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Book Magical Practice in the Latin West

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: 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

Book The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the 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.

Book Magical Practice in the Latin West

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

Book Magic in Western Culture

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.

Book The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period

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.

Book Materia Magica

    Book Details:
  • Author : Andrew Wilburn
  • Publisher : University of Michigan Press
  • Release : 2012
  • ISBN : 0472117793
  • Pages : 377 pages

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.

Book The Transformations of Magic

Download or read book The Transformations of Magic written by Frank Klaassen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-26 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this original, provocative, well-reasoned, and thoroughly documented book, Frank Klaassen proposes that two principal genres of illicit learned magic occur in late medieval manuscripts: image magic, which could be interpreted and justified in scholastic terms, and ritual magic (in its extreme form, overt necromancy), which could not. Image magic tended to be recopied faithfully; ritual magic tended to be adapted and reworked. These two forms of magic did not usually become intermingled in the manuscripts, but were presented separately. While image magic was often copied in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Transformations of Magic demonstrates that interest in it as an independent genre declined precipitously around 1500. Instead, what persisted was the other, more problematic form of magic: ritual magic. Klaassen shows that texts of medieval ritual magic were cherished in the sixteenth century, and writers of new magical treatises, such as Agrippa von Nettesheim and John Dee, were far more deeply indebted to medieval tradition—and specifically to the medieval tradition of ritual magic—than previous scholars have thought them to be.

Book Magic as a Political Crime in Medieval and Early Modern England

Download or read book Magic as a Political Crime in Medieval and Early Modern England written by Francis Young and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-30 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Treason and magic were first linked together during the reign of Edward II. Theories of occult conspiracy then regularly led to major political scandals, such as the trial of Eleanor Cobham Duchess of Gloucester in 1441. While accusations of magical treason against high-ranking figures were indeed a staple of late medieval English power politics, they acquired new significance at the Reformation when the 'superstition' embodied by magic came to be associated with proscribed Catholic belief. Francis Young here offers the first concerted historical analysis of allegations of the use of magic either to harm or kill the monarch, or else manipulate the course of political events in England, between the fourteenth century and the dawn of the Enlightenment. His book addresses a subject usually either passed over or elided with witchcraft: a quite different historical phenomenon. He argues that while charges of treasonable magic certainly were used to destroy reputations or to ensure the convictions of undesirables, magic was also perceived as a genuine threat by English governments into the Civil War era and beyond.

Book Magic in the Modern World

Download or read book Magic in the Modern World written by Edward Bever and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays considers the place of magic in the modern world, first by exploring the ways in which modernity has been defined in explicit opposition to magic and superstition, and then by illuminating how modern proponents of magic have worked to legitimize their practices through an overt embrace of evolving forms such as esotericism and supernaturalism. Taking a two-track approach, this book explores the complex dynamics of the construction of the modern self and its relation to the modern preoccupation with magic. Essays examine how modern “rational” consciousness is generated and maintained and how proponents of both magical and scientific traditions rationalize evidence to fit accepted orthodoxy. This book also describes how people unsatisfied with the norms of modern subjectivity embrace various forms of magic—and the methods these modern practitioners use to legitimate magic in the modern world. A compelling assessment of magic from the early modern period to today, Magic in the Modern World shows how, despite the dominant culture’s emphatic denial of their validity, older forms of magic persist and develop while new forms of magic continue to emerge. In addition to the editors, contributors include Egil Asprem, Erik Davis, Megan Goodwin, Dan Harms, Adam Jortner, and Benedek Láng.

Book Magic in the Cloister

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sophie Page
  • Publisher : Penn State Press
  • Release : 2013-10-21
  • ISBN : 0271062975
  • Pages : 246 pages

Download or read book Magic in the Cloister written by Sophie Page and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2013-10-21 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries a group of monks with occult interests donated what became a remarkable collection of more than thirty magic texts to the library of the Benedictine abbey of St. Augustine’s in Canterbury. The monks collected texts that provided positive justifications for the practice of magic and books in which works of magic were copied side by side with works of more licit genres. In Magic in the Cloister, Sophie Page uses this collection to explore the gradual shift toward more positive attitudes to magical texts and ideas in medieval Europe. She examines what attracted monks to magic texts, in spite of the dangers involved in studying condemned works, and how the monks combined magic with their intellectual interests and monastic life. By showing how it was possible for religious insiders to integrate magical studies with their orthodox worldview, Magic in the Cloister contributes to a broader understanding of the role of magical texts and ideas and their acceptance in the late Middle Ages.

Book Daughters of Hecate

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kimberly B. Stratton
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
  • Release : 2014
  • ISBN : 0195342712
  • Pages : 553 pages

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: Interrogating the magic-gender connection / Kimberly B. Stratton -- From goddess to hag: the Greek and the Roman witch in classical literature / Barbette Stanley Spaeth -- "The most worthy of women is a mistress of magic": women as witches and ritual practitioners in I Enoch and rabbinic sources / Rebecca Lesses -- Gendering heavenly secrets?: women, angels, and the problem of misogyny and "magic" / Annette Yoshiko Reed -- Magic, abjection, and gender in Roman literature / Kimberly B. Stratton -- Magic accusations against women in Tacitus's Annals / Elizabeth Ann Pollard -- Drunken hags with amulets and prostitutes with erotic spells: the re-feminization of magic in late antique Christian homilies / Dayna S. Kelleres -- The bishop, the pope, and the prophetess: rival ritual experts in third century Cappadocia / Ayşe Tuzlak -- Living images of the divine: female theurgists in late antiquity / Nicola Denzley Lewis -- Sorceresses and sorcerers in early Christian tours of Hell / Kirsti Barrett Copeland -- The social context of women's erotic magic in antiquity / David Frankfurter -- Cheating women: curse tablets and Roman wives / Pauline Ripat -- Saffron, spices, and sorceresses: magic bowls and the Bavli / Yaakov Elman -- Victimology, or: how to deal with untimely death / Fritz Graf -- A Gospel amulet for Joannia (P. Oxy. VIII 1151) / Annemarie Luijendijk.

Book Making Magic in Elizabethan England

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.

Book Magic  A Very Short Introduction

Download or read book Magic A Very Short Introduction written by Owen Davies and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-01-26 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defining 'magic' is a maddening task. Over the last century numerous philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and theologians have attempted to pin down its essential meaning, sometimes analysing it in such complex and abstruse depth that it all but loses its sense altogether. For this reason, many people often shy away from providing a detailed definition, assuming it is generally understood as the human control of supernatural forces. 'Magic' continues to pervade the popular imagination and idiom. People feel comfortable with its contemporary multiple meanings, unaware of the controversy, conflict, and debate its definition has caused over two and a half millennia. In common usage today 'magic' is uttered in reference to the supernatural, superstition, illusion, trickery, religious miracles, fantasies, and as a simple superlative. The literary confection known as 'magical realism' has considerable appeal and many modern scientists have ironically incorporated the word into their vocabulary, with their 'magic acid', 'magic bullets' and 'magic angles'. Since the so-called European Enlightenment magic has often been seen as a marker of primitivism, of a benighted earlier stage of human development. Yet across the modern globalized world hundreds of millions continue to resort to magic - and also to fear it. Magic provides explanations and remedies for those living in extreme poverty and without access to alternatives. In the industrial West, with its state welfare systems, religious fundamentalists decry the continued moral threat posed by magic. Under the guise of neo-Paganism, its practice has become a religion in itself. Magic continues to be a truly global issue. This Very Short Introduction does not attempt to provide a concluding definition of magic: it is beyond simple definition. Instead it explores the many ways in which magic, as an idea and a practice, has been understood and employed over the millennia. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Book Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic

Download or read book Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic written by David Frankfurter and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume seeks to advance the study of ancient magic through separate discussions of ancient terms for ambiguous or illicit ritual, the ancient texts commonly designated magical, and contexts in which the term magic may be used descriptively.

Book The Lives of Peter the Iberian  Theodosius of Jerusalem  and the Monk Romanus

Download or read book The Lives of Peter the Iberian Theodosius of Jerusalem and the Monk Romanus written by John Rufus (Bishop of Maiuma) and published by Society of Biblical Lit. This book was released on 2008 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The context of the history of Georgia from the fourth to the sixth centuries -- Christianity and monasticism in Georgia in the fourth and fifth centuries -- Peter's genealogy in the life of Peter the Iberian : hagiographic ancestry -- The history of the christological controversies and their context in Palestine from the fourth to the sixth centuries -- Monasticism in fifth-century Palestine -- On the death of Theodosius -- The anti-chalcedonian defeat in Palestine -- Authorship -- John Rufus -- Rhetoric and genre in the life of Peter the Iberian -- Text-critical overview -- Versions and original text -- Synopsis of the Vita Petri Iberi and the De obitu Theodosii -- Outline of the Vita Petri Iberi -- Outline of the De obitu Theodosii -- Genealogical tables of the families of Peter the Iberian and Zuzo -- Chronological timeline -- Texts and translations -- Life of Peter the Iberian -- On the death of Theodosius.

Book Living and Cursing in the Roman West

Download or read book Living and Cursing in the Roman West written by Stuart McKie and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-03-10 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the Roman west, this book examines the rituals of cursing, their cultural contexts, and their impact on the lives of those who practised them. A huge number of Roman curse tablets have been discovered, showing their importance for helping ancient people to cope with various aspects of life. Curse tablets have been relatively neglected by archaeologists and historians. This study not only encourages greater understanding of the individual practice of curse rituals but also reveals how these objects can inform ongoing debates surrounding power, agency and social relationships in the Roman provinces. McKie uses new theoretical models to examine the curse tablets and focuses particularly on the concept of 'lived religion'. This framework reconfigures our understanding of religious and magical practices, allowing much greater appreciation of them as creative processes. Our awareness of the lived experiences of individuals is also encouraged by the application of theoretical approaches from sensory and material turns and through the consideration of comparable ritual practices in modern social contexts. These stimulate new questions of the ancient evidence, especially regarding the motives and motivations behind the curses.