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Chapter 1

The Emergence of Dybbuk Possession

How did sixteenth-century Jews make sense of spirit possession? To what affliction did they bear witness when someone in their midst began displaying the characteristic signs of the possessed? What sort of spirit was doing the possessing? Why and how did the possession take place? How distinctive was the Jewish construction of spirit possession in this period? These are the central questions we shall take up in this chapter.

Here it would be apposite to say something regarding the identity of ghosts of the evil dead and demonic spirits in Jewish sources. This view could be found in Greco-Roman antiquity, whether in Plato’s general claim that the demons were souls of the dead or in the more specific belief that Josephus articulated, according to which they were ghosts of the wicked.¹ Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, an eighth-century midrashic work likely composed in the Land of Israel, asserts that the generation of the biblical Flood would not rise at the Resurrection, having been transformed into ruḥot (spirits) and mazzikim (destructive spirits).² Jewish mystical sources occasionally enlarged upon this view, construing that all mazzikim were the metamorphosed souls of the wicked dead, as in the zoharic passage “in the name of R. Judah, that the souls of the wicked are the demons of this world.”³ Some decades later, the fourteenth-century Spanish Kabbalist R. Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi would cite Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer as proof that shedim were souls of the wicked dead.⁴ In Ashkenazi’s mystical transmigratory vision, however, anything could very well turn into anything else.⁵ R. Eliezer Ashkenazi, the earliest recorded recipient of the broadsheet from Safed detailing a dramatic possession case from the early 1570s, adduced the account in the context of discussing his assertion that it is the fate of the wicked to turn into demons. “It has been explained that [to become] demons [shedim] is the punishment and ultimate destiny of evil people,” wrote Ashkenazi in his 1583 work, Ma‘asei ha-Shem.⁶ In a philosophically informed discussion, Ashkenazi explains that their bodies “are from the hylic element that receives the forms … [enabling them to] appear at times in animal form, and at other times in the form of people. Moreover, what people have said of them—that they roam in flight—should not be cause for bewilderment, since their bodies are from a fine, simple substance.” Idolaters of old used to animate their idols with impure spirits so that they might speak. Their punishment was to become like the very impure spirits they used to animate these idols. Ashkenazi adduces Psalm 135, verse 18, “they who make them become like them,” in support of this thesis. Ashkenazi then continues to extend his structural analogy to the workings of wind instruments. Understanding their principle of amplification enables one to understand why the wicked dead demons enter a human to commandeer his or her organs of speech.

[B]odies that are from that same fine element are so highly refined that “their voices are unheard” (Psalms 19,4). Just as we see that when a sound comes to the hollow of instruments such as trumpets, rams’ horns, or the like, it will amplify and sound. So too the voice from that body, due to its delicacy, is inaudible. But when it comes to the hollow of the throat of that fallen person [ha-nofel], the throat is an apt vessel to make the voice audible, notwithstanding its fineness. Thus the body will make its voice and its speech heard in that throat, without moving the lips at all. And people commonly say⁷ of the fallen that an evil spirit [ruaḥ ra‘ah] has entered them, for they too call them a wind/spirit [ruaḥ].

Ashkenazi largely conflates demons (shedim) and spirits (ruḥot) in his attempt to provide a cogent “natural” explanation for the phenomenon of spirit possession.⁸ His analysis attempts to conform to contemporary natural philosophical notions of the nature of occult bodies, while referring repeatedly to biblical texts and contemporary dybbuk accounts to demonstrate the correctness of his thesis. His concerns were exclusively theoretical and metaphysical, and the consequences of his terminological conflation on the practice of exorcism were of no concern to him.

Yet even before such conflation, confusion reigned. The terms ruḥot, mazzikim, and shedim were used interchangeably in Jewish literature from the rabbinic era to the early modern period. This terminological fluidity was noticed by commentators such as R. Moshe bar Naḥman (“Ramban,” 1194–1270), according to whom “the shedim [were] called mazzikin in the language of our rabbis, and se‘irim in the language of scripture.”⁹ This imprecision notwithstanding, occasional attempts were made to impose order on these classifications. Thus the most eminent of medieval Jewish commentators, R. Solomon Yiẓḥaki (“Rashi,” 1040–1105), distinguished in his talmudic commentary between “shedim—they have human shape and eat and drink like people; ruḥin—without body or form; and lilin—human form but they have wings.”¹⁰ No term was taken to refer to a human ghost, though all partook of familiar human characteristics.

Although the identification of a possessing spirit as a ghost seems to have been common among late medieval and early modern Christians, clerical authorities generally suppressed such notions as soon as they were summoned to perform an exorcism, though they did not eliminate belief in possession by the dead entirely.¹¹ In so doing, they were following theological traditions going back to Augustine that denied this possibility.¹² Islam similarly disallowed for the possibility of possession by souls of the deceased. As a recent orthodox scholar of Islamic demonology has written, “Since the human soul enters the barzakh upon the death of the body and the state of the barzakh prevents any contact with this world, it would not be possible for disembodied human spirits to possess living beings or to communicate with them.”¹³ Although Christian clerics attempted to suppress the notion that the dead could possess the bodies of the living and Islamic theorists dismissed the very possibility, Jewish religious authorities came to regard spirit possession as typically resulting from just such an etiology. An exceptional position could still be found among Jewish scholars: the sixteenth-century Italian physician-rabbi Abraham Yagel rejected altogether the notion that the possessing agents were disembodied souls and argued that they were in fact demons impersonating humans. Yagel’s view was thus congruent with the one held by the religious authority of his broader cultural environment, the Catholic Church.¹⁴

Yagel’s atypical view should not obscure the fact that early modern rabbis generally believed that ghosts as well as demons could possess the living. Sometimes they were thought to do so together. Whatever the case, the exorcist had to know whom he was up against in order to work effectively. R. Ḥayyim Vital (1542–1620), the most prominent disciple of R. Isaac Luria and a major figure in what follows,¹⁵ described how one was to distinguish between possession by a ghost and by a demon:

Demons [Shedim] and a ghost [ruaḥ ra’ah] are two distinct types. For the ghost is the spirit of a person, which after his death enters the body of a living person, as is known. First one must recognize their signs: the demon compels the person, and he moves spasmodically with his arms and legs, and emits white saliva from his mouth like horse-froth. With a ghost, he feels pain and distress in his heart to the point of collapse. However, the primary clarification is when he speaks, for then he will tell what he is, particularly if he speaks after having been compelled by you with adjurations and decrees.¹⁶

In Sefer ha-Goralot (Book of Lots), a work attributed to Vital, a bibliomantic divination procedure promises to discern whether the spirit afflicting someone is a ghost or a demon.¹⁷ In this source, the demon may be a Jew, a Muslim, or a Christian. This should be no great surprise, given the traditions noted above regarding the various human qualities and appetites of these creatures, sexual among them. It is also strikingly similar to Islamic demonological views according to which demons are either Muslims or kuffars (disbelievers).¹⁸ Nevertheless, techniques designed to remove a demon were regarded as ineffective for removal of a ghost. In his unpublished work on practical kabbalah, Vital therefore provided a technique to exorcise such spirits, which, he wrote, would not work against a disembodied soul.¹⁹ Although it therefore remained possible to view demons as potential possessing agents in early modern Judaism, most sources at our disposal clearly indicate that the primary agent in nearly every case was taken to be a ghost. Even where a demonic spirit was present, its role was as guardian and tormentor of the disembodied soul. Ghosts had become the clear stars of the show.

The doctrine of gilgul provided the ideational basis for this development and lent it cultural coherence. Rather than viewing gilgul in conceptual terms alone, and in isolation from other factors, in what follows I sketch a genealogy of dybbuk possession that traverses the historical terrain vertically as well as laterally. The vertical view emphasizes gilgul and kabbalistic practice; the lateral, cognate idioms and speculative contextualizations. The resulting image is one that narrows the phenomenological gap between dybbuk possession and spirit possession in early modern non-Jewish settings without effacing their distinctiveness.

Magico-mystical techniques employed by Spanish Kabbalists to bind disembodied spirits of the dead to the souls of the practitioners were decisive in first translating doctrine into practice; indeed, no a priori reason exists to assume that the techniques did not precede the doctrine. Although such techniques may have been indebted to ancient (and contemporary) magical necromancy, their inscription in kabbalistic sources affiliates them most directly to the concept of ‘ibbur (a masculine noun, literally meaning “conception”; v. le-hit‘abber, to become pregnant; n. ‘ubar, fetus).²⁰ Before considering such techniques, however, we must briefly survey the development of this notion²¹.

Although it first appeared in Jewish mystical sources as a general term for reincarnation, synonymous with gilgul, ‘ibbur appears to have been imbued with a distinct meaning of its own for the first time in Ramban’s commentary on Ecclesiastes.²² Little is known of Ramban’s views on reincarnation; the Geronese and Castilian schools of kabbalah treated gilgul as a profound mystery, referring to it only through hints and allusions.²³ The secrecy surrounding the subject among these kabbalists may stem from their belief that the secret of the messianic redemption was to be found in the mystery of gilgul. Ramban, an active disputant with Christians over matters of messianic belief, may have thought it indiscreet to treat the subject of reincarnation openly, given the sensitivity of the issue.²⁴ No less plausible a reason for the secrecy shrouding discussions of reincarnation in early kabbalistic literature is the simple fact that so much earlier Jewish literature implicitly or explicitly denied it as heretical, figuring nowhere in biblical or rabbinic literature, and complicating if not contradicting classical Jewish eschatological beliefs such as resurrection.²⁵ As reincarnation gradually came to be viewed as a punishment rather than as a soteriological mystery, however, exoteric treatment became increasingly possible.²⁶ Gilgul had become the carrot and the stick of mystical literature.

Not all kabbalists shared a common understanding of the term ‘ibbur, nor did they agree on the conditions and extent of reincarnation in general. By the end of the thirteenth century, however, Spanish Kabbalists had taken the term ‘ibbur to denote the temporary introduction of a foreign soul into a living body some time after birth. Gilgul was then taken to refer specifically to reincarnation coincident with conception or birth. The difference in timing was fraught with psychospiritual ramifications. Foremost was the fact that one who returned to the world by means of gilgul did not recall any former identity; the conscious continuity between the embodiments of past and present lives was severed. Moreover, the identity between the soul and its new bodily home was complete; the new body was its own. One returning as an ‘ibbur, however, remembered the former life and regarded the new bodily home as temporary. Its customary resident, or “host,” was generally unaware of the presence, let alone personality, of the ‘ibburic guest.

The idea that two souls might even temporarily coexist in one body was consonant with early thirteenth-century assumptions that souls transmigrated in fragments, felicitously referred to by Joshua Trachtenberg as “the prevailing polypsychism of the Middle Ages.”²⁷ According to such conceptions, the soul—itself a composite of the strata nefesh (vital soul), ruaḥ (anima, spirit), and neshamah (spiritus, rational soul), differently conceived depending upon one’s metaphysical affiliations—need not transmigrate as a collective, integrated whole.²⁸ Thus, individuals might be born with “composite” souls, each stratum carrying an independent transmigratory history. The notion that multiple strata of souls might incarnate in a given body was not, however, invoked to explain bizarre personality disorders.²⁹ The “normal” individual was a composite of these multiple strata, which collaborated in a manner that obscured their multiplicity in the consciousness of the subject. Paranormal diagnostic skills were required to expose these layers and to guide the individual on a path of rectification that took into account his innate complexity. “Schizoid manifestations of the soul,” as Gershom Scholem called the stranger disorders, were understood in terms of ‘ibbur—particularly when the ‘ibburic guest became known, through speech or other action, as a concomitant occupant of a person’s body. In early kabbalistic literature, it was assumed that an ‘ibbur would most commonly impregnate a host’s body when both the transmigrating soul and the soul of its temporary host stood to benefit from the association.

The Zohar, the greatest work of medieval Spanish Kabbalah, invokes this notion of ‘ibbur in linking Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron whose mysterious death during the consecration of the Tabernacle is described in Leviticus, chapter 10, to Phinehas, whose zealous actions are described in Numbers, chapter 25.³⁰ According to the Zohar, the souls of Nadab and Abihu became impregnated in Phinehas when he faced the lewd exhibitionism of Zimri, the Israelite man, and Cozbi, the Midianite woman.³¹ The introduction of ‘ibbur in this context evinces the zoharic tendency to regard reincarnation as an opportunity to rectify sexual transgressions (including sins of omission, such as dying childless).³² Furthermore, unlike gilgul, which was thought to rectify sins, ‘ibbur was regarded by the Spanish kabbalists as a phenomenon that applied primarily to the righteous, in this world and the next. It is with R. Moses Cordovero (“Ramak,” 1522–70) that we first encounter the term evil ‘ibbur—a formulation that signals the consolidation of the kabbalistic conceptual framework underlying early modern dybbuk possession.³³

Cultivating Connections with the Dead: Spanish Antecedents

Cordovero, Safed’s preeminent kabbalist until his death in 1570, distinguished gilgul and ‘ibbur clearly and succinctly in his “Shemu‘ah be-‘Inyan ha-Gilgul” (Tradition Regarding Reincarnation), preface 6: “For gilgul does not only refer to the [incarnation of the soul at the time of a] person’s birth, i. e., at the time of his formation, but also, after his maturity, he may draw a gilgul upon himself. The sages refer to this as ‘ibbur”³⁴ The first kabbalist to discuss the possibility of a deleterious ‘ibbur, Cordovero raised the quotidian possibility of this threat in a fascinating passage in his commentary on the prayer book, Tefillah le-Moshe (Prayer of Moses).

According to tradition, the blessings recited upon arising include the following expressions of thanksgiving: “Blessed art Thou, Lord of the Universe, who has not made me a slave,” “Blessed art Thou, Lord of the Universe, who has not made me a woman,” and “Blessed art Thou, Lord of the Universe, who has not made me a Gentile.” This plain sense of this liturgy is to express thankfulness for one’s auspicious birth as a free Jewish male. According to Cordovero, however, these daily recitations express one’s grateful relief for not having been impregnated by the soul of a slave, a woman, or a Gentile while asleep.

We may also explain that, even during a person’s life, it is possible for one to become impregnated [le-hit‘abber] in a deleterious manner by the soul of a woman, a slave, or a Gentile. This, God forbid, can harm a person repeatedly. Upon considering these matters, one who is thoughtful will find that at times people change their behavior. At times, they act like women, at times like men. At times they will serve men like slaves, for the inner shows its effects on the outer. At times one will give one’s attention to foul matters, like the Gentiles. Thus, when one’s soul returns to him and he sees that all is well with him … it is upon him to bless his Rock for the good that He has granted him …. And this renewal takes place daily for a person, and he must therefore say these blessings daily. One fearful of the word of the Lord, in hearing this, must strengthen himself in his simplicity and not fail, nor heed false words, nor depend upon anything unworthy, God forbid. And one should intend in these three blessings to nullify any ‘ibbur of idolators, an ‘ibbur of a slave, and an ‘ibbur of a woman from himself. And he must purify himself through the secret of these three blessings from any grafting [harkavah] and evil ‘ibbur.³⁵

Cordovero regards the possibility of ‘ibbur as ongoing, even routine. These are not evil souls of the more malicious variety, whom we will meet in later accounts of dybbuk possession. Rather, Cordovero seems to have identified the sudden onset of the servile personality traits of the inferior classes of beings—slaves, women, and Gentiles—as symptoms of a deleterious ‘ibbur. In this passage, Cordovero does not identify any particular behavior on the part of the “possessed” that has led to the impregnation; one’s actions are not said to attract an ‘ibbur directly, as would be the case in subsequent kabbalistic treatments of the subject.³⁶ It is also worth noting that in this early discussion, Cordovero entertains the distinct possibility that a male will be impregnated by a woman—a scenario that will be noticeably absent in the later dybbuk accounts.³⁷ Thus, in this kabbalistic rereading of the typical Jewish morning prayer routine, one must, upon arising, thank God for having reentered one’s body without unwelcome company. As the soul was thought to depart the body during the night—sleep being one-sixtieth of death³⁸—its return to the body could naturally be expected to meet with the occasional complication.

Yet Cordovero’s reading of the morning blessings is not merely a novel construal of that for which one’s blessings are to give thanks. Rather, the blessings in Cordovero’s interpretation serve as a means to nullify ‘ibburim, should one’s body have been overcome by unwelcome intruders during the night. Not mere expressions of praise, blessings have become wieldings of power—in this case against any evil soul that has penetrated one’s body.³⁹ In Cordovero’s reading, the morning blessings have become liturgical exorcisms. The use of blessings to wield power ought not to surprise, given the well-known and ancient use of the Psalms to magical ends. Drawing on zoharic precedent, blessings would also be hermetically construed as instances of drawing-down (hamshakhot) by the Hasidic masters.⁴⁰

Just as certain practices might nullify evil ‘ibburim, other practices were designed by Spanish rabbis to cultivate propitious contact with the dead. These venerable practices were designed to bind the practitioner to the lowest portion of the tripartite soul of a departed saint, the nefesh. The nefesh was thought to remain in contact with its former body and was thus accessible at the grave. Cordovero’s discussion of these practices appears in his commentary on the Zohar, pericope Aḥarei Mot [3:70b], in the wake of a discussion of the enduring presence of the nefesh near the bodily remains.

The Zohar states:

At the hour when the world requires mercy, the living go and inform the souls [nefashot] of the righteous [ẓaddikim, pl. of ẓaddik], and cry on their graves, and are worthy of rousing them. Why? Because they make it their will to cling to them, soul to soul. The souls of the righteous then awaken and assemble, and go forth to those who sleep in Hebron to inform them of the suffering of the world.⁴¹

According to the Zohar, in times of crisis, living saints visit the graves of their righteous predecessors. Their cries serve both to bind them (the root DBK, as in dybbuk, is used here) to the souls of the dead and to rouse them to action on their behalf. The righteous dead then ascend to commune with the souls of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people—“those who sleep in Hebron,” in the Cave of Makhpelah—hoping to obtain their intervention.⁴² In his commentary on this passage, Cordovero is interested in exploring the means by which the living are able to cross the divide that separates them from the dead. How is it that an embodied soul can communicate and commingle with the disembodied souls of the dead? And embodiment is indeed taken to be the heart of the problem; coarse flesh suffices to obscure the refined spiritual form of the dead from the eyes of the living. A metamorphosis of this fleshy garment of the soul is indispensable. So writes Cordovero: “This matter will be apprehended and discovered in the secret of the Garment [levush] prior to Adam and the rest of worldly existence, before Adam’s sin, the secret ‘Garments of Light.’ For after the sin and the corporealization [of the Garment] as matter, it was said to him, you are dust, and shall return to dust.’”⁴³ The garment of skin (‘or) fashioned by God for Adam (Gen. 3: 21) was created first as light (or). Sin resulted in its corporealization, and with physicality came opacity and, tragically, perishability.⁴⁴ In other words, when Adam was first created, like the dead, he too was formed of a fine, diaphanous body of light, partaking of immortality.

This original Garment of Light was removed from ordinary men as a consequence of Adam’s sin, yet remains available to the righteous, whose recovery of this ethereal body enables them to communicate with the souls of the dead. “This Garment and the existence of this subtle world is received by the righteous in the mystery of their soul, and is transmitted only to the refined of mind whose spiritual souls vanquish their corporeality, and who nullify their bodily desires. They then pass beyond the veil and threshold of the physical world and enter the World of Souls.”⁴⁵ Those who refine their intellects and strengthen their spirits, who manage to overcome their physicality, transmute their Garments of Skin. Attaining the Garments of Light, they become capable of commingling with the souls of the righteous dead. “[There] they apprehend according to the degree of their merit, to hear them [the souls] and sometimes actually to see them, as did R. Shimon and his comrades, as explicated in several places in the Zohar.”⁴⁶ Once they have exchanged their coarse flesh for ethereal bodies, the righteous find themselves in the world of souls. At this level of spiritual attainment they hear, if not see, the dead. The heroes of the Zohar, explains Cordovero, enjoyed such interaction with departed souls precisely through the process he has described. Yet hearing and even seeing are not enough; in times of crisis, the living righteous must bring about the adhesion of their souls to the souls of their dead predecessors, and arouse them to act on their behalf. This calls for the implementation of a more magical necromantic technique that takes the living ẓaddik to the grave of the dead ẓaddik whom he seeks to arouse. “This is the secret of the binding of one soul to another, which is given only to one located in this world, who is able to bind his embodied soul with the soul of the righteous. This is done through his pouring out of his soul upon the grave of the righteous, and he clings soul to soul and speaks with the soul of the righteous and informs him. This soul then awakens the other souls, and this is what is said: ‘Why? Because they make it their will to cling to them ….’”⁴⁷ It is the presumption of the Zohar that the presence of the lower soul (nefesh) of the ẓaddik remains at the grave; his spirit (ruaḥ) is taken to be in Gan Eden (paradise), his higher soul (neshamah) far beyond. It is the nefesh of the living that clings strictly to the nefesh of the righteous, which has remained in this world precisely to aid the living when the need arises.⁴⁸

Cordovero’s closing remarks on this passage are particularly striking: “This matter was still done in Spain by great men who knew of it. They would dig a trench in the grave over the head of the dead. In it, they would pray for the benefit of the whole community, and they would cling, soul to soul, in solitary meditation.”⁴⁹ In Spain, the technique is said to have involved laying prone in a trench, head aligned with the head in the grave, the communion enhanced by proximity. A meditative engagement of the practioner’s soul with the soul of the dead would then culminate in a state of adhesion, soul to soul. According to Cordovero, then, the technique described by the Zohar was practiced not only by the Tannaitic saints whose exploits were so magnificently depicted in pseudoepigraphic style, but also by the great men of Spain, apparently in the recent past.⁵⁰ These men practiced a form of hishtatḥut, or gravesite prostration, that was to become extremely popular among the kabbalists of sixteenth-century Safed.⁵¹ Indeed, in his paraphrase of Cordovero’s commentary, rather than concluding with the original’s recollections of Spanish practitioners, R. Abraham Azulai (1570–1644) substitutes, “And this matter has been verified among us, as this happened in our own times. Speakers of truth have testified to me that they saw this practiced by the AR”I [R. Isaac Luria]⁵² and his students, the comrades, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing.”⁵³

Not only did R. Isaac Luria practice these techniques, he broadened their applicability considerably. In his conception, hishtatḥut practices were to be undertaken to achieve a positive ‘ibbur in the practitioner, and not only in times of crisis. In his autobiographical dream diary Sefer ha-Ḥezyonot (Book of Visions), R. Ḥayyim Vital records that in 1571, Luria sent him to the burial cave of the talmudic sage Abaye so that the latter might penetrate him as a positive ‘ibbur. “In that year, my teacher, may his memory be a blessing, sent me to the cave of Abaye and taught me that yiḥud [unification]. I clung to his soul, and he spoke to me of the matters of which I wrote in the aforementioned tract.” yiḥudim (pl.) were the staples of Luria’s magico-mystical contemplative system. Scholem defined such yiḥudim as theurgic acts “based on mental concentration on the combinations of Sacred Names” that “contained … an element of magic.”⁵⁴ Vital’s own definition of yiḥudim makes it clear that he viewed them primarily as a means for cleaving to souls of the righteous, achieved through a circulation of energies initiated by the intender of the yiḥud. Early in the work Sha‘ar ha-yiḥudim (Gate of Unifications), Vital promises that he plans to

explain the matter of yiḥudim, what they are and their nature, and how by means of this [practice] one attains revelations of the souls of the righteous. By this we will explain the matter of prostration on the graves of the righteous and cleavage to them, spirit to spirit….⁵⁵ For it is impossible for a person to awaken [the dead] without the yiḥudim, to ascend in the secret of Female Waters [mayyim nukvin]. In this they drawn down illumination below and illuminate the one engaged in the unification [ha-meyaḥed].⁵⁶

The yiḥud is thus a meditative practice that promises to grant the practitioner clairvoyant contact with the dead and, moreover, to cleave to them in spiritual ecstasy. The yiḥud awakens the dead and allows the practitioner to ascend through the energy of his devotion while simultaneously drawing down enlightenment from above. The practitioner-driven devotion is characterized here by the kabbalistic term Female Waters, understood as the spiritual arousal and “lubrication” of the practitioner that stimulates the divine partner and calls forth the shower of divine effusion, itself called “Male Waters” in the literature.

In this mystical circle, necromantic techniques such as graveside prostration were not always required to bring about the impregnation of the soul of a departed saint into the body of a living counterpart. Elsewhere in his mystical diary, Vital relates that there were times when he heard voices speaking to him, which he did not know with certainty to be those of visiting transmigrants. He even suspected the voices to be his own. In doubt, he consulted a Damascene sorcerer, who in turn summoned a demonic spirit to appear in a looking glass, in order to respond to Vital’s query. “He answered me,” writes Vital, “He [the ‘ibbur] is the speaker, and not me. For his soul enclothes itself in my heart, and from there he raises the sound of his words to my mouth and he speaks with my mouth, and then I hear.”⁵⁷

Vital devoted much effort to clarifying the subject of transmigration in Luria’s thought.⁵⁸ In the Lurianic context, a kind of Gnostic structural parallelism between good and evil applies fully to the possibilities of transmigration, a parallelism often associated in kabbalistic works with the phrase from Ecclesiastes, Chapter 7, verse 14: “This opposite that has God made.”⁵⁹ Both beneficial (often silent) and baneful (often vocal) ‘ibburim exist. The former take up occupancy in a person to do good or to better the host, whereas the latter do so to wreak evil or to catalyze the moral downfall of the host. Thus Vital writes,

The first [type of deleterious ‘ibbur] are those souls of the wicked who, after their death, do not merit to enter Gehinnom. They enter living people’s bodies due to our numerous transgressions, speaking and telling all that happens to them there, as is known, may the Merciful save us. The second are those who impregnate themselves in a person in the secret of ‘ibbur … and cling to him [mitDaBKim bo] in great concealment. Then, if the person sins, this soul impregnated within him will become stronger and bring him to sin [further] and divert him to an evil path in the same way that we have previously explained how the soul of a ẓaddik impregnated in a person aids him to become better.⁶⁰

According to Vital, souls of the evil dead impregnate bodies of the living because they are unable to enter Gehinnom. Gehinnom, the Jewish precursor-analogue of the Christian purgatory or the Islamic barzakh was the refinery for a “polluted” soul.⁶¹ There, after death, it could be purged of the dross accumulated over a lifetime of sin before taking its place in the World to Come. The duration of this cleansing was fixed at twelve months according to rabbinic tradition.⁶² Without access to Gehinnom, the most the tormented soul could accomplish was a temporary respite from the afflictions associated with its endless limbo state, a respite provided by the shelter of another’s body. The idea that a disembodied being might penetrate someone else’s body was perfectly natural to medievals, who regarded the body as a highly permeable container.⁶³ Saint and sinner alike might expect their physical frames to be pierced, if not utterly commandeered by a foreign guest at any time. As Cordovero’s recollections so vividly illustrated, however, Luria and his disciples clearly inherited and amplified traditions and sensibilities from remote and more immediate predecessors alike; they did not create them themselves.

Spain was the locus for more than the development of reincarnation theory; there it became a practical matter with both everyday and extraordinary dimensions. An acute sense of the practical implications of transmigration underlies the disturbing concern that in the course of an innocent meal, one might actually devour of one’s dear deceased. R. Elazar Azikri (1533–c. 1599) and R. Avraham Galanti, who wrote shortly after Cordovero, tell the following Castilian story: a bull scheduled for a corrida de toros appeared to his “son” in a dream. The father, then incarnated in the bull, asked that he be slaughtered in the kosher manner and fed to poor Torah students, in order to return in his next incarnation as a man. “Many events of this kind took place among the people of Israel,” testifies Azikri.⁶⁴ Such stories indicate that the sources of an “active” understanding of the doctrine of gilgul were already present in medieval Spanish Kabbalah, notwithstanding the emergence of dybbuk narratives only in the sixteenth century.⁶⁵

The kabbalists of Safed were particularly interested in food and saw eating as fraught with hazardous, yet potentially redemptive, possibilities. Eating with proper kavvanah (lit. intention)⁶⁶ and sanctity could bring about the elevation of a good soul incarnated in the food.⁶⁷ Extreme caution was also advised lest an evil ‘ibbur result from ingesting food in which it resided. Vital, apparently reflecting Luria’s influence, stressed the dangers of eating more than any prior kabbalist. According to Vital, for example, eating the hearts of animals or drinking from a well inhabited by disembodied souls might result in an evil ‘ibbur capable of destroying one’s life: “Thus, God forbid, if a person drinks such water and a soul which has transmigrated into that water enters him, he cannot rectify the situation, for the evil soul will impregnate him and cause him to sin until it has plunged him down to the nethermost pit.”⁶⁸ For Vital, the unexpected ‘ibbur that may result from everyday eating and drinking explains why good people may suddenly sin. When the AR”I drank, Vital recalls, he “exorcised” the water first:

Now, my master, may his memory be a blessing, as he traveled and drank water from a spring or a well, he would gaze and intend [mekhaven] while drinking so that the power of his intention [kavvanah] would expel and repel from [the water] the spirit or soul who had transmigrated in it. Only then would he drink the water. The spirit would afterwards return to its place.⁶⁹

Wells were long considered dwelling places for spirits, and rabbinic literature is not without its tales of these water-based creatures.⁷⁰ In his Ḥesed le-Avraham (Mercy to Abraham), R. Abraham Azulai discusses the problem in light of Lurianic traditions. According to Azulai, individuals who have not washed their hands in the ritually prescribed manner (for example, upon arising and before eating) and those who have neglected to recite blessings before enjoying food, fragrances, and the like (birkhot ha-nehenin) are reincarnated into water as a punishment. As a result,

[k]now that there is no spring, nor well, nor pool of water, nor river which is not infested with countless transmigrants [megulgalim]. Therefore it is not fitting that one place one’s mouth on the stream to drink, but one should rather take [the water] into one’s hand. For it is possible for one of them to transmigrate into him, as is known, and then that evil soul will be impregnated in him. For sometimes through some sin, something evil comes upon a person and then that evil soul impregnates himself in him, and abets him to sin…. Thus through his eating and drinking, numerous types of transmigrants reincarnate through a person at all times. One who is learned and who eats with the proper intention is able to elevate and to fix those transmigrants.⁷¹

These attitudes and precautions exemplify the new centrality of reincarnation in sixteenth-century kabbalistic thought. Gilgul stories, like the one from Azikri and Galanti above, were popular, carried pietistic weight, and struck fear in the hearts of their listeners. They may have been even more effective given their undeniable entertainment—and even humoristic—value. Poor sanitation has been considered a primary cause for this suspicious view of food and water, though the personalistic view of reincarnation does not necessarily flow logically from a premodern case of dysentery.⁷²

While seeking to avoid evil ‘ibburim by means of these prophylactic exorcism meditations, Luria, like his disciples, also received (and actively sought) holy ‘ibburim.⁷³ With his disciples, the master discussed methods for inculcating holy ‘ibburim other than the old Spanish techniques of gravesite prostration. Prominent among these was the imitation of the a righteous man (ẓaddik) whose soul one wished to draw down as an ‘ibbur.

Occasionally a person will happen to perform a particular commandment [miẓvah] in an ideal manner [ke-tikna]. Thereupon a certain soul will be called upon him, a righteous man of old who himself ideally performed that commandment. Because of the similarity between them that was established through this commandment, the soul of the righteous man will impregnate him. Moreover, it is also possible for the righteous man to be a contemporary, alive during his lifetime; the soul of this righteous man will become impregnated within his soul for the same reason. For when this man performs any commandment or commandments associated with that righteous man, who, like him, performed them properly, then the soul of that righteous man will impregnate him even while the two are alive simultaneously.⁷⁴

Here is an incubation theory based entirely on the principle of mimesis, colored in kabbalistic hues. The anthropological presumption is that each individual is spiritually rooted in one of the 613 limbs of Primordial Adam (Adam Kadmon), the Macanthropos. Each limb corresponds to one of the 613 commandments. An individual therefore finds true expression and personal fulfillment through the performance of that special commandment. One’s true relatives are those who share one’s soul root, rather than one’s biological family.⁷⁵ Building on these concepts, a practical, natural method for attracting a positive ‘ibbur impregnation suggested itself: imitation of the saint who ranks highly in one’s soul family by the fully realized performance of the family commandment. Impregnation would naturally follow, even for one who just “happens” to fulfill the commandment as it should be, for like attracts like. Gary Tomlinson has emphasized “the fundamentally imitative nature of Renaissance magic,” and the source of the magician’s power in his mimetic abilities.⁷⁶ This technique to bring about ‘ibburic possession—the conscious or unconscious imitation of the figure desired as a catalyst to spiritual elevation—is the very essence of mimesis, and reveals the AR”I as close kin of the Renaissance magi.⁷⁷

The tales of the AR”I’s elder, R. Judah Ḥallewa, would seem to suggest that the atmosphere in Safed was charged with interest in reincarnation at least a generation before Luria’s arrival.⁷⁸ Ḥallewa, a rabbi and kabbalist from Fez, Morocco, came to Safed in the early part of the sixteenth century. Upon his arrival, Ḥallewa was dismayed by the lack of disciplinary authority exercised by the rabbis of the Land of Israel. The rabbis of Safed had their hands tied: Turkish authorities granted them little power to punish, while forcing Jews who were turned over for punishment to convert to Islam. Ḥallewa conceived his treatise Ẓafnat Pa‘aneaḥ (Exposer of Mysteries) as a work to dissuade readers from sin by instilling fear in them.⁷⁹ Adducing talmudic and zoharic passages dealing with the punishments awaiting the soul after death, Ḥallewa sought to save his people from the torments of Gehinnom—or worse. Moshe Idel, who brought this work to scholarly attention, wrote of the considerations that would seem to have led to the book’s composition: “In an atmosphere of the weakening of the Jewish tradition and an inability to force it upon sinners through the threat of violence, a unique way of acting arises: persuasion through fear.”⁸⁰ Ḥallewa’s was among the first kabbalistic ethical (mussar) books of Safed, which emerged to strengthen religious mores at a time of their weakening.⁸¹ So as to discourage his contemporaries from pursuing their untamed appetites for sexual sins, theft, slander, and apostasy, Ḥallewa focused sharply upon reincarnation and its tribulations.⁸² By 1545, Ḥallewa had related a story about a cow escaping to Jews in the hopes of being slaughtered in accordance with Jewish dietary law for transmigratory reasons.⁸³ In addition to this well-known tale, which Ḥallewa embeds in a discussion of the plausibility of reincarnation into animal bodies, Ḥallewa relates two accounts of spirit possession in which the possessor is a disembodied soul.

One of Ḥallewa’s tales of spirit possession features a spirit who declares himself to be the tortured soul of R. Joseph Della Reina. Della Reina, a mid-fifteenth-century Spanish Kabbalist, was the hero of a kabbalistic legend surrounding his failed attempt to hasten the redemption. Although various versions of this Faustian tale are found in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources, most scholars believe, with Joseph Dan, that “some factual basis for the story exists.”⁸⁴ Ḥallewa reports that he was told of this case by two eye-witnesses, but no markers provide further clues as to the provenance of the account, nor confirmation that it took place in a Christian household, which seems to be implied. Although the possessed in Ḥallewa’s account is a young Christian servant girl, the exorcist is a Jewish expert.

Once in the west there was a healthy Gentile maidservant. She suddenly fell to the ground with the falling sickness and said wondrous things. They finally sought out a Jew, from among those who know how to adjure demons, spirits, devils, and destructive beings. He adjured the spirit who entered that Gentile to reveal his name and to depart. The spirit that was in the Gentile’s body responded that he should be left in peace in the body of the Gentile, having only now arrived, and that he was weary and exhausted from his journey when he entered the body of that Gentile. [The Jew] adjured him to say who he was, and he responded and said that he was the soul of Joseph Della Reina, who had been punished and driven away by the Supernal Court for having conjoined his soul with demons. For while in this world, he had used Holy Names for his own benefit and for the good of his body, rather than for the sake of the holiness of heaven.⁸⁵

This striking account locates a case of possession by a disembodied soul in preexpulsion Spain. It also suggests, however cryptically, something of a religious syncretism surrounding the possession episode. Christians are said to turn to Jewish experts to treat the possession of one of their own, and the Jewish exorcist is shown revealing the possessing spirit to be none other than a Spanish rabbi of the not-so-distant past. The rabbi has sought refuge in the body of a Gentile girl, having been punished for his abuse of divine names before his death. Although the syncretistic dimension of the account is fascinating, as is its suggestion of a certain ecumenicism in the area of spirit possession in preexpulsion Spain, the account is fragmentary. It neither provides information as to the means of exorcism used nor comments as to the conclusion of the episode. Ḥallewa does not seem to have felt it important to establish that Della Reina was even exorcised successfully from the maid-servant’s body. For Ḥallewa, the significance of the account was didactic in that it forced his readers to confront the unimaginable suffering that sinners faced after death. Although reincarnation and the possibility of evil impregnation are significant elements in Ḥallewa’s thought—and were thus familiar to members of Safed’s population in the 1540s—Ḥallewa’s discussions and the illustrative and terrifying stories he recounts lack the emphasis upon the rehabilitation or reparation (tikkun) of the possessing soul that became central in the literature in the decades to come. In these later accounts, the exorcist often assumed a responsibility for the ultimate welfare of the possessing spirit no less than for the possessed.

Ḥallewa’s is not the earliest source that testifies to the association between gilgul and some form of spirit possession in the Iberian context. In his midrashic commentary, R. Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi recounts a firsthand experience with a woman who died, but whose spirit subsequently returned to her dead body.⁸⁶ With the spirit within her, she attained clairvoyant powers associated with the possessed. “Sometimes a spirit will return after its death. I myself saw a woman who had died, and remained so from the beginning of the night until almost the middle of the night, and suddenly she arose and sat aright. She remained mute, however, without speech. Yet she heard, and revealed future events.”⁸⁷ Ashkenazi’s account has much in common with the possession narratives of the subsequent century and constitutes yet another indication that Spanish Jews were not unfamiliar with the idea of a departed soul returning—here to a freshly dead body, emptied of its former soul inhabitant. (It is unclear whether the returning soul was the woman’s own.) Although this narrative differs from the standard evil ‘ibbur scenario insofar as the penetrated body is a corpse, the rest of the story is strikingly similar to later accounts. First, the corpse is a woman, and even though women were not the only victims of spirit possession, they were considered to be especially vulnerable to it.⁸⁸ Second, the possessing or resurrecting soul is described as manifesting clairvoyant powers—the woman “revealed future events” (maggedet ‘atidot). Here, Ashkenazi attributes to the woman an ability that was considered by R. Moses Zacuto more than three centuries later to be a distinguishing characteristic of the possessed: “some of them also say something regarding the future.”⁸⁹ Both Ashkenazi and Zacuto use forms of the Hebrew root MGD to describe the manner of speaking associated with clairvoyance in the case of the spirit possessed. Maggidism, another kabbalistic phenomenon with strong Iberian roots, was the most significant and recognized form of positively valued spirit possession in early modern Jewish culture.⁹⁰

A maggid might be defined as a beneficial ‘ibbur, were it not for the fact that unlike an ‘ibbur, a maggid is construed not as a disembodied soul but as an angelic being. Spanish Kabbalists actively sought this form of possession through the deployment of a variety of magico-mystical techniques. An examination of Sefer ha-Meshiv (Book of the Responding Angel) reveals the extent to which practices for obtaining revelations through maggidic possession were of central importance in fifteenth-century Spanish kabbalistic circles. “This work,” wrote Moshe Idel, “represents the first precedent for the rise in the revelatory element in the later Kabbalah of the sixteenth century—as testified to by the work Maggid Mesharim [Angel of Righteousness, by R. Joseph Karo].”⁹¹ The aggressive pursuit of revelation through magical means, entailing the supplanting of one’s own personality with that of an “other,” is not far removed from the cultivation of beneficial ‘ibburim that was a staple of Luria’s prescriptions for his disciples. Dybbuk possession, which proliferated contemporaneously with maggidism, may thus be regarded as “an instance of ‘inverse maggidism.’”⁹² The inversive parallel between dybbukim and maggidim is most clearly manifest in the eruption of involuntary speech in the host. Like the dybbuk, the maggid made its presence known through speech. The literature on ‘ibbur, however, indicates that the visiting soul generally remained silent in its temporary abode, discernible only by the clairvoyant (like Luria) and through what presented itself as a visceral influence, the embodiment of the qualities of the departed rather than his (speaking) personality.

Karo would seem to have wedded the two paradigms in an unprecedented manner. The famous recipient of the most famous maggid in Jewish history, Karo was also shown by Idel to have been the exorcist in the first known possession narrative in early modern Jewish sources.⁹³ Karo was not the only recipient of maggidic revelations to have been associated with exorcism; Zacuto was also reported to have had a maggid.⁹⁴ This should not be terribly surprising, given that rabbinic exorcists were as a rule kabbalists—precisely those who would pursue the attainment of a maggidic revelation. And a maggid could be pursued, unlike Elijah the Prophet, whose revelations were always desired but whose presence was considered impossible to compel. A seventeenth-century purveyor of hagiographic literature, Shlomo ibn Gabbai, discussed the relation between revelations of a maggid and those of Elijah in his introduction to his book on the wonders of R. Isaac Luria.

The level of a maggid is not like the level of Elijah, may his memory be a blessing, not even one one-thousandth part. Perhaps he will apprehend something, for a maggid is a spark of one’s soul that was already in the world, and one can adjure it, and it will appear in one’s own form and image, until one becomes bored with the apparition, since it is a shame that it is unable to reveal more, but only that which is within the power of the spark of one’s soul and not more. But Elijah, may his memory be a blessing, reveals himself with the Shekhina⁹⁵ and they do not separate from each other. And the wise will intuitively understand that there is nothing higher than this level.⁹⁶

Karo’s own status as a clairvoyant mystic suffered by the comparison. Unlike Luria, Karo’s positive possession state, his maggid, was not sufficiently rarefied to provide him with the most sublime revelations. His achievement thus paled when measured against that of Luria, as ibn Gabbai was quick to point out: “And you, who are interested, look at the book Maggid Mesharim of R. Joseph Karo, of blessed memory, to whom the maggid revealed himself regularly and revealed some [mystical] rationales of the Torah [ta‘amei Torah]. Yet nevertheless, these were as naught before the secrets of the AR”I [Luria], may his memory be for life everlasting.”⁹⁷ Of course, because Elijah’s presence could not be forced, few enjoyed his revelations; maggidic revelations were far more common among the mystical rabbinic elite, for whom the maggid was a regularized, positive form of spirit possession with clear Iberian roots.

A good deal of the theoretical and practical groundwork for the reconstruction of spirit possession in sixteenth-century Jewish culture can therefore be found in literature written in and recalling preexpulsion Spain. The interest in cultivating positively valued possession states, whether ‘ibburic or maggidic, is recalled by sixteenth-century kabbalists as having been part of the Spanish milieu of their fathers. How do such recollections of Spanish antecedents accord with the views of spirit possession prevalent in late medieval Christian Spain? Was the Jewish willingness to accept a disembodied soul as a possessor entirely foreign to Christian contemporaries? Although the Church held that possession by the deceased was impossible—and indeed heretical—sixteenth-century Spanish writers acknowledged that popular notions of possession often presumed precisely that. Souls of the dead appeared frequently in fifteenth-century Spain in the forms of apparitions to the living. These souls, or ghosts, were thought to be in purgatory, in need of assistance from the living to ascend to heaven. Given that requirement, they make their appearance to ask that responses or anniversary masses be said on their behalf. They may also express anger at the dispersal of a patrimony.⁹⁸ According to William A. Christian, “medieval theologians accepted that souls could visit the earth in visible form, and these souls seem to have been regarded as good, rather than bad, spirits.”⁹⁹ Nevertheless, clerical authorities did not consider such ghosts to be capable of possessing the body of a living person—a belief that seems to have been prevalent, despite clerical opposition. Learned demonological works from early sixteenth-century Spain criticize this belief. Two authors of such works, Martin de Castañega and Pedro Ciruelo, sharing common sources and authorities, provided similar descriptions of the possessed.¹⁰⁰ Both Castañega and Ciruelo wrote that souls of the dead professed to occupy demoniacs, compelling them to act as their possessing spirits had acted. If the soul was in purgatory, the possessed would prescribe masses, charity, and fasts. Castañega nevertheless criticizes exorcists for finding the souls of the dead in demoniacs, a phenomenon foreign to the documented experiences of Jesus and the apostles.¹⁰¹

Regarding possession phenomena more broadly as forms of prophecy, we may also see Iberian parallels without difficulty. Popular prophecy was a widespread phenomenon in fifteenth-century Spain. Jews who witnessed “plaza prophets” firsthand often suffered as a result of their diatribes.¹⁰² Their experience of prophecy was not merely one of passivity and suffering, however; New Christians were among the active participants in the prophetic revival during this period.¹⁰³

The efflorescence of spirit possession in sixteenth-century Jewish culture resists simple explanation. Although the preoccupation with gilgul and tikkun in Jewish thought reflected in the idiom of dybbuk possession might, like nearly everything else in the period, be seen as a response to the expulsion from Spain, a richer appreciation of the idiom and its emergence requires a more complex historical context. Such a context frames the phenomenon in the broader, shared cultural constructions that characterized the early modern period.¹⁰⁴ Even as they responded to their own crises, Jews nevertheless participated in broad idioms shared by other subcultures. An explanation of the emergence of dybbuk possession must therefore take several factors into consideration: shifts in kabbalistic anthropology and demonology, magical practices that closed the gap between the living and the dead, popular conceptions of “ghost” possession, and an appreciation of the indebtedness of sixteenth-century Safedian developments to the cultural climate of fifteenth-century Spain. A mixture of social factors, theory, and practices combined to facilitate the emergence of the classic construct of dybbuk possession and render it intelligible in sixteenth-century Safed.