Abulafia

Warnings

“Let your garments be white... If it is dark, set many lights burning... Now begin combining letters, few, many, shift them and combine them until your heart is warm. And when your heart is warm, when you see that through the combination of the letters you grasp things you could not have known by yourself or with the aid of tradition, when you are ready to receive the influence of the divine power that enters into you, then use all the profundity of your thought to imagine in your heart the Name and His higher angels, as if they were human beings beside you.”

—Abraham Abulafia, Hayye ha-’Olam ha-Ba, 1280.Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum, 1988, chapter 68.