The (again, extremely little) I know about the golem is that the thing that animated it was the actual name of G*d written on its forehead, and that the way its creator stopped it was by erasing that name - it was only that power that gave the inanimate matter a spirit, so to speak.

Also, there are very few stories (again, that *I* know of) about this sort of thing - you have to be an extremely special person, both in knowledge and in personality, on order to be able to learn these things without losing your mind completely (you know how many of the real genius mathematicians also had mental ilnesses? I'm guessing it's something similar - touching the rims of the current capacity of the human ability). There are several stories about people who tried to walk in those secret paths and lost either their sanity or their lives.

YES! That's what I'm remembering; she had that symbol and erased it. I'm trying to remember if she took it off his forehead; I think she did. Need to see that episode again; it had some very well-written moments.

CaBil, my question on the utility of the cross before this alleged covenant thing - there were people before Christ, and cultures before Christ, and the mythology of more than one had some version of undead; after all, it's a universal theme.

Is the Christian concept that before Christ, there was no way to repel vampires? Because that's, well, no.

IMO, the novel that did the best job of having vampires--and the repelling of same--make the most sense is The Stress of Her Regard, by Tim Powers. Wonderful, scary-ass book that desperately needs to be back in print. (Lord Byron as vampire hunter--sexy stuff indeed.)

Oh, and just for the record, and again from very sketchy and lacking knowledge, it seems like Judaism doesn't exclude the possibility of the existence of demons and spirits, good and bad. It does forbid un-prepared people to get any hold of the knowledge required to deal with them in any way, however. There are very strict rules as to who is allowed to study kabbalah - it should be a grown-up (somewhere it's said that it should be over 40), with a wife and children and a solid family he built for himself, he should have learned all his life up until then (or, in the word-for-word translation, to fill his stomach with talmud and halakha), and to learn with somebody, never alone. Most of the movies representations of kabbalah are, therefore, quite different than most of what actually gets to take place.

In that X-Files episode, the woman has her wedding ring (an heirloom from a European ghetto, I believe), and they go through the wedding ritual at the end of the episode. I beleive she's saying one of the wedding prayers as she erases the letters from the golem's forehead, whereupon he collapses into dirt at her feet. Lots of people dislike that episode, but I thought it was wonderful.

they go through the wedding ritual

The strange thing is, the wedding ritual is something the man tells the woman. He gives her a ring (that's worth more than, um, I guess I should write a cent, because that's the logical equivalent), and tells her (in front of witnesses, who are an essential part of the ceremony), something freely translated like "you are dedicated to me, by this ring, as in the religion/order of Moses and Israel". Later, there are 7 blessings that somebody else says, not the groom (thankfulness and joy-wishes).

You don't happen to remember the words that she said, do you? Now I'm all curious.

Here's a transcript:

ARIAL: Isaac!

(She has the ring in her hand. The Golem stops choking Mulder and looks at her. He goes to Arial. As he gets closer and out of the shadow, she sees his face and cries out. He takes the ring and holds it at the end of her ring finger.)

ARIAL: (Hebrew) I am to my beloved... as my beloved is to me.

(He puts the ring on her finger. She smiles to him. They curtsy. She kisses his hand tattoo and then erases the Aleph symbol.)

ARIAL: I loved you.

(They look at each other as she cries and his face deteriorates, turning back to mud. Scully comes.)

SCULLY: Mulder...

(She goes to him. He's still laying on the ground catching his breath.)

SCULLY: Are you okay? I heard shots fired. (She helps him up. ) What happened?

(He can't talk. They look over at Arial. She's kneeling over Isaac's body, which has slumped to the floor. She is caressing his shoulder and arm.)

SCULLY: What is she doing?

MULDER: Saying goodbye.

(He had turned to dirt. She picks up a handful and lets it spray over the body as she continues to pray and caress him.)

It was a killer, killer episode. I loved the bit where the Aryan disses Mulder for being Jewish, and of course, Mulder's character purely isn't. But he points out to the Aryan that Christ was a nice Jewish boy...

Right, both Judaism and Islam include the concept of the other in their cosmology, though that has been deemphasized in modern versions.

What I found interesting is that in Islam, if I remember correctly, the spirits could be saved or damned just like humanity, so we have the good and evil jinn of folklore.

Modern Catholicism officially has no stance on the existence of 'spirits' while most strands of Protestantism clearly argue that everything is either angelic or demonic, and most of the time, it is demonic.

From what I remember of the various golem myths, you don't just need to erase the whole name, but just a letter. Hebrew has so much emphasis on power of names, by erasing a single letter, it turns a word from life to death, or so similar concept.

And deborah, pre-Christians were always up the creek since they didn't have God to take care of them, so it is completely normal in early Christian view that they were helpless, especially considering their false gods.

For a very limited and stylized intro to the Kaballah, read the comic Promethea's Kaballah arc. The character goes through a quest through the ten realms of the Kaballah in a stylized dream like manner.

Thanks, Katie - it does read as a very beautiful and sad scene.

I am to my beloved... as my beloved is to me.

This is not an official part of the Jewish wedding ceremony. It is a line from the Song of Songs, which is pretty much the ultimate Hebrew love song (and is very beautiful, and reads just like music when pronounced out loud, and I love it a lot). It has another layer of meaning, not just the connection between a man and a woman, though, because the whole interpretation of the book of Song of Songs is that the woman there is the Jewish nation and the man, the beloved, it G*d, and the whole book is also the story about the connection between the people and their deity, and the best way to metaphor that relationship is through the love story of a man and a woman. That line is definitely one of the most prominant love expressions in Hebrew (in Hebrew it's "ani ledodi vedodi li").

the Aleph symbol

Aleph is just the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The explicit name of G*d contains different letters, if I understand what they man twhen they use the phrase "the explicit name of G*d", and I'm pretty sure I don't.

Oh, and just for the record - Arial is very much not a Jewish girl's name (yeah, I know, the little mermaid, but our current prime minister is named Ariel. Of course, his last name is Sharon, so this may not be the best example).