Practical Jewish Folk Magic: An Ancient Path for a Postmodern World

Political Ritual: Bind Mammon and Moloch with an amulet, charge it with FOVWINC,

then bury it in DC.

I need tattoos before doing this

Duality is meaningless because the universe is absurd

I made Matthias to become an avatar. This means my method works.

When you wish upon a star

Eris is my Asherah. Asherah is disorder to YHVH as order. Opposites in dance.

Phase reversal pedal

All this magic is Jewish, but only some of the philosophy (Bey, Levi, Kaplan, Winkler,

[Gafni,] Shah, Eliade, Rabinovich, Nachmanides, Maimonides, Spinoza, Shimon bar

Yochai, Hai Gaon / Geonic school, merkavah)

Chapter 1: A Crash Course on the Jewish Occult

Magic and the occult have been taboo in mainstream Judaism for far too long.

But it wasn’t always this way – back in the Middle Ages and before, we practiced all

sorts of magic openly. The Christian population of Europe used to consider Jews to

be powerful sorcerers, and often they weren’t wrong. The rise of the Inquisition

(and later, the Enlightenment) meant that the rabbis felt they needed to tone down

the magical and mystical elements of the tradition in order to avoid persecution and

ridicule. That decision may have saved a great many people from torture or

execution.

The rabbis banned many magical practices and teachings outright, but also

encoded some into prayers that became part of the weekly Friday night service. For

an easy example of this, think of the processional that most synagogues sing as the

Torah is removed from the ark. It starts, “L’cha Adonai ha-Gedulah v’ha-Gevurah

v’ha-Tiferet v’ha-Netzach v’ha-Hod.” If you have any familiarity with the Tree of Life,

you’ll instantly recognize those as the second through the sixth sephirot, counting

from the top of the Tree. (“Gedulah” is an alternate name for Chesed.)

The Talmud also preserves a great many magical practices, since it dates

from long before the whitewashing of Judaism in Europe. Various parts of the

Talmud include information on popular superstitions, stories about ghostly and

demonic possession, and lengthy discussion about which magical practices are legal

and which are forbidden. As in the bible, the Talmudic rabbis consider “magic” to be
forbidden, where “magic” is defined as the practices they don’t like (usually because

they originally come from a non-Jewish source). When Jews practice magic, the term

“miracle” or “practical kabbalah” is used instead of the term “magic”, since the latter

implies that worship of foreign gods might be involved. Rabbis have often frowned

upon these practical kabbalah as well, but could never stamp it out; in every

religion, there’s a big difference between what the authorities preach and what most

people on the ground actually choose to do.

I happen to believe the reason the rabbis couldn’t stamp out practices like

making amulets or invoking divine names is that they were too effective. Amulets

were big business in ancient times, so much so that today we have examples of a

wide variety of quality. Some of the specimens are intricately carved into precious

metals by scribes who clearly were fluent in Hebrew. Others are so bad that the

instructions for making the amulet are carved onto the final product itself. It seems

unlikely to me that so many people could have made a living as amulet-makers if

their craft were no more than a placebo. Certainly, in cases where the amulet was

meant to help cure a disease, the client would pursue medical attention also… but

it’s also true that ancient medicine often did more harm than good. Amulets were

popular because they worked.

Many Jews today seem to think the information in this book is dangerous and

should be kept secret. I could not disagree more emphatically. The magic of our

ancestors is our birthright, a birthright we’ve allowed the rabbinate to steal from us.

Don’t get me wrong, rabbis are important – but “rabbi” means “teacher”, not

“censor”. Mature adults should be able to decide for themselves what information is
“too dangerous” to study. This magic is ancient, it is powerful, it is reasonably easy

to use, and most importantly, it belongs to every Jew who has ever lived. It’s time we

took it back for ourselves. It’s time to occupy Judaism. It’s time for the return of

Jewish folk magic.

The biggest obstacle I’ve faced in researching this topic on my own is there’s

no one book that covers it all. That’s why I decided I needed to write one. While

slogging through endless academic books on amulets and incantation bowls looking

for useful information can be rewarding, it’s also very time consuming and I realize

it isn’t everyone’s idea of fun. The only other comprehensive book on practical

Jewish magic that currently exists in English is Qabalistic Magic by Salomo Baal

Shem, which is more of a spellbook than an actual system. I definitely recommend

reading it, and its lists of the magical uses for psalms and the most common Hebrew

phrases on ancient amulets alone make it worth owning. However, it also contains a

few too many Hermeticisms to be properly called a Jewish magic book – it’s more

like heavliy Jewish-flavored ceremonial magic. It’s also more useful if you want to

run rituals directly out of the book than if you want to construct them yourself. This

book aims to be the opposite – a purely Jewish, cohesive magical system that you

can use for whatever your goals might be.

There is, of course, every possibility that some people will misuse the

information in this book. To those people I say, “On your own head be it”. Every

major medieval grimoire, Jewish and otherwise, agrees that horrible things will

happen to an unrighteous person who uses this type of magic. I imagine most rabbis

would disagree with me, but if we don’t trust God to be able to sort out abuses of
divine and angelic names without our help, can we honestly say we have any faith at

all? Not likely.

If you happen to be an observant Jew or a rabbi, I’d like to just say a few

further things for you in particular. While I’m sure you can detect an obvious anti-

censorship bias on my part, I want you to know that I did not write this book lightly.

Outside the Orthodox world, young Jews are leaving Judaism for Buddhism or other

faiths that don’t fear mysticism like Reform and Conservative Judaism always have.

And while I support Jewish Renewal’s efforts at reviving meaningful ancient

practices such as drumming, meditation and Hebrew chanting, very few Jews still

seem to be aware of what they do. I invite you to read this book in a certain way:

setting aside your preconceptions about magic / practical kabbalah. Please try to

look instead toward the ways in which this system could lead a person to a far

deeper understanding of (and appreciation for) the various Hebrew names for

Hashem. And I can’t see how that could ever be a bad thing. This is all just a specific

form of prayer directed at producing a particular result, much like some of the

prayers in the standard Friday night service.

While I’ve assembled this information what I hope is a new and useful way,

all of it is already published in English or I’d never have learned about it myself. And

I want to emphasize to everyone, regardless of observance level, that the

compassionate and righteous heart of a tzaddik (or more often, an aspiring tzaddik)

is a prerequisite for using this book for anything more than theory. Tikkun olam is

the goal, not personal wealth or power. So if you use it for selfish or malicious

reasons, either it will fail to work or you might live to regret your mistake. Or you
might not. Our god is a jealous god who does not take kindly to would-be usurpers,

and misuse of divine names would definitely be playing God. So don’t.

Basic assumptions of this book

I assume that most of my readers fall into one of two categories: Jews who

want to learn about Jewish magic, and non-Jewish magicians who want to learn how

Jews do things. Either way, I imagine you want me to present things from a Jewish

perspective, so that’s what I’m doing. While I still also consider myself a chaos mage,

since that’s what I learned first, any book on some other magical paradigm would

have a very different title without the word “Jewish” in it. So to help differentiate

this system from others you might already be familiar with, I’m going to list the

assumptions this book makes about how magic works. Whether you actually believe

these things or not, it will be helpful advantage to act as if you do whenever using

the system presented in later chapters.

Names have inherent power

This is the case with most ancient Near Eastern magic, like also Egyptian

magic for example, and this particular bit of wisdom survives in encoded form to

this very day. Sometimes you might see a crucifix with the letters “INRI” on the top,

right about Jesus’s head. There are two theories on what it means. The first is that

it’s Latin for “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudiae”, or “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”.

However, Gnostics believe that it stands for “Ipse nomen res ipsa”, which means
“The name of the thing is the thing itself.” And Catholicism likely got this

information via Judaism.

Ancient Jewish magic, like Judaism itself, is very literary. When I showed one

of my amulets to my teacher Jason Miller via Facebook, he was surprised how big it

was and how many words were on it. Traditional Jewish amulets aren’t wearable,

they’re for the home, and describing the effect you want in as much detail as

possible is always best. This is where the names come in – choose the angels and

names of God that best fit your goal. For example, if you’re trying to heal someone,

you might use Raphael (the archangel of healing) and the divine name “Adonai

Rophe” (“God Heals”). Often there’s more than one applicable divine or angelic name

for your goal, and in that case I suggest using them all. The ancient view is that more

names always equal more power, as long as they’re the right ones.

Ritual purity is important.

Because Jewish magic relies on divine favor, it’s important to make sure

you’re in a state of ritual purity before doing any. Ritual purity as an often-

misunderstood concept in Judaism, so let me explain a bit. In The Hebrew Goddess,

Raphael Patai argues very convincingly that the word we usually translate as

“profane” or “unholy” actually reflects a separate kind of holiness – the holiness of

the goddess Asherah, who was very popular in ancient Israel. So popular that she

was regarded as God’s wife. But since God and Asherah represented the masculine

and feminine principle, respectively, it was impossible to be holy in both their eyes
at the same time. So whatever makes you ritually pure for Asherah would make you

ritually impure for God, and vice versa. Ritual impurity isn’t something bad or nasty,

it’s just something that naturally happens as a course of living our lives.

Using divine or angelic names while ritually impure is a bit like stepping into

God’s house and tracking mud all over the floor. If you do it accidentally, God

probably won’t be upset - it’s still rude, so don’t do it. I won’t presume to tell you

which commandments you should keep, since that’s up to your own conscience.

However, I think the ones that are generally considered “the big ones” in Judaism

are a good place to start. These include the Ten Commandments and the laws about

what not to eat. While the Talmud is unusually strict about them, the actual biblical

commandments about food aren’t that hard to keep. Giving up pork and shellfish

can be difficult, but who really wants to eat a bird of prey or a calf boiled in its

mother’s milk? Doesn’t sound very appetizing to me.

If a situation occurs where you do break a commandment that you’ve

committed to keeping, don’t worry. As I said above, ritual impurity isn’t “bad”, it’s

just something that happens. The Torah has easy solutions: make a sacrifice and

bathe in the mikveh. The second part is easy – find any free-flowing body of water,

get naked and immerse yourself completely, and say a particular blessing. If you

don’t have access to a traditional Orthodox mikveh (which most major cities do

have) or a free-flowing body of water, I find that dissolving Dead Sea salt in the

bathtub and immersing myself there is also effective.

As for sacrifices, we know from the writings of the later prophets that the

sacrifice itself was never the important detail. The act was what mattered, because it
represented giving God something that you will miss, and thus symbolically placing

faith above your earthly, material concerns. Which is where it should be anyway. A

good modern way to make a sacrifice is to give an amount of money that feels

somewhat uncomfortable for you to a charity you believe in. I personally like

Jerusalem Peace Makers, as I think peace in the Middle East is one of the most

important goals of our entire culture, but my friend Sara prefers Heifer International

since they give an animal to a starving person (so the money actually goes to an

animal sacrifice of sorts). As long as your rationale makes sense to you, it’s definitely

the thought that counts here.

Intent is crucial.

As I said in the introduction (which most people will probably have skipped),

the only difference between a prophet’s miracles and a sorcerer’s magic in the bible

is who the person worships. The effects are the same, but the intent is different.

While it’s definitely possible to serve other gods and YHVH in your life, you can’t do

both at the exact same time. This type of belief system is usually called monolatry,

which might best be expressed by the sentence, “Other gods are real, but YHVH is

the most powerful god.” A close reading of the book of Genesis reveals that the

author(s) were monolators, not monotheists; this is well accepted by both

academics and at least some rabbis.

As long as you can work with other gods or spirits while still realizing YHVH

is supreme, you aren’t committing idolatry. Thinking some other god is cooler may
be a gray area, but if you find yourself in that situation, offering worship to that god

is a risk I don’t recommend. However, for what it’s worth, plenty of chaos magic and

ceremonial magic can integrate easily into a Jewish worldview with minor

modifications that will become intuitive once you know the Jewish system better.

Belief matters, but isn’t required.

While Maimonides’ thirteen articles of faith are reasonably universal among

most mainstream Jews, this is not a book about mainstream Judaism. Nowhere in

the bible does it say you have to believe in God, only that you may have no other

gods before God. Being a Jewish atheist is perfectly acceptable as long as you keep

the commandments and don’t try to destroy the faith of others. Most Jewish atheists

I’ve met said they keep the commandments because doing so gives them a sense of

belonging and tribal identity. There is even a whole movement of Judaism, the

Humanistic movement, that runs services in which God doesn’t appear at all.

Humanistic services are more about learning how to become our best selves and

repair the world, which is certainly valuable, but my own personal view is that

religion has far more to offer than ethics alone. Still, the humanistic approach is a

valid one if it appeals to you. If you’re familiar with Christian terminology, good

works are everything in ancient Judaism – faith is nice, but it’s gravy.

Torah is the word of God; Talmud is the word of man. Interpreting Torah for

yourself is a sacred duty.

 Oddly enough, this teaching is more heretical than the idea that magic is

okay. The rabbinate has spent many centuries justifying its existence by making

decrees and pronouncements about how “binding” the Oral Torah is. The problem

is, their arguments don’t make sense. Oral law evolves because it isn’t written down.

Once you do write it down, it ceases to oral and thus it also ceases to be law. Not that

the Talmud, mishnah, and other rabbinic works aren’t valuable – they surely are.

But listen to Rabbi Nachman of Breslav when he said, “I will not be to my

predecessors as a donkey, eternally hauling their books.” Critical thinking isn’t

reserved solely for rabbis, it’s a fundamental human capability that we all should

use. And the Zohar teaches that whatever meaning you find in the Torah, God put it

there specifically for you to find. So don’t just feel frre to interpret scripture

yourself, feel obligated to do so. If you don’t read Hebrew, of course, having access to

multiple translations helps a lot with this.

Judaism favors debate over dogma.

In ancient times, the forebears of modern rabbinic Judaism were called the

Pharisees. They were far from the only Jewish sect, though. The Sadducees were the

hereditary priests who presided over the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and

admittedly as time went on they became increasingly corrupt servants of Rome.

Another lesser-known sect was the Essenes, a celibate monastic order whose

community at Qumran was responsible for writing the Dead Sea Scrolls. Other
related groups with their own customs and beliefs included the Samaritans and the

Ethiopian Jews (known today as the Beta Israel). Jews of different sects used to

work, pray and debate together in the Temple, and our ancestors considered it not

only normal but desirable: diversity leads to a better understanding of the world.

I mention this to illustrate the fact that the rabbinic monoculture we have

come to accept is in itself un-Jewish. Liberal Jews in the Reform, Reconstructionist

and Renewal movements have too long allowed the Orthodox to act as the de-facto

keepers of tradition rather than creating our own traditions and rediscovering new

ones. Beyond even the anti-Palestinian racism this has created in Israel, it has made

us unsure of ourselves as Jews. Make no mistake: Being a good Jew is not in how

many of the commandments you keep, but rather in your reason for keeping them.

And our tradition teaches that a Jew who becomes even slightly more observant

throughout his or her life, a person called a baal teshuvah, is more holy to God than a

person who has kept all 613 commandments his or her entire life. Conscious and

mindful choice is worth more than all the rote memorization and hollow

performance in the world.

Now let me be clear: the Orthodox world has some wonderful teachers, many

of whom are true mystics whose joy and love are palpable just being around them.

But like any faith-based community, it also has its share of believers who are more

concerned with the letter of the law than with its spirit. I believe it is our duty as

liberal Jews to remind them that Judaism is fundamentally about loving the stranger,

feeding the poor, healing the sick, and repairing the world. More importantly, the

story of Abraham tells us exactly how to go about it.

Destroying idols is in our blood.

A Jew and a Buddhist were walking in a Buddhist temple and talking about

idolatry. “Idolatry is placing an object or a worldly concern above the divine,” said

the Jew to the Buddhist. In response, the Buddhist picked up a statue of the Buddha

and smashed it on the ground. “Can you do that with your Torah?” he asked with a

smile.

If this story sounds similar to the tale of Abraham smashing his father’s idols,

that’s by design. Modern statues of the Buddha aren’t idols because modern people

can’t conceive of the idea that the entire substance of a god could be contained

within a physical object. This idea is so obvious now to make disagreement silly. But

it wasn’t always this way.

In ancient times, Torah tells us that some people actually believed that their

statues of household gods were the gods themselves. And so Abraham made the

ultimate point when smashing his father’s idols: How can you worship a god this

fragile? What kind of god is so impotent as to prevent me from smashing him on the

floor?

In his books, Gershon Winkler suggests that one meaning for the word

“Hebrew” is “boundary-crosser”. Likewise, it’s well known that “Israel” means “the

one who wrestles with God”. These two adjectives, boundary-crosser and God-

wrestler, describe and define us as Jews throughout the ages. Whether in magic or in

science, we have long been known for our ingenuity and intelligence. But the last
major innovation in our religion – the formation of the Reform movement – was

over a century ago, and while it helped Jews to modernize and evolve, it also

removed from the tradition much of what gave it lasting value.

Historians often say that the pendulum of history swings back and forth

between liberalism and conservatism. In religion, the two sides of the pendulum are

reason and magic. The old conceit that “reasonable people don’t believe in all that

superstitious nonsense” is beneath us. The old concern of Christians burning us as

heretics or witches is behind us. And the idea that any person could use holy names

or scripture to accomplish something bad or evil has never made the slightest bit of

sense. These “sacred cows” are assumptions that keep us from fulfilling our destiny,

and in that way they are their own kind of idols. Now is the time to destroy them.

Older magic is raw.

I use the word "raw" because it encompasses both power and danger, and

let's face it, because it conjures up images (at least for me) of sorcerers in robes with

electricity crackling from their fingertips. Ancient magic is different in that it has

centuries or even millennia of belief behind it, which tends to make it more effective

than something you might throw together haphazardly without research. However,

like grimoiric magic, this also means that if you do it incorrectly you can be in for a

rude awakening. When there are warnings in this book about ritual purification or

other precautions you should take, please do yourself a favor and listen to them.
-Innovation is essential. Creation is what makes us like God. That’s why using your

art in your magic makes it more powerful.

-The Jewish magician = the biblical prophet. Get over it now. Discuss navie vs

maggid vs baal shem.

-This tradition had to hide for centuries, but now it’s safe to come out and play

(compare with Santeria)

- God wants you to be happy and fulfilled

- Seek God and live. / All the rest is commentary

- Debate instead of dogma

- Always strive to be better, more awesome

- Nondualism and cognitive dissonance (ancient temple mysteries / man and wife is

one flesh)

- Destroy idols. (Idolatry = addiction / greed / sacred cows) – Dalai Lama /

destroying Buddha statue

Destructive order / constructive disorder

What religion is for, from a mindfulness point of view

- Torah is not about rules. The rules are incidental. Their purpose is to provoke

mindfulness, tikkun olam, prophecy, and eventual self-actualization in an ancient

mind. This book is an attempt to do the same for a modern mind.

- “the devil” is a Christian creation. While we have fallen angels and demons, YHVH

is supreme creator of both light and dark. Compare with Hinduism / Zoroastrianism

Nephilim are sterile. Except Zuri’s line.

- Always speak your mind. Be a hero. Practice justice (tzedakah)

- Stay humble by being of service. (tzaddik)

- The greatest of these is love.

No hate speech / gossip

Magical tools

-Bible verses

-names

-ancestry / patriarchs / blood

-Shofar

-Dead sea salt

-Israeli soil

-Intentionality – Oath of the Abyss, hitbodedut, Baruch Hashem, tzaddik, messianic

age, tikkun olam

Correspondences (elements, directions, animals, worlds, Tree of Usefulness)

Spirits

Alphabets

Chapter 3: Amulets and Incantations

Historical background

How to construct an incantation

Basic ritual framework

Amulet making