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T H E K O G O D LIBRARY O F JUDAIC STUDIES

S atu rn ’s Jews
 flu
10
Editor
The Kogod Library of Judaic Studies
10
E d it o r ia l B oard M enachem Fisch
M oshe H albertal
D onniel H artm an
M oshe Idel
Avi Sagi
Other titles in the series

Judaism and the Challenges of Modem Life

Edited by Moshe Halbertal and Donniel Hartman

The Boundaries ofJudaism

Donniel Hartm an

Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism

Moshe Idel

The Open Canon

Avi Sagi

Transforming Identity
Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar

Messiahs and Resurrection in ‘The Gabriel Revelation ’

Israel Knohl

Mysticism and Madness: The Religious Thought of Rabbi Nachman

Bratslav
Zvi Mark

To Be a Jew
Avi Sagi

Disempowered King
Yair Lorberbaum
Saturn’s Jews
On the Witches’ Sabbat
and Sabbateanism

Moshe Idel

SHALOM HARTMAN i n n
in s t it u t e m a i n o n L ‘
a\
continuum
Published by Continuum International Publishing Group
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

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system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

©M oshe Idel, 2011

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-2144-8

PB: 978-0-8264-4453-0

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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

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Vdhirrrr dwwirinxi iiwto "ism'row pi
And Saturn is the first and last gate,
and there everything will be united.

MS. Vatican 194, fol. 67a.

A

9
Contents

Abbreviations ix

Preface xi

1 From Saturn, Sabbath and Sorcery to the Jews 1

Introduction 1
On Abraham ibn Ezra’s Visions of Saturn 5
Two Thirteenth-Century Kabbalists: Abraham Abulafia
and Joseph Ashkenazi on Saturn, Sorcery and Sabbath 12
Some Fourteenth-Century Texts 22
Some Fifteenth-Century Jewish Texts on Saturn 24
Saturn in the Sixteenth Century: Joseph ibn Tzayyah,
Isaac Karo and Abraham Yagel 27
Jewish Resistance to and Critique of the Saturnization
of Judaism 29
Some Possible Repercussions 38

■ From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi: A Planet that Became Messiah 47

Some Preliminary Reflections on Jewish Culture 47
Astrology, Messianism and Universalism 51
Saturn, Binah and Messiah 54
Sabbatai Tzevi and Saturn 64
Saturn, Forbidden Sexual Relations and Sabbateanism 69
More on Sabbateanism and Astrology 72
Nathan of Gaza and Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto
on Saturn and Sabbatai Tzevi 76
Some Conclusions 77
viii Contents

3 From Saturn to Melancholy 85

Some Saturnian Discussions in the Eighteenth Century 85
Between Aby Warburg’s School and
Gershom Scholem’s School 88
On Some Elite Jews and Melancholy in
the Twentieth Century 91

Concluding Remarks 99

Appendix 109

Notes 119

Bibliography 181

Index of Subjects 189

Index of Persons 195

Abbreviations

AHDMLA Archives d ’histoire doctrinale et litteraire du Mayen Ages

BN Bibliotheque nationale
HUCA Hebreiv Union College Annual
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review
JSJT Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought
JWCI The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
QS Qiryat Sefer
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Preface

In 1924, Felix Warburg, the Jewish German-American banker, and his

wife, visited the Land of Israel and at the end of their visit, they donated
a substantial sum of money. Their donation turned out to be a significant
factor in the establishment of the Institute of Jewish Studies, and to a
certain extent, an important step for the beginning of the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem .1 Since then, the Warburg scholarships at the
Institute have been a major financial source for PhD students in Jewish
studies at the Hebrew University. As a doctoral student, I benefited greatly
from these scholarships, particularly between 1972 and 1976. They gave
me the free time to examine hundreds of Hebrew manuscripts in a variety
of fields. It was the Warburg family who facilitated, in the first quarter of
the twentieth century, the studies of their brother Aby Warburg and the
construction of his famous Library in Hamburg, and then the Warburg
Institute in London.
In some of my research studies that have been printed since the late
1970s I drew especially on materials from manuscripts that I had collected
in the earlier years, and in some cases also published some passages for
the first time, especially from manuscript treatises of the late fifteenth-
century Italian kabbalist Yohanan Alemanno.2 To a certain extent, my
reading of the Kabbalistic and magical materials found in many of the
manuscripts was carried out through the prism of the Warburg school of
research, both its German and British avatars, but especially on account
of the famous monograph of Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Saturn and
Melancholy. The first English study that I wrote was indeed brought out
by the Journal of the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes.3 Many discussions
with the late Professors Shlomo Pines, Chaim Wirszubski and Moshe
Barasch of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, some discussions with
Professor Daniel P. Walker in 1982 and 1983, and two written responses
by the late Dame Frances A. Yates, some months before her death in
1981, to initial drafts of some of my articles about Jewish Kabbalah in
the Italian Renaissance, were very encouraging. They convinced me to
pursue this course and even expand its relevance to an understanding
of phenomena as late as in eighteenth-century East European Hasidism.4
The sustained efforts of both Walker and Yates at the Warburg Institute,
and of Eugenio Garin and Paola Zambelli in Italy, to re-evaluate the role
of magic in the Renaissance were inspiring indeed. Thanks are due to the
xii P refa ce

Warburg Institute, and especially its director Professor J. B. Trap, for their
gracious hospitality during some working visits I made in London in the
late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as to Professor Brian Copenhaver for
our discussions over years.
The first two chapters of this book were written on separate occasions,
though they are linked to each other by the dominant leitmotif of the
conflicting features of the planet Saturn in Jewish sources and its various
relationships to Jews. The first chapter originates from a lecture delivered
in 1998, at a conference organized by the Einstein Forum in Berlin,
around the image of the Magician, and appeared in a German translation
in the proceedings of the conference.5 A substantially expanded version
appears here for the first time in English. Chapter 2 was written in the
autumn of 1994, while I served as Stewart Professor at the Department
of Religious Studies at Princeton University. I am very grateful for that
kind invitation, which also facilitated the completion of a study on
messianism, which has been in print since 1998.6 A first Hebrew version
of it served as the body of a lecture at the Israeli Academy for Sciences
and Humanities, Jerusalem, in March 1995, and later at a conference on
messianism organized later that same year at Princeton University, and
delivered in English, and has been published as part of its proceedings.7
Some discussions with Professor Carlo Ginsburg at UCLA in early 1998
concerning the first chapter were extremely helpful and I would like to
extend him my heartfelt thanks for them. The third chapter, ‘Concluding
Remarks’ and the Appendix were written for this study.
In their present form there are substantial additions in terms of
both the material and expanded perspectives to the original content of
the two earlier essays. I have eliminated some overlap between them,
corrected some errors and updated them, as well as elaborating on the
earlier material. The time that it took to complete the writing of this book
was part of my membership, over recent years, at the Kogod Institute for
Judaic Advanced Studies at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem,
and I am very grateful to its directors, David and Donniel Hartman, for
that opportunity. These chapters serve as another example of the dramatic
enrichment of Jewish thought, when what I call a new type of order, the
astral one, was adopted; an adoption that had profound repercussions in
the way some Jews thought of themselves, or how they were perceived by
others. In a way, they came in the wake of the main thrust that guided the
methodological approach of Aby Warburg and his school of research as
to the importance of the renewal of some elements of ancient paganism,
especially astrology.
However, this time they were related to Jewish sources, which some
criticized while others accepted as part of new insights and perceptions
into the nature of Judaism. Following the main distinction of the
Warburgian scholars, who emphasized the basic duality in the figure of
Saturn, I shall divide the first two chapters into discussions related to the
negative aspects or the negative ‘conceptual structure’ - to use a notion
of Panofsky —of Saturn, and then I will turn to the positive conceptual
structure. This means that some authors identified Saturn as the planetary
genius of the Jews, notwithstanding the more sinister attributes of this
planet, especially sorcery. To some extent this reflected their fears, and
their attempts to preserve a certain type of order, while for others this
planet is associated with a positive conceptual structure related to hope
and redemption.
Since the first publication of the two chapters, there has been much
headway in elucidating aspects of Jewish thought related to Saturn and
messianism in the literature available, especially in the research of Dov
Schwartz and Shlomo Sela into Abraham ibn Ezra and his commentators;
Reimund Leicht’s study of Jewish astrology; Yuval Harari’s recent study
on ancient Jewish sorcery; an analysis by Haviva Pedaya about Sabbath
and Saturn mainly concerning Kabbalah; Avraham Elqayam and Yehuda
Liebes on Sabbateanism; and Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman’s studies on
Yemenite messianism. I have updated my references in order to include
these more recent studies, or to take cognizance of a later acquaintance
with them.
It is important to point out the manner in which I use some main
terms in the following pages: ‘Sabbat’ stands for the myth related to the
meetings of the witches, while ‘Sabbath’ will be used in order to refer to
the seventh day of the Jewish week. ‘Saturnine’ stands for some qualities
of a person under the alleged impact of Saturn, while ‘Saturnian7 are
different qualities that are attributed to the planet and the divinity related
to it. Moreover, I refer by the term ‘Saturn7 to the planet and sometimes
to the name of the Latin god, but never to the name of a person, while
‘Sabbatai’ may refer both to a person and a planet. In order to prevent
confusion, I have sometimes added to ‘Sabbatai’ as a planet (as found
in the Hebrew sources and in my discussions of their content) the term
‘Saturn’, resorting to the form ‘Sabbatai’/ ’Saturn’, when the context is
ambiguous.
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ONE From Saturn, Sabbath and Sorcery to the Jews

Introduction

There are many definitions of Judaism: they vary with the passage of
time, from an elected people, to a people that keeps the commandments
of God (what is called halakhocentric Judaism), to a people of the book
(basically a Muslim understanding of the Jews), to the assumption
that Jews are the portents of monotheism, or according to other views,
portents of ethical monotheism in the world, to Jews as the sons of God,
etc. In each of these descriptions, different elements are put into relief.
During the Middle Ages, with the more substantial encounter between
Jewish elites and new forms of knowledge, additional understandings were
forged, even if they had a lesser impact both on Jews as a whole and on
the perceptions of others about Judaism. Jews were understood as more
inclined to philosophical thought and as believers in a transcendental
God whose nature was assumed to be, in many cases, an intellect, as by
Maimonides and his followers, or those who confess in the divine name in
the Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia. This continuous search for identity is
part of the deep changes that took place within Jewish thought and society
over the centuries, changes which are sometimes related to interactions
with a variety of different cultural and religious backgrounds. Moreover,
due to their being a minority group, the search for identity was an acute
one. Attempting to resonate with the cultural standards of the majority,
or in other cases universal values, Jewish elites sometimes adopted new
forms of thought that were validated by the imprint of the general order
of reality en vogue in their times and in the places they lived. These orders
were considered to depend on higher systems, whose impact on lower
events was decisive. Their systems might be philosophical, adopting an
ontology of astrological or cosmic intellects (assuming the paramount
impact of the astral bodies and their conjunctions), or theosophical
(presuming the existence of divine powers, sefirot, or configurations,
partzufim, which inform developments on earth below). In these three
cases, it is appropriate to speak of different forms as constellating
the biblical-rabbinic forms of Judaism, which did not operate with
‘constellated’ universes, but allowed the intervention of the Divine Will
to be the decisive religious event. However, the theosophical-Kabbalistic
system, which appeared later than the other two, not only solely displaced
2 Saturn s Jews

the respective constellations but in some cases also created a constellation

that informed what the kabbalists believed to be the lower constellation.
The result was the formation of quite complex hierarchies, which also
include some linguistic-ontological levels.
In the chapters that follow, I shall address two rather neglected types of
self-perception that are found injewish texts, both related to characteristics
attributed to the planet Saturn, a phenomenon that I propose to refer
to as Saturnism. Though the inspiring sources for these new forms of
Jewish identity are unquestionably astrological, they spread beyond the
modest Jewish astrological literature and found their expressions in
books dealing with commentaries on the Torah, supercommentaries,
Kabbalistic treatise, and even some forms of philosophical writing which
combined astrology, philosophy and Kabbalah to varying degrees.
In the Jewish authors that will be examined below, elements which
had been neglected, and even rejected in ancient times and during the
early Middle Ages by various forms of Judaism, were thrown into relief,
including themes which portrayed Jews and aspects of their religion in
a rather negative light, despite the undeniable allegiance of the authors
to Judaism. A Saturnization of Judaism generated new views which
prompted not only a series of fresh conceptual developments but also
carried historical consequences.
The imaginary nexus between the planet Saturn, the seventh of the
known planets in those times - in Hebrew Sabbatai - and the Jews, with
their celebration of the Sabbath, the seventh day of the Jewish week, is
quite an ancient theologoumenon, and the few extant ‘testimonies’ had
already attracted the due attention of scholars. The nexus is attested to
as early as in the Histories of Tacitus and reverberated in late antiquity,
which provided the source of the astrological discussions as they appear
in the Middle Ages. An example of this approach is found, for example, in
Augustine’s answer to Faustus the Manichean, who probably regarded the
keeping of the Sabbath as related to Saturn:

We are not afraid to encounter your scoffing at the Sabbath,

when you call it the fetters of Saturn. It is a silly and meaningless
expression, which occurred to you only because you are in the
habit of worshipping the sun on what you call Sunday. What you
call Sunday we call the Lord’s day, and on it we do not worship the
sun, but the Lord’s resurrection. And in the same way, the fathers
observed the Sabbath day of rest, not because they worshipped
Saturn, but because it was incumbent at that time, for it was a
shadow of things to come, as the apostle testifies.1
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

Augustine is less concerned with defending the Jews’ celebration of

Sabbath than in undermining its performance de facto, by assuming
that the observance in the past is merely a prefiguration for the future,
more spiritual, Christian celebration. In fact, the very reference to such a
nexus between Sabbath and Saturn in Augustine’s book shows that long
after Tacitus this association remained a vital topic in the pagan world,
whose resurgence in the Middle Ages in different guises will preoccupy
us below. In the spirit of Warburgian scholarship, I shall attempt to show
how ancient motifs, even when they stem from pagan sources, could
recur to play a significant role in quite different contexts as they were
reconceptualized and recontextualized by several leading figures in the
Jewish elite, first in Europe and then in several other parts of the Jewish
world.
Thus, in astrology we have a historical channel, which can be
documented in quite a detailed manner, transmitting much earlier Greek
mythologoumena into medieval Europe.
Not originally part of the manner in which Jews imagined their
identity in ancient times and early medieval ones, in the high Middle
Ages, astrology, in some elite types of Jewish literature, becomes an
interesting way to explain both the nature of the Jews and their place in
the cosmic order. Pre-medieval linkages were found exclusively in non-
Jewish sources, since the prevailing rabbinic assumption was that Jews
are not dominated by planetary or astral bodies.2 In non-Jewish sources
linkage is prevalently part of negative associations with the planet, and
thus of Jews as well. Later on the connection between these two subjects
is often related to a third one, which was understood to serve as a link
between them: the Sabbath day, a day holy to the Jews, the seventh day,
and the one upon which the planet Saturn was conceived of as presiding.3
On the other hand, there is ample evidence as to the alleged affinities
between Saturn and sorcery or magic, and this issue has also caught the
attention of scholars.4 However, these two distinct forms of describing
the properties of the taciturn planet stem from different traditions, and
they rarely occur together in the same text. Moreover, the association
of Saturn and sorcery has been assumed by scholars to have emerged
relatively late in the fifteenth century.5
In this chapter I will explore the affinities between the four subjects
mentioned above as found injewish texts since the twelfth century: Saturn,
Jews, the Sabbath day and magic or sorcery. In some cases, a mention
of the Plague can also be detected in texts where these four factors are
clustered as one unit. This restriction has excluded from our discussions
cores of other passages in which only two of the topics occur together. It is
my purpose below to suggest a certain solution for the emergence of the
4 S a tu rn ’s Jews

extremely familiar nexus between the concept of Sabbat and witchcraft,

a nexus that played such a fateful role in the history of the late medieval
and Renaissance periods. By pointing out the affinities between the
four issues mentioned above, I hope to be able to draw the attention of
scholars to a complex of affinities or what may be called, following the
example of the Warburgian scholars, a conceptual structure, which in this
chapter we shall survey in its negative dimensions. Dealing with syntheses
more than with astrology as a distinct and separate type of knowledge,
I am concerned with the nebula of themes and mythologoumena that
surround the concept of Saturn, defining it while changing it all the time.
A potential source of the emergence of aspects of a far more complex,
variegated and influential concept - that of the Sabbat of the witches -
already appears over the centuries in the writings of some Jewish authors,
and earlier in an Arabic source. Before embarking upon more detailed
analyses, I would like to emphasize that the material presented here does
not amount to an attempt to offer a historical picture: I will not be offering a
description of some Jews throughout the course of history performing acts
of magic on the Sabbath day by resorting to the powers of Saturn. I doubt
very much the possible historicity of such a hypothetical event, which, to
the best of my knowledge, has never been reported. In this book I will be
looking at the convergence of basically disparate motifs which coalesced in
the passages I analysed and created a more complex conceptual picture.
This said, I have no intention of claiming what would be patently
absurd - that there were no Jewish magicians or sorcerers in the Middle
Ages, though their existence or activities may scarcely be deduced from the
fact that we have so many texts of the aforementioned complex of affinities.
It is a cultural image that will be described here, though such an image
does not preclude the possible impact of such imaginary Jewish magicians
on the perception of Jews and magic in their immediate environments
and even far beyond. As in many other cases, cultural images may be as
influential as historical events, and the emergence and the dissemination
of various constellations of ideas may shape historical events, even to a
dramatic extent.
In chapter 2, I suggest the possible impact of a nexus between a
Kabbalistic view of the third sejirah, Binah, designated as playing an
eschatological role (which has been combined with Saturn/Sabbatai), on
the consciousness of the most prominent Messiah in early modern Judaism,
Sabbatai Tzevi. Tzevi is discussed at length in the following chapter. Here
I would like to address the possibility that another avatar of a perception
of Saturn has contributed once more to shaping widespread conceptions
regarding the particular day presided over by Saturn - the day of the
Sabbath - as the Sabbat of the witches. Though it may appear paradoxical,
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

many of the discussions below are part of the much broader and more
profound process of the ‘naturalization’ of Judaism which took place in the
Middle Ages under the strong impact of Greek philosophies in Muslim garb.
The adoption of the astral order, one of the many adopted and adapted
by Jewish elites in the Middle Ages, amounted to an explanation of some
elements of Judaism in terms that are related to forms already well known,
and the astronomical aspect was certainly one of the most widespread
theories in the Middle Ages. Let me point out that I am not trying to repeat
or summarize the vast literature that deals with Saturn and the Jews, or
Saturn and witchcraft, or even less Saturn and melancholy, when only two
of the concepts are concatenated. The ensuing pages will reveal my concern
with broader concatenations, most of which are to be found in texts that
have not been discussed at all, and certainly not together.

On Abraham ibn Ezra v Visions of Saturn

During the twelfth century, the impact of astrology, especially that

dictated by conjunction, on the Jewish elite in the Iberian Peninsula was
particularly marked. The most prominent among them was Abraham bar
Hiyya, from Barcelona, who wrote an influential treatise entitled Megillat
ha-Megalleh ( ‘the Scroll of the Revealer’) in Hebrew, well known to Jews
and Christian authors alike. Bar Hiyya was less concerned with what will
be called the ‘negative conceptual structure’ of Saturn and preferred
the more positive one that will be addressed in the next chapter. His
contribution to our study lies in introducing the theory of Abu Ma‘shar,
which was not concerned with the magical aspects of Saturn that showed
the historical importance of the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter
and its religious implications. Thus, while certain Jewish astrologers used
aspects of historical astrology, specifically the explanation astrologers
offered of events in history on the grounds of astrological conjunctions,
they could at the same time ignore the magical aspects of astrology.
However, for our focus in this chapter Abraham ibn Ezra’s (1 0 8 9 -
1164) influential writings in the middle of the twelfth century are far
more important. They constitute a major departure from the prevailing
patterns of thought dominant in earlier layers of Jewish literature, since
he claims it is not only history (including sacredjewish history) that can be
explained astrologically, but also other important Jewish fields of interest.
Especially important therefore are both the astrological interpretations
ibn Ezra offered of some crucial topics in biblical history, and a new
understanding of the nature of some of the commandments ( mitzvoth).
This is a significant watershed which, though rejected by some late-twelfth-
and early-thirteenth-centuryJewish philosophers, was destined, especially
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to be taken seriously in many
6 S a tu rn ’s Jews

circles. In Spain as well as outside the country, it attracted the attention

of numerous commentators on ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch.6
The main topics in Judaism may be described according to astrological
principles as a striking case of what I propose to call an intercorporal
reading, namely an interpretation of one body of literature, the biblical
one, in accordance with another, the astrological corpus of literature,
whose basic concepts are independent from the former.7 This meant that
the inflexible rules of astrology were imposed upon the more flexible
and performative approaches (not only in the form of carrying out
one’s own sense of self-perfection, but ideally in public and imagined as
having an impact) of biblical and rabbinic literature and the looser types
of theological reflection. This development is part of the infiltration
of astrological forms of thought, as formulated in Arabic, which drew
on much earlier sources (Greek, Hellenistic and Hindu) as well as
reverberations of Babylonian astronomy. As was the case in most forms of
Jewish philosophy, astrology was the result of an acculturation of a section
of the Jewish elite to some of the trends dominant in Arabic thought and
literature, even though some of their most fundamental reverberations
were felt in Christian European areas long after the direct impact of
Arabs on Judaism had declined.
As we shall see below, there were quite bizarre results, and perhaps
also a kind of transposition resulting from a very different logic from that
embraced by rabbinic literature. While the latter is basically particularist,
astrology is overridingly universal in its nature. This is also the case with
Maimonides’ introduction of neo-Aristotelianism, different as this is from
ibn Ezra’s propensities towards astrology and Hermeticism. These two
philosophers, unlike Yehudah ha-Levi or Hasdai Crescas, introduced
different forms of a natural understanding of religious lore: Maimonides
was much more interested in psychology, physics and metaphysics, while
ibn Ezra was far more taken with the astrological understanding of the
Bible. Taking a long-term view, these two thinkers contributed to the
emergence of tensions between elements found in their religious synthesis
and the tenets of rabbinic Judaism, especially when their more veiled and
subtle hints were later elaborated, explicated and sometimes even abused
by their followers, who commented on their diverging writings. Here
I am concerned with one small detail, part of a much greater picture,
where the astrological elements conjoin with some magical ones, both
strongly influenced by Arabic sources, a view accepted by ibn Ezra but
sharply criticized by Maimonides. This tension between the two streams
of thought, of the Sefardi Jewish heritage as well as between Maimonides
and his followers on the one hand, and Ashkenazi culture on the other
hand, echoes tendencies less evident in early Judaism but nevertheless
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to theJeivs

extant, reflecting trends in elite Arabic cultures, which in turn echo even
earlier propensities in classical Greek and Hellenistic cultures.
A major aspect of the theme that will be discussed below —namely the
nexus between Saturn and sorcery - is already to be found in some Greek
and Arabic treatises on astrology which preceded ibn Ezra by several
centuries. It is clear in Ptolemy of Alexandria’s (c. 9 0 -168 CE) highly
influential Tetrabiblo£ and it is mentioned by the famous ninth-century
Persian astrologer Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi,9 but for our purpose, it is the
formulation of his follower Al-Kabi‘si, a tenth-century Arab astrologer
known in the West as Alcabitius, that is much more pertinent. The latter
seems to be the first author to add Judaism to a whole list of qualities that
constitute the negative conceptual structure that will concern us here.
Alcabitius exploited the much earlier nexus between Saturn and the Jews,
but he added Judaism to the list of the objects, events and powers that are
dominated by this planet: ‘Saturn ... presides over ... the dead, magicians,
demons, devils and people of ill-fame ... the right ear ... He has the faith
of Judaism, black clothing; of days Saturday, and the night of Wednesday
... and goats and bullocks, waterfowl, black snakes and mountains.’10
Here all the four topics we shall investigate below are found together
in what can be called a negative conceptual structure: Saturn, Jews,
Sabbath and magic. For apparently the first time in an astrological
treatise, the ancient theme of the nexus between the Jews, Sabbath and
Saturn, has been taken a step further by adding the topic of sorcery and
magic. This means that though Jews, the Sabbath, and sorcery, among
other matters, are each related directly to Saturn, there can be no doubt
that they were also considered to have a strong affinity for each other.
In the instructions of the eleventh-century ‘Ali bin Rijal [known in
Latin as Abenrejal] regarding Saturn, it is said that the 'conjunction
of Mercury with Saturn foretells [those] men will deal with matters of
sorcery’.11 For this reason, in some of the most influential non-Jewish
astrological treatises circulating in the Middle Ages, Saturn and sorcery
are frequently linked to one other, in one case even implicating an affinity
for Jews, thus creating a conceptual structure that will be analysed below.
In an important passage dealing with the major characteristics of
Saturn and the entities and spiritual faculties upon which it presides,
Abraham ibn Ezra enumerates the following attributes:

Among the nations, the Jews are presided over by Saturn, the
thought and the scarcity of speech and fraud, and the isolation
from m en12 and [the power to] overcome them ... and every tree
which produces the poison of death13 ... and the greatness of
thought14 and the knowledge of secrets and the worship of God.
8 S a tu rn ’s Jews

[And the Jewish nation is the lot of Saturn, among the sciences
are the sorceries and the incantations15 and the science of ethics
and metaphysics and philosophy and the science of the dreams,
and foretelling the future.] ... hemiplegia16 and leprosy17 ... and
the day of Sabbath.18

This is one of the most influential passages on the perception of Saturn in

Jewish circles and its impact is evident even in some of the passages dealt
with below. This excerpt poses a major problem, crucial to our discussion,
as to what extent the phrase dealing with incantation and sorcery is
authentic ibn Ezra, or whether it is a later addition by his fourteenth-
century commentator Joseph Bonfils. Sorcery is indeed mentioned in
Reshit Hokhmah, in the same chapter that contains the passage on the path
of Saturn, but in connection to lunar characteristics, in a description
that is somehow reminiscent of the passage on Saturn: ‘Its human traits
are excessive introspection, meditation in a mind lacking knowledge,
amnesia, phobia, indifference, revelation of secrets,19 love of pleasure,
victory, knowledge of sorcery.’20,21
Could someone have compounded the two discussions into one and so
created a characterization of Saturn that also includes sorcery? I find such
a hypothesis quite implausible since sorcery had already been mentioned
in connection with Saturn quite a long time before, in Abu Ma‘shar and
bin Rijal, both plausible sources for ibn Ezra’s astrology, and in some
Hebrew sources which predate Joseph Bonfils. Unlike bin Rijal, ibn Ezra’s
passage - if indeed authentic insofar as the sentence on incantation and
sorcery is concerned - attributes sorcery to Saturn alone, rather than
to its conjunction with Mercury. According to this commentator, Saturn
presides over the Jews, and their nature thus includes an inclination
to isolation, as it also extends to the contemplative and ruling powers.
What is important in this passage is the assumption that Jews are inclined
to states of solitude not on account of their spiritual exertions, but on
account of their natural constitution. However, an inclination to isolation
can be associated with other spiritual qualities, and should not necessarily
be conceived of as a religious achievement, as in the passage just cited.
There it precedes the indwelling of the divine spirit; here it is part of a
list which includes several spiritual qualities. Even more explicit is the
relationship between hitbodedut, religious perfection and miraculous
powers, as expressed in ibn Ezra’s commentary on Exodus 6.3, where he
avers that he is disclosing a secret:

God created three worlds ... and the mundane world receives
power from the intermediary world,22 each individual in
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to theJeius

accordance to the supernal constellation.25 And because the

intellectual soul is more exalted than the intermediary world,
if she will be wise and will know the deeds of God, those done
without any intermediary and those done by the means of an
intermediary, and [if] she will leave the desires of the world, and
[if] she will isolate herself, in order to cleave to the Exalted God.
And if there is the constellation of the stars during pregnancy
a bad time destined to come in a certain day, by his cleaving to
God, will change the course of the causes in order save him from
evil ... and this is the secret of the entire Torah ... this is why
Moses was able to change the course of the mundane world and
perform miracles and wonders.24

Hitbodedut, a mental activity that means ‘concentration’ in this context, is

described elsewhere in ibn Ezra as related to Saturn, and it functions here
as a link in the sequel of acts that culminates in the experience of devequt,
or ‘soul-cleaving’. Therefore, the practice of isolation is conceived of as
leading not only to supernatural knowledge, but also as ensuring a much
more mystical experience in life - which assists people to avoid bad or
unsavoury experiences, and even to perform miracles.25 Thus isolation
and cleaving enable someone to circumvent the evil predetermined by
the ordinary course of nature, as dictated by astrological constellations.
There is a clear congruence between this passage and the earlier one,
where greatness of thought is attributed to this planet. Hitbodedut is
therefore related to a path conductive to miraculous deeds, or to what
we might call ‘natural magic’. Moreover, as some statements attributed to
ibn Ezra from an apparently lost Commentary on Lamentations imply, the
Torah was revealed when Saturn was in the ascent.26 Is the great secret of
the Torah taking into consideration the need to cleave to God and the
fact that the Torah was promulgated under the aegis of Saturn? Such a
view would be consonant with the more general astrological principle
that changes in matters of religion are related to the conjunction of
Saturn and Jupiter.
Let me now turn to an extensive treatment of Saturn’s nature and the
things over which he presides, to be found in another book of ibn Ezra:

Saturn. I have already mentioned the reason why this planet is cold
and dry. The essence of death is cold and dryness, so it indicates
death and sadness and mourning: it indicates primordial things
... and of the Jews because their sign is Aquarius, which is its
house, and of the elderly because it is uppermost, and of the
farmers because the ground is in its portion. So its portion in
10 S a tu rn ’s Jexvs

the human body is the spleen and its portions include tanners
and privy-cleaners, because the [black] bile, which is its nature,
indicates filth ... Its portion of the earth is caves and dark places,
because it suits a melancholic nature to be in solitude ... The gall-
oak is in its portion on account of its nature, as well as anything
that contains a deadly poison, because it indicates death. It
indicates frost because it has retention of fluids [i.e. freezing],
and of garments, any garment that is thick, because the nature
of black bile is thick and it loves only what is thick. Thought is in
its portion, because it is uppermost, and so is the knowledge of
the arcane, violence, anger, and seduction, because it is malefic;
and also all crafts that are exhausting. It indicates long journeys
because it is uppermost. The bones are in its portion, because
they are cold and dry and they are the mainstay of the body ... It
indicates madness27 because it stems mostly from the black bile,
and also hemiplegia and leprosy. It indicates pain that lingers
many days because of its sluggish motion. It indicates old age,
as expounded by Ptolemy ... Proceeding with this method, the
diurnal part of Saturday is in the portion of Saturn, and of the
nights, Wednesday night is in its portion.28

No doubt this is an example of the strong influence of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos

on ibn Ezra. What is important is the fact that we may discern the precise
transition of ancient astrological elements not only into Hebrew, but also
as associated with the Jews. All this despite the fact that Ptolemy does not
mention the Jews, but ibn Ezra is ready to adopt the Arabic inclusion of
thejews, which incontrovertibly also follows some traditions that predate
the Muslim era, as mentioned earlier. At this point I would like to turn to
the nexus between the planet Saturn and the Sabbath day, as set out by
ibn Ezra in one of his commentaries on Exodus:

The fourth commandment, concerning the Sabbath, corresponds

to Sabbatai/Saturn, since the sages of experiments [Hakhmei
ha-nisayyon, which in fact means astrologers] said that each of
the serving planets presides over a certain day of the week when
its power will be manifested and it [Saturn] presides every first
hour of the day, and every last one of the night. And they say
that Saturn and Mars are maleficent planets,29 and whoever will
commence a certain labour, or start a journey during one of the
two, will be damaged, and this is why our ancient sages said: ‘the
permission has been given to wreak damage during every night
on Tuesday and Friday.’30 Behold, you will not find in any of the
 From S aturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

days of the week a consecutive night and day when these two
maleficent planets are presiding, but during this day [alone] this
being the reason why it is not worthwhile to be preoccupied by
things relating to this world, but by things related to the fear of
God.31

The whole day of Sabbath, as understood by the Jews, is compounded by

the night of Friday and the day of Saturday. These two units had been
dominated respectively by Mars and Saturn, and in ibn Ezra’s astrological
system, influenced by pseudo-Ptolemy, by the two nefarious planets: the
night of Friday is ruled by Mars and the Sabbath day, by Saturn.32 Thus,
in lieu of the biblical explanation of the cessation of work during the
Sabbath as an imitatio dei, the astrological explanation of this cessation
has to do with the negative nature of the two presiding planets. Sabbath
regulations, or at least part of them, become apotropaic techniques
which prevent the malign impact of the planet on those who keep them,
and this is a leitmotif that recurs in many Jewish writings throughout
history.
Moreover, in Abraham ibn Ezra’s Hebrew free paraphrase of
the Arabic story about Hay ibn Yoqtan, entitled Hai ben Meqitz, which
means ‘the Living, the son of the Awakened’, Saturn is described in the
following manner:

In the seventh realm33 there are men of wisdom and shrewdness

and understanding and cleverness, difficult in their deeds
and slow-going. They maintain and are vigilant of mercy and
they revenge felony and guard it ... It34 is the ‘responsible
over fifty, honourable and expert in magic35 who understand
incantations’.37,38,38

My translation of the terms related to magic is tentative, taking into

consideration the possible biblical meanings of these words, though
I cannot state definitively that ibn Ezra himself subscribed to this
understanding of these words. Therefore, we may assume that ibn Ezra,
an influential, prolific and prodigious writer who flourished in the mid
twelfth century, had introduced a long series of thinkers in Judaism,
and apparently also in the Christian world, to a conception of Judaism
as related to the most nefarious planet. This instance of adopting some
elements from ‘scientific’ sources as to the nature of the Jews, even when
it includes explicitly negative treats, is revealing as to the new situation of
some of the Jewish elite figures in the Middle Ages. The Arabic sources
are the trident of these worldviews, which dramatically shifted the way
12 S a tu rn ’s Jews

some of the Jewish elite perceived themselves by adopting a series of new

categories understood as relevant to their self-definition.

Two Thirteenth-Century Kabbalists: Abraham Abulafia and Joseph

Ashkenazi on Saturn, Sorcery and Sabbath

In addition to the schematic presentations of Saturn and its corresponding

qualities in classical astrological contexts, this planet was also associated
with forms of magic and sorcery that were not initially connected to
Hellenistic astro-magic and its medieval reverberations. I would venture
that no later than the end of the first half of the thirteenth century, a
combination of linguistic magic (based on the Hebrew letters and on the
use of divine names, and characteristic of Jewish ancient magic) on the
one hand, and of astro-magic (including a discussion of Saturn) on the
other can be demonstrated.
Some of the discussions below belong to various interpretations of
a sentence in the Sefer Yetzirah, a text widespread in many manuscripts
and printed for the first time in 1562. The date of the composition of
this seminal book is still a matter of debate among scholars. The range
of views is quite broad and includes datings like that of Yehuda Liebes,
in the first century cii, to other scholars, arguing that it is a post-Muslim
Jewish composition, written as late as the ninth century. According to
the Sefer Yetzirah, God created all the entities by the combination of the
seven double letters in Hebrew in what the anonymous author called the
three dimensions of reality: ‘Made Bet a king, and bound to it a crown,
and combined them one with another, and formed with it Saturn in [the
dimension of] the universe, the Sabbath in [the dimension of] the year,
and the mouth in [the dimension of] the person.’39
Though Saturn, Sabbath and the mouth are created by the same
combinations of the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Bet, with all
the other letters, it is not clear whether, according to the Sefer Yetzirah,
the three created entities are subordinate to each other, though they
stem from a higher common denominator. In other words, despite the
rather ancient traditions adduced above from non-Jewish circles about
the subordination of Sabbath to Saturn, here such subordination is not
evident at all. In other words, though the planets have been integrated
within a more comprehensive vision of reality, according to the Sefer
Yetzirah all creatures are subordinate to language, namely its letters and
letter combinations, not to the planets. In any case, except for the fact
that Saturn is the first of the seven double letters, Saturn’s relation to
Bet does not confer on the planet a special, privileged status according
to this book. Sefer Yetzirah becam e a canonical book in many elite Jewish
circles, which included philosophers, kabbalists, and both Spanish and
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

Ashkenazi authors who wrote some two dozen commentaries on the

book.
Though many kabbalists interpreted this book, not all of them
expatiated on the nature of Saturn and its affinity to other aspects of reality,
as found in the above passage. In 1271, a young kabbalist, Abraham ben
Shmuel Abulafia (1240-c. 1291), who had been initiated into a special
brand of this lore a year or two earlier, wrote a short treatise entitled
Get ha-Shemot ( ‘The Divorce of the Names’), which sharply attacks the
magical use of the divine names. This divorce is the background to what
Abulafia wrote some few years later, when he fiercely attacked popular
magic. In a passage that includes a discussion of Maimonides’ Guide of the
Perplexed, I: 62, where the latter criticized resorting to amulets, Abulafia
writes:

I have found in one of the books, whose title I would like not to
mention [explicitly]: ‘whoever wants to bring a woman to him
so that she will love him, let him pronounce the name of whw
yly syt ‘lm , backwards and forwards seven times, in the night of

Wednesday, during the first hour of night, which is the time of

Saturn, and let him conjure Qaftziel, who is the angel presiding
over that planet, by that name. At that time let him write four
names40 on a parchment of a deer, without interrupting the
writing by any speech.41 Then, let him put the writing on his neck
as an amulet and then the woman, whose name and the name
of her father he has pronounced, will love him with a great love,
by the virtue of that nam e.’ I have found similar things in great
number, and they are almost infinite; and these things have been
spread and reached the hands of great Rabbis, but they hide them
in a scrupulous manner and they think that their archives are
replete with pearls. And they are very reverent [awesome] while
studying the names when they need them. And these things may
cause [even] good-tempered people to become crazy or others
like them, as the great Rabbi [Maimonides] has said.42

While I have had the opportunity to analyse some of the aspects of magic
in this passage and its context elsewhere,43 here I would like to point out
the hybrid nature of the passage, quoted by Abulafia from an existing
book whose name he unfortunately decided not to disclose. In that book
- which I would suspect it is a lost version of SeferRaziel or Sefer ha-Razim44
- the name of God’s name in seventy-two letters, represented in the text
by its first four combinations of three letters, is described as effective
in bringing the beloved to the person reciting the incantation. So far,
14 S a tu rn ’s Jews

there is nothing unusual in Jewish magic, as this same name had been
used time and again in magical procedure even before the thirteenth
century.45 Neither is the conjunction of the special timing of the magical
procedure and a certain angel a novelty, as we learn from Sefer ha-Razim,
a book of magic that has come down to us in several versions. However,
the introduction of Saturn into the linguistic contexts of the divine and
the angelic names is rare before the thirteenth century. It occurs in an
older tradition preserved in the twelfth-century Yehudah Barceloni’s
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah.46 The affinity between the planet and the
angelic name Qaftziel, sometimes presupposes a sort of astro-magic,
which assumes that each planet is presided over by an angel.47
Indeed, in an anonymous Kabbalistic Commentary on Liturgy, composed
at the start of the second half of the thirteenth century by a kabbalist who
was close to ecstatic Kabbalah, we do indeed find the following sentence:
‘Qaftziel, right ear,48 and the day of Sabbath, and its angel49 is Sabbatai.’50
Therefore, at least one piece of evidence as to the existence of an affinity
between Qaftziel and Sabbatai in Abulafia’s lifetime has been found. This
statement points to a nexus between the astrological approach and the
angelic one, from as far back as the middle of the thirteenth century.
However, this affinity between Qaftziel and Saturn is also to be found in
the printed version of Sefer Raziel and in another version also called Sefer
Raziel.51
The text quoted from this book is the butt of Abulafia’s derision. While
it does represent a positive attitude to magic in circles which had previously
produced a book of magic quoted by Abulafia, the above passage does not
reflect Abulafia’s own position. However, the ecstatic kabbalist was aware
of and accorded the possibility of linguistic magic related to Saturn: in his
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, probably composed after the book cited above,
he wrote:

The secret of seventy and of seventy-two is an important

introduction to the knowledge of the essence of [all] the
languages. Behold, seven, seventy and seven hundred and
those similar to them, all belong to the principle of seven, the
simple and the complex [heptads], are topics which indicate the
plurality of the incantations of the Jewish powers52 as is testified
by Sabbath, because there is a supplementary [soul]53 for those
who rest and recreate in this [day]. And the powers of the planet
of Saturn testify together with the Shemittin and Yovelin.54,55

The main term that interests me in this context is hashbba'ot, which

we have translated as ‘incantations’. In this passage it alone points to
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

a magical procedure, and if the word does not appear in the text, my
whole discussion is mistaken. In all the manuscripts of this text that I have
studied carefully, the word appears. However, the editor of the text, Israel
We instock, has suggested reading shive‘at in lieu of hashbba‘ot as part of
the expression Shive‘at ha-kohot ha-Yehudiyyot, namely the ‘seven Jewish
powers’ He does not explain what the meaning of this phrase is and I
myself cannot make sense of it and thus I do not see a real improvement
in his proposal as it does not clarify the text. However, if we retain the
term hashbba‘ot, found in the manuscripts, we may understand the passage
better when we compare it to a passage written in another Commentary on
Sefer Yetzirah, one composed by Barukh Togarmi, which was well known
to Abraham Abulafia.56 Let me cite the short quotation and analyse it in
some detail before returning to Abulafia’s passage: ‘The incantation of
the language is the secret of the Garden of Eden, known from the three
meals, 26, 65, and 86, that are incumbent upon the individual to eat on
Sabbath, [during] day and night.’57
This compact passage is based upon gematria, namely the affinity
between the numerical values of the different phrases constituting this
quotation. The basic figure is 177, which is the gematria of Gan ‘Eden on
the one hand and the three divine names, the Tetragrammaton, Adonai
and Elohim, on the other. This is also the case for the phrase ‘day and night’
- Yomam va-laylah. Moreover, according to a certain way of calculation,
the phrase ‘three meals’, shalosh se‘udot, amounts to 1176, which was
understood as 176 + 1 = 177, while the phrase hashbbaat ha-lashon is 1178,
when understood as follows: 1178 = 178 — 1 = 117. The ‘incantation of
language’ is related to the three divine names, this figure, 117, indicating
the three meals the rabbis claimed should be ritualistically eaten during
the Sabbath day.58 These three names are available to the kabbalists, as
they are found in the Bible, just as is the possibility of eating the three
meals. The Garden of Eden has to do with an experience which is on the
one hand magical, on the other ritualistic. In other words, according to
Togarmi’s passage, the term Gan Eden, Paradise, is connected to linguistic
activities, the incantation of language and the three divine names, on the
one hand, and to the performative ritual of ‘keeping’ the Sabbath on the
other.
Incantation, exactly the same term occurring in Abulafia’s text, also
occurs in the work of his teacher Barukh Togarmi, again in the context of
language and Sabbath, just as in Abulafia. Moreover, the nexus between
the name of seventy-two letters and Saturn, found in the anonymous book
quoted in Abulafia's Sefer ha-Melammed adduced above, is obviously part of
a book dealing with incantations. In the Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah the
‘secret of the seventy-two’ (in Hebrew sodshiv‘im u-shtayyirn) is numerically
16 S a tu rn ’s Jew s

equivalent to mahut ha-leshonot, ‘the essence of the languages’,59 as each of

the two phrases amounts to 1240, as has been pointed out by Weinstock.60
Thus, there is no good reason to deny the existence of the word hashbba ot,
either from the palaeographical point of view or from the conceptual
one. However, it should be pointed out that, in the manner Abulafia uses
it, this term does not have a negative connotation.
Let me summarize Abulafia’s text: in a discussion circling around
the propitious nature of the number seven, several issues related to this
number are put together - the Sabbath, Sabbatai, Shemittin and Yovelin. I
assume that the term hashbba‘ot, ‘incantations’, stems from a root very
similar to Sheva, seven, and should be introduced in this series particularly
because it occurs, as we have seen above, in the quotation from Abraham
ibn Ezra’s Reshit Hokhmah. The question is whether a certain nexus exists
between them, according to Abulafia’s passage. On the basis of several
hints in the text, the answer seems to be positive: for the Jews, the Sabbath
day carries with it a certain additional spiritual power, which may allow,
so I conjecture, the possibility of conjuring using the divine name of the
seventy-two letters while Saturn is the presiding planet. Before turning
to the views of another influential kabbalist, it should be emphasized
that according to Abulafia’s Kabbalistic system, there was a shift from
external magic (found in earlier sources, especially Ashkenazi ones)
towards a mystical technique, which uses many devices characteristic of
magic, but is here directed to attain an inner experience that Abulafia
often described as prophecy. However, by mentioning the above elements
together, he plausibly reflects a tradition (already enigmatically hinted at
by Barukh Togarmi) which brought the Sabbath day and some form of
linguistic magic into the same context.
A contemporary of Abulafia’s, and a thinker who might have been
influenced by him, or alternatively had an influence upon him,61 was
Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi, sometime referred also as ha-’Arokh, the
tall. We do not know exactly the dates that he was active - scholars refer
to the temporal parameters from 1270 to 1325. Ashkenazi was a respected
kabbalist who was active in several places in Europe and perhaps even
in Northern Africa, as well as presumably in Barcelona, where Abulafia
started his Kabbalistic career. This uncertainty is heightened by the fact
that was not duly recognized in scholarship, that his name, his writings
or his specific terminology are neither quoted nor referred to by any
of the Spanish kabbalists in the Iberian Peninsula until the expulsion
of the Jews from Spain. However, Ashkenazi is quoted in the Byzantine
Empire; vestiges of his terminology were found in Central Europe in the
mid fourteenth century, and later on in Northern Africa and Italy. This
picture from someone who was acquainted with Ashkenazi’s thought
 From Sal urn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jexvs

complicates both dating the period when he was active as well as further
clarification of the precise background of Ashkenazi’s idiosyncratic
Kabbalistic thought.
Joseph Ashkenazi contributed a very influential passage on the nexus
between the three religious factors that is our focus here. It is found in his
commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, a text widespread in many manuscripts and
printed for the first time in 1562. Here is my translation of the passage
that was also adduced verbatim by the anonymous Sefer ha-Peliy’ah in the
late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries, as well as by several other
kabbalists:

Sabbatai in the [dimension of the] world,62 and Sunday in the

year [i.e. in the dimension of tim e], and the right eye in a person
[the third dimension of reality]; namely He elevated the letter Bet
so that it is the head of ‘the power of Keter ElyorC - ‘the highest
crown’. And He put it in the power of Hokhmah and formed in
it the planet Sabbatai, which is beneath the [divine name] ’ABG
YTTz,m and the latter gave wisdom to Sabbatai, despite the fact
that Sabbatai is the planet of destruction, by the [dint of the]
Shemittot, it possesses the power of Hokhmah, and the reason why
it is appointed over destruction is that it is not concerned with
any corporeal issues, and this is the reason why it destroys them
and has no mind for them or their adornments, but is concerned
with the separated intelligences, and the comprehension of God,
blessed be He, and the comprehension of the heptads ... and
the prophetic power was added to them [the mindless] ... and it
is responsible for maladies and death ... and it is responsible for
the Jews and this is the reason they are in trouble in this world ...
and on the science of sorcery64 and the knowledge of the future
... And it is responsible for bad rumours65 and despair ... And
because it is appointed on weight, it is responsible for lead, and
darkness and everything that is black, and the black bile66 ... And
because [the planet of Sabbatai] is responsible for the perpetuity,
when it will reach the ascent, it will not decline forever, as it is said
that67 ‘the spirit of God dwells upon him, the spirit of Hokhmah
and of BinaK and it is the secret of ‘Mashiyah YHW H.6B

This seminal passage, part of a much longer text, ushers in a motif that
will become more explicit in the fourteenth century. According to this new
motif, there is a strong relationship between Saturn and demonic powers,
which is presented here independently of the theme of sorcery addressed
later in the same text. It is one of the richest and, as we shall see in the
18 S a tu rn ’s Jews

next chapter, one of the most influential discussions related to the nature
of Saturn, but one that has been steadfastly ignored in the vast scholarly
literature concerning the medieval metamorphoses of this planet-god: for
example, it is not acknowledged by the erudite authors of the monograph on
Saturn and Melancholy. In fact, Ashkenazi’s passage reverberates in the work
of many authors, some of whom will be mentioned in this chapter, others in
chapters 2 and 3.
To a greater extent than Abulafia, the Ashkenazi passage translated
above was instrumental in disseminating a very important (in fact,
possibly the most important) elaboration of Saturn in kabbalistic
circles. As the manuscripts containing in this book are very numerous,
this specific passage has been copied verbatim in a separate classic of
Kabbalah, the anonymous Byzantine Sefer ha-Peliy’ah,m so we shall be
returning to readdress this passage in chapter 2.
What is crucial to an understanding of this passage is the phenomenon
of a synthesis between two types of order, a conceptual structure that
may be designated theo-astrology. This presupposes that the astral order,
governed by the rhythm of the motion and nature of the celestial bodies,
especially the seven planets, is in alignment with the theosophical order,
based on ten divine powers, known as the ten sefirot, which have their own
specific features and interact in accordance with rules that differ from
the astrological ones. Thus, it is not only a matter of different levels of
reality involved in this theo-astrological synthesis, but also of different
numbers of entities - seven versus ten - with different characteristics of
factors in each order and different rules of interaction between them. It
should be stressed that the two different forms of order, the astral and
the theosophical, have related forms of worship or cults. Astro-magic
instructs people how to capture or even to draw down the celestial influx
by certain rituals, while theosophical systems are related to rabbinic
rituals. These two forms of worship are totally different, though in some
cases the astro-magical rituals were also translated into Hebrew and have
had an impact on the manner in which the rabbinic rituals have been
understood, as we shall see below in the context of Sabbat.
Nevertheless, the theo-astrological synthesis strove to build corres­
pondences that brought together the two systems while subordinating
the astrological to the theosophical order. Joseph Ashkenazi’s work is
an early and extremely important example of such a synthesis, which
affected some of the characteristics of the theosophical order, which
has its own logic, also impacted upon by astrological ways of thought.
It may well be that he had an impact on the Zoharic discussions of the
planet Sabbatai, as subordinated to the supernal realm. This synthesis
is part of the new organization of knowledge that had accumulated in
 From S aturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

Jewish circles in Spain since the second half of the thirteenth century:
a more complex theosophy and greater openness toward astrology. This
is a hierarchical organization, or a theosophical constellation of the
astrological constellation, which would have parallels later on in Spain
among other figures such as ibn Waqar, ibn Motot and ibn Zarza. Whether
Joseph Ashkenazi in fact did have an impact on those thinkers, who wrote
somewhat later than Ashkenazi, is extremely uncertain, as I have pointed
out above, since his name was never mentioned in this context.
It should perhaps be pointed out that one more ontological level is
mentioned in the compact passage cited above: that of the letters of the
divine name of forty-two letters, whose first unit ABG YTTz is mentioned
as being placed, ontologically, between the sefirotic and the astral levels.
Whether this level of discussion (in addition to the relationship of the
topics mentioned in the passage, such as the limbs of the body) also
carries a magical valence, as is the case in some Ashkenazi traditions, is
an issue that should not concern us here.
However, what is important here is to emphasize the richness of the
fields that are related to each other, in principle though not always in
practice, to Saturn. The astrological traditions that entered Saturnism
have been enriched by their reconceptualization within theosophical
modes of thinking. This complex concatenation emerges out of affinities
created between the astral order, the theosophical order, the linguistic
order and the anatomical one, which have been in alignment in a rather
succinct but systematic manner. It should be pointed out that while astral
order is understood as belonging to the celestial world, and as presiding
over events and entities in the lower world, it is conceived of as relatively
low on the Great Chain of Being: it is subordinate to both the theosophical
and the linguistic forms of order.
It should also be mentioned that following the lead of a certain
version of Sefer Yetzirah, R. Joseph identifies Saturn with Sunday and
not with the Sabbath, as the astrologers did. Indeed, the combination
of the two modes of discourse, the theosophical and the astrological, is
fascinating in terms of the complexity it generates. In away, the two modes
strengthen each other since the qualities of the higher are projected on
to the lower depending on the manner in which the kabbalist writes.
We may learn from the juxtaposition of these discourses something
about the historical filiation of theosophical discourse. When compared
to astrological discourse, it is historically later and indubitably part of
the cultural panorama of the early kabbalists. In other words, listing the
qualities of each of the seven planets, which is widespread in astrological
literature, may be a paradigm for symbols belonging to the enumeration
of each of the ten sefirot. Moreover, I assume that in many cases this is
20 S a tu rn ’s Jew s

not only a matter of transferring a certain type of discourse from one

realm to another. I would assume that, at least in our specific case, the
qualities of the astrological body have been projected upon the higher
hierarchical level, the corresponding sejirah. In other words, it would be
more beneficial for us to use the present combination of the two types of
discourse in order to understand the theosophical one, utilizing the form
and content of the astrological type. Furthermore, in my opinion, another
type of comparison is called for: a comparison of the discourses of Joseph
Ashkenazi and Abraham Abulafia. In the former, there is an ontological
centre, whose qualities are enumerated without necessarily assuming a
strong relation between the words expressing those qualities. In Abulafia,
the importance of the ontological centre is less evident, but the affinities
that are established stem from the numerical relations between the words,
namely the gematria. In other words, while the astrological-theosophical
discourse is more vertical, with each word related to the supernal power
that presides over it, in the discourse of ecstatic Kabbalah the horizontal
relations are more evident, with each of the words related much more
intimately to other words that express the same idea or, in some cases, the
opposite. Moreover, astrological discourse is much less concerned with
biblical exegesis (or that of another specific book) on its textual level, but
is much more concerned, with events; whereas theosophical discourse is
more concerned with new theosophical insights into the meaning of the
verses and words of the Bible (and other classical Jewish texts) as carrying
what may be described as symbolic valence.
The description of the relation between Saturn and the sejirah of
Hokhmah and Binah that is to be found in Joseph Ashkenazi’s passage in
terms used earlier in relation to Saturn is quite characteristic of the new
theological modality that was to flourish later, during the mid fourteenth
century, in Castile. It was also to appear, in the late fifteenth or early
sixteenth centuries, in Yohanan Alemanno’s work in Florence, who would
also opt for the subordination of Saturn to the third sejirah, Binah. Neither
subordination works so neatly, since the seven planets correspond more
neatly to the seven lower sejirot, which are often described in theosophical
Kabbalistic writings as operating in this world. On the other hand, the
planet Saturn was understood to be the third of the ten celestial spheres,
found beneath the sphere of the intellect or the Empireum and that of the
twelve signs of the zodiac, and from this perspective, more appropriately
from the formal point of view, was thought to correspond to the third
sejirah, Binah. The elevation of Saturn, from a planet which would
correspond in a formal manner of seven versus seven to the fourth sejirah,
Hesed, counted from above, which is the first of the lower seven sejirot, by
a higher status conditioned by its subordination to a higher sejirah, to the
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

second or mainly to the third in fact complicated the relations between the
seven planets and the sefirotic system: the seven lower sefirot and a higher
one now correspond together to only seven planets. Such an elevation
has to do with the Kabbalistic perception that this is indeed a high astral
body, appointed for prophecy and mental concentration, and probably
for contemplation. However, this elevation created a discrepancy between
the astrological order and the sefirotic one. From the astrological stance,
Saturn has religious characteristics: it is worshiped according to certain
rituals, it presides over some qualities of temperament, but at the same
time, together with Jupiter when they are in alignment, as in conjuntio
major, it presides over the changes in religion here below. This vision is not
only a matter of astrology, but also reflects some elements found in Greek
mythology, where Kronos was ousted by his son Zeus/Jupiter.
By and large, the two different functions have been separated in
the Kabbalistic conjugation with astrology. Given the status of Binah
as higher than the seven sefirot, this sefirah is responsible, according to
some of the texts discussed in this chapter and in the next one, for the
change of religions, the dinim, while in the theosophical systems it is
based on the cosmic cycles, and not a religious system of its own. This
change in religion, whose source is, as mentioned above, part of the
astrological system, is consonant with the vision of Saturn as destroyer, or
with the myth of Kronos/Saturn, who devoured his own children. In the
Kabbalistic systems, however, Binah is related much more to the secret
of Yovel, ‘J ubilee’, which means the cessation of all forms of existence in
the fiftieth millennium or, according to other versions, for two millennia,
while the Shemittot are related to the lower seven sefirot. Each of these
sefirot is perceived of as presiding over a cycle of seven thousand years,
and in some versions, each of these cycles has a religious law of its own,
which assumes that these changes are taking place in the cosmic Jubilee.
The theosophical power now supervising changes is not astral, and the
change is not part of a constellation of planetary powers, but an entity
that transcends the seven sefirot, and one which does not possesses a law
of its own. Nevertheless, as seen in the text of Joseph Ashkenazi, Binah
is described as governing both the cosmic Jubilee and the Shemittot, as
part of the common denominator, that of the heptad, a combined or a
simple one, respectively. Higher than and appointed on the seven sefirot,
Binah is conceived of as the building, the binyan, as mentioned in Joseph
Ashkenazi’s text, or the seven sons in other discussions in the same book,
and is not considered part of that complex and dynamic system.
It should be pointed out that the two types of order discussed here,
the astrological and the theosophical, different as they are, are much
closer to each other than to the philosophical order as formulated in
22 Saturn s Jews

the writings of R. Moshe ben Maimon. While the latter type of thought is
anchored in the neo-Aristotelian thought (which presumes the existence
of a final type of truth, part of a more static universe), both the astral
and the theosophical orders are much more flexible. They deal much
more with dynamic situations created by movements and intersections,
unions and separations, rather than radiation or emanation alone, as
are the philosophical systems. This is why there is a possibility, in both
astrology and in some Kabbalistic writings, such as in Tiqqunei Zohar and
Ra ‘aya ’ Meheimna ’, of a change of law, while Maimonides, who adopted
the Aristotelian view of truth, did not allow for any change in the Torah.
I have dwelt on the two Kabbalistic discussions, that of Abulafia’s
and that of Joseph Ashkenazi, in order to show that astrological views
on Saturn and the Jews were already known in the second part of the
thirteenth century beyond the small circles of expert philosophers and
astrologers, and were already making their impact on ways of thinking in
circles which were not closely related to these. I would venture to locate
the place from which the concepts expressed in the two discussions stem
as Barcelona, a place where Abulafia started his Kabbalistic career and
where Joseph Ashkenazi probably lived, at least for a while. Similarly,
the critique of the preoccupation with Saturn by Bahya ben Asher (to
be discussed immediately below), an author who lived in the same city
sometime later, may be related to developments connected to this centre
of Jewish culture. Moreover, these two kabbalists, and those anonymous
circles criticized by a third kabbalist - the anonymous author of Sefer
Tiqqunei Zohar, whose views will be addressed later on in this study -
bear witness to the dissemination of views whose deeper impact may be
discerned in the fourteenth century. If Abulafia’s testimony as to the
spread of magic indeed reflects the types of magic and sorcery included
in the passage he quoted, then the impact of Saturnine magic was greater
in the thirteenth century than may be possible to document today.

Some Fourteenth-Century Texts

In Jewish culture, the fourteenth century hosted what Alexander Altmann

has cogently designated ‘a Renaissance of ibn Ezra’, something that is
more evident in the second half of that century.70 Given the staggering
amount of manuscript material still awaiting detailed analysis and
publication, the following survey is very tentative. Crucial for some of
the renewed interest in ibn Ezra was a mid-fourteenth-century Castilian
kabbalist named Joseph ibn Waqar, who offered interesting syntheses
between philosophy, Kabbalah and astrology.71
Insofar as the topic of Saturn is concerned, he was explicitly quoted
by Samuel ibn Zarza, one of the main commentators on ibn Ezra, in a
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

way that shows the deep impact of the citation previously given from ibn
Ezra’s Sefer Reshit Hokhmah. Ibn Zarza brings ibn Waqar’s view together
with what the ‘sages of the zodiac signs’ have to say about Saturn.72 The
same view is echoed by his contemporary, Shmuel ibn Motot, though he
does not mention ibn Waqar’s name. Ibn Motot also quotes the views of
the ‘sages of the zodiac signs’ and of the kabbalist found in ibn Zarza,
thus producing the following passage:

Know that according to the truth there is a very great advantage

to Sabbath over all the days because the force of the soul will
be enhanced by the [faculties of] knowledge and intellect and
it is from the power of Saturn to which it has been attributed
the presidency over the first hour and it is a superior power and
all the planets give power to it. When we shall retain the power
of the intellect, and its lot is the rational soul, and the power of
thought and understanding and cleverness and the knowledge
of secrets and the worship of God and it is the star of Israel and
its lot are the Temple,73 the Hebrew language and the Torah of
Israel74 and this is the reason why the power of the soul will be
enhanced in Israel during this day more than during the others.75

More than in ibn Ezra’s astrological worldview, this quotation expands

the presidency of Saturn over more specific and very important areas of
Judaism. It adds to the general view of ibn Ezra concerning Sabbath and
the Jews, as well as the Torah, the Temple and the Hebrew language. This
passage, which reflects ibn Waqar’s somewhat earlier stance, amounts to
a fairly comprehensive Satumization of Judaism as it was disseminated
in verbatim citations just a generation after his death by the two other
Castilian thinkers, ibn Zarza and ibn Motot.
However, the most powerful discussions of the relation between
Saturn and maleficent powers are found in the mid fourteenth century,
in the supercommentary on ibn Ezra by Shlomo Franco, who describes
this planet as the ‘great Satan', and the ‘great maleficent power’, all
this in contexts that clearly mention Sabbath and the Jews.76 Demonic
powers are mentioned explicitly in connection with Saturn in another
fourteenth-century follower of ibn Ezra’s thought, Shem Tov ibn Major:
‘because the matters of the demons had been attributed to Saturn ...
Capricorn was the house of Saturn77 and behold the demons had been
called goats’.78
Goats had previously been described as a representation of demons
in rabbinic sources and in ibn Ezra,79 and the biblical scapegoat was
indeed an animal presented to a demonic power, ‘Azazel. In fact, this
24 S a tu rn ’s Jews

nexus between demons and Saturn is already found in the second half
of Ashkenazi’s thirteenth-century Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, discussed
above, which reflects much earlier traditions, as was obvious from the
passage of Alcabitius also discussed above.80

Some Fifteenth-Century Jewish Texts on Saturn

A very similar type of thought, namely the association between different

motifs, also persisted in later speculative writings in Judaism. In a mid­
fifteenth-century text, an anonymous treatise (most plausibly written in
Italy) combining philosophy and Kabbalah, we learn that:

On Jericho the influx of Saturn is found, which is the seventh of

the planets and this is the reason they circumambulated it seven
times and the wall fell on the day of Sabbath, which is Sabbatai/
Saturn’s day and there was destruction, because the nature of
Saturn is to emanate destruction.81

Here the magical ritual of the Israelites is not performed during the
Sabbath, but its repercussions are intended to occur then - all this in the
context of the influx of Saturn.
Drawing mainly on ibn Ezra and his fourteenth-century commentators,
as well as on Kabbalistic writings, especially Joseph Ashkenazi, Yohanan
ben Isaac Alemanno, an older companion of Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola, mentions Saturn several times in his writings. Some of these
expressions suggest a rather assimilationist religious attitude to Saturn, as
we shall see immediately below, though some other discussions found in
his writings betray a more confrontational attitude towards the planet. It
is interesting to point out that Alemanno, a prolific and erudite thinker
who lived for many years in Florence and was linked to the principal
contributors to the Florentine Renaissance, including Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola, was not attracted (as far as I could inspect the relevant
sources analysed by scholars) by the Hermetical formulations used by
Marsilio Ficino in this context. In Alemanno’s untitled writing extant in
a unique manuscript in the National Library in Paris, as part of a lengthy
commentary on the ten sefirot, he describes the third sefirah, Binah, and
writes in this context:

since the Binah is the property of Israel ... the Binah is the zodiac
sign of all the zodiac signs ... Yovel, which is the fiftieth year ... and
to this sefirah was [attributed] the revelation of the Torah ... and
to it the counting of the seven Sabbaths, years, and all the heptads,
and the redemptions ... and the third [sphere] is the sphere of
 From Saturn, Sabbath and, Sorcery to the Jeivs

Saturn, which is the first under the sphere of the zodiacal signs,
and forty-eight forms [of the Moon] ... and it is a supreme and
noble, higher than all the other planets, which is the reason that
the ancient sages said of it that it generated all the other planets
... And they say that Saturn is the true judge [dayyan emmet] and
the planet of Moses, peace be with him.82 The angel of Saturn is
Michael,88 the great minister, so called because of his great power
in divine matters and He is the ministering angel of Israel.84
And the astrologers who described Saturn say that it endows
man with profound thought, laws85 and the spiritual sciences,86
prophecy, sorcery87 and prognostication and the Shemittot and
Yovelot,88 The Jewish people and the Hebrew language and the
Temple are under its jurisdiction. Saturn's major conjunction is
with Jupiter in the dominion of Pisces89 occurred to assist the
nation, and the Torah and its prophets. This planet endows the
people with perfection in sciences and divine matters such as the
Torah and its commandments, out of its sublimity, because it is
spiritual... It is concerned only with thought, understanding and
design, esoteric knowledge and divine worship and His Torah,
and the Sabbath day is under its sway, because its nature causes
material existence to cease ... and all the operations that are not
corresponding to it are forbidden [during Sabbath] because it
corrupts and destroys all [kinds of] destructions. And lightening
[fire] should not be done in its lot because it is cold ... and if
they will keep its spiritual rules and laws it will impart a spiritual
influx abundantly. But if they will not keep the way of God, it
will spew out everything which is bad, prophecy will occur to the
fools and to babies in an insufficient manner, and to women and
to melancholics [ba‘alei ha-shehorah] and those possessed by an
evil spirit, and maleficent demons that obliterate the limbs90 and
bad counsels and sorceries91 and anxieties and erroneous beliefs
and hypocrisies and cheatings and destruction and famine and
poverty.92

This passage, deeply influenced by Joseph Ashkenazi’s Commentary on

Sefer Yetzirah, is also inspired by various commentators on ibn Ezra, who
were mentioned above, as well as by theosophical kabbalists, probably
even Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah. This style of writing is certainly eclectic, bringing
together, as it does, more theosophical and astrological themes than
any other author before Alemanno. On a larger scale than previously,
it attempts to contrive an organization of symbols and objects, thus
creating a more unified understanding of reality as a whole, as governed
26 S a tu rn ’s Jew s

by a series of distinct supernal powers, sefirot and the planets, which are
related to each other in hierarchical structures. It constitutes the more
comprehensive and radical Saturnization of Jewish practices, since
keeping Saturn’s regulations is implicitly understood as keeping to the
path of God. Even more than Joseph Ashkenazi’s passage previously
discussed, Alemanno’s list is repetitious in that it also reflects common
denominators from a variety of overlapping sources - astro-magical and
Kabbalistic. Interestingly enough, the biblical interdiction on kindling
light during Sabbath is explained as corresponding to the cold nature of
Saturn. This passage represents the culmination of a process that began
with ibn Ezra and fanned out with his followers, but was also joined by
kabbalists. A discussion on various later kabbalists follows below.
It is significant that during the Renaissance period this process
became more pronounced in a Jewish author at a period when some
Christian intellectuals were discovering salient Greek texts which, though
recently translated into Latin by Ficino, had not been integrated into
Alemanno’s synthesis. Elsewhere, in a short discussion inspired by ibn
Motot’s quote above, Alemanno claims that:

in Sefer ha-Atzamirn13 he expatiated on Saturn because it presides

over the Israelite nation and their activities in general and in
particular the Holy Language, and among the places, the Temple,
and the conjunction of Sabbatai and Jupiter is conjunctio maxima
which is known as being in the ascent for to the nation of Israel.94

The resort to the phrase ‘their activities in general’ points to Alemanno’s

extension of the role of Saturn in a greater variety of topics then had been
specified by earlier authors. In other words, Alemanno’s Saturnization of
Judaism was based on astro-magical sources available in Hebrew in Spain
since the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, though he was active in
a cultural environment that fostered similar astro-magical views based on
the Hermetic corpus translated by Marsilio Ficino, which was unrelated
to Jews. Fascinatingly enough, the Hellenistic literary corpus arriving
from the Byzantine Empire and written in Greek, thus stemming from
the east of Italy, encountered the astrological concepts arriving from
Spain, extant in Hebrew texts, coming from the West, and they all met in
the same city: Florence, during the last third of the fifteenth century. In
some cases it is hard to discover the precise source of a discussion written
in Florence in this period: the Eastern trajectory, represented mainly
by Ficino’s translations from Greek, or the Western - Hebrew material
stemming from Provenge and Spain. In my opinion, which will hopefully
be expanded elsewhere, Alemanno’s family played a role in bringing
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to theJexvs

manuscripts from Spain to Italy, thus contributing to the strengthening

of the Western vector in Italy. Some authors, like Yohanan Alemanno,
Isaac Abravanel and his son Leone Ebreo, were acquainted with both
vectors.95

Saturn in the Sixteenth Century: Joseph ibn Tzayyah, Isaac Karo and
Abraham Yagel

In the first part of the sixteenth century, we find an explicit association

of Saturn with sorcery in two books of a little known kabbalist who was
active in Jerusalem and Damascus, Joseph ibn Tzayyah. His voluminous
writings display an unprecedented mixture of theosophical speculations
with detailed astrological theories. In two separate texts, which overlap in
many details, he describes the planet Saturn in the classical terms found
in many of his Jewish predecessors, astrologers and kabbalists:

cold and dry and it is destruction, and bareness, and death

and plague96 and things that are corrupting by the power of
judgement of Binah ... and if you wish to use it by means of the
path of demoniacs, be careful and guard your soul very much
lest you do so ... but its [magical] use should be studied only in
order to teach and understand the secrets of the chambers of
the attribute of the power of Binah and behold its use [magical]
involves the aspect of sorcery97 which denies and changes the
supernal Family [Pamalya] .98

Ibn Tzayyah’s influence on the history of Kabbalah seems to be limited to

few Kabbalists living in the Land of Israel and Syria. However, Isaac ben
Joseph Karo (1 4 5 8 -1 5 2 5 ), the uncle of the more famous Rabbi Joseph
Karo, author of a widespread commentary on the Pentateuch, Toledot
Yitzhaq, a title printed three times in the sixteenth century, elaborated on
Saturn and Sabbath in two different discussions. In one, he conceived of
the planet designated over Israel, on the Temple, the Hebrew language
and, last but not least, the Torah of Moses.99 However, in his discussion,
in which he explicitly mentions the astrologers and ibn Ezra, there is no
trace of a negative conceptual structure. His various discussions do testify,
however, to the process of Saturnization of Judaism in the sixteenth
century.
Moreover, in 1562 the first printing ofjoseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi’s
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah in Mantua had made its content available to
much wider audiences, as we learn from the fact that the passage on
Saturn discussed above influenced, for example, Abraham ibn Migash
in the second half of the sixteenth century in the Ottoman Em pire.100
28 S a tu rn ’s Jews

The impact of Joseph Ashkenazi’s text (as discussed above) was also
formative for Abraham Yagel in Italy in the late sixteenth century. Yagel,
a prolific author and thinker, wrote:

You should know that Capricorn and Aquarius are the

constellations of Israel;101 their planet is Saturn, since these
constellations are its102 houses, as [Abraham] ibn Ezra explains in
Sefer ha-‘Atzamim,103 and R. Abraham ben David in his Commentary
on the Sefer Yetzirah. Because of these constellations, they [the Jews]
are liable to plunder and destruction,104 to toil and to burdens, like
those of our ancestors in Egypt. None of the heavenly hosts are as
devastating as these two in summoning evil and suffering to this
world. Accordingly, the astrologers assigned as its105 lot the [black]
plague, illness, slaves, graves, the prison, and a place of corpses.106

Mention of the plague here is one of the clearest instances Saturn being
linked to this much-feared disease in Hebrew texts. Since there is no
reason to assume that he was aware of ibn Tzayyah’s passage quoted
above, directly or indirectly, we should better surmise the existence of
a common source which predated the composition of both ’Even ha-
Shoham and Yagel’s Gei Hizzayon, where a nexus between the plague and
Saturn is made explicit in a Jewish source. In this writer’s opinion, in his
Saturnization of Judaism Yagel reflects the peak already established by
Alemanno, an author whose writings he was acquainted with and quotes,
always anonymously, from time to time.
However, the last quote is far from being the most important Hebrew
astrological discussion of the plague that I could detect in the sixteenth
century. In a treatise dedicated to the nature and treatment of the plague,
also written by Abraham Yagel, an astrological explanation is offered for
this disease, which is fascinating from several points of view:

We had already mentioned in Ch. V,107 how the ancients brought

about the descent of the supernal powers on the lower [entities]
by means of smoke and incense, and how it is the special quality
of Saturn and Mars and other bad conjunctions to cause a bad
quality and property to the air, which becomes corrupted and
there they create the evil animal [Hayyah ra‘ah] ... and how by
the variety of smokes that are contrary to that bad nature we can
purify it and kill the ‘horned viper on the path’108 as you know
because the nature of Saturn and Mars is related to those things
that create a bad smell.109
 From S aturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

As was pointed out several times in this treatise, the corrupted or

adulterated air, ha-avir ha-me‘uppash, is the cause of the plague,110 and
this deterioration of the air depends upon ‘the bad conjunctions that
cause plague, whose vast majority are those of Saturn and Mars’, which
cause ‘the corrupted air’ - namely the pestilential air.111 This explanation
was known centuries before Yagel, and adduced as one of the reasons for
the Black Death,112 though I did not find a significant discussion which
connects plague and Saturn in the medical discussions in the astrological
books mentioned above.113
In this context too, Yagel mentions the emergence of ‘the serpent
and the horned viper, which kills by the breath of his lips’.114 Therefore,
the descent of the influences depending upon the two planets creates
an entity described in negative terms: serpent, evil animal, horned viper
- instrumental in killing people. The plague is therefore personified in
an entity described in serpentine terms, with lethal influences. Though
there is discussion of the emergence of the maleficent animals in the
context of the conjunction of Saturn and Mars, no direct connection
is made between either of the two planets and the serpentine animals.
However, such a nexus did occur previously in a discussion of the
anonymous kabbalist who composed Sefer Tiqqunei Zohar, where the
serpent is mentioned together with Saturn, as we shall see below. As far
back as in the passage by Alcabitius, Saturn is described as appointed
upon black serpents.115 On the other hand, the goats mentioned by ibn
Major as indicating Capricorn and demons are only further symbols of the
demonic aspects of Saturn. A short catalogue of the animals mentioned
above will bring out the resemblance between them and the main Satanic
figures of the Sabbat of the witches, but this issue will be addressed later
in this study. It is therefore possible to speak about a constellation of
negative features attributed to Saturn in texts written by astrologers
before it was accepted by the Jews. This negative conceptual structure
is fairly stable and migrated from century to century with only minor
changes and additions.

Jewish Resistance to and Critique of the Satumization of Judaism

I have attempted to describe an astrological tradition concerning

Judaism, shared by some important Jewish authors between the period
from the middle of the twelfth to the end of the sixteenth centuries. This
survey of the above texts, which form only a part of the literature that has
contributed to the Satumization ofjudaism, or at least to quote from them
approvingly, should nevertheless be seen from a broader perspective. The
texts are representative of various small scholarly circles —which may be
designated ‘secondary elites’ 116 - and their views on the above topics were
30 S a tu rn ’s Jews

not circulated widely. Most of the texts mentioned above were written in
Spain and they reflect a trend in Jewish Sefardi culture, which adopted it
in a significant manner after Maimonides had directed criticism towards
astrology and astral magic. There can be no doubt that the dark and
pessimistic character of Saturn did not attract too many Jews, and that
the vast Jewish speculative literature produced since the twelfth century,
when astrology made its first substantial inroads, was less receptive to
Saturnian images of the Jew. However, silence was only one way to react to
the process of Saturnization as described above. In other cases, resistance
proved far more explicit and provoked a polar comparison between
Saturnism and Judaism.
Bahya ben Asher, writing some time at the end of the thirteenth
century, adduces two quotations concerning Saturn from an Epistle of
Galenud11 dealing with the knowledge of the stars and their spiritual forces,
in Hebrew ruhaniyyut ha-kokhavim, preserved most probably in Arabic,
one of them describing an ascetic discipline intended to draw down those
astral spiritualities. Immediately afterwards he claims that the Torah is a
science higher than the astrological one, and this is the reason for the
Sabbath regulations which are inverted practices of those prescribed by
the astrologers for Saturnian astro-magic.118 In one of the two quotations
Galens, or perhaps Balinus/Apollonius, prescribes the sacrifice of a black
cat when Saturn is in the house of Capricorn, apparently on the Sabbath
day. Let me translate this second passage:

whoever wants to draw down upon himself the spirituality of Saturn,

that is the start [= planet] which presides in the day of Sabbath, he
should reduce his eating of meat and any other food and avoid
sexual intercourse and clothe in black garb, and prepare a form
[temunah = talisman] of a lion of copper, at the hour of Saturn, and
in the zodiac sign of Capricorn, and they should slaughter a black
cat on the form and then he should come close to it and worship it
and it will tell him future things. This is the language of that epistle
that I translated from Arabic to Hebrew.119

What is not specified in the text is the precise time of the event, but from
the context it is obvious that it is sometime during the Sabbath day. To
be sure, R. Bahya, a fairly conservative figure, rejects this view, claiming
immediately afterwards that the wisdom of the Torah is higher than that
of the stars, namely the planets, and of zodiac signs, this being the reason
why the commandments related to the Sabbath in fact contradict the ritual
mentioned in the epistle. Thus, we have here a third description of an astro-
magical ritual related to Saturn in Spain, in addition to the Picatrix and
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

Sefer ha-Atzamim. In fact, in the same generation we have three different

titles, in addition to another booklet translated into Hebrew by Sefer ha-
Levanah, namely The Book of the Moon, which deals with astral magic. In fact,
a substantial rise in interest in astro-magical information among Jewish
authors contributed as much as did an acquaintance with it - there was an
awareness of the divergence between the Jewish rituals of Sabbath (based
on joy, the consumption of food and sometimes also wearing white clothes)
and rituals which concentrated on being sad and donning black garb,
something that was to become a topos in Jewish literature to which we will
be referring in chapter 3.
However, the most explicit rejection of magic and sorcery as related
to Saturn is to be found in some texts which belong to the later layer
of Zoharic literature, written in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries. Some discussions found in this canonical book of Kabbalah, in
which Sabbatai is subordinate to higher forms of celestial order, entities
called palaces, do not draw undue attention if we remind ourselves that
the book was written in Castile in the last decades of the thirteenth
century, a period when the Arabic original of Picatrix was being translated
into Castilian, and later into Hebrew. However, though the Picatrix, and
perhaps its Hebrew translation, might have determined the negative
reaction of the anonymous kabbalist, it is quite plausible that he might
also have been responding to developments in Kabbalah in Barcelona,
specifically some form of the syntheses mentioned above, including the
work of Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi.
A similar reaction to that expressed by R. Bahya to the Saturnian
ritual can be found in an addition to one of the volumes of the Zohar
that may belong to its later stratum. This part is constituted of two main
compositions, the Tiqqunim, or the amendments to the Zohar, and the
so-called Faithful Shepherd, Ra‘aya’ Meheimna’. This nexus is indeed
significant, but it is not so tight as to make us decide that we actually have
a fragment from the later corpus of the Zohar, and perhaps we should
allow for the possibility of a kabbalist who differs both from Zoharic
thought and from that of the later layer though he was close to both. In
this addition to one of the volumes of the Zohar, we find the following
passage:

At the hour that the planet Saturn presides over the world, and
one of his branches emanates to descend on low and it exits by
a barren head, and it strikes him by the means of Qorqefani
and Shamriron, two spirits that preside over that branch. And
when it strikes that person, they design two red traces, and that
branch that the black trace [which is a third one] is designed on
32 Saturn's Jew s

it, behold the completion of Saturn is using the black [trace].

And this secret presides during the day of Sabbath but not on the
holy nation, since the holy nation does not inherit the heritage
of planets and zodiacal signs, but the Holy One, blessed be He,
alone. And they [the Jews] should evince joy, with eating and
beverage, and (fine) garments, and prepare the house and the
table during that day, unlike those who seize the planet of Saturn,
upon which it is incumbent to fast, and show sorrow and worry
and anger, and have black garments, and black covers, and not
to consume meat and wine and oil, and not to delight in the
delights of the world, but seat in their houses in sorrow, and
separate themselves from people. And the two spirits, Qorqefani
and Shamriron, emanate upon him and disclose to him things of
this world, by the emanation of Saturn. We have seen in the Book
of King Solomon that there are persons that were born when this
branch was presiding, and they are full of sorrow all the time,
and are not joyous ever, but when they study the Torah and then
they grasp on to the Holy One Blessed-be-He, and despite this
there is in this person elements and roots of the Right of the
Forefathers.120

The author describes some instances of inscribing on his face - in the case
of Saturn by means of three lines: two black and one red. The resort to the
image of a branch leaves us with the impression that we have here some
ritual in which Saturn plays the role of a king, perhaps in the investiture of a
vassal, a verbal picture that describes a gesture deserving further attention.
Its attribution to an ancient book written by King Solomon is part of the
image of Solomon as skilled in the arts of magic, which was a topos in the
Middle Ages.
This juxtaposition of Saturnian qualities and the Jews forms a strong
parallel to R. Bahya’s passage, formulated on the grounds of a translation
that he rendered from the Arabic. Thus, if the latter Zoharic text is indeed
similar to that of R. Bahya, it depends on it, not vice versa. This means
that the anonymous Zoharic author reacted to the vision of the Epistle
of Galenus, not to the rather similar view found in Picatrix, especially in
Book III, chapter 8, which was influenced by the prayers to Saturn already
found in ibn Wahshiya’s Nabbatean Agriculture. However, the Zoharic text
avoids the description of the ritual of witchcraft found in Bahya, and
instead gives the theme of the branch and the physiognomical traces or
lines that reflect the subordination of the person to the planet, in order to
describe the effect that Saturn has upon people in this world. Though the
details related to the black clothes are indubitably taken from astrological
 From Saturn, Sabbath and, Sorcery to the Jews

treatises, it is plausible that the critique is addressed not to that of the

basically unknown Saturnians, but rather more to the contemporary
Christian monks. Thus, the Saturnization of Judaism created a reaction,
which culminated in a Saturnization of Christianity among the Jews who
could not accept the astrological domination of the Jews by the malign
planet.
One of these critiques formulated in a piece belonging to later Zoharic
literature distinguishes between the good Sabbatai - which is related to
Sabbath and to the sefirah of Yesod - and the pernicious Sabbatai - which
depends on the ‘other side’, namely on the demonic powers, and ‘when
it is dominant on the world the Sabbath departs, and the supplementary
souls exclaim “There is no Sabbath!”’121 The discussion is based upon a
pun: the Hebrew spelling of Sabbata’ywas deconstructed into two Hebrew
words Y Sabbath which means ‘there is no Sabbath’. The exact nature
of this negative Sabbath is not so explicit in the passage referred to
above.122 We may assume that this is one of the very rare approaches to
the possibility of the existence of the concept of a pernicious Sabbath,
apparently cultivated by a Jewish magician or sorcerer, since the
‘supplementary souls’, destined to descend only upon Jews, are described
as not descending, on account of nefarious activities. Moreover, several
lines before the mention of Saturn, the anonymous kabbalist carefully
distinguishes between those figures who reflect the splendour of the
primordial light, and the others, ‘preoccupied as they are all the day in
sorcery123 and they are successful with kings and governors, and they are
Me‘onen, and Menahesh, and Sorcerer’.124,125
Moreover, the positive figures are emphatically described as white.
It would be logical to assume that the blackness of Saturn, a well-known
attribute of this planet, is the background for creating a stark contrast
between the two types. Given the strong polarities that govern the whole
discussion in this passage, I see no reason not to correlate the pernicious
Saturn with the preoccupation with sorcery mentioned earlier in the
text, just as those people described as ‘good people’ are plausibly related
to the study of the Torah. As we shall see immediately below, Saturnine
figures were conceived of as magicians in another pertinent discussion
belonging to this literature.
It seems that the author was aware of the religious dangers involved in
immersion in astral magic and astrology, which could prove detrimental
to the more particularistic propensity of the Jews to be under the sway
of Saturn, here related to the study of the Torah. The very fact that the
magicians are described as being in contact with kings and governors
may demonstrate that their magical preoccupation involves some form
of cooperation. Indeed, it seems that the author of the above passage was
34 Saturn's Jews

aware of and antagonistic to the interest in astro-magic at the court of King

Alfonso Sabio, the King of Castile (c. 1280), and the involvement of Jews
in translations of magical treatises like the Picatrix, which are replete with
astro-magic in general and discussions on Saturn in particular.126 As I have
suggested elsewhere, there was a negative affinity between the interest in
astro-magic in the last third of thirteenth-century Castile and the attitude to
astro-magic in the Zoharic literature.127 Later on in the Zoharic composition,
another typology of people with a Saturnine temperament whose ‘look is
pernicious’ is proposed, where again the keeping of the Sabbath in gladness
and abundance is conceived of as the opposite of the sadness and poverty so
characteristic of Saturn.128 In other words, Sabbath and Torah, two topics that
loom so conspicuously in the Satumization of Judaism mentioned above, are
described here as forms of resistance to the maleficent influences of Saturn.
In the literature of the later Zoharic layer, entitled Tiqqunei Zohar,
the affinity between Saturn and Saturnine persons on the one hand and
sorcery on the other is expressed even more explicitly. Capitalizing on the
dichotomy between the Tzaddiq, the righteous man, who belongs in the
realm of the Shekhinah, namely the divine presence, and the wicked one,
who belongs to the feminine counterpart power of evil, the anonymous
kabbalist describes the colour black as follows:

If he is a sinner, he is from the side of Saturn, he is a gullible person,129

a black one, from the side of the female of the Qelippah, where all
the magic of the black ravens130 and black birds, from the side of
impurity, upon which there are some presiding powers named
leilotm ... and they descend under the wings of the ravens and show
to them,132 by means of the [ir] movements, some evil decrees133 that
descend upon the world. And there are others134 which preside over
their voices, and they cry voice after voice ... and the serpent is riding
over the voice of the raven, the Other God, to his spouse, magic,135
the poison of death,136 in which Samael, the Other God, becomes
complete.137,138

The entire passage is replete with images related to black - night, ravens,
black birds - and thus they are symbols of impurity, namely the demonic
dimension of reality. The demonology espoused here is not so clear: is
Saturn different from Samael, or does the latter represent, as in many
other cases, the planet Mars; and does their cooperation point to the
particularly nefarious impact of the astral power during the Sabbath, as
already hinted at in ibn Ezra?
It would be redundant to emphasize the importance of the addition of
the theme of poison as part of sorcery. This connection seems to reflect the
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

existence of a conception that connects saturnine sorcery with poison, as

reflected implicitly in ibn Ezra’s book Reshit Hokhmah, which was criticized
by the anonymous kabbalist. In the vein of the theurgical Kabbalah, which
emphasized the need to unify the male and female aspects of the divine
powers, the anonymous kabbalist resorts to the pun Sam plus ’E l in order
to invoke the completion of the demonic counterpart by sorcery. In other
words, sorcery is the inverse operation, or a counter-ritual when compared
to theurgical Kabbalah. Here I should point out that though a clearly
masculine noun, Sabbatai as a planet is related in several instances in this
layer of the Zoharic literature to a female demonic power. Interestingly
enough, the figure of Melancholy in the famous etching of Durer’s
Melencolia I is also a feminine entity, as is an angel imagined to be related to
Saturn and Walter Benjamin, as we shall see in chapter 3.
Some of the motifs mentioned in the Zoharic texts discussed above
are to be found together in a short discussion elsewhere in Tiqqunei Zohar.

'Elohim Aherim, Sabbatai, ’Y Sabbath, [since] Sabbatai is composed

of the letters Y Sabbath, and Israel should change place and name
and deed ... so that the enemy, which is Samael, will not know
them ... If someone keeps Sabbath he has to change the clothes,
in comparison to other days, as well as the foods, which are the
delight of Sabbath. If he is accustomed to eat two meals in the
week days, during Sabbath he should eat three meals.139

Keeping the commandments related to Sabbath became, therefore,

an attempt to escape the attention of Samael, a power which is either
identical to, or at least closely associated with, Sabbatai. Apparently, the
assumption is that during Sabbath the power of Saturn is even greater than
during the week, and hence the need for disguise is more conspicuous
in order to escape its nefarious influence. Such a view may reflect the
theory of ibn Ezra as to the combined influence of these two maleficent
planets discussed above. This confrontational understanding of Jewish
ritual, reminiscent of the manner in which Maimonides explained some
of the commandments, may point to a struggle that is not a mere matter
of theoretical dispute, though unfortunately material on historical
events related to Jews practising magic and sorcery is very scant. When
promulgating the rituals of Sabbath, Moses (i.e. a Jewish Everyman ?)
was therefore fighting against the practices of the Saturnines, as we shall
see below in a more explicit statement found in a much later author.
Interestingly enough, the explanation of the Jewish rituals as an attempt
to counteract astro-magic is not an innovation of the anonymous
kabbalist but an explication of a principle formulated by Maimonides,
36 S a tu rn ’s Jews

who explained some Jewish religious practices as attempts to eradicate

what he construed to be ancient pagan forms of worship.140 It is quite
interesting to see how this classical text of Kabbalah is much closer to the
‘Great Eagle’ than to ibn Ezra: philosophy and Kabbalistic mythology may
sometimes cooperate against some forms of astrological worship.
Let me attempt to describe the above passages belonging to the later
layers of the Zohar from another perspective. Most of the discussions
dealing with Saturn are mainly lists attempting to arrange some of the
objects and occurrences in the world, as well as human qualities and
behaviour, under the aegis of this malign planet. The schematic structure
of the discourse and the staccato style of texts like ibn Ezra’s and those
of his commentators, or those of other astrologers such as Ptolemy and
Abu Ma‘shar, are conspicuous. In the Kabbalistic texts, however, an attempt
has been made to correlate the different entities, predominantly words,
arranged under this rubric, though they may belong to different ontological
levels: sefirotic, i.e. divine, and astral. One of the aspects of the semiotic
process, the assimilation of properties of one of the entities to another,
will be discussed below. Here I would like to deal with another aspect of
organizing the discourse: the creation of a dynamic that conjugates the
different elements into a broader narrative with obvious mythical qualities.
The astrologers were concerned predominantly with organizing a map of
reality - the kabbalists sometimes following the astrologers were far more
concerned to discover types of interaction between the catalogued entities,
and they did so by introducing sexual polarity.
In contrast with the work of the astrologers in the later Zoharic
material adduced above, there are much shorter sentences to similar
effect, and feminine entities are introduced, creating forms of mythical
interaction which are very rare in the more scientifically oriented texts.
In fact, the anonymous kabbalist created a myth which is designed to
counteract the astrological discourse which he has construed as negative.
However, the main raw material for this new myth is less an activation of the
astral bodies as personifications and more a resort to complex linguistic
speculations. While the astrologers were concerned with a description
of things and processes, the kabbalists were much more concerned with
symbolic interpretations and allegorical words in canonical books and
in manipulating their letters. The Greek myths that nourished some of
the Hellenistic and medieval astrological speculations were less oriented
towards linguistics, whereas the kabbalists capitalized on the linguistic
material that designated the basic elements which had already been
organized along more ‘objective’ lines by the astrologers.
As has been pointed out by Dov Schwartz,141 there are reservations
to be found concerning the extreme and comprehensive processes of
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

Saturnization of Judaism in Abraham ibn Al-Tabib’s explicit critique of

Shlomo Franco’s stand142 and in the reticence of some of the students
of a group of interpreters of ha-Levi’s Kuzari. Some of those Provencal
masters were also inclined to accept an astrological understanding of
Judaism, describing Moses as aligned with the benevolent and intellectual
influence of Mercury.143 Other important instances of a critique of
astral magic have recently been collected and discussed.144 However, of
particular importance is a passage by Rabbi Menahem ben Zerah, an
important figure who was active in the second half of the fourteenth
century in Castile:

I seal the discussion of the matters of stars and the deeds of

sorcery,145 so that the mouth of the astrologers will be filled
with rubble and their premolars will be broken, because in
our generation there are many ignoramuses, belonging to the
monotheists146 who follow their own opinion and counsel ... and
they do not know the decrees of the Lord of the Earth ... and
their opinion and view is that the deeds of all men, without any
exception, have been delivered to the motions of the spheres and
the aspects of the seven planets ... and they say that God has left
the world since the six days of Creation.147

The Castilian master claims that he is protesting against a more substantial

group, whose adherence to astrology and magic amounted to a vision
of a universe that was totally governed by astral bodies without any
intervention on the part of God. Even if his claim is an exaggeration, the
social implications of this passage should not be overlooked, provided
that a number of Jewish authors became followers of ibn Ezra in the
fourteenth century.
In Sha‘ar ha-FIesheq, the printed introduction to his manuscript
commentary on the Song of Songs, entitled Hesheq Shlomo, even Yohanan
Alemanno, the author who so warmly espoused a positive attitude to
the fourteenth-century Jewish commentators on ibn Ezra, nevertheless
claims in a manner especially reminiscent of Bahya ben Asher’s attitude,
as discussed above, that:

Since Saturn is the cause of sorcery148 and of pagan worship ...

our master Moses, of blessed memory, had to stand in the breach
and guard Israel in the matter of the Torah and commandments
which issue from the sefirah of Tiferet and from all kinds of pagan
worship. All kinds of sorcery issue from Saturn.149
38 S a turn s Jews

Unlike the passage adduced above from an untitled treatise preserved

in MS. Paris BN 849, where Saturn is described as the planet of Moses,
here Moses is described as striving against the maleficent Saturn and
its influence, and as offering a religious system based on the Torah
which, according to the kabbalists, was related to the sixth sefirah, Tiferet.
Apparently, this was a divine attribute connected to Mercury, a planet
that was instrumental in obliterating Saturnian influences, as we have
seen above in one of the commentators on ibn Ezra.150 In a passage to
be analysed below in the Appendix, Alemanno, in a manner perhaps
influenced by Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, emphasizes the sharp distinction (and
separation) between spirituality and corporeality as the main purpose of
Moses.
However, I would like to emphasize that following the tradition of
ibn Ezra neither the Saturnian religion nor Judaism were described
by Alemanno by creating a mythical narrative, as found in the Zoharic
literature, or later on in Sabbatean thought. The ‘list type’ of discourse
remained the backbone of Kabbalistic treatments, and a modest change
in the direction of a more sustained narrative may be discerned when
Sabbatai Tzevi becomes involved, as we shall see in the next chapter.

Some Possible Repercussions

The above passages do not exhaust the discussions on the nexus between
magic and sorcery, Saturn, Sabbath and Jews found in Jewish texts. I hope
that I have detected the more important ones. However, the vast literature
which is pertinent to our topic - especially the thousands of folios dealing
with the various ‘supercommentaries’ on Abraham ibn Ezra - and still
in manuscript has to be perused before a more accurate picture may
be offered. Nevertheless, I assume that the passages analysed above will
suffice to conclude that in somejewish intellectual circles, of philosophers
and kabbalists alike, the affinities between these topics were conceived
of as part of the ordered astrological universe pertaining to the more
comprehensive ‘scientific’ worldview of some of their contemporaries.
However, beyond the more philological analyses, we should bear in
mind the semiotic processes involved in the various formulations of these
passages. The different attributes and qualities found in relation to Saturn
stem from a variety of realms: nations, times, places, spiritual qualities or
domains of knowledge. They do indeed reflect unconnected entities which
were assembled because of the belief that they were under the aegis of
Saturn. The above discussions reveal a great amount of what I have called
‘vertical selective affinities’ between some of the entities in the mundane
world and Saturn and to a certain extent also the sefirah related to it. In
most cases that sefirah is Binah. Though the horizontal affinities between
 From Saturn, Sabbath and, Sorcery to the Jews

those matters which were individually related to Saturn are rare, they
nevertheless exist, as the descriptions of the Jews as suffering, as sorcerers
or as intelligent, show. However, a possible and, in my opinion, plausible
reading of those texts may emphasize the horizontal affinities beyond
what was explicitly specified in the various different passages. They create
a greater coherence between the discrete entities found in the mundane
realm, or what may be described as a mutual contamination. This is not
necessarily part of the discourse on gematria in the School of Ecstatic
Kabbalah, but it reflects the same quality.
Hence, the Jews, or the Hebrew language, were to become more
‘melancholic’ or prophetic’ or ‘magical’ or involved in sorcery, as the
Sabbath may attract these and other ‘relevant’ positive or negative qualities.
In other words, the reception of the texts discussed above may have taken
a path already analysed by Brian Vickers and described as assimilation’
or ‘symphysis’.151 The “symphysical’ process could produce a stronger
association, or assimilation, of sorcery and Jewishness, or of Sabbath and
sorcery and Jewishness, and each of these and Saturn, even including in
some way the theme of Jews as portents of the plague. Both Jews and the
plague are ‘vertically’ related to Saturn, but their horizontal affinity is only
rarely made explicit in classical astrological texts. However, this nexus may
be activated in special social and religious circumstances based on reading
(and frequently misunderstanding) texts and oral discussions.
More common is the tight relation between elements entering vertical
relations. One such example, though a late one, consists in descriptions
of the Jews as having a Saturnine temperament and as miserable in the
fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.152 Even the expression Lex
Satuma has been coined in order to point to Judaism.153
The question that I would like to address now is whether the existence
of this complex of affinities could have contributed to the emergence of
the much more widespread notion of the ‘Sabbat of the witches’. A proof
in this direction would indicate a resort to the use of the term ‘Sabbat’ to
designate the encounters between witches. To the best of my knowledge,
the possible nexus between the Hebrew term for Saturday, the Sabbath
and the ‘Sabbat of the witches’ has not been unanimously accepted in
very recent scholarship.154 Even Carlo Ginzburg does not commit himself
when identifying an earlier suggestion to this effect, and considers the
witches’ Sabbat to be “of obscure etymology’,155 though he does not reject
it altogether. It seems that among recent scholars only Baroja and Cohn
commit themselves, without however adducing detailed analysis, to the
nexus of Sabbath-Sabbat.156 This etymological affinity when adjoined
to the more conceptual one - meaning the view that magic can be
better performed during the Sabbath because of the extra-soul and the
40 S a tu rn ’s Jews

presidency of Saturn — may suggest an explanation for the otherwise

unexplained and bizarre usage of the term ‘Sabbat’ to refer to a general
assembly of witches.
However, this conceptual-terminological explanation of the origin of
the Sabbat is somehow corroborated by the way the genesis of ‘Sabbat’
is described in recent scholarship. Carlo Ginzburg has proposed viewing
the dreadful Sabbat persecutions as the result of a transposition of
xenophobic sentiments from one marginal group, the lepers, to another,
the Jews, and then to the wider and much vaguer category, the witches.157
Thus, just before the contamination of the rituals of the so-called witches
with the concept of Sabbat, at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning
of the fifteenth centuries, the Jews played a similar role as a persecuted
group, especially during the social trauma throughout Europe created by
the Black Death.158 This occurred in the mid fourteenth century, a period
when the nexus between the entities mentioned above had already been
in existence in some Jewish circles for more than a century and a half and,
in the views of Alcabitius (found in Arabic and Latin), even earlier. As
previously mentioned,159 in some texts Saturn was conceived of as being
related to the Black Death. Prior to the sixteenth century, I have not
been able to find connections between Saturn, Sabbath, the plague and
the Jews all occurring in one text, and I wonder if the existence of such
an earlier, and rather rare, view has been assimilated into the complex
of affinities that we have discussed above and whether these provoked
a wider nexus between Jews and the Black Death. If further material
demonstrates the more widespread persistence of such a multi-faceted
complex, then Jews might have been conceived of by Christians, even
before the time of the Black Death, not only as Saturn’s Planetenkinderbxit
also as people who spread the plague - and not only for social reasons
but also on the grounds of more ‘scientific’ astrological speculations.160
Indeed, as Guerschberg has correctly pointed out, the astrological
explanation for the plague was the most widespread one: ‘Aussi de toutes
les theories etiologiques concernant la Peste Noire, c ’est la theorie
astrologique qui a triomphe.’161 Needless to say, this is not what actually
happened in history, as the Jews never had anything to do with spreading
the plague. But as we know, people’s imagination, when it was founded
upon negative attitudes towards Jews and then stoked by great fear, was a
powerful historical factor in the religious history of Christian Europe.
However, even now, on the basis of two influential texts, ibn Ezra’s
Reshit Hokhmah and Ashkenazi’s Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, both of which
mention various contagious diseases in connection with Saturn, this
possibility should be taken seriously. Meanwhile, it should be emphasized
that one of the explanations for the Black Death in 1348, in Western
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

Europe, based on earlier sources, is indeed identical to that presented

by Yagel almost two centuries later: the conjunction between Saturn and
Mars.11’- Indeed, if we follow Ginzburg’s research, we may hypothesize a
phase when the conception of the cult of demonic powers was posited
as being on Friday night, in connection either with concepts found in
Judaism or - though this is less plausible - with actions carried out by
Jews and misunderstood by Christians that were later transferred to
witches. Indeed, it seems that the very fact that the Sabbat meeting often
took place on Friday night may point to a connection with Jewish rituals,
because, as discussed above, since ibn Ezra this moment in time had been
understood as the conjunction of the two most maleficent planets.163
Persuasive as some of these points may be for understanding some
details of the Sabbat, no claim has been made that the astro-magical themes
previously addressed may solve the complexity of the Sabbat mythology.
Nevertheless, there is one important detail that should be pointed out
in the context of the Saturnian explanation: the famous ‘fact’ that in
Greek mythology Kronos devoured his children, and that during the
Sabbat imaginary children were consumed by imaginary witches.164 If the
Saturnine explanation is correct, we have an additional affinity, which, for
the time being, cannot be explained by resorting to the astrological sources
found in the Jewish writings discussed above. I would like to emphasize
that though this theme may point to astrological or mythical traditions
regarding Saturn, which are only vaguely represented in Jewish literature,
and were transmitted by channels that differ from those discussed above,
their existence does not preclude the influence of other astrological
traditions mediated by Jewish texts which, so far, I have not detected.
Another major motif of the Sabbat cult is the central role of the goat,
which becomes a recurrent protagonist as an embodiment of Satanic
power.165 It is important to stress that all three first visual representations
of Satan used the image of a goat.166 A he-goat may have something to
do with the relation between Saturn and Capricorn mentioned above in
the text by ibn Major. Even if further research is definitively to explain
the em ergence of the goat cult as non-astrological, the possibility may
nevertheless remain that an archaic cult of this kind could have attracted
motifs found in the astrological relation between Saturn, Capricorn and
goats. Moreover, the occurrence of the term ‘synagoga’ in order to point
to the Sabbat is further proof of the existence of a Jewish context of the
Sabbat.167
Last but not least: the substantial renaissance of ibn Ezra’s thought
occurred during the period when the Sabbat ritual was formulated by its
ecclesiastic opponents, mainly Inquisitors at the end of the fourteenth
century.168 Is it a mere historical coincidence that a dramatic surge in
42 S a tu rn ’s Jews

the role played by Saturn and its impact on corresponding notions

(including the Sabbath and sorcery) is discernible among the Jewish elite
within certain geographical parameters, while the beginning of the use
of the term ‘Sabbat’ in Western Christian circles as related to sorcery
or witchcraft is contemporaneous? The above explanation, I would like
to emphasize, does not attempt to exhaust the more complex social
phenomena of the emergence and dissemination of the ‘Sabbat of the
witches’, especially its possible origins, pagan European or Asian. Neither
does the proposed explanation disqualify the modern explanations of the
emergence of many of the elements of the magical rituals as imagined in
medieval Europe as stemming from Eurasian ancient mythologies, as has
been proposed by Carlo Ginzburg and others.169 However, if accepted,
this explanation is a further indication of the need to explore medieval
European material as pertinent to the emergence of medieval social-
cultural phenomena.
If Ginzburg is right in suggesting the importance of much earlier
sources, transmitted orally over the course of centuries and perhaps even
millennia from another continent - a claim that it is certainly hard to
prove conclusively but, in my opinion, not implausible - then the imagery
that inspires the concept of the Sabbat of the witches constitutes a
conjugation of Eurasian traditions on the one hand and of ancient Greek
and medieval Jewish ones on the other, the latter mediated basically
by Arabic texts. This conjugation can be described as the application
of notions (found in the high culture of Jews in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, which do not refer to specific forms of rituals) to
various rituals that had emigrated from Asia and were conceived of as
witchcraft or sorcery, and had been unknown earlier to the ecclesiastic
authorities.
Indeed, the most widespread conceptualization of the rituals
concerning various forms of sorcery in Western Europe began to be
articulated during the period of the Black Death. This went together with
a fervent persecution of the Jews, later designated by a term related to a
central Jewish ritual.170
Here I propose not to differentiate too sharply between the targets
of these persecutions, namely the Jews, and some of their conceptions,
but concentrate mainly on their misconception by the Christians. The
manner in which the Christians understood both Jews and witches
is a misconstruction. However, this misunderstanding is related to
some conceptions of the rituals that provoked a misunderstanding
in interpretation. In the same way it would not be wise to ignore the
possible contribution of the beliefs and rituals of the persecuted women
declared to be witches. In doing so, as in the case of the explanation
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to theJeivs

that Carlo Ginzburg proposes, I basically accept his explanation, which

is based on the crucial role of misunderstanding. This is reminiscent of
another major and fateful misunderstanding related to the actions of
Ashkenazi Jews. As Israel J. Yuval has proposed recently in a study, the fact
that some Ashkenazi Jews killed members of their own families, and then
themselves, in order to escape forced conversion to Christianity or to
avoid being murdered by the Crusaders has been misunderstood in ways
that have contributed to the formulation of the blood libels.171
In our case, some Provencal and Spanishjews developed astro-magical
understandings of Judaism that might have contributed to the emergence
of several mythological themes concerning the witches’ Sabbat, a
fantastic ritual whose more substantial sources might nevertheless be
found in cultural environments other than in these astrological writings
and practices. It should be emphasized, nevertheless, that unlike the
eleventh-century pogroms in Germany, which are, historically speaking,
well-documented, and had been sometimes seen by Christians, though
their significance has been misinterpreted, in our case I doubt whether
there were Jewish magicians or sorcerers who performed some specifically
astro-magical rituals during Sabbath in the manner stipulated by the
astro-magical texts. Nevertheless, I would assume that it is possible that
some regular Jewish rituals concerning Sabbath have been understood
by kabbalists as having astro-magical valences.172 On the other hand, the
above discussions should be seen in a broader context, one that assumes
the existence of indoctrination with deep anti-Jewish attitudes for many
centuries in medieval Europe, theories that are totally independent of the
astrological sources that we have discussed above. What I have attempted
to explain here is just the reason for the adoption of the term ‘Sabbat’ in
its specific meaning as related to witchcraft. In the history of European
discourse, it is related to nocturnal magic, a development that could then
be grafted upon more profound anti-Jewish religious sentiments, whose
historical origins differ dramatically from the astro-magical traditions.
It seems that even a very comprehensive approach to medieval
magic in Europe, as proposed by Ginzburg — one attempting to reach
back through hoary antiquity to the pre-axial age - should be further
expanded in order to include the possible contribution of traditions
that permeated some intellectual circles in Europe - elite circles of axial
conceptions. While there is no reason to dismiss the ‘folkloristic roots
of Sabbat’,173 there is a need for a better understanding of the themes
mediated by elite traditions, in our case Jewish ones, that were influenced
by Arabic sources and ultimately derived from Hellenistic extraction, but
differed from the circles of the Inquisitors. In other words, I propose an
additional explanation, which does not necessarily displace the possibility
S a tu rn ’s Jews

that elements related to the Sabbat rituals are either autochthonic in

Europe, or stemmed from Asian sources, as proposed by Ginzburg.
These elites passed on traditions regarding the nature of the ancient
Greek gods via their astrological transformations, and, on the basis of
Jewish material unknown to Seznec, our study above confirms his theory
on the role of astrology in this context.174 Likewise, it is consonant with
Zafran’s explanation of some anti-Semitic descriptions of Jews based on
certain Saturnian themes through the Middle Ages.175 However, in his
important study, Zafran restricted his discussions to Arabic astrological
material and its plausible impact on mainly Christian depictions of Jews
in the pre-Modern period, but did not address the possible impact of the
abundant Jewish astrological descriptions available in Hebrew. The self-
perception of some Jewish authors, and of quite influential ones in some
Christian circles, such as bar Hiyya and Abraham ibn Ezra, should also
be taken into serious consideration.
Complex situations and constellations of ideas based on the synthesis
of concepts from different sources, and concerning perceptions of
the 'other', should be approached by allowing, scholarly speaking,
the interaction of a variety of sources and social layers. When such a
complex approach is applied, the astro-magical sources of Greek and
Hellenistic origin (in the forms in which they have been transmitted,
mainly by Arabic authors, translated into Hebrew and then appropriated
by other Jews in the high Middle Ages) are seen to play a greater role in
the way some Christians perceived Jews in Western Europe. In fact, this
process, among numerous other instances, exemplifies the role of Jews
as mediators of scientific and theological traditions from Arabic culture
to Western Europe. This integration necessitates greater openness on
the part of scholars in Jewish studies in matters of astrology,176 magic
and sorcery.177 It also suggests that these literary fields might have
contributed to the shaping of life and thought just as much as the
more ‘sublime’, ‘spiritual’ worldviews inspired by Jewish philosophy or
Kabbalah. In medieval Christian Europe, when magic included so many
astrological elements and when such elements were also part of magically
oriented Jewish branches of philosophy, this type of order attracted
some kabbalists, who then integrated it into their systems in varying
proportions, though always first subordinating it to the theosophical
order.178
Following my approach, the more interesting question as to how
exactly the constellation of ideas connected to the sinister aspects of
Saturn (which included the association of the Jews, of Sabbath and of
sorcery, as if inseparably linked) has produced the Sabbat complex of
themes in the eyes of some Christian authorities is an issue that still
 From Saturn, Sabbath a n d Sorcery to the Jews

calls for special research to bridge the gap between the approaches of
the ‘history of ideas’ and the ‘history of culture’. In other words, how
Jewish thinkers, and perhaps the deeds of some Jews, contributed to the
em ergence of the sorcery-Sabbath nexus and the idea of the Sabbat of the
witches is a matter that requires further and more detailed investigation.
I hope I have supplied at least a conceptual matrix for this development;
it is based upon a possible deep misreading of the textual sources and a
possible misunderstanding of the practices of the Jews.
In any case, it is worth pointing out that the development described
above is a significant one from a statistical point of view and is, in my
opinion, as representative of developments in Jewish culture in Spain as
Maimonides’ so-called rationalism. Indeed, both the writings of those
dealing with Saturnian astro-magic and the writing of Maimonides
continue two different trends in Islamic culture, present in the medieval
period but relatively unknown in the early Middle Ages in Europe.
Different as they are conceptually, they were cultivated by Spanish Jews
as revealing the esoteric aspects of Judaism, part of the process of a more
comprehensive phenomenon I have described as the arcanization of
Judaism.179These two different intellectual orientations, sharply divergent
as they are, in addition to the various Kabbalistic schools, are part and
parcel of the Sefardi heritage, which can only be conceptually reduced
to one orientation with the loss of much of its creativity as a historical
phenomenon. Again, different as these two orientations are, there may
nevertheless be a certain connection between them. To what extent the
vigorous rejection of magic by Maimonides contributed to the emphasis
on magical views in Judaism is still an issue that requires investigation.
According to Daniel L. O ’Keefe, magic may surface in places where there
is too little religion, i.e. where there are rationalistic visions of religion.180
As regards the texts discussed in this chapter, we have seen the willingness
of some Jews to assert that magic or sorcery is indeed related to the Jews,
at least by symphysis. This is expressed in explicit terms in more than one
cultural centre of Judaism. Though we may assume the existence of some
practices related to astro-magic as expressed by the authors mentioned
above, we may also assume that when they used the term kishshuf, translated
as ‘sorcery’, they were repeating a term they had found in their sources,
a term more representative of a cultural cliche than a specific type of
practice. This assumption may be beneficial to scholars of religion, such
as Peterson181 and John G. Gager,182 who suggest not using the term
‘magic’ because it reflects an image rather than a real fact. However, even
if the Jewish authors we have mentioned would have rejected sorcery,
their astro-magical practice may sometimes have amounted to more
than a theoretical worldview. They might have protested against being
Saturn s Jew s

depicted as magicians resorting to kishshuf, but they would at the same

time have embraced some more elite form of magic. Nevertheless, the
role played by astro-magic in ancient Jewish magic is quite marginal.
For this reason scholars should distinguish between different practices,
and their explanations as expressed by practitioners or others, in order
to do justice to the variety and complexity of what were imagined to be
powerful performances.183
As we have seen above, there are two different contexts that connect
Saturn and sorcery or witchcraft. One is the specific claim related to
Saturn that it presides over sorcery or witchcraft - unlike the other planets
to which such a view is not attributed. The second is the specific form of
worship addressed to Saturn, which while it differs in detail from that
addressed to other planets is nevertheless part of a more comprehensive
astro-magical view that each of the planets should be worshiped
according to its special nature. This view is expressed in several of the
astro-magical books mentioned above, as well as in the book entitled
Religions of the Prophets, which I will discuss in chapter 3.184 The former is
a general attribution without specific content; the latter is much more
detailed. Nevertheless, both forms of imaginaire corroborate one another,
strengthening the conceptual affinities that some authors assume to exist
between Saturn and witchcraft.
It should be mentioned that the basically negative conceptual structure
has not always been associated with the Saturn-Sabbath theme.185 Though
this is rare, Saturn’s presence is sometimes conceived in more positive
terms influenced by the short formulation of the Sefer Yetzirah. This was
much more the case from the late fifteenth-century Renaissance in Italy.
Another example is the early sixteenth-century discussion of Isaac Karo
mentioned above. These are exceptions. However, we shall turn to one of
the major examples of such an exception, which integrates the positive
aspects, Saturnian and Saturnine, in relation to a new understanding of
the image of the Messiah, in the next chapter.
 TW O From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi:
A Planet that Became ‘Messiah’

Some Preliminary Reflections on Jewish Culture

In this chapter we shall deal mostly with the positive conceptual

structure related to Saturn and its 'materialization’ in history, and in
the personality of a certain individual, Sabbatai Tzevi (1626-76). This
development is based on the wider impact of astrological themes on this
messianic figure, and in the following pages I will be proposing a broader
spectrum of influences than I have done in my earlier studies. However,
this conceptual structure should be seen in a wider context. One of the
most interesting characteristics of the various forms of Jewish culture is
their continuous undulation and oscillation between the two poles of the
'particularistic’ and the ‘universalistic’.
Preserving and cultivating some major forms of ritualistic attitude,
different Jewish communities have occasionally flourished, often suffered
and eventually perished, in cultural ambiances at variance from the main
centres where particularistic attitudes were initially articulated. This
oscillation affected both the more popular and the elitist forms of Judaism:
the former adopted popular practices cultivated in their environments,
while the latter often opened themselves up to some of the major forms
of the majority elite cultures. The two poles represent the common
denominators - understood here as the particularistic attitude - while
the ‘universalistic’ aspects represent the adoption of the forms of culture
embraced by nonjewish communities where the Jews lived. In other
words, and this does not represent a value judgement, the particularistic
approach is much more centripetal, while the universalistic one has more
centrifugal propensities. By using the term ‘universalism7, we should be
well aware of the specific and often limited nature of the forms of culture
that hosted the Jewish ones. Even today ‘universalism7 does not represent
more than a reification of values accepted by cultures that constitute
small minorities in the global population, but which are nevertheless
powerful enough to impose their specific values as generally worthwhile.
This was the case with astrology, originally a more universalistic ‘scientific’
approach that imposed a vision of Saturn as the planet dominating the
Jews and various aspects of their culture, especially in its effects on the
self-perception of some circles of the Jewish elite, as we have seen.
Saturn s Jews

The particularistic self-perception of rabbinic Judaism has generally

been understood by resorting to relatively universalistic clues, an approach
that is also evident in many other cases in Jewish medieval philosophy.
However, in the case of the astrological themes discussed above, the
universal approach is quite problematic since its interpretations use many
terms applied to religions and nations that are not only biased but cannot
be controlled in a practical manner.
The two poles have attracted two main attitudes among historians of
Judaism: while the integrative aspects were more emphasized by nineteenth-
century Jewish historiosophy, in the twentieth century the opposite
approach become more dominant. Nineteenth-century Jewish historians,
who were active in various European diasporas, especially Germany, at a time
when acculturation to the culture of the Christian Enlightenment was still
conceived of as an ideal (a phenomenon related to Jewish emancipation),
wrote about Judaism from a more universalistic perspective, emphasizing
the ‘rational’ and ethical aspects of the culture, and the concept of a mission
of the Jews in the Diaspora. Latter historians, on the other hand, attempted
to create a dichotomy between the ‘centrifugal’ elements, described as
negative, and the ‘centripetal’ ones, described as positive. So, for example,
the distinguished historian Heinrich Graetz conceived of Kabbalah as the
bete noire of the Jewish Middle Ages, while Maimonides was portrayed as the
paragon of Jewish culture; in the historiography of another distinguished
scholar, Yitzhaq Baer, the most important Israeli historian, the situation
is precisely the inverse: Jewish medieval philosophy was conceived of as a
major cause of the conversion of Jews.
The positive attitude to Kabbalah as a centripetal type of religiosity is
to a very great extent dependent upon the pivotal change in the nature
and role of Jewish mysticism produced by the magisterial studies of
Gershom Scholem. His positive and sympathetic approach to this body of
Jewish knowledge and practice opened the way, and the hearts, of some
historians to integrating mysticism as an active factor in shaping Jewish
history. Most outstanding in this context was Scholem’s chef d ’oeuvre, his
monograph on the seventeenth-century messianic figure Sabbatai Tzevi. A
broad description of the historical aspects of Sabbateanism and an incisive
analysis of the conceptual and mystical underpinning of this movement,
Scholem’s book is also the most important scholarly discussion of what
he calls the ‘messianic idea’ in Judaism. It addresses in detail not only an
important Messiah but also the history of messianism in Judaism - and
sometimes also in Christianity - as well as the emergence of a popular
messianic movement of huge dimensions.
Scholem’s hypothesis concerning the emergence of Sabbateanism
became one of the most well-known theses of modern Judaica scholarship.
 From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi

This thesis, which may be described as a ‘hyperthesis’ (my own term), has
been repeated so many times that a list of those scholars who have reiterated
it, without adducing any additional material to strengthen it, would
amount to a short booklet.1 Scholem’s assumption is that the diffusion
of Kabbalistic messianism via the dissemination of Lurianism served as
the indispensable background for the emergence of Sabbateanism as a
messianic collective phenomenon. This major rationale, in fact the only
major one according to Scholem’s explanation, thrusts Sabbateanism into
the history of Jewish mysticism in a dramatic manner. Though affecting
the lives, the beliefs and the thoughts of so many Jews, common folk as
well as learned rabbis, who lived in different geographical and cultural
centres, Lurianism was conceived of as a sufficient common denominator
to create a more uniform cultural substratum to nourish Sabbatean
messianism.
Although this theory is related to one single type of explanation,
Scholem's Sabbateanism is profoundly inscribed within a particularistic
framework of historiography. That the exposition of the messianic
movement was conceived of as an event that belongs first and foremost
to internal Jewish history and culture was primarily the result of the
dissemination of Lurianic Kabbalah and its alleged acute messianism.2
This more particularistic approach differs from the way Scholem has
described the emergence of Kabbalah as a synthesis between neo­
platonism and Gnosticism, or Jewish Gnosticism - namely, that a body of
knowledge was generated by the confluence of two spiritual trends that
were different from or even antagonistic to rabbinic Judaism. 5 With the
development of Kabbalah as it is envisioned in Scholem’s historiography,
and by many scholars who followed him, it became more and more of an
internal Jewish affair. This is also evident in Scholem’s description of the
emergence of Hasidism as a reaction to, and an alleged neutralization of,
Sabbatean trends. The various debates between scholars as to whether
Hasidism is a continuation of the neutralization of Sabbatean Messianism
are played out on grounds that I explain by negative ‘proximism’ in time
(my term) —taking into consideration only the most immediate context
as the single relevant starting point for an analytical approach.
Does Kabbalah represent such a definitive movement, turning away
from an initially greater openness towards external factors to a much
more inward-facing and “purely’ Jewish story? The answer seems to be
rather complex. In my opinion, the sources of the nascent Kabbalah
should more appropriately be sought within the various Jewish traditions,
though not exclusively.4 This body of knowledge, in all its different forms,
became gradually more and more open to the cultural ambiances that
hosted the various centres of Kabbalah, either by responding to the
Saturn s Jews

challenges of these centres or by being influenced by the conceptual views

found there. This was the case with the Zoharic Kabbalah, which absorbed
more Christian elements than the earlier theosophical Kabbalah;5 with
the ecstatic Kabbalah, which was initially strongly influenced by neo-
Aristotelianism but absorbed more neo-Platonic and Sufic elements in the
second phase of its development;6 and with the Kabbalah in Italy, which
was understood in a much more philosophical manner from the end of
the fifteenth century to the first third of the seventeenth century.7 Even
the Lurianic Kabbalah, which originally emerged from particularistic
thought, was interpreted only one generation after its inception in strong
Italian Renaissance terms.8 Does Sabbateanism, a basically messianic mass
movement, represent an exception to this turning of the major forms of
Kabbalah towards external forms of thought? The messianic nature of
this movement may point in this direction.
However, it seems that a much more variegated type of explanation
of the emergence of the messianic movement of Tzevi than that offered
by Scholem is in order; recently, the importance of the Marranos to
the reception of this messianic theory has been reiterated, as well as
the contribution of the pogroms of 1648-9.9 These two explanations
are of a more sociological nature, as they deal with conditions of the
dissemination of this type of messianism rather more than with processes
related to its inception.
Here I would like to address the possible contribution of an additional
factor in both the emergence of Sabbateanism and in its reception.
This factor is the interpretation of Saturn as the planet related to a
change of religion, as found in Arabic, Christian and Jewish astrology,
its reinterpretation in Kabbalistic sources as dealing with the Messiah,
and, finally, the Sabbatean interpretation of Saturn, Shabbatai in Hebrew,
to Sabbatai Tzevi.10 In chapter 1, in the passages from Joseph Ashkenazi
and Yohanan Alemanno, we noted the view that Saturn is appointed over
dinim, which I translate as ‘religion’, on the assumption that it reflects
the Arabic meaning of din. Thus, though they were active in Europe,
Spain and Italy, it is not only the general concepts, drawn basically from
earlier Hellenistic sources that were mediated by Muslim authors, but
also some more specific linguistic details that depended on the Arabic
language. Let me be clear from the outset: by stressing the importance
of the astrological factor, I do not intend to reduce the emergence,
the evolution or the reception of Sabbateanism to this factor alone,
thereby creating a new unilinear explanation of this mass movement.
Rather, I would like to propose the presence of a multiplicity of causes
of different natures, some of them already mentioned above, as well as
to allow the astrological factor a more modest role than the main, or
 From S aturn to Sabbatai Tzevi

a main, cause. Nevertheless, it is my claim that while the explanations

currently accepted in scholarship deal much more with the reception of
Sabbateanism allegedly facilitated by a prior dissemination of Lurianism,
in the following argument I shall be concerned more with its emergence
and less with its reception.

Astrology, Messianism and Universalism

Astrology, like other corpora of knowledge that reached medieval

Europe through the mediation of Arab authors, turned into a branch of
knowledge accepted by both intellectual and popular circles. As a science
accepted by so many in both the East and West, it offered a common basis
of knowledge. Arguments based on the ‘book of heaven’ were as decisive
in some circles as those based on that other widely accepted book, the
Sacred Scriptures. Astrological language and concepts carried a universal
nomenclature, widespread and influential in many of the areas where
Jewish mysticism flowered in the Middle Ages.
Unlike the various forms of Jewish mysticism, astrological terminology
was far more understandable to and acceptable in broader Jewish
circles. Ostensibly, it also facilitated communication between different
intellectuals who did not share the same religious assumptions. If Jewish
mysticism, for some of the first centuries of its existence, resorted to
particularistic language and symbolism, astrological language could at
least be described as far more universalistic. Nevertheless, not unlike
Sigmund Freud’s renowned interpretation of the Oedipus complex,
in the case of Saturn, Greek mythological sources were paramount,
and it was the Greek mythologoumena that formed the bedrock of the
‘universal’ interpretations.
As has been pointed out by several scholars (as seen in the previous
chapter), the astrological character of Saturn in the Middle Ages was
a composite one, reflecting different, sometimes even conflicting,
traditions. On the one hand, there was the ambivalent nature of Kronos
in Greek mythology; on the other, there was the more positive nature of
Saturn in Roman lore. In any case, the complex figure emerging from this
synthesis was cloaked in the negative characteristic of the melancholic.11
This earlier Saturn was designated over the Golden Age and the Islands
of the Happy. Saturn is also the paramount planet of the solitary and
numerous spiritual qualities are enumerated as falling under its aegis,
not to mention some fairly unpleasant occupations, as we saw in chapter
1. This is not the place to address the rich literature concerning this quite
complex planet about the ‘influences’ that have been attributed to it. Let
me just note some basic facts that are pertinent to the point I would like
to make.
S a tu rn ’s Jews

In ancient texts, and much more in the Middle Ages, the nexus
between Jews and Saturn was suggested on the grounds that this planet
dominates the seventh day, which was conceived of as a time that was holy
to the Jews.12 This is the reason why this planet has been designated in
Hebrew as Sabbatai, a derivative noun of the name Sabbath, the Hebrew
term for Saturday. In the Middle Ages, this nexus reverberates in many
texts, most of them of an astrological nature. So, for example, Abraham
ibn Ezra, one of the most influential Jewish medieval thinkers, is quoted
(see chapter 1) as maintaining that ‘from the nations, Sabbatai has,
[under his aegis are], the Jews’.13 I would like to emphasize that in the
few cases of astrological discussions where Sabbatai is mentioned by
Jewish authors before the impact of Arabic astrology is discernible, all
the descriptions of Saturn are negative. Positive qualities may be added
to the negative ones only after the twelfth century, and it seems to me
that only this positive addition may explain the subsequent developments
in Judaism insofar as messianism is concerned. Of special importance
in this context is Abraham bar Hiyya’s historical astrology, which adopts
Abu Ma‘ashar s theory about the ‘Great Conjunction’ and the changes in
religion both in the past and in the future.14
Towards the end of the thirteenth century, Abraham ben Samuel
Abulafia, the founder of ecstatic Kabbalah and someone who believed he
was a prophet and a Messiah (and acted accordingly), writes about Saturn
in a passage different from the one analysed in the first chapter:

The Land of Israel is higher than all the lands ... the known land,
whose sign is one thousand two hundred and ninety, and this is
the Land of Israel , which was the land of Cana‘an ... And it is
known that among the stars, the power of Sabbatai corresponds to
it15 because it [Saturn] is the highest among its companions, and
behold, the supernal entity appointed upon another supernal
entity, and the nation of Israel is superior to all the nations, ‘for
there is one on high who watches over him that is high, and that
there are yet higher ones’.16 And the high is the dust17 of the
Land of Israel, and higher than it, which is appointed on it, is
Sabbatai, and Israel are higher than them.18

Unfortunately, Abulafia did not elaborate upon the significance of the

relation between Israel and Saturn, the former being conceived of as
superior to the latter. This is an unusual hierarchy, as the much more
common assumption is that Saturn is presiding over the nation of Israel.
I have no good explanation for Abulafia’s passage, but in any case, the
nexus between the two entities is quite explicit. For this kabbalist, the
 From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi.

nexus Sabbatai-Israel-Land of Israel, as well as the heptads, constitutes

what may be called the positive conceptual structure related to this planet
since only a relatively insignificant negative aspect is associated with Saturn.
But what seems to be important for our discussion is the fact that the term
Eretz, mentioned in the extract above, has been interpreted in our context
as indicating the year 1290 as the date of redemption: the consonant
’Aleph stands for a thousand; the consonant Reish for two hundred; and
finally Tzade for ninety. Abulafia changed the reference to a place, the
Promised Land, into a hint at a special time, that of redemption. Thus,
at least implicitly (below, in another passage from this book, we shall see
this stated in a rather more explicit manner), Saturn/Sabbatai is related
to redemption, a fact that is even more remarkable if we remember that
Abulafia considered himself to be a Messiah.
However, what is much more important and widespread is the
existence of the concept that the greatest conjunction between Saturn
and Jupiter, the so-called conjunctio maxima, in Hebrew ha-dibbuq ha-gadol,
is the moment of the emergence of new religions.19 This view had been
well known amongjewish writers since the twelfth century and sometimes
even explicitly associated with messianic expectations.20 So, for example,
in the short, widespread manuscript treatise by the mid-thirteenth-century
author Moses ben Yehudah entitled Commentary on the Hebrew Alphabet,
we see several references to Sabbatai/Saturn in quite positive terms as
designated over the Jews, as related to the letter Lamed, whose form in
Hebrew points upward to ‘divine wisdom’, namely to metaphysics, as
being connected to the revelation of the Torah, appointed upon the true
religion, and finally related to redemption.21 As to the topic that concerns
us here, redemption, let me adduce a passage from the very end of the
commentary: “all [the data] amount to five thousand and twenty years,22
and [then] the rule of Saturn23 will commence and our redemption will
be during it, with the help of God, Blessed be His Name ,24
This author is indubitably expressing a version of the positive
conceptual structure related to Saturn. His is by no means an exceptional
stand. The conjunction between the two planets was also conceived of
as indicative of the arrival of a messianic figure by a contemporary of
R. Moshe, Yehudah ben Nissim ibn Malka.2j At the close of the fifttenth
and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries we learn (from several
sources) in a text written by the famous astronomer Abraham Zacuto,
who was active in Spain and Northern Africa,26 about the importance of
the conjunctio maxima for the emergence of an important Jewish figure,
a prophet or Messiah.27 A contemporary of Abraham Zacuto, Yohanan
Alemanno, describes Saturn as appointed over the Torah of Israel, the
Temple in Jerusalem, Moses and the Hebrew language, as we have seen
S a tu rn ’s Jews

above.28 As we shall see in the next paragraph, Saturn played a more

conspicuous role in the descriptions ofjudaism at the end of the fifteenth
century in Italy.

Saturn, Binah and Messiah

In some Kabbalistic writings, the planet Saturn has been connected to the
third sejirah, Binah, whose affinity to concepts of redemption is understood
from several types of Kabbalistic source. Though the origins of this view
may be inherent in the very beginning of Kabbalah, bearing in mind the
great importance of this sejirah in the theosophy of Isaac Sagi-Nahor and
his school where it is often designated as Teshuvah, repentance or return,29
it seems that both the book of the Zohar and Joseph Gikatilla approached
the role of this sejirah in much more redemptive terms than the earlier
kabbalists. In the main part of the book of the Zohar, for example, the fifty
gates of Binah mentioned in the Talmud are described as opened by God
at the time of the Exodus from Egypt, ‘in order to take out the people of
Israel ... as will He do also in the days of the Messiah’.30 In a manner quite
similar to that of Gikatilla, the author of the Zoharic text says that this
sejirah is the source from where the redemption of Israel will come.31
However, these two forms of Kabbalah, unlike the later layers of
Zoharic literature (as seen in the previous chapter), did not introduce
the planet Saturn in their discussions of Binah. For the time being, on the
basis of the dating of the Kabbalistic books as available in scholarship, the
first instance when the third sejirah was plausibly identified with Saturn in
a clearly eschatological discussion is found in a book by Abraham Abulafia
which addresses the topics in Sefer Yetzirah, Sefer Gan Na‘ul that were
mentioned above. This does not mean that he invented it, and I assume
that he gave expression to an earlier view, but its first explicit written
articulation is found in this book, at least as far as we know for the time
being. When interpreting a verse related to David, the quintessential^
messianic figure, ‘His seed shall endure forever, and his throne shall be
like the sun before m e,’32 he writes:

Leil Shmarini33 whose secret is ‘Et Qetz,34 and by combination of

letters is haker ha-nefesh,35 ‘and His throne shall be like the sun30
before me [negdi)’37 ... The secret of Negdi is Binah,38 which
comprises Gedz39 and Deli40 which are the servants41 of the star42
Sabbatai,43 whose secret is mahshavti and everything is Binah
mahshavti, and whoever comprehends it, he has comprehended
[the meaning of] mahshavti. And see that Levanah [moon] is Ke-
Binah [like Binah]44 and also Hokhmah is KeHammah [like Hammah,
namely like sun]45 and know them and when you will understand
 From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi

them and recognize the linkage of Moladot [nativities], during

the periods of equinox and solipses,46 you will understand from
them the influx that emanates from the emanator to its recipient.
And know that the paths of the sefirof1 that I wrote to you are -
according to their secret - Binah,4S whose meaning is twelve [times
fifty five amounts to ‘the time of]49 Qetz ,50 and all is Seter.51,52

There can be doubt that for Abulafia, the terms Binah and Sabbatai/
Saturn and the secrets of redemption are related to one another. For
him, as a person who pretended to be the Messiah, redemption would
start soon after writing the book - no more than two years. In other
instances, he claimed that the time of redemption was the year 1290,
which is the fiftieth year of the new millennium according to the Jewish
calendar, while Sefer Gan N a‘ul was composed c. 1289.53 The nexus
between mahshavti, namely ‘thoughtful’, and Saturn, is well known in
astrological texts, where this planet is conceived of as appointed over ‘the
power of thought’ - koah ha-rnahashevet - according to Abraham ibn Ezra
for example, who claims that the power of foretelling the future is also
connected to this planet.54 The nexus between thought or understanding
and Saturn is, however, much older. It is implied in the alleged etymology
of Chronos/Kronos, the Greek partial correspondent of Saturn, which
has been understood as pointing to conros, plenitude, and nous, intellect,55
and the nexus between the planet and the virtus intellectiva is conspicuous
in the Middle Ages.56 This nexus is related by Abulafia to the reception
of the influx from above, apparently by the actualized human intellect.
Whether or not this reception of intellectual influx in Abulafia is related
in this specific text to the knowledge of the future, contemplation or
prophecy, as in other cases when Saturn was mentioned, is a matter of
interpretation; though from my reading of his writings this is quite a
plausible assumption.
In any case, the above passage not only deals with secrets of the
immediate future, but also interprets a biblical verse that has obvious
‘messianic’ implications. The meaning of the phrase Binah mahshavti,
apparently ‘understand my thought’, may point to plumbing the secret
of redemption found in divine thought. As in the other phrase (see n.
51), ‘Binah twelve End’ points within the term Binah to the figure 660,
the figure that in Abulafia represents the end. Moreover, the occurrence
of the discussions on Hammah and Binah may well point to the verse in
Isaiah 11.2, where the spirit of Hammah and Binah is described as dwelling
upon the messianic figure, a verse that was also exploited in quite specific
messianic terms in Joseph Ashkenazi, a contemporary of Abulafia, as we
shall see immediately below. A cautious assessment of the contents of
Saturn s Jews

the passage would therefore emphasize the eschatological dimension of

the above passage, as it deals with the ‘Time of the End’, though a more
audacious one would insist upon its messianic cargo.
Let me speculate on the significance of the term Binah: it means
understanding, and in some cases deep understanding, and it therefore
also makes sense in a non-sefirotic framework. However, an attempt
to disregard a certain type of sefirotic reading is mistaken, because
Abulafia explicitly mentions ‘the paths of the sefirof. If this is a plausible
explanation, then Binah points also to the third sejirah, and is connected
to Sabbatai. If this guess is correct, the above text represents the first
nexus between the planet Sabbatai, Binah and redemption. Whether or
not Abulafia’s text had any influence on an even much more influential
quote by Joseph Ashkenazi, to be discussed immediately below, is a
difficult question to answer, for this is an issue that cannot be decided
here.57 In any case, of outmost importance for the further history of this
interpretation of the function of the third sefirah was the reverberation
of this view in the writings of a kabbalist of Ashkenazi extraction, whose
views we saw in the first chapter.
Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi offered one of the most important
and influential descriptions of the connection between the Messiah and
the third sejirah in a passage of his Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah that was
discussed in the first chapter:

And since it is higher than all the seven planets it is appointed

upon religions [dinirn] and buildings ... And because [the planet
of Sabbatai] is appointed over the perpetuation, when it will
arrive to the ascent, it will not decline forever, as it is said that58
‘the spirit of God dwells upon him, the spirit of Hokhmah and of
Binah'. See and understand that this is the secret of ‘Mashiyah
YHWtT ... This is the reason why every ascent of Israel is but by
the means of commandments, when they draw upon themselves
the power of the Binah ... See and understand that the planet
Sabbatai has the crown of Binah.m

This passage is part of a much larger text, partially quoted and discussed
in chapter 1. In this case we have the central role of a redemptive sefirotic
power, the third sejirah of Binah, which is understood as identical with
the Messiah. In a way, the path of the commandments is conceived of as
bringing down the supernal power, which is understood as a redemptive
moment. The seven lower sefirot under Binah are presided over by the
power that is related to religions, as we find in many sources in the
context of Saturn when in conjunction with Jupiter, as appointed upon
 From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi 57

changes in matters of religion. From this point of view prophecy and

Messianism are understood to be related to a change in religion, just as
Binah is related to changes in the seven lower sefirot that are explicitly
related to the commandments, namely the specific regulations of a
certain religion. Implied here, and less clear, is the fact that in a certain
cosmic cycle dominated by one of the lower sefirot, those specific precepts
are imperatives, but this changes when the religion change, under the
impact of the Binah.
Unlike Abulafia, however, who did not connect Sabbatai to the
human Messiah but to redemption in more general terms, Joseph ben
Shalom Ashkenazi did so rather explicitly, and his mention of the “secret
of Mashiyah YHWFT represents the most positive description of the planet
in Hebrew literature from the Middle Ages. Thus, we have three different
forms of redemptive entity mentioned here: Binah, a divine (feminine)
power, which is regarded as presiding over the seven lower sefirot, which
return cyclically to it as the source from which they emanated, since she
emanates in each cycle of fifty thousand years, the cosmic Jubilee or what
is called the m acrochronoi - the seven lower sefirot, then the planetary
entity, Saturn, which operates in corporeal events, following the same
macrochronic rhythm as Binah; and finally, what is called the Messiah
of God, which I read as a human entity, who is active basically on the
national level as a redeemer.
This reading of the passage assumes a hierarchy, which starts with
the divine and descends, reaching the level of the human saviour. We
may assume that the two lower levels depend upon the higher one,
and indeed Saturn is subordinated, via the first letters of the name of
forty-two, to the sefirotic level, which impacts on wisdom. This is also
the case insofar as the Messiah is concerned, as the resort to the verse
that describes the descent of wisdom implies. This hierarchy, which also
assumes a descent and also, according to the last part of the quotation,
some form of ascent, is very important in the Kabbalistic worldview
of Joseph Ashkenazi, who emphasizes the ascent/descent motions by
resorting to a recurring expression that he presumably invented, Din
Benei Halof, ‘the law or rule of the changing entities, either by ascent or
descent on the great Chain of Being, transforming themselves as part of
these processes’.
As formulated explicitly, not only does Binah emanate upon the lower
worlds, but Saturn also does, as the assumption that it impacts upon
the demons appointed over people’s limbs shows. This strongly unified
universe, built on strict correspondences between different levels on the
one hand, and on strong interactions between them and changes they
undergo on the other, is characteristic of Ashkenazi s commentary.
S a tu rn ’s Jews

Let me reflect on this crucial statement related to the Messiah of

God. In principle, one may regard this term as related to either the
sefirah or the planet. As we shall see below, such a reading is non-existent
in Kabbalah. However, my assumption, as formulated above, is that we
may better understand it in this context as also referring to the human
Messiah, since it occurs in a context concerning the things that Saturn
is appointed over. Ashkenazi mentions the affinity between things that
alternate as related to the planet, like boats, which go and return.
However, given the fact that the planet is also appointed over inertia, the
time of redemption will be long-lasting. Indeed, within the framework of
the cosmic cycles known as Shemittot and Yovelin, the problem of national
redemption related to the human Messiah is quite obvious: each cosmic
cycle of seven thousand years has its moment of redemption, but it is not
going to remain forever since the sum of corporeal reality, terrestrial and
astral, as well as the seven lower sejirot, will be absorbed within the sefirah
of Binah. Though an ascent to what may be called the Great Mother, this
event is, at the same time, also a period of destruction, which may last
for a millennium, before the lower sejirot will emanate again, and then
the cosmological process will be restarted, with a new world, religion and
commandments. The precarious status of the historical/national Messiah
is evident when the scope of religion is extended to cosmic cycles in such a
broad manner. This is the reason for the succinct reference to the Messiah
when understood in national terms. National redemption, though not
neutralized, is nevertheless marginalized. However, according to such
logic, the Messiah is not a unique personality, whose advent means a
final redemption, butjust one such occurrence, which will recur in other
cosmic cycles.
However, the manner in which Joseph Ashkenazi formulated his
thought is rather ambiguous, since it allows for an understanding of
the term ‘Messiah’, and ‘Israel’, on more than one ontological level,
conceived of as parallel. This is the reason why it is unnecessary to
determine in a conclusive manner that terms such as ‘Messiah’ or
‘Israel’ refer to either the supernal sefirotic level or to the mundane
one. In principle, according to the law of BeneiHalof they may function
on both.
Let me now turn to the repercussion of this view of the supernal
redemptive power as a sefirah in less famous writings. The first of these
is authored by the very eclectic Spanish kabbalist David ben Yehudah
he-Hasid, whose Kabbalah is haunted by a variety of Kabbalistic ideas, of
which a few are also present in Joseph Ashkenazi’s though. This is not an
example of copying from his writings, though David does do so in many
other cases, drawing from a variety of Kabbalistic sources. One of the
 bw m Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi

most explicit descriptions of the Messiah as symbolic of the third sefirah

argues:

The King Messiah is the secret of Binak, and when the time
for the Redemption of Israel will arrive, the Holy One, Blessed
be He, who is A [eter]- ‘E [ lyon] will cause him to smell all those
fine smells and perfumes ... that attribute called Messiah as it is
written60 ‘and the spirit of Elohim is hovering over the face of the
water this is the spirit of the Messiah ... Then, the Binah which
is Messiah, judges the poor in a right manner, namely Knesset
Yisrael, because she arouses stern judgement and justice onto the
nations of the world.61

The mythology of redemption is construed here in terms of an emanative

drama in the higher realm of the first group of three sefirot; the first sefirah
arouses the third one by means of smells and perfumes, symbols of the
divine influx. Then, by this arousal, and apparently this power received
from the higher realms, the third sefirah distributes its influx onto the last
sefirah, symbolized by the Knesset Yisrael, the ‘Assembly of Israel’, while
preserving that influx from the demonic powers, symbolized by the nations.
This description is characteristic of a whole series of symbolic readings
of the meaning of redemption: this is not an extraordinary moment, a
rupture with the past or an upheaval. In fact, it is simply conceived of
as the distribution of the divine forces from the first to the last sefirah.
The Messiah as a supernal entity is an agent active in differentiating the
distribution of influx, which is perceived of as descending from the first
sefirah. The apocalyptic judgement which takes place in history is only
implicitly referred to - not negated but also not explicated. What is more
important for this kabbalist is an understanding of the supernal, divine
processes rather than lower history. However, while Ashkenazi’s thought
is theo-astrological and refers to the human Messiah, David ben Yehudah
he-Hasid’s approach is not, and the name of Saturn is absent in this work
as well as in other Kabbalistic books by him. This fact complicates the
assumption that he was influenced by Ashkenazi’s thought.
The anonymous Sefer ha-Temunah, a mid-fourteenth-century Kabbalist
classic most probably written in the Byzantine Empire,62 also envisions
a link between the third sefirah and the Messiah, apparently under the
influence of the views surveyed above:

‘The Son of David will not come until the souls will be exhausted
from the Body’63 and then the supernal and lower redemptions
will be united to the supernal light ... because everything will
S a tu rn ’s Jews

return to the first redeemer, who has safely redeemed everything,

and ‘that who has been sold, will be redeemed and he will be free
at the Jubilee’64 which are the days of the ‘Supernal Messiah’.65

From the context, as well from some parallels found in the writings of
Joseph Gikatilla on terms pointing to redemption66 and in earlier writers,
it stands to reason that the first redeemer, who is identical to the ‘supernal
Messiah’, referred to the third sefirah, which is conceived of as pointing to
both the redemption of the higher entities, namely the last seven sefirot,
and the lower, mundane world. Redemption here stands not for national
or individual salvation but for a cosmic process, which involves both the
corporeal and the spiritual components of reality. This is a deterministic
process, deeply influenced by astrological concepts, which resorts to
eschatological concepts in order to make its points in more traditional
terms. Thus, we find in the emphasis on the redemptive nature of the
third sejirah, designated as the Redeemer and higher Messiah, a clear
tendency to depict the return of the emanative process to the source, a
restoration of the primordial, a circular concept of what I propose to call
a ‘cosmic macrochronos’, and not a historical rectilinear vision of history
which ends, or culminates in, the messianic era.67
However, the most important repercussion of the views from the
circle of Joseph Ashkenazi is to be found in the late-fourteenth or early-
fifteenth-century anonymous Sefer ha-Peliy’ah. This vast compilation
of various Kabbalistic sources, which includes excerpts from Joseph
Ashkenazi and Abraham Abulafia’s writings, was composed within the
realms of the Byzantine Empire. The author was also well acquainted
with the literature of the circle of Sefer ha-Temunah, which means all the
important Kabbalistic sources where Sabbatai/Saturn plays an important
role. However, as we shall see in the Appendix, the compilator also
added the phrase ‘planet Sabbatai’, which occurs another three times
in sources where it was mentioned only twice, as well as once more
immediately afterwards. The very fact that the anonymous kabbalist
brought together all these Kabbalistic sources in one book is in itself a
significant development, since any reader of Kabbalistic literature who
was interested in topics related to Saturn could now find them together
in clear eschatological contexts. The anonymous Byzantine kabbalist also
includes the passage from Joseph Ashkenazi’s Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah
quoted above, which he reshaped as if it is part of a conversation between
two ancient sages:

He said: ‘Our Master, tell us why Sabbatai is the planet of

destruction, and it is nevertheless informed by the wisdom
 From Sa tu rn to Sabbatai Tzevi

of [the name] 'ABG ITTz? He told him: ‘Despite the fact

that Sabbatai is the power of destruction, by the [dint of the]
Shemittot, it possesses the power of Harnmah, and the reason it is
appointed over destruction is that it is not concerned with any
corporeal issues, and this is the reason why it destroys them and
does not mind them, neither their adornments, but is concerned
with the separated intelligences, that are the sefirot, and the
comprehension of God, blessed be He ... and from the power of
Saturn ... the power of prophecy.68

As formulated in Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah, this passage should be understood as

the continuation of the school of the kabbalists mentioned above, which
means that the Messiah was again understood as connected to the third
sefirah, as we learn from the occurrence of the term Binah, the mentions
of the Shemittot and the heptad, which are related to the third sefirah, as
seen above. However, what is especially significant in this latter text is
the recurrence of the name of the planet Sabbatai, which corresponds
to the well-known Latin deity and to the planet Saturn, more than in the
original passage of Joseph Ashkenazi, as we shall see in the Appendix.
Here the theo-astrological moment that is seminal for my discussions
below is preserved intact.
The ambiguity of the qualities related to this planet is well known
to scholars, as has been thrown so well into relief in the monograph
by Klibansky, Panovsky and Saxl (1989), and it reflects a combination
of much older and independent traditions, psychological, mythical and
astrological. I prefer not to elaborate on this issue here. In any case,
in numerous astrological texts, the planet Saturn has been attributed
with both the quality of presiding over wisdom (as understood by a
number of authors and artists, especially since the Renaissance) and of
being the source of genius, but at the same time with being the celestial
power responsible for destruction, for the passive, for fools and for
those of a melancholic temperament. I do not see these contradictory
qualities as part of an original conceptual structure whose inner logic
should be explored in depth, but as the result of a contiguous process
of combination. This is the reason why I refrain from attempting
to speculate about the possible deeper structure of the discourse of
the kabbalists mentioned above, since they reflect earlier, sometimes
randomly assembled, astrological traditions. The speculation of James
Hillman, in his essay ‘Senex and Puer', following the erudite study of the
Warburgians’ Saturn and Melancholy, in the vein of Jung s psychology of
the archetype, is groundless; there is no ‘puer’ in the texts to which he
refers. Taking into account this weakness, he claims that the image of the
S a tu rn ’s Jew s

positive and negative senex subsumed an earlier puer/senex archetype.

This refusal to engage with the issue of the positive qualities reflects an
original pattern that is important for my study here, since the assumption
that the opposites should be understood together is, in my opinion, highly
problematic. This is the reason why I assume that the Messiah should not
be understood as embodying the opposite features of both wise man and
fool. I assume that the phenomenon of the Messiah is part of the positive
conceptual structure and should not collide with the negative conceptual
structure, even when they occur together, if there is no specific indication
for such a ‘symphisical’ reading articulated by the author.
The awareness of the nexus between Sabbatai and Saturn is already
to be found in the extremely influential book by the sixteenth-century
Christian kabbalist, Francesco Giorgio of Venice, De Harmonia Mundi, I, 4,
4 -5 .69 The impact of Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi’s passage is formative
on the passage by Abraham Yagel, adduced in chapter 1, where the latter
wrote that:

You should know that Capricorn and Aquarius are the

constellations of Israel;70 their planet is Saturn, since these
constellations are its [Saturn’s] houses, as [Abraham] ibn Ezra
explains in Sefer ha-‘Atzamim,n and Abraham ben David in his
commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah. Because of these constellations,
they [the Jews] are liable to plunder and destruction, to toil and
to burden, like those of our ancestors in Egypt. None of the
heavenly hosts are as devastating as these two in summoning evil
and suffering to this world.72

However, the sinister plight of the Jews in the present would find
compensation in their success in the future. Speaking of the six lower
planets, Yagel wrote that ‘all of them will give strength to Saturn, although
the later will not give strength to any of them’.73 And, according to an
Indian sage, he says:

Since Saturn signifies the Jews, all the Gentiles will acknowledge
their Torah and bow down to them while they [the Jews] will not
acknowledge them [the Gentiles], as the prophet stated:74 ‘For
then I will make the peoples a pure speech so that they all will
invoke the Lord by nam e.’75

These two quotations address the two extremes in the situation of the
Jews. Their subordination and humiliation in the present is reminiscent
of the negative qualities of the Greek god Kronos, while the promise
 From Sa tu rn to Sabbatai Tzevi

of the future, very reminiscent, as we shall see in a moment, of the

messianic age, seems to reflect more the character of Saturnus, the Latin
god before he was conflated with the Greek one. Like Joseph Ashkenazi,
in his Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, or Alemanno’s passages, here we also have the
combination of positive and negative qualities, of despair and hope.
Indeed, the last passage presages a much more articulate discussion
that follows it, in which the ascent of the planet Saturn is described in
conspicuous utopian terms. No less than the great philosopher Aristotle
- in fact a pseudo-Aristotelian source circulated in the Middle Ages76 -
has been adduced from something written by the famous Jewish thinker
Joseph Albo, to the effect that in the golden future ‘everyone will accept
Israel’s Torah’.77
After invoking the authority of the Indian astrologer and that of the
great Greek philosopher, Yagel approaches the opinion of the kabbalists.
He formulates his view, on the basis of ideas already presented above,
that:

Binah, the supernal mother, nourishes these constellations and

their planets. In the language of the rabbis she is called ‘the
constellation of Israel’ and also ‘repentance’, by which all repent.
[She also is called] ‘J ubilee’, and through [her power] the slaves
were liberated and Israel [came] forth from Egypt.78

It is after this passage that Yagel introduces a lengthy verbatim citation

from Joseph Ashkenazi’s Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, part of it quoted
above. Thus, the astrological view related to the messianic character
of Saturn and the higher power that rules over it, the third sefirah, are
in alignment with different eschatological views and some messianic
verses and Talmudic discussions.79 However, interesting as Yagel’s views
may be in themselves, they remain on the sidelines of Jewish culture.
Nevertheless, the fact that a similar view was expressed by an older
contemporary of Yagel, the Christian kabbalist Francesco Giorgio Veneto,
who speaks about the nexus between Sabbatai, Saturn and Binah in his
very influential book De Harmonia Mundi, seems to be quite significant
since it assumes that there is a Saturnian religion, conceived in quite
a positive conceptual structure.80 It points to the impact of Kabbalah
on the cultural mood in Italy, and to a certain extent in Europe - as is
demonstrated by the French translation and the printing of the book in
Paris in 1556. However, I assume that an inverse statement might also be
correct, namely that the strong Renaissance culture would have had an
impact on some Jewish audiences in Italy at the close of the sixteenth
century and later, including some of the kabbalists.
S a tu rn ’s Jew s

Finally, a renowned Lurianic kabbalist, who flourished in the mid

seventeenth century, Nathan Neta Shapira of Jerusalem, has attributed
a commentary on Sefer Yetzirah to a medieval author, Rav Hai Gaon,
otherwise unknown, except in pseudo-epigraphic sources, where it is said
that: ‘Israel’s sign of the zodiac is Deli [Aquarius], and the planet of Israel
is Sabbatai, and if Israel will join to them it will amount [by acronym] to
ShaDaY, Sabbatai, Deli, Yisrael ... and the brethren will come, which are
the ten tribes.’81
This mention of the ten tribes, described in that context as coming to
the Land of Israel, is indubitably adding the eschatological touch to the
nexus between Sabbatai, Israel and Aquarius, and when united they are
described as forming the divine name Shadday, one of the divine names
often used by Sabbatai Tzevi, the famous Messiah, in his speculations
about his own special status, and its plene spelling as identical in gematria
to his name.

Sabbatai Tzevi and Saturn

Sabbatai Tzevi, the most famous and for some Jews also the most notorious
of the Jewish messiahs, was called by the name Sabbatai, like some other
Jewish infants, because he was bom on the day of the Sabbath. This is
an ancient custom, which does not have any eschatological meaning in
itself. Nevertheless, this means that a certain affinity between his proper
name and a fact that may be interpreted in an astrological manner has
been present in potentia from the very moment of his birth. What seems
to be much more pertinent, however, is the fact that in his youth he had
been a student of Sefer ha-Peliy’ah and, as Scholem has pointed out, he was
influenced by it. Three passages from this book, analysed above - two from
Abulafia and the third from Joseph Ashkenazi - were quoted in this large
compendium of early Kabbalah, all of them anonymously. The fact that the
three main passages on the planet Saturn/Sabbatai found in this book have
eschatological and messianic implications, and the more general impact of
Sefer ha-Temunah’s kabbalistic worldview, could not, in my opinion, escape
the attention of a careful reader. Indeed, a Sabbatean ideologue has quoted
Joseph Ashkenazi’s passage from Sefer ha-Peliy’ah framed as follows:

These are the words of Metatron to the holy Qanah called Sefer
ha-Peliy’ah who is a wondrous man and it is found in our hands
in a manuscript, and his words were copied by Rabad [Joseph
Ashkenazi’s] in his Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah ... and these are the
words of Metatron to the holy Qanah, and these are his [ Qanah’s]
words.82
 From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi

Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, in which the student of Nathan of Gaza is quoted, is

attributed in the book itself to a second-century Tannaitic figure, a revered
mystic named Nehuniah ben ha-Qanah, who is described as engaging in
various mystical dialogues with Metatron, the highest of the angels. In
fact, Nathan was convinced that it was the medieval kabbalist who was
quoted from the ‘ancient’ Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah, and not vice versa, but this
minor historical error does not affect his conviction. Both the occurrence
of the name of this mystic and the fact that this book is conceived of as
being revealed from above were bound to bolster the authority of the
affinity between Sabbatai/Saturn and the Messiah. Actually the name of
the planet, as linked to the quotation above is Sabbatai, but at the same
time it ‘is the secret of the Mashyiah YHWH’, and in Hebrew identical with
the proper name of Sabbatai Tzevi.
This may be much more than sheer coincidence. Sabbatai Tzevi
studied this book in his youth and might well have been influenced by
this passage. In any case, his prophet used it explicitly to prove Tzevi’s
messianism. I am inclined to attribute to this passage, which has also
left other conspicuous traces in Sabbatean literature,83 a much greater
role than a belated and retrospective proof text. I assume that Tzevi
conceived of himself as Messiah, at least in part because of the content
of the passage that has just been cited, in which the planet Saturn, alias
Sabbatai, was described as the ‘secret of the Messiah’. The manner of
reference is rather ambiguous because it is not altogether clear whether
the reference to Sabbatai is to a planet or to a human individual. Thus,
someone could plausibly enough understand the passage to refer to the
expected Messiah who is conceived of as being related to Sabbatai, or
understand it to mean that he is called Sabbatai. If this hypothesis is
correct, then the late thirteenth-century Kabbalah of the circle of Joseph
Ashkenazi might have contributed more to Tzevi s self-consciousness
as Messiah than anything in the Lurianic Kabbalah could possibly have
done.84 Attempts to restrict the impact of Ashkenazi’s Commentary on Sefer
Yetzirah to Nathan, and diminish its influence on Sabbatai Tzevi, seem
rather bizarre to this writer, since the latter was described as studying the
book, not the former.
Here, let me adduce some significant instances of the possible
contribution of what may be called the Saturn clue to the understanding
of an important passage authored by Nathan of Gaza. In one of his famous
epistles, he mentions that faith in Sabbatai Tzevi, accepted by those who
believed in him will ensure the reception of:

‘the inheritance of the Lord’85 which is the mystery of the Jubilee

Year that will become manifest at this time and the rest , which is
S a tu rn ’s Jew s

the mystery of the manifestation of ‘Attiqa' Qaddisha’, within the

configuration of Ze‘ir ’Anppin, in the year 1670.86

Two different topics are explicated in this passage. Let me start with the
most obvious one: in 1670 a high revelation is to take place, when the
highest divine hypostasis, ‘Attiqa’ Qaddisha’, will illuminate the lower
configuration within the intra-divine world.87 Then those who merit it
will gain ‘rest’, menuhah. Though ‘rest’ is explicitly related to redemption,
it must also have something to do with the concept of the Sabbath. This
redemptive significance is hinted at by the term secret’. However, an
earlier phase of the salvific drama is already emerging ‘in this time’,
referred to by the secret of the Jubilee’. I assume that this secret
designates a lower form of deliverance - but one already present in 1665.
However, what is the theosophical significance of this present
mystery of the Jubilee? In almost unanimous agreement on Kabbalistic
symbolism, and on the basis of the above discussions, the Jubilee is a
symbol of the third sejirah. This symbolism points to the current presiding
power, namely the sejirah of Binah. This distinction between the two
phases was overlooked in Scholem’s analysis; nevertheless he did quite
correctly point out the salvific meaning of Binah in this context. However,
he did not pay attention to its possible implications, leaving the reader
with the feeling that one global redemptive event is mentioned here.88
However, in one of the later sentences of the same epistle, describing
future events of the next seven years, Nathan wrote explicitly that the
miracles mentioned in the book of the Zohar would take place until:

the year of the next Shemittah89 And in the seventh [year] ben
David will come90 and in the seventh year is Sabbath, which is
the King Sabbatai, and at that time the abovementioned rabbi,
[namely Sabbatai Tzevi] will come from the river of Sambatiyon
together with his spouse, the daughter of Moses, our master.91

The emphasis on the seventh is obvious; it is quite reminiscent of the

secret of the Jubilee and, at the same time, of the description cited above
from Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah, where Sabbatai/Saturn was described as connected
to ‘the secret of Shemittot’. However, even more explicit is the mention of
King Sabbatai in the last passage quoted. The reign of this king should
not, in my opinion, be confused with that of Tzevi himself, because
immediately after mentioning Sabbatai/Saturn, Nathan introduces the
‘Rabbi’, namely Tzevi himself - thus preventing a possible confusion
between the two. In other words, from this passage we can discern that the
importance of the reign of Sabbatai-Saturn, which is indeed the seventh
 From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi

planet, as part of the redemptive drama, was utilized beyond the direct
quotation of the thirteenth and fourteenth-century Kabbalistic writings
that served as possible sources of inspiration.
We may assume that, while studying Sefer ha-Peliy 'ah in his youth, Tzevi
was attracted by the text cited above and may have been influenced by the
nexus between Sabbatai, namely the planet Saturn (but also his proper
name), and the Messiah and thus led to a sense of his own connection to
the concept of Messiah. His vision was passed on to Nathan, his prophet,
who integrated both the man and the planet in the same discussion, as
both have the same name. Provided that all these suppositions are correct,
we are presented with an interesting example of how the contents of some
Kabbalistic books may have infused their ideas in certain personalities,
and may perhaps have constituted the starting point for far-reaching
personal developments, even more than historical events.
Indeed, on the basis of the texts above, it would be plausible to suggest
another clue to the inner spiritual life of Tzevi. Gershom Scholem has
proposed a diagnosis of mental illness that may explain Tzevi’s emotional
up and downs: manic depression,92 or what in present-day parlance is
known as bipolar personality disorder. It is not my aim here, or in general,
to dispute the accuracy of this modern diagnosis of the mental malady of
a patient who died a few centuries ago. It will be sufficient to mention
here the possibility that, due to the Kabbalistic passage triggering a
personal affinity to Binah and Saturn, Tzevi also internalized the peculiar
emotional characteristic connected to this planet: marah shehorah, ‘black
humour’ or “melancholy’. Indeed, Scholem, following the Hebrew
sources, refers to Tzevi’s melancholy on several occasions. The resort
to traditional terminology helps us to discern the existence of a wider
context. As is better understood today, since the Renaissance, more and
more historical personalities born under the aegis of Saturn have been
haunted by the idea of having a troubled fate.931 hope that this clue will
help to give a better understanding of various facets of Tzevi’s behaviour,
but the psychological aspects of absorbing the melancholic side of Saturn
are an issue that still awaits fuller discussion. Here I am concerned
with the more explicit material that sustains, in my opinion in a clearer
manner, the astrological dimensions of the Sabbatean movement.
In addition to the possible contamination of the young Tzevi by
ideas concerning Sabbatai-Saturn as related to a future Messiah,
from the point of view of our discussion here it would be pertinent to
examine one major issue related to the status of the myth: the deity
Saturn m etamorphosed into a planet. Despite the astral role of Saturn,
some qualities of the ancient Graeco-Latin god remained alive. As
pointed out by Seznec, astral concepts in the Middle Ages bore mythical
Saturn's Jews

concepts concerning the ancient gods.94 Is it at all possible that we will

discover an even greater revival of this ancient myth in Tzevi’s thought
and self-perception? Or, to pose the question even more bluntly: would
Sabbatai conceive of himself not only as a Messiah, perhaps a person
ruled by the highest planet or by the third sefirah, but also as someone
who would achieve, at least for a while, divine status - through some
experience of apotheosis or theosis?
In a fairly explicit passage, the ascent of Tzevi to the sefirah of Binah
(a sefirah related in many texts to Saturn as has been demonstrated
above) is quite conspicuous. In what is called the Yemenite Sabbatean
apocalypse, which is a fragment from a lost treatise stemming from a
rather early period of the Sabbatean movement, the Messiah is described
as ascending from ‘one degree to another, [all] the degrees of the seven
sefirot from Gedullah to Malkhut... after two years he ascends to the degree
that his mother is there’.95 Gershom Scholem correctly interpreted this
text as pointing to the third sefirah, which is commonly symbolized in
the theosophical Kabbalah by the symbol of the Great Mother, and he
even proposed, on the basis of this passage, the presupposition of a
mystical event occurring in the spiritual life of Tzevi in 1650. Moreover,
Scholem correctly intuited that the meaning of this attainment would be
an understanding of the ‘secret of divinity’.96 However, what Scholem did
not specify or even conjecture was the possible nature of that ‘secret of
the divinity’.
On the basis of these extracts and some others dealt with above, I
suggest that this secret was not only understood by reaching the third
sefirah, but may indeed be the very secret of the divinity itself, namely the
most intimate secret of Sabbatean theology as proposed by Tzevi himself.
This would invite a more detailed investigation, which may find that the
Sabbatean secret of the divinity changed as it developed in relation to
the vector of time and the ontic hierarchy of the sefirot, meaning that the
closer the messianic drama comes to the final stage, the higher the divine
power that is appointed upon or related to Sabbatai, which ultimately
constitutes the ‘secret of divinity’. In any case, elsewhere in the same
epistle, the nest of the bird, the mystical place of the Messiah according
to the book of the Zohar, is described as none other than the third
sefirah. Thus, the return to the third sefirah, understood in many texts
as redemption, in the symbolism dominant in the Yemenite Sabbatean
Apocalypse, is tantamount to a return to the bosom of the Mother, as part
of some form of what Erich Neuman called uroboric mysticism.97
However, whatever the details of Sabbatai’s own ‘secret of divinity’
might have been, and this secret is far from being clear, the apotheosis
described in the above text presupposes a conception that the Messiah,
 From Sa tu rn to Sabbatai Tzevi

ascending to the third sejirah, has been turned into a divine power in one
way or another. Of the many discussions dealing with the nexus between
Messiah and Binah, it is only the Messiah named Sabbatai to whom this
specific form of apotheosis is attributed; none of the others mention the
ascent of a historical Messiah to that sefirah?* Unlike Marsilio Ficino,
Girolamo Cardano or (to a certain extent) Robert Burton, among many
others whose mood has been profoundly affected by their belief that they
were born under Saturn," Sabbatai Tzevi attempted, or has at least been
portrayed as attempting, to ascend to the celestial source presiding over
his character.
Much as King Solomon was turned into a divinity in a fourteenth-
century Kabbalistic text by Isaac of A cre,100 the divinization of the Messiah
in Sabbateanism restores the mythical traits of some Greek themes lost
over the centuries. It is a plausible assumption that the seventeenth-
century Messiah, or the authors who invented the passage cited above,
did not know about the original Greek mythological material about
Saturn, and I very much doubt that Sabbatai Tzevi intended to restore
the status of Saturn as the father of the gods. However, what does seem
pertinent to our discussion is that using the hermeneutical apparatus of
the median line of the divine powers some vestiges of ancient myths were
given a certain dramatic colouring that made it appear as if they were
closer to the ancient sources than the medieval versions of these myths.

Saturn, Forbidden Sexual Relations and Sabbateanism

According to some accounts, Sabbatai Tzevi, and Sabbateanism in

a broader sense, has been accused of indulging in sexual relations
prohibited by Jewish laws.101 This is conceived of as a major breach in
Judaism and is perhaps the most controversial aspect of Sabbateanism and
its offspring, Frankism. To the best of my knowledge, no serious attempt
has been made to explain this drastic development in terms related to
astrology and more specifically to Saturnian features. However, such an
explanation, even if it is only partial, seems fairly pertinent to m e.102 It
should be noted that here I am referring to discussions found in a variety
of texts, but not reverberated in Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah. This would imply that
Tzevi was also acquainted with additional sources concerning Saturn.
As far back as in Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos we read about the different
aspects of people connected with Saturn when it is in alignment with
Venus:

Saturn makes men averse to women and renders them fond of

governing, prone to solitude ... indifferent to beauty ... but if
he be thus conciliated, and not posited in glory, he makes men
Saturn 5 Jew s

licentious and libidinous, practitioners of lewdness, careless, and

impure in sexual intercourse, obscene, treacherous to women,
especially of their families, wanton ... adulterous and impious.103

Here we have an interesting example of complexity, in which Saturn’s

impact is different in accordance with whether it is in the ascendant or not
- in this case, indifferent towards women or prone to lewd sexuality, a topic
that is characteristic of Sabbatai Tzevi. As stated above,104 Ptolemy’s book
was well known in Jewish circles, especially among the followers of Abraham
ibn Ezra. In some of their writings we find the assumption that incestuous
relations are forbidden in the Land of Israel, since it is governed by Saturn,
which is understood as a cold and frigid planet. Though this theory may
stem from a correct implicit interpretation of ibn Ezra,105 his followers have
made it quite explicit. For example, Shlomo Gatigno writes:

One of the rationales of the ‘Arayyotis that since sexual intercourse

corresponds to the Land of Israel, since Sabbatai/Saturn rules
over it and this is the reason why Balaam advised Balaq to
abandon the daughters of Midian to them so that Israel could
prostitute with them, and because of it they will fail, since they
will act against their constellation, which is Saturn, which hates
lewdness. And because Saturn is the planet of Israel it is cold
and dry, while sexual intercourse needs warmth and humidity.
And this is the reason, in my opinion, that lighting fire during
Sabbath is prohibited ... since it corresponds to the planet of the
day that is Saturn.106

This is an application of Ptolemy’s view, as discussed above, of the Land

of Israel and of a specific form of sexual relationships - incestual ones.
According to another anonymous text copied by Yohanan Alemanno
in his Collectanea, this planet is explicitly associated with incestuous
relationships. In his compilation of excerpts and reflections on a variety
of topics, Alemanno quotes from a source (which so far I have not been
able to identify precisely) as follows:

The astrologers said that Sabbatai/Saturn, when in alignment

with Nogah/Venus, points to ugly and repulsive intercourse,
especially with relatives, like a mother, a sister or a daughter.
And despite the fact that this is true, this is the reason for the
interdiction of relatives, since Sabbatai/Saturn, on account
of being spiritual, and because its influxes are spiritual, to
whomever merited them, who are pure and holy, because of
 From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi 71

its coming close to the holy spiritual world; and its material
influxes, because of its coming close to the material world, are
inferior and repulsive. This is the reason why the nation that is
its lot should prepare itself toward to its pure influxes and keep
themselves apart from preparing itself to repulsive influxes such
as incestuous [relations], which [are related] to relatives.107

This is most probably a Jewish text, since it regards as the lot of

Saturn those who respect the interdictions of incest. It is based on the
contradictory nature of Saturn, whose influxes may be either spiritual,
when it turns to the spiritual world, or material, when it turns to the
material world. This oscillation of Saturn is quite interesting since it has
some parallels in the passages from Joseph Ashkenazi and Sefer ha-Peliy’ah
discussed in the Appendix. However, what is crucial for our discussion
here is the direct nexus between Saturn and illicit sexual relations -
incest, which in Jewish texts is called ‘Arayyot. However, this more astral
vision is not only a concern of astrological texts but is also hinted at
in a Kabbalistic theosophical passage, preserved anonymously in a later
manuscript, which expresses views found in the later Zoharic layer:

Sabbatai/Saturn is the secret of spleen108 which is permanently

immersed in sadness109 ... Idolatry, incestuous relations, and
bloodshed depend on the liver, the spleen, and black bile;
idolatry on liver, that is angry because of black bile, bloodshed
on black bile, which is called Geheinna ... and the incestuous
relationship on the spleen, which is Lilith, the mother of ‘Erev
Rav, who commits adultery against her husband and is called
incest in the Shekhinah.no

What is crucial to my point here is the relationship between Saturn, the

spleen and incestuous relations, which parallels Ptolemy’s book or the
astrological anonymous text quoted by Alemanno, which may be the
source of the Kabbalistic passage. A page later in Alemanno’s Collectanea,
he cites the following statement from Shlomo Al-Qonstantin s book Aron
ha-‘E dut,m which offers another astral constellation for sexual incestuous
relations:

Sabbatai/Saturn points to the bodies. Idolatry — from the

power of Sabbatai/Saturn. It is found that idolatry, incest and
bloodshed emanate from Sabbatai/Saturn, and from Mars and
Venus. Abraham has obliterated the incest from his son and
given it to Ishmael, Isaac obliterated bloodshed from his son
S a tu rn ’s Jew s

and gave it to Esau, Jacob obliterated idolatry from his sons

and gave it to the nations. This [was done] by Abraham with
the sacrifice of a calf, as against Venus, whose house is Taurus,
Isaac sacrificed a lamb instead of him, which is the ram that was
sacrificed in correspondence to the zodiac sign of Aries, which is
the house of Mars, and Jacob brought two kids corresponding to
Sabbatai/Saturn, whose house is Capricorn, and this is because
the quintessence of idolatry is rumination of the heart, and
Sabbatai/Saturn’s power is thought and rumination.112

The astrological explanation for incest, which was also integrated in

theosophical Kabbalah, reached the attention of Tzevi and inspired his
deviant behaviour of spending time with married women, his former
wives and virgins, a practice against rabbinic regulations. By proposing to
identify the astrological sources as one of the important springboards for
Tzevi’s deviant behaviour, I do not aim to restrict the solution of Sabbatai’s
behaviour, or its interpretation by others, to just one source. Scholem
was undoubtedly right when he pointed to another important source,
Tiqqunei Zohar, which inspired Nathan of Gaza as to the permissiveness
of incestuous relations within the divine sphere, implicitly condoning
this kind of behaviour for his Messiah.113 In fact, permissiveness of
this kind is not such a novelty in Kabbalah, as it had been part of its
development since its inception.114 In any case, it is hard to minimize the
affinity between the astrological concatenation of Saturn and lewdness
and improper sexual relationships and Sabbatai’s behaviour, which has
no antecedent in Judaism.

More on Sabbateanism and Astrology

Let me adduce some examples of an awareness of the nexus between

Sabbatai Tzevi and the planet. In an explicit statement as to the affinity
between the Messiah and the planet, written by a contemporary Rabbi of
Tzevi, who dedicated a poem to him, we read:

Come together like brethren -

all the planets, in order to praise
To Thee, the supernal Sabbatai, the head of the seven -
Greatness and dominion is appropriate.
This is why God put thou broad knowledge -
Your name was called by his name on the day of circumcision.115

I propose to interpret these verses as dealing with the Sabbatai the Messiah
in terms of the status of the first among the seven planets, namely Saturn,
 From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi 73

which also offers the reason for the name given to Sabbatai the infant at the
moment of circumcision. Again, I would like not to deduce the development
of Tzevi’s self-awareness from the reception of Sabbatai Tzevi as a planet,
but at least we may argue that the nexus between the very high status of
the planet Sabbatai and the Messiah Sabbatai could not have escaped the
notice of many of his followers, as it could not have escaped the notice of
Tzevi himself. In other words, the relatively young Tzevi, who studied a
classic of Kabbalistic literature in the specific geographical area in which he
was born, the Ottoman Empire, was shaped by a statement that connected
his proper name to the homonymous planet and the Messiah. Another
very important nexus between Sabbatai, the Messiah and the planet, in
a conspicuously astrological context, is found in a debate related to the
epistle of the Italian Rabbi Raphael Supino: ‘Even more so the fostering of
his messianism by the sages of the nations and their astrologers, as you said
that they have seen the light of the star of Saturn that shines and is brilliant,
and this is a sign of the Redemption.’116
Sabbatean propaganda had a very conspicuous astrological dimension,
and also involved non-Jews and astrologers as well as claims about the
significance of recent astronomical phenomena. Moreover, according to
another text preserved by Sasportas, Tzevi was described as transmitting
the gift of prophecy to his close friend Abraham ha-Yakhini as follows:
‘The Master [Tzevi] put upon him his spirit of prophecy. Thereupon
something resembling a brilliant star grew on his forehead - and it seems
to me that it was the planet Saturn - and it is said that he [ha-Yakhini] too
then prophesied.’117
Both the spirit of prophecy and the mention of the star - even without
the explicit nexus with Saturn - in my opinion point to Saturn, which was
linked with the faculty of prophecy. We have very reliable testimony for
an astral understanding of Tzevi emanating from the most intimate circle
of the Messiah, but independently of the testimonies of Nathan of Gaza
and his followers, who merely reiterated the views of Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah. In
other words, in circles closest to Sabbatai Tzevi, statements were made
that establish a relation between him and the planet bearing a similar
name. If this assumption is correct, we are witness to a classical situation
in which a specific type of personality interacted with pre-existent thought
forms, in this case an astrological model capable of influencing not only
an abstract messianic claim but also other aspects of his inner life and
external deeds. In any case, it is quite possible that Tzevi’s “melancholy’
is not only part of the Messiah’s personal spiritual constitution and the
result of his having read and internalized the content of the passage from
Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah, but also an aspect of the more general attitude towards
melancholy in his period.118
Saturn s Jew s

In this context, it would be important to mention additional topics,

related not to the passage by Joseph Ashkenazi and Sefer ha-Peliy’ah but
to traditions connected with Saturn and to Sabbateanism. The first is
the discussion of conjunctio maxima, an argument in all likelihood used
by propagandists of Sabbateanism, but countered by Sasportas in these
words:

Would we come to behave in accordance with their119 calculations,

they maintain that at the time of Sabbatai/Saturn found in the
zodiac sign of Scorpio, there will be an innovation of religion
[hiddush ha-dat], as it was at the time when the Israelites prepared
the [Golden] calf and when they prostrated themselves to the
image of Nebuchadnezzar. Because of their words120 would you
install his rule over the land, so that he will be the policeman and
governor, the king of Israel and their redeemer?121

This is no doubt a critical response to a claim made by Raphael Supino, on

the basis of the views of astrologers, on the renovation of religion under
the jurisdiction of Saturn. Sasportas here mentions the view that idolatry
is related to this planet, an issue that we saw above in Al-Qonstantin’s
passage as quoted by Alemanno. In this explicit astrological context, let
me adduce the view of Joseph Eskapha, Sabbatai Tzevi’s teacher in his
youth and one of the most important rabbinic authorities in Smyrna, who
excommunicated Sabbatai because he had a propensity to change the law,
declaring that ‘he [will] make a new religion’.122 This is quite an important
piece of evidence, stemming, as it does, from an early period of Tzevi’s
life, given that Eskapha died in 1661, long before the return of his former
student to Smyrna as a messiah; it may reflect a conversation with Tzevi
himself, who probably confessed to him in his youth that the Messiah
would change the law.123 This prerogative of the prophet or the Messiah is
mentioned in several discussions related to conjunctio maxima. If proven,
my conjecture would give scope to the assumption that Tzevi planned his
messianic career much earlier in his life and that it was ‘premeditated’ in
a much more careful manner than assumed by scholars, allowing theo-
astrological elements a more significant part in the development of his
thought. My assumption is that it was not only manic elation that informed
his ‘strange deeds’, as Scholem suggests, but that the existence of a more
conceptual structure also sometimes nourished them.
Let me turn to the revelation experienced by a simple man after losing
his senses at the port of Piraeus, as preserved in Sasportas’s collection of
Sabbatean material: ‘Sabbatai Tzevi, our king, our redeemer, the teacher
of justice, crowned with the supernal crown, you will rule over the entire
 From Sa tu rn to Sabbatai Tzevi 75

world, and the host of heaven, and Nathan the prophet is teaching the
redemptions of Israel.’124
I assume that the crown reflects a vestige of theosophical symbolism,
while the mention of the host of heaven points to the superiority of
Sabbatai over the celestial bodies just as Saturn is the highest planet. The
occurrence of the supernal crown is not a void epithet. In the seminal
passage by Joseph Ashkenazi, and following him in the anonymous Sefer
ha-Peliy’ah (translated in chapter 1), there is a reference to ‘the power of
the supernal Keter, i.e. the power of the crown, that is characteristic of
Ashkenazi’s style.125 In gematria the consonants of the phrase Koah Keter
‘Elyon amount to 814, like the consonants of the words Sabbatai Tzevi, and
this is indubitably one of the reasons why this phrase recurs so many times
in Sabbatean literature. The question remains as to whether this gematria
was itself part of Ashkenazi’s passage. Though he refers to gematria in his
writings, it is not clear that this is the case here. In one of the passages
by Nathan of Gaza (discussed above) the concept of ‘the King’ was
associated with Sabbatai but not necessarily with Sabbatai Tzevi. The use
of this phrase, in a passage where Sabbatai is mentioned several times, is
evidence of the fact that the passage under scrutiny here did indeed have
an impact on Sabbatean thought. It is important to note, as Scholem has
done, that Nathan applied the phrase ‘the power of the supernal Keter to
Sabbatai Tzevi himself.126 This suggests that both Nathan and I have made
the same assumption: that the Messiah pored over Joseph Ashkenazi’s
passage and used it. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that in the famous
magical book Picatrix, as well as in some other illustrations, Saturn is
described as a king who has a crown on his head.127 Thus the coronation
of Sabbatai Tzevi, as illustrated in some Hebrew books, may be better
understood if we acknowledge the possibility that this is a reiteration
of various pictorial versions of the image of Saturn as bearing a crown,
something that is widespread in many manuscripts and found to a certain
extent in the passage on Sabbatai discussed above.128
Other discussions in Sasportas that address the presence of the form
of Tzevi, or that of his name, in the seventh firmament are relevant to
the possibility that there is a connection between Sabbatai Tzevi and
the astral order.129 In Jewish texts, the seventh firmament is sometimes
related to the planet Saturn. In this context, Nathan’s statement that he
saw Sabbatai in his seminal vision as a figure ensconced in the Merkavah130
is reminiscent of the view that Sabbatai’s form is to be found in the
seventh firmament. We should mention the connection between Saturn
and snakes that is also found in Tzevi’s documents, a connection that was
already familiar from astrological texts.131
Sa tu rn s Jew s

Nathan of Gaza and Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto on Saturn and

Sabbatai Tzevi

It may be relevant both to Sabbatai Tzevi’s self-perception, and certainly

to the reception of his act of apostasy, that his conversion has been
understood by leading Sabbatean figures as being related to the planet
Saturn. Nathan of Gaza, Tzevi’s prophet, capitalizes on an interesting
discussion found in the latter layer of the Zohar, Ra‘aya’ Meheimna’,
where the negative conceptual structure is evident, in order to describe
the suffering related to this act and the ‘alien deeds’ he did or would
do.132 We may suggest that while the passages from Joseph Ashkenazi’s
Commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah/ Sefer ha-Peliy’ah were important for the
emergence of Tzevi’s self-perception as Messiah, his apostasy is more
easily explained in terms of the later layer of the Zoharic literature’s anti-
Saturnian attitude, though understood in an original manner by applying
it to the converted Messiah. It is an interesting case of turning the earlier
inversion of Judaism as Saturnism on its head.
However, more explicit than Nathan’s view, though simultaneously
rather intriguing, is a short passage by Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, known by
the acronym Ramhal (1707-46), a prolific and original kabbalist who had
messianic aspirations of his own, as reflecting a complex attitude toward
Sabbatai Tzevi:

‘And the wicked maidservant is the burial, and within her the lady
is [found] etc.’133 It seems from this passage that it is incumbent
on the Messiah - who is [found] in the secret of the Shekhinahm
- to clothe himself in the shell,135 in the secret of Sabbatai, that
is the shell of Ishm'a’el, in the secret of the diminution of the
m oon,136 as it is explained there.137

There can be no doubt that the Messiah who was entering the shell of
Ishm‘a’el and the secret of Sabbatai is no other than Sabbatai Tzevi.
Here the name Sabbatai has a double entendre, since it stands both for
the planet, which is described in the later layer of the Zohar in quite
negative terms as part of the negative conceptual structure, and for the
fallen seventeenth-century Messiah Sabbatai Tzevi, who is introduced
here by adding the topic of messianism to the Zoharic passage. Tzevi’s
controversial conversion to Islam was considered by Luzzatto and his
predecessors to be a necessary move, to find within the planet (conceived
here under the influence of the Zohar as a demonic feminine power, and
described elsewhere in the same context as Lilith) the divine presence of
the Shekhinah, which is connected to the Messiah.138
 From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi 77

In the same context, Luzzatto describes Ishnrfa’el and Esau

as corresponding to Saturn and Mars, the two negative planets
corresponding to Islam and Christianity, respectively. This entry into
the sphere of Ishm’a’el, referring in my opinion to Tzevi’s conversion
to Islam, is conceived of as less pernicious than apostasy to Christianity;
in fact, we have here an interesting example of Luzzatto’s theodicy in
relation to Tzevi’s religious conversion. Whether this entrance into the
maidservant, in other words into Saturn, also entails the consummation
of sexual relations with a Muslim woman, conceived of as a shell, namely
a demonic power, remains a theoretical question based on the available
historical material. However, it should be pointed out that Barukh of
Arezzo, an Italian kabbalist who followed Nathan of Gaza’s lead on this
important point, wrote in Tzevi’s lifetime that his apostasy was understood
in terms of such a relationship long before Luzzatto, as it was considered
comparable to the patriarchs’ relation to non-Israelite women - for
example, Abraham and Hagar, or Jacob and the daughters of Laban - who
were also compared to shells.139 Thus it seems that the mid-eighteenth-
century Italian kabbalist had been influenced by an interpretation of
Tzevi’s apostasy which had been formulated in the Ottoman Empire and
in Italy a generation before him.
In fact, the theory that the marriage of some biblical figures with
gentile women was an act of entering the powers of evil had been a
leitmotif since the late thirteenth-century Kabbalah in Castile; it has
been neglected in scholarship and I hope to explore it elsewhere.140
Thus a major argument advanced by both Nathan of Gaza and Barukh
of Arezzo —explaining the apostasy as an intentional confrontation with
evil by entering a feminine demonic power designated as Saturn —is not
necessarily a Lurianic theme, as scholars claim. Surprisingly enough, the
demonic aspects of Saturn, thrown into relief by Aby Warburg s studies,
became evident in the late layer of the Zohar but were more pronounced
in some instances in Sabbatean Kabbalah, which resort to the Zoharic
discussions as proof texts.

Some Conclusions

Let me distinguish between two main proposals advanced above as

they relate to Sabbateanism: one deals with what seems to me to be a
demonstrated claim, namely that the astrological background of the
messianic and melancholic nature of Sabbatai/Saturn was instrumental
in the reception of Sabbatai Tzevi as a melancholic messiah by people
already acquainted with the constellation of ideas related to Saturn.
Indeed, even in the criticism of the movement the astrological element
was adduced. So, for example, Isaac Cardozo, the brother of a major
Saturn ’s Jews

Sabbatean believer, Abraham Michael Cardozo, writes quite critically

about Tzevi: ‘What save sadness did Sabbatai, who was born on a funeral
day, predict? He was unfortunate in his very name, since, in the Hebrew
language, Saturn is called Sabbatai, a sad and malignant star, regarded as
a rather great misfortune by the astrologers.’141
Given the fact that both the supporters and opponen ts of Sabbateanism
introduced astrological concepts of Saturn into their discourse, as we have
seen above, there is reason to give significance to this type of speculation
in the reception and diffusion of Sabbateanism, at least in some cultural
areas in Europe. Indeed, as I have suggested elsewhere, it would be less
reasonable to look for one basic and universally valid explanation for
the emergence of Sabbateanism that allegedly unified all the Jewish
communities than to allow that there may be different explanations that
fit different communities.142 In our case, the Renaissance concern with
Saturn as the star of melancholics but also of creative geniuses may have
influenced some Jews in Italy or Western Europe, and may have had a
more minor effect on those who lived in the East.
The second proposal consists in the plausibility of the impact of
Kabbalistic discussions about Saturn, as found in Abraham Abulafia and
Joseph Ashkenazi and especially as elaborated in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, on the
emergence of Tzevi’s self-perception as the Messiah and on some of his
specific acts afterwards. So far, no attempt has been made to explain
what conceptual structure influenced the young kabbalist Sabbatai to
claim for himself the role of the Messiah. That his messianic mission
was revealed to him in a dream, or according to another version in a
revelation while roaming one night, does not explain why such a dream
or revelation occurred at all. My proposal is based upon what seems a
plausible inference and combines the undisputed testimony of Tzevi’s
early study of the book Peliy’ah with how it casts the aspects of the planet
in a positive light, one aspect being an explicit mention of the Messiah of
God as related to -fimaA/Sabbatai/Saturn. Though such an explanation
includes an imponderable factor, namely the psychological absorption
of the content of these discussions by the young Sabbatai, it seems to
me, at least for the time being, that this is the only significant proposal
that explains the emergence of the messianic consciousness in him. I
would like to emphasize that in principle one may accept the validity of
the ’reception’ theory without accepting the second proposal. However,
given the fact that Nathan of Gaza himself used imagery related to
expressions in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah to describe the Messiah as Koah Keter ‘Elyon,
such a sceptical attitude, though possible, is less plausible.
The proposals stated above are not intended substantially to
mitigate the place of Sabbatean ideology as part of the history of Jewish
 From Sa tu rn to Sabbatai Tzevi

mysticism by over-emphasizing the theo-astrological component nor

to inscribe it forcefully in the history of the reverberations of Greek or
Roman mythologies. Nevertheless, astral mythology should be taken into
serious account as it appears in Kabbalistic books. Unlike other forms of
comprehensive speculation (such the philosophical or the Kabbalistic),
the astrological approaches were much more widespread in the Middle
Ages, including in non-Jewish circles, and were an inherent component
of the beliefs of many people for long after. This deterministic worldview
was accepted by a wider segment of the general population than both
Kabbalah and philosophy, and crossed the borders of religions and
nations. It is therefore much easier to understand how specific astrological
mythologoumena were grafted onto the more generally accepted beliefs
shared by elite and popular audiences alike.
My proposals strive, nevertheless, to broaden the pertinent
contexts of the emergence of Tzevi’s self-awareness and the expansion
of Sabbateanism. In lieu of scholarly over-emphasis of the impact and
role of Lurianic Kabbalah - which was rejected, or at least neglected, by
Tzevi and only barely recognized by Nathan of Gaza in the early stages of
his activity - in order to create a unilinear explanation of the history of
Kabbalah as it allegedly culminated in Sabbateanism, I propose a picture
that is far less developmental. My approach emphasizes the importance of
several cross-currents143 and particularly the continuous importance of pre-
Lurianic forms of Kabbalah, as well as in our specific instance the continuing
relevance of fairly heterogeneous Kabbalistic elements preserved in Sefer
ha-Peliy’ah. The heterogeneity of the Kabbalistic trends represented in
this book is emblematic of the manner in which I propose to describe the
history of Kabbalah and Kabbalistic messianism in general.144 A variety of
distinct schools, in our case ecstatic Kabbalah, and strongly astrologically
oriented treatments survived mainly in manuscript (of which important
excerpts were incorporated in Kabbalistic classics), so their views were
able to inspire later forms of Jewish mysticism even after the emergence
and the canonization of later forms of Kabbalah such as the various forms
of Lurianism.
My further assumption is that astrological concepts served as a conduit
for messianic perception related to the nexus between Saturn/Sabbatai
much more than Lurianic concepts, considered by scholars to be pregnant
with acute messianic cargo, and that astrological concepts could have
prepared the ground for Sabbatean ideas and effervescence. The proper
understanding of the phenomenon of Sabbateanism as proposed above
assumes the need to transcend the often artificial distinctions between
literary genres and the literature that belongs to certain types of religion.
A reliance on the inspection of Kabbalistic literature alone in order to
Saturn s Jews

understand religious developments of a broad impact, as in Scholem’s

otherwise very impressive monograph on Sabbatai Tzevi, seems to miss
other types of sources, such as the astrological ones, which may shed a
different light on the emergence of certain moments in Sabbateanism.
The above suggestion, of viewing the emergence and diffusion of
Sabbatean messianism in broader religious and cultural contexts, may,
however, be seen as necessary in a variety of topics related to Judaism and
especially to Jewish mysticism. It is not my purpose here to give detailed
examples of the necessity of reading Jewish topics against backgrounds
of far greater scope than ordinarily imagined by scholars. However, some
suggestions, related to the direction we outlined above, may be made.
Greek mythological themes, for example, also figure large in Heikhalot
literature,145 in some views of the golem,146 some eschatological and other
Rabbalistic themes in Kabbalah, and some topics in Jewish Renaissance
mysticism.147 An overly stark, and oftentimes too artificial, separation
between the content of literatures conceived of as belonging to Jewish
mysticism and other forms of occult knowledge current in late antiquity
and the Middle Ages148 or between Kabbalah and philosophy,149 as
cultivated in the dominant scholarly forms of treating the history of this
mystical lore, has hardly helped to advance the study of the field. We shall
be returning to this issue in chapter 3.
In any case, one of the leading kabbalists of the sixteenth-century
Safed, Moshe Cordovero, offered a more complex synthesis between
Kabbalah and astro-magic than most of the other kabbalists, which was
influential in shaping some of the developments in the ensuing stages of
Jewish mysticism - and Cordovero refers to Sabbatai as a planet several
times in his writings.150 This synthesis has not been taken sufficiently into
consideration in the extant accounts of the thought of this towering
kabbalist. Only by gradually liberating the analyses of the Jewish material
from the intellectual ghettoes invented by scholars, who have portrayed
Jewish thinkers as reflecting narrow concerns dealing dominantly
with ritual or history, and by scrupulous examination of new Jewish
texts, beyond the often artificial walls of literary genres or historical
circumstances, may we open gates that have remained closed until now.151
On the other hand, the scholars’ acquaintance with various frameworks
and backgrounds of Sabbateanism is an important imperative that should
not diminish the need to master the details of earlier Jewish traditions
known and studied by the kabbalists. In the pages above, I have attempted
to bring those two requirements together. It would be more advisable to
start with the spadework before turning to larger frameworks. This means
that a scholar of Sabbateanism should carefully peruse at least the few
Kabbalistic books read by Sabbatai Tzevi himself in his formative years
 From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi

and try to assess their potential relevance to his spiritual development.152

Moreover, Tzevi should be understood as part of a wider development
of Kabbalah in the former Byzantine Empire, which differs from both
the Spanish and the Italian forms of Kabbalah, though it was deeply
influenced by them .153 These requirements will prove to be as helpful as
general considerations about the Muslim and Christian backgrounds to
his activities, topics that needless to say should not be neglected.
To sum this up, many of the important kabbalists have been concerned
with features of the planet Saturn: Abraham Abulafia, Joseph Ashkenazi,
some writers of Zoharic literature, Joseph ibn Waqar, Sefer ha-Temunah,
Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, Yohanan Alemanno, Moshe Cordovero, Nathan Neta‘
Shapira of Jerusalem, Sabbatai Tzevi and his followers, as well as, lastly,
Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto and, as we shall see below, Israel Ba‘al Shem Tov.
Their brief reflections, responses, and their more rare critiques, show
that the special nature of the planet Saturn and its possible redemptive
qualities were topics that preoccupied numerous kabbalists, different
as their approaches to this topic might be. At any event, they reflect
a specific case, part of an intellectual development that took place in
Kabbalah in the last third of the thirteenth century, when astro-magic was
adopted in a variety of Kabbalistic schools and among thinkers who were
not kabbalists, mainly in Spain, and then disseminated in other centres of
Jewish culture.154
It is this development, coupled with the resort to qualities related to
Saturn in the writings of the authors mentioned above, that contributed
to the dissemination of the interest in Saturn and related topics in wider
circles in Judaism, creating a nexus between the planet, melancholy and
Judaism, and sometimes even messianism.155 Thus, in the discussions
adduced in this chapter, we can make out an interesting addition to what
I call the constellation of messianic ideas found in medieval Judaism, and
significantly different from other messianic ideas adopted in this period.
Moreover, the coexistence of astrological themes of messianism with the
intellectual ones in Abulafia’s thought shows that it is appropriate to
speak of complex constellations of messianic ideas even in the writings of
the same kabbalist. In fact, some form of cyclical recurrence is implied in
other discussions of this kabbalist in various eschatological contexts.156
One more general remark should be made about the adoption of
the astrological order in conjunction with messianism. While popular
messianism is rooted in the assumption that the messianic figure is the
revelation of divine will and power, and much less a manifestation of an
intelligible order, in the astral order we have some significant changes
in the very meaning of messianism as accepted in popular Judaist circles
in a direction that is more intelligible. This move is part of a more
Saturn s Jews

comprehensive restructuring of messianism in the Middle Ages, and of

Judaism in general in some elite circles. In a way, the popular Messiah as
an expression of the divine will has been ‘chained’ to new forms of order,
as this figure has been interpreted as a perfect philosopher, as the Agent
Intellect or as one of the divine sefirot by different kabbalists according to
their specific predilection.157
Moreover, in an intelligible manner the astrological order offered a
clue as to the direction of history by resorting to types of knowledge that
were au courant in the ‘science’ of medieval thinkers in Europe. Though
I am sceptical about the phenomenological understanding of Judaism
as a religion, which invented the religious value of history as part of a
unilinear conceptualization of time, as claimed by Mircea Eliade,158 there
can be no doubt that an attempt to understand history was one of the
concerns of elite forms of Judaism. Astrology, with its cyclical vision of
time and able to make predictions according to a perception of events
that lend themselves to being precisely calculated and thus understood in
an intelligible manner, was one major tool used by that elite in order to
do so. Cyclical time as it is reflected in some Kabbalistic sources is not only
a matter of returning to the Golden Age but also a form of deterministic
vision, something that is problematic in the framework of a religion that
emphasizes the centrality of the performance of the commandments.
However, independently of Judaism, astral religions are modalities
to understanding the rhythms of the cosmos that were en vogue in many
other instances,159 and their existence and influence call into question
Eliade’s overly stark distinction between historical and non-historical
forms of religion respectively dominated by linear and circular forms
of time. In fact, there are different concatenations in Jewish theories
of time, which preclude simple statements of the sort aired in Eliade’s
studies.160 The astrological speculations succinctly addressed here show
that cyclical cosmic types of thought, which I call ‘macrochronoi’, were
more influential in elite forms of Judaism than commonly considered. In
a manner consonant with Eliade’s assertion, the longer the cosmic cycle,
the more abrupt, calamitous and total is the eschatological catastrophe.161
In the case of Saturn/Sabbatai/^maA, the cosmic cycles are indeed
considered to be very long, and the destruction is described as total.
However, in my opinion, the deterministic aspects of those macrochronoi,
found in medieval Judaism, did not impose too significant or fatalistic an
approach on Jewish messianism.162
In any case, one of its important developments, as also exemplified by
our discussions here, is the significant addition of cyclical ‘macrochronoi’,
and ‘mesochronoi’, to the centrality of the ‘microchronoi’ - the cyclical
performance of rituals present in all the major forms of Judaism. Each
 From Saturn to Sabbatai Tzevi

of these types of time is related to specific forms of redemption, and

I assume also of exile, and of redeeming figures and entities, human,
astral, intellectual or sefirotic, all of them being part of what I call the
constellation of messianic ideas.163
Part of the ongoing process of the diversification of this constellation
of ideas depends on the gradual opening of some Jewish elites to the
variety of Greek and Hellenistic forms of thought, especially in matters
of philosophy, the sciences, psychology,164 and astrology, which facilitated
new interpretations of Judaism and its forms of messianism.
However, what is surprising is the fact that though the medieval
philosophical, theosophical and astrological forms of order have declined
in some Jewish elite circles since the eighteenth century, some aspects of
these linkages continued in some discussions of Jewish authors that are
extant from the eighteenth and even up to the twentieth centuries, as we
shall see in chapter 3. In any case, curiosity about what may be described
as Saturnism persisted in small Christian circles, expressed as interest in
a reform that would bring back the Golden Age of Saturn, also identified
as the glorious time of Adam, by the Rosicrucians in the early seventeenth
century in Central Europe,165 and in testimony regarding a sect active
in mid-eighteenth-century England whose members were described as
‘Saturnians’.166
 -3

The

negat

A<

Je

hdee
twice

A
THREE From Saturn to Melancholy

Some Saturnian Discussions in the Eighteenth Century

We have surveyed some of the occurrences of the term ‘Saturn’ in its

Hebrew form ‘Sabbatai' in Jewish writings since the twelfth century.
The passages quoted above are a small part of much wider range of
discussions regarding Saturn found in print and in manuscripts, which
also deal with other issues.1 In the first chapter, we concentrated on
the negative conceptual structure, whereby Jews were described as
dealing with witchcraft, and related this to a series of both positive and
negative features dominated by Saturn. In chapter 2, we discussed the
positive conceptual structure that related to the nexus between Saturn,
redemption and messianism. The complexity of the descriptions of
the nature of Saturn, which encompass so many opposite features,
has facilitated the adoption of some of these features in the creation
of different identities for Jews over the centuries. In a way, Saturn has
become the planetary genius of the Jews.
As seen in chapter 2, the eighteenth-century kabbalist Moshe
Hayyim Luzzatto had a clear awareness of the affinity between Saturn
and Sabbatai Tzevi. Three additional discussions, stemming from other
eighteenth-century authors, display some acquaintance with the two
conceptual structures discussed above. Let me start with two examples
dealing with the messianic understandings of Saturn. In Jean-Frederic
Bernard’s description of the Karaite Jews, written in Amsterdam and
printed in 1733, we find the following passage:

They expect the Messiah, but are against losing any time in
calculating his coming, believing its coming may be delayed by
their sins, and by the slowness of Saturn’s periodical revolution,
which is the star of the Sabbath, and of the Jewish nation. It is a
question to be asked them, what relation there is between the
planet of Saturn and the Messiah, and how are they sure that
Saturn presides over Sabbath, or sheds its influence over the
Jewish nation?2

Indeed, it is not so much a question of why there was a belief in this

conceptual structure, but why it was attributed to the Karaites.
S a tu rn ’s Jeivs

Interestingly enough, Bernard does not mention Sabbatai Tzevi or his

movement. Thus we may assume that not only attentive readers of Sefer
ha-Peliy’ah, such as I have argued Sabbatai Tzevi presumably was, were
acquainted with the Saturn-Messiah nexus, but also people superficially
interested in the details of Jewish customs.
Interestingly enough, none other than King David, the figure
conceived of as the founder of the messianic line in both Judaism and
Christianity, is described as related to the planet Sabbatai/Saturn in an
eighteenth-century book by Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye. Jacob Joseph was
one of the main disciples of the founder of Hasidism, Israel Ba‘al Shem
Tov (c. 1698-1760), known as the Besht (the acronym of the Hebrew
words that signify the ‘master of the Good Name’), and he writes as
follows: ‘he was [presided over by] a zodiacal constellation in which his
thoughts about worship of God, blessed be He, did not emerge properly,
and he was from the aspect of the zodiacal sign of Saturn, that receives
from Binah’.3
Whether this is a statement of the Besht himself or just Jacob
Joseph’s interpretation of one of his master’s comments, is not totally
clear from the context, but I am inclined to see it as reflecting the view
of the Besht. Moreover, immediately afterwards, and still as part of a
discussion that is presumably authored by the Besht himself, the issue
of melancholy is mentioned in an explicit manner. Either way, we have
here one more reverberation of Joseph Ashkenazi’s theo-astrological
system applied to a messianic figure, in this case in mystical literature
that was basically uninterested in constellated types of worldview. Why
King David’s improper thoughts were incompatible with the worship of
God, and whether they have something to do with a melancholic vision
of the famous king, is still a complex question. In this context, the issue
is described as corporeal’, and it may have something to do with David’s
affair with Bathsheva, or a form of ‘alien thoughts’ in Hasidic mentality.
In any case, it is evident that the role of melancholy in Jewish experience
and thought did not come to an end with the death of Sabbatai Tzevi.
As has been pointed out more recently, it played an interesting role in
the life of some important Hasidic masters active in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.4
It is pertinent to point out that in a hagiographical collection of
tales and legends about the Besht’s life and deeds, the editor wrote, ‘I
heard that the Besht stems from the soul of King David, may he rest in
peace.’5 In what would, I admit, be quite a strong act of interpretation, if
we read together the two traditions about King David as part of a rather
chaotic web of teachings surrounding the figure of the Besht, we may
conclude that he not only identified himself with the glorious king and
 From Saturn to Melancholy

thus with a messianic mission, but also with the Messiah as related to
Sabbatai, namely the planet of Saturn. If this link is significant, based
as it is on what I call an oblique type of connection, it may reflect yet
another reverberation of Joseph Ashkenazi’s seminal passage, which, in
my opinion and as discussed in the previous chapter, had such a strong
influence on Sabbatai Tzevi as well as on a certain aspect of the messianic
self-awareness of the Besht. It should be pointed out that those short
passages stem from a literature that, at least in principle, emphasized the
value of joy as an important religious attitude.
Let me turn to a third example, where difficult questions related to
Saturn and its attributes are obvious. In a vast mid-eighteenth-century
compendium of Jewish customs entitled Hemdat Yamim, which stems from
a Sabbatean circle whose identity is a matter of debate among scholars,
we find a description of the Sabbath as a foil for Saturnian attributes.
Capitalizing on the critique of Saturnism formulated in a later layer of
Zoharic literature, and after copying the passage on Saturn found in
Bahya ben Asher (translated in chapter 1) with few variations, the
anonymous author describes the custom of Isaac Luria and his student
Hayyim Vital of preferring the wearing of white clothes on the Sabbath
as an attempt to counteract the pernicious influx of Saturn.6 I wonder
whether this explanation has any historical value in relation to the
emergence of Lurianism and its customs. It certainly shows that the
challenge of Saturnism had not disappeared as late as the mid eighteenth
century; in fact, we discern it even later in a variety of sources such as the
sermons of Jonathan Eybeschutz and in some Hasidic writers.
One of the most distinguished personalities in rabbinic and
Kabbalistic eighteenth-century literature, R. Elijah, known as the Vilna
Gaon, paraphrased much of the passage by Joseph Ashkenazi in his
Commentary on Sifra’ de-Tzeniuta’1 another example of the persistence of
the negative conceptual structure.
Let us turn now to the survival of this negative conceptual structure in
a passage written by an eminent Jewish philosopher active in the second
half of the eighteenth century, Solomon Maimon:

It is well known in the science of the planets,8 that when someone

makes a peculiar image from a peculiar matter which is connected
with a peculiar planet, as they [the ancestors] said: ‘There is
no [leaf of] grass on earth etc.,’9 and he will place it under the
power of the above-mentioned planet, when the latter is at its
ascendant, and in the house of its glory, then will the power of
the star pour upon that image and it [the image] will speak and
perform certain operations, and they are the Teraphim,n) which
S a tu rn ’s Jew s

are mentioned in the Book of the Prophets.11 Likewise when a person

prepares himself for that, for example to receive the power and
the spiritual force of the planet Saturn, he would dress [in] black
and he would wrap himself in black [clothes] and would cover
the place he stood upon with black clothes and would eat things
which increase the dark bile, which are under the dominion
of Saturn12 and he should smell things that are attributed to it
and will compose of them a perfume to burn incense from the
above-mentioned things so that the incense would rise to heaven
to the above-mentioned planet, and the light of another planet
would not intercede. Then the power and the spiritual force of
the above-mentioned planet will pour upon the person. And this
is the essence of the prophecy of the Ba‘al and the prophets of
Ashtoret and similar [phenom ena].13

To be sure, this astro-magical practice is conceived of as a negative one.

It contains few original elements, if any. Nevertheless, it points to the
acquaintance of a distinguished intellect such as Maimon, a Jew living in
the second part of the eighteenth century who moved from Lithuania to
Berlin and later became an accomplished philosopher, with descriptions
of astro-magical practices that were related to Saturn. Furthermore, this
early passage of Maimon reflects the impact of followers of ibn Ezra,
despite his famous allegiance to Maimonides, the sharpest critique of
astro-magic. Therefore, in Western, Central and Eastern Europe, the
conceptual structures related to Saturn discussed above were persisting
in common knowledge long after the death of Sabbatai Tzevi.

Between Aby W arburg’s School and Gershom Scholem’s School

Now is the time to turn to the relationship between Saturn, melancholy

and Jews in the twentieth century. First and foremost, I should point
out that many of the studies used in the previous two chapters draw
on the scholarship of Jewish scholars. This is obvious not only insofar
as Gershom Scholem’s outstanding monograph on Sabbatai Tzevi is
concerned, but also thanks to the famous monograph on Saturn and
Melancholy by the three Warburgian scholars Raymond Klibansky, Erwin
Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, inspired and also sustained in their first steps in
academe by Aby Warburg.14 A third book that belongs to the Saturnian
scholarly constellation is Rudolph and Margot Wittkover’s Born Under
Saturn. Rudolf Wittkover was also associated with the Warburg Institute
in Hamburg and then in London. Aby Warburg himself was preoccupied
by this them e.15 Gershom Scholem, who personally knew some of those
scholars and even visited the Warburg Institute in Hamburg twice,
 From S aturn to Melancholy 89

has called their members one of the sects of German Jewry.16 He even
testifies:

This circle was bound to raise my lively interest in the new

perspectives which have been opened up there and which were
to have momentous consequences. My own studies aroused great
interest there from 1926 on, and after two visits to Hamburg, in
1927 and 1932, I established close scholarly contact and friendly
relations with a number of scholars from this circle. For upwards
of twenty-five years it consisted almost entirely ofjews whose Jewish
intensity ranged from moderate sympathies to the point of zero or
even below.17

Despite this rather strong declaration of mutual scholarly interest and

friendship, neither Scholem nor his student Chaim Wirszubski (who was
in close contact with some of the members of the Warburg Institute in
London), not to mention others followers of Scholem who were much
less concerned with European culture, capitalized in their studies on the
new perspectives opened up by the Warburgian brand of scholarship. As
we have seen, Scholem even described them as one of the three Jewish
sects’ that German Jewry produced.18 Surprisingly enough, in his academic
writings Scholem ignored Aby Warburg’s intellectual interests, and those
of the three Warburgian scholars who treated the theme of melancholy
so extensively from the first 1923 German version of their monograph
until its publication in English in 1964, when he wrote his comprehensive
study on Sabbatai Tzevi, while all the Warburgians with whose writings I am
acquainted ignored the figure of Sabbatai Tzevi and its possible contribution
to their monograph, which was re-edited twice after its initial publication.
Moreover, in 1973, on the occasion of the publication of the translation
of Scholem’s monograph in English, Daniel P. Walker, a senior member
of the Warburg Institute in London, wrote a fairly lengthy review of it, but
again there was no hint of a connection between Sabbatai and Saturn.19
The second possible opportunity to link these two major contributions
was the publication of the magisterial French translation of Saturn and
Melancholy, supervised and significantly enriched by new material from
Raymond Klibansky and printed by Gallimard in 1989, an edition which
contains plenty of additional sources and images in comparison with the
1964 version. However, it does not contain a single mention of Scholem’s
Sabbatai Sevi, which had meanwhile been enlarged and magnificently
translated into English by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky for its publication in 1973.
Nevertheless, it is not an exaggeration to say that the two monographs
dealing with Saturnian and saturnine subjects are among the most
outstanding contributions to both Jewish and European studies on the
part of scholars of Jewish extraction active in the twentieth century in
this field. The Warburgian scholars dealt with Saturn and melancholy,
while Scholem was for several decades quite intensively preoccupied
with Sabbatai Tzevi, perhaps the most influential melancholic figure in
Jewish culture. Moreover, if Saturn and Melancholy is the peak of research
carried out at the Warburg Institute, Sabbatai Sevi is the peak of Scholem’s
academic enterprise, and Sabbateanism constitutes the topic of almost
half of Scholem’s scholarly writings. Thus, though thematically unaware
of each other, the authors of the two monographs dealt brilliantly,
and independently, with a conceptual structure en vogue in both the
European world and in Jewish culture - two cultures that have been
influenced by material that was transmitted by Arab authors, who in
their turn capitalized on ideas current in pagan antiquity. The renewal
of ancient mythologoumena related to Saturn assumed different forms
in the medieval and pre-modern periods. In Christian Europe it was
passed down through a long series of images, exemplified in the pictures
attached to Saturn and Melancholy, particularly its French version (1989),
and culminated in Albrecht Durer’s famous engraving Melencolia I. In
some trends in Judaism, the Saturn mythologoumena were brought in to
serve an understanding of classical Jewish values and ideals, like Sabbath
and Messiah, and they created conceptual structures that reverberated
in many instances (as seen above) and the discussion of which we will be
expanding in the ‘Concluding Remarks’ below.
The non-encounter between the two extensive treatments of similar
topics is a fascinating example of how fields of investigation in humanities
can remain separate, with no cross-fertilization even when scholars claim
to be in contact for many years.20 By neglecting so many of the medieval
and Jewish Renaissance discussions of the Saturn constellation of ideas,
the Warburgian scholars impoverished the more complex picture of the
links between Saturn and melancholy, which they otherwise so skilfully
and eruditely delineated. As Yates so aptly recognized, one of the main
weakness of the monograph Saturn and Melancholy is the ignorance of
data found in Christian Kabbalah, especially the writings of Johannes
Reuchlin and Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim.21 I would add that
much of the pertinent Jewish material discussed above was left out of this
monograph. By ignoring the most important achievement of the Warburg
school, the academic picture that Scholem offered of Sabbatai Tzevi lacks
an interesting dimension that may explain not only his messianic and
prophetic claims, but also something about the nature of his malady.
I hope that the above chapters are a modest contribution to bringing
together the more historically philologically oriented school of research
 From S aturn to Melancholy

presided over by Gershom Scholem and adopted by his followers with the
analysis of the mythological and cosmological imagery that was dominant
in the Warburgian school of research, where magic and astrology played
a much more central role.22

On Some Elite Jews and Melancholy in the Twentieth Century

Beyond the common interest in Saturn figures, the two monographs

mentioned above also deal with melancholy. It is this issue that should be
put in the context of the scholars who generated their books: there was
a melancholy mindset among Jews, especially in Central Europe, in the
period between the two world wars. This is an issue that deserves more
detailed analysis, and I shall try to provide a few examples. Let me start
with Scholem himself. He wrote a very powerful (and in my opinion also
quite emblematic) final stanza of a poem of 1933 that was related to a
book by Walter Benjamin:

In days of old all roads somehow led

To God and to his name.
We are not devout. We remain in the Profane,
And where ‘God’ once stood, [now] Melancholy stands.23

In contrast to the past, all roads now led - so Scholem declared in 1933 -
to ‘Melancholy’ rather than to God. I would suggest that we pay particular
attention to the substitution of God with Scholem’s ‘Melancholy’, coming
as it does from the pen of one of the most acute observers of all things
to do with Judaism and its theology. Such a radical statement about
melancholy as a form of hypostasis is, at the same time, a melancholic
statement in itself. However, as towering a figure as Scholem undoubtedly
was, and cogent as his formulation is, he was not alone in his sharp
discernment of the reign of melancholy at that time. In fact, a variety of
other creative geniuses among the Jews in that period were also interested
in melancholy, or considered themselves as Saturnine and as belonging
to the realm of the profane.
Closest to Scholem was Walter Benjamin, whose self-perception
contributes to our topic. When writing of Paul Klee s famous painting
Angelas Novas, which he was to describe elsewhere as the demonic and
destructive angel of history,24 Benjamin speaks of himself as follows —also
in 1933, the same year that Scholem wrote the stanza above:

For in taking advantage of the circumstance that I came into the

world under the sign of Saturn - the star of the slowest revolution,
the planet of detours and delays25 - he sent his feminine form
S a tu rn ’s Jews

after the masculine one reproduced in the picture by way of the

longest, most fatal detour even though both happened to be -
only they did not know each other - most intimately adjacent to
each other.26

Saturn now is no more subordinated to a higher power, sefirotic of

otherwise. It is simply the ‘Lord’ of Benjamin’s nativity. Its sending two
angels, one after another, is indeed an interesting idea, which may have
something to do with the assumption that each of the planets has two
angels, and Saturn, according to a tradition found in Yohanan Alemanno,
has the angels Qaftziel and Hodiel.27
I first propose to emphasize the obvious: the Angel of History, the
term Benjamin gave to Klee’s Angelas Novus,28 is understood to be both
Saturn (or sent by Saturn) and related to Benjamin himself. Hence
we have an interpretive approach to the angel that deals both with a
disastrous celestial power that destroys and with Saturn. From this point
of view, Benjamin’s description of the angel fits with the malign vision
of Saturn in some of the texts mentioned above, and with the general
manner in which the planet was described in scholarship as well. If
the destructive aspect of the Angel of History that sees ruin is indeed
indebted to Saturn, then we may attribute not only a clue as to his own
identity to Benjamin’s understanding of the planet but also something
of the nature of history as seen by his eyes. Moreover, if the personal
aspect is interpreted as referring to Benjamin’s melancholy, then we
have another attribute of Saturn included in this short passage: his being
appointed over melancholy. Moreover, the reference to the feminine
aspect emanating from the angel needs some form of clarification. In
another context, when dealing with the Origin of German Tragic Drama,
Benjamin refers to the connection between melancholy and femininity:

according to the Western medical and philosophical tradition, the

physiological state of disease is stubbornly linked with the figure
of woman (whether as its cause or its icon), the often vague and
contradictory symptomatology of melancholia is also what allows
it to be manipulated ... in the creation of an elite psychological
condition implicitly or explicitly associated with the genius of ‘great
men’.29

Hence the dimension of the feminine as related to the angel, which

should be understood as representing the melancholic aspect of the
angel and his own. I wonder whether this gender vision of melancholy
was not influenced by the Warburgian treatment of Diirer's etching,
 From S aturn to Melancholy

though it is also reminiscent of the role played by Lilith, as related to

Saturn, in the later layer of Zoharic literature, as seen in some examples
in chapter 2 above.
Indeed, as Scholem has argued, there is some connection between the
angel and melancholy: ‘The angel, not yet sunk in melancholy as he was
later to be, still speaks to both of us, joined in a common cause.’301 would
suggest that this is quite an enigmatic statement: is he intimating that
the angel became melancholic after not being so? In fact, it subsequently
speaks to Scholem as a melancholic angel, though this does happen
later. We might re-read Scholem s stanza quoted above and ask ourselves
whether the “melancholy’ that replaced God was not actually a reference
to Saturn, since the poem is explicitly related to Benjamin. Scholem’s
reification, or deification, of melancholy fits the Saturnian vision found
in some of the medieval and pre-modern texts addressed in previous
chapters.
There is a third important implication related to the angel. Before
mentioning Saturn, Benjamin refers to the angel in the context of
a revelation that he imagines is related to the secret Jewish name that
parents give to their infant but disclose to their child only when it reaches
maturity.311 wonder whether this discussion of the name does not find an
inverse parallel in Scholem’s mention of the name of God in the poem
cited above. Thus, in addition to being connected to the destructive
aspect of history and to melancholy, the angel is also connected by
Benjamin to Jewishness, just as Saturn was in the texts analysed above.
Moreover, to follow Scholem’s argument, the secret name is no other
than ‘Agesilaus Santander’, which is an anagram of the letters ‘Der Angel
Satanas’ with which Benjamin presumably identified.32 Do the feminine
and masculine angels constitute a reverberation of the themes of Satan
and Lilith discussed above? This demonic understanding of the angel,
who spreads ruin in history, is quite close to Scholem’s vision of a
demonic power that is responsible for Jewish history,33 and is perhaps
related to his propensity towards catastrophic vision, as pointed out by
Harold Bloom.34 In principle, Benjamin and Scholem are not so different
from the medieval figures who regarded Saturn as the planetary genius of
Israel.
Indeed, as has already been suggested, Benjamin’s concern with and
propensity for melancholy should be understood in the broader context
of the Warburgian scholars, his Jewish contemporaries in Germany.35
Beatrice Hanssen has drawn attention to this background, and if she is
correct in her assumption as to the influence on Benjamin of the two
Warburgian scholars writing on Saturn and melancholy (as I suspect she
is), this is another example of the self-perception of a figure of the Jewish
Saturn s Jews

elite, a person who was not acquainted with the earlier Jewish examples of
Saturnine qualities discussed above or with Jewish material about Saturn.
It seems that there were Jewish scholars who were also unacquainted
with Jewish precedents who still passed down the mythologoumena that
informed Benjamin. However, Benjamin, like the scholars who were
the probable source of his inspiration, was less acquainted with Hebrew
sources and did not know about the eschatological imagery identified
with Saturn. Even though he speculated from time to time about the
nature of messianism in his writings,36 he did not declare himself to be
a Messiah, though his enthusiastic intellectual followers in Europe and
elsewhere today would certainly be ready to proclaim his messages as
near-messianic in their revelation.
In any event, in Benjamin’s case melancholy was not just an academic
topic that had attraction for him or merely a form of self-perception. His
tendency to suicide, which became apparent in 1932, culminated in a
final (and successful) attempt in 1940. Both these examples demonstrate
that in dealing with melancholy there was something much deeper at
issue than literary conventions and cliches. Certainly, Scholem diagnosed
his friend’s melancholy in quite an explicit manner.37
Before turning to other 'melancholics’ from Scholem’s circle, let me
stress that my reading of Scholem’s statements and the stanza from his
poem together with Benjamin’s words assumes that it is self-evident that
two such close friends, who were constantly writing to each other, often
dealing with similar issues (Klee’s painting, for example) and citing one
another in their work, should be read together. This seems particularly
important given that the material was written in the same year, 1933.
Hence the occurrence of themes related to Saturn and melancholy,
which surfaced in the early 1930s in Scholem’s circle in basically the
same manner as they were reflected in the Warburgian scholars and
Benjamin.38
The fascination of both Benjamin and Scholem with Klee’s Angelas
Novusis part of what I would like to call the ‘angelotropic turn’: the fact that
some individuals, unable to accept the existence of the divinity as part of a
profound personal experience or to take on a totally atheistic worldview,
turned to a metaphorical flirtation with angels. This angelotropic attitude
is reflected in a series of books published between the world wars, such as
Alter’s Necessary Angels or Stephane Moses’s Angel of History. It seems that
a saturnine temperament may trigger, or at least encourage, a Saturnian
reading of history, but also that a Saturnian reading of history may
facilitate the development of a saturnine temperament.39
Scholem perceived melancholic propensities in three other cases
in his immediate entourage. One of his best friends, the famous writer
 From Sa tu rn to Melancholy 95

S. Y. Agnon, was depicted by Scholem as living in his (Agnon’s) youth ‘in

an atmosphere of loneliness, and not less of Weltschmerz, in a depression
of sweet melancholy, which is fitting to sensitive young persons’.40 Still
in Germany, the physician and writer Werner Kraft who was later to
become especially close to Scholem, was described as writing “profoundly
melancholy letters’ in which the possibility that he might commit suicide
was mildly suggested.41 Even the decidedly non-melancholic Zalman
Rubashov (Shazar), another good friend of Scholem, was depicted as
making a ‘melancholic friendly gesture’ when he accompanied Scholem
to enlist in the German army.42 Thus, some of Scholem’s closest friends
in Germany were depicted by him as having melancholy propensities.43
This begs the question of whether Scholem considered himself to be
melancholic. So far, I have not found any such self-perception, but the
verses quoted above about melancholy in lieu of God hold not only for
Benjamin but also, at least potentially, for what Scholem believed (at least
as a poet) in 1933. More recently, the concern with melancholy has also
been evident in the philosophy of another distinguished contemporary
and conversant of Benjamin 's, Theodor W. Adorno.44
The figures above constitute the second generation of Jewish
melancholics in Central Europe. Other melancholics who are also well
known and lived slightly earlier than this period are Sigmund Freud,
Marcel Proust and, last but not least, Frank Kafka, as we learn from the
latter’s famous letter to his father.45 Both Scholem and Benjamin admired
Kafka greatly,46 and Benjamin also wrote about Proust’s melancholy.47 In
a letter to Scholem, Benjamin even described Kafka as an angel guarding
his bed when he was sick.
In another instance, melancholy was considered to be almost
congenital with Judaism, as claimed by the gifted Jewish-Roman ian novelist
and playwright Mihail Sebastian, the pen name of Joseph Hechter (1907-
45). Writing in the late 1920s, he describes the ‘very ancient melancholy’ of
the Jews,48 while in his controversial 1934 novel dealing with two millennia
of persecutions and suffering he refers repeatedly to the melancholy of the
Jews and even considers them as possessed by ‘a melancholy that cannot be
healed’.49 Sebastian was also a great admirer of Proust.
I have brought together the names of Jewish scholars, writers and
cultural critics, and though some of them have written studies, essays or
at least a poem about melancholy this does not necessarily entail that
they were melancholics themselves —although some of them admittedly
were. My intention here has been to emphasize the fact that the topic of
melancholy remained high on the agenda of some sectors of the Jewish
intelligentsia long after medieval beliefs in the astral order had dissipated
among modern Jews, though not necessarily divorced from this nexus.j0
S a tu rn ’s Jew s

Between the two world wars, Saturn, the mythological source of

melancholy, was removed from the theological constellation of Jews who
imagined that they might have a saturnine temperament, but whose
conception of that temperament was no longer related to the Saturnian
aspects of the planet. Some, however, remained obsessed with one of the
major influences this planet allegedly had on Jews. Was this, as Sebastian
claimed, an incurable state of mind among some leading Jewish figures?
Or had melancholy indeed taken the place of God, as Scholem so
poetically claimed?
Being the anti-essentialist that I assume myself to be, I cannot answer
those questions at all, since for me they represent a form of playful
imagery.51 Presumably, more ordinary people as well as intellectuals are
attracted by cultural images and may change their behaviour when they
identify with cultural cliches. If I am right, the path of Tzevi’s entire life is
to be understood differently if we assume that he absorbed the content of
Joseph Ashkenazi’s writing as found in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah (discussed above),
much as the course of Benjamin ’s life may be considered differently if we
imagine that his self-perception as saturnine may have been related to the
manner in which he died.
As someone who has read a great deal about Saturn and melancholy
over several decades and has also on occasion written on these subjects, 1
was born in the month of January, under the so-called aegis of Saturn, in
a province that was considered by some Romanians as melancholic par
excellence -Moldavia.52 In addition, I was Jewish. As such, I may add my
modest testimony to the meaning of the Saturujudaism nexus: I see the
above statements as no more than simple reverberations of an ancient
Greek myth or a cliche that has been passed down from generation to
generation or, to use a phrase that is reminiscent of the title of one of Aby
Warburg’s studies, as a quite modest ‘renewal of pagan antiquity’ which
may help some thinkers who need it to reflect on their existential situation
in a way similar to that of medieval Jews. The ‘existence’ and ‘co-existence’
of all the three classical ‘characteristics’ of melancholy in my biography
- a special time: January, place: a melancholy province; and Jewishness
- did not, however, transform me into a melancholic, either because I
proved an exception to the rule or, and this seems to me to be much more
plausible, because even in the past these connections never really worked
in reality. My assumption is that they are mainly cultural constructs which
some people choose to believe in and even internalize as cultural inertia or
fashion. Sometimes they might be linked to innate predispositions, but in
my opinion these do not reflect a natural type of astral causality.
For some other Jews, however, this is one more instance of imaginaire
they have acquired from their cultural environment, in which the
 From Saturn to Melancholy

performance of the Jewish rituals demanded some form of rationale, as

was the case in the Middle Ages. In modern times, when those rituals lost
their spell, other forms of identity were gained, as in, for example, the
recognition of melancholy or a saturnine temperament as signs of Jewish
identity.5SAs in the case of Sabbatai Tzevi’s behaviour, it may be described
(at least in this writer’s opinion) as an internalization of saturnine features
- something that also seems to be the case with other twentieth-century
figures. In saying this I have no intention of denigrating the importance
of possible innate predispositions towards melancholy or depression in
some individuals, but I also assume that cultural encounters and textual
impact could also play their part in modifying a person’s behaviour.
Will the more recent resurgence of interest in astrology in general,
including in Israel, also trigger a return of the identification of Jews
with Saturn in our present century? If one were to give credence to the
warnings of an international health organization, then depression - a
form of melancholia - will become the dominant malaise in the very near
future, second only to illnesses related to heart disease.54
 Co:

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Concluding Remarks

Let me survey briefly the literatures and authors discussed above: Abraham
bar Hiyya, Abraham ibn Ezra and his many interpreters, the kabbalists
such as Joseph Ashkenazi and Abraham Abulafia, and those who took
up and continued their line of thought, Bahya ben Asher, the later layer
of Zoharic literature, especially Sefer ha-Temunah and Sefer ha-Peliy’ah,
Yohanan Alemanno, Joseph ibn Tzayyah, Moshe Cordovero, Abraham
Yagel, Sabbatai Tzevi and his followers, as well as Walter Benjamin - these
are the most important names that recur in the chapters above. They all
mentioned the planet Saturn by name, whether in Hebrew, Aramaic or
German and for all of them its attributes, for better or for worse, constitute
a significant challenge. This is the reason why I proposed above to resort to
the term ‘Saturnism’ as a dimension of medieval Judaism, either shaping
the identity of some Jews or by provoking a reaction against it presented as
if the rituals of Sabbath represent an anti-Saturnian form of activity. If my
proposal, to see an implementation of the changes in religion connected
to the Messiah and to the influence of Saturn in the measures introduced
by Sabbatai Tzevi in rabbinic Judaism, is correct, the amplitude of
Saturnism is much greater than is speculated in many books. This is also
the case with the great Moses Maimonides, whose crusade against astro-
magic (albeit without singling out Saturn as a major target of his critique)
fills many of the pages of his books. Astro-magic was indubitably a foil for
his intellectualistic picture of what he conceived of as the true religion.
I would include in this reaction against Saturnism even some forms of
early Kabbalah, such as the book of Bahir and the Geronese Kabbalah,
or the Kabbalistic writings of Joseph Gikatilla and Moshe de Leon, as
well as most of the writings of Lurianic Kabbalah, as attempts to retreat
from the various forms of Saturnization of Judaism. I mention these
retreats so as to lend the right proportions to the phenomena discussed
above: just as early Judaism, biblical, rabbinic, Heikhalot literature and
early Jewish magical literature1 may be understood without resorting to
the conceptual structures related to Saturn, so we may understand other
forms of Judaism, philosophical and Kabbalistic and even more so the
continuation of rabbinic literature, without even mentioning the name
Sabbatai/Saturn.
Though they deal with some stereotypes inherited from late antiquity
appropriated and then elaborated by medieval Jews, who borrowed them
 S a tu rn ’s Jew s

from their gentile predecessors, the chapters above are not only concerned
with the history of astrological ideas or concepts that merely migrated
from one book to another. My assumptions are that the concatenations
between some of these ideas and Jews, albeit imaginary connections,
operated in the historical arena in a rather substantial manner. In fact,
the transition from one period, that of Arab astrology, to the Christian
territories was accompanied by an enrichment in the texture of the themes
in which Jews were instrumental. The earlier, shorter, texts about Saturn
became longer with time, as the passages of Joseph Ashkenazi, Yohanan
Alemanno and Abraham Yagel demonstrate. If the image of the Jews as
sorcerers and the concept of the Sabbat are indebted to the Saturnian
constellation of ideas, and if Sabbatai Tzevi turned saturnine due to his
acquaintance with the messianic interpretation of the role of Saturn, as I
have proposed above, a more wide-ranging observation as to the meaning
of the writing of history is called for. None of the two connections were
systemic developments, but they appeared because of the exposure of
a small sector of the Jewish elite to material articulated in nonjewish
environments. These connections could never have surfaced before their
adoption by Jews. However, after they emerged, their dissemination and
reception were related to various historical developments, the effect of the
Black Death in the late fourteenth century or the changing situation of the
Jews in the mid seventeenth century, as well as the proliferation of interest
in melancholy among wider audiences in Europe in the twentieth century.
If I am right, the developments mentioned above are not part of a
grand narrative forged by scholars who bring together different events
from periods of history, but the product of much smaller units, whose
causality is related to more subjective moments that are far more intimate
and rather more closely related to instances of misunderstanding. Not
that I assume the grand narratives are not based upon misunderstandings,
but this is a topic I cannot address here.
Thus, the astrological element in Sabbateanism is both a continuation
of a much older, astrological theme which did not play a significant
role in rabbinic Judaism but was emphasized in some medieval elites.
In the seventeenth century, however, there was also a new development
related to the self-perception of a major figure, stemming from a
misunderstanding of the planet Sabbatai referring to a human being, the
Messiah, understood to be Tzevi himself. There is also the application of
the term ‘Sabbath’, a Jewish feast, to the ‘Sabbat of the witches’, which
can only be understood as a historical misunderstanding on the part of
those who created the ritual of the witches’ Sabbat, whose details stem
only to a small extent from material related to Saturn. In other words, my
approach is that of a much less historicist type of history. Though I do not
 C o n clu d in g Remarks 101

argue that this should always be the way to write history, I am nevertheless
convinced that this is one of the most helpful ways of understanding
personalities who played a major role in changing the course of history.
Indeed, I wonder if a history that assumes that people are motivated by
a proper understanding of books, facts or persons is a more adequate
one than a history that presupposes misunderstandings in these matters.
Perhaps a history based on misunderstandings in the past is a more
intelligible history than one that attributes overmuch understanding to
its protagonists. Moreover, in cases when the transmission of ideas is in
question, the factor of misunderstanding is inherent in the very transition
of information from one cultural centre to another, and certainly from
one language to another. In our case, the Hellenistic sources of disdain
towards Jews have been assimilated in astrological treatises by Muslim
authors, and imported into Judaism by Jews who certainly did not set
out to hurt other Jews. However, if my analysis in chapter 1 is correct, in
spite of themselves, they turned out to be agents of the dissemination
of anti-Jewish motifs when their views, based on cliches, were applied to
a cult that had nothing to do with Judaism, namely one that practised
some form of sorcery during the Sabbath. In fact, cultural transmission is
bound often to create misunderstandings, sometime quite ‘fertile’ ones
given the decontextualization of some themes and their usage in new
contexts, a process that amounts to their reconceptualization.
Let me turn now to a subject that is worth summarizing and even
slightly elaborating. Reconceptualizations were discussed above as being
the result of new concatenations that emerged within Jewish circles,
though the sources of the trigger themes were external: the astrological
theories about Saturn as reinterpreted in Kabbalistic contexts. This process
can also be discerned in the case of some concepts in philosophy that
have been reinterpreted theosophically: for example, the Agent Intellect,
the concept of ’Ayin, Nihil or in actu and in potentia. The import of the
new form of order was significant, not only because it had been adopted,
but much more because it was adapted and elaborated. Either through
reinterpretation of the qualities of Saturn/Sabbath as an explanation
of the significance of the details of the Sabbath commandments or by
connecting Sabbatai as a Messiah to specificjewish figures, the astrological
scheme was enriched by resorting to the strategy of concatenation.
It is the conceptual addition that is an integral part of the process of
adaptation that ultimately created the developments discussed above,
not the simple act of adoption alone. Though indubitably quintessential
for the em ergence of those new developments, the very process of
import alone would not be able to impress many Jews; neither would
the themes related to Saturn be connected with central Jewish values
such as Sabbath and Messiah. Though cosmic, and to a certain extent
also magical, those Graeco-Hellenistic universalistic themes were turned
into indicators of particular Jewish practices and aspirations. The various
forms of the Judaization of Saturn are therefore among the main clues
for understanding the fascinating avatars that constitute the career of this
Greek mythologoumenon in the tents of Shem. In our case, we witness
an interesting example of the implicit rejection of a rabbinic statement
to the effect that the nation of Israel is not presided over by any sign of
the zodiac. In more general terms, this is an example of the ascent of the
importance of a secondary elite that is capable of introducing important
innovations that do not resonate with the main gist of rabbinic culture,
an issue to which we shall refer immediately below. In other words, the
secondary elite introduced a strong intercorporal hermeneutics.
However, it is not only the Judaization of the Greek themes that
constitutes the reason for the impact they had on some figures in Judaism.
Concatenation is at the same time an enrichment of the earlier material,
which is in alignment with new themes, and thus it has a better chance
of attracting additional thinkers who are concerned with more complex
forms of thought. In other words, the profound phenomenological
differences between the Graeco-Hellenistic and the rabbinic cultures,
which consist in the refusal of rabbinic figures to adopt and cultivate
the Greek philosophical and scientific modes of writing, were attenuated
by a long series of syntheses. In fact this synthetic mode of discourse,
which began in late antiquity with Philo of Alexandria, and subsequently
assumed a variety of forms, not only shaped the religious structure of
nascent Christianity, but also a long series of phenomena that constitute
the main aspects of European culture, which includes both its more
positive and negative aspects.
This was also the case with Judaism. The installation of Saturn as
the planet imagined as being appointed over the Jews as a nation and
its various reverberations are some of the less anticipated variations
of the vast range of Graeco-Jewish syntheses. These syntheses of the
worldview of the Hebrew Bible with that of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos created
Jewish Saturnism, a mentality based on the characteristics of the planet
as set out in astrological books, but coupled with a more particularistic
emphasis related to values in Judaism. In this context, misunderstanding
can be among the most intellectually fertile processes, characteristic of a
continent that hosted so many diverging and interacting cultures. However,
in order to discern the nature of those misunderstandings, a correct
understanding of the misunderstood passages or themes is necessary
first, which means that significant philological work should be carefully
invested before proclaiming the importance of a misunderstanding.
 C o n clu d in g Remarks

In this way, cultural fortuities and intellectual misunderstandings

should be counted among the most powerful triggers which changed the
religious and intellectual landscape of Europe and in some cases also the
course of Jewish history. Many of the above discussions are commentaries
on Sefer Yetzirah, where the brief mention of Saturn attracted many
treatments related to this planet that otherwise would not have occurred.
The spread of the concept of melancholy in many circles in the sixteenth
century is just one European example.2 Who could ever have predicted
that among medievaljews, some would prove ready to sacrifice themselves
and their families in order to prevent baptism,3 while others would adopt
motifs related to a cruel, sinister, often bloody Greek god who devours
his own children as the overlord appointed on their nation without any
discernible pressure coming from outside?4 The type of history that I have
tried to advance above is strongly contingent and related to accidents,
especially when it is connected to the primacy of an internal experience as
a major trigger for som eone’s decision to believe that he is a Messiah that
is later transformed into becoming a Messiah publicly.5 At the same time,
it is hard to ignore the persistence of the mythologoumena discussed
above from late antiquity to inter-war Germany in such a great variety
of sources, across different cultures and diverse cultural environments.
This is indubitably facilitated by the wide range of qualities attributed to
the planet, which has drawn the interest of philosophers, astronomers,
astrologers, kabbalists, physicians and eschatologically oriented authors
as well as those interested in the events of history and the characters of
men, including, later on, a variety of artists and even a distinguished
critique of culture such as Walter Benjamin. Thus what I propose is to
adopt a vision of history that assumes a variety of different concomitant
currents, simultaneously overlapping and contending, a vision that also
suggests a certain historical phenomenon may be quite complex and
might be at an intersection of more than one cultural development. I
would refer to the concept of ‘colligation', which means that in order
to understand a certain historical event, it is necessary to locate it in its
context by mentioning other events with which it is bound up.6
The multifarious nature of Saturn, more than that of other planets,
therefore attracted a much wider audience and for centuries was able to
persist in a more or less metaphorical manner in terms like ‘saturnine’.
Sectors of the intellectual elite who adopted Saturnian qualities as
relevant for understanding Judaism were attracted by some of the qualities
they were imagined to secure: depth of wisdom and the knowledge of
secrets. It should be pointed out that unlike the more widespread astral
myths and the rituals related to them, namely the solar, the lunar or
the Mercurian mythologies, Saturnian mythology is related to a far less
 S a tu rn ’s Jews

visible planet, and thus connected to a more elitist vision of reality. From
many points of view it is less related to rituals,7 the Sabbath being one of
the few rituals attributed to the ancient Jews as worshippers of Saturn.
In any case, it is fascinating to observe that descriptions of Jews in late
antiquity as worshippers of Saturn, extant since Tacitus (though probably
wrong or statistically speaking negligible, and so far certainly difficult
to substantiate historically), are far more pertinent in the case of some
Spanish and Italian Jews in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period.
To sum up, the passages discussed above show that an understanding
of developments in the metamorphoses of a theme in Europe is
much richer if the Jewish materials are also taken into consideration.8
Fascinatingly enough, the cultural history of Europe, though written
about since the inter-war period by several prominent Jewish authors,
has been presented as if the Jews themselves were an unimportant factor,
when in fact they were the opposite, not just in cultural transmission
but also as independent thinkers, whose works and misunderstandings
could affect some significant cultural developments in Europe. Examples
include the Jewish translators at the court of Alfonso Sabio, and other Jews
who served as teachers of prominent Christian authors, such as Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola and Johann Reuchlin. Though this tendency to
suppress the possible Jewish contribution is understandable on the part
of Jewish authors writing in the inter-war period and aspiring to build
their academic careers in one of the Central European universities, the
approach still lingers on even in our times.
Some developments in Judaism are also better understood if we take
into serious consideration the wider background of Muslim, European
or any other relevant culture. The passages discussed above which stem
from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries seem to parallel the twelfth-
and thirteenth-century Renaissances.9 Last but not least, astrology, like
magic, is not an isolated form of knowledge expressed in its own discrete
literature, but an alternative that was open to a variety of elite figures,
philosophers, kabbalists and Messiahs, who were inspired by the themes
it discusses.10 This means that a much more interdisciplinary approach
that takes into consideration topics that cross different types of literatures
will better reflect the dynamic of historical development than a unilinear
approach that focuses on one type of literature.11
It is obvious that astrological speculations contributed to the
mythopoesis of Kabbalah far more than is acknowledged by the extant
studies. Myths of the utopian-messianic Golden Ages and of changes of
religion, on the one hand, and visions of predetermination, darkness,
almost cursed individuals and some form of damnation of the Jews as a
nation, on the other, together with assumptions about the extraordinary
 C o n clu d in g Remarks 105

powers of the Saturnians and Saturnines, intellectual and magical

respectively, are the strongest expressions we may find in the better-known
Kabbalistic mythologoumena. However, this does not diminish the inner
developments of rabbinic myths and their impact on Kabbalah.12 These
were an important additional source of inspiration for some medieval
Jewish myths, rather widespread in the Middle Ages, about the nature
of the people of Israel and their practices, especially on the Sabbath, an
inspiration that was nevertheless marginalized in scholarship but which
had significant effects on Kabbalistic thought in either a positive or a
negative way.
Last, but not least, the introduction of astral mythologoumena,
with its Saturnian vision of religion, in my opinion contributed to the
emergence of a variety of anomian and antinomian visions in Kabbalah.13
Some of the authors mentioned above, such as Abraham Abulafia and
the writers of the later layer of Zoharic literature, Sefer ha-Qanah and
ha-Peliy’ah, who were acquainted with and resorted to astrology, can
be considered to display an uneasiness with some aspects of rabbinic
Judaism. Though each of these kabbalists is a complex thinker, and
reducing the definition of his approach to the impact of astrology
would be a dramatic simplification, I see in the Saturnian elements as
adopted or imposed on Judaism the seeds of further development in
their thought, which also draw from other important sources. First and
foremost, we have seen that flexibility in theosophical and astrological
forms of order invited the idea of change in the Torah, or what may be
called Torah-mutability.14 This idea stems from the theory of conjunctio
maxima, which appears many times in Jewish thought, as we have seen
above. It has also been connected to another astrological concept of the
cosmic cycles, the Shemittot and Yovelim, which assumes drastic changes in
the law that will preside over the other cycles. This is implicit in Joseph
Ashkenazi’s use of the term dinim, while in Sefer ha-Temunah and in Sefer
ha-Qanah and Peliy ’ah the theory of dramatic change is quite explicit, and
the latter books had a direct impact on Sabbateanism. Other kabbalists,
especially the ones from Safed, recognized these theories antinomian
potential and restricted recourse to them, as did Moshe Cordovero;lj
or rejected them outright, as did Isaac Luria and many of his followers.
From this point of view, Sabbateanism does not continue the much more
cautious and conservative approach of the Safedian masters. These
forms of antinomianism were coupled with other tendencies, such as
the intellectual antinomianism inherent in the exaltation of intellectual
activity as the highest form of religious worship that was implied by
Maimonides’ philosophical thought, or the vision of an ideal Torah,
Torah de-’Atzilut, related to the realm of the divine world, suggested in
 S a tu rn ’s Jew s

the later Zoharic layer.16 Thus, I would say that it is hard to presuppose
the existence of pure forms of antinomianism which are not in alignment
with some form of positive or negative Saturnism.17
In the seventeenth century, when the anti-Ptolemaic ideas of
Copernicus gained more and more ground in Judaism, especially in
Sabbateanism, Ptolemy’s astrology, based on geocentrism, reached the
height of its influence, rendering it problematic for both conservative
rabbinic Judaism and the possibility of integrating Jews in the new
scientific worldview. Or to formulate the above remarks in a different
manner, the ascent of a new, secondary elite, constituted by figures such
as Abraham bar Hiyya, Abraham ibn Ezra, Abraham Abulafia, Joseph
Ashkenazi, the anonymous author of Tiqqunei Zohar and Sefer ha-Peliy’ah,
Yohanan Alemanno and Abraham Yagel, who adopted and adapted
Saturnism, created a new situation in which the rabbinic elite, or the first
elite, could no longer manage to control the content and distribution
of new forms of knowledge that Jews introduced into Judaism and
interpreted accordingly. The new views differed from both the rabbinic
approaches and also from Maimonides’ sharp critique of astrology.
Therefore, Sabbatai Tzevi is only the most important representative of a
much longer list of thinkers who were able to impose a new agenda that
had antinomian overtones.
In the next stage, exemplified by Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin and,
to a certain extent, Scholem, the issue was less about antinomianism, but
rather about indifference towards rabbinic law, the assumption that it is
not a revealed type of religious instruction or the ‘interpretation of the
inaudible pronunciation’, i.e. a silent revelation.18
However, great as the role that I attribute to the ascent of the
secondary elites in shaping and changing the content of Judaism may
be,19 let me also emphasize what seems to be its corollary: the secondary
elites were also dominated, perhaps even obsessed by, the forms of
knowledge they imported. For instance, Sabbatai Tzevi was much less of
a revolutionary than he is imagined to be, but he was the most important
example of Saturnism: someone who read a scenario that had been
circulating for centuries in Judaism and who, because of his proper name
and his innate disposition (his personality, we might call it), internalized
some of its elements and played them out on the stage of history.20 To
be sure, external circumstances have their role in selecting what will or
will not become more widespread and accepted. Moreover, without the
prior widespread popular belief in, and aspiration for, redemption in its
personal messianic form, the secondary elite would not have been able
to circulate its visions to a wide audience creating what I propose to call
the ‘messianic pyramid’.21 Thus the conjunctures of the historical scene
 C o n clu d in g Remarks

indubitably dictate the processes of dissemination and work as a selective

grid. Selection, however, is not the most creative of the processes that
organize knowledge.
Appel

Iadduc

Hiisis

moitai

Let
ire rite

hhall
liditK
 Appendix

I adduce below the Hebrew versions of the seminal passage by Joseph

ben Shalom Ashkenazi on the planet Saturn found in his CoTnmentavy
on Sefer Yetzirah, and its reverberation in the anonymous Sefer ha-Peliy’ah.
This is one of two significant discussions of Saturn in the work of
Joseph Ashkenazi; the second will shortly be discussed at the end of the
Appendix. My main purpose here is to make available the most important
texts on which I have relied in my analyses and, more specifically, to point
out the differences between the two versions of the passage, as well as to
analyse the meaning of the changes found in Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah. English
translations of most of the text are to be found in chapters 1 and 2, and
more are offered below. Here the reader may see the original Hebrew
texts of the translated passages in their wider context. From the general
literature about Saturn with which I am acquainted, the two Hebrew
passages that follow are among the longest discussions of the negative
qualities of this planet, listing a variety of malign and malicious aspects,
which in some cases appear twice, probably as part of a careless fusion of
elements from two different though nevertheless similar lists that were
known to Joseph Ashkenazi. I assume that one of them was related to the
list of Abu Ma^har.1 The passage byjoseph Ashkenazi shows that material
additional to that known in Hebrew literature until the late thirteenth
century, especially from the writings of ibn Ezra, most probably stemming
from Arabic sources, had an impact on his views.
Let me point out that the two books from which the excerpts below
are cited are not found in critical editions, and there can be no doubt
that the two passages contain some mistakes, which I have attempted to
correct on the basis of manuscripts and which I discuss in the attached
footnotes. My thesis as discussed above is that it is the passage as it is found
in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah that should be considered Tzevi’s primary source, and
I shall highlight below the differences between it and its own source. The
additions to be found only in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah are in bold text.2

4ris,‘?Dn iso mbw p nov ’ n bw r r r ir ~idd w it s

ro1? ’3D1D’tV’l nob1ooo ’r crVzipn onm [A] Tr:>‘ :n”n ,n pis [A]

ran ra onm nvms o’n nix Q’^pn

y ’n 73 /3 1 13
□’raw ’I □,l p DHQ D’D ’T BfflD’Wm
110 S a turn s Jew s

maw 13 nsi nnalb nwp D”n3 ’3 nix mbnn maw ia nsi nna ib nwpi □’ma ’a mx j ’ban

nbynw b”n wma rm i’yi 6niwn iiwxn nvi nbiya b”n 5’waia l’n’ ryi mwa liwxn mm nbiya

13 dwi ’irby m3 n33 wxn nimb n”’an nx na ia dwi y”a naa wxn nmb n”pn nx nbynw

T”m T’axb nnnn nwx maw 331313 nm “nnann 7”miax owb nnnn nwx maw aaia la nsi nnann
.mawb nnan non nwx xin xim nxnawb nnan non nwx xm xim

p n n bw 3313 xin maw 11b m axnrnnx V s w monwn moa pnnby aaia xm wiaww D”yx

xm maww b ” s?x b”x .y’rp i ”ax3 nanm nnbi irxw pb pnn by nnnn inimb oyoi .nnann na ia

immbi nnann n313 w’ '“mtnnwa p n n bw 3313 nnwn lmxi pmnn p p b pm ’rmyn i’iya yon

inn miyn p m pan irxw pb p n n bs? nnnn xbi nna

by xbx piwpa xbi pn miwn mxi pmnn p p b i awn mwn byi amiwan D’bawnby xbx piwpa

.n”’wn raism 12mnpon an amiwon o’bawn "nvypwn mwn b y ’m

ina anxn max n’boann D’nwb n3 yin matsm ina Dnxn ma’x D’boann I30’nwb yinn na linm

b”x .nyn mom a’moi amm l4a’myi a’wnn n”xi .nynn mom bmim ppn ni’ban ’byai apam

by nnnn xim i ”ax» bapn matt? i n n s man linn ix r T’x a”x ,nnann by nnnn xm nx

oman xannx p ?nyn non iinn ixm px 3”x ,nnann ninx nm obiyn mmya nynn man ,mxp ?nynn

T”my miyn nynn ’non 16b”x ,nnn nxsb in n s nm annw dtp l5b”nxwma ”xiai na nna nan

mnan nyib nnam nnxi3i na nnn non bax mina pyi npmnbi pmnbi opiwb nxiai mnm wnpnn

wnpnn ma annwn b”nxw xin ,t”my miyn xbw D’xbnn by nnnn mim mo inn .xma xaa naona

by nnnn min dii ,nipnmbi 19D’oiwb nxiam nmi nrn nannm iibpm mbnm "hmon nmi mnm

nrn nannm iibpm mbnm nmon mai mam Q’xbnn nnnn xm nnann ia mmbi ,20aia’y ba byi ,abiyn

by nnnn naan 13 nm byi .map ba byi ,Dbiyn

.nmian byi m n .D’nman byi 2lD’nnn by

®irn by nnnn n”’in aw ay pnosna [B] wimn by nmnn “ n’^m dw ay lonosna [B]

by ina moi nan ba by nnn nno: mmbi ,mDinwn ina moi nan ba by nnin nnoi immbi ,monwn

ba nmnx ppwa invnbi .mnnonm mypnpn ba nmnx ’yawaimmbi .mnnonm 23niypnpn

nnnn mmbi pnpTm nan ba mnnx nnn nmaian mmbi .ampin byi nan ba nmnx by nmn omaian

nra nnxa an a’yi ominm by nnnn nym nnann by iamb D’mnm by nnnn mynm mnann by nnnn

mmbi .o’wian m nxa mnay.n by nnnm .nbiyn msnxa omayn by nnnm .Dbiyn ma nnsa an

nrn pbion mmbi .mnxbm D’poyn ba boan no’nwa .maxbni D’poyn ba boan nonwa immbi .n’wian

omwyna nnx ’ia nnnn byi mxnn by nnn nbiyn byi 24nixnn by nmn Dbiyn nr p pbion immbi

mnw nan by mm m a» aaia nn pmanai ommaa min ,nmanai nmniaai nmwyna Dnx na pmo

^n’nnnn Dn law nbmini maan mbynn nnnn an lbi nbmini maan nbynn nnm’i nmw nan by
ni nnaxi ,d p nmbm omao by nnn m p ’mpam am rmnni anoo by nmn .ampom amainn
 A ppendix 111

.non m s “?yi nnvii^i non by mi1 ,Dan ’ias *?yi naiywi non h>ynan .m’asi

.n®ini mass iv nam .7wn b>yi mya msy by mri

ninny *?V7rn’isy *?yi mailman paiy by nam *7yi urn ‘pyi m'ixy ^yi mauman paiy bv mri

nuna ^yi nVim mma by nam ,o’na napi ^yi nVmi mina by mri ,o’na maapi 26mmty

omai cnunn 'lyi mroon by\ omi'iiyn *7yi amis Q’ann *?yi mrson “pyi D’m'piyn *?yi D’ars rmna

’ainn *?yi o’au *?yi narfiaa D’oo’in *?yi moiysi 27o’a’osn “7N1narfiaa n’snan ^yi moiysi o’nm

^yn niT'nyn nyi^ o’oiyan naan “?yi 28D’na nyiVi D’Dwan naan by\ o’na nmo “?yi D’aan by\

sinty *?yi noann ^yi nainoa “nrn ^yi mVotyn by\ noann Vyi nainoa VmnVmiyn Vyi nnmyn
tpin Vyi .la’ia rasa irsi 1’oa rasa rnsaarn qin *?yi 29ia'?a rasa irsi rsa rasa simy
msam

nypaai rryi ayai mnsi am nnyr amoi pmm ’wpaai aryi ayai mnoi onm may’ aaia pam

mya myiaiym D’lay.m D’^inn mma by\ on1? no myan myiawm onaym o’^inn nn’a 'ayi onVno

rf?mn Vyi rayiaai imy ^yi D’noo ^yi ,iyis’m n'imn ’7yil3o,asiai 30O’aiy Pyi onoa ’ayi ,wism

.nation .liaiyan 'jyi o’wn ’aymaiyiaa

by nnaa simy aiaya man by nnan invn ^yi noa sin man by man inrn oias

’a nnyan sim mirnya o’s'Pnn ’a yin mo’aiyn la’D1? o’linn min^n sin o’s’pnn ’a yin mown

^ijfraa nT'aian kmb ^l^n aa ria H’^nai nnya na ria n’^nai mtra sin ’a o’s'ann no moa
32ni*?n

liaan iiaon 'ob Daionai Nona D’sxaun o’myn by liaan iiaomy ’o'? oaonai n’ssain D’rayn by

mmsa inyun m’nVi .imwaa naan paom iinan ain’sa inyiin nrn1?! .lmwaa naan iiaom

naia o’aaia 34nu?iy17 p’ny inrn1?! ,aia’y by by naia naia D’aaia ’r^>lv’jy lnm^i ,aia’y by by naia

.nn’inVy .□Tin by

nrinn mimnnnn by by naia min own lsaoxnai nnnn miymnn naia n”’inn own loaoynai

^aa aaa am by by naia inyiin aims1?! ,D’mai n'aa 73a aai *73 by naia myirn ain’S^i p ’lmnni

liaoa by ^yi anon? am byi mypapn laa yyuna liaoa by by\ anony aai ^ai 35mypapn laa yynna

.maapi mayai rn’un maiai mnioi ma’sm .maapi 36mayai rn’u^i maiai ma’om

mans aa7 by by naia na1? ’naia ’in mans mm1?! mans aai *7a by naia D’aaia ’rn n’ans ini’n^i

my’aty s’n nraniy on1? ym .niprm aa7 by pio byi noaa’tsin nran ’a yna .mpn aa7 *73 nioi

la’o^i ii’^y anaai naann in n^apai nbyob noaVa aa’D1?! y”ai naann ia n^apai n'jya*?!

naan nnn nram .Vsnim by naann ia nnaa sin an’ n]’am‘37,?snw’ by\ naann by nnaa sin

D’ainoi o’piay naia x’m nra iy7r,7 nyn o’aan1? snp’ay s^i sim nra ’yrb syaiai I’a’an1? nnaan

7’aya sim ,’n’au; may sainn saryna4na ym sim ,saw n’ay sainn saiwna na yr snanoai

,17’aia sim r^ a ’I’a'ia opnai I’a'ia myna

nma ly’iaa s*?i D’irVyn nm’a ^anoa Inin1?! [C] mua iy’ia’ s^i r ’^yn ny’i ’a Vanoa ini’n^i [C]

aianai ntyyaa mairoai mnnaai aia’iai D’raaai ’’Diroai mirraai

S a turn s Jew s

137 *73 *7S7i boix by nnn 73iD by min mimbi [D] ba byi 38bnan by m in naia by m in lniMbi [D]

nbpxi iwim Dan uax *?V7 minty ma byi nnty Itym D nn uax byi m inty m n byi nnty nan

’a byi ncnni nibatyi n m n D’na minn byi nobyi mbotyi D’a n byi dm 3 n m n byi nubyi nbsxi
nnntyi nanm pnm ,D”pn lrxi mnxb ni3’7a noty 7
p n m .D” pn lr x i n a a mnxb noty p byi ntnm

D’tyn irxty pb nr *?3i. my*i myptyi m nsi anm .niyn myintyi m m oi o n m amy’i nnntyi nanni

xin p p b i nan nbya bty D’batyb pn ibaun mratyn bty o’batyb pn innatyn D’tyn irxty p b nr bai

naxbn bn bban nn .niannm matynnn ’pay by mia matynnn ’pay by m in xin p p b i nnn nbyn

Dyni in1?’ ays nupon inn mnxb opysb aitynty mnxb npyob aitynty naxbn ba bban nT.ninanni

a r nysi on1nya nnnn pi nnxb pib ’ ayoi nay a w n nyai mayn nyai “jbn nya m rson ina

xinty pbi .Dn’by nran maty aaia lbxa xxrai npb m p n mnxb any’ nysi on’ nya n n u n n p i ninsb

mnbiy 77’ xb in”by y’rtya ppbmnnnn by nran by n rn n xmty p b i .nn’by n ra n xin ibxa x s ip i

piram ’nrai naan nn ’n nn rby nmi‘ nnxtity 39nnxa rrabiy m ’ xb in” by mrtya ia p b mnnnn

.’n n’tyn 7io xin ’n n’tyn t id xim ’n ra i nnan n n ’n n n vby nm i‘

tyty mb’xxi baty ban nonityn nran m ^ i tytyi m b p xi 40baty ban nsnityn nran nimbi

ourbya npannaty nya nibiya uty na ty’ nap1? nnsp pannaty nya ,nibiya up uty la ur ia p b nnsp

nnua run nnsp ’p npannnty nyai. nonb namn nn tytya pannnty nyai .4lnunb p n n nan nui’bya

.□’tynnna 42.nuuyaty aio ba tynnnnnnsp

tyty nrnbi ,nb»ab nibsnb mun Kin 43rmi [E]

km -wk mina a’poiy arKty bRnar anniixp

j ”3K nnn km iwr Maty aaia pb naan nxba

aaiai ,bR7»’ by njiaa rp»N-ia ny nannan y”ni

poiyi nan ban ’a betyn abiy pushi oKia Maty

mtyyb a’amnn bRittri naaa nbyabty naan nynb

nabim nran npbnoa pbi a’tyiy btki imaa

km nyna lbe’ bKny aunpan nnsp tytyi aurbya

naa 7’oaai naa baaty bKntyb uk tki .nnan

.73K3 ityaai ,iaui abiy mayna bnrtynty

xbi mxaa xbx irx bxnty’ bty prby ba pbi [F] msna pn i r x bxnty’ bty p ’by ba ia p b [F ]

,nran xmty ’n 46y’tyr mna xbi anna xb p nnnbnn ’ba nrnxa napbi .ni’an na 45nn’by ^ I ’tynna
xbi anna xb p nanba ’ba ’bai nun ’bai am

nnn pbnon T>n nixnn p rpbnonty n p i msnn p D’pbnonty p ra i , (n a p )47 ’n y’tyr nuna

.m n m n’bnn ny m u nran 48.m m m n’ban ny m u nra n Dnn pbnon 7P

’i r pb n Tipna dx‘ inn .mnainn ba nioi ’iabn mipna dx‘ mo inn

 Appendix 113

Tint rr>m‘ ids’?bin©’ lVtraj© inn [G]

nan jnnsinni niDian nra lrravi ’■pernors

nnn sin© n”*iDa 7 ”aa ’a ’i© ©vpd aa1? vn»N

.n'BN-ia as nanna Kin© y ”n->j ”a«

The verbatim correspondence between the two texts is obvious and very
substantial insofar as most of the content is concerned. Nevertheless,
there are some significant changes. One of the most important
differences between Ashkenazi’s version and that of the anonymous
Byzantine kabbalist is the recurrence of the phrase Kokhav Sabbatai, five
times in the latter versus two in the former. The insertion of this short
passage in Sefer ha-Peliyah contributed two occurrences of this name, and
one more reference to this planet is added within the text the author
copied from R. Joseph in order to clarify the identity of the subject. This
repetition throws into relief the planet’s name much more than is the
case in Joseph Ashkenazi’s original passage, and presumably contributed
to the impression that the passage made on the young Sabbatai Tzevi. It is
hard to judge whether the added passage is copied from another source,
or is an elaboration made by the anonymous kabbalist, but, on the basis
of the examination of other instances in which the kabbalist copied from
different sources, I am inclined to the former alternative.50
Let me highlight the fact that an understanding of prophecy
as a power added to persons who lack knowledge conflicts with the
Maimonidean intellectualistic definition of prophecy, which, to a certain
extent at least, affected some other discussions by Joseph Ashkenazi on
this topic.51 Moreover, as we see in the last paragraph of the quotation,
where the assumption is that by means of the commandments the Jews
draw down the power of Binah upon themselves, Joseph Ashkenazi not
only adopted an astrological view but also an astro-magical one. Whether
the power of Binah also means the power of Saturn is not clear. Either
way, even drawing down the sefirotic power is, in my opinion, the result
of adopting and adapting an astro-magical approach.
As has been recognized by many scholars, although the anonymous
author of Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah was a compiler on a very large scale, and in some
ways a careless one, he was nevertheless intelligent. Eclecticism does not
always signal a lack of originality. In some cases, he added theosophical
interpretations to texts he copied, which stem, for example, from non-
Kabbalistic forms of discourse. In other cases, he appropriated Kabbalistic
texts but added new eschatological computations,52 which means that he
read the texts he copied carefully and adapted them to his purposes. In
my opinion, this is also the case with the manner in which he adapted the
 S a tu rn s Jew s

passage by Joseph Ashkenazi. He not only edited the text he copied but
also added two small passages and some additional words here and there
(the original Hebrew is shown in bold above), and I translate one example
below for the sake of a short analysis. Let me start with passage E:

And it causes to ascend on high, and since the six extremities53

are Israel, that do not study of Torah, which is replete with
wisdom, this is the reason why the star [planet] of Saturn, which
is under [the name] ABG YTTz, that is connected to Bereshit,54 is
appointed on Israel, and the star of Saturn repels the delights
of the lower world, since they are vain, and it intends to know
wisdom55 which is higher than it, and it is incumbent on Israel to
do like him, but they do not do so, and this is the reason why the
Binah is ascending on high, and the six extremities that are called
Israel, will fall into evil which is Fear. Then woe to Israel that fell
in the pit and they lose, since they preoccupied themselves with
the delights of the world, and his body and soul are lost.

This contemplative and strongly otherworldly approach is also to be found

in another statement in paragraph C: ‘and since it56 contemplates the
knowledge of the supernal entities, it will not feel the opprobrium and
the contempt and the filth, in deeds and in speech’. Thus, the anonymous
author of Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah throws into sharper relief a hint already found in
Joseph Ashkenazi: that extreme mental concentration and contemplation
are channelled towards the higher intellectual worlds, which is tantamount
to a rejection of the corporeal world. The study of the Torah, replete as
it is with wisdom, is seen therefore as an extreme contemplative activity,
which dissociates the contemplator, here the sefirah of Binah and probably
also Saturn, from immersion in lower, corporeal preoccupations. This
dissociation inherently means absorption with the spiritual and a rejection
of the corporeal or the lower desires.57 As a sefirah, Binah occupies a liminal
space between the two higher sefirot on the one hand, and the seven lower
ones on the other, and the oscillation in its attachment is presented here
either as leaning to a spiritual contemplation or, inversely, as immersion
in corporeality. In fact, the transposition of mundane activities as symbols
that refer to events within the sefirotic world is characteristic of Joseph
Ashkenazi and David ben Yehudah he-Hasid, as seen above in chapter 2,
and even more so of Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah.m Such a view is reminiscent of the
passage by Yohanan Alemanno in the name of anonymous astrologers
adduced above in chapter 2.59
Let me point out that the ascent of the Binah on high, and its negative
repercussions caused by the negligence or the sins of the people of Israel,
 A ppendix 115

is a theme current in rabbinic literature as well as in Heikhalot literature

in the context of the retreat of the Shekhinah for similar reasons.1’0
However, a similar view is found in Hermetic literature in the context
of the retreat of the gods from Egypt.61 It is not clear what the precise
sources that inspired the anonymous kabbalist are.
However, it will be hard to read the added passage as dealing solely
with an act of contemplation taking place only within the higher world
without assuming at the same time that this is a paradigm for human
behaviour, more precisely for the People of Israel. Presiding over a lower
entity means not only the subordination of the human to the astral and
theosophical orders but, according to this kabbalist, also the imitation
of the higher by the lower. Does this sharp emphasis in the book of Sefer
ha-Peliy’ah on some form of extreme asceticism, which shuns corporeal
delight in favour of a strong dedication to study and contemplation,
antedate the extreme approach of Sabbatai Tzevi, who did not
consummate his marriages because of his devotion and marriage to the
Torah?62 The ambiguous language, which allows for an understanding of
human imitation of supernal behaviour, means that the behaviour of the
supernal Sabbatai/Saturn that is appointed upon a person, presumably
the Messiah, was most probably understood by Tzevi to constitute a
paradigm whose details should be internalized by the human counterpart
and implemented in his behaviour
Let me summarize the possible implications of the correspondences
between details found in our passage and Sabbatai Tzevi. The very
‘occurrence’ of his ‘proper’ name in a Kabbalistic visionary book believed
to have been written in the second century of the common era, his
predilection for staying in caves, his extreme devotion to the spiritual and,
very significandy, his much-discussed melancholy, may reflect the impact
of this passage on Tzevi’s messianism. As seen in chapter 2, other texts also
found in Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah advocated a linkage between the planet Saturn and
messianism. Hence, not just one single passage, the one adduced above,
may have been involved in triggering Tzevi’s messianic consciousness, but
also Abraham Abulafia’s discussions of the topic of Saturn and messianism,
which were copied quite faithfully in Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah as well. It seems that
the anonymous Byzantine kabbalist had a particular interest in Saturn and
can therefore be described as a Satumist whose impact on another, Sabbatai
Tzevi, proved decisive. It should be mentioned that the discussions on
Saturn in the Zoharic texts adduced above were not known at that period
in Byzantium despite the fact that some references to Tiqqunei Zohar were
already to be found there in the fifteenth century.
At this point I would like to speculate about the possibility of learning
something about the identity of the anonymous kabbalist who wrote Sefer
116 Sa tu rn ’s Jews

ha-Peliy’ah or about his sources. If the repeated addition of the name

‘Sabbatai’ to the original passage by Joseph Ashkenazi reflects his own ^
proper name, which is (one should emphasize) by no means evident, we ^
may perhaps have a candidate: a Byzantine kabbalist active during the mid
fifteenth century whose name was Sabbatai - a certain Sabbatai ben Potto M
of Janina. Here is not the place to offer a more detailed effort to discuss ^
this Sabbatai, who was acquainted with Sefer ha-Qanah, as he correctly refers
to it in Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah, and I hope to elaborate on these tentative proposals ^
elsewhere.63 Even if this is mere coincidence, the possible contribution of Pel
his many glossae and the sources adduced there for a better understanding Si111111
of the genesis of the mysterious Sefer ha-Peliy’ah are worthwhile the rather
tenuous effort of perusing the material found in those glossae. ®^1
k
To round this off, it is also worth addressing another Saturnian passage ion®(
in Ashkenazi’s Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah which was not cited in Sefer ha- tentuiy
Peliy’ah. Though it does not add too much new material to the longer
passage, it again demonstrates the attempt to create lists that organize the tailed
diverse material found in tradition and reality in a meaningful way. When
interpreting the view of Sefer Yetzirah, where the dimensions of reality are
detailed, in the context of the phrase ‘and the depth of the end’, ve-‘omeq
’aharitf4 Ashkenazi refers to:

As it is said'r>‘and I am the last’ is hinting at the secret of Jubilees

(the Binah) 66 and this is why [it is written]67 ‘Thou shall count
seven Sabbaths seven times’ and accordingly, the seventh is the
holy of the days, like the day of Sabbath {Binah), and in the months
- Nissan and Tishrei, and in the years - the Shemittah and the
Yovelot,6Hand in the thousands - [as it is written]69 ‘Six thousand
years the world subsists and for one is devastated’ and there are
[authorities who assert] ‘and for two [thousands] is devastated’.
And in the firmaments - Aravot,70 and in the lands - the Land of
Israel, and in the years of a human - the sixty years, behold there
are six decades and a [nother] decade that is the seventh71 ‘which
is holy to God’. And among the stars - Sabbatai {Binah), and the
secret of the fifty days of [the counting of] ‘Omer, and fifty weeks
of the year72 [namely in the dimension of time]. [In] the ten
sefirot - Binah, the end of all, in all the Shemittot and Yovelim ... and
the principle of all is that there,73 there is [both] ‘the beginning
and the end’74 of all the beings and of all that was the innovated,75
from it they emerged and to it they will return.76

This passage evinces the same strategy as in the first passage of Ashkenazi
of organizing the two forms of order: the theosophical and the astral. Thus,
 A ppendix

we have some additions to the longer text: the Land of Israel is added,
and we have a parallel to ibn Ezra’s and Abulafia’s similar assertions.77 The
addition of the word 'Binah' , which appears beside the word in print, but
actually above the term ‘Sabbatai’/ ‘Saturn' in manuscripts, constitutes a
theosophical interpretation of a basically astrological text in a manner
in which Joseph Ashkenazi interprets many other texts.78 The manner in
which Binah is described as the beginning and the end of all shows that
Saturn corresponds to it and is conceived of as an essential level in the
divine world. Doubtless this is an example of the centrality occupied by
Saturn in this Kabbalistic system.
The parallels that were referred to above between the two texts and
some details in Tzevi’s life79 seem to me too significant to be attributed
to mere accident. It is plausible that from his youth the seventeenth-
century Messiah used the astro-kabbalistic descriptions as a blueprint for
his behaviour, though his sources as to the attributes of Saturn were not
limited to the texts in this Appendix.80
1 SeeS
p.172

! See.e

^5-6
«ai

! The:

PP-5

i Seel

1See!
in i
Notes

Preface

1 See Scholem, From Berlin toJerusalem (Schocken Books, New York, 1980)
p.172
2 See, e.g., my ‘The Study Program of Yohanan Alemanno’, pp. 303-30, ‘An
Astral-Magical Pneumatic Anthropoid’, Incognita, vol. 2 (1991), pp. 9-31,
‘The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations’, ‘Prometheus in a Jewish
Garb’, ‘Magical Temples and Cities in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: A
Passage of Masudi as a Possible Source for Yohanan Alemanno\ Jerusalem
Studies in Arabic and Islam, vol. 3 (1981/2), pp. 185-9, ‘The Epistle of R.
Isaac of Pisa (?)’, Beit Arie-Idel, ‘Treatise on the End and Astrology’, ‘R.
Johanan Alemanno and the Astrological Treatise Ma’amarHozeh', ibid., pp.
825-6, and ‘Hermeticism and Judaism’. As we shall see below, Alemanno
was acquainted with many traditions related to Saturn, more than any
other Jewish author writing previously.
3 ‘The Throne and the Seven-Branched Candlestick: Pico della Mirandola’s
Hebrew Source’, JWCI, vol. 40 (1977), pp. 290-2 as well as my ‘Ramon
Lull and Ecstatic Kabbalah’. For an analysis of the metamorphosis of a
Greek myth in medieval Kabbalah and Renaissance Kabbalah see also my
‘Prometheus in a Jewish Garb’. See also my review of Dame Frances A.
Yates’s book Occult Philosophy, which appeared in Numen, vol. 29 (1982),
pp. 147-9, and ‘Kabbalah and Hermeticism in Dame Frances A. Yates’s
Renaissance’, in R. Caron, J. Godwin, W. J. Hanegraaf,J.-L. Vieillard-Baron
(eds), Esoterisme, Gnoses & Imaginaire Symbolique: Melanges offerts a, Antoine
Faivre (Peeters, Louvian, 2001), pp. 71-90. For more on Yates and Saturn
and Melancholy see the postface to the Romanian translation of the French
version, written by Bogdan Tataru-Cazaban, Saturn si melancholia, trans. M.
Tataru-Cazaban, B. Tataru-Cazaban and A. Vaetisi (Polirom, Iassi, 2002),
pp. 564-6.
4 See Idel, Hasidism, pp. 57, 218-21, 381 n. 57.
5 ‘Saturn, Schabbat, Zauberei und die Juden’, in A. Grafton and M. Idel
(eds), DerMagus (Akademie Verlage, Berlin, 2001), pp. 209-49.
6 See my Messianic Mystics.
7 See M. Idel, ‘Saturn and Sabbatai Tzevi: A New Approach to Sabbateanism’,
in P. Schaefer and M. Cohen (eds), Toward the Millennium, Messianic
 Expectations from, the Bible to Waco (Brill, Leiden 1998), pp. 173-202. A
Hebrew version of this essay appeared in the translation of Avriel Bar-Levav
in Jewish Studies, vol. 37 (1997), pp. 161-84.

Chapter l

1 Contra Faustum Manichaeum XVIII: 5, trans. Richard Stothert, Reply

to Faustus the Manichaen, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series I, vol. 4
(Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1974), p. 238. For fetters in the context of
Saturn, see Sela’s note in Ibn Ezra, The Book of Reasons, p. 305. See also
Contra Faustum Manichaeum XX: 13, p. 259: ‘I refer to this now, to show
where you got your silly idea that our fathers kept the Sabbath in honor
of Saturn. For as there is no connection with the worship of the Pagan
deities Ceres and Bacchus in our observance of the sacrament of the bread
and wine, which you approve so highly that you wish to resemble us in
it, so there was no subjection to Saturn in the case of our fathers, who
observed the rest of the Sabbath in a manner suitable to prophetic times.’
On Sabbath as a prefiguration, and thus the reason why Christians do not
keep it after the revelation of Jesus Christ see ibid., XIX: 9, p. 243. On
St Augustine, Saturn and Sabbath see also Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl,
Saturne et la melancolie, pp. 211, n. 27, 245-7 and n. 118. For the scholarly
literature on the topic ofJews and Saturn in ancient times see the important
collection of texts in Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and
Judaism (Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem, 1980),
Tibulus, vol. I, p. 319, I Frontinus, p. 510, Tacitus, vol. II, pp. 18-19, 33n.,
II, p. 143, p. 654 anonymous, Cassius Dio, II, pp. 349-51, 352-3, 360, 373,
375, 377; A. Bouche-Leclercq, LAstrologie Greque (Paris, 1899), pp. 318, 371,
478; Yohanan H. Levi, Studies in Jewish Hellenism (Mossad Bialik, Jerusalem,
1969), pp. 122, 143 (Hebrew); Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, trans.
John Bowden (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1974), vol. II, p. 176, n. 47;
Zafran, ‘Saturn’; Peter Schaefer, Judeophobia: Attitudes Toward theJews in the
Ancient World (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1998), pp. 84, 228; and
Sela, Astrology and Biblical Exegesis in Abraham ibn Ezra’s Thought, p. 149, his
long footnote to his edition of ibn Ezra, The Book of Reasons, pp. 157-8, and
his ‘Appropriation of Saturn’, pp. 23-4; Bar Ilan, Astrology and Other Sciences,
pp. 19-20; and Kocku Von Suckrad, ‘Jewish and Christian Astrology in Late
Antiquity: A New Approach’, Numen, vol. 47 (2000), pp. 1-40.
2 For the Rabbinic elements related to magic and astrology see Harari,
Early Jewish Magic, pp. 263-5, 341-52. These sources show no connection
between Jews and Saturn, as many sources deny that astral bodies preside
over the nation of Israel. See also Kiener, ‘Astrology in Jewish Mysticism’,
pp. 1-4.
3 Halbronn, Le Monde Juif et lAstmlogie, pp. 84-7; Ginsburg, Sod ha-Shabbat,
pp. 163-7; and Pedaya, ‘Sabbath, Sabbatai’, pp. 150-3. Compare also
interesting similarities found in Southern India, in the context of Sani, the
Hindu counterpart of Saturn, as analysed in David M. Knipe, ‘Softening
the Cruelty of God: Folklore, Ritual and the Planet Sani (Saturn) in
Southern India’, in David Shulman (ed.), Syllabes of Sky: Studies in South
Indian Civilization in Honor of Velchet'u Narayana Rao (Oxford University
Press, Delhi, 1995), pp. 205-47. My thanks to David Shulman for drawing
my attention to this study.
4 Maxime Preaud, Les Sorcieres (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, 1973), pp.
16-19 and Charles Zika, ‘Les parties du corps’, pp. 389-418, now in his
Exorcising Our Demons, pp. 375-409.
5 See Zika, ‘Les parties du corps’, pp. 404, 411. See also Couliano, Eros and
Magic, p. 47.
6 There are several lists of the numerous supercommentaries compiled
by modern scholars. See Uriel Simon, ‘Interpreting the Interpreter:
Supercommentaries on Ibn Ezra’s Commentaries’, in I. Twersky and J.
M. Harris (eds), Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra: Studies in the Writings of a Twelfth-
Century Jewish Polymath (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993),
pp. 86-128; Moritz Steinschneider, ‘Supercommentare zu Ibn Esra,
zur Orientirung in verschiedenen Handschriften’, Judische Zeitschrift fur
Wissenschaft und Leben, vol. 6 (1868), pp. 121-31 and ‘Supercommentare
zu Ibn Esra’s Pentateuchcommentar’, in Abraham Berliner (ed.), Pletath
Soferim (Schletter'sche Buchhandlung H. Skutsch, Breslau, 1872), pp.
42-6 and 50-4 (German part); Abraham Berliner, ‘Super-Corn men tare
zu Abraham Ibn Esra,’ Magazin fu r die Wissenschaft des Judenthums, vol.
3 (1876), pp. 41-51 and vol. 4 (1877), pp. 145-9; Tamas Visi, The Early
Ibn Ezra Supercommentaries: A Chapter in Medieval Jewish Intellectual History,
PhD thesis, CEU, Budapest, 2006; and n. 72 below. See, more recently,
the important analysis of the topic of Saturn in Shlomo Sela, Abraham ibn
Ezra and the Rise of Medieval Hebrew Science, pp. 151—4 and in an expanded
argument in the English version of ‘Appropriation of Saturn , pp. 21—53.
The existence of such voluminous literature demonstrates the paramount
impact of ibn Ezra’s thought on late-thirteenth- and fourteenth-century
Jews and thus of some of the material to be discussed below. To be sure,
other Jewish thinkers mentioned Saturn before Abraham ibn Ezra, more
eminently bar Hiyya. See below, ch. 2, n. 14.
7 Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 251—2, 340—2, 415—16. For an example of a
short description of Saturn as a malign planet appointed over the Jews
and Sabbath, without however referring to sorcery or magic, see the
anonymous quotation in the name of Shlomo ibn Gabirol (known as
Avicebron) as found at the beginning of the early-sixteenth-century Joseph
 ben Shlomo Al-Ashqar’s Tzafnat Pa‘aneah, MS. Jerusalem, 4° 154, fol. 2a.
There is a good chance that the author of the short treatise is actually
Al-Ashqar himself. Compare the occurrence of this passage ibid., fol. 36b,
where it appears without mentioning ibn Gabirol’s name. I could not
detect this negative conceptual structure in the writings of ibn Gabirol
himself. On the other hand, let me point out that I found fragments from
a lost commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, written by one of the teachers of Rashi,
in which a negative description of Saturn occurs together with some more
positive characteristics, following Sefer Yetzirah. I hope to publish and discuss
these fragments in a separate study. Let me point out that here I have not
brought all the discussions on Saturn in astrological texts in Hebrew, but
have rather restricted my discussions to texts where the nexus between the
planet and the topics I choose to analyse in the ensuing chapters is explicit.
8 Tetrabiblos III: 18, (Ashmand), p. 163, III: 13 (Robbins), p. 347. On the
Hebrew versions of this book see Leicht, Astrologumena Judaica, pp. 72-3,
153. See also Sela, Abraham ibn Ezra and the Rise of Medieval Hebrew Science,
pp. 138-46; Schwartz, ‘Astrology and Astral Magic’, pp. 57, 63; and, more
recently, Chaim Kreisel, ‘Sabbath in Jewish Philosophy: From Supra-Natural
to Natural’, in Gerald Blidstein (ed.), Sabbath, Idea, History, Reality (Ben
Gurion University Press, Beer Sheva, 2004), pp. 72-5 (Hebrew). In other
parts of this study the author addresses differing philosophical approaches
to Sabbath, some of them astrological and related to Saturn. See ibid., pp.
75-81. For more on this chapter in the Tetrabiblos see below, ch. 2, para. 5.
9 See Sela, ‘The Appropriation of Saturn’, p. 31; Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl,
Satume et la melancolie, p. 207. See Charles Burnett and Keiji Yamamoto,
Abu Ma ’shar on Historical Astrology: The Book of Religions and Dynasties on Great
Conjunctions (Brill, Leiden, 2000).
10 Cf. Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Satume et la melancolie, pp. 207-8;
Zafran, ‘Saturn’, pp. 16-17. On this author see Moritz Steinschneider, Die
Hebraeischen Ubersetzungen desMittelalters und diefuden alsDolmetschers (Berlin,
1893), pp. 561-2. On snakes and Saturn/Sabbatai see below, chapter 2, in
the context of Sabbatai Tzevi. See also the passage cited by Alemanno, MS.
Oxford-Bodleiana, 2234, fol. 118a, where death and sorcery are adduced
together.
11 MS. Oxford-Bodleiana Hunt. 305, Neubauer, 2029, fols 247b-48a. On this
author see Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Satume et la melancolie, p. 206, n.
10. Similar views were held also by another important Muslim writer, the
twelfth-century encyclopedic author Al-Biruni.
12 Hitbodedut. In many sources, this is a standard characteristic of Saturn. See
also ibn Ezra’s Sefer ha-Te‘amim, ed. Yehudah L. Fleisher (Mossad ha-Rav
Kook, Jerusalem, 1951), p. 62. For hitbodedut as mental concentration see
Idel, 1Hitbodedut as Concentration in Jewish Philosophy’ and n. 19 below.
 13 Sam ha-mawet. See also Sefer ha-Te‘amim, p. 62 and below, n. 145. In other
versions it is written ’angel of death’. See n. 18 below.
14 ‘Orekh ha-Mahashavah. On this issue see especially the Neoplatonic sources
discussed in Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Satume et la melancolie, pp. 250—5.
See also the next passage dealing with hitbodedut.
15 Ha-keshafim ve-ha-hashabba‘ot. The term keshafim, and its parallel kishshuf,
will recur often in the discussions below; see nn. 21, 96, 100, 106, 132, 133,
154, 157. On this term in the Bible see Jeffers, Magic and Divination, pp.
65-70, who indeed proposes to translate it as ’sorcery’. I shall use this term
in order to distinguish it from magic and even more from natural magic
because of the negative overtones of the term kishshuf \n the contexts in
which it will be quoted. On the different views on sorcery in scholarship see
Harari, EarlyJewish Magic, throughout.
16 Ha-pillug See Sefer ha-Te‘amim, p. 63 and below, n. 69.
17 Tzara1at. See also ibid.
18 Reshit Hokhmah, ch. 4. I combined the version found in a passage of
this book as explicitly quoted in Joseph Bonfils, Tzafnat Pa‘aneah, I, p.
49, with the common edition of the book. See also ibid., I, p. 270. The
common version of this passage, as edited and translated by Raphael Levi
and Francisco Cantera, The Beginning of Wisdom, An Astrological Treatise by
Abraham ibnEzra (Paris, 1939), pp. xlii-xliv, does not contain the reference
to incantation and sorcery found in Bonfils’s version, which I have put
in parentheses. For a modern French translation by Jacques Halbronn
see Abraham ibn Ezra, Le Livre des fondements astrologiques (Bibliotheca
Hermetica, Retz, Paris, 1977), pp. 140—3. A longer version of it appears
in the late-nineteenth-century Hamoi, Daveq me-Ah, pp. 96-7. For more
on this passage see Barkai, Science, Magic and Mythology, p. 30 and n. 84;
Idel, 1Hitbodedut as Concentration in Jewish Philosophy’; Ginsburg, Sod ha-
Shabbat, p. 163 n. 378, who enumerated the Jewish sources that precede ibn
Ezra in their description of the negative nature of Saturn. For more on ibn
Ezra’s view on the Jews, Saturn and melancholy see Langermann, ‘Some
Astrological Themes’, pp. 59-60, and the edition and English translation
of ibn Ezra’s passage in ibn Ezra, The Book of Reasons, ch. 4, pp. 71-6, and
the appendix there pp. 349-50. It should be mentioned that though ibn
Ezra’s name is mentioned casually in Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Satume
et la melancolie, the major passages from ibn Ezra have nevertheless been
overlooked.
19 Gillui ha-sod. In Sefer ha-Te‘amim, p. 62: da ‘at ha-sodot, namely ‘the knowledge
of the secrets’, as in the text found in the context of Saturn adduced above.
See also Schwartz, Astral Magic, pp. 119, 186.
20 Da‘at ha-kishshuf. The English translation is not so precise: ‘skill of magic’.
See also n. 15 above.
21 Reshit Hokhmah, p. 1, English, p. 202. Interestingly enough, this passage
does not occur in the description of the attributes of moon in Sefer ha-
Te‘amim, pp. 69-71.
22 Namely the celestial world, constituted by planets and stars.
23 ha-ma'arakhah ha-‘elyonah. This expression, which draws upon a biblical
expression related to a specific form of arrangement, has been used in a
variety of contexts in order to point to supernal types of order, first the astral
and later on the theosophical, like the title of the famous theosophical
book, the anonymous SeferMaarekhet ha-’Elohutwritten early in fourteenth-
century Catalunia. See Idel, ‘On Some Forms of Order', pp. lvi-lvii.
24 Ed. A. Weiser, vol. II, p. 47. Thus, we have a combination of the astrological,
magical and philosophical types of speculation, all of them now applied to
another important Jewish value, Moses.
25 On this issue and its medieval reverberations see Aviezer Ravitzky, ‘The
Anthropological Theory of Miracles in Medieval Jewish Philosophy’, in
I. Twersky (ed.), Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature (Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1984), vol. II, pp. 238-9, 250; Barkai,
Science, Magic and Mythology, p. 20; Howard Kreisel, ‘Miracles in Medieval
Jewish Philosophy’, JQR, vol. 75 (1984), pp. 119-21; Gitit Holzman, The
Theory of the Intellect and Soul in the Thought of Rabbi Moshe Narboni, PhD
thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1996, pp. 293-9 (Hebrew). See
Langermann, ‘Some Astrological Themes’, p. 60, and below, the quotation
attributed to ibn Waqar and, following him, Yohanan Alemanno.
26 See Langermann, ‘Astrological Themes’, p. 60, and the quotation in the
name of ibn Waqar below and, following him, Yohanan Alemanno.
27 Shiga'on. See also ibid., p. 233.
28 The Book of Reasons, in Shlorno Sela’s translation, pp. 71-3.
29 This is the opinion of several ancient authors; see Klibansky, Panofsky and
Saxl, Saturne et la melancolie, p. 218, and Ptolemy in Tetrabiblos, I: 5. See the
Hebrew translation extant in MS. Paris BN 1028, fol. 101b.
30 BT., Pesahim, fol. 112b. For more on this issue see Ginzberg, Legends of the
Jews, vol. V, p. 405, n. 72. Therefore, already in rabbinic sources, and under
their influence in some medieval halakhic discussions, all enumerated
by Ginzberg, the astrological view of the negative impact of Saturn on
Wednesday night, and of Mars on Friday night, is discernible.
31 Commentary on Exodus 20.14, ed. A. Weiser (Mossad ha-Rav Kook,
Jerusalem, 1977), vol. II, pp. 139-40. See Ginsburg, Sod ha-Shabbat, p. 164,
n. 379. This text was quoted, without mentioning the source, by Joseph
ben Shlorno Al-Ashqar in his Tzafnat Pa‘aneah, fols 113b-14a, and see also
ibid., fols 69b-70a, as well as his contemporary Isaac Karo in Toledot Yitzhaq,
fol. 12a. See also Barkai, Science, Magic and Mythology, p. 31. For a later
reverberation of this passage in the seventeenth century see Halbronn,
 Notes 125

Le Monde Ju if et I’Astrologie, pp. 281-2. The vision of the commandments

related to Sabbath as counteracting the impact of Saturn constitutes an
approach that is reminiscent of the ritualistic behaviour of Marsilio Ficino,
who attempted to escape the pernicious influence of Saturn through a
certain way of life. See, especially, Peter Ammann, ‘Music and Melancholy:
'tttdim
Masilio Ficino’s Architypal Music Therapy’, Journal of Analytical Psychology,
Cestui
vol. 43 (1998), pp. 571-88. Thanks are due to Prof. Daniel Abrams for
filial drawing my attention to this article.
32 See, e.g., the commentary on Rashi, on BT., Berakhot, fol. 29b and Joseph
■ivii
Angelet’s Sefer Livenat ha-Sappir, ed. S. Mussaioff (Jerusalem, repr. 1971),
troluv.
fol. 22bc.
#4 33 That of Saturn. See also below, ch. 2 para. 6.
34 Saturn.
ink'He 35 Hakham harashim. On the magical background of this phrase in the Bible
iopin. in see Jeffers, Magic and Divination, pp. 49-52.
M
Haraid 36 Navon lehashim. Seejeffers, ibid., pp. 70-4. The mention of the sarhamishim
ft Haiti - reminiscent of the Rabbinic concept of the fifty gates of Binah - and of
iM edierJ navon may reflect a nexus between Saturn and Binah that will later become
znm,lie explicit in some Kabbalistic texts, as we shall see below.
iktPW) 37 According to Isaiah 3.3.
38 Ibn Ezra, Hai ben Meqitz, p. 143 and Igeret Hay ben Mekitz by Abraham ibn
GUOUL'I Ezra, ed. Israel Levin (Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 1983), pp. 78-9. On
the figure fifty, which in many Kabbalistic books is related to the sefirah of
ionill[k Binah, see also the Kabbalistic texts discussed below.
M). 39 Sefer Yetzirah 4:5. The book extant in two major versions, the longer, quoted
above, and a shorter one, where the day upon which Saturn presides is
Sunday. On this book see, inter alia, Peter A. Hyman, ‘Was God a Magician?
lofeband Sefer Yetzirah and Jewish Magic', Journal ofJewish Studies, vol. 40 (1989), pp.
j.Seetbe 225-37; Idel, Golem, pp. 9-26, etc.; Yehuda Liebes, ArsPoetica in Sefer Yetzira
(Schocken, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, 2000) (Hebrew). For the apotheosis of
aJstffo Sefer Yetzirah in Jewish culture see Idel, ‘Golems and God’, pp. 232-43. On
nduidff astrology in this book see Kiener, ‘Astrology in Jewish Mysticism’, pp. 5-7,
inieiaied and now Bar Ilan, Astrology and Other Sciences, pp. 83-114.
arumm 40 Previously mentioned.
41 On the writing of the name of seventy-two letters on deer parchment, this
nEoot can already be seen in a recipe found in a magical text stemming from
Ashkenazi Hasidic circles, Siddur Rabbenu Shelomo of Germaiza, ed. M.
Hershler (Jerusalem, 1972), p. 99.
pjosepl1
seealso 42 Sefer harMelammed, MS. Paris, BN 680, fols 292b-93a. On this treatise see
Idel, Abraham Abulafia’s Works and Doctrine, pp. 15-17. Sefer ha-Melammed,
(lifcty
MS. Paris, BN 680, fols 292b-93a. On this treatise see Idel, Abraham
■iW
Abulafia’s Works and Doctrine, pp. 15-17.
S0’
126 Notes

43 ‘On Judaism, Jewish Mysticism and Magic’, pp. 195-213.

if
44 See, e.g., what I wrote in Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. 152, n.
89. See also below, n. 53.
45 For a survey of the resort to this divine name in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, see M. Idel, ‘On She’elat Halom in Hasidei Ashkenaz: Sources and
Influences’, Materia Giudaica, vol. 10, no. 1 (2005), pp. 99-109.
h
46 Ed. S.H. Halberstam (Berlin, 1885), p. 247 (Hebrew); see also Ginzberg, Legends
of theJews, vol. V, p. 164, n. 61. On the view that each of the planets has an angel
which is appointed on it, and the planet serves as its temple and talisman, see
the twelfth-century Muslim mystic Shihaboddin Yahya Sohrawardi; cf. Henry
Corbin, L’ArchangeEmpourpre, (Fayard, Paris, 1976), p. 489.
'h
47 See also Eleazar of Worms, Sodei Razzaya (Jerusalem, 2004), p. 46; Elhanan
ben Abraham of Esquira’s Sefer Yesod ‘Olam, a Kabbalistic book written Sei
at the beginning of the fourteenth century, MS. Moscow-Ginzburg 607,
fol. 115a, where this angel is connected to Sabbatai and to the seventh 10
firmament of ‘Aravot as well as Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition, Sat
p. 251 and the text printed by Scholem, Demons, Devils, and Souls, p. 112.
See also in Alemanno’s interesting untitled book preserved in MS. Paris
BN 849, fol. 64a. For other references see M. Moise Schwab, Vocabulaire de Lei
lAngelologie d ’apres les manuscripts Hebreux de la Bibliotheque nationale (Arche, M
Milan, 1989), p. 352. See also the discussion found in the mid-nineteenth- sai
century French occultist Eliphas Levi, The Key of the Mysteries, tr. A. Crowley, a
no page numbers, commenting on the Hebrew letter Resh: ‘Destruction red
and Regeneration, Time, Saturn, Cassiel, King of Tombs, and of Solitude. ' i! i
However, in the French original only the issue of the tombs occurs, i! Per
without any other of the attributes mentioned in the English translation.
The affinity between tombs and Saturn appears, for example, in Joseph
Ashkenazi’s passage, printed in the Appendix. tier
48 Compare to ibn Ezra, Reshit Hokhmah, p. xliv, and the quotation we adduced ear
above from Alcabitius. Sat
49 Saro. This is quite an uncommon vision of Saturn as if it is an angel
appointed upon a day rather than a planet. Compare with the view found
in an astro-magical epistle attributed to Maimonides, in MS. London,
British Library Or. 19788, fols.4b-5a; Abraham Harnoi, Liderosh ’Elohim
(Livorno, 1870), fols 19b-20a; Z. Edelman (ed.), Hemdah Genuzah,
(Koenigsberg, 1856), fols 43b-44a: ‘And from this verse seven names Go
emerge, which correspond to seven angels of the firmaments that are af
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon.’ For the context of
?
this statement see Idel, ‘Astral Dreams in Judaism: Twelfth to Fourteenth
» (In
Centuries’, Dream Cultures, Explorations in the Comparative History of
ret
Dreaming, ed. David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa (Oxford University
is
Press, New York, 1999), pp. 239-42.
At
50 Commentary on Prayers, MS. Paris BN 848, fol. 15a. For some details on
this treatise see Idel, ‘Ramon Lull and Ecstatic Kabbalah: A Preliminary
Observation’, pp. 170-4 and see now the editions of Saverio Campanini,
Yehudah ben Nissim ibn Malka: Perush ha-Tefelot, in Giulio Busi, Catalogue of
the Kabbalistic Manuscripts in the Library of the Jewish Community of Mantua
(Florence, 2001), pp. 219-358, and Adam Afterman, The Intention of
Prayers in Early Ecstatic Kabbalah (Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2004), p.
228 (Hebrew). Though deeply influenced by Sefer Yetzirah, whose author
relates Sabbatai to Sunday, the anonymous kabbalist nevertheless accepts
the view of the astrologers. This is also the case in Joseph Gikatilla’s Sefer
ha-Niqqud (Krakow, 1608), fol. 10a, and in his Sha'ar ha-Niqqud, printed in
’'Arzei Levanon (Venice, 1601), fol. 39b. See also n. 45 above.
51 See Sefer Raziel ha-Malakh, (Amsterdam, 1701), fols 20a, 34b. Elsewhere,
fol. 5a, the angel related to Saturn is Michael, considered in many sources
to be the angel governing the Nation of Israel. Once again ibid., fol. 41b,
Saturn is related to the Sabbath and to an angel who, according to one
variant, is called Israel! See also below, n. 85. For another version of Sefer
Raziel see MS. New York, JTS 8117, fols 70a, 71a. On this manuscript see
Leicht, Astrologumena Judaica, pp. 332-3, and see also Alejandro Garcia
Aviles, ‘Alfonso X y el Liber Raziel: Imagenes de la magfa astral judia en el
scriptorium alfonsi’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, vol. 74 (1997), pp. 21-39.
The nexus Qaftziel, sometimes Qatzfiel, and Saturn became standard and
returned in several later sources.
52 Ribbui ha-hashbba‘ot ha-kohot ha-Yehudiyyot.
53 Perhaps a hint at the concept of Neshamah Yeterah. Cf. BT, Beitzah, fol. 16a.
Abulafia’s text is not so clear, but it seems to me that Weinstock’s suggestion
to read Neshamah Yeterah here is plausible. I assume that Abulafia has
been influenced by a view which, though found later, reflects a much
earlier one; see the nexus between the supplementary soul, Sabbath, and
Saturn in the passage from the Pericope Yitro printed in Zohar Hadash, to
be discussed below, and the supercommentary on Abraham ibn Ezra, by
the mid-fourteenth-century Shlomo Franco, printed in Dov Schwartz, The
Philosophy of a Fourteenth CenturyJewish Neoplatonic Circle (Ben Tzvi Institute,
Bialik Institute, Jerusalem, 1996), p. 261 (Hebrew), and of the controversy
between him and Abraham ibn Al-Tabib, printed in ibid., ‘Worship of
God’, pp. 228-9, and Studies on Astral Magic, pp. 168-70. For more on ibn
al-Tabib see Schwartz, ‘R. Abraham Al-Tabib: The Man and His Oeuvre’,
QS, vol.64 (1992-3), pp. 1397-1400 (Hebrew).
54 In the Bible, these two terms stand for the cessation of agriculture
respectively during the seventh and forty-ninth years. I assume that the first
is an example of a simple heptad, the second of a complex one. Though
Abulafia does not explicate his use of the two terms, I assume from the
128 Notes

context that he is referring to cosmic cycles, of seven thousand and forty-

nine thousand years, rather than to the biblical sense of these terms. See
also below, n. 97. For another relation between Yovel, ‘the sphere of Saturn’
and the Jews, see the interesting fragment by Yehudah ben Shemariah,
i
Commentary on the Pentateuch, ed. Leah N. Goldfeld, printed in Qovetz
j
‘Al Yad, (ns) vol. 10 (1982), p. 150 (Hebrew), where the impact of both
Ptolemy and Yehudah ibn Matqa are evident.
55 Abraham Abulafia, Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, MS. Harvard, Houghton 58,
fol. 40a, ed. Israel Weinstock (Mossad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1984), p. 4.
i
As we shall see immediately below, this claim of an affinity between Saturn
and Shemittah can also be found in Joseph Ashkenazi’s Commentary on Sefer
Yetzirah. For more on incantations, hashba'ot, at the inception of prophetic
Kabbalah see the material printed and analysed in M. Idel, ‘Incantations,
Lists and “Gates of Sermons” in the Circle of Rabbi Nehemiah ben Shlomo
the Prophet, and Their Influences’, Tarbiz, vol. 77, (2009), pp. 499-506 ft
(Hebrew). An issue that deserves a separate analysis is the possible affinity
between the combination of astrological speculations with linguistic ones,
including the art of combinations, in Raimond Lull and Abulafia. On Lull
see Yates, Lull & Bruno, pp. 14-16, 21, 23-4. For other affinities between to
the two schools of thought see also my study ‘Ramon Lull and Ecstatic to
Kabbalah’, pp. 170-4, and my ‘Ashkenazi Esotericism and Kabbalah in
Barcelona’, HispaniaJudaica, vol. 5 (2007), pp. 100-4.
56 See, e.g., the list of parallels drawn by Weinstock, Commentary on Sefer
Yetzirah, pp. 51-62, who attempted to show that Togarmi’s Commentary was
in fact composed by Abulafia himself, a theory that I find quite implausible.
I hope to deal with these issues in my edition of this commentary.
57 Printed by Gershom Scholem as an appendix to his The Qahbalah of Sefer Ih
ha-Temunah and of R. Abraham Abulafia, ed. Y. ben Shlomo (Akademon, i
Jerusalem, 1969), p. 235 (Hebrew). On this type of speculation see M. Idel, in
‘On Paradise in Jewish Mysticism’, in Ch. Ben-Noon (ed.), The Cradle of lex
Creativity (Ramot, Hod ha-Sharon 2004), pp. 609-44. ill
58 BT, Sabbath, fol. 117b. un
59 On this phrase and its meaning in the Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah see Idel, evi
Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics, p. 10. sta
60 P. 4, n. to line 17. M
j
61 On this seminal figure, whose thought still deserves a more comprehensive
study, see Gershom Scholem’s highly important study of Studies in Kabbalah
(1), ed. J. ben Shlomo and M. Idel (Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 1998), pp. 112-36
O
i
(Hebrew), in which it is established in a definitive manner that he is the
author of the Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah otherwise attributed to an earlier
in
kabbalist R. Abraham ben David (Rabad). See more on this passage below
(
in chapter 2. See also Georges Vajda, ‘Un chapitre de l’histoire du conflit
Isj
 entre la kabbale et la philosophic: la polemique anti-intellectualiste de
Joseph b. Shalom Ashkenazi’, AHDLMA,vol. 23 (1956), pp. 45-143; Pedaya,
‘Sabbath, Sabbatai’; Moshe Hallamish, ‘Fragments from the Commentaries
of R. Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi on Psalms’, Daat, vol. 10 (1983), pp.
57-70 (Hebrew); Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, pp. 93-5; Ogren, Renaissance
and Rebirth, pp. 18-20; HarveyJ. Haines, The Art of Conversion, Christianity &
Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century (Brill, Leiden, 2000), pp. 139-41, 169-70;
and M. Idel, ‘Ashkenazi Esotericism and Kabbalah in Barcelona’, Hispania
Judaica, vol. 5 (2007), pp. 101-3; Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 367-77; and
‘An Anonymous Commentary on Shir ha-Yihud', ed. K. E. Groezinger andj.
Dan, Mysticism, Magic and Kabbalah in AshkenaziJudaism (Walter de Gruyter,
Berlin, New York, 1995), pp. 151-4, as well as n. 70 below.
62 In space, which is one of the three dimensions of reality according to Sefer
Yetzirah. The other two will be mentioned immediately below.
63 This is the first unit of letters that constitute the name of forty-two letters,
each of the six letters corresponding, according to Joseph Ashkenazi’s
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, to each of the seven planets. The affinity
between the seven planets and the name of forty-two letters is evident in
Abulafia’s Gan Xa ‘ul, p. 38, in a passage that has also been copied in Sefer
ha-Peliy’ah I, fol. 76c. See also below, chapter 2, n. 105, Shirot ve-Tishbahot
shel ha-Shabbatayim, pp. 76, 158, and Elqayam, ‘The Rebirth of the Messiah’,
p. 155, nn. 123, 124.
64 Hokhmat ha-keshafim.
65 Shemu'ot ra‘ot. In Sefer ha-Peliy’ah the version is ‘Etzah Raah, ‘bad counsel’.
On the affinity between Saturn and counsel see Edgard Wind, Pagan
Mysteries in the Renaissance (Penguin, Harmondworth, 1967), p. 279.
66 The Hebrew phrase is Marah Shehorah, namely ‘black humour’ or
melancholy. The nexus between Saturn and melancholy is conspicuous
in many ancient, medieval and Renaissance texts, as the numerous
texts found in the monograph by Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Saturn
et la Melancolie, amply demonstrate. In the many Hebrew sources, which
unfortunately escaped the attention of those authors, this nexus is also
evident in several instances. See, in addition to the astrological literature
starting in the twelfth century, the Zoharic literature: Zohar Hadash, ed. R.
Margoliot (Mossad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem, 1978), fols 32a, 33d; Zxrhar,
vol. Ill, fol. 237b (Ra'aya’ Meheimna); Tiqqunei Zohar, no. 21, fol. 56b; no.
70, fol. 124ab. See also Elqayam, ‘Sabbatai Sevi’s Manuscript’, pp. 361-5.
On Saturn and melancholy see more in the next two chapters. On the
affinity between black bile, black and death or maladies, see the proposal
in Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age
of Reason (Tavistock Publications, London, 1967), pp. 116-18.
67 Isaiah 11.2.
68 Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, fols 51c-52a, copied in Sefer lia-Peliy’ah, I, fol.
57b. For the Hebrew originals see the Appendix below. This quotation
reverberates in the work of manyjewish authors. See, e.g., the repercussions
of this passage in Moses of Kiev’s Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, called 'Otzar
ha-Shem, ibid. A somewhat shorter variant has been copied anonymously
in Alemanno’s untitled treatise found in MS. Paris BN 849, fols 73b-74a.
A version of this passage that contains some slight differences from the
above passage is to be found in the early sixteenth-century Joseph ben
Shlomo Al-Ashqar, in his TzafnatPa‘aneah, fol. 71a. See also ibid., fol. 37ab,
where another eschatological understanding of Saturn is mentioned.
For additional discussions of Saturn in this book, see also ibid., fols 36b,
69b-70a. A late compilation of Kabbalistic tradition extant in MS. New
York, JTS 2054, fol. 14b-15a, contains a paraphrase of this text. For a late-
nineteenth-century appropriation of this passage, without mentioning the
source, as part of a compilation of different traditions about Sabbatai/
Saturn, see Hamoi, Daveq me-’Ah, pp. 95-6. On the identification between
Saturn and the third sefirah, without messianic implications however,
see another book by the same R. Joseph, Kabbalistic Commentary on
Genesis Rabbah, p. 236. Also see the passage from Abraham Yagel in this
chapter below. On the affinity between Saturn, a third power within the
pleroma on the one hand and an eschatological figure on the other, see
previously in Ismaiyliah, cf., the discussion of Henry Corbin, Cyclical Time
and Ismaili Gnosis (London, 1983), pp. 91-2, 94. See also Wolfson, ‘The
Engenderment of Messianic Politics’, pp. 243-4, n. 135, and for another
possible parallel to Ismailiyah see Bezalel Naor, Post-Sabbatian Sabbatianism
(Orot, Spring Valley, New York, 1999), pp. 14-20. See also below ch. 2, n.
81.
69 On the repercussions of this quote see chapter 2 below and for the entire
Hebrew text see the Appendix. It should be pointed out that in the later
passage, the anonymous kabbalist mentions the name Sabbatai several
times, more than in the original version in Joseph Ashkenazi’s Commentary
on Sefer Yetzirah.
70 Alexander Altmann, ‘Moses Narboni’s “Epistle on Shi‘ur QomaK”, in A.
Altmann (ed.), Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, MA, 1967), pp. 241-2; Simon, ‘Interpreting the
Interpreter,’ p. I l l ; Dov Schwartz, ‘La magie astrale dans la Penseejuive
rationaliste en Provence au XlVgSiecle’, AHDLMA, vol. 61 (1994), p. 40;
Schwartz, ‘Different Forms’, p. 43; Colette Sirat, ‘Moses Narboni’s Pirqei
Moshe', Tarbiz, vol. 39 (1970), pp. 296—7 (Hebrew). See also n. 6 above.
71 On Ibn Waqar, see Georges Vajda, Recherches sur la phibsophie et la Kabbale
dans la pensee juive du Moyen Age (Mouton, 1962), pp. 117-297; Gershom
Scholem, ‘R. Joseph ibn Waqar s Arabic Book on Kabbalah and Philosophy’,
 QS, vol. 20 (1943/4), pp. 153-62 (Hebrew); Altmann, ‘Moses Narboni’, pp.
242-3; Sirat, La philosophie Juive medieuale en pays de Chretiente, pp. 157-62;
and now Paul B. Fenton (ed.), Rabbi Joseph b. Abraham Ibn Waqar, Principles
of the Qabbalah (Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2004) (Hebrew). On his crucial
role in promoting the interest in ibn Ezra, especially in Castile, see Simon,
‘Interpreting the Interpreter’, pp. 111-13, 127, n. 46. However, it should
be pointed out that syntheses between theosophy and astrology are to be
found before ibn Waqar in Joseph Ashkenazi and Yehudah ben Nissim ibn
Malka.
72 Sefer Meqor Hayyim (Mantua, 1559), fol. 6, col. 3-4 and the version found
in MS. Leiden, Or. 2065, fols Clb-C2a. On ibn Zarza, see Schwartz, Studies
on Astral Magic, pp. 115-18. For ibn Zarza as the source of an important
passage cited by Marsilio Ficino see Stephane Toussaint, ‘Ficino’s Orphic
Magic or Jewish Astrology and Oriental Philosophy? A Note on spiritus, the
Three Books on Life, Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Zarza’, Accademia, vol. II (2000),
pp. 19-33.
73 Compare to the passages of Ezra Gatigno, printed and analysed by
Schwartz, ‘The Philosophical Interpretation’, pp. 85-8, and see also his
‘Land, Place, Star’, pp. 138-50, especially p. 148; Schwartz, ‘The Worship
of God’, p. 256.
74 See above, n. 27.
75 Shmuel Ibn Motot, Megillat Setarim (Venice, 1554), fol. 6b and especially
the discussion based on ibn Motot found in Margaliyyot Tovah (Amsterdam,
1722), fol. 71b, where he refers to ibn Sina and to Yehudah ben Nissim
ibn Malka in this context; and the view of ibn Zarza ibid., fol. 8b, based on
ibn Motot, cf. 75 above. Cf. also the passage copied in Yohanan Alemanno,
Collectanea, MS. Oxford-Bodleiana 2234, fol. 125b. On the thought of ibn
Motot, see Vajda, ‘Recherches’, pp. 29-63. See also the claim of Shem Tov
ibn Shaprut, who argues that prayer and the worship of God strengthen
the influx of Saturn, so that it emanates power and intellect. Cf. Norman
E. Frimer and Dov Schwartz, The Life and Thought of Shem Tov ibn Shaprut
(Ben Zvi Institute, Jerusalem, 1992), p. 92 (Hebrew). On ibn Zarza, see
Schwartz, The Religious Philosophy of Samuel ibn Zarza, PhD thesis, Bar
Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 1989, especially pp. 118—32 (Hebrew). See
especially ibn Zarza’s view that when someone would desire secrets to be
revealed to him when he wishes or take revenge on his enemies, he should
direct his prayer to Saturn. Cf. Schwartz, ibid., p. 119, pp. 126-7, where
the negative conceptual structure of Saturn is quite conspicuous. For the
relation of the planet to Jewish nation see ibid., p. 129.
76 See Schwartz, ‘Worship of God’, p. 250, and for the broader background
see his Studies on Astral Magic, pp. 124-80. See also Benjamin’s view of
Saturn as related to the angel Satan, as discussed in chapter 3.
77 See below, n. 109.
78 See the passage quoted by Schwartz, ‘Different Forms’, p. 33.
79 See The Commentary on Leviticus, 17:7, ed. A. Weiser (Mossad ha-Rav Kook,
Jerusalem, 1977), vol. Ill, p. 53. See also Karo, Toledot Yitzhaq, fol. 89b.
On the danger of goats, plausibly pointing to demonic powers, when
encountered on a Friday evening, see previously in the Talmudic discussions
and Mahzor Vitry, by R. Simhah, a student of Rashi, ed. Shimeon ha-Levi
Horowitz (repr. Jerusalem, 1963), p. 81 (Hebrew). These sources discuss
the term sakkanat seyirim, apparently following a biblical theme. See also
Nahmanides’ Commentary on Leviticus 16:8, and for the nexus between
Samael and goats see Ginzberg, Legends of theJews, vol. V, p. 312.
80 Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Satume et la melancolie, pp. 207-8 and Zafran,
‘Saturn’, pp. 16-17. See also para. 6 below.
81 Sefer Toledot ’Adam, MS. Oxford-Bodeliana 836, fol. 180b. On this treatise
see Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, pp. 150-2.
82 Compare, however, a quite different attitude in a passage from
Alemanno’s Sha'ar ha-Hesheq, to be discussed below. For the view that the
Jews worshipped Saturn, see previously in ancient texts, analysed in the
bibliography referred to above, n. 1, and in ibn Ezra and David Qimhi on
Amos 5.26, as well as the material collected by Ginzberg, Legends of theJews,
vol. V, p. 135, n. 6, and Sela, ‘The Appropriation of Saturn’, pp. 35-6. For
a comprehensive astrological reading of the Bible, at least in principle, see
the passage of Alemanno translated in Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, p. 183.
83 This angel was conceived of as presiding over the people of Israel. On the
nexus between this angel and Saturn see Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and
Superstitions, p. 251 and above n. 53.
84 See Vajda, ‘Recherches’, p. 59, n. 112.
85 Or religions, dinim. Indeed in another important statement on Saturn
found in Alemanno’s other book Sefer Hei ‘Olamim, MS. Mantua, Jewish
Community 21, fol. 116a, we read: the sphere of Saturn and its motions
and the depth of its thoughts, and the destruction and dreariness of the
land that is under it, and the sorcery and the demons and the religions [ha-
datot], which are under its spirituality [ruhaniyyuto] ’. Here the term datot,
religions, parallels the dinim. In this context, the mention of the Torah
later in this passage is quite relevant. According to such a reading, the
Torah is one of those dinim he mentions.
86 Hokhmot ruhaniyyot. On this phrase as indicating astral magic see the
studies of Shlomo Pines, ‘On the Term Ruhaniyyut and its Sources and
On Judah Halevi’s Doctrine’, Tarbiz, vol. 57 (1988), pp. 511-40 (Hebrew);
‘Shi‘ite Terms and Conceptions in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari’, Jerusalem Studies
in Arabic and Islam, vol. II (1980), pp. 165-251, especially pp. 243-7; ‘Le
Sefer ha-Tamar et les Maggidim des Kabbalists, Hommage a Georges Vajda’,
 ed. G. Nahon and C. Touati (Peeters, Louvain, 1980), pp. 333-63. It
should be mentioned that at the end of the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries, there were some definitions of Kabbalah which integrated the
views of astro-magic, and conceived of it as creating a connection between
the supernal and lower realms. See Idel, ‘The Epistle of R. Isaac of Pisa
(?)’, pp. 166-7, 87 n. 141, 213-14. For a late Christian understanding of
Kabbalah as a pact with the devil, see Trachtenberg, The Devil and theJews,
p. 86. See also below, n. 185.
87 kishshuf See n. 15 above.
88 The nexus between these two practices and Saturn is already manifest in
the passage of Abraham Abulafia and even more in Joseph ben Shalom
Ashkenazi’s influential Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah. See chapter 2 below.
In addition, the prophecy that is accorded to fools is found in the same
passage by Ashkenazi, to be discussed below in the Appendix.
89 On the importance of the Conjunctio Maior, also see the other texts of
text of Alemanno printed in Beit Arie and Idel, ‘Treatise on the End and
Astrology’, pp. 191-4. On this issue see also below chapter 2.
90 See above, beside n. 69.
91 kishshufim. See n. 15 above.
92 MS. Paris BN 849, fols 93b-95a, in a passage dealing at length with the
seftrah of Binah. See also Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, pp. 188-90. On Alemanno’s
authorship of this treatise see Gershom Scholein, ‘An Unknown Treatise
of Yohanan Alemanno’, QS, vol. 5 (1928/9), pp. 273-7 (Hebrew). See
also Idel, ‘Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations’, p. 209 and Absorbing
Perfections, pp. 149—50, 487-92. On the Spanish background of Alemanno’s
discussions, see the debate analysed by Schwartz, Studies on Astral Magic, pp.
282-5. Parallel versions of several parts of this quotation are to be found in
excerpts from the super-commentaries on Ibn Ezra that Alemanno copied
into his Collectanea, see MS. Oxford-Bodleiana 2234, fols 125b, 126b and
128b, and see also below ch. 3, para. 5. The analogy of Binah to the planet
Saturn appears in Joseph ibn Waqar and, following him, in Moses Narboni
and ibn Motot. On Alemanno and occult sciences in general, see Erwin
Rosenthal, ‘Yohanan Alemanno and Occult Science’, in Y. Maeyama and W.
G. Saltzer (eds), Prismata, Naturwissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien, Festschrift
fur Willy Hartner (Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1977), pp. 349-61. On
the presence of Alemanno in Florence in general, see Michele Luzzatti,
‘Documenti inediti su Yohanan Alemanno a Firenze (1481 e 1492-1493)’,
in Liscia Bemporad and Ida Zatelli (eds), La cultura Ebraica alVEpoca
di Lorenzo il Magnifico (Olschki, Florence, 1995), pp. 71-84; Fabrizio
Lelli, ‘Biography and Autobiography in Yohanan Alemanno’s Literary
Perception’, in D. B. Ruderman and G. Veltri (eds), Cultural Intermediaries,
Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modem Italy (University of Pennsylvania Press,
134 Notes

Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 25-38; and Retorica, poetica e linguistica nel Hay ha- ^
‘Olamim di Yohanan Alemanno, PhD thesis, Universita degli Studi di Torino,
1990/91; Michael Reuveni, The Physical Worlds ofJochanan Alemanno in Hai
Si
H a’Olamim, PhD thesis, University of Haifa, Haifa, 2004 (Hebrew); Garb,
Manifestations of Power, pp. 174-84, and in the following footnote. This ^
13£
presence may account for the parallel between Binah and Saturn found in
Alemanno’s student, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, according to Yates, 1
Giordano Bruno, pp. 100-1. On Alemanno and Joseph Ashkenazi as the ^
former's source see also Ogren, Renaissance and Rebirth, pp. 187, 193-8, s
216-17. 6Sa
93 Ed. Grossberg, p. 21. On this book of magic, spuriously attributed to ibn ^
V.
Ezra, in the Renaissance, see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 195; Idel, ‘The M
Study Program of Yohanan Alemanno’, p. 312, n. 76; and now Leicht, ^
AstrologumenaJudaica, pp. 367-8. The Hebrew phrase translated as ‘among
the places’ is min ha-beqa‘ot. Compare the above quotation from ibn Motot, ^
n. 77 above, and the texts quoted in Idel, ‘The Epistle of R. Isaac of Pisa rer
(?)’, pp. 166-7. I assume that this phrase has something to do with Saturn ®
as the god of agriculture in Latin mythology. ^
94 Collectanea, MS. Oxford-Bodleiana 2234, fol. 126b; on this issue see also ®
ibid., fol. 127b. For more on Saturn in the folios close to these in Alemanno &
see the quotes adduced in chapter 2. Compare also the ambivalent attitude fy
of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, as adduced by Henri de Lubac, Pico de la pp.

Mirandole (Aubier, Montaigne,Paris, 1974), pp. 314-15. da

95 See his mention of Saturn in his Dialoghi dAmore, as discussed in Klibansky, refs
Panofsky and Saxl, Satume et la melancolie, pp. 4 0 4 , n. 3 5 , and in the foil
translator’s note on pp. 6 8 0 - 1 . Ebreo mentions Saturn several times in his and

book. See Dialogues of Love, ed. Rossella Pescatori, tr. Damian Bacich and |
Rossella Pescatori (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2 0 0 9 ), pp. 1 2 3 -5 , i

1 3 4 -5 , 147, 148, 1 5 0 -3 , 290.

96 Dever. frr
97 Al tzad ha-kishshuf. In his She’erit Yosef (see next note) the version is ‘al derekh
kishshuf See n. 15 above.
98 Sefer ’Even ha-Shoham, MS. Jerusalem, NUL, Heb. 8° 416, fol. 136b. See also fljj^
the parallel text found in his Sefer She’erit Yosef, MS. Warsau 229, fol. 21a.
These texts have been drawn to my attention by Dr Yoni Garb. On this ^
kabbalist see Garb’s ‘Techniquesof Trance inthe Jerusalemite Kabbalah/ |jjj
Pe’amim, vol. 70 (1997), pp. 47-67 (Hebrew), his Manifestations of Power,
pp. 187-94 and his ‘The Kabbalah of Rabbi Joseph ibn Sayyah as a Source y
for the Understanding of Safedian Kabbalah’, Kabbalah, vol. 4 (1999), pp.
255-313 (Hebrew). ^
99 Toledot Yitzhaq, fol. 12a. The impact of ibn Zarza’s Meqor Hayyim is evident
in his account. See also ibid., fol. 49b. ,
P
100 See SeferKevod Elohim (Constantinople, 1585), fol. 111a.
101 On Saturn and the two zodiacal signs see die paintings adduced in
Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Suturne et la melancolie, pp. 304-6, 312-13.
See also above, n. 86.
102 Saturn’s.
103 See n. 102 above. See also Yagel, A Valley of Vision, p. 323.
104 See, e.g., above the texts referred to in nn. 87 and 90. The assumption that
the Jews are predisposed to destruction is an example of the process of
assimilation, to be dealt with in para. 8.
105 Saturn’s.
106 Yagel, A Valley of Vision, p. 171. On this author in general see Ruderman,
Kabbalah, Magic, and Science. Slaves, graves and prisons occur in Ashkenazi’s
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah. It should be mentioned that elsewhere in A Valley
of Vision, pp. 323-4, another astro-magical discussion on Saturn, now put in
relation with the sefirah of hesed, symbolized by Abraham, was adduced. Also
very important is the discussion, ibid., pp. 303-4, where an implicit relation
was established between Saturn and the Hebrew language. For a nexus
between Saturn, the Jews and plague, in a context where Kabbalah is also
mentioned, see Yagel’s contemporary, Giordano Bruno, as translated and
discussed in Karen-Silvia de Leonjones, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah:
Prophets, Magicians, and Rabbis (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1998),
pp. 119-21. Let me note that the association of Kabbalah with assinity, so
characteristic of Bruno’s thought, including the passage translated in this
reference, may be related to the connection between an ass and Saturn,
found in the later layer of the Zohar, Ra‘aya’Meheimna’, Zohar, III, fol. 282a,
and in Henri Cornelius Agrippa of Netesheim, De Occulta Philosophia, I, ch.
26, as well as in another passage of Agrippa, pointed out by de Leon-Jones,
ibid., pp. 109-11, 128-30. For the ancient accusation that Jews worship
an ass, see John G. Gager, The Origins of Antisemitism (Oxford University
Press, New York, Oxford, 1985), pp. 40, 46 and Halbronn, Le MondeJuif et
lAstrologie, pp. 216-17.
107 See fol. 16ab.
108 Shefifon ‘alei ’orah. Cf. Genesis 49:17, where this serpentine is a parallel to
Nahash, a serpent. On Saturn and serpent see also below the connection
between Sabbatai Tzevi and the serpent in ch. 2, n. 108.
109 MoshVa Hossim, ch. 8, fol. 27a. On this book see Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic
and Science, pp. 32-4. On the issue of the conjunction of the two planets,
Yagel was also influenced by bin Rijal. See Yagel, Valley of Vision, p. 99. On
smell and Saturn see the passage of Solomon Maimon in ch. 3.
110 MoshVa Hossim, fols.l3a, 13b.
111 Ibid., fol. 17b. See already Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, 11:9, p. 86. For more on
Jewish views on the Greatest Conjunction and plague in a passage written
 by a witness to the plague, see the important passage by Moshe Narboni
printed in Gerit Bos, ‘R. Moshe Narboni: Philosopher and Physician: A
Critical Analysis of Sefer Orah Hayyim , Medieval Encounters, vol. 1, no. 2
(1995), pp. 241-3, and the bibliography adduced there concerning recent
research on the Black Death. The connection between the tenth of the
greatest conjunctions and pestilence can already be found in Abu Ma'shar.
112 See below, n. 171.
113 See Dov Schwartz, ‘The Neoplatonic Movement in 14th Century Jewish
Literature and its Relationship to Theoretical and Practical Medicine’,
Koroth, vol. 9, nos 9-10 (1989), pp. 272-84 (Hebrew).
114 Moshi'a Hossim, fol. 17b. See also ibid., fol. 18a. It should be emphasized
that Yagel’s interest in plague has much to do with what happened in Italy
in his lifetime. See Yagel, Valley of Vision, index, under plague. For the
nexus between Saturn and serpents see the next chapter in the context of
Sabbatai Tzevi.
115 Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Satume et la melancolie, p. 208.
116 See, for the time being, Idel, ‘Kabbalah and Elites in Thirteenth-Century
Spain’, Mediterranean Historical Review, vol. 9 (1994), pp. 5-19; Idel, ‘On
Judaism, Jewish Mysticism, and Magic’, pp. 212-13. None of the authors
cited here reflect a positive attitude towards Saturn and its role as the
overlord of Jews, and more belonged, in their lifetimes, to the Jewish
Rabbinic elite, where the attitude towards astrology was slightly more
circumspect. It should be mentioned that some form of rejection of astro-
magic may be discerned in Jewish esoteric literature in late antiquity. See
Idel, ‘Hermeticism and Judaism’, p. 61.
117 Perhaps this is a corrupted form for Balinus, the Arabic form of the name
of Apollonius, to whom some magical words, also dealing with astro-magic,
have been attributed. These quotations are reminiscent of concepts found
in Picatrix and in the spurious Sefer ha-‘Atzamim which is attributed to ibn
Ezra. Indeed the two books surfaced in Castile in the fourteenth century.
See Moritz Steinschneider, Zur pseudepigraphischen Literatur, insbesondere der
geheimen Wissenschaften des Mittelalters aus Hebraeischen und Arabischen Quellen
(Berlin, 1862), pp. 29-30, n. 7. See also Schwartz, ‘Astrology and Astral
Magic’, pp. 53-4, 72, and the view of Isaac Pulgar, ibid., p. 58. On the ascent
of Hermetic elements in Kabbalah in general and in the second half of
the thirteenth century in particular see Idel, ‘Hermeticism and Kabbalah’,
in P. Lucentini, I. Parri and V. P. Compagni (eds), Hermeticism from Late
Antiquity to Humanism (Brespols, Turnhout, 2004), pp. 389-408. See also
the discussions about astral magic in the circles related to Nahmanides
and ibn Adret, in Schwartz, Studies on Astral Magic, pp. 56-90 and Leicht,
Astrobgumena fudaica, p. 297. This epistle may well be a source of the
Arabic original of Picatrix. See also Bar Ilan, Astrology and Other Sciences, pp.
 19-20. The Pseudo-Galen passage has been copied by R. Elijah of Smyrna
in his Midrash Talpiyyot (ed. Smyrna, repr. Jerusalem, 1963), fol. 171 d and
Steinschneider, ibid.
118 Commentary on Deuteronomy 18.10, ed. C. D. Chavel (Mossad ha-Rav Kook,
Jerusalem, 1968), vol. Ill, p. 361. See also Ginsburg, Sod ha-Shabbat, p. 163,
n. 378. The negative aspects of Saturn were duly put in relief in the same
commentary on Genesis 29.32, ibid., vol. I, pp. 258-9
119 R. Bahya, ibid. There can be no doubt that astro-magic was well-known in
Bahya’s entourage, especially in the context of astral medicine. See Joseph
Shatzmiller, ‘In Search of the Book of Figures: Medicine and Astrology in
Montpellier at the Turn of the Fourteenth Century’, Association for Jewish
Studies Review, vol. 7 (1982/83), pp. 383-407; Shatzmiller, ‘The Forms of
the Twelve Constellations: A 14th Century Controversy’, in Z. Harvey, M.
Idel and E. Schweid (eds), Shlomo Pines Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem, 1990),
vol. II, pp. 397-408 (Hebrew); Gerrit Bos, Charles Burnett and Y. Tzvi
Langermann, Hebrew Medical Astrology: David ben Yom Tov, Kelal Qatan
(American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 2005) as well as n. 118
above. See also the reference to Scholem in n. 123 below. Interesting
discussions on Saturn are also spread in the various sermons of R. Jacob of
Sicily, Torat ha-Minhah, who was another student of Shlomo ben Abraham
ibn Adret - known as the Rashba’ - also the main master of our R. Bahya,
and those discussions deserve separate analyses. It should be pointed out
that the Book of the Moon resorts to a term that is translated in Hebrew
as temunah, again talisman. On this book, which was known to R. Bahya’s
entourage, see Fabrizio Lelli, ‘Le versioni ebraiche di un testo ermetico: II
Sefer Ha-Levanah’, Henoch, vol. 12 (1990), pp. 147-63.
120 Addition to Zohar, II, fol. 275a. It should be mentioned that in Gershom
Scholem’s private copy of the Zohar, printed as Sefer ha-Zohar shel Gershom
Scholem, ed. Josefof, 1873 (The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1992), vol. IV,
fol. 274b, he noted in handwriting the affinity between the two passages,
and writes that this is a reaction to Picatrix and related to R. Bahya’s
passage quoted above. He also refers to Zohar III, fol. 272b, which indeed
has a parallel with the sorrow of some people during Sabbath and the
difference from the Jewish ritual, without, however, mentioning Saturn.
There, Scholem, ibid., vol. VI, fol. 272b, he again refers to Bahya, and
this time mentions the Pseudo-Galenus. However, see my discussion
immediately below. On Bahya and the Zohar see Liebes, Studies in the
Zohar, pp. 90-3, and the bibliography on the topic. The Book of Solomon
is an imagined book, like other ancient ones, which is found in Zoharic
literature. On another possible source for Zoharic acquaintance with
forms of Hellenistic magic in late antiquity see Liebes, ‘Zohar and
Iamblichus’. On the contemporary view of Lull that the astral bodies do
 not transmit energy but ‘imprint it on them ... their similitudes which
are the influences which they transmit to their inferiors’, cf. Yates, Lull
& Bruno, pp. 107-8. On astrology in this layer of Zoharic literature see
Kiener, ‘Astrology in Jewish Mysticism’, pp. 38-42.
121 Zohar Hadash, ed. Reuven Margaliot (Mossad ha-Rav Kook, Jerusalem,
1978), pericope Yithro, fol. 32a. On supplementary souls during Sabbath
in a similar context see above n. 57. The composition that is quoted
here differs substantially from the style of the conceptual framework of
the first layers of the Zohar, and is closer to the later layers of Zoharic
literature, Tiqqunei Zohar and Ra‘aya’ Meheimna’, like the former passage
that was added to Zohar II, and translated above, though I am not sure
that it necessarily belongs to it. (See, however, Scholem, Devils, Demons,
and Souls, p. 294, n. 209, and p. 299.) For a lengthy and important
discussion of Sabbatai and demonic powers, idolatry and maidservants,
see the fragment from this layer printed in Zohar, III, fols 281b-82a. See
also below, n. 128. This layer should be dated to the very end of the
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in Spain. See also Ginsburg,
Sod ha-Shabbat, p. 165, n. 381 and Goldreich, ‘The Pessimistic Pole of the
Sabbath’, p. 58, n. 51. On the negative aspects of the Sabbath in ancient
sources and in some medieval ones, see the important study by Pedaya,
‘Sabbath, Sabbatai’, pp. 169-91.
122 For more on Sabbath and Sabbatai, see Elliot K. Ginsburg, The Sabbath in
Classical Kabbalah (SUNY Press, Albany, 1989), pp. 198, 212 n. 38, pp. 223,
240-1, 253 nn. 53-4.
123 Be-kishshuf. See n. 15 above.
124 Mekashshef.
125 Zohar hadash, fol. 32a.
126 See also the presence of detailed discussions on Saturn in ibn Wah
shiyyah’s important book on magic, the famous Nabbatean Agriculture,
which might have had an impact on the original Arabic of Picatrix, as
pointed out by David Pingree, ‘Some of the Sources of the Ghayat al-H
akirn', JCWI, vol. 43 (1980), p. 12, and as described in Schwartz, Studies
on Astral Magic, p. 35 and the references there, and see especially the
long discussion on Saturn’s worship in Sefer ha-Atzamim, ed. Grossberg,
p. 21. See also above, n. 124. Some fragments from the book of Nabbatean
Agriculture were known towards the end of the thirteenth century in
Spain, as the quotations found in a lost book of Shem Tov Falaqera
demonstrate. See the passage quoted in Raphael Jospe and Dov Schwartz,
‘Shem Tov Falaquera’s Lost Bible Commentary’, HUCA, vol. 64 (1993),
pp. 199-200, and my ‘Golems and God’, pp. 239-41. On the Hebrew
versions of the book of Picatrix see Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, pp. 206-7;
Leicht, Astrologumena Judaica, pp. 316-22; and Schwartz, Astral Magic,
 pp. 101-3. See also the important discussions in Cohen-Aloro, Magic and
Sorcery in the Zohar, pp. 137-9, and the footnotes on pp. 320, 322, 329-30.
For the impact of Picatrix in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance
in Christian thought, see Warburg, The Renewal of Ancient Paganism, pp.
643, 687, 691, 701-2, 734, 735, 736, 753; Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance,
pp. 29-55; Yates, Giordano Bruno, pp. 49-57, 69-72, 80-2, 107-8, 141-2,
370-1; and Couliano, Eros and Magic, pp. 142-3.
127 ‘The Beginning of Kabbalah in Northern Africa? A Forgotten Document
by R. Yehudah ben Nissim ibn Malka’, Pe‘amim, vol. 43 (1990), p. 12 n. 53
(Hebrew). See also the important discussion of Dorit Cohen-Aloro, The
Secret of the Garment in the Zohar (Research Projects of the Institute ofJewish
Studies,Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 81-7 (Hebrew).
128 Zohar Hadash, fol. 33d and Ginsburg, Sod ha-Sabbat, p. 165, n. 381. See also
the passage cited immediately below from Tiqqun 21.
129 Patiya'. According to another interpretation it means a vessel, apparently
used for magical purposes.
130 On ravens as birds that are conceived of as belonging to Saturn, see ibn
Ezra, Reshit Hokhmah, p. xliii. Here we have some form of revelation of the
future by means of the movements of black birds, stemming from demonic
powers, which are related to Saturn.
131 Nights. However, given the frequent correlation between Saturn and Lilith,
in this layer of the Zohar, I assume that this is a pun, which attempts to
connect the darkness of the night with demonic female power. On the nexus
between Lilith, Sabbatai and melancholy see the Zoharic text belonging to
the same layer and printed in Zohar, III, fol. 227b, and the view ofJoseph of
Hamadan, Sefer Toledot Adam, printed in Jacob M. Toledano (ed.), Seferha-
Malkhut (Casablanca, 1930), fol. 52d. This kabbalist, active in Castile at the
close of the thirteenth century, may well be the main source of the author
of the view of the kabbalist who wrote Tiqqunei Zohar. For other possible
influences of this kabbalist on Tiqqunei Zohar, see M. Idel, Introduction
to Efraim Gottlieb, The Hebrew Writings of the Author of Tiqqunei Zohar and
Ra‘aya Mehemna (Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem,
2003), pp. 32-4 (Hebrew). See also the Hebrew passage authored by the
kabbalist who wrote Tiqqunei Zohar, printed by Goldreich, ‘The Pessimistic
Pole of the Sabbath’, pp. 54-5 and the pertinent footnotes. Compare,
however, Hillman, Senex and Puer, p. 319, who assumes that Saturn is
negatively inclined towards women.
132 To the sinners.
133 Dmm.This Dinim is quite a different meaning in comparison to din as
religion, in the text of Joseph Ashkenazi and Sabbatai Tzevi.
134 The demonic powers called Leilot.
135 Qesem.
140 Notes

136 Sam ha-Mawwet. This is a pun on Sam, poison’, and the two last consonants
of Qesem. The phrase ‘poison of death’ already occurs in ibn Ezra’s
description of Saturn. See Reshit Hokhmah, p. xliii. See n. 13 above. This
issue may be of importance for the claims of fourteenth-century Christians
that Jews were poisoning the water. See Guerschberg, ‘La controverse’.
The vision that venom is related to Saturn also occurs also in Marsilio
Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda, in a passage where he refers to views of
the Arabs.
137 The term translated as poison, in Hebrew, Sam, when combined with ’El
(God) produce Samael. On Samael and Saturn see also Ginsberg, Legends of
theJews, vol. V, p. 135, n. 5.
138 Tiqqunei Zohar, ed. R. Margaliot, Tiqqun no. 70, fol. 124a. On this text see
Ginsburg, Sod ha-Shabbat, p. 166, n. 382, and Scholem, Demons, Devils, and
Souls, p. 63. On magic based on mantics referring to birds in the main
Zoharic corpus see Cohen-Aloro, Magic and Sorcery in the Zahar, pp. 229-
34. Note the occurrence of the female aspects of demonic power, an issue
that will also be addressed in the next two chapters. This passage had
an impact on some of the sermons of the important eighteenth-century
author Jonathan Eibeschuetz’s books of homilies Ya‘arot Devash, an issue
that deserves a separate inquiry.
139 Tiqqunei Zohar, Tiqqun no. 21, fols 56b-57a. On this text see also Ginsburg,
Sod ha-Shabbat, p. 166, n. 382; Pedaya, ‘Sabbath, Sabbatai’, pp. 173-4; and
M. Idel, ‘Sabbath: On Concepts of Time in Jewish Mysticism’, in Gerald
Blidstein (ed.), Sabbath, Idea, History, Reality (Ben Gurion University
Press, Beer Sheva, 2004), pp. 57-93. For more on the negative aspects of
the Sabbath in Tiqqunei Zohar, see Goldreich’s important study of, ‘The
Pessimistic Pole of the Sabbath’. On the three meals on Sabbath, see also
above, in the discussion on Abraham Abulafia.
140 On this issue see Isadore Twersky, Introduction to the CodeofMaimonides (Mishneh
Torah) (Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 1980), pp. 389-91. See
also Goldreich, ‘The Pessimistic Pole of the Sabbath’, pp. 55-6, n. 45.
141 Schwartz, ‘La magie astrale’, p. 51.
142 See Schwartz, ‘Worship of God’.
143 Ibid., pp. 50-1. See also below in this paragraph the passage from
Alemanno’s Sha‘ar ha-Hesheq.
144 Schwartz, ‘The Polemic on Astral Magic in 14th Century Provence’, Zion,
vol. 58 (1993), pp. 141-74 (Hebrew).
145 Ma‘asei ha-kishshuf. See n. 15 above.
146 ha-mityahadim. This is a pun on Esther 8.17.
147 Tzeidah la-Derekh (Warsaw, 1880), fol. 63b, adduced and discussed by
Schwartz, ‘Different Forms’, p. 17 and Studies in Astral Magic, pp. 267-9.
148 kishshuf See n. 15 above. On talisman ic magic as sorcery see also
Alemanno’s contemporary, Isaac Abravanel; cf. Idel, ‘The Magical and
Neoplatonic Interpretations’, p. 214.
149 Halberstadt, 1860, fol. 44a. See also another text from this book, quoted
and analysed in Idel, ‘The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations’, p.
205. For the vacillation between a pro and a contra astrological position
see also the circle of scholars in Florence, especially Giovanni Pico, cf.
Walker, Spiritual & Demonic Magic, pp. 54-9 and Henri de Lubac, Pic de la
Mirandole, Etudes et discussions (Aubier Montaigne, Paris, 1974), pp. 307-26.
On Saturn, see especially pp. 309-11, 324-6. See also Karo, Toledot Yitzhaq,
fol. 92a, for a counter-Saturnian vision of Judaism.
150 See n. 145 above.
151 See his ‘On the Function of Analogy in the Occult’, in I. Merkel and A. Debus
(eds.), Hermeticism and the Renaissance (Cranbury, New Jersey, 1988), pp.
265-92; and see also his ‘Analogy versus Identity: The Rejection of the
Occult Symbolism, 1580-1680’, in B. Vickers (ed.), Occult & Scientific
Mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1986), pp. 95-164. See above, n. 112.
152 Guerschberg, ‘La controverse’, pp. 38-9 and Halbronn, Le Monde Juifi et
I’Astrologie, pp. 217-18.
153 Cf. Guerschberg, ‘La controverse’, p. 36. Unfortunately, Guerschberg, who
duly though shortly pointed to the possible affinity between the relations
between Saturn and Jews on the one hand, and their persecution during
the plague on the other, could not pursue this path given the fact that she
acknowledged that she did not have access to Jewish material. See ibid., p.
35, n. 72
154 Even Trachtenberg’s The Devil and theJews, which also discusses the Sabbat
of the witches and the image of the Jews as sorcerers and magicians, did not
contribute to a significant connection between Sabbath and Sabbat; see p.
210. Moreover, his contemporary, Montague Summers, a rather uncritical
mind altogether, writes in 1925 in his The History of Witchcraft (The Citadel
Press, Secaucus, NJ, 1974), p. I l l : ‘The derivation of the word Sabbat does
not seem to be exactly established. It is perhaps superfluous to point out
that it has nothing to do with the number seven, and is wholly unconnected
with the Jewish festival.’
155 Ecclesiasties, p. 1.
156 Baroja, The World of the Witches, p. 88 and Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, p.
101 .

157 Ecclesiasties, pp. 33-86.

158 Ibid., especially p. 80.
159 See nn. 105, 116 and 120 above.
160 See Guerschberg, ‘La controverse’, pp. 8-9, 10, 36.
161 Ibid., p. 11.
162 Ibid., pp. 10, 36; on the corrupted air, see ibid., pp. 10, 15, 17, 39; Lynn
Thorndike, History of Magic & Experimental Science (Columbia University
Press, NewYork, 1953), vol. Ill, pp. 244-5, 336-7; I assume that Ginzburg’s
remark in Ecstasies, p. 81, n. 8 should be corrected accordingly.
163 See above, n. 29. On the impact of the translations of ibn Ezra’s astrological
writings in Western Europe, see Thorndike, History of Magic & Experimental
Science, vol. II, pp. 926-30.
164 On this point see Zika, ‘Les parties du corps’ and Exorcising Our Demons.
For the resort to Saturnine imagery of the planet as killing his children in
Christian anti-Jewish pamphlets, see the important contribution of Zafran,
‘Saturn’, pp. 24-6.
165 See Baroja, The World of the Witches, pp. 87-8. For another early mention
of the cult of the goat; see H. C. Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft
(Thomas Yoseloff, New York, London, 1957), vol. I, p. 232; Trachtenberg,
The Devil and theJews, pp. 46-8, 206, 208, 227 n. 11.
166 See Zika, ‘Les partie du corps’, p. 390, n. 2; Zika, Exorcising Our Demons,
p. 375, n. 2; Zafran, ‘Saturn’, pp. 16-18, 21.
167 See Baroja, The World of the Witches, p. 88; Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons,
pp. 100-1.
168 See n. 6 above. See also the methodological approach of Ginzburg, Clues,
Myths, pp. 156-63, which may be supplemented by the assumption that
the Inquisitors not only learned from medieval books about Diana and
applied their knowledge to the practices in the various part of Western
Europe but also applied the concept of Sabbat as time for witchcraft.
169 See, especially, Eva Poes, ‘Le sabbat et les mythologies indo-europeenes’,
in N. Jacques-Chaquin et M. Preaud (eds), Le sabbat des sorciers en Europe,
(XVe-XVIIIe siecles), (Jerome Millon, Grenobles, 1993), pp. 23-31.
170 I have discarded the ‘earliest’ document dealing with Sabbat explicitly,
attributed to the Toulousian witches, which is frequently adduced as
such in modern scholarship on witchcraft, since it is, as pointed out
by Cohn, a late forgery. See his Europe’s Inner Demons, pp. 129-32.
Nevertheless, what is surprising in this forgery is a fact that did not
attract the attention of Cohn, namely that one of the women ‘described’
the pact she signed with the Devil, and after incantations ‘the Devil
Berit appeared to her’ (cf. Baroja, The World of the Witches, p. 86). I
did not find any explanation for the term Berit. However, in Hebrew it
means ‘pact’ or ‘covenant’. Was the forger, Baron Lamother-Langon,
using a Hebrew term at the beginning of the nineteenth century in
Paris in order to create a nexus between Jews and the Sabbat ritual? See
also Ginzburg, Ecstasies, p. 86, n. 74.
171 ‘Vengeance and Curses, Blood and Libel’, Zion, vol. 58 (1993), pp. 70-90
(Hebrew), now in Israel Jacob Yuval’s Two Nations in Your Womb, pp. 9 2 -
203.
172 See the passages discussed in Idel, ‘The Magical and Neoplatonic
Interpretations’, pp. 202-10; Idel, ‘The Epistle of R. Isaac of Pisa (?)’, pp.
166-7.
173 See Ginzburg, Ecstasies, p. 11.
174 See Seznec’s fine monograph The Survival of the Pagan Gods.
175 ‘Saturn and the Jews’.
176 See the marginal role astrology played in Frantisek Graus, Pest - Geissler-
Judenmorde (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Goettingen, 1987).
177 See especially the important contributions of Trachtenberg’s two books for
the Middle Ages and John G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism, Attitudes
Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (Oxford University Press,
Oxford, New York, 1985), pp. 63, 107-12.
178 See Idel, ‘On Some Forms of Order’, pp. xlix-liv. For the marginalization
of the roles of astronomy and astrology in the descriptions of the general
economy of Kabbalistic literature see, e.g., Scholem, Kabbalah, pp. 186-7.
Neither has it been taken into account seriously in most of the more recent
discussions of this literature. The manner in which Kabbalah has been
described in the studies of Isaiah Tishby, Efraim Gottlieb, Rivka Schatz-
Uffenheimer, Rachel Elior and Joseph Dan, to mention only some of the
pertinent names, reflects this neglect of the ‘occult’ facets of Kabbalistic
literature, far more interested as they are in the theological aspects of
Kabbalah. On the other hand, astrology plays an important role in Georges
Vajda’s analyses of Kabbalah, but since they were written in French, these
studies escaped the attention of many scholars of Kabbalah. It should
be mentioned that the more recent ascent of the study of the magical
dimensions in the scholarship of Kabbalah is reminiscent of the ascent
of magic and astrology in the manner in which the Italian Renaissance
is understood, after the studies of Daniel P. Walker, Frances A. Yates,
Eugenio Garin, Paola Zambelli, Charles Zika and, more recently, Stephane
Toussaint.
179 See my Absorbing Perfections, throughout.
180 Stolen Lighting, The Social Theory of Magic (Vintage Books, New York, 1983),
p. 133.
181 See ‘Magic-Religion: Some Marginal Notes to an Old Problem’, Ethnos vol.
22 (1957), pp. 109-19.
182 Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World (Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1992), pp. 24-5.
183 Compare the view of Harari, EarlyJewish Magic, who recommends resorting
to the term kishshufas a generic category.
185 See, e.g., Johannes Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, pp. 124-5, where
it seems that for the first time Saturn, Sabbatai and Sabbath have been
mentioned together in a context that has a positive overtone. In many
other discussions in Jewish tradition, the celebration of the day of the
Sabbath with joy is described as a contest with the negativity of the day,
but these views do not concern us here. However, at the beginning of
his much earlier De Verbo Mirifico there is a classical negative vision of the
Jew Baruchias as Saturnine. See Johann Pistorius (ed.), Ars Cabalistica
(Sebastianus Henriepetri, Basle, 1587), p. 891 and Yates, The Occult
Philosophy, p. 23. The diverging attitudes to Saturn in Reuchlin’s writings
require a separate study.

Chapter 2

1 More recently, it has been faithfully summarized by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky,

‘Shabbetai Zevi’, in H. Beinart (ed.), The Sephardi Legacy (Magnes Press,
Jerusalem, 1992), vol. II, pp. 207-16, where he offers, in wonderful
English, a very faithful version of Scholem’s views, consistently ignoring
all the scholarship written after the master’s death. On the other hand,
see the innovative approach to the subject by Liebes, Studies in Jewish
Myth, pp. 93-114, and his collection of studies On Sabbateaism. For an
innovative treatment of Nathan of Gaza’s thought see Abraham Elqayam,
The Mystery of Faith in the Writings of Nathan of Gaza, PhD thesis, Hebrew
University, Jerusalem, 1993 (Hebrew). See also the references in nn. 3, 10
below. Compare the interesting critique of some of Scholem’s views of the
Sabbatean movement in Tishby, Paths of Faith and Heresy, pp. 235-75, who
duly emphasizes the centrality of Tzevi for the emergence of the Sabbatean
movement, as against Scholem’s attribution of a greater role to Nathan of
Gaza.
2 For critical reviews of Scholem’s over-emphasis on the role of messianic
Lurianism in the emergence of Sabbateanism, stemming from different
angles, see Idel, ‘“One from a Town’”; Idel, ‘On Prophecy and Magic in
Sabbateanism’; and Ze’ev Gries, Conduct Literature (Regimen Vitae), Its History
and Place in the Life of the Beshtian Hasidism (Bialik Institute, Jerusalem,
1989), p. 15 (Hebrew); Ze’ev Gries, ‘The Fashioning of Hanhagot (Regimen
Vitae) Literature at the end of the 16th and during the 17th Century and
Its Historical Importance’, Tarbiz, vol. 56 (1987), pp. 561-3, 570 (Hebrew);
as well as Joseph Hacker, ‘The Intellectual Activity among the Jews in the
Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th Centuries’, Tarbiz, vol. 53 (1984), p.
593 (Hebrew); Bat-Zion Eraqi-Klorman, Messianismin theJewish Community
of Yemen in the Nineteenth Century, PhD thesis, University of California, Los
 Notes 145

Angeles, 1981, pp. 42-8; Ya'aqov Barnai, Sabbateanism: Social Perspectives

'^tier?
(Merkaz Shazar, Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 28-80 (Hebrew), and his studies
mentioned in n. 9 below.
3 See, e.g., Scholern, Kabbalah, p. 45; Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp.
'ot'tlie 404-14.
4 See Idel, Kabbalah: Nero Perspectives.
iniagof
5 See Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, pp. 139-61.
6 Alexander Altmann, ‘Maimonides’ Attitude toward Jewish Mysticism’, in
A. Jospe (ed.) Studies in Jewish Thought (Wayne University Press, Detroit,
ifOol 1981), pp. 200-19; M. Idel, ‘Maimonides and Kabbalah’, in I. Twersky
witir,-; (ed.), Studies in Maimonides (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA,
1990), pp. 54-70.
7 M. Idel, ‘Major Currents in Italian Kabbalah between 1560-1660’, Italia
Judaica (Roma, 1986), vol. II, pp. 243-62, repr. in D. B. Ruderman (ed.),
Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (New York
University Press, New York, 1992), pp. 345-68.
8 This strategy started before the emergence of Lurianism; see Idel, ‘The
Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations’, pp. 186-242; and for later
radertii phenomena see Alexander Altmann, ‘Lurianic Kabbalah in a Platonic
ignoring Key: Abraham Cohen Herrera’s Puerta del Cielo’, HUCA, vol. 53 (1982),
;r iucii pp. 321-4; Nissim Yosha, Myth and Metaphor, Abraham Cohen Herrera’s
Hjy Philosophic Interpretation of Lurianic Kabbalah (Ben Zvi Institute, Magnes
For so Press, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1994) (Hebrew). See also M. Idel,
‘Italy in Safed, Safed in Italy: Toward an Interactive History of Sixteenth
Century Kabbalah’, in David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (eds),
mill! Cultural Intermediaries, Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modem Italy (University of
sotifc Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 239-69.
75, vito 9 Yaakov Barnai, ‘Christian Messianism and the Portuguese Marranos: The
toiai Emergence of Sabbateanism in Smyrna’, Jewish History, vol. 7 (1993), pp.
lihanof 119-26; Barnai, ‘The Outbreak of Sabbateanism: The Eastern European
Factor’, Journal for Jewish Thought and Philosophy, vol. 4 (1994), pp. 171-83.
See also Silvia Berti, ‘A World Apart? Gershom Scholem and Contemporary
Readings of 17th century Christian Relations'', Jewish Studies Quarterly, vol. 3
(1996), pp. 212-14.
IIfl0j 10 On Kabbalah and astrology in general, see Halbronn, Le Monde Ju if et
I’Astrologie, pp. 289—334, as well as n. 117 below.
11 See Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Satume et la melancolie, pp. 210-12; For
iff ami the ancient psychology of melancholy, afterwards connected to Saturn see
ht»); Jean Pigeaud, Aristote, I’homme de genie et la melancolie (Rivages, Paris, 1988),
ait and Jean Starobinski, La melancolie au miroir (Julliard, Paris, 1989) and his
?v4.:.p- Histoire du traitement de la melancolie des origines a 1900 (Basle, 1960), as well
as Mortimer Ostow, The Psychology ofMelancholy (Harper and Row, London,
146 Notes
assto
1970). On the negative perceptions of Saturn, in addition to what has already
been demonstrated above, see Jane Chance Nitzsche, The Genius Figure in
Antiquity in the Middle Ages (Columbia University Press, New York, 1975),
pp. 22-3, 75-7. See also Eleazar Gutwirth, ‘Jewish Bodies and Renaissance
Melancholy: Culture and the City in Italy and the Ottoman Empire’, in Maria
Diemling and Giuseppe Veltri (eds), TheJewish Body: Corporeality, Society, and
I? See 0.
Identity, in the Renaissance and Early Modem Period (Brill, Leiden, 2009), pp.
18/3),
57-92 and C. G. Jung, Aion (Princeton, 1979), pp. 74^-7.
12 On Saturn and the Golden Age see Gianni Guastella, ‘Saturn, Lord of
the Golden Age’, in Ciavolella, Saturn from Antiquity to the Renaissance,
pp. 1-23. See the important text of the tenth century Al-Qabisi, known 151- / 1 ;

as Alcabitius, discussed in Saturne et la melancolie, p. 208, and quoted in

chapter 1 above, as well as the passage from Picatrix adduced in Hillman,
‘Senex and Puer’, p. 316. The name of Saturn, Sabbatai in Hebrew, often
surfaces in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Hebrew texts, which mingled
philosophy, astrology, and magic, a subject studied in recent years by Dov
Schwartz. See, e.g., his Studies in Astral Magic, and n. 15 below.
13 Reshit Hokhmah, as quoted and analysed above, chapter 1. further i
14 See his Megillat ha-Megalleh, pp. 116, 119, 128, 148, 149, 151, 152. See also SSeebarl
Ben-Shalom, Facing Christian Culture, pp. 156-7 and Garin, Astrology in the :! SeeMS.
Renaissance, pp. 21-3, 120, n. 24. Alemanno quotes bar Hiyya to this effect i,e tc
in his untitled treatise in MS. Paris BN 849, fol. 121b. jewshtl
15 To the Land of Israel. On the later nexus between the Land of Israel and
Saturn see Schwartz, ‘Land, Space, and Star’, p. 148 and n. 40.
16 Ecclesiastes 5.7.
17 On the relation between ‘the power of dust’ and Sabbatai see also Abulafia’s
Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, ed. I. Weinstock (Mossad ha-Rav Kook,
Jerusalem, 1984), p. 34. This is part of the correspondence of Saturn to
earth, one of the four elements in many texts. See, e.g., the view of Ra‘aya’ MyXoti
Meheirnna’, Zohar III, fol. 282a. It should be pointed out that dust became wL5(!
a symbol of the sefirah of Binah in the writings of Abulafia’s contemporary, 111-15
Moses de Leon.
18 Sefer Gan Na‘ul, MS. Murichen 58, fol. 327a, ed. Gross, pp. 37-8. This
passage is quoted verbatim in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, I, fol. 76c, a book that
was studied by Sabbatai Tzevi, as we shall see below. On this book, see
K
Kushnir-Oron, The Sefer Ha-Peli’ah, especially pp. 75-6, where Abulafia’s
°/Cas(
influence on the book is discussed. For more on Sabbatai, the image of
the Jew, and the Land of Israel, see Abulafia’s Sefer ’Otzar ‘Eden Ganuz, MS.
tonne
Oxford-Bodleiana 1580, fol. 95c. See also ibid., fol. 102a, as well as Joseph
fol. 61
Ashkenazi’s Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, translated below in the Appendix.
ihejr,
On Sabbatai and black bile see Sefer ’Otzar ‘Eden Ganuz, fol. 109a. On
another issue, the pronunciation of the divine name by a messianic figure,
See 5
 as shared by both Abulafia and Sabbatai Tzevi, see Idel, M e s s ia n ic Mystics,
pp. 185-7 and ‘On Prophecy and Magic in Sabbateanisin’. On the nexus
between Saturn and prophecy, see also William of Auvergne. Cf. Idel, ‘On
Prophecy and Magic in Sabbateanisin’, p. 34. Elsewhere I shall address the
astrological underpinnings of some of Abulafia’s revelations, based upon
unknown Kabbalistic material found mainly in some manuscripts.
19 See O. Loth, ‘Al-Kindi als Astrolog’, Morgenlaendische Studien (Leipzig,
1875), pp. 263-309; Halbronn, Le Monde Juif et l‘astrologie, pp. 139-42,
156-9; Frederik A. de Armas, ‘Saturn in Conjunction: From Albumasar
to Lope de Vega’, in Ciavolella, Saturn from Antiquity to the Renaissance, pp.
151-71; Laura Ackerman Smoller, History, Prophecy, and the Stars (Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 1994); Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos,
pp. 106-7. For the Jewish discussions of conjunctio maxima, see, e.g., the
texts printed in Beit Arie-Idel, ‘An Essay on the End and Astrology’, and
see also nn. 24 and 58 below. For an explicit reference to this conjunction
as a proof for Sabbatai Tzevi’s messianism see the argument of Raphael
Supino, preserved in Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzevi, p. 93 and discussed
further in this chapter.
20 See bar Hiyya, Megillat ha-Megalleh, pp. 11, 119, 128, 153-4.
21 See MS. Firenze-Laurentiana, II, 5, fols 230a-36b, MS. Paris, BN 711, fol.
66b, etc. Whether this Moshe is a son of Yehudah ibn Matqa, a Toledan
Jewish thinker, whose views are close to some of the aspects of the Commentary
on the Alphabet, is a matter that cannot be discussed here. On the views of
ibn Matka, see Colette Sirat, ‘Juda b. Salomon Ha-Kohen - philosophe,
astronome et peut-etre Kabbaliste de la premiere moitie du XHIe siecle’,
Italia, \ol. 1, no. 2 (1979), pp. 39-61. In her book, Laphilosophiejuivemedieval
en pays de Chretiente, pp. 70-1, she quotes this commentary on the name of
Yehudah ben Moshe ibn Matka. See also now Y. Tzvi Langermann, ‘From
My Notebooks: Two Treatises on the Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet’, Aleph,
vol. 3 (2003), pp. 293-7; and Nissan-Ophir Shemesh, Saturnine Traits, pp.
114-15. For an important translator at the court of Alfonso Sabio, Yehudah
ben Moshe, who was active later than the previous author with the same
name, and perhaps was involved in the translation of the Arabic original
of Picatrix, see Norman Roth, ‘Jewish Collaborators in Alfonso’s Scientific
Work’, in Robert I. Burns, SJ (ed.), Emperor of Culture, Alfonso X the Learned
of Castile and His Thirteenth Century Renaissance (University of Pennsylvania
Press, Philadelphia, 1990), pp. 64-7. It should be pointed out that the
connection between Lamed and Saturn appears also in Sefer ha-Temunah,
fol. 6b. Both books are commentaries on the Hebrew alphabet. In general,
the genre of commentaries on the alphabet in Judaism deserves special
inquiry, and it may well be that this is the result of the influence of Islam.
See Yair Zoran, ‘Magic, Theurgy, and the Knowledge of Letters in Islam
 and their Parallels in Jewish Literature’, Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore,
vol. 18 (1997), pp. 19-62 (Hebrew). Let me point out that in addition to
the many manuscripts in which this commentary is extant, its traces are
visible in the thought of a leading Italian kabbalist of the mid sixteenth
century, Mordekhai Dato. See the material printed by Jacobson, Path of
Exile and Redemption, pp. 406-8, n. 257, where Dato quotes several times
from an anonymous manuscript, adducing in fact some interesting parts
of the commentary including some of the discussion related to Saturn.
It may well be that Dato has seen a longer version than the one found in
the two manuscripts I used. Dato himself, however, does not attribute any
importance to the astrological approach in his own vision of the end. See
Jacobson, ibid., p. 199.
22 Namely, the year 1260 in the common calendar. On this year as related
to redemption, see also Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, p. 293. As to its
reliance, see ibid., pp. 293-4 and n. 103; on Scholem’s conjectural remark
regarding the possibility of Joachim of Fiore’s impact on the Kabbalistic
theory of Shemittot andjubilees, I would like to point out that the astrological
explanation is far better documented and more convincing than the
assumption of Christian influence. It is a complex methodological subject
as to how the selection of the sources of influence that are quite broad is
to be made in order to point the research in a specific direction without
first surveying all the other possibilities, but this is an issue that cannot be
dealt with here. See, meanwhile, M. Idel, ‘The Jubilee in Jewish Mysticism’,
in E. Rambaldi Feldman (ed.), Millenarismi nella cultura contemporanea
(F. Angeli, Milano, 2000), pp. 209-32. A similar selectivity is found in
Scholem’s resort to Gnostic sources, in order to bolster his theory of the
Gnostic origin of Kabbalah. In my opinion, if late-antiquity texts written in
Greek did influence Kabbalah in a significant manner, it was more likely to
have been Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, not the Gnostic works. It should be pointed
out that there is a strong affinity between Saturn and time, as the essay by
Erwin Panofsky, ‘Father Time’ demonstrates. See his Studies in Iconobgy:
Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (Harper Torchbooks, New
York, 1962), pp. 69-93.
23 Sabbatai.
24 See also MS. Paris BN 711, fol. 66a, and the rather contemporary
astrological view printed in Alexander Marx, ‘M a’amar ‘al Shenat Ge’ullah’,
ha-Tzofeh le-Hokhmat Yisrael, vol. 5 (1921), p. 198, mentioning the coniunctio
maxima between Saturn and Jupiter. The material found in this document
stems from a variety of sources and the collection cannot be dated earlier
than the mid thirteenth century. On the origin of religions as linked to the
great conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter, see also Sela, Astrology and Biblical
Exegesis in Abraham ibn Ezra’s Thought, pp. 85-97; Georges Vajda, Recherches
 suit la philosophie et la kabbale dans la penseejuive du Moyen Age (Paris, 1962),
p. 264, n. 3; and Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, pp. 622-3, 637,
768-9. See also above n. 19.
25 On the dating of his floruit, see M. Idel, ‘The Beginning of Kabbalah in
Northern Africa? A Forgotten Document by R. Yehuda ben Nissim ibn
Malka’, Pe‘amim, vol. 43 (1990), pp. 4-15 (Hebrew), especially p. 10, n.
42. On this author and his views on astrology see Vajda,Juda ben Nissim ibn
Malka, pp. 45-6, 136-41, 143
26 See the texts on this conjunction printed in Beit-Arie-Idel, ‘An Essay on the
End and Astrology’, pp. 174-94, 825-6.
27 See ibid.
28 See the texts collected and translated in Idel, ‘The Magical and Neoplatonic
Interpretations’, pp. 209—10 and our discussions in chapter 1.
29 in Michal Oron and Amos Goldreich (eds), Massu’ot, Studies in Kabbalistic
Literature and Jewish Philosophy in Memory of Prof Ephraim Gottlieb (Mossad
Bialik,Jerusalem, 1994), pp. 28-9 (Hebrew). See also below, n. 77.
30 Zohar, I, fol. 261b.
31 Zohar, II, fol. 46b. Similar views recur in Kabbalistic literature; see, e.g., the
late-fifteenth-century Italian kabbalist Elijah ben Benjamin of Genazzano,
IggeretHamudot, ed. A. Greenup (London, 1912), p, 60, analysed by Charles
Mopsik, Les grands textes de la Kabbale (Verdier, Lagrasse, 1993), pp. 303-4.
32 Psalm 89.37. See especially verse 41 where the term meshihekha, your
annointed, which was later understood as ‘your Messiah’, is mentioned.
The eschatological interpretation of these verses is standard, though
Abulafia’s extraction of precise dates seems to be unparalleled.
33 The night of watchfulness. This is apparently a deficient spelling of Leil
shimmurim, an expression found in Exodus 12.42, a verse understood as
pregnant with messianic implications.
34 Both expressions amount to 660, just as the phrase. See below, n. 36.
35 The recognition of the soul, a phrase that in gematria also comes to 660.
36 Ka-shemesh amounts also to 660.
37 Psalm 89.37. For the Sabbatean interpretation of this verse as the gematria
ofSabbatai Tzevi, see the text printed by Benayahu, The Sabbatean Movement,
p. 501.
38 Negdi and Binah amount numerically to the same figure - 67 - as do the
combination of the words Gedi and Deli.
39 Capricorn.
40 Aquarius.
41 On Saturn and the two signs of the zodiac, which are its houses, see,
e.g., the paintings adduced in Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Satume et la
melancholie, pp. 304—6, 312-13, and see also below, n. 75.
42 Namely, the planet.
150 Notes
0
43 Kokhav Shabbatai amounts in gematria to 760, like Mahshavti. Saturn has
AbiaJ
been connected in many sources with the intellect. On Sabbatai as related
A le i
to the two signs of the zodiac and as the star of Israel, see the introduction
to Abulafia’s commentary on Genesis, Mafteah ha-Hokhmot, ed. A. Gross
(Jerusalem, 2001), pp. 42-3.
44 Like Binah. In gematria both are equivalent to 87.
45 Like the sun. Hokhmah and ke-Hamah amount to 73.
46 Ba-tequfah.
47 Abulafia differentiates between the higher form of Kabbalah dealing with
the divine names and the lower one dealing with the sefirot. See M. Idel,
‘The Contribution of Abraham Abulafia’s Kabbalah to the Understanding
ofjewish Mysticism’, in P. Schaefer andJ. Dan (eds), Gershom Scholem’s Major Seealst
Trends in Jervish Mysticism, 50 Years After (J. C. B. Mohr, Tubingen, 1993), pp.
124-7, and ‘On the Meanings of the Term “Qabbalah”: Between Prophetic
Kabbalah and the Kabbalah of Sefirot in the 13th Century’, Pe'amim, vol.
93 (2003), pp. 39-76 (Hebrew). Here, the secret of the paths of the sefirot
is the numerical calculation, which extracts the meaning of the Binah, Ki.|
understood as Kabbalah, by the gematria of the two signs of the zodiac gedi
ve-deli =87.
48 Binah as a term for Kabalah, see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 209-15. See
also the view found in ’Otzar ‘Eden Ganuz, ed. A. Gross, (Jerusalem, 2000),
p. 286, where there is a nexus between Sabbatai/Saturn, Sabbath and
Teshuvah, repentance, a symbol that in theosophical Kabbalah stands for
Binah.
49 The phrase in brackets is found in Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah, but not in MS. Munchen.
50 The time of the End, in Hebrew ‘Et Qetz, amounts in gematria to Seter,
namely 660. Elsewhere in this book Abulafia proposes the gematria
Qetz - 190 = ne‘elam, namely hidden, like seter. See MS. Munchen 58, fol.
338b, ed. Gross, p. 76. The gematria of Qetz as ne’elam is already found jifealx
in Nehemiah ben Shlomo of Erfurt, one of the sources of Abulafia. See
M. Idel, ‘Some Forlorn Writings of a Forgotten Ashkenazi Prophet: R.
Nehemiah ben Shlomo ha-Navi’‘,JQR, vol. 96 (2005), pp. 186-7. See also
the next note.
51 In many places in this book Seter, arcanum, stands for the figure 660,
!l There
which has a messianic meaning in Abulafia. See, e.g., MS. Munchen 58,
Eabba
fol. 328b, ed. Gross, p. 76. In other words, the quintessential arcanum is
diffen
the eschatological one. This figure is also the result of the multiplication
separ
of 12 by 55, which is Yod Bet, and Nun Hei, the four consonants of Binah,
^ Isaial
and it is also the numerical value of ‘like the sun’, ka-shemesh. For more
on Abulafia’s calculations of the end, see M. Idel, “‘The Time of the
ihe j
End”: Apocalypticism and Its Spiritualization in Abraham Abulafia’s
Eschatology’, in Albert Baumgarten (ed.), Apocalyptic Time (Brill, Leiden,
lfi-j
 Notes 151

2000), pp. 155-86. On Abulafia and messianism in general see also

Abraham Berger, ‘The Messianic Self-Consciouness of Abraham Abulafia:
A Tentative Evaluation’, in J. L Blau et al. (eds), Essays on Jewish Life and
Thought Presented in Honor of Sab Wittmayer Baron (Columbia University
Press, New York, 1959), pp. 55-61, Harvey J. Hames, Like Angels on Jacob’s
Ladder: Abraham Abulafia, the Franciscans, and Joachimism (SUNY Press,
Albany, 2008); Idel, Messianic Mystics, pp. 58-100; and ‘Torah Hadashah:
Messiah and the New Torah in Jewish Mysticism and Modern Scholarship’,
Kabbalah, vol. 21 (2010), pp. 68-76
*Mldel 52 See his Gan Na‘ul, MS. Munchen 58, fol. 323b, ed. Gross, p. 26, copied in
framdicj Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, part I, fol. 75a, where the version is, however, deficient.
See also above, the previous paragraph for another discussion of Saturn in
Abulafia. It should be pointed out that a connection between the Messiah
and the seventh day, Sabbath, based on gematria, is found several times in
(BUR L 10 Abulafia and in texts close to his thought. This is an oblique connection
to Saturn too. See M. Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah (SUNY Press, Albany,
the Bmot, 1988), pp. 51-2, 54-5. However, given the explicit references to Saturn
in Abulafia’s writings, it stands to reason that there is quite a significant
and stable nexus also between Sabbath, Messiah and Saturn in Abulafia’s
ijy-15.See thought. It is not so certain if Abulafia invented the gematria Yom ha-Shevi‘y
mlIC), = Melekh ha-Mashiyah = 453, and it may be he inherited it from the circle of
kabbalists from which he learned his Kabbalah. See also another book by
Abulafia, also written around 1289, Sefer ha-Hesheq, in which he mentions
Sabbatai/Saturn together with Sabbath and redemption. Cf. ed. M. Safrin
(Jerusalem, 1999), p. 108.
53 See Idel, Abraham Abulafia’s Works and Doctrine, p. 19. For the explicit resort
to the figure fifty in the context of redemption and Saturn, see Gan Na‘ul,
:B3f.iO
L pp. 37-8.
54 See above, chapter 1, the passage from ibn Ezra’s Reshit Hokhmah.
Jafia.Sef 55 See Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Satume et la melancolie, p. 247. On Sabbatai
ophec R- and men of understanding - Binah - see also ibn Ezra’s Hai ben Meqitz, p.
'.Seealso 143.
56 Satume et la melancolie, p. 255.
jure® 57 There are some points of resemblance between Joseph Ashkenazi’s
chen 5S. Kabbalah and some topics in Abraham Abulafia, despite the huge
differences between their approaches to Kabbalah. This topic requires a
separate study.
58 Isaiah 11.2.
59 Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, fols 51b-52a. For the Hebrew original, see
the Appendix below. This quotation has reverberated in many Jewish
t
authors. See, e.g., its repercussions in Moses of Kiev’s Commentary on Sefer
Yetzirah, entitled ’Otzar ha-Shem. A version of this passage, which contains
 some slight differences from that quoted above is to be found in the early-
sixteenth-century work of Joseph ben Shlomo Al-Ashqar, Tzafnat Pa'aneah,
fol. 71a. See also fol. 37ab, where another eschatological understanding
of Saturn is mentioned. See also additional discussions of Saturn to be
found in this book, on fols 36b, 69b-70a. On the identification between
Saturn and the third sefirah, without messianic implications however, see
Joseph Ashkenazi’s Kabbalistic Commentary on Genesis Rabbah, ed. Moshe
Hallamish (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1984), p. 236. See also above, chapter
1, the passage from Abraham Yagel. See also above, ch. 1, n. 70. Dinim as
religions reflects an Arabism. See also the use of din in such a maimer
by Sabbatai Tzevi, cf. Liebes, On Sabbateaism, pp. 21-2, 31-2. Joseph
Ashkenazi was acquainted with Arabic customs. See, e.g., his Commentary on
Bereshit Rabbah, p. 249, and compare to Bernard Septimus, ‘Petrus Alfonsi
on the Cult of Mecca’, Speculum, vol. 56 (1981), pp. 134-6. See also the
recurrent affinity between Saturn and religions - again dinim - or Torah
in Alemanno’s passage translated above in chapter 1, from MS. BN Paris
849 and in another text translated there, n. 88. It should be mentioned
that Isaac Abravanel, a contemporary of Abraham Zacuto and Yohanan
Alemanno, refers several times to conjunctio maxima in his discussions of
redemption in his various eschatological books.
60 Genesis 1.2.
61 Sefer Mar’ot ha-Tzove’ot, ed. D. Ch. Matt (Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1982),
pp. 100-1. For the connection between smell and Sabbatai Tzevi see the
material about his special odour in Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 139-40, 654.
62 On the more recent tentative dating of this book to the end of the
thirteenth century, see Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 460-1, n. 233;
however, see Moshe Idel, ‘The Meaning of “Ta'amei ha-'Ofot ha-Teme’im”by
R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid’, in M. Hallamish (ed.), ‘Alei Shefer, Studies
in the Literature offeivish Thought Presented to Rabbi Dr. Alexandre Safran (Bar-
Ilan University Press, Ramat Gan, 1990), pp. 18-21 (Hebrew), and my
‘Kabbalah in Byzantium: A Preliminary Inquiry’, Kabbalah, vol. 18 (2008),
pp. 208-14 (Hebrew).
63 BT, Yeuamot, fol. 62a.
64 Leviticus 25.24. See also Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 262.
65 Seferha-Temunah (Lemberg, 1892), fol. 44b. In this book, the planet Saturn,
and some of its qualities, are connected, as in Isaac of Acre’s Sefer Me irat
Einayyim, to the ninth sefirah, Yesod. See fols 3b, 16a, and Pedaya, ‘Sabbath,
Sabbatai’, pp. 165-91. For more on the concept of Jubilee and the cosmic
cycles in Kabbalah, see Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 460-74, and
Haviva Pedaya, Nahmanides, Cyclical Time and Holy Text (‘Am ‘Oved, Tel
Aviv, 2003), pp. 215-437 (Hebrew).
 66 See those sources in Moshe Idel, ‘Types of Redemptive Activities in the
Middle Ages’, in Z. Baras (ed.), Messianism and Eschatology (Merkaz Shazar,
Jerusalem, 1983), pp. 264-5, 270-1 (Hebrew) and Sefer ha-Temunah itself,
fol. 55ab.
67 See above, n. 64. It should be mentioned that a connection between
redemption and the motions of the sphere of Saturn occurs twice in the
literature that is described as Sefer ha-Meshiv, written before the expulsion
of the Jews from Spain, presumably in Castile. See the texts printed from
MS. Mussaioff 24 in my study ‘The Lost Books of Solomon’, Daat\ol. 32/33
(1994), pp. 235-46 (Hebrew).
68 Sefer ha-Peliy 'ah, I fol. 57ac. For the Hebrew original of this passage see
the Appendix below. On the major influence of Joseph Ashkenazi’s
commentary on this book see Kushnir-Oron, The Sefer Ha-Peli’ah, pp. 94
n. 48, 187-93. For the relation between Sabbatai Tzevi and prophecy,
see also Idel, ‘On Prophecy and Magic in Sabbateanism’. I assume that
prophecy represents some transformation of the concept of mania, related
to melancholy, in texts from antiquity. See Toohey, Melancholy, Love, and
Time, p. 299, n. 31.
69 See n. 80 below. For a discussion of Saturn in the sixteenth-century
Jewish thinker Abraham ibn Migash, see Shalom Rosenberg, ‘Exile and
Redemption in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century: Contending
Conceptions’, in Bernard D. Cooperman (ed.), Jewish Thought in the
Sixteenth Century (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1983), pp.
406-7 and the pertinent footnotes.
70 See also above, n. 41.
71 On this book of magic, spuriously attributed to ibn Ezra, in the Jewish
Renaissance see Idel, ‘The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations’, p.
195; Idel, ‘The Study Program of Yohanan Alemanno’, p. 312, n. 76.
72 Yagel, Valley of Vision, p. 171. See also above, chapter 1. Abraham ben
David is the kabbalist to whom Joseph Ashkenazi’s commentary has been
attributed.
73 Ibid., p. 173.
74 Zephaniah 3.9.
75 Yagel, Valley of Vision, p. 173.
76 See Samuel M. Stern, Aristotle on the World-State (University of South
Carolina Press, Columbia, SC, 1968), pp. 78-85, especially p. 85, n. 1.
77 Yagel, Valley of Vision, p. 173.
78 Ibid., p. 173. For repentance as related to Binah and Redemption see
above, n. 28, and the Kabbalistic texts dealt with in M. Idel, ‘Multiple
Forms of Redemption in Kabbalah and Hasidism’, JQR, vol. 101 (2011),
pp. 27-70.
79 Yagel, Valley of Vision, pp. 173-5 and the pertinent notes.
80 I, 4, 5. See also Catherine Swietlicki, Spanish Christian Cabala (University
of Missouri Press, Columbia, 1986), pp. 140-5, especially p. 143 and
Yates, The Occult Philosophy, pp. 33-4, and especially p. 100, where she
claims that Giorgio’s book had an impact on Edmund Spenser’s Faerie
Queen. F. Giorgio was well acquainted with Sefer ha-Peliy'ah. See Giulio
Busi, ‘Francesco Zorzi, A Methodical Dreamer’, in J. Dan (ed.), Christian
Kabbalah (Harvard College Library, Cambridge, 1997), pp. 97-125
81 MS. Harvard, Houghton, Heb. 50, fol. 125b. This is a quotation from a
sermon delivered around 1665, presumably in Italy. I hope to address
Nathan Shapira’s manuscript containing his sermons, in a future study.
82 See the epistle of Abraham Peretz, entitled ‘Magen Abraham’, printed in
Gershom Scholem, Studies and Texts, Concerning the History of Sabbetianism
and its Metamorphoses (Mossad Bialik, Jerusalem, 1974) (Hebrew), pp.
175-6, which differs from the original in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah as printed later
on in the eighteenth century only in insignificant details. On the wide
recurrence of manuscripts of Sefer ha-Peliy’ah in circles of Sabbateans see
the important remarks of Benayahu, The Sabbatean Movement, pp. 350-4.
The Sabbateans were aware of the literary nexus between Joseph ben
Shalom’s Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah and Sefer ha-Peliy’ah', see Benayahu,
ibid., pp. 369-70, and p. 151. Compare the note printed by Amarillo,
‘Sabbatean Documents’, p. 269. See also the important additional
material concerning the affinity between Sabbateanism and astral magic,
and between Sabbatai Tzevi and melancholy, discovered and analysed by
Elqayam - after reading a first version of this presentation - in his study
‘The Rebirth of the Messiah’, pp. 104-11, 129, 136, 139-40, n. 57, 157, n.
137, 162.
83 See Scholem, Studies and Texts, p. 267 and n. 288, the text hinted at by
Scholem in his Researches in Sabbateanism, p. 44, and Liebes’s remark, ibid.,
p. 175, n. 143, as well as the lengthy quotation from Sefer ha-Peliy’ah adduced
in Elijahu of Smyrna, Midrash Talpiyyot (Smyrna, repr. Jerusalem, 1963), fol.
163a, another Sabbatean figure. See also Liebes, ‘Bounds’, pp. 1-13.
84 As Scholem has correctly indicated, both Sefer ha-Temunah and Sefer ha-Qanah
- in fact he might also have included Sefer ha-Peliy’ah - have ‘influenced the
Sabbatians tremenduously’; cf. his The Messianic Idea, p. 111. In general, I
would say that the trend of Kabbalah represented by the writings ofJoseph
Ashkenazi, and adopted by some other important kabbalists, has been one
of the most influential schools in the history of early Kabbalah, especially
in Byzantium. See M. Idel, ‘An Anonymous Commentary on Shir ha-Yihud',
in K. E. Groezinger and J. Dan (eds), Mysticism, Magic and Kabbalah in
Ashkenazifudaism (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York, 1995), pp. 151-4,
also below in n. 130. It should be pointed out that astronomical events
could have facilitated the reception of Sabbatai Tzevi in Yemen, as the
 documents mentioned by Eraqi-Klorman, ‘The Sabbatean Movement in
Yemen’, p. 55, show.
85 See I. Tishby’s remark in Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzevi, p.7, n. 8.
86 Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzevi, pp. 7-8; Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 270 and his
notes there.
87 This is a view found both in Zoharic theosophy and in Lurianic Kabbalah,
and connected somedmes with the glory of redemption. See Zohar, III, fol.
136b and Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, pp. 44-6, 60-2.
88 Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 275-6.
89 Namely within the span of a maximum of six years. The term shemittah does
not always refer to the cosmic cycles in the Kabbalistic texts.
90 Tishby, in Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzevi, p. 11, n. 9, mentions the parallel to
BT, Megillah, fol. 17b.
91 Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzevi, p. 11; Scholem, Sabbatai Seui, pp. 273-4. Here
Sabbatai is spelled with an ’Aleph. On the distinction between the plene
spelling of Sabbatai, with an ’Aleph, which sometimes points to a maleficent
spirit, very similar to Saturn, and the deficient spelling, without an ’Aleph,
as poindng to a private name, see the thirteenth-century Ashkenazi
authors in the gloss on the Talmud, Ba‘alei ha-Tosafot, Gittin, fol. 11a. In
the Talmud itself there are rabbis whose name ‘Sabbatai’ is spelled with
an ’Aleph. Sabbatai Tzevi’s name is sometimes spelled with an ’Aleph. My
interpretation of King Sabbatai as referring to Saturn is related to the
citation adduced above from p. 7, where the Jubilee and the revelation of
the ‘Attiqa’ Qadisha’ are mentioned, as well as on the reading offered by
Sasportas himself, adduced on p. 9, n. 44. See also p. 13: ‘this Rabbi whose
name points to him, Sabbatai’. Compare however, Liebes, ‘Bounds’, p. 2,
n. 4.
92 Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 125-38.
93 See Wittkover, Bom Under Saturn. For a description of Tzevi as both
accomplished in the wisdom of the Torah and as acting foolishly, see the
text printed by Benayahu, The Sabbatean Movement, pp. 63-4, the discussion
of Tobias Rofe, a younger contemporary of Tzevi, adduced by Zvi Mark,
‘Dibbuk and Devekut in the Shivhe ha-Besht Toward a Phenomenology of
Madness in Early Hasidism’, in Matt Goldish (ed.), Spirit Possession in
Judaism, Cases and Context from the Middle Ages to the Present (Wayne State
University Press, Detroit, 2003), pp. 273-4 and see the Appendix, n. 15
below.
94 Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods.
95 Scholem, Researches in Sabbateanism, pp. 214-15. For more on the possible
non-Yemenite background of this treatise, see Yehudah Nini, ‘Sabbatean
Messianism in Yemen’, Pe‘amim, vol. 65 (1995), pp. 5-17 (Hebrew) and
Joseph Tubi, ‘Iunim be-Megillat Teiman, (Jerusalem, 1986), pp. 82-150
 (Hebrew). It should be stressed, as Eraqi-Klorman, ‘The Sabbatean Movement
in Yemen’, p. 54 states, that a perusal of this early document does not reveal
any significant trace of Lurianic Kabbalah. For a Freudian interpretation of
this passage, which emphasizes the importance of mentioning ‘his mother’,
see Avner Falk, ‘The Messiah and the Qelippoth: On the Mental Illness of
Sabbatai S ev iJournal of Psychology and Judaism, vol. 7, no. 1 (1982), pp. 25-6.
For a Jungian interpretation see Siegmund Hurwitz, ‘Sabbatai Zwi, Zur
Psychologie der haeretischen Kabbala’, Studien zur analytischen Psychobgie
C.G. Jungs, Festschriftzum 80. Geburtstagvon C.G.Jung(Rascher Verlag, Zurich,
1956), vol. II, pp. 239-63. See also Idel, Ben, pp. 457-8.
96 Idel, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 119-23, 146-7, 149; Idel, Studies and Texts, p. 49;
Liebes, Studies in Jewish Myth, pp. 107-13; and Aharon Telenberg, ‘The
Sabbatean Theology in Judah Levi Tova’s Commentary on Genesis’,
Kabbalah, vol. 8 (2003), pp. 169-72 (Hebrew).
97 Scholem, Researches in Sabbateanisrn, p. 222 and Neuman, ‘The Mystical
Man’, in Joseph Campbell (ed.), The Mystic Vision, Papers from the Eranos
Yearbooks, tr. Ralph Manheim (Bollingen Series, Princeton, 1970), pp.
375-415. For Sabbatai’s special attitude to his mother, see Goldish, The
Sabbatean Prophets, pp. 4-6
98 On the apotheotic impulse in Jewish mysticism, see M. Idel, ‘Metatron:
Comments on the Development of Jewish Myth’, in Idel, ‘The World of
Angels’, pp. 74-92; Idel, Ben, throughout; and Michael Schneider, The
Appearance of the High Priest: Theophany, Apotheosis and Binitarian Theobgy,
from Priestly Tradition to the Second Tempb Period through Ancient Jewish
Mysticism, PhD thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 2007 (Hebrew).
99 See Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Saturne et la melancolie, pp. 389-432;
Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, pp. 112-13; Walker, Spiritual and
Demonic Magic, pp. 45-50; Yates, The Occult Phibsophy, p. 136; Wittkover,
Bom under Saturn, throughout; Couliano, Eros and Magic, pp. 137-43;
Sylvain Matton, ‘En marge du De Lumine, splendeur et melancolie chez
Marcile Ficin’, in Lumiere et Cosmos, Courants occultes de la phibsophie de la
Nature (Albin Michel, Paris, 1981), pp. 45-51; Anthony Grafton, Cardano’s
Cosmos'. The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000); Valery Rees, “‘A Bono in Bonum omnia
Diriguntur”: Optimism as a Dominant Strait in the Correspondence of
Marsilio Ficino’, Accademia, vol. 10 (2008), pp. 7-27, especially p. 20; and
for Ficino in general, Michael J. B. Allen, ‘Masilio Ficino on Saturn, the
Plotinian Mind, and the Monster of Averroes’, Bruniana & Campanelliana,
vol. 16 (2010), pp. 11-30.
100 See Idel, ‘Prometheus in a Jewish Garb’, pp. 119-22.
101 See Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 243, 387, 403-4, 669-71, 810-11, 880;
Scholem, Researches in Sabbateanisrn, pp. 302, 350, 373; Scholem, The
 Messianic Idea, p. 75; Liebes, On Sabbateaisrn, p. 294, n. 258; Telenberg, ‘The
Sabbatean Theology’, pp. 172-4; and Goldish, The Sabbatean Prophets, pp.
3-6, 54.
102 This is not the place to discuss the possible affinities between Tzevi’s sexual
problems and his saturnine character, as well as between Sabbatean sexual
orgies and the celebration of the Saturnalia, since the later seem not to be
related to the planetary dimensions of Saturn. Nevertheless, the claims as
to the lucema extincta, in the context of the witches’ Sabbat, and the event
of the ‘extinction of lights’ in eighteenth-century Frankism still require
further examination. See Mircea Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural
Fashions (Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1976), pp. 85-9.
103 Tetrabiblos, 111:18, (Ashmand), p. 163, (Robbins), 111:13, p. 345, 111:14, pp.
369-73. This view reverberates in the Renaissance period. See the case of
Cardano discussed in Massimo Ciavolella, ‘Saturn and Venus’, in Ciavolella,
Saturn from Antiquity to the Renaissance, pp. 173-81.
104 See above ch. 1, n. 9.
105 See ibn Ezra, The Book of Reasons, p. 247: ‘Saturn indicates filth because the
black bile belongs to it, and similarly with sexual intercourse because it is
impure, and Venus indicates women.’ See also Schwartz, Studies on Astral
Magic, p. 25, n. 74.
106 Sod ha-Shem ly-Yre’av, MS. Munchen 15, fol. 258ab, printed in Schwartz,
‘Land, Place, and Star', p. 148. For other references to similar views see
ibid., pp. 148-9.
107 MS. Oxford-Bodleiana 2234, fol. 118a.
108 See Tiqqunei Zohar, fols 85a, 134a. On Saturn and spleen compare to
Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, IV:9, (Ashmand), p. 198, (Robbins), p. 429, and the
material collected by Bar Ilan, Astrology and Other Sciences, p. 135, n. 242.
109 Ra‘aya’Meheimna’, Zohar, III, fol. 227b.
110 MS. New York, JTS 2034, fol. 71a.
111 On this figure see Schwartz, ‘Astrology and Astral Magic’.
112 MS. Oxford-Bodleiana 2234, fol. 119a. I did not find the source of this
quotation, besides which the title of the book constitutes a problem into
which I cannot enter here.
113 See Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 810-11.
114 See Moshe Idel, ‘R. Joseph of Hamadan’s Commentary on Ten Sefirot and
Fragments of His Writings’, ‘Aley Sefervol. 6-7 (1979), pp. 74-9 (Hebrew)
and Moshe Idel, ‘The Kabbalistic Interpretations of the Secret of Arayyot
in Early Kabbalah’, Kabbalah, vol. 12 (2004), pp. 89-199 (Hebrew).
115 Simon Bernstein, ‘The Letters of Rabbi Mahalalel Halelujah of Ancona’,
HUCA, vol. 7 (1930), p. 515, and Scholem, in the Hebrew version of
Sabbatai Sevi (‘Am ‘Oved, Tel Aviv, 1957), p. 405 (a text not translated in
the English version, p. 493).
116 Printed in Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzevi, p. 93 and see also p. 68 as well
as Nathan’s vision printed in Freimann, ‘Inianei Shabbatai Tzevi, p. 50.
See also Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 647, n. 155. Supino, like Mahallalel,
was an Italian rabbi, and the importance of the Italian cultural context is
obvious in the astrological theme. For additional though later examples of
the nexus between Saturn the planet and Sabbatai Tzevi see the material
printed by Elqayam, ‘The Rebirth of the Messiah’, pp. 104-11.
117 Cf. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 430, and the Hebrew passage printed in
Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzevi, pp. 165-6, also p. 186. On the affinity between
Saturn and prophecy see the passage from Joseph Ashkenazi, part of which
was dealt with above, as copied in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, part I, fol. 57b. See also
above, n. 54. It should be emphasized that from the formulation of the last
sentence, it also appears that Tzevi was conceived of as a prophet. See also
Giacomo Saban, ‘Sabbatai Sevi as Seen by a Contemporary Traveller', Jewish
History, vol. 7 (1993), p. 106. On prophecy and Sabbateanism in general,
and by resorting briefly also to the astrological moment see Goldish, The
Sabbatean Prophets, pp. 100-1. See also Idel, ‘On Prophecy and Magic in
Sabbateanism’.
118 For a recent outstanding treatment of melancholy in the period of Tzevi
see Michael Heyd, ‘Be Sober and Reasonable’, The Critique ofEnthusiasm in the
Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Brill, Leiden, 1995), pp. 44-70;
Samuel L. Macey, Patriarchs of Time, Dualism in Saturn-Cronus (University
of Georgia Press, Athens and London, 1987), pp. 23-39; H.S. Versnel,
Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual (Brill, Leiden, New York, Koeln,
1993), pp. 136-227; Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian
Thought in the Western World (Belknap, Harvard, Cambridge, MA, 1980),
pp. 64-92; Vito Teti, La melanconia del vampiro, Mito, Storia, Immaginario
(Manifestolibri, Roma, 1994), pp. 161-200. For more on the recurrence of
the idea of melancholy in the period of Tzevi’s life see Lawrence Babb, The
Elizabethan Malady: A Study of Melancholia in English Literature from 1580 to
1642 (Michigan State College Press, East Lansing, 1951), and John Owen
King III, The Iron of Melancholy, Structures of Spiritual Conversion m America
from the Puritan Conscience to Victorian Neurosis (Wesleyan University Press,
Middletown, CT, 1983), as well as the considerable scholarly literature
about Robert Burton’s classic Anatomy of Melancholy, the most important
discussion on melancholy printed in Oxford in 1621, shortly before the
birth of Sabbatai Tzevi.
119 Of the astrologers.
120 Again the words "of the astrologers’.
121 Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzevi, p. 93. For the conjunction in Scorpio see
Tishby’s note ibid., and for earlier sources Sela, in ibn Ezra, The Book of
Reasons, p. 162. See also Benayahu, The Sabbatean Movement, p. 151, where a
 Sabbatean figure, Shlomo Ayalon, shows the passage by Joseph Ashkenazi
on Saturn to leading kabbalist Moshe Zacuto and asks his opinion. See also
Freimann, ed., ‘Inianei Shabbatai Tzevi, p. 237.
122 Cf., Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 142. The Hebrew original is ’Emunah
hadashah, which may be translated, literally as ‘a new faith’, a translation
that better fits the Sabbatean emphasis on faith.
123 For Tzevi’s change of the law see Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 162-6, and
673. For earlier instances of discussions on the change of law see also nn.
19, 24 and 58 above.
124 Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzevi, p. 73.
125 The expression ‘Koah Keter ‘Elyon’ recurs again in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, I, fol.
57c, again under the influence of Joseph Ashkenazi’s Commentary on Sefer
Yetzirah. See also the next footnote. It should also be mentioned that in the
Kabbalistic passage of Joseph Ashkenazi, Saturn/Sabbatai is connected to
the first unit of the divine name of forty-two letters. See above, ch. 1, n. 66.
Interestingly enough, Nathan of Gaza describes Sabbatai as related to this
specific divine name. See the poem printed by Bezalel Naor, Post-Sabbatian
Sabbatianism (Orot, Spring Valley, New York, 1999), p. 3 (Hebrew part). On
this poem see also Elqayam, ‘The Rebirth of the Messiah’, pp. 118-21. See
also the expression ‘crown of Binah' in a passage quoted above and related
to Saturn. In any case, Nathan of Gaza also borrowed other topics from
Joseph Ashkenazi/Sefer ha-Peliy ’ah. See especially Liebes, On Sabbateanism,
pp. 33, 294 n. 261 and 295 n. 276 and below, n. 125.
126 See, e.g., Gershom Scholem’s footnote to Shirot ve-Tishbahot shel ha-
Shabbatayim, pp. 27, 30, 34, 63, 130, 135, and 206 n. 2; the material
adduced in Abraham Amarillo, ‘Sabbatean Documents from the Archive
of R. Shaul Amarillo’, Sefunot, vol. 5 (1961), p. 270 (Hebrew); and Wolfson,
‘The Engenderment of Messianic Politics’, pp. 234 n. 105, 243-4 n. 135.
See also the view of Nathan in Freimann, ‘Inianei Shabbatai Tzevi, p. 50. It
should be pointed out that in a poem found in an epistle Nathan of Gaza
sent to Tzevi, he interprets the thirty-two intellects, as found in Ashkenazi’s
introduction to his Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, fols 10a—12b, and copied
verbatim in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, I, fols 68d-70b, on Tzevi himself. See the text
printed by Benayahu, The Sabbatean Movement, pp. 384—97. Liebes, ibid., p.
295, n. 276 pointed to this correspondence. Moreover, in Benayahu, ibid.,
p. 387, it is said that God will put his throne, namely Tzevi’s, higher than
all the signs of the Zodiac. This is inconvertible proof of the importance of
the Kabbalistic material found in the two books regarding the two heads of
Sabbateanism.
127 See Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 71. See also figures 14, 16-19, 37-8, 40,
reproduced in Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Satume et la melancolie, pp.
305-6, 328-9, 331, respectively. For a Hebrew example of Sabbatai/Saturn
 bearing a crown, see the picture preserved in the codex containing magical
treatises, MS. Jerusalem-Schocken 102, fol. 79a.
128 Compare, however, the explanation of Tzevi’s coronation offered by
Wolfson, ‘The Engenderment of Messianic Politics’. Though the Kabbalistic
sources mentioned by Wolfson could, at least in principle, impact on
some aspects of Tzevi’s coronation, the existence of pictorial and verbal
expressions of relations between a crown and Saturn as personified as a
human person should not be ignored or neglected. For three pictures of
Sabbatai’s coronation see the reproductions adduced in Wolfson, ibid., pp.
248, 251, 253. It should be pointed out that in addition to resorting to
the term ‘diadem’, ‘atarah, which is interpreted by Wolfson according to
his phallocentric ‘clue’ to the profound structure of Kabbalah, in many
other instances related to Sabbatai Tzevi, it is the term ‘crown’, Keter, that
is mentioned in the context of the Messiah. See the epistle of Isaac Abohab
of Amsterdam, printed in Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzevi, pp. 106-7, where
crown recurs several times, the discussion printed in Freimann, ‘Inianei
Shabbatai Tzevi, p. 50, and the bowls decorated by a deer with one or three
crowns printed by Itzhak Einhorn, ‘Three Shabbatean Plates’, Pe'amim,
vol. 44 (1990), pp. 76, 79 (Hebrew). See also Sfiirot ve-Tishbahot shel ha-
Shabbatayim, p. 200.
129 See Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzevi, pp. 96, 258. See especially the second
passage by Joseph Ashkenazi, to be translated in the Appendix and the
passage in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, I, fol. 58c, on the firmament of Sabbatai/Saturn.
See also Alemanno’s untitled treatise found in MS. Paris BN 849, fol. 64a,
where he describes the seventh firmament, using details presented in the
much earlier Sefer ha-Razim, as the firmament of Sabbatai/Saturn.
130 See Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 206-7.
131 See above, ch. 1, n. 10. Moreover, in the Middle Ages there are
representations of Saturn as holding an ouroburos, reminiscent of the
connection between Sabbatai Tzevi and the concept of a serpent. See
Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 227, 274, 235-6, 308-9. On p. 236, Scholem
claims that Tzevi himself never refers to an ouroburos. However, as Liebes
has pointed out, such an ouroboric symbol occurs in eighteenth-century
Sabbatean literature. See On Sabbateaism, pp. 174-5. This possible parallel
deserves a more detailed inquiry. See also above ch. 1, n. 110.
132 See the very important passage printed by Wirszubski, Between the Lines, pp.
136-7, and the pertinent analysis by Liebes, ‘Bounds’, pp. 10-11 and his
footnotes there, as well as Goldreich, ‘The Pessimistic Pole of the Sabbath’,
pp. 48-9, 55-6 n. 45.
133 See Raya’Meheimna’, printed in the book of the Zohar, III, fols. 281b-282a,
as well as fol. 279b. In this context Ishm'a’el is also mentioned, thus
facilitating Luzzatto’s interpretation.
134 On the Messiah and Shekhinah see Tishby, Paths of Faith and Heresy, p. 321,
n. 120 and Idel, Messianic Mystics, pp. 110-15.
135 This view is expressed elsewhere in the same book. See Sefer Qine’at H '
Tzeua’ot, printed in H. Friedlander (ed.), Ginzei Ramhal (Benei Berak,
1980), vol. 2, pp. 99, 104. See also the text printed by Gershom Scholem,
Studies and Texts Concerning the History of Sabbateanism (Mossad Bialik,
Jerusalem, 1974), p. 242 (Hebrew).
136 On this issue in earlier texts see the important analysis of Pedaya, ‘Sabbath,
Sabbatai’.
137 Sefer Qine’a tH ’ Tzeua’ot, p. 106, also p. 113. On this book see Meir Benayahu,
Kabbalistic Writings ofR. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, Studies and Texts (Jerusalem,
1979), pp. 133-48 (Hebrew). Luzzatto elaborates on the nature of Sabbatai
in this context, dealing with the subordination of the Ismaelites to both
Saturn and the moon, issues which are not relevant to our discussions
here.
138 On the historical details of Tzevi’s apostasy and on other Kabbalistic
explanations of his conversion to Islam, see Wirszubski, Between the Lines,
pp. 121-51 and Scholem, Sabbatai Seui, pp. 792-820, 830-5. On Luzzatto’s
view of the descensus ad inferos, see Tishby, Paths ofFaith and Heresy, pp. 172—
82, especially p. 182, where he cites the passage discussed here, without,
however, referring to the astral dimension of the term ‘Sabbatai’.
139 See Freimann, ‘Inianei Shabbatai Tzevi, p. 58. See also Wolfson, ‘The
Engenderment of Messianic Politics’, p. 256 and Elqayam, ‘The Rebirth of
the Messiah’, pp. 139-40 and n. 57.
140 See, meanwhile, Idel, Messianic Mystics, pp. 118-20. See also the passage of
Nathan of Gaza in Wirszubski, Between the Lines, pp. 139-40.
141 See Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto: A Study
in Seventeenth-Century Marranism and Jewish Apologetics (University of
Washington Press, Seattle, 1981), p. 345. The funeral day is Tisha‘ be-
’Av. Compare also Sasportas’s critique of the resort to the argument of
astronomers, ha-Tokhenim, who described Saturn as a bloody star, in order
to criticize Sabbatai Tzevi. Cf., especially, Sasportas, Tzitzat Novel Tzevi,
pp. 99—100, adduced above, where it also states that Sabbatai devours his
children, and see Tishby’s remark there, p. 100, n. 2. See also ibid., p. 298,
where the term kokhav Shabbatai, the planet of Saturn, is mentioned in a
fairly negative manner, and p. 93, where the light of the star of Saturn is
conceived after the astronomers, a sign of redemption. See also Elqayam,
‘The Rebirth of the Messiah’, pp. 104-6. It is therefore obvious that several
seventeenth-century Jewish authors understood the nature of Sabbatai
Tzevi to refer to the astrological features of Saturn. See also Freimann,
‘Inianei Shabbatai Tzevi, p. 50. There is an immense amount of literature
on Saturn and devouring his children, but see the relevant nexus between
 sorcery and cannibalism in the important studies of Zika, Exorcising Our
Demons, pp. 445-80 and Sela, ‘Appropriation of Saturn’, p. 29. On Saturn
as related to a day of sorrow, see above, ch. 1.
142 See Idel, ‘One in a Town’, p. 94.
143 See, e.g., Idel, ‘Metatron’, pp. 32, 44; Hasidism, throughout. For the impact
of the later layer of the Zohar on the view of Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto’s
understanding of Tzevi’s conversion see above in this chapter.
144 See Idel, Messianic Mystics, throughout, and more details regarding Nathan’s
scant acquaintance with Lurianic Kabbalah at the outset of his prophetic
career discussed in Idel, ‘On Prophecy and Magic in Sabbateanism’. The
ecstatic nature of some aspects of Nathan’s visions does not allow too a
significant role to Lurianic elements. Compare, however, more recently
Wolfson, ‘The Engenderment of Messianic Politics’, pp. 205-6, n. 8, and
Elqayam, ‘The Rebirth of the Messiah’, pp. 106-7, but compare to the
latter’s ‘The Absent Messiah’, p. 38.
145 See Guy G. Stroumsa, ‘Mystical Descents’, in John J. Collins and
Michael Fishbane, Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys (SUNY Press,
Albany, 1955), pp. 137-51. Elsewhere I shall deal with the impact of a
mythologoumenon related to Apollo on a passage in Heikhalot literature.
It is well known that the myth of Orpheus had an impact on the ancient
paintings of King David found in ancient Jewish synagogues in the Land of
Israel and elsewhere.
146 See M. Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial
Anthropoid (SUNY Press, Albany, 1990), pp. 4-5.
147 See Idel, ‘Prometheus in a Jewish Garb’; Liebes, Studies in Jewish Myth, pp.
65-93 and his important discussions of a myth of Helene in a variety of
Jewish texts in his God’s Story, pp. 237-98.
148 For the importance of astrological-magical terminology for the better
understanding of Kabbalah and Hasidism, see also Idel, Hasidism, index
under astrology. On Kabbalah and astrology in general, see Halbronn,
Le Monde Ju if et I’Astrobgie, pp. 289-334 and Kiener, ‘Astrology in Jewish
Mysticism’, pp. 1—42; on astrology and magic in the Renaissance in general,
see Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance', and for Kabbalah see Francois Secret,
‘L’Astrologie et les kabbalistes chretiens a la Renaissance’, Le Tour Saint-
Jacques, vol. 5 (1956), pp. 45-9.
149 See M. Idel, ‘Abulafia’s Secrets of the Guide: A Linguistic Turn’, in Alfred
Ivry, Elliot Wolfson and Allan Arkush (eds), Perspectives in Jewish Thought
and Mysticism (Harwood Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, 1998), pp.
269-72.
150 See his Pardes Rimmonim, XXVII: 15, where he identifies Sabbath with the
sefirahoiBinahand mentions Sabbatai in that context. See also ibid., xvii:23,
and his Commentary on the Zohar, ’Or Yaqar, vol. 3 (Jerusalem 1964), p. 184,
 vol. 8 (Jerusalem, 1976), p. 174 (on this text see Margolin, ‘Physiognomy
and Chiromancy’, p. 219, n. 57), vol. 9 (Jerusalem, 1976), pp. 66, 171, vol.
11 (Jerusalem, 1981), p. 8 3 -4 ,vol. 17 (Jerusalem, 1989), p. 2 1 ,and ’OrYaqar
on Tiqqunei Zohar; vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1983), p. 99, etc. See also the quote
from Cordovero in Abraham Azulai’s Sefer ’Oi ha-Hammah (Premyslany,
1887), vol. Ill, fol. 120a. In most of those cases Cordovero connects Saturn
to the last sefirah, Malkhut, and basically follows the approach he took in
Tiqqunei Zohar. It should be mentioned that in an important discussion
about Sabbath, found in his commentary on the prayerbook, Tefillah le-
Moshe (Premyslany 1892), fol. 190b, in which Cordovero describes its rituals
as preparations which are similar, in his explicit terms, to the preparations
of astrologers to bring down influxes from stars, he does not mention, at
least in this specific context, the name of Saturn. See M. Idel, ‘Sabbath: On
Concepts of Time inJewish Mysticism’, in Gerald J. Blidstein (ed.), Sabbath:
Idea, History, Reality (Ben Gurion University Press, Beer Sheva, 2004), pp.
81-4 and Goldreich, ‘The Pessimistic Pole of the Sabbath’, pp. 66-8. For
more on the astral thinking of Cordovero, see the important analysis of
Garb, Manifestations of Power, pp. 200-24. See also Liebes, God’s Story, pp.
184-5, where astrology and physiognomy are combined. However, there
are no traces of his interest in Saturn in the student oeuvre of Mordekhai
Dato, who expatiated on eschatological issues. See Jacobson, Path of Exile
and Redemption, p. 199. However, Shlomo ha-Levi Al-Qabetz, Cordovero’s
brother-in-law, was probably acquainted with Joseph Ashkenazi’s passage
about Saturn and Messiah. See Liebes, ‘Bounds’, p. 8, n. 46. Sabbatai/
Saturn also occurs several times in Azulai’s Hesed le-’Avraham, 1:25 (Lemberg,
1863), fol. 6d, a very popular compendium of Cordoverian thought. In this
case Saturn is related to destruction and to the Land of Israel.
151 See above, chs 1 and 3. It is worth pointing out that talismanic theories,
which are strongly related to astrology, are an important component of
Cordovero’s thought that still requires detailed analysis.
152 See Idel, ‘On Prophecy and Magic in Sabbateanism’.
153 On Sabbatai Tzevi qua Byzantine kabbalist, see Idel, ‘On Prophecy and
Magic in Sabbateanism’; Idel, ‘Neglected Treatises by the Author of
Sefer Kaf ha-Qetoref, Pe‘amim, vol. 53 (1993), pp. 75—89 (Hebrew); Idel,
‘Kabbalah in Byzantium: A Preliminary Inquiry’, Kabbalah, vol. 18 (2008),
p. 227 (Hebrew); and Elqayam, ‘Sabbatai Sevi’s Manuscript’, pp. 358-61.
154 See Idel, ‘Hermeticism and Kabbalah’, in P. Lucentini, I. Parri and V.P.
Compagni (eds), Hermeticism from Late Antiquity to Humanism (Turnhout,
Brespol, 2004), pp. 389-408. It should be pointed out that an outstanding
example of an early-fifteenth-century Jew living in Constantinople, who
was described as a polytheist and had an impact on a Byzantine figure who
influenced the Italian Renaissance, was the mysterious Elisha, one of the
 teachers of Gemistos Plethon. See Francois Masai, Plethon et lePlatonisme de
Mistra (Les belles letters, Paris, 1956), pp. 55-60, 63.
155 It should be pointed out that the rich pictorial tradition about Saturn that is
to be found in Christian sources, as exemplified by the last French version
of Satume et la melancolie, in Panofsky’s Studies in Iconology, in Cesare Ripa’s
seventeenth-century Iconologia, or Charles Zika’s Exorcising Our Demons has
no significant correspondence in Jewish manuscripts.
156 See my Messianic Mystics, pp. 79-82.
157 See ibid., pp. 101-20.
158 See, especially, his Cosmos and History: The Myth ofthe Eternal Return, tr. Willard
R. Trask (Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1959). Apparently following him, a
scholar claimed more recently that Jewish eschatologies are only ‘historical’.
See Samuel L. Macey, Patriarchs of Time, Dualism in Satum-Cronus (University
of Georgia Press, Athens and London, 1987), p. 18.
159 See, e.g., David Brown, Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy-Astrology (Brill,
Leiden, 2000); Brian G. Baumann, Divine Knowledge: Buddhist Mathematics
According to Antoine Mostaert’s Manual of Mongolian Astrology and Divination
(Brill, Leiden, 2008); Franz Cumont, LEgypt des astrologues (repr., Editions
culture et civilizations, Brussels, 1982); Franz Cumont, Oriental Religions in
Roman Paganism (Dover Publications, New York, 1956), pp. 162-95; Henry
Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis (Kegan Paul International, London,
1983). This means that some aspects of the monotheistic religions,
adopted comical cycles and adapted circular modes of understanding
time in addition to what had been in existence beforehand, especially the
microchronoi related to normal forms of rituals that were performed daily
or weekly.
160 See Jacobson, The Path of Exile and Redemption, pp. 181-200, especially p.
199 and pp. 406-8, and M. Idel, ‘Some Concepts of Time and History in
Kabbalah’, in E. Carlebach,J. M. Efron and D.N. Myers (eds), fewish History
and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (Brandeis
University Press, Hanover and London, 1998), pp. 153-88.
161 See his Myth and Reality, tr. Williard R. Trask (Pantheon Books, New York,
1954), p. 52.
162 See, e.g., Idel, Messianic Mystics, pp. 158-60, and also Idel, ‘The Chained
Messiah: The Taming of the Apocalyptic Complex in Jewish Mystical
Eschatology’, forthcoming in Nadia Al-Baghdadi, David Marno and
Matthias Riedl (eds), The Apocalyptic Complex —Origins, Histories, Permanences
(CEU, Budapest, New York, 2012).
163 My approach differs from the more homogeneous approach adopted
in modern scholarship on the topic. See, e.g., the title of Scholem’s
The Messianic Idea, in the singular, versus the complex typologies of the
constellations of messianic ideas I offered in my Messianic Mystics.
 164 Insofar as ancient forms of psychology are concerned and their contributions
to the conceptual structures related to Saturn, see Klibansky, Panofsky and
Saxl, Satume et la melancolie, and Toohey, Melancholy, Love, and Time.
165 See Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (ARK Paperback,
London, New York, 1986), pp. 56-7.
166 See Keith Thomas, Religion & the Decline of Magic (Scribners, New York,
1971), p. 384. In the Middle Ages, there were claims that the Muslim
Ka‘aba, with its black stone, reflects a worship of Saturn. See Septimus’s
study mentioned in n. 59 above.

Chapter 3

1 See, e.g., the seventeenth-century Ashkenazi figure Samuel ben Benjamin’s

Sefer Devarim Attiqim, a commentary on various parts of the book of the
Zohar, extant in a unique manuscript, MS. Oxford-Bodleiana 1563, fol.
288a. This manuscript, which includes many discussions on astro-magic,
merits a separate study.
2 Ceremonies and Religious Habits of all the People Represents by Figures Drawn by
Bernard Picart (1733), III, p. 180. More on Christian views of the Jews as
Saturnine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Halbronn, Le
MondeJuif et VAstrologie, pp. 217-18, 281-2.
3 Tzafnat Pa‘aneah, ed. Gedaliah Nigal (Jerusalem, 1989), p. 359. Thanks to
Dr Zvi Mark, who drew my attention to this passage. The discussion of the
topic also includes a revelation which the Besht received from his ‘teacher’,
probably Ahijah the Shilonite. Interestingly enough, in Al-Ashqar’s, Tzafnat
Pa‘aneah, MS. Jerusalem, 4° 154, fols. 36a, 37a, the assumption is that the
tribe of Yehudah corresponds to Sabbath and Sabbatai, but in order to
struggle against the planet’s influence, and here the fact that David stems
from this tribe is mentioned in a messianic context. I hope to return to the
content of this passage in a separate study. For melancholy in Hasidism see
Zvi Mark, ‘Madness, Melancholy and Suicide in Early Hasidism’, Kabbalah,
vol. 12 (2004), pp. 27-44.
4 See Zvi Mark, Mysticism and Madness in the Work of R. Nahman of Bratslav
(‘Am ‘Oved, Tel Aviv, 2004), pp. 31-4 (Hebrew), and his ‘Dibbuk and
Devekut in the Shivhe ha-Besht Toward a Phenomenology of Madness in
Early Hasidism’, in Matt Goldish (ed.), Spirit Possession in Judaism, Cases
and Context from the Middle Ages to the Present (Wayne State University Press,
Detroit, 2003), pp. 272-85. Nahman ofBratzlav, the Besht’s great-grandson,
considered King David to have been quite a melancholic figure.
5 See In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, p. 234. Compare to Scholem, The Messianic
Idea, p. 196, who describes another statement of the Besht as ‘deeply
melancholic’,
166 Notes
To’
6 Hemdat Yamim, Sabbath, ch. 3 (Constantinopole, 1735), vol. I, fol. 2 lab.
is a
Discussions on Sabbatai/Saturn and Sabbath recur in this book.
Soli
7 See Perush Sifra ’ de-Tzeni ‘uta ch. 1.
15 See
8 In Hebrew kokhavim, but Maimon refers afterwards only to planets. See
16 Cf.
also S. Maimon’s commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed entitled Give'at
ha-Moreh, ed. S. H. Bergman and N. Rotenstreich (Israeli Academy
for Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem, 1965), p. 96 (Hebrew), and
Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, I: 63,111:29.
9 Genesis Rabbah, X, 6, p. 79. See also ibid., MS. Berlin, p. 33, where this
trace
dictum is interpreted again in a mystical vein..
10 See Idel, ‘The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations’, p. 213; Idel,
‘Hermeticism and Judaism’, p. 66. On the magical perception of the
Teraphim see M. Idel, ‘Jewish Magic from the Renaissance Period to Early were
Hasidism’, in Jacob Neusner et al. (eds), Religion, Science, and Magic. In
Concert and in Conflict (Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1989), 19 Seel
p. 112, n. 12; M. Idel, ‘An Astral-magical Pneumatic Anthropoid’, Incognita, 19.?
vol. 3 (1991), pp. 19-23, elaborated in Idel, Kabbalah in Italy, pp. 269-86;
and Schwartz, ‘Different Forms of Magic’, pp. 24—5. See also Joseph Albo,
Sefer ha-lqarim, 111:18, where Saturn is mentioned.
11 In some other versions of this passage, Sefer Datot ha-Neuiim, ‘the Book of
the Religions of the Prophets’ is written. On this book, which has been
sometimes attributed to Enoch understood as a prophet, see Vajda, Judah 11 Yate
ben Nissim ibn Malka, p. 154; Schwartz, Astral Magic in Jewish Thought in the not l
Middle Ages, pp. 281-2; Sela, Abraham ibn Ezra and the Rise ofMedieval Hebrew vers
Science, pp. 184-5; Idel, ‘Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations’, p.
204; Idel, ‘Enoch, the Mystical Cobbler', in The Angelic World, pp. 110-11;
and the reference in Samuel ben Benjamin’s Devarim Attiqim, mentioned
above, n. 1. li]
12 Cf. the pseudo-Ibn Ezra’s Sefer ha-Atzamim, pp. 17-18. This book was highly 8 The
influential on many discussions of magic in Judaism from early fourteenth- sent
century Spain and Italy and had an impact on Shmuel ibn Zarza. See also
above, chapter 1. 23 Ger
13 Hesheq Shbmo, MS. Berlin, Jewish Community, now in Jewish National
and University Library, Jerusalem, 6426 8° pp. 130-1, and see also Idel,
Hasidism, pp. 39-41, 73, 195-8. On this manuscript see Abraham Geiger, ina
‘Salomon Maimon’s Entwickelungsgeschichte’, Judische Zeitschrift, vol. 4 to i
(1866), pp. 189-99.
US
14 About the members of the Warburg Institute see Silvia Ferretti’s, Cassirer,
•3 Set
Panofsky, and Warburg, especially pp. 59-60, 66, 197-202, where the issue
of melancholy is discussed. On Saturn see ibid., pp. 66, 198-201, 212. On
the method of this school, see Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, pp. 17-59. See also
Cassirer’s 1926 dedication to Aby Warburg in The Individual and the Cosmos.
At
 To what extent Warburg’s melancholy shaped the interest of his colleagues
is an issue that I cannot prove. See also Nissan and Ophir Shemesh,
Saturnine Traits.
15 See Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan /l ntiquity, pp. 641-50.
16 Cf. his From Berlin to Jemsalem (Schocken Books, New York, 1980), pp.
130-1.
17 Ibid., p. 131. This means that Scholem was twice in Hamburg some few
years after the first German version of Saturn and Melancholy, written by
Saxl and Panowfsky, had been printed in 1923. So far, I have not found a
trace of interest in Scholem s studies, or in Kabbalah in general, among
Warburgians of the first generation. However, the first edition in German
and the 1964 English version of the monograph on Saturn and melancholy
were found in his library and it seems that he read them.
18 Ibid.
19 See his ‘Mystery and History’, New York Review of Books, 4.10.1973, pp. 17-
19. Neither has Yates, who mentioned the name of Sabbatai Tzevi several
times in her 1979 book, made any connection between him and the planet
Saturn, a topic that recurs in her volume. See Yates, The Occult Philosophy,
pp. 21, 109, 186.
20 Scholem was indeed fond of Aby Warburg’s dictum that ‘the dear God is to
be found in the details’.
21 Yates, The Occult Philosophy, pp. 54-7. See also pp. 23, 33-4. Unfortunately,
not too much of her proposal has been integrated into the 1989 French
version of Saturn and Melancholy. See also Moshe Idel, ‘Kabbalah and
Hermeticism in Dame Frances A. Yates’s Renaissance’, in R. Caron, J.
Godwin, W. J. Hanegraaf andj. L. Vieillard-Baron (eds), Esoterisme, Gnoses
& Imaginaire Symbolique: Melanges offerts a Antoine Faivre (Peeters, Louvain,
2001), pp. 71-90.
22 The only Warburgian scholar to take Scholem’s oeuvre a little more
seriously into consideration in some of her studies was Frances A. Yates,
especially in Giordano Bruno and in her latest book, The Occult Philosophy.
23 Gershom Scholem, The Fullness of Time: Poems, ed. Steven M. Wasserstrom,
trans. Richard Sieburth (Ibis, Jerusalem, 2003), pp. 98-9. I made some
slight changes to maintain a more literal rendition. See, especially relevant
in a poem explicitly related to Kafka’s Trial, ibid., pp. 104—5. For a reference
to melancholy stemming from this verse, see Alter, Necessary Angels, pp. 19,
119.
24 See Walter Benjamin’s ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in his
Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, tr. Harry Zohn (Schocken Books, New
York, 1969), pp. 257-8. See also Baruch Kurzweil, Struggling for the Values
ofJudaism (Schocken, Jerusalem, 1969), pp. 213-40 (Hebrew); and Alter,
Necessary Angels, pp. 113-15.
25 Whether this delay is related to Scholem’s concept regarding deferment
in Judaism is an issue that deserves a separate study. See Idel, Messianic
Mystics, pp. 283-9.
26 Walter Benjamin, ‘Agesilaus Santander’ (the version written in Ibiza,
13 August 1933), as translated in Gershom Scholem’s, ‘Walter Benjamin
and his Angel’, in Warner J. Danhauser (ed.), OnJews andJudaism in Crisis,
p. 207, and see Scholem’s short comments on Benjamin and Saturn in
ibid., pp. 219-20. It should be mentioned that, as seen above, Saturn was
sometimes described as having an angel, Qaftziel, Michael or Samael, and
even Satan in the case of Shlomo Franco. On Benjamin and melancholy
see, e.g., Max Pensky, Melancholy Dialectics: Walter Benjamin and the Play of
Mourning (University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 2001); Rodolphe
Gasche, ‘Saturnine Vision and the Question of Difference: Reflections
on Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Language’, in Rainer Naegele (ed.),
Benjamin’s Ground (Detroit, 1988), pp. 83-104, and see also the following
notes. Benjamin, who was born on 15 July, was therefore not alluding to a
personal astrological connection which could have had something to do
with his time of birth. Let me draw a tentative parallel between Benjamin’s
discussion and a Zoharic passage, found in Zohar, III, fol. 104ab, discussed
in another context by Couliano, Eros and Magic, p. 45. On Saturn as an
angel, see above several traditions to be found in the Middle Ages and in
the Renaissance.
27 See MS. Paris BN 849, fol. 64a. Scholem printed his study, where
he identified Alemanno as the author in 1928/29 (see above ch.
1, n. 95) which means that he read the manuscript at least a year or
two beforehand. En passant, I am not sure whether indeed we may
attribute an androgynous nature of Saturn or the angels to Benjamin’s
description. On the androgynous nature of the angel to be found in Paul
Klee’s picture see Steven M. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion, Mircea
Eliade and Henry Corbin atEranos (Princeton University Press, Princeton,
1999), pp. 206-7. On the existence of a pair of angels, male and female,
though not connected to Saturn, in ancient Gnostic traditions, which in
my opinion reflect Jewish mythologoumena, see M. Gaster, ‘Das Shiur
Komah’, Monatschrift fuer Geschichte und Wissenschaft desJudentums, vol. 37
(1893), pp. 213-30, repr. in M. Gaster, Studies and Texts in Folklore, Magic,
Medieval Romance, Hebrew Apocrypha and Samaritan Archaeology (London
1925—8), II, pp. 1330—53; Scholem, On the Mystical Shape, pp. 26—7; Idel,
The Angelic World, pp. 20-2; Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, pp. 211-12, n.
178.
28 On this painting and its background, and the pertinent scholarship, see
Ester Muchawsky-Schnapper, ‘Paul Klee’s Angelas Novus, Weaker Benjamin
and Gershom Scholem’, Israel Museum Journal, vol. 8 (1989), pp. 47-52.
29 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, tr. John Osborne
(London, New Left Books, 1977), p. 151.
30 See Scholem, OnJews andJudaism in Crisis, p. 212.
31 See ibid., pp. 206-7.
32 Ibid., pp. 216-29. See also above in chapter 1 the discussions from Tiqqunei
Zohar on Samael as the angel of Saturn.
33 See my analysis in Old Worlds, New Mirrors, pp. 102-5.
34 See his ‘Scholem: Unhistorical or Jewish Gnosticism’, in Harold Bloom
(ed.), Gershom Scholem,Chelsea House, New York 1987), p. 217.
35 See Susan Sontag’s Introduction to W. Benjamin, One-Way Street and Other
Writings, tr. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (Verso, London,
1985), pp. 7-28, and especially Beatrice Hanssen, ‘Portrait of Melancholy
(Benjamin, Warburg, Panofsky)’, Modem Language Notes, vol. 114, no. 5
(December 1999), pp. 991-1013, who analyses Benjamin on the ground of
the scholarship of the Warburgian authors who were already interested in
Durer’s engraving, Melencolia in 1923. See the early version of Saturn and
Melancholy, as Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, Durer’s Melencolia I: Eine quellen
und typengeschichtliche Untersuchung (Studien der Bibliothek Warburg,
Leipzig, Berlin, 1923).
36 See his different statements in his ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in
Illuminations, pp. 254, 255, 263, 264.
37 See Gershom Scholem, Explications and Implications, Writings in Jewish
Heritage and Renaissance (Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 1982), p. 428 (Hebrew).
38 The question that may be asked is why Benjamin’s closest friend, Gershom
Scholem, did not refer to the monograph printed in Leipzig and Berlin, if
it indeed had an impact on Benjamin.
39 On the recent angelotropic turn see Idel, The Angelic World, pp. 14^15.
See the nexus between apocalypticism and melancholy, adduced in the
context of both Benjamin and Scholem, in Anson Rabinbach, In the Shadow
of Catastrophy: German Intellectuals between Apocalypse and Enlightenment
(California University Press, Berkeley, 1997), pp. 7-8, and the pertinent
footnotes, where he points to Julia Kristeva and Martin Jay’s connection
between apocalypse and melancholy in more general terms. I would add,
however, to the Gestalt-consonance between the two concepts also the
quite plausible impact of the conceptual negative structure as related to
Saturn, which Benjamin could have learned from the Warburgians and
to a certain extent also from Scholem. At least in the case of Benjamin it
is an imperative to take Saturnian conceptual structure in consideration;
while in the case of Scholem, it is a plausible assumption, especially since,
in 1933 he was acquintanced with at least some of the views expressed in
Kabbalistic texts mentioned above. So, for example, in 1928 he published
his important study on Joseph Ashkenazi in QS. Why Saturn does not
 loom more conspicuously in his own writings or in his interpretation of
Benjamin is a matter that is hard to fathom.
40 See Scholem, Explications and Implications, p. 467, originally a speech delivered
in Jerusalem in 1966, when Agnon received the Nobel Prize for Literature,
and also in Scholem’s later memoires From Berlin toJerusalem, p. 93.
41 From Berlin toJerusalem, p. 102. As to the temperament of Franz Rosenzweig,
and his attempt to commit suicide, a more detailed analysis is called for.
42 See the Hebrew version of From Berlin toJerusalem (‘Am ‘Oved , Tel Aviv,
1982), p. 98. The phrase does not occur in the first German and English
shorter versions.
43 See also Scholem’s description of a statement of the Besht as ‘deeply
melancholic’. Cf. The Messianic Idea, p. 196. For another reading of the
same statement as non-melancholic, see Idel, Messianic Mystics, pp. 218-19.
Here, I cannot enter into a more sustained discussion of melancholy in
Scholem, which is a desideratum for understanding his personality and
the manner in which he reacted to the Holocaust. See meanwhile, The
Messianic Idea, p. 34.
44 See Gillian Rose, The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of
Theodor W. Adorno (McMillan, London, 1978).
45 ‘I was soon finished off; what remained was flight, embitterment,
melancholy, and inner struggle.’ For the attitudes of Kafka, Scholem and
Benjamin to their fathers, see Alter, Necessary Angels, pp. 29-30.
46 See Alter, ibid., throughout, as well as William S. Allen, ‘Melancholy and
Parapraxis: Rewriting History in Benjamin and Kafka’, Modem Literature
Notes, vol. 123, 5 (December, 2008), pp. 1068-87.
47 According to Scholem, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis, p. 196, ‘Proust and
Kafka were probably the authors truly familiar to him at the deepest level.’
48 In a piece by Sebastian, written in 1927, and quoted by Geo Serban in a
piece on this author, ‘Remember’, Realitatea Evreiasca, no. 277 (1077) 1-20
June (2007), p. ii. The Romanian expression is ‘melancolia straveche’.
49 De doua rnii de ani (repr. Hasefer, Bucharest, 2000), p. 60. See also pp. 48,
81, 100, 107, 215, 228.
50 See also Jean Starobinski, La melancolie au miroir, Trois lectures de Baudelaire
(Julliard, Paris, 1989) and Susan Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn: Essays
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1980).
51 For attempts to identify a special Jewish melancholic character or a specific
sensibility towards spirituality, see the views of Gustav Landauer, or recent
attempts, like that found in Roger Bartra, ‘Arabs, Jews, and the Enigma of
Spanish Imperial Melancholy’, Discourse, vol. 22, no. 3 (2000), pp. 64—72,
as well as other more recent opinions as discussed and criticized by Kate
Miriam Loewenthal, ‘Depression, Melancholy and Judaism’, International
Journalfor the Psychology of Religion, vol. 2 (April 1992), pp. 101-8.
52 For the rather widespread cliche concerning Moldavia as a melancholy
region see, e.g., Sebastian, ‘Remember’, pp. 101-4, 228, and Mircea Eliade,
Autobiography, vol. I, 1907-1937, Journey East, Journey West, tr. Mac Linscott
Rickets (Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1981), p. 16 and his ‘Against
Moldavia’, reprinted in his collection of essays, Profetismul Rominesc (Roza
Vinturilor, Bucuresti, 1990), vol. I, pp. 97-8.
53 The preoccupadon of contemporary scholars with the inter-bellic
fascination with melancholia is part of a wider phenomenon of their trying
to continue the astonishing creadvity of Jewish intellectuals in the period
between the world wars, and identifying with them to create an identity
of their own - and an issue into which I cannot enter in detail here. See,
meanwhile, my discussion of the ‘desolates’ in Idel, Old Worlds, New Mirrors,
pp. 6-9.
54 Seejustin Clemens, ‘On Depression Considered as Acephalic Melancholia’,
DoubleDialogue, vol. 4 (Winter 2003), p. 2. On the history of the relationship
between the two emotional phenomena see Stanley W. Jackson, Melancholy
and Depression from Hippocratic Times to Modem Times (Yale University Press,
New Haven, 1986).

Concluding Remarks

1 See, e.g., three recent monographs dealing with late antiquity and early
medieval Jewish magic which do not mention the name Saturn: Harari,
EarlyJewish Magic, Michael Swartz, Scholastic Magic, Ritual and Revelation in
Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996); and
Gideon Bohak, AncientJewish Magic. A History (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, New York, 2007). Neither does the magical literature of the
early-thirteenth-century figure, Nehemiah ben Shlomo, the prophet of
Erfurt, display any interest in astrology and astro-magic. See, e.g., M. Idel,
‘Some Forlorn Writings of a Forgotten Ashkenazi Prophet: R. Nehemiah
ben Shlomo ha-Navi”,/QRvol. 96 (2005), pp. 188-96; M. Idel, ‘On Angels
in Biblical Exegesis in Thirteenth-Century Ashkenaz’, in D. A. Green and L.
S. Lieber (eds), Scriptural Exegesis, Shapes of Culture and Religious Imagination,
Essays in Honour of Michael Fishbane (Clarendon Press, Oxford 2009), pp.
211-44, as well as the studies referred in n. 11 below.
2 See above ch. 2, n. 96.
3 See Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb.
4 Interestingly enough, though the first medieval documents adduced
above are of Sefardi extraction, including the material found in Joseph
Ashkenazi’s passage, some of the later figures who appropriated Saturnian
views, like Yohanan Alemanno and probably also Sabbatai Tzevi, were of
Ashkenazi origin.
5 See my Messianic Mystics. By saying so, I do not assume that connections
between events that have a causal nature cannot be drawn, and indeed the
entire project of this book goes in this direction. However, I am sceptical
about a Hegelian, unilinear and mono-causal vision of history.
6 See W. H. Walsh, Philosophy ofHistory: An Introduction (Harper Torchbooks,
New York, 1967), pp. 24-5.
7 For the Jewish discussions in medieval and Renaissance books as to the
alleged ancient cult of Saturn by the Romans see Ben-Shalom, Facing
Christian Culture, pp. 104-6.
8 See Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, Humanistic Themes in the Art of
the Renaissance (Harper & Row, New York, 1962), p. 77, who attributes
the contemplative, positive dimension of Saturn in the Renaissance to
the impact of Plotin, and Wittkower, Bom Under Saturn, pp. 103-4. See
also Ferretti, Cassirer, Panofsky, and Warburg, p. 199, who attributes this
positive aspect to Dante. Compare also to Couliano, Eros and Magic, pp.
48-9. However, as seen above in chapters 1 and 2, the connection between
thought and contemplation and Saturn is already found in rather a clear
way in ibn Ezra, Abraham Abulafia, Joseph Ashkenazi and ibn Motot. See
also the Appendix below.
9 See M. Idel, ‘On European Cultural Renaissances and Jewish Mysticism’,
Kabbalah, vol. 13 (2005), pp. 43-78.
10 See, e. g., the more prominent place of astrology in the new histories of
Jewish philosophy as written by Colette Sirat, La philosophicJuive medieval en
pays de Chretiente and La philosophicJuive medieval en terre dislam (Presses du
CNRS, Paris, 1988), and Raphael]ospe, Jewish Philosophies in the Middle Ages
(Academic Studies Press, Boston, 2009), in comparison to its marginality
in Julius Guttmann’s classical Philosophies ofJudaism, tr. David W. Silverman
(Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1964).
11 See Amos Goldreich, Automatic Writing in Zoharic Literature and Modernism
(Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2010) (Hebrew); M. Idel, ‘Incantations, Lists,
and “Gates of Sermons” in the Circle of Rabbi Nehemiah ben Shlomo
the Prophet, and Their Influences’, Tarbiz, vol. 77 (2009), pp. 475-554
(Hebrew); and Sela, Astrology and Biblical Exegesis in Abraham ibn Ezra’s
Thought.
12 See, e.g., Liebes, God’s Story; Liebes, Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish
Messianism tr. Batya Stein (SUNY Press, Albany, 1993), pp. 1-92; Michael
Fishbane, Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2003); Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, ‘From Mythic Motifs to Sustained
Myth: The Revision of Rabbinic Traditions in Medieval Midrashim’,
Harvard Theological Review, vol. 89 (1996), pp. 131-59; and Idel, Kabbala:
New Perspectives, pp. 156-7; M. Idel, ‘Rabbinism versus Kabbalism: On G.
Scholem’s Phenomenology of Judaism’, Modern Judaism, vol. 11 (1991),
 Notes 173

pp. 281—97; M. Idel, ‘Leviathan and Its Consort: From Talmudic to

Kabbalistic Myth’, in Ithamar Gruenwald and M. Idel (eds), Myths in
Judaism: History, Thought, Literature (Zalman Shazar Center, Jerusalem,
2004), pp. 145-86 (Hebrew); M. Idel, ‘On Jerusalem as a Feminine and
Sexual Hypostasis: From Late Antiquity Sources to Medieval Kabbalah, in
Mihail Neamu and Bogdan Tataru-Cazaban (eds), Memory, Humanity, and
Meaning. Selected Essays in Honor ofAndrei Ple§u’s Sixtieth Anniversary (Zeta,
Cluj, 2009), pp. 65-110; and Idel, Ben, throughout.
13 While scholars of Kabbalah did not resort to astrological theories as
one of the reasons for Kabbalistic antinomianism, it was done so in the
context of the nexus of incestuous relations and the Land of Israel in
philosophical texts. See Schwartz, ‘Land, Place, and Star’, pp. 146-9, and
his Studies on Astral Magic, pp. 25, n. 74, 104-5, 169.
14 On the various forms of mutability, see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, pp. 352-7.
15 See Bracha Sack, The Kabbalah of Rabbi Moses Cordovero (Ben Gurion
University Press,Jerusalem and Beer Sheva, 1995), pp. 279-90 (Hebrew).
16 See Scholem, The Messianic Idea, pp. 75-7, 111-13.
17 See Idel, Absorbing Perfections, p. 357.
18 See Idel, Old Worlds, New Mirrors, pp. 119-25.
19 See Idel, ‘Kabbalah and Elites in Thirteenth-Century Spain’ Mediterranean
Historical Review, vol. 9 (1994), pp. 5-19.
20 Compare what I wrote in Messianic Mystics, pp. 256-9, 268-9.
21 See ibid., pp. 265-9.

Appendix

1 This list has been translated in Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Saturn and
Melancholy, pp. 130-1.
2 For a list of the parallels between Ashkenazi’s Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah
and Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, including some more detailed comparisons between
some of the passages in the two sources, see Kushnir Oron, Ha-Peli’ah and
Ha-Kanah, pp. 106-10, n. 85.
3 Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, I, fol. 57b. The passage has been copied, anonymously,
in a form that is combined with Ashkenazi’s passage in Hamoi, Daveq
me-’Ah, pp. 97-8. The comparison of the printed version to the early
manuscript of the book, MS. New York JTS 2202, fol. 101b-102b, shows
that the printed version is better and I did not refer to variations which
are inferior.
4 Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, fols. 51b-52a. For a reprint of the text and
corrections according to a manuscript and some footnotes see Liebes,
‘Bounds’, pp. 2-5.
5 However, elsewhere, the author of Sefer ha-Peliy’ah adopts the view of the
astrologers and identifies Sabbath with the day upon which Saturn is
appointed. See I, fol. 58c:
in o a w i i^ n x i v o w td w y p i y ’rp T n x
6 This version differs from the long version of Sefer Yetzirah adduced in
chapter 1 above.
7 On the phrase Koah Keter Elyon, see above ch. 2, nn. 124-5.
8 Hokhmah stands here instead of Hayyim in the passage of Sefer Yetzirah R.
Joseph comments upon. The consonants of both Hokhmah and Hayyim
come to 68 in gematria.
9 This is the acronym of ’amar lo: He said to him, a strategy of creating a
dialogue between two ancient figures.
10 According to some Sabbatean sources, redemption is related to the
shemittah. See in Elqayam, ‘The Absent Messiah’, pp. 36-7.
11 The anonymous kabbalist added the explanatory note that identifies the
separate intellects with the sefirot. See also below, n. 40.
12 So also in MS. Vatican 291. In MS. Oxford-Bodleiana 1942 and 1953, the
version is ha-Shavu’ot, which is a corrupted version. Compare to Liebes,
‘Bounds’, p. 3, n. 8, where the version is Disown, namely ‘incantations’.
13 Shedim, namely demons, as in the two Oxford manuscripts mentioned
above, while in the printed version of Sefer ha-Peliy’ah the version is Sarim,
namely angels. However, in MS. New York JTS 2202, fol. 101b, the version
is indeed Shedim. Compare also to Tetrabiblos, 111:14 (Robbins), p. 365.
14 The connection of Saturn to the blind is known already in Abu-Mash‘ar,
and it seems that the anonymous author had a reliable source for his
inserting it. See Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, Satume et la melancolie, p.
206, English, p. 130, and Zafran, ‘Saturn’, p. 17.
15 Again ‘He said to him’.
16 BT, Baba’Batra, fol. 12b. For the description of Tzevi as a fool, see Scholem,
Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 128, 136, 137, Liebes, ‘Bounds’, p. 9 and above ch. 2, n. 92.
17 In Ashkenazi the version is Koah, nenu’iy, and this is also the version in MS.
New York of this book.
18 See especially the statement that the fool cleaves to Saturn, found in Sefer
ha-Qanah, fol. 132b. The language of Sefer ha-Qanah is reminiscent of that
of the text found in the Zoharic passage that was translated above in ch. 1.
19 See n. 27. below, and also Tiqqunei Zohar, fol. 124b: ‘Sabbatai/Saturn has
two houses: one is with lowered head, and the second is a prison, where the
prisoners of the king are to be found imprisoned there in exile.’
7n ,pm pm rp7 rrx ■
’’xmun
x n ta pn f’T’DX xd^b ,,tox7 ,mon jtb xrm i ,wx7
See the way in which Sabbatai Tzevi has been described as incarcerated in
the prison of where the king’s prisoners are found. See Freimann, ‘Inianei
Shabbatai Tzevi, p. 50.
 Notes 175

20 See also above in ch. 3 the passage by Benjamin on delay.

21 Namely on religions, dinim as I read it, though in theory one may also read
it as dayanim, ‘judges’, which may sometime stand for 'deacons’. See also,
immediately below, the reference to the same term in a similar context, as
related to Saturn, as another example of a repetition. On the Hebrew din as
referring to religion see the medieval letter of the Kazar monarch to Hisdai
ibn Shafrut. Saturn is higher than the other planets, which correspond
to the lower seven sefirot, which are parallel to the commandments, the
mitzvot. See also above, ch. 1, n. 87 and ch. 2 n. 58.
22 Namely with one of the permutations of the letters of the Tetragrammaton.
See also below, for the recurrence of the same theme, and Idel, Golem, pp.
119-26.
23 This is again a repetition, and is related to Saturn as the god of agriculture
in the Roman religion.
24 On the term ‘worry’, de’agah, in the context of Tzevi’s depressive states,
see this appearing three times in Samuel Gandoor’s testimony, adduced by
Scholem, Sabbatai Seui, p. 129.
25 This is a mistake for Mokhsim.
26 Shuhot, which means ‘pits’. This attribution recurs immediately below, again
together with ‘tombs’. On Tzevi’s custom of visiting tombs, see Scholem,
Sabbatai Seui, pp. 186, 244, 247, n. 138 and Liebes, ‘Bounds’, p. 10.
27 Compare above, in no. 18, the mention of prisons as related to Saturn. The
term is absent in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah. It should be mentioned that in a diagram
of ten concentric circles representing the ten spheres, in the third circle
we find the inscription:
frown nwai -oral iwim mion irai yfrptai nmp yinnw■?»min tow ‘Mfa*
‘.*?Dwn dnsh
‘The sphere of Saturn refers to desert, fever, and all ignominy, and prison
and darkness and sorrow and from there the influx descends to the
lower world.’ Cf. MS. Cambridge Or. 2116, fol. 77b. This diagram is part
of a collection of Kabbalistic traditions from a variety of sources but the
diagrams reflect the views of R. Joseph Ashkenazi on the one hand, and I
would assume that they influenced Sefer harPeliy ’ah on the other.
28 The phrase also occurs below and is part of a repetition whose meaning
is not clear. Hotrei ha-Batim, or sotrei ha-Batim in Ashkenazi, refers to those
who destroy houses. Compare to Job 24.16.
29 The hypocrite is reminiscent of the situation of Tzevi after conversion to
Islam, yet I do not believe that this is the reason he converted.
30 See ibn Ezra, The Book ofReasons, pp. 223,349-50. Compare also the episode
of Tzevi as blinded and miraculously cured afterwards. Cf. Scholem,
Sabbatai Sevi, p. 183.
31 koferim, ‘heretics’, seems to be less appropriate in this context than in
 Peliy’ah, where it is written mekho‘arim, ‘ugly’, which is also found in the
MS. New York. However, in Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, the word atheoi, ‘atheists’,
is related to the inhabitants of Coelo Syria, Judea and Idomea. See 11:3
(Ashmand), p. 68 (Robbins), p. 143, translates as ‘godless’.
32 This explanatory note is very resonant with Ashkenazi’s style. Gilgul does
not mean here metempsychosis, as in many other cases, but the ‘rolling’
(meaning moving both up and down) of beings in a vertical manner on the
great Chain of Being.
33 Din benei halof, which may be translated as the rule of the transient entities,
is one of the phrases that characterize the style and thought of Joseph
Ashkenazi. It means the rule concerning the transformations an entity
suffers by its ascent or descent on the great Chain of Being. See also
Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 315.
34 Unlike Ashkenazi, where it is said that Saturn is highest of the seven
planets, Sefer ha-Peliy’ah described it as higher than the other six.
35 The Latin god Saturnus is appointed over agriculture.
36 Caves. The source is found in ibn Ezra’s Book of Reasons, quoted above in
ch. 1. On Sabbatai Tzevi as spending time in caves, see Scholem, Sabbatai
Sevi, pp. 137, 177 n. 185, 189 n. 214, 187, 358. This connection of Saturn to
caves may have something to do with the Greek myth about the expulsion
of Kronos to the cave on the island of Ogygia.
37 Daniel 2.21.
38 As in MS. Oxford-Bodleiana 1942, and this is the correct version. The
meaning is the metal lead.
39 Isaiah 11.2.
40 The term sekhel here, as well as above and below in our quotation, stands
for some form of sefirotic entity. See also above, n. 12.
41 The destruction is therefore not the absorption of the lower entities within
the higher, but the ascent of the root of the lower entities, higher, and the
disruption of its influences on the lower entities.
42 Probably a better version would be Be-binyanim since the lower sefirot are
also called binyan. In MS. Oxford-Bodleiana 1942 and 1953 and Vatican
291 I'm 7d is missing and it is written unnna DT’ryn, a version that is closer
to ha-Peliy ’ah.
43 This passage is not found also in Moshe of Kiev’s ’Otzar Ha-Shem, thus
showing that it has been added by the anonymous author of Sefer ha-
Peliy’ah. For translation and discussion see the Appendix below.
44 I Samuel 17.45. See also the view that Redemption will not come by means
of arms but through Sabbatai Tzevi’s sinning, as discussed in Elqayam, The
Absent Messiah, p. 37, n. 13.
45 The verb MShKh as pointing to the drawing down from a sefirah is
widespread in theosophical Kabbalah, but it appears also in astro-magical
 Notes 177

texts like that quoted by R. Bahya from Pseudo-Galenus as in chapter 1

above, and in the passage from the Zohar, quoted immediately following
that of R. Bahya’s. See also Margolin, ‘Physiognomy and Chiromancy’, pp.
236-7. It should be pointed out that Joseph Ashkenazi, in his Kabbalistic
Commentary on Genesis Rabbah, pp. 248—9, mentions the worship of talismans
as pure idolatry and criticizes those who praise Islam, a veiled attack in the
direction of Maimonides.
46 In manuscripts the version is DrP^Nin lieu of in print, which means ‘to
them’ rather than ‘onto them’.
47 In the manuscripts the word Binah is written over the name of God. See
also n. 46 above and n. 78 below.
48 Compare to the ascent and descent of the Jews according to the discussion
in BT., Meg&lah, fol. 16a.
49 Genesis 28.14.
50 See M. Idel, ‘On Angels in Biblical Exegesis in Thirteenth-Century
Ashkenaz’, in D. A. Green and L. S. Lieber (eds), Scriptural Exegesis, Shapes
of Culture and Religious Imagination, Essays in Honour of Michael Fishbane
(Clarendon Press, Oxford 2009), p. 218.
51 See M. Idel, Enchanted Chains: Techniques and Rituals in fewish Mysticism
(The Cherub Press, Los Angeles, 2005), pp. 228-32.
52 See Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, I, fols. 12c-13b, where he gives the year of redemption
as 1490, which is not found in the sources he uses.
53 Namely the six lower sefirot, which are described as surrounding the
sefirah of Tiferet, that is called Israel. This identification recurs in Sefer ha-
Peliy’ah. The concept is found in Sefer Yetzirah but has been interpreted
theosophically by many kabbalists.
54 The affinity between the six first letters of the divine name of forty-two
letters and Bereshit is based upon the assumption that it is already found
in earlier sources, that the divine name is taken from the first forty-two
letters of Genesis 1. See also Sefer ha-Qanah, fol. 88ab. Thus, the first six
letters of the two formulas correspond, as we also learn from another
rather lengthy passage found in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, which I analysed in ‘On
R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo the Prophet’s Commentaries on the Name of Forty-
Two and Sefer ha-Hokhmah, attributed to R. Eleazar of Worms’, Kabbalah,
vol. 14 (2006), p. 244 (Hebrew). See also below, the addition at the end
of the quotation from Joseph Ashkenazi in Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, and ibid., I,
fol. 55c, and especially the discussion of Abulafia in Gan Na‘ul, ed. Gross,
pp. 76-7. See also the view of Bahya ben Asher to the effect that Saturn
was the head of the planet at the time of creation. See Kad ha-Qemah, in
C. D. Chavel (ed.), KitveiRabbeinuBahya (Mossad ha-Rav Kook,Jerusalem,
1969), p. 338. On the view of Sabbatai Tzevi that his name is included in
the consonants of the Hebrew Bereshit, see Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 234.
178 Notes

This is one more testimony to the relation of the Messiah to the Kabbalistic
text he studied. The only antecedent of such a view is found in Abraham
Abulafia’s Commentary on Exodus, Mafteah ha-Shemot, ed. Am non Gross
(Jerusalem, 2001), p. 152.
55 Namely the sefirah of Hokhmah, which is higher than that of Binah.
56 In Hebrew, the form is masculine, hence it is probably related to Saturn
and not to Binah, which is feminine. See, however, the previous note. It
should be pointed out that in Alemanno’s variant of Joseph Ashkenazi’s
passage, found in MS. Paris BN 849, fol. 74a, there is an interpolation,
where it is written in the vein of Sefer ha-Peliy’ah: ‘This is the reason why they
[the fools] or belonging to the lot of Saturn, who hates the material reality,
out of his high spirituality.’
.u r n r i n m i 1? n a n n m xrsn n m io t t q w p7na on nr1?!

57 Such a view is not rare in the Middle Ages, and it occurs, for example, in
Abraham Abulafia. See M. Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia,
tr. Jonathan Chipman (SUNY Press, Albany, 1987), pp. 134-7. Also here
there is some similarity to Sabbatai Tzevi’s behaviour. See Scholem, Sabbatai
Sevi, pp. 112-14.
58 See Idel, Ben, pp. 434-7.
59 See MS.Oxford-Bodleiana 2234, fol. 118a.
60 See Idel, ‘Hermeticism and Judaism’, pp. 61-2.
61 See Asclepiusparagraphs 23-4, cf. Brian Copenhaver, Hermetica (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1995), pp. 80-1.
62 On this event see Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 159-60, 400-1.
63 On R. Sabbatai’s acquaintance with Sefer ha-Peliy’ah see the many quotes in
his glossae as Qanah, on Menahem Recanati’s Commentary on the Pentateuch,
MS. Paris BN, 786, e.g. fols 108b, which have been pointed out by Kushnir
Oron, Ha-Peli ah and Ha-Kanah, p. 15. See also Idel, Ben, p. 347, n. 16.
64 Sefer Yetzirah 1:5.
65 Isaiah 44.6.
66 This form of pointing to the sefirotic valence of a certain word by
introducing paranthesis is late and started with the printing of Kabbalistic
books. In the school of Joseph Ashkenazi, which perhaps includes David
ben Yehudah he-Hasid, and manuscripts of Sefer ha-Temunah and some
manuscripts of Sefer ha-Peliy’ah, the sefirotic valences were written upon
the words. This form of reference distinguishes this school from other
Kabbalistic schools, in addition to the common conceptual structures.
67 Leviticus 23.15.
68 Here, and below, as in the longer text adduced above, lordship over both
Shemittot and Yovel is attributed to Binah.
69 BT., Sanhedrin, fol. 97a.
70 See above, ch. 1, n. 49.
 Notes 179

71 Namely, the age of seventy.

72 See also the connection between Binah and fifty in many Kabbalistic texts
and that of Saturn and fifty in the passage from Hai ben Meqitz, adduced in
chapter 1 above.
73 Namely, in Binah.
74 This is an 'ouroboric’ image applied to Binah. See Liebes, ‘Zohar and
Iamblichus’, p. 107, n. 7. The terms reshit and takhlit are reminiscent of
the view that Sabbatai is the first and the last, Rishon va-’aharon (see below,
n. 76), but also of the way in which Tzevi has been described by Abraham
Cardozo: Reshit ve-’Aharit. See Liebes, On Sabbateanism, p. 43.
75 The term mehuddashim is a term characteristic of Joseph Ashkenazi’s
thought, and it refers to the seven lower sefirot, described as innovated from
the Binah. See, e.g., Perush Sefer Yetzirah, fol. 3a. This term is also found in
Joseph ibn Waqar.
76 Perush Sefer Yetzirah, fol. 26d:
‘n n n s p aw ’ -i&iuw ‘i n n s u x i ’ □’Pdivi tio Pn r a n

pwPi (nron) ‘mrawynw-|pmaoi’ mays yawouwyawiraw. ora^ W7p wpwn-p^Pi

Tin law wPx xrrw□wPiai m Pui’i nuawduwdi nwmp u □’wimi (nro) nowav i » d
d w oiK njiuw di .Piow* p x rnmxni /mny □wpim.ann nni ,onn 7mxupy
imypdt>crwnnnoi .(nro) t o w □, udidui ,’nPW7p wawniwyi nnwy wwnn ,mw
n ran1?mmn p ion1?! irParmmunwnPooPanminx nruno”'’ ruwzimynwcpwnm
"07 PwiPPdi nwownnoawnniooxmn (nro) rreypcrwanp pi mwwnnoawnniooxvi
□’wnnanPdi crxxainPd mpDmmwxi sinaw , imw’ mPxi iso maa.
Compare views found later in writings that belong to the circle of Sefer ha-
Temunah, where it is said of Saturn:
Pan7nirr awwirinxi iiwxi nyw’nowpi
‘And Saturn is the first and last gate and there everything will be united.’
Cf. MS. Vatican 194, fol. 67a. See also n. 74 above. In another statement
from the same circle, found in another codex, MS. Vatican 431, fol. 87b, we
read: DnywnPd*110nron ‘the Binah is the end of all the gates’.
77 See above, ch. 2, n. 18.
78 See above nn. 47, 66.
79 See above nn. 15, 24, 36, 54, 74. In this context, the visit to the Land of
Israel may be triggered by its alleged relation to Saturn. See the last passage
translated in the Appendix and in ch. 1, n. 18 and ch. 2, n. 149 above.
80 See especially ch. 2, ‘Saturn, Forbidden Sexual Relations and Sabbateanism’
above.
jUwlalM

N IX '

Gdskoi

Cassirer, 1

In
Ciavolel]
l’r
Oi
Cohen-
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Index of Subjects

Abraham 7 1 -2 , 77, 135 colour 7, 10, 17, 28, 29,

angels 1 3-14, 25, 35, 65, 9 1 -5 , 30—4, 40, 4 2 ,6 7 ,7 1 ,8 8 ,
123, 1 2 6 -7 , 132, 151, 156, 100, 129, 139, 146, 157,
166-9, 1 70-1, 174, 177, 181, 165
183—4 Black Death 29, 40, 42, 100, 136
Angel of History 91, 92, 94
Angelas Novus 9 1 - 2 ,9 4 , caves 10, 15, 176
168 Chain of Being, Great 19, 57,
Hodiel 92 176
Qaftziel 13, 14, 92, 127, 168 Christianity 33, 43, 48, 77, 86,
Metatron 164-5, 156, 162 102, 129
Michael 27, 127, 168 Commandments 1 ,5 ,2 5 ,3 0 ,
Samael 3 4 ,3 5 , 132, 140, 3 5 ,5 6 - 8 , 82, 101, 113, 125,
168, 169 175
antinomianism 105-6, 173 conceptual structure xiii, 4 -5 , 7,
Apocalypse 68, 169 1 8 ,2 7 , 29, 4 6 - 7 ,5 3 ,6 1 - 3 , 74,
apocalypticism 150, 169 76, 78, 85, 8 7 -8 , 90, 99, 122,
apotheosis 6 8 -9 , 125, 156, 184 131, 165, 169, 178
Arabs 6, 140, 170 conjunction, conjunctio maxima
Aristotelianism, neo- 7 -9 , 14, 2 5 , 2 8 - 9 ,4 1 ,5 2 - 3 ,
Aristotelianism 6 5 7 ,7 4 ,8 1 , 105, 122, 135-6,
ass 135 147-9, 152, 158, 185
astrology xii, xiii, 2 -8 , 18-22, contemplation 2 1 ,5 5 ,1 1 4 ,1 1 5 ,
30, 33, 37, 44, 47, 5 0 -2 , 69, 172
72, 82, 83, 91, 97, 100, 104-6,
119, 120, 122, 125, 131, 133, David 54, 59, 66, 86, 162, 165
1 3 6 -9 , 143, 1 4 5 -9 , 157, Devequt 9
1 6 2 -4 , 1 7 1 -2 , 1 8 1 -2 , 184, 186 Din, dinim (as religion) 21, 50,
56, 105, 132, 139, 152, 175
Bahir 99 divine names 12-13, 15, 64
black
bile, hum our 10, 17, 71, 88, Enoch 1 3 7 ,1 6 6
1 2 9 ,1 4 6 , 157
birds 34, 139 faith 7 ,6 5 , 144, 159, 161, 187
fool 2 5 ,6 1 ,6 2 , 133, 155, 174,
178
Index of Subjects

Frankism 69, 157 Israel (Jewish nation), Jews

2 3 -8 , 35, 37, 5 2 -6 , 5 8 -9 ,
GanNciul 55, 129, 146, 151, 6 2 -4 , 70, 7 4 -5 , 77, 93, 97,
17 7 ,1 8 1 102, 105, 114-15, 120, 127,
gematria 15, 20, 39, 64, 75, 149, 132, 143, 150, 177, 181
150, 151, 174
genius xiii, 61, 78, 85, 9 1 -2 , 93, Jerusalem xi, xii, 27, 53, 64, 81,
146 119, 120, 134
Gnosticism 49, 169 Jubilee (Yovel) 2 1 , 5 7 ,6 0 ,6 3 ,6 5 ,
goats 7 ,2 3 ,2 9 ,4 1 , 132 66, 116, 137, 148, 152, 155,
Golden Ages 51, 8 2 -3 , 104, 146 181, 183
golem 80, 125, 138, 162, 175, Jupiter 5 , 9 ,2 1 , 2 5 - 6 ,5 3 , 5 7 ,
183, 184 126, 148
elites 1 ,3 , 5 -7 , 1 1 -1 2 ,2 9 ,
4 2 -4 , 4 6 -7 , 79, 8 2 -3 , Kabbalah xi, xiii, 1, 2, 14, 18, 20,
9 1 -2 , 94, 100, 102-4, 2 2 ,2 4 ,2 7 ,3 1 ,3 5 - 6 , 3 9 ,4 4 ,
106, 136, 161, 173 4 8 -5 0 , 52, 54, 58, 6 3 -5 , 68,
72, 77, 7 9 -8 1 , 90, 99, 104-5,
Hai ben Meqitz 25 119, 127-30, 132-6, 138-9,
Hasidism xi, 49, 86, 119, 144, 143-5, 148-57, 160, 162, 167,
153, 155, 162, 165, 166, 184 172, 173, 177, 182-7
Heikhalot literature 80, 99, 115, ecstatic 14, 20, 39, 50, 52,
162 79, 119, 127, 128, 151,
Hemdat Yamim 87 1 6 2 ,1 8 3
Hermes, Hermetic literature 6, Geronese 99
24, 26, 115, 119, 123, 136, Lurianism 4 9 ,5 1 ,
141, 163, 166-7, 178, 183, 187 79, 87, 144, 145
Hitbodedut 8, 9, 122, 123, 183 theosophical-theurgical 35,
101, 177
idolatry 7 1 ,7 2 ,7 4 , 138, 177 Karaites 85
incantation 8, 11, 13-16, 123,
128, 142, 172, 174 Land of Israel xi, 27, 5 2 -3 , 64,
incest (‘A rayyot) 7 0 - 2 ,1 5 7 ,1 7 3 70, 116-17, 146, 162-3, 173,
intellect, agent, 1, 20, 23, 55, 82, 179, 186
88, 101, 105, 113,114, 121, language 12, 14-16, 23, 25 -7 ,
124, 131, 150, 159, 174 30, 39, 5 0 - 3 ,6 3 ,7 8 , 101, 115,
intellects, separate 1 ,1 5 9 ,1 7 4 126, 128, 135, 168-9, 174, 183
Islam, Muslim 1, 5, 10, 12, 45, letters and letter combinations
50, 76, 77, 81, 101, 104, 119, 12, 13, 15-16, 19, 3 5 -6 , 54,
122, 126, 132, 147, 148, 161, 57, 93, 95, 125, 129, 147-8,
165, 172, 175, 177 157, 159, 164, 175, 177
Lilith 7 1 ,7 6 ,9 3 ,1 3 9
 Index of Subjects 191

Lurianism, Lurianic Kabbalah 156, 158, 162, 164, 166, 168,

49, 50, 51, 65, 79, 87, 99, 172, 176, 178, 181, 182, 184,
1 4 4 -5 , 155-6, 162, 183 185-6

Ma arekhet ha - ’Eloh at 124 Nabbatean Agriculture 32, 138

magic xi, xii, 3 -9 , 11-19, 22, 24, Neoplatonism 49
2 6 -7 , 3 0 - 9 ,4 1 - 6 , 75, 8 0 -1 ,
8 8 ,9 1 ,9 9 , 102, 104-5, 113, Paradise (Garden of Eden) 15,
119, 1 20-7, 129, 131-9, 128
140-7, 149, 153-8, 160-3, philosophy 2, 6, 8, 22—4, 36, 44,
165-6, 68, 171-3, 177, 182-8 48, 79, 80, 8 3 ,9 5 , 101, 119,
astral magic 3 0 -1 , 33, 37, 122-4, 127, 130-1, 144-6,
119, 122-3, 127, 131-3, 149, 154, 156, 167, 169, 172,
136, 138-40, 146, 154, 181, 183-4, 187
157, 166, 173, 186 Picatnx 3 0 -4 , 75, 136-9, 146,
linguistic magic 12, 14, 16 147
Mars 10-11, 24, 26, 28, 29, 34, plague (Black Death) 3, 2 7 -9 ,
41, 69, 7 1 -2 , 77, 124-6, 131, 39, 40, 42, 100, 135-6, 141
1 4 0 ,1 5 6 planets xii, xiii, 2 -3 , 7, 9, 10-14,
melancholy xi, 5, 18, 35, 61, 16-19, 2 0 - 1 ,2 3 - 9 , 3 0 -8 ,
67, 7 3 ,8 1 ,8 5 - 9 , 9 0 -7 , 100, 4 0 - 1 , 4 6 - 7 , 5 0 - 8 ,6 0 - 8 , 70,
103, 115, 119, 123, 125, 129, 7 2 -8 , 8 0 -1 , 8 5 -8 , 9 0 -3 , 96,
139, 145-6, 153-4, 158, 165, 99, 100-4, 109, 113-15,
167-71, 173, 184, 187 1 21-2, 124, 126, 129, 131-3,
inarah shehorah 67 135, 142, 150-2, 157-8, 161,
Mercury 7, 8, 37, 38, 126 164-7, 175-7
Messiah, messianism xii, xiii, 4, poison, venom 7, 10, 3 4 -5 , 140
46, 4 8 -5 9 , 6 0 -9 , 7 2 -9 , 8 0 -3 , prayer 32, 127, 131, 163
8 5 -7 , 90, 94, 99, 1 00-4, 106, prison, prisoners 28, 135, 174-5
115, 117, 119, 1 2 9 -3 0 , 144-7, prophecy, prophets 1 6 -1 7 ,2 1 ,
149, 1 5 0 -6 , 1 5 8 -9 , 161-5, 25, 39, 4 6 ,5 2 - 3 , 55, 5 7 ,6 1 - 2 ,
168, 1 7 0 -5 , 178, 182, 184-7 65, 67, 7 3 - 6 ,8 8 , 90, 113, 120,
Supernal Messiah 60 128, 133, 135-44, 147, 150,
moon 25, 31, 54, 76, 124, 126, 153, 156-8, 162-3, 166,
1 3 7 ,1 6 1 ,1 8 5 171-2, 177, 182, 184
Moses 9, 25, 27, 35, 38, 53, 66,
94, 99, 124, 130-1, 133, 146, Ra ‘aya ’ Meheimna ’ 2 2 ,3 1 ,7 6 ,
1 5 1 ,1 7 3 135, 138, 146, 157
myth, mythology xiii, 3^4, 21, redemption xiii, 24, 5 3 -9 , 60,
36, 38, 4 1 -2 , 51, 59, 61, 6 7 -9 , 66, 68, 73, 75, 83, 85, 106,
7 9 -8 0 , 9 0 -1 , 94, 96, 102-5, 148, 151-3, 155, 161, 163-4,
119, 123—4, 134, 142, 144-5, 174, 176-7, 184
192 In d ex o f Subjects

Renaissance xi, 4, 22, 24, 26, concentration 9

4 1 ,4 6 , 5 0 ,6 1 ,6 3 ,6 7 , 78, 80, destruction, demonic power
90, 104, 119, 129, 130, 134, 7, 1 0 ,2 1 ,2 3 ,2 4 , 29, 77,
139, 141, 143, 145-8, 153, 92
156-7, 162-3, 166-9, 172, duality, double nature xiii,
181-3, 185-6 71
Reshit Hokhmah 8, 16, 23, 35, 40, God, and Latin god, Saturnus
123, 124, 126, 139, 140, 146, 26, 63
151 Golden Age 5 1 ,8 2 - 3 , 104,
Ruhaniyyut, spiritualities 30, 132 146
Jews 22, 28, 39, 70
Sabbat (the witches’ Sabbat) xiii, Jupiter Mars and planets
4 ,7 , 18, 29, 39, 4 2 ,4 5 , 100, 1 1 ,2 8 ,2 9 ,4 1 ,5 7 - 8 ,6 1 ,
141 6 3 -4 ,7 0 , 73, 7 5 ,8 1 ,
Sabbateanism xiii, 48, 49, 5 0 -1 , 8 7 -8 ,9 9 , 115
69, 72, 74, 7 7 -9 , 80, 90, 100, Kabbalah and 5 9 -6 2 , 63,
105-6, 119, 144-5, 147, 6 7 -8 , 78
153-9, 161-3, 179, 183-6 king as 3 1 - 2 ,4 0 ,6 6 ,7 5
Sabbath (Saturday) xiii, 1-9, 10- Lex Saturna 39
1 9 ,2 1 ,2 3 - 9 , 3 0 - 9 ,4 0 - 6 , 52, melancholy and xi, 5, 18,
64, 66, 70, 8 5 ,8 7 ,9 0 , 9 9 -1 0 2 , 61, 7 7 -8 , 88, 9 0 -4 , 96,
104-5, 116, 120-2, 125, 127- see also melancholy
9, 137-9, 140-1, 144, 150-2, mythological, Greek
160-6, 174, 182, 185 my thologoumena 3 ,4 ,5 1 ,
sadness xi, 5, 9, 18, 3 4 -5 , 61, 69, 79, 90, 94, 102-3,
6 7 , 7 1 ,7 3 ,7 8 ,8 1 ,8 5 - 9 , 105, 168
9 0 -7 , 100, 103, 115, 119, 123, negative conceptual structure
125, 129, 139, 145-6, 153-4, 5, 53, 85
158, 165-9, 170-1, 173, 184, planet of Israel xii, 2, 5, 8,
187 9, 16, 2 5 -6 , 28, 3 2 -4 ,
see also melancholy 38, 4 7 ,5 0 , 5 2 ,6 1 ,8 5
Samael 3 4 -5 , 132, 140, 168, 169 Sabbatai and, Sabbatai Tzevi
Satan, devil, 9, 23, 29, 41 and 62, 64, 65, 67, 69,
Saturn 7 8 -9 , 8 2 -6 , 89, 90, 115,
angel 2 5 ,9 2 -3 117
astrology and 41, 50, 72, Sabbath day 4,7, 11
86 , 101 Saturn’s children 21
attributes, characteristics, Sefirot 20, 38, 54, 57, 113
perception of 3 -5 , 7 -9 , sorcery and demonic powers
10, 18, 30, 3 2 ,3 6 , 3 8 ,8 1 , 7 ,8 , 12, 15, 1 7 ,2 2 ,2 7 ,
87, 94, 103 3 1 ,3 3 - 5 ,3 7 - 8 , 44, 46
Black Death, plague 40 worship 21, 30, 74, 88, 104
 In d ex o f Subjects 193

Saturnism 2, 19, 30, 76, 83, 87, Hokhmah 54, 56, 140
99, 102, 106 Keter 1 7 ,7 5 ,7 8 , 159-60,
Saturnization 2, 23, 2 6 -3 0 , 1 7 4 ,1 8 6
3 3 -4 , 37, 99 Knesset Yisrael 59
Sefer Datot ha-Nevi’im, ‘the Book of Koa&hdot; Keter 'Elyon 75,
the Religions of the Prophets’ 78, 159, 174
166 Malkhut 63, 139, 163
Sefer ha-Atzamim, pseudo-ibn Ezra Mother (Great Mother) 58,
26, 28, 62, 136, 166, 183 63, 68, 7 0 -1 , 142, 156
Sefer ha-Levanah 31, 137 Seven sefirot 2 0 - 1 ,6 0 ,6 8 ,
Sefer ha-Meshiv 153 175
Sefer ha-Qanah 1 0 5 ,1 1 6 ,1 5 4 , Teshuvah 54, 150
174, 177, 186 Tiferet 3 7 -8 , 177
Sefer ha-Peliy’ah 17-18, 25, 38, Yesod 33, 126, 152
6 0 - 1 ,6 3 - 7 , 6 9 ,7 1 ,7 3 - 9 ,8 1 , serpent, snake, viper 7, 2 8 -9 ,
86, 96, 99, 106, 109, 113-16, 34, 75, 122, 135-6, 160
129, 130, 146, 150-1, 153-4, sexuality, illicit relations 30, 36,
158-60, 173, 174-8, 186 69, 7 0 -2 , 77, 157, 173, 179
Sefer ha-Razim 13, 14, 160 Shekhinah 34, 71, 76, 115, 161
Sefer ha-Te ‘amim 122-4 Shemittah 66, 116, 128, 155, 174
Sefer ha-Temunah 5 9 ,6 0 ,6 4 ,8 1 , solitude 8, 10, 69, 126
99, 105, 128, 147, 152, 153, Solomon 32, 69, 87, 135, 137,
154, 178, 179 153
Sefer Raziel 13, 14, 127 sorcery, see witchcraft
Sefer Yetzirah 12, 19, 46, 54, 64, spleen 1 0 ,7 1 ,1 5 7
103, 116, 122, 125, 127, 129, star (Kokhav) 9, 23, 30, 37, 52,
173-1, 1 7 7 -9 54, 73, 7 8 , 8 5 ,8 7 ,9 1 , 1 1 3 -1 4 ,
commentaries on 14-15, 116, 124, 131, 1 46-7, 150,
17, 2 4 -5 , 2 7 -8 , 40, 56, 157, 161, 163, 166, 173, 186
60, 6 2 -5 , 76, 109, 116, sun (Hammah) 2 , 5 4 ,5 5 , 6 1 ,
128, 130, 133, 135, 146, 126, 150, 163
151, 154, 159, 173, 181 symbolism 51, 66, 68, 75, 141
Sefirot
‘Atcirah 160 talisman 30, 126, 137, 141, 163,
Binah 4, 17, 2 0 -1 , 24, 27, 177
38, 5 4 - 9 ,6 1 ,6 3 , 6 6 -9 , Temple 23, 2 5 -7 , 53, 119, 126,
7 8 ,8 2 , 86, 113, 1 1 6 -1 7 , 156
125, 1 3 3 -4 , 146, 149, Teraphim 87, 166
1 5 1 -3 , 159, 162, 1 77-9 Tetrabiblos 7, 10, 69, 102, 122,
crown 12, 17, 56, 159 124, 135, 148, 157, 174, 176,
fifty gates 54, 125 185
Hesed/Gedullah 68 theosophy 19, 54, 131, 155
In d ex o f Subjects

theurgy, theurgical 35, 147 witches, witchcraft (sorcery,

thought xii, xiii, 1, 5 -7 , 9, 10, Kishshuf) xiii, 1, 3 -5 , 7 -9 ,
16-18, 20, 2 2 - 5 ,3 1 ,3 8 ,4 1 , 11-13, 15-17, 19, 2 1 -5 , 27,
44, 4 9 -5 0 , 55, 5 8 -9 , 68, 7 2 -5 , 29, 3 1 -5 , 3 7 - 9 ,4 0 - 6 , 85,
8 0 -3 , 86, 100, 102, 105, 100-1, 121-3, 132-4, 138-9,
120-1, 124, 128, 131-2, 135, 140-1, 143, 157, 162, 181-2,
139, 144-5, 148, 151-3, 158, 188
162-3, 166, 170, 172-3, 176,
179, 183-4, 186 Ya ‘arot Devcish 140
Tiqqunei Zohcir 22, 29, 34, 35,
72, 106, 115, 129, 138-40, Zodiac, signs of the Zodiac 20,
157, 163, 169, 174, 182, 185 2 3 -5 , 30, 32, 64, 72, 74, 86,
time 102, 135, 149-50, 159, 182
cyclical 81, 82, 130, 152, Capricorn 23, 2 8 -3 0 , 41,
164 62, 72, 149
tombs 126, 175 Pisces 25
Torah 2, 9, 2 2 -5 , 27, 30, 3 2 -4 , Zohar and Zoharic 18, 22, 29,
3 7 -8 , 53, 6 2 -3 , 105, 114-15, 3 1 -6 , 38, 50, 54, 66, 68, 7 1 -2 ,
126, 128, 132, 140, 151-2, 7 6 - 7 ,8 1 ,8 7 ,9 3 ,9 9 , 105-6,
155, 183 115, 127, 129, 135, 1 3 7 ^ 0 ,
145-6, 149, 155, 157, 160,
Venus 6 9 ,7 0 - 2 , 126, 157 162-3, 165, 168-9, 172, 174,
177, 179, 181-2, 184-5
Warburg school, Institute,
Warburgians xi, xii, xiii, 3,
4 , 6 1 ,7 7 ,8 8 - 9 4 , 96, 139, 149,
166-7, 169, 172, 182, 187
Index of Persons

Abraham bar Hiyya 5, 52, 99, 113-14, 116-17, 125-6,

106 128-9, 130-1, 133-5, 139,
Abraham ben David 28, 62, 146, 150-5, 158-9, 160-3,
128, 15S 165, 169, 171-9, 181
Abraham ha-Yakhini 73 Augustine, St 2, 3, 120
Abraham Peretz 154 Ayalon, Shlomo 159
Abu Ma‘shar al-Balkhi 7 Azulai, Abraham 163
Abulafia, Abraham 1, 12, 15, 20,
54, 60, 78, 81, 99, 105-6, 115, Bahya ben Asher 22, 30, 37, 87,
125, 133, 140, 150-1, 172, 99, 177
178, 183 Barceloni, Yehudah 14
Agnon, S. Y 95, 170 Barukh of Arezzo 77
Agrippa of Nettesheim, Henry Benjamin, Walter 3 5 ,9 1 ,9 6 ,
Cornelius 90 99, 103, 106, 167-9
Al-Ashqar, Joseph ben Shlomo Bernard, Jean-Frederic 85
121-2, 124, 130, 152, 165, 181 Bonfils, Joseph 8, 123, 181
Al-Biruni 122 Bruno, Giordano 134-5, 138-9,
Alemanno, Yohanan xii, 20, 159, 167, 187
2 4 -8 , 3 7 ,3 8 , 50, 5 3 ,6 3 ,7 0 - 1 , Burton, Robert 69, 158
7 4 ,8 1 ,9 2 ,9 9 , 100, 106, 114,
119, 122, 124, 126, 130-4, Cardano, Girolamo 69, 156,
14 0 -1, 146, 1 52-3, 160, 168, 157
171, 178, 183 Cardozo, Abraham Michael 78,
Alfonso Sabio 34, 104, 147 179, 182
Ali bin Rijal (known in Latin as Cardozo, Isaac 77
Abenrejal) 7 Cordovero, Moses 8 0 -1 , 99,
Al-Kabi’si, (Alcabitius) 7, 24, 29, 105, 163, 173
40, 126, 146 Crescas, Hasdai 6
Al-Qabetz, Shlomo ha-Levi 163
Al-Qonstantin, Shlomo 71, 74, Dante 172
186 Dato, Mordekhai 148, 163, 166,
Apollonius (Balinus) 30, 136 184
Ashkenazi, Joseph ben Shalom David ben Yehudah he-Hasid
12, 1 6 - 2 2 ,2 4 - 8 ,3 1 ,4 0 , 50, 152
5 5 - 6 5 ,7 1 ,7 4 - 6 , 7 8 ,8 1 ,8 6 - 7 , Della Mirandola, Giovanni Pico
96, 9 9 -1 0 0 , 105-6, 109, 24, 104, 119, 134
196 In d ex o f Persons

Diirer, Albrecht 90 ibn Gabirol, Solomon 121-2

ibn Major, Shem Tov 23, 29, 41
Eibeschuetz, Yonathan 140 ibn Malka, Yehudah ben Nissim
Eleazar of Worms 1 2 6 ,1 7 7 53, 127, 131, 139, 149, 166,
Elhanan ben Abraham of Esquira 187
126 ibn Matqa, Yehudah ben Moshe
Elijah, the Vilna Gaon 87 128, 147
Elijah ben Benjamin of Genazzano ibn Migash, Abraham 27, 153
149 ibn Motot, Samuel 19, 23, 26,
Elijah of Smyrna 137 131, 133-4, 172, 187
Elisha 163 ibn Shafrut, Hisdai 175
Eskapha, Joseph 74 ibn Shaprut, Shem Tov 131
ibn Sina 131
Ficino, Marsilio 24, 26, 69, 125, ibn Tzayyah, Joseph 2 7 -8 ,9 9
131, 140, 156, 187 ibn Zarza, Samuel 19, 2 2 -3 ,
Francesco Giorgio of Venice 62 131, 134, 166
Franco, Shlomo 23, 37, 127, ibn Wahshiyya 138
162, 168, 186 ibn Waqar, Joseph 1 9 ,2 2 - 3 ,8 1 ,
124, 130-1, 133
Galenus (Pseudo) 30, 32, 137, Isaac of Acre 6 9 ,1 5 2
177 Isaac Sagi-Nahor 54
Gandoor, Samuel 175 Israel ben Eliezer, the Besht
Gatigno, Ezra 70, 131, 8 6 -7 , 144, 155, 165, 170
Gikatilla, Joseph 5 4 ,6 0 ,9 9 ,1 2 7
Jacob of Sicily 137
Hai Gaon 64 Jacob Josepli of Polonnoye 86
Hamoi, Abraham 1 2 3 ,1 2 6 ,1 3 0 , Joachim of Fiore 148
173, 182
Kafka, Franz 95, 106, 167, 170,
ibn Adret, Shlomo ben Abraham 181
(Rashba’) 136-7 Karo, Isaac 27, 46, 124, 132,
ibn Al-Tabib, Abraham 3 7 ,1 2 7 141, 184
Ibn Ezra, Abraham xiii, 5 -1 1 , Klibansky, Raymond xi, 61,
16, 2 2 - 8 ,3 4 - 8 , 4 0 - 1 ,4 4 , 52, 8 8 -9 , 120, 122-1, 129, 132,
55, 62, 70, 88, 99, 100, 109, 134-6, 145, 149, 151, 156,
117, 120-3, 125-7, 131-1, 159, 165, 173-4, 184
136, 139-40, 142, 148, 151,
153, 157-8, 166, 172, 175-6, Landauer, Gustav 170
183-7 Leone Ebreo 27
Levi, Eliphas 126
Lull, Ramon 119, 127-8, 138,
183
 In d ex o f Persons 197

Luria, Isaac 49, 5 0 -1 , 6 4 -5 , 77, Rashi 122, 125, 132

79, 87, 99, 105, 144-5, 155-6, Recanati, Menahem 178
162, 183
Luzzatto, R. Moshe Hayyim (the Sabbatai ben Potto ofjanina
Ramhal) 7 6 - 7 ,8 1 ,8 5 , 116
160-2 Samuel ben Benjamin 165-6
Sasportas, Jacob 7 3 -5 , 147, 155,
Maimon, Shlomo 22 158-9, 160-1, 185
Maimonides, Moshe ben Maimon Saxl, Fritz xi, 61, 88, 120,
1 ,6 , 13, 22, 30, 35, 4 5 ,4 8 ,8 8 , 122-4, 129, 132, 134, 135-6,
99, 105-6, 126, 140-5, 166, 145, 148-9, 151, 156, 159,
177 164-6, 169, 172-4, 182, 184
Menahem ben Zerah 37 Supino, Raphael 7 3 -4 , 147, 158
Moses ben Yehudah 53, 58, 59,
114, 152, 178 Reuchlin, Johann 90, 104, 144,
Moses of Kiev 130,1 5 1 185
Rubashov (Shazar), Zalman 95
Nahman of Bratzlav 165
Nahmanides, Moshe ben Nahman Scholem, Gershom 4 8 -9 , 50,
132, 136, 152 64, 6 6 -8 , 72, 7 4 -5 , 80, 8 8 -9 ,
Nathan of Gaza 65, 7 2 -3 , 7 5 -9 , 9 0 -1 , 9 3 -6 , 106, 119, 126,
144, 159, 161 128, 130, 133, 137-8, 140,
Nathan Neta‘ Shapira of 1 43-5, 148, 150, 152, 154-9,
Jerusalem 6 4 ,8 1 1 60-1, 164-5, 167-9, 170,
Nehemiah ben Shlomo of Erfurt 172-6, 178, 181, 185-6
150 Sebastian, Mihail 9 5 -6 , 170-1
Nehuniah ben ha-Qanah 65 Sohrawardi, Shihaboddin Yahya
126
Panofsky, Erwin xi, xiii, 88, 120,
12 2 -4, 129, 132, 134-6, 145, Tacitus 2, 3, 104, 120
1 4 8 -9, 151, 156, 159, 164-6, Togarmi, Barukh 15, 16, 128
169, 1 7 2 ^ , 182, 184 Tzevi, Sabbatai 4, 38, 4 7 -5 1 ,
Philo of Alexandria 102 5 3 ,5 5 , 5 7 ,5 9 ,6 1 ,6 3 - 9 , 7 0 -9 ,
Plethon, Gemistos 164 8 0 - 1 ,8 3 , 8 5 -9 , 90, 9 6 -7 ,
Plotin 156, 172 99, 100, 106, 110, 113, 115,
Ptolemy 7, 10, 11, 36, 69, 7 0 -1 , 117, 119, 122, 135-6, 139,
102, 106, 124, 128, 135, 148, 144, 146-7, 149, 152-5, 157,
1 5 7 ,1 7 6 , 185 158-9, 160-3, 167, 171, 174,
Pulgar, Isaac 136 175-9, 182, 185

Qimhi, David 132 Vital, Hayyim 3, 87

198 In d ex o f Persons

Warburg, Aby xi, xii, 77, 88, 89, Yehudah ben Shemariah 128
96, 139, 149, 166-7, 169, 172, Yehudah ha-Levi 6
182, 187
Zacuto, Abraham 53
Yagel, Abraham 2 7 - 9 ,4 1 ,6 2 - 3 , Zacuto, Moses 159
99, 100, 106, 130, 135-6,
152-3, 187
Yates, Frances A xi, 90, 119,
128, 134, 138, 139, 143-4,
154, 156, 159, 165, 167, 187
f

[
I
f

1
 T h e R o b e rt a n d A rle n e ICogod L ib ra r y o f J u d a ic stu d ies p u b lish es
new re s e a rc h w bicb p rovid es inn ovative d ir e c tio n s fo r m o d e rn Jew ish
th o u g h t an d life , a n d serves to e n h a n ce th e q u ality o f d ialo g u e betw een
classical so u rces a n d the m o d e rn w orld.

T h is book series re flects the m iss io n o f th e S h a lo m H a r tm a n In s titu te ,

a p lu ra lis tic re s e a rc h a n d lead ersh ip in s titu te at th e f o r e f r o n t o f Jew ish
th o u gh t an d e d u ca tio n . It em pow ers sc h o la rs , ra b b is, e d u ca to rs an d
laylead ers to develop new a n d diverse voices w ith in th e tr a d itio n , layin g
fo u n d a tio n s fo r the fu tu re o f Jew ish life in Is ra e l a n d a ro u n d th e w orld .

T h i s b o o k e x p lo r e s the p h e n o m e n o n o f S a t u r n i s m , n a m e l y th e b e l i e f that the

p l a n e t S a t u r n , th e sev en th k n o w n p l a n e t i n a n c i e n t a str o lo g y , was a p p o i n t e d
u p o n th e Jews, w h o c e le b r a te d th e S a b b a th , the sev en th day o f the J ew ish week.

T h e i n f l u e n c e s o f this n o t o r i o u s l y t a c it u r n p l a n e t a ffe c te d all aspects o f

J ew ish life . W i t h s c h o l a r s h i p a n d a b r i l l i a n t d eftn es s, M o s h e Idel g u id e s
th e r e a d e r t h r o u g h d a z z li n g c o n s t e l l a t io n s r a n g i n g f r o m A n t i q u i t y to the
m o d e r n p e r i o d , s h o w i n g the f e r t i l e a n d s o m e t i m e s d a n g e r o u s e n c o u n t e r
b e tw e e n m e d ia e v a l K a b b a l i s m , a s t r o - m a g i c , M u s l i m a stro lo g y , a n d E u r o p e a n
l e a r n i n g . H e in terw eav es th e l u m i n a r i e s i n these fie ld s — i b n E zra , A b u l a f i a ,
J o s e p h A s h k e n a z i , A l - A s h q a r — w ith the c u lt u r a l , h is to r ic a l, r e li g i o u s , a n d
p h i l o s o p h i c a l c o n c e p t s o f t h e i r day, a n d ex p la in s h o w these c u lt u r a l agents
w ere in a d v e r t e n t ly i n s t r u m e n t a l in the m i d - l 7 t h - c e n t u r y mass m o v e m e n t that
l e d to the c o n v i c t i o n that S a b b a ta i T z e v i was the M essiah .

I d e l ’ s fr e sh a p p r o a c h e x p lo r e s h o w th e trag ic m i s p e r c e p t i o n o f the J ew ish

S a b b a th b y the n o n - J e w i s h w o r l d le d to a lin k a g e o f Jews w ith s o r c e r y in 1 4 t h -
a n d 1 5 t h - c e n t u r y E u r o p e , a sso c ia tin g t h e i r h o l y day w ith the w i t c h e s ’ 'S a b b a t ’
g a t h e r i n g . T h e b o o k b r i n g s this w i d e - r a n g i n g stu d y i n t o the p r e s e n t day, w ith
a n analysis o f aspects o f 2 0 t h - c e n t u r y s c h o la r s h ip a n d t h o u g h t i n f l u e n c e d by
S a t u r n i s m , p a r t i c u l a r l y l i n g e r i n g th e m e s r e la te d to m e l a n c h o l y in th e w orks
o f G e r s h o m S c h o l e m a n d W a lte r B e n j a m i n .

M osbe Id el is M a x C o o p e r P r o f e s s o r o f J ew ish T h o u g h t at the H e b r e w

U n iv e r s i t y o f J e r u s a le m , Israel, a n d S e n i o r R e se a rc h F e llo w at th e S h a lo m
H a r t m a n I n stitu te , Israel. H e is an e x p e r t in K a b b a l a h a n d has b e e n a r e c i p i e n t
o f the p r e s t ig io u s Israel P rize f o r e x c e lle n c e in the f i e l d o f J ew ish p h i l o s o p h y .

RELIGIOUS STUDIES
ISBN 978- 0- 8264- 4453-0

A SHALOM HARTMAN 1DD

INSTITUTE lDIDin mVUJ
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