Talismans and Trojan Horses

Talismans and Trojan Horses PDF Author: Christopher A. Faraone
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Greek legends and historical accounts contain many references to special statues or images designed to preserve the safety or livelihood of a city, a business or a house. These images, which fall into two often overlapping categories (talismans and apotropaia), were erected according to special rituals and took on a variety of intriguing forms, including lions, locusts, and bound effigies of destructive deities like Ares. Looking closely at a wide variety of Greek texts and artifacts, Faraone provides a detailed description and survey of these images and then uses this information to provide new interpretations of early Greek myths about Pandora, the Trojan Horse, and the "living statues" created by Hephaestus. At each step he sets the Greek evidence in a wider eastern-Mediterranean context, with detailed discussions of Near Eastern and Egyptian practices that bear close resemblance to the Greek rituals. The study closes with a re-evaluation of the traditional scholarly approach to religious art as purely representational, suggesting that some images instead of simply illustrating the power of a god, were actually created to restrain and control the power of inimical supernatural forces such as plague-gods and ghosts. Focusing renewed attention on these often misinterpreted talismans and apotropaia, Talismans and Trojan Horses will be illuminating for scholars and students of classics, art and archaeology, religion, the Ancient Near East, the Bible, and mythology.

Talismans and Trojan Horses

Talismans and Trojan Horses PDF Author: Christopher A. Faraone
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
Greek legends and historical accounts contain many references to special statues or images designed to preserve the safety or livelihood of a city, a business or a house. These images, which fall into two often overlapping categories (talismans and apotropaia), were erected according to special rituals and took on a variety of intriguing forms, including lions, locusts, and bound effigies of destructive deities like Ares. Looking closely at a wide variety of Greek texts and artifacts, Faraone provides a detailed description and survey of these images and then uses this information to provide new interpretations of early Greek myths about Pandora, the Trojan Horse, and the "living statues" created by Hephaestus. At each step he sets the Greek evidence in a wider eastern-Mediterranean context, with detailed discussions of Near Eastern and Egyptian practices that bear close resemblance to the Greek rituals. The study closes with a re-evaluation of the traditional scholarly approach to religious art as purely representational, suggesting that some images instead of simply illustrating the power of a god, were actually created to restrain and control the power of inimical supernatural forces such as plague-gods and ghosts. Focusing renewed attention on these often misinterpreted talismans and apotropaia, Talismans and Trojan Horses will be illuminating for scholars and students of classics, art and archaeology, religion, the Ancient Near East, the Bible, and mythology.

Talismans and Trojan Horses

Talismans and Trojan Horses PDF Author: Christopher A. Faraone
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mythology, Greek
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description


The High Magic of Talismans and Amulets

The High Magic of Talismans and Amulets PDF Author: Claude Lecouteux
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1620552809
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
A comprehensive study of the use of talismans and amulets in the Western Mystery Tradition • Provides an in-depth look at the medieval and Renaissance use of amulets and talismans, including the work of Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Athanasius Kircher • Provides a full summary of the magical knowledge required to make an amulet or talisman, including the invocations required to activate their powers • Reviews different kinds of amulets and talismans, from ancient jewelry and magical objects to the modern rabbit’s foot or lucky horseshoe The use of talismans and amulets stretches back nearly to the dawn of man, from everyday items magically prepared, such as horns or coins, to intricate and beautiful jewelry imbued with protective powers. Drawing on his private collection of medieval manuscripts as well as his privileged access to the rare book archives of major European universities, Claude Lecouteux provides a comprehensive history of the use of talismans and amulets for protection, healing, and divine influence. He explores their use in the Western Mystery Tradition as well as Eastern and Middle Eastern beliefs about these magical objects and their incorporation--despite Church anathema--into the Christian tradition of Medieval Europe. Reviewing many different kinds of amulets and talismans used throughout the ages, such as a rabbit’s foot, horseshoe, gris-gris bag, or an inscribed parchment charged through ritual, he details the principles and symbology behind each object and shows that their use is still as widespread today as any time in the past. Lecouteux explains the high magic behind the hermetic art of crafting amulets and talismans: the chains of sympathy, astrological geography, and the invocations required to activate their powers. He explores the work of adepts such as Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Athanasius Kircher, including an in-depth look at Kircher’s work on planetary seals in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus. Illustrated throughout with period art depicting magical symbols, seals, and a wide array of talismans and amulets, this comprehensive study provides a practical guide to the historical development and step-by-step creation of magical objects.

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe PDF Author: Valerie Irene Jane Flint
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780485890020
Category : Magic
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description


Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic

Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic PDF Author: David Frankfurter
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004390758
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 817

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Book Description
In the midst of academic debates about the utility of the term “magic” and the cultural meaning of ancient words like mageia or khesheph, this Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic seeks to advance the discussion by separating out three topics essential to the very idea of magic. The three major sections of this volume address (1) indigenous terminologies for ambiguous or illicit ritual in antiquity; (2) the ancient texts, manuals, and artifacts commonly designated “magical” or used to represent ancient magic; and (3) a series of contexts, from the written word to materiality itself, to which the term “magic” might usefully pertain. The individual essays in this volume cover most of Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquity, with essays by both established and emergent scholars of ancient religions. In a burgeoning field of “magic studies” trying both to preserve and to justify critically the category itself, this volume brings new clarity and provocative insights. This will be an indispensable resource to all interested in magic in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, ancient Greece and Rome, Early Christianity and Judaism, Egypt through the Christian period, and also comparative and critical theory. Contributors are: Magali Bailliot, Gideon Bohak, Véronique Dasen, Albert de Jong, Jacco Dieleman, Esther Eidinow, David Frankfurter, Fritz Graf, Yuval Harari, Naomi Janowitz, Sarah Iles Johnston, Roy D. Kotansky, Arpad M. Nagy, Daniel Schwemer, Joseph E. Sanzo, Jacques van der Vliet, Andrew Wilburn.

Apotropaia and Phylakteria: Confronting Evil in Ancient Greece

Apotropaia and Phylakteria: Confronting Evil in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Maria G. Spathi
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1803277505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The belief in the existence of evil forces was part of ancient everyday life and a phenomenon deeply embedded in popular thought of the Greek world. Stemming from a conference held in Athens in June 2021, this volume addresses the apotropaia and phylakteria from different perspectives: via literary sources, archaeological material, and iconography.

Blood Rites

Blood Rites PDF Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
Publisher: Twelve
ISBN: 1455543713
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A New York Times Notable BookAn ALA Notable Book "Original and illuminating." --The Washington Post What draws our species to war? What makes us see violence as a kind of sacred duty, or a ritual that boys must undergo to "become" men? Newly reissued in paperback, Blood Rites takes readers on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century "total war." Ehrenreich sifts deftly through the fragile records of prehistory and discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place -- not in a "killer instinct" unique to the males of our species, but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experiences of predation by stronger carnivores. Brilliant in conception and rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that continues to transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life.

Patterns of the Past

Patterns of the Past PDF Author: Alfonso Moreno
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199668884
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
In this volume, an international group of leading academics undertake an examination of epitedeumata ('way of life') in Greek history, looking at cultural practices as acts which relate meaningfully to perceived sequences of past acts.

Early Greek Mythography

Early Greek Mythography PDF Author: Robert L. Fowler
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198147414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 849

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Book Description
Volume 2 is a detailed commentary on the texts of Early Greek Mythography: Volume 1, a critical edition of the twenty-nine authors of this genre from the late 6th to early 4th centuries BC. Volume 2 provides a mythological commentary of the original works, as well as a philological commentary on separate authors.

Light and Darkness in Ancient Greek Myth and Religion

Light and Darkness in Ancient Greek Myth and Religion PDF Author: Menelaos Christopoulos
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739139010
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Light and Darkness in Ancient Greek Myth and Religion is a ground-breaking volume dedicated to a thorough examination of the well known empirical categories of light and darkness as it relates to modes of thought, beliefs and social behavior in Greek culture. With a systematic and multi-disciplinary approach, the book elucidates the light/darkness dichotomy in color semantics, appearance and concealment of divinities and creatures of darkness, the eye sight and the insight vision, and the role of the mystic or cultic.