Jewish Mystical Tradition Research Articles

Jewish Mystical Insights for Christian Anthropologists

The Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, as reflected in ethnohistoric documents underwriting the beliefs and practices of contemporary neo-kabbalists, practitioners of shamanic Judaism, Jewitchery, and other para-Judaic spiritualities (including Hermetic Qabalah and Christian Cabala) illustrate a cosmological theory of “kabbalistic perspectivism” analogous to the Amazonian perspectivism reported by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1998). Consideration of kabbalistic perspectivism provides Messianic Jewish, gentile Christian, and other religiously committed anthropologists opportunity for practicing comparative theology. It also may serve as a model for developing “methodological possibilianism,” an ontologically-oriented complement to the epistemological model of critical realism popularized by Christian anthropologists Paul Hiebert and Charles Kraft.

“Mystical Spirituality” in Second Temple Period Judaism? Light from the Decorated Stone in the Magdala Synagogue

While “Merkavah mysticism” as a religious movement is a phenomenon of Late Ancient and Medieval Judaism, scholars have debated whether the origins of this movement are traceable to traditions of the divine Merkavah (chariot-throne) preserved in some early Jewish apocalyptic literature from the Second Temple period. Furthermore, scholars have emphasized that these early Merkavah traditions reflect individualistic religious experiences that emerged historically in contexts of small esoteric groups of initiates who claimed a privileged experience and knowledge of the divine. In this article, I wish to do two things: (1) to establish methodologically the point that, from an analytical perspective, we can, indeed, speak of a kind of Jewish “mystical spirituality” present in the Second Temple period akin to later Jewish mystical traditions; and (2) to argue that, in light of some iconographic features on the decorated stone from the first-century synagogue at Magdala, early Jewish “mystical spirituality” was not a phenomenon restricted to the individual but could also involve an assembled community’s experience of divine presence.

Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman and Ancient Jewish Worlds

Abstract In Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World, Radcliffe Edmonds provides us with a new etic framework for understanding ancient magic, but one steeped in the emic perspectives of the actual practitioners and clients as preserved in the literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence. In this paper I examine Edmonds’s findings in relation to the ancient Jewish magical and mystical traditions found mainly in Sefer HaRazim, “The Book of the Mysteries,” a late-antique ritual handbook written in Hebrew.

“Looking for the Zohar in the New Testament”: The Lost Messias puer of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth between Kabbalah and Biblical Studies

AbstractChristian Knorr von Rosenroth was the author of a work called Messias puer, which universally has been considered lost. This article seeks to demonstrate that a manuscript currently catalogued as Historiæ evangelicæ initium is, in fact, this lost work of Knorr. Knorr’s involvement in the study of the Jewish mystical tradition enabled him to develop new and original insights in his reading of the New Testament. Furthermore, his use of comparative philology points to him as a significant precursor in the development of biblical studies.

Kabbalah, education, and prayer: Jewish learning in the seventeenth century

In the seventeenth century, the Jewish mystical tradition which is known as Kabbalah was integrated into the curriculum of studying the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. Kabbalah became popular in these times in the wake of the dissemination of Isaac Luria’s teachings, in particular within the Jewish communities in Prague and Amsterdam, where members of the Horowitz family took a leading role. Kabbalistic psychology was applied to the whole Jewish lifestyle then, and to the understanding of Jewish tradition. Kabbalistic intentions of prayer intensified the expectation of redemption, and during the messianic movement initiated by Shabtai Zvi, the kabbalistic meaning of repentance was also adapted in prayer books composed for so-called Conversos, who had to familiarize themselves with Jewish tradition. The article exemplifies this process by a Spanish anthology of prayers, Libro entitulado ensenha à pecadores, and shows the historical impact of Kabbalah in the field of Jewish education.

Releasing the Sparks: Extending a Kabbalistic Metaphor to Contemporary Business Practice

An increasingly uncertain global business environment demands a new approach to strategizing. This paper argues for a contemporary re- imagining of the spiritual narrative of “releasing the sparks”. In the Jewish mystical tradition, when the world was created sparks of Divine light were scattered, something like taking a book and throwing all its words and letters into the air. The job of humanity is to rescue and liberate these sparks to create a meaningful world. Extending the metaphor to contemporary business practice, firms seeking to attain a long-term sustainable competitive advantage will need to develop the capability to continuously reach out and release the sparks by attracting and converting potential stakeholders into actual stakeholders. What we propose directly connects firm value creation to an explicit sense of spiritual purpose accompanied by social welfare enhancements via a two-pronged strategic focus on developing trustworthiness and increasing proximity. A purposeful focus on “releasing the sparks” will support a firm’s ability to innovate in this new competitive context by strengthening its relationship to the broader eco-system in which it is embedded.

The Discovery of Bloom’s Misreading: Metaphysics, Mysticism, and the Role of the Unconscious in “Calypso”

The influence of Jewish mysticism on Ulysses, particularly as it relates to the theme of metempsychosis or reincarnation, has been under-recognized by critics. The doctrine of metempsychosis blurs the boundary between mysticism and metaphysics, reconciling the tensions of Hebraism and Hellenism by demonstrating not only their cultural reciprocity, but also their sympathetic envisioning of a soul in a way that is distinct from the Irish-Catholic tradition. This has implications for the range of unconscious responses that Bloom has to Rudy’s death, as sin theologizes the formerly secular Greek soul and introduces the problem of evil. The psychological dimension of the soul plays a pivotal role in “Calypso,” for the word “metempsychosis” can be seen to emerge as an instance of Freudian parapraxis. Although the popular notion involves only errors in speech, Freud delineates several other parapraxial categories relevant to interpreting Ulysses, including mistakes in reading. In each case of parapraxis, the error reveals a powerful unconscious motive on the part of the subject. In Ulysses, this unconscious motive manifests itself in Bloom’s repression of his son’s death. However, the unconscious in Greek thought was also synonymous with anamnesis, or the ability of the soul to “recollect” a priori knowledge. As such, Jewish mysticism can be seen to emerge from within the work as a positive unconscious “motive” which counteracts the negative repression of Rudy’s death. By employing the doctrine of anamnesis, Joyce recovers the Jewish mystical tradition even as Bloom remains unconscious of the knowledge’s source.

Bruce Grindal's Hidden Theology, Kabbalah, and the Need for a Humanistic Theodicy

SummaryWhile Bruce Grindal never explicitly disclosed his own religious outlook in print, in the epilogue of the draft prospectus for his unpublished book on religious life in North Florida, he professed a “spiritual” impulsion to “admit to being one of the many” and implied that he fit a category he dubbed “quasi‐religious.” I would not be the first to observe that even the most secular, allegedly impartial anthropology has a spiritual dimension. I believe that Dr. Grindal's anthropology—perhaps owing to decades of quiet reflection upon his experience of mysterious happenings during his sojourn among the Sisala—was particularly spiritual in this manner, even if not expressly so. Grindal himself likened humanistic inquiry to “a spiritual quest” and the classroom give and take to “listening to a myth and participating in a ritual.” While his published works are elusive on the matter, in graduate seminars and undergraduate lectures, office hours conversations and impromptu bull sessions, there were occasional flashes of disclosure and candid exposition of his personal convictions about the sacral mysteries of the universe. In this essay, I endeavor to demonstrate how a bricolage of such noncanonical remarks permits us to descry the underlying influence of a somewhat patchwork secret theology in Bruce Grindal's writings on synergetic consciousness and his lectures on normative anthropology and ethics. Further, I enter into dialogue with Bruce's reconstituted theology and humbly attempt to offer emendations to one area he left underdeveloped by bringing it into conversation with the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah: the problem of suffering and evil.

Of ladders and looms: Moving through Walter Benjamin’s ‘Storyteller’

In this article I take a closer look at Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘The Storyteller’ by connecting the craft of carpet weaving to storytelling. I reveal that Benjamin has encoded a ladder in his essay through his seemingly fragmentary ruminations or ‘philosophical observations’. I attempt a genealogy of ‘The Storyteller’, where I recognize that the ladder is an inspiration from Jewish mystical tradition, the Kabbala, where the cycle of life is realized and interpreted. I trace this ladder of experience through my own fieldwork on Persian carpets where I argue the importance of carpet weaving for the art of storytelling and vice versa, and in turn its implications and possibilities for recounting ethnographic accounts. By examining Benjamin’s writing on the craft of the artisan and his concept of experience, I explore the significance of storytelling as an ethnographic and experiential art.

Between Paradigm Shift Judaism and Neo-Hasidism

Between Paradigm Shift Judaism and Neo-Hasidism

When Yoga is Kosher but Kabbalah is Not: Spirituality and Cultural Appropriation in Jewish Education

This article argues that the traditional boundaries of Jewish education have been challenged by the appropriation of eastern spiritual ideas and practices by many Jews, and the introduction of Jewish mystical ideas to non-Jewish audiences. The reinvention of yoga from a Hindu spiritual tradition to a commonly found element in synagogue-based Jewish education illustrates the flexibility of Jewish tradition to absorb foreign religious ideas and make them an authentic part of Jewish education. It also reflects a shift in emphasis in Jewish education from particularistic religion and ethnicity to a focus on universalism and spirituality. The case of yoga is contrasted with the popularization of the Jewish mystical tradition of kabbalah as a universal spiritual method for a general audience by the Kabbalah Center. In this case, rabbis teaching unquestionably Jewish texts outside the context of Jewish religion or ethnicity have raised doubts about its ultimate Jewish authenticity.

Editor’s Introduction: Jorge Luis Borges and the Jewish Question

Editor’s Introduction:Jorge Luis Borges and the Jewish Question David N. Myers Keywords Jorge Luis Borges, Judaism, Holocaust One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century—and indeed one of the greatest never to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature—was the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). Borges was a master innovator in style, a compelling and ceaselessly inventive storyteller, and an unusually probing philosophical writer. He was also a deeply committed citizen of his country and the world, whose fiction engaged with major political and ethical concerns of the day. Despite a brief and atypical period in the 1970s in which he expressed sympathy for the dictatorial regimes of Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Borges tended to find himself on the right side of history, using his extraordinary writerly talent to strip away the façade of toxic political ideologies. Among his chief targets were the intersecting currents of fascism and anti-Semitism, which he observed with growing trepidation in the 1920s and 1930s. Part of what animated Borges’s critique of anti-Semitism was a deep and almost obsessive sense of connection to Jews and Judaism. This connection was first nurtured in Geneva, where he moved with his family in 1914 and where he gained his first formative insights into Jewish literature and culture, in part through a close friendship with two Jewish boys. From that point forward, Borges felt a powerful bond to the Jewish tradition—to the point that fascist sympathizers back in his native Argentine accused him of being Jewish. Rather than curb or conceal his feelings, he responded to his fascist critics in Argentina in 1934 with courageous directness in an essay, “Yo, Judio” (I, a Jew). He was not in fact Jewish, but he declared that he wished he were, given his heartfelt admiration for Jews and Judaism. Borges’s sense of identification was based on not only his adolescent friendships but also an engagement with Jewish history and thought that was neither superficial nor fleeting. Concomitant with his sharp condemnation [End Page 335] of anti-Semitism, Borges developed a deep interest in the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah. His 1932 essay “A Defense of the Kabbalah” launched a lifetime of investigation into the subject, nurtured by his voracious reading of modern scholars, including and especially his friend in Jerusalem, Gershom Scholem. In “A Defense of Kabbalah,” Borges admitted to his “almost complete ignorance of the Hebrew language” but further elaborated that he was motivated to delve into the esoteric Jewish tradition by “my desire to defend not the doctrine but rather the hermeneutical or cryptographic procedures that lead to it.” Perhaps his most renowned fictional engagement with those procedures came in his story “El Aleph” (The Aleph), from 1945. Attuned to the great symbolic importance that kabbalists place on the Hebrew letters in their cosmological universe, especially the first (aleph), Borges depicts a mysterious phenomenon, an “aleph” described as a lens that opens up perspectives on the entire universe, from all possible angles at once. Through it one peers into infinity—a recurrent motif in Borges’s writing, as well as a central concept in the Kabbalah, denoting the boundless power of God. Gazing into infinity, or grasping the ultimate meaning of letters of the Hebrew alphabet, were not simple matters. They were tasks burdened by the inherent limitations of the human mind. But those limitations inspired, in turn, manifold waves of interpretive ingenuity in hopes of gaining a proximate understanding of the infinite. Borges seized on that relentless quest to grasp that which could not be fully grasped to reflect not only on the Kabbalah but on the nature of the world more broadly. His fiction was animated by the desire for the ever elusive goal of epistemological certainty, resulting in the creation of a dream-like fantastical world in which one’s sense of reality was altogether shaken. Both the Kabbalah and, to a great extent, the Jewish condition at large gave Borges a language to represent this world. It is in this regard that Borges has become a figure of interest in and to the field of Jewish studies...

Cabala Chymica or Chemia Cabalistica—Early Modern Alchemists and Cabala

This essay investigates the relationships between early modern alchemy and the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, following its introduction to the Christian West by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola at the end of the fifteenth century, and its promulgation by Johannes Reuchlin in the early sixteenth century. New exponents of Christian Cabala were excited by the exegetical methods of Kabbalah, and some alchemists, seeking fresh ways of interpreting enigmatic alchemical texts and the Book of Nature, experimented with novel combinations of the two practices in the hope of gaining insights into their work. While many of these figures were engaged in the broader concerns of Paracelsian philosophy, those experimenting with combinations of alchemy and Cabala nevertheless spanned the spectrum from metallic transmutation to chemical medicine. While focusing on the investigation of kabbalistic elements in alchemical texts produced by Christian authors, rather than the discussion of alchemical material in Jewish Kabbalistic sources, I also briefly consider one apparently authentic Jewish combination of alchemy and Kabbalah: the Aesch Mezareph, published by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth in the Kabbala Denudata.

No Religion without Idolatry: Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment by Gideon Freudenthal (review)

Reviewed by: No Religion without Idolatry: Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment by Gideon Freudenthal David Novak Gideon Freudenthal. No Religion without Idolatry: Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Pp. xi + 332. Paper, $40.00. In his learned and insightful reading of the eighteenth-century German–Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Gideon Freudenthal clearly wants to rescue him from total irrelevance. For Freudenthal claims that “Mendelssohn’s philosophy of Judaism—and of religion in general—can be defended and, in fact, still deserves contemporary interest” (12). But does Mendelssohn’s philosophy deserve the interest of philosophers who are interested in what is still significant in the present first for themselves and then for everybody else; or perhaps it deserves the interest only of historians of ideas who are interested only in what was significant in the past for those who lived then? (Let it be assumed that a philosopher speaks in the first person in the present tense, that is, “This is what I think is true; and why.”) So, does Freudenthal himself now agree with what Mendelsohn thought is true, or does he try to ascertain only what Mendelssohn truly meant back then? Freudenthal does a fine job in refuting the putdown of Mendelssohn as a second-rate metaphysician made by his contemporary, the Lithuanian–Jewish philosopher Salomon Maimon, which was picked up by most later scholars of Jewish philosophy. He does this by showing that Mendelssohn did not really intend to be a metaphysician, but that he employed metaphysics (mostly that of Christian Wolff) only to bolster his semiotics. Mendelssohn conducted his semiotics in his treatment of language in general and of the Hebrew Bible in particular (something neglected by most scholars, even by those who can read the original Hebrew text of Mendelssohn’s Bible commentary). Since Mendelssohn saw the primary intent of the Bible to be practical, he interpreted the ceremonies it prescribes to be a “language of action” (18). These performative acts are tangible expressions, mandated by revelation, of the truths of “natural religion” (17). Metaphysics can help a philosopher explicate the meaning of these symbolic actions, but metaphysics should not be taken to be the ground from which natural religion (the religion of “common sense”) is derived. For Freudenthal, Mendelssohn’s primary task was to interpret the biblical text (and subsequent sacred texts), selectively employing ideas of speculative metaphysics so as to enable the Bible to gain philosophical respectability. That is why his methodology, if not his actual ideas, can be of interest to hermeneutical philosophy today. Mendelssohn recognized that “permanent signs are conducive to idolatry” (9) (hence the title of Freudenthal’s book). He saw the temptation of idolatry for any religion of revelation, yet he argued for the superiority of Judaism over Christianity nonetheless (ignoring Islam, though). For the Christian doctrine of transubstantiation (in Catholic and Lutheran theologies of the Eucharist) seems to mean the act of divinizing physical objects by the theurgic speech-acts that so elevate them. But that is not the case with Jewish speech-acts [End Page 494] (i.e. mitsvot or “precepts”) because they are not hypostatized into physical objects. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn is quite aware of the fact that in the Jewish mystical tradition of kabbalah, theurgic speech-acts are much more than the expressions of subjective human approaches to the Divine; they have objective efficacy of cosmic proportions. Therefore, Mendelssohn considers kabbalistically founded Jewish practices to be superstition, which is incompatible with what he held to be essential, philosophically respectable Judaism. Finally, though, does Freudenthal make a convincing case for genuinely philosophical interest in the content of Mendelssohn’s thought? I think not. For he says that Mendelssohn’s approach to the Jewish tradition assumes it has normative dominance over most Jews. Hence a philosophy of Judaism like Mendelssohn’s need explicate only sacred texts, plus refute those who would deny the intellectual and moral authority of that tradition. But it does not have to argue for the validity of the tradition itself. Yet Freudenthal recognizes that the tradition no longer has that kind of authority for most Jews, because of the political dissolution of the pre-modern Jewish communities (of which...

The Age of Time according to Carlos Fuentes

Born on 11 November 1928, Carlos Fuentes on 15 May 2012 met on Parnassus the princes of word and vision that one of his deceased characters dreamed of in El naranjo (1993; The Orange Tree). If, as he wrote in Constancia y otras novelas para vírgenes (1990; “Constancia” and Other Stories for Virgins), readers are the ghosts of writers (296), the author of Terra nostra (1975) was, for his part, a ghost of Cervantes and disciple of Erasmus who rewrote La Celestina, Don Quixote, the successive Don Juans of Tirso de Molina, Zorrilla, and Mozart, the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Luca Signorelli, the gnostic gospels, and the texts of the Jewish mystical tradition.

The Sudden Angel Affrighted Me

The Sudden Angel Affrighted Me

"The King Is Dead [and has been for three decades], Long Live the King": Contemporary Kabbalah and Scholem's Shadow

"The King Is Dead [and has been for three decades], Long Live the King":Contemporary Kabbalah and Scholem's Shadow Shaul Magid Jonathan Garb . The Chosen Will Become Herds: Studies in Twentieth Century Kabbalah. Translated by YaffaBerkovitz-Murciano. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. Pp. xi + 218. Pinchas Giller . Shalom Shar'abi and the Kabbalists of Beit El. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. viii + 199. There is a myth that one can identify a demon, or dybuk, because it casts no shadow—meaning that its corporeality is a mere illusion. But what do we make of a human being who continues to cast a shadow almost three decades after his death? In short, what do we make of a disembodied shadow such as Gershom Scholem (1897-1982)? All of us who research the Jewish mystical tradition stand in that shadow and we often vie for our "four ells" inside its dark yet comforting embrace. In this shared space a scholarly carnival has continued unabated for the past three decades: Oedipal wars, romantic reconstructions, chivalrous defenses, sweeping misreadings, and self-serving caricatures are among the main attractions.1 No one has (yet) been able to fully step out of the giant's shadow. The no-man's land of the post-Scholem era has begun to [End Page 131] receive some attention but still remains unexplored territory.2 Perhaps the only way out of this "anxiety of influence" is through it, in this case by slowly deconstructing its contours, (re)reading the texts Scholem read and misread in a social, political, and ideational context Scholem could not have anticipated or one Scholem definitively devalued. Or, more relevant for our present concerns, reading—texts Scholem intentionally did not read against his "better" judgment—which gestures toward a kind of Kafkaesque reading of Scholem.3 In a forum in the previous issue of JQR I explored some of Scholem's attitudes toward contemporary Kabbalah in greater detail. Here I simply want to frame a discussion of two important new books on contemporary Kabbalah, one by the Israeli scholar Jonathan Garb and one by the American Pinchas Giller, as part of a growing body of literature that challenges some of Scholem's assumptions about the contemporary world by showing us new developments that he could not have predicted—developments that undermine Scholem's skeptical attitude toward the possibility of a kabbalistic renewal—and that should be taken seriously by scholars. Garb is associate professor of Jewish thought at the Hebrew University, [End Page 132] where he also earned his doctorate. Giller is professor of Jewish thought at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He earned his doctorate at Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union. Both have written on Kabbalah from the medieval period to the present. Without explicitly saying so, both offer quite different renderings of Scholem's position on the contemporary scene. In doing so, both begin a process of stepping outside Scholem's shadow into the uncharted territory of the twenty-first century. Jonathan Garb's The Chosen Will Become Herds, which originally appeared in Hebrew as Yeḥide ha-segulot yihyu le-'adarim, is the first book-length study devoted to twentieth-century Kabbalah.4 Although the book limits its scope largely to contemporary Israel, in the final chapter Garb briefly incorporates a more global view of the subject. Without explicitly mentioning Scholem, Garb gestures toward his intimidating presence when he justifies his project at the outset of the book. "The aim of this book is to present the main currents of twentieth-century Kabbalah by focusing on various leitmotifs that characterizes it and differentiate it from the more classical forms of Kabbalah" (p. 7). Garb posits that what he calls "classical" Kabbalah came to be distinguished from "modern" Kabbalah in the twentieth century, when Kabbalah took on a "distinctly modern (and perhaps even postmodern) flavor . . . that accounts for the contemporary assimilation and influence of Kabbalah" (p. 2).5 What it not clear from this assessment but is implied throughout the book is that the twentieth century has presented us with two radically new frames of reference: first, the politicization of Judaism through applied Zionism, that is, the modern...

The Meshugana Complex

“The Meshugana Complex” examines some of the “craziness” of being both Jungian and Jewish. It begins with personal biographical anecdotes showing there are as many ways of being Jewish as there are of being Jungian. The paper then explores group identity as being mediated by complexes that are built up over time, both within the group’s view of itself and of how other groups perceive it. Jewish Jungians carry multiple cultural complexes as part of their identity. The paper concludes with an archetypal perspective, from which the conflict among Jungian, Freudian, and Jewish identities can be imagined as a drop in the bucket in the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah.

TO SEE GOD IN HIS BEAUTY: AVRAHAM CHALFI AND THE MYSTICAL QUEST FOR THE EVASIVE GOD

Avraham Chalfi's poetry contains some of the main themes of the mystical experience, namely, the attempt “to see God in his Beauty” and the quest to gain an intimate communion with the Divine.1 Uncovering the intertextual references and the repertoire of his allusions positions this poetry within the ever-evolving mystical-religious discussion. Chalfi's theology transforms the Jewish mystical tradition into a critical, at times even fierce, encounter with God and turns fundamental elements, such as ascent to the Pardes and the respective roles of the mystic and God, on their heads. Exploring Chalfi's mystical poems expands our awareness of the theological elements embedded in a variety of modern secular Hebrew poems and their contribution to the evolution and diversification of the canon of Jewish thought.

The Thinkers of Non-being. Heidegger and the Jewish Mystical Tradition

The present article does not attempt to trace a possible influence of the Jewish mystical tradition on Heidegger’s Seinsdenken, but to provide a general survey of the role played in both Cabbalistic tradition and Heideggerian ontology by the notion/concept of non-being (Nichts/Nichtlichkeit and Ayn) as well as of the place held by the two systems of thought in the history of meontology (the doctrine of non-being). Notwithstanding the fact that the Heideggerian “question of the sense of being” excludes any “question of God”, there are noteworthy ‘affinities’ between his reflection on being/origin – conceivable exclusively in their tension with non-being – and the Cabbalistic reflection on the groundless origins (of being and of God). In terms of ‘affinity’ rather than of ‘influence’, Heidegger’s a-theistic quest of a primordial thinking of being could be seen as carrying to its ultimate consequences the very paradox underlying this type of mystical approach.