The Caretaker

THE GRECO-ROMAN MAGICAL MILIEU - 7/15/2022

Added 2022-07-15 17:58:48 +0000 UTC

THE GRECO-ROMAN MAGICAL MILIEU

The year is 100 CE and it’s a great year for soup. Emperor Trajan just became consul of a Roman Empire that is Romeing as hard as it will ever Rome. The Egyptians have been Rome’d, Judea has been Rome’d, most of Western Europe has been Rome’d. The Mediterranean sea is referred to as “Mare Nostrum” meaning “Our Sea.” Roman chefs (read: mostly slaves) have access to a mind-boggling range of ingredients. The soups they were able to create were strange, experimental, and delicious for those with a sophisticated enough palette to appreciate them.

Religion and magic worked the same way.

The turn of the millenia was dominated by syncretism. Magic and religion were being remixed all over the place. The myriad religious and magical cultures that appeared in this time frame deserve books all their own, but in the interest of time, we will discuss the magical and religious milieus of our main three ingredients:

GREEK MAGIC

(Three sections:

What did magic mean to the greek world?
- Discuss greek interaction with zoroastrianism, origin of Magi
- What was disallowed?
- From where did the power come?
How did Greek magic work?
- Sports?
- Defixiones
- Theurgy vs Goetia
- What was “authentically greek”?
How did greek magic effect the systems it interacted with?
- It was kinda the broth, the medium by which other elements

The Greek world was a tapestry of magical practitioners. Seers, the manteis and chresmologoi sold their services door to door, but the good ones work at the temples. The epodoi, sing incantations. The thaumatopoioi perform wonders which the tetraskopoi interpret. The goetoi speak to the spirits of the dead. Those who require medicine go to the root-cutters, the rizotomoi or the herbalists, the pharmakaeis. The world teems with magic, and those who work in its fold are called mágos, magicians. [this is from Gosden, find where he got it]

(Maybe make a table that gives short descriptions of these dudes, along with their roman equivalents?)

(Maybe discuss the origins of the word “magic” here? Like, talk about the Magi.)

(Talk about defixiones/katadeseis-katadesmoi)

DIASPORIC JEWISH MAGIC

(Three sections:

What did magic mean to the jewish world?
- Define terms like Keshaphim
- Discuss biblical prohibitions on magic
- Charismatic holy men vs Learned body of knowledge
How did jewish magic work?
- That one spell for killing mice
- Exorcisms
- Magic Amulets
- Invoking god for curses
How did jewish magic effect the systems it interacted with
- Importance of written language
- A common set of techniques
- A cosmopolitan and syncretic list of ingredients

The recently-concluded second temple period had seen Judea in a period of rapid, explosive change. New institutions like the Non-Davidian kingship, the synagogue, and a new class of non-priestly Torah interpreters were popping up left and right. Judaism wrestled with sectarianism, dualism, the idea of the afterlife, and a newly apocalyptic strain of theology. It is safe to say that during the turn of the millenia, the Jewish people were having a rough go of it.

Periods of social upheaval tend to be rich seedbed for new religious and magical ideas, and due to the roman empire, the Jewish population was forced to socially upheave themselves all across the mediterranean. The effects of the Jewish diaspora on the greater social dynamics of the mediterranean could fill a library. Several dense and ponderous tomes could be written on just the diasporas effect on magical history. In the interest of time and accessibility, we will be summarizing.

As for sources on Jewish magic, the obvious place to start is the hebrew bible. The Tanahk makes myriad references to practices we consider magic. Deuteronomy 18:10-11 states:

“Let no one be found among you who consigns a son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead.”

The terms used to discuss these practices and their specific translations bares some discussion. First, Kosem, which is probably a general term for those who see the future, comparable to “diviner.” with gazerin being a similarly general term for “those who practice magic.” In particular, there are also me’onen, the soothsayers, and machesh, the enchanters, and mechashef, the sorcerers. Although it is also possible that kosem is also a specific term for astrologers, and that kesamim refers to the specific sort of divination that astrologers do. (ibn Ezra on deuteronomy.)

The important thing about all these terms is their specificity. It is clear that there are biblical prohibitions on specific magical practices, but not necessarily on magic as a whole. This mild ambiguity leaves open a door for a diverse array of practices. However, it also raises an important question: If there is no power but god, what is magic?

A particularly illustrative passage is found in Moses and Aaron engaging in a magical duel with the Pharaohs wizards in Exodus 7:10. Within the context of biblical law, there is clearly some meaningful difference between what Moses and Aaron are doing, and what the Pharaohs wizards are doing. This is commonly interpreted as an example of “magic as the wonders of the other.”

From the perspective of a non-jewish author looking back at biblical history, this raises some fairly complicated questions for discussing something as nebulous as the history of magic. Was Moses a magician? Were Jewish Charismatic Holy Men, in the fold of Jacob, Isaiah, and Jesus magicians? It would be reasonable to say yes, the working of miracles could reasonably be called magic. Though, an equally reasonable argument could be made that placing such religious figures in the bucket of magicians is disingenuous, technically correct, but incorrect in subtle and important ways.

In Ancient Jewish Magic, A History, Gideon Bohak draws a key distinction: The charismatic jewish holy men of history perform their works through an innate power, whereas magicians rely on an “acquired body of technical knowledge (27).” Simply put, a prophet cannot teach someone else how to be a prophet, but a magician can.

To start off, we should talk about biblical prohibitions about magic, and the term “Keshaphim” Specifically in the passages ( Exodus 7:11 Exodus 7:22 ; Exodus 8:7 Exodus 8:18 )

Isaiah 47:9 Isaiah 47:12

Jeremiah 8:17 ; Compare Psalms 58:5 ).

( Numbers 24:1 )

( Isaiah 47:9 Isaiah 47:12 ), "magical spells." All kinds of enchantments were condemned by the Mosaic law ( Leviticus 19:26 ; Deuteronomy 18:10-12 ).

One of our earliest sources on magic within the Jewish ouvre is Philo, a Jewish philosopher from the Roman province of Egypt writing around the year 20 CE. Philo’s understanding of magic neatly follows the greek paradigm. He explains that there are two types of magic: On one hand, there is true magic, a revered art especially among the people of Persia, which is a discipline similar to science, in which the magician experiments to reveal the secrets of nature. On the other hand, there is the evil and deceptive counterpart, a profane art pursued by mendicant priests who sell snake oil medicines from stone altars to the dregs of society (read, women, slaves, etc.) for their own nefarious and chaotic purposes. [bohak, 79]

This clearly parallels the greek conception of magic as divided between the good Rhizotomoi, who acted as itinerant healers, and the evil Pharmakon, who were more closely associated with poisons and malicious spagyry.

Talk about how the dead sea scrolls gave us two new rules about magic

The First: No cursing The Name
The Second: “whoever is ruled by the spirits of Belial and speaks apostasy is to be judged in accordance with the law of the ’ov and the yide‘oni.”

Talk about ‘ov and yideo’oni

(Judaism was traditionally more focused around temples. The diaspora radically changed focus onto preservation and interpretation of scripture. Rabbinical system wasn’t codified until the 6th century.)

(the introduction of Charismatic holy men vs Magic as learned body of technical knowledge)

(the Hebrew Bible displays a deep-seated conviction that many striking feats – from the cleaving of rivers to the destruction of mighty walls – could be achieved not only by men of God, but also by the correct manipulation of God’s sacred objects. Similarly, the Greek distinction between “true piety” and “superstition,” that is, religious behavior which simply made no sense to a rational (Greek) observer, was quite meaning-less to most ancient Jews. Bohak 38)

(“Monotheistic gods are immune to magic.” < wrong)

(The Septugant, translated into greek during the 3rd century, tells us a few things: “We thus learn that not only necromancy, augury from birds, and other divinatory techniques are entirely forbidden, but also the dabbling in pharmaka (plural of pharmakon, which means both “poison” and “magical procedure,” not to mention the meaning “medicine,” whence the English word “pharmacy”) and the reciting of incantations.”)

(Book of Jubilees: The demon leader, Mastema, (Hatred) begs for clemency, so god lets one demon go, and the rest have to teach their healing arts to man.

This created a new category of practice that couldn’t be classified as keshaphim) (Define Keshaphim)

(Dead Sea Scrolls, comes with two new rules on magic

The First: No cursing The Name

The Second: “whoever is ruled by the spirits of Belial and speaks apostasy is to be judged in accordance with the law of the ’ov and the yide‘oni.”)

Josephus: (Now, all biblical prohibitions on magic are condensed into “Pharmakon”

This would sound really similar to the Roman “Lex Cornelia de sicariis (et veneficis)”

Or, “The Law of Assassins and Poisoners”)

More Josephus: (When asked if Moses was a Goetes, he says:

Moses didn’t invent his own laws, he got them from god

Moses’s miracles beat the egyptian wizards, proving their superiority and difference)

Summary of the 2nd temple period:

On the one extreme, we noted Philo’s very Greek concept of magic, which distinguishes between the noble art of the Persian Magi and the base counterfeit of that art as practiced by women and slaves

On the other hand, we saw the literary trajectory leading from 1 Enoch to Jubilees and to the Dead Sea Scrolls, with an elaborate demonological awareness, a conviction that magic is one of the evil things taught to humanity by the Fallen Angels, and a willingness in the Qumran sect to condemn any deviant member under the biblical rubric of the ’ov and the yide‘oni, as well as a willingness to use many techniques that we might see as “magic” in the daily fight against the forces of evil

Josephus’ general disinterest in “magic” as a concept, his downplaying of the relevant biblical legislation, and his pride in such ancient Jewish practices as the exorcism of demons.

multiplicity of views of magic and an absence of any real emic definition of magic as a legal or social concept. (87)

So what did it actually involve?

Exorcisms
Magic Amulets
Invoking god for curses

Babylonian Aramaic starts showing up on Incantation bowls

The advent of more literary magical texts:

Sepher Ha-Razim
Sword of moses

**A second feature of these magical texts is that in spite of some variation between the different types of magical products (e.g., magical papyri vs. magical gems), they all display a common set of magical techniques, “words of power,” and visual designs, images, and symbols, most of which are unique to this specific magical idiom. (195)

Basically, we hit the 1st century, and a new magical idiom shows up, characterized by three things: