C2C is proud to partner with the legendary FATE Magazine to provide our readers with a visit to the deep paranormal past via classic pieces from the iconic chronicle of high strangeness.
This week's article is titled "Legend of the Golem: The First Frankenstein" by Tex Lowell and was published by FATE in the January 1962 edition of the magazine (Vol. 15, #1). It is being reprinted with permission from FATE Magazine and all reproductions rights remain with them.
And now, journey back into the FATE Magazine archives and let us tell you about the Golem...
Legend of the Golem
By: Tex Lowell
Fate Magazine, January 1962 (Vol.15, #1)
"The giant clay figure was mystically endowed with life. It was an obedient servant--and then it went mad. "
Out of the tortured ghetto of medieval Prague comes a combination of history and legend that has fired the imaginations of men for over three centuries. It is the story of a clay statue brought to life by the rites of the Kabbala. This creature was called Golem, a Hebrew word meaning "strong".
That the Golem should have its origin in Prague is not surprising. The city was founded about 722 A. D. and houses one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. While the Bohemian capitol was originally a German Catholic settlement, it soon became the home of many migrant Jews who banded together in a large ghetto. This district was once destroyed by fire, then rebuilt in 1338. Thereafter Jewish life revolved about the Altneu Synagogue, a great, twisted building which still stands as a colorful monument to ancient times.
In the late 1500's Altneu was presided over by Rabbi Loew, the most brilliant of a long line of sages whose knowledge of the mystic Kabbala rituals was known throughout Europe. It is he who created the Golem, a giant in human form built of clay (not stone as is often supposed). He called upon his god to endow it with life and, by divine order, carved the letters aleph mem soph, the Hebrew characters for "truth", upon the forehead of the statue. At a certain command the being came to life, thereafter obeying its master's commands, shuffling mutely about its errands but keeping mostly to the place of its creation, the attic of the synagogue.
At this time Bohemia was in its golden age of science and culture. The Emperor Rudolph II, suffering from a hereditary disease that had brought him to the brink of madness, brought to his court all the magicians, astrologers and alchemists of Europe. Among them were many charlatans, parasitically feeding upon the emperor's fears, but there were also many great scientists such as Kepler and Tycho de Brahe.
Rabbi Loew was a favorite at the court and became a close friend of the emperor. This aroused the ire of Lang, the ruthless and tyrannical chancellor whose influence upon Rudolph boded ill for the people of Bohemia. Rudolph was intrigued by the tales of the silent giant of colossal strength who silently and blindly served the Rabbi and was revered by the people of the ghetto as their protector.
Sometime in the early 1600's the Golem seems to have gone mad, running amok and spreading terror through the ghetto streets. Rabbi Loew, regaining control of the creature, altered the "truth" symbol by scraping the first letter from the giant's forehead, leaving only the word "death". Thereupon the monster became once more lifeless clay. It was removed to the attic of the synagogue, where it lay abandoned. The Jews who had revered the Golem now feared it, claiming that an aura of dread still emanated from the crumbling body. The Rabbi assured them that if the Golem were to again be motivated it would once more be a force for good.
In 1610 Rabbi Loew died and the care of the lifeless Golem fell to his former assistant, Rabbi Jacob. Lang, meantime, saw his opportunity to turn Rudolph against the Jews now that Loew could no longer influence the court. Lang's weapon was the Golem, which he insisted might be revived to lead a revolt against the emperor. Fear of the creature preyed upon Rudolph's diseased mind and his obsession that it must be destroyed led to violence against the people of the ghetto. It is said that Rabbi Jacob awakened the Golem to fight against Lang's marauding soldiers.
Eventually the people of Prague revolted against Rudolph, who abdicated in favor of his more stable brother, Archduke Mathias. Lang supposedly was killed. History recalls Mathias as a just ruler.
The story of the Golem seems to be a mixture of fact and fantasy, and no one seems to know where one leaves off and the other begins. In the preface to his book, Der Golem (1916), Gustav Meyrick wrote:
"I really do not know what the origin of the Golem legend is, but that somewhere, something which cannot die haunts this quarter of the city (Prague) and is somehow connected with the legend, of that I am sure."
Chayim Bloch explored both aspects in The Golem: Legends Of The Ghetto Of Prague, stating that "men who live amidst mysticism are at pains to prove that the exalted Rabbi Loew and all those saints and sages, before and after him, to whom is attributed the creation of a Golem, understood, thanks to their profound knowledge of the Kabbala, how to employ the Shem, hame, forasch -the pre-eminent name of God, so as to endow with life a shape formed by them. Those, however, who do not believe in and deny any justification for the mystical and the occult, aver that we have here to deal with a symbol, the allegorical meaning of which was eventually forgotten, because of the clearness and vividness of the symbol itself, which has consequently come down through the centuries with a sort of independent life of its own in a legend."
In the early 1930's Egon Erwin Kisch, a writer for Der Rasende Reporter, went to the long abandoned attic at Altneu where he searched vainly for the body of the Golem. There he found another clue which convinced him that the clay statue was buried in the ancient Galgenberg Cemetery on the outskirts of Prague. He found that the writings of Rabbi Loew and others agree as to times and places on what little is actually known of the history of 'the era.
Despite the period of madness, the Golem was considered by believers to be a symbol of strength and deliverance from evil, a gift from God, not from the dark powers. This belief undoubtedly gave courage to a people much in need of it during dark times. Whether truth or legend, or a subtle blending of both, the Golem was a reality to millions of persons. And some persons point to the recorded words of Rabbi Loew himself:
"The Golem partakes of the everlasting belief; and will rise again at the end of all human existence, but in quite a different form."