Ecstatic Kabbalah as an Experiential Lore

This chapter describes how some modern scholars have focused their attention on theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah, a preeminently Spanish type of Kabbalah, and how they have pointed out the “casuistical” nature of Kabbalah as a whole. Part of this evaluation has to do with the marginalization of Abulafia's Kabbalah in the scholarship after the mid-1950s, despite Gershom Scholem's characterization of ecstatic Kabbalah as a major trend. This marginalization is part of a larger phenomenon that can be described as a more theological approach to Kabbalah, which was conceived of more as a speculative system than as a full-fledged form of mysticism. This trend especially affected the writings of Abulafia, some of which were dedicated to describing mystical techniques.