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Political Ritual: Bind Mammon and Moloch with an amulet, charge it with FOVWINC,
All this magic is Jewish, but only some of the philosophy (Bey, Levi, Kaplan, Winkler,
Magic and the occult have been taboo in mainstream Judaism for far too long.
But it wasn’t always this way – back in the Middle Ages and before, we practiced all
sorts of magic openly. The Christian population of Europe used to consider Jews to
be powerful sorcerers, and often they weren’t wrong. The rise of the Inquisition
(and later, the Enlightenment) meant that the rabbis felt they needed to tone down
the magical and mystical elements of the tradition in order to avoid persecution and
ridicule. That decision may have saved a great many people from torture or
execution.
The rabbis banned many magical practices and teachings outright, but also
encoded some into prayers that became part of the weekly Friday night service. For
an easy example of this, think of the processional that most synagogues sing as the
Torah is removed from the ark. It starts, “L’cha Adonai ha-Gedulah v’ha-Gevurah
v’ha-Tiferet v’ha-Netzach v’ha-Hod.” If you have any familiarity with the Tree of Life,
you’ll instantly recognize those as the second through the sixth sephirot, counting
from the top of the Tree. (“Gedulah” is an alternate name for Chesed.)
The Talmud also preserves a great many magical practices, since it dates
from long before the whitewashing of Judaism in Europe. Various parts of the
demonic possession, and lengthy discussion about which magical practices are legal
and which are forbidden. As in the bible, the Talmudic rabbis consider “magic” to be
forbidden, where “magic” is defined as the practices they don’t like (usually because
they originally come from a non-Jewish source). When Jews practice magic, the term
“miracle” or “practical kabbalah” is used instead of the term “magic”, since the latter
implies that worship of foreign gods might be involved. Rabbis have often frowned
upon these practical kabbalah as well, but could never stamp it out; in every
religion, there’s a big difference between what the authorities preach and what most
I happen to believe the reason the rabbis couldn’t stamp out practices like
making amulets or invoking divine names is that they were too effective. Amulets
were big business in ancient times, so much so that today we have examples of a
wide variety of quality. Some of the specimens are intricately carved into precious
metals by scribes who clearly were fluent in Hebrew. Others are so bad that the
instructions for making the amulet are carved onto the final product itself. It seems
their craft were no more than a placebo. Certainly, in cases where the amulet was
meant to help cure a disease, the client would pursue medical attention also… but
it’s also true that ancient medicine often did more harm than good. Amulets were
Many Jews today seem to think the information in this book is dangerous and
should be kept secret. I could not disagree more emphatically. The magic of our
ancestors is our birthright, a birthright we’ve allowed the rabbinate to steal from us.
Don’t get me wrong, rabbis are important – but “rabbi” means “teacher”, not
“censor”. Mature adults should be able to decide for themselves what information is
“too dangerous” to study. This magic is ancient, it is powerful, it is reasonably easy
to use, and most importantly, it belongs to every Jew who has ever lived. It’s time we
took it back for ourselves. It’s time to occupy Judaism. It’s time for the return of
The biggest obstacle I’ve faced in researching this topic on my own is there’s
no one book that covers it all. That’s why I decided I needed to write one. While
slogging through endless academic books on amulets and incantation bowls looking
for useful information can be rewarding, it’s also very time consuming and I realize
it isn’t everyone’s idea of fun. The only other comprehensive book on practical
Jewish magic that currently exists in English is Qabalistic Magic by Salomo Baal
reading it, and its lists of the magical uses for psalms and the most common Hebrew
phrases on ancient amulets alone make it worth owning. However, it also contains a
few too many Hermeticisms to be properly called a Jewish magic book – it’s more
like heavliy Jewish-flavored ceremonial magic. It’s also more useful if you want to
run rituals directly out of the book than if you want to construct them yourself. This
book aims to be the opposite – a purely Jewish, cohesive magical system that you
There is, of course, every possibility that some people will misuse the
information in this book. To those people I say, “On your own head be it”. Every
major medieval grimoire, Jewish and otherwise, agrees that horrible things will
happen to an unrighteous person who uses this type of magic. I imagine most rabbis
would disagree with me, but if we don’t trust God to be able to sort out abuses of
divine and angelic names without our help, can we honestly say we have any faith at
If you happen to be an observant Jew or a rabbi, I’d like to just say a few
further things for you in particular. While I’m sure you can detect an obvious anti-
censorship bias on my part, I want you to know that I did not write this book lightly.
Outside the Orthodox world, young Jews are leaving Judaism for Buddhism or other
faiths that don’t fear mysticism like Reform and Conservative Judaism always have.
practices such as drumming, meditation and Hebrew chanting, very few Jews still
seem to be aware of what they do. I invite you to read this book in a certain way:
setting aside your preconceptions about magic / practical kabbalah. Please try to
look instead toward the ways in which this system could lead a person to a far
deeper understanding of (and appreciation for) the various Hebrew names for
Hashem. And I can’t see how that could ever be a bad thing. This is all just a specific
form of prayer directed at producing a particular result, much like some of the
While I’ve assembled this information what I hope is a new and useful way,
all of it is already published in English or I’d never have learned about it myself. And
compassionate and righteous heart of a tzaddik (or more often, an aspiring tzaddik)
is a prerequisite for using this book for anything more than theory. Tikkun olam is
the goal, not personal wealth or power. So if you use it for selfish or malicious
reasons, either it will fail to work or you might live to regret your mistake. Or you
might not. Our god is a jealous god who does not take kindly to would-be usurpers,
I assume that most of my readers fall into one of two categories: Jews who
want to learn about Jewish magic, and non-Jewish magicians who want to learn how
Jews do things. Either way, I imagine you want me to present things from a Jewish
perspective, so that’s what I’m doing. While I still also consider myself a chaos mage,
since that’s what I learned first, any book on some other magical paradigm would
have a very different title without the word “Jewish” in it. So to help differentiate
this system from others you might already be familiar with, I’m going to list the
assumptions this book makes about how magic works. Whether you actually believe
these things or not, it will be helpful advantage to act as if you do whenever using
This is the case with most ancient Near Eastern magic, like also Egyptian
magic for example, and this particular bit of wisdom survives in encoded form to
this very day. Sometimes you might see a crucifix with the letters “INRI” on the top,
right about Jesus’s head. There are two theories on what it means. The first is that
it’s Latin for “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudiae”, or “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”.
However, Gnostics believe that it stands for “Ipse nomen res ipsa”, which means
“The name of the thing is the thing itself.” And Catholicism likely got this
Ancient Jewish magic, like Judaism itself, is very literary. When I showed one
of my amulets to my teacher Jason Miller via Facebook, he was surprised how big it
was and how many words were on it. Traditional Jewish amulets aren’t wearable,
they’re for the home, and describing the effect you want in as much detail as
possible is always best. This is where the names come in – choose the angels and
names of God that best fit your goal. For example, if you’re trying to heal someone,
you might use Raphael (the archangel of healing) and the divine name “Adonai
Rophe” (“God Heals”). Often there’s more than one applicable divine or angelic name
for your goal, and in that case I suggest using them all. The ancient view is that more
names always equal more power, as long as they’re the right ones.
Because Jewish magic relies on divine favor, it’s important to make sure
you’re in a state of ritual purity before doing any. Ritual purity as an often-
Raphael Patai argues very convincingly that the word we usually translate as
the goddess Asherah, who was very popular in ancient Israel. So popular that she
was regarded as God’s wife. But since God and Asherah represented the masculine
and feminine principle, respectively, it was impossible to be holy in both their eyes
at the same time. So whatever makes you ritually pure for Asherah would make you
ritually impure for God, and vice versa. Ritual impurity isn’t something bad or nasty,
it’s just something that naturally happens as a course of living our lives.
Using divine or angelic names while ritually impure is a bit like stepping into
God’s house and tracking mud all over the floor. If you do it accidentally, God
probably won’t be upset - it’s still rude, so don’t do it. I won’t presume to tell you
which commandments you should keep, since that’s up to your own conscience.
However, I think the ones that are generally considered “the big ones” in Judaism
are a good place to start. These include the Ten Commandments and the laws about
what not to eat. While the Talmud is unusually strict about them, the actual biblical
commandments about food aren’t that hard to keep. Giving up pork and shellfish
can be difficult, but who really wants to eat a bird of prey or a calf boiled in its
committed to keeping, don’t worry. As I said above, ritual impurity isn’t “bad”, it’s
just something that happens. The Torah has easy solutions: make a sacrifice and
bathe in the mikveh. The second part is easy – find any free-flowing body of water,
get naked and immerse yourself completely, and say a particular blessing. If you
don’t have access to a traditional Orthodox mikveh (which most major cities do
have) or a free-flowing body of water, I find that dissolving Dead Sea salt in the
As for sacrifices, we know from the writings of the later prophets that the
sacrifice itself was never the important detail. The act was what mattered, because it
represented giving God something that you will miss, and thus symbolically placing
faith above your earthly, material concerns. Which is where it should be anyway. A
good modern way to make a sacrifice is to give an amount of money that feels
somewhat uncomfortable for you to a charity you believe in. I personally like
Jerusalem Peace Makers, as I think peace in the Middle East is one of the most
important goals of our entire culture, but my friend Sara prefers Heifer International
since they give an animal to a starving person (so the money actually goes to an
animal sacrifice of sorts). As long as your rationale makes sense to you, it’s definitely
Intent is crucial.
As I said in the introduction (which most people will probably have skipped),
the only difference between a prophet’s miracles and a sorcerer’s magic in the bible
is who the person worships. The effects are the same, but the intent is different.
While it’s definitely possible to serve other gods and YHVH in your life, you can’t do
both at the exact same time. This type of belief system is usually called monolatry,
which might best be expressed by the sentence, “Other gods are real, but YHVH is
the most powerful god.” A close reading of the book of Genesis reveals that the
As long as you can work with other gods or spirits while still realizing YHVH
is supreme, you aren’t committing idolatry. Thinking some other god is cooler may
be a gray area, but if you find yourself in that situation, offering worship to that god
is a risk I don’t recommend. However, for what it’s worth, plenty of chaos magic and
ceremonial magic can integrate easily into a Jewish worldview with minor
modifications that will become intuitive once you know the Jewish system better.
most mainstream Jews, this is not a book about mainstream Judaism. Nowhere in
the bible does it say you have to believe in God, only that you may have no other
gods before God. Being a Jewish atheist is perfectly acceptable as long as you keep
the commandments and don’t try to destroy the faith of others. Most Jewish atheists
I’ve met said they keep the commandments because doing so gives them a sense of
belonging and tribal identity. There is even a whole movement of Judaism, the
Humanistic movement, that runs services in which God doesn’t appear at all.
Humanistic services are more about learning how to become our best selves and
repair the world, which is certainly valuable, but my own personal view is that
religion has far more to offer than ethics alone. Still, the humanistic approach is a
valid one if it appeals to you. If you’re familiar with Christian terminology, good
works are everything in ancient Judaism – faith is nice, but it’s gravy.
Torah is the word of God; Talmud is the word of man. Interpreting Torah for
okay. The rabbinate has spent many centuries justifying its existence by making
decrees and pronouncements about how “binding” the Oral Torah is. The problem
is, their arguments don’t make sense. Oral law evolves because it isn’t written down.
Once you do write it down, it ceases to oral and thus it also ceases to be law. Not that
the Talmud, mishnah, and other rabbinic works aren’t valuable – they surely are.
reserved solely for rabbis, it’s a fundamental human capability that we all should
use. And the Zohar teaches that whatever meaning you find in the Torah, God put it
there specifically for you to find. So don’t just feel frre to interpret scripture
yourself, feel obligated to do so. If you don’t read Hebrew, of course, having access to
In ancient times, the forebears of modern rabbinic Judaism were called the
Pharisees. They were far from the only Jewish sect, though. The Sadducees were the
hereditary priests who presided over the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and
Another lesser-known sect was the Essenes, a celibate monastic order whose
community at Qumran was responsible for writing the Dead Sea Scrolls. Other
related groups with their own customs and beliefs included the Samaritans and the
Ethiopian Jews (known today as the Beta Israel). Jews of different sects used to
work, pray and debate together in the Temple, and our ancestors considered it not
only normal but desirable: diversity leads to a better understanding of the world.
I mention this to illustrate the fact that the rabbinic monoculture we have
and Renewal movements have too long allowed the Orthodox to act as the de-facto
keepers of tradition rather than creating our own traditions and rediscovering new
ones. Beyond even the anti-Palestinian racism this has created in Israel, it has made
us unsure of ourselves as Jews. Make no mistake: Being a good Jew is not in how
many of the commandments you keep, but rather in your reason for keeping them.
And our tradition teaches that a Jew who becomes even slightly more observant
throughout his or her life, a person called a baal teshuvah, is more holy to God than a
person who has kept all 613 commandments his or her entire life. Conscious and
mindful choice is worth more than all the rote memorization and hollow
Now let me be clear: the Orthodox world has some wonderful teachers, many
of whom are true mystics whose joy and love are palpable just being around them.
But like any faith-based community, it also has its share of believers who are more
concerned with the letter of the law than with its spirit. I believe it is our duty as
liberal Jews to remind them that Judaism is fundamentally about loving the stranger,
feeding the poor, healing the sick, and repairing the world. More importantly, the
A Jew and a Buddhist were walking in a Buddhist temple and talking about
idolatry. “Idolatry is placing an object or a worldly concern above the divine,” said
the Jew to the Buddhist. In response, the Buddhist picked up a statue of the Buddha
and smashed it on the ground. “Can you do that with your Torah?” he asked with a
smile.
If this story sounds similar to the tale of Abraham smashing his father’s idols,
that’s by design. Modern statues of the Buddha aren’t idols because modern people
can’t conceive of the idea that the entire substance of a god could be contained
within a physical object. This idea is so obvious now to make disagreement silly. But
In ancient times, Torah tells us that some people actually believed that their
statues of household gods were the gods themselves. And so Abraham made the
ultimate point when smashing his father’s idols: How can you worship a god this
fragile? What kind of god is so impotent as to prevent me from smashing him on the
floor?
In his books, Gershon Winkler suggests that one meaning for the word
“Hebrew” is “boundary-crosser”. Likewise, it’s well known that “Israel” means “the
one who wrestles with God”. These two adjectives, boundary-crosser and God-
wrestler, describe and define us as Jews throughout the ages. Whether in magic or in
science, we have long been known for our ingenuity and intelligence. But the last
major innovation in our religion – the formation of the Reform movement – was
over a century ago, and while it helped Jews to modernize and evolve, it also
Historians often say that the pendulum of history swings back and forth
between liberalism and conservatism. In religion, the two sides of the pendulum are
reason and magic. The old conceit that “reasonable people don’t believe in all that
heretics or witches is behind us. And the idea that any person could use holy names
or scripture to accomplish something bad or evil has never made the slightest bit of
sense. These “sacred cows” are assumptions that keep us from fulfilling our destiny,
and in that way they are their own kind of idols. Now is the time to destroy them.
I use the word "raw" because it encompasses both power and danger, and
let's face it, because it conjures up images (at least for me) of sorcerers in robes with
electricity crackling from their fingertips. Ancient magic is different in that it has
centuries or even millennia of belief behind it, which tends to make it more effective
than something you might throw together haphazardly without research. However,
like grimoiric magic, this also means that if you do it incorrectly you can be in for a
rude awakening. When there are warnings in this book about ritual purification or
other precautions you should take, please do yourself a favor and listen to them.
-Innovation is essential. Creation is what makes us like God. That’s why using your
-The Jewish magician = the biblical prophet. Get over it now. Discuss navie vs
-This tradition had to hide for centuries, but now it’s safe to come out and play
- Nondualism and cognitive dissonance (ancient temple mysteries / man and wife is
one flesh)
- Torah is not about rules. The rules are incidental. Their purpose is to provoke
- “the devil” is a Christian creation. While we have fallen angels and demons, YHVH
is supreme creator of both light and dark. Compare with Hinduism / Zoroastrianism
Magical tools
-Bible verses
-names
-Shofar
-Israeli soil
Spirits
Alphabets
Amulet making