Superstition as fear of the gods February 7, 2009
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: events, superstition, traditions, nature, minds, wisdom, Supernatural, practices, spells, magical, rites, antiquity, evil, divine, charms, humanity, superstitious, creations, fear, taboos, consultation, sorcerers, witches, prayers, agents, intervention, herbs, roots, secrets
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In the late antiquity people were certainly extremely superstitious. I am talking not only about simple people but also about the great minds like Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Apuleius and the like, whose creations I had a chance to read in my web analytics company. These writers define superstition as fear of the gods that leads to the need to resort to magical rites and taboos, the consultation of professional sorcerers and witches, charms and spells, and unintelligible language in prayers addressed to the gods. Not just simple people, but even highly educated people of that time took for granted other magical practices, such as hurting someone by the evil eye. They also believed in daemons that serve as agents or links between gods and human beings and are responsible for many supernatural events in human life that are commonly attributed to divine intervention. Some daemons are good, some are evil, but even the good ones, in moments of anger, can do harmful acts.
It seems that great mind of that time were also convinced of the powers of certain herbs or roots as revealed to humanity by the gods. They argued that the divine powers in their concern for the welfare of humanity wish for humanity to discover the secrets of nature. For example, in their wisdom the gods sought to bring humans gradually closer to their status; which certainly many magical traditions seek.
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Apollonius of Tyana January 22, 2009
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: antiquity, bestseller, columns, combination, creation, doctrine, fake, figures, heaven, interest, magical, magician, magus, manuscript, memoirs, novel, philosopher, powers, talismans, teacher, traveling
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The third magician of interest in that period of the Roman Empire was Apollonius of Tyana. Between 217 and 238 Flavius Philostratus wrote his Life of Apollonius of Tyana. It was a lengthy novel about magical powers of Apollonius. According to Philostratus, this novel was born out of the memoirs of somebody named Damis, who was a disciple of great magic user Apollonious. He claimed that the memoirs were owned by empress Julia Domna, mother of emperor Caracalla.
In any case Philostratus creation was a literary fake. From the pages of the novel Apollonius emerges as an ascetic traveling teacher. He is usually labeled a new Pythagoras, and he does represent the same combination of philosopher and magus that Pythagoras was. According to Philostratus, Apollonius traveled far and wide, as far as India, teaching ideas reasonably consistent with traditional Pythagorean doctrine. Anyway, this manuscript became a bestseller in Roman empire of Late Antiquity. Apollonius was so popular that talismans allegedly made by Apollonius appeared in several Greek cities of the Eastern Roman Empire, as if they were sent from heaven. Some magical figures and columns dedicated to him were also erected in public places to protect the cities from plagues and evil.
Famous mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras December 22, 2008
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: ancient, animals, appearance, contradictory, control, documents, examples, fact, famous, figure, interpretation, magical, mathematician, messenger, philosopher, powers, traditions
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Magical powers were also attributed to the famous mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, as recorded in the days of Aristotle. The traditions concerning Pythagoras are somewhat complicated due to the fact that the number of survived documents are often contradictory in their interpretation of the figure of Pythagoras.
Some of the magical acts attributed to him included being seen at the same hour in two cities. Or a white eagle permitting him to stroke it. A river greeting him with the words “Hail, Pythagoras!” Ancient Greeks also claimed that he could predict, that a dead man would be found on a ship entering a harbor.
Another examples of magical powers of Pythagoras are even wilder. He predicted the appearance of a white bear and declaring it was dead before the messenger reached him bearing the news. And once he bit a poisonous snake to death. These stories hint that Pythagoras was a divine man, and had ability to control animals and to transcend space and time.
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The encounter of Odysseus with the Titan Circe November 4, 2008
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: act, ancient, beautiful, books, companions, components, control, culture, dangerous, definition, description, distance, divine, fact, figure, form, greek, herb, history, island, literature, magical, operation, practice, secret, secretive, story, wand, woman
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As a web analyst, who completed many types of research on ancient history, I think that the earliest description of a magical operation in Greek literature was on The Odyssey. This is one of my favorite books. In the Odyssey we meet a definition of magic as a practice aimed at trying to locate and control the secret forces of the world. The Odyssey describes the encounter of Odysseus with the Titan Circe. In the story Circe’s magic consists in the use of a wand against Odysseus and his men while Odysseus’ magic consists of the use of a secret herb called moly to defend himself from her attack. All three necessary components are present: the magic wand, the use of a magical herb and Hermes, the divine figure that reveals the secret of the magical act.
In the story Circe is presented as being in the form of a beautiful woman when Odysseus meets her on an island. In this encounter Circe uses her wand to change Odysseus’ companions into swine. This suggests that magic is often associated with practices that go against the natural order, or against wise and good forces. Circe too is representative of a power that had been conquered by Zeus, Poseidon and Hades.
Furthermore she had been banished to the island after having murdered her husband. She is thus quite dangerous: secretive, opposed to the gods, a semi-divine power left over from the older god culture of the Titans. However the internal fact that Odysseus has first to visit her before she becomes a threat suggests that she has a relatively harmless power if one keeps to a distance.
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Horrors and powers of witchcraft November 4, 2008
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: audience, claims, concept, constellation, controlling, cosmos, destruction, future, hating, horrors, influencing, knowledge, magic, magical, power, practices, spells, texts, version, witch, witchcraft, works
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In Seneca’s version Medea’s power of hating, which she can switch on and intensify at will is still the dominant theme, but Medea is now given a full cupboard of horrors from which to select the most efficient means of magical destruction. Her magic can even, apparently affect the cosmos, as she claims that she can force down the constellation of the Snake.
Seneca’s nephew Lucan in his work surpassed his uncle in portraying the horrors and powers of witchcraft. In his play, just before the decisive battle of Pharsalus, in which Julius Caesar defeats the forces of Pompey, the two armies are moving through Thessaly, the country of witchcraft in Lucan’s work. Here one of Pompey’s sons consults a famous witch called Erictho about the outcome of the future battle. Erictho is the most powerful of witches, and because she is so powerful she is presented as being quite loathsome and disgusting. Such are her powers that she can even compel some of the lesser gods to serve her and even cause them to shudder at her spells. As exaggerated as these plays are they demonstrate knowledge of magical practices found in the Greek magical texts. These works also shows that Roman audience must have easily understood the concept of magic in a negative sense but also in the sense of being a practice aimed at influencing or controlling the forces of the cosmos, even the gods themselves.
Traveling hero meets a beautiful female November 4, 2008
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: ancient, ceremony, complex, conflict, dangerous, dealing, epic, hate, hero, literature, love, magic, magical, myths, poet, powers, pyre, ritual, roman, sacrifice, underworlds, wishes
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Much of ancient Roman literature dealing with magic are, basically, retellings of Greek myths. Roman poet Virgils’s Aeneid for example describes an interestng magical ceremony. The hero of the epic, Aeneas, who has landed on the coast of North Africa after fleeing from Troy, meets Queen Dido. She has just begun to build the city of Carthage. Dido falls in love with Aeneas, and wishes him to stay as her prince consort. The rest of what happens is easy to imagine. As usual, a traveling hero meets a beautiful female who is potentially dangerous, although kind and hospitable as long as her love for the hero lasts.
Thus the future conflict is set when goddess Fate decrees that Aeneas leave Dido to found a city of his own. Inevitably Dido’s love turns to hate. Enraged queen seeks to use a complex magical ritual to bring her former lover back to her. She builds a gigantic pyre in the main courtyard of her palace and prepares an elaborate sacrifice to the powers of the underworld.
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Direct evidence November 4, 2008
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: affiliations, amulets, ancient, base, bronze, city, conclusion, dish, elements, evidence, forms, formulas, incantations, kit, letters, magic, magical, mixture, nail, papyri, period, permanence, powers, practices, remains, rings, rituals, scientists, spells, stones, Supernatural, symbols, table, testimonies, tools, type, universality
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Thus amulets were actually often a mixture of various formulas from Babylonian, Egyptian, and Greek elements that were worn by those of most affiliations so as to protect against other forms of magic. It is interesting to note that amulets are actually often abbreviated forms of the formulas found in the magical papyri.
Magical tools were thus very common in magical rituals. They were just as important as the spells and incantations that were repeated for each magical ritual. Direct evidence of this – a magician’s kit, probably dating from the third century CE, was discovered in the remains of the ancient city of Pergamon in Asia Minor. The find consisted of a bronze table and base covered with symbols, a dish, a large bronze nail with letters inscribed on its flat sides, two bronze rings, and three black polished stones inscribed with the names of supernatural powers. What emerges then, from this evidence, is the conclusion that a type of permanence and universality of magic had developed in the the Hellenistic period if not earlier. Most scientists agree that although many testimonies about magic are relatively late, the practices they reveal are much older.
Magic acts or rituals October 24, 2008
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: acts, amulets, aspect, battlefield, curse, daemons, efficacy, enemies, enemy, evil, execution, formulas, inhabitants, magical, materials, negativity, papyri, place, power, precious, presence, process, protection, protections, rituals, spells, spirits, stones, symbols, tablets, tomb, various, victim
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In other cases certain spells allow one to send out a daemon or daemons to harm one’s enemies or even to break up someone’s marriage. There seems to be a self-defining negativity to some of the magical rituals being expressed in the papyri. So, for example, love magic can turn into hate magic if the victim does not respond to the love magic.
The same negative aspect to magic is found in various “curse tablets”, left to us from the Greco-Roman world. It was also possible to curse an enemy through a spoken word, either in his presence or behind his back. But due to numbers of curse tablets that have been found it would seem that this type of magic was considered more effective. The process involved writing the victim’s name on a thin sheet of lead along with varying magical formulas or symbols, then burying the tablet in or near a tomb, a place of execution, or a battlefield, to give spirits of the dead power over the victim. Sometimes the curse tablets were even transfixed with various items – such as nails, which were believed to add magical potency.
For most magic acts or rituals there existed counter-magic. it. Amulets were one of the most common protections used in the Greco-Roman world as protection against such fearful things as curses and the evil eye; which were seen as very real by most of its inhabitants. Amulets were often made of cheap materials, but precious stones were believed to have special efficacy. Many discovered thousands of carved gems clearly had a magical rather than an ornamental function. Amulets were a very widespread type of magic, because of the fear of other types of magic such as curses being used against oneself.
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Magical papyri October 24, 2008
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: antiquity, books, concepts, cults, effects, formulas, fraction, gestures, ingredients, interest, literature, magic, magical, manuscripts, mystery, papyri, poetry, points, practitioners, prose, recipes, ritual, rituals, talent, terms, texts
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It seems, that a huge interest in magic was on the rise in the Hellenistic period, especially around 3d century b.c. Piles of texts, both literary and some from actual practitioners, in Greek and in Latin came to us from this time. Truly speaking, a lot of existing magical papyri was written in the first centuries after Christ, but the manuscripts’ concepts, formulas and rituals reflect the earlier Hellenistic period. These magical papyri are no doubt only a fraction of the magical literature available in antiquity. The ascendancy of orthodox Christianity by the 5th century CE had much to do with this. This is reflected by the book of Acts where the Apostle Paul convinces many Ephesians to bring out their magical books and burn them.
The language of the magical texts reflects various levels of literary skill. Generally they are standard Greek, and may well be closer to the spoken language of the time than to poetry or artistic prose left to us in literary texts. Many terms are borrowed from the mystery cults. The texts are often written as we might write a recipe. In other words the magic requires certain ingredients. Of course it is not just as simple as knowing how to put a recipe together. Appropriate gestures, at certain points in the magical ritual, are required to accompany the ingredients, different gestures it would seem produce various effects. A magical ritual done in the right way can guarantee the revealing of dreams and of course the rather useful talent of interpreting them correctly.
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Shamanic contacts with the spirit world October 24, 2008
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: aboriginal, adepts, ancient, communities, contact, development, excitement, formulations, history, human, information, magic, magical, paintings, priests, religions, rites, rituals, sacrifice, shamanic, shamans, sources, spirit, traditions, tribes, world
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Ancient history provides us with a lot of information about magic. Appearing from aboriginal tribes in Australia and Maori tribes in New Zealand to rainforest tribes in South America, bush tribes in Africa and ancient Pagan tribal groups in Europe and the British Isles, some form of shamanic contact with the spirit world seems to be nearly universal in the early development of human communities. I was observing with excitement at the office of my local web analytics company photos of the ancient cave paintings in France and Germany, that were widely speculated to be early magical formulations, intended to produce successful hunts. While going through other sources I could not help noticing, that much of the Babylonian and Egyptian pictorial writing characters appear derived from the same sources.
Although indigenous magical traditions persist to this day, very early on some communities transitioned from nomadic to agricultural civilizations, and with this shift, the development of spiritual life mirrored that of civic life. Just as tribal elders were consolidated and transformed into kings and bureaucrats, so too were shamans and adepts devolved into priests and a priestly caste. This shift is by no means in nomenclature alone. While the shaman’s task was to negotiate between the tribe and the spirit world, on behalf of the tribe, as directed by the collective will of the tribe, the priest’s role was to transfer instructions from the deities to the city-state, on behalf of the deities, as directed by the will of those deities. This shift represents the first major usurpation of power by distancing magic from those participating in that magic. It is at this stage of development that highly elaborate rituals, setting the stage for formal religions, began to emerge, such as the funeral rites of the Egyptians and the sacrifice rituals of the Babylonians, Persians, Aztecs and Mayans.
