Cannibal cult members arrested in PNG". New Zealand Herald. 2012-07-05. ISSN 1170-0777 . Retrieved 2015-11-28. Cunningham, Graham (1999). Religion and Magic: Approaches and Theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748610136. In the Medieval Jewish view, the separation of the mystical and magical elements of Kabbalah, dividing it into speculative theological Kabbalah ( Kabbalah Iyyunit) with its meditative traditions, and theurgic practical Kabbalah ( Kabbalah Ma'asit), had occurred by the beginning of the 14th century. [114] Ancient Greek scholarship of the 20th century, almost certainly influenced by Christianising preconceptions of the meanings of magic and religion, and the wish to establish Greek culture as the foundation of Western rationality, developed a theory of ancient Greek magic as primitive and insignificant, and thereby essentially separate from Homeric, communal ( polis) religion. Since the last decade of the century, however, recognising the ubiquity and respectability of acts such as katadesmoi ( binding spells), described as magic by modern and ancient observers alike, scholars have been compelled to abandon this viewpoint. [87] :90–95 The Greek word mageuo (practice magic) itself derives from the word Magos, originally simply the Greek name for a Persian tribe known for practicing religion. [88] Non-civic mystery cults have been similarly re-evaluated: [87] :97–98

Modern scholarship has produced various definitions and theories of magic. [177] According to Bailey, "these have typically framed magic in relation to, or more The model of the magician in Christian thought was provided by Simon Magus, (Simon the Magician), a figure who opposed Saint Peter in both the Acts of the Apostles and the apocryphal yet influential Acts of Peter. [103] The historian Michael D. Bailey stated that in medieval Europe, magic was a "relatively broad and encompassing category". [104] Christian theologians believed that there were multiple different forms of magic, the majority of which were types of divination, for instance, Isidore of Seville produced a catalogue of things he regarded as magic in which he listed divination by the four elements i.e. geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, and pyromancy, as well as by observation of natural phenomena e.g. the flight of birds and astrology. He also mentioned enchantment and ligatures (the medical use of magical objects bound to the patient) as being magical. [105] Medieval Europe also saw magic come to be associated with the Old Testament figure of Solomon; various grimoires, or books outlining magical practices, were written that claimed to have been written by Solomon, most notably the Key of Solomon. [106]

Footnotes

For many, and perhaps most, modern Western magicians, the goal of magic is deemed to be personal spiritual development. [156] Another, related danger inherent in the vocabulary of magic is connected to its usability in non-Western contexts. For instance, let us take the Islamic notion of siḥr, usually translated as magic or sorcery. Siḥr partly resembles Christian understandings of magic as unorthodox dealings with the occult, and therefore illegitimate and sinful. However, alongside familiar items like goetia (commerce with demons) and astrology, siḥr also includes slander, malicious gossip, the ‘charismatic seduction of crowds’ (Knight 2016: 16), and other arts of deception which would not be considered ‘magic’ in most Western understandings. When it comes to magic, nuance risks easily getting lost in translation.

The functionalist approach to defining magic is associated with the French sociologists Marcel Mauss and Emile Durkheim. [203] Magic was practiced by both the literate priestly hierarchy and by illiterate farmers and herdsmen, and the principle of heka underlay all ritual activity, both in the temples and in private settings. [57] Ritner, R.K., Magic: An Overview in Redford, D.B., Oxford Encyclopedia Of Ancient Egypt, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 323

Four Archangels

Cicero, Chic& Cicero, Sandra Tabatha The Essential Golden Dawn: An Introduction to High Magic. Llewellyn Books. p. 87. Related post-Marxist approaches have further illuminated magic’s relation with political-economic dynamics, such as the rapid development of capitalist markets disrupting pre-existing social arrangements and spreading anxieties across social bodies. Michael Taussig (1977), for example, has explored how in the 1960s, impoverished labourers in Latin American mines and sugar plantations employed the occult idiom of ‘the devil’ and the trope of the Faustian pact – the risk of losing one’s soul – to make sense of their work. These ideas were used to express intellectual and moral statements about the ‘hidden’ mechanisms of aggressive capitalism, such as uncompensated labour, the extraction of surplus value with the amassment of wealth into a few private hands, and commodity fetishism. Libbrecht, Ulrich (2007). Within the Four Seas--: Introduction to Comparative Philosophy. Peeters Publishers. ISBN 978-90-429-1812-2. If any wizard therefore or person imbued with magical contamination who is called by custom of the people a magician...should be apprehended in my retinue, or in that of the Caesar, he shall not escape punishment and torture by the protection of his rank. Middle Ages [ edit ] Part of a series on

The practice of magic was banned in the late Roman world, and the Codex Theodosianus (438 AD) states: [94]

During the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, the Persian maguš was Graecicized and introduced into the ancient Greek language as μάγος and μαγεία. [15] In doing so it transformed meaning, gaining negative connotations, with the magos being regarded as a charlatan whose ritual practices were fraudulent, strange, unconventional, and dangerous. [15] As noted by Davies, for the ancient Greeks—and subsequently for the ancient Romans—"magic was not distinct from religion but rather an unwelcome, improper expression of it—the religion of the other". [81] The historian Richard Gordon suggested that for the ancient Greeks, being accused of practicing magic was "a form of insult". [82]