Seven Palaces, Guarded by Angels, on the Way to the Throne

Hekhalot Rabbati, the Greater Palaces, is one of the central texts of the Hekhalot literature, a body of early Jewish mystical writing describing the ascent of a practitioner through seven heavenly palaces toward a vision of the divine throne chariot, the Merkavah, guarded at each successive gate by hostile angels who must be passed using specific seals, names and incantations the text supplies in considerable, often obscure detail. The work is framed pseudepigraphically as the teaching of the second century sage Rabbi Ishmael, a common device in this literature that projects the material back onto revered rabbinic figures regardless of when it was actually composed, and it incorporates the harrowing narrative known as the story of the Ten Martyrs, rabbinic sages executed by Roman authorities, woven into its account of ascent and divine justice.

Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism treats Hekhalot Rabbati and the related Hekhalot texts as evidence of an organized, technically detailed tradition of visionary ascent practice within rabbinic era Judaism that operated alongside, and largely beneath the surface of, the more publicly known legal and exegetical rabbinic literature of the same period.