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Magick
The history of magick
The history of "magick" isn't a single discovery but an evolution of belief systems and practices that span millennia, from the earliest shamanic rituals in prehistoric societies to complex ritual systems in ancient civilizations, and modern interpretations influenced by figures like Aleister Crowley. Early "discovery" involved a desire to understand and manipulate natural phenomena, with magic often intertwined with religion, medicine, and early forms of science like alchemy. The Western concept of magic took shape in Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman traditions, evolving through the medieval and Renaissance periods and eventually leading to the distinct separation from science with the Scientific Revolution.
Prehistoric and Ancient Beginnings
- Primal Practices:
- Early Civilizations:
Medieval and Renaissance Developments
Modern Eras and the "Magick" Spelling
- Aleister Crowley:
- Modern Occult and Wicca:
- Neopaganism:
The history of magic extends from the earliest literate cultures, who relied on charms, divination and spells to interpret and influence the forces of nature. Even societies without written language left crafted artifacts, cave art and monuments that have been interpreted as having magical purpose. Magic and what would later be called science were often practiced together, with the notable examples of astrology and alchemy, before the Scientific Revolution of the late European Renaissance moved to separate science from magic on the basis of repeatable observation. Despite this loss of prestige, the use of magic has continued both in its traditional role, and among modern occultists who seek to adapt it for a scientific world.
Magic was invoked in many kinds of rituals and medical formulae, and to counteract evil omens. Defensive or legitimate magic in Mesopotamia (asiputu or masmassutu in the Akkadian language) were incantations and ritual practices intended to alter specific realities. The ancient Mesopotamians believed that magic was the only viable defense against demons, ghosts, and evil sorcerers.[1] To defend themselves against the spirits of those they had wronged, they would leave offerings known as kispu in the person's tomb in hope of appeasing them.[2] If that failed, they also sometimes took a figurine of the deceased and buried it in the ground, demanding for the gods to eradicate the spirit, or force it to leave the person alone.[3]
The ancient Mesopotamians also used magic intending to protect themselves from evil sorcerers who might place curses on them.[4] Black magic as a category didn't exist in ancient Mesopotamia, and a person legitimately using magic to defend themselves against illegitimate magic would use exactly the same techniques.[4]The only major difference was that curses were enacted in secret;[4] whereas a defense against sorcery was conducted in the open, in front of an audience if possible.[4] One ritual to punish a sorcerer was known as Maqlû, or "The Burning".[4]The person viewed as being afflicted by witchcraft would create an effigy of the sorcerer and put it on trial at night.[4] Then, once the nature of the sorcerer's crimes had been determined, the person would burn the effigy and thereby break the sorcerer's power over them.[4]
The ancient Mesopotamians also performed magical rituals to purify themselves of sins committed unknowingly.[4] One such ritual was known as the Šurpu, or "Burning",[5] in which the caster of the spell would transfer the guilt for all their misdeeds onto various objects such as a strip of dates, an onion, and a tuft of wool.[5] The person would then burn the objects and thereby purify themself of all sins that they might have unknowingly committed.[5] A whole genre of love spellsexisted.[6] Such spells were believed to cause a person to fall in love with another person, restore love which had faded, or cause a male sexual partner to be able to sustain an erection when he had previously been unable.[6] Other spells were used to reconcile a man with his patron deity or to reconcile a wife with a husband who had been neglecting her.[7]
The ancient Mesopotamians made no distinction between rational science and magic.[8][9][10] When a person became ill, doctors would prescribe both magical formulas to be recited as well as medicinal treatments.[9][10][11] Most magical rituals were intended to be performed by an āšipu, an expert in the magical arts.[9][10][11][12] The profession was generally passed down from generation to generation[11] and was held in extremely high regard and often served as advisors to kings and great leaders.[13] An āšipu probably served not only as a magician, but also as a physician, a priest, a scribe, and a scholar.[13]
The Sumerian god Enki, who was later syncretized with the East Semitic god Ea, was closely associated with magic and incantations;[14] he was the patron god of the bārȗ and the ašipū and was widely regarded as the ultimate source of all arcane knowledge.[15][16][17] The ancient Mesopotamians also believed in omens, which could come when solicited or unsolicited.[18] Regardless of how they came, omens were always taken with the utmost seriousness.[18]
A common set of shared assumptions about the causes of evil and how to avert it are found in a form of early protective magic called incantation bowl or magic bowls. The bowls were produced in the Middle East, particularly in Upper Mesopotamia and Syria), what is now Iraqand Iran, and fairly popular during the sixth to eighth centuries.[19][20] The bowls were buried face down and were meant to capture demons. They were commonly placed under the threshold, courtyards, in the corner of the homes of the recently deceased and in cemeteries.
In ancient Egypt (Kemet in the Egyptian language), Magic (personified as the god heka)) was an integral part of religion and culture which is known to us through a substantial corpus of texts which are products of the Egyptian tradition.[22]
While the category magic has been contentious for modern Egyptology, there is clear support for its applicability from ancient terminology.[23] The Coptic term hik is the descendant of the pharaonic term heka, which, unlike its Coptic counterpart, had no connotation of impiety or illegality, and is attested from the Old Kingdom through to the Roman era.[23] Heka was considered morally neutral and was applied to the practices and beliefs of both foreigners and Egyptians alike.[24] The Instructions for Merikare informs us that heka was a beneficence gifted by the creator to humanity "... in order to be weapons to ward off the blow of events".[25]
Magic was practiced by both the literate priestly hierarchy and by illiterate farmers and herdsmen, and the principle of hekaunderlay all ritual activity, both in the temples and in private settings.[26]
The main principle of heka is centered on the power of words to bring things into being.[27]: 54 Karenga[28] explains the pivotal power of words and their vital ontological role as the primary tool used by the creator to bring the manifest world into being. Because humans were understood to share a divine nature with the gods, snnw ntr (images of the god), the same power to use words creatively that the gods have is shared by humans.
Illustration from the Book of the Dead of Hunefer showing the Opening of the Mouth ceremony being performed before the tomb
The use of amulets, (meket) was widespread among both living and dead ancient Egyptians.[30][27]: 66 They were used for protection and as a means of "...reaffirming the fundamental fairness of the universe".[31] The oldest amulets found are from the predynastic Badarian Period, and they persisted through to Roman times.[32]
Book of the Dead
Main article: Book of the Dead
The Book of the Dead were a series of texts written in Ancient Egypt with various spells to help guide the Egyptians in the afterlife.
The interior walls of the pyramid of Unas, the final pharaoh of the Egyptian Fifth Dynasty, are covered in hundreds of magical spells and inscriptions, running from floor to ceiling in vertical columns.[27]: 54 These inscriptions are known as the Pyramid Texts[27]: 54 and they contain spells needed by the pharaoh in order to survive in the Afterlife.[27]: 54 The Pyramid Texts were strictly for royalty only;[27]: 56 the spells were kept secret from commoners and were written only inside royal tombs.[27]: 56 During the chaos and unrest of the First Intermediate Period, however, tomb robbers broke into the pyramids and saw the magical inscriptions.[27]: 56 Commoners began learning the spells and, by the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, commoners began inscribing similar writings on the sides of their own coffins, hoping that doing so would ensure their own survival in the afterlife.[27]: 56 These writings are known as the Coffin Texts.[27]: 56
After a person died, his or her corpse would be mummified and wrapped in linen bandages to ensure that the deceased's body would survive for as long as possible[33] because the Egyptians believed that a person's soul could only survive in the afterlife for as long as his or her physical body survived here on earth.[33] The last ceremony before a person's body was sealed away inside the tomb was known as the Opening of the Mouth.[33] In this ritual, the priests would touch various magical instruments to various parts of the deceased's body, thereby giving the deceased the ability to see, hear, taste, and smell in the afterlife.[33]
Spells
See also: List of Book of the Dead spells
The mystical Spell 17, from the Papyrus of Ani. The vignette at the top illustrates, from left to right, the god Heh) as a representation of the Sea; a gateway to the realm of Osiris; the Eye of Horus; the celestial cow Mehet-Weret; and a human head rising from a coffin, guarded by the four Sons of Horus.[34]
The Book of the Dead is made up of a number of individual texts and their accompanying illustrations. Most sub-texts begin with the word ro, which can mean "mouth", "speech", "spell", "utterance", "incantation", or "chapter of a book". This ambiguity reflects the similarity in Egyptian thought between ritual speech and magical power.[35] In the context of the Book of the Dead, it is typically translated as either chapter or spell. In this article, the word spell is used.
At present, some 192 spells are known,[36]though no single manuscript contains them all. They served a range of purposes. Some are intended to give the deceased mystical knowledge in the afterlife, or perhaps to identify them with the gods: for instance, Spell 17 is an obscure and lengthy description of the god Atum.[37] Others are incantations to ensure the different elements of the dead person's being were preserved and reunited, and to give the deceased control over the world around him. Still others protect the deceased from various hostile forces or guide him through the underworld past various obstacles. Famously, two spells also deal with the judgement of the deceased in the Weighing of the Heart ritual.
Such spells as 26–30, and sometimes spells 6 and 126, relate to the heart and were inscribed on scarabs.[38]
The texts and images of the Book of the Dead were magical as well as religious. Magic was as legitimate an activity as praying to the gods, even when the magic was aimed at controlling the gods themselves.[39] Indeed, there was little distinction for the Ancient Egyptians between magical and religious practice.[40]The concept of magic (heka) was also intimately linked with the spoken and written word. The act of speaking a ritual formula was an act of creation;[41] there is a sense in which action and speech were one and the same thing.[40] The magical power of words extended to the written word. Hieroglyphic script was held to have been invented by the god Thoth, and the hieroglyphs themselves were powerful. Written words conveyed the full force of a spell.[41] This was even true when the text was abbreviated or omitted, as often occurred in later Book of the Dead scrolls, particularly if the accompanying images were present.[42] The Egyptians also believed that knowing the name of something gave power over it; thus, the Book of the Dead equips its owner with the mystical names of many of the entities he would encounter in the afterlife, giving him power over them.[43]
Egyptian Book of the Dead, painted on a coffin fragment (c. 747–656 BCE): Spell 79 (attaching the soul to the body); and Spell 80 (preventing incoherent speech)
The spells of the Book of the Dead made use of several magical techniques which can also be seen in other areas of Egyptian life. A number of spells are for magical amulets, which would protect the deceased from harm. In addition to being represented on a Book of the Deadpapyrus, these spells appeared on amulets wound into the wrappings of a mummy.[39]Everyday magic made use of amulets in huge numbers. Other items in direct contact with the body in the tomb, such as headrests, were also considered to have amuletic value.[44] A number of spells also refer to Egyptian beliefs about the magical healing power of saliva.[39]
Judea
Halakha (Jewish religious law) forbids divination and other forms of soothsaying, and the Talmud lists many persistent yet condemned divining practices.[45]Practical Kabbalah in historical Judaism, is a branch of the Jewish mystical traditionthat concerns the use of magic. It was considered permitted white magic by its practitioners, reserved for the elite, who could separate its spiritual source from qlipoothic realms of evil if performed under circumstances that were holy (Q-D-Š) and pure (טומאה וטהרה, tvmh vthrh[46]). The concern of overstepping Judaism's strong prohibitions of impure magic ensured it remained a minor tradition in Jewish history. Its teachings include the use of Divine and angelic names for amulets and incantations.[47] These magical practices of Judaic folk religion which became part of practical Kabbalah date from Talmudic times.[47] The Talmud mentions the use of charms for healing, and a wide range of magical cures were sanctioned by rabbis. It was ruled that any practice actually producing a cure was not to be regarded superstitiously and there has been the widespread practice of medicinal amulets, and folk remedies (segullot) in Jewish societies across time and geography.[48]
Jewish law views the practice of witchcraft as being laden with idolatry and/or necromancy; both being serious theological and practical offenses in Judaism. Although Maimonides vigorously denied the efficacy of all methods of witchcraft, and claimed that the Biblical prohibitions regarding it were precisely to wean the Israelites from practices related to idolatry. It is acknowledged that while magic exists, it is forbidden to practice it on the basis that it usually involves the worship of other gods. Rabbis of the Talmud also condemned magic when it produced something other than illusion, giving the example of two men who use magic to pick cucumbers.[49] The one who creates the illusion of picking cucumbers should not be condemned, only the one who actually picks the cucumbers through magic.
Although magic was forbidden by Levitical law in the Hebrew Bible, it was widely practised in the late Second Temple period, and particularly well documented in the period following the destruction of the temple into the third, fourth, and fifth centuries CE.[50][51][52] Some of the rabbis practiced "magic" themselves or taught the subject. For instance, Rava (amora))created a golem and sent it to Rav Zeira, and Hanina and Hoshaiah studied every Friday together and created a small calf to eat on Shabbat.[53] In these cases, the "magic" was seen more as divine miracles (i.e., coming from God rather than "unclean" forces) than as witchcraft.
A subcategory of incantation bowls are those used in Jewish magical practice. Aramaic incantation bowls are an important source of knowledge about Jewish magical practices.[54][55][56][57][58]
Judaism does make it clear that Jews shall not try to learn about the ways of witches[59] and that witches are to be put to death.[60] Judaism's most famous reference to a medium is undoubtedly the Witch of Endor whom Saul consults, as recounted in 1 Samuel 28.
Greco-Roman world
Hecate, the ancient Greek goddess of magic
Main article: Magic in the Greco-Roman world
The English word magic has its origins in ancient Greece.[61] During the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, the Persian maguš was Graecicized and introduced into the ancient Greek language as μάγοςand μαγεία.[62] In doing so it transformed meaning, gaining negative connotations, with the magos being regarded as a charlatan whose ritual practices were fraudulent, strange, unconventional, and dangerous.[62] As noted by Davies, for the ancient Greeks—and subsequently for the ancient Romans—"magic was not distinct from religion but rather an unwelcome, improper expression of it—the religion of the other".[63] The historian Richard Gordon suggested that for the ancient Greeks, being accused of practicing magic was "a form of insult".[64]
This change in meaning was influenced by the military conflicts that the Greek city-states were then engaged in against the Persian Empire.[62] In this context, the term makes appearances in such surviving text as Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Hippocrates' De morbo sacro, and Gorgias' Encomium of Helen.[62] In Sophocles' play, for example, the character Oedipusderogatorily refers to the seer Tiresius as a magos—in this context meaning something akin to quack or charlatan—reflecting how this epithet was no longer reserved only for Persians.[65]
In the first century BCE, the Greek concept of the magos was adopted into Latin and used by a number of ancient Roman writers as magus and magia.[62] The earliest known Latin use of the term was in Virgil's Eclogue, written around 40 BCE, which makes reference to magicis... sacris (magic rites).[66] The Romans already had other terms for the negative use of supernatural powers, such as veneficus and saga.[66]The Roman use of the term was similar to that of the Greeks, but placed greater emphasis on the judicial application of it.[62] Within the Roman Empire, laws would be introduced criminalising things regarded as magic.[67]
In ancient Roman society, magic was associated with societies to the east of the empire; the first century CE writer Pliny the Elder for instance claimed that magic had been created by the Iranian philosopher Zoroaster, and that it had then been brought west into Greece by the magician Osthanes, who accompanied the military campaigns of the Persian King Xerxes.[68]
Ancient Greek scholarship of the 20th century, almost certainly influenced by Christianising preconceptions of the meanings of magic and religion, and the wish to establish Greek culture as the foundation of Western rationality, developed a theory of ancient Greek magic as primitive and insignificant, and thereby essentially separate from Homeric, communal (polis) religion. Since the last decade of the century, however, recognising the ubiquity and respectability of acts such as katadesmoi (binding spells), described as magic by modern and ancient observers alike, scholars have been compelled to abandon this viewpoint.[69]: 90–95 The Greek word mageuo(practice magic) itself derives from the word Magos, originally simply the Greek name for a Persian tribe known for practicing religion.[70] Non-civic mystery cults have been similarly re-evaluated:[69]: 97–98
the choices which lay outside the range of cults did not just add additional options to the civic menu, but ... sometimes incorporated critiques of the civic cults and Panhellenic myths or were genuine alternatives to them.
— Simon Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks (1999)[71]
Katadesmoi (Latin: defixiones), curses inscribed on wax or lead tablets and buried underground, were frequently executed by all strata of Greek society, sometimes to protect the entire polis.[69]: 95–96 Communal curses carried out in public declined after the Greek classical period, but private curses remained common throughout antiquity.[72] They were distinguished as magical by their individualistic, instrumental and sinister qualities.[69]: 96 These qualities, and their perceived deviation from inherently mutable cultural constructs of normality, most clearly delineate ancient magic from the religious rituals of which they form a part.[69]: 102–103
A large number of magical papyri, in Greek, Coptic, and Demotic, have been recovered and translated.[73] They contain early instances of:
- the use of magic words said to have the power to command spirits;[74]
- the use of mysterious symbols or sigils)which are thought to be useful when invoking or evoking spirits.[75]
The practice of magic was banned in the late Roman world, and the Codex Theodosianus (438 AD) states:[76]
If any wizard therefore or person imbued with magical contamination who is called by custom of the people a magician...should be apprehended in my retinue, or in that of the Caesar, he shall not escape punishment and torture by the protection of his rank.
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Magick
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