Biblical and Pagan SocietiesUniversity of Pennsylvania Press, 2001 - 168 من الصفحات In the ancient Near East, the art of influencing the natural course of events by means of spells and other ritual forms was universal. The social and political role of magic is apparent, too, in the competition to achieve precedence over rival systems of ritual practice and belief. Within a region filled with petty kingdoms competing for power, the Jews of ancient Palestine maintained control over adherents by developing distinct ritual practices and condemning as heretical those of nearby cults. Texts from Mesopotamia reveal a striking number of incantations, rituals, and medical recipes against witchcraft, attesting to a profound fear of being bewitched. Magical rituals were also used to maintain harmony between the human and divine realms. The roots of European witchcraft and magic lie in Hebrew and other ancient Near Eastern cultures and in the Celtic, Nordic, and Germanic traditions of the continent. For two millennia, European folklore and ritual have been imbued with the belief in the supernatural, yielding a rich trove of histories and images. Witchcraft and Magic in Europe combines the traditional approaches of political, legal, and social historians with a critical synthesis of cultural anthropology, historical psychology, and gender studies. The series, complete in six volumes, provides a modern, scholarly survey of the supernatural beliefs of Europeans from ancient times to the present day. Each volume of this ambitious six-volume series contains the work of distinguished scholars chosen for their expertise in a particular era or region. |
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... performed is also supported by other cases ; for instance , rituals against sorcery of the type zikurudû made before a certain star are carried out before that same star . Messages of Witchcraft : zikurudû A special type of witchcraft ...
... performed for a prince : ' [ Wh ] at the king , my lord , wrote to me [ about ] Šarrat - samsī , to perform the ritual against zikurudû for him we again pronounced ( his ) name ( and ) performed ( it ) . We are not negligent with regard ...
... performed on favourable days , as listed in the hemerologies , but this principle could be applied more subtly ; a certain ritual was not expected to be equally successful on any day of a year . Calendars were developed according to the ...