What is the Dybbuk ? Spirit Possession and Exorcism in the Kabbalah

in the first part of this two-part series on the history of possession and exorcism in judaism we explored the first thousand years in the development of this concept from the ancient near east to roughly the roman period there we saw that possession and exorcism were relatively minor concepts in ancient israelite theology despite being relatively ubiquitous among their neighbors however during the babylonian exile it appears that a substantial number of zoroastrian religious ideas were imported into israelite theology thus setting the ground for a substantial increase in the general supernatural ecology of ancient israelite religion and therefore judaism it was a period following the babylonian exile starting in 586 bce that saw a substantial increase in the population of supernatural entities specifically angels and demons in israelite theology and it was around the turn of the common era that the concept of possession and exorcism really flourished in ancient judaism this is attested in a wide variety of sources from the dead sea scrolls to the stories of jesus of nazareth in the new testament to the philosopher philo of alexandria and including the jewish roman historian josephus however following the destruction of the jerusalem temple and the disastrous revolt led by barcokba judaism underwent a major religious pivot rather than being a religion centered on a single cultic site following an elaborate system of ritual sacrifices pilgrimage holidays and a highly developed priestly cast judaism would rapidly develop into several different academic schools and elaborate literature the temple vacation of the home and the emergence of a new class of religious leaders the rabbis judaism would emerge from the wreckage of this period although with a whole host of angels and demons in tow indeed it's during the rabbinical period that entirely new forms of mysticism will appear and with those forms of mysticism new forms of possession and exorcism i hope you'll join me in this episode of esoteric as we explore the development of possession and exorcism during the rabbinical period and the rise of the kabbalah including the infamous case of the dybbic i'm dr justin sledge and welcome to esoterica where we explore the arcane side of history philosophy and religion [Music] judaism emerged like a phoenix from the ashes of the destruction of the temple-based religious worship of the first century of the common era facing what they rightly thought was a religious extinction event the rabbis sought to commit to writing what at that point had only been transmitted orally from teacher to student this hybrid of both oral and written literature blossomed into the enormous literary output of the early rabbinical period with the mishnah being redacted sometime around 200 of the common era followed by the palestinian talmud around 400 and the cornerstone of rabbinical judaism the massive babylonian talmud being redacted sometime around 500 or 600 of the common era further texts the rabbinical lore and legend such as the midrash literature would be completed in the remaining years of the first millennium what is curious about this vast literature at least for our purposes is that despite the popularity of possession and exorcism narratives from the centuries prior this strata of literature is conspicuously missing just those type of narratives indeed even discussions of angelic and demonic entities in this literature is distributed in a highly uneven way for instance the babylonian talmud is replete with stories about demons and includes even magical ways of repulsing them while the jerusalem talmud composed only as few centuries prior is basically bereft of these type of narratives despite the fact that the babylonian talmud does have a great deal to say about the world of the demonic there are very few narratives of demonic possession and exorcism in its over 35 volumes i find this conspicuous but despite numerous discussions of the shedding or demons as the babylonian talmud typically refers to them there are less than a handful of possession and exorcism cases described in that vast literature before attempting to explain why this absence seems to occur in the early rabbinical literature i want to turn and take a look at the few references that do occur in the talmud in tractate sanhedrin there is a curious remark about what seems to be the practice of a kind of voluntary necromantic possession at 65b we see the rabbis discussing the finer points of sorcery and necromancy because of course they're discussing the finer points of sorcery and necromancy but we see them there lamenting a sinister practice here they make an oblique reference to a practice in which one would fast and then go sleep in a graveyard such that an unclean spirit a ruach to ma would fall upon that person now it isn't clear exactly why someone would fast and sleep in a graveyard in order for a ruach tuma an unclean spirit to fall upon them although if we read the later commentaries of arashi it's classic necromancy they're actually using this ruach tuma as a way of learning about the future despite this reference we're not told much more about this practice of what appears to be a kind of voluntary necromantic possession by an unclean spirit however rabbi akiva does make an interesting kind of complaint about this practice for him he laments the fact that people would go into a graveyard to welcome an unclean spirit whereas he wished that people would actually go and attempt to have a clean spirit or a pure spirit come upon them but his lamentation takes the form of the idea that this generation is simply not righteous enough to have a kind of pure spirit fall upon them and there is some indication that if one were to welcome a pure spirit it would also give one supernatural insight or perhaps supernatural powers again we're not quite sure because this reference is so oblique but what is worth noticing here is that rabbi akiva seems to have the idea that both clean and unclean spirits can perhaps possess a person thus giving them some kind of supernatural power retain that idea that both unclean but also pure spirits can possess the living this idea is going to become very important later in the development of the kabbalah in another account in the babylonian talmud we're told about the famed galilean miracle worker and remember this idea of the galilean miracle worker covers both jesus of nazareth but also several other major rabbinical figures including khoni the circle maker and the character that we're going to talk about now hanita mendoza in this account we're told that hanina bendosa is immersing himself for ritual purification perhaps in a cave in the galilee where a group of samaritans actually try to wall him up inside the cave for whatever reasons it's not clear some spirits or demons actually go to the cave remove the rocks so that hanina mendoza can get out of the cave and then go on to bother some old lady for whatever reason sometime after this bendosa is actually called to exercise or drive these demons away from this elderly woman and interestingly enough it's the exact same spirits or demons that remove the rocks from the cave thus saving him but are also possessing or at least bothering this older woman of course this creates some drama because as soon as mendoza attempts to drive these spirits away from this elderly woman they immediately claim hey we also just saved you from being walled up by the samaritans why are you doing this to us now we're not told exactly how bendosa manages this conflict of interest but we are told that he is successful in driving these spirits are these demons away from the elderly woman now exactly how it all turned out the text remains relatively unclear in another really interesting story mendoza is said to encounter the queen of the demons along with her vast demonic army now according to the text prior to hanena mendoza rebuking her she's basically allowed out every night to basically do whatever demons do kill people and torture them and possess them i suppose but after hanina mendoza rebukes her the knights that she's allowed out are limited to certain years in the religious jubilee cycle of the jewish year what's interesting here is that hanina mendoza is basically able to strike a deal with the queen of the demons his supernatural power is at least substantial enough to force her into submission such that she's only allowed out during certain nights of the jubilee cycle and of course during those specific years during the jubilee cycle the babylonian talmud warns us well don't be out on those nights because you know the queen of the demons is out there rampaging with her demonic army so in another narrative in the babylonian talmud we're told of a situation in which the roman government basically passes a decree which makes jewish religious life impossible in order to counter this decree the rabbi sent another galilean miracle worker this time shimon bar yochai to the roman government in order to overturn the decree of course shimon bar yochai is sent precisely because he is known to be able to work miracles in this relatively short and somewhat fragmentary story we're told that shimon bar yochai does make his way to rome only to find that the daughter of the emperor is actually possessed by a demon named ben tamaleon and of course shimon bar yochai promptly drives that demon out now for having driven this demon out of the emperor's daughter shimoba yokai is basically granted a wish and of course what he immediately does is go in and tear up the decree that he was sent there to undo thus in some sense accomplishing his task using the power of exorcism to at least indirectly end the decree banning jewish religious life what's interesting about this narrative is that in a later account we have a pretty substantial revision of just what goes on in this story in that later version the demon possessing the roman emperor's daughter isn't male it's female in fact shimon bar yochai actually sees the demon sitting on top of the mast of the ship that's going to take him to rome and more interestingly than that shimon bar yochai actually commands the demoness to go and possess the roman emperor's daughter it's in fact shimon bar yochai according to this later version of the story that actually sets up the possession to begin with only to make his way to rome and fix it thus being able to null this decree against the jewish people in this later version of the story shimon bar yochai's supernatural power is in some sense extended not only is he capable of exercising the daughter of the roman emperor he's in some sense capable of actually causing her to be possessed in the first case thus using the entire possession exorcism cycle as a kind of elaborate foil to get the decree made by the romans against the jewish people lifted so needless to say this later version is a lot more colorful than the earlier version that we see in other places in the babylonian entanglement of course as you may know shimon bar yochai is known for his deep hatred of the roman empire and it's actually shimon rayochi that will go on to be the mythical author of the safer zohar and thus in some sense tied very intimately with jewish mysticism and jewish occultism for centuries to come finally we come to a story about a spirit-possessed well this story is interesting again because it's not a spirit-possessed person but rather a well that has a spirit in fact there are two spirits in the story and it's very clear that this narrative was very popular i think there are at least six different versions of this story that populate themselves throughout rabbinical literature in this story we're told that a female spirit has actually taken up residence in a local spring but eventually along comes a male spirit who wants to copulate with the female spirit and apparently drive her out it's relatively clear that this male spirit coming along later is rather malevolent so we have a character named abba yossi he's sometimes referred to as the ish zatur the man of zetor is visiting this spring and the female spirit comes to him and says basically look i've been living in this spring for quite some time and i've never harmed anyone however there's an evil spirit a male spirit coming and that male spirit is going to harm people and if you want to get rid of them i can show you how what's worth noting here is that the character is referred to as abba yoshi the man of zetor he's not referred to here as a rav or a rabbi the title abba our father is often linked for whatever reason in many stories found in the midrash and in the talmud with someone specifically able to deal with supernatural problems specifically demonic possession so the use of this term abba prompts the reader to know that this person has some kind of special relationship with the world of the supernatural so how does the female spirit warn the town's people and abba yoshi to drive off this malevolent male spirit or demon well what they're commanded to do is take various kinds of steel implements one thinks of farm implements here and go out at noon near the well or near the spring and bang them together make a very loud racket and they must say over and over again victory is ours victory is ours well apparently after doing this elaborate ritual which again involved the entire town's people the male demon is driven away from the well and to give proof of this a clot of blood actually appears on the surface of the water showing that the demon the male demon here has vanished away from the spring or the well now we're not told exactly what the fate of the female spirit is here one would hope that given the fact that she alerted the townspeople to the presence of this malevolent other spirit that she's allowed to live in the well again she says that she's never harmed anyone and therefore given that fact one would hope that she would be allowed to live here in the spring are this well of course this idea of spirits living in wells and springs among other kinds of natural places was very common in the ancient world and very common through cultures one thinks for instance of the kami in japanese mythology but the idea here of a spirit living in this well would have been very common in the roman or the sasanian ideas to be found at this time and again what we have that's interesting is that there's a range of attitudes that one could have about these spirits some of which are relatively benign and neutral and some of which are malevolent and we actually have a kind of supernatural proxy war between the various spirits some of which are neutral and some of which are malevolent involving humans driving away the bad ones so that the good ones or at least the neutral ones in this case are allowed to remain in their homes so again a pretty popular story here like i said it occurs i think six different times in various versions in the rabbinical literature the one we're looking at here is from midrash vaikuraba and what's interesting i suppose about this story is that we have here the idea that a spirit can set up residence in a well in their rabbinical imagination something that we certainly don't see at all anywhere in the hebrew bible aside from this handful of tales literature about exorcism in the early rabbinical literature is relatively scant as i mentioned earlier and i think i have a few reasons why this might be the case i think one of the reasons why we may see a dearth in exorcism narratives here at least in the babylonian context is a shift in anti-demonic technology while exorcism seems to have been the primary anti-demonic technology in turn of the common era of palestine that technology seems to have shifted in the area in which the babylonian talmud was redacted in this context the primary anti-demonic technology seems to have shifted to the use of demon capturing bowls these bowls which have been recovered in the thousands are typically inscribed with incantations around the inside perimeter of the bowl and even often have images of the kinds of demons they wish to capture at the very bottom of the bowl these bowls are typically produced and then buried upside down under the lentils of houses in the areas in which the babylonian tamarind was redacted these demon warding or demon capturing bowls perhaps represent a shift in anti-demonic technology away from exorcism and rather to a kind of execration magic such that these demons are either trapped or warded off rather than actually being exercised once they possess people of course with the demons trapped or otherwise repulsed using these demonic magic bowls or perhaps even with the use of the magical understanding of the mezuzah you simply don't need exorcism as much if at all if demons aren't getting into the homes of people in order to possess them well you don't need much in the way of exorcism so what we may have here in the context of the babylonian entanglement in the cultural system that produce that literature is simply a shift in anti-demonic technology away from exorcism and to the use of these anti-demon bulls secondly there may just be a shift in attitudes toward possession and exorcism within judaism itself given the rise of christianity as you'll remember from the first episode of this series if jesus hadn't been known as the messiah of a new religion he almost certainly would have been known primarily as a very successful healer and exorcist in early christianity really adopted these exorcistic narratives as a very important part of its identity indeed if you read the book of acts one of the very early claims to fame of the jesus movement is of its adherence ability to drive out demons specifically in the name of jesus and this ability to drive out demons was taken to be proof at least to early christians of the truth of their faith it is only if their faith were true that they would have power over these kinds of supernatural malevolent entities it may have been the case that insofar as exorcism became a cornerstone practice of the early jesus movement and in turn early christianity that rabbinical authority simply removed themselves from this practice so one could say in some sense that in the divorce of christianity and judaism christianity kind of got exorcism yeah religion is weird but you can see how if christianity begins to see itself as a exercising religion or as a religion who really takes exorcism very seriously judaism might be distancing itself from those practices in order to show look we're not like those weird christians our religion is not like that so perhaps we do something different in order to drive out demons perhaps these demon bowls or other kinds of practices but at any rate one can see that in the division perhaps between christianity and judaism it's largely christianity that's going to take up the ideas of exorcism possession whereas judaism perhaps is going to back off those ideas precisely in order to distinguish itself away from the rise of early christianity finally and perhaps the last reason why records about exorcisms from this period may be scant is that in general after the composition of the babylonian talmud records in literature in the jewish world simply go silent for several hundred years it may be the case that exorcisms were taking place in the jewish world but the records describing them simply haven't survived what does seem to survive are very fragmentary records which do mention at least obliquely something like exorcistic rituals we have for instance the idea that one can mix oil and water together and this combination of oil and water allows a person to drive a demon out although exactly what this ritual looked like and how exactly it was performed remains very mysterious although it's worth noting that during this time period there are a handful of jewish magical texts which survive such as the seifer harazim and the harba moshe which do describe the ability to control demons in those texts although notice that's slightly different than exorcism having some power over demonic forces is slightly different than being able to cast them out of people's bodies in addition to those two texts there's also a text called safer ketsi which unfortunately is very fragmentary and it seems that in that text we're also getting some sense of how to control demons and perhaps how to exercise them from people who are possessed unfortunately that text is in a very bad state of preservation and it's difficult to get any information out of it at all it's also worth noting that a handful of exorcistic texts have also been recovered from the chiroguniza although it's not quite clear when these date from all this indicates that at least at some level there were exorcistic practices in judaism from the late classical period all the way into the early medieval period although as i mentioned records from this period are extremely scant we simply don't know to what degree and to what extent possession and exorcism were major or minor aspects of jewish life and in what areas just how those communities interacted with the concept of possession and exorcism perhaps varied enormously from cultural context to cultural context though it's worth driving this point home that from roughly 500 to 1500 of the common era there are basically no exorcism narratives recovered from the jewish world again while magical records and magical texts certainly were produced during this period again going back to the sephirah regime and its ability to manipulate demons we simply don't have much in the way of possession and exorcism narratives stretching over this nearly 1000 year period and indeed it isn't until the rise of the kabbalah in the late medieval in the early modern period that we begin to see new forms of exorcism and possession emerge indeed it isn't until the rise of the kabbalah and specifically the lurianic kabbalah that we see that begin to change it is in that context the context of the rise of the lurianic kabbalah that we see new forms of possession and exorcism begin to take place and it is in that context that we see the appearance for the first time of the dybbuk by the european high middle ages jewish population centers in europe would have stabilized in france germany and spain and it is in those centers that we see the rise of a new form of jewish mysticism the kabbalah of course the development and rise of rarely kabbalah remains one of the most obscure and difficult aspects in the study of jewish mysticism and i'm not going to try to rehash all of that here the two main points that matter for us at least in the context of this episode is the rise of german pietism or the khaste ashkenaz in medieval germany and the subsequent rise of the kabbalah as it appears in the form of the safer zohar in medieval spain what's crucially important to understand about the rise of khaste ashkenaz or german pietism in medieval germany are two things one the deep interest in that movement in jewish occultism many of the jewish magical and mystical texts from previous periods actually survive only because they were copied in this context so here we have a community deeply interested in what we might term jewish occultism secondly it's worth pointing out that the khasti ashkenaz were among the most pessimistic in the history of jewish religious communities this likely points out their historical context that is to say the extreme violence that they faced at the hands of christians specifically the hands of crusaders and it's from that extreme pessimism that we have a religious culture absolutely dominated by the forces of evil and specifically very interested in the realm of the demonic indeed it's from this cultural context that will see the rise of jewish magic specifically to fight the world of the demonic in fact it's in this milieu that we will see for the first time the development of the idea of the golem in a very concrete way it's in the commentaries of folks like eliezer of verms where we will see the idea of the golem this religious pessimism would be taken up in various degrees by the earliest strata of the kabbalah sometimes this early pessimism is referred to by grisham sholum as a kind of gnostic kabbalah in which the world is seen as primarily evil and the fundamental task of the mystic is to escape this world rife with evil and the demonic indeed one can read the central text of the kabbalah the safer zohar as a text not only brimming with light and illumination but also in some sense just as filled with alienation cosmic tragedy and positively filled with the power of the demonic the zohar's near obsession with the world of the demonic can be found even in commentaries on what appear to be passing references in the hebrew bible for instance in the book of genesis there is a basically passing reference to a list of edomite kings well that's no mere list of edomite kings if you're a reader of the safer zohar in the zohar's commentary that list of edomite kings becomes part of the theosophy for the creation endurance and persistence of cosmic evil itself again one can argue that the safer zohar as much as it is a book of light and illumination is just as much a book detailing the world of demonic darkness and horror in the aftermath of the spanish expulsions of 1492 many mystically inclined jewish refugees would actually settle in the homeland of the zohar's hero shimon baryochae in the upper galilee and it was in this new kabbalistic milieu and sfat are safeed in the 16th century that would give rise to new forms of possession and exorcism reflecting this deep concern on the part of the kabbalist with the great light of the godhead and the great darkness of the demonic though central to these new forms of possession and exorcism is going to be the novel kombalistic concept of gilgal or the transmigration or reincarnation of souls in previous forms of jewish mysticism such as the merkava mysticism the task of the mystic was to descend into the various palaces of god until ultimately arriving in the divine throne room thus receiving a form of divine illumination however with the development of the kabbalah the goal of the mystic became far grander in the kabbalah one is not simply experiencing a mystical insight for oneself here the goal of the kabbalistic mystic is nothing short of the metaphysical reparation of both the cosmos and the godhead according to luria and vital the process of cosmic reparation begins with our very souls and our souls actually stretch back from body to body through a process of reincarnation our gill ghoul which itself stretches all the way back to a kind of root soul as they put it at the very beginning of creation itself just as the cosmos itself must be repaired through the process of tikkun olam so too must our individual souls be subject to the exact same kind of reparation thus the higher levels of our soul there are five levels of the soul in classical lyrianic kabbalah these various higher levels of the soul are actually reincarnated from body to body either inching forward toward the world of unification through the use of good deeds and the following of the commandments or the meets vote are they slowly degraded into the world of evil by committing various kinds of sins so life after life or reincarnation after reincarnation our souls are either reaching up through the levels of unification to being reunited with the divine oneness or they're reaching down further into the world of the demonic through various acts of sin which further degrade and destroy our souls according to luria in vital in addition to the longer process of gilgul there are two temporary states which may either hinder or render a boon to the soul in its process up toward the supernal realm or down into the realm of the demonic are the clippot the shards of creation itself those temporary states are either falling victim to a dybbuk or receiving the divine boon of ebor we'll explore both of these in turn but let's turn to the dybbuk first according to luria's theory acts of goodness help to restore one's soul back to the realm of divine goodness whereas acts of evil or sin pull one's soul back into the world of evil if one were to commit enough evil or perhaps a singularly evil deed worthy of karate or ritual excommunication then it's possible that one soul simply leaves the cycle of gilgal altogether and roams about the world disconnected from the very cycle of reincarnation itself unfortunately being cut off from the cycle of gilgal is rather dreadful and one attempts to be unified with anything living including non-human animals and anything holy including synagogues but unfortunately because of the unholy condition of the soul one is repulsed by anything good so if one is unable to enter for instance into a home or a synagogue that is protected by the mezuzot or the ritual scroll put on the doorpost of observant jewish homes further the amputated soul becomes rather ravenous for life itself it seems as if the condition of being separated from the bodies in some sense spiritually agonizing and because it was precisely the evil of one's life that separated one's soul from one's body or separated one's soul from the process of gilgal the disembodied spirit often becomes rather vengeful and hostile despite the fact that it craves to be reunited with the body when these disembodied spirits are reunified with the body they cling to that body and desperately seek not to be separated from it again and it's from this clinging that these entities get their name they're called dibbuk from the hebrew dabak which means to cling or to hold on to in fact the modern word for glue devec actually comes from the exact same root or shoresh what's crucially important to note here is that dybbic possession is radically different than previous forms of spiritual possession in those previous forms of possession it was demonic entities that were doing the possessing in this case rather it's the evil dead it's spirits of people who for whatever reason in their life committed sin so grave that they were expelled from the process of reincarnation and were forced to roam around the world seeking someone else seeking another body to re-inhabit here under the influence of the lurianic kabbalah there's a shift away from possession by demonic entities to possession by the evil dead i mean not that evil dead that's kondari and demons the naganomicon where they won't help you with dybbuks i i don't think but notice here right that the possession is occurring by basically ghosts as opposed to demons the first major and well-known dybbuk possession case was publicized in february of 1571 and is usually referred to as the falcon debit case or the great event in saphed it's known as the falcon debit case because it was the rabbi elijah falcon who first composed and publicized the events that took place there though i should point out there were a couple of cases of exorcism and possession in saffid in the earlier 16th century in which the exorcist in that case was none other than the famed jurist and kabulist joseph caro in the falcon debit case or the great event in sapphire we have a young woman she's never named who's possessed by the dybbuk of a man named samuel zafarti what's interesting is that samuel safarti is either her brother-in-law or her uncle by marriage it's never entirely clear to me exactly what relationship she had with this man though it seems from the details of the case that he died at tripoli and lived a relatively profligate and somewhat heretical lifestyle in fact he seems to have declared during his life that quote all religions were the same again this idea would have been heretical and perhaps is the condition for his soul being cut off and thus becoming a dybbuk it's also worth noting that there are very strong sexual undertones to the entire dibit case this is not uncommon in many spirit possession cases here we have the idea that samuel may have had some kind of inappropriate relationship with the young woman he's currently possessing and in fact when the rabbis question him about why exactly he's possessing this woman he says that he can do so and it basically insinuates that he's sort of spiritually copulating with her that he says that he can do so because her husband well is in salonika so he could kind of do what he wants so there's definitely some very strong and not so subtle sexual undertones in the entire case here of the falcon debit case we'll actually see that exact same dimension the fact that many debits will actually have a kind of sexual relationship with their host all throughout many of the early and developing stories in the debit cases as they come into the literature well the exorcists in this case want to further check to see whether or not this woman is in fact possessed by the dybbuk of samuel tsufarti and what they do is actually check to see which languages she knows and doesn't know samuel apparently knew some languages that she didn't know for instance she apparently seems to know yiddish whereas he didn't but he seems to have known turkish and other languages and it seems that the way they vet this process is by speaking to the dibicon languages that only he would know whereas when they speak to the debit in a language for instance that the victim here would know yiddish he can't respond so it seems like this knowledge of languages at some level proves that the dybic is in fact the ghost of samuel tsufarti also it's the case that she seems to know all kinds of interesting facts about his life that she would otherwise not know for whatever reason at this point they're relatively convinced that it is in fact the ghost or the dybbuk of samuel zafarti that is possessed this young woman and they proceed with the exorcism which primarily involves the threat of excommunication the use of sulfur as a kind of incense and various incantations and psalms being repeated over and over again we're told in somewhat disturbing detail how this possessed young woman was able to breathe in large amounts of burning sulfur without ever reacting this is an important detail it actually may come into the story here in an important way in just a moment and you'll remember all the way back to the ancient near east and all the way to the ancient greek magical papyri that the burning of sulfur has been long used in the history of ancient near east exorcisms to drive out demons so it's interesting to see here all the way into the year of 1571 sulfur is still being burned in order to drive demons out of possessed people at any rate we're told toward the end of the exorcism that she becomes violent they attempt to cover her body to protect her modesty but that the dybbuk itself is actually going to exit her body via her vagina and there's an indication that the sign the dibik has left is that there's actually a discharge of blood uh from her vagina showing that the dybbic has in fact left now unfortunately several days later it appears that the divik actually repossesses this young woman will see this motif happen in many different dybbuk stories of this time where the dybbuk will be expelled only to come back several days later and actually killed the host of the person that they had possessed this unfortunately happens to this young woman in which allegedly she was choked to death by the dybbuk although one may wonder and i certainly do to what degree did this young woman being subjected to perhaps hours of inhaling burning sulfur contribute to her early demise but at any rate this motif as i mentioned of the dybbic being successfully exercised only to return later is a common motif in many of these early dybbic exorcism stories in the years following the falcon dybbuk possession case numerous other dybbuk stories appear and it's in this period that khaim vital is appointed by rabbi itzhak luria as a kind of chief exorcist in this area if you're interested in reading the falcon debut possession case or the other dybbuk possession cases from this period stay tuned toward the end of the video i'll introduce some books which contain translations of these accounts so take a look at those toward the end of the video and you can also check those links out in the description below these other dybic possession cases include a wide range of very fascinating material in their accounts especially things dealing with widespread sexual immorality in the community the possessed person knowing the various secret sins of various members of the community the disembodied dead actually provide something like a travelogue in some cases where they'll describe all the various places that they've gone to in this disembodied state one of the really interesting stories is how one of the dybbuks actually climbs into a deer and the deer is pregnant and the debit describes how horribly cramped and uncomfortable it was to be inside this deer unfortunately being inside this pregnant deer with the dybbuk eventually kills the deer and the dybbuk is forced out and goes on the prowl looking for another host in other accounts we actually learned how people became possessed by badibik and in most cases it's a relatively minor sin for instance there was a case in which a dybbuk wanted to possess a woman but it wasn't until that woman actually burned herself slightly and uttered a curse word this very minor sin and it's by uttering that curse word that allowed the debate to actually enter into her body so we learn all kinds of interesting stories about how exactly the debit can actually get into the body of a person or what kind of buildings a debit can and cannot enter and further we're also told of the various mechanisms by which one can exercise a dybbuk and what's interesting about these mechanisms is it's a kind of experimentation going on no one really knows exactly how with the exception of its like luria of course he knows exactly how to get rid of dybbix but aside from his esoteric knowledge no one really knows quite what they're doing and so there's a wide range of experimentation going on for just how to expel these demons and of course this is very unlike exorcism that's going on in the catholic world this time in which there are very strict rituals and protocols for how to engage in exorcism here in the jewish world this phenomena in some sense is radically new or at least relatively new or at least it hasn't happened in a thousand years or so no one really knows exactly what to do and so there's a wide range of experimental exorcistic techniques being used in order to drive these dybbuks out if you're interested some of these techniques include the use of divine names some of these require that the exorcists engage in certain kinds of aesthetic practices there's the repetition of various psalms and various specific kinds of orders in order to drive the dybbuk out there's also interestingly the use of the threat of nedui nadui is a kind of temporary excommunication in which the idea here is that the soul is already in a bad enough state but if it's further excommunicated it may be in a worse state and using the threat of nadui would actually drive the dibik out so the idea here is your situation is bad you're already a dybbuk but it can be worse so you might as well leave and go somewhere else and of course on the other side of further threatening them with things like nadui there's also the possibility of trying to help them get back on the path of gilgal on the path of reincarnation and this is the idea that one may study torah on behalf of the dybbuk or one may say kaddish on their behalf and the idea here is that by attempting to do greich's deeds on their behalf that might allow the dybbuk to leave the world of dibikdom to victim it will allow them to leave the world of dibicdum and perhaps re-enter the process of gilgul such they can get back on the right track so to speak of having their soul ultimately reunified with the divine so as you can see in these early dybic accounts there's a wide range of how one might become a dybbic there's a wide range of what can happen once one is possessed by a dybbuk and there is a kind of experimental quality in just how to get the debit to be removed and as i've mentioned earlier in many of these cases the exorcism actually fails either the person dies who is possessed are the dybbuk returns as you'll remember from the ancient near east exorcistic practices it wasn't uncommon when they expelled a ghost or a demon to actually provide some kind of backup system to prevent the demon or the ghost from repossessing the living in this case it would be the use of amulets or perhaps other kinds of symbols and other kinds of rituals to prevent that repossession from happening notice here that repossession is happening sometimes it actually kills the person being repossessed and it's in that light that will have the rise of not just exorcism rituals in the debit cases but also additional amulets and other kinds of safeguards to prevent exactly repossession what's perhaps most crucially important about these late 16th century debit possession case narratives and there are about 12 of these by the end of the 16th century is that they are both printed and distributed into the wider jewish world and their veracity is attested to by some of the leading figures in the development of early modern judaism for instance alphabets the author of the famed hymn for kabbalah shabbat lecha dodi actually signed his name onto the facts of the falcon possession case thus lending his kabbalistic approval to the idea that the events that are described in that case in fact happened and further menasha been israel one of the leading figures in the jewish world at the time edited and reprinted the falcon possession case himself thus further allowing the idea that this case was in fact authentic menasha ben israel was seen as a great moderating force in some of the more heretical movements in the jewish world and when he reprinted this it was certainly seen as something worthy of belief by many of the world's jews and in subsequent generation the rising tide of the shabbathian movement would bring with it and leave behind the great ideas of lurianic kabbalah and with those ideas of lurianic kabbalah came the rise of the hasidic movement and it was in the hasidic world primarily in eastern europe in the early 18th century onward that we see the rise of debit cases there and it was primarily in the hasidic world beginning in the 18th century that debit cases became more popular and it's from that milieu that most of the more famous dybbuk stories actually took root and if you're interested in some of these debit narratives from the hasidic world i'll include a great book which includes many of them at the end of the video and in the description below in addition to the malevolent dybbic form of possession kabbalah and especially lurianic kabbalah also gave rise to several distinct forms of beneficent possession as well prior to the rise of the lorianic kabbalah moshe cordovero alkabetz and joseph caro all experience what we may describe as beneficent forms of spiritual possession cordovero and alkabits would undergo what they referred to as gerosheme are becoming exiled in this mystical practice they would seclude themselves in graveyards and inside the graveyards there in the massive graveyard in sfat they would begin to ecstatically utter kabbalistic interpretations of the torah itself this is presumably under the inspiration of either the righteous dead and in some cases under the inspiration of the shechina or the divine feminine herself joseph caro on the other hand would recite long passages of the mishnah this is a collection of rabbinical lore dating to around 200 of the common era and during this process of reciting these passages from memory his body would become the vessel for a kind of angelic teacher or mageed and this angelic teacher would create utterances through his body in some sense this angelic mageed was the spiritual dimension of the mishnah itself and it would urge joseph caro on to greater and greater levels of spiritual and aesthetic practices in order to further purify his soul in the interest of divine unification as you probably know joseph cara would also go on to publish the core text in jewish law the shulkhan arukh or the prepared table so it's important to know that there's no distinction here between the mystical and the legal and there's also important to realize that many of the people undergoing these mystical experiences even in the case of these divine possession cases are not marginal figures joseph caro mosher cotavero and alkabet are all central in the moral intellectual legal and spiritual life of the jewish world in the early modern period so there's simply no writing these people off as marginal characters they are in fact central to the development of judaism as we now know it perhaps you'll be unsurprised to learn that it's it's like luria that introduces what is to me the most interesting and certainly the most bizarre form of voluntary spiritual beneficial possession in luria's technique one actually lies prostrate overnight or at least for some period of time onto the grave of a righteous person by lying on the grave of this righteous person or sadiq one is able to awaken some aspect of their soul that of course isn't dead and by communion with their soul this process is called yehudim or communion and by communing with the soul of the deceased person one is able to gather some degree of jesus or power or strength and with this khizuk one is able to for instance fight off a temptation or upgrade one's spiritual journey in the world of the mystical this technique where one lies prostrate onto the grave of a righteous person art sadiq in order to gain our spiritual strength is what isaac luria terms eboor our spiritual pregnancy a board literally just means pregnancy and it is in this process of spiritual pregnancy or eboor in which the soul of the righteous dead communes with the mystic in order to give that mystic some kezuk or spiritual strength or mystical insight for all kinds of various reasons it's also worth noting something of the sexual connotation of this process this idea of ibour and yehud of course the word yehud is also used for the first time a bride and groom are actually alone together in a room by themselves after their wedding so it's very interesting that this idea of lying prostrate on the grave of a righteous person temporarily impregnates one thus one becomes impregnated at least temporarily with the soul of the righteous of course this has a very profound homoerotic and certainly a deeply sexual connotation to it of course though not everyone can engage in yehudim not everyone can engage in the process of ebor this is reserved only for the most elite of kabbalists and even those elite kabbalists must undergo a pretty sophisticated series of ascetic and spiritual purifications to even hope to arouse and the language here is one of arousal this is how isaac luria talks about it to arouse the soul of the righteous person to impregnate the soul of the kabbalist to learn deeper and more profound secrets of the kabbalah in the world of the esoteric divine of course it will khaim vital isaac luria's student who would greatly develop and expand the notion of yehodim both in terms of explaining exactly how it works given the very sophisticated ideas found in isaac luria's kabbalistic system but also explaining that this technique can be done in one's home one need not lay on the grave of the righteous in order to achieve the state of eboor of course all this seems to harken back to our statement by rabbi akiva back in the babylonian talmud remember there he lamented the fact that people would go into graveyards and fast in order to have a ruach tuma an unclean spirit fall upon them and rather he wished that people would try to do the same thing in order to get a pure spirit a ruach tahor to come lie upon them instead well it seems rabbi akiva has gotten exactly what he wished for here in the idea of ibour we have the idea of entering into a graveyard precisely in order to get the soul of a righteous person to enter into the soul of the kabbalist of course i don't know exactly what rabbi akiva would have thought about all this lying on graves and becoming pregnant with the soul of saints or whatever so be careful what you wish for you just might get it it might take 1500 years and it might involve people lying on graves and graveyards but spiritual pregnancy there you go rabbi akiva generally speaking dybbuk cases persisted through the centuries especially in the context of khasidism however the process of yehudim and ebor seem to have largely been eclipsed by the more developed hasidic idea of devekut or devacus in which the soul of the kabbalists are the soul of the khasid clings to the divine of course this may have just as much to do with the dislocation of the kabbalah away from sfat particularly where there are many many graves of righteous people to lie upon but also it may have to do with the weird kind of necromantic associations of this practice it's also worth remembering that khaim vital also argued that one can achieve the state of ibor our spiritual pregnancy in one's home so one doesn't have to go out into a graveyard and well lie on a grave in order to achieve this spiritual feat i've actually asked around if yukadeem is still practice at all in the area around svat and basically what i was told is that no one's going to confirm it and no one's going to deny it of course all of this is in the context of the extremely insular world of kharadi judaism and of course kabbalah is the esoteric dimension of that type of judaism and the idea of yehudim and ibour are considered even extreme ideas within the context of kabbalah so it's not surprising as a non-member of that kind of community that i'm not going to ever have real access to the degree to which anyone is actually engaging in a practice like this so if the tradition of this practice is still being carried on it would be very unlikely for outsiders to have any access to it well if you find yourself wandering around the graveyards of spot in the middle of the night and you see people lying on tombs well now you know why they're doing it they're getting mystically pregnant the more you know as i mentioned earlier debit cases continued through the hasidic period and many of the early hasidic masters such as the balsham tove were famed as exorcists though with the rise of the jewish enlightenment or the haskalah the destruction of many hasidic communities during the nazi period and the general suppression of religiosity during the soviet period cases of dibic possession simply were on the lane though we're lucky that from 1911 through 1914 roughly the beginning of the first world war the writer anski actually gathered ethnographic data on hasidic jews primarily living in southern poland and it's from that ethnographic data that he would go on to publish his famous play the dybbuk written first in russian and then translated into yiddish and hebrew the play debuted in 1920 and was a rave hit in fact it was so popular that in 1937 a film adaptation was actually shot in poland just on the eve of the nazi invasion it's with great sadness that i say that many of the cast and crew that worked on this great masterpiece of german expressionism in yiddish film perished during the nazi extermination period although i am happy to report that the film has recently undergone digital restoration along with new subtitles and is available on dvd from the national center of jewish film i'll include a link in the description below if you want to check that out the lore of the dybbuk has also appeared in the opening act of the colon brothers really wonderful 2009 film a simple man which is great because it's actually shot entirely in yiddish and actually depicts at some level something like a dybbic story from the old hasidic world so even if you don't watch all of a simple man which you should the opening sequence with the dybic is absolutely wonderful the dybbuk also appears in the 2012 film the possession although it's not at all in accordance with actual dybic lore although an interesting point about this film is that during the exorcism ritual psalm 91 is actually recited out loud that's actually pretty accurate psalm 91 has long been used in exorcistic rituals in judaism reaching from the period of the dybbuk in the early modern period all the way back in fact to the dead sea scrolls in addition to the dybbuk on film real-life dybbuk possession cases have also began to reappear in the real world at least in the charadi world the most interesting and probably the most infamous case of recent memory is a 1999 so-called dybbuk of demona and that one is so interesting because the exorcism was actually filmed and you can watch the entire thing on youtube i'll put a link in the description below although i will say that that entire business of the demona dibic is really controversial some people claiming that it was a fraud some people claiming that it was true there's a lot of ins and outs about exactly what is going on in this whole situation however in the haredi world there are actually books published about how one can learn lessons from the demonet dybbuk to become a better person however after the demon debit case other debit cases also began to appear specifically in binet brock and in other kharadi communities throughout israel it's also the case that other debit cases also began to appear in the united states so it appears that after about a hundred years of silence that dybbuks have for whatever reason returned if you're interested in the history of demons occult magic and kabbalah make sure to subscribe here to esoterica these are all core content areas of our channel so make sure to also check out our other content as well also if you value freely accessible and scholarly approaches to materials such as this kabbalah and western other terrorism please consider supporting our channel via patreon or with a one-time donation your contributions esoterica make our channel and our research possible thank you i just want to recommend a few texts which i find to be some of the most superb scholarship on possession and exorcism in the early modern jewish world and more generally in the kabbalah goldich's edited volume spirit possession in judaism which is actually published by wayne state university which is one of the places i teach is a really amazing collection of essays on a wide range of topics in possession and judaism this includes topics going all the way back to the medieval period all the way up to contemporary accounts of possession in modern israel along with a real host of primary source documents many of which are translated for the first time so this is a really incredible volume well worth picking up not terribly expensive and gives you an excellent opportunity really to get into the various aspects of jewish possession i'll especially recommend lawrence finds article in the text in which he introduces the idea of benevolent possession in judaism he goes into really great detail some of which again has never been translated before about the exact mechanisms by which the process of ebor or spiritual pregnancy takes place according to the thought of itzhak luria and khaim vital so a really great resource well worth having on your shelf if you're interested in the intersection between spirit possession and kabbalah chaya's text between worlds is probably the best introduction to the development of the idea of spirit possession specifically in the context of the development of lurianic kabbalah and he also includes the most comprehensive collection of spiritual possession accounts or dybic accounts from this early period so between his excellent analysis of the spirit possession world and of dybbix and of the really excellent collection of primary source documents about the conditions there in saffed this volume is absolutely important if you want to understand the development of lurianic kabbalah as it pertains specifically to the rise of dybbuk possession and ibour there in the very early period in the development of kabbalah and safad in the late 16th century so at excellent volume the primary sources that he translates are fantastic some of them are really creepy and wonderful so i'd really recommend picking up this text if you really want to deep dive into the world of the dybbuk winkler also has a really nice volume simply entitled debic that is a collection from an orthodox jewish standpoint of various dybbuk stories from history all the way back from sapphire all the way into the hasidic world into the modern period and so this is a really nice collection again not from an academic point of view but from the point of view of orthodox judaism about exactly what dybbuks are where they come from how they operate in various narratives and various lessons i suppose we could learn from cases of debit possession again this is not an academic source but it's still really interesting and worth checking out if you're just interested in the dybbuk and dybbuk lore more generally finally and of course if you've never had the chance to read onski's play the dybbuk nor seen the 1937 film adaptation you're really missing out on some classic literature and classic film these are both really wonderful plays and the film is just shot in this really great german expressionistic way so if you've never had the chance to check out this marvel and testament to the genius of yiddish literature in yiddish film which was sadly largely snuffed out by the horrors of the nazi period you deserve to take a look at this wonderful piece of literature and this wonderful film of course i'll just say that the film and the play are both lovely and spooky at the same time they're filled with love and magic and kabbalah and of course dybic and so if you've not had the chance to check them out or if you've never checked out the play in the film the dybbuk they are wonderful things as part of the history of a cult film kabbalistic film they're well worth checking out and you can easily get a copy in yiddish and english and if you read a little bit of german and if you can read hebrew letters the yiddish is honestly not that hard to tease out so i can't recommend enough that you check out the play and the film adaptation of the dybbuk well until next time i'm dr justin sledge and you've been watching esoterica where we explore the arcane side of history philosophy and religion you

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Keywords: occultism, magic, mysticism, magick, occult, western esotericism, occult lecture, jewish mysticism, qabalah, judaism, jewish magic, angelic magic, solomonic magic, kabbalistic magic, kabbalah history, Israelite magic, magic in the bible, kabbalah, possession, exorcism, bible demons, the exorcist, real exorcism, dybbuk, what is a dybbuk, ibbur, isaac luria, lurianic kabbalah, spirit possession, evil dead, dimona dybbuk, dybbuk box, ansky, hayyim vital, jewish demons, jewish exorcism

Id: ZftV3x8qY4Y

Length: 59min 52sec (3592 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020