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Chapter 3

The Task of the Exorcist

The 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 Ḥanina, was a leading rabbinic figure known for his halakhic authority, as well as for his magical prowess. In this case, the demon actually collaborates with R. Shimon; the possession is a “setup” to allow R. Shimon to earn the favor of the Emperor by saving his daughter. This source, and its midrashic parallel,¹² refer to the demon’s entering the belly of the girl, the whispering of incantations into her ear by the exorcist R. Shimon, and the breaking of glass in the Emperor’s house as a sign of the demon’s departure. According to Bar-Ilan, this case ex-emplifies the centrality of charismatic, shamanistic Jewish leadership in the ancient world.

Josephus provides one of the richest accounts of exorcism in ancient Judaism in his Antiquitates Judaicae, describing the exorcism of a demoniac by the Jew Eleazar before Vespasian and his court. As Josephus tells it, “Eleazar applied to the nostrils of the demon-possessed man his own ring, which had under its seal-stone one of the roots whose properties King Solomon had taught, and so drew the demon out through the sufferer’s nose. The man immediately fell to the ground, and Eleazar then adjured the demon never to return, calling the name of Solomon and reciting the charms that he had composed.”¹³ Josephus regarded demons as “spirits of the wicked which enter into men that are alive and kill them,” but which can be driven out by a certain root.¹⁴ It has been suggested that Eleazar was an Essene and that the Essenes were in possession of secret works, including one or more works on healing ascribed to King Solomon—perhaps to be identified with the work on healing hidden by Hezekiah.¹⁵

In the third century, Origen testified to the broad recognition in the ancient world that Jews and Jewish formulas were particularly powerful agents against demons. He was carrying on a trope that shot through Greek and Roman literature for centuries.¹⁶

In any event, it is clear that the Jews trace their genealogy back to the three fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Their names are so powerful when linked with the name of God that the formula “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” is used not only by members of the Jewish nation in their prayers to God and when they exorcise daemons, but also by almost all those who deal in magic and spells. For in magical treatises it is often to be found that God is invoked by this formula, and that in spells against daemons His name is used in close connexion with the names of these men.¹⁷

Origen is mindful of the fact that the Jews remain the authorities in these matters. “We learn from the Hebrews,” he writes, “the history of the events mentioned in these formulae and the interpretation of the names, since in their traditional books and language they pride themselves on these things and explain them.”¹⁸ If, as Marcel Simon has suggested, “In the opinion of the ancients, magic was, as it were, congenital in Israel,” recent scholars have argued that the very concept of spirit possession is foreign to Greek thought in classical and Hellenistic times.¹⁹ A broad consensus in the ancient world to this effect is indirectly revealed by the many Jewish elements that found their way into both pagan and Christian exorcism rituals, as exemplified so well by the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM), a body of papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt dating from the second century B.C.E. to the fifth century C.E. The PGM contain a number of exorcism rituals featuring pronounced Jewish elements.²⁰

Prominent among these exorcism techniques in the PGM are Hebrew magical names, references to the God of Israel and the Patriarchs, and to the saving acts of this mighty God.²¹ The following famous passage provides a good sense of the nature of these rituals.

A tested charm of Pibechis²² for those possessed by daimons: Take oil of unripe olives with the herb mastigia and the fruit pulp of the lotus, and boil them with colorless marjoram while saying, “IOEL … come out from NN.” The phylactery: On a tin lamella write / “IAEO …” and hang it on the patient. It is terrifying to every daimon, a thing he fears. After placing [the patient] opposite [to you], adjure ….

[The adjuration:] I adjure you by the God of the Hebrews, Jesus IABA … I adjure you by the one who appeared to Osrael in a shining pillar and a cloud by day, / who saved his people from the Pharaoh and brought upon Pharaoh the ten plagues because of his disobedience. I adjure you, every daimonic spirit, to tell whatever sort you may be, because I adjure by the seal / which Solomon placed on the tongue of Jeremiah, and he told …. I adjure you by the great god SABAOTH, through whom the Jordan River drew back and the Red Sea, / which Israel crossed, became impassable … I adjure you by the one who introduced the one hundred forty languages and distributed them by his own command …. I adjure [you] by the one in holy Jerusalem, before whom the / unquenchable fire burns for all time, with his holy name, IAEOBAPHRENEMOUN (formula), the one before whom the fiery Gehenna trembles, flames surround, iron bursts asunder and every mountain is afraid from its foundation. / I adjure you, every daimonic spirit, by the one who oversees the earth and makes its foundations tremble, [the one] who made all things which are not into that which is.²³

The closing instructions of the exorcism adjure the exorcist himself to abstain from eating pork in order to ensure the effectiveness of the ceremony. He is instructed to keep himself pure, “for this charm is Hebraic and is preserved among pure men.”

This procedure combines a number of components: gathering and cooking herbs, along with reciting spells during the process; attaching an amulet to the patient; adjuring the demon to disclose its identity; addressing the deity by various magical names; and recalling His works. As the adjuration in the name of Jesus makes clear, the procedure is not of Jewish provenance, though it obviously has many Jewish elements and is touted as “Hebraic” by the enthusiastic and earnest magician-scribe.²⁴ Some components, like the use of herbs, may reflect Jewish influence but are nonetheless fairly universal in character.²⁵ Amulets too were not unfamiliar in Jewish and non-Jewish circles in antiquity, known in such everyday accoutrements of Jewish life as tefillin and mezuzot (phylacteries for placement on the arm and head during prayer, and upon the doorposts of the home, respectively) as well as in more esoteric forms of Babylonian magical practices.²⁶

Our example from the PGM also illustrates another characteristic of exorcism rituals that was to remain a constant throughout history: the imperative to force the demon to speak and to name himself. We find this in sources ranging from the Gospel of Mark (5:1–20) to Rumpelstilzkin in Grimm’s Märchen, as well as in many of the Jewish procedures of the medieval and early modern periods. As Michel de Certeau has written, exorcists respond to the indeterminate “other” that speaks from the possessed

through a labor of naming or designating that is the characteristic answer to possession in any traditional society. Whether in Africa or South America, therapy in cases of possession essentially consists of naming, of ascribing a term to what manifests itself as speech, but as an uncertain speech inseparable from fits, gestures, and cries. A disturbance arises, and therapy, or social treatment, consists of providing a name—a term already listed in a society’s catalogues—for this uncertain speech …. Thus exorcism is essentially an enterprise of denomination intended to reclassify a protean uncanniness within an established language. It aims at restoring the postulate of all language, that is, a stable relation between the interlocutor, “I,” and a social signifier, the proper name.²⁷

Our text’s adjuration, “I adjure you by the one who introduced the one hundred forty languages and distributed them by his own command,” alludes to this destabilization of “the postulate of all language.” In this case, it also asserts an ultimate ordering subject, the “I” of “I am the Lord your God”—guaranteeing order behind the linguistic chaos of Babel.

Finally, we find in the PGM passage a recounting of God’s mighty works, an example of what has been called “the authoritative discourse of precedent.”²⁸ This particular historiola places significant emphasis upon the crossing of the Red Sea and the Jordan River. In addition to calling upon the power manifested in these great acts, the specific references to bodies of water reflect the widespread notion that demons and witchcraft have no power against water, an idea found in ancient sources from Apuleius to the Talmud, and underlying the twentieth-century icon of the melting wicked witch upon her drenching by Dorothy.²⁹ It seems to have troubled few that water was also considered a favored domain of the spirits, and drinking a typical way of becoming possessed.

Though magical manuscripts were consigned to destruction repeatedly throughout history, they could never be totally eradicated. Collections were preserved and even enhanced from generation to generation by each recipient of the precious tomes. loan Couliano wrote of “an uninterrupted continuity of the methods of practical magic” stretching from late antiquity, via Byzantium, and, through Arab channels, reaching the West in the twelfth century.³⁰ In Baroja’s words, “There is little difference between the spells which Celestina knew and used, and those enumerated in Latin texts.”³¹ Indeed, magical texts featuring exorcism techniques reveal a consistency over time that is positively unnerving to the historian, who by training and disposition is best equipped to analyze and evaluate change. The preservation of formulas is so significant that scholars have at times been able to reconstruct magical fragments from antiquity by using medieval materials, such as the readings of fifth-century clay tablets assisted by eleventh-century Geniza fragments accomplished by Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked.³²

The use of Hebrew names in non-Jewish rites would continue over the centuries, evincing the enduring and highly syncretistic nature of these traditions. Thus the frequent appearance in Catholic exorcism rites of the Hebrew magical name AGLA, the acrostic of the phrase Atah Gibbor Le-‘olam Adonai, “You are mighty forever, my Lord.”³³ Jews and Christians used this magical name, connoting as it did divine judgment and severity, in cases of possession, demonic disturbance, or for all-purpose protection. Yet the presence of Hebrew in Christian rites did not find favor in the eyes of all Church authorities. Martín de Castañega, the Franciscan friar whose views on possession by the dead have been noted above, took pains in his Tratado to denounce the use of Hebrew words in Christian exorcisms:

It seems a vain thing, and even a lack of faith, and from the Jewish quarter [judería], or superstition, to use ancient Hebrew names in Christian and Catholic prayers, as if the old names were worth more than the new. And such names are especially dangerous for the ignorant who know little, because those Hebrew and Greek names may serve as a cover, so that other unknown, diabolical names are spoken with them.³⁴

Castañega’s conflation of Judaizing, superstition, magic, and diabolism typifies a critique of the syncretistic tradition going back to the early Christian centuries.³⁵ It is echoed by Daniel Defoe, who charged in his 1727 work A System of Magick; or, A History of the Black Art that magicians depended on books filled with Hebrew and Arabic, alongside altogether nonsensical words and symbols. This, he felt, placed them in league with the demonolatrous necromancers of hoary antiquity. Magicians “make a great deal of Ceremony with their Circles and Figures, with Magical Books, Hebrew or Arabick Characters, muttering of hard Words, and other Barbarisms innumerable; Just, in a word, as the old Necromancers do, when they consult with the Devil.”³⁶ The reputation of Hebrew words for magical efficacy and this syncretic tradition were not limited to the Christian world nor even to the Middle Ages. A more recent witness, from the beginning of the twentieth century, testified that “At present in Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus, Jewish silversmiths carry on a large trade in Moslem amulets. In fact an amulet is supposed to have special power if it has not only Arabic but Hebrew letters on it.”³⁷

Medieval Jewish Exorcism

Shoshan Yesod ha-‘Olam (Lily, Foundation of the World) is perhaps the most comprehensive extant late medieval magical Hebrew manuscript.³⁸ Most of the manuscript, in its present form, was compiled in the early decades of the sixteenth century by R. Joseph Tirshom, a kabbalist based in Salonika about whom little is known. Tirshom was exposed to magico-mystical traditions from around the Jewish world, and his great manuscript bears witness to this range of experience. In Salonika, Tirshom became acquainted with material that arrived with Spanish exiles as well as with members of the city’s Ashkenazi community, including his teacher, R. Meir ha-Levi.³⁹ Tirshom also traveled widely and discovered magical works in Damascus, Jerusalem, Egypt, and other Jewish communities in the Levant, many of which he copied whole cloth into his comprehensive compilation.⁴⁰ Some of these he copied from Judeo-Arabic works, apparently intending to have them translated subsequently into Hebrew; Tirshom does not seem to have understood Arabic himself.⁴¹

Shoshan Yesod ha-‘Olam was a pivotal text in the transmission of Jewish magical traditions. First of all, it included significant passages and even entire works from earlier strata in the history of Jewish magic, including material from texts and teachers who played a central role in the development of Safedian Kabbalah. Tirshom copied from Sefer ha-Meshiv, perhaps the most important work from late medieval Spain to provide the theoretical under-pinnings of dybbuk possession as well as traditions in the name of individuals such as R. Ḥayyim Ashkenazi, a mystic acquainted with the father of Vital and whose prophecies regarding Ḥayyim Vital are noted in the latter’s journal.⁴² Second, Shoshan Yesod ha-‘Olam was clearly an important manuscript for the mystical inheritors of Luria’s legacy. Autographs and annotations in the margins indicate that it passed through the hands of important redactors of Lurianic literature, including R. Ya‘aqov Ẓemaḥ, and even caught the attention of no less a striking figure than Sabbetai Sevi, whose signature appears on page 522!⁴³ Additions to the manuscript—including a commentary on Luria’s sabbath meal hymns—are in a mixture of Spanish and Ashkenazic handwriting, indicating that it found a home among the Ashkenazi sages who studied with Sephardic authorities in Jerusalem in the early seventeenth century; other additions exhibit a liberal use of Ladino.⁴⁴ In short, just as Tirshom copied copiously from earlier works as well as from his contemporaries, his great manuscript became an important source for subsequent generations of practical kabbalists and copyists.

Shoshan Yesod ha-‘Olam is full of exorcism rituals. Although many techniques are suggested in the manuscript, the ingredients that go into most of them would be found in every good magician’s cabinets. The procedures almost universally call for the adjuration of spirits, some angelic and some demonic, in the classic form “I adjure you angel so-and-so to come and to do such-and-such.” The exorcist must adjure the appropriate angel for the job, because each day has its own angel who must be enlisted for the operation to be a success. The procedures have much in common with those found on the magical bowls of antiquity as well as with those of the PGM. Bowls are still very much in use—they are written upon, erased, and filled with living waters made murky by the erasure. The potion is then given to the possessed to drink. Other passages suggest that deer skin be used in lieu of a bowl or that the magical names be written directly upon the forehead and arms of the possessed. Psalms, foremost among them the famous antidemonic Psalm 91, also have their uses here, suggesting parallels going back to Qumran and forward to the Rituale Romanum.⁴⁵ Elsewhere, the exorcist is advised to supplement the recitation of two chapters of Psalms with the use of leaves from a date palm that has not yet produced fruit.⁴⁶ Finally, it is important to note that most techniques suggested for treating spirit possession have other uses as well—they are truly broad-spectrum remedies. Shoshan Yesod ha-‘Olam includes a technique that promises to offer protection from injuries, doubts and fears, bad dreams, business negotiation problems, crying children, women having difficulty in labor, dangers of travel, and demonic afflictions.⁴⁷ Another technique is said to have the power to confuse and confound one’s enemy, while also being capable of exorcising a demon and exiling someone from his or her place of residence.⁴⁸ The ability to treat disparate problems with one solution stems from a belief that the problems had a common etiology, often astrologically or sympathetically understood.

Quite nearly at random, then, we may choose from the many techniques of adjuration exorcism in Shoshan Yesod ha-‘Olam to exemplify the “pre-Lurianic” approach. Little had changed in the composition of such techniques since antiquity, as a cursory comparison with our PGM text well demonstrates. In one exorcism technique recorded by Tirshom (§511), the exorcist-magician is given the following instructions in order “[t]o remove a demon [shed] from the body of a man or woman, or anything into which a male or female demon has entered”:

Take an empty flask and a white waxen candle, and recite this adjuration in purity:

I adjure you, the holy and pure angels Michael, Raphael, Shuviel, Ahadriel, Zumtiel, Yeḥutiel, Zumẓiel …. By 72 names I adjure you, you all the retinues of spirits in the world—Be-‘ail Laḥush and all your retinue; Kapkafuni the Queen of the Demons and all your retinue; and Agrat bat Malkat and all your retinue, and Zmamit and all your retinue, and those that were made on the eve of the Sabbath⁴⁹—that you bring forth that demon immediately and do not detain the mazzik of so-and-so, and tell me his name in this circle that I have drawn in your honor ….

Immediately they will tell you his name and the name of his father and the name of his mother aloud; do not fear them.

Immediately recite this adjuration in such a way:

I adjure you the demon so-and-so, by the utterance of the watchers and the holy ones [cf. Dan. 4:14] by YHVH God of the Heavens, with these names I adjure you the demon so-and-so, son of so-and-so and so-and-so, that you now enter this flask immediately and immediately the flask will turn red. Immediately say to him these five names YHV YHV …. That demon will immediately cry a great and bitter cry from the great pressure; do not believe him until he swears by YUD HA VAV HA explicitly.⁵⁰ Then leave him alone and pay him no further heed.⁵¹

This procedure again contains familiar elements, many of them ubiquitous in exorcism techniques. Hardware requirements are minimal—the standard glass flask, common in Arabic magic for these types of applications, and a white candle. Holy angels and demonic spirits are adjured by the exorcist, enlisted to assist him by forcing the penetrating demon to disclose his name and the names of his parents. Once the demon has been named, it becomes vulnerable to adjurations that force its departure and subsequent capture in the flask. At this point, with the demon quite literally in the exorcist’s hands, the exorcist makes his final adjurations and is “left alone.” Although this formula does not include instructions for disposing of the flask, options ranged from disposal in a barren place to a thorough rinsing in water.

In all, exorcism techniques preserved in late medieval Hebrew manuscripts indicate that little had changed since antiquity. Comprising both adjurations and operations based upon the occult properties of objects, these exorcism techniques blend natural and demonic magic to full effect.⁵² Moreover, the ceremonies retain the theatrical power that had made them the miracles par excellence of antiquity. This theatricality and the powerful impression made by public exorcisms almost certainly led to the interest in their control by elites, no less than it did to their success as a healing modality.⁵³