The Hekhalot Literature and Maʿaseh Merkabah
- Date of account
- Late antique Jewish texts, approximately 3rd–8th centuries CE, with later witnesses
- Location
- Palestine and Babylonia
- Source
- model_recalled_reference
- Record updated
- 2026-10-10
Record summary
Hekhalot and Merkabah texts describe visionary ascent through heavenly palaces, angelic guardians, divine names, seals, and techniques associated with mystical knowledge. They are central for comparing spirit communication, heavenly travel, ritual speech, and the boundary between liturgy and magic in late antique Judaism. The corpus is heterogeneous, pseudepigraphical, and transmitted through manuscripts that postdate many presumed compositional layers. Accounts of ascent belong to a visionary and liturgical textual genre, not independently verified testimony of physical travel beyond the world.
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