Light of the Intellect (Or ha-Sekhel)

Light of the Intellect (Or ha-Sekhel) is a central text of the ecstatic or prophetic school of Kabbalah, which sought not to map the sefirot but to attain a direct, transformative experience of prophecy and union with the divine. Its premise is that the Hebrew letters and the names of God are instruments that, recombined and recited, reshape consciousness.

The practice it sets out, tzeruf or letter-permutation, moves through written, spoken, and mental combination, joined to patterns of breathing, head movement, and posture. This staged discipline is aimed at inducing the prophetic state and culminating in devekut, the unitive dissolution of the ordinary self into the divine intellect.

Marginalized in its own time, the work later passed into Christian Kabbalah through Latin translation. It stands as an early, explicit method for altering inner state, holding that prophecy is a reachable goal of disciplined practice.