Golem

Basic Information

Derived from the Hebrew for a shapeless thing, or something incompletely formed, the word Golem has come to signify a construct, formed from lifeless matter and animated by theurgy or some other form of magic.

The most famous golem narrative concerns Rabbi Loew and the construct that he build to protect and serve the Jews of the Prague Ghetto, but there are a variety of others and all of them emphasise that golems are hard to make and harder still to control. How human they appear to be … varies.

Arguably Mary Shelly's tale of Frankenstein's Monster is a Golem narrative in which (pseudo) science¹ replaces magic as the animating force - the creation, the hubris and the disasterous loss of control are the same and Frankenstein, not being any Maharal, is unable to bring his creation to heel again. some later interpretations have explored the golem aspect more explicitly.

The Hebraic tradition tends to show golems being made of fresh clay - in bringing it to life, the Rabbi is imitating God who formed Adam from clay² - but later fantasy traditions have included golems of all manner of substances including blood, spider silk, mercury, stone and glass. In some traditions the clay golems are made from fired clay rather than flesh. "Flesh Golems" like Frankenstein's-monster, seem to hover thematically between construct and undead.

The Jewish Golem is at least partially powered (in some stories) by the chem - a piece of paper on which relevant parts of scripture and/or instructions are written. In some traditions this must be removed at nightfall to 'park' the golem and prevent it running out of control. In others, the animating force is the word "emet" ("truth") cut into its forhead, erasing the first character changes the word to "met" (death) and shuts the golem down.

Sources

• China Miellville's The Iron Council stars a powerful, instinctive maker of golems … called Judah Low³.
• Terry Pratchett's golems are Jew-ish: made of clay (albiet baked clay), containing a chem and using a font that resembles hebre characters. They are also created by holy men and unable to speak.
• Golem; Petisk, Eduard ISBN 80-900129-2-2 - contains Jewish legends concerning the Maharal and his Golem.
• The Cobbler's Monster; Amano, Jeff ISBN-13: 978-1582406299 - a graphic novel combining the Frankenstein story with the Golem myth. And featuring Gepetto…

Bibliography

1. full source reference

Game and Story Use

• Having a golem crop up in WW2 during the Shoah (or in Israel during the mandate or the 1948 war) would be sort of cool…

Footnotes

1. …but perfectly reasonable sci-fi by the standards of the time

2. although being made by a mere human the golem lacks a soul and, frequently, other faculties such as speech

3. The book itself is a tedious political gibber almost as bad as though it had been written by Kim Stanley Robinson, but there's a lot of eminently useful fantasy stuff that can be harvested from it.