Quote from: WERDNA on May 17, 2024, 05:58:38 PMIt's funny to me how strong the image of witch trials and magical suppression is with regards to the church. There was a period of witch trials in Syria shortly before the birth of Christ, a magical papyri burning ordered by Augustus Caesar, a pre-Christian expulsion of astrologers, and a number of Imperial laws against magical practices (often associated with "superstitio").

Why aren't the pagan Romans seen as wizard haters?

   Because a lot of the condemnations of witch hunting and inquisitors come out of the creation of the Black Legend (anti-Catholic, anti-Spanish) and the Enlightenment (anti-Christian, pro-Roman).

Greetings!

Yes, very interesting! I love reading my copies of The Malleus Malificarum.

The authors of the famous manual on Witch Hunting, Kramer and Spengler, were definitely interesting men!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

There's enough about the role Christianity played in the social and political development of Europe during the middle ages to earn multiple doctorates.  We are talking about multiple centuries, hundreds of languages, and thousands of prominent personalities and decision makers that all played a part.

I made a very broad general statement based on my knowledge.  I still hold that it's true in the general sense but I see how things could be perceived differently.  People would have rationalized away the inconsistencies rather than taking a hard line by allowing a lot of relabeling and moving on.

I will say that there were five magic areas that were directly condemned by doctrine backed up by Bible passages; summoning, conjuring, divination, speaking with the dead, and curses.  Messing with these would have been a high risk activity anywhere where the more orthodox elements of the church held sway.

In case anyone is interested, I added a small section on street performers and a folk magic ritual (Houkigami Ritual) to my big post on Japanese magic (#35, pg. 3).

Quote from: BadApple on May 17, 2024, 11:57:35 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 17, 2024, 09:35:07 AMYes, it's worth repeating that practically all users of magic (folk or "high") in the Christian medieval world would absolutely identify as Christians, and usually as devout Christians. Prayer, purification and often the recitation of biblical texts were a central part of many medieval magical procedures.

What they would not do is identify what they were doing as magic or themselves as wizards.  They were men of faith sharing the blessings of the Lord.  I know it's all the same to someone viewing it from a Hermetic tradition perspective but it's extremely important to a Christian.

I grew up around this type of ideology.  I have met and spent time talking with Mike Warnke, Kennith Copland, and Carmen Licciardello.  Not to mention the fact that I've studied some Catholic esoteric theory.  What became the inquisition comes from a lot of the same energy that caused the satanic panic of the 80s and 90s.  (You better believe there are still a lot of people steeped in it.)  Many of the Manuals of Inquisition are pretty easy to understand for me as they look a lot (in spirit if not procedure) like the stuff the Evangelicals put out on the subject.

From a conservative Christian perspective, both now and then, all supernatural happenings are either divine or satanic.  A lot of effort goes into figuring out which one is which.  Miracles are divine supernatural events and magic is the result of occult satanic ritual.   

What nearly anyone practicing magic in the middle ages in Europe would need to do is either a) keep it hidden or b) convince onlookers that it was divine in nature and therefore not occult.

Pundit, you said that a lot of it comes down to how you define magic.  I agree.

Well, I'm not sure if I'm understanding what you're saying here. Holy Men or Saints or preachers would heal and do other things by prayer and faith alone, and they certainly didn't identify themselves as magicians or hermetics or occult philosophers.
But both folk-tradition wise men/women and hermetic magicians, while identifying as Christians, and using christian purification and prayer in their ritual magic, still DID ritual magic. They weren't thinking of what they were doing as just prayer or just "gifts of the holy spirit" or something like that, they understood that what they were doing was a ritual, and that it was part of an ancient tradition.

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 17, 2024, 01:19:30 PM

Quote from: BadApple on May 17, 2024, 11:57:35 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 17, 2024, 09:35:07 AMYes, it's worth repeating that practically all users of magic (folk or "high") in the Christian medieval world would absolutely identify as Christians, and usually as devout Christians. Prayer, purification and often the recitation of biblical texts were a central part of many medieval magical procedures.

What they would not do is identify what they were doing as magic or themselves as wizards.  They were men of faith sharing the blessings of the Lord.  I know it's all the same to someone viewing it from a Hermetic tradition perspective but it's extremely important to a Christian.

The above is basically the reason why terms like "Natural Philosophy" (and "Natural Magic") arose in the first place. One thing about the Catholic Church; it likes to define things. It creates terms specifically to distinguish things from what might otherwise be lumped together if the differences are spiritually significant (and sometimes even if they aren't).

"That guy over there is a wizard, I'm a natural philosopher."

The term "natural philosophy" was not invented by the Catholic Church. It was in use at least from the time of the ancient greeks.

In fact, the prohibitions that the Church had on certain types of magic ("maleficium", necromancy, etc) were basically THE SAME as the ones that the PAGAN Roman Empire had in most of its history.

The mentality that "all magic is from satan" is something that only really arose around the peak of the witch craze, and coincided not only with the reactionary mentality which produced that but was also coinciding with the reformist movement (which is not to say that only protestants were involved, because there was a reformist movement that led to Protestantism but it was part of a longer reformist movement that had been trying to reform the church for at least a century before Luther and would continue to do so after the protestant reformation). It was part of that combination of iconoclasm, excessive puritanism, and taking the "sola scriptura" concept to a radical extreme.

It's something that has happened in this past century in the Muslim world, where 100 years ago a huge percentage of Muslims were of the mystical Sufi school, and all kinds of philosophical and mystical studies abounded in much of the Muslim world, and today the "purity of Islam" nonsense (and it is nonsense because there never ever was that mythical past they claim they're trying to recover where no one looked to anything at all outside the Koran/Hadith) has all but wiped out Sufism in much of the Muslim world, and instead nearly 50% of muslims are extremist Wahabi/Deobandists.

Quote from: BadApple on May 18, 2024, 12:50:32 AMThere's enough about the role Christianity played in the social and political development of Europe during the middle ages to earn multiple doctorates.  We are talking about multiple centuries, hundreds of languages, and thousands of prominent personalities and decision makers that all played a part.

I made a very broad general statement based on my knowledge.  I still hold that it's true in the general sense but I see how things could be perceived differently.  People would have rationalized away the inconsistencies rather than taking a hard line by allowing a lot of relabeling and moving on.

I will say that there were five magic areas that were directly condemned by doctrine backed up by Bible passages; summoning, conjuring, divination, speaking with the dead, and curses.  Messing with these would have been a high risk activity anywhere where the more orthodox elements of the church held sway.

Agreed. Note what they all have in common though... all call upon something supernatural through means of ritual; either for information, bargaining, or compelling service (divination isn't the same as astrology... the latter is passively observing the heavens in search of patterns, the former is performing rituals to seek information from spirits).

The Church's position against those practices was to protect people from acts that would expose them to demonic temptation, oppression or possession.

The Epistles even laid out a process for testing visions or apparitions that weren't called for and said to not trust spirits claiming to be angels or saints without performing those tests (chief among them is whether or not it's message in any way contradicted the gospel message and to consult with others before putting faith in such a thing) because demons are angels and can appear as saints or the dead and are free to lie and deceive in the process.

Mucking about with chemicals derived from minerals, plants and animals, even if those results can be explosive, won't damn your soul (alchemy always sat right on the border of acceptable precisely because one of the ends that could be pursued was mucking about with one's soul and summoning spirits as part of the procedures).

Quote from: WERDNA on May 17, 2024, 05:58:38 PM

Quote from: BadApple on May 17, 2024, 11:57:35 AMWhat became the inquisition comes from a lot of the same energy that caused the satanic panic of the 80s and 90s.

By this are you referring to the Witch trials? I'd associate the creation of the inquisition more with the increase of influence held by the Cathars.

It's funny to me how strong the image of witch trials and magical suppression is with regards to the Church. There was a period of witch trials in Syria shortly before the birth of Christ, a magical papyri burning ordered by Augustus Caesar, a pre-Christian expulsion of astrologers, and a number of Imperial laws against magical practices (often associated with "superstitio").

Why aren't the pagan Romans seen as wizard haters?

You're largely correct. The Inquisition itself had very little to do with the Witch Craze. The people involved in that were mostly secular authorities of both Catholic and Protestant areas who were egged on by radical preachers.
It wasn't in any way the Inquisition's job to hunt down witches or anything like that, they were tasked with uncovering heretics and apostates who taught ideas that were in opposition to the doctrines of faith.

And yes, the Romans did all those things, and as I just said in my previous post, pretty much all the things they Romans routinely outlawed were the same things that the Catholic Church later outlawed, while the things they tolerated were things that were also tolerated by the Catholic Church. There were some particular exceptions of brief persecutions of certain practices by specific Emperors, but the consistent prohibitions were pretty much the same.
And the motives were pretty much the same: curses and magical poisoners that made pacts with dark powers (ie witches) were seen as a menace in almost every culture, foreign teachings drew people away from the state religion (which in Rome was also the Cult of the Emperor), astrology was dangerous if it was used for political propaganda, and charlatans and frauds feigning magical powers were bad for the economy.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 18, 2024, 08:51:07 AMWell, I'm not sure if I'm understanding what you're saying here. Holy Men or Saints or preachers would heal and do other things by prayer and faith alone, and they certainly didn't identify themselves as magicians or hermetics or occult philosophers.
But both folk-tradition wise men/women and hermetic magicians, while identifying as Christians, and using christian purification and prayer in their ritual magic, still DID ritual magic. They weren't thinking of what they were doing as just prayer or just "gifts of the holy spirit" or something like that, they understood that what they were doing was a ritual, and that it was part of an ancient tradition.

Wow, ok.  This one came as a bit of a shock to me.

It's not a question of doing or not doing the rituals, it's a matter of context.  I think the best way to explain it is by describing what I have seen and experienced of modern Christian ritual practice and the mindset of the practitioners. 

Yes, there are both clergy and lay members in Christian faiths that engage in mystic ritual.  Indeed, many of the rituals I have seen and participated in are fairly similar to some of the rituals you describe in The Invisible College.

The Seven Sacraments are the cornerstone of Catholic beliefs and are absolutely mystic ritual.  Eucharist, for instance, is held that during the ceremony the wafers and wine become part of the body of Christ in a literal sense.  I have never met a priest that would have been ok with you calling the sacraments magic.

This holds for rituals of some of the Protestant denominations as well.  If you were there and called it magic you'd get a rather strong reaction and possibly some violence.  From their viewpoint, Hermetic ritual is a bastardization of sacred rites.

Based on reading I've done, I don't think this view is new.  There is plenty of evidence that many of the rituals are very old and predate Christianity.  (I think some predate any known language.)  It's also not unusual for Christianity to absorb rituals and tweak them to fit doctrine.  The Christian argument is that when done in proper context, it's a form of worship and submission to God whereas magic is done to to enrich and empower one's self.  The first is holy and the second is blasphemy.

You mentioned Albertus Magnus.  From a conservative Catholic viewpoint, he wasn't a mage but a holy man redeeming holy rituals and practices and restoring them to their rightful place under God's grace.

If you see this as nothing more than an argument of semantics, I sympathize.  If you don't see the distinction between holy rites and magic ritual, join the club.  There's a lot of internal hostility in Christendom over this issue.  A lot of death and violence has occurred precisely over the argument of where the line between the two is.

One thing that might help in the whole "magic" department is to remember that language is not a constant thing.

The modern sense of the word "magic" only goes back to the 14th Century. Prior to that magikos referred mainly to the acts of various priestly classes (see the Biblical Three Magi... who were priests from the East).

In period there would be terms like Wiccacraeft (witchcraft) and Drycraeft (Dry was derived from the Irish Drui... from which the modern term Druid came) along with Sorcier (later Sorcerer, but derived from "caster of lots" and in terms of seeing the roots... say it as sorSEER) all referring to what we're lumping under "magic."

Basically... if you want this discussion to make more sense, replace every instance of "magic" with "supernatural" and "magician" with a wide array of terms (priest, wiseman/woman for legitimate ones and wicce, dry, sorcier etc. for illegitimate ones).

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 18, 2024, 03:32:47 PMOne thing that might help in the whole "magic" department is to remember that language is not a constant thing.

The modern sense of the word "magic" only goes back to the 14th Century. Prior to that magikos referred mainly to the acts of various priestly classes (see the Biblical Three Magi... who were priests from the East).

In period there would be terms like Wiccacraeft (witchcraft) and Drycraeft (Dry was derived from the Irish Drui... from which the modern term Druid came) along with Sorcier (later Sorcerer, but derived from "caster of lots" and in terms of seeing the roots... say it as sorSEER) all referring to what we're lumping under "magic."

Basically... if you want this discussion to make more sense, replace every instance of "magic" with "supernatural" and "magician" with a wide array of terms (priest, wiseman/woman for legitimate ones and wicce, dry, sorcier etc. for illegitimate ones).

The term I have most often heard used is sorcery. This is as old as the hills.  It's also the modern umbrella term used by many Christian denominations for anything supernatural that isn't directly from God.

In the New Testament, the story of Simon is often used as a cornerstone of understanding the relationship between Christianity and the use of supernatural powers.

QuoteActs 8:9-25

9 But there was a certain man, called Simon, which before time in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:

10 To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.

11 And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.

12 But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.

13 Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done.

14 Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John:

15 Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost:

16 (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)

17 Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.

18 And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money,

19 Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.

20 But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

21 Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.

22 Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.

23 For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.

24 Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me.

25 And they, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.

How this is interpreted will be based on the denomination.  Most do agree that this is a story that show that it's a sin to engage in any form of sorcery and you should only rely on the power of God.

Then there is the discussion of the Holy Ghost which leads down another avenue of inquiry that will get your head spinning...

As far as the three Magi, I have seen a lot of arguments and theories as to who they were and where they came from.  I believe they were Zoroaster priests from Parthia but that's just a guess based on my reading.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 16, 2024, 10:21:45 PMThe answer to this depends on how one defines magicians. For all of the middle ages, most peasant villages had some kind of wise man or cunning woman, who did folk magic. They were generally valued by the people; and contrary to the claims of some modern wiccans or whatever, they absolutely considered themselves to be Christians (at least after the very earliest part of the middle ages).

Complicating this is the fact that modern Wiccans are rather prone to making false and rather outlandish claims about witches and witchcraft in the Middle Ages.  One of them is buried in the phrase modern Wiccans.  This implies that there was such a thing as ancient Wiccans.  This fits in with the claims made by some Wiccans that Wicca is the survival of some Pre-Christian European tradition.  This is simply false.  All Wiccans are modern Wiccans.  Wicca is a modern practice invented in the 1950s by a guy named Gerald Gardner aka Scire.  The ancient coven that supposedly inducted him was pure fabrication.  He made it all up.  There are some rather outlandish claims about the persecution of witches by the Church in the Middle Ages too.  People talk about "The Burning Times" when millions of witches were supposedly burned by the Catholic Church.  Supposedly, so many witches were burned that the smoke blackened the sky.  This claim is, of course, absurd.  Some Wiccan authors, like Scott Cunningham, are honest about the origins of Wicca while others still promote these falsehoods. 

Then again, there are people who still promote Margaret Murray's work as if it had any validity at all.

Perhaps to make it clearer, I was specifically trying to address the question of "didn't priests work magic too?"

The answer is best understood if you know that the word "magic" in its modern extremely broad definition didn't exist back then ("magic" didn't even get associated with sleight of hand/legardimain performances until the 18th Century and only became an umbrella term for "use of supernatural forces" during the Renaissance.

The modern sense of "magic" tends to distinguish the source of the supernatural power. If its God or science then it's not magic. So the priest doesn't work magic, he's performing miracles. The village wise men/women used proto-science (which back in the day was seen as supernatural in that it relied on principles and forces not fully understood).

In a way it was kinda like the Eskimos and their "17 words for snow." Because it was seen to be everywhere, the people back then had many different terms for different types of what we'd just dump under the header of "supernatural/magic."

The easiest way in modern language for me to distinguish it is "yeah, everyone was using supernatural forces, but not everyone was using the forbidden supernatural forces."

Priests or holy men don't actually perform miracles.  They pray for intercession.  If a miracle is performed, it's by God. 

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 19, 2024, 09:28:09 AMPriests or holy men don't actually perform miracles.  They pray for intercession.  If a miracle is performed, it's by God. 

Fair. It's what I get for using broad shorthand.

Technically, the sorcerer isn't doing the magic either. It's whatever spirit they're calling upon that is acting.

The point stands that the modern distinction between the Catholic priest ritually performing the Eucharistic blessing (miracle) and a Sorcerer calling on a spirit (magic) is which supernatural entity they're seeking the aid from.