The Magic of the Aramaic Incantation Bowls + the Origins of Lilith

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Every night, about 5-10 minutes after I turn out the lights, one of my cats walks throughout the house loudly singing an ancient incantation. This was initially quite annoying, but the lack of demons and evil spirits in the house can't be denied.

I really like the thinking here. If the demon is bothering you, this bowl will trap them on their way up and they will be forced to read your divorce command. Feels like serving papers.

I would love a coffee mug with a nice incantation spiraling down... towards the Brill sigil on the bottom

I know they’re supposed to be fearsome demon, but those figures are darn cute.

"Ma! Why am I so ugly?" "It's the demons' fault, honey."

I played Vampire: The Masquerade as a teenager. The more modern Lilith myth is a part of the game's lore. It's funny how myths like that go through so many incarnations over thousands of years, and we're still talking about them.

Love this topic. Artifacts like this really give us a look at what real, common people - as opposed to kings and generals - were concerned with in their day to day lives. It's a wonderful glimpse into cultures that are otherwise lost. Also, as a military veteran, the comment about US foreign policy in Iraq got a laugh out of me, so thank you.

I love the idea of there just being some dude on the corner of the market that's just like, "What? What's troubling you? You got a cold? Yeah, I got a bowl for that." like some sort of corner pharmacist.

i love the glimpse these mundane-turned-magical objects give us into an unofficial and undocumented at the time religious practice from within the actual homes of people. I learned about such bowls on this channel and am now fascinated by them. thank you for this discovery!

This kind of content makes the world a better place!

Some of the demon drawings remind me a bit of Where the Wild Things Are. I know you’ve mentioned them on the channel before but I always think these protective bowls are fascinating. Thank you Dr. Sledge!

For all Hebrew readers in here, I'd like to recommend "Harashta" חרשתא which is a new urban fantasy epic that revolves around incantation bowls and ancient demonology. I really hope it would be translated to English, it's a very good book

There is a thunderstorm just entering my city(central Mexico), as I am watching this video. Vibes indeed...

The women in my weekly bible study often lament that there are not more womens' voices represented in the scripture we study (at least that we know of). I am going to suggest they watch your video. I am excited about the possibility that the unheard voices and concerns of women can be heard across time on these bowls. Thank you for this fascinating video Justin.

Glad to hear you’re planing on publishing on your bowl. I’m afraid a lot of them were probably bought up by rich people just wanting a curio for decoration.

Ah yes the only thing more scary than a naked wild woman: divine bureaucracy

Hey Doc I would like to share a personal story about Incantation Bowls with you. While I was in college and looking for cool stuff to add to one of my stories where one of my protags was a Jewish girl fighting a doom cult, I went around looking for like Jewish demon-fighting technologies and I ran into the Incantation Bowls. I found them quite odd' the idea of using a common household object with inscriptions to somehow contain a malevolent spirit while Catholic priests are still out here banishing Lilith or something with more direct methods. It kind of opened my eyes a bit to the differences of my Catholic/Filipino upbringing and subsequent view of ghouls, demons, and malevolent spirits and exposed me to kind of an anthropological shift in Judaism from doing it the hard way ala what Josephus described, to the Incantation Bowl tradition, and eventually the slow extinction of the malevolent spirit tradition within the tradition. At least, up until I watched your video on the Dybbuk like 9 years later. And now here you are with a 30 minute video on the exact objects that started me on this strange adventure in the first place. Thanks for answering questions I never knew I had Doc.

Another interesting video. Hmmm, an Incantation Bowl against Brill... Hmmm...

The part about women being involved with incantaion bowls makes sense, although I also remember Irvine Finkel and Co. talking about how people in Sumerian/Akkadian times assumed all black magicians were women. That seems to have continued on into the Medieval period (Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Vol. 2), so, that it could influence this bowl artwork. It certainly seemed to be pervasive in the last few hundred years with the "Halloween witch.".