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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian religions > Pre-Christian European & Mediterranean religions
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Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome (Paperback)
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Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome (Paperback)
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Parting company with the trend in recent scholarship to treat the
subject in abstract, highly theoretical terms, Magic in Ancient
Greece and Rome proposes that the magic-working of antiquity was in
reality a highly pragmatic business, with very clearly formulated
aims - often of an exceedingly malignant kind. In seven chapters,
each addressed to an important arm of Greco-Roman magic, the volume
discusses the history of the rediscovery and publication of the
so-called Greek Magical Papyri, a key source for our understanding
of ancient magic; the startling violence of ancient erotic spells
and the use of these by women as well as men; the alteration in the
landscape of defixio (curse tablet) studies by major new finds and
the confirmation these provide that the frequently lethal intent of
such tablets must not be downplayed; the use of herbs in magic,
considered from numerous perspectives but with an especial focus on
the bizarre-seeming rituals and protocols attendant upon their
collection; the employment of animals in magic, the factors
determining the choice of animal, the uses to which they were put,
and the procuring and storage of animal parts, conceivably in a
sorcerer's workshop; the witch as a literary construct, the clear
homologies between the magical procedures of fictional witches and
those documented for real spells, the gendering of the witch-figure
and the reductive presentation of sorceresses as old, risible and
ineffectual; the issue of whether ancient magicians practised human
sacrifice and the illuminating parallels between such accusations
and late 20th century accounts of child-murder in the context of
perverted Satanic rituals. By challenging a number of orthodoxies
and opening up some underexamined aspects of the subject, this
wide-ranging study stakes out important new territory in the field
of magical studies.
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