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Religious mysticism has two major components that are found, in various ways and degrees, in many of its manifestations. They are the intensification of religious life on the one hand, and eventually the feeling that a contact was established with a more sublime realm, widely understood as more spiritual than the ‘normal’ religious experience of a certain religion. Thus, we may speak about more general characteristics of mysticism, which differ from assumptions as to the existence of a special cognitive level that is specifically representative of the mystical experience. On the other hand, the type of intensification and the nature of the contact vary from one sort of mysticism to another, even within the same religion, and should be understood against the background of themes and ideals found in the specific religion within which the mystic operated. Most of the ideals shared by the specific mystics are also shared by the specific religious structures, which host the much more limited religious events described by scholars as mystical. Thus, a performative religion will intensify the religious acts, a religion based on faith will intensify the value of faith, and a more philosophically oriented religion will emphasize the importance of the intensified acts of cognition.
Mystics are, therefore, fundamentally more ‘religious’ than some of the other forms of religious elites, like for example the members of ordinary religious establishments, which are much more concerned with preserving the prevailing social-spiritual structures. In many cases, mystics sometimes claim to be more ‘authentic’ and in keeping with the ‘original’ or pristine ideals of a certain religion that have been allegedly ‘betrayed’ or at least neglected or forgotten by present religious elites. Thirteenth-century Christian forms of mysticism, especially in Italy, with their emphasis on the importance of poverty, are a major example of this claim for a renascence of a genuine betrayed spirituality with ancient roots. Contemporaneous Jewish mystics active in Western Europe, known as the Kabbalists, also claimed to restore an ancient Jewish spirituality, forgotten or neglected by some rabbinic authorities. This is the case of the authorship of the book of the Zohar attributed to a second-century rabbinic figure, of R. Baḥya ibn Paquda (eleventh-century Spain) who preached the allegedly ‘lost’ ‘duties of the heart’, and R. Abraham Abulafia (thirteenth century), who conceived himself to be a prophet. Revival is mentioned in the title of one of al-Ghazālī’s most important books, The Revival of Religious Sciences. Or, to put it in more sociological terms, there are strong revivalist elements in mystical thinking, practice, and movements that isolate some ideals from the past. These are, to be sure, understood in new ways, but only in a few cases do they represent what a scholar—unlike a contemporary authority—would discern as heresy, from a theological or a phenomenological point of view.
The ways adopted by those spiritual figures in order to restore the ancient and allegedly betrayed values are somewhat different from the more common religious practices. Poverty, itinerant life, seclusion, intense dedication to contemplation or meditation, are sorts of activities that are supposed to facilitate the retrieval of a spiritual experience characteristic of a pristine, ancient spiritual past. Though rarely a case of strict innovation, mystical ideals and techniques are more often a restructuring of the old with new emphases and with the addition of elements taken from other cultures. From the literary point of view, many of the spiritual figures are also commentators, and the vast exegetical enterprises in mystical literatures are conspicuous.
However, the strong belief in spiritual values, and the deep emotional and intellectual investment in a type of behaviour intended to actualize them, constitute departures from the common way of religious life. They invite a more intense spiritual life by following a more specific religious path and then having some experience as the result of it. This intensification of religious life, more than the specifics of the techniques or the content of the experience, either restorative or new, seems to me to be a basic feature of many traditional forms of mysticism. In many cases, the intensification is described as culminating in reaching some contact with the divine realm. Therefore, the intensification of religious life, and the contact with what is conceived of as a spiritual sphere, are two main general features of mysticism that distinguish mystical literatures and experiences from other religious ones. This is the case also in the quietist forms of mysticism, where efforts are directed to a state of mind which strives not to exercise the will; these efforts are in themselves intense states of expectation. The new intensity of religious life creates what is perceived of as an alternative to what is envisioned—at least implicitly—as a more diluted form of religion, as fostered by present social structures, sometimes regarded as corrupted, and this is the reason why tensions often emerge between mystics and establishments. Thus, cases of sectarianism, polemics, and persecutions, which are conducive to extremism from the two sides, are often part of the emergence of the new spiritual ideals. In a way, mystical revivals are part of the phenomena of sociological and intellectual bifurcations. This departure of ways does not mean dramatic schisms, but even small divergences may attract sharp theological controversies. Not that the mystics attempted to present themselves as innovators, but any intensification also generates new emphases that are conceived of as alternatives, and thus as threats to the more common perceptions of a certain religion.
The intensification of activities changes the psychosomatic system and induces forms of experience which may have some characteristics in common with other mystical events. These intensifications may de-automatize ordinary behaviour and thus open the consciousness toward other forms of experiences. By paying special attention to carefully described patterns of behaviour and the ensuing experiences, a shift from a theological orientation takes place. To sum up my proposal: though traditional mystics belong to their respective religious traditions, and should be studied as such, they intensified their religious activity in order to reach stronger experiences than the regular religious ones in their tradition. This intensification is a more universal characteristic, which is nevertheless applied to different particularistic ways of religious behaviour. Some of these intensifications may take the form of acceleration of activities that will bring about the mystical experiences, which differ from each other from one religion to another, or even from one individual to another in the same religion.
The vast and diverse literatures commonly designated as religious mysticism can be approached from at least two main different perspectives. One is to see it as a universal phenomenon in many religions and to attempt to explore the common denominators of the different mystical literatures and experiences in order to discover and define the recurring universals. In many cases this approach is indebted to general psychological assumptions as to the nature of the soul and its special activities during what is described as a mystical experience as if present in all the forms of mystical experiences. This may be described as a synthetic approach, since it takes into consideration disparate literatures that are described as mystical, paying less attention to their cultural or religious contexts, and attempting to find the major characteristics that allegedly underlie them. The other major approach to religious mysticism is to consider it first and foremost against the specific background of the various religions from which it emerges. This is a more analytical approach, and it resorts to more philological, historical, sociological, and literary tools. Without using exactly the terms suggested above, the two approaches have been recently developed as competing alternatives in a series of collected articles initiated and edited by Steven T. Katz (1978, 1983) and Robert K. Forman (1990).
In line with an inclusive approach to the study of religion and mysticism, which strives to resort to many different methodologies, I suggest adopting elements from both approaches, without subscribing totally to the premises of either of the two. I believe that the approaches may at times function as correctives to each other, and complement each other much more than diverge. By assuming a very significant experiential component of the literatures to be surveyed below I do not claim that this element is identical in all of them but rather that there are significant differences between them.
Assumptions as to the existence of distinct forms of mysticism that characterize each of the Abrahamic religions run against the plethora of mystical phenomena found in each of them. In other words, in each religion we may distinguish between many different approaches, a fact that problematizes the weight of phrases like Jewish, Christian, or Muslim mysticism as phenomenologically delineated from each other. This does not mean that we should not try to discern what is characteristic of each of the mystical phenomena in the three religions, by asking questions regarding the themes that are more or less important in each of them, or querying what is absent in one of them and prominent in the others. So, for example, the vision of Christian mysticism as focused on Christ, or of the Muslim and the Jewish ones as more focused on language, helps greatly in distinguishing between their general contours.
However, much more important is the distinction between different mystical trends found in each of the three religions. So, for example, there are dramatic differences between Christian orthodox mysticism, known as hesychasm, and Catholic mysticism, as demonstrated by the famous fourteenth-century polemic of Catholic thinkers against the main exponent of hesychastic thought, Gregory Palamas; in turn, both of them differ quite substantially from the Protestant forms of mysticism. In Judaism, distinctions between different schools of Kabbalah, and between it and other forms of philosophical mysticism on the one hand, and eighteenth-century Hasidism and other Kabbalists who opposed them fiercely on the other hand, is just one example of the diversity found in this religion. In Islam, the existence of many different orders, belonging to the two main versions of Islam, the Shiʿa and the Sunna, as well as the more heretical Ismāʿilis, and the fact that its mystical literatures have been written in various languages—for example Arabic, Persian, or Turkish—testify to its richness. The wide geographical range of the cultural centres of each of the three religious forms of mysticism, all found across more than one continent, warns against too simple a distinction even within one single religion. The three forms of mysticism display different attitudes toward the existence and role of mystical techniques that transcend the distinction between the three religions.
However, it is hard to distinguish between forms of mysticism found in the same geographical area but in different periods. So, for example, the first form of mysticism in Spain, Muslim Sufism of the eleventh–twelfth centuries, had a deep influence on Jewish mysticism, as seen for example in Rabbi Baḥya ibn Paquda’s influential The Duties of the Heart. However, Sufism ended its career in the Iberian Peninsula when the most important Sufi master, Ibn al-ʿArabī, left al-Andalus for the Middle East; Kabbalah then started to flower there in the first decades of the thirteenth century, developing for almost three centuries until the expulsions from Spain (1492) and from Portugal (1496). In Spain some Sufi treatises were translated into Hebrew in the thirteenth century.
It is only after the expulsions of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, in the sixteenth century, that Spain produced its most important Christian mystics, Teresa d’Avila and Juan de la Cruz. Whether these two towering mystics were influenced by Kabbalah is still an open question, though their belonging to conversos, namely to Jewish families who converted to Christianity, is more plausible. Despite this temporal stratification, it is plausible that some continuity may be discerned between the three forms of mysticism in the Iberian Peninsula.
Those are the reasons why many of the discussions below are general approximations, as they deal with the more widespread or well-known forms, ignoring less influential trends, especially provided the limited framework of the present exposition.
Like many other forms of scholarship, the study of mysticism first began in West and Central Europe, and the intellectual propensities there coloured the manner in which mysticism has been depicted. This means that the more theological aspect of mysticism, namely the acquaintance with the nature of divinity, was conceived of as quintessential for understanding the nature of the mystical experience. A corollary to it was that the experiences were granted, freely, by the divinity to the aspirant. The role played by specific paths to reach divinity was neglected. Though certain rules that were part of the general ways of life in specific social-religious frameworks, monasteries, and orders—to say nothing of cells—have certainly been respected, they were conceived more as a form of preparation, and not as sufficiently effective in themselves to ensure the attainment of mystical experiences. Indeed, the forms of mystical experiences that may be correlated to a certain type of theology, even if a general one, are much more numerous than those that may be related to specific mystical techniques. The reason for this is simple: a scholar will be quite hesitant in reconstructing a mystical technique without solid evidence, but will more easily adventure in creating an affinity between a mystical experience and a theological stance, even if the latter is not mentioned explicitly by the mystic himself. Moreover, there are good reasons to assume that not all mystical experiences are related to mystical techniques. This relative absence of techniques is more evident in the Christian western forms of mysticism than in the Christian Orthodox ones, and more central in Hindu, Japanese, or Muslim forms of mysticism, than in the Christian ones. Phenomenologically speaking, Jewish mysticism is more similar to the Christian Orthodox forms, despite the fact that most of its main medieval developments took place in the Latin West. This is also the case with the Ashkenazi speculative schools that developed in Germany and France in the thirteenth century.
In lieu of a theological type of constructivism, which is problematic given the diversity of theologies active in the cases of some of the mystics (many of them elite figures and erudite scholars) there is also the danger of a constructivism of technique. Nevertheless, there is a certain substantial difference between the two forms of constructivism: while the theological one is prone to being exclusive, preventing, at least according to the methodology of Gershom Scholem and Robert Zaehner (Idel 2005: 4–16), extreme forms of mystical experience in Judaism, technical constructivism can be envisioned as inclusive: a variety of experiences can be induced by the same mystical technique—given the diversity of the spiritual physiognomies of the mystics—and in some cases a variety of techniques are available within the same mystical system. On the other side I am not aware of an explicit assumption that there are forms of experience that cannot be attained by the means of a certain technique. Though it is possible to postulate a certain affinity between the nature of the techniques and the content of the experience induced by these techniques, the nexus between them is not always organic, and unexpected experiences can be incited by these techniques. In other words, a certain theology is considered, by those scholars whom I propose to see as belonging to the ‘Hegelian’ approach, to be the representative of a certain religion, and at the same time, a closed system, and the nexus between it and the nature of the experience determined by a certain intrinsic logic. However, if we assume a significant affinity between the mystical experiences and the mystical techniques, we may speak about a form of relationship that is much more open-ended, and then attempt to offer forms of categorizations that will take into consideration the types of mystical techniques. Such a proposal has, perhaps, its strengths, but also its limitations, and the latter are worth emphasizing.
What impresses when reading the exercises of St Ignatius, Sufi mystical treatises, or some Kabbalistic writings is not just the existence of fascinating theologies that allow deep mystical transformations of the personality, but primarily the existence of detailed and sophisticated treatments of mystical techniques that are supposed to induce these mystical changes. Likewise, it seems that the specific regula of a certain order may bear evidence of its mystical character much more than the more general theology shared by all the Christian orders. It is in the principium individuationis of each of these religious structures, not only in their theologies, that clues for an understanding of the specifics of mystical experiences should be sought.
On the other hand, mystical experiences are not only a matter of recondite interpretation of sacred texts by resorting to a certain type of nomenclature, but may be conditioned by a sustained praxis of techniques and rituals. Strong affinities exist between the details of the rites and techniques used to trigger a certain experience, and the nature of that experience. Most of the details of those techniques stem from Jewish sources, some of them documented in late antiquity. Therefore, the description of those experiences in medieval Judaism should take into consideration both the speculative heritage stemming from the Greek and Hellenistic sources as mediated by Arabic sources, basically Neoplatonic and Hermetic, and sometimes also Sufi and Hindu elements, on the one hand, and the contribution of indigenous elements that pre-dated the nascent phases of Kabbalah, on the other.
Another aspect of the ‘upward’ approach that starts the study first with the more concrete aspects, puts in relief the importance of technique more than the nature of the divinity. The resort to the term ‘ecstasy’ is late in the history of mysticism, and it is related to the divestment from the body and implies much more of a human experience rather than a divine inspiration or a prophetic illumination. The main approach that describes the experience as a reflection of the supernal presence within man, in order to disclose some form of sublime information, theological in its nature, will be less concerned with ecstasy. However, focusing on this term does not reduce the religious experience to a psychosomatic event, but puts the emphasis upon those elements that are more available to the scholar, while keeping a more neutral position regarding the external elements—divine or others—that took part in the experience.
The main layers of Jewish literatures are concerned with detailed instructions dealing with the minutiae of religious performances, designated by the term Halakhah. The Halakhic mode of writing and behaving is a quintessential component of many forms of Judaism. The attention paid to the performance of commandments throughout the history of Jewish literature is paralleled by the special attention paid to those modes of action in the mystical literatures, and even to modes of action which are not nomian, but nevertheless enter into many details of precise performance. The ‘technical’ nature of Judaism in all its classical forms, which stresses the centrality of punctilious performance of commandments, invited a technical mode also in the mystical interpretations of these forms. In general, the techniques developed in medieval Kabbalah relied on the scale of value informing rabbinic Judaism: practices relating to the sanctity of the divine name, the study of the Torah, performance of commandments, and prayer. Those practices should be understood as forms of rituals, which may be defined by their ‘apartness’, namely, their distinctness from ordinary activities, and their ‘scriptedness’, namely, their ordered sequence of actions which makes them recognizable, to adopt a recent description of the nature of rituals. In the case of these four practices, both their distinctness and ‘scriptedness’ are conspicuous. When performed as linguistic rituals they were not only performed in Hebrew, a language that is not the vernacular of most of the authors to be discussed below, but were quite fixed and their activation broke the course of the ordinary life through the sanctity attributed to their performance. If this distinctness is obvious in most forms of Judaism, it is even more intensified in Jewish mystical literatures, which emphasized their efficacy and thus put a special emphasis on punctilious performance. A religion, or a certain type of mysticism, may include extreme experiences and expressions not only because some phrases are used—though the occurrence of such phrases is indubitably an important fact to be taken into account—but also if scholars are able to detect circumstantial factors that contrive to ensure the occurrence of the extreme experiences. Perhaps the recurrence of oblique indications, like the existence of techniques to return from an extreme mystical experience, or descriptions of bodily symptoms related to a certain experience, are as important as, or even more than, the theological criteria.
The difference between the theological and the technical approaches implies more than methods to deal with the role of an imponderable experience as part of the more general understanding of a certain form of mysticism. It assumes other dynamics that are formative of religious experience, especially in the case of mysticism: less dependent upon the nature of a reigning theology, on authority, or on abstract ideas, mysticism will be conceived as reaching its peak in extreme experiences if it will develop ways of reiterating these ideal experiences and transmitting them as ideals. I can imagine that a mystic who has undergone extreme mystical experiences will be more ready to write about techniques to retrieve these experiences, and as the esoteric nature of his lore becomes less important, he may attempt to impart his strong formative experience to others.
The different forms of mysticism should be examined not only with an eye to theological claims available and acceptable in a certain environment, but mainly by explicating their abstract tenets by resorting pre-eminently to semiotic, literary, anthropological, psychological, or neurological methods of investigation. This means also a certain restructuring of the corpora of mystical literature that will attract the attention of scholars: so, for example, in lieu of expatiating upon the nature of divine attributes or upon the emanative processes, the scholars of mysticism should inspect the large literature dealing with mystical rationales for the commandments or handbooks dealing with techniques to achieve mystical experiences, some of them still extant only in manuscript in Judaism, on hesychastic practices in Orthodox Christianity, and on the practice of dhikr and Samaʿ in Islam. The Abrahamic mysticisms refer to special paths, designated as via, tariqa, or derekh, that are imagined to be conducive to extraordinary experiences. The affinity, or affinities, between the nature of mystical techniques and the ideal of mystical union will clarify the status of the ideal in a certain mystical network in a way that may be different from a network where the mystical techniques that show the way to reach such an experience are absent. Not less important are the detailed and complex speculations on the special nature of language and letters in Islamic mysticism, especially in the Shiʿah sect of Hurufiya and in Kabbalah, which hardly have parallels in Christian mysticism.
It would be more reasonable to deduce the mystical nature of a system from its practices, and its general spiritual disciplines, rather than reduce mysticism to a spiritual potentiality related to a certain theological belief, or to abstract ideas like theism, pantheism, or panentheism. Instead of starting from above, namely with the theological stance, and deriving thus the kind of mysticism, I would prefer to start from below, namely with the details of the mystical practices, and advance then toward the experiences moulded by these practices. In my opinion, this approach is preferable also in the case of other areas of Jewish mysticism, like the emergence of Jewish myths from ritual, and not vice versa.
In lieu of an essentialist view that strives to decide, a priori, the nature of a mystical system from its theology, I would say that the nature of the concrete praxis, the spiritual disciplines as described by the mystics, may bear a crucial testimony for the mystical nature of a certain religion. Certainly, the notion that one basic theology informs a religion that developed over thousands of years is rather problematic, and if we assume that a mystic was exposed to more than one kind of theology at the same time, it is very difficult to decide which of these theologies were more influential for the mystical experience of a certain individual. This does not mean that theologies are not important for understanding mysticism in the three religions. However, their descriptions as simply monotheistic require much more elaborated analyses. Some forms of mysticism adopted more exclusive forms of theology, emphasizing the negative theology of Neoplatonic sources, while others assumed a more inclusive theology, which comprises a unity constituted of different divine powers or attributes, sometimes described as theosophy. Those divine structures or hierarchies mediate between the higher, sometimes unknown aspect of the deity and the created world, and may serve as a ladder of ascent for the soul or the mind of the mystic. This is the reason why sometimes the term mystical theology is used, following the title of a treatise by Pseudo-Dionysius. The complex imaginaire of the divine realm has trinitarian structures in Christianity, as is the case in Pseudo-Dionysius’s treatises, sevenfold ones were important for some Ismāʿilis, and decadic ones are prevalent in Ismāʿīlīsm and in Kabbalah. In the two latter cases, those hierarchies involve also significant dynamic processes, like falls and ruptures within the pleromatic structures.
In this context the importance in the Abrahamic religions of the scintilla animae, or apex animae, namely the concept of the human soul as a divine spark, is related to theories of the immanence of the divinity within man, thus bridging the gap between God and man by means of following a mystical path.
Discussions of various divine names permeate most of the literature of Jewish mysticism, and they play a role of honour in both the Christian and Muslim ones. Speculations as to the existence of esoteric traditions among Jews are found in the works of early Christian writers such as Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenaeus, and later in Talmudic literature. However, it seems that the first sustained discussion of the role of divine names can be found in the early sixth-century treatise on Divine Names by Pseudo-Dionysius, a text which had a deep impact on Christian mysticism, and even on Jewish mysticism. Devotion to the name of Jesus is known from the fifteenth-century Italian mystic Bernardino of Siena. In the three religions there are many discussions as to the numerous—seventy, seventy-two, or ninety-nine—or even infinite number of names of God, though sometimes God is conceived as unnamed. Those names were imagined as sharing something with the divine essence and thus a way to approach divinity.
The divine names were taken to constitute important components of techniques to achieve mystical experiences, as is the case in hesychasm and in Sufism throughout their history, among the late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Hasidei Ashkenaz, in Abraham Abulafia’s ecstatic Kabbalah and its various repercussions, until East European Hasidism. This is a common denominator, though, to be sure, the names are different from one religion to another. In the main schools of Kabbalah divine names were taken to be an indispensable part of theurgical operations, especially those performed during prayer. By theurgical I mean recourse to performances, most of them nomian—namely the rabbinic precepts for regular prayers, which include divine names—in order to have an impact on the relations between the divine powers, the sfirot. This is just another form of contact with the divine realm. In many cases in Kabbalah, as well as in Christian mysticism, the divine names are conceived of as symbols for divine powers on the one hand, and for magical practices on the other.
Abrahamic religions are also religions of sacred scriptures. However, they alone cannot explain most of the elements found in the three mystical literatures. The interpretations offered for those texts and the manner in which mystical life has been envisioned by some of the religions’ elites owe a lot to what I propose to call the Graeco-Hellenistic reservoir of speculative systems, mystery religions, mythology, magical and astrological traditions. The different interactions between the contents of this reservoir and themselves, and between their different combinations and the scriptural traditions, written and sometimes oral, may explain some of the main processes that produced the mystical traditions.
Mystical themes may be detected already in the sacred scriptures, though nowhere in them is there a more elaborated description of mystical experiences. In the Hebrew Bible we find verses like Psalm 16: 8, ‘I set the Lord always before me’, a verse that played an important role in the subsequent stages of Jewish mystical practices. The main impact of the sacred scriptures on mystics was the adoption of the lives of the holy men in the respective religions as paradigmatic figures, the details of whose behaviour, and sometimes even aspects of their death, should be imitated: Moses in Judaism, Jesus in Christianity, and Muhammad in Islam are not just founding figures of respective religions, but also transhistorical models to be imitated as much as it is possible.
However, the first significant encounter between the Jewish scriptural tradition and some parts of the reservoir is found in Philo of Alexandria’s numerous writings, written in Greek. Here, the variety of speculative Greek thought has been employed in order to build up a philosophical-mystical understanding of the Hebrew Bible, conceived of as harbouring the most cherished Greek intellectual values. Philo’s writings had a huge impact on early Christian mysticism and theology, though his direct impact on either Judaism or Islam is scant, if it exists at all. Extremely important is the possible impact of Philo, who may be described as a Middle Platonist, on Neoplatonism, especially on Plotinus’ view of mystical union, a view that left an indelible impact on many mystics from the Abrahamic traditions. This indirect impact changed the course of earlier mystical traditions toward a more spiritual-intellectual direction. By the dissemination of Plotinus’ thought in their various Arabic versions, such as the Theology of Aristotle, the so-called Sayings of the Greek Sage, and in the shorter version of an influential book of a Neoplatonic philosopher, Proclus’ Elements of Theology, known in the Middle Ages as Liber de causis, the three forms of Abrahamic mysticism had reached an important conceptual common denominator. Also the concept of emanation, which played an important role in the three forms of mysticism under scrutiny here, may have a common root in the Jewish Alexandrian book of the Wisdom of Solomon. Moreover, Neoplatonic traditions were combined since late antiquity with Stoic and Pythagorean elements, influencing first Christian mysticism, then Muslim mysticism, and only later the Jewish medieval forms of Kabbalah. So, for example, the Stoic, Cynical, and Epicurean ideal of ataraxia or apatheia, namely equanimity toward suffering, blame, or praise, or imperturbability, had a significant impact on the church fathers, and Meister Eckhart’s Gelicheit, as well as on the Sufi concept of istiwa, which has been translated in Hebrew as hishtavut, being conceived of as a necessary condition for attaining a mystical experience.
However, other types of tradition found in the reservoir, such as Hermetic literature, astrology, and magic, also made their way into the three mystical literatures, sometimes together with the Neoplatonic trends, especially since the High Middle Ages. Some of those traditions reached Europe through medieval Arabic translations and sometimes also Hebrew ones, translated from Arabic, and in some fewer cases in Latin translations. Another wave of impact of these elements from the Greek and Latin originals made their ways into European culture and mysticism from the second half of the fifteenth century in the Italian Renaissance, especially in the influential translations of Marsilio Ficino, which entered the circuit of European elite culture at the same time and in the same circles as Jewish Kabbalah. Some of the amalgams of the Renaissance thought mentioned above had a lasting impact on western Esotericism, as in Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry.
In addition to the decisive influence of the Graeco-Hellenistic reservoir, it is possible to discern additional influences on the three forms of mysticism. According to Robert Zaehner (1960), a significant influence of Hindu mysticism is found in Muslim mysticism. In a more specific way in all the three mysticisms there are practices of breathing: this is the case of the Christian hesychasm, in some forms of Sufism, and in Abraham Abulafia’s Kabbalah. It is plausible that, at least in the case of the Kabbalist, an impact of the Yogian distinction between three types of breathing is found: inspiration, respiration, and hold breathing. Patanjali Yoga was translated in the twelfth century into Arabic by al-Bīrūnī. In Kabbalah there are techniques of visualizing colours that correspond to divine powers during prayer, probably an impact of Tibetan practices related to mandala. The impact of Hindu and Buddhist collections of tales that were translated from Sanskrit via Pahlavi to Arabic and then to Hebrew and European languages served as a channel for transmitting certain concepts of eastern thought both in the Middle Ages and in pre-modern times. As pointed out by Henry Corbin (1982: 9–69; 1990), Zoroastrian influences are found in Iranian Sufism. It is plausible that Iranian theories on dualism, not necessarily via Manichaeism or Gnosis, but in their specific Zurvanic version had an impact on Kabbalistic thought, especially on theories of evil, though in the case of Christianity, the Cathar views have been regarded as heresy.
The question of contact with the divinity or with median powers is part of many forms of mysticism, and in its most extreme forms it means a total fusion with the divinity described as unio mystica. Expressions of such experiences are found in the three forms of mysticism influenced by the terminology of Plotinus, especially the term henosis, which in many discussions has been used to interpret the Deuteronomic imperative to adhere to God (Deut. 10: 20). This contemplative-philosophical trend unifies many discussions in the Abrahamic forms of mysticism, and it overcame the more apophatic understandings of theology.
However, what is crucial for understanding the differences or the similarities between different forms of mysticism is not the very existence of mystical union experiences or their technical expressions, but the more comprehensive structures within which they eventually function. In matters of religion it is hard to assume that concepts function independently. The network of basic mystical notions defines the concept that enters it as much as the concept defines the dynamic network itself. Therefore, in lieu of resorting to detailed study of the theologies that were influential in a certain type of mysticism in order to discover whether these theologies allow extreme experiences and expressions, or would permit only moderate ones, it is also plausible to turn to an inspection of the mystical paths as a major avenue of describing the mystical nature of a certain religion. By investigating the various kinds of mystical paths and correlating them to the mystical ideals, it could be more reasonable to decide whether a certain ideal was cultivated in fact, rather than consisting in a theoretical goal. The detailed description and analysis of the mystical path, the question of occurrence of initiation rites, the intensity of the mystical techniques, altogether may testify as to the extreme nature of experiences more than the kind of theology that presides over a certain religion. Approached from this point of view, the place of mystical union in Jewish mysticism, as belonging to a performative religion, is quite substantial, despite the claims of Gershom Scholem to the contrary.
The direct contact with the divine is understood sometimes not only as a matter of a personal achievement that distinguishes the mystic from ordinary persons but also as the mystic’s empowerment with special qualities, whether personal ones, namely clairvoyance, or transitive, such as thaumaturgic or magical powers. This concept of empowerment is shared by various religions and it is evident in the various perceptions of holy men in the Abrahamic religions: in the theories of western Christianity’s view of saints and in the function of the starets in late Orthodox Christianity or the ẓaddiq in East European Hasidism. In the latter, a theory of conjugation between the extreme mystical union with God and the ability to perform miracles in this world has been explicated. In many cases founders of religions, and in some cases of mystical movements, have been conceived of as combining extreme mystical experiences with magical powers. In several cases in Christianity, the specific ascetic way of life could generate unusual corporeal effects, like special odours, a phenomenon known also in Judaism in the case of the messianic figure and Kabbalist Shabbtai Ẓvi.
The profound influence of Platonism and then of Neoplatonism, together with the centrality of the figure of Jesus Christ, contributed to a redemptive understanding of mystical experiences in Christianity. Basically a universalistic religion, Christian mysticism was concerned much more with individual redemption, namely a spiritual experience that can be accessed by the individual at any time, and much less with eschatology, which was part of the more apocalyptic genre. Though not pivoting around a redeemer who was already revealed, Muslim mysticism is similar to Christian mysticism as described above, and apocalyptic elements are even less central in Islam. This strong penchant toward individual redemption stems from common philosophical sources, which influenced both religions quite early by direct drawing from the Greek speculative sources, either by the intermediary of the impact of the Philonic synthesis, or by that of Pseudo-Dionysius. Aristotelian elements played a secondary role in those forms of mysticism, especially since they came later to the attention of Christian mystics, such as the early fourteenth-century Meister Eckhart. This is the reason why it is basically the soul, rather than the intellect, that is redeemed by its contact or union with the divine. The theme of the soul as a stranger in this world, and the body conceived of as tomb [soma-sema], played a significant role in those forms of mysticism, just as they did in Gnostic literatures.
To a great extent the earlier forms of Jewish mysticism, biblical, Qumran, rabbinic, and Heikhalot literature, are not concerned with Orphic-Platonic themes, as the soul–body dichotomy played a less significant role in them. However, in the Jewish mystical literatures of the Middle Ages, the role of this dichotomy increased dramatically as the result of the appropriation of Neoplatonism, first in Jewish philosophy and then in several forms of Kabbalah. From this point of view it is possible to discern a conspicuous common denominator in both the sources and the conceptual structures of these trends. Nevertheless, two major differences should be pointed out between the Jewish and the two other Abrahamic mysticisms: the much more pronounced role played by Aristotelian elements, especially the intellect as an organon of experience, as is evident in Abraham Abulafia’s type of Kabbalah and its reverberations on the one hand, and the much more important role played by the nexus between the individual redemption and national eschatology on the other hand. Sometimes the redemptive experience has been interpreted by assuming the importance of preliminary experiences of personal redemption, which empowers a certain figure to play a public role as a national messiah. Or, to put it in other terms: spiritual forms of redemption connected to the individual have sometimes been combined with the national eschatology that was conceived in much more concrete, material terms of rebuilding a state and the Temple in Jerusalem, gathering the Jewish in exile, and restoring the ancient glory of the Israelites. Various attempts to balance an inner form of redemption as self-sufficient with the public role to be played by the mystic as a collective redeemer reverberate in the history of Jewish mysticism.
Though a sociological approach to mysticism may appear to be a contradiction in terms, it is nevertheless interesting to compare the Abrahamic mystics from this point of view. Christianity and Islam harboured specific structures within which mysticism flowered. Monasteries and orders in Christianity, and orders in Islam, were frequently major frameworks which allowed the development of individuals that culminated in some mystical experiences. Encouraging special ways of life for their adherents through exceptional rules and practices, those frameworks were essential for the aspirations, attainments, and sometimes even the committing to writing of personal experiences. Moreover, by spending long periods of time in those fraternities, or sisterhoods, other types of ordinary life have been shaped, which combined from one side some forms of privation—asceticism in different forms—and some forms of enrichment by cultivating communities whose religious life was much more intense. To a great extent, these two forms of mysticism may be described following the Orphic-Platonic propensity, and as ‘other-worldly oriented’, to resort to Erich Neumann’s distinction. This orientation occasionally came into conflict with the more institutional structures of the respective religions, and triggered tensions, critiques, and condemnations of the mystics by authorities—religious and secular—which caused their persecutions and sometimes even their eradication.
In Judaism, such social frameworks that separated the mystic from the community did not play a significant role. First and foremost because of family life: marriage and procreation were conceived of as quintessential requirements for a perfect Jewish life including that of the mystics, and the role of asceticism in the common use of the term was minimal, and its forms dissimilar to those of the two other Abrahamic religions. Though some forms of fraternities are known since the mid-eighteenth century in a Kabbalistic academy in Jerusalem, the famous Beit-El Yeshivah, family life continued nevertheless to be practised in accordance with rabbinic instructions. In many cases, Jewish mystics played central roles in the religious leadership of communities, which meant a direct or indirect involvement with the laymen. This leading role became more prominent in East European Hasidism from the end of the eighteenth century, where the person designated as the Righteous, or the Ẓaddiq, became the pivotal figure in the Hasidic groups, serving as an intermediary between the divinity and the community. To a great extent some popular Jewish forms of mysticism were intended to shape the behaviour of larger audiences more than was the case in the other two forms of Abrahamic mysticism. This is part of a this-worldly propensity more evident in Jewish mysticism.
In this context another basic difference is worth mentioning: the absence of writings stemming from feminine mystics, as authors. While in Christianity there are plenty of examples of women who experienced mystical experiences, and in Islam much less so but nevertheless there are, and some of their writings reached us, in Judaism the almost total absence of any role played by women in generating religious literature in general, and mystical literature in particular, is quite conspicuous. This phenomenon has to do with the absence of the special social frameworks mentioned above, the religious role played by the imperative to supply sexual fulfilment by the husband and especially by the imperative of procreation, and the prominent role played, de facto, by the mother in the education of the sons. The family and its obligations constitute the structural parallel of monasteries and orders, shifting the main activity of Jewish women from seeking spiritual experiences and writing confessional books as in Christianity, to procreating and sustaining the family. To a certain extent, the roles of the Jewish woman have been transferred to the feminine aspect of the divinity, the last of the ten sfirot, designated especially by the name Shkhinah—the divine presence, and then this theosophical stance also influenced the perception of the women.
Christian and Muslim mysticism reflect the nature of their respective religions also by the languages in which the main literatures have been written. The two belonging to universal, non-national forms of religions, the diversity of languages represents both of the unifying factors: the main languages, like Greek, Latin, and Arabic, and the secondary languages, a long series of vernaculars, which constitute the specific backgrounds. In Judaism, a national religion, the central language was Hebrew (and to a certain extent also Aramaic, another cultic language that does not reflect a specific vernacular in the pertinent period), which is the language in which the vast majority of literatures conceived of as mystical have been composed. This is true not only of Kabbalah but also of East European Hasidism, which resorted very much to the vernacular Yiddish, including in the sermons delivered by the leaders on Sabbath afternoons; but when committed to writing they were printed in Hebrew. In Arabic and Spanish there are very few books of Kabbalah, much less than 1 per cent. These observations are important since they point to more centripetal tendencies in Jewish mysticism while in the two other religions the tendencies are more centrifugal. While constituting a smaller corpus of literature than the other two, Jewish mysticism includes a much more dialogical situation with the writing of previous mystics than in Christianity and Islam. The latter two were part of a more missionary type of attitude and the vernaculars were part of this approach, which is missing in Judaism, even more so when the basic assumption was that Kabbalah is an esoteric tradition, not to be revealed even to ordinary Jews, to say nothing of explicit rabbinic and Kabbalistic interdictions to disclose secrets to Gentiles.
This difference has to do also with another divergence: while in Judaism the confessional genre is much less developed (the autobiographical genre is scant) but the ‘objective’ aspects—exegetical, technical, and theological—which are more descriptive and esoteric, are more prominent, this is the inverse in the two other forms of mysticism, which are more subjective and exoteric, the different forms of Ismaili esotericism notwithstanding.
Similarities between forms of mysticism in the three Abrahamic religions are, however, not only a matter of common sources. There can be no doubt that there were also lateral influences of forms of mysticism in one religion on the other. Bernard McGinn (1991: 9–22), for example, speaks about the Jewish matrix of early Christian mysticism, especially Philo, and some Jewish elements are found in early Islamic mysticism, and in Ismāʿilism. It is undeniable that Muslim forms of mysticism influenced in quite a substantial manner Jewish medieval forms of mysticism, as is the case of R. Baḥya ibn Paquda, Abraham ben Maimon, and his entourage and descendants, and in the field of Kabbalah it is possible to discern influences of Ibn ʿArabi’s school on some forms of ecstatic Kabbalah insofar as the concept of ‘ālam al-mithāl, the world of the images, or the imaginal world as Henri Corbin translated it in his writings, is concerned. A few Ismāʿīlī treatises were translated into Hebrew, and their thought had an impact on Kabbalah. Moreover, some of the famous ecstatic exclamations of al-Ḥallāj are quoted in a Hebrew translation in a book of the fourteenth-century Provencal-Spanish author Moshe Narboni. John Scotus Eurigena’s thought probably influenced theosophy in early Kabbalah. Early masters of Hasidism, flourishing in mid-eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, could be acquainted with Sufi material since this Hasidic movement was articulated in its inception in a region that was once part of the Ottoman Empire (or near it), and Turkish troops, the Janissaries, were permeated by Sufi propaganda, as well as with the eighteenth-century neo-hesychastic renascence that flowered in the northern Carpathian mountains. Evidently, Christian Kabbalah and its later offshoots owe much to the Jewish Kabbalah. In any case, it seems that the most formative influences on most of the stages of Jewish mysticism stem from the Muslim sources, while in the case of Christian mysticism, East and West, the sources are much more of Graeco-Latin extraction.