 Although Kabbalist writings had first appeared in the twelfth century, Christians before Pico knew almost nothing about them. The Kabbalah that he discovered for the Latin West is a theory as well as a practice, at bottom a kind of biblical hermeneutics. And for some Kabbalists, then and now, textual theorizing underwrites a spiritual practice whose aim is mystical ascent for the excitation of prophetic or messianic states by various techniques, including magic and theurgy. Many Kabbalists believe that the Hidden God, called the Infinite, reveals himself not only in the Bible but also through ten emanations or attributes, the Sefirot. Hypostasized in myths, made concrete by images and symbolized by letters and numbers, the Sefirot are at the core of Kabbalist speculation, whose other major focus is the names of God and their resonance in words of scripture.