We’ll now address a subject termed “theurgy’, which is the art of affecting change in the world through the recitation of Divine names and the like. We won’t be divulging the process itself, since it’s only for holy souls and their initiates. What we will do, though, will be to explain how such things are possible, and the hope is that that will give us insight into the powers of the holy as well as in The Holy One who hears their pleas. But we’ll have to review a few things beforehand to put a largely unknown phenomenon into perspective.

If you recall, we said early on that transcendent forces in the Heavens form the backdrop of everything on earth (1:5:3), and that the lot of them are arranged in a specific order with particular roles. Recall as well that we pointed out that there are distinct transcendent forces behind evil, too (1:5:8). And finally, recall that we depicted the transcendent forces as “the sublime and ethereal counterparts” of things (1:5:2); we underscored the point that material things are thus mere projections, physical manifestations, and offshoots of those transcendent forces; and we noted that reality actually lies in that transcendent realm.

It’s also important to know that it’s there, in the “backgound”, where it’s decided what’s to go on in our world, based on our general and specific needs. And that G-d has seen to it that the transcendant forces affect specific changes down here by being connected to them through a chain of fixed and orderly spiritual phenomena that start far back and reach all the way down (and back again).

Let’s now go on from there.

This series is dedicated to the memory of Yitzchak Hehrsh ben Daniel, and Sarah Rivka bas Yaakov Dovid.

Subscribe to Ramchal and receive the class via e-mail.