Demons, Sex, and Possession in Judaism

Demons are sexy. In many Jewish myths and in larger Jewish contexts many demons want to disrupt your sexual purity. Typically every time you fantasize about sex it is said that you are actually fornicating with a demon. All aspects of demonology in Judaism are sexually charged and in tales of possession is where the sexual metaphors reach their proverbial climax.

Judaism has its own terms and concepts for dealing with evil spirits and spirit possession. Ru’ah is a generic word for spirits used in many Jewish contexts.¹ Ibbur comes from the Hebrew word to impregnate but is also used to talk about receiving an additional soul.² Ibbur is the most general world for possession and is used to talk about demon possession.³ It also used to talk about another type of possessions that tend to be benevolent in nature and are sometimes said to be soul fragments from dead pious people or second soul that one receives on the Sabbath.⁴ Sometimes though ibbur is used in a malevolent spirit possession however negative spirit possessions by deceased humans are referred to by the name dybbuk.⁵ One common but not exact way to distinguish dybbuk possession from others is that dybbuk possession almost always involved possession from a dead human being that’s either wicked or confused.⁶

When talking about demons in Judaism, Lilith is a logical place to start. Lilith is said to be the first wife of Adam who fled from Adam after refusing to lie underneath him during sex.⁷ Lilith is referenced in Isaiah 34:14 and she may be based on the Babylonian succubus Lilitu who was a great seducer of men and stealer of semen.⁸ Lilith adopts a dual role in Jewish lore: the seducer of men and the killer of babies.⁹ However it seems that Lilith was originally only a seducer and succubus; and her child killing tendencies previously belonged to a demon named Obyzouth whom is mentioned in the pseudepigraphical book The Testament of Solomon.¹⁰

However it came about, it is interesting that Lilith is associated with both sex and death; she is an externalization of everything that scared and fascinated the pre-modern Jewish mind. Judaism and Jewish culture can be fairly characterized as being very concerned with purity. In no two areas of life is purity more in danger than during sex and death. Therefore Lilith and her demonic children are naturally most active and dangerous when people are coming into the world and also when they are on their way out of this world. Lilith was more than a demon; she was the personification of impurity and mankind’s inclination towards evil (yetzer ha-ra).¹¹

Lilith the seducer is said to be able to take very beautiful forms, besides being able to be the epitome of beauty she is a master in the Law.¹² Lilith uses her intellectual prowess to try to talk people into sinning by trying to convince them that sleeping with her would only be a very minor sin.¹³ Lilith is often described as having long black hair and her long hair is said to be a symbol of not being married, so she tempts men by trying to convince them that since the Torah doesn’t specifically specify a punishment for a man lying with an unmarried woman, that it is only a minor sin.¹⁴ Lilith and all demons were also brazen enough to try to temp even the most holy of men, in fact the more holy you are the more Lilith and her children will want to try to attack and seduce you.

Lilith and her demon children, called the Lilim, want semen. It is said that every time a man ejaculates outside of his wife he is having sex with a Lilim or succubus. Lilim appear to men in many ways but it is usually through visions or dreams.¹⁵ The Lilim want semen so that they can become pregnant with half-human half-demon spawn that will haunt their fathers for all their days.¹⁶ The symbolism here is seemingly transparent, what should scare a man more than a sexually empowered woman, a woman in control, that wants to become pregnant and then the children of said arrangement will torment the man for the rest of his life?

Most men have dozens if not hundreds or thousands of half-demon spawn haunting them.¹⁷ Luckily for men though, it said that a hundred of Lilith’s children perish every day.¹⁸ Demon spawn can cause many health problems for their father or just those that happen to be near by.¹⁹ When a man dies his demon children surround his body and howl out his name, to avoid these demon, the human children of a man must take certain precautions. There are many rituals a man’s sons must perform in order to not take on his father’s demons.²⁰ Perhaps this is an expression of a type of Oedipus complex, as well as a type of repression of it, built into the myth. When a son takes on his father’s demons he in effect becomes his father and owns his demons, in the way it may be said a man owns his wife or his children. Even more so it is possible and likely that said son could one day have sex with a Lilim perhaps even the same Lilim that knew his father. In a very convoluted way we can see something similar to an Oedipus complex as well as the an incorporation of that fact that people try to repress this urge built into the myth. It is bad for a son to take on his father’s demons and his father’s demon-lover just like it is bad for a son to take his father’s wife but that doesn’t mean that the subconscious desire isn’t there.

Copulation with demons and the resulting health issues aren’t only limited to men, one myth about the origins of the giants called the Nefilim, found in the pseudepigraphical Testament of Reuben, attributes the birth of the Nefilim not to women sleeping with the sons of God but instead to women fantasizing about the angels while having sex with their husbands.²¹ As it is in the case of men fantasizing about Lilith is also considered having sex with her and having children with her, so too here simply by fantasizing about the angels the women bring untold and unexpected consequences on themselves by having Nefilim children. There are also various other myths that have to do with Cain being the spawn of a demon because of Eve having sex with, being raped by, or fantasizing about a demon; an alternative myth also involves Adam and Eve cannibalizing a human baby or eating a sheep that was actually a demon.²²

Despite having long black hair that is suppose to be a symbol of not being married, Lilith is said to have at least two husbands Samael, the angel of death, and Ashmedai, the king of demons. Attempts have been made to bring these beliefs into agreement by saying that there are two Liliths. One that is married to Samael and is the great seducer and one that is married to Ashmedai that is the baby killer.²³ The notion that there are two Liliths fits into a larger Luriandric Kabbalist theme of their being two Adams, two Messiahs, and two covenants with God.

Let’s look as Lilith as the killer of babies. A woman fears Lilith for different reasons than a man fears her. Men fear her as a sexual fantasy but to a woman Lilith represents the risk of somebody taking away their husband and killing their children.²⁴ For men Lilith is forbidden and sensual therefore making her tempting while yet fearing her destructive abilities.²⁵ For a woman Lilith is nothing but trouble, a whore that wants to steal her husband’s affection and seed as well as take the life of her infant children.²⁶ Perhaps because women aren’t typically afraid of being tempted by Lilith women seem to have the most knowledge and expertise fighting her. It is said that Lilith is attracted to the smell of breast milk and that sometimes she takes the form of a long black hair and goes into a container of breast milk to get to a baby.²⁷ One astute mother was able to see what Lilith was up to one day and she put a lid on the jug of milk that Lilith had put herself in and she shook the jug mercilessly to torment Lilith. Lilith eventually agreed to protect the mother and child from all danger for three years in exchange for being released.²⁸ Notice how in this story, it is the woman that’s the hero, she is strong and smart and more than capable of defending herself and her baby’s health against Lilith, something that can rarely be said about a man.

How does one go about healing themselves from the problems caused by the Lilim and various other demons? Judaism has many processes in place for dealing with the health issues that are demon related. Exorcisms are used to expel demons, the recitation and inscription of holy names or even the names of the demons are used to ward demons away, and most commonly there are many purity rituals in place so that one can regain their purity through ablutions.

The notion of purity is very important to Judaism and is one of the driving forces behind demons. Demons are a useful tool because they allow an individual or a society to externalize parts of themselves that they are not willing to include in their concept of us and can thereby make parts of their own society part of “them” by blaming it on demons or other types of spirits. Various contexts give various impressions, but it seems that typically there is no sin or transgression that can be inferred simply because somebody is being plagued by a demon. Even the most holy men get plagued by demons and are actually more likely to be done so.

Demon possession (ibbur) has been a part of Jewish culture for millennia but possession by deceased human beings is a relatively new phenomenon that the earliest known documented cases come from the late sixteenth century.²⁹ The idea of being possessed by humans was most likely heavenly influenced by the idea of the transmigration of souls (gilgul), which can be traced, back to the thirteenth century CE.³⁰ Dybbuk possession while different in theological significance to demon possession played a very similar role as demon possession in terms of being very sexual in nature.³¹

Contrasted to men being tempted by female demons such as Lilith, dybbuk possession usually happened to women and it was male spirits that usually possessed them.³² The second most common combination was men being possessed by male spirits.³³ The least common scenario was female spirits possessing men.³⁴ Dybbuk possessions thus usually play out as heterosexual or less commonly male homosexual metaphors. It is said that where the spirit enters the body is through the vagina or the anus; the association of erogenous zones with dybbuk possession further showcase the sexual nature of demons and possession in Judaism.³⁵ One of the signs of a woman being possessed by a male dybbuk is that she will masturbate uncontrollably and she will avoid being penetrated by her husband at all cost.³⁶

Just as encounters with demons became an externalization and symbol for men’s sexual fantasies; so too did dybbuk possession become a means by which people could express subconscious urges that were not acceptable to the larger society without the context of spirit possession. Under the context of being possessed by a dybbuk women could express their desires for more sex, or express their lack of interest in sex with men and instead demand to have sex with women. Likewise men could express desires of wanting to know another man. By externalizing these feelings the individuals and the societies at large had a way of explaining away things they did not like such as female sexuality or homosexuality. As a culture obsessed with sexual purity having something like a dybbuk, which could be explained as an impure outsider, was a very useful tool the society could use to not incorporate sexual deviants into their sense of “us” while at the same time not literally pushing their members out. With proper motivation, effort, and ritual these people could become clean again, healed, and brought back into the society. In the theme of repression Yorma Bilu speculates whether male-to-female dybbuk possession might be influenced by Oedipal urges by women to be penetrated by their fathers.³⁷ While there isn’t a lot to go on in dybbuk literature, there is one instant where a famous nineteenth century Hasidic rabbi was said to have possessed his most favored daughter, whom he favored over all his other children including the males.³⁸ Under the pretext of being possessed by her father the daughter challenges the moral and spiritual authority of her brothers.³⁹

Spirit possession is not always bad and sometimes people are impregnated with the spirit of a righteous person that needs to accomplish something. Even spirit possession that is malevolent can have unexpected positive side effects such as clairvoyance.⁴⁰

The way to cure a possession is through an exorcisms and a Jewish dybbuk exorcisms is said to be a very long, emotional, and exhausting struggle done by a Rabbi.⁴¹ The first important step in a dybbuk exorcism is to find out the identity and name of the possessing spirit, a theme common to many exorcism rituals around the world.⁴² The next step the Rabbi would negotiate with the spirit, typically what the spirit wanted had something to do with its own spiritual redemption or it wants certain mourning practices to be done on its behalf because nobody did them for it when it died.⁴³ The Rabbi would make arrangements with the spirit to meet its conditions if it would swear a public oath to leave its victim.⁴⁴ The next and final step was tricky, the spirit would want to maintain its pride and declare some sort of victory in its leaving by hurting its victim through the exit wound that it would leave though. Therefore it was very important for the Rabbi to instruct the spirit to leave though the fingers or big toe, which were said to be the safest place for a spirit to leave the body.⁴⁵ Yoran Bilu points out that in contrast to modern Western practices of healing, when a Rabbi heals somebody from possession he’s not only healing the person he’s also healing his community, the deviance shown by the possessed person is harnessed and used as a tool to reinforce social control and cultural unity.⁴⁶

Besides sexual impurity, demon possession was also used to explain things like madness as well as many other kinds of sickness especially in the seventeenth through eighteenth centuries.⁴⁷ In this time period Jewish magic and spell makers were very popular however the old theme of antagonism toward sorcerers and against practitioners of magic was ever present.⁴⁸ This antagonism did not necessarily derive from a lack of belief in the effectiveness of the person that practiced the magic but instead arise from the ever present Biblical theme of not practicing witchcraft, divination, or otherwise knowing what is hidden.⁴⁹

These Jewish magical practitioners were known as the ba’al shem which literally means masters of the name, they took this name because the ba’al shem were mainly concerned with knowing and manipulating divine and spiritual names for the sake of fulfilling some goal often a healing goal.⁵⁰ The knowing of spiritual names and the power that knowledge give somebody control over has a long history in Judaism. One of the most commonly known and held beliefs is that the names of the angels Seynoy, Sansenoy, and Semangeof will ward off Lilith.⁵¹ Another legend gives the secret names of Lilith herself, which were told by her to the prophet Elijah and are Lilith, Abiti, Abizu, Amrusu, Hakash, Ode, Ayil, Maturta, Avgu, Katah, Kali, Batub, and Paritasha.⁵² Knowing the name of an angel or a demon was thought to be an extremely powerful magical tool, inscriptions of holy names and amulets have a documented history in Judaism that’s thousands of years old.

Demons, spirits, dybbuks, shades, and any other correlating figure have played a role that is central to Judaism. They’ve served as the personification of sexual impurity, are used to scare people into doing the right things. They’ve been catalyst for people to express subconscious repressed urges. Studying demons and possessions tells more about human nature and the state of Judaism at any one particular time than it does about the nature of demons themselves. Attitudes about women, purity, sexuality, and what’s best for the society are all alluded to when looking at literature about demons and possessions in Judaism. Perhaps the greatest insight to be gained is to look at how the individual cases of temptation and possession are used as a tool by the society to reinforce its own norms and also to reassert what it means to be a member of that society as well as what it means to not be a member of that society.

Bibliography

Bilu, Yoram. “The Taming of the Deviants and Beyond: An Analysis of Dybbuk Posession and Exorcism in Judaism.” In Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present, edited by Matt Goldish. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003, 41-72.

Goldish, Matt. “Preface.” In Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present, edited by Matt Goldish. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003, 11-19.

Mark, Zvi. “Dybukk and Devekut in the Shivhe ha-Besht: Toward a Phenomenology of Madness in Early Hasidim.” In Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present, edited by Matt Goldish. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003, 257-304.

Schwartz, Howard. Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Sommer, Eli. “Trance Poessession Disorder in Judaism: Sixteenth-Century Dybbuks in the Near East.” Journal of Trauma and Dissociation 5, no. 2 (2004), www.haworthpress.com/web/JTD: 131-146.

1 Matt Goldish, “Preface,” in Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Matt Goldish (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), 12.

2 Matt Goldish, 12.

3 Matt Goldish, 12.

4 Matt Goldish, 12, and Howard Schwartz, “The Sabbath Bride,” in Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 309.

5 Matt Goldish, 13.

6 Yormal Bilu, “The Taming of the Deviants and Beyond: An Analysis of Dybbuk Posession and Exorcism in Judaism,” in Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Matt Goldish (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), 41

7 Howard Schwartz, “Adam and Lilith,” in Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 216.

8 Howard Schwartz, Adam and Lilith, 216.

9 For many examples of these roles see the chapter “Myths of Hell” in Howard Schwartz’s, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 211-243.

10 Howard Schwartz, “The Night Demoness,” in Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 223.

11 Howard Schwartz, “The Woman in the Forrest,” in Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 219.

12 Howard Schwartz, Woman in Forest, 219.

13 Howard Schwartz, Woman in Forest, 219.

14 Howard Schwartz, Woman in Forest, 219.

15 Howard Schwartz, “The Cellar,” in Howard Schwartz, “The Woman in the Forrest,” in Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 220.

16 Howard Schwartz, The Cellar, 220-221.

17 Howard Schwartz, Woman in the Forest, 219.

18 Howard Schwartz, Adam and Lilith, 216.

19 Goldish, 15.

20 Howard Schwartz, The Cellar, 221.

21 Howard Schwartz, “The Giants of Old,” in Howard Schwartz, “

22 Howard Schwartz, “Cain and Abel,” in Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 450-462.

23 Howard Schwartz, “The Two Liliths,” Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 222.

24 Howard Schwartz, “Lilith the Witch,” in Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 224.

25 Howard Schwartz, Lilith the Witch, 224.

26 Howard Schwartz, Lilith the Witch, 224.

27 Howard Schwartz, Lilith the Witch, 224.

28 Howard Schwartz, Lilith the Witch, 224.

29 Bilu, 42-43.

30 Bilu, 42, and Howard Schwartz, “The Creation of Souls,” in Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 164.

31 Bilu, 46.

32 Bilu, 46-48.

33 Bilu, 46.

34 Bilu, 46.

35 Bilu, 47-49.

36 Bilu, 49.

37 Bilu, 53.

38 Bilu, 53-55.

39 Bilu, 55.

40 Eli Sommer, “Trance Possession Disorder in Judaism: Sixteenth-Century Dybbuks in the Near East,” Journal of Trauma and Dissociation Vol 5 issue 2 (2004), www.haworthpress.com/web/JTD: 135.

41 Bilu, 56.

42 Bilu, 56.

43 Bilu, 58.

44 Bilu, 58-59.

45 Bilu, 59.

46 Bilu, 60.

47 Zvi Mark, “Dybukk and Devekut in the Shivhe ha-Besht: Toward a Phenomenology of Madness in Early Hasidim,” in Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Matt Goldish (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), 257.

48 Mark, 257, 263-265.

49 Mark 257, 287.

50 Mark 257-258.

51 Howard Schwartz, A Spell to Banish Lilith, 218.

52 Howard Schwartz, “Lilith and Elijah,” in Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford University Press, 2004), 224-225.

Depth Theology

John C. Merkle rehashes Abraham Heschel’s theology and covers such things as becoming aware of the divine through the sublime, the inadequacy of human perception and senses, the non-physical nature of the divine. Merkle strays from Heschel theology by introducing a non-Heschelian idea of grace into his ideas and he also uses the example of love as an example of the sublime.

Human beings have an innate predisposition to want to know about things beyond themselves; we question what is our greater meaning (Merkle 366). You could not ask questions about the world if it didn't exist, that's obvious. Heschel argues that you could not ask questions about greater meaning if a greater meaning did not exist because, “to sense the sublime is to perceive the sublime, not merely to conceive of it” (Merkle 369). The argument is not particularly strong because it makes an appeal to an abstract quasi-sensory and/or emotional feeling. Heschel, I’d imagine, would say that I am in no position to critique his claims from a scholastic point of view. In his work God in Search of Man Heschel says that religious beliefs are some what like a living being and when one tries to take them apart philosophically you lose a lot because when you do so you remove the ideas of faith from the moments of faith and, according to Heschel, if you try to study one without the other you will fail (Heschel 8).

However because I do not have access to a pious man and I am required to do so I will dredge forward but instead of critiquing Merkle or Heschel I will try to put myself in dialog with them through their work and my writing. To me the most obvious rebuttal to the argument that supposedly perceiving the sublime means that a higher reality exist is the Kantian notion of thinking you have a 100 dollars doesn't mean you have 100 dollars. And a Heschelian rebuttal would be that it is not human nature to think you have 100 dollars, but the notion that there is something greater than ourselves is a universal precept found in all cultures, at all times, and in all places (Heschel 152). And, that even people of science and reason are trying to find a greater meaning or the purpose of being human (Heschel 153). The argument is that it is an unavoidable presupposition that's part of being human (Merkle 371). But why do we have this presupposition?

The answer is the sublime. What is the sublime exactly? The sublime, according to Heschel is a silent allusion of things to something greater than themselves (Merkle 369). Of importance here is the notion of "silent allusion". Silent denotes that it is not readily perceived, and is actually not sensory at all, which is why two people could look at the same thing but only one of them would be able to perceive the sublimity of it (Merkle 369). And allusion points out that this sublimity is not an ultimate reality unto itself but instead points to the ultimate reality (Merkle 369). That is to contrast this position with a pantheism where God could be said to be "in" the sublime or creation could be a "self-expression" of God because that would imply that the sublime things share in the ultimate reality. The appropriate quote here comes from Heschel’s work Man’s Quest for God, "The world speaks to God, but that speech is not speaking to Himself”.

Heschel says that every human surrenders to an ultimate reality because there is no purpose in living without an ultimate reality (Merkle 368). We do this in one of three ways according to Heschel and Merkle: we can accept God as the ultimate reality, we can give ourselves over to a non-sufficient ultimate reality, or we can just deny intellectually that there is an ultimate reality but even if we deny it that doesn't make us immune to the fact that there is an ultimate reality (Heschel 154,155).

One of the insufficient answers to the question of ultimate reality, Heschel classifies as being false idols (Heschel 152). According to Heschel most people have false idols in their life. One of the most popular false idols, according to Heschel, is to believe that science has all the answers. Heschel and Merkle attack this notion by attacking the premise that science is based on, observation. Heschel argues that observation is an insufficient tool to use to measure reality and to prove his point Heschel makes a distinction between being the "living encounter" of reality and of "insight" (Heschel 116).

Heschel argues that the "living encounter" of reality is immediate, preconceptional, and presymbolic" (Heschel 115). An insight that may have been a few decades ahead of his time because I've recently read a book by Donald Norman that argues that our brains start to react to things on a chemical level a very considerable time before we start to make rational thinking ideas about what we're perceiving (Donald Norman's Emotional Design).

The way we experience the world through living encounters is a flood of input. Of all the things bombarding our senses at any one moment we are only processing a very small amount of that stimuli.

Of the stimuli we do process we then use that information for the "insight" part of thinking. When we conceptualize and verbalize our experiences they diminish. You can't possibly explain to another human being every detail and aspect of an experience you had. Notice too that of that experience you had you only possesses some of the stimuli of it to begin with. So the whole processes of experiencing things, conceptualizing them, and then putting them into words is a process of considerable degradation. This is why science and reason are unsatisfactory answers for ultimate reality, according to Heschel.

Another issue of faith in Heschel's writing is that of being aware of the sublime as being an antecedent, or prerequisite, for faith. But before I delve into this I think it's important to make a point here about "grace". Heschel didn't believe in the traditional notion of Christian grace, in that he didn't believe that faith was something one could tap into at any time and that it came as a "free gift" from God. Faith does come from God but people that deserve it earn it and you have to work extremely hard, for a long time, to acquire a suitable amount of it (Heschel 154). And once you get faith you must work to keep it or you can lose it. However Heschel also states that everybody has a little bit of faith that of which they cannot get rid.

Recall earlier when we covered how you only sense a small percent of the stimuli perceived is analyzed by the brain? The fact that there is so much stimuli that you are unable to perceive is an example of the sublime according to Heschel (Heschel 156). The sublime is the mystery of what we cannot perceive. The sublime is what is hidden. It is recognizing that the sublime is beyond us and not understood and not easily understood is one of the first steps towards worship (Heschel 156).

Actually the very act of thinking there is something greater than one's self is, according to Heschel, an act of worship (Merkle 369). So by merely pondering about if there is or is not a larger reality that humans are a part of or if there is or is not a god is worshiping God, again according to Heschel.

Extending to it's logical extreme even people that devote themselves over to a life of science and actively use science to discount God are still worshiping God because their career as a scientist is a testimony to the fact that there is a larger reality to the universe and they're trying to figure it out. An objection somebody could raise to this argument is that it is non-falsifiable, however I doubt Heschel and Merkle would have cared in the slightest because recall that according to them you cannot extract the religious experience from the religious claims and claim to have a grasp or understanding of the religion.

One place where Merkle and Heschel differ is over two things. Firstly Merkle uses words like faith and grace in a way that isn’t consistent with Heschel’s philosophy. Merkle argues that we become aware the sublime by simultaneously recognizing that it comes from God. However Heschel makes the distinction that you can perceive the sublime even if you do not believe in God and that you start to worship before you believe. For Heschel worship is a two-part thing, the first part is visceral and happens without your control and the second part is conscious. The visceral worship, argues Heschel, is human nature and can’t be avoided (Heschel 156,157).

Heschel’s and Merkle’s arguments are designed for people to already believe, many of the points they make appeal to one’s emotions or intuition but they make many assumptions that they assert to be plainly true. The weakest claim is that there must be a transcendent meaning to reality because we sense the sublime, although Heschel spends a lot of time and effort explaining what the sublime is, nothing effable is said about it. We know that, according to Heschel, the sublime is perceived with, through, and beyond the senses but I don’t really think that tells us anything. I think I have an idea of what Heschel are Merkle are talking about however I too am at a loss to put it in effable words.

I don’t think Heschel or Merkle would cede the point that what they claim is sublimity is something else or even worse is something that can be totally explained by neuroscience because they are making a case for the transcendent reality that is God and that all of creation is an allusion to God but is not in-and-of-itself a part of God.

Works Cited

Heschel, Abraham J. God in Search of Man: a Philosophy of Judaism. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1955.

Merkle, John C. "The Sublime, the Human, and the Divine in the Depth-Theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel." The Journal of Religion 58 (1978): 365-379. JSTOR. JSTOR.Com. 31 Mar. 2008 <http://jstor.org/stable/1201471>.

Norman, Donald. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. Jackson, TN: Basic Books, 203.

The Value of Community and Ritual in Healing

The Value of the Community and Ritual

In the “Healing Wisdom of Africa” Malidoma Somé argues that the agents that heal people in Africa, specifically the Dagara people in West Africa, are ritual and community. Community is important because according to Somé, “there is an understanding that human beings are collectively oriented” that is to say that the health, both physically and mentally, of the individual are directly related to the overall health of the community, and vise versa (Somé 22). Somé goes on to argue that many of the problems we face in the west are a longing for a sense of community.

It is important to understand that Somé’s notion of community is much broader than just the human beings you deal with on a day-to-day basis. There are a whole host of supernatural beings afoot and they are all a part of the community. These beings, as well as other supernatural invisible forces, are what people call upon when during rituals.

Rituals are missing from the west, however Somé says that doesn’t westerns are totally devoid of things that take the place of rituals. People still go through things like initiation, it’s just that we are more disorganized and chaotic about it.

This invisible world that exist alongside and beyond our world consist of ancestor spirits as well as an innumerable amount of other spirits. Such as the Siura, which is like a personal guardian spirit that everybody has. A Siura might help you make sure that you’re living up to your purpose and potential (33).

Everybody is born with a purpose and innate gifts (27). We need to live up to these talents or else we’ll become mentally or physically ill. The community plays a big role in making sure that we don’t get sick because they acknowledge our innate gifts. The simple act of acknowledging a problem if it exists goes a long way towards curing it, a theme that’s been common in a lot of our readings.

The language used to talk about people’s innate talents is to talk about “remembering” things instead of learning things (32). There is a ritual in place where the community talks to an unborn fetus and asks it what its purpose is (33). Whether or not this means the person has a real purpose or not is irrelevant but Somé talks about it as if it is true. The very fact this institution exist and the whole community gets behind it makes it true enough that it can have a profound efect on somebody’s life. Somé gives me the impression from the introduction to this book, that he was at least somewhat inspired by the prophecies about him that the community believed before he was born.

The idea that everybody has a purpose needs to be further understood in the contexts of the spirit-body connection. Somé says that the spirit and the body need each other to exist, at least for humans in a living form. The spirit and body are intensifications of the Spirit and as such need to be in harmony with the spirit world. That is why people are born with a purpose and it is also why not living up to that purpose can cause problems (66).

Since the world of the Dagara includes non-human and non-corporeal beings, illness caused by being misaligned with the community can be invisible and unseen, except for their symptoms (29). For this reason, problems that we wouldn’t usually think of as illnesses, the Dagara do think of as illnesses. If you are having trouble studying it may mean that you need to perform some kind of ritual to bring you back into alignment with the community (30).

While supernatural beings are apart of the community and encounters with them can heal you, such as Somé’s encounter with the green lady healing his feelings of alienation, but it isn’t fair to say that they are members of the community in the exact same way living people are. Spirits from the Other World have rules that they have to follow so that they do not interupt the daily lives of people too much and it is also said that seeing their true form would be traumatic so they usually don’t show us that (Somé 55-56).

Somé blurs the line between what is nature and what is community, but he says that it is nature that is the foundation for healing (38). What rituals need to be done depend largely on what the natural conditions you are at are like (38).

Illness is always understood in terms of breakage of a relationship (73). It is for this reason that when an African herbist is selecting herbs it isn’t just a simple procedure, the herbist has pick out the right herbs with the right energy that’s appropriate for that person.

Being aware of these energy flows is important for a good ritual, and rituals are important because they nourish our souls and spirits. Somé argues that some emotionally pains cannot be healing by any other method except through ritual (160). Because correct rituals are so important it is necessary to have a good understanding of Dagara cosmology in order to understand those rituals.

The Dagara cosmos is made out of five elements; water, fire, earth, mineral stone, and vegetative nature (165-166). Each of these elements is connected with spirits and is also connected to an innate quality that a person has. Somebody people are more into fire others into earth etc. Because of that there are not blanket rituals that are good for everybody, a shaman must get in touch with the essence of the person and then from that decide how to continue with the cure.

Just to put Somé into the context of some of the ideas we’ve talked about in class this semester, Somé and Sudhir Kakar seem as though they would agree on the value of recognizing supernatural forces as a tool to heal people. It seems to me though that Somé is more Jungian than Somé because Somé always takes the position that the supernatural reality they are tapping into is real, while Kakar may be obliged to say that the supernatural forces experienced are externalizations of something from inside the persons own mind, and he would point to the closed system of Freud. From a Lévi-Straussian point of view, the method here is totally irrelevant and all that matters is what the community believes; Somé’s explanation of how people are suppose to just give themselves over to and trust the natural and invisible forces around them also stresses the idea that the community’s collective belief is the most important thing even more so than the faith of the individual practitioner. And from a Victor Turnerian point of view, he may look at examples like the Dagara grieving as an example of communitas. The notion that, either the person or the community need to readjust in order for healing to take place, has echoes of Jerome Frank’s theories. And the last I’ll mention Mary Douglass may be glad to point out the use of purity to strength community bonds and define what it means to be Dagara, and by implication what it means to not be Dagara.

For Lévi-Strauss all elements of a society can be understood in terms of a duality. What we experience and the conclusions we draw from it is highly subjective to our experiences, but there is a constant give and take between a society and its members. However because culture shapes how we think there is no such thing as an uncontexted idea. Cultures through out the world are constantly coming up with and changing old ideas about religion, healing, science, etc.

What many in the West consider to be the “right way” to do things is simply a case of ethnocentrism. When looking at things like cultural institutions there are no right or wrong ones, only more and less adapted ones. What works here might not work somewhere else and vice versa.

According to Lévi-Strauss there are three things to consider when looking at the effectiveness of a healing practice; the belief of the sorcerer, the belief of the patient, and the belief of the group as a whole (Lévi-Strauss 168).

Lévi-Strauss tells of a boy that’s accused of being a sorcerer and giving a girl a seizure (Lévi-Strauss 172). Through the course of the trial against him, he begins to accept and enjoy his role as a sorcerer, and because the group views him a sorcerer he may as well literally be one (Lévi-Strauss 174-175). Because the group is telling him he’s a sorcerer he ultimately gives into that reality and for all intents and purposes it might as well be true.

When looking at Shamans, Lévi-Strauss says that you need to look at the experiences of the Shaman, the patient who may or may not get cured, and the feelings of the over all community (179). Each of these things is further qualified by the experiences of the individual versus the experiences of the group. In the case of Quasalid, it is really irrelevant that he does not believe in his own teaching method, or that the method in and of itself is nothing special. What matters is how the community feels about his method. The community, drawing from its collective experiences views Quasalid as a great spiritual teacher and as such the power of the community literally makes him into a powerful teacher.

For Lévi-Strauss argues that healing is a function of abreaction but unlike in our traditional scientific point of view, the abreaction doesn’t only need to take place between the patient and the Shaman, it needs to take place between all three agents; the shaman, the patient, and the community (183). Healing takes place when the patient reorganized his worldview into one that is more appropriate, or when the larger community reorganizes its worldview (184).

This system puts very little emphasis on the method used and a lot of method on how the individual and society view each other. Lévi-Struass’ ideas fit in well with Somé’s because they both argue that the community has a very important role to play in healing.

When looking at the case of a healing ritual of the Cuna Indians, Lévi-Strauss argues that the patients world is full of spirits and supernatural beings, she believes in them and they are incorporated into her world (197). The pains she feels however are not incorporated into her world (197). One of the things the Shaman does is to personify her pains in the form of an animal spirit (195). Now that the pains are presented to her in a recognizable form that she and her society are used to deal with, her and the Shaman can now work on curing her.

It does not matter if the myths are real, or even if they are coherent, what matters is whether she and her society believe them or not. Somé talks about his experiences with the supernatural as though they were real, and I have no intention on passing judgment on his claims, but if you look at them from a Lévi-Struassian point of view it doesn’t really matter if the myths are right or not. All that matters is if the community and/or patient believe in them. To a certain extent it doesn’t even matter if the Shaman or patient believe in cure, as long as the larger society does. The patient will eventually get caught up in the communal healing experience and be cured. The Shaman’s ability to make effable deep psychological feelings in his or her patients puts the Shaman somewhere between our modern psychologist and doctor (198).

Both Somé and Lévi-Strauss stress the importance of the community, and both off them stress the value of ritual. Lévi-Strauss says that it is paradoxical that blaming an illness or something supernatural may have better effects than blaming it on germs because germs are real. Somé offers that same paradox to us as a gift and invites us to get in touch with our spiritual side again and develop rituals.

Works Cited

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke B. Schoeph. New York: Basic Books, 1963. 04 Apr. 2008 <http://books.google.com/books?id=RmeUknlauJAC>.

Somé, Malidoma P. The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual, and Community. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc, 1998.

A dialog in a dream

A dialog in a dream about dreams

Two eerily similar individuals sit across from each other in a nondescript room, the entire scenario is dreamlike and it is hard to say if it even happened at all. At one end of the room is the vague figure of a person that goes by the name Ziggy. Ziggy is a somewhat intelligent college student that has an overview understanding of Freudian psychoanalysis and has attended all of Dr. Capper’s class about Freudian theory. At the opposite extreme of the room is Chris, a similarly intelligent person that has a similar level of knowledge as Ziggy except focused on Christianity and dream healing.

Ziggy: The mind is like an iceberg in that most of it is hidden and cannot be easily seen or studied. The part of the mind that cannot be easily seen is the unconscious (Freud 14). Although unseen and not easily accessible it does exist and is worthy of study and also the study of the unconscious is along the lines of a natural science and the does follow certain cause and effect rules that ultimately boil down to something physical (Freud 14,15, 29).

Chris: There is the potential for something extra physical that goes on when one sleeps. Maimonides says that some dreams can serve as a type of prophecy (Kelsey 139, 151). For early Christians dreams played a large role in their faith as is evident by the fact that both the Pauline letters have accounts of Paul’s dream vision of Jesus as well as text “Sheperd of Hermas” has an account of a dream vision from its author (Kelsey 100, 90). Not all dreams are necessarily important however; some are just junk dreams (Kelsey 21).

It is however obvious that some dreams do not come from the self and come from God in some way or another. Joel 2:28 says, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions (NIV).” As it is also clear from the story of Joseph that the use of puns and hidden meanings in dreams is also important.

Ziggy: What a perfect lead in to wish fulfillment and the interpretation of dream symbolism. But first let us discuss why we are here: the healing power of dreams. Everything that we encounter we remember on an unconscious level. The mind is made up of three parts the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the oldest most fundamental part of the mind (Freud 15, 19). The id is composed of two basic instincts, the Eros instinct and the Death instinct (Freud 18). While contradictory these two instincts exist side by side and influences everything that we do. The other superego is responsible for enforcing all the learned norms society and our parents have placed upon us and the ego is responsible for mediating between the id, the superego, and what is feasible (Freud 14-16).

As you might imagine often the ego is not able to totally satisfy the id and the superego all the time. When this happens often things become repressed (Freud 36). The repressed can cause mental problems in an individual because although it is our nature to repress things repression causes one to lose touch with the reality of what their mind is actually think of. It is important, in Freudian theory, to not have any unknown repressions.

Things that are repressed and put into the unconscious want to be expressed, besides mental problems another medium for expression is dreams. When one dreams the unconscious mind takes control and the id mostly reigns supreme supplanting the normal roles and boundaries in a dream although it is possible for the ego to take control during a dream as well. The superego does not give up its attempt to impose order and norms on our mind willy-nilly however and impose some limited structure on dreams; the main avenue for this is the dream-distortion (Freud 39).

Dream-distortion causes images in our dreams to not be what they seem to be (Freud 39,40). The examples are endless: a cigar may be a penis; a window or the back of the nose may represent female genitalia and so on. However it is important to note that these associations are not hard and fast. As noted earlier when talking about the Eros and Death instincts, the id is capable of holding contradictory beliefs simultaneously and the id is constantly making wild associations between unrelated objects, not unlike the Aristotelian imagination (Freud 56). So it is difficult to interpret dreams without an in depth knowledge about the dreamer in question.

Back to wish fulfillment, despite being censored by the superego dreams are mostly about the id satisfying some desire by way of a dream (Freud 39). This relates to healing because if one is unaware of this process taking place one is ruled by it, to be healthy and free one must recognize the dynamics of their own mind and this acknowledgement and self knowledge will lead to good mental health (Freud 61-62).

Chris: In addition to the Jewish influences on Christian dream theories it is also important to note that Christianity owes a lot of its dream traditions to the ancient Greeks. Dreams could be part of shamanistic healing traditions involving soul travel; dreams in Platonic thought are accepted as important and also as a way for the gods to communicate with humans (Kelsey 62, 66). However Ziggy there were Greeks that agreed with you that dreams are physical entities that arises from the self and follow certain rules, Aristotle being one as you’ve mentioned. While Aristotelian thought has been unutterably important in the Occidental Christian tradition, western Christians have lost touch with their very rich pre-Aquinas dream tradition (Kelsey 152, 191).

These non-Jewish Greek dream traditions had a strong following in early Christianity. Macrobius an early 5^th century Christian theologian borrowed heavenly from the Pagan Dream manual of Artemidorus (Kelsey 139). A contemporary of Macrobius, Jerome was less keen on dreams and forbid them by translating Deuteronomy 18:10 as forbidding dream observation in the Vulgate (Kelsey 139).

About wish fulfillment why would somebody like Saul or Constantine dream about Jesus and Christians symbols before they ever converted?

Ziggy: For the sake or argument, assuming that these accounts are true, and using your own example of Artemidorus it would depend heavily on the context of that dream and who had that dream. As mentioned before often symbols in dreams are not self evident and may mean something other than what you assume they’d mean and also following in the Artemidorian thought and also early Hebrew Biblical thought dreams can often have a meaning that is the opposite of what their face value reading is. So my answer is that it is impossible for us to know, with certainty what these dreams may of actually meant. But from a Freudian point of view all religious beliefs are neurotic and hinder mental health.

Chris: Ah then how would you explain examples of people like Handsome Lake whom overcame alcoholism after a dream that he claimed was sent from God? Or how do you explain cases where people with little or no faith are dragged to Lourdes and get cured?

Ziggy: Well the answer absolutely cannot be that there is any merit in religion or ritual at all. Obviously they are displacing one neurosis with another. On some level or another some id satisfaction is going on, perhaps though some sort of cathexis where the id recognizes the dream or the Lourdes water as fulfilling some sort of need it has, but this is naturally wrong and will cause another neurosis and not take away the original neurosis in question. So it is bad business all around.

How do you go about curing yourself in the Christian dream tradition?

Chris: In both Aristotelian and Hippocratic circles dreams warn somebody of subtle changes in their body and alert the dreamer by way of an allegorical dream such as dreaming you’re on fire when your body detects a fever coming on (Kelsey 73). There are examples of people becoming healed after a dream vision such as Aquilinus’ healing after a dream (Kelsey 119). Ambrose, the late 4^th Milan Bishop, was told to repent in a dream and also was given the emotional comfort of seeing his brother after his death (Kelsey 132). You argued Ziggy that becoming aware of the inner workings of your mind and acknowledging these things to yourself can lead to good mental health. Say you what can be said about the value of repentance in the Freudian theory.

Ziggy: In psychoanalysis it is important to have a skilled therapist to counter and lead the way of psychoanalytic sessions. If one repents to God all sorts of things can go wrong! Transferences, when a patient projects qualities of their parental figures onto the therapist, must take place, be used masterfully, and be channeled properly in order for a patient to fully work though issues they have with their parents. The language is already in place for this kind of interaction to take place between a repenter and a priest and or God. In a protestant context, when one talks to God and uses God as an invisible therapist this natural transference can lead to issues plus there isn’t an actual trained psychoanalyst there to steer the session. If you transfer anger onto your therapist the therapist could help you work through that anger, put it into perspective, and ultimately dispel it. If one transfers upon God and gets mad at God, there is nobody present help this person work through this feeling and he or she is likely to develop a new neurosis because his or her superego will be telling him or her that it is unacceptable to feel mad at God.

Chris: You said previously that humans, by nature, are going to have neurosis. In a Christian context this idea fits in well with the idea that humans have an evil nature because of the Fall. It is only by living the teachings found in the New Testament that one can, through divine grace, over come this nature. On this journey of self-discovery dreams can be a valuable tool to gauge one’s spiritual health and even get messages from God.

Ziggy: Human beings are neurotic but there is no place for God in the path to personal enlightenment, as I have clearly pointed out any such belief is an example of neurosis in and of itself.

Chris: Thank you, before we go I’d like to reiterate that the Judeo-Christian tradition has a long history of dream theories. Christians today are rediscovering Christian takes on dream interpretation and I’m sure we owe that in large to Sigmund Freud and others that have paved the way for the importance of the self, self identity, and self reflection. In a world where it was not enough to be content with the idea that “I think therefore I am”, Freud makes us ponder the idea that: I know how I think there for I am less neurotic.

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. An Outline of Psycho-Analysis. Trans. James Stachey. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1949.

Kelsey, Morton T. God, Dreams, and Revelation: a Christian Interpretation of Dreams. Revised and Expanded ed. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1991.