Sepher Yetzirah: Book Of Formation

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The ^'Sepher Yetzirah," or "Book of Formation," is perhaps the oldest philosophical treatise which is yet extant in the Hebrew language. The great interest which has been evinced of late years in the Hebrew Kabalah, and the modes of thought and doctrine allied to it, has induced me to translate this volume from the original Hebrew texts, and to collate with them the Latin versions of mediaeval authorities. Three im- portant books of the " Zohar," or " Splendour," which is the great storehouse of Kabalistic teaching, have been for the first time translated into English by that skilful and erudite Kabalist, my fellow student in occult science, Mac Gregor Mathers, and the " Sepher Yetzirah " in an English translation is almost a necessary companion to these even more abstruse disquisitions : the two books indeed mutually explain each other. The '' Sepher Yetzirah " although this name means " The Book of Formation," is not in any sense a narra- tive of Creation, or a substitute Genesis, but it is a very ancient and instructive philosophical treatise upon one aspect of the origin of the universe and mankind ; an aspect at once archaic and essentially Hebrew. The grouping of the processes of origin into an arrangement, at once alphabetic and numeral, is one only to be found in Semitic authors. Attention must be called to the essential peculiarity of Hebrew doctrines, the inextricable and necessary association of numbers and letters ; every letter suggesting a number, and every group of letters having a numerical signification, as vital as its literal meaning. The Kabalistic principles involved in the reversal of Hebrew letters, and their substitution by others, on definite schemes, should also be studied and borne in mind. It is exactly on these principles that the ^' groundwork idea " of this disquisition rests ; and these principles may be traced throughout the Kabalistic volumes which have succeeded it in point of time, and development, and which are now associated together in one volume and known as the '^ Zohar," or '^Book of Splendour," a collection of treaties which is in the main concerned with the essential dignities of the God-head, and with the emanations which have sprung therefrom, with the doctrine of the Sephiruth, and the ideals of Macroprosopus and Microprosopus. The '' Sepher Yetzirah," on the other hand is mainly concerned with our universe and with the Microcosm. The opinions of Hebrew Kabalistic Rabbis and of two French mystics may be fitly introduced here.