79 myths · Page 2 of 3
When Lilith flew from Eden, God sent three angels after her. She refused to return. What she offered instead became the contract that still limits her power.
A tradition in Talmud and Kabbalah says Adam was not Cain's father. Samael seduced Eve in the Garden, and the murder of Abel was written into Cain's blood.
Samael did not tempt from outside the Garden. He entered. A folktale explains how the yetzer hara, the evil inclination, found its home in the human heart.
Psalm 91 promised protection from the terror of night. The rabbis disagreed about what that terror was. Hezekiah lit every school in Jerusalem with Torah.
Noah's skin shone white as snow at birth and his eyes lit up the room. His father Lamech ran to Methuselah convinced the child was not human.
Solomon used a ring inscribed with God's name to call every beast, bird, and demon to his table. Every creature came dancing. Then one did not appear.
The Zohar and Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer agree on the origin of demons: God stopped creating before their bodies were finished. The Sabbath did not wait.
Two thousand years before there was an earth, a voice was already calling out for people to come back. There was nobody yet to come back from anything.
At the Jabbok ford a figure grips Jacob until dawn. Tradition names him precisely: Samael, Esau's angel, the prosecutor of Israel.
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi descended through all seven chambers of Gehinnom (afterlife of judgment) and returned. Solomon never went himself, but he sent his.
Moses recited Psalm 91 on Sinai to ward off demons, and when the Mishkan rose, the noon demon Ketev Meriri lost dominion over the world.
A demon stood bound in front of the king of Israel and told him to go wash his hands before he questioned her. Solomon got up and washed his hands.
When Noah stepped out of the ark, evil spirits were still at large. An angel was commanded to teach him medicines before demons could harm his grandchildren.
After the Flood Noah prays against evil spirits, Mastema bargains to keep one tenth of them, and angels teach Noah remedies to fight back.
For seven days Moses raised the Tabernacle each morning and took it down each evening. On the eighth it stayed standing, and fire came down on the altar.
No iron could touch the Temple stones, so Solomon needed the Shamir worm. Benaiah drained the well where Ashmedai the demon drank and poured in wine.
The messengers said the same words at every gate. All that is ours is yours. Then a widow gave one order at dawn and the whole army ran.
Rabbi Meir taught that angels scale with precepts: one commandment kept earns one guardian. A thousand protect the left side and ten thousand protect the right.
Solomon binds Ashmedai with the Ineffable Name to get the shamir. After the Temple is built, Ashmedai borrows the royal ring and throws Solomon into exile.
The richest miser in town took no fee for circumcisions. One night a carriage came, and the road left the ordinary world entirely.
Lilith refused to lie beneath Adam and flew out of Eden. Three angels found her at the sea, and she swore to spare children who wear their names.
A dragon-demon immune to every blade can be slain only by its own blood, and on a night road a demon offers gold for one man's eternity.
Something drank from the boy's thumb every night until he could not lift a chisel. Solomon gave him a ring with God's name cut into it.
The princess did not tear his house down. She carried every broken oath to a court of human judges. Then she asked for one last kiss.
A ruined believer overhears demons boasting their secrets, while three other men face marble, a haunted tree, and a Shabbat spell.
Solomon set Beelzeboul and the powers of darkness to dig his Temple while Benaiah met a queen on the road and shone like the morning star.
Denounced for hiding twelve thousand students from the poll-tax, Rabbah ran through the marshes of Babylonia until heaven itself summoned him.
A proud king tears the verse that names his fall from the holy book, and a demon in deerskin rides home to sit on his abandoned throne.
A nation that kindles a great stake at dawn and dusk meets the demon their fire was feeding, and Samriel opens the gate.
Summoned before Solomon's seal, a restless demon confesses it is what became of the Nephilim, and the wise king binds it to labor on his Temple.
