I tend to go off on rabbit hunts. When I catch a scent, I stay on the trail, sometimes bypassing the rabbit altogether if I detect the scent of something more desirable and/or potentially filling to my predator’s belly. While working on an article for our sister site VAMPIRES.COM involving the Frankenstein Monster, I caught just such a scent and went chasing after it. And since Frankenstein—we have the Universal Monsters movies to thank for the name of the Monster becoming synonymous with the name of the scientist who created it—duked it out with the Wolfman, the world’s most famous celluloid werewolf, as well as crossing paths with Dracula, I can write about Frankenstein for either this site or the one pertaining to vampires. Franky fits either place.
So, the Golem. The creature of folklore, predominantly Jewish folklore, fashioned out of clay and brought to life by magic. The “magic” specific to the creation of the entity involved the inscribing of the “name of God” into the creature’s forehead. Might this not be symbolic? And when we say that a Golem is fashioned of clay, might it not be the same as saying that God created Adam, the first man, out of “dust”? Maybe the inscribing of the name, then, is the instilling in the form its humanity, the giving to it of a soul. Aren’t newborn babies born as just such blank slates? Deprived of human contact they do not develop morality on their own. Frankenstein deprived his creation of a nurturing “parental” influence and the creature developed abnormally. Did Victor Frankenstein neglect to “inscribe the name of God” into his Golem’s forehead, and that’s why the Monster ended up taking innocent lives?
