(This is the fifth and final post of a series. To begin the series, click here.) "Oh--oh, the eyes are there. Always the eyes are there. ... Only the eyes are talking to me. I--I--I--I don't understand that. Oh--the eyes don't have a body. They're just eyes ... not connected to a body. … [Read more...]
The Mystery of the Merkabah – The Eyes of Terror
(This post is the fourth of a series. To begin the series, click here.) Imagine: we're Jewish mystics of the sort that Gershom Scholem called the "merkabah mystics"--fascinated, or maybe obsessed, with the divine Chariot (merkabah) that's described in the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel. … [Read more...]
The Mystery of the Merkabah – Alien Abduction, Shamanic Journey
(This post is the third of a series. For the first two installments, click here and here.) Remember "The Fourth Kind," the pseudo-documentary thriller about UFO abductions in Alaska that came out around the end of 2009? Filmed by Olatunde Osunsanmi? Starring Milla Jovovich as psychiatrist … [Read more...]
The Mystery of the Merkabah – “What Was That Paradise?”
Sometime around the beginning of the 11th century, an Iraqi Jewish academician named Hai Gaon had to field a query from a puzzled reader of the Talmud: "With respect to that which our rabbis taught, 'Four entered Paradise, Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, the "Other One" and Rabbi Akiba'--what was that … [Read more...]
