The Golem of Prague

[Hottius_Maximus]

@Steken

For shame.

All this, and no one has mentioned Gustav Meyrink’s The Golem from 1913-1914?

Bonus info to sex it all up a bit: Meyrink himself was a practicing occultist, having established a Theosophical lodge dedicated to practical magic as early as 1891. Where? In Prague!

As Gregory Tillett has written, Meyrink and his small circle

No word on whether they ever tried to create a Golem, though.

Perhaps I should not have been so presumptuous. As I mentioned when I made the original post, the story is well-known to a lot of old horror movie buffs. I have never seen the 1913 version, but I own a copy of the 1920 version starring Paul Wegener. I have to wonder if any of the learned Kabbalists (spelling?) would know how to create the golem.

[the_diego]

@Alan_Smithee

And the attic of the New Old Synagogue in Prague, where the golem’s remains were supposedly kept was renovated in 1883 and opened to a film crew in 1985, and neither time was there any sign of a golem.

Proof that it can walk!!!

[Steken]

@Hottius_Maximus

Perhaps I should not have been so presumptuous. As I mentioned when I made the original post, the story is well-known to a lot of old horror movie buffs. I have never seen the 1913 version, but I own a copy of the 1920 version starring Paul Wegener.

Meyrink’s Der Golem is a novel, not a film.

The film you mention is not based on the book, according to Wikipedia.

@Hottius_Maximus

I have to wonder if any of the learned Kabbalists (spelling?) would know how to create the golem.

Do you believe in magic? If so, why?

[Gukumatz]

I’ve been meaning to ask this - perhaps I already have. I once saw someone on the net, perhaps here, make a very effective argument that by all standards, computers are golems.

ETA: Found it. I’ll link to it in case anyone else is curious, but won’t quote it in order to keep form hijacking the thread. Sorry about that.

[Noone_Special]

@Gukumatz

I’ve been meaning to ask this - perhaps I already have. I once saw someone on the net, perhaps here, make a very effective argument that by all standards, computers are golems.

Well, since a pair of pioneering computers built at the Weizmann Institute in the '60’s and '70’s were called Golem I and Golem II, I daresay others thought the same thing

[Jragon]

@Johnny_Bravo

Kaballah is pretty awesome. It basically boils down to this:

A very long time ago, Jews knew the name of God, but then they forgot it. Very righteous Jews can learn the true name of God, and calling on it more or less gives you undefined magical powers, including visiting heaven to hang out with angels and animating golems.

@DocCathode

It isn’t that they forgot it. 99.99% of Hebrews never knew it. It’s said that in times of the Temple, only the High Priest knew the Name.

I thought the idea was that names have power, and knowing the name of God is calling upon him (or forcing him, based on your interpretation) to do what you ask. And that the name was forgotten because it was at best a dick move and at worst suicidal to call upon God to do things on your terms instead of his – so nobody ever used it (at first nobody but the High Priest and eventually nobody at ALL) due to that.

@Alan_Smithee

Wikipedia has some interesting information. But there is absolutely no reason to think that it is anything but a fairytale. What makes you think anything strange happened in Prague in the 16th century?

Of course it is impossible to create a golem. You can’t make a statue come to life by carving letters into it or by performing rituals over it. On the other hand, the golem is the literary forebear of the robot, and we have those for real now, even ones that can speak (unlike the golem)! But robots are technology, not magic. Magic isn’t real, and I doubt you’ll find more than one person here that thinks magic is real.

Well, I’m not read up enough on the subject to say, but if there are enough reports it’s possible something happened but nothing magical. E.G. The Rabbi was taking care of a deformed mute guy in the attic (a la the Hunchback of Notre Dame story), which is plausible, not magic, and could explain sightings of a large strange creature that didn’t speak.

Again, I have nowhere near enough expertise to say if anything probably did or did not happen at all, I’m just saying that it’s possible “something weird was going on”, but that doesn’t entail “something magic MUST have happened.”

[Bridget_Burke]

@Hottius_Maximus

Perhaps I should not have been so presumptuous. As I mentioned when I made the original post, the story is well-known to a lot of old horror movie buffs. I have never seen the 1913 version, but I own a copy of the 1920 version starring Paul Wegener. I have to wonder if any of the learned Kabbalists (spelling?) would know how to create the golem.

If they had known, wouldn’t they have done so–beginning around 1939? The community was definitely in need of protection…

[Steken]

@Bridget_Burke

If they had known, wouldn’t they have done so–beginning around 1939? The community was definitely in need of protection…

There’s a truly brilliant alt-history story in there somewhere.

[Hogfather65]

@Dewey_Finn

If by “this” you’re referring to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, I should warn you that the Golem of Prague only appears at the beginning of the novel, and is, as I said, basically a plot device. But as I also said, it’s an excellent novel and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001 (and was nominated for a bunch of other awards). But if you want a golem story, it’s not that.

Terry Pratchet Discworld - best golem story is ‘feet of clay’. very good

[Wargamer]

@Ludovic

::::Looks up in the sky::::

Naw, no one knows the name of God. The Sun is still shining.

Well, actually, that’s one down, 8,999,999,999 to go.

[Ian_D.Bergkamp]

@Dewey_Finn

If by “this” you’re referring to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, I should warn you that the Golem of Prague only appears at the beginning of the novel, and is, as I said, basically a plot device. But as I also said, it’s an excellent novel and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001 (and was nominated for a bunch of other awards). But if you want a golem story, it’s not that.

Nor is The Prague Cemetery, the other book mentioned in that post. It’s golem-free as far as I can recall, which is sad. The addition of a golem or two may have improved the book.

[DocCathode]

@Wargamer

Well, actually, that’s one down, 8,999,999,999 to go.

cute. I see what you did there.

Jragon I was taught that first, the Ineffable Name is extremely difficult to pronounce properly. Mispronunciation led to things like insanity and demons eating your soul. I was also taught that if the Name was said without perfect focus and faith, you went insane or demons ate your soul. Even the High Priest was supposed to have only said the Name once a year on Yom Kippur.

More On Golems

Before the net, they were tough to research. I was proud of my knowledge of the subject. Then White Wolf published Vampire- The Dark Ages Player’s Guide. A page on the Golem had all the information I knew and more.
-As noted on the Wikipedia page, golems cannot speak. This is because they lack souls.

-A golem will feel like rock to anybody but its creator. To the creator, it is always soft clay and this makes it easy to wipe away the holy word.

• Generally the holy word is emet which means truth. Wiping away the first letter will not get you the word dead. Met is literally Hebrew for corpse.

• As golems are created by imperfect humans, they embody all of their creator’s faults.

• According to some sources, a golem grows every day. When it’s forhead is too high for the creator to wipe off the holy word, it goes beserk.

-According to some sources, it takes four sages to create a golem. This is because you need some one born under each element of the zodiac.

Recommended media-

Avram Davidson’s The Golem was mentioned already. It’s fantastic.

That X Files episode Kaddish

The aforementioned Vampire The Dark Ages Player’s Guide has a nice bit on the golem and more on kabbalah.

Alfred Bester’s Golem 100 (that should be to the hundredth power) has little to do with golems but is a fun read.

The Tribe is an attempt at a Jewish horror novel about a golem. Like the golem in its pages, it truly and deeply stinks.

Mendy And The Golem- was an excellent comic book series produced in the eighties. The Klein family finds the golem of Prague and has adventures. Each issue taught us (without being glurgy or beating us over the head) some lesson about Judaism. In the oughts, there was a new series produced under the same name. It had nothing else in common with the original and I didn’t like it.