Kabbalah - Mysteries of Kabbalistic Thought

6 Primary texts

Sefer Raziel HaMalakh ("Book of Raziel the angel") - the first and oldest book of Kabbalah. It explains Mazal ("fortune" or "destiny" associated with the notions of Kabbalah astrology)

Sefer Yetzirah, ("Book of Creation"). The first commentaries on this small book were written in the 10th century, and the text itself is quoted as early as the sixth century. Its historical origins are unclear. It exists today in a number of editions, up to 2500 words long. Like many Jewish mystical texts, it was written in such a way as to be meaningless to those who read it without an extensive background in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and Midrash.

Bahir ("illumination"), also known as The Midrash of Rabbi Nehuniah ben haKana. It is some 12,000 words long. First published in Provence in 1176, many Orthodox Jews believe that the author was Rabbi Nehuniah ben haKana, a Talmudic sage of the first century. Historians, however, believe that the book was likely written not long before it was published.

Zohar ("splendor") - the most important work of Jewish mysticism. It is an esoteric mystical commentary on the Torah, written in Aramaic. In the 13th century, a Spanish Jew by the name of Moses de Leon claimed to discover the text of the Zohar, attributing it to the 2nd century Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. This book was subsequently published throughout the Jewish world. Though the book was widely accepted, over the subsequent centuries a small number of significant rabbis published works espousing the view that it was a forgery, and that it contained concepts contrary to Judaism.

Modern historian Gershom Scholem (a famous scholar and historian of Kabbalah in the twentieth century), echoing many of the arguments of some of these rabbis, contends that de Leon himself was the author of the Zohar. The Zohar contains and elaborates upon much of the material found in Sefer Yetzirah and Bahir, and is considered the Kabbalistic work par excellence.