Important book published - Expelling Jinn from Your Home
Reply #73 - April 05, 2015, 03:29 PM
It was the primitive demonology of Babylonia which peopled the world of the Jews with beings of a semi-celestial and semi-infernal nature. Only afterward did the division of the world between Ahriman and Ormuzd in the Mazdean system give rise to the Jewish division of life between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of evil. Rabbinical demonology has, like the Chaldean, three classes of, demons, though they are scarcely separable one from another. There were the "shedim," the "mazziḳim" (harmers), and the "ruḥin" or "ruḥotra'ot" (evil spirits). Besides these there were "lilin" (night spirits), "ṭelane" (shade, or evening, spirits), "ṭiharire" (midday spirits), and "ẓafrire" (morning spirits), as well as the "demons that bring famine" and "such as cause storm and earthquake" (Targ. Yer. to Deut. xxxii. 24 and Num. vi. 24; Targ. to Cant. iii. 8, iv. 6; Eccl. ii. 5; Ps. xci. 5, 6; compare Ps. lxx. and Is. xxxiv. 14). Occasionally they are called "mal'ake ḥabbalah" (angels of destruction) (Ber. 51a; Ket. 104a; Sanh. 106b). "They surround man on all sides as the earth does the roots of the vine"; "a thousand are on his left, and ten thousand on his right side" (compare Ps. xci. 7); if a man could see them he would lack the strength to face them, though he can see them by casting the ashes of the fetus of a black cat about his eyes, or by sprinkling ashes around his bed he can trace their cock-like footprints in the morning (Ber. 6a). They hover around the house and the field (Gen. R. xx.), particularly in the lower regions of the air (Num. R. xii.; Tan., Mishpaṭim, ed. Vienna, 99a; compare Diogenes Laertius, viii. 32, ix. 7). Their main abode is in the northern part of the earth (Pirḳe R. El. iii., after Jer. i. 14). Their sporting-places are caper-bushes and spearworts, where they dwell in groups of sixty; nut-trees, where they form in groups of nine; shady spots on moonlight nights, especially the roofs of houses, under gutters, or near ruins; cemeteries and privies (there is a special demon of the privy, "shed shel bet ha-kisse"); water, oil, and bread-crums cast on the ground; and they harm persons and things coming near them (Pes. 3b; Ber. 3a, 62b; Shab. 67a; Giṭ. 70a; Ḥul. 105; Sanh. 65b).
When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
A.A. Milne,
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Topic: Important book published - Expelling Jinn from Your Home