Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Formation) - Westcott

“Commended to writing with the deepest understanding.” original Latin: profundissimis sensibus literis commendatus. — Johannes Pistorius. Johannes Pistorius (1546–1608) was a German physician and theologian who published a famous collection of Kabbalistic texts.

The “Sepher Yetzirah” Hebrew: "Book of Formation" consists of six chapters, containing 33 paragraphs distributed among them in this manner: the first has 12, followed by 5, 5, 4, 3, and 4.

The oldest title includes an addition: “The Letters of our Father Abraham” or “ascribed to the patriarch Abraham.” It is described as such by many medieval authorities, but this origin is undoubtedly legendary. However, it is perhaps no more improbable than the supposed authorship of the “Book of Enoch,” mentioned by Saint Jude in the Bible and rescued in modern times from the wilderness of Ethiopia by the great traveler James Bruce.

In essence, the work was likely the crystallization of centuries of tradition by a single writer. It has been expanded from time to time by later authors who also revised it. Some of these additions, which were rejected even by medieval students, I have not included in the text at all. I present in this volume only the undisputed kernel of this occult nut—a work upon which many great authorities (Hebrew, German, Jesuit, and others) have written long commentaries, yet have failed to explain satisfactorily.

I find Kalisch Isidor Kalisch (1816–1886), a prominent rabbi and scholar who produced an English translation of the Sepher Yetzirah in 1877. speaking of these commentaries, saying:

“They contain nothing but a medley of arbitrary explanations, sophistical distortions of scriptural verses, astrological notions, oriental superstitions, a metaphysical jargon, a poor knowledge of physics, and not a correct elucidation of this ancient book.”

Kalisch, however, was not an occultist. These commentaries are so extensive that they require years of study, and I feel no hesitation in confessing that my researches into them have been only superficial.

For convenience of study, I have placed the Notes in a separate section at the end of the work, and I have provided a short definition of the subject matter of each chapter.

The substance of this little volume was read as a...