Between Worlds. J. H. Chajes
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could never be totally eradicated. Collections were preserved and even enhanced from generation to generation by each recipient of the precious tomes. loan Couliano wrote of “an uninterrupted continuity of the methods of practical magic” stretching from late antiquity, via Byzantium, and, through Arab channels, reaching the West in the twelfth century.30 In Baroja’s words, “There is little difference between the spells which Celestina knew and used, and those enumerated in Latin texts.”31 Indeed, magical texts featuring exorcism techniques reveal a consistency over time that is positively unnerving to the historian, who by training and disposition is best equipped to analyze and evaluate change. The preservation of formulas is so significant that scholars have at times been able to reconstruct magical fragments from antiquity by using medieval materials, such as the readings of fifth-century clay tablets assisted by eleventh-century Geniza fragments accomplished by Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked.32
The use of Hebrew names in non-Jewish rites would continue over the centuries, evincing the enduring and highly syncretistic nature of these traditions. Thus the frequent appearance in Catholic exorcism rites of the Hebrew magical name AGLA, the acrostic of the phrase Atah Gibbor Le-‘olam Adonai, “You are mighty forever, my Lord.”33 Jews and Christians used this magical name, connoting as it did divine judgment and severity, in cases of possession, demonic disturbance, or for all-purpose protection. Yet the presence of Hebrew in Christian rites did not find favor in the eyes of all Church authorities. Martín de Castañega, the Franciscan friar whose views on possession by the dead have been noted above, took pains in his Tratado to denounce the use of Hebrew words in Christian exorcisms:
It seems a vain thing, and even a lack of faith, and from the Jewish quarter [judería], or superstition, to use ancient Hebrew names in Christian and Catholic prayers, as if the old names were worth more than the new. And such names are especially dangerous for the ignorant who know little, because those Hebrew and Greek names may serve as a cover, so that other unknown, diabolical names are spoken with them.34
Castañega’s conflation of Judaizing, superstition, magic, and diabolism typifies a critique of the syncretistic tradition going back to the early Christian centuries.35 It is echoed by Daniel Defoe, who charged in his 1727 work A System of Magick; or, A History of the Black Art that magicians depended on books filled with Hebrew and Arabic, alongside altogether nonsensical words and symbols. This, he felt, placed them in league with the demonolatrous necromancers of hoary antiquity. Magicians “make a great deal of Ceremony with their Circles and Figures, with Magical Books, Hebrew or Arabick Characters, muttering of hard Words, and other Barbarisms innumerable; Just, in a word, as the old Necromancers do, when they consult with the Devil.”36 The reputation of Hebrew words for magical efficacy and this syncretic tradition were not limited to the Christian world nor even to the Middle Ages. A more recent witness, from the beginning of the twentieth century, testified that “At present in Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus, Jewish silversmiths carry on a large trade in Moslem amulets. In fact an amulet is supposed to have special power if it has not only Arabic but Hebrew letters on it.”37
Medieval Jewish Exorcism
Shoshan Yesod ha-‘Olam (Lily, Foundation of the World) is perhaps the most comprehensive extant late medieval magical Hebrew manuscript.38 Most of the manuscript, in its present form, was compiled in the early decades of the sixteenth century by R. Joseph Tirshom, a kabbalist based in Salonika about whom little is known. Tirshom was exposed to magico-mystical traditions from around the Jewish world, and his great manuscript bears witness to this range of experience. In Salonika, Tirshom became acquainted with material that arrived with Spanish exiles as well as with members of the city’s Ashkenazi community, including his teacher, R. Meir ha-Levi.39 Tirshom also traveled widely and discovered magical works in Damascus, Jerusalem, Egypt, and other Jewish communities in the Levant, many of which he copied whole cloth into his comprehensive compilation.40 Some of these he copied from Judeo-Arabic works, apparently intending to have them translated subsequently into Hebrew; Tirshom does not seem to have understood Arabic himself.41
Shoshan Yesod ha-‘Olam was a pivotal text in the transmission of Jewish magical traditions. First of all, it included significant passages and even entire works from earlier strata in the history of Jewish magic, including material from texts and teachers who played a central role in the development of Safedian Kabbalah. Tirshom copied from Sefer ha-Meshiv, perhaps the most important work from late medieval Spain to provide the theoretical under-pinnings of dybbuk possession as well as traditions in the name of individuals such as R. Ḥayyim Ashkenazi, a mystic acquainted with the father of Vital and whose prophecies regarding Ḥayyim Vital are noted in the latter’s journal.42 Second, Shoshan Yesod ha-‘Olam was clearly an important manuscript for the mystical inheritors of Luria’s legacy. Autographs and annotations in the margins indicate that it passed through the hands of important redactors of Lurianic literature, including R. Ya‘aqov Ẓemaḥ, and even caught the attention of no less a striking figure than Sabbetai Sevi, whose signature appears on page 522!43 Additions to the manuscript—including a commentary on Luria’s sabbath meal hymns—are in a mixture of Spanish and Ashkenazic handwriting, indicating that it found a home among the Ashkenazi sages who studied with Sephardic authorities in Jerusalem in the early seventeenth century; other additions exhibit a liberal use of Ladino.44 In short, just as Tirshom copied copiously from earlier works as well as from his contemporaries, his great manuscript became an important source for subsequent generations of practical kabbalists and copyists.
Shoshan Yesod ha-‘Olam is full of exorcism rituals. Although many techniques are suggested in the manuscript, the ingredients that go into most of them would be found in every good magician’s cabinets. The procedures almost universally call for the adjuration of spirits, some angelic and some demonic, in the classic form “I adjure you angel so-and-so to come and to do such-and-such.” The exorcist must adjure the appropriate angel for the job, because each day has its own angel who must be enlisted for the operation to be a success. The procedures have much in common with those found on the magical bowls of antiquity as well as with those of the PGM. Bowls are still very much in use—they are written upon, erased, and filled with living waters made murky by the erasure. The potion is then given to the possessed to drink. Other passages suggest that deer skin be used in lieu of a bowl or that the magical names be written directly upon the forehead and arms of the possessed. Psalms, foremost among them the famous antidemonic Psalm 91, also have their uses here, suggesting parallels going back to Qumran and forward to the Rituale Romanum.45 Elsewhere, the exorcist is advised to supplement the recitation of two chapters of Psalms with the use of leaves from a date palm that has not yet produced fruit.46 Finally, it is important to note that most techniques suggested for treating spirit possession have other uses as well—they are truly broad-spectrum remedies. Shoshan Yesod ha-‘Olam includes a technique that promises to offer protection from injuries, doubts and fears, bad dreams, business negotiation problems, crying children, women having difficulty in labor, dangers of travel, and demonic afflictions.47 Another technique is said to have the power to confuse and confound one’s enemy, while also being capable of exorcising a demon and exiling someone from his or her place of residence.48 The ability to treat disparate problems with one solution stems from a belief that the problems had a common etiology, often astrologically or sympathetically understood.
Quite nearly at random, then, we may choose from the many techniques of adjuration exorcism in Shoshan Yesod ha-‘Olam to exemplify the “pre-Lurianic” approach. Little had changed in the composition of such techniques since antiquity, as a cursory comparison with our PGM text well demonstrates. In one exorcism technique recorded by Tirshom (§511), the exorcist-magician is given the following instructions in order “[t]o remove a demon [shed] from the body of a man or woman, or anything into which a male or female demon has entered”:
Take an empty flask and a white waxen candle, and recite this adjuration in purity:
I adjure you, the holy and pure angels Michael, Raphael, Shuviel, Ahadriel, Zumtiel, Yeḥutiel, Zumẓiel …. By 72 names I adjure you, you all the retinues of spirits in the world—Be-‘ail Laḥush and