Visualization of Colors, 2: Implications of David ben Yehudah he-Ḥasid’s Diagram for the History of Kabbalah

Some Sixteenth-Century Reverberations of Color-Visualizing Techniques

The possibility that R. David ben Yehudah he-Ḥasid’s diagram, or one similar to it, influenced R. Isaac Lurid or R. Ḥayyim Vital finds support in the fact that his theory of prayer by visualizing names in colors was known and most probably practiced in Safed before Luria’s arrival there as well as after his death. This technique was known to some of the Kabbalists exiled from the Iberian Peninsula¹ and it reached Kabbalists at large, as exemplified in the case of R. Shime‘on Lavi in North Africa.² We learn from a handbook for visualization known there and several discussions about the visualization of colors that this theory also influenced Kabbalists in Jerusalem, including R. Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi³ and R. Joseph ibn Ẓayyaḥ,⁴ as well as in Safed. The importance of manuscript Ms. Sassoon 290, now in the Bibliothèque de Genève, Montana, the Segre Amar collection 145, lies in the fact that it includes several discussions from the school of R. Joseph Ashkenazi and R. David ben Yehudah he-Ḥasid that though probably known in Safed have not been found in other manuscripts, an issue that needs a more thorough analysis, especially insofar as the question of the technique of visualization is concerned.⁵ In any case, traces of the significant impact of this school are already evident in earlier Byzantine Kabbalah, although I found no references to the technique of the visualization of colors in that region.⁶

The most important example of the appropriation of the imagery of colors, and perhaps also of their visualization, is to be found in ibn Ẓayyaḥ’s three extant Kabbalistic books.⁷ Thanks to Jonathan Garb’s more recent studies of this Kabbalist, the impact of this technique upon him stands out in regard to several important topics and I do not repeat his findings here.⁸ However, I would like to note that ibn Ẓayyaḥ’s views were much closer to those of R. Joseph Ashkenazi than to those of R. David. Moreover, ibn Ẓayyaḥdid not share the inclination of the latter toward Zoharic terminology, as was the case with R. Moses Cordovero. He regarded the interdiction to visualize sefirot as the view of “a few Kabbalists.”⁹ Although Cordovero resorted to the verb ẓayyer, it was not when referring to visualization but rather to divine action.¹⁰ Ibn Ẓayyaḥ adopted the view of sefirot within sefirot, so important to R. Joseph Ashkenazi, and also applied it to the idea of the existence of each color within the other colors.¹¹ Although dealing many times with the colors of the sefirot and a rotating circle or sphere, galgal, that is only part of the theogonic process.¹² As for Cordovero’s commentary on the prayer book, the impact of R. David’s theory of color visualization is rather marginal.¹³

In R. Moshe Cordovero’s compendium of Kabbalah, Pardes Rimmonim, an entire section (“gate”) is devoted to the symbolism and, at least implicitly, to the practice of the visualization of colors.¹⁴ This leading Safedian Kabbalist was uneasy about some of the traditions concerning colors found in the writings of earlier Kabbalists, especially as colors are part of the corporeal dimension of reality and cannot symbolize the sefirot, and he referred to them and their actions metaphorically.¹⁵ Nevertheless, he followed the line of thought in the anonymous response about colors attributed to R. Joseph Gikatilla and wrote:

It is good and fitting if he wishes to visualize¹⁶ these ḥavayot ¹⁷ according to their color, as then his prayer will be very effective, on the condition that his [mystical] intention is that there is no other possible way to represent the activity of a certain attribute [but] the certain [corresponding] color. And as the colors in the “Gate of Colors” are many, we shall not discuss here the colors. But when he wishes to direct [his prayer], behold that gate is before [the...