Gates of Light: Sha'are Orah (Sacred Literature Trust Series)

Entrega súper rápida. Este libro es una gema preciosa.

great study by a thirteenth century kabbalist. takes the reader through all the qualities of the sepheroth starting at the tenth through an upward direction. very deep and elaborate. correspondences of divine attributes with the paths and descent of powers from upper spheres is detailed with much more comprehensiveness than most tree of life works. each chapter covers a level of soul/spirit correspondances. reaching the more intangible and splendid realms which the aspirant can hope to attain. many Torah and O.T. quotes. recommended for those with some background in kabbalah.

I order this book for me and friends twice. I can tell you that this book is very good. I am a kindle costumer and have a good amount of books. I wish amazon could make moves to produce it in a kindle versión format. Thank you.

Very well written need to be very familiar with key parts of Kabbalah prior to reading.

You need “The Palace of Adam Kadmon” by Chaim Vital to understand this question. With that explanation firmly grasped, this book is all Light. The translation is good but don’t trust the biblical references. At least 40% of them are incorrect.In the historical introduction, Moshe Idel notes that Gikatilla does not explain why he adopted an ascending order approach in this book and he offers an explanation. Instead of using Dr. Idel’s speculation, go straight to Vital. This book is a gem for the ages.

The most amazing and enlightening book.

😍!!!

[The following is one of my earliest reviews on Amazon. For some reason (perhaps being non-AVP), it has not been carried over from the product page on which it was originally posted to new pages for the same book. I would probably write it differently today, but I haven't read the book since 2003, so I'm leaving the review as it was. Instead of changing it, I will conclude with some bibliographic guidance, a practice I eventually included in many of my reviews.]This is a full translation of an important, but generally neglected, work of theoretical Kabbalah (the most prominent, although not the only, form of Jewish mysticism). It explains in detail the doctrine of the Sefirot (or Sephirot), the creative emanations of the unknowable God. It arranges them in ascending order (toward Divine Totality), rather than the descending order (toward the Created World) in which they are usually presented. It has been suggested that it could, therefore, at least in theory, be used as a meditation guide, although it does not seem to have been considered even devotional reading. (Descriptions of Kabbalistic meditation practices were rarely committed to writing, so the absence of evidence on this point may not be evidence of absence, but so far as I know this is only a reasonable speculation.)"Gates of Light" is a clear exposition (well, clear for mystical theology), rather than a series of parables to be interpreted, which may account for its being studied, but not often quoted, and not being the subject of commentaries by later Kabbalists. It also suffered from being known as the work of a "modern" writer, in medieval Spain, instead of being offered, like the "Zohar," as a rediscovered text from the time of the Talmudic sages. "Gates of Light" may still be too sparse in language to appeal to devotional readers, but I would hope that those with a personal, spiritual, interest in Kabbalah would use it to improve their grasp of the intellectual foundations of the movement.[Moshe Idel's "Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation" (2002) has a short discussion of the present work (page 300 and following, in which he notes that the treatise was (in fact) very influential, which I had not gathered from the literature I knew when I first wrote this review in 2003. Idel also points out that, unlike the rest of the hundred-and-fifty treatises on the Sefirot known to him, only two, the present example and another by the same author, use the ascending approach rather than the descending one. He also finds a brief example in a slightly earlier work by Gikatilla's teacher, R. Abraham Abulafia.]Students of the history of Kabbalah, to whom the translation seems mainly directed, will find this translation of great interest. So will students of Kabbalah in history (a slightly different topic). Although the book was eclipsed in fame in its own time and later by the "Zohar," an abridged Latin version was influential in Christian circles during the Renaissance, when ultimately Neo-Platonic theories of divine emanations were extremely popular. Its availability in English is therefore of importance outside the circles of those interested in Judaica, or in Kabbalah in particular.I have one, relatively minor, objection to this version. For some reason, the translator has chosen to render the technical term for emanations, "Sefirot" (singular form "Sefirah"), as "Spheres," as though it derived from the Greek "sphaira." As Gershom Scholem, among others, demonstrated at length, the actual origin is the root "sfr," originally referring to counting or numbers. The word "sefer," meaning "book" (i.e., an account of things) is the most generally familiar form to those with a little Hebrew. "Sefirah" was also linked, as a significant word-association, with the Biblical word "sappir," meaning a gem (Greek and Latin "sapphire," but not necessarily the modern stone). The pun on "sphaira," the Greek word for "ball" does eventually appear in the literature, but it does not seem likely to have had much currency in thirteenth-century Spain. The translator's decision makes for easier reading, but it could suggest extraneous associations, such as the crystalline spheres of medieval astronomy (and some sort of Kabbalistic astrology). This is indeed a minor objection, but the reader unfamiliar with the field may find the choice confusing, and the subject is already esoteric.[Suggested reading: In the twentieth century, the main authority on the development of the Kabbalah was Gershom Scholem. Some of his positions have been challenged (sometimes, I think, successfully), but he remains the go-to source for much information. He did a very short biography of Joseph Gikatilla (or Chiquatilla), the author of "Gates of Light," for the first edition of "Encyclopedia Judaica." This, with his other contributions to it, can be found in the volume  Kabbalah , which of course also contains expositions of the doctrine of the Sephirot. These are fairly accessible, although the reader may have to follow up with cross-references. There are longer treatments in his early summary,  Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism , in the context of the main Kabbalistic classic, the Zohar, along with some brief discussions of Gikatilla's life and career. This is based on lectures addressed to rabbis and rabbinical students, and assumes a certain level of Jewish literacy. Another, less technical, treatment of the Sephirot can be found in his lecture to laymen (mostly non-Jewish), "Kabbalah and Myth" in  On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism (Mysticism & Kabbalah) . There are more advanced treatments of specific themes in a follow-up to that collection,  On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah (Mysticism & Kabbalah)  Finally, complete novices probably should avoid his exploration of the origins of the Sephirotic system in the very dense (although very good)  Origins of the Kabbalah (Princeton Paperbacks) .]

Phenomenonal in its breadth. Not a book for beginners. One or two kabbilistic terms were translated awkwardly but on the whole the translator has done a fantastic job.

Very good!