One early scholar of Kabbalah was a 13th century mystic called Abraham Abulafia1. He had visions, tried to convince the Pope of his reasoning and lived in Malta.
But who was this strange troglodyte?
His early life
Abulafia was born in Zaragoza in Spain in 12402 3. When he turned 20 he began a life of mystical wandering2. He wanted to go to Israel and to find the location of the mythical ten lost tribes of Israel2 4. The Crusades got in his way so he gave up2 4.
He returned to Europe, stopping in Capua to study philosophy2 4. He ended up back in Spain2 4 where he started having messianic visions2 4. He became convinced that he could answer the great questions of the meaning of life by looking for symbols inside letters and numbers in Hebrew4.
Think of it as a mystical form of Sudoku.
He thought his methods of free association, letter permutation and meditation could help people re-live prophecies from God1 4. This was dangerous for organised religion. What if your re-lived prophecy contradicts the revealed word of God?
Furthermore, prophecies from God in all Abrahamic faiths stopped around 2000 years ago. Now we’re left with the texts we have (the Bible, Quran, and Torah) and it’s up to our religious leaders to debate, discuss and teach. If prophecy is available to everyone, then why would you need religious leaders?
These teachings challenged the authority of organised religion. They also led him to preach to the public.
His preaching
Armed with this mystical messianic1 knowledge he travelled to Greece where he taught his new ideas to people in Patras in 12752, and made his way back to Capua by 12792.
In the summer of 1280 he decided to go to Rome2. He felt the need for a new single unifying religion to join the Abrahamic faiths together3. He concluded the best way to start all this would be to go to Rome to convert the Pope1 3.
He announced he was going to do so4 which made people think he was, at best, insane. Pope Nicholas III was furious at these claims, and ordered his guards to ‘burn the fanatic as soon as he arrives’1 3.
He arrived on August 22 only to hear the Pope had died of a heart attack1 2. They still imprisoned Abulafia2 in the College of the Franciscans for 28 days4.
This did not quench his desire to evangelise.
His troglodyte phase
After his release, he spent a decade lecturing in Messina2 3. Local Jews protested against his teachings and he soon had to leave.
Messina is the site of the catastrophic earthquake in the early 20th century.
He travelled to Malta and decided to live on Comino3 – the third largest island in the archipelago.
It wasn’t inhabited but he seemed happy enough in a cave on the island. Here he wrote two books – his autobiography, Book of the Sign in 12883 and Words of beauty in 12913. He died later that year1.
You can find some strange people in Malta.
’Twas always so.
- Abraham Abulafia; Learn Kabbalah; (Retrieved 2019-11-12) [↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
- Abraham Abulafia: A Starter Kit; Archive.org; (Retrieved 2019-11-12) [↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
- Did You Know An Epic Jewish Mystic Lived On Comino In The 13th Century?; Johnathan Cilia; Lovin’ Malta; 2018-02-17[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
- The doctrine of prophetic Kabbalism; (Retrieved 2019-11-12) [↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]