There’s an previous Yiddish incantation, documented from the 18th century ahead, that options three mysterious girls. It’s a folks spell fending off the evil eye–the adverse affect that will come both from demons or from the jealousy and spite of others (or each). Concern of the evil eye is the explanation it was conventional to not praise cute infants or gifted folks—as a result of the evil eye is likely to be interested in such magnificence or expertise and trigger hurt. The evil eye, to offer a private instance, is the explanation my father, who was usually not a non secular individual, refused to permit my mom to buy a crib till I used to be born, lest the evil eye discover they had been going to have a child and put together some horrible destiny for me.
I discovered this specific incantation towards the evil eye from scholar and Kohenet (priestess) Annabel Cohen, who’s a scholar of Yiddish and significantly of Ashkenazi Jewish girls’s customs. I appeared the spell up myself as a result of there was one thing about it that spoke to me deeply. At a very troublesome level in my life, I discovered myself repeating the English of this incantation. Right here is the textual content of it in transliteration and translation:
Zitsn dray vayber oyf a shteyn
Ein zogt yo, di tsveyte zogt neyn,
Di dritte zogt: Enjoyable vanen s’iz gekumen,
Ahin zol es geyn.
Three girls sit on a stone.
One says sure and the opposite says no.
The third one says, “From the place it got here, there shall it go.”
Poo-poo-poo.
(The interpretation is my variation on Annabel Cohen’s translation.) In keeping with Cohen, the three girls are saying “sure, So-and-So has the evil eye,” and “no, they don’t,” and “could the evil eye return the place it got here from.” “Poo-poo-poo” is supposed to point spitting 3 times, which was a vital a part of the spell, to thrust back the spirits. Ultimately, the “sure/no”high quality of this spell helped the magic: if the individual did have the evil eye, the incantation was meant to unravel it and ship the adverse energies again to their supply. And if the individual didn’t have it, a lot the higher.
The unique incantation was typically for much longer than this and had many variations, defending fields, folks, and so forth. In A Frog Below the Tongue: Jewish People Medication in Jap Europe, Marek Tuszewicki reviews a variant: In der midber shteyt a groyser shteyn, oyf im sitzen dray vayber… “Within the wilderness stands an excellent stone, and on it sit three girls…” (p. 280) Tuszewicki notes {that a} stone is “a logo of the boundary between worlds.”
I used to be drawn to this incantation due to the three girls, and in addition due to the stone. These three girls are unknown to me from different Jewish sources. The biblical figures often known as the matriarchs are both 4 (Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah) or six (with the addition of Bilhah and Zilpah). I couldn’t assist however suppose, after I first heard this poem-spell, that the ladies jogged my memory of the three Fates, or the Norns of Germanic custom. They’re, in a roundabout way, managing an individual’s destiny, similar to the Fates or Norns.
Students agree that the origin of this incantation is probably going not a Jewish one. One commentator, Natan Meir, connects the three girls to the “three holy maidens” of European custom, known as in Germany the Bethen. The three holy maidens had been recognized with varied saints, although their origin is unquestionably a lot older, and had been typically worshipped at stones.
And but, there’s one Jewish mystical supply that, uncannily sufficient, appears to narrate. Within the 13th century kabbalistic work known as the Zohar, we discover a story of “the inspiration stone.” This stone is understood all through Jewish legend because the spot at which God created the world, and from which the cosmos unfold out within the 4 instructions. It’s the navel of the universe. The Zohar tells the story on this manner:
The Holy One created the world by taking a stone, the ‘basis stone,’ and casting it into the abyss in order that it stayed there, and from it the world grew. That is the middle of the universe, and atop it stands the Holy of Holies….The stone is made of fireside, water, and air, and rests on the abyss. At occasions water flows out of it and fills the deeps.
Zohar I, 231a
The stone, which rests within the midst of the void, is made of fireside, water, and air. That is related to an earlier Jewish legend (Exodus Rabbah 15:22) that three creations preceded the world: hearth, water, and air. The fireplace conceived and gave start to mild, the water conceived and gave start to darkness, and the air conceived and gave start to knowledge. In a mystical textual content often known as Sefer Yetzirah, hearth, water, and air (and their corresponding Hebrew letters, Shin, Mem, and Aleph) are known as the Three Moms. These three moms, on this Zohar passage, make up the inspiration stone that’s the coronary heart of the universe.
There you have got it. Three girls and a single stone. On this fantasy, the three “girls” are the weather, who form the world. Whereas the Yiddish incantation possible is predicated in wider European folklore, I like to think about it as referring to the three moms “sitting” on the good stone on the coronary heart of the cosmos. Who higher to name on in time of want, when future must be re-shaped, than these primordial moms of matter?
At a time on this planet when our future certainly must be remade, could the three moms intervene on our behalf and information us to a greater destiny for all. Poo-poo-poo.
