VIII.
DEMONOLOGY OF THE PHARISEES

Contents

• Jewish Magic
• Habdalah
• Tashlik and Kapparah
• Lilith - Favorite Demoness
• To Fig
• Spirits and Cemeteries
• Jewish Necromancy
• The Shulhan Aruch
• Ritual Murder
• Murdering Children
• The Fire Burns for the Children
• The Moloch Sacrifice Climaxes
• LaCroix on Moloch
• Judaism Permits Child Sacrifices to Moloch

"When he rises from his sleep the evil spirit departs from his entire body excepting from his fingers. From there the unclean spirit does not depart unless he spills water on them three times alternately. One is not permitted to walk four cubits without having his hands washed." (Schulchan Aruch, Vol. 1, Chapter II: Hebrew Publishing Co. 77-9 Delancey St., New York, copyright 1927).

"This ... rite ... formed one of the chief breaches between Jesus and the Pharisees." (page 545) When the Pharisees came to Christ, baiting Him about His Apostles not doing these handwashing rituals, He came back at them, saying that they were hypocrites, "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men ... Full well ye reject the commandment of God that ye may keep your own tradition." (See Matthew 15)

"There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or daughter to pass through the fire (see Ritual Murder herein) or that useth divination, or an observer of times [astrology] or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of the abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee." (Deuteronomy 18:10-12)

"The sources indicate that Jews were at least acquainted with methods of inducing disease and death, of arousing and killing passion, of forcing people to do their bidding, of employing demons for divinatory and other purposes ... We find accounts of the magician’s power to project his soul to far-distant places, there to perform an errand, and then return to his comatose body." (Page 13)

"Jewish magic ... functioned within the framework of the Jewish religion." (Page 15)

"Knowledge of the names, through which Jewish magic worked, was inaccessible to women, for it required not only a thorough training in Hebrew and Aramaic, which most of them lacked, but also a deep immersion in mystical lore from which they were barred ... Early mystical and magical lore was successfully guarded by a limited oral transmission. The secret lore of the Kalonymides [Note: who brought it from Babylonia] ... was first written down in the 13th Century ... Jewish life had turned more and more inward ... and intensive study of the Talmud had become almost its sole intellectual pursuit ... But the German Kabbalah never attained the theoretical depth of its Spanish counterpart, nor did it exert so much influence." (Pages 16-17, same publication)

"So we may say that every Jew whose desire led him thither essayed a little magic in a small way. But it was generally recognized that only a minor portion of the mystical lore had found its way into books; much of it remained private, jealously guarded property." (page 18)

"The Bible had pronounced an unqualified condemnation of sorcery. The Talmud ... pursued its customary function of clarifying and classifying Jewish law, and so broke up the all-inclusive category of sorcery into several divisions ..."

"On Saturday evening, during the Habdalah ceremony which marks the beginning of the new week, another libation was offered to the spirits, as part of the ritual. Some of the wine was poured upon the ground ‘as a good omen for the entire week to symbolize good fortune and blessing.’"

"Moses Mat in the 16th Century wrote that this practice is intended to ‘give their portion to the company of Korah,’ namely, to the powers of evil. And that portion was not inconsiderable. As one rabbi in Silesia remarked, ‘If I had the wine that is poured upon the ground in Austria during Habdalah it would suffice to quench my thirst for a whole year!’ "

This custom of pouring out some wine over which a blessing has been recited, which appears again in the wedding ceremony, may have been considered by some people not as an offering to the spirits, but as a means of driving them off." (page 167, Jewish Magic and Superstition).

"Fowl are closely associated with the spirits in Jewish and non-Jewish lore, and are the commonest oblation to them ... The cock is employed to represent a man, the hen, a woman, in many magic rites. The circles which are described about the head of the individual, and the numbers three and seven, are well-known magical elements.

"The words which effectuate the substitution have all the earmarks of a typical incantation. In the earlier texts the words ‘this is my atonement’ are not present; they were added so that the initials of the Hebrew terms might form the word hatash, ‘which is the name of the angel appointed over this.’ "

"The belief that evil spirits roost on roofs occurs often (the Talmud places them under the eaves) ... In view of this requirement that the entrails be thrown on a roof acquires special significance. Thus analyzed there can be little doubt of the true meaning of the rite, which is still observed today.

"It is probably the most blatantly superstitious practice to have entered Jewish religious usage, for where the significance of other such practices has long since been lost sight of, the purpose of this is too apparent to escape the dullest wits." (same publication, pages 164-5)

"Not unrelated is the rite of Tashlik, observed on the first day of Rosh Hashonah ... this ceremony represents merely the latest version of a complex of superstitious practices centering about the belief in the existence of spirits in bodies of Water ... in later times Tashlik was postponed if the first day of the New Year fell on a Sabbath on the ground that carrying bread was a violation of the Sabbath rules."

"These explanations only too patently evade the main issue, the bread offering to the spirits ... Under Kabbalistic influence an attempt was made to limit the rite to shaking one’s clothes at the river-side ... " (page 166)

"As a result of the legend of Adam’s relations with Lilit [another spelling] ... the Lilits were most frequently singled out as the demons who embrace sleeping men and cause them to have nocturnal emissions which are the seed of a hybrid progeny ... . As the demons whose special prey is lying-in women, it was found necessary to adopt an extensive series of protective measures against her ...

"We seem to have here a union of the night demon with the spirit that presides over pregnancy, influenced no doubt by the character of the Babylonian Lamassu, and the lamiae and striga of Greek and Roman folklore."

" ... most widely used anti-demonic devices ... It is made by closing the fist and inserting the thumb between the two fingers. Its particularly obnoxious character ... derives from the fact that it is meant as an obscene representation of the sexual act. Menasseh ben Israel was correct both in his explanation of the intent of this gesture, and his association of it with the Talmudic recommendation that to protect oneself against the evil eye one should place his right thumb in his left fist and his left thumb in his right fist ...

‘When a man encloses his thumb in his fist he simulates a pregnant woman, and they, the spirits, do not harm him.’ People who employed this gesture were warned that it infuriates the demons at the same time that it renders them harmless; therefore a weak person, ‘especially one who is dangerously ill,’ should forebear to use it, for the spirits may subsequently take vengeance on him."

"Variations on this theme were also employed: For safety on a journey one should place the little finger of the right hand in the left fist and recite a charm formula. The fingers were used as phallic symbols to the same end, and we learn that a witch is transfixed when one raises his index finger and thumb and recites the name ‘Uriel’ seven times, or that an ‘evil impulse’ may be vanquished by pressing the thumbs on the ground, repeating ‘Pipi’ nine times and spitting."

"Obviously the spirits can help as well as harm the living ... An observant visitor to the tomb of Simon bar Yohai, for instance, at Meron, Palestine, will discern a host of written entreaties for the saint’s aid [Note: the "saint" was a second century Talmudic voodoo-worker associated with the Zohar, principal multi-volumed work of the Jewish Cabala] ... The ancient practice of visiting the cemetery to entreat the offices of deceased relatives or scholars persisted ... In addition to such individual visits, there grew up the custom of the entire congregation repairing to the cemetery annually on several occasions, such as the seven ‘rain fasts,’ and on Tisha ‘B ‘ab ... and on the eves of New Year and the Day of Atonement, ‘that the dead may beseech mercy on our behalf.’ " (Jewish Magic and Superstition by Trachtenberg, page 64)

"The custom of washing the hands after a funeral is very widespread ... Efforts were made to find a Biblical precedent for this act, but ... there was a general admission that it was done ‘to dispel the spirits of uncleanness’ which cling to one’s person, these being ‘the demons that follow them home.’"(page 179, same publication).

"The future is an open book to the denizens of the supernatural realm, and like the demons and the angels, the deceased can by eavesdropping pick up the latest decisions of the court on high; ‘they flit through the universe to hear what has been decreed.’ Then they report back to intimates on earth, in dreams or personal appearances ... But in general the spirit-world is chary of its secrets and can be induced to reveal them only by magical means ... mystical invocations and occult rites are effective in forcing the dead to obey the magician’s will. The art of necromancy is a specialized function of sorcery." (Jewish Magic and Superstition, page 65)

"The official language of the celestial court is Hebrew ... This principle was advanced in the Talmud." (page 74)

"The methods of warding off the spirits fell into three general categories: 1. to drive them away ... 2. to buy them off with gifts, to bribe them and thus conciliate them; 3. to deceive them by disguising their intended victims, or by pretending that the situation was other than what it was. Each of these methods, and often two or three of them combined, was known and employed by Jews even found expression in special ceremonies which have become part and parcel of Jewish ritual."

"When the Righteous Judgement has already decreed death from illness, our saintly rabbis said: Three things annul the decree; and one of them is changing the name of the patient. We therefore, in conformity with their advice, have changed the name of (mention here the former name) to the name of (mention the adopted name) who is now another person. The [page 50] decree shall not have any force with regards to him ...

"When a man is asleep the holy soul departs from his body, and the unclean spirit comes down upon him. When he rises from his sleep the evil spirit departs from his entire body excepting his fingers. From there the unclean spirit does not depart unless he spills water on them three times alternately. One is not permitted to walk four cubits without having his hands washed."

"It may be positively asserted that there is no Jewish ritual which prescribes the use of blood of any human being. Were there such a ritual ... there would certainly be some reference to it in the colossal mass of halakic literature ... "

"to the world of the Akkadian-Chaldean ‘Babylonian’ inscriptions and of the Graeco-Egyptian papyri animated by the belief that the gods could and would support the magician in his dealings with the demons, if properly invoked; and that by the use of certain mysterious and ineffable names as well as other spells, they could be forced to do so even against their will. From the earliest times this extraordinary power was recognized as prone to abuse in the hands of ‘black’ magicians, but the Art itself was not only respectable, it was a high and holy one. Christianity altered all that, anathematizing magic ..."

"They had not despatched to Phoenicia their annual offering due to Tyrian Melkarth ... . The gods were indignant with the Republic, and were, no doubt, about to prosecute their vengeance ...

"All were feeble in comparison with Moloch the Destroyer ... there was no pain great enough for the god, since he delighted in such as was of the most horrible description ... He must, accordingly, be fully gratified - it was believed that an immolation by fire would purify Carthage. The ferocity of the people was predisposed towards it.

"The Ancients assembled ... and when the pontiff of Moloch asked them whether they would consent to surrender their children ... All successively bent their heads in approval ... The decision was almost immediately known in Carthage, and lamentations resounded. The cries of the women might everywhere be heard; their husbands consoled them, or railed at them with remonstrances ... Then ... the priests of Moloch began their task. Men in black robes presented themselves in the houses ... the servants of Moloch came and took the children away. Others themselves surrendered them stupidly. Then they were brought to the temple of Tanith, where the priestesses were charged with their amusement and support until the solemn day ...

"Part of a wall in the temple of Moloch was thrown down in order to draw out the brazen god without touching the ashes of the altar. Then as soon as the Sun appeared the hierodules pushed it toward the square of Khamon.

"It moved backwards sliding upon cylinders; its shoulders overlapped the walls. No sooner did the Carthaginians see it in the distance than they speedily took to flight, for the Baal could be looked upon with impunity only when exercising his wrath.

[page 52] "A smell of aromatics spread through the streets. All the temples had just been opened simultaneously, and from them came forth tabernacles borne upon chariots, or upon litters carried by the pontiffs. Great plumes swayed at the corners of them, and rays were emitted from their slender pinnacles which terminated in balls of crystal, gold, silver or copper.

"These were the Canaanitish Baalim, offshoots of the supreme Baal. Melkarth’s pavilion, which was of fine purple, sheltered a petroleum flame; on Khamon’s, which was of hyacinith color, there rose an ivory phallus [Note: the male procreative symbol which distinguished the "high places" excoriated by the Bible] bordered with a circle of gems; between Eschmoun’s curtains, which were blue as the ether, a sleeping python formed a circle with his tail ...

"Then came all the inferior forms of the Divinity: Baal Samin, god of celestial space; Baal-Peor ... Baal Zehoub ... the Irabel of Liyba, the Adrammelech of Chaldaea, the Kijun of the Syrians; Decreto ... crept on her fins, and the corpse of ‘Tammouz’ [sex-god whose fast is part of the Talmudic synagogue calendar today] was drawn along in the midst of a catafalque ...

"In order to subdue the kings of the firmament to the Sun [the current Talmudic religion "Greets the Sun" periodically] ... diversely colored metal stars were brandished at the end of long poles; and all were there, from the dark Nebo, the genius of Mercury, to the hideous Rahab, which is the constellation of the Crocodile. The Abbadirs, stones which had fallen from the Moon [Note: New Moon days are celebrated in the synagogues monthly today with superstitious rites] were whirling in slings of silver thread; little loaves, representing the female form were borne on baskets by the priests of Ceres; others brought their fetishes and amulets."

"The brazen statue continued to advance towards the square of Khamon. The rich, carrying scepters with emerald balls ... the Ancients with diadems on their heads ... masters of the finances, governors of provinces, sailors and the numerous horde employed at funerals, all with the insignia of their magistracies or the instruments of their calling, were making their way ... At last the Baal arrived exactly in the Centre of the square. His pontiffs arranged an enclosure with trellis-work to keep off the multitude ... A picture is drawn of the various orders and their positions, their colorful array, "the necromancers all covered with tattooings and the shriekers in patched cloaks ... and the Yidonim, who put the bone of a dead man into their mouths to learn the future. The priests of Ceres ... were chanting a thesmophorion in the Megarian dialect. [Note: the festival in honor of female procreation of Thesmorphoria.]

"From time to time files of men arrived, completely naked, their arms outstretched, and all holding one another by the shoulders ... they drew forth a hoarse and cavernous intonation; their eyes ... shone thru the dust, and they swayed their bodies simultaneously, and at equal distances, as though they were all affected by a single movement. They were so frenzied that to restore order the hierodules compelled them, with blows of the stick, to lie flat on the ground, with their faces resting against the brass trellis work."

"He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord." (Deut. 23:1)

"Meanwhile a fire of aloes, cedar, and laurel was burning between the legs of the colossus. The tips of its long wings dipped into the flame; the unguents with which it had been rubbed flowed like sweat over its brazen limbs.

"Around the circular flagstone on which its feet rested, the children, wrapped in black veils, formed a motionless circle ... The rich, the Ancients, the women, the whole multitude, thronged behind the priests and on the terraces of the houses. The large painted stars revolved no longer; the tabernacles were set on the ground; and the fumes from the censers ascended perpendicularly ...

"Many fainted; others became inert and petrified in their ecstasy. Infinite anguish weighed upon the breasts of the beholders ... At last the High Priest of Moloch passed his left hand beneath the children’s veils, plucked a lock of hair from their foreheads and threw it upon the flames. Then the men in the red cloaks chanted the sacred hymn: ‘Homage to thee, Sun! King of two zones, self-generating Creator ‘ ... their voices were lost in the outburst of instruments sounding simultaneously to drown the cries of the victims.

"The eightstringed scheminiths, the kinnors which had ten strings and [page 53] the nebals which had twelve, grated, whistled, and thundered. Enormous leathern bags, bristling with pipes, made a shrill clashing noise; the tambourines, beaten with all the players’ might, resounded with heavy, rapid blows; and in spite of the fury of the clarions, the salsalim snapped like grasshoppers’ wings ...

"The hierodules, with a long hook, opened the seven-storied compartments on the body of the Baal. They put meal into the highest, two turtle-doves into the second, an ape into the third, a ram into the fourth, a sheep into the fifth, and as no ox was to be had for the sixth, a tawny hide taken from the sanctuary was thrown into it. The seventh compartment yawned empty still ... it was well to make trial of the arms of the god. Slender chainlets stretched from his fingers up to his shoulders and fell behind, where men by pulling them made the two hands rise to a level with the elbows, and come close together against the belly; they were moved several times in succession with little abrupt jerks.

"Then the instruments were still. The fire roared. An individual sacrifice was necessary, a perfectly voluntary oblation ... Then the priests to encourage the people drew bodkins from their girdles and gashed their faces. [Note the description in I Kings 18:28 of the priests of Baal: "And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed upon them."]

"The Devotees, who were stretched on the ground outside, were brought within the enclosure. A bundle of horrible irons was thrown to them, and each chose his own torture. They drove in spits between their breasts; they split their cheeks ... then they twined their arms together, and surrounded the children in another large circle which widened and contracted in turns. They reached to the balustrade; they threw themselves back again, and then began once more, attracting the crowd to them by the dizziness of their motion with its accompanying blood and shrieks."

"By degrees people came into the end of the passages; they flung into the flames pearls, gold vases, cup, torches, all their wealth; the offerings became more numerous and more splendid.

"At last a man who tottered, a man pale and hideous with terror, thrust forth a child; then a little black mass was seen between the hands of the colossus, and sank into the dark opening. The priests bent over the edge of the great flagstone and a new song burst forth ...

"The children ascended slowly, and as the smoke formed lofty eddies as it escaped ... Not one stirred. Their wrist and ankles were tied, and the dark drapery prevented them from seeing anything and from being recognized ...

"The brazen arms were working more quickly. They paused no longer. Every time that a child was placed in them the priests of Moloch spread out their hands upon him to burden him with the crimes of the people, vociferating:

‘They are not men, but oxen!’ The devout exclaimed: ‘Lord! eat!’ and the priests of Proserpine complying through terror with the needs of Carthage, muttered the Eleusinian formula: ‘Pour out rain! bring forth!’

"The victims when scarcely at the edge of the opening, disappeared like a drop of water on a red-hot plate, and white smoke rose amid the great scarlet color. Nevertheless, the appetite of the god was not appeased. He ever wished for more. In order to furnish him with a larger supply, the victims were piled upon his hands with a big chain above them which kept them in their place. Some devout persons had at the beginning wished to count them, to see whether their number corresponded with the days of the solar year, but others were brought, and it was impossible to distinguish them in the giddy motion of the horrible arms. This lasted a long, indefinite time until the evening. Then the partitions inside assumed a darker glow, and burning flesh might have been seen. Some even believed they could decry hair, limbs, and whole bodies.

"Night fell: clouds accumulated above the Baal. The funeral-pile, which was flameless now, formed a pyramid of coals up to his knees; completely red like a giant covered with blood, he looked, with his head thrown back, as though he were staggering beneath the weight of his intoxication.

"In proportion as the priests made haste, the frenzy of the people increased; as the number of victims was diminishing, some cried out to spare them, other that still more were needful. The walls, with their burden of people, seemed to be giving away beneath the howlings of terror and mystic voluptuousness. Then the faithful came into the passages, dragging their children, who clung to them; and they beat them in order to make them let go, and handed them over to the men in red. The instrument-players sometimes stopped through exhaustion; then the cries of the others might be heard, and the frizzling of the fat as it fell upon the coals.

"The henbane-drinkers crawled on all fours around the colossus, roaring like tigers; the Yidonim vaticinated, the Devotees sang with their cloven lips; the trellis work had been broken through, all wished for a share in the sacrifice: - fathers, whose children had died previously, cast their effigies, their playthings, their preserved bones into the fire.

"Some who had knives rushed upon the rest. They slaughtered one another. [Note: One is reminded here of Deuteronomy 14:1 "ye shall not cut yourselves."] The hierodules took the fallen ashes at the edge of the flagstone in bronze fans, and cast them into the air that the sacrifice might be scattered over the town and even to the region of the stars.

"The loud noise and the great light had attracted the Barbarians* to the foot of the walls; they clung to the wreck of the helepolis to have a better view, and gazed open-mouthed in horror." ("Salammbo," Gustave Flaubert: born France: died 1880.)

"Moloch was represented under the figure of a man with the head of a calf ... erected upon an immense oven, which [see Note 1 below] [page 54] was lighted to consume at once the seven kinds of offerings. During this holocaust, the priests of Moloch kept up a terrible music, with sistrums and tambours, in order to stifle the cries of the victims. Then took place that infamy cursed by the God of Israel: the Molochites abandoned themselves to practices worthy of the land of Onan (masturbation] and, inspired by the rhythmic sound of the musical instruments, writhed about the incandescent statue, which appeared red thru the smoke; and they gave forth frenzied cries as, in accordance with the Biblical expression, they gave their seed to Moloch." ("History of Prostitution," by Paul LaCroix, French author and historian; 1806-84)

"(5) As two separate offenses, proving that giving one’s seed to Moloch is not idolatry." What foul idolatry!

"He explains this to be the meaning of the Mishna unless he gives it to Moloch (5). This proves that the offense consists of two parts; (1) formal delivery to the priests, and (2) causing the seed to pass through the fire." (Exhibit 67)

Note 1: At the time referred to by Flaubert, Carthage was under siege from unpaid Barbarians enlisted by Carthage in its war with Rome, as mercenaries, and they were out of funds, water. etc. at the time.