UNTITLED MAGIC BOOK: EXCERPT - 2/4/2022

MEDIEVAL MAGIC

The day is full of work and song. The night is deep and cold. Every sunday sit under the effigy of a man in agony. A priest incants words in an ancient language you do not speak or understand. He says the words are holy and you believe him. How else could flesh and blood taste of bread and wine? Wondrous things are possible. You know this to be true. You taste it for yourself every sunday. The priest says there are the good wonders, the miracles of God, and the bad wonders, the magic of the devil. You believe him. The night is deep and cold. The dead are buried deeper.

Magic in the medieval world is characterized by two things: Ruin, and the church. For better or worse, the roman empire was the skeleton of europe, with its collapse the flow of technology and information through europe was hamstrung. Many communities suddenly became isolated as knowledge of how to repair and maintain roman bridges, roads, and irrigation was lost. The remnants of a powerful yet fallen civilization were everywhere. One could only imagine the wonders they achieved.

At the center of medieval life was the church, but interaction with magic was far from simple. The boundary between miracle and magic was nuanced and complex, and priests often had to walk a fine line between official church doctrine and the folk practices which evolved naturally from the privations of medieval village life. Attempting to place medieval magic in too rigid a box would be a mistake, as creative use of church artifacts and tactful syncretism with folk belief was fairly common. [WHY IS THERE NO ACCESSIBLE INFORMATION ON EUROPEAN MAGIC FROM LIKE 410 TO 1150 AD THATS A 500 YEAR GAP QUIT MAKING ME PIRATE SHIT CHALLENGE ILL BE BACK TO THIS AFTER IVE READ MORE]

Gilchrist: https://books.google.com/books/about/Medieval_Life.html?id=T3EwHTrRZEsC

Thomas: https://books.google.com/books/about/Religion_and_the_Decline_of_Magic.html?id=yQwSAQAAIAAJ

All this said, the medieval world gives rise to an exciting new phenomenon for the aspiring occultist: The spell book. Indeed, one of the Catholic Churches most important contributions to magical history in the middle ages was its network of dedicated scribes. Europe was dotted with stone buildings full of monks who spent their days creating, copying, and translating tomes of knowledge. But magical texts generally only start to appear in Europe around the 11th century.

Let us back up a bit, to the 8th century AD. For there can be no discussion of medieval magic without the Islamic Golden Age.

TEXTS TO TALK ABOUT HERE

• Picatrix
• Lesser key of solomon
• Malleus
• Book of da composition of alchemy
• We HAVE to mention Alfonso X
• Kieth Thomas “The medieval church...appeared as a vast reservoir of magical power, capable of being deployed for a variety of secular purposes.”
• Godsen: “It is impossible to understand Medival magic without embedding it within the context of the church, and medieval society more generally.”
• Talk about how the roman empire fell in like 410 but continued to influence life
• Talk about humorism here, as an example of as above so below
• Talk about the spheres of the world, medival cosmology, ideas like the sublunary world and the Primum Mobile and empyrean heaven
• Robert Grossteste
• Demonology
• NEOPLATONISM
• Poltinus
• The texts of Alfonso X of Castile
• Lapidario
• Picatrix
• Libro de las formas e imagenes
• Libro de astromagia
• St Augustine, everything has its own angel