traditions of magic historical display

[Ben Gruagach]

http://www.lib.umich.edu/pap/magic/ (http://www.lib.umich.edu/pap/magic/)

This is a really interesting website that has digital photos of various magickal items from the past -- fragments of parchment with English translations of the spells they contain, photos of magickal charms and amulets, many from ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman times.

It's interesting to see things like this to compare what we do today with what was done hundreds if not thousands of years ago by people who also practiced magick.

[Xentor]

Quite fascinating. Thanks for sharing!

[raven grimassi]

It's interesting to see things like this to compare what we do today with what was done hundreds if not thousands of years ago by people who also practiced magick.

Thanks, Ben. I found part of the intro to be interesting as it seems to demonstrate some of the core problems related to some of discussions on MW related to Witchcraft as a religion or a magical system, etc. I refer to the following statement on the site:

"Magic, as modern scholars have grudgingly learned to admit, is a very elusive category. No definition of "magic" has ever found universal acceptance, and countless attempts to separate it from "religion" on the one hand and "science" on the other have borne few, if any, fruits. The problem lies, to a large extent, in that what one society may label "magic," another would label "religion," and another "science," so that by choosing one label we are implicitly choosing sides whenever conflicting definitions of magic compete with each other, or run the risk of imposing our own categories upon societies in which these categories would have made no sense".

Best regards - Raven

[blackroseivy]

I agree completely, Raven: Magic is whatever you make of it within your own context. Science was barely born in this early time; we now think of it in everyday terms. Religion was a group undertaking, involving major Powers; magic (or magick) was more tailored to the individual. In today's terms, I think that Magick is still what people experience on an individual basis, with Religion being more all-encompassing. Just my 2c!