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Guide XIII-145

Merkavah and Heikhalot ascent (historical)

100
A 29 · L 60 · M 1111 interventions in the Trinity explorer
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[source: …] where a claim comes from[uncertain] not confirmed in a primary source[synthesis] the writer's reconstruction

1. Introduction

Version followed: the academic reconstruction of the Hekhalot/Merkavah corpus (Hekhalot Rabbati, Hekhalot Zutarti, Ma'aseh Merkavah, Merkavah Rabbah, 3 Enoch, Sar ha-Torah material) as summarised by Ra'anan Boustan (2013), read alongside Gershom Scholem's founding account, Peter Schäfer (2011), Rachel Elior's priestly reading and James Davila's (2001) practitioner reading. This is a historical entry. It describes what scholars say the texts depict and what survives today. It is not a practice manual, and it gives no ascent technique, posture, divine-name recitation or count.

What it is. Hekhalot ("palaces") and Merkavah ("chariot", after Ezekiel's throne-chariot vision in Ezekiel 1) literature is, in Boustan's words, "the earliest extensive collection of Jewish mystical writings". Its traditions may reach back to the 2nd–5th centuries CE, but it took shape as a genre in the second half of the first millennium. It survives mainly in 12th-century and later European manuscripts and in more than twenty Cairo Genizah fragments. Scribes kept reworking it, so it is better seen as an open-ended body of material than as fixed books [source: Boustan 2013]. The texts are anonymous or pseudepigraphic and are credited to Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva [source: Elior, "Early Forms of Jewish Mysticism"].

Its two central themes [source: Boustan 2013]:

  • heavenly ascent through seven palaces to the divine Throne of Glory;
  • the adjuration of angels, especially the Sar ha-Torah ("Prince of Torah") rites, which promised mastery of Torah learning.

How the texts imagine change. The texts do not describe psychological change. The practitioner, called a yored merkavah ("descender to the chariot"), is depicted moving between earth and heaven through "meticulous performance of ritual speech and action" [source: Boustan 2013]. The aim is to:

  • join the angels' heavenly liturgy (Schäfer's unio liturgica, in contrast to mystical union with God);
  • bring back a commission conveying God's love for Israel [source: Boustan 2013].

Elior reads the ascent as joining the heavenly service through prayer, a heavenly "surrogate for the no longer extant Temple" after 70 CE [source: Elior]. For the clinician, the relevant "change" is how a client today makes meaning from reading these texts or from modern reconstructions of them [synthesis].

2. Framework

There is no historical therapeutic framework, no session structure and no source-given session count. This section has two parts. Part A is the shape of the practice as scholars describe it in the texts. Part B is a framework for the therapist when a client brings this material [synthesis].

A. The practice as the texts depict it (scholarly reconstruction, qualitative only)

  1. Prerequisites and preparation.
    • Hekhalot Rabbati (§234 in the standard edition) makes moral and scholarly excellence a requirement for the descender [source: Sefarad review of Davila 2001].
    • The texts make access conditional on purity and ritual readiness, modelled on priestly preparation [source: Elior].
    • Davila summarises the means as "ascetic practices, prayers, hymns, and divine names" used to reach an ecstatic state [source: Davila via My Jewish Learning].
    • These are named here only as categories. No procedure is given.
  2. Passage through the seven palaces. The descender passes the gates of seven celestial palaces, guarded by angelic gatekeepers, to stand before the Throne [source: Davila via My Jewish Learning; Elior]. The texts call the journey perilous, with a risk of "a fiery and potentially fatal transformation into an angel" [source: Davila via My Jewish Learning].
  3. Participation in the heavenly liturgy. Angelic choirs sing the Qedushah ("Holy, holy, holy"). Elior describes three modes of prayer: mystical prayer learned from angels, the shared Qedushah of earthly and heavenly congregations, and the celestial liturgy that culminates in the Ineffable Name [source: Elior].
  4. Return and commission. The descender returns as the people's "mystical messenger" [source: Elior], carrying God's love for Israel [source: Boustan 2013].
  5. The parallel adjuration strand (Sar Torah). Here angels are adjured to grant Torah knowledge without toil. Halperin treats this strand as central as the ascent theme [source: Davila via My Jewish Learning].

Scholarly versions of what this was (name the one you are drawing on when you explain it to a client):

  • Scholem: a mystical school within rabbinic Judaism from the 2nd century onward, with the magical elements seen as a decline from the mystical impulse [source: Boustan 2013].
  • Halperin: chiefly exegetical, a populist path to the revelation of Torah, with ecstatic journeys first appearing in Babylonian sources [source: Boustan 2013; Davila via My Jewish Learning].
  • Schäfer: ritual pervades both ascent and adjuration. He also stresses approaching God through exegesis rather than ecstasy, and reads much of the literature as practical ritual manuals for controlling angels to gain revelation [source: Boustan 2013; Jewish Book Council review of Schäfer 2011].
  • Swartz: the Sar Torah material comes from "secondary elites", lower-status scribes outside rabbinic institutions [source: Boustan 2013].
  • Elior: a priestly, Temple-centred tradition, continuous with Qumran's Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and Enochic writings [source: Elior; Boustan 2013].
  • Davila: the descenders resemble shamans, testing them against six traits Åke Hultkrantz defined [source: Sefarad review]. Critics note that a model drawn from oral cultures sits awkwardly on a literate corpus [source: Sefarad review].

Whether the texts record real experiences or are literary constructions remains disputed [source: Davila via My Jewish Learning].

Rabbinic restriction. The Mishnah, Tosefta and both Talmuds forbid expounding the "Work of the Chariot" before more than one listener [source: Robinson via My Jewish Learning]. The rabbis discouraged all but a select few from these journeys [source: Jewish Book Council review of Schäfer 2011]. The Talmudic story of four sages who "entered the pardes", only one of whom left unharmed, is often linked to this material [uncertain: not verified].

B. Therapist's framework when a client encounters this material [synthesis]

  1. Assess. Find out how the client meets the material:
    • academic or devotional reading;
    • liturgy;
    • a modern "merkavah meditation" or visualisation class;
    • an online esoteric group;
    • an unusual experience the client interprets through it.
    Move on once you know the context, the client's tradition and community, any current practice and its intensity, and whether there is distress or impairment.
  2. Explore meaning. Look at what the material means in the client's life. Move on when the client can say what draws them to it and what they hope for.
  3. Integrate or reduce. Support client-led integration within their own tradition, or reduce and ground an intense self-directed practice that is causing harm.
  4. Refer and collaborate. Bring in a rabbi or recognised teacher for religious questions, and psychiatric or medical colleagues where illness is suspected.
  5. Review. Re-check functioning, sleep and the client's spiritual wellbeing.

The format is ordinary individual sessions. Length depends on the presenting problem, not on the practice.

3. Guiding principles

  • Attribute, don't adjudicate. Describe ascent, angels, the Throne and the divine Name as the texts and traditions hold them, never as fact or delusion. In practice: say "the texts describe…" and "in your tradition…" [source: APA Monitor 2023].
  • Historical, not living lineage. Scholars treat this as a textual corpus whose practice is disputed. In practice: present modern "ascent" courses as modern reconstructions, not an unbroken transmission [source: Boustan 2013; Davila via My Jewish Learning; synthesis].
  • No technique from the therapist. In practice: never teach, rehearse or improve ascent methods, name recitation, posture or ascetic preparation in session [synthesis].
  • The tradition itself urges restraint. Rabbinic sources restricted teaching of this material to a select few [source: Robinson via My Jewish Learning; JBC review]. In practice: an observant client's own sources may support caution and a teacher's guidance.
  • Client-led, with consent. In practice: ask whether the client wants spirituality in therapy before you include it [source: APA Monitor 2023].
  • Know your role. The therapist is not a rabbi, kabbalist or spiritual director. In practice: send theological and halakhic questions to the client's religious authority [source: APA Monitor 2023].
  • Competence. Use the 16 spiritual and religious competencies (attitudes, knowledge, skills) proposed by Vieten et al. (2013). In practice: do your own reading on the corpus and the tradition before working in depth [source: Vieten et al. 2013 abstract].
  • Take unusual experiences seriously both ways. In practice: don't pathologise visionary experience, and don't miss psychosis, mania or dissociation [source: Lukoff, DSM-IV Religious & Spiritual Problems course].
  • Adverse effects are real. Contemplative practice can produce lasting difficulties, including in people with no psychiatric history. In practice: screen and monitor [source: Farias et al. 2020; Lindahl et al. 2017 via Brown University].
  • Check your own reactions. Examine your own religious or secular biases and countertransference, and self-disclose only when it helps the client [source: APA Monitor 2023].

4. Intervention inventory

The historical practice is not taught here. Every item below is the psychotherapist's own work with a client who reads, studies, prays with, or tries to reconstruct this material. Unless a source is tagged, the procedures are [synthesis] built on the cited clinical sources.

4.1 Religious and spiritual history focused on this material

  • Purpose / when:
    • Use at intake, or as soon as Merkavah, Hekhalot, "chariot" or "palace" ascent, Metatron, Shi'ur Qomah or angel adjuration comes up.
    • Asking about sacred beliefs and meaning-making belongs in every intake, covering both strengths and struggles [source: APA Monitor 2023].
  • Steps:
    1. Ask whether the client wants their religious or spiritual life included in therapy, and record the answer.
    2. Establish the context. Is the client:
      • studying academically (Scholem, Schäfer, Elior);
      • reading devotionally;
      • meeting it in liturgy;
      • in a class, retreat or online group teaching "ascent";
      • interpreting a spontaneous experience through it?
    3. Ask about their tradition and community: denomination, rabbi or teacher, family attitudes. You can use the DSM-5-TR Cultural Formulation Interview for this [uncertain: not verified].
    4. Ask about any current practice in qualitative terms: what they do, how often, how intensely, whether alone or guided, and any ascetic elements such as restricted eating or sleep. Do not ask for, or record, names or formulas.
    5. Screen functioning: sleep, eating, work and relationships, mood, perceptual changes, and any sense of special mission.
    6. Ask what the client hopes the material or practice will give them.
  • Example language (illustrative):
    • "Some people come to the chariot texts through scholarship, some through prayer, some through a teacher. How did you come to them?"
    • "You don't need to tell me any words or names you use. I'm more interested in how often you practise, how long, and how you feel afterwards."
  • Watch for:
    • reluctance to disclose because the texts frame the material as secret (respect it);
    • signs that practice has become intense, isolated or self-directed;
    • sleep loss.
    It is working when the client can describe the place of the material in their life without feeling judged.

4.2 Exploring meaning

  • Purpose / when: Understand what draws the client to the material. It might be longing for closeness to God, a liturgical or priestly sense of worship (Elior's reading), intellectual fascination, a wish for special knowledge (the Sar Torah theme), or an escape from distress.
  • Steps:
    1. Invite the client to describe the images that matter to them: palaces, angelic song, the Throne, the Qedushah.
    2. Reflect the functions you hear, such as belonging, awe, mastery, escape or meaning after loss. Elior's reading of the corpus as a response to the Temple's destruction can help you notice themes of loss and rebuilding, if the client finds that frame fitting [source: Elior; synthesis].
    3. Link those functions to the client's goals for therapy, with their agreement.
    4. Name strengths, such as reverence, discipline and community belonging, as well as struggles.
  • Example language (illustrative):
    • "When you read about joining the angels' song, what happens inside you?"
    • "It sounds as though the hope is less about seeing something and more about not being alone with God. Is that close?"
  • Watch for:
    • meaning that hardens into grandiosity ("chosen to ascend") or into dread (fear of fatal danger, drawn from the texts' warnings);
    • avoidance of present-day problems.
    It is working when the client finds the material enriching or holds it more flexibly.

4.3 Accurate, even-handed orientation to the history

  • Purpose / when: Use when a client's beliefs about the practice rest on claims of unbroken ancient transmission, or when a seller promises results.
  • Steps:
    1. Ask what the client has been told about where the practice comes from.
    2. If the client wants it, share the scholarly picture briefly and neutrally:
      • manuscripts are mainly medieval;
      • the texts were continually reworked;
      • scholars disagree whether they record practice or literary construction (Scholem, Halperin, Schäfer, Davila) [source: Boustan 2013; Davila via My Jewish Learning].
    3. Present this as information, not as a verdict on the client's faith.
    4. Suggest they bring theological questions to their own teacher or rabbi.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Historians still argue about whether people actually performed these ascents or whether the texts are mainly literature. That doesn't settle what it means for you, but it may help when someone says they are teaching 'the original method'."
  • Watch for:
    • the client hearing this as dismissal of their faith (stop, and repair);
    • you sliding into teaching or debating theology.
    It is working when the client can judge claims more freely.

4.4 Client-led integration within the living tradition

  • Purpose / when: Use when an observant or returning Jewish client wants to connect with this heritage in a way their community recognises.
  • What remains in practice today, as sources describe it:
    • Liturgy. The Qedushah is central to Hekhalot prayer, recited jointly by the earthly and heavenly congregations [source: Elior]. The hymn HaAderet v'HaEmunah (LeChai Olamim) first appears in Hekhalot Rabbati. It is reportedly recited before the Kedusha on Yom Kippur in Ashkenazi rites, on Shabbat in Hasidic communities and Nusach Sefard, and sung at Simchat Torah [uncertain: secondary, unverified].
    • Study. The texts are studied in universities and read in translation.
    • Later mysticism. Scholem held that Merkavah ideas fed into medieval Kabbalah [source: Davila via My Jewish Learning].
    • Revival. No living lineage of Hekhalot ascent is found in the sources consulted. Modern "merkavah meditation" offerings are reconstructions [uncertain: not verified].
  • Steps:
    1. Ask which forms the client's community accepts, for example communal prayer, study with a teacher, or Kabbalah study under a rabbi.
    2. Help the client choose forms that are communal and guided rather than solitary and intensive.
    3. Let the client lead the content. Your role is to explore how these practices affect mood, relationships and goals.
  • Example language (illustrative): "When you sing that hymn on Yom Kippur with your congregation, does it touch the same longing the texts stir in you? What's it like to have that with other people rather than alone?"
  • Watch for:
    • the therapist prescribing religious practice (don't);
    • a client using integration to avoid clinical work.
    It is working when the client's spiritual life feels supported and connected rather than isolating.

4.5 Referral to and collaboration with a rabbi or qualified teacher

  • Purpose / when: Use for questions about permissibility, theology, halakha or who should study this material. Consider working with a spiritual leader from the client's tradition for such questions [source: APA Monitor 2023].
  • Steps:
    1. Ask whether the client has a rabbi or teacher they trust.
    2. With written consent, agree what will be shared.
    3. Keep roles distinct: the rabbi addresses religious questions, the therapist addresses mental health.
    4. Review the plan with the client after any contact.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Whether and how to study these texts is a question your tradition has views on. Would it help to bring it to your rabbi, and would you like me to speak with them about how you've been sleeping and feeling?"
  • Watch for:
    • a "teacher" who is a self-appointed seller rather than someone accountable to a community;
    • pressure from a teacher to intensify practice.
    It is working when the client has a trusted religious guide and a coherent plan.

4.6 Screening for adverse effects of reconstructed visualisation or ascent practice

  • Purpose / when: Use for any client doing contemplative, visualisation, ascetic or trance-oriented practice based on this material.
  • What the evidence says:
    • Lindahl et al. (2017) mapped 59 kinds of challenging meditation experience across seven domains: cognitive, perceptual, affective, somatic, conative, sense of self and social.
    • Examples include hypersensitivity to light or sound, insomnia, involuntary movements, fear and panic, and disorienting experiences of oneness.
    • Some lasted from days to more than a decade.
    • The teacher relationship could support or harm [source: Brown University on Lindahl et al. 2017].
    • Farias et al. (2020) found adverse events in 65% of 83 studies, with an overall prevalence of 8.3%. The most common were anxiety, depression and cognitive anomalies, and they occurred in people with no psychiatric history too [source: PubMed abstract].
  • Steps:
    1. Ask directly about unwanted experiences during or after practice: fear, panic, perceptual change, depersonalisation, insomnia, involuntary movement, low mood, suicidal thoughts.
    2. Ask about intensity factors: solitary practice, long sessions, ascetic preparation, sleep or food restriction, no supervision.
    3. Check psychiatric and trauma history. Note that Lindahl et al. found these explained only some cases.
    4. Agree on monitoring.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Practices like this can bring difficult experiences as well as good ones, and that's well documented. Has anything unsettling happened during or after practice?"
  • Watch for: any ascetic element such as restricted eating or reduced sleep. Route physical health questions to the client's doctor. It is working when difficulties are named early and the client feels free to report them.

4.7 Dose reduction and grounding

  • Purpose / when: Use when self-directed practice is producing distress, sleep loss, perceptual disturbance or dissociation.
  • Steps:
    1. Agree with the client to pause, or scale back to shorter, communal or text-study forms.
    2. Stop any ascetic preparation such as restricted food or reduced sleep, and involve their doctor if eating or sleeping has been affected.
    3. Restore ordinary routines: regular sleep, meals, movement, time with others.
    4. Use ordinary grounding in the room: open eyes, attention to surroundings and the feel of the chair, naming objects, talking about everyday matters.
    5. If the client wishes, coordinate with their teacher about resuming, and when.
    6. Peer support from people who understand meditation difficulties was a commonly cited help [source: Brown University on Lindahl et al. 2017].
    7. Trauma-sensitive mindfulness adaptations (Treleaven 2018) are a published model for this kind of adjustment [uncertain: not verified].
  • Example language (illustrative): "Let's give your nervous system a rest for a while. You can keep the parts that steady you, like praying with your community, and set aside the parts that leave you shaky at night."
  • Watch for:
    • the client fearing that stopping is a spiritual failure (invite their rabbi's view);
    • symptoms persisting after the pause (re-assess, see 4.8).
    It is working when sleep and functioning recover.

4.8 Telling spiritual experience apart from psychiatric illness

  • Purpose / when: Use when a client reports visions of palaces, angels or a throne, voices, a sense of mission, or fear of being destroyed.
  • Background:
    • DSM-IV added "Religious or Spiritual Problem" (V62.89) after a proposal by Lukoff, Lu and Turner.
    • The DSM-5-TR keeps a code for a religious or spiritual problem, Z65.8 [source: ICD-10-CM Z65.8].
    • Markers of mental disorder in religious patients drawn from Greenberg and Witztum include experiences that are more intense than community norms, terrifying, or preoccupying, a decline in social skills or hygiene, and special messages from religious figures [source: Lukoff, DSM-IV Religious & Spiritual Problems course].
  • Steps:
    1. Take a careful history of onset, sleep, substances, mood (including signs of mania), perceptual change, dissociation and trauma.
    2. Compare the experience with the client's own community norms. Ask whether people in their tradition would recognise it.
    3. Assess risk, including fasting, self-neglect, suicidal thinking or thoughts of harming others.
    4. If there are red flags (the markers above, persistent sleep loss, disorganisation, fixed beliefs with impairment), arrange psychiatric assessment promptly.
    5. If not, work with the experience as meaningful and keep monitoring.
  • Example language (illustrative): "I'm not here to tell you what you saw. I do want to make sure you're safe and sleeping. Would people in your community recognise this as part of their path, or does it feel different from that?"
  • Watch for:
    • pathologising devout experience;
    • missing early psychosis or mania because the content is religious.
    It is working when the client feels heard and risk is clearly assessed.

4.9 Scrupulosity and fear around purity, secrecy and divine names

  • Purpose / when:
    • The texts make purity and moral worthiness preconditions [source: Elior; Sefarad review], and warn of fatal danger [source: Davila via My Jewish Learning].
    • Some clients develop obsessional fear about unworthiness, impurity, saying a Name wrongly, or being punished for reading. Use this item then.
  • Steps:
    1. Assess for OCD-pattern features: intrusive fears, checking, repeated purification or confession, reassurance seeking, and distress out of proportion to the client's own tradition's teaching.
    2. If present, offer exposure and response prevention adapted with the client's religious authority, so that exercises fit what the tradition actually requires [uncertain: IOCDF guidance not verified].
    3. Do not design exposures that ask the client to break their own religious law.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Your rabbi says you're not in danger, and part of you still feels you have to check again and again. Shall we look at that pattern together?"
  • Watch for:
    • rituals growing;
    • reassurance seeking moving onto the therapist.
    It is working when distress and rituals fall while observance stays the client's own.

4.10 Teacher and group dynamics

  • Purpose / when: Use when a client learns "chariot" or "palace" ascent from a teacher or group, especially one selling secret methods, special status or angelic powers. The Sar Torah theme promises effortless knowledge [source: Davila via My Jewish Learning].
  • Steps:
    1. Explore the relationship: fees, secrecy demands, isolation from family or the community rabbi, pressure to intensify practice, claims that doubts or leaving bring spiritual danger.
    2. Name these features, without labels, as signs of coercive control.
    3. Support the client's own decisions, including leaving, and attend to any religious trauma afterwards.
    4. Documented teacher misconduct linked to Hekhalot practice: none found in the sources consulted.
  • Example language (illustrative): "What happens in the group when someone has doubts, or wants to talk it over with their own rabbi?"
  • Watch for:
    • fear-based compliance;
    • financial exploitation;
    • sexual or other boundary violations, which call for the usual safeguarding and reporting steps.
    It is working when the client's choices are freer.

4.11 Keeping the therapist's role clear

  • Purpose / when: Throughout the work.
  • Steps:
    1. Do not teach or guide the practice, interpret visions authoritatively, or act as the client's spiritual teacher.
    2. Avoid dual relationships, such as teaching in the client's study circle.
    3. Examine your own religious or secular commitments and any countertransference, and self-disclose only when it serves the client [source: APA Monitor 2023].
    4. Build competence using Vieten et al.'s 16 competencies and the update by Vieten and Lukoff (2022) [source: Vieten et al. 2013 abstract; APA Monitor 2023].
    5. Follow your profession's ethics code on competence, boundaries and avoiding harm [synthesis].
    6. Seek consultation when you are unsure or strongly affected.
  • Example language (illustrative): "I'm not the right person to teach you these texts, but I can help you look after yourself while you explore them, and work alongside whoever does guide you."
  • Watch for:
    • fascination with the material pulling sessions into seminars;
    • a client seeking initiation from the therapist.

5. Handling problems

All guidance in this section is [synthesis], drawing on the clinical sources cited above.

  • Client asks the therapist to teach or confirm an ascent method.
    • Decline warmly and explain your role.
    • Offer to explore what they hope the method will do.
    • Point them to scholarly reading or their rabbi.
    • Never supply or correct technique, names, postures or counts.
  • Client believes a modern course transmits the "original" ancient practice.
    • Offer the scholarly picture (4.3) only if the client wants it. Respect their freedom to continue.
    • Focus on effects: sleep, mood, money, relationships.
  • Overwhelm, panic or depersonalisation after practice.
    • Ground in the session (4.7).
    • Pause the practice by agreement.
    • Screen for risk and for psychosis or mania (4.8).
    • Involve the doctor if sleep or eating are affected.
    • Follow up promptly.
  • Client in an apparent "spiritual emergency".
    • Use 4.8.
    • If red-flag markers or risk are present, arrange urgent psychiatric assessment.
    • If not, offer frequent contact, a supportive network and, if wanted, the client's teacher. Prefer less restrictive responses where it is safe to do so [source: Lukoff course].
  • Ascetic preparation (restricted food, reduced sleep).
    • Explore the client's understanding in qualitative terms.
    • Route physical health concerns to their doctor.
    • Watch for overlap with eating-disorder or mood-disorder patterns.
    • Never set or endorse targets.
  • Fear of fatal danger or divine punishment from reading the texts.
    • Assess for scrupulosity (4.9).
    • Invite the client's religious authority's view.
    • Note that the tradition's own restrictions point to guidance rather than terror.
  • Resistance: the client feels therapy will "secularise" them.
    • State clearly that faith is welcome and will not be diagnosed.
    • Ask what would make discussing it feel safe.
    • Repair openly if you were dismissive.
  • Non-adherence to agreed pauses.
    • Explore the meaning of continuing: longing, fear of losing a gift, group pressure.
    • Negotiate smaller steps.
    • Involve the teacher if the client consents.
  • Rupture over the therapist's beliefs or disbelief.
    • Acknowledge it and explore its impact.
    • Consider supervision or consultation.
    • Refer if the gap cannot be bridged.
  • Stuck: sessions turn into seminars on Scholem or Elior.
    • Name the pattern gently.
    • Link the ideas back to the client's life and goals.
  • Group pressure or exploitation.
    • Use 4.10.
    • Plan safety if the client leaves.
    • Follow safeguarding and reporting duties for abuse.
  • Minors. Where a young person is pursuing solitary ascetic or trance practice, involve parents or guardians as appropriate, follow safeguarding procedures, and attend to both consent and assent.

Sources

Online sources:

Books and articles cited:

  • Boustan, R. S. (2013). Hekhalot/Merkabah literature. In R. S. Bagnall et al. (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Ancient History (pp. 3099–3101). Blackwell.
  • Davila, J. R. (2001). Descenders to the Chariot: The People Behind the Hekhalot Literature. Brill.
  • Farias et al. (2020). Adverse events in meditation practices and meditation-based therapies: a systematic review. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 142(5), 374–393. doi:10.1111/acps.13225
  • Lindahl, J., et al. (2017). The varieties of contemplative experience. PLOS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0176239
  • Schäfer, P. (2011). The Origins of Jewish Mysticism. Princeton University Press.
  • Scholem, G. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Schocken.
  • Vieten, C., Scammell, S., Pilato, R., Ammondson, I., Pargament, K. I., & Lukoff, D. (2013). Spiritual and religious competencies for psychologists. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 5(3), 129–144.
  • Treleaven, D. (2018). Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness [uncertain: not verified].
  • ICD-10-CM Z65.8, Other specified problems related to psychosocial circumstances (includes 'Religious or spiritual problem'), https://www.unboundmedicine.com/icd/view/ICD-10-CM/945432/all/Z65_8___Other_specified_problems_related_to_psychosocial_circumstances
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