Ceremonial Magic: A Guide to the Mechanisms of Ritual

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Importantly, accessing the etheric dimension required sophisticated training of one’s imaginative and affective faculties. This involved rigorous spiritual discipline, encyclopaedic knowledge, articulated ceremonials, and the craft of handling matter according to its occult, etheric properties. In what is known as ‘desire magic’, for instance, Renaissance magicians would use their ability to discern and activate ethereal interconnections between objects, including persons, to influence the latter’s psychic life.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein; Dagli, Caner K.; Dakake, Maria Massi; Lumbard, Joseph E.B.; Rustom, Mohammed (2015). The Study Quran; A New Translation and Commentary. Harper Collins. p.25. ISBN 9780062227621. Flint, Valerie I.J. (1990). The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (1sted.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp.4, 12, 406. ISBN 978-0691031651. Belser, Julia Watts. "Book Review: Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic". Academia . Retrieved 9 July 2021.Katadesmoi (Latin: defixiones), curses inscribed on wax or lead tablets and buried underground, were frequently executed by all strata of Greek society, sometimes to protect the entire polis. [87] :95–96 Communal curses carried out in public declined after the Greek classical period, but private curses remained common throughout antiquity. [90] They were distinguished as magical by their individualistic, instrumental and sinister qualities. [87] :96 These qualities, and their perceived deviation from inherently mutable cultural constructs of normality, most clearly delineate ancient magic from the religious rituals of which they form a part. [87] :102–103

Libbrecht, Ulrich (2007). Within the Four Seas--: Introduction to Comparative Philosophy. Peeters Publishers. ISBN 978-90-429-1812-2. In the sixteenth century, European societies began to conquer and colonise other continents around the world, and as they did so they applied European concepts of magic and witchcraft to practices found among the peoples whom they encountered. [138] Usually, these European colonialists regarded the natives as primitives and savages whose belief systems were diabolical and needed to be eradicated and replaced by Christianity. [139] Because Europeans typically viewed these non-European peoples as being morally and intellectually inferior to themselves, it was expected that such societies would be more prone to practicing magic. [140] Women who practiced traditional rites were labelled as witches by the Europeans. [140]Freud, Sigmund; Strachey, James (1950). Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics (Repinted.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 978-0393001433. In ancient Egypt ( Kemet in the Egyptian language), Magic (personified as the god heka) was an integral part of religion and culture which is known to us through a substantial corpus of texts which are products of the Egyptian tradition. [53] Gilchrist, Roberta (2012). Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course (Reprinted.). Woodbridge: Boydell Press. p.xii. ISBN 9781843837220 . Retrieved 8 March 2017. Gilchrist, Roberta (1 November 2008). "Magic for the Dead? The Archaeology of Magic in Later Medieval Burials" (PDF). Medieval Archaeology. 52 (1): 119–159. doi: 10.1179/174581708x335468. ISSN 0076-6097. S2CID 162339681. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2015-05-14. The ancient Mesopotamians also performed magical rituals to purify themselves of sins committed unknowingly. [30] One such ritual was known as the Šurpu, or "Burning", [31] in which the caster of the spell would transfer the guilt for all their misdeeds onto various objects such as a strip of dates, an onion, and a tuft of wool. [31] The person would then burn the objects and thereby purify themself of all sins that they might have unknowingly committed. [31] A whole genre of love spells existed. [32] Such spells were believed to cause a person to fall in love with another person, restore love which had faded, or cause a male sexual partner to be able to sustain an erection when he had previously been unable. [32] Other spells were used to reconcile a man with his patron deity or to reconcile a wife with a husband who had been neglecting her. [33]

a b c Brown, Michael (1995). Israel's Divine Healer. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan. p.42. ISBN 9780310200291. Jesper Aagaard Petersen (2009). Contemporary religious Satanism: A Critical Anthology. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p.220. ISBN 978-0-7546-5286-1. Coleman, Simon (2008). "The Magic of Anthropology". Anthropology News. 45 (8): 8–11. doi: 10.1111/an.2004.45.8.8.Diversified instruments or rituals used in medieval magic include, but are not limited to: various amulets, talismans, potions, as well as specific chants, dances, and prayers. Along with these rituals are the adversely imbued notions of demonic participation which influence of them. The idea that magic was devised, taught, and worked by demons would have seemed reasonable to anyone who read the Greek magical papyri or the Sefer-ha-Razim and found that healing magic appeared alongside rituals for killing people, gaining wealth, or personal advantage, and coercing women into sexual submission. [117] Archaeology is contributing to a fuller understanding of ritual practices performed in the home, on the body and in monastic and church settings. [118] [119] Building on the reports of missionaries and explorers, Victorian-era anthropologists (of the mid- to late-nineteenth century) busied themselves with creating hierarchically organised taxonomies of social facts they had second-hand knowledge of, and that corresponded, in their view, to more or less well-defined ‘steps’ in an evolutionary ladder of human cultures. Influenced by the styles of reasoning of their time, these scholars classified magic, religion, and science in different categories, corresponding to progressive ‘stages’ of cultural complexity, with magic attached to ideas of archaism and childlike irrationality. From a magical stage, human groups would progress to a religious stage, followed by science supplanting religion at the top of the evolutionary hierarchy. Davies, Owen (2012). Magic: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199588022.

During the Baroque era, several intriguing figures engaged with occult and magical themes that went beyond conventional thinking. Michael Sendivogius (1566–1636), a Polish alchemist, emphasized empirical experimentation in alchemy and made notable contributions to early chemistry. Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639), an Italian philosopher, blended Christianity with mysticism in works like The City of the Sun, envisioning an ideal society governed by divine principles. Jakob Böhme (1575–1624), a German mystic, explored the relationship between the divine and human experience, influencing later mystical movements. This spread of European colonial power across the world influenced how academics would come to frame the concept of magic. [144]Drijvers, Jan Willem; Hunt, David (1999). The Late Roman World and Its Historian: Interpreting Ammianus Marcellinus (1sted.). London: Routledge. pp.208–. ISBN 9780415202718 . Retrieved 22 August 2010. Person, Hara E. The Mitzvah of Healing: An Anthology of Jewish Texts, Meditations, Essays, Personal Stories, and Rituals, pp. 4–6. Union for Reform Judaism, 2003. ISBN 0-8074-0856-5 Cunningham, Graham (1999). Religion and Magic: Approaches and Theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748610136.