that for Abulaijia there is no opposition or boundary between the two, and further, that the way he conceptualized the relationship between religious experience, textual production, and the act of reading might offer scholars of religion a new model with which to conceptualize and categorize what, exactly, constitutes a mystical text. In short, I will argue that Abulaijia envisioned his commentary as the means by which large textual units gleaned from Maimonides’ Guide would be re-constituted in a new form within the mind of the reader, thereby creating an intramental mystical text that was meant to be experienced. This argument will involve a detailed examination of how Abulaijia read and understood Maimonides, how Abulaijia used the Guide to create a new text in the mind of the reader, and how that new text was then meant to operate on the reader. Before continuing, I should say a word about what I mean by “mystical” here. Historically, there is no such thing as Jewish “mysticism.” There is no medieval Hebrew word for mysticism and the usual calque — that kabbalah (lit. “tradition” or “reception”) is the closest cultural translation — is not quite accurate. Christian mysticism and Jewish Kabbalah have very different connotations and histories of linguistic and conceptual development.3 Furthermore, the core theoretical possibility inherent in Christian mysticism — self-erasure through unio 3) For an instructive comparison, I suggest reading Bernard McGinn’s (1996) history of Christian mysticism and Gershom Scholem’s (1991) study of the development of Kabbalah side by side. N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 255 mystica via bodily and psychological discipline — is nowhere present in the writings of the medieval kabbalists.4 But this does not mean we must do away with the term altogether. As Benson Saler (1999) and others have argued, categories are the fundamental cognitive tools of the scholar of religion. So long as these tools are deployed critically, selfreflexively, and with a theoretical purpose, they are still useful. Therefore, I use the word “mystical” here as a heuristic device to denote texts and practices whose objective is to induce a radical shift in subjectivity by the reader/practitioner. This shift in subjectivity may take many forms and be deployed for many ends but is marked by new perspectives on the nature of reality. This deijinition is admittedly broad but it will serve to highlight what makes Abulaijia’s commentary on the Guide for the Perplexed different from the text of the Guide itself. To begin, then, it will be necessary to differentiate the “mystical” Abulaijia from the “philosophical” Maimonides, if only subsequently to highlight the collapse of these supposedly stable categories under the weight of Abulaijia’s intense hermeneutic. One of the more remarkable aspects of The Guide for the Perplexed, the philosophical magnum opus of Moses Maimonides (d. 1204), is that he does not present it to his readers as a philosophical treatise. Indeed, he makes it clear from the outset that the Guide is an extended commentary on the Hebrew Bible intended to solve a literary problem: ambiguity and metaphor in the biblical text.5 In the course of his 4) I agree with Moshe Idel’s (1988a:59–61) critique of Gershom Scholem (1946) and his followers for rejecting outright the possibility of a unitive experience in Kabbalah. To be sure, there are a number of descriptions of union in terms of devequt by the Genoese kabbalists, Abulaijian kabbalists, and the later Ḥasidim. Even within the nonkabbalistic tradition, Abraham Ibn Ezra (d. 1164) espoused a form of devequt. However, none of these kabbalists describe this union as an erasure of the self. There is always a remnant of the self pulling the kabbalist back to the mundane world. This, I would argue, is intimately tied to the different contexts of development of these traditions: Christian mystics in monasteries, where the goal was the subjugation of the carnal self, and kabbalists in study halls, where the goal was the cultivation of knowledge about the universe and its upkeep. 5) Maimonides speciijies in the introduction that his treatise has two purposes: the ijirst being “the clariijication of terms appearing in the books of prophecy,” and the second being “the clariijication of extremely obscure metaphors in the books of the prophets” (Maimonides 1929:2, 1963:5–6). References to the Guide will be given to Joel’s 256 N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 commentary, Maimonides reworks scripture in order to construct a philosophically coherent conception of divinity, humanity, and prophecy. He does this by drawing on traditional Jewish exegetical techniques (Diamond 2002) in concert with Aristotelian philosophy as it was understood in the Islamic tradition (Pines 1963:lxxviii–cxxxiv; Ivry 2006).6 Beginning soon after its publication, European readers of the Guide generally understood Maimonides’ project to be a thoroughly rationalist interpretation of scripture.7 However, many readers in the medieval Middle East read the Guide as a repository of secrets and representing a highly intellectualist type of mysticism.8 Indeed, Maimonides’ own son and grandsons combined the teachings of the Guide and a Suiji-inspired form of piety into a seamless whole (Fenton 1997, 2000, 2009).9 One of the earliest and most proliijic purveyors of such a view was Abraham Judeo-Arabic edition ijirst, followed by Pines’ English translation. All translations of Hebrew and Arabic sources in this article are my own unless otherwise noted. 6) In addition to the Rabbinic exegetical and Islamic philosophical traditions, Maimonides was also drawing on the Islamic tradition of ta⁠ʾwīl, a hermeneutic that assumes that the text to be interpreted necessarily carries multiple and coded meanings that can be recovered by a reader with the proper lenses and training (Poonawala 2000). 7) This rationalist understanding, as David Blumenthal 2006:44 has argued, is partially due to the fact that Maimonides was primarily read in light of the strict Aristotelianism espoused by Ibn Rushd (Averroes) shortly after publication of the Guide. On Ibn Rushd as the lens through which medieval Jewish philosophers learned Aristotelian philosophy, see Harvey 2003. Maimonides’ writings have not only stirred up debates about their rational vs. non-rational character. There is also the debate about the esoteric nature of the Guide with Strauss (1952) and his followers on one side and scholars like Leaman (1990) on the other. Menachem Kellner 1991b has nicely summarized what is at stake in many of these debates and why Maimonides’ interpreters continue to argue. 8) This is different from the legend that arose arguing that Maimonides was a kabbalist, on which see Scholem 1935. Idel (1990, 1991 and 2004) has made the argument that the Kabbalah itself, as a social and intellectual movement, arose in opposition to what the early kabbalists saw as the strict rationalism of Maimonides. Wolfson (2004, 2008), in part responding to Idel’s claims, has re-examined this relationship in a new light. 9) In addition to Maimonides’ family and Abraham Abulaijia, the Jews of Yemen also tended to read Maimonides more “mystically” than “philosophically” (Blumenthal 1974, 1981). There are some who continue this trend; see the collection of essays in Blumenthal 2006 and Faur 1999. For arguments against this reading see Kellner 2006 and the arguments presented (and addressed) by Blumenthal 2006:31–42. N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 257 Abulaijia.10 Maimonides’ philosophy provided Abulaijia with the metaphysical underpinnings for his distinctive mystical program that bears traces of the “great eagle” throughout. Abulaijia explicitly synthesized his ideas with those of Maimonides by writing three commentaries on the Guide, the last of which, Sitrey Torah (The Mysteries of the Torah), is the most coherently and conceptually developed in terms of his unique mystical program.11 Within the pages of this commentary he lays out a highly developed method for achieving intellectual union with the divine. By subtly weaving the potentially ordinary intellectual experience of reading the Guide into a contemplative practice designed to collapse the distance between the human and the divine, Abulaijia effectively created a mystical text from the pages of the Guide itself. Without attributing any undue “intention” to Maimonides, it is safe to say that he did not intend the Guide to be read as a primer on Abulaijian Kabbalah. Yet, this is precisely what Abulaijia does by means of his commentary in the Sitrey Torah. Here I will demonstrate the ways in which Abulaijia effects this reading by describing some of his literary and exegetical techniques. Furthermore, I will focus on the speciijicities of Abulaijia’s mystical epistemology, which, although ijirmly rooted in Maimonides’ metaphysics and cosmology, paradoxically obliterates the Maimonidean text in favor of a radical, mystical subjectivity. 10) Abulaijia was born in 1240 in Saragossa, grew up in Tudela, and left Spain sometime in 1260 to travel to Palestine in search of the mythical river Sambation. He quickly gave up his quest and returned to Spain via Greece and Italy. In 1260 he began his study of Sefer Yeṣirah and other kabbalistic texts and this seems to be the beginning of his career as a kabbalist. He eventually returned to Italy after 1280 and probably died there around 1291. 11) The ijirst of these commentaries, Sefer ha-geʾulah (The Book of Redemption) is extant in the Hebrew only in poor, fragmentary form but exists in a complete medieval Latin translation. The second two, Ḥayyey ha-nefesh (The Life of the Soul) and Sitrey Torah (The Mysteries of the Torah), have only recently been published for the ijirst time. For Sefer ha-geʾulah, see Wirszubski 1970. Ḥayyey ha-nefesh and Sitrey Torah were both recently published by Aaron Barzani and Son (Abulaijia 2001b, 2001e). Abulaijia was excommunicated by Ibn Adret around 1290 at the request of the Sicilian community in which Abulaijia was living (Idel 2000). The lasting stigma of this excommunication may be the reason that Abulaijia’s work was only recently published. However, the fact that most of his works have been preserved in numerous manuscripts (Ḥayyey ha-nefesh exists in 11 manuscripts and Sitrey Torah in 29, for example) attests to his relevance and popularity throughout the medieval period. 258 N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 This raises a fascinating question. What, exactly, constitutes the mystical text here? Is it Abulaijia’s commentary? Is it the Guide? Does it only exist in the relationship between the two? This essay will address that question by examining Abulaijia’s mystical hermeneutic, its relationship to Maimonides’ reading of the Hebrew Bible, and the subtle interplay between the two. Abulaijia’s strong reading of the Maimonidean text can be compared to Maimonides’ strong reading of scripture in which he turned the Hebrew Bible into an Aristotelian text.12 Just as Maimonides’ literary project is based upon a philosophical reinterpretation of ambiguous and obscure anthropomorphic terms and parables in the biblical text, Abulaijia’s commentary is rooted in a mystical reinterpretation of those same terms as they appear in the Maimonidean text. These terms, the true meanings of which are hidden in the Guide and revealed by Abulaijia, perform double duty for Abulaijia. First, they provide him with a conceptual point from which to begin a discussion of some aspect of his mystical project. Second, and because they are ostensibly found within the Maimonidean corpus, they function as epistemological “proofs” that his mystical program has solid metaphysical underpinnings. However, rather than rooting out anthropomorphisms, the object of Abulaijia’s commentary is the revealing of 36 secrets (sodot) he sees hidden throughout the Guide.13 Each secret is a conglomeration of ideas embodied by a single Hebrew term. Rather than succinct mystical insights into the true nature of reality or explicit and detailed instructions for a via mystica that one typically ijinds in mystical tracts, each of Abulaijia’s sodot are diffuse, nebulous networks of concepts that must be drawn together from a variety of sources to glean knowledge about a particular topic. 12) By “Aristotelian” I mean the neoplatonic Aristotle of the Muslim philosophers. 13) One of the questions surrounding these secrets is where the number of thirty-six came from. Idel 1998:311–313 argues that Abulaijia may well have been part of a larger chain of transmission of thirty-six secrets surrounding the Guide. However, if this were the case one would expect to see evidence of such a chain in other commentaries or at least a mention in some work of Kabbalah. Abulaijia is adamant that these mysteries are hidden within the Guide, and not of his own creation: “the intention of [Maimonides’] interpretation and the truth of its existence is the revelation of its hidden matters to the enlightened, and within them a few of the secrets of the Torah (sitrey torah), according to our tradition, are revealed as well. Therefore, this commentary is called by the name ‘Sitrey Torah’ ” (Abulaijia 2001e:12–13). N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 259 These conceptual networks are culled from the Guide, from Abulaijia’s mystical thought, from rabbinic tradition and from the Sefer Yeṣirah, or Book of Creation.14 One can not simply sit down and read the commentary. Abulaijia’s ideas must be pieced together, intertextually, from the book’s numerous chapters and compared with Maimonides’ Guide. This is similar to the way in which Maimonides requires his readers to piece together his teachings about a particular topic from multiple chapters in the Guide, while paying close attention to the biblical texts under discussion. This strategy of disclosure — what I would call a triple lexicography — demands a great deal from the reader: the adept must understand (1) the biblical context of a particular term, (2) Maimonides’ philosophical explanation of said term, and (3) Abulaijia’s re-working of that explanation. This triple lexicography is embedded in a framework in which the disclosure of the “secrets” is both the means and end of Abulaijia’s hermeneutical project. There is, in other words, a dialectical relationship between the revelation of these secrets and their use as exegetical tools by the reader. The reader is encouraged not only to discover the secrets of the Guide but also to use these secrets to attain mystical experience and understanding. The secrets of the Guide will disclose the mystical path to the reader, but the reality and true content of the secrets can only be fully understood in light of the experience that is a result of this path. Thus, the secrets themselves can only be revealed experientially. For Abulaijia, the Guide (read properly) is not a repository of conceptual content but actually one part of a mechanism for achieving radically new states of experience and subjectivity. Abulaijia’s relationship to Maimonides and his role in disseminating the Guide in Europe have been amply documented (Idel 1998:289–329, 2011:31–34). However, the fact that Abulaijia actually incorporated the Guide into a mystical practice has not been explored in any detail. Therefore, I will focus here on the literary and contemplative strategies Abulaijia used to recast the Guide by focusing on two of his “secrets” in detail. I examine where he ijinds these secrets, how he explains their 14) Sefer Yeṣirah is an early Jewish work on the relationship of numbers, the Hebrew alphabet, and creation. Scholem 1978:26–28 dates the work to between the third and sixth centuries CE. English translations and commentaries can be found in Blumenthal 1978:15–46 and Kaplan 1997. 260 N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 “plain” meaning, and how he points to their mystical content. At the very heart of this commentarial project lies Abulaijia’s distinctive epistemology and mystical system, which are rooted in a unique conception of the Hebrew alphabet.15 Abulaijia called his system kabbalat ha-shemot (the tradition of names) or ha-kabbalah ha-nevuʾit (the prophetic tradition).16 At its core lies the belief that the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet have an ontological signiijicance that encompasses all the languages of the nations. This idea, rooted in his early study of the Sefer Yeṣirah, holds that these twenty-two letters are the building blocks of existence used by God to create the universe.17 The Hebrew name of an object is, therefore, not only a conventional sign by which humans subjectively communicate with one another, but also an objective marker of that object’s onto15) Abulaijia’s mystical thought is most readily accessible in English in a series of books devoted to him by Moshe Idel (1988b, 1988c, 1988d). 16) There is some question about how Abulaijia saw himself in relation to his contemporaries. Did he consider himself a part of a larger community of kabbalists that included those circles that produced the Zohar? Or did he see himself advocating a break with that tradition? These questions have generally turned on the role of the seijirot in Abulaijia’s own system of prophetic Kabbalah. Wolfson 2000b:94–99 summarized these issues and the positions of modern scholars on them before reopening the question himself. The only hint Abulaijia himself provides is his letter of self-defense sent to Yehuda Salomon ca. 1280–1290, Ve-zoʾt li-yehudah (And This is for Yehudah), in which he differentiates between kabbalat ha-seijirot and his system, kabbalat ha-shemot ( Jellinek 1853). While some have taken this to be a hard and fast distinction, I agree with Wolfson that Abulaijia probably envisioned his system of Kabbalah as part of the larger universe of esoteric traditions and that the distinction serves a polemical function. He refers to each type of Kabbalah as a ḥeleq (a part of the whole) and argues that both parts are hidden from the majority of rabbinic scholars (neʿelamim me-rov ha-ḥakhamim). He then goes on to say that “there is no doubt that the ijirst part is prior to the second in terms of when it is studied, and the second is at a higher level than the ijirst” ( Jellenik 1853:15–16). This would indicate that Abulaijia saw knowledge of the system of seijirot (however he conceptualized them) as a precursor to his own system. 17) Abulaijia wrote three commentaries on Sefer Yeṣirah that I am aware of: Gan naʿul (Abulaijia 2001a), Oṣar ʿeden ganuz (Abulaijia 2001d), and Perush sefer yeṣirah (Abulaijia 1984). Tellingly, these are not included in traditional editions of the Sefer Yeṣirah that contain multiple medieval commentaries. Sefer yeṣirah ha-shalem (The Complete Sefer Yeṣirah), for example, contains the commentaries of eleven medieval scholars including Rashi, Saʿadya Gaon, and Nachmanides. Abulaijia is nowhere to be found in its pages. N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 261 logical nature. The epistemological consequence of this presumption is that one may gain intellectual insight into the fundamental nature of an object or concept by meditating on the letters of its Hebrew name and then manipulating those letters. Abulaijia leverages this construct into a mystical system by asserting that contemplating particularly powerful words like the shem ha-meforash (the explicit name of God, Y-H-V-H) will open the mystic’s mind to the influx of divine overflow (ha-shefaʿ ha-ʾelohit). This overflow joins the human and divine intellects in a conjunction that Abulaijia calls devequt, or “cleaving.”18 It is in his discussion of intellectual cleaving that Abulaijia is especially indebted to the philosophical cosmology articulated by Maimonides, particularly his discussion concerning the mechanics of prophecy contained in Part II of the Guide. Abulaijia argues that the permutation of powerful, religiously charged words moves the human intellect from potentiality to activation, which allows it access to the Active Intellect (ha-sekhel ha-poʿel). This is neoplatonic-Maimonidean terminology yoked to an Abulaijian epistemology.19 The moment of divine influx induces a radical shift in subjectivity that we might call the “mystical experience.” God is no longer the object of cognition but of ecstatic experience, which Abulaijia describes as becoming the object of God’s cognition: And God, may He be blessed, caused that which He knew [the mystic] to be capable of receiving His goodness to flow upon him. He taught him His ways one by one according to Moses’ power, which was the power of flesh and blood, until He caused his intellect to go from in potentia to in actu (min ha-koaḥ ʾel ha-poʿal) little by little, and returned him to the Divine Intellect (ha-poʿel ha-ʾelohi) (Abulaijia 2001e:11). Abulaijia also describes this experience of devequt in his most detailed manual of mystical experience, Ḥayyey ha-ʿolam ha-ba⁠ʾ (Life in the World to Come): 18) An extended discussion of the development and varieties of devequt is in Idel 1988a:35–58. 19) Idel 2005:144–151 has argued convincingly that Abulaijia identiijied the Active Intellect with the Torah itself; further strengthening the connection between logos, intellect, knowledge, and experience. 262 N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 The more the sublime intellective flow is strengthened within you, the more your external and internal organs become weakened, and your body begins to tremble greatly and mightily, until you think that you shall surely die at that time, for your soul will become separated from your body out of the great joy in attaining and knowing what you have known (Idel 1988c:41). It is clear from these two passages that the mystical experience for Abulaijia is based upon intellectual cognition ijirst and foremost and is ijirmly rooted in the neoplatonic understanding of intellect espoused by Maimonides.20 In Sitrey Torah, Abulaijia deploys seven types of exegetical-noetic tools that he calls “Torah proofs” (mofetim toriim) to disclose the 36 secrets of the Guide.21 Each of these seven proofs is deployed, either in isolation or in combination with others, to demonstrate the veracity of a particular secret that Abulaijia is explaining. More simply, by deploying these linguistic tools Abulaijia generates new intellectual and experiential content from old words. These seven Torah proofs are: 1. shituf shemot — Joining separate words together to form new words. 2. mashlim ʾotiot — Completing the letters of one word to make a new word. 3. ṣeyruf ʾotiot — Rearranging the letters of one word to form a new word. 4. roshey teyvot and sofey teyvot — Creating new words from the ijirst and/or last letters of other words. 5. ḥiluf ʾotiot — Exchanging the letters of several words to make new words. 6. noṭeriqon — Each letter of a word stands for another word; thus a word becomes a sentence. 20) The connection between Maimonides’ cosmology and Abulaijian metaphysics is explored in more detail in Blumenthal 1982:5–83. 21) I use the term exegetical-noetic to signify that by performing these exegetical actions intra-mentally, the adept will actually experience the word and its interpretation, i.e., the experience of manipulation opens the intellect to the influx from the Active Intellect and the adept will experientially learn the meaning and essence of that word. These “Torah proofs” are discussed in more detail in Idel 1988b. N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 263 7. gemaṭriʾot — Two words are conceptually equivalent if they are numerically equal. By using these Torah proofs in concert with the study of the Guide the reader will gain two types of knowledge. First, the plain text of the Guide provides essential metaphysical knowledge of the structure of the universe and of the human intellect that underlies the mechanics of the mystical experience. Second, by actually practicing and performing these Torah proofs while simultaneously studying the Guide, the adept is trained in the skills of letter manipulation that are essential for Abulaijia’s mystical path. Sitrey Torah is thus more than a commentary that explicates esoteric content from the Guide. It is actually a primer containing everything the adept needs to know to begin the mystical journey, including both theoretical and practical knowledge. In other words, Abulaijia intends his reader to read the Guide as a contemplative exercise. The object of contemplation, however, is neither the primer nor the Guide, it is the 36 secrets generated between the texts and within the mind of the reader. This is a complicated process. In order to demonstrate how these exegetical-noetic tools function in this way I will turn to two speciijic examples. Intellect and Imagination The ijirst secret that Abulaijia takes up, “The Secret of Form and Likeness” (sod ṣelem u-demut), is drawn from the beginning chapter of the Guide, where Maimonides treats these same terms (1929:14–15, 1963:21–23). In the ijirst chapter of Part I of the Guide, Maimonides undertakes to describe the proper understanding of the biblical terms ṣelem (form) and demut (likeness), which he argues are problematic because they imply divine corporeality. He held that those who interpreted Genesis 1:26 literally, “Let us make man in our form (be-ẓalmenu) and according to our likeness (ci-demutenu),” were guilty of “pure anthropomorphism” (al-tajsīm al-maḥḍ) (1929:14, 1963:21). For Maimonides, the true meaning of ṣelem is “natural form” or “typological form,” which is to say that which represents the “essence of a thing.” What distinguishes human beings from all other created things is the power of intellect. Thus, when the Bible declares that humankind was created “in the form of God” it 264 N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 means that human beings and God share the characteristic of intellect, ʿaql, even if these respective intellects are of very different orders.22 As for demut, Maimonides argues that its meaning is akin to the Arabic verb shabaha, “to be similar,” and refers to abstract, not physical, similarity. The “likeness” between humans and God is the ability to exercise their intellect and thus implies no physical resemblance.23 Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our form, and according to our likeness,” can now be understood properly to mean, “Let us endow man with our intellect, so that he might think like us.”24 Maimonides’ method here is clear: he locates biblical terms that are ambiguous and that might lead to anthropomorphic errors, he corrects this error by explaining their philosophical meaning, and the whole verse is re-read to generate the proper meaning of the biblical text. In his commentary on this chapter, Abulaijia informs his readers that in order to truly understand the secret, they must supplement their study of Guide I:1 with a number of other chapters from the Guide, namely chapters 2, 7, 41, 46, 56, 68, 69, and 72 of part I.25 Abulaijia does not explain why this is necessary nor does he direct his reader to anything in particular in those chapters; he merely mentions them and says nothing further on the subject. However, the reason he does so will become 22) In this neoplatonic system, human intellect is the product of divine emanations proceeding from the Active Intellect, through the spheres of existence, and into the human soul. On this subject in medieval Islamic philosophy in general see Davidson 1992. On Maimonides’ particular views of the intellect and its relationship to the soul, see Altmann 1987. 23) While Maimonides says here that they are “similar,” he insists that this similarity only seems so “at ijirst glance” (ʿalā bādiʾ al-ra⁠ʾy); there is actually no real similarity at all between God and human beings. This is a point to which Maimonides will return over and over again in the Guide. 24) Of course, Maimonides would cringe at the use of “us” and “our,” but I will retain it for the sake of comparison with the original. 25) There is a problem with Abulaijia’s system of numbering the chapters of the Guide. At the beginning of the commentary he lists all the chapters of the Guide and the ijirst couple of words of each so that his readers would be able to ijind their way around. His chapters conform to our current edition of the Guide except for I:27, which he either did not have or (as is more likely) was a part of chapter 26. Thus, when Abulaijia directs his readers to I:30, it is actually I:31 in our editions, I:31 is I:32 and so on. This only occurs in the ijirst of the three parts of the Guide and I have compensated for it; when I mention a chapter it will refer to the chapters as we currently know them. N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 265 clear after examining his commentary. Abulaijia begins his exposition of the secret with a concise paraphrase of Maimonides’ understanding of the term ṣelem, which is itself taken almost word-for-word from Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation of the Guide (Abulaijia 2001e:20).26 After his summary, Abulaijia introduces the possibility of human intellectual union with the Active Intellect by means of the mutual cognition of the kabbalist and God by stating that “[the human] ṣelem returns to be His name, recited like the name of his Lord, which is the special name for the Active Intellect: ṣelem with ṣelem” (Abulaijia 2001e:20).27 This may seem like a non-sequitur given that it follows his paraphrase of Maimonides. But upon closer inspection it seems that Abulaijia is deriving his reading from Genesis 1:27, “God created man in His own image (be-ṣalmo), in the image of God (be-ṣelem ʾelohim) He created him.” The double use of ṣelem in this verse leads Abulaijia to the conclusion that there are actually two ṣelems being discussed: the intellects of God and human beings. Thus, when Genesis (read through Maimonides and then through Abulaijia) is read correctly, the reader should understand that the ṣelem (Active Intellect) of God and the ṣelem (intellect) of human beings are not only the same but can be combined in the Active Intellect. Read in this way, Genesis 1:27 becomes “God endowed Adam with human intellect (ṣelem) by means of His intellect (ṣelem).” Furthermore, given that the human ṣelem is a product of the divine, Abulaijia can also argue that the double use of ṣelem in verse 27 “testiijies that these two are one thing without separation (devar eḥad bilti mitḥaleq)” (Abulaijia 2001e:21). This is where one begins to see Abulaijia’s triple lexicography in action. Abulaijia expects the reader to understand the biblical context of these terms, Maimonides’ philosophical reading, and Abulaijia’s synthesis of them both. 26) Curiously, Abulaijia mentions that the human ṣelem is also “the name of the soul (ha-nefesh) that remains after death,” an idea that is not found in the Maimonidean text. It seems that Abulaijia is eliding Maimonides’ remarks about ṣelem and his doctrine of the soul (rooted in the thought of al-Fārābī) that it is indivisible but comprised of ijive faculties, of which intellect is the most important and that which survives death. For more on this, see Davidson 1963. 27) This is surely a hint to the fact that the “special name of the Active Intellect” is the shem ha-meforash, which is the most powerful word to be manipulated by the kabbalist. 266 N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 Abulaijia’s discussion of demut intensiijies this hermeneutic. While Maimonides understood demut to indicate the similarity — but not equivalence — of the human and divine intellects, Abulaijia reads demut quite differently. He states, obscurely, that “ṣelem is the form of the intellect” and “demut is the imagination of knowledge” (dimyon daʿat), because “the intellect and the imagination are known to be ṣelem and demut” (Abulaijia 2001e:21). How does Abulaijia arrive at this equation: intellect and imagination = ṣelem and demut? The answer lies in an ingenious use of a gemaṭria, the seventh of his “Torah proofs” mentioned above. In Hebrew, the phrase “the intellect and the imagination are known” (‫ )השכל והדמיון ידועים‬numerically equals 616, and the phrase “form and likeness” (‫ )צלם ודמות‬also equals 616. By means of one of his Torah proofs, Abulaijia is thus able to generate new meaning for the biblical text, and even more surprising, new meaning for the Guide as well. Thus, through a complex intertextual reading of Genesis, Maimonides, and a gemaṭria, Abulaijia is able to assert that ṣelem is the intellect (as Maimonides held) but also that demut is human imagination, something that Maimonides pointedly did not say. The key to understanding what Abulaijia is doing with the Maimonidean text hinges on his reading of the word dimyon. But again, he does not clearly deijine it in this chapter. Elsewhere, he hints that dimyon refers to what medieval philosophers knew as the imaginative faculty, which Abulaijia calls the “imagination of knowledge” (dimyon daʿat).28 But why does he want to claim that ṣelem and demut refer to intellect and imagination? The key is prophecy, which, it should be remembered, was one of the names Abulaijia gave his system (ha-kabbalah ha-nevuʾit). Abulaijia certainly knew that Maimonides held the two requirements of a prophet to be highly developed imaginative and rational faculties (1929:253–256, 1963:360–363). Abulaijia seems to hint, without going into detail, that the adept will need to develop both mental faculties — intellect and imagination, ṣelem and demut — in order to access the Active Intellect and achieve devequt, or prophecy. 28) Throughout this commentary, Abulaijia delineates the difference in function between the rational and imaginative powers of the soul and refers to the imagination as dimyon. A particularly salient example of this bifurcation is discussed in his treatment of the “Secret of Experience” (Abulaijia 2001e:179–180). N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 267 At this point it should be clear to his readers that the secret of ṣelem and demut — intellect and imagination — are the constituent components of prophetic experience. But what about the extra chapters from the Guide Abulaijia indicated at the beginning of this chapter? The extra chapters, when read in light of Abulaijia’s exposition of the secret, provide the necessary material for an esoteric discussion of the mechanics of prophecy, which can also be read as a primer for the attainment of prophecy by human beings. If one reads all of the extra chapters together, along with Abulaijia’s discussion, the following philosophicalmystical narrative can be discerned: While no actual similarities exist between the attributes of humans and those ascribed to God (Guide I:56), humans do have an actual connection to deity by means of the Active Intellect and the rational soul, which is another word for the human intellect (Guide I:41). Prophecy is not a matter of physical speech between God and humans (Guide I:46) but must be described as a process of the Active Intellect — which is always in actu (Guide I:68) — being the direct cause of everything that happens in the universe (Guide I:69). This includes the conveyance of knowledge during prophecy by means of the proximate cause of the spheres (Guide I:69 and 72).29 I should stress that Abulaijia does not by any means present this material in a straightforward manner. He merely indicates the chapter numbers and the reader is expected to piece this together after having read and understood the true (mystical) meaning of the secret of ṣelem and demut. The signiijicance of what Abulaijia is doing with the Maimonidean text is now much clearer. As an astute reader of the Guide, he gives a concise and straightforward introduction to the ijirst chapter, while pointing the reader to other chapters in the Guide that will be necessary to understand the full import of what he is saying. He then immediately introduces Torah proofs (in this case, gemaṭria) as a means of demonstrating the veracity of his claims. However, these Torah proofs are not merely a kind of epistemological check. They do perform this function, but my contention is that these are also introduced here in order to begin training the adept’s mental faculties. By using the Torah proofs 29) The two chapters not mentioned here, I:2 and I:7, are mentioned in this sod but in connection with something not directly related to the discussion here. 268 N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 while reading the Guide, from the very beginning, the reader will begin to form an understanding of the metaphysical structures underlying the prophetic experience, the means by which the experience can be achieved, and, most importantly, practical exercises designed for that end. By requiring the reader to perform the Torah proofs, Abulaijia collapses the distance between his mystical system and Maimonides’ philosophical project, thereby setting the stage for the mystical experience that will truly reveal Maimonides’ secrets. One begins to see here how typical conceptualizations of “mystical” and “philosophical” begin to break down. In his chapter on the “Secret of Prophecy” (sod ha-nevuʾah), Abulaijia blurs this line further and details explicit exercises to be performed in the quest for the prophetic experience, understood in a neoplatonic, philosophical vein. The Prophetic Experience Abulaijia’s presentation of the sod ha-nevuʾah is dependent upon the reader’s understanding of what he calls the pirqey ha-nevuʾah, “the chapters on prophecy,” found in chapters 32 through 48 of Part II of the Guide (1929:253–294, 1963:360–412). In these chapters, Maimonides constructs a naturalistic and universalistic understanding of prophecy rooted in Islamic thought and indebted to that of al-Fārābī in particular.30 Maimonides describes prophecy as “an emanation that flows from God by means of the Active Intellect to the rational faculty ijirst, then to the imaginative faculty after that. This is the highest level of humanity and the ultimate in perfection . . . and this matter is not possible for absolutely every person . . . for the imaginative faculty is rooted in one’s natural disposition” (1929:260, 1963:369).31 Thus, for Maimonides, prophecy 30) Al-Fārābī’s conception of prophecy and dreams can be found in his treatise, The Opinions of the People of the Perfect City (al-Fārābī 2002:108–116). There is a debate about whether or not Maimonides’ conception of prophecy was actually universalistic (i.e., possible for Jews as well as non-Jews) or whether it was restricted to Jews only. I tend to agree with Kellner’s (1991a:26–29 and 2006:257–259) assessment that it was indeed universalistic. For the particularistic view, see H. A. Wolfson 1942 and Sheilat 1999. 31) In Guide I:15 and II:10, Maimonides likens this chain of emanation and the act of intellection therein to Jacob’s vision of the ladder (Gen. 28:12). The ladder described in the biblical account, “And behold, there was a ladder standing on the earth, whose N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 269 is limited to those individuals who are born with a highly developed imaginative faculty, have completed their advanced education, and are perfected in their moral behaviors.32 Maimonides further restricts the list of potential prophets by asserting that “one who is ready for [prophecy] might still not prophesy because of the divine will . . . God gives prophecy to whom he wants, when he wants.”33 Human beings can only be in a prophetic mode by means of God’s initiation of the prophetic moment. This is the same terminology used by al-Fārābī to describe prophecy. However, Maimonides differs from al-Fārābī in one crucial respect. Maimonides insists that God can block prophecy if He so wills.34 I will return to this point, but ijirst it will be instructive to detail what Abulaijia does with this material. In his explication of the Secret of Prophecy, Abulaijia does not explicitly cite any of Maimonides’ writings on the subject.35 Differing from his treatment of ṣelem and demut, Abulaijia here expects his reader to understand Maimonides’ position on prophecy without Abulaijia’s summary. As Abulaijia begins his treatment of the secret, one immediately notes that, contra Maimonides, the prophetic experience may be top reached the heavens,” represents the metaphysical link in the chain of existence. In I:15 in particular, Maimonides is explicit about the fact that the act of ascending and descending on the ladder is the activity of prophecy. 32) This is true of Maimonides’ conception of all the prophets except for Moses, who prophesied by means of intellect alone; his experience was not mediated by the imaginative faculty. See Guide II: 34–37 (1929:258–265, 1963:366–375). 33) Altmann 1978:8, making a subtle yet precise distinction, argues that Maimonides intends that primordial divine wisdom determines prophecy, not divine will. 34) For al-Fārābī 2002:114–116, the prophetic experience is only limited to those with a natural capability. God does not interfere in the process; see chapter 25, “Statement Concerning Prophecy and Vision of the King.” My understanding of Maimonides’ conception follows the reading of Warren Harvey 1981, which is distinct from the readings of H. A. Wolfson 1942, Davidson 1979, and Kaplan 1977. 35) Rather than paraphrasing Maimonides, Abulaijia begins his discussion with a preface about the nature of prophecy and prophets, followed by an explication of Abulaijia’s understanding of prophecy. The preface is interesting for what it reveals about Abulaijia’s self-understanding not only as a mystic, but as a prophet. Abulaijia writes that all the prophets, by nature of being a prophet, “were compelled to say what they said and to write what they wrote” (Abulaijia 2001e:137). I read these introductory remarks as Abulaijia’s apologia for why he is putting to paper the secrets of prophecy and the methods by which it can be obtained. 270 N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 initiated by human beings. Speciijically, one might commence prophecy by means of a linguistic act, which he calls “an interior utterance” (dibbur penimi).36 For Abulaijia, this “inner utterance” must be understood as the act of manipulating Hebrew letters of various words within the human intellect. It is important to note that it is not necessarily the Hebrew language that is essential here, but the Hebrew letters. Indeed, Abulaijia often uses gemaṭriot and ṣeyruijim based upon Greek or Latin words written in Hebrew characters.37 While the Hebrew language is indeed holy, it is the actual letters that are imbued with divine power. By meditating upon them, the intellect is activated and rendered capable of receiving the divine influx. This begins a chain reaction in which the conscious permutation of Hebrew letters activates the human intellect, which allows the Active Intellect to overflow upon the imaginative faculty (ʿal ha-koaḥ ha-dimyoni), which flows to the emotional faculty (ha-mitʿorer), which flows to the sensory faculty (he-hargashi), and from there to the representational faculty (ha-ṣiyuri), at which point the content of prophetic revelation can be mentally represented, externalized, and expressed linguistically. This chain reaction then proceeds backwards, up the chain of faculties, to the Active Intellect. This movement of the human intellect back to its divine source is what makes devequt possible: “and the one [human intellect] and the other [the Active Intellect] will be one thing” (Abulaijia 2001e:138). Maimonides’ and Abulaijia’s conceptions of prophecy are nearly identical. The crucial difference between the two is that Maimonides restricts prophecy to those with an innate imaginative faculty and whom God does not prevent from prophesying, and Abulaijia has opened up a space for all human beings to prophesy if they are able and willing to develop the discipline necessary to do so.38 Prophecy is therefore not a state in which imagination 36) This interior utterance is created “by means of the seventy languages with the 22 holy letters, all of which are permutated in the heart, by using [the Torah proof ] of letter permutation, which is in potentia in terms of the rational soul and in actu in terms of the Active Intellect” (Abulaijia 2001e:138). 37) As Wolfson 2000a:62 points out, this complex of thought is rooted in Abulaijia’s conception that the seventy-two human languages are actually contained within the language of God, which is Hebrew. On this topic see also Idel 1988b:8–11. 38) Abulaijia writes that the adept will be ready for prophecy, “when you know for yourself that good morals have been absolutely perfected in you . . . and you know that you are perfect in the matters of God (middot ha-shem), which are known to be the means N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 271 and intellect are receptive (as in Maimonides), but prophecy is initiated by the adept and results in a state in which the Active Intellect will cleave to the intellect of the adept until “the one and the other will be one thing” or as he said in the secret of ṣelem and demut, “one thing without separation.” Abulaijia’s claim that prophecy/devequt may be initiated by the adept is the sine qua non of his thought that I argue qualiijies it as mystical. The power to transcend the gulf separating humanity and divinity is in the hands (or mind) of the adept, which results in a radical shift in subjectivity marked by new perspectives on the nature of reality. Given this aim, it is not surprising that it is here that Abulaijia introduces exercises designed to train the reader for prophecy. One such exercise is a free associative gemaṭria. For example, one should begin with the phrase “the letters of holiness” (‫)אותיות הקדש‬, which numerically equals 1,232. The reader then proceeds to freely associate any other letters and phrases that also add up to 1,232. For instance, Abulaijia provides the example of the phrase “studying the commandments of Torah” (‫)למוד מצות התורה‬, which in Hebrew is equal to 1,232. Then, and by use of permutation, ‫ למוד מצות‬becomes ‫ צלם ודמות‬and the whole phrase may then be rearranged to read ‫צלם דמות ותורה‬: “intellect, imagination, and Torah.” Note that if one has not understood the ijirst secret of the commentary, ṣelem u-demut, this number/letter combination would not make any sense. One must understand before beginning this chapter that, for Abulaijia, ṣelem refers to the intellect and demut to the imagination. Thus, the “letters of holiness” (‫ )אותיות הקדש‬with which he began have literally become “intellect, imagination, and Torah” (‫ )צלם דמות ותורה‬by means of “studying the commandments of the Torah” (‫)למוד מצות התורה‬. This speciijic move might be understood in a number of ways. Most importantly, it seems that he intends here that studying the Torah by means of permutation of the Hebrew letters (“the letters of holiness”) is an activity made possible by means of the intellect (the ṣelem) and the imagination (demut). Furthermore, that the human intellect, the Active Intellect, and the Torah are all essentially by which the world is continually governed, and your thought pursues your intellect so that they will be similar to it (the Active Intellect?), always according to your ability. And you know with your intellect that the non-essential powers have been removed, and all of your intention is toward the God of heaven” (Abulaijia 2001e:138–139). 272 N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 one and the same during devequt, or prophecy, a conijiguration that supports Idel’s (2005:144–155) contention that Abulaijia conceived of the Torah and Active Intellect as the same thing. Having mastered this skill of permutation, Abulaijia instructs the adept to practice this technique by “skipping around and calculating” (tidalleg ve-tiḥshov) various permutations and gemaṭriot.39 Another, more complicated exercise utilizes the Torah proof of mashlim ʾotiot (“completing the letters”). The adept should begin with a phrase; his example is “the holy language” (‫)לשון הקדש‬. Now, beginning with the letter lamed, the adept should turn each letter into two letters by means of numerical equivalences. Thus, ‫ ל‬will become ‫ כ"י‬because they both equal thirty. The initial phrase can now be rearranged — with the substitution of ‫ כ‬and ‫ י‬for the ‫ — ל‬to read ‫שכינה קדש‬, “the presence of the Holy.” As practice for this method Abulaijia prescribes working backward through the entire alphabet in four letter blocks. Thus, starting with ‫( תשרק‬the last four letters of the Hebrew alphabet), one should begin with the ‫ת‬, which equals 400, and turn it into ‫ שס"מ‬,‫שע"ל‬, ‫שפ"כ‬, etc., each of which is a combination that yields a total of 400. This should be done for the entire alphabet, in blocks of four letters at a time, back and forth until the adept can literally do it without thinking. But why does Abulaijia introduce these exercises in this chapter on prophecy? Abulaijia states very clearly at the end of this chapter that: this is the way, the mysteries of which I have revealed to you, and it is a straight path by which are taught the sitrey torah and by which the thought of the enlightened is guided to the knowledge of God, from Whom the overflow is received by means of the 22 letters (Abulaijia 2001e:144). This passage, I would argue, is the key to the entire commentary. First, by “this is the way” — i.e. the manipulation of letters — “by which are taught the sitrey torah,” Abulaijia clearly intends that the manipulation 39) This “skipping around and calculating” would take years of training as it requires an amazing degree of concentration, a huge storehouse of Hebrew words and phrases, and an acute mathematical skill that would allow the easy movement between words, letters, and numbers. Abulaijia expected his students to be able to do these forwards, backwards, inside-out, and all as rapidly as possible. N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 273 of letters is the only way to learn the “secrets of the Torah” embedded within the pages of the Guide for the Perplexed. Second, he says that the manipulation of letters is also how “the enlightened” are guided to God and receive the divine influx, i.e., prophecy. In other words, studying the Guide and its secrets is essential preparation for the mystical experience, but true knowledge of the secrets can only be understood after experiencing conjunction with the Active Intellect. The fact that study of the Guide, mystical experience, and knowledge of the “secrets” are dialectically linked leads me to the conclusion that Abulaijia’s 36 sodot are both the means and the result of his mystical hermeneutic. The only piece of information that Abulaijia does not include here — and it is a crucial piece — is that it is only by permuting and meditating upon the actual names of God (like the explicit name Y-H-V-H) that the adept will tread the paths of prophecy.40 Conclusion If one looks back at what Abulaijia has done with the Maimonidean text, the parallels with Maimonides’ own interpretive project are striking and worthy of note. Both authors deploy a strategy of concealment to reveal their respective doctrines, hiding their teachings in plain sight.41 Both authors focus their commentaries on explicating certain biblical words and concepts, the true meaning of which will open up the author’s project for the reader. Most importantly, they both attempt to re-work an earlier text and incorporate it into their own systems. In doing so they both do a certain amount of violence to the text they are working with. If we move beyond similarities however, and focus more precisely on the way these two authors are re-working texts, the differences are startling. Maimonides’ discursive reading does not demand an experiential component from the reader the way Abulaijia does. This is ultimately 40) Abulaijia 2001e:74–86 hints at this information a little more explicitly in the Secret of the Proper Noun (sod shem ‘eṣem). 41) Idel 1998 and Wolfson 2000a have described the very different types of secrecy deployed by Maimonides and Nachmanides that are here combined by Abulaijia. For Maimonides, secrets are secret because the masses may not be ready for them and they are thus hidden within the text. For Nachmanides, secrets are secret because they are literally incommunicable and thus can not be conveyed in writing. 274 N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 why we might categorize the Guide as a philosophical text, not a mystical one. Indeed, Maimonides’ primary concern is to offer a corrective to misunderstandings of the biblical text, bringing it into alignment with the neoplatonic physics and metaphysics of his day, while nevertheless leaving the text itself intact. The effect is one in which the reader is able to read Maimonides’ biblical text by substituting “correct” meaning where and when appropriate. The reader, in a sense, looks through Maimonides at the biblical text in order to reconstruct its true meaning. Abulaijia’s project is fundamentally different. If Maimonides exhibited a certain violence towards the biblical text, Abulaijia goes further by absolutely pulverizing and atomizing it. Abulaijia’s Torah proofs are intra-mental speech acts that reduce language to discrete alpha-numeric units that can be taken apart and re-constituted into a new text. When these Torah proofs are brought to bear on Maimonides and the biblical text, the reader does not look through Abulaijia at the Maimonidean text and then at the biblical text, as one might suspect. Rather, one must reconstruct a completely new text from the bits of biblical and Maimonidean language that Abulaijia has torn apart. This cryptological reading is completely different from the Maimonidean reading of the biblical text and offers up intriguing possibilities for conceptualizing the nature and bounds of mystical texts. While one might consider Sitrey Torah itself a mystical commentary in the sense that it purports to reveal that which is hidden, there is another mystical text here that is generated in the mind of the reader from the commentary and the text of the Guide. At this point, I can return to the question I posed at the outset of this essay: Where is the mystical text here? The Guide for the Perplexed itself, read without Abulaijia’s commentary, is certainly not “mystical” in the sense I am using it here. Likewise, the commentary without the actual text of the Guide in front of the reader is almost useless (actually incomprehensible) as a mystical guide. I would add that without the text of the Hebrew Bible in mind as well, the whole Abulaijian process of reading becomes impossible. Abulaijia’s hermeneutic thus demands the mental juggling of biblical, Maimonidean, and Abulaijian texts in the mind of the reader. This is what I have called his triple lexicography. In addition, the reader must be able to perform the complicated mental N. Hofer / Numen 60 (2013) 251–279 275 feats of letter manipulation demanded by his Torah proofs while studying the texts of the commentary and the Guide. The key to Abulaijia’s reading — as a mystical technique — is that the human intellect and Active Intellect in turn, will only be activated by manipulating particularly powerful letters like the explicit name of God. Given that these textual manipulations — while drawn from the biblical, Maimonidean, and Abulaijian texts — occur intra-mentally within the reader, the actual mystical text only exists, in effect, within the mind of the reader. The necessary information is present in both the Guide and the commentary together, yet it is not completely in either one or even both. This is one of the many paradoxes that lie at the center of Abulaijia’s system: the 36 secrets of the Guide can only really be experientially “learned” after they have been “learned” discursively. But this discursive knowledge is impossible without the experiential component. The whole mystical system is rooted in Maimonides’ neoplatonic cosmology found in the Guide, the text of which is then obliterated to make space for Abulaijia’s mystical epistemology. For Abulaijia’s complicated mystical hermeneutic, two senses of the word “mystical” are operational. On one hand, there is an unveiling of reality in which one text reveals reality by means of a second. On the other hand, this unveiling of reality is combined with an experiential component that might be learned and taught to others. By loosening the strictures of the mystical-philosophical binary and approaching them instead from the Abulaijian perspective, the categories are reinvigorated and open up new possibilities for thinking about and categorizing texts. In this case, we have a paradoxical disclosure of secrets in which the linguistic mysteries must be disclosed discursively before they can become experiential mysteries to be disclosed mystically. 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