Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Formation) - Westcott

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

It has been at the earnest wish of many students, members of the Theosophical Society, and of my Hermetic brothers original: "fratres" of the Order of the G.D. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a late 19th-century magical society., that I have made a revised translation of the “Sepher Yetzirah” The "Book of Formation," one of the oldest and most important books of Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah).. In this edition, I have followed most closely the Hebrew version of Joannes Stephanus Rittangelius, which was printed in 1642 at Amsterdam. I have abandoned many of the Latinized renderings which had been adopted in the First Edition from the works of Postellus and Pistorius.

The Notes have been expanded, and it is hoped that they explain and illustrate difficult passages, making this complex original: "abstruse" treatise more understandable than it has been found until now.