Ancient Christian Magic - Protection, Exorcism, and Love Magic from Ancient Coptic Texts

christianity has had one of the most endearing and tumultuous relationships with magic in world religions on the one hand the official word is the practice is completely banned as i've mentioned in a previous episode christianity has long held that magic is essentially the work of demons meant to ensnare and destroy the soul of its practitioners and indeed we can find repeated bans on magic and magical practice as early as the new testament through the apostolic fathers into the middle ages and beyond of course banning a practice only reveals that it was well practiced and often psychologically the effect is actually counter-intuitive by banning something we actually make it more enticing there can be no doubt from a historical point of view that magic has flourished in all aspects of christendom and all periods of that religion and in all iterations of that faith indeed most magical practices that have survived into modern occultism are simply unimaginable without the backdrop of christianity although i think most modern occultists and most christians would not want to admit that that's true from simon magus to dr john d's conversations with angels one could very much argue that christianity has been both the greatest foe and the greatest ally to the development of magical theory and practice in the western world in this episode of esoterica we're going to explore some of the earliest christian yes christian forms of magic to be found in the ancient world from amulets to magical spells to a whole range of incantation including curses as we'll see magic was alive and well in early christianity i'm dr justin sledge and welcome to esoterica where we explore the arcane side of history philosophy and religion [Music] this episode is somewhat of a follow-up to the episode i made on the greek magical papyri if you haven't seen the episode yet you may want to pause here and check that one out first much of this episode is going to take for granted a lot of the background information that we discussed in that video so if you want to check that out there's a link in the card above check that one out first and come back to this one to get a more full understanding of the kind of world that produced the kind of christian magic we'll be discussing at length in this episode though just to review a few things before we get started a great deal of the knowledge we have about magic from the early common era is actually from egypt and there are a couple reasons for this the first is that egypt had a highly developed magical tradition reaching all the way back into the pharonic period this indigenous form of egyptian magic or heka has a very long history and a wide range of magical applications from medical magic to execration magic this is magic which wards off evil to the animation of statues by divine gods to the resurrection powers that are found in the egyptian mythology around the afterlife i'm planning on doing an episode specifically on egyptian magic or heka at some point in the near future so if you're really interested in that form of magic stay tuned a second reason for the endurance of so much written magical material from this period and just written material in general is that the medium used for writing in ancient egypt papyrus is incredibly durable as you probably know papyrus is made from a reed which is stripped and those strips are laid against one another the juices from the papyrus reed itself act as a kind of glue which bind those strips together into an incredibly durable material i have a piece of papyrus here and it's amazing how well you can see how well this material is very very strong in terms of its in terms of its non-terribility and its durability in fact papyrus is so durable that one can even make baskets from the reeds themselves the fact that one can make baskets weight-bearing baskets and these some of these baskets have survived for thousands of years show the incredible strength of the papyrus plant finally the hot and dry climate of egypt greatly increases the durability of text written on things like papyrus paper and parchment in fact in 2013 french archaeologists discovered a papyrus sheet in a cave describing the transport of stones these stones were probably used for the great pyramid at giza being built under the administration of pharaoh khufu that text the diary of mirror is over 4500 years old and is still legible to this very day what's really incredible when you think about that is that jesus of nazareth is closer to us in time than he was to the composition of that text which only shows just how durable papyrus in this environment is of course another reason why we'll discover early christian magic primarily in egypt is the very long relationship christianity has had with that region this relationship goes all the way back to the gospel of matthew in which jesus and his family are said to take in refuge during the massacre of the innocents allegedly perpetuated by herod and it said that mark himself was the person who introduced christianity into egypt sometime right after the death of jesus further monastic life is said to have developed in ancient egypt under people like saint anthony and further many of the greatest early theologians of christianity actually emerged in egypt this would include people like clement origen athanasius and of course arias another factor that may explain the rise of ancient christian magic in egypt is that ancient christianity lived among several other religions and philosophies in that region at that time here we think for instance to judaism whose presence in egypt actually predates christianity by centuries we have evidence of both jewish temples operating in alexandria but also a jewish presence dating all the way back to the persian period on the elephantine island this would also include the various religious and philosophical schools like hermetism gnosticism along with the various mystical and straightforwardly philosophical schools we shouldn't forget this was also the land of philo of alexandria along with people like platinus the founder of neoplatonism and of course we have to think of all those religions philosophies and mysticisms as being set against the backdrop of the indigenous religion of egypt which stretches back from millennia not to mention many religious newcomers to the region as well this would include things like the cult of serapis the dualistic religion of manichaeism and many many more as you can see egyptian life was incredibly pluralistic and was marked by a high degree of cultural religious and magical syncretism that is to say egypt in some sense was an ancient melting pot of course before turning to talk about specifically christian magic we should know that christianity had a very difficult relationship from its earliest beginnings indeed part of this problem has to do with the fact that christianity was a new religion and the idea that religion was new was basically the idea that it wasn't true in the roman imagination new and religion simply made very little sense in the roman mind even judaism a religion that the romans basically held in contempt for its single invisible god worshipped only in one temple in jerusalem still at some level respected judaism for its great antiquity though this courtesy would not be extended to christianity its leader jesus of nazareth had basically been executed in the most humiliating way for the most terrible of crimes probably something like treason and not just executed by crucifixion but executed last week the idea that a executed criminal could become a god was something that the romans just found to be very very unusual perhaps even disgusting so we have to understand that christianity from its very early period had an uphill battle for legitimacy now while christianity did have this pr problem the fact that it was a new religion there's an interesting counterbalance to this in the ancient world and that counterbalance has to do with the fact that many people in fact believed jesus did do the miracles ascribed to him in fact many early christians were thought to actually have magical or miraculous powers of course in both roman and in jewish eyes at the time jesus and his followers didn't have these powers because of jesus being the son of god and therefore christianity being a legitimate religion so part of the debate early on around christianity wasn't whether jesus and his followers had supernatural powers even someone who was a harsh opponent of christianity like celsus basically admitted that they did the question is where those powers came from and in many people's eyes those powers originated either in magic or in demonic power so as you can see christianity is going to have a really difficult time early on with magic because on the one hand it needs to argue that its miracles are the result of a legitimate relationship with the divine and not the workings of sorcery or magic and so you can see part of what christianity is going to have to do very early on is distance itself in a very strong way from magical practices this whole quest to distance itself from magic but also claim historical legitimacy led christianity into some rather interesting results for instance one of the early tactics used by some early christians was to claim that ancient pagan philosophers actually foretold the coming of jesus in fact one of the ancient pagan philosophers or maguses that early christians claimed foretold the coming of christianity was in fact hermes tris mcgistus now this is ironic of course because hermes stress magistus is primarily linked in the ancient imagination with things like astrology alchemy and well magic this quest for legitimacy and this desire to distance itself from magic led early christianity to again to somewhat strange bedfellows here again we have someone like lactantius arguing that none other than hermes trismegistus is a kind of prefiguring of christianity again linking christianity ironically with alchemy astrology and magic of course that irony wasn't lost on all early christians saint augustine for instance really didn't like the idea of linking hermes tristan guest with early christianity probably because of the associations with hermes stress magistas and these various kinds of occult practices of course it's also going to be saint augustine who's going to primarily develop the anti-magic attitudes that christianity is going to hold from the late classical period into the medieval period and beyond however that didn't stop ancient christians from happily going about practicing magic so before turning to look at some of the magical texts that have survived from the early christian period i know that they're going to be some people out there that are going to say something like well real christianity doesn't practice magic christianity bans magic and therefore anything that was done in the name of magic was never actually christian and therefore christian magic simply can't exist this is a bit of a version of what is called the true scotsman's argument the idea that for instance real christians would never engage in the crusades and therefore the violence perpetuated by the crusaders wasn't christian or that the ku klux klan isn't christian because real christianity isn't racist well the reality is that we can make a distinction between what christianity officially says and what actual christians do in this case we can make a distinction between what elite christian theologians and christian lawyers as they were developing christianity articulated in terms of what christians should and shouldn't do however that doesn't have a lot of impact and necessarily upon what average christians did in alexandria in ancient egypt any conception of true christianity or true judaism or true paganism for that matter is really just an abstract idea that primarily exists in the minds of practitioners and theologians it doesn't really so much exist on the ground real people do all kinds of well weird things that aren't exactly orthodox and aren't exactly the exact representation of how religion should be practiced in the mind of elite theorists so from the point of view of scholarship alone i'm actually interested in both versions of christianity both the elite version of christianity that exists in the minds of theologians and lawyers but i'm also really interested in the average christianity that was practiced on the streets of the ancient world and what we'll find is that those two things often don't meet up and the average christian practicing on the street may have been somewhat different and maybe even been condemned at some level by the kind of high-level theoreticians operating in the monasteries are in the churches that the average christian on the street may have been chastised or even condemned by the monks priests and theologians operating at the high level of christian orthodoxy doesn't mean the average christian on the street was any less of a christian in fact by studying these magical documents i think we get a new light on how christianity was actually practiced among common people in the ancient world and that's very important because we need a very full picture of just what christianity was not just the idea of what pure rarified christianity was in the minds of elite scholarship that christians were practicing magic as worthy of study alone whether they were heretics or normies or whatever the fact that they were engaging in this process is worth studying because we learned something about the diversity and the depth by which christianity was operating both from the very high level of the theologians all the way to the street level perhaps of magical practice in the ancient world not that the high-level folks didn't do magic too but we learned a lot about how christianity was being practiced in reality in the ancient world so studying christian magic is a core and essential aspect of gaining a real insight into what early christianity was in fact like as i mentioned earlier most of the magical texts that we have that survive from ancient egypt are primarily preserved in two languages they're preserved in either greek or coptic coptic being the final version of the ancient egyptian language being written out in greek letters specifically we can divide ancient christian magic in this period into either coptic or greek text and then we can further subdivide them into the various spell types that is to say we can look at healing spells protective spells erotic magic or love magic cursing and then a kind of miscellaneous grab bag of various magical spells that have been recovered from this ancient period what typically separates these spells from the other spells collected in the vast collection of the greek magical papyri is that these are almost always overtly christian either in symbolism and language or by virtue of the fact that we can be fairly confident that practitioners of these magic were specifically christian of course like many magical texts of this period even the specifically christian spells often bear some degree of syncretism that is to say the magical practices actually mix jewish pagan and christian elements together although here i want to focus really on the spells that are very explicitly christian in character to give you an idea about what those spells and what early christian magic look like so what i want to do now is turn and look at a couple of spells from each one of these categories to get a better sense of what ancient christian magic looked like of course i'm only covering a very small percentage of the spells over 150 spells collected by meyer and smith in their edition so if you want to deep dive into early christian magic you'll have to pick that text up i'll be talking a little bit about the text at the end of the video as usual so our first spell is actually a healing spell found at oxy rincus it's actually moxierinkus1077 in greek oxyrinkus as you may know is a pretty famous trash heap what's really great about trash heaps in history is that trash heaps tell us well a ton about the actual lived conditions of people in the ancient world so archaeologists absolutely love trash so in this trash you've been found enormous amounts of text ranging from receipts to even early fragments of gospels so the trash hebit oxyringus has just yielded a treasure trove of ancient manuscripts and here we have an interesting spell using the gospel of matthew text from the gospel of matthew as a way of healing someone of some kind of illness of course we should always consider the character of literacy in the ancient world we're talking about a population where at most 25 of the population was literate and so writing had a long association with magic in fact in ancient egypt toth the god of writing is also a god of magic so unsurprising a text like the gospel of matthew a text already thought to have somewhat supernatural power as having revealed the truth of christianity it's unsurprising that a text like the gospels are also going to be used for magical healing purposes as well what's also important about this spell is that the gospel of matthew is not just laid out but laid out in cross-shaped patterns of course the cross is the quintessential image in christianity of the power over death the power over sickness it's the execution of jesus on the cross that basically defeats death in the christian mythology so the fact that we have the gospel of matthew laid out in a cross-shaped pattern only further gives this amulet or this magical text further supernatural power finally we also have a figure here at the center it's not clear who this figure is and as you can see this text is quite worn it's very likely this figure in the center is jesus himself so we have these cross-shaped patterns of the gospel of matthew which jesus is healing people and that pericappy themselves shaped in cross-shaped patterns and then jesus placed at the center you can also tell that this document was probably folded up and probably carried by the person who sought healing by it so this amulet is fascinating because it uses a section from the gospel of matthew along with the cross-shaped configuration of the words along with an image of jesus all to probably affect a kind of magical healing of the person that carried this amulet our next magical spell actually comes from pgm4 this is the great collection of magical documents held now in paris and it's interesting because it is written both in greek and in coptic and it dates from about the 4th century this magical spell is actually a kind of exorcism magic which have been very popular in the ancient greek world as you probably know exorcism was very intimately associated with christianity and with jesus in the ancient world in fact exorcism is one of the main miracles accomplished by jesus in the gospels so we can see here the christian elements are quite clear we have the invocation of the father the son and the holy spirit although it's interesting here that in the exorcism spell itself we have the use of olive branches now the use of olive branches is found all throughout ancient magic and it has a wide variety of implications specifically the implication and the symbolic power of victory of course you'll remember in the olympic games the olive branch is used as a sign of success in those games so the use of olive branches in ancient magic was somewhat ubiquitous in this context in fact we see olive branches being used for protective dye dims for various kinds of chains for instance to bind demons as we see in this spell but also as a scourge which we also see in this spell where a bundle of olive branches are actually used as a kind of whip to drive the demons away further this smells also interesting because it uses a kind of post exorcism amulet to prevent demons from repossessing the person that has been liberated from this demonic possession the use of post-possession amulets actually dates back all the way to the ancient near east and we see something like the idea of post-possession magic being used all the way into contemporary exorcisms as well what's perhaps interesting about this later aspect of the exorcism spell is that this later section may be earlier and may reflect the kind of syncretism with the indigenous religion of ancient egypt and the christian religion here in this later section of the incantation the section of the amulet being written on metal is actually gods like bess and horus of course bess and horus were powerful egyptian deities and we see this repetition of these magical words over and over again you'll see p-h-o-r being repeated in coptic over and over that p sound is actually the definite article in coptic and so it's probably some repetition of the horus over and over and over again in various kinds of permutations in order in some sense to drive the demons away by the power of it seems horus and bess so again a really interesting syncretistic exorcism spell which both uses christian imagery and christian language and christian invocation but at the same time is actually using egyptian deities as a form of amulet to keep the demon from repossessing so we use christianity to get rid of the demon but we use egyptian religion to keep the demon from getting back into that person so again a fascinating spell that shows the lines between christianity and egyptian religion aren't always clear in the ancient world another spell here we can take a look at is a protective spell composed in greek sometime between the 5th and the 7th centuries this spell is interesting because it uses both language from the lord's prayer obviously a very important prayer in the history of christianity but it also mentions something called the exorcism of solomon solomon of course is very important in the history of control over demons certainly by this time period and before and all the way into modern occultism solomon is associated with his power to control manipulate dispel and get demons to kind of do what you want so solomon is going to be instrumental in some ways in the history and development of magic and we can see the development of that magical idea of solomon controlling demons reaching all the way back here into early christian magic it's also worth noting here that toward the end of this exorcistic incantation we also have language that's very evocative of psalm 91. psalm 91 is important in the history of exorcism and we actually see it used all the way back from the dead sea scrolls in which some version of it was actually used for something like exorcistic rituals in the jewish context and the dead sea scrolls all the way through exorcisms all the way into now really exorcistic spells and exorcistic incantations in both the jewish and christian context still use psalm 91 as a kind of powerful mechanism for expelling demons and of course it's interesting to note that reaching all the way back to the fifth or seventh centuries of the common era we have the exact same psalm being used for the exact same purpose exorcism so again we can see an enormous amount of continuity in this early christian magic reaching all the way back to the judaism of the dead sea scrolls through the early christian magic of the egyptian period all the way into modern and contemporary exorcistic procedures that still use this psalm so an incredible tradition here preserved in this early piece of christian exorcistic magic so here we have another healing and protection spell written in coptic from around the 10th century the spell has a lot of interesting characteristics one of which is we actually have the name of the person who wishes to be healed in this spell a certain kirahu the daughter of so and so it's often worth noting that in many of these healing spells the person is often identified matrilineally rather than patrilineally typically a person will be known in the ancient world as so and so the son of their father but in these healing spells we often have it as so and so the daughter or son of that mother of course it's interesting that the matrilineal link is noted in these healing spells and of course this idea actually survives into modern judaism where the prayer for healing bishop barrach actually typically mentions the mother of the person rather than the father so this may actually be a survival at least into modern judaism of this kind of matrilineal descent in protective magic of course this spell also abounds in motifs found and other forms of ancient magic here we have the sator word square which is thought to have magical powers and we see this word square of course written all over the ancient roman world what's also interesting of course is we have a wide variety of what are called powerful words or magical words that are repeated here along with various christian symbols of course some of these words we can decipher in fact some of them there are actually slightly garbled versions of the so-called four living creatures that are found in the book of ezekiel which go on to become symbolic of the four gospel writers matthew mark luke and john so we have those images being invoked in the spell along with a clear invocation of jesus again this spell isn't terribly complicated but what it does show is a wide variety of christian imagery and christian motifs being used alongside of more typical magical motifs like the satoru word square being incorporated into a unified kind of christian magic which again is helping to heal this person of course love magic or erotic binding magic was just as common in the ancient world as it is in the modern world i notice i call it erotic binding magic because it's not really love that we're dealing with here if you're being magically compelled to love someone or to have sex with them you don't exactly have consent and so you really you're erotically bound to that person rather than in love with them so i make a distinction here between love magic and what i would rather call erotic binding magic of course a great deal of erotic binding magic survives from antiquity and this spell is interesting because it attempts to bind one man a guy named papalo to another man a guy named fellow now fellow it seems maybe actually a word for an elder or perhaps even another monk of course this spell is interesting because while we don't have a great deal of same gendered love magic from the ancient world although i did mention one of those spells in my other episode on the greek magical papyri this one's interesting because it's not just same gendered love magic but it actually might be same gendered love magic between two monks now again i know what some of you may be thinking magic alone is not allowed in christianity and there's no such thing as christian magic well of course many christians practice magic as this entire episode is about you might also be saying something like well christians aren't supposed to be gay well sorry they are there are lots of gay christians so unsurprisingly in the ancient world we're going to have erotic bonding magic between men and perhaps here even between monks sorry not sorry history just is what it is this magical spell is rather complicated and unsurprisingly if it were written by a monk of course monks are going to have access to a much higher degree of literacy and therefore perhaps a much higher degree of literacy in magical techniques so we here have a great deal of magical words the word ruse is being used over and over again although exactly what this word is meant to mean is unclear but we also have the invocation of the typical name of god used in these texts the idea of god of the hosts which is a classic name for god in israelite and hebrew scriptures along with the ubiquitous ring characters that we see all through greek magical practice these ring characters are a bit mysterious and i've actually done an entire episode on their history and development but clearly these ring elements in this spell are meant to further enhance its magical power so again this spell actually betrays a lot of what we know about greco-egyptian magical practices although it's clearly being used here very likely by a monk in order to entice another monk to have sex with him and it's very clear right that this is sexual the language here is very clearly erotic so again an interesting spell because it shows a range of magical practices from this period and also of course interesting because it is a same gender erotic binding spell which are pretty rare in the ancient world so worth investigating worth looking at these spells more closely because again they reveal that the ancient world was well a lot like our world unsurprisingly as much as people seek love in the ancient world they also seek to curse people they hate and so we also have a wide variety of curse spells to be found in early christian magic so some of the more interesting and well macabre spells that we actually have in early christian magic are those written on bones sometimes camel bones but as we'll see one of these spells is actually even written on a human rib we have some reason to believe that some of these spells would have been written in blood on those bones of course mummies and corpses have long held the idea in ancient egypt of having supernatural powers the idea that they have somehow survived death a common idea in ancient egyptian religion so it's not surprising that curses the idea that you would send evil to someone or send death to someone is going to be associated with blood and bones and actually burying those bones with written curses on them with the corpses of people so here we're going to turn to some curses and we're going to see that the use of bones human bones in fact was not at least super uncommon in ancient christian magic so here's a curse spell actually written on a human rib bone now again where they got a human rib bone is mysterious and weird but the actual spell here is a meant to curse someone called apollo now apollo was just a typical greek name lots of people were named apollo including christians and what's interesting about this spell is that it's supposed to rain down all kinds of curses perhaps in the form of an angry ghost which is something we also see in egyptian mythology but here you'll notice that one of the curses is that they will be bombarded or cursed like the people of sodom and gomorrah of course a clear reference to the two famous destroyed cities in the hebrew bible thus linking this egyptian magic perhaps with a more biblical story that a christian or perhaps a jew would have known also it's worth noticing here that we actually know the person who wrote this spell out we have a certain jacob of euphemia and the fact that we know his name was jacob it further tells us that either this person was a christian or a jew so again we have magic being written out on a bone probably placed with a corpse meant to somehow summon perhaps that corpse into the form of an angry ghost to curse the person that jacob here really just doesn't like so don't cross jacob of euphemia this other spell is a bit more vague but it also is prescribed to have been written on a bone now we don't have the actual version written on a bone we simply have the spell that tells us that in order to be effective it must be written on a bone and placed with a corpse what this spell does is again somewhat vague but it seems like it might be a kind of necromancy that attempts to revivify the dead a common motif of course in ancient egyptian mythology there's a relatively obscure reference here to a child with flowing hair we're not quite sure exactly what this is meant to represent but i suspect that this spell was probably meant to revive a dead child of course child death in the ancient egyptian world or the ancient world more generally is very common and so it's not surprising that a desperate parent would turn to a kind of necromancy in the hopes of their child somehow either surviving death or actually being physically resurrected through a kind of magic so someone who recently had a child and who also has a young two-year-old this piece of magic is especially touching and sad and powerful i think a cross-cultural idea we can all grasp christian or otherwise is that grief drives people to do rather extreme things and there's probably perhaps very few forms of grief more extreme than the loss of a child so unsurprisingly we may have a spell here which is attempting to revivify a dead child in the form of a kind of necromancy written on a bone and perhaps placed with that very corpse so again a very sad and touching form of magic but again a form of magic which cuts through barriers like christian or jewish or pagan and tells us what we're dealing with are people and perhaps people and profound grief again some of these spells border a bit on the humerus here we have a fourth or fifth century spell written in coptic where a certain mary is cursing a certain martha and it seems like again we don't know what martha did but mary's curse is very extreme where she invokes the power of jesus to ruin martha's marriage and fill her full of ulcerous tumors and all kinds of things again i don't know what martha did but damn like be careful not to cross marry here with her curses so again what's interesting to me about these spells is not often how complicated they are or how weird they are or how the magic is meant to do x y or z this just gives us a glimpse into the life of common everyday people where apparently mary and martha had some kind of feud and mary decided that rather than going about the regular way of disliking her she decides to in fact invoke jesus himself to curse her and ruin her marriage etc so again just a glimpse into the human life of people using early christian magic as a way of cursing people now again would the average christian bishop say this was a good idea of course they wouldn't but does that matter to average christian people who are obviously in a tiff with one another no so again what's interesting about this spell brief as it is is that the glimpse it gives us into the life of common people this is just one more curse spell and again i don't want to put too much emphasis on the curse spells there's a lot of protective spells as well the curse spells for whatever reason are just far more complex and they just have a lot more interesting features to talk about this curse spell is really fascinating because of the imagery that is meant to be carved onto a piece of metal and actually smeared with various kinds of oils in fact smeared with menstrual blood in order to accomplish the various curse that is supposed to be carried out by this magic so here we have images of what appear to be bound entities perhaps bound angels or demons that are meant to do the cursing or perhaps even person that is meant to be cursed being bound in a magical way with these very elaborate ring-shaped magical devices these ring-shaped devices as you may know from other episodes that i've done about magic in the ancient world are ubiquitous in this period and in fact that ringed magical symbol appears through later islamic and jewish magic and appears all the way into modern contemporary pagan practices to this day you can actually see these exact same ringed figures in various magical alphabets in various contemporary magical texts of course the spell is also interesting because it uses wax and dolls or wax and effigies as a mechanism of cursing the persons involved with the spell the use of these kinds of dolls as a form of magical practice have actually been recovered from the ancient world and so we know a little bit about how these dolls were used what's again also interesting if these dolls were sort of buried or they were smeared with various kinds of things in this case we actually have the doll being wrapped in mummy wrappings and then smeared with various kinds of oils and menstrual blood in order to affect the curse and then the dolls were buried in some kind of way in order to affect that curse so again a very complicated curse ritual which again gives a glimpse into the wide range of imagery and motifs that have actually survived well into medieval and in contemporary magic so it's interesting that the kind of magic operating here in this early christian period is being inherited from earlier forms of magic and survives well into the contemporary period this last spell that i want to discuss is perhaps one of the most interesting and unusual to me in the entire collection like yeah even more interesting than the weird bone ones this spell invokes a wide variety of archangels it seems to even invoke the power of king david which will matter more in just a moment in fact this spell even seems to invoke the power of the zodiac well to what end a good singing voice the person wants to sing well and entice other people with their singing voice in fact the spell even reads that the operator of this kind of magic wants to be such a good singer that people demand an encore and in fact closed their shops to come listen to this guy's sing interestingly we even know the name of the person who invoked this magic he was a certain service of anna now i've never heard of servers of anna maybe his spell really worked and he was the rage of the ancient world but what's interesting here is that we have a wide variety of magical techniques and devices being used to try to get this guy to sing well one of the more interesting aspects of this spell is that part of what it invokes are the seven holy vowels these are the seven vowels of the greek alphabet which are said to be tattooed across the chest of the father almighty yeah that father almighty like father almighty maker of heaven and earth of all things seen and unseen like father son and holy spirit that guy so the idea is that apparently the father almighty has a chest piece tattooed across his chest with all these vowels and part of how this spell is supposed to work is by invoking the power of those vowels now we see the use of those vowels in various kinds of permutations all through magic both christian and otherwise in the ancient world and the use of these vowels may have been something like a chant or a kind of hymn or a kind of drone meant to induce a kind of meditative or magical state we really just don't know exactly how these vowels are being used although we see them in everything from magical texts to gnostic gospels but clearly the idea at least in this text is that they are actually tattooed across the chest of god and one can invoke them or sing them or chant them somehow and that leads further power to the incantation itself this idea of the vowels being tattooed on the chest only occurs in a very few other magical texts both of them christian for whatever reason so just why these vowels being tattooed on the chest of god seems to be either uniquely christian or at least found only in christian magic is unclear but this is just such an evocative image that i couldn't pass it up further what's also interesting about this spell is that we're given some insight into the media and the material culture of just how the spell is meant to be carried out we're actually told that you have to write it out in with certain kinds of substances we see this in various other forms of magic but the fact that we actually have very detailed descriptions of what's going on here is fascinating further we also have this very elaborate ring imagery which again we've seen in other magical texts as well we see again spread all throughout ancient magic and all the way through medieval and contemporary magic but notice it's interesting about this ring magical imagery here is that the scribe of the spell is actually depicted what might be cerberus the son of ana actually depicted here with a kind of loot or a kind of guitar i'm not sure what the exact name for this ancient instrument would be but notice this may actually be a picture of the person invoking this magic in their future state as a kind of magically empowered singer or it could be an image of the divine king david who the spell also invokes of course david also was famous as a musician so exactly what this spell is meant to do it's really clear it's just to get a good singing voice which apparently was a big deal as much then as it is now but we have a wide range of different kinds of imagery and magical techniques being used in this spell and again this image of the of the person holding the guitar is just fascinating because it's the use of the ringlet magical symbols being actually used to compose the image of the singer that i guess the singer wanted to be or perhaps again of the kind of angelic king david again this spell is just so interesting because of its complexity the aim of the spell and the general tenor of the spell but i just couldn't pass it up so again here we have a spell for a good singing voice which again gives a gamut of this kind of magic we have curses we have perhaps revivification spells for children and we have things as basic as healing spells and then here we have a somewhat interesting i think a rather interesting spell for the invocation of a good singing voice here in early christian magic of course this is just a small sample of the over 150 spells that have survived from this period of early christian magic and i'm not going to be able to do justice to the full range of those spells here although i will point out that because we have over 150 spells that are survived this is probably indicative of the fact that we're probably thousands probably tens of thousands of spells that were generated in the ancient christian context which only serves to prove that magic was alive and well in ancient christianity of course christians never stopped practicing magic even after this egyptian period and christian magic survives both into the byzantine context but also of course into europe in fact one might even say that all of medieval magic is in some sense christian magic of course with the exception of jewish magic and we're going to spend a good bit of time here on the channel discussing the development of specifically christian magic so if you're interested in that topic make sure to stick around further if you're interested in the history of magic alchemy the occult hermetic philosophy or kabbalah make sure to subscribe to our channel these are all core content issues and we explore them almost every week here at esoterica if you want to support my work of making scholarly accessible and free content on topics in western esotericism please consider supporting my work on patreon or with a one-time donation your support of esoterica really does make this channel possible from all the books i have to buy to do research the time it takes to produce these videos your support really does make this channel and its content possible ethoterrica is a growing project starting here with youtube content we're going to eventually grow to a winter seminar and eventually semester-length classes interviews and more so your continued support of esoterica makes content in western zotero system free and accessible so again please consider supporting our work via patreon or with a one-time donation of course if you really want to deep dive into ancient christian magic then the primary text you're going to want to pick up is a text by that name ancient christian magic that's edited by meyer and smith this is a really wonderful collection of over 150 different ancient christian texts spanning from coptic to greek spanning over the course of several centuries from some of the earlier centuries of christianity all the way into what we might call the early medieval period this is a really wonderful text every single spell or collection of spells has a unique introduction for every single spell a little bit of background and information about the spell it also has some bibliographic data about where the spell is located and what museum our collection it's found in who the principal editor is etc so every single spell in the text gets a lot of attention which is really really nice especially if you don't have a lot of background in ancient christianity or in ancient egyptian magic so again a really wonderful text in almost every regard almost every regard my only complaint about the text is that in the case of many of the magical symbols and many of the magical words these are those little ringlet symbols that appear throughout graco egyptian magic but also in ancient christian magic in many cases the signs are simply left out of the text it'll simply have a bracket and say magical signs here or ring signs are here it's unfortunate that in many cases the actual magical symbols are not reproduced sometimes they are and sometimes they're not in my general opinion magic is should be taken in its totality and really understanding the text is not just having a translation from greek or coptic into english but actually knowing what it was written on noting exactly what kind of symbols were being used so that we can really have a better understanding of exactly what this magic looked like in its original context with that exception i'll say that this text by meyer and smith is really a wonderful addition to anyone who wants to study ancient magic ancient christianity are the overlap between those two or even just the history of magic in general again we can't really understand the development of magic especially into the medieval and the modern period without understanding the cradle of western magic which in some sense the graco egyptian context of course if you're really interested in graco egyptian magic the text you'll need to pick up is the greek magic papyri by bets as i mentioned earlier in this episode i've done an entire episode just on that topic with some recommendations for greek magic egyptian magic and the synthesis that we have in the greek magical papyri so if you've studied some greek magical papyri but you've not taken a look at the specifically christian texts then the meyer and smith text is an absolutely important adjunct to the vast library that is the greek magical papyri because you really can't understand the greek magical papyri without seeing that christianity was a huge component of that world so i hope you found our introduction to some ancient christian magical text interesting to really reveal that christianity is a far more complex and nuanced religion than simply the high-level debates among scholars and theologians about whether the nature of christ is the same nature of the father of its humo uscios or homo oysios of course those conversations and debates are very interesting especially to me as a philosopher but what's also crucially important is knowing that in everyday life we have these interesting magical practices and these magical texts more than those high-level academic debates of the ancient world really shed light onto the actual human lived experience of christians in this early period of that religion's development so then rather than shedding an exclusive light on the high-level theological and philosophical texts of the ancient world these magical texts really put a human face on early christianity and for that reason alone i'm really grateful they've survived and i'm really happy to be able to study them to learn more about early christians and the magic they practiced until next time i'm dr justin sledge and you've been watching esoterica where we explore the arcane side of history philosophy and religion you

Channel: ESOTERICA

Views: 493,592

Keywords: necromancy, occultism, grimoire, magic, mysticism, magick, hermetic, witchcraft esoteric, esotericism, occult, demons, spirits, western esotericism, hermetic philosophy, occult lecture, alchemy, supernatural, history of magic, Christian magic, coptic, Egyptian magic, angels, angelic magic, angel magic, gospels, coptic magic, white magic, jesus, prayer magic, magical seals, angelic writing, angelic language, john dee, ancient egypt, egyptian christian magic, monks, gay magic, curses, love magic

Id: APQn6M3gJcY

Length: 48min 12sec (2892 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020