Don Karr

Don Karr (BFA RISD 1974, MFA Cornell 1976) is co-author of two books in the acclaimed series, Sourceworks of Ceremonial Magic: with Stephen Skinner, Sepher Raziel: Liber Salomonis, a Sixteenth-century English Grimoire (Singapore: Golden Hoard Press, 2010; second edition [paperback], 2018), and with Calanit Nachshon, Liber Lunæ – Book of the Moon – Sepher ha-Levanah (Singapore: Golden Hoard Press, 2011; second edition [paperback], 2017). Karr also published the pioneering Approaching the Kabbalah of Maat (York Beach: Black Jackal Press, 2013), which contains a foreword by Colin Low. This is supplemented by Methods of Maat (forthcoming). Karr is the author of numerous articles on Jewish mysticism and its influence on the Western esoteric tradition: a series of bibliographic essays covering merkabah mysticism and hekhalot literature, Sepher Yetzirah, early kabbalah, the Zohar, later kabbalah including the Lurianic kabbalah (featuring “Which Lurianic Kabbalah?”), and Christian kabbalah. Karr has transcribed and edited several key works, making them available to the general public for the first time: Morton Smith’s translation of Hekhalot Rabbati, British Library Sloane MS 3826, selected writings of Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, and the writings of Henry More from Kabbala denudata. These articles and transcriptions can be found online at Hermetic Kabbalah, edited by Colin Low, at www.digital-brilliance.com > “Bibliographies” and > “Contributed Documents.” The 2017 version of Karr’s “Notes on the Study of Merkabah Mysticism and Hekhalot Literature in English with an appendix on Jewish Magic” appears in Jewish Studies 52 (Jerusalem: Journal of the World Union of Jewish Studies, 2017), English section, pages 35-112. Karr contributed the article “Ésotérisme et Kabbale chrétienne” (translated from “Esotericism and Christian Kabbalah: 1480-1520” into French by Eva Kushner), in L'Époque de la Renaissance (1400-1600), Tome II: LA NOUVELLE CULTURE – 1480-1520, edited by Eva Kushner [HISTOIRE COMPARÉE DES LITTÉRATURES DE LANGUES EUROPÉENNES, xxx] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó/Amsterdam: John Benjamins B. V., 2017), pages 47-56.