Magic

Until fairly recently European and North American scholars continued the ancient and widespread practice of defining magic as something other people do, reserving the more exalted category of religion for their own culture and a few other high cultures. One example of this is the demonization of classical paganism and the religious practices of colonized subjects. An earlier example involves the etymology of the English word magic, which comes from the Latin magice and the Greek magike, both of which derive from the Persian word magi, meaning a Zoroastrian priest. This was an expression of the ancient Greek and Roman belief that magic was something foreign or at least marginal. Other examples include famous characters from myth and literature, such as the foreigner Medea, and Circe on her faraway island. Those two figures call attention to the widespread association of magic with women or as being achieved through the agency of goddesses such as Diana, Hekate, and Isis.

WOMEN AND MAGIC

The association of women with magic is so pervasive that in some societies, such as Nepal, male magicians dress and wear their hair like women. However, many religions present vivid portrayals of male magicians such as Zoroaster, Moses, Solomon, and Jesus, whose activities are described in relationship to the "true" god and characterized as theurgy, or philosophically grounded magic, especially as the concept was developed by Neoplatonists such as Plotinus (c. 205–270) and Porphyry (c. 232–304). Despite the fact that Proclus (c. 410–485), the head of the Platonic school in Athens, learned theurgy from Plutarch's daughter, Asclepigeneia (Dickie 2001), female magicians are described in more sinister terms. The positioning of women as practitioners of lesser or malevolent forms of magic parallels their exclusion from the most sacred aspects of male-dominated religions, a situation that holds in diverse cultures such as the Hellenistic world and modern Nepal (Levine 1982). Magic is mainly about obtaining power, and whether it is spiritual or secular power, it is illegitimate for women to have it unless they use it to serve men.

Hekate was an important goddess to theurgists as well as to less sophisticated magicians. Both invoked Hekate to gain access to and control over wandering ghosts known as daemons who could carry out their wishes. For theurgists Hekate took on increasingly celestial and benevolent characteristics, commanding as she did celestial daemons, whereas for more common magicians she maintained her earlier role as the goddess of the underworld whose daemons could be put to malevolent uses.

The fact that the tensions between high and low forms of magic often were categorized by gender can be observed in the many magical contests in world literature in which men easily defeat women. For instance, Saint Symeon tricked a woman magician into wearing an amulet that he said would protect her from the evil eye, but he wrote on it "Let God render you ineffective and let him stop you turning men away from himself to yourself" (Dickie 2001, p. 306). As soon as she started wearing it, the woman lost all her magical powers. In a South Asian folk tale the male hero, Gopi Chand, went to Bengal, one of the Indian equivalents of Thessaly, the land of witches and magic, where he successfully battled a band of female magicians by using his superior male religious powers. Rabbis also were believed to have superior powers with which to combat female sorcery; when necessary, rabbis could exhibit greater supernatural powers. In one tale two rabbis were about to start a journey by ship when a woman asked them to take her along, but they would not. She then pronounced a spell, and the ship was held fast. They then pronounced a spell, and it was freed.

LOVE MAGIC

Historically sexual or love magic always has been associated with women, especially courtesans and prostitutes (Dickie 2001, Golomb 1993), who are believed to introduce substances such as hemlock and menstrual blood into men's food. Inevitably this is connected to the belief that women are poisoners, as when Deianira accidentally poisons her husband Hercules through the potion she concocts to regain his love. In other tales love potions are deadly in their consequences rather than their contents, such as the potion Queen Grimhilde gives Sigurd to make him forget Brunilde in the Nibelungenleid and the one made by Isolde's mother that dooms Tristan and Isolde.

In his amusing second-century ce novel The Golden Ass, Apuleius describes the many adventures of an eager but hapless student of sexual magic and the association of magic with the goddess Isis. Ironically, in his own life, after he married an older wealthy woman who later died, Apuleius was accused by his former in-laws of having won her love by magic. He was put on trial but defended himself successfully. This brings out the legal sanctions that could be brought against practitioners in the ancient world and is an important indicator of the widespread belief in the power of magic to bewitch or harm people.

The power of menstrual blood in sexual magic derives from pollution beliefs that assert that contact with a menstruating woman can render a man incapable of communicating with the sacred and thus make him vulnerable to the demonic. Such ideas are found all over the world and express belief in the power of women, accidentally or on purpose, to control men, a power that is turned against them to justify men's actual control of women. The antinomian practices of Tantric Buddhism and Hinduism reify ideas about women as polluters and utilize them for the benefit of men by advocating contact with menstrual blood as a path to supernatural power. They also positively incorporate the connections between women and magic in the figure of the dakini, semidivine women who can confer magical powers, though they do so mostly for the benefit of male practitioners (Sanford 1991).

Despite male anxiety about female pollution and magical powers, the archaeological evidence in tablets that contain spells and surviving magical texts in Egypt from the Hellenistic period reveals that sexual magic was done predominantly for and by men, as do the practices recommended in the appendix of the Kama Sutra. This does not mean that women did not practice magic or hire those who could, but such evidence undermines the idea of their predominance in this area, especially when added to the widespread use by men of binding spells carved on sheets of lead that were buried in the hippodrome to influence the outcome of chariot races. In other words in the Hellenistic period men appear to have resorted to magic more often than women did.

A relevant contrast comes from modern Thailand where both women and men are heavy consumers of magic but women are the primary customers for love magic. Louis Golomb attributes women's precarious marital status to their use of magic. In Thailand polygamy is officially illegal but widely practiced with impunity, and this leaves a deserted wife with few legal rights and second wives and their children with none (Golomb 1993). As a result women believe the only control they have comes through magic.

JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN MAGIC

Jewish magic had great currency in the Hellenistic world and later periods among both Jews and non-Jews. Two major biblical figures are the locus of magical practices: Moses and Solomon. The association of Moses with magic is represented most clearly in his contest with the magicians of the Pharaoh (Exodus 7-10, especially 7:11-13), who can do some of the things Moses can, such as turning staffs into snakes and water into blood. The distinction is clearly not a matter of what is done but of who is doing it and/or what the source of their supernatural power is. It was reasoned that Moses had God's sponsorship; therefore, the magicians must have had a demon's. It is also a matter of miracles. Moses and the Jewish sages who followed, in their mastery of the Torah and with God's help, can perform miracles. Women, in contrast, partly because they were excluded from Torah study and were deemed incapable of any direct experience of the divine, were considered incapable of performing miracles. Consequently, if they showed supernatural powers, they had to be practicing sorcery. The Talmud also contains examples of male sorcerers, but they are fewer in number, reinforcing the idea that magic is a female preoccupation.

The association of magic and healing is found frequently in Jewish sources and is claimed to be one of the special benefits of extraordinary Torah learning. For centuries Christians resorted to Jews because of their supposed magical powers of healing, as is attested to by John Chrysostam's fourth-century sermons against Christians who went to synagogues to be cured of illness (Dickie 2001).

In Judaism and Christianity the connections between magic and healing can be traced back to Solomon, whose renowned wisdom came to include knowledge of magic and healing, whereas his prodigious literary output easily subsumed his authorship of magical texts, such as the widely circulated Testament of Solomon. In it Solomon uses a ring given to him by God to bind various demons and make them help build the temple at Jerusalem. However, it is questionable whether this is a Jewish or a Christian text. The biblical citations in it could have been made as easily by Christians as by Jews, especially in light of the syncretic nature of magic in the Hellenistic period.

THE MODERN PERIOD

Nineteenth-century Europe saw a revival of interest in occult and magical practices, and organizations such as the Order of the Golden Dawn in England, which attracted prominent women and men, had a lasting impact on the practice of magic. In the 1960s the upsurge of interest in the occult met with the women's movement. An offshoot of this is modern feminist magic, which is represented most popularly by Starhawk, who defines magic as "changing consciousness at will" (Star-hawk 1997, pp. xiv-xvi) and has utilized ritual and magic in political demonstrations for the rights of women and the protection of the environment.

Throughout America and Europe mostly middle-class women have embraced magic as a form of spirituality that affirms and empowers women (Luhrmann 1989, Pahnke 1995). Donate Pahnke's thoughtful analysis of Starhawk's writings, as well as that of Heide Göttner-Abendroth, a leading figure in the women's spirituality movement in German-speaking countries, illustrates the illusory distinction between religion and magic. Both Starhawk and Göttner-Abendroth conflate those terms, most often in their references to ancient goddess religions, although both are opposed to patriarchal religions, and in representing magic as a spiritual path for women. Pahnke makes the point that these remain politically loaded terms that must be used with a fuller understanding of their complexity and history.

see also Witchcraft.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adler, Margot. 1986. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today. Rev. edition. Boston: Beacon Press.

Dickie, Matthew W. 2001. Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World. London and New York: Routledge.

Fishbane, Simcha. 1993. "Most Women Engage in Sorcery": An Analysis of Sorceresses in the Babylonian Talmud." Jewish History 7(1): 27-42.

Frazer, Sir James George. 1922. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. New York: Macmillan.

Gold, Ann Grodzins. 1991. "Gender and Illusion in a Rajasthani Yogic Tradition." In Gender, Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions, ed. Arjun Appadurai, Frank J. Korom, and Margaret A. Mills. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Gold, Ann Grodzins. 1994."Devotional Power or Dangerous Magic? The Jungli Rani's Case." In Listen to the Heron's Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India, ed. Gloria Goodwin Raheja, and Ann Grodzins Gold. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Golomb, Louis. 1993. "The Relativity of Magical Malevolence in Urban Thailand." In Understanding Witchcraft and Sorcery in Southeast Asia, ed. C. W. Watson, and Roy Ellen. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Gonzalez-Wippler, Migene. 1973. Santería: African Magic in Latin America. New York: Julian Press.

Levine, Nancy E. 1982. "Belief and Explanation in Nyinba Women's Witchcraft." Man 17(2): 259-274.

Lighstone, Jack N. 1978–1985. "Magicians, Holy Men and Rabbis: Patterns of the Sacred in Late Antique Judaism." In Vol. 5 of Approaches to Ancient Judaism: Theory and Practice, ed. William Scott Green. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press.

Luck, George, trans., ed., and intro. 1985. Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Collection of Ancient Texts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Luhrmann, T. M. 1989. Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Pahnke, Donate. 1995. "Religion and Magic in the Modern Cult of the Great Goddess." In Religion and Gender, ed. Ursula King. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Sanford, James H. 1991. "The Abominable Tachikawa Skull Ritual." Monumenta Nipponica 46(1): 1-20.

Siegel, Lee. 1991. Net of Magic: Wonders and Deceptions in India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Starhawk. 1997. Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics. Boston: Beacon Press.

Thorndike, Lynn. 1923–1958. A History of Magic and Experimental Science. 8 vols. New York: Macmillan.

Trachtenberg, Joshua. 1939. Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion. New York: Behrman's Jewish Book House.

                                           Serinity Young