Sefer HaRazim

Sefer HaRazim (Hebrew: ספר הרזים; "Book of Secrets") is a Jewish magical text supposedly given to Noah by Archangel Raziel, and passed down throughout Biblical history until it ended up in the possession of King Solomon, for whom it was a great source of his wisdom and purported magical powers.

This is not the same work as the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh, which was given to Adam by the same angel, although both works stem from the same tradition, and large parts of Sefer HaRazim were incorporated into the Sefer Raziel under its original title.

It is thought to be a sourcebook for Jewish magic, calling upon angels rather than God to perform supernatural feats.

Date of authorship

The original text was written in the early fourth or late third century CE and is universally accepted to predate other Kabbalistic texts, including the Zohar (thirteenth century) and possibly the proto-Kabbalistic Sefer Yetzirah (fourth century).

Content

The book is split into seven sections, not including a preface which details the book's reception and transmission. Each of the first six sections corresponds to one heaven and contains a listing of angels and instructions to perform one or more magical rites. There is an uneasy tension between the orthodox cosmogony of the book and the unorthodox praxeis embodied in these magical rites.

Some of the rituals are designed to:

• facilitate healing
• bring about prophecy
• attack upon one's enemy
• gain good fortune

The number seven, the importance of divine names, and the prevalence of sympathetic magic all have significance in the literature of Middle Eastern magic. The text demonstrates strong syncretism of Jewish and Greek traditions.

Modern discovery

The text was rediscovered in the 20th century by Mordecai Margalioth, a Jewish scholar visiting Oxford in 1963, using fragments found in the Cairo Geniza. He hypothesised that several fragments of Jewish magical literature shared a common source and was certain that he could reconstruct this common source. He achieved this in 1966 when he published Sefer HaRazim.

Publication

The first English translation of the book was undertaken by Michael A. Morgan in 1983; the book is now in print, as of summer 2007. A new scholarly edition of the main extant manuscript including Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic Geniza fragments and a 13th-century Latin translation was prepared by Bill Rebiger and Peter Schäfer in 2009, along with a translation and commentary in German in a separate volume.