Sheydim In Beit HaBechirah

י'ב באייר תשס"ח
Mab 13

In contrast to today's earlier entry on the collapse at Angels Camp, here is an entry on sheydim (commonly, yet incorrectly, identified as demons).

Excerpts from Magic Of The Ordinary: Recovering The Shamanic In Judaism (Gershon Winkler):

The book of the Zohar, one of the most classical of the Jewish mystical texts, describes the sheydim as "half human, half angel" ... (beings who) dance between both the spirit world and the physical world ...

who await their completion during Shabbat*.

"And the Source of Powers said: 'The earth should bring out of itself the Life Spirit ...", taught Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, "these are the sheydim, whose souls the Creator fashioned and whose bodies the Creator was about to form when the Settling Time (Shabbat) arrived ..."

Jewish tradition recounts quite extensively how sheydim were invoked by people for evil or good.

Although "demonized" by religious scripture and folklore, sheydim are also mentioned in more positive contexts. Shlomo, who was Chief of Hebrew tribes during the ninth century B.C.E., is recorded as having made positive use of sheydim as have several of the early rabbis. Dabbling in the arts of invoking sheydim is therefore not to be confused with "demonology" and was never prohibited by Jewish law except in instances when sheydim were invoked as primary source powers rather than supplemental aids in "supernatural" maneuvering [1]. But invoking sheydim as aids for effecting "supernatural" phenomena rather than as primary causes of such phenomena, is althogether different and permissible in Jewish shamanic practice.

In Jewish shamanic practice, the "supernatural" is none other than a deeper "natural", and there really is no such thing as the "supernatural":

The various permutations of the various Sacred Names can effect or rearrange the "natural order" of things, since the natural order of things and their makeup are animated by Creator whose creative essence is concealed within many Names. The kabbalistic rite of the permutation of the Sacred Names would then be like rearranging molecules with the intention of altering their structures to effect any variety of manifestations.

The MaHaRaL noted that the realms of both the physical and the spiritual share the same Primary Root Cause, the Creator's ineffable Name, which, when pronounced properly constitutes an invocation of that attribute of the Infinite that manifests in the ever-unfolding dynamics of ever-continuing creation. Therefore, a supernatural occurence invoked by chanting the Sacred Name constitutes no disruption of the order of the physical universe. In other words: there is actually no such thing as "supernatural" ...

The secrets of sorcery and of ancient mystery wisdom altogether are exclusively to be discovered neither in books nor in workshops but deep down in the cobwebbed cellars of each and every one of us, buried within the murky mystery of our Essential Self. After all, the masters quoted in these ancient and early medieval texts must have gotten their inspiration and wisdom from somewhere other than books. For the main part, this body of wisdom was transmitted orally since Avraham, who in turn may have learned a lot of it from Eber and Malchizedek, whom the ancient rabbis considered the primary mentors of the first Hebrews.

One idea (inserted above*) regarding the sheydim that I will bring down into Rabbi Winkler's excellent instruction is this - the sheydim are made Holy when completed in the beauty of Shabbat consciousness. So mote it be. אמן

Footnote:

[1] Rabbi Menachem M'iri in Beit Hab'chirah on Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 67b