Pictures of Destiny in a Jewish Incantation by Jill Hammer

There’s an outdated Yiddish incantation, documented from the 18^th century ahead, that options three mysterious ladies.  It’s a folks spell heading off the evil eye–the unfavourable affect which will come both from demons or from the jealousy and spite of others (or each). Worry of the evil eye is the rationale it was conventional to not praise cute infants or proficient individuals—as a result of the evil eye could be drawn to such magnificence or expertise and trigger hurt.  The evil eye, to provide a private instance, is the rationale my father, who was usually not a non secular particular person, refused to permit my mom to buy a crib till I used to be born, lest the evil eye discover they had been going to have a child and put together some horrible destiny for me.

I discovered this explicit incantation in opposition to the evil eye from scholar and Kohenet (priestess) Annabel Cohen, who’s a scholar of Yiddish and significantly of Ashkenazi Jewish ladies’s customs.  I appeared the spell up myself as a result of there was one thing about it that spoke to me deeply. At a very troublesome level in my life, I discovered myself repeating the English of this incantation.  Right here is the textual content of it in transliteration and translation:

Zitsn dray vayber oyf a shteyn
Ein zogt yo, di tsveyte zogt neyn,
Di dritte zogt: Enjoyable vanen s’iz gekumen,
Ahin zol es geyn.

Three ladies sit on a stone.
One says sure and the opposite says no.
The third one says, “From the place it got here, there shall it go.”
Poo-poo-poo.

(The interpretation is my variation on Annabel Cohen’s translation.) In response to Cohen, the three ladies are saying “sure, So-and-So has the evil eye,” and “no, they don’t,” and “might the evil eye return the place it got here from.” “Poo-poo-poo” is supposed to point spitting 3 times, which was an important a part of the spell, to thrust back the spirits.  Not directly, the “sure/no”high quality of this spell helped the magic: if the particular person did have the evil eye, the incantation was meant to unravel it and ship the unfavourable energies again to their supply.  And if the particular person didn’t have it, a lot the higher.

The unique incantation was usually for much longer than this and had many variations, defending fields, individuals, and many others. In A Frog Below the Tongue: Jewish People Medication in Jap Europe, Marek Tuszewicki stories a variant: In der midber shteyt a groyser shteyn, oyf im sitzen dray vayber… “Within the wilderness stands a fantastic stone, and on it sit three ladies…” (p. 280)  Tuszewicki notes {that a} stone is “a logo of the boundary between worlds.”

I used to be drawn to this incantation due to the three ladies, and likewise due to the stone.  These three ladies are unknown to me from different Jewish sources.  The biblical figures often known as the matriarchs are both 4 (Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah) or six (with the addition of Bilhah and Zilpah).  I couldn’t assist however assume, after I first heard this poem-spell, that the ladies jogged my memory of the three Fates, or the Norns of Germanic custom.  They’re, indirectly, managing an individual’s destiny, identical to the Fates or Norns.

Students agree that the origin of this incantation is probably going not a Jewish one. One commentator, Natan Meir, connects the three ladies to the “three holy maidens” of European custom, known as in Germany the Bethen.  The three holy maidens had been recognized with numerous saints, although their origin is definitely a lot older, and had been typically worshipped at stones.

And but, there may be one Jewish mystical supply that, uncannily sufficient, appears to narrate.  Within the 13^th century kabbalistic work known as the Zohar, we discover a story of “the muse stone.”  This stone is understood all through Jewish legend because the spot at which God created the world, and from which the cosmos unfold out within the 4 instructions.  It’s the navel of the universe. The Zohar tells the story on this method:

The Holy One created the world by taking a stone, the ‘basis stone,’ and casting it into the abyss in order that it stayed there, and from it the world grew.  That is the middle of the universe, and atop it stands the Holy of Holies….The stone is made of fireside, water, and air, and rests on the abyss.  At instances water flows out of it and fills the deeps.
                                                            Zohar I, 231a

The stone, which rests within the midst of the void, is made of fireside, water, and air. That is linked to an earlier Jewish legend (Exodus Rabbah 15:22) that three creations preceded the world: fireplace, water, and air.  The fireplace conceived and gave beginning to gentle, the water conceived and gave beginning to darkness, and the air conceived and gave beginning to knowledge.  In a mystical textual content often known as Sefer Yetzirah, fireplace, water, and air (and their corresponding Hebrew letters, Shin, Mem, and Aleph) are known as the Three Moms.  These three moms, on this Zohar passage, make up the muse stone that’s the coronary heart of the universe.

There you will have it.  Three ladies and a single stone.  On this delusion, the three “ladies” are the weather, who form the world. Whereas the Yiddish incantation seemingly relies in wider European folklore, I like to think about it as referring to the three moms “sitting” on the good stone on the coronary heart of the cosmos.  Who higher to name on in time of want, when future must be re-shaped, than these primordial moms of matter?

At a time on the earth when our future certainly must be remade, might the three moms intervene on our behalf and information us to a greater destiny for all. Poo-poo-poo.