Magic and the Occult

Magic in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean

When does a prayer turn into a curse? What is the difference between pious worship and manipulative coercion? Who ultimately draws the boundaries between magic and religion? When we consider the various connotations of magic in the context of Greco-Roman culture before the Common Era, we are faced with a twofold conundrum. The concept of magic is constructed, on the one hand, from the often-biased depictions of what the ancient authors judged to be magic and, on the other hand, from the varied approaches that modern scholars have used to study Greco-Roman magic. Yet, even though we have ample evidence on ancient practices that were widely considered to be magic, these practitioners seldom left any commentaries on their work. In this chapter, I will outline the development of magic as a concept within both the Greco-Roman literature and the scholarship discussing ancient magic. I do not aim to describe any actual magical practices; instead, I will concentrate on the discourse on magicancient and modern. 1 First, I will briefly survey how the ancient concept of magic has been reconstructed in modern scholarship, and how it may have affected our understanding of the phenomenon. Second, I will consider various elements that Greco-Roman literati employed in crafting their definitions of magic. Any endeavor to describe, analyze, or understand the ancient concept of magic requires a working definition of what exactly is considered to be magic. As such, magic is a notoriously elusive concept which is often talked about, but which seldom has clear definitions or unambiguous content that all parties would agree on. Some regard magic as a substantial phenomenon that has certain modi operandi, actual operational powerswhether they work for good or for badand tangible effects, while others use magic as a discursive concept that classifies and labels various practices. Therefore, it is important to clarify whose ideas of magic are being considered: are they those of ancient practitioners of 'magic,' for instance, people employing potions and spells for their own use or professionals offering their services for a fee, or those of educated literati, who often employed the term magic in a deprecatory sense? Or, are they perhaps those of modern scholars attempting to define magic from the perspective of their own cultural background? Furthermore, one needs to keep in mind that these ancient and modern contexts for definitions vary in different places and different times. Therefore, before surveying Greek and Roman views on magic, we need to consider how the etic perspective on ancient magic, that is, our modern concepts of magic which are projected on the 1 See Gordon and Simón 2010, 5. 2 ancient sources, have developed and shaped our understanding of Greco-Roman magic in recent decades. Since ancient testimonia show that magic involved evocation, utilization, and even manipulation of superhuman 2 powers, a logical starting point for many scholarly constructions of magic has been its relationship to and distinction from religion. Perhaps the most influential scholars in this respect have been the two pioneers of anthropology, Sir Edward Burnett Tylor and Sir James George Frazer. They were both advocates of the nineteenth century ideas of cultural evolution, which led them to assign the practice of magic to less developed stages of societies. Tylor considered that all societies passed from savagery to barbarism and finally to a civilized state: and, in his view, magic belonged to the less educated and more primitive levels of development. 3 Yet, evolution is not linear, and just as civilized societies can lapse back into more primitive forms of spiritualism, they have also preserved survivals of past ways through "stupidity and unpractical conservatism and dogged superstition." 4 On the other hand, Tylor noted that all communities tend to associate magic with other groups that they consider more savage than themselves, 5 which foreshadows the contemporary view on magic as an othering device. Tylor mainly viewed magic as a psychological tool that provided its practitioners with authority and prestige; when magic seemingly works, it is by pure chance or because of natural causes, while the magicians are skilled in finding excuses for their failures. Yet, Tylor does not label those practicing magic as impostors, since they rely on complex pseudo-scientific explanatory systems that are transmitted among fellow professionals. 6 The opposing lines that Tylor draws between magic, religion (or "animism" as he calls it), and science are even more clearly presented in the evolutionary scheme of his follower, Sir James George Frazer. For Frazer, magic represents the lowest stage of cultural development, which will be replaced by religion and which will, in turn, give way to science. He believed this progress to be universal, so that the intellectually more primitive stage of magic use has preceded the development of religion in different cultures, even though they can still coexist. 7 In his magnum opus, The Golden Bough, Frazer delineates the crucial differences between magic, religion, and science. While magic and science share the idea of a predictable world where the succession from one thing to a certain effect is fixed, magic essentially misperceives the laws that govern this succession. Thus, magic is fundamentally fallacious. On the other hand, magic and religion share the belief in superhuman force that either 2 To use the term "supernatural" would violate ancient understanding of natural world.

2020

Magic is an essential topic in the New Testament. Still, compared to other items of discussion in New Testament Studies, the significance of the theme of magic has been unjustly undermined, as indicated by David E. Aune. From all eight occurrences of magic in the New Testament, four are found in the Acts of the Apostles. Therefore, the Acts of the Apostles is the most significant source to understand magic in the New Testament. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the significance of magic in the Greco-Roman era as the historical context to understand magic in the Acts of the Apostles. Since Christianity flourished in the Greco-Roman period, the understanding of magic in the Greco-Roman era is necessary to understand its confrontation with Christianity in the Acts of the Apostles. This article will examine the definition of magic, the positive and negative judgment of magic, the aspects of magic, which are the philosophy and sacraments related to the Acts of the Apostles, and the relation between magic and religion in the Greco-Roman Era.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, 2021

[Only an extract of this article is given here; for the full version consult the online Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion] Magic in the Graeco-Roman world is a disputed concept among modern historians, whose interpretation has changed significantly over the last 200 years of study. In studying it we may either focus on terms from ancient languages translatable as "magic," or examine materials and practices that may be classified as "magic" according to modern definitions. Ancient terminology centers around terms such as the Greek word mageia, and its Latin cognate magia, referring to superhuman practices that often involved the manipulation of the natural and divine worlds through secret knowledge and ritual. Objects identified by modern scholars as magical include curse tablets, written objects intended to injure, bind, or render harmless their victims, magical handbooks written on papyrus, providing instructions for rituals, and amulets, often in the form of semiprecious stones inscribed with images of deities and short texts. While some of these practices are reflected in ancient literary sources discussing magic, literary texts also show an exaggerated discourse, in which magic-users may be stereotyped according to their ethnicity (exotic magicians from Egypt, Syria, or Judaea) or gender (lurid images of witches), and practices are depicted as fantastical and extreme, involving acts such as human sacrifice. Popular images of magic and actual practice come together in laws and regulations against magic and its users, primarily from the period of the Roman Empire. These may be in the form of imperial law, or else Christian and non-Christian cultic rules, which prescribe social exclusion or even death, so that accusations of magic could be a potent tool in social conflicts.

Numen, 2013

Even though the concept of “magic” has sufffered severe criticism in academic discourse, the category continues to be used in many disciplines. During the last two decades, classicists in particular have engaged in a lively discussion over “magic” and have produced an impressive amount of written output. Given the impossibility of defijining “magic” in a consistent and widely accepted manner, one cannot help but wonder what these scholars are actually talking about. Hence this paper purports (a) to critically review the recent debate on “magic” in Classical Studies, (b) to advocate for abandoning an abstract category of “magic” in favour of a proper analysis of ancient sources and (c) to historicize the term “magic” in Antiquity, that is, to muse on its ancient semantics, functions, and contexts. This methodological approach does not only overcome the major problems inherent in modern definitions of “magic,” but will also yield new insights into terminologies, modes of thought and speech strategies that underlie ancient religious discourses.