Fantastic Metropolis

There are myths that curve recursively through time and space, which seem to have the force of prophecy. Whether they are songs of doom and death or tales that promise us rebirth, they happen over and over again, so much so that you have to wonder what our group mind is trying to tell us.

Math said, ‘Let us use our magic and enchantments to conjure up a woman out of flowers.’ By then Lleu had the stature of a man and was the handsomest lad anyone had ever seen. Math and Gwydion took the flowers of oak and broom and meadowsweet and from these conjured up the loveliest and most beautiful girl anyone had seen; they baptized her with the form of baptism that was used then, and named her Blodeuedd.

—The Mabinogion (“Math the Son of Mathonwy”)

The sorcerer poet Virgilius of Naples gained a great reputation for animating statues… the same art was known to medieval magicians. Gerbert (Pope Sylvester II), Robert Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon are all credited with the manufacture of talking brass heads that would give advice and answer any questions put to them. Albertus Magnus is also said to have made a metal man that grew so loquacious that his student, Thomas Aquinas, finally smashed it to pieces.

—Bob Rickard and John Mitchell, Unexplained Phenomena: A Rough Guide Special

One of the great axioms of magic was expressed by that dark muse of Providence as do not call up that which you cannot put down. Math’s creation proved unwilling to love the man she was created for (and whether or not she was justified in plotting to kill him is not the point… only that creating a woman with free will and then expecting her to obey you blindly really isn’t very smart) and Aquinas felt compelled to destroy his master’s brass automata… was it merely because it talked too much? Or did it talk too well?

Why should the Son of Fire kneel to the Son of Clay?

—The Quran

Prometheus’ creation of the Truth out of clay and his breathing life into it might have reminded some Jews of the creation of man out of dust and the induction of life by God, a fact which possibly facilitated the absorption of this tradition in Jewish sources.

—Moshe Idem, Golem

The story, reduced of all of its charm and poetry, is as follows: To protect the people of Chelm (or Prague, depending on which version you hear or read) a Rabbi with great knowledge of the Qabbalah (specifically, the Qabbalah as influenced by the thoughts of Moses de Leon in the Zohar some two to three centuries earlier) created a man out of clay and placed the Hebrew word emet on its forehead. (Or, he placed in the mouth of the golem one of the secret names of God, again depending on your source.) This word, linking the Golem to the spheres of the ten sefirot, and beyond them to En Sof, the unknowable source of all life. Having thus been empowered, the clay statue came to life and protected the Jews of Chelm (or Prague) from pogroms and other persecutions… at first.

However, much like Blodeuedd, or the monster Frankenstein created, the Golem soon grew in strength and intelligence until the Rabbi who created him (Sometimes Elijah of Chelm, sometimes Rabbi Loew of Prague, sometimes someone else) felt that he needed to be destroyed. “Therefore, using the secret gematria of Cabalistic formulas for the second time, the Maharal returned the clay hulk of his creature to its original inanimate condition by withdrawing from its mouth the Shem, the life creating, ineffable name of God that he had placed there when first he made him.” (All thanks to Nathan Ausubel.) Whether the word be the Hebrew for truth or one of the names of God, it has power… because it contains information. It personifies knowledge.

Diotallevi told me that the first Sefirah is Keter, the crown, the beginning, the primal void. In the beginning He created a point, which became Thought, where all the figures were drawn. He was, and was not, He was encompassed in the name yet not encompassed in the name, having as yet no name other than the desire to be called by a name… He traced signs in the air; a dark light leapt from His most secret depth, like a colorless mist that gives form to formlessness, and as the mist spread, a burst of flames took shape in its center, and the flames streamed down to illuminate the lower Sefirot, and down, down to the Kingdom.

—Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum