Ilan Ha-Gadol (Kabbalistic Scroll) Poppers type [Eastern Europe: 19th century]

Scroll (9 ¼ in. x 12 feet 5 in.; 235 mm x 3 meters 780 mm). Ink on Parchment; written on 6 membranes.

The present lot is a beautifully executed exemplar of the most widely disseminated manuscript family of the entire Ilanot genre, the “Great Ilan” attributed to R. Meir Poppers. This attribution is highly significant, as Poppers was the redactor-editor of the canonical edition of Lurianic teachings written by R. Chaim Vital known as Etz Chaim, and a diagrammatic scroll bearing his name would accordingly be presumed authoritative. Although we know from Poppers’ own writings that he drafted an Ilan for his students in Cracow in the mid-seventeenth century, nothing from that period survives that can be identified with certainty as Poppers’ creation. Two things are, however, clear – this most popular of Ilanot (and the only one ever brought to press by Jews) was not in its entirety Poppers’s own creation, and its popularity has a great deal to do with the (false) attribution. In fact, this family of scrolls does not present one Ilan, but a sequence of Ilanot, each of which has its own genealogy. This sequential presentation of a number of disparate diagrammatic scrolls creates a kind of Rashomon effect, with much of the same ontological ground being covered from a number of different perspectives.

This Moussaieff scroll opens with a brief preface, with the word “Ilan” inscribed in bold red ink within a crowned circle situated between colourfully inked decorative floral patterns. The preface opens with the all-important attribution to Poppers before noting its unique form and functions. It is, we are told, written in “small signs” to facilitate the apprehension of the divine science; it is mnemonic (“le-zikaron”); it is meditative, allowing the practitioner to use it “in order to ascend the ladder whose top reaches heaven”; and it is anthological, constituting a digest of “all the writings of the Ari (Isaac Luria).”

Following the preface, we find a sequence of four geometrical diagrams depicting the Saruqian stages of creation. As J. H. Chajes has recently shown, this sequence, which opens this most common and canonical of all manuscript families, was originally drafted by the seventeenth-century Christian kabbalist Knorr von Rosenroth for his Latin work, Kabbalah denudata. Rosenroth based himself, by his own admission, on material (images and texts) found in R. Naftali Bachrach’s Valley of the King, published in Frankfurt in 1648. (The influence of Bachrach’s work may be seen in the Kopio and Shantuch Ilanot as well.)

The Rosenroth sequence is followed by what may be considered the “second” Ilan in this modular manuscript, and consists of the emoticon-like faces of Primordial Adam, as well as the “Long” and “Short” Faces of the godhead. Although lacking much figurative detail,  looking carefully one can clearly see the outlines of eyes and ears, nose and mouth – all of which are also clearly labelled as such. The language of the embedded texts in this section of the Ilan would seem to indicate that it stems from the school of Poppers, and indeed may represent a version of the diagram fashioned by Poppers himself noted above. This section concludes with tabulated theosophical data.

The third “Ilan within this Ilan” would seem to have its origins in the “Ilan of Faces” (Ilan ha-parzufim) divinity map drafted by Poppers’ teacher, and one of the most fascinating figures of his day, R. Jacob Zemach. Zemach left the Iberian Peninsula as a highly educated adult only to become one of the great rabbinic scholars of his generation just a few years later. A student of Chaim Vital’s son and successor, Samuel Vital, Zemach became one of the key editor-redactors and teachers of Lurianic Kabbalah of the seventeenth century. As was the case with Poppers, Zemach too records that he fashioned a large scroll depicting the process of “Engarmentation,” (hitlabushuot) with cross-references to his editions of Vital’s works on the subject. We may presume that this oft-reproduced visualization, which we noted in the Kopio and Shanduch Ilanot as well, was based on Zemach’s work. Although to date no Ilanot with cross-references to Zemach’s editions has been found, it is likely that with the ascent of Poppers’ Etz Chaim, such references lost their utility and were omitted from copies. When we find scrolls of third section on its own, they generally depict the highest of the four kabbalistic worlds, “Emanation” (Atzilut) alone. This compound manuscript, however, features additional material treating the three “lower worlds” of “Creation” (briyah), “Formation” (Yezirah), and “Action” (‘Assiyah) by means of variously inscribed arboreal diagrams. The survey extends to the demonic realm before presenting the concentric circles of the Ptolemaic cosmos, with traditional planetary and elemental inscriptions. The end of the scroll is indicated with a finely wrought decorative flourish.