The 231 Gates

Sets the 22 letters round a wheel and joins each with every other: 231 gates, read forward and back, as Sefer Yetzirah 2:4–5 counts them, with its own example: nothing in good above ענג, pleasure, nothing in evil below נגע, plague. The gates as four prints set them out — Mantua 1562, Eleazar of Worms, the Gra, Kalisch — and the three classes of letters, whose planets differ between versions.

• Sefer Yetzirah, Mantua 1562 (editio princeps), NLI scan, Wikimedia Commons
• Isidor Kalisch, Sepher Yezirah: A Book on Creation (New York, 1877), archive.org
• Sefer Yetzirah with the Gra’s commentary (Warsaw, 1884), National Library of Israel
• Mayer Lambert (ed.), Commentaire sur le Séfer Yesira … par le Gaon Saadya (Paris, 1891), archive.org