Infinitum

Slavic mythology

As various Slavic populations were Christianised between the 7th and 12th centuries, Christianity was introduced as a religion of the elite, flourishing mostly in cities and amongst the nobility. Amongst the rural majority of the medieval Slavic population, old myths remained strong. Christian priests and monks in Slavic countries, particularly in Russia, for centuries fought against the phenomenon called dvoeverie (double faith). On the one hand, peasants and farmers eagerly accepted baptism, masses and the new Christian holidays. On the other hand, they still persisted performing ancient rites and worshiping old pagan cults, even when the ancient deities and myths on which those were based were completely forgotten.

This was because, from a perspective of the Slavic peasant, Christianity was not a replacement of old Slavic mythology, but rather an addition to it. Christianity may have offered a hope of salvation, and of blissful afterlife in the next world, but for survival in this world, for yearly harvest and protection of cattle, the old religious system with its fertility rites, its protective deities, and its household spirits was taken to be necessary. This was a problem the Christian church never really solved; at best, it could offer a Christian saint or martyr to replace the pagan deity of a certain cult, but the cult itself thrived, as did the mythological view of the world through which natural phenomena were explained.

While folk beliefs and traditions of all Slavic peoples indeed are the richest resource for reconstructing the ancient pagan beliefs, these may very likely have lost their original mythology and sanctity. People entertained a vague idea that some festivals must be celebrated in a certain way, some stories must be told or some songs must be sung, merely in accordance with tradition. Cults of old deities were mixed with worship of new Christian saints, and old rituals blended among new Christian holidays.

Gamayun, one of three prophetic birds of Russian folklore, alongside Alkonost and Sirin (painting by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1897).

This led scholars to analyse the structure of folklore itself, and to devise methodologies through which they could reconstruct the lost mythology from this structure. We can roughly divide the folklore accounts into two groups:

• Fairy tales about various fantastical characters and creatures such as Alkonost, Baba Yaga, Koschei the Deathless, Firebird, Zmey songs and tales of legendary heroes such as Russian bogatyrs, and superstitions about various demons and spirits such as domovoi, likho, vilas, vampires, vodyanoy, rusalkas etc. Many of these tales and beliefs may be quite ancient, and probably contain at least some elements of old mythical structure, but they are not myths themselves. They lack a deeper, sacral meaning and religious significance, and furthermore they tend to vary greatly among various Slavic populations.

• Folk celebrations of various Christian festivals and popular beliefs in various saints. It is, for instance, quite clear that a popular saint in many Slavic countries, St Elijah the Thunderer, is a replacement of old thunder-god Perun. Likewise, traces of ancient deities can also be found in cults of many other saints, such as St Mary, St Vitus, St George, St Blaise, St Nicholas, and it is also obvious that various folk celebrations, such as the spring feast of Jare or Jurjevo and the summer feast of Ivanje or Ivan Kupala, both very loosely associated with Christian holidays, are abundant with pre-Christian elements. These beliefs have considerable religious and sacral significance to the people still performing them. The problem is, of course, that the elements of pre-Christian religion are hopelessly mixed into popular Christianity.

Reconstruction of original Slavic myths is thus a true detective work, requiring a considerable knowledge of various scientific disciplines such as semiotics, linguistics, philology, comparative mythology and ethnology. Folklore accounts must be analysed on level of structure, not merely as songs or stories, but as groups of signs and symbols which contain some internal structural logic. Each of these signs is composed of some key words, which are more than simply names of characters, places or artifacts. One important aspect of symbols is that they are almost impossible to change; while their names may be altered, their structure may not. Changing or losing of key words would result in a change of symbol, which would then invalidate the internal structural logic of a text and render the entire tale meaningless. It would then soon be forgotten, because the pattern, or logic, through which it was transmitted over generations would be lost.

For example: as stated already, the Slavic god of thunder, Perun, was mostly equated with St Elijah the Thunderer in Christian folklore. But he was also sometimes equated with St Michael, and sometimes even with the Christian God, whilst in some of Russian or Belarusian folk stories, he was downgraded to various fairy characters such as Tsar Ogin (Tsar Flame) or Grom (Thunder). Notwithstanding changes in the name itself, there are always some key words present which were used to describe Perun as a symbol in ancient mythical texts, and have survived through folklore. Perun is always gore (up, above, high, on the top of the mountain or in heaven; Perun is a heavenly god, and he is also the ‘highest’ deity of old Slavic pantheon), he is suh (dry, as opposite of wet; he is god of thunder and lightning, which causes fire), he treska/razbija/goni/ubija (strikes/hits/pursues/kills; he is a god of thunder and storms, destructive and furious) with strela/kamen/molnija (arrow/stone/lightning; Perun’s weapons, are of course, his bolts of lightning. He fires them as arrows which are so powerful they explode and blow up stones when they hit). These key words are always preserved in folklore traces, even if the true name of Perun has been long ago forgotten. Consequently, the structure of this symbol allowed the identification of Perun with similar characters either from Christian religion or from later folklore, which share these similarities in structure of their own symbols.

Following similar methodology, and drawing parallels with structure of other, related Indo-European mythologies (particularly Baltic mythology), and occasionally using some hints found in historical records of Slavic paganism, some of the ancient myths could be reconstructed. Significant progress in the study of Slavic mythology was made during last 30 years, mostly through the work of the Russian philologists Vladimir Toporov and Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, as well as that of the Croatian scientists Radoslav Katičić and Vitomir Belaj. Also very valuable are the studies of Russian scholar Boris Uspensky and of Serbian philologist and ethnologist Veselin Čajkanović.

Tags: Mythology, Slavic

The names of the Watchers

According to the Book of Enoch, exactly 200 Watchers fell to Earth to take human wives. It names 20 of these, explaining that each one was a leader in a group of 10. In his book From the Ashes of Angels, Andrew Collins names a few others, and other reference works corroborate some of the names given in these sources, sometimes with alternate spellings. Through these various sources, I have collected information on what some of these named Watchers taught to mankind. Where there was a variation in wording, I have included both wordings.

According to Collins, there is no complete record of the names of all 200 Watchers. Most of the names included in Enoch are not included in other books, apocryphal or otherwise; in fact, very few of the others appear inother mythological texts; these include Azazel and Kokabel (Shemyaza is a central character in Storm Constantine’s Grigori triology). Azazel is a curious example; although the Watchers, in the beginning of Enoch, swear to Shemyaza, the clear leader, that they will not change their minds about descending. But later, Azazel takes the brunt of the blame for what happens (to his credit, he taught more forbidden items to humankind than the others). He was thrown into the canyon of Duadel, and pinned with sharp rocks, with his face covered. In the Biblical book Leviticus, he is recreated as a desert creature to whom the ancient Israelites dedicated their scapegoats:

“Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord, and offer it as a sin offering; but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the lord to make atonement for it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.”

In still later times, Azazel is considered a demon, and is occasionally identified as the devil — or as one of his chieftains.

Kokabel, or Kakabel, also appears in Jewish folklore as a powerful angel who is in charge of the stars and constellations. He is considered by some to be a holy angel; by others, a fallen one. It is said that he commands 365,000 lesser spirits and teaches astrology to his fellow angels.

Sariel is known under many names, but this one translates to “God’s command.” Some say he is the angel of death; he is named as the one who retrieved the soul of Moses from Mount Sinai. He is also called by some a “prince of the presence” and an angel of healing. His name appears in Gnostic amulets and it is said that when he’s invoked he manifests in the form of an ox; according to the Cabala, he is one of the seven angels that rule the earth. He is also associated with the skies and is in charge of the zodiac sign of Aries and instructs others on the course of the Moon. In occult circles he is one of the nine angels of the summer equinox and can protect against the evil eye.

What follows is as complete a list of the Watchers’ names as I can find; I will add names as I discover more of them.

1. Semyaza, Shemyaza, Semjaza, Semiaza, Samyaza, Shemhazai
“Taught enchantments and root-cuttings.”

2. Azazel, Azazyel, Azaziel
“Taught men to make swords, knives, shields, breastplates, the fabrication of mirrors and the workmanship of bracelets and ornaments, the use of paint, the beautifying of the eyebrows, the use of stones of every valuable and select kind, and of all sorts of dyes, so that the world became altered.”

“Taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures.”

3. Amazarak
“Taught all the sorcerers, and dividers of roots.”

4. Armers, Armeros, Armaros
“Taught the solution of sorcery.”
“Taught the resolving of enchantments.”

5. Barkayal, Baraqijal, Baraqel
“Taught the observers of the stars.”
“Taught astrology.”

6. Kokabel, Kawkabel, Kakabel
“Taught the science of the constellations.”

7. Ezeqeel, Ezekeel
“Taught the knowledge of the clouds.”

8. Araqiel, Arakiel
“Taught the signs of the earth.”

9. Shamsiel, Shamshiel
“Taught the signs of the sun.”

10. Sariel,, Suriel, Zerachiel, Saraquel, Asardel
“Taught the motion of the moon.”
“Taught the course of the moon.”

11. Akibeel
“Taught signs.”

12. Tamiel
“Taught astronomy.”

13. Penemue
“Taught the bitter and the sweet, the use of ink and paper.”

14. Kasdeja, Kisdeja
“Taught the children of men all the wicked smitings of spirits and demons, and the smitings of the embryo in the womb, that it may pass away.”

15. Gadreel
“Introduced weapons of war.”

16. Ramuell
17. Danel
18. Azkeel
19. Saraknyal
20. Asael
21. Batraal
22. Anane
23. Zavebe
24. Samsaveel
25. Ertael
26. Turel
27. Yomvael
28. Urakabarameel

The many names of the Nephilim

“The Nefilim (‘Fallen Ones’) bore many other tribal names, such as Emim (‘Terrors’), Repha’im (‘Weakeners’), Gibborim (‘Giant Heroes’), Zamzummim (‘Achievers’), Anakim (‘Long-necked’ or ‘Wearers of Necklaces’), Awwim (‘Devastators’ or ‘Serpents’). One of the Nefilim named Arba is said to have built the city of Hebron, called ‘Kiriath-Arba’ after him, and become the father of Anak whose three sons, Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai, were later expelled by Joshua’s comrade Caleb. Since, however, arba means ‘four’ in Hebrew, Kiriath-Arba may have originally have meant ‘City of Four,’ a reference to its four quarters mythically connected with the Anakite clans: Anak himself and his ’sons’ Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai.”
- Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis

Tags: watchers

Alchemy

Alchemy became known as the spagyric art after Greek words meaning to separate and to join together in the 16th century, the word probably being coined by Paracelsus. Compare this with one of the dictums of Alchemy in Latin: SOLVE ET COAGULA — Separate, and Join Together (or dissolve and coagulate).

The best-known goals of the alchemists were the transmutation of common metals into gold (called chrysopoeia) or silver (less well known is plant alchemy, or “spagyric”); the creation of a “panacea”, or the elixir of life, a remedy that, it was supposed, would cure all diseases and prolong life indefinitely; and the discovery of a universal solvent. Although these were not the only uses for the discipline, they were the ones most documented and well-known. Certain Hermetic schools argue that the transmutation of lead into gold is analogical for the transmutation of the physical body (Saturn or lead) into Solar energy (gold) with the goal of attaining immortality. This is described as Internal Alchemy. Starting with the Middle Ages, Arabic and European alchemists invested much effort in the search for the “philosopher’s stone”, a legendary substance that was believed to be an essential ingredient for either or both of those goals. Alchemists were alternately persecuted or supported through the centuries. For example in 1317 Pope John XXII issued a Bull against alchemical counterfeiting, and the Cistercians banned the practice amongst their members. In 1403, Henry IV of England banned the practice of Alchemy. In the late 14th century, Piers the Ploughman and Chaucer both painted unflattering pictures of Alchemists as thieves and liars. By contrast, Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, in the late 16th century, sponsored various alchemists in their work at his court in Prague.

It is a popular belief that Alchemists made mundane contributions to the “chemical” industries of the day—ore testing and refining, metalworking, production of gunpowder, ink, dyes, paints, cosmetics, leather tanning, ceramics, glass manufacture, preparation of extracts, liquors, and so on (it seems that the preparation of aqua vitae, the “water of life”, was a fairly popular “experiment” among European alchemists). In reality, although Alchemists contributed distillation to Western Europe, they did little for any known industry. Long before Alchemists appeared, goldsmiths knew how to tell what was good gold or fake, and industrial technology grew by the work of the artisans themselves, rather than any Alchemical helpers.

The double origin of Alchemy in Greek philosophy as well as in Egyptian and Mesopotamian technology set, from the start, a double approach: the technological, operative one, which Marie-Louise von Franz call extravert, and the mystic, contemplative, psychological one, which von Franz names as introvert. These are not mutually exclusive, but complementary instead, as meditation requires practice in the real world, and conversely.

Several early alchemists, such as Zosimos of Panopolis, are recorded as viewing alchemy as a spiritual discipline, and, in the Middle Ages, metaphysical aspects increasingly came to be viewed as the true foundation of the art. Organic and inorganic chemical substances, physical states, and molecular material processes as mere metaphors for spiritual entities, spiritual states, and, ultimately, transformations. In this sense, the literal meanings of ‘Alchemical Formulas’ were a blind, hiding their true spiritual philosophy, which being at odds with the Medieval Christian Church was a necessity that could have otherwise led them to the “stake and rack” of the Inquisition under charges of heresy.^[8] Thus, both the transmutation of common metals into gold and the universal panacea symbolized evolution from an imperfect, diseased, corruptible, and ephemeral state towards a perfect, healthy, incorruptible, and everlasting state; and the philosopher’s stone then represented a mystic key that would make this evolution possible. Applied to the alchemist himself, the twin goal symbolized his evolution from ignorance to enlightenment, and the stone represented a hidden spiritual truth or power that would lead to that goal. In texts that are written according to this view, the cryptic alchemical symbols, diagrams, and textual imagery of late alchemical works typically contain multiple layers of meanings, allegories, and references to other equally cryptic works; and must be laboriously “decoded” in order to discover their true meaning.

In his Alchemical Catechism, Paracelsus clearly denotes that his usage of the metals was a symbol:

Q. When the Philosophers speak of gold and silver, from which they extract their matter, are we to suppose that they refer to the vulgar gold and silver? A. By no means; vulgar silver and gold are dead, while those of the Philosophers are full of life.

Psychology

Alchemical symbolism has been occasionally used by psychologists and philosophers. Carl Jung reexamined alchemical symbolism and theory and began to show the inner meaning of alchemical work as a spiritual path. Alchemical philosophy, symbols and methods have enjoyed something of a renaissance in post-modern contexts.

Jung saw alchemy as a Western proto-psychology dedicated to the achievement of individuation. In his interpretation, alchemy was the vessel by which Gnosticism survived its various purges into the Renaissance, a concept also followed by others such as Stephan A. Hoeller. In this sense, Jung viewed alchemy as comparable to a Yoga of the East, and more adequate to the Western mind than Eastern religions and philosophies. The practice of Alchemy seemed to change the mind and spirit of the Alchemist. Conversely, spontaneous changes on the mind of Western people undergoing any important stage in individuation seems to produce, on occasion, imagery known to Alchemy and relevant to the person’s situation^.

His interpretation of Chinese alchemical texts in terms of his analytical psychology also served the function of comparing Eastern and Western alchemical imagery and core concepts and hence its possible inner sources (archetypes).

Marie-Louise von Franz, a disciple of Jung, continued Jung’s studies on Alchemy and its psychological meaning.

Alchemy, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alchemy&oldid=324283779 (last visited Nov. 9, 2009).

Tags: alchemy

The sacred word YOD-HE-VAU-HE

The Kabbalah and the Sacred Word–The Yod–The He–The Vau–The second He–Synthesis of the Sacred Word.

ACCORDING to the ancient oral tradition of the Hebrews, or Kabbalah, 1 a sacred word exists, which gives to the mortal who can discover the correct way of pronouncing it, the key to all the sciences, divine and human. This word, which the Israelites never uttered, and which the High Priest pronounced once a year, amidst the shouts of the laity, is found at the head of every initiative ritual, it radiates from the centre of the flaming triangle at the 33rd degree of the Freemasonry of Scotland, it is displayed above the gateways of our old cathedrals, is formed of four Hebrew letters, and reads thus, Yod-he-vau-he, יהוה.

It is used in the Sepher Bereschit, or Genesis of Moses, to designate the divinity, and its grammatical construction recalls even by its formation 1 the attributes which men have always delighted to ascribe to God. Now we shall see that the powers attributed to this word are real up to a certain point, for with its aid the symbolical gate of the arch, which contains the explanation of the whole doctrine of ancient science, is easily opened. It is therefore necessary to enter into some detail respecting it.

The word is formed of four letters, Yod (י), he (ה), vau (ו), he (ה). This last letter he is repeated twice.

A number is attributed to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. We must look at those which relate to the letters we are now considering.

י Yod = 10

ה he = 5

ו vau = 6

The total numerical value of the word יהוה is therefore

10 + 5 + 6 + 5 = 26.

Let us now study each letter separately.

THE YOD.

The Yod, shaped like a comma or a dot, represents the principle or origin of all things.

The other letters of the Hebrew alphabet are all produced by different combinations of the letter Yod. 1 The synthetic study of nature had led the ancients to conclude that one law only existed, and ruled all natural productions. This law, the basis of analogy, placed the Unity-principle at the origin of all things, and regarded them as the reflections at various degrees of this Unity-principle. Thus the Yod, which alone forms all the other letters, and therefore all the words and all the phrases of the alphabet, was justly used as the image and representation of this Unity-principle, of which the profane had no knowledge.

Thus the law which presided over the creation of the Hebrew language is the same law that presided over the creation of the Universe, and to know the one is to know the other, unreservedly. The Sepher Yetzirah, 2 one of the most ancient books of the Kabbalah, proves this fact.

Before proceeding any further, let us illustrate the definition which we have just given of the Yod by an example. The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the aleph (א), is composed of four yods placed opposite to each other; the other letters are all formed on the same basis. 3

The numerical value of the yod leads to other considerations. The Unity-principle, according to the doctrine of the Kabbalists, is also the Unity-end of beings and of things, so that eternity, from this point of view, is only an eternal present. The ancients used a dot in the centre of a circle as the symbol of this idea, the representation of the Unity-principle (the dot) in the centre of eternity (the circle, a line without beginning or end). 1

According to these demonstrations, the Unity is regarded as the whole, of which all created beings are only the constituent parts; just as the Unity-man is formed of an agglomeration of molecules, which compose his being.

The Kabbalah, therefore, places at the origin of all things the absolute assertion of the being by itself of the Ego-Unity, which is represented by the yod symbolically, and by the number 10. This number 10, representing the All-principle 1, with the Zero-nothing 0, well supplies the requisite conditions. 2

THE HE. 1

But the Ego cannot be realized except through its opposition to the Non-Ego. The assertion of the Ego is scarcely established, when we must instantly realize a reaction of the Ego, Absolute, upon itself, from which the conception of its existence will be drawn, by a kind of division of the Unity. This is the origin of duality, of opposition, of the Binary, the image of femininity, even as the Unity is the image of the masculine. Ten, divided by itself, in opposition to itself, then equals 10/2 = 5, five, the exact number of the letter He, the second letter of the great sacred name.

The He therefore represents the passive in relation to the Yod, which symbolizes the active; the Non-Ego in relation to the Ego, the woman relatively to the man; the substance relatively to the essence; life in its relation to the soul, &c., &c.

THE VAU. 2

But the opposition of the Ego and the Non-Ego immediately gives rise to another factor; this is the Affinity existing between this Ego and this Non-Ego.

Now the Vau, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, produced by 10 (yod) + 5 (he) = 15 = 6 (or 1 + 5), signifies link or analogy. It is the link which, uniting

antagonisms in the whole of nature, constitutes the third word of this mysterious Trinity.

Ego–Non-Ego.

Affinity of the Ego with the Non-Ego.

THE 2nd HE.

Nothing can exist beyond this Trinity, considered as a law.

The Trinity is the synthetic and absolute formula to which all the sciences converge; and this formula, forgotten with regard to its scientific value, has been transmitted to us integrally, by all the religious of the world, the unconscious depositaries of the SCIENCE WISDOM of primitive civilizations. 1

Thus the great sacred name is formed of three letters only. The fourth term of the name is formed by the repetition of the second letter, the He.

This repetition indicates the passage of the Trinitarian law into a new application; that is, to speak correctly, a transition from the metaphysical to the physical world, or generally, of any world whatever to the world that immediately follows it. 2

The knowledge of the property of the second He is the

key to the whole divine name, in every application of which it is susceptible. We shall presently see the proof of this statement.

SUMMARY UPON THE WORD YOD-HE-VAU-HE.

Now that we have separately studied each of the letters that compose the sacred name, we will apply the law of synthesis to them, and sum up the results obtained.

The word Yod-he-vau-he is formed of four letters, signifying:

These three letters express the Trinitarian law of the Absolute.

This second He represents the complete Being, comprising in one Absolute Unity the three letters which compose it: Ego, Non-Ego, Affinity.

It indicates the passage from the noumenal to the phenomenal or reciprocal; it serves as means of ascension from one scale to another.

REPRESENTATION OF THE SACRED WORD.

The word Yod-he-vau-he can be represented in various ways, which are all useful.

The circle can be drawn in this way–

But since the second He, the sign of transition, becomes the active entity in the following scale, i. e. since this He only represents a yod in germ, 1 the sacred word can be represented, with the second he under the first yod, thus–

Lastly, a third method of representing the word consists in enveloping the Trinity, Yod-he-vau, with the tonalisating letter, or second He, thus–

Now we will leave these data, to which we must return later on, and speak of the occult or Pythagorean conception of numbers.

Excerpt from The Tarot of the Bohemians

By Papus

Tags: Kabbalah

Theosophy

Formation

The Theosophical Society was founded in New York City, USA, in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, William Quan Judge and others. Its initial objective was the investigation, study and explanation of mediumistic phenomena. After a few years Olcott and Blavatsky moved to India and established the International Headquarters at Adyar, Madras (Chennai). There, they also became interested in studying Eastern religions, and these were included in the Society’s agenda. After several iterations the Society’s objectives have evolved to be:

1. to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or colour.
2. to encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science.
3. to investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man.

In addition to the stated objectives, as early as 1889 Blavatsky purportedly had told a group of Theosophical students that the real purpose of establishing the Society was to prepare humanity for the reception of the World Teacher when he appeared again on earth. This was repeated again more publicly by Annie Besant in 1896, five years after Blavatsky’s death. In Blavatsky’s own writings, the only reference to a similar idea indicated that it would not be for at least a century .

Schisms

After Helena Blavatsky’s death in 1891, the Society’s leaders seemed at first to work together peacefully. This did not last long. Judge was accused by Olcott and Annie Besant of forging letters from the Mahatmas; he ended his association with Olcott and Besant in 1895 and took most of the Society’s American Section with him. The original organisation led by Olcott and Besant remains today based in India and is known as the Theosophical Society – Adyar. The group led by Judge further splintered into a faction led by Katherine Tingley, and another associated the Judge’s secretary Ernest Temple Hargrove. While Hargrove’s faction no longer survives, the faction led by Tingley is today known simply as the Theosophical Society, but often with the clarifying statement, “international headquarters, Pasadena, California”. A third organization, the United Lodge of Theosophists or ULT, in 1909 split off from the latter organization, and various small splinter groups began to take shape including the Palmers Green Theosophical Lodge under the leadership of Thomas Neumark-Jones — which was influential among British New Liberal intellectuals.^{[citation needed]}
In 1902, Rudolf Steiner became General Secretary of the German/Austrian division of the Theosophical Society. He maintained a Western-oriented course, relatively independent from the Adyar headquarter led by Besant and Olcott. After serious philosophical conflicts, primarily on the spiritual significance of Christ and on the status of the young boy Krishnamurti (see below), most of the German and Austrian members split off in 1913 and formed the Anthroposophical Society. The latter remains very active and influential today and has branches in almost all western communities, including the US and Canada.

Controversy / Racial Beliefs

Blavatsky posited that humanity had descended from a series of non-human “Root Races” (Cosmologically on par with the Christian sacraments, Cabalistic Tree of life, the eastern phylosophy of the chakras) naming the fifth root race (out of seven) the Aryan race. The Root Races were evolutionary stages, each new Root Race being more evolved than the previous one. She thought that the Aryans originally came from Atlantis, who were part of the fourth Root Race. The Aryan Root Race was only one more step in the evolutionary progress and it would eventually be superseded by a more spiritual Root Races , the sixth. She believed that “The Semites, especially the Arabs, are later Aryans — degenerate in spirituality and perfected in materiality. To these belong all the Jews and the Arabs. The former are a tribe descended from the Tchandalas of India, the outcasts, many of them ex-Brahmins, who sought refuge in Chaldea, in Scinde, and Aria (Iran), and were truly born from their father A-bram (No Brahmin) some 8,000 years B.C.

The latter, the Arabs, are the descendants of those Aryans who would not go into India at the time of the dispersion of nations, some of whom remained on the borderlands thereof, in Afghanistan and Kabul,* and along the Oxus, while others penetrated into and invaded Arabia. But this was when Africa had already been raised as a continent. We have meanwhile to follow, as closely as limited space will permit, the gradual evolution of the now truly human species. It is in the suddenly arrested evolution of certain sub-races, and their forced and violent diversion into the purely animal line by artificial cross-breeding, truly analogous to the hybridization, which we have now learned to utilize in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, that we have to look for the origin of the anthropoids.”

She did not encourage any feeling of superiority by any person or race, spreading the idea of the common origin and destiny of all humanity, and establishing the principle of universal brotherhood as the First Object of the Theosophical Society: “To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, colour, or creed.”  Thus, she declares “Theosophists, collectively, respect the Bible as much as they do the sacred scriptures of other people, finding in it the same eternal truths as in the Vedas, the Zend-Avesta, the Tripitakas, etc.”

Guido von List (and his followers such as Lanz von Liebenfels) later took up some of Blavatsky’s ideas, mixing her ideology with nationalistic and fascist ideas; this system of thought became known as Ariosophy.

Some researchers, when tracing the links between Ariosophy and Theosophy, tried to portray the latter as relying mostly on “intellectual expositions of racial evolution”.However, in The Key to Theosophy Elena Blavatsky had clearly pointed out that “The Society is a philanthropic and scientific body for the propagation of the idea of brotherhood on practical instead of theoretical lines.”

“ENQUIRER. Can you attain the “Secret Wisdom” simply by study? Encyclopaedias define Theosophy pretty much as Webster’s Dictionary does, i. e., as “supposed intercourse with God and superior spirits, and consequent attainment of superhuman knowledge by physical means and chemical processes.” Is this so?
THEOSOPHIST. I think not. Nor is there any lexicographer capable of explaining, whether to himself or others, how superhuman knowledge can be attained by physical or chemical processes. Had Webster said “by metaphysical and alchemical processes,” the definition would be approximately correct: as it is, it is absurd. Ancient Theosophists claimed, and so do the modern, that the infinite cannot be known by the finite — i.e., sensed by the finite Self — but that the divine essence could be communicated to the higher Spiritual Self in a state of ecstasy. This condition can hardly be attained, like hypnotism, by “physical and chemical means.“.

Unlike Theosophists (whose first objective was “to form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, colour, or creed”), “The Thule Society preached Aryan supremacy and acted to achieve it. It provides the final link between occult racial theories and the racial ideology of Hitler, who skewed the fundamental principles of and understandings for sociological and economic control by the emerging Nazi party.”

Theosophical Society, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theosophical_Society&oldid=323513122

Tags: Root races, Theosophy, Thule

Watchers

The Watchers (from Greek egrḗgoroi (ἐγρήγοροι)) or Grigori are a group of fallen angels told of in Biblical apocrypha who mated with mortal women, giving rise to a race of hybrids known as the Nephilim, who are also mentioned in Genesis 6:4. The Watchers appear in Biblical apocrypha, in the first and second books of Enoch and Jubilees. The word “Grigori” derives from the Slavonic Second Book of Enoch.

According to the Book of Enoch, the Watchers numbered a total of 200 but only their leaders are named:

And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And these are the names of their leaders: Sêmîazâz, their leader, Arâkîba, Râmêêl, Kôkabîêl, Tâmîêl, Râmîêl, Dânêl, Êzêqêêl, Barâqîjâl, Asâêl, Armârôs, Batârêl, Anânêl, Zaqîêl, Samsâpêêl, Satarêl, Tûrêl, Jômjâêl, Sariêl. These are their chiefs of tens. (Enoch 6)

A different idea of the Watchers appears in some traditions of Italian witchcraft where they are said to come from ancient stellar lore: “In the Italian system, these ancient Beings are called the Grigori. They are the Guardians of the “doorways” between the physical plane and that which is beyond. In Italian witchlore, the stars were thought to be the campfires of the legions of the Watchers…”

Book of Enoch

In the Book of Enoch, the “watchers” are angels apparently dispatched to Earth simply to watch over the people.

They soon begin to lust for the human women they see, and at the prodding of their leader Samyaza, they defect en masse to illicitly instruct and procreate among humanity. The children produced by these relationships are the Nephilim, savage giants who pillage the earth and endanger humanity. Samyaza and associates further taught their human charges arts and technologies such as weaponry, cosmetics, mirrors, sorcery, and other techniques which were intended to be discovered gradually over time by humans, not foisted upon them all at once. The Greek mythology about Prometheus revealing fire-making to humans without Zeus’s permission is likely a variant of the same ancient legend, and it is possible also that ancient legends among many cultures about cannibalistic giants and pervasive implementation of magical powers (such as in the tale Jack and the Beanstalk) arise from the same ancient mythology that came to inspire the Books of Enoch. Eventually God allows a Great Flood to rid the earth of the Nephilim, but first sends Uriel to warn Noah so as not to eradicate the human race. Genesis says Nephilim remained “on the earth” even after the Great Flood, but Jude says the Watchers themselves are bound “in the valleys of the Earth” until Judgment Day. (See Genesis 6:4 and Jude 1:6, respectively)

The “watchers” story in Enoch from the sixth chapter Genesis where it describes the “Origin of the Nephilim” and mentions the “Sons of God” who beget them:

When men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose. Then the Lord said: “My spirit shall not remain in man forever, since he is but flesh. His days shall comprise one hundred and twenty years.” At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth (as well as later), after the sons of God had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-4)

Here, the “sons of God” are given no specific name or function; they could represent fallen angels, heavenly beings that mate with women. The Book of Enoch regards these as the same angels who are referred to as the Benei Ha-Elohim (Eng. Sons of God) in the Book of Genesis. According to this belief their sins filled the Earth with violence and the world was destroyed as a result of their intervention. Later theologians believed the “sons of God” to refer to the descendants of Seth and the “daughters of man” to refer to the descendants of Cain.

Other References to the Watchers

The Book of Jubilees adds further details about the “watchers”.

In the Book of Daniel an Aramaic term used to denote angels is “watchers” (`îrîn). The term “watcher” probably derives from the verb “to be awake” or “to be vigilant,” so that the implication of calling the angels “watchers” is that they are constantly on watch as sentinels for Yahweh.

Angels were fairly popular in Jewish folklore, which often describes them as looking like large human beings that never sleep and remain forever silent. While there are good and bad “watchers”, most stories revolve around the evil ones that fell from grace when they took “the daughters of man” as their mates.

In the Old Testament (Daniel 4:13-17) there is reference made to the Irin, or “watchers”, which appear to be an order of angels. In early Hebrew lore the Irin were a high order of angels that sat on the supreme Judgment Council of the Heavenly Court.

Richard Cavendish, in his book The Powers of Evil, suggests that the Giants mentioned in Genesis 6:4 were the Giants or Titans of Greek Mythology. He also lists the “watchers” as the fallen angels which magicians call forth in ceremonial magic. Cavendish mentions that the “watchers” were so named because they were stars, the “eyes of night.”

16th Century French theologian Sinistrari referred to the Watchers as beings existing between Humans and Angels. He called them demons and associated them with the Elemental natures of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Clement of Alexandria, influenced by Hellenistic cosmology, attributed the movement of the Stars and the control of the four elements to angelic beings. Sinistrari attributed bodies of fire, air, earth, and water to these Beings, and concluded that the “watchers” were made of fire and air. Cardinal Newman, writing in the mid 1800s, proposed that certain angels existed who were neither totally good nor evil, and had only “partially fallen” from the Heavens.

Partial List of Watchers

• Araqiel (also Arakiel, Araqael, Araciel, Arqael, Sarquael, Arkiel, Arkas) taught humans the signs of the earth. However, in the Sibylline Oracles, Araqiel is referred to not as a fallen angel, or Watcher, but as one of the 5 angels who lead the souls of men to judgement, the other 4 being Ramiel, Uriel, Samiel, and Azazel.
• Armaros (also Amaros) in Enoch I taught men the resolving of enchantments.
• Azazel taught men to make knives, swords, shields, and how to devise ornaments and cosmetics.
  • Gadriel taught the art of cosmetics.
• Baraqel (Baraqiel) taught men astrology
• Bezaliel mentioned in Enoch I, left out of most translations due to damaged manuscripts and problematic transmission of the text.
• Chazaqiel (sometimes Ezeqeel) taught men the signs of the clouds (meteorology).
• Kokabiel (also Kakabel, Kochbiel, Kokbiel, Kabaiel, and Kochab), is a high-ranking, holy angel but, in general apocryphal lore and also in Enoch I, he is a fallen Watcher, resident of nether realms, and commands 365,000 surrogate spirits to do his bidding. Among other duties, he instructs his fellows in astrology.
• Penemue “taught mankind the art of writing with ink and paper,” and taught “the children of men the bitter and the sweet and the secrets of wisdom.”
• Sariel (also Suriel) taught mankind about the courses of the moon (at one time regarded as forbidden knowledge).
• Samyaza (also Shemyazaz, Shamazya, Semiaza, Shemhazi, Semyaza and Amezyarak) is one of the leaders of the fall from heaven.
• Shamsiel, once a guardian of Eden, served as one of the 2 chief aides to the archangel Uriel (the other aide being Hasdiel) when Uriel bore his standard into battle, and is the head of 365 legions of angels and also crowns prayers, accompanying them to the 5th heaven. He is referred to as one of the Watchers. He is a fallen angel who teaches the signs of the sun.

Tags: nephilim, watchers

Causality

Causality is the process of making something happen. Often it denotes a necessary relationship between one event (called cause) and another event (called effect) which is the direct consequence of the first. This two event type of causality is known as accidental causality. Another variety, essential causality, has one event seen in two ways. Aristotle’s example of essential causality is a builder building a house. This single event can be analyzed into the builder building (cause) and the house being built (effect).

The philosophical treatment of causality extends over millennia. In the Western philosophical tradition, discussion stretches back at least to Aristotle, and the topic remains a staple in contemporary philosophy journals.

Though cause and effect are typically related to events, candidates include objects, processes, properties, variables, facts, and states of affairs; which of these make up the causal relata, and how best to characterize the relationship between them, remains under discussion.

According to Sowa (2000), up until the twentieth century, three assumptions described by Max Born in 1949 were dominant in the definition of causality:

1. “Causality postulates that there are laws by which the occurrence of an entity B of a certain class depends on the occurrence of an entity A of another class, where the word entity means any physical object, phenomenon, situation, or event. A is called the cause, B the effect.
2. “Antecedence postulates that the cause must be prior to, or at least simultaneous with, the effect.
3. “Contiguity postulates that cause and effect must be in spatial contact or connected by a chain of intermediate things in contact.” (Born, 1949, as cited in Sowa, 2000)

However, according to Sowa (2000), “relativity and quantum mechanics have forced physicists to abandon these assumptions as exact statements of what happens at the most fundamental levels, but they remain valid at the level of human experience.”

In the case of a mis-attribution of a cause to an effect, the event is known as questionable cause.

Western philosophy

Aristotle

In his Posterior Analytics and Metaphysics, Aristotle wrote, “All causes are beginnings…” , “… we have scientific knowledge when we know the cause…” , and “… to know a thing’s nature is to know the reason why it is…” This formulation set the guidelines for subsequent causal theories by specifying the number, nature, principles, elements, varieties, order of causes as well as the modes of causation. Aristotle’s account of the causes of things is a comprehensive model.

Aristotle’s theory enumerates the possible causes which fall into several wide groups, amounting to the ways the question “why” may be answered; namely, by reference to the material worked upon (as by an artisan) or what might be called the substratum; to the essence, i.e., the pattern, the form, or the structure by reference to which the “matter” or “substratum” is to be worked; to the primary moving agent of change or the agent and its action; and to the goal, the plan, the end, or the good that the figurative artisan intended to obtain. As a result, the major kinds of causes come under the following divisions:

• The material cause is that “raw material” from which a thing is produced as from its parts, constituents, substratum, or materials. This rubric limits the explanation of cause to the parts (the factors, elements, constituents, ingredients) forming the whole (the system, structure, compound, complex, composite, or combination) (the part-whole causation).
• The formal cause tells us what, by analogy to the plans of an artisan, a thing is intended and planned to be. Any thing is thought to be determined by its definition, form (mold), pattern, essence, whole, synthesis, or archetype. This analysis embraces the account of causes in terms of fundamental principles or general laws, as the intended whole (macrostructure) is the cause that explains the production of its parts (the whole-part causation).
• The efficient cause is not the external entity from which the change or the ending of the change first starts. It identifies ‘what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed’ and so suggests all sorts of agents, nonliving or living, acting as the sources of change or movement or rest. Representing the current understanding of causality as the relation of cause and effect, this analysis covers the modern definitions of “cause” as either the agent, agency, particular causal events, or the relevant causal states of affairs.
• The final cause is that for the sake of which a thing exists, or is done – including both purposeful and instrumental actions. The final cause, or telos, is the purpose, or end, that something is supposed to serve; or it is that from which, and that to which, the change is. This analysis also covers modern ideas of mental causation involving such psychological causes as volition, need, motivation, or motives; rational, irrational, ethical – all that gives purpose to behavior.

Additionally, things can be causes of one another, reciprocally causing each other, as hard work causes fitness, and vice versa – although not in the same way or by means of the same function: the one is as the beginning of change, the other is as its goal. (Thus Aristotle first suggested a reciprocal or circular causality – as a relation of mutual dependence, action, or influence of cause and effect.) Also; Aristotle indicated that the same thing can be the cause of contrary effects – as its presence and absence may result in different outcomes. In speaking thus he formulated what currently is ordinarily termed a “causal factor,” e.g., atmospheric pressure as it affects chemical or physical reactions.

Aristotle marked two modes of causation: proper (prior) causation and accidental (chance) causation. All causes, proper and incidental, can be spoken as potential or as actual, particular or generic. The same language refers to the effects of causes; so that generic effects assigned to generic causes, particular effects to particular causes, and operating causes to actual effects. It is also essential that ontological causality does not suggest the temporal relation of before and after – between the cause and the effect; that spontaneity (in nature) and chance (in the sphere of moral actions) are among the causes of effects belonging to the efficient causation, and that no incidental, spontaneous, or chance cause can be prior to a proper, real, or underlying cause per se.

All investigations of causality coming later in history will consist in imposing a favorite hierarchy on the order (priority) of causes; such as “final > efficient > material > formal” (Aquinas), or in restricting all causality to the material and efficient causes or, to the efficient causality (deterministic or chance), or just to regular sequences and correlations of natural phenomena (the natural sciences describing how things happen rather than asking why they happen)..

Causality, determinism, and existentialism

Causality has taken many journeys in the minds of human beings for over 3000 years. Determinism and existentialism are but a few of the manifestations of this journey.

The deterministic world-view is one in which the universe is no more than a chain of events following one after another according to the law of cause and effect. To hold this worldview, as an incompatibilist, there is no such thing as “free will“. However, compatibilists argue that determinism is compatible with, or even necessary for, free will.

Existentialists have suggested that people believe that while no meaning has been designed in the universe, we each can provide a meaning for ourselves.

Though philosophers have pointed out the difficulties in establishing theories of the validity of causal relations, there is yet the plausible example of causation afforded daily which is our own ability to be the cause of events. This concept of causation does not prevent seeing ourselves as moral agents.

Indian philosophy

Theories of causality in Indian philosophy focus mainly on the relationship between cause and effect. The various philosophical schools (darsanas) provide different theories.

The doctrine of satkaryavada affirms that the effect inheres in the cause in some way. The effect is thus either a real or apparent modification of the cause.

The doctrine of asatkaryavada affirms that the effect does not inhere in the cause, but is a new arising.

The Buddha, and subsequent Buddhist thinkers such as Nagarjuna, rejected both, instead proposing a middle way.

See Nyaya for some details of the theory of causation in the Nyaya school.

Logic

Necessary and sufficient causes

A similar concept occurs in logic, for this see Necessary and sufficient conditions

Causes are often distinguished into two types: Necessary and sufficient.

Necessary causes:

If x is a necessary cause of y, then the presence of y necessarily implies the presence of x. The presence of x, however, does not imply that y will occur.

Sufficient causes:

If x is a sufficient cause of y, then the presence of x necessarily implies the presence of y. However, another cause z may alternatively cause y. Thus the presence of y does not imply the presence of x.

J. L. Mackie argues that usual talk of “cause,” in fact refers to INUS conditions (insufficient and non-redundant parts of unnecessary but sufficient causes). For example, a short circuit as a cause for a house burning down. Consider the collection of events: the short circuit, the proximity of flammable material, and the absence of firefighters. Together these are unnecessary but sufficient to the house’s destruction (since many other collections of events certainly could have destroyed the house). Within this collection, the short circuit is an insufficient but non-redundant part (since the short circuit by itself would not have caused the fire, but the fire would not have happened without it, everything else being equal). So, the short circuit is an INUS cause of the house burning down.

Causality contrasted with conditionals

Conditional statements are not statements of causality. An important distinction is that statements of causality require the antecedent to precede the consequent in time, whereas conditional statements do not require this temporal order. Confusion commonly arises since many different statements in English may be presented using “If …, then …” form (and, arguably, because this form is far more commonly used to make a statement of causality). The two types of statements are distinct, however.

For example, all of the following statements are true when interpreting “If …, then …” as the material conditional:

1. If George Bush is president of the United States in 2004, then Germany is in Europe.
2. If George Washington is president of the United States in 2004, then Germany is in Europe.
3. If George Washington is president of the United States in 2004, then Germany is not in Europe.

The first is true since both the antecedent and the consequent are true. The second is true because the antecedent is false and the consequent is true. The third is true because both the antecedent and the consequent are false. These statements are trivial examples. Of course, although none of these statements expresses a causal connection between the antecedent and consequent, they are nonetheless all true because no statement has the combination of a true antecedent and false consequent. Logic requires only that truth not be deceptive.

The ordinary indicative conditional has somewhat more structure than the material conditional. For instance, although the first is the closest, none of the preceding three statements seems true as an ordinary indicative reading. But the sentence

• If Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon did not write Macbeth, then someone else did.

intuitively seems to be true, even though there is no straightforward causal relation in this hypothetical situation between Shakespeare’s not writing Macbeth and someone else’s actually writing it.

Another sort of conditional, the counterfactual conditional, has a stronger connection with causality, yet even counterfactual statements are not all examples of causality. Consider the following two statements:

1. If A were a triangle, then A would have three sides.
2. If switch S were thrown, then bulb B would light.

In the first case, it would not be correct to say that A’s being a triangle caused it to have three sides, since the relationship between triangularity and three-sidedness is that of definition. The property of having three sides actually determines A’s state as a triangle. Nonetheless, even when interpreted counterfactually, the first statement is true.

A full grasp of the concept of conditionals is important to understanding the literature on causality. A crucial stumbling block is that conditionals in everyday English are usually loosely used to describe a general situation. For example, “If I drop my coffee, then my shoe gets wet” relates an infinite number of possible events. It is shorthand for “For any fact that would count as ‘dropping my coffee’, some fact that counts as ‘my shoe gets wet’ will be true”. This general statement will be strictly false if there is any circumstance where I drop my coffee and my shoe doesn’t get wet. However, an “If…, then…” statement in logic typically relates two specific events or facts — a specific coffee-dropping did or did not occur, and a specific shoe-wetting did or did not follow. Thus, with explicit events in mind, if I drop my coffee and wet my shoe, then it is true that “If I dropped my coffee, then I wet my shoe”, regardless of the fact that yesterday I dropped a coffee in the trash for the opposite effect –the conditional relates to specific facts. More counterintuitively, if I didn’t drop my coffee at all, then it is also true that “If I drop my coffee then I wet my shoe”, or “Dropping my coffee implies I wet my shoe”, regardless of whether I wet my shoe or not by any means. This usage would not be counterintuitive if it were not for the everyday usage. Briefly, “If X then Y” is equivalent to the first-order logic statement “A implies B” or “not A-and-not-B”, where A and B are predicates, but the more familiar usage of an “if A then B” statement would need to be written symbolically using a higher order logic using quantifiers (“for all” and “there exists”).

Tags: Causality

Determinism

Determinism necessarily entails that humanity or individual humans may not change the course of the future and its events (a position known as fatalism); however, some determinists believe that the level to which human beings have influence over their future is itself merely dependent on present and past. Causal determinism is associated with, and relies upon, the ideas of materialism and causality. Some of the main philosophers who have dealt with this issue are Marcus Aurelius, Omar Khayyám, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, David Hume, Baron d’Holbach (Paul Heinrich Dietrich), Pierre-Simon Laplace,Arthur Schopenhauer, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and, more recently, John Searle, Ted Honderich, and Daniel Dennett.

Mecca Chiesa notes that the probabilistic or selectionistic determinism of B.F. Skinner comprised a wholly separate conception of determinism that was not mechanistic at all. A mechanistic determinism would assume that every event has an unbroken chain of prior occurrences, but a selectionistic or probabilistic model does not.

The nature of determinism

The exact meaning of the term determinism has historically been subject to rigorous scrutiny and several interpretations. Some people, called Incompatibilists, view determinism and free will as mutually exclusive. The belief that free will is an illusion is known as Hard Determinism. Others, labeled Compatibilists, (or Soft Determinists) believe that the two ideas can be coherently reconciled. Incompatibilists who accept free willbut reject determinism are called Philosophical Libertarians — not to be confused with Political Libertarians. Some feel it refers to the metaphysical truth of independent agency, whereas others simply define it as the feeling of agency that humans experience when they act. Many will agree that determinism is the theory that human choices and actions can be determined from external causes; but free will is the theory that human choices and actions are determined by internal causes: that an individual is the prime mover of his life.

Ted Honderich, in his book How Free Are You? – The Determinism Problem gives the following summary of the theory of determinism:

In its central part, determinism is the theory that our choices and decisions and what gives rise to them are effects. What the theory comes to therefore depends on what effects are taken to be… [I]t is effects that seem fundamental to the subject of determinism and how it affects our lives.

Varieties of determinism

Causal (or nomological) determinism is the thesis that future events are necessitated by past and present events combined with the laws of nature. Such determinism is sometimes illustrated by the thought experiment of Laplace’s demon. Imagine an entity that knows all facts about the past and the present, and knows all natural laws that govern the universe. Such an entity might be able to use this knowledge to foresee the future, down to the smallest detail. Simon-Pierre Laplace’s determinist “dogma” (as described by Stephen Hawking) is generally referred to as “scientific determinism” and predicated on the supposition that all events have a cause and effect and the precise combination of events at a particular time engender a particular outcome. This causal determinism has a direct relationship with predictability. Perfect predictability implies strict determinism, but lack of predictability does not necessarily imply lack of determinism. Limitations on predictability could alternatively be caused by factors such as a lack of information or excessive complexity. An example of this could be found by looking at a bomb dropping from the air. Through mathematics, we can predict the time the bomb will take to reach the ground, and we also know what will happen once the bomb explodes. Any small errors in prediction might arise from our not measuring some factors, such as puffs of wind or variations in air temperature along the bomb’s path.

Logical determinism is the notion that all propositions, whether about the past, present or future, are either true or false. The problem of free will, in this context, is the problem of how choices can be free, given that what one does in the future is already determined as true or false in the present. This is referred to as the problem of future contingents.

Additionally, there is environmental determinism, also known as climatic or geographical determinism which holds the view that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture. Those who believe this view say that humans are strictly defined by stimulus-response (environment-behavior) and cannot deviate. Key proponents of this notion have included Ellen Churchill Semple, Ellsworth Huntington,Thomas Griffith Taylor and possibly Jared Diamond, although his status as an environmental determinist is debated.

Biological determinism is the idea that all behavior, belief, and desire are fixed by our genetic endowment. There are other theses on determinism, including cultural determinism and the narrower concept ofpsychological determinism. Combinations and syntheses of determinist theses, e.g. bio-environmental determinism, are even more common. Addiction Specialist Dr. Drew Pinski relates addiction to biological determinism:

“Absolutely. It’s a complex disorder, but it clearly has a genetic basis. In fact, in the definition of the disease, we consider genetics absolutely a crucial piece of the definition. So the definition as stated in a consensus conference that was published in the early ’90s, it’s a genetic disorder with a biological basis. The hallmark is the progressive use in the face of adverse consequence, and then finally denial.”

Theological determinism is the thesis that there is a God who determines all that humans will do, either by knowing their actions in advance, via some form of omniscience^[9] or by decreeing their actions in advance. The problem of free will, in this context, is the problem of how our actions can be free, if there is a being who has determined them for us ahead of time.

Determinism with regard to ethics

Often determinism is connected with ethics as an excuse for unethical actions. Hard determinists assert morality as being caused through hereditary and environmental means. Opposition to determinism promotes that without belief in uncaused free will, humans will not have reason to behave ethically. Determinism, however, does not negate emotions and reason of a person, it simply proposes the source of what causes us to fall back on moral behavior. Anyone susceptible to immoral actions from the idea of determinism was susceptible before and does not hold strong moral judgment prior to the idea.

Determinism implies the moral differences between two people are caused by hereditary predispositions and environmental effects and events. This does not mean determinists are against punishment of people who commit crimes because the cause of a person’s morality (depending on the branch of determinism) is not necessarily themselves.

Determinism in Eastern tradition

The idea that the entire universe is a deterministic system has been articulated in both Eastern and non-Eastern religion, philosophy, and literature.

A shifting flow of probabilities for futures lies at the heart of theories associated with the Yi Jing (or I Ching, the Book of Changes). Probabilities take the center of the stage away from things and people. A kind of “divine” volition sets the fundamental rules for the working out of probabilities in the universe, and human volitions are always a factor in the ways that humans can deal with the real world situations one encounters. If one’s situation in life is surfing on a tsunami, one still has some range of choices even in that situation. One person might give up, and another person might choose to struggle and perhaps to survive. The Yi Jing mentality is much closer to the mentality of quantum physics than to that of classical physics, and also finds parallelism in voluntarist or Existentialist ideas of taking one’s life as one’s project.

This theory has also seen its use in popular culture in Japan. In an anime titled xxxHolic the term Hitsuzen is used to describe the Determinism theory although it has a more magical feel to its explanation.

The followers of the philosopher Mozi made some early discoveries in optics and other areas of physics, ideas that were consonant with deterministic ideas.

In the philosophical schools of India, the concept of precise and continual effect of laws of Karma on the existence of all sentient beings is analogous to western deterministic concept. Karma is the concept of “action” or “deed” in Indian religions. It is understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect (i.e., the cycle called saṃsāra) originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist philosophies. Karma is considered predetermined and deterministic in the universe, with the exception of a human, who through free will can (somewhat) influence the future. See Karma in Hinduism.

Determinism in Western tradition

In the West, the Ancient Greek atomists Leucippus and Democritus were the first to anticipate determinism when they theorized that all processes in the world were due to the mechanical interplay of atoms, but this theory did not gain much support at the time. Determinism in the West is often associated with Newtonian physics, which depicts the physical matter of the universe as operating according to a set of fixed, knowable laws. The “billiard ball” hypothesis, a product of Newtonian physics, argues that once the initial conditions of the universe have been established, the rest of the history of the universe follows inevitably. If it were actually possible to have complete knowledge of physical matter and all of the laws governing that matter at any one time, then it would be theoretically possible to compute the time and place of every event that will ever occur (Laplace’s demon). In this sense, the basic particles of the universe operate in the same fashion as the rolling balls on a billiard table, moving and striking each other in predictable ways to produce predictable results.

Whether or not it is all-encompassing in so doing, Newtonian mechanics deals only with caused events, e.g.: If an object begins in a known position and is hit dead on by an object with some known velocity, then it will be pushed straight toward another predictable point. If it goes somewhere else, the Newtonians argue, one must question one’s measurements of the original position of the object, the exact direction of the striking object, gravitational or other fields that were inadvertently ignored, etc. Then, they maintain, repeated experiments and improvements in accuracy will always bring one’s observations closer to the theoretically predicted results. When dealing with situations on an ordinary human scale, Newtonian physics has been so enormously successful that it has no competition. But it fails spectacularly as velocities become some substantial fraction of the speed of light and when interactions at the atomic scale are studied. Before the discovery of quantum effects and other challenges to Newtonian physics, “uncertainty” was always a term that applied to the accuracy of human knowledge about causes and effects, and not to the causes and effects themselves.

Newtonian mechanics as well as any following physical theories are results of observations, and experiments and so they describe “how it all works” within a tolerance. However, old western scientists believed if there are any logical connections found between an observed cause and effect, there must be also some absolute natural laws behind. Belief in perfect natural laws driving everything, instead of just describing what we should expect, led to searching for a set of universal simple laws that rule the world. This movement significantly encouraged deterministic views in western philosophy.

Minds and bodies

Some determinists argue that materialism does not present a complete understanding of the universe, because while it can describe determinate interactions among material things, it ignores the minds or souls of conscious beings.

A number of positions can be delineated:

1. Immaterial souls exist and exert a non-deterministic causal influence on bodies. (Traditional free-will, interactionist dualism).
2. Immaterial souls exist, but are part of deterministic framework.
3. Immaterial souls exist, but exert no causal influence, free or determined (epiphenomenalism, occasionalism)
4. Immaterial souls do not exist — the mind-body problem has some other solution.
5. Immaterial souls are all that exist (Idealism).

Modern perspectives on determinism

Determinism and a first cause

Since the early twentieth century when astronomer Edwin Hubble first hypothesized that redshift shows the universe is expanding, prevailing scientific opinion has been that the current state of the universe is the result of a process described by the Big Bang. Many theists and deists claim that it therefore has a finite age, pointing out that something cannot come from nothing. The big bang does not describe from where the compressed universe came; instead it leaves the question open. Different astrophysicists hold different views about precisely how the universe originated (Cosmogony). The philosophical argument here would be that the big bang triggered every single action, and possibly mental thought, through the system of cause and effect.

Determinism and generative processes

Some proponents of emergentist or generative philosophy, cognitive sciences and evolutionary psychology, argue that free will does not exist. They suggest instead that an illusion of free will is experienced due to the generation of infinite behaviour from the interaction of finite-deterministic set of rules and parameters. Thus the unpredictability of the emerging behaviour from deterministic processes leads to a perception of free will, even though free will as an ontological entity does not exist.^[14][15]

As an illustration, the strategy board-games chess and Go have rigorous rules in which no information (such as cards’ face-values) is hidden from either player and no random events (such as dice-rolling) happen within the game. Yet, chess and especially Go with its extremely simple deterministic rules, can still have an extremely large number of unpredictable moves. By this analogy, it is suggested, the experience of free will emerges from the interaction of finite rules and deterministic parameters that generate infinite and unpredictable behaviour. Yet, if all these events were accounted for, and there were a known way to evaluate these events, the seemingly unpredictable behaviour would become predictable.

Determinism in mathematical models

Many mathematical models are deterministic. This is true of most models involving differential equations (notably, those measuring rate of change over time). Mathematical models that are not deterministic because they involve randomness are called stochastic. Because of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, some deterministic models may appear to behave non-deterministically; in such cases, a deterministic interpretation of the model may not be useful due to numerical instability and a finite amount of precision in measurement. Such considerations can motivate the consideration of a stochastic model when the underlying system is accurately modeled in the abstract by deterministic equations. A truly non-deterministic event is independent of the time and observer, thus it is called intrinsic random event.

Determinism, quantum mechanics, and classical physics

Since the beginning of the 20th century, quantum mechanics has revealed previously concealed aspects of events. Newtonian physics, taken in isolation rather than as an approximation to quantum mechanics, depicts a universe in which objects move in perfectly determinative ways. At human scale levels of interaction, Newtonian mechanics makes predictions that are agreed with, within the accuracy of measurement. Poorly designed and fabricated guns and ammunition scatter their shots rather widely around the center of a target, and better guns produce tighter patterns. Absolute knowledge of the forces accelerating a bullet should produce absolutely reliable predictions of its path, or so was thought. However, knowledge is never absolute in practice and the equations of Newtonian mechanics can exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions, meaning small errors in knowledge of initial conditions can result in arbitrarily large deviations from predicted behavior.

At atomic scales the paths of objects can only be predicted in a probabilistic way. The paths may not be exactly specified in a full quantum description of the particles; “path” is a classical concept which quantum particles do not exactly possess. The probability arises from the measurement of the perceived path of the particle. In some cases, a quantum particle may trace an exact path, and the probability of finding the particles in that path is one. The quantum development is at least as predictable as the classical motion, but it describes wave functions that cannot be easily expressed in ordinary language. In double-slit experiments, photons are fired singly through a double-slit apparatus at a distant screen and do not arrive at a single point, nor do the photons arrive in a scattered pattern analogous to bullets fired by a fixed gun at a distant target. Instead, the light arrives in varying concentrations at widely separated points, and the distribution of its collisions with the target can be calculated reliably. In that sense the behavior of light in this apparatus is deterministic, but there is no way to predict where in the resulting interference pattern an individual photon will make its contribution (see Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle).

Some have argued that, in addition to the conditions humans can observe and the laws we can deduce, there are hidden factors or “hidden variables” that determine absolutely in which order photons reach the detector screen. They argue that the course of the universe is absolutely determined, but that humans are screened from knowledge of the determinative factors. So, they say, it only appears that things proceed in a merely probabilistically-determinative way. In actuality, they proceed in an absolutely deterministic way. Although matters are still subject to some measure of dispute, quantum mechanics makes statisticalpredictions which would be violated if some local hidden variables existed. There have been a number of experiments to verify those predictions, and so far they do not appear to be violated, though many physicists believe better experiments are needed to conclusively settle the question. (See Bell test experiments.) It is possible, however, to augment quantum mechanics with non-local hidden variables to achieve a deterministic theory that is in agreement with experiment. An example is the Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics.

On the macro scale it can matter very much whether a bullet arrives at a certain point at a certain time, as snipers are well aware; there are analogous quantum events that have macro- as well as quantum-level consequences. It is easy to contrive situations in which the arrival of an electron at a screen at a certain point and time would trigger one event and its arrival at another point would trigger an entirely different event. (See Schrödinger’s cat.)

Even before the laws of quantum mechanics were fully developed, the phenomenon of radioactivity posed a challenge to determinism. A gram of uranium-238, a commonly occurring radioactive substance, contains some 2.5 x 10²¹ atoms. By all tests known to science these atoms are identical and indistinguishable. Yet about 12600 times a second one of the atoms in that gram will decay, giving off an alpha particle. This decay does not depend on external stimulus and no extant theory of physics predicts when any given atom will decay, with realistically obtainable knowledge. The uranium found on earth is thought to have been synthesized during a supernova explosion that occurred roughly 5 billion years ago. For determinism to hold, every uranium atom must contain some internal “clock” that specifies the exact time it will decay.^{[citation needed]} And somehow the laws of physics must specify exactly how those clocks were set as each uranium atom was formed during the supernova collapse.

Exposure to alpha radiation can cause cancer. For this to happen, at some point a specific alpha particle must alter some chemical reaction in a cell in a way that results in a mutation. Since molecules are in constant thermal motion, the exact timing of the radioactive decay that produced the fatal alpha particle matters. If probabilistically determined events do have an impact on the macro events—such as when a person who could have been historically important dies in youth of a cancer caused by a random mutation—then the course of history is not predictable from the dawn of time.

The time dependent Schrödinger equation gives the first time derivative of the quantum state. That is, it explicitly and uniquely predicts the development of the wave function with time.

So quantum mechanics is deterministic, provided that one accepts the wave function itself as reality (rather than as probability of classical coordinates). Since we have no practical way of knowing the exact magnitudes, and especially the phases, in a full quantum mechanical description of the causes of an observable event, this turns out to be philosophically similar to the “hidden variable” doctrine.

According to some, quantum mechanics is more strongly ordered than Classical Mechanics, because while Classical Mechanics is chaotic, quantum mechanics is not. For example, the classical problem of three bodies under a force such as gravity is not integrable, while the quantum mechanical three body problem is tractable and integrable, using the Faddeev Equations. That is, the quantum mechanical problem can always be solved to a given accuracy with a large enough computer of predetermined precision, while the classical problem may require arbitrarily high precision, depending on the details of the motion. This does not mean that quantum mechanics describes the world as more deterministic, unless one already considers the wave function to be the true reality. Even so, this does not get rid of the probabilities, because we can’t do anything without using classical descriptions, but it assigns the probabilities to the classical approximation, rather than to the quantum reality.

Asserting that quantum mechanics is deterministic by treating the wave function itself as reality implies a single wave function for the entire universe, starting at the origin of the universe. Such a “wave function of everything” would carry the probabilities of not just the world we know, but every other possible world that could have evolved. For example, large voids in the distributions of galaxies are believed by many cosmologists to have originated in quantum fluctuations during the big bang. (See cosmic inflation and primordial fluctuations.) If so, the “wave function of everything” would carry the possibility that the region where our Milky Way galaxy is located could have been a void and the Earth never existed at all. (See large-scale structure of the cosmos.)

Tags: determinism

Synchronicity

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which are causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. In order to count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance.

The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality. Instead, it maintains that just as events may be grouped by cause, they may also be grouped by their meaning. Since meaning is a complex mental construction, subject to conscious and subconscious influence, not every correlation in the grouping of events by meaning needs to have an explanation in terms of cause and effect.

The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined as the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own logical way and gives rise to relationships that are not causal in nature. These relationships can manifest themselves as simultaneous occurrences that are meaningfully related—the cause and the effect occur together.

Synchronous events reveal an underlying pattern, a conceptual framework which encompasses, but is larger than, any of the systems which display the synchronicity. The suggestion of a larger framework is essential in order to satisfy the definition of synchronicity as originally developed by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung.

Jung coined the word to describe what he called “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” Jung variously described synchronicity as an “acausal connecting principle”, “meaningful coincidence” and “acausal parallelism”. Jung introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but only gave a full statement of it in 1951 in an Eranos lecture and in 1952, published a paper, Synchronicity — An Acausal Connecting Principle, in a volume with a related study by the physicist (and Nobel laureate) Wolfgang Pauli.

It was a principle that Jung felt gave conclusive evidence for his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious, in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlies the whole of human experience and history—social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. Events that happen which appear at first to be coincidence but are later found to be causally related are termed as “incoincident”.

Jung believed that many experiences that are coincidences due to chance in terms of causality suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances in terms of meaning, reflecting this governing dynamic.

One of Jung’s favourite quotes on synchronicity was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”.

Scientific reasoning

A possible explanation for Jung’s perception that the laws of probability seemed to be violated with some coincidences can be seen in Littlewood’s law.

In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs. It is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference, or as a form of selection bias toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study or disconfirmation of an alternative hypothesis. Confirmation bias is of interest in the teaching of critical thinking, as the skill is misused if rigorous critical scrutiny is applied only to evidence challenging a preconceived idea but not to evidence supporting it.

Wolfgang Pauli, a scientist who in his professional life was severely critical of confirmation bias, made some effort to investigate the phenomenon, coauthoring a paper with Jung on the subject. Some of the evidence that Pauli cited was that ideas which occurred in his dreams would have synchronous analogs in later correspondence with distant collaborators.

Examples

The French writer Émile Deschamps claims in his memoirs that in 1805, he was treated to some plum pudding by a stranger named Monsieur de Fontgibu. Ten years later, the writer encountered plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant and wanted to order some, but the waiter told him that the last dish had already been served to another customer, who turned out to be de Fontgibu. Many years later, in 1832, Émile Deschamps was at a diner and was once again offered plum pudding. He recalled the earlier incident and told his friends that only de Fontgibu was missing to make the setting complete—and in the same instant, the now senile de Fontgibu entered the room.

In his book Synchronicity (1952), Jung tells the following story as an example of a synchronistic event: “A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream, I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from the outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeud beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since.”

Simultaneous discovery is the creation of the same new idea at causally disconnected places by two persons at approximately the same time. If, for example, an American and a British musician, having never had anything to do with one another, arrived at the same musical concept, chord sequence, feel or lyrics at the same time in different places, this would be an example of synchronicity. The wardrobe department for The Wizard of Oz unknowingly purchased a coat for character Professor Marvel from a second-hand store, which was later verified to have originally been owned by L. Frank Baum, the author of the novel on which the film was based. The comic strip character Dennis The Menace featuring a young boy in a red and black striped shirt debuted on March 12, 1951 in 16 newspapers in the United States. Three days later in the UK a character called Dennis The Menace, wearing a red and black striped jumper made his debut in children’s comic The Beano. Both creators have denied any causal connection.

Jung wrote, after describing some examples, “When coincidences pile up in this way, one cannot help being impressed by them — for the greater the number of terms in such a series, or the more unusual its character, the more improbable it becomes.”

Synchronicity. (2009, July 26). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:21, July 26, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Synchronicity&oldid=304330957

Tags: synchronicity

Dybbuk – Spiritual Possession

A human being that is possessed by a spirit or some otherworldly creature is a phenomenon found in a myriad of cultures and religions. Jewish folklore calls the spirit that causes this rare but remarkable occurrence a “dybbuk.”

A dybbuk (pronounced “dih-buk”) is the term for a wandering soul that attaches itself to a living person and controls that person’s behavior to accomplish a task. The word “dybbuk” is the Hebrew word for “cleaving” or “clinging,” and surprisingly, having a dybbuk is not always a bad thing for the human host. However, sometimes having a dybbuk is a very bad thing.

Rabbi Gershon Winkler has been studying Jewish folklore, spirituality, and its shamanic roots for more than 25 years. He has written books covering the Jewish perspective on ghosts, apparitions, magic, and reincarnation, including a book titled Dybbuk. I spoke to Rabbi Winkler about dybbuk from his office at the Walking Stick Foundation in the wilderness of New Mexico.

My own understanding of possession is from a very Roman Catholic perspective: a person can succumb to a demon or devil that will take over their body, and the only cure is an exorcism to drive the demon out. Rabbi Winkler said, “[Jews] don’t believe in demonic possession. We believe that, on very rare occasions, there can be a possession of a living person by the soul of one who has left the body, but not the world, and they’re seeking a body to possess to finish whatever they need to finish.”

Winkler explained how stories of dybbuk go back to ancient scriptures. In the Old Testament of the Bible, in the Book of Samuel (18:10), a bad spirit is briefly described as attaching itself to King Saul, the first king elected chieftain of the ancient tribes of Israel: “And it came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul…” Later in the Bible, in the Book of Kings, the prophet Elijah is possessed by the spirit of a dead man who is trying to get the prophet to trick the King into going to war when he wasn’t supposed to. Winkler said, “You have stories like that, that just nonchalantly mention spirits of people who have left us coming down to effect some change, some phenomenon in this world.”

Rabbi Winkler has a unique perspective on dybbuk and other Jewish folklore. Though the kinds of things he’s writing and teaching about may not be discussed in your local synagogue, Winkler explains how ghosts and spirits are definitely part of Judaism. Winkler said, “Our scriptures and our mystical tradition are full of ghosts — ghosts meaning the disembodied soul still wandering around. We also have teachings about what in English they call “demons,” but they’re not all evil — they’re called ’sheydim’ in Hebrew. There are good demons and bad demons. According to our ancient tradition, demons are beings just like we are, just like animals are. They were created in the twilight of creation after the human being was created, right before the climax of creation, so that they’re neither of this world, nor of the other world, but little bit of both. There are teachings about how our ancestors like King Solomon dabbled in demonology, and he learned a lot of sorcery mysteries from the famous head of all the demons, Ashmedai.”

So how does a dybbuk take hold of a person? Winkler said, “The dybbuk is drawn to someone who is in the state where their soul and their body are not fully connected with each other because of severe melancholy, psychosis, stuff like that — where you’re not integrated. It seeks a particular person who in their current lifetime is going through what the possessing spirit went through, and so the possessing spirit is drawn to compatibility — to someone who is struggling with the same thing it did. Let’s say in my heart I have a desire to rob all convenience stores, but I don’t follow through because I don’t have the guts. The spirit of someone who has actually done it will be drawn to my desire to do it and will possess me because we’re compatible.”

Giving in to your bad inclinations doesn’t necessarily mean you are victim of a dybbuk. A true possession does have specific signs. Winkler explained, “You can tell it is real if the person is capable of speaking things that they would not otherwise be capable of knowing. Because the soul that’s in them is not integrated with them enough to be subject to time, space, and matter, they would be able to tell you things they would ordinarily not know — like what you dreamed last night, what’s happening across the street, maybe they can even speak a separate language that they’ve never known before.” If this kind of bad possession takes hold, the solution is exorcism.

The Jewish exorcism ritual is performed by a rabbi who has mastered practical Kabbalah. The ceremony involves a quorum of 10 people who gather in a circle around the possessed person. The group recites Psalm 91 three times, and the rabbi blows the shofar — a ram’s horn. Rabbi Winkler has performed four exorcisms in his life so far. He said, “We blow the ram’s horn in a certain way, with certain notes, in effect to shatter the body, so to speak. So that the soul who is possessing will be shaken loose. After it has been shaken loose, we can begin to communicate with it and ask it what it is here for. We can pray for it and do a ceremony for it to enable it to feel safe and finished so that it can leave the person’s body.”

The point of the exorcism is to heal the person being possessed and the spirit doing the possessing. This is a stark contrast to the Catholic exorcism that is intended to drive away the offending spirit or demon. Winkler said, “We don’t drive anything out of anybody. What we want to do is to heal the soul that’s possessing and heal the person. It’s all about healing — we do the ceremony on behalf of both people.”

In some cases, a person may exhibit signs of dybbuk but the problem is purely psychological. Rabbi Winkler recounted a story from Jewish folklore that took place in the eighteenth century — around the time the first wind-up alarm clock was invented. A woman brought her daughter to her rabbi because she suspected a dybbuk. The rabbi diagnosed the young girl and didn’t find any real signs of possession, so he sent her home with an alarm clock and told her to carry it throughout the day. The rabbi told the woman and her daughter that at 4:30 that afternoon, the dybbuk would leave the girl. At 4:30, the family believed the dybbuk was gone by the mere shock of hearing the bell go off at exactly 4:30.

There is also a positive aspect to a dybbuk. Sometimes a spirit will come to a person in a time of need to help. Winkler said, “The second kind of possession is called ’sod ha’ibbur,’ which is Hebrew for ‘mystery impregnation.’ This kind of possession is a good possession — it’s a spirit guide. The spirit of someone who has struggled and overcome what you have struggled with and can’t overcome will be lent to you from the spirit world to possess you, encourage you, and help you overcome what you have not been able to overcome and what it has been able to in its lifetime. Then when it’s done and you’ve managed to achieve what you need to achieve in your life, it leaves you. Sometimes people reach high pinnacles of achievement and they fall into deep depression, and that’s explained as the loss of that spirit. So there’s a sense of loss, and it’s misinterpreted as depression. If the person realizes that, they can be thankful that they had a spirit guide to help them, and they need to continue to lift up their own spirit.”

Most belief systems have some notion of a spirit guide or guardian angel, and they also recognize a malevolent spiritual force that can influence us. The Jewish concept of dybbuk recognizes that our physical world and the spiritual world can intertwine for both positive and negative reasons. If those intersecting reasons are negative, Judaism has a healing process to mend the collision so both the possessor and the possessed can move on.

By Jeff Belanger

Tags: folklore, jewish