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Dybbuk and Maggid: Two Cultural Patterned of

Altered Consciousness in Judaism

Yoram Bilu

AJS Review / Volume 21 / Issue 02 / November 1996, pp 341 - 366

DOI: 10.1017/S0364009400008552, Published online: 15 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0364009400008552

How to cite this article:

Yoram Bilu (1996). Dybbuk and Maggid: Two Cultural Patterned of Altered
Consciousness in Judaism. AJS Review, 21, pp 341-366 doi:10.1017/
S0364009400008552

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 DYBBUK AND MAGGID:
TWO CULTURAL PATTERNED
OF ALTERED CONSCIOUSNESS
IN JUDAISM
by

YORAM BILU

Introduction

For many years scholars of Judaism were reluctant to employ the analytic
tools distilled in anthropology for studying Jewish culture. One reason for this
reluctance was that the classical ethnographic field, consisting of a small-scale
tribal society with no written tradition, did not appear pertinent to the study
of the text-informed "great tradition" of Judaism. In addition, the notion
of comparative research implicit in most anthropological studies appeared
dubious to many scholars of Judaism, who were alarmed by the sweeping,
methodologically unfounded comparisons evident in the treatment of biblical
material by such precursors of modern anthropology as Robertson Smith and
Frazer.1 This methodological consideration was augmented by an emotional
unwillingness to equate the "primitive" religious systems of "savage" societies
with concepts and rituals pertaining to the oldest monotheistic religion.2

1. J. G. Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testament (London: Macmillan, 1919); William

Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889; reprint ed., New York:
Meridian Books, 1927).
2. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1990); Harvey E. Goldberg, ed., Judaism Viewed from Within and from Without:
Anthropological Perspectives (Albany: State University of New York Press), 1987); idem,
"Anthropology and the Study of Traditional Jewish Society," AJS Review 15 (1990)): 1-22.

AJS Review 21/2 (1996): 341-366 341

342 YORAM BILU

Over the years a more benign ambiance for cooperation and mutual
enrichment has been created by significant developments in both disciplines.
In anthropology, the comparative melange of nineteenth-century evolutionists
was refined by in-depth investigations in bounded cultural settings. Sorting
out the similarities and differences between "others" and "us" remained the
tacit agenda of most (though definitely not all) anthropological research, even
when it focused, as it usually did, on one particular cultural environment.
But this comparative venture has become more contextualized and defensible
methodologically. In addition, the settings studied, which in the formative
years of ethnographic fieldwork were limited to remote, preliterate societies,
were gradually broadened to include civilizations boasting "great traditions,"
like Buddhism and Islam.
The "text-context" division that separated anthropology from most hu-
manistic disciplines, including Judaic studies, came to be blurred as leading
anthropologists began to turn to these disciplines for inspiration and guiding
models. While the emphasis on context remained the trademark of modern
ethnography, the metaphor of culture as text gained prominence in the
anthropology of the 1970s. The practice of subsuming the ethnographic
enterprise under titles like "reading," "translating," "deciphering," and "in-
terpreting" cultural "scripts," "narratives," and "dramas" lucidly conveys
this textual-hermeneutic turn.3 The new paradigm contested the formerly
dominant mechanistic and organismic metaphors in anthropology and made
its discourse more congenial to scholars of Judaic studies.
A similar lowering of disciplinary thresholds has been noted in Judaic
studies in the growing readiness of scholars to move from text to context.
One recent example is the attempt by scholars of Jewish mysticism to
augment the dominant philological-historical research paradigm by analyzing
the phenomenological and behavioral layers of mystical phenomena.4 The
present essay seeks to contribute to this line of research by examining the
mystical phenomena of dybbuk (dibbuq) and maggid through analytic lenses
cultivated in psychological anthropology.

3. The most well known exponent of the culture-as-text paradigm is Clifford Geertz. See
his now classic collection of essays, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books,
1973); see also Goldberg, "Anthropology and the Study of Traditional Jewish Society," p. 5.
4. Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988);
Yehuda Liebes, "New Directions in the Study of Kabbalah," Pe'amim 50 (1992): 150-170
(Heb.).
DYBBUK AND MAGGID 343

As an interdisciplinary realm, the goal of psychological anthropology is

to explore the relationship between individual and sociocultural phenomena
by making systematic use of psychological concepts and methods.5 Thus, the
interface between collective representations (e.g., ideologies, discourses, and
symbols) and mental representations (e.g., personal schemas, dispositions, and
desires) is a major concern to psychological anthropology.6 On the individual
level, psychological anthropologists seek to elucidate the processes through
which cultural messages are subjectively evaluated and differentially encoded.
On the collective level, they seek to discern consistent group differences and
to account for their origins, but at the same time they are also interested
in delineating the psychological and cultural universals that underlie these
differences.
This dual perspective, seeking to illuminate group differences against
the backdrop of human universals, is characteristic of the present study.
Without underestimating the Jewish-specific contents of the dybbuk and
maggid phenomena, my aim is to ponder them in the wider comparative
context of altered consciousness, as representing the two major categories
employed cross-culturally to articulate trance experiences.

Cultural Patterns of Altered Consciousness

Altered states of consciousness are a natural field of study for psychologi-

cal anthropologists. Emerging from a panhuman psychophysiological matrix,
they manifest themselves in a multitude of cultural forms and contexts,
hi contrast with the aura of psychopathology associated with them in the
West,7 in most societies altered states of consciousness appear as socially

5. Philip K. Bock, Continuities in Psychological Anthropology (San Francisco: Freeman,

1980); Erika Bourguignon, Psychological Anthropology (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston,
1979).
6. Roy D'Andrade and Claudia Strauss, eds., Human Motives and Cultural Models (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Gananath Obeyesekere, Medusa's Hair (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980); Melford E. Spiro, Collective Representation and Mental
Representations in Religious Meaning Systems," in Culture and Human Nature, ed. L. L.
Langness and Benjamin Kilborne (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 161—184.
7. John Leavitt, "Are Trance and Possession Disorders?" Transcultural Psychiatric Re-
search Review 30 (1993): 51-57; Collean A. Ward, "The Cross-Cultural Study of Altered States
of Consciousness and Mental Health," in Altered States of Consciousness and Mental Health,
ed. Collean A. Ward (London: Sage Publications, 1989), pp. 15-35.
344 YORAM BILU

endorsed and ritually elaborate phenomena serving important religious and

therapeutic functions.8 According to Erika Bourguignon, two principal types
of indigenous categories are employed as explanatory models for trance
phenomena across the globe.9 One explanatory type, designated "possession
trance," attributes altered states of consciousness to possession by spirit
entities, while the other, "nonpossession trance," views them as resulting
from an encounter with the spirit. This encounter may occur by sending one's
soul on a spirit voyage or by having the spirits come to visit.10 It is against this
bifurcation of altered states of consciousness proposed by Bourguignon that
I would like to evaluate the phenomena of dybbuk and maggid. But before
detailing the features of these Jewish variants of altered consciousness, a
closer look at possession trance and nonpossession trance is in order.
It would be erroneous to view the two forms of trance merely as ex-
planatory models imposing divergent theories of causation on a common
core of experiences and behaviors. Rather, they are cultural idioms through
which experiences are articulated and behaviors are constructed so as to form
culturally divergent configurations.11 In this sense, the terms "possession
trance" and "nonpossession trance" are somewhat unfortunate, as they imply
a separation between native theory ("possession") and behavior ("trance").
In addition, a critique may be launched against the very attempt to subsume
the dazzling diversity of altered states of consciousness under two general
categories. While possession trance and nonpossession trance take note of
intracultural interpretive systems of altered states of consciousness, they
are also the end-product of a cross-cultural endeavor to distill regulari-
ties and uniformities from highly contextualized, culturally heterogeneous
phenomena.12

8. Erika Bourguignon, ed., Religion, Altered States of Consciousness, and Social Change
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1973); idem, Possession (Corta Madera, Calif.:
Chandler & Sharp, 1976).
9. Bourguignon, ed., Psychological Anthropology, p. 243.
10. This division is roughly parallel to possession and shamanism. See Luc De Heusch,
Why Marry Her? Society and Symbolic Structures (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981),
pp. 151-164.
11. Vincent Crapanzano, introduction to Case Studies in Spirit Possession, ed. Vincent
Crapanzano and Vivian Garrison (New York: John Wiley, 1977), pp. 1-40.
12. Michael Larnbek, "From Disease to Discourse: Remarks on the Conceptualization of
Trance and Spirit Possession," in Ward, Altered States of Consciousness, pp. 36-61.
DYBBUK AND MAGGID 345

Indeed, as broad approximations or generalizations, lumping together the

enormously rich array of trance phenomena, possession trance and nonposses-
sion trance cannot serve as precise conceptual tools. Following the two-path
scheme suggested by Bourguignon inevitably entails some oversimplification,
given the malleability of trance phenomena and the possibility of hybrid forms.
Therefore, in applying Bourguignon's categorization to the Jewish variants
of altered consciousness, I would like to use it as a heuristic device in the
context of a preliminary exploration. Even if trance experiences are not so
categorical, I believe that the divergent nature of the Jewish phenomena under
study can be better understood through the prism of the two-path model.
It is important to note that both possession trance and nonpossession trance
may be positively or negatively defined, in accord with the moral qualities
ascribed to the spirit.13 "Positive" cases, steeped in ritual and religious
symbolism, are willfully sought, as the encounter with the spirit is believed
to contribute to the well-being of the trancer or of others in his environs.
"Negative," spontaneously emerging forms of altered states of consciousness
are often evaluated as an affliction, and in consequence strict measures are
taken to disengage the tormented trancer from the spirit (e.g., exorcism). In
some societies, where special cultural avenues are available for domesticating
the engaging spirit, involuntary disruptive states may be transformed into
ecstatic, divinatory, or other religiously based dissociative behavior. It should
be noted also that the two cultural categories under discussion may not involve
altered consciousness at all. Possession, for example, may be used to explain
a plethora of human conditions, from chronic illness to artistic inspiration,
which do not necessarily entail a discernible shift in consciousness.
While possession trance and nonpossession trance can be found in the
same society, as the case under discussion will show, they seem to be in a
relationship of structural inversion.14 Indeed, the contrasts between posses-
sion trance and nonpossession trance in terms of geographical distribution,
societal and ecological variables, morphology (continuity/discontinuity in
consciousness), modes of interaction, gender, and symbolism seem to fashion
them into sharply distinct types of experiences.
Geographically, nonpossession trance has been predominant in North
and South America, while possession trance is positively correlated with

13. I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: Anthropological Study of Spirit and Shamanism (Balti-
more: Penguin, 1971).
14. See De Heusch, Why Marry Her, p. 152.
346 YORAM BILU

sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean basin. This differential distribution

is associated with two other related variables. Possession trance is more typical
of societies with higher levels of societal complexity (indicated, for example,
by class stratification and jurisdictional hierarchy) and subsistence economy
(food production through agriculture and animal husbandry), while nonpos-
session trance is overrepresented in simpler and more egalitarian societies of
hunters and gatherers. How should these correlations be accounted for? The
positive association between possession trance and societal complexity seems
to be mediated by social rigidity. In hierarchical, stratified societies, where
social boundaries are rigidly delineated, possession trance provides socially
deprived individuals, mostly women, with a golden opportunity to assume
the spirit's identity and temporarily escape, under the spirit's auspices, the
confines of their social roles.15 Following various cross-cultural studies,16
Bourguignon suggests that the association between hunting and gathering
and nonpossession trance may be mediated by socialization pressures toward
self-reliance, independence, and individual achievement typical of societies
relying on this mode of subsistence. The particular ways in which the
encounter with the spirit is pursued and realized, especially in the Native
American guardian spirit complex, seem to directly reflect these culturally
commended personality traits. At the same time, the acquisition of a lifelong
spiritual ally may compensate for the stress arising in these societies from
unsatisfied dependency longings in childhood. Men's predominance in the
cultural patterns of nonpossession trance is congruent with the fact that most
of the socialization pressures toward self-reliance are exerted on them. In the
same vein, it was found that societies heavily dependent for their subsistence
on hunting, gathering, and fishing, where pressures for independence are
great, are more likely to use dreams to seek and control supernatural powers.17
Phenomenologically, dreams are quite akin to nonpossession trance states, as
both are private, internal experiences with a strong hallucinatory component.

15. Leora Greenbaum, "Societal Correlates of Possession Trance in Sub-Saharan Africa,"

in Bourguignon, Religion, Altered States of Consciousness, and Social Change, pp. 39-57. Also
see Lewis, Ecstatic Religion.
16. Herbert Barry III, Irvine L. Child, and Margaret K. Bacon, "Religion of Child Training
to Subsistence Economy," American Anthropologist 61 (1959): 51-63; Guy E. Swanson, "The
Search for a Guardian Spirit: A Process of Empowerment in Simpler Societies," Enthnology
12 (1973): 359-378.
17. Roy G. D'Andrade, "Anthropological Studies of Dreams," in Psychological Anthro-
pology, ed. Francis L. K. Hsu (Homewood, 111.: Dorsey, 1961), pp. 296-332.
DYBBUK AND MAGGID 347

In contrast to hunting and gathering societies, the socialization pressures in

high-accumulation societies (dependent on agriculture and food production)
are toward compliance, obedience, reliability, and nurturance. These personal-
ity attributes are more strongly emphasized in the socialization of girls. It is not
surprising, then, that women are overrepresented in possession trance, where
the relationship between the invading spirit and the possessed appears to be
strongly informed by these attributes. In addition, the penetration of the spirit
into the host's body and its temporary residence there, strongly resonant with
female-specific modes of experience (female sexuality, pregnancy), make
the possession idiom particularly conducive to the articulation of female
concerns.18 As a form of encounter with the spirit, nonpossession trance
essentially is an interaction based on visual and auditory experiences. In
contrast, possession trance is a performance in which the trancer becomes the
spirit. Typically, nonpossession trance is a private experience, and in order to
become a communicable cultural resource it has to be remembered. Possession
trance, as a performance carried out in front of an audience, can be culturally
registered and socially employed without the recollection of the individual
trancer. Accordingly, episodes of possession trance are typically followed
by amnesia. Nonpossession trance is likely to be induced by fasting (which
produces dissociation-facilitating hypoglycemia and dehydration), sensory
deprivation, and mortification, while possession trance is generally induced
by drumming, singing, dancing, and crowd contagion. In terms of Ludwig's
typology of means of trance induction,19 it seems that nonpossession trance is
associated with the reduction of sensory stimulation and motor activity, while
possession trance generally involves the increase of sensory stimulation,
motor activity, and emotional arousal.
Since nonpossession trance is basically an intrapsychic experience, the
trancer often appears physically passive. Yet his interaction with the spirit is
replete with active imagery congruent with the fact that he achieves mastery
without loosing his identity and individuality. In contrast, the physically active
possession trancer remains psychologically passive, since, in the process of
obtaining the gift of the spirit (in positive possession trance), her own self

18. Yoram Bilu, "The Taming of the Deviants and Beyond: A Psychocultural Analysis
of Dybbuk Possession and Exorcism in Judaism," Psychoanalytic Study of Society 11 (1985):
1-32.
19. Arnold M. Ludwig, "Altered States of Consciousness," in Altered States of Conscious-
ness, ed. Charles T. Tart (New York: Anchor Books, 1972), pp. 11-24.
 348 YORAM BILU

and identity are temporarily eradicated. These opposite patterns appear to be

linked with the sex-typed distribution of possession trance and nonpossession
trance.
Having discussed the major differences between possession trance and
nonpossession trance,20 we turn now to the Jewish variants of the altered
states of consciousness under discussion.

Dybbuk and Maggid in Judaism

The term dybbuk (dibbuq) was used in Jewish mystical circles to designate
a spirit of a dead person, a notorious sinner in his lifetime, that took temporary
possession of a human being, usually a female, by inhabiting her body.21 The
spirit announced his presence inside the victim in various ways. After striking
her down and committing her to violent convulsions, the spirit's strange
voice could be heard from the mouth of the possessed. His lewd and immoral
character was indicated by the forbidden acts of libidinal, aggressive, and
religiously subversive behavior that the possessed was compelled to commit.
Given this repugnant display, it is not surprising that dybbuk possession was
always conceived as an affliction or an illness and the possessing agent as
a foreign, dangerous intruder that had to be expelled. The uniquely Jewish,
culture-bound nature of the dybbuk was prominently expressed in the public
exorcistic ritual. The exorcist was always a revered rabbi who confronted
the spirit with various religiously informed measures used in a fixed, graded
order. Often the exorcism was performed in the synagogue and involved the
active employment of Jewish sacred paraphernalia by the congregants.
During the highly structured sequence of steps of the ritual, the spirit
was compelled to identify himself, to confess his transgressions during his
lifetime and disclose the heavenly penalty inflicted on him in retribution,
to specify his conditions for departure, to give his consent to leave through
a minor organ (usually one of the big toes), and then to depart for good.22

20. See Bourguignon, Psychological Anthropology, pp. 233-269.

21. Since with only a few exceptions, the spirits belonged to male sinners, I use masculine
pronouns in discussing them. Feminine pronouns are used to describe the possessed, given the
predominance of females in this group.
22. See Bilu, "Taming of the Deviants," pp. 16-20; Gedalyah Nigal, Dybbuk Tales in
Jewish Literature (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1983) (Heb.).
DYBBUK AND MAGGID 349

Judging from the reported cases, successful expulsion of the spirit was the
outcome of most exorcistic rituals.
Documented cases of dybbuk possession appear in Jewish sources from
the mid-sixteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century. Only
mystically oriented communities, first Sephardic (in the Mediterranean basin)
and then also Ashkenazi (in Hasidic Eastern Europe), were exposed to the
phenomenon, and this selective distribution attests to the strong mystical
basis of the dybbuk phenomenon. The major kabbalistic doctrine underlying
dybbuk possession was that of gilgul, or the transmigration of souls, which
emerged in the twelfth century. In the late thirteenth century the doctrine of
transmigration was expanded to include the entry of a spirit into a living
person after he was born. This addition, designated ibbur ("impregnation"),
paved the way for the appearance of dybbuk possession. Specifically, it
contended that dybbukim were spirits of the wicked who, in retribution for
their mortal sins, were doomed to remain in limbo, exposed to ruthless
persecution, without even being allowed to enter hell, where their sins could
be eventually repented. The inhabitation of humans gave these tormented
spirits a temporary shelter as well as an opportunity (realized through the
intercession of the exorcist) to gain access to the world of the dead.23
The disappearance of the dybbuk in the first half of the twentieth century
was apparently related to the disintegration of the Jewish traditional centers in
Europe and the Middle East due to modernization, emigration, and physical
extermination.
In Jewish mysticism the term maggid was used to indicate a celestial
entity, usually an angel, who delivered mystical secrets to a kabbalist.
Unlike the relative uniformity of dybbuk possession episodes, the ways in
which maggidim revealed themselves to mystics were quite varied. Dreams
constituted a fertile ground for maggidic visitations, but no less common were
wakeful apparitions in which the kabbalist saw the heavenly messenger or
heard his voice, or both. Automatic speech and, to a lesser degree, automatic
writing were also means of maggidic revelation.
The maggid phenomenon could be seen as one chapter in a long-lasting
chain of prophetic revelations in Judaism which were related to diverse
celestial powers, from Ru 'ah Ha-Qodesh and the heavenly voice {bat-qot) to
Elijah the Prophet and the archangel Metatron.24 Historically, revelations of

23. Gershom Scholem, s.v. "Gilgul," Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971), vol. 7, cols. 573-577.
24. Joseph Dan, s.v. "Maggid," Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971), vol. 11, cols. 699-701.
350 YORAM BILU

maggidim in mystical circles spanned a two-hundred-year period, from the

sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Subsequently, the term came to be used
mainly as a designation for sermonists or preachers, particularly in Hasidic
communities, a meaning of maggid that also dated back to the sixteenth
century. In this essay, however, the nonrevelatory designation of maggid will
not be discussed, even though it is unlikely that the two meanings of the term
were entirely unrelated.
The figure of the maggid as an angelic messenger was apparently crys-
tallized in the first decades of the sixteenth century in the circle of kabbalists
around Rabbi Joseph Taytazak in Salonica.25 From him maggidic revelations
spread to Safed in the Galilee, which at that time was emerging as a world
center of Jewish mysticism. Some of the most renowned mystics of the era,
Rabbi Solomon Alkabets, Rabbi Moses Cordovero, and even Rabbi Isaac
Luria Ashkenazi, the prominent founder of the Lurianic school of Kabbalah,
are known to have had maggidim, but the nature of their revelations remains
virtually unknown.
The most famous maggid of sixteenth-century Safed, and perhaps of
all times, was that of Rabbi Joseph Karo, one of the greatest figures of
rabbinic Judaism and the author of Shulhan Arukh.26 A talmudist by day
and a kabbalist by night, Karo left a diary, Maggid Mesharim, recording the
messages from his heavenly mentor, who was none other than the Shekhina
embodied in the anthropomorphized figure of the Mishnah. Aside from
interpretations of the Torah and mystical secrets, these messages included
personal communications which moved from agonizing chastisement and
harsh demands for self-mortification to aggrandizing praises and promises of
the greatest achievements.
Throughout the first half of the seventeenth century, maggidim kept
appearing to mystically oriented rabbis in Italy and Poland, but the number
grew with the rise of the messianic movement of Sabbatai Sevi around
1665-66, and the exuberant hopes for redemption that he stirred. Many of
the Sabbatean "prophets," including Nathan of Gaza, the prime mover of the

25. According to various sources from the seventeenth century, Sefer ha-Meshiv ("The
Book of the Responding [Entity]"), a famous mystical compilation of maggidic revelations
and the techniques to obtain them, was written by Taytazak. See Moshe Idel, "Inquiries in
the Doctrine of Sefer ha-Meshiv" Sefiinot 17 (1983): 185-266 (Heb.); Gershom Scholem,
Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), p. 67.
26. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic (Philadelphia: Jewish Publi-
cation Society, 1977).
DYBBUK AND MAGGID 3 51

movement, claimed to have had maggidic revelations. Maggidim played an

important role in Sabbatean groups after the death of Sabbatai Sevi. Among
other things, they served to reconcile the shocked believers to their Messiah's
conversion to Islam followed by his imprisonment and exile, and then to his
premature death. A particularly busy period of maggidic activity occurred in
the religious academy of Rabbi Avraham Revigo in Italy. Another Sabbatean
circle where maggidic revelations were prominent was that of Avraham
Kardozo in Turkey.27
The maggidic epoch was sealed in the first half of the eighteenth century
with the mystical revelations of Rabbi Moses Hayyim Luzzatto in Padua,
Italy. The secret Messianic group that formed around this brilliant kabbalist
and writer received its inspiration from the revelations of Luzzatto's maggid.
However, the social and religious climate in the post-Sabbatean era was
very inauspicious for maggidim. Luzzatto's messianic fervor was viewed by
many of his contemporaries as nurtured by heretical Sabbatean sources. He
was persecuted and excommunicated by the rabbinical authorities and was
forced to forsake his mystical studies, not to mention his involvement with
his maggid.28 Since Luzzatto's time, the steady flow of prophetic revelations
reported from Hasidic and other mystically oriented circles has not included
apparitions of maggidim.

Dybbuk and Maggid as Culturally Patterned Altered States of Consciousness

The obvious contrasts between dybbuk and maggid only seem to accen-
tuate their affinity and common template. They emerged—or more precisely,
appeared in written sources—at the same time and in the same area: in
the first half of the sixteenth century in the Sephardic communities of the
Mediterranean basin. Moreover, the two phenomena peculiarly converged in
the life histories of some prominent mystics of that era. Thus, Rabbi Joseph
Karo, whose heavenly mentor was the most well known in the history of
maggidim, was recently identified as the exorcist in the first documented

27. Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp.
645-647.
28. Meir Benayahu, "The Maggid of R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto," Sefunot 5 (1961);
297-336 (Heb.).
352 YORAM BILU

case of dybbuk expulsion, which took place in Safed in 1545.29 In the same
vein, Rabbi Shlomo Alkabets, Karo's close friend, who in a detailed epistle
described the impressive manifestations of the latter's maggid, and who was
known to have a maggid of his own,30 was also the first witness to sign one
of the earliest reports of dybbuk exorcism, dated 1571.31 It is interesting to
note that the term dybbuk was first employed in the context of a specific
case of controversial maggid-like prophetic revelations. It was Rabbi Jacob
Emden, one of the fiercest opponents of the Sabbatean movement, who
described a Sabbatean prophet, Zaddok of Grodno, as "an ignorant rude man
. . . who in all probability was possessed by some dybbuk from the foreign
[demonic] beings, like all his deranged friends."32 Another Sabbatean prophet,
Rabbi Leib Prossnitz, who claimed to have enlisted Sabbatai Sevi and Rabbi
Isaac Luria as his maggidim, was compelled to admit, after having been
interrogated by the rabbinical authorities, that the source of his prophecies
was none other than a dybbuk in the guise of dog.33 Thus, it appears that
at a time of dispute, the boundaries between these seemingly contrasting
phenomena could become blurred. Maggidic revelations and prophecies, a
source of highly cherished mystical secrets and spiritual insights for the
believer, could easily be defamed by opponents and relabeled as negative
possession by a demon or a dybbuk.
Scholars of Jewish mysticism could not fail to notice the parallelism
between dybbuk and maggid. Scholem, who was not fond of psychological
analysis of mystical phenomena, nevertheless stated that:

From a psychological point of view, these maggidim were products of the

unconscious level of the psyche, crystallizing on the conscious level of the
kabbalists' minds into psychic entities. Maggidim, holy angels or the souls of
departed saints, speaking either to the kabbalist or through his mouth . . . often
had their counterparts on the "other side" in the dibbuks, demons or evil souls

29. Moshe Idel, "Jewish Magic from the Early Renaissance Period to Early Hasidism," in
Religion, Science, and Magic, ed. Jacob Neusner, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Paul V. M. Flesher
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 108.
30. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, pp. 19-21.
31. Nigal, Dybbuk Tales, p. 65.
32. Gershom Scholem, Researches in Sabbateanism (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1991), p. 575
(Heb.).
33. Yehuda Liebes, "The Author of the Book Tsaddik Yesod Olam—The Sabbatean Prophet
Rabbi Leib Prossnitz," Da at 2-3 (1978-79): 159-174 (Heb.)
DYBBUK AND MAGGID 353

that possessed some unhappy or mentally sick creature. . . . Psychologically,

the two phenomena have common roots}*

Idel has emphasized the historical concurrence of dybbuk and maggid

as well as the "inverted affinity" between them.35 Some of the contrasts
he highlighted will be discussed below. As stated before, I would like to
make this inverted affinity meaningful by anchoring dybbuk and maggid in
Bourguignon's worldwide typification of culturally patterned altered states
of consciousness. The textual evidence indicating that these two phenomena
indeed involved dissociation is ample. The reports on dybbuk possession and
exorcism leave little doubt as to the profound shifts in consciousness that
the possessed underwent once the spirit invaded her body. No less abrupt
and dramatic was the return to normal consciousness upon the exit of the
spirit. Where detailed reports of maggidic apparitions exist, behavioral and
phenomenal manifestations of trance or dissociation can be easily recognized
during the revelatory period. Yet there is room to assume that not all the
cases subsumed under dybbuk and maggid can be defined as altered states of
consciousness.
In linking the two phenomena to Bourguignon's bifurcation, the asso-
ciation of the dybbuk with possession trance appears self-evident on all
relevant dimensions. The very essence of the dybbuk phenomenon was
grounded in the idiom of possession, with the mystical doctrines of gilgul
and ibbur as "natural models" for shaping the behavior of the possessed in
a taken-for-granted manner. As a negative possession forced on the victim
and deemed an affliction or an illness, it did not include religious rituals
for summoning the spirits, so central in positive possession. Rituals came
to the fore in the exorcistic phase, which was designed to put an end to
the possession episode. As in other cultural forms of possession trance, the
spirit took absolute control of the victim by temporarily obliterating her
individual identity. In most of the cases the dissociative episode was followed
by amnesia, and as a result the reports on the cases were never provided by the
victims themselves. The public character of dybbuk possession, particularly
salient in the dramatic exorcistic ritual, provided many eye-witnesses to
document the cases.

34. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 82. The italicized final sentence of the quoted passage does
not appear in the English version of Scholem's book and was translated from the Hebrew
original.
35. Idel, "Jewish Magic," pp. 107-108.
354 YORAM BILU

The near-universal preponderance of females in possession trance is

echoed in the case of the dybbuk, as the ratio of females to males among
the possessed was approximately 2:1. One of the distinctive features of
the male possessed was their significantly younger age. In fact, most of
the possessed males were children and adolescents. Like other possession
trance cases, dybbuk possession exhibited an inherent tension between active
performance, replete with hypermotor and aggressive behaviors, and passive
imagery emerging from the absolute loss of individuality and control vis-
a-vis the spirit. Since dybbuk possession has never been transformed into
a positive, willfully sought state, it altogether lacked induction rituals. Yet
the spontaneously emerging factors underlying the possession attacks can
be identified as emotional intensification or arousal, hi terms of Ludwig's
classification of induction techniques,36 these factors clearly belong to the
category of stimulation increase, so typical of possession trance states.
Whereas dybbuk possession appears as a clear-cut case of possession
trance, the position of the maggid as an altered state of consciousness is
more complicated and requires a thorough examination. Scholars of Jewish
mysticism, while emphasizing the aforementioned inverted affinity between
dybbuk and maggid, tended to place the contrasts between them within the
domain of possession by designating the maggid as positive possession.37 In
what follows, I propose a critical examination of this view by evaluating var-
ious characteristics of maggidic revelation against Bourguignon's dichotomy
of socially patterned altered states of consciousness.
A strong support for viewing maggidic revelations as positive possession
comes from the main mystical accounts of these phenomena. A pertinent
example is the doctrine of prophetic revelation developed by Rabbi Moses
Cordovero, one of the mystical luminaries of sixteenth-century Safed.

For the holy spirit can rest upon man... and this was the case with all prophets
. . . and the opposite is the case of Saul, where "an evil spirit troubled him."
Similarly man can be entered by another soul—a holy or an evil one—and
similarly we have seen demons or evil spirits entering men and troubling them.
. . . Similarly an angel may enter man and speak within him words of wisdom,
and this is what is generally called maggid.38

36. Ludwig, "Altered States of Consciousness," pp. 12-14.

37. Idel, "Jewish Magic," p. 107.
38. Quoted in Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, p. 80.
DYBBUK AND MAGGID 355

The classification of mystical associations with positive and negative beings

proposed by Cordovero rests solely on the notion of possession. It is interesting
that even when he deals with the mystical revelations of Elijah the Prophet
(gilluy Eliahu), which he described as an internally generated insight or
illumination, Cordovero still sticks to an intellectual-abstract version of
possession, apparently without trance at all: "Elijah entering the intellect of
man and teaching him hidden things."39 It seems that Cordovero was totally
engulfed in the possession idiom, which he employed to account for a wide
spectrum of prophetic revelations.
It should be emphasized, however, that Cordovero presented a theory, or
conceptual scheme, that was designed to account for empirical facts (prophetic
revelations) but was not identical with them. True, the articulatory power of
explanatory models like Cordovero's may have a significant bearing on the
behavioral level. But in this case it is not at all clear whether Cordovero's
esoteric doctrine stemmed from a widespread folk-model of maggidism or
subsequently become one. At any rate, other doctrinal accounts of maggidim
held by noted kabbalists were not necessarily linked to possession as the
guiding idiom. Thus the maggidic theory of Rabbi Hayyim Vital, Luria's
great disciple and the promulgator of his teachings, asserts that the study
of the Law and dutiful performance of the commandments by the mystic
bring about the creation of an angel who reveals himself to his creator and
discloses mystical secrets to him. Vital's formulation leaves it entirely open
whether we are dealing here with a nonpossession trance experience (i.e., a
bounded encounter with the angel) or with a possession trance.40 If we move
from the doctrinal-theoretical level to the phenomenological-behavioral one,
the strongest support for defining the maggid as a case of positive possession
is automatic speech, one of the most common paths of maggidic revelation.
Many references in Maggid Mesharim, Karo's mystical diary, attest to the fact
that his maggid revealed himself through automatic speech (e.g., "Behold the
voice of my beloved knocketh in my mouth and the lyre sounded of itself').41
Alkabets, in his famous epistle, testified that "we heard the voice speaking in
the mouth of the virtuous."42 Automatic speech was quite common among the
Sabbatean prophets. One of them, Joseph Ben-Sur of Meknes in Morocco,

39. Ibid., p. 81.

40. Ibid., p. 79.
41. Ibid., p. 260.
42. Ibid., p. 21.
356 YORAM BILU

reported in amazement that "I do not know who speaks with me, and I neither
see nor speak but my lips are speaking and I hear the voice that proceeds
from them."43
The importance and central place of automatic speech in prophetic
revelations was manifested in various religious commentaries in which it was
argued that Moses and the other prophets used this method to communicate
with heavenly forces.44 Some kabbalists left us vivid descriptions of the
experience of automatic speech. Consider, for example, the excitement of
the author of Sha 'arey Sedeq ("The Gates of Justice"), a mystical text of the
thirteenth century, after he had experienced automatic speech: "And then,
some utterances came out from my heart and reached my lips, forcing them
to move. And I was worried lest this was a senseless spirit, but then I found
out that the talk was sagacious. And I came to the conclusion that this was a
wise-hearted spirit."45
Again, this self-testimony apparently constitutes strong evidence for the
presence of the speaking force within the body of the mystic. It seems that the
author's personal notion of automatic speech is consistent with Cordovero's
maggid-as-possession theory. A similar notion appears in the doctrine of
prophetic revelation of Nathan of Gaza, the prominent Sabbatean prophet and
Sabbatai Sevi's harbinger: "And then he [the prophet] sees the speech [sic] of
the prophecy in the form of letters protruding in front of him. . . . after that,
an angel is created [from these letters] and inhabits the body of the man who
sees this vision. And [the angel] utters through his [the prophet's] mouth the
letters that he had seen above him."46
Note that in this passage the phenomenology of prophecy and its inter-
pretation are confounded. The prophetic sequence, according to Nathan of
Gaza, begins with a visual message, more typical of nonpossesslon trance
than of possession trance, and ends with automatic speech. The mediating
link between these two sets of experience is a theory of possession. I
believe that this separation between theory and subjective reality reflects
an epistemological gap which is crucial for understanding the nature of the
maggid as an altered state of consciousness. Before further elaborating on this

43. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 897.

44. Idel, "Inquiries," pp. 220-221.
45. Ibid, p. 221.
46. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 206. Seeing the speech is not a case of synesthesia (fusion
of sense modalities). The prophet is imagined to see in a three-dimensional form the letters
from which the words of the prophecy are composed.
DYBBUK AND MAGGID 357

gap (but in line with the argument that unfolds presently), it should be noted
that Rabbi Hayyim Vital contends in his Sha 'ar ha-Gilgulim ("The Gate of
Transmigrations") that the spiritual voice of the Divine cannot be heard by
the prophet because it lacks material dimensions. Hence, to be communicated
it must be embodied in the corporeal voice of the prophet.47
Does the embodiment of the spiritual voice in the human voice of the
prophet imply a possession trance state? The phenomenology of automatic
speech, so lucidly demonstrated in the above-cited passage from Sha'arey
Sedeq, leads me to a negative answer. The reflexive awareness expressed here
indicates that the individual identity of the kabbalist was far from abolished
in the course of automatic speech. In many of the reports, the trancer's ability
to be attentive to the utterances that his own lips generated and to process
them correctly was taken for granted. Furthermore, the state of automatism
did not involve dissociation strong enough to obliterate the recollection of
the messages thus delivered, as many mystics were able to remember them
long afterwards. Karo's ability to remember the messages that the maggid
delivered to him on Friday night, the preferred time for revelations, was
particularly impressive, since he could write them down only many hours
later, after the holy Sabbath had ended.
Thus, although maggidic revelations often involved automatic
speech—after all, this was the only way to hear the spiritual message of
the Divine according to influential kabbalists like Vital—and although the
phenomenon of automatic speech was often explained in terms of possession,
the boundaries between the trancer and his divine mentor were not dissolved.
The association with the maggid generally took the form of an encounter
in which the human and spiritual participants appeared as distinct entities.
Karo's maggid demonstrated this point by stating, "I am talking to you as
a man (would talk) to his friend."48 If we add to this dimension of clearly
demarcated interaction during revelation the persistence of the cognitive
attributes of reflexivity, attention, and memory, it seems that we cannot escape
the conclusion that phenomenologically the maggid is closer to nonpossession
trance than to possession trance.
The association of the maggid with nonpossession trance gains further
support when we examine other forms of maggidic revelation. Dreaming,
a state of altered consciousness sharing many affinities with nonpossession

47. Weiblowsky, Joseph Karo, pp. 78-79.

48. Ibid., p. 258.
358 YORAM BILU

trance, constituted a fertile matrix for germinating maggidim. In fact, the

context in which the term maggid first emerged was that ofshe'elat halom
(dream query), a magical technique for inducing dream revelations.49 The wide
variety of dream revelations led Werblowsky to argue that "all known forms
and kinds of mystical experience could be doubled on the dream level."50
Indeed, the phrase "dreaming or awake" appears in many descriptions of
maggidic revelation. That the dream precedes the waking state in this phrase
is indicative of its perception as the "natural" setting for apparitions. In the
mystical text Sefer ha-Meshiv mentioned above, the dream's primacy is stated
quite explicitly: "[one can ask questions] yirs* many times in the dream, then
later in waking state."51 It is possible that maggidic apparitions in dreams are
underrepresented in the texts because the dreaming and waking states are so
often confounded in mystical experiences, particularly if the dream apparition
underwent massive revision after the dreamer awakened. The fact that many
maggidic visitations occurred at night lends support to this conjecture. In
addition, many revelations took place in twilight states, just before falling
asleep (hypnagogic states) or, more frequently, immediately after waking up
(hypnopompic states). The first visitation of the maggid of Rabbi Moses
Hayyim Luzzatto belonged to the second type: "And as I woke up, I heard
a voice speaking." In another passage he stated that "I do all these things
(incantations for summoning the maggid) when I fall down and I see all of the
holy souls as if I am dreaming."52 The Sabbatean prophet Joseph Ben-Sur was
frequented by his maggid in a twilight state, when he was "neither dreaming
nor awake."53 He reported a clear-cut dissociative state ("all my senses are
in abeyance, and I do not know whether I am in Heaven or on earth") of a
hypnopompic nature ("and he wants to open his eyes and he cannot, as if
they are covered with lead").54
As a private hallucinatory experience, the dream is akin to nonpossession
trance. Indeed, the two tracks of visual and auditory sense modalities that
were dominant in visitational dreams prevailed in waking revelations as well.
The only difference is that the auditory mode, inferior to the visual mode in
dream revelations, was more dominant in wakefulness. The double track of

49. Idel, "Inquiries," p. 222.

50. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, p. 41.
51. Idel, "Inquiries," p. 204.
52. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 897; Benayahu, "Maggid of Luzzatto."
53. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 897.
54. Ibid.
DYBBUK AND MAGGID 359

sense modalities in nondream revelations is evident in Sefer ha-Meshiv, which

was designated by Cordovero "a book speaking according to a maggid,"55
while another mystic, Rabbi Ovadiah Hamon, called it "the book of visions
according to the maggid."56 Against phrases in this text emphasizing vocal
discourse (e.g., "You will come at once to have a face-to-face dialogue with
me"),57 other expressions stress the visual mode (e.g., "You will see in your
eye thefigureof the angel himself').58 Needless to say, the auditory and visual
tracks did not exclude each other and could be integrated into one coherent
system.59
Sefer ha-Meshiv specifies an interesting technique for summoning mag-
gidim in which the yisual and auditory tracks were separated. The revelation
here entailed a conjurer who was able to see the summoned angel, and
a naive scribe who was called upon to write down the maggid's spoken
communication but could not see him.60 Whether or not the voice that the
scribe was supposed to hear was in fact the conjurer's (in the form of
automatic speech) is left an open question.
The auditory sense modality was salient in the maggidic revelations of
Luzzatto, who, like Karo, could not see his heavenly mentor. However,
Luzzatto's mystical experience apparently was not automatic speech, even
though he explicitly stated that "I could hear his voice speaking in my
mouth."61 Based on the report of one of Luzzatto's students ("This angel
speaks out of his mouth, though we, his disciples, do not hear anything"),
Werblowsky cogently concludes that his was a case of endophasia (inner
speech).62 A strong emphasis on the visual mode was typical of Kardozo's
maggidic revelations. To a modern reader, his techniques appear to have been
based on massive hypnotic suggestions (almost tantamount to guided imagery)
designed to bring his disciples to see the maggidim. But in his mystical

55. Idel, "Inquiries," p. 189.

56. Ibid.
57. Ibid., p. 190.
58. Ibid.
59. Some mystical techniques for inducing prophecy included an elaborate multisensory
system encompassing visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory sensations. See Moshe
Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988), pp. 33-34
(Heb.).
60. Idel, "Inquiries," p. 219.
61. Benayahu, "Maggid of Luzzatto."
62. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, p. 23.
360 YORAM BILU

circle the latter could also be heard. To conclude, the sensory-perceptual

("hallucinatory") dimension, so prominent in maggidic revelation both in
dreams and in wakefulness, once again situates the maggid in the category of
nonpossession trance.
A different kind of revelation, regarded by most mystics as superior to
maggidism, was the revelation of Elijah (gilluy Eliahu). As mentioned before,
some mystics believed that Elijah could impinge himself on the intellectual
faculties of a sage and create an experience felt as an abrupt insight or
inspiration. But the typical way in which he disclosed himself was in his
figure, either in a dreams or in a waking state. The ideal revelation of Elijah,
as depicted in Karo's Maggid Mesharim and in Sefer ha-Meshiv, was a private
encounter, based on a clearly demarcated interaction, in which Elijah would
reveal himself to the mystic and talk to him "mouth to mouth." Cordovero
argued that before his earthly visitations Elijah incarnated in his material
body and appeared to his mortal companion "in his body and soul."63 This
notion, which highlights the nature of Elijah as a distinct "embodied" entity
during apparitions, makes him, in fact, incapable of taking possession of
humans. Like maggidic revelations, then, gilluy Eliahu appears to be firmly
linked with nonpossession trance.
Let us explore now the induction techniques for summoning maggidim.
While these techniques were less rich and elaborate than those employed
by mystics involved in ecstatic Kabbalah, like the thirteenth-century Spanish
kabbalist Rabbi Avraham Abulafia and his circle,64 they were based on
structured methods which had to be meticulously followed. These methods
included the ceremonial recitation of appropriate scriptural verses, passages
from the Mishnah, or Divine Names (yihudim). Sometimes specific incanta-
tions were employed to summon the angel during sleep ("dream query") or
in wakefulness.65 The serious preparations required for conjuring the maggid
are evident in the case of Luzzatto, who "was compelled to prepare himself
for three days . . . by taking ritual baths and other things designed to appease
the maggidic angel who was speaking to him."66
Beyond these techniques, seclusion, penance, and abstinence were also
used to establish an auspicious background for summoning maggidim. The

63. Ibid., p. 270.

64. Idel, Abraham Abulafia, pp. 15-42.
65. Idel, "Inquiries," pp. 201-218.
66. Benayahu, "Maggid of Luzzatto," p. 307.
DYBBUK AND MAGGID 361

ascetic preparations included sleep deprivation, fasting, and self-mortification.

From Alkabets's epistle, it comes out that the dramatic revelations of the
maggid of Karo during the vigil of Shavuot occurred in the context of
two sleepless nights. Karo's maggid pursued the notion of asceticism to
the extreme. He pushed Karo to ever-increasing self-inflicted suffering and
castigated him harshly for the tiniest deviationfromhis Spartan demands. The
ultimate reward he promised Karo for maintaining this penitential discipline
was martyrdom on the stake ("I shall make thee worthy to be publicly burned
in Palestine, to sanctify my name in public"), following the exemplary model
of the messianic martyr Solomon Molkho, who was burned in Mantua in
1532.67 Against this ascetic lifestyle, Werblowsky's psychodynamic reading of
the maggid as the product of Karo's demanding superego appears well-taken.68
The ascetic preparations for summoning maggidim may be psychologi-
cally interpreted, then, as stemming from the unconscious need to appease
tormenting internalized objects crystallized in a harsh superego. From the
native mystical perspective, these activities were considered to be suitable
means of purifying the soul before meeting with divine forces. The perspective
espoused in this essay puts the main emphasis on yet another level of analysis,
spanning the psychophysiological and the psychocultural: the preparatory in-
ductions may have created physical and psychological conditions conducive
to entering a culturally fashioned state of altered consciousness. It should
be noted that even the apparition of Elijah, which according to Werblowsky
"was not amenable to any mystico-magical coercion,"69 was in fact facilitated
by lengthy fasts. Karo's ascetically oriented maggid, who urged him to fast
seven times for three consecutive days each, in order to see Elijah, only
echoed an old tradition going back to the talmudic era.70
While the techniques for summoning maggidim were varied, most of
them belong to the cluster of induction means based on the reduction
of stimulation and motor activity. The abstinence and seclusion, together
with the engrossment in nightly prayers and incantations, were likely to
increase sensory deprivation. In addition, the lengthy fasts may have produced
hypoglycemia and dehydration conducive to an altered state of consciousness.

67. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, p. 98.

68. Ibid., p. 285.
69. Ibid., p. 50.
70. Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society,
1913), vol. 4, p. 215.
362 YORAM BILU

All of these inductions are typical of nonpossession trance. Possession trance,

as mentioned above, is more likely to be induced by stimulation increase,
either external or internal.

Positive Possession Trance in Judaism

If maggidic revelations are not instances of positive possession trance, as

has been commonly assumed, where in Jewish mystical circles can we find
positively evaluated manifestations of this type of dissociation? After review-
ing many historical cases of prophetic revelation in Judaism, I would like
to suggest that the group and individual revelations of entranced Sabbatean
prophets bore significant resemblances to the behavioral manifestations of
possession trance.
The messianic fervor of 1666, the year of redemption according to
Sabbatai Sevi, gave birth to a mass movement of prophets that encompassed
men and women, children and adults. The ecstatic trance into which these
prophets entered started with a comatose state and continued with violent
convulsions, excessive foaming, and loud utterances of mystical formulae. It
is important to note that these states were followed by amnesia: "Thereafter
they would rise without remembering what they had done or said."71 This type
of collective prophecy appears akin to dybbuk possession in terms of both the
population involved (which included women, children, and the ignorant) and
the behaviors exhibited (coma, convulsions, foaming, amnesia). As in the case
of dybbukim, here too epilepsy ("falling sickness") was used as a common
frame of reference. It is hard to determine the extent of female participation
in Sabbatean prophecy, but in any case the strongly felt presence of women
stood in sharp contrast to the near-absence of females with maggidim.72
The individual prophetic performances of Sabbatean mystics were also
quite similar to possession trance. In the prophecies of Nathan of Gaza,
for example, hypermotor excitation was part of the induction to the trance
state. In one of the reports he is described as wobbling and dancing wildly

71. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 420.

72. I have been able to locate only one case of a woman who had maggidic revelations.
This woman, La Francesa, lived in Safed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and
amazed the town's sages by her ability to foretell the future. H. Z. Hirschberg, "The Author
of Divrey Kwef and His Attitude Toward the Duty of Settling in Eretz Israel," in Sefer Shazar
(Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1971), pp. 132-137 (Heb.).
DYBBUK AND MAGGID 363

in the room while taking his clothes off. Following a particularly frenetic
movement, he collapsed into a comatose state so deep that a physician was
called for and announced his death. Only then, to the surprise of all attendant,
was his voice heard from underneath the sheet that covered him, uttering
praises of Sabbatai Sevi.73 Another Sabbatean prophet, Rabbi Moses Suriel,
entered a trance in a stimulus-loaded setting.

And they [adherents of the Sabbatean movement] were sitting with him and
singing songs of praises for Sabbatai Sevi, and they were playing the harp and
other musical instruments. And in the midst of all that, Rabbi Moses would
start dancing like a young man, and in the middle of the dance he would fall
down as if he had contracted, heaven forbid, the falling sickness. After some
agitation he would commence talking. And they put a handkerchief on his face
. . . and he would disclose secrets.... And two scribes were sitting at his side,
quickly writing down every utterance he made.74

Again, Rabbi Moses SuriePs prophetic behavior corresponds to the behavioral

configuration of possession. The mobilization of the two scribes to write down
his revelations at the moment they were uttered may be taken as an indication
that Suriel was unable to recall them.
Even though the association of Sabbatean ecstatic prophecy with posses-
sion trance strikes me as quite sound, two reservations are appropriate here.
First, this association is solely based on behavioral and phenomenological
criteria. We do not know whether Sabbatean doctrine had any notion of
prophecy-as-possession. In any case, note that my analysis of maggidim as
nonpossession trance is based in part on the existence of some discrepancy
or incongruence between native theory and behavior.
Second, some of the literature on Sabbateanism was written by anti-
Sabbatean rabbis after the fall of the false Messiah. In these sources the
explanation for the salvo of prophecies in 1666 is often presented in terms
of possession by evil spirits or demons. Interestingly one of these opponents,
Rabbi Jacob Sasportas, suggested three possible ways of accounting for these
prophecies—psychological ("their lust and desire aroused their imagination

73. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 423.

74. Leib Ben Ozer, The Story of Sabbatai Sevi (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1978),
pp. 59-60 (Heb.).
364 YORAM BILU

until they beheld visions"), medical ("falling sickness"), and demonologi-

cal ("possibly the spirit also rested upon them accidentally, speaking and
announcing various things, as does one who is possessed by a demon").75

Summary and Conclusions

Dybbuk and maggid were portrayed as representing two contrasting

paths of culturally shaped altered states of consciousness similar to the
universal division of possession trance and nonpossession trance suggested
by Bourguignon. Even though some mystical accounts of maggidim were
based on the possession idiom, and even though the phenomenon of automatic
speech apparently lends support to this association, most of the experiential
attributes of maggidism were akin to nonpossession trance. If one looks
for positive possession trance in Jewish mysticism, the ecstatic individual
and collective prophecies prevalent in the Sabbatean movement offer an
appropriate example. Let us summarize the differences between dybbuk and
maggid. The dybbuk was a negative and involuntary possession phenomenon
in which an evil spirit imposed himself on the victim, usually a woman or
a child, and was eventually expelled after a public and dramatic exorcistic
ritual. During the possession episode, the altered consciousness was clearly
manifested in the realization of the identity of the invading spirit to the
exclusion of the victim's self-identity. The episode was apparently precipitated
by a strong emotional arousal and was followed by total or partial amnesia.
The maggid was a positive and willfully sought encounter with an angel or
another spiritual aide experienced mostly by male mystics. The maggid was
summoned by various ritual inductions characterized by sensory deprivation
and self-mortification, and his presence was experienced as an interaction
based on visual or auditory sense modalities or both. The experience was
typically private and "internal," and therefore had to be remembered. Since
the association with the maggid was desirable, unlike the compelled presence
of the dybbuk, we find summoning rituals in the instance of the former, as
opposed to exorcistic rituals for the latter.
The contrasts between the two Jewish variants of altered states of con-
sciousness highlight the different social positions and cultural evaluations of
the typical trancers in the two paths of altered consciousness—a mystically

75. Quoted in Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 423.

DYBBUK AND MAGGID 365

oriented rabbi or sage on the one hand, an ignorant woman or a young lad on
the other. The fact that the principal cultural option open to women in trance,
unequivocally negative, was conceived as an illness is a gloomy reminder
of female inferiority in Jewish traditional society. Note that in Judaism
negative possession did not undergo a transformation into the ceremonial
context of a possession cult, wherein possession is not stigmatized but
socially approved.76 In Lewis's terms,77 the dybbuk spirits were amoral,
and the peripherality of their carriers was objectified by the possession
idiom. Moreover, dybbuk possession left the victim as a passive object,
temporarily bereft of self-awareness and without self-control vis-a-vis two
external authorities: the possessing spirit who deprived the possessed of her
individual identity and the rabbi-exorcist who compelled the spirit to leave.
In the maggidic experience the trancer maintained his identity, reflexivity,
and individuality. Even if we espouse the possession theory of Cordovero and
accept that the angel inhabited the mystic when he spoke through his mouth,
we must concede that he did not eliminate his soul as in the dybbuk.
From a psychological viewpoint, it might be argued that the extreme
passivity of the possessed in dybbuk cases was nothing but a convenient guise
for rebellious acting out, amply manifested in the aggressive, sexual, and
grotesque behavior of the spirits. But this subversive aspect was confronted
and effectively eliminated by the exorcistic ritual, hi a dramatic series of
movements, the spirits were overpowered by the exorcists, confessed their
sins, and vividly reported the persecutions that were their lot in the afterlife.
In doing all this, the rebellious spirits were transformed into conservative
agents of the social order, promoting conformity and religious observance.
Paradoxically it was the positively evaluated maggid that had the potential to
become truly subversive, as the revelations initiated by him could facilitate
mystical innovations and stir messianic expectations. The recognition of this
subversive potential sometimes led rabbinic authorities to stigmatize such
revelations and excommunicate the mystics who were involved with them,
particularly in the post-Sabbatean era (e.g., Luzzatto).
Finally, after discussing the points of similarity between maggid and
nonpossession trance and between dybbuk and possession trance, I would like
to risk a speculation regarding the ecological variable that differentiated the

76. Yoram Bilu, "The Moroccan Demon in Israel: The Case of Evil Spirit Disease," Ethos
8 (1980): 24-39.
77. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, p. 127.
366 YORAM BILU

two types of altered states of consciousness—hunting and gathering societies

(associated with nonpossession trance) and agricultural societies (associated
with possession trance). Needless to say, this distinction does not apply to
traditional Jewish society. Yet it is worth asking whether the socialization
pressures toward compliance, obedience, and conformity that were evident
in agricultural societies were not also the fate of the Jewish female victims
of dybbukim? And in this vein, is it not possible to metaphorically ponder
the Jewish mystics as hunters, relentlessly propelled by the adventurous drive
to find their own path to the Divine and to stalk mystical secrets? In this
independent pursuit of esoteric knowledge, the maggid served as a kind of
a guardian spirit or a spiritual ally, a chaperon and guide in the dangerous
orchard of mystical enigmas, who helped to dispel doubt and insecurity
among the kabbalists and suffused them with assurance in their calling.

Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel