Abraham the Patriarch

The primary book that came into our possession, after the book of the first man, was the book of Abraham the Patriarch, The Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzira). It is a special book and a difficult one to understand, because it is a very synoptic book, containing only several dozen pages. We’ve known about its existence for thousands of years now, but it is impossible to study Kabbalah with it because Abraham did not mean to write a study book for those in our world and explain how to develop the sensation of the upper-spiritual world. His purpose was not to teach the attainment of the upper world, but only to mark out a few principal laws that he discovered about the spiritual world.

However, Abraham the Patriarch used drawings, explanations and charts to describe the various interconnections between our world and the spiritual world, and demonstrate how the spiritual world operates, where the spiritual forces come from and how they clothe the bodies of this world. It explains how each body receives a special force from above, which determines what will happen to it in our world, and what will finally become of it, i.e. where humanity will come to under the influence of the upper forces.

The Book of Creation was written in a different way than the book The Angel Raziel. It is comprised of chapters (called Mishniot), and its language is better organized. Abraham writes in it about the structure of the spiritual world, about the ten Sefirot, Partzufim, and management systems, how the upper force (the light) descends, how it is balanced and collected, and how the collective soul is divided to individual souls and the order of their descent.

He writes about relationships between the bodies in this world, under the influence of the souls that clothed them. The book is interesting but very far from us. For today’s souls, the book can only serve as a learning aid because of its great power, I would even say – heat.

The property that characterizes Abraham is called Hesed (benevolence). Abraham was known for his hospitality to anyone. His book gives humanity his power of Hesed, which allowed the following generation to develop and aspire for spiritual attainment. But the generation that followed Abraham demanded a new revelation, which resulted in the emergence of new Kabbalists.

The next significant composition after the Book of Creation and The Angel Raziel, is the book of Zohar. There were many Kabbalists between Abraham the Patriarch and the Zohar. The greatest of them was Moses.