Mindfulness
- PDF / 910,563 Bytes
- 74 Pages / 547.087 x 737.008 pts Page_size
- 3 Downloads / 207 Views
Magic involves the practice of what is perceived to be the direct manipulation of material and spirit realms by human initiative. This action is meant to bring about definitive, tangible results. The Greco-Roman Egypt source entitled the Greek Magical Papyri (second century BCE–fifth century CE) provides an array of kinds and forms of magic used during this time. The spells, for instance, bring favor, produce a trance, drive out daemons, question a corpse, induce insomnia, catch a thief, cause evil sleep, break enchantment, and induce childbearing. They occur as charms, oracles, dreams, saucer divination, magical handbooks, magical rings, astrological calendars, horoscopes, lamp inquiry, and magico-medical formulae. Many of the spells require complex procedures. To control one’s shadow, the subject must make an offering of wheaten meal, ripe mulberries, and un-softened sesame. After making the offering, she must go into the desert on the sixth hour of the day and lay prostrate toward the rising sun, hands out-stretched, saying a formula which begins: ‘‘Cause now my shadow to serve me . . .’’ (Betz, 1986 PGM III: 612–632). The shadow will come before the face of the subject on the seventh hour, and is to be addressed with the command: ‘‘Follow me everywhere.’’ A charm for sending a dream requires picking three reeds before sunrise, and incanting a formula after sunset while facing, respectively, east, south, west, and north (Betz, 1986 PGM IV: 3172–3208). The range and extent of forms and purposes of magic relate the human desire to address the complexity of day-to-day life situations. They are meant as wish-fulfillment response to human limitation and anxiety. Coursing through the material there occurs the influence of ancient Egyptian temple religion, worship of the sun, and notions of the regenerative potencies in nature seen in the ritual practices of mummification. At the same time, these magical formulae are representative of a cultural syncretism which includes
Babylonian, Greek, Jewish, and Christian religions, and as such evidence the extent to which magic was used within the ancient world. By 13 BCE however, the influence of magic becomes stemmed by Augustus’ burning of 2,000 magical scrolls (Seutonius, Augustus 2.31). The early church reaction against magic as pagan practice contributes further to the suppression of magical handbooks and magicians. St. Augustine (d. 430 CE) makes it a point to say how the raising of Samuel from the dead by the witch of Endor (1 Sam. 28.8–25) occurred through the work of daemons (Ad Simplicianum II, III). The Medieval text De Magis, which is part of a larger treatise entitled Etymologies by St. Isidore of Seville (d. 638 CE), denounces magic as having originated with angelorum malorum (‘‘evil angels’’). He says that ‘‘hidden knowledge’’ resulting in the taking of oracles and the raising of the dead (dicuntur oracula et necromantia) was first employed by Zoroaster, King of Persia, and even more by the Assyrians beginning with King Ninus (9.1–3). Subsequent church figures i
Data Loading...
