Download or read book Magical Practice in the Latin West written by Richard Lindsay Gordon and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most studies of Graeco-Roman magic focus on the Greek texts. Stimulated by important recent finds of Latin curse-tablets, this collection of essays for the first time tries to define the nature and extent of the originality of magical practice in the Latin West
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West written by David J. Collins, S. J. and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Magical Practice in the Latin West written by Francisco Marco Simón and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-12-14 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How different was the practice of magic in the Latin West from that of the eastern Mediterranean basin? Was it just derivative from Greek practice, or did it have its own originality? The recent discovery of important new curse-tablets in Mainz and in the Fountain of Anna Perenna at Rome has made the question newly topical. This volume contains the first commented editions in English of most of these new texts as well as major surveys of new prayers for justice. Other sections are devoted to the discourse of magic in the West, to the linguistics and aims of cursing, and to the major field of protective and eudaemonic magic up to and including the Visigothic slates and the Celtic loricae. The essays are by well-known scholars in the field as well as by established and younger Spanish scholars.
Download or read book The Transformations of Magic written by Frank Klaassen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Explores two principal genres of illicit learned magic in late Medieval manuscripts: image magic, which could be interpreted and justified in scholastic terms, and ritual magic, which could not"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Materia Magica written by Andrew Wilburn and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Materia Magica approaches magic as a material endeavor, in which spoken spells, ritual actions, and physical objects all played vital roles in the performance of a rite. Through case studies drawing on objects excavated or discovered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century at three Mediterranean sites, Andrew T. Wilburn identifies previously unknown forms of magic. He discovers evidence of the practice of magic in objects of ancient daily life, suggesting that individuals frequently turned to magic, particularly in times of crises. Studying the remains of spells enacted by practitioners, Wilburn examines the material remains of magical practice by identifying and placing them within their archaeological contexts. His method of connecting an analysis of the texts and inscriptions found on artifacts of magic with a close consideration of the physical form of these objects illuminates an exciting path toward new discoveries in the field.
Download or read book Ancient Magic and Ritual Power written by Paul Mirecki and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-08-24 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Choosing Magic Contexts Objects Meanings The Archaeology of Instrumental Religion in the Latin West written by Richard Gordon and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Daughters of Hecate written by Kimberly B. Stratton and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daughters of Hecate presents a diverse collection of essays on the topic of women and magic in the ancient Mediterranean world. The book gathers investigations by leading scholars from the fields of Classics, Judaic Studies, and early Christianity, illuminating as well as interrogating the persistent associations of women with magic.
Download or read book Priests Tongues and Rites written by Jacco Dieleman and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005-05-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an investigation into the sphere of production and use of two related bilingual magical handbooks found as part of a larger collection of magical and alchemical manuscripts around 1828 in the hills surrounding Luxor, Egypt. Both handbooks, dating to the Roman period, contain an assortment of recipes for magical rites in the Demotic and Greek language. The library which comprises these two handbooks is nowadays better known as the Theban Magical Library. The book traces the social and cultural milieu of the composers, compilers and users of the extant spells through a combination of philology, sociolinguistics and cultural analysis. To anybody working on Greco-Roman Egypt, ancient magic, and bilingualism this study is of significant importance.
Download or read book Magic in Western Culture written by Brian P. Copenhaver and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-09 with total page 615 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the beliefs and practices called 'magic' starts in ancient Iran, Greece, and Rome, before entering its crucial Christian phase in the Middle Ages. Centering on the Renaissance and Marsilio Ficino - whose work on magic was the most influential account written in premodern times - this groundbreaking book treats magic as a classical tradition with foundations that were distinctly philosophical. Besides Ficino, the premodern story of magic also features Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Aquinas, Agrippa, Pomponazzi, Porta, Bruno, Campanella, Descartes, Boyle, Leibniz, and Newton, to name only a few of the prominent thinkers discussed in this book. Because pictures play a key role in the story of magic, this book is richly illustrated.
Download or read book Prayer Magic and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World written by Scott Noegel and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the religious systems of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean, gods and demigods were neither abstract nor distant, but communicated with mankind through signs and active intervention. Men and women were thus eager to interpret, appeal to, and even control the gods and their agents. In Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, a distinguished array of scholars explores the many ways in which people in the ancient world sought to gain access to--or, in some cases, to bind or escape from--the divine powers of heaven and earth. Grounded in a variety of disciplines, including Assyriology, Classics, and early Islamic history, the fifteen essays in this volume cover a broad geographic area: Greece, Egypt, Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Persia. Topics include celestial divination in early Mesopotamia, the civic festivals of classical Athens, and Christian magical papyri from Coptic Egypt. Moving forward to Late Antiquity, we see how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each incorporated many aspects of ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman religion into their own prayers, rituals, and conceptions. Even if they no longer conceived of the sun, moon, and the stars as eternal or divine, Christians, Jews, and Muslims often continued to study the movements of the heavens as a map on which divine power could be read. The reader already familiar with studies of ancient religion will find in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars both old friends and new faces. Contributors include Gideon Bohak, Nicola Denzey, Jacco Dieleman, Radcliffe Edmonds, Marvin Meyer, Michael G. Morony, Ian Moyer, Francesca Rochberg, Jonathan Z. Smith, Mark S. Smith, Peter Struck, Michael Swartz, and Kasia Szpakowska. Published as part of Penn State's Magic in History series, Prayer, Magic, and the Stars appears at a time of renewed interest in divination and occult practices in the ancient world. It will interest a wide audience in the field of comparative religion as well as students of the ancient world and late antiquity.
Download or read book The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period written by Jan N. Bremmer and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2002 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deities, demons, and angels became important protagonists in the magic of the Late Antique world, and were also the main reasons for the condemnation of magic in the Christian era. Supplicatory incantations, rituals of coercion, enticing suffumigations, magical prayers and mystical songs drew spiritual powers to the humain domain. Next to the magician's desire to regulate fate and fortune, it was the communion with the spirit world that gave magic the potential to purify and even deify its practitioners. The sense of elation and the awareness of a metaphysical order caused magic to merge with philosophy (notably Neoplatonism). The heritage of Late Antique theurgy would be passed on to the Arab world, and together with classical science and learning would take root again in the Latin West in the High Middle Ages. The metamorphosis of magic laid out in this book is the transformation of ritual into occult philosophy against the background of cultural changes in Judaism, Graeco-Roman religion and Christianity. This volume, the first in the new series Groningen Studies in Cultural Change, offers the papers presented at the workshop The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period held from 22 to 24 June 2000, and organised by Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra. The papers have been written by scholars from such varying disciplines as classics, theology, philosophy, cultural history, and law. Their contributions shed new light upon several old obscurities; they show magic to be a significant area of culture, and they advance the case for viewing transformations in the lore and practice of magic as a barometer with which to measure cultural change.
Download or read book Making Magic in Elizabethan England written by Frank Klaassen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-12-11 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents editions of two fascinating anonymous and untitled manuscripts of magic produced in Elizabethan England: the Antiphoner Notebook and the Boxgrove Manual. Frank Klaassen uses these texts, which he argues are representative of the overwhelming majority of magical practitioners, to explain how magic changed during this period and why these developments were crucial to the formation of modern magic. The Boxgrove Manual is a work of learned ritual magic that synthesizes material from Henry Cornelius Agrippa, the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, Heptameron, and various medieval conjuring works. The Antiphoner Notebook concerns the common magic of treasure hunting, healing, and protection, blending medieval conjuring and charm literature with materials drawn from Reginald Scot’s famous anti-magic work, Discoverie of Witchcraft. Klaassen painstakingly traces how the scribes who created these two manuscripts adapted and transformed their original sources. In so doing, he demonstrates the varied and subtle ways in which the Renaissance, the Reformation, new currents in science, the birth of printing, and vernacularization changed the practice of magic. Illuminating the processes by which two sixteenth-century English scribes went about making a book of magic, this volume provides insight into the wider intellectual culture surrounding the practice of magic in the early modern period.
Download or read book Magic A Very Short Introduction written by Owen Davies and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-26 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging overview of how magic has been defined, understood and practiced over the millennia introduces it in today's world as a real force that helps people overcome misfortune, poverty and illness. By the author of Grimoires: A History of Magic Books. Original.
Download or read book Magic and Magicians in the Greco Roman World written by Matthew W Dickie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is the first to assemble the evidence for the existence of sorcerors in the ancient world; it also addresses the question of their identity and social origins. The resulting investigation takes us to the underside of Greek and Roman society, into a world of wandering holy men and women, conjurors and wonder-workers, and into the lives of prostitutes, procuresses, charioteers and theatrical performers. This fascinating reconstruction of the careers of witches and sorcerors allows us to see into previously inaccessible areas of Greco-Roman life. Compelling for both its detail and clarity, and with an extraordinarily revealing breadth of evidence employed, it will be an essential resource for anyone studying ancient magic.
Download or read book The Imperial Cult in the Latin West written by Duncan Fishwick and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 867 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages written by Charles Burnett and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-28 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After discussing the terminology of talismanic magic (or necromancy) and its position in divisions of science in the Middle Ages, this book traces the history of talismanic texts from the Classical period through the Arabic world to the Latin Middle Ages. The principal authorities are Hermes and Aristotle, and the search for the ’secret knowledge’ of these ancient sages is shown to have been a catalyst for the translating activity from Arabic into Latin in 12th-century Spain. The second half of the volume is devoted to examples of the kinds of divination prevalent in Arabic and Latin-reading societies: chiromancy, onomancy, scapulimancy, geomancy and fortune-telling. The book ends with advice on when to practice alchemy and a prophetic letter of supposed Arabic provenance, warning of the coming of the Mongols. Several editions of previously unedited texts are included, with translations.
