This extraordinary ilan, completed in Moravia in 1691 by the 67-year-old Nosen Neta “Hazen” ben Moshe Naftali Hirsh Hammerschlag, draws from the deepest currents of Lurianic Kabbalah — the revolutionary mystical system taught by R. Isaac Luria in 16th-century Safed. At its center stands the figure of Adam Kadmon, the “Primordial Human,” representing the first anthropomorphic emanation to emerge from the Infinite (Ein Sof). Luria’s Kabbalah can be characterized as an intricate working out of the most recondite compositions within zoharic literature, the so-called Idrot (“assemblies” or perhaps “threshing floors”). As Hayyim Vital, Luria’s foremost disciple, was keen to point out in his introduction to Etz Hayyim (Tree of Life/Hayyim), its complexity stands in stark contrast to the relatively simple theosophy of classical Kabbalah, which devoted itself to the names and appellations of the ten sefirot and related questions. 
 
To visualize the intricate, dynamic structures and processes of Lurianic Kabbalah, the Ilanot genre was reimagined in the mid-seventeenth century by its most prominent exponents, including rabbis Jacob Zemah, Moses Zacuto, and Meir Poppers. Poppers, an itinerant kabbalist who taught both in Cracow and in Jerusalem, was responsible for the first anthropomorphic visualization of the “Head of Adam Kadmon”--a bold move, even when pictured with schematic austerity. Hammerschlag was familiar with Poppers’ ilan, having copied it years before embarking on his ambitious and, some would say audacious, Ilan of Adam Kadmon. Along with the familiar materials Hammerschlag integrated in his magnum opus, there are no few surprises that await its dedicated students. 
 
Upon completing his stunning work, Hammerschlag declared his ilan “that which has never been seen until this very generation... happy is the eye that has seen its great power and grandeur!” Large in both scale and ambition, this ilan—part theological diagram, part mystical proclamation—offers a glimpse into the bold visual world of Lurianic cosmology and the stirring currents of the 17th-century Jewish world.
 
Courtesy of Bavarian State Library, Munich, Cod.hebr. 450