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
