The Golem

    To piggyback onto my last post, Dan Brown’s Secret of Secrets had a golem as a character. He explained the myth the book, but I wanted to know more. A golem is technically a being that was created from dust or mud or clay. It was most famously conjured up by a Jewish rabbi, Judah Loew ben Bezalel in order to protect the Jews from persecution in Prague during the 1500s. 

    The golem creation originated from a form of mystical Judaism called Kabbalah.  The golem has no soul and cannot think for himself, relying on instructions from his creator. According to the myth, the Prague golem became dangerous. The rabbi had to put it to sleep. He supposedly deactivated the golem by taking a magic parchment out of his mouth. The rabbi then hid the golem in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue. The attic is supposedly locked to this day. When the golem was alive, the Hebrew word “emet” was written on the golem’s forehead. When the golem was “turned-off” (not sure if it ever died), the rabbi changed the word to “met” or dead in Hebrew. 

    Parts of the myth date all the way back to the Book of Creation. Adam was an unformed mass or golem for the first twelve hours of his existence. The golem also is mentioned in the Bible, Psalm 139:16:

Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.

Unformed body in Hebrew means “golmi.”

    To conjure up a golem, one needs to chant parts of the Hebrew alphabet and write one of the names of God on the clay that is being used as the body. This ritual has been picked up by Wiccans, pagans and witches. Instead of clay, statues and dolls are sometimes substituted.
    Although the Prague golem is the most famous, others have conjured up golems. The first to create a golem may have been Abraham. In Midrashic tradition, he created golem animals and people. The sage Rava from the Book of Creation or Sefer Yetzirah created a golem and sent it to another rabbi to converse with. This golem wasn’t very talkative. The rabbi commanded the golem to “return to dust.” A couple of other rabbis created fat calves and then eat them.

    The golem is part of Czech culture. Walking tours and golem hunts are popular in the Jewish Quarter of Prague. The golem is a character in several video games such as Minecraft, Pokemon, Legend of  Zelda, and Dungeons and Dragons. Occult practitioners still attempt to create golems today.