Hello Steve,  
 
We're going to take a little side tour in this post.  
But bear with me, I think it will make some sense in the end.  :-) 
 
The golem is a servant created from dust and returned to dust. 
The story is of a rabbi / magician / sorcerer said to have formed 
dust into a living being, an act paralleling God's creation of Adam. 
 
The story of the golem echoes a few passages from Genesis:    
 
  "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and  
  breathed into the nostrils the breath of life; and man became  
  a living soul."  ( Genesis 2:7 ) 
 
In Genesis 3, shortly after God discovers that Adam and Eve  
had acted according to their own desires and were attempting  
to hide this fact, we read: 
 
  "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread; til thou return 
  unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art,  
  and unto dust thou shalt return."   ( Genesis 3:19 ) 
           
As we proceed in exploring the symbolism and meaning of the golem,  
the marks and words on foreheads, etc., let's turn our attention to  
the Christian celebration of Ash Wednesday.  On that day, the priest 
dips his thumb into ashes that have been blessed, then uses them to  
mark the celebrant's forehead in the shape of a cross and says,  
"Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." 
 
You'll want to compare this to what happens to the golem when the 
rabbi erases the first character of the word written on the forehead 
of the golem and changes emet to met.   
 
There are many sources which explore the meaning of the marking of  
foreheads on Ash Wednesday.  Here are some thoughts from  
http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/ash_wed.htm 
 
   "This is in imitation of the spiritual mark or seal that is put  
   on a Christian in baptism, when he is delivered from slavery  
   to sin and the devil and made a slave of righteousness and  
   Christ. (Rom. 6:3-18). 
 
   It is also in imitation of the way the righteousness are  
   described in the book of Revelation, where we read of the  
   servants of God... 
 
   "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, till we have  
   sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads."  
   (Revelation 7:3)  
 
   "[The demon locust] were told not to harm the grass of the  
   earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those of  
   mankind who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads"  
   (Revelation 9:4) 
 
   "Then I looked, and lo, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and  
   with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had his name  
   and his Father's name written on their foreheads."  
   (Revelation 14:1) 
 
   The reference to the sealing of the servants of God for their 
   protection in Revelation is an allusion to a parallel passage 
   in Ezekiel, where Ezekiel also sees a sealing of the servants of  
   God for their protection: 
 
   "And the LORD said to him [one of the four cherubim], 'Go  
   through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark [literally,  
   "a tav"] upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over 
   all the abominations that are committed in it.'  And to the  
   others he said in my hearing, 'Pass through the city after him,  
   and smite; your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity;  
   slay old men outright, young men and maidens, little children  
   and women, but touch no one upon whom is the mark.  And begin  
   at my sanctuary.'  So they began with the elders who were before  
   the house."  ( Ezekiel 9:4-6 ) 
 
   Unfortunately, like most modern translations, the one quoted  
   above (the Revised Standard Version, which we have been quoting  
   thus far), is not sufficiently literal.  What it actually says is  
   to place a tav on the foreheads of the righteous inhabitants of  
   Jerusalem.  Tav is one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet,  
   and in ancient script it looked like the Greek letter chi, which  
   happens to be two crossed lines (like an "x") and which happens  
   to be the first letter in the word "Christ" in Greek (christos).   
   The Jewish rabbis commented on the connection between tav  
   and chi and this is undoubtedly the mark Revelation has in mind  
   when the servants of God are sealed in it. 
 
   The early Church Fathers seized on this tav-chi-cross-christos 
   connection and expounded it in their homilies, seeing in Ezekiel  
   a prophetic foreshadowing of the sealing of Christians as servants  
   of Christ.  It is also part of the background to the Catholic 
   practice of making the sign of the cross, which in the early  
   centuries (as can be documented from the second century on) was  
   practiced by using one's thumb to furrow one's brow with a small  
   sign of the cross, like Catholics do today at the reading of the  
   Gospel during Mass. 
 
 
More to come...  
 
Marnie  
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