The most important process in the material world, for mostof the Kabbalah, is that of creation itself. This, after all, is what God does:creates the world and bring it into being. And it is what humans, in theirdeepest imitation of God, do as well. Sexuality, reproduction, differentiation,and the bringing forth of life were considered great cosmic mysteries andawesome powers bestowed upon human beings. Spiritual production, too, wasimportant to the kabbalists: A person's deeds create worlds, order the cosmicarray, and participate in the divine process of destruction and repair.

That's when all goes right, of course. But what about whenthe life-energies are misappropriated? What happens when something goes wrong?

The mythic structure of the Kabbalah provided many colorfulanswers to that question: demons and dybbuks, golems, and ghosts are all the results ofmisspent life energy. But the Kabbalah does not develop its ideas out ofnowhere; they are part of a long history of Jewish speculation about shedim (demons, also a word used torefer to foreign gods) and demonic personalities such as Lilith.

As compared with other ancient Near Eastern texts, in whichdemons play a central role, the Bible is nearly silent about the existence ofsupernatural beings. But not the Talmud. The Talmud has a rich, though vague,demonology. Houses of study are described as being filled with demons whensexual energy is not properly channeled. Great rabbis are able to perceivedemons sitting on the right and left hands of every person. They are able toharness the divine creative energies to create animals which can then beconsumed for food. And, in the talmudic world, spirits are everywhere: Theyhaunt dark places, homes, even the crumbs left on the dinner table. Forexample, consider the omnipresence and omnimalevolence of demons described in theTalmud in Berakhot 6a:

"It has been taught: Abba Benjamin says, If the eye hadthe power to see them, no creature could endure the demons. Abaye says: Theyare more numerous than we are and they surround us like the ridge around afield. R. Huna says: Every one among us has a thousand on his left hand and tenthousand on his right hand. Raba says: The crushing of the crowd in the Kallah [yearly public] lectures comes from them. Fatigue in the kneescomes from them. The wearing out of the clothes of the scholars is due to theirrubbing against them. The bruising of the feet comes from them."

Rarely does the talmudic literature go into detail aboutexactly how demons and magical creatures come into being, or whether they arereally independent beings "out there," or merely psychologicalrealities. If the latter, of course, then we today can perhaps understand thisforeign-sounding discourse--after all, who among us has not been plagued by"demons" in their work or sexual life? As in the source above,"demons" (mazzikim, a wordwhich might be better translated "harmful beings") could be seen asanything that causes decay, pain, and the depletion of life-energy.

But there's reason to think that the text in Berakhot is notreferring to metaphorical demons, as it goes on to say, "If one wants todiscover them, let him take sifted ashes and sprinkle around his bed, and inthe morning he will see something like the footprints of a cock." 

Unlike the Talmud, kabbalistic demonology is more detailed. Somedemons are formed whenever a man improperly spills his seed--a sin consideredso heinous by the Kabbalah because it subverts the creative process. Otherdemons are, as in the Christian myth, rebellious angels, or in the case ofLilith, primordial humans who disobeyed the divine plan. In all cases, they areinstances of life-energy gone awry. In the proper functioning of the cosmos,energy flows like a cycle: down from heaven, then back up in the form of properritual action. But when the energy is misappropriated, as in masturbation orrebellion, its intense power falls into the realm of shadow.

The mythic narratives of the Kabbalah may be difficult forus to understand today, but not if we situate them within the deep concerns--particularlythose related to conception and childbirth--of the kabbalists and ordinary Jewswho lived in a time of great uncertainty. Just as bearing children was centralto one's identity, it was also rife with peril. Miscarriage, infant mortality,illness, and birth defects were all far more common in the medieval world thanthey are today. Bearing children was awesome and terrifying.

As, of course, was death. If we are all possessed oflife-energy, then what happens to that energy when we die? Ideally, it returnsto its source--or, in some kabbalistic texts, it

The Dybbuk

But sometimes the process goes wrong. In such cases, avariety of ills may befall the soul. The most well-known of these is thephenomenon of the dybbuk, orpossession, when one soul "sticks" onto another. Possession by a dybbuk can happen for a number ofreasons. Perhaps the departed soul is sinister and the living person innocent. Or,conversely, the departed soul may have been saintly, but wronged by the living;in this case, possession by a dybbukis essentially punishment (or revenge) for an improper act. Or,apparently, possession may happen almost at random.

The most popular dybbukin Jewish cultural history is that of S. Ansky's well-known play, The Dybbuk (1920), which describes howthe soul of a betrayed man comes back to haunt the body of his betrothed.

The Ibbur

There are other "possession" possibilities as well.A soul may visit a person during sleep, bringing messages from the beyond orprophecies about the future, or it may haunt a place, as in popular ghoststories. Sometimes the soul of a departed righteous person may"impregnate" the soul of a living person, the process described byLurianic Kabbalah as ibbur--thoughunlike the dybbuk, ibbur is usually positive,not negative. Sometimes a righteous soul undergoes ibbur so it can complete a task or perform a mitzvah. Sometimesit does so for the benefit of the "host" soul. Really, ibbur is no different from possessionby a dybbuk--but practically speaking, they are polar opposites, as the formeris benign and the other sinister.

In all of these cases, the ordinary processes of life-energyare being diverted, for either positive or negative reasons. And life energy,above all, is powerful. When put to proper ends, the transmission of lifeenergy, by means of sex or supernatural activity, is the godly act ofmaintaining the cosmic flow. But anything that powerful can also create greatevil.

The Golem

Perhaps the most well-known example of this phenomenon, astransmuted by a variety of European sources, is that of the golem, the artificial anthropoidanimated by magic. The Talmud relates a tale of rabbis who grew hungry while ona journey--so they created a calf out of earth and ate it for dinner. The kabbalistsdetermined that the rabbis did this magical act by means of permuting language,primarily utilizing the formulas set forth in the Sefer Yetzirah, or Book of Creation. Just as God speaks andcreates, in the Genesis story, so too can the mystic. (The word Abracadabra,incidentally, derives from avra k'davra,Aramaic for "I create as I speak.") Thus, under the rarest ofcircumstances, a human being may imbue lifeless matter with that intangible,but essential spark of life: the soul.

The kabbalists saw the creation of a golem as a kind of alchemical task, the accomplishment of whichproved the adept's skill and knowledge of Kabbalah. In popular legend, however,the golem became a kind of folkhero. Tales of mystical rabbis creating life from dust abounded, particularlyin the Early Modern period, and inspired such tales as Frankenstein and "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."  Sometimes the golem saves the Jewishcommunity from persecution or death, enacting the kind of heroism or revengeunavailable to powerless Jews. Often, however, Jewish folktales about the golemtell what happens when things go awry--when the power of life-force goesastray, often with tragic results.

The classic narrative of the golem tells of how Rabbi JudahLoew of Prague (known as the Maharal; 1525-1609) created a golem to defend theJewish community from anti-Semitic attacks. But eventually, the golem growsfearsome and violent, and Rabbi Loew is forced to destroy it. (Legend tellsthat the golem remains in the attic of the Altneushul in Prague, ready to bereactivated if needed; this legend reappeared recently in Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &Clay). Likewise in Paul Wegener's expressionist film The Golem (1920), the golem is a brutish creature whose powers areall-too-easily turned to destructive ends.

This is, of course, a perfect encapsulation of the sameanxiety that underlies so much of the mystical speculation about demons, dybbuks, ghosts, and golems: thepower of life is so strong, that it brings both promise and terror.