Berakhot — the Talmud on the body at prayer

The first tractate of the Talmud, on blessings and prayer — and the source, several times over, for what the body does in this room.

It is where feet together comes from (10b, reading the angels' undivided leg out of Ezekiel 1:7); where the four bows are fixed (34a); where the bow is broken across its words — bend at barukh, straighten at the Name (12a); and where the hand over the eyes at the Shema is recorded (13b).

Worth naming what kind of source this is, because it changes how the room reads. None of this is mystical literature. It is law — argued, disputed, and settled, in a document finished around the sixth century, several hundred years before anything in this app calls itself Kabbalah. The postures came first. The mystical readings of them are a later layer, and this app draws the line between the two rather than letting the older material borrow the glamour of the newer. The first Talmud node in this space; there will be more.