Merkabah mysticism

Merkaba ( Old Hebrew מרכבה, car ' ) refers to the " chariot " of the vision of Ezekiel ( Ezek 1.4 in EU).

Merkabamystik

The Merkabamystik or Merkabah literature also refers to a vorkabbalistische flow within the Jewish mysticism. This first period of Jewish mysticism extended from the first century BC to the 10th century before the Christian era. From the heyday of this movement ( 3rd to 6th century), no names have survived. The Merkabah mystics it was less about an immersion into the very essence of God, but rather in the mysteries of the heavenly throne world. Their significance for the Merkabah mystics may be compared with that of the Pleroma of the Hellenistic or early Christian Gnostics. After appropriate preparation, extending over an extended period, the mystic reaches the immediate intuition of God's majesty on his throne. On the way there, which is called "Rise to the throne of the world", various thresholds have been exceeded and dangers to be passed. In later sections of the Merkabah literature is a waste instead of a rise of the speech, and the corresponding mystics referred to in this layer later than Jorde Merkaba Merkaba for The Rising Down '; this reversal took place probably around the 3rd century, according to Gershom Scholem.

The up - or down is " a perilous trek through the seven heavenly palaces before the throne of God ," in which there is a Jewish variation of the ascent of the soul among the Gnostics and Hermetics the 2nd and 3rd century. The local rulers, the " Befreitung of the soul are hostile from the bonds of the world" correspond, here are the gatekeepers; to pass by, the Auf-/Absteigende must each express a specific password, which consists of a secret name for each station. These passwords were long incantations with time. Much of the text is devoted to the heavenly liturgy; they cite hymns, the angels sing and the four living creatures bearing the divine throne. These songs usually end up with three times the Holy of Isaiah 6:3 EU. The solemn and monotonous uniformity of the hymns should certainly promote the ecstasy.

This area also includes the description of the divine palace or temple, which is why it is also called Hechalotmystik (Hebrew Hehal, temple 'or' palace ').

According to the Mishnah ( Chagiga 2, 1) it is forbidden, even to teach only one person in the introduction to the Book of Ezekiel, provided that the student is not wise and is able to understand the substance itself. Maimonides qualified this prohibition as binding halacha. His philosophical work, the Guide of the Perplexed, is an attempt to reconcile the study of the Bible with that of the Aristotelian philosophy. Here, the discussion of the Merkaba ( Merkabah ma'aseh ) be equated with metaphysics.

Others

Mircea Eliade points out the similarities shamanic " vehicles " and the Merkaba.

Meant not merely as Ezekiel's vision, but as a real spacecraft Joseph F. Blumrich (1913 - 2002) to recognize the Merkaba. He was responsible for the design and construction of a stage of the Saturn V moon rocket with his colleagues at NASA in the 1960s. The experience gained from this utiwizing, Blumrich Ezekiel car has reconstructed as spacecraft and graphically illustrated in detail. The description in Chapter 1 of the book of Ezekiel was taken this literally. Blumrich came to the conclusion that there must have been traded to a VTOL spacecraft, whose four wheels were rotated in all directions.

Based on Blum Rich's findings, Hans Herbert Beier (1929 - 2004), he also described in chapters 40 through 47 of the Book of Ezekiel temple spotted engineer at a large company, as runways and maintenance facilities of the spacecraft. He also describes the - to this day, however, not localized - buildings in detail, while strictly holding on to Ezekiel's descriptions.

The contemporary German painter Anselm Kiefer in 1987 titled one of his large-format paintings, showing a fighter aircraft of World War II in the crash, with Merkaba. Later he added this image to a whole cycle Merkaba, which was shown at the Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2002.