By Maureen Bloom
Providing a different anthropological standpoint on Jewish mysticism and magic, this e-book is a examine of Jewish rites and rituals and the way the research of early literature presents the roots for knowing spiritual practices. It comprises research at the significance of sacrifice, amulets, and names, and their underlying cultural constructs and the patience in their symbolic significance.
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Extra resources for Jewish Mysticism and Magic: An Anthropological Perspective
Example text
The six divisions of the Mishnah – Sedarim or orders – contain sixty three tractates, or Masekhtot. Each tractate is divided into chapters, of which there are five hundred and twenty three, further divided into paragraphs. The Orders of the Mishnah cover all aspects of daily life: • • • • • • Zera im – (literally ‘seeds’) – Laws connected with agriculture Mo ed – (literally ‘season’) – Sabbath and festivals Nashim – (literally ‘women’) – Laws concerning relationships between men and women Nezikin – (literally ‘torts’) – Damages and other civil legislation Qodashim – (literally ‘sanctities’) – Holy offerings and dietary laws Taharot – (literally ‘purities’) – Purity of Temple and home.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND many contemporary Jewish scholars, and the impact of Babylonian ‘science’ on a religious and magical discourse should not be underestimated. The Jews of antiquity, influenced by Babylon, were concerned not only with spirituality but also with ‘Wissenschaft’. Bottéro shows evidence of scientific thinking in early Babylonia, using divination as his model. He suggests that it is wrong to reserve divination for Mesopotamia and science for Greece . . (for) in Mesopotamia itself, from very early and long before the Greeks, divination had become a scientific type of knowledge and was, essentially, already a science.
27 Abusch has shown convincingly, using Babylonian material, how this reversal sometimes occurred in Babylon. The ashipu, or exorcism priest/magician was engaged to dispel witchcraft in a complicated ritual involving fire, water, washing and anointing, and his appeals were to the gods of the Sun and Moon, and gods of the celestial and netherworld. 28 When Mauss wrote that ‘Prayer is speech’, his analysis of prayer led him to conclude that ‘A rite only gains its raison d’être when one has discovered its meaning .