AngelicArtistry's GoToHeaven Jophiel's Game Question 54
"____________________________"
A great mystical tradition of Judaism, it was in existence from around the late second century B.C., seeking to express the mystical tendencies of the Jewish people.
The students of this tradition sought to enter into communication with God and to answer the most difficult and esoteric questions about the Lord and his Creation.
It became one of the most complex and detailed systems of thought and practice ever developed, forming an influential aspect on Judaic life.
Scholars point to its origins in neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, and occult teachings from the East, and many of its precepts and methods were charged by some rabbis as being both heretical and dangerously pantheistic.
It flourished in the first century A.D. in the mystical movement called the Kerkabah.
It was subsequently given vigorous examination, with its members compiling such words as the SeferYetzira, the Bahir, and the Sefer ha-Temuna.
The chief writing in all of the _____________, however, is the Zohar (Book of Radiance), created by Moses de Leon, a Spanish mystic, in the thirteenth century.
In the wake of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and the continued brutal oppression of the Jewish people elsewhere in Europe, the center of ____________ studies shifted from Spain and elsewhere to Safed, Galilee, in the Holy Land.
There, in the sixteenth century, lived Rabbi Isaac Luria, considered the greatest of all _____________s.
The __________ remained a major element in Judaism, producing in the twentieth century the renowned scholar Gershom Scholem.
As the _____________ is concerned with the nature of God and the cosmos, students of the field wrote extensively on angels and demons.
While Talmudic rabbis discouraged such speculation, the ________________s formulated such angel-related systems as the merkabah and the sefiroth and wrote about individual angels such as Metatron, Phanuel, Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Sandelphon, and Samael.
There was also a detailed study of demons, and advanced ______________s sought to summon and control both angels and devils by mastering incantations and forging amulets.
Such undertakings were naturally extremely risky, bringing the possibility of injury, madness, or death.
What is this great mystical tradition of Judaism called?