“Everything that is of the spirit has to be turned into flesh”

Abstract Materialism is the defining feature of Jacob Frank’s theology, discussed in chapter 3. Our world is entirely physical, populated by beings with magical powers, and is created not by God but by three flawed and evil demigods. Like contemporaneous forms of Western esotericism, Frank rereads Biblical text in material-magical terms, transforming Shaddai, normally a name for God, into a powerful, magical being, and regarding the Temple (and Częstochowa) as a quasi-technological power place. Yet our world is but one one-thousandth of the universe: behind a “curtain” lies a hidden, good, blessed world inhabited by immortal beings, chiefly the Big Brother, a kind of demigod in possession of the secrets of immortality. This theology is exemplified in Frank’s rereading of the biblical story of Jacob, who sought and sometimes obtained magical objects but ultimately was too afraid to complete his mission—which Jacob Frank will now do. And it is reflected in numerous tales of magical beings and power.