The thirteenth-century Jewish mystical classic Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Splendor), commonly known as the Zohar, took shape against a backdrop of rising anti-Judaism in Spain. Mystical Resistance reveals that in addition to the Zohar's role as a theological masterpiece, its kabbalistic teachings offer passionate and knowledgeable critiques of Christian majority culture. During the Zohar's development, Christian friars implemented new missionizing strategies, forced Jewish attendance at religious disputations, and seized and censored Jewish books. In response, the kabbalists who composed the Zohar crafted strategically subversive narratives aimed at diminishing Christian authority. Hidden between the lines of its fascinating stories, the Zohar makes daring assertions that challenge themes important to medieval Christianity, including Christ's Passion and ascension, the mendicant friars' new missionizing strategies, and Gothic art's claims of Christian dominion. These assertions rely on an intimate and complex knowledge of Christianity gleaned from rabbinic sources, polemic literature, public Church art, and encounters between Christians and Jews. Much of the kabbalists' subversive discourse reflects language employed by writers under oppressive political regimes, treading a delicate line between public and private, power and powerlessness, subservience and defiance. By placing the Zohar in its thirteenth-century context, Haskell opens this text as a rich and fruitful source of Jewish cultural testimony produced at the epicenter of sweeping changes in the relationship between medieval Western Europe's Christian majority and its Jewish minority.

Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Radiance) has amazed readers ever since it emerged in medieval Spain over seven hundred years ago. Written in lyrical Aramaic, this masterpiece of Kabbalah exceeds the dimensions of a normal book; it is virtually a body of mystical literature, comprising over twenty discrete sections. The bulk of the Zohar consists of a mystical interpretation of the Torah, from Genesis through Deuteronomy. This seventh volume of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition consists of commentary on more than half the book of Leviticus. How does the Zohar deal with a biblical text devoted largely to animal sacrifices, cereal offerings, and priestly ritual? Here these ancient laws and procedures are spiritualized, transformed into symbols of God's inner life, now that both the Desert Tabernacle and the Temple in Jerusalem no longer exist. For example, the ascent offering, which was totally consumed on the altar, is known in Hebrew as olah (literally, "that which ascends"). In the Zohar, this symbolizes Shekhinah, last of the ten sefirot (divine potencies), who ascends to unite with Her beloved, the blessed Holy One. The biblical narrative describes how two of Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, offered alien fire before YHVH and were immediately consumed in a divine blaze. Rabbinic tradition suggested various reasons why they were killed: they lacked the proper priestly garments, or had not washed their hands and feet, or were drunk, or were not married. For the Zohar, marriage enables one to imitate the divine union of male and female energies, and to stimulate that union above. By not marrying, Nadab and Abihu remained incomplete and unfulfilled. According to a related Zoharic passage, their ritual act failed because in their contemplation of the divine qualities they did not include Shekhinah. Without Her, God is incomplete.

Judaism, Sufism, and the Pietists of Medieval Egypt addresses the extraordinary rise and inner life of the Egyptian pietist movement in the first half of the thirteenth century. The creative engagement with the dominant Islamic culture was always present, even when unspoken. Dr Russ-Fishbane calls attention to the Sufi subtext of Jewish pietiem, while striving not to reduce its spiritual synthesis and religious renewal to a set of political calculations. Ultimately, no single term or concept can fully address the creative expression of pietism that so animated Jewish society and that left its mark in numerous manuscripts and fragments from medieval Egypt. Russ-Fishbane offers a nuanced examination of the pietist sources on their own terms, drawing as far as possible upon their own definitions and perceptions. Jewish society in thirteenth-century Egypt reflects the dynamic reexamination by a venerable community of its foundational texts and traditions, even of its very identity and institutions, viewed and reviewed in the full light of its Islamic environment. The historical legacy of this religious synthesis belongs at once to the realm of Jewish culture, in all its diversity and dynamism, as well as to the broader spiritual orbit of Islamicate civilization.

Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, whose life and mystical poetry provided the inspiration for the Mevlevi Sufi order, is one of the world's best-known poets, yet the centuries-long musical tradition cultivated by the Mevleviye remains much less known. In this deeply researched book, renowned scholar Walter Feldman traces the historical development of Mevlevi music and brings to light the remarkable musical and mystical aesthetics of the Mevlevi ayin the instrumental and vocal accompaniment to the sublime ceremony of the 'Whirling' Dervishes.

"Keter" is a close reading of fifty relatively brief Jewish texts, tracing the motif of divine coronation from Jewish esoteric writings of late antiquity to the Zohar, written in thirteenth-century Spain. In the course of this investigation Arthur Green draws a wide arc including Talmudic, Midrashic, liturgical, Merkavah, German Hasidic, and Kabbalistic works, showing through this single theme the spectrum of devotional, mystical, and magical views held by various circles of Jews over the course of a millennium or more. The first portion of the work deals with late antiquity, emphasizing the close relationship between texts of what is often depicted as "normative" Judaism and their mystical/magical analogues. The mythic imagination of ancient Judaism, he suggests, is shared across this spectrum. The latter portion of the work turns to the medieval Jews who inherited this ancient tradition and its evolution into Kabbalah, where "keter" plays a key role as the first of the ten divine emanations or "sefirot."

The nature of these "sefirot" as symbols and the emergence of a structured and hierarchical symbolism out of the mythic imagery of the past are key themes in these later chapters. As a whole, "Keter" takes the reader on an exciting tour of the interior landscapes of the Jewish imagination, offering some remarkable insights into the nature of mystical and symbolic thinking in the Jewish tradition.

Originally published in 1997.

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God hides behind the simplest of daily activities; finding Him is a matter of total surrender to His will. That's the message of this 18th-century inspirational classic. Its encouragement to "live in the moment," accepting everyday obstacles with humility and love, has guided generations of seekers to spiritual peace.

'Dreams are products of the mind, and do not come from any external source' Artemidorus' The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica) is the richest and most vivid pre-Freudian account of dream interpretation, and the only dream-book to have survived complete from Graeco-Roman times. Written in Greek around AD 200, when dreams were believed by many to offer insight into future events, the work is a compendium of interpretations of dreams on a wide range of subjects relating to the natural, human, and divine worlds. It includes the meanings of dreams about the body, sex, eating and drinking, dress, the weather, animals, the gods, and much else. Artemidorus' technique of dream interpretation stresses the need to know the background of the dreamer, such as occupation, health, status, habits, and age, and the work is a fascinating social history, revealing much about ancient life, culture, and beliefs, and attitudes to the dominant power of Imperial Rome. Martin Hammond's fine translation is accompanied by a lucid introduction and explanatory notes by Peter Thonemann, which assist the reader in understanding this important work, which was an influence on both Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault.

Arthur Edward Waite (1857 1942), mystic and historian, was an influential figure in the occult revival of the nineteenth century. Brought up a devout Catholic, he became increasingly involved in spiritualism in his late teens following the death of his sister. Choosing not to enter the priesthood, he pursued instead his interests in occult philosophy. A translator and editor of several alchemical texts in the 1890s, Waite also wrote several histories of magic in his later years. First published in 1902, the present work establishes Kabbalah's significant influence on nineteenth-century occultism. The book chronicles the history of Kabbalist practice from its ancient Hebrew origins to its effect on other branches of the occult, including Rosicrucianism, freemasonry, hermeticism and tarot. Waite also connects noted occultists to Kabbalah, including Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus and Eliphas Levi.

The Apocalypse of Abraham is a vital source for understanding both Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism. Written anonymously soon after the destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple, the text envisions heaven as the true place of worship and depicts Abraham as an initiate of celestial priesthood. Andrei A. Orlov focuses on the central rite of the Abraham story - the scapegoat ritual that receives a striking eschatological reinterpretation in the text. He demonstrates that the development of the sacerdotal traditions in the Apocalypse of Abraham, along with a cluster of Jewish mystical motifs, represents an important transition from Jewish apocalypticism to the symbols of early Jewish mysticism. In this way, Orlov offers unique insight into the complex world of the Jewish sacerdotal debates in the early centuries of the Common Era. The book will be of interest to scholars of early Judaism and Christianity, Old Testament studies, and Jewish mysticism and magic.