“Things have a life of their own,” the gypsy proclaimed… “It’s simply a matter of waking up their souls.”

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Ecclesiastes

“When Pallas, pitying her wretched state,
At once prevented, and pronounc’d her fate:
Live; but depend, vile wretch, the Goddess cry’d,
Doom’d in suspence for ever to be ty’d;
That all your race, to utmost date of time,
May feel the vengeance, and detest the crime.

Then, going off, she sprinkled her with juice,
Which leaves of baneful aconite produce.
Touch’d with the pois’nous drug, her flowing hair
Fell to the ground, and left her temples bare;
Her usual features vanish’d from their place,
Her body lessen’d all, but most her face.
Her slender fingers, hanging on each side
With many joynts, the use of legs supply’d:
A spider’s bag the rest, from which she gives
A thread, and still by constant weaving lives.”

Ovid, Metamorphoses

“The universe was created for the sake of man, i.e. adam, who represents the tithe of one tenth (in Hebrew, “maaser”) of Truth, “emet”. [“Adam” in Hebrew is spelled alef, dalet, mem.] The numerical value of the letter mem in Adam’s name (40) is 10% of the numerical value of tav (400) in the Hebrew word for “Truth” (emet), and the letter dalet (= 4) in Adam’s name is one tenth of the letter mem (=40) in the word “emet”. The letter alef in “emet” is, of course, irreducible.

The serpent was the first to introduce the concept of lying into the universe by claiming that G-d had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge before being able to create the universe. Proverbs 16:28 describes the serpent as saying, “A quarrelsome one alienates his friend.”

By removing the first letter of the word “emet”, alef, all that you are left with is the word “met”, meaning “dead”. When you remove the first letter from the word “adam”, you are left with the word “dam”, meaning “blood”. Anyone who is able to protest wrongdoing with a chance of success and fails to do so has blood inscribed on his head. Those were the people who, though they are described as having observed the commandments of the Torah “from alef to tav”, i.e. “from A to Z”, were not pious in the true sense of the word since they failed to admonish the other members of their society. Under such circumstances the letter mem which ought to symbolize a letter from the word for “truth”, “emet”, symbolizes the word “death”, “mavet”, instead.”

Flying Letters of Life and Death, Kabbalah Online

“After saying certain prayers and observing certain feast days, the Polish Jews make the figure of a man from clay or mud, and when they pronounce the miraculous Shemhamphoras [the name of God] over him, he must come to life. He cannot speak, but he understands fairly well what is said or commanded. They call him golem and use him as a servant to do all sorts of housework. But he must never leave the house. On his forehead is written emeth [truth]; every day he gains weight and becomes somewhat larger and stronger than all the others in the house, regardless of how little he was to begin with. Fore fear of him, they erase the first letter, so that nothing remains but meth {he is dead], whereupon he collapses and turns to clay again.”

Jakob Grimm, Journal for Hermits, 1808

“In the preface to an anonymous commentary, known as Pseudo-Saadya, on the Book Yetsirah [Book of Creation], we read a few lines about Abraham and then the author continues: ‘It is said in the Midrash that Jeremiah and his son Ben Sira created a man by means of the Book Yetsirah, and on his forehead stood emeth, truth, the name which He had uttered concerning the creature as the culmination of His work. But this man erased the aleph, by which he meant to say that God alone is truth, and he had to die.’ Here it is clear that the golem is a repetition of the creation of Adam, concerning which we learn here for the first time that then too the name ‘truth’ was uttered. According to the a well-known Talmudic saying ‘truth’ is the seal of God. Here it is imprinted on His noblest creation.”

Gershom Scholem, On The Kabbalah and Its Symbolism

Even when visiting Jewish graves of someone that the visitor never knew, the custom is to place a small stone on the grave using the left hand. This shows that someone visited the gravesite, and is also a way of participating in the mitzvah of burial.

Bereavement In Judaism, Wikipedia

Until quite recently Jewish burials in Jerusalem were often marked by a strange happening. Before the body was lowered into the grave, ten men danced round it in a circle, reciting a Psalm which in the Jewish tradition has generally been regarded as a defence against demons (Ps.91), or another prayer. Then a stone was laid on the bier and the following verse (Gen.25:6) recited: “But unto the sons of concubines, which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away.” The rite, which in modern times has been unintelligible to most of the participants, has to do with Kabbalistic conceptions about sexual life and the sanctity of human seed…

The Kabbalists took up old conceptions of demonic generation in pollution or other, chiefly onanistic, practices. They are systematised in the Zohar, which develops the myth that Lilith, queen of the demons, or the demons of her retinue, do their best to provoke men to sexual acts without the benefit of a woman, their aim being to make themselves bodies from the lost seed.

Gershom Scholem, On The Kabbalah and Its Symbolism

Prior to Creation, there was only the infinite Or Ein Sof filling all existence. When it arose in G-d’s Will to create worlds and emanate the emanated…He contracted (in Hebrew “tzimtzum”) Himself in the point at the center, in the very center of His light. He restricted that light, distancing it to the sides surrounding the central point, so that there remained a void, a hollow empty space, away from the central point… After this tzimtzum… He drew down from the Or Ein Sof a single straight line [of light] from His light surrounding [the void] from above to below [into the void], and it chained down descending into that void…. In the space of that void He emanated, created, formed and made all the worlds.

Isaac Luria, Etz Chaim

This mysterious decision to create space is associated with the first “emanation” (sefirah) from God is called Keter, or crown (see later). God then created “vessels” (kelim) in the empty space, but when the Divine Light began to radiate into them, they shattered. This is called the “shattering of the vessels” (Shevirat Ha-Kelim) in Lurianic Kabbalah. The shards of the shattered vessels eventually became souls and objects in the worlds. The re-ascent of the soul is called tikkun, the process of “raising the sparks of God’s Light” and re-incorporating them into the One. The doctrine of tzimtzum is considered paradoxical, since it suggests attributes of God that defy his unity by confounding God’s transcendence and immanence. Moreover, it neither explains how finitude emerges from infinity nor how plurality emerges from absolute unity. Nonetheless, it is a commonly held metaphor for the initial moment when God decided to create the universe.

A Brief Introduction To Kabbalah

Kabbalah examines the very origins of creation. In the Kabbalah, G-d is referred to as the Ein Sof; meaning the Being that has “no end.” In the act of creation, G-d made something very finite out of the infinite. How did this come about?

While some Kabbalistic texts speak of a gradual contraction of Divine Power as it streamed into this finite world, eventually reaching a point of complete concealment in this world, the Kabbalah of the Arizal, however, held a different view. According to the Arizal, there was a quantum leap from infinite to finite, calling this leap of states Tzimtzum (contraction).

In order to visualize how this happens, the Etz Chaim of Rabbi Chaim Vital presents the following structure. The power and ability of the Ein Sof is called the Or Ein Sof (the Light of the Ein Sof). Because physical light is perceived as being ethereal and intangible, and because light gives life and warmth, it is often used in Kabbalah as a metaphor for Divine Power.

In the initial stage of revelation, the prevalent manifestation was that of the infinite Light. Contained within the Or Ein Sof in a most sublime way was the potential for finitude, however initially it was undistinguished from the powerful manifestation of the Or Ein Sof. In order for creation to take place it was necessary somehow to conceal this infinite Light, thus creating a vacuum for the Finite Light to be revealed. One may draw an analogy to a ray of light from the sun. While it is within the sun, the ray has no independent identity because it is totally nullified by the greater light of the sun itself. Only when the ray has left the sun can it be recognized and perceived as having an independent identity.

Tzimtzum – The Principles of Kabbalah

“Now, I swear by the sun god Utu on this very day – and my younger brothers shall be witness of it in foreign lands where the sons of Sumer are not known, where people do not have the use of paved roads, where they have no access to the written word – that I, the firstborn son, am a fashioner of words, a composer of songs, a composer of words, and that they will recite my songs as heavenly writings, and that they will bow down before my words…”

King Shulgi (c. 2100 BC)

The History of Ancient Sumeria

“The Argo, Jason’s ship, was built mostly of oaken timbers. It had an oracular beam of oak from Dodona that had been fitted into its prow by Athene. The Golden Fleece, stolen by Jason with the aid of Medea’s magic, was found fastened to an oak tree and guarded by a lion.”

Myths, Spirits and the Wee Folk – Oak Lore

In Euripides’ Medea, Medea and Jason have lived together as husband and wife in Corinth since fleeing, first Colchis, where Medea betrayed her father King Aaetes, and then Iolcos, where Medea was indirectly responsible for the death of King Pelias.

When Jason landed at Colchis, where King Pelias had sent him to capture the golden fleece, Medea fell in love with him and, despite her father, helped him.

Medea and Jason have had 2 children during their life together, but at the opening of Euripides’ Medea, Jason and his father-in-law-to-be, Creon, say Medea and her children must leave the country so that Jason may marry Creon’s daughter Glauce in peace. Medea is blamed for her own sentence, being told that if she hadn’t behaved as a jealous, possessive woman, she could have remained.

Medea asks for and is granted one day’s reprieve, but King Creon was right to be fearful. During that one day’s time Medea confronts Jason, who blames Medea’s banishment on her own temper, rubbing salt into the wound. Medea reminds Jason of what she has sacrificed for him and what evil she has done on his behalf. She reminds him that since she is from Colchis and is therefore a foreigner in Greece, without a Greek mate, she will not be welcome elsewhere. Jason tells Medea that he has given her enough already, but that he will recommend her to the care of his friends (and he has many as witnessed by the gathering of the Argonauts).

Jason’s friends need not be bothered, as it turns out, since Aegeus of Athens arrives and agrees that Medea may find refuge with him. With her future assured, Medea turns to other matters.

Medea is a witch. Jason knows this, as do Creon and Glauce, but Medea seemed appeased, so when she presents a wedding gift to Glauce of a dress and crown, Glauce accepts them. The theme is familiar from the death of Hercules. When Glauce puts on the robe it burns her flesh. Unlike Hercules, she dies. Creon dies, too, trying to help his daughter.

So far the motives and reactions seem understandable, but then Medea does the unspeakable. She murders her own two children. Her revenge comes when she witnesses Jason’s horror as she flies off to Athens in the chariot of the sun god Helios (Hyperion), her ancestor.

Summary of The Medea Tragedy by Euripides