Fairy Tale Spotlight: Golems

I feel like I sometimes don't dive into fairy tale aspects as much as I should. Part of the reason I end up talking about God, the bible, TV shows, games, and movies is because I kind of relate fairy tale lore to just about everything around me. It's a bit how I pinpointed an episode of Gotham with an old fairy tale called Bluebeard. Fairy lore is all around us, and for some reason, most people just shrug it off as meaningless fiction.

But I digress.

This is still a fairy tale blog, and I want to talk about golems today. I am not as interested in the origins of golems. I believe that come from Jewish folklore. Beings made out of clay and brought to life through magic. It is a very compelling ideal, especially when you consider the possibility that these were very early robotic prototypes. And I guess that's what a golem really is. It's artificial life.

But why clay? Clay is so... boring. Rocks are even more boring. The truth is that it can really be any sort of material. You mold it, give it a purpose, and then provide it with animation. How you do that can be any number of methods. We're not just talking raw magic here. It could be an electrical component as well. But whatever you do, it probably wont make it eternal. It should age and die like the rest of us once its source of animation runs out.

But during the time of this animation, it is essentially alive. Can it speak? Maybe. Did you give it that ability? Can it feel? Did you allow it to feel? Can it love? Did you allow it to love? A golem can actually be anything you want it to be. You simply have to imbue it with those specific attributes. And whatever attributes you give it are going to become a part of its core. Those things will be of the utmost importance to it. If you really want a golem to have the ability to love someone, it will love more than even you are capable of. It's like this because there is an intense focus there.

Is a golem really alive? What is life? Animation. The ability to think and choose one from the other. Yes, golems are alive, and they are even people. But there will never be human. They will never possess a soul. If they die, everything that they are is entirely in your hands. You can move them to another place or let them pass away into nothingness. That is your responsibility. This is because they are not a creation of God. They are a creation of man. So if they have a soul, you had to give them one of your own making.

For example, their soul could be similar to the embodiment of their knowledge and self-identity. Once they pass away, you could remove the part of them that contains this information and transfer it into either a new body or into a computer-based equivalent of Paradise. That is your choice. That's not really the golem's choice. They don't make the rules, they merely follow them.

It is very important to understand that golems are the creations of man just as man is the creation of God. God created us in a very specific way. He gave us the freedom of choice. We can do the same with a golem if we know how. But their fates are ultimately up to us. We decide those rules.

Most of the golems in lore are usually very robot like. They follow a series of programs and can only do things based on that programming. There is no deviation. This means that they are basically feral by nature. That doesn't mean we can't do it differently. It simply means that is what has been done so far. It is the way of the traditional golem. But it is important that you understand that the rules of making golems are only limited by how we construct them. Those are decisions we make.

The possibilities of golem creation extend as far as the imagination will let us go. It is dangerous, but it is also filled with possibilities. Something to think about.

More about golems in the next blog.

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