THE GRECO-ROMAN MAGICAL MILIEU - 7/5/2022

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)

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?
  • 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

(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:

• Importance of written language
• A common set of techniques
• A cosmopolitan and syncretic list of ingredients

EGYPTIAN MAGIC

(Copts!)

(Hermetics!)

(We can do a fun compare-contrast with jewish magical language vs egyptian magical language)