Record #73
Golem
An artificial clay servant animated through sacred words and vulnerable to loss of control.
Original Text
In a book inspired by infinite wisdom, nothing can be left to chance, not even the number of words it contains or the order of the letters; this is what the Kabbalists thought, and they devoted themselves to the task of counting, combining, and permutating the letters of the Scriptures, fired by a desire to penetrate the secrets of God. Dante stated that every passage of the Bible has a fourfold meaning - the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the spiritual. Johannes Scotus Erigena, closer to the concept of divinity, had already said that the meanings of the Scriptures are infinite, like the hues in a peacock’s tail. The Kabbalists would have approved this view; one of the secrets they sought in the Bible was how to create living beings. It was said of demons that they could make large and bulky creatures like the camel, but were incapable of creating anything delicate or frail, and Rabbi Eliezer denied them the ability to produce anything smaller than a barley grain. ‘Golem’ was the name given to the man created by combinations of letters; the word means, literally, a shapeless or lifeless clod.
In the Talmud (Sanhedrin, 6;b) we read:
If the righteous wished to create a world, they could do so. By trying different combinations of the letters of the ineffable names of God, Raba succeeded in creating a man, whom he sent to Rabbi Zera. Rabbi Zera spoke to him, but as he got no answer, he said: ‘You are a creature of magic; go back to your dust.’
Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Oshaia, two scholars, spent every Sabbath eve studying the Book of Creation, by means of which they brought into being a three-year-old calf that they then used for the purposes of supper.
Schopenhauer, in his book Will in Nature, writes (Chapter 7): ‘On page 32; of the first volume of his Zauberbibliothek[Magic Library], Horst summarizes the teachings of the English mystic Jane Lead in this way: Whoever possesses magical powers can, at will, master and change the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms; consequently, a few magicians, working in agreement, could make this world of ours return to the state of Paradise.’
The Golem’s fame in the West is owed to the work of the Austrian writer Gustav Meyrink, who in the fifth chapter of his dream novel Der Golem (IgI;) writes:
It is said that the origin of the story goes back to the seventeenth century. According to lost formulas of the Kabbalah, a rabbi [Judah Loew ben Bezabel] made an artificial man - the aforesaid Golem - so that he would ring the bells and take over all the menial tasks of the synagogue.
He was not a man exactly, and had only a sort of dim, half-conscious, vegetative existence. By the power of a magic tablet which was placed under his tongue and which attracted the free sidereal energies of the universe, this existence lasted during the daylight hours.
One night before evening prayer, the rabbi forgot to take the tablet out of the Golem’s mouth, and the creature fell into a frenzy, running out into the dark alleys of the ghetto and knocking down those who got in his way, until the rabbi caught up with him and removed the tablet.
At once the creature fell lifeless. All that was left of him is the dwarfish clay figure that may be seen today in the New Synagogue.
Eleazar of Worms has preserved the secret formula for making a Golem. The procedures involved cover some twenty-three folio columns and require knowledge of the ‘alphabets of the 22I gates’, which must be recited over each of the Golem’s organs. The word Emet, which means ‘Truth’, should be marked on its forehead; to destroy the creature, the first letter must be obliterated, forming the word met, whose meaning is ‘death’ .
In the Talmud (Sanhedrin, 6;b) we read:
If the righteous wished to create a world, they could do so. By trying different combinations of the letters of the ineffable names of God, Raba succeeded in creating a man, whom he sent to Rabbi Zera. Rabbi Zera spoke to him, but as he got no answer, he said: ‘You are a creature of magic; go back to your dust.’
Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Oshaia, two scholars, spent every Sabbath eve studying the Book of Creation, by means of which they brought into being a three-year-old calf that they then used for the purposes of supper.
Schopenhauer, in his book Will in Nature, writes (Chapter 7): ‘On page 32; of the first volume of his Zauberbibliothek[Magic Library], Horst summarizes the teachings of the English mystic Jane Lead in this way: Whoever possesses magical powers can, at will, master and change the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms; consequently, a few magicians, working in agreement, could make this world of ours return to the state of Paradise.’
The Golem’s fame in the West is owed to the work of the Austrian writer Gustav Meyrink, who in the fifth chapter of his dream novel Der Golem (IgI;) writes:
It is said that the origin of the story goes back to the seventeenth century. According to lost formulas of the Kabbalah, a rabbi [Judah Loew ben Bezabel] made an artificial man - the aforesaid Golem - so that he would ring the bells and take over all the menial tasks of the synagogue.
He was not a man exactly, and had only a sort of dim, half-conscious, vegetative existence. By the power of a magic tablet which was placed under his tongue and which attracted the free sidereal energies of the universe, this existence lasted during the daylight hours.
One night before evening prayer, the rabbi forgot to take the tablet out of the Golem’s mouth, and the creature fell into a frenzy, running out into the dark alleys of the ghetto and knocking down those who got in his way, until the rabbi caught up with him and removed the tablet.
At once the creature fell lifeless. All that was left of him is the dwarfish clay figure that may be seen today in the New Synagogue.
Eleazar of Worms has preserved the secret formula for making a Golem. The procedures involved cover some twenty-three folio columns and require knowledge of the ‘alphabets of the 22I gates’, which must be recited over each of the Golem’s organs. The word Emet, which means ‘Truth’, should be marked on its forehead; to destroy the creature, the first letter must be obliterated, forming the word met, whose meaning is ‘death’ .