THE third stage of mystical tradition in antiquity took shape in the wake of the destruction of the Second Temple, around the time of the Mishnah and the Talmud, when certain priestly circles, deprived of their focus of earthly ritual and unable to perform the sacred service, created Heikhalot and Merkavah literature. It is not known precisely when this literature was composed, and the identity of the authors and editors of the Heikhalot tradition is anonymous, pseudepigraphic, or disputed, although the works concerned were written in the first person, as if by eyewitnesses to the supernal worlds, and attributed by the authors to the high priest Rabbi Ishmael b. Elisha and Rabbi Akiva, who entered the Pardes (i.e. engaged in esoteric speculation pertaining to the heavenly sanctuaries; see BT ḥagigah 14b). Anonymous or pseudepigraphic as they are, these works display a distinct affinity with many of the mystical priestly traditions which envisaged humans and angels moving freely between the terrestrial and celestial realms. The authors of Heikhalot literature, however, were concerned solely with the ‘heavenly corpus’ of the secessionist priestly tradition—that dealing with the mystical metamorphoses of the Temple and the priesthood: Merkavah, angels, Enoch and sevenfold configurations, sacred song and Song of Songs, holy names and oaths. They disregarded the ‘earthly corpus’ and its preoccupation with the reclusive Community, its polemics revolving around the priesthood and the Temple, the halakhic controversies and dualistic conceptions reflecting the fierce struggle over supernatural authority, sacred tradition, and ritual pathways. The Heikhalot authors neutralized the oppositional disposition of the priestly traditions, for the terrestrial polemic had lost its import with the destruction of the Temple, the abolition of the high priesthood, and the cessation of the sacred service. What they preserved was the mystical nature of the Temple traditions pertaining to the heavenly world; their object was to perpetuate the traditions of the Temple (Heb. heikhal) and the priestly ritual, beyond the boundaries of time and place.