Dybbuk and maggid: Two cultural patterned of altered consciousness in judaism

AJS Review

Volumn 21, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 341-366

  Bilu, Yoram ^a  

^a HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85012535979     PISSN: 03640094     EISSN: 14754541     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0364009400008552     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. J. G. Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testament (London: Macmillan, 1919); William Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889; reprint ed., New York: Meridian Books, 1927).
2. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Harvey E. Goldberg, ed., Judaism Viewed from Within and from Without: Anthropological Perspectives (Albany: State University of New York Press), 1987); idem, “Anthropology and the Study of Traditional Jewish Society,” AJS Review 15 (1990)): 1-22.
3. The most well known exponent of the culture-as-text paradigm is Clifford Geertz. See his now classic collection of essays, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973); see also Goldberg, “Anthropology and the Study of Traditional Jewish Society,” p. 5.
4. Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Yehuda Liebes, “New Directions in the Study of Kabbalah,” Pe'amim 50 (1992): 150-170 (Heb.).
5. Philip K. Bock, Continuities in Psychological Anthropology (San Francisco: Freeman, 1980); Erika Bourguignon, Psychological Anthropology (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979).
6. Roy D'Andrade and Claudia Strauss, eds., Human Motives and Cultural Models (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Gananath Obeyesekere, Medusa's Hair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Melford E. Spiro, Collective Representation and Mental Representations in Religious Meaning Systems,” in Culture and Human Nature, ed. L. L. Langness and Benjamin Kilborne (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 161-184.
7. John Leavitt, “Are Trance and Possession Disorders?” Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review 30 (1993): 51-57; Collean A. Ward, “The Cross-Cultural Study of Altered States of Consciousness and Mental Health,” in Altered States of Consciousness and Mental Health, ed. Collean A. Ward (London: Sage Publications, 1989), pp. 15-35.
8. Erika Bourguignon, ed., Religion, Altered States of Consciousness, and Social Change (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1973); idem, Possession (Corta Madera, Calif.: Chandler & Sharp, 1976).
9. Bourguignon, ed., Psychological Anthropology, p. 243.
10. This division is roughly parallel to possession and shamanism. See Luc De Heusch, Why Marry Her? Society and Symbolic Structures (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 151-164.
11. Vincent Crapanzano, introduction to Case Studies in Spirit Possession, ed. Vincent Crapanzano and Vivian Garrison (New York: John Wiley, 1977), pp. 1-40.
12. Michael Larnbek, “From Disease to Discourse: Remarks on the Conceptualization of Trance and Spirit Possession,” in Ward, Altered States of Consciousness, pp. 36-61
13. I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: Anthropological Study of Spirit and Shamanism (Baltimore: Penguin, 1971).
14. See De Heusch, Why Marry Her, p. 152.
15. Leora Greenbaum, “Societal Correlates of Possession Trance in Sub-Saharan Africa,” in Bourguignon, Religion, Altered States of Consciousness, and Social Change, pp. 39-57. Also see Lewis, Ecstatic Religion.
16. Herbert Barry III, Irvine L. Child, and Margaret K. Bacon, “Religion of Child Training to Subsistence Economy,” American Anthropologist 61 (1959): 51-63; Guy E. Swanson, “The Search for a Guardian Spirit: A Process of Empowerment in Simpler Societies,” Enthnology 12 (1973): 359-378.
17. Roy G. D'Andrade, “Anthropological Studies of Dreams,” in Psychological Anthropology, ed. Francis L. K. Hsu (Homewood, 111.: Dorsey, 1961), pp. 296-332.
18. Yoram Bilu, “The Taming of the Deviants and Beyond: A Psychocultural Analysis of Dybbuk Possession and Exorcism in Judaism,” Psychoanalytic Study of Society 11 (1985): 1-32.
19. Arnold M. Ludwig, “Altered States of Consciousness,” in Altered States of Consciousness, ed. Charles T. Tart (New York: Anchor Books, 1972), pp. 11-24.
20. See Bourguignon, Psychological Anthropology, pp. 233-269.
21. Since with only a few exceptions, the spirits belonged to male sinners, I use masculine pronouns in discussing them. Feminine pronouns are used to describe the possessed, given the predominance of females in this group.
22. See Bilu, “Taming of the Deviants,” pp. 16-20; Gedalyah Nigal, Dybbuk Tales in Jewish Literature (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1983) (Heb.).
23. Gershom Scholem, s.v. “Gilgul,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971), vol. 7, cols. 573-577.
24. Joseph Dan, s.v. “Maggid,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971), vol. 11, cols. 699-701.
25. According to various sources from the seventeenth century, Sefer ha-Meshiv (“The Book of the Responding [Entity]”), a famous mystical compilation of maggidic revelations and the techniques to obtain them, was written by Taytazak. See Moshe Idel, “Inquiries in the Doctrine of Sefer ha-Meshiv” Sefiinot 17 (1983): 185-266 (Heb.); Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), p. 67.
26. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1977).
27. Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 645-647.
28. Meir Benayahu, “The Maggid of R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto,” Sefunot 5 (1961); 297-336 (Heb.).
29. Moshe Idel, “Jewish Magic from the Early Renaissance Period to Early Hasidism,” in Religion, Science, and Magic, ed. Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Paul V. M. Flesher (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 108.
30. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, pp. 19-21.
31. Nigal, Dybbuk Tales, p. 65.
32. Gershom Scholem, Researches in Sabbateanism (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1991), p. 575 (Heb.).
33. Yehuda Liebes, “The Author of the Book Tsaddik Yesod Olam-The Sabbatean Prophet Rabbi Leib Prossnitz,” Da at 2-3 (1978-79): 159-174 (Heb.)
34. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 82. The italicized final sentence of the quoted passage does not appear in the English version of Scholem's book and was translated from the Hebrew original.
35. Idel, “Jewish Magic,” pp. 107-108.
36. Ludwig, “Altered States of Consciousness,” pp. 12-14.
37. Idel, “Jewish Magic,” p. 107.
38. Quoted in Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, p. 80.
39. Quoted in Werblowsky., p. 81.
40. Quoted in Werblowsky., p. 79.
41. Quoted in Werblowsky…, p. 260.
42. Quoted in Werblowsky…, p. 21.
43. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 897.
44. Idel, “Inquiries,” pp. 220-221.
45. “Inquiries,”, p. 221.
46. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 206. Seeing the speech is not a case of synesthesia (fusion of sense modalities). The prophet is imagined to see in a three-dimensional form the letters from which the words of the prophecy are composed.
47. Weiblowsky, Joseph Karo, pp. 78-79.
48. Joseph Karo., p. 258.
49. Idel, “Inquiries,” p. 222.
50. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, p. 41.
51. Idel, “Inquiries,” p. 204.
52. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 897; Benayahu, “Maggid of Luzzatto.”
53. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 897.
54. Sabbatai Sevi.
55. Idel, “Inquiries,” p. 189.
56. “Inquiries,”.
57. “Inquiries,”., p. 190.
58. “Inquiries,”…
59. Some mystical techniques for inducing prophecy included an elaborate multisensory system encompassing visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory sensations. See Moshe Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988), pp. 33-34 (Heb.).
60. Idel, “Inquiries,” p. 219.
61. Benayahu, “Maggid of Luzzatto.”
62. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, p. 23.
63. Joseph Karo., p. 270.
64. Idel, Abraham Abulafia, pp. 15-42.
65. Idel, “Inquiries,” pp. 201-218.
66. Benayahu, “Maggid of Luzzatto,” p. 307.
67. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, p. 98.
68. Joseph Karo., p. 285.
69. Joseph Karo., p. 50.
70. Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1913), vol. 4, p. 215.
71. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 420.
72. I have been able to locate only one case of a woman who had maggidic revelations. This woman, La Francesa, lived in Safed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and amazed the town's sages by her ability to foretell the future. H. Z. Hirschberg, “The Author of Divrey Kwef and His Attitude Toward the Duty of Settling in Eretz Israel,” in Sefer Shazar (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1971), pp. 132-137 (Heb.).
73. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 423.
74. Leib Ben Ozer, The Story of Sabbatai Sevi (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1978), pp. 59-60 (Heb.).
75. Quoted in Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 423.
76. Yoram Bilu, “The Moroccan Demon in Israel: The Case of Evil Spirit Disease,” Ethos 8 (1980): 24-39.
77. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, p. 127.