Quotes from Gershom Scholem

We live in our language like blind men walking on the edge of an abyss. This language is laden with future catastrophes. The day will come when it will turn against those who speak it.

The great Name of God in His creative unfolding is Adam

A similar tradition on the creative power of letters forms the basis of the following midrash on Job 28:11.... This brings us to the text that played so important a part in the development of the golem concept: the Book of Yetsirah or the Book of Creation.... We do not know the exact date of this enigmatic text,.... We can only be sure that it was written by a Jewish Neo-Pythagorean some time between the third and sixth century.

Why, if all the creatures in the world gathered together to make a single gnat and put a soul into it, they would not succeed!' No more than man can make a gnat can demons, according to another tradition, make anything smaller than a grain of barley. But those who favored the thaumaturgic interpretation of the Book of Yetsirah, and believed that a man or golem could be created with its help,.... Idea of the Golem p. 171

When Nicholas Flamel – one of the few who, according to the mystics and alchemists, was supposed to have discovered the Philosopher's Stone – bought a papyrus [19] book in Paris, reputedly "at a small price," it was a baptized Jewish physician, not a kabbalist, who in 1378, in the pilgrimage town of Santiago de Compostela, disclosed to him the meaning of the writing and therewith the secret of alchemy.

A philosophy that does not include the possibility of soothsaying from coffee grounds and cannot explicate it cannot be a true philosophy." Such prophesying may be reprehensible, as in Judaism, but it must be recognized as possible from the connection of things.

Why is gold called ??? (zahab)? Because there are three principles contained in it: the masculine, zakhar, and the ? (zayin) points to that; the soul, and the ? (he), points to that [obviously the feminine, since the consonant he in the mysticism of the alphabet has always been interpreted as such]; … and ? (bet) avouches its duration, as is written [in the Torah, which starts with this letter]: "in the beginning.

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All those strange parables, where the philosophers talked mystically about a stone, a moon, an oven, a vessel – all that is Saturn [i.e., all talk about humans]; because you must not add anything extraneous, except for what emanates from itself. None in the world is too poor to undertake and execute the Work. The seven grades of alchemical

We've had days of unrest here. The situation is no better than it was a week ago, even if there are no 'incidents' to report. The state of siege continues without interruption. Curfew begins at seven P.M. One might think this would be conducive to work, but the necessary atmosphere of concentration and peace is missing. So we all sit sunk in our armchairs.

As evidenced by his Frankfurt enterprise, however, he wanted to pursue to the end the possibility of an academic career which might have been able to provide his intellect with material backing. When we took leave of each other, he happened to be rather optimistic in that regard. He did not know as yet that "intellect cannot be habilitated"—to quote Erich Rothacker's wickedly insolent statement about him.

Another thing that was striking about him was his extraordinary sensitivity to noise, which he often referred to as his "noise psychosis." It really could disturb him. Once he wrote me: "Do other people manage to have peace and quiet? I'd like to know the answer to that.

We live in our language like blind men walking on the edge of an abyss. This language is laden with future catastrophes. The day will come when it will turn against those who speak it.