The Lesser Holy Assembly (Idra Zuta Qadisha)

The Idra Zuta Qadisha ("Lesser Holy Assembly"), the sequel to the Greater Holy Assembly and the last part of the Zohar's story of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: on the day of his death he assembles the companions again and passes on the remaining secrets, and the treatise closes with his death. Tradition ascribes the Zohar to Shimon bar Yochai himself; most modern scholars place its composition in late thirteenth-century Spain. This is S.L. MacGregor Mathers's English of 1887 (The Kabbalah Unveiled), made from Knorr von Rosenroth's Latin version rather than directly from the Aramaic; his own commentary and notes are not reproduced. The printed edition skips section 234. Not scripture in any tradition. The diagrams of Mathers's edition are not reproduced here.