While his direct literary contribution to the Kabbalistic school of Safed was extremely minute (he wrote only a few poems), his spiritual fame led to their veneration and the acceptance of his authority.

[7] Sefer HaKavanot U'Ma'aseh Nissim records that one day, Luria's father remained in the synagogue alone, studying, when the prophet Elijah appeared to him and said, "I have been sent to you by the Almighty to bring you tidings that your holy wife shall conceive and bear a child, and that you must call him Yitzchak.

"[4] While still a child, Luria lost his father and was raised by his rich maternal uncle Mordechai Frances, a mültazim (tax farmer) from Cairo in Ottoman Egypt.

[7] Luria showed himself a diligent student of rabbinical literature and under the guidance of another uncle, Bezalel Ashkenazi, best known as the author of the Gathered Method (Hebrew: שיטה מקובצת), he became proficient in that branch of Jewish learning.

Around the age of twenty-two he became engrossed in the study of the Zohar, a major work of the Kabbalah that had recently been printed for the first time, and adopted the life of a recluse.

[citation needed] Soon Luria had two classes of disciples: novices, to whom he expounded elementary kabbalah, and initiates, who became the repositories of his secret teachings and his formulas of invocation and conjuration.

[citation needed] Many Jews who had been exiled from Spain following the Edict of Expulsion believed they were in the time of trial that would precede the appearance of the Messiah in Galilee.

Those who moved to Damascus Eyalet in anticipation of this event found a great deal of comfort in Luria's teachings due to his theme of exile.

[14] Luria delivered his lectures spontaneously, without ever writing down his ideas (with a few exceptions, including kabbalistic poems in rabbinical Aramaic for the Shabbat table).