53 myths · Page 2 of 2
He went up the hill for firewood. The snake lay in the scrub and never looked at him. His hair came out before he reached the bottom.
Every seder has a cup for Elijah. Every circumcision has his chair. But a tradition older than both holds that Elijah is not present everywhere. He is hidden.
The news reached them on a Thursday. Rome had four of the great sages and wanted eight thousand students of Jerusalem as the price of their release.
They searched the fields for Enoch and came back empty-handed. The man who walked with God had been taken, and there was nothing to bury.
The upper waters flew up to the Throne singing. The half left underneath said woe to us and started climbing after them, and the world nearly ended.
Passover night was hours off, and the caravan road to Egypt took months. He spoke Names over a cloud and dropped into Fustat before the first cup.
Rava sent the man he had made walking toward Rabbi Zera's house. The man had a face, two hands, and no answer waiting in his throat.
Nehunya sat on a bench with his eyes open and nothing behind them. His students needed the names of the two seals before more men died.
Before the Temple was built, a stone already held the abyss under Zion, engraved with the Name, and King David nearly lifted it and flooded the world.
Israel had walked three days without water. At Marah the pool was bitter. Moses stood over it with a tree in his hand and a people at his back.
A mystic begs to see how something came from nothing. Tikkunei Zohar answers with a measuring line in primordial air and the tiny Yod that begins everything.
She pinched off a piece of dough before the loaf went into the oven. In another house a thief set a stolen cup back on the shelf.
Anaphiel swung the last gate. Five hundred and twelve eyes turned. The mystic's knees went first, then his back hit the floor.
At the fourth palace two seals are demanded, right and left. At the sixth, the wrong companion does not survive what he is sent to witness.
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was dying. He told a handful of students what he had never said out loud, and souls came up from Eden to listen.
A man hardens his face against one who has seen the chariot. Heaven answers with dark eyes, erased lineage, and trumpets thrice each day.
In a palace no one else may enter, a thousand halls deep in longing, the Messiah weeps and waits for the sign that his hour has come.
A descender to the chariot climbs through gates of fire to the Throne and learns the world was not hammered but poured out of beauty and light.
Pulled past every world, a seer stands before the divine face and reads mercy in its skull, unsleeping eyes, patient breath, and thirteen-streamed beard.
At the seventh palace his knees gave out. The guardians stood taller than towers, and behind the last door was a roar that turned out to be singing.
Praise cooled on his tongue. A voice used the street language of Jerusalem to bury a city, while the palace wall under his hand stayed warm.
Rabbi Ishmael carried a seal past seven gates and found the Throne of Glory already singing a hymn with no last verse and no exit.
Nehunya sent a prayer past every keeper to the beings who carry the Throne of Glory, and a horn answered from beyond the last firmament.
