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THE ATLAS OF THE UNPAINTABLE

Portae Lucis (Augsburg, 1516)

Portae Lucis
nature
Paulus Ricius' Latin translation of Joseph Gikatilla's Sha'arei Orah. Its title page carries a bearded man holding a tree of ten linked circles — the first printed picture of the sefirot in the West.

⭐⭐⭐ EVERY TREE OF LIFE YOU HAVE EVER SEEN DESCENDS FROM THIS WOODCUT, including the one this app draws. Before 1516 the diagram lived in manuscripts, drawn by hand, differing wildly. Print made one arrangement into THE arrangement — an accident of an Augsburg printer became a structure people now describe as eternal.
Portae Lucis — the Gates of Light.
rhymes with
sephirahmalkhut
whyMalkhut is where a thing becomes an object in the world. This is the day the Tree became one.
tags
portae lucis · gikatilla · ricius · 1516 · ilan · sefirot · print · woodcut · christian kabbalah
go and look
GO AND LOOK — everything below leaves this app
▤ read
Wikipedia — Gikatilla, whose book this is directthe British Museum's copy of the title page direct
▶ watch
video — Portae Lucis 1516 first printed Tree of Life sefirot search
❡ scholarship
scholarship — Portae Lucis 1516 Ricius Gikatilla first printed sefirot woodcut search
⇗ walk this live in Tehiru →
Tehiru is a walk-in model of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and its kindred ways — built to be explored, not read. This page is a still frame of one node; the app is where it moves.