Michael A. Hoffman II
Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare Page 106
visible among Jewish and some Christian authors of the Renaissance period. The beginning of modern science (is) attributed to the renewed interest in magic by certain 15th and 1 6 t h century Renaissance figures... Indubitably, the Renaissance period is the first significant point of influence of the Jewish views of the golem on European culture... " A Polish Kabbalist writing circa 1630: 'And I have heard, in a certain and explicit way, from several respectable persons that one man, living close to our time, in the holy community of Chelm, whose name is Rabbi Elijah, the master of the Name, who made a creature out of matter [golem] and form [zurah] and it was performing hard work for him for a long period..." " A s the Kabbalist narrates the legend here, it is a continuation of the Sanhedrin passage and the Ashkenazi Hasidic recipe of creating an artificial man... it seems that the usage of the term hiyyut, vitality, together with the emphasis on the creature as dead, seems to reflect the influence of the view of Rabbi Moses Cordovero, a sixteenth century Kabbalist in Safed, on the nature of the creature as totally inhuman... "According to three statements, written in the thirteenth century, the creation of the artificial man follows the same pattern as that of the calf, or a cow... In some Ashkenazi manuscripts certain combinations of letters of the Divine Name and the letters of the alphabet vocalized according to the pattern of the Notariqon (which is the quintessence of the second stage of creation) are considered appropriate for the creation of the calf... "Furthermore, a statement of Rabbi Abraham Esquira, at the end of the thirteenth century, indicates that in France there was someone who was acquainted with this and was engraving the form of a cow on a wall, and it changed into a cow and they ritually slaughtered it and ate it like Rabbi Hananya and Rabbi Oshayah. "...these devices were still in possession of the... masters, who did not hesitate to exploit the possibilities inherent in this magical gnosis." (Dr. Moses Idel, "The Golem in Jewish Magic and Mysticism," in Golem!, pp. 15-35). In 1 9 8 8 , Fundamentalist " C h r i s t i a n s " joined with Kabbalistic rabbis in the search for the remains of a magical cow, the so-called Ashes of the Red Heifer.