UNTITLED MAGIC BOOK - MEDIEVAL MAGIC - NOTES - 2/16/2022

What is the medieval era?

• Rise of the church and scolasticism.
• We’ve got this new thing called scholasticism (Scholars!)
  Whats Scholasticism?
  Commitment to Catholicism
  Dialectical Reasoning
  Rigorous Conceptual analysis
  Careful drawing of distinctions
  formal debate and disputation
• The Church! (Priests!)
  Edict of Thessalonica makes christianity the official religion of the late roman empire
  Dominant religious power structure in Europe (they could launch crusades)
  Schools under Charlamagne and Louis the Pious cause a small renaissance for priests who can read now
  They keep invading the islamic world (because all their shit is better)
• Whats this mean for magic? A new paradigm: Systemization!

Scholasticism:

• The church pretty much universally banned all magic. People did it anyways.
• The so-called Clerical Necromantic Underground
• Rodger Bacon: “Christianity had two major rivals, Magic and Philosophy”
• Previously, dudes lie Porphyry and Iamblicus drew a distinction between Goetia (bad) and Theurgy (good)
• St Augustine on magic:
• St. Augustine basically says “its all demons” its all a vast snare for humans where they trick so-called wizards into thinking they have control
• All weird properties of plants? Stones? Demons.
• St. Augustine is the origin of the idea that weaker demons can be bound through controlling more powerful demons.
• Isadore of Seville:
• wrote Etemolgies, this is THE text on magic for the time
• He says generally “it was invented by Zoroaster and improved upon by democritus”
• Then it was promulgated to the rest of europe by devil demons
• Isadore has a whole taxonomy of magic, dividing them into Auguries, Divination, Oracles, Neromancy, Illusioners, etc
• One is “Maleficus” or evil-doing which often gets translated as witchcraft.
• He also draws a distinction between “Superstituious witchcraft” and “non-superstitious witchcraft” which leaves witchcraft in a vague place with christianity, as hes vague on what the difference is.
• John of Salisbury
• Dreams? Yeah those are demons.

Hey why is there a weird gap in scholarship? Hint Hint its the fall of the roman empire. Maybe add something about treasure spirits here. Include that anecdote about people summoning saint christopher and then banishing him like a demon.

Saint Guinefort

• The Catholic Church has to perform a careful dance of syncretism with dogma (ha) and folk beliefs

The Clerical Necromantic Underground

• Magic was basically universally banned

Secretus Secretorum

• Why is this text important: The Body is Maybe a System with Astrology involved
• Even a Europe dominated by the church is obsessed with strange and esoteric text
• Weird Authorship! Knowledge came from one of two places: Legend and Tradition