THE ATLAS OF THE ALIEN SPARK

Gershom Scholem

Scholem

nature

The founder of the academic study of Kabbalah, and the man who put the disputed wire on the table. In Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition (1960) he argued that the Hekhalot literature — seven heavens, hostile gatekeepers, seals and passwords — represents a Jewish Gnosticism contemporary with the Christian kind.

The hinge figure between this pack and the main house. He used the phrase "Jewish Gnosticism" and then spent decades qualifying it, and both the using and the qualifying are instructive.

The Kabbalists… were the heirs of a Gnostic tradition, but they were also its most radical opponents.

rhymes with

sephirahdaat

whyDaat sits between the flash and the structure, half-hidden. Scholem's whole career was the attempt to say precisely how much one tradition knew of another.