Hekalot
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
According to the Zohar , the seven halls of the world of Yetsirah, the divine halls into which the seekers for the Chariot (Merkabah) strive to enter. Here dwell the angels, presided over by Metatron; likewise the souls of men not specially noted for their piety. (The souls of the pious dwell in the world of Beriah). 66 Hela, or Death": One of the offspring of Loki and the giantess Angurbodi. The gods becoming alarmed of her and the other monsters which were coming to life in Jotunheim, it was deemed advisable by All-father that they should be brought before him. Hela was cast into Niflheim, to which are sent all those who die of sickness or old age. She governs this world, which is composed of nine regions, into which she distributes those who come to her; and in which she inhabits a strongly-protected abode. Niflheim is said to be " a dark abode far from the sun"; its gates open to the cutting north": "its walls are formed of wreathed snakes and their venom is ever falling like rain"; and it is surrounded by dark and poisonous Hell streams. "Nidhog, the great dragon, who dwells beneath the central root of Ygdrassil, torments and gnaws the dead." It is said that one-half of Hela's body is livid, and the other half flesh-coloured. Hunger is her table; Starvation, her knife; Delay, her man; Slowness, her maid; Precipice, her threshold; Care, her bed; and Burning Anguish forms the hangings of her apartments.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When the Encyclopaedia of Occultism wrote this in 1920, it defined the hekalot purely through the Zohar, a Spanish work of the 1280s, and slotted them into the later kabbalistic scheme of the worlds of Yetsirah and Beriah. Scholarship since has recovered the Hekhalot texts themselves ati, Hekhalot Zutarti, Ma'aseh Merkavah, and 3 Enoch (Sefer Hekhalot) as a distinct body of Jewish mystical writing centuries older than the Zohar; Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941) put this "Merkavah mysticism" at the head of the tradition rather than the end of it. Peter Sch", published from 1981, gave the corpus its first critical edition from the manuscripts and Cairo Geniza fragments, and the Dead Sea Scrolls' Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, found after 1947, showed a much earlier Jewish interest in heavenly sanctuaries. Readers should also note that this page runs the hekalot entry straight into an unrelated article on the Norse Hel, an artefact of the original printing.
Written for this edition, 2026.