ArchivesSpace at the University of Iowa

Scope and Contents David Moss Introduction in book accompanying prints: "Among the many Hebrew letter forms which have now largely become defunct, there is a group of strange alphabets which were used exclusively for Kabbalah Maasit-practical Kabbalah, i.e. magic. These bear no apparent relationship to the common Hebrew letters. They were known by various names: angelic alphabets, characters, seals. They appear on ancient Greek magic papyri and on Aramaic incantation bowls; they continued to be used for centuries on amulets and were, until quite recent times, even written on mezuzot. When I chanced upon the first publication of The Midrash on The Alphabet of Metatron, these strange letters were not unfamiliar to me. I recognized in them the characteristic forms of all of these magical alphabets: simple, straight and curved lines always ending with tiny circles. I had seen such letters in Sefer Raziel-probably the most popular book of Jewish magic. But the discovery of this charming midrash based...