Corpora

Kabbalah
Heikhalot
Hasidism

Arabia, Persia, Andalusia, Anatolia, the Maghreb

Islamic Mysticism

c. 800 CE -- present

Akbarian
Illuminationist
Ismaili

Mediterranean, Western Europe, Byzantium

☧

Christian Mysticism

c. 200 CE -- present

The Christian Corpus
Apophatic Christian
Hesychasm

c. 100 BCE -- 600 CE (with substantial later reception)

Hellenistic and Hermetic

Egypt, Greek Mediterranean, Syria

Hermetic

frame PaRDeS -- peshat (plain) / remez (allegorical) / derash (homiletic) / sod (esoteric)

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grouped by family · alphabetical within

The catalog

א Jewish Mysticism 3 corpora

Kabbalah

12th century -- present

The classical Jewish theosophical mystical tradition that emerges in twelfth-century Provence and reaches its systematic synthesis in the thirteenth-century Castilian Zohar and the sixteenth-century Lurianic school of Safed.

figures Isaac the Blind · Azriel of Gerona · Nachmanides · Moses de León

HebrewAramaic

frame visionary ascent -- exegesis of Ezekiel 1 and the throne-chariot vision

Heikhalot and Merkavah

c. 200-700 CE

The earliest stratum of Jewish mystical literature -- visionary ascent through seven heavenly palaces toward the divine throne-chariot first glimpsed in Ezekiel's vision.

figures Rabbi Akiva · Rabbi Ishmael · the anonymous Heikhalot redactors · Enoch / Metatron

HebrewAramaic

mid-18th century -- present

Hasidism

The eighteenth-century revival of Jewish mysticism that internalizes Lurianic Kabbalah into popular contemplative practice, organized around the figure of the tzaddik and the doctrine of devekut.

frame kavanah / devekut / bitul ha-yesh -- intentional cleaving and self-nullification

figures Israel ben Eliezer (the Baal Shem Tov) · Dov Ber of Mezeritch · Schneur Zalman of Liadi · Nachman of Breslov

HebrewYiddish

late 12th century -- present

ع Islamic Mysticism 3 corpora

Akbarian Sufism

The metaphysical Sufi school descending from Ibn Arabi (al-Shaykh al-Akbar, "the greatest master"), centered on the doctrine of wahdat al-wujud and the elaborated science of the divine names.

frame zahir / batin -- the manifest and the inner; tajalli -- divine self-disclosure

figures Ibn Arabi · Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi · Abd al-Razzaq al-Kashani · Fakhr al-Din al-Iraqi

ArabicPersian

late 12th century -- present

Illuminationist (Ishraqi)

The Persian Sufi-philosophical school founded by Suhrawardi (1154-1191), centered on the metaphysics of light (hikmat al-ishraq) as the structural grammar of being and knowing.

frame hikmat al-ishraq -- the philosophy of illumination; light-metaphysics as ontological grammar

figures Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi (al-Maqtul) · Shams al-Din al-Shahrazuri · Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi · Mulla Sadra (cross-affiliated with Akbarian Sufism)

ArabicPersian

late 9th century -- present

Ismaili Esotericism

The Shi'i intellectual tradition of esoteric exegesis (ta'wil) developed within Ismaili thought, in which the inner meaning (batin) of revelation is accessible only through the authoritative interpretation of the living Imam.

frame ta'wil -- esoteric exegesis; batini hermeneutic mediated by the Imam

figures Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani · Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani · Nasir Khusraw · Ikhwan al-Safa (collective)

ArabicPersian

1st century CE -- present

☧ Christian Mysticism 3 corpora

Christian Esoteric Exegesis

The tradition of esoteric reading of scripture in the Christian tradition from Origen through Bernard of Clairvaux to John of the Cross. Distinct from apophatic theology (the negative-theological method) and hesychasm (the prayer of the heart), this corpus names the exegetical mode by which Christians read scripture for its inner senses as a contemplative practice.

frame the four senses (Quadriga) -- littera, allegoria, tropologia, anagogia

figures Origen · Gregory of Nyssa · Augustine · Bernard of Clairvaux

GreekLatinHebrewAramaicMiddle High GermanSpanishMiddle English

frame kataphatic / apophatic -- the way of affirmation and the way of negation; via negativa

Christian Apophatic Theology

c. 500 CE -- present

The Christian tradition of negative theology -- approaching the divine by negating all predicates -- that descends from Pseudo-Dionysius through the Rhineland mystics, the Cloud of Unknowing, and the Carmelite school.

figures Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite · Maximus the Confessor · John Scotus Eriugena · Meister Eckhart

GreekLatinMiddle High GermanMiddle EnglishSpanish

frame essence / energies -- the unknowable divine essence and the genuinely participable divine energies

Hesychasm

c. 500 CE -- present

The Eastern Orthodox contemplative tradition centered on the prayer of the heart (the Jesus Prayer) and the theology of divine essence and energies systematized by Gregory Palamas.

figures Evagrius Ponticus · John Climacus · Symeon the New Theologian · Gregory Palamas

GreekChurch SlavonicRussian

frame theurgia / anagoge -- ritual elevation of the soul through the noetic hierarchy

Ω Hellenistic and Hermetic 1 corpora

Hermetic and Late-Antique Theurgy

c. 100 BCE -- 600 CE

The late-antique Greco-Egyptian philosophical-religious corpus centered on the Corpus Hermeticum, paired with the theurgic Neoplatonism of Iamblichus and Proclus.

figures pseudo-Hermes Trismegistus · Plotinus · Iamblichus · Proclus

GreekCopticLatin