Infinite MonkeysToday I am going to write about kittens, afterbirth and what that has to do with seeing ghosts. But first some background is required.
A couple years back my wife and I attended a class on Judaism. The basic method of the class was that from week to week we would attend classes at different synagogues, each synagogue representing various alignments of modern Jewish practice, including Reform, Conservative, "Traditional" - which I was lead to understand was Orthodox in all respects except for some allowances for co-ed worship, as well as Reconstructionist and non-aligned. The format was intended to give a broad sweep of exposure to the varieties of Jewish practice available today, as well as to emphasize the foundational unity of the faith.
Though not a point of this entry, it may be worth noting that the first day of class, at the Reform synagogue, the rabbi said something to this affect: Judaism is a faith, a way of life, a moral philosophy, an ethnic group deriving from an ancient mid-east tribe, a tribe which, he pointed out, exists and thrives today, unlike so many other tribes of 3500 years gone by, i.e.: the Hittites, the Philistines, the Canaanites and, for that matter, the Egyptians ... Judaism is many things, but, he said, whatever it is, it always has to do with God.
No one spelled out the connection, but to my mind it was a subtle apologetic plug, quickly tied into a certain mode of Jewish worship, which we also attended as part of the class. One is repeatedly reminded in Jewish liturgy that something "preserves" the Jews. It may be God, it may be the Sabbath, it may be the scriptures and the Law, it may be all of those things. But the Jews are with us today, a living, Semitic tribe over 3500 years old. Not something many others can claim.
I find that note interesting because one group left out of this introductory class was the self-described "Humanistic" sect of Judaism, which attempts to practice Judaism without fostering or affirming a belief in God. That group, evidently, was outside the boundaries of the "broad sweep".
But I'm not writing to talk about that today. What I really want to discuss is ghosts, how it is said that one may "see" them, and what that has to do with kittens and afterbirth.
It turns out that the first class we had at the Traditional synagogue was on the variety of Jewish scriptures. In my opinion, this was the most interesting course of the whole set. A brief primer:
Yes, Judaism holds in common with much of Christianity the "written" Law, what Judaism calls the Tanakh but what Christians are familiar with as the Old Testament. But much more than that forms the basis of Jewish anthropological, theological, cultural and philosophical thought.
First, the Tanakh begins with the first five books of Moses, the Torah, or what many Christians today call the Pentateuch. Christians and Jews are in general alignment to agree that the Torah was received by Moses from God. But, - if my memory serves me rightly - Judaism also holds that along with the Torah Moses received an "oral" Law, the Mishnah, which forms the first part of a larger body of work now described as the Talmud.
The Mishnah provides many details on technique of Jewish practice which, while commanded in the Torah, are not elaborated upon in detail. If, for example, the Temple were rebuilt today upon Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, no one would know how to perform any of the Temple rituals commanded in the Torah, were it not for the fact that they are spelled out in detail in the Mishnah.
Other examples may be techniques for the conduct of civil matters, such as marriage.
For generations the Mishnah and the Tanakh were studied exhaustively by rabbis. This formed a parallel conduit of oral tradition known as Gemara, which is rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah and Tanakh. Gemara is truly encyclopedic and voluminous. Roughly arround 400 A.D. (or C.E. as might be preferred), rabbis committed the Mishnah and Gemara to writing for fear that because of the diaspora of the Jews throughout the world, the knowledge was at risk of being lost. The combined Mishnah and Gemara are thus known as the Talmud.
Past this there is one other form of written Jewish scripture - and I use the word scripture here loosely because I do not claim to understand the relative level of authority attributed to these works in Judaism, but the other work is the Midrash. Though the Traditional rabbi was highly reluctant, under my repeated and direct questioning, to say so, I take the Midrash to essentially be the equivalent of what Christians would generally call "apocryphal" literature.
The difference would seem to be that in Judaism, this apocrypha seems to be held with something closer to the Catholic view than the Protestant view, which essentially dismisses aprocrypha out of hand. Catholics do attribute a good deal of authority to their apocryphal literature, what they describe as "deutero-canonical works". It seems that in Judaism, there is considerably more in the Midrash than in the Catholic canon.
The rabbi explained that Midrash provides something like "between the lines" detail on narratives that Torah and Tanakh tend to be quite brief in describing. For example, we know from the Torah that a man named Joseph was abandoned for dead by his brothers but eventually became a personal, trusted advisor to Pharoah and his advise helped save the people of and around Egypt from famine. In other words, just the facts. Midrash provides this additional detail: Joseph was a well-cut stud of man and was quite popular with the ladies. In a similar vein, we know from Torah that Sarah was Abraham's wife. Midrash clarifies: Sarah was Abraham's rocking, knock-out, babe of a wife.
At this point, nay, probably a while back, you were probably asking yourself, "what does any of this have to do with the title?" Well, I'm sorry to keep you waiting.
Earlier I mentioned how voluminous the Talmud is. The rabbi attempted to provide some sense of this by listing a spread of topics addressed in the Talmud, the point basically being, if it's a topic, the Talmud addresses it. I can't remember his list, but there was one topic I really fixated on: ghosts.
Ghosts, the rabbi said, exist, and the Talmud not only describes them, but it describes how one can prove to himself that they exist, or even, if one was so inclined, "see them".
This much the rabbi told us: the ghosts described in the Talmud are not necessarily so much the spirits of the dead, but just spirits of a kind, a kind the Talmud names the "shadim". If I recall rightly, the rabbi said that shadim are not necessarily hostile, but they are also quite far from friendly. Shadim do not like to be in the company of people, which is why they are drawn to inhabit places where people are not. Empty, abandoned homes and buildings are prime candidates for the inhabitance of shadim.
Also, shadim seem to fill a certain place in the cycle of things - the destructive place. Where ants and bacteria are the scavengers of the organic, shadim may be the scavengers of the inanimate. Shadim break things down. This is one reason why buildings that are not lived in tend to decay faster than buildings that are lived in. I found this claim very interesting, because while on the surface it is highly anecdotal, it is actually a scientifically testable hypothesis. But I digress.
He said it is unwise to go and be in the places where shadim inhabit, that the Talmud advises against this. People tend to be hurt in those places, not because of overt hostility from shadim that is, but simply because people tend to get in the way of the destructive business shadim are up to: i.e.: breaking down beams and dropping rocks.
The Talmud also says that cats can see shadim. This is why cats, unlike people, are quite safe prowling those places where shadim may be found. I might also be mistaken on this point, but it seems he said that cats may even chase shadim.
As an owner of a cat and as a fan of horror movies - specifically the kind of fan who is not at all frightened by monster movies - because we know there are no monsters, but one who suffers nightmares from ghost movies, - because, well ..., I found this interplay of cats and ghosts to be fascinating. Indeed, I will personally attest, I have many times watched my cat speed wildly about my apartment with the determination of a cheetah locked on its prey ... but when not so much as a flying bug was there to disturb her.
I've seen the cat hunt and I've chased the cat myself. I know what different kinds of running behaviors she has and sometimes she runs, she runs far (and even clumsily, as if too locked on a point of focus to pay any attention to a stool) and she pounces. But she does so, on nothing. Also, on the rare occasions when she goes about such psychotic behavior, it is always at night.
This one last detail for skeptics on the cat-behavior point: on at least one occasion I have witnessed, from the living room, my cat bolt headlong out of the bedroom, crash into the hallway wall darting for it, recover and speed clear across the hallway, negotiate the dual doorway to the living room and dining room, clear the dining-room table and cross the other room door to the living room, jump the ottoman, slide through the part-way opened door to the sun-room, jump up on a planter and pound her paws on the window, then stop. She was definitely not chasing a fly, and I don't recall any rodent jumping to its certain death out of our 4th story sun-room window.
So, back to the rabbi. The rabbi told us that for doubters, there is a way one can prove to oneself the existence of the shadim. He described the method thusly: go to a place shadim are likely to inhabit, i.e.: an abandoned building. Make yourself a bedding in that place and sleep there the night, but, in advance of going to sleep, spread ashes in a circle around your bedding. The shadim will leave footprints during the night, recognizable as similar to those of ducks, which you can observe during the day.
The rabbi went on to say that if this test were not satisfactory, then there is another way of seeing the shadim that is spelled out in the Talmud. He cautioned us, however, that the Talmud advises against using this test because there are, in fact, so very many shadim. A person using this test must be of soundest psychological character because either the sight or number of shadim (which of the two I don't recall) would be so upsetting that it would drive most mad.
Beyond this, the rabbi said that the technique of seeing shadim had to do with cats. He may have mentioned something about eyes too but past that, he would not give us any additional details.
I was possessed by this intriguing lesson for a long time, until a few months ago, running various search strings into the web, e.g.: "cats shadim", "talmud cats", etc, when finally I came upon a website that spells out the test. I take the website to be reliable simply because the coincidence is just so obscure, though I have no other reason for believing it so. That warning stated, the site is here.
I note that the website is a bit less ambiguous about the nature of shadim than the rabbi, describing them as "demons", clearly a more judgmental translation. But the site explains the test as follows:
"But if one would see the demons themselves, he must burn to ashes the after-birth of a first-born black kitten, the offspring of a firstborn black cat, and then put a little of the ashes into his eyes, and he will not fail to see them".
It also cautions, "'If our eye were permitted to see the malignant sprites that beset its, we could not rest on account of them.' Abaii has said, 'They out-number us, they surround us as the earthed-up soil on our garden-beds.' Rav Hunna says, 'Every one has a thousand at his left side and ten thousand at his right'".
Okay, on that, these points:
1. I explicitly recommend against anyone following through with this test or any test of this kind, nay, I condemn anyone who does so
2. If you are so inclined to do a test of this kind, you are a fool, not least of all because, as I already have written, we have no good reason to trust the website, so even if the Talmud is to be trusted here, the website is not
3. If you are a fool, and you do this because you read it on a blog site, well, first "J*sus Chr*st" and second, at very least make sure to notice that this is describing "the after-birth" that you must burn, NOT THE KITTEN.
That all said, this is one of the most perculiar, intriguing, fascinating things, at least in my low-IQ monkey judgment. I'm a big admirer of M. Night Shyamalan and would jump at any opportunity to sit down to lunch or for a beer with the fellow. While I have no way of contacting him, I think that this little tidbit would make fine fodder for another film of his trademark character. But more on Shyamalan for a later post.
As one must have guessed, I am far from a Talmud expert, but when I hear of things like this from the Talmud, and I've heard of others, what strikes me is how profoundedly occult it seems. Originating as it did in early Jewish history, I wonder how much of this constitutes cross-polination with other, early Semitic cultures and religions. Were I an archaeologist or anthropologist, I'd be tempted to explore possible connections between Talmudic literature and the thoughts and beliefs of other early mid-eastern tribes and peoples. That no such studies seem evident is quite surprising to me.
Reconnecting with the occult point for a minute though: there's a distinct, western, rationalist tradition that, I think, took root in western Christianity alongside of the Protestant reformation but which is actually quite foreign to the ancient Christian tradition. While never acknowledged by Catholicism, definite strains of it affect Catholic thinking as well, despite the fact that the Vatican has at times been at pains to condemn the rationalist infection.
But the rationalist tendency in our culture is strong and we tend to forget that Catholicism is a pre-Renaissance faith and unlike so much of westernized Protestantism, Catholicism does not shrink away from the occult, but, treats the occult as real and as a reality to be contended with. Every Catholic baptism, for example, is accompanied by a "minor exorcism". While, I believe, this is a strength of Catholicism (and would be even if the occult were not real), this can also be a weakness as it makes Catholicism both the victim and focus of any number of Hollywood religious media-massacres.
So while the rationalist, western part of me is put off by the apparent occultism of this evident Talmudic text, the Catholic part of me, the part that appreciates Catholicism explicitly because of its refusal to be co-opted by western cultural thought-trends, finds it quite compelling, even if the rationalist in me comes back and theorizes that it may have been co-opted from the Egyptian book-of-the-dead, or some such.
Anyway, please, don't go burning kitten after-birth and if you do you are a stupid fool not worthy of a monkey poop pie, you are not welcome in my home or hometown and I shall think nasty thoughts of you the next time my stomach is taken of too much gin and I am given to vomit and that is giving you too much credit.
Otherwise, for everyone else, next time I address matters of faith I'll stay away from such bloody affairs and keep it to M. Night Shyamalan and his recurrent themes of faith, hope and love, "and the greatest of these ...".
Posted by Dan at September 27, 2004 01:49 PM | TrackBack