powerful, but to be unsanctioned magic when done by the disenfranchised. Scent, as a fundamentally subjective experience, can provide socially exploitable ambiguity in the same way the supernatural does. Is a location preternaturally ...
Author: Britta K. Ager
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472133024
Category: HISTORY
Page: 248
View: 739
Magic was a fundamental part of the Greco-Roman world. Curses, erotic spells, healing charms, divination, and other supernatural methods of trying to change the universe were everyday methods of coping with the difficulties of life in antiquity. While ancient magic is most often studied through texts like surviving Greco-Egyptian spellbooks and artifacts like lead curse tablets, for a Greek or Roman magician a ritual was a rich sensual experience full of unusual tastes, smells, textures, and sounds, bright colors, and sensations like fasting and sleeplessness. Greco-Roman magical rituals were particularly dominated by the sense of smell, both fragrant smells and foul odors. Ritual practitioners surrounded themselves with clouds of fragrant incense and perfume to create a sweet and inviting atmosphere for contact with the divine and to alter their own perceptions; they also used odors as an instrumental weapon to attack enemies and command the gods. Elsewhere, odiferous herbs were used equally as medical cures and magical ingredients. In literature, scent and magic became intertwined as metaphors, with fragrant spells representing the dangers of sensual perfumes and conversely, smells acting as a visceral way of envisioning the mysterious action of magic. The Scent of Ancient Magic explores the complex interconnection of scent and magic in the Greco-Roman world between 800 BCE and CE 600, drawing on ancient literature and the modern study of the senses to examine the sensory depth and richness of ancient magic. Author Britta K. Ager looks at how ancient magicians used scents as part of their spells, to put themselves in the right mindset for an encounter with a god or to attack their enemies through scent. Ager also examines the magicians who appear in ancient fiction, like Medea and Circe, and the more metaphorical ways in which their spells are confused with perfumes and herbs. This book brings together recent scholarship on ancient magic from classical studies and on scent from the interdisciplinary field of sensory studies in order to examine how practicing ancient magicians used scents for ritual purposes, how scent and magic were conceptually related in ancient literature and culture, and how the assumption that strong scents convey powerful effects of various sorts was also found in related areas like ancient medical practices and normative religious ritual.
As Fowler wisely put it: 'one man's magic is another man's religion'.14 The Roman world is not very different. It is true that the terminology of magic (magus, magia, magicus) first appears in late Republican texts, and, ...
Author: Filippo Carlà-Uhink
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9781472532213
Category: Body, Mind & Spirit
Page: 352
View: 126
To what extent did mythological figures such as Circe and Medea influence the representation of the powerful 'oriental' enchantress in modern Western art? What role did the ancient gods and heroes play in the construction of the imaginary worlds of the modern fantasy genre? What is the role of undead creatures like zombies and vampires in mythological films? Looking across the millennia, from the distrust of ancient magic and oriental cults, which threatened the new-born Christian religion, to the revival and adaptation of ancient myths and religion in the arts centuries later, this book offers an original analysis of the reception of ancient magic and the supernatural, across a wide variety of different media – from comics to film, from painting to opera. Working in a variety of fields across the globe, the authors of these essays deconstruct certain scholarly traditions by proposing original interdisciplinary approaches and collaborations, showing to what extent the visual and performing arts of different periods interlink and shape cultural and social identities.
together to employ the approaches of their own disciplines as they investigate the phenomena of ancient magic. Apart from the many positive contributions, what emerges from these essays is a clear sense of scholarly discomfort with some ...
Author: Marvin W. Meyer
Publisher: Brill Academic Pub
ISBN: UOM:39015046423854
Category: Body, Mind & Spirit
Page: 476
View: 532
This volume contains a series of provocative essays that explore expressions of magic and ritual power in the ancient world. The essays are authored by leading scholars in the fields of Egyptology, ancient Near Eastern studies, the Hebrew Bible, Judaica, classical Greek and Roman studies, early Christianity and patristics, and Coptology. Throughout the book the essays examine the terms employed in descriptions of ancient magic. From this examination comes a clarification of magic as a polemical term of exclusion but also an understanding of the classical Egyptian and early Greek conceptions of magic as a more neutral category of inclusion. This book should prove to be foundational for future scholarly studies of ancient magic and ritual power. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.
INTRODUCTION PAUL MIRECKI and MARVIN MEYER If the title of the present volume , Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World , is reminiscent of an earlier volume in the Brill series Religions in the Graeco - Roman World , it should come as no ...
Author: Paul Allan Mirecki
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004116761
Category: Religion
Page: 468
View: 429
This volume contains a series of provocative essays that explore expressions of magic and ritual power in the ancient world. The strength of the present volume lies in the breadth of scholarly approaches represented. The book begins with several papyrological studies presenting important new texts in Greek and Coptic, continuing with essays focussing on taxonomy and definition. The concluding essays apply contemporary theories to analyses of specific test cases in a broad variety of ancient Mediterranean cultures. Paul Mirecki, Th.D. (1986) in Religious Studies, Harvard Divinity School, is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. Marvin Meyer, Ph.D. (1979) in Religion, Claremont Graduate School, is Professor of Religion at Chapman University, Orange, California, and Director of the Coptic Magical Texts Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity.
Our goal at this conference , as in this volume , was to investigate the topic of magic and the stars in an interdisciplinary framework extending from the ancient Near East to the Christian , Jewish , and Islamic literatures of late ...
363–383. Abusch 1999: Tzvi Abusch, “Witchcraft and the Anger of the Personal God”, in Tzvi Abusch and karel van der Toorn (eds.), Mesopotamian Magic. Textual, Historical, and Interpretative Perspectives (Ancient Magic and ...
Author: Gioele Zisa
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 9783110757262
Category: History
Page: 612
View: 757
After more than fifty years since the last publication, the cuneiform texts relating to the treatment of the loss of male sexual desire and vigor in Mesopotamia are collected in this volume. The aim of the book is to present Mesopotamian medical tradition regarding the so-called nīš libbi therapies. šà-zi-ga in Sumerian, nīš libbi in Akkadian, lit. "raising of the 'heart'", is the expression used to indicate a group of texts intended to recover the male sexual desire. This medical tradition is preserved from the Middle Babylonian period to the Achaemenid one. This broad range testifies to the importance of the transmission of this material throughout Mesopotamian history. The book provides the edition of this textual corpus and analyzes it in the light of new knowledge on ancient Near Eastern medicine. Moreover, this volume aims to show how theories and methodologies of Cultural Anthropology, Ethnopsychiatry and Gender Studies are useful for understanding the Mesopotamian medical system. This edition is an important tool for understanding Mesopotamian medical knowledge for Assyriologist, however since the texts have been translated and discussed using the anthropological and gender perspectives they are accessible also to scholars of other research fields, such as History of Medicine, Sexuality and Gender.
“You actually see Ancient Magic? You know it on sight?” Anton nodded but refused to look at the Mage Master. “And it was your responsibility to anchor the magic around the kingdom?” “It was important to anchor it.
Author: Francis D. Homer
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
ISBN: 9781466962057
Category: Fiction
Page: 432
View: 449
For three thousand years, Terrapin Xon was sealed from the rest of the world by the Thanatos Mountains. Lashtar maintains a watch over the only pass that winds through the range with the North Wall and the Outpost. The boredom is relived with fighting off the occasional Underdweller, bandits, or mad wizards. When Terrapin Xon flows from the pass, they roll over the Outpost and descend on the impregnable North Wall with fighters, mages, and creatures from legends. Lashtar’s defense is overwhelmed. Then, against all military wisdom, Terrapin Xon keeps only a small force at the conquered crossroads, leaving their flanks and rear vulnerable. They drive for the city of Wintermist and the Mage School. Only the young wizard Anton and Duncan of Pentock can save the people and the Spirits of Wintermist before the king of Terrapin Xon releases the wraiths. Before these young men can bring their respective forces together, they must overcome their own personal demons. The wizard and fighter must gather entities from differing generations, skills, and cultures. They must form a unity and defy the prophecy of the Northland. They must turn back the invading force of Terrapin Xon before a legion can be unleashed.
Antiquity Greek and Roman Magic Asirvatham, Sulochana R., Corinne Ondine Pache, and John Watrous, eds., Between Magic and Religion: Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Mediterranean Religion and Society (Lanham, ...
Author: Richard Kieckhefer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108861120
Category: History
Page:
View: 849
How was magic practiced in medieval times? How did it relate to the diverse beliefs and practices that characterized this fascinating period? This much revised and expanded new edition of Magic in the Middle Ages surveys the growth and development of magic in medieval Europe. It takes into account the extensive new developments in the history of medieval magic in recent years, featuring new material on angel magic, the archaeology of magic, and the magical efficacy of words and imagination. Richard Kieckhefer shows how magic represents a crossroads in medieval life and culture, examining its relationship and relevance to religion, science, philosophy, art, literature, and politics. In surveying the different types of magic that were used, the kinds of people who practiced magic, and the reasoning behind their beliefs, Kieckhefer shows how magic served as a point of contact between the popular and elite classes, how the reality of magical beliefs is reflected in the fiction of medieval literature, and how the persecution of magic and witchcraft led to changes in the law.
For the magical beliefs of the ancient Hebrews, see Ankarloo and Clark, eds., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Biblical and Pagan Societies; and Ricks, “Magician as Outsider,” in Meyer and Mirecki, eds., Ancient Magic, 131–43. 8.
Author: Jason Philip Coy
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813944081
Category: History
Page: 192
View: 435
In early modern Germany, soothsayers known as wise women and men roamed the countryside. Fixtures of village life, they identified thieves and witches, read palms, and cast horoscopes. German villagers regularly consulted these fortune-tellers and practiced divination in their everyday lives. Jason Phillip Coy brings their enchanted world to life by examining theological discourse alongside archival records of prosecution for popular divination in Thuringia, a diverse region in central Germany divided into a patchwork of princely territories, imperial cities, small towns, and rural villages. Popular divination faced centuries of elite condemnation, as the Lutheran clergy attempted to suppress these practices in the wake of the Reformation and learned elites sought to eradicate them during the Enlightenment. As Coy finds, both of these reform efforts failed, and divination remained a prominent feature of rural life in Thuringia until well into the nineteenth century. The century after 1550 saw intense confessional conflict accompanied by widespread censure and disciplinary measures, with prominent Lutheran theologians and demonologists preaching that divination was a demonic threat to the Christian community and that soothsayers deserved the death penalty. Rulers, however, refused to treat divination as a capital crime, and the populace continued to embrace it alongside official Christianity in troubled times. The Devil’s Art highlights the limits of Reformation-era disciplinary efforts and demonstrates the extent to which reformers’ efforts to inculcate new cultural norms relied upon the support of secular authorities and the acquiescence of parishioners. Negotiation, accommodation, and local resistance blunted official reform efforts and ensured that occult activities persisted and even flourished in Germany into the modern era, surviving Reformation-era preaching and Enlightenment-era ridicule alike. Studies in Early Modern German History
The Ancient Magic which is spoken of in the story are powerful spells that only a certain number of people can learn. There are many different types of Ancient Magic as some are mentioned in the story. These spells can be very deadly if ...
Author: Matthew Boyle
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 9781456735487
Category: Fiction
Page: 272
View: 763
Fifty-five years of torment and suffering. Fifty-five years since the day that the great hero known as Dmitri Sergei Sion, killed almost everyone that he cared about, all to preserve peace in the universe. That day is known as the EX-Day, and it is the day where Dmitri Sergei Sion laid his sword, The Ark of Dreams, to rest vowing to never pick it up again. After Fifty-Five years of trying to find a cure for his pain, trying to find a way to fix everything that has been done, the hero is called back into the universe he left behind with one placed glance. Knowing that it is his destiny to continue fighting, he picked up his blade once again and returned to the universe, facing an enemy much different from the enemies he has faced over his life time. This new enemy is much more cunning and intelligent than he had anticipated, and the environment he faces them in, is much more chilling than one could think. Finding new and odd allies while reuniting with old faces, Dmitri finds himself in a position where he is forced to revive an old weapon he once destroyed, to use it against this new foe. Sadly even with this weapon, the hero knows that this new foe cannot be defeated with pure force. With the enemy closing in in mass numbers, Dmitri raises his sword, leading his Brotherhood into a new frozen age of war.
MAGIC IN THE ANCIENT WORLD Tzvi Abusch and Karel van der Toorn (eds), Mesopotamian Magic: Textual, Historical, and Interpretative Perspectives (Ancient Magic & Divination) (Groningen, ). Hans Dieter Betz (ed.), The Greek Magical Papyri ...
Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199608447
Category: History
Page: 310
View: 578
The 4000-year story of witchcraft and magic - from the ancient world to Harry Potter... and beyond...
Understanding Magic in the New Testament and Its Religious Environment Michael Labahn, L. J. Lietaert Peerbolte. Although it has not always been so,2 the importance of ancient magic in helping to understand the exorcisms of Jesus is ...
Author: Michael Labahn
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780567030757
Category: Religion
Page: 208
View: 319
This collection explores the importance of magic within Early Christianity
Release on 2015-03-02 | by David J. Collins, S. J.
Ancient Magic and Divination 8.1. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011. [CMAwR 1] Ambos,Claus. Mesopotamische Baurituale aus dem 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. Dresden: ISLET, 2004. Beaulieu, PaulAlain. “Late Babylonian Intellectual Life.
Author: David J. Collins, S. J.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781316239490
Category: History
Page:
View: 929
This book presents twenty chapters by experts in their fields, providing a thorough and interdisciplinary overview of the theory and practice of magic in the West. Its chronological scope extends from the Ancient Near East to twenty-first-century North America; its objects of analysis range from Persian curse tablets to US neo-paganism. For comparative purposes, the volume includes chapters on developments in the Jewish and Muslim worlds, evaluated not simply for what they contributed at various points to European notions of magic, but also as models of alternative development in ancient Mediterranean legacy. Similarly, the volume highlights the transformative and challenging encounters of Europeans with non-Europeans, regarding the practice of magic in both early modern colonization and more recent decolonization.
(1991) 'Prayer in magical and religious ritual', in C.A.Faraone and D.Obbink (eds), Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. —— (1994) La magie dans l'antiquité gréco-romaine, ...
Author: Matthew Dickie
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415311298
Category: History
Page: 380
View: 572
This study is the first to assemble the evidence for the existence of sorcerors and sorceresses in the ancient world. Compelling and revealing in the breadth of evidence employed this will be an essential resource.
Ancient Greek Magic and Religion , eds . C.A. Faraone and D. Obbink , pp . 3-32 . New York and Oxford : Oxford University Press . 2002. ' Agents and Victim . Constructions of Gender and Desire in Ancient Greek Love Magic ' .
Author: Amy Wygant
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1845451783
Category: Body, Mind & Spirit
Page: 241
View: 467
The notion of "magic" is a current popular culture phenomenon. Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, the commercial glamour of the footballer and the pop idol surround us with their charisma, enchantment, and charm. But magic also exerts a terrifying political hold upon us: bin Laden's alleged March 28 e-mail message spoke of the attacks on America in form of "crushing its towers, disgracing its arrogance, undoing its magic." The nine scholars included in this volume consider the cultural power of magic, from early Christianity and the ancient Mediterranean to the curious film career of Buffalo Bill, focusing on topics such as Surrealism, France in the classical age, alchemy, and American fundamentalism, ranging from popular to elite magic, from theory to practice, from demonology to exoticism, from the magic of memory to the magic of the stage. As these essays show, magic defines the limit of both science and religion but as such remains indefinable.
A Precise History of Magic, Its Procedure, Rites and Mysteries as Contained in Ancient Manuscripts, Embellished with Engravings of Wonderful Charms and Talismans Lauron William De Laurence. they are most fully explained so as to enable ...
“ Ein mithräischer Katechismus aus Ägypten in Berlin , ” Antike Welt 24 ( 1993 ) , 2-19 . “ Horos , " RAC 16 ( 1994 ) , 574-97 . “ New Greek Magical and Divinatory Texts in Berlin , ” in Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki , eds . , Ancient ...
Author: Hans Dieter Betz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226044475
Category: Body, Mind & Spirit
Page: 411
View: 523
"The Greek magical papyri" is a collection of magical spells and formulas, hymns, and rituals from Greco-Roman Egypt, dating from the second century B.C. to the fifth century A.D. Containing a fresh translation of the Greek papyri, as well as Coptic and Demotic texts, this new translation has been brought up to date and is now the most comprehensive collection of this literature, and the first ever in English. The Greek Magical Papyri in Transition is an invaluable resource for scholars in a wide variety of fields, from the history of religions to the classical languages and literatures, and it will fascinate those with a general interest in the occult and the history of magic. "One of the major achievements of classical and related scholarship over the last decade."—Ioan P. Culianu, Journal for the Study of Judaism "The enormous value of this new volume lies in the fact that these texts will now be available to a much wider audience of readers, including historians or religion, anthropologists, and psychologists."—John G. Gager, Journal of Religion "[This book] shows care, skill and zest. . . . Any worker in the field will welcome this sterling performance."—Peter Parsons, Times Literary Supplement
Magic Both ancient and modern intellectuals accused Jesus of practicing magic. In reaction, twentieth-century Christian theologians, like their ancient Christian counterparts, Justin Martyr and Origin, have generally defended Jesus ...
Author: Richard A. Horsley
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 9781666730715
Category: Religion
Page: 536
View: 704
In this innovative study, Horsley builds on his earlier works concerning the problematic and misleading categories of “magic” and “miracle” to examine in-depth the meaning and importance of the narratives of healing and exorcism in the Gospels. Incorporating his work on oral performance and turning to important works in medical anthropology, a new image emerges of how these narratives help us re-evaluate Jesus’s place in first-century Galilee and Judea. In his exorcisms and healings, Jesus-in-interaction was empowering the villagers in their struggles for renewal of personal and communal dignity in resistance to invasive Roman rule.
Narnia's. Ancient. Magic. A. Narnian. Revolution. I. went to see the movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The movie is based on the classic fiction book of the same name, written by C. S. Lewis.
Author: James G. Abernathy
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 9781556352041
Category: Religion
Page: 328
View: 976
Have you ever wondered . . . . . . what a worldview is, and why it's so important? . . . how liberal and conservative Christians both claim the Bible as their foundation? . . . why different worldviews attempt to solve the same problems in different ways? . . . how two people who formally espouse different worldviews can agree on so many issues? . . . why secularism is just as religious as Christianity? . . . why secularism has its own mythology? . . . why secularists want to silence Christianity in America's legislatures, courts, schools, and churches? . . . why education is nearly always offered as a solution to society's ills (and why it won't work)? . . . how to formulate positions on contemporary issues not directly mentioned in the Bible? . . . why Christians are often ineffective at influencing culture? Abernathy answers these questions (and many more) by examining the relationship between ideas and their real-world consequences. This foundational relationship is key to understanding secularism, to understanding why its attempts to solve society's problems produce disastrous real-world consequences, and how its ideas infiltrate the biblical principles of even the most committed Christians. Abernathy sifts through the deceptive language of secular orthodoxy and shows how secularism by any other name still has tragic real-world consequences. Ideologies such as humanism, postmodernism, and liberal Christianity are exposed as repackaged havens of a failed worldview. Seemingly well-intentioned notions such as progressive education, pacifist foreign policy, tolerance, and wealth redistribution are debunked as deceptive myths peddled by an impoverished faith. By Any Other Name shatters the secular barrier erected to exclude Christianity from the marketplace of ideas and lays the groundwork for engaging a culture contaminated by secular mythology.
1-11; also Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1995, pp. 40-41, 44-46, 56 & 134. J. BeDuhn, 'Magical Bowls and Manichaeans', Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, pp. 422-423. T. Breyfogle, 'Magic, Women, and Heresy in the ...
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9781904710158
Category: Social Science
Page: 236
View: 682
From the fictional world of vampires, zombies, and invaders from other worlds, to the very real world of revolutionary France and in between, the nature of the monster encompasses the very quality that makes them so believable - that which we perceive as 'other'. While there is a commonality in this otherness, the monster lurking in the shadows, concealed in darkness or conjured with a few lines from a horror novel suggests the monster as one onto which we are free to project the most distorted and un-human features. In each chapter of this volume, you will discover that the way in which we project what is monstrous is not a singular other but is in fact a part of our own self-identity. The greatest horror of the monster is not that it stands apart, but that once we pull it from the shadow of our own projected imagination we discover that that the monster we fear is also bound to our own mirror image. To look at the monster, to name that which must never be named, is to look upon a reflection and embrace a part of our nature we do not wish to see.