Dungeons, Dragons and Halacha

In an earlier entry I discussed whether under halachah (Orthodox Jewish law) it would be acceptable to make a horcrux or become a lich if either were possible in real life. That entry was largely an excuse for bad wordplay related to the word "phylactery" which has a variety of meanings. A phylactery is in the most general sense an object which contains someting of religious or ritual significance. In the most common context, the word is used in the plural- "phylacteries" as an English translation of tefilin, the small boxes worn by some Jews at morning prayers. Another use of term is in Dungeons and Dragons, where the term is used to describe the object that a lich, a type of undead wizard, uses to store their soul.

However, I recently came across yet another meaning of this term in a Dungeons and Dragons context. There is a spell, described in the D&D book "Player's Guide to Faerun" called "Spell Phylactery" which allows one to store a spell on a scroll which "must be bound to your arm or forehead (usually rolled tightly or placed in a small box for this purpose)". This form seems more directly inspired by the phylacteries of the Jewish tradition. Unfortunately, even if D&D magic were real, it would not be halachically acceptable to make a three-way phylactery since the Spell Phylactery spell can only be cast by a worshipper of the goddess Mystra, which would be not allowed under halacha. Too bad. I really wanted phylacteries that functioned as both a phylactery and as a spell phylactery.

Two New Jack Chick Tracts

Jack Chick has recently added to his website, not one, but two new tracts: "Evil Eyes" and "It's a Deal."

Jack Chick is a best-selling evangelical tract writer and conspiracy theorist. His tracts encourage people to accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior. This by itself would not be cause for note. However, Chick is refreshingly explicit in articulating and endorsing the more ridiculous elements of extreme evangelical beliefs. Multiple tracts revolve around good individuals being damned because they died before they accepted Jesus as their personal lord and savior while bad individuals are saved at the last minute since they accepted Jesus before they died. Multiple tracts state explicitly "It isn't a question of good or bad. It is a question of saved or lost." If one tried to write a parody of the evangelical conception of God and tried to accent its wretched, cruel and capricious nature, one would have trouble constructing a deity that looked more cruel and evil than that in Jack Chick's mind.

Like many extremists, Chick feels a need to make his argument primarily by attacking groups he dislikes. Thus, he has tracts about how all sorts of people are going to hell: Jews, Catholics, atheists, Mormons, Muslims, Catholics, Dungeons and Dragons players, Wiccans, Catholics, Protestants who think that good works help for salvation, evolutionists, and Catholics. Did I mention he really doesn't like Catholics?

In the past, his anti-Catholicism has generally been highly conspiratorial, claiming among other things that the Catholic Church secretly founded Islam as a way to control the Arab world. Apparently all of the historical conflicts between Christendom and Islam were really just to prevent us from realizing the truth. Or something like that. He also thinks that the Catholic Church founded liberation theology to help control the communists. As with Islam, the fact that the Church has generally been unfriendly to liberation theology is obviously just more evidence for the conspiracy (although honestly in this case, I suspect that he simply heard the term "liberation theology" at one point and jumped from there).

However, one of the new tracts, Evil Eyes, takes a new angle on his anti-Catholicism. In the past, he has portrayed the low level personnel in the Church such as most priests as simple pawns in the larger conspiracy. In this tract however, the Catholic priest in it publicly doubles as a priest of Santeria. Now, one important thing about Jack Chick is that he believes that every deity of every other religion is really an actual demonic entity. Thus, in this tract, an individual uses a voodoo curse on a man to turn him into a zombie. The local Catholic priest, who is also a Santero, tries all he can but is powerless. However, the day is saved when the young born-again cousin uses the true word of God to expel the demon that is the cause of the curse. At the end, the priest gives up both Catholicism and Santeria to become a true born again Christian. One of the most fascinating details in this tract is that not only does Chick think that it is perfectly natural for a Catholic priest to also practice Santeria, but he considers it natural that the priest would do so as part of an accepted community practice. Chick sees everyone else's religions as part of one large blur and assume that the practitioners themselves also see them that way. This is not unique to Chick but is also true for other evangelicals such as the writers of the Left Behind series.

The second tract involves Satan making a deal with a basketball player to have his soul in exchange for letting the player play really well. This tract is part of a running series of tracts that Chick is producing now which are particularly aimed at African-Americans and hence have all African-American characters and stereotypical black plotlines. I'm not sure what Chick is thinking given that African-Americans have one of the highest percentages of evangelicals of any racial group. In any event, as with most Chick tracts involving contracts with the Devil, the protagonist realizes that he's in deep trouble and accepts Jesus as his lord and savior, thus nullifying the contract. The point is then made that the Devil doesn't need a contract to get your soul. This leads to a question: More often than not in Chick tracts, people end up in hell. Furthermore, even people who know about the Devil and God often wind up in hell; in at least some cases people wind up in hell even after seeing the Devil first hand. Therefore, why does the Devil bother to make contracts with people? Indeed, it seems in the Chickverse that making a contract with the devil is a sure sign that you'll eventually realize that you really need Jesus. So if the Devil is trying to collect as many souls as he wants, he shouldn't be trying to make contracts at all.

The only thing more striking than the cruelty of Chick's God is the incompetence of Chick's Devil.

There's a fascinating element to Chick tracts. Aside from the interesting view into a warped mind whose views are shared by a disturbingly large number of people, one learns all sorts of tidbits that one wouldn't learn otherwise. For example, according to the Dark Dungeons tract, not only is Dungeons and Dragons a way to lure children into the occult but if your character advances to at least eighth level , then you will start to learn real spells. Obviously, I was never patient enough. I'm am however curious. D&D 4.0 recently came out. The power level of magic in the game is substantially reduced from that of 3rd edition. Does this mean one has to get to a higher level before one learns real magic? If so, this seems like yet another reason to not play 4th edition.

Horcruxes and Halacha

One of the most iconic creatures in Dungeons and Dragons is the lich. The lich is a powerful mage who has transformed himself into an undead creature and placed his soul or life-force into a small object called a phylactery. Until the object is destroyed, the lich cannot die; if his physical body is destroyed, he simply forms a new body later. D&D is not the only setting with creatures like this. Variants exist in old mythologies as well as appearing in various fantasy books. For example, in Loyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, an evil wizard breaks off one of his fingers and imbues his soul into it and so cannot be killed until the finger bone is broke. Another recent example is a primary plot element in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. In those books, evil wizards can make an object called a horcrux by killing someone and then splitting one’s own soul and storing fragment of the soul in the horcrux. This post will examine the ramifications of becoming a lich or of creating a horcrux under halacha(the system of laws kept by Orthodox Jews).

Assuming that magic as described in D&D existed for real, can one halachically become a lich? First, we must ask can one become a wizard or sorcerer? The quick and superficial answer is no since the Torah specifically forbids magic use. However, closer inspection reveals that the answer is not so clear.

Maimonides argued that the Torah actually forbids trickery where one claims to be doing magic. To Maimonides, “magic” in any meaningful sense doesn’t exist. So the abilities of a D&D style wizard would be simply talents that are difficult to explain. Thus, becoming a wizard would be fine as long as one didn’t call them magic except as something like a possible shorthand for a Clarke’s Third Law class of technology . Even if one disagrees with Maimonides and thinks that there is some class of abilities which constitute magic, it still isn’t clear that D&D magic is a problem. Just because we call something magic does not mean that that it was the Torah was referring to when it talked about magic. The standard system of magic used in D&D (not counting 4th edition) uses a so-called Vancian system of magic. In this system, named after science fiction writer Jack Vance, spells must be prepared beforehand and the spells are then stored in the mind. The gestures and arcane words merely release the stored spell. The Vancian system bears little similarity to magic as described in the Torah or Talmud.

Becoming a wizard is probably ok. Assuming one can become a wizard, can one become a lich? This seems much more halachically problematic but a case can be made that the answer is yes. First, in many descriptions, the process to become a lich involves killing others to fuel ones transformation. If one is using such a process, this is obviously not ok. Second, the process seems to involve killing oneself. Killing oneself is not halachically ok. However, we may get away with this if we examine the halachic notion of death. There is a disagreement in the Talmud over how we determine if someone is dead. The two opinions given are whether the person is breathing and whether the person has a heartbeat. However, it isn’t clear if these are descriptive statements or whether they are normative tests of life. For example, the Talmud makes clear that everyone agrees that at decapitation a person is considered dead instantaneously even if the heart and lungs continue to function for a short period of time. If the test (whether breath or heartbeat) are normative descriptions of when someone is alive then one cannot become a lich. Unfortunately, for our prospective frum lich, the opinion that these are normative tests of life and not proxies is not a rare one. If however, heart and lung activity are merely proxies, then it isn’t unreasonable to declare that a lich walking around is halachically alive.

The only remaining issue is that in some editions of D&D, becoming a lich also requires making supplications to dark gods which would be a problem. However, most editions do not have that requirement so for most forms of D&D magic this is not an issue. Thus, one can become a lich.

We can extend this analysis without much effort to the creation of horcruxes. The analysis of J. K. Rowling’s magical system follows through almost identically. However, murdering others to create a horcrux raises halachic problems. But it isn’t clear precisely what constitutes a murder for purposes of a creating a horcrux. If killing someone in any form is sufficient then killing someone during wartime or if carrying out a valid execution would be halachically acceptable routes to creating a horcrux. There’s really no halachic problem with splitting one’s soul. Halacha takes no standpoint on the existence or nature of a soul. Since souls cannot be manipulated by normal means, they are not covered under any halachic rulings. Thus, although the Harry Potter books describe the process of splitting a soul to be profoundly evil, it does not raise any halachic issues. Moreover, since someone with a horcrux is still living (unlike a lich) the entire set of issues about killing oneself can be bypassed. Whether or not halacha allows you to become a lich, it almost certainly allows you to create a horcrux.

Now, astute readers may recall the other definition of the word “phylactery.” The word actually means a small box containing an object of religious or mystical significance. The word is most commonly used in the plural form as a translation for tefillin, the objects traditionally worn by religious Jews in weekday morning prayers. I do own tefillin. This raises an additional question: If I do become a lich, may I use my phylacteries as a phylactery?