ANONYMOUS. Sepher Yetzirah ["Book of Creation": cosmogony]. With traditional commentaries of Ramba"n and Ra'avad

(KABBALAH)

Jacob Cohen of Gazolo

Mantua

1562

FIRST EDITION. Title within woodcut architectural arch. Numerous spherical charts and Kabbalistic diagrams. Usually there appears at the end of the volume an illustrated leaf containing important diagrams. In our copy, these volvelles have been cut out and mounted on the appropriate leaves (ff.10v., 33r. and 77r.). It is almost unheard of to find a copy of Sepher Yetzirah with the volvelles mounted. Wide-margined copy

Vinograd, Mantua 86; not in Adams

"The earliest extant Hebrew text of systematic speculative thought” (Scholem). The Sepher Yetzirah (attributed to Abraham the Patriarch), is the most esoteric of all Kabbalistic texts and certainly the most influential. The central subject of the Sepher Yetzirah is a compact discourse on cosmogony. It opens with the declaration that God created the world with “thirty-two secret paths of wisdom.” These paths are defined as the Ten Sephiroth and the enty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The first chapter elaborates upon the Sephiroth and the remaining five chapters on the function of the letters. In Talmudic times, it was believed that by utilizing the Sepher Yetzirah one could create life (see TB Sanhedrin 65b). A FINE COPY OF THIS IMPORTANT TEXT, INCLUDING THE TANTALIZINGLY ELUSIVE VOLVELLES, HERE INSERTED IN THE APPROPRIATE PLACES.