Between Worlds. J. H. Chajes
material aspects of spells has frequently been described. A list of them will wear down any scholar who takes on the unenviable task of studying them.
—Julio Caro Baroja 1
Exorcism techniques, as eclectic as they were extensive, were found among the Jews for centuries, a diverse repository deployed by magical experts in their midst. This legacy was inherited by generation after generation of magical practitioners, many of whom were also leading rabbinic figures. In scanning the history of this magico-liturgical material, only one chapter seems to evince signs of internal opposition: the “reform” in technique demanded by R. Isaac Luria. With the reconstruction of the possession idiom, and its reinscription in the field of transmigration, came the need to develop new strategies for exorcising the spirits. Moreover, Luria’s new approach reflected his idiosyncratic and ambivalent attitude toward Judaism’s magical tradition. Notwithstanding Luria’s towering reputation, however, subsequent Jewish exorcists seem to have simply added his reformed technique to their arsenals, rather than rely on it to the exclusion of the others.
The Church also initiated exorcism reform in the late Middle Ages. Europeans saw the transformation of exorcism from a spectacle, performed by saints and wonder-workers, into a fixed ritual, performed by priests. This process, an expression of the Church’s quest for centralization of authority, and amid a growing suspicion of female spirituality, culminated in the early seventeenth century with the codification of the Rituale Romanum (1614), which treated the priestly rite of exorcism in the tenth title.2 Thus, although there was a concurrent rise in the prominence of spirit possession among early modern Jews and Christians, the Jewish rituals of exorcism did not undergo the kind of revision and standardization that Catholic authorities applied to the exorcisms in their own traditional arsenals. Whereas the Church may have sought to centralize its authority by controlling exorcism, a decentralized rabbinic leadership seems to have favored bolstering its own authority by retaining a broad spectrum of impressive magical techniques to vanquish the spirits.
Despite the warnings of Baroja that open this chapter, in what follows I present the adumbrated results of “the unenviable task” of studying the formulas of Jewish exorcism since antiquity. Such a survey will better enable us to appreciate the context and significance of Luria’s reform of exorcism technique in the late sixteenth century, as well as its subsequent absorption in the ever-syncretistic Jewish magical repository.
Exorcism in the Ancient World: Jewish Dimensions
King David is the first recorded exorcist in Jewish—or at least Judean—history, and King Saul the first demoniac. When King Saul was tormented by an evil spirit, the young David was called upon to heal him with the sweet strains of his lyre.
The spirit of YHVH departed from Saul and an evil spirit from YHVH tormented him. And Saul’s servants said to him, “Behold now, an evil ELOHIM spirit [ruaḥ elohim ra‘ah] is tormenting thee. Let our lord now command thy servants, who are before thee, to seek out a man, who knows how to play on the lyre, and it shall come to pass when the evil ELOHIM spirit is upon thee, that he will play with his hand and thou shalt be well. [1 Sam. 16:14–16]
David is successful: “And it came to pass, when the ELOHIM spirit was upon Saul, that David took the harp, and played with his hand; so Saul found relief [ve-ravah le-Shaul], and it was well with him, and the evil spirit departed from him” (ibid., 23). After waves of spiritual elation (“the spirit of YHVH”) and affliction (“the evil ELOHIM spirit”), only the strains of David’s harp return the king to a state of well-being. Yet diagnosing Saul as a manicdepressive would be anachronistic and insensitive to the biblical valence of the key terms in the account: ruaḥ ra‘ah and elohim. Elohistic spirits are not metaphors, and this passage constitutes an account of an attack of one such evil elohistic spirit upon Saul. Josephus was unequivocal about the nature of the disturbance, and described it as an attack of demons (daimonia).
But the Divine Power departed from Saul, and removed to David; who, upon this removal of the Divine Spirit to him, began to prophesy. But as for Saul, some strange and demoniacal disorders came upon him, and brought upon him such suffocations as were ready to choke him; for which the physicians could find no other remedy but this, That if any person could charm those passions by singing, and playing upon the harp, they advised them to inquire for such a one, and to observe when these demons came upon him and disturbed him, and to take care that such a person might stand over him, and play upon the harp, and recite hymns to him.3
Josephus’s amplified rendering of the biblical passage exemplifies the new spiritual climate in which he wrote. Cosmological shifts transformed a three-tiered hierarchical universe (heaven-earth-underworld) into a universe of concentric spheres, with earth at the center. The newer conception would minimize the direct interventions of the deity, now located at considerable remove, while ramifying the intermediary forces that occupied the nearly endless expanse that separated earth from the remote god.4 The elohim spirit who had overcome King Saul was now understood as a battery of daimones.
Thus spirit possession became more widespread, demonology more complex, and exorcism more magically sophisticated by the Second Temple period. The plethora of accounts of spirit possession and descriptions of exorcism in the literature of the period make this patently clear: from the New Testament and Apocrypha, to the Qumran texts, Josephus, and rabbinic literature.
Ancient Exorcism
The New Testament features scores of references to spirit possession, with an especially high concentration in the gospels of Luke and Mark. Lest we under-estimate the centrality of this phenomenon in early Christianity, note that Jesus’ mission on earth was summarized by Peter in Acts as “doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38). The Gospel of Mark concludes with a description of the signs that enable one to identify a true Christian, the first of which is the power to exorcise: “These are the signs that will be associated with believers: in my name they will cast out devils; they will have the gift of tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands and be unharmed should they drink deadly poison; they will lay their hands on the sick, who will recover” (Mark 16:17–18). Exorcistic prowess is the primary mark of the Christian according to this source.5
Although less prominent than in the New Testament, exorcism is referred to a number of times in rabbinic literature as well.6 A well-known example is the case of a Gentile who asked R. Yoḥanan ben Zakkai for an explanation of the customs associated with the Red Heifer, which seemed to him to be magical. The rabbi responded that the process of slaughtering the animal, burning it, collecting its ash, and using the ash to purify was analogous to the Gentile’s own customs for exorcising evil spirits.7
Meir Bar-Ilan has analyzed a number of rabbinic-era exorcisms recorded in talmudic and midrashic literature. Arguing that in antiquity there was no distinction between religious life and magic, as is commonly assumed by modern scholars, Bar-Ilan claims that exorcism was “an accepted popular practice.” It was performed not as a magical act but simply as a healing therapy, “like the war on germs that penetrate the body of modern man.”8 All three of Bar-Ilan’s examples of rabbinic exorcism, however, emphasize precisely its wondrous dimensions. The first, from a medieval source, deals with R. Ḥanina ben Dosa, who went down to a cave for ritual immersion. When Kutim (sectarians) sealed the cave with a large rock, spirits came to remove it, freeing R. Ḥanina. One of these spirits later victimized a girl in his village, and R. Ḥanina’s students called his attention to the girl’s sufferings. R. Ḥanina went to the girl and addressed the spirit: “Why do you distress a daughter of Abraham?” “Were you not the one who descended to the cave,” responded the spirit, “until my kindred spirits and I came and removed it [the stone]? And for the favor that I did you, this is how you treat me?” R. Ḥanina, a wonder-worker and healer in talmudic sources,9 then began a decree of exorcism upon the spirit, though the formula was not preserved in the account.10
Yet another talmudic story recounts R. Shimon ben Yoḥai’s successful exorcism of the Emperor’s daughter, which led to the rescinding of anti-Jewish legislation.11 R. Shimon, unlike the wonder-working