Shi'ur Qomah
Wheel of Heaven Translation
The Hekhalot/Merkavah mystical text describing the cosmic dimensions of the divine body — Siddur Rabbah recension. The 'Kabbalah' the Raëlian canon implicitly cites for *parasangs* measurements.
An English translation of the Shi'ur Qomah (Hebrew: שִׁעוּר קוֹמָה, 'The Measure of the Stature'), produced from a best-effort reconstruction based on named scholarly editions (verification pending against Cohen 1985 TSAJ 9). **The project's first Kabbalah / Jewish-mysticism-tradition text.** Chapter 1 covers the Siddur Rabbah recension — one of five recensions Cohen 1985 distinguishes (Sefer Hekhalot, Sefer Razim, Merkavah Rabbah, Siddur Rabbah, Ma'aseh Merkavah), and the most-cited 'standard' recension. Shi'ur Qomah is one of the oldest pieces of Jewish mystical literature (3rd–6th c. CE, with oral traditions reaching earlier — Scholem 1965 argues for tannaitic-era roots), preserved across Hekhalot literature. The text describes the cosmic measurements of the body of the Creator — the divine YOTZER — as a head-to-foot enumeration in which each limb is named with a secret magical name and measured in *parasangs* (Persian unit of distance adapted to cosmic scale: one parasang = 'as much as the entire universe is full'). The framing is a transmission from R. Yishmael (the famous high priest) to R. Akiva, then to the Hekhalot mystics. The implicit liturgical-theurgical function: knowing the names and measurements lets the mystic ascend the seven Hekhalot palaces and stand before the throne. **Reception is genuinely contested.** Maimonides (Iggeret Teiman; Mishneh Torah, Yesodei ha-Torah 1:8-12; Guide for the Perplexed I:35-36) condemned the text as un-Jewish and disputed its canonical status — calling it 'a forgery of a Greek preacher or a Karaite' (Iggeret Teiman). Conversely, R. Moses Cordovero, the Lurianic Kabbalists, and the Hasidic tradition treated it as authoritative. The text was central to the Hasidei Ashkenaz of medieval Germany and survived in Hekhalot anthologies through to the early-modern *Sefer Raziel ha-Mal'akh* printings. **Raëlian-canon engagement.** *The End of the World* and *At the Root of All Religions* both implicitly cite the Shi'ur Qomah tradition for its *parasangs* measurements and 'height of the creator' passages — making this translation a project priority for closing one of the genuine source-tensions named in the *Reference corpus of the Raëlian canon* wiki entry. The WoH-Translation pipeline produces the philologically-disciplined version, not the canon's pre-filtered version, with explicit operational disavowals against Sitchin/Anunnaki-engineered-deity-body and other lens-risk readings.
Structural heading: the manuscript-internal chapter division Perek Bet 'Chapter 2', the body-measurements core of the Siddur Rabbah recension. Cohen 1985 The Shi'ur Qomah: Texts and Recensions (TSAJ 9) reorganises this as approximately §§1-160 of his critical edition. The title Šiʿūr Qōmâ literally 'the measure of the stature' — preserved as untranslated title throughout the WoH-Translation per the central glossary entry.