Chaim Vital — Recorder of the Ari's Teachings

Nearly everything known about the teachings of Isaac Luria exists only because one devoted student spent years transcribing and systematizing lectures that his teacher himself never wrote down.

Chaim Vital (1543-1620) became Isaac Luria's principal disciple during the Ari's brief two years teaching in Safed, and after Luria's death in 1572, Vital took on the task of organizing his teacher's oral instruction into coherent written form. His central compilation, Etz Chaim, the Tree of Life, lays out the full architecture of Lurianic cosmology, while a companion volume, Shaar HaGilgulim, the Gate of Reincarnations, focuses specifically on the transmigration of souls, including categories like gilgul and ibbur. Vital reportedly restricted circulation of these writings during his lifetime, and manuscript copies spread gradually and sometimes through unauthorized copying before later printed editions made Lurianic Kabbalah widely accessible. Without Vital's transcription work, the entire Lurianic system would likely not have survived Luria's own early death.

Vital's transcriptions are the primary reason Lurianic Kabbalah survives at all, since Luria himself left almost no writings of his own.

Etz Chaim; Shaar HaGilgulim