A midrash on the book of Psalms states: "Had the chapters of the Torah been given in their correct order, anyone who read them would have been enabled to raise the dead and work miracles; therefore, the Torah’s true order has been hidden and is known only to God."

The magical uses of the Torah are discussed in the book Shimmushei Torah ("Uses of the Torah"). According to the author(s) Moses received not only the accepted text of the Torah at Sinai, but another reading composed of Holy Names possessing magical significance. Reading the Torah according to the "Names" is a completely esoteric exercise. The Torah read in this manner focuses upon the concentration of divine power evinced in the various combinations of the letters of God’s Holy Names. From this premise was derived the magical belief that the Torah consisted of nothing other than the Great Name of God Himself. This Great Name was an expression of God’s being, which manifested itself through the act of creation.

This theory supposes a Torah that predated human existence. Thus God, in the process of creation, used the Torah as His instrument of genesis. This is another way of describing the process by which the Sefirot and the individual aspects of the Divine Names were emanated from the Ein-Sof. In this image the Torah represents the inner life of God and is referred to as "the primordial Torah" (Torah Kedumah), which is sometimes identified with the emanation of "Wisdom." Once revealed, the Torah is made manifest into the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. The origin of these two Torahs, acknowledged in all rabbinic thought as a dual gift at Sinai, is seen by the mystics through the emanations of Tiferet ("Beauty") and Malkhut ("Kingdom").

The thirteenth-century kabbalist, Joseph Gikatilla, described the relationship between the Torah and the letters of God’s name: "The entire Torah is like an explication of, and a commentary on, the Ineffable Name of God." How is this Ineffable Name explicated? The Torah is formed from the many names of God, out of which the one Ineffable Name emerges. This four-letter Name or Tetragrammaton can be compared to the mystic body of the Godhead. Indeed, God Himself is the soul of these ineffable letters.

This perspective suggests that the Torah is a living organism, and all its narratives and chapters are bound together in a single organic pattern.