The Golem — Kabbalah, Creation, and Projected Selfhood
The Kabbalistic Basis
Kabbalah attempts to understand the making of the world and the connection of God and Man, including through occult practice. The universe “is built essentially on the prime elements of numbers and letters, because the letters of God’s language reflected in human language are nothing but concentrations of his creative energy.”
Shems — hidden names of God — are words of power from the Hebrew alphabet. Keys to unlocking divine secrets, granted through fasting and prayer. With Shems, a sufficiently prepared Kabbalist could mime divine creation and bring forth a golem.
From the Talmud: before God inserted his soul, Adam himself was a golem — a creature of clay without completion. The golem is man-before-ensoulment.
Film Analysis: The Golem (Hana Ben-David Reading)
Premise: A Lithuanian shtetl faces existential threat from plague-doctor-masked outsiders. The rabbi fails to act. Hannah — who has secretly studied sacred texts — creates a golem. Because she and her husband are grieving their dead child, the golem takes the form of a small boy: silent, unblinking, with black eyes. The spitting image of her lost son.
The key insight: The golem reflects the desires of its creator. The Maharal of Prague wanted a mighty protector. Hannah wants her child back.
The Golem as Externalized Id
The golem has no subjectivity, no mind or soul of its own. It is pure body. It is finetouned to Hannah’s emotions, but without its own judgment or morality, it becomes her id — an externalized embodiment of her fears and desires, beyond her control or awareness.
- Hannah becomes jealous of her husband → the golem kills the rival woman
- Hannah strengthens — she stands up to the patriarchy, makes passionate love, cooks sumptuous meals. Creating the golem awakens her sensuality and reconnects her to her own flesh.
- Then: the golem becomes more destructive to the community than the pogromists themselves
Hannah must end him. She embraces the golem, kisses him, pulls out the tiny scroll from his mouth. He turns to dust in her arms.
In the final scene: a girl whose mother was killed by the golem picks up the scroll from the dirt. The cycle of violence is ongoing.
Golem ↔ Tulpa ↔ Projected Self
The parallel structure with tulpas is exact:
- Begins as a willed creation
- Requires emotional investment and ritual focus
- Grows more autonomous over time
- Turns against or beyond its creator
- Must be deliberately dissolved
The critical difference: the golem is body without soul, pure instrument of will. The tulpa becomes something more like a secondary personality — it develops a character. Both grow beyond their makers.
Augustine’s framework makes sense of this: the golem is an object of disordered love. Hannah attaches to it as if it were a higher-order being (her son, a person), when it is a lower-order instrument. The consequences follow from that disorder.
The Book Thread
Notes in the source file suggest this material connects to a book or creative project — “Inspo for book: broken down and hungry for love with no way to feed it.” The golem-as-id reading maps to a character who creates something to fill a void and loses control of what she made.
Questions Worth Sitting With
- If the golem reflects the creator’s desires — what would your golem look like?
- What have you created to fill a void, that turned out to be more destructive than what it was protecting you from?
- The scroll animates the golem and the scroll survives. What “scrolls” survive cycles of violence in your own life?
See also: tulpas-thoughtforms | acedia-desert-fathers | belief-systems