Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Kabbalah Meditations on Jesus and the Merkabah


Its been a long couple of months here in Stanton, KY and I have been spending much of my time studying early Jewish mysticism and their meditation practices trying to envision the Merkabah or Chariot of God in Ezekiel's vision (this is the early precursor to Kabbalah). So I have decided to adapt that meditation into visions of what Jesus would look like as well as my own meditations on the chariot.

First, I got the earliest clear depictions of Jesus that I could find and ran them through face combining software to find a mashup of what two early roman artists though Jesus looked like. Next I took a CGI image that some scientists made of a Galilean man of the time period thought to be similar to Jesus and added that into the facial recognition/augmentation software. Here is what I came up with:





















I guess if nothing else, it shows what a combined effect of how others view Jesus and therefore is a group depiction. Next I started seeking out different depictions of the Merkava Chariot and found there is a difference in how people interpret "wheels inside of wheels" which is great! Some see it as two alternate directions and some see it as something akin to olympic rings. Both expand the meditation on the vision so I will add them as well:



Hopefully this adds to someones meditative practices. Let me know in the comments.
-Andrew E.