Story of the Golem of Prague Statue
Strolling the street of the alchemists in Prague today, we still hear strange stories about the Golem, a mysterious creature with malicious features, created with the help of magic by some rabbis specializing in the cabal.
The Golem, in the Hebrew tradition, is a creature made by man with the method used by God to create Adam, but with the help of magic. The ambiguity that characterizes it is determined by the ambivalence of his behavior towards its creator: it can be a humble servant but also a violent and malicious enemy.
In the West, we owe the dissemination of this myth, outside of Judaic-cabalistic culture, to Gustav Meyrink (1868-1932), Austrian writer initiated thanks to his esoteric interests and his activities within the theosophical lodge “blue star” from Paris and who, in The Golem (1915), tells the adventures of this mysterious creature, often evoked in a frightening way. This is how he describes the monstrous being:
“The origin of this story dates back to the 17th century. It is said that a rabbi, basing himself on writings of the cabal which, afterwards got lost, succeeded in giving life to the Golem, an artificial man who served him as a servant, sounded the bells of the synagogue and took care of the most thankless tasks in its place. It was not strictly speaking a man like us, but an obscure being, a kind of vegetable creature which came to life by day thanks to a magic formula written on a note which one hung to him behind the teeth and which attracted upon him the sidereal forces wandering in the universe.
One evening after the prayer, the rabbi forgot to remove the seal from his mouth and it is said that the Prague Golem was seized with wild anger and started to run blindly through the dark alleys, destroying everything on its way. Finally, the rabbi succeeds in jumping on it and destroying the magic formula. The Golem would then have collapsed to the ground. Nothing was left of it except a small clay statue that can still be seen in the Vecchia-Nuova synagogue in Prague.”
