A Recipe to See Demons

[Aramaic] If someone wants to know about them [i.e., the demons], let him bring sieved ashes and surround his bed [with them], and in the morning he will see something like the feet of a cock. If someone wants to see them [demons], let him bring the afterbirth of a firstborn black [female] cat, daughter of a firstborn black [female] cat, and roast it in a fire and grind it and fill his eyes with it, and he will see them [demons]. And he should put it in an iron tube and seal it with a seal, lest [the contents] be stolen from it, and to seal its opening, that in this way one is not harmed.

R. Bevay bar Abaye tried this. He saw [demons] and was harmed. The rabbis came and sought mercy for him, and he was healed.

Translated by Markham J. Geller and Lennart Lehmhaus.

Credits

b. Berakhot 6a, trans. Markham J. Geller and Lennart Lehmhaus, publication forthcoming. Copyright Markham J. Geller and Lennart Lehmhaus. Used with permission of the translators.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 2: Emerging Judaism.

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