Magic and Divination in the Ancient World

Magic and Divination in the Ancient World PDF Author: Leda Ciraolo
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004497366
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
This collection of essays focuses on divination across the Ancient World from early Mesopotamia to late antiquity. The authors deal with the forms, theory and poetics of this important and still poorly understood ancient phenomenon.

Magic and Divination in the Ancient World

Magic and Divination in the Ancient World PDF Author: Leda Ciraolo
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004497366
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
This collection of essays focuses on divination across the Ancient World from early Mesopotamia to late antiquity. The authors deal with the forms, theory and poetics of this important and still poorly understood ancient phenomenon.

Magic in the Ancient World

Magic in the Ancient World PDF Author: Fritz Graf
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Ancient Greeks and Romans often turned to magic to achieve personal goals. Magical rites were seen as a route for direct access to the gods, for material gains as well as spiritual satisfaction. In this survey of magical beliefs and practices from the sixth century B.C.E. through late antiquity, Fritz Graf sheds new light on ancient religion. Graf explores the important types of magic in Greco-Roman antiquity, describing rites and explaining the theory behind them. And he characterizes the ancient magician: his training and initiation, social status, and presumed connections with the divine world. With trenchant analysis of underlying conceptions and vivid account of illustrative cases, Graf gives a full picture of the practice of magic and its implications. He concludes with an evaluation of the relation of magic to religion.

Magic and Divination in the Ancient World

Magic and Divination in the Ancient World PDF Author: Leda Jean Ciraolo
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004124066
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
This collection of essays focuses on divination across the Ancient World from early Mesopotamia to late antiquity. The authors deal with the forms, theory and poetics of this important and still poorly understood ancient phenomenon.

Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World

Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World PDF Author: Scott Noegel
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271046006
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
In the religious systems of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean, gods and demigods were neither abstract nor distant, but communicated with mankind through signs and active intervention. Men and women were thus eager to interpret, appeal to, and even control the gods and their agents. In Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, a distinguished array of scholars explores the many ways in which people in the ancient world sought to gain access to--or, in some cases, to bind or escape from--the divine powers of heaven and earth. Grounded in a variety of disciplines, including Assyriology, Classics, and early Islamic history, the fifteen essays in this volume cover a broad geographic area: Greece, Egypt, Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Persia. Topics include celestial divination in early Mesopotamia, the civic festivals of classical Athens, and Christian magical papyri from Coptic Egypt. Moving forward to Late Antiquity, we see how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each incorporated many aspects of ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman religion into their own prayers, rituals, and conceptions. Even if they no longer conceived of the sun, moon, and the stars as eternal or divine, Christians, Jews, and Muslims often continued to study the movements of the heavens as a map on which divine power could be read. The reader already familiar with studies of ancient religion will find in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars both old friends and new faces. Contributors include Gideon Bohak, Nicola Denzey, Jacco Dieleman, Radcliffe Edmonds, Marvin Meyer, Michael G. Morony, Ian Moyer, Francesca Rochberg, Jonathan Z. Smith, Mark S. Smith, Peter Struck, Michael Swartz, and Kasia Szpakowska. Published as part of Penn State's Magic in History series, Prayer, Magic, and the Stars appears at a time of renewed interest in divination and occult practices in the ancient world. It will interest a wide audience in the field of comparative religion as well as students of the ancient world and late antiquity.

Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria

Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria PDF Author: Ann Jeffers
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004105133
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This publication is a detailed study of magical and divinatory practices in the Ancient Near East, particularly in Palestine and Syria. It combines the insights of the Old Testament with the data available from Phoenician and the older Ugaritic texts. It traces the links both historically and archaeologically.

Mantikê

Mantikê PDF Author: Sarah Iles Johnston
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047407962
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This book is a collection of studies by scholars Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and early Christian religions on the topic of divination. Its topics range from necromancy to dice rolling, free-lance diviners to Delphi, and includes treatments from the Archaic period to Late Antiquity.

Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World

Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World PDF Author: Paul Allan Mirecki
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004116764
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
This volume contains a series of provocative essays that explore expressions of magic and ritual power in the ancient world. The strength of the present volume lies in the breadth of scholarly approaches represented. The book begins with several papyrological studies presenting important new texts in Greek and Coptic, continuing with essays focussing on taxonomy and definition. The concluding essays apply contemporary theories to analyses of specific test cases in a broad variety of ancient Mediterranean cultures. Paul Mirecki, Th.D. (1986) in Religious Studies, Harvard Divinity School, is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. Marvin Meyer, Ph.D. (1979) in Religion, Claremont Graduate School, is Professor of Religion at Chapman University, Orange, California, and Director of the Coptic Magical Texts Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity.

Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria

Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria PDF Author: Ann Jeffers
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004667806
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Beginning with Deut. 18:9ff and its condemnation of magicians and diviners, this book explores the window that this text gives us into magic and divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria. Investigating the wealth of language combined with the archaeological and historical evidence, it seeks to place the influence of these factors in the emerging Israelite religion. An integral part of Ancient Near Eastern cosmology and culture, magic and divination are never completely eradicated despite the ideological warfare led by the Old Testament writers. The first part examines the function of various magicians and diviners. This is followed by a chapter on dreams and visions. The third chapter looks at the techniques and devices used by the oracular practitioners. Other subjects covered include magic in warfare, in the treatment of diseases, and blessing and cursing.

Mesopotamian Magic

Mesopotamian Magic PDF Author: I. Tzvi Abusch
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789056930332
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This volume, edited by Tzvi Zbusch and Karel van der Toorn, contains the papers delivered at the first international conference on Mesopotamian magic held under the auspices of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) in June 1995. It is the first collective volume dedicated to the study of this topic. It aims at serving as a bench-mark and provides analytic and innovative but also sythetic and programmatic essays. Magical texts, forms, and traditions from the Mesopotamian cultural worlds of the third millennium BCE through the first millennium CE, in the Sumerian, Akkadian and Aramaic languages as well as in art, are examined.

Ancient Greek Divination

Ancient Greek Divination PDF Author: Sarah Iles Johnston
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444303007
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The first English-language survey of ancient Greek divinatorymethods, Ancient Greek Divination offers a broad yetdetailed treatment of the earliest attempts by ancient Greeks toseek the counsel of the gods. Offers in-depth discussions of oracles, wandering diviners,do-it-yourself methods of foretelling the future, magicaldivinatory techniques, and much more Illustrates how the study of divination illuminates thementalities of ancient Greek religions and societies