Officina Magica

Officina Magica PDF Author: Shaul Shaked
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047407849
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This book of essays deals with magical phenomena in Mesopotamian, Zoroastrian, Greek and Jewish cultures. The topics discussed include Mesopotamian magic, its impact on the Aramaic magic bowls, Jewish magical literature, magical gems, Zoroastrian omens, and methods of research.

Officina Magica

Officina Magica PDF Author: Shaul Shaked
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047407849
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This book of essays deals with magical phenomena in Mesopotamian, Zoroastrian, Greek and Jewish cultures. The topics discussed include Mesopotamian magic, its impact on the Aramaic magic bowls, Jewish magical literature, magical gems, Zoroastrian omens, and methods of research.

Materia Magica

Materia Magica PDF Author: Andrew Wilburn
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472117793
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Materia Magica approaches magic as a material endeavor, in which spoken spells, ritual actions, and physical objects all played vital roles in the performance of a rite. Through case studies drawing on objects excavated or discovered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century at three Mediterranean sites, Andrew T. Wilburn identifies previously unknown forms of magic. He discovers evidence of the practice of magic in objects of ancient daily life, suggesting that individuals frequently turned to magic, particularly in times of crises. Studying the remains of spells enacted by practitioners, Wilburn examines the material remains of magical practice by identifying and placing them within their archaeological contexts. His method of connecting an analysis of the texts and inscriptions found on artifacts of magic with a close consideration of the physical form of these objects illuminates an exciting path toward new discoveries in the field.

The Origins of Jewish Mysticism

The Origins of Jewish Mysticism PDF Author: Peter Schäfer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691142157
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
'The Origins of Jewish Mysticism' offers an in-depth look at the history of Jewish mysticism from the book of Ezekiel to the Merkavah mysticism of late antiquity. The author reveals what these writings seek to tell us about the age-old human desire to get close to and communicate with God.

Studies in the Syriac Magical Traditions

Studies in the Syriac Magical Traditions PDF Author: Marco Moriggi
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004467203
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The study of the Syriac magical traditions has largely been marginalised within Syriac studies, with the earliest treatments displaying a disparaging attitude towards both the culture and its magical practices. Despite significant progress in more recent scholarship in respect of the culture, its magical practices and their associated literatures remain on the margins of the scholarly imagination. This volume aims to open a discussion on the history of the field, to evaluate how things have progressed, and to suggest a fruitful way forward. In doing so, this volume demonstrates the incredible riches contained within the Syriac magical traditions, and the necessity of their study.

"From a Sacred Source"

Author: Ben Outhwaite
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004190589
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
These papers on the medieval manuscripts of the Cairo Genizah are in honour of Stefan Reif, Professor of Medieval Hebrew at Cambridge University, on the occasion of his retirement after thirty-three years as director of the Genizah Research Unit.

Jewish Love Magic

Jewish Love Magic PDF Author: Ortal-Paz Saar
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004347895
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Jewish Love Magic: From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages is the first monograph dedicated to the supernatural methods employed by Jews in order to generate love, grace or hate. Examining hundreds of manuscripts, often unpublished, Ortal-Paz Saar skillfully illuminates a major aspect of the Jewish magical tradition. The book explores rituals, spells and important motifs of Jewish love magic, repeatedly comparing them to the Graeco-Roman and Christian traditions. In addition to recipes and amulets in Hebrew, Aramaic and Judaeo-Arabic, primarily originating in the Cairo Genizah, also rabbinic sources and responsa are analysed, resulting in a comprehensive and fascinating picture. “Due to the general neglect of the topic in previous scholarship, the richness of the research corpus and the scientific precision of the author, Saar’s Jewish Love Magic is an important volume that should be on the shelf of every scholar focusing on ancient Jewish magic, but also on Jewish culture and cultural history in general. Furthermore, the book is an enjoyable read also for a non-specialist audience thanks to its clarity and fluency.” - Alessia Belusci, Yale University, in: Journal of Semitic Studies 64.2 (2019) “This is a valuable foray into the relationship between institutionalised religion and magic and the complex question of ‘legitimacy’. Overall, the book presents a compelling case for the existence of Jewish ‘love magic’.” -Ann Jeffers, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 43.5 (2019)

The Witch

The Witch PDF Author: Ronald Hutton
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300229046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
This book sets the notorious European witch trials in the widest and deepest possible perspective and traces the major historiographical developments of witchcraft

Demons in the Details

Demons in the Details PDF Author: Sara Ronis
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520386183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
The Babylonian Talmud is full of stories of demonic encounters, and it also includes many laws that attempt to regulate such encounters. In this book, Sara Ronis takes the reader on a journey across the rabbinic canon, exploring how late antique rabbis imagined, feared, and controlled demons. Ronis contextualizes the Talmud's thought within the rich cultural matrix of Sasanian Babylonia, placing rabbinic thinking in conversation with Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Syriac Christian, Zoroastrian, and Second Temple Jewish texts about demons to delve into the interactive communal context in which the rabbis created boundaries between the human and the supernatural, and between themselves and other religious communities. Demons in the Details explores the wide range of ways that the rabbis participated in broader discussions about beliefs and practices with their neighbors, out of which they created a profoundly Jewish demonology.

Amulets and Talismans of the Middle East and North Africa in Context

Amulets and Talismans of the Middle East and North Africa in Context PDF Author: Marcela A. Garcia Probert
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004471480
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
In this volume amulets and talismans are studied within a broader system of meaning that shapes how they were manufactured, activated and used in different networks. Text, material features and the environments in which these artifacts circulated, are studied alongside each other, resulting in an innovative approach to understand the many different functions these objects could fulfil in pre-modern times. Produced and used by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the case studies presented here include objects that differ in size, material, language and shape. What the articles share is an all-round, in-depth approach that helps the reader understand the complexity of the objects discussed and will improve one’s understanding of the role they played within pre-modern societies. Contributors Hazem Hussein Abbas Ali, Gideon Bohak, Ursula Hammed, Juan Campo, Jean-Charles Coulon, Venetia Porter, Marcela Garcia Probert, Anne Regourd, Yasmine al-Saleh, Karl Schaefer and Petra M. Sijpesteijn.

Making Amulets Christian

Making Amulets Christian PDF Author: Theodore De Bruyn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199687889
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Making Amulets Christian: Artefacts, Scribes, and Contexts examines Greek amulets with Christian elements from late antique Egypt in order to discern the processes whereby a customary practice--the writing of incantations on amulets--changed in an increasingly Christian context. It considers how the formulation of incantations and amulets changed as the Christian church became the prevailing religious institution in Egypt in the last centuries of the Roman empire. Theodore de Bruyn investigates what we can learn from incantations and amulets containing Christian elements about the cultural and social location of the people who wrote them. He shows how incantations and amulets were indebted to rituals or ritualizing behavior of Christians. This study analyzes different types of amulets and the ways in which they incorporate Christian elements. By comparing the formulation and writing of individual amulets that are similar to one another, one can observe differences in the culture of the scribes of these materials. It argues for 'conditioned individuality' in the production of amulets. On the one hand, amulets manifest qualities that reflect the training and culture of the individual writer. On the other hand, amulets reveal that individual writers were shaped, whether consciously or inadvertently, by the resources they drew upon-by what is called 'tradition' in the field of religious studies.