Great Kabbalistic Art — Hartmann Schopper, 1564-1569

Many false, uncertain, and varied things are read among the Hebrews concerning the origin of the Kabbalah mystical tradition. Authors and certain people think it was handed down by God to Adam through the ministry of the Angel Raziel in the promise made to him concerning the coming Messiah, designated in those four letters יהוה the Tetragrammaton: Yod, He, Vav, He. Others want the Angel Raphael to have spoken it to Abraham. Some have thought that not this one, but the Angel Metatron was the teacher of Moses. And Rabbi Moses the Egyptian Maimonides in the beginning of his commentary on Deuteronomy relates that Moses first received it from God, then Moses handed it to Joshua, Joshua to Phineas, and so it was transmitted to Posterity. This was followed not only by Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, Rabbi Ishmael, Akiva, and Rabbi Nachman, who are all numbered among the wiser of the Jewish People, but also many more recent scholars well known in the Catholic Religion have not feared to embrace it and confirmed it with strong Reasons, such as Reuchlin, as is evident in book 3, in that numbering of the fifty Gates of Intelligence.

The leader and Prince of this noble Art among Christians was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. When those volumes of Livy were translated from Hebrew into Latin by the command of the fourth Pope Sixtus IV (as he says in the Preface to his Apology) and had been acquired at no small expense to reach the Latin language, he converted the Hebrew words and letters into numbers with much study and wonderful industry. By their means, he performed the same operations which the letters, Points, and Signs performed in that Hebrew Idiom. For this reason, he was deservedly called the Phoenix of Wits everywhere. However, when he offered certain conclusions drawn from the Kabbalah to be defended in Rome in the year 1486, which were still germinating in their infancy among Catholics, the name "Kabbalah" was heard so poorly by some as if it were some new and unusual term. Therefore, he later had to publish the Apology which he dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici for the firmness of his assertions.

Johannes Reuchlin, also called Capnio of Pforzheim because he was born in Pforzheim, a town of the Margraviate of Baden, imitated Mirandola and spent much study in drafting the Method of Kabbalah. This can be seen in those three books On the Kabbalistic Art addressed to Pope Leo X, which first appeared in Hagenau at the press of Thomas Anselm in the year 1517.

Likewise, Paulus Riccius, an Israelite who converted from Judaism to Christianity, pursued this Art greatly. For he wrote the Isagoge Introduction to the tradition of the Kabbalists or Allegorists, along with a Letter against the Letter of Stephanus Presslyen, an attacker of the Kabbalah, and he sent his Treatise on the Kabbalah to Erasmus of Rotterdam. He was the Physician of the Emperor Maximilian,

whose Works were printed in Basel under the sign of Mechel in the year 1540.

Furthermore, Pietro Galatino of the Order of Friars Minor gave no small labor to this Art. Indeed, to protect the reputation of Johannes Reuchlin, which had been criticized by some, he composed the Work On the Secrets of Catholic Truth, arranged into Twelve Books. This Work of Galatino first appeared in Ortona a Mare in the year 1516. It had been completed by the Author in Bari in the year 1513, under the patronage of Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan and Bari. All these were the First of the Christians who, from the Jews whom they had as Teachers and from their Books, produced again this same cabbage original: "crambe," a metaphor for repeated or recycled material of the Kabbalah. From them, later Kabbalists borrowed it, and it flourishes and is put into Practice until this very day. I thought it appropriate to make some mention here in passing of these beginnings of the Kabbalah and its first Authors, so that it may be known by whom and at what time it flowed to the Latins.

A pointing hand icon appears here in the original margin.
Furthermore, I confess that this Kabbalah of mine does not emanate from any other source than from the true "Jehovaic" tradition derived from the name of God handed down by God. For since Pico della Mirandola included the whole foundation of both the Hebrew Kabbalah and two books in all that vast work of his, and it could be understood by very few, I have composed my Great Kabbalistic Art, which I have rightly chosen to call the Art of Arts, after many years of study and labor through which I have seen it examined, explained, and proved by Hebrew volumes. I sought nothing else from Pico than the true foundations. Indeed, I have without doubt made it far more excellent than Mirandola's version. For his version only serves operations written in the Latin Idiom. Mine, however, communicates its utility not only in Latin, but in Greek, French, Spanish, German, and finally in all languages, not excluding Hebrew (in which its greatest power exists, and on which I have therefore labored not a little). This will be evident from its two books. The First of these treats the true practical Operation of this Art in a brief, easy, and certain Method. The Second clarifies the Operations of the same Art, opening their causes and the properties of their effects, and makes public the knowledge of other Kabbalistic matters.

Therefore, may you look kindly upon this labor of mine in this Divine Art, though it is below the merit and height of your dignity, as a most certain pledge of obedience and a Token of your Humanity and Mercy. If I see you prospering and safe, my Mind, which is now almost exhausted by illness, will be pleased by this station alone, so that you may believe I will soon produce another work, perhaps better or greater, and worthy of such a Prince. Meanwhile, may that highest King of Kings and Lord of Lords keep and protect your nourishing Laurels and you, the clear light and hope of my future tranquility.