Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

Ezekiel's vision of the Merkabah (divine chariot) — from a 15th-century Bible illustration. The four-faced living creatures, the wheels within wheels, and the overwhelming luminosity of the divine presence are among the most influential visionary experiences in the Hebrew prophetic tradition. When the prophet Ezekiel stood among the exiles by the river Chebar in Babylon and the heavens opened, what he saw was unlike anything recorded before in human spiritual literature. He saw a storm from the north, a great cloud with fire flashing from it, and at its center, four living beings — four creatures of such overwhelming strangeness and beauty that his account of them became the foundation of an entire stream of Jewish mystical practice lasting three thousand years. These creatures are the Hayyot HaKodesh — the Holy Living Creatures (חַיּוֹת הַקֹּדֶשׁ, Hayyot HaQodesh ). They are the innermost beings of the divine Merkabah, the celestial chariot-throne of God. They are the most...