An exquisite Ilan Ha-Gadol of the type historically attributed to the great 17th-century Kabbalist Rabbi Meir Poppers.
Ink on parchment, 15.4 x 335 cm. Hand-written on 5 membranes.
The Ilan Ha-Gadol – the Great Ilan (‘tree’)– is a long parchment scroll that uses Kabbalistic images and texts to "map" the divine realm. These "Maps of God" were designed to actively engage their users in both contemplative study and meditative prayer. Their exceptionally-long, vertical format also engaged the user in the physical act of "scrolling", which became another central part of the ritual experience offered by these fascinating Kabbalistic works.
As early as the thirteenth century, and especially from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, kabbalists fashioned pictorial representations of the structure of creation as it progressed from Ein-Sof (the limitless) downward. Such diagrams were generally called ilanot ("trees"), and the differences between them reflect divergences among the various kabbalistic doctrines and schemes of symbolism. For centuries, drawings of this kind were to be found only in manuscript scrolls such as the present copy.
This hierarchical diagram charts the order of azilut (emanation) according to Lurianic kabbalah, from zimzum (contraction) and Adam kadmon (primeval man) through beriah (creation), yezirah (formation) and assiyah (action). This intricate example of the genre devotes the larger portion of its great length to the three worlds of creation, formation and action which are diagrammatically depicted in the later sections of the scroll.
Overall Length: 11ft
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Lot #214