{ "title": "Magic in the Ancient Texts: passages", "report": "https://skirnirstudios.com/magic-in-the-ancient-texts/", "licence": "CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)", "records": 1343, "how_made": "Compiled by AI agents reading the Classica Codex library. A script looked for each quoted excerpt at its reference; museum objects were checked only for their catalogue entry. Translations, summaries and classifications are the agents' work and have not been reviewed by a specialist.", "csv_note": "In the CSV version, list columns hold JSON arrays.", "fields": { "id": "Survey identifier: corpus key and number.", "corpus": "Which of the fifteen surveys found it. Some passages were found by two or three surveys, and a long library passage can hold several entries, so 40 library locations appear in more than one row.", "work": "Work title.", "author": "Author, or Anonymous.", "culture": "Culture, language group or period, as the surveyor described it.", "language": "Language of the excerpt, where the surveyor recorded it; blank in 594 rows.", "date": "Approximate date of the work (or, for manuscripts, the copy).", "date_sort": "A single year for sorting; negative is BCE.", "edition_urn": "The edition's identifier in the Classica Codex library.", "ref": "The passage reference in that edition.", "conventional_ref": "The reference as scholars usually cite it.", "source_collection": "The open collection the edition comes from (see the report's Sources and licences).", "practice_types": "Kinds of practice (divination, healing, binding, love, protection and so on).", "excerpt_original": "The quoted words as the library holds them: the original language, except 76 Bible passages quoted from the library's English (World English Bible; see 'language'). ' / ' marks a line break and '…' an omission.", "translation": "English translation made by the AI surveyor; for English texts, a modernised paraphrase. Not checked by a specialist.", "excerpt_withheld": "Why an excerpt is blank, where it is.", "summary": "What the passage says, in the surveyor's words.", "claimed_effect": "What the text says the practice does.", "claimed_mechanism": "How the text says it works.", "practitioner": "Who performs it.", "practitioner_gender": "Free text as the surveyor recorded it: mostly male, female or mixed; blank where not recorded.", "social_legal_context": "Setting, status or law, where recorded.", "authorial_stance": "How the author treats it (believing narrative, condemnation, fiction, exposure of a trick, mockery, instruction and so on).", "importance": "The surveyor's 1-5 rating of how central the passage is.", "library_check": "Result of the library check: ok, ref-corrected, ok-manual or object-found.", "library_check_meaning": "What that result means.", "check_note": "A note on the check, where there is one.", "surveyor_ref": "The reference the surveyor first gave, where it differs from ref." }, "passages": [ { "id": "bible-1", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Genesis", "author": "Hebrew Bible (J/E narrative; WEB translation)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "traditions early 1st mill. BCE; written c. 8th–6th c. BCE (disputed)", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg001.perseus-eng2", "ref": "30.14.1", "conventional_ref": "Gen 30.14–16", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them to his mother, Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.", "translation": "At wheat harvest Reuben found dûdāʾîm ('love-plants', mandrakes) in the field and brought them to Leah. Rachel asked her for some.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The barren Rachel trades a night with Jacob for Leah's mandrakes, a plant that was evidently believed to bring love or fertility. The narrative then quietly undercuts the plant. The fertile Leah, who gave the mandrakes away, conceives because 'God listened to Leah' (30.17), and Rachel conceives only when 'God remembered Rachel' (30.22). The LXX has μῆλα μανδραγόρου ('mandrake apples'). Song 7.13 also links mandrakes with love.", "claimed_effect": "fertility / erotic attraction", "claimed_mechanism": "virtue of the plant; the narrator reassigns the effect to God", "practitioner": "Rachel and Leah (household women)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "domestic rivalry between co-wives; not condemned", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-2", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Genesis", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB translation)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 8th–6th c. BCE (disputed)", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg001.perseus-eng2", "ref": "30.37.1", "conventional_ref": "Gen 30.37–43; cf. 31.10–12", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Jacob took to himself rods of fresh poplar, almond, plane tree, peeled white streaks in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.", "translation": "Jacob took fresh rods of poplar, almond and plane, peeled white stripes in them, laying bare the white of the wood.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Jacob sets streaked rods in front of mating flocks so that the lambs are born streaked. This is sympathetic magic: what the mother sees shapes the offspring. He also breeds selectively, putting the rods only before the 'stronger' animals (30.41–42). In 31.10–12 Jacob gives the credit to a dream in which an angel shows him the streaked males. The text thus gives the result two causes, a technique and God.", "claimed_effect": "control over the colouring of the flock's offspring", "claimed_mechanism": "visual impression on breeding animals (maternal impression); reattributed to divine revelation", "practitioner": "Jacob", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "trickster contest with Laban over wages", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-3", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Genesis (Septuagint)", "author": "Septuagint translators", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish (Alexandria)", "language": "grc", "date": "Hebrew c. 7th–5th c. BCE; LXX Pentateuch c. 280–250 BCE", "date_sort": -260, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "30.27.1", "conventional_ref": "Gen 30.27 (LXX)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "εἶπεν δὲ αὐτῷ Λαβάν Εἰ εὗρον χάριν ἐναντίον σου, οἰωνισάμην ἄν· εὐλόγησεν γάρ με ὁ θεὸς τῇ σῇ εἰσόδῳ.", "translation": "Laban said: 'If I have found favour with you — I would have taken the omens: God has blessed me since you came.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "WEB: 'I have divined (niḥashtî, from nḥš) that Yahweh has blessed me for your sake.' Laban reports a successful omen-reading and the text does not object to it. The LXX turns it into a hedged conditional built on οἰωνίζομαι ('take bird-omens'). This is the same verb the LXX later uses for Joseph's cup and in the bans of Lev 19.26 and Deut 18.10. A foreign patriarch divines and is right.", "claimed_effect": "knowledge that Jacob brings him blessing", "claimed_mechanism": "omen-reading (nḥš)", "practitioner": "Laban the Aramean", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-4", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Genesis", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB translation)", "culture": "Israelite / Aramean", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 8th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg001.perseus-eng2", "ref": "31.34.1", "conventional_ref": "Gen 31.19, 31.33–35", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Now Rachel had taken the teraphim, put them in the camel’s saddle, and sat on them. Laban felt about all the tent, but didn’t find them.", "translation": "Rachel had put the household images (tĕrāpîm) in the camel saddle and was sitting on them; Laban searched the whole tent and found nothing.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Rachel steals her father's teraphim (31.19) and hides them by sitting on them, claiming her period (31.35). The joke rests on menstrual impurity, so the scene mocks the images. Elsewhere teraphim are used for divination (Ezek 21.21; Zech 10.2), stand in a household shrine (Judg 17.5), are condemned (1 Sam 15.23; 2 Kgs 23.24), and are human-sized (1 Sam 19.13).", "claimed_effect": "household protection / oracle (implied)", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-5", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Genesis", "author": "Hebrew Bible (Joseph novella; WEB)", "culture": "Israelite depiction of Egypt", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–5th c. BCE (disputed)", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg001.perseus-eng2", "ref": "41.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Gen 41.8, 41.24", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "It happened in the morning that his spirit was troubled, and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men of it. Pharaoh told them his dream, but there was no one who could interpret them to Pharaoh.", "translation": "In the morning, troubled, Pharaoh summoned all the ḥarṭummîm of Egypt and all its sages; he told them his dream, but none could interpret it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the first appearance of the ḥarṭummîm. The word is widely taken to be an Egyptian loanword (ḥry-tp, the chief lector-priest); that is the surveyor's own knowledge, not the library. Here they are dream-interpreters at court. The LXX renders them as ἐξηγηταί, 'expounders'. Joseph succeeds where they fail by crediting God (41.16, not opened). This sets up the Bible's recurring court contest, repeated in Daniel 2.", "claimed_effect": "dream interpretation", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Egyptian court ḥarṭummîm", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal court specialists", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-6", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Genesis (Septuagint)", "author": "Septuagint translators", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish rendering of Israelite tale", "language": "grc", "date": "LXX c. 280–250 BCE", "date_sort": -260, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "44.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Gen 44.5, 44.15", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "οὐ τοῦτό ἐστιν ἐν ᾧ πίνει ὁ κύριός μου; αὐτὸς δὲ οἰωνισμῷ οἰωνίζεται ἐν αὐτῷ·", "translation": "Is not this the cup my lord drinks from? And he divines with it by omen-taking.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Joseph's silver cup is described as his divining vessel (WEB 'by which he indeed divines'; nḥš). At 44.15 Joseph boasts 'such a man as I can indeed divine'. This is cup divination (lecanomancy), well attested in Mesopotamia. The hero practises a technique that Lev 19.26 and Deut 18.10 later forbid, and the narrator never comments. It may be part of Joseph's ruse.", "claimed_effect": "discovering hidden facts", "claimed_mechanism": "reading signs in a liquid-filled cup (implied)", "practitioner": "Joseph as Egyptian vizier", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-7", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Exodus", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE (composite)", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.perseus-eng2", "ref": "4.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 4.2–9", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "He said, Throw it on the ground. He threw it on the ground, and it became a snake; and Moses ran away from it.", "translation": "He said, 'Throw it down.' Moses threw it down; it became a snake, and Moses fled from it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "God gives Moses three authenticating 'signs' (ʾōtōt): staff to snake, hand made leprous and restored, river water to blood. They exist 'that they may believe' (4.5). In this narrative a sign is an argument, and the same feats are then matched by Egypt's magicians in ch. 7.", "claimed_effect": "credentials of a messenger", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Moses (empowered by Yahweh)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-8", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Exodus", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite depiction of Egypt", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.perseus-eng2", "ref": "7.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 7.8–13, 7.22, 8.7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers. They also, the magicians of Egypt, did in like manner with their enchantments.", "translation": "Pharaoh summoned the sages and the mĕkaššĕpîm; and the ḥarṭummîm of Egypt did the same by their secret arts (lahăṭêhem).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Aaron's staff becomes a serpent and the Egyptian experts copy it, but Aaron's staff swallows theirs (7.12). They match the water turned to blood (7.22) and the frogs (8.7), using the same Hebrew phrase each time. The text concedes that the foreign technique really works and wins by superior power, not by exposing a fraud. The Hebrew 'secret arts' (lāṭ/lahaṭ) is often taken as 'by their secrets/flames'; that reading is the surveyor's own knowledge.", "claimed_effect": "staff-to-serpent, water-to-blood, frogs", "claimed_mechanism": "secret arts / spells", "practitioner": "Egyptian ḥarṭummîm, sages, sorcerers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-9", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Exodus (Septuagint)", "author": "Septuagint translators", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish (Alexandria)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 280–250 BCE", "date_sort": -260, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "7.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 7.11 LXX", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "συνεκάλεσεν δὲ Φαραὼ τούς σοφιστὰς Αἰγύπτου καὶ τοὺς φαρμακούς· καὶ ἐποίησαν καὶ οἱ ἐπαοιδοὶ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ταῖς φαρμακίοις αὐτῶν ὡσαύτως,", "translation": "Pharaoh summoned the sophists of Egypt and the drug-men; and the Egyptian chanters did likewise with their potions.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Alexandrian Jews translating in Egypt cast Pharaoh's experts in Greek professional terms. The sages become σοφισταί, the sorcerers φαρμακοί ('drug-men'), the ḥarṭummîm ἐπαοιδοί ('chanters of spells'), and their arts φαρμακεῖαι. So the Greek labels Egyptian magic as drugs and incantation together, the vocabulary later inherited by Gal 5.20 and Revelation.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "pharmaka and epōidai (incantations)", "practitioner": "Egyptian ἐπαοιδοί/φαρμακοί", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-10", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Exodus", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite depiction of Egypt", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.perseus-eng2", "ref": "8.19.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 8.18–19 (MT 8.14–15); cf. 9.11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, This is the finger of God: and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he didn’t listen to them; as Yahweh had spoken.", "translation": "The ḥarṭummîm said to Pharaoh, 'This is the finger of a god (ʾĕlōhîm)!' But Pharaoh's heart stayed hard.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At the lice/gnats the magicians 'tried with their enchantments … but they couldn’t' (8.18), and it is they who recognise a power beyond technique (LXX Δάκτυλος θεοῦ ἐστὶν τοῦτο). By 9.11 they cannot even stand before Moses because they too have boils. The story draws a line: magic can imitate, but it hits a limit that marks divine action. The magicians are the first in the Bible to make that distinction.", "claimed_effect": "failure to reproduce lice", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Egyptian ḥarṭummîm", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "court contest", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-11", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Exodus", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 6th c. BCE (P/Passover law)", "date_sort": -550, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.perseus-eng2", "ref": "12.23.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 12.7, 12.13, 12.23", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "For Yahweh will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel, and on the two side-posts, Yahweh will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to strike you.", "translation": "When Yahweh sees the blood on lintel and doorposts he will pass over, and will not let 'the Destroyer' (ha-mašḥît) enter.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is an apotropaic blood rite: lamb's blood smeared on the doorway keeps out a personified 'Destroyer'. It is commanded by God and remembered in a festival, but structurally it works like a protective threshold rite. It shows that the Bible's line against 'magic' is drawn by who authorises a rite, not by what the rite looks like.", "claimed_effect": "protection from a death-dealing power", "claimed_mechanism": "blood sign seen by the deity / Destroyer", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-12", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Exodus", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.perseus-eng2", "ref": "15.25.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 15.23–25", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Then he cried to Yahweh. Yahweh shown him a tree, and he threw it into the waters, and the waters were made sweet. There he made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there he tested them;", "translation": "Moses cried to Yahweh, who showed him a piece of wood; he threw it into the water and the water became sweet.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Bitter water at Marah is made drinkable by throwing in wood that God reveals. It is a 'shown' remedy, half miracle and half materia medica. Sirach 38.5 (bible-89) later reads this episode as proof of the natural power of medicines.", "claimed_effect": "purifying water", "claimed_mechanism": "divinely revealed wood", "practitioner": "Moses", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-13", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Exodus (Covenant Code)", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 8th–7th c. BCE (disputed)", "date_sort": -725, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.perseus-eng2", "ref": "22.18.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 22.18 (MT 22.17)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "You shall not allow a sorceress to live.", "translation": "A mĕkaššēpâ (sorceress) you shall not let live.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the only biblical law that names the practitioner in the feminine (mĕkaššēpâ). It is the oldest legal statement against sorcery in the corpus and the proof-text of the European witch-trials. The LXX in this library reads Φαρμακοὺς οὐ περιποιήσετε, 'You shall not preserve drug-makers'. That turns the singular feminine into a masculine plural and recasts the crime as pharmaka (drugs or poisons).", "claimed_effect": "unspecified harmful sorcery", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "female (Hebrew); male plural (LXX)", "social_legal_context": "capital offence in the Covenant Code", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-14", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Exodus", "author": "Hebrew Bible (Priestly source; WEB)", "culture": "Israelite (priestly)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 6th–5th c. BCE", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.perseus-eng2", "ref": "28.30.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 28.30 (LXX 28.26); Lev 8.8; Num 27.21", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "You shall put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be on Aaron’s heart, when he goes in before Yahweh:", "translation": "Put the Urim and Thummim in the breastpiece of judgment, so that they are over Aaron's heart when he enters before Yahweh.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is sanctioned divination built into the high priest's vestments. Num 27.21 has Eleazar 'inquire … by the judgment of the Urim' for Joshua's campaigns. The LXX (stored at 28.26) translates the terms rather than transliterating them: τὴν δήλωσιν καὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν, 'the Manifestation and the Truth'. The Hebrew Bible bans the diviner but keeps a priestly lot-oracle.", "claimed_effect": "yes/no decisions from God", "claimed_mechanism": "sacred lots in the breastpiece", "practitioner": "the high priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-15", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Exodus", "author": "Hebrew Bible (Priestly; WEB)", "culture": "Israelite (priestly)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 6th–5th c. BCE", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.perseus-eng2", "ref": "28.35.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 28.33–35", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "It shall be on Aaron to minister: and the sound of it shall be heard when he goes in to the holy place before Yahweh, and when he comes out, that he not die.", "translation": "Aaron is to wear it when he serves; its sound must be heard when he goes into the holy place and comes out, so that he does not die.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Golden bells alternate with pomegranates on the hem of the high priest's robe. Their sound protects him from death at the dangerous boundary of the sanctuary. Bells are a widespread apotropaic device; here the text itself gives the protective function.", "claimed_effect": "protection from lethal holiness", "claimed_mechanism": "audible bells", "practitioner": "high priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-16", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Exodus", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.perseus-eng2", "ref": "32.20.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 32.20", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "He took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, ground it to powder, and scattered it on the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.", "translation": "Moses burned the calf, ground it to powder, scattered it on water and made the Israelites drink it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Moses makes the people drink the destroyed idol, a rite of elimination with the feel of an ordeal. It parallels the curse-water of Num 5 (bible-20), where written curses are dissolved and drunk.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Moses", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-17", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Leviticus", "author": "Hebrew Bible (Priestly; WEB)", "culture": "Israelite (priestly)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 6th–5th c. BCE", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg003.perseus-eng2", "ref": "14.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Lev 14.4–7, 14.49–53", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "He shall sprinkle on him who is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird go into the open field.", "translation": "He shall sprinkle the one being cleansed seven times, declare him clean, and release the living bird into the open country.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "For skin disease (ṣāraʿat) and mould in houses, the priest kills one bird over 'living water'. He dips the live bird with cedar, scarlet thread and hyssop in its blood, sprinkles seven times, and releases the bird, which carries the impurity away. The LXX repeats the rite for houses (14.51–52). Structurally this is a classic transfer-and-elimination rite. In Israel's own categories it is purification (ṭohŏrâ), not medicine: the priest certifies a cure, he does not cause it.", "claimed_effect": "ritual cleansing after skin disease", "claimed_mechanism": "transfer of impurity to a released bird; blood, water, seven-fold sprinkling", "practitioner": "priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-18", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Leviticus", "author": "Hebrew Bible (Priestly; WEB)", "culture": "Israelite (priestly)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 6th–5th c. BCE", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg003.perseus-eng2", "ref": "16.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Lev 16.8–10, 16.21–22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats; one lot for Yahweh, and the other lot for the scapegoat.", "translation": "Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats: one lot 'for Yahweh', one lot 'for Azazel'.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "On the Day of Atonement lots pick which goat is sacrificed and which carries the people's confessed sins into the wilderness 'for Azazel'. WEB renders this 'scapegoat'; the Hebrew la-ʿăzāʾzēl, often read as a wilderness demon's name, is the surveyor's own knowledge. Two techniques Israel shared with its neighbours, lot-casting and the elimination rite, sit at the centre of the most solemn day of the year.", "claimed_effect": "removal of communal sin", "claimed_mechanism": "lots; transfer by laying on of hands; dispatch to the wild", "practitioner": "high priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-19", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Leviticus (Septuagint)", "author": "Septuagint translators", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "Hebrew c. 6th c. BCE (Holiness Code); LXX c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg003.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "20.27.1", "conventional_ref": "Lev 19.26, 19.31, 20.6, 20.27", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Καὶ ἀνὴρ ἢ γυνὴ ἃς ἂν γένηται αὐτῶν ἐνγαστρίμυθος ἢ ἐπαοιδός, θανάτῳ θανατούσθωσαν ἀμφότεροι· λίθοις λιθοβολήσατε αὐτούς, ἔνοχοί εἰσιν.", "translation": "A man or a woman among them who becomes a belly-talker or a spell-chanter: let both be put to death; stone them; they are guilty.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "WEB 20.27: 'A man also or a woman that has a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death'. Lev 19.26 bans omen-taking and soothsaying, which the LXX renders οὐκ οἰωνιεῖσθε οὐδὲ ὀρνιθοσκοπήσεσθε ('no bird-omens, no bird-watching'). 19.31 and 20.6 ban consulting the ʾôb and yiddĕʿōnî; 20.6 calls it 'playing the prostitute'. The LXX consistently renders ʾôb as ἐγγαστρίμυθος, 'one who speaks from the belly': ventriloquist. The Holiness Code names both sexes, and the penalty is stoning.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "both", "social_legal_context": "capital offence; impurity language (defilement)", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-20", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Numbers", "author": "Hebrew Bible (Priestly; WEB)", "culture": "Israelite (priestly)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 6th–5th c. BCE (possibly older ordeal)", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg004.perseus-eng2", "ref": "5.23.1", "conventional_ref": "Num 5.11–31 (esp. 5.17–28)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "The priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out into the water of bitterness.", "translation": "The priest writes these curses on a scroll and washes the writing off into the bitter water.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A wife suspected of adultery is made to drink 'holy water' mixed with dust from the sanctuary floor (5.17). The curses are written down and washed into the water, she answers 'Amen, Amen' (5.22), and if guilty her belly swells and her 'thigh falls away' (5.27). If innocent 'she shall be free, and shall conceive' (5.28). The LXX calls it τὸ ὕδωρ τοῦ ἐλεγμοῦ τοῦ ἐπικαταρωμένου, 'the water of proof that brings the curse' (5.18). Here a written curse dissolved and swallowed, the core technique of ancient binding magic, is operated by a priest inside the Torah.", "claimed_effect": "reveals and punishes secret adultery", "claimed_mechanism": "ingested written curse activated by oath before Yahweh", "practitioner": "priest; subject is a woman", "practitioner_gender": "male (operator), female (subject)", "social_legal_context": "husband's jealousy; no witnesses", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-21", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Numbers", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg004.perseus-eng2", "ref": "21.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Num 21.4–9", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Moses made a serpent of brass, and set it on the standard: and it happened, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked to the serpent of brass, he lived.", "translation": "Moses made a bronze serpent and put it on a pole; whoever had been bitten looked at it and lived.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is a textbook sympathetic image, like curing like, commanded by God (21.8). The cure is gazing at a bronze copy of the thing that harms. Its later history matters (bible-55): Hezekiah smashed it because Israel was burning incense to it.", "claimed_effect": "cure of snakebite", "claimed_mechanism": "looking at a bronze image of the serpent", "practitioner": "Moses", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-22", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Numbers", "author": "Hebrew Bible (Balaam cycle; WEB)", "culture": "Moabite/Aramean as seen by Israel", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 8th–6th c. BCE; cf. Deir ʿAlla Balaam text c. 800 BCE", "date_sort": -750, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg004.perseus-eng2", "ref": "22.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Num 22.6–7; 23.1–3; Josh 13.22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "The elders of Moab and the elders of Midian departed with the rewards of divination in their hand; and they came to Balaam, and spoke to him the words of Balak.", "translation": "The elders of Moab and Midian set out with the fees for divination (qĕsāmîm) in hand and came to Balaam.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "King Balak hires a famous foreign specialist to curse Israel: 'he whom you curse is cursed' (22.6). Balaam builds seven altars with seven bulls and seven rams and goes off to meet a revelation (23.1–3). The LXX calls the fees τὰ μαντεῖα. Balaam's power is real in the text but is overridden by Yahweh, so he can only bless. Josh 13.22 later remembers him simply as 'Balaam … the soothsayer' (qōsēm), killed by Israel. An inscription naming Balaam son of Beor as a seer was found at Deir ʿAlla in Jordan; that is the surveyor's own knowledge, not the library.", "claimed_effect": "cursing a people to defeat", "claimed_mechanism": "sacrifice, revelation, spoken curse", "practitioner": "Balaam son of Beor, professional seer", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "paid royal commission", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-23", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Numbers", "author": "Hebrew Bible (Balaam oracles; WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "oracles possibly 10th–8th c. BCE (disputed)", "date_sort": -800, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg004.perseus-eng2", "ref": "23.23.1", "conventional_ref": "Num 23.23; 24.1", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Surely there is no enchantment with Jacob; Neither is there any divination with Israel: Now shall it be said of Jacob and of Israel, What has God done!", "translation": "There is no omen-reading (naḥaš) in Jacob, no divination (qesem) in Israel; now it will be said of Jacob, 'What God has done!'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Hebrew bĕ- can mean 'in' or 'against' (the surveyor's own knowledge). Read 'in', the line defines Israel by its lack of divination; read 'against', it says no spell works on Israel. The LXX takes the first reading: οὐ γάρ ἐστιν οἰωνισμὸς ἐν Ἰακώβ, οὐδὲ μαντεία ἐν Ἰσραήλ. At 24.1 Balaam 'didn't go, as at the other times, to meet with enchantments' (LXX τοῖς οἰωνοῖς, 'the bird-omens'). So the text admits that his normal method was omen-hunting.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Balaam", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-24", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Deuteronomy", "author": "Hebrew Bible (Deuteronomic law; WEB)", "culture": "Judahite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th c. BCE (Josianic), exilic additions", "date_sort": -620, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg005.perseus-eng2", "ref": "18.10.1", "conventional_ref": "Deut 18.9–14", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy", "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "There shall not be found with you anyone who makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices sorcery, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer,", "translation": "Let there not be found among you one who passes son or daughter through fire, a diviner of divinations (qōsēm qĕsāmîm), a soothsayer (mĕʿônēn), an omen-reader (mĕnaḥēš), a sorcerer (mĕkaššēp) — (18.11) a spell-binder (ḥōbēr ḥeber), one who asks an ʾôb or yiddĕʿōnî, or one who seeks the dead.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the Bible's master list of forbidden specialists. The Hebrew terms are the surveyor's own knowledge, matched to WEB's 'divination, sorcery, enchanter, sorcerer, charmer, consulter with a familiar spirit, wizard, necromancer'. They are 'abominations' of the nations Israel is to dispossess (18.12, 18.14). The positive alternative follows at once: 'a prophet … like me' (18.15). So the rule is 'listen to God's prophet, not to technicians'. Child sacrifice heads the list, so magic is classed with foreign cult, not with fraud.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "national identity; replacement of divination by prophecy", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-25", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Deuteronomy (Septuagint)", "author": "Septuagint translators", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg005.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "18.10.1", "conventional_ref": "Deut 18.10–11 LXX", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "οὐχ εὑρεθήσεται θήσεται ἐν σοὶ περικαθαίρων τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν θυγατέρα αὐτοῦ ἐν πυρί, μαντευόμενος μαντείαν, κληδονιζόμενος καὶ οἰωνιζόμενος, φαρμακοῖς", "translation": "There shall not be found among you one who purifies son or daughter in fire, a prophesier of prophecies, a reader of chance utterances, a taker of bird-omens, drug-men…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Greek list maps the Hebrew onto Greek professions. It has μάντις-craft, κληδονισμός (omens from overheard words), οἰωνισμός (bird-omens) and φαρμακοί. 18.11 continues ἐπαείδων ἐπαοιδήν, ἐνγαστρίμυθος καὶ τερατοσκόπος ('chanter of chants, belly-talker and portent-watcher'), and then the OCR garbles the next phrase ('ὀπὸς, τοὺς νεκρούς', for 'one who questions the dead'). The LXX also softens child sacrifice to 'purifying in fire'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-26", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Deuteronomy", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -620, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg005.perseus-eng2", "ref": "18.22.1", "conventional_ref": "Deut 18.21–22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "when a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if the thing doesn’t follow, nor happen, that is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken: the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you shall not be afraid of him.", "translation": "If a prophet speaks in Yahweh's name and the thing does not happen, Yahweh did not speak it; the prophet spoke presumptuously — do not fear him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Right after banning diviners, the law gives an empirical test for the sanctioned channel: prophecy is checked against outcomes. It is an ancient falsification criterion, and the same standard could have been, but is never, applied to the forbidden diviners.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-27", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Judges", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE (Dtr)", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg008.perseus-eng2", "ref": "6.37.1", "conventional_ref": "Judg 6.36–40", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "behold, I will put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there be dew on the fleece only, and it be dry on all the ground, then shall I know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have spoken.", "translation": "I will put a fleece on the threshing floor: if dew is on the fleece alone and the ground is dry, I will know that you will save Israel by my hand.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Gideon sets up a two-part sign test with natural materials and reverses the conditions the second night (6.39–40), as if designing a control. In the narrative it is an approved form of seeking a sign from Yahweh, not forbidden divination.", "claimed_effect": "confirmation of victory", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Gideon", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-28", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Samuel", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Philistine as seen by Israel", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE (Ark narrative possibly older)", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg011.perseus-eng2", "ref": "6.5.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Sam 6.2–5; LXX 5.6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Therefore you shall make images of your tumors, and images of your mice that mar the land; and you shall give glory to the God of Israel: peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you,", "translation": "Make images of your swellings and of the mice ravaging the land, and give glory to Israel's God; perhaps he will lift his hand from you.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Struck by plague after capturing the Ark, the Philistines consult 'the priests and the diviners' (6.2). They prescribe five golden tumours and five golden mice, one per city lord: an image-offering sending the affliction back to its source. The LXX 6.2 adds καὶ τοὺς ἐπαοιδοὺς αὐτῶν ('and their spell-chanters'). LXX 5.6 adds that 'mice sprang up' in the land with 'a great confusion of death'. The foreign diviners give correct, effective advice and are not condemned.", "claimed_effect": "ending a plague", "claimed_mechanism": "golden replicas of the plague's signs offered as reparation (ʾāšām)", "practitioner": "Philistine priests and diviners (qōsĕmîm)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-29", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Samuel", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Philistine as seen by Israel", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg011.perseus-eng2", "ref": "6.9.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Sam 6.7–12", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Behold; if it goes up by the way of its own border to Beth-shemesh, then he has done us this great evil: but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that struck us; it was a chance that happened to us.", "translation": "If the cart heads up toward Beth-shemesh, it was he who did us this harm; if not, we will know it was not his hand but chance (miqreh).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The diviners harness two untrained milk-cows and shut their calves up at home, so nature should draw the cows back to their calves. Only if the cows walk away to Israel will the plague be credited to Israel's God; otherwise it 'was a chance'. Its design deliberately stacks the odds against the divine reading, with an explicit chance alternative. The cows go straight on, lowing (6.12).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "test against natural instinct", "practitioner": "Philistine diviners", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-30", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Samuel (Septuagint, Kingdoms I)", "author": "Septuagint translators", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish (preserving a pre-Masoretic Hebrew text)", "language": "grc", "date": "Hebrew c. 7th–6th c. BCE; LXX c. 2nd c. BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg011.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "14.41.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Sam 14.41–42 (LXX)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Κύριε ὁ θεὸς Ἰσραήλ, δὸς δήλους· καὶ ἐὰν τάδε εἴπῃ, δὸς δὴ τῶ λαῷ σου Ἰσραήλ, δὸς δὴ ὁσιότητα. καὶ κληροῦται Ἰωνασθὰν καὶ Σαούλ,", "translation": "'Lord God of Israel, give the Clear Ones (Urim); and if it says thus, give to your people Israel, give Holiness (Thummim).' And Jonathan and Saul were taken by lot.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "WEB/MT read only 'Show the right … Jonathan and Saul were taken [by lot]' (14.41). The LXX preserves a fuller form of Saul's prayer that spells out the binary Urim/Thummim procedure: one outcome if the guilt is in Saul's house, the other if it is in the people. This is the best evidence in the library for how the priestly lot-oracle actually worked.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "binary sacred lots", "practitioner": "Saul with priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-31", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Samuel", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg011.perseus-eng2", "ref": "15.23.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Sam 15.23", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because you have rejected the word of Yahweh, he has also rejected you from being king.", "translation": "Rebellion is the sin of divination (qesem); arrogance is iniquity and teraphim.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Samuel uses divination as the benchmark sin to which disobedience is compared, showing it was proverbial as an offence. The LXX diverges: ὅτι ἁμαρτία οἰώνισμά ἐστιν, ὀδύνη καὶ πόνος θεραπείαν ἐπάγουσιν ('sin is omen-taking; grief and pain bring on teraphim/worship'). The translator appears to have read 'teraphim' as related to θεραπεία.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-32", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Samuel", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg011.perseus-eng2", "ref": "16.23.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Sam 16.14–23", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "It happened, when the [evil] spirit from God was on Saul, that David took the harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.", "translation": "Whenever the spirit from God was on Saul, David played the lyre; Saul was relieved, recovered, and the evil spirit left him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Here is the Hebrew Bible's one 'exorcist', and his tool is music. The afflicting spirit comes from God, not from a rival power. David's lyre-playing is the only spirit-removal in the Hebrew Bible, and it works without spells or names, closer to therapy than to the NT exorcisms.", "claimed_effect": "relief from an 'evil spirit'", "claimed_mechanism": "lyre music", "practitioner": "David", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-33", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Samuel", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg011.perseus-eng2", "ref": "19.13.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Sam 19.13–16", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Michal took the teraphim, and laid it in the bed, and put a pillow of goats’ [hair] at the head of it, and covered it with the clothes.", "translation": "Michal put the teraphim in the bed, with goat-hair at its head, and covered it with a garment.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Michal fakes the presence of her husband David with the household teraphim and goat hair. Teraphim stand in David's own house, they are roughly human-sized, and the scene uses the cult object as a theatrical decoy.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Michal", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-34", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Samuel", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE (Dtr)", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg011.perseus-eng2", "ref": "28.8.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Sam 28.3–11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Saul disguised himself, and put on other clothing, and went, he and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and he said, Please divine to me by the familiar spirit, and bring me up whoever I shall name to you.", "translation": "Saul disguised himself and came by night: 'Divine for me by the ʾôb and bring up for me the one I name.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Saul had expelled the ʾôbôt and yiddĕʿōnîm (28.3). God then gives him no answer 'by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets' (28.6), the three legitimate channels, so he seeks out a 'woman who is mistress of an ʾôb' (baʿălat ʾôb) at Endor. She fears entrapment (28.9) and Saul swears by Yahweh to protect her. The episode is the Bible's fullest description of a necromantic consultation.", "claimed_effect": "raising a named dead man to consult him", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "the woman of Endor", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "illegal under royal ban; done at night, in disguise", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-35", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Samuel", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg011.perseus-eng2", "ref": "28.13.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Sam 28.12–25", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "The king said to her, Don’t be afraid: for what do you see? The woman said to Saul, I see a god coming up out of the earth.", "translation": "'Do not fear; what do you see?' The woman said, 'I see ʾĕlōhîm coming up from the earth.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Only the woman sees. Saul asks what she sees and identifies Samuel from her description of 'an old man … covered with a robe' (28.14). Samuel then speaks and his prophecy of Saul's death next day comes true (28.19), so the narrative treats the necromancy as successful. The dead are called ʾĕlōhîm ('gods'). The scene ends humanely: the medium persuades the broken king to eat and kills her fattened calf for him (28.21–25).", "claimed_effect": "vision and voice of dead Samuel; true prediction", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "woman of Endor", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-36", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Samuel (Septuagint)", "author": "Septuagint translators", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 2nd c. BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg011.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "28.7.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Sam 28.7, 28.13 LXX", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Ζητήσατέ μοι γυναῖκα ἐνγαστρίμυθον, κοὶ πορεύσομαι πρὸς αὐτὴν καὶ ζητήσω ἐν αὐτῇ· καὶ εἶπαν οἱ παῖδες αὐτοῦ πρὸς αὐτόν Ἴδου γυνὴ ἐνγαστρίμυθος ἐν Ἀελδώρ.", "translation": "'Find me a belly-talking woman, and I will go to her and inquire through her.' His servants said, 'There is a belly-talker at Endor.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Greek Bible makes the woman of Endor an ἐγγαστρίμυθος, the ordinary Greek word for a ventriloquist-medium whose 'spirit' speaks from her belly. At 28.13 LXX she says Θέους ἑόρακα ἀναβαίνοντας ἐκ τῆς γῆς ('I have seen gods coming up from the earth'), keeping the plural. This rendering lies behind later Christian debate over whether Samuel really appeared or whether the woman faked it.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-37", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Chronicles (Septuagint, Paralipomenon I)", "author": "Chronicler; Septuagint translators", "culture": "Judahite (Persian/Hellenistic era)", "language": "grc", "date": "Hebrew c. 350 BCE; LXX c. 2nd c. BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg015.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "10.13.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Chr 10.13–14", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅτι ἐπηρώτησεν Σαοὺλ ἐν τῷ ἐνγαστριμύθῳ τοῦ ζητῆσαι, καὶ ἀπεκρίνατο αὐτῷ Σαμουὴλ ὁ προφήτης,", "translation": "…because Saul inquired of the belly-talker to seek counsel, and Samuel the prophet answered him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Chronicler (WEB: 'he asked counsel of one who had a familiar spirit') makes consulting the medium one cause of Saul's death. The LXX adds 'and Samuel the prophet answered him', so the Greek tradition affirms that the necromancy worked even while condemning it.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "female (implied)", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-38", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Samuel", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE (court history older)", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg012.perseus-eng2", "ref": "5.24.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Sam 5.23–24", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "It shall be, when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then you shall bestir yourself; for then is Yahweh gone out before you to strike the host of the Philistines.", "translation": "When you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the bākāʾ-trees, move: Yahweh has gone out before you.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "David receives an oracle and an omen to watch for: rustling in the treetops signals the moment to attack. This is a sanctioned omen, structurally like the forbidden 'enchantments', but it is framed as a word of Yahweh.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "David", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-39", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (Elijah cycle; WEB)", "culture": "Israelite (northern prophetic)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "set 9th c. BCE; written c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg013.perseus-eng2", "ref": "17.21.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Kgs 17.17–24", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "He stretched himself on the child three times, and cried to Yahweh, and said, Yahweh my God, please let this child’s soul come into him again.", "translation": "He stretched himself over the boy three times and cried, 'Yahweh my God, let this child's life (nepeš) return into him.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Elijah revives the widow's son through bodily contact repeated three times, plus prayer. Elisha's revival of a boy (bible-46) repeats the pattern more elaborately. The technique is contact, a fixed number of repetitions and a spoken plea.", "claimed_effect": "return of life", "claimed_mechanism": "threefold body contact plus prayer", "practitioner": "Elijah", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-40", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Phoenician/Israelite Baal cult as seen by Yahwists", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg013.perseus-eng2", "ref": "18.28.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Kgs 18.26–29", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "They cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them.", "translation": "They shouted and gashed themselves, as was their custom, with swords and spears until the blood poured over them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Baal prophets' technique: limping dance round the altar (18.26), shouting, ritual self-laceration 'after their manner', and ecstatic prophesying (18.29), all with no answer. Elijah's taunts (18.27: Baal is musing, travelling or asleep) are the corpus's sharpest mockery of failed ritual. Lev 19.28 bans cutting the flesh for the dead.", "claimed_effect": "fire from the god", "claimed_mechanism": "ecstasy, blood, invocation", "practitioner": "450 prophets of Baal", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-41", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg013.perseus-eng2", "ref": "18.38.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Kgs 18.30–39", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Then the fire of Yahweh fell, and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.", "translation": "Yahweh's fire fell and consumed the offering, the wood, the stones and the soil, and licked up the water in the trench.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Elijah has twelve jars of 'water' poured over his altar (18.33–35) and then prays briefly (18.36–37). The contrast with Baal's prophets is method: no technique, only a request. Compare 2 Macc 1.19–36 (bible-91), where 'thick water' poured over a sacrifice ignites in the sun and is identified as naphtha.", "claimed_effect": "fire from heaven", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Elijah", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-42", "corpus": "bible", "work": "1 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg013.perseus-eng2", "ref": "18.44.1", "conventional_ref": "1 Kgs 18.41–45", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "It happened at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there arises a cloud out of the sea, as small as a man’s hand. He said, Go up, tell Ahab, Make ready [your chariot], and get you down, that the rain not stop you.", "translation": "At the seventh look the servant said, 'A cloud as small as a man's hand is rising from the sea.' Elijah said, 'Tell Ahab: harness up and go down before the rain stops you.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Elijah ends the drought crouched with his head between his knees while his servant scans the sea seven times. The first sign is a small cloud rising from the Mediterranean, and Elijah reads it correctly as the onset of a storm. This is rain-making and weather-reading in one.", "claimed_effect": "ending of drought", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Elijah", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-43", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite / Philistine oracle", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "1.2.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 1.2–6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Ahaziah fell down through the lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick: and he sent messengers, and said to them, Go, inquire of Baal Zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover of this sickness.", "translation": "Injured, Ahaziah sent to consult Baal-zebub god of Ekron whether he would recover.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An Israelite king seeks a medical prognosis from a foreign oracle shrine and is condemned for it. 'Baal-zebub' ('lord of flies', probably a pun on Baal-zebul, 'Prince Baal'; the surveyor's own knowledge) becomes the NT's Beelzebul, prince of demons (Mark 3.22). This is the one place in the corpus where a foreign god becomes the chief demon.", "claimed_effect": "medical prognosis", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "oracle of Baal-zebub at Ekron", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-44", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (Elisha cycle; WEB)", "culture": "Israelite (prophetic guild)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "set 9th c. BCE; written c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "2.21.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 2.19–22; cf. 2.8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "He went forth to the spring of the waters, and cast salt therein, and said, Thus says Yahweh, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from there any more death or miscarrying.", "translation": "He went to the spring, threw salt in, and said, 'Thus says Yahweh: I have healed these waters; no more death or miscarriage from them.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Jericho's water 'is bad, and the land miscarries' (2.19). Elisha asks for a new jar with salt, throws the salt into the spring and speaks a formula in Yahweh's name. A material act plus a spoken formula is the Elisha pattern. Earlier, Elijah's rolled mantle parts the Jordan (2.8).", "claimed_effect": "curing a spring that caused death and miscarriage", "claimed_mechanism": "new vessel, salt, spoken word", "practitioner": "Elisha", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-45", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "2.24.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 2.23–24", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "He looked behind him and saw them, and cursed them in the name of Yahweh. There came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and mauled forty-two lads of them.", "translation": "He turned, looked at them, and cursed them in Yahweh's name; two she-bears came out of the wood and mauled forty-two of the boys.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A prophet's curse in the divine name works instantly against boys who mocked his baldness. The holy man's spoken curse is as potent as any sorcerer's, and the text does not apologise for it.", "claimed_effect": "death/injury of mockers", "claimed_mechanism": "curse in Yahweh's name", "practitioner": "Elisha", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-46", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "4.34.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 4.32–35; cf. 3.15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "He went up, and lay on the child, and put his mouth on his mouth, and his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands: and he stretched himself on him; and the flesh of the child grew warm.", "translation": "He lay on the child, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands, stretched over him, and the child's flesh grew warm.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the most physical revival in the Bible: Elisha prays behind a shut door, then makes point-by-point bodily contact, walks about, and repeats it. The child 'sneezed seven times' (4.35). Elsewhere a minstrel's music brings 'the hand of Yahweh' on Elisha before he prophesies (3.15), music used as an induction technique.", "claimed_effect": "revival of a dead child", "claimed_mechanism": "prayer; mouth-to-mouth body contact", "practitioner": "Elisha", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-47", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Moabite as seen by Israel", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "set 9th c. BCE; written c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "3.27.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 3.26–27", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Then he took his eldest son who would have reigned in his place, and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. There was great wrath against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.", "translation": "He took his firstborn heir and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall; and great wrath came upon Israel, and they withdrew.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "King Mesha of Moab, besieged, sacrifices his heir on the city wall, and the ritual works: 'great wrath' falls on Israel and the siege is lifted. The text does not say whose wrath. A historian in Israel concedes that a foreign rite of extreme cost had real effect.", "claimed_effect": "breaking a siege", "claimed_mechanism": "human sacrifice", "practitioner": "Mesha king of Moab", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-48", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite (prophetic guild)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "4.40.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 4.38–41", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "So they poured out for the men to eat. It happened, as they were eating of the stew, that they cried out, and said, man of God, there is death in the pot. They could not eat of it.", "translation": "As they ate the stew they cried out, 'Man of God, there is death in the pot!' and could not eat it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "During a famine a disciple shreds 'wild gourds' (paqquʿōt) from a 'wild vine' into the stew (4.39). Elisha throws in meal and 'there was no harm in the pot' (4.41). A real food poisoning is treated with a simple additive. The text names a recognisable toxic plant.", "claimed_effect": "neutralising poison", "claimed_mechanism": "adding meal", "practitioner": "Elisha", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-49", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Aramean expectations vs Israelite prophet", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "5.11.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 5.9–14", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "But Naaman was angry, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of Yahweh his God, and wave his hand over the place, and recover the leper.", "translation": "Naaman was angry: 'I thought he would come out, stand, invoke the name of Yahweh his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure the skin disease.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is a rare outsider's description of what a healer was expected to do: come out, stand, invoke the god's name and wave a hand over the diseased spot. Elisha refuses the theatre, sending only a message to bathe seven times in the Jordan (5.10). His servants point out the paradox (5.13). Prophetic healing defines itself against the conjurer's performance.", "claimed_effect": "cure of skin disease", "claimed_mechanism": "sevenfold bathing in the Jordan", "practitioner": "Elisha (contrasted with expected healer-magician)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-50", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "6.6.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 6.1–7; cf. 6.17–18", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "The man of God said, Where fell it? He shown him the place. He cut down a stick, and cast it in there, and made the iron to swim.", "translation": "'Where did it fall?' He showed him; Elisha cut a stick, threw it in, and made the iron float.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A small wonder: the borrowed iron axe-head floats up when a stick is thrown in. In the same chapter Elisha has his servant's eyes 'opened' to see fiery chariots and has an army struck with blindness at his prayer (6.17–18). These are wonder-tales of a prophetic guild (bĕnê hannĕbîʾîm).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Elisha", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-51", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "13.19.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 13.14–19", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "The man of God was angry with him, and said, You should have struck five or six times: then had you struck Syria until you had consumed it, whereas now you shall strike Syria but thrice.", "translation": "Angry, the man of God said, 'You should have struck five or six times; then you would have destroyed Aram. Now you will defeat it only three times.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "On his deathbed Elisha lays his hands on the king's hands, has him shoot an arrow east ('Yahweh's arrow of victory', 13.17) and strike the ground with arrows. The number of strikes fixes the number of future victories. The result is set by the performance, not by prayer: in our terms this is sympathetic or performative magic, done by the prophet.", "claimed_effect": "military victories", "claimed_mechanism": "symbolic acts whose count fixes the outcome", "practitioner": "Elisha and King Joash", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-52", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "13.21.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 13.20–21", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "It happened, as they were burying a man, that behold, they spied a band; and they cast the man into the tomb of Elisha: and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.", "translation": "Burying a man, they saw raiders, threw the body into Elisha's tomb; when it touched Elisha's bones, the man revived and stood up.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Power remains in a holy man's bones after death: contact with them revives a corpse. This is the Hebrew Bible's one relic miracle, and it anticipates the Acts handkerchiefs (bible-79) and the later Christian cult of relics.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "contact with bones", "practitioner": "(the dead Elisha)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-53", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "9.22.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 9.22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "It happened, when Joram saw Jehu, that he said, Is it peace, Jehu? He answered, What peace, so long as the prostitution of your mother Jezebel and her witchcraft abound?", "translation": "'What peace, while the whorings of your mother Jezebel and her many sorceries (kĕšāpêhā) continue?'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Jezebel, the foreign Phoenician queen, is charged with kĕšāpîm, a political smear joining foreign cult, sexuality and sorcery. The LXX renders it τὰ φάρμακα αὐτῆς τὰ πολλά. The same pairing of 'harlotry and sorceries' is applied to Nineveh (Nah 3.4) and to Babylon in Revelation (18.23).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Jezebel", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "dynastic coup; polemic against a foreign queen", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-54", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 6th c. BCE (Dtr)", "date_sort": -580, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "21.6.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 21.6; 17.17; 2 Chr 33.6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "He made his son to pass through the fire, and practiced sorcery, and used enchantments, and dealt with those who had familiar spirits, and with wizards: he worked much evil in the sight of Yahweh, to provoke him to anger.", "translation": "He passed his son through fire, practised soothsaying (ʿônēn) and omen-reading (niḥēš), and appointed ʾôb and yiddĕʿōnî practitioners.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "King Manasseh sponsors the whole forbidden list of Deut 18. In 2 Kgs 17.17 the same charge ('used divination and enchantments') explains the fall of the northern kingdom. 2 Chr 33.6 adds kiššēp (sorcery); the LXX there reads ἐκληδονίζετο καὶ ἐφαρμακεύετο καὶ οἰωνίζετο, καὶ ἐποίησεν ἐνγαστριμύθους καὶ ἐπαοιδοὺς. In the Deuteronomistic history magic is a royal sin that causes national catastrophe.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "King Manasseh", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "state-sponsored divination", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-55", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 6th c. BCE (reform set c. 715 BCE)", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "18.4.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 18.4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "He removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah: and he broke in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made; for to those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan.", "translation": "He smashed the bronze serpent Moses had made, for until then the Israelites burned incense to it; it was called Nehushtan.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The healing image of Num 21 (bible-21) survives as a temple cult object and is destroyed as idolatry by a reforming king. This is the clearest case in the corpus of a sanctioned ritual object being reclassified as illicit over time. The LXX names it Νεσθαλεί.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Hezekiah (reformer)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-56", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings (Septuagint, Kingdoms IV)", "author": "Septuagint translators", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "Hebrew c. 6th c. BCE; LXX c. 2nd c. BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "23.24.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 23.24", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "καί γε τοὺς θελητὰς καὶ τοὺς γνωριστὰς καὶ τὰ θεραφεὶν καὶ τὰ εἴδωλα καὶ πάντα τὰ προσοχθίσματα τὰ γεγονότα ἐν γῇ Ἰούδα", "translation": "Josiah also removed the 'willers' and the 'knowers', the teraphim, the idols and all the abominations in Judah…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "WEB: 'those who had familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the teraphim'. Here the Greek translator renders ʾôb and yiddĕʿōnî by the odd calques θεληταί ('willers') and γνωρισταί ('knowers'). Yiddĕʿōnî derives from yādaʿ 'know' (the surveyor's own knowledge). The translator is guessing at specialist terms he no longer understands. Josiah's purge is tied to the newly found book of the Law.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-57", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 6th c. BCE; set c. 701 BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "20.11.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 20.8–11; cf. Josh 10.12–13", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Isaiah the prophet cried to Yahweh; and he brought the shadow ten steps backward, by which it had gone down on the dial of Ahaz.", "translation": "Isaiah cried to Yahweh, and he brought the shadow back ten steps on the stairway of Ahaz.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hezekiah asks for a harder sign than a shadow advancing, and the prophet makes it go backward on Ahaz's step-sundial (20.10). Like Joshua's sun standing still at Gibeon (Josh 10.12–13, 'written in the book of Jashar'), it is a cosmic sign worked through a prophet's prayer.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Isaiah", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-58", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Kings", "author": "Hebrew Bible (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 6th c. BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg014.perseus-eng2", "ref": "23.5.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Kgs 23.5; cf. Deut 4.19", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "He put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of the sky.", "translation": "…and those who burned incense to Baal, the sun, the moon, the mazzālôt (constellations/zodiac signs) and all the host of heaven.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Josiah suppresses an established astral cult. The Hebrew mazzālôt ('planets', WEB) is cognate with later mazzal 'luck/zodiac sign'; that is the surveyor's own knowledge. In this text the stars are worshipped rather than read: astrology appears as foreign cult.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-59", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Isaiah", "author": "Isaiah of Jerusalem (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 8th c. BCE", "date_sort": -730, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg048.perseus-eng2", "ref": "3.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Isa 3.1–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "The mighty man, The man of war, The judge, The prophet, The diviner, The elder,", "translation": "…warrior and soldier, judge and prophet, diviner (qōsēm) and elder… (3.3) captain, notable, counsellor, skilled craftsman and expert in charms (nĕbôn lāḥaš).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Isaiah's list of the 'staff and support' God will remove from Jerusalem includes, without disapproval, the diviner and (3.3) 'the clever enchanter' alongside judge, prophet and elder. It suggests that in 8th-century Judah these specialists were ordinary pillars of society, before Deuteronomy's bans.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "civic elite of Jerusalem", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-60", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Isaiah", "author": "Isaiah of Jerusalem (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 8th c. BCE", "date_sort": -730, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg048.perseus-eng2", "ref": "3.20.1", "conventional_ref": "Isa 3.18–23", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "the headdresses, the ankle chains, the sashes, the perfume bottles, the charms,", "translation": "…the headdresses, ankle-chains, sashes, scent-boxes and amulets (lĕḥāšîm)…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Among the jewellery of Jerusalem's elite women are lĕḥāšîm, literally 'whisperings' (from the root of whispered incantation; the surveyor's own knowledge), i.e. inscribed amulets. They are condemned as luxury, not as sorcery. The LXX list in this library has only ornaments (ψέλια, ἐνώτια…) with no amulet word.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-61", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Isaiah", "author": "Isaiah of Jerusalem (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 734 BCE", "date_sort": -734, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg048.perseus-eng2", "ref": "8.19.1", "conventional_ref": "Isa 8.19; cf. 29.4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "When they shall tell you, Consult with those who have familiar spirits and with the wizards, who chirp and who mutter: shouldn’t a people consult with their God? on behalf of the living [should they consult] with the dead?", "translation": "When they say, 'Consult the ʾôbôt and the yiddĕʿōnîm who chirp and mutter' — should not a people consult its God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the earliest prophetic attack on necromancy, and it records the sound: the spirits 'chirp and mutter'. Isa 29.4 compares Jerusalem's humbled voice to an ʾôb speaking low and whispering out of the dust. The objection is theological ('consult God, not the dead'), not a claim of fraud.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "voices of the dead from the ground", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-62", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Isaiah (Septuagint)", "author": "Septuagint translator of Isaiah", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish (Egypt)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 150 BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg048.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "8.19.1", "conventional_ref": "Isa 8.19 LXX", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Ζητήσατε τοὺς ἐνγαστριμύθους καὶ τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς φωνοῦντας, τοὺς κενολογοῦντας οἳ ἐκ τῆς κοιλίας φωνοῦσιν,", "translation": "Seek out the belly-talkers and those who make voices from the earth, the empty-talkers who speak from the belly.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Greek Isaiah turns 'chirp and mutter' into 'those who talk emptiness, who give voice from the belly'. Necromancy becomes vocal performance: the voice of the dead is the medium's own, thrown. LXX 44.25 likewise has God scatter 'the signs of belly-talkers and divinations from the heart' (σημεῖα ἐνγαστριμύθων καὶ μαντείας ἀπὸ καρδίας). This is the corpus's clearest move from 'forbidden' to 'fake'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-63", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Isaiah (Second Isaiah)", "author": "Second Isaiah (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite exiles in Babylon", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 540 BCE", "date_sort": -540, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg048.perseus-eng2", "ref": "47.13.1", "conventional_ref": "Isa 47.9–15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "binding-curse", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "You are wearied in the multitude of your counsels: let now the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save you from the things that shall come on you.", "translation": "Let them stand and save you — the dividers of the heavens (hōbĕrê šāmayim), the star-gazers, those who announce by the new moons what is coming upon you.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is a taunt-song against Babylon, the home of systematic omen science. Babylon trusts its 'multitude of sorceries' and 'great abundance of enchantments' (47.9, 47.12, kĕšāpîm and ḥăbārîm). Its astrologers who make monthly forecasts will burn like stubble (47.14). The LXX has οἱ ἀστρολόγοι τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, οἱ ὁρῶντες τοὺς ἀστέρας and στῆθι νῦν ἐν ταῖς ἐπαοιδαῖς σου καὶ τῇ πολλῇ φαρμακίᾳ σου. This is a Judahite eyewitness of Mesopotamian divination in its homeland, and it mocks it as useless.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Babylonian astrologers and enchanters", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "exile under Babylonian rule", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-64", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Isaiah (Septuagint)", "author": "Septuagint translator of Isaiah", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "Hebrew c. 520 BCE; LXX c. 150 BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg048.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "65.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Isa 65.4 LXX", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐν τοῖς μνήμασιν καὶ ἐν τοῖς σπηλαίοις κοιμῶνται διὰ ἐνύπνια, οἱ ἔσθοντες κρέας ὕειον", "translation": "They sleep in the tombs and in the caves for the sake of dreams, those who eat pig's flesh…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Hebrew (WEB: 'who sit among the graves, and lodge in the secret places') becomes, in the Greek, explicit incubation: sleeping in tombs to receive dreams. This is how the translator understood the rite in his own Hellenistic Egypt, where incubation at shrines was common.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-65", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Jeremiah", "author": "Jeremiah (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 600 BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg049.perseus-eng2", "ref": "10.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Jer 10.2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "thus says Yahweh, \"Don't learn the way of the nations, and don't be dismayed at the signs of the sky; for the nations are dismayed at them.", "translation": "Do not learn the way of the nations; do not be terrified by the signs of the heavens, for the nations are terrified by them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the plainest rejection of celestial omens in the Hebrew Bible. Heavenly signs belong to the nations' way of life; Israel's God makes them meaningless to Israel. The verse never says the omens fail, only that Israel should not fear them.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-66", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Jeremiah", "author": "Jeremiah (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite / neighbouring kingdoms", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 594 BCE", "date_sort": -594, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg049.perseus-eng2", "ref": "27.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Jer 27.9; cf. 29.8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "But as for you, don't you listen to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreams, nor to your soothsayers, nor to your sorcerers, who speak to you, saying, You shall not serve the king of Babylon:", "translation": "Do not listen to your prophets, diviners, dream-tellers, soothsayers or sorcerers who tell you not to serve the king of Babylon.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is addressed to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon (27.3). It lists a regional advisory corps of prophets, diviners, dreamers, soothsayers and sorcerers, all wrong about Babylon. In 29.8 the same warning is aimed at the exiles' own 'prophets … and diviners'. So Israel had diviners too.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "political counsel in an international crisis", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-67", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Psalms", "author": "Psalmist (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 7th–5th c. BCE (uncertain)", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg027.perseus-eng2", "ref": "58.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Ps 58.4–5 (MT 58.5–6; LXX 57.5–6); Eccl 10.11; Jer 8.17; Sir 12.13", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Which doesn’t listen to the voice of charmers, No matter how skillful the charmer may be.", "translation": "…which will not listen to the voice of the whisperers (mĕlaḥăšîm), of the most skilful binder of spells (ḥôbēr ḥăbārîm).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Snake-charming is a real profession, used as a figure of speech in several places. The wicked are a 'deaf cobra that stops its ear' (58.4). 'If the snake bites before it is charmed, then is there no profit for the charmer’s tongue' (Eccl 10.11). God sends adders 'which will not be charmed' (Jer 8.17). Ben Sira asks 'who pities a snake-charmer who is bitten?' (Sir 12.13). The LXX Ps 57.6 has φωνὴν ἐπᾳδόντων φαρμάκου τε φαρμακευομένου παρὰ σοφοῦ. The charmer's tongue is treated as effective, but fallible.", "claimed_effect": "controlling snakes", "claimed_mechanism": "whispered incantation", "practitioner": "snake-charmers (mĕlaḥăšîm)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-68", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Ezekiel", "author": "Ezekiel (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite (exile)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 590 BCE", "date_sort": -590, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg053.perseus-eng2", "ref": "13.18.1", "conventional_ref": "Ezek 13.17–23", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "divination", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "and say, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: Woe to the women who sew pillows on all elbows, and make kerchiefs for the head of [persons of] every stature to hunt souls! Will you hunt the souls of my people, and save souls alive for yourselves?", "translation": "Woe to the women who sew bands (kĕsātôt) on every wrist and make veils (mispāḥôt) for heads of every height to hunt lives! Will you hunt my people's lives and keep lives alive for yourselves?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the corpus's only detailed portrait of female Israelite magical specialists. 'Daughters of your people who prophesy out of their own heart' (13.17) tie cloth bands on arms and veils on heads to 'hunt' or catch souls, killing some and preserving others (13.19). They are paid in 'handfuls of barley and … pieces of bread' (13.19) and condemned for 'divination' (13.23). The LXX calls the bands προσκεφάλαια ('cushions'), from the same word misunderstood. The WEB 'pillows' follows that tradition. The Hebrew terms likely mean wrist-bands and veils (the surveyor's own knowledge; disputed).", "claimed_effect": "capturing, killing or preserving souls", "claimed_mechanism": "knotted/sewn cloth bands and veils", "practitioner": "Judahite women prophets/binders", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "low-paid popular practice", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-69", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Ezekiel", "author": "Ezekiel (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite (exile)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 590 BCE", "date_sort": -590, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg053.perseus-eng2", "ref": "13.6.1", "conventional_ref": "Ezek 13.6–9; 12.24; 22.28", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "They have seen falsehood and lying divination, who say, Yahweh says; but Yahweh has not sent them: and they have made men to hope that the word would be confirmed.", "translation": "They saw falsehood and lying divination (qesem kāzāb), saying 'Yahweh declares', though Yahweh did not send them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ezekiel brands rival Yahweh-prophets as practitioners of 'divination' (qesem). The word for foreign technique is turned against Israelite prophets who speak in God's name. Here 'magic' is a polemical label for the other side's prophecy.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-70", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Ezekiel", "author": "Ezekiel (WEB)", "culture": "Babylonian as seen by a Judahite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 588 BCE", "date_sort": -588, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg053.perseus-eng2", "ref": "21.21.1", "conventional_ref": "Ezek 21.21–23 (MT 21.26–28)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he shook the arrows back and forth, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver.", "translation": "The king of Babylon stands at the fork of the road to divine: he shakes the arrows, consults the teraphim, inspects the liver.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Nebuchadnezzar chooses between Jerusalem and Rabbah by three methods: arrow-lots (belomancy), teraphim and liver inspection (hepatoscopy, the core of Babylonian bārûtu). The lot for Jerusalem falls 'in his right hand' (21.22). Ezekiel accepts that the omen is right, because Yahweh is using it, while calling it 'a false divination' in Judah's eyes (21.23).", "claimed_effect": "choosing a military target", "claimed_mechanism": "belomancy, teraphim, hepatoscopy", "practitioner": "Nebuchadnezzar II and his diviners", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-71", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Ezekiel (Septuagint)", "author": "Septuagint translators", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 2nd c. BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg053.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "21.21.1", "conventional_ref": "Ezek 21.21 LXX", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "τοῦ μαντεύσασθαι μαντείαν, τοῦ ἀναβράσαι ῥάβδον καὶ ἐπερωτῆσαι ἐν τοῖς γλυπτοῖς καὶ ἡπατοσκοπήσασθαι ἐκ δεξιῶν αὐτοῦ.", "translation": "…to divine a divination, to toss up a rod, to inquire of the carved images, and to inspect the liver on his right.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Greek uses the technical verb ἡπατοσκοπέομαι ('to inspect livers'), turns the arrows into a tossed rod (rhabdomancy; compare Hos 4.12 LXX ἐν ῥάβδοις) and the teraphim into 'carved images'. It names three distinct omen technologies.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-72", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Daniel (Old Greek)", "author": "Old Greek translator of Daniel", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "Hebrew/Aramaic tales 3rd c. BCE, book c. 165 BCE; OG c. 100 BCE", "date_sort": -100, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg056.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.20.1", "conventional_ref": "Dan 1.20 (OG)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "κατέλαβεν αὐτοὺς σοφωτέρους δεκαπλασίως ὑπέρ τοὺς σοφιστὰς καὶ τοὺς φιλοσόφους τοὺς ἐν πάσῃ τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτοῦ·", "translation": "He found them ten times wiser than the sophists and the philosophers in all his kingdom.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "WEB (from the Hebrew) reads 'ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters' (ḥarṭummîm, ʾaššāpîm). The Old Greek translator renders those same court diviners as 'sophists and philosophers', so for him a Babylonian magus is the counterpart of a Greek intellectual. That is a striking emic equation.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Daniel and companions vs Babylonian sages", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-73", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Daniel", "author": "Book of Daniel (Aramaic court tale; WEB)", "culture": "Judean depiction of Babylonian court", "language": "eng (WEB from Aramaic)", "date": "tales c. 3rd c. BCE; book c. 165 BCE", "date_sort": -200, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg056.perseus-eng2", "ref": "2.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Dan 2.2–13", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "But if you don't make known to me the dream, there is but one law for you; for you have prepared lying and corrupt words to speak before me, until the time be changed: therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me the interpretation of it.", "translation": "If you do not tell me the dream, there is one sentence for you; you have agreed to tell me lies until the times change. Tell me the dream, and I will know you can give its interpretation.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Nebuchadnezzar summons 'the magicians, and the enchanters, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans' (2.2). He refuses to tell them his dream: anyone can invent an interpretation, but only real insight can recover the dream itself. It is a deliberate test against fraud. The experts admit 'no man on the earth' can do it, only 'the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh' (2.10–11).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "ḥarṭummîn, ʾāšĕpîn, mĕkaššĕpîn, kaśdîm (Chaldeans)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "court experts under threat of execution", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-74", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Daniel (Theodotion)", "author": "Theodotionic version", "culture": "Hellenistic/Roman-era Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "Aramaic c. 3rd–2nd c. BCE; Theodotion 1st c. BCE–2nd c. CE (disputed)", "date_sort": 50, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg057.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.27.1", "conventional_ref": "Dan 2.27–28 (Th)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Τὸ μυστήριον ὃ ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐρωτῷ οὐκ ἔστιν σοφῶν, μάγων, ἐπαοιδῶν, γαζαρηνῶν ἀναγγεῖλαι τῷ βασιλεῖ", "translation": "The mystery the king asks about is not for sages, magi, chanters or gazarēnoi to declare to the king.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Daniel concedes the limit of the experts and gives God the credit (WEB 2.28: 'there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets'). Theodotion transliterates the Aramaic gāzĕrîn ('decreers, determiners'; probably fate-calculators or astrologers; the surveyor's own knowledge) as γαζαρηνοί. Both Greek versions of 2.2 use μάγοι for the court experts, the same word Matthew uses for his eastern visitors.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-75", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Daniel", "author": "Book of Daniel (WEB)", "culture": "Judean depiction of Babylonian court", "language": "eng (WEB from Aramaic)", "date": "tales c. 3rd c. BCE", "date_sort": -200, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg056.perseus-eng2", "ref": "5.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Dan 4.7–9; 5.7–15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "and the king Nebuchadnezzar your father, the king, [I say], your father, made him master of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and soothsayers;", "translation": "…King Nebuchadnezzar made him chief of the ḥarṭummîn, ʾāšĕpîn, Chaldeans and gāzĕrîn.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Jewish hero is appointed head of the very guild Deuteronomy bans (cf. 4.9 'Belteshazzar, master of the magicians'). The experts fail again with the dream of the tree (4.7) and the writing on the wall (5.7, 5.15). Daniel succeeds because 'the spirit of the holy gods' is in him. Theodotion 5.11 reads ἄρχοντα ἐπαοιδῶν, μάγων, Χαλδαίων, γαζαρηνῶν. Daniel's book draws the line by source (God-given wisdom), not by the office held.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Daniel/Belteshazzar", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-76", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Hosea", "author": "Hosea (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite (northern kingdom)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 740 BCE", "date_sort": -740, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg036.perseus-eng2", "ref": "4.12.1", "conventional_ref": "Hos 4.12; cf. 3.4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "My people consult with their wooded idol, And answer to a stick of wood. Indeed the spirit of prostitution has led them astray, And they have been unfaithful to their God.", "translation": "My people ask their piece of wood, and their staff tells them; a spirit of whoredom has led them astray.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the earliest reference to rod-divination (rhabdomancy) in Israel, framed as spiritual adultery. The LXX renders it ἐν συμβόλοις ἐπηρώτων, καὶ ἐν ῥάβδοις αὐτοῦ ἀπήγγελλον αὐτῷ ('they inquired by tokens, and by his rods they answered him'). Hos 3.4 says Israel will be without 'ephod or idols' (teraphim), assuming both are normal kit.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-77", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Micah", "author": "Micah (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 710 BCE (5.12 possibly later)", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg038.perseus-eng2", "ref": "3.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Mic 3.5–11; 5.12 (MT 5.11)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Her leaders judge for bribes, And her priests teach for a price, And her prophets of it tell forturnes for money: Yet they lean on Yahweh, and say, Isn’t Yahweh in the midst of us? No disaster will come on us.", "translation": "Her rulers judge for a bribe, her priests teach for hire, her prophets divine (yiqsōmû) for silver — yet they lean on Yahweh.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Micah says Jerusalem's own Yahweh-prophets 'divine' for money ('forturnes' is the library's typo), and that God will silence the 'seers' and 'diviners' (3.6–7). In 5.12 God promises to 'destroy witchcraft from your hand; And you shall have no soothsayers'. The LXX has τὰ φάρμακά σου and ἀποφθεγγόμενοι, 'oracle-utterers'. The complaint is that divination is a trade, done for pay.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "paid prophecy and divination", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-78", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Nahum", "author": "Nahum (WEB)", "culture": "Judahite view of Assyria", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 615 BCE", "date_sort": -615, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg042.perseus-eng2", "ref": "3.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Nah 3.4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "because of the multitude of the prostitution of the alluring prostitute, the mistress of witchcraft, who sells nations through her prostitution, and families through her witchcraft.", "translation": "…the graceful harlot, mistress of sorceries (baʿălat kĕšāpîm), who sells nations by her harlotries and clans by her sorceries.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Nineveh is personified as a seductive sorceress who enslaves nations. LXX: ἡγουμένη φαρμάκων … ἐν τοῖς φαρμάκοις αὐτῆς. This is the template for Revelation's Babylon (18.23), whose φαρμακεία deceives all nations: imperial power pictured as erotic magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "female (personified city)", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-79", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Zechariah", "author": "Second Zechariah (WEB)", "culture": "Judean (Persian/Hellenistic era)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 5th–4th c. BCE", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg046.perseus-eng2", "ref": "10.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Zech 10.2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "For the teraphim have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie; And they have told false dreams. They comfort in vain. Therefore they go their way like sheep. They are oppressed, because there is no shepherd.", "translation": "The teraphim speak deceit, the diviners see lies, the dreamers tell false dreams and comfort with emptiness.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the latest Hebrew-Bible witness that teraphim 'speak', i.e. are oracular, and that diviners and dream-tellers were still consulted after the exile. The verdict is that they do not work.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-80", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Malachi (Septuagint)", "author": "Septuagint translators", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "Hebrew c. 460 BCE; LXX c. 2nd c. BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg047.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "3.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Mal 3.5", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "other", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ἔσομαι μάρτυς ταχὺς ἐπὶ τὰς φαρμακοὺς καὶ ἐπὶ τὰς μοιχαλίδας καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς ὀμνύοντας τῷ ὀνόματί μου ἐπὶ ψεύδει,", "translation": "I will be a swift witness against the (female) sorceresses, the adulteresses, and those who swear falsely by my name…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "WEB: 'against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the perjurers'. The Hebrew is masculine (mĕkaššĕpîm, mĕnāʾăpîm; the surveyor's own knowledge), but the Greek in this edition gives them feminine articles, τὰς φαρμακούς … τὰς μοιχαλίδας. This is the reverse of Exod 22.18, where the Greek masculinised a feminine. Sorcery sits in the Day-of-Judgement list beside adultery and oppression of wage-workers, widows and foreigners.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "female (LXX)", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-81", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Jonah", "author": "Jonah (WEB)", "culture": "Judean depiction of foreign sailors", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 5th–4th c. BCE", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg041.perseus-eng2", "ref": "1.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Jonah 1.7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "They all said to each other, Come, let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is on us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.", "translation": "'Let us cast lots to know on whose account this evil has come upon us.' They cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pagan sailors find the guilty man by lot, and they are right. Lot-casting is shared ground: it works for foreigners as well as for Israelite priests, because God controls the outcome.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Phoenician/foreign sailors", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-82", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Proverbs", "author": "Proverbs (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite wisdom", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 8th–5th c. BCE", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg029.perseus-eng2", "ref": "16.33.1", "conventional_ref": "Prov 16.33", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "philosophical-theory" ], "excerpt_original": "The lot is cast into the lap, But its every decision is from Yahweh.", "translation": "The lot is thrown into the lap, but its whole decision is from Yahweh.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the theory behind sanctioned lot-divination. Randomness is the channel through which God decides, so lots are not 'magic' but a direct line to divine will. The same assumption underlies the choice of Matthias in Acts 1.26 (bible-110).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-83", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Esther", "author": "Esther (WEB)", "culture": "Judean diaspora under Persia", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 4th–3rd c. BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg019.perseus-eng2", "ref": "3.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Esth 3.7; 9.24–26", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "In the first month, which is the month Nisan, in the twelfth year of king Ahasuerus, they cast Pur, that is, the lot, before Haman from day to day, and from month to month, [to] the twelfth [month], which is the month Adar.", "translation": "In Nisan they cast pûr — that is, the lot — before Haman, day by day and month by month, until it fell on the twelfth month, Adar.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Haman picks a lucky day for genocide by casting pūr (an Akkadian loanword for 'lot'; the surveyor's own knowledge) through the calendar. It is Persian-court hemerology (choosing auspicious days). The festival of Purim is named after the lot (9.26), so a Jewish holiday is named after a foreign divination that God turned upside down. The LXX has ἔβαλεν κλήρους.", "claimed_effect": "choosing a propitious date", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Haman and attendants", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-84", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Ezra (Esdras ii)", "author": "Ezra–Nehemiah (WEB)", "culture": "Judean (Persian era)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 400 BCE", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg018.perseus-eng3", "ref": "2.63.1", "conventional_ref": "Ezra 2.63; Neh 7.65", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "The governor said to them, that they should not eat of the most holy things, until there stood up a priest with Urim and with Thummim.", "translation": "The governor told them not to eat the most holy food until a priest arose with Urim and Thummim.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After the exile the priestly lot-oracle is lost, and doubtful genealogies must wait until it returns. The sanctioned form of divination ends in the Persian period. The Second Temple community lives without it, which may help explain the rise of lots, dreams and angelic revelation in later texts.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-85", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Job", "author": "Job (WEB)", "culture": "Israelite wisdom (international setting)", "language": "eng (WEB from Hebrew)", "date": "c. 6th–4th c. BCE", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg032.perseus-eng2", "ref": "3.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Job 3.8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Let them curse it who curse the day, Who are ready to rouse up leviathan.", "translation": "Let those who curse days curse it, those skilled to rouse Leviathan.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Job calls on professional day-cursers, specialists who could blight a calendar day and wake the chaos-monster, to curse the day of his birth. It is a passing allusion to a curse-craft treated as real enough to be invoked in poetry.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "day-cursers", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-86", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Tobit", "author": "Tobit (Greek, Vaticanus+Alexandrinus text)", "culture": "Judean diaspora (Mesopotamian setting)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 225–175 BCE (Aramaic original; Qumran fragments)", "date_sort": -200, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg021.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "6.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Tob 6.4–9", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἡ καρδία καὶ τὸ ἧπαρ, ἐάν τινα ὀχλῇ δαιμόνιον ἢ πνεῦμα πονηρόν· ταῦτα δὲ καπνίσαι ἐνώπιον ἀνθρώπου ἢ γυναικός, καὶ οὐ μηκέτι ὀχληθῇ.", "translation": "The heart and the liver: if a demon or evil spirit troubles anyone, burn them as smoke before the man or woman, and they will be troubled no more.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The angel Raphael, disguised as 'Azarias', teaches Tobias a recipe. The fish's heart and liver, smoked, drive off demons; its gall, smeared on the eyes, cures white films (λευκώματα, 6.9). This is angelically revealed medico-magical lore of exactly the kind Deuteronomy might condemn, presented as pious and approved. Its nearest ancestry is Mesopotamian fumigation and eye-medicine.", "claimed_effect": "repelling demons; curing eye-whiteness", "claimed_mechanism": "fumigation with fish organs; ointment of gall", "practitioner": "Raphael (angel) → Tobias", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-87", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Tobit", "author": "Tobit (Greek)", "culture": "Judean diaspora", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 225–175 BCE", "date_sort": -200, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg021.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "8.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Tob 8.2–3; cf. 3.8, 3.17", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅτε δὲ ὠσφράνθη τὸ δαιμόνιον τῆς ὀσμῆς, ἔφυγεν εἰς τὰ ἀνώτατα Αἰγύπτου, καὶ ἔδησεν αὐτὸ ὁ ἄγγελος.", "translation": "When the demon smelled the odour, it fled to the remotest parts of Egypt, and the angel bound it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "On the wedding night Tobias puts heart and liver on the incense ashes (8.2). The demon Asmodeus (Ἀσμόδαυς), who had killed Sarah's seven previous husbands (3.8), flees from the smell and is 'bound' by Raphael. The effect has two layers: the smell works on the demon, and the angel finishes the job with a binding. Binding (δῆσαι, 3.17) is the standard verb of exorcistic and curse magic.", "claimed_effect": "expulsion of a lethal demon", "claimed_mechanism": "smell of burnt organs; angelic binding", "practitioner": "Tobias and Raphael", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-88", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Tobit", "author": "Tobit (Greek)", "culture": "Judean diaspora", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 225–175 BCE", "date_sort": -200, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg021.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.10.1", "conventional_ref": "Tob 2.10; 11.7–13", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀφώδευσαν τὰ στρουθία θερμὸν εἰς τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς μου, καὶ ἐγενήθη λευκώματα εἰς τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς μου· καὶ ἐπορεύθην πρὸς ἰατρούς, καὶ οὐκ ὠφέλησάν με·", "translation": "Sparrows dropped warm dung into my eyes and white films formed on them; I went to physicians, but they did not help me.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The blindness has a natural cause, bird droppings producing λευκώματα, and ordinary doctors fail. The cure (11.8, 11.11–13) is fish gall: Tobit's eyes sting, he rubs them, and the white films peel off from the corners. The text joins naturalistic aetiology to a revealed remedy, and it records a sensation of the treatment.", "claimed_effect": "cure of blindness", "claimed_mechanism": "fish gall applied to the eyes; stinging and rubbing remove the film", "practitioner": "Tobias (on angelic instruction)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-89", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)", "author": "Jesus ben Sira (Greek tr. by his grandson)", "culture": "Judean (Jerusalem scribal) / Alexandria", "language": "grc", "date": "Hebrew c. 180 BCE; Greek c. 132 BCE", "date_sort": -180, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg034.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "38.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Sir 38.1–8", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Κύριος ἔκτισεν ἐκ γῆς φάρμακα, καὶ ἀνὴρ φρόνιμος οὐ προσοχθίσει αὐτοῖς.", "translation": "The Lord created medicines (pharmaka) out of the earth, and a sensible man will not despise them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ben Sira tells his reader to honour the physician (38.1) and approve of pharmaka. Then he naturalises Moses at Marah: 'Was not water made sweet by wood, so that its power (ἰσχύς) might be known?' (38.5). God gave skill to men, the pharmacist (μυρεψός) makes his mixtures (38.8), and prayer goes alongside (38.9). The same Greek word φάρμακον that means 'sorcery' elsewhere is here a gift of God. The line between magic and medicine runs through one word.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "natural powers created in plants and substances", "practitioner": "physicians and pharmacists", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-90", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)", "author": "Jesus ben Sira (Greek)", "culture": "Judean scribal", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 180 / 132 BCE", "date_sort": -180, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg034.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "31.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Sir 34.1–8 (library 31.1–8)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "μαντεία καὶ οἰωνισμοὶ καὶ ἐνύπνια μάταιά ἐστι, καὶ ὡς ὠδῖν’ οὔσης φαντάζεταί σου ἡ καρδία.", "translation": "Divinations, omen-takings and dreams are empty; like a woman in labour, your heart fantasises.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the most sceptical passage in the corpus. Dreams are like grasping at shadows (31.2), mirror images of the dreamer's own face (31.3), and 'have led many astray' (31.7). Dreams are psychological products, with one exception: 'unless sent from the Most High' (31.6).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-91", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Maccabees (prefatory letter)", "author": "Letter to Egyptian Jews prefixed to 2 Maccabees", "culture": "Judean (Hasmonean) / Persian legend", "language": "grc", "date": "letter c. 124 BCE (disputed); book c. 100 BCE", "date_sort": -124, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg024.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.22.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Macc 1.19–36", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "chemistry-fire", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "ὡς δὲ ἐγένετο καὶ χρόνος διῆλθεν ὅ τε ἥλιος ἀνέλαμψεν ἐπινεφὴς ὤν, ἀνήφθη πυρὰ μεγάλη, ὥστε θαυμάσαι πάντας.", "translation": "When this was done and time passed, and the sun, which had been clouded over, shone out, a great blaze was kindled, so that all marvelled.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Exiled priests hid the altar fire in a dry cistern (1.19). Nehemiah's men find only 'thick water' (ὕδωρ παχύ), which is sprinkled on the wood and sacrifices and bursts into flame in the sun (1.21–22). Poured on stones it flares again (1.31–32). The Persian king fences the site, makes it a sanctuary and profits from it (1.34–35), and it is called Νεφθάρ (1.36), i.e. naphtha. The text describes petroleum self-ignition as a temple miracle.", "claimed_effect": "rekindling the sacred fire", "claimed_mechanism": "thick liquid ignited by sunlight", "practitioner": "Nehemiah and priests", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-92", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Maccabees", "author": "Jason of Cyrene, epitomised", "culture": "Judean (Hasmonean)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 100 BCE; event 163 BCE", "date_sort": -100, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg024.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "12.40.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Macc 12.39–42", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "εὗρον δὲ ἑκάστου τῶν τεθνηκότων ὑπὸ τοὺς χιτῶνας ἱερώματα τῶν ἀπὸ Ἰαμνίας εἰδώλων, ἀφʼ ὧν ὁ νόμος ἀπήργει τοὺς Ἰουδαίους·", "translation": "Under the tunic of each of the dead they found sacred tokens of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids to Jews.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Judas Maccabeus's soldiers had worn protective amulets from a pagan shrine under their clothes. The author draws the lesson that the amulets caused their deaths (12.40) and that God reveals hidden things (12.41). It is a rare glimpse of everyday amulet use among pious Jewish fighters, and an inversion: the charm meant to protect is what kills.", "claimed_effect": "protection in battle", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Jewish soldiers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "forbidden by the Law; discovered at burial", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-93", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Wisdom of Solomon", "author": "Wisdom of Solomon (Alexandrian Jewish)", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish (Alexandria)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 50 BCE–40 CE", "date_sort": -30, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg033.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "18.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Wis 17.7–8 (library 18.7–8)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "μαγικῆς δέ ἐμπαίγματα κατέκειτο τέχνης,", "translation": "The tricks of the magic art lay prostrate,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Retelling the plague of darkness, Wisdom says the illusions of Egypt's 'magic art' collapsed, 'a shameful refutation of their boasted wisdom' (18.7.2). Those who promised to drive away terrors and disturbances from a sick soul were themselves sick with a ridiculous fear (18.8). This is the first use in the corpus of μαγική τέχνη, with ἐμπαίγματα, 'jests/tricks', and it treats the Egyptian magicians as failed psychotherapists.", "claimed_effect": "curing fear and mental disturbance", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Egyptian magicians", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-94", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Wisdom of Solomon", "author": "Wisdom of Solomon", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish (Alexandria)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 50 BCE–40 CE", "date_sort": -30, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg033.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "12.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Wis 12.3–6; cf. 19.13", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "μισήσας ἐπὶ τῷ ἔχθιστα πράσσειν ἔργα φαρμακειῶν", "translation": "…hating them for practising most hateful works of sorcery (pharmakeia)", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Canaanites are said to have been dispossessed for 'works of sorcery' and 'unholy rites' (τελετὰς ἀνοσίους, 12.4.2), child-murder, and cannibal feasts of 'initiates' in a θίασος (12.5). The vocabulary is Greek mystery-cult language, so ancient Canaanite religion is described as a depraved Dionysiac mystery.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-95", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Wisdom of Solomon", "author": "Wisdom of Solomon", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish (Alexandria)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 50 BCE–40 CE", "date_sort": -30, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg033.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "7.20.3", "conventional_ref": "Wis 7.17–21", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "philosophical-theory", "healing", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "διαφορὰς φυτῶν καὶ δυνάμεις ῥιζῶν.", "translation": "…the varieties of plants and the powers of roots.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "'Solomon' claims God-given knowledge of the elements, solstices, cycles of years and 'positions of stars' (7.19). He also knows animal natures and 'the violent forces of spirits' (πνευμάτων βίας, 7.20.2) and 'the powers of roots'. This is the seed of the later legend of Solomon the master of demons and herbs (Josephus, the Testament of Solomon; the surveyor's own knowledge). In the text it is natural philosophy, with no hint of magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Solomon", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-96", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Bel and the Dragon (Theodotion)", "author": "Addition to Daniel", "culture": "Judean / diaspora polemic against Babylonian cult", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 2nd c. BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg059.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.19.1", "conventional_ref": "Bel 1–22", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ἐγέλασεν Δανιὴλ, καὶ ἐκράτησεν τὸν βασιλέα τοῦ μὴ εἰσελθεῖν αὐτὸν ἔσω, καὶ εἶπ εν Ἴδε δὴ τὸ ἔδαφος καὶ γνῶθι τίνος τὰ ἴχνη ταῦτα.", "translation": "Daniel laughed, held the king back from going in, and said, 'Look at the floor, and see whose footprints these are.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Bel's priests 'eat' the god's food offerings through a secret entrance under the table (1.13). Daniel has ashes sifted over the temple floor in front of the king only, and the doors are sealed (1.14). Next morning the seals are intact, but the footprints of priests, wives and children betray them (1.20–21). This is the corpus's only full exposure of a staged miracle, and its method is forensic.", "claimed_effect": "the idol eats", "claimed_mechanism": "secret door; refuted by ash-trace evidence", "practitioner": "priests of Bel (frauds); Daniel (debunker)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-97", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Bel and the Dragon (Theodotion)", "author": "Addition to Daniel", "culture": "Judean / diaspora", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 2nd c. BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg059.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.27.1", "conventional_ref": "Bel 23–27", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ἔλαβεν Δανιὴλ πίσσαν καὶ στῆρ καὶ τρίχας, καὶ ἥψησεν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ ἐποίησεν μάζας, καὶ ἔδωκεν εἰς τὸ στόμα τοῦ δράκοντος· καὶ φαγὼν διερράγη ὁ δράκων.", "translation": "Daniel took pitch, fat and hair, boiled them together, made cakes and fed them to the serpent; it ate and burst.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The living serpent-god of Babylon is killed by an indigestible mixture, with no prayer or spell. Daniel's line, 'See what you worship!', presents the act as a demonstration that the god is only an animal.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Daniel", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-98", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Epistle of Jeremiah", "author": "Pseudepigraphic letter (Baruch 6)", "culture": "Judean diaspora anti-idol polemic", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 4th–2nd c. BCE (fragment at Qumran)", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg052.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "69.1", "conventional_ref": "Ep Jer 69 (Bar 6.69/70); cf. 9, 27, 32", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐν σικυηράτῳ προβασκάνιον οὐδὲν φυλάσσον, οὕτως οἱ θεοὶ αὐτῶν εἰσὶν ξύλινοι καὶ περίχρυσοι καὶ περιάργυροι.", "translation": "Like an evil-eye charm in a cucumber patch that guards nothing, so are their gods of wood, overlaid with gold and silver.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The letter compares Babylonian idols to a προβασκάνιον, an anti-evil-eye figure or scarecrow set up in a vegetable plot, which 'guards nothing'. It also accuses priests of stripping gold from the gods for themselves (9), selling sacrifices (27) and dressing their wives in the gods' clothes (32). Religion is presented as a priestly racket.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-99", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Gospel of Matthew", "author": "Matthew", "culture": "Early Christian (Jewish-Christian)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 80–90 CE", "date_sort": 85, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Matt 2.1–12", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Ποῦ ἐστὶν ὁ τεχθεὶς βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων; εἴδομεν γὰρ αὐτοῦ τὸν ἀστέρα ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ καὶ ἤλθομεν προσκυνῆσαι αὐτῷ.", "translation": "'Where is the one born king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "μάγοι ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν (2.1) read a royal birth from a star 'at its rising'. ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ can be a technical term for a heliacal rising; WEB has 'in the east'. They are guided to the child (2.9) and warned in a dream (2.12). Here the forbidden figure of Daniel's court, the magus, is the first Gentile to honour Jesus. Contrast Acts 8 and 13, where μάγος is a term of abuse.", "claimed_effect": "learning of a king's birth", "claimed_mechanism": "astral omen; dream", "practitioner": "Persian/Babylonian magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-100", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Gospel of Mark", "author": "Mark", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 70 CE", "date_sort": 70, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.22.1", "conventional_ref": "Mark 3.22–27; Matt 12.24–27; Luke 11.15–19", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς οἱ ἀπὸ Ἰεροσολύμων καταβάντες ἔλεγον ὅτι Βεεζεβοὺλ ἔχει, καὶ ὅτι ἐν τῷ ἄρχοντι τῶν δαιμονίων ἐκβάλλει τὰ δαιμόνια.", "translation": "The scribes from Jerusalem said, 'He has Beezebul,' and 'by the ruler of the demons he casts out the demons.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Jesus's opponents accept that his exorcisms work but attribute them to a demonic patron. The charge is in effect sorcery, the same accusation later hostile sources made against him. Jesus answers with the divided-kingdom argument. In Matt 12.27 he adds 'by whom do your sons cast them out?', conceding that other Jewish exorcists operated (bible-101). The name descends from 2 Kgs 1.2 (bible-43).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "power over demons from (alleged) demonic prince vs. Holy Spirit", "practitioner": "Jesus (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-101", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Gospel of Matthew", "author": "Matthew (WEB)", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "eng (WEB)", "date": "c. 80–90 CE", "date_sort": 85, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg001.perseus-eng2", "ref": "12.27.1", "conventional_ref": "Matt 12.27; Luke 11.19", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "If I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges.", "translation": "If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people cast them out?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the plainest NT witness that exorcism was a normal Jewish practice in Jesus's time, practised by Pharisees' disciples. The argument works only if those exorcisms were accepted as genuine. The line between Jesus and other exorcists is drawn by allegiance, not technique.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Jewish exorcists ('your sons')", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-102", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Gospel of Mark", "author": "Mark", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 70 CE", "date_sort": 70, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Mark 5.1–13", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "Τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί, Ἰησοῦ υἱὲ τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ὑψίστου; ὁρκίζω σε τὸν θεόν, μή με βασανίσῃς.", "translation": "'What have I to do with you, Jesus, son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Gerasene demoniac's spirit tries to bind Jesus with the exorcist's own formula: knowledge of the opponent's exact name and title, plus ὁρκίζω σε τὸν θεόν, 'I adjure you by God'. Jesus counters by demanding the demon's name ('Legion', 5.9) and expels the demons into pigs. It is a duel of naming techniques familiar from the Greek magical papyri.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "names, adjuration, command", "practitioner": "Jesus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-103", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Gospel of Mark", "author": "Mark (WEB)", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "eng (WEB)", "date": "c. 70 CE", "date_sort": 70, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg002.perseus-eng2", "ref": "5.30.1", "conventional_ref": "Mark 5.25–34", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Immediately Jesus, perceiving in himself that the power had gone out from him, turned around in the crowd, and asked, \"Who touched my clothes?\"", "translation": "Jesus, knowing at once that power (dynamis) had gone out of him, turned in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my clothes?'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Healing is presented as a quasi-physical power that flows out on contact, even without Jesus intending it. The woman reasons 'If I just touch his clothes, I will be made well' (5.28) and the flow of blood stops. Jesus then credits her faith (5.34, not opened). It is the NT's most 'mechanical' healing.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "transferable dynamis through clothing", "practitioner": "Jesus; initiative of an unnamed woman", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-104", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Gospel of Mark", "author": "Mark", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 70 CE", "date_sort": 70, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.34.1", "conventional_ref": "Mark 7.32–35; 8.22–26", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ἀναβλέψας εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐστέναξεν, καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ Ἐφφαθά, ὅ ἐστιν Διανοίχθητι·", "translation": "Looking up to heaven he groaned and said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Mark's most 'technical' healing has privacy, fingers in the ears, spitting and touching the tongue (7.33), an upward gaze, a groan and a foreign-language command preserved in Aramaic. At 8.23–25 a blind man is healed in two stages with spittle and laying on of hands ('I see men; for I see them like trees walking'). Matthew and Luke drop both stories, perhaps because they looked too much like a magician's procedure.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "saliva, touch, sighing, Aramaic command", "practitioner": "Jesus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-105", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Gospel of John", "author": "John", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 90–100 CE", "date_sort": 95, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "9.6.1", "conventional_ref": "John 9.6–7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ταῦτα εἰπὼν ἔπτυσεν χαμαὶ καὶ ἐποίησεν πηλὸν ἐκ τοῦ πτύσματος, καὶ ἐπέθηκεν αὐτοῦ τὸν πηλὸν ἐπὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς,", "translation": "Having said this he spat on the ground, made mud from the spittle, and put the mud on his eyes.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A man born blind is healed with a saliva-and-earth ointment followed by washing in the pool of Siloam. Saliva as a remedy for the eyes was widespread in ancient medicine; that is the surveyor's own knowledge (e.g. Pliny NH 28).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "saliva-mud ointment and washing", "practitioner": "Jesus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-106", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Gospel of Mark", "author": "Mark", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 70 CE", "date_sort": 70, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.41.1", "conventional_ref": "Mark 5.41", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ κρατήσας τῆς χειρὸς τοῦ παιδίου λέγει αὐτῇ Ταλειθά κούμ, ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον Τὸ κοράσιον, σοὶ λέγω, ἔγειρε.", "translation": "Taking the child's hand he said, 'Talitha koum,' which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, get up.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The raising of Jairus's daughter keeps the Aramaic words, as with Ephphatha. Unlike the voces magicae of the papyri they are translated at once, so the Greek reader knows they are ordinary speech, not a secret formula. Compare the Elijah and Elisha revivals (bible-39, bible-46), which need prolonged bodily contact.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Jesus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-107", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Gospel of Matthew", "author": "Matthew", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 80–90 CE", "date_sort": 85, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "17.15.1", "conventional_ref": "Matt 17.14–18; Mark 9.17–29", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Κύριε, ἐλέησόν μου τὸν υἱόν, ὅτι σεληνιάζεται καὶ κακῶς ἔχει, πολλάκις γὰρ πίπτει εἰς τὸ πῦρ καὶ πολλάκις εἰς τὸ ὕδωρ·", "translation": "'Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is moonstruck and suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "σεληνιάζεται, 'is moon-struck', is an astrological-medical diagnosis; WEB translates it 'epileptic'. Mark 9.18 describes seizures exactly: thrown down, foaming, grinding teeth, rigidity. Jesus treats it as a 'mute and deaf spirit' (9.25), and after the convulsion the boy lies 'like one dead' (9.26). Three aetiologies sit together: moon, spirit, disease. In Mark 9.29 the Greek edition reads only 'by prayer' (ἐν προσευχῇ), while WEB adds 'and fasting', a later scribal addition.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "command to a spirit; prayer", "practitioner": "Jesus; disciples fail", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-108", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Gospel of Mark", "author": "Mark (WEB)", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "eng (WEB)", "date": "c. 70 CE", "date_sort": 70, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg002.perseus-eng2", "ref": "9.38.1", "conventional_ref": "Mark 9.38–39; Luke 10.17", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "John said to him, \"Teacher, we saw someone who doesn't follow us casting out demons in your name; and we forbade him, because he doesn't follow us.\"", "translation": "John said, 'Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we stopped him because he was not following us.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Jesus's name already works as a power-word for outsiders, and Jesus permits it (9.39). The seventy report that 'even the demons are subject to us in your name' (Luke 10.17). The name of Jesus enters the exorcists' repertoire within the gospels themselves. Acts 19 (bible-114) shows the danger of using it without allegiance.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "name of Jesus", "practitioner": "unnamed outside exorcist", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-109", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Gospel of John", "author": "John (WEB; verse absent from Greek edition)", "culture": "Early Christian / popular Jerusalem healing lore", "language": "eng (WEB)", "date": "gospel c. 95 CE; verse a later scribal gloss", "date_sort": 200, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg004.perseus-eng2", "ref": "5.4.1", "conventional_ref": "John 5.3b–4 (textual variant)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "for an angel of the Lord went down at certain times into the pool, and stirred up the water. Whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made whole of whatever disease he had.", "translation": "An angel would go down at times into the pool and stir the water; the first one in after the stirring was healed of whatever disease he had.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The healing-pool legend of Bethesda is in WEB but has no counterpart in the library's Greek edition, which lacks 5.4. The sick man's complaint (5.7) presupposes a belief about stirred water. The verse explaining it is a later addition that turns intermittent bubbling of a spring into angelic action.", "claimed_effect": "cure of any disease for the first to enter", "claimed_mechanism": "angel stirring the water", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-110", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Gospel of Matthew", "author": "Matthew", "culture": "Early Christian / Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 80–90 CE", "date_sort": 85, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "23.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Matt 23.5; Acts 1.26", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "πάντα δὲ τὰ ἔργα αὐτῶν ποιοῦσιν πρὸς τὸ θεαθῆναι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις· πλατύνουσι γὰρ τὰ φυλακτήρια αὐτῶν καὶ μεγαλύνουσι τὰ κράσπεδα,", "translation": "They do all their deeds to be seen; they broaden their phylaktēria and lengthen their tassels.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Greek name for tefillin, the scripture-capsules worn on forehead and arm, is φυλακτήρια, the ordinary Greek word for a protective amulet. Matthew criticises display, not magic. The Greek-speaking world evidently saw the boxes as amulets. Compare Acts 1.26, where the apostles still pick Judas's replacement by lot.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Pharisees", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-111", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Acts of the Apostles", "author": "Luke", "culture": "Early Christian / Samaritan", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 80–100 CE", "date_sort": 90, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "8.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Acts 8.9–24", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἀνὴρ δέ τις ὀνόματι Σίμων προυπῆρχεν ἐν τῇ πόλει μαγεύων καὶ ἐξιστάνων τὸ ἔθνος τῆς Σαμαρίας, λέγων εἶναί τινα ἑαυτὸν μέγαν,", "translation": "A man named Simon had long practised magic (mageuōn) in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, claiming to be someone great.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Simon is hailed as 'the Power of God called Great' (8.10) after amazing people for a long time 'with his magics' (ταῖς μαγίαις, 8.11). He is baptised. Then he offers money for the power to confer the Spirit by laying on hands (8.18–19). Peter: 'May your silver perish with you' (8.20). Magic is defined as power for sale, and 'simony' takes its name from him. Simon asks for prayer, fearing Peter's curse (8.24).", "claimed_effect": "amazing wonders; claims divine status", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Simon (Magus)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "religious marketplace in Samaria", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-112", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Acts of the Apostles", "author": "Luke", "culture": "Early Christian / Jewish court magus in Roman Cyprus", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 80–100 CE", "date_sort": 90, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "13.10.1", "conventional_ref": "Acts 13.6–12", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Ὦ πλήρης παντὸς δόλου καὶ πάσης ῥᾳδιουργίας, υἱὲ διαβόλου, ἐχθρὲ πάσης δικαιοσύνης, οὐ παύσῃ διαστρέφων τὰς ὁδοὺς τοῦ κυρίου τὰς εὐθείας;", "translation": "'You full of all deceit and all villainy, son of the devil, enemy of all righteousness — will you not stop twisting the Lord's straight paths?'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Bar-Jesus/Elymas, a 'Jewish μάγος and false prophet' (13.6) attached to the proconsul Sergius Paulus, opposes Paul. Paul pronounces a curse, 'the hand of the Lord is on you, and you will be blind' (13.11), and mist and darkness fall on him. The apostle's curse defeats the magus's arts, a replay of Moses against Pharaoh's magicians. The magus is accused of fraud (δόλος, ῥᾳδιουργία), while Paul's own power is a binding curse.", "claimed_effect": "temporary blindness", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Elymas Bar-Jesus; Paul", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "court magus to a Roman governor", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-113", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Acts of the Apostles", "author": "Luke", "culture": "Early Christian / Greek oracular culture (Philippi)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 80–100 CE", "date_sort": 90, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "16.16.1", "conventional_ref": "Acts 16.16–19", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "παιδίσκην τινὰ ἔχουσαν πνεῦμα πύθωνα ὑπαντῆσαι ἡμῖν, ἥτις ἐργασίαν πολλὴν παρεῖχεν τοῖς κυρίοις", "translation": "…a slave-girl who had a python spirit met us; she brought her owners much profit by soothsaying (manteuomenē).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A slave-girl with a 'python spirit', the Delphic prophetic spirit; Plutarch equates such 'pythons' with belly-talkers (ἐγγαστρίμυθοι), the surveyor's own knowledge. She tells true things about Paul (16.17), and he exorcises the spirit 'in the name of Jesus Christ' (16.18). The sequel is purely economic: her owners lose their income and have Paul arrested (16.19). Divination here is a commercial asset owned by slave-masters.", "claimed_effect": "fortune-telling", "claimed_mechanism": "possession by a Pythian spirit", "practitioner": "enslaved girl; her owners profit", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "slavery; commercial divination", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-114", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Acts of the Apostles", "author": "Luke", "culture": "Early Christian / Jewish exorcists at Ephesus", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 80–100 CE", "date_sort": 90, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "19.13.1", "conventional_ref": "Acts 19.11–17", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἐπεχείρησαν δέ τινες καὶ τῶν περιερχομένων Ἰουδαίων ἐξορκιστῶν ὀνομάζειν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἔχοντας τὰ πνεύματα τὰ πονηρὰ τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ λέγοντες Ὁρκίζω ὑμᾶς τὸν Ἰησοῦν ὃν Παῦλος κηρύσσει.", "translation": "Some itinerant Jewish exorcists tried to name the name of the Lord Jesus over the possessed, saying, 'I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Paul's sweat-cloths and aprons cure the sick and expel spirits (19.12, σουδάρια ἢ σιμικίνθια), contact-relics working at a distance. The seven sons of 'Sceva, a Jewish chief priest' borrow Jesus's name as a formula. The demon answers 'Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?' (19.15) and strips and wounds them. The name works only for those who belong, which is how Luke separates miracle from magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "adjuration by a powerful name; contact-relics", "practitioner": "sons of Sceva (itinerant exorcists); Paul", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-115", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Acts of the Apostles", "author": "Luke", "culture": "Early Christian / Ephesian magical culture", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 80–100 CE", "date_sort": 90, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "19.19.1", "conventional_ref": "Acts 19.18–19", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "ἱκανοὶ δὲ τῶν τὰ περίεργα πραξάντων συνενέγκαντες τὰς βίβλους κατέκαιον ἐνώπιον πάντων· καὶ συνεψήφισαν τὰς τιμὰς αὐτῶν καὶ εὗρον ἀργυρίου μυριάδας πέντε.", "translation": "Many of those who had practised the curious arts (ta perierga) gathered their books and burned them in front of everyone; they reckoned their value at fifty thousand silver pieces.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the corpus's one direct witness to magical books (the 'Ephesian' literature of spells). Converts confess their practices (19.18) and burn their scrolls publicly. The value given is 50,000 drachmas. τὰ περίεργα, 'things overdone' or 'curious arts', is a standard Greek euphemism for magic. It is the first book-burning of magic in Christian history.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Ephesian converts (both Jews and Greeks, 19.17)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "public renunciation", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-116", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Acts of the Apostles", "author": "Luke (WEB)", "culture": "Early Christian / Maltese islanders", "language": "eng (WEB)", "date": "c. 80–100 CE", "date_sort": 90, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg005.perseus-eng2", "ref": "28.6.1", "conventional_ref": "Acts 28.3–6; cf. Mark 16.18; Luke 10.19", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "But they expected that he would have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly, but when they were long in expectation and saw nothing bad happen to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god.", "translation": "They waited for him to swell up or drop dead; when nothing happened after a long wait, they changed their minds and said he was a god.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A viper fastens on Paul's hand. The islanders first read it as divine justice (Δίκη) catching a murderer (28.4), then, when he is unharmed, decide he is a god. It is the corpus's clearest ancient observation-then-inference about invulnerability. Mark 16.18, in the bracketed longer ending, promises that believers 'will take up serpents' and drink poison unharmed.", "claimed_effect": "immunity to snakebite", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Paul", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-117", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Galatians", "author": "Paul", "culture": "Early Christian / Anatolian Gentile converts", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 50–55 CE", "date_sort": 52, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg009.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Gal 3.1", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Ὦ ἀνόητοι Γαλάται, τίς ὑμᾶς ἐβάσκανεν, οἷς κατʼ ὀφθαλμοὺς Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς προεγράφη ἐσταυρωμένος;", "translation": "You senseless Galatians, who has cast the evil eye on you — you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was placarded as crucified?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Paul uses the evil-eye verb βασκαίνω to describe his rivals' influence. It is a vivid figure of speech that assumes his readers knew and feared the evil eye. The pun on 'before your eyes' strengthens it. The Epistle of Jeremiah's προβασκάνιον (bible-98) is the matching anti-evil-eye object.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-118", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Galatians", "author": "Paul", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 50–55 CE", "date_sort": 52, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg009.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.20.1", "conventional_ref": "Gal 5.19–21", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "εἰδωλολατρία, φαρμακία, ἔχθραι, ἔρις, ζῆλος, θυμοί, ἐριθίαι, διχοστασίαι, αἱρέσεις,", "translation": "…idolatry, sorcery (pharmakeia), enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, rivalries, dissensions, factions…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Among the 'works of the flesh', φαρμακεία ('drug-craft/sorcery') stands next to idolatry, just as Deuteronomy pairs magic with foreign cult. The LXX vocabulary for Pharaoh's magicians (bible-9) is now a sin-list term for Gentile converts.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-119", "corpus": "bible", "work": "2 Timothy", "author": "Pastoral Epistle attributed to Paul", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 90–120 CE (authorship disputed)", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg016.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.8.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Tim 3.8; 3.13", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ὃν τρόπον δὲ Ἰαννῆς καὶ Ἰαμβρῆς ἀντέστησαν Μωυσεῖ, οὕτως καὶ οὗτοι ἀνθίστανται τῇ ἀληθείᾳ,", "translation": "Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men oppose the truth.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This gives names, never mentioned in Exodus, to Pharaoh's magicians. The names come from post-biblical Jewish tradition; a 'Iannes' also appears in Pliny NH 30.11 and Apuleius as a famous magician, the surveyor's own knowledge. At 3.13 opponents are γόητες, 'wailers/charlatans', who 'deceive and are deceived'. γόης is the Greek word for magician as fraud.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Jannes and Jambres (Egyptian magicians)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-120", "corpus": "bible", "work": "James", "author": "Epistle of James (WEB)", "culture": "Early Christian (Jewish-Christian)", "language": "eng (WEB)", "date": "c. 60–100 CE (disputed)", "date_sort": 80, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg020.perseus-eng2", "ref": "5.14.1", "conventional_ref": "Jas 5.14–15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord,", "translation": "Is anyone sick? Let him call the community's elders; let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the Lord's name.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is church healing ritual: elders, oil (also a standard ancient medicament) and the divine name. It is the Christian equivalent of the incantation-plus-ointment healing that elsewhere counted as magic. The legitimate version is given to community officials, not freelance experts.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "prayer, oil, the Lord's name", "practitioner": "church elders", "practitioner_gender": "male (presumed)", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-121", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Revelation", "author": "John of Patmos", "culture": "Early Christian (Asia Minor) / anti-Roman apocalyptic", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 95 CE", "date_sort": 95, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg027.perseus-grc2", "ref": "18.23.1", "conventional_ref": "Rev 18.23; 9.21; 21.8; 22.15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅτι [οἱ] ἔμποροί σου ἦσαν οἱ μεγιστᾶνες τῆς γῆς, ὅτι ἐν τῇ φαρμακίᾳ σου ἐπλανήθησαν πάντα τὰ ἔθνη,", "translation": "…for your merchants were the great ones of the earth, and by your sorcery all the nations were led astray.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Rome-as-Babylon deceives the world by φαρμακεία, which inherits Nahum's harlot-sorceress Nineveh (bible-78) and Isaiah's Babylon (bible-63). The unrepentant refuse to give up τῶν φαρμάκων αὐτῶν (9.21). φαρμακοί are in the lake of fire (21.8) and 'outside' the New Jerusalem with 'the dogs' (22.15: ἔξω οἱ κύνες καὶ οἱ φαρμακοὶ). Sorcery here stands for a whole imperial system.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "bible-122", "corpus": "bible", "work": "Revelation", "author": "John of Patmos", "culture": "Early Christian / Roman imperial cult in Asia", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 95 CE", "date_sort": 95, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg027.perseus-grc2", "ref": "13.15.1", "conventional_ref": "Rev 13.13–15; Mark 13.22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ἐδόθη αὐτῇ δοῦναι πνεῦμα τῇ εἰκόνι τοῦ θηρίου, ἵνα καὶ λαλήσῃ ἡ εἰκὼν τοῦ θηρίου", "translation": "It was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast should even speak…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The second beast, the 'false prophet' of imperial cult, makes fire come down from heaven 'in the sight of men' (13.13). It animates a speaking statue (13.15). Mark 13.22 warns that false prophets 'will give signs and wonders' to deceive. Wonders are no longer proof of truth (contrast Exod 4); the enemy can do them too. Talking and fire-producing statues are a known temple technology.", "claimed_effect": "fire from the sky; speaking image", "claimed_mechanism": "granted power; deception (planaō)", "practitioner": "the 'false prophet' / second beast", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-1", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous (Old Kingdom priesthood)", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom, 5th Dynasty)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE (inscribed; composition possibly older)", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "226.225a-b", "conventional_ref": "PT 226 §225–226", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "č̣(ṭ) mṭw šn(.w) nꜥw ꞽn nꜥw šn(.w) bḥs ḫꜣb.w pr m ḥsp … ḥfꜣ.w pnꜥ mꜣ čw Rꜥw", "translation": "Words to be spoken: the serpent is encircled by the serpent, the toothless(?) calf that came out of the garden is encircled … Snake, turn over! Ra sees you.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the first of the snake spells (PT 226–244) carved around the Unas sarcophagus chamber. The serpent is neutralised in two ways: it is encircled by a serpent of equal kind, and it is ordered onto its back under the gaze of the sun god. The command is in the imperative, with no prayer or offering. Speaking it was the protective act.", "claimed_effect": "disabling snakes that threaten the king's body and tomb", "claimed_mechanism": "performative command; making like counter like (serpent against serpent); the sun god as witness", "practitioner": "lector priest speaking for the dead king", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal funerary cult; heka is legitimate sacred power, not illicit", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ref-corrected", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words beginning at a different passage from the one the surveyor cited, and the reference was corrected", "check_note": "the quotation begins at a different passage from the one the surveyor cited; the reference was corrected", "surveyor_ref": "226.226b" }, { "id": "egypt-2", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "230.230c.1", "conventional_ref": "PT 230 §230", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "tmm rʾ ⸗k ꞽn š(m)ś.t / tmm rʾ n(.ꞽ) š(m)ś.t ꞽn Mꜣfṭ.t", "translation": "Your mouth is closed by the šmś.t; the mouth of the šmś.t is closed by Mafdet.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A chain-transfer formula against a biting snake. The snake's mouth is shut by one power, whose own mouth is shut in turn by Mafdet, the feline or mongoose-like goddess whose claws kill snakes. The meaning of šmś.t is uncertain. The spell then calls on Ra and Geb and twists the act of biting back onto the attacker. Mafdet returns in Unas 295, 297 and 298 and in Pepi I 501C, which shows the same protective figure working in the spells of several kings.", "claimed_effect": "closing the snake's mouth so it cannot bite", "claimed_mechanism": "a chain of binding by mouths; a predator goddess", "practitioner": "lector priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal funerary protection", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-3", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian with possible Northwest Semitic (Canaanite) component", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "236.240", "conventional_ref": "PT 236 §240; cf. PT 232, 235, 281 §422, 286 §427", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "č̣(ṭ) mṭw kbb hꞽ tꞽtꞽ bꞽtꞽ šś sꜣ ḥꞽfg.t rn ⸗k pw", "translation": "Words to be spoken: kbb hi titi biti … ḥifget — that is your name.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Several Unas serpent spells cannot be read as ordinary Egyptian. Examples are PT 232 'mꞽtꞽ mꞽtꞽ mꞽtꞽ mꞽtꞽ', PT 236, PT 281 'ꞽss hꞽ kw kbb hꞽ ꜣꜣꜣ bꞽ … nꜥ.y nꜥ.y', and PT 286. Scholars (notably R. Steiner 2011) have argued that they write Northwest Semitic (early Canaanite) snake incantations in hieroglyphs; others treat them as sound-play or 'foreign-sounding' words. Either way, the earliest Egyptian religious corpus already uses words that are opaque or foreign for effect, and still names the being ('that is your name'). The Semitic reading is disputed.", "claimed_effect": "repelling snakes", "claimed_mechanism": "sound and name power; possibly a borrowed foreign-language charm", "practitioner": "lector priest (possibly using imported Levantine snake-charming formulae)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal funerary cult open to foreign ritual expertise", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-4", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "298.442a-b", "conventional_ref": "PT 298 §442–443", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "č̣(ṭ) mṭw ḫꜥ Rꜥw ꜣḫ.t ⸗f ṭp ⸗f ꞽr ḥfꜣ.w pn pr m tꜣ ẖr.ꞽ č̣bꜥ(.w) Wnꞽś … hꞽ.w śč̣r kꜣ sbn", "translation": "Words to be spoken: Ra appears with his radiant one (uraeus) on his head against this snake that comes out of the earth under the fingers of Unas … Hiu-snake, lie down! Bull(?), slither away!", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is from the antechamber series of apotropaic spells (PT 276–299). The sun's uraeus is turned against a snake rising from the ground under the king's hand, and Mafdet's claw then cuts off its head (§442c–443a). The closing cry 'hꞽ.w śč̣r' ('Hiu-snake, lie down') recurs in PT 226, 237, 293 and in Pepi I 501A, 501C and 502E, a stock exit formula for snake spells.", "claimed_effect": "killing or immobilising a snake", "claimed_mechanism": "solar uraeus; Mafdet's claw; a formulaic command", "practitioner": "lector priest", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "tomb protection", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-5", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "273.397a-c", "conventional_ref": "PT 273 §397 (Cannibal Hymn)", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Wnꞽś pꞽ kꜣ p.t nhṭ m ꞽb ⸗f ꜥnḫ m ḫpr(.w) n(.ꞽ) nčr nb wnm(.w) wsm.w ⸗śn ꞽw.w mḥ ẖ.t ⸗śn m ḥkꜣ.w m Ꞽw-nśꞽśꞽ", "translation": "Unas is the bull of the sky, who rages in his heart, who lives on the being of every god, who eats their entrails(?), when they come with their bellies full of heka from the Island of Flame.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Cannibal Hymn (PT 273–274) pictures the dead king as a sky-bull who hunts, cooks and eats the gods. Here heka is a substance stored in the gods' bodies, and the king gets it by eating them. Magic is not asked of the gods; it is taken from them. The library has 60 lines of the hymn for Unas and only 4 for Teti.", "claimed_effect": "the king acquires the gods' power and becomes supreme in the sky", "claimed_mechanism": "incorporation: eating heka and akh-power", "practitioner": "the dead king (as recited by priests)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal ideology of kingship beyond death", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-6", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas (with Teti parallel)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE (Unas); c. 2330 BCE (Teti)", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "274.403c", "conventional_ref": "PT 274 §403, §410–411", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Wnꞽś pꞽ wnm ḥkꜣ(.w) ⸗śn ꞽ:ꜥm ꜣḫ(.w) ⸗śn … ꞽw ḥkꜣ(.w) ⸗śn m ẖ.t ⸗f", "translation": "Unas is the one who eats their heka and swallows their akh-power … their heka is in his belly.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This line states most plainly that heka can be possessed, digested and stored in the body. §410c adds that he is satisfied by living on their hearts and their heka. Teti's copy (teti 274.403c.1–2) reads 'ꞽn Ttꞽ wnm ḥkꜣ(.w) ⸗śn / ꞽn Ttꞽ ꞽ:ꜥm ꜣḫ(.w) ⸗śn' ('it is Teti who eats … it is Teti who swallows …'): the claim is the same but the syntax differs. That is a concrete example of wording varying between kings.", "claimed_effect": "possession of divine power", "claimed_mechanism": "ingestion", "practitioner": "the dead king", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal funerary theology", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-7", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "273.394c", "conventional_ref": "PT 273 §394, §399", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "other", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Wnꞽś pꞽ nb sꜣb.wt ḫm.n mw.t ⸗f rn ⸗f … Wnꞽś pꞽ wč̣ꜥ mṭw ⸗f ḥnꜥ ꞽmn rn ⸗f", "translation": "Unas is the lord of …, whose name his mother does not know … Unas is one who judges together with him whose name is hidden.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Two statements about names. The king's own name is unknown even to his mother, so it cannot be used against him. He also sits in judgement beside a god 'whose name is hidden' (ꞽmn rn ⸗f). Teti has the same line (teti 273.399a-b). PT 254 §276c speaks of a 'great god whose name is unknown'. This is the basis of the idea, much repeated by Greeks, Christians and Hermetists, that Egyptian power lives in secret names.", "claimed_effect": "inviolability and authority", "claimed_mechanism": "concealment of the true name", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal theology", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-8", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "254.277b", "conventional_ref": "PT 254 §277", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "ꞽr tm ⸗k ꞽr(.w) ś.t n Wnꞽś ꞽr.kꜣ Wnꞽś fꜣ.t m ꞽt(ꞽ) ⸗f Gbb / tꜣ nꞽ mṭw.n ⸗f / Gbb nꞽ wꜣ.n ⸗f", "translation": "If you do not make a place for Unas, Unas will lay a curse(?) on his father Geb: the earth will not speak, Geb will not be able to … .", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is a threat in conditional form ('if you do not …') against the Lord of the Horizon. If he refuses the king a place, the cosmic order will be disrupted: the earth falls silent and Geb is disabled. The meaning of fꜣ.t here is uncertain ('curse'? 'lifting'?). Teti has the identical threat (teti 254.277b). The same kind of threat is later described by Plutarch (De Iside 73) and defended by Iamblichus (DM 6.5).", "claimed_effect": "forcing a god to grant the king a place", "claimed_mechanism": "coercive threat against the gods", "practitioner": "the king via the reciting priest", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal funerary cult; coercing gods is legitimate for the king", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-9", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas (and Teti)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "255.297b-299b", "conventional_ref": "PT 255 §297–299", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "ꞽr tm ⸗k ṭr čw ḥr ś.t ⸗k [wꜣḥ] [⸗k] [śꜥḥ] [⸗k] [r] [tꜣ] ꞽw.kꜣ Wnꞽś ḥr ⸗f m Wr pw nb ꜣ.t", "translation": "If you do not remove yourself from your seat and lay your dignity on the ground, Unas will come, his face that of the Great One, lord of power …", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A second conditional threat. The god addressed must give up his throne, or the king will come in terrifying form, set the fire of his eye around the gods, and break Shu's support of the sky (§299). Teti's copy (teti 255) is better preserved where Unas has bracketed restorations. Together with PT 254 this establishes coercive speech toward gods as an Old Kingdom royal practice.", "claimed_effect": "a god yields his seat", "claimed_mechanism": "threat of cosmic violence", "practitioner": "the king", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal funerary cult", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-10", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts III: Pepi I (with Pepi II parallel)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom, 6th Dynasty)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2300 BCE", "date_sort": -2300, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:pepi:translit", "ref": "456.855a-d", "conventional_ref": "PT 456 §855–856", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "rḫ św rr(ꞽ) rʾ pn n(.ꞽ) Rꜥw ꞽr ⸗f śn ḥkꜣ(.w) ꞽpn n.(ꞽ)w Ḥr.w-ꜣḫ.tꞽ wnn ⸗f rr(ꞽ) m rḫ.ꞽ n(.ꞽ) Rꜥw wnn ⸗f m śmr n(.ꞽ) Ḥr.w-ꜣḫ.tꞽ", "translation": "As for the one who knows this spell (rʾ) of Ra and performs these heka of Horakhty: he will be an acquaintance of Ra, he will be a companion of Horakhty.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A 'knowledge clause': the reward goes to whoever knows the spell and does its heka. Pepi II has the same clause (neferkare 456.855a-d), and §856 restates it in the first person for the king. Here heka is a set of acts that can be learned and performed, and the clause anticipates the rubrics of the Coffin Texts and Book of the Dead ('whoever knows this spell…'). It also shows that a spell can be generalised beyond the one king.", "claimed_effect": "intimacy with the sun god", "claimed_mechanism": "knowledge plus performance", "practitioner": "anyone who knows the spell (in principle); in practice the king", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "the beginning of transferable spells", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-11", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts III: Pepi I", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2300 BCE", "date_sort": -2300, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:pepi:translit", "ref": "472.924a–472.924b.1", "conventional_ref": "PT 472 §924", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "č̣(ṭ) mṭw ꜣwꞽ p.t śṭꜣ tꜣ ṭp-ꜥw(.wꞽ) Ppy pn / Ppy pw ḥkꜣ.w / Ppy pw ẖr(.ꞽ) ḥkꜣ", "translation": "Words to be spoken: the sky is extended(?), the earth trembles before this Pepi. Pepi is Heka (or: magic); Pepi is the one who holds heka.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The king is identified with heka itself. The phrase can be read as the god Heka or as the abstract power; the library's lemma table has no separate god Heka. 'ẖr(.ꞽ) ḥkꜣ' ('the one under / possessor of heka') is uncertain. The point is identity, not request: the king does not use magic, he is magic.", "claimed_effect": "cosmic awe, the king's ascent", "claimed_mechanism": "identification with heka", "practitioner": "the king", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal theology", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ref-corrected", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words beginning at a different passage from the one the surveyor cited, and the reference was corrected", "check_note": "the quotation begins at a different passage from the one the surveyor cited; the reference was corrected", "surveyor_ref": "472.924b.1" }, { "id": "egypt-12", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts III: Pepi I", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2300 BCE", "date_sort": -2300, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:pepi:translit", "ref": "443.823a-c", "conventional_ref": "PT 443 §823", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "č̣(ṭ) mṭw Nw.t pr.n ꞽr.t(ꞽ) m ṭp ⸗č ꞽč.n ⸗č Ḥr.w wr.t ⸗f ḥkꜣ(.w) ꞽśč ꞽč.n ⸗č Śtẖ wr.t ⸗f ḥkꜣ(.w) ꞽśč", "translation": "Words to be spoken: Nut, the Eye has come forth from your head; you have taken Horus, his great heka; you have taken Seth, his great heka.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Gods are 'great of heka', and the sky goddess absorbs both Horus' and Seth's heka. Heka is a measurable property of gods, morally neutral, held by rivals alike. It is not a skill confined to humans.", "claimed_effect": "Nut gains and contains the power of both contending gods", "claimed_mechanism": "possession or absorption of heka", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal funerary theology", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-13", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "221.196a-197a", "conventional_ref": "PT 220–221 §194–198", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "hꞽ N.t hꞽ Ꞽn hꞽ Wr.t hꞽ Wr.t-ḥkꜣ(.w) hꞽ Nsr.t č̣i̯ ⸗č šꜥ.t Wnꞽś mr šꜥ.t ⸗č", "translation": "O Red Crown, O Inu, O Great One, O Great-of-Magic, O Flaming One: put the slaughter (= terror) of Unas (among men) like your own slaughter.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "These are the crown spells. The crown and the uraeus goddess are addressed as Wr.t-ḥkꜣ.w, 'Great of Magic', and asked to give the king her terror, fear, love and power over his enemies (§197b–f). Heka is the force of royal regalia, so the protective power of kingship is itself magical.", "claimed_effect": "the king inspires dread and love; defeats enemies", "claimed_mechanism": "transfer of the crown goddess's qualities", "practitioner": "priest addressing the crown", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal regalia and coronation imagery", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-14", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "23.16a", "conventional_ref": "PT 23 §16", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Wśr(.w) ꞽč n ⸗k mśč̣č̣.w Wnꞽś nb.w mṭw(.w) m rn ⸗f č̣w … č̣(ṭ) mṭw sp 4 (ꞽ)m ś:fḫḫ.w ⸗k ꞽm ⸗f", "translation": "Osiris, take for yourself all who hate Unas, who speak evil against his name … Words to be spoken four times: do not let go of him!", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The first spell in the library's Unas edition is a seizing-curse against the king's enemies, defined as those who slander his name. Thoth is sent to deliver the offender to Osiris. A rubric orders four repetitions and a libation (s(ꜣ)č). Protection of the name stands at the start of the corpus.", "claimed_effect": "enemies are seized and held", "claimed_mechanism": "divine agents; fourfold repetition; libation", "practitioner": "lector priest", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal funerary cult", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-15", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "25.18c-d", "conventional_ref": "PT 25 §18", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "other", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "Wśr(.w) Wnꞽś (r)č̣.n (⸗ꞽ) n ⸗k ꞽr.t Ḥr.w ḥtm(.w) ḥr ⸗k ꞽm ⸗ś pč̣pč̣ śč ꞽr.t Ḥr.w r ⸗k | č̣(ṭ) mṭw sp 4 śnčr ḫ.t", "translation": "Osiris Unas, I have given you the Eye of Horus; your face is equipped with it; the scent of the Eye of Horus spreads to you. Words to be spoken four times. Incense, fire.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the offering ritual every offering (incense, water, wine, bread) is declared to be the Eye of Horus, and the stage direction is written beside the words: 'say four times — incense, fire'. The real substance and the mythic one are the same thing, and the declaration makes it so. The Unas offering ritual runs from PT 23 to 171 in the library.", "claimed_effect": "the dead king is nourished and restored", "claimed_mechanism": "mythic equation (offering = Eye of Horus); repetition", "practitioner": "lector priest with offering-bearers", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "temple and mortuary offering cult", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-16", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "34.26a", "conventional_ref": "PT 34 §26", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "smꞽn smꞽn wpp rʾ ⸗k … č̣(ṭ) mṭw sp 4 ḥsmn ⸗k m-ꜥb šmś.w-Ḥr.w | bṭ Šmꜥ.w čꜣ 5 Nḫb", "translation": "Natron, natron, which opens your mouth … Words to be spoken four times: you are purified with natron among the followers of Horus. (Southern natron, five pellets, from Nekheb.)", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A purification with natron is built on a pun (smꞽn 'natron/to establish' and ḥsmn 'natron/purify'), followed by a precise material prescription: five pellets of southern natron from Nekheb. Wordplay is a working mechanism, and the instructions carry real materia medica. Natron is a genuine desiccant and cleanser.", "claimed_effect": "purification and the 'opening' of the mouth", "claimed_mechanism": "punning speech plus the cleansing substance", "practitioner": "lector priest", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "mortuary ritual", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-17", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts V: Pepi II (Neferkare)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom, 6th Dynasty)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2200 BCE", "date_sort": -2200, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:neferkare:translit", "ref": "21.13b-c", "conventional_ref": "PT 21 §13 (Opening of the Mouth)", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "other", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "[hꜣ] [Nfr]-[kꜣ]-[Rꜥw] [wp.n] [(⸗ꞽ)] [] [⸗k] [rʾ] [⸗k] m nwꜣ Wp-wꜣ.wt mśḫt.w bꞽꜣ wp rʾ n(.ꞽ) nčr(.w)", "translation": "O Neferkare, I have opened your mouth for you with the adze of Wepwawet, the meteoric-iron 'foreleg' adze that opens the mouth of the gods.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the Opening of the Mouth (PT 20–21), held in the library only in Pepi II and largely restored (the brackets mark restorations). It names a real tool, an adze of bꞽꜣ, the metal word associated with meteoric iron, used to reanimate the dead king's senses. PT 20 (neferkare 20.11a-b) has the officiant say 'I am Horus … I am your beloved son', so identification with the god is part of the act.", "claimed_effect": "restoring the faculties of speech and eating to the dead", "claimed_mechanism": "ritual touch with a sacred instrument; role identification", "practitioner": "priest acting as Horus, the son", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "mortuary and statue animation ritual", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-18", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "77.52a.1", "conventional_ref": "PT 77 §52–53", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "mrḥ.t mrḥ.t čn(ꞽ) ꞽ:wn ⸗č … ś:ꜣḫ ⸗č św ẖr ⸗č / č̣i̯ ⸗č śḫm ⸗f m č̣.t ⸗f", "translation": "Ointment, ointment, where should you be? … make him akh (effective) under you; give him power over his body.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The ointment is addressed as a person and asked to 'akh-ify' the king (ś:ꜣḫ, the causative of ꜣḫ) and to give him control of his own body. This is the technical idea behind the 'glorifications' (sꜣḫw): a substance plus speech turns the dead into an effective spirit.", "claimed_effect": "bodily power and transfiguration", "claimed_mechanism": "anointing and address to the substance", "practitioner": "lector priest", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "mortuary ritual", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-19", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts I: Unas", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2350 BCE", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "301.449a.1", "conventional_ref": "PT 301 §449, §452", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "other", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "ꞽw Wnꞽś rḫ(.w) św rḫ(.w) rn ⸗f / Nḥ rn ⸗f / Nḥ-nb-rnp.t rn ⸗f", "translation": "Unas knows him, knows his name: Neh is his name, Neh-lord-of-the-year is his name.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Knowing a being's name gives standing toward it. The same spell then uses the formula 'm rn ⸗k pw n(.ꞽ) X' ('in this your name of X', §452), which recurs across kings (Unas 293, 306, 311; Teti 364; Pepi I 423). These are etymological puns that tie the god's identity to the act being performed. The name-theory later credited to Egypt by Origen, Iamblichus and the Hermetica has real roots here.", "claimed_effect": "access to and authority over the named god", "claimed_mechanism": "knowledge of the name; punning on names", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal funerary cult", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-20", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts III: Pepi I", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2300 BCE", "date_sort": -2300, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:pepi:translit", "ref": "501C.7", "conventional_ref": "PT 501C (Pepi I, Leclant numbering)", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "ḥfꜣ.w pw … [č̣r.t] ˹Mꜣfṭ.t˺ nw ḥr˹.t˺ [ꞽb] ˹ḥw.t˺ / šp ⸗ś čw r ḥr ⸗k", "translation": "It is a snake! … the claw of Mafdet, who is in the midst of the Mansion (of Life); she blinds you in your face.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pepi I has a block of snake spells of its own (501A–502Q), damaged and partly restored, that do not repeat Unas' PT 226–244. Mafdet and the 'hꞽ.w śč̣r' ending are shared, but the texts are new. Some are pure sound repetition, such as 502J 'kk.(w)t(ꞽ) kk.(w)t(ꞽ) ꞽ:kk.t(ꞽ)…'. The snake repertoire was rewritten for each king rather than copied.", "claimed_effect": "blinding and killing the snake", "claimed_mechanism": "predator goddess; command; sound repetition", "practitioner": "lector priest", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal tomb protection", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-21", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts II: Teti", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom, 6th Dynasty)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2330 BCE", "date_sort": -2330, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:teti:translit", "ref": "388.681a–388.681d-e", "conventional_ref": "PT 388 §681", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "č̣(ṭ) mṭw čn(ꞽ) Ḥr.w pr m šnč … ḥfꜣ.w ḥ(ꜣ)b ḥnn čbb.n Ḥr.w rʾ ⸗f m čbw ⸗f", "translation": "Words to be spoken: Where is Horus who came forth from the acacia? … The snake … Horus has stopped (shod?) its mouth with his sandal.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Teti's own snake spell: the king is Horus born from the acacia, and the snake is defeated by being trodden on, its mouth shut under the god's sandal. Comparing it with Unas 226–244 and Pepi I 501–502 shows each king receiving a different anti-snake formula built from the same ideas.", "claimed_effect": "silencing a snake", "claimed_mechanism": "identification with Horus; trampling", "practitioner": "lector priest", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal funerary cult", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ref-corrected", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words beginning at a different passage from the one the surveyor cited, and the reference was corrected", "check_note": "the quotation begins at a different passage from the one the surveyor cited; the reference was corrected", "surveyor_ref": "388.681d-e" }, { "id": "egypt-22", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pyramid Texts II: Teti", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Egyptian (Old Kingdom)", "language": "egy", "date": "c. 2330 BCE", "date_sort": -2330, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:teti:translit", "ref": "155.93a-b", "conventional_ref": "PT 155 §93 (Teti vs Unas)", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "č̣(ṭ) mṭw Wśr(.w) Ttꞽ m n ⸗k ḥwn.t ꞽm.t ꞽr.t Ḥr.w wp rʾ ⸗k ꞽm ⸗ś č̣(ṭ) mṭw sp 4 n Ttꞽ pn fꜣ.t sp 4", "translation": "Words to be spoken: Osiris Teti, take the pupil that is in the Eye of Horus; open your mouth with it. Words to be spoken four times for this Teti; lifting (the offering), four times.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In Unas (unas 155.93a-b) the same offering line carries no rubric. Teti's version adds 'say four times … lift four times', a gesture instruction beside the speech. Performance instructions were added between kings, so the texts are scripts as well as hymns.", "claimed_effect": "the offering reaches and revives the king", "claimed_mechanism": "fourfold repetition and gesture", "practitioner": "lector priest", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "offering cult", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-23", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Exodus (Septuagint, with WEB English)", "author": "Old Testament (anonymous; Greek translators of Alexandria)", "culture": "Hebrew/Jewish (Greek translation in Ptolemaic Egypt)", "language": "grc", "date": "Hebrew text c. 7th–5th c. BCE; Greek c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "7.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 7.10–12 (LXX)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "συνεκάλεσεν δὲ Φαραὼ τούς σοφιστὰς Αἰγύπτου καὶ τοὺς φαρμακούς· καὶ ἐποίησαν καὶ οἱ ἐπαοιδοὶ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ταῖς φαρμακίοις αὐτῶν ὡσαύτως,", "translation": "Pharaoh summoned the sophists of Egypt and the sorcerers; and the enchanters of the Egyptians did likewise with their sorceries.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Aaron's rod becomes a serpent; Pharaoh's experts do the same, but Aaron's rod swallows theirs (7.12). The Greek uses three terms (σοφισταί, φαρμακοί, ἐπαοιδοί), where the English WEB has 'wise men', 'sorcerers' and 'magicians' with 'enchantments'. The Vulgate (Jerome, tmp497 3.14a) renders 'sapientes et maleficos … per incantationes Aegyptias et arcana quaedam'. The Egyptians' power is treated as real but outmatched.", "claimed_effect": "staffs turned into serpents", "claimed_mechanism": "their enchantments or 'arcana' against the power of God", "practitioner": "Pharaoh's court experts (ḥarṭummîm in Hebrew)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "court contest; Egyptian expertise as rival to Israel's God", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-24", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Exodus (Septuagint)", "author": "Old Testament", "culture": "Hebrew/Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 7th–5th c. BCE; Greek c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "8.19.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 8.18–19 (LXX numbering as in the library); 9.11", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "εἶπαν οὖν οἱ ἐπαοιδοὶ τῷ ¶ Φαραώ Δάκτυλος θεοῦ ἐστὶν τοῦτο·", "translation": "So the enchanters said to Pharaoh: this is the finger of God.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Egyptian enchanters match the blood and the frogs (7.22, 8.7) but cannot produce the gnats (8.18), and they themselves concede a power beyond theirs. In 9.11 they cannot even stand before Moses because of the boils. The biblical boundary is of degree and source: Egyptian technique against divine agency. The '¶' is an OCR artefact in the edition.", "claimed_effect": "failure to reproduce the third plague", "claimed_mechanism": "the limits of human technique", "practitioner": "Egyptian enchanters", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "polemical court narrative", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-25", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Exodus (Septuagint and WEB English)", "author": "Old Testament", "culture": "Hebrew/Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "law collection c. 8th–6th c. BCE; Greek c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "22.18.1", "conventional_ref": "Exod 22.18 (Heb. 22.17)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Φαρμακοὺς οὐ περιποιήσετε.", "translation": "You shall not keep sorcerers alive.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Greek uses the same word, φαρμακοί, that described Pharaoh's experts in 7.11, and makes it masculine plural. The English WEB (from the Hebrew) reads 'You shall not allow a sorceress to live', which is feminine. The law forbids at home what Egypt's court employs, and the Greek ties the legal category to the Egyptian story.", "claimed_effect": "(prohibition)", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "female in Hebrew/English; male plural in Greek", "social_legal_context": "capital law of the Covenant Code", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-26", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Genesis (Septuagint, with WEB English)", "author": "Old Testament", "culture": "Hebrew/Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 7th–5th c. BCE; Greek c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "tlg0527.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "41.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Gen 41.8", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐκάλεσεν ἐκάλεσεν πάντας τοὺς ἐξηγητὰς Αἰγύπτου καὶ πάντας τοὺς σοφοὺς αὐτῆς", "translation": "He called all the interpreters of Egypt and all its wise men.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pharaoh's dream experts are 'magicians' in the English WEB, rendering the Hebrew ḥarṭummîm (generally derived from the Egyptian title of the chief lector priest), but ἐξηγηταί ('interpreters') in the Greek. The same Egyptian priestly office is translated as 'magician' or as 'interpreter' depending on the translator. The edition repeats ἐκάλεσεν (dittography).", "claimed_effect": "interpretation of dreams (they fail; Joseph succeeds)", "claimed_mechanism": "learned interpretation", "practitioner": "Egyptian lector-priests or dream interpreters", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal court", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-27", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Acts of the Apostles", "author": "New Testament (Luke)", "culture": "Early Christian (Greek)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 80–90 CE", "date_sort": 85, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.22.1", "conventional_ref": "Acts 7.22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ἐπαιδεύθη Μωυσῆς πάσῃ σοφίᾳ Αἰγυπτίων, ἦν δὲ δυνατὸς ἐν λόγοις καὶ ἔργοις αὐτοῦ.", "translation": "And Moses was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was powerful in his words and deeds.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Stephen's speech treats Egyptian wisdom as a respectable education. The phrase was later read, by Pliny's sources, Apuleius and Celsus' circle, as evidence that Moses was a magician trained in Egypt. Contrast Acts 21.38, where 'the Egyptian' is a rebel prophet.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Moses", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Christian apologetic history of Israel", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-28", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "2 Timothy", "author": "New Testament (Pauline tradition)", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 70–120 CE (disputed)", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg016.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.8.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Tim 3.8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὃν τρόπον δὲ Ἰαννῆς καὶ Ἰαμβρῆς ἀντέστησαν Μωυσεῖ, οὕτως καὶ οὗτοι ἀνθίστανται τῇ ἀληθείᾳ,", "translation": "Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men too oppose the truth.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the first library attestation of names for Pharaoh's magicians, which Exodus does not give. The names come from Jewish tradition. In the Latin West the pair become 'Iamnes et Mambres' (Augustine, Philastrius, Optatus, Rufinus, Jerome all in the library), stock types of heretics who resist truth.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Jannes and Jambres", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "inner-Christian polemic", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-29", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Fragmenta (fr. 8, via Eusebius PE 9.8)", "author": "Numenius of Apamea", "culture": "Greek (Middle Platonist, Syria)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 150 CE", "date_sort": 150, "edition_urn": "tlg1542.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "8.1", "conventional_ref": "Numenius fr. 9 des Places = Euseb. PE 9.8.1", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "other", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἰαννῆς καὶ Ἰαμβρῆς Αἰγύπτιοι ἱερογραμματεῖς, ἄνδρες οὐδενὸς ἥττους μαγευταὶᵃ κριθέντες εἶναι … τὰς νεανικωτάτας αὐτῶν ἐπιλύεσθαι ὤφθησαν δυνατοί", "translation": "Jannes and Jambres, Egyptian sacred scribes, men judged second to none in magic … were seen to be able to undo the most violent of [the calamities].", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A pagan philosopher tells the Exodus story from the Egyptian side. Jannes and Jambres are hierogrammateis chosen by the Egyptian people to oppose 'Musaeus' (Moses), and they were able to reverse his worst plagues. Eusebius quotes it (PE 9.8.1.2, also in the library) as pagan witness to Moses. The magicians are effective professionals here, not defeated frauds.", "claimed_effect": "undoing (ἐπιλύεσθαι) plagues", "claimed_mechanism": "counter-magic", "practitioner": "Egyptian sacred scribes", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "priests acting for the Egyptian community", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-30", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "30.1.2", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 30.8–11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "est et alia magices factio a Mose et Janne et Lotape ac Iudaeis pendens, sed multis milibus annorum post Zoroastren.", "translation": "There is also another faction of magic, deriving from Moses, Jannes and Lotapes and the Jews, but many thousands of years after Zoroaster.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In Pliny's history of magic, magic is Persian in origin (Zoroaster, Osthanes). Moses and Jannes, adversaries in Exodus, end up in the same 'Jewish' school. The same passage says Democritus publicised 'Apollobex the Copt' and Dardanus. Egypt enters Pliny's account through named authorities (Apollobex, Apion) rather than as the origin of magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Moses, Jannes, Lotapes; Apollobex the Copt", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Roman encyclopaedic hostility to magic as 'intestabilis, inrita, inanis'", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-31", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "30.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 30.18", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "poison-drug", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Apion grammaticae artis prodiderit cynocephalian herbam, quae in Aegypto vocaretur osiritis, divinam et contra omnia veneficia, sed si tota erueretur, statim eum, qui eruisset, mori, seque evocasse umbras ad percunctandum Homerum", "translation": "Apion the grammarian reported a dog's-head plant, called osiritis in Egypt, divine and effective against all poisonings, but whoever pulled it up whole died at once; and he said he had summoned shades to ask Homer (his homeland and parents).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pliny's evidence that the old magi lied comes from his own youth: the Alexandrian scholar Apion claims a deadly sacred herb and a necromancy to settle Homer's birthplace, but 'did not dare to say what answer he got'. The same chapter reports that Nero, with all his resources, found magic 'vana falsaque'. It is an early empirical test of magic with a negative result.", "claimed_effect": "protection against poison; consultation of the dead", "claimed_mechanism": "sacred plant; evocation of shades", "practitioner": "Apion of Alexandria (grammarian)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "elite scholarly self-advertisement", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-32", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "30.11.3", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 30.98–99", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "propter hunc Aegypti magna pars scarabaeos inter numina colit, curiosa Apionis interpretatione, qua colligat Solis operum similitudinem huic animali esse, ad excusandos gentis suae ritus.", "translation": "Because of this beetle a large part of Egypt worships scarabs among its gods, according to Apion's ingenious explanation, by which he argues that this creature resembles the works of the Sun, in order to excuse his people's rites.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a list of amulets against quartan fever, the dung-rolling scarab is tied on. Pliny notes the Egyptian cult of the scarab and its solar explanation, which he regards as special pleading by an Egyptian (Apion). Pliny himself thinks clinical medicine can do almost nothing for quartan fever.", "claimed_effect": "curing quartan fever", "claimed_mechanism": "amulets of animal parts; solar symbolism", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "popular remedy lore", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-33", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "26.1.5", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 26.7–8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Aegypti peculiare hoc malum et, cum in reges incidisset, populis funebre, quippe in balineis solia temperabantur humano sanguine ad medicinam eam.", "translation": "This disease (elephantiasis) is peculiar to Egypt, and when it struck kings it was deadly for the people, since the tubs in their baths were tempered with human blood as a remedy for it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A Roman tradition that Egyptian kings treated leprosy-like disease with baths of human blood. It is a remedy halfway between medicine and blood-magic, and it serves as a marker of Egyptian otherness.", "claimed_effect": "cure of elephantiasis", "claimed_mechanism": "human blood", "practitioner": "royal physicians (implied)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal privilege at the people's cost", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-34", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Jewish Antiquities", "author": "Flavius Josephus", "culture": "Jewish (Greek-writing, Rome)", "language": "grc", "date": "93/94 CE", "date_sort": 94, "edition_urn": "tlg0526.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.286.1", "conventional_ref": "Joseph. AJ 2.284–287", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "δείξω δὲ οὐ κατὰ γοητείαν καὶ πλάνην τῆς ἀληθοῦς δόξης τἀμὰ, κατὰ δὲ θεοῦ πρόνοιαν καὶ δύναμιν φαινόμενα.", "translation": "I will show that my works appear not by sorcery and the deception of true opinion, but by the providence and power of God.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pharaoh calls Moses a cheat using 'wonder-working and magic' (2.284) and has his priests repeat the signs (2.285). Moses does not despise Egyptian wisdom, but says his works surpass it as the divine surpasses the human (2.286). His staff then eats 'the staffs of the Egyptians, which seemed to be serpents' (οἳ δράκοντες ἐδόκουν, 2.287). Josephus quietly makes the Egyptian feat an appearance only.", "claimed_effect": "staffs become (seem to become) serpents", "claimed_mechanism": "mageia and technē versus providence", "practitioner": "Egyptian priests", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Jewish apologetic for Greek and Roman readers", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-35", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Jewish Antiquities", "author": "Flavius Josephus", "culture": "Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "93/94 CE", "date_sort": 94, "edition_urn": "tlg0526.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.205.1", "conventional_ref": "Joseph. AJ 2.205, 2.234", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "τῶν ἱερογραμματέων τις, καὶ γάρ εἰσι δεινοὶ περὶ τῶν μελλόντων τὴν ἀλήθειαν εἰπεῖν, ἀγγέλλει τῷ βασιλεῖ τεχθήσεσθαί τινα κατʼ ἐκεῖνον τὸν καιρὸν τοῖς Ἰσραηλίταις", "translation": "One of the sacred scribes, for they are clever at telling the truth about the future, announces to the king that at this time a child will be born to the Israelites …", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Josephus credits Egyptian hierogrammateis with real predictive skill. One of them foretells Moses' birth, prompting the killing of the infants, and later tries to kill the child (2.234). The prophecy proves true (2.209). Egyptian divination is accurate but turned against God's plan.", "claimed_effect": "accurate prediction", "claimed_mechanism": "priestly foreknowledge", "practitioner": "Egyptian sacred scribe", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal counsellors", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-36", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "The Jewish War (with AJ 20.169–170)", "author": "Flavius Josephus", "culture": "Jewish", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 75 CE (events c. 55 CE)", "date_sort": 75, "edition_urn": "tlg0526.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.261.1", "conventional_ref": "Joseph. BJ 2.261–263; AJ 20.169–172; cf. Acts 21.38", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Μείζονι δὲ τούτου πληγῇ Ἰουδαίους ἐκάκωσεν ὁ Αἰγύπτιος ψευδοπροφήτης· παραγενόμενος γὰρ εἰς τὴν χώραν ἄνθρωπος γόης καὶ προφήτου πίστιν ἐπιθεὶς ἑαυτῷ", "translation": "With a greater blow than this the Egyptian false prophet harmed the Jews: arriving in the country, a sorcerer (goēs), he claimed the credit of a prophet …", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "'The Egyptian' leads a crowd to the Mount of Olives. In AJ 20.170 he promises that Jerusalem's walls will fall at his command. Rome crushes the movement. Goēs here means a charismatic impostor, and the Egyptian origin is part of the label. Acts 21.38 (in the library) has the tribune ask Paul whether he is that Egyptian.", "claimed_effect": "walls falling on command", "claimed_mechanism": "prophetic authority", "practitioner": "an Egyptian prophet", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "political-messianic unrest under Roman rule", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-37", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Odyssey", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Archaic Greek", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 700 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.227", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Od. 4.219–232", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "τοῖα Διὸς θυγάτηρ ἔχε φάρμακα μητιόεντα, / ἐσθλά, τά οἱ Πολύδαμνα πόρεν, Θῶνος παράκοιτις / Αἰγυπτίη, τῇ πλεῖστα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα / φάρμακα, πολλὰ μὲν ἐσθλὰ μεμιγμένα πολλὰ δὲ λυγρά·", "translation": "Such cunning drugs did Zeus' daughter have, good ones, which Polydamna, wife of Thon, had given her, an Egyptian woman; for there the grain-giving land bears the most drugs, many good when mixed, many baneful.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The earliest Greek picture of Egypt is a land of pharmaka and of physicians ('every man a healer', 4.231–232). Helen's nepenthes, received from an Egyptian woman, banishes grief for a day. The figure is a female drug expert, and the power lies in the substance, not in a spell.", "claimed_effect": "oblivion of grief and anger", "claimed_mechanism": "a drug mixed in wine", "practitioner": "Polydamna, an Egyptian woman; Helen", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "aristocratic hospitality; Egyptian medicine", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-38", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Historical Library", "author": "Diodorus Siculus", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 60–30 BCE", "date_sort": -45, "edition_urn": "tlg0060.tlg001.perseus-grc5", "ref": "1.97.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Diod. 1.97.7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔτι γὰρ καὶ νῦν τὰς ἐν ταύτῃ γυναῖκας τῇ προειρημένῃ δυνάμει χρῆσθαι λέγουσι, καὶ παρὰ μόναις ταῖς Διοσπολίτισιν ἐκ παλαιῶν χρόνων ὀργῆς καὶ λύπης φάρμακον εὑρῆσθαί φασι", "translation": "For they say that even now the women of that city use the aforesaid power, and that among the women of Diospolis alone a drug against anger and grief was discovered long ago.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Egyptian priests cite Homer's nepenthes as proof that Homer visited Egypt, and claim that Theban (Diospolis) women still use a drug against anger and grief. It is a living women's pharmacology, and it points toward a real anxiolytic such as the opium later known in Latin as 'Thebaic'.", "claimed_effect": "relief of anger and grief", "claimed_mechanism": "a drug", "practitioner": "women of Thebes", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "local women's knowledge; priests' claims of Greek dependence on Egypt", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-39", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Classical Greek", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 430 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.82.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 2.82", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "γενομένου γὰρ τέρατος φυλάσσουσι γραφόμενοι τὠποβαῖνον, καὶ ἤν κοτε ὕστερον παραπλήσιον τούτῳ γένηται, κατὰ τὠυτὸ νομίζουσι ἀποβήσεσθαι.", "translation": "When a portent occurs they watch and write down the outcome, and if something similar ever happens later, they think it will turn out the same way.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Herodotus describes Egyptian divination as an archive: written records of portents and their outcomes, plus a calendar assigning each month and day to a god and predicting a person's fate from the birth day (2.82.1). It is an empirical, record-based method. Herodotus never calls any of this mageia or goēteia; his Magi are Persian.", "claimed_effect": "prediction of outcomes and of individual fate", "claimed_mechanism": "recorded precedents; day-gods", "practitioner": "Egyptian priests (implied)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "temple scholarship", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-40", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Classical Greek", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 430 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.83.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 2.83–84", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "μαντικὴ δὲ αὐτοῖσι ὧδε διακέεται· ἀνθρώπων μὲν οὐδενὶ προσκέεται ἡ τέχνη, τῶν δὲ θεῶν μετεξετέροισι·", "translation": "Divination among them is arranged thus: the art belongs to no human being, but to certain of the gods.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In Egypt, Herodotus says, prophecy is the property of gods' oracles (Leto at Buto is the most honoured), not of freelance seers. In 2.84 medicine is divided among specialists, one for each disease, including 'invisible diseases'. Egypt appears institutional and specialised, the opposite of the wandering magus.", "claimed_effect": "oracular knowledge; healing", "claimed_mechanism": "divine oracles; medical specialisation", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "temple institutions", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-41", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Classical Greek (reporting Egyptian tradition)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 430 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.111.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 2.111", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀναβλέψει γυναικὸς οὔρῳ νιψάμενος τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς, ἥτις παρὰ τὸν ἑωυτῆς ἄνδρα μοῦνον πεφοίτηκε, ἄλλων ἀνδρῶν ἐοῦσα ἄπειρος.", "translation": "(The oracle said) he would see again if he washed his eyes in the urine of a woman who had been with her own husband only and had known no other men.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "King Pheros, blinded for spearing the Nile, is told by the Buto oracle to wash his eyes in the urine of a faithful wife. His own wife's fails; another works; he burns the unfaithful women (2.111.3). This is a real Egyptian ingredient (urine and other secretions in eye recipes) wrapped in a moral ordeal.", "claimed_effect": "cure of blindness", "claimed_mechanism": "urine of a chaste woman (purity as active ingredient)", "practitioner": "oracle of Buto; the king", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "royal legend; sexual-moral test", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-42", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Classical Greek", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 430 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.133.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 2.133", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ταῦτα δὲ ἐμηχανᾶτο θέλων τὸ μαντήιον ψευδόμενον ἀποδέξαι, ἵνα οἱ δυώδεκα ἔτεα ἀντὶ ἓξ ἐτέων γένηται, αἱ νύκτες ἡμέραι ποιεύμεναι.", "translation": "He contrived this wishing to prove the oracle false, so that he might have twelve years instead of six, his nights being made days.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Mycerinus, told he has six years to live, lights many lamps and revels day and night to 'double' his time. A king tries a technical trick against prophecy; it is a story about the limits of outwitting fate.", "claimed_effect": "cheating a death oracle", "claimed_mechanism": "lamplight turning nights into days", "practitioner": "King Mycerinus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal legend", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-43", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Historical Library", "author": "Diodorus Siculus", "culture": "Greek (reporting Egyptian claims)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 60–30 BCE", "date_sort": -45, "edition_urn": "tlg0060.tlg001.perseus-grc5", "ref": "1.25.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Diod. 1.25.2–7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "κατὰ γὰρ τοὺς ὕπνους ἐφισταμένην διδόναι τοῖς κάμνουσι βοηθήματα πρὸς τὰς νόσους, καὶ τοὺς ὑπακούσαντας αὐτῇ παραδόξως ὑγιάζεσθαι·", "translation": "For she stands over the sick in their sleep and gives them remedies for their diseases, and those who obey her are healed beyond expectation.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Egyptians say that Isis invented many drugs (1.25.2) and heals in dreams, curing cases the physicians had given up, including blindness. She also discovered 'the drug of immortality' with which she raised Horus from the water (1.25.6). They offer as proof 'not myths but evident deeds'. Healing is divine and incubatory and sits beside human doctors.", "claimed_effect": "cures in dreams; resurrection", "claimed_mechanism": "divine epiphany in sleep; a drug of immortality", "practitioner": "Isis (goddess); temple incubation", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "temple healing cult", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-44", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Historical Library", "author": "Diodorus Siculus", "culture": "Greek (rationalising)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 60–30 BCE", "date_sort": -45, "edition_urn": "tlg0060.tlg001.perseus-grc5", "ref": "1.62.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Diod. 1.62.2–4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "weather-nature", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐν ἔθει γὰρ εἶναι τοῖς κατʼ Αἴγυπτον δυνάσταις περιτίθεσθαι περὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν λεόντων καὶ ταύρων καὶ δρακόντων προτομάς, σημεῖα τῆς ἀρχῆς·", "translation": "For it was customary for the rulers of Egypt to place on their heads the foreparts of lions, bulls and serpents as signs of rule.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Proteus, the Egyptian shape-shifter of Homer, is explained naturally. His 'knowledge of the winds' came from living with astrologers (1.62.2–3), and his transformations were royal head-dresses of animals, trees, fire and incense, worn to impress and to inspire superstitious awe. This is a Euhemerist dissolution of magic into regalia and weather-lore.", "claimed_effect": "shape-shifting; control of winds", "claimed_mechanism": "(explained as) costume and astrological weather knowledge", "practitioner": "King Proteus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal display", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-45", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "De Iside et Osiride", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (Roman imperial)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 120 CE", "date_sort": 120, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg089.perseus-grc2", "ref": "73.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. De Is. et Os. 73 (380C–D)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "weather-nature", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔνια τῶν τιμωμένων οἱ ἱερεῖς ἀπάγοντες ὑπὸ σκότῳ μετὰ σιωπῆς καὶ ἡσυχίας ἀπειλοῦσι καὶ δεδίττονται τὸ πρῶτον ἂν δʼ ἐπιμένῃ, καθιερεύουσι καὶ σφάττουσιν,", "translation": "The priests lead some of the honoured animals away in darkness, in silence and quiet, and at first threaten and frighten them; if the trouble continues, they consecrate and slaughter them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In severe drought or plague, attributed to Typhon (Seth), Egyptian priests threaten sacred animals and, if needed, sacrifice them. Manetho is cited for human 'Typhonians' burned at Eileithyiapolis. This is coercion of the divine, matching the PT threats and Iamblichus' defence of them.", "claimed_effect": "ending drought or plague", "claimed_mechanism": "threatening the god through its animal; punitive sacrifice", "practitioner": "Egyptian priests", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "temple crisis ritual, secret", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-46", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "De Iside et Osiride", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 120 CE", "date_sort": 120, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg089.perseus-grc2", "ref": "80.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. De Is. et Os. 80 (383E–384C)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "συντίθενται δʼ οὐχ ὅπως ἔτυχεν, ἀλλὰ γραμμάτων ἱερῶν τοῖς μυρεψοῖς, ὅταν ταῦτα μιγνύωσιν, ἀναγιγνωσκομένων.", "translation": "They are compounded not at random, but while sacred writings are read aloud to the perfumers as they mix them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Kyphi, the sixteen-ingredient evening incense (honey, wine, raisins, resin, myrrh, juniper, cardamom and others), is mixed to the recitation of sacred texts. Plutarch then explains its effect physiologically: the aromatic exhalations relax the body, bring sleep, 'loosen like knots' the day's anxieties and clear the dream faculty 'like a mirror'. It is a ritual drug with a naturalistic theory attached.", "claimed_effect": "sleep, calm, clear dreams; internal cleansing when drunk", "claimed_mechanism": "recitation during compounding plus the aromatic vapours' physical action", "practitioner": "temple perfumers and priests", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "daily temple cult (resin at dawn, myrrh at noon, kyphi at dusk)", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-47", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Philopseudes", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek (Syrian, Roman imperial)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg031.perseus-grc2", "ref": "31.2", "conventional_ref": "Lucian Philops. 31", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "τὰς βίβλους λαβὼν — εἰσὶ δέ μοι Αἰγύπτιαι μάλα πολλαὶ περὶ τῶν τοιούτων — … τὴν φρικωδεστάτην ἐπίρρησιν αἰγυπτιάζων τῇ φωνῇ συνήλασα κατᾴδων αὐτὸν εἴς τινα γωνίαν", "translation": "Taking my books (I have very many Egyptian ones about such things) … I uttered the most bloodcurdling imprecation, speaking in the Egyptian tongue, and by chanting drove him into a corner.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Pythagorean Arignotus lays a haunting daimon in Corinth with Egyptian books and an incantation in Egyptian. Next morning a skeleton is dug up at the spot and buried, and the haunting stops (31.3). In Lucian's satire Egyptian language and Egyptian books are the credentials of an exorcist, and the frame mocks believers.", "claimed_effect": "expelling a ghost", "claimed_mechanism": "Egyptian books; Egyptian-language incantation", "practitioner": "Arignotus (Pythagorean philosopher)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "elite philosophical circles", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-48", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Philopseudes", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg031.perseus-grc2", "ref": "34.1", "conventional_ref": "Lucian Philops. 34–36", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐλέγετο δὲ τρία καὶ εἴκοσιν ἔτη ἐν τοῖς ἀδύτοις ὑπόγειος ᾠκηκέναι μαγεύειν παιδευόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς Ἴσιδος. … ἢ τὸ κόρηθρον ἢ καὶ τὸ ὕπερον περιβαλὼν ἱματίοις ἐπειπών τινα ἐπῳδὴν ἐποίει βαδίζειν", "translation": "He was said to have lived twenty-three years underground in the sanctuaries, being taught magic by Isis. … he would take the broom or the pestle, dress it in clothes, say a spell over it and make it walk.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pancrates, a Memphite sacred scribe (hierogrammateus), shaven and linen-clad, rides crocodiles. He animates a pestle as a servant. Eucrates overhears half the spell, cannot stop the water-carrying pestle, splits it, and gets two (36). This is the ancient 'sorcerer's apprentice'. Egyptian magic is learned in subterranean adyta from Isis herself, and is told by a narrator the dialogue wants us to doubt.", "claimed_effect": "animating objects as servants", "claimed_mechanism": "syllables of an incantation", "practitioner": "Pancrates of Memphis, sacred scribe", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "temple-trained elite magician as literary type", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-49", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Philopseudes", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg031.perseus-grc2", "ref": "33.2", "conventional_ref": "Lucian Philops. 33", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀλλά μοι καὶ ἔχρησεν ὁ Μέμνων αὐτὸς ἀνοίξας γε τὸ στόμα ἐν ἔπεσιν ἑπτά", "translation": "But Memnon himself, opening his mouth, gave me an oracle in seven verses.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Eucrates boasts that the Colossus of Memnon at Thebes, famous for 'sounding at sunrise', gave him a personal oracle rather than the usual meaningless sound. Lucian's target is the inflation of a real acoustic phenomenon into prophecy.", "claimed_effect": "oracle from a statue", "claimed_mechanism": "statue speaking at sunrise", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "tourism to Egyptian wonders", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-50", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Roman (North African)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi002.perseus-lat1", "ref": "2.28.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Met. 2.28–30", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Zatchlas adest Aegyptius, propheta primarius, qui mecum iamdudum grandi praemio pepigit reducere paulisper ab inferis spiritum corpusque istud postliminio mortis animare", "translation": "Here is Zatchlas the Egyptian, a prophet of the first rank, who has long since contracted with me for a great fee to bring back the spirit from the underworld for a little while and animate this body by return from death.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A shaven, linen-clad, palm-sandalled Egyptian prophet places a herb on the corpse's mouth and another on its chest, prays silently to the rising sun, and the dead man rises (2.28.2–29.1). The corpse accuses his wife of poisoning him (noxio poculo). The crowd splits: some believe, others say 'no trust in a corpse's lie' (2.29.2). The necromancy is for hire and works as forensic testimony.", "claimed_effect": "temporary resurrection to testify", "claimed_mechanism": "herbs on mouth and breast; prayer to the sun; threats of the Furies", "practitioner": "Zatchlas, Egyptian propheta", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "paid service; a murder accusation in a Thessalian town", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-51", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi002.perseus-lat1", "ref": "11.6.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Met. 11.6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "scies ultra statuta fato tum spatia vitam quoque tibi prorogare mihi tantum licere.", "translation": "You will learn that I alone have the power to extend your life even beyond the span set by fate.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Isis appears to Lucius, now an ass, promises re-transformation through roses carried by her priest, and claims power over fate itself. In 11.15 the priest says Fortune has no power over those the goddess claims. Book 2's Thessalian magic was curiosity punished; Egyptian religion here is the legitimate counter-power, presented devotionally.", "claimed_effect": "undoing transformation; prolonging life beyond fate", "claimed_mechanism": "divine grace in return for service and chastity", "practitioner": "Isis; her priest", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Isiac initiation", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-52", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi002.perseus-lat1", "ref": "11.22.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Met. 11.22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "rune-writing-magic", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "libros litteris ignorabilibus praenotatos, partim figuris cuiuscemodi animalium concepti sermonis compendiosa verba suggerentes", "translation": "Books inscribed in unknowable letters, partly through figures of animals of every kind suggesting abbreviated words of the formulated speech …", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Isiac high priest brings out from the adyton books written in hieroglyphs and hieratic, protected 'from the curious reading of the profane'. Egyptian writing is valued for being unreadable to outsiders, a theme that runs from PT secrecy to the Hermetica's 'keep it untranslated'.", "claimed_effect": "ritual instruction for initiation", "claimed_mechanism": "secret sacred script", "practitioner": "Isiac priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "mystery cult secrecy", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-53", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Apologia", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Roman (North African)", "language": "lat", "date": "158/159 CE", "date_sort": 158, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "38.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Apol. 38; cf. 90", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "iam me clamabis magica nomina Aegyptio uel Babylonico ritu percensere: σελάχεια, μαλάκεια, μαλακόστρακα", "translation": "Now you will cry that I am reciting magic names in the Egyptian or Babylonian manner: selachia, malacia, malacostraca …", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Apuleius, on trial for magic, mocks his accusers. Aristotelian zoological terms sound to them like Egyptian spell-names. In Apol. 90 (marked athetized in the library) he lists famous magi 'after Zoroaster and Ostanes': Carmendas, Damigeron, Moses, Iohannes (Jannes), Apollobex, Dardanus. Strange-sounding words were themselves taken as evidence of Egyptian magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Apuleius (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "criminal trial under the lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis, Sabratha", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-54", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Aethiopica", "author": "Heliodorus of Emesa", "culture": "Greek (Syrian; late Roman)", "language": "grc", "date": "3rd–4th c. CE (disputed)", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg0658.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "3.16.1", "conventional_ref": "Heliod. Aeth. 3.16", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination", "astrology", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "ἣ μὲν γάρ τις ἐστὶ δημώδης, καὶ ὡς ἄν τις εἴποι, χαμαὶ ἐρχομένη, εἰδώλων θεράπαινα καὶ περὶ σώματα νεκρῶν εἰλουμένη, βοτάναις προστετηκυῖα καὶ ἐπῳδαῖς ἐπανέχουσα", "translation": "One kind is vulgar and, so to speak, goes on the ground, a servant of phantoms, rolling about corpses, devoted to herbs and relying on incantations …", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Egyptian priest Calasiris rebukes those who think Egyptian wisdom is one thing. Low wisdom deals in ghosts, corpses, herbs and spells, makes the unreal seem real, and serves lawless pleasures. True wisdom, practised by priests and the prophetic class, looks to heaven, studies the stars' motions and gains foreknowledge. It is the clearest ancient statement of the boundary, put in an Egyptian mouth.", "claimed_effect": "(two kinds) illusions and love-charms versus prognosis", "claimed_mechanism": "earthly herbs and spells versus astral science and communion with gods", "practitioner": "Calasiris, priest of Memphis", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "priestly self-definition against popular magic", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-55", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Aethiopica", "author": "Heliodorus of Emesa", "culture": "Greek (late Roman)", "language": "grc", "date": "3rd–4th c. CE", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg0658.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "6.14.1", "conventional_ref": "Heliod. Aeth. 6.14–15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "σκηνῆς τινὸς οὐκ εὐαγοῦς μέν, ταῖς δὲ Αἰγυπτίαις ἐπιχωριαζούσης θεωρὸς ἐγίνετο … ἐπὶ τὸν νεκρὸν τοῦ παιδὸς προκύψασα καί τινα πρὸς τὸ οὖς ἐπᾴδουσα ἐξήγειρέ τε", "translation": "She became a spectator of a scene not holy, but customary among Egyptian women … bending over the corpse of her son and singing something into its ear, she roused it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An old woman of Bessa digs a pit, lights a fire, pours libations, and raises her dead son, who prophesies but rebukes her for 'forcing the unmovable by sorceries'. She dies impaled on a spear-shaft (6.15). Necromancy is coded female, local and impious, and contrasted with the priest Calasiris' wisdom.", "claimed_effect": "raising the dead to prophesy", "claimed_mechanism": "pit, fire, libation, whispered incantation", "practitioner": "old woman of Bessa", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "described as a women's custom in Egypt; condemned within the story", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-56", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Contra Celsum", "author": "Origen (quoting Celsus)", "culture": "Greek pagan critic (Celsus) and Alexandrian Christian (Origen)", "language": "grc", "date": "Celsus c. 175–180 CE; Origen c. 248 CE", "date_sort": 178, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "1.28.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. C. Cels. 1.28", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "οὗτος διὰ πενίαν εἰς Αἴγυπτον μισθαρνήσας κἀκεῖ δυνάμεών τινων πειραθεὶς, ἐφ᾿ αἷς Αἰγύπτιοι σεμνύνονται.", "translation": "He, because of poverty, hired himself out in Egypt, and there tried his hand at certain powers on which the Egyptians pride themselves.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Celsus' Jew alleges that Jesus learned in Egypt the 'powers' Egyptians boast of, came back proud of them, and proclaimed himself a god. Egypt is the stock place where a wonder-worker gets his training, and Christian miracles are reclassified as Egyptian magic.", "claimed_effect": "miracles", "claimed_mechanism": "Egyptian dunameis", "practitioner": "Jesus (as alleged)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "pagan-Christian polemic", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-57", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Contra Celsum", "author": "Origen (quoting Celsus)", "culture": "Greek", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 175–180 CE (Celsus)", "date_sort": 178, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "1.68.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. C. Cels. 1.68", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "exorcism", "healing", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "πρὸς τὰ ὑπὸ τῶν μαθόντων ἀπὸ Αἰγυπτίων ἐπιτελούμενα, ἐν μέσαις ἀγοραῖς ὀλίγων ὀβολῶν ἀποδομένων τὰ σεμνὰ μαθήματα καὶ δαίμονας ἀπὸ ἀνθρώπων ἐξελαυνόντων καὶ νόσους ἀποφυσώντων", "translation": "… to the feats performed by those taught by the Egyptians, who for a few obols sell their sacred lore in the middle of the market-place, drive daimones out of people, blow away diseases …", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Celsus' catalogue of Egyptian-trained street performers: exorcism, blowing away disease, calling up heroes' souls, showing costly banquets 'that do not exist', and making things move as if alive, though only in appearance. He asks whether these too are sons of God. Egyptian magic here is commercial, public and illusionistic.", "claimed_effect": "exorcism, healing, apparitions, phantom feasts", "claimed_mechanism": "(Celsus: appearance or phantasia)", "practitioner": "itinerant Egyptian-trained performers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "market-place for-hire magic", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-58", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Contra Celsum", "author": "Origen", "culture": "Alexandrian Christian", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 248 CE", "date_sort": 248, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "1.24.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. C. Cels. 1.24–25", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "exorcism", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἄλλα δὲ κατὰ Αἰγυπτίαν φερόμενα φωνὴν ἐπί τινων δαιμόνων. τῶν τάδε μόνα δυναμένων … ὅτι καὶ ἡ καλουμένη μαγεία οὐχ, ὡς οἴονται οἱ ἀπὸ Ἐπικούρου καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους, πρᾶγμά ἐστιν ἀσύστατον πάντῃ", "translation": "… and other names, spoken in the Egyptian language, apply to certain daimones who have power only over particular things … and so-called magic is not, as the Epicureans and Aristotelians think, something wholly incoherent.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A Christian theologian argues that magic is real. Names are 'by nature' (the Stoic view), not convention (Aristotle). Hebrew divine names are effective, and so are names in Egyptian for particular local daimones, and Persian ones too. Efficacy is lost in translation. This is the clearest library statement of a linguistic theory of magic, crediting the Egyptian 'wise' with effective names.", "claimed_effect": "command over specific daimones", "claimed_mechanism": "names naturally bound to powers; the right language and sequence", "practitioner": "'the wise of the Egyptians', Persian magi, Brahmans", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Christian philosophy of language and demonology", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-59", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "De Mysteriis", "author": "Iamblichus (as 'Abammon', replying to Porphyry's Letter to Anebo)", "culture": "Syrian Neoplatonist writing as an Egyptian priest", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 300 CE", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg2023.tlg006.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "6.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Iambl. Myst. 6.5–7", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "ἢ γὰρ τὸν οὐρανὸν προσαράξειν ἢ τὰ κρυπτὰ τῆς Ἴσιδος ἐκφανεῖν, ἢ τὸ ἐν ἀβύσσῳ ἀπόρρητον δείξειν ἢ στήσειν τὴν βάριν, ἢ τὰ μέλη τοῦ Ὀσίριδος διασκεδάσειν τῷ Τυφῶνι", "translation": "… (the operator threatens) to smash the heaven, or reveal the secrets of Isis, or show the secret thing in the abyss, or stop the sacred bark, or scatter the limbs of Osiris to Typhon …", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Porphyry had objected to Egyptian practitioners' 'violent threats' against gods. Iamblichus concedes they are used, but says they are aimed not at gods but at irrational, partial powers that cannot tell true from false and are startled by such threats. In 6.7 the secrets of Abydos are never revealed and the sun's course never stops, which is why the cosmos is safe. This is a philosophical defence of the coercive speech seen in PT 254–255, two and a half millennia later.", "claimed_effect": "compelling lower powers", "claimed_mechanism": "threats work on irrational daimonic powers through phantasia", "practitioner": "Egyptian theurgists", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Neoplatonist debate (Porphyry vs Iamblichus)", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-60", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "De Mysteriis", "author": "Iamblichus", "culture": "Syrian Neoplatonist", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 300 CE", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg2023.tlg006.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "7.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Iambl. Myst. 7.4–5", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "οὐδὲ γὰρ πάντως τὴν αὐτὴν διασώζει διάνοιαν μεθερμηνευόμενα τὰ ὀνόματα, ἀλλ’ ἔστι τινὰ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἔθνος ἰδιώματα, ἀδύνατα εἰς ἄλλο ἔθνος διὰ φωνῆς σημαίνεσθαι·", "translation": "For names translated do not wholly preserve the same meaning; there are idioms in each nation that cannot be signified in another nation's speech.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Why use 'meaningless' barbarous names? Iamblichus answers that they are not meaningless to the gods (7.4). The language of the 'sacred nations' (Egyptians, Assyrians) is naturally fitted to the divine, and translation destroys its power. In 7.5.2 the gods are said to rejoice in Egyptian rites, because the Egyptians were first to receive a share of the gods. Iamblichus argues that this is not 'goetic artifice'.", "claimed_effect": "union with the gods", "claimed_mechanism": "untranslatable sacred names by nature", "practitioner": "theurgists", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "pagan theurgy under Christian pressure", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-61", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Hermetica: Definitions of Asclepius to King Ammon (CH 16)", "author": "Anonymous Hermetic author", "culture": "Graeco-Egyptian (Roman Egypt)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 2nd–3rd c. CE", "date_sort": 200, "edition_urn": "tlg1286.tlg016.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.1", "conventional_ref": "Corp. Herm. 16.1–2", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ἡ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ὀνομάτων ⎡δύναμις⎤ ἐν ἑαυτῇ ἔχει τὴν ἐνέργειαν τῶν λεγομένων. … ἡμεῖς δὲ οὐ λόγοις χρώμεθα, ἀλλὰ φωναῖς με[γι]σταῖς [τῶν] ἔργων.", "translation": "… and the power of Egyptian names has in itself the efficacy of the things said … We do not use mere speech, but sounds full of deeds.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The king is told to keep the discourse untranslated, lest Greek's 'arrogant, loose, prettified' diction weaken the efficacious names. Greek philosophy is 'noise of words'; Egyptian is 'sounds of deeds'. This is Egyptian performative speech theorised in Greek, close to the PT idea that recitation acts.", "claimed_effect": "efficacy of sacred discourse", "claimed_mechanism": "phonetic quality and power of Egyptian names", "practitioner": "Hermetic teachers", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Egyptian priestly-intellectual identity against Greek culture", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-62", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Hermetica: Asclepius (Latin)", "author": "Anonymous Hermetic author", "culture": "Graeco-Egyptian (Latin version)", "language": "lat", "date": "Greek original c. 2nd–3rd c. CE; Latin c. 4th c.", "date_sort": 250, "edition_urn": "tlg1286.tlg019.1st1K-lat1", "ref": "37.1", "conventional_ref": "Asclepius 37 (cf. 23–24)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "invenerunt artem qua efficerent deos … evocantes animas daemonum vel angelorum, eas indiderunt imaginibus sanctis divinisque mysteriis", "translation": "They discovered the art of making gods … summoning the souls of daimones or angels, they placed them in the sacred images by divine mysteries.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hermes describes the Egyptian art of 'making gods'. Statues are ensouled by drawing down daimones, so that they can harm and heal, foretell by lot, seer and dreams, and send and cure illness (24a: 'statuas animatas sensu et spiritu plenas'). Augustine attacks the passage in City of God 8.23–26 (in the library). It is the theoretical side of temple statue cult and oracles.", "claimed_effect": "living, prophetic, healing statues", "claimed_mechanism": "inserting daimonic souls into images through rites, herbs, stones and aromas", "practitioner": "Egyptian priests ('our ancestors')", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "temple cult; target of later Christian condemnation", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-63", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Refutatio Omnium Haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus", "culture": "Christian (Rome)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 225 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.perseus-grc1", "ref": "4.28.1", "conventional_ref": "Hippol. Ref. 4.28", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "divination", "chemistry-fire" ], "excerpt_original": "εἶτα μάγων Αἰγυπτίων θύσας τὸ καλούμενον κῦφι θυμίαμα … Καὶ διὰ τοῦ χαλκάνθου δέ τις εἰ γράψειε καὶ τῆς κηκῖδος ὑποθυμιάσειε λελειωμένης, φανερὰ γένοιτ᾿ ἂν τὰ κεκρυμμένα γράμματα.", "translation": "Then, burning the incense called kyphi of the Egyptian magi … And if one writes with copper sulphate and fumigates with powdered oak-gall, the hidden letters become visible.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is a detailed exposure of a sorcerer's oracle. The client's written question is secretly read; invisible inks are developed with copper or iron sulphate, gall, milk and ash, urine, fish-sauce or fig sap. A boy-medium hears 'daimones' through a speaking tube made of a crane's or swan's windpipe, or of telescoping bronze pipes. Salt hidden in incense crackles, 'Indian ink' gives a bloody flame, alum makes the coals move. The 'Egyptian magi's kyphi' is part of the stage dressing.", "claimed_effect": "answers from daimones", "claimed_mechanism": "(exposed) chemistry, acoustics, cold reading, ambiguous answers", "practitioner": "magician running an oracle with a boy medium", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "heresiological exposure linking heretics to magicians", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-64", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus, Book 6 (proem)", "author": "Galen", "culture": "Greek (Pergamene physician in Rome)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 170s–180s CE", "date_sort": 175, "edition_urn": "tlg0057.tlg075.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "6.prooemium.1", "conventional_ref": "Gal. SMT 6 prooem. (XI.792–798 K.)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος μὲν εἴς τε μύθους γραῶν τινας ἐξετράπετο καί τινας γοητείας Αἰγυπτίας ληρώδεις ἅμα τισὶν ἐπῳδαῖς, ἃς ἀναιρούμενοι τὰς βοτάνας ἐπιλέγουσι.", "translation": "But he (Pamphilus) turned aside into old wives' tales and certain silly Egyptian sorceries, together with incantations which they recite when gathering the plants.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Galen rejects the herbal of Pamphilus for its amulets and other 'manganeiai' that are not only outside medicine but false. He also rejects a book ascribed to 'Hermes the Egyptian' on the 36 sacred plants of the horoscopes (decans), whose plants 'go no further than their names'. Galen draws the medical boundary: substances yes, Egyptian incantations and astral herbs no.", "claimed_effect": "herbal potency increased by incantation and astral sympathy", "claimed_mechanism": "spells at harvest; decan correspondences", "practitioner": "Egyptian root-cutters; the Hermetic author; Pamphilus", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "professional medicine policing its borders", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-65", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "De Natura Animalium", "author": "Aelian", "culture": "Roman (Greek-writing, Praeneste)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 220 CE", "date_sort": 220, "edition_urn": "tlg0545.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "6.33.1", "conventional_ref": "Ael. NA 6.33", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Αἰγυπτίους ἐγὼ πυνθάνομαι μαγείᾳ τινὶ ἐπιχωρίῳ τοὺς ὄρνιθας ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καταφέρειν· τῶν δὲ φωλεῶν τοὺς ὄφεις ἐπαοιδαῖς τισι καταγοητεύσαντες εἶτα μέντοι προάγουσι ῥᾷστα.", "translation": "I learn that the Egyptians, by a native magic, bring birds down from the sky; and they bewitch snakes with certain incantations and then lead them out of their holes very easily.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A short naturalist's report of Egyptian 'native magic' over animals: bringing down birds and charming snakes out of their burrows. It is the classical image of the Egyptian snake-charmer, which links back to the PT snake spells and to Pharaoh's staffs.", "claimed_effect": "command over birds and snakes", "claimed_mechanism": "local mageia; incantations", "practitioner": "Egyptian snake-charmers and fowlers", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "popular expertise", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-66", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Historiae", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 105 CE (events of 69/70 CE)", "date_sort": 105, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi004.perseus-lat2", "ref": "4.86.1", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Hist. 4.81 (library 4.86)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "postremo aestimari a medicis iubet an talis caecitas ac debilitas ope humana superabiles forent. … statim conversa ad usum manus, ac caeco reluxit dies.", "translation": "Finally he had the physicians assess whether such blindness and disability could be overcome by human means. … At once the hand returned to use, and daylight shone again for the blind man.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At Alexandria, on Serapis' instruction, a blind man asks Vespasian to anoint his eyes with spittle and a lame man asks to be trodden on. Vespasian first laughs, then has physicians judge the cases curable: one's sight not destroyed, the other's limb dislocated. He performs the acts, and both are healed. Eyewitnesses still affirm it 'now that lying brings no reward'. Divine favour for a new emperor is staged with medical pre-screening.", "claimed_effect": "cure of blindness and a crippled hand", "claimed_mechanism": "royal touch, spittle, the god's command", "practitioner": "Vespasian (at Serapis' prompting)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "imperial legitimation in Alexandria", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-67", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Historiae", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 105 CE", "date_sort": 105, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi004.perseus-lat2", "ref": "4.87.1", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Hist. 4.82 (library 4.87)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "respexit pone tergum e primoribus Aegyptiorum nomine Basiliden, quem procul Alexandria plurium dierum itinere et aegro corpore detineri haud ignorabat.", "translation": "He looked back and saw behind him one of the leading Egyptians, named Basilides, whom he knew to be detained, sick, several days' journey from Alexandria.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the Serapeum Vespasian sees Basilides, who was in fact 80 miles away at that moment, and reads the apparition and the name ('kingly') as an oracle of rule. Tacitus then gives the Ptolemaic origin of Serapis (4.83–84). It is an Egyptian temple vision interpreted politically.", "claimed_effect": "bilocation or apparition as an omen", "claimed_mechanism": "divine sign; name-omen", "practitioner": "Serapis' temple; Basilides", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "imperial propaganda", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-68", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Pseudo-Clementine Homilies", "author": "Pseudo-Clement", "culture": "Early Christian (Syria)", "language": "grc", "date": "4th c. CE (on a 3rd c. base)", "date_sort": 330, "edition_urn": "tlg1271.tlg006.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "5.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Ps.-Clem. Hom. 5.3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "περιτυχών τινι Αἰγυπτίῳ, πάνυ τὰ μάγων ἀκριβοῦντι, καὶ φιλωθεὶς ἐκφαίνω μου τὸν ἔρωτα … τὴν ἐπαοιδὴν, δι᾽ ἧς ἔτυχον, διδάσκειν οὐκ ἐφθόνησεν.", "translation": "Meeting an Egyptian thoroughly versed in the lore of the magi, and becoming his friend, I revealed my love … and he did not begrudge teaching me the incantation by which I won her.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Clement feigns love-sickness to test Apion, the Alexandrian grammarian. Apion offers help from his own youth, when an Egyptian magician taught him a love incantation that worked once and cured his passion. Egyptian love-magic is a teachable technique, and the real Apion becomes its dealer (compare Pliny on Apion, egypt-31). Elsewhere in the same work Simon Magus learns magic in Alexandria (2.22, 2.24).", "claimed_effect": "winning an unattainable woman", "claimed_mechanism": "an incantation (epaoidē)", "practitioner": "an Egyptian magus; Apion", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Christian romance polemicising against Greek learning", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-69", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Vita Sancti Hilarionis", "author": "Jerome", "culture": "Latin Christian (Palestine)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 390 CE", "date_sort": 390, "edition_urn": "stoa0162.stoa063.opp-lat1", "ref": "2.21", "conventional_ref": "Jer. V. Hilar. 21", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "exorcism", "rune-writing-magic" ], "excerpt_original": "subter limen domus puellae portenta quaedam verborum, et portentosas figuras sculptas in aeris Cyprii lamina defodit. … quam bene Memphis somniis homines delu- debam!", "translation": "Under the threshold of the girl's house he buried monstrous words and monstrous figures engraved on a plate of Cyprian copper. … (the demon cries) How well I used to deceive people at Memphis with dreams!", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A young man of Gaza, rejected by a consecrated virgin, studies for a year at Memphis with 'the seers of Asclepius' (Imhotep's priests). He buries an engraved copper love-binding under her threshold, and she goes into an erotic frenzy. Hilarion exorcises the demon, which confesses it is bound by 'thread and plate'. He refuses to dig up the spell first, so that the cure cannot be credited to undoing it. This matches surviving metal defixiones, and Egypt is the training ground.", "claimed_effect": "compulsive love; demonic possession; its cure", "claimed_mechanism": "engraved metal tablet buried at the threshold; demon bound by it; exorcism by Christ's name", "practitioner": "a young man trained at Memphis; Hilarion (exorcist)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Christian holy man versus Egyptian-taught magic", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-70", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Adversus Nationes", "author": "Arnobius of Sicca", "culture": "Latin Christian (North Africa)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 300 CE", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "stoa0034.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "1.43.1", "conventional_ref": "Arnob. Adv. nat. 1.43", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "magus fuit, clandestinis artibus omnia illa perfecit, Aegyptiorum ex adytis angelorum potentium nomina et remotas furatus est disciplinas.", "translation": "'He was a magus; he did all those things by secret arts; he stole from the inner shrines of the Egyptians the names of powerful angels and their hidden disciplines.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Arnobius reports the pagan charge that Christ was a magician who stole angel-names from Egyptian temples. He answers that Christ worked without spells, herb-juices, or the observance of rites and times. The charge assumes a known Egyptian name-magic stored in temple adyta.", "claimed_effect": "miracles", "claimed_mechanism": "stolen names of angels or powers", "practitioner": "Christ (as accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "pagan-Christian controversy", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-71", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "De Anima", "author": "Tertullian", "culture": "Latin Christian (Carthage)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 210 CE", "date_sort": 210, "edition_urn": "stoa0275.stoa010.opp-lat2", "ref": "57.1", "conventional_ref": "Tert. De an. 57.1–2", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "quibus auctrix opinionum istarum magia sonat, Ostanes et Typhon et Dardanus et Damigeron et Nectabis et Berenice. … quid ergo dicemus magian? quod omnes paene, fallaciam.", "translation": "… in the words in which magic, the author of these opinions, speaks: Ostanes and Typhon and Dardanus and Damigeron and Nectabis and Berenice. … What then shall we call magic? What almost everyone calls it: deception.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Tertullian names the canon of magical authorities, which includes 'Nectabis', the last native pharaoh Nectanebo II in his afterlife as a magician. Necromancy of the untimely and violently dead is, he says, real deception by demons who impersonate the dead. Pagan magic's books are a 'publica litteratura'.", "claimed_effect": "summoning the souls of the dead", "claimed_mechanism": "demons impersonating the dead", "practitioner": "named authorities incl. Nectanebo", "practitioner_gender": "mixed (Berenice is female)", "social_legal_context": "Christian demonology", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-72", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Konung Alexander (Aff konung alexander)", "author": "Anonymous (Old Swedish translator of the Historia de preliis)", "culture": "Medieval Swedish", "language": "swe", "date": "translation c. 1375–1400; manuscript Holm D 4, early 15th c.", "date_sort": 1380, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:aff-konug-alexander:holm-d-4", "ref": "111v.11", "conventional_ref": "Konung Alexander, Holm D 4 fol. 111v (Nectanebus' basin divination)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "togh et kar alt giort aff eer / fylte th; m; watn th; drogh ey meer / ha̅ wiiſte thr͛ ſina diæwls fund … gøra tw ſkip aff wax badhin ny", "translation": "He took a vessel all made of bronze, filled it with water as full as it would hold; there he showed his devil's devices … (he had) two ships made of wax, both new.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Nectanebus, 'full of devilry inside though he shone outwardly like gold' (111v.1–2), learns of Artaxerxes' invasion by watching wax ships in a bronze basin of water (lecanomancy), sees his gods abandoning him, shaves his head, and flees to Ethiopia and Macedonia disguised as a prophet. The Egyptian king-magician of the Alexander Romance survives in Swedish, with his art reclassified as diæwls konst (devil's art).", "claimed_effect": "foreknowledge of war; later seduction of Olympias", "claimed_mechanism": "wax figures in water (sympathetic divination); 'devil's craft'", "practitioner": "Nectanebus, king of Egypt", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "late medieval courtly romance; Christian reframing as devilry", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-73", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Altdeutsche Exodus (Vienna, ÖNB cod. 2721)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Middle High German (early)", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1120s; manuscript 12th c.", "date_sort": 1125, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m068:norm", "ref": "1242", "conventional_ref": "Altdeutsche Exodus vv. 1242–1245, 1288–1289", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "zwêne goukelære er dô ladete. / die macheten gelîche. / trachen samelîche. / mit goukeles liste.", "translation": "Then he summoned two conjurers; they likewise made dragons, all of them, by the cunning of conjuring.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The German poet calls Pharaoh's magicians 'goukelære' (jugglers, conjurers; the source of Gaukler) and their art 'goukeles list' and 'galsters list' (the craft of incantation, vv. 1288–1289). There are exactly two of them, as with Jannes and Jambres. The vocabulary moves Egyptian magic toward stage trickery.", "claimed_effect": "staffs into dragons", "claimed_mechanism": "goukel (sleight) and galster (incantation)", "practitioner": "two court conjurers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "vernacular biblical poetry for lay audiences", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-74", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Geography", "author": "Strabo", "culture": "Greek (Augustan)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 20 CE", "date_sort": 20, "edition_urn": "tlg0099.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.3.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Strabo 7.3.11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "συναγωνιστὴν ἔσχε Δεκαίνεον ἄνδρα γόητα, πεπλανημένον κατὰ τὴν Αἴγυπτον καὶ προσημασίας ἐκμεμαθηκότα τινάς, διʼ ὧν ὑπεκρίνετο τὰ θεῖα·", "translation": "He had as helper Decaeneus, a sorcerer who had wandered through Egypt and learned certain signs of the future, through which he played the part of interpreter of the divine.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Getic king Burebista's authority was supported by Decaeneus, a goēs trained in Egypt in prognostic signs, who soon became 'a god' like Zalmoxis. A stay in Egypt is the credential of the barbarian holy man, and the training is in prediction.", "claimed_effect": "foreknowledge; religious authority", "claimed_mechanism": "signs learned in Egypt", "practitioner": "Decaeneus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Dacian state-building", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-75", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Historiae adversus paganos", "author": "Orosius (after Pompeius Trogus)", "culture": "Latin Christian (Spain)", "language": "lat", "date": "417 CE", "date_sort": 417, "edition_urn": "stoa0215c.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "1.8.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Oros. 1.8.3 (cf. Justin 36.2.7–8)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "cum magicas ibi artes sollerti ingenio percepisset, breui ipsi regi percarus fuit. nam et prodigiorum sagacissimus erat et somniorum primus intellegentiam condidit", "translation": "Having learned magic arts there with clever wit, he soon became very dear to the king himself; for he was most shrewd in prodigies and was the first to found the understanding of dreams.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Orosius quotes the pagan Trogus: Joseph learned magic in Egypt and foresaw the famine. A patriarch's Egypt-trained knowledge is called 'magicae artes' by a pagan source, and a Christian historian repeats it to prove the famine was historical.", "claimed_effect": "interpreting dreams; predicting famine", "claimed_mechanism": "magic arts learned in Egypt", "practitioner": "Joseph", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "pagan ethnography reused by Christian history", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-76", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Historia Ecclesiastica (quoting Dionysius of Alexandria)", "author": "Eusebius of Caesarea", "culture": "Greek Christian", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 313–325 CE (letter c. 260 CE)", "date_sort": 260, "edition_urn": "tlg2018.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.10.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Euseb. HE 7.10.4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὁ διδάσκαλος καὶ τῶν ἀπ’ Αἰγύπτου μάγων ἀρχισυνάγωγος … παῖδας ἀθλίους ἀποσφάττειν καὶ τέκνα δυστήνων πατέρων καταθύειν καὶ σπλάγχνα νεογενῆ διαιρεῖν", "translation": "The teacher and archisynagogue (chief) of the magi from Egypt … (persuaded him) to slaughter wretched children, sacrifice the offspring of unhappy fathers and divide newborn entrails.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Bishop Dionysius blames Valerian's persecution on Macrianus, 'chief of the magi from Egypt', who taught extispicy with infants. He adds that Christians' mere presence and breath scatter the demons' plots. Egyptian magic is linked to human sacrifice and to imperial policy against Christians.", "claimed_effect": "divination and imperial success", "claimed_mechanism": "child sacrifice and entrail inspection", "practitioner": "Macrianus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "persecution under Valerian (257–260 CE)", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-77", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "De Somniis", "author": "Philo of Alexandria", "culture": "Jewish (Alexandria)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 30 CE", "date_sort": 30, "edition_urn": "tlg0018.tlg019.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.220.1", "conventional_ref": "Philo Somn. 1.220", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐξ ὧν οἱ Αἰγύπτου πάντες ἀνέβλαστον σοφισταί, οἰωνομάντεις, ἐγγαστρίμυθοι, τερατοσκόποι, δεινοὶ παλεῦσαι καὶ κατεπᾷσαι καὶ γοητεῦσαι", "translation": "… from which all the sophists of Egypt sprang: bird-diviners, ventriloquists, portent-watchers, clever at tricking, charming and bewitching.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In an allegory of Joseph's many-coloured coat, a little truth mixed with plausible falsehood, Philo, himself an Alexandrian, lists Egypt's experts as tricksters. Ventriloquists (engastrimythoi) are among them. Egyptian religious expertise appears as a craft of deception.", "claimed_effect": "divination and enchantment", "claimed_mechanism": "(Philo: deception)", "practitioner": "Egyptian sophists and diviners", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Alexandrian Jewish polemic against Egyptian religion", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-78", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "De Incarnatione Verbi", "author": "Athanasius of Alexandria", "culture": "Greek Christian (Egypt)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 335 CE (date disputed, 318–337)", "date_sort": 335, "edition_urn": "tlg2035.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "47.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Athan. Inc. 47.4", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἴσχυε καὶ ἐνήργει παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις καὶ Χαλδαίοις καὶ Ἰνδοῖς αὕτη καὶ ἐξέπληττε τοὺς ὁρῶντας· τῇ δὲ παρουσία τῆς ἀληθείας, καὶ τῇ ἐπιφανεία τοῦ Λόγου διηλέγχθη καὶ αὕτη, καὶ κατηργήθη παντελῶς.", "translation": "It (magic) was strong and effective among the Egyptians, Chaldaeans and Indians and amazed those who saw it; but by the presence of the truth and the appearance of the Word it too was refuted and wholly abolished.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An Egyptian bishop concedes that magic once really worked in Egypt, then declares it defeated by Christ. The power is not denied; its era is declared over, with conversion presented as the end of a working technology.", "claimed_effect": "(formerly) real wonders", "claimed_mechanism": "demonic power, broken by the Incarnation", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Christianisation of Egypt", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-79", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Apotelesmatica (Tetrabiblos)", "author": "Claudius Ptolemy", "culture": "Graeco-Egyptian (Alexandria)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 150 CE", "date_sort": 150, "edition_urn": "tlg0363.tlg007.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.3.49.1", "conventional_ref": "Ptol. Tetr. 2.3 (§49 Robbins numbering varies)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "μάλιστα οἱ περὶ τὴν κάτω χώραν τῆς Αἰγύπτου μᾶλλον συνοικειοῦνται τοῖς Ἰχθύσι καὶ τῷ τοῦ Ἑρμοῦ, διόπερ … μαγευτικοί τε καὶ κρυφίων μυστηρίων ἐπιτελεστικοὶ", "translation": "… especially those around the lower country of Egypt are more akin to Pisces and to Mercury; therefore they are … given to magic and performers of hidden mysteries.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An Alexandrian astronomer gives an astrological ethnography. Lower Egyptians are naturally magical because of their astral rulers (Pisces, Mercury), as well as intelligent and good at mathematics. Egyptian 'magic-mindedness' is explained as a physical, astral fact about a people.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "astral influence on national character", "practitioner": "inhabitants of Lower Egypt", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "scientific astrology", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-80", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Stromata", "author": "Clement of Alexandria", "culture": "Greek Christian (Alexandria)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 200 CE", "date_sort": 200, "edition_urn": "tlg0555.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "6.4.37.2", "conventional_ref": "Clem. Strom. 6.4.35–37", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "astrology", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "τὰς δὲ λοιπὰς ἓξ οἱ παστοφόροι ἰατρικὰς οὔσας περί τε τῆς τοῦ σώματος κατασκευῆς καὶ περὶ νόσων καὶ περὶ ὀργάνων καὶ φαρμάκων καὶ περὶ ὀφθαλμιῶν", "translation": "The remaining six (books), the pastophoroi learn, which are medical: on the structure of the body, on diseases, on instruments and drugs, on eye diseases (and on women's ailments).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Clement describes an Egyptian procession: singer, horoscopus with astrological books, hierogrammateus with hieroglyphic books, stolistes, prophet. The 42 'books of Hermes' include six medical ones for the pastophoroi. For Clement, Egyptian priestly knowledge is a curriculum in which astrology and medicine are departments of temple learning, not 'magic'. The library oddly flags 6.4.36.1 as athetized.", "claimed_effect": "medicine; astrology; ritual", "claimed_mechanism": "canonical sacred books of Hermes (Thoth)", "practitioner": "Egyptian priestly grades", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "temple organisation", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-81", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Saturae", "author": "Juvenal", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 116 CE (Sat. 6); c. 127 CE (Sat. 13)", "date_sort": 116, "edition_urn": "phi1276.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.6.537", "conventional_ref": "Juv. 6.526–541; 13.92–94", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "healing", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "magnaque debetur violato poena cadurco / et movisse caput visa est argentea serpens; / illius lacrimae meditataque murmura praestant / ut veniam culpae non abnuat, ansere magno / scilicet et tenui popano corruptus, Osiris.", "translation": "A great penalty is owed for the violated bed, and the silver serpent was seen to move its head; his tears and rehearsed murmurs ensure that Osiris, bribed of course by a fat goose and a thin cake, does not refuse pardon.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Juvenal satirises Isiac devotion at Rome: pilgrimages for Meroe water, the priest dressed as Anubis mocking the mourners, a moving silver serpent on a cult statue, and pardons bought with geese. In 13.93 a perjurer bets that Isis may strike his eyes blind with her angry sistrum. He also mocks those who time meals by 'Petosiris' (6.581). Egyptian cult is grafted onto Roman women's private religion as paid expiation.", "claimed_effect": "pardon for sexual transgression; divine blinding of perjurers", "claimed_mechanism": "priestly intercession; offerings", "practitioner": "Isiac priests; Roman matrons", "practitioner_gender": "female (clients)", "social_legal_context": "Egyptian cults in Rome", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-82", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Apotelesmatica", "author": "Pseudo-Manetho", "culture": "Graeco-Egyptian astrological poetry", "language": "grc", "date": "books composed c. 2nd–4th c. CE (dates vary by book)", "date_sort": 150, "edition_urn": "tlg2583.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "4.1.475", "conventional_ref": "[Manetho] Apotel. 4.475; 6(5).1–3 (library numbering)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "ἢ μάγοι ἀρρήτοισι θεοὺς καλέοντες ἀοιδαῖς. … Ἐξ ἀδύτων Ἱερῶν βίβλων, βασιλεῦ Πτολεμαῖε, / καὶ κρυφίμων στηλῶν, ἃς ἤρατο πάνσοφος Ἑρμῆς", "translation": "… or magi, summoning gods with unspeakable songs. … From the sacred books of the inner shrines, King Ptolemy, and from hidden stelae which all-wise Hermes raised …", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An astrological poem under the name of the Egyptian priest Manetho. Under Saturn's aspect, people are born to be seers, astronomers, augurs or 'magi calling gods with unspeakable songs'. The poem claims its authority from secret temple books and Hermes' stelae, alongside Petosiris. Magic is one of the fated professions, and Egyptian temple secrecy is the source of the science.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "planetary configurations at birth", "practitioner": "astrologer; magi as a born profession", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Ptolemaic and Roman astrological literature", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-83", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Euthydemus", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Classical Greek", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 384 BCE", "date_sort": -384, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg021.perseus-grc2", "ref": "288.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Euthd. 288b–c", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀλλὰ τὸν Πρωτέα μιμεῖσθον τὸν Αἰγύπτιον σοφιστὴν γοητεύοντε ἡμᾶς.", "translation": "… but they are imitating Proteus, the Egyptian sophist, bewitching us.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Socrates compares the eristic brothers to Proteus, called an 'Egyptian sophist', whose shape-shifting is goēteia. It is an early, playful link between Egypt, verbal trickery and 'bewitchment', still metaphorical. Compare Diodorus' rationalised Proteus (egypt-44).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "shape-shifting as a metaphor for argument", "practitioner": "Proteus (mythic)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Athenian philosophical satire", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "egypt-84", "corpus": "egypt", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Classical Greek", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 430 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.33.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 2.33", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀπονοστῆσαί τε ἔφασκε τοὺς Νασαμῶνας, ὡς οἱ Κυρηναῖοι ἔλεγον, καὶ ἐς τοὺς οὗτοι ἀπίκοντο ἀνθρώπους, γόητας εἶναι ἅπαντας.", "translation": "He said the Nasamonians returned home, as the Cyrenaeans told it, and that the people they reached were all sorcerers.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In Book 2 Herodotus never uses goēs or magos of Egyptians. The only goētes in his Egyptian logos are a people far beyond the Libyan desert, reported by the king of the Ammonians. For Herodotus magic lies further out than Egypt, which is the land of piety and specialist expertise.", "claimed_effect": "(unspecified)", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "inner-African people", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "ethnographic hearsay", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-1", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Ad equum errehet (Paris, BN, nouv. acq. lat. 229)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Upper German, monastic manuscript)", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1125, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m001:norm", "ref": "2.1–2.15", "conventional_ref": "Pariser Pferdesegen 'Ad equum errehet'", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "man gienc after wege. zôch sîn ros inhanden. dô begagente ime mîn truhtîn ... mîn ros ist erræhet. nû ziuch ez dâ bîviere. dû rûneime in daz ôre. trit ez anden zesewen vuoz. sô wirdet ime des erræhetenbuoz", "translation": "A man went along the road, leading his horse by the hand. Then my Lord met him... 'My horse is foundered.' 'Now lead it over here, whisper into its ear, tread on its right foot, and it will be cured of the foundering.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A horse charm for foundering (laminitis). The historiola has Christ meeting a man on the road and telling him how to cure the horse: whisper in its ear and tread on its right foot. The Latin rubric adds a paternoster and rubbing the horse's legs and feet. It closes with a performative German formula 'as quickly as God cured it then', for a horse of any colour (red, black, white, dun, grey, dappled). The narrative of a past cure by Christ is itself the instruction. The diplomatic edition (m001:dipl) has older spellings (gieng, Roſ, handon, begagenda).", "claimed_effect": "Cure of a foundered horse", "claimed_mechanism": "Analogy with a precedent cure by Christ (historiola) plus speech-act formula and ritual touch", "practitioner": "lay horse-owner or cleric", "practitioner_gender": "male (implied)", "social_legal_context": "Copied in a Latin monastic manuscript among other charms; veterinary charm", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-2", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Ad fluxum sanguinis narium (Paris, BN, nouv. acq. lat. 229)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1125, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m002:norm", "ref": "10r.7–10r.11", "conventional_ref": "Pariser Jordansegen (nosebleed)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Krist unde Johan giengen zuoder Jordan. dô sprach Krist stant Jordan. biz ich unde Johan über dich gegân. alsô Jordan dô stuont. sô stant dû .N.. illius bluot. hoc dicatur ter. et singulis vicibus fiat nodus in crine hominis.", "translation": "Christ and John went to the Jordan. Then Christ said: 'Stand, Jordan, until John and I have crossed you.' As the Jordan stood then, so stand you, blood of N. Let this be said three times, and each time let a knot be tied in the person's hair.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The classic 'Jordan' blood charm against nosebleed. The historiola is apocryphal: Christ stops the Jordan as Joshua did. Then comes a direct command to the blood, built on the analogy 'as the Jordan stood, so stand you'. The instructions are in Latin: say it three times and tie a knot in the patient's hair each time (binding magic).", "claimed_effect": "Stops nosebleed", "claimed_mechanism": "Analogy (historiola), command, triple repetition, knot-binding", "practitioner": "healer (unspecified)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Monastic charm collection", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-3", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Ad restringendum sanguinem [Erfurter Blutsegen]", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Thuringian?)", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m003:norm", "ref": "69E.1–69E.9", "conventional_ref": "Erfurter Blutsegen", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Krist wart wunt des wart er gesunt. stant bluot stant bluot. stant hier inne. durch des heiligen Kristes willen. pater noster. ... sancta Maria liga haec uvlnera alsô stant dû. sô der Jordan verstuont.", "translation": "Christ was wounded; of it he became whole. Stand, blood, stand, blood, stand in here, for the sake of holy Christ. Our Father... Holy Mary, bind these wounds. So stand you as the Jordan stood still.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The charm switches back and forth between Latin and German. It joins three historiolae: Christ's wound that healed, blood that stopped flowing from an 'iron spring', and the Jordan halting at Christ's baptism. Mary is asked to bind the wound. Paternosters are to be said three times. Close variants are the Millstätter Blutsegen (m035, 32r.19–24: 'alsô verstant dû bluotrinne durch des heiligen Kristes minne') and the Uppsala Blutsegen (m031, 1.2: 'ich verspriche dich bluot. ich verbiute dich bluot'), which uses the verbs versprechen and verbieten, 'to speak away' and 'to forbid'.", "claimed_effect": "Staunching blood", "claimed_mechanism": "Analogy, command, intercession of Mary, triple paternoster", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Clerical manuscript; Latin rubrics", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-4", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Bamberger Blutsegen (Bamberg, Msc. Med. 6)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (East Franconian)", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m033:norm", "ref": "69.1–69.14", "conventional_ref": "Bamberger Blutsegen", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Krist unde. Judas spileten mit spieze. dô wart der heilige Krist wunt in sîne sîten. dô namer den dûmen. unde verdûhte sie vorne. sô verstant dû bluot. sôse Jordanis ahe verstuont.", "translation": "Christ and Judas were playing with spears; then holy Christ was wounded in his side. Then he took his thumb and pressed it [the wound] shut in front. So stand still, blood, as the river Jordan stood still.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An unusual historiola: Christ is wounded while playing at spears with Judas, and stops his own bleeding by pressing the wound with his thumb. It goes on to the Jordan analogy and a rhymed formula ('Krist wart hier in erden wunt, daz wart dâ ze himele kunt; izne bluotete noch ne swar, noch nechein eiter ne bar'). Then three paternosters and an adjuration 'by the holy five wounds'. The story about Christ quietly describes a real first-aid technique: direct pressure.", "claimed_effect": "Stops bleeding; prevents swelling and pus", "claimed_mechanism": "Historiola with a model act (pressure by thumb), analogy, adjuration by Christ's wounds", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "In a medical manuscript (Msc. Med. 6)", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-5", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Straßburger Blutsegen", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Alemannic)", "language": "gmh", "date": "11th–12th c. (MS lost, burnt 1870)", "date_sort": 1100, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m037:norm", "ref": "68.1–68.8", "conventional_ref": "Straßburger Blutsegen (Genzan unde Jordan)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Genzan unde Jordan giengen sament schiezen dô verschôz Genzan Jordane die sîten dô verstuont daz bluot verstande diz bluot stant bluot stant bluot vaste", "translation": "Genzan and Jordan went shooting together; then Genzan shot Jordan in the side; then the blood stopped. Stop, this blood! Stand, blood, stand, blood, fast!", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A blood charm whose actors are not Christian at all: 'Genzan' and 'Jordan', the river turned into a person. A second part has obscure names (Vrô, Lazakere, 'tumbe' sitting on a mountain with a 'tumb' child) and ends 'der heilige tumbe versegene diuse wunde', 'may the holy Tumbe charm this wound away'. The meaning of these names is disputed; some read pagan or nonsense survivals. The manuscript was burnt.", "claimed_effect": "Stops bleeding from a wound", "claimed_mechanism": "Narrative precedent and command; verb versegenen ('to charm away')", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Charm without overt Christian framing in its first half", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-6", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Münchener Wundsegen (Clm 23374)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Bavarian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "12th–13th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m246:norm", "ref": "16v.a.3–16v.a.36", "conventional_ref": "Münchener Wundsegen ('Drei gute Brüder')", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "drî guot bruoder giengen einen wec· dâ bekom in unser hêrre Jesus Christus ... swert mir ... daz irez enhelt· noch lôn entvâhet· und vart hinzuo dem Mont Olivet und nemet öle. des öleboumes. und schâfwolle· und leget die. über die wunden", "translation": "Three good brothers were walking along a road; our Lord Jesus Christ met them... 'Swear to me... that you will not keep it secret nor take payment, and go to the Mount of Olives and take oil of the olive tree and sheep's wool and lay them on the wound.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the 'Three Brothers' wound charm. Three brothers are searching for a wound-herb when Christ meets them and gives them a remedy: olive oil and sheep's wool laid on the wound. He makes them swear not to conceal it and not to take money for it. After that comes a Longinus analogy (Christ's spear wound neither festered nor grew hot), the formula to be said three times with three paternosters, and the warning 'do nothing more than is written here'. The real dressing (oil and wool) is wrapped inside the charm.", "claimed_effect": "Wounds heal without bleeding, heat, swelling, pus or rot", "claimed_mechanism": "Christ's revelation of a remedy; Longinus analogy; repetition", "practitioner": "lay healer, sworn not to take payment", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Ban on payment marks the healing as charity, not trade", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-7", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Augensegen, Cambridger (Peterhouse 130)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "13th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1250, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m018:norm", "ref": "211v.1–211v.11", "conventional_ref": "Cambridger Augensegen", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "ich beswer hiute dîne hir bî dem heiligen Christe der sich zemarterunge gap ... daz vel und die hir und die schuzblâtren diu wazzerblâter und der herdbrâte und allez daz gesühte .N. daz [in] dînem ougen sî daz hiute sich winnente sî", "translation": "Today I adjure your 'hir' (eye ailment) by holy Christ, who gave himself to martyrdom... the film and the 'hir' and the shooting blisters, the water blister and the 'herdbrâte' and all the sickness, N., that is in your eyes, that today it may waste away...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An eye charm that treats each eye disease (film, pustules, blisters) as something that can be addressed and adjured, 'by' the Passion, the Holy Blood, the Nativity, the Ascension, the Sepulchre and the Last Judgement. It ends with a prayer formula: 'may these words be true, firm and victorious'.", "claimed_effect": "Eye diseases shrink; sight grows back", "claimed_mechanism": "Adjuration (beswern) of the disease as a personal agent by sacred events", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-8", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Augensegen, Münchner (Clm 14472)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Bavarian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m019:norm", "ref": "166v.41–166v.45", "conventional_ref": "Münchner (Regensburger) Augensegen", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ganc zedeme vliezenteme wazzere· unde netze ime sîne ougen unde quit mit deme selben segene sô der allemehtige got deme regenblinden segenete sîniu ougen", "translation": "Go to the flowing water and wet his eyes and say: with the same blessing with which almighty God blessed the eyes of the man born blind...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An eye charm modelled on John 9, Christ healing the man born blind. Its ritual act is washing the eyes in running water. The segen (blessing) is explicitly 'the same blessing' Christ used.", "claimed_effect": "Restored sight", "claimed_mechanism": "Re-enactment of a Gospel cure", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-9", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Contra caducum morbum (P) (Paris, BN, nouv. acq. lat. 229)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS); a related version in Clm 14763 (m048m)", "date_sort": 1125, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m048p:norm", "ref": "9v.23–9v.35", "conventional_ref": "Epilepsy charm 'Donerdutigo'", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "alsô tuon ich dich unreiner âteme. von diseme kristenen lîchamen. alsô schiere werde buoz. diseme kristenen lîchamen. sô schiere sô ich mit den handen. die erden berüere. ... hoc ter fac. et mox videbis infirmum surgere sanum.", "translation": "So I drive you, unclean breath, out of this Christian body; as quickly may this Christian body be cured as I touch the earth with my hands... Do this three times, and soon you will see the sick man rise up healed.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An epilepsy charm. Approach the patient lying on the ground, step from his left side to his right, stand over him, and recite a historiola about 'Donerdutigo' and 'Dietewigo', the devil's son on Adam's bridge, and Peter sending Paul to bind vein to vein. The 'unclean breath' (âtem, the spirit) is then expelled. The healer touches the earth with both hands, jumps to the right, touches the patient's right side with his foot and says 'Stand up, what was wrong with you? God commanded it.' Epilepsy is treated as a possessing spirit. The Munich version (m048m, 88v.a.16ff., 'donerdutiger pro cadente morbo') shares the narrative.", "claimed_effect": "Epileptic rises healed", "claimed_mechanism": "Exorcism of an unclean spirit; earth-touching analogy; triple performance", "practitioner": "healer standing over the patient", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-10", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Contra paralysin theutonice (Bern, Burgerbibl. 803)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m050:norm", "ref": "775–791", "conventional_ref": "Contra paralysin (German); Latin-German version Clm 23479 (m203, 1v.1–15)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "sihwelich man oder wîp vergihtiget werde. zesewen halben. sôlâzeman ime in dere winsteren hende ... unde neme danne gingebern. wîn. unde honec. unde dere wîzen wîden loup. ... unde trinke daz in deme warmen bade. sô wirdetes ime buoz", "translation": "If any man or woman is paralysed on the right side, let him be bled on the left hand... then take ginger, wine and honey and white-willow leaves... and drink it in the warm bath; so he will be cured.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A prescription for paralysis (vergiht) that uses no words of power at all. It calls for bloodletting on the side opposite the paralysis, a three-day bath of oats, elder, fern, ants, wormwood and nettles, and a drink of ginger, wine, honey, white-willow, cherry, peach leaves, sage, rue, storksbill, pellitory and other herbs. The Latin-German version in Clm 23479 (m203) has the same contents. In charm-only catalogues it sits among the charms, but it is purely medical.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of paralysis", "claimed_mechanism": "Humoral bloodletting (crossed sides), balneotherapy, herbal drink", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-11", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Contra uberbein (Paris, BN, nouv. acq. lat. 229)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "lat/gmh", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1125, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m052:norm", "ref": "9r.13–9r.20", "conventional_ref": "Contra überbein", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "lignum de saepe vel aliunde sumptum pone super überbein· faciens crucem et ter dicens pater noster· additis his teutonicis verbis. ichbeswerendich überbein bî deme holze dâ der almehtige got anersterben wolde", "translation": "Put a piece of wood taken from a hedge or elsewhere on the ganglion, making a cross and saying three paternosters, adding these German words: 'I adjure you, ganglion, by the wood on which almighty God chose to die...'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A charm against a ganglion (überbein, a hard swelling on a tendon). The instructions are Latin, and only the adjuration is in German, an explicit Latin/German split. A piece of wood is pressed on the lump with the sign of the cross, at dawn on three days, and the swelling is commanded to shrink 'by the wood of the Cross'. The rubric promises: 'you will see the überbein vanish quickly'.", "claimed_effect": "Ganglion vanishes", "claimed_mechanism": "Adjuration by the wood of the Cross; contact with wood; repetition at dawn", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-12", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Contra vermem edentem (Paris, BN, nouv. acq. lat. 229)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1125, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m053:norm", "ref": "9v.23–10r.7", "conventional_ref": "Contra vermem edentem", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "ich gebiute dir wurm dû indeme vleische ligest. sî dîn einer. sîndîn zwêne swie vile dîn sî ... quicumque homini hac medicina vermem emendare velit. caveat ne alicui iumento per eam emendet. quia postea homini non proderit.", "translation": "I command you, worm, who lie in the flesh, whether you are one or two or however many you are... Whoever wants to cure a person of the worm with this medicine, let him beware of curing any beast of burden with it, for afterwards it will not help a human.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A worm charm: a command to the flesh-eating worm by the life of Jesus (born in Bethlehem, baptised in the Jordan, martyred at Jerusalem, ascended from the Mount of Olives) that it eat and drink no more of the patient's flesh and blood. The Latin note at the end is remarkable. If the charm is ever used on an animal it loses its power for humans. Its virtue is treated as something that can be used up or contaminated, and the note calls the charm itself a 'medicina'.", "claimed_effect": "Worm stops eating the flesh", "claimed_mechanism": "Command (gebieten) to a worm-demon by Christ's life; the charm's virtue can be degraded", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-13", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Contra vermes pecus edentes (Paris, BN, nouv. acq. lat. 229)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1125, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m054:norm", "ref": "10r.20–10r.22", "conventional_ref": "Contra vermes pecus edentes", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "contra vermes pecus edentes. ich beswere dich sunne. bîsancto Germano. daz dû hiute ne schîn. êr deme dic colore vihe die würme ûzsîn", "translation": "Against worms eating livestock. I adjure you, sun, by Saint Germanus, that you do not shine today until the worms are out of the [say the colour] cattle.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A cattle charm with an unusual target. It adjures the sun itself, by St Germanus, not to shine until the worms have left the animal: a cosmic power is put under a deadline. The healer inserts the animal's colour.", "claimed_effect": "Worms leave the livestock", "claimed_mechanism": "Adjuration of the sun by a saint", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-14", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Contra malum malannum (Bonn, UB S 218)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "lat/gmh", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m049:norm", "ref": "41r.22–41r.24", "conventional_ref": "Contra malum malannum", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "cum minimo digito circumdare locum debes ubi apparebit his verbis ich bemunigen dich. swam bîgote jouch bî Kriste tunc fac crucem per medivm ... ut amplius non crescas. set arescas", "translation": "With the little finger you must circle the place where it appears, with these words: 'I conjure you, fungus/swelling (swam), by God and by Christ'; then make a cross through the middle... 'that you grow no more but dry up.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A charm against a growth or ulcer (swam, 'fungus'). The healer encircles it with the little finger, crosses it through the middle, conjures it in German, and adds a Latin adjuration in the 'non crescas sed arescas' pattern.", "claimed_effect": "Growth stops and dries up", "claimed_mechanism": "Circumscribing gesture, cross, bilingual adjuration", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-15", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Grazer Wurmsegen (B) (Graz, UB 1501)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat/voces magicae", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m248:norm", "ref": "133r.1–133r.7", "conventional_ref": "Grazer Wurmsegen", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "der wurm der sî nû tôt. hiute unde iemer mêr· innominedomini· amen· pater noster· daz solt dû drîestunten sprechen· vüre daz eiter soltdûez sprechen. carnanx odia· carnanx edia· inmensina· samsodina·", "translation": "May the worm be dead now, today and evermore, in the name of the Lord, amen, paternoster; you shall say this three times. Against pus you shall say: carnanx odia, carnanx edia, inmensina, samsodina...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A worm and pus charm that turns into voces magicae (carnanx odia, carnanx edia, inmensina, samsodina) after the Christian formula. The Zürich 'Contra rehin' (m051, 66-01.1–4) shows the same thing in German: a paternoster into the right ear, then 'marcvar nienetar muntwas marhwas', and the illness is sent 'into your mountains'.", "claimed_effect": "Worm dies; pus disperses", "claimed_mechanism": "Death-command plus unintelligible words of power", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-16", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Prüler Wurmsegen (Clm 536)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Bavarian, Prüll near Regensburg)", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "mid-12th c.", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m247:norm", "ref": "1–12", "conventional_ref": "Prüler Wurmsegen (Job)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Jop lac indem miste. er rief ze Kriste. er quat. dû genædige Krist. dû der indeme himele bist. dû büeze *deme mennischen des wurmes· N. durch die Jobes bete. ... der wurm ist tôt. tôt ist der wurm.", "translation": "Job lay in the dung; he called to Christ; he said: 'You merciful Christ, who are in heaven, cure this person, N., of the worm, for the sake of Job's prayer'... The worm is dead. Dead is the worm.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A worm charm whose historiola is Job, worm-eaten on his dunghill (Job 7:5), calling on Christ, an anachronism. It closes with the chiastic death-formula 'der wurm ist tôt, tôt ist der wurm'. It sits in the same manuscript as the Prüll Kräuterbuch and Steinbuch, so charms, herbal and lapidary were copied side by side.", "claimed_effect": "Worm dies", "claimed_mechanism": "Saint's precedent prayer; chiastic death formula", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-17", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Gothaer Fiebersegen", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Middle Franconian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "13th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1250, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m070:norm", "ref": "414v.b.1–414v.b.11", "conventional_ref": "Gothaer Fiebersegen", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "sanfte inde wole gebar [sente] [Isebet] sente [Johanne] sanfte inde wole gebar sente [Anne] [sente] Marien. sanfte inde. wole gebar sente [Marie] [unsen] hêrren ... alsô sanfte inde alsô wole [gelâze] [den] mennischen N.. [der] [rite]", "translation": "Gently and well St Elisabeth bore St John; gently and well St Anne bore St Mary; gently and well St Mary bore our Lord... so gently and so well may the fever leave this person, N.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A fever charm. The fever is called 'rite' and personified along with 'all its evil ways'. The historiola is a chain of holy births (Elisabeth bore John, Anne bore Mary, Mary bore Christ), and the fever is asked to leave the body as gently. It names the patients (Heinrich or Hildegunde) and prescribes three paternosters and three Ave Marias with three prostrations (venjen).", "claimed_effect": "Fever departs gently", "claimed_mechanism": "Analogy with painless holy births; saints' intercession; prostrations", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-18", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Grazer Hagelsegen (Graz, UB 784)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Bavarian-Austrian)", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS; date disputed)", "date_sort": 1175, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m101:norm", "ref": "148v.1–148v.9", "conventional_ref": "Grazer Hagelsegen", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "von wannen gênt swarziu wolkenn. daz ist der heilige Krist. mit sîner gezierde. ... der scheidet trüebiu wolkenn. der wile veimen wîze steine. daz si êr zergên. êr si zeerde gên. ... gehügest dû nû hagel. wâ dich die wartmanne. in dem wolkenn sâhen.", "translation": "Whence come black clouds? That is holy Christ with his array... he parts the murky clouds; he wills to melt the white stones, so that they dissolve before they reach the earth... Do you remember now, hail, where the watchmen saw you in the cloud?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A hail charm. It opens with obscure words ('Ivie riffe'), recasts the storm as Christ parting the clouds, and asks that the 'white stones' of hail melt before they reach the ground. Then the hail is addressed directly and reminded that watchmen saw it in the cloud and that angels hunted it. Paternosters follow. This is protection of crops by commanding the weather, with no mention of any human weather-maker.", "claimed_effect": "Hail melts before it falls", "claimed_mechanism": "Christ as master of clouds; addressing and shaming the hail", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-19", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Zürcher Hausbesegnung (Zürich, Cod. Car. C 176)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old/Early Middle High German (Alemannic)", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "10th–11th c. (date disputed)", "date_sort": 1050, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m104:norm", "ref": "75.1–75.3", "conventional_ref": "Zürcher Haussegen", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "at signandum domum contra diabolum. wole wiht daz dû weist daz dû wiht heizest. daz dûne weist noch ne kanst queden chnoſpinci.", "translation": "To sign a house against the devil. Well, wight, you know that you are called 'wight', that you neither know nor can say 'chnospinci'.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A very old house-blessing against a demon. It names the demon 'wiht' (wight, creature) and taunts it with a word, 'chnospinci', that it supposedly cannot pronounce, much as a creature is beaten in folk tales by knowing or refusing its name. The Latin rubric calls it 'signing' the house against the devil. The meaning of chnospinci is unknown.", "claimed_effect": "Protects the house from the devil", "claimed_mechanism": "Naming and verbal defeat of a demon", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-20", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Vatikanische Pferdesegen 'Ad pestem equi / Ad equum infusum'", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS; date uncertain)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m153:norm", "ref": "68v.1–68v.7", "conventional_ref": "Vatikanische Pferdesegen (Pal. lat. 1158)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "at pestem equi· quot dicitur mort. dic. Johan· was ein man. Fases sîn sun· genas inne des· sô tuo diz ros· des mordes. pater noster. ter.", "translation": "For horse plague, which is called 'mort': say: 'John was a man; Fases his son recovered from it; so may this horse [recover] from the mort.' Paternoster three times.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Two veterinary charms. In the first, an obscure precedent (John and his son Fases) is set against horse plague. The second, 'Ad equum infusum', uses a Nativity historiola (born on earth, laid in the manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes) and asks Christ to cure the named horse of foundering, colic and the worm. Animal medicine runs on the same machinery as human healing.", "claimed_effect": "Horse cured of plague, founder, colic, worm", "claimed_mechanism": "Precedent-analogy; Nativity historiola; paternosters", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-21", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Münchner Halssegen (Clm 23390)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "lat/gmh", "date": "12th–13th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m102:norm", "ref": "59v.14–59v.18", "conventional_ref": "Münchner Halssegen (St Blaise)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "sweme diu kele. verswillet. segene domine. Jesu Christe per orationem famuli tui sancti Blasii. festina in adiutorium famuli dei. N.. ... dâr nâch. sprich. drî stunt. pater noster", "translation": "For whoever's throat swells, bless [him with]: 'Lord Jesus Christ, through the prayer of your servant St Blaise, hasten to the help of God's servant N....' Afterwards say three times the paternoster.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A 'charm' for a swollen throat that is in form a Latin collect invoking St Blaise, the Church's patron of throats. Only the German rubric ('segene', 'bless') and the triple paternoster make it a charm. The same Blaise verse is recommended in the Benediktbeuern advice (m196, 52v.b.8–11). A Church-approved prayer and a charm cannot be told apart by their words; the difference lies only in the instructions around them.", "claimed_effect": "Throat swelling cured", "claimed_mechanism": "Saint's intercession; prayer repeated three times", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-22", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Münchener Ausfahrtsegen (Clm 23374)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Bavarian)", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th–13th c. (MS; disputed)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m020:norm", "ref": "1–51", "conventional_ref": "Münchener Ausfahrtsegen", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "aller mîner vîende gewæfen diu ligen hiute· unde slâfen· ... mîn houbet sî mir hiute stælîn decheiner slahte wâfen snîde dâr în· mîn swert eine ... daz snîde unde bîze", "translation": "May all my enemies' weapons lie and sleep today... May my head be of steel today; may no kind of weapon cut into it, my sword alone... may it cut and bite.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A morning charm for a man setting out, probably a warrior. He makes Christ's protection his 'peace-shield' and Mary's shift his 'peace-shirt'. Sun, moon and morning star are to be friendly to him. Enemy weapons are to 'sleep' and his head is to be of steel, while his own sword alone cuts. It invokes Christ 'called by the wonderful name tetragrammaton' and rests its power on the analogy of the blessing that hallowed baptism, chrism and scripture. It asks for protection against fire, water, weapons, mortal sin and sudden death.", "claimed_effect": "Invulnerability in fight; safety on the road", "claimed_mechanism": "Self-blessing; analogy with sacramental blessings; divine name", "practitioner": "the traveller/warrior himself", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-23", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Tobiassegen U (Uppsala, UB C 664)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "13th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1250, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m228:norm", "ref": "4.45–4.52", "conventional_ref": "Tobiassegen", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "daz herze sî dir steinîn der lîp sî dir beinîn daz houbet sîdir stehelîn der himel sîdir schiltîn diu helle sî dir vore versperret ... elliu wâfen sîn vore dir verslozzen", "translation": "May your heart be of stone, your body of bone, your head of steel, heaven your shield; may hell be locked against you... may all weapons be locked away from you.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A long travel blessing in verse, built on old Tobit blessing his son as he sends him to Media. Here it is spoken over a departing friend. It runs from pious wishes (God's guidance, the apostles, Stephen, St Gall for food, St Gertrude for lodging) into a list of invulnerability spells and the wish that 'man and woman be fond of you'. The Graz fragment (m227) is a variant.", "claimed_effect": "Safe return, invulnerability, favour", "claimed_mechanism": "Biblical precedent (Tobit's blessing); saints' patronage; formulaic hardening of the body", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-24", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Kölner Morgensegen (Hannover, LB I 81)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Ripuarian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "13th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1250, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m148:norm", "ref": "2–38", "conventional_ref": "Kölner Morgensegen", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "si sîn hiute gebunden. daz si ougen en haben dâ mite hê gesien müge daz dir schaden. [müge] daz si den munt nieten haben daz si niet ensprechen daz dir schaden müge", "translation": "May they be bound today, so that they have no eyes with which they could see what might harm you, that they have no mouth so that they cannot speak what might harm you...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A morning blessing that commends a person (N.) to God by a string of biblical 'commendations' (Christ commending Mary to John, Jacob sending his son to Egypt, Tobit sending Tobias to Media). It then binds every enemy, 'visible or invisible', limb by limb (eyes, mouth, ears, heart, hands cut off, feet) so that they can do no harm. The same binding formula appears almost word for word in the Muri prayer book (m077, 43r.3–16), so binding magic travelled inside monastic devotion.", "claimed_effect": "Enemies cannot harm the person that day", "claimed_mechanism": "Commendation analogies; dismemberment-style binding of enemies", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-25", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Gebete u. Benediktionen von Muri", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Alemannic, Muri)", "language": "lat/gmh/voces magicae", "date": "c. 1200 (MS)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m077:norm", "ref": "18r.1–18r.10", "conventional_ref": "Muri prayer book, 'ego signo crucis' with voces magicae", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ego signo crucis non clipeo protectus aut galea. hostium cuneos penetrabo secura. unde segene dîn houbet vünf stunt mit diseme zeichene. zanuel. unde sprich den vers ... ego signo. paruc. domello. astac. efranis. protanis. lezradis.", "translation": "'I, protected by the sign of the cross, not by shield or helmet, will pierce the enemy's wedges unharmed.' And bless your head five times with this sign: 'zanuel', and say the verse... 'ego signo, paruc, domello, astac, efranis, protanis, lezradis.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a devotional book of German prayers and benedictions, a protective Latin verse comes with the instruction to sign the head five times and to speak unintelligible names (zanuel, paruc, domello, astac, efranis, protanis, lezradis). These words of power sit next to prayers to St Susanna that 'beswern' (adjure) both the saint and God. The same book has a favour-charm (94r.14–94v.12) asking to be 'as dear to all the world as their heart in their blood', with the name 'Adonai' that Adam called on.", "claimed_effect": "Protection in danger; favour of all people", "claimed_mechanism": "Sign of the cross plus secret names; adjuration of saints", "practitioner": "religious (likely nuns or monks of Muri)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-26", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Vatikanische Gebete (Vat. lat. 4763)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "lat/gmh", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m082:norm", "ref": "126v.1–126v.13", "conventional_ref": "Vatikanische Gebete (prayer before the crucifix)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "nû sich di vuoze ane unde sprich. domine Jesu Christe eloy. per tria nomina quae habuisti antequam natus fuisses. Pantacher. Eloy. admirabilis. libera me de imminenti tribulatione.", "translation": "Now look at the feet [of the crucifix] and say: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Eloy, by the three names you had before you were born, Pantacher, Eloy, Admirabilis, deliver me from imminent tribulation.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A crucifix devotion with German rubrics that tell the user where to look (left hand, right hand, feet). It calls on Christ by secret pre-natal names (Pantacher, Eloy) and, a little later, by the ineffable names 'On, Ione, Ot, Zel, Melchion, Adonay, Iotch, Eyan' (127r.5–6). It asks for deliverance 'from the hearts' of named people. These are the divine-name lists of learned ritual magic, here inside private prayer.", "claimed_effect": "Deliverance from trouble and from hostile people", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine names of power; gaze-directed prayer", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-27", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Benediktbeurer Ratschläge u. Gebete (Clm 4616)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Bavarian)", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th–13th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m196:norm", "ref": "52v.a.8–52v.b.7", "conventional_ref": "Benediktbeurer angel-names advice", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "sô dû den doner hoerest sant Gabrielem habe indînem muote sô ne wirret dir niht. ... sant Raguelem habe indînem muote sô wirdesdû genuhtsam. ... den engel Pantassaron habe indînem muote. ... Urielem habe indînem muote wider vîant sô gesiges dû.", "translation": "When you hear thunder, keep St Gabriel in mind, and nothing will harm you... keep St Raguel in mind and you will be satisfied... keep the angel Pantassaron in mind [at a feast]... keep Uriel in mind against an enemy and you will win.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An everyday guide to holding angel names in mind: Michael on rising, Gabriel in thunder, Raphael on a journey, Raguel when eating, Barachiel in doubt and in court, Pantassaron at feasts, Uriel against enemies, Uriel and Tobiel at sea. Each comes with a promised effect. Several of these angels (Uriel, Raguel, Tubuel/Tobiel) were the names condemned at the Roman synod of 745 in the Aldebert case; they turn up here unchallenged. The same text prescribes alms in set numbers and a nine-part candle, bread and cheese rite before the Cross, with promises of rescue.", "claimed_effect": "Joy, safety in thunder, easy travel, victory, success in court", "claimed_mechanism": "Mental invocation of angel names; numbered alms; candle rite", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-28", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Bamberger Arzneibuch ['Arzenîbuoch Ipocratis']", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m015:norm", "ref": "1r.1–1r.22", "conventional_ref": "Arzenîbuoch Ipocratis, preface ('Capsula eburnea' prognostics)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "sîne buoche legen in sîn grap under sîn houbet dârnâch über lanc vuor ein keiser dâvüre. unde verwânteinen daz michel schatz dâinne wære. dô hiez er daz [grab] [offenen] unde vande dâr inne [ein] buoch alle sîne arzâtîe", "translation": "...to lay his books in his grave under his head. Long after, an emperor passed by and thought there was great treasure inside. Then he had the grave opened and found in it a book of all his medicine...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The medical book opens with a legend: Hippocrates' secret book was buried under his head, found by an emperor, and given only to the physician 'Promodosius'. The prognostic signs of death that follow (swelling of the face, left hand on the breast, itching nose = death on day 23; frenetic with red cheeks = day 9) belong to the Latin 'Capsula eburnea' tradition. Hidden revealed knowledge serves to vouch for prognoses that are partly real Hippocratic medicine.", "claimed_effect": "Predicting the day of death", "claimed_mechanism": "Authority of a buried secret book; symptom-based prognosis", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-29", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Bamberger Arzneibuch", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m015:norm", "ref": "2v.10–2v.20", "conventional_ref": "Arzenîbuoch Ipocratis, spleen and wound recipes", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "nim die mittelen rinden dere salhewîden eine hant vol unde siut si in eineme niuwen havene mit deme virnen wîne ... obe dû diz dârane wollest versuochen. sô gip ez eineme swîne ze trinken", "translation": "Take a handful of the middle (inner) bark of the sallow willow and boil it in a new pot with old wine... If you want to test this, give it to a pig to drink...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "These are purely pharmacological recipes. For the spleen, a decoction of inner willow bark (a source of salicin) in old wine. For wounds, powdered brooklime ('bungen'), with a prognostic rider: if the wounded man vomits it, he dies. There is an explicit test on an animal ('give it to a pig'), and the arrow-extraction poultice of fern and old lard comes with the same kind of check ('bind it on the other side'). The recipes also stress a 'new pot', a ritual-looking detail that may simply be about cleanliness.", "claimed_effect": "Relief of spleen pain; wound healing", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbal decoction; empirical testing on animals", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-30", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Innsbrucker Arzneibuch (Cod. 652)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Bavarian)", "language": "lat/gmh", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m016:norm", "ref": "77v.19–78r.4", "conventional_ref": "Innsbrucker Arzneibuch, worm remedies", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "equis quibus vermes nocent· liga circa collum unum os mortui equi· statim vermes moriuntur· quem vermis mordet· adiutorium nostrum· in· nomine· domini· ... et Christus inpetra sedebat· et virgam in manu tenebat", "translation": "For horses troubled by worms, tie a bone of a dead horse around the neck; at once the worms die. For one whom the worm bites: 'Our help is in the name of the Lord...' and 'Christ sat on a stone and held a rod in his hand...'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the middle of a mostly herbal recipe book come an amulet (a dead horse's bone on a live horse's neck) and a full worm charm. The charm has a Latin historiola (Christ on a stone with a rod, ordering the worms to die if alive and to come out if dead), three paternosters, and a German command 'wurm ich gebiute dir bî gotes worten et sancti Jop'. Shortly before, a Longinus formula against nosebleed appears among the recipes ('der lange Longinus transfixit Christi latus', 77r.3–5), followed at once by a practical remedy: eggshell powder blown into the nose through a reed.", "claimed_effect": "Worms die or leave", "claimed_mechanism": "Sympathetic amulet (dead horse bone); historiola; command", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-31", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Innsbrucker Arzneibuch (Cod. 652)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "lat/gmh", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m016:norm", "ref": "78r.4–78r.12", "conventional_ref": "Innsbrucker Arzneibuch, epilepsy and lizard", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "contra cadentem morbum· tolle hirundines denido· et capita eorum abscide· et misce album tus cum eo sanguine ... et dum primum luna crescat vel decrescat da at bibendum· ... nim die egedehsen unde lege sie viventem infirmo super umbilicum et liga omnis morbus qui est inaegro der kumet indie egedehsen·", "translation": "Against epilepsy: take swallows from the nest, cut off their heads, and mix white frankincense with the blood... and give it to drink when the moon first waxes or wanes... Take a lizard and lay it alive on the sick man's navel and bind it; all the sickness in the patient goes into the lizard.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "For epilepsy, a drink of nestling swallows' blood and frankincense, timed by the lunar phase, which links epilepsy (lunaticus) with the moon. For general illness, transference: a live lizard bound on the navel draws the disease into itself. Plain herbal remedies (nettle cures increasing by a spoonful a day for nine days) sit beside these.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of epilepsy and of 'all illness'", "claimed_mechanism": "Animal sympathy; lunar timing; transference of disease into an animal", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-32", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Arzneibuch, Züricher (Zentralbibl. C 58)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Alemannic)", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1175, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m017:norm", "ref": "44v.a.2–44v.a.24", "conventional_ref": "Zürcher Arzneibuch, headache", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "hier beginnet daz arzenbuoch Ypocratis· ... at capitis dolorem· nim wermuoten· rutam· ephöuwe. daz an der erde wehset· unde niuwez mit honige. unde mischeiz mit dem wîzen des eies. legeez an ein tuoch· unde· verbint daz houbet dâr mite.", "translation": "Here begins the medical book of Hippocrates... For headache: take wormwood, rue and ground ivy that grows on the earth, crush it with honey, mix it with egg white, spread it on a cloth and bind the head with it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Zürich text of the 'Arzenîbuoch Ipocratis'. Most of it is herbal and mineral pharmacy: poultices, collyria of myrrh, aloe, litharge and orpiment, wound powders of myrrh, frankincense, mastic and resin, sulphur salves for scabies, garlic decoction for bladder stone. There are no words of power in this section. The recipes' authority comes from 'Hippocrates', not from Christ or the saints.", "claimed_effect": "Relief of headache and other ailments", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbal and mineral pharmacy", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-33", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Arzneibuch, Züricher (Zentralbibl. C 58)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1175, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m017:norm", "ref": "45v.b.27–45v.b.29", "conventional_ref": "Zürcher Arzneibuch, stone; cf. 47r.a.12–19 (Christmas egg), 46r.a.33–46r.b.2 (swallow-stone), 46v.b.17–28 (ointment buried nine days)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "sô bristet der stein· item. nim daz ei daz an dem donerstage geleget würde· unde gip ez im mitdem wîne zetrinkenne·", "translation": "...so the stone breaks. Item: take an egg laid on a Thursday and give it to him to drink with wine.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The same rational-looking recipe book uses ingredients whose power depends on time and the sacred calendar. An egg laid on a Thursday (Donar's day) works against the stone. An egg laid on Christmas Day, burnt to powder, removes a film from the eye (47r.a.12–19). A stone found in a swallow is laid under the tongue for pleurisy (46r.a.33ff.). The 'unguentum graecum' is buried in a bronze vessel in the earth for nine days (46v.b.17–28). These ritual elements sit inside pharmacy, not in a separate magical genre.", "claimed_effect": "Breaking bladder stone, clearing the eye, curing pleurisy", "claimed_mechanism": "Virtue conferred by sacred or weekday time; burial; magical stones", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-34", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Kräuterbuch, Innsbrucker Fassung", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th c. (MS); Prüll version Clm 536 (m126)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m125:norm", "ref": "78v.1–79r.6", "conventional_ref": "Innsbrucker (Prüler) Kräuterbuch", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "daz galgan ist warmer natûre. iz döuwet. unde loeset. machet den munt vilesüeze stinkente. unde bringet den man. unde daz wîp. zemichelen minnen. ... paeonia ist guot vürezebringen den wîben ire naturae bluot", "translation": "Galingale is of a warm nature; it aids digestion and loosens, makes the mouth smell very sweet, and brings man and woman to great love... Peony is good for bringing on women's natural blood...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A short herbal in humoral terms (warm natures). Hyssop drunk in warm water expels a dead fetus. Gentian and hellebore boiled in vinegar are good for madmen. Mugwort bound on the belly speeds childbirth, but must be removed at once lest the womb follow. Galingale, zedoary and nutmeg are 'warm', sweeten the breath and kindle love. Peony is an emmenagogue. Love is induced here by spice and humoral heat, not by spells.", "claimed_effect": "Aphrodisiac effect, emmenagogue, expelling a dead fetus, calming madness", "claimed_mechanism": "Humoral 'warm nature' of spices and herbs", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-35", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Prüler Steinbuch (M1) (Clm 536)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Bavarian)", "language": "lat/gmh", "date": "mid-12th c.", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m220p:norm", "ref": "82v.24–83r.18", "conventional_ref": "Prüler Steinbuch, jasper", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "obdaz wîp daz getrinket dâder selbe stein ingeworfen wirdet. issi nieht maget ûfire vüeze netzet. ist daz si maget ist izne wirret irniet. ... swelich wîp diu den stein hât andem vinger dazer die hût dâ durch rüeret. si wirdet niet swanger.", "translation": "If a woman drinks [water] into which this stone has been thrown: if she is not a virgin, she wets her feet; if she is a virgin, it does her no harm... Any woman who has the stone on her finger so that it touches the skin will not become pregnant.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A lapidary of the twelve apocalyptic stones. Jasper staunches blood, helps with fever and childbirth, heals snakebite, draws out poison, and helps the eye if one blesses oneself with it 'in nomine patris' on three mornings. It also works as a virginity test (the non-virgin who drinks the jasper-water urinates) and as a contraceptive ring. Further on (83v.12–24) chrysolite and amethyst make the wearer loved, beryl makes devils flee, and sardius protects against epilepsy. Stones work by their natural 'virtue', sometimes with an added blessing.", "claimed_effect": "Virginity test, contraception, healing, love, protection from devils", "claimed_mechanism": "Occult virtue of stones, sometimes plus self-blessing", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-36", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Bartholomäus (Cgm 92)", "author": "'Meister Bartholomäus' (attributed)", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "c. 1200 (text); 13th c. MS", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m302:norm", "ref": "13v.a.18–14r.b.18", "conventional_ref": "Bartholomäus, Verbena chapter (after Macer)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet", "divination", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "der diselben wurz graben wile. der sol si umbe rîzen mit golde. unde mit silber. unde spreche dâr obe einen pâternoster. unde Credo in deum unde sprich. ich gebiute dir edeliu wurz V͛bena. In nomine patris ... unde bî den zwein unde sibenzic namen. des almehtigen gotes", "translation": "Whoever wants to dig up this herb should draw a circle round it with gold and silver and say over it a paternoster and the Creed, and say: 'I command you, noble herb Verbena, in the name of the Father... and by the seventy-two names of almighty God...'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A full herb-gathering rite in a learned medical book. The digger circles the plant with gold and silver, says the paternoster and the Creed, and adjures the herb by the 72 names of God, four angels (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and the non-canonical 'Antoniel') and the four evangelists. Gold and silver lie by it overnight, it is dug before sunrise without touching iron, washed in wine and consecrated on a Marian feast. It serves as a prognostic (hidden in the hand, it predicts the patient's recovery from his answer), as an amulet for women in childbed and for infants, against sleeplessness, against 'all zouber', and against the alp (nightmare) by fumigation. It also makes the bearer loved and tireless on the road, and is tied to the horse's forelock.", "claimed_effect": "Protection from sorcery and nightmare, prognosis, favour, endurance", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbal virtue activated and bound by adjuration, divine names, precious metals, timing, avoidance of iron", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-37", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Bartholomäus (Cgm 92)", "author": "'Meister Bartholomäus'", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "c. 1200 (text)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m302:norm", "ref": "14r.b.19–14v.b.3", "conventional_ref": "Bartholomäus, epilepsy strap", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "sô binde ich hier den siechtuom dises mennischen indisem knopfe ... In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti begrabe ich mit diseme riemen den siechtuom ditze mennischen. mit dem gedinge. daz disem mennischen dirre siechtuom niemer mêre gewerre. unz dirre lîchname andem jungestem tage erstê.", "translation": "'So I bind here the sickness of this person in this knot'... 'In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit I bury with this strap the sickness of this person, on the condition that this sickness never trouble him again until this corpse rises on the Last Day.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A transference rite for epilepsy. A new deerskin strap is knotted around the patient's neck during the fit, with a formula that binds the sickness into the knot. The patient abstains from wine until a funeral takes place; then the strap is untied and buried under the dead man's shoulder with a formula. The sickness is to stay away 'until this corpse rises on the Last Day'. The resurrection is used as a legal deadline in the formula.", "claimed_effect": "Permanent cure of epilepsy", "claimed_mechanism": "Binding illness into a knot; burial with a corpse; conditional formula tied to the Resurrection", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-38", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Bartholomäus (Cgm 92)", "author": "'Meister Bartholomäus'", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "c. 1200 (text)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m302:norm", "ref": "8v.a.25–8v.b.11", "conventional_ref": "Bartholomäus, remote blood-staunching", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "swenne dir gesaget werde daz ein mennische vaste bluote. sô sende dînen boten hinze wazzer. unde gebiut dem boten daz er niene spreche underwegen. ... sprich danne disiu wort. In nomine patris ... N. caro carice confirma Ysmaheli te. daz tuo drîstunte. unde gip dem boten zetrinkenne. ob der dâ niht sî. der dâ bluotet.", "translation": "When you are told that someone is bleeding badly, send your messenger for water and order him not to speak on the way... then say these words: 'In the name of the Father... N. caro carice confirma Ysmaheli te.' Do this three times and give it to the messenger to drink, if the bleeder is not there.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Healing at a distance. Water fetched in silence is strained through the healer's shirt, garbled Latin words are said over it, and the messenger drinks it in place of the absent patient. 'Truly, it stops at once.' Just before this, a practical snakebite remedy (dragon-wort in vinegar, a plantain poultice, a deerskin strap above the swelling, which works as a tourniquet) shows the book mixing practical and magical cures.", "claimed_effect": "Bleeding stops even if the patient is absent", "claimed_mechanism": "Silent fetching; contact with healer's shirt; words of power; proxy drinking", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-39", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Bartholomäus (Cgm 92)", "author": "'Meister Bartholomäus'", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1200 (text)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m302:norm", "ref": "9v.b.6–9v.b.12", "conventional_ref": "Bartholomäus, wound prognosis", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "wilt dû versuochen ob der wunde man sterben oder genesen schule. sô nim pibinellā. unde zertrîp di in wazzer. unde gip im di wurze. alsô indem wazzer zetrinkenne. sol er genesen er verdöuwet di wurze. sol er sterben. dû vindest di wurz inder wunden.", "translation": "If you want to test whether the wounded man will die or recover, take burnet, grind it in water and give him the herb to drink thus in the water. If he is to recover, he digests the herb; if he is to die, you will find the herb in the wound.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A 'prognostic' that is in fact a real diagnostic test. A drink that reappears in a trunk wound shows that the gut has been perforated, which was nearly always fatal before modern surgery. The same book also has an irrational virginity test with burnt celery smoke (13r.b.27–13v.a.4).", "claimed_effect": "Predicts death or recovery of a wounded man", "claimed_mechanism": "Observation of whether the drink reappears in the wound", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-40", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Bartholomäus (Cgm 92)", "author": "'Meister Bartholomäus'", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1200 (text)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m302:norm", "ref": "7v.a.12–7v.a.19", "conventional_ref": "Bartholomäus, henbane fumigation for tooth-worms", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "swem di würme zende holent unde di bilerne æzent. nim bilsenöle. unde bere daz mit wahse. unde mache ein kerzen. unde stecke di inein schüzzel. dâein lützel wazzers inne sî. sô diu kerze entbrinne. sô habe di zende dâr über. sô vallent di würme", "translation": "For one whose teeth the worms hollow and whose gums they eat: take henbane oil, knead it with wax, make a candle and set it in a bowl with a little water. When the candle burns, hold the teeth over it; then the worms fall out.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The famous henbane fumigation against 'tooth-worms'. Henbane really is an analgesic: its smoke contains scopolamine and hyoscyamine. The 'worms' seen falling into the water were probably burst seeds or wax threads. The same book also uses henbane oil in salves for swellings (7v.b.22) and a poppy foot-bath (mâgenkrût) for feverish sleeplessness (11v.b.10–13).", "claimed_effect": "Toothache cured; worms fall out", "claimed_mechanism": "Fumigation drives out worms", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-41", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Bartholomäus (Cgm 92)", "author": "'Meister Bartholomäus'", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1200 (text)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m302:norm", "ref": "12v.a.3–12v.b.5", "conventional_ref": "Bartholomäus, lead tablet, dog-silencing, hemlock", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "rune-writing-magic", "poison-drug", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "wellesdû machen daz dich dîne vîande müezen vermîden. sô schrîp aneinem blîwe. oder ane eine zinîne tavel. sînen namen. unde dise buochstabe. h. h. S. it. l. V. P. unde trac./ den briev under dînem vuoze. ... wilt dû di vogel vâhen mit der hant. ein wurze heizet Cẏcvta daz diutet scherlinc.", "translation": "If you want your enemies to avoid you, write on lead or a tin tablet his name and these letters: h. h. S. it. l. V. P., and carry the writing under your foot... If you want to catch birds by hand: a herb is called Cicuta, which means hemlock...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A cluster of 'experimenta'. A lead or tin tablet inscribed with the enemy's name and letters (cf. ancient lead defixiones) is carried under the foot. A test of which woman 'wants a man' uses a turnip ground in linen that breeds worms. A weasel's tail and hare's hair, or a dog's heart and tongue under the big toe, stop dogs barking. Wheat steeped in hemlock juice and yeast stupefies birds so that they can be caught by hand. Real poisoning and inscribed binding magic stand side by side.", "claimed_effect": "Enemies avoid you; dogs fall silent; birds cannot fly", "claimed_mechanism": "Inscribed name and letters (binding); animal sympathies; poison", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-42", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Bartholomäus (Cgm 92)", "author": "'Meister Bartholomäus'", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1200 (text)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m302:norm", "ref": "16v.a.2–16v.a.18", "conventional_ref": "Bartholomäus, Epistula vulturis", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "Ieronimus der heilige man vant anden kaldêischen buochen. von maniger erzenîe diu an manigem vogel ist. ... swer den gîr zeerzenîe wile. der sol des vâren. daz er in erslahe âne îsene.", "translation": "St Jerome found in the Chaldean books much medicine that lies in many birds... Whoever wants the vulture for medicine must take care to kill it without iron.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The 'vulture letter' tradition, put under Jerome's authority via 'Chaldean books'. The vulture must be killed without iron. Every limb is a medicine. Its right eye carried in the left hand wins the favour of lords and success in lawsuits, its heart in the sleeve brings victory, and candlesticks made from its claws show poison by going out, as 'Galen' tells of King Orestes. The magic of the bird's parts is credited to scholarly and patristic authority.", "claimed_effect": "Healing, favour of lords, victory, poison detection", "claimed_mechanism": "Occult virtues of animal parts; no-iron rule", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-43", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Frauengeheimnisse (Innsbruck, Cod. 652)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German / Latin", "language": "lat/gmh", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m072:norm", "ref": "79v.19–79v.24", "conventional_ref": "Innsbrucker Frauengeheimnisse, crow-skull rite", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "divination", "transformation", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "tolle testam decapite cornicis ... exprime mamillas [lac] [matris] infantis insupradictam testam cornicis ... et ita pasce tribus continuis diebus ... audivi abbatem desuperiori scocia cum magna affirmatione dicere. quot postea quando creverit infans possit discernere omnes voces cornicorum et significationes earum.", "translation": "Take the skull of a crow's head... press the mother's milk into the crow's skull... and feed the child thus for three successive days... I heard an abbot from Upper Scotland affirm emphatically that afterwards, when the child grows up, he can understand all the voices of crows and their meanings.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a short gynaecological text: for postpartum illness, a stag's genitals taken in the rut and eaten in an egg for nine nights; a blessed elecampane (alant) root cut on St Peter's day, hung to dry 'without smoke' and blessed 'nine times'. Then comes a rite feeding a newborn its mother's milk from a crow's skull so that it will later understand the language of crows, which is augury by birth-magic. The compiler vouches for it with an oral source, an Irish or Scottish abbot ('Scotia superior'), and his strong assurance.", "claimed_effect": "Child will understand crow-language (omens)", "claimed_mechanism": "Sympathy (crow skull carries crow speech); first feeding", "practitioner": "mother/midwife; source: an abbot", "practitioner_gender": "female (mother) / male informant", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-44", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Tegernseer Prognostica (Cgm 5250/26)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Bavarian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "12th–13th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m225:norm", "ref": "1r.5–1r.20", "conventional_ref": "Tegernseer Lunar (Lunare) prognostics", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "diu drîzehende lûne. ist von mittemtage guot· si ist aber niht guot anzevâhen ein iegelich dinc· geborenez kint wirdet manhaft· küene unde hêr· unde wirdet niht alt· ... der troum ergêt in siben tagen.", "translation": "The thirteenth moon(-day) is good from midday, but it is not good for beginning anything; a child born then will be manly, bold and proud, and will not grow old... the dream comes true in seven days.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A German lunarium. For each day of the lunar month it gives whether the day suits undertakings, the character and lifespan of children born then (boys and girls separately), whether a sick person recovers or dies, and when dreams come true. Divination by the moon, for everyday use.", "claimed_effect": "Forecasts of birth, sickness and dream fulfilment", "claimed_mechanism": "Lunar day determines outcomes", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-45", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Monatsregeln für die Wahl eines Freundes (Vienna, ÖNB 2245)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "lat/gmh", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1175, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m146:norm", "ref": "1.1–11.4", "conventional_ref": "Monatsregeln für die Wahl eines Freundes", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Martius dicit nim decheinen vriunt in Ariete. wante ir scheidet iuch mit unminnen. Aprilis dicit. sô dû vindes daz signum in Tauro. sône scholtdû nieht erwinden êr dû dir einen vriunt gewinnes.", "translation": "March says: take no friend [when she is] in Aries, for you will part in enmity. April says: when you find the sign in Taurus, do not rest until you win yourself a friend.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Rhymed rules, month by month, on when to make friends depending on the sign in which 'she' (the moon) stands. Friendships begun under Gemini or Leo last; under Cancer or Libra they end in envy or anger; under Scorpio the friend is loyal only for gifts. Catarchic astrology applied to social life.", "claimed_effect": "Durability of friendships", "claimed_mechanism": "Moon's zodiacal sign at the start of an undertaking", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-46", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Verfahren beim Gottesurteil (Trier, StB 1917/1514)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Middle Franconian)", "language": "lat/gmh", "date": "12th c. (MS)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m236:norm", "ref": "50v.1–50v.27", "conventional_ref": "Trierer Gottesurteil (cold-water ordeal)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "postea puer qui vice accusati mittendus est inaquam. consignatus cum evangelio. inprincipioe.. u.. simul cum accusato statuatur. etsacerdosdicat haec verba. disen kristenen mennischen den lîche ich dir", "translation": "Afterwards the boy who is to be sent into the water in place of the accused, signed with the Gospel 'In principio', is to be placed together with the accused, and the priest says these words: 'This Christian person I lend to you...'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A cold-water ordeal over a stolen horse, as liturgy. Mass is said, the water is blessed, and accuser and accused stand facing east, each holding a 'sunnestâp' (sun-staff). The German oath formulas between Kuonrât and Ruodolf are recorded, and 'diseme gesegeneten wâge' (this blessed water) is to judge. A boy is sent into the water as the accused's proxy, signed with the opening of John's Gospel. Church-run divination by water. Elsewhere, Priester Wernher's Marienleben (m241y, 3267–3280) describes the Jews' bitter-water ordeal, whose water was blessed and adjured ('alsô gesegenen kunden unde alsô tiefe beswern') so that the guilty died.", "claimed_effect": "Judgement of guilt or innocence", "claimed_mechanism": "Blessed water reveals guilt by accepting or rejecting the body", "practitioner": "priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Ecclesiastically administered judicial ordeal (before the 1215 ban on clerical participation)", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-47", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Erfurter Judeneid", "author": "Anonymous (issued by Bishop Konrad)", "culture": "Medieval German (Thuringian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1160–1200", "date_sort": 1190, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m117:norm", "ref": "1–12", "conventional_ref": "Erfurter Judeneid", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "ob dû unrehte sweres. daz dich di erde verslinde. di Datan unde Abiron verslant. unde ob dû unrehte sweres. daz dich di miselsuht bestê. di Naamanen liez. unde Jezi bestuont.", "translation": "If you swear falsely, may the earth swallow you, which swallowed Datan and Abiron; and if you swear falsely, may the leprosy seize you that left Naaman and seized Gehazi.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A Jewish oath imposed by law. It is a conditional self-curse modelled on biblical punishments (the earth swallowing Datan and Abiron; Naaman's leprosy passing to Gehazi; destruction by the Law of Moses). The Pfälzer Judeneid (m118) adds burning by heavenly fire and invokes 'Adonay'. Here a curse formula is official, binding legal procedure.", "claimed_effect": "Perjurer is destroyed", "claimed_mechanism": "Conditional curse by biblical precedent", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Court oath imposed on Jews by the bishop", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-48", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Bamberger Glaube u. Beichte (Clm 4460)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1140", "date_sort": 1140, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m089:norm", "ref": "143.34–143.38", "conventional_ref": "Bamberger Beichte", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "other", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "in zoubere. in goukele. in heilsôde. in getrügede. an deme verwâzenen merrsale. des gotes rehtes. in alleme tiuvelheite.", "translation": "...in sorcery, in conjuring tricks, in omen-taking, in deception, in the accursed obstruction of God's judgement (the ordeal), in all devilry.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A model confession that lists the magic sins: zouber (sorcery), goukel (jugglery/illusion), heilsôd (augury, omen-seeking), getrügede (deceit), and the 'accursed hindering of God's judgement'. The last most likely means tampering with the ordeal by counter-magic, though that reading is interpretive. The Wessobrunn confession (m097, 28W-143.36) has 'zoubere, gougelôde, heilslihtunge'. The Uppsala Sündenklage (m222, 2.6) pairs 'mordes unde zouberes'. Here magic counts as a sin to confess.", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a (catalogue of sins)", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Penitential practice; lay confession", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-49", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Hoffmannsche Predigtsammlung (Vienna 2718)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "12th–13th c.", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m165:norm", "ref": "27r.17–27r.21", "conventional_ref": "Baptismal exorcism in a sermon", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "der mennische wirdet von dem boesen geiste erloeset. swenne der priester oder swer dâ toufet. und den tiuvel verblâset und beswert. indem namen des vateres und des sunes und des heiligen geistes. daz er entwîche von dem mennischen", "translation": "A person is freed from the evil spirit when the priest, or whoever baptises, blows the devil away and adjures him in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to depart from the person...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A sermon explains the exsufflation and exorcism at baptism. The verbs are the same as in the charms (beswern, to adjure; verblâsen, to blow away). Lawful exorcism and the charmer's adjuration use the same language; what differs is who performs it and in what setting.", "claimed_effect": "Devil departs from the baptisand", "claimed_mechanism": "Exsufflation and adjuration in the Trinity's name", "practitioner": "priest or any baptiser", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-50", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Kaiserchronik A (Vorau)", "author": "Anonymous (Regensburg cleric)", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1150", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m121y:norm", "ref": "2082–2094", "conventional_ref": "Kaiserchronik 2082ff. (Simon Magus, Clementine legend)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "illusion-trickery", "invisibility-invulnerability", "alchemy" ], "excerpt_original": "meister er hât ein ungemeiletez kint erslagen. und hât iz under sînem bette begraben dâ mit zoubert er swaz er wile. ... den blîen machen wir zegolde er sprichet welle in ieman vâhen. der nemege im niemer genâhen", "translation": "'Master, he has slain an unblemished child and buried it under his bed; with it he works whatever magic he wants... He says: \"we make lead into gold\"; he says if anyone tries to seize him, no one can come near him...'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Simon Magus as the arch-goukelære. His power comes from the murdered soul of a pure child buried under his bed, which is necromancy. He claims to turn lead into gold, become invisible, and die and come alive again. Peter later unmasks the child-murder (2546–2571: 'dû bist ein goukelære. die tiuvel helfent dir dâ zuo'). At 4212–4247 Simon is carried into the air by devils from a bronze column and crashes when Peter makes the sign of the cross. Magic here is the devil's help and deception, defeated by the sign of the cross.", "claimed_effect": "Transmutation, invisibility, revival, flight", "claimed_mechanism": "Spirit of a murdered child; devils' help", "practitioner": "Simon Magus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-51", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Kaiserchronik A (Vorau)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "c. 1150", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m121y:norm", "ref": "3515–3549", "conventional_ref": "Kaiserchronik 3515ff. (Faustinianus on astrology)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "hætes dû ein teil gevlizzen baz. sô wære dir astronomîa vile kunde. ... daz meisterent allez septem planetae. di di himele rihtent. unde die wîle tihtent.", "translation": "Had you studied a little harder, astronomy would be well known to you... All this is mastered by the seven planets, which rule the heavens and compose the hours.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the Clementine recognition story, old Faustinianus defends astral fatalism. The 24 hours each have their power and no human cunning can stop their course. Whoever died in battle died because it was 'his hour and his day', drowned or slain as the hour required, all governed by 'septem planetae'. Christian speakers then refute him. The debate is staged as the pagan view that Christians must reject.", "claimed_effect": "Fixed destiny of death", "claimed_mechanism": "Planetary hours determine fate", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-52", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Kaiserchronik A (Vorau)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1150", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m121y:norm", "ref": "10043–10051", "conventional_ref": "Kaiserchronik 10031ff. (Silvester and Zambri)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "other", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "dar gieng der hêbrêische man. er hiez den var stille stân. ... er neliez iz nieman hoeren. er rûnete im indaz ôre. bizzdaz er volsprach ein wort. der var viel nider tôt.", "translation": "The Hebrew man went there; he ordered the bull to stand still... he let no one hear it; he whispered into its ear, until he had spoken one word through. The bull fell down dead.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the Silvester disputation, the Jewish master Zambri kills a wild bull by whispering a secret word (in the legend, the name of God) into its ear. Silvester answers (10134–10149) that Zambri did it 'mit dem tiuvel', since killing is the devil's work, like manslaughter, and sets a test: if it was done by God, let him raise the bull. Silvester then revives it 'in Christ's name'. The criterion for telling miracle from magic is that God gives life and the devil only destroys. The ear-whisper parallels the horse charm (entry 1).", "claimed_effect": "Instant death of a bull", "claimed_mechanism": "Secret word/name whispered; (per Silvester) devil's power", "practitioner": "Zambri (Jewish sage)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Anti-Jewish disputation narrative", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-53", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Kaiserchronik A (Vorau)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1150", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m121y:norm", "ref": "12179–12195", "conventional_ref": "Kaiserchronik, Crescentia episode", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "dû bist ein unholde. und sitzest hier behangen mit golde. si sprach goteweiz hêrreguot kneht. ir tuot mir michel unreht ... got weiz wole di schulde. ob ich bin ein unholde. oder iedecheines zoubers gepflac.", "translation": "'You are an unholde (witch/fiend), and you sit here hung with gold!' She said: 'God knows, good sir, you do me great wrong... God knows well the guilt, whether I am an unholde or ever practised any sorcery.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the Crescentia legend, a rejected courtier insults the lady's old attendant as an 'unholde' who 'should rather go to the woods' and as an 'übeliu hornblâse'. Later the duke's man accuses Crescentia herself of bewitching the duke 'mit zouberlîchen dingen' (12319) and of being 'drowned through zouber' (12164). The duke beats her and vows she will 'never bewitch nor deceive' again (12343). The accusation of sorcery appears as a slander weapon against women at court. This is the nearest thing to a 'witch' in the corpus, and the narrator presents the accusation as unjust.", "claimed_effect": "Alleged bewitching of a husband", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a (accusation)", "practitioner": "accused women", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Court intrigue; slander of women", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-54", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Kaiserchronik A (Vorau)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1150", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m121y:norm", "ref": "13216–13250", "conventional_ref": "Kaiserchronik 13067ff. (Astrolabius and the Venus statue)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "love", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "daz der priester der hêrre Eusebius. die wîl er jungelinc was. inden swarzen buochen er las. ... an einem buoche er dô las vile unlange stuont daz. unze der tiuvel zuo vuor. alse tiure erinbeswuor.", "translation": "...that the priest, lord Eusebius, while he was a young man, read in the black books... He read from a book; it did not take long until the devil came, so strongly did he conjure him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Young Astrolabius puts his betrothal ring on the finger of a Venus statue in which the devil dwells, and pines away 'bound' to it (13109–13130). The court chaplain Eusebius, who studied 'the black books' as a youth, summons the devil by reading from a book and forces him 'in gotes ban' to return the ring. The devil protests that Eusebius is perjured, having sworn to keep his Christianity. Necromantic knowledge is used against the devil with the narrator's approval: the same art is licit in a priest's hands for a rescue.", "claimed_effect": "Erotic enslavement; its reversal", "claimed_mechanism": "Ring as bond with an idol-demon; book-conjuration; command in God's ban", "practitioner": "priest Eusebius (former student of black books)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-55", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Altdeutsche Exodus (Vienna 2721)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1120–1130", "date_sort": 1125, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m068:norm", "ref": "1242–1250", "conventional_ref": "Altdeutsche Exodus 1242ff. (Exod. 7:11–12)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "zwêne goukelære er dô ladete. die macheten gelîche. trachen samelîche. mit goukeles liste. sine mahten iz gevristen. disiu alterseine. neveræze ene beide.", "translation": "He [Pharaoh] then summoned two jugglers; they made, likewise, dragons in the same way, by the art of illusion; they could not save them: this one [Aaron's] alone devoured both of theirs.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The German poet calls Pharaoh's magicians goukelære (jugglers, illusionists) and their art 'goukeles list'. At 1287–1291 he adds that 'mit galsters liste' (by the art of incantation) they copied the water-into-blood plague. The Bible's magicians become performers of illusion and incantation, set against God's true signs (zeichen).", "claimed_effect": "Staffs into serpents; water into blood", "claimed_mechanism": "Illusion (goukel) and incantation (galster)", "practitioner": "Egyptian court magicians", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-56", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Wiener Genesis (Vienna 2721)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1060–1080", "date_sort": 1070, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m088:norm", "ref": "1282–1297", "conventional_ref": "Wiener Genesis 1282ff.", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "er lêrte sîniu kint dei zouber dei hiute sint. ... Adâm hiez si mîden wurze. daz sinienewurren an ire gebürte. sîn gebot si verkuren. ire geburt si verluren.", "translation": "He [Cain] taught his children the magic arts that exist today... Adam told them [the women] to avoid herbs, so that they would not harm their offspring; they disregarded his command; they lost [the right form of] their offspring.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Two aetiologies in one passage. Cain taught his descendants 'the sorceries that exist today', so magic begins with the first murderer. Adam had forbidden the women certain herbs that harm the unborn; they disobeyed and bore the monstrous races (dog-headed, mouth on the breast, eyes on the shoulders). Wolfram's Parzival tells the same story (entry 75), so it was a shared German learned tradition. It is an early theory of teratogenic plants.", "claimed_effect": "Origin of sorcery and of monstrous races", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbs damaging fetal development; Cain's devilish teaching", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-57", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Wiener Genesis (Vienna 2721)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1060–1080", "date_sort": 1070, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m088:norm", "ref": "2797–2811", "conventional_ref": "Wiener Genesis 2797ff. (Gen. 30:37–39)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "other", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "er nam alberîne stabe. sneit in die rinde iewâ. abe. lie dâr ane swarze vlecke. eteswâ wîze blecken. ... swes si dâ wart berenthaft. sô si ane sach den vêhen stap. daz wart misselîchen varwe", "translation": "He took poplar staffs, cut the bark off here and there, left black spots on them, white patches elsewhere... Whatever she [the ewe] conceived there, when she looked at the speckled staff, became of mottled colour.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Jacob's peeled rods are retold as an explicit mechanism of maternal impression: what the ewe sees at conception shapes the colour of the lamb. In Genesis this is the trick by which Jacob outwits Laban's 'übeln list'. It is presented as cleverness and natural sympathy, not as sorcery. The Vorauer Genesis (m087, ~1005–1034) leaves the rods out.", "claimed_effect": "Mottled offspring", "claimed_mechanism": "Maternal impression through sight at conception", "practitioner": "Jacob", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-58", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Wiener Genesis (Vienna 2721)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1060–1080", "date_sort": 1070, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m088:norm", "ref": "4669–4671", "conventional_ref": "Wiener Genesis 4669ff. (Gen. 44:5)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "daz irime sînen kopf stâlet. dâer ûz spulgete trinken. und inne wonete liezen.", "translation": "...that you stole his cup, from which he was wont to drink and in which he was accustomed to divine.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Joseph's silver cup 'in quo augurari solet' is translated with the old verb liezen (OHG hliozan, 'to cast lots, to divine'). This preserves a native term for divination, used for the patriarch without disapproval. Joseph's dream-interpreting (troumscheiden) runs through the same poem.", "claimed_effect": "Knowledge of hidden things", "claimed_mechanism": "Cup divination (lecanomancy)", "practitioner": "Joseph", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-59", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Balaam, Vorauer (Bücher Mosis 5)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Austrian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1130–1140", "date_sort": 1135, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m028:norm", "ref": "9–18; 116–119", "conventional_ref": "Vorauer Balaam (Num. 22–24)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "einen wîssagen insîneme lande den er habete. er bôt ime schatzes sô vile. ob er komen wolte zuo ime. unde daz er vervluochete. di got selbe leite ... diu zunge indeme munde. diu wart ime gebunden. daz er ne mahte vluochen.", "translation": "...a seer in his land whom he had; he offered him much treasure if he would come to him and curse those whom God himself led... the tongue in his mouth was bound so that he could not curse.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Balak hires the 'heathen seer' Balaam to defeat Israel by cursing, 'von des vluoches segene', a striking phrase: 'by the blessing (spell) of the curse'. Greed blinds Balaam; God binds his tongue. A professional curse-for-hire is treated as real but powerless against God's will. The Elisabeth legend (entry 69) cites Balaam as a pagan priest who learned God's will from the stars.", "claimed_effect": "Defeat of an army", "claimed_mechanism": "Paid curse by a seer", "practitioner": "Balaam (wîssage)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-60", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Straßburger Alexander", "author": "Anonymous (reworking of Lambrecht)", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1170–1187", "date_sort": 1180, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m008:norm", "ref": "83–88; 262–269", "conventional_ref": "Straßburger Alexander 83ff., 262ff. (Nectanabus rumour)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "noch sprechent manige lügenære daz er eines gouchelæres sun wære ... den stiez er ze tale über einen stein daz ime sîn hals in zwei brach wandeer ime eine lügene zuo sprach nû sprechent manige lügenære daz der sîn vater wære", "translation": "Many liars still say that he was a juggler's son... He pushed him [a master] down over a stone so that his neck broke in two, because he told him a lie; now many liars say that this man was his father.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Nectanabus, the Egyptian magician-astrologer who fathers Alexander in Pseudo-Callisthenes, is never named. The poet calls the paternity story a lie (the father is 'eines gouchelæres') and keeps only the episode of the master whose neck Alexander breaks. The birth is marked by portents (earthquake, thunder, darkened sun, 132–138). Pfaffe Lambrecht's Vorau Alexander (m009, 71–77) has the same denial. The Germans deliberately removed the magician from the hero's origin.", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a (rejected rumour of magical paternity)", "practitioner": "Nectanabus (unnamed)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-61", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Herbort von Fritzlar, Liet von Troye (H)", "author": "Herbort von Fritzlar", "culture": "Medieval German (Hessian/Thuringian court)", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1190–1210", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:herbort-von-fritzlar:m541h:norm", "ref": "545–584", "conventional_ref": "Herbort, Liet von Troye 545ff. (Medea)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination", "weather-nature", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "sie kunde arzedîen unt von nigromanzîen daz man heizet swarze buoch ... noch sô lernet man die list in einer stat zuo Tolêt ... sie beswuor daz wazzer daz iz gienc wider an sîn ursprinc ... des was niht man hette es wân daz iz alsô wære", "translation": "She knew medicine and necromancy, which is called the black book... this art is still learned in a city, Toledo... She conjured the water so that it went back to its source... That was not so; people only imagined that it was so.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea is a learned woman. She knows medicine and nigromanzîe, glossed as 'the black book' of curses and conjurations by which evil spirits are compelled to reveal past and future, an art 'still taught at Toledo in Spain'. She sends rivers back to their source and makes the moon run backwards. Then Herbort inserts a sceptical note: 'it was not so; people merely believed it'. This is one of the earliest German mentions of Toledo as a school of necromancy, joined to a naturalistic doubt. Later (9365–9373) he explains that nigromantia came down to us from the devil speaking out of idols.", "claimed_effect": "Knowledge of past and future; reversing rivers and moon", "claimed_mechanism": "Conjuring spirits from the black books", "practitioner": "Medea (zouberærinne)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Court romance adapting Benoît's Roman de Troie", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-62", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Herbort von Fritzlar, Liet von Troye (H)", "author": "Herbort von Fritzlar", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1190–1210", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:herbort-von-fritzlar:m541h:norm", "ref": "756–760; 845–856", "conventional_ref": "Herbort, Liet von Troye 756ff., 845ff. (Medea in love)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "ich wæne die elber triegent mich machet minne daz ich reben nein mir ist zouber gegeben ez enist doch dechein zouber niet von minnen ez mir geschiet ... ich wære ein zouberærinne ... nû enweiz ich waz zouber ist", "translation": "'I think the elves are deceiving me; is it love that makes me rave? No, I have been given magic. Yet it is no magic; it comes to me from love'... 'I was a sorceress... now I do not know what magic is.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea, the famous sorceress, cannot at first name her own lovesickness. She suspects elves ('die elber triegent mich') or a potion given to her, and decides it is love. She admits she was known as a 'zouberærinne' who could arrange anything between men and women, and now 'does not know what zouber is'. Love beats magic. The passage also preserves the native idea of being deceived by elves.", "claimed_effect": "Lovesickness", "claimed_mechanism": "Elf-deception or administered charm (rejected) vs love", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-63", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Herbort von Fritzlar, Liet von Troye (H)", "author": "Herbort von Fritzlar", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1190–1210", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:herbort-von-fritzlar:m541h:norm", "ref": "1013–1036", "conventional_ref": "Herbort, Liet von Troye 1013ff. (Jason's aids)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "ein bilede sie hervüre tete besungen mit ireme gebete bezoubert unt besworen ... dô gap sie im ûz ire laden ein güldîn vingerlîn daz wider den zoubern solte sîn ... swenne er ez beslôz in der hant ... daz in nieman ensach", "translation": "She brought out an image, sung over with her prayer, bewitched and conjured... she gave him out of her box a golden ring that was to be [a protection] against sorcery... whenever he closed it in his hand... no one saw him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea arms Jason with a conjured image against wrath, a salve against fire, a ring that protects against sorcery, poison and the dragon and makes him invisible when its stone is closed in the hand, and a letter. The vocabulary (besingen, bezoubern, besweren) matches the charm texts.", "claimed_effect": "Protection from fire, poison, sorcery; invisibility", "claimed_mechanism": "Consecrated image, salve, ring with stone, written text", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-64", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Herbort von Fritzlar, Liet von Troye (H)", "author": "Herbort von Fritzlar", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1190–1210", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:herbort-von-fritzlar:m541h:norm", "ref": "17631–17682", "conventional_ref": "Herbort, Liet von Troye 17631ff. (Ulysses on Circe)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug", "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "Circe kunde trenke gegeben solich zouber soliche spîse ... des weiz ich wole daz zouberlist gein mannes herzen ein wint ist ... zouber gift noch bete mohten mich niht enthalten", "translation": "Circe knew how to give drinks, such magic, such food... I know well that magic art is but wind against a man's heart... neither magic, poison nor prayer could hold me back.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ulysses tells of Circe. Her drinks and food are 'zouber', but what held him was her greeting, bearing and words, and the drink made him think only of her love. He freed himself by manly resolve: 'zouberlist gein mannes herzen ein wint ist'. Circe's transforming magic becomes seduction plus a love-drug, which a firm heart can overcome.", "claimed_effect": "Men cannot leave her; forget other women", "claimed_mechanism": "Potion and food; charm of manner", "practitioner": "Circe", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-65", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Vorauer Novelle (Vorau, Cod. 412)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Austrian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "13th c. (mid)", "date_sort": 1250, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m512:norm", "ref": "128–165", "conventional_ref": "Vorauer Novelle 128ff.", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "love", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "dâ lâse man offenlîchen. diu buoch nigromanzî. daz ist von zouberî. ein kunst diu wider ieſu Krist. von zouber tief getihtet ist. ... swer lernen wile diu zouberbuoch. der muoz den geswinden gotes vluoch. ûf sîne sêl entvâhen.", "translation": "There one read publicly the books of necromancy, which is about sorcery, an art against Jesus Christ, deeply composed of magic... 'Whoever wants to learn the magic books must take God's swift curse upon his soul.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Two young clerics travel to a city where nigromanzî is taught openly in a 'zouberschuole'. The master, greeting them in French, warns that learning the zouberbuoch brings God's curse on the soul. They accept and read from a gold-clasped book. It teaches how to 'pervert wise people with magic, deceive women and men... call up and conjure the devil' (225–235), and they use it for seduction. One dies 'on the magic book' under the curse (300). This is a cautionary tale about student necromancy, the clerical underground of learned magic.", "claimed_effect": "Deception, seduction, power", "claimed_mechanism": "Book-learned demonic conjuration", "practitioner": "student clerics and a schoolmaster", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Clerical education; 'scholastic' necromancy", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-66", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Leben der heiligen Elisabeth (A)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Thuringian/Hessian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1300", "date_sort": 1300, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m305:norm", "ref": "201–218; 240–295", "conventional_ref": "Leben der hl. Elisabeth 201ff. (Klingsor at the Wartburg)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "nû was ouch meister Clinsor. ... von Sibenbürge ûz Ungerlant. deme aller dinge wasbekant. die nigromanzîe. ûz astronomîe. kunde er schoene meisterschaft. ... diz was ein hêre volleist. daz unser hêrre sînen geist. hêrrn Clinsoren sande.", "translation": "Now Master Clinsor too... from Transylvania in Hungary, who knew all things: necromancy, and of astronomy he had fine mastery... This was a noble aid, that our Lord sent his spirit to Lord Clinsor.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At the Wartburg singers' contest, the Hungarian master Clinsor, rich and versed in necromancy and astronomy, reads the stars from his lodging in Eisenach. He predicts that the queen of Hungary will that very night bear a daughter named Elisabeth, who will marry the Landgrave's son. The poet explains that God sent his spirit to Clinsor, as to the heathen priest Balaam. A necromancer's astrology is legitimised when it announces a saint. This is where the library has Klingsor, not in its Parzival excerpt.", "claimed_effect": "Prediction of a saint's birth and marriage", "claimed_mechanism": "Reading star configurations; divine inspiration", "practitioner": "Klingsor (Clinsor)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-67", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Rudolf von Ems, Weltchronik (Z)", "author": "Rudolf von Ems", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1250", "date_sort": 1250, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m359:norm", "ref": "32411–32432", "conventional_ref": "Rudolf von Ems, Weltchronik (Solomon; after Josephus AJ 8.44–45)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "wie allen lebenen ire leben von natûre ist gegeben nâch sîner ordenunge ouch tihteer beswerunge. mit der worte grôzer kraft er zouberte. unde mit ire meisterschaft.", "translation": "...how life is given by nature to all living things according to its order; he also composed incantations; with the great power of words he worked magic, and with their mastery.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Solomon, following Josephus, knew the natures of every plant 'not after human dreams' and composed beswerunge (incantations), working zouber with 'the great power of words'. Here zouber has no blame attached: the wisest king is a master of natural lore and of incantation. Shortly before (31825–31834), Rudolf says David's treasure was hidden in sealed coffins 'mit zouberlîcher meisterschaft'.", "claimed_effect": "Exorcism/command (implied)", "claimed_mechanism": "Knowledge of natures; power of words", "practitioner": "Solomon", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-68", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Lob Salomons (Vorau)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1130–1150", "date_sort": 1140, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m131:norm", "ref": "59–98", "conventional_ref": "Lob Salomons 59ff. (dragon and shamir)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Salomon der was rîche. er tet sô wîslîche· er hiez daz liut zuo gân eine cisternam vüllen. metes unde wînes. ... dô er iz allez ûz getranc. ich weiz er inslâfente bant.", "translation": "Solomon was mighty; he acted very wisely: he had the people fill a cistern with mead and wine... When it [the dragon] had drunk it all, he bound it sleeping.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A dragon drinks Jerusalem's wells dry. Solomon fills a cistern with mead and wine, binds the drunken dragon, and in return for its freedom the dragon reveals an animal from Lebanon whose sinew, made into a cord, cuts marble (the shamir motif of the Temple-building legend). Solomon's mastery of the monster comes from cleverness and 'goteskraft', not spells. This is a Jewish-Christian legend attributed to Jerome.", "claimed_effect": "Capture of a dragon; stone-cutting cord", "claimed_mechanism": "Ruse (intoxication); secret natural knowledge", "practitioner": "Solomon", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-69", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Mitteldeutsche Predigten (K)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Central German)", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "13th c.", "date_sort": 1250, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m330:norm", "ref": "6r.14–6r.19; 6r.42–6r.50", "conventional_ref": "Sermon on St Matthew (Zaroes and Arphaxat)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "binding-curse", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "indeme lande vuoren zwêne zouberære. der ein hiez Zoroc. der ander hiez Arfaxat. die stalten michel zouber unde macheten die liute blint swenne sie wolten. unde tâten in daz sie sich niergen geregen mohten", "translation": "In that land went about two sorcerers, one called Zoroc, the other Arfaxat; they practised great magic and made people blind whenever they wished, and caused them to be unable to move at all...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the apostle legend preached to a lay audience, the two Ethiopian (Môrlant) sorcerers blind and paralyse people and claim to be gods. They fail to raise the dead king's son, whom Matthew revives. They bring dragons, which Matthew puts to sleep, and finally they flee to Babylon. The court chamberlain says 'all kinds of harm come from them'. The sorcerer is a false god and source of harm; the apostle wins by God's grace.", "claimed_effect": "Blinding, paralysis; failed resurrection", "claimed_mechanism": "Devil-aided illusion and binding", "practitioner": "Zaroes and Arphaxat", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-70", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Mitteldeutsche Predigten (Fr/G/H1)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "13th c.", "date_sort": 1250, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m328:norm", "ref": "5v.b.18–5v.b.29", "conventional_ref": "Sermon on Peter and Paul (Simon Magus)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "invisibility-invulnerability", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "dô tet er manic zeichenlich zouber. dâ di houbet stuonten ergraben in den sûlen. dâ macheteer daz di liute wânten daz si lacheten. di er wolte sticken di stickete er daz si von der stat niet kumen mohten. unde machete sich ungesihtlich", "translation": "Then he did many wonder-like magic tricks: where the heads were carved in the columns, he made people think they were laughing; those he wished to fix, he fixed so that they could not move from the spot; and he made himself invisible...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Simon's 'zouber' is described as producing appearances: carved heads 'seem' to laugh, people are fixed to the spot, and Simon vanishes 'under their hands'. The verb wânen (to believe falsely) marks these as illusions. Simon also boasts that he can raise the dead. Magic here means making people see things that are not there.", "claimed_effect": "Laughing statues, paralysis, invisibility", "claimed_mechanism": "Illusion produced by the devil", "practitioner": "Simon Magus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-71", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Mitteldeutsche Predigten (Fr/G/H1)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "13th c.", "date_sort": 1250, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m328:norm", "ref": "8v.b.12–8v.b.31", "conventional_ref": "Sermon on St Bartholomew (Astaroth)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "unde machete si toup. unde blint. unde stum. unde irrete si an ire lidemæzen. sô si in danne beteten ane. unde ime opferten sô nam er daz zouber von in. dâ mite er si geirret hæte ire sinne sô wurden si danne gesehente.", "translation": "...and he made them deaf and blind and dumb and afflicted their limbs; when they then prayed to him and sacrificed to him, he took the magic off them with which he had afflicted their senses; then they could see again.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the Bartholomew legend, the devil in the idol Astaroth first inflicts deafness, blindness, dumbness and lameness by 'zouber', then lifts the affliction when people sacrifice, so that 'foolish people thought he was a god and did signs'. This is a medieval theory of fake healing: the pagan healer's 'cures' are the removal of an illness he caused himself.", "claimed_effect": "Apparent miraculous cures by an idol", "claimed_mechanism": "Demon causes, then removes, illness", "practitioner": "demon in the idol Astaroth", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-72", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Hermann von Fritzlar, Heiligenleben", "author": "Hermann von Fritzlar (compiler)", "culture": "Medieval German (Hessian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "1343–1349", "date_sort": 1345, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m407:norm", "ref": "93r.21–93v.4", "conventional_ref": "Hermann von Fritzlar, St Prisca (Jan 18)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "dô wart der keiser zornic. unde wolte wænen si tete iz mit zoubernisse. unde liez si besuochen ob si iht bî ir hette von zoubernisse unde liez ir daz hâr abe snîden obe di kraft læge in den locken. dô sprach si. ich entuo iz niht mit zoubernisse Christus gotes sun der tuot diz.", "translation": "Then the emperor became angry and would believe she did it by sorcery; he had her searched for any magic object on her, and had her hair cut off in case the power lay in her locks. She said: 'I do not do it by sorcery; Christ, God's Son, does this.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "When St Prisca's prayer topples a temple and its idol, the persecutor assumes sorcery. He has her searched for hidden magical objects and cuts her hair because the power might lie in her locks, a Samson-like folk belief. The saint denies zoubernisse: the power is Christ's. The pagan cannot tell a miracle from magic; the saint's answer draws the line.", "claimed_effect": "Destruction of a temple", "claimed_mechanism": "(Persecutor's belief) hidden objects; power in hair", "practitioner": "St Prisca (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-73", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Hartwig von dem Hage, Margaretenlegende", "author": "Hartwig von dem Hage", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1300 (MS 14th c.)", "date_sort": 1300, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m309:norm", "ref": "M1196–M1205", "conventional_ref": "Hartwig, Margareta M1196ff.", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "dû vindest wile dû suochen. an alt geschribenen buochen des zouberærs meistern Jambrê. inheidenschaft und Manbrê von ünsererm künnen und ünsererm lebene. daz wir in hôhen lüften sweben", "translation": "'You will find, if you will search, in old written books of the sorcerer-masters Jambres and Mambres among the heathen, about our kind and our life: that we hover in the high air...'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The demon whom Margaret has overpowered tells her that the books of Jannes and Jambres, Pharaoh's magicians (2 Tim 3:8), contain knowledge of the demons' nature and life in the air, and then mentions Solomon. A body of demonological magic books is assumed to exist, credited to the biblical sorcerers.", "claimed_effect": "Knowledge of demonic nature", "claimed_mechanism": "Book knowledge of demons", "practitioner": "Jannes and Jambres (authors)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-74", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "St. Galler (mittelrheinisches) Passionsspiel", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Middle Rhenish)", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1330", "date_sort": 1330, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m532:norm", "ref": "1037–1040", "conventional_ref": "St. Galler Passionsspiel 1037ff.", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "pylate wir bringen einen man der wole mit zoubernisse kan dâr umbe wilt dû gerehte hân sô tuo ime den tôt an", "translation": "'Pilate, we bring you a man who is well skilled in sorcery; if you want to have justice, put him to death.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the passion play, the accusers bring Christ before Pilate as a sorcerer, an old polemical charge (Jesus as magus). In the Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk (m520, 295v.29–30), Pilate's letter reports that the Jews said 'er wær ein zouber'. In Die Erlösung (m306, 5391–5392) the devil takes Christ for 'ein ander zouberære'. On stage, the accusation of magic marks a misreading of divine power.", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a (accusation)", "practitioner": "Christ (falsely accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Religious drama; anti-Jewish framing", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-75", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival (D)", "author": "Wolfram von Eschenbach", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1200–1210", "date_sort": 1205, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m325:norm", "ref": "518.1–518.20", "conventional_ref": "Parz. 518,1–20", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "er erkante ouch ieteslîches art. dâr zuo der stern umbevart. der selben plânêten. waz di krefte hêten. er erkante ouch aller wurze maht. ... vile wurze ersie mîden hiez. di mennischen vruht verkêrten.", "translation": "He [Adam] also knew the nature of each thing, and the circuit of the stars, of these same planets, what powers they had; he also knew the power of all herbs... He told them to avoid many herbs that perverted human offspring.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Wolfram tells the Wiener Genesis story too (entry 56). Adam, taught by God, knew the powers of planets and herbs and warned his pregnant daughters off herbs that deform the unborn; they disobeyed, and so the misshapen people of Secundille's land, Cundrie and Malcreatiure, came about. Here the knowledge of herbs and stars is a divine gift to the first man, and misusing it causes physical harm, not demonic intervention.", "claimed_effect": "Monstrous births", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbal powers acting on pregnancy; planetary powers", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-76", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Gottfried von Straßburg, Tristan (f1/f + m)", "author": "Gottfried von Straßburg", "culture": "Medieval German (Alsatian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1210", "date_sort": 1210, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m341:norm", "ref": "11437–11448", "conventional_ref": "Gottfried, Tristan 11435ff.", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Isôt diu wîse küningîn. in ein glasevezzelîn. einen tranc von minnen. mit alsô kleinen sinnen. ûf geleit unde vorebedâht. in solichem liste vürebrâht. mit swem sîn ieman getranc. den muoseer âne sînen danc. vore allen dingen meinen.", "translation": "Isolde the wise queen had prepared in a little glass vessel a love drink, with such subtle skill devised and contrived, brought forth with such art, that whoever drank of it with anyone had, against his will, to love that one above all things.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The love potion is the work of the 'wise queen', who is also the healer of Morolt's poison (m342, 7772–7777: 'dû bist mit gelüppe wunt'). It is made by 'list' (craft). She entrusts it to Brangaene for the wedding night. Gottfried frames it as a woman's learned drug-craft (arzâtlîcher list), not demonic magic. 'Gelüppe' (poison, charm-drug) covers both poison and philtre.", "claimed_effect": "Irresistible mutual love", "claimed_mechanism": "Compounded drink acting on the will", "practitioner": "Queen Isolde of Ireland", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-77", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Gottfried von Straßburg, Tristan (f1/f + m)", "author": "Gottfried von Straßburg", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1210", "date_sort": 1210, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m341:norm", "ref": "15739–15752", "conventional_ref": "Gottfried, Tristan 15737ff. (hot-iron ordeal)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "daz der vile tugenthafte Krist wintschaffen als ein ermel ist. ... erist allen herzen bereit. ze durhnehte unde ze trügeheit. ist ez ernest ist ez spil. er ist ie swie sô man wile. ... die generte ire trügeheit. unde ire gelüppeter eit.", "translation": "...that most virtuous Christ is as wind-blown as a sleeve... He is ready for all hearts, for honesty and for deceit; whether it be earnest or game, he is always however one wants him... Her deceit saved her, and her poisoned (cunningly drugged) oath.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After Isolde passes the hot-iron ordeal with a deliberately ambiguous oath, Gottfried comments that Christ turns 'like a sleeve in the wind'. The ordeal, God's judgement, can be gamed by a 'gelüppeter eit'. This is satire on Church-run divination, and it calls a trick oath by the same word used for poison and magic drugs.", "claimed_effect": "Guilty party passes the ordeal", "claimed_mechanism": "Equivocal oath deceiving the ordeal", "practitioner": "Isolde", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-78", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Nibelungenlied (C, Donaueschingen 63)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Danubian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1200", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m321:norm", "ref": "97.1–100.4", "conventional_ref": "NL (C) 97–100", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "dâ er die tarnkappen. Alprîche ane gewan. ... einen lintrachen. sluoc des heledes hant. dô badete er in dem bluote. des ist der helt gemeit. von alsô vester hiute. daz in nie wâfen sît versneit.", "translation": "...where he won the cloak of concealment from Alberich... The hero's hand slew a dragon; then he bathed in its blood; from that the hero has so hard a skin that no weapon has cut him since.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hagen's account of Siegfried's two magical assets. The tarnkappe, won from the dwarf Alberich, gives invisibility (and in the epic, strength). Bathing in a dragon's blood gave a horny, invulnerable skin. The magic is in objects and substances; nobody casts spells. Kriemhild's prophetic falcon dream, which her mother Ute interprets (13.1–13.4), shows heroic dream-divination.", "claimed_effect": "Invisibility; invulnerability", "claimed_mechanism": "Magical object; dragon's blood", "practitioner": "Siegfried (bearer)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-79", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Hartmann von Aue, Iwein (B)", "author": "Hartmann von Aue", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1200", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m312:norm", "ref": "594–656", "conventional_ref": "Iwein 594ff., 637ff. (storm spring)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "daz ich gôz ûf den stein. dô erlasch diu sunne diu êr schein. unde zergie daz vogelsanc. als ez ein swærez weter twanc. ... sich huop ein hagel unde ein regen. wan daz mich der gotes segen. vriste von des weters nôt.", "translation": "When I poured [water] on the stone, the sun that had shone went out, and the birdsong ceased as a heavy storm forced it... A hail and rain arose; but that God's blessing preserved me from the storm's peril...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Kalogrenant pours water from the spring on an emerald stone and raises a supernatural storm of lightning, thunder and hail. It is weather-magic built into a place. The real Barenton spring in Brittany had a rain-making custom. Only 'God's blessing' (der gotes segen) saves him. It is the literary counterpart of the hail charm (entry 18).", "claimed_effect": "Storm and hail", "claimed_mechanism": "Ritual pouring on a stone at a marvellous spring", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-80", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Rheinischer Merlin (Merlin und Lüthild)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German (Ripuarian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "early 14th c.", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m530:norm", "ref": "61–117", "conventional_ref": "Rheinischer Merlin (threefold death prophecy)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Merlîn sprach ir sulet ervallen ... ir sulet aue..er...ich hangen ... ir sulet ertrinken sprach Merlîn ... eine vurke in mit den vüezen vienc daz houbet ime indaz wazzer hienc dô viel hê hine inde vertranc dê tôt was drîvalt gemanc", "translation": "Merlin said: 'You shall die by falling'... 'You shall hang'... 'You shall drown,' said Merlin... A forked branch caught him by the feet, his head hung in the water; so he fell and drowned: the death was threefold mingled.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The seneschal tests Merlin three times in disguise and receives three different predictions of his death (fall, hanging, drowning). He mocks them as lies, then dies all three ways at once. The poem says Merlin's truth-telling comes from Jesus Christ, not from any 'list'. Prophecy is legitimate when its source is God.", "claimed_effect": "Exact prediction of a threefold death", "claimed_mechanism": "Prophetic gift (from Christ)", "practitioner": "Merlin", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-81", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Wiener Physiologus (Jüngerer Physiologus)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1120", "date_sort": 1120, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m157:norm", "ref": "156v.2–156v.10", "conventional_ref": "Physiologus, Caladrius", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "mit diseme vogele mac man bekennen ob der sieche man ersterben oder genesen schol. ober sterben schol. sô kêret sich der caradrius von ime. ob er aber genesen schol. sô kêret sich der vogel zuo deme manne", "translation": "With this bird one can know whether the sick man will die or recover: if he is to die, the caradrius turns away from him; but if he is to recover, the bird turns towards the man...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The caladrius, a white bird whose dung heals dim eyes, foretells whether a sick man lives or dies by turning away from him or towards him. If it turns towards him, it takes his sickness into itself through his mouth. In the Physiologus this is allegory for Christ, but it is told as natural fact. The mandrake (139r.4–9) is the elephant's aphrodisiac 'children's herb'.", "claimed_effect": "Prognosis; cure", "claimed_mechanism": "Bird's natural sympathy; transference of disease", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-82", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Lucidarius (Gö1)", "author": "Anonymous (Braunschweig court)", "culture": "Medieval German", "language": "gmh/lat", "date": "c. 1190 (MS 13th c.)", "date_sort": 1190, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:anonymous:m132g:norm", "ref": "1v.32–1v.35", "conventional_ref": "Lucidarius I (cacodemones in the air)", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "von der erde unz anden mânen sint die übelen geiste die heizent cacodemones it est malum scientes ... von deme lufte nement sie den lîp sô sie uns erschînent.", "translation": "From the earth up to the moon are the evil spirits called cacodemones, that is, 'knowing evil'... From the air they take a body when they appear to us.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The vernacular encyclopedia gives the cosmology behind all the magic in this corpus. Evil spirits live in the sublunary air until Judgement Day and take bodies of air when they appear to humans. This is the scholastic theory of demonic apparitions, the reason sorcery was thought to work at all: through demons. Elsewhere the same text explains the tides by the moon (2v.5–6), a correct natural explanation.", "claimed_effect": "Apparitions of spirits", "claimed_mechanism": "Aerial demons assuming air-bodies", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "german-medieval-83", "corpus": "german-medieval", "work": "Hugo von Trimberg, Der Renner (E)", "author": "Hugo von Trimberg", "culture": "Medieval German (Franconian)", "language": "gmh", "date": "c. 1290–1313", "date_sort": 1300, "edition_urn": "urn:rem:hugo-von-trimberg:m334:norm", "ref": "24115–24117; 24428", "conventional_ref": "Renner 24115ff., 24428", "source_collection": "ReM", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "wanne unser ist lützel unde ir ist vile dâ von sîn wir ire goukelspil sie sehent uns wole unde wir sie niht ... Phytonissâ mit allen zouberærn", "translation": "For we are few and they [the devils] are many; therefore we are their juggling-game; they see us well and we do not see them... [In hell:] the Pythoness with all sorcerers...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The moralist turns the idea of goukel (conjuring tricks) around: humans are the devils' 'juggling act', watched by invisible demons. In his list of the damned, the Witch of Endor ('Phytonissa', the pythoness of 1 Sam 28) leads 'all sorcerers'. Elsewhere (11462–11465) he calls dice-gambling the devil's goukel. By c. 1300, sorcery is one item in a general satire of vice.", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "Demonic deception", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-1", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Greek author on Median/Persian practice", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.107.1.2", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 1.107.1 (cf. 1.108.2, 1.120, 1.128.2)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ὑπερθέμενος δὲ τῶν Μάγων τοῖσι ὀνειροπόλοισι τὸ ἐνύπνιον, ἐφοβήθη παρʼ αὐτῶν αὐτὰ ἕκαστα μαθών.", "translation": "He laid the dream before those of the Magi who interpret dreams, and when he had learned every detail from them he was afraid.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Astyages dreams that his daughter Mandane floods Asia. In Herodotus' first use of the word, the Magi are a Median tribe (1.101) with a section of professional dream-readers (oneiropoloi). They later misread a second dream, and Astyages impales them (1.120, 1.128.2). Here the Magi are court experts in a respectable science and are punished for failure, not as sorcerers.", "claimed_effect": "Accurate prediction of royal succession from dreams", "claimed_mechanism": "Dreams as signs interpretable by trained specialists", "practitioner": "Median Magi (oneiropoloi)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Court divination; failed interpreters executed by the king", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-2", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Greek author on Median/Persian practice", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.120.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 1.120.3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "παρὰ σμικρὰ γὰρ καὶ τῶν λογίων ἡμῖν ἔνια κεχώρηκε, καὶ τά γε τῶν ὀνειράτων ἐχόμενα τελέως ἐς ἀσθενὲς ἔρχεται.", "translation": "For some of the oracles too have come to small things with us, and the things that depend on dreams end up in something quite feeble.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Cyrus survived and was made 'king' in a children's game. The Magi rule that this fulfilled the dream and the danger is over. Herodotus shows interpreters bending a prophecy to please the king; they are later impaled (1.128.2). This is an early Greek picture of interpreters reshaping a prophecy after the fact.", "claimed_effect": "Prophecy can be fulfilled 'cheaply' and so neutralised", "claimed_mechanism": "Reinterpretation of the sign", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Royal consultation; fatal consequences for wrong interpretation", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-3", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Persian (Greek report)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.132.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 1.132.3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Μάγος ἀνὴρ παρεστεὼς ἐπαείδει θεογονίην, οἵην δὴ ἐκεῖνοι λέγουσι εἶναι τὴν ἐπαοιδήν· ἄνευ γὰρ δὴ Μάγου οὔ σφι νόμος ἐστὶ θυσίας ποιέεσθαι.", "translation": "A Magus standing by chants over it a theogony, which is what they say the chant (epaoidē) is; for it is not their custom to sacrifice without a Magus.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Herodotus describes Persian sacrifice. The Magus's indispensable role is to sing an epaoidē, the Greek word for an incantation, which here names a liturgical hymn on the birth of the gods. This is the root of the later Greek equation of magos with spell-singer. In its own setting the role is simply priestly.", "claimed_effect": "Valid sacrifice", "claimed_mechanism": "Ritual chant by an authorised priest", "practitioner": "Magus (Persian priest)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Public religious custom (nomos) of the Persians", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-4", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Persian (Greek report)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.140.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 1.140.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Μάγους μὲν γὰρ ἀτρεκέως οἶδα ταῦτα ποιέοντας· ἐμφανέως γὰρ δὴ ποιεῦσι. κατακηρώσαντες δὲ ὦν τὸν νέκυν Πέρσαι γῇ κρύπτουσι. Μάγοι δὲ κεχωρίδαται πολλὸν τῶν τε ἄλλων ἀνθρώπων καὶ τῶν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ ἱρέων.", "translation": "I know for certain that the Magi do this [expose corpses to birds and dogs], for they do it openly. The Persians coat the corpse in wax and bury it. The Magi are very different from other people and from the priests in Egypt.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "These are Zoroastrian-style purity rules: corpse exposure, wax-coating before burial, and the ritual killing of ants, snakes and other 'noxious' creatures (1.140.3). Herodotus marks the Magi as a distinct priestly caste with peculiar laws. He separates what he knows at first hand from what he has only heard.", "claimed_effect": "Ritual purity", "claimed_mechanism": "Avoiding pollution of earth; destroying harmful creatures", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Priestly custom", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-5", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Persian (Greek report)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.19.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 7.19.1", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "τρίτη ὄψις ἐν τῷ ὕπνῳ ἐγένετο, τὴν οἱ Μάγοι ἔκριναν ἀκούσαντες φέρειν τε ἐπὶ πᾶσαν γῆν δουλεύσειν τέ οἱ πάντας ἀνθρώπους.", "translation": "A third vision came to him in his sleep, which the Magi, on hearing it, judged to mean that the whole earth and all mankind would be enslaved to him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Xerxes dreams of an olive crown whose branches cover the earth and then vanish. The Magi read only the first half. Herodotus' narrative shows the reading to be fatally partial, since the crown 'disappears'. Magi act as official state interpreters before the invasion of Greece.", "claimed_effect": "Prediction of world conquest", "claimed_mechanism": "Symbolic dream interpretation", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "State decision-making for war", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-6", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Persian (Greek report)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.37.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 7.37.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "οἱ δὲ ἔφραζον ὡς Ἕλλησι προδεικνύει ὁ θεὸς ἔκλειψιν τῶν πολίων, λέγοντες ἥλιον εἶναι Ἑλλήνων προδέκτορα, σελήνην δὲ σφέων.", "translation": "They explained that the god was foretelling to the Greeks the eclipse of their cities, saying that the sun was the forecaster for the Greeks, the moon for themselves.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The sun vanishes in a clear sky as Xerxes sets out from Sardis (7.37.2). The Magi read the sun as the Greeks' sign and the moon as Persia's. This is an astral-omen theory with national 'patrons' among the heavenly bodies. The date is disputed: no solar eclipse visible at Sardis fits spring 480. Scholars suggest a misplaced eclipse, perhaps 478 BCE.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of the war's outcome", "claimed_mechanism": "Celestial bodies assigned to peoples as omen-bearers", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Court consultation", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-7", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Persian ritual in Thrace (Greek report)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.114.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 7.113.2–114.2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "φαρμακεύσαντες δὲ ταῦτα ἐς τὸν ποταμὸν καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ πρὸς τούτοισι ἐν Ἐννέα ὁδοῖσι τῇσι Ἠδωνῶν ἐπορεύοντο κατὰ τὰς γεφύρας", "translation": "Having worked these charms (pharmakeusantes) on the river, and many others besides, at the Nine Ways of the Edonians, they marched across by the bridges.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At the Strymon the Magi sacrifice white horses to obtain good omens (7.113.2). Herodotus uses the verb pharmakeuein, 'to use pharmaka', for this ritual handling of the river. At Nine Ways the Persians bury nine boys and nine girls alive, which Herodotus calls a Persian custom and compares with Amestris' offering to the god beneath the earth (7.114.2). It is the corpus's starkest picture of foreign ritual violence.", "claimed_effect": "Safe crossing of the river", "claimed_mechanism": "Sacrifice and propitiation of river and chthonic powers", "practitioner": "Magi; Persian army", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Military ritual on campaign", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-8", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Persian (Greek report)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.191.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 7.191.2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "τέλος δὲ ἔντομά τε ποιεῦντες καὶ καταείδοντες γόησι οἱ Μάγοι τῷ ἀνέμῳ, πρός τε τούτοισι καὶ τῇ Θέτι καὶ τῇσι Νηρηίσι θύοντες, ἔπαυσαν τετάρτῃ ἡμέρῃ, ἢ ἄλλως κως αὐτὸς ἐθέλων ἐκόπασε.", "translation": "At last the Magi, offering victims and chanting with wailing spells (goēsi) to the wind, and sacrificing besides to Thetis and the Nereids, stopped it on the fourth day, or else it somehow dropped of its own accord.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After a three-day storm wrecks the fleet off Magnesia, the Magi chant to the wind and sacrifice to Thetis, a cult they learned from Ionian Greeks. This is the clearest weather-magic in the corpus. Herodotus deliberately leaves open a natural alternative: storms end by themselves.", "claimed_effect": "Stopping a storm", "claimed_mechanism": "Incantation (goos, katadein) addressed to the wind, plus sacrifice to local sea-goddesses", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Military crisis; Persians adopt a Greek local cult", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-9", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Scythian/northern peoples (Greek report)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.105.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 4.105.1–2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "ὡς ἔτεος ἑκάστου ἅπαξ τῶν Νευρῶν ἕκαστος λύκος γίνεται ἡμέρας ὀλίγας καὶ αὖτις ὀπίσω ἐς τὠυτὸ κατίσταται. ἐμὲ μέν νυν ταῦτα λέγοντες οὐ πείθουσι", "translation": "[It is said] that once each year every one of the Neuri becomes a wolf for a few days and then returns to his former state. Those who say this do not persuade me.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Neuri, says 4.105.1, 'may well be goētes'. Scythians and Pontic Greeks swear that the Neuri turn into wolves annually. Herodotus refuses belief but records that they insist on oath. This is the first Greek werewolf report, explicitly disbelieved.", "claimed_effect": "Annual transformation into wolves", "claimed_mechanism": "Unstated; attributed to their being goētes", "practitioner": "The Neuri (whole people)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Ethnographic hearsay at the edge of the known world", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-10", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Scythian (Greek report)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.67.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 4.67–69", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "μάντιες δὲ Σκυθέων εἰσὶ πολλοί, οἳ μαντεύονται ῥάβδοισι ἰτεΐνῃσι πολλῇσι ὧδε· ἐπεὰν φακέλους ῥάβδων μεγάλους ἐνείκωνται, θέντες χαμαὶ διεξειλίσσουσι αὐτούς", "translation": "The Scythians have many diviners, who divine with many willow rods as follows: they bring great bundles of rods, lay them on the ground and unroll them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Scythian rod-divination is ancestral. The androgynous Enarees divine by splitting linden bark, a gift of Aphrodite (4.67.2). When the king falls ill, diviners name a citizen who has 'sworn falsely by the royal hearth' (4.68). If other diviners clear him, the first are bound, gagged and burned on a cart of brushwood as 'false diviners' (4.69). Divination here is a judicial instrument with lethal accountability.", "claimed_effect": "Identifying the cause (a perjurer) of the king's illness", "claimed_mechanism": "Sortition with rods; illness as consequence of perjury", "practitioner": "Scythian manteis; Enarees (androgynous diviners)", "practitioner_gender": "male and androgynous", "social_legal_context": "Royal justice; false prophets executed by burning", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-11", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Thracian (Getae), reported by Pontic Greeks", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.95.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 4.94–96", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "κατάγαιον οἴκημα ἐποιέετο. ὡς δέ οἱ παντελέως εἶχε τὸ οἴκημα, ἐκ μὲν τῶν Θρηίκων ἠφανίσθη, καταβὰς δὲ κάτω ἐς τὸ κατάγαιον οἴκημα διαιτᾶτο ἐπʼ ἔτεα τρία", "translation": "He had an underground chamber made. When it was finished he vanished from among the Thracians, went down into the chamber, and lived there for three years.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Getae 'immortalise' by going to the daimōn Salmoxis (4.94). In the Pontic Greek version Salmoxis, a former slave of Pythagoras, preaches immortality at banquets, hides underground and reappears in the fourth year, so the Thracians believe him (4.95.5). Herodotus 'neither disbelieves nor believes too much' (4.96). This is a staged resurrection, told as an exposé.", "claimed_effect": "Proof of immortality by return from the 'dead'", "claimed_mechanism": "Concealment in a hidden chamber", "practitioner": "Salmoxis/Zalmoxis", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Founding a cult of immortality among Thracians", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-12", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Libyan (Nasamones)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.172.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 4.172.3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "μαντεύονται δὲ ἐπὶ τῶν προγόνων φοιτέοντες τὰ σήματα, καὶ κατευξάμενοι ἐπικατακοιμῶνται· τὸ δʼ ἂν ἴδη ἐν τῇ ὄψι ἐνύπνιον, τούτῳ χρᾶται.", "translation": "They divine by going to the tombs of their ancestors, praying, and lying down to sleep on them; whatever dream a man sees, he acts on it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Nasamonian incubation on ancestral graves, with oaths sworn by touching the tombs of the just dead. Consulting the dead through dreams at their graves is a mild form of necromancy, presented without censure as ethnographic custom.", "claimed_effect": "Guidance from ancestors", "claimed_mechanism": "Dream incubation at the tomb", "practitioner": "Ordinary Nasamonian men", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Customary oath and divination", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-13", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Greek (Corinth; Thesprotian oracle of the dead)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE (events c. 600 BCE)", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.92G.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 5.92η.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "πέμψαντι γάρ οἱ ἐς Θεσπρωτοὺς ἐπʼ Ἀχέροντα ποταμὸν ἀγγέλους ἐπὶ τὸ νεκυομαντήιον παρακαταθήκης πέρι ξεινικῆς οὔτε σημανέειν ἔφη ἡ Μέλισσα ἐπιφανεῖσα", "translation": "When he sent messengers to the oracle of the dead on the river Acheron in Thesprotia about a deposit left by a guest-friend, Melissa appeared and said she would not tell.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Periander consults his dead wife at the Acheron necromanteion. She is cold and naked because her clothes were not burned with her, and proves her identity by a secret token: he had 'put his loaves in a cold oven', i.e. had intercourse with her corpse. Periander strips the Corinthian women and burns their clothes for her (5.92η.3). This is the only Greek necromantic consultation in the corpus, told in a speech.", "claimed_effect": "Communication with the dead; locating a lost deposit", "claimed_mechanism": "Oracle of the dead at an entrance to Hades; offerings to the shade", "practitioner": "Periander (client); oracle staff unnamed", "practitioner_gender": "male client; female ghost", "social_legal_context": "Tyrant's abuse of power; part of anti-tyrant speech of Socles", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-14", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Egyptian (from priests)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.111.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 2.111.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀναβλέψει γυναικὸς οὔρῳ νιψάμενος τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς, ἥτις παρὰ τὸν ἑωυτῆς ἄνδρα μοῦνον πεφοίτηκε, ἄλλων ἀνδρῶν ἐοῦσα ἄπειρος.", "translation": "He would see again if he washed his eyes in the urine of a woman who had been with her own husband only and knew no other man.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "King Pheros, blinded for spearing the Nile, receives an oracle from Buto. His own wife's urine fails, as do many others'. He burns the unfaithful women in a town and marries the one whose urine cured him. A purity-based cure that doubles as a chastity ordeal.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of blindness", "claimed_mechanism": "Ritual purity (chastity) of the donor gives the urine its virtue", "practitioner": "Oracle of Buto; the king", "practitioner_gender": "male patient; female 'donors'", "social_legal_context": "Royal punishment of adultery", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-15", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Egyptian (Greek report)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.39.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 2.39.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "καταρῶνται δὲ τάδε λέγοντες τῇσι κεφαλῇσι, εἴ τι μέλλοι ἢ σφίσι τοῖσι θύουσι ἢ Αἰγύπτῳ τῇ συναπάσῃ κακὸν γενέσθαι, ἐς κεφαλὴν ταύτην τραπέσθαι.", "translation": "They curse the heads saying this: if any evil is about to befall them who sacrifice, or all Egypt, may it turn onto this head.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Egyptians load evils onto the head of the sacrificial animal by spoken curse. They then sell it to Greek traders or throw it into the Nile (2.39.2). This apotropaic transfer rite is close to a scapegoat. Herodotus' Book 2 says little else about Egyptian 'magic' in our sense; it focuses on oracles (2.83).", "claimed_effect": "Averting misfortune from sacrificers and the land", "claimed_mechanism": "Verbal transfer of evil to an object removed from the community", "practitioner": "Egyptian sacrificers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Public temple ritual", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-16", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Herodotus", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–425 BCE (events late 6th c.)", "date_sort": -430, "edition_urn": "tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.6.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Hdt. 7.6.3–4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐπʼ αὐτοφώρῳ ἁλοὺς ὑπὸ Λάσου τοῦ Ἑρμιονέος ἐμποιέων ἐς τὰ Μουσαίου χρησμόν", "translation": "Caught in the act by Lasus of Hermione inserting an oracle into the oracles of Musaeus.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Onomacritus, Athenian chresmologos and 'arranger of the oracles of Musaeus', was expelled by Hipparchus for forgery. He later recited to Xerxes only the favourable verses. Herodotus documents textual fraud by an oracle-collector who worked with books in the name of Musaeus, the same authority invoked by Plato's begging priests (Rep. 364e).", "claimed_effect": "Authoritative prophecy", "claimed_mechanism": "Ancient poetic oracles in written collections", "practitioner": "Onomacritus, chresmologos", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Expulsion from Athens; later Persian court politics", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-17", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "History of the Peloponnesian War", "author": "Thucydides", "culture": "Greek (Athens and Greece)", "language": "", "date": "c. 431–400 BCE", "date_sort": -410, "edition_urn": "tlg0003.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.8.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Thuc. 2.8.2–3; cf. 2.21.3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ πολλὰ μὲν λόγια ἐλέγετο, πολλὰ δὲ χρησμολόγοι ᾖδον ἔν τε τοῖς μέλλουσι πολεμήσειν καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἄλλαις πόλεσιν.", "translation": "Many oracles were being recited and oracle-mongers sang many, both among those about to go to war and in the other cities.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At the outbreak of war, oracle-singers flourish, and the Delos earthquake is read as a portent: 'everything of the sort was hunted out' (2.8.3). At 2.21.3 chresmologoi sing oracles of every kind to the crowds, each listening to what suited his impulse. Thucydides treats oracle-mongering as a symptom of crowd emotion.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of the war", "claimed_mechanism": "Recited verse oracles; portents", "practitioner": "Chresmologoi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Wartime public excitement", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-18", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "History of the Peloponnesian War", "author": "Thucydides", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 431–400 BCE", "date_sort": -410, "edition_urn": "tlg0003.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.47.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Thuc. 2.47.4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅσα τε πρὸς ἱεροῖς ἱκέτευσαν ἢ μαντείοις καὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις ἐχρήσαντο, πάντα ἀνωφελῆ ἦν, τελευτῶντές τε αὐτῶν ἀπέστησαν ὑπὸ τοῦ κακοῦ νικώμενοι.", "translation": "All the supplications they made at shrines, and their use of oracles and such things, were useless, and in the end they gave them up, overcome by the evil.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the plague, doctors failed and so did every other human art. Religious remedies were equally useless and were finally abandoned. A dry, empirical verdict on ritual healing, set beside the failure of medicine.", "claimed_effect": "Relief from plague", "claimed_mechanism": "Supplication, oracles", "practitioner": "Athenian public", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Epidemic of 430 BCE", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-19", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "History of the Peloponnesian War", "author": "Thucydides", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 431–400 BCE", "date_sort": -410, "edition_urn": "tlg0003.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.54.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Thuc. 2.54.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐγένετο μὲν οὖν ἔρις τοῖς ἀνθρώποις μὴ λοιμὸν ὠνομάσθαι ἐν τῷ ἔπει ὑπὸ τῶν παλαιῶν, ἀλλὰ λιμόν, ἐνίκησε δὲ ἐπὶ τοῦ παρόντος εἰκότως λοιμὸν εἰρῆσθαι", "translation": "There was a dispute whether the old verse had said not 'plague' (loimos) but 'famine' (limos); for the moment, naturally, 'plague' won.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Old men recalled a verse: 'A Dorian war will come and plague with it'. Thucydides notes that people shape memory to their sufferings. He predicts that a future Dorian war with famine will make them sing 'limos'. This is an explicit psychological analysis of how prophecies are retrofitted.", "claimed_effect": "Prophecy fulfilled", "claimed_mechanism": "Ancient verse oracle", "practitioner": "Elders reciting old oracles", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Plague", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-20", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "History of the Peloponnesian War", "author": "Thucydides", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 400 BCE", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "tlg0003.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.26.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Thuc. 5.26.3–4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ τοῖς ἀπὸ χρησμῶν τι ἰσχυρισαμένοις μόνον δὴ τοῦτο ἐχυρῶς ξυμβάν.", "translation": "And for those who put their trust in oracles, this was the only thing that came out firmly true.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The war lasted 'thrice nine years', as many had said from the start. Thucydides grants this single hit with conspicuous restraint: 'the only one'. The concession shows how rarely he thinks oracles succeed.", "claimed_effect": "Correct prediction of the war's length", "claimed_mechanism": "Oracle", "practitioner": "Oracle-mongers (unnamed)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Historiographical reflection", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-21", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "History of the Peloponnesian War", "author": "Thucydides", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 400 BCE (event 413 BCE)", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "tlg0003.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.50.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Thuc. 7.50.4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ὁ Νικίας (ἦν γάρ τι καὶ ἄγαν θειασμῷ τε καὶ τῷ τοιούτῳ προσκείμενος) οὐδ’ ἂν διαβουλεύσασθαι ἔτι ἔφη πρίν, ὡς οἱ μάντεις ἐξηγοῦντο, τρὶς ἐννέα ἡμέρας μεῖναι", "translation": "And Nicias, who was somewhat too much given to divination and that kind of thing, said he would not even discuss it until they had waited thrice nine days, as the seers prescribed.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The lunar eclipse of 27 August 413 BCE halts the Athenian retreat from Syracuse, with disastrous consequences. Thucydides' 'too much' (agan) marks excessive religiosity as a fatal flaw. Compare 2.28, where he notes that solar eclipses occur only at new moon.", "claimed_effect": "Avoiding disaster by obeying the omen", "claimed_mechanism": "Eclipse as divine sign interpreted by manteis", "practitioner": "Manteis advising Nicias", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Military command decision", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-22", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "History of the Peloponnesian War", "author": "Thucydides", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 431–400 BCE", "date_sort": -410, "edition_urn": "tlg0003.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.28.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Thuc. 2.28", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "τοῦ δ’ αὐτοῦ θέρους νουμηνίᾳ κατὰ σελήνην, ὥσπερ καὶ μόνον δοκεῖ εἶναι γίγνεσθαι δυνατόν, ὁ ἥλιος ἐξέλιπε μετὰ μεσημβρίαν", "translation": "The same summer, at the new moon (the only time, it seems, when this can happen), the sun was eclipsed after midday.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Thucydides dates the solar eclipse of 3 August 431 BCE and adds the astronomical rule that eclipses occur at new moon. He gives no omen reading. This is the natural knowledge against which the Magi's (Hdt. 7.37) and Nicias' readings stand.", "claimed_effect": "None (natural event)", "claimed_mechanism": "Lunar conjunction", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Historiographical record", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-23", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "History of the Peloponnesian War", "author": "Thucydides", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 400 BCE", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "tlg0003.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "8.1.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Thuc. 8.1.1", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ὠργίζοντο δὲ καὶ τοῖς χρησμολόγοις τε καὶ μάντεσι καὶ ὁπόσοι τι τότε αὐτοὺς θειάσαντες ἐπήλπισαν ὡς λήψονται Σικελίαν.", "translation": "They were angry too with the oracle-mongers and seers and all who, by divine inspiration of some kind, had raised their hopes that they would take Sicily.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After the Sicilian disaster, Athenians turn on the orators and on the religious specialists who promised victory. This shows the political vulnerability of chresmologoi, who are blamed for public decisions.", "claimed_effect": "Prediction of conquest", "claimed_mechanism": "Inspired prophecy (theiazein)", "practitioner": "Chresmologoi and manteis", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Public anger after military catastrophe (413 BCE)", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-24", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "De morbo sacro (On the Sacred Disease)", "author": "Hippocratic author", "culture": "Greek (Ionian medicine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 420–400 BCE", "date_sort": -410, "edition_urn": "tlg0627.tlg027.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.1", "conventional_ref": "Hippoc. Morb. Sacr. 1–2 (Jones) = 1 Littré", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκέουσιν οἱ πρῶτοι τοῦτο τὸ νόσημα ἀφιερώσαντες τοιοῦτοι εἶναι ἄνθρωποι οἷοι καὶ νῦν εἰσι μάγοι τε καὶ καθάρται καὶ ἀγύρται καὶ ἀλαζόνες, ὁκόσοι δὴ προσποιέονται σφόδρα θεοσεβέες εἶναι καὶ πλέον τι εἰδέναι.", "translation": "I think those who first made this disease sacred were men like the magoi, purifiers, begging priests and charlatans of our own day, who pretend to be very pious and to know more than others.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the first sustained attack on magic in Greek. Epilepsy is no more divine than other diseases. The healers' 'purifications and incantations' (katharmoi, epaoidai) and food taboos (mullet, goat, garlic, black cloaks, crossing feet) are a cover for ignorance. They guarantee credit if the patient recovers and blame the gods if he dies. If diet causes and cures, 'the god is the cause of nothing'.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of epilepsy", "claimed_mechanism": "Purification, incantation, dietary and clothing taboos", "practitioner": "Magoi, kathartai, agyrtai, alazones", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Competition between itinerant ritual healers and physicians", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-25", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "De morbo sacro (On the Sacred Disease)", "author": "Hippocratic author", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 420–400 BCE", "date_sort": -410, "edition_urn": "tlg0627.tlg027.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.1", "conventional_ref": "Hippoc. Morb. Sacr. 3–4 (Jones)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "εἰ γὰρ ἄνθρωπος μαγεύων τε καὶ θύων σελήνην τε καθαιρήσει καὶ ἥλιον ἀφανιεῖ καὶ χειμῶνα καὶ εὐδίην ποιήσει, οὐκ ἂν ἔγωγέ τι θεῖον νομίσαιμι τούτων εἶναι, ἀλλʼ ἀνθρώπινον", "translation": "For if a man by magic (mageuōn) and sacrifice will bring down the moon, make the sun vanish, and produce storm and fair weather, I would not think any of these things divine but human.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The practitioners claim to draw down the moon, hide the sun, and make storms, droughts and a barren sea, 'from mysteries or some other knowledge'. The author's objection is theological. Such claims mean the gods are either non-existent or enslaved to human cunning, so the 'pious' healers are really impious. He adds that whoever can remove a disease by purifying and magic could also bring one on.", "claimed_effect": "Control of moon, sun, weather, sea and land fertility", "claimed_mechanism": "Mageia, sacrifice, knowledge from teletai (mysteries)", "practitioner": "Magoi and purifiers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Polemic; implicit charge of asebeia", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-26", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "De morbo sacro (On the Sacred Disease)", "author": "Hippocratic author", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 420–400 BCE", "date_sort": -410, "edition_urn": "tlg0627.tlg027.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.1", "conventional_ref": "Hippoc. Morb. Sacr. 4 (Jones)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἑκάτης φασὶν εἶναι ἐπιβολὰς καὶ ἡρώων ἐφόδους. Καθαρμοῖσί τε χρέονται καὶ ἐπαοιδῇσι", "translation": "They say these are attacks of Hecate and assaults of heroes. And they use purifications and incantations.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The healers diagnose by symptom. A patient who bleats is struck by the Mother of the Gods, one who neighs by Poseidon; incontinence points to Enodia, foaming and kicking to Ares. Night terrors are Hecate and the heroes. Patients are purified with blood as if polluted, haunted by avengers (alastores) or 'drugged by men' (pepharmagmenoi). The offscourings are buried, thrown into the sea or taken to the mountains. This is the richest description of Greek exorcistic healing in the corpus.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of seizure and night terrors", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine possession; removal of miasma by blood purification and spells", "practitioner": "Kathartai", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Private healing for fee", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-27", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "De morbo sacro (On the Sacred Disease)", "author": "Hippocratic author", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 420–400 BCE", "date_sort": -410, "edition_urn": "tlg0627.tlg027.perseus-grc2", "ref": "18.1", "conventional_ref": "Hippoc. Morb. Sacr. 21 (Jones) = 18 Littré", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ταῦτα δʼ ἐστὶ θεῖα, ὥστε μηδὲν. διακρίνοντα τὸ νούσημα θειότερον τῶν λοιπῶν νουσημάτων νομίζειν, ἀλλὰ πάντα θεῖα καὶ ἀνθρώπινα πάντα", "translation": "These things [cold, sun, changing winds] are divine, so there is no need to single this disease out as more divine than the rest: all are divine and all are human.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The closing chapter does not deny the divine. It redistributes it into nature as a whole, so every disease has its own physis and is curable by its causes. This is the positive theology behind the attack on magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Divinity of nature itself (winds, sun, cold)", "practitioner": "Physician", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Medical theory", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-28", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "De aere, aquis, locis (Airs, Waters, Places)", "author": "Hippocratic author", "culture": "Greek on Scythian", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–410 BCE", "date_sort": -420, "edition_urn": "tlg0627.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "22.1", "conventional_ref": "Hippoc. Aer. 22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "οἱ μὲν οὖν ἐπιχώριοι τὴν αἰτίην προστιθέασι θεῷ καὶ σέβονται τούτους τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ προσκυνέουσι, δεδοικότες περὶ ἑωυτῶν ἕκαστοι.", "translation": "The natives attribute the cause to a god, and revere and do obeisance to these men, each fearing for himself.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Scythian Anarieis are impotent men living as women, the same people as Herodotus' Enarees (1.105.4: a 'female disease' sent by Aphrodite for sacking Ascalon). The Hippocratic writer says all such conditions are equally divine. He blames chronic horse-riding and the Scythian cure of cutting the veins behind the ears. It is a natural alternative to divine punishment, with a sociological twist: the disease strikes the rich, who ride, and not the poor, whom gods would favour if it were divine.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine punishment (native view) vs. riding and vein-cutting (author)", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "male (patients)", "social_legal_context": "Ethnographic medicine", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-29", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "De virginum morbis (Diseases of Young Women)", "author": "Hippocratic author", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "late 5th–4th c. BCE", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "tlg0627.tlg037.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.1", "conventional_ref": "Hippoc. Virg. 1 (Littré VIII 466–470)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Φρονησάσης δὲ τῆς ἀνθρώπου, τῇ Ἀρτέμιδι αἱ γυναῖκες ἄλλα τε πολλὰ, ἀλλὰ δὴ καὶ τὰ πουλυτελέστατα τῶν ἱματίων καθιεροῦσι τῶν γυναικείων, κελευόντων τῶν μάντεων, ἐξαπατεώμεναι.", "translation": "When the girl comes to her senses, the women dedicate to Artemis many things, above all the costliest of women's garments, at the bidding of the seers, being deceived.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Girls of marriageable age see hostile daimones by night and day and are driven to hang themselves or leap into wells. The author explains this as retained menstrual blood pressing on heart and diaphragm. Seers prescribe costly offerings to Artemis; the author calls this deception and prescribes marriage and pregnancy. It is a rare explicit physician-versus-seer contest over women's bodies.", "claimed_effect": "Recovery from visions and suicidal mania", "claimed_mechanism": "Appeasing Artemis (seers) vs. blood flow (physician)", "practitioner": "Manteis; women of the household", "practitioner_gender": "male seers; female dedicants", "social_legal_context": "Household religion around female puberty", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-30", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "De diaeta (Regimen) IV (On Dreams)", "author": "Hippocratic author", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 400 BCE", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "tlg0627.tlg031.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "4.87.1", "conventional_ref": "Hippoc. Vict. 4.87 (cf. 4.89–90)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "φυλάσσεσθαι δὲ παραινεῦντες, μή τι κακὸν λάβῃ, οὐ διδάσκουσιν ὡς χρὴ φυλάξασθαι, ἀλλὰ θεοῖσιν εὔξασθαι κελεύουσι. Καὶ τὸ μὲν εὔχεσθαι πρέπον καὶ λίην ἐστὶν ἀγαθόν· δεῖ δὲ καὶ αὐτὸν ξυλλαμβάνοντα τοὺς θεοὺς ἐπικαλέεσθαι.", "translation": "Advising people to be on guard lest harm befall, they do not teach how to guard, but bid them pray to the gods. Praying is fitting and very good; but one should also lend a hand oneself while calling on the gods.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The author accepts that some dreams are divine and foretell events for cities and individuals. Others show bodily states and belong to the physician. He criticises dream-interpreters who prescribe only prayer, yet his own regimen includes prayers to Helios, Zeus, Athena, Hermes and Apollo for good signs and to 'averting' gods, Earth and the heroes for bad ones (4.89). Medicine and religion are combined here, not opposed.", "claimed_effect": "Health; averting evils signalled in dreams", "claimed_mechanism": "Dreams as signs of bodily state; prayer plus regimen", "practitioner": "Dream-interpreters (kritai); physician", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Medical regimen", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-31", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "De natura muliebri (Nature of Women)", "author": "Hippocratic author", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "late 5th–4th c. BCE", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "tlg0627.tlg033.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "26.1", "conventional_ref": "Hippoc. Nat. Mul. 26 (cf. 1)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Ὁκόταν πνίγωσιν αἱ ὑστέραι, ὑποθυμιῇν χρὴ τὰ κακώδεα πάντα ὑπὸ τὰς ῥῖνας, ἄσφαλτον, θεῖον, κέρας, ἐλλύχνιον, φώκης ἔλαιον, καστόριον· ὑπὸ δὲ τὰ αἰδοῖα τὰ εὐώδεα.", "translation": "When the womb chokes, fumigate under the nostrils with all foul-smelling things, asphalt, sulphur, horn, lamp-wick, seal oil, castoreum; and under the genitals with sweet-smelling things.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Displaced-womb therapy uses repellent and attractant smells. Its logic of sympathy and antipathy resembles ritual practice but is offered as straightforward medicine. The treatise opens (1.1) by saying that 'the divine is chiefly the cause' among humans, a reminder that Hippocratic naturalism is not uniform.", "claimed_effect": "Returning a 'wandering' womb to its place", "claimed_mechanism": "Womb flees bad smells and is drawn by good ones", "practitioner": "Physician", "practitioner_gender": "male physician; female patient", "social_legal_context": "Gynaecological practice", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-32", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Republic", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 375 BCE", "date_sort": -375, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg030.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.364.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Resp. 364b–c", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐάν τέ τινα ἐχθρὸν πημῆναι ἐθέλῃ, μετὰ σμικρῶν δαπανῶν ὁμοίως δίκαιον ἀδίκῳ βλάψει ἐπαγωγαῖς τισιν καὶ καταδέσμοις, τοὺς θεούς, ὥς φασιν, πείθοντές σφισιν ὑπηρετεῖν.", "translation": "And if he wishes to harm an enemy, at small cost he will injure just and unjust alike with certain spells of attraction (epagōgai) and binding-spells (katadesmoi), persuading the gods, as they say, to serve them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Adeimantus describes begging priests and seers at rich men's doors. They claim a god-given power, through sacrifices and incantations, to heal any wrong done by a client or his ancestors 'with pleasures and feasts'. They also sell harm to enemies by curse. The passage gives the classical names for curse-tablet magic (katadesmos) and for attraction spells. The decisive charge is that they claim to make gods their servants.", "claimed_effect": "Expiation of inherited guilt; harming enemies", "claimed_mechanism": "Sacrifice, epōdai, epagōgai, katadesmoi compelling the gods", "practitioner": "Agyrtai and manteis", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Private paid ritual service to the wealthy", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-33", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Republic", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 375 BCE", "date_sort": -375, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg030.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.365.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Resp. 364e–365a", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "βίβλων δὲ ὅμαδον παρέχονται Μουσαίου καὶ Ὀρφέως, Σελήνης τε καὶ Μουσῶν ἐκγόνων, ὥς φασι, καθʼ ἃς θυηπολοῦσιν", "translation": "They produce a hubbub of books of Musaeus and Orpheus, offspring, as they say, of the Moon and the Muses, according to which they perform their sacrifices.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The same specialists persuade individuals and whole cities that 'releases and purifications from wrongdoing', which they call teletai, help both living and dead and spare them torments below. This is evidence for book-based ritual expertise in Orphic texts, and links to Theophrastus' Orpheotelestai (Char. 16.12) and Onomacritus (Hdt. 7.6).", "claimed_effect": "Release from punishment in the afterlife", "claimed_mechanism": "Rites from Orphic books", "practitioner": "Agyrtai/manteis (Orphic initiators)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Private and civic purification", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-34", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Republic", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 375 BCE", "date_sort": -375, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg030.perseus-grc2", "ref": "10.602.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Resp. 602d", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ᾧ δὴ ἡμῶν τῷ παθήματι τῆς φύσεως ἡ σκιαγραφία ἐπιθεμένη γοητείας οὐδὲν ἀπολείπει, καὶ ἡ θαυματοποιία καὶ αἱ ἄλλαι πολλαὶ τοιαῦται μηχαναί.", "translation": "Exploiting this weakness of our nature, shadow-painting falls nothing short of sorcery (goēteia), and so do conjuring and the many other such contrivances.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Optical illusion, such as bent sticks in water or perspective painting, is called goēteia. Plato pairs it with thaumatopoiia, stage conjuring. 'Magic' is defined by deceiving perception, and the remedy is measuring and counting. This is the philosophical origin of the equation magic = illusion.", "claimed_effect": "Making false appearances seem real", "claimed_mechanism": "Exploiting perceptual confusion", "practitioner": "Painters, conjurors, poets", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Critique of mimetic art", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-35", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Republic", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 375 BCE", "date_sort": -375, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg030.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.380.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Resp. 380d–381e", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἆρα γόητα τὸν θεὸν οἴει εἶναι καὶ οἷον ἐξ ἐπιβουλῆς φαντάζεσθαι ἄλλοτε ἐν ἄλλαις ἰδέαις", "translation": "Do you think the god is a sorcerer (goēs), who by design appears now in one form, now in another?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Socrates bans poetic stories of shape-shifting gods (Proteus, Thetis). A god neither changes his form nor 'deceives and bewitches' (goēteuontes, 381e) us into seeing him changed. Transformation and illusion are defined as the goēs' work and denied to the divine.", "claimed_effect": "Divine metamorphosis", "claimed_mechanism": "Actual change or induced appearance", "practitioner": "Gods of poetry", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Censorship of myth in the ideal city", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-36", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Republic", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 375 BCE", "date_sort": -375, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg030.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.426.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Resp. 426a–b", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "οὔτε φάρμακα οὔτε καύσεις οὔτε τομαὶ οὐδʼ αὖ ἐπῳδαὶ αὐτὸν οὐδὲ περίαπτα οὐδὲ ἄλλο τῶν τοιούτων οὐδὲν ὀνήσει", "translation": "Neither drugs nor cautery nor surgery, nor again incantations or amulets or anything of that sort will help him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "For the intemperate invalid, Plato lists incantations and amulets alongside drugs, cautery and surgery as ordinary therapies, all useless without a change of life. This shows how normal epōdai and periapta were in the healing market.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of chronic illness", "claimed_mechanism": "Drugs, surgery, spells, amulets", "practitioner": "Physicians and charm-healers", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Everyday medicine", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-37", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Laws", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek (ideal Cretan city)", "language": "", "date": "c. 350 BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg034.perseus-grc2", "ref": "10.909.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Leg. 909a–d", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "τοὺς δὲ τεθνεῶτας φάσκοντες ψυχαγωγεῖν καὶ θεοὺς ὑπισχνούμενοι πείθειν, ὡς θυσίαις τε καὶ εὐχαῖς καὶ ἐπῳδαῖς γοητεύοντες, ἰδιώτας τε καὶ ὅλας οἰκίας καὶ πόλεις χρημάτων χάριν ἐπιχειρῶσιν κατʼ ἄκρας ἐξαιρεῖν", "translation": "Claiming to lead up the souls of the dead and promising to persuade the gods, bewitching them as it were by sacrifices, prayers and incantations, they try for money to ruin utterly individuals, whole households and cities.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "These are the 'bestial' impious, who believe gods can be bought. They are to be imprisoned for life in the remote prison, never visited by free men, and denied burial. Necromancy (psychagōgein) and persuading gods for profit are made a capital-level religious crime, distinct from the curable 'foolish' atheist.", "claimed_effect": "Raising the dead; bending the gods", "claimed_mechanism": "Sacrifice, prayer, epōdai", "practitioner": "Impious goētes for hire", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Asebeia law: life imprisonment, unburied corpse", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-38", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Laws", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 350 BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg034.perseus-grc2", "ref": "10.910.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Leg. 909e–910d", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔν τε φάσμασιν ἐγρηγορότας διὰ φόβους καὶ ἐν ὀνείροις, ὡς δʼ αὕτως ὄψεις πολλὰς ἀπομνημονεύοντας ἑκάσταισί τε αὐτῶν ἄκη ποιουμένους", "translation": "Seeing apparitions while awake through fear, and in dreams, and remembering many visions and making remedies for each of them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Plato bans private shrines. Women especially, the sick, the endangered and the newly lucky found altars after frightening visions and dreams, filling houses and villages with them. Private cult opens the door to secret propitiation by the wicked. The boundary between legitimate and illegitimate religion is drawn here by publicity.", "claimed_effect": "Averting harm signalled by visions", "claimed_mechanism": "Private altars and sacrifices", "practitioner": "Householders, especially women", "practitioner_gender": "female (emphasised)", "social_legal_context": "Prohibition of private cult", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-39", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Laws", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 350 BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg034.perseus-grc2", "ref": "11.933.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Leg. 932e–933c", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "ἄλλη δὲ ἣ μαγγανείαις τέ τισιν καὶ ἐπῳδαῖς καὶ καταδέσεσι λεγομέναις πείθει τοὺς μὲν τολμῶντας βλάπτειν αὐτούς, ὡς δύνανται τὸ τοιοῦτον, τοὺς δʼ ὡς παντὸς μᾶλλον ὑπὸ τούτων δυναμένων γοητεύειν βλάπτονται.", "translation": "The other kind, by trickeries, incantations and so-called bindings, persuades those who dare to harm that they can do so, and the victims that they are certainly harmed by those able to bewitch.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "There are two pharmakeiai: one harms bodies by bodies 'according to nature' (poison), the other works through manganeia, epōdai and katadeseis. Plato locates the second kind's power in belief, on both sides. He declines to settle whether it really works but notes the terror caused by 'wax images' (kērina mimēmata) at doors, crossroads or parents' tombs. The lawgiver should not argue people out of these fears but forbid the practice.", "claimed_effect": "Harm to person, livestock, bees", "claimed_mechanism": "Belief and fear (Plato's analysis); binding spells and wax effigies (practice)", "practitioner": "Anyone attempting pharmakeia; especially manteis and teratoskopoi", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Criminal law on pharmakeia", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-40", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Laws", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 350 BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg034.perseus-grc2", "ref": "11.933.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Leg. 933d–e", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐὰν δὲ καταδέσεσιν ἢ ἐπαγωγαῖς ἤ τισιν ἐπῳδαῖς ἢ τῶν τοιούτων φαρμακειῶν ὡντινωνοῦν δόξῃ ὅμοιος εἶναι βλάπτοντι, ἐὰν μὲν μάντις ὢν ἢ τερατοσκόπος, τεθνάτω", "translation": "If anyone seems like one who harms by bindings or attraction-spells or incantations or any such pharmakeia, if he is a seer or portent-reader, let him die.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The penalties are graded by expertise. A physician who poisons dies, while a layman's penalty is set by the court. For magical pharmakeia, a mantis or teratoskopos dies; a layman's penalty is again assessed by the court. Professional knowledge aggravates the crime. The penalty attaches to 'seeming like' one who harms, i.e. to intent and practice, whatever the efficacy.", "claimed_effect": "Harm", "claimed_mechanism": "Binding, epagōgē, epōdē", "practitioner": "Manteis, teratoskopoi, physicians, laymen", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Capital punishment for professional sorcerers", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-41", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Laws", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 350 BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg034.perseus-grc2", "ref": "11.932.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Leg. 931b–932a", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "πᾶς δὴ νοῦν ἔχων φοβεῖται καὶ τιμᾷ γονέων εὐχάς, εἰδὼς πολλοῖς καὶ πολλάκις ἐπιτελεῖς γενομένας", "translation": "Every sensible man fears and honours the prayers (curses) of parents, knowing that for many, many times, they have been fulfilled.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Just before outlawing magical harm, Plato affirms that parents' curses (euchai), like those of Oedipus and Theseus cited in 931b, really work. Legitimate cursing power belongs to kinship, illegitimate power to hired specialists.", "claimed_effect": "Fulfilment of parental curses", "claimed_mechanism": "Gods hear parents", "practitioner": "Parents", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Family law (neglect of parents)", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-42", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Laws", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 350 BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg034.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.790.9", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Leg. 790d–791a", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "αἵ τε τροφοὶ τῶν σμικρῶν καὶ αἱ περὶ τὰ τῶν Κορυβάντων ἰάματα τελοῦσαι", "translation": "Both the nurses of little children and the women who perform the Corybantic cures.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Mothers lull sleepless babies by rocking and singing, not by quiet, 'just as the cures of frenzied Bacchic states' use movement, dance and music. Plato accepts Corybantic ritual healing as empirically effective and explains it as outer motion overcoming inner agitated motion of the soul (791a). This is a physiological-psychological account of a ritual cure.", "claimed_effect": "Calming frenzy and fear", "claimed_mechanism": "External rhythmic motion and music master internal disorderly motion", "practitioner": "Women initiators of Corybantic rites; nurses", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Accepted ritual therapy", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-43", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Laws", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 350 BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg034.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.659.3", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Leg. 659d–e (cf. 664b, 666c)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἃς ᾠδὰς καλοῦμεν, ὄντως μὲν ἐπῳδαὶ ταῖς ψυχαῖς αὗται νῦν γεγονέναι", "translation": "What we call songs (ōidai) have in reality become incantations (epōidai) for souls.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Plato plays on ōidē and epōidē: the city's choral songs are charms to make young souls feel pleasure and pain rightly. In the Laws the lawgiver 'charms' citizens (664b, 666c, 773d, 812c, 837e). The charm is appropriated as a method of moral education.", "claimed_effect": "Shaping children's emotions toward virtue", "claimed_mechanism": "Song as persuasive charm", "practitioner": "Lawgiver, choruses", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Civic education", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-44", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Symposium", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 380 BCE", "date_sort": -380, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg011.perseus-grc2", "ref": "203.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Symp. 202e–203a, 203d", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "διὰ τούτου καὶ ἡ μαντικὴ πᾶσα χωρεῖ καὶ ἡ τῶν ἱερέων τέχνη τῶν τε περὶ τὰς θυσίας καὶ τελετὰς καὶ τὰς ἐπῳδὰς καὶ τὴν μαντείαν πᾶσαν καὶ γοητείαν.", "translation": "Through this [the daimonic] passes all divination and the art of priests concerned with sacrifices, initiations, incantations, and all prophecy and sorcery (goēteia).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Diotima gives the first Greek theory of how magic works. 'God does not mingle with man'; the daimonic intermediary carries all communication, waking or sleeping. Goēteia is listed with priestly arts without censure. Eros, a daimōn, is 'a clever goēs and pharmakeus and sophist' (203d, same node).", "claimed_effect": "Communication between gods and humans", "claimed_mechanism": "Daimones as intermediaries", "practitioner": "Priests, seers, goētes; Eros", "practitioner_gender": "female speaker (Diotima)", "social_legal_context": "Philosophical myth", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-45", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Meno", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 385 BCE", "date_sort": -385, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg024.perseus-grc2", "ref": "80.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Meno 80a–b", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "γοητεύεις με καὶ φαρμάττεις καὶ ἀτεχνῶς κατεπᾴδεις, ὥστε μεστὸν ἀπορίας γεγονέναι.", "translation": "You are bewitching me, drugging me and simply chanting spells over me, so that I am full of perplexity.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Meno compares Socrates to the numbing torpedo-fish. He warns that if Socrates did this as a foreigner in another city he might be 'arrested as a goēs'. That is a direct hint that goēteia was a prosecutable charge, ironically aimed at philosophy itself.", "claimed_effect": "Paralysis of the mind", "claimed_mechanism": "Dialectic as spell", "practitioner": "Socrates (metaphorically)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Risk of prosecution for sorcery abroad", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-46", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Charmides", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek and Thracian", "language": "", "date": "c. 390 BCE (dramatic date 432)", "date_sort": -390, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg018.perseus-grc2", "ref": "155.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Chrm. 155e", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "αὐτὸ μὲν εἴη φύλλον τι, ἐπῳδὴ δέ τις ἐπὶ τῷ φαρμάκῳ εἴη, ἣν εἰ μέν τις ἐπᾴδοι ἅμα καὶ χρῷτο αὐτῷ, παντάπασιν ὑγιᾶ ποιοῖ τὸ φάρμακον· ἄνευ δὲ τῆς ἐπῳδῆς οὐδὲν ὄφελος εἴη τοῦ φύλλου.", "translation": "It was a certain leaf, but there was a charm to go with the remedy; if one sang it while using the leaf, the remedy made one wholly healthy, but without the charm the leaf was of no use.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Socrates pretends to know a cure for Charmides' morning headache: herb plus incantation. This is the classic Greek statement that a physical remedy and a spoken charm work only together. He says he learned it from a Thracian physician of Zalmoxis (156d).", "claimed_effect": "Cure of headache", "claimed_mechanism": "Herb activated by spoken charm", "practitioner": "Thracian physicians of Zalmoxis (via Socrates)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Folk medicine framed in philosophical play", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-47", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Charmides", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek and Thracian", "language": "", "date": "c. 390 BCE", "date_sort": -390, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg018.perseus-grc2", "ref": "157.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Chrm. 156d–158b", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "θεραπεύεσθαι δὲ τὴν ψυχὴν ἔφη, ὦ μακάριε, ἐπῳδαῖς τισιν, τὰς δʼ ἐπῳδὰς ταύτας τοὺς λόγους εἶναι τοὺς καλούς· ἐκ δὲ τῶν τοιούτων λόγων ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς σωφροσύνην ἐγγίγνεσθαι", "translation": "The soul, he said, is treated by certain charms, and these charms are beautiful words; from such words sophrosyne arises in souls.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Zalmoxis 'our king, a god' teaches that the body cannot be healed without the soul (156e). The Thracian's charm turns out to be philosophical conversation. Socrates says that if Charmides already has sophrosyne he needs neither the charms of Zalmoxis nor those of Abaris the Hyperborean (158b). Plato reinterprets the incantation as therapeutic logos.", "claimed_effect": "Health of body via temperance of soul", "claimed_mechanism": "Speech producing sophrosyne", "practitioner": "Thracian physicians; Socrates", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Philosophical therapy", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-48", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Phaedo", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 385 BCE", "date_sort": -385, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "77.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Phd. 77e–78a (cf. 114d)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀλλὰ χρή, ἔφη ὁ Σωκράτης, ἐπᾴδειν αὐτῷ ἑκάστης ἡμέρας ἕως ἂν ἐξεπᾴσητε.", "translation": "Then, said Socrates, you must sing charms over him every day until you have charmed it away.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The 'child within us' fears death as a bogey (mormolykeion). Arguments for immortality are charms to be sung daily. Cebes asks where to find a good epōidos once Socrates is gone; Socrates says to search all Greece and the barbarians (78a). At 114d the myth too is something to 'sing to oneself like a charm'.", "claimed_effect": "Removing the fear of death", "claimed_mechanism": "Repeated persuasive speech", "practitioner": "Philosophers as epōidoi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Deathbed philosophy", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-49", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Euthydemus", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 385 BCE", "date_sort": -385, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg021.perseus-grc2", "ref": "290.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Euthd. 289e–290a", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ἡ μὲν γὰρ τῶν ἐπῳδῶν ἔχεών τε καὶ φαλαγγίων καὶ σκορπίων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων θηρίων τε καὶ νόσων κήλησίς ἐστιν", "translation": "The art of incantations is the charming of vipers, poisonous spiders and scorpions and other beasts and diseases.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Speech-writing is 'a part of the art of incantation, a little inferior to it'. The epōidē charms venomous animals and diseases, while rhetoric charms jurors and assemblies. Charming snakes and scorpions is taken for granted as a real techne.", "claimed_effect": "Neutralising venomous creatures and diseases", "claimed_mechanism": "Kēlēsis (enchantment) by song", "practitioner": "Epōidoi", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Comparison with rhetoric", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-50", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Gorgias", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek (Thessaly)", "language": "", "date": "c. 387 BCE", "date_sort": -387, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg023.perseus-grc2", "ref": "513.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Grg. 513a", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅπως μή, ὦ δαιμόνιε, πεισόμεθα ὅπερ φασὶ τὰς τὴν σελήνην καθαιρούσας, τὰς Θετταλίδας· σὺν τοῖς φιλτάτοις ἡ αἵρεσις ἡμῖν ἔσται ταύτης τῆς δυνάμεως", "translation": "Lest we suffer what they say happens to the Thessalian women who draw down the moon: our choice of this power will cost us what is dearest.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the proverbial Thessalian witches. Drawing down the moon was believed to cost the practitioner her eyes or children. Socrates uses the belief as an analogy for political power bought at the soul's expense. It is the classical prose attestation of a female, regional witch-type.", "claimed_effect": "Drawing down the moon", "claimed_mechanism": "Unstated; requires a terrible price", "practitioner": "Thessalian women", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Proverbial lore", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-51", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Gorgias", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 387 BCE", "date_sort": -387, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg023.perseus-grc2", "ref": "484.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Grg. 483e–484a", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καταπατήσας τὰ ἡμέτερα γράμματα καὶ μαγγανεύματα καὶ ἐπῳδὰς καὶ νόμους τοὺς παρὰ φύσιν ἅπαντας", "translation": "Trampling on our writings and trickeries (manganeumata) and incantations and all our laws contrary to nature.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Callicles calls conventional morality a spell. We take the strongest young men 'like lions', charm and bewitch them (katepaidontes te kai goēteuontes) into believing in equality, until a natural master breaks free. Here law itself is magic, a manipulation of nature.", "claimed_effect": "Enslaving the strong", "claimed_mechanism": "Social convention as spell", "practitioner": "The many/lawgivers (Callicles' view)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Debate on nature vs. convention", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-52", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Alcibiades I", "author": "Plato (authenticity disputed)", "culture": "Persian (Greek view)", "language": "", "date": "4th c. BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg013.perseus-grc2", "ref": "122.1", "conventional_ref": "[Pl.] Alc. 1, 121e–122a", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὧν ὁ μὲν μαγείαν τε διδάσκει τὴν Ζωροάστρου τοῦ Ὡρομάζου—ἔστι δὲ τοῦτο θεῶν θεραπεία— διδάσκει δὲ καὶ τὰ βασιλικά", "translation": "Of these [royal tutors], one teaches the mageia of Zoroaster son of Horomazes (this is the worship of the gods) and teaches also the royal arts.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The earliest Greek definition of mageia as Persian religion: 'service of the gods'. It is taught to Persian princes by the wisest of four tutors. This is the emic, positive sense, preserved in a dialogue whose authorship and date are disputed. It contrasts sharply with Gorgias and the Hippocratics.", "claimed_effect": "Proper worship; royal formation", "claimed_mechanism": "Zoroastrian teaching", "practitioner": "Persian royal tutors", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Royal education", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-53", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Theaetetus", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 369 BCE", "date_sort": -369, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg006.perseus-grc2", "ref": "149.15", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Tht. 149c–d", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ μὴν καὶ διδοῦσαί γε αἱ μαῖαι φαρμάκια καὶ ἐπᾴδουσαι δύνανται ἐγείρειν τε τὰς ὠδῖνας καὶ μαλθακωτέρας ἂν βούλωνται ποιεῖν, καὶ τίκτειν τε δὴ τὰς δυστοκούσας, καὶ ἐὰν νέον ὂν δόξῃ ἀμβλίσκειν, ἀμβλίσκουσιν;", "translation": "And the midwives, by giving little drugs and singing charms, can bring on labour pains and make them gentler as they wish, and deliver women who are labouring hard, and if they think fit, cause a young foetus to miscarry?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Women's obstetric expertise combines pharmaka and epōidai. It covers inducing and easing labour and procuring abortion. Plato presents it neutrally as real competence. Socrates' 'midwifery' of souls is modelled on it, and at 157c he 'sings charms' to Theaetetus.", "claimed_effect": "Inducing, easing or ending labour; abortion", "claimed_mechanism": "Drugs plus incantation", "practitioner": "Midwives (maiai)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Accepted female professional practice", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-54", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Statesman", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 360 BCE", "date_sort": -360, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg008.perseus-grc2", "ref": "280.8", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Plt. 279c, 280e", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ δὴ καὶ τὴν μαγευτικὴν τὴν περὶ τὰ ἀλεξιφάρμακα κατʼ ἀρχὰς εὐθὺς διωρισάμεθα σύμπασαν", "translation": "And the whole art of magic concerned with protective antidotes (alexipharmaka) we distinguished at the very start.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the Stranger's division of arts, the 'defensive' class splits into alexipharmaka, 'some divine, some human' (279c), and screens such as armour, walls and clothing. Apotropaic magic (mageutikē) is simply one protective technology among others, classified without blame.", "claimed_effect": "Protection from harm", "claimed_mechanism": "Counter-charms and antidotes", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Taxonomy of arts", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-55", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Phaedrus", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 370 BCE", "date_sort": -370, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg012.perseus-grc2", "ref": "244.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Phdr. 244d–e", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅθεν δὴ καθαρμῶν τε καὶ τελετῶν τυχοῦσα ἐξάντη ἐποίησε τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἔχοντα πρός τε τὸν παρόντα καὶ τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον", "translation": "Whence, obtaining purifications and rites, it made the one possessed by it safe for the present and the time to come.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "'Telestic' madness is the second of Plato's divine madnesses. Where diseases afflict families because of ancient wrath, prophetic madness finds release through prayers and purifications. This is the same service Republic 364 condemns when sold by agyrtai. Here it is god-sent and legitimate.", "claimed_effect": "Release from ancestral curse and disease", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine madness guiding purification", "practitioner": "Inspired purifiers", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Religious healing of family guilt", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-56", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Sophist", "author": "Plato", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 360 BCE", "date_sort": -360, "edition_urn": "tlg0059.tlg007.perseus-grc2", "ref": "235.1", "conventional_ref": "Pl. Soph. 234c–235a (cf. Plt. 291c, 303c)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅτι τῶν γοήτων ἐστί τις, μιμητὴς ὢν τῶν ὄντων", "translation": "That he [the sophist] is one of the sorcerers, being an imitator of real things.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The sophist is classed among goētes because he produces 'spoken images' (eidōla) that make the young take falsehoods for truth (234c). In the Statesman (291c, 303c) the politicians of actual cities are 'the greatest goētes'. Goēs here is a philosophical category for makers of false appearances.", "claimed_effect": "Creating belief in falsehood", "claimed_mechanism": "Verbal imitation (eidōla)", "practitioner": "Sophists", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Philosophical polemic", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-57", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Encomium of Helen", "author": "Gorgias of Leontini", "culture": "Greek (Sicilian rhetoric)", "language": "", "date": "c. 415 BCE", "date_sort": -415, "edition_urn": "tlg0593.1st1K001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "10.1", "conventional_ref": "Gorg. Hel. 10", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "other", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "συγγιγνομένη γὰρ τῇ δόξῃ τῆς ψυχῆς ἡ δύναμις τῆς ἐπῳδῆς ἔθελξε καὶ ἔπεισε καὶ μετέστησεν αὐτὴν γοητείᾳ. γοητείας δὲ καὶ μαγείας δισσαὶ τέχναι ηὕρηνται, αἵ εἰσι ψυχῆς ἁμαρτήματα καὶ δόξης ἀπατήματα.", "translation": "For the power of incantation, joining with the soul's opinion, beguiles, persuades and transforms it by sorcery. Two arts of sorcery and magic have been discovered, which are errors of the soul and deceptions of opinion.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Inspired incantations through words bring pleasure and remove pain. Gorgias gives the earliest pairing of goēteia and mageia as two arts and defines both psychologically, as mistakes of the soul and deceits of opinion. Magic is explained as the working of persuasion on belief.", "claimed_effect": "Transforming emotion and belief", "claimed_mechanism": "Speech acting on doxa", "practitioner": "Orators/poets (by analogy)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Epideictic rhetoric", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-58", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Encomium of Helen", "author": "Gorgias of Leontini", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 415 BCE", "date_sort": -415, "edition_urn": "tlg0593.1st1K001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "14.1", "conventional_ref": "Gorg. Hel. 14", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὥσπερ γὰρ τῶν φαρμάκων ἄλλους ἄλλα χυμοὺς ἐκ τοῦ σώματος ἐξάγει, καὶ τὰ μὲν νόσου τὰ δὲ βίου παύει, οὕτω καὶ τῶν λόγων ... οἱ δὲ πειθοῖ τινι κακῇ τὴν ψυχὴν ἐφαρμάκευσαν καὶ ἐξεγοήτευσαν.", "translation": "Just as different drugs draw different humours from the body, and some end disease, others life, so with words: … some drug and bewitch the soul with an evil persuasion.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Speech is to the soul as pharmaka are to the body: it can heal or kill. The pharmakon's double sense of remedy and poison carries over to logos, so that persuasion becomes a drug and a spell.", "claimed_effect": "Altering soul as drugs alter body", "claimed_mechanism": "Analogy logos–pharmakon", "practitioner": "Speakers", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Rhetorical theory", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-59", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Memorabilia", "author": "Xenophon", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 371–355 BCE", "date_sort": -365, "edition_urn": "tlg0032.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.11.17.1", "conventional_ref": "Xen. Mem. 3.11.16–18", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "εὖ ἴσθι ὅτι ταῦτα οὐκ ἄνευ πολλῶν φίλτρων τε καὶ ἐπῳδῶν καὶ ἰύγγων ἐστί.", "translation": "Be assured this does not happen without many love-potions, incantations and iynges (love-wheels).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Socrates teases the courtesan Theodote. His 'girlfriends' come to learn philtra and epōidai from him, and his disciples never leave him because of his iynges. She asks to borrow the iynx to draw him to her. This is the only appearance of the iynx in the corpus and shows love-magic as part of the hetaira's world.", "claimed_effect": "Drawing a beloved", "claimed_mechanism": "Philtra, epōidai, the iynx (spinning wheel)", "practitioner": "Hetairai (implied); Socrates (jokingly)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Courtesan culture", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-60", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Memorabilia", "author": "Xenophon", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 371–355 BCE", "date_sort": -365, "edition_urn": "tlg0032.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.6.13.1", "conventional_ref": "Xen. Mem. 2.6.10–13", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "ἤκουσα μὲν ὅτι Περικλῆς πολλὰς ἐπίσταιτο, ἃς ἐπᾴδων τῇ πόλει ἐποίει αὐτὴν φιλεῖν αὑτόν.", "translation": "I have heard that Pericles knew many [charms], which he sang over the city and made it love him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "'They say' there are epōidai and philtra that make others into friends (2.6.10). Socrates converts them into praise. The Sirens' song to Odysseus is the model. Pericles 'charmed' Athens, whereas Themistocles 'hung something good around it', a pun on the amulet (periaptein). Magic of attraction becomes a metaphor for friendship and politics.", "claimed_effect": "Winning friends; popular love", "claimed_mechanism": "Flattering speech as charm", "practitioner": "Statesmen (metaphorically)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Ethics of friendship", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-61", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Memorabilia", "author": "Xenophon", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 371–355 BCE", "date_sort": -365, "edition_urn": "tlg0032.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.1.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Xen. Mem. 1.1.6–9", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ἃ μὲν μαθόντας ποιεῖν ἔδωκαν οἱ θεοί, μανθάνειν, ἃ δὲ μὴ δῆλα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐστί, πειρᾶσθαι διὰ μαντικῆς παρὰ τῶν θεῶν πυνθάνεσθαι", "translation": "What the gods have granted us to do by learning, we should learn; what is not clear to humans, we should try to learn from the gods by divination.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Socrates' daimonion is defended as ordinary divination of the same kind as birds, voices and sacrifices (1.1.3). Asking the gods what one can learn by counting, measuring or weighing is 'unlawful' (athemita). Those who think all is human judgment are 'mad' (daimonan). The line runs between divination and technē, not between religion and magic.", "claimed_effect": "Knowledge of uncertain outcomes", "claimed_mechanism": "Gods signal through omens to those they favour", "practitioner": "Socrates; all users of mantikē", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Defence against the impiety charge of 399", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-62", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Cyropaedia", "author": "Xenophon", "culture": "Persian (idealised Greek portrait)", "language": "", "date": "c. 370 BCE", "date_sort": -370, "edition_urn": "tlg0032.tlg007.perseus-grc2", "ref": "8.1.23.1", "conventional_ref": "Xen. Cyr. 8.1.23 (cf. 4.5.14, 7.5.35, 8.3.11)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ τότε πρῶτον κατεστάθησαν οἱ μάγοι ὑμνεῖν τε ἀεὶ ἅμα τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τοὺς θεοὺς καὶ θύειν ἀνʼ ἑκάστην ἡμέραν οἷς οἱ μάγοι θεοῖς εἴποιεν.", "translation": "And then the Magi were first appointed always to hymn the gods at daybreak and to sacrifice each day to whatever gods the Magi said.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Xenophon's Magi are wholly respectable. They are court priests who receive the gods' share of booty (4.5.14, 7.5.35), direct sacrifices (8.3.11: Persians prefer experts in religion to experts in anything else) and sing dawn hymns. There is no trace of 'magic' in the pejorative sense; this is an idealising historical novel.", "claimed_effect": "Divine favour for the kingdom", "claimed_mechanism": "Hymn and sacrifice by experts", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Royal state cult", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-63", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Anabasis", "author": "Xenophon", "culture": "Greek soldiers in Colchis/Pontus", "language": "", "date": "c. 370 BCE (event 400 BCE)", "date_sort": -370, "edition_urn": "tlg0032.tlg006.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.8.20.1", "conventional_ref": "Xen. Anab. 4.8.20–21", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ τῶν κηρίων ὅσοι ἔφαγον τῶν στρατιωτῶν πάντες ἄφρονές τε ἐγίγνοντο καὶ ἤμουν καὶ κάτω διεχώρει αὐτοῖς καὶ ὀρθὸς οὐδεὶς ἐδύνατο ἵστασθαι", "translation": "All the soldiers who ate of the honeycombs went out of their senses, vomited, had diarrhoea, and none could stand upright.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Ten Thousand eat honey near Trapezus. Small doses resemble drunkenness, large ones madness, and some seemed to die. They recovered 'as if from a drug-drinking' (pharmakopposia). This is a purely natural intoxication, a control case showing Greeks recognised plant toxins acting on mind without magic.", "claimed_effect": "Madness and collapse", "claimed_mechanism": "Toxic honey (natural)", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Military campaign narrative", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-64", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Against the Stepmother for Poisoning", "author": "Antiphon", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 420s BCE", "date_sort": -420, "edition_urn": "tlg0028.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "9.1", "conventional_ref": "Antiph. 1.9 (cf. 1.14–20)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "ταύτην τε οὐκ οὖσαν ἄπαρνον, πλὴν οὐκ ἐπὶ θανάτῳ φάσκουσαν διδόναι ἀλλʼ ἐπὶ φίλτροις.", "translation": "She did not deny it, but claimed she gave it not to kill but as a love-potion.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An earlier attempt is said to have been excused as a philtron. The speaker alleges that his stepmother persuaded Philoneus' concubine to put a 'love-drug' in the libation wine at the Piraeus, promising it would win back the men's affection. The concubine gave Philoneus more to be more loved; he died at once and the father within twenty days. She was tortured and executed. The love-potion/poison ambiguity is the defence and the prosecution's target.", "claimed_effect": "Restoring a man's love", "claimed_mechanism": "Ingested philtron", "practitioner": "Stepmother (instigator); concubine (administrator)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Homicide trial; slave concubine executed", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-65", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Against Aristogeiton I", "author": "[Demosthenes] (authorship doubted)", "culture": "Greek (Athens; Lemnian woman)", "language": "", "date": "c. 324 BCE", "date_sort": -324, "edition_urn": "tlg0014.tlg025.perseus-grc2", "ref": "79.1", "conventional_ref": "[Dem.] 25.79–80", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐφʼ οἷς ὑμεῖς τὴν μιαρὰν Θεωρίδα, τὴν Λημνίαν, τὴν φαρμακίδα, καὶ αὐτὴν καὶ τὸ γένος ἅπαν ἀπεκτείνατε, [80.1] ταῦτα λαβὼν τὰ φάρμακα καὶ τὰς ἐπῳδὰς", "translation": "…for which you put to death the foul Theoris, the Lemnian, the pharmakis, both her and all her family; [80] having taken these drugs and incantations…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Aristogeiton's brother is accused of taking from Theoris' slave-woman, who had informed against her, the very drugs and epōidai for which Athens executed Theoris and her family. He now 'practises trickery (manganeuei), cheats, and claims to cure epileptics'. This is a documented execution of a female pharmakis, though the formal charge (impiety?) is unclear. It shows healing claims and magical harm in one person.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of epilepsy; (implied) harm", "claimed_mechanism": "Pharmaka and epōidai", "practitioner": "Theoris of Lemnos; her slave; Aristogeiton's brother", "practitioner_gender": "female (Theoris); male (brother)", "social_legal_context": "Execution of Theoris and her family by an Athenian court", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-66", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "On the Crown", "author": "Demosthenes", "culture": "Greek (Athens; private mystery cult)", "language": "", "date": "330 BCE", "date_sort": -330, "edition_urn": "tlg0014.tlg018.perseus-grc2", "ref": "259.1", "conventional_ref": "Dem. 18.259–260", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καθαίρων τοὺς τελουμένους καὶ ἀπομάττων τῷ πηλῷ καὶ τοῖς πιτύροις, καὶ ἀνιστὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ καθαρμοῦ κελεύων λέγειν ἔφυγον κακόν, εὗρον ἄμεινον", "translation": "Purifying the initiates and wiping them with clay and bran, and raising them from the purification and bidding them say 'I have fled the bad, I have found the better'.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Demosthenes mocks Aeschines for assisting his mother's private initiations. He read out the books, purified initiates with mud and bran, and by day led thiasoi through the streets with fennel and poplar crowns, brandishing snakes and shouting 'euoi saboi'. This is a detailed picture of a Sabazian/Bacchic purification business, used for social invective.", "claimed_effect": "Purification of initiates", "claimed_mechanism": "Wiping off pollution with clay and bran; ritual formulas", "practitioner": "Glaukothea (Aeschines' mother); Aeschines", "practitioner_gender": "female leader; male assistant", "social_legal_context": "Private cult on the margins of respectability", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-67", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "On the False Embassy", "author": "Demosthenes", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "343 BCE", "date_sort": -343, "edition_urn": "tlg0014.tlg019.perseus-grc2", "ref": "281.1", "conventional_ref": "Dem. 19.281", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "τὸν δʼ Ἀτρομήτου τοῦ γραμματιστοῦ καὶ Γλαυκοθέας τῆς τοὺς θιάσους συναγούσης, ἐφʼ οἷς ἑτέρα τέθνηκεν ἱέρεια", "translation": "The son of Atrometus the schoolmaster and of Glaukothea who gathers the thiasoi, for which another priestess has been put to death.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is an allusion to the execution of a priestess, usually identified as Ninos, for running the same kind of private cult associations. With Theoris it is evidence that 4th-century Athens prosecuted women religious entrepreneurs, plausibly under impiety or pharmakeia charges; the charge here is unstated.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Glaukothea; an executed priestess", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Capital trial of a priestess", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-68", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Against Ctesiphon", "author": "Aeschines", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "330 BCE", "date_sort": -330, "edition_urn": "tlg0026.tlg003.perseus-grc2", "ref": "137.1", "conventional_ref": "Aeschin. 3.137 (cf. Dem. 18.276; Din. 1.92, 95)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "οὔτʼ ἄλλος οὐδεὶς πώποτε τῶν πάλαι πονηρῶν τοιοῦτος μάγος καὶ γόης ἐγένετο", "translation": "Nor was any of the old villains ever such a magos and goēs.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In 4th-century oratory 'magos and goēs' is plain invective for a deceiving speaker. Demosthenes complains that Aeschines calls him a goēs and sophist (18.276), and Dinarchus calls Demosthenes 'this foul goēs' (1.92, 95). The Persian priestly title has become a slur for verbal fraud.", "claimed_effect": "Deceiving the people", "claimed_mechanism": "Rhetoric as sorcery", "practitioner": "Demosthenes (as accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Political prosecution", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-69", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "In Defence of Euxenippus", "author": "Hyperides", "culture": "Greek (Athens; Amphiaraion at Oropos)", "language": "", "date": "c. 330–324 BCE", "date_sort": -328, "edition_urn": "tlg0030.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "14.1", "conventional_ref": "Hyp. 4.14–15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ὁ δῆμος προσέταξεν Εὐξενίππῳ τρίτῳ αὐτῷ ἐγκατακλιθῆναι εἰς τὸ ἱερόν, οὗτος δὲ κοιμηθεὶς ἐνύπνιόν φησιν ἰδεῖν, ὃ τῷ δήμῳ ἀπαγγεῖλαι.", "translation": "The people ordered Euxenippus with two others to sleep in the sanctuary; he slept and says he saw a dream, which he reported to the people.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Assembly commissions state incubation at the Amphiaraion to settle a land dispute. The dreamer is then prosecuted for allegedly falsifying the dream. The defence says the proper check was to consult Delphi. Divination is public, legal procedure, and fraud in it is actionable.", "claimed_effect": "Divine ruling on sacred land", "claimed_mechanism": "Incubation dream at a hero's sanctuary", "practitioner": "Euxenippus (citizen delegate)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Eisangelia (impeachment) for false report of a dream", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-70", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Magna Moralia", "author": "Aristotle (attribution disputed)", "culture": "Greek (Athens, Areopagus)", "language": "", "date": "c. 330 BCE or later", "date_sort": -330, "edition_urn": "tlg0086.tlg022.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.16.2.1", "conventional_ref": "[Arist.] MM 1.16, 1188b29–38", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "οἷόν φασί ποτέ τινα γυναῖκα φίλτρον τινὶ δοῦναι πιεῖν, εἶτα τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἀποθανεῖν ὑπὸ τοῦ φίλτρου, τὴν δʼ ἄνθρωπον ἐν Ἀρείῳ πάγῳ ἀποφυγεῖν", "translation": "As they say a woman once gave someone a love-potion to drink, and the man died of it, but she was acquitted on the Areopagus.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "She was acquitted 'for no other reason than that it was not done with forethought'. She gave it out of love and missed her aim. This is a philosophical test case for voluntariness. It confirms that philtra could kill and that intent decided guilt. Compare Antiphon 1, where the same defence failed.", "claimed_effect": "Inducing love", "claimed_mechanism": "Ingested philtron", "practitioner": "A woman", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Areopagus homicide trial; acquittal for lack of intent", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-71", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Historia animalium", "author": "Aristotle", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 340–330 BCE", "date_sort": -335, "edition_urn": "tlg0086.tlg014.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "6.22.1", "conventional_ref": "Arist. HA 6.22, 577a (cf. 6.18, 572a)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Τοῦτο ἐάν τις φθῇ λαβὼν καὶ ὄσφρηται ἡ ἵππος, ἐξίσταται καὶ μαίνεται πρὸς τὴν ὀσμήν· διὸ καὶ τοῦτο αἱ φαρμακίδες ζητοῦσι καὶ συλλέγουσιν.", "translation": "If someone takes it first and the mare smells it, she goes out of her mind and is maddened by the smell; that is why the pharmakides seek and collect it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hippomanes is a black, flat growth on a newborn foal's forehead, which the mare normally eats. At 572a the same name is given to a discharge of mares in heat, 'sought above all by women concerned with pharmakeiai'. Aristotle treats the drug-women as a known social type and the substance as a real animal product.", "claimed_effect": "Erotic madness", "claimed_mechanism": "Smell/substance of the mare's sexual frenzy", "practitioner": "Pharmakides (women drug-specialists)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Natural history", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-72", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Historia animalium", "author": "Aristotle", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 340–330 BCE", "date_sort": -335, "edition_urn": "tlg0086.tlg014.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "8.24.1", "conventional_ref": "Arist. HA 8.24, 605a", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "τὰ δ’ ἐπιμυθευόμενα πέπλασται μᾶλλον ὑπὸ γυναικῶν καὶ τῶν περὶ τὰς ἐπῳδάς.", "translation": "The stories told in addition [about it] have been invented, rather, by women and by the people concerned with incantations.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Aristotle accepts the physical hippomanes but rejects the myths attached to it. He attributes them to women and charm-singers. The naturalist's judgement is that the substance is real and the magical lore fabricated.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Women; epōidoi", "practitioner_gender": "female (emphasised)", "social_legal_context": "Natural history", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-73", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Historia animalium", "author": "Aristotle", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 340–330 BCE", "date_sort": -335, "edition_urn": "tlg0086.tlg014.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.14.1", "conventional_ref": "Arist. HA 2.14, 505b", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἔστι δ’ ἰχθύδιόν τι τῶν πετραίων, ὃ καλοῦσί τινες ἐχενηΐδα, καὶ χρῶνταί τινες αὐτῷ πρὸς δίκας καὶ φίλτρα· ἔστι δὲ ἄβρωτον", "translation": "There is a little rock-fish which some call echeneis, and some use it for lawsuits and love-charms; it is inedible.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The 'ship-holder' fish is used to 'hold back' lawsuits and to bind lovers. Aristotle reports the usage without comment but corrects a claim that it has feet. Sympathetic logic is at work: a creature that holds becomes a charm that restrains.", "claimed_effect": "Delaying lawsuits; binding love", "claimed_mechanism": "Sympathy with the fish's 'holding' nature", "practitioner": "Unnamed users", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Courtroom and erotic magic", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-74", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "De divinatione per somnum", "author": "Aristotle", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 340 BCE", "date_sort": -340, "edition_urn": "tlg0086.tlg008.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.1", "conventional_ref": "Arist. Div. somn. 1, 462b12–463b11; 2, 463b12–22", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "θεόπεμπτα μὲν οὐκ ἂν εἴη τὰ ἐνύπνια, οὐδὲ γέγονε τούτου χάριν, δαιμόνια μέντοι· ἡ γὰρ φύσις δαιμονία, ἀλλ’ οὐ θεία. Σημεῖον δέ· πάνυ γὰρ εὐτελεῖς ἄνθρωποι προορατικοί εἰσι καὶ εὐθυόνειροι", "translation": "Dreams are not god-sent nor do they exist for that purpose, but they are daimonic, for nature is daimonic, not divine. A sign: quite ordinary people foresee and have vivid dreams.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Prophetic dreaming is 'neither easy to despise nor to believe' (1.1). If gods sent dreams they would send them to the wise, not to random people. Some dreams are causes (they prompt action) and some are signs of bodily states. Many 'hits' are coincidence: 'throw often and you'll throw differently each time'.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge in dreams", "claimed_mechanism": "Bodily stimuli, coincidence, self-fulfilment; 'daimonic' nature", "practitioner": "Dreamers; melancholics", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Natural philosophy", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-75", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Metaphysics", "author": "Aristotle", "culture": "Greek on Persian", "language": "", "date": "c. 340 BCE", "date_sort": -340, "edition_urn": "tlg0086.tlg025.perseus-grc2", "ref": "14.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Arist. Metaph. 14.4, 1091b8–10", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "τὸ γεννῆσαν πρῶτον ἄριστον τιθέασι, καὶ οἱ Μάγοι", "translation": "They make the first begetter the best, and so do the Magi.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Aristotle classes the Magi with Pherecydes, Empedocles and Anaxagoras as thinkers who placed the Good among first principles. To him the Magi are a philosophical school, not sorcerers.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "History of philosophy", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-76", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Rhetoric", "author": "Aristotle", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 340–335 BCE", "date_sort": -338, "edition_urn": "tlg0086.tlg038.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.5.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Arist. Rh. 3.5, 1407a31–b6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "πάσχουσιν οἱ ἀκροαταὶ ὅπερ οἱ πολλοὶ παρὰ τοῖς μάντεσιν· ὅταν γὰρ λέγωσιν ἀμφίβολα, συμπαρανεύουσιν", "translation": "Listeners feel what most people feel with seers: when they speak ambiguously, people nod along.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Seers speak in genera, since one is likelier to guess right in odd-or-even than in an exact number. 'That is why oracle-mongers do not specify when.' Croesus' oracle is the example. This is a clear technical account of how vagueness protects prophecy, folded into a lesson on clear style.", "claimed_effect": "Correct prophecy", "claimed_mechanism": "Strategic ambiguity", "practitioner": "Manteis, chresmologoi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Rhetorical theory", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-77", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Politics", "author": "Aristotle", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 330 BCE", "date_sort": -330, "edition_urn": "tlg0086.tlg035.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.1315a.1", "conventional_ref": "Arist. Pol. 5.11, 1314b38–1315a3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐὰν δεισιδαίμονα νομίζωσιν εἶναι τὸν ἄρχοντα καὶ φροντίζειν τῶν θεῶν, καὶ ἐπιβουλεύουσιν ἧττον ὡς συμμάχους ἔχοντι καὶ τοὺς θεούς", "translation": "If they think the ruler god-fearing (deisidaimōn) and attentive to the gods, they also plot against him less, since they think he has the gods as allies.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Tyrants should appear deisidaimōn, but 'without silliness'. The word here is still neutral to positive, 'god-fearing'. By Theophrastus' Characters it means pathological superstition. The passage marks a semantic hinge.", "claimed_effect": "Political security", "claimed_mechanism": "Perceived divine alliance", "practitioner": "Rulers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Advice for preserving tyranny", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-78", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Problemata", "author": "[Aristotle] (Peripatetic)", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "late 4th–3rd c. BCE", "date_sort": -280, "edition_urn": "tlg0086.tlg036.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "30.1.1", "conventional_ref": "[Arist.] Pr. 30.1, 954a34–38", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅθεν Σίβυλλαι καὶ Βάκιδες καὶ οἱ ἔνθεοι γίνονται πάντες, ὅταν μὴ νοσήματι γένωνται ἀλλὰ φυσικῇ κράσει.", "translation": "Hence come Sibyls and Bakises and all the inspired, when it arises not from disease but from natural temperament.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Prophetic inspiration is explained by overheated black bile near the seat of intellect. Sibyls and the Bakis oracle-poets are physiologically gifted melancholics. Possession is fully naturalised.", "claimed_effect": "Inspired prophecy", "claimed_mechanism": "Heat of black bile", "practitioner": "Sibyls, Bakides", "practitioner_gender": "female and male", "social_legal_context": "Medical philosophy", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-79", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Mirabilium auscultationes", "author": "[Aristotle] (Peripatetic compilation)", "culture": "Greek (Thessaly)", "language": "", "date": "3rd c. BCE (compilation; sources older)", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg0086.tlg027.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "151.2.1", "conventional_ref": "[Arist.] Mir. 151, 845b", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Γυναῖκα κύκλον γράψασαν καὶ τὰ φάρμακα θεῖσαν εἰσβῆναι εἰς τὸν κύκλον, αὐτὴν καὶ τὸν υἱόν, εἶτα μιμεῖσθαι τὴν φωνὴν τοῦ θηρίου", "translation": "A woman drew a circle, placed her drugs, and stepped into the circle with her son, and then imitated the creature's voice.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A Thessalian woman kills the deadly 'sacred snake' at Tenos. The snake answered her singing and approached, and she grew drowsy, her son beating her awake. When it entered the circle it shrivelled at once (151.3). This is a very early Greek magic circle, with drugs and voice-mimicry, again assigned to a Thessalian woman.", "claimed_effect": "Killing a lethal snake", "claimed_mechanism": "Protective circle, pharmaka, vocal lure", "practitioner": "A Thessalian woman", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Marvel literature", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-80", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Characters", "author": "Theophrastus", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 319 BCE", "date_sort": -319, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg009.perseus-grc2", "ref": "16.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Theophr. Char. 16", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "exorcism", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀμέλει ἡ δεισιδαιμονία δόξειεν ἂν εἷναι δειλία πρὸς τὸ δαιμόνιον", "translation": "Superstition (deisidaimonia), of course, would seem to be cowardice towards the divine.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The superstitious man walks about with laurel in his mouth, waits or throws three stones if a weasel crosses his path, and anoints wayside stones. He purifies his house 'claiming a Hecate-sending (epagōgē) has occurred' (16.7). He visits dream-interpreters, seers and bird-diviners, is initiated monthly by Orpheotelestai (16.12), and has priestesses purify him with squill or a puppy (16.14). He spits into his chest at a madman or epileptic. Excess, not practice, is mocked.", "claimed_effect": "Averting pollution and ill omen", "claimed_mechanism": "Apotropaic gestures, purification, consultation", "practitioner": "Ordinary citizen; exēgētai, manteis, Orpheotelestai, priestesses", "practitioner_gender": "male (protagonist); female priestesses", "social_legal_context": "Everyday Athenian religion", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-81", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Enquiry into Plants", "author": "Theophrastus", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 BCE", "date_sort": -300, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "9.8.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Theophr. HP 9.8.5–6", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἔτι δὲ ὅσα οἱ φαρμακοπῶλαι καὶ οἱ ῥιζοτόμοι τὰ μὲν ἴσως οἰκείως τὰ δὲ καὶ ἐπιτραγωδοῦντες λέγουσι.", "translation": "Further, there are the things drug-sellers and root-cutters say, some perhaps pertinently, others with theatrical exaggeration.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Theophrastus sorts root-cutting lore. Some rules make sense: cut thapsia standing upwind with the body oiled, and eat garlic and drink neat wine before digging hellebore, which causes heaviness of head. These track real irritant and toxic effects. Others are 'far-fetched additions', such as digging peony only at night lest a woodpecker see you and your eyes or anus suffer. This is an explicit rational sieve applied to magical herbal rules.", "claimed_effect": "Safe collection of potent plants", "claimed_mechanism": "Avoiding toxic exposure (plausible) vs. omens and taboos (implausible)", "practitioner": "Rhizotomoi, pharmakopōlai", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Commercial drug trade", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-82", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Enquiry into Plants", "author": "Theophrastus", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 BCE", "date_sort": -300, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "9.8.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Theophr. HP 9.8.7–8", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "περιγράφειν δὲ καὶ τὸν μανδραγόραν εἰς τρὶς ξίφει, τέμνειν δὲ πρὸς ἑσπέραν βλέποντα. τὸν δ᾿ ἕτερον κύκλῳ περιορχεῖσθαι καὶ λέγειν ὡς πλεῖστα περὶ ἀφροδισίων.", "translation": "They also draw three circles round the mandrake with a sword and cut it facing west; and another person must dance round it and say as much as possible about sex.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Root-cutting rituals: pray while cutting (not absurd, he says); leave honey-cakes and fruits in exchange for the Asclepian panax; draw three circles with a double-edged sword around the iris; guard against an eagle when cutting black hellebore facing east, or die within the year. Theophrastus files these as 'additions' (epitheta) and compares the obscenity rite to cursing cumin when sowing.", "claimed_effect": "Potency and safety of the drug", "claimed_mechanism": "Circle-drawing, orientation, prayer, exchange offerings, sexual speech", "practitioner": "Rhizotomoi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Herb-gathering practice", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-83", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Enquiry into Plants", "author": "Theophrastus", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 BCE", "date_sort": -300, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "9.9.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Theophr. HP 9.9.1–3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "love", "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀγαθὴν δὲ τὴν ῥίζαν καὶ ὠκυτόκιον περίαπτον καὶ εἰς φίλτρα", "translation": "The root is good also as an amulet for quick childbirth, and for love-potions.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Cyclamen root is recorded as an amulet for quick delivery and for philtra. The juice is said to cause drunkenness. Mandrake leaf treats sores; its root treats erysipelas and gout, brings sleep and serves philtra (9.9.1). Theophrastus lists these 'magical' uses flatly alongside pharmacological ones.", "claimed_effect": "Easy childbirth; love; sleep", "claimed_mechanism": "Plant powers (dynameis), worn or ingested", "practitioner": "Root-cutters and users", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Materia medica", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-84", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Enquiry into Plants", "author": "Theophrastus", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 BCE", "date_sort": -300, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "9.10.4.2", "conventional_ref": "Theophr. HP 9.10.4", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Καλοῦσι δὲ τὸν μέλανά τινες ἔκτομον Μελαμπόδιον, ὡς ἐκείνου πρῶτον τεμόντος καὶ ἀνευρόντος. καθαίρουσι δὲ καὶ οἰκίας αὐτῷ καὶ πρόβατα συνεπᾴδοντές τινα ἐπῳδὴν", "translation": "Some call black hellebore 'Melampodion', because Melampus first cut and discovered it. They purify houses and sheep with it, singing a charm along with it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Black hellebore, a strong purgative and poison, is used to purify houses and flocks while singing a charm. It is named after the mythical seer-healer Melampus, who purged the Proetids. Medical katharsis and ritual katharmos share one plant.", "claimed_effect": "Purification of houses and livestock", "claimed_mechanism": "Hellebore plus incantation", "practitioner": "Unnamed purifiers", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Agricultural and household ritual", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-85", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Enquiry into Plants", "author": "Theophrastus", "culture": "Greek (Arcadia)", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 BCE", "date_sort": -300, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "9.15.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Theophr. HP 9.15.7", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "χρῆσθαι δὲ αὐτῷ πρός τε τὰ ἀλεξιφάρμακα καὶ τὰς μαγείας· οὐ μὴν ὀρύττειν γ᾿ εἶναι χαλεπόν, ὡς Ὅμηρός φησι.", "translation": "They use it for antidotes and for magic; but it is not hard to dig up, as Homer says.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Moly grows at Pheneus and on Cyllene and resembles Homer's plant. It is used 'for alexipharmaka and mageiai', the word mageia here denoting practical counter-magic. Theophrastus corrects Homer's claim that it is hard to dig.", "claimed_effect": "Protection against drugs and spells", "claimed_mechanism": "Plant virtue", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Materia medica; Homeric reception", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-86", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Enquiry into Plants", "author": "Theophrastus", "culture": "Greek (with Italian, Egyptian lore)", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 BCE", "date_sort": -300, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "9.15.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Theophr. HP 9.15.1", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Φαρμακώδεις δὲ δοκοῦσιν εἶναι τόποι μάλιστα τῶν μὲν ἔξω τῆς Ἑλλάδος οἱ περὶ τὴν Τυρρηνίαν καὶ τὴν Λατίνην, ἐν ᾗ καὶ τὴν Κίρκην εἶναι λέγουσιν", "translation": "The places most rich in drugs seem to be, outside Greece, those around Etruria and Latium, where they say Circe lived.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Theophrastus gives a geography of pharmaka. Etruria and Latium are Circe's land, and Egypt is the source of Helen's nepenthes according to Homer. Mythical sorceresses are rationalised as markers of real drug-producing regions.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Local abundance of potent plants", "practitioner": "Circe; Polydamna (mythical)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Botanical geography", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-87", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Enquiry into Plants", "author": "Theophrastus", "culture": "Greek (Mantinea)", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 BCE", "date_sort": -300, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "9.16.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Theophr. HP 9.16.8", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "ὥστε ῥᾳδίαν ποιεῖν καὶ ἄπονον τὴν ἀπόλυσιν τοῖς ὀποῖς χρώμενος κωνείου τε καὶ μήκωνος καὶ ἑτέρων τοιούτων", "translation": "So as to make the release [death] easy and painless, using the juices of hemlock, poppy and other such plants.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Thrasyas of Mantinea devised a compound of hemlock, opium and other plant juices. It gave a painless death at a dose of one drachm, had no antidote and kept indefinitely. He sourced his hemlock from Susa and other cold, shady places. This is real pharmacological expertise in poisons, with no magic involved.", "claimed_effect": "Painless death", "claimed_mechanism": "Coniine plus opiates", "practitioner": "Thrasyas; his pupil Alexias", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Professional drug-makers", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-88", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Enquiry into Plants", "author": "Theophrastus", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 BCE", "date_sort": -300, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "9.17.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Theophr. HP 9.17.1–3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ἔφη τὸ αὐτὸ τοῖς μὲν φάρμακον εἶναι τοῖς δ᾿ οὐ φάρμακον, διαιρῶν τὰς φύσεις ἑκάστων", "translation": "For he said the same thing is a drug to some and not a drug to others, distinguishing the natures of each.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Drug strength weakens with habit. A drug-seller astonished crowds by eating one or two hellebore roots. A shepherd discredited him by eating a whole bundle, since he did so daily (9.17.1). Eudemus the drug-seller wagered he could eat hellebore and feel nothing before sunset. This is an exposé of the drug-seller's stunt as acquired tolerance.", "claimed_effect": "Immunity to poison", "claimed_mechanism": "Habituation (synētheia) and constitution", "practitioner": "Pharmakopōlai (Eudemus); Thrasyas; shepherds", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Marketplace demonstrations", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-89", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Enquiry into Plants", "author": "Theophrastus", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 BCE", "date_sort": -300, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "9.19.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Theophr. HP 9.19.2–3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἀλλὰ τάδε εὐηθέστερα καὶ ἀπιθανώτερα τά τε τῶν περιάπτων καὶ ὅλως τῶν ἀλεξιφαρμάκων λεγομένων τοῖς τε σώμασι καὶ ταῖς οἰκίαις.", "translation": "But these things are sillier and less credible: what is said about amulets and generally about the so-called protective charms for bodies and houses.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Plants said to affect the mind, such as strychnos and onothēras, are accepted (9.19.1). Amulets are not, nor tripolion, dug at night 'according to Hesiod and Musaeus' to help in any serious matter, nor plants that confer good repute when rubbed on or worn as a crown. Such claims come from people 'wishing to magnify their own arts' (9.19.3). The line falls between pharmacological action and symbolic protection.", "claimed_effect": "Protection; fame and good repute", "claimed_mechanism": "Amulets, ointments, crowns", "practitioner": "Root-cutters promoting their craft", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Critique of commercial claims", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-90", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Enquiry into Plants", "author": "Theophrastus", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 BCE", "date_sort": -300, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "9.18.2.2", "conventional_ref": "Theophr. HP 9.18.2", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "εἰ δὲ ἀληθῆ τὰ περὶ τὸν σκορπίον ἤδη καὶ τἆλλα, οὐκ ἀπίθανα τὰ τοιαῦτα. καὶ τὰ μυθώδη δὲ οὐκ ἀλόγως συγκεῖται.", "translation": "If the things about the scorpion are true, then the rest too, such things, are not incredible; and even the mythical stories are not composed without reason.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Thelyphonon is said to kill a scorpion and white hellebore to revive it. Theophrastus offers a criterion: if one remarkable effect is verified, analogous claims become credible, and myths often encode real powers. This is a methodological middle position between credulity and dismissal.", "claimed_effect": "Killing and reviving scorpions; killing livestock", "claimed_mechanism": "Antipathetic plant powers", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Natural history method", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-91", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "Fragmenta varia (Ethics, via Plutarch Per. 38)", "author": "Theophrastus", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 320 BCE (event 429 BCE)", "date_sort": -320, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg010x09.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "146.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Theophr. fr. 146 (= Plut. Per. 38.2)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "δείξειε περίαπτον ὑπὸ τῶν γυναικῶν τῷ τραχήλῳ περιηρτημένον, ὡς σφόδρα κακῶς ἔχων ὁπότε καὶ ταύτην ὑπομένοι τὴν ἀβελτηρίαν.", "translation": "He showed an amulet hung round his neck by the women, as being very ill indeed if he put up even with this folly.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Dying of the plague, Pericles shows a visiting friend the amulet the women of his house had put on him. Theophrastus used the anecdote to ask whether illness changes character. Amulets belong to the women's sphere and shame an elite man.", "claimed_effect": "Healing/protection", "claimed_mechanism": "Worn amulet", "practitioner": "Women of Pericles' household", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Elite household; gendered embarrassment", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-classical-prose-92", "corpus": "greek-classical-prose", "work": "De signis tempestatum", "author": "Theophrastus (or Peripatetic)", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 BCE", "date_sort": -300, "edition_urn": "tlg0093.tlg010x03.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.1.1", "conventional_ref": "[Theophr.] Sign. 1", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Σημεῖα ὑδάτων καὶ πνευμάτων καὶ χειμώνων καὶ εὐδιῶν ὧδε ἐγράψαμεν καθʼ ὅσον ἦν ἐφικτὸν, ἃ μὲν αὐτοὶ προσκοπήσαντες ἃ δὲ παρʼ ἑτέρων οὐκ ἀδοκίμων λαβόντες.", "translation": "We have written down signs of rain, winds, storms and fair weather as far as was possible, some observed ourselves, some taken from others of good repute.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is an empirical handbook of weather prediction from star risings, local mountain clouds and lunar haloes (2.31: haloes around the moon mean wind). It is the observational counterpart to the claims to make storms and fair weather attacked in De morbo sacro, and to the Magi's storm-calming. Foreknowledge of weather, not control of it.", "claimed_effect": "Predicting weather", "claimed_mechanism": "Observation of natural signs", "practitioner": "Observers, sailors, farmers", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Practical science", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-1", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Conjugalia praecepta", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (Roman imperial Boeotia), reporting Thessalian lore", "language": "", "date": "c. 100 CE", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg078.perseus-grc2", "ref": "48.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Conj. praec. 48 (Mor. 145c)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "illusion-trickery", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "περὶ Ἀγλαονίκης ἀκηκουῖα τῆς Ἡγήτορος τοῦ Θεσσαλοῦ θυγατρὸς ὅτι τῶν ἐκλειπτικῶν ἔμπειρος οὖσα πανσελήνων καὶ προειδυῖα τὸν χρόνον, ἐν ᾧ συμβαίνει τὴν σελήνην ὑπὸ τῆς σκιᾶς ἁλίσκεσθαι, παρεκρούετο καὶ συνέπειθε τὰς γυναῖκας", "translation": "having heard of Aglaonice, daughter of Hegetor the Thessalian: she was expert in the eclipses of full moons, knew in advance the time at which the moon is caught by the shadow, and so deceived the women and persuaded them [that she was drawing the moon down].", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Plutarch advises the young wife to laugh at anyone who claims to 'draw down the moon'. An educated woman knows that Aglaonice used real eclipse knowledge to stage the famous Thessalian spell. This is the classic case of 'magic' that is really prediction from astronomy.", "claimed_effect": "pulling the moon down from the sky", "claimed_mechanism": "(real) foreknowledge of lunar eclipses, presented as incantation", "practitioner": "Aglaonice daughter of Hegetor (Thessalian)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Advice on marriage: a wife's education in astronomy protects her from credulity.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-2", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De defectu oraculorum", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (Delphic priest), reporting Thessalian lore", "language": "", "date": "c. 100 CE", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg092.perseus-grc2", "ref": "13.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. De def. or. 13 (Mor. 416f–417a)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἀγλαονίκης τῆς Ἡγήτορος, ὥς φασιν, ἀστρολογικῆς γυναικός, ἐν ἐκλείψει σελήνης ἀεὶ προσποιουμένης γοητεύειν καὶ καθαιρεῖν αὐτήν.", "translation": "Aglaonice daughter of Hegetor, an astronomer woman as they say, who at every lunar eclipse pretended to be bewitching the moon and bringing it down.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Second Plutarchan telling of Aglaonice. It is used as an analogy for people who drag the god down into every petty matter, 'as the Thessalian women are said to draw down the moon'. Here Plutarch calls her trick 'pretending to goeteuein'.", "claimed_effect": "drawing down the moon", "claimed_mechanism": "pretended goeteia covering eclipse prediction", "practitioner": "Aglaonice; 'Thessalian women'", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-3", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Quaestiones convivales", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (Roman imperial)", "language": "", "date": "c. 100–115 CE", "date_sort": 110, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg112.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.7.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Quaest. conv. 5.7.2 (within Mor. 680c–683b)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "μάλιστα δὲ τοῦτο γίγνεσθαι διὰ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν εἰκός ἐστι· πολυκίνητος γὰρ ἡ ὄψις οὖσα μετὰ πνεύματος αὐγὴν ἀφιέντος πυρώδη θαυμαστήν τινα διασπείρει δύναμιν", "translation": "It is most likely that this happens through the eyes. Sight is highly mobile, and with the pneuma, which sends out a fiery ray, it scatters a wonderful power.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At a dinner the other guests laugh at the evil eye (katabaskainein). Plutarch, speaking in person, builds a physical theory from emanations (aporrhoiai): bodies give off smell, voice and breath, and the eye most of all gives off a fiery effluence. The proof offered is that love itself begins with a look.", "claimed_effect": "harm to people and things looked at with envy", "claimed_mechanism": "emanations and a fiery pneuma streaming from the eyes", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-4", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Quaestiones convivales", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (Roman imperial)", "language": "", "date": "c. 100–115 CE", "date_sort": 110, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg112.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.7.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Quaest. conv. 5.7.3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "διὸ καὶ τὸ τῶν λεγομένων προβασκανίων γένος οἴονται πρὸς τὸν φθόνον ὠφελεῖν, ἑλκομένης διὰ τὴν ἀτοπίαν τῆς ὄψεως, ὥσθʼ ἧττον ἐπερείδειν τοῖς πάσχουσιν.", "translation": "That is why people think the so-called 'pre-bewitchers' (probaskania) help against envy: the gaze is drawn off by their oddness, so that it presses less on its victims.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Envy floods body and soul. Envious eyes send their vice out 'like poisoned arrows' (ὥσπερ πεφαρμαγμένα βέλη), much as an angry dog's bite is worse. Grotesque amulets (probaskania) work by distracting the gaze. In 5.7.4–5 the guests go on to self-bewitchment, Eutelidas who fell ill after admiring his own reflection, which Plutarch explains by Hippocrates' warning that peak bodily condition is unstable.", "claimed_effect": "protection from envious gaze", "claimed_mechanism": "diversion of the visual ray by a startling object", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-5", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De superstitione", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (Roman imperial)", "language": "", "date": "c. 70–100 CE", "date_sort": 90, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg080.perseus-grc2", "ref": "12.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. De superst. 12 (cf. 3)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "exorcism", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας ἔργα καὶ πάθη καταγέλαστα, καὶ ῥήματα καὶ κινήματα καὶ γοητεῖαι καὶ μαγεῖαι καὶ περιδρομαὶ καὶ τυμπανισμοὶ καὶ ἀκάθαρτοι μὲν καθαρμοὶ ῥυπαραὶ δʼ ἁγνεῖαι", "translation": "the ridiculous deeds and feelings of superstition: words and gestures, sorceries and magic rites, runnings-around and drummings, unclean purifications and filthy sanctities", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Plutarch blames deisidaimonia, not the heavens, for driving people to atheism. Its outward signs are goeteiai, mageiai and degrading purifications. At 3.1 the dreamer who fears 'chthonic Hecate's revel' falls among 'beggar-priests and goetes' who prescribe sea-dips, sitting on the ground and mud-smearing (πηλώσεις). These he calls barbarian evils the Greeks have taken up.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "agyrtai and goetes; the 'old woman who purifies' (περιμάκτρια γραῦς)", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "A philosophical boundary: true eusebeia against fear-driven ritualism.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-6", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De Iside et Osiride", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek interpretation of Persian (Zoroastrian) ritual", "language": "", "date": "c. 115–120 CE", "date_sort": 118, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg089.perseus-grc2", "ref": "46.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. De Is. et Os. 46 (Mor. 369d–370a)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "πόαν γάρ τινα κόπτοντες Μῶλυ καλουμένην ἐν ὅλμῳ, τὸν ᾍδην ἀνακαλοῦνται καὶ τὸν σκότον· εἶτα μίξαντες αἵματι λύκου σφαγέντος εἰς τόπον ἀνήλιον ἐκφέρουσι καὶ ῥίπτουσι.", "translation": "Pounding in a mortar a herb called 'moly', they invoke Hades and darkness; then they mix it with the blood of a slaughtered wolf, carry it to a sunless place and throw it away.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Zoroaster 'the magos' (dated 5,000 years before Troy) taught dualism, Oromazes against Areimanios with Mithras as mediator, and taught that one sacrifices thank-offerings to the good god and averting, gloomy rites (ἀποτρόπαια) to the evil one. Plants and animals are divided between them, and killing water-rats is meritorious. Here the 'magoi' are priests of a dualist religion, not sorcerers. The plant name is disputed: this edition prints Μῶλυ, while other editions read ὄμωμι, which may be Iranian haoma.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "averting offerings to the evil principle", "practitioner": "Persian magoi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-7", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Alexander", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek, reporting Macedonian and Thracian ecstatic cult", "language": "", "date": "c. 110 CE (events 357 BCE)", "date_sort": 110, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg047.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Alex. 2.4–6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "εἴτε δείσαντά τινας μαγείας ἐπʼ αὐτῷ καὶ φάρμακα τῆς γυναικός, εἴτε τὴν ὁμιλίαν ὡς κρείττονι συνούσης ἀφοσιούμενον.", "translation": "either because he feared some magic and drugs of his wife's directed at him, or because he shrank from intercourse with her as the consort of a higher being.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A snake was once seen stretched beside the sleeping Olympias, and Philip's ardour cooled. Plutarch offers two readings, fear of her mageia and pharmaka or religious awe. Then (2.5–6) he gives a cultural explanation: the women of the region were addicted to Orphic and Dionysiac orgies, and Olympias 'more barbarously' brought large tame snakes into the thiasoi to terrify the men.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Olympias", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Royal marriage; suspicion of a queen's magic", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-8", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Alexander", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek, reporting a Babylonian/Persian demonstration", "language": "", "date": "c. 110 CE (events 331 BCE)", "date_sort": 110, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg047.perseus-grc2", "ref": "35.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Alex. 35.1–6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "εἰκότως οὖν ἔνιοι τὸν μῦθον ἀνασῴζοντες πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν τοῦτό φασιν εἶναι τὸ τῆς Μηδείας φάρμακον, ᾧ τὸν τραγῳδούμενον στέφανον καὶ τὸν πέπλον ἔχρισεν.", "translation": "So it is reasonable that some, rescuing the myth for the truth, say that this was Medea's drug, with which she anointed the crown and robe of tragedy.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The 'barbarians' sprinkle naphtha along a street and light it at dusk, and the fire runs the whole length in an instant. A bath attendant smears a boy with it as an experiment; he bursts into flame and barely survives. Plutarch rationalises Medea's poisoned robe as naphtha, ignited not by itself but by a nearby flame, and gives a physical theory of 'fiery rays' (35.6).", "claimed_effect": "Medea's robe that burst into flame", "claimed_mechanism": "petroleum (naphtha) ignited by nearby fire", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-9", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Nicias", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (Athens, 413 BCE, seen from c. 100 CE)", "language": "", "date": "c. 100–110 CE", "date_sort": 105, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg038.perseus-grc2", "ref": "23.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Nic. 23.1–5", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐξέλιπεν ἡ σελήνη τῆς νυκτός, μέγα δέος τῷ Νικίᾳ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τοῖς ὑπὸ ἀπειρίας ἢ δεισιδαιμονίας ἐκπεπληγμένοις τὰ τοιαῦτα.", "translation": "The moon was eclipsed in the night, a great terror to Nicias and to those others who are struck dumb by such things through inexperience or superstition.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The lunar eclipse at Syracuse. Plutarch notes that people already understood solar eclipses but not lunar ones. Anaxagoras' explanation still circulated secretly, and 'meteorologists' were persecuted (Protagoras, Anaxagoras, Socrates). Nicias' own seer Stilbides, 'who took away much of his superstition', had just died. Philochorus says the sign was actually favourable to men in flight. Ignorance of astronomy cost an army.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "seers (manteis) such as Stilbides", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-10", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Pericles", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (5th-c. Athens via c. 100 CE)", "language": "", "date": "c. 100–110 CE", "date_sort": 105, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg012.perseus-grc2", "ref": "6.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Per. 6.2–4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐκώλυε δʼ οὐδέν, οἶμαι, καὶ τὸν φυσικὸν ἐπιτυγχάνειν καὶ τὸν μάντιν, τοῦ μὲν τὴν αἰτίαν, τοῦ δὲ τὸ τέλος καλῶς ἐκλαμβάνοντος", "translation": "Nothing prevented, I think, both the natural philosopher and the seer from being right, the one grasping the cause correctly, the other the purpose.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A one-horned ram's head is brought to Pericles. The seer Lampon reads it as meaning power will pass to one man. Anaxagoras splits the skull and shows the deformed brain. Both prove right. Plutarch's verdict is that a physical cause does not abolish a sign's meaning, just as gongs, beacons and sundial shadows have causes and still signify. This is a defence of divination alongside natural science.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Lampon the mantis; Anaxagoras", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-11", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Pericles", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 100–110 CE", "date_sort": 105, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg012.perseus-grc2", "ref": "35.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Per. 35.2 (cf. Dion 24.1)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀνέσχε τὴν χλαμύδα πρὸ τῶν ὄψεων αὐτοῦ, καὶ παρακαλύψας ἠρώτησε μή τι δεινὸν ἢ δεινοῦ τινος οἴεται σημεῖον", "translation": "he held his cloak up before the man's eyes and, having covered them, asked whether he thought this was anything terrible or a sign of something terrible", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "During a solar eclipse Pericles calms a terrified helmsman with his cloak: the only difference is that something bigger than a cloak caused the darkness. Plutarch admits the story is 'told in the philosophers' schools'. Similarly, Dion's men saw 'nothing wondrous' in a lunar eclipse because they reckoned the cycles and the earth's shadow (Plut. Dion 24.1.1, opened).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-12", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Numa", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek retelling of early Roman/Latin myth", "language": "", "date": "c. 100–110 CE", "date_sort": 105, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "15.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Num. 15.3–6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "transformation", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς κεραυνοῖς ἐκδιδάξαι καθαρμόν, ὃς ποιεῖται μέχρι νῦν διὰ κρομμύων καὶ τριχῶν καὶ μαινίδων.", "translation": "and they taught him the expiation against thunderbolts, which is performed to this day with onions, hair and sprats.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Picus and Faunus, daimones 'with the power of drugs and skill in goeteia about divine things' like the Idaean Dactyls, are caught by Numa, who spikes their spring with wine and honey. They shift shapes, then teach the thunderbolt charm. In another version they 'drew Zeus down by magic' and Numa haggles the god from human heads to onions, hair and live fish. Plutarch calls it all mythical and laughable but valuable evidence of early Roman piety.", "claimed_effect": "protection from lightning", "claimed_mechanism": "ritual substitution in a bargain with Zeus", "practitioner": "Picus and Faunus (daimones); Numa; Egeria", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-13", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Caius Marius", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Roman Republic (c. 102 BCE), with a Syrian prophetess", "language": "", "date": "c. 110 CE", "date_sort": 110, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg031.perseus-grc2", "ref": "17.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Mar. 17.1–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "τινα Σύραν γυναῖκα, Μάρθαν ὄνομα, μαντεύεσθαι λεγομένην ἐν φορείῳ κατακειμένην σεμνῶς περιήγετο, καὶ θυσίας ἔθυεν ἐκείνης κελευούσης.", "translation": "He carried about with him in a litter, with great ceremony, a Syrian woman named Martha who was said to prophesy, and he offered sacrifices at her command.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Senate had refused to hear Martha. She proved herself to Marius' wife by predicting the winners of gladiatorial bouts, and then served Marius as camp prophetess in a purple cloak with a ribboned spear. Plutarch adds that many thought Marius was staging it. It shows a foreign female seer moving from rejection by the Senate to a general's private religion.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Martha the Syrian", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Senate rejection; private patronage by a general", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-14", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Aemilius Paulus", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Roman (168 BCE) contrasted with Macedonian", "language": "", "date": "c. 110 CE", "date_sort": 110, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg019.perseus-grc2", "ref": "17.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Aem. 17.7–10", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων, ὥσπερ ἐστὶ νενομισμένον, χαλκοῦ τε πατάγοις ἀνακαλουμένων τὸ φῶς αὐτῆς καὶ πυρὰ πολλὰ δαλοῖς καὶ δᾳσὶν ἀνεχόντων πρὸς τὸν οὐρανόν", "translation": "while the Romans, as is customary, called back its light with the clashing of bronze and held up many fires of brands and torches to the sky", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Before Pydna the moon is eclipsed. The Romans make noise and torches to recall the light; the Macedonians whisper that it means the eclipse of their king. Aemilius 'was not ignorant of the eclipse anomalies' caused by the earth's shadow, yet as a pious man he sacrificed eleven calves to the moon when it reappeared. Technical knowledge and ritual sit together in one man.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Customary public rite (nenomismenon) at eclipses", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-15", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De defectu oraculorum", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (Delphi)", "language": "", "date": "c. 100 CE", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg092.perseus-grc2", "ref": "50.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. De def. or. 40–51 (esp. 50–51, Mor. 437c–438c)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ὁ γὰρ οἶκος, ἐν ᾧ τοὺς χρωμένους τῷ θεῷ καθίζουσιν, οὔτε πολλάκις οὔτε τεταγμένως ἀλλʼ ὡς ἔτυχε διὰ χρόνων εὐωδίας ἀναπίμπλαται καὶ πνεύματος", "translation": "The room in which they seat those consulting the god is filled, neither often nor regularly but at random intervals, with fragrance and a breath (pneuma)", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Plutarch's exhalation theory of prophecy: the earth sends up the mantic pneuma (anathymiasis), which acts on the soul 'like a drug'. It varies in strength and can fail, which is why oracles decline. 51.1 tells how a Pythia, forced to prophesy when the omens were bad, became 'full of a dumb and evil pneuma', rushed screaming out and died a few days later. This is a naturalistic account of inspired divination by a Delphic priest.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "earth exhalation acting like a pharmakon on the prophetic faculty", "practitioner": "the Pythia; the prophetes Nikandros", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-16", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Quaestiones Romanae", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Roman (evocatio), with a Tyrian parallel", "language": "", "date": "c. 100 CE", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg084a.perseus-grc3", "ref": "61.2", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Quaest. Rom. 61 (Mor. 278f–279a)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐκκλήσεις εἰσὶ καὶ γοητεῖαι θεῶν, αἷς νομίζοντες καὶ αὐτοὶ θεούς τινας ἐκκεκλῆσθαι παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων καὶ μετῳκηκέναι πρὸς αὑτοὺς ἐφοβοῦντο τὸ αὐτὸ παθεῖν ὑφʼ ἑτέρων", "translation": "there are summonings-out and bewitchments of gods; since the Romans believed they had themselves called certain gods out from their enemies and resettled them at home, they feared the same might be done to them", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Why is Rome's tutelary god secret? Because Roman state ritual practised evocatio, which Plutarch's sources call 'goeteiai of gods'. Rome hid its own god's name, as the Tyrians are said to bind their statues with chains. The Greek word for illicit sorcery is here applied to a public priestly rite.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "State religion; secret divine names as civic protection", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-17", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De sera numinis vindicta", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (Sparta, 5th c. BCE, via Plutarch)", "language": "", "date": "c. 100 CE", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg107.perseus-grc2", "ref": "17.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. De sera num. vind. 17 (Mor. 560e–f); cf. Cimon 6.6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ Σπαρτιάταις χρησθὲν ἱλάσασθαι τὴν Παυσανίου ψυχήν, ἐξ Ἰταλίας μεταπεμφθέντες οἱ ψυχαγωγοὶ καὶ θύσαντες ἀπεσπάσαντο τοῦ ἱεροῦ τὸ εἴδωλον.", "translation": "Likewise, when the Spartans were told by oracle to appease the soul of Pausanias, they sent to Italy for 'soul-guides' (psychagogoi), who sacrificed and drew the ghost away from the sanctuary.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ghost-laying ordered by Delphi and carried out by professional psychagogoi hired abroad: necromantic specialists in the service of a Greek state. Callondas likewise had to appease Archilochus' soul at the psychopompeion of Taenarum. Plut. Cimon 6.6.1 (opened) has Pausanias himself calling up Cleonice's soul at the nekyomanteion of Heraclea.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "psychagogoi from Italy", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Delphic command; official state commission", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-18", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Conjugalia praecepta", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (household ethics)", "language": "", "date": "c. 100 CE", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg078.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Conj. praec. 5 (Mor. 139a); cf. De tuenda san. 7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "οὕτως αἱ φίλτρα τινὰ καὶ γοητείας ἐπιτεχνώμεναι τοῖς ἀνδράσι καὶ χειρούμεναι διʼ ἡδονῆς αὐτοὺς ἐμπλήκτοις καὶ ἀνοήτοις, καὶ διεφθαρμένοις συμβιοῦσιν.", "translation": "So wives who contrive love-potions and spells against their husbands and master them through pleasure end up living with stupefied, witless, ruined men.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Fishing with poison catches the fish quickly but makes it inedible, and the same goes for love magic used by wives. Circe got nothing from the men she drugged into swine; she loved the sensible Odysseus. In De tuenda 7.1 Plutarch remarks that we loathe wives' philtra but let hired cooks all but 'bewitch and drug' our food. Love magic is assumed to work, as a dangerous drug.", "claimed_effect": "binding a husband's affection", "claimed_mechanism": "drugs acting through pleasure, damaging the mind", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-19", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Mulierum virtutes", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (Cyrene, 1st c. BCE)", "language": "", "date": "c. 100 CE", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg083.perseus-grc3", "ref": "19.3", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Mul. virt. 19 (Aretaphila, Mor. 255e–257e)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "μωρὰ μὲν ἴσως καὶ γυναικεῖα, θανάτου δʼ οὐκ ἄξια· πλὴν εἰ κριτῇ σοι δόξειε φίλτρων ἕνεκα καὶ γοητείας κτεῖναι γυναῖκα, πλεῖον ἢ σὺ βούλει φιλεῖσθαι δεομένην.", "translation": "foolish perhaps and womanish, but not worth death, unless you as judge decide to kill a woman for love-potions and witchcraft because she wanted to be loved more than you wish.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Aretaphila, forced to marry the tyrant Nicocrates, is caught preparing a 'pharmakeia'. Under interrogation and torture she claims it was a philtron against rival women's drugs. The defence works because love-potions were a recognised, half-tolerated female practice, less grave than poisoning. Plutarch reports the rumour that she really used goeteia and drugs on the girl given to the tyrant's brother.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Aretaphila of Cyrene", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Inquiry and torture at a tyrant's court; love philtron as a lesser charge than poisoning", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-20", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Romulus", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Roman (Varro and Tarutius, 1st c. BCE)", "language": "", "date": "c. 100 CE", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "12.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Rom. 12.3–6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "τῆς γὰρ αὐτῆς θεωρίας εἶναι, χρόνον τε λαβόντας ἀνθρώπου γενέσεως βίον προειπεῖν, καὶ βίῳ δοθέντι θηρεῦσαι χρόνον.", "translation": "For it belongs to the same science, given the time of a man's birth, to foretell his life, and given his life, to hunt down the time.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Varro asks his friend Tarutius, a philosopher and mathematikos expert in 'the method of the table', to cast Romulus' nativity backwards from his deeds. Tarutius dates Romulus' conception to the hour of a total solar eclipse and finds Rome a horoscope of its own, since cities too have fortunes tied to their birth. Plutarch declines to judge it. This is retrograde astrology as scholarship.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "L. Tarutius Firmanus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-21", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Philopseudes", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek (Syrian-born satirist, Athens setting)", "language": "", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg031.perseus-grc2", "ref": "8.2", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Philops. 7–8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ὡς πιστεύειν τὰ ἔξω καὶ μηδὲν κοινωνοῦντα τοῖς ἔνδοθεν ἐπεγείρουσι τὰ νοσήματα μετὰ ῥηματίων, ὥς φατε, καὶ γοητείας τινὸς ἐνεργεῖν καὶ τὴν ἴασιν ἐπιπέμπειν προσαρτώμενα.", "translation": "to believe that external things, having nothing in common with what causes the disease inside, can act, as you say, with little words and some sorcery, and send healing when tied on.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At gouty Eucrates' sickbed philosophers swap cures. Cleodemus says to tie a shrew's tooth, picked up with the left hand, in a fresh lion skin round the legs; Deinomachus insists it must be a virgin doe's skin, because does are swift. The sceptic Tychiades objects that external attachments plus words cannot touch an internal disease: he has seen the Nemean lion limp in its own skin. The company laughs at him, and only the physician Antigonus, who prescribes diet, is pleased.", "claimed_effect": "cure of gout", "claimed_mechanism": "sympathetic amulets plus incantation (ἐπῳδή)", "practitioner": "philosophers of every school (Peripatetic, Stoic, Platonist, Pythagorean)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-22", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Philopseudes", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek, with a Babylonian 'Chaldaean' healer", "language": "", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg031.perseus-grc2", "ref": "11.2", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Philops. 11–13", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ἧκεν ὁ Βαβυλώνιος καὶ ἀνέστησε τὸν Μίδαν ἐπῳδῇ τινι ἐξελάσας τὸν ἰὸν ἐκ τοῦ σώματος, ἔτι καὶ προσαρτήσας τῷ ποδὶ νεκρᾶς παρθένου λίθον ἀπὸ τῆς στήλης ἐκκολάψας.", "translation": "The Babylonian came and raised Midas, driving the venom out of his body with an incantation and also tying to his foot a chip of stone he had cut from a dead virgin's grave-stele.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The slave Midas, bitten by a viper, is swollen and livid and close to death. A 'Babylonian of the Chaldaeans' cures him with an epode and a grave-stone amulet, and then charms all the snakes of the estate into a pit and blasts them with his breath. Tychiades mocks the details, asking whether the old dragon walked with a stick.", "claimed_effect": "cure of snakebite; summoning and killing snakes", "claimed_mechanism": "incantation and grave-stone amulet", "practitioner": "a Babylonian 'Chaldaean'", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-23", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Philopseudes", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek, with a 'Hyperborean' magos", "language": "", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg031.perseus-grc2", "ref": "14.2", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Philops. 13–15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "necromancy", "illusion-trickery", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "τέλος δʼ οὖν ὁ Ὑπερβόρεος ἐκ πηλοῦ ἐρώτιόν τι ἀναπλάσας, Ἄπιθι, ἔφη, καὶ ἄγε Χρυσίδα. καὶ ὁ μὲν πηλὸς ἐξέπτατο", "translation": "Finally the Hyperborean modelled a little Eros out of clay and said, 'Go and fetch Chrysis.' And the clay flew off", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Cleodemus, once a sceptic, is converted on seeing the Hyperborean fly by day, walk on water and through fire (13.2). For four minae down and sixteen on success, the magos waits for a waxing moon, digs a pit at midnight, raises the dead father, brings up Hecate with Cerberus, draws down the Moon, and sends a clay Eros to fetch the married woman Chrysis, who arrives mad with love. Tychiades retorts that Chrysis could have been had for twenty drachmas and that a real magos would hardly work so cheaply (15.2). This is the textbook agoge ritual seen from outside.", "claimed_effect": "compelled love; raising the dead; drawing down the moon", "claimed_mechanism": "pit, moon timing, invocation of Hecate, animated clay figurine", "practitioner": "the 'Hyperborean' magos", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-24", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Philopseudes", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek, describing a Syrian/Palestinian exorcist", "language": "", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg031.perseus-grc2", "ref": "16.1", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Philops. 16", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐπειδὰν γὰρ ἐπιστὰς κειμένοις ἔρηται ὅθεν εἰσεληλύθασιν εἰς τὸ σῶμα, ὁ μὲν νοσῶν αὐτὸς σιωπᾷ, ὁ δαίμων δὲ ἀποκρίνεται, ἑλληνίζων ἢ βαρβαρίζων", "translation": "For when he stands over them as they lie and asks from where they entered the body, the sick man himself is silent, and the daimon answers in Greek or in a barbarian tongue", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "'The Syrian from Palestine' heals, for a large fee, people who fall down at the moon, roll their eyes and foam at the mouth. He interrogates the daimon, drives it out with oaths and threats, and Ion claims to have seen it leave 'black and smoky'. The symptoms are those of epilepsy. Lucian's sarcasm points at the fee. This is one of the earliest pagan descriptions of exorcism by interrogation.", "claimed_effect": "cure of possession (epileptic seizures)", "claimed_mechanism": "adjuration (ὅρκοι) and threats against the indwelling daimon", "practitioner": "'the Syrian from Palestine'", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-25", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Philopseudes", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek (Corinth), with Egyptian books", "language": "", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg031.perseus-grc2", "ref": "31.2", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Philops. 30–31", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "τὰς βίβλους λαβὼν — εἰσὶ δέ μοι Αἰγύπτιαι μάλα πολλαὶ περὶ τῶν τοιούτων — ἧκον εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν περὶ πρῶτον ὕπνον", "translation": "taking my books (I have very many Egyptian ones on such matters) I went to the house about first sleep", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Arignotus the Pythagorean clears a haunted house in Corinth by reading Egyptian books, conjuring the ghost into a corner. Next day digging there turns up an unburied skeleton, which is given a proper burial, and the haunting stops. Ghost-laying is joined to proper burial, and the expertise is said to come from written Egyptian books.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "reading Egyptian ritual books; burial of the dead", "practitioner": "Arignotus the Pythagorean", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-26", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Philopseudes", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek, with an Egyptian priest-magician of Memphis", "language": "", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg031.perseus-grc2", "ref": "35.1", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Philops. 34–36", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "λαβὼν ἂν ὁ ἀνὴρ ἢ τὸν μοχλὸν τῆς θύρας ἢ τὸ κόρηθρον ἢ καὶ τὸ ὕπερον περιβαλὼν ἱματίοις ἐπειπών τινα ἐπῳδὴν ἐποίει βαδίζειν", "translation": "the man would take the door-bar, or the broom, or the pestle, dress it in clothes, say an incantation over it and make it walk", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pancrates, a sacred scribe of Memphis said to have lived 23 years underground 'being taught magic by Isis', rides crocodiles and animates household objects as servants. Eucrates overhears the three-syllable spell, sets a pestle carrying water, cannot stop it, splits it with an axe and gets two water-carriers. Pancrates reverses the spell and vanishes. This is the Sorcerer's Apprentice. In 34.1–2 the magician is an Egyptian temple priest (shaven, in linen, speaking imperfect Greek).", "claimed_effect": "animating objects", "claimed_mechanism": "a secret three-syllable epode", "practitioner": "Pancrates, hierogrammateus of Memphis", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-27", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Alexander or the False Prophet", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek (Paphlagonia/Bithynia), with an apprenticeship to a goes from Tyana", "language": "", "date": "after 180 CE", "date_sort": 182, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg038.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.1", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Alex. 5", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "λαμβάνει τις αὐτὸν ἐραστὴς γόης τῶν μαγείας καὶ ἐπῳδὰς θεσπεσίους ὑπισχνουμένων καὶ χάριτας ἐπὶ τοῖς ἐρωτικοῖς καὶ ἐπαγωγὰς τοῖς ἐχθροῖς καὶ θησαυρῶν ἀναπομπὰς καὶ κλήρων διαδοχάς.", "translation": "A lover took him up, a goes of the kind who promise magic and wondrous incantations, charms for love affairs, 'sendings' against enemies, the bringing-up of treasures and successions to inheritances.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The young Alexander's lover and teacher was a goes who posed publicly as a physician and knew drugs 'many good, many baneful'. He was a disciple of Apollonius of Tyana. The list gives a goes' standard services: love charms, attacks on enemies (epagogai), treasure-finding, inheritances. Lucian ties the Apollonius tradition to a fraudster lineage.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "an unnamed goes from Tyana, posing as a doctor", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-28", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Alexander or the False Prophet", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek (Abonuteichos)", "language": "", "date": "after 180 CE", "date_sort": 182, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg038.perseus-grc2", "ref": "12.1", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Alex. 12–15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "μεμηνέναι προσποιούμενος ἐνίοτε καὶ ἀφροῦ ὑποπιμπλάμενος τὸ στόμα· ῥᾳδίως δὲ τοῦτο ὑπῆρχεν αὐτῷ, στρουθίου τῆς βαφικῆς βοτάνης τὴν ῥίζαν διαμασησαμένῳ", "translation": "sometimes pretending to be mad and filling his mouth with foam, which came easily to him: he chewed the root of struthion, the dyers' plant", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The staging of inspiration. Alexander fakes ecstatic foam by chewing the root of struthion (soapwort, which contains saponin). He has a linen serpent's head, 'man-like', painted, opening and closing its mouth by horsehair strings with a forked black tongue, to put on a large tame snake from Pella. In 13–15 a 'newborn' god is planted in a goose egg in the temple foundations and the serpent is displayed with its real head hidden under his arm.", "claimed_effect": "divine possession; epiphany of Glykon", "claimed_mechanism": "(exposed) saponin root for foam; puppet head on a real snake", "practitioner": "Alexander of Abonuteichos", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-29", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Alexander or the False Prophet", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "after 180 CE", "date_sort": 182, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg038.perseus-grc2", "ref": "26.1", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Alex. 26", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "γεράνων ἀρτηρίας συνάψας καὶ διὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἐκείνης τῆς μεμηχανημένης πρὸς ὁμοιότητα διείρας, ἄλλου τινὸς ἔξωθεν ἐμβοῶντος, ἀπεκρίνετο πρὸς τὰς ἐρωτήσεις", "translation": "he joined cranes' windpipes together and threaded them through that artificial head, and with someone else calling into them from outside, it answered the questions", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The 'self-speaking' oracles (autophonoi) of Glykon: a speaking-tube of crane tracheae running to an accomplice. Lucian presents this as mechanical fraud of the kind Hero describes for temple automata.", "claimed_effect": "a god speaking aloud", "claimed_mechanism": "(exposed) speaking tube", "practitioner": "Alexander and accomplices", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-30", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Alexander or the False Prophet", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "after 180 CE", "date_sort": 182, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg038.perseus-grc2", "ref": "21.1", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Alex. 19–21", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "βελόνην πυρώσας τὸ ὑπὸ τὴν σφραγῖδα μέρος τοῦ κηροῦ διατήκων ἐξῄρει καὶ μετὰ τὴν ἀνάγνωσιν τῇ βελόνῃ αὖθις ἐπιχλιάνας τὸν κηρόν", "translation": "heating a needle he melted and removed the wax under the seal, and after reading [the question] he warmed the wax again with the needle", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Lucian tells Celsus three methods for reading sealed questions put to the oracle: a hot needle; a 'kollyrion' paste of Bruttian pitch, asphalt, powdered transparent stone, wax and mastic used to cast a copy of the seal; and quicklime in bookbinder's glue. This is a forensic manual of oracle fraud, offered 'so that you can refute such things'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "(exposed) breaking and recasting seals", "practitioner": "Alexander of Abonuteichos", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-31", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Necyomantia (Menippus)", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek parody of Babylonian/Persian magi", "language": "", "date": "c. 160 CE", "date_sort": 160, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg035.perseus-grc2", "ref": "9.2", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Nec. 6–10", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "δαίμονάς τε ὁμοῦ πάντας ἐπεβοᾶτο καὶ Ποινὰς καὶ Ἐρινύας καὶ νυχίαν Ἑκάτην καὶ ἐπαινὴν Περσεφόνειαν, παραμιγνὺς ἅμα βαρβαρικά τινα καὶ ἄσημα ὀνόματα καὶ πολυσύλλαβα.", "translation": "he called on all the daimones together, the Punishers and Erinyes, night-roaming Hecate and dread Persephone, mixing in barbarian, meaningless, many-syllabled names.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Menippus seeks 'one of the magi, disciples and successors of Zoroaster', said to open the gates of Hades with epodai and teletai. The Chaldaean Mithrobarzanes puts him through 29 days of dawn baths in the Euphrates, murmured spells, spitting, a diet of nuts and milk, a midnight purification in the Tigris with torch and squill, being 'wholly magicked' against phantoms, then a pit, sheep's blood and voces magicae. It is a parody, but the procedural detail matches real katabasis and purification rites.", "claimed_effect": "live descent to Hades to consult Teiresias", "claimed_mechanism": "purification, incantation, blood-pit, barbarous names", "practitioner": "Mithrobarzanes, a Chaldaean magos", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-32", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Dialogi meretricii", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek (Athens), with a Syrian witch", "language": "", "date": "c. 160 CE", "date_sort": 160, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg069.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Dial. meretr. 4.4–5", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "εἶτα ἐκ τοῦ κόλπου προκομίσασα ῥόμβου ἐπιστρέφει ἐπῳδήν τινα λέγουσα ἐπιτρόχῳ τῇ γλώττῃ, βαρβαρικὰ καὶ φρικώδη ὀνόματα.", "translation": "Then, taking a rhombos from her bosom, she spins it, saying an incantation with a rapid tongue, barbarous and terrifying names.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A courtesan recommends a 'useful pharmakis, Syrian by race'. Her fee is a drachma and a loaf, plus seven obols, sulphur, a torch and a bowl of wine for herself (4.4.3). She needs something of the man's (clothes, shoes, hairs), fumigates it with sulphur and salt, says both names, and spins the bullroarer. There is also a 'hate-charm' (misethron): treading on the rival's footprint, left on right, saying 'I tread on you and am above you'. The lover does come back. This is an ordinary, cheap, commercial agoge as women used it.", "claimed_effect": "bringing back a lover; alienating a rival", "claimed_mechanism": "ousia (personal items), fumigation, rhombos, voces magicae, footprint magic", "practitioner": "an old Syrian woman (pharmakis)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Commercial service among courtesans; low fee", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-33", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Asinus (Lucius or the Ass)", "author": "Pseudo-Lucian", "culture": "Greek (Thessaly)", "language": "", "date": "2nd c. CE", "date_sort": 150, "edition_urn": "tlg0061.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "12.1", "conventional_ref": "[Lucian] Asin. 12–14", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐκ τούτου λαβοῦσα χρίεται ὅλη, ἀπὸ τῶν ὀνύχων ἀρξαμένη τῶν κάτω, καὶ ἄφνω πτερὰ ἐκφύεται αὐτῇ", "translation": "Taking some of this she anoints herself all over, beginning from her toenails, and suddenly wings sprout on her", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Through a crack in the door Lucius watches Hipparchus' wife, 'a terrible magos' (4.1) who ruins young men who refuse her. She strips, burns incense at the lamp, talks to it, picks one of many boxes and anoints herself into a night-raven to fly to her lover. The maid then grabs the wrong box for Lucius and turns him into an ass, curable only by eating roses (14.1). Thessalian witchcraft becomes a pharmacy of ointments.", "claimed_effect": "metamorphosis into a bird or an ass", "claimed_mechanism": "ointments kept in labelled boxes, plus words to the lamp", "practitioner": "Hipparchus' wife (and her maid Palaestra)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-34", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", "author": "Philostratus the Athenian", "culture": "Greek (Severan court), on a 1st-c. CE Pythagorean", "language": "", "date": "c. 220–235 CE", "date_sort": 230, "edition_urn": "tlg0638.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Philostr. VA 1.2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "οἱ δέ, ἐπειδὴ μάγοις Βαβυλωνίων καὶ Ἰνδῶν Βραχμᾶσι καὶ τοῖς ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ Γυμνοῖς συνεγένετο, μάγον ἡγοῦνται αὐτὸν καὶ διαβάλλουσιν ὡς βιαίως σοφόν, κακῶς γιγνώσκοντες", "translation": "others, because he associated with the magi of Babylon, the Brahmans of India and the Naked Ones in Egypt, consider him a magos and slander him as a man wise by force, judging badly", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Philostratus' programme. Empedocles, Pythagoras and Democritus also consorted with magi without becoming practitioners of 'the art'. Foreknowledge is wisdom, not magic, as with Socrates' daimonion and Anaxagoras' predictions of rain, a house collapse and a meteorite. Being 'wise by force' (βιαίως σοφός) is the Greek definition of the magos.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Apollonius of Tyana", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Defence against the charge of mageia", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-35", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", "author": "Philostratus the Athenian", "culture": "Greek image of Indian Brahmans", "language": "", "date": "c. 220–235 CE", "date_sort": 230, "edition_urn": "tlg0638.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.15.1", "conventional_ref": "Philostr. VA 3.15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "μετεωροποροῦντας δὴ ἰδεῖν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἐς πήχεις δύο, οὐ θαυματοποιίας ἕνεκα, τὸ γὰρ φιλότιμον τοῦτο παραιτεῖσθαι τοὺς ἄνδρας", "translation": "he saw them walking in the air two cubits above the ground, not for the sake of conjuring display, for these men decline such vanity", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Damis claims the Brahmans levitate in sun-worship and keep a fire drawn from the sun's ray that floats in the air without an altar. Philostratus marks the line: true sages' wonders are acts of worship, not thaumatopoiia (stage-conjuring for show).", "claimed_effect": "levitation; fire drawn from the sun", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Brahmans", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-36", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", "author": "Philostratus the Athenian", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 220–235 CE", "date_sort": 230, "edition_urn": "tlg0638.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.20.1", "conventional_ref": "Philostr. VA 4.20", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐλελήθει δὲ ἄρα δαιμονῶν τὸ μειράκιον· ἐγέλα τε γὰρ ἐφʼ οἷς οὐδεὶς ἕτερος καὶ μετέβαλλεν ἐς τὸ κλάειν αἰτίαν οὐκ ἔχον, διελέγετο τε πρὸς ἑαυτὸν καὶ ᾖδε.", "translation": "The youth was, it turned out, unknowingly possessed: he laughed where no one else did, switched to weeping for no reason, talked to himself and sang.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A dissolute Corcyraean youth laughs coarsely at Apollonius' teaching on libations. Apollonius stares at him; the daimon, howling 'like the burned and racked', swears to leave and, as proof, topples a statue in the Royal Stoa, and the young man turns philosopher. The diagnosis is behavioural (inappropriate laughter and weeping, monologue). The cure is the sage's gaze and command, not ritual.", "claimed_effect": "expulsion of a daimon", "claimed_mechanism": "authoritative look and command", "practitioner": "Apollonius", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-37", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", "author": "Philostratus the Athenian", "culture": "Greek (Corinth); Phoenician-identified demoness", "language": "", "date": "c. 220–235 CE", "date_sort": 230, "edition_urn": "tlg0638.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.25.1", "conventional_ref": "Philostr. VA 4.25", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "exorcism", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔμπουσά τε εἶναι ἔφη καὶ πιαίνειν ἡδοναῖς τὸν Μένιππον ἐς βρῶσιν τοῦ σώματος", "translation": "she said she was an empusa, and was fattening Menippus with pleasures in order to eat his body", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The rich and beautiful 'Phoenician' bride of Menippus is a phasma. At the wedding Apollonius exposes the gold and silver plate as illusion; the servants vanish, and the creature confesses she is an empusa, or lamia, that feeds on young blood. Philostratus says it was the best known of Apollonius' deeds and tells it from Damis. Magic here is the power to dispel phantasmal illusion.", "claimed_effect": "unmasking an illusory household", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Apollonius; the empusa", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-38", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", "author": "Philostratus the Athenian", "culture": "Roman (senatorial family)", "language": "", "date": "c. 220–235 CE", "date_sort": 230, "edition_urn": "tlg0638.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.45.1", "conventional_ref": "Philostr. VA 4.45", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ εἴτε σπινθῆρα τῆς ψυχῆς εὗρεν ἐν αὐτῇ, ὃς ἐλελήθει τοὺς θεραπεύοντας — λέγεται γάρ, ὡς ψεκάζοι μὲν ὁ Ζεύς, ἡ δὲ ἀτμίζοι ἀπὸ τοῦ προσώπου — εἴτʼ ἀπεσβηκυῖαν τὴν ψυχὴν ἀνέθαλψέ τε", "translation": "and whether he found a spark of life in her that her attendants had missed (for it is said that it was drizzling and she gave off vapour from her face) or rekindled a soul already quenched", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Apollonius stops a consular girl's funeral, touches her, says something inaudible and 'wakes her from her apparent death'. He gives the 150,000 drachmas offered back as her dowry. Philostratus himself leaves the naturalistic option open, apparent death detected by her breath steaming in the rain, and calls the truth 'beyond grasp'.", "claimed_effect": "raising the dead (or reviving the apparently dead)", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Apollonius", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-39", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", "author": "Philostratus the Athenian", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 220–235 CE", "date_sort": 230, "edition_urn": "tlg0638.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.12.1", "conventional_ref": "Philostr. VA 5.12", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "οἱ γόητες, ἡγοῦμαι δʼ αὐτοὺς ἐγὼ κακοδαιμονεστάτους ἀνθρώπων, οἱ μὲν ἐς βασάνους εἰδώλων χωροῦντες, οἱ δʼ ἐς θυσίας βαρβάρους, οἱ δὲ ἐς τὸ ἐπᾷσαί τι ἢ ἀλεῖψαι μεταποιεῖν φασι τὰ εἱμαρμένα", "translation": "The goetes, whom I consider the most wretched of men, claim to change what is fated, some by torturing images, some by barbarous sacrifices, some by chanting over or anointing something", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Philostratus defines goeteia by its claim to force fate, through torturing images (voodoo-type figurines), barbarian sacrifices, incantation and anointing. Many goetes under accusation 'confessed to being wise in such things'. Apollonius, by contrast, followed the Fates and foreknew 'from what the gods revealed'; he admired but did not try to copy the Brahmans' self-moving tripods. The difference is one of attitude: compulsion of fate against attunement to it.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Prosecutions of goetes; confessions", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-40", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", "author": "Philostratus the Athenian", "culture": "Roman (Domitian's prison)", "language": "", "date": "c. 220–235 CE", "date_sort": 230, "edition_urn": "tlg0638.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.38.1", "conventional_ref": "Philostr. VA 7.38", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ εἰπὼν ταῦτα ἐξήγαγε τὸ σκέλος τοῦ δεσμοῦ καὶ πρὸς τὸν Δάμιν ἔφη ἐπίδειξιν πεποίημαί σοι τῆς ἐλευθερίας τῆς ἐμαυτοῦ καὶ θάρρει.", "translation": "Saying this he drew his leg out of the fetter and said to Damis, 'I have given you a demonstration of my freedom; take heart.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In prison Apollonius slips his leg from the shackle and puts it back. Damis takes this as proof that his nature was 'divine and greater than human', because he did it without sacrifice, prayer or word, which is to say without the apparatus of magic. Escape from fetters was a classic accusation against goetes (cf. 7.34).", "claimed_effect": "releasing oneself from chains", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Apollonius", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-41", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", "author": "Philostratus the Athenian", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 220–235 CE", "date_sort": 230, "edition_urn": "tlg0638.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.39.1", "conventional_ref": "Philostr. VA 7.39", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἢν μὲν γὰρ παθόντων τι τῶν παιδικῶν πρὸς τοὺς ἐρῶντας ἢ δώροις ὑπαχθέντων προβαίνῃ τὰ ἐρωτικά, ὑμνεῖται ἡ τέχνη ὡς ἱκανὴ πάντα, εἰ δʼ ἀποτυγχάνοι ἡ πεῖρα, ἐς τὸ ἐλλειφθὲν ἡ ἀναφορά", "translation": "If the beloved is moved toward the lover, or won over by gifts, and the affair goes forward, the art is hymned as all-powerful; but if the attempt fails, the blame falls on something left out", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An ancient analysis of why magic is believed. Athletes, merchants and especially lovers credit their successes to the goes and blame failures on an omitted sacrifice or fumigation ('if only I had burned the thing'). The goetes sell girdles, stones 'from the earth's secrets or from moon and stars' and Indian spices at high prices 'and contribute nothing'. Philostratus adds that the art 'is condemned both by nature and by law'.", "claimed_effect": "victory, trade luck, love", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "'condemned by nature and by law' (φύσει διαβέβληται καὶ νόμῳ)", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-42", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Life of Apollonius of Tyana", "author": "Philostratus the Athenian", "culture": "Greek (an imagined defence before Domitian)", "language": "", "date": "c. 220–235 CE", "date_sort": 230, "edition_urn": "tlg0638.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "8.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Philostr. VA 8.7 (Apology)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀλλὰ τοὺς γόητας ψευδοσόφους φημί· τὰ γὰρ οὐκ ὄντα εἶναι καὶ τὰ ὄντα ἀπιστεῖσθαι, πάντα ταῦτα προστίθημι τῇ τῶν ἐξαπατωμένων δόξῃ", "translation": "I call the goetes false-sages, for that unreal things seem to exist and real things are disbelieved, all this I put down to the opinion of the deceived", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The long written defence, which is one node in this edition. If I were a goes, how could you try me, and how could you bind me? Goetes are greedy and sell lovers' wishes, whereas he took no money. Predicting the plague at Ephesus was no more goeteia than Thales' olive forecast or Anaxagoras' meteorology. The charges are his dress, diet, linen and an alleged sacrifice of an Arcadian boy, all of which he rebuts. The art of the goes, he argues, rests on the folly of those who are deceived and those who sacrifice.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Apollonius", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Trial for mageia before the emperor (cf. Apuleius' Apology in Latin)", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-43", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Lives of the Sophists", "author": "Philostratus the Athenian", "culture": "Greek (Ionia/Rome, 2nd c. CE)", "language": "", "date": "c. 237 CE", "date_sort": 237, "edition_urn": "tlg0638.tlg003.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.22.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Philostr. VS 1.22 (cf. 2.10.6)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ὁ δὲ λόγος ὁ περὶ τοῦ Διονυσίου λεγόμενος, ὡς Χαλδαίοις τέχναις τοὺς ὁμιλητὰς τὸ μνημονικὸν ἀναπαιδεύοντος πόθεν εἴρηται, ἐγὼ δηλώσω· τέχναι μνήμης οὔτε εἰσὶν οὔτʼ ἂν γένοιντο", "translation": "As for the story told of Dionysius, that he trained his pupils' memory by Chaldaean arts, I will show where it came from: arts of memory neither exist nor could exist", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The sophist Dionysius of Miletus was rumoured to boost students' memory by 'Chaldaean arts'. Philostratus explains it as plain repetition. At VS 2.10.6 the brilliant sophist Hadrian of Tyre was 'so famous that many thought him a goes', and Philostratus insists an educated man would never stoop to the goetes' arts. Outstanding intellectual performance attracted accusations of magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Dionysius of Miletus; Hadrian of Tyre", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Rumour as a weapon of professional rivalry", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-44", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Jewish Antiquities", "author": "Flavius Josephus", "culture": "Jewish (Hellenistic Greek), on Egyptian magi", "language": "", "date": "93/94 CE", "date_sort": 94, "edition_urn": "tlg0526.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.286.1", "conventional_ref": "Joseph. AJ 2.284–287 (cf. Ap. 2.145, 2.161)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "δείξω δὲ οὐ κατὰ γοητείαν καὶ πλάνην τῆς ἀληθοῦς δόξης τἀμὰ, κατὰ δὲ θεοῦ πρόνοιαν καὶ δύναμιν φαινόμενα.", "translation": "I will show that my deeds appear not by sorcery and deception of true judgement, but by God's providence and power.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pharaoh calls Moses' signs 'wonder-working and magic' (τερατουργίαις καὶ μαγείαις). The Egyptian priests' staffs become 'what seemed serpents' (οἳ δράκοντες ἐδόκουν), and Moses' real snake eats them. Josephus' Moses concedes Egyptian wisdom but ranks divine power above human art: the divine-versus-human boundary, with the rivals' feats reduced to appearance. In Contra Apionem 2.145 and 2.161 Josephus rebuts pagans who slandered Moses as a goes and deceiver.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Moses; Egyptian priests", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Apologetic: Jewish law-giver against the charge of goeteia", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-45", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Jewish Antiquities", "author": "Flavius Josephus", "culture": "Jewish (biblical Israel, 1 Sam 28)", "language": "", "date": "93/94 CE", "date_sort": 94, "edition_urn": "tlg0526.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "6.330.1", "conventional_ref": "Joseph. AJ 6.330–332", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "τὸ γὰρ τῶν ἐγγαστριμύθων γένος ἀνάγον τὰς τῶν νεκρῶν ψυχὰς διʼ αὐτῶν προλέγει τοῖς δεομένοις τὰ ἀποβησόμενα.", "translation": "For the class of 'belly-talkers' raises the souls of the dead and through them foretells the future to those who ask.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Saul consults the necromancer of Endor, called Dor here, in disguise. She refuses at first because the king had expelled 'this kind of seers' and fears entrapment. Saul swears to protect her, and she brings up Samuel, whom she does not recognise. Josephus explains the Hebrew 'ob' with the Greek ventriloquist term engastrimythos and treats the raising as real. He goes on to praise the woman's hospitality.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "the woman of Endor", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Royal ban on necromancers; fear of a trap", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-46", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Jewish Antiquities", "author": "Flavius Josephus", "culture": "Jewish (1st-c. CE Judaea/Rome)", "language": "", "date": "93/94 CE", "date_sort": 94, "edition_urn": "tlg0526.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "8.47.1", "conventional_ref": "Joseph. AJ 8.45–49", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "προσφέρων ταῖς ῥισὶ τοῦ δαιμονιζομένου τὸν δακτύλιον ἔχοντα ὑπὸ τῇ σφραγῖδι ῥίζαν ἐξ ὧν ὑπέδειξε Σολόμων ἔπειτα ἐξεῖλκεν ὀσφρομένῳ διὰ τῶν μυκτήρων τὸ δαιμόνιον", "translation": "holding to the nose of the possessed man a ring that had under its seal a root of those Solomon had prescribed, he drew the daimonion out through his nostrils as he smelled it", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "God gave Solomon the 'art against daimones'. He composed epodai that soothe diseases and forms of exorcism, 'and this cure is very strong among us to this day'. Josephus saw one Eleazar, before Vespasian, his sons and officers, draw out demons by a ring with a root, the name of Solomon and his incantations, and prove it by ordering the demon to overturn a basin of water on its way out. Exorcism here is legitimate wisdom handed down from a king.", "claimed_effect": "expulsion of demons", "claimed_mechanism": "Solomonic root in a signet ring, adjuration, Solomon's name, incantations", "practitioner": "Eleazar, a Jew", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "A public demonstration before the Roman imperial family", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-47", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "The Jewish War", "author": "Flavius Josephus", "culture": "Jewish (Machaerus, Transjordan)", "language": "", "date": "c. 75–79 CE", "date_sort": 78, "edition_urn": "tlg0526.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.184.1", "conventional_ref": "Joseph. BJ 7.180–185", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "εἶτʼ ἐξ αὐτῆς ἀποδοῦσι κύνα, κἀκείνου τῷ δήσαντι συνακολουθεῖν ὁρμήσαντος ἡ μὲν ἀνασπᾶται ῥᾳδίως, θνήσκει δʼ εὐθὺς ὁ κύων", "translation": "Then they tie a dog to it; when the dog rushes to follow the man who tied it, the root is easily pulled up, but the dog dies at once", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The baaras root near Machaerus is flame-coloured, flashes light at evening, and flees from anyone trying to take it until it is doused with a woman's urine or menstrual blood. Touching it is fatal unless one carries the root itself. It is pulled up safely by a dog, which dies in place of the gatherer. Its one virtue is that it instantly drives out 'so-called daimonia', which Josephus explains as the spirits of wicked men entering the living. The mandrake-gathering legend is transferred to an exorcistic plant.", "claimed_effect": "exorcism of demons (spirits of the wicked dead)", "claimed_mechanism": "a dangerous root with innate power", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-48", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Jewish Antiquities", "author": "Flavius Josephus", "culture": "Jewish (Judaea c. 45 CE)", "language": "", "date": "93/94 CE", "date_sort": 94, "edition_urn": "tlg0526.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "20.97.1", "conventional_ref": "Joseph. AJ 20.97–98 (cf. 20.160, 20.167–172, 20.188)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "γόης τις ἀνὴρ Θευδᾶς ὀνόματι πείθει τὸν πλεῖστον ὄχλον ἀναλαβόντα τὰς κτήσεις ἕπεσθαι πρὸς τὸν Ἰορδάνην ποταμὸν αὐτῷ· προφήτης γὰρ ἔλεγεν εἶναι", "translation": "A goes named Theudas persuaded most of the crowd to take their possessions and follow him to the Jordan, for he said he was a prophet", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Theudas promised to part the Jordan 'by command'. The procurator Fadus' cavalry killed many and beheaded him. In Josephus' political vocabulary goes means a charismatic deceiver promising signs of deliverance (cf. 20.160 'the land filled with bandits and goetes', 20.167 'goetes and deceivers' leading crowds into the desert). The word labels messianic or prophetic leaders as frauds.", "claimed_effect": "parting a river", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Theudas", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Roman military suppression of sign-prophets", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-49", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "The Jewish War", "author": "Flavius Josephus", "culture": "Jewish (Judaea under Felix, 50s CE)", "language": "", "date": "c. 75–79 CE", "date_sort": 78, "edition_urn": "tlg0526.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.259.1", "conventional_ref": "Joseph. BJ 2.259–263", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "πλάνοι γὰρ ἄνθρωποι καὶ ἀπατεῶνες προσχήματι θειασμοῦ νεωτερισμοὺς καὶ μεταβολὰς πραγματευόμενοι δαιμονᾶν τὸ πλῆθος ἔπειθον", "translation": "Deceivers and impostors, plotting revolution and upheaval under a pretence of divine inspiration, persuaded the masses to act possessed", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Wandering prophets led crowds into the desert to see 'signs of freedom', and Felix destroyed them. Worse was 'the Egyptian false prophet' (2.261), 'a goes who put on the credibility of a prophet', who gathered 30,000 people. Goes and pseudoprophetes form one political-religious category.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "'the Egyptian' false prophet and others", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Roman procurators treat sign-prophets as insurrection", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-50", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Jewish Antiquities", "author": "Flavius Josephus", "culture": "Jewish/Cypriot at a Roman procurator's court", "language": "", "date": "93/94 CE", "date_sort": 94, "edition_urn": "tlg0526.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "20.142.1", "conventional_ref": "Joseph. AJ 20.141–143", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἄτομον ὀνόματι τῶν ἑαυτοῦ φίλων Ἰουδαῖον, Κύπριον δὲ τὸ γένος, μάγον εἶναι σκηπτόμενον πέμπων πρὸς αὐτὴν ἔπειθεν τὸν ἄνδρα καταλιποῦσαν αὐτῷ γήμασθαι", "translation": "sending to her one of his friends named Atomus, a Jew of Cypriot birth who claimed to be a magos, he persuaded her to leave her husband and marry him", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The procurator Felix uses a Jewish 'magos' from Cyprus as his go-between to win Drusilla, Agrippa II's sister, away from King Azizus. The magos acts as a matchmaker and persuader. Josephus' 'σκηπτόμενον' ('pretending/claiming') signals scepticism.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Atomus (Simon?), a Cypriot Jew", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Elite marriage politics", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-51", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Jewish Antiquities", "author": "Flavius Josephus", "culture": "Jewish (Herod's court), with 'Arabian' drug-women", "language": "", "date": "93/94 CE", "date_sort": 94, "edition_urn": "tlg0526.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "17.62.1", "conventional_ref": "Joseph. AJ 17.62–63 (cf. BJ 1.583; AJ 15.223–229)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "κομιστὸν μέντοι γενέσθαι τὸ φάρμακον ὑπὸ γυναικὸς ἐκ τῆς Ἀραβίας λόγῳ μὲν ἐπὶ προσποιήσεσιν ἐρώτων, φίλτρον γὰρ δὴ ὄνομα αὐτῷ εἶναι, τὸ δʼ ἀληθὲς ἐπὶ τῇ Φερώρου τελευτῇ.", "translation": "The drug had been brought by a woman from Arabia, nominally to win love, for it was called a philtron, but in truth to cause Pheroras' death.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After Pheroras' death his freedmen claim his wife gave him a 'love potion' that was really poison. Josephus adds the ethnographic judgement that 'Arabian women are the most skilled in drugs of all women' (17.63). The Mariamme affair (15.223–229) likewise turns on a cupbearer's claim that she asked him to give Herod a philtron. Love potion and poison are one substance under two names.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "an Arabian woman; Pheroras' wife's family", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Court intrigue; torture of witnesses", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-52", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "The Jewish War", "author": "Flavius Josephus", "culture": "Jewish (Essenes)", "language": "", "date": "c. 75–79 CE", "date_sort": 78, "edition_urn": "tlg0526.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.136.1", "conventional_ref": "Joseph. BJ 2.136", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔνθεν αὐτοῖς πρὸς θεραπείαν παθῶν ῥίζαι τε ἀλεξητήριον καὶ λίθων ἰδιότητες ἀνερευνῶνται.", "translation": "From these [ancient writings] they investigate protective roots and the properties of stones for the healing of diseases.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Josephus presents the Essenes' book-learned study of roots and stones as a virtue. The same subject matter (root lore, stone properties, ancient books) that Galen calls Egyptian goeteia in Pamphilus is here respectable piety. The boundary depends on who is doing it.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Essenes", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-53", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Geography", "author": "Strabo", "culture": "Persian magi in Cappadocia (Strabo as eyewitness)", "language": "", "date": "c. 20 CE", "date_sort": 20, "edition_urn": "tlg0099.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "15.3.15.1", "conventional_ref": "Strabo 15.3.14–15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ πῦρ ἄσβεστον φυλάττουσιν οἱ Μάγοι· καὶ καθʼ ἡμέραν δὲ εἰσιόντες, ἐπᾴδουσιν ὥραν σχεδόν τι πρὸ τοῦ πυρὸς τὴν δέσμην τῶν ῥάβδων ἔχοντες", "translation": "and the Magi guard an unquenchable fire; and going in daily they chant for about an hour before the fire, holding their bundle of rods", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In Cappadocia there are many Magi, called pyraithoi ('fire-kindlers'). They sacrifice by clubbing, not with a knife, keep eternal fires, and wear felt tiaras whose cheek-pieces cover their lips. They chant (epaidein) holding a bundle of tamarisk rods, the barsom. 'These things we have seen.' In 15.3.14 they offer to water at a pit without letting blood touch it. For Strabo, magoi are Zoroastrian priests and epaoide is liturgical chant, not sorcery.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "liturgical chant with the barsom", "practitioner": "Magi (pyraithoi)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-54", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Geography", "author": "Strabo", "culture": "Comparative (Greek, Getic, Indian, Persian, Assyrian, Etruscan)", "language": "", "date": "c. 20 CE", "date_sort": 20, "edition_urn": "tlg0099.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "16.2.39.1", "conventional_ref": "Strabo 16.2.39", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "παρὰ δὲ τοῖς Πέρσαις οἱ μάγοι καὶ νεκυομάντεις καὶ ἔτι οἱ λεγόμενοι λεκανομάντεις καὶ ὑδρομάντεις, παρὰ δὲ τοῖς Ἀσσυρίοις οἱ Χαλδαῖοι, παρὰ δὲ τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις οἱ Τυρρηνικοὶ οἰωνοσκόποι.", "translation": "among the Persians the magi and necromancers, and also the so-called dish-diviners and water-diviners; among the Assyrians the Chaldaeans; among the Romans the Etruscan bird-watchers.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Strabo's comparative table of honoured seers who 'were thought worthy even of kingship': Amphiaraus, Trophonius, Orpheus, Musaeus, Zalmoxis, Decaeneus, Achaicarus, the gymnosophists, Persian magi and necromancers, Chaldaeans, Etruscan haruspices, and Moses and his successors. Necromancy and lecanomancy appear as respectable national priesthoods. Note: the library flags this node IsAthetized.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Seers as public authorities", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-55", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Geography", "author": "Strabo (citing Posidonius)", "culture": "Nabataean/Judaean (Dead Sea)", "language": "", "date": "c. 20 CE (Posidonius c. 80 BCE)", "date_sort": 20, "edition_urn": "tlg0099.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "16.2.43.1", "conventional_ref": "Strabo 16.2.42–43 (Posidonius fr.)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "γόητας δὲ ὄντας σκήπτεσθαί φησιν ἐπῳδὰς ὁ Ποσειδώνιος τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ οὖρα καὶ ἄλλα δυσώδη ὑγρά, ἃ περικαταχέαντας καὶ ἐκπιάσαντας πήττειν τὴν ἄσφαλτον, εἶτα τέμνειν", "translation": "Posidonius says the people, being goetes, make a show of incantations, and of urine and other foul-smelling liquids which they pour over the asphalt, squeeze, and so solidify it, then cut it up", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The bitumen-gatherers of the Dead Sea claim their spells and urine harden the floating asphalt. Strabo allows a possible chemical effect of urine, comparing bladder stones and chrysocolla formed from children's urine. The rest he puts down to the irregular natural upwelling of fire and asphalt in mid-lake. Goeteia is here a trade secret wrapped around a natural process.", "claimed_effect": "solidifying floating bitumen", "claimed_mechanism": "incantation plus urine (possibly with a real chemical effect)", "practitioner": "Dead Sea asphalt collectors", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-56", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Geography", "author": "Strabo (after Megasthenes)", "culture": "Indian ascetics (Pramnai)", "language": "", "date": "c. 20 CE (source c. 300 BCE)", "date_sort": 20, "edition_urn": "tlg0099.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "15.1.70.1", "conventional_ref": "Strabo 15.1.70", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "τοὺς μὲν ὀρεινοὺς δοραῖς ἐλάφων χρῆσθαι, πήρας δʼ ἔχειν ῥιζῶν καὶ φαρμάκων μεστάς, προσποιουμένους ἰατρικὴν μετὰ γοητείας καὶ ἐπῳδῶν καὶ περιάπτων.", "translation": "the mountain ones wear deerskins and carry wallets full of roots and drugs, professing medicine combined with sorcery, incantations and amulets.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Among the Indian Pramnai (Śramaṇas?) the mountain sages practise a medicine of roots, spells and amulets, which is the Greek ethnographer's image of the folk healer abroad. The library flags this node IsAthetized.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "'mountain' Pramnai", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-57", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Geography", "author": "Strabo", "culture": "Greek (Rhodes/Crete myth-history)", "language": "", "date": "c. 20 CE", "date_sort": 20, "edition_urn": "tlg0099.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "14.2.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Strabo 14.2.7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "οὓς οἱ μὲν βασκάνους φασὶ καὶ γόητας θείῳ καταρραίνοντας τὸ τῆς Στυγὸς ὕδωρ ζώων τε καὶ φυτῶν ὀλέθρου χάριν, οἱ δὲ τέχναις διαφέροντας τοὐναντίον ὑπὸ τῶν ἀντιτέχνων βασκανθῆναι", "translation": "some say they were evil-eyed sorcerers who sprinkled Styx-water with sulphur to destroy animals and plants; others, on the contrary, that they excelled in crafts and were 'bewitched' (slandered) by rival craftsmen", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Telchines, the first workers of iron and bronze, are either goetes who blighted crops with sulphurous water or master craftsmen defamed by envious competitors. Strabo gives the rationalising alternative that metallurgical skill is mistaken for, or slandered as, sorcery. The word baskainein covers both 'bewitch' and 'malign'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "sulphur and Styx-water (or envy and slander)", "practitioner": "Telchines", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-58", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Geography", "author": "Strabo", "culture": "Getic (Dacian), with Egyptian training", "language": "", "date": "c. 20 CE (events 1st c. BCE)", "date_sort": 20, "edition_urn": "tlg0099.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.3.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Strabo 7.3.11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "συναγωνιστὴν ἔσχε Δεκαίνεον ἄνδρα γόητα, πεπλανημένον κατὰ τὴν Αἴγυπτον καὶ προσημασίας ἐκμεμαθηκότα τινάς, διʼ ὧν ὑπεκρίνετο τὰ θεῖα· καὶ διʼ ὀλίγου καθίστατο θεός", "translation": "He had as helper Decaeneus, a goes who had wandered through Egypt and learned certain prognostic signs, by which he played the interpreter of the divine; and in a short time he was made a god", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Boerebistas built the Getic kingdom with the seer Decaeneus, who persuaded the people even to uproot their vines and live without wine. Strabo frames the religious specialist as a political instrument, with goes used half-admiringly. The Egyptian training makes the expertise exotic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Decaeneus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Royal adviser and deified prophet", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-59", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Historical Library", "author": "Diodorus Siculus", "culture": "Greek myth rationalised (Colchis/Tauris)", "language": "", "date": "c. 60–30 BCE", "date_sort": -40, "edition_urn": "tlg0060.tlg001.perseus-grc5", "ref": "4.45.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Diod. Sic. 4.45.2–4.46.1", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "φιλότεχνον δʼ εἰς φαρμάκων θανασίμων συνθέσεις γενομένην τὸ καλούμενον ἀκόνιτον ἐξευρεῖν, καὶ τῆς ἑκάστου δυνάμεως πεῖραν λαμβάνειν μίσγουσαν ταῖς διδομέναις τοῖς ξένοις τροφαῖς.", "translation": "Being ingenious in compounding deadly drugs, she discovered so-called aconite, and tested the power of each by mixing it into the food given to strangers.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Diodorus euhemerises the witch dynasty. Hecate is a cruel Taurian princess who tests poisons on foreigners and kills her father. Circe researches 'roots of every kind with incredible powers'. Medea learns all drugs but uses them to rescue strangers. The goddess of magic becomes a toxicologist experimenting on human subjects.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "real plant poisons (aconite)", "practitioner": "Hecate, Circe, Medea (euhemerised)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok-manual", "library_check_meaning": "the script could not match the transcription, and an AI agent confirmed the passage by reading it", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-60", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Historical Library", "author": "Diodorus Siculus", "culture": "Rhodian legend", "language": "", "date": "c. 60–30 BCE", "date_sort": -40, "edition_urn": "tlg0060.tlg001.perseus-grc5", "ref": "5.55.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Diod. Sic. 5.55.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "λέγονται δʼ οὗτοι καὶ γόητες γεγονέναι καὶ παράγειν ὅτε βούλοιντο νέφη τε καὶ ὄμβρους καὶ χαλάζας, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ χιόνα ἐφέλκεσθαι· ταῦτα δὲ καθάπερ καὶ τοὺς μάγους ποιεῖν ἱστοροῦσιν.", "translation": "They are also said to have been goetes, bringing on clouds, rain and hail at will and drawing down snow, things which, it is recorded, the magi also do.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Telchines were inventors of crafts and the first makers of divine statues. They were also weather-sorcerers and shape-shifters, 'jealous in teaching their arts'. Diodorus aligns them with the magi's reputed weather control, and craft secrecy merges with sorcery.", "claimed_effect": "raising clouds, rain, hail and snow; changing shape", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Telchines", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-61", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Historical Library", "author": "Diodorus Siculus (citing Ephorus)", "culture": "Phrygian/Cretan (Idaean Dactyls)", "language": "", "date": "c. 60–30 BCE", "date_sort": -40, "edition_urn": "tlg0060.tlg001.perseus-grc5", "ref": "5.64.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Diod. Sic. 5.64.4–7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "πολλὰς τῶν γυναικῶν ἔτι καὶ νῦν λαμβάνειν ἐπῳδὰς ἀπὸ τούτου τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ περιάμματα ποιεῖν, ὡς γεγονότος αὐτοῦ γόητος καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς τελετὰς ἐπιτετηδευκότος", "translation": "many women even now take incantations from this god and make amulets, since he was a goes and practised initiation rites", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Dactyls were goetes who invented epodai, teletai and mysteries, astonished the Samothracians, and had Orpheus as pupil. On Crete they discovered fire, bronze and iron. Women of Diodorus' day still invoke the Dactyl Heracles in spells and amulets. Diodorus attests contemporary female amulet practice and the overlap of goeteia with mystery cult and metallurgy.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Idaean Dactyls; contemporary women", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Women's everyday protective magic", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-62", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Historical Library", "author": "Diodorus Siculus", "culture": "Egyptian (Isis cult)", "language": "", "date": "c. 60–30 BCE", "date_sort": -40, "edition_urn": "tlg0060.tlg001.perseus-grc5", "ref": "1.25.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Diod. Sic. 1.25.2–6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "κατὰ γὰρ τοὺς ὕπνους ἐφισταμένην διδόναι τοῖς κάμνουσι βοηθήματα πρὸς τὰς νόσους, καὶ τοὺς ὑπακούσαντας αὐτῇ παραδόξως ὑγιάζεσθαι", "translation": "Standing over the sick in their sleep she gives them remedies for their diseases, and those who obey her are healed beyond expectation", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Egyptians say Isis discovered many drugs and medical science, and now heals by dream incubation: patients given up by physicians, the blinded and the maimed. They offer 'not myths like the Greeks but manifest deeds' as proof. Healing by divine dream is legitimate temple religion, opposite in status to the goes' remedies.", "claimed_effect": "cures of incurable disease", "claimed_mechanism": "dream-revealed remedies", "practitioner": "Isis (via incubation)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-63", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Historical Library", "author": "Diodorus Siculus", "culture": "Babylonian (Chaldaeans)", "language": "", "date": "c. 60–30 BCE", "date_sort": -40, "edition_urn": "tlg0060.tlg001.perseus-grc5", "ref": "2.29.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Diod. Sic. 2.29.2–2.31.6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀντέχονται δʼ ἐπὶ πολὺ καὶ μαντικῆς, ποιούμενοι προρρήσεις περὶ τῶν μελλόντων, καὶ τῶν μὲν καθαρμοῖς, τῶν δὲ θυσίαις, τῶν δʼ ἄλλαις τισὶν ἐπῳδαῖς", "translation": "They also devote themselves greatly to divination, making predictions about the future, and [trying to avert] some evils by purifications, others by sacrifices, others by certain incantations", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Chaldaeans are a hereditary priestly caste, like Egypt's priests, who are astronomers, diviners and averters of evil through purifications, sacrifices and epodai (the Babylonian namburbi apotropaic rites). They learn from childhood from their fathers. At 2.30.5 they predict winds, rains, comets and eclipses. At 2.31.6 they explain lunar eclipses by the earth's shadow 'like the Greeks' but are weak on solar eclipses, which matches the actual state of Babylonian astronomy.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Chaldaeans", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Hereditary temple scholarship", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-64", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Description of Greece", "author": "Pausanias", "culture": "Greek (Lebadeia, Boeotia)", "language": "", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0525.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "9.39.13.1", "conventional_ref": "Paus. 9.39.5–14", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "κομίζουσι κάτοχόν τε ἔτι τῷ δείματι καὶ ἀγνῶτα ὁμοίως αὑτοῦ τε καὶ τῶν πέλας.", "translation": "they carry him back still possessed by terror and not knowing either himself or those around him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pausanias, who consulted the oracle himself (9.39.14), describes it: days of purification, nocturnal bathing by two boys, drinking from the springs of Lethe and Memory, linen tunic, a narrow ladder into a built chasm, honey-cakes, and being sucked feet-first through a hole 'as by a river's whirlpool'. Afterwards the priests seat him on the throne of Memory and question him, and his laughter returns later. Lucian, Dial. mort. 3.2.1 (opened) mocks the same rite: Trophonius 'differs from us dead only by his goeteia'.", "claimed_effect": "revelation of the future in an underground encounter", "claimed_mechanism": "purification, fasting, darkness, disorientation, terror", "practitioner": "priests of Trophonius", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-65", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Description of Greece", "author": "Pausanias", "culture": "'Persian' (Iranian) cult communities in Lydia", "language": "", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0525.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.27.6.1", "conventional_ref": "Paus. 5.27.5–6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "chemistry-fire", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐπᾴδει δὲ ἐπιλεγόμενος ἐκ βιβλίου· ἄνευ τε δὴ πυρὸς ἀνάγκη πᾶσα ἁφθῆναι τὰ ξύλα καὶ περιφανῆ φλόγα ἐξ αὐτῶν ἐκλάμψαι.", "translation": "He chants, reading from a book; and without fire the wood must catch and a brilliant flame blaze out of it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pausanias saw this himself at Hierocaesarea and Hypaipa. In the 'Persian' sanctuaries a magos puts dry wood on an altar covered with ash 'not of the usual colour', dons a tiara, invokes some god in a language 'not at all intelligible to Greeks', reading from a book, and the wood bursts into flame without fire. He calls it a wonder 'not free of the magi's wisdom'. The odd-coloured ash suggests a pyrophoric or chemical preparation.", "claimed_effect": "spontaneous ignition of wood", "claimed_mechanism": "chant read from a book; a peculiar 'ash' on the altar", "practitioner": "a magos (Lydian 'Persian' priest)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-66", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Description of Greece", "author": "Pausanias", "culture": "Greek (Elis; Andros)", "language": "", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0525.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "6.26.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Paus. 6.26.1–2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐσελθόντες ἐς τὸ οἴκημα εὑρίσκουσιν οἴνου πεπλησμένους τοὺς λέβητας. ταῦτα Ἠλείων τε οἱ δοκιμώτατοι ἄνδρες, σὺν αὐτοῖς δὲ καὶ ξένοι κατώμνυντο ἔχειν κατὰ τὰ εἰρημένα", "translation": "Entering the building they find the cauldrons filled with wine. The most reputable men of Elis, and foreigners with them, swore that this was so", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At the Thyia festival priests put three empty cauldrons in a building. The doors are sealed by priests and any citizens or visitors who wish, and next day the cauldrons are found full of wine. Andros boasts wine flowing spontaneously from its temple. Pausanias missed the festival and suspends judgement, comparing the Ethiopian 'table of the sun'. The sealed room was public verification, but the priests controlled the building. The library flags this node IsAthetized.", "claimed_effect": "empty sealed vessels filling with wine", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "priests of Dionysus at Elis", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-67", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Description of Greece", "author": "Pausanias", "culture": "Greek (Titane near Sicyon)", "language": "", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0525.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.12.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Paus. 2.12.1", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "δρᾷ δὲ καὶ ἄλλα ἀπόρρητα ἐς βόθρους τέσσαρας, ἡμερούμενος τῶν πνευμάτων τὸ ἄγριον, καὶ δὴ καὶ Μηδείας ὡς λέγουσιν ἐπῳδὰς ἐπᾴδει.", "translation": "He performs other secret rites into four pits, taming the winds' savagery, and they say he even chants the spells of Medea.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At the altar of the Winds a priest sacrifices one night each year, performs secret rites into four pits and sings 'Medea's incantations' to calm the winds. Weather magic is attributed to the archetypal witch and performed by an official priest of a civic cult.", "claimed_effect": "calming the winds", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "priest of the Winds at Titane", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Annual public cult", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-68", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Description of Greece", "author": "Pausanias", "culture": "Greek (Methana, Argolid)", "language": "", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0525.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.34.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Paus. 2.34.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐπεὶ χάλαζάν γε ἤδη θυσίαις εἶδον καὶ ἐπῳδαῖς ἀνθρώπους ἀποτρέποντας.", "translation": "for I have myself seen men turning away hail with sacrifices and incantations.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Against the vine-withering Lips wind, two men split a pure-white cock and run round the vineyard in opposite directions, each carrying half, then bury it where they meet (2.34.2). Pausanias doubts the local claim that one islet never gets rain, but vouches as an eyewitness for averting hail by sacrifice and epodai. This is agrarian apotropaic magic, observed and not condemned.", "claimed_effect": "protecting vines from wind and hail", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Methanian farmers; hail-averters", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-69", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus", "author": "Galen", "culture": "Greek medicine (Pergamon/Rome), against Egyptian-Hermetic herbals", "language": "", "date": "c. 170–180 CE", "date_sort": 175, "edition_urn": "tlg0057.tlg075.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "6.prooemium.1", "conventional_ref": "Gal. SMT 6 prooem.", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος μὲν εἴς τε μύθους γραῶν τινας ἐξετράπετο καί τινας γοητείας Αἰγυπτίας ληρώδεις ἅμα τισὶν ἐπῳδαῖς, ἃς ἀναιρούμενοι τὰς βοτάνας ἐπιλέγουσι.", "translation": "But he [Pamphilus] wandered off into old wives' tales and silly Egyptian sorceries along with certain incantations that people say over herbs as they dig them up.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Galen attacks the grammarian Pamphilus' herbal. It contains metamorphosis stories, incantations, libations and fumigations for plant-gathering, amulets and 'other mangania, false as well as irrelevant', and 'sacred herbs of the decans and daimones' from a book of 'Egyptian Hermes'. Pamphilus had never seen the plants, and Xenocrates of Aphrodisias is 'not free of goeteia'. Dioscorides is praised as the model. This is empirical pharmacology drawing its boundary against Hermetic botany.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "incantations at harvest; decan-plants", "practitioner": "Pamphilus; Xenocrates; 'Egyptian Hermes' literature", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-70", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus", "author": "Galen", "culture": "Greek medicine", "language": "", "date": "c. 170–180 CE", "date_sort": 175, "edition_urn": "tlg0057.tlg075.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "6.3.10.1", "conventional_ref": "Gal. SMT 6.3.10 (peony)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ οἶδά γέ ποτε παιδίον ὀκτὼ μησὶ μηδ’ ὅλως ἐπιληφθὲν ἐξ ὅτου τῆς ῥίζης ἐφόρει, ὡς δ’ ἀπεῤῥύη πως ἀπὸ τοῦ τραχήλου τὸ περιάπτον, εὐθὺς ἐπελήφθη", "translation": "And I know of a child who had no seizure at all for eight months while he wore the root; but when the amulet somehow slipped off his neck he was immediately seized", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Galen tests the peony-root amulet against childhood epilepsy: off, seizure; on again, well; off again 'for the sake of experiment', seizure; then a large fresh piece, and the boy was cured for good. He explains it physically, either particles of the root breathed in or the air around it altered, comparing Cyrenaic silphium juice and roasted black cumin inhaled through linen. He also notes the 'viper-strangling' purple threads for neck swellings. This is a personal on-off-on trial of an amulet.", "claimed_effect": "preventing epileptic fits", "claimed_mechanism": "emanation of drying particles inhaled from the root", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-71", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus", "author": "Galen", "culture": "Greek medicine", "language": "", "date": "c. 170–180 CE", "date_sort": 175, "edition_urn": "tlg0057.tlg075.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "10.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Gal. SMT 10.1 (proem on Xenocrates)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐκεῖνα μὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν καὶ γελοῖα, καταδῆσαι τοὺς ἀντιδίκους, ὡς μηδὲν ἐπὶ τοῦ δικανικοῦ δυνηθῆναι φθέγξασθαι, ἢ ἐκτρῶσαι ποιῆσαι τὴν κύουσαν, ἢ μηδέποτε συλλαβεῖν", "translation": "Some of these are actually ridiculous: binding one's opponents at law so that they cannot utter a word in court, or making a pregnant woman miscarry, or never conceive", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Galen will not record 'so-called philtra, agogima, oneiropompoi and misetra' (love potions, attraction spells, dream-senders, hate-spells), nor deadly poisons, 'even if I had sufficient experience'. Courtroom binding spells (the katadesmos genre of the curse tablets) are 'ridiculous' and mostly 'impossible by experience'. In the same book he rejects basilisks and Nile horses he has never seen. A doctor's technical names for magic genres are listed and refused.", "claimed_effect": "silencing legal opponents; abortion; contraception; love; hatred", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Courtroom curse tablets; ethics of the physician", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-72", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus", "author": "Galen", "culture": "Greek medicine", "language": "", "date": "c. 170–180 CE", "date_sort": 175, "edition_urn": "tlg0057.tlg075.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "10.2.16.1", "conventional_ref": "Gal. SMT 10.2.16 (on saliva)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ὕστερον δ’ ἐγὼ χωρὶς τῆς ἐπῳδῆς ἐθεασάμην ἐπὶ τῷ σιάλῳ μόνῳ τὸν σκορπίον ἀποθανόντα", "translation": "Later I saw the scorpion die from the saliva alone, without the incantation", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A man promised to show an epode that kills scorpions; after each of three recitations he spat on the scorpion, and it died. Galen repeated it without words: saliva alone killed it, fast with a fasting person's spit and slowly with a full person's. This is a controlled separation of the 'magical' element from the active substance.", "claimed_effect": "killing scorpions by incantation", "claimed_mechanism": "(tested) human saliva", "practitioner": "an unnamed charmer", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-73", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus", "author": "Galen", "culture": "Greek medicine", "language": "", "date": "c. 170–180 CE", "date_sort": 175, "edition_urn": "tlg0057.tlg075.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "10.2.21.1", "conventional_ref": "Gal. SMT 10.2.21 (wolf dung)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "λέγω δ’ οὕτως, ὥστ’ οὐσίαν εἶναι τὴν περιαπτομένην, οὐκ ὀνόματα βάρβαρα, καθάπερ εἰώθασιν ἔνιοι τῶν γοήτων", "translation": "I mean that what is hung on is a substance, not barbarous names, as some of the goetes are accustomed to do", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A colleague gave white wolf dung, ideally caught before it touched the ground, to colic patients and also hung it on their flanks in wool from a sheep killed by a wolf. Galen tried the amulet himself in a bean-sized pot with two ears for the strap, and 'marvelled to see most of them clearly helped'. He accepts amulets made of substances and rejects amulets made of words, which is his line between medicine and goeteia.", "claimed_effect": "relief of colic", "claimed_mechanism": "substance (ousia) acting at a distance", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-74", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De praenotione ad Epigenem", "author": "Galen", "culture": "Greek medicine at Rome", "language": "", "date": "c. 178 CE", "date_sort": 178, "edition_urn": "tlg0057.tlg083.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "10.1", "conventional_ref": "Gal. De praenot. 10 (cf. 1; SMT 10.2.6)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "οὐ γὰρ περιέρχομαι κηρύττων τὰς ἐμὰς προγνώσεις τε καὶ θεραπείας, ἵνα μᾶλλον οἱ ἰατροί τε καὶ φιλόσοφοί με μισῶσι, γόητά τε καὶ μάντιν ἕτερά τε κατ᾿ ἐμοῦ τοιαῦτα θρυλοῦντες.", "translation": "For I do not go about trumpeting my prognoses and cures, lest the physicians and philosophers hate me even more, babbling that I am a goes and a seer and other such things.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Galen's accurate fever prognosis for Sextus, son of the emperor Antoninus, sets off the familiar accusation. At De praenot. 1.1 a doctor who predicts delirium or a nosebleed 'would be content not to be thought a goes'. At SMT 10.2.6 Galen avoids even trying crocodile-blood eye-salve 'to escape a reputation for goeteia', since 'envious physicians' already said his prognoses came from mantike. Medical skill was open to the charge of magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Galen (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Professional rivalry among doctors in Rome", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-75", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De materia medica", "author": "Dioscurides Pedianus", "culture": "Greek pharmacology (Roman army physician)", "language": "", "date": "c. 60–70 CE", "date_sort": 65, "edition_urn": "tlg0656.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "4.75.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Diosc. MM 4.75 (mandragoras)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "χρώμενοι ἐπὶ τῶν ἀγρυπνούντων καὶ περιοδυνώντων κυάθῳ ἐνὶ καὶ ἐφʼ ὧν βούλονται ἀναισθησίαν τεμνομένων ἢ καιομένων ποιῆσαι.", "translation": "using one cyathus for the sleepless and those in severe pain, and for those in whom they wish to produce insensibility when they are cut or cauterised.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Mandrake, also called 'Circe's plant', 'since the root is thought to make love potions' (4.75.1), is prepared as a wine decoction for surgical anaesthesia. 4.75.5 repeats the use: those to be cut or burned 'do not perceive the pain because they are overcome by sleep'. More than the dose kills (4.75.3.2). The witch's plant is the surgeon's analgesic, and Dioscorides records both names.", "claimed_effect": "anaesthesia, sleep, love", "claimed_mechanism": "(real) tropane alkaloids: scopolamine, hyoscyamine", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-76", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De materia medica", "author": "Dioscurides Pedianus", "culture": "Greek pharmacology and folk ritual", "language": "", "date": "c. 60–70 CE", "date_sort": 65, "edition_urn": "tlg0656.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "4.134.136.162.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Diosc. MM 4.162 (black hellebore)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "περιρραίνουσι δὲ καὶ οἰκίας αὐτῷ καθάρσιον εἶναι νομίζοντες, ὅθεν καὶ ὀρύσσοντες ἵστανται πρὸς ἕω, εὐχόμενοι Ἀπόλλωνι καὶ Ἀσκληπιῷ, φυλαττόμενοι δὲ ἀετόν", "translation": "They also sprinkle houses with it, thinking it purifying; and so when digging it they stand facing east, praying to Apollo and Asclepius and keeping watch for an eagle", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Black hellebore, named 'melampodion' after the goatherd Melampus who purified and cured Proetus' mad daughters with it (4.162.1), is used as a house-purifier. Gatherers face east and pray, and fear an eagle whose sight of the digging brings death. They must dig fast, 'because heaviness of the head arises from the exhalation', so they first eat garlic and drink wine. A ritual taboo sits next to a real toxic hazard. (The edition's ref string is printed as the helper gives it.)", "claimed_effect": "purification; safe harvest", "claimed_mechanism": "(real) toxic, irritant plant; ritual precautions", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-77", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De materia medica", "author": "Dioscurides Pedianus", "culture": "Greek pharmacology reporting folk magic (incl. Thessalian women)", "language": "", "date": "c. 60–70 CE", "date_sort": 65, "edition_urn": "tlg0656.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "3.134.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Diosc. MM 3.134 (asplenon); cf. 4.60, 4.131", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "love", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "δοκεῖ δὲ ἀτόκιον εἶναι καθʼ ἑαυτὴν καὶ μετὰ ἡμιόνου ὁπλῆς περιαπτομένη ἀσελήνου δὲ νυκτὸς ἡ ἡμέρας οὔσης φασὶ δεῖν αὐτὴν ὀρύσσειν εἰς ἀτόκιον.", "translation": "It is thought to be a contraceptive by itself and when hung on with a mule's hoof; and they say it must be dug on a moonless night, or by day, for a contraceptive.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Dioscorides' formula for magical uses is to put them in indirect speech: δοκεῖ, φασί, ἱστορεῖται ('it is thought', 'they say', 'it is recorded'). This appears in dozens of amulet entries (36 περιαπτ- hits). Examples: spleenwort with a mule's hoof as a contraceptive dug on a moonless night; 'sacred herb' (verbena) 'because it is useful in purifications for amulets' (4.60.2.1); katananke 'which Thessalian women use for love potions' (4.131.1). The pharmacologist records the folk uses and keeps his distance.", "claimed_effect": "contraception; love; protection", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "root-cutters; Thessalian women", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-78", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De materia medica", "author": "Dioscurides Pedianus", "culture": "Egyptian (Memphis) mineral lore", "language": "", "date": "c. 60–70 CE", "date_sort": 65, "edition_urn": "tlg0656.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "5.140.1", "conventional_ref": "Diosc. MM 5.140 (Memphite stone)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "οὗτος ἱστορεῖται καταχρισθεὶς λεῖος ἐπὶ τῶν μελλόντων τέμνεσθαι καίεσθαι τόπων ἀκίνδυνον ἀναισθησίαν ἐπιφέρειν.", "translation": "It is recorded that, ground fine and smeared on places about to be cut or cauterised, it produces safe insensibility.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The 'Memphite stone', pebble-sized, fatty and variegated, is a reported topical anaesthetic from Egypt. Modern suggestions are marble or limestone releasing carbon dioxide with vinegar (cold or numbing), but that is uncertain. Dioscorides reports it at second hand (ἱστορεῖται).", "claimed_effect": "local anaesthesia for surgery", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-79", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De lapidibus", "author": "Pseudo-Dioscorides", "culture": "Greek lapidary tradition", "language": "", "date": "date uncertain (imperial or late antique)", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg1118.tlg003.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.14.1", "conventional_ref": "Ps.-Diosc. De lap. 14 (hierakites)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Λίθος ἱερακίτης καὶ ἰνδικὸς περιαπτόμενος μηρῷ δεξιῷ τὰς αἱμορροΐδας ἀναξηραίνουσιν, ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐπειράθημεν", "translation": "The hawk-stone and the Indian stone, hung on the right thigh, dry up haemorrhoids, as we too have tested", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A stone amulet with a claim of personal testing, in the same experiential idiom as Galen. Other entries: jet hung on relieves chronic headache (1.8.1); agates are 'all thought to be protective amulets that also speed childbirth' (1.12.1).", "claimed_effect": "curing haemorrhoids", "claimed_mechanism": "stone worn on the body", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-80", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Cyranides", "author": "Anonymous (Hermetic, ascribed to Kyranos and Harpocration)", "culture": "Graeco-Egyptian Hermetic", "language": "", "date": "compiled c. 1st–4th c. CE (uncertain)", "date_sort": 250, "edition_urn": "tlg1482.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.1.39.1", "conventional_ref": "Cyran. 1.1.39 (cf. prologue 1.0.1–3)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "love", "rune-writing-magic" ], "excerpt_original": "Λαβὼν οὖν ἀετίτην λίθον γλύψον ἀετόν, καὶ ὑπὸ τὸν λίθον ὑπόθες γίγαρτον σταφυλῆς, καὶ τὸ ἄκρον τοῦ πτεροῦ τοῦ ἀετοῦ εἶτε ἱέρακος, καὶ κατακλείσας φόρει", "translation": "Take an eagle-stone, engrave an eagle on it, put a grape-pip under the stone and the tip of an eagle's or hawk's feather, enclose it and wear it", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A practical Hermetic manual. Its prologue calls it a 'book of natural powers, sympathies and antipathies', the 'greatest gift of God' given by Hermes Trismegistus, to be shared only with one's children under oath, and copied from Syriac letters on an iron stele. Recipes pair a stone, bird, plant and fish under each letter: engraved gems with enclosed animal and plant parts, and 'drinkable philtra' (philtropotima) from animal organs (e.g. 1.18.8.1, 3.18.4.1). This is magic written from the inside, as instruction.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "sympathy and antipathy among stone, bird, plant and fish; engraving", "practitioner": "Hermes Trismegistus (revealer); the wearer", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-81", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Fragmentum alchemicum (Kataphe)", "author": "'Iamblichus Alchemista' (pseudepigraphic)", "culture": "Graeco-Egyptian alchemy", "language": "", "date": "date very uncertain (late antique or Byzantine attribution)", "date_sort": 450, "edition_urn": "tlg2140.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.1", "conventional_ref": "[Iamblichus] alchem. fr. 1", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "alchemy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ΙΑΜΒΛΙΧΟΥ ΚΑΤΑΒΑΦΗ. – Ἁλὸς καππαδοκικοῦ δραχμαὶ β'· κινναδάρεως ἰταλικῆς γ° ἥμισυ· ἀρσενικοῦ γ° α'", "translation": "Iamblichus' Dye: Cappadocian salt, 2 drachmas; Italian cinnabar, half an ounce; arsenic (orpiment), 1 ounce", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A metal-tinting recipe ('kataphe'): salt, cinnabar, orpiment, roasted chalcitis, iron scale, verdigris, chrysocolla, cadmia, mixed with mandrake juice and buried in horse dung for 15 days, then used to colour silver. This is alchemy as practical metallurgy aimed at gold-looking alloys. The date is outside the period and very uncertain; it is included only as a chemistry control.", "claimed_effect": "colouring metal (silver toward gold)", "claimed_mechanism": "(real) chemical surface treatment", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-82", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Pneumatica", "author": "Hero of Alexandria", "culture": "Alexandrian mechanics", "language": "", "date": "c. 60 CE", "date_sort": 60, "edition_urn": "tlg0559.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.38.1", "conventional_ref": "Hero, Pneum. 1.38 (cf. 1.12, 2.3, prooem.)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "Ναΐσκου κατασκευή, ὥστε θυσίας γινομένης τὰς θύρας αὐτομάτως ἀνοίγεσθαι, σβεσθείσης δὲ τῆς θυσίας πάλιν κλείεσθαι.", "translation": "Construction of a little temple whose doors open by themselves when a sacrifice is made, and close again when the sacrifice is extinguished.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Fire on the altar heats air, which drives water into a vessel whose weight turns the door-pivots. Hero also describes figures that pour libations when altar fire is lit (1.12), dancers that appear on transparent altars (2.3), and in his preface devices that 'produce an astonishing wonder' (ἐκπληκτικόν τινα θαυμασμόν). He never says priests used these to deceive; the link to temple fraud is modern inference, though it fits Lucian's Alexander.", "claimed_effect": "self-opening temple doors; libating statues", "claimed_mechanism": "(real) thermal expansion of air; siphons; counterweights", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-83", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Apotelesmatica (Tetrabiblos)", "author": "Claudius Ptolemaeus", "culture": "Alexandrian astronomy and astrology", "language": "", "date": "c. 150–170 CE", "date_sort": 160, "edition_urn": "tlg0363.tlg007.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Ptol. Tetr. 1.2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "ἥ τε σελήνη πλείστην, ὡς περιγειοτάτη, διαδίδωσιν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν τὴν ἀπόρροιαν, συμπαθούντων αὐτῇ καὶ συντρεπομένων τῶν πλείστων καὶ ἀψύχων καὶ ἐμψύχων", "translation": "and the moon, being nearest the earth, sends down the greatest effluence, most things both inanimate and animate sympathising with it and changing with it", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ptolemy grounds astrology in physics. The sun drives seasons, and the moon governs tides, rivers and the growth of plants and animals. Farmers, herdsmen and sailors already forecast from heavenly signs. Astrology is a conjectural (stochastic) science of physical influence, liable to error like navigation or medicine, and not a power to compel.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "physical aporrhoia and sympathy from the heavens", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-84", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Apotelesmatica (Tetrabiblos)", "author": "Claudius Ptolemaeus", "culture": "Alexandrian, with Egyptian iatromathematics", "language": "", "date": "c. 150–170 CE", "date_sort": 160, "edition_urn": "tlg0363.tlg007.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Ptol. Tetr. 1.3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "οὐ γὰρ ἄν ποτε ἀποτροπιασμούς τινας καὶ φυλακτήρια καὶ θεραπείας συνίσταντο πρὸς τὰς ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος ἐπιούσας ἢ παρούσας περιστάσεις", "translation": "for they would never have devised certain averting rites, amulets and treatments against the circumstances coming or present from the environment", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Astrology is useful because what is not strictly necessary can be counteracted, as a doctor fights a disease or the magnet 'draws iron' unless something antipathetic intervenes. The Egyptians, who advanced the art most, joined prognosis to medicine in their 'iatromathematical' works, with apotropaic rites and phylacteries. The astronomer of the Almagest theorises amulets as legitimate countermeasures against celestial influence.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "sympathy and antipathy counteracting celestial causes", "practitioner": "Egyptian iatromathematici", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-85", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Apotelesmatica (Tetrabiblos)", "author": "Claudius Ptolemaeus", "culture": "Alexandrian astrology", "language": "", "date": "c. 150–170 CE", "date_sort": 160, "edition_urn": "tlg0363.tlg007.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.13.1", "conventional_ref": "Ptol. Tetr. 3.13 (3.14 Robbins); cf. 4.4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "τοιχωρύχους, μιαιφόνους, πλαστογράφους, ῥᾳδιουργούς, γόητας, μάγους, φαρμακούς, ἀνδροφόνους.", "translation": "housebreakers, murderers, forgers, rogues, sorcerers, magicians, poisoners, homicides.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the doctrine of the 'quality of the soul', a badly placed Mars ruling the soul makes goetes, magoi and pharmakoi among other criminals. At 4.4 (with Saturn) such people are listed among occupations. Elsewhere in 3.13 well-placed configurations produce people inclined to 'magical, mystery, astrological, mechanical and conjuring (θαυματοποιούς)' pursuits. Astrology classes the magician as a born type among criminals and technicians.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-86", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes", "author": "Sextus Empiricus", "culture": "Greek (Pyrrhonist sceptic, physician)", "language": "", "date": "c. 180–200 CE", "date_sort": 190, "edition_urn": "tlg0544.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.14.46.1", "conventional_ref": "Sext. Emp. PH 1.46", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "chemistry-fire" ], "excerpt_original": "καί γε οἱ γόητες χρίοντες τὰς θρυαλλίδας ἰῷ χαλκοῦ καὶ θολῷ σηπίας ποιοῦσιν ὁτὲ μὲν χαλκοῦς ὁτὲ δὲ μέλανας φαίνεσθαι τοὺς παρόντας", "translation": "and indeed the goetes, smearing lamp-wicks with verdigris or with cuttlefish ink, make those present look now copper-coloured, now black", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Sextus' first mode of scepticism shows that perception depends on the medium. His example is a goes' parlour trick: lamp wicks treated with copper salts (a green-blue flame) or sepia make onlookers' faces change colour. The trick is recorded casually as common knowledge of how goetes stage apparitions.", "claimed_effect": "people appearing transformed in colour", "claimed_mechanism": "(real) coloured flame from copper salts; sooty light", "practitioner": "goetes", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-87", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Adversus Mathematicos (Against the Astrologers)", "author": "Sextus Empiricus", "culture": "Greek sceptic against 'Chaldaean' genethlialogy", "language": "", "date": "c. 180–200 CE", "date_sort": 190, "edition_urn": "tlg0544.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "5.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Sext. Emp. M. 5.1–2, 27–28", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀλλὰ πρὸς γενεθλιαλογίαν, ἣν σεμνοτέροις κοσμοῦν- τες ὀνόμασιν οἱ Χαλδαῖοι μαθηματικοὺς καὶ ἀστρολόγους σφᾶς αὐτοὺς ἀναγορεύουσιν", "translation": "but against genethlialogy, which the Chaldaeans adorn with grander names, proclaiming themselves mathematicians and astrologers", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Sextus spares Eudoxus' and Hipparchus' predictive astronomy, 'observation of phenomena like farming and navigation', which forecasts droughts, rains, plagues and earthquakes. He attacks birth-horoscopy, which 'builds up a great superstition against us'. His chief argument (5.27–28) is practical: the Chaldaean on the hilltop is told of the birth by a gong, so the exact rising degree can never be fixed. The real science of the sky is separated from personal fate-reading.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Chaldaeans (genethlialogers)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-88", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Oneirocritica", "author": "Artemidorus", "culture": "Greek (Daldis/Ephesus) professional diviner", "language": "", "date": "c. 170–190 CE", "date_sort": 180, "edition_urn": "tlg0553.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.69.1", "conventional_ref": "Artem. 2.69 (cf. 1 prooem.)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅσα γὰρ ἂν λέγωσι Πυθαγορισταὶ φυσιογωνμονικοὶ ἀστραγαλομάντεις τυρομάντεις κοσκινομάντεις μορφοσκόποι χειροσκόποι λεκανομάντεις νεκυομάντεις, ψευδῆ πάντα καὶ ἀνυπόστατα χρὴ νομίζειν", "translation": "whatever Pythagoreanisers, physiognomists, knucklebone-diviners, cheese-diviners, sieve-diviners, form-readers, palm-readers, dish-diviners and necromancers say must all be considered false and baseless", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A working dream-interpreter draws the line inside divination. Reliable dream-speakers are gods, priests, kings and parents, and the true arts are sacrificers, augurs, sky-watchers, portent-readers, dream-interpreters and liver-readers. The listed practitioners 'know nothing of mantike but, by goeteia and deception, strip those who meet them'. In his proem he admits keeping company for years with 'market diviners, whom the solemn-faced call beggars, goetes and buffoons'. Necromancy, honoured in Strabo, is fraud for Artemidorus. The library flags 2.69.1 IsAthetized.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "market diviners of many kinds", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Status competition among diviners in the marketplace", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-89", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Ad se ipsum (Meditations)", "author": "Marcus Aurelius", "culture": "Roman emperor writing Greek (Stoic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 170–180 CE", "date_sort": 175, "edition_urn": "tlg0562.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.6.1.1", "conventional_ref": "M. Aur. 1.6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ τὸ ἀπιστητικὸν τοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν τερατευομένων καὶ γοήτων περὶ ἐπῳδῶν καὶ περὶ δαιμόνων ἀποπομπῆς καὶ τῶν τοιούτων λεγομένοις", "translation": "and disbelief in what is said by wonder-mongers and goetes about incantations, the sending-away of daimones and such things", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Among the lessons he thanks his tutor Diognetus for: scepticism about incantations and exorcism (δαιμόνων ἀποπομπή), and not keeping fighting quails. Elite education trained disbelief in spells and exorcism as part of character.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "teratologists and goetes", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-90", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Orationes 24 (= Sacred Tales II, Keil Or. 48)", "author": "Aelius Aristides", "culture": "Greek (Smyrna/Pergamon, Asclepius cult)", "language": "", "date": "c. 170 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0284.tlg024.perseus-grc2", "ref": "295.2", "conventional_ref": "Aristid. Or. 48.18–23 Keil (= Or. 24 Dindorf p. 295)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ὡς δʼ ἐξέβην, ὅτε δὴ χρὼς πᾶς ἤνθει καὶ τὸ σῶμα πάντη κοῦφον ἦν, καὶ βοὴ πολλὴ τῶν τε παρόντων καὶ ἐπιόντων, τὸ πολυύμνητον δὴ τοῦτο βοώντων, μέγας ὁ Ἀσκληπιός.", "translation": "When I came out, my whole skin was glowing and my body light everywhere, and a great shout went up from those present and arriving, crying that much-sung cry, 'Great is Asclepius!'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In midwinter, with the river pebbles frozen together, Asclepius orders Aristides by dream to bathe in the river. Friends and doctors follow, one expecting opisthotonus, and he plunges in still 'full of the warmth of the god's vision', swims, and emerges glowing. In 297.1 the god also orders pit-rites at the river and the throwing of coins. Dream-commanded therapy in Asclepius' cult is the legitimate counterpart of the goes' cures.", "claimed_effect": "relief of chronic catarrh and illness", "claimed_mechanism": "obedience to dream commands (cold immersion)", "practitioner": "Asclepius via dreams; Aristides as patient", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-91", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Aethiopica", "author": "Heliodorus of Emesa", "culture": "Greek novel; Egyptian priest Calasiris", "language": "", "date": "3rd or 4th c. CE (disputed)", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg0658.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "3.16.1", "conventional_ref": "Heliod. Aeth. 3.16.3–4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination", "astrology", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἣ μὲν γάρ τις ἐστὶ δημώδης, καὶ ὡς ἄν τις εἴποι, χαμαὶ ἐρχομένη, εἰδώλων θεράπαινα καὶ περὶ σώματα νεκρῶν εἰλουμένη, βοτάναις προστετηκυῖα καὶ ἐπῳδαῖς ἐπανέχουσα", "translation": "One kind is vulgar and, as one might say, goes on the ground: handmaid of phantoms, grovelling about corpses, devoted to herbs and relying on incantations", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Calasiris' doctrine of 'two Egyptian wisdoms'. The low, popular kind deals with ghosts, corpses, herbs and spells, produces 'illusions of what is not as if it were', and serves lawless pleasures. The true wisdom of priests and prophets looks upward, studies the motion of the stars, gains foreknowledge and aims at the good. It is the clearest ancient statement of 'magic versus religion' as low against high wisdom.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Egyptian priests (prophetic class) against popular sorcerers", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-92", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Aethiopica", "author": "Heliodorus of Emesa", "culture": "Egyptian (Bessa, Nile Delta), in a Greek novel", "language": "", "date": "3rd or 4th c. CE (disputed)", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg0658.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "6.14.1", "conventional_ref": "Heliod. Aeth. 6.14–15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐπὶ τὸν νεκρὸν τοῦ παιδὸς προκύψασα καί τινα πρὸς τὸ οὖς ἐπᾴδουσα ἐξήγειρέ τε καὶ ὀρθὸν ἑστάναι τῇ μαγγανείᾳ κατηνάγκαζεν.", "translation": "Bending over her son's corpse and chanting something into its ear, she roused it and by her sorcery forced it to stand upright.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "On a battlefield under the full moon, which Heliodorus calls a rite 'familiar among Egyptian women', an old woman digs a pit, lights a pyre, pours honey, milk and wine, throws in a dough man-figure crowned with laurel and fennel, cuts her arm, calls barbarous names to the moon and makes her son's corpse rise and speak. The corpse rebukes her for 'forcing fate' (ἐκ μοιρῶν θεσμοὺς ἐκβιαζομένην), foretells her violent death, and she soon dies impaled on a spear. The priest Calasiris refuses to watch such things. It is the fullest necromancy scene in Greek prose.", "claimed_effect": "making a corpse speak prophecy", "claimed_mechanism": "pit, libations, effigy, blood, invocation of the moon, whispered spell", "practitioner": "an old woman of Bessa", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-93", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Aethiopica", "author": "Heliodorus of Emesa", "culture": "Greek (Delphi), Egyptian sage speaking", "language": "", "date": "3rd or 4th c. CE (disputed)", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg0658.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "3.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Heliod. Aeth. 3.7–8 (cf. 4.5)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ νόσος ἐγένετο πολλοῖς ὁ φθόνος, οἰκεῖον ὄνομα βασκανίαν ἐπιδεξάμενος. ἤδη δὲ κἀκεῖνα σκόπησον, ὦ Χαρίκλεις, ὅσοι μὲν ὀφθαλμίας ὅσοι δὲ τῆς ἐκ λοιμῶν καταστάσεως ἀνεπλήσθησαν", "translation": "and envy has become a disease for many, taking the proper name 'baskania'. Consider too, Charicles, how many have caught ophthalmia, or the condition of plagues", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Charicles laughs, 'do you too, like the mob, believe in baskania?' Calasiris replies that it is true. Air entering through eyes, nose and pores carries qualities, and envy fills the surrounding air with bitter pneuma, as eye-disease and plague spread by shared air alone, and as love enters through the eyes. In the plot the 'evil eye' is actually lovesickness, which Calasiris diagnoses knowingly (4.5).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "air-borne contagion of envy through the senses", "practitioner": "Calasiris (diagnosing)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-94", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Leucippe and Clitophon", "author": "Achilles Tatius", "culture": "Greek novel (Tyre), Egyptian charm", "language": "", "date": "c. 150–200 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0532.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.7.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Ach. Tat. 2.7.1–7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "παύσειν γὰρ αὐτὴν τῆς ἀλγηδόνος δύο ἐπᾴσασαν ῥήματα· διδαχθῆναι γὰρ αὐτὰ ὑπό τινος Αἰγυπτίας εἰς πληγὰς σφηκῶν καὶ μελιττῶν.", "translation": "for she would stop the pain by chanting two words, which an Egyptian woman had taught her for wasp and bee stings.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Leucippe charms away a bee sting on her maid with a two-word spell learned from an Egyptian woman, and the maid feels better. Clitophon fakes a sting on the lip so that the whispered charm becomes a kiss. A minor healing charm is presented as ordinary girls' knowledge, part of everyday life, and turned into erotic comedy.", "claimed_effect": "stopping sting pain", "claimed_mechanism": "a two-word epode", "practitioner": "Leucippe (taught by an Egyptian woman)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-95", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Leucippe and Clitophon", "author": "Achilles Tatius", "culture": "Greek novel (Nile Delta)", "language": "", "date": "c. 150–200 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0532.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.21.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Ach. Tat. 3.15–22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἂν γὰρ ἐρείσῃ τις ἐπί τινος σώματος, φεύγει πρὸς τὴν κώπην ὥσπερ εἰς κουλεόν· καὶ οἱ μὲν ὁρῶντες δοκοῦσι βαπτίζεσθαι τὸν σίδηρον κατὰ τοῦ σώματος", "translation": "If one presses it against a body, it retreats into the handle as into a sheath, and onlookers think the iron is plunging into the body", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Leucippe's 'sacrifice' and disembowelling by bandits was staged with a theatrical retractable sword and a false belly of sheepskin filled with animal guts. When she later speaks from the coffin, Clitophon first takes Menelaus for a magos (3.17.6.1). Menelaus then 'performs wonders, recites some formula' and removes the 'magic devices' from her belly (3.18.3.1, flagged IsAthetized). The novel itself explains the apparent miracle as stagecraft.", "claimed_effect": "apparent resurrection after disembowelment", "claimed_mechanism": "(revealed) stage props", "practitioner": "Menelaus and Satyrus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-96", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Leucippe and Clitophon", "author": "Achilles Tatius", "culture": "Greek novel; Egyptian soldier", "language": "", "date": "c. 150–200 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg0532.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.15.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Ach. Tat. 4.15.4–6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Ὤν δὲ φύσει φαρμακεὺς σκευάζει τι φάρμακον ἔρωτος καὶ πείθει τὸν διακονούμενον ὑμῖν Αἰγύπτιον λαβεῖν τὸ φάρμακον καὶ ἐγκαταμίξαι τῷ τῆς Λευκίππης ποτῷ. Λανθάνει δὲ ἀκράτῳ χρησάμενος τῷ φαρμάκῳ, καὶ τὸ φίλτρον εἰς μανίαν αἴρεται.", "translation": "Being a drug-maker by nature, he prepared a love-drug and persuaded the Egyptian who served you to mix it into Leucippe's drink. Unawares he used the drug undiluted, and the love-potion turned to madness.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Leucippe's ten-day madness is explained: a love potion given at full strength becomes a psychotropic poison. The dead man's servant sells the antidote for four gold pieces. The novel treats love potions as real drugs with a dose-response, and madness from philtra was a known hazard.", "claimed_effect": "erotic compulsion; madness when overdosed", "claimed_mechanism": "psychoactive drug; antidote", "practitioner": "Gorgias, an Egyptian soldier", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-97", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Ephesiaca", "author": "Xenophon of Ephesus", "culture": "Greek novel (Tarsus)", "language": "", "date": "2nd c. CE", "date_sort": 150, "edition_urn": "tlg0641.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.5.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Xen. Eph. 3.5.11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "κομίζων θανάσιμον μὲν οὐχὶ φάρμακον, ὑπνωτικὸν δέ, ὡς μήτε τι παθεῖν τὴν κόρην", "translation": "bringing not a deadly drug but a sleeping one, so that the girl would suffer no harm", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Anthia, forced into marriage, bribes the physician Eudoxus for poison. He gives a soporific; she drinks it, is buried as dead, and wakes in the tomb (3.6–8). Apparent death caused by a narcotic is a repeated novel motif with a pharmacological basis.", "claimed_effect": "apparent death", "claimed_mechanism": "(real) narcotic", "practitioner": "Eudoxus, a physician", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-98", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De natura animalium", "author": "Aelian", "culture": "Graeco-Roman paradoxography", "language": "", "date": "c. 220–235 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg0545.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.35.1", "conventional_ref": "Ael. NA 1.35 (cf. 11.18; VH 1.15)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "βασκάνων ὀφθαλμοὺς καὶ γοήτων φυλάττεται καὶ τῶν ζῴων τὰ ἄλογα φύσει τινὶ ἀπορρήτῳ καὶ θαυμαστῇ. ἀκούω γοῦν βασκανίας ἀμυντήριον τὰς φάττας δάφνης κλωνία ἀποτραγούσας λεπτὰ", "translation": "Even the irrational animals guard against the eyes of the envious and the goetes, by some secret and wonderful instinct. I hear, for instance, that wood-pigeons nibble off laurel twigs as a defence against the evil eye", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Each bird places its own anti-baskania plant in its nest: kites buckthorn, ravens chaste-tree, hoopoes maidenhair, eagles the 'eagle-stone' (aetites), which is also good for pregnant women. At 11.18 the peacock carries a flax root under its wing 'like a natural amulet'; at VH 1.15 pigeons spit on their chicks against bewitchment. Amulets are naturalised as animal instinct, a proof from nature that the evil eye is real.", "claimed_effect": "protection of young from the evil eye", "claimed_mechanism": "natural antipathies of plants and stones", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-99", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De natura animalium", "author": "Aelian", "culture": "Graeco-Roman paradoxography", "language": "", "date": "c. 220–235 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg0545.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.17.1", "conventional_ref": "Ael. NA 3.17 (cf. 15.11)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ οἱ γόητες τὰ τοιαῦτά φασιν ὁρμάς τινας ἑλκτικὰς ἐς μίξιν ἀκατάσχετον καὶ οἶστρον ἀφροδίσιον παρέχειν καὶ ἐξάπτειν.", "translation": "And the goetes say that such things give and kindle drawing urges to irresistible intercourse and sexual frenzy.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The mare bites off the foal's forehead growth, 'hippomanes', which goetes prize for love magic, 'as though grudging humans this greatest good'. Animals hide their magical goods out of envy, as the stag buries its right antler. At 15.11 the weasel was once a woman, 'a goes and pharmakis' of unlawful lust, transformed by Hecate's anger; Aelian leaves the myth to others.", "claimed_effect": "irresistible sexual desire", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "goetes", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-100", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Historia Romana", "author": "Cassius Dio", "culture": "Roman (33 BCE), Greek historian", "language": "", "date": "c. 220 CE", "date_sort": 220, "edition_urn": "tlg0385.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "49.43.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Cass. Dio 49.43.5", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἀγρίππας μὲν δὴ ταῦτά τε ἐποίει, καὶ τοὺς ἀστρολόγους τούς τε γόητας ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἐξήλασεν", "translation": "Agrippa did these things, and he drove the astrologers and goetes out of the city", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In his aedileship Agrippa expelled astrologers and sorcerers from Rome as part of a civic clean-up alongside public works. Expulsions of mathematici and magi became a recurrent Roman instrument.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Administrative expulsion from Rome", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-101", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Historia Romana", "author": "Cassius Dio", "culture": "Roman (speech of Maecenas, composed c. 220 CE)", "language": "", "date": "c. 220 CE", "date_sort": 220, "edition_urn": "tlg0385.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "52.36.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Cass. Dio 52.36.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "μαντικὴ μὲν γὰρ ἀναγκαία ἐστί, καὶ πάντως τινὰς καὶ ἱερόπτας καὶ οἰωνιστὰς ἀπόδειξον, οἷς οἱ βουλόμενοί τι κοινώσασθαι συνέσονται· τοὺς δὲ δὴ μαγευτὰς πάνυ οὐκ εἶναι προσήκει.", "translation": "Divination is necessary: by all means appoint some haruspices and augurs, whom those wishing to consult may approach; but magicians ought not to exist at all.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "'Maecenas' advises Augustus to allow no atheist or goes. Official divination is necessary and should be licensed, while the 'mageutai' must not exist, because by saying a few true things and many false ones they stir people to revolution. Dio's own Severan programme: the line between divination and magic is drawn by the state, and the danger is political.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Imperial policy: licensed diviners against banned magi", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-102", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Ab excessu divi Marci", "author": "Herodian", "culture": "Roman (Caracalla, 217 CE)", "language": "", "date": "c. 240–250 CE", "date_sort": 245, "edition_urn": "tlg0015.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "4.12.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Herodian 4.12.3–4", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "κελεύει δὲ αὐτῷ μάγων τοὺς ἀρίστους ζητήσαντι νεκυίᾳ τε χρησαμένῳ μαθεῖν περὶ τοῦ τέλους τοῦ βίου αὐτοῦ", "translation": "he ordered him to seek out the best of the magi and, using necromancy, to learn about the end of his life", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The suspicious Caracalla gathered 'magi, astronomers and sacrificers from everywhere'. Fearing they flattered him, he had Maternianus in Rome consult the best magi by necromancy about his death. The result, a warning against Macrinus, led to Caracalla's assassination. An emperor uses the forbidden art, and Herodian calls the whole business 'this goeteia'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "magi in Rome (for the emperor)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Imperial consultation of banned specialists", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-103", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Vitae philosophorum", "author": "Diogenes Laertius", "culture": "Greek doxography on Persian Magi", "language": "", "date": "c. 230 CE (sources 4th c. BCE)", "date_sort": 230, "edition_urn": "tlg0004.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.prol.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Diog. Laert. 1.6–9", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Τὴν δὲ γοητικὴν μαγείαν οὐδʼ ἔγνωσαν, φησὶν Ἀριστοτέλης ἐν τῷ Μαγικῷ καὶ Δείνων ἐν τῇ πέμπτῃ τῶν Ἱστοριῶν· ὃς καὶ μεθερμηνευόμενόν φησι τὸν Ζωροάστρην ἀστροθύτην εἶναι", "translation": "Sorcerous magic they did not even know, says Aristotle in the Magikos and Dinon in book 5 of his Histories; Dinon also says that Zoroaster means, when translated, 'star-sacrificer'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Magi as philosophers. They care for the worship of the gods, sacrifices and prayers, practise divination, see the air full of images (eidola) entering the eyes of the sharp-sighted by emanation, and wear white. Citing Aristotle's lost Magikos, Diogenes says 'goetic mageia' was unknown to them. Greek writers had distinguished priestly mageia from goeteia since the 4th c. BCE.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Persian Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-104", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Orationes 36 (Borystheniticus)", "author": "Dio Chrysostom", "culture": "Greek (Prusa/Olbia), on Persian Magi", "language": "", "date": "c. 100 CE", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg0612.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "36.41.1", "conventional_ref": "Dio Chrys. Or. 36.41", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "οὓς Πέρσαι μάγους ἐκάλεσαν, ἐπισταμένους θεραπεύειν τὸ δαιμόνιον, οὐχ ὡς Ἕλληνες ἀγνοίᾳ τοῦ ὀνόματος οὕτως ὀνομάζουσιν ἀνθρώπους γόητας.", "translation": "whom the Persians called magi, men skilled in serving the divine, not as the Greeks, through ignorance of the word, call goetes by that name.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Dio says outright that the Greeks have misunderstood the word. The Persian magoi are true worshippers who keep a chariot of Nisaean horses for Zeus, and their 'Magian myth' of the cosmic chariot follows. This is a Greek distinction between the emic Persian priestly title and the Greek pejorative.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Persian Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-105", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "Histories", "author": "Polybius", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic historian)", "language": "", "date": "c. 150 BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0543.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "16.12.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Polyb. 16.12.3–9", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅσα μὲν οὖν συντείνει πρὸς τὸ διασῴζειν τὴν τοῦ πλήθους εὐσέβειαν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον, δοτέον ἐστὶ συγγνώμην ἐνίοις τῶν συγγραφέων τερατευομένοις καὶ λογοποιοῦσι περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα· τὸ δʼ ὑπεραῖρον οὐ συγχωρητέον.", "translation": "Where such stories help preserve the piety of the masses toward the divine, some indulgence must be given to writers who tell marvels about such things; but excess is not to be allowed.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Bargylians and Iasians claim their open-air Artemis statues are never rained or snowed on, and Theopompus says those entering the forbidden precinct of Zeus Lykaios cast no shadow. Polybius calls such claims 'childish silliness' that exceed not only the probable but the possible, though tolerable where they serve popular piety. This is the Hellenistic historian's line on wonders.", "claimed_effect": "statues untouched by rain; bodies without shadows", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-imperial-prose-106", "corpus": "greek-imperial-prose", "work": "De anima libri mantissa (On fate chapter)", "author": "Alexander of Aphrodisias (school)", "culture": "Greek Peripatetic", "language": "", "date": "c. 200 CE", "date_sort": 200, "edition_urn": "tlg0732.tlg011.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "24.13.1", "conventional_ref": "Alex. Aphr. Mantissa 24 (De fato)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "κατά τινα τριβήν τε καὶ περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα σύνεσιν καὶ τῆς ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις ἀκολουθίας θεωρίαν προλέγοντες εὐστόχως τινὰ τῶν τοῖς οὕτως ἔχουσιν ἀκολούθως ἐσομένων", "translation": "by a certain practice, shrewdness about such matters and observation of what usually follows in such cases, they cleverly predict some of what will likely happen to people in that situation", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Goetes have noticed how weak most people are in judging fate, and how readily, from self-love, people blame fate for their failures. So they proclaim that everything happens by fate and pretend to an art of foreknowing everything (24.12). They approach people in crises and disasters, who all but pray for it to be true, and make shrewd predictions from experience, then claim them as fate-science and charge large fees. This is an ancient description of 'cold reading'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "(exposed) experience-based guesswork presented as knowledge of fate", "practitioner": "goetes as fate-diviners", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-1", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Enneads", "author": "Plotinus", "culture": "Greek (Neoplatonist school at Rome)", "language": "", "date": "c. 263–268 CE", "date_sort": 265, "edition_urn": "tlg2000.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "4.4.40.1", "conventional_ref": "Plot. Enn. 4.4.40", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ γὰρ μηδενὸς μηχανωμένου ἄλλου πολλὰ ἕλκεται καὶ γοητεύεται: καὶ ἡ ἀληθινὴ μαγεία ἡ ἐν τῷ παντὶ φιλία καὶ τὸ νεῖκος αὖ. καὶ ὁ γόης ὁ πρῶτος καὶ φαρμακεὺς οὗτός ἐστιν", "translation": "Even when nobody contrives anything, many things are drawn and bewitched. The true magic is the Love, and the Strife too, within the All. This is the first sorcerer and the first drug-maker.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Plotinus asks how sorceries work and answers: by sympathy. Like is in harmony with like and opposed to the unlike, inside one cosmic living being. People who understand this use the cosmos' own 'drugs and enchantments' on each other. Love magic joins one soul to another 'like grafting plants'. Postures and figures silently draw powers down. An incantation's melody moves the irrational soul as music does. Prayer is answered without the star 'hearing' anything. In 4.4.41 the transmission is likened to a plucked string. A man placed outside the cosmos could draw nothing.", "claimed_effect": "Love attraction, binding (katadesmoi), drawing down powers, fulfilment of prayers, charming of the irrational soul.", "claimed_mechanism": "Cosmic sympathy (sympatheia): the universe is one animal whose parts affect each other by likeness and contrariety, as tuned strings resonate.", "practitioner": "goēs/pharmakeus (human), but 'nature' is the primary magician", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Philosophical treatise for Plotinus' circle in Rome. It explains magic rather than condemning it.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-2", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Enneads", "author": "Plotinus", "culture": "Greek (Neoplatonist)", "language": "", "date": "c. 263–268 CE", "date_sort": 265, "edition_urn": "tlg2000.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "4.4.43.1", "conventional_ref": "Plot. Enn. 4.4.43–44", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "love", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὁ δὲ σπουδαῖος πῶς ὑπὸ γοητείας καὶ φαρμάκων; ἢ τῇ μὲν ψυχῇ ἀπαθὴς εἰς γοήτευσιν, καὶ οὐκ ἂν τὸ λογικὸν αὐτοῦ πάθοι, οὐδ’ ἂν μεταδοξάσειε … ὥσπερ δὲ ἐπῳδαῖς τὸ ἄλογον πάσχει, οὕτω καὶ αὐτὸς ἀντεπᾴδων τὰς ἐκεῖ δυνάμεις ἀναλύσει", "translation": "How is the good man affected by sorcery and drugs? In his soul he cannot be bewitched; his reasoning part is not affected and does not change its mind … Just as the irrational part suffers from incantations, so he, by chanting back, will undo the powers at work there.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The sage's rational soul is immune to bewitchment. He will not fall in love through drugs, since love needs the consent of the rest of the soul. His body, as a part of the All, can still suffer disease or death from such means. He can counter-chant. Daimones can be charmed by nature because they have irrational parts. Plotinus then widens the idea: 'all action is bewitched' (πᾶσα πρᾶξις γεγοήτευται), because practical life is drawn by what charms it. In 4.4.44 only contemplation remains unbewitched, so magic becomes a metaphor for every attachment to the world below.", "claimed_effect": "Disease and death can be inflicted on the body; love philtres fail against the sage; counter-chants undo spells.", "claimed_mechanism": "Sympathy acts on the irrational and bodily parts of a person, not on the rational soul.", "practitioner": "the sage (spoudaios) as counter-enchanter", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Discussed against the background of the attacks on philosophers' health that Porphyry reports in his Life of Plotinus (not in the library).", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-3", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Enneads (Against the Gnostics)", "author": "Plotinus", "culture": "Greek (Neoplatonist) against Christian-Gnostic sects", "language": "", "date": "c. 265 CE", "date_sort": 265, "edition_urn": "tlg2000.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.9.14.1", "conventional_ref": "Plot. Enn. 2.9.14", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "νῦν δὲ ὑποστησάμενοι τὰς νόσους δαιμόνια εἶναι καὶ ταῦτα ἐξαιρεῖν λόγῳ φάσκοντες δύνασθαι … τοὺς μέντοι εὖ φρονοῦντας οὐκ ἂν πείθοιεν, ὡς οὐχ αἱ νόσοι τὰς αἰτίας ἔχουσιν ἢ καμάτοις ἢ πλησμοναῖς ἢ ἐνδείαις ἢ σήψεσι", "translation": "As it is, they suppose diseases to be daimons and claim they can drive them out by speech … But they would not persuade sensible people that diseases do not have their causes in fatigue, surfeit, deficiency or putrefaction.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Plotinus attacks Gnostics who write incantations addressed even to the higher powers: melodies, sounds, aspirations, hissings, 'all that is written to work magic there'. He asks how incorporeal beings could be moved by sounds. Their claim to expel disease-daimons by a word impresses 'the many who admire the powers of magicians'. His counter-argument is medical. Purging, drugs, bloodletting and fasting cure disease. If the daimon left because it was starved, the disease was something other than the daimon. If a natural cause is present, the cause is enough to produce the fever.", "claimed_effect": "Healing by exorcism.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Rejected) The Gnostics' claim that verbal formulas compel higher powers and expel disease-demons.", "practitioner": "Gnostic teachers in Plotinus' circle", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Debate inside a philosophical school. Plotinus draws the line between philosophy and magic at disease aetiology.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-4", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Enneads", "author": "Plotinus", "culture": "Greek (Neoplatonist)", "language": "", "date": "c. 268 CE", "date_sort": 268, "edition_urn": "tlg2000.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "4.3.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Plot. Enn. 4.3.11", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καί μοι δοκοῦσιν οἱ πάλαι σοφοί, ὅσοι ἐβουλήθησαν θεοὺς αὐτοῖς παρεῖναι ἱερὰ καὶ ἀγάλματα ποιησάμενοι, εἰς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς φύσιν ἀπιδόντες … προσπαθὲς δὲ τὸ ὁπωσοῦν μιμηθέν, ὥσπερ κάτοπτρον ἁρπάσαι εἶδός τι δυνάμενον.", "translation": "It seems to me that the ancient sages who wished the gods to be present to them, by making shrines and statues, had looked into the nature of the All … Whatever is an imitation of any kind is sympathetically receptive, like a mirror able to catch a form.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Plotinus gives a philosophical rationale for 'ensouled' cult statues. Soul is everywhere easy to attract, and a crafted likeness becomes a receptacle for a portion of it, as a mirror catches an image. This is the theoretical root of later theurgic statue-animation and of Sallustius' doctrine of 'receptivity' (see Sallustius 15). The library flags this node as athetized, which is probably a markup artefact.", "claimed_effect": "The gods become present in shrines and statues.", "claimed_mechanism": "Imitation creates sympathetic receptivity (prospathes): a likeness 'catches' soul.", "practitioner": "'the ancient sages' (founders of cults)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Defence of traditional cult images in philosophical terms.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-5", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Enneads (On whether the stars are causes)", "author": "Plotinus", "culture": "Greek (Neoplatonist)", "language": "", "date": "c. 269 CE", "date_sort": 269, "edition_urn": "tlg2000.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.3.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Plot. Enn. 2.3.1 and 2.3.7", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔστω τοίνυν ὥσπερ γράμματα ἐν οὐρανῷ γραφόμενα ἀεὶ ἢ γεγραμμένα καὶ κινούμενα, ποιοῦντα μέντοι ἔργον καὶ ἄλλο", "translation": "Let them be, then, like letters always being written in the sky, or written already and moving, though they also do some other work besides.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In 2.3.1 Plotinus states the thesis that the movement of the stars signifies what will happen to each person but does not itself cause everything, 'as the many believe'. Here he explains how: the planets are like moving letters, readable because the whole is one living being, as one part of an animal tells you about another. This rescues astrology as a reading of signs while denying that the planets cause vice, virtue or fortune. The library flags this node as athetized, probably a markup artefact.", "claimed_effect": "Prediction of individual destinies.", "claimed_mechanism": "The heavens are signs (letters) within a unified cosmos, not efficient causes.", "practitioner": "astrologers (criticised in part)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Philosophical critique of popular Chaldaean astrology.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-6", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "De abstinentia", "author": "Porphyry", "culture": "Greek (Neoplatonist)", "language": "", "date": "c. 270–275 CE", "date_sort": 272, "edition_urn": "tlg2034.tlg003.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.42.1", "conventional_ref": "Porph. Abst. 2.40–42", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "love", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "πλήρεις γὰρ πάσης φαντασίας οὗτοι καὶ ἀπατῆσαι ἱκανοὶ διὰ τῆς τερατουργίας. διὰ τού των φίλτρα καὶ ἐρωτικὰ κατασκευάζουσιν οἱ κακο- δαίμονες.", "translation": "For these [evil daimones] are full of every kind of illusion and able to deceive by wonder-working; through them the wretched prepare philtres and love-charms.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In 2.40, maleficent daimones cause plagues, crop failures, earthquakes and droughts, then persuade people that the good gods are angry. In 2.41 Porphyry states that 'all goēteia is accomplished through the opposite [evil daimones]', and that those who do evil by sorcery honour them and their chief. Here they produce illusions, love potions and hopes of wealth. They want to seem gods, and their pneumatic bodies are fattened on the vapours of blood and burnt flesh. This makes blood sacrifice the food of the very demons used in sorcery. Eusebius later quoted the passage for the Christians (PE 4.22.8–10, also seen).", "claimed_effect": "Love philtres, illusions, promises of wealth and glory; public calamities.", "claimed_mechanism": "Evil daimones with vaporous bodies fed by sacrificial smoke; sorcerers work through them.", "practitioner": "goētes, 'those who achieve evil through sorceries'", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Argument for vegetarianism and against blood sacrifice. Pagan philosophy here meets Christian demonology.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-7", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "De abstinentia", "author": "Porphyry", "culture": "Greek (Neoplatonist)", "language": "", "date": "c. 270–275 CE", "date_sort": 272, "edition_urn": "tlg2034.tlg003.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.45.1", "conventional_ref": "Porph. Abst. 2.44–45", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὥστε οὐ γοήτων ἦν ἡ ἁγνεία, ἀλλὰ θείων καὶ θεοσόφων ἀνδρῶν, φυ- λακὴν δὲ φέρουσα πανταχοῦ τοῖς χρωμένοις τὴν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον οἰκείωσιν.", "translation": "So purity did not belong to sorcerers but to divine and god-wise men, bringing everywhere to those who practise it, as a safeguard, their kinship with the divine.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In 2.44, theologians teach that one must not touch the victims of averting sacrifices, and must purify body and clothes in a river or spring before entering a city or house. Purity is 'a symbol or divine seal' so that one suffers nothing from the beings one appeases, like a rampart around one. In 2.45 even sorcerers saw the need for this precaution, but they cannot keep it, since they trouble evil daimones for the sake of lust. They therefore pay the penalty, both from the beings they provoke and from Justice. The legitimate counterpart of magic here is ascetic purity and 'intellectual sacrifice'.", "claimed_effect": "Protection from demonic harm; failure and punishment for impure sorcerers.", "claimed_mechanism": "Purity creates unlikeness to evil daimones, so they cannot attach themselves.", "practitioner": "theologians and divine men vs goētes", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Philosophical ascetic ethics.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-8", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Vita Pythagorae", "author": "Porphyry", "culture": "Greek (Neoplatonist hagiography of Pythagoras)", "language": "", "date": "c. 270–300 CE (about a 6th-c. BCE figure)", "date_sort": 280, "edition_urn": "tlg2034.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "29.1", "conventional_ref": "Porph. VP 28–29", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "προρρήσεις τε γὰρ ἀπαράβατοι σεισμῶν διαμνημονεύονται αὐτοῦ καὶ λοιμῶν ἀποτροπαὶ σὺν τάχει καὶ ἀνέμων βιαίων χαλαζῶν τʼ ἐκχύσεως καταστολαὶ καὶ κυμάτων ποταμίων τε καὶ θαλαττίων ἀπευδιασμοὶ", "translation": "Unfailing predictions of earthquakes are recorded of him, swift avertings of plagues, the stilling of violent winds and of downpours of hail, and the calming of river and sea waves.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In 28, Pythagoras shows his golden thigh to Abaris the Hyperborean, who took him for Apollo. He also predicts that an incoming ship will bring 'a corpse', and it does. In 29 come weather-working and plague-averting. Empedocles was nicknamed 'wind-stayer', Epimenides 'purifier', and Abaris 'air-walker' because he crossed rivers and seas riding Apollo's arrow. Pythagoras was seen at Metapontum and Tauromenium on the same day. Porphyry adds that 'countless other things, more wonderful and more divine, are told of him consistently'. These are wonders of a holy man, never called goēteia.", "claimed_effect": "Prediction of earthquakes, averting of plague, calming of weather and sea, bilocation, flight.", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine nature of the sage (Pythagoras as Hyperborean Apollo).", "practitioner": "Pythagoras, Empedocles, Epimenides, Abaris", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Pagan 'divine man' biography, a rival model to the gospel miracles.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-9", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Vita Pythagorae", "author": "Porphyry", "culture": "Greek (Neoplatonist)", "language": "", "date": "c. 270–300 CE", "date_sort": 280, "edition_urn": "tlg2034.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "33.1", "conventional_ref": "Porph. VP 33", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "κάμνοντας δὲ τὰ σώματα ἐθεράπευε, καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς δὲ νοσοῦντας παρεμυθεῖτο, καθάπερ ἔφαμεν, τοὺς μὲν ἐπῳδαῖς καὶ μαγείαις τοὺς δὲ μουσικῇ.", "translation": "He treated those sick in body and consoled those sick in soul, as we said, some with incantations and magical rites, others with music.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a philosopher's biography, μαγεία is used positively for Pythagoras' healing. He had healing melodies 'against diseases of the body', and songs that produced forgetfulness of grief, calmed anger and removed strange desires. Porphyry elsewhere condemns goēteia (Abst. 2.41–45). The word μαγεία itself could therefore carry a respectable sense for a Neoplatonist writing about the founder of his tradition.", "claimed_effect": "Healing of bodily disease; relief of grief, anger and obsessive desire.", "claimed_mechanism": "Incantation and music act on body and soul.", "practitioner": "Pythagoras", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Hagiography. Magic is legitimate when the practitioner is a sage.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-10", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "De vita Pythagorica", "author": "Iamblichus", "culture": "Greek (Syrian Neoplatonist)", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 CE", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg2023.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "25.114.2", "conventional_ref": "Iambl. VP 112–114", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔστι δὲ καὶ ὅτε ἄνευ λέξεως μελισμάτων ὅπου τε καὶ πάθη καὶ νοσήματά τινα ἀφυγίαζον, ὡς φασίν, ἐπᾴδοντες ὡς ἀληθῶς, καὶ εἰκὸς ἐντεῦθέν ποθεν τοὔνομα τοῦτο εἰς μέσον παρεληλυθέναι τὸ τῆς ἐπῳδῆς.", "translation": "Sometimes, with wordless melodies, they cured passions and certain diseases, so it is said, by truly 'singing over' them; and it is likely that the very word epōidē (incantation) came into use from this.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Pythagorean school used evening songs to purge the day's disturbances and give calm, few and good dreams. Morning songs removed drowsiness. In VP 112, Pythagoras, star-gazing at night, had a piper switch from a Phrygian tune to a spondaic one, and so calmed a drunken youth of Tauromenium who was about to set fire to his rival's door. Iamblichus derives 'incantation' from music therapy, which turns a magical category into a psychological one.", "claimed_effect": "Calming of rage, better sleep, cure of some diseases.", "claimed_mechanism": "Melodies matched to the passions to be counteracted (rhythmic 'tuning' of the soul).", "practitioner": "Pythagoras and the Pythagorean school", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Idealised philosophical community; music as medicine.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-11", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "De vita Pythagorica", "author": "Iamblichus", "culture": "Greek (Neoplatonist) on a 'barbarian' (Hyperborean) priest", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 CE", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg2023.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "28.147.1", "conventional_ref": "Iambl. VP 147 (with 91–93, 135, 140)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "τὴν σπουδαζομένην παντὶ βαρβάρων γένει πρόγνωσιν διὰ θυμάτων ἐπορίζετο, μάλιστα τῶν ὀρνιθείων· τὰ γὰρ τῶν τοιούτων σπλάγχνα ἀκριβῆ πρὸς διάσκεψιν ἡγοῦνται· βουλόμενος ὁ Πυθαγόρας μὴ ἀφαιρεῖν μὲν αὐτοῦ τὴν εἰς τἀληθὲς σπουδὴν", "translation": "[Abaris] sought foreknowledge through sacrificial victims, as every barbarian race eagerly does, especially birds, since they think their entrails exact for inspection; Pythagoras, not wishing to take away his zeal for truth…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pythagoras gives the Hyperborean priest Abaris a safer, bloodless foreknowledge 'through numbers' in place of extispicy. He considered the cockerel sacred to the Sun. VP 93 says the same: he gave Abaris prognosis by numbers instead of hieroscopy by sacrifice. This sets up a hierarchy of divination: barbarian blood-divination is replaced by a Greek-philosophical mathematical divination.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge without bloodshed.", "claimed_mechanism": "Numbers as the essence of the gods (taken from the Orphics), giving foreknowledge.", "practitioner": "Pythagoras; Abaris, priest of Hyperborean Apollo", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Contrast between ethnic or barbarian ritual and philosophical religion.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-12", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "De mysteriis (Reply of Abamon to Porphyry)", "author": "Iamblichus", "culture": "Greek-Syrian Neoplatonist writing as an Egyptian priest", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 CE", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg2023.tlg006.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.11.2", "conventional_ref": "Iambl. Myst. 2.11 (Parthey 96–97)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "οὐδὲ γὰρ ἡ ἔννοια συνάπτει τοῖς θεοῖς τοὺς θεουργούς … καὶ γὰρ μὴ νοούντων ἡμῶν αὐτὰ τὰ συνθήματα ἀφ’ ἑαυτῶν δρᾷ τὸ οἰκεῖον ἔργον", "translation": "For it is not thought that joins theurgists to the gods … indeed, even when we are not thinking of them, the tokens themselves by themselves do their proper work.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the central statement of theurgy. Union with the gods comes from 'the performance of ineffable works, performed in a god-befitting way beyond all understanding', and from 'the power of unutterable symbols understood by the gods alone'. Purity and right disposition are only contributing causes. The divine tokens (synthēmata) awaken the gods' will by themselves. This answers Porphyry's intellectualism and makes ritual efficacy independent of the practitioner's understanding. It comes close to the later Christian ex opere operato idea, and stands far from Plotinus.", "claimed_effect": "Theurgic union (henōsis) with the gods.", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine tokens (synthēmata, symbola) planted in matter and ritual by the gods themselves; the gods recognise their own images.", "practitioner": "theurgists (theourgoi), priests", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Debate within the Neoplatonist school over whether ritual or intellect saves.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-13", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "De mysteriis", "author": "Iamblichus", "culture": "Greek-Syrian Neoplatonist; Anatolian cult (Kastabala)", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 CE", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg2023.tlg006.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "3.4.2", "conventional_ref": "Iambl. Myst. 3.4 (Parthey 110–111)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "πολλοὶ γὰρ καὶ πυρὸς προσφερομένου οὐ καίονται, οὐχ ἁπτομένου τοῦ πυρὸς αὐτῶν διὰ τὴν θείαν ἐπίπνοιαν· πολλοὶ δὲ καιόμενοι οὐκ ἀντιλαμβάνονται … καὶ οἱ μὲν διαπείραντες ὀβελοὺς οὐκ ἐπαισθάνονται", "translation": "Many, when fire is applied, are not burned, because the fire does not touch them on account of the divine inspiration; many who are burned do not perceive it … and some who are pierced through with spits do not feel it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Iamblichus' 'greatest proof' that people are truly possessed by gods: they do not burn or do not feel burning, are pierced with spits, strike axes on their backs and cut their arms with daggers without noticing. They walk on fire, go through fire and cross rivers, 'like the priestess at Kastabala'. They are not living a human or animal life but a diviner one. The same feats appear in Hippolytus Ref. 4.32–33 as conjuring tricks.", "claimed_effect": "Insensibility to pain and fire; prophecy; walking through fire and over water.", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine inspiration (epipnoia) replaces the human and animal life, so sensation is suspended.", "practitioner": "enthusiasts; priestess at Kastabala", "practitioner_gender": "female (priestess) and mixed", "social_legal_context": "Defence of oracular possession against Porphyry's doubts.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-14", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "De mysteriis", "author": "Iamblichus", "culture": "Greek-Syrian Neoplatonist", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 CE", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg2023.tlg006.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "3.28.1", "conventional_ref": "Iambl. Myst. 3.28–29 and 3.31", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "οὐ γὰρ θεὸς αὐτῶν ἐστι ποιητὴς ἀλλ’ ἄνθρωπος· οὐ δ’ ἐκ τῶν ἑνοειδῶν καὶ νοητῶν οὐσιῶν παράγεται, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ τῆς ὕλης τῆς λαμβανομένης.", "translation": "For their maker is not a god but a human being; nor are they brought forth from unitary and intelligible substances, but from the matter that is taken up.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Porphyry had suggested that 'makers of effective images' (eidōla) were not to be rejected. Iamblichus says no true theurgist would trade the true forms of the gods for images. Images made by human art from matter are shadow-paintings, weaker than their makers. In 3.31.4, those who consort with deceiving and licentious daimones fight against theurgists, and before theurgists every evil spirit is overturned. This draws the theurgy/goēteia line by source (god vs human craft), by material (intelligible vs merely material) and by moral effect.", "claimed_effect": "(Rejected) Animated, effective images.", "claimed_mechanism": "Human craft working on matter produces only phantasms.", "practitioner": "image-makers (eidōlopoioi); deceiving daimones", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Boundary-drawing within pagan ritual expertise.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-15", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "De mysteriis", "author": "Iamblichus", "culture": "Egyptian ritual tradition as interpreted by a Neoplatonist", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 CE", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg2023.tlg006.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "6.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Iambl. Myst. 6.5–7 (Parthey 245–249)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἢ γὰρ τὸν οὐρανὸν προσαράξειν ἢ τὰ κρυπτὰ τῆς Ἴσιδος ἐκφανεῖν, ἢ τὸ ἐν ἀβύσσῳ ἀπόρρητον δείξειν ἢ στήσειν τὴν βάριν, ἢ τὰ μέλη τοῦ Ὀσίριδος διασκεδάσειν τῷ Τυφῶνι", "translation": "[The operator threatens] either to dash down heaven, or to reveal the secrets of Isis, or to show the ineffable thing in the abyss, or to stop the sacred barque, or to scatter the limbs of Osiris to Typhon.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Porphyry was scandalised that operators threaten the gods. Iamblichus says the threats are aimed not at sun, moon or heavenly gods but at an irrational, undiscerning class of cosmic powers that obey words without judging them. In 6.6, the theurgist speaks 'no longer as a man' but as one ranked among the gods, using threats beyond his own nature to show the power his union with the gods gives him. In 6.7, cosmic order is preserved precisely because Osiris' power stays pure, Isis' secrets do not descend, the sun's course never stops and the mysteries of Abydos are never revealed. These are typical Egyptian threat-formulas, also known from the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri.", "claimed_effect": "Compulsion of cosmic daimones.", "claimed_mechanism": "Formulaic threats move lower irrational powers; the theurgist acts in the persona of a god.", "practitioner": "theurgist / Egyptian priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Integration of Egyptian priestly practice into Greek philosophy.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-16", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "De mysteriis", "author": "Iamblichus", "culture": "Greek-Syrian Neoplatonist privileging Egyptian and Assyrian languages", "language": "", "date": "c. 300 CE", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "tlg2023.tlg006.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "7.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Iambl. Myst. 7.4–5 (Parthey 254–259); library 7.3.2 and 7.5.1–2", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἦν κατὰ συνθήκην κείμενα τὰ ὀνόματα, οὐδὲν διέφερε τὰ ἕτερα ἀντὶ τῶν ἑτέρων μεταλαμβάνειν … ἔχει δὲ καὶ τὰ βάρβαρα ὀνόματα πολλὴν μὲν ἔμφασιν πολλὴν δὲ συντομίαν", "translation": "If names were fixed by convention, it would make no difference to substitute some for others … but the barbarian names have great expressive force and great concision.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Why prefer barbarous names to Greek? In library 7.3.2 the gods revealed the whole sacred language of holy nations such as the Egyptians and Assyrians. Names are natural, not conventional, so translation loses their power. In 7.5.2, 'Greeks are innovators by nature', always changing prayers and so emptying them, while barbarians keep the old words that please the gods. Iamblichus denies that the names are 'devices of sorcerers' (γοήτων … τεχνάσματα). Origen and the Hermetic treatise CH 16 make parallel arguments.", "claimed_effect": "Efficacy of invocation.", "claimed_mechanism": "Names belong to things by nature; ancient sacred languages are closest to the gods; exact preservation of the formula is required.", "practitioner": "theurgists, priests of 'sacred nations'", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Defence of voces magicae against Porphyry's objection that the hearer attends only to meaning.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-17", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "In Platonis Rem publicam commentarii", "author": "Proclus", "culture": "Greek (Athenian Neoplatonist)", "language": "", "date": "c. 440–470 CE", "date_sort": 460, "edition_urn": "tlg4036.tlg001.opp-grc1", "ref": "2.15", "conventional_ref": "Procl. In Remp. vol. I (Kroll), essay on Homeric theology; Kroll page not verified", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "πῶς αἱ αὐτοφάνειαι γίγνονται τῶν θεῶν, φαινομένων τότε μὲν ἀτυπώτων φώτων, τότε δὲ τετυπωμένων· μὴ γὰρ προισέμενοι ταῦτα τὴν ἱερατικὴν ὅλην ἀνατρέπομεν καὶ τὰ ἔργα τῶν θεουργῶν", "translation": "[The problem:] how the self-manifestations of the gods occur, appearing now as formless lights, now as shaped ones; for if we do not admit these, we overturn the whole hieratic art and the works of the theurgists.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Proclus lists the problems raised by Plato's claim that the gods do not change form. Visible epiphanies are taken as fact: formless and shaped lights (autophaneiai), both those produced by theurgists and those that happen spontaneously. Oracles that deceive the consultants are another problem. Theurgy (the 'hieratic art') is treated as a datum that philosophy must accommodate. In 2.16 Proclus speaks of 'ineffable tokens' stamped with different forms.", "claimed_effect": "Visible divine lights and figures.", "claimed_mechanism": "Gods appear in forms adapted to the viewer while remaining unchanged.", "practitioner": "theurgists", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Late pagan Athenian school, under Christian imperial rule.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-18", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "In Platonis Rem publicam commentarii (on the myth of Er)", "author": "Proclus, citing Clearchus of Soli", "culture": "Greek (Peripatetic anecdote preserved by a Neoplatonist)", "language": "", "date": "Clearchus c. 300 BCE; Proclus c. 440–470 CE", "date_sort": 460, "edition_urn": "tlg4036.tlg001.opp-grc1", "ref": "11.18", "conventional_ref": "Procl. In Remp. II.122–123 Kroll = Clearchus fr. 7 Wehrli", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "τῇ γὰρ ῥάβδῳ πλήξας τὸν παῖδα τήν ψυχήν ἐξείλκυσεν καὶ οἷον ἄγων δι᾿ αὐτῆς πόρρω τοῦ σώματος ἀκίνη|τον ἐνέδειξε τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἀβλαβὲς σῳζόμενον ἀναισθητεῖν", "translation": "Striking the boy with the wand, he drew out his soul and, as if leading it with the wand far from the body, showed the body motionless, kept unharmed, and insensible.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "To prove that a soul can leave and re-enter its body (like Er's), Proclus cites Clearchus' On Sleep. A man used a 'soul-drawing wand' (ψυχουλκὸς ῥάβδος) on a sleeping boy. With the soul drawn away, the body lay insensible 'like a lifeless thing'. When the wand was brought back, the soul re-entered and the boy reported everything. Aristotle and other spectators were convinced that the soul is separable from the body. It is a demonstration staged before a philosophical audience.", "claimed_effect": "Temporary separation of soul from body; the soul reports what it saw while away.", "claimed_mechanism": "A wand that draws the soul out of the body and leads it back.", "practitioner": "an anonymous operator, with Aristotle as witness", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Used as philosophical evidence. Possibly an early report of induced trance.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-19", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Hymn to the Mother of the Gods (Or. 5)", "author": "Julian (Emperor)", "culture": "Greek (theurgic Neoplatonism, imperial)", "language": "", "date": "362 CE", "date_sort": 362, "edition_urn": "tlg2003.tlg008.perseus-grc2", "ref": "12.1", "conventional_ref": "Julian Or. 5, approx. 172D", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "εἰ δὲ καὶ τῆς ἀρρήτου μυσταγωγίας ἁψαίμην, ἣν ὁ Χαλδαῖος περὶ τὸν ἑπτάκτινα θεὸν ἐβάκχευσεν, ἀνάγων δι’ αὐτοῦ τὰς ψυχάς, ἄγνωστα ἐρῶ, καὶ μάλα γε ἄγνωστα τῷ συρφετῷ, θεουργοῖς δὲ τοῖς μακαρίοις γνώριμα", "translation": "If I were to touch on the ineffable mystagogy that the Chaldaean celebrated in Bacchic frenzy about the Seven-Rayed God, raising souls up through him, I would speak of things unknown, unknown indeed to the rabble, but familiar to the blessed theurgists.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The emperor himself alludes to the Chaldaean Oracles' rite of 'anagogy' (raising the soul) through the sun-god's rays. He explains the spring-equinox timing of the Attis festival by the sun's 'anagogic rays' drawing things up. Theurgy is presented as elite knowledge hidden from the 'rabble'. In 18.1 he adds that ritual food rules save the body as well as the soul.", "claimed_effect": "Elevation and salvation of the soul.", "claimed_mechanism": "Solar rays draw souls upward; secret Chaldaean rites.", "practitioner": "'the Chaldaean' (Julian the Theurgist), theurgists", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Imperial pagan restoration of 361–363. Theurgy as state religion for one emperor.", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-20", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Against the Galilaeans", "author": "Julian (Emperor)", "culture": "Greek (pagan polemic against Christianity)", "language": "", "date": "362–363 CE", "date_sort": 363, "edition_urn": "tlg2003.tlg017.perseus-grc2", "ref": "41.1", "conventional_ref": "Jul. Gal. 191E (Neumann)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "εἰ μή τις οἴεται τοὺς κυλλοὺς καὶ τυφλοὺς ἰάσασθαι καὶ δαιμονῶντας ἐξορκίζειν ἐν Βηθσαιδᾷ καὶ ἐν Βηθανίᾳ ταῖς κώμαις τῶν μεγίστων ἔργων εἶναι.", "translation": "…unless anyone thinks that healing the lame and blind and exorcising the possessed in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany ranks among the greatest of deeds.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Julian concedes that Jesus healed and exorcised, but belittles it. In his lifetime Jesus did 'nothing worth hearing', apart from village cures and exorcisms. Julian does not call it goēteia here. He downgrades it as small-scale rural wonder-working, beneath the civilising works of Greek heroes and lawgivers.", "claimed_effect": "Healing and exorcism, conceded but minimised.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Not discussed)", "practitioner": "Jesus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Imperial anti-Christian treatise written during the Persian campaign preparations.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-21", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "De deis et mundo", "author": "Sallustius", "culture": "Greek (Neoplatonist catechism of Julian's circle)", "language": "", "date": "c. 362 CE", "date_sort": 362, "edition_urn": "tlg2049.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "15.1", "conventional_ref": "Sallust. De deis 15", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "πᾶσα δὲ ἐπιτηδειότης μιμήσει καὶ ὁμοιότητι γίνεται, διὸ οἱ μὲν ναοὶ τὸν οὐρανόν, οἱ δὲ βωμοὶ μιμοῦνται τὴν γῆν … οἱ δὲ χαρακτῆρες τὰς ἀῤῥήτους ἄνω δυνάμεις, βοτάναι δὲ καὶ λίθοι τὴν ὕλην", "translation": "All fitness [to receive the gods] arises from imitation and likeness: so temples imitate heaven, altars earth … the magical signs (charaktēres) the ineffable powers above, herbs and stones matter.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Sallustius explains how rituals work without the gods changing. The divine needs nothing. Honours are for our benefit, and providence needs only 'receptivity' (epitēdeiotēs), produced by likeness. Temples, altars, statues, prayers, charaktēres, herbs, stones and victims each imitate a level of reality. In ch. 14, gods are never angry or appeased: we join or separate ourselves by likeness or unlikeness. Charaktēres and stones, typical items of the magical papyri, appear here as respectable cult.", "claimed_effect": "Presence and benefit of the gods; salvation of the worshipper.", "claimed_mechanism": "Receptivity (epitēdeiotēs) through mimesis and likeness.", "practitioner": "priests and worshippers generally", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Pagan 'creed' of the Julianic restoration.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-22", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Corpus Hermeticum 16 (Definitions of Asclepius to King Ammon)", "author": "Hermetica (anonymous)", "culture": "Graeco-Egyptian", "language": "", "date": "2nd–3rd c. CE (uncertain)", "date_sort": 250, "edition_urn": "tlg1286.tlg016.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.1", "conventional_ref": "CH 16.1–2", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "other", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ἡ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ὀνομάτων ⎡δύναμις⎤ ἐν ἑαυτῇ ἔχει τὴν ἐνέργειαν τῶν λεγομένων … ἡμεῖς δὲ οὐ λόγοις χρώμεθα, ἀλλὰ φωναῖς με[γι]σταῖς [τῶν] ἔργων.", "translation": "The power of the Egyptian names has within itself the efficacy of what is said … we do not use mere words, but sounds full of deeds.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The treatise asks the king to keep it untranslated. Greek, 'proud, slack and prettified', would make the solemn, effective phrasing of the names fade away. Greek philosophy is 'a noise of words', while Egyptian speech consists of 'sounds of deeds'. The claim that the Egyptian language works by its sound-quality matches Iamblichus Myst. 7.4–5 and Origen CC 1.24–25.", "claimed_effect": "Efficacious speech.", "claimed_mechanism": "The sound-quality of Egyptian words carries their efficacy; translation destroys it.", "practitioner": "Egyptian priestly sages (Asclepius, Hermes)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Greek-language text staging Egyptian cultural superiority.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-23", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Contra Celsum", "author": "Origen", "culture": "Early Christian (Alexandrian/Caesarean)", "language": "", "date": "c. 248 CE", "date_sort": 248, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "1.6.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Cels. 1.6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "οὐ γὰρ κατακηλήσεσιν ἰσχύειν δοκοῦσιν ἀλλὰ τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ μετὰ τῆς ἀπαγγελίας τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἱστοριῶν.", "translation": "For they do not seem to prevail by enchantments, but by the name of Jesus together with the recitation of the stories about him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Celsus had said Christians seem strong 'through names of certain daimones and incantations'. Origen answers that Christians use the name of Jesus plus the gospel narrative. This often expels demons, especially when said with sound faith. The name is so powerful 'that it sometimes works even when named by bad men', citing Matt 7.22. Mark 9.38, also opened, has a non-disciple casting out demons in Jesus' name. Origen also reports Celsus' charge that Jesus did his wonders by goēteia and foresaw that others would copy his techniques. The distinction between the name and an incantation is fine-drawn.", "claimed_effect": "Expulsion of demons.", "claimed_mechanism": "Power inherent in the name of Jesus, combined with narrative recitation and faith.", "practitioner": "Christians, even 'simple' ones", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Apologetic defence against the charge that Christianity is magic.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-24", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Contra Celsum", "author": "Origen", "culture": "Early Christian, reporting Jewish and Egyptian incantation practice", "language": "", "date": "c. 248 CE", "date_sort": 248, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "1.22.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Cels. 1.22; cf. 4.33", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀλλὰ γὰρ καὶ πολλοὶ τῶν ἐπᾳδόντων δαίμονας χρῶνται ἐν τοῖς λόγοις αὐτῶν τῷ „ὁ θεὸς Ἀβραὰμ,“ ποιοῦντες μὲν διὰ τὸ ὄνομα καὶ τὴν πρὸς τὸν δίκαιον τοῦ θεοῦ οἰκειότητα", "translation": "Indeed, many of those who enchant daimones use in their formulas 'the God of Abraham', acting through the name and through the intimacy of God with that righteous man.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Origen notes that enchanters, not knowing who Abraham was, still use the phrase 'God of Abraham'. The same goes for Isaac, Jacob and Israel: Hebrew names 'sown into the doctrines of Egyptians who promise some efficacy'. In 4.33.1 he says these names joined to God's title are so powerful that not only Jews in prayer and exorcism but 'almost all who deal in incantations and magic' use them. This matches the Jewish divine names in the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri.", "claimed_effect": "Control and exorcism of daimones.", "claimed_mechanism": "Power of the patriarchs' names linked to God.", "practitioner": "Egyptian and other enchanters; Jewish exorcists", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Shows the shared ritual vocabulary of Jews, pagans and Christians.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-25", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Contra Celsum", "author": "Origen", "culture": "Early Christian philosophy of language", "language": "", "date": "c. 248 CE", "date_sort": 248, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "1.24.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Cels. 1.24–25", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅτι καὶ ἡ καλουμένη μαγεία οὐχ, ὡς οἴονται οἱ ἀπὸ Ἐπικούρου καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους, πρᾶγμά ἐστιν ἀσύστατον πάντῃ ἀλλ᾿, ὡς οἱ περὶ ταῦτα δεινοὶ ἀποδεικνύουσι, συνεστὸς μὲν λόγους δ᾿ ἔχον σφόδρα ὀλίγοις γινωσκομένους", "translation": "…that so-called magic is not, as the followers of Epicurus and Aristotle think, an utterly incoherent thing, but, as experts in these matters demonstrate, a consistent system with principles known to very few.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Celsus says it makes no difference whether one calls the supreme God Zeus or by an Indian or Egyptian name. Origen invokes the Stoic theory that names are natural, not conventional. 'Effective names' used by Egyptian sages, Persian magi, Indian Brahmans and Samanaeans show that magic is a real art. Sabaoth and Adonai refer to the Creator and work when spoken in their proper sequence. Other names, in Egyptian or Persian, belong to local daimones. In 1.25, translating them or swapping Zeus for Sabaoth destroys their power. So a Christian theologian defends magic as a real art while attributing pagan magic to demons.", "claimed_effect": "Efficacy of invocations and exorcisms.", "claimed_mechanism": "Natural (not conventional) relation between names and things; names tied to particular nations and daimones.", "practitioner": "Egyptian sages, Persian magi, Brahmans, Jewish exorcists", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Debate with Celsus over divine names and the identity of the gods.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-26", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Contra Celsum (quoting Celsus, True Doctrine)", "author": "Origen, quoting Celsus", "culture": "Greek pagan polemic (Celsus' 'Jew' speaking) against Christianity", "language": "", "date": "Celsus c. 175–180 CE; Origen c. 248", "date_sort": 178, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "1.28.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Cels. 1.28; 1.38; cf. Justin 1 Apol. 30", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ὅτι οὗτος διὰ πενίαν εἰς Αἴγυπτον μισθαρνήσας κἀκεῖ δυνάμεών τινων πειραθεὶς, ἐφ᾿ αἷς Αἰγύπτιοι σεμνύνονται. ἐπανῆλθεν ἐν ταῖς δυνάμεσι μέγα φρονῶν, καὶ δι᾿ αὐτὰς θεὸν αὑτὸν ἀνηγόρευσε.", "translation": "…and that, because of poverty, he hired himself out in Egypt, and there, having tried his hand at certain powers on which the Egyptians pride themselves, came back puffed up by these powers and on their account proclaimed himself a god.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Celsus' Jew makes the classic accusation: Jesus, born in secret of an adulterous poor woman, learned wonder-working powers in Egypt and returned claiming divinity. In 1.38, Celsus concedes the miracles but attributes them to magic, not divine power. Justin 1 Apol. 30.1, also opened, already rebuts the objection 'what prevents our Christ having done his powers by magic art?'. Egypt is the home of magical skill and 'magic' is an accusation, the mirror-image of Christian charges against Simon Magus.", "claimed_effect": "Jesus' miracles and his claim to divinity.", "claimed_mechanism": "Egyptian magical training.", "practitioner": "Jesus (as accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Accusation of magic as delegitimation in the 2nd-c. pagan–Christian controversy.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-27", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Contra Celsum", "author": "Origen", "culture": "Early Christian reading of Matthew's Magi", "language": "", "date": "c. 248 CE", "date_sort": 248, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "1.60.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Cels. 1.58–60; cf. Ignatius Eph. 19", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Πρὸς μὲν οὖν Ἕλληνας, ὅτι μάγοι δαίμοσιν ὁμιλοῦντες καὶ τούτους ἐφ᾿ ἃ μεμαθήκασι καὶ βούλονται καλοῦντες ποιοῦσι μὲν τὸ τοιοῦτον, ὅσον οὐδὲν θειότερον καὶ ἰσχυρότερον τῶν δαιμόνων", "translation": "To Greeks we say that magi, who consort with daimones and summon them for what they have learned and wish, achieve such things as long as nothing more divine and stronger than the daimones appears.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Origen's theory of the Magi in Matthew 2. The magi's demonic powers failed when angels and the divine appearance came at Jesus' birth, 'their sorcery refuted and its operation dissolved'. Seeking the cause, they reasoned from the star and their knowledge of Balaam's prophecy (1.59) and came to worship. This is a narrative of magic's defeat that makes the Magi its first converts. Ignatius Eph. 19.3 has the same idea.", "claimed_effect": "Collapse of magic at the Nativity.", "claimed_mechanism": "Daimones summoned by incantation lose power before a greater divine presence.", "practitioner": "Persian magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Christian appropriation of the prestigious magi.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-28", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Contra Celsum (quoting Celsus)", "author": "Origen, quoting Celsus", "culture": "Greek pagan view of Egyptian street magicians", "language": "", "date": "Celsus c. 175–180 CE", "date_sort": 178, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "1.68.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Cels. 1.68", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "exorcism", "healing", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐν μέσαις ἀγοραῖς ὀλίγων ὀβολῶν ἀποδομένων τὰ σεμνὰ μαθήματα καὶ δαίμονας ἀπὸ ἀνθρώπων ἐξελαυνόντων καὶ νόσους ἀποφυσώντων καὶ ψυχὰς ἡρώων ἀνακαλούντων δεῖπνά τε πολυτελῆ καὶ τραπέζας καὶ πέμματα καὶ ὄψα τὰ οὐκ ὄντα δεικνύντων", "translation": "…[those taught by Egyptians] who, in the middle of the marketplace, sell their solemn lore for a few obols, drive daimones out of people, blow away diseases, call up the souls of heroes, and display costly banquets, tables, cakes and dishes that do not exist…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Celsus grants Jesus' miracles for the sake of argument, then compares them with marketplace performers trained by Egyptians. They exorcise, blow diseases away, raise heroes' souls, show phantom banquets, and 'move as living things what are not really living, appearing so only to the imagination'. 'Shall we think them sons of God because they do these things? Or are they the practices of wicked men possessed by evil daimones?' In 1.68.2 Origen remarks that Celsus here seems almost to admit that magic exists.", "claimed_effect": "Exorcism, healing by breath, necromancy, phantom feasts, animated objects.", "claimed_mechanism": "Illusion (phantasia) and technique; perhaps evil daimones.", "practitioner": "Egyptian-trained marketplace conjurors", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Low-status paid performers, set against the high-status claims of religious founders.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-29", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Contra Celsum", "author": "Origen", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "", "date": "c. 248 CE", "date_sort": 248, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "2.51.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Cels. 2.49–51", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ὥσπερ λύκος κυνὶ οὐχ ὁμογενὴς, κἂν δοκῇ ἔχειν τι παραπλήσιον ἐν τῷ τοῦ σώματος σχήματι καὶ τῇ φωνῇ, οὐδὲ φάσσα τῇ περιστερᾷ· οὕτως οὐδὲν ὅμοιον ἔχει τὸ δυνάμει θεοῦ ἐπιτελούμενον τῷ γινομένῳ ἀπὸ γοητείας.", "translation": "As a wolf is not of one kind with a dog, though it seems to have something similar in bodily shape and voice, nor a wood-pigeon with a dove, so what is done by God's power has nothing in common with what is done by sorcery.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Celsus argued that Jesus himself admitted others (false Christs, Satan) would work the same signs, so wonders prove nothing. In 2.49, Origen says Jesus' warning concerned those claiming to be Christ, not magicians in general. He then insists on a difference of kind, not of appearance. In 2.51.3 he suggests that if magic is real, divine miracles must also be real, and the criterion is the moral fruit, the reform of those who see them.", "claimed_effect": "Similar-looking wonders.", "claimed_mechanism": "Two distinct sources of power: divine power vs goēteia.", "practitioner": "Jesus vs magicians", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Apologetic criteria for telling miracle from magic.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-30", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Contra Celsum (quoting Celsus)", "author": "Origen, quoting Celsus", "culture": "Greek pagan rationalist critique", "language": "", "date": "Celsus c. 175–180 CE", "date_sort": 178, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "2.55.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Cels. 2.55", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "τίς τοῦτο εἶδε; γυνὴ πάροιστρος, ὥς φατε, καὶ εἴ τις ἄλλος τῶν ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς γοητείας, ἤτοι κατά τινα διάθεσιν ὀνειρώξας καὶ κατὰ τὴν αὐτοῦ βούλησιν δόξῃ πεπλανημένῃ φαντασιωθεὶς", "translation": "Who saw this? A frantic woman, as you say, and perhaps someone else of the same sorcery, who either dreamed in a certain state of mind and through his own wish had a hallucination under a mistaken belief…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Celsus' Jew applies a psychological explanation to the resurrection appearances. The witnesses were an excited woman and others 'of the same sorcery'. They either had wish-driven dream-visions, 'which has happened to countless people', or wanted to astonish others with a wonder-tale. Origen rejects this. It is an ancient example of explaining a claimed supernatural event by suggestion and wish-fulfilment, with the gendered disparagement of the female witness that is typical of the polemic.", "claimed_effect": "Belief in an appearance of the risen Jesus.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Celsus' explanation) Wish-driven dream or hallucination, or deliberate deception.", "practitioner": "Mary Magdalene (implied) and disciples, as accused", "practitioner_gender": "female (as disparaged)", "social_legal_context": "Anti-Christian polemic; gender stereotyping of visionary women.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-31", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Contra Celsum (quoting Celsus)", "author": "Origen, quoting Celsus", "culture": "Greek pagan catalogue of apotropaic and magical techniques", "language": "", "date": "Celsus c. 175–180 CE", "date_sort": 178, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "6.39.2", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Cels. 6.39", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "τί με δεῖ καταριθμεῖν ὅσοι καθαρμοὺς ἐδίδαξαν ἢ λυτηρίους ᾠδὰς ἢ ἀποπομπίμους φωνας ἢ κτύπους ἢ δαιμονίους σχηματισμοὺς, ἐσθήτων ἢ ἀριθμῶν ἢ λίθων ἢ φυτῶν ἢ ῥιζῶν καὶ ὅλως παντοδαπῶν χρημάτων παντοῖα ἀλεξιφάρμακα;", "translation": "Why should I list all who have taught purifications, or releasing songs, or sounds that send [evil] away, or noises, or daimonic postures, or all kinds of protective remedies made of clothes, numbers, stones, plants, roots, and things of every sort?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Celsus complains that magicians call on barbarous names of daimones and resemble people who make a wonder out of the fact that gods have different names among Greeks and Scythians. In 6.39.1 he uses Herodotus' Scythian god-names. He then lists the wider apotropaic repertoire: purifications, releasing songs, averting cries and noises, demonic gestures, remedies made of clothing, numbers, stones and plants. Origen says Christians are not implicated. In 6.32.2 he notes that the Ophites drew names such as Ialdabaoth, Astaphaios and Horaios 'from magic'.", "claimed_effect": "Purification and protection.", "claimed_mechanism": "Sounds, gestures and material substances that avert harm.", "practitioner": "teachers of purifications and amulet-makers", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Pagan philosopher's list of 'popular' protective magic.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-32", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Contra Celsum (quoting Celsus)", "author": "Origen, quoting Celsus", "culture": "Greek pagan report on Christian clergy", "language": "", "date": "Celsus c. 175–180 CE", "date_sort": 178, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "6.40.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Cels. 6.40", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐν οἷς ἔφησεν ἑωρακέναι παρὰ τισι πρεσβυτέροις τῆς ἡμετέρας δόξης τυγχάνουσι βιβλία βάρβαρα, δαιμόνων ὀνόματα ἔχοντα καὶ τερατείας", "translation": "…in which he said he had seen, among certain presbyters of our persuasion, barbarian books containing names of daimones and wonder-working [recipes].", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Celsus claims eyewitness knowledge that some Christian 'elders' owned barbarian magic books with demon names and recipes that promised nothing good but only harm to people. Origen puts this on a level with the libels of cannibalism and incest that ordinary people already reject. Whether Celsus saw Gnostic or Ophite diagrams or Christian-used spell books is debated. Origen's own statement in 6.32 shows that some sects drew names from magic, so the charge was not wholly fanciful.", "claimed_effect": "Harm to people (maleficium).", "claimed_mechanism": "Demon names written in books.", "practitioner": "Christian presbyters (alleged)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Accusation of magic as part of anti-Christian slander; Origen denies it.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-33", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Contra Celsum (quoting Celsus)", "author": "Origen, quoting Celsus", "culture": "Greek pagan, reporting an Egyptian musician; with Moiragenes on Apollonius", "language": "", "date": "Celsus c. 175–180 CE", "date_sort": 178, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "6.41.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Cels. 6.41", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "φησὶ Διονύσιόν τινα μουσικὸν Αἰγύπτιον συγγενόμενον αὐτῷ εἰρηκέναι περὶ τῶν κατὰ τὴν μαγείαν ὅτι πρὸς ἀπαιδεύτους μὲν αὐτὴ δύναται καὶ πρὸς διαφθαρέντας τὰ ἤθη, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς φιλοσοφήσαντας οὐδὲν οἵα τε ἐστὶν ἐνεργεῖν", "translation": "He says that a certain Dionysius, an Egyptian musician he had met, told him concerning magic that it has power over the uneducated and those of corrupted character, but can achieve nothing against those who have practised philosophy.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Egyptian musician Dionysius claims that magic works only on the uneducated and immoral, not on philosophers, 'since they have taken care of a healthy way of life'. Origen counters with Moiragenes' memoirs of Apollonius of Tyana, 'magus and philosopher', where some not undistinguished philosophers, including Euphrates and an Epicurean, were captured by Apollonius' magic. This is an ancient theory of susceptibility, close to a psychological account of suggestion.", "claimed_effect": "Magic affects only the credulous and dissolute.", "claimed_mechanism": "Susceptibility depends on education, character and regimen.", "practitioner": "Dionysius the Egyptian musician; Apollonius of Tyana", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Debate over whether philosophers are immune to magic.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-34", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Contra Celsum (quoting Celsus)", "author": "Origen, quoting Celsus", "culture": "Egyptian iatromathematics as reported by a Greek", "language": "", "date": "Celsus c. 175–180 CE", "date_sort": 178, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "8.58.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Cels. 8.58–60", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ τῶν δαιμόνων ἴσασι τὰ ὀνόματα ἐπιχωρίῳ φωνῇ, ὥσπερ Χνουμὴν καὶ Χναχουμὴν καὶ Κνὰτ καὶ Σικὰτ καὶ Βιοὺ καὶ Ἐροὺ καὶ Ἐρεβίου καὶ Ῥαμανὸρ καὶ Ῥειανοὸρ ὅσα τε ἄλλα τῇ ἑαυτῶν γλώσσῃ ὀνομάζουσι· καὶ δὴ ἐπικα λοῦντες αὐτοὺς ἰῶνται τῶν μερῶν τὰ παθήματα.", "translation": "They know the names of the daimones in the local tongue, such as Chnoumen, Chnachoumen, Knat, Sikat, Biou, Erou, Erebiou, Ramanor, Reianoor and others they name in their own language; and by invoking them they heal the ailments of the parts.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Celsus reports the Egyptian doctrine that 36 daimones or aetherial gods (the decans), or more, divide the human body and each govern a part. Invoking them by their Egyptian names cures the corresponding ailments. So why not honour them? In 8.59 Origen mocks the 'Egyptian catalogue' in favour of the name of Jesus. In 8.60 Celsus himself warns that earthbound daimones, bound to blood, smoke and melodies, can do no more than heal bodies and foretell fortunes, and that dwelling on them makes one forget higher things.", "claimed_effect": "Healing of localised ailments.", "claimed_mechanism": "Decan-daimones govern body parts and respond to their native names.", "practitioner": "Egyptian healers", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Medical astrology (iatromathematics) as part of Egyptian temple lore.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-35", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Commentary on Matthew (Books 12–17)", "author": "Origen", "culture": "Early Christian vs Greek medicine", "language": "", "date": "c. 246–248 CE", "date_sort": 247, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg030.opp-grc1", "ref": "13.6.2", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Comm. in Mt. 13.6 (on Matt 17.15)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ἰατροί μὲν οὖν φυσιολογείτωσαν. ἅτε μηδὲ ἀκάθαρτον πνεῦμα εἶναι νομίζοντες κατὰ τὸν τόπον ἀλλὰ σωματικόν <τι> σύμπτωμα, καὶ φυσιολογοῦντες τὰ ὑγρὰ λεγέτωσαν κινεῖσθαι τὰ ἐν τῇ κεφαλῇ κατά τινα συμπάθειαν τὴν πρὸς τὸ σεληνιακὸν φῶς", "translation": "Let physicians give their natural explanations, since they think there is no unclean spirit in this case but a bodily symptom; and, explaining it physically, let them say the fluids in the head are moved by a certain sympathy with the moon's light.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "On the 'moonstruck' (epileptic) boy, Origen reports the medical view: a bodily symptom, with head-fluids moved by lunar sympathy. He insists that the illness is caused by a mute and deaf unclean spirit. He also observes that 'those accustomed, like the Egyptian enchanters, to promise treatment' sometimes seem to succeed. He suggests the demon times its attacks to the moon's phases in order to slander God's creation. This is a direct clash between Hippocratic and demonological explanation.", "claimed_effect": "Epileptic seizures; occasional cures by enchanters.", "claimed_mechanism": "A demon times its attacks to lunar phases (vs the physicians' lunar sympathy of head-fluids).", "practitioner": "physicians; Egyptian-style enchanters; Jesus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Christian exegesis negotiating with medical science.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-36", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "De engastrimytho (Homily on 1 Sam 28)", "author": "Origen", "culture": "Early Christian exegesis of Israelite necromancy", "language": "", "date": "c. 240s CE", "date_sort": 245, "edition_urn": "tlg2042.tlg013.opp-grc1", "ref": "3.1", "conventional_ref": "Orig. Hom. in 1 Reg. 28 (De engastrimytho) 3–4", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Καὶ μὴν γοῦν ἴσμεν τινὰς τῶν ἡμετέρων ἀδελφῶν ἀντιβλέψαντας τῇ γραφῇ καὶ λέγοντας· οὐ πιστεύω τῇ ἐγγαστριμύθῳ.", "translation": "Indeed we know some of our brothers who have opposed the scripture and said: 'I do not believe the ventriloquist.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "On the medium of Endor, some Christians argued that the 'ventriloquist' (engastrimythos) lied and a demon impersonated Samuel: how could the great prophet be in Hades and be raised by a necromancer? In 4.1 Origen insists on reading the text as written: 'the woman saw Samuel', in the narrator's (Holy Spirit's) voice. So Samuel truly appeared. Origen thereby concedes that a necromancer really brought up a prophet's soul. Justin (1 Apol. 18; Dial. 105) also takes necromancy as real.", "claimed_effect": "Appearance and speech of the dead Samuel.", "claimed_mechanism": "Necromantic evocation by a ventriloquist medium (permitted by God).", "practitioner": "the woman of Endor (engastrimythos)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Intra-Christian exegetical controversy (later attacked by Eustathius, whose work is not in the library).", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-37", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Refutatio omnium haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus (attributed; authorship disputed)", "culture": "Early Christian (Rome) exposing pagan magicians", "language": "", "date": "after 222 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.opp-grc1", "ref": "4.28.4.1", "conventional_ref": "[Hippol.] Ref. 4.28.1–5", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ἔνδον φιάλῃ ὑδατος πλήρει ἐμβαλὼν χάλκανθος καὶ τήξας τὸ φάρμακον τὸ δῆθεν ἐξαλειφθὲν χαρτίον δι᾿ αὐτοῦ καταρράνας τὰ φωλεύοντα καὶ κεκρυμμένα γράμματα πάλιν εἰς φῶς ἐλθεῖν ἀναγκάζει", "translation": "Inside, he throws copper vitriol (chalkanthos) into a bowl full of water, dissolves the drug, sprinkles the supposedly erased paper with it, and forces the lurking, hidden letters to come back to light.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "How the magician answers sealed written questions to the 'daimones'. The client writes his question, which is supposedly burned so the smoke carries it to the daimones. The magician fakes Hebrew demon names, burns kyphi incense, and switches papers. The question is revealed with vitriol. Writing in vitriol shows up under fumes of powdered oak-gall. Milk-writing appears when dusted with paper ash, and urine, fish sauce, spurge or fig juice do the same. Meanwhile assistants shake laurel and shout to the daimon Phrēn, and the noise covers the trick. Unknown questions get ambiguous answers that can be fitted to any outcome (4.28.11). In 4.28.12–13, salt hidden in incense crackles, Indian ink or alkanet wax gives a blood-red flame, and alum makes coals move.", "claimed_effect": "Demons appear to read and answer sealed questions.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Real) Invisible inks and chemical developers, sleight of hand, ambiguity.", "practitioner": "magoi (paid diviners), with boy medium and accomplices", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Christian heresiologist teaching 'the youth' to see through magicians (4.34.4).", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-38", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Refutatio omnium haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus (attributed)", "culture": "Early Christian exposing pagan oracle-mongers", "language": "", "date": "after 222 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.opp-grc1", "ref": "4.28.9.1", "conventional_ref": "[Hippol.] Ref. 4.28.7–10", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Τὸ δὲ τοῖς ὠσὶ παρατεθὲν ὄργανόν ἐστι φυσικὸν ὄργανον, τῶν μακροτραχήλων γεράνων ἢ πελαργῶν ἢ κύκνων ἀρτηρία. ὧν εἰ μηδέτερον παρῇ, ἔστι καὶ ἕτερα τέχνης ὄργανα· αὐλίσκοι γάρ τινες χάλκεοι τὸν ἀριθμὸν δέκα εἰς ἀλλήλους χωροῦντες", "translation": "The instrument placed at the ears is a natural one, the windpipe of long-necked cranes, storks or swans; if none of these is available there are artificial instruments too, ten bronze pipes fitting into one another…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The boy medium lies face-down in darkness, 'since mortal nature cannot see the divine'. A speaking-tube is put to his ear: first it rings, then hums, then speaks what the magician wants the boy to say. The tube is a bird's windpipe, nesting bronze pipes, a leather tube shaped on a rod, or a rolled book. The terrified boy repeats the words as the voice of daimones. This explains child-medium divination (cf. Justin 1 Apol. 18 'inspections of uncorrupted boys') as ventriloquial staging.", "claimed_effect": "Daimones speak through a child medium.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Real) Acoustic speaking-tube.", "practitioner": "magos with boy medium", "practitioner_gender": "male (boy)", "social_legal_context": "Fraudulent divination for paying clients.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-39", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Refutatio omnium haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus (attributed)", "culture": "Early Christian exposing pagan magicians", "language": "", "date": "after 222 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.opp-grc1", "ref": "4.30.1.1", "conventional_ref": "[Hippol.] Ref. 4.30–31", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "κρύβδην καυστικῷ φαρμάκῳ χρίσας τὸν φάρυγγα ἐᾷ παραθεὶς τὸ ξίφος· ὁ δὲ κνήθεσθαι θέλων προσπεσὼν τῇ μαχαίρᾳ θλίβων σφάζεται καὶ μικροῦ δεῖν ἀποτέμνει τὴν κεφαλήν. ἔστι δὲ τὸ φάρμακον βρυωνία καὶ ἀδάρκη καὶ σκίλλα κατ’ ἴσον μεμιγμένα.", "translation": "He secretly smears the [lamb's] throat with a caustic drug and leaves a sword beside it; the animal, wanting to scratch, presses against the blade, cuts its own throat and almost severs its head. The drug is bryony, adarkē and squill mixed in equal parts.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "How magicians make lambs 'cut off their own heads'. The caustic drug is hidden in a double horn box whose visible half holds frankincense. Mercury poured into the ears of the animal 'to be killed' is 'a death-bearing drug'. In 4.31, goats die if their ears are sealed with wax, a ram dies if made to face the sun, and burning sea-foam poured on the head does not burn. Hippolytus mixes real irritant and toxic plants with folk beliefs.", "claimed_effect": "Sacrificial animal appears to offer itself.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Real) Skin irritant causing itching; mercury poisoning; partly folklore.", "practitioner": "magoi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Fake sacrificial omens.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-40", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Refutatio omnium haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus (attributed)", "culture": "Early Christian exposing pagan magicians", "language": "", "date": "after 222 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.opp-grc1", "ref": "4.33.2.1", "conventional_ref": "[Hippol.] Ref. 4.32.2; 4.33.2", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ὄζος <δὲ> καὶ νίτρον ἐμβαλὼν καὶ πίσσαν ὑγρὰν ὑποκαίει τὸν τὸ δὲ ὄζος ἅμα τῷ νίτρῳ μιγὲν ἀντιλαμβανόμενον θέρμης μικρᾶς κινεῖ τὴν πίσσαν ὡς μέχρι τῆς ἐπιφανείας κινεῖν πομφόλυγας καὶ φαντασίαν μόνην παρέχειν ζέοντος", "translation": "Putting vinegar and natron in with liquid pitch, he heats it gently; the vinegar mixed with the natron, catching a little heat, stirs the pitch so that bubbles rise to the surface and give only the appearance of boiling.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In 4.32.2 magicians put their hands into a cauldron of 'boiling' pitch and walk barefoot on coals unburned. A stone pyramid burns like a torch, smoke and fire come from the mouth, and a cloth over coals stays unburned. Here vinegar and natron fake the boil. The hands are washed in brine, or smeared with myrtle, natron and myrrh in vinegar. The feet are protected with fish glue and salamander, a mythical fire-proof ingredient inside a debunking recipe. The burning 'stone' is Cretan earth baked in oil. These are the same feats Iamblichus Myst. 3.4 offers as proof of divine possession.", "claimed_effect": "Immunity to fire and boiling pitch.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Real) Acid–carbonate effervescence (vinegar + natron gives CO2 bubbles), brine and coatings; partly folklore (salamander).", "practitioner": "magoi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Debunking aimed at protecting converts.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-41", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Refutatio omnium haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus (attributed)", "culture": "Early Christian exposing pagan magicians", "language": "", "date": "after 222 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.opp-grc1", "ref": "4.35.2.1", "conventional_ref": "[Hippol.] Ref. 4.35–36", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ὕπεστι δὲ οἶκος λεληθώς, εἰς ὂν συμπορευόμενοι οἱ συμπαικται σχήματα ὧν ἂν βούληται δεινύναι ὁ μάγος θεῶν καὶ δαιμόνων ἐνδυσάμενοι ἐμφαίνουσιν", "translation": "Underneath there is a hidden room into which the accomplices go together and, dressed in the costumes of whatever gods and daimones the magician wants to show, they make them appear.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Lecanomancy (bowl divination) exposed. In a closed room with a ceiling painted cyan, a water bowl reflects a sky. The bowl has a glass bottom over a hidden opening in the floor, and costumed accomplices below appear as gods (4.35.1–2). A daimon 'burns' on the wall because it was painted with Laconian and Zacynthian asphalt and set alight with a torch. Hecate appears flying through the air as fire after a hexameter invocation to Brimo/Bombo, quoted in 4.35.5. In 4.36 an accomplice releases a kite or vulture wrapped in burning tow, which sometimes sets houses on fire. Onlookers fall to the ground in terror.", "claimed_effect": "Visible gods in the bowl; epiphany of a fiery Hecate.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Real) Stage architecture, reflection, flammable coatings, burning bird, accomplices.", "practitioner": "magos with accomplices (sympaiktai)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Theatrical fraud aimed at paying clients.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-42", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Refutatio omnium haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus (attributed)", "culture": "Early Christian exposing pagan magicians", "language": "", "date": "after 222 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.opp-grc1", "ref": "4.37.1.1", "conventional_ref": "[Hippol.] Ref. 4.37–39", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐν μέσῳ τῆς ὀροφῆς μέρει προσαρμόσας κάτοπτρον, τιθεὶς λεκάνην ὕδατος μεστὴν ἐν τῷ μέσῳ τῆς γῆς κατ’ ἴσον, λύχνον δὲ μέσον φαίνοντα ἀμαυρὸν μετεωρότερον τῆς λεκάνης θείς", "translation": "Fixing a mirror in the middle of the ceiling and placing a basin full of water in the middle of the floor directly below, with a dimly shining lamp set between them, higher than the basin…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The 'drawing down of the moon' is staged by reflection: a mirror, a water bowl and a dim lamp. Alternatively a drum or a cut-off jar with a lamp is uncovered by an accomplice on a signal. Stars on the ceiling are fish scales glued on (4.38). An 'earthquake' is faked by burning ichneumon dung with lodestone on coals, a cryptic recipe with a lacuna in the text (4.39). In 4.32.1, thunder is made by stones rolled onto bronze sheets or a cord-wound board.", "claimed_effect": "Moon and stars appear indoors; thunder; earthquakes.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Real) Optics and stagecraft; the earthquake recipe is obscure.", "practitioner": "magoi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Exposure of the classic Thessalian-witch feat of drawing down the moon.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-43", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Refutatio omnium haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus (attributed)", "culture": "Early Christian exposing pagan necromancers", "language": "", "date": "after 222 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.opp-grc1", "ref": "4.41.1.1", "conventional_ref": "[Hippol.] Ref. 4.41", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "γεράνου ἤ τινος τοιούτου μακροτραχήλου ζῴου φάρυγγα σκευάσας, προσθεὶς τῷ κρανίῳ λεληθότως ὁ συμπαίκτης ἃ θέλει φθέγγεται.", "translation": "Preparing the throat of a crane or some similar long-necked animal and attaching it secretly to the skull, the accomplice utters whatever he wishes.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The talking skull is a fake made of ox caul shaped with Tyrrhenian wax and gypsum. An accomplice speaks through a crane's windpipe. To make the skull 'vanish', the magician surrounds it with coals as if burning incense, and the wax melts. In 4.40 a liver bearing an 'inscribed' answer was written in mirror-image on the magician's left palm with oak-gall and vinegar, then pressed onto the liver. This is necromancy and extispicy turned into props.", "claimed_effect": "The dead speak; omens appear in the entrails.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Real) Wax prop, hidden speaking-tube, ink transfer.", "practitioner": "magoi with accomplices", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Fraudulent necromancy and hepatoscopy.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-44", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Refutatio omnium haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus (attributed)", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "", "date": "after 222 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.opp-grc1", "ref": "4.42.1.1", "conventional_ref": "[Hippol.] Ref. 4.34.4; 4.42.1–2", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Ταῦτα μάγων ἔργα καὶ τοιάδε μυρία, ἂ τῇ τῶν ἐπῶν συμμετρίᾳ καὶ τῶν ἀξιοπίστως δρωμένων ἔργων φαντασίᾳ πείθει τοὺς ἄφρονας· ὧν τὴν τέχνην καταπλαγέντες οἱ αἱρεσιάρχαι ἐμιμήσαντο", "translation": "These are the works of magicians, and countless others like them, which persuade fools by the metre of their verses and the illusion of convincingly performed acts; the heresiarchs, astonished at their art, imitated it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hippolytus explains why a heresiologist reveals conjurors' secrets. In 4.34.4, 'concern for the many young men who can be saved' persuaded him: whoever learns the tricks will be on guard, and the magicians 'will be ashamed'. He also gives practical anti-fraud advice: mix pig fat and hair into sealing wax so seals cannot be lifted and replaced. In 4.42 he claims the heresiarchs (Simon, Marcus) copied these arts. Exposing magic is a tool for unmasking rival Christians.", "claimed_effect": "Persuasion of the credulous.", "claimed_mechanism": "Verse incantations plus convincing staging.", "practitioner": "magoi; heresiarchs", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Heresiology; protecting converts.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-45", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Refutatio omnium haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus (attributed)", "culture": "Early Christian critique of Chaldaean astrology (drawing on Sextus Empiricus)", "language": "", "date": "after 222 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.opp-grc1", "ref": "4.3.2.1", "conventional_ref": "[Hippol.] Ref. 4.3.1–4", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅθεν ἀναιρεθέντος τοῦ ὡροσκόπου κατὰ ἀνάγκην οὐδὲ τὸ μεσουρανοῦν <ἢ δῦνον ἢ ἀντιμεσουρανοῦν> ἐστι γνώριμον ἀκαταληπτουμένων δὲ τούτων συναφανίζεται πᾶσα <ἡ> Χαλδαϊκὴ μέθοδος.", "translation": "Therefore, once the horoscope is removed, of necessity neither the midheaven nor the setting point nor the lower midheaven is known; and if these cannot be grasped, the whole Chaldaean method vanishes with them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The ascendant (hōroskopos) is the foundation of every chart. To fix it one must know the exact moment of birth (conception or delivery?), have an infallible timekeeper, and observe the sign's rising precisely. None of these is possible, so the whole system collapses. This is a measurement-precision critique of astrology, distinct from moral or demonological objections.", "claimed_effect": "Horoscopic prediction.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Critiqued) Prediction from the configuration of the stars at birth.", "practitioner": "Chaldaeans (astrologers)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Christian use of Sceptical arguments.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-46", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Refutatio omnium haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus (attributed)", "culture": "Early Christian, telling a Libyan anecdote", "language": "", "date": "after 222 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.opp-grc1", "ref": "6.8.2.1", "conventional_ref": "[Hippol.] Ref. 6.7.2–6.8", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "συναθροίσας γὰρ εἰς ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν τὸν οἰκίσκον ὄρνιθας πλείστους ψιττακοὺς κατέκλεισεν· εἰσὶ δὲ πλεῖστοι κατὰ τὴν Λιβύην ψιττακοὶ καὶ ἐναργῶς μιμούμενοι πάνυ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην φωνήν. οὗτος χρόνῳ διαθρέψας τοὺς ὄρνεις ἐδίδαξε λἐrειν· Ἄψεθος θεός ἐστιν.", "translation": "He gathered a great many parrots into one cage, for there are many parrots in Libya that imitate the human voice very clearly; rearing the birds over time, he taught them to say: 'Apsethus is a god.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Introducing Simon Magus (6.7: 'experienced in magic', who 'played many tricks in the art of Thrasymedes' and also worked through daimones), Hippolytus compares him with Apsethus the Libyan. Apsethus taught parrots to proclaim him a god and released them, and the Libyans worshipped him. A Greek recaptured parrots and taught them to say that Apsethus had caged them and forced them to say it, so the Libyans burned Apsethus. Self-deification is exposed as staged technique.", "claimed_effect": "A 'heavenly voice' proclaiming divinity.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Real) Trained mimic birds.", "practitioner": "Apsethus; Simon by analogy", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Fable used against the heresiarch's claim to divinity.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-47", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Refutatio omnium haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus (attributed)", "culture": "Early Christian report on Simonian Gnostics", "language": "", "date": "after 222 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.opp-grc1", "ref": "6.20.1.1", "conventional_ref": "[Hippol.] Ref. 6.20.1–3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "í οὐν τούτου μαθηταὶ μαγείας ἐπιτελοῦσι καὶ ἐπαοιδὰς φίλτρα τε καὶ ἀγώγιμα καὶ τοὺς λεγομένους ὀνειροπομποὺς δαίμονας ἐπιπἐμπουσι πρὸς τὸ ταράοσειν οὕς βούλονται", "translation": "His disciples perform magic rites and incantations, love-philtres and attraction spells (agōgima), and send the so-called dream-sending daimones to trouble whomever they wish.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Simon's followers practise love-magic, attraction spells, dream-sending daimones and 'so-called assistants' (paredroi). They worship images of Simon as Zeus and Helen as Athena, and calling the images by those names gets one expelled. In 6.20.3, at Rome, Simon claimed he would rise on the third day if buried alive. His disciples buried him and 'he remained until now, for he was not the Christ'. The vocabulary (agōgimon, oneiropompos, paredros) matches the technical terms of the magical papyri.", "claimed_effect": "Erotic attraction, harmful dreams, resurrection (failed).", "claimed_mechanism": "Incantations and assisting daimones.", "practitioner": "Simon Magus and Simonians", "practitioner_gender": "male (with Helen as cult figure)", "social_legal_context": "Heresiological portrait linking Gnosticism to magic.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-48", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Refutatio omnium haeresium", "author": "Hippolytus (attributed)", "culture": "Early Christian report on Marcosian Gnostic eucharist", "language": "", "date": "after 222 CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2115.tlg060.opp-grc1", "ref": "6.39.3.1", "conventional_ref": "[Hippol.] Ref. 6.39.2–6.40.3 (cf. Iren. Haer. 1.13.2)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "φάρμακον γάρ τι τοιαύτην δυνάμενον χρόαν παρασχεῖν λαθραίως ἐνιῶν τῷ κεράσματι ἐπὶ πολὺ φλυαρῶν ἀνέμενεν, ὅπως τῆς ὑγρότητος μεταλαβὸν λυθῇ καὶ ἀναμιγὲν ἐπιχρώσῃ τὸ πόμα.", "translation": "For, secretly putting into the mixed cup some drug able to produce such a colour, he waited, babbling at length, until it took up the moisture, dissolved, and, mixing in, coloured the drink.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Marcus, 'experienced in magic', made the eucharistic cup turn purple or red during a long invocation, as if grace and a blood-like power descended (6.39.2). He also had a woman bless a small cup and poured it into a larger empty one, which overflowed (6.40.1–3). Hippolytus explains a hidden colouring drug and a 'windy' (effervescent) substance smeared inside the empty cup, which swells the wine. He refers back to the recipes 'in the book against magicians', meaning book 4.", "claimed_effect": "Visible descent of grace; miraculous multiplication of wine.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Real) Colour-changing and foaming agents dissolved in wine; prolonged speech to cover the delay.", "practitioner": "Marcus the Gnostic (with female participants)", "practitioner_gender": "male, women as participants", "social_legal_context": "Ritual innovation in a Gnostic circle, exposed by a rival Christian.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-49", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Adversus haereses (Greek fragments)", "author": "Irenaeus of Lyon", "culture": "Early Christian (Gaul/Asia Minor)", "language": "", "date": "c. 180 CE", "date_sort": 180, "edition_urn": "tlg1447.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "6b.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Iren. Haer. 1.13.3–5", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "Ὅτι δὲ 1φίλτρα καὶ ἀγώγιμα, πρὸς τὸ καὶ τοῖς σώμασιν αὐτῶν ἐνυβρίζειν, ἐμποιεῖ οὗτος ὁ Μάρκος ἐνίαις τῶν γυναικῶν, εἰ καὶ μὴ πάσαις", "translation": "That this Marcus administers love-philtres and attraction spells to some of the women, though not all, so as to abuse their bodies as well…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Women returning to the church confessed that Marcus had defiled them and that they had loved him passionately. A deacon in Asia lost his beautiful wife, 'corrupted in mind and body by this magus', who followed Marcus for a long time. In 6b.3.1, faithful women resisted his attempt to make them prophesy: they 'blew at him' (καταφυσήσασαι) and cursed him, knowing that prophecy is God's gift and not Marcus'. Love magic is the explanation for women joining a sect, and blowing is a female counter-ritual. The '1' in the excerpt is an editorial footnote mark as stored.", "claimed_effect": "Erotic enthralment; induced prophesying.", "claimed_mechanism": "Philtres and agōgima; demonic assistance.", "practitioner": "Marcus (male); women as victims and as resisters", "practitioner_gender": "male practitioner, female targets", "social_legal_context": "Gendered accusation in heresy polemic.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-50", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Protrepticus", "author": "Clement of Alexandria", "culture": "Early Christian (Alexandria) against Greek divination", "language": "", "date": "c. 195 CE", "date_sort": 195, "edition_urn": "tlg0555.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.1", "conventional_ref": "Clem. Protr. 2.11 (approx.)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "στῆσον δὲ ὁμοῦ παρὰ τὸν Πύθιον τοὺς ἀλευρομάντεις ἄγων καὶ κριθομάντεις καὶ τοὺς εἰσέτι παρὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς τετιμημένους ἐγγαστριμύθους· ναὶ μὴν ἄδυτα Αἰγυπτίων καὶ Τυρρηνῶν νεκυομαντεῖαι σκότῳ παραδιδόσθων.", "translation": "Bring and set beside the Pythian the flour-diviners and barley-diviners and the ventriloquists still honoured by the many; yes, let the shrines of the Egyptians and the necromancies of the Etruscans be handed over to darkness.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Clement says the oracles are dead: Castalia and Colophon are silent. Pythian, Clarian, Didymaean and Amphiaraus oracles, portent-readers, bird-diviners, dream-interpreters, flour- and barley-diviners and ventriloquists are lumped together as 'mantic, or rather manic'. Their 'fellow-merchants in this sorcery' are goats trained for divination and ravens taught by men to give oracles. The sweep of divinatory specialists, and the remark that animals are trained to deliver them, are notable.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Rejected) Oracular and divinatory techniques; trained animals.", "practitioner": "oracle priests, aleuromanteis, krithomanteis, engastrimythoi", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Christian exhortation to pagan Greeks.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-51", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Protrepticus", "author": "Clement of Alexandria", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "", "date": "c. 195 CE", "date_sort": 195, "edition_urn": "tlg0555.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "11.1", "conventional_ref": "Clem. Protr. 11 (c. §115–116; section unverified)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "εἶθ̓ οἱ μὲν τοῖς γόησι πεπιστευκότες τὰ περίαπτα καὶ τὰς ἐπαοιδὰς ὡς σωτηρίους δῆθεν ἀποδέχονται, ὑμεῖς δὲ οὐ βούλεσθε τὸν οὐράνιον αὐτὸν περιάψασθαι, τὸν σωτῆρα λόγον", "translation": "Then those who trust sorcerers accept amulets and incantations as supposedly saving, but you will not fasten upon yourselves the heavenly one himself, the saving Word…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Clement turns the vocabulary of amulets into a metaphor. Christ the Logos is the true periapton (amulet) and God's epōidē (incantation), which frees from the passions, 'the diseases of the soul'. This both condemns and appropriates magical language, much as Protr. 1 calls Christ the 'new song' replacing Orpheus' enchantments.", "claimed_effect": "Healing of the soul's passions.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Metaphorical) The Word as amulet and spell.", "practitioner": "goētes (rejected); Christ (true)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Popular use of amulets among Alexandrians.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-52", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Stromata", "author": "Clement of Alexandria", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "", "date": "c. 200–210 CE", "date_sort": 205, "edition_urn": "tlg0555.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.4.26.2", "conventional_ref": "Clem. Strom. 7.4.26.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔρια πυρρὰ καὶ ἁλῶν χόνδρους καὶ δᾷδας σκίλλαν τε καὶ θεῖον δεδίασι, πρὸς τῶν γοήτων καταγοητευθέντες κατά τινας ἀκαθάρτους καθαρμούς. … ὁρᾶν γοῦν ἔστι τὰ ὠὰ τὰ ἀπὸ τῶν περικαθαρθέντων, εἰ θαλφθείη, ζωογονούμενα.", "translation": "They fear red wool, lumps of salt, torches, squill and sulphur, having been bewitched by sorcerers through certain impure purifications … One can see that the eggs used to purify people hatch if they are kept warm.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Superstitious people dread the paraphernalia of purification, used by sorcerers in 'unclean cleansings'. Clement adds an empirical test. Eggs that have been rubbed over a person to absorb evil still hatch when warmed. This would not happen if they had really taken on the purified person's evils. It is a rare ancient appeal to a simple observation to refute a magical belief.", "claimed_effect": "Purification of a person.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Rejected) Transfer of impurity into the egg (and wool, salt, sulphur).", "practitioner": "goētes performing katharmoi", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Household purification rites common in Alexandria.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-53", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Apologia I", "author": "Justin Martyr", "culture": "Early Christian (Rome)", "language": "", "date": "c. 155 CE", "date_sort": 155, "edition_urn": "tlg0645.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "14.1", "conventional_ref": "Just. 1 Apol. 14.1–2; cf. 30.1", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "other", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "οἱ δὲ καὶ μαγικαῖς τέχναις χρώμενοι, νῦν ἀγαθῷ καὶ ἀγεννήτῳ θεῷ ἑαυτοὺς ἀνατεθεικότες", "translation": "…and we who once used magical arts, have now dedicated ourselves to the good and unbegotten God.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Demons try to enslave people 'sometimes through appearances in dreams, sometimes through magical twistings' (διὰ μαγικῶν στροφῶν). Conversion means renouncing fornication, money-love and magic. Justin implies that some converts had themselves been practitioners, as in Acts 19.19. In 1 Apol. 30.1 Justin anticipates the objection that Christ worked by 'magic art' and answers with fulfilled prophecy.", "claimed_effect": "Enslavement to demons.", "claimed_mechanism": "Demonic deception through dreams and magical 'twists'.", "practitioner": "former magicians among converts", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Apology addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-54", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Apologia I", "author": "Justin Martyr", "culture": "Early Christian (Rome)", "language": "", "date": "c. 155 CE", "date_sort": 155, "edition_urn": "tlg0645.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "18.1", "conventional_ref": "Just. 1 Apol. 18.3–4", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Νεκυομαντεῖαι μὲν γὰρ καὶ αἱ ἀδιαφθόρων παίδων ἐποπτεύσεις καὶ ψυχῶν ἀνθρωπίνων κλήσεις καὶ οἱ λεγόμενοι παρὰ τοῖς μάγοις ὀνειροπομποὶ καὶ πάρεδροι καὶ τὰ γινόμενα ὑπὸ τῶν ταῦτα εἰδότων πεισάτωσαν ὑμᾶς, ὅτι καὶ μετὰ θάνατον ἐν αἰσθήσει εἰσὶν αἱ ψυχαί", "translation": "Let necromancies, and the inspections of uncorrupted boys, and the summonings of human souls, and those whom the magi call dream-senders and assistants, and what is done by those who know these things, persuade you that souls are conscious even after death.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Justin uses the reality of magic as evidence for the afterlife. Necromancy, child-medium divination, dream-senders (oneiropompoi) and familiar spirits (paredroi) show that souls survive, as do people seized and thrown about by souls of the dead, 'whom all call demon-possessed and mad', and the oracles of Amphilochus, Dodona and Delphi. A Christian apologist cites magical practice as empirical proof of a Christian doctrine.", "claimed_effect": "Contact with the dead, possession, oracles.", "claimed_mechanism": "Souls of the dead and demons are real and can be summoned.", "practitioner": "magoi; boy mediums", "practitioner_gender": "male, boy mediums", "social_legal_context": "Apologetic argument addressed to Roman authorities.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-55", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Apologia I", "author": "Justin Martyr", "culture": "Early Christian (Samaritan-born author)", "language": "", "date": "c. 155 CE", "date_sort": 155, "edition_urn": "tlg0645.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "26.1", "conventional_ref": "Just. 1 Apol. 26.1–3; cf. 56", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὃς ἐπὶ Κλαυδίου Καίσαρος διὰ τῆς τῶν ἐνεργούντων δαιμόνων τέχνης δυνάμεις ποιήσας μαγικὰς ἐν τῇ πόλει ὑμῶν βασιλίδι Ῥώμῃ θεὸς ἐνομίσθη", "translation": "…who under Claudius Caesar, through the art of the daimones working in him, performed magical powers in your royal city of Rome and was thought a god.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Simon of Gitta did magical wonders through demons and was honoured with a statue on the Tiber 'between the two bridges', inscribed SIMONI DEO SANCTO. Almost all Samaritans worshipped him as the first god, together with Helen, a former prostitute. Menander also deceived people by magic art, and 1 Apol. 56 repeats the accusation. Since 1574, when an inscription to SEMONI SANCO DEO FIDIO was found on the Tiber island, scholars widely suspect that Justin misread a dedication to the Sabine god Semo Sancus.", "claimed_effect": "Magical powers leading to deification.", "claimed_mechanism": "Art of indwelling demons.", "practitioner": "Simon Magus; Menander", "practitioner_gender": "male (Helen as companion)", "social_legal_context": "Apologetic complaint that Romans honour magicians but persecute Christians.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-56", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Dialogue with Trypho", "author": "Justin Martyr", "culture": "Early Christian on Jewish exorcism", "language": "", "date": "c. 160 CE", "date_sort": 160, "edition_urn": "tlg0645.tlg003.perseus-grc2", "ref": "85.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Just. Dial. 85.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἢδη μέντοι οἱ ἐξ ὑμῶν ἐπορκισταὶ τῇ τέχνῃ, ὥσπερ καὶ τὰ ἔθνη, χρώμενοι ἐξορκίζουσι καὶ θυμιάμασι καὶ καταδέσμοις χρῶνται, εἶπον.", "translation": "Your exorcists, however, I said, use technique when they exorcise, just as the Gentiles do, and employ fumigations and binding-spells.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Every demon exorcised 'in the name of this very Son of God', with the creed-like sequence of virgin birth, crucifixion under Pilate and resurrection, is conquered (85.2). Exorcism by the names of Jewish kings, righteous men or patriarchs fails, though exorcising 'by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob' may perhaps succeed. Jewish professional exorcists use 'art', fumigations and katadesmoi like the pagans. The boundary is the formula and the absence of material technique, not the act of exorcism itself.", "claimed_effect": "Subjection of demons.", "claimed_mechanism": "Name of Jesus with a creedal narrative vs technical aids (incense, binding tablets).", "practitioner": "Christian exorcists; Jewish epōrkistai", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Jewish–Christian rivalry over exorcistic competence.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-57", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Oratio ad Graecos", "author": "Tatian", "culture": "Early Christian (Syrian, Justin's pupil)", "language": "", "date": "c. 165–175 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg1766.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "17.1", "conventional_ref": "Tatian Or. 17", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing", "love", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Πάθος οὐκ ἔστι δι᾿ ἀντιπαθείας ἀπολλύμενον, οὐδὲ ὁ μεμηνὼς σκυτίδων ἐξαρτήμασι θεραπεύεται. … καὶ τῶν ῥιζῶν αἱ ποικιλίαι, νευρῶν τε καὶ ὀστέων παραλήψεις, οὐκ αὐταὶ καθ᾿ ἑαυτὰς δραστικαί τινές εἰσι", "translation": "A disease is not destroyed by antipathy, nor is a madman cured by leather amulets hung on him … and the varieties of roots, the use of sinews and bones, are not effective in and of themselves.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Tatian dismisses Democritus' sympathies and antipathies, and threatens the boaster of Ostanes the magus with eternal fire. He proposes a semiotic theory. As letters do not signify by themselves but by human convention, so roots, sinews and bones are 'the alphabet of the demons' wickedness'. Demons have fixed what each one is good for, and when they see people using them they enslave the users. Demons visit the sick, the lover, the hater and the vengeful as helpers. On this view magic works by a demonic code, not by natural virtue.", "claimed_effect": "Healing, love and revenge through demonic help.", "claimed_mechanism": "Material substances are conventional signs fixed by demons (like letters), not natural causes.", "practitioner": "goētes; followers of Ostanes", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Christian rejection of the Greek natural-sympathy tradition.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-58", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Oratio ad Graecos", "author": "Tatian", "culture": "Early Christian (Syrian)", "language": "", "date": "c. 165–175 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "tlg1766.tlg001.perseus-grc1", "ref": "18.1", "conventional_ref": "Tatian Or. 18", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Φαρμακεία δὲ καὶ πᾶν τὸ ἐν αὐτῇ εἶδος τῆς αὐτῆς ἐστιν ἐπιτεχνήσεως. … Οὐ θεραπεύουσι δαίμονες, τέχνῃ δὲ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους αἰχμαλωτεύουσι", "translation": "Pharmakeia, and every form within it, belongs to the same contrivance … Daimones do not heal; by craft they take people captive.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Tatian extends 'pharmakeia' to drug medicine in general. Poisons and remedies are of the same material kind, so trusting matter rather than God is culpable. Demons are like brigands who take hostages and return them for ransom. They seize people's limbs, demand honour in dreams, order the sufferers to appear publicly, then 'fly off', ending the disease they caused. This reads incubation-cult healings (Asclepius) as a demonic protection racket. It is an unusually radical position among early Christians.", "claimed_effect": "Apparent cures at healing shrines.", "claimed_mechanism": "Demons cause disease, then withdraw for the sake of honour; material drugs are demonic.", "practitioner": "daimones; healers using drugs", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Rejection of temple medicine and arguably of Greek pharmacology.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-59", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Legatio pro Christianis", "author": "Athenagoras", "culture": "Early Christian (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "177 CE", "date_sort": 177, "edition_urn": "tlg1205.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "26.132.1", "conventional_ref": "Athenag. Leg. 26.3–5", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Ὁ δὲ Νερυλλῖνος καὶ ὁ Πρωτεὺς καὶ ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος τί πλέον τοῖς νοσοῦσιν; Ἃ γὰρ ἡ εἰκὼν λέγεται νῦν ἐνεργεῖν, ἐνήργει καὶ ζῶντος καὶ νοσοῦντος Νερυλλίνου.", "translation": "And what more do Neryllinus, Proteus and Alexander do for the sick? For what the statue is now said to accomplish, it was accomplishing while Neryllinus was alive and sick.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Statues of recent men give oracles and heal: Neryllinus at Troas, Peregrinus Proteus (who burned himself at Olympia), and Alexander of Abonuteichos with public sacrifices. Athenagoras argues that neither the dead man nor the bronze, which could be recast into a foot-basin as Amasis did, can be the agent. The statue worked even while its subject lay sick, so demons must be using the images.", "claimed_effect": "Oracles and healings at statues.", "claimed_mechanism": "Demons operating through cult statues.", "practitioner": "daimones", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Contemporary statue cults of the Antonine age.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-60", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Gospel of Matthew", "author": "New Testament (Matthew)", "culture": "Early Christian (Jewish-Christian, Greek-speaking)", "language": "", "date": "c. 80–90 CE", "date_sort": 85, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Matt 2.1–2, 16", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ γεννηθέντος ἐν Βηθλεὲμ τῆς Ἰουδαίας ἐν ἡμέραις Ἡρῴδου τοῦ βασιλέως, ἰδοὺ μάγοι ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν παρεγένοντο εἰς Ἰεροσόλυμα λέγοντες", "translation": "When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In 2.2 the magi say: 'Where is the one born king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and came to worship him.' In 2.16 Herod, 'mocked by the magi', kills the children. The NT's one positive use of μάγοι is eastern (Persian or Babylonian) star-experts whose astral reading is validated. Later writers (Ignatius, Origen) had to explain why magi were vindicated.", "claimed_effect": "Recognition of a royal birth.", "claimed_mechanism": "Astral sign interpreted by eastern experts.", "practitioner": "magoi from the east", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Gentile wise men contrasted with Herod's hostility.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-61", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Gospel of Mark", "author": "New Testament (Mark)", "culture": "Early Christian (Jewish milieu)", "language": "", "date": "c. 70 CE", "date_sort": 70, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.22.1", "conventional_ref": "Mark 3.22; cf. Matt 12.27; Luke 11.20", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς οἱ ἀπὸ Ἰεροσολύμων καταβάντες ἔλεγον ὅτι Βεεζεβοὺλ ἔχει, καὶ ὅτι ἐν τῷ ἄρχοντι τῶν δαιμονίων ἐκβάλλει τὰ δαιμόνια.", "translation": "And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, 'He has Beelzebul', and, 'By the ruler of the demons he casts out the demons.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The earliest form of the charge that would become 'Jesus the magician': his exorcisms are real but powered by the demon-prince. In Matt 12.27 Jesus retorts, 'by whom do your sons cast them out?', which acknowledges contemporary Jewish exorcists. In Luke 11.20 he exorcises 'by the finger of God', a sign of the Kingdom. The dispute is about the source of power, not the reality of the effect.", "claimed_effect": "Expulsion of demons.", "claimed_mechanism": "Disputed: the spirit of God vs alliance with Beelzebul.", "practitioner": "Jesus; Jewish exorcists ('your sons')", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Religious-authority conflict; accusation of demonic alliance.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-62", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Gospel of Mark", "author": "New Testament (Mark)", "culture": "Early Christian (Galilee/Decapolis setting)", "language": "", "date": "c. 70 CE", "date_sort": 70, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Mark 5.1–20 (esp. 5.9–13)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ἐπηρώτα αὐτόν Τί ὄνομά σοι; καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ Λεγιὼν ὄνομά μοι, ὅτι πολλοί ἐσμεν·", "translation": "And he asked him, 'What is your name?' And he said to him, 'Legion is my name, for we are many.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Gerasene demoniac. Jesus asks the demon's name, as exorcists did to gain control. The spirits beg to be sent into a herd of about 2,000 pigs, which rush into the sea and drown (5.10–13). The narrative shares the exorcistic technique of asking the name and transferring the spirit into another host. The Latin military 'Legion' has often been read as an allusion to Roman occupation.", "claimed_effect": "Healing of a violent possessed man.", "claimed_mechanism": "Command and name-knowledge; transfer of spirits into animals.", "practitioner": "Jesus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Gentile territory; economic loss to the swineherds.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-63", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Gospel of Mark", "author": "New Testament (Mark)", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "", "date": "c. 70 CE", "date_sort": 70, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.30.1", "conventional_ref": "Mark 5.25–34", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ εὐθὺς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐπιγνοὺς ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν ἐξ αὐτοῦ δύναμιν ἐξελθοῦσαν ἐπιστραφεὶς ἐν τῷ ὄχλῳ ἔλεγεν Τίς μου ἥψατο τῶν ἱματίων;", "translation": "And at once Jesus, knowing in himself that power had gone out of him, turned in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my clothes?'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A woman with a twelve-year haemorrhage reasons, 'If I touch even his clothes I shall be saved' (5.28). The bleeding stops at once. Jesus feels 'power' (dynamis) leave him, as though it were a substance transmitted by contact, though Jesus then credits her faith. Acts 5.15 (Peter's shadow) and 19.12 (Paul's handkerchiefs) extend the same contact-power to apostles, which became the basis of relic practice.", "claimed_effect": "Cessation of chronic bleeding.", "claimed_mechanism": "Transferable dynamis through contact with garments; faith.", "practitioner": "Jesus (passive); the woman (active initiator)", "practitioner_gender": "female initiator", "social_legal_context": "Ritual impurity of a bleeding woman; healing initiated by a woman.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-64", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Gospel of Mark", "author": "New Testament (Mark)", "culture": "Early Christian (Aramaic-speaking setting)", "language": "", "date": "c. 70 CE", "date_sort": 70, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "7.33.1", "conventional_ref": "Mark 7.32–35; 8.22–26; cf. John 9.6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ἀπολαβόμενος αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ὄχλου κατʼ ἰδίαν ἔβαλεν τοὺς δακτύλους αὐτοῦ εἰς τὰ ὦτα αὐτοῦ καὶ πτύσας ἥψατο τῆς γλώσσης αὐτοῦ,", "translation": "And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears and, spitting, touched his tongue,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Healing of a deaf-mute. Jesus takes him aside, puts fingers in his ears, applies spittle, looks to heaven, groans, and says the Aramaic word 'Ephphatha', which Mark keeps and translates as 'Be opened' (7.34). In 8.23–25 he spits on a blind man's eyes and lays on hands. The man first sees 'men like trees walking', and full sight needs a second application. In John 9.6 he makes mud with spittle. Privacy, spittle, groaning and a foreign word are elements that critics (cf. Celsus) could classify as magical technique. The gospels present them as divine power.", "claimed_effect": "Restoration of hearing, speech and sight.", "claimed_mechanism": "Touch, saliva, sighing, Aramaic command.", "practitioner": "Jesus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Folk-medical use of saliva, set in a ritualised healing.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-65", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Gospel of Mark", "author": "New Testament (Mark)", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "", "date": "c. 70 CE", "date_sort": 70, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "9.18.1", "conventional_ref": "Mark 9.14–29; Matt 17.15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ὅπου ἐὰν αὐτὸν καταλάβῃ ῥἤσσει αὐτόν, καὶ ἀφρίζει καὶ τρίζει τοὺς ὀδόντας καὶ ξηραίνεται· καὶ εἶπα τοῖς μαθηταῖς σου ἵνα αὐτὸ ἐκβάλωσιν, καὶ οὐκ ἴσχυσαν.", "translation": "Wherever it seizes him it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and goes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they could not.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The father describes symptoms. In 9.20 the boy convulses, falls and rolls foaming. Matthew's version (17.15) calls him σεληνιάζεται, 'moonstruck', often falling into fire and water. The disciples fail. Jesus exorcises and says 'this kind can come out only by prayer' (9.29). Origen's commentary on this passage records that physicians explained such cases naturally.", "claimed_effect": "Cessation of seizures.", "claimed_mechanism": "A mute and deaf spirit expelled by command and prayer.", "practitioner": "Jesus; disciples (failing)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Possession as the cultural frame for what Greek medicine called the 'sacred disease'.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-66", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Gospel of Mark (longer ending)", "author": "New Testament (Mark 16.9–20, later addition)", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "", "date": "2nd c. CE (addition to Mark)", "date_sort": 140, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "16.18.1", "conventional_ref": "Mark 16.17–18", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "exorcism", "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "[καὶ ἐν ταῖς χερσὶν] ὄφεις ἀροῦσιν κἂν θανάσιμόν τι πίωσιν οὐ μὴ αὐτοὺς βλάψῃ, ἐπὶ ἀρρώστους χεῖρας ἐπιθήσουσιν καὶ καλῶς ἕξουσιν.", "translation": "They will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink anything deadly it will not harm them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The signs promised to believers: exorcism 'in my name', tongues (16.17), snake-handling, immunity to poison, healing by imposition of hands. This is a Christian promise of invulnerability, which Hellenistic culture attributed to Marsi or Psylli snake-charmers and to magicians. The Acts of John later dramatises the poison immunity.", "claimed_effect": "Immunity to venom and poison; healing.", "claimed_mechanism": "The name of Jesus and faith.", "practitioner": "believers", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Missionary charismatic expectations; textually secondary ending.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-67", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Acts of the Apostles", "author": "New Testament (Luke-Acts)", "culture": "Early Christian (Samaria)", "language": "", "date": "c. 85–90 CE", "date_sort": 88, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "8.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Acts 8.9–24", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἀνὴρ δέ τις ὀνόματι Σίμων προυπῆρχεν ἐν τῇ πόλει μαγεύων καὶ ἐξιστάνων τὸ ἔθνος τῆς Σαμαρίας, λέγων εἶναί τινα ἑαυτὸν μέγαν,", "translation": "A man named Simon had been in the city practising magic and astonishing the people of Samaria, saying that he was someone great,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Samaritans called Simon 'the Power of God called Great' (8.10) and had long been amazed by his magic (μαγίαις, 8.11). He was baptised. Seeing the Spirit given by the apostles' laying on of hands, he offered money for the power (8.18–19). Peter: 'May your silver perish with you, because you thought to buy God's gift with money' (8.20). The text distinguishes magic from apostolic power by commerce and by the origin of the gift. 'Simony' is named after this episode, and Simon became the arch-heretic of the patristic tradition.", "claimed_effect": "Public astonishment; conferral of the Spirit.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Simon) Magical arts; (apostles) the Holy Spirit through laying on of hands.", "practitioner": "Simon Magus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Christian mission confronting a local cult figure.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-68", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Acts of the Apostles", "author": "New Testament (Luke-Acts)", "culture": "Early Christian (Cyprus, Roman provincial court)", "language": "", "date": "c. 85–90 CE", "date_sort": 88, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "13.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Acts 13.6–12", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ ἔσῃ τυφλὸς μὴ βλέπων τὸν ἥλιον ἄχρι καιροῦ. παραχρῆμα δὲ ἔπεσεν ἐπʼ αὐτὸν ἀχλὺς καὶ σκότος, καὶ περιάγων ἐζήτει χειραγωγούς.", "translation": "'…and you will be blind, not seeing the sun for a time.' Immediately mist and darkness fell on him, and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At Paphos, Bar-Jesus, a 'Jewish magus and false prophet' also called Elymas 'the magus' (13.6, 13.8), was attached to the proconsul Sergius Paulus and opposed Barnabas and Saul. Paul, filled with the Spirit, calls him 'son of the devil' (13.10) and pronounces temporary blindness, which strikes at once. The proconsul believes. A Christian 'curse' defeats a court magician. Formally it resembles a binding curse, but it is framed as 'the hand of the Lord'.", "claimed_effect": "Sudden temporary blindness.", "claimed_mechanism": "The hand of the Lord, invoked by a Spirit-filled apostle.", "practitioner": "Elymas (magus at court); Paul", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Competition for elite patronage: court diviners vs apostles.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-69", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Acts of the Apostles", "author": "New Testament (Luke-Acts)", "culture": "Early Christian (Philippi, Roman colony)", "language": "", "date": "c. 85–90 CE", "date_sort": 88, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "16.16.1", "conventional_ref": "Acts 16.16–19", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἐγένετο δὲ πορευομένων ἡμῶν εἰς τὴν προσευχὴν παιδίσκην τινὰ ἔχουσαν πνεῦμα πύθωνα ὑπαντῆσαι ἡμῖν, ἥτις ἐργασίαν πολλὴν παρεῖχεν τοῖς κυρίοις", "translation": "As we were going to the place of prayer, a slave girl having a python-spirit met us, who brought her owners much profit…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The slave girl 'with a python spirit', the term for Delphic or ventriloquial mantic possession, made money for her owners by soothsaying. For many days she followed Paul, crying out that these men were servants of the Most High God. Paul, 'annoyed', ordered the spirit out in the name of Jesus Christ (16.18). Her owners, seeing their profit gone, dragged Paul and Silas before the magistrates (16.19). Divination here is a commercial enterprise, and the female practitioner is a slave whose gift is someone else's property.", "claimed_effect": "Accurate prophecy (she correctly identifies the apostles); loss of the gift.", "claimed_mechanism": "Possession by a Pythian spirit; expelled by the name of Jesus.", "practitioner": "enslaved girl (pythōn); Paul", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Divination as a slave-owner's business; legal action for economic loss.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-70", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Acts of the Apostles", "author": "New Testament (Luke-Acts)", "culture": "Early Christian (Ephesus, a famous magical centre)", "language": "", "date": "c. 85–90 CE", "date_sort": 88, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "19.19.1", "conventional_ref": "Acts 19.11–20", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἱκανοὶ δὲ τῶν τὰ περίεργα πραξάντων συνενέγκαντες τὰς βίβλους κατέκαιον ἐνώπιον πάντων· καὶ συνεψήφισαν τὰς τιμὰς αὐτῶν καὶ εὗρον ἀργυρίου μυριάδας πέντε.", "translation": "A good number of those who had practised curious arts brought their books together and burned them before everyone; they reckoned up their value and found it to be fifty thousand pieces of silver.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Paul's handkerchiefs and aprons heal and expel spirits (19.12). The seven sons of the Jewish high priest Sceva, itinerant exorcists, try the formula 'I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches' (19.13). The spirit answers, 'Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?' The possessed man beats them and they flee naked (19.15–16). Converts confess their practices and burn their 'curious arts' (τὰ περίεργα) books, worth 50,000 silver pieces. The name only works for those properly authorised. 'Ephesian letters' were proverbial magic words, and the episode's book-burning anticipates later imperial and ecclesiastical burnings.", "claimed_effect": "Healing, exorcism; failed exorcism with violent backlash.", "claimed_mechanism": "Contact relics; the name of Jesus (valid only for authorised users).", "practitioner": "Paul; sons of Sceva (Jewish exorcists); Ephesian practitioners of periergia", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Conversion involving destruction of costly magical books; competition among exorcists.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-71", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Letter to the Galatians", "author": "New Testament (Paul)", "culture": "Early Christian (Pauline)", "language": "", "date": "c. 50–55 CE", "date_sort": 53, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg009.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.20.1", "conventional_ref": "Gal 5.20; cf. 3.1", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "εἰδωλολατρία, φαρμακία, ἔχθραι, ἔρις, ζῆλος, θυμοί, ἐριθίαι, διχοστασίαι, αἱρέσεις,", "translation": "idolatry, sorcery (pharmakeia), enmities, strife, jealousy, fits of rage, rivalries, dissensions, factions,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pharmakeia (spelled φαρμακία) stands in Paul's list of the 'works of the flesh' between idolatry and social vices. The word covers poisoning, drugs and spells together. In Gal 3.1 Paul asks 'who has bewitched you?' (τίς ὑμᾶς ἐβάσκανεν), using the evil-eye verb βασκαίνω for the Galatians' change of mind. The rhetoric draws on everyday fear of the evil eye.", "claimed_effect": "Harm; the Galatians' 'bewitched' change of belief.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Implicit) Drugs and spells; the evil eye.", "practitioner": "unspecified", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Moral exhortation in an early Christian community.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-72", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Revelation", "author": "New Testament (John of Patmos)", "culture": "Early Christian apocalyptic (Asia Minor)", "language": "", "date": "c. 95 CE", "date_sort": 95, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg027.perseus-grc2", "ref": "18.23.1", "conventional_ref": "Rev 18.23; cf. 9.21; 21.8; 22.15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅτι [οἱ] ἔμποροί σου ἦσαν οἱ μεγιστᾶνες τῆς γῆς, ὅτι ἐν τῇ φαρμακίᾳ σου ἐπλανήθησαν πάντα τὰ ἔθνη,", "translation": "…for your merchants were the great ones of the earth, and by your sorcery all the nations were deceived.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Babylon (Rome) deceives the nations by pharmakeia, a political use of the sorcery charge. In 9.21 people do not repent 'of their pharmaka'. In 21.8 pharmakoi share the lake of fire with murderers and idolaters, and in 22.15 they stand outside the holy city with 'dogs'. The sorcerer is an eschatological outsider.", "claimed_effect": "Deception of the nations.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Metaphorical/political) Imperial seduction as sorcery.", "practitioner": "Rome personified; pharmakoi", "practitioner_gender": "female personification (Babylon)", "social_legal_context": "Anti-Roman apocalyptic.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-73", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Second Letter to Timothy", "author": "New Testament (Pastoral Epistles; Pauline authorship disputed)", "culture": "Early Christian, drawing on Jewish legend", "language": "", "date": "c. 90–110 CE (disputed)", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg016.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.8.1", "conventional_ref": "2 Tim 3.8, 3.13", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὃν τρόπον δὲ Ἰαννῆς καὶ Ἰαμβρῆς ἀντέστησαν Μωυσεῖ, οὕτως καὶ οὗτοι ἀνθίστανται τῇ ἀληθείᾳ,", "translation": "Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these also oppose the truth,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The unnamed Egyptian magicians of Exodus 7 are named from Jewish tradition as Jannes and Jambres, and become types of false teachers. In 3.13, 'wicked people and goētes will go from bad to worse, deceiving and deceived'. The goēs is the false teacher.", "claimed_effect": "Opposition to truth; deception.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Not stated)", "practitioner": "Jannes and Jambres (Egyptian magicians); false teachers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Intra-church polemic.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-74", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Letter of James", "author": "New Testament (James)", "culture": "Early Christian (Jewish-Christian)", "language": "", "date": "c. 60–100 CE", "date_sort": 80, "edition_urn": "tlg0031.tlg020.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.14.1", "conventional_ref": "Jas 5.14–15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀσθενεῖ τις ἐν ὑμῖν; προσκαλεσάσθω τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους τῆς ἐκκλησίας, καὶ προσευξάσθωσαν ἐπʼ αὐτὸν ἀλείψαντες ἐλαίῳ ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι [τοῦ κυρίου]·", "translation": "Is anyone among you sick? Let him call the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord;", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In 5.15, 'the prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up', and sins are forgiven. Church-sanctioned healing ritual: oil (a standard ancient medicament), prayer, the divine name, office-holders. It is the institutional counterpart to the amulets and incantations the church forbade. Theodoret's holy man (HR 8) later uses blessed oil against love magic.", "claimed_effect": "Recovery and forgiveness.", "claimed_mechanism": "Prayer of faith, anointing, the name of the Lord.", "practitioner": "church elders (presbyteroi)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Community care of the sick.", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-75", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Didache", "author": "Didache (anonymous)", "culture": "Early Christian (Syria?), Jewish 'Two Ways' tradition", "language": "", "date": "c. 70–120 CE", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg1311.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Did. 2.2; 3.4; 5.1", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "divination", "astrology", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "οὐ κλέψεις, οὐ μαγεύσεις, οὐ φαρμακεύσεις, οὐ φονεύσεις τέκνον ἐν φθορᾷ, οὐδὲ γεννηθὲν ἀποκτενεῖς", "translation": "You shall not steal, you shall not practise magic, you shall not use drugs (pharmakeia), you shall not kill a child by abortion, nor kill one that is born.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The earliest Christian church-order adds 'no magic, no pharmakeia' to the Decalogue, placed directly before abortion and infanticide. That placement is consistent with pharmakeia including abortifacient and contraceptive drugs. In 3.4: 'do not be an augur, since it leads to idolatry, nor an enchanter, nor an astrologer (mathēmatikos), nor a purifier, and do not even wish to watch these.' In 5.1 mageiai and pharmakiai appear on 'the way of death'.", "claimed_effect": "Harm to life; idolatry.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Not stated)", "practitioner": "community members (forbidden)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Catechetical moral code for converts.", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-76", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Letter to the Ephesians", "author": "Ignatius of Antioch", "culture": "Early Christian (Syria)", "language": "", "date": "c. 110 CE (date debated)", "date_sort": 110, "edition_urn": "tlg1443.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.19.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Ign. Eph. 19.2–3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅθεν ἐλύετο πᾶσα μαγεία καὶ πᾶς δεσμὸς ἠφανίζετο κακίας: ἄγνοια καθῃρεῖτο", "translation": "From then on all magic was dissolved, and every bond of wickedness vanished; ignorance was destroyed…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In 19.2 a star shone above all stars at Christ's birth, the sun, moon and other stars forming a chorus around it. From then all magic and every 'bond' (desmos, also the term for binding spells) was dissolved. This is the earliest form of the motif that magic ended with Christ's coming, developed by Origen (Cels. 1.60) and Athanasius (Inc. 47–48).", "claimed_effect": "End of magic and binding.", "claimed_mechanism": "Cosmic epiphany defeats demonic power.", "practitioner": "(magicians, defeated)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Letter written on the way to martyrdom.", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-77", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Homiliae (Pseudo-Clementine)", "author": "Pseudo-Clement", "culture": "Early Christian (Jewish-Christian, Syria)", "language": "", "date": "4th c. CE (basic source 3rd c.)", "date_sort": 330, "edition_urn": "tlg1271.tlg006.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.26.1", "conventional_ref": "Ps.-Clem. Hom. 2.26", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅτι παιδίου ψυχὴν τοῦ ἰδίου σώματος χωρίσας ἀποῤῥήτοις ὅρκοις, συνεργὸν πρὸς τὴν τῶν αὐτῷ δοκούντων φαντασίαν, τὸν δὲ παῖδα διαγράψας ἐπ᾽ εἰκόνος", "translation": "…that, having separated a boy's soul from its own body by unspeakable oaths, [he keeps it] as an assistant for producing the illusions he wants, and, having drawn the boy on a picture…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Simon is said to have begun committing murder. He confided that he separated a child's soul by secret oaths to serve as his assistant, and keeps the boy's portrait in his bedroom. He claims he formed the boy out of air 'by divine transformations' and returned him to the air. His physical explanation: the human spirit, turned hot, draws in surrounding air 'like a cupping-glass', which is turned into water, then blood, then flesh. This is a pseudo-physics of making a familiar (paredros) from a murdered child's soul.", "claimed_effect": "A spirit assistant for producing illusions.", "claimed_mechanism": "Binding a dead child's soul by oaths; elemental transformation of air into flesh.", "practitioner": "Simon Magus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Christian romance about Peter and Simon; links magic to murder.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-78", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Homiliae (Pseudo-Clementine)", "author": "Pseudo-Clement", "culture": "Early Christian (Jewish-Christian, Syria)", "language": "", "date": "4th c. CE", "date_sort": 330, "edition_urn": "tlg1271.tlg006.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.32.1", "conventional_ref": "Ps.-Clem. Hom. 2.32–34", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "illusion-trickery", "invisibility-invulnerability", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅτι ἀνδριάντας ποιεῖ περιπατεῖν , καὶ ἐπὶ πῦρ κυλιόμενος οὐ καίεται· ἐνίοτε δὲ καὶ πέταται· καὶ ἐκ λίθων ἄρτους ποιεῖ· ὄφις γίνεται, εἰς αἶγα μεταμορφοῦται", "translation": "…that he makes statues walk, rolls on fire without being burned, sometimes even flies, makes bread from stones, becomes a snake, turns into a goat…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Simon's repertoire in 2.32: walking statues, fire-immunity, flight, bread from stones, shape-shifting into snake or goat, becoming two-faced or gold, opening locked doors, dissolving iron, conjuring images at banquets, and household vessels that serve by themselves with no visible bearers. Many claimed to have seen these. In 2.34 Peter gives the criterion: such signs are 'useless', not done for healing people and naturally deceptive, while the signs of 'compassionate truth' heal. Utility and benevolence separate miracle from magic.", "claimed_effect": "Animated statues, invulnerability, transformation, flight, automatic servants.", "claimed_mechanism": "Magic (versus beneficial divine signs).", "practitioner": "Simon Magus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Utility criterion of the miracle/magic boundary.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-79", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Acta Philippi", "author": "Acts of Philip (anonymous)", "culture": "Early Christian apocryphal (Asia Minor)", "language": "", "date": "late 4th c. CE", "date_sort": 380, "edition_urn": "tlg2948.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "23.1", "conventional_ref": "Acta Philippi 18–19 (library §23)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Ὁ δὲ ἀπόστολος εἶπεν πρὸς τὸν Ἰησοῦν· Ζαβαρθάν, σαβαθαβάτ, βραμανούχ, ταχὺ ἐλθέ. Καὶ εὐθὺς ἡ γῆ ἐσχίσθη κατὰ τὸ μέρος τοῦ Ἀνανίου", "translation": "The apostle said to Jesus: 'Zabarthan, sabathabat, bramanouch, come quickly!' And at once the earth split open where Ananias stood…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Jewish high priest Ananias calls Philip a pharmakos: 'you will not bewitch me'. Philip invokes Jesus with foreign-sounding words like the voces magicae of the papyri, and the earth swallows Ananias to the knees. Ananias cries, 'O great thing of true sorcery (μαγγανεία)!', saying Philip 'threatened the earth in Hebrew', and that hooks pull him down to make him believe. He still refuses, since he 'knows his magic from Jerusalem'. The apocryphal apostle uses magical-sounding language openly, and the villain's accusation is turned into comedy.", "claimed_effect": "Earth swallows an opponent.", "claimed_mechanism": "Invocation of Jesus with barbarous (Hebrew-sounding) words.", "practitioner": "the apostle Philip", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Popular Christian narrative; the charge of magic is shown as the unbeliever's misreading.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-80", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Acta Thomae", "author": "Acts of Thomas (anonymous)", "culture": "Early Christian (Syrian; Greek version)", "language": "", "date": "early 3rd c. CE", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg2038.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "106.1", "conventional_ref": "Acts Thom. 96–106", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "other", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐμὲ γὰρ ἡ σὴ μαγεία οὐ βλάπτει· τὴν γὰρ σὴν μαγείαν ἐπὶ τὴν σὴν κεφαλὴν θήσομαι.", "translation": "Your magic does not harm me; I will turn your magic back on your own head.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "When the noblewoman Mygdonia converts and refuses to sleep with her husband Charisius, he says that 'that magus and deceiver' teaches that no one should live with his own wife (96). He goes to the king, who asks who is 'that magus' lodging in his house (104). Charisius tells Thomas his magic cannot harm him and will rebound on him (106). 'Magic' explains a woman's conversion to ascetic Christianity and the disruption of marriage. The rebound curse is a standard magical idea.", "claimed_effect": "Wife's refusal of marital sex.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Alleged by the husband) Magical seduction; (narrative) the gospel of continence.", "practitioner": "the apostle Thomas (as accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male accused, female convert", "social_legal_context": "Elite household conflict over female conversion.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-81", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Praeparatio evangelica", "author": "Eusebius of Caesarea", "culture": "Early Christian (Palestine), presenting a sceptical position", "language": "", "date": "c. 313–320 CE", "date_sort": 316, "edition_urn": "tlg2018.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "4.1.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Eus. PE 4.1.8–11", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "τὰ μὲν γὰρ ποιήματα καὶ τὰς τῶν χρησμῶν συνθέσεις οὐκ ἀφυῶν ἀνδρῶν, εὖ μάλα δὲ πρὸς ἀπάτην ἐσκευωρημένων πλάσματα τυγχάνειν … τὰ δὲ τὸν πολὺν ἀπατῶντα διά τινων τερατειῶν θαύματα φυσικαῖς αἰτίαις ἀνῆφθαι.", "translation": "[One might say] that the verses and compositions of the oracles are fabrications of clever men, well equipped for deceit … and that the wonders deceiving the crowd through certain marvels depend on natural causes.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Eusebius sets out a fully naturalistic theory that 'another' might hold, and he partly endorses it. Oracles are clever ambiguous verse. Wonders hang on natural causes. In 4.1.9 nature contains many roots, herbs, plants, fruits, stones and fluids with powers to repel, attract, separate, condense, relax, preserve, kill or transform, for long or short periods. Add the crowd's stupidity and lack of scrutiny, and the cunning of goētes who flatter hopes and cloak their guesses in ambiguity (4.1.10). In 4.1.11 incantations with 'barbarous, meaningless' words make it seem that these cause effects they do not.", "claimed_effect": "Oracular answers and wonders at cult statues.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Real) Natural properties of materials, ambiguity, credulity, staged verbal formulas.", "practitioner": "oracle-priests and goētes", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Christian apologetic after the persecution, recycling pagan sceptical traditions.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-82", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Praeparatio evangelica", "author": "Eusebius of Caesarea", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "", "date": "c. 313–320 CE", "date_sort": 316, "edition_urn": "tlg2018.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "4.2.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Eus. PE 4.2.1–4", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ὡς εἴ τις καὶ ἐπὶ δύο λαγχάνουσιν ἀπὸ μυρίων, εἰ ἄρα ποτὲ εἰς ἅπαξ αὐτοὺς κατὰ τῶν αὐτῶν συμπεσεῖν ἔτυχε, θαυμάζοι ὡς κατὰ μαντείαν χαἲ πρόγνωσιν ἔνα καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν ἀμφοτέροις συνέβη περιελθεῖν ἀριθμόν.", "translation": "…as if, when two people draw lots out of ten thousand and it once happened that they coincided, someone were to marvel as if by divination and foreknowledge the same number had come round to both.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An argument from selective memory and chance. Unambiguous oracles have failed countless times. The rare hit, 'one in ten thousand by chance', is carved on stelae and proclaimed everywhere, while the misses are never mentioned. Marvelling at such a coincidence is like marvelling that two lot-drawers drew the same number. In 4.2.4 the oracles also failed in war and stirred up strife. This is close to a modern account of confirmation bias.", "claimed_effect": "Apparent success of oracles.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Real) Chance hits plus selective recording; ambiguity.", "practitioner": "oracle-givers (thespiōidoi)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Critique of oracle publicity (inscribed responses).", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-83", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Historia ecclesiastica", "author": "Eusebius of Caesarea", "culture": "Early Christian report of Roman judicial torture (Antioch)", "language": "", "date": "c. 315–325 CE (events 312–313)", "date_sort": 315, "edition_urn": "tlg2018.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "9.11.6.1", "conventional_ref": "Eus. HE 9.3.1; 9.11.5–6; cf. PE 4.2.10–11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "τοὺς τοῦ νεοπαγοῦς ξοάνου προφήτας καὶ ἱερεῖς βασάνοις ᾐκίζετο, τίνι λόγῳ τὴν ἀπάτην καθυποκρίνοιντο, πυνθανόμενος· ὡς δ’ ἐπικρύπτεσθαι αὐτοῖς πρὸς τῶν βασάνων συνελαυνομένοις ἀδύνατον ἦν, ἐδήλουν δὲ τὸ πᾶν μυστήριον ἀπάτην τυγχάνειν τέχνῃ τῇ Θεοτέκνου μεμηχανημένην", "translation": "He tortured the prophets and priests of the newly made statue, asking by what means they staged the deception; and since, under torture, they could not hide it, they revealed that the whole mystery was a deception contrived by Theotecnus' art.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In 9.3.1 Theotecnus, the persecuting curator of Antioch, set up a statue of Zeus Philios 'with certain jugglery and sorceries' and new rites. Its oracle demanded the expulsion of Christians. After Maximinus fell, Licinius 'made a search for goētes' and tortured the statue's prophets and priests, who confessed it was all fraud. Theotecnus and his accomplices were executed. PE 4.2.10–11 adds that 'philosophers in the cloak' and Antiochene notables confessed and left written records of 'the whole method of the contrivance'. A similar case is reported at Miletus. These are claimed confessions of fraudulent oracles, obtained under torture by a Christian-friendly regime.", "claimed_effect": "Oracles against Christians.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Confessed) Fraudulent contrivance behind a speaking statue.", "practitioner": "Theotecnus, statue's prophets and priests", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Persecution politics, then judicial reprisal. Torture makes the 'confessions' historically suspect.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-84", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Praeparatio evangelica (quoting Porphyry, Philosophy from Oracles)", "author": "Porphyry, quoted by Eusebius", "culture": "Greek pagan theurgic oracles", "language": "", "date": "Porphyry c. 260s CE; Eusebius c. 315", "date_sort": 265, "edition_urn": "tlg2018.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "5.8.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Eus. PE 5.8.1–11 = Porph. Phil. ex orac. (Smith fr. 347)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ πάλιν ἄλλος ἀναγκαζόμενος ἔφη κλῦθί μευ οὐκ ἐθέλοντος, ἐπεί μ’ ἐπέδησας ἀνάγκῃ.", "translation": "And again another god, under compulsion, said: 'Hear me, unwilling as I am, since you have bound me with necessity.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Porphyry agrees with 'Pythagoras of Rhodes' that the gods do not enjoy sacrifices but come 'dragged by a certain necessity of sequence'. The oracles confirm that all came 'by necessity', or rather 'persuasive compulsion' (πειθανάγκη) (5.8.1–3). Hecate asks why she is summoned 'by god-subduing compulsions' (θειοδάμοις ἀνάγκαις) and speaks of drawing gods down 'with ineffable iynges' (5.8.6). Apollo issues his own compelling formula (ἐπάναγκος). In 5.8.11 Apollo's stream of light enters the medium's head and 'gives birth to a voice through a mortal pipe'. In 5.9.10 Eusebius concludes that such easily dragged spirits are not divine.", "claimed_effect": "Gods descend and speak through a medium.", "claimed_mechanism": "Ritual compulsion (iynges, epanankoi formulas, 'persuasive necessity').", "practitioner": "theurgic operators; mediums (dochoi)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Pagan oracle collection turned into Christian evidence that the gods are coercible demons.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-85", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Demonstratio evangelica", "author": "Eusebius of Caesarea", "culture": "Early Christian", "language": "", "date": "c. 315–320 CE", "date_sort": 318, "edition_urn": "tlg2018.tlg005.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "3.6.34.1", "conventional_ref": "Eus. DE 3.6.34 (with 3.6.1–39; 3.7.1–3)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "εἴ ποτε ὀφθαλμοῖς εἶδεν ἢ ἀκοῇ ἔγνω γόητάς τε καὶ φαρμακέας δίχα σπονδῶν καὶ θυμάτων καὶ δαιμόνων ἐπικλήσεως τε καὶ παρουσίας γοητεύοντας.", "translation": "…whether he has ever seen with his eyes or heard tell of sorcerers and poisoners working sorcery without libations, sacrifices, and the invocation and presence of demons.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Against those who grant Jesus' wonders but call them goēteia (3.5.110), Eusebius gives an operational definition: magic always requires libations, sacrifices and demon-invocation. Jesus and his followers use none, and would rather die than sacrifice to demons. Further arguments: a goēs would not teach virtue (3.6.1, 3.6.7). His disciples were never convicted of goēteia, and converts in Acts burned their magic books (3.6.14–19). A first inventor without teachers would be divine (3.6.26). No goēs ever founded a new nation (3.6.31). He also cites Porphyry's oracle praising Jesus as pious, 'not a goēs' (3.7.3).", "claimed_effect": "Wonders.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Defining magic) Libations, sacrifices, demon invocation.", "practitioner": "Jesus (defended); goētes and pharmakeis", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Apologetic rebuttal of the magician charge.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-86", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Historia ecclesiastica", "author": "Eusebius of Caesarea", "culture": "Early Christian report on Roman imperial magic", "language": "", "date": "c. 315 CE (events c. 306–312)", "date_sort": 315, "edition_urn": "tlg2018.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "8.14.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Eus. HE 8.14.5", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "μαγικαῖς ἐπινοίαις τοτὲ μὲν γυναῖκας ἐγκύμονας ἀνασχίζοντος, τοτὲ δὲ νεογνῶν σπλάγχνα βρεφῶν διερευνωμένου λέοντάς τε κατασφάττοντος", "translation": "…by magical devices, now ripping open pregnant women, now searching the entrails of newborn babies, and slaughtering lions…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Eusebius says the crowning crime of the 'tyrant' Maxentius was sorcery: extispicy of babies and pregnant women, lion sacrifice, unspeakable summonings of demons and rites to avert war, on which he pinned his hope of victory. HE 9.9.3 has Maxentius relying 'on magical contrivances' against Constantine. The charge of human-sacrifice divination is a stock way of disqualifying a defeated ruler, and is not reliable evidence of practice.", "claimed_effect": "Military victory (failed).", "claimed_mechanism": "Divination from human entrails; demon-summoning.", "practitioner": "Maxentius (emperor)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Political propaganda of the Constantinian victory.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-87", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "De incarnatione Verbi", "author": "Athanasius of Alexandria", "culture": "Early Christian (Egypt)", "language": "", "date": "c. 335 CE (some date it c. 318)", "date_sort": 335, "edition_urn": "tlg2035.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "48.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Athan. Inc. 47.4; 48.3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "other", "protection-amulet", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "χρησάσθω τῷ σημείῳ τοῦ γελωμένου παρ’ αὐτοῖς σταυροῦ, τὸν Χριστὸν ὀνομάσας μόνον, καὶ ὄψεται πῶς δι' αὐτοῦ δαίμονες μὲν φεύγουσι, μαντεῖα δὲ παύεται, μαγεία δὲ πᾶσα καὶ φαρμακεία κατήργηται.", "translation": "…let him use the sign of the cross they laugh at, merely naming Christ, and he will see how through it demons flee, oracles cease, and all magic and sorcery is rendered powerless.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In 47.4 Egyptian, Chaldaean and Indian magic 'had strength and worked and astonished onlookers' before the Word came, but was refuted and abolished by its appearance. In 48.3 Athanasius invites anyone 'wishing to test' to try the sign of the cross against demonic illusions, oracles and the wonders of magic. In 48.5–6 he argues that if the cross defeats all magic, Christ cannot be a magus. The sign of the cross works as the Christian counter-apotropaion, presented as an empirical challenge.", "claimed_effect": "Demons flee; oracles and magic cease.", "claimed_mechanism": "The sign of the cross and the name of Christ.", "practitioner": "any Christian", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Post-Constantinian triumphalism in Egypt, the reputed home of magic.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-88", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Epistulae (Canonical Letter to Amphilochius, Ep. 217)", "author": "Basil of Caesarea", "culture": "Early Christian (Cappadocia), church law", "language": "", "date": "375 CE", "date_sort": 375, "edition_urn": "tlg2040.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "217.16", "conventional_ref": "Basil Ep. 217, canons 65, 72, 83 (library 217.16, .23, .34); cf. Ep. 188 can. 8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Ὁ γοητείαν ἢ φαρμακείαν ἐξαγορεύων τὸν τοῦ φονέως χρόνον ἐξομολογήσεται, οὕτως οἰκονομούμενος, ὡς ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ ἁμαρτήματι ἑαυτὸν ἐλέγξας.", "translation": "Whoever confesses sorcery or poisoning shall do penance for the period of a murderer, being treated as one who has convicted himself of that sin.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Penitential law equates goēteia and pharmakeia with homicide (canon 65). Canon 72: 'whoever gives himself to diviners or the like' does a murderer's term. Canon 83 (library 217.34) is milder: those who practise divination 'following the customs of the gentiles', or who bring people into their houses to discover pharmakeia or for purification, get six years. In Ep. 188.10, pharmakoi are grouped with murderers, adulterers and idolaters. The canons distinguish the operator, the client and the consulter of house-purifiers.", "claimed_effect": "Harm by sorcery or poison (treated as murder).", "claimed_mechanism": "(Not stated)", "practitioner": "goētes, pharmakoi, diviners, and their clients", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Episcopal penitential discipline; clients counted as well as practitioners.", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-89", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Panarion", "author": "Epiphanius of Salamis", "culture": "Early Christian (Cyprus), reporting Jewish Galilee", "language": "", "date": "c. 375 CE (events c. 330s)", "date_sort": 376, "edition_urn": "tlg2021.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "30.8.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Epiph. Pan. 30.7–8", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐκεῖ παραλαβόντες τὸν προειρημένον οἱ ἅμα ἅμα γόητες γόητες τινας καὶ ἐπιορκισμοὺς καὶ ἐπιτηδεύματα ἀσεβείας ἔμπλεα εἰς αὐτὸν ἐποιοῦντο καὶ εἰς ὄνομα τῆς προειρημένης γυναικός.", "translation": "There, taking the young man, the sorcerers performed over him certain adjurations and impious devices, in the name of the woman mentioned.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Told to Epiphanius by Joseph of Tiberias, a convert. A Jewish youth in love with a Christian woman is taken by older sorcerers after sunset to rock-cut tombs (polyandria) for a love-binding ritual. Joseph and an elder overhear it, then urinate on the ritual objects left on the ground and throw dust on them (30.8.7), a counter-ritual of defilement. The spell fails 'because of the seal of Christ and faith' protecting the woman (30.8.9). Joseph's lesson: pharmakeia has no strength 'where the name of Christ and seal of the cross' are.", "claimed_effect": "Erotic compulsion of a woman (failed).", "claimed_mechanism": "Graveside adjuration in the target's name (love-binding); counter: the sign of the cross; defilement of ritual objects.", "practitioner": "Jewish elders acting as goētes; Joseph of Tiberias", "practitioner_gender": "male operators, female target", "social_legal_context": "Interreligious tension in 4th-c. Galilee; conversion narrative.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-90", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Historia ecclesiastica", "author": "Theodoret of Cyrrhus", "culture": "Early Christian (Syria), on Julian's Persian campaign", "language": "", "date": "c. 449 CE (event 363)", "date_sort": 449, "edition_urn": "tlg4089.tlg003.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "3.21.2", "conventional_ref": "Thdt. HE 3.21 (PG numbering; 3.26 Parmentier, not verified)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Εἶδον γὰρ γύναιον ἐκ τῶν τριχῶν ᾐωρημένον, ἐκτεταμένας ἔχον τὰς χεῖρας, ἧς ἀνακείρας ὁ ἀλιτήριος τὴν γαστέρα, τὴν νίκην δήπουθεν τὴν κατὰ Περσῶν διὰ τοῦ ἥπατος ἔγνω.", "translation": "For they saw a woman hanging by her hair with her arms outstretched, whose belly the wretch had cut open, evidently to learn from her liver about his victory over the Persians.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After Julian's death, soldiers opened the sealed temple at Carrhae (Harran), which Julian had locked and guarded on his way to Persia, and 'detected his sorcery'. They found a woman hanged and disembowelled for hepatoscopy. This is a hostile, almost certainly legendary atrocity tale. It shows how Christian historians assigned the most extreme form of divination, human extispicy, to the pagan emperor.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of military victory (failed).", "claimed_mechanism": "Human hepatoscopy.", "practitioner": "Julian (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male operator, female victim", "social_legal_context": "Posthumous Christian vilification of the apostate emperor.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-91", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Historia religiosa (Life of Aphrahat)", "author": "Theodoret of Cyrrhus", "culture": "Early Christian (Syria/Antioch), holy man", "language": "", "date": "c. 440 CE (events 370s)", "date_sort": 440, "edition_urn": "tlg4089.tlg004.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "8.18", "conventional_ref": "Thdt. HR 8 (Aphrahat), library §§16–18", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "love", "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "εὐχῇ τῆς γοητείας ἀμαυροῖ τὴν ἐνέργειαν, καὶ ἐλαίου ληκύθιον ὑπ’ αὐτῆς προσενεχθὲν τῇ θείᾳ ἐπικλήσει καθαγιάσας, χρίσασθαι τοῦτο προσέταξε.", "translation": "By prayer he dimmed the working of the sorcery, and, sanctifying with the divine invocation a little flask of oil she had brought, he told her to anoint herself with it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A noblewoman complains, at the door because the monk never admitted women, that her husband was bewitched by a concubine's sorcery into hating his lawful wife (8.16–17). Aphrahat neutralises the spell by prayer and blesses oil for her to anoint herself. She 'transferred her husband's love to herself'. The holy man performs the functional equivalent of love magic, redirecting desire, through Christian means, within marriage. The library flags 8.18 as athetized, which is probably a markup artefact.", "claimed_effect": "The husband's love restored to his wife.", "claimed_mechanism": "Prayer and blessed oil overcome the concubine's goēteia.", "practitioner": "concubine (accused sorceress); Aphrahat (holy man)", "practitioner_gender": "female (accused), male (holy man), female client", "social_legal_context": "Marriage, concubinage and gendered accusation; the holy man as ritual expert.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-92", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Historia ecclesiastica", "author": "Sozomen", "culture": "Early Christian historian on pagan philosophers under Valens", "language": "", "date": "c. 445 CE (event c. 371–372)", "date_sort": 445, "edition_urn": "tlg2048.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "6.35.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Soz. HE 6.35.1–11; cf. Socr. HE 4.19.2–6", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "τρίποδα ξύλινον ἐκ δάφνης κατεσκευάσαντο, καὶ ἐπικλήσεσι καὶ λόγοις οἷς εἰώθεισαν, ἐτέλεσαν: ὥστε συλλογῇ γραμμάτων, καθ̓ ἕκαστον στοιχεῖον ὑπὸ μηχανῆς τοῦ τρίποδος καὶ τῆς μαντείας σημαινομένων, ἀναφανῆναι τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ ἐσομένου βασιλέως.", "translation": "They built a wooden tripod of laurel and consecrated it with their customary invocations and words, so that, by gathering the letters, each indicated one by one through the device of the tripod and the divination, the name of the future emperor would appear.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Leading pagan philosophers, resenting Christianity's advance, used a laurel tripod to spell out Valens' successor letter by letter. It stopped at ΘΕΟΔ, and they assumed Theodorus, a Hellenist courtier. Theodorus and the 'tripod-craftsmen' were burned or beheaded, and philosophers across the empire were killed. People stopped wearing philosophers' cloaks for fear of being thought to dabble in divination and rites (6.35.7–8). Sozomen blames both Valens' cruelty and the philosophers' rashness. In Socrates 4.19 a demon gave the four letters in a necromancy and many Theodori and Theodosii were killed. Theodosius did in fact succeed in 379.", "claimed_effect": "The name of the next emperor.", "claimed_mechanism": "Consecrated tripod device indicating letters; invocations.", "practitioner": "pagan philosophers ('tripod-craftsmen'); Theodorus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Treason trials of 371–372: divination about the emperor was a capital crime.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-philosophy-christian-93", "corpus": "greek-philosophy-christian", "work": "Historia ecclesiastica", "author": "Sozomen", "culture": "Early Christian report on Sasanian Persia (Zoroastrian Magi)", "language": "", "date": "c. 445 CE (event c. 344)", "date_sort": 445, "edition_urn": "tlg2048.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "2.12.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Soz. HE 2.12.1–3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Παραλαβόντες δὲ οἱ Μάγοι Ταρβούλαν καὶ τὰς λοιπὰς καταδικάζουσιν αὐτῶν θάνατον: καὶ πρίονι διχῆ τεμόντες, ἀνεσκολόπισαν, καὶ ὡς ἀποτρόπαιον νόσου, διὰ μέσου τῶν σκολόπων τὴν βασιλίδα παρελθεῖν", "translation": "Taking Tarbula and the others, the Magi condemned them to death; and having sawn them in two, they impaled them, and, as an averting remedy for the disease, made the queen pass between the stakes.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "When the Persian queen fell ill, Tarbula, sister of the martyred bishop Symeon, a consecrated virgin, was accused, at Jewish instigation, of plotting against her with pharmaka. The sick queen believed it, 'for sickness is apt to lend an ear to evil reports' (2.12.2). The Magi, here Zoroastrian clergy rather than 'magicians', executed the women and made the queen walk between the halves of their bodies as an apotropaic cure. A Magus had propositioned Tarbula, promising her safety (2.12.3). The episode combines an accusation of poison-magic, an apotropaic ritual by state priests, and female martyrdom.", "claimed_effect": "The queen's illness and its cure.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Accusation) Pharmaka causing illness; (Magian ritual) passing between dismembered bodies averts disease.", "practitioner": "Persian Magi; Tarbula (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "female accused, male priests", "social_legal_context": "Persecution of Christians under Shapur II; sorcery accusation against women.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-1", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Odyssey", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 725–675 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "10.235–10.240", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Od. 10.233–243", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "οἴνῳ Πραμνείῳ ἐκύκα· ἀνέμισγε δὲ σίτῳ φάρμακα λύγρʼ, ἵνα πάγχυ λαθοίατο πατρίδος αἴης. αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δῶκέν τε καὶ ἔκπιον, αὐτίκʼ ἔπειτα ῥάβδῳ πεπληγυῖα κατὰ συφεοῖσιν ἐέργνυ. οἱ δὲ συῶν μὲν ἔχον κεφαλὰς φωνήν τε τρίχας τε καὶ δέμας, αὐτὰρ νοῦς ἦν ἔμπεδος", "translation": "She stirred it into Pramnian wine, and mixed baneful drugs into the food, so that they would utterly forget their native land. When she had given it and they had drunk, at once she struck them with her wand and penned them in the sties. They had the heads of swine, the voice, the bristles and the body, but their mind stayed firm as before.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Circe's two-stage technique: a drug (pharmaka lugra) mixed into a kykeon of cheese, barley and honey in wine causes forgetting, and a blow of the wand (rhabdos) completes the change into pigs. The men keep their human minds. Earlier, at 10.212–213, the wolves and lions around her house were 'enchanted' (katethelxen) by her evil drugs. Circe is a goddess ('deine theos'), not a human witch. This is the founding Greek image of the drug-and-wand sorceress.", "claimed_effect": "amnesia, then bodily transformation of men into swine with the mind intact", "claimed_mechanism": "ingested pharmaka followed by a touch of the rhabdos; no spoken spell is mentioned", "practitioner": "Circe, daughter of Helios (a goddess)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Mythical island of Aiaia; the act is a hostile act against guests, condemned as 'baneful devices' (ὀλοφώια δήνεα, 10.289).", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-2", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Odyssey", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 725–675 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "10.302–10.306", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Od. 10.287–306", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "ὣς ἄρα φωνήσας πόρε φάρμακον ἀργεϊφόντης ἐκ γαίης ἐρύσας, καί μοι φύσιν αὐτοῦ ἔδειξε. ῥίζῃ μὲν μέλαν ἔσκε, γάλακτι δὲ εἴκελον ἄνθος· μῶλυ δέ μιν καλέουσι θεοί· χαλεπὸν δέ τʼ ὀρύσσειν ἀνδράσι γε θνητοῖσι, θεοὶ δέ τε πάντα δύνανται.", "translation": "So speaking, the Slayer of Argos gave me the drug, pulling it from the ground, and showed me its nature. Its root was black, its flower like milk. The gods call it moly; it is hard for mortal men to dig, but the gods can do all things.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hermes gives Odysseus a counter-drug (pharmakon esthlon, 10.287, 10.292). It is a plant with a black root and a milk-white flower and a 'divine' name. It makes Circe's drug ineffective: 'she will not be able to enchant (thelxai) you' (10.291). It is the first antidote or protective plant in Greek literature, and the first instance of a plant name known only to the gods. Hermes also adds practical advice: draw the sword, and make her swear an oath. Odysseus' success at 10.318 and 10.326 confirms that the remedy works.", "claimed_effect": "immunity to Circe's transforming drug", "claimed_mechanism": "possession or ingestion of a counter-pharmakon; botanical identity given in 'the language of the gods'", "practitioner": "Hermes (god) gives it; Odysseus uses it", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "divinely sanctioned counter-magic; legitimate because it is defensive and given by a god", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-3", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Odyssey", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 725–675 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "10.391–10.395", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Od. 10.388–396", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ἡ δὲ διʼ αὐτῶν ἐρχομένη προσάλειφεν ἑκάστῳ φάρμακον ἄλλο. τῶν δʼ ἐκ μὲν μελέων τρίχες ἔρρεον, ἃς πρὶν ἔφυσε φάρμακον οὐλόμενον, τό σφιν πόρε πότνια Κίρκη· ἄνδρες δʼ ἂψ ἐγένοντο νεώτεροι ἢ πάρος ἦσαν", "translation": "Going among them, she anointed each with another drug. From their limbs the bristles fell away, which the ruinous drug Lady Circe had given them had made grow; and they became men again, younger than they had been before.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The reversal is done by a second drug applied as an ointment, together with the wand (10.389). The restored men are younger, taller and handsomer, so the same art that degrades can also rejuvenate. Homer treats pharmaka as morally neutral substances whose use determines their quality.", "claimed_effect": "retransformation and rejuvenation", "claimed_mechanism": "topical ointment (prosaleiphen) plus wand", "practitioner": "Circe", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "done under oath after Odysseus forces her compliance", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-4", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Odyssey", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic); drug knowledge credited to Egypt", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 725–675 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.220–4.230", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Od. 4.219–232", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "αὐτίκʼ ἄρʼ εἰς οἶνον βάλε φάρμακον, ἔνθεν ἔπινον, νηπενθές τʼ ἄχολόν τε, κακῶν ἐπίληθον ἁπάντων. … Αἰγυπτίη, τῇ πλεῖστα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα φάρμακα, πολλὰ μὲν ἐσθλὰ μεμιγμένα πολλὰ δὲ λυγρά·", "translation": "At once she cast into the wine they were drinking a drug that banished grief and anger and brought forgetfulness of every ill. … [given by Polydamna] the Egyptian, whose grain-giving land bears the most drugs, many good when mixed and many baneful.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Helen puts nepenthes into the wine. Whoever drinks it would not weep for a day even if his mother, father, brother or son died before his eyes (4.222–226). The drug was a gift from Polydamna, wife of Thon, in Egypt, where 'every man is a physician, of the race of Paieon' (4.231–232). This is the earliest Greek statement that Egypt is the land of drugs, and it fuses medicine (iētros) with mind-altering potions. The context is entirely positive: a hostess's 'cunning, good drugs' (pharmaka mētioenta, esthla) at a feast.", "claimed_effect": "a day's freedom from grief and anger", "claimed_mechanism": "psychoactive drug dissolved in wine", "practitioner": "Helen (daughter of Zeus), taught by Polydamna of Egypt", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "aristocratic hospitality at Sparta; foreign (Egyptian) expertise valued, not suspected", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-5", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Odyssey", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 725–675 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "10.517–10.520", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Od. 10.508–540", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "βόθρον ὀρύξαι, ὅσον τε πυγούσιον ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα, ἀμφʼ αὐτῷ δὲ χοὴν χεῖσθαι πᾶσιν νεκύεσσιν, πρῶτα μελικρήτῳ, μετέπειτα δὲ ἡδέι οἴνῳ, τὸ τρίτον αὖθʼ ὕδατι· ἐπὶ δʼ ἄλφιτα λευκὰ παλύνειν.", "translation": "…dig a pit a cubit each way, and pour around it a libation to all the dead: first honey-milk, then sweet wine, third water; and sprinkle white barley over it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Circe dictates a full necromantic procedure. It is given at a fixed place where Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus flow into Acheron. The steps are: dig a pit, make a triple libation and barley, vow a barren cow and a black ram for Teiresias, sacrifice a ram and a black ewe 'turned toward Erebus' with the face turned away, burn the victims with prayers to Hades and Persephone, and guard the blood with a sword until Teiresias has drunk. This is the most detailed ritual recipe in early Greek poetry. It is put in the form of instructions, a precept genre embedded in the narrative.", "claimed_effect": "summoning of the dead to consult the seer Teiresias", "claimed_mechanism": "offerings to the dead and chthonic gods; blood as the medium that lets the shades approach and speak", "practitioner": "Circe instructs; Odysseus performs", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "not presented as illicit; a heroic consultation framed as ordinary chthonic sacrifice", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-6", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Odyssey", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 725–675 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "11.35–11.37; 11.147–11.148", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Od. 11.23–50, 95–99, 145–149", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "τὰ δὲ μῆλα λαβὼν ἀπεδειροτόμησα ἐς βόθρον, ῥέε δʼ αἷμα κελαινεφές· αἱ δʼ ἀγέροντο ψυχαὶ ὑπὲξ Ἐρέβευς νεκύων κατατεθνηώτων. … ὅν τινα μέν κεν ἐᾷς νεκύων κατατεθνηώτων αἵματος ἆσσον ἴμεν, ὁ δέ τοι νημερτὲς ἐνίψει·", "translation": "I took the sheep and cut their throats over the pit, and the dark blood flowed; and the souls of the dead gathered up out of Erebus. … 'Whichever of the dead you let come near the blood will tell you the truth.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The rite works: the psychai crowd round 'with a wondrous cry' and Odysseus is seized by 'pale fear' (11.43). Teiresias asks to drink so that he may 'speak unerring things' (11.95–96), and explains the rule that drinking the blood gives the dead truthful speech. Blood restores enough life for communication. This is the classic Greek theory of necromancy: the shades are witless (amenēna karēna) until revived by blood.", "claimed_effect": "conversation with the dead; true prophecy from Teiresias", "claimed_mechanism": "the dead drink sacrificial blood and so regain mind and voice", "practitioner": "Odysseus with Perimedes and Eurylochus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "heroic, divinely advised consultation at the edge of the world", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-7", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Odyssey", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 725–675 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "19.456–19.458", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Od. 19.455–458", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ὠτειλὴν δʼ Ὀδυσῆος ἀμύμονος ἀντιθέοιο δῆσαν ἐπισταμένως, ἐπαοιδῇ δʼ αἷμα κελαινὸν ἔσχεθον, αἶψα δʼ ἵκοντο φίλου πρὸς δώματα πατρός.", "translation": "The wound of noble godlike Odysseus they bound up skilfully, and with an incantation they stanched the dark blood, and quickly came back to their dear father's house.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After the boar hunt on Parnassus, Autolycus' sons bind the young Odysseus' wound 'knowingly' and stop the bleeding with an epaoidē. It is the only use of epaoidē in Homer, and the earliest attested Greek healing charm. Skilled bandaging and sung charm are placed side by side as parts of one competent treatment. The healers are the sons of Autolycus, grandson of Hermes and a master of trickery and oaths (19.395–396).", "claimed_effect": "haemostasis (stopping bleeding)", "claimed_mechanism": "bandaging plus a sung incantation", "practitioner": "the sons of Autolycus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "household or kin medicine in a hunting party; wholly respectable", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-8", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Iliad", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 750–700 BCE", "date_sort": -725, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "14.214–14.217", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Il. 14.214–221", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ἦ, καὶ ἀπὸ στήθεσφιν ἐλύσατο κεστὸν ἱμάντα ποικίλον, ἔνθα δέ οἱ θελκτήρια πάντα τέτυκτο· ἔνθʼ ἔνι μὲν φιλότης, ἐν δʼ ἵμερος, ἐν δʼ ὀαριστὺς πάρφασις, ἥ τʼ ἔκλεψε νόον πύκα περ φρονεόντων.", "translation": "She spoke, and loosed from her breast the embroidered pierced strap, in which all her enchantments were fashioned: in it was love-making, in it desire, in it whispered intimacy, persuasion that steals the wits even of the shrewd.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Aphrodite lends Hera her kestos himas, a decorated band containing all thelktēria (charms of enchantment). It is worn in the bosom, and Hera is promised she will not return without achieving what she desires. It is the archetype of the erotic charm-object or amulet. The 'charms' are personified emotions (philotēs, himeros, oaristus, parphasis), so the boundary between psychological seduction and magic is blurred from the start.", "claimed_effect": "irresistible sexual allure that deceives even the wise", "claimed_mechanism": "a worn object 'containing' erotic powers", "practitioner": "Aphrodite lends it; Hera uses it on Zeus", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "divine trickery (the Dios apatē); comic-epic tone", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-9", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Iliad", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 750–700 BCE", "date_sort": -725, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "11.740–11.741", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Il. 11.740–741", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "πρεσβυτάτην δὲ θύγατρʼ εἶχε ξανθὴν Ἀγαμήδην, ἣ τόσα φάρμακα ᾔδη ὅσα τρέφει εὐρεῖα χθών.", "translation": "…he had to wife the eldest daughter, fair-haired Agamede, who knew all the drugs that the broad earth nourishes.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Nestor recalls Agamede, daughter of Augeas: a mortal woman defined by her knowledge of all earth-grown pharmaka. She is the first named human 'wise woman' of drugs, mentioned without censure. Later tradition (Theocr. 2.16 'blonde Perimede') seems to echo her as a byword for a sorceress.", "claimed_effect": "comprehensive knowledge of plant drugs", "claimed_mechanism": "botanical expertise", "practitioner": "Agamede, daughter of Augeas", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "elite woman in Elis; praised", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-10", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Iliad", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 750–700 BCE", "date_sort": -725, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.217–4.219", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Il. 4.217–219", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ ἴδεν ἕλκος ὅθʼ ἔμπεσε πικρὸς ὀϊστός, αἷμʼ ἐκμυζήσας ἐπʼ ἄρʼ ἤπια φάρμακα εἰδὼς πάσσε, τά οἵ ποτε πατρὶ φίλα φρονέων πόρε Χείρων.", "translation": "When he saw the wound where the bitter arrow had struck, he sucked out the blood and skilfully sprinkled soothing drugs on it, which Chiron in friendship once gave to his father.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Machaon, son of Asclepius, treats Menelaus: he sucks the wound and sprinkles 'gentle drugs' handed down from the centaur Chiron. It is a purely practical military medicine with no incantation, a useful control case beside Od. 19.457. Battlefield medicine in the Iliad is pharmaka plus manual skill.", "claimed_effect": "healing an arrow wound", "claimed_mechanism": "suction and topical drugs", "practitioner": "Machaon, physician-son of Asclepius", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "military surgeon; a lineage of transmitted drug-lore (Chiron to Asclepius to Machaon)", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-11", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Odyssey", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 725–675 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.261–1.263", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Od. 1.259–264; cf. 2.328–329", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "φάρμακον ἀνδροφόνον διζήμενος, ὄφρα οἱ εἴη ἰοὺς χρίεσθαι χαλκήρεας· ἀλλʼ ὁ μὲν οὔ οἱ δῶκεν, ἐπεί ῥα θεοὺς νεμεσίζετο αἰὲν ἐόντας,", "translation": "…seeking a man-slaying drug, to smear on his bronze-tipped arrows; but [Ilus] would not give it, for he feared the indignation of the gods who live forever.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Odysseus sails to Ephyra to get arrow poison from Ilus son of Mermerus. Ilus refuses out of fear of divine nemesis, but Mentes' father gives it. This is the earliest Greek statement of a moral or religious limit on the use of pharmaka: poisoning is something the gods resent. At 2.328–329 the suitors fear Telemachus will fetch 'life-destroying drugs' from Ephyra to put in their wine-bowl. Ephyra is thus a byword for poison.", "claimed_effect": "lethal arrow poison", "claimed_mechanism": "toxic substance applied to arrowheads", "practitioner": "Ilus son of Mermerus (supplier); Odysseus (seeker)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "religious scruple (nemesis), not law, restrains the trade; a real practice (arrow poisons) treated as morally fraught", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-12", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Odyssey", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 725–675 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "24.1–24.4", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Od. 24.1–5; Il. 24.343–344", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἑρμῆς δὲ ψυχὰς Κυλλήνιος ἐξεκαλεῖτο ἀνδρῶν μνηστήρων· ἔχε δὲ ῥάβδον μετὰ χερσὶν καλὴν χρυσείην, τῇ τʼ ἀνδρῶν ὄμματα θέλγει ὧν ἐθέλει, τοὺς δʼ αὖτε καὶ ὑπνώοντας ἐγείρει·", "translation": "Cyllenian Hermes called forth the souls of the suitors; he held in his hands his beautiful golden wand, with which he enchants the eyes of whatever men he wishes, and wakes others again from sleep.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hermes' rhabdos 'enchants' (thelgei) eyes into sleep and wakes sleepers; with it he summons and drives the souls of the dead, which follow 'squeaking like bats'. The same formula appears at Il. 24.343–344. Together with Circe's wand this sets the wand as the instrument of thelxis. Cf. Hymn. Herm. 529–532, where Apollo gives Hermes the golden three-leaved rhabdos of wealth.", "claimed_effect": "inducing sleep or waking; leading souls to Hades", "claimed_mechanism": "touch or gesture of a golden wand", "practitioner": "Hermes Psychopompos", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "divine office; no moral taint", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-13", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Odyssey", "author": "Homer", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Ionian epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 725–675 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "20.355–20.357", "conventional_ref": "Hom. Od. 20.351–357", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "εἰδώλων δὲ πλέον πρόθυρον, πλείη δὲ καὶ αὐλή, ἱεμένων Ἔρεβόσδε ὑπὸ ζόφον· ἠέλιος δὲ οὐρανοῦ ἐξαπόλωλε, κακὴ δʼ ἐπιδέδρομεν ἀχλύς.", "translation": "The porch is full of phantoms, and the court is full, hastening down to Erebus into the gloom; the sun has perished out of heaven, and an evil mist has spread over all.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The seer Theoclymenus, of the Melampodid line, has a waking vision of the suitors' doom: walls dripping blood, ghosts, and the sun blotted out. The suitors laugh at him as mad. This is inspired second sight (not technical divination) inside epic narrative. Some modern scholars read 'the sun has perished' as an eclipse memory; the reading is disputed.", "claimed_effect": "foreseeing the slaughter of the suitors", "claimed_mechanism": "divinely sent vision", "practitioner": "Theoclymenus, a mantis", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "the seer is a suppliant-guest; the scoffers die", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-14", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter", "author": "Homeric Hymns", "culture": "Greek (Archaic, Attic/Eleusinian)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 650–550 BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0013.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "227–230", "conventional_ref": "Hymn. Hom. Dem. 227–230", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "θρέψω κοὔ μιν, ἔολπα, κακοφραδίῃσι τιθήνης οὔτʼ ἄρʼ ἐπηλυσίη δηλήσεται οὔθʼ ὑποτάμνον· οἶδα γὰρ ἀντίτομον μέγα φέρτερον ὑλοτόμοιο, οἶδα δʼ ἐπηλυσίης πολυπήμονος ἐσθλὸν ἐρυσμόν.", "translation": "I will nurse him, and I trust no attack (epēlysiē) shall harm him through his nurse's carelessness, nor the Undercutter; for I know a counter-cut far stronger than the wood-cutter, and I know a good safeguard against the harmful attack.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Demeter, disguised as an old nurse, promises to protect the baby Demophon. The language is riddling, probably euphemistic folk-terms. Epēlysiē is an 'onset' or attack, probably witchcraft or the evil eye. Hypotamnon and hylotomos ('undercutter', 'wood-cutter') probably mean teething pain or a gnawing worm, or a root-cutter's harmful herb. Antitomon is a 'counter-cut', i.e. an antidote, and erysmos a 'safeguard', i.e. an amulet. The meanings are disputed. Even so, it is the earliest Greek evidence for nursery charms against ill-wishing.", "claimed_effect": "protection of an infant from witchcraft and teething or gnawing harm", "claimed_mechanism": "counter-remedy and protective safeguard (unspecified: herb or amulet)", "practitioner": "Demeter disguised as the nurse Doso", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "the household nurse as keeper of protective lore; carelessness of nurses is blamed for infant harm", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-15", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter", "author": "Homeric Hymns", "culture": "Greek (Archaic, Eleusinian)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 650–550 BCE", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "tlg0013.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "237–242", "conventional_ref": "Hymn. Hom. Dem. 231–255", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "χρίεσκʼ ἀμβροσίῃ ὡσεὶ θεοῦ ἐκγεγαῶτα ἡδὺ καταπνείουσα καὶ ἐν κόλποισιν ἔχουσα· νύκτας δὲ κρύπτεσκε πυρὸς μένει ἠύτε δαλὸν λάθρα φίλων γονέων·", "translation": "By day she anointed him with ambrosia as if he were born of a god, breathing sweetly on him and holding him in her bosom; and by night she hid him in the fire's force like a brand, unknown to his dear parents.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Demeter tries to immortalise Demophon by anointing him with ambrosia, breathing on him, and burying him in the fire at night. The mother Metaneira spies on her and screams, and the rite is broken. The goddess angrily declares human folly. It is a divine rite of transformation (making 'ageless and deathless', 242) that fails through human interruption, an aetiology for the Eleusinian promise.", "claimed_effect": "immortality and agelessness for a mortal child", "claimed_mechanism": "ambrosial anointing, divine breath and purifying fire, performed secretly", "practitioner": "Demeter", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "the secret rite fails when seen: secrecy as a condition of efficacy", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-16", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes", "author": "Homeric Hymns", "culture": "Greek (Archaic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 520–480 BCE (disputed)", "date_sort": -520, "edition_urn": "tlg0013.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "560–563", "conventional_ref": "Hymn. Hom. Merc. 550–566", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "αἳ δʼ ὅτε μὲν θυΐωσιν ἐδηδυῖαι μέλι χλωρόν, προφρονέως ἐθέλουσιν ἀληθείην ἀγορεύειν· ἢν δʼ ἀπονοσφισθῶσι θεῶν ἡδεῖαν ἐδωδήν, ψεύδονται δὴ ἔπειτα διʼ ἀλλήλων δονέουσαι.", "translation": "When they have eaten golden honey and are in a frenzy, they are willing to speak the truth; but if they are deprived of the gods' sweet food, then they lie, swarming in and out among one another.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Apollo gives Hermes the three bee-maidens (the 'Thriai', unnamed here) under Parnassus, teachers of a 'divination apart' that Apollo practised as a boy. They prophesy truly only after eating honey, in a state of frenzy (thuiōsin). Apollo keeps the high oracle of Zeus's will for himself (533–549). This is a hierarchy of divination: inspired Delphic oracle above, minor bee or honey divination below, open to deceit.", "claimed_effect": "true prophecy", "claimed_mechanism": "ecstatic state induced by eating honey", "practitioner": "three winged maiden sisters on Parnassus", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "lower-status divination handed to Hermes; Apollo reserves oracular truth about Zeus's plans", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-17", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Theogony", "author": "Hesiod", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Boeotian)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 700 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "tlg0020.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "416–420", "conventional_ref": "Hes. Theog. 411–452", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "καὶ γὰρ νῦν, ὅτε πού τις ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων ἔρδων ἱερὰ καλὰ κατὰ νόμον ἱλάσκηται, κικλῄσκει Ἑκάτην. πολλή τέ οἱ ἕσπετο τιμὴ ῥεῖα μάλʼ, ᾧ πρόφρων γε θεὰ ὑποδέξεται εὐχάς,", "translation": "For even now, whenever any man on earth, performing fine sacrifices according to custom, seeks propitiation, he calls on Hecate; and great honour readily follows him whose prayers the goddess receives with favour…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This lead needed correcting. Hesiod's 'Hymn to Hecate' has no magic at all. Hecate is a universal benefactress: she grants prosperity, victory in war and games, success to horsemen and fishermen, increase of flocks, and is 'nurse of the young' (kourotrophos, 450–452). The link between Hecate and sorcery, crossroads, dogs and the dead is a classical and Hellenistic development (see Eur. Med. 395–397, Theocr. 2.12–14, Ap. Rhod. 3.529, 3.1035, 3.1211). Hesiod's Hecate is approached 'kata nomon', by ordinary sacrifice.", "claimed_effect": "prosperity, victory, abundant catch and flocks", "claimed_mechanism": "customary sacrifice and prayer", "practitioner": "any worshipper", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "civic religion; no hint of illicit practice", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-18", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Works and Days", "author": "Hesiod", "culture": "Greek (Archaic Boeotian)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 700 BCE", "date_sort": -690, "edition_urn": "tlg0020.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "727–730; 826–828", "conventional_ref": "Hes. Op. 724–759, 765–828", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "μηδʼ ἄντʼ ἠελίου τετραμμένος ὀρθὸς ὀμιχεῖν· … τάων εὐδαίμων τε καὶ ὄλβιος, ὃς τάδε πάντα εἰδὼς ἐργάζηται ἀναίτιος ἀθανάτοισιν, ὄρνιθας κρίνων καὶ ὑπερβασίας ἀλεείνων.", "translation": "Do not make water standing upright facing the sun… Happy and blessed is he who knows all these things and works blameless before the immortals, judging the birds and avoiding transgressions.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "These are farmer's taboos (bodily functions, nail-paring, bathing), a calendar of lucky and unlucky days, and an exhortation to read bird omens. This is everyday 'religious-magical' prudence: not sorcery but a system of correspondences in which right timing and avoidance protect against unseen harm. It is useful as a baseline of ordinary Greek practice against which illicit magic is defined.", "claimed_effect": "avoiding divine anger and misfortune; success in work", "claimed_mechanism": "observance of taboos, auspicious days, augury", "practitioner": "the ordinary farmer", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "traditional peasant wisdom; 'few know' the true days (824)", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-19", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Epigrams (Kaminos)", "author": "Homer (pseudo-Homeric)", "culture": "Greek (Archaic or Classical, craftsmen's culture)", "language": "grc", "date": "6th–5th c. BCE? (uncertain; transmitted in the Herodotean Life of Homer)", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "tlg0012.tlg003.perseus-grc1", "ref": "14.7–14.16", "conventional_ref": "[Hom.] Epigr. 14 (Kaminos or Keramis) 7–16", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "ἢν δ’ ἐπ’ ἀναιδείην τρεφθέντες ψεύδε’ ἄρησθε, συγκαλέω δὴ ἔπειτα καμίνων δηλητῆρας, Σύντριβ’ ὁμῶς Σμάραγόν τε καὶ Ἄσβετον ἠδὲ Σαβάκτην … δεῦρο καὶ Ἠελίου θύγατερ, πολυφάρμακε Κίρκη, ἄγρια φάρμακα βάλλε,", "translation": "But if you turn shameless and tell lies, then I summon the destroyers of kilns: Smasher and Crasher and Unquenchable and Shatterer… Come too, daughter of Helios, Circe of many drugs, cast your wild drugs…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The singer asks payment from potters. If they pay, Athena will bless the kiln; if they cheat, he calls up named kiln-demons (Syntrips, Smaragos, Asbetos, Sabaktes, Omodamos), Circe with her drugs, and Chiron's centaurs to wreck the firing. Anyone who peers in is to have his face scorched. This is a performative curse in hexameters, close in form to real binding curses (named daimones, conditional threat) and set in an artisan workshop. It is a rare glimpse of everyday economic magic.", "claimed_effect": "ruin of the potters' firing if they refuse payment", "claimed_mechanism": "invocation of named kiln-demons, Circe's drugs and centaurs", "practitioner": "an itinerant singer ('Homer')", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "a beggar-poet's leverage over tradesmen; magic as a threat of extortion", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-20", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Pythian Odes", "author": "Pindar", "culture": "Greek (Classical, Theban)", "language": "grc", "date": "462 BCE", "date_sort": -462, "edition_urn": "tlg0033.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.214–4.219", "conventional_ref": "Pind. Pyth. 4.213–223", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "ποικίλαν ἴϋγγα τετράκναμον Οὐλυμπόθεν ἐν ἀλύτῳ ζεύξαισα κύκλῳ μαινάδʼ ὄρνιν Κυπρογένεια φέρεν πρῶτον ἀνθρώποισι, λιτάς τʼ ἐπαοιδὰς ἐκδιδάσκησεν σοφὸν Αἰσονίδαν·", "translation": "The Cyprus-born, binding the dappled wryneck, the maddening bird, four-spoked to an unbreakable wheel, brought it from Olympus first to mankind, and taught the son of Aeson suppliant incantations…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Aphrodite invents the iynx wheel (a wryneck bound to a four-spoked wheel) and gives it to men for the first time. She teaches Jason prayer-incantations (litas epaoidas) so that Medea loses respect for her parents and burns for Greece 'under the whip of Persuasion'. Medea then gives Jason an oil-based antidote to harsh pains (4.221–222) against the fire-breathing bulls, and fire 'did not harm him by the commands of the all-drugging stranger-woman' (4.233). Here the man uses love-magic on the future witch: the gender roles are inverted relative to later tradition, and magic is a divine gift.", "claimed_effect": "erotic compulsion; immunity to fire", "claimed_mechanism": "spinning iynx wheel with bound bird; sung prayers; protective drugged oil", "practitioner": "Aphrodite (inventor); Jason (user); Medea (drug-giver)", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "epinician myth for Arcesilas of Cyrene; magic as heroic aid sanctioned by gods", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-21", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Pythian Odes", "author": "Pindar", "culture": "Greek (Classical)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 474 BCE (P. 3, date disputed)", "date_sort": -474, "edition_urn": "tlg0033.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.51–3.53", "conventional_ref": "Pind. Pyth. 3.47–58", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔξαγεν, τοὺς μὲν μαλακαῖς ἐπαοιδαῖς ἀμφέπων, τοὺς δὲ προσανέα πίνοντας, ἢ γυίοις περάπτων πάντοθεν φάρμακα, τοὺς δὲ τομαῖς ἔστασεν ὀρθούς.", "translation": "…he released them, tending some with gentle incantations, others by giving soothing potions, or by binding drugs all round their limbs; and others he set upright by surgery.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Asclepius' therapeutic repertoire has four parts: gentle epaoidai, drinks, amulets or applications 'fastened around the limbs' (perapton), and surgery (tomai). Incantation stands as a normal branch of the healer's art beside drugs and the knife. Pindar then moralises: 'even wisdom is bound by gain'. Bribed with gold, Asclepius raised a dead man, and Zeus struck both with the thunderbolt (54–58). Resurrection is the forbidden limit of healing.", "claimed_effect": "cure of ulcers, wounds, fevers and chills; (forbidden) resurrection", "claimed_mechanism": "incantation, potion, amulet or bound drug, surgery", "practitioner": "Asclepius", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "medicine legitimate; raising the dead for pay is hybris punished by Zeus", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-22", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Olympian Odes", "author": "Pindar", "culture": "Greek (Classical, Corinthian myth)", "language": "grc", "date": "464 BCE", "date_sort": -464, "edition_urn": "tlg0033.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "13.65–13.68; 13.85", "conventional_ref": "Pind. Ol. 13.63–86", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "πρίν γέ οἱ χρυσάμπυκα κούρα χαλινὸν Παλλὰς ἤνεγκʼ· ἐξ ὀνείρου δʼ αὐτίκα ἦν ὕπαρ· φώνασε δʼ· εὕδεις, Αἰολίδα βασιλεῦ; ἄγε φίλτρον τόδʼ ἵππειον δέκευ, … φάρμακον πραῢ τείνων ἀμφὶ γένυι,", "translation": "…until the maiden Pallas brought him the gold-fronted bridle; at once the dream became waking reality. She said: 'Are you sleeping, Aeolid king? Come, take this horse-charm…' … stretching the gentle drug about its jaw…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Bellerophon sleeps on Athena's altar on a seer's advice (incubation, 13.74–76) and wakes holding a golden bridle, which Athena calls a 'horse-philtron'. Pindar calls the bit a 'gentle pharmakon' about Pegasus' jaw. A technical invention (the bit or bridle) is described in the vocabulary of love-charm and drug. The episode joins dream-incubation, a seer's interpretation and the 'magic' of technology.", "claimed_effect": "taming the winged horse", "claimed_mechanism": "divinely given bridle; dream-oracle at an altar", "practitioner": "Athena; Bellerophon; the seer Polyidus son of Coeranus", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "civic myth of Corinth; incubation as legitimate consultation", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-23", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Persians", "author": "Aeschylus", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy) depicting Persians", "language": "grc", "date": "472 BCE", "date_sort": -472, "edition_urn": "tlg0085.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "609–610; 619–621", "conventional_ref": "Aesch. Pers. 607–680", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "παιδὸς πατρὶ πρευμενεῖς χοὰς φέρουσʼ, ἅπερ νεκροῖσι μειλικτήρια, … ἀλλʼ, ὦ φίλοι, χοαῖσι ταῖσδε νερτέρων ὕμνους ἐπευφημεῖτε, τόν τε δαίμονα Δαρεῖον ἀνακαλεῖσθε,", "translation": "…bringing to my son's father kindly libations, such as soothe the dead… Come, friends, over these libations to those below sing hymns of good omen, and call up the spirit Darius…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Atossa brings milk, honey, spring water, unmixed wine, olive oil and flowers as 'appeasements of the dead'. The chorus of elders sings an invocation (623–680) calling Earth, Hermes and Hades to send up Darius. They worry whether he hears their 'barbarian, unclear' cries (stored at 1.633–1.639: 'βάρβαρʼ ἀσαφηνῆ'). It is a Greek dramatist's staging of a Persian necromancy: a tomb rite of libation plus song.", "claimed_effect": "raising the ghost of King Darius for counsel", "claimed_mechanism": "libations to the dead and chthonic gods; invocatory hymns and laments at the tomb", "practitioner": "the queen mother Atossa and the Persian elders", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "royal ancestor cult; presented sympathetically, with an exotic 'barbarian' tone", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-24", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Persians", "author": "Aeschylus", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "472 BCE", "date_sort": -472, "edition_urn": "tlg0085.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "686–690", "conventional_ref": "Aesch. Pers. 681–693", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "ὑμεῖς δὲ θρηνεῖτʼ ἐγγὺς ἑστῶτες τάφου καὶ ψυχαγωγοῖς ὀρθιάζοντες γόοις οἰκτρῶς καλεῖσθέ μʼ· ἐστὶ δʼ οὐκ εὐέξοδον, ἄλλως τε πάντως χοἰ κατὰ χθονὸς θεοὶ λαβεῖν ἀμείνους εἰσὶν ἢ μεθιέναι.", "translation": "You stand near the tomb lamenting and, shrilling soul-leading laments, call me piteously; but the way out is not easy, especially since the gods below are better at taking than letting go.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The ghost of Darius appears and confirms that the rite worked: he received the libations and was summoned by psychagogoi gooi, 'soul-drawing laments'. This is the first poetic use of the psychagog- root in its necromantic sense, and it links goos (lament) with the act of drawing up the dead, the root from which the word goēs was later linked. Darius came only because he holds power among the dead (691).", "claimed_effect": "the dead king appears and gives prophecy (Plataea, 800–842)", "claimed_mechanism": "lamentation (goos) and libations draw the soul up", "practitioner": "the Persian elders", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "dramatic fiction; necromancy portrayed as a solemn rite of foreign royalty", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-25", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Eumenides", "author": "Aeschylus", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "458 BCE", "date_sort": -458, "edition_urn": "tlg0085.tlg007.perseus-grc2", "ref": "306; 1.328–1.333", "conventional_ref": "Aesch. Eum. 306–396 (esp. 328–333 = 341–346)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "ὕμνον δʼ ἀκούσῃ τόνδε δέσμιον σέθεν. … ἐπὶ δὲ τῷ τεθυμένῳ τόδε μέλος, παρακοπά, παραφορὰ φρενοδαλής, ὕμνος ἐξ Ἐρινύων, δέσμιος φρενῶν, ἀφόρμικτος, αὐονὰ βροτοῖς.", "translation": "You shall hear this hymn that binds you. … Over the victim, this song: derangement, frenzy that destroys the mind, the hymn of the Erinyes, binder of wits, lyreless, withering for mortals.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Furies dance a circle around Orestes and sing the 'binding song' (hymnos desmios). Its refrain names its effects: madness, mind-binding, wasting. The song mirrors the form of a defixio (binding curse): repetitive, choral, aimed at a named victim's phrenes. The play ends with Athena 'charming' them with persuasion (thelktērion, 2.886), a civic counter-spell. The refrain is repeated at 1.345.", "claimed_effect": "madness and wasting of the victim", "claimed_mechanism": "choral circle-dance and binding song over a victim", "practitioner": "the Erinyes (chthonic goddesses)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "blood-guilt pursuit, replaced by the Areopagus court; magic-like vengeance yields to law and persuasion", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-26", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Eumenides", "author": "Aeschylus", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "458 BCE", "date_sort": -458, "edition_urn": "tlg0085.tlg007.perseus-grc2", "ref": "647–649", "conventional_ref": "Aesch. Eum. 645–651", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀνδρὸς δʼ ἐπειδὰν αἷμʼ ἀνασπάσῃ κόνις ἅπαξ θανόντος, οὔτις ἔστʼ ἀνάστασις. τούτων ἐπῳδὰς οὐκ ἐποίησεν πατὴρ οὑμός,", "translation": "But once the dust has drunk up a man's blood, once he is dead, there is no resurrection. For this my father made no charms…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Furies argue that Zeus could undo fetters ('there is a remedy, many a means of release'), but made no epōdai against death. This is a theological statement of the limits of charms: binding can be loosed, death cannot. It parallels Pind. Pyth. 3.54–58 and Eur. Alc. 962–971.", "claimed_effect": "none: denial that any charm can reverse death", "claimed_mechanism": "epōdai can release bonds but not death", "practitioner": "Zeus (as the hypothetical author of charms)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "argument in the trial of Orestes", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-27", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Agamemnon", "author": "Aeschylus", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "458 BCE", "date_sort": -458, "edition_urn": "tlg0085.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.1415–1.1418", "conventional_ref": "Aesch. Ag. 1415–1418", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "ὃς οὐ προτιμῶν, ὡσπερεὶ βοτοῦ μόρον, μήλων φλεόντων εὐπόκοις νομεύμασιν, ἔθυσεν αὑτοῦ παῖδα, φιλτάτην ἐμοὶ ὠδῖνʼ, ἐπῳδὸν Θρῃκίων ἀημάτων.", "translation": "…he, caring no more than for the death of a beast from his teeming fleecy flocks, sacrificed his own child, my dearest birth-pang, as a charm against the Thracian winds.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Clytemnestra calls Iphigenia's sacrifice an epōdos ('charm, spell') against the Thracian winds that held the fleet at Aulis. The vocabulary of incantation is applied to a public sacrifice for weather control, collapsing the line between sacrifice and magic. Cf. Eur. Hec. 535–539, Neoptolemus' blood offering to Achilles to release the ships' cables.", "claimed_effect": "calming contrary winds", "claimed_mechanism": "human sacrifice understood as a spell", "practitioner": "Agamemnon (via the seer Calchas)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "military-religious necessity, condemned by Clytemnestra as pollution", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-28", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Agamemnon", "author": "Aeschylus", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "458 BCE", "date_sort": -458, "edition_urn": "tlg0085.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1273–1275", "conventional_ref": "Aesch. Ag. 1269–1276", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "καλουμένη δὲ φοιτὰς ὡς ἀγύρτρια πτωχὸς τάλαινα λιμοθνὴς ἠνεσχόμην— καὶ νῦν ὁ μάντις μάντιν ἐκπράξας ἐμὲ", "translation": "…called a vagrant, like a begging priestess, a wretched starving pauper, I endured it; and now the seer-god, having finished with me, his seer…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Cassandra recalls being mocked as an agyrtria, a wandering mendicant diviner or begging priestess. Even a genuinely god-inspired prophetess could be assimilated to the despised itinerant religious specialist. This is evidence for the low social standing of freelance diviners in classical Athens.", "claimed_effect": "true prophecy (disbelieved)", "claimed_mechanism": "Apollonian inspiration", "practitioner": "Cassandra", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "the stigma of the itinerant agyrtēs or agyrtria", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-29", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Prometheus Bound", "author": "Aeschylus (authorship disputed)", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 460–430 BCE (disputed)", "date_sort": -450, "edition_urn": "tlg0085.tlg003.perseus-grc2", "ref": "484–487", "conventional_ref": "[Aesch.] PV 476–499", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "τρόπους τε πολλοὺς μαντικῆς ἐστοίχισα, κἄκρινα πρῶτος ἐξ ὀνειράτων ἃ χρὴ ὕπαρ γενέσθαι, κληδόνας τε δυσκρίτους ἐγνώρισʼ αὐτοῖς ἐνοδίους τε συμβόλους·", "translation": "I set in order the many ways of divination; I was the first to judge which dreams must come true in waking life, and I made known to them omens hard to interpret, and signs met on the road.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Prometheus lists his gifts to mankind: mixtures of soothing remedies for disease (478–483) and a taxonomy of divination. This includes dream interpretation, chance utterances (klēdones), wayside signs, bird-flight, entrails (liver lobe, gall-bladder colour) and burnt-offering signs. Medicine and divination are presented together as civilising technai, the opposite of illicit magic. It is the fullest early catalogue of Greek divinatory methods.", "claimed_effect": "healing of disease; foreknowledge", "claimed_mechanism": "drug mixtures; reading signs in dreams, birds, entrails, sacrificial fire", "practitioner": "Prometheus (culture-hero Titan)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "divination and medicine as legitimate technai of civilisation", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-30", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Trachiniae", "author": "Sophocles", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 450–430 BCE (uncertain)", "date_sort": -440, "edition_urn": "tlg0011.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "572–577", "conventional_ref": "Soph. Trach. 555–581", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐὰν γὰρ ἀμφίθρεπτον αἷμα τῶν ἐμῶν σφαγῶν ἐνέγκῃ χερσίν, ᾗ μελαγχόλους ἔβαψεν ἰοὺς θρέμμα Λερναίας ὕδρας, ἔσται φρενός σοι τοῦτο κηλητήριον τῆς Ἡρακλείας, ὥστε μήτινʼ εἰσιδὼν στέρξει γυναῖκα κεῖνος ἀντὶ σοῦ πλέον.", "translation": "If you take in your hands the clotted blood from my wound, where the Lernaean hydra's offspring dyed the arrows with black bile, this will be a charm for the heart of Heracles, so that he will never look at and love another woman more than you.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The dying centaur Nessus tells Deianira that his blood, mixed with the hydra-poison from Heracles' arrow, is a kēlētērion (love-charm). She keeps it in a bronze vessel for years and smears it on a robe for Heracles. It is in fact a deadly poison: the love-charm that kills, the classic Greek ambiguity of philtron and poison. The 'charm' comes from a hostile enemy and its true nature is the hydra's venom.", "claimed_effect": "(claimed) exclusive love; (actual) agonising death", "claimed_mechanism": "blood and venom smeared on a garment, activated by heat", "practitioner": "Deianira (user), Nessus (deceitful source)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "wife's attempt to win back a husband from a concubine (Iole); mirrors real Athenian cases of 'philtra' that poisoned", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-31", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Trachiniae", "author": "Sophocles", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 450–430 BCE", "date_sort": -440, "edition_urn": "tlg0011.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "582–587", "conventional_ref": "Soph. Trach. 582–587", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "κακὰς δὲ τόλμας μήτʼ ἐπισταίμην ἐγὼ μήτʼ ἐκμάθοιμι, τάς τε τολμώσας στυγῶ· φίλτροις δʼ ἐάν πως τήνδʼ ὑπερβαλώμεθα τὴν παῖδα καὶ θέλκτροισι τοῖς ἐφʼ Ἡρακλεῖ,", "translation": "Wicked daring I hope I may never know or learn, and I hate the women who dare it; but if somehow, with love-charms and spells on Heracles, I can outdo this girl…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Deianira draws a moral line: she abhors 'wicked daring' (implicitly poisoning or harmful sorcery) but regards philtra and thelktra used to keep a husband as acceptable. This shows the emic distinction between harmful pharmaka and benign love-charms, and the danger that the user cannot tell them apart. The chorus approves if she has 'some ground for confidence' (588–589).", "claimed_effect": "winning back marital love", "claimed_mechanism": "philtra or thelktra", "practitioner": "Deianira", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "wives' use of love-charms tolerated; 'kakai tolmai' (harmful arts) despised", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-32", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Trachiniae", "author": "Sophocles", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 450–430 BCE", "date_sort": -440, "edition_urn": "tlg0011.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "695–702", "conventional_ref": "Soph. Trach. 672–706", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "τὸ γὰρ κάταγμα τυγχάνω ῥίψασά πως τῆς οἰός, ᾧ προύχριον, ἐς μέσην φλόγα, ἀκτῖνʼ ἐς ἡλιῶτιν· ὡς δʼ ἐθάλπετο, ῥεῖ πᾶν ἄδηλον καὶ κατέψηκται χθονί, … ἐκ δὲ γῆς, ὅθεν προύκειτʼ, ἀναζέουσι θρομβώδεις ἀφροί,", "translation": "For the tuft of sheep's wool I had used to anoint it I happened to throw into the full glare, into the sun's ray; and as it grew warm it all ran away to nothing and crumbled on the ground… and from the earth where it lay clotted foams boil up…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Deianira kept the drug 'away from fire and the warm sun's ray' as Nessus instructed (685–687). The wool tuft she used dissolves like sawdust in sunlight and leaves boiling, clotted foam. She realises the charm is a corrosive poison activated by heat. This is a remarkably 'empirical' observation of a substance reacting, staged as the moment of discovery.", "claimed_effect": "destruction of whatever the drug touches when warmed", "claimed_mechanism": "heat- or light-activated corrosive substance", "practitioner": "Deianira", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "private domestic preparation in secret (kryphē, 689)", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-33", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Oedipus Tyrannus", "author": "Sophocles", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 429 BCE", "date_sort": -429, "edition_urn": "tlg0011.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "387–389", "conventional_ref": "Soph. OT 387–389", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ὑφεὶς μάγον τοιόνδε μηχανορράφον, δόλιον ἀγύρτην, ὅστις ἐν τοῖς κέρδεσιν μόνον δέδορκε, τὴν τέχνην δʼ ἔφυ τυφλός.", "translation": "…having suborned this scheming magos, this crafty begging-priest, who has eyes only for profit but was born blind in his art.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Oedipus insults Teiresias as a magos, mēchanorraphos and agyrtēs, and accuses him of venal fraud. This is the earliest use of magos as a term of abuse in the poetry corpus, beside its plain ethnic sense (a Persian personal name 'Magos the Arab' in Aesch. Pers. 318). The irony is that the 'quack' tells the truth. The classical Athenian stereotype appears here: magos = mercenary charlatan diviner.", "claimed_effect": "(accusation) false prophecy for gain", "claimed_mechanism": "(accusation) fraud and conspiracy", "practitioner": "Teiresias (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "the polemical label magos/agyrtēs used to delegitimise a religious specialist", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-34", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Ajax", "author": "Sophocles", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 445 BCE (uncertain)", "date_sort": -445, "edition_urn": "tlg0011.tlg003.perseus-grc2", "ref": "581–582", "conventional_ref": "Soph. Aj. 581–582", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "πύκαζε θᾶσσον· οὐ πρὸς ἰατροῦ σοφοῦ θρηνεῖν ἐπῳδὰς πρὸς τομῶντι πήματι.", "translation": "Close it up quickly. It is not the mark of a wise doctor to wail incantations over a sore that calls for the knife.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ajax tells Tecmessa to shut the doors and stop lamenting. His proverb opposes the 'wise physician' who cuts to one who chants epōdai, and shows a classical sense that incantation is the wrong (or inferior) remedy for serious conditions. Compare the integrated repertoire in Pind. Pyth. 3.51–53: by the later 5th century, charm and surgery can be rhetorically opposed.", "claimed_effect": "none: rejection of charms for a 'cutting' problem", "claimed_mechanism": "contrast of epōdai and surgery", "practitioner": "(hypothetical physician)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "proverbial wisdom about medicine", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-35", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Medea", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy); Colchian heroine", "language": "grc", "date": "431 BCE", "date_sort": -431, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg003.perseus-grc2", "ref": "384–385; 395–397", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Med. 384–398", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "κράτιστα τὴν εὐθεῖαν, ᾗ πεφύκαμεν σοφαὶ μάλιστα, φαρμάκοις αὐτοὺς ἑλεῖν. … οὐ γὰρ μὰ τὴν δέσποιναν ἣν ἐγὼ σέβω μάλιστα πάντων καὶ ξυνεργὸν εἱλόμην, Ἑκάτην, μυχοῖς ναίουσαν ἑστίας ἐμῆς,", "translation": "Best is the direct way, in which we women are most skilled by nature: to take them with poisons. … No, by the mistress whom I revere above all and have chosen as my helper, Hecate, who dwells in the inmost recess of my hearth…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea chooses poison as 'the straight road' in which women are 'by nature most skilled'. She swears by Hecate, her chosen accomplice, enshrined at her hearth. Gender ideology (women = pharmaka) and a personal tie to Hecate first appear together here. Note that Medea's 'magic' in this play is effectively chemistry: poisoned gifts.", "claimed_effect": "killing her enemies", "claimed_mechanism": "poisons (pharmaka) with Hecate as divine patron", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "a foreign woman, exiled and divorced; poison as the weapon of the weak and female", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-36", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Medea", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "431 BCE", "date_sort": -431, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg003.perseus-grc2", "ref": "716–718", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Med. 714–718", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "εὕρημα δ’ οὐκ οἶσθ’ οἷον ηὕρηκας τόδε· παύσω δέ σ’ ὄντ’ ἄπαιδα καὶ παίδων γονὰς σπεῖραί σε θήσω· τοιάδ’ οἶδα φάρμακα.", "translation": "You do not know what a find you have found here: I will end your childlessness and make you sow the seed of children; such drugs I know.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea offers the childless Aegeus fertility drugs in exchange for asylum. The same woman who kills with pharmaka offers reproductive medicine. It shows the dual nature of a woman's drug-knowledge (fertility and contraception or abortion, cf. the accusation in Andromache) and its exchange value.", "claimed_effect": "curing male infertility", "claimed_mechanism": "drugs", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "bargain for asylum in Athens", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-37", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Medea", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "431 BCE", "date_sort": -431, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg003.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1186–1189; 1200–1201", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Med. 784–789, 1156–1221", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "χρυσοῦς μὲν ἀμφὶ κρατὶ κείμενος πλόκος θαυμαστὸν ἵει νᾶμα παμφάγου πυρός, πέπλοι δὲ λεπτοί, σῶν τέκνων δωρήματα, λεπτὴν ἔδαπτον σάρκα τῆς δυσδαίμονος. … σάρκες δ’ ἀπ’ ὀστέων ὥστε πεύκινον δάκρυ γναθμοῖς ἀδήλοις φαρμάκων ἀπέρρεον,", "translation": "The golden circlet on her head sent forth a wondrous stream of all-devouring fire, and the fine robes, your children's gifts, ate into the poor girl's tender flesh… her flesh fell from her bones like resin from a pine, under the unseen jaws of the drugs.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The messenger describes the effect of the robe and crown Medea had 'anointed with drugs' (789): spontaneous fire that grows when shaken, flesh dissolving, and death for Creon who embraces her. The robe-and-crown fire is presented as the action of pharmaka, not of spoken magic. Ancient and modern readers have compared it to naphtha or other incendiary substances.", "claimed_effect": "self-igniting garments that burn and dissolve the wearer", "claimed_mechanism": "drugs smeared on the gifts; triggered by wearing or contact", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "murder of the Corinthian princess and king", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-38", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Hippolytus", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "428 BCE", "date_sort": -428, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "478–479; 509–516", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Hipp. 478–517", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "εἰσὶν δ’ ἐπῳδαὶ καὶ λόγοι θελκτήριοι· φανήσεταί τι τῆσδε φάρμακον νόσου. … ἔστιν κατ’ οἴκους φίλτρα μοι θελκτήρια ἔρωτος, … πότερα δὲ χριστὸν ἢ ποτὸν τὸ φάρμακον;", "translation": "There are incantations and enchanting words; some drug for this sickness will appear. … I have in the house love-charms that enchant away desire… [Phaedra:] Is the drug a salve or a potion?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Phaedra's nurse treats lovesickness as a disease (nosos) curable by epōdai, thelktērioi logoi and philtra. She needs a 'token' from the beloved (a word or a piece of his clothing, 514–515), the classic ousia or material link of love-magic. Phaedra's practical question (salve or drink?) receives the answer 'Seek to benefit, not to learn' (517). It is a domestic 'wise woman' using love-magic, and the vagueness of whether it is meant to cure or to compel is deliberate.", "claimed_effect": "curing Phaedra's love (or, ambiguously, winning Hippolytus)", "claimed_mechanism": "philtra plus a personal token from the target; incantations", "practitioner": "the Nurse", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "household slave-nurse as keeper of charm lore; secrecy and ambiguity", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-39", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Hippolytus", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "428 BCE", "date_sort": -428, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg005.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1038", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Hipp. 1038–1040", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἆρ’ οὐκ ἐπῳδὸς καὶ γόης πέφυχ’ ὅδε,", "translation": "Is this man not a born enchanter and sorcerer…?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Theseus accuses his chaste son of being an epōdos and goēs who trusts he can master his father's soul by his calm temper. 'Goēs' here is pure abuse: a manipulator by words. It shows the accusation of magic deployed against an innocent man. The pairing epōdos + goēs recurs in Bacch. 234.", "claimed_effect": "(accusation) bewitching his father with words", "claimed_mechanism": "(accusation) charms", "practitioner": "Hippolytus (falsely accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "family conflict; 'goēs' as insult", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-40", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Andromache", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 425 BCE", "date_sort": -425, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg006.perseus-grc2", "ref": "157–160", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Andr. 29–35, 155–160, 205–208", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "τούσδε, στυγοῦμαι δ’ ἀνδρὶ φαρμάκοισι σοῖς, νηδὺς δ’ ἀκύμων διὰ σέ μοι διόλλυται· δεινὴ γὰρ ἠπειρῶτις εἰς τὰ τοιάδε ψυχὴ γυναικῶν·", "translation": "…and I am hated by my husband through your drugs, and my womb is ruined, barren, because of you; for the mind of mainland [Asiatic] women is terrible at such things.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hermione accuses the captive concubine Andromache of using hidden pharmaka to make her barren and hateful to her husband (also 32–33). Andromache replies (205–208) that 'virtues, not beauty, are the love-charm' and Hermione's character is the cause. This is the classic structure of a magic accusation: rivalry between wives or concubines, infertility, and the ethnic slur of the 'ēpeirōtis' (Asian) woman's skill in drugs.", "claimed_effect": "barrenness and loss of the husband's love", "claimed_mechanism": "(alleged) concealed drugs", "practitioner": "Andromache (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "household rivalry; foreign slave-woman suspected of sorcery", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-41", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Bacchae", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy); Lydian/Dionysiac stranger", "language": "grc", "date": "405 BCE", "date_sort": -405, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg017.perseus-grc2", "ref": "233–238", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Bacch. 233–238", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "λέγουσι δʼ ὥς τις εἰσελήλυθε ξένος, γόης ἐπῳδὸς Λυδίας ἀπὸ χθονός, ξανθοῖσι βοστρύχοισιν εὐοσμῶν κόμην, οἰνῶπας ὄσσοις χάριτας Ἀφροδίτης ἔχων, ὃς ἡμέρας τε κεὐφρόνας συγγίγνεται τελετὰς προτείνων εὐίους νεάνισιν.", "translation": "They say some stranger has come, a sorcerer-enchanter from the land of Lydia, his blond curls fragrant, with the wine-dark graces of Aphrodite in his eyes, who keeps company day and night with young women, offering them Bacchic initiations.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pentheus labels the disguised Dionysus a goēs epōdos, a foreign charmer who offers mystery rites (teletai) to women. Goēs is linked here with private initiations, foreignness, seduction and nocturnal gatherings. This anticipates Plato's condemnation of agyrtai and manteis selling teletai. The 'sorcerer' is actually a god.", "claimed_effect": "(accusation) seducing women away from home", "claimed_mechanism": "(accusation) charms and initiations", "practitioner": "Dionysus in disguise (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "civic authority (Pentheus) versus new ecstatic cult; magic as a charge against foreign religion", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-42", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Ion", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 413 BCE", "date_sort": -413, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg010.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1003–1005", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Ion 1001–1017", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "δισσοὺς σταλαγμοὺς αἵματος Γοργοῦς ἄπο. … ἰσχὺν ἔχοντας τίνα πρὸς ἀνθρώπου φύσιν; … τὸν μὲν θανάσιμον, τὸν δʼ ἀκεσφόρον νόσων.", "translation": "Two drops of blood from the Gorgon. … [Old man:] What power do they have over human nature? … [Creusa:] One is deadly, the other heals diseases.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Creusa owns an heirloom: two drops of Gorgon's blood given by Athena to Erichthonius, worn on the wrist in gold bands. One drop kills and the other cures. She tries to poison Ion with the lethal drop. This is the purest image of pharmakon as double-edged (poison and remedy in one source), carried as an amulet.", "claimed_effect": "death or healing", "claimed_mechanism": "divine substance; worn as a bracelet-amulet", "practitioner": "Creusa, queen of Athens", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "royal heirloom; attempted poisoning at Delphi", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-43", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Iphigenia in Tauris", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy); 'barbarian' Taurians", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 414 BCE", "date_sort": -414, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg013.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1331–1338", "conventional_ref": "Eur. IT 1331–1338", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "ὡς ἀπόρρητον φλόγα θύουσα καὶ καθαρμὸν ὃν μετῴχετο, … ἀνωλόλυξε καὶ κατῇδε βάρβαρα μέλη μαγεύουσʼ, ὡς φόνον νίζουσα δή.", "translation": "…as though making a secret fire-offering and the purification she had come for… she raised the ritual cry and chanted barbarian songs, playing the magus, as if washing away the blood-guilt.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Iphigenia stages a fake purification of the matricide Orestes and the polluted statue so that they can escape by ship. The messenger reports her chanting 'barbarian melodies, mageuousa'. It is a deliberate imposture of ritual magic, and the guards' suspicion was overridden by awe. It shows Greek awareness that ritual spectacle could be staged as cover.", "claimed_effect": "(feigned) cleansing of pollution", "claimed_mechanism": "(feigned) secret fire-sacrifice, ololygē, incantation", "practitioner": "Iphigenia, priestess of Artemis", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "trick against King Thoas; magic language as a mark of barbarian ritual", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-44", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Orestes", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "408 BCE", "date_sort": -408, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg016.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1495–1498", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Or. 1493–1498", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐγένετο διαπρὸ δωμάτων ἄφαντος, ὦ Ζεῦ καὶ γᾶ καὶ φῶς καὶ νύξ, ἤτοι φαρμακοῖσιν ἢ μάγων τέχναις ἢ θεῶν κλοπαῖς.", "translation": "…she vanished clean through the house — O Zeus and earth and light and night! — either by drugs, or by the arts of magi, or stolen away by gods.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Phrygian slave reports Helen's disappearance and offers three explanations: pharmaka, 'the arts of the magi', or divine abduction. Magoi are here an explanatory category for inexplicable vanishing, distinct from both drugs and gods. The speaker is a Phrygian (Asian) eunuch, which itself marks the idea as 'Eastern'.", "claimed_effect": "invisibility or vanishing", "claimed_mechanism": "drugs, magoi's craft, or divine theft", "practitioner": "unknown (Apollo in fact)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "the Phrygian slave's barbarian perspective", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-45", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Suppliants", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 423 BCE", "date_sort": -423, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg008.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1108–1111", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Supp. 1108–1113", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ὦ δυσπάλαιστον γῆρας, ὡς μισῶ σʼ ἔχων, μισῶ δʼ ὅσοι χρῄζουσιν ἐκτείνειν βίον, βρωτοῖσι καὶ ποτοῖσι καὶ μαγεύμασι παρεκτρέποντες ὀχετὸν ὥστε μὴ θανεῖν·", "translation": "O old age, hard to wrestle with, how I hate having you! And I hate those who long to prolong life, diverting its channel with foods and drinks and magic charms so as not to die.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Iphis condemns those who try to extend life by diet, drinks and mageumata (magical practices). It is an early instance of the noun mageuma, here 'magic' broadly, grouped with dietetic regimens as unnatural attempts to cheat death. The moral line is between accepting mortality and technical or magical prolongation.", "claimed_effect": "extension of life", "claimed_mechanism": "regimen, potions and magic", "practitioner": "those seeking longevity", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "moral disapproval, not legal", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-46", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Alcestis", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy); Thracian/Orphic writings", "language": "grc", "date": "438 BCE", "date_sort": -438, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.965–1.971", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Alc. 962–972", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "rune-writing-magic", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "κρεῖσσον οὐδὲν Ἀνάγκας ηὗρον, οὐδέ τι φάρμακον Θρῄσσαις ἐν σανίσιν, τὰς Ὀρφεία κατέγραψεν γῆρυς, οὐδ’ ὅσα Φοῖβος Ἀσκληπιάδαις ἔδωκε φάρμακα πολυπόνοις ἀντιτεμὼν βροτοῖσιν.", "translation": "Nothing have I found stronger than Necessity, no remedy in the Thracian tablets that the voice of Orpheus wrote down, nor among the drugs that Phoebus gave the Asclepiads, cutting them as counters for toil-laden mortals.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The chorus, having studied 'the Muses and lofty matters', denies that either the written Orphic tablets (pharmaka written on Thracian boards) or Asclepiad medicine can overcome Ananke. This is early evidence for written Orphic remedies or charms (the chorus treats them as a known category). Healing magic and medicine are equally powerless before fate.", "claimed_effect": "none: denial of a remedy against Necessity", "claimed_mechanism": "written charms; root-cut drugs (antitemnōn)", "practitioner": "Orpheus (writer of tablets); Asclepiads", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "intellectual scepticism; Orphic books known in Athens", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-47", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Alcestis", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "438 BCE", "date_sort": -438, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1127–1128", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Alc. 1127–1128", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ὅρα γε μή τι φάσμα νερτέρων τόδ’ ᾖ. … οὐ ψυχαγωγὸν τόνδ’ ἐποιήσω ξένον.", "translation": "[Admetus:] Take care this is not some phantom from below. [Heracles:] It is no conjurer of souls you have made your guest-friend.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "When Heracles brings back the veiled Alcestis, Admetus fears she is a phasma. Heracles denies being a psychagōgos, a necromancer who calls up shades. It distinguishes heroic rescue of the living body from the necromancer's conjured image, and implies that psychagōgoi were known (and suspect) figures who produced phantoms.", "claimed_effect": "(denied) raising a phantom", "claimed_mechanism": "necromantic conjuration", "practitioner": "psychagōgos (denied)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "psychagōgia as a recognised, faintly disreputable profession", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-48", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Cyclops", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian satyr play)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 410 BCE (uncertain)", "date_sort": -410, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "646–648", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Cyc. 646–648", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀλλ’ οἶδ’ ἐπῳδὴν Ὀρφέως ἀγαθὴν πάνυ, ὡς αὐτόματον τὸν δαλὸν ἐς τὸ κρανίον στείχονθ’ ὑφάπτειν τὸν μονῶπα παῖδα γῆς.", "translation": "But I know a very fine incantation of Orpheus, so that the brand will walk of its own accord into the skull and set fire to the one-eyed son of Earth.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The cowardly satyr chorus, refusing to help blind Polyphemus, claims to know an 'Orphic epode' that would make the burning stake move by itself. This is comic mockery of Orphic charms as an excuse for doing nothing, and evidence that 'spells of Orpheus' were a familiar and mockable notion by c. 410.", "claimed_effect": "self-moving fire-brand", "claimed_mechanism": "Orphic incantation", "practitioner": "the satyrs (boasting)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "satire of Orphic-magical pretensions", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-49", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Hecuba", "author": "Euripides", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian tragedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 424 BCE", "date_sort": -424, "edition_urn": "tlg0006.tlg007.perseus-grc2", "ref": "535–539", "conventional_ref": "Eur. Hec. 534–541", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "δέξαι χοάς μοι τάσδε κηλητηρίους, νεκρῶν ἀγωγούς· ἐλθὲ δʼ, ὡς πίῃς μέλαν κόρης ἀκραιφνὲς αἷμʼ, ὅ σοι δωρούμεθα στρατός τε κἀγώ·", "translation": "Receive from me these charming libations that draw up the dead; come, that you may drink the maiden's dark pure blood, which the army and I give you.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Neoptolemus pours 'kēlētērioi' (charming, soothing) libations described as 'nekrōn agōgoi' (leaders or drawers of the dead) at Achilles' tomb before sacrificing Polyxena. He asks the ghost to release the ships' sterns and cables, i.e. to grant fair sailing. This is the vocabulary of necromantic summoning (agōgē, kēlēsis) used in a public military sacrifice.", "claimed_effect": "appeasing a hero's ghost; release of the fleet", "claimed_mechanism": "libations and human blood offered at the tomb", "practitioner": "Neoptolemus on behalf of the army", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "public hero-cult sacrifice, not private magic", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-50", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Clouds", "author": "Aristophanes", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian comedy); Thessalian witches", "language": "grc", "date": "423 BCE (revised c. 418–416)", "date_sort": -423, "edition_urn": "tlg0019.tlg003.perseus-grc2", "ref": "749–756", "conventional_ref": "Ar. Nub. 749–757", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "γυναῖκα φαρμακίδʼ εἰ πριάμενος Θετταλὴν καθέλοιμι νύκτωρ τὴν σελήνην, εἶτα δὴ αὐτὴν καθείρξαιμʼ ἐς λοφεῖον στρογγύλον, ὥσπερ κάτοπτρον, κᾆτα τηροίην ἔχων —", "translation": "What if I bought a Thessalian witch and drew the moon down by night, and then shut it up in a round box like a mirror, and kept it under guard?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Strepsiades' scheme to avoid paying interest (due at the new moon) is to buy a Thessalian pharmakis to pull down the moon and lock it in a case. It is the earliest explicit attestation of the 'drawing down the moon' (kathairein selēnēn) motif and of Thessalian women as moon-witches who can be bought like slaves. Played for laughs, but it presumes the audience knows the belief.", "claimed_effect": "drawing down and capturing the moon, stopping the calendar", "claimed_mechanism": "Thessalian sorcery", "practitioner": "a Thessalian pharmakis (hypothetical, purchasable)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "comic; witches as a commodity; Thessaly as a land of witches by 423 BCE", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-51", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Clouds", "author": "Aristophanes", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian comedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "423 BCE", "date_sort": -423, "edition_urn": "tlg0019.tlg003.perseus-grc2", "ref": "767–769b", "conventional_ref": "Ar. Nub. 764–774", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἤδη παρὰ τοῖσι φαρμακοπώλαις τὴν λίθον ταύτην ἑόρακας τὴν καλήν, τὴν διαφανῆ, ἀφʼ ἧς τὸ πῦρ ἅπτουσι; … τὴν ὕαλον λέγεις;", "translation": "Have you ever seen at the drug-sellers' that fine transparent stone they light fires with? [Socrates:] You mean the glass?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Right after the moon-witch idea, Strepsiades proposes standing in the sun with a burning-glass to melt the wax tablet on which his lawsuit is written. The 'magic' scheme and the technological one sit side by side. The lens is bought from pharmakopōlai, drug-sellers who also traded marvels. It is an early literary reference to burning lenses.", "claimed_effect": "erasing a written indictment", "claimed_mechanism": "focusing sunlight with a glass or crystal lens", "practitioner": "Strepsiades", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "litigation in Athens; the drug-market as a source of wonders", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-52", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Birds", "author": "Aristophanes", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian comedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "414 BCE", "date_sort": -414, "edition_urn": "tlg0019.tlg006.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1.1553–1.1564", "conventional_ref": "Ar. Av. 1553–1564", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "πρὸς δὲ τοῖς Σκιάποσιν λίμνη τις ἔστʼ ἄλουτος οὗ ψυχαγωγεῖ Σωκράτης· ἔνθα καὶ Πείσανδρος ἦλθε δεόμενος ψυχὴν ἰδεῖν ἣ ζῶντʼ ἐκεῖνον προὔλιπε,", "translation": "By the Shadow-foots there is a lake, unwashed, where Socrates conjures souls; there Peisander too came, asking to see the soul that had deserted him while still alive…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is a parody of the Odyssean nekyia. Socrates is the psychagōgos at a swamp. The coward Peisander sacrifices a camel (in place of a lamb), cuts its throat 'as Odysseus once did', and up from below comes Chaerephon 'the bat' to drink the blood. It mocks both philosophers and the necromantic rite, and assumes the audience knows psychagōgia as an activity.", "claimed_effect": "summoning a soul", "claimed_mechanism": "Odyssean blood-sacrifice at a lake", "practitioner": "'Socrates' (comic)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "comic slander of intellectuals as soul-conjurers", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-53", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Wealth (Plutus)", "author": "Aristophanes", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian comedy); Asclepieion", "language": "grc", "date": "388 BCE", "date_sort": -388, "edition_urn": "tlg0019.tlg011.perseus-grc2", "ref": "676–681", "conventional_ref": "Ar. Plut. 653–747 (esp. 676–681, 716–725)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔπειτʼ ἀναβλέψας ὁρῶ τὸν ἱερέα τοὺς φθοῖς ἀφαρπάζοντα καὶ τὰς ἰσχάδας ἀπὸ τῆς τραπέζης τῆς ἱερᾶς· μετὰ τοῦτο δὲ περιῆλθε τοὺς βωμοὺς ἅπαντας ἐν κύκλῳ, εἴ που πόπανον εἴη τι καταλελειμμένον· ἔπειτα ταῦθʼ ἥγιζεν ἐς σάκταν τινά.", "translation": "Then, looking up, I saw the priest snatching the cakes and dried figs from the holy table; after that he went round all the altars in a circle, in case any offering-cake had been left, and then he 'consecrated' them into a sack.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Carion's report of incubation at the temple of Asclepius: lamps out, silence ordered. He sees the priest pocketing the offerings that the god supposedly consumes. The god then mixes a stinging plaster (Tenian garlic, fig-juice, squill, Sphettian vinegar) and smears it on the lying politician Neocleides' everted eyelids 'so it would hurt more' (716–725). This is comic exposure of temple-medicine stagecraft, combined with recognisably real irritant pharmacology.", "claimed_effect": "healing during temple sleep (restoring Plutus' sight)", "claimed_mechanism": "divine visit during incubation; plasters and drugs", "practitioner": "the temple priest; 'Asclepius' and attendants", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "civic healing cult; comedy suggests priests profited from offerings", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-54", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Wealth (Plutus)", "author": "Aristophanes", "culture": "Greek (Classical Athenian comedy)", "language": "grc", "date": "388 BCE", "date_sort": -388, "edition_urn": "tlg0019.tlg011.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.302–2.305", "conventional_ref": "Ar. Plut. 302–308", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐγὼ δὲ τὴν Κίρκην γε τὴν τὰ φάρμακʼ ἀνακυκῶσαν, ἣ τοὺς ἑταίρους τοῦ Φιλωνίδου ποτʼ ἐν Κορίνθῳ ἔπεισεν ὡς ὄντας κάπρους μεμαγμένον σκῶρ ἐσθίειν, αὐτὴ δʼ ἔματτεν αὐτοῖς,", "translation": "And I'll imitate Circe, the one who stirs up drugs, who once in Corinth persuaded Philonides' companions that they were boars and should eat kneaded dung, and she herself kneaded it for them…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The chorus parodies Circe as a Corinthian courtesan (the hetaira Lais is probably meant) who 'persuades' clients they are pigs. The text is printed with a variant at 2a.309–310 'καὶ μαγγανεύουσαν' ('playing the sorceress'). Myth is turned into social satire: the witch's power is a courtesan's manipulation. Compare Palladas' later rationalisation (AP 10.50).", "claimed_effect": "making men behave like swine", "claimed_mechanism": "persuasion and drugs (parodied)", "practitioner": "'Circe' (a courtesan)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "comic attack on a hetaira and her clientele", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-55", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Idylls 2 (Pharmakeutriai)", "author": "Theocritus", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic, Coan or Alexandrian urban setting)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 275 BCE", "date_sort": -275, "edition_urn": "tlg0005.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.10–2.16", "conventional_ref": "Theoc. Id. 2.1–16", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀλλὰ Σελάνα, φαῖνε καλόν· τὶν γὰρ ποταείσομαι ἅσυχα, δαῖμον, τᾷ χθονίᾳ θʼ Ἑκάτα, τὰν καὶ σκύλακες τρομέοντι ἐρχομέναν νεκύων ἀνά τʼ ἠρία καὶ μέλαν αἷμα. … φάρμακα ταῦτʼ ἔρδοισα χερείονα μήτέ τι Κίρκης μήτέ τι Μηδείας μήτε ξανθᾶς Περιμήδας.", "translation": "Shine fair, Selene; for to you I will softly sing, goddess, and to Hecate of the underworld, before whom even the whelps tremble as she goes among the tombs of the dead and the dark blood. … making these drugs no weaker than Circe's, or Medea's, or blonde Perimede's.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The poem is titled 'The Sorceresses' (Pharmakeutriai, 2.head). Simaetha, an ordinary young woman of the city, prepares a night-time love-binding rite against her absent lover Delphis with her slave Thestylis. She calls for bay and philtra, and invokes Selene and chthonic Hecate (crossroads, dogs, tombs, blood). She ranks herself with the mythical witches. This is the fullest literary representation of a working erotic rite, closely paralleled by the later papyrus spells.", "claimed_effect": "drawing the lover back (agōgē) and making him burn", "claimed_mechanism": "invocation of Selene and Hecate; sympathetic rites", "practitioner": "Simaetha, assisted by the slave Thestylis", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "private, nocturnal, domestic; a free single woman acting outside male control", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-56", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Idylls 2 (Pharmakeutriai)", "author": "Theocritus", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 275 BCE", "date_sort": -275, "edition_urn": "tlg0005.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.17; 2.28–2.31", "conventional_ref": "Theoc. Id. 2.17–42", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἶυγξ, ἕλκε τὺ τῆνον ἐμὸν ποτὶ δῶμα τὸν ἄνδρα. … ὡς τοῦτον τὸν κηρὸν ἐγὼ σὺν δαίμονι τάκω, ὣς τάκοιθʼ ὑπʼ ἔρωτος ὁ Μύνδιος αὐτίκα Δέλφις. χὡς δινεῖθʼ ὅδε ῥόμβος ὁ χάλκεος ἐξ Ἀφροδίτας, ὣς τῆνος δινοῖτο ποθʼ ἁμετέραισι θύραισιν.", "translation": "Iynx, draw that man of mine to my house. … As I melt this wax with the goddess's help, so may Myndian Delphis at once melt with love. And as this bronze rhombus whirls by Aphrodite's power, so may he whirl about my door.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The refrain-driven core of the rite. Barley is burnt ('I sprinkle Delphis' bones'), bay crackles and vanishes ('so may Delphis' flesh waste in the flame'), wax is melted, a bronze rhombus is spun, bran is offered, and there are triple libations and triple utterances (2.43). The persuasive analogy ('as X, so Y') is spelled out explicitly. Dogs howling signal the goddess at the crossroads (2.35–36), so the gong is struck.", "claimed_effect": "compulsive love; burning or wasting of the lover", "claimed_mechanism": "sympathetic analogy (similia similibus), refrains, threes, iynx wheel, rhombus", "practitioner": "Simaetha", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "private love magic", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-57", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Idylls 2 (Pharmakeutriai)", "author": "Theocritus", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic); Arcadian lore", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 275 BCE", "date_sort": -275, "edition_urn": "tlg0005.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.48–2.62", "conventional_ref": "Theoc. Id. 2.48–62", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "ἱππομανὲς φυτόν ἐστι παρʼ Ἀρκάσι· … τοῦτʼ ἀπὸ τᾶς χλαίνας τὸ κράσπεδον ὤλεσε Δέλφις, ὡγὼ νῦν τίλλοισα κατʼ ἀγρίῳ ἐν πυρὶ βάλλω. … σαύραν τοι τρίψασα ποτὸν κακὸν αὔριον οἰσῶ.", "translation": "There is a plant, hippomanes, among the Arcadians… This fringe from his cloak Delphis lost; I now pluck it and throw it into the wild fire. … I will crush a lizard and tomorrow bring him an evil drink.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Further techniques. The hippomanes plant maddens mares in Arcadia (an analogy for Delphis' madness). A fringe from the lover's cloak (his ousia) is burnt. A lizard is crushed into a harmful potion. Thestylis kneads herbs on his threshold and spits while saying 'I knead Delphis' bones' (2.59–62). Personal material, plant lore and a threatened poisoning all appear together, and erotic magic shades into harm.", "claimed_effect": "madness of love; harm", "claimed_mechanism": "ousia (garment fringe) burnt; plant analogy; lizard potion; threshold rite with spitting", "practitioner": "Simaetha and Thestylis", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "the poison threat marks where love-magic becomes criminal", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-58", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Idylls 2 (Pharmakeutriai)", "author": "Theocritus", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 275 BCE", "date_sort": -275, "edition_urn": "tlg0005.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.88–2.91", "conventional_ref": "Theoc. Id. 2.85–92", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "καί μευ χρὼς μὲν ὁμοῖος ἐγίνετο πολλάκι θάψῳ, ἔρρευν δʼ ἐκ κεφαλᾶς πᾶσαι τρίχες, αὐτὰ δὲ λοιπὰ ὀστίʼ ἔτʼ ἦς καὶ δέρμα. καὶ ἐς τίνος οὐκ ἐπέρασα ἢ ποίας ἔλιπον γραίας δόμον, ἅτις ἐπᾷδεν;", "translation": "My skin turned often as yellow as fustic, all my hair fell from my head, and only bones and skin were left. Whose house did I not go to, what old woman's did I miss, who knew how to chant charms?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Simaetha describes her own lovesickness (jaundiced skin, hair loss, emaciation for ten days). She made the round of every old woman who 'sings charms' (epaidei), without effect. This is evidence for a market of elderly female charm-specialists consulted for erotic sickness. The symptoms are psychosomatic, and the charms of others failed.", "claimed_effect": "curing love-sickness", "claimed_mechanism": "incantation", "practitioner": "old women (graiai) who chant", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "informal female specialists in the city", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-59", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Idylls 2 (Pharmakeutriai)", "author": "Theocritus", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic); 'Assyrian' expertise", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 275 BCE", "date_sort": -275, "edition_urn": "tlg0005.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.159–2.162", "conventional_ref": "Theoc. Id. 2.159–162", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "νῦν μὲν τοῖς φίλτροις καταθύσομαι· αἰ δʼ ἔτι κἠμὲ λυπῇ, τὰν Ἀίδαο πύλαν ναὶ Μοίρας ἀραξεῖ. τοῖά οἱ ἐν κίστᾳ κακὰ φάρμακα φαμὶ φυλάσσειν, Ἀσσυρίω δέσποινα παρὰ ξείνοιο μαθοῖσα.", "translation": "Now I will bind him with my love-charms; but if he still grieves me, by the Fates, he shall knock at the gate of Hades: such evil drugs, I say, I keep for him in a box, which I learned of from an Assyrian stranger, my lady.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The rite ends with an escalation: if the philtra fail, Simaetha has lethal drugs in a chest, learned from an 'Assyrian stranger'. Magic expertise is attributed to Near Eastern foreigners, and the line from erotic agōgē to poisoning is explicit. This gives the poem its plausibly criminal edge.", "claimed_effect": "death of the lover", "claimed_mechanism": "poison", "practitioner": "Simaetha, taught by an Assyrian stranger", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "foreign source of deadly pharmaka; potential crime", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-60", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Idylls 3", "author": "Theocritus", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic pastoral; rural folk practice)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 275 BCE", "date_sort": -275, "edition_urn": "tlg0005.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.28–3.33", "conventional_ref": "Theoc. Id. 3.28–37", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔγνων πρᾶν, ὅκα μευ μεμναμένω, εἰ φιλέεις με, οὐδὲ τὸ τηλέφιλον ποτεμάξατο, τὸ πλατάγημα, ἀλλʼ αὔτως ἁπαλῷ ποτὶ πάχεος ἐξεμαράνθη. εἶπε καὶ ἀγροιῶτις ἀλαθέα κοσκινόμαντις,", "translation": "I learned it the other day when I was wondering whether you love me: the 'far-love' petal did not smack, but simply withered on my soft forearm. And the country sieve-diviner told me the truth too…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A goatherd uses two pieces of rustic love-divination. One is the 'telephilon' (a poppy petal or leaf struck on the forearm; a loud pop means love). The other is the advice of a peasant woman diviner by sieve (koskinomantis), Agroeo the Paraebatis, who gathers herbs. A twitching right eye (3.37) is read as an omen. These are folk divination practices for love, recorded nowhere else so concretely in early poetry.", "claimed_effect": "discovering whether one is loved", "claimed_mechanism": "petal-pop test, sieve-divination, body twitch omen", "practitioner": "the goatherd; a rustic woman sieve-diviner", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "rustic everyday practice, harmless", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-61", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Idylls 6", "author": "Theocritus", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic pastoral)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 275 BCE", "date_sort": -275, "edition_urn": "tlg0005.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "6.39–6.40", "conventional_ref": "Theoc. Id. 6.39–40; cf. 20.11, 7.127", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ὡς μὴ βασκανθῶ δέ, τρὶς εἰς ἐμὸν ἔπτυσα κόλπον· ταῦτα γὰρ ἁ γραία με Κοτυταρὶς ἐξεδίδαξε.", "translation": "So that I might not be bewitched by the evil eye, I spat three times into my bosom; for the old woman Cotyttaris taught me this.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Polyphemus, having admired his own reflection, spits three times into his chest against baskania (the evil eye, or envy aroused by self-praise). The remedy was taught by an old woman. The same gesture appears at 20.11, and 7.127 'spitting to keep off what is not good'. This is the canonical Greek apotropaic act against the evil eye.", "claimed_effect": "averting the evil eye", "claimed_mechanism": "triple spitting into the bosom", "practitioner": "Polyphemus, taught by old Cotyttaris", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "everyday apotropaic custom transmitted by old women", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-62", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Idylls 24 (Heracliscus)", "author": "Theocritus", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic; Theban seer)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 270s BCE", "date_sort": -272, "edition_urn": "tlg0005.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "24.91–24.99", "conventional_ref": "Theoc. Id. 24.88–100", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "καῖε δὲ τώδʼ ἀγρίαισιν ἐπὶ σχίζαισι δράκοντε νυκτὶ μέσᾳ, … ἂψ δὲ νέεσθαι ἄστρεπτος· καθαρῷ δὲ πυρώσατε δῶμα θεείῳ πρᾶτον, ἔπειτα δʼ ἅλεσσι μεμιγμένον, ὡς νενόμισται, θαλλῷ ἐπιρραίνειν ἐστεμμένῳ ἀβλαβὲς ὕδωρ·", "translation": "Burn the two serpents at midnight on wild brushwood… and let her come back without turning round. Fumigate the house first with pure sulphur, then, as is customary, sprinkle pure water mixed with salt from a wreathed branch.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Teiresias prescribes the purification after the infant Heracles strangles Hera's snakes. The serpents are burnt on thorny wood at midnight, the ashes thrown across the river onto rocks beyond the border by a servant who must not look back, the house is fumigated with sulphur and sprinkled with salt water, and a boar is sacrificed to Zeus. This is a complete katharmos: legitimate seer's ritual that is also, materially, a fumigation.", "claimed_effect": "cleansing the house of the pollution or menace of the snakes", "claimed_mechanism": "burning, disposal beyond boundaries without looking back, sulphur fumigation, lustral water, sacrifice", "practitioner": "Teiresias the seer", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "legitimate seer-led purification 'as is customary' (hōs nenomistai)", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-63", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Epigrams 46", "author": "Callimachus", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic Alexandrian)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 270–240 BCE", "date_sort": -260, "edition_urn": "tlg0533.tlg003.perseus-grc2", "ref": "46.1–46.4", "conventional_ref": "Callim. Epigr. 46 Pf. (= AP 12.150)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ως ἀγαθὰν Πολύφαμος ἀνεύρετο τὰν ἐπαοιδάν τὠραμένωι· ναὶ Γᾶν, οὐκ ἀμαθὴς ὁ Κύκλωψ· αἱ Μοῦσαι τὸν ἔρωτα κατισχαίνοντι Φίλιππε· ἦ πανακὲς πάντων φάρμακον ἁ σοφία.", "translation": "How good an incantation Polyphemus found for the lover! By Earth, the Cyclops was no fool: the Muses shrink love, Philippus; surely poetic skill is a cure-all for everything.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Callimachus turns the epaoidē into a metaphor: poetry (the Muses) is the true charm against love, after Theocritus 11.1–3. He adds that hunger is another cure, and that he has 'both charms' (ἐπωιδαί, 46.9–10) at home against love's wound. This is the Hellenistic literary internalisation of magic: the charm becomes art and self-therapy.", "claimed_effect": "curing love", "claimed_mechanism": "song or poetry, and hunger", "practitioner": "the poet", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "literary wit", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-64", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Argonautica", "author": "Apollonius Rhodius", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic Alexandrian epic); Colchian setting", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg0001.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.529–3.533", "conventional_ref": "Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.528–533", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "τὴν Ἑκάτη περίαλλα θεὰ δάε τεχνήσασθαι φάρμαχʼ, ὅσʼ ἤπειρός τε φύει καὶ νήχυτον ὕδωρ, τοῖσι καὶ ἀκαμάτοιο πυρὸς μειλίσσετʼ ἀυτμή, καὶ ποταμοὺς ἵστησιν ἄφαρ κελαδεινὰ ῥέοντας, ἄστρα τε καὶ μήνης ἱερῆς ἐπέδησε κελεύθους.", "translation": "…whom the goddess Hecate taught above all others to work the drugs that land and flowing water produce; with them the blast of unwearying fire is softened, she stops rushing rivers in an instant, and she binds the paths of the stars and the holy moon.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Argus describes Medea's powers. She was taught by Hecate the drugs of land and water, by which she can quench fire, halt rivers, and 'bind' (epedēse) the courses of stars and moon. This is the full Hellenistic sorceress's résumé: Hecate as teacher, pharmaka as the medium, cosmic binding as the claim.", "claimed_effect": "quenching fire, stopping rivers, binding the moon and stars", "claimed_mechanism": "Hecate-taught pharmaka", "practitioner": "Medea, priestess of Hecate", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "royal Colchian priestess; power feared and needed by the heroes", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-65", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Argonautica", "author": "Apollonius Rhodius", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic epic); Caucasian / Colchian lore", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg0001.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.854–3.866", "conventional_ref": "Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.844–868", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "τοῦ δʼ ἤτοι ἄνθος μὲν ὅσον πήχυιον ὕπερθεν χροιῇ Κωρυκίῳ ἴκελον κρόκῳ ἐξεφαάνθη, καυλοῖσιν διδύμοισιν ἐπήορον· ἡ δʼ ἐνὶ γαίῃ σαρκὶ νεοτμήτῳ ἐναλιγκίη ἔπλετο ῥίζα.", "translation": "Its flower appeared a cubit above ground, in colour like the Corycian crocus, raised on twin stalks; and in the earth the root was like freshly cut flesh.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the 'Prometheion'. It grew from Prometheus' ichor dripped by the eagle in the Caucasus. Anointed after nocturnal sacrifice to the Maiden (Persephone/Hecate), it makes a man invulnerable to bronze and fire for one day (846–850). Medea gathered its black juice in a Caspian shell after bathing seven times and calling seven times on Brimo, at night, in dark clothes; the earth bellowed and Prometheus groaned when the root was cut (858–866). It is a mythic root-cutting ritual with botanical description.", "claimed_effect": "one day's invulnerability and superhuman strength", "claimed_mechanism": "plant drug born of divine blood, gathered under strict ritual conditions", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "secret, nocturnal; the cutting causes cosmic pain (the drug is a violation)", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-66", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Argonautica", "author": "Apollonius Rhodius", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg0001.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.1029–3.1045", "conventional_ref": "Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.1026–1062", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "δὴ τότε μέσσην νύκτα διαμμοιρηδὰ φυλάξας, ἀκαμάτοιο ῥοῇσι λοεσσάμενος ποταμοῖο, οἶος ἄνευθʼ ἄλλων ἐνὶ φάρεσι κυανέοισιν βόθρον ὀρύξασθαι περιηγέα· … μουνογενῆ δʼ Ἑκάτην Περσηίδα μειλίσσοιο,", "translation": "Then, watching for the exact middle of the night, bathe in the streams of the tireless river, and alone, apart from others, in dark-blue robes, dig a round pit… and propitiate only-begotten Hecate, daughter of Perses…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea's instructions to Jason. At midnight he is to bathe in a river, go alone in dark robes, dig a round pit, slaughter a ewe and burn it whole on a pyre, pour honey libations to Hecate, and withdraw without turning back whatever noise or dogs he hears. At dawn he is to anoint his body, spear and shield with the drug, which gives one day's invincibility. Then he must throw a stone among the earthborn men so they kill each other (the 'Cadmus trick'). It combines ritual rules (time, solitude, colour, no looking back) with tactical advice.", "claimed_effect": "invulnerability for one day; victory over the earthborn", "claimed_mechanism": "chthonic sacrifice to Hecate plus anointing with the Prometheion", "practitioner": "Medea instructs; Jason performs", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "secret aid to a stranger against her father's will", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-67", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Argonautica", "author": "Apollonius Rhodius", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg0001.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.1212–3.1217", "conventional_ref": "Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.1191–1224", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "καί ῥʼ ὁ μὲν ἀγκαλέσας πάλιν ἔστιχεν· ἡ δʼ ἀίουσα κευθμῶν ἐξ ὑπάτων δεινὴ θεὸς ἀντεβόλησεν ἱροῖς Αἰσονίδαο· πέριξ δέ μιν ἐστεφάνωντο σμερδαλέοι δρυΐνοισι μετὰ πτόρθοισι δράκοντες. στράπτε δʼ ἀπειρέσιον δαΐδων σέλας·", "translation": "Having called on her he turned back; and the dread goddess heard and came up from the deepest recesses to Aeson's son's offerings; around her, terrible serpents were wreathed among oak branches; the countless gleam of torches flashed…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The rite works: Jason calls on 'Brimo Hecate', and Hecate appears, crowned with snakes among oak boughs, with torches flashing, chthonic hounds howling and marsh-nymphs shrieking. Jason does not look back. It is a successful epiphany produced by ritual, the literary model of later theurgic and magical invocation scenes.", "claimed_effect": "epiphany of Hecate; her aid in the contest", "claimed_mechanism": "invocation and sacrifice at a pit", "practitioner": "Jason", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "night rite in solitude", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-68", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Argonautica", "author": "Apollonius Rhodius", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg0001.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.51–4.61", "conventional_ref": "Ap. Rhod. Argon. 4.50–65", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "θαμὰ καὶ πρὶν ἀλωμένη ἀμφί τε νεκρούς, ἀμφί τε δυσπαλέας ῥίζας χθονός, οἷα γυναῖκες φαρμακίδες· … ἦ θαμὰ δὴ καὶ σεῖο κίον δολίῃσιν ἀοιδαῖς, μνησαμένη φιλότητος, ἵνα σκοτίῃ ἐνὶ νυκτὶ φαρμάσσῃς εὔκηλος,", "translation": "…often before she had wandered among corpses and the hard-won roots of the earth, as sorceress-women do… [Selene:] 'Often I too have gone away because of your deceitful songs, reminded of my love, so that you might work your drugs undisturbed in the dark night…'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Fleeing at night, Medea knows the roads because, like pharmakides, she has wandered among the dead and dug roots. The Moon gloats: Medea often drove her from the sky with 'deceitful songs' so that she could work her drugs in darkness, and now Medea too suffers from love (cf. Endymion). This is the poetic explanation of moon-drawing as a way of making darkness for the witch's work.", "claimed_effect": "driving the moon from the sky", "claimed_mechanism": "songs or incantations (aoidai)", "practitioner": "Medea and 'women pharmakides' generally", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "graveyards and root-gathering as the haunts of witches", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-69", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Argonautica", "author": "Apollonius Rhodius", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg0001.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.156–4.159", "conventional_ref": "Ap. Rhod. Argon. 4.123–166", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἡ δέ μιν ἀρκεύθοιο νέον τετμηότι θαλλῷ βάπτουσʼ ἐκ κυκεῶνος ἀκήρατα φάρμακʼ ἀοιδαῖς ῥαῖνε κατʼ ὀφθαλμῶν· περί τʼ ἀμφί τε νήριτος ὀδμὴ φαρμάκου ὕπνον ἔβαλλε·", "translation": "With a freshly cut sprig of juniper she dipped pure drugs from a potion and, with songs, sprinkled them over its eyes; and all around the potent scent of the drug cast sleep.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea first calls on Sleep and on Hecate 'the night-wanderer' to enchant (thelxai) the serpent guarding the fleece (4.145–148). The serpent 'charmed by the song' (oimēi thelgomenos) uncoils, and she sprinkles a drug with a juniper sprig. The odour casts sleep. Song and scent work together. Musaeus' fragment (tlg2691.tlg002 fr. 2, a scholion) independently records the juniper detail.", "claimed_effect": "putting the never-sleeping serpent to sleep", "claimed_mechanism": "invocation of Hypnos and Hecate, song, and an aromatic soporific sprinkled on the eyes", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "theft of the fleece from the grove of Ares", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-70", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Argonautica", "author": "Apollonius Rhodius", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg0001.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.704–4.709", "conventional_ref": "Ap. Rhod. Argon. 4.659–717", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "πρῶτα μὲν ἀτρέπτοιο λυτήριον ἥγε φόνοιο τειναμένη καθύπερθε συὸς τέκος, ἧς ἔτι μαζοὶ πλήμμυρον λοχίης ἐκ νηδύος, αἵματι χεῖρας τέγγεν, ἐπιτμήγουσα δέρην· αὖτις δὲ καὶ ἄλλοις μείλισσεν χύτλοισι, καθάρσιον ἀγκαλέουσα Ζῆνα,", "translation": "First, as a release from the murder not yet atoned, she held above them the young of a sow whose dugs still swelled from bearing, and cutting its throat she wetted their hands with the blood; then she propitiated with other libations, calling on Zeus the Purifier…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Circe (who has had nightmares of blood flooding her house, 4.664–669) purifies Jason and Medea from Apsyrtus' murder by the standard Greek piglet-blood katharsis and invocation of Zeus Katharsios, before learning who they are. Her female attendants carry the defilements out of the house. Even the archetypal witch performs a perfectly legitimate, civic-style purification: the 'witch' and the 'priestess' are the same figure.", "claimed_effect": "removal of blood-guilt (miasma)", "claimed_mechanism": "piglet-blood purification, libations, burnt offerings, prayer to Zeus", "practitioner": "Circe", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "supplication of murderers at the hearth: normal Greek purification law and custom", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-71", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Argonautica", "author": "Apollonius Rhodius", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic epic); Cretan Talos", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 250 BCE", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg0001.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.1665–4.1672", "conventional_ref": "Ap. Rhod. Argon. 4.1638–1688", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "necromancy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔνθα δʼ ἀοιδῇσιν μειλίσσετο, μέλπε δὲ Κῆρας θυμοβόρους, Ἀίδαο θοὰς κύνας, … θεμένη δὲ κακὸν νόον, ἐχθοδοποῖσιν ὄμμασι χαλκείοιο Τάλω ἐμέγηρεν ὀπωπάς·", "translation": "There she propitiated with songs and hymned the life-devouring Keres, swift hounds of Hades… and, setting her mind on evil, with hostile eyes she bewitched the gaze of bronze Talos…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea kills the bronze giant Talos at a distance. She invokes the Keres three times with songs and three times with prayers, then directs a hostile gaze (emegēren, the evil eye) and sends 'phantoms' (deikēla) at him. Talos grazes his ankle on a rock and his ichor runs out 'like molten lead'. The narrator exclaims that death can come 'from afar', not only through disease and blows (4.1673–1675). It is the most explicit evil-eye killing in Greek poetry.", "claimed_effect": "destroying a bronze automaton", "claimed_mechanism": "songs to the Keres, envious evil eye, phantoms causing a fatal stumble", "practitioner": "Medea 'of many drugs'", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "heroic aid; narrator's wonder that magic can kill at a distance", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-72", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Alexipharmaca", "author": "Nicander of Colophon", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic didactic)", "language": "grc", "date": "2nd c. BCE (some date him to the 3rd c.)", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0022.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "12–28", "conventional_ref": "Nic. Alex. 12–73", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "πνυθείης ἀκόνιτον, ὃ δή ῥ’ Ἀχερωίδες ὄχθαι φύουσιν, … Τοῖο δὲ πάντα χαλινὰ καὶ οὐρανόεσσαν ὑπήνην οὖλά θ’ ὑποστύφει χολόεν ποτὸν, … τὰ δὲ διπλόα δέρκεται ὄσσοις", "translation": "…you should learn about aconite, which grows on the banks of Acheron… The bitter drink makes all the corners of the mouth, the palate and the gums contract… and he sees double with his eyes…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Nicander describes aconite poisoning in verse, giving it a mythic origin (Acheron, the entrance to Hades at Heraclea) but a clinically precise picture. The signs are astringent, burning mouth, cardialgia, sweating, flatulence, heavy head, throbbing temples and double vision 'like a man drunk at night'. Antidotes follow. The poem is purely pharmacological: no incantations or amulets are used for treatment (a grep for epaoid-/mag-/thelg- in the poem returns nothing).", "claimed_effect": "poisoning and its treatment", "claimed_mechanism": "toxic plant; antidotes (emetics, wine, etc.)", "practitioner": "poisoners (implied); physicians (reader)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "didactic medical poetry for an educated reader; poisoning treated as a medical problem", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-73", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Alexipharmaca", "author": "Nicander of Colophon", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic didactic)", "language": "grc", "date": "2nd c. BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0022.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "433–438", "conventional_ref": "Nic. Alex. 433–464", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Καί τε σὺ μήκωνος κεβληγόνου ὁππότε δάκρυ πίνωσιν, πεπύθοιο καθυπνέας· ἀμφὶ γὰρ ἄκρα γυῖα καταψύχουσι, τὰ δ’ οὐκ ἀναπίτναται ὄσσε, ἀλλ’ αὕτως βλεφάροισιν ἀκινήεντα δέδηεν·", "translation": "And when men drink the tear [juice] of the seed-headed poppy, learn that they fall into deep sleep: their extremities grow cold, their eyes do not open but stay fixed under unmoving lids…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is an accurate account of opium overdose: cold extremities, closed fixed eyes, profuse sweat, pallor, swollen lips, slackened jaw, cold shallow breath and livid nails. The treatment is wine, emetics and warming. It is a useful naturalistic counterpart to Helen's nepenthes (Od. 4.220–230): the same substance class described clinically.", "claimed_effect": "narcotic poisoning", "claimed_mechanism": "poppy latex (opium)", "practitioner": "(none: a toxicological account)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "medical didactic", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-74", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Alexipharmaca", "author": "Nicander of Colophon", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic didactic)", "language": "grc", "date": "2nd c. BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0022.tlg002.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "521–526; 538–543", "conventional_ref": "Nic. Alex. 521–536 (fungi), 537–556 (salamander)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "εὖθ’ ὑπὸ φωλεύοντα τραφῇ βαθὺν ὁλκὸν ἐχίδνης, ἰὸν ἀνικμαῖνον στομίων τ’ ἀποφώλιον ἄσθμα. κεῖνο κακὸν ζύμωμα, τὸ δὴ ῥ’ ὑδέουσι μύκητας … φαρμακίδος σαύρης πανακηδέος, ἣν σαλαμάνδρην κλείουσιν, τὴν οὐδὲ πυρὸς λωβήσατο λιγνύς,", "translation": "…when it grows beneath the deep lair of a viper, soaking up its venom and the noxious breath of its mouth: that evil ferment men call mushrooms… [the drink] of the poison-lizard, utterly baneful, which they call salamander, which not even the smoke of fire harms…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Folk explanation mixed with real toxicology. Poisonous mushrooms are 'evil ferment of the earth' made toxic by growing over a viper's hole and absorbing its breath, and the remedies include radish and vinegar with vine-ash. The salamander, the 'pharmakis lizard', is believed fireproof, and drinking it causes tongue inflammation, trembling, crawling on all fours like infants, dulled wits and livid spots. These are naturalised 'magical' beliefs (the fireproof salamander) inside a medical poem.", "claimed_effect": "mushroom poisoning; salamander poisoning", "claimed_mechanism": "venom absorbed from vipers; inherent toxicity", "practitioner": "poisoners (implied)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "medical didactic", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-75", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Theriaca", "author": "Nicander of Colophon", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic didactic); Thracian herdsmen's lore", "language": "grc", "date": "2nd c. BCE", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg0022.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "35–47", "conventional_ref": "Nic. Ther. 35–56", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Θιβρὴν δ’ ἐξελάσεις ὀφίων ἐπιλωβέα κῆρα, καπνείων ἐλάφοιο πολυγλώχινα κεραίην, ἄλλοτε δ’ ἀζαλέην δαίων ἐγγαγίδα πέτρην, ἣν οὐδὲ κρατεροῖο πυρὸς περικαίνυται ὁρμή·", "translation": "You will drive off the harmful bane of snakes by fumigating with the many-tined antler of a deer, or sometimes by burning the dry Gagas-stone [jet], which the force of strong fire does not consume…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Snake-repelling fumigations: burnt deer-antler, jet (gagates stone), goat-hair, roots of cachrys with cress, melanthium, sulphur and bitumen, and the 'Thracian stone' that blazes when wetted with water and is quenched by a whiff of oil (45–47), brought by herdsmen from a Thracian river. These are apotropaic smokes with a practical rationale (pungent, sulphurous fumes). The passage opens the poem's purely naturalistic snake lore; elsewhere the snakes are said to be born from the Titans' blood 'if Hesiod speaks truly' (8–12), a hedged mythology.", "claimed_effect": "driving snakes away from sleeping places", "claimed_mechanism": "pungent fumigation with horn, jet, sulphur, bitumen, plants, and a water-ignited stone", "practitioner": "farmers or travellers (the reader)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "rural practice codified in learned verse", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-76", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Halieutica", "author": "Oppian", "culture": "Greek (Imperial, Cilician)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 177–180 CE", "date_sort": 178, "edition_urn": "tlg0023.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.647–4.649; 4.658–4.663", "conventional_ref": "Opp. Hal. 4.647–693", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔστι δέ τις θήρης ἕτερος νόμος ἰχθυβόλοισι φαρμάκταις, οἳ λυγρὸν ἐπʼ ἰχθύσι μητίσαντο φάρμακον, … ῥίζαν θʼ, ἣν κυκλάμινον ἐφήμισαν ἰητῆρες, μίξας ἐν παλάμῃσι δύω φυρήσατο μάζας·", "translation": "There is another manner of fishing for those fish-killers who use drugs, who devised a baneful drug for fish… [a man takes rich clay] and the root that physicians call cyclamen, and mixing them kneads two lumps in his hands…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The fishermen-poisoners (pharmaktai) herd fish into a rocky hollow, encircle it with nets, and smear clay mixed with cyclamen root into the crevices. The foul smell stupefies the fish, whose eyes, head and limbs grow heavy, and they swim out and die. The same agent-noun used for sorcerers (pharmaktēr/pharmaktēs) names a real piscicide technique. At 2.483 'Persian pharmaktēres' are named as makers of poisoned arrows.", "claimed_effect": "stunning and killing fish", "claimed_mechanism": "cyclamen root and clay smeared in rock hollows; toxic odour", "practitioner": "fishermen (pharmaktai)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "ordinary livelihood; morally neutral 'law of hunting' (nomos thērēs)", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-77", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Fall of Troy (Posthomerica)", "author": "Quintus Smyrnaeus", "culture": "Greek (Imperial epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "3rd c. CE", "date_sort": 250, "edition_urn": "tlg2046.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "9.461–9.466", "conventional_ref": "Q.S. 9.461–468", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ἕλκεϊ τειρόμενον· τὸν δὲ στερεὸν καὶ ἄνουσον ὠκύτερον ποίησε νοήματος αἰψηροῖο ἶσος ἐπουρανίοις Ποδαλείριος, εὖ μὲν ὕπερθε πάσσων φάρμακα πολλὰ καθʼ ἕλκεος, εὖ δὲ κικλήσκων οὔνομα πατρὸς ἑοῖο·", "translation": "…worn by his wound; and Podalirius, equal to the gods, made him strong and free of disease swifter than a quick thought, skilfully sprinkling many drugs over the wound and skilfully invoking the name of his own father.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Podalirius heals Philoctetes' decade-old snake-bite ulcer instantly with drugs plus invocation of the name of Asclepius. The Achaeans cry out praising Asclepius' son. This is the late-epic version of 'medicine wrapped in ritual': pharmacology and the power of the divine name combined. Quintus also has Oenone's refused cure of Paris (10.262–331).", "claimed_effect": "instant healing of a chronic wound", "claimed_mechanism": "topical drugs plus invocation of a divine name", "practitioner": "Podalirius, son of Asclepius", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "heroic military medicine; the name of Asclepius as a power", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-78", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Apotelesmatica", "author": "Manetho (pseudo-; 'Manetho Astrologus')", "culture": "Greco-Egyptian (Imperial astrological verse)", "language": "grc", "date": "books of differing dates, c. 2nd–4th c. CE (uncertain)", "date_sort": 150, "edition_urn": "tlg2583.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "6.1.181–6.1.186", "conventional_ref": "Manetho, Apotel. book 6, ll. 181–187 (edition numbering)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἢν δʼ Ἄρης ζώοις ἐπὶ φωλεύουσι τὰ κέντρα ξυνὰ Ζηνὶ λαχὼν κατίδῃ Κρόνον ὄνθʼ ὑπόγειον, ῥιζοτόμους τεύχει, παραβαλλομένους, ἐπαοιδούς, ζητοῦντας θάνατον κακοδαίμονα καὶ μόρον αὔτως ἀσπίδος αἰνομανοῦς πλατυαύχενος,", "translation": "If Mars, sharing the cardinal points with Zeus in the burrowing signs, looks upon Saturn beneath the earth, he makes root-cutters, risk-takers, enchanters, who seek an ill-starred death and fate from the raging broad-necked asp…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In astrological verse, magicians are a product of the stars. A Mars–Jupiter–Saturn configuration produces rhizotomoi (root-cutters), daredevils, and epaoidoi (enchanters or snake-charmers) who handle asps and vipers and court death. Elsewhere (5.1.313) Saturn's aspect produces 'goētas' among pimps and perverts, and at 2.1.310 it produces men 'skilled in deadly pharmakeia'. Magic is classified as an occupation determined by nativity, a distinctive late-antique classification.", "claimed_effect": "(prediction) a person's becoming a magician or snake-charmer", "claimed_mechanism": "planetary configurations at birth", "practitioner": "(the native) root-cutters, enchanters, snake-handlers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "astrology as a learned 'science' that ranks magicians among low or dangerous trades", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-79", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Oracula Sibyllina", "author": "Oracula Sibyllina (Jewish Sibyllist)", "culture": "Hellenistic Jewish (Alexandria?) in Greek hexameters", "language": "grc", "date": "Book 3 core c. 163–145 BCE (disputed)", "date_sort": -150, "edition_urn": "tlg1551.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "3.8", "conventional_ref": "Or. Sib. 3.218–230", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology", "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "οὐ πταρμῶν σημεί᾿, οίωνοπόλων τε πετεινα, ον μάντεις, ον φαρμακονς, ον μην έπαοιδονς, οὐ μνθοιν μωρών άπάτας έγγαοτεριμνθων, οὐδέ τε Χαλδαίων τὰ προμάντια ἀστρολογονοιν", "translation": "…not the signs of sneezes, nor the birds of augurs, nor seers, nor sorcerers, nor enchanters, nor the deceits of foolish ventriloquists' tales, nor the Chaldaeans' astrological predictions…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Jewish Sibyl praises the righteous race from 'Ur of the Chaldaeans'. They do not concern themselves with the courses of sun and moon, sneeze-omens, augury, manteis, pharmakoi, epaoidoi, ventriloquists (engastrimythoi) or Chaldaean astrology, 'for all these are deceptions'. This is a full Hellenistic catalogue of illicit divination and magic, written as Jewish self-definition in Homeric verse. (The library text is OCR-damaged: 'ον' = οὐ, 'φαρμακονς' = φαρμακούς.)", "claimed_effect": "(denied) foreknowledge and power", "claimed_mechanism": "(denied) all are 'planai', deceptions", "practitioner": "(rejected) seers, sorcerers, enchanters, ventriloquists, Chaldaean astrologers", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Jewish polemic against pagan divination; echoes Deut. 18:10–11", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-80", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Oracula Sibyllina", "author": "Oracula Sibyllina (Jewish/Christian Sibyllist)", "culture": "Jewish with Christian redaction, Greek hexameters", "language": "grc", "date": "Book 1: 1st c. CE core, later Christian additions (disputed)", "date_sort": 100, "edition_urn": "tlg1551.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1.4", "conventional_ref": "Or. Sib. 1.87–103 (approx.)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "astrology", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ἄλλῳ δ’ ἀστρονομεῖν καὶ ὀνειροπολεῖν τὰ πετεινά, φαρμακίη δ’ ἄλλῳ, αὐτὰρ μαγικὴ πάλιν ἄλλῳ· ἄλλοι δ' ἄλλα ἔκαστα μεμηλότα τεχνώοντο, Γρήγοροι ἀλφηοτῆρες,", "translation": "…another took to astronomy and reading dreams and birds, another to drug-craft, another again to magic; others devised other arts each for himself — the enterprising Watchers…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The second human race, the 'Watchers' (Egrēgoroi), invent all the arts: farming, carpentry, sailing, astronomy, dream- and bird-divination, pharmakeia and magikē. This is the Enochic myth of the fallen Watchers teaching humanity forbidden arts, retold in Homeric hexameter. Magic is an antediluvian invention by transgressive beings. Book 2 (card 2.8) consigns 'pharmakoi and pharmakides' to the river of fire.", "claimed_effect": "(origin myth) invention of magic", "claimed_mechanism": "transgressive teaching", "practitioner": "the Watchers (Egrēgoroi)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Jewish-Christian apocalyptic; magic among sins punished in the end-time", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-81", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Fabulae Aesopeae 57", "author": "Babrius", "culture": "Greek (Imperial, possibly Syrian milieu)", "language": "grc", "date": "1st–2nd c. CE", "date_sort": 150, "edition_urn": "tlg0614.tlg001.1st1K-grc2", "ref": "1.2.57.12–1.2.57.14", "conventional_ref": "Babrius 57", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἐντεῦθεν Ἄραβές εἰσιν, ὡς ἐπειράθην, ψεῦσταί τε καὶ γόητες, ὧν ἐπὶ γλώσσης οὐδὲν κάθηται ῥῆμα τῆς ἀληθείης.", "translation": "From that time the Arabs are, as I have found by experience, liars and cheats (goētes), on whose tongue no word of truth sits.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An aetiological fable: Hermes drove a wagon full of lies, deceit and knavery across the earth, giving each people a little. In Arabia it broke down, and the Arabs plundered the whole cargo. Goēs here means 'cheat or impostor', paired with liars. It shows the ethnicised attribution of goēteia to eastern peoples, and the drift of goēs toward 'fraud'.", "claimed_effect": "deception", "claimed_mechanism": "(mythic) Hermes' stolen cargo of lies", "practitioner": "Arabs (ethnic stereotype)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "ethnic slur; goēs = fraud", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-82", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Greek Anthology 5.205", "author": "Anonymous (Anonymi Epigrammatici)", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic dedicatory epigram); Thessalian witch", "language": "grc", "date": "Hellenistic (3rd–2nd c. BCE?)", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "tlg7000.tlg001.perseus-grc6", "ref": "5.205.1–5.205.6", "conventional_ref": "AP 5.205", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "ἴυγξ ἡ Νικοῦς, ἡ καὶ διαπόντιον ἕλκειν ἄνδρα καὶ ἐκ θαλάμων παῖδας ἐπισταμένη, χρυσῷ ποικιλθεῖσα, διαυγέος ἐξ ἀμεθύστου γλυπτή, σοὶ κεῖται, Κύπρι, φίλον κτέανον, πορφυρέης ἀμνοῦ μαλακῇ τριχὶ μέσσα δεθεῖσα, τῆς Λαρισσαίης ξείνια φαρμακίδος.", "translation": "The iynx of Niko, which knows how to draw a man from across the sea and boys from their bedrooms, inlaid with gold, carved from translucent amethyst, is laid up for you, Cypris, a treasured possession, bound in the middle with soft wool of a purple lamb: the gift of the witch of Larissa.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A dedication to Aphrodite of a precious iynx wheel (amethyst and gold, tied with purple wool) belonging to Niko, 'the pharmakis of Larissa' (Thessaly). It is a rare, concrete description of the physical iynx as a luxury object, its powers (drawing men and boys), and a practitioner who dedicates her tool in a temple. Love-magic here sits comfortably inside Aphrodite cult.", "claimed_effect": "drawing lovers across distances", "claimed_mechanism": "spinning iynx wheel", "practitioner": "Niko, a Thessalian pharmakis", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "public temple dedication: love-magic tool offered openly to a goddess", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-83", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Greek Anthology 10.50", "author": "Palladas", "culture": "Greek (Late Antique Alexandria)", "language": "grc", "date": "early 4th c. CE", "date_sort": 330, "edition_urn": "tlg7000.tlg001.perseus-grc9", "ref": "10.50.1–10.50.10", "conventional_ref": "AP 10.50", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "τὴν Κίρκην οὔ φημι, καθὼς εἴρηκεν Ὅμηρος, ἀντʼ ἀνδρῶν ποιεῖν ἢ σύας ἠὲ λύκους τοὺς αὐτῇ προσιόντας· ἑταίρα δʼ οὖσα πανοῦργος, τοὺς δελεασθέντας πτωχοτάτους ἐποίει· … εἶχε γοητείας φάρμακον ἀντίπαλον.", "translation": "I deny that Circe, as Homer says, turned those who came to her from men into swine or wolves; being a crafty courtesan, she made those she lured utterly poor… [Odysseus] had, as a drug against goēteia, [his own good sense].", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Palladas rationalises the myth. Circe was a hetaira who robbed her clients of their reason and money and 'fed them like brute beasts'. Odysseus' moly was not Hermes' gift but 'the reason innate in his own nature', a pharmakon against goēteia. Magic is explained as seduction and psychological manipulation.", "claimed_effect": "(rationalised) men reduced to beast-like dependence", "claimed_mechanism": "(rationalised) seduction; the antidote is reason", "practitioner": "Circe reinterpreted as a courtesan", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "late-antique moralising allegory", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-84", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Greek Anthology 14.140", "author": "Anonymous (Anonymi Epigrammatici)", "culture": "Greek (date uncertain; arithmetical or riddle epigram)", "language": "grc", "date": "uncertain (Late Antique collection?)", "date_sort": 500, "edition_urn": "tlg7000.tlg001.perseus-grc10", "ref": "14.140.1–14.140.4", "conventional_ref": "AP 14.140", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Ζεῦ μάκαρ, ἦ ῥά τοι ἔργα τάδʼ εὔαδεν, οἷα γυναῖκες Θεσσαλικαὶ παίζουσι; μαραίνεται ὄμμα Σελήνης ἐκ μερόπων ἴδον αὐτός· ἔην δʼ ἔτι νυκτὸς ἐπʼ ἠῶ δὶς τόσον ὅσσα δύʼ ἕκτα καὶ ἕβδομον οἰχομένοιο.", "translation": "Blessed Zeus, do such deeds please you, the games that Thessalian women play? The eye of Selene withers; I saw it myself from among mortals; and there remained of night till dawn twice as much as two-sixths and a seventh of what had passed.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A time-reckoning puzzle (book 14 is arithmetical) framed around a lunar eclipse attributed to the 'play' of Thessalian women. The eclipse is dated to an hour of the night by arithmetic. It shows the moon-drawing belief and quantitative astronomy literally in the same four lines.", "claimed_effect": "darkening the moon", "claimed_mechanism": "witchcraft (traditional ascription)", "practitioner": "Thessalian women (traditional moon-drawers)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "a learned riddle; belief cited half-playfully", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-85", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Dionysiaca", "author": "Nonnus of Panopolis", "culture": "Greco-Egyptian (Late Antique epic); Indian Brahmans", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 450–470 CE", "date_sort": 460, "edition_urn": "tlg2045.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "36.344–36.349", "conventional_ref": "Nonn. Dion. 36.344–349", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "ἀλλὰ σοφοὺς Βραχμῆνας ἀτευχέας εἰς σὲ κορύσσω· γυμνοὶ γὰρ γεγάασι, θεοκλήτοις δʼ ἐπαοιδαῖς πολλάκις ἠερόφοιτον, ὁμοίιον ἄζυγι ταύρῳ, οὐρανόθεν κατάγοντες ἐφαρμάξαντο Σελήνην,", "translation": "But I will arm against you the wise Brahmans, who bear no weapons; they are naked, and with god-summoning incantations they have often brought down from heaven the air-roaming Moon, like an unyoked bull, and bewitched her…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Indian king Deriades threatens Dionysus with the Brahmans. These 'naked sages' with theoklētoi epaoidai (god-calling incantations) draw down the Moon and halt Phaethon's (the Sun's) chariot. The Thessalian moon-drawing motif is transferred to India. Theoklētos, 'god-summoning', is a late-antique theurgic term (also 22.77 of Circe's kykeon).", "claimed_effect": "drawing down the moon; stopping the sun", "claimed_mechanism": "god-summoning incantations", "practitioner": "Brahmans (gymnosophists)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "exoticising wisdom of India; magic as the weapon of the unarmed", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-86", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Dionysiaca", "author": "Nonnus of Panopolis", "culture": "Greco-Egyptian (Late Antique epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 450–470 CE", "date_sort": 460, "edition_urn": "tlg2045.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "14.172–14.176", "conventional_ref": "Nonn. Dion. 14.167–178", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Θεσσαλίδος δολόεντα παρʼ Ἀχλύος ἄνθεα ποίης ὕπνον θελγομένων φυλάκων ἐπέχευε καρήνῳ, μάγγανα φαρμακόεντα κατασταλάουσα κομάων· καὶ μάγον ἁβρὸν ἄλειφα περιχρίσασα προσώπῳ ἀνδρομέης ἤμειψε παλαίτερον εἶδος ὀπωπῆς·", "translation": "Taking from Achlys the treacherous flowers of a Thessalian herb, she poured sleep over the heads of the enchanted guardians, dripping drugged charms on their hair; and anointing their faces with a delicate magic ointment she changed the former shape of their human aspect…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hera, angry with Dionysus' guardians, uses a Thessalian herb from Achlys (personified Mist of Death) to cast sleep, and a magic unguent to transform them into horned, eared creatures (the origin of Satyr or Centaur forms). It is late-epic pastiche of Circe's technique with the adjective magos ('magic') applied to an ointment, and the Thessalian provenance as a stock epithet.", "claimed_effect": "sleep and bodily transformation", "claimed_mechanism": "Thessalian herb, magic unguent", "practitioner": "Hera", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "divine malice; 'magos' as an adjective = magical", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-87", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Dionysiaca", "author": "Nonnus of Panopolis", "culture": "Greco-Egyptian (Late Antique epic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 450–470 CE", "date_sort": 460, "edition_urn": "tlg2045.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "6.58–6.68", "conventional_ref": "Nonn. Dion. 6.15–103 (esp. 58–103)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "οὐδὲ γέρων Ἀστραῖος ἀναίνετο· μουνοτόκου δὲ κούρης ἀρτιλόχευτα γενέθλια μέτρα νοήσας … καί οἱ κεκλομένῳ θεράπων εὔκυκλον ἀείρας σφαῖραν ἑλισσομένην, τύπον αἰθέρος, εἰκόνα κόσμου,", "translation": "Old Astraeus did not refuse; reckoning the newly born birth-measures of the only daughter… and at his call a servant raised a well-rounded revolving sphere, model of the heavens, image of the cosmos…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Demeter consults the astrologer-god Astraeus about her daughter Persephone. He calculates the nativity on his fingers and uses an armillary sphere to read the zodiac. He finds the Moon at a node and the Sun below the earth, and predicts danger from a 'serpent' suitor (Zeus). This is technical horoscopy dramatised in epic, astrology presented as a respectable divine science.", "claimed_effect": "foretelling a girl's fate from her nativity", "claimed_mechanism": "finger-reckoning and armillary sphere; planetary positions", "practitioner": "Astraeus (Titan astrologer)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "astrology as an elite technical art; no taint", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-88", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Orbis Descriptio", "author": "Dionysius Periegetes", "culture": "Greek (Imperial, Hadrianic didactic geography)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 124 CE", "date_sort": 124, "edition_urn": "tlg0084.tlg001.1st1K-grc1", "ref": "1020–1029", "conventional_ref": "Dion. Per. 1020–1031", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (First1KGreek)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Εὖτε γὰρ Ἀκταίοιο παρὰ ῥόον Ἰλισσοῖο φάρμακʼ ἐμήσατο λυγρὰ γόνῳ Πανδιονίδαο, … Τοὔνεκεν εἰσέτι νῦν πολυφάρμακοι ἄνδρες ἔασι χώρην ναιετάοντες ἀπείριτον,", "translation": "For when, by the stream of Attic Ilissus, she devised baneful drugs against the son of Pandion's line… That is why, even now, the men who inhabit that boundless land are skilled in many drugs.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Medes are descendants of Medea, who fled to the land named after her after trying to poison Theseus at Athens. Therefore the Medes 'are still polypharmakoi'. This is a geographical aetiology turning a Greek myth of a witch into ethnography: Eastern peoples inherit sorcery. (Note: the library text prints 'Ἰλισσοῖς' at 1023.)", "claimed_effect": "skill in drugs as a national trait", "claimed_mechanism": "descent from Medea", "practitioner": "Medea; the Medes", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "ethnographic stereotype", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok-manual", "library_check_meaning": "the script could not match the transcription, and an AI agent confirmed the passage by reading it", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "greek-poetry-89", "corpus": "greek-poetry", "work": "Phaenomena", "author": "Aratus of Soli", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic didactic)", "language": "grc", "date": "c. 275 BCE", "date_sort": -275, "edition_urn": "tlg0653.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "1142–1148", "conventional_ref": "Arat. Phaen. 1142–1154", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "τῶν μηδὲν κατόνοσσο· καλὸν δʼ ἐπὶ σήματι σῆμα σκέπτεσθαι· μᾶλλον δὲ δυοῖν εἰς ταὐτὸν ἰόντων ἐλπωρὴ τελέθοι, τριτάτῳ δέ κε θαρσήσειας.", "translation": "Despise none of these signs; it is good to watch sign upon sign: when two point the same way, hope grows stronger, and with a third you may be confident.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Aratus closes his weather-signs section (moon's horns, halo, animal behaviour, and more) with an epistemology of prediction. Accumulate and cross-check signs; two concordant signs make a likelihood, three give confidence. Lunar phases and the 'eight dark nights' are risky. This is naturalistic forecasting in the same verse tradition as Hesiod. It contrasts with magical claims to control weather or moon.", "claimed_effect": "predicting weather", "claimed_mechanism": "observation and corroboration of celestial and natural signs", "practitioner": "sailors, farmers (the reader)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "respectable astronomical didactic; Stoic providential frame", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-1", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Etymologiae", "author": "Isidore of Seville", "culture": "Visigothic Spain", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 615-636", "date_sort": 625, "edition_urn": "stoa0159.stoa004.opp-lat5", "ref": "8.148", "conventional_ref": "Isid. Etym. 8.9.3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Itaque hæc vaniias magicarum artium n ex tradi. tione angelorum malorum in toto terrarum orbe plurimis saeculis valuit, per quamdam scientiam futurorum, et infernorum evocationes. Eorum inventa sunt aruspicia, augurationes, et ipsa quae dicuntur oracula, et necromantia.", "translation": "So this vanity of the magic arts, handed down by the evil angels, held sway across the whole world for many ages, through a kind of knowledge of the future and through summonings of the dead. Their inventions are haruspicy, augury, the so-called oracles, and necromancy.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This opens the chapter De magis (8.9). Zoroaster is named as the first magus (8.146) and Democritus as the one who enlarged the art. Magic is then given a demonic origin. The chapter goes on to build the taxonomy that the Middle Ages inherited.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Teaching and cooperation of fallen angels", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Encyclopedia for Visigothic clergy; the definitions are later absorbed into canon law", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-2", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Etymologiae", "author": "Isidore of Seville", "culture": "Visigothic Spain", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 615-636", "date_sort": 625, "edition_urn": "stoa0159.stoa004.opp-lat5", "ref": "8.154", "conventional_ref": "Isid. Etym. 8.9.9-10", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "weather-nature", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Magi sunt qui vulgo malefici ob facinorum magnitudinem nuncupantur. IIi et elementa concutiunt, turbant mentes hominum, ac sine ullo veneni haustu violentia tantum carminis interimunt.", "translation": "Magi are those commonly called malefici ('evil-doers') because of the enormity of their crimes. They shake the elements, derange men's minds, and kill by the sheer force of a spell without any draught of poison.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Here magus and maleficus become synonyms. The magus kills by incantation alone, cites Lucan, summons demons, and uses blood, victims and corpses (8.155). The wording on blood and corpses is lifted from Jerome's commentary on Daniel (see latin-christian-55).", "claimed_effect": "Storms, madness, death without poison", "claimed_mechanism": "Power of the carmen; summoned demons; blood and corpses", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-3", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Etymologiae", "author": "Isidore of Seville", "culture": "Visigothic Spain", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 615-636", "date_sort": 625, "edition_urn": "stoa0159.stoa004.opp-lat5", "ref": "8.156", "conventional_ref": "Isid. Etym. 8.9.11-13", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Necromantii sunt, quorum præcantationibus videntur resuscitati mortui divinare. et ad interrogatarespondere. … nam amare dæmones sanguinem dicunt; ideoque, quoties necromantia fit, cruor aqua miscetur, ut colore sanguinis facilius provocentur.", "translation": "Necromancers are those whose spells seem to make the raised dead prophesy and answer questions. … For demons are said to love blood; so whenever necromancy is done, gore is mixed with water, so that they are more easily drawn by the colour of blood.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Isidore defines necromancy and hydromancy (8.157): seeing the shadows of demons in water. Following Varro (via Augustine), he divides divination by the four elements into geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy and pyromancy. Note the hedge 'videntur': the dead only seem to rise.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Demons attracted by blood impersonate the dead", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-4", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Etymologiae", "author": "Isidore of Seville", "culture": "Visigothic Spain", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 615-636", "date_sort": 625, "edition_urn": "stoa0159.stoa004.opp-lat5", "ref": "8.174", "conventional_ref": "Isid. Etym. 8.9.28-29", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Sortilegi sunt qui sub nomine fictae religionis per quasdam, quas sanctorum sortes vocant, divinationis scientiam profitentur, aut quarumcunque scripturarum inspectione futura promittunt.", "translation": "Sortilegi are those who, under the name of a feigned religion, profess knowledge of divination by what they call the 'lots of the saints', or promise the future by inspecting any kind of writings.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Isidore defines the sortilegus as a practitioner of Bible-lot divination. Nearly word for word, this is canon 42 of the Council of Agde (506) (latin-christian-73). Next comes the salisator (8.175), who reads omens from twitching limbs.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Clerics and laymen using scripture as lots", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-5", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Etymologiae", "author": "Isidore of Seville", "culture": "Visigothic Spain", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 615-636", "date_sort": 625, "edition_urn": "stoa0159.stoa004.opp-lat5", "ref": "8.176", "conventional_ref": "Isid. Etym. 8.9.30-31", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Ad hæc omnia pertinent et ligaturæ exsecrabilium remediorum quæ ars medicorum condemnat, g sive in præcantationibus, sive in characteribus, vel in quibuscunque rebus suspendendis atque ligandis.", "translation": "To all these belong also the ligatures of accursed remedies which the medical art condemns, whether by spoken charms, by written characters, or by any objects hung or tied on the body.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Isidore classes amulets (ligaturae) as magic, explicitly appealing to the verdict of physicians. He concludes (8.177) that all these arts come from a 'pestilent society of men and evil angels' and must be shunned. The passage is taken from Augustine DDC 2.20.30 (latin-christian-16).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Pact/society with demons", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-6", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Etymologiae", "author": "Isidore of Seville", "culture": "Visigothic Spain", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 615-636", "date_sort": 625, "edition_urn": "stoa0159.stoa004.opp-lat5", "ref": "8.179", "conventional_ref": "Isid. Etym. 8.9.33", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Præstigium vero Mercurius primus dicitur invenisse. Dictum autem præstigium, quod præstingat aciem oculorum.", "translation": "Mercury is said to have invented the praestigium (conjuring trick). It is called praestigium because it dazzles (praestingat) the sight of the eyes.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Isidore gives a (folk) etymology of praestigium as an optical deception. Earlier in the chapter (8.159) the divini are defined as people who 'guess the future by a fraudulent cunning'. So fraud and demonic agency sit side by side in the same chapter.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-7", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Etymologiae", "author": "Isidore of Seville", "culture": "Visigothic Spain", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 615-636", "date_sort": 625, "edition_urn": "stoa0159.stoa004.opp-lat5", "ref": "3.130", "conventional_ref": "Isid. Etym. 3.27.1-2", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Naturalis, dum exsequitur solis et lunæ cursus, vel stellarum, certasque temporum stationes. Superstitiosa vero cst illa quam mathematici sequuntur, qui in stellis augurantur, quique etiam duodecim signa per singula animæ vel corporis membra disponunt", "translation": "Astrology is natural when it follows the courses of sun, moon and stars and the fixed stations of the seasons. It is superstitious when practised by the mathematici, who take auguries from the stars and assign the twelve signs to the separate parts of soul and body.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Isidore's line between licit and illicit star-knowledge. 3.129 distinguishes astronomia from astrologia. The 'natural' half (calendar, computus) is legitimate. Natal astrology and zodiacal melothesia are 'superstitious'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-8", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De civitate Dei", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 415", "date_sort": 415, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa003.opp-lat3", "ref": "5.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Civ. 5.3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Hoc figmentum fragilius est quam uasa, quae illa rotatione finguntur. Nam si tam multum in caelo interest, quod constellationibus conprehendi non potest, ut alteri geminorum hereditas obueniat, alteri non obueniat", "translation": "This fiction is more fragile than the pots shaped on that wheel. For if the difference in the sky is so great that the horoscopes cannot capture it, and yet one twin gets an inheritance and the other does not…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Nigidius 'Figulus' spun a potter's wheel and struck it twice with ink. The marks landed far apart, which he used to show how twins born moments apart get different fates. Augustine turns the argument round: if such tiny intervals decide everything, no horoscope can ever be read precisely. In 5.2 he prefers Hippocrates' medical explanation of twins' shared illnesses (same parents, food, air and water) to Posidonius' astrological one.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-9", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De civitate Dei", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 416", "date_sort": 416, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa003.opp-lat3", "ref": "7.35.1", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Civ. 7.35", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Nam et ipse Numa, ad quem nullus Dei propheta, nullus sanctus angelus mittebatur, hydromantian facere conpulsus est, ut in aqua uideret imagines deorum uel potius ludificationes daemonum, a quibus audiret, quid in sacris constituere adque obseruare deberet.", "translation": "Even Numa, to whom no prophet of God and no holy angel was sent, was driven to practise hydromancy, seeing in water images of the gods (or rather demons' mockeries) from whom he learned what rites to establish.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Drawing on Varro, Augustine makes Rome's religious founder a water-scryer. The 'nymph Egeria' is rationalised as a pun on aquam egerere (carrying out water). Numa's books are said to have been burned by the senate. The founding of Roman civic religion is thus recast as magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Numa Pompilius (and Pythagoras, per Varro)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-10", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De civitate Dei", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 416", "date_sort": 416, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa003.opp-lat3", "ref": "8.19.1", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Civ. 8.19", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "other", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Quur enim tam grauiter ista plectuntur seueritate legum, si opera sunt numinum colendorum? An forte istas leges Christiani instituerunt, quibus artes magicae puniuntur?", "translation": "Why are these things punished so severely by the laws, if they are the works of gods to be worshipped? Or did Christians perhaps make the laws by which magic arts are punished?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Augustine argues from Rome's own record against the Platonists who defend magic. He cites Virgil's Dido and the Twelve Tables' penalty for charming crops into another's field (via Cicero). He also notes that Apuleius was tried for magic before non-Christian judges.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Roman criminal law against magic predates Christianity (Twelve Tables; the trial of Apuleius)", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-11", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De civitate Dei", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 416", "date_sort": 416, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa003.opp-lat3", "ref": "8.23.1", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Civ. 8.23", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "Hos ergo spiritus inuisibiles per artem quandam uisibilibus rebus corporalis materiae copulare, ut sint quasi animata corpora illis spiritibus dicata et subdita simulacra, hoc esse dicit deos facere", "translation": "To join these invisible spirits by a certain art to visible material things, so that statues become as it were animated bodies dedicated and subject to those spirits — this, he says, is 'making gods'.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Augustine quotes the Latin Asclepius (Hermes Trismegistus) on telestic statue-animation as the human power to 'make gods'. He treats it as the template of idolatry-as-magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Binding spirits to statues by ritual art", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-12", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De civitate Dei", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 417", "date_sort": 417, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa003.opp-lat3", "ref": "10.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Civ. 10.9-10", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "non incantationibus et carminibus nefariae curiositatis arte conpositis, quam uel magian uel detestabiliori nomine goetian uel honrabiliori theurgian uocant, qui quasi conantur ista discernere", "translation": "…not by incantations and spells composed by the art of wicked curiosity, which they call magia, or by a more detestable name goetia, or a more honourable one theurgia — those who try, as it were, to distinguish them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the key statement on the Platonist distinction. Goetia is what the crowd calls maleficium; theurgy is the respectable kind. Augustine collapses the two: both are bound to demons under angels' names. In 10.10 he mocks Porphyry's report that one theurgist's prayers could frighten the gods into withholding a purification another theurgist had asked for.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-13", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De civitate Dei", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 417", "date_sort": 417, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa003.opp-lat3", "ref": "10.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Civ. 10.11", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Quaerit etiam ueluti dubitans, utrum in diuinantibus et quaedam mira facientibus animae sint passiones an aliqui spiritus extrinsecus ueniant, per quos haec ualeant; et potius uenire extrinsecus conicit, eo quod lapidibus et herbis adhibitis et adligent quosdam, et aperiant clausa ostia", "translation": "He also asks, as if in doubt, whether in diviners and wonder-workers these are affections of the soul or spirits coming from outside. He inclines to outside spirits, because with stones and herbs they bind people and open closed doors.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Augustine summarises Porphyry's Letter to Anebo. Porphyry asked whether trance and wonder-working come from inside the practitioner's soul or from outside agents. Augustine praises the inquiry while finding Porphyry too timid to condemn all demons.", "claimed_effect": "Binding people; opening locked doors", "claimed_mechanism": "Stones, herbs, external spirits", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-14", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De civitate Dei", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa / Italy", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 425", "date_sort": 425, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa003.opp-lat3", "ref": "18.18.2", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Civ. 18.18", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "poison-drug", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ubi stabularias mulieres inbutas his malis artibus in caseo dare solere dicebant quibus uellent seu possent uiatoribus, unde in iumenta ilico uerterentur et necessaria quaeque portarent postque perfuncta opera iterum ad se redirent", "translation": "…where they said that innkeeper-women steeped in these evil arts used to give travellers something in cheese, whereupon they were turned into beasts of burden and carried loads, and afterwards returned to themselves.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Augustine heard this in Italy and compares it with Apuleius' Golden Ass. He denies that any real bodily change happens. Instead the 'phantasticum' of the man appears as an animal to others while his real body lies drugged (18.18.3). Praestantius reported that his father ate the drugged cheese and could not be roused for days. He woke 'dreaming' that he had been a packhorse carrying army rations to Raetia, and the transport was later found to have taken place.", "claimed_effect": "Turning travellers into pack animals", "claimed_mechanism": "A drug in cheese; demonic projection of the phantasticum", "practitioner": "Innkeeper women (stabulariae)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-15", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De civitate Dei", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 426", "date_sort": 426, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa003.opp-lat3", "ref": "21.6.3", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Civ. 21.6", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ut in quodam templo lapidibus magnetibus in solo et camera proportione magnitudinis positis simulacrum ferreum aeris illius medio inter utrumque lapidem ignorantibus, quid sursum esset ac deorsum, quasi numinis potestate penderet", "translation": "…so that in a certain temple, with magnets placed in floor and ceiling in proportion, an iron statue hung in mid-air between the two stones, as if by divine power, to those who did not know what was above and below.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Augustine attributes temple 'marvels' (mechanemata) to human art working on God's creation. These include the magnet-suspended statue and Venus' 'inextinguishable lamp', possibly made 'by an artisan with asbestos stone' (21.6.2–3). Only after that does he concede that demons do aid the magi. He himself had been startled by a magnet lifting a chain of iron rings (21.4).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Magnets; asbestos", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-16", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De doctrina christiana", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "396/7", "date_sort": 397, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa005.opp-lat1", "ref": "89", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Doctr. chr. 2.20.30", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Ad hoc genus pertinent omnes etiam ligaturæ atque remedia, quæ medicorum quoque disciplina condemnat, sive in præcantationibus, sive in quibusdam notis quos characteres vocant, sive in quibusque rebus suspendendis atque illigandis", "translation": "To this class belong all ligatures and remedies which the discipline of physicians also condemns, whether in charms, or in certain marks called 'characters', or in things to be hung up or tied on.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Augustine defines superstition as anything instituted by people for idols or for 'consultations and pacts of signification agreed with demons'. Amulets that 'they call physica' are included, so as to look like nature rather than superstition. His examples are earrings at the top of each ear, ostrich-bone rings on the fingers, and telling someone with hiccups to hold the left thumb with the right hand.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Signification agreed with demons, not natural action", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-17", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De doctrina christiana", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "396/7", "date_sort": 397, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa005.opp-lat1", "ref": "90", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Doctr. chr. 2.20.31", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "His adjunguntur millia inanissimarum observa. tionum, si membrum aliquod salierit, si junctim ambulantibus amicis lapis, aut canis, aut puer medius intervenerit", "translation": "To these are added thousands of the emptiest observances: if a limb twitches; if, when friends walk together, a stone, a dog or a child comes between them…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Augustine catalogues everyday omens. Friends kick the stone or slap the child that came between them, and he dryly notes that a struck dog sometimes sends its striker to a real doctor. Other omens: treading the threshold, going back to bed after a sneeze, mice gnawing clothes. He quotes Cato's joke: it would have been a portent only if the boots had gnawed the mice.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-18", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De doctrina christiana", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "396/7", "date_sort": 397, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa005.opp-lat1", "ref": "96", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Doctr. chr. 2.24.37", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Non enim quia valebant, animadversa sunt; sed animadvertendo atque signando a tactum est ut valerent. Et ideo diversis diverse proveniunt secundum cogitationes et præsumptiones suas.", "translation": "They were not noticed because they were valid; rather, by noticing and marking them they came to be valid. And so they turn out differently for different people according to their own thoughts and presumptions.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is Augustine's semiotic theory of magic. Omens and charms work like letters, such as X, which means one thing to Greeks and another to Latins: by convention, a 'common language' agreed with demons. Augurs even avoid seeing birds, because a sign has no force without the observer's consent. In 2.23.35–36 he adds that true predictions do not legitimise these arts, citing the image of Samuel and the 'ventriloqua femina' of Acts 16.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Signs valid by consent; demons exploit the convention", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-19", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De doctrina christiana", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "396/7 (book 2)", "date_sort": 397, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa005.opp-lat1", "ref": "105", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Doctr. chr. 2.29.45", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Aliud est enim dicere, Tritam istam herbam si biheris, venter non dolebit; et aliud est dicere, Istam herbam collo si suspenderis, venter non dolebit. Ibienim probatur contemperatio salubris, hic significatio superstitiosa damnatur.", "translation": "It is one thing to say 'If you drink this herb crushed, your stomach will not hurt', another to say 'If you hang this herb round your neck, your stomach will not hurt.' In the first a healthy mixing is approved; in the second a superstitious signification is condemned.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is Augustine's clearest test for telling medicine from magic. Ingestion acts by nature; suspension acts by signification. He admits that where no charms or characters are involved it is often unclear whether a tied-on remedy works naturally. In that case the user's intention decides.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-20", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De divinatione daemonum", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "406-411", "date_sort": 408, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa038a.opp-lat1", "ref": "7.1", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Div. daem. 3.7", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Daemonum eam esse naturam, ut aerii corporis sensu terrenorum corporum sensum facile praecedant, celeritate etiam propter eiusdem aerii corporis superiorem mobilitatem non solum cursus quorumlibet hominum uel ferarum, uerum etiam uolatus auium inconparabiliter uincant.", "translation": "The nature of demons is such that, with the senses of an airy body, they easily outstrip the senses of earthly bodies, and by the greater mobility of that airy body they incomparably surpass in speed not only any man or beast but even the flight of birds.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is Augustine's 'physics' of demonic knowledge: sharp senses, speed, and long experience of a very long life. He likens demons to a keen-nosed hunting dog, and to old men, doctors, sailors and farmers who 'seem to divine' to the inexperienced.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Airy bodies; speed; accumulated experience", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-21", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De divinatione daemonum", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "406-411", "date_sort": 408, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa038a.opp-lat1", "ref": "9.1", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Div. daem. 5.9", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "accipiunt enim saepe potestatem et morbos inmittere et ipsum aerem uitiando morbidum reddere … neque enim quia praeuidet medicus, quod non praeuidet eius artis ignarus, ideo iam diuinus habendus est.", "translation": "For they often receive power both to send diseases and to make the air itself sickly by corrupting it … And a physician who foresees what someone ignorant of his art does not foresee is not on that account to be considered divine.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Demons predict what they themselves will do, and read storms in the air the way a physician reads a body. They also read people's intentions from involuntary bodily signs, as a face betrays agitation. All of this is prediction from real but hidden knowledge, not true prophecy.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Reading natural signs; causing what they predict; reading bodily expressions", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-22", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Confessiones", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "397-400 (events c. 374-380)", "date_sort": 398, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "4.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Conf. 4.2.3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "mandasse mihi nescio quem haruspicem, quid ei dare uellem mercedis, ut uincerem, me autem foeda illa sacramenta detestatum et abominatum respondisse, nec si corona illa ita esset inmortaliter aurea, muscam pro uictoria mea necari sinere.", "translation": "…that some haruspex sent to ask what fee I would give him to make me win; but I, loathing those foul rites, answered that even if the crown were of immortal gold I would not let a fly be killed for my victory.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A haruspex offered the young Augustine victory in a poetry contest by animal sacrifice, a fee-for-service rite meant to win the demons' support. Augustine refused, yet he kept consulting astrologers, reasoning that they offered no sacrifice (4.4.1).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Haruspex for hire", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-23", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Confessiones", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "397-400", "date_sort": 398, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "4.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Conf. 4.3.5", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "respondit ille, ut potuit, sortem hoc facere in rerum natura usquequaque diffusam. si enim de paginis poetae cuiuspiam longe aliud canentis atque intendentis, cum forte quis consulit, mirabiliter consonus negotio saepe uersus exiret", "translation": "He answered as best he could that it was chance, spread everywhere throughout nature: for if, when someone consults the pages of some poet singing of something quite different, a verse often comes out wonderfully apt to the matter…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Vindicianus, a physician and proconsul who had once studied to be an astrologer, gave up astrology after finding it false. He explained astrologers' successes as chance, likening them to Virgilian lots, and told Augustine 'if you understood Hippocrates you could understand those books.'", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Vindicianus (former student of astrology)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-24", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Confessiones", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "397-400", "date_sort": 398, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "7.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Conf. 7.6.8-10", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "inde certissime colligi ea, quae uera consideratis constellationibus dicerentur, non arte dici, sed sorte, quae autem falsa, non artis inperitia, sed sortis mendacio.", "translation": "From this I concluded with certainty that true statements made after examining the constellations were spoken not by art but by luck, and false ones not by unskill in the art but by the lie of luck.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Firminus' father, an astrology enthusiast, recorded a slave-woman giving birth at the same instant as his own wife. The two boys, one a free-born gentleman and one a slave, lived utterly different lives. This natural experiment convinced Augustine; he then turned to twins (7.10).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-25", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De Trinitate", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 400-416", "date_sort": 405, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa009.opp-lat1", "ref": "89", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Trin. 3.8.13", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Nec sane creatores illi mali angeli dicendi sunt, quia per illos magi resistentes famulo Dei ranas et serpentes fecerunt: non enim ipsi eas crcaverunt. Omnium quippe rerum quæ corporaliter visibiliterque nascuntur, occulta quædam semina in Istis corporeis mundi hujus elementis latent.", "translation": "Nor should those evil angels be called creators because through them Pharaoh's magicians made frogs and serpents; they did not create them. For of all things born bodily and visibly, certain hidden seeds lie in the bodily elements of this world.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Augustine explains real magical transformations, such as Pharaoh's magicians' serpents, by 'seminal reasons'. Demons with subtle senses know where hidden seeds lie and speed their growth, as a farmer does. Only God creates; magic merely accelerates nature.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Manipulation of hidden seeds (rationes seminales)", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-26", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Epistulae", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "411/412", "date_sort": 412, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa011.opp-lat2", "ref": "138.18.1", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Ep. 138.18-19", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Quis autem uel risu dignum putet, quod Apollonium et Apuleium ceterosque magicarum artium peritissimos conferre Christo uel etiam praeferre conantur?", "translation": "Who would think it even worth a laugh that they try to compare Apollonius and Apuleius and the other experts in the magic arts with Christ, or even to rank them above him?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Marcellinus (Ep. 136.1) reported that Carthaginian pagans held up Apollonius and Apuleius as greater wonder-workers than Christ. Augustine mocks Apuleius, who with all his magic could not even win a judgeship, and notes that he defended himself against the charge of magic in court (138.19).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Pagan-Christian polemic at Carthage after 410", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-27", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "In Evangelium Ioannis Tractatus", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 406-407", "date_sort": 407, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa069.opp-lat1", "ref": "136", "conventional_ref": "Aug. In Ioh. tr. 7.12 (cf. 7.6)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Cum caput tibi dolet, laudamus si Evangelium ad caput tibi posueris, et non ad ligaturam cucurreris.", "translation": "When your head aches, we praise you if you put the Gospel to your head instead of running to a ligature.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Augustine tolerates a Gospel book placed on the head as a cure, as the lesser evil compared with amulets. In 7.6 (ref 130) he complains that sellers of ligatures and charms now mix Christ's name into their spells 'like honey on poison'. He also knew a priest of 'the Capped One' (Attis) who said 'the Capped One himself is a Christian.'", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Trust in God vs. vain remedy", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-28", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "396", "date_sort": 396, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa038.opp-lat1", "ref": "60", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Simpl. 2.3.2", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "ut non vere spiritum Samuelis excitatum a requie sua creJamus, sed ala. quod phantasma, et imaginariam illusionem diaboli machinationibus factam", "translation": "…that we should not believe Samuel's spirit truly roused from its rest, but some phantasm, an imaginary illusion produced by the devil's machinations.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "On the witch of Endor (1 Sam 28), Augustine leaves open whether the real Samuel appeared. He prefers the 'easier' reading: a phantasm called by Samuel's name, as a painting of Cicero is called 'Cicero'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "The pythonissa of Endor", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-29", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De Genesi ad litteram", "author": "Augustine of Hippo", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "401-415", "date_sort": 410, "edition_urn": "stoa0040.stoa042a.opp-lat1", "ref": "2.17.3", "conventional_ref": "Aug. Gen. litt. 2.17.37", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "quapropter bono christiano siue mathematici siue quilibet inpie diuinantium, maxime dicentes uera, cauendi sunt, ne consortio daemoniorum animam deceptam pacto quodam societatis inretiant.", "translation": "Therefore the good Christian should beware of mathematici (astrologers) or any impious diviners, especially when they tell the truth, lest they ensnare the deceived soul in a pact of fellowship with demons.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Augustine concedes that astrologers sometimes tell the truth, by a 'most hidden instinct' (demonic, angelic or permitted by God). That is exactly why they are dangerous. The sentence is often misquoted today as a warning against mathematicians; in context mathematici means astrologers.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-30", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Apologeticum", "author": "Tertullian", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "197", "date_sort": 197, "edition_urn": "stoa0275.stoa009.perseus-lat2", "ref": "22.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Tert. Apol. 22.8-11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Benefici plane et circa curas valitudinum. Laedunt enim primo, dehinc remedia praecipiunt ad miraculum nova sive contraria, post quae desinunt laedere, et curasse creduntur.", "translation": "They are 'benefactors', to be sure, in curing illness: first they injure, then they prescribe remedies, novel or contrary, to make a marvel; after which they stop injuring, and are believed to have cured.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Tertullian explains demonic power: 'every spirit is winged', so demons know events everywhere at once. They steal prophecy from Scripture, foretell rain because they live in the air and 'already feel it', and fake cures by stopping the harm they caused.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Speed, aerial habitat, harm-then-cure", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-31", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Apologeticum", "author": "Tertullian", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "197", "date_sort": 197, "edition_urn": "stoa0275.stoa009.perseus-lat2", "ref": "23.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Tert. Apol. 23.1", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "si multa miracula circulatoriis praestigiis ludunt, si et somnia immittunt habentes semel invitatorum angelorum et daemonum adsistentem sibi potestatem, per quos et caprae et mensae divinare consuerunt", "translation": "…if they play many wonders with mountebank tricks, if they send dreams, having the power of angels and demons once invited to assist them, through whom even goats and tables are accustomed to divine…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Tertullian lists what magicians do. They produce phantasms, raise the souls of the dead, and make boys utter oracles, apparently a child medium. They play wonders 'circulatoriis praestigiis' (street-juggler tricks), send dreams, and make goats and tables divine. The divining tables recall later table-turning.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "magi", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-32", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De anima", "author": "Tertullian", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 210", "date_sort": 210, "edition_urn": "stoa0275.stoa010.opp-lat2", "ref": "57.1", "conventional_ref": "Tert. An. 57", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "quid ergo dicemus magian? quod omnes paene, fallaciam. sed ratio fallaciae solos non fugit Christianos", "translation": "What then shall we say magic is? What nearly everyone says: a deception. But the reason for the deception escapes only Christians…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Necromancers claim to call up the untimely dead (aori) and the violently dead (biaeothanati), names drawn from magicians' own books: Ostanes, Typhon, Dardanus, Damigeron, Nectabis, Berenice. Tertullian says demons impersonate them, as they do in exorcisms, where a demon may claim to be a relative or a gladiator. The phantasm and its fake body deceive the eyes, as with Pharaoh's rod-serpents and the 'Samuel' of Endor.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Demons impersonating the dead; phantasms", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-33", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De idololatria", "author": "Tertullian", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 200-206", "date_sort": 203, "edition_urn": "stoa0275.stoa017.opp-lat2", "ref": "9.1", "conventional_ref": "Tert. Idol. 9", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "expelluntur mathematici, sicut angeli eorum. urbs et Italia interdicitur mathematicis, sicut caelum angelis eorum. eadem poena est exilii discipulis et magistris.", "translation": "The astrologers are expelled, just like their angels: the City and Italy are forbidden to astrologers, as heaven is to their angels. Disciples and masters suffer the same penalty of exile.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A Christian astrologer had defended his profession. Tertullian says astrology was revealed by the angels who lusted after women. The Magi's star was allowed only 'until the Gospel', and Simon Magus and Elymas show magic's continuing defeat. 'We know the alliance of magic and astrology.' He also refers to the Roman expulsions of astrologers.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Roman edicts expelling mathematici from Rome and Italy", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-34", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De cultu feminarum", "author": "Tertullian", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 200", "date_sort": 200, "edition_urn": "stoa0275.stoa014.opp-lat1", "ref": "1.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Tert. Cult. fem. 1.2", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "other", "astrology", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "siquidem et metallorum opera nudaverant et herbarum ingenia traduxerant et incantationum vires provulgaverant et omnem curiositatem usque ad stellarum interpretationem designaverant", "translation": "…for they had laid bare the working of metals, passed on the powers of herbs, published the force of incantations, and marked out every curiosity down to the interpretation of the stars…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the Enochic myth in Latin: the fallen angels taught women metallurgy, herb-lore, incantations and astrology, along with cosmetics. Technology, pharmacy, magic and astrology share one illicit origin.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Revelation by fallen angels (1 Enoch tradition)", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-35", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Octavius", "author": "Minucius Felix", "culture": "Roman (North African?) Christian", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 200-240 (priority vs Tertullian disputed)", "date_sort": 220, "edition_urn": "stoa0203.stoa001.opp-lat2", "ref": "26.10.1", "conventional_ref": "Min. Fel. Oct. 26.10-11", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "magi quoque non tantum sciunt daemonas, sed etiam quicquid miraculi ludunt, per daemonas faciunt: illis adspirantibus et infundentibus praestigias edunt, uel quae non sunt uideri, uel quae sunt non uideri.", "translation": "The magi not only know the demons; whatever wonder they play, they do through demons: by their inspiration and infusion they produce illusions, making what is not seem to be, and what is seem not to be.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Minucius defines magic as visual illusion. He cites Hostanes (Ostanes), chief of the magi, as a witness that the true God exists and that angels and earthly, wandering demons are real. The magi's own literature thus serves as evidence for Christian demonology.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-36", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Octavius", "author": "Minucius Felix", "culture": "Roman (North African?) Christian", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 200-240", "date_sort": 220, "edition_urn": "stoa0203.stoa001.opp-lat2", "ref": "27.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Min. Fel. Oct. 27.1-3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "inrepentes etiam corporibus occulte ut spiritus tenues morbos fingunt, terrent mentes, membra distorquent, ut ad cultum sui cogant, ut nidore altarium uel hostiis pecudum saginati, remissis quae constrinxerant, curasse uideantur.", "translation": "Creeping secretly into bodies as thin spirits, they feign diseases, terrify minds, twist limbs, to force people to worship them, so that, fattened on altar-smoke and sacrifices, they release what they had bound and seem to have cured.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Demons hide in statues, inspire seers, animate entrails, steer the flight of birds, rule lots and make oracles. They cause illness and 'cure' it in return for cult. Ecstatic street-prophets are part of the same picture (27.3).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Demonic harm-and-release", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-37", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Quod idola dii non sint", "author": "Cyprian of Carthage (attribution disputed)", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 250", "date_sort": 250, "edition_urn": "stoa0104a.stoa006.opp-lat1", "ref": "7.1", "conventional_ref": "Cypr. Idol. 6-7", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "hi tamen adiurati per Deum uerum nobis statim cedunt et fatentur et de obsessis corporibus exire coguntur: uideas illos nostra uoce et oratione maiestatis occultae flagris caedi, igne torreri", "translation": "Yet when adjured by the true God they yield to us at once, confess, and are forced out of the bodies they possess: you could see them whipped by our voice and by the prayer of hidden majesty, roasted by fire…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Chapters 6–7 reproduce Minucius Oct. 26–27 almost verbatim: Ostanes, demons in statues, and illness released after cult. The author adds a vivid scene of exorcism as public proof. This is a textbook case of literary dependence.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Christian exorcists", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-38", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Divinae institutiones", "author": "Lactantius", "culture": "Roman North Africa / Nicomedia", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 305-311", "date_sort": 308, "edition_urn": "stoa0171.stoa009.opp-lat1", "ref": "2.16.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Lact. Div. inst. 2.14.10, 2.16.1-4", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy", "astrology", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "sed eos magi et ii quos uere maleficos uulgus appellat, cum artes suas exsecrabiles exercent, ueris suis nominibus cient, illis caelestibus quae in litteris sanctis leguntur.", "translation": "But the magi, and those whom the people rightly call malefici, when they practise their execrable arts, summon them by their true names, those heavenly names that are read in the sacred writings.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Demons invented astrology, haruspicy, augury, oracles, necromancy and the magic art (2.16.1). Magicians' power consists in blinding the eyes with praestigiae (2.14.10). Lactantius' striking detail is that sorcerers invoke demons by the angelic names found in Scripture.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Invocation by true (scriptural/angelic) names", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-39", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De mortibus persecutorum", "author": "Lactantius", "culture": "Roman East (Diocletian's court)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 315 (events c. 299)", "date_sort": 315, "edition_urn": "stoa0171.stoa002.opp-lat1", "ref": "10.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Lact. Mort. pers. 10.1-4", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "imposuerunt frontibus suis inmortale signum: quo facto fugatis daemonibus sacra turbata sunt. trepidabant aruspices nec solitas in extis notas uidebant et quasi non litassent, saepius immolabant.", "translation": "They put the immortal sign on their foreheads; at this the demons fled and the rites were thrown into confusion. The haruspices trembled, did not see the usual marks in the entrails, and as if the sacrifice had failed they sacrificed again and again.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Christian attendants crossed themselves during Diocletian's extispicy. The chief haruspex Tagis blamed 'profane persons' and the persecution followed. Christian sign and pagan rite meet as rival ritual technologies.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Imperial haruspices", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-40", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Divinae institutiones", "author": "Lactantius", "culture": "Roman East", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 305-311", "date_sort": 308, "edition_urn": "stoa0171.stoa009.opp-lat1", "ref": "5.3.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Lact. Div. inst. 5.3.7-9", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "si magus Christus, quia mirabilia fecit, peritior utique Apollonius, qui ut describis cum Domitianus eum punire uellet, repente in iudicio non conparuit.", "translation": "If Christ was a magus because he did wonders, Apollonius was surely more skilful, who, as you describe, vanished suddenly from the court when Domitian wanted to punish him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This answers Hierocles' Philalethes, which compared Apollonius to Christ. It shows the pagan charge that Christ was a magus, and the Christian reply that a true god is attested by prophecy, which no magus has.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-41", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Adversus nationes", "author": "Arnobius of Sicca", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 300", "date_sort": 300, "edition_urn": "stoa0034.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "1.43.1", "conventional_ref": "Arnob. Adv. nat. 1.43-44, 1.52", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "divination", "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "magus fuit, clandestinis artibus omnia illa perfecit … aut sine clauibus reserare quae clausa sunt aut ora silentio uincire aut in curriculis equos debilitare incitare tardare", "translation": "'He was a magus; he did all that by secret arts' … or to open without keys what is locked, to bind mouths in silence, or in the races to weaken, spur on or slow down horses…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pagans said Christ stole the names of powerful angels from Egyptian shrines. Arnobius replies with a catalogue of what magicians actually claim to do: foreknow fated events, send wasting disease, break up families, open locks, bind tongues, rig chariot races, and inflame illicit love. All of it works only through the power they invoke. In 1.52 he lists famous magi (Zoroaster, Ostanes, Apollonius, Damigeron, Dardanus…) and challenges them to heal the mute and blind as 'rustic Christians' do.", "claimed_effect": "Lock-opening, silencing, horse-race fixing, love", "claimed_mechanism": "Carmina, herbs, observance of times, invoked powers", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-42", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De errore profanarum religionum", "author": "Firmicus Maternus", "culture": "Late Roman (Sicily/Rome)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 346", "date_sort": 346, "edition_urn": "stoa0123a.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "13.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Firm. Err. 13.4-5 (cf. 6.6)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Serapis tuus ab homine uocatur et uenit et cum uenerit statim iussus includitur et loquendi necessitas nolenti forsitan imperatur.", "translation": "Your Serapis is called by a man and comes, and when he has come he is at once ordered and shut in, and the necessity of speaking is imposed on him, perhaps against his will.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Firmicus, author of the astrological Mathesis (not in the library) who later converted, uses Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles: Serapis summoned into a human medium shows that 'your gods serve men's commands'. In 6.6 he euhemerises Dionysus as a Theban tyrant-magician who drove women mad 'with poisons and spells'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Theurgic compulsion; drugs and carmina", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-43", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Codex Theodosianus (Constantine, De maleficis) with Breviary interpretatio", "author": "Constantine I (law); Visigothic interpreters", "culture": "Late Roman imperial law / Visigothic Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "321 (interpretatio 506)", "date_sort": 321, "edition_urn": "tmp76.tmp76.opp-lat1", "ref": "11.35", "conventional_ref": "CTh 9.16.3", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "weather-nature", "love", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Nullis vero crimina- tionibus implicanda sunt remedia b humanis c quae- sita corporibus aut in agrestibus locis, ne maturis d vindemiis metuerentur imbres, aut ruentis e grandi- nis lapidatione quaterentur", "translation": "But remedies sought for human bodies, or used innocently in country places so that ripe vintages need not fear rain or be battered by stoning hail, are not to be involved in any accusation…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Constantine punishes magic aimed against people's health or at seducing the chaste, but expressly protects healing charms and weather magic. The Breviary's interpretatio (11.36) drops the exemption: 'malefici, incantatores, immissores tempestatum' and demon-invokers are to be punished with every kind of penalty. The legal boundary visibly moves between 321 and 506.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Imperial rescript to Bassus, PPO; reinterpreted in Alaric's Breviary", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-44", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Codex Theodosianus (Constantine, De maleficis et mathematicis)", "author": "Constantine I", "culture": "Late Roman imperial law", "language": "lat", "date": "319", "date_sort": 319, "edition_urn": "tmp76.tmp76.opp-lat1", "ref": "9.3", "conventional_ref": "CTh 9.16.1 (cf. 16.10.1)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Nullus arus- pex limen alterius accedat h, nec ob alteram cau- sam", "translation": "No haruspex shall cross another's threshold, not even for some other reason.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Private haruspicy is banned on pain of burning, while public rites remain allowed: 'those who wish to serve their superstition may exercise their rite publicly'. Elsewhere in the same survey (10.40) Constantine orders haruspices to be consulted when the palace is struck by lightning. What is policed is private divination, not divination as such.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Haruspices", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-45", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Concilium Eliberitanum (Concilia Hispaniae)", "author": "Council of Elvira", "culture": "Roman Spain", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 300-306", "date_sort": 303, "edition_urn": "tmp1453.tmp1453.opp-lat1", "ref": "1.8", "conventional_ref": "Conc. Elvira can. 6", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Si quis vero maleficio interficiat alterum, eo quod sine Idololatria perficere scelus non potuit, nec in finem impertiendam esse illi [ U., G., ei ] commu- nionem.", "translation": "If anyone kills another by maleficium, since he could not commit that crime without idolatry, communion is not to be given him even at the end.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the earliest conciliar sanction on lethal sorcery, and it is among the harshest: no communion even on the deathbed. The reasoning is that sorcery necessarily involves idolatry.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-46", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Codex canonum: Concilium Ancyranum", "author": "Council of Ancyra (Latin version)", "culture": "Asia Minor (Latin canonical tradition)", "language": "lat", "date": "314", "date_sort": 314, "edition_urn": "tmp1102.tmp1102.opp-lat1", "ref": "25", "conventional_ref": "Conc. Ancyra can. 24", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "Qui divinationes expetunt, et consuetudines gentium subsequuntur, aut in domos suas hujusmodi homines introducunt, exquirendi aliquid arte magica, aut expiandi causa, in canonem qninquennii incidant", "translation": "Those who seek divinations and follow the customs of the gentiles, or bring such men into their houses to find something out by magic art or for purification, fall under the five-year canon.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Five years of graded penance for bringing diviners into the house, whether to find something out or to purify it. Purification (lustration) appears here as a service magicians sold.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-47", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Codex canonum: Concilium Laodicenum", "author": "Council of Laodicea (Latin version)", "culture": "Asia Minor (Latin canonical tradition)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 363-364 (disputed)", "date_sort": 363, "edition_urn": "tmp1106.tmp1106.opp-lat1", "ref": "39", "conventional_ref": "Conc. Laodicea can. 36", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Quod non oportet sacerdotes aut do- ricos, magos aut incantatores esse, vel mathemati- cos, vel astrologos, aut facere quæ dicuntur phylacteria, quae quidem sunt animarum ipsarum vincula.", "translation": "Priests or clerics must not be magi or enchanters, or mathematici or astrologers, or make what are called phylacteries, which are in truth chains for their own souls.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The canon is aimed at clergy, implying that clerics did make amulets. It puns on the phylactery (a 'guard') as a chain for the soul. The OCR prints '56' for the canon number. The preceding canon (35) bans 'naming angels', a hidden idolatry.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Clergy", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-48", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Diversarum hereseon liber", "author": "Filastrius of Brescia", "culture": "Northern Italy", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 385", "date_sort": 385, "edition_urn": "stoa0122a.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "21.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Filastr. Haer. 21", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "rune-writing-magic" ], "excerpt_original": "et in eo incisiones et impressiones manu hominum et ut litterarum quarundam sculpentes Iudaei, et formulas diuersas tollentes et ponentes in lammina baiulabant in collo", "translation": "…and on it the Jews carved incisions and impressions as of certain letters, and, taking various formulae and putting them on a metal plate, carried them on their necks.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Filastrius describes a supposed Jewish 'heresy' that worshipped the bronze serpent. Its adherents copied formulae from an inscribed obelisk-like stone onto metal lamellae worn round the neck, and used incantations, phylacteries and 'alligaturas et tutamina' (21.3). This is a recognisable description of inscribed lamella amulets.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-49", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Exameron", "author": "Ambrose of Milan", "culture": "Northern Italy", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 387", "date_sort": 387, "edition_urn": "stoa0022.stoa054.opp-lat1", "ref": "4.33.1", "conventional_ref": "Ambr. Exam. 4.8.33", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "quam ridiculum autem quod te plerumque credunt homines magicis carminibus posse deduci. aniles istae fabulae ac uulgi opiniones.", "translation": "How ridiculous that people often believe you [the moon] can be drawn down by magic songs! These are old wives' tales and popular opinions.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ambrose dismisses the Thessalian drawing-down of the moon. He adds that 'enchanters are powerless where the song of Christ is daily sung', Christ being the Church's own 'incantator'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-50", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Exameron", "author": "Ambrose of Milan", "culture": "Northern Italy", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 387", "date_sort": 387, "edition_urn": "stoa0022.stoa054.opp-lat1", "ref": "5.24.1", "conventional_ref": "Ambr. Exam. 5.9.24", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "qui mathematicus, qui astrologus sed Chaldaeus potest sic siderum cursus, sic caeli motus et signa conprehendere?", "translation": "What mathematicus, what astrologer or Chaldaean can grasp the courses of the stars, the motions and signs of the sky, like this?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The sea urchin weighs itself down with a pebble before storms, and sailors read this as a storm warning: 'the urchin is never wrong'. Ambrose sets natural, God-given weather signs against astrologers' failures. In 4.4.14 he argues that no astrologer can fix the moment of birth while the midwife is still announcing it.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-51", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Contra Symmachum", "author": "Prudentius", "culture": "Spain / Rome", "language": "lat", "date": "402-403", "date_sort": 402, "edition_urn": "stoa0238.stoa007.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.1.96", "conventional_ref": "Prud. C. Symm. 1.87-101", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "murmure nam magico tenues excire figuras / atque sepulcrales scite incantare favillas, / vita itidem spoliare alios ars noxia novit,", "translation": "For with magic murmur his baneful art knew how to call up thin shapes and skilfully enchant the ashes of the tomb, and likewise to rob others of life.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Prudentius euhemerises Mercury as a Thessalian magician-necromancer with his wand, worshipped by credulous antiquity. Isidore Etym. 8.9.8 quotes these lines as 'Prudentius on Mercury'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-52", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Apotheosis", "author": "Prudentius", "culture": "Spain / Roman Empire", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 400 (event under Julian, 361-363)", "date_sort": 400, "edition_urn": "stoa0238.stoa005.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3.477", "conventional_ref": "Prud. Apoth. 449-502", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "nil agit arcanum murmur, nil Thessala prosunt / carmina, turbatos revocat nulla hostia manes,", "translation": "The secret murmur achieves nothing, Thessalian spells avail nothing, no victim recalls the troubled shades.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "During Julian's sacrifice to Hecate the haruspex panics: the shades scatter, fire dies, the libation bowl falls. A Christian guardsman with the chrism-sign on his brow has 'disturbed Zoroastrian whispers'. This is the verse counterpart to Lactantius DMP 10, and Prudentius claims to remember it from boyhood.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Emperor Julian and his haruspex", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-53", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Vita Sancti Hilarionis", "author": "Jerome", "culture": "Roman Palestine/Egypt (via Latin)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 390", "date_sort": 390, "edition_urn": "stoa0162.stoa063.opp-lat1", "ref": "2.21", "conventional_ref": "Hier. V. Hil. 21", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "rune-writing-magic", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "et subter limen domus puellae portenta quaedam verborum, et portentosas figuras sculptas in aeris Cyprii lamina defodit. Illico insanire virgo, et amictu capitis ab- jecto, rotare crinem, stridere dentibus, inclamare nomen adolescentis.", "translation": "…and under the threshold of the girl's house he buried certain monstrous words and monstrous figures engraved on a plate of Cyprian copper. At once the virgin went mad, threw off her head-covering, whirled her hair, gnashed her teeth, and shouted the young man's name.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A youth of Gaza, rebuffed by a consecrated virgin, studies for a year with the priests of Asclepius at Memphis. He returns and buries an inscribed copper love-spell under her threshold. The demon says it is bound there 'by thread and plate'. Hilarion expels it but refuses to have the plates dug up, so it will not seem that undoing the spell freed her. He also scolds the girl for giving the demon an opening.", "claimed_effect": "Erotic madness", "claimed_mechanism": "Buried inscribed lamella plus a bound love-demon", "practitioner": "A young man trained at Memphis", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-54", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Vita Sancti Hilarionis", "author": "Jerome", "culture": "Roman Palestine (Gaza)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 390", "date_sort": 390, "edition_urn": "stoa0162.stoa063.opp-lat1", "ref": "2.20", "conventional_ref": "Hier. V. Hil. 20", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Hic itaque aemulo suo habente maleficum, qui daemoniacis quibusdam imprecationibus et hujus impediret [Al. praecantationibus et hujus praeparet] equos, et illius concitaret ad cursum", "translation": "Since his rival had a sorcerer who by demonic imprecations would hinder this man's horses and spur on his own…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Italicus, a Christian horse-breeder, faces a duumvir devoted to Marnas who employs a maleficus to curse the chariot horses. Hilarion has Italicus sprinkle water from his own drinking cup on the stable, horses, drivers and starting gates. The Christian team wins; the crowd shouts 'Marnas is defeated by Christ', and Hilarion is himself denounced as a 'Christian maleficus'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "A hired maleficus vs. the holy man", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Circus factions; curse tablets against racehorses", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-55", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Commentarii in Danielem", "author": "Jerome", "culture": "Roman Palestine (Bethlehem)", "language": "lat", "date": "407", "date_sort": 407, "edition_urn": "tmp465.tmp465.opp-lat1", "ref": "2.14", "conventional_ref": "Hier. In Dan. 1.2.2", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Ergo videntur mihi incantatores esse, qni verbis rem peragunt. Magi, qui de singulis 1 philosophantur : malefici, qui sanguine utuntur et victimis, et saepe contingunt corpora mortuorum.", "translation": "So enchanters seem to me those who accomplish things by words; magi, those who philosophise about each thing; malefici, those who use blood and victims and often touch the bodies of the dead.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "On Dan 2:2 Jerome distinguishes arioli/incantatores, magi, malefici and Chaldaei (= genethlialogi, 'whom the crowd calls mathematici'). He notes that common speech uses magus for maleficus, though among their own people the magi are Chaldean philosophers. This is the direct source of Isidore Etym. 8.9.9–10 and 8.9.15.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-56", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Epistulae (Ep. 96, Theophilus of Alexandria's Paschal Letter, translated by Jerome)", "author": "Theophilus of Alexandria / Jerome (translator)", "culture": "Egypt / Latin West", "language": "lat", "date": "401", "date_sort": 401, "edition_urn": "stoa0162.stoa004.opp-lat1", "ref": "96.16.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Hier. Ep. 96.16", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "nam in tractatibus suis his locutus est uerbis: ars magica non mihi uidetur alicuius rei subsistentis uocabulum, sed et, si sit, non est operis mali nec quod haberi possit contemptui.", "translation": "For in his treatises he spoke in these words: 'The magic art does not seem to me the name of any really existing thing; but even if it were, it is not an evil work, nor something to be held in contempt.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Theophilus attacks Origen for 'patronising' magic and makes him an ally of Elymas and of Jannes and Jambres. His argument: if magic is not evil, idolatry, which rests on magic, is not evil either. It preserves an otherwise surprising early Christian view that magic is either unreal or morally neutral.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-57", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historia ecclesiastica", "author": "Rufinus of Aquileia", "culture": "Late Roman Alexandria (via Latin)", "language": "lat", "date": "402 (events 391)", "date_sort": 402, "edition_urn": "tmp387.tmp387.opp-lat1", "ref": "18.23.2", "conventional_ref": "Rufin. HE 11.23", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Fenestra perexigua ab ortu solis ita erat aptata, ut die qua fuerat institu- tum simulachrum Solis ad Serapio salutandum in- troferri, diligenter temporibus observatis, ingre- diente simuluchro radius solis per eandem fenes- tram g directus, os et la(??)ra Serapis illustraret", "translation": "A very small window was so placed toward the sunrise that, on the day fixed for the image of the Sun to be carried in to greet Serapis, with the timing carefully observed, a sunbeam passed through it as the image entered and lit up Serapis' mouth and lips…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the Serapeum the people saw Serapis 'kissed by the Sun'. A second device used a lodestone in the ceiling to make an iron Sun-image seem to rise and hang in the air, explained by the attendants as 'the Sun rising to bid Serapis farewell'. Rufinus calls these things 'composed by trickery and art for amazement'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Solar alignment; magnetism", "practitioner": "Temple staff", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-58", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historia ecclesiastica", "author": "Rufinus of Aquileia", "culture": "Late Roman Alexandria (via Latin)", "language": "lat", "date": "402", "date_sort": 402, "edition_urn": "tmp387.tmp387.opp-lat1", "ref": "18.25.2", "conventional_ref": "Rufin. HE 11.25", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Erat autem simu- lachrum illud a tergo b exesum, et parieti diligenter annexum. Ardentibusque intra aedem luminibus, in- tentae supplicantique mulieri vocem subito per simulachrum aeris concavi proferebat", "translation": "The statue was hollowed out at the back and carefully joined to the wall. With lamps burning in the shrine, he suddenly sent his voice through the hollow bronze statue to the woman praying intently…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Tyrannus, priest of Saturn, told noblemen that the god wanted their wives to spend the night in the temple. He crept through underground passages into the hollow statue, spoke as the god, put out the lamps by a trick with cloths, and seduced the women. One woman recognised his voice; he was tortured and confessed.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Tyrannus, priest of Saturn", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-59", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historia ecclesiastica", "author": "Rufinus of Aquileia", "culture": "Late Roman Egypt (via Latin)", "language": "lat", "date": "402", "date_sort": 402, "edition_urn": "tmp387.tmp387.opp-lat1", "ref": "18.26.2", "conventional_ref": "Rufin. HE 11.26", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "chemistry-fire" ], "excerpt_original": "Harum ille unam cera foraminibus obturatis, desuper etiam variis co- loribus pictam, aqua repletam statuit ut Deum.", "translation": "He took one of these [porous filter-jars], stopped its holes with wax, painted it over in various colours, filled it with water, and set it up as a god.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Canopus is called 'almost a public school of magic' under cover of priestly (hieroglyphic) letters. Its aetiology: Chaldaeans claimed their Fire-god defeated every other god. The Canopic priest set up a porous water-filter jar with its pores sealed by wax. When the fire was lit the wax melted, the jar 'sweated', and the fire went out.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Wax-sealed porous jar", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-60", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historia monachorum (Liber de vitis patrum)", "author": "Rufinus of Aquileia (from Greek HM / Palladius)", "culture": "Egyptian monasticism (via Latin)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 403-404", "date_sort": 403, "edition_urn": "tmp386.tmp386.opp-lat1", "ref": "12.28.4", "conventional_ref": "Rufin. Hist. mon. 28 (Macarius)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "illusion-trickery", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Ego hanc quam osten- ditis mihi puellam video, nihil in se pecudis haben- tem : hoc autem quod dicitis, non est in ejus cor- pore, sed in oculis intuentium. Phantasiae enim daemonum sunt istae, non veritas rerum.", "translation": "I see the girl you are showing me, with nothing of a beast about her; what you speak of is not in her body but in the eyes of the beholders. These are phantasies of demons, not the truth of things.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Parents bring Macarius their daughter, 'turned into a mare by wicked men's magic arts'. He sees only a girl. He prays and anoints her with oil, and she is 'seen as a virgin by all, as she saw herself'.", "claimed_effect": "Woman seen as mare", "claimed_mechanism": "Demonic illusion in the viewers' eyes", "practitioner": "Anonymous magicians; Macarius the Egyptian", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-61", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historia monachorum (Liber de vitis patrum)", "author": "Rufinus of Aquileia", "culture": "Egyptian monasticism (via Latin)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 403-404", "date_sort": 403, "edition_urn": "tmp386.tmp386.opp-lat1", "ref": "12.28.3", "conventional_ref": "Rufin. Hist. mon. 28", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Et elevata voce, ex nomine clamat defunctum. Cum- que ei de sepulcro vocatus respondisset", "translation": "And raising his voice he called the dead man by name; and when the man, called, answered him from the tomb…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "To clear a man falsely accused of murder, Macarius goes to the victim's grave and calls him by name 'through faith in Christ'. The corpse answers from the tomb that the accused did not kill him. Macarius refuses to ask who did: 'it is enough that the innocent be freed.' Rufinus notes the story is not in Palladius. Structurally it is a Christian necromancy for legal proof.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Macarius", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-62", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Vita Sancti Martini", "author": "Sulpicius Severus", "culture": "Roman Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "396/7", "date_sort": 397, "edition_urn": "stoa0270.stoa002.opp-lat2", "ref": "11.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Sulp. Sev. V. Mart. 11", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "tum conuersus ad laeuam uidet prope adsistere umbram sordidam, trucem: imperat nomen meritumque loqueretur. nomen edicit, de crimine confitetur: latronem se fuisse, ob scelera percussum, uulgi errore celebratum", "translation": "Then, turning to the left, he saw a filthy, savage shade standing near; he commanded it to tell its name and merit. It gave its name and confessed its crime: it had been a robber, executed for his crimes, honoured by popular error.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Martin doubts a local 'martyr' shrine and prays at the tomb. A ghost appears and confesses that it is an executed bandit. Those present hear the voice but see nothing, and the altar is removed. Saintly questioning of the dead is used to police cult.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Martin of Tours", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-63", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Vita Sancti Martini", "author": "Sulpicius Severus", "culture": "Roman Gaul / Spain", "language": "lat", "date": "396/7", "date_sort": 397, "edition_urn": "stoa0270.stoa002.opp-lat2", "ref": "24.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Sulp. Sev. V. Mart. 24", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "fuisse in Hispania iuuenem, qui cum sibi multis signis auctoritatem parauisset, eo usque elatus est, ut se Heliam profiteretur.", "translation": "…there was in Spain a young man who, having won authority for himself by many signs, was so puffed up that he declared himself Elijah.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Spanish wonder-worker later claimed to be Christ, and a bishop named Rufus worshipped him and was deposed. A similar 'John' arose in the East. The devil appears to Martin in royal purple claiming to be Christ, and Martin rejects any Christ without the stigmata (24.4–7). A Christian frame for signs-working impostors.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-64", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Chronica", "author": "Sulpicius Severus", "culture": "Roman Gaul / Spain", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 403 (trial 385)", "date_sort": 403, "edition_urn": "stoa0270.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "2.50.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Sulp. Sev. Chron. 2.50.8", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Priscillianum gemino iudicio auditum conuictumque maleficŲ nec diffitentem obscenis se studuisse doctrinis, nocturnos etiam turpium feminarum egisse conuentus nudumque orare solitum", "translation": "…that Priscillian, heard in two hearings, was convicted of maleficium and did not deny that he had studied obscene doctrines, held nocturnal gatherings of shameful women, and was accustomed to pray naked.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The prefect Evodius' verdict against Priscillian, bishop of Avila, executed at Trier in 385, the first Christian put to death by Christians. The formal charge was maleficium. Sulpicius had earlier said Priscillian was believed to have practised magic from youth (2.46.5).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Priscillian", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Imperial trial under Magnus Maximus; magic as a capital charge against a heretic", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-65", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Epistulae (Ep. 15 to Turribius)", "author": "Leo I", "culture": "Rome / Spain", "language": "lat", "date": "447", "date_sort": 447, "edition_urn": "tmp894.tmp894.opp-lat1", "ref": "145", "conventional_ref": "Leo, Ep. 15 praef., 11-13", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ut per magicarum artium profana secreta et mathematicorum vana mendacia, religionis fidem morumque rationem in potestate dæmonum, et in (d) efFectu siderum collocarent.", "translation": "…so that, by the profane secrets of the magic arts and the vain lies of the astrologers, they placed the faith of religion and the rule of morals in the power of demons and the influence of the stars.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Leo condemns the Priscillianists' astral fatalism: souls bound to fatal stars, body parts assigned to signs and to the patriarchs (156, chapter 11). Heresy, magic and astrology are fused into one accusation.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-66", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historiae adversum paganos", "author": "Orosius", "culture": "Spain / North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "417", "date_sort": 417, "edition_urn": "stoa0215c.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "4.13.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Oros. 4.13.3-4", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "sed obligamentum hoc magicum in contrarium continuo uersum est", "translation": "But this magical binding was at once turned to the opposite effect.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Roman decemviri buried alive a Gallic man and woman with a Greek woman in the Forum Boarium (4.13.3), a state rite of the Republic. Orosius labels it a 'magical binding' (obligamentum magicum) that backfired. A Christian historian reclassifies Roman public religion as magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-67", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Consultationes Zacchaei christiani et Apollonii philosophi", "author": "Anonymous (Zacchaeus)", "culture": "Late Roman West", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 410-420 (disputed)", "date_sort": 415, "edition_urn": "tmp380.tmp380.opp-lat1", "ref": "1.14.3", "conventional_ref": "Consult. Zacch. 1.14", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Nec me praeterit magicis carminibus non mortuorum, sed daemonum spiritus evocari, eosdemque per phantasiam paulisper simulare quod non sunt : conditionem praeterea addere falsitati, ut aut non visi respondeant, aut, si videntur, obti- ceant", "translation": "I am well aware that by magic songs it is not the spirits of the dead but of demons that are called up, and that they briefly pretend by phantasy to be what they are not; and they add a condition to the falsehood: either they answer unseen, or, if they are seen, they keep silent.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In answer to a pagan's question, the Christian explains necromancy: demons, not souls, appear. The detail is revealing: the 'dead' either speak without being seen or are seen without speaking, never both. The souls of the dead are kept in their proper places until the Judgement.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-68", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Conlationes", "author": "John Cassian", "culture": "Southern Gaul (Egyptian monasticism)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 426", "date_sort": 426, "edition_urn": "stoa0076c.stoa001.opp-lat2", "ref": "8.21.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Cassian. Conl. 8.21.6-7", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "rune-writing-magic", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "scelestas artes ac profana conmenta diuersorum metallorum lamminis, quae scilicet aquarum conrampi inundatione non possent, et durissimis lapidibus insculpsit.", "translation": "…he engraved the wicked arts and profane inventions on plates of various metals, which the flood waters could not destroy, and on the hardest stones.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Seth's descendants held a God-given 'knowledge of all natures'. Mixed with Cain's line, it was turned into maleficia, praestigiae and magical superstitions. Ham, knowing he could not bring a book into the Ark, engraved magic on metal plates and stones to survive the Flood. Magic appears here as natural science corrupted. In 8.18 two philosophers send demons against Antony by magic and fail.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Ham son of Noah", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-69", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Acta (Passio) Sancti Sebastiani", "author": "Anonymous (attributed to Ambrose)", "culture": "Rome (legendary 3rd-c. setting)", "language": "lat", "date": "5th century", "date_sort": 450, "edition_urn": "stoa0022.stoa012.opp-lat1", "ref": "58", "conventional_ref": "Passio Sebastiani 57-58 (PL 17)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "liabeo, inquit. cubiculum holovitreum, in quo omnia disciplina stellarum ac mathesis a meuhanica est arte constructa", "translation": "'I have,' he said, 'an all-glass chamber, in which the whole discipline of the stars and mathesis is constructed by mechanical art.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The prefect Chromatius is told he will be healed only when all his idols are broken. He confesses he still owns a glass room built by mechanical art for astrology, which cost his father over 200 pounds of gold. He defends lunar and calendrical computation as non-cultic; the priest Polycarp insists the zodiac signs are demonic, and the machine is smashed. At 88 a pagan judge says: 'Who does not know that your Christ taught you magic?'", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Chromatius (prefect)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-70", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Sermo (Ps.-Augustine, Sermones suppositi; = Caesarius of Arles, Serm. 54?)", "author": "Caesarius of Arles (transmitted under Augustine's name)", "culture": "Southern Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 503-542", "date_sort": 520, "edition_urn": "stoa0040a.stoa001d.opp-lat1", "ref": "216", "conventional_ref": "Caes. Arel. Serm. 54.1-5 (identification probable)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Quid facimus, eo quod auguria ipsa, et caragi, vel divini frequenter nobis vera annuntiant ?", "translation": "'What are we to do, since these very auguries, and caragi, and diviners often tell us true things?'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Caesarius forbids consulting caragi, divini and sortilegi for any cause or illness, and forbids hiring praecantatores. Whoever does so 'loses the sacrament of baptism' (214). He also bans bird-omens on the road, unlucky days and sneeze-omens, and prescribes the sign of the cross and the Creed instead. He answers the parishioners' objections honestly: diviners often tell the truth, and without praecantatores many nearly die of snakebite. God permits this to test Christians.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "caragi, divini, sortilegi, praecantatores", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Pastoral preaching to rural Provençal congregations", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-71", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Sermo de martyribus vel phylacteriis (Ps.-Augustine; Caesarius of Arles)", "author": "Caesarius of Arles (attribution probable)", "culture": "Southern Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 503-542", "date_sort": 520, "edition_urn": "stoa0040a.stoa001d.opp-lat1", "ref": "223", "conventional_ref": "Caes. Arel. Serm. (Ps.-Aug. 'De martyribus vel phylacteriis') 4", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination", "protection-amulet", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Mitte ad illum divinum, transmitte ad illum cingulum aut fasciam tuam, mensuretur et aspiciat; et ipse tibi dicet quid facies,aut utrum evadere possis. Dicit et alius Ille bene novit fumigare", "translation": "'Send to that diviner, send him your belt or headband; let it be measured and inspected, and he will tell you what to do or whether you can escape.' Another says: 'That man knows well how to fumigate…'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the sick-bed 'persecutor': neighbours urge a praecantator, characters to hang on the body, a diviner who diagnoses by measuring the patient's girdle, or a fumigator. Others offer to 'raise a person' who will name a thief, on condition that the client does not cross himself. Mothers put a fascinum on sick children. Refusing all this counts as a kind of martyrdom.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "divini, praecantatores, fumigators, mothers", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-72", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Sermo (Ps.-Augustine; = Caesarius of Arles, Serm. 13?)", "author": "Caesarius of Arles (attribution probable)", "culture": "Southern Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 503-542", "date_sort": 520, "edition_urn": "stoa0040a.stoa001d.opp-lat1", "ref": "149", "conventional_ref": "Caes. Arel. Serm. 13.5 (identification probable)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "quando lunam, quæ Deo jubente certis temporibus obscuratur, clamoribus suis a maleficiis sacrilego ausu se defensare posse confidunt.", "translation": "…when they trust that by their shouting they can defend the moon from sorceries with sacrilegious daring, though the moon is darkened at fixed times at God's command.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Peasants shout during lunar eclipses to protect the moon from sorcerers. Caesarius counters that eclipses come at fixed times, implying regularity and predictability. The same sermon attacks Kalends masquerades as a stag or a heifer, vows at springs and trees, hanging herbs and juices as amulets, and the Thursday rest in honour of Jupiter. In 147 he says the church offers double benefit: the sick should take the Eucharist and anoint themselves, not go to charmers.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-73", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Concilium Agathense (Galliae Concilia)", "author": "Council of Agde", "culture": "Visigothic Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "506", "date_sort": 506, "edition_urn": "tmp1452.tmp1452.opp-lat1", "ref": "10.44", "conventional_ref": "Conc. Agde can. 42 (cf. Orléans I can. 30)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "quod aliquanti clerici vel laici student auguriis, et sub nomine fictae religionis, quas sanctorum sortes vocant, divinationis scientiam profitentur aut quarumcunque scripturarum inspectione futura promittunt", "translation": "…that a number of clerics and laymen devote themselves to auguries and, under the name of feigned religion, profess the science of divination by what they call the 'lots of the saints', or promise the future by inspecting any kind of scripture.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Clerics as well as laymen practise Bible-lot divination. Anyone caught consulting or teaching it is put outside the church. Orléans I (511) can. 30 (11.28 in the same edition) repeats the ban. Isidore copied the canon's wording into his definition of sortilegi.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Clergy and laity", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-74", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Concilium Autissiodorense", "author": "Synod of Auxerre (Bishop Aunacharius)", "culture": "Merovingian Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 578-585", "date_sort": 580, "edition_urn": "tmp1244.tmp1244.opp-lat1", "ref": "51", "conventional_ref": "Syn. Auxerre can. 4 (cf. can. 1)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "non ad caragios2, nec ad sortes, quas sanctorum vocant, vel quas de ligno, aut de pane faciunt, aspicere ; sed quaecunque homo facere vult, omnia in nomine Domini faciat.", "translation": "…nor to look to caragii, nor to the lots they call 'of the saints', nor to lots made of wood or of bread; but whatever a man wishes to do, let him do it all in the name of the Lord.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The canon records lot-casting with wood and with bread alongside the 'lots of the saints'. Canon 1 (47) bans Kalends masquerades with the 'vetula' (old woman) and 'cervolus' (little stag) and 'diabolical strenae' (New Year gifts).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-75", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Concilium Narbonense (Concilia Hispaniae)", "author": "Council of Narbonne", "culture": "Visigothic Septimania", "language": "lat", "date": "589", "date_sort": 589, "edition_urn": "tmp1453.tmp1453.opp-lat1", "ref": "33.14", "conventional_ref": "Conc. Narbonne can. 14", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ut si qui viri ac mulieres divinatores, quos dicunt esse caragios atque sorticularios, in cujuscunque domo Gothi, Romani, Syri, Graeci vel Judaei, fue- rint inventi", "translation": "…that if any men or women diviners, whom they call caragii and sorticularii, are found in the house of anyone, Goth, Roman, Syrian, Greek or Jew…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Householders who harbour diviners are suspended and fined six ounces of gold. The diviners themselves, free or slave, male or female, are 'most severely flogged in public and sold', and the price goes to the poor. The canon shows a multi-ethnic clientele and a penalty of enslavement.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "caragii, sorticularii", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Church council under Reccared; fine and sale into slavery", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-76", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Concilium Bracarense II (Capitula Martini)", "author": "Council of Braga II / Martin of Braga", "culture": "Suevic Gallaecia", "language": "lat", "date": "572", "date_sort": 572, "edition_urn": "tmp1453.tmp1453.opp-lat1", "ref": "27.104", "conventional_ref": "Capit. Martini 71-72", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "exorcism", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Si quis paganorum consuetudinem sequens divinos et sortilegos in domo sua introduxerit, quasi ut ma- lum foras mittant aut maleficia inveniant vel lustra- tiones paganorum faciant, quinque annis poeniten- tiam agat.", "translation": "If anyone, following the custom of the pagans, brings diviners and sortilegi into his house, as if to drive evil out, or to discover sorceries, or to perform the purifications of the pagans, let him do five years' penance.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Martin of Braga's canons adapt Ancyra 24. Diviners are hired to detect sorcery (counter-magic) and to purify houses. Chapter 72 (27.105) bans watching moon and stars when building a house, sowing, planting or arranging marriages. This is the only trace in the library of Martin's anti-superstition programme; De correctione rusticorum is absent.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-77", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Concilium Emeritense (Concilia Hispaniae)", "author": "Council of Mérida", "culture": "Visigothic Spain", "language": "lat", "date": "666", "date_sort": 666, "edition_urn": "tmp1453.tmp1453.opp-lat1", "ref": "36.21", "conventional_ref": "Conc. Mérida can. 15", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "aliquos presbyteros, aegritudine accedente, familiae Ecclesiae suae crimen imponere, dicentes ex ea homi- nes aliquos maleficium sibi fecisse eosque sua po- testate torquere", "translation": "…that some priests, when illness comes upon them, lay a charge on the slaves of their church, saying that some of them have worked maleficium on them, and torture them by their own authority.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Here sickness prompts accusations: priests who fall ill blame the church's dependants for sorcery and torture them. The council requires the bishop to appoint judges to investigate instead. The same canon bans bishops from mutilating church slaves.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Clerical abuse of witchcraft accusations against unfree dependants", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-78", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Variae", "author": "Cassiodorus (for Theodoric)", "culture": "Ostrogothic Italy", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 507-511", "date_sort": 509, "edition_urn": "tmp1179.tmp1179.opp-lat1", "ref": "219", "conventional_ref": "Cassiod. Var. 3.51", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Frequentia palmarum cum dici faciebat maleficum b, inter quos magnum; praeconium videtut esse ad talia crimina pervenfte. \"ecesse est enim ad perversitatem magicam referri, quando victoria equorum meritis non potest applicari.", "translation": "The frequency of his victories made people call him a sorcerer, and among such folk it seems high praise to be accused of such crimes. For it must be put down to magical perversity when victory cannot be credited to the horses' merits.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Thomas, a charioteer from the East, wins so often that fans call him maleficus. Cassiodorus, writing for Theodoric, treats the label as a backhanded compliment and a sociological reflex: unexplained success gets explained as magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Thomas the charioteer (alleged)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-79", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Variae", "author": "Cassiodorus (for Theodoric)", "culture": "Ostrogothic Italy", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 510", "date_sort": 510, "edition_urn": "tmp1179.tmp1179.opp-lat1", "ref": "253", "conventional_ref": "Cassiod. Var. 4.22 (cf. 4.23)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Versari non licet in magicis artibus tempori bus Christianis", "translation": "It is not permitted to dabble in the magic arts in Christian times.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Theodoric instructs the urban prefect Argolicus to try Basilius and Praetextatus, senators accused of magic. The case goes to a court of five senators (Symmachus, Decius, Volusianus, Caelianus, Maximianus) 'with legal order preserved'. The count Arigern is to drag them out if they hide; 4.23 records that they escaped custody.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Basilius and Praetextatus (senators)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Senatorial magic trial under an Arian king", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-80", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historia ecclesiastica tripartita", "author": "Cassiodorus/Epiphanius (from Socrates HE 7.8)", "culture": "Sasanian Persia (via Greek and Latin)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 550 (events c. 400-410)", "date_sort": 550, "edition_urn": "tmp1180.tmp1180.opp-lat1", "ref": "684", "conventional_ref": "Hist. trip. (= Socr. HE 7.8)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "magi sub terra bominem quemdam abscondentes tempore quo rex solebat adorare, eum talia ciamare fecerunt", "translation": "The magi hid a man underground at the time when the king used to worship, and had him cry out such words…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Bishop Maruthas cures the Persian king Yazdgerd's headache by prayer after the magi had failed. The magi then hide a man under the sacred fire so that the fire 'speaks' against the bishop. Maruthas tells the king: 'the fire does not speak; these are human contrivances.' The ground is dug up and the man found. Here the Persian magi are a real priesthood, not sorcerers.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Zoroastrian magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-81", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historiae (Decem libri historiarum)", "author": "Gregory of Tours", "culture": "Merovingian Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 576-591 (event 577)", "date_sort": 577, "edition_urn": "stoa0143.stoa001.opp-lat2", "ref": "405", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Tur. Hist. 5.14", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Merovechus vero non credens pythonissæ, tres libros super sancti sepulcrum posuit, id est Psalterii, Regum, Evangeliorum: et vigilans lota nocte, petiit ut sibi beatus confessor quid eveniret ostenderet", "translation": "But Merovech, not trusting the pythoness, placed three books on the saint's tomb — the Psalter, Kings and the Gospels — and, keeping vigil all night, asked the blessed confessor to show him what would happen.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Duke Guntram Boso consults a pythoness who had once foretold King Charibert's death to the day. She promises Chilperic's death and a bishopric. Gregory laughs at her. Yet Gregory himself opens Proverbs at random and takes the verse as a divine sign. Merovech performs exactly the 'sortes sanctorum' that Agde had banned, on Martin's tomb, after a three-day fast, and draws ominous verses.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "A pythonissa; Merovech; Gregory himself", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-82", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historiae", "author": "Gregory of Tours", "culture": "Merovingian Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 580s (event 580)", "date_sort": 580, "edition_urn": "stoa0143.stoa001.opp-lat2", "ref": "527", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Tur. Hist. 6.35", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "love", "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "At illae conti.. tentur se maleficas esse, et multos occumbere letho se fecisse testatae sunt, addentes illud, quod nulla ratione credi patior", "translation": "And they confessed that they were witches and testified that they had caused many to die, adding something which I cannot by any means allow myself to believe…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After her son dies of dysentery, Queen Fredegund hears that he was killed by sorcery with the prefect Mummolus' knowledge. Mummolus had boasted of an herb that cures any dysentery. She has Parisian women tortured until they confess to giving her son's life for Mummolus', then burns, drowns and breaks them on the wheel. Under torture Mummolus admits only to receiving ointments and potions to win royal favour. Gregory refuses to believe the coerced confession.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Parisian women (accused); Mummolus", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Royal torture-driven witch hunt", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-83", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historiae", "author": "Gregory of Tours", "culture": "Merovingian Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 585", "date_sort": 585, "edition_urn": "stoa0143.stoa001.opp-lat2", "ref": "631", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Tur. Hist. 7.44", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "Si quis enin aut furtum, aut aliquid mali perferret, statim hæc quo fur ahiil, cui tradidit, vel quid ex hoc fecerit, edicebat.", "translation": "If anyone suffered a theft or any harm, she at once declared where the thief had gone, to whom he had passed it, and what he had done with it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An enslaved woman 'having a spirit of Python' earned so much for her owners by divining, especially by tracing stolen goods, that they freed her. She grew rich, and people thought something divine was in her. Bishop Ageric of Verdun exorcised her with oil, but the demon would not leave, and she took refuge with Queen Fredegund. The episode follows Acts 16.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Enslaved, later freed, pythonissa", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-84", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historiae", "author": "Gregory of Tours", "culture": "Merovingian Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 587", "date_sort": 587, "edition_urn": "stoa0143.stoa001.opp-lat2", "ref": "777", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Tur. Hist. 9.6", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "illusion-trickery", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "invenit eum eo sacculum magnum plenum de radicibus diversarum herbarum; ibique et dentes talpae, et ossa murium, et ungues atque adipes ursinos.", "translation": "He found on him a large bag full of roots of various herbs, and in it moles' teeth, mice bones, and bear claws and bear fat.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Desiderius of Tours claimed messengers ran between him and the apostles. He 'healed' paralytics by having servants stretch their limbs violently, and many died. He seemed to know what was said about him behind his back, which Gregory puts down to demons, and he gorged in secret while posing as an ascetic. A second impostor, with a cross and 'holy oil', was searched by the bishop of Paris, who found a herbalist's kit of roots and animal parts.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Desiderius; a vagrant relic-seller", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-85", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historiae", "author": "Gregory of Tours", "culture": "Merovingian Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 591 (event 590)", "date_sort": 590, "edition_urn": "stoa0143.stoa001.opp-lat2", "ref": "880", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Tur. Hist. 10.25", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "muscarum eum circumsedit examen , qua de causa per biennium amens est habitus", "translation": "…a swarm of flies surrounded him, and for this reason he was considered mad for two years.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A woodcutter of Bourges, after a fly swarm and two years of madness, began to divine, proclaimed himself Christ with a 'Mary', healed by touch and foretold illness. He drew more than 3,000 followers, including priests, and was killed when he tried to attack Bishop Aurelius of Le Puy. Gregory attributes his gifts to 'diabolical arts and I know not what praestigiae'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "The 'false Christ' of Bourges and his 'Mary'", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-86", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "De virtutibus sancti Martini", "author": "Gregory of Tours", "culture": "Merovingian Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 573-593", "date_sort": 585, "edition_urn": "stoa0143.stoa002.opp-lat2", "ref": "244", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Tur. Virt. Mart. (bk 4?; cf. 1.26-27)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Interea accedentibus ariolis, ac dicentibus eam me- ridiani dæmonii d incursum pati, ligamina herbarum atque incantationum verba proferebant", "translation": "Meanwhile the arioli came, saying she suffered an attack of the noonday demon, and brought out ligatures of herbs and words of incantations.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The wife of Serenatus collapses speechless coming back from the fields. Arioli diagnose the 'noonday demon' and apply herb-ligatures and charms. Gregory's niece removes them and pours oil from Martin's tomb into her mouth, and she recovers. In 36 Gregory states the rule: 'a little dust from the basilica is worth more than they with their mad remedies.' In 34, rustic parents bring 'ligamenta et potiones' from sortilegi and arioli.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "arioli vs. saint's shrine", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-87", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Libri miraculorum (De virtutibus sancti Iuliani)", "author": "Gregory of Tours", "culture": "Merovingian Gaul (Auvergne)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 581-587 (event c. 571)", "date_sort": 585, "edition_urn": "tmp1198.tmp1198.opp-lat1", "ref": "194", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Tur. Virt. Iul. 46a (approx.)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ariolum quemdam 882 invocant. Ille vero venire non differens accessit ad ægrotum, et artem suam exercere conatur. Incantationes immurmurat, sortes jactat, ligaturas collo suspendit, promiuit vivere quem ipse mancipaverat morti.", "translation": "They called in a certain ariolus. He came without delay to the sick boy and set about practising his art: he muttered incantations, cast lots, hung ligatures round his neck, and promised life to one he had himself consigned to death.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "During the bubonic plague (lues inguinaria) in Auvergne, a boy of Gregory's own household falls ill. Without Gregory's knowledge his people call an ariolus, and the boy dies. A second sick boy is given dust from Julian's tomb and recovers. Gregory's own household shows how ordinary such recourse was.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "ariolus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-88", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Dialogi", "author": "Gregory the Great", "culture": "Ostrogothic/Byzantine Italy", "language": "lat", "date": "593-594", "date_sort": 593, "edition_urn": "tmp1287.tmp1287.opp-lat1", "ref": "28", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Dial. 1.4", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "love", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Eo autem tempore quo malefici in hoc sunt Ro- mana urbe deprehensi, r Bisilius, qni in magicis operibus prilnus fuit, in monachico habitu Valeriani fugiens petiit.", "translation": "At the time when sorcerers were caught in this city of Rome, Basilius, who was foremost in magic works, fled in monk's habit to the region of Valeria.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A magician on the run hides in a monastery. Abbot Equitius sees 'not a monk but a devil'. A nun falls into a fever crying that only Basilius can cure her, a love-magic intrusion, and Basilius is exposed and later burned by the Roman people. This Basilius may be the senator of Cassiodorus Var. 4.22, as is often suggested; the identification is uncertain.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Basilius the magician", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-89", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Dialogi", "author": "Gregory the Great", "culture": "Byzantine Italy (Tuscany)", "language": "lat", "date": "593-594", "date_sort": 593, "edition_urn": "tmp1287.tmp1287.opp-lat1", "ref": "72", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Dial. 1.10", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Ducta est itaque ad fluvium, atque in aquam mersa; ibique diutius ineantationibus agere malefici Dlolie- bantur, ut is qui eam invaserat diabolus exiret.", "translation": "So she was taken to the river and plunged into the water, and there the sorcerers laboured at length with incantations to make the devil that had seized her come out.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A young wife, possessed after attending a dedication having slept with her husband, is handed by relatives to malefici. They try a river-immersion exorcism. The result, says Gregory, is that a whole legion enters her, and Bishop Fortunatus cures her by prayer. Pagan or folk exorcists compete with the bishop.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "malefici (folk exorcists)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-90", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Dialogi, book 2 (Life of Benedict)", "author": "Gregory the Great", "culture": "Italy (Monte Cassino)", "language": "lat", "date": "593-594", "date_sort": 593, "edition_urn": "tmp1084.tmp1084.opp-lat1", "ref": "10.2", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Dial. 2.10", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Qui eumdem ignem in oculis fratrum esse, in suis vero non esse conside- rans, caput protinus in orationem flexit, et eos quos phantastico reperi(??)gne deludi, revocavit", "translation": "He, seeing that the fire was in the brothers' eyes but not in his own, at once bowed his head in prayer and called back those whom he found deceived by a phantasmal fire…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Monks dig up a bronze idol at Cassino and toss it into the kitchen. The whole kitchen seems to burst into flames and they rush with water. Benedict sees no fire and tells them to sign their eyes. It is a collective hallucination attributed to a demonic phantasm.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-91", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Dialogi, book 2 (Life of Benedict)", "author": "Gregory the Great", "culture": "Italy", "language": "lat", "date": "593-594", "date_sort": 593, "edition_urn": "tmp1084.tmp1084.opp-lat1", "ref": "27.3", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Dial. 2.26-27 (poisoned man; chapter number uncertain)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ut ei ne- scienti in potu venenum daret. d Quod quamvis vitam auferre non valuit, cutis tamen colorem mutavit, ita ut diffu a in corpore ejus varietas leprae morem imitari videretur.", "translation": "…that he gave him poison in a drink without his knowing. Although it could not take his life, it changed the colour of his skin, so that a mottling spread over his body imitating leprosy.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A non-lethal poisoning leaves leprosy-like skin discoloration, which Benedict's touch removes. The same book has the priest Florentius sending Benedict poisoned bread (2.8) and the monks' poisoned wine (2.3). Poison and maleficium sit side by side in Gregory's world.", "claimed_effect": "Leprosy-like mottling of the skin", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-92", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Registrum epistolarum", "author": "Gregory the Great", "culture": "Rome / Lombard Italy", "language": "lat", "date": "603/604", "date_sort": 603, "edition_urn": "tmp1291.tmp1291.opp-lat1", "ref": "2637", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Reg. 14.12 (to Theodelinda)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "devotional" ], "excerpt_original": "Excellentissimo autem filio nostro Adulouvaldo regi transmittere e phylacteria curavimus, id est cru- cern cum ligno sancte crucis Domini, et r lectionem sancti Evangelii g theca Persica inclusafu.", "translation": "To our most excellent son, King Adaloald, we have taken care to send phylacteries, that is, a cross containing wood of the Lord's holy Cross, and a reading of the holy Gospel enclosed in a Persian case.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The pope sends 'phylacteria', a relic-cross and a Gospel text in a case, to the Lombard boy-king, with rings for his sister. This is the very word that Laodicea can. 36 and Caesarius condemn. Licit Christian amulets differ from illicit ones by their content and source, not their form.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Pope Gregory I", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-93", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Registrum epistolarum", "author": "Gregory the Great", "culture": "Byzantine Sicily", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 594/5", "date_sort": 595, "edition_urn": "tmp1291.tmp1291.opp-lat1", "ref": "859", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Reg., letter to Cyprian the deacon (PL ep. 32; book uncertain)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "a maleficio quod vu!go b can- terma dicitur, quosdam didicit maculatos. Quos etiam, sicut et dilectionis tuae nuntiavit epistola, dedit c in custodia retinendos.", "translation": "…he learned that some were stained with the sorcery commonly called 'canterma', and had them put in custody.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The late bishop Maximianus of Syracuse jailed clerics for 'canterma', a vernacular term for sorcery. Gregory orders the deacon Cyprian to investigate and punish them, or send them to Rome. Elsewhere in the register Gregory urges punishment of incantatores and sortilegi, and of cult of idols and haruspices in Sardinia (2205, 1643).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Clerics", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-94", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Paenitentiale (De poenitentiarum mensura taxanda)", "author": "Columbanus", "culture": "Irish monasticism in Gaul", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 600", "date_sort": 600, "edition_urn": "tmp1345.tmp1345.opp-lat1", "ref": "18", "conventional_ref": "Columb. Paenit. B 6 (ed. cap. 18)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Si autem pro amore quis maleficus sit, et neminem perdiderit, annum integrum cum pane et aqua, clericus ille poeniteat", "translation": "But if anyone is a sorcerer for love and has destroyed no one, let that cleric do penance a whole year on bread and water…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Killing by maleficium earns seven years of penance. Love-magic that kills no one earns one year (cleric), half a year (layman), two (deacon) or three (priest). The penalty is heavier still 'if by this anyone has deceived a woman's childbirth', i.e. caused miscarriage. Love-potions and abortifacients overlap.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Clerics and laymen", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-95", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum", "author": "Bede", "culture": "Anglo-Saxon England", "language": "lat", "date": "731 (event 597)", "date_sort": 731, "edition_urn": "stoa0054.stoa006.perseus-lat1", "ref": "1.25.3", "conventional_ref": "Bede HE 1.25", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Cauerat enim, ne in aliquam domum ad se introirent, uetere usus augurio, ne superuentu suo, siquid malificae artis habuissent, eum superando deciperent.", "translation": "For he had taken care that they should not come to him in any house, following an ancient augury, lest, if they had any magic art, they might deceive and overcome him on their arrival.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "King Æthelberht of Kent meets Augustine's mission in the open air. He follows a traditional belief that magic works best indoors. To the pagan king, the missionaries are potential sorcerers.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Æthelberht (fearing magic)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-96", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum", "author": "Bede", "culture": "Anglo-Saxon England", "language": "lat", "date": "731 (event 679)", "date_sort": 731, "edition_urn": "stoa0054.stoa006.perseus-lat1", "ref": "4.20.3", "conventional_ref": "Bede HE 4.22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "rune-writing-magic" ], "excerpt_original": "an forte litteras solutorias, de qualibus fabulae ferunt, apud se haberet, propter quas ligari non posset. At ille respondit nil se talium artium nosse", "translation": "…whether perhaps he had about him 'loosening letters', such as the tales tell of, because of which he could not be bound. But he answered that he knew nothing of such arts.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The captured thegn Imma's fetters keep falling off. His captor suspects 'litterae solutoriae', written loosening-charms, often linked by scholars with runes, though Bede does not say so. Imma explains that his brother, believing him dead, is saying Masses for him. Bede gives a Christian cause for a known magical motif.", "claimed_effect": "Bonds loosening", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Imma (suspected)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-97", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum", "author": "Bede", "culture": "Anglo-Saxon England", "language": "lat", "date": "731 (events 660s)", "date_sort": 731, "edition_urn": "stoa0054.stoa006.perseus-lat1", "ref": "4.25.3", "conventional_ref": "Bede HE 4.27", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ad erratica idolatriae medicamina concurrebant; quasi missam a Deo conditore plagam per incantationes uel fylacteria uel alia quaelibet daemonicae artis arcana cohibere ualerent.", "translation": "…they ran to the wandering remedies of idolatry, as if they could check a plague sent by God the Creator by incantations or phylacteries or any other secrets of demonic art.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "During the plague of the 660s baptised Northumbrians return to charms and amulets. Cuthbert walks to remote villages to preach against them. Bede counts amulets as idolatry against an epidemic sent by God.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-christian-98", "corpus": "latin-christian", "work": "Vitae Patrum (Rosweyde), Latin version of Theodoret, Historia religiosa (Aphraates)", "author": "Theodoret of Cyrrhus (Greek original); Latin translator uncertain, possibly Renaissance", "culture": "Syria (via Latin)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 440 (Greek); Latin translation date uncertain", "date_sort": 440, "edition_urn": "tmp1270.tmp1270.opp-lat1", "ref": "134", "conventional_ref": "Theodoret, Hist. rel. 8 (Aphraates), Latin version", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "love", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Dicebat enim, maritum concubinæ captum consuetudine, magicis quibusdam praestigiis fuisse incantatum, et odio habere ipsam legitimo matrimonioconjunctam.", "translation": "For she said her husband, captured by habit with a concubine, had been enchanted by certain magical tricks and hated her, his lawful wife.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A noblewoman believes a concubine's love-spell has turned her husband against her. The monk Aphraates prays to 'abolish the working of the incantation' and blesses oil for her to anoint herself, and her husband's love returns to her. The holy man supplies a counter-love-charm. The Latin of this book of Rosweyde's 1615 Vitae Patrum may be a 16th-century translation; treat its wording with caution.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Concubine (alleged); Aphraates", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-1", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De agri cultura", "author": "Cato the Elder", "culture": "Roman (Latin rural)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 160 BCE", "date_sort": -160, "edition_urn": "stoa0079.stoa001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "160.1", "conventional_ref": "Cato Agr. 160", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Luxum siquod est, hac cantione sanum fiet. harundinem prende tibi viridem P. IIII aut quinque longam, mediam diffinde, et duo homines teneant ad coxendices. incipe cantare [...] 'motas uaeta daries dardares astataries dissunapiter', usque dum coeant.", "translation": "If there is a dislocation, this chant will make it sound. Take a green reed four or five feet long, split it down the middle, and have two men hold it at the hips. Begin to chant [...] 'motas uaeta daries dardares astataries dissunapiter' until the halves come together.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The oldest Latin healing charm. The split reed must 'come together' while the gibberish words are sung; iron is thrown over it; then the reed is cut and bound to the dislocated or broken limb, and the chant is repeated daily. A second variant formula ('huat hauat huat ista pista sista...') follows. Pliny NH 28.21 cites it as Cato's 'carmen auxiliare' for dislocations. The library flags the node as athetized, probably an encoding artefact.", "claimed_effect": "Reduction and healing of a dislocation or fracture.", "claimed_mechanism": "Sympathy: the reed halves rejoining mirror the joint; the power lies in the uncomprehended words and in repetition.", "practitioner": "The landowner or any household member; no specialist.", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "A domestic farm manual that mixes plain husbandry, cult formulas and charms with no sense of contradiction. The same author forbids the farm-manager to consult diviners (5.4).", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-2", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De agri cultura", "author": "Cato the Elder", "culture": "Roman (Latin rural)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 160 BCE", "date_sort": -160, "edition_urn": "stoa0079.stoa001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "5.1", "conventional_ref": "Cato Agr. 5.4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "parasitum nequem habeat. haruspicem, augurem, hariolum, Chaldaeum nequem consuluisse velit.", "translation": "He is to keep no hanger-on. He is not to want to consult any haruspex, augur, soothsayer or Chaldaean.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the rules for the vilicus (slave farm-manager), freelance diviners appear among the hazards of estate management. These are itinerant haruspices, private 'augurs', harioli and Babylonian-style astrologers, already present in 2nd-century BCE Italy. The ban rests on order and expense, not impiety: the master keeps religion in his own hands.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Itinerant diviners: haruspex, augur, hariolus, Chaldaeus.", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "A household rule binding slaves. Private divination is treated as a source of disorder in the familia.", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-3", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De agri cultura", "author": "Cato the Elder", "culture": "Roman (Latin rural)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 160 BCE", "date_sort": -160, "edition_urn": "stoa0079.stoa001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "141.1", "conventional_ref": "Cato Agr. 141.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Mars pater, te precor quaesoque uti sies volens propitius mihi domo familiaeque nostrae, quoius rei ergo agrum terram fundumque meum suovitaurilia circumagi iussi, uti tu morbos visos invisosque, viduertatem vastitudinemque, calamitates intemperiasque prohibessis defendas averruncesque", "translation": "Father Mars, I pray and beseech you to be willing and propitious to me, my house and my household, for which purpose I have ordered the pig-sheep-bull offering to be led round my field, land and farm, that you keep off, ward off and avert diseases seen and unseen, dearth and devastation, disasters and bad weather.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The lustration of the fields: a pig, sheep and bull are driven round the boundary and Mars is asked to avert seen and unseen diseases and storms. Its goals are the same as those of the condemned 'magic' of crop-charming. What makes it legitimate is the public form, the named god, the sacrifice and the exact repetition of formulas, with expiatory sacrifices if the offering fails. Compare 83.1, a vow for oxen at which no woman may be present.", "claimed_effect": "Protection of crops, flocks and household from disease and storm.", "claimed_mechanism": "A contractual prayer and sacrifice, with exact formulas and repeat offerings (piaculum) if the omens fail.", "practitioner": "The landowner, or his deputy Manius.", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Ancestral cult (mos maiorum); the model of permitted religio.", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-4", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Res Rustica", "author": "Columella", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 60–65 CE", "date_sort": 62, "edition_urn": "phi0845.phi002.perseus-lat3", "ref": "1.8.6.1", "conventional_ref": "Columella 1.8.6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Haruspices sagasque, quae utraque genera vana superstitione rudes animos ad impensas ac deinceps ad flagitia compellunt, ne admiserit", "translation": "He is not to admit haruspices or wise-women: both kinds drive simple minds, through empty superstition, first into expense and then into wrongdoing.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Two centuries after Cato the same rule stands, but now the female 'saga' (wise-woman) sits beside the male haruspex. It is framed in the vocabulary of superstitio. Expense comes first and crime follows, the classic Roman link between private ritual specialists and flagitia.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Haruspices (male) and sagae (female wise-women).", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Estate management. The manager is to stay away from towns and markets, where such people are met.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-5", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Res Rustica", "author": "Columella", "culture": "Greco-Egyptian (Bolus of Mendes), reported by a Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 60–65 CE (Bolus c. 200 BCE)", "date_sort": 62, "edition_urn": "phi0845.phi002.perseus-lat3", "ref": "7.5.17.1", "conventional_ref": "Columella 7.5.17", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Sed Aegyptiae gentis auctor memorabilis Bolus Mendesius, cuius commenta, quae appellantur Graece χειρόκμητα,sub nomine Democriti falso produntur, censet [...] vivam pecudem, quae fuerit pusulosa,resupinam obruamus, patiamurque super obrutam meare totum gregem", "translation": "But the notable Egyptian writer Bolus of Mendes, whose works, called in Greek Cheirokmeta ('handmade things'), circulate falsely under Democritus' name, advises [...] that we bury on its back a living sheep that has the pustule disease, and let the whole flock walk over it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A rare explicit statement that the 'Democritean' magical-natural lore of Pliny's sources was really written by Bolus of Mendes, a Hellenistic Egyptian. Gellius (entry 92) makes the same accusation less precisely. The remedy is a threshold burial of a living diseased animal to drive off a flock epidemic.", "claimed_effect": "The flock disease (pusula) is driven away.", "claimed_mechanism": "Transfer or burial of the disease at the threshold; the flock 'treads down' the sickness.", "practitioner": "The shepherd, on Bolus' authority.", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Pseudepigraphic Greco-Egyptian 'Democritean' literature circulating in Roman agronomy.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-6", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "28.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 28.10–13", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Ex homine remediorum primum maximae quaestionis et semper incertae est, polleantne aliquid verba et incantamenta carminum. [...] Vestales nostras hodie credimus nondum egressa urbe mancipia fugitiva retinere in loco precatione", "translation": "Of the remedies drawn from man, the first and always unresolved question is whether words and the incantations of charms have any power. [...] We believe even today that our Vestals can hold runaway slaves to the spot by prayer, provided they have not yet left the city.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pliny's central methodological passage. The wisest individuals reject the power of words, yet 'life believes it at every hour without noticing'. He lists the evidence: sacrifice needs exact prayer, with a prompter, a checker and a piper to drown ill-omened sounds; the Decii devoted themselves by formula; the Vestal Tuccia carried water in a sieve; Greeks and Gauls were buried alive in the Forum Boarium; Vestals stop runaways. He concludes that if any of this works, the whole theory of verbal power must be admitted.", "claimed_effect": "Effective sacrifice, devotion, Vestal binding of slaves, ordeals.", "claimed_mechanism": "Exact verbal formulas bind gods or events; error in wording spoils the rite.", "practitioner": "Magistrates, priests, Vestals.", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Shows that the 'power of carmen' sat at the heart of state religion, which made the distinction from illicit incantation a matter of who spoke and why.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-7", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (citing the Twelve Tables, c. 450 BCE)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE (law c. 450 BCE)", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "28.2.3", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 28.17–21 (XII Tab. 8.1, 8.8)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "weather-nature", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "quid? non et legum ipsaruin in duodecim tabulis verba sunt: qui fruges excantass it, et alibi: qui malum carmen incantassit ? [...] defigi quidem diris precationibus nemo non metuit.", "translation": "Indeed, are there not words in the Twelve Tables themselves: 'whoever has charmed away crops', and elsewhere 'whoever has chanted an evil charm'? [...] And there is no one who does not fear being fixed by dread curses.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The two famous Twelve Tables clauses, quoted verbatim. The same paragraph covers the evocatio of enemy cities' gods (Rome's own tutelary god kept secret for this reason), universal fear of defixio, smashing eggshells so no one can pierce them, love charms from Theocritus, Catullus and Virgil, Marsian snake-charming, wall inscriptions against fire, and the observation that foreign 'unutterable' words and odd Latin ones are both believed. Cato's dislocation charm, Varro's gout charm and Caesar's triple travel charm are cited. Library typos 'ipsaruin' and 'excantass it' are preserved.", "claimed_effect": "Stolen harvests, harm to persons, healing of dislocation and gout, safe travel.", "claimed_mechanism": "Incantation (carmen) transfers crops or harms persons; defixio binds by curse.", "practitioner": "Anyone. The law targets the chanter.", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Archaic Roman law made crop-charming and the 'evil charm' crimes. The core of the later Roman legal category of magic (Apuleius cites the same law, entry 84).", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-8", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "28.2.4", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 28.22–29", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "carmina quidem extant contra grandines contraque morborum genera contraque ambusta, quaedam etiam experta, sed prodendo obstat ingens verecundia in tanta animorum varietate.", "translation": "Charms do exist against hail, against kinds of disease and against burns, some of them even tested; but great embarrassment stops me publishing them, given how differently people think.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A catalogue of everyday Roman superstitions: New Year good wishes, blessing sneezes, spitting into one's bosom, pressing the thumbs, not sweeping while a guest leaves, cutting nails on market-days in silence. Two elite amulets: the consular M. Servilius Nonianus wore a paper inscribed with the Greek letters rho and alpha against eye disease, and Mucianus, three times consul, wore a live fly in a linen cloth. Pliny admits some charms are 'tested' but will not print them.", "claimed_effect": "Protection from eye disease, hail, burns and bad luck.", "claimed_mechanism": "Words, gestures and amulets that avert misfortune; letters as amulet.", "practitioner": "Ordinary Romans and senators.", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Shows apotropaic 'magic' in daily use by the Roman elite with no stigma, in contrast to the condemned magi.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-9", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (against Greek and Persian lore)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "28.1.2", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 28.4–8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "sanguinem quoque gladiatorum bibunt, ut viventibus poculis, comitiales [morbi] [...] quis ista invenit, Osthane ? tecum enim res erit, eversor iuris humani monstrorumque artifex", "translation": "Epileptics even drink the blood of gladiators, as if from living cups [...] Who invented these things, Osthanes? It is you I have to deal with, overturner of human law and craftsman of monstrosities.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pliny opens his books on human-derived remedies with revulsion: gladiators' blood, marrow, infants' brains, a slain man's tooth, water drunk from an unburned murdered man's skull for epilepsy, pills from a hanged man's skull. He blames the Persian magus Osthanes and Greek writers such as Democritus, Apollonius and Artemon. He promises 'remedies, not expiations' (auxilia, non piacula), limited to milk, saliva and touch.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of epilepsy, rabies, toothache.", "claimed_mechanism": "The vital force in fresh blood or in parts of the violently dead.", "practitioner": "Magi (Osthanes) and Greek medical writers; epileptics at the arena.", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Corpse and blood remedies used in the arena; Pliny marks them as foreign and inhuman.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-10", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (on Persian magic)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "30.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 30.1–2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "astrology", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "fraudulentissima artium plurimum in toto terrarum orbe plurimisque saeculis valuit. [...] natam primum e medicina nemo dubitabit ac specie salutari inrepsisse velut altiorem sanctioremque medicinam", "translation": "The most fraudulent of the arts has held the greatest sway over the whole world and for the most ages. [...] No one will doubt that it was born first from medicine and crept in under the guise of healing, as a loftier and holier medicine.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The first ancient theory of the origin of magic. Magic is a hybrid that absorbed the three arts most powerful over the human mind: medicine, then religion (whose promises still blind mankind), then the 'mathematical arts' (astrology). With this triple chain it 'rules the kings of kings' in the East.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Pliny's own account is psychological: magic combines hope of health, fear of the gods and desire to know the future.", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Written under Vespasian, after the expulsions of astrologers and magi under Tiberius and Claudius.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-11", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (history of Persian, Greek, Jewish magic)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "30.1.2", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 30.3–11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Sine dubio illic orta in Perside a Zoroastre, ut inter auctores convenit. [...] est et alia magices factio a Mose et Janne et Lotape ac Iudaeis pendens, sed multis milibus annorum post Zoroastren.", "translation": "Without doubt it arose there, in Persia, from Zoroaster, as the authorities agree. [...] There is also another branch of magic deriving from Moses, Jannes, Lotapes and the Jews, but many thousands of years after Zoroaster.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pliny's genealogy of magic. Zoroaster is dated 6,000 years before Plato's death (Eudoxus, Aristotle), and Hermippus catalogued two million of his verses. Homer's Proteus, Sirens, Circe and nekyia are read as magic. Thessalian women are known for drawing down the moon. Osthanes travelled with Xerxes and 'scattered the seeds' through Greece. Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Plato sailed abroad to learn it. A Jewish branch (Moses, Jannes, Lotapes) and a Cypriot one are added, and medicine and magic flourished together under Hippocrates and Democritus.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Zoroaster, Osthanes, Greek philosophers, Moses/Jannes, Thessalian women", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Magic is constructed as foreign and ancient. Jewish 'magic' is filed beside Persian.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-12", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman, Gallic, British", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "30.1.3", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 30.12–13", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "namque Tiberii Caesaris principatus sustulit Druidas eorum et hoc genus vatum medicorumque. [...] nec satis aestimari potest, quantum Romanis debeatar, qui sustulere monstra, in quibus hominem occidere religiosissimum erat, mandi vero etiam saluberrimum.", "translation": "For the principate of Tiberius Caesar abolished their Druids and that whole tribe of seers and physicians. [...] It cannot be reckoned how much is owed to the Romans, who swept away monstrous rites in which killing a man was the height of piety, and eating him the height of health.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Traces of magic in Italy (the Twelve Tables), the senatus consultum of 97 BCE banning human sacrifice, Tiberius' suppression of the Druids (filed as 'seers and doctors'), and Britain, which 'celebrates it with such ceremony that it could seem to have given it to the Persians'. Roman imperial suppression is presented as a service to humanity. The library's 'debeatar' is a typo for debeatur.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Druids (Gaul, Britain)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Senate decree of 97 BCE against human sacrifice; Tiberian (and Claudian) anti-Druid measures.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-13", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (Nero; Armenian/Persian magi; Egyptian Apion)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE (events 54–68 CE)", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "30.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 30.14–18", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "inmensum, indubitatum exemplum est falsae artis, quam dereliquit Nero [...] proinde ita persuasum sit, intestabilem, inritam, inanem esse, habentem tamen quasdam veritatis umbras, sed in his veneficas artes pollere, non magicas.", "translation": "It is a vast and indubitable proof that the art is false that Nero abandoned it [...] So let us be convinced that it is detestable, ineffectual and empty; it has certain shadows of truth, but in these it is the arts of poisoning that have power, not those of magic.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Osthanes lists the species of magic: divination by water, spheres, air, stars, lamps, basins and axes, and conversation with shades. Nero, with unlimited wealth, power and the will to command the gods, tested it all, was initiated at 'magic banquets' by the magus-king Tiridates, and found it 'vain and false'. Pliny's verdict: what works in magic is pharmacology (veneficium), not magic. He adds Apion's claim to have raised Homer's shade, though Apion dared not say what it answered.", "claimed_effect": "Command of the gods; knowledge of the future; conversation with the dead.", "claimed_mechanism": "Divination media (lecanomancy, lychnomancy, axinomancy) and evocation of the dead.", "practitioner": "Nero; the magus Tiridates of Armenia; Apion", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Imperial patronage of magi; Pliny treats the emperor's failure as a decisive experiment. Suetonius confirms Nero's attempt to raise Agrippina's shade (entry 73).", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-14", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "26.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 26.18–20", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "ubinam istae fuere, cum Cimbri Teutonique terribili Marte ulularent aut cum Lucullus tot reges Magorum paucis legionibus sterneret? [...] non satius fuit Aemilianum Scipionem Carthaginis portas herba patefacere quam machinis claustra per tot annos quatere?", "translation": "Where were these herbs when the Cimbri and Teutones were howling in terrible war, or when Lucullus laid low so many kings of the Magi with a few legions? [...] Would it not have been better for Scipio Aemilianus to open the gates of Carthage with a herb than to batter its bars with siege-engines for so many years?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pliny's counterfactual refutation of the magical herbs. The Aethiopis herb dries up rivers, the onothuris opens locks, the Achaemenis routs armies and the latace makes Persian envoys abound in everything. If any of this worked it would have been used in war, siege, famine or draining the Pomptine marshes. He also mocks Democritus' recipe for 'beautiful, good and lucky children'.", "claimed_effect": "Drying rivers, opening locks, routing armies, abundance, ideal offspring.", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbs of occult virtue (Democritean or Magian).", "practitioner": "Magi; pseudo-Democritus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Part of Pliny's attack on Asclepiades, whose success he credits partly to the excesses of magical herb-lore.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-15", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (on Magian lore)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "29.4.11", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 29.74–76", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ex ipsa quae Magi tradunt contra incendia, quoniam ignes sola animalium extinguat, si forent vera, iam esset experta Roma.", "translation": "As for what the Magi teach about using the salamander against fires, since it alone of animals quenches fire: if it were true, Rome would have tried it by now.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A one-sentence empirical refutation: fire-prone Rome would long since have used the salamander remedy if it worked. Sextius is also cited as reporting that the salamander does not in fact put out fire. Pliny does accept the salamander as a deadly poison.", "claimed_effect": "Protection against conflagrations.", "claimed_mechanism": "The salamander's cold nature extinguishes fire.", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-16", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (on Magian gem lore)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "37.10.9", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 37.165", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Magorum inpudentiae vel manifestissimum in hac quoque exemplum est, quoniam admixta herba heliotropio, quibusdam additis precationibus, gerentem conspici negent.", "translation": "This stone too offers the clearest example of the Magi's shamelessness: they claim that if it is combined with the heliotrope herb and certain prayers are added, the wearer cannot be seen.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The heliotrope stone (bloodstone) genuinely acts as a mirror and lets one watch eclipses. The Magi make it an invisibility charm. The neighbouring chapters (37.124 on amethyst against drunkenness, hail and locusts) show the same pattern: real optical or colour properties inflated into magical powers.", "claimed_effect": "Invisibility of the wearer.", "claimed_mechanism": "Stone plus homonymous herb plus prayer.", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Magian lapidaries circulating in Greek.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-17", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman and Greek", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.12.1", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 2.53–55", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "weather-nature", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Et rationem quidem defectus utriusque primus Romani genesis in vulgum extulit Sulpicius Gallus [...] aut in luna veneficia arguente mortalitate et ob id crepitu dissono auxiliante", "translation": "The first Roman to make the explanation of both eclipses public was Sulpicius Gallus [...] while mortals blamed poisonous magic for the moon's failure and so came to its help with a discordant din.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A hymn to astronomers. Sulpicius Gallus predicted the eclipse before Pydna (168 BCE), Thales predicted a solar eclipse, and Hipparchus computed both luminaries for 600 years. They freed human minds from the fear that eclipses meant crimes, deaths or witches' veneficia, a fear that made people bang bronze and made Nicias lose his fleet. Prediction from real knowledge is set against magic.", "claimed_effect": "Eclipse (as witchcraft) versus a predicted natural event.", "claimed_mechanism": "Popular belief: witches 'draw down' the moon; astronomy: shadow and periodicity.", "practitioner": "Astronomers; (believed) Thessalian witches", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Clashing on bronze during eclipses was a popular Roman practice; astronomical prediction worked as political authority.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-18", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Ab urbe condita", "author": "Livy", "culture": "Roman versus Macedonian", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 10 BCE–10 CE (event 168 BCE)", "date_sort": -5, "edition_urn": "phi0914.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "4.44.37.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Livy 44.37.5–9", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "pronuntiavit, nocte proxima, ne quis id pro portento acciperet, ab hora secunda usque ad quartam horam noctis lunam defecturam esse. id quia naturali ordine statis temporibus fiat, et sciri ante et praedici posse.", "translation": "He announced that on the following night, so that no one should take it for a portent, the moon would be eclipsed from the second to the fourth hour of the night; since this happens in a natural order at fixed times, it can be known in advance and foretold.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The military tribune C. Sulpicius Gallus pre-empts panic before Pydna. The eclipse comes as predicted, the Romans think his wisdom 'almost divine', while the Macedonians and their seers howl that it portends the fall of the kingdom. The same astronomical event is a natural fact on one side and a fatal prodigy on the other.", "claimed_effect": "Prediction of a lunar eclipse; morale.", "claimed_mechanism": "The earth's shadow at fixed periods.", "practitioner": "C. Sulpicius Gallus (Roman officer-astronomer); Macedonian vates", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Astronomical knowledge used to manage soldiers' religio.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-19", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Historiae Alexandri Magni", "author": "Quintus Curtius Rufus", "culture": "Macedonian army; Egyptian seers", "language": "lat", "date": "1st c. CE (Claudian or Vespasianic, disputed); event 331 BCE", "date_sort": 45, "edition_urn": "phi0860.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "4.10.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Curt. 4.10.1–7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "At illi, qui satis scir.ent temporum orbes inplere destinatas vices lunamque deficere, cum aut terram subiret aut sole premeretur, rationem quidem ipsis perceptam non edocent valgus", "translation": "But they, who knew well enough that the cycles of time fulfil their appointed courses and that the moon fails when it passes under the earth or is overpowered by the sun, did not teach the common soldiers the explanation they themselves understood.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Before Gaugamela a lunar eclipse nearly causes mutiny. Alexander's Egyptian seers know the cause but deliberately announce a fake omen: the sun is Greek, the moon Persian, so an eclipse portends Persian ruin. Curtius comments: 'Nothing rules a crowd more effectively than superstitio.' This is the opposite of Sulpicius Gallus: real knowledge concealed and dressed as prophecy. Library typos 'scir.ent' and 'valgus' are preserved.", "claimed_effect": "Morale restored by a 'favourable' omen.", "claimed_mechanism": "Astral sympathy (sun = Greeks, moon = Persians).", "practitioner": "Egyptian vates in Alexander's service", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Divination as a tool of command.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-20", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (on Thessalian, Colchian, Italian witches)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "25.2.4", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 25.9–11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "durat tamen tradita persuasio in magna parte vulgi, veneficiis et herbis id cogi eamque unam feminarum scientiam praevalere. certe quid non repleverunt fabulis Colchis Media aliaeque, in primis Itala Circe dis etiam adscripta?", "translation": "Yet among most of the people the inherited conviction persists that eclipses are forced by drugs and herbs, and that this one female science prevails. Certainly, what have Colchian Medea and the others, above all Italian Circe who was even counted among the gods, not filled with fables?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Although eclipses are now predicted to the hour, the masses still believe women force them with herbs and veneficia. Witchcraft is gendered as 'women's science' and linked to Medea, Circe and the Marsi, who are said to descend from Circe's son and to master snakes. Pliny praises the centenarian herbalist Antonius Castor as the sober, real form of herb knowledge.", "claimed_effect": "Eclipse ('drawing down the moon').", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbal drugs (venefica) compel the moon.", "practitioner": "Women herbalists (Medea, Circe type); Marsi", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "The gendered stereotype of the venefica; Italian herb lore located among the Marsi.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-21", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "North African (Psylli), Italian (Marsi), Hellespontine (Ophiogenes)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "7.2.2", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 7.13–15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "similis et in Africa Psyllorum gens fuit [...] horum corpori ingenitum fuit virus exitiale serpentibus et cuius odore sopirent eas; mos vero liberos genitos protinus obiciendi saevissimis earum eoque genere pudicitiam coniugum experiendi", "translation": "Similar was the race of the Psylli in Africa [...] Their bodies had an innate venom deadly to serpents, whose smell put them to sleep; and it was their custom to expose newborn children at once to the fiercest snakes and so test their wives' chastity.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hereditary snake-healers. The Ophiogenes of Parium cure by touch, the Psylli by an innate venom (with a chastity ordeal for newborns), and the Marsi of Italy by descent from Circe's son. Pliny ends by saying that all human saliva is poison to snakes, especially when fasting. NH 28.30 adds the Ophiogenes envoy Euagon, thrown into a jar of snakes 'as an experiment' by the consuls and licked unharmed.", "claimed_effect": "Immunity to snakebite, cure of the bitten by touch or saliva.", "claimed_mechanism": "Innate bodily 'virus' (venom or antipathy) in certain lineages.", "practitioner": "Psylli, Marsi, Ophiogenes", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Itinerant ethnic snake-healers known in Rome; Pliny elsewhere (NH 11.89) accuses the Psylli of importing foreign snakes for profit.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-22", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De Medicina", "author": "Celsus", "culture": "Roman (on Psylli, Gauls, street performers)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 25–35 CE", "date_sort": 30, "edition_urn": "phi0836.phi002.perseus-lat4", "ref": "5.27.4", "conventional_ref": "Celsus Med. 5.27.3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Neque hec scientiam praecipuam habent ii, qui Psylli nominantur, sed audaciam usu ipso confirmatam. [...] et si stupente ea, quod per quaedam medi-camenta circulatores faciunt, in os digitum quis insidit neque percussus est, nulla in ea saliva noxa est.", "translation": "Those called Psylli have no special knowledge, only boldness confirmed by practice. [...] And if, while the snake is stupefied (which street performers do with certain drugs), someone puts a finger in its mouth and is not bitten, there is no harm in its saliva.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A physician demystifies snake-charming. Venom harms only in a wound, not when swallowed, so anyone who sucks the bite (with no mouth ulcers) is safe and saves the patient: 'whoever follows the Psylli's example will be safe'. In passing Celsus exposes the circulatores' trick of drugging snakes before handling them. He also notes Gallic hunting poisons that work the same way.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of snakebite.", "claimed_mechanism": "Popular: innate power; Celsus: venom acts only in the bloodstream; suction removes it.", "practitioner": "Psylli; circulatores (street conjurors)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Medical writing that reclassifies an ethnic 'gift' as a learnable technique and a show trick.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-23", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De Medicina", "author": "Celsus", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 25–35 CE", "date_sort": 30, "edition_urn": "phi0836.phi002.perseus-lat4", "ref": "3.23.2", "conventional_ref": "Celsus Med. 3.23.7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Quidam iugulate gladiatoris calido sanguine epoto tali morbo se liberarunt; apud quos miserum auxilium tolerabile miserius malum fecit.", "translation": "Some have freed themselves from this disease by drinking the hot blood of a slaughtered gladiator; with them a wretched remedy was made tolerable by a still more wretched illness.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the chapter on epilepsy, after diet, purging and hellebore, Celsus records the arena blood cure that Pliny (NH 28.4, entry 9) blames on the magi. Celsus reports without endorsing and moves at once to the physician's last resort: bleeding and cautery of the occiput.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of epilepsy (morbus comitialis).", "claimed_mechanism": "The vital heat of fresh human blood.", "practitioner": "Epileptic patients themselves", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "An arena folk-cure known to physicians.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-24", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (on Arcadian Greek tradition)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "8.22.1", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 8.80–84", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "homines in lupos verti rursusque restitui sibi falsum esse confidenter existimare debemus aut credere omnia quae fabulosa tot saeculis conperimus. [...] mirum est quo procedat Graeca credulitas! nullum tam inpudens mendacium est, ut teste careat .", "translation": "We must confidently consider it false that men are turned into wolves and restored to themselves, or else believe everything we have learned to be fabulous over so many centuries. [...] It is amazing how far Greek credulity goes! No lie is so shameless that it lacks a witness.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pliny explains why 'versipellis' (skin-changer) is a Roman insult. He reports the Arcadian story (Euanthes) of a man of the Anthus clan who hangs his clothes on an oak, swims a pool and lives as a wolf for nine years, and Demaenetus, who tasted the entrails of a boy sacrificed to Lycaean Zeus and became a wolf for ten years before winning at Olympia. He also says a wolf's glance takes away a man's voice. Pliny's position is outright denial.", "claimed_effect": "Transformation of man into wolf for a fixed term.", "claimed_mechanism": "Ritual swim or eating human sacrificial meat at the Lykaia.", "practitioner": "Arcadian clan members (Anthus, Demaenetus)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Probably reflects an Arcadian initiation or exile rite connected with Zeus Lykaios.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-25", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Satyricon", "author": "Petronius", "culture": "Roman (Campanian freedmen's folklore)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 60–66 CE", "date_sort": 63, "edition_urn": "phi0972.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "62.ab1", "conventional_ref": "Petron. Sat. 62", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "At ille circumminxit vestimenta sua, et subito lupus factus est. Nolite me iocari putare; ut mentiar, nullius patrimonium tanti facio. [...] Intellexi illum versipellem esse", "translation": "He pissed in a circle round his clothes and suddenly turned into a wolf. Don't think I'm joking; I wouldn't lie for anyone's fortune. [...] I realised he was a skin-changer.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Niceros' werewolf tale at Trimalchio's dinner. At the fifth milestone among the tombs, under a bright moon, a soldier strips, urinates round his clothes (which turn to stone) and becomes a wolf that savages the flock. When a slave spears its neck, the soldier is later found in bed with a doctor treating his neck. The story belongs to the freedmen's folklore and is mocked by the author's framing, but the details (urine circle, tombs, moon, wound transfer) are a rare record of Italian popular belief.", "claimed_effect": "Transformation into a wolf; a wound received in wolf form appears on the human body.", "claimed_mechanism": "Stripping and urinating in a circle round the clothes among tombs by moonlight.", "practitioner": "A soldier (miles)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Lower-class Campanian storytelling.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-26", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Satyricon", "author": "Petronius", "culture": "Roman (popular belief in striges)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 60–66 CE", "date_sort": 63, "edition_urn": "phi0972.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "63.ab1", "conventional_ref": "Petron. Sat. 63", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "scilicet iam puerum strigae involaverant et supposuerant stramenticium vavatonem. Rogo vos, oportet credatis, sunt mulieres plussciae, sunt nocturnae, et quod sursum est, deorsum faciunt.", "translation": "Of course the striges had already snatched the boy and put a straw doll in his place. I beg you, you must believe it: there are women who know more, there are night-women, and they turn what is up to down.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Trimalchio's tale. During a wake for a favourite slave boy the striges shriek outside, a strong Cappadocian runs one through, then collapses black and blue 'because an evil hand had touched him' and dies mad days later. The corpse turns out to be a straw doll, its heart and entrails gone. It is the clearest Latin prose evidence for the strix as a child-stealing night-witch and for the euphemism 'mulieres plussciae' ('women who know more').", "claimed_effect": "Theft of a dead boy's body and organs; lethal 'evil hand'.", "claimed_mechanism": "Night-witches (striges) fly, steal corpses and organs, and strike by touch.", "practitioner": "Striges / mulieres nocturnae", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Popular fears around death, infants and corpses.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-27", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Satyricon", "author": "Petronius", "culture": "Roman (southern Italian priestess of Priapus)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 60–66 CE", "date_sort": 63, "edition_urn": "phi0972.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "138.ab1", "conventional_ref": "Petron. Sat. 138", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Profert Oenothea scorteum fascinum, quod ut oleo et minuto pipere atque urticae trito circumdedit semine, paulatim coepit inserere ano meo", "translation": "Oenothea brings out a leather phallus, smears it with oil, ground pepper and crushed nettle seed, and slowly begins to insert it into my anus.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The climax of Encolpius' treatment for impotence (which he blames on veneficium, Sat. 128) by the priestess and saga Oenothea. After charms and offerings she resorts to irritant drugs: pepper and nettle on a leather phallus, cress and southernwood juice, and flogging with green nettles. Satire, but the materia medica is real: rubefacient stimulants used as aphrodisiacs.", "claimed_effect": "Restoration of potency.", "claimed_mechanism": "Ritual plus irritant stimulants (pepper, nettle, cress).", "practitioner": "Oenothea, priestess of Priapus and saga", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Comic picture of the old-woman healer of sexual disorders.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-28", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (on African, Illyrian, Scythian peoples)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "7.2.3", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 7.16–18", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "esse eiusdem generis in Triballis et Illyris adicit Isigonus, qui visu quoque effascinent interemantque quos diutius intueantur, iratis praecipue oculis [...] notabilius esse quod pupillas binas in oculis singulis habeant.", "translation": "Isigonus adds that among the Triballi and Illyrians there are people of the same kind who bewitch with their gaze and kill those they look at too long, especially with angry eyes [...] and more remarkably that they have two pupils in each eye.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The evil eye (fascinatio) as an ethnographic marvel: African families who kill by praise, Illyrians who kill by gaze, Scythian Bitiae, and a double pupil as the bodily sign. Pliny adds that Cicero says all women with double pupils harm by looking. Gellius (9.4.7–8) later reads the same Greek paradoxographers. Pliny's own theory: nature put poison even in human eyes.", "claimed_effect": "Death of people, trees, children, livestock.", "claimed_mechanism": "A poisonous emanation from eyes or voice, especially when angry or praising.", "practitioner": "Hereditary 'fascinators'", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Background to Roman anti-fascination amulets (fascinum) and the custom of spitting.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-29", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "28.4.2", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 28.35–38", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "despuimus comitiales morbos, hoc est contagia regerimus. simili modo et fascinationes repercutimus dextraeque clauditatis occursum. [...] mirum dicimus, sed experimento facile", "translation": "We spit at epileptics, that is, we throw back the contagion. In the same way we repel fascination and the meeting of someone lame in the right leg. [...] It is a marvel, but easy to test", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Fasting saliva as apotropaic and medicinal: spitting at epileptics, against the evil eye, into one's bosom to ask the gods' pardon for presumptuous hopes, three times with a prayer in all medicine, and on budding boils. The sceptic Pliny here vouches for one effect, that spitting into the hand that struck someone relieves the victim, 'easy to test' and 'often proved on lamed animals'. This shows how contested his empiricism was.", "claimed_effect": "Protection from epilepsy, fascination, bad omens; relief of blows.", "claimed_mechanism": "Saliva, especially fasting saliva, repels contagion and envy and transfers guilt.", "practitioner": "Ordinary Romans", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Universal domestic apotropaic practice, not stigmatised.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-30", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (citing Metrodorus of Scepsis on Cappadocia)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "28.7.3", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 28.77–80", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "iam primum abigi grandines turbinesque contra fulgura ipsa mense nudato [...] quocumque autem alio menstruo si nudatae segetem ambiant , urucas et vermiculos scarabaeosque ac noxia alia decidere", "translation": "First, hailstorms and whirlwinds are driven away if a menstruating woman exposes herself to the lightning [...] and at any other menstruation, if women walk naked round the crop, caterpillars, worms, beetles and other pests drop off.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Menstrual blood as a dangerous and also useful power: it averts hail and storms at sea; naked menstruating women walking round the field kill pests (a Cappadocian discovery, with the variant of walking barefoot with loosened hair and belt); it also blunts razors, dims mirrors and makes bees flee. Pliny introduces this with 'post haec nullus est modus' ('after this there is no limit'). This is the lead attributed to Columella 11.3.64, which is not in the library.", "claimed_effect": "Averting hail and storms, killing crop pests; many harmful effects.", "claimed_mechanism": "The 'violentia' of menstrual blood, strongest at eclipses and at a virgin's first menses.", "practitioner": "Menstruating women", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Folk agricultural rite; women's bodies treated as a hazard and a resource. Compare the Italian rustic law against women spinning on the roads (28.28).", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-31", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (citing the annalist L. Piso)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE (event 191 BCE)", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "18.6.5", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 18.41–43", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "in invidia erat magna, ceu fruges alienas perliceret veneficiis. [...] Veneficia mea, Quirites, haec Sunt, nec possum vobis ostendere aut in forum adducere lucubrationes meas vigiliasque et sudores .", "translation": "He was greatly resented, as if he were luring his neighbours' crops with sorcery. [...] 'These, citizens, are my sorceries; and I cannot show you or bring into the forum my late nights, my vigils and my sweat.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The freedman C. Furius Cresimus produced far bigger harvests on a small plot than his neighbours did on large ones, so he was prosecuted by an aedile for crop-charming, the Twelve Tables offence. He brought his well-fed, well-clothed slaves, heavy hoes and ploughs and fat oxen into the forum and was acquitted unanimously. This is the classic exposure of a magic accusation as envy of better technique.", "claimed_effect": "Transfer of fertility from others' fields.", "claimed_mechanism": "Accusers: veneficia that lure crops from neighbouring fields (excantare fruges).", "practitioner": "C. Furius Cresimus (accused), a freedman", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Prosecution before the people by a curule aedile; magic accusation tied to envy of a socially marginal outsider.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-32", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Gallic (Druids)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "16.44.11", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 16.249–251", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "theurgy", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "nihil habent Druidae—ita suos appellant magos -visco et arbore, in qua gignatur, si modo sit robur, sacratius. [...] omnia sanantem appellant suo vocabulo.", "translation": "The Druids (so they call their magi) hold nothing more sacred than mistletoe and the tree it grows on, provided it is an oak. [...] In their own tongue they call it 'all-healer'.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The mistletoe ritual: on the sixth day of the moon a white-robed priest climbs the oak, cuts the mistletoe with a golden sickle onto a white cloak, and two white bulls are sacrificed. A drink of mistletoe gives fertility to any barren animal and is an antidote to all poisons. Pliny: 'so great is the religion of peoples in frivolous matters.' Roman classification at work: Druids are 'their magi'.", "claimed_effect": "Fertility; antidote to all poisons.", "claimed_mechanism": "Heaven-sent plant on a god-chosen tree; lunar timing; sacrifice.", "practitioner": "Druid priest (sacerdos)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Gallic public cult, later suppressed by Tiberius and Claudius.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-33", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Gallic (Druids, Vocontii)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE (execution under Claudius, 41–54 CE)", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "29.3.3", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 29.52–54", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "atque, ut est Magorum sollertia occultandis fraudibus sagax, certa luna capiendum censent [...] tantae vanitatis, ut habentem id in lite in sinu equitem R. e Vocontiis a divo Claudio principe interemptum non ob aliud sciam.", "translation": "And, with the cunning of the Magi at hiding their frauds, they prescribe that it be taken at a certain moon [...] it is held in such vain esteem that I know a Roman knight of the Vocontii was put to death by the deified emperor Claudius for no other reason than that he had one in his bosom during a lawsuit.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Druids' 'snake's egg' (anguinum), formed from the spittle of entwined snakes and caught in a cloak as it is tossed into the air; the snakes pursue the horseman who takes it until a river stops them. It floats against the current even when bound with gold and brings victory in lawsuits and access to kings. Pliny has seen one: apple-sized, with a cartilaginous crust pocked like an octopus's suckers. A Roman knight was executed for carrying one in court.", "claimed_effect": "Victory in lawsuits, favour of rulers.", "claimed_mechanism": "An object made by snakes, harvested at a lunar date; 'proved' by floating.", "practitioner": "Druids; a Vocontian Roman knight (user)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Capital punishment under Claudius for using a legal-victory amulet in court; Pliny's 'Magorum sollertia occultandis fraudibus' generalises the charge of fraud.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-34", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (on Magian amulets)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "30.11.3", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 30.98–99", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "In quartanis medicina clinice propemodum nihil pollet. quam ob rem plura eorum remedia ponemus primumque ea, quae adalligari iubent", "translation": "Against quartan fevers bedside medicine is almost powerless. So I shall give more of their remedies, first those they prescribe to be tied on as amulets", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pliny's candid reason for including magic: where clinical medicine fails (quartan malaria), people turn to amulets. Examples: dust a hawk has rolled in, tied in red linen; a black dog's longest tooth; a wasp caught with the left hand; a viper's head; a lizard's right eye; the dung-rolling scarab, which Egyptians worship (with Apion's solar 'excuse'). The same quartan amulets were later capital crimes under Caracalla and Valens (entries 107, 100).", "claimed_effect": "Cure or prevention of quartan fever.", "claimed_mechanism": "Sympathetic animal parts tied to the body (adalligare).", "practitioner": "Magi; ordinary patients", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "In Pliny's day legal, if despised; later criminalised.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-35", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (on Magian corpse remedies)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "28.4.6", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 28.45–46", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "necromancy", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "iidem in quartanis fragmentum clavi a cruce involutum lana collo subnectunt aut spartum e cruce, liberatoque condunt caverna, quam sol non attingat. Magorum haec commenta sunt", "translation": "The same people, against quartan fever, tie round the neck a fragment of a nail from a cross wrapped in wool, or a cord from a cross, and once the patient is freed they hide it in a hole the sun does not reach. These are inventions of the Magi", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Remedies from the dead: the hand of someone who died young heals scrofula and throat swellings by touch; a dead man's tooth is used for toothache; earth from a skull; a nail or cord from a crucifixion as a fever amulet, buried afterwards in a sunless hole. Pliny marks the line explicitly: 'Magorum haec commenta sunt.'", "claimed_effect": "Cure of scrofula, toothache, fevers.", "claimed_mechanism": "Power of the untimely or violent dead and of execution instruments; the disease is buried with the amulet.", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Use of execution and grave material, which later law (Ammianus 19.12.14) treats as necromantic and capital.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-36", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman and Greek pharmacology", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "25.13.3", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 25.147–150", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "effossuri cavent contrarium ventum et III circulis ante gladio circumscribunt , postea fodiunt ad occasum spectantes. [...] bibitur et contra serpentes et ante sectiones punctionesque, ne sentiantur", "translation": "Those about to dig it up avoid having the wind against them, first draw three circles round it with a sword, then dig facing west. [...] It is also drunk against snakebite and before incisions and punctures, so that they are not felt.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Mandrake (also called Circaeon, Circe's plant). The ritual of uprooting (sword circles, wind, facing west) sits beside sober pharmacology: the dose is graded to strength (one cyathus), excessive drinking kills, the smell alone causes torpor, and it is drunk as an anaesthetic before surgery. A genuine tropane-alkaloid drug wrapped in root-cutters' ritual.", "claimed_effect": "Sleep, anaesthesia for surgery, emetic, antidote; death in overdose.", "claimed_mechanism": "Narcotic juice (vis somnifica); the digging ritual protects the gatherer.", "practitioner": "Rhizotomoi (root-cutters), physicians", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Shows the overlap of drug-lore, veneficium and magic; Apion's 'cynocephalia' that kills its uprooter (30.18) is the magical version.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-37", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Naturalis Historia", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman (on Babylonian naphtha and the Medea myth)", "language": "lat", "date": "77 CE", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.105.1", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 2.235", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "huic magna cognatio ignium, transiliuntque in eam protinus undecumque visam. ita ferunt a Medea paelicem crematam, postquam sacrificatura ad aras accesserat, corona igne rapto.", "translation": "It has a great affinity with fire, which leaps across to it at once from wherever it sees it. That is how, they say, Medea burned her rival: when she approached the altar to sacrifice, her crown caught the fire.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A naturalistic explanation of the most famous mythic act of witchcraft. Medea's burning crown is explained by naphtha (volatile petroleum from Babylonia and Parthia). The previous chapter describes Samosata's flaming 'maltha' used against Lucullus' soldiers, which water feeds rather than quenches.", "claimed_effect": "Spontaneous combustion of a poisoned crown.", "claimed_mechanism": "Volatile petroleum vapour ignites at a distance from the altar flame.", "practitioner": "Medea (myth)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-38", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Ab urbe condita", "author": "Livy", "culture": "Roman (regal legend)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 27–25 BCE (legend 7th c. BCE)", "date_sort": -27, "edition_urn": "phi0914.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.1.31.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Livy 1.31.8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "sed non rite initum aut curatum id sacrum esse, nec solum nullam ei oblatam caelestium speciem, sed ira Iovis sollicitati prava religione fulmine ictum cum domo conflagrasse.", "translation": "But the rite was not begun or performed correctly; not only was no heavenly apparition granted him, but by the anger of Jupiter, provoked by the faulty ritual, he was struck by lightning and burned up with his house.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "King Tullus Hostilius finds in Numa's commentaries secret sacrifices to Jupiter Elicius ('drawn down') and tries to conjure the god, but performs them wrongly and is killed by lightning. Pliny (NH 2.140 and 28.14) tells the same story from L. Piso, with Porsenna's lightning against the monster Olta. This is Roman 'theurgy' within state cult: lawful only if done exactly right.", "claimed_effect": "Epiphany or controlled lightning; if botched, death.", "claimed_mechanism": "Secret Numan rites compel or entreat Jupiter to descend as lightning.", "practitioner": "King Tullus Hostilius (and Numa)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Royal and pontifical secret rites; the moral is ritual exactness.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-39", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Ab urbe condita", "author": "Livy", "culture": "Roman (Etruscan-style augury)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 27–25 BCE (legend 6th c. BCE)", "date_sort": -27, "edition_urn": "phi0914.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.1.36.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Livy 1.36.3–5", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "“atqui hoc animo agitavi” inquit, “te novacula cotem discissurum; cape haec et perage, quod aves tuae fieri posse portendunt.” tum illum haud cunctanter discidisse cotem ferunt.", "translation": "'Well, what I had in mind,' he said, 'was that you would cut a whetstone with a razor. Take these and do what your birds foretell can be done.' And they say he cut the whetstone without hesitation.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "King Tarquinius Priscus tests the augur Attus Navius, who promptly splits a whetstone with a razor. A statue of Navius and the whetstone were shown in the Comitium as a monument to the miracle. The story defends the authority of augury, but it is also a classic test-and-demonstration of the kind a conjuror could stage.", "claimed_effect": "Splitting a whetstone with a razor.", "claimed_mechanism": "The augur's birds confirm what is possible.", "practitioner": "Attus Navius, augur", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Legitimation of the public augural college against royal power.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-40", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Ab urbe condita", "author": "Livy", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 27–25 BCE (event 340 BCE)", "date_sort": -27, "edition_urn": "phi0914.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.8.9.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Livy 8.9.6–8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "dique Manes, vos precor, veneror, veniam peto oroque, uti populo Romano Quiritium vim victoriamque prosperetis hostesque populi Romani Quiritium terrore, formidine morteque adficiatis.", "translation": "and you, gods of the dead, I pray, worship, ask your favour and beg you to grant strength and victory to the Roman people of the Quirites, and to afflict the enemies of the Roman people with terror, dread and death.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The formula of devotio dictated by the pontifex to the consul P. Decius Mus before the battle of Veseris. He devotes himself together with the enemy legions to the Manes and Tellus, then rides to his death. It is structurally a curse (binding enemies to the underworld powers) but is the most honoured act of state religion. Pliny (28.12) cites the 'carmen' of the Decii as proof of the power of words.", "claimed_effect": "Panic and death among the enemy; Roman victory.", "claimed_mechanism": "Self-sacrifice plus a spoken formula transfers the enemy to the gods below.", "practitioner": "Consul P. Decius Mus, with the pontifex", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Public religion; shows that 'binding' the enemy was legitimate in state hands.", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-41", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Ab urbe condita", "author": "Livy", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 27–25 BCE (event 331 BCE)", "date_sort": -27, "edition_urn": "phi0914.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.8.18.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Livy 8.18.4–13", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "cum ea medicamenta salubria esse contenderent, ab confutante indice bibere iussae [...] epoto medicamento suamet ipsae fraude omnes interierunt.", "translation": "When they maintained that these were healthful medicines, the informer refuted them and they were ordered to drink them [...] they drank the drug and all died by their own fraud.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the plague year 331 BCE a slave-woman reveals that matrons are 'cooking venena'. Cornelia and Sergia claim their preparations are medicines, are made to drink them and die. About 170 matrons are condemned, the first veneficium inquiry at Rome (8.18.11). Livy wishes the story were false, and the Romans themselves took it as a prodigy of 'minds possessed', expiated by a dictator driving the sacred nail. Valerius Maximus 2.5.3 repeats it.", "claimed_effect": "Deaths of leading men, interpreted against the background of pestilence.", "claimed_mechanism": "Medicamenta: ambiguous drugs that are either remedies or poisons.", "practitioner": "Roman matrons (Cornelia, Sergia and others)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Mass prosecution of women on a slave's information; the episode was treated as a prodigy needing ritual expiation (clavi figendi causa).", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-42", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Ab urbe condita", "author": "Livy", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 20 BCE (event 213 BCE)", "date_sort": -20, "edition_urn": "phi0914.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.25.1.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Livy 25.1.6–12", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "sacrificuli ac vates ceperant hominum mentes; quorum numerum auxit rustica plebs, ex incultis diutino bello infestisque agris egestate et metu in urbem conpulsa, et quaestus ex alieno errore facilis, quem velut concessae artis usu exercebant.", "translation": "Petty sacrificers and seers had taken hold of people's minds; their numbers were swelled by the country people, driven into the city from fields left untilled and unsafe by the long war, through poverty and fear; and there was easy profit from others' error, which they practised as if it were a licensed art.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "During the Hannibalic war 'foreign' religion floods Rome and women sacrifice in the Forum and on the Capitol in non-ancestral ways. The senate orders the praetor M. Aemilius to collect all books of prophecy, prayers and written sacrificial arts by 1 April and bans new or foreign rites in public. War, refugees and fear drive the market for ritual specialists.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Sacrificuli and vates; women worshippers", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Senate decree and praetor's edict: confiscation of vaticinii libri and ritual manuals; ban on externus ritus in public places.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-43", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Ab urbe condita", "author": "Livy", "culture": "Roman (on Greek-Etruscan Bacchic cult)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 10 BCE (event 186 BCE)", "date_sort": -10, "edition_urn": "phi0914.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3bis.39.8.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Livy 39.8.3–8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Graecus ignobilis in Etruriam primum venit nulla cum arte earum, quas multas ad animorum corporumque cultum nobis eruditissima omnium gens invexit, sacrificulus et vates", "translation": "A Greek of low birth came first into Etruria, bringing none of the many arts for the care of mind and body which that most learned of nations has brought us; he was a petty sacrificer and seer", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Bacchanalia affair begins with a nameless Greek sacrificulus et vates teaching secret nocturnal rites. Livy lists the crimes produced 'in the same workshop': sexual promiscuity, false witness, forged seals and wills, and venena with secret murders whose bodies vanish, the noise of drums and cymbals drowning the victims' cries. The archetype of illicit religion: secret, nocturnal, mixed-sex and foreign.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "A Greek sacrificulus et vates; initiates of both sexes", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Consular quaestio de clandestinis coniurationibus; senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus (186 BCE).", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-44", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Ab urbe condita", "author": "Livy", "culture": "Roman (on Bacchic cult)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 10 BCE (event 186 BCE)", "date_sort": -10, "edition_urn": "phi0914.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3bis.39.13.12.1", "conventional_ref": "Livy 39.13.12–13", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "matronas Baccharum habitu crinibus sparsis cum ardentibus facibus decurrere ad Tiberim, demissasque in aquam faces, quia vivum sulpur cum calce insit, integra flamma efferre. raptos a diis homines dici, quos machinae illigatos ex conspectu in abditos specus abripiant", "translation": "Matrons dressed as Bacchants, hair streaming, run down to the Tiber with burning torches, plunge them into the water and bring them out still alight, because the torches contain live sulphur mixed with lime. Men are said to be 'carried off by the gods' who are tied to a machine and whisked out of sight into hidden caves", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In Hispala's testimony two cult 'miracles' are exposed as technology: torches that burn after being dipped in the river (sulphur plus quicklime, which heats when wet) and 'divine abduction' done with machinery and hidden caves. The 'possessed' men prophesy with fanatic convulsions. This is among the earliest Latin explanations of a religious miracle as a chemical and mechanical trick.", "claimed_effect": "Unquenchable torches; people snatched by the gods.", "claimed_mechanism": "Cult claim: divine power; the explanation given: quicklime and sulphur; hoisting machines and caves.", "practitioner": "Bacchic matrons and priests", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Testimony given to the consul Postumius by the freedwoman Hispala Faecenia; used to justify the repression of 186 BCE.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-45", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Ab urbe condita", "author": "Livy", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 10 BCE (event 184 BCE)", "date_sort": -10, "edition_urn": "phi0914.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3bis.39.41.5.1", "conventional_ref": "Livy 39.41.5–6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "quaestiones veneficii, quarum magnam partem extra urbem per municipia conciliabulaque habuit, quia ita aptius visum erat, tenuerunt. si Antiati Valerio credere libet, ad duo milia hominum damnavit.", "translation": "The inquiries into poisoning kept him (the praetor Q. Naevius) for four months; he held most of them outside the city in the towns and market-centres, since that seemed more suitable. If we believe Valerius Antias, he condemned about two thousand people.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "One of a cluster of mass veneficium inquiries in 184–180 BCE that run alongside the Bacchanalia repression and pestilence. Livy doubts Valerius Antias' figure of 2,000. The inquiry is carried out in rural Italy, not in Rome.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Unnamed rural Italians", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Praetorian quaestiones extra ordinem de veneficiis.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-46", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Ab urbe condita", "author": "Livy", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 10 BCE (events 180 BCE)", "date_sort": -10, "edition_urn": "phi0914.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3bis.40.43.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Livy 40.43.2–3 (cf. 40.37.1–7)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "ut quaereret de veneficiis longius ab urbe decem milibus passuum, litterae adlatae, se iam tria milia hominum damnasse, et crescere sibi quaestionem indiciis", "translation": "(the praetor C. Maenius, charged) with investigating poisonings more than ten miles from the city, sent a letter saying that he had already condemned three thousand people and that the inquiry was growing on him through informers' denunciations", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In 180 BCE pestilence kills a praetor, a consul and many notables; it is first expiated with prayers and gifts to Apollo, Aesculapius and Salus. Then 'suspicion of human fraud' sets in (40.37.4). Quarta Hostilia is condemned for poisoning her husband the consul Piso, partly because she had predicted her son's consulship within two months (40.37.6–7). Maenius' rural inquiry swells to 3,000 condemnations and he asks to drop it.", "claimed_effect": "Deaths in an epidemic attributed to poisoning.", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Quarta Hostilia and thousands of others", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Shows epidemic disease converted into veneficium accusations; informers (indicia) drive the process.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-47", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Ab urbe condita", "author": "Livy", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 10 BCE (event 181 BCE)", "date_sort": -10, "edition_urn": "phi0914.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3bis.40.29.11.1", "conventional_ref": "Livy 40.29.3–14", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "lectis rerum summis cum animadvertisset pleraque dissolvendarum religionum esse, L. Petilio dixit sese libros eos in ignem coniecturum esse", "translation": "Having read the main points and noticed that most of it tended to undermine religious observances, he told L. Petilius that he would throw the books into the fire", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Stone chests found under the Janiculum claim to hold King Numa's body (empty) and his books: seven Latin on pontifical law and seven Greek 'Pythagorean' ones, suspiciously fresh. The urban praetor judges them subversive of religion, and by senate decree they are burned in the Comitium by the sacrificial attendants. Livy suspects the Pythagorean claim is a plausible fiction. It is the archetype of Roman burning of religious books, continued by Augustus (entry 71) and Valens (entry 99). The library flags 40.29.3 as athetized.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Q. Petilius (praetor), senate", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Senatus consultum; state control of religious texts.", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-48", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De Divinatione", "author": "Cicero", "culture": "Roman (on Chaldaean astrology)", "language": "lat", "date": "44 BCE", "date_sort": -44, "edition_urn": "phi0474.phi053.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.99.1", "conventional_ref": "Cic. Div. 2.99", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "quam multa ego Pompeio, quam multa Crasso, quam multa huic ipsi Caesari, a Chaldaeis dicta memini, neminem eorum nisi senectute, nisi domi, nisi cum claritate esse moriturum!", "translation": "How many things I remember the Chaldaeans telling Pompey, Crassus and Caesar himself: that none of them would die except in old age, at home and in glory!", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Cicero's knock-down empirical argument, written in the months after the Ides of March. All three triumvirs were promised peaceful deaths in old age, and all three died violently (Crassus at Carrhae, Pompey in Egypt, Caesar in the Senate). He also mocks the casting of Rome's own nativity (L. Tarutius). Astrologers' predictions are 'refuted daily by events'.", "claimed_effect": "Prediction of manner and time of death.", "claimed_mechanism": "Natal horoscopy by Chaldaei.", "practitioner": "Chaldaei consulted by Roman dynasts", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Astrology fashionable among the late Republican elite.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-49", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De Divinatione", "author": "Cicero", "culture": "Roman (on Babylonian astrology)", "language": "lat", "date": "44 BCE", "date_sort": -44, "edition_urn": "phi0474.phi053.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.97.2", "conventional_ref": "Cic. Div. 2.97", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "omnesne qui Cannensi pugna ceciderint uno astro fuerint? exitus quidem omnium unus et idem fuit.", "translation": "Were all who fell at the battle of Cannae born under one star? Their end, at any rate, was one and the same.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A run of proto-statistical arguments against astrology. The claim that the Babylonians tested horoscopes on children for 470,000 years is false, for if they had done so they would not have stopped (2.97.1). Geography matters more than the moon. Twins have different fates. Men who die together were not born together. Every moment sees countless births. Cicero notes he borrows from the Stoic Panaetius as well as from Carneades.", "claimed_effect": "Character and fate.", "claimed_mechanism": "Zodiacal influence at the moment of birth.", "practitioner": "Chaldaei", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-50", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De Divinatione", "author": "Cicero", "culture": "Roman (Praeneste lot oracle)", "language": "lat", "date": "44 BCE", "date_sort": -44, "edition_urn": "phi0474.phi053.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.85.1", "conventional_ref": "Cic. Div. 2.85–87", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "quid enim sors est? idem prope modum, quod micare, quod talos iacere, quod tesseras, quibus in rebus temeritas et casus, non ratio nec consilium valet. tota res est inventa fallaciis aut ad quaestum aut ad superstitionem aut ad errorem.", "translation": "For what is a lot? Much the same as playing odds-and-evens or throwing knucklebones or dice, in which chance and luck prevail, not reason or design. The whole business was invented by deceit, for profit, for superstition or through error.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Cicero demolishes the famous lots of Fortuna at Praeneste: their 'miraculous' discovery by Numerius Suffustius after threatening dreams, honey flowing from an olive tree, and a boy mixing the oak tablets at Fortune's prompting. Who cut and inscribed the wood? No magistrate or eminent man now uses lots. He cites Carneades' quip that he had never seen a luckier Fortuna than at Praeneste. Book 2 (2.51) also has Cato's famous remark that he wondered how one haruspex could look at another without laughing.", "claimed_effect": "Oracular answers.", "claimed_mechanism": "Divinely guided drawing of inscribed oak lots.", "practitioner": "Temple of Fortuna Primigenia, Praeneste", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "A great Italian oracle, still operating; Cicero notes elite disuse.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-51", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De Divinatione", "author": "Cicero", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "44 BCE", "date_sort": -44, "edition_urn": "phi0474.phi053.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.121.1", "conventional_ref": "Cic. Div. 2.121", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "quis est enim, qui totum diem iaculans non aliquando conliniet? totas noctes dormimus, neque ulla est fere, qua non somniemus, et miramur aliquando id quod somniarimus evadere?", "translation": "Who is there who, shooting all day long, does not sometimes hit the mark? We sleep every night, and there is hardly a night without dreams; and are we surprised that sometimes what we dreamed comes true?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The law of large numbers against dream divination. With dice even a 'Venus throw' turns up repeatedly by chance, so we should not credit Venus. Coincidence, not prophecy, explains fulfilled dreams. (In book 1, Quintus argued that 100 Venus throws in 400 could not be chance; Cicero answers 'I do not see why not', 2.48.)", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge.", "claimed_mechanism": "Dreams sent by gods or the soul's detachment in sleep.", "practitioner": "Dreamers; coniectores (dream-interpreters)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-52", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De Divinatione", "author": "Cicero (Quintus Cicero quoting Ennius)", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "44 BCE (Ennius c. 180 BCE)", "date_sort": -44, "edition_urn": "phi0474.phi053.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.132.1", "conventional_ref": "Cic. Div. 1.132 (Ennius, Telamo)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "non me sortilegos neque eos, qui quaestus causa hariolentur, ne psychomantia quidem, quibus Appius, amicus tuus, uti solebat, agnoscere: non habeo denique nauci Marsum augurem", "translation": "I do not recognise lot-drawers, nor those who prophesy for money, nor even the oracles of the dead which your friend Appius used to consult; in short, I don't give a fig for a Marsian augur", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Even the defender of divination (Quintus) draws a line. He rejects sortilegi, mercenary harioli and psychomantia (necromantic oracles), the latter used by the senator and augur Appius Claudius Pulcher. With Ennius' verses he dismisses Marsian augurs, village haruspices, circus astrologers and Isiac dream-interpreters as superstitious, impudent, lazy, mad or needy. The boundary is commercial, low-status freelance divination against learned or public divination.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Sortilegi, harioli, psychomantia; Appius Claudius (consulter)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Shows a Roman augur (Appius) practising necromancy without legal consequence in the 50s BCE.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-53", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De Divinatione", "author": "Cicero", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "44 BCE", "date_sort": -44, "edition_urn": "phi0474.phi053.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.148.1", "conventional_ref": "Cic. Div. 2.148", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "nec vero—id enim diligenter intellegi volo—superstitione tollenda religio tollitur.", "translation": "Nor, and I want this clearly understood, is religion destroyed when superstition is destroyed.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The programmatic close of the work. Superstitio, 'spread through the nations', oppresses almost everyone's minds. Removing it does not remove religio: the wise man keeps ancestral rites and ceremonies, and the beauty and order of the heavens prove a divine nature. This is the key Roman distinction that frames magic as excess or deviance of the religious impulse.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Elite philosophical scepticism combined with conservative cultic practice (Cicero was himself an augur).", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-54", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De Natura Deorum", "author": "Cicero", "culture": "Roman (citing Diagoras of Melos)", "language": "lat", "date": "45 BCE", "date_sort": -45, "edition_urn": "phi0474.phi050.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3.89.1", "conventional_ref": "Cic. ND 3.89", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "nonne animadvertis ex tot tabulis pictis, quam multi votis vim tempestatis effugerint in portumque salvi pervenerint, ita fit inquit, illi enim nusquam picti sunt qui naufragia fecerunt in marique perierunt.", "translation": "'Don't you see from all these painted tablets how many escaped the violence of the storm by their vows and came safe into harbour?' 'Yes,' he said, 'because those who were shipwrecked and drowned at sea are nowhere painted.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Diagoras at Samothrace and the votive tablets: the classic ancient statement of survivorship bias against the efficacy of vows. In the same anecdote passengers blame the atheist on board for a storm, and he points to other ships labouring in the same storm.", "claimed_effect": "Rescue from shipwreck.", "claimed_mechanism": "Vows to the gods (Samothracian Great Gods).", "practitioner": "Sailors making vows", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Votive religion in a mystery sanctuary.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-55", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Brutus", "author": "Cicero", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "46 BCE (trial c. 77–74 BCE)", "date_sort": -46, "edition_urn": "phi0474.phi039.perseus-lat2", "ref": "217.1", "conventional_ref": "Cic. Brut. 217", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "subito totam causam oblitus est idque veneficiis et cantionibus Titiniae factum esse dicebat.", "translation": "Suddenly he forgot his whole case, and he claimed this had been done by Titinia's sorceries and incantations.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The orator C. Scribonius Curio, notorious for a poor memory, blanks in a private suit against Cicero's client Titinia and blames her veneficia and cantiones. This is exactly the 'tongue-binding' that Greek and Latin judicial curse tablets aim at. Cicero tells it as a joke at Curio's expense.", "claimed_effect": "The advocate forgets his case in court.", "claimed_mechanism": "Judicial binding spell (cantio) on the opposing advocate's memory or tongue.", "practitioner": "Titinia (alleged), a litigant", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Private lawsuit; the accusation of magic is used as an excuse for failure, not prosecuted.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-56", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "In Vatinium", "author": "Cicero", "culture": "Roman (Neopythagorean necromancy)", "language": "lat", "date": "56 BCE", "date_sort": -56, "edition_urn": "phi0474.phi023.perseus-lat2", "ref": "14.1", "conventional_ref": "Cic. Vat. 14", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "cum inaudita ac nefaria sacra susceperis, cum inferorum animas elicere, cum puerorum extis deos manis mactare soleas", "translation": "when you have taken up unheard-of and abominable rites, when you are in the habit of calling up the souls of the dead and of appeasing the gods of the underworld with boys' entrails", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Political invective against P. Vatinius, 'who calls himself a Pythagorean'. He is accused of necromancy and of child sacrifice to the Manes, and of contempt for the auspices. Necromancy and murder of children appear as stock charges against an enemy linked to the Pythagorean circle of Nigidius Figulus.", "claimed_effect": "Raising the souls of the dead (for divination).", "claimed_mechanism": "Blood sacrifice of children to the Manes.", "practitioner": "P. Vatinius (alleged)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Courtroom invective (the trial of Sestius); magic charges as character assassination.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-57", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Pro Cluentio", "author": "Cicero", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "66 BCE (law 81 BCE)", "date_sort": -66, "edition_urn": "phi0474.phi010.perseus-lat2", "ref": "148.1", "conventional_ref": "Cic. Clu. 148", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "iubet lex ea, qua lege haec quaestio constituta est, iudicem quaestionis, hoc est Q. Voconium, cum eis iudicibus qui ei obvenerint — vos appellat, iudices — quaerere de veneno.", "translation": "The law under which this court was set up orders the president of the court, that is Q. Voconius, with the jurors allotted to him (it is you, jurors, whom it addresses), to inquire into poison.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Cicero quotes the Sullan lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis, which covers anyone who 'made, sold, bought, possessed or gave' poison. This is the statute under which later magic was prosecuted. Quintilian (5.11.39) records Cato's dictum that every adulteress is also a venefica.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Oppianicus (accused poisoner)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Standing quaestio de veneficiis; venenum (drug or poison) is the legal hook for magic.", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-58", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Annales", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 115–120 CE (event 16 CE)", "date_sort": 117, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi005.perseus-lat1", "ref": "2.28", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Ann. 2.27–30", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "donec Iunius quidam, temptatus ut infernas umbras carminibus eliceret, ad Fulcinium Trionem indicium detulit.", "translation": "until a certain Junius, approached to call up the shades of the underworld by incantations, laid information with Fulcinius Trio.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The trial of M. Scribonius Libo Drusus: a credulous young noble is pushed by a false friend 'towards the promises of the Chaldaeans, the rites of the magi, and dream-interpreters' (2.27). The case breaks when a necromancer reports him. His 'evidence' includes absurd notes (whether he would have enough money to pave the Appian Way to Brundisium with coins) and a list of names with sinister marks (2.30). Tacitus says this was the first appearance of the delation that devoured the state.", "claimed_effect": "Knowledge of the future; implied designs on the emperor.", "claimed_mechanism": "Necromancy by carmina; astrology; magian rites.", "practitioner": "Libo Drusus (client); Junius (necromancer); Chaldaei and magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Maiestas trial before the senate; consulting diviners about the emperor's fate treated as treason.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-59", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Annales", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 115–120 CE (event 16 CE)", "date_sort": 117, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi005.perseus-lat1", "ref": "2.32", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Ann. 2.32", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "facta et de mathematicis magisque Italia pellendis senatus consulta; quorum e numero L. Pituanius saxo deiectus est, in P. Marcium consules extra portam Esquilinam, cum classicum canere iussissent, more prisco advertere.", "translation": "Decrees of the senate were also passed expelling astrologers and magi from Italy; of their number L. Pituanius was thrown from the Rock, and P. Marcius was executed by the consuls outside the Esquiline Gate in the ancient manner, after the trumpet had been sounded.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The aftermath of Libo's trial: senatorial decrees expel astrologers and magi; two are executed by archaic methods (the Tarpeian Rock; flogging and beheading outside the gate). Tacitus elsewhere stresses such expulsions were repeated and futile (entries 64, 68).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Mathematici and magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Senatus consulta of 16 CE; archaic public executions.", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-60", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Annales", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Roman (Antioch)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 115–120 CE (event 19 CE)", "date_sort": 117, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi005.perseus-lat1", "ref": "2.70", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Ann. 2.69", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "necromancy", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "reperiebantur solo ac parietibus erutae humanorum corporum reliquiae, carmina et devotiones et nomen Germanici plumbeis tabulis insculptum, semusti cineres ac tabo obliti aliaque malefica quis creditur animas numinibus infernis sacrari.", "translation": "There were found, dug out of the floor and walls, remains of human bodies, spells and curses, the name of Germanicus inscribed on lead tablets, half-burned ashes smeared with gore, and other instruments of evil by which souls are believed to be consecrated to the infernal powers.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "As Germanicus lies dying at Antioch, a full curse deposit is found in his house: human remains, carmina and devotiones, lead tablets with his name, bloodied ashes. Alongside comes the belief that Piso had poisoned him, and Piso's agents watch his illness. A local venefica, Martina, is sent to Rome and dies suddenly at Brundisium, poison hidden in her hair (3.7). The best literary match for the excavated Roman defixiones.", "claimed_effect": "Fatal illness of Germanicus.", "claimed_mechanism": "Lead defixio tablets inscribed with the victim's name, with corpse material, consecrating the soul to the gods below.", "practitioner": "Unknown (Piso and Plancina suspected; Martina 'infamis veneficiis')", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Politically charged death of the heir; magic and poison charges merge in the trial of Piso (Ann. 3).", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-61", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Annales", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 115–120 CE (event 24 CE)", "date_sort": 117, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi005.perseus-lat1", "ref": "4.22", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Ann. 4.22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "mox Numantina, prior uxor eius, accusata iniecisse carminibus et veneficiis vaecordiam marito, insons iudicatur.", "translation": "Soon after, Numantina, his former wife, was accused of having driven her husband mad with incantations and drugs, and was judged innocent.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The praetor Plautius Silvanus throws his wife from a window, pleads that he was 'heavy with sleep', and is made to kill himself. His ex-wife is then charged with having caused his madness by magic, and is acquitted. A rare recorded acquittal in a magic case, and a typical use of veneficium to explain male insanity (compare Caligula, entry 72).", "claimed_effect": "Madness leading to murder.", "claimed_mechanism": "Carmina and veneficia producing vaecordia (madness).", "practitioner": "Numantina (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Senatorial trial; acquittal.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-62", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Annales", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Roman (Tiberius and the Greek astrologer Thrasyllus)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 115–120 CE (event c. 6–2 BCE on Rhodes)", "date_sort": 117, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi005.perseus-lat1", "ref": "6.25", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Ann. 6.21", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "regredientem, si vanitatis aut fraudum suspicio incesserat, in subiectum mare praecipitabat ne index arcani existeret.", "translation": "(the freedman) on the way back, if any suspicion of emptiness or fraud had arisen, threw the man into the sea below, so that he should not survive to betray the secret.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Tiberius' test of astrologers on the cliffs of Rhodes. Thrasyllus, asked about his own horoscope, measures the stars, hesitates, grows alarmed and cries that he faces almost mortal danger. Tiberius embraces him and keeps him as an intimate, treating his words 'as an oracle'. Library 6.25 = conventional 6.21; 6.24 (= 6.20) gives Tiberius' prophecy to Galba.", "claimed_effect": "Prediction of imminent personal danger.", "claimed_mechanism": "Genethlialogy (positions and intervals of the stars at birth).", "practitioner": "Thrasyllus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "An astrologer as imperial counsellor while astrology was being repressed for others.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-63", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Annales", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 115–120 CE", "date_sort": 117, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi005.perseus-lat1", "ref": "6.26", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Ann. 6.22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "ceterum plurimis mortalium non eximitur quin primo cuiusque ortu ventura destinentur, sed quaedam secus quam dicta sint cadere fallaciis ignara dicentium: ita corrumpi fidem artis cuius clara documenta et antiqua aetas et nostra tulerit.", "translation": "Yet most people cannot be shaken from the view that each person's future is fixed at birth, but that some things turn out otherwise than foretold through the deceits of those who speak without knowledge, and so the credit of an art is spoiled of which both antiquity and our own age have produced clear proofs.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Tacitus' own suspended judgement on fate. He sets the Epicurean view (the gods do not care), the Stoic view (fate in natural causes, not wandering stars) and the popular astrological view side by side. He leans to the last, blaming failures on incompetent practitioners, and promises to record how Thrasyllus' son foretold Nero's reign.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Fate fixed at birth and readable in the stars.", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Elite historian who distrusts the astrologers' trade but not the art.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-64", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Annales", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 115–120 CE (event 52 CE)", "date_sort": 117, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi005.perseus-lat1", "ref": "12.53", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Ann. 12.52", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "de mathematicis Italia pellendis factum senatus consultum atrox et inritum.", "translation": "A senatorial decree was passed expelling the astrologers from Italy, harsh and ineffectual.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Furius Scribonianus is exiled for 'inquiring into the emperor's end through Chaldaeans'. Tacitus' four-word verdict on the expulsion decree, 'atrox et inritum', sums up the whole Roman policy. Compare Ann. 12.22 (Lollia Paulina ruined by Agrippina on charges of consulting Chaldaeans, magi and Clarian Apollo about the emperor's marriage) and 12.59 (Statilius Taurus charged with 'magicas superstitiones').", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Chaldaei/mathematici; Furius Scribonianus (client)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Consulting astrologers about the princeps' death treated as maiestas.", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-65", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Annales", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Roman and Etruscan", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 115–120 CE (event 47 CE)", "date_sort": 117, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi005.perseus-lat1", "ref": "11.15", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Ann. 11.15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Rettulit deinde ad senatum super collegio haruspicum, ne vetustissima Italiae disciplina per desidiam exolesceret [...] et quia externae superstitiones valescant.", "translation": "He then raised with the senate the matter of a college of haruspices, so that the most ancient discipline of Italy should not die out through neglect [...] and because foreign superstitions were gaining strength.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Claudius institutionalises Etruscan haruspicy, 'the most ancient discipline of Italy', preserved in Etruscan noble families, as a bulwark against 'foreign superstitions'. The same art that Cato and Columella keep off the farm when practised by freelancers is promoted when public and Italian.", "claimed_effect": "Restoration of right relations with the gods in crises.", "claimed_mechanism": "Extispicy and portent interpretation (Etrusca disciplina).", "practitioner": "Etruscan haruspices (aristocratic families)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Senatus consultum establishing a public college; the legitimacy boundary set by public status and antiquity.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-66", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Annales", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "British (Druids of Mona)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 115–120 CE (event 60 CE)", "date_sort": 117, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi005.perseus-lat1", "ref": "14.31", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Ann. 14.30", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Druidaeque circum, preces diras sublatis ad caelum manibus fundentes, novitate aspectus perculere militem ut quasi haerentibus membris immobile corpus vulneribus praeberent.", "translation": "And Druids all around, lifting their hands to heaven and pouring out dread curses, so struck the soldiers by the strangeness of the sight that, as if their limbs were paralysed, they offered their motionless bodies to wounds.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Roman assault on Anglesey: black-robed women with torches like Furies and cursing Druids briefly 'freeze' the legionaries, until shame drives them on. The groves are cut down 'because they held it right to drench altars with captives' blood and consult the gods by human entrails'. The curse's effect is described in psychological terms (novitas aspectus).", "claimed_effect": "Paralysis of the enemy; divination by human entrails.", "claimed_mechanism": "Ritual curses (preces dirae) and terrifying display.", "practitioner": "Druids; women with torches", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Military destruction of a native religious centre under Suetonius Paulinus.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-67", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Annales", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 115–120 CE (event 66 CE)", "date_sort": 117, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi005.perseus-lat1", "ref": "16.32", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Ann. 16.30–31", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "'nullos' inquit 'impios deos, nullas devotiones, nec aliud infelicibus precibus invocavi quam ut hunc optimum patrem tu, Caesar, vos, patres, servaretis incolumem.", "translation": "'No impious gods,' she said, 'no curses did I invoke, nor did I ask anything in my unhappy prayers except that you, Caesar, and you, senators, should keep this best of fathers safe.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Servilia, not yet twenty, is charged with selling her dowry jewels 'to raise money for magic rites' (magicis sacris) after consulting magi about her father Barea Soranus' fate. She clings to the altar and pleads that she only asked whether her family would survive. The case shows how private divination by a frightened daughter could be framed as treasonous magic.", "claimed_effect": "Knowledge of the father's fate.", "claimed_mechanism": "Consultation of magi about the outcome of a trial.", "practitioner": "Servilia (client); unnamed magi", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Neronian maiestas trial; father and daughter condemned.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-68", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Historiae", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 105–109 CE (event 69 CE)", "date_sort": 107, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi004.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.22.1", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Hist. 1.22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "urgentibus etiam mathematicis, dum novos motus et clarum Othoni annum observatione siderum adfirmant, genus hominum potentibus infidum, sperantibus fallax, quod in civitate nostra et vetabitur semper et retinebitur.", "translation": "The astrologers too were pressing him, declaring from observation of the stars that there would be new upheavals and a glorious year for Otho: a breed of men treacherous to the powerful, deceptive to the hopeful, which in our state will always be banned and always be kept.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Tacitus' most quoted sentence on astrology. Poppaea's household kept many astrologers ('the worst instrument of an imperial marriage'). Ptolemy had promised Otho he would outlive Nero, gained credit when this came true, and then pushed him to crime. Tacitus adds a psychological comment: 'the desire of the human mind to believe what is obscure'.", "claimed_effect": "Prediction of rule.", "claimed_mechanism": "Observation of the stars.", "practitioner": "Ptolemy (Seleucus) and other mathematici", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Repeated bans that never hold; astrologers as agents of usurpation.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-69", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Historiae", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Alexandrian Egyptian (Serapis cult) and Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 105–109 CE (event 70 CE)", "date_sort": 107, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi004.perseus-lat2", "ref": "4.86.1", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Hist. 4.81", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "postremo aestimari a medicis iubet an talis caecitas ac debilitas ope humana superabiles forent. [...] statim conversa ad usum manus, ac caeco reluxit dies. utrumque qui interfuere nunc quoque memorant, postquam nullum mendacio pretium.", "translation": "Finally he had doctors assess whether such blindness and disability could be overcome by human means. [...] At once the hand returned to use and daylight shone again for the blind man. Both cures are still told by those present, now that there is no reward for lying.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At Alexandria, at the god Serapis' prompting, a blind man begs Vespasian to anoint his eyes with spittle and a man with a crippled hand to be trodden on. Vespasian first laughs, then has doctors assess the cases; they judge the sight not destroyed and the joints dislocated. He performs the acts and both are cured. Tacitus pointedly notes the doctors' pre-screening and the political value. Suetonius (Vesp. 7.2–3) has a blind man and a lame leg.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of blindness and of a disabled limb.", "claimed_mechanism": "Royal or divine touch and spittle at the command of Serapis.", "practitioner": "Vespasian", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Legitimation of a new dynasty in Egypt; healing by a ruler as divine favour, not magic.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-70", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Germania", "author": "Tacitus", "culture": "Germanic", "language": "lat", "date": "98 CE", "date_sort": 98, "edition_urn": "phi1351.phi002.perseus-lat1", "ref": "10.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Tac. Germ. 10.1–2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "rune-writing-magic" ], "excerpt_original": "Auspicia sortesque ut qui maxime observant. sortium consuetudo simplex. virgam frugiferae arbori decisam in surculos amputant eosque notis quibusdam discretos super", "translation": "They pay as much attention as anyone to auspices and lots. Their way with lots is simple: they cut a branch from a fruit-bearing tree into slips, mark them with certain signs, and (scatter them at random over a white cloth).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Germanic sortilegium. Slips cut from a fruit tree and marked with notae are scattered on a white cloth (10.2); a priest (for public questions) or the father of the family (for private ones) prays, looks at the sky, picks up three, and interprets them by their marks. Confirmation follows by birds and by the neighing of sacred white horses. Whether the notae are runes is disputed (runes are attested only from c. 150 CE). Germ. 8 adds the seeresses Veleda and Aurinia.", "claimed_effect": "Divine yes or no to a question.", "claimed_mechanism": "Randomly cast marked lots read under prayer.", "practitioner": "Sacerdos civitatis or pater familias", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Public and domestic divination, entirely legitimate within Germanic society.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-71", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Divus Augustus", "author": "Suetonius", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 121 CE (event 12 BCE)", "date_sort": 121, "edition_urn": "phi1348.abo012.perseus-lat2", "ref": "31.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Suet. Aug. 31.1", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "quidquid fatidicorum librorum Graeci Latinique generis nullis uel parum idoneis auctoribus uulgo ferebatur, supra duo milia contracta undique cremauit ac solos retinuit Sibyllinos", "translation": "He collected from everywhere whatever books of prophecy, Greek and Latin, were in circulation under no or inadequate authors, more than two thousand of them, and burned them, keeping only the Sibylline Books", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "On becoming pontifex maximus (12 BCE) Augustus burns over 2,000 private prophetic books and keeps only a vetted selection of the Sibyllines, sealed in gilded cases under Palatine Apollo. Prophecy is not abolished but monopolised by the state.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Augustus as pontifex maximus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "State control of prophetic literature, continuing Livy 25.1 and 39.16 and anticipating Ammianus 29.1.41.", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-72", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Caligula", "author": "Suetonius", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 121 CE (event c. 37–41 CE)", "date_sort": 121, "edition_urn": "phi1348.abo014.perseus-lat2", "ref": "50.2.2", "conventional_ref": "Suet. Calig. 50.2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "creditur potionatus a Caesonia uxore amatorio quidem medicamento, sed quod in furorem uerterit.", "translation": "It is believed that his wife Caesonia gave him a potion, a love-drug in fact, but one that turned to madness.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Caligula's mental instability is explained by a love potion from Caesonia (compare 25.3, his passion for her) that went wrong. Suetonius also gives natural causes: childhood epilepsy, sudden faintness, insomnia, his own thought of 'purging his brain'. This is the type case for Quintilian's school question whether an amatorium is a venenum (entry 77).", "claimed_effect": "Love intended; madness produced.", "claimed_mechanism": "Amatorium (love potion) with psychoactive effect.", "practitioner": "Caesonia (alleged)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Court rumour; women's love-drugs as the explanation of male insanity.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-73", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Nero", "author": "Suetonius", "culture": "Roman (with magi)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 121 CE (event 59 CE)", "date_sort": 121, "edition_urn": "phi1348.abo016.perseus-lat2", "ref": "34.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Suet. Nero 34.4", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "quin et facto per Magos sacro euocare Manes et exorare temptauit.", "translation": "He even tried, through a rite performed by the magi, to call up her shade and win her pardon.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Haunted by his murdered mother's ghost and the Furies' whips and torches, Nero has magi perform a rite to evoke and appease Agrippina's Manes. He dares not attend the Eleusinian Mysteries, from which the impious are banned. This independently confirms Pliny's account of Nero's magical experiments (entry 13).", "claimed_effect": "Relief from the mother's avenging ghost.", "claimed_mechanism": "Evocation and propitiation of the dead.", "practitioner": "Magi employed by Nero", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Imperial use of magic forbidden to subjects.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-74", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Nero", "author": "Suetonius", "culture": "Roman (popular amulet cult)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 121 CE", "date_sort": 121, "edition_urn": "phi1348.abo016.perseus-lat2", "ref": "56.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Suet. Nero 56", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "imagunculam puellarem, cum quasi remedium insidiarum a plebeio quodam et ignoto muneri accepisset, detecta confestim coniuratione pro summo numine trinisque in die sacrificiis colere perseuerauit", "translation": "he had been given a little image of a girl by an unknown commoner as a protection against plots; when a conspiracy was discovered immediately afterwards, he went on worshipping it as the highest deity with three sacrifices a day", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Nero, who despised every religion and even urinated on his Syrian Goddess, clings to one superstition: a girl figurine received as an anti-plot amulet. Its apparent success (a conspiracy uncovered at once) makes it his supreme god, and he claims it gives him foreknowledge. A neat illustration of confirmation by a single coincidence.", "claimed_effect": "Protection from conspiracies; foreknowledge.", "claimed_mechanism": "A protective figurine (remedium insidiarum).", "practitioner": "Nero (user); an unknown plebeian (giver)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-75", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Domitianus", "author": "Suetonius", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 121 CE (event 96 CE)", "date_sort": 121, "edition_urn": "phi1348.abo022.perseus-lat2", "ref": "15.3.2", "conventional_ref": "Suet. Dom. 15.3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "interfici quidem sine mora, sed ad coarguendam temeritatem artis sepeliri quoque accuratissime imperauit. quod cum fieret, euenit ut repentina tempestate deiecto funere semiustum cadauer discerperent canes", "translation": "He ordered him executed without delay, but also buried with the greatest care, to prove the rashness of his art. While this was being done, a sudden storm overturned the pyre, and dogs tore the half-burned corpse apart", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Domitian's 'experiment' against the astrologer Ascletarion, who had predicted that he himself would soon be torn by dogs. The prediction comes true despite the emperor's precautions, and Domitian hears of it from a mime at dinner shortly before his own murder. Chaldaeans had long since told him the year, day, hour and manner of his death (14.1). This is the believer's counterpart to Pliny's 'experiments'.", "claimed_effect": "Exact prediction of the manner of one's own death.", "claimed_mechanism": "The astrologer's art (ex arte).", "practitioner": "Ascletarion, mathematicus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Execution for divining about the emperor.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-76", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Institutio Oratoria", "author": "Quintilian", "culture": "Roman", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 95 CE", "date_sort": 95, "edition_urn": "phi1002.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "7.3.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Quint. Inst. 7.3.7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "an carmina magorum veneficium. res enim manifesta est, sciturque [...] non idem carmina ac mortiferam potionem; quaeritur tamen, an eodem nomine appellanda sint.", "translation": "(the question) whether the spells of magi are veneficium. For the facts are clear, and it is known [...] that spells are not the same thing as a deadly drink; yet the question is whether they should be called by the same name.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A textbook example of a dispute about definition (finitio): does the legal term veneficium cover magicians' carmina as well as poison? Quintilian shows that the extension of poisoning law to magic was a live interpretive problem in the courts of the late 1st century CE.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Interpretation of the lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-77", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Institutio Oratoria", "author": "Quintilian", "culture": "Roman (rhetorical school case)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 95 CE", "date_sort": 95, "edition_urn": "phi1002.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "7.8.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Quint. Inst. 7.8.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "sit enim lex: venefica capite puniatur. saepe se verberanti marito uxor amatorium dedit; eundem repudiavit; per propinquos rogata ut rediret non est reversa; suspendit se maritus. mulier veneficii rea est.", "translation": "Suppose the law: 'a venefica shall be put to death'. A wife gave a love potion to a husband who often beat her; then she divorced him; asked by relatives to return, she refused; the husband hanged himself. The woman is accused of veneficium.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A declamation theme. The strongest prosecution line is to define the amatorium as a venenum; failing that, to argue by analogy that it should be punished as if it were poison. Elsewhere (7.3.10, 7.3.30) Quintilian makes the same 'amatorium versus venenum' distinction. Love magic sits on the edge of capital law.", "claimed_effect": "Binding the husband's love (with fatal effect after divorce).", "claimed_mechanism": "Love potion (amatorium).", "practitioner": "A wife", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "School exercise reflecting real legal uncertainty; women's love-drugs linked to domestic violence.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-78", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Epistulae Morales", "author": "Seneca the Younger", "culture": "Roman (citing the Stoic Hecaton)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 63–64 CE", "date_sort": 63, "edition_urn": "phi1017.phi015.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.9.6.1", "conventional_ref": "Sen. Ep. 9.6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "Hecaton ait: Ego tibi monstrabo amatorium sine medicamenta, sine herba, sine ullius veneficae carmine: si vis amari, ama.", "translation": "Hecaton says: 'I will show you a love charm without drugs, without herbs, without any witch's spell: if you want to be loved, love.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A Stoic aphorism that lists the standard ingredients of love magic (drugs, herbs, the venefica's incantation) in order to replace them with an ethical 'charm': reciprocity.", "claimed_effect": "Being loved.", "claimed_mechanism": "Reciprocal affection.", "practitioner": "Veneficae (contrasted)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-79", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Apologia", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Roman North Africa (Platonist defending himself)", "language": "lat", "date": "158/159 CE", "date_sort": 158, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "25.3", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Apol. 25.9–11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "Nam si, quod ego apud plurimos lego, Persarum lingua magus est qui nostra sacerdos, quod tandem est crimen, sacerdotem esse et rite nosse atque scire atque callere leges cerimoniarum, fas sacrorum, ius religionum", "translation": "For if, as I read in very many authors, a magus in the Persian language is what a priest is in ours, what crime is it, pray, to be a priest and to know, understand and be skilled in the rules of ceremonies, the right of rites, the law of religion", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Apuleius' first, 'learned' definition, offered at his trial before the proconsul Claudius Maximus at Sabratha. Magus means 'priest' in Persian, and magia (citing Plato's Alcibiades I, quoted in Greek) is 'the worship of the gods' taught to Persian princes. On this definition magic is no crime but royal religion.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Magia = θεῶν θεραπεία (care of the gods).", "practitioner": "Persian magi; Apuleius as philosopher", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Trial for magic under the lex Cornelia, accused by his wife's relatives of winning the rich widow Pudentilla by spells.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-80", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Apologia", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "158/159 CE", "date_sort": 158, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "26.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Apol. 26.6–9", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "sin uero more uulgari eum isti proprie magum existimant, qui communione loquendi cum deis immortalibus ad omnia quae uelit incredibilia quadam ui cantaminum polleat, oppido miror, cur accusare non timuerint quem posse tantum fatentur.", "translation": "But if, in the vulgar way, they think a magus properly is one who, through converse with the immortal gods, has power by some force of incantations to do every incredible thing he wishes, I am quite amazed that they were not afraid to accuse a man they admit can do so much.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The second, 'popular' definition: a magus talks with the gods and can do anything by incantation. Apuleius turns it into an argument: you can guard against an assassin, a poisoner or a thief, but no one could guard against such a man, so the accusers' boldness proves they do not believe their own charge. The library flags the node as athetized, probably an artefact.", "claimed_effect": "Unlimited power over the incredible.", "claimed_mechanism": "Communio loquendi with the gods; vis cantaminum.", "practitioner": "Magus (popular sense)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Defence speech; sets out the two Roman concepts of magic side by side.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-81", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Apologia", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "158/159 CE", "date_sort": 158, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "27.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Apol. 27.1–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "eos uero uulgo magos nominent, quasi facere etiam sciant quae sciant fieri, ut olim fuere Epimenides et Orpheus et Pythagoras et Ostanes", "translation": "while those (philosophers) who inquire closely into providence and worship the gods more devoutly, the crowd calls magi, as if they also knew how to make happen what they know happens: such as once were Epimenides, Orpheus, Pythagoras and Ostanes", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The 'common error of the ignorant' about philosophers. Natural philosophers (Anaxagoras, Democritus, Epicurus) are called atheists, and theologically minded ones (Epimenides, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Ostanes; Empedocles' Purifications, Socrates' daimonion, Plato's Good) are called magi. Apuleius is glad to be counted among them. The charge of magic is the price of intellectual eminence.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Philosophers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Popular suspicion of philosophers and their unusual practices.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-82", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Apologia", "author": "Apuleius (citing Varro and Nigidius Figulus)", "culture": "Roman and Greek (Tralles)", "language": "lat", "date": "158/159 CE (Varro 1st c. BCE)", "date_sort": 158, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "42.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Apol. 42.3–8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Trallibus de euentu Mithridatici belli magica percontatione consultantibus puerum in aqua simulacrum Mercuri contemplantem quae futura erant CLX uersibus cecinisse.", "translation": "When the people of Tralles were consulting by magical inquiry about the outcome of the Mithridatic war, a boy gazing at an image of Mercury in water sang what was to come in 160 verses.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The accusers claim Apuleius enchanted a boy in secret, by a small altar and lamp, so that he fell down and later prophesied. Apuleius concedes the belief is supported by learned men. Varro records the Tralles boy scrying in water. Nigidius Figulus, after Fabius lost 500 denarii, had 'boys inspired by a charm' reveal where part of the purse was buried and where the rest had gone, including one coin Cato had received as alms for Apollo.", "claimed_effect": "Prophecy in verse; finding lost money.", "claimed_mechanism": "Incantation of a pure boy-medium who gazes into water (lecanomancy).", "practitioner": "Magi at Tralles; Nigidius Figulus (Roman senator and Pythagorean)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Boy-medium divination practised by a Roman senator of the late Republic.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-83", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Apologia", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Roman North Africa (Platonist)", "language": "lat", "date": "158/159 CE", "date_sort": 158, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "43.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Apol. 43.1–10", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "posse animum humanum, praesertim puerilem et simplicem, seu carminum auocamento siue odorum delenimento soporari et ad obliuionem praesentium externari [...] ceterum Thallus, quem nominastis, medico potius quam mago indiget", "translation": "that the human soul, especially a simple child's, can be lulled to sleep by the distraction of chants or the soothing of scents and carried out of itself into forgetfulness of the present [...] But Thallus, whom you named, needs a doctor rather than a magus", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Apuleius gives a Platonic-psychological theory of the trance (daemons mediate between gods and men; a child's soul, sedated by chant or smell, returns to its immortal nature and foresees). Such a boy must be healthy, handsome and clever, since 'not from every wood should a Mercury be carved'. The alleged victim, the slave Thallus, is an epileptic who falls three or four times a day without any charm. The accusers have mistaken disease for enchantment; in 50–51 Apuleius gives a humoral explanation of epilepsy from Plato's Timaeus.", "claimed_effect": "Prophecy; (accusers) a seizure caused by spell.", "claimed_mechanism": "Chant or scent induces sleep; the soul is freed for divination (daemonic mediation).", "practitioner": "Boy-mediums; Apuleius (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "An epileptic slave's fit used as evidence of magic in a capital trial.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-84", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Apologia", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "158/159 CE", "date_sort": 158, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "47.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Apol. 47.1–5", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "magia ista, quantum ego audio, res est legibus delegata, iam inde antiquitus XII tabulis propter incredundas frugum inlecebras interdicta, igitur et occulta non minus quam tetra et horribilis, plerumque noctibus uigilata et tenebris abstrusa et arbitris solitaria et carminibus murmurata", "translation": "This magic, as I hear, is a matter handed over to the laws, forbidden already of old by the Twelve Tables because of incredible enticements of crops; it is therefore secret, no less than foul and horrible, usually kept up at night, hidden in darkness, alone without witnesses and muttered in incantations", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Apuleius' working definition of criminal magic: legally banned since the Twelve Tables (crop-luring), and hence secret, nocturnal, solitary and muttered. The accusers claim fifteen slaves witnessed his rite, so it cannot have been magic: 'fifteen free men make a people, fifteen slaves a household, fifteen chained men a prison'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Secrecy as the legal mark of magic; the Twelve Tables still cited in the 2nd century CE.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-85", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Apologia", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Roman North Africa", "language": "lat", "date": "158/159 CE", "date_sort": 158, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "63.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Apol. 61–64", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "em uobis, quem scelestus ille sceletum nominabat. auditisne reclamationem omnium qui adsunt? [...] magicumne istud an sollemne et commune simulacrum est?", "translation": "There you are: this is the one that villain called a skeleton. Do you hear the uproar from everyone present? [...] Is this a magic object, or an ordinary customary image?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The accusers say Apuleius had a skeleton-shaped figure carved from rare wood, which he worshipped as 'basileus'. He produces it in court: a charming boxwood Hermes (Mercuriolus) made by the craftsman Saturninus, which he carries among his books and honours with incense and wine on feast-days. The 'basileus' is Plato's King of All (64). A demonstration that the line between cult statuette and magical figurine was in the eye of the accuser. The library flags 63–64 as athetized, probably an artefact.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Accusers: a skeletal daemon figure used for maleficia.", "practitioner": "Apuleius; the craftsman Saturninus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Private devotion to a portable god versus suspected necromantic figurine.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-86", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Apologia", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Greco-Roman canon of famous magi", "language": "lat", "date": "158/159 CE", "date_sort": 158, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "90.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Apol. 90.6", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ego ille sim Carmendas uel Damigeron uel † his Moses uel Iohannes uel Apollobex uel ipse Dardanus uel quicumque alius post Zoroastren et Hostanen inter magos celebratus est.", "translation": "then let me be that Carmendas or Damigeron or Moses or Iohannes (Jannes?) or Apollobex or Dardanus himself, or whoever else has been famous among the magi after Zoroaster and Ostanes.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "If the accusers can show any motive for him to court Pudentilla, he will accept being any famous magus. The list is a Roman-period canon of magical authors (Damigeron is known from a lapidary; Apollobex the Copt and Dardanus also appear in Pliny NH 30.9). Moses and 'Iohannes' (corrupt; probably Jannes) are ranked as magi, as in Pliny. The text is corrupt (†). He then argues there was no gain: the dowry was small and the estate stayed with her sons.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Legendary magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Motive as the legal key; the accusation of erotic magic for money.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-87", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Greek Thessaly as imagined by a Roman African", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 160–180 CE (disputed)", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi002.perseus-lat1", "ref": "1.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Met. 1.8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "necromancy", "love", "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "Saga inquit Et divina, potens caelum deponere, terram suspendere, fontes durare, montes diluere, manes sublimare, deos infimare, sidera extinguere, Tartarum ipsum illuminare.", "translation": "'A witch,' he said, 'and a seer, able to bring down the sky, hang the earth in the air, harden springs, dissolve mountains, raise the shades, lower the gods, put out the stars, and light up Tartarus itself.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Socrates describes the innkeeper Meroe, whose minor tricks include making people as far as India fall madly in love with her. She turns a faithless lover into a beaver, a rival innkeeper into a frog, and a lawyer into a ram, and locks a whole town in their houses. Later (1.12–13) she and her sister Panthia cut out Socrates' heart and plug the wound with a sponge. These are the literary topoi of the Thessalian saga at their most extreme.", "claimed_effect": "Cosmic inversion, erotic compulsion, transformation, killing.", "claimed_mechanism": "Incantation (carmen) and drugs; reversing cosmic order.", "practitioner": "Meroe, a Thessalian innkeeper-saga", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Thessaly as the homeland of witches ('artis magicae nativa contamina', 2.1).", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-88", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Egyptian priest-necromancer in Thessaly", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 160–180 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi002.perseus-lat1", "ref": "2.28.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Met. 2.28–30", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Zatchlas adest Aegyptius, propheta primarius, qui mecum iamdudum grandi praemio pepigit reducere paulisper ab inferis spiritum corpusque istud postliminio mortis animare", "translation": "Here is Zatchlas the Egyptian, a prophet of the first rank, who has long since agreed with me for a large fee to bring the spirit back from the underworld for a short time and revive this body by a return from death", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In Thelyphron's tale an uncle hires a linen-clad, palm-sandalled, shaven Egyptian priest to revive his poisoned nephew so that he can name his murderer. The corpse rises (2.29), protests at being recalled from Lethe, accuses his wife of poison and adultery, and proves his truthfulness by revealing that the witches had cut off the guard Thelyphron's nose and ears. Male, priestly, paid, public Egyptian necromancy is contrasted with the female witches who mutilate corpses.", "claimed_effect": "Temporary reanimation of a corpse for testimony.", "claimed_mechanism": "Prayer by the gods of Egypt (Coptic shrines, Nile, Memphis, sistra) and threats of the Furies.", "practitioner": "Zatchlas, Egyptian propheta", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Necromancy used as forensic evidence in a public setting, a fictional inversion of the legal ban.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-89", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Greek Thessaly (literary)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 160–180 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi002.perseus-lat1", "ref": "3.17.2", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Met. 3.17–18", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "priusque apparatu solito instruit feralem officinam, omne genus aromatis, et ignorabiliter laminis litteratis et infelicium avium durantibus damnis, defletorum sepultorum etiam cadaverum expositis multis admodum membris", "translation": "and first she fits out her deadly workshop with its usual apparatus: every kind of spice, metal plates inscribed with illegible letters, the lasting remains of ill-omened birds, and many limbs of mourned and buried corpses", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pamphile's rooftop laboratory: inscribed lamellae, owl remains, noses and fingers of corpses, nails from crucified men, blood of murdered men, skulls from wild beasts' jaws. She burns knotted hairs with libations of water, milk, honey and mead to draw her beloved Boeotian youth. Because Fotis brought her goat-hairs instead, three inflated goatskins come and batter at the door and Lucius 'kills' them (3.18). A literary catalogue that matches the papyri and lead lamellae of real erotic magic.", "claimed_effect": "The beloved is drawn to her door.", "claimed_mechanism": "Sympathy through the victim's hair (ousia), compelled daemons, corpse materials, inscribed lamellae.", "practitioner": "Pamphile (maga primi nominis) and her slave Fotis", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Love-binding with stolen hair as a domestic household crime.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-90", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Greek Thessaly (literary)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 160–180 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi002.perseus-lat1", "ref": "3.21.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Met. 3.21 (cf. 3.24–25)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "egesta unguedine diuque palmulis sui affricta ab imis unguibus sese totam adusque summos capillos perlinit, multumque cum lucerna secreto collocuta membra tremulo succussu quatit", "translation": "taking out ointment and rubbing it long in her palms, she smeared herself all over from the tips of her toenails to the top of her hair, and after a long secret conversation with her lamp she shook her limbs with a trembling shudder", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pamphile strips, anoints herself from a box and becomes an owl to fly to her lover. Lucius tries the same, Fotis gives him the wrong box, and he becomes an ass (3.24–25); the antidote is roses. Transformation by ointment, which much later becomes the witches' 'flying ointment', is the plot engine of the novel.", "claimed_effect": "Transformation into an owl (or, by mistake, an ass).", "claimed_mechanism": "Magical ointment plus incantation to the lamp.", "practitioner": "Pamphile; Lucius (imitator)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-91", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Apuleius", "culture": "Isiac cult (Egyptian, in Greece)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 160–180 CE", "date_sort": 170, "edition_urn": "phi1212.phi002.perseus-lat1", "ref": "11.15.1", "conventional_ref": "Apul. Met. 11.15", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "In tutelam iam receptus es Fortunae, sed videntis, quae suae lucis splendore ceteros etiam deos illuminat.", "translation": "You have now been received into the protection of Fortune, but a Fortune who sees, who lights up even the other gods with the splendour of her light.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The priest Mithras' speech after Isis restores Lucius' human form. His sufferings were the work of 'blind Fortune' and of curiositas about magic. Salvation comes not from counter-magic but from submission to a goddess and initiation. The novel's structure dramatises the line between illicit magia and legitimate religio.", "claimed_effect": "Release from magical transformation; protection.", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine grace of Isis; initiation.", "practitioner": "Isiac priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Mystery religion presented as the true alternative to magic.", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-92", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Noctes Atticae", "author": "Aulus Gellius", "culture": "Roman (on pseudo-Democritean lore)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 170–180 CE", "date_sort": 175, "edition_urn": "phi1254.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "10.12.6.1", "conventional_ref": "Gell. NA 10.12.1–8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "His portentis atque praestigiis a Plinio Secundo scriptis non dignum esse cognomen Democriti puto", "translation": "I think these marvels and conjuring tricks written down by Pliny are unworthy of the name of Democritus", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Gellius criticises Pliny for crediting Democritus with a book On the Chameleon. In it a hawk flying over a chameleon falls to the ground, and burning its head and neck on oak wood brings rain and thunder (10.12.3); a preparation of the left foot in a wooden box makes the carrier invisible (10.12.5). He concludes that 'clever rogues' fathered such inventions on Democritus (10.12.8), as Columella (entry 5) says of Bolus.", "claimed_effect": "Rain-making, invisibility, bird-killing.", "claimed_mechanism": "Occult properties of animal parts (sympathy and antipathy).", "practitioner": "Pseudo-Democritus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Antiquarian source criticism of magical literature.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-93", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Noctes Atticae", "author": "Aulus Gellius", "culture": "Greek (Archytas of Tarentum), via Favorinus", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 170–180 CE (Archytas 4th c. BCE)", "date_sort": 175, "edition_urn": "phi1254.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "10.12.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Gell. NA 10.12.9–10", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "simulacrum columbae e ligno ab Archyta ratione quadam disciplinaque mechanica factum volasse; ita erat scilicet libramentis suspensum et aura spiritus inclusa atque occulta concitum.", "translation": "that a model of a dove made of wood by Archytas through a certain science of mechanics actually flew; it was, evidently, balanced by counterweights and set in motion by air enclosed and hidden within it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Set directly after the pseudo-Democritean marvels as their opposite: a wonder that is 'no less admirable but not equally vain', because it is explained by mechanics (balances and compressed air). Favorinus adds that once it landed it could not rise again. Gellius draws the boundary between magical portent and engineering marvel.", "claimed_effect": "A wooden bird flies.", "claimed_mechanism": "Counterweights and enclosed compressed air.", "practitioner": "Archytas, Pythagorean mechanician", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-94", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Noctes Atticae", "author": "Aulus Gellius (reporting Favorinus)", "culture": "Roman (Greek lecture in Rome)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 170–180 CE", "date_sort": 175, "edition_urn": "phi1254.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "14.1.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Gell. NA 14.1.1–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "sed id praestigiarum atque offuciarum genus commentos esse homines aeruscatores et cibum quaestumque ex mendaciis captantes.", "translation": "but that this kind of conjuring and trickery was devised by beggarly hustlers who seek their food and profit from lies.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Favorinus' lecture against the 'Chaldaeans or genethliaci'. Their discipline is not as old as claimed, and its founders are not who they say. It was built on a true observation (the tides follow the moon) inflated into total astral determinism. Gellius (1.9.6) also notes that the vulgus misuses 'mathematici' for those who should be called by the ethnic name Chaldaei.", "claimed_effect": "Prediction of individual fates.", "claimed_mechanism": "Stellar motions govern all human affairs (extrapolated from the lunar tides).", "practitioner": "Chaldaei/genethliaci", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Philosophical public lecture in Rome.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-95", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Noctes Atticae", "author": "Aulus Gellius (citing Theophrastus and Democritus)", "culture": "Greek medical-musical lore", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 170–180 CE", "date_sort": 175, "edition_urn": "phi1254.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "4.13.1.1", "conventional_ref": "Gell. NA 4.13.1–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ischia cum maxime doleant, tum, si modulis lenibus tibicen incinat, minui dolores", "translation": "when sciatica is at its most painful, if a piper plays soft melodies, the pains are lessened", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Music as therapy: Theophrastus (On Enthusiasm) on the pipe easing sciatica, and Democritus (On Plagues) on skilful pipe-playing healing viper bites and many illnesses. Gellius' explanation is the 'affinity of bodies and minds'. Pliny calls this an incantation (Theophrastus in NH 28.21); Gellius treats it as natural.", "claimed_effect": "Relief of sciatica and snakebite.", "claimed_mechanism": "Melody acting on the soul and through it on the body.", "practitioner": "Pipers (tibicines)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-96", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Res Gestae", "author": "Ammianus Marcellinus", "culture": "Late Roman (Antioch; Greek theurgic divination)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 390 CE (event 371–372 CE)", "date_sort": 390, "edition_urn": "stoa0023.stoa001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "29.1.31.1", "conventional_ref": "Amm. Marc. 29.1.29–32", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "supersistit cortinulae sacerdos pensilem anulum librans, aptum ex Carphathio filo perquam levi, mysticis disciplinis initiatum: qui per intervalla distincta, retinentibus singulis litteris, incidens saltuatim, heroos efficit versus", "translation": "the priest stands over the little tripod, swinging a ring hung on a very light thread of Carpathian flax and consecrated by mystic rites; jumping across the intervals between the letters, each holding one, it forms hexameter verses", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The defendants Hilarius and Patricius describe their apparatus at the treason trial. A small 'Delphic' tripod of laurel wood is consecrated with secret charms; a metal dish carries the 24 letters at its rim; a linen-clad priest with vervain swings a ring on a thread. Asked 'who will succeed the present emperor?', the ring spells Θ-Ε-Ο-Δ; someone cries 'Theodorus', and the inquiry stops (29.1.32). Theodorus and many others are executed, and the eventual successor was in fact Theodosius.", "claimed_effect": "Oracular hexameters naming the next emperor.", "claimed_mechanism": "A consecrated pendulum ring moved by the invoked deity over a letter dish.", "practitioner": "Hilarius, Patricius and an unnamed linen-clad priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Maiestas trials under Valens at Antioch; divining the emperor's successor is capital.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-97", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Res Gestae", "author": "Ammianus Marcellinus", "culture": "Late Roman (province of Asia)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 390 CE (event c. 372–378 CE)", "date_sort": 390, "edition_urn": "stoa0023.stoa001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "29.2.26.1", "conventional_ref": "Amm. Marc. 29.2.26", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Anum quandam simplicem intervallatis febribus mederi leni carmine consuetam, occidit ut noxiam, postquam filiam suam ipso conscio curavit adscita.", "translation": "He put to death as a criminal a simple old woman who was accustomed to cure intermittent fevers with a gentle charm, after she had been called in, with his own knowledge, and had cured his own daughter.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Among the atrocities of Festus, governor of Asia, who imitated Maximinus: a village healer whose 'gentle charm' worked on his own daughter's fever is executed as noxia. Ammianus' sympathy is clear. The case marks the late-Roman collapse of the old distinction between harmless folk healing and harmful magic.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of intermittent (malarial) fevers.", "claimed_mechanism": "Lene carmen (gentle incantation).", "practitioner": "An anus simplex (village wise-woman)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Provincial governor's cognitio under Valens; capital punishment for healing charms.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-98", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Res Gestae", "author": "Ammianus Marcellinus", "culture": "Late Roman (province of Asia)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 390 CE (event c. 372–378 CE)", "date_sort": 390, "edition_urn": "stoa0023.stoa001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "29.2.28.1", "conventional_ref": "Amm. Marc. 29.2.28", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Visus adulescens in balneis admovere marmori manus utriusque digitos alternatim et pectori, septemque vocales litteras numerasse, ad stomachi remedium prodesse id arbitratus: in iudicium tractus, percussus est gladio post tormenta.", "translation": "A young man was seen in the baths touching the marble and his chest alternately with the fingers of both hands and counting off the seven vowels, believing this would help his stomach; he was dragged to court and, after torture, beheaded.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A tiny private ritual of vowel magic (the seven Greek vowels, linked to the seven planets and well attested in Greek magical papyri) used as a stomach remedy is enough for torture and execution. The previous case (29.2.27) is a man killed for owning a horoscope of his dead brother named Valens. Ammianus presents these as proof of tyrannical paranoia.", "claimed_effect": "Relief of stomach complaints.", "claimed_mechanism": "Recitation of the seven vowels with touching of stone and chest.", "practitioner": "An adulescens at the baths", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Informers in public baths; capital punishment.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-99", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Res Gestae", "author": "Ammianus Marcellinus", "culture": "Late Roman (Antioch and the eastern provinces)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 390 CE (event 371–372 CE)", "date_sort": 390, "edition_urn": "stoa0023.stoa001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "29.1.41.1", "conventional_ref": "Amm. Marc. 29.1.41 (cf. 29.2.4)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Deinde congesti innumeri codices, et acervi voluminum multi, sub conspectu iudicum concremati sunt, ex domibus eruti variis ut illiciti, ad leniendam caesorum invidiam, cum essent plerique liberalium disciplinarum indices variarum et iuris.", "translation": "Then countless codices and many heaps of scrolls, dragged from various houses as forbidden, were piled up and burned before the judges, to soften the odium of the executions, although most of them were treatises on the various liberal arts and on law.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Mass book-burning after the Antioch trials. Ammianus stresses that most of the 'illicit' books were ordinary learning. In 29.2.4 property-owners across the East burn their entire libraries for fear, and everyone 'crept as in Cimmerian darkness'. It continues the Roman tradition of burning religious books (Livy 40.29; Suetonius Aug. 31) on a vastly larger scale.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Imperial judges under Valens", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Treason-magic trials; the 'magic book' as pretext for cultural destruction.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-100", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Res Gestae", "author": "Ammianus Marcellinus", "culture": "Late Roman (Scythopolis trials; Abydos oracle of Bes)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 390 CE (event 359 CE)", "date_sort": 390, "edition_urn": "stoa0023.stoa001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "19.12.14.1", "conventional_ref": "Amm. Marc. 19.12.14", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Nam siqui remedia quartanae vel doloris alterius collo gestaret, sive per monumentum transisse vesperi, malivolorum argueretur indiciis, ut veneficus, sepulchrorumque horrores, et errantium ibidem animarum ludibria colligens vana, pronuntiatus reus capitis interibat.", "translation": "For if anyone wore round his neck a remedy against quartan fever or some other pain, or was accused by the ill-disposed of having passed by a tomb in the evening, he was condemned to death as a poisoner, a collector of the horrors of graves and of the empty mockeries of the souls wandering there.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Scythopolis trials of 359 CE, set off by written questions left at the oracle of the god Bes at Abydos in Egypt (19.12.3). Under Constantius, wearing a fever amulet or walking past a tomb at dusk became a capital offence as 'veneficus' and necromancer. The amulets Pliny listed as despised but legal (entry 34) are now treason.", "claimed_effect": "(Users) relief from fever and pain.", "claimed_mechanism": "(Accusers) amulets and graveyard materials used for necromancy.", "practitioner": "Ordinary amulet wearers, accused by informers", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Imperial treason investigations by Paulus 'Catena' and Modestus; executions at Scythopolis.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-101", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Res Gestae", "author": "Ammianus Marcellinus", "culture": "Late Roman (court of Constantius II)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 390 CE (event 356 CE)", "date_sort": 390, "edition_urn": "stoa0023.stoa001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "16.8.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Amm. Marc. 16.8.2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "aut anile incantamentum ad leniendum adhibuisset dolorem, quod medicinae quoque admittit auctoritas, reus unde non poterat opinari delatus, raptusque in iudicium, poenaliter interibat.", "translation": "or had used an old wives' charm to ease pain, something that medical authority also allows, he was denounced from a quarter he could not have guessed, dragged into court and put to death.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Under Constantius, consulting an expert about a squeaking shrew or a weasel crossing one's path, or using an old woman's pain charm, became capital. Ammianus' aside 'quod medicinae quoque admittit auctoritas' is important evidence that 4th-century medicine (compare Marcellus Empiricus) accepted charms as legitimate therapy.", "claimed_effect": "Pain relief; knowledge of omens.", "claimed_mechanism": "Folk incantation; omen interpretation.", "practitioner": "Ordinary people; anus (old woman) as source of charms", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Delation at court; the legal line has moved to include folk medicine.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-102", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Res Gestae", "author": "Ammianus Marcellinus", "culture": "Late Roman (Rome; Sardinian necromancer)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 390 CE (events c. 368–371 CE)", "date_sort": 390, "edition_urn": "stoa0023.stoa001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "28.1.7.1", "conventional_ref": "Amm. Marc. 28.1.7 (cf. 28.1.14)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "dein quod nanctus hominem Sardum, quem ipse postea per dolosas fallacias interemit, ut circumtulit rumor, eliciendi animulas noxias, et praesagia sollicitare larvarum, perquam gnarum", "translation": "then because he had found a Sardinian, whom he himself later got rid of by treacherous deceit, as rumour had it, a man very skilled in calling up harmful spirits and soliciting prophecies from ghosts", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The motives of Maximinus, who ran the senatorial magic and adultery trials in Rome. His father, an augury expert, had foretold his rise and violent death. He himself had kept a Sardinian necromancer, whom he later murdered so he would not betray him. The persecutor is a client of magic. At 28.1.14 the advocate Marinus is executed for having sought marriage with one Hispanilla 'by evil arts'.", "claimed_effect": "Prophecy.", "claimed_mechanism": "Evocation of noxious spirits and larvae.", "practitioner": "A Sardinian necromancer; Maximinus (client)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Trials of senators and senatorial women at Rome for veneficium, adultery and magic under Valentinian.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-103", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Res Gestae", "author": "Ammianus Marcellinus", "culture": "Persian (magi), seen by a Greek-born Roman officer", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 390 CE", "date_sort": 390, "edition_urn": "stoa0023.stoa001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "23.6.32.1", "conventional_ref": "Amm. Marc. 23.6.32–34", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Magiam opinionum insignium auctor amplissimus Plato, hagistiam esse verbo mystico docet, divinorum incorruptissimum cultum", "translation": "Plato, that most distinguished author of noble doctrines, teaches that magic, under a mystic name, is 'hagisteia', the purest worship of divine things", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In his Persian excursus Ammianus gives the 'positive' account of magia: Plato's 'hagisteia', enriched by Zoroaster from Chaldaean secrets and by Hystaspes from the Brahmans. It is a hereditary priestly caste devoted to the gods and to foreknowledge, and it keeps an eternal fire said to have fallen from heaven. The same author who records the persecutions treats Persian magi as sages.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of the future.", "claimed_mechanism": "Pure cult of the gods; Chaldaean and Brahman astral lore.", "practitioner": "Persian magi (hereditary)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Ethnography written in the context of Julian's Persian campaign.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-104", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Res Gestae", "author": "Ammianus Marcellinus", "culture": "Late Roman pagan (Neoplatonic)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 390 CE", "date_sort": 390, "edition_urn": "stoa0023.stoa001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "21.1.9.1", "conventional_ref": "Amm. Marc. 21.1.7–10", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Auguria et auspicia non volucrum arbitrio futura nescientium colliguntur (nec enim hoc vel insipiens quisquam dicet) sed volatus avium dirigit deus", "translation": "Auguries and auspices are not gathered from the will of birds, which know nothing of the future (not even a fool would say that), but god directs the flight of birds", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ammianus defends Julian against the charge that his interest in the future was 'evil arts'. He offers a Neoplatonic theory: the spirit of the elements shares the gift of prophecy; propitiated 'substantial powers' supply prophetic words under Themis; the deity steers birds, entrails and dreams. Divination is a learned, legitimate art, and only the malicious call it magic.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge.", "claimed_mechanism": "The elemental world-spirit and propitiated powers communicate the future; god guides the signs.", "practitioner": "The emperor Julian; augurs, haruspices", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Defence of pagan divination in a Christian empire that criminalised it.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-105", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Historia Augusta, Marcus Antoninus", "author": "Scriptores Historiae Augustae", "culture": "Late Roman (fictionalising biography of the 2nd c.)", "language": "lat", "date": "late 4th c. CE (claims c. 300; disputed); story set c. 160 CE", "date_sort": 395, "edition_urn": "phi2331.phi004.perseus-lat2", "ref": "19.1", "conventional_ref": "HA Marc. 19.1–2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "quod cum ad Chaldaeos Marcus rettulisset, illorum fuisse consilium, ut occiso gladiatore sanguine illius sese Faustina sublavaret atque ita cum viro concumberet.", "translation": "When Marcus referred this to the Chaldaeans, their advice was that the gladiator be killed, that Faustina wash herself in his blood, and then lie with her husband.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Popular gossip ('fabella') that Faustina, sick with love for a gladiator, was cured by Chaldaean advice: a bath in his blood. The love was dissolved, but Commodus was conceived and was 'a gladiator, not a prince'. Chaldaeans here are healers of love-sickness by blood ritual. The HA is notoriously unreliable.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of passion (with an unintended hereditary effect).", "claimed_mechanism": "Washing in the beloved's blood as an anti-erotic rite.", "practitioner": "Chaldaei consulted by Marcus Aurelius", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Palace scandal literature.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-106", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Historia Augusta, Didius Julianus", "author": "Scriptores Historiae Augustae", "culture": "Late Roman (on 193 CE)", "language": "lat", "date": "late 4th c. CE (event 193 CE)", "date_sort": 395, "edition_urn": "phi2331.phi009.perseus-lat2", "ref": "7.1", "conventional_ref": "HA Did. Iul. 7.9–11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "et ea quae ad speculum dicunt fieri, in quo pueri praeligatis oculis incantato vertice respicere dicuntur, Iulianus fecit, tuncque puer vidisse dicitur et adventum Severi et Iuliani decessionem.", "translation": "and Julianus performed the rite said to be done with a mirror, in which boys with bandaged eyes, after a charm has been sung over their heads, are said to look; and then the boy is said to have seen both the arrival of Severus and the departure of Julianus.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The beleaguered emperor uses magi to placate the people and soldiers, with non-Roman sacrifices and 'profane charms', and a catoptromantic rite with a blindfolded boy-medium enchanted on the crown of his head. The boy foresees Severus' arrival and Julianus' fall. This matches Apuleius' boy-medium (entry 82) and the papyrus 'lamp and mirror' rites. Note 'praeligatis' (bound over the eyes).", "claimed_effect": "Vision of future events.", "claimed_mechanism": "Mirror-gazing by a blindfolded, enchanted boy-medium.", "practitioner": "Didius Julianus with magi; a boy-medium", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "An emperor practising rites 'non convenientes Romanis sacris' — itself presented as amentia.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-107", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Historia Augusta, Antoninus Caracalla", "author": "Scriptores Historiae Augustae", "culture": "Late Roman (on c. 213 CE)", "language": "lat", "date": "late 4th c. CE (event c. 213 CE)", "date_sort": 395, "edition_urn": "phi2331.phi013.perseus-lat2", "ref": "5.1", "conventional_ref": "HA Carac. 5.7", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "damnatis et qui remedia quartanis tertianisque collo adnexas gestarent.", "translation": "those too were condemned who wore remedies against quartan and tertian fevers tied round their necks.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Among Caracalla's cruelties (alongside punishing those who urinated near his statues): condemning people who wore fever amulets. Whether historical or a late-4th-century projection, it closely parallels Ammianus 19.12.14 (entry 100) and shows fever amulets becoming a recognised category of crime.", "claimed_effect": "Protection from malarial fevers.", "claimed_mechanism": "Amulets tied to the neck.", "practitioner": "Ordinary amulet wearers", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Imperial cruelty narrative; possible anachronism reflecting Constantius' or Valens' practice.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-108", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "Historia Augusta, Carus, Carinus et Numerianus", "author": "Scriptores Historiae Augustae", "culture": "Gallic (female Druid) in Late Roman narrative", "language": "lat", "date": "late 4th c. CE (story set c. 270s CE)", "date_sort": 395, "edition_urn": "phi2331.phi030.perseus-lat2", "ref": "14.1", "conventional_ref": "HA Car. 14.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "post quod verbum Druias dixisse fertur, Diocletiane, iocari noli, nam eris imperator cum Aprum occideris.", "translation": "At that the Druidess is said to have answered: 'Diocletian, don't joke; you will be emperor when you have killed a boar (Aper).'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A tavern-keeping Druidess among the Tungri tells the young soldier Diocletian he will rule when he kills 'Aper' (boar). He later kills the praetorian prefect Aper and becomes emperor. Notable as late evidence (or invention) of female Druids, here reduced to village fortune-tellers. The author claims his grandfather heard it from Diocletian.", "claimed_effect": "Accurate prediction of accession.", "claimed_mechanism": "Ambiguous oracle (pun on Aper).", "practitioner": "A Druias (female Druid), innkeeper", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Druidism surviving as freelance divination in 3rd-century Gaul.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-classical-prose-109", "corpus": "latin-classical-prose", "work": "De Bello Gallico", "author": "Julius Caesar", "culture": "Gallic (Druids)", "language": "lat", "date": "c. 52–51 BCE", "date_sort": -51, "edition_urn": "phi0448.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "6.16.2.1", "conventional_ref": "Caes. BG 6.16.2–3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "qui sunt adfecti gravioribus morbis quique in proeliis periculisque versantur, aut pro victimis homines immolant aut se immolaturos vovent administrisque ad ea sacrificia druidibus utuntur", "translation": "those afflicted with more serious diseases, and those engaged in battles and dangers, either sacrifice human beings as victims or vow to sacrifice themselves, and use the Druids as ministers of these sacrifices", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Gallic logic of substitution: 'unless a man's life is given for a man's life, the gods cannot be appeased'. Human sacrifice is used for healing and in war, with Druids as officiants, along with wicker colossi filled with living men. This is the background to the Roman equation of Druidism with magic in Pliny (entries 12, 32) and Suetonius (Claud. 25.5).", "claimed_effect": "Recovery from serious illness; survival in battle.", "claimed_mechanism": "Life-for-life substitution offered to the gods.", "practitioner": "Druids (as ministers), Gallic sufferers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Gallic public religion; Roman conquest ethnography.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-1", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Amphitruo", "author": "Plautus", "culture": "Roman (Republican comedy, Greek model)", "language": "", "date": "c. 190 BCE", "date_sort": -190, "edition_urn": "phi0119.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "4.3.1043", "conventional_ref": "Plaut. Amph. 1043", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ego pol illum ulciscar hodie Thessalum veneficum, / qui pervorse perturbavit familiae mentem meae.", "translation": "By Pollux, I'll take my revenge today on that Thessalian sorcerer who has turned my household's wits upside down.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Amphitryo is baffled by Jupiter's impersonation of him and Mercury's double of Sosia. He can only explain it as the work of a 'Thessalian veneficus'. This is the earliest Latin witness to Thessaly as the home of sorcery, and the sorcerer here is male. Magic is the first explanation reached for when deception cannot be explained.", "claimed_effect": "Deranging a household's perception", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "imagined Thessalian poisoner-sorcerer", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Comic stock figure; veneficus covers both poisoner and sorcerer.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-2", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Miles Gloriosus", "author": "Plautus", "culture": "Roman (Republican comedy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 205 BCE", "date_sort": -205, "edition_urn": "phi0119.phi012.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3.1.690-3.1.696", "conventional_ref": "Plaut. Mil. 690-696", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "da qui faciam † condiat, dá quod dem quinquatribus / praecantrici, coniectrici, hariolae atque haruspicae; / flagitiumst, si nil mittetur quae supercilio spicit;", "translation": "'Give me something to hand out at the Quinquatrus to the charm-woman, the dream-reader, the soothsayer and the entrail-reader; it's a scandal if nothing goes to the woman who reads by the eyebrow.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The old bachelor Periplectomenus explains why he will not marry. A wife would demand money at festivals for a whole staff of female ritual specialists: the praecantrix (who heals by incantation), the dream-interpreter, the soothsayer, the female haruspex and the eyebrow-reader (a physiognomist). These are ordinary paid household services. They are treated as an expense, not a crime.", "claimed_effect": "Healing charms, dream interpretation, prophecy", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "praecantrix, coniectrix, hariola, haruspica", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Gifts expected at the Quinquatrus; a matron's normal ritual budget.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-3", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Pseudolus", "author": "Plautus", "culture": "Roman (Republican comedy)", "language": "", "date": "191 BCE", "date_sort": -191, "edition_urn": "phi0119.phi016.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3.2.819-3.2.821", "conventional_ref": "Plaut. Pseud. 819-821", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ei homines cenas ubi coquont, cum condiunt, / non condimentis condiunt, sed strigibus, / vivis convivis intestina quae exedint.", "translation": "When those fellows cook dinners and season them, they season not with spices but with screech-witches, to eat out the guests' guts while they're still alive.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A boastful cook abuses his rivals. The joke only works if the strix is already known as a creature that devours the entrails of the living. This is the earliest Latin attestation of the gut-eating strix that later appears in Ovid (Fasti 6) and Petronius (63).", "claimed_effect": "Striges devour the innards of living people", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "strix", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-4", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Carmina", "author": "Catullus", "culture": "Roman (late Republic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 57 BCE", "date_sort": -57, "edition_urn": "phi0472.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "lyrics.7.9-lyrics.7.12", "conventional_ref": "Catull. 7.9-12 (cf. Verg. Ecl. 3.103)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "tam te basia multa basiare / vesano satis et super Catullo est, / quae nec pernumerare curiosi / possint nec mala fascinare lingua.", "translation": "To kiss you so many kisses is enough and more for mad Catullus: so many that busybodies could not count them, nor an evil tongue bewitch them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The kisses must be past counting because a known number can be 'fascinated' by an envious tongue, the evil eye and evil tongue (fascinatio) working through precise knowledge. Virgil Ecl. 3.103, also opened, has the shepherd's version: 'some eye or other is bewitching my tender lambs' (oculus ... fascinat).", "claimed_effect": "Envy and an evil eye or tongue harm whatever they can count or see", "claimed_mechanism": "Envy acting through gaze and speech; counting gives the evil eye a hold", "practitioner": "any envious person", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-5", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Carmina", "author": "Catullus", "culture": "Roman, about Persians", "language": "", "date": "c. 55 BCE", "date_sort": -55, "edition_urn": "phi0472.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "elegies.90.1-elegies.90.6", "conventional_ref": "Catull. 90", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Nascatur magus ex Gelli matrisque nefando / coniugio et discat Persicum haruspicium: / nam magus ex matre et gnato gignatur oportet, / si vera est Persarum impia religio,", "translation": "Let a magus be born from the unspeakable union of Gellius and his mother, and learn Persian soothsaying: for a magus must be begotten by mother and son, if the impious religion of the Persians is true,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Invective: Gellius' incest with his mother qualifies him to father a Persian magus, who will worship the gods with pleasing hymns while melting caul-fat in the flame. Here magus still means a foreign Persian priest, not a generic sorcerer. Catullus passes on Greek slander about Zoroastrian next-of-kin marriage.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Persian magus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Ethnic stereotype; magus has not yet become the ordinary word for a sorcerer.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-6", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "De Rerum Natura", "author": "Lucretius", "culture": "Roman (Epicurean)", "language": "", "date": "c. 55 BCE", "date_sort": -55, "edition_urn": "phi0550.phi001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "4.33-4.47", "conventional_ref": "Lucr. 4.33-47 (cf. 1.132-135)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "atque eadem nobis vigilantibus obvia mentes / terrificant atque in somnis, cum saepe figuras / contuimur miras simulacraque luce carentum,", "translation": "and these same images, meeting our minds, terrify us both awake and in sleep, when we often behold strange shapes and the likenesses of those who lack the light,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Lucretius gives an Epicurean account of apparitions: bodies constantly shed thin films (simulacra), and these produce visions of the dead in dreams and in waking. So we should not believe that souls escape from Acheron or that shades flit among the living. This is a direct naturalistic rebuttal of the belief on which necromancy rests.", "claimed_effect": "Explains why people see the dead", "claimed_mechanism": "Atomic films (simulacra) striking the mind", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Philosophical attack on religio and the fear of ghosts.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-7", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Eclogues", "author": "Virgil", "culture": "Roman (Augustan, after Theocritus Id. 2)", "language": "", "date": "c. 39 BCE", "date_sort": -39, "edition_urn": "phi0690.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "8.64-8.109", "conventional_ref": "Verg. Ecl. 8.64-109", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "transformation", "necromancy", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Carmina vel caelo possunt deducere Lunam; / carminibus Circe socios mutavit Ulixi; / frigidus in pratia cantando rumpitur anguis. / Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim.", "translation": "Spells can draw even the Moon down from the sky; with spells Circe transformed Ulysses' men; the cold snake in the meadows bursts when it is chanted at. Draw Daphnis home from the city, my spells, draw Daphnis home.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Alphesiboeus sings a woman's erotic summoning rite (agoge). She uses vervain and male frankincense, three threads of three colours tied in three knots ('the god delights in an odd number'), and a clay image that hardens beside a wax image that melts in the same fire. She burns laurel with bitumen and buries clothing Daphnis left behind at the threshold. She also has Pontic herbs from Moeris, who used them to turn into a wolf, raise souls from tombs and lure crops into another field. When the ash flares up on its own she wonders whether lovers make up their own dreams (8.108). The edition prints the typo 'pratia' at 8.71.", "claimed_effect": "Compel an absent lover home; transformation into a wolf, raising the dead, moving crops", "claimed_mechanism": "Sympathetic analogy (clay hardens, wax melts 'so Daphnis by my love'), binding knots, odd numbers, the target's personal belongings, herbs, refrain chant", "practitioner": "unnamed woman with her servant Amaryllis; Moeris (male) as supplier", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Rural pastoral setting; mirrors the Greek papyri love spells.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-8", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Georgics", "author": "Virgil", "culture": "Roman (Augustan)", "language": "", "date": "29 BCE", "date_sort": -29, "edition_urn": "phi0690.phi002.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3.280-3.283", "conventional_ref": "Verg. G. 3.280-283", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "hippomanes, quod saepe malae legere novercae / miscueruntque herbas et non innoxia verba.", "translation": "hippomanes, which cruel stepmothers have often gathered, mixing in herbs and words that are not harmless.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a farming passage on mares in heat, Virgil gives the shepherds' real name, hippomanes, for the sticky discharge from a mare's groin, and notes that stepmothers collect it for potions mixed with herbs and spells. A practical text thus records a magical ingredient. The wicked stepmother is the stock poisoner.", "claimed_effect": "Love philtre or poison", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "stepmothers", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-9", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Georgics", "author": "Virgil", "culture": "Roman (Augustan), method attributed to Egypt", "language": "", "date": "29 BCE", "date_sort": -29, "edition_urn": "phi0690.phi002.perseus-lat2", "ref": "4.295-4.314", "conventional_ref": "Verg. G. 4.295-314", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Interea teneris tepefactus in ossibus umor / aestuat et visenda modis animalia miris, / trunca pedum primo, mox et stridentia pennis, / miscentur", "translation": "Meanwhile the moisture, warmed in the soft bones, ferments, and creatures wondrous to behold, footless at first, soon whirring on wings, swarm together", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Bugonia: to replace a lost hive, a two-year-old bullock is beaten to death in a small closed hut and left on branches and thyme until bees swarm out of it. It is presented as an Egyptian technique, not as magic, but it is the classic ancient claim of spontaneous generation and frames the Aristaeus story.", "claimed_effect": "Regenerate a bee swarm from a carcass", "claimed_mechanism": "Spontaneous generation from putrefying flesh", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-10", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Aeneid", "author": "Virgil", "culture": "Roman (Augustan), portraying Carthaginian and African ritual", "language": "", "date": "19 BCE", "date_sort": -19, "edition_urn": "phi0690.phi003.perseus-lat2", "ref": "4.474-4.521", "conventional_ref": "Verg. Aen. 4.474-521", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "necromancy", "weather-nature", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Haec se carminibus promittit solvere mentes / quas velit, ast aliis duras immittere curas, / sistere aquam fluviis, et vertere sidera retro; / nocturnosque movet Manis", "translation": "She promises by her spells to release the hearts of whomever she wishes, and to send harsh cares into others; to halt the water in rivers and turn the stars backward; and she rouses the ghosts of night", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Dido stages a magic rite to win Aeneas back or be freed from love, guided by a Massylian priestess of the Hesperides' temple who feeds the dragon honey and 'sleep-bringing poppy'. The pyre holds Aeneas' arms, clothes, bed and an effigy. The priestess, hair loose, thunders out 300 gods, Erebus, Chaos and triple Hecate. There is imitation Avernus water, herbs cut with bronze sickles by moonlight, and the love-growth torn from a newborn foal's forehead. Dido has one foot unshod. She swears she turns to magic 'unwillingly' (4.493), and the rite is a cover for her suicide.", "claimed_effect": "Free or bind a lover's mind; stop rivers, reverse stars, raise ghosts", "claimed_mechanism": "Chant, effigy and the lover's belongings burned, herbs cut at the right time, hippomanes, invocation of chthonic gods", "practitioner": "Massylian priestess; Dido", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Magic is marked as foreign (African) and shameful for a queen ('invitam').", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-11", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Aeneid", "author": "Virgil", "culture": "Roman (Augustan), Cumaean Sibyl", "language": "", "date": "19 BCE", "date_sort": -19, "edition_urn": "phi0690.phi003.perseus-lat2", "ref": "6.243-6.263", "conventional_ref": "Verg. Aen. 6.243-263 (cf. 6.45-51)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "voce vocans Hecaten, Caeloque Ereboque potentem. [...] Procul O procul este, profani, / conclamat vates, totoque absistite luco;", "translation": "calling aloud on Hecate, mighty in Heaven and in Erebus [...] 'Away, away, you uninitiated,' the seer cries out, 'keep clear of the whole grove'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Sibyl, whose god-filled frenzy is described at 6.45-51, holds a night sacrifice to Hecate, Night, Earth, Proserpina and Dis before the descent: black bullocks, wine poured on their brows, warm blood caught in bowls, a barren cow, whole carcasses burned. The ground bellows and dogs howl as the goddess comes. A respected prophetess uses the same imagery as the witches' necromancy, but here it is pious.", "claimed_effect": "Open the way to the underworld; prophecy", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Sibyl (Deiphobe)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Legitimate prophetess at an Apolline sanctuary.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-12", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Aeneid", "author": "Virgil", "culture": "Roman (Augustan), Marsian (central Italy)", "language": "", "date": "19 BCE", "date_sort": -19, "edition_urn": "phi0690.phi003.perseus-lat2", "ref": "7.750-7.760", "conventional_ref": "Verg. Aen. 7.750-760", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "vipereo generi et graviter spirantibus hydris / spargere qui somnos cantuque manuque solebat / mulcebatque iras et morsus arte levabat.", "translation": "who used to sprinkle sleep on the viper race and on foul-breathing water-snakes by song and by hand, soothing their rage and easing their bites by his art.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Umbro, a priest from Marruvium sent by King Archippus, is a snake-charmer and bite-healer. He cannot heal a Trojan spear wound: neither sleep-bringing chants nor herbs from the Marsian mountains help, and Angitia's grove and the Fucine lake mourn him. Marsian charming is honourable, priestly and Italian, but it has its limits.", "claimed_effect": "Put snakes to sleep, cure bites", "claimed_mechanism": "Chant, touch, mountain herbs", "practitioner": "Umbro, Marsian priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Native Italian ritual expert attached to the cult of Angitia.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-13", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Satires", "author": "Horace", "culture": "Roman (triumviral Rome)", "language": "", "date": "c. 35 BCE", "date_sort": -35, "edition_urn": "phi0893.phi004.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.8.17-1.8.50", "conventional_ref": "Hor. S. 1.8.17-50", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "binding-curse", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "cruor in fossam confusus, ut inde / manis elicerent animas responsa daturas. / lanea et effigies erat altera cerea: maior / lanea, quae poenis conpesceret inferiorem;", "translation": "the blood was poured into a trench so that from it they might lure up the shades, souls that would give answers. There was one effigy of wool and another of wax: the larger, woollen one, to subdue the lesser with punishments;", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The fig-wood Priapus in Maecenas' new gardens on the Esquiline, once a paupers' cemetery, complains that witches come by moonlight for bones and harmful herbs. Canidia and Sagana, barefoot, hair loose and howling, tear a black lamb with their teeth to call up shades for oracles. They use a dominant wool doll and a cringing wax doll, invoke Hecate and Tisiphone, and secretly bury a wolf's beard and a spotted snake's tooth, and the wax image blazes up. A loud fart from the god sends them running; they drop Canidia's false teeth, Sagana's wig, herbs and enchanted bindings.", "claimed_effect": "Oracles from the dead; erotic domination", "claimed_mechanism": "Blood offering in a pit, paired effigies (sympathetic punishment), burying animal parts, invoking Hecate", "practitioner": "Canidia and Sagana", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Urban graveyard; the old, poor, ridiculous woman as witch.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-14", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Satires", "author": "Horace", "culture": "Roman, Sabellian (rural Italian)", "language": "", "date": "c. 35 BCE", "date_sort": -35, "edition_urn": "phi0893.phi004.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.9.29-1.9.34", "conventional_ref": "Hor. S. 1.9.29-34", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "namque instat fatum mihi triste, Sabella / quod puero cecinit divina mota anus urna: / “hunc neque dira venena nec hosticus auferet ensis", "translation": "for a grim fate hangs over me, which a Sabellian old woman sang to me as a boy after shaking her divining urn: 'Neither dread poisons nor an enemy's sword shall carry this one off'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A mock oracle by lot: a rural Sabine woman shook lots in an urn and foretold that Horace would die of a chatterbox, so he should avoid talkers. It parodies the sortes of Italian village diviners (compare the 'Sabella carmina' of Epod. 17.28).", "claimed_effect": "Foretell manner of death", "claimed_mechanism": "Lots shaken in an urn (sortes)", "practitioner": "Sabellian old woman", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-15", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Epodes", "author": "Horace", "culture": "Roman (triumviral Rome)", "language": "", "date": "c. 30 BCE", "date_sort": -30, "edition_urn": "phi0893.phi003.perseus-lat2", "ref": "5.1-5.102", "conventional_ref": "Hor. Epod. 5", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "exsucta uti medulla et aridum iecur / amoris esset poculum, / interminato cum semel fixae cibo / intabuissent pupulae.", "translation": "so that his marrow, sucked out, and his dried liver might be a love-potion, once his eyes, fixed on the forbidden food, had wasted away.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Canidia, her hair braided with vipers, works with Sagana, Veia and Folia of Ariminum. They bury a kidnapped freeborn boy up to the chin so that he starves while staring at food, then plan to make a love potion for the old adulterer Varus from his marrow and liver. Other ingredients are grave fig-trees, cypress, eggs smeared with toad's blood, a strix feather, poisons from Iolcos and Iberia, and bones snatched from a starving dog. Canidia complains her spell has failed because 'a more skilled sorceress' has released him (5.71-72), and promises a potion stronger than Marsian chants. The boy curses them: his ghost will return as a Fury, and the mob will stone the obscene old hags. The edition reads 'venena maga non fas nefasque' at 5.87.", "claimed_effect": "Compel an old lover's desire", "claimed_mechanism": "Potion from a child's organs, made potent by longing and starvation; counter-magic can undo spells", "practitioner": "Canidia, Sagana, Veia, Folia", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Child-murder for magic; the victim's curse and the threat of popular stoning.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-16", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Epodes", "author": "Horace", "culture": "Roman (triumviral Rome)", "language": "", "date": "c. 30 BCE", "date_sort": -30, "edition_urn": "phi0893.phi003.perseus-lat2", "ref": "17.1-17.81", "conventional_ref": "Hor. Epod. 17", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "love", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "per atque libros carminum valentium / refixa caelo devocare sidera, / Canidia: parce vocibus tandem sacris / citumque retro solve, solve turbinem.", "translation": "and by the books of potent spells that can unfix the stars and call them down from the sky, Canidia, spare me your holy words at last, and spin back, unwind, unwind your racing wheel.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The poet is wasted, grey and sleepless from Canidia's spells (17.21-26). He admits he now believes Sabellian charms batter the heart and Marsian dirges split the head, and begs her to reverse her magic wheel (turbo). Canidia refuses: he mocked her rites and called her 'pontiff of Esquiline sorcery'. She can move wax images, pull down the moon, raise the cremated dead and mix desire-potions. The poem attests written spell-books and the magic wheel.", "claimed_effect": "Wasting illness of the victim; drawing down stars; raising the dead", "claimed_mechanism": "Spell books, the turbo (rhombus) wound one way to bind and reversed to release, wax images", "practitioner": "Canidia", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-17", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Epistulae", "author": "Horace", "culture": "Roman (Augustan)", "language": "", "date": "c. 19 BCE", "date_sort": -19, "edition_urn": "phi0893.phi005.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.2.208-2.2.209", "conventional_ref": "Hor. Epist. 2.2.208-209", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, / nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessala rides?", "translation": "Dreams, magic terrors, marvels, wise-women, ghosts of the night and Thessalian portents: do you laugh at them?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a list of tests for a free mind, belief in dream-omens, magic, witches, ghosts and Thessalian prodigies is a vice to be laughed away, alongside fear of death and anger. It is the educated Augustan view of magic as superstition.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Philosophical self-examination; magic grouped with irrational fears.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-18", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Epistulae", "author": "Horace", "culture": "Roman (Augustan state religion)", "language": "", "date": "c. 12 BCE", "date_sort": -12, "edition_urn": "phi0893.phi005.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.1.132-2.1.138", "conventional_ref": "Hor. Epist. 2.1.132-138", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "caelestis implorat aquas docta prece blandus, / avertit morbos, metuenda pericula pellit, / impetrat et pacem et locupletem frugibus annum, / carmine di superi placantur, carmine Manes.", "translation": "coaxing with learned prayer it implores the waters of heaven, turns aside diseases, drives off dreaded dangers, wins peace and a year rich in crops: by song the gods above are appeased, by song the shades below.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Defending poetry to Augustus, Horace describes the civic chorus of boys and girls (as in his Carmen Saeculare), whose carmen brings rain, wards off disease and appeases gods and the dead. The same word, carmen, names this public prayer and the witch's spell; what differs is who sings it and on whose behalf.", "claimed_effect": "Rain, averting disease, peace, good harvest", "claimed_mechanism": "Choral prayer-song taught by a poet", "practitioner": "chorus of freeborn children", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "State cult; the legitimate counterpart of the private carmen.", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-19", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Elegiae", "author": "Tibullus", "culture": "Roman (Augustan elegy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 27 BCE", "date_sort": -27, "edition_urn": "phi0660.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.2.41-1.2.66", "conventional_ref": "Tib. 1.2.41-66", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "illusion-trickery", "necromancy", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Hanc ego de caelo ducentem sidera vidi, / Fluminis haec rapidi carmine vertit iter, / Haec cantu finditque solum Manesque sepulcris / Elicit et tepido devocat ossa rogo;", "translation": "I have seen her drawing the stars down from the sky; she turns the course of a racing river with her spell; with her chant she splits the ground, lures the ghosts from their tombs, and calls the bones down from the warm pyre;", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A saga has given Tibullus a charm so that Delia's husband will believe no informer, not even his own eyes if he finds them in bed. Sing it three times and spit three times (1.2.55-56). Her advertised powers include stars, rivers, ghosts, the infernal crowds held by her magic shriek, dispelling clouds and summoning summer snow, Medea's herbs and Hecate's hounds. Yet the same woman claimed she could cure his love with chants or herbs. She purified him with torches and sacrificed a dark victim to the magic gods, and he asked only for love returned.", "claimed_effect": "Make a husband blind to adultery; dissolve or reciprocate love", "claimed_mechanism": "A chant repeated three times with spitting; torch purification; dark sacrifice to 'magic gods'", "practitioner": "saga", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "A paid practitioner serving adulterous lovers.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-20", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Elegiae", "author": "Tibullus", "culture": "Roman (Augustan elegy, domestic ritual)", "language": "", "date": "c. 27 BCE", "date_sort": -27, "edition_urn": "phi0660.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.5.9-1.5.16", "conventional_ref": "Tib. 1.5.9-16", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Ipseque te circum lustravi sulphure puro, / Carmine cum magico praecinuisset anus;", "translation": "and I myself purified you all round with pure sulphur, after an old woman had first sung a magic chant;", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "When Delia lay sick, the lover says his vows saved her. He fumigated her with sulphur after an old woman had sung a magic chant, made offerings of holy meal three times to avert bad dreams, and at night, wearing a woollen fillet with his tunic loosened, made nine vows to Trivia. Healing combines domestic religion, a female chanter and fumigation.", "claimed_effect": "Cure fever; avert evil dreams", "claimed_mechanism": "Sulphur fumigation, incantation, ritual numbers (3, 9), vows to Trivia", "practitioner": "old woman (anus) with the lover", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-21", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Elegiae", "author": "Tibullus", "culture": "Roman (Augustan elegy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 27 BCE", "date_sort": -27, "edition_urn": "phi0660.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.5.41-1.5.60", "conventional_ref": "Tib. 1.5.41-60", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Hanc volitent animae circum sua fata querentes / Semper et e tectis strix violenta canat; / Ipsa fame stimulante furens herbasque sepulcris / Quaerat et a saevis ossa relicta lupis,", "translation": "Around her may souls flit lamenting their fates, and may the violent strix forever shriek from the rooftops; may she herself, crazed by hunger, hunt herbs on tombs and bones left by savage wolves,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The poet curses the 'cunning bawd' who steered Delia to a rich lover, wishing on her the witch's own life among tombs, ghosts and strix, with bloody food and gall-filled cups. He also says a woman left him 'devotum' (cursed), knowing 'unspeakable things' (1.5.41-42), and urges Delia to drop the greedy saga's advice. The bawd and the saga merge into one figure, and the poet's counter-curse uses witch language.", "claimed_effect": "Revenge on the bawd", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "lena or saga (target); the poet as curser", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-22", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Elegiae", "author": "Tibullus", "culture": "Roman (Augustan elegy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 27-19 BCE", "date_sort": -25, "edition_urn": "phi0660.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.8.17-1.8.24", "conventional_ref": "Tib. 1.8.17-24", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "love", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Cantus vicinis fruges traducit ab agris, / Cantus et iratae detinet anguis iter, / Cantus et e curru Lunam deducere temptat / Et faceret, si non aera repulsa sonent.", "translation": "Chant lures the crops away from neighbours' fields; chant halts the angry snake's path; chant tries to draw the Moon down from her chariot, and would do it, if the beaten bronzes did not ring out.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Has some old woman bewitched you with chants and pale herbs at night? The poet lists chant's powers: luring away crops (as in the Twelve Tables' crime of excantare fruges), stopping snakes, and drawing down the moon, which is prevented only by the din of beaten bronze during an eclipse. Then he dismisses it: beauty needs no magic aids.", "claimed_effect": "Crop theft; snake-stopping; eclipse", "claimed_mechanism": "Incantation; bronze noise as counter-magic", "practitioner": "old woman (anus)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Echo of the early Roman law against charming away crops; the popular eclipse ritual.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-23", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Elegiae", "author": "Propertius", "culture": "Roman (Augustan elegy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 29 BCE", "date_sort": -29, "edition_urn": "phi0620.phi001.perseus-lat3", "ref": "1.1.19-1.1.24", "conventional_ref": "Prop. 1.1.19-24", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "at vos, deductae quibus est pellacia lunae / et labor in magicis sacra piare focis, / en agedum dominae mentem convertite nostrae,", "translation": "But you who have the seductive art of drawing down the moon, and the task of propitiating rites on magic hearths, come now, change my mistress's mind,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The lovesick poet challenges witches: make Cynthia paler than I am, and then I will believe you can lead ghosts and stars with Colchian ('Cytinaean', a disputed reading) spells. His belief in magic depends on results.", "claimed_effect": "Change a beloved's mind", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "witches addressed collectively", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-24", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Elegiae", "author": "Propertius", "culture": "Roman (Augustan elegy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 26 BCE", "date_sort": -26, "edition_urn": "phi0620.phi001.perseus-lat3", "ref": "2.4.7-2.4.14", "conventional_ref": "Prop. 2.4.7-14", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "non hic herba valet, non hic nocturna Cytaeis, / non Perimedaeae gramina cocta manus; / nam cui non ego sum fallaci praemia vati? / quae mea non decies somnia versat anus?", "translation": "Here no herb avails, no Colchian of the night, no grasses brewed by Perimede's hand; for to what lying seer have I not been a payday? What old woman has not turned over my dreams ten times?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Lovesickness has no visible cause and no cure. Neither witches' herbs nor doctors help, and the lover has paid many 'deceitful' seers and dream-interpreting old women. The practitioners are paid and untrustworthy.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "vates, old women interpreting dreams", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "A market in fee-paid divination.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-25", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Elegiae", "author": "Propertius", "culture": "Roman (Augustan elegy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 26 BCE", "date_sort": -26, "edition_urn": "phi0620.phi001.perseus-lat3", "ref": "2.28b.1-2.28b.4", "conventional_ref": "Prop. 2.28.35-38", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "DEFICIVNT magico torti sub carmine rhombi, / et iacet exstincto laurus adusta foco; / et iam Luna negat totiens descendere caelo, / nigraque funestum concinit omen avis.", "translation": "The rhombi spun to the magic chant are failing, and the laurel lies scorched on the dead hearth; the Moon now refuses to come down from the sky so often, and the black bird sings its omen of death.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "During Cynthia's dangerous illness the healing magic is failing: the spinning rhombus, burnt laurel, the drawn-down moon. So the poet turns to prayer to Jupiter and Persephone. Magic is used here to heal a loved one, not only for love or harm.", "claimed_effect": "Healing a sick woman", "claimed_mechanism": "Rhombus spun to a chant, laurel burning (crackle as omen), drawing down the moon", "practitioner": "unnamed", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-26", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Elegiae", "author": "Propertius", "culture": "Roman (Augustan elegy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 22 BCE", "date_sort": -22, "edition_urn": "phi0620.phi001.perseus-lat3", "ref": "3.6.25-3.6.30", "conventional_ref": "Prop. 3.6.25-30", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "staminea rhombi ducitur ille rota. / illum turgentis sanie portenta rubetae / et lecta exsuctis anguibus ossa trahunt, / et strigis inventae per busta iacentia plumae,", "translation": "he is drawn along by the threaded wheel of the rhombus; the monstrous venom of a swollen toad drags him, and bones gathered from snakes sucked dry, and strix feathers found among fallen tombs,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Cynthia, through the slave Lygdamus, says a rival won Propertius 'not by her character but by herbs'. Her erotic attraction magic uses a threaded rhombus, toad venom, snake bones, strix feathers, and a woollen fillet from a funeral couch. The rubeta toad is a real source of toxic secretions.", "claimed_effect": "Erotic attraction", "claimed_mechanism": "Rhombus wheel; toxic and grave-polluted materials", "practitioner": "rival woman", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-27", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Elegiae", "author": "Propertius", "culture": "Roman, with Babylonian astrologer", "language": "", "date": "c. 16 BCE", "date_sort": -16, "edition_urn": "phi0620.phi001.perseus-lat3", "ref": "4.1.71-4.1.108", "conventional_ref": "Prop. 4.1.71-108", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "nunc pretium fecere deos et (fallitur auro / Iuppiter) obliquae signa iterata rotae / felicesque Iouis stellas Martisque rapaces / et graue Saturni sidus in omne caput;", "translation": "Now they have turned the gods into profit, and Jupiter is cheated for gold: the repeated signs of the slanting wheel, the lucky stars of Jupiter, rapacious Mars, and Saturn's star that weighs on every head;", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Horos, a self-styled Babylonian descended from Archytas and Conon, interrupts the poet with credentials: his books are reliable, and he correctly foretold a difficult childbirth and the vow that eased it (4.1.99-102). He ranks astrology above Ammon's oracle, entrails, the crow's wing, and the shade that rises from 'magic waters' (hydromancy, 4.1.106). His own speech admits that astrology has become a business.", "claimed_effect": "Accurate prediction of life events", "claimed_mechanism": "Planetary and zodiacal positions; 'the true path through the stars'", "practitioner": "Horos, astrologer", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Augustan Rome's market for astrology; Greek and Eastern credentials.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-28", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Elegiae", "author": "Propertius", "culture": "Roman (Augustan elegy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 16 BCE", "date_sort": -16, "edition_urn": "phi0620.phi001.perseus-lat3", "ref": "4.5.5-4.5.18", "conventional_ref": "Prop. 4.5.5-18", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "transformation", "illusion-trickery", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "audax cantatae leges imponere lunae / et sua nocturno fallere terga lupo, / posset ut intentos astu caecare maritos, / cornicum immeritas eruit ungue genas;", "translation": "bold enough to lay down laws for the enchanted moon and to disguise her back as a night-wolf; so that she could blind watchful husbands by her cunning, she tore out crows' innocent eyes with her nails;", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Over the grave of the bawd Acanthis, the poet recalls her powers. She could make Penelope yield, stop a magnet drawing iron, dissolve standing things with Colline herbs, rule the moon, turn into a wolf, consult striges about the poet's blood and gather hippomanes. The bawd is a witch, but her real magic is persuasion and blinding husbands.", "claimed_effect": "Seduction, shape-shifting, blinding husbands", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbs, crows' eyes (sympathetic blinding), striges, hippomanes", "practitioner": "Acanthis, lena", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-29", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Amores", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (Augustan elegy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 16 BCE", "date_sort": -16, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.8.1-1.8.20", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Am. 1.8.1-20", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "weather-nature", "transformation", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Illa magas artes Aeaeaque carmina novit / Inque caput liquidas arte recurvat aquas; / Scit bene, quid gramen, quid torto concita rhombo / Licia, quid valeat virus amantis equae.", "translation": "She knows magic arts and Circe's spells, and by her art bends flowing waters back to their source; she knows well what herbs can do, what threads spun on the twisted rhombus, what the slime of a mare in heat.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The bawd Dipsas ('Thirsty', a drunkard) gathers and clears clouds at will, makes stars drip blood and the moon turn red. She is suspected of flying by night with feathers on her old body, has double pupils (the evil eye), and calls ancestors from their tombs. Her real weapon is her corrupting tongue. 'If you can believe it, I saw' and 'I suspect, and rumour says so' mark the account as ironic hearsay.", "claimed_effect": "Weather control, bloody moon, flight, necromancy", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbs, rhombus threads, hippomanes, spells, the evil eye", "practitioner": "Dipsas, lena", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-30", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Amores", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (Augustan elegy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 16 BCE", "date_sort": -16, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.14.39-1.14.46", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Am. 1.14.39-46", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Non te cantatae laeserunt paelicis herbae, / Non anus Haemonia perfida lavit aqua; [...] Facta manu culpaque tua dispendia sentis; / Ipsa dabas capiti mixta venena tuo.", "translation": "No rival's enchanted herbs have harmed you, no treacherous old woman has washed you in Thessalian water [...] the loss you feel is the work of your own hand and your own fault: you yourself poured mixed poisons on your head.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The girl's hair has fallen out. Ovid rules out a rival's spell, a witch's Thessalian water, disease and envy: the cause was her own hair-dye. A cosmetic-chemical cause replaces the bewitchment that people would suspect. Now she must wear hair taken from German captives.", "claimed_effect": "Hair loss (diagnosis)", "claimed_mechanism": "Caustic dyes, not magic", "practitioner": "none: self-inflicted", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-31", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Amores", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (Augustan elegy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 16 BCE", "date_sort": -16, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3.7.27-3.7.36", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Am. 3.7.27-36, 79-80", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "Num mea Thessalico languent devota veneno / Corpora? num misero carmen et herba nocent, / Sagave poenicea defixit nomina cera / Et medium tenuis in iecur egit acus?", "translation": "Is my body drooping, cursed by Thessalian poison? Are spells and herbs harming me, poor wretch, or has a witch pinned my name in red wax and driven fine needles into the middle of the liver?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Impotent with a girl, the poet wonders whether he is the victim of defixio: a name written in wax and a pierced figurine. Spells blight grain, dry springs and strip acorns and grapes, so why not his nerves too (3.7.31-36)? The girl suspects the same: either an 'Aeaean sorceress' has cursed him with pierced wool, or he has come from another lover (3.7.79-80). This matches real Greco-Roman curse tablets and pierced dolls.", "claimed_effect": "Erectile failure", "claimed_mechanism": "Name-binding in wax, needle-piercing, herbs and chant", "practitioner": "saga, venefica", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Defixio was a real practice; the poem shows it as the default explanation for impotence.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-32", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Heroides (Epistulae)", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman, depicting Colchian Medea", "language": "", "date": "c. 15 BCE", "date_sort": -15, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi002.perseus-lat2", "ref": "6.83-6.94", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Her. 6.83-94", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "necromancy", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Per tumulos errat passis discincta capillis / Certaque de tepidis colligit ossa rogis. / Devovet absentis simulacraque cerea figit, / Et miserum tenuis in iecur urget acus —", "translation": "She roams among the tombs, ungirt, hair streaming, and gathers chosen bones from warm pyres. She curses the absent, pierces wax images, and drives fine needles into the wretched liver —", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hypsipyle claims Medea won Jason not by beauty or merit but by spells: herbs reaped with an enchanted sickle, drawing down the moon, hiding the sun, stopping rivers, moving forests and rocks, robbing graves, wax effigies. She concludes that love should be won by character and looks, not by herbs (6.93-94). Jealous slander links foreign witchcraft with illegitimate love.", "claimed_effect": "Erotic capture; cosmic control; harm at a distance", "claimed_mechanism": "Effigy-piercing, bones from pyres, herbs", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-33", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Heroides (Epistulae)", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman, depicting Colchian Medea", "language": "", "date": "c. 15 BCE", "date_sort": -15, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi002.perseus-lat2", "ref": "12.165-12.168", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Her. 12.165-168 (cf. 5.141-143)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Ipsi me cantus herbaeque artesque relinquunt; / Nil dea, nil Hecates sacra potentis agunt.", "translation": "My very chants and herbs and arts desert me; the goddess does nothing, nor do the rites of mighty Hecate.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea, who soothed the bulls' fire with learned drugs, cannot put out her own love. Magic is helpless against eros. Oenone in Her. 5.141-143, also opened, says the same of herbal medicine: 'love cannot be cured by herbs.'", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-34", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Medicamina faciei femineae", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (Augustan didactic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1 BCE", "date_sort": -1, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi003.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.35-1.42", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Medic. 35-42", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Nec mediae Marsis finduntur cantibus angues, / Nec redit in fontes unda supina suos; / Et quamvis aliquis Temesaea removerit aera, / Numquam Luna suis excutietur equis.", "translation": "Snakes are not split down the middle by Marsian chants, nor does water run backward to its source; and even if someone takes away the bronzes of Temesa, the Moon will never be shaken from her horses.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a poem on cosmetics, Ovid tells women to win love by grooming and character, not by herbs cut by a witch's hand or a mare's slime. He flatly denies the stock magical powers, including the eclipse belief: without the din of bronze the moon is still safe. This is open debunking.", "claimed_effect": "Denied: snake-bursting, river reversal, moon-pulling", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Urban elite didactic replacing magic with cosmetics.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-35", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Ars Amatoria", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (Augustan didactic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 2 BCE", "date_sort": -2, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi004.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.99-2.107", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Ars 2.99-107", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Nec data profuerint pallentia philtra puellis: / Philtra nocent animis, vimque furoris habent. / Sit procul omne nefas; ut ameris, amabilis esto:", "translation": "Nor will pale philtres given to girls help: philtres harm the mind and carry the force of madness. Away with every wickedness: to be loved, be lovable.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Haemonian (Thessalian) arts and the growth torn from a foal's forehead are useless; Medea could not keep Jason, nor Circe Ulysses. Ovid adds a medical warning that love potions damage the mind and cause madness, and calls them nefas.", "claimed_effect": "Love potions (denied); madness (affirmed)", "claimed_mechanism": "Toxic drugs act on the mind", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Philtres treated as dangerous drugs, consistent with Roman law on venena.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-36", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Remedia Amoris", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (Augustan didactic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1 CE", "date_sort": 1, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi005.perseus-lat2", "ref": "249-290", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Rem. 249-290", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "necromancy", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Ista veneficii vetus est via; noster Apollo / Innocuam sacro carmine monstrat opem. / Me duce non tumulo prodire iubebitur umbra,", "translation": "That is the ancient road of sorcery; my Apollo shows a harmless help through sacred song. Under my guidance no shade will be ordered out of the tomb,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Anyone who thinks Haemonian herbs and magic arts can cure love is mistaken; the poet's song is 'harmless'. He lists the sorcery he will not use: ghosts from tombs, splitting the ground, moving crops, a pale sun, a moon off course, love driven out with sulphur. Circe pleads with Ulysses: she could turn men into a thousand shapes but could not change her own heart. The passage ends with 'withdraw your faith from sorceries and spells'. The poet's carmen is set against the witch's.", "claimed_effect": "Denied: curing love by magic", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Circe, Medea (exempla)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-37", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman, depicting Colchian Medea in Thessaly", "language": "", "date": "c. 8 CE", "date_sort": 8, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi006.perseus-lat2", "ref": "7.179-7.293", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Met. 7.179-293 (prayer 7.192-219)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "transformation", "weather-nature", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "auraeque et venti montesque amnesque lacusque / dique omnes nemorum, dique omnes noctis adeste. / Quorum ope, cum volui, ripis mirantibus amnes / in fontes rediere suos,", "translation": "and you breezes and winds, mountains, rivers and lakes, all you gods of the groves, all you gods of the night: be present. With your help, whenever I willed it, rivers ran back to their springs as their banks marvelled,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea rejuvenates Aeson. At full moon, barefoot with hair loose, she turns three times, sprinkles herself, howls three times and prays to Night, Hecate and Earth. She flies nine days in a dragon chariot gathering Thessalian herbs, sets up turf altars to Hecate and to Youth, and pours blood, wine and milk into pits. She puts Aeson into a charmed sleep and purifies him three times each with fire, water and sulphur. Her cauldron holds roots, eastern stones, moon-frost, a strix's wings and flesh, a werewolf's entrails, snake skin, stag liver and a crow's head. A dead olive stick stirred in it sprouts leaves and fruit. She cuts his throat, drains the old blood and fills him with the brew, and he becomes 40 years younger. The prayer is the model Latin incantation (later imitated by Shakespeare's Prospero).", "claimed_effect": "Rejuvenation; reversing rivers, moving mountains, raising ghosts, pulling the moon", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine helpers (Hecate, Earth, Night), herbs, animal parts of long-lived or shape-changing creatures, blood replacement, ritual numbers", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-38", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman, depicting Medea", "language": "", "date": "c. 8 CE", "date_sort": 8, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi006.perseus-lat2", "ref": "7.297-7.349", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Met. 7.297-349", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "cum rapido fallax Aeetias igni / imponit purum laticem et sine viribus herbas.", "translation": "when Aeetes' deceitful daughter set on the fierce fire plain water and herbs with no power in them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea fakes a quarrel with Jason, gains the trust of Pelias' daughters, and 'proves' her art by boiling an old ram, which bleats and jumps out as a lamb. Then she boils plain water and powerless herbs, puts Pelias and his guards into a spell-induced sleep, and persuades the daughters to drain their father's blood. Ovid presents this second rite as a sham: a magic display used for fraud and murder.", "claimed_effect": "Fake rejuvenation used as a murder trap", "claimed_mechanism": "Demonstration on an animal, feigned gravity, sleep induced by spells", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-39", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman, depicting Medea in Athens", "language": "", "date": "c. 8 CE", "date_sort": 8, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi006.perseus-lat2", "ref": "7.404-7.424", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Met. 7.404-424", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Quae quia nascuntur dura vivacia caute, / agrestes aconita vocant. Ea coniugis astu / ipse parens Aegeus nato porrexit ut hosti.", "translation": "Because they grow tenaciously on hard rock, country people call them aconites. Through his wife's cunning, Aegeus himself handed this to his son as if to an enemy.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea's poison for Theseus is aconite, which she brought from Scythia; Ovid explains its origin from the foam of Cerberus. A real toxic plant (Aconitum) sits under the mythic story. Medea then escapes in a mist raised by her spells.", "claimed_effect": "Poisoning", "claimed_mechanism": "A plant made deadly by Cerberus' foam (aetiology)", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-40", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (household healing)", "language": "", "date": "c. 8 CE", "date_sort": 8, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi006.perseus-lat2", "ref": "10.394-10.399", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Met. 10.394-399", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "Seu furor est, habeo, quae carmine sanet et herbis, / sive aliquis nocuit, magico lustrabere ritu, / ira deum sive est, sacris placabilis ira.", "translation": "If it is madness, I have a woman who will cure it with chant and herbs; if someone has harmed you, you will be purified by a magic rite; if it is the anger of the gods, anger can be appeased by sacrifice.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Myrrha's old nurse offers a three-way diagnosis of unexplained suffering: illness, cured by a female healer's song and herbs; human sorcery, cleansed by magical purification; or divine anger, appeased by sacrifice. Magic appears as one option alongside medicine and religion.", "claimed_effect": "Diagnosis and cure of mental distress", "claimed_mechanism": "Classification by cause: disease, bewitchment, divine wrath", "practitioner": "nurse and an unnamed female healer", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Counter-magic is presented as respectable household practice.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-41", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman, depicting Circe", "language": "", "date": "c. 8 CE", "date_sort": 8, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi006.perseus-lat2", "ref": "14.264-14.288", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Met. 14.264-288", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "ipsa quod hae faciunt opus, exigit, ipsa, quis usus / quove sit in folio, quae sit concordia mixtis, / novit et advertens pensas examinat herbas.", "translation": "She herself oversees the work they do; she herself knows what use there is in each leaf and what harmony in mixtures, and she carefully checks the weighed herbs.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Macareus describes Circe's palace. Nymphs sort flowers and herbs into baskets while Circe supervises the weighing and compounding like a pharmacist. She serves roasted barley, honey, wine and curdled milk with juices hidden under the sweetness, touches the men's hair with her wand, and they grow bristles and become swine: 'so much can drugs do' (14.285). Eurylochus alone refused the cup.", "claimed_effect": "Transformation into swine", "claimed_mechanism": "Drugs hidden in a sweet drink, plus the touch of a wand", "practitioner": "Circe and her nymph assistants", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-42", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Metamorphoses", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (Latium), Circe and Picus", "language": "", "date": "c. 8 CE", "date_sort": 8, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi006.perseus-lat2", "ref": "14.346-14.396", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Met. 14.346-396", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "transformation", "love", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Dixit et effigiem, nullo cum corpore, falsi / finxit apri praeterque oculos transcurrere regis", "translation": "She spoke, and formed the likeness of a false boar, with no body, and made it run past the king's eyes", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Circe creates a phantom boar to lure King Picus away from his companions, and darkens the sky with fog by an unknown song to unknown gods. Rejected, she turns twice to the west and twice to the east, touches him three times with her staff, says three spells, and turns him into a woodpecker. The episode combines illusion and transformation with precise numerical ritual.", "claimed_effect": "Phantom, fog, transformation", "claimed_mechanism": "Unknown chant, ritual turning, staff", "practitioner": "Circe", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-43", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Fasti", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (state festival: Lupercalia)", "language": "", "date": "c. 8 CE", "date_sort": 8, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi007.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.423-2.428", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Fast. 2.425-428", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "nupta, quid expectas? non tu pollentibus herbis / nec prece nec magico carmine mater eris; / excipe fecundae patienter verbera dextrae,", "translation": "Bride, what are you waiting for? Not by potent herbs, nor by prayer, nor by magic song will you become a mother: patiently take the blows of the fertile hand,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At the Lupercalia, the public cure for barrenness is to be struck by the Luperci's goatskin thongs. Ovid sets this civic rite explicitly against the private alternatives of herbs, prayer and magic spells. Fertility magic is legitimate when the state performs it.", "claimed_effect": "Fertility", "claimed_mechanism": "Ritual whipping at the Lupercalia", "practitioner": "Luperci", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Public religion versus private magic for the same goal.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-44", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Fasti", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (Feralia, domestic women's rite)", "language": "", "date": "c. 8 CE", "date_sort": 8, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi007.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.571-2.582", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Fast. 2.571-582", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "tunc cantata ligat cum fusco licia plumbo / et septem nigras versat in ore fabas, / quodque pice adstrinxit, quod acu traiecit aena, / obsutum maenae torret in igne caput;", "translation": "then she binds enchanted threads with dark lead and rolls seven black beans in her mouth; and the head of a sprat, sealed with pitch, pierced with a bronze needle and sewn up, she roasts in the fire;", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At the Feralia an old woman sitting among girls performs the rite of Tacita, the Silent Goddess. She places three grains of incense under the threshold where a mouse has made its path, binds enchanted threads with lead, rolls seven black beans in her mouth, and roasts a fish head that has been sewn shut, pitched and pierced. She drips in wine and drinks most of what is left herself. As she leaves, tipsy, she says: 'We have bound hostile tongues and unfriendly mouths.' A binding spell sits inside the official festival calendar, and the lead and piercing match real curse tablets.", "claimed_effect": "Silencing enemies' slander", "claimed_mechanism": "Sympathetic sealing and piercing of a mouth (fish head), lead binding, black beans, the number seven, the threshold", "practitioner": "old woman (anus) with girls", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Attached to a public festival; tolerated, gently mocked.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-45", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Fasti", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (legend of King Numa)", "language": "", "date": "c. 8 CE", "date_sort": 8, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi007.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3.323-3.346", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Fast. 3.323-346", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "weather-nature", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "quaque trahant superis sedibus arte Iovem, / scire nefas homini: nobis concessa canentur / quaeque pio dici vatis ab ore licet,", "translation": "by what art they draw Jupiter down from his seat on high, it is unlawful for a man to know: I shall sing what is permitted, what may be spoken from a pious bard's mouth,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "King Numa captures Picus and Faunus and learns from them the charms that draw Jupiter down ('Elicius'). He then bargains with the god over the expiation of lightning. Jupiter asks for 'a head'; Numa offers one of onion. 'A man's': Numa offers hair. 'A life': Numa offers a fish. The god laughs and grants a pledge of empire. A rite of drawing down a god, and haggling with him, is a founding legend of state religion, while the charm itself stays unspeakable.", "claimed_effect": "Compel a god's presence; fix the ritual for expiating lightning", "claimed_mechanism": "Secret charms of Picus and Faunus; verbal substitution in the offering", "practitioner": "Numa, Picus, Faunus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "The legitimate, king-founded counterpart of the witch's drawing-down.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-46", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Fasti", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (Lemuria, household ritual)", "language": "", "date": "c. 8 CE", "date_sort": 8, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi007.perseus-lat2", "ref": "5.429-5.444", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Fast. 5.429-444", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "aversusque iacit; sed dum iacit, ‘haec ego mitto, / his’ inquit redimo meque meosque fabis. / hoc novies dicit nec respicit:", "translation": "and turning away he throws them; and as he throws he says, 'These I send; with these beans I redeem myself and mine.' Nine times he says it, and does not look back:", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The householder's midnight rite at the Lemuria. Barefoot, with fingers joined to the thumb in a warding sign, he washes his hands in spring water, throws black beans behind him, says the formula nine times without looking back, washes again, clashes Temesan bronze and tells the paternal shades to leave. Ancestral religion here banishes ghosts with the same features as 'magic': numbers, gesture, not looking back.", "claimed_effect": "Expelling household ghosts", "claimed_mechanism": "Substitute offering (beans), ritual number nine, bronze noise, gesture", "practitioner": "head of household", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Official calendar festival; the paterfamilias acts as priest.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-47", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Fasti", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (Kalends of June, cult of Carna)", "language": "", "date": "c. 8 CE", "date_sort": 8, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi007.perseus-lat2", "ref": "6.131-6.168", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Fast. 6.131-168", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing", "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "sive igitur nascuntur aves, seu carmine fiunt / naeniaque in volucres Marsa figurat anus,", "translation": "whether, then, they are born as birds, or are made so by a spell, and a Marsian chant shapes old women into birds,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Striges are big-headed, staring, hook-clawed night birds that snatch babies from their cradles, peck out their entrails and drink their blood. They attack the five-day-old Proca: the nurse finds his cheeks scratched and his colour like late leaves nipped by early frost. The nymph Crane cures him. She touches the doorposts and threshold three times with arbutus, sprinkles the entrance with medicated water, and offers the raw entrails of a two-month-old sow: 'heart for heart, entrails for entrails, this life for a better one'. She forbids anyone to look back and sets a whitethorn branch at the window. Ovid leaves open whether striges are birds or transformed women.", "claimed_effect": "Infant illness caused by striges; cured by apotropaic rite", "claimed_mechanism": "Substitution sacrifice, thresholds and windows sealed with plants, no looking back", "practitioner": "Crane/Carna (goddess); strix or Marsian old woman", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-48", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Ibis", "author": "Ovid", "culture": "Roman (exile poetry; literary curse)", "language": "", "date": "c. 10 CE", "date_sort": 10, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi010.perseus-lat2", "ref": "93-106", "conventional_ref": "Ov. Ib. 93-106 (cf. [Verg.] Dirae)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Neve minus noceant fictum execrantia nomen / Vota , minus magnos commoveantve deos : / Illum ego devoveo , quem mens intellegit , Ibin ,", "translation": "And lest curses that execrate an invented name do less harm, or move the great gods less, I devote him, the one my mind means, Ibis,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In his curse poem Ovid worries that a curse made under a pseudonym may be weaker, so he names the target by intention. He then acts as priest of a funeral rite: black robes, left feet first, fillets, an altar set up for Ibis' funeral with Ibis as the victim. It is a literary curse modelled on real devotio and defixio. The Appendix Vergiliana Dirae, also opened, curses confiscated land in the same mode.", "claimed_effect": "Ruin and death of an enemy", "claimed_mechanism": "Correct naming (the name's power), mock-funeral sacrifice", "practitioner": "Ovid as sacerdos", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-49", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Medea", "author": "Seneca the Younger", "culture": "Roman (Neronian tragedy), Colchian Medea", "language": "", "date": "c. 50-62 CE", "date_sort": 55, "edition_urn": "phi1017.phi004.perseus-lat2", "ref": "670-739", "conventional_ref": "Sen. Med. 670-739", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "necromancy", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "addit venenis verba non illis minus / metuenda, sonuit ecce vaesano gradu / canitque. mundus vocibus primis tremit.", "translation": "To the poisons she adds words no less to be feared. Listen: her frenzied step has sounded, and she sings. The world trembles at her first words.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Nurse describes Medea's store of poisons. Snakes come at her chant; she calls on the serpent constellations (Draco, Ophiuchus) and on Python and the Hydra. Her deadly plants come from Eryx, the Caucasus, the Arabian arrow-poisons and the Suebian forests, cut at dawn, at night or with a charmed fingernail, and she adds an owl's heart and a live strix's entrails. Then comes her incantation to the dead and to Hecate, boasting that she has reversed seasons, tides, rivers and the sun.", "claimed_effect": "Lethal poisons; cosmic disorder", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbs and animal parts gathered by rule and time, plus spoken spell", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-50", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Medea", "author": "Seneca the Younger", "culture": "Roman (Neronian tragedy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 50-62 CE", "date_sort": 55, "edition_urn": "phi1017.phi004.perseus-lat2", "ref": "817-842; 888-890", "conventional_ref": "Sen. Med. 817-842, 879-890", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ignis fulvo elusus in auro / latet obscurus, quem mihi caeli / qui furta luit viscere feto / dedit et docuit condere vires / arte, Prometheus, dedit et tenui / sulphure tectos Mulciber ignes,", "translation": "a fire, tricked into the tawny gold, lies hidden: Prometheus, who pays for his theft from heaven with a liver that keeps regrowing, gave it to me and taught me to store its power by art; and Vulcan gave fires concealed under fine sulphur,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea charges Creusa's robe and gold with hidden fire, meant to burn into the bones when worn. The Messenger then reports that the palace fire is fed by water: 'water feeds the flames, and the more it is checked, the more it burns' (888-890). The poison is described in near-technical terms: fire under sulphur, hidden in gold, lit on contact, made worse by water.", "claimed_effect": "A garment that bursts into fire which water cannot quench", "claimed_mechanism": "Stored fire, sulphur, gifts from Prometheus and Vulcan, Hecate's blessing", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-51", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Oedipus", "author": "Seneca the Younger", "culture": "Roman (Neronian tragedy), Theban priest", "language": "", "date": "c. 50-62 CE", "date_sort": 55, "edition_urn": "phi1017.phi006.perseus-lat2", "ref": "548-607", "conventional_ref": "Sen. Oed. 548-607", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "carmenque magicum volvit et rabido minax / decantat ore quicquid aut placat leves / aut cogit umbras;", "translation": "he rolls out a magic chant and, menacing, with frenzied mouth sings through whatever either soothes the flimsy shades or compels them;", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Creon reports Tiresias' necromancy in a black grove: a pit, fire from pyres, mourning clothes and yew, black sheep and cattle burnt alive, blood, milk and wine poured with the left hand, a 'carmen magicum' that both soothes and compels. Hecate's hounds bark, the earth gapes, and the Theban dead swarm out. Here the necromancer is the city's revered priest acting for the state, so 'magic chant' carries no stigma.", "claimed_effect": "Summon Laius' ghost to name the murderer", "claimed_mechanism": "Chthonic sacrifice; chant that soothes or compels", "practitioner": "Tiresias (with Manto)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "State-sponsored necromancy to end a plague.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-52", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Hercules Oetaeus", "author": "Seneca (attribution disputed)", "culture": "Roman (Neronian or later tragedy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 60 CE? (authorship and date disputed)", "date_sort": 60, "edition_urn": "phi1017.phi009.perseus-lat2", "ref": "449-472; 516-530", "conventional_ref": "[Sen.] HO 449-472, 516-530", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "tunc verba moriens addit: 'hoc' inquit 'magae / dixere amorem posse defigi malo; / hoc docta Mycale Thessalas docuit nurus,", "translation": "Then, dying, he added: 'Witches have said love can be pinned fast by this evil; learned Mycale taught it to the Thessalian women,'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Deianira's Nurse offers love-binding magic, claiming she has made woods bloom in winter, stopped lightning and made the dead speak. Deianira says no chant can bend Hercules. Instead she relies on the 'charm' the dying centaur Nessus gave her: his blood, poisoned by the Hydra's venom, to smear on clothing. The supposed love-binder is a lethal contact poison, the classic case of love magic turning out to be poisoning.", "claimed_effect": "Recover a straying husband's love", "claimed_mechanism": "Smearing the centaur's blood on a robe", "practitioner": "Nurse; Thessalian witch Mycale (cited); Deianira", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-53", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Phaedra", "author": "Seneca the Younger", "culture": "Roman (Neronian tragedy)", "language": "", "date": "c. 50-62 CE", "date_sort": 55, "edition_urn": "phi1017.phi005.perseus-lat2", "ref": "785-794", "conventional_ref": "Sen. Phaedr. 785-794 (cf. 406-423)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "et nuper rubuit, nullaque lucidis / nubes sordidior vultibus obstitit: / at nos solliciti numine turbido, / tractari! Thessalicis carminibus rati, / tinnitus dedimus:", "translation": "And lately she blushed red, though no dark cloud stood in front of her bright face; and we, anxious at the troubled goddess, believing she was being dragged by Thessalian spells, raised a ringing din:", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Chorus recalls a recent red-faced moon on a cloudless night, a lunar eclipse. People rang bronzes believing Thessalian spells were dragging her down, but really she had lingered to gaze at Hippolytus. The passage shows both the popular eclipse ritual and the witch explanation, which the poet playfully replaces with an erotic one. Compare the Nurse's prayer to triform Hecate (406-423) that Thessalian chants may never pull her down.", "claimed_effect": "Witches pull down the moon (popular belief reported)", "claimed_mechanism": "Thessalian chant; bronze noise as counter-measure", "practitioner": "Thessalian witches (imagined); the crowd", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-54", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Bellum Civile (Pharsalia)", "author": "Lucan", "culture": "Roman (Neronian epic), Thessalian witchcraft", "language": "", "date": "c. 62-65 CE", "date_sort": 63, "edition_urn": "phi0917.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "6.430-6.509", "conventional_ref": "Luc. 6.430-509", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "love", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "Quis labor hic superis, cantus herbasque sequendi, / Spernendique timor? cuius commercia pacti / Obstrictos habuere deos? Parere necesse est, / An iuvat?", "translation": "What burden is it for the gods above to follow chants and herbs, and to fear spurning them? What exchange, what pact, has kept the gods bound? Must they obey, or do they like to?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Lucan catalogues the powers of the Thessalian witches (Haemonides). Their herbs grow from rocks that 'feel' the singing magi, and their voices force unwilling gods; one Thessalian spell outdoes all the secrets of Babylon and Memphis. They cause love without fate, kill minds without poison, and bind with the magic spin of twisted thread. They suspend day and night, reverse rivers and tilt the earth, and beasts fear and serve them. He then asks the theoretical question: is it a pact, unknown piety, threats, or a supreme god who compels the gods? He likens the drawing-down of the moon to an eclipse in Earth's shadow, until she 'froths' onto the herbs below (lunar virus).", "claimed_effect": "Compelling gods; cosmic disorder; love and mind-killing", "claimed_mechanism": "Compulsion by voice, possibly backed by a pact, threats, or a supreme compelling god; moon-froth as an ingredient", "practitioner": "Thessalian witches", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-55", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Bellum Civile (Pharsalia)", "author": "Lucan", "culture": "Roman (Neronian epic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 62-65 CE", "date_sort": 63, "edition_urn": "phi0917.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "6.507-6.569", "conventional_ref": "Luc. 6.507-569", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Nec superos orat, nec cantu supplice numen / Auxiliare vocat, nec fibras illa litantes / Novit: funereas aris imponere flammas / Gaudet,", "translation": "She does not pray to the gods above, nor call on a helping power with suppliant chant, nor know the entrails of an accepted sacrifice: she delights in setting funeral fire on altars,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Erichtho rejects even Thessalian rites as too pious. She lives in tombs, blasts crops with her breath, and the gods grant her every wish at her first word, fearing a second spell. She buries the living, steals corpses from pyres and crosses, gnaws the dead, cuts unborn children from the womb, takes hair from dying youths, and bites the tongues of the dead to send messages below. She is defined as the inversion of Roman religion: no prayer, no proper sacrifice.", "claimed_effect": "Total power over the dead and gods", "claimed_mechanism": "Pollution, corpse-materials, inverted ritual", "practitioner": "Erichtho", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-56", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Bellum Civile (Pharsalia)", "author": "Lucan", "culture": "Roman (Neronian epic, Stoic background)", "language": "", "date": "c. 62-65 CE", "date_sort": 63, "edition_urn": "phi0917.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "6.589-6.623", "conventional_ref": "Luc. 6.589-623", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Conceditur arti, / Unam cum radiis presserunt sidera mortem, / Inseruisse moras: et, quamvis fecerit omnis / Stella senem, medios herbis abrumpimus annos.", "translation": "Our art is allowed, when the stars' rays have pressed on a single death, to insert delays; and though every star has made a man old, we cut off his middle years with herbs.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Sextus Pompey, scorning the true oracles, asks Erichtho to reveal how the war will end. She explains the limits of magic. It can delay or hasten a single person's death against the stars, but when the whole chain of causes running from the world's origin is at stake, 'fortune is stronger'. Foreknowledge is easy, though. She picks a fresh corpse whose lungs are uninjured, so that the voice will be full rather than a faint shriek.", "claimed_effect": "Prophecy; altering individual lifespans", "claimed_mechanism": "Magic works within Stoic fate; a fresh corpse with intact lungs gives the dead a clear voice", "practitioner": "Erichtho (for Sextus Pompey)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "An aristocrat consulting illicit magic rather than state oracles.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-57", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Bellum Civile (Pharsalia)", "author": "Lucan", "culture": "Roman (Neronian epic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 62-65 CE", "date_sort": 63, "edition_urn": "phi0917.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "6.667-6.830", "conventional_ref": "Luc. 6.667-830", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Protinus adstrictus caluit cruor, atraque fovit / Vulnera, et in venas extremaque membra cucurrit. / Percussae gelido trepidant sub pectore fibrae:", "translation": "At once the congealed blood grew warm, nourished the black wounds, and ran into the veins and the farthest limbs. Struck, the organs quiver in the cold chest:", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Erichtho fills the corpse with hot blood and plenty of 'lunar virus', along with rabid dogs' foam, lynx entrails, hyena, the remora, dragon eyes and phoenix ash. Her voice imitates every animal and natural sound. She invokes the underworld powers and threatens to call them by their true names, to expose Hecate's real face, and to summon the nameless supreme god (6.732-749). The soul resists, and she lashes the body with a live snake. The corpse revives and prophesies Pompey's ruin. Afterwards spells and herbs are needed to let it die again (6.822-823).", "claimed_effect": "Temporary resurrection of a corpse to prophesy", "claimed_mechanism": "Ingredients of 'unnatural' creatures, true names, threats against the gods", "practitioner": "Erichtho", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-58", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Bellum Civile (Pharsalia)", "author": "Lucan", "culture": "Roman, about the Libyan Psylli", "language": "", "date": "c. 62-65 CE", "date_sort": 64, "edition_urn": "phi0917.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "9.890-9.937", "conventional_ref": "Luc. 9.890-937", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Nam primum tacta designat membra saliva, / Quae cohibet virus, retinetque in vulnere pestem. / Plurima tum volvit spumanti carmina lingua / Murmure continuo,", "translation": "For first he marks the limbs with touched-on saliva, which checks the venom and keeps the poison in the wound. Then he rolls out many spells with foaming tongue in an unbroken murmur,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the Libyan desert, Cato's army meets the Psylli (Marmaridae), a people naturally immune to snakebite. They test newborns' legitimacy by exposing them to asps. They guard the camp by chanting the sand clear and ringing it with medicinal fires of elder, galbanum, tamarisk, costus, panacea, centaury, peucedanum, larch and southernwood. They treat bites with saliva, then chant, and finally by sucking and spitting out the venom; they can tell the snake by tasting the poison. Lucan calls this the 'miracles of the magic people', yet most of the procedure is practical medicine.", "claimed_effect": "Repelling snakes; curing envenomation", "claimed_mechanism": "Inborn immunity; saliva; chant; aromatic fumigation; suction", "practitioner": "Psylli", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Ethnographic marvel; hired by a Roman army.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-59", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Satyricon", "author": "Petronius", "culture": "Roman (Neronian satire), freedmen's folklore", "language": "", "date": "c. 60s CE", "date_sort": 64, "edition_urn": "phi0972.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "62.ab1", "conventional_ref": "Petron. Sat. 62", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "At ille circumminxit vestimenta sua, et subito lupus factus est. Nolite me iocari putare; ut mentiar, nullius patrimonium tanti facio.", "translation": "But he pissed in a circle round his clothes and suddenly became a wolf. Don't think I'm joking; I wouldn't lie for anyone's fortune.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Niceros tells his story at Trimalchio's dinner. At cock-crow, under a moon bright as noon, his soldier companion stops among the roadside tombs, strips, urinates in a circle round his clothes, becomes a wolf and runs off howling; the clothes turn to stone. A wolf slaughters the sheep at his girlfriend Melissa's villa and is speared in the neck by a slave. Next day the soldier lies in bed with a doctor treating his neck: 'I realised he was a versipellis.' This is the first full Latin werewolf story, told as true inside a satire on credulous freedmen.", "claimed_effect": "Shape-shifting into a wolf", "claimed_mechanism": "Stripping, urinating in a circle (boundary), moonlit tombs", "practitioner": "soldier (versipellis)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-60", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Satyricon", "author": "Petronius", "culture": "Roman (Neronian satire), freedmen's folklore", "language": "", "date": "c. 60s CE", "date_sort": 64, "edition_urn": "phi0972.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "63.ab1", "conventional_ref": "Petron. Sat. 63", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other", "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "Rogo vos, oportet credatis, sunt mulieres plussciae, sunt nocturnae, et quod sursum est, deorsum faciunt.", "translation": "I beg you, you have to believe it: there are women who know more, there are night-women, and they turn what is up into down.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Trimalchio's story: during the wake for his master's favourite boy, strigae start screeching. A huge Cappadocian rushes out with a sword and stabs one through the middle; they hear a groan but see nothing. He comes back bruised all over 'as if flogged', because an evil hand touched him. The mother finds that the boy's body has been replaced by a straw dummy with no heart or guts. The Cappadocian never got his colour back and died raving a few days later. The emic terms are plussciae ('women who know more') and nocturnae.", "claimed_effect": "Stealing corpses' organs; harming by touch", "claimed_mechanism": "Invisible night-women; substitution of a straw dummy", "practitioner": "strigae", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-61", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Satyricon", "author": "Petronius", "culture": "Roman (Neronian satire)", "language": "", "date": "c. 60s CE", "date_sort": 64, "edition_urn": "phi0972.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "131.ab1", "conventional_ref": "Petron. Sat. 131", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "Illa de sinu licium protulit varii coloris filis intortum cervicemque vinxit meam. Mox turbatum sputo pulverem medio sustulit digito frontemque repugnantis signavit.", "translation": "She drew from her bosom a cord twisted from threads of different colours and tied it round my neck. Then she picked up dust mixed with spittle on her middle finger and marked my forehead, though I resisted.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Chrysis brings an old woman to cure Encolpius' impotence. She ties a multicoloured thread round his neck, marks his forehead with spit and dust, chants, has him spit three times, and drops three enchanted pebbles wrapped in purple into his lap. Then she tests him with her hands and he responds at once, to her triumph. A folk healing rite for impotence succeeds through touch and suggestion.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of impotence", "claimed_mechanism": "Coloured thread, spittle, three-fold spitting, charmed pebbles, chant, touch", "practitioner": "old woman (anicula)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-62", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Satyricon", "author": "Petronius", "culture": "Roman (Neronian satire), priestess of Priapus", "language": "", "date": "c. 60s CE", "date_sort": 64, "edition_urn": "phi0972.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "134.1-134.17", "conventional_ref": "Petron. Sat. 134", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "healing", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Quid leviora loquor? Lunae descendit imago / carminibus deducta meis, trepidusque furentes / flectere Phoebus equos revoluto cogitur orbe. / Tantum dicta valent.", "translation": "Why speak of smaller things? The Moon's image comes down, drawn by my spells, and Phoebus in alarm is forced to turn his raging horses back on a reversed course. Such is the power of words.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Proselenos first asks Encolpius 'what striges have eaten your sinews?' (134.ab1). Oenothea, priestess of Priapus, then boasts in verse that all nature obeys her (earth, sea, winds, rivers, tigers, dragons, moon and sun) and promises to make him 'as stiff as horn'. It parodies the stock list of powers from Ovid's Medea, put in the mouth of a drunken old priestess.", "claimed_effect": "Cosmic control; curing impotence", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Oenothea and Proselenos", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-63", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Satyricon", "author": "Petronius", "culture": "Roman (Neronian satire)", "language": "", "date": "c. 60s CE", "date_sort": 64, "edition_urn": "phi0972.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "138.ab1", "conventional_ref": "Petron. Sat. 138", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Profert Oenothea scorteum fascinum, quod ut oleo et minuto pipere atque urticae trito circumdedit semine, paulatim coepit inserere ano meo", "translation": "Oenothea brought out a leather phallus, smeared it with oil, ground pepper and crushed nettle seed, and slowly began to push it into my anus", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Oenothea's physical cure for impotence: a leather fascinum coated with oil, pepper and nettle seed is inserted into the anus; his thighs are sprinkled; cress juice mixed with southernwood is poured over his genitals; and she beats him below the navel with a bunch of green nettles. Unlike the chant-cures, these are real irritant and warming substances, close to those in ancient medical books.", "claimed_effect": "Restoring potency", "claimed_mechanism": "Irritants and stimulants (pepper, nettle, cress), flogging with nettles", "practitioner": "Oenothea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-64", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Saturae", "author": "Persius", "culture": "Roman (Neronian Stoic satire), household women", "language": "", "date": "c. 60 CE", "date_sort": 60, "edition_urn": "phi0969.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.31-2.40", "conventional_ref": "Pers. 2.31-40", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Ecce avia aut metuens divum matertera cunis / exemit puerum, frontemque atque uda labella / infami digito et lustralibus ante salivis / expiat, urentis oculos inhibere petita;", "translation": "Look: a grandmother or a god-fearing aunt has lifted the boy from his cradle and purifies his forehead and wet little lips with the infamous finger and cleansing spittle, expert at warding off burning eyes;", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Women of the family protect a baby against the evil eye by dabbing spittle on him with the middle finger, then pray that he will be rich, sought after by kings' daughters, with roses springing up wherever he steps. Persius contrasts such greedy wishes with honest prayer. It is a real everyday protective practice carried out by female relatives.", "claimed_effect": "Protecting an infant from the evil eye", "claimed_mechanism": "Purifying saliva and the middle finger", "practitioner": "grandmother or aunt", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-65", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Saturae", "author": "Persius", "culture": "Roman (Neronian), foreign cults in Rome", "language": "", "date": "c. 60 CE", "date_sort": 60, "edition_urn": "phi0969.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "5.179-5.188", "conventional_ref": "Pers. 5.179-188", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "tum nigri lemures ovoque pericula rupto, / tum grandes galli et cum sistro lusca sacerdos / incussere deos inflantis corpora, si non / praedictum ter mane caput gustaveris alii.", "translation": "then black ghosts and the dangers of a broken egg, then the huge Galli and a one-eyed priestess with her rattle have struck into you gods who swell up bodies, unless you've eaten the prescribed head of garlic three times in the morning.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Persius lists superstitions that enslave the mind: Herod's day with its lamps and the Jewish sabbath, black lemures, omens from a broken egg, and the eunuch priests of Cybele and a one-eyed Isis priestess who threaten that gods will swell your body with dropsy unless you eat garlic three times at dawn. Foreign cult staff are shown selling fear and its remedies.", "claimed_effect": "Avoiding divine punishment by dropsy", "claimed_mechanism": "Garlic eaten three times; avoiding ill omens", "practitioner": "Galli, Isiac priestess", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-66", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Argonautica", "author": "Valerius Flaccus", "culture": "Roman (Flavian epic), Thessalian necromancer", "language": "", "date": "c. 70-80 CE", "date_sort": 75, "edition_urn": "phi1035.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.730-1.818", "conventional_ref": "Val. Fl. 1.730-818", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "in scrobibus cruor et largus Phlegethontis aperti / stagnat honos, saevoque vocat grandaeva tumultu / Thessalis exanimes atavos magnaeque nepotem / Pleiones.", "translation": "Blood pools in the pits, a lavish tribute to opened Phlegethon, and an aged Thessalian woman calls up with savage clamour the lifeless ancestors and the grandson of great Pleione.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Fearing Pelias, Jason's parents Aeson and Alcimede consult the dead. An aged Thessalian necromancer raises Aeson's father Cretheus, who foretells Jason's success and advises them to die. She had kept a doomed bull for her own later rites, and the couple then die drinking its blood (1.816-818). A respectable royal family uses a hired Thessalian witch.", "claimed_effect": "Raising an ancestor for prophecy", "claimed_mechanism": "Blood in pits, clamorous incantation", "practitioner": "Thessalian woman", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-67", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Argonautica", "author": "Valerius Flaccus", "culture": "Roman (Flavian epic), Colchian Medea", "language": "", "date": "c. 80-90 CE", "date_sort": 85, "edition_urn": "phi1035.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "7.353-7.370", "conventional_ref": "Val. Fl. 7.353-370", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "cingitur inde sinus et, qua sibi fida magis vis / nulla, Prometheae florem de sanguine fibrae / Caucaseum promit nutritaque gramina poenis,", "translation": "Then she girds her lap and brings out the power she trusts above all others: the Caucasian flower from the blood of Prometheus' liver, a herb nourished by his torments,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Medea prepares the drug that will make Jason proof against the fire-breathing bulls: the undying flower that grows where Prometheus' blood drips, which resists lightning and blooms in flames. Hecate first cut it with a Stygian sickle and showed it to her servant. It is an invulnerability drug with a mythic botany, the counterpart of Apollonius' Prometheion; any identification with a real Colchian plant is speculative.", "claimed_effect": "Invulnerability to fire", "claimed_mechanism": "A plant born of a Titan's blood; harvesting taught by Hecate", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-68", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Punica", "author": "Silius Italicus", "culture": "Roman (Flavian epic), Carthaginian state ritual", "language": "", "date": "c. 85-100 CE", "date_sort": 92, "edition_urn": "phi1345.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.90-1.98", "conventional_ref": "Sil. 1.90-98", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "immugit tellus rumpitque horrenda per umbras / sibila; inaccensi flagrant altaribus ignes. / tum magico uolitant cantu per inania manes / exciti, uultusque in marmore sudat Elissae.", "translation": "The earth bellows and bursts out in horrid hissing through the shadows; unlit fires blaze on the altars. Then, roused by the magic chant, shades flit through the void, and Elissa's face sweats in the marble.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In Dido's shrine at Carthage a priestess, hair loose and in Stygian robes, calls on Hecate and Acheron at a hundred altars. Fires light themselves, ghosts appear, and Dido's statue sweats. Then the boy Hannibal swears eternal hatred of Rome. Magic is presented as Carthaginian state ritual, a sign of un-Roman religion.", "claimed_effect": "Summoning the dead; self-kindling fire; sweating statue", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Carthaginian priestess", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-69", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Punica", "author": "Silius Italicus", "culture": "Roman (Flavian epic), Libyan healer", "language": "", "date": "c. 85-100 CE", "date_sort": 92, "edition_urn": "phi1345.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "5.352-5.356", "conventional_ref": "Sil. 5.352-356 (cf. 3.300-302)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "unguere uulnus / herbarum hic sucis ferrumque e corpore cantu / exigere et somnum tacto misisse chelydro / anteibat cunctos,", "translation": "he surpassed everyone at anointing a wound with juices of herbs, drawing iron out of the body by chant, and sending sleep on the water-snake with a touch,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The old Libyan Synhalus, famous along the Syrtes and taught by a line going back to Ammon, treats Mago's battle wound with herbal salves and a chant to extract the iron. It is battlefield surgery wrapped in incantation, as with the charm over Odysseus' wound in Homer. Silius also has the Marmaridae, 'a healing people', charming snakes (3.300-302, opened).", "claimed_effect": "Healing wounds; extracting weapons; calming snakes", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbal juices, chant, touch", "practitioner": "Synhalus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-70", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Punica", "author": "Silius Italicus", "culture": "Roman (Flavian epic), rewriting Aeneid 4", "language": "", "date": "c. 85-100 CE", "date_sort": 92, "edition_urn": "phi1345.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "8.96-8.103", "conventional_ref": "Sil. 8.96-103", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "heu sacri uatum errores! dum numina noctis / eliciunt spondentque nouis medicamina curis, / quod uidi decepta nefas!", "translation": "Alas for the hallowed errors of seers! While they lure out the powers of the night and promise remedies for new cares, what horror I saw, deceived!", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Dido's sister Anna recalls how the 'deceitful and wicked fickleness of the Massylian people' drove Dido to magic arts, and how the priestess's promise of remedies fooled her while Dido piled Aeneas' things on the pyre. Silius re-reads Virgil's rite in Aeneid 4 as the error and deceit of priests.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Massylian priestess", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Foreign priesthood blamed for deceit.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-71", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Punica", "author": "Silius Italicus", "culture": "Roman (Flavian epic), Cumae", "language": "", "date": "c. 85-100 CE", "date_sort": 95, "edition_urn": "phi1345.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "13.395-13.434", "conventional_ref": "Sil. 13.395-434", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "‘Mactare repostis / mos umbris’ inquit ‘consueta piacula nigras / sub lucem pecudes reclusaeque abdere terrae / manantem iugulis spirantum caede cruorem.", "translation": "'The custom for the buried shades,' she said, 'is to slaughter black beasts as the usual offerings before dawn, and to hide in the opened earth the blood streaming from the throats of the still-breathing victims.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Scipio, grieving for his father and uncle, consults the Cumaean priestess Autonoe at Lake Avernus to call up the dead and learn the future. She prescribes the rite (black victims at the cave mouth, blood in a pit, honey and wine) and promises to summon the shade of the old Sibyl. A Roman general carries out necromancy as a pious consultation.", "claimed_effect": "Speaking with dead relatives; prophecy", "claimed_mechanism": "Chthonic sacrifice at an entrance to the underworld", "practitioner": "Autonoe, priestess; Scipio", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-72", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Thebaid", "author": "Statius", "culture": "Roman (Flavian epic), Theban seer", "language": "", "date": "c. 91 CE", "date_sort": 91, "edition_urn": "phi1020.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "4.406-4.519", "conventional_ref": "Stat. Theb. 4.406-519", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ille deos non larga caede iuvencum, / non alacri pinna aut verum salientibus extis, / nec tripode implicito numerisque sequentibus astra, / turea nec supra volitante altaria fumo / tam penitus,", "translation": "never so deeply, he says, had he read the gods: not by lavish slaughter of bullocks, nor by the darting wing, nor by entrails leaping with truth, nor by the riddling tripod and the numbers that track the stars, nor by incense smoke rising over altars,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Eteocles consults Tiresias, who ranks necromancy above haruspicy, augury, Delphi, astrology and incense: nothing reveals as much as shades called up from the border of death. Manto assists with black victims, a pit, nine libations, and altars to Hecate and the Furies. When the dead are slow to come he threatens them: do you obey a Thessalian chant or a Colchian poison more than me? I too could disturb Hecate and invoke the one it is forbidden to know, but my quiet old age holds me back (4.500-518).", "claimed_effect": "Prophecy from the dead", "claimed_mechanism": "Chthonic sacrifice; threats; hierarchy of divination methods", "practitioner": "Tiresias and Manto", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "A royal consultation; the legitimate seer measures himself against witches.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-73", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Thebaid", "author": "Statius", "culture": "Roman (Flavian epic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 91 CE", "date_sort": 91, "edition_urn": "phi1020.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "6.684-6.688", "conventional_ref": "Stat. Theb. 6.685-688", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "sic cadit, attonitis quotiens avellitur astris, / Solis opaca soror; procul auxiliantia gentes / aera crepant frustraque timent, at Thessala victrix / ridet anhelantes audito carmine bigas.", "translation": "So falls the Sun's darkened sister whenever she is torn from the stunned stars: far off the nations clash their helping bronzes and fear in vain, while the victorious Thessalian woman laughs at the team panting at the sound of her spell.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A simile in the discus contest presents an eclipse as a witch's victory over the moon, with peoples vainly banging bronze to help her. It places the popular ritual and the witch explanation side by side.", "claimed_effect": "Witch causes eclipse", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Thessalian witch", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-74", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Thebaid", "author": "Statius", "culture": "Roman (Flavian epic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 91 CE", "date_sort": 91, "edition_urn": "phi1020.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "9.730-9.735", "conventional_ref": "Stat. Theb. 9.730-735", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "cantusque sacros et conscia miscet / murmura, secretis quae Colchidas ipsa sub antris / nocte docet monstratque feras quaerentibus herbas.", "translation": "and she mingles holy chants and knowing murmurs, which she herself teaches the Colchian women by night in secret caves, showing them the wild herbs they seek.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Diana, protecting Parthenopaeus, sprinkles him and his horse with ambrosia and adds the spells she herself teaches Colchian women. A goddess is the source and teacher of herbal magic, so here magic comes from the divine Diana or Hecate, not from demons.", "claimed_effect": "Protection in battle", "claimed_mechanism": "Ambrosia, sacred chants", "practitioner": "Diana (divine teacher); Colchian women", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-75", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Epigrammata", "author": "Martial", "culture": "Roman (Flavian and Trajanic city life)", "language": "", "date": "c. 101 CE", "date_sort": 101, "edition_urn": "phi1294.phi002.perseus-lat2", "ref": "12.57.15-12.57.17", "conventional_ref": "Mart. 12.57.15-17 (cf. 9.29.9)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Dicet quot aera verberent manus urbis, / Cum secta Colcho Luna vapulat rhombo.", "translation": "He could say how many hands in the city beat bronzes when the Moon, cut by the Colchian rhombus, is being thrashed.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Among the noises that ruin sleep in Rome is the citywide din during a lunar eclipse, when everyone bangs bronze because the moon is supposedly under attack from a Colchian magic wheel. This shows the eclipse ritual as a mass urban practice around 100 CE. Martial 9.29.9 (opened) praises the dead bawd Philaenis as one who knew how 'to draw down the moon with a Thessalian rhombus'.", "claimed_effect": "Witches attack the moon; noise defends it", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "the whole city", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-76", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Epigrammata", "author": "Martial", "culture": "Roman (Flavian)", "language": "", "date": "c. 92 CE", "date_sort": 92, "edition_urn": "phi1294.phi002.perseus-lat2", "ref": "7.54.1-7.54.8", "conventional_ref": "Mart. 7.54 (cf. 11.49.8)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Exorat noctes dum mihi saga tuas; / Consumpsi salsasque molas et turis acervos; / Decrevere greges, dum cadit agna frequens;", "translation": "While a wise-woman pleads away your nights on my behalf, I have used up the salted meal and heaps of incense; my flocks have shrunk, with lamb after lamb falling;", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Nasidianus tells Martial his ominous dreams about him every morning, and Martial has bankrupted himself paying a saga to expiate them with meal, incense, lambs, a pig, chickens and eggs. Expiating dreams is a paid household service. Compare 11.49.8: 'so that a chattering saga may expiate your dreams'.", "claimed_effect": "Averting the dangers foretold by dreams", "claimed_mechanism": "Expiatory offerings by a saga", "practitioner": "saga", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-77", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Saturae", "author": "Juvenal", "culture": "Roman (Trajanic and Hadrianic satire), cosmopolitan", "language": "", "date": "c. 115 CE", "date_sort": 115, "edition_urn": "phi1276.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.6.542-2.6.591", "conventional_ref": "Juv. 6.542-591", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Chaldaeis set maior erit fiducia: quidquid / dixerit astrologus, credent a fonte relatum / Hammonis, quoniam Delphis oracula cessant", "translation": "But the Chaldaeans will have greater credit: whatever an astrologer says, they'll believe it fetched from Ammon's spring, since the oracles at Delphi have fallen silent", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Juvenal surveys the divination market for women. A Jewish woman sells dream interpretations for small change. An Armenian or Commagenian haruspex reads a dove's lung or the entrails of chickens, puppies, even a child, and will then inform on his client himself. Chaldaean astrologers gain credit the more often they have been exiled or nearly executed. Rich women will not go out or take eye-salve without consulting ephemerides and Petosiris. The poor use circus fortune-tellers, lots, palmistry and the lightning-burier. The passage shows the divination trade divided by class and the legal risk around it.", "claimed_effect": "Predictions of love, inheritance, deaths and timing", "claimed_mechanism": "Horoscopes, entrails, lots, palms, dreams", "practitioner": "Chaldaeans, haruspices, Jewish dream-seller, augurs, sagae", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Astrologers repeatedly expelled or prosecuted; consultation about the emperor or a husband's death is criminal.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-78", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Saturae", "author": "Juvenal", "culture": "Roman (Trajanic and Hadrianic satire)", "language": "", "date": "c. 115 CE", "date_sort": 115, "edition_urn": "phi1276.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.6.592-2.6.626", "conventional_ref": "Juv. 6.592-626", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "Hic magicos adfert cantus, hic Thessala vendit / philtra, quibus valeat mentem vexare mariti / et solea pulsare natis:", "translation": "This one brings magic chants, that one sells Thessalian philtres, so that she can derange her husband's mind and whack his backside with her slipper:", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Rich women hardly ever give birth, thanks to sterilising and abortifacient drugs, and the husband should be glad. Love philtres explain his stupor and memory loss. Caesonia poured the whole growth from a foal's forehead (hippomanes) into Caligula, who went mad and set everything ablaze, a worse crime than Agrippina's mushroom, which killed only Claudius. Juvenal treats magic as pharmacology and poisoning with political consequences.", "claimed_effect": "Control of husbands; madness; sterility; abortion", "claimed_mechanism": "Drugs and philtres", "practitioner": "wives, potion-sellers, venefica", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Echoes Roman law on venena and amatoria; imperial scandal.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-79", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Saturae", "author": "Juvenal", "culture": "Roman, about Egypt", "language": "", "date": "c. 127 CE", "date_sort": 127, "edition_urn": "phi1276.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "5.15.1-5.15.8", "conventional_ref": "Juv. 15.1-8", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "effigies sacri nitet aurea cercopitheci, / dimidio magicae resonant ubi Memnone chordae / atque vetus Thebe centum iacet obruta portis,", "translation": "the golden image of a sacred long-tailed monkey gleams where magic strings resound from half-broken Memnon, and ancient Thebes lies in ruins with its hundred gates,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Attacking Egyptian animal worship, Juvenal mentions the 'magic' sound of the broken colossus of Memnon at Thebes, which sang at dawn until it was restored around 200 CE. A natural acoustic effect is labelled as magic.", "claimed_effect": "Singing statue", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "none", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-80", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Parentalia", "author": "Ausonius", "culture": "Gallo-Roman (4th c., Christian era)", "language": "", "date": "c. 380 CE", "date_sort": 380, "edition_urn": "stoa0045.stoa022.perseus-lat2", "ref": "4.13-4.22", "conventional_ref": "Auson. Parent. 4.13-22", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "tu caeli numeros et conscia sidera fati / callebas studium dissimulanter agens, / non ignota tibi nostrae quoque formula vitae, / signatis quam tu condideras tabulis,", "translation": "You were skilled in the numbers of heaven and the stars that know fate, pursuing the study in secret; nor was the pattern of my own life unknown to you, which you had laid away in sealed tablets,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ausonius' maternal grandfather Arborius, an Aeduan noble ruined and exiled, practised astrology in secret. He cast his grandson's horoscope and sealed it away; it was never revealed until Ausonius' mother found it. In the fourth century a respected family still practises astrology but hides it, because it is legally risky.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of a child's career", "claimed_mechanism": "Natal astrology", "practitioner": "Caecilius Argicius Arborius", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Imperial laws against mathematici; secrecy inside the family.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-81", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Epigrammata", "author": "Ausonius", "culture": "Gallo-Roman (4th c.)", "language": "", "date": "c. 380 CE", "date_sort": 380, "edition_urn": "stoa0045.stoa010.perseus-lat2", "ref": "80.head-80.6", "conventional_ref": "Auson. Epigr. 80 (Peiper numbering)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "LANGUENTI Marco dixit Diodorus haruspex / ad vitam non plus sex superesse dies. / sed medicus divis fatisque potentior Alcon / falsum convicit illico haruspicium", "translation": "When Marcus lay ill, Diodorus the haruspex said he had no more than six days left to live. But Alcon the doctor, mightier than gods and fates, at once proved the haruspicy false", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The punchline: Alcon took his pulse, and Marcus, who would otherwise have lived, died on the spot, so the six days vanished. A joke that deflates both the haruspex's prediction and the doctor.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Diodorus the haruspex; Alcon the doctor", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-82", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Mosella", "author": "Ausonius", "culture": "Gallo-Roman (4th c.), Greek technical legend", "language": "", "date": "c. 371 CE", "date_sort": 371, "edition_urn": "stoa0045.stoa019.perseus-lat2", "ref": "pr.305-pr.317", "conventional_ref": "Auson. Mos. 305-317", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Ictinus, magico cui noctua perlita fuco / adlicit omne genus volucres perimitque tuendo.", "translation": "Ictinus, whose owl, coated with a magic dye, lures every kind of bird and kills them with its gaze.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a list of legendary architects, Ausonius recalls Ictinus' owl on the Acropolis, painted with a magical pigment that attracts birds and kills them by its gaze. He also recalls Dinochares, who suspended a statue of Arsinoe in mid-air in her Egyptian temple by means of a magnetic stone in the vault pulling on her iron hair. Engineering marvels are told as near-magic.", "claimed_effect": "Bird-killing image; levitating statue", "claimed_mechanism": "Magic pigment; magnetism", "practitioner": "Ictinus, Dinochares", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-83", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Technopaegnion", "author": "Ausonius", "culture": "Gallo-Roman (4th c.)", "language": "", "date": "c. 380 CE", "date_sort": 380, "edition_urn": "stoa0045.stoa028.perseus-lat2", "ref": "10.26", "conventional_ref": "Auson. Technop. (de historiis) last line; PL text tmp349 21.12.119", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "nota Caledoniis nuribus muliebre secus Strix,", "translation": "known to Caledonian brides, the female kind: Strix,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a game-poem whose lines end in monosyllables, the strix is defined as female and 'known to Caledonian brides'. The Patrologia edition (tmp349) reads instead 'Nota et parvorum cunis muliebre secus Strix', 'known to the cradles of little ones'. The two editions disagree, a textual crux for the strix's link with infants.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "strix", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-84", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Panegyricus de sexto consulatu Honorii", "author": "Claudian", "culture": "Roman (late 4th and early 5th c. court poetry under a Christian emperor)", "language": "", "date": "404 CE", "date_sort": 404, "edition_urn": "stoa0089.stoa012.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.340-1.350", "conventional_ref": "Claud. VI Cons. Hon. 340-350", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "pugna fuit: Chaldaea mago seu carmina ritu / armavere deos, seu, quod reor, omne Tonantis / obsequium Marci mores potuere mereri.", "translation": "the battle was fought in the sky: whether Chaldaean spells, by a magus's rite, armed the gods, or, as I believe, Marcus' character was able to earn the Thunderer's full obedience.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The 'rain miracle' of Marcus Aurelius' war against the Quadi (c. 172 CE): fiery rain and lightning melted the enemy's helmets and swords. Claudian weighs the claim that a Chaldaean magus caused it (Cassius Dio credits the Egyptian Arnuphis; Christians credited the Thundering Legion) against the emperor's virtue, and prefers virtue. A court poet under the Christian emperor Honorius keeps the pagan alternatives open.", "claimed_effect": "Storm and lightning destroying an enemy army", "claimed_mechanism": "Magus's rite arming the gods, or divine favour earned by virtue", "practitioner": "Chaldaean magus (alleged)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-85", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Carmina (Panegyric of Majorian)", "author": "Sidonius Apollinaris", "culture": "Gallo-Roman (5th c.)", "language": "", "date": "458 CE", "date_sort": 458, "edition_urn": "stoa0261.stoa0001.perseus-lat1", "ref": "5.259-5.263", "conventional_ref": "Sidon. Carm. 5.259-263", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "certe recto si tramite servat / sidera Chaldaeus, novit si gramina Colchus, / fulgura si Tuscus, si Thessalus elicit umbras, / si Lyciae sortes sapiunt,", "translation": "Surely, if the Chaldaean watches the stars on a true path, if the Colchian knows herbs, the Tuscan lightning, if the Thessalian draws out shades, if the Lycian lots are wise,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a panegyric, a conditional catalogue gives each people its occult specialty: Chaldaean astrology, Colchian herbs, Etruscan lightning lore, Thessalian necromancy, Lycian lots, augury, Ammon's oracle. All supposedly foretell Majorian's triumph. The ethnic map of magic is still a live rhetorical commonplace in Christian Gaul.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "stock ethnic specialists", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-86", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Contra Symmachum", "author": "Prudentius", "culture": "Roman Christian (early 5th c.)", "language": "", "date": "402-403 CE", "date_sort": 402, "edition_urn": "stoa0238.stoa007.perseus-lat2", "ref": "1.1.89-1.1.101", "conventional_ref": "Prud. C. Symm. 1.89-101", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "necnon Thessalicae doctissimus ille magiae / traditur extinctas sumptae moderamine virgae / in lucem revocasse animas,", "translation": "And that master of Thessalian magic, too, is said to have called extinguished souls back to the light by guiding them with the staff he had taken up,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Mercury, Hermes the guide of souls with his caduceus, is recast as a human necromancer and murderer whom simple-minded antiquity worshipped as a god, pretending he flew through the clouds on winged feet. On this view pagan gods began as magicians. Christian polemic turns myth into a criminal biography.", "claimed_effect": "Raising and killing souls", "claimed_mechanism": "Magic staff, murmured spells", "practitioner": "Mercury (euhemerised)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-87", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Contra Symmachum", "author": "Prudentius", "culture": "Roman Christian (early 5th c.)", "language": "", "date": "402-403 CE", "date_sort": 402, "edition_urn": "stoa0238.stoa007.perseus-lat2", "ref": "2.1.887-2.1.895", "conventional_ref": "Prud. C. Symm. 2.887-895", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "inlicit et volucrum linguis et haruspice fallit, / instigat bacchantis anus ambage Sibyllae, / involvit mathesi, magicas inpellit in artes,", "translation": "He entices with the tongues of birds and deceives through the haruspex, goads on with the riddling of the raving old Sibyl, entangles in astrology, and drives into the magic arts,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At life's crossroads a demon leader leads souls astray through augury, haruspicy, Sibylline oracles, astrology (mathesis), magic and omens. The whole range of Roman divination is lumped together with magic as demonic deception.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Demonic deception", "practitioner": "demon (daemon)", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-88", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Apotheosis", "author": "Prudentius", "culture": "Roman Christian (c. 400), about the pagan emperor Julian", "language": "", "date": "c. 400 CE", "date_sort": 400, "edition_urn": "stoa0238.stoa005.perseus-lat2", "ref": "3.449-3.502", "conventional_ref": "Prud. Apoth. 449-502", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "theurgy", "divination", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "nil agit arcanum murmur, nil Thessala prosunt / carmina, turbatos revocat nulla hostia manes,", "translation": "The secret murmur does nothing, Thessalian spells are no use, no victim calls back the scattered shades,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Prudentius, who remembers Julian from his boyhood ('me puero'), describes Julian sacrificing to Hecate while a haruspex reads the entrails. The rite fails: the incense fire cools, the cup falls, the flamen's laurel slips, Persephone flees. The cause is a Christian guardsman marked with the sign of the cross. The priest collapses and Julian flees. The cross acts as counter-magic that breaks up the 'Zoroastrian whispers' (3.494).", "claimed_effect": "Pagan rite disrupted by Christian presence", "claimed_mechanism": "Sign of the cross overpowering demons", "practitioner": "Julian, haruspex, flamen", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Christian triumph narrative after the restoration of paganism failed.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-89", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Peristephanon", "author": "Prudentius", "culture": "Roman Christian (c. 400), martyr narrative", "language": "", "date": "c. 400 CE", "date_sort": 400, "edition_urn": "stoa0238.stoa001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "10.866-10.870", "conventional_ref": "Prud. Perist. 10.866-870", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "‘quousque tandem summus hic nobis magus / inludet,’ inquit, ‘Thessalorum carmine / poenam peritus vertere in ludibrium?", "translation": "'How long, pray,' he said, 'will this arch-magician make fools of us, skilled at turning punishment into a joke with a Thessalian spell?'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Told that the martyr Romanus can still speak after his tongue was cut out, the judge accuses him of being a magus using Thessalian charms, echoing Cicero's 'quousque tandem'. The perspective is inverted: pagans read Christian miracle as magic, the standard charge in persecution narratives (compare the charge against Jesus answered by Commodian).", "claimed_effect": "Accusation that miracle is sorcery", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "martyr Romanus (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-90", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Peristephanon", "author": "Prudentius", "culture": "Roman Christian (c. 400)", "language": "", "date": "c. 400 CE", "date_sort": 400, "edition_urn": "stoa0238.stoa001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "13.21-13.26", "conventional_ref": "Prud. Perist. 13.21-26", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "unus erat iuvenum doctissimus artibus sinistris, / fraude pudicitiam perfringere, nil sacrum putare, / saepe etiam magicum cantamen inire per sepulcra,", "translation": "There was one young man most skilled in sinister arts: breaking down chastity by fraud, holding nothing sacred, often even going among tombs to perform magic incantation,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Prudentius merges Cyprian of Carthage with the legend of Cyprian of Antioch, the converted magician. As a youth he used graveyard spells to break marriages and seduce women, until Christ suddenly checked his frenzy. This is the conversion-from-magic story.", "claimed_effect": "Erotic seduction, dissolving marriages", "claimed_mechanism": "Graveyard incantations", "practitioner": "Cyprian (before conversion)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-91", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Cathemerina", "author": "Prudentius", "culture": "Roman Christian (c. 400), hymn before sleep", "language": "", "date": "c. 400 CE", "date_sort": 400, "edition_urn": "stoa0238.stoa004.perseus-lat2", "ref": "6.133-6.140", "conventional_ref": "Prud. Cath. 6.133-140", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "crux pellit omne crimen, / fugiunt crucem tenebrae: / [...] procul, o procul vagantum / portenta somniorum, / procul esto pervicaci / praestigiator actu.", "translation": "The cross drives off every sin; the darkness flees the cross [...] Away, away, you portents of wandering dreams; away, you conjuror, with your stubborn work.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a hymn before sleep, the faithful sign the cross on forehead and heart to repel nightmares and the devil, called a 'praestigiator' (juggler, trickster). A Christian protective gesture replaces pagan dream expiation (compare Martial 7.54 and Tibullus 1.5.13-14).", "claimed_effect": "Protection from nightmares and demons", "claimed_mechanism": "Sign of the cross", "practitioner": "every Christian", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-92", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Evangeliorum libri quattuor", "author": "Juvencus", "culture": "Roman Christian (Constantinian)", "language": "", "date": "c. 329 CE", "date_sort": 329, "edition_urn": "stoa0169a.stoa002.opp-lat2", "ref": "1.224-1.226", "conventional_ref": "Juvenc. 1.224-226", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Gens est ulterior surgenti conscia soli, / Astrorum sollers ortusque obitusque notare; / Huius primores nomen tenuere Magorum.", "translation": "There is a people further off, familiar with the rising sun, skilled at noting the risings and settings of the stars; its leading men bore the name of Magi.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The first Christian epic renders Matthew's magoi as eastern astronomers with no hint of sorcery. This is the honourable 'Persian wise man' sense of magus, opposite to the sorcerer sense found elsewhere in the corpus.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-93", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Heptateuchos (Exodus)", "author": "Cyprianus Gallus", "culture": "Gallo-Roman Christian (early 5th c.), Biblical Egypt", "language": "", "date": "early 5th c. CE", "date_sort": 420, "edition_urn": "stoa0104c.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "exo.270-exo.285", "conventional_ref": "Cypr. Gall. Exod. 270-285", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "quin etiam similes faciunt prorepere ranas / qua tellus, qua fluctus erat, paribusque creantur / magorum canore modis,", "translation": "they even make similar frogs creep forth over land and water, and these are produced in like manner by the magicians' chanting,", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pharaoh's magicians, 'their profane minds girded with sinister chant', match Moses' plagues of blood and frogs. At the plague of gnats the 'Chaldaean band' admits it is 'the hand of the Lord' and gives up. The Egyptian magicians of the Bible are renamed 'Chaldaeans'; they can imitate divine signs but not exceed them.", "claimed_effect": "Imitating Moses' wonders", "claimed_mechanism": "Chant", "practitioner": "Pharaoh's magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-94", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Heptateuchos (Exodus)", "author": "Cyprianus Gallus", "culture": "Gallo-Roman Christian (early 5th c.), Biblical law", "language": "", "date": "early 5th c. CE", "date_sort": 420, "edition_urn": "stoa0104c.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "exo.924-exo.929", "conventional_ref": "Cypr. Gall. Exod. 927 (Exod. 22:18)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "maleficum celare nefas. mors dura necabit / permixtum pecudi coitus deformis in actu.", "translation": "It is a crime to hide a sorcerer. A hard death will slay the one who couples with a beast in a monstrous act.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Putting Exodus 22:18 ('you shall not suffer a sorceress to live') into verse, the poet writes 'it is a crime to conceal a maleficus'. The Hebrew feminine becomes gender-neutral, and the offence becomes concealment, which fits late Roman laws requiring the denunciation of magicians.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "maleficus", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "Biblical law reread through the Theodosian legislation against malefici.", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-95", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "De Mosaicae historiae gestis (Carm. 5)", "author": "Avitus of Vienne", "culture": "Gallo-Roman Christian (c. 500-507), Biblical Egypt", "language": "", "date": "c. 507 CE", "date_sort": 507, "edition_urn": "tmp963.tmp963.opp-lat1", "ref": "88", "conventional_ref": "Avit. Carm. 5 (De transitu maris rubri), the rods of Pharaoh's magi (this edition has no line numbers)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Dant jactae vanas species, anguesque putati / lllusos terrent oculos fallente figura. / Nec longum tumuere magi; consumitur omne / Quod fecisse rati;", "translation": "Their thrown rods give empty appearances, and supposed snakes frighten deluded eyes with a deceiving shape. Not for long were the magi puffed up: everything they thought they had made was consumed;", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In Avitus' version, Pharaoh claims Moses' serpent was a trick of the eyes and summons magi. With drugged rods and funereal murmurs they produce only illusory snakes, which Moses' real serpent swallows before turning back into wood. The Christian theory is that magic makes phantasms while divine power makes real transformations.", "claimed_effect": "Rods turned into snakes", "claimed_mechanism": "Drugged rods and murmured spells producing illusion", "practitioner": "Pharaoh's magi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-96", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "De Mosaicae historiae gestis (Carm. 2)", "author": "Avitus of Vienne", "culture": "Gallo-Roman Christian (c. 500-507)", "language": "", "date": "c. 507 CE", "date_sort": 507, "edition_urn": "tmp963.tmp963.opp-lat1", "ref": "30", "conventional_ref": "Avit. Carm. 2 (De originali peccato), on snake-charmers and necromancy (approximate place)", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Mox impune manu coluber tractatur inermis / Et morsus tantum, non virus, in angue timetur. / Interdum perit incantans, si callida surdus / Adjuratoris contempsit murmura serpens.", "translation": "Soon the disarmed snake is handled without harm, and only the bite, not the venom, is feared in it. Sometimes the charmer dies, if a deaf snake has scorned the clever murmurs of the adjurer.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Avitus explains snake-charmers (probably the Marsi; the edition prints 'Mir i') and necromancers through the Fall. The charmers' rapport with snakes descends from Eve's conversation with the serpent. Those who think they converse with summoned shades are given answers through empty figures by the 'spirit of error', and anyone who seeks forbidden knowledge will be damned. He openly admits that charmers sometimes die.", "claimed_effect": "Disarming snakes; conversing with the dead", "claimed_mechanism": "Inherited serpent-lore; demonic illusion", "practitioner": "snake-charmers, necromancers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-97", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "De Vita Sancti Martini", "author": "Paulinus of Perigueux", "culture": "Gallo-Roman Christian (c. 460-470)", "language": "", "date": "c. 465 CE", "date_sort": 465, "edition_urn": "stoa0224b.stoa001.opp-lat1", "ref": "2.196-2.221", "conventional_ref": "Paul. Petric. Mart. 2.196-221", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "quid simile his titulis tandem conferre ualebit / ars magicis infecta dolis uel tincta uenenis, / carmina conpositis texens mendacia uerbis", "translation": "What, in the end, can an art stained with magic deceits or dyed in poisons set beside these feats, weaving lying spells out of contrived words", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Martin of Tours makes the shade of a robber, venerated as a martyr, appear and confess (only Martin sees him). The poet sets this against necromancy, in which magic and haruspicy produce a demon bellowing a deceitful murmur behind a fake face. The saint's simple prayer, by contrast, truly undid the bonds of the underworld law. The same act of calling up a dead man is miracle or magic depending on who does it and how.", "claimed_effect": "A dead man's shade appears and testifies", "claimed_mechanism": "Prayer, not compulsion; magic's results are demonic fakes", "practitioner": "St Martin (contrasted with necromancers)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Policing the cult of false martyrs.", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-98", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Carmen Apologeticum", "author": "Commodian", "culture": "Latin Christian (date disputed: mid-3rd or 5th c.)", "language": "", "date": "3rd-5th c. CE (disputed)", "date_sort": 260, "edition_urn": "stoa0096.stoa004.opp-lat2", "ref": "1-12", "conventional_ref": "Commod. Carm. apol. 7-8", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Non satis; his rebus criminosus denique Marsus / Paene fni factus herbas incantando malignas.", "translation": "Not enough: in these pursuits I very nearly became a criminal 'Marsus', chanting over evil herbs.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In his conversion autobiography, the Christian poet says he almost became a 'Marsus', a sorcerer (literally a Marsian snake-charmer), by chanting over harmful herbs, before he read the Law and saw the light. 'Marsus' has become a general word for sorcerer. The text is garbled ('fni') and the date disputed.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Commodian himself (before conversion)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "latin-poetry-99", "corpus": "latin-poetry", "work": "Carmen Apologeticum", "author": "Commodian", "culture": "Latin Christian (date disputed)", "language": "", "date": "3rd-5th c. CE (disputed)", "date_sort": 260, "edition_urn": "stoa0096.stoa004.opp-lat2", "ref": "388-395", "conventional_ref": "Commod. Carm. apol. 388-395", "source_collection": "Open Greek and Latin (CSEL / Patrologia Latina)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Si magus adfuerat, cur ergo prophetae canebant / Venturum e caelo, ut esset spes gentium ipse?", "translation": "If he had been a magician, why then did the prophets sing that he would come from heaven, to be himself the hope of the nations?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Commodian rebuts the Jewish charge that Jesus was a magus: prophecy proves his divine origin. The accusation of magic serves as the boundary marker between rival religions.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Jesus (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-1", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase London E 163 (Medea and the ram in the cauldron)", "author": "Anonymous Attic red-figure painter; catalogue text Perseus", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Vulci, Etruria", "language": "", "date": "c. 485–470 BCE", "date_sort": -478, "edition_urn": "artifact:London E 163", "ref": "London E 163", "conventional_ref": "London, BM E 163 (ARV2 258.26, 1640; Para 165)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Ovid Met. 7.319–321 (phi0959.phi006.perseus-lat2): 'and a tender bleating is heard from the middle of the bronze; at once, while they marvel at the bleating, a lamb leaps out and frisks away, seeking the milky udder.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A named Medea scatters herbs over a cauldron on a tripod above a blazing fire, and a ram springs out towards her. The old man opposite is labelled Jason. The catalogue notes the inscription may be an error for Aeson, which would make this the rejuvenation of Jason's father that Ovid tells at Met. 7.285–293 (Medea drains the old blood and refills him with juices; his beard and hair turn black). The ram scene matches Ovid's demonstration at 7.312–321. On the vase the magic is plant-based (pharmaka scattered from a bowl), not spoken.", "claimed_effect": "rejuvenation; an old ram becomes a lamb", "claimed_mechanism": "herbal juices (pharmaka) added to a boiling cauldron", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "mythical foreign (Colchian) woman with expert herb-knowledge; painted for the Etruscan export market", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-2", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Harvard 1960.315 (Medea boils the ram before the Peliades)", "author": "Anonymous Attic black-figure painter; catalogue text Perseus", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Vulci", "language": "", "date": "c. 510–500 BCE", "date_sort": -505, "edition_urn": "artifact:Harvard 1960.315", "ref": "Harvard 1960.315", "conventional_ref": "Cambridge MA, Harvard Art Museums 1960.315", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "poison-drug", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Ovid Met. 7.316–318: 'the sorceress (venefica) plunges the beast's limbs and her potent juices into the hollow bronze; they shrink its body and burn off its horns, and with the horns its years.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The same scene appears on both sides: a ram in a cauldron over a log fire, with women on either side. The catalogue reads the left-hand woman as Medea, since her short palmette-tipped stick is 'either a wand or an ingredient', and calls her 'the sorceress'. The vase shows the deceptive demonstration that persuaded Pelias' daughters to kill their father. Magic here is a convincing show that leads to murder. Linked to Ovid Met. 7.312–321 (opened).", "claimed_effect": "rejuvenation (ram to lamb); used to deceive", "claimed_mechanism": "dismemberment and boiling with drugs", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-3", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Munich 3296 (Apulian, Medea's vengeance)", "author": "Apulian painter (RVAp 18/283); catalogue text Perseus", "culture": "South Italian Greek (Apulia), found at Canosa", "language": "", "date": "c. 330–310 BCE", "date_sort": -320, "edition_urn": "artifact:Munich 3296", "ref": "Munich 3296", "conventional_ref": "Munich, Antikensammlungen 3296 (RVAp 18/283, pl. 194; FR pl. 90)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Eur. Med. 1321–1322 (tlg0006.tlg003.perseus-grc2): 'Such a chariot Helios, my father's father, gives me, a bulwark against an enemy hand.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A lead from the brief that is present but described only by its one-line title. The record does not say what the scene contains (poisoned gifts, child-killing, or the escape in the serpent chariot), so it cannot be used for detail. It confirms that Medea's revenge was a subject on monumental South Italian funerary vases a century after Euripides.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-4", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Bologna PU 273 (Aigeus, Theseus, Medea)", "author": "Codrus Painter circle (ARV2 1268.1); catalogue text Perseus", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Vulci", "language": "", "date": "c. 440–430 BCE", "date_sort": -435, "edition_urn": "artifact:Bologna PU 273", "ref": "Bologna PU 273", "conventional_ref": "Bologna, Museo Civico PU 273 (ARV2 1268.1)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Plut. Thes. 12.2 (tlg0007.tlg001.perseus-grc2 12.2.1): 'Medea, having fled from Corinth and promised to cure Aigeus of his childlessness with drugs, was living with him… she persuaded him to do away with the stranger at a feast by poison.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Medea at the Athenian court with Aigeus and the young Theseus. No magical act is shown, but the labelled grouping evokes the story that Medea, Aigeus's drug-wielding consort, tried to poison Theseus before his father recognised him by his sword. Two Boston gems show 'Theseus examining his father's sword' (27.731, 27.781). Euripides makes her promise Aigeus fertility drugs: Med. 717–718, 'I will make you sow children; such pharmaka I know' (opened). The same pharmaka are cure and poison.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "the foreign wise-woman inside an Athenian royal household", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-5", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Ruvo, Jatta 1501 (death of Talos)", "author": "Talos Painter (ARV2 1338.1); catalogue text Perseus", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Ruvo, Apulia", "language": "", "date": "c. 400–390 BCE", "date_sort": -395, "edition_urn": "artifact:Ruvo, Jatta 1501", "ref": "Ruvo, Jatta 1501", "conventional_ref": "Ruvo, Museo Jatta 1501 (ARV2 1338.1; FR pl. 38–39)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Ap. Rhod. 4.1669–1672 (tlg0001.tlg001.perseus-grc2): 'setting her mind on evil, with hostile eyes she bewitched the eyes of bronze Talos; she ground out baleful rage against him and sent forth phantoms of destruction, raging fiercely.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The death of the bronze guardian of Crete. In Apollonius, Medea kills Talos with songs, prayers to the death-spirits (Keres) and the evil eye (Ap. Rhod. 4.1665–1672, opened). The record names only the subject and does not say whether Medea is shown (the full scene has to be checked elsewhere). It is useful as the visual counterpart of the clearest literary 'evil eye' killing.", "claimed_effect": "death of a bronze automaton", "claimed_mechanism": "hostile gaze plus incantations to the Keres", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-6", "corpus": "material", "work": "Gem Boston 21.1203 (Jason and the dragon, scarab)", "author": "Anonymous gem engraver", "culture": "Greek or Etruscan scarab (Egyptian amulet form)", "language": "", "date": "c. 500–450 BCE", "date_sort": -475, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 21.1203", "ref": "Boston 21.1203", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 21.1203", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A beetle-backed seal: a Greek scene cut on an Egyptian amulet shape, the scarab. It shows a rare version of the Fleece story in which the dragon swallows or disgorges Jason. In the usual version, Medea's drugs make the dragon harmless. The scarab form itself carries the Egyptian protective meaning, and many gems in the collection are such scarabs (21.1198–1202, 23.577, 27.659–670, 27.717–722).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-7", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Boston 99.518 (Circe and the companions of Odysseus)", "author": "Anonymous Attic black-figure cup-painter; catalogue text Perseus", "culture": "Greek (Attic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 550–525 BCE", "date_sort": -538, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 99.518", "ref": "Boston 99.518", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 99.518 (ABV 198; Para 80)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Hom. Od. 10.235–238 (tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc2): 'she stirred them into Pramnian wine, and mixed baneful drugs (pharmaka lugra) into the food, so that they would utterly forget their native land. When she had given it and they had drunk, at once she struck them with her wand (rhabdos) and penned them in the sties.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The earliest visual counterpart in the collection to Odyssey 10. Circe, called 'the sorceress' in the catalogue, stirs a drink while men turn into boar, ram, wolf and lion, and Odysseus comes at her with his sword drawn. The painter shows several animals, where Homer gives only pigs (Od. 10.239–240, where their minds stay intact). Homer combines a drug in a kykeon with a wand-stroke and a spoken command (10.316–320). The god-given antidote mōly has a black root and a milk-white flower and is hard for mortals to dig (10.302–306).", "claimed_effect": "humans turned into animals with human minds", "claimed_mechanism": "drug in the kykeon plus a stroke of the rhabdos", "practitioner": "Circe", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "divine enchantress on a remote island", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-8", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Mississippi 1977.3.116 (Kabeiric parody of Circe)", "author": "Kabeirion workshop, Boeotia", "culture": "Greek (Boeotian), from the Kabeirion near Thebes", "language": "", "date": "c. 450–400 BCE", "date_sort": -425, "edition_urn": "artifact:Mississippi 1977.3.116", "ref": "Mississippi 1977.3.116", "conventional_ref": "University of Mississippi 1977.3.116", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.) Linked text, Hom. Od. 10.318: 'when she had given it and I had drunk, it did not bewitch me (oud' ethelxe).'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A Circe scene caricatured, with a squatting Odysseus, a cup and the loom Homer mentions, on a cup from the mystery sanctuary of the Kabeiroi. The catalogue connects the 'Kabeirion style' with comic performances at the sanctuary. Here the magic myth is played as burlesque at a sanctuary, which suggests the Circe story was so familiar it could be parodied.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Circe", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-9", "corpus": "material", "work": "Bronze Boston 03.986 (Glykon, human-headed snake)", "author": "Anonymous Roman-period bronzeworker", "culture": "Roman Imperial Greek East, found at Athens", "language": "", "date": "AD 150–250", "date_sort": 200, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 03.986", "ref": "Boston 03.986", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 03.986", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "divination", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Lucian, Alex. 18 (tlg0062.tlg038.perseus-grc2 18.1): 'Paintings were made of this, and images and statuettes (xoana), some likened in bronze, some in silver, and a name was given to the god: he was called Glykon.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A small bronze snake with a human head, coiled in two loops. It matches Lucian's account that the oracle-founder Alexander of Abonoteichos had bronze and silver images of the god made (Alex. 18.1). Lucian also describes the linen puppet head behind the god's 'face' (12.1) and the windpipe speaking tube (26.1); see material-58 and -60. The object comes from Athens, far from Paphlagonia, so the cult spread. Calling it an amulet and calling Alexander a 'magician' are the catalogue's views, not ancient labels. To worshippers Glykon was a god of oracles and healing, the 'new Asklepios'.", "claimed_effect": "protection and oracular healing", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Alexander of Abonoteichos (cult founder)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "popular new cult with emperor-level clients; Lucian presents it as fraud", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 5, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-10", "corpus": "material", "work": "Bronze Boston 64.6 (triple Hekate)", "author": "Anonymous Roman-period bronzeworker", "culture": "Roman Imperial Greek (said to be from Aegina)", "language": "", "date": "AD 50–200", "date_sort": 125, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 64.6", "ref": "Boston 64.6", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 64.6", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Hes. Th. 411–414 (tlg0020.tlg001.perseus-grc2): 'and she conceived and bore Hekate, whom Zeus son of Kronos honoured above all; he gave her splendid gifts, to have a share of the earth and the barren sea; and she has a share of honour from the starry sky too.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The three-bodied Hekate: polos with three stars and a crescent moon, snakes in two pairs of hands, torches in the third. This is the Roman-period image of the goddess of crossroads, night and the moon, invoked in love and binding spells. Hesiod's Hekate, by contrast, is an all-honoured cosmic goddess with no witchcraft (Th. 411–414). Theocritus' love-witch already calls on her at the crossroads (Id. 2.36). The object shows Hekate drifting from civic goddess towards the patron of magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-11", "corpus": "material", "work": "Building Athens, Triangular Shrine (possible Hekate crossroads shrine)", "author": "Architectural record", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 450–425 BCE", "date_sort": -438, "edition_urn": "artifact:Athens, Triangular Shrine", "ref": "Athens, Triangular Shrine", "conventional_ref": "Athens, Kerameikos/Agora area, Triangular Shrine", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Theoc. Id. 2.36 (tlg0005.tlg001.perseus-grc2): 'The goddess is at the crossroads: quick, clash the bronze.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A small triangular precinct at a road junction, tentatively assigned to Hekate. It ties the crossroads of the love-spell poem (Theoc. 2.35–36, dogs howling, bronze clashed) to real Athenian street topography. The dedication is uncertain ('may be').", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-12", "corpus": "material", "work": "Coin Dewing 1418 (Pherai, Thessaly: head of Hekate)", "author": "Mint of Pherai", "culture": "Greek (Thessaly)", "language": "", "date": "369–359 BCE", "date_sort": -364, "edition_urn": "artifact:Dewing 1418", "ref": "Dewing 1418", "conventional_ref": "Dewing Collection 1418 (also Dewing 1419, 320–300 BCE)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Hekate as the civic goddess of the Thessalian city of Pherai, on silver of the tyrants' period. A companion coin, Dewing 1419, shows her head with a torch. On a coin she is a city's patron, not a witch's goddess. Greek literature's association of Thessaly with witches was not checked in this sweep. Writers may contrast the civic image with the literary one, but should verify the literary side separately.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-13", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase London F 68 (initiation of Herakles and the Dioskouroi, with Hekate)", "author": "Attic red-figure painter (ARV2 1446.1); catalogue text Perseus", "culture": "Greek (Attic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 360–350 BCE", "date_sort": -355, "edition_urn": "artifact:London F 68", "ref": "London F 68", "conventional_ref": "London, BM F 68 (ARV2 1446.1, 1693)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "An Eleusinian scene with Triptolemos in a serpent-car, Demeter and Persephone. Hekate, torch in hand, leads one of the Dioskouroi forward. This is Hekate inside legitimate state religion, as a torch-bearing guide of initiates. Pairs with the Eleusis Telesterion record ('designed to hold large groups, up to 3000').", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-14", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Malibu 77.AE.13 (Apulian underworld: Hekate, Hermes, Orpheus)", "author": "Apulian painter; catalogue text Perseus", "culture": "South Italian Greek (Apulia)", "language": "", "date": "c. 340–310 BCE", "date_sort": -330, "edition_urn": "artifact:Malibu 77.AE.13", "ref": "Malibu 77.AE.13", "conventional_ref": "Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 77.AE.13", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Persephone and Pluto enthroned. Hermes sits with his caduceus. Hekate holds two torches, and Orpheus stands with kithara and plektron in a Phrygian cap. Funerary vases like this put the singer of the Orphic mysteries and the torch-goddess in the underworld as guides and mediators for the dead. Comparable: Munich 3297 ('Hades and Persephone in their palace, with Orpheus').", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Orpheus; Hekate", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-15", "corpus": "material", "work": "Votive relief Athens, NM 1841 (incubation before Asklepios)", "author": "Anonymous Attic sculptor", "culture": "Greek (Athens, south slope of the Acropolis)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–400 BCE (High Classical; no dates in record)", "date_sort": -415, "edition_urn": "artifact:Athens, NM 1841", "ref": "Athens, NM 1841", "conventional_ref": "Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1841", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Ar. Plut. 733–736 (tlg0019.tlg011.perseus-grc2): 'Two snakes darted out of the temple, enormous in size… slipping quietly under the purple cloth they licked his eyelids, as it seemed to me.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The clearest picture of temple sleep (enkoimēsis) in the collection. A priest leads a man in, the man lies in bed, and the god appears twice, laying a hand on his head and stroking his arm. To the Greeks this was medicine by divine epiphany in a dream, part of public religion and not 'magic'. Pausanias records the dormitory 'where the suppliants of the god sleep' beyond the Epidauros temple (2.27.2.1). Aristophanes gives the comic version with snakes licking the eyes.", "claimed_effect": "cure", "claimed_mechanism": "divine touch during sleep in the sanctuary", "practitioner": "Asklepios, through priests", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 5, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-16", "corpus": "material", "work": "Votive relief Athens, NM 3369 (cure of Archinos by Amphiaraos)", "author": "Anonymous sculptor", "culture": "Greek (Oropos, Amphiaraion)", "language": "", "date": "c. 400–380 BCE", "date_sort": -390, "edition_urn": "artifact:Athens, NM 3369", "ref": "Athens, NM 3369", "conventional_ref": "Athens, National Archaeological Museum 3369", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Paus. 1.34.5 (tlg0525.tlg001.perseus-grc2 1.34.5.1): 'those who come to consult Amphiaraos first purify themselves… then, having sacrificed a ram and spread its skin under them, they go to sleep awaiting a revelation in a dream.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Continuous narrative of one cure, with both figures named by inscription. The hero-god treats Archinos' right shoulder like a physician. A snake licks the sleeping patient. Then Archinos dedicates a stele. This is the cure-and-thank-offering cycle in a single object, and the shoulder treatment shows manual medicine imagined as the god's work.", "claimed_effect": "healing of a shoulder injury", "claimed_mechanism": "dream-visit; divine handling of the injured part; sacred snake", "practitioner": "Amphiaraos", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 5, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-17", "corpus": "material", "work": "Votive relief Athens, NM 3526 (man with a colossal votive leg)", "author": "Anonymous Attic sculptor", "culture": "Greek (Athens, west slope of the Acropolis)", "language": "", "date": "c. 325–300 BCE", "date_sort": -312, "edition_urn": "artifact:Athens, NM 3526", "ref": "Athens, NM 3526", "conventional_ref": "Athens, National Archaeological Museum 3526", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English; the inscription is only partly preserved.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A man leans on a giant votive leg with swollen veins beside a niche holding two votive feet. This is the only trace in the collection of the anatomical-votive habit, and here it is shown on a relief rather than as a surviving votive. The illness portrayed is recognisably real (varicose veins), and the dedication records a hoped-for or claimed cure.", "claimed_effect": "cure of a leg ailment", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-18", "corpus": "material", "work": "Votive relief Athens, NM 1402 (family before Asklepios and his children)", "author": "Anonymous sculptor", "culture": "Greek (Laconia, Loukou in Kynouria)", "language": "", "date": "c. 400–350 BCE", "date_sort": -375, "edition_urn": "artifact:Athens, NM 1402", "ref": "Athens, NM 1402", "conventional_ref": "Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1402", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A household sacrifices a pig to Asklepios and his family. The daughters' names personify healing: Iaso 'cure', Akeso 'remedy', Panakeia 'all-heal'. Related reliefs show patients carried to the god's couch, e.g. NM 2373, 'A man and a woman place a patient on a couch, presumably at the Sanctuary of Asklepios'. Healing cult was family religion, publicly displayed.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 2, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-19", "corpus": "material", "work": "Building Epidauros, Abaton (Dormitory)", "author": "Architectural record", "culture": "Greek (Argolid)", "language": "", "date": "c. 400–350 BCE (Roman extension)", "date_sort": -375, "edition_urn": "artifact:Epidauros, Abaton (Dormitory)", "ref": "Epidauros, Abaton (Dormitory)", "conventional_ref": "Epidauros, Abaton/Enkoimeterion", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Paus. 2.27.2 (2.27.2.1): 'Across from the temple is the place where the suppliants of the god sleep.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The physical home of incubation at Epidauros. Related records: the Baths, whose water came 'from the sacred well of Asklepios' and 'may have had religious and curative uses', and the Old Temple, whose rooms were 'perhaps serving as dormitories'. In the same precinct stood the cure stelai Pausanias saw (2.27.3.1; material-68). The site combined architecture, water, rest and record-keeping.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-20", "corpus": "material", "work": "Building Epidauros, Tholos (Thymele)", "author": "Architectural record (attributed to Polykleitos the Younger)", "culture": "Greek (Argolid)", "language": "", "date": "c. 360–320 BCE", "date_sort": -340, "edition_urn": "artifact:Epidauros, Tholos", "ref": "Epidauros, Tholos", "conventional_ref": "Epidauros, Tholos", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Paus. 2.27.3 (2.27.3.1): 'A round building of white stone called the Tholos has been built nearby, worth seeing.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A round building over an underground maze. The idea that it housed sacred snakes is a modern conjecture ('may have'), consistent with the snakes on the healing reliefs and in Aristophanes. Pausanias admires the paintings inside and mentions no cult function.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-21", "corpus": "material", "work": "Building Amphiaraion, Stoa (Enkoimeterion)", "author": "Architectural record", "culture": "Greek (Oropos)", "language": "", "date": "4th century BCE (Late Classical)", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "artifact:Amphiaraion, Stoa", "ref": "Amphiaraion, Stoa", "conventional_ref": "Oropos, Amphiaraion, Stoa", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Paus. 1.34.5.1: 'I think Amphiaraos is most devoted to the interpretation of dreams… having sacrificed a ram and spread its skin under them, they sleep awaiting a revelation in a dream.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A dream-oracle that was also a healing centre. The 'Terrace of Dedications' record notes the stoa was 'for visitors awaiting treatment', and the site had a theatre and a water-clock. At Oropos, oracle and medicine were one service, divination by dreams. Possibly separate rooms for women show both sexes attended.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-22", "corpus": "material", "work": "Marble Boston 1974.131 (Hygieia with sleeping Hypnos and snake)", "author": "Anonymous sculptor", "culture": "Roman Imperial (Asia Minor)", "language": "", "date": "AD 170–220", "date_sort": 195, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 1974.131", "ref": "Boston 1974.131", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 1974.131", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Health personified, with Sleep at her feet and her snake reaching for an egg. It sums up the theology of incubation: sleep is the means of cure. Roman-period healing cult kept the classical imagery.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-23", "corpus": "material", "work": "Coin Boston 58.13 (Pergamon: Caracalla saluting the Asklepian serpent)", "author": "Civic mint of Pergamon", "culture": "Roman Imperial (Asia Minor)", "language": "", "date": "AD 196–217", "date_sort": 213, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 58.13", "ref": "Boston 58.13", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 58.13", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "An emperor honouring the healing serpent of the Pergamon Asklepieion. Telesphoros, the little hooded healing daimon, appears again on Boston 35.235 (Rome, Aesculapius with Telesphorus). Caracalla's visit to Pergamon for healing is reported in historians not checked here, so treat that link as unverified. The coin shows healing cult as imperial religion, at the top of the social scale.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "civic coinage honouring the emperor's piety", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-24", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Champaign 70.8.1 (eye-cup with Horus-type eyes)", "author": "Anonymous Attic black-figure cup-painter; catalogue text Perseus", "culture": "Greek (Attic) with Egyptian motif", "language": "", "date": "c. 530–520 BCE", "date_sort": -525, "edition_urn": "artifact:Champaign 70.8.1", "ref": "Champaign 70.8.1", "conventional_ref": "Champaign, Krannert Art Museum 70.8.1 (Moon 1979 no. 51)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Pyramid Texts, Unas PT 25 §18c–d (urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit 25.18c-d): 'Osiris Unas, I have given you the Eye of Horus; your face is equipped with it; the scent of the Eye of Horus spreads to you.' (my rendering; the reading of pč̣pč̣ is uncertain)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "An eye-cup: two great eyes with brows and a snout-like nose, Gigantomachy groups at the handles, Triton inside. The catalogue identifies the teardrop inner corner as the Egyptian wedjat (Eye of Horus) and the nose and forehead dots as Gorgon-like. Two protective symbols from two cultures are combined, and on the catalogue's account the combination 'does not appear on eye-decorated vases of later date'. The Eye of Horus is the standard offering-token of the Pyramid Texts (material-72). The catalogue honestly admits the Greek meaning is unknown.", "claimed_effect": "warding off harm or the evil eye (probable, not attested on the object)", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 5, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-25", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Champaign 70.8.2 (amphora with charioteer between Eyes of Horus)", "author": "Anonymous Attic black-figure painter", "culture": "Greek (Attic) with Egyptian motif", "language": "", "date": "c. 520–500 BCE", "date_sort": -510, "edition_urn": "artifact:Champaign 70.8.2", "ref": "Champaign 70.8.2", "conventional_ref": "Champaign, Krannert Art Museum 70.8.2", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The wedjat eye moved from the cup to an amphora shoulder, flanking a chariot. The catalogue notes the two Horus eyes are drawn identically ('black ground, incised circle, black ring, white ring… black center with dot'). This is evidence that an Egyptian protective sign was adopted, at least as a motif, in Athens.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-26", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Munich 2044 (Dionysos in his ship; apotropaic eyes outside)", "author": "Exekias (ABV 146.21); catalogue text Perseus", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Vulci", "language": "", "date": "c. 530 BCE (Archaic; no dates in record)", "date_sort": -530, "edition_urn": "artifact:Munich 2044", "ref": "Munich 2044", "conventional_ref": "Munich, Antikensammlungen 2044 (ABV 146.21)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The most famous eye-cup. Inside, Dionysos sails among dolphins in a ship whose prow 'is decorated with eyes'. Outside, great eyes stare from both sides. When the drinker lifts the cup it becomes a mask facing the room. The eye is on the ship's bow and on the cup alike, as on the merchantman of London B 436 ('an apotropaic eye painted on its bow'). The 'apotropaic' label is modern, though Plutarch's theory of probaskania supports it (material-61).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-27", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Yale 1967.74.16 (eye-cup with gorgoneion)", "author": "Anonymous Attic black-figure painter", "culture": "Greek (Attic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 530–520 BCE", "date_sort": -525, "edition_urn": "artifact:Yale 1967.74.16", "ref": "Yale 1967.74.16", "conventional_ref": "New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery 1967.74.16", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Outer eyes and a Gorgon's face in the tondo, so the drinker meets a staring face at the bottom of the cup. Similar: Malibu 87.AE.22 ('Six symposiasts reclining around central tondo of gorgoneion', with Herakles and Dionysos 'between eyes'), and Boston 01.8057 (Dionysos' frontal face 'between feminine apotropaic eyes'). The symposion was a protected space of shared drinking and gazing.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-28", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Boston 10.651 (obscene cup with a siren whose body is an eye)", "author": "Anonymous Attic black-figure painter (ABV 157.86)", "culture": "Greek (Attic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 520–515 BCE", "date_sort": -518, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 10.651", "ref": "Boston 10.651", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 10.651 (ABV 157.86; Para 65)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Side A shows two masturbating revellers and side B a male siren whose whole body is a single great eye, with dogs defecating under the handles. Here protective imagery and obscene laughter go together. Plutarch's explanation, that strange sights 'draw off' the envious gaze (Quaest. conv. 5.7.3; material-61), fits this mixing of the grotesque and the protective.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-29", "corpus": "material", "work": "Sculpture Athens, Acropolis 701 (archaic Gorgon head)", "author": "Anonymous Attic sculptor", "culture": "Greek (Athens, Acropolis)", "language": "", "date": "c. 575–550 BCE", "date_sort": -563, "edition_urn": "artifact:Athens, Acropolis 701", "ref": "Athens, Acropolis 701", "conventional_ref": "Athens, Acropolis Museum 701", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A frontal Gorgon with lolling tongue and tusks, on a temple of Athena. It is the architectural version of the protective face. Gorgoneia also appear on Athena's aegis in dozens of sculptures, on shields, on Roman emperors' cuirasses (Boston 58.13 obverse: 'He wears the gorgoneion on his breastplate') and on archaic Athenian coins (Dewing 1571: 'Obverse: Gorgoneion').", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-30", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase London E 180 (gorgoneion medallion)", "author": "Anonymous Attic red-figure painter (ARV2 218)", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Corneto (Tarquinia)", "language": "", "date": "c. 490–480 BCE (Late Archaic/Early Classical; no dates in record)", "date_sort": -485, "edition_urn": "artifact:London E 180", "ref": "London E 180", "conventional_ref": "London, BM E 180 (ARV2 218)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A gorgoneion with tusks, a protruding red tongue and twenty-eight snakes. The catalogue states its protective function outright. It belongs with the Perseus vases (material-31), which explain where the head came from: Athena's aegis carries the severed Medusa.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 2, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-31", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Munich 2312 (Perseus with the cap of invisibility)", "author": "Attic red-figure painter (ARV2 197.11)", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Vulci", "language": "", "date": "c. 490 BCE (Late Archaic; no dates in record)", "date_sort": -490, "edition_urn": "artifact:Munich 2312", "ref": "Munich 2312", "conventional_ref": "Munich, Antikensammlungen 2312 (ARV2 197.11)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Perseus' magical kit: winged boots, the cap of Hades (invisibility), the bag (kibisis) for the head, and the sickle-sword (harpē), with a Gorgon running after him on side B. Magic objects come as divine equipment lent to a hero, not as human craft. Related: London B 380 ('The last Gorgon on left is the decapitated Medusa, with a horse's head springing from her neck').", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Perseus (with divine gear)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-32", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Berlin V.I. 3206 (woman carrying a phallos with an eye)", "author": "Pan Painter (ARV2 551.10)", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found in Etruria", "language": "", "date": "c. 470 BCE (Early Classical; no dates in record)", "date_sort": -470, "edition_urn": "artifact:Berlin V.I. 3206", "ref": "Berlin V.I. 3206", "conventional_ref": "Berlin, Antikenmuseen V.I. 3206 (ARV2 551.10)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Pliny NH 28.39 (phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2 28.4.2): see material-62, the fascinus that guards infants and generals.", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Side A shows a youth greeting a herm. Side B shows a woman with a giant eyed phallos. The phallos and the eye are the two chief protective images of the Greco-Roman world, here combined on one object. In Greek terms the scene may be festival (phallophoria) or fertility imagery rather than amulet-use, and the catalogue does not interpret it. It is relevant because Pliny names the phallic fascinus as a guard against envy.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-33", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Boston 10.185 (Pan pursues a goatherd past a phallic image)", "author": "Pan Painter (ARV2 550.1)", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Cumae", "language": "", "date": "c. 470 BCE", "date_sort": -470, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 10.185", "ref": "Boston 10.185", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 10.185 (ARV2 550.1)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Pliny NH 19.50 (phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2 19.4.1): 'we see satyr-images dedicated as a remedy against the bewitchings of the envious only in the garden and the forum.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A rustic ithyphallic image watches over the countryside. Pliny says such figures were set up against 'effascinationes', bewitchment by envy, in gardens and the forum. Side A is the death of Aktaion, a divine punishment that becomes, in the literary versions, a transformation into a stag; the record does not mention antlers. Rural phallic guardians are the folk end of protective magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-34", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Harvard 1960.342 (infant wearing a string of charms)", "author": "Anonymous Attic red-figure painter", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Vari", "language": "", "date": "c. 440–430 BCE", "date_sort": -435, "edition_urn": "artifact:Harvard 1960.342", "ref": "Harvard 1960.342", "conventional_ref": "Cambridge MA, Harvard Art Museums 1960.342", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A domestic scene: a mother hands her baby to a Thracian slave-nurse, and the baby wears a bandolier of amulets. Similar strings are on Berlin F 2443 ('An amulet band lies on his upper body') and Kansas City 31.80 (material-35). Everyday protective magic for children was normal enough to paint in a respectable household scene. Texts in the collection rarely describe it so plainly.", "claimed_effect": "protection of the child from sickness", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "mothers and nurses", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "household; the nurse is a foreign slave", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 5, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-35", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Kansas City 31.80 (boy wearing amulets on chest, foot and wrist)", "author": "Attic red-figure painter (ARV2 1248.8)", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Apiro, Macerata", "language": "", "date": "c. 420–410 BCE", "date_sort": -415, "edition_urn": "artifact:Kansas City 31.80", "ref": "Kansas City 31.80", "conventional_ref": "Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum 31.80 (ARV2 1248.8)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A child with three sets of amulets among personifications of civic virtue (Eunomia, Eukleia?, Paidia, Peitho). Protection of children is shown inside an idealised civic world, not as something illicit.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-36", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Munich 2411 (bathing woman with a thread amulet on her thigh)", "author": "Attic red-figure painter (ARV2 1052.18)", "culture": "Greek (Attic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 440 BCE (record says 'High Archaic', but the ARV2 1052 attribution implies the Classical period; flagged)", "date_sort": -440, "edition_urn": "artifact:Munich 2411", "ref": "Munich 2411", "conventional_ref": "Munich, Antikensammlungen 2411 (ARV2 1052.18)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Three naked women at a washbasin, one wearing a thread amulet on her thigh. A similar band is on an athlete's ankle in Würzburg L 509 ('Around his left ankle he wears a band, perhaps an amulet'). Body-amulets (periapta, periammata) appear on women, children and athletes, the groups whose bodies were thought most exposed to harm and envy. The catalogue's identification of these bands is interpretive.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-37", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Malibu 86.AE.680 (Aphrodite holding an iynx)", "author": "South Italian painter; catalogue text Perseus", "culture": "South Italian Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 350–340 BCE", "date_sort": -345, "edition_urn": "artifact:Malibu 86.AE.680", "ref": "Malibu 86.AE.680", "conventional_ref": "Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 86.AE.680", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Pind. Pyth. 4.214–217: see material-66, Aphrodite brings the wryneck on the wheel to men.", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The love-magic spinner (iynx: a wheel or bird-on-a-wheel whirled on a string) as an attribute of Aphrodite herself. In Pindar the goddess invents it and teaches it to Jason to win Medea. In Theocritus a jilted woman uses it to draw her lover home. The vase makes a magical tool a divine emblem.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Aphrodite", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-38", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Malibu 87.AE.23 (Andromeda; Aphrodite and Eros with iynges)", "author": "South Italian painter; catalogue text Perseus", "culture": "South Italian Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 340–330 BCE", "date_sort": -335, "edition_urn": "artifact:Malibu 87.AE.23", "ref": "Malibu 87.AE.23", "conventional_ref": "Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 87.AE.23", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "In the triumph of Andromeda, Aphrodite (labelled Kypris) holds an iynx. A second Eros holds 'an iynx in his left hand over Cassiopeia's head'. The love-charm turns up at a marriage, which suggests the iynx was seen as working erotic attraction in general and not only in illicit spells.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-39", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Paris, Cab. Md. 422 (Odysseus consulting the shade of Teiresias)", "author": "Lucanian painter (Trendall 1967 no. 532)", "culture": "South Italian Greek (Lucania), found at Pisticci", "language": "", "date": "c. 380–360 BCE", "date_sort": -370, "edition_urn": "artifact:Paris, Cab. Md. 422", "ref": "Paris, Cab. Md. 422", "conventional_ref": "Paris, BnF Cabinet des Médailles 422 (Trendall 1967, 102 no. 532)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Hom. Od. 11.25–28, 35–36: 'I dug a pit a cubit each way and poured a libation to all the dead, first with honey-milk, then sweet wine, third water, and sprinkled white barley… I cut the throats of the sheep over the pit, and the dark blood flowed.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The only clear necromancy scene in the collection, described in a single line. Homer's rite (Od. 11.25–36) is a sacrificial procedure taught by Circe: pit, libations, blood, prayers to the dead. The Beloit 31.1 record quotes the same lines for Athenian grave libations. Consulting the dead is shown through heroic myth, not a contemporary practitioner.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Odysseus (on Circe's instructions)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-40", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Munich 1493 (the uninitiated in Hades filling a leaky jar)", "author": "Attic black-figure painter (ABV 316.7)", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Vulci", "language": "", "date": "c. 530–525 BCE", "date_sort": -528, "edition_urn": "artifact:Munich 1493", "ref": "Munich 1493", "conventional_ref": "Munich, Antikensammlungen 1493 (ABV 316.7)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Pl. Gorg. 493b (tlg0059.tlg023.perseus-grc2 493.1): 'of those in Hades these would be the most wretched, the uninitiated (amyētoi), and they would carry water into the perforated jar with another such perforated sieve.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Small winged souls pour water into a half-buried jar beside Sisyphos, opposite Herakles with Kerberos. The catalogue reports the reading that the two sides contrast initiated and uninitiated fates. The idea that ritual initiation changes one's fate after death runs through Plato (Gorg. 493) and Polygnotos' painting (Paus. 10.31.9.1: women carrying water in broken sherds labelled 'of the uninitiated'). Writers can use it to show where mystery religion overlaps with ideas of efficacious rite.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-41", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Berlin V.I. 3172 (Orpheus singing to Thracians)", "author": "Orpheus Painter (ARV2 1103.1)", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Gela", "language": "", "date": "c. 440 BCE", "date_sort": -440, "edition_urn": "artifact:Berlin V.I. 3172", "ref": "Berlin V.I. 3172", "conventional_ref": "Berlin, Antikenmuseen V.I. 3172 (ARV2 1103.1)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Song as enchantment (thelxis): armed Thracians stand spellbound. Later echoes in the collection are Boston 1981.658 (late Roman, Orpheus with boar, bear, stag and lion) and the deaths of Orpheus at the hands of tattooed Thracian women (Louvre G 416). Greeks counted Orpheus' song as the model of spoken or sung power; later 'Orphic' rites traded on his name.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Orpheus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-42", "corpus": "material", "work": "Gem Boston 23.587 (youth touching an oracular head; scarab)", "author": "Anonymous gem engraver", "culture": "Greek or Etruscan scarab gem", "language": "", "date": "undated in record (scarab form suggests 5th–4th century BCE)", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 23.587", "ref": "Boston 23.587", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 23.587", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Philostr. Her., Olearius p. 703 (tlg0638.tlg004.perseus-grc2 703.1): 'It gave oracles, I think, from Orpheus; for the head, after the women's deed, put in at Lesbos, dwelt in a cleft of Lesbos and chanted oracles in the hollow earth.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A speaking severed head consulted on a rock. The catalogue does not name it; scholars often identify such heads as Orpheus, whose head became an oracle on Lesbos (Philostratus, material-69). Lucian gives the rationalised version: the head sang while the lyre sounded in the wind (material-70). The scene sits where divination meets the cult of the dead.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-43", "corpus": "material", "work": "Gem Boston 23.599 (maschalismos: dismembering a corpse)", "author": "Anonymous gem engraver", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 300–200 BCE", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 23.599", "ref": "Boston 23.599", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 23.599", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Suda ε 928 (tlg9010.tlg001.1st1K-grc1 2.E.928.1): 'It was a custom of the ancients, whenever they killed someone by treachery, to expiate the deed by cutting off the corpse's extremities, stringing the parts together and hanging them round the neck, passing them under the armpits.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A rare image of maschalismos, the mutilation of a murder victim to disable his revenge and expiate the killing. Tragedy uses the word for Agamemnon's corpse (Aesch. Cho. 439; Soph. El. 445, opened via search). The Sophocles scholia say killers wiped their swords on the victim's head 'as if averting the pollution'. This is corpse-binding magic against the angry dead, on a seal stone.", "claimed_effect": "preventing the dead man's revenge; expiation", "claimed_mechanism": "mutilation and stringing of the corpse's extremities", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-44", "corpus": "material", "work": "Gem Boston 27.763 (Bes scarab)", "author": "Anonymous gem engraver", "culture": "East Greek or Phoenician gem with an Egyptian god", "language": "", "date": "c. 560–540 BCE", "date_sort": -550, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 27.763", "ref": "Boston 27.763", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 27.763", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Bes, the Egyptian dwarf-god who protected households, childbirth and sleep, cut as a 'master of animals' on a scarab. The gem shows Egyptian protective religion entering the Greek and Phoenician seal repertoire in the 6th century BCE, alongside the Horus eyes of the eye-cups.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-45", "corpus": "material", "work": "Relief Athens, NM 226 (woman with a divining liver, 'Diotima')", "author": "Anonymous sculptor", "culture": "Greek (Arcadia, Mantinea)", "language": "", "date": "c. 425–400 BCE", "date_sort": -412, "edition_urn": "artifact:Athens, NM 226", "ref": "Athens, NM 226", "conventional_ref": "Athens, National Archaeological Museum 226", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Pl. Symp. 201d (tlg0059.tlg011.perseus-grc2 201.1): 'a woman of Mantinea, Diotima, who was wise in these and many other things, and who once, when the Athenians had sacrificed before the plague, brought about a ten years' postponement of the disease.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A woman holding a liver for extispicy, the reading of entrails. The identification with Plato's Diotima rests only on the find-spot and is uncertain. Plato credits Diotima with delaying a plague by ten years through sacrifice. Divination by entrails was respectable, public religious expertise, and here a woman holds it.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Diotima (?)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-46", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Berlin F 2538 (Aigeus consulting Themis at Delphi)", "author": "Codrus Painter (ARV2 1269.5)", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Vulci", "language": "", "date": "c. 440–430 BCE", "date_sort": -435, "edition_urn": "artifact:Berlin F 2538", "ref": "Berlin F 2538", "conventional_ref": "Berlin, Antikenmuseen F 2538 (ARV2 1269.5; FR pl. 140)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Eur. Med. 679 (tlg0006.tlg003.perseus-grc2): 'not to loosen the jutting foot of the wineskin—' (the riddling oracle Aigeus brings from Delphi).", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Aigeus at the Delphic oracle, the prophetess shown as Themis. In Euripides, Aigeus is returning from this consultation when he meets Medea and accepts her drugs (Med. 679–718). One play links legitimate oracle and private pharmakon. Compare St Petersburg St. 1793, 'Zeus consulting Themis before the Trojan War': even the gods consult.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Pythia (as Themis)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-47", "corpus": "material", "work": "Sculpture Delphi, Siphnian Treasury East Pediment (struggle for the tripod)", "author": "Anonymous sculptor", "culture": "Greek (Delphi)", "language": "", "date": "c. 530–525 BCE", "date_sort": -528, "edition_urn": "artifact:Delphi, Siphnian Treasury East Pediment", "ref": "Delphi, Siphnian Treasury East Pediment", "conventional_ref": "Delphi Museum, Siphnian Treasury east pediment", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English; it cites Apollod. 2.6.2, not opened.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A myth about control of oracular power. Herakles, polluted and sick after killing Iphitos in madness, is refused a reply and tries to steal the Pythia's tripod; Zeus intervenes. Oracles also dealt with disease and pollution. Delphi's purification apparatus appears in the 'Later Kastalian Fountainhouse' record ('Pilgrims to the sanctuary ritually purify themselves at the fountains').", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-48", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase London 1917.12-10.1 (Orestes at Delphi, Furies and votive tablets)", "author": "South Italian painter (Trendall 1987, 2.244)", "culture": "South Italian Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 350–340 BCE", "date_sort": -345, "edition_urn": "artifact:London 1917.12-10.1", "ref": "London 1917.12-10.1", "conventional_ref": "London, BM 1917.12-10.1", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Orestes, polluted by matricide, kneels on the omphalos under Apollo's protection, hounded by snake-bearing Erinyes. Votive tablets hang in the sacred laurel. Purification from blood-guilt and protection from avenging spirits was one of Apollo's public functions. Writers can use it as the legitimate counterpart of private 'exorcism'. Compare Harvard 1960.367 (Orestes on the omphalos, bucrania above).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-49", "corpus": "material", "work": "Building Didyma, Hellenistic Temple of Apollo", "author": "Architectural record", "culture": "Greek (Ionia)", "language": "", "date": "oracle revived c. 331 BCE; temple built c. 300 BCE–AD 200", "date_sort": -331, "edition_urn": "artifact:Didyma, Hellenistic Temple of Apollo", "ref": "Didyma, Hellenistic Temple of Apollo", "conventional_ref": "Didyma, Temple of Apollo (Hellenistic)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A major oracle that fell silent for about 160 years after the Persians sacked it, and was revived in the year of Alexander's eastern campaign with Seleucid funding. The cult image was returned from Ecbatana. The 'labyrinth' staircases and the adyton are named in the building accounts. An oracle's activity followed politics and patronage, which fits the commercial and political reading of Alexander of Abonoteichos' oracle.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-50", "corpus": "material", "work": "Coin Boston 95.165 (Roman Republic: head of the Sibyl, sphinx)", "author": "Roman Republican mint", "culture": "Roman (Republic)", "language": "", "date": "Roman Republic (undated in record; probably 1st century BCE)", "date_sort": -60, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 95.165", "ref": "Boston 95.165", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 95.165", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The Sibyl as a state emblem on silver coinage. Rome kept official Sibylline books, consulted by priestly colleges, so prophecy was state-controlled. The private seers banned in the legal texts were the counterpart. Exact moneyer and date are not in the record.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Sibyl", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "state-sanctioned prophecy", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-51", "corpus": "material", "work": "Grave lekythos Athens, NM 4502 (Hermes Psychopompos)", "author": "Anonymous Attic sculptor", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "c. 410–400 BCE", "date_sort": -405, "edition_urn": "artifact:Athens, NM 4502", "ref": "Athens, NM 4502", "conventional_ref": "Athens, National Archaeological Museum 4502", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Hom. Od. 24.1–4: 'Kyllenian Hermes called out the souls of the suitors; he held in his hands his fair golden wand (rhabdos), with which he charms (thelgei) the eyes of whom he will, and wakes again those who sleep.'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Hermes as guide of the dead on an Athenian grave monument. The kerykeion or wand he carries is, in Homer, an enchanting staff that closes eyes and leads souls. The god who escorts the dead is the same god invoked in later binding spells as 'Hermes of the underworld' (that last point is general knowledge, not checked in this collection). Compare Boston 95.67 and London 1206.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-52", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Munich 2648 (Peleus wrestling the shape-shifting Thetis)", "author": "Attic red-figure painter (ARV2 441.185)", "culture": "Greek (Attic), found at Vulci", "language": "", "date": "c. 490–470 BCE", "date_sort": -480, "edition_urn": "artifact:Munich 2648", "ref": "Munich 2648", "conventional_ref": "Munich, Antikensammlungen 2648 (ARV2 441.185)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Divine shape-shifting shown by attaching an animal to the struggling figure. The same device appears in Malibu 77.AE.11 (Thetis 'has taken the form of a snake') and Louvre CA 823 (Nereus becoming a lion; material-53). Transformation in the art belongs to sea-gods and to gods' punishments (Kallisto, Malibu 72.AE.128: 'Both her hands are in the process of changing into paws'). The only human practitioners of transformation are Circe and Medea.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Thetis", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-53", "corpus": "material", "work": "Vase Louvre CA 823 (Herakles and the shape-changing Nereus)", "author": "Boeotian black-figure painter (ABV 12.23)", "culture": "Greek (Boeotia)", "language": "", "date": "c. 600–580 BCE", "date_sort": -590, "edition_urn": "artifact:Louvre CA 823", "ref": "Louvre CA 823", "conventional_ref": "Paris, Louvre CA 823 (ABV 12.23)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The oldest transformation image in the sweep: the Old Man of the Sea sprouts a lion's head as Herakles holds him to force out information. Shape-shifting is a property of prophetic sea-gods who must be held down before they speak. Here transformation and divination are connected.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Nereus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-54", "corpus": "material", "work": "Bronze Boston 65.100 (syncretic nursing goddess with snake, frog, turtle and lizard)", "author": "Anonymous Roman-period bronzeworker", "culture": "Roman Imperial; Egyptian and Anatolian syncretism", "language": "", "date": "AD 150–250", "date_sort": 200, "edition_urn": "artifact:Boston 65.100", "ref": "Boston 65.100", "conventional_ref": "Boston, MFA 65.100", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "A reclining goddess in a Phrygian cap nursing an infant, like Isis with Horus. Around her are Hermes' bag and caduceus, Zeus' thunderbolt, Dionysiac objects, balances, seven vessels and the creatures snake, frog, turtle and lizard. That set of creatures is typical of Roman-period protective votives. The object packs the protective symbols of several pantheons into one piece.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-55", "corpus": "material", "work": "Building Athens, State Prison (medicine bottles)", "author": "Architectural record", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "5th–4th century BCE (Socrates executed 399 BCE)", "date_sort": -399, "edition_urn": "artifact:Athens, State Prison", "ref": "Athens, State Prison", "conventional_ref": "Athens, Agora, 'State Prison'", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "Material evidence for pharmakon as state poison: small bottles probably for the hemlock used in executions. Writers can contrast it with Medea's and Circe's mythical pharmaka. The same Greek word covered drug, poison and spell, and here the state uses the poison legally. The identification of the building is interpretive.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "legal execution by poison", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-56", "corpus": "material", "work": "Building Athens, Well near the Leokoreion (lead tablets)", "author": "Architectural record", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "well Classical; tablets 3rd century BCE", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "artifact:Athens, Well near the Leokoreion", "ref": "Athens, Well near the Leokoreion", "conventional_ref": "Athens, Agora, well near the Leokoreion", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "(Catalogue text is English.)", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The only 'lead tablets' anywhere in the collection, and they are administrative: cavalry-horse registrations, not curse tablets. Athenian wells are a classic find-spot for defixiones, but the collection holds none. This entry documents the absence and keeps writers from mistaking these tablets for curses.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-57", "corpus": "material", "work": "Sculpture: Cult statue of Nemesis of Rhamnous (Agorakritos)", "author": "Agorakritos (per Pausanias); known from copies", "culture": "Greek (Attica, Rhamnous)", "language": "", "date": "c. 430–420 BCE", "date_sort": -425, "edition_urn": "artifact:Cult statue of Nemesis of Rhamnous", "ref": "Cult statue of Nemesis of Rhamnous", "conventional_ref": "Nemesis of Rhamnous (cf. London 460 head; copies Athens NM 3949, Berlin 1891, Butrinto)", "source_collection": "Perseus Art & Archaeology catalogue", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "Linked text, Pliny NH 28.22 (phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2 28.2.4): 'why do we meet bewitchments (effascinationes) with a special worship, some invoking the Greek Nemesis, whose image for that reason stands in Rome on the Capitol, though she has no Latin name?'", "excerpt_withheld": "catalogue text under Perseus terms, not an open licence", "summary": "The famous Attic Nemesis. Pliny says Romans invoked 'the Greek Nemesis' against envious bewitchment, so the goddess of retribution served as a protector against the evil eye. The many Roman copies (London 460, Athens NM 3949, Berlin 1891, Butrinto) show how widely the image spread.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 2, "library_check": "object-found", "library_check_meaning": "museum object: the script confirmed only that the catalogue entry exists; the description was not compared", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-58", "corpus": "material", "work": "Lucian, Alexander or the False Prophet", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek (Roman Imperial)", "language": "", "date": "c. AD 180", "date_sort": 180, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg038.perseus-grc2", "ref": "12.1", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Alex. 12", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "στρουθίου τῆς βαφικῆς βοτάνης τὴν ῥίζαν διαμασησαμένῳ· τοῖς δὲ θεῖόν τι καὶ φοβερὸν ἐδόκει καὶ ὁ ἀφρός. ἐπεποίητο δὲ αὐτοῖς πάλαι καὶ κατεσκεύαστο κεφαλὴ δράκοντος ὀθονίνη ἀνθρωπόμορφόν τι ἐπιφαίνουσα", "translation": "'…for he chewed the root of soapwort, the dyers' plant; yet to them even the foam seemed something divine and fearful. They had long since made and fitted out a serpent's head of linen, showing something human-like…' (it opened and shut its mouth by horsehairs, and a forked black tongue darted out, also worked by hairs).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Lucian's exposé of how the Glykon oracle was staged. Alexander fakes prophetic frenzy by chewing a foaming root, and the god's face is a painted linen puppet head worked by horsehair. This is the textual key to the bronze Glykon (material-9): the cult image copies a stage prop.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "(exposed) soapwort-induced foaming; puppet head on horsehair strings", "practitioner": "Alexander of Abonoteichos", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-59", "corpus": "material", "work": "Lucian, Alexander or the False Prophet", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek (Roman Imperial)", "language": "", "date": "c. AD 180", "date_sort": 180, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg038.perseus-grc2", "ref": "14.1", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Alex. 14 (cf. 16)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ῥᾳδίως ὑποβαλὼν ἀνιμᾶται μετὰ τοῦ ὕδατος καὶ τοῦ πηλοῦ τὸ ᾠὸν ἐκεῖνο ἐν ᾧ ὁ θεὸς αὐτῷ κατεκέκλειστο, κηρῷ λευκῷ καὶ ψιμυθίῳ τὴν ἁρμογὴν τοῦ πώματος συγκεκολλημένον", "translation": "'slipping it in easily, he drew up with the water and mud that egg in which he had shut the god up, the seam of its lid sealed with white wax and white lead.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The 'birth' of the god: a goose egg, previously planted and sealed with wax and white lead, is 'found' in the foundation trench, broken open, and a baby snake appears. At 16.1 the 'grown' god (a large tame Pellaean snake) is shown in a dim room, the crowd hurried through and out by a second door. These are conjuring-trick techniques: planted objects, substitution, poor light, crowd flow.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Alexander of Abonoteichos", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-60", "corpus": "material", "work": "Lucian, Alexander or the False Prophet", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek (Roman Imperial)", "language": "", "date": "c. AD 180", "date_sort": 180, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg038.perseus-grc2", "ref": "26.1", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Alex. 26", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "γεράνων ἀρτηρίας συνάψας καὶ διὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἐκείνης τῆς μεμηχανημένης πρὸς ὁμοιότητα διείρας, ἄλλου τινὸς ἔξωθεν ἐμβοῶντος, ἀπεκρίνετο πρὸς τὰς ἐρωτήσεις", "translation": "'joining cranes' windpipes together and threading them through that head, contrived to look lifelike, with someone else shouting into it from outside, he answered the questions…'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The 'self-speaking' oracle (autophōnos) explained: an accomplice speaks through a tube of cranes' windpipes into the linen head, so the voice seems to come from the snake. This is the clearest technical exposure of a staged oracle in Greek. It sets the claims for the oracular and 'speaking' heads (material-42) in context.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Alexander of Abonoteichos and accomplices", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-61", "corpus": "material", "work": "Plutarch, Table Talk (Quaestiones convivales) 5.7, 'On those said to cast the evil eye'", "author": "Plutarch", "culture": "Greek (Roman Imperial)", "language": "", "date": "c. AD 100–115", "date_sort": 108, "edition_urn": "tlg0007.tlg112.perseus-grc2", "ref": "5.7.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Plut. Quaest. conv. 5.7.3, 681f", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "διὸ καὶ τὸ τῶν λεγομένων προβασκανίων γένος οἴονται πρὸς τὸν φθόνον ὠφελεῖν, ἑλκομένης διὰ τὴν ἀτοπίαν τῆς ὄψεως, ὥσθʼ ἧττον ἐπερείδειν τοῖς πάσχουσιν.", "translation": "'That is why people think the class of things called anti-envy charms (probaskania) helps against envy: the gaze is pulled aside by their strangeness, so that it bears down less on its victims.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An ancient naturalistic theory of the evil eye and its amulets. The speaker argues the soul acts on the body through the eyes, so an envious gaze can harm, and grotesque objects work by distraction. The probaskanion is a 'lightning rod for the gaze'. This is the best ancient explanation for the eye-cups, gorgoneia, eyed phalli and obscene imagery in this corpus (material-24 to 32). Other diners at 5.7.1.1 'mocked the whole business'.", "claimed_effect": "protection from envy and harm", "claimed_mechanism": "emanations from the envious eye; strangeness diverts the gaze", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-62", "corpus": "material", "work": "Pliny the Elder, Natural History 28", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman", "language": "", "date": "AD 77", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "28.4.2", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 28.39", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "quamquam religione eum tutatur et fascinus, imperatorum quoque, non solum infantium , custos, qui deus inter sacra Romana a Vestalibus colitur, et currus triumphantium, sub his pendens, defendit medicus invidiae", "translation": "'…although the Fascinus also guards him by religious means, protector not only of infants but of generals too, a god worshipped among the Roman rites by the Vestal Virgins; and hanging beneath the chariots of triumphing generals it defends them as a doctor against envy.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Roman phallic Fascinus as a state god kept by the Vestals and hung under the triumphal chariot. Pliny also lists spitting rites: nurses spit three times at a sleeping baby when a stranger enters. The same protection ran from nursery to triumph. It is the textual counterpart of the eyed phallos (material-32), the amulet strings on children (material-34) and the Mutinus Titinus coin (Boston 32.816).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "state cult (Vestals) and household custom; Pliny reports it with qualified belief", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-63", "corpus": "material", "work": "Pliny the Elder, Natural History 19", "author": "Pliny the Elder", "culture": "Roman", "language": "", "date": "AD 77", "date_sort": 77, "edition_urn": "phi0978.phi001.perseus-lat2", "ref": "19.4.1", "conventional_ref": "Pliny NH 19.50", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "hortoque et foro tantum contra invidentium effascinationes dicari videmus in remedio saturica signa", "translation": "'and we see satyr-images dedicated as a remedy against the bewitchings of the envious only in the garden and the forum.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Satyric (phallic) images as remedies against 'effascinatio' in gardens and the forum. It explains the rustic phallic image on Boston 10.185 (material-33). The Latin term fascinatio ties sight, envy and bewitchment together, much as the Greek baskania does.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-64", "corpus": "material", "work": "Aristophanes, Wealth (Plutus)", "author": "Aristophanes", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "388 BCE", "date_sort": -388, "edition_urn": "tlg0019.tlg011.perseus-grc2", "ref": "676", "conventional_ref": "Ar. Plut. 676–681", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔπειτʼ ἀναβλέψας ὁρῶ τὸν ἱερέα τοὺς φθοῖς ἀφαρπάζοντα καὶ τὰς ἰσχάδας ἀπὸ τῆς τραπέζης τῆς ἱερᾶς", "translation": "'Then, looking up, I see the priest snatching the cakes and the dried figs from the holy table; after that he went round all the altars in a circle, in case any flat-cake was left, and then he \"consecrated\" them into a sack.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A comic eyewitness account of an Asklepieion night (Wealth 653ff.). The slave Karion watches the priest pocket the offerings while patients sleep, and imitates him. It is the earliest Greek joke about priests profiting from incubation. The comedy does not deny the cure: the god heals the blind Wealth at 733–736 with snakes licking his eyes. This is the textual counterpart of the incubation reliefs (material-15 to 22).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "priest of Asklepios", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-65", "corpus": "material", "work": "Aristophanes, Wealth (Plutus)", "author": "Aristophanes", "culture": "Greek (Athens)", "language": "", "date": "388 BCE", "date_sort": -388, "edition_urn": "tlg0019.tlg011.perseus-grc2", "ref": "716–720", "conventional_ref": "Ar. Plut. 716–725", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "πρῶτον δὲ πάντων τῷ Νεοκλείδῃ φάρμακον καταπλαστὸν ἐνεχείρησε τρίβειν, ἐμβαλὼν σκορόδων κεφαλὰς τρεῖς Τηνίων. ἔπειτʼ ἔφλα ἐν τῇ θυείᾳ συμπαραμιγνύων ὀπὸν καὶ σχῖνον", "translation": "'First of all he set about grinding a plaster-drug for Neokleides, throwing in three heads of Tenian garlic; then he pounded it in the mortar, mixing in fig-juice and squill; then, steeping it in Sphettian vinegar, he plastered his eyelids, turning them inside out to make it hurt more.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the comic dream, the god acts as a pharmacist mixing a real eye-plaster of garlic, fig sap, squill and vinegar, all genuine irritant drugs. Asklepios is imagined as doing what physicians do. The joke depends on the audience knowing that temple medicine used ordinary pharmacology.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "irritant plaster of garlic, fig-juice, squill, vinegar", "practitioner": "Asklepios (in a dream)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok-manual", "library_check_meaning": "the script could not match the transcription, and an AI agent confirmed the passage by reading it", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-66", "corpus": "material", "work": "Pindar, Pythian 3", "author": "Pindar", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "c. 474 BCE (date disputed)", "date_sort": -474, "edition_urn": "tlg0033.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "3.51", "conventional_ref": "Pind. Pyth. 3.47–53", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "τοὺς μὲν μαλακαῖς ἐπαοιδαῖς ἀμφέπων, τοὺς δὲ προσανέα πίνοντας, ἢ γυίοις περάπτων πάντοθεν φάρμακα, τοὺς δὲ τομαῖς ἔστασεν ὀρθούς.", "translation": "'some he tended with gentle incantations, some by giving them soothing potions to drink, or by fastening remedies (pharmaka) all round their limbs, and others he set upright with the knife.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Asklepios' four therapies listed side by side: incantation (epaoidē), potion, the attached remedy or amulet (periaptō), and surgery. In the 5th century BCE these were one continuous toolkit with no line between 'magic' and 'medicine'. The amulet strings on the vases (material-34 to 36) are the periapta. The next line, 'but even wisdom is bound by gain', moralises against the healer's greed.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Asklepios", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-67", "corpus": "material", "work": "Pindar, Pythian 4", "author": "Pindar", "culture": "Greek", "language": "", "date": "462 BCE", "date_sort": -462, "edition_urn": "tlg0033.tlg002.perseus-grc2", "ref": "4.214", "conventional_ref": "Pind. Pyth. 4.213–219", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "ποικίλαν ἴϋγγα τετράκναμον Οὐλυμπόθεν ἐν ἀλύτῳ ζεύξαισα κύκλῳ μαινάδʼ ὄρνιν Κυπρογένεια φέρεν πρῶτον ἀνθρώποισι, λιτάς τʼ ἐπαοιδὰς ἐκδιδάσκησεν σοφὸν Αἰσονίδαν", "translation": "'The Cyprus-born goddess, yoking the dappled wryneck, four-spoked, to the unbreakable wheel, brought the maddening bird from Olympus for the first time to men, and taught the clever son of Aeson prayers and incantations, so that he might take from Medea her respect for her parents.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The origin myth of the iynx. Aphrodite invents it and teaches Jason love-spells against Medea, so the great witch is first the target of love-magic. It is the text behind the iynx held by Aphrodite and Eros on South Italian vases (material-37, 38).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Aphrodite; Jason", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-68", "corpus": "material", "work": "Theocritus, Idyll 2 (Pharmakeutria)", "author": "Theocritus", "culture": "Greek (Hellenistic)", "language": "", "date": "c. 275 BCE", "date_sort": -275, "edition_urn": "tlg0005.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.17", "conventional_ref": "Theoc. Id. 2.17, 2.35–36", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Ἶυγξ, ἕλκε τὺ τῆνον ἐμὸν ποτὶ δῶμα τὸν ἄνδρα. ... ἁ θεὸς ἐν τριόδοισι· τὸ χαλκίον ὡς τάχος ἄχει.", "translation": "'Wryneck, draw that man of mine to my house!' … 'The goddess is at the crossroads: quick, clash the bronze.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The refrain of a private love-spell performed by Simaitha with her maid Thestylis. The ingredients are an iynx, burning barley-groats, and Hekate at the crossroads with howling dogs. In 2.16 she names Medea as a model. Iynx and Hekate are linked here as on the material (material-10, 11, 37). This is a literary portrait of a woman's private magic.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Simaitha", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "a private, female, urban rite", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-69", "corpus": "material", "work": "Pausanias, Description of Greece 2 (Epidauros)", "author": "Pausanias", "culture": "Greek (Roman Imperial)", "language": "", "date": "c. AD 160–175", "date_sort": 165, "edition_urn": "tlg0525.tlg001.perseus-grc2", "ref": "2.27.3.1", "conventional_ref": "Paus. 2.27.3", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "ταύταις ἐγγεγραμμένα καὶ ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν ἐστιν ὀνόματα ἀκεσθέντων ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ, προσέτι δὲ καὶ νόσημα ὅ τι ἕκαστος ἐνόσησε καὶ ὅπως ἰάθη", "translation": "'On these are inscribed the names of men and women healed by Asklepios, and also the disease each one suffered and how he was cured.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The cure stelai (iamata) of Epidauros. In antiquity there were more, and six remained in Pausanias' day. The same passage describes the Tholos (material-20). At 2.27.2 the gold-and-ivory god rests a hand over his snake, with a dog beside him, and suppliants sleep beyond the temple. A sanctuary's published success-record makes it obvious why failures went unrecorded.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-70", "corpus": "material", "work": "Philostratus, Heroicus", "author": "Philostratus the Athenian", "culture": "Greek (Roman Imperial)", "language": "", "date": "c. AD 220–230", "date_sort": 225, "edition_urn": "tlg0638.tlg004.perseus-grc2", "ref": "703.1", "conventional_ref": "Philostr. Her., Olearius p. 703 (chapter number not verified)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "healing", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "ἔχρα δέ, οἶμαι, ἐξ Ὀρφέως, ἡ κεφαλὴ γὰρ μετὰ τὸ τῶν γυναικῶν ἔργον ἐς Λέσβον κατασχοῦσα ῥῆγμα τῆς Λέσβου ᾤκησε καὶ ἐν κοίλῃ τῇ γῇ ἐχρησμῴδει.", "translation": "'It gave its oracles, I think, from Orpheus: for the head, after what the women did, put in at Lesbos, dwelt in a cleft of Lesbos, and chanted oracles in the hollow earth.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The oracle of Orpheus' head on Lesbos, consulted by the Greeks at Troy. The same passage says Philoktetes was cured by Lemnian earth, which 'drives out madness, stops haemorrhage, and heals only the bite of the water-snake'. That claim mixes a real medicinal clay with exaggerated powers. The text behind the oracular-head gem (material-42).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "head of Orpheus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-71", "corpus": "material", "work": "Lucian, Against the Ignorant Book-Collector (Adversus indoctum)", "author": "Lucian of Samosata", "culture": "Greek (Roman Imperial)", "language": "", "date": "c. AD 160s", "date_sort": 165, "edition_urn": "tlg0062.tlg028.perseus-grc2", "ref": "11.1", "conventional_ref": "Lucian, Ind. 11", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "τὴν μὲν ᾄδουσαν θρῆνόν τινα ἐπὶ τῷ Ὀρφεῖ, ὡς λόγος, τὴν λύραν δὲ αὐτὴν ὑπηχεῖν τῶν ἀνέμων ἐμπιπτόντων ταῖς χορδαῖς", "translation": "'the head singing some dirge for Orpheus, as the story goes, and the lyre itself sounding in response as the winds fell on its strings.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Lucian's version of the floating head of Orpheus: the head 'sings, as the story goes', but the lyre sounds because the wind strikes its strings. He gives the singing head a natural explanation, an Aeolian-harp effect, while Philostratus makes it an oracle. The section that follows tells how the lyre, which 'charmed beasts, plants and stones', was stolen by bribing its priest.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "material-72", "corpus": "material", "work": "Pyramid Texts of Unas, Utterance 25", "author": "Anonymous Egyptian priests (Old Kingdom)", "culture": "Egyptian", "language": "", "date": "c. 2350 BCE (pyramid of Unas)", "date_sort": -2350, "edition_urn": "urn:egy:pyramid-texts:unas:translit", "ref": "25.18c-d", "conventional_ref": "PT 25 §18c–d (Unas)", "source_collection": "UD Egyptian-PC (Pyramid Texts)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Wśr(.w) Wnꞽś (r)č̣.n (⸗ꞽ) n ⸗k ꞽr.t Ḥr.w ḥtm(.w) ḥr ⸗k ꞽm ⸗ś pč̣pč̣ śč ꞽr.t Ḥr.w r ⸗k", "translation": "'Osiris Unas, I have given you the Eye of Horus; your face is equipped with it; the scent of the Eye of Horus spreads to you.' (my rendering; the verb pč̣pč̣ is uncertain; the line ends 'words to be said four times: incense, fire')", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Eye of Horus (ꞽr.t Ḥr.w, the wedjat) as the universal restorative offering of Egyptian funerary ritual, which here gives the king his scent, face and wholeness. PT 220 (195d–e) calls the crown Wr.t-ḥkꜣ(.w), 'Great of Magic'. This is the Egyptian background to the Horus eyes the Athenian painters copied (material-24, 25). In Egypt the eye is a ritual token of restored wholeness, and in Athens it became a decorative or protective stare.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "lector-priest", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal mortuary cult", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-1", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Maqlû I–III and Šurpu III (KAR 94 = VAT 8928; CCP 2.1.D)", "author": "Anonymous exorcist of the 'House of the Exorcist', Assur", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Assur)", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE (tablet); Maqlû itself 1st millennium BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P369075:transliteration", "ref": "7'–11'", "conventional_ref": "KAR 94 7'–11' (comm. on Maqlû I)", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "e-le-ni-tu₂ ub-bir₂-⸢an⸣-[ni] / ub-bu-ru ka-[su-u] / SIK₂.UZ₃ im-li-šu ma-la-šu ⸢ba⸣-[qa-mu] / i-ti-iq SAHAR GIR₃-MIN-ia₂ ⸢iš⸣-[bu-šu₂] / ša₂-ba-šu₂ na-⸢sa⸣-[hu]", "translation": "'The witch (ēlenītu) has bound me': 'binding' means 'tying up'. 'She plucked out my hair': 'plucking' means 'tearing out'. 'She gathered the dust of my footsteps': 'gathering' means 'removing'.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The commentary quotes Maqlû's list of the witch's methods (binding the victim, taking hair, scooping up the dust of his footprints) and glosses the hard words. This is the classic Mesopotamian theory of witchcraft by contact with bodily traces, read as philology by a professional exorcist. It is the library's main surviving witness to Maqlû, which is otherwise absent.", "claimed_effect": "The victim is 'bound': illness, misfortune, loss of speech and strength", "claimed_mechanism": "A witch who possesses or manipulates personal material (hair, footprint dust) gains power over the victim. Maqlû counters by burning effigies of the witch.", "practitioner": "Witch (kaššāptu/ēlenītu, female) as aggressor; exorcist (āšipu) as commentator and counter-ritualist", "practitioner_gender": "female (witch); male (exorcist)", "social_legal_context": "Witchcraft (kišpū) is the illicit, hidden practice; the āšipu's counter-ritual is legitimate temple scholarship", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-2", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Maqlû I–III and Šurpu III (KAR 94; CCP 2.1.D)", "author": "Anonymous Assur exorcist", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Assur)", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P369075:transliteration", "ref": "37'–40'", "conventional_ref": "KAR 94 37'–40' (comm. on Maqlû III 114–115)", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "a-laq-qa-kim-ma ha-ha-a ša₂ UDUN dih₂-me-e ša₂ UTUL₂ / ma-a NU ša₂ IM DU₃{uš} / kur-ban-nu ša₂ UDUN dih₂-me-e ša₂ UTUL₂ / a-mah-ha-ah ina SAG.DU NU ša₂ IM a-tab-bak", "translation": "'I take against you slag from the kiln and ashes from the cooking-pot.' That is: he makes a clay figurine. 'A lump from the kiln and ashes from the pot I soak, and over the head of the clay figurine I pour it.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The commentary explains what the exorcist does while reciting part of the Maqlû cycle: he makes a clay effigy of the witch and treats it with kiln residues, which anticipates its burning. The commentator spells out the hidden ritual act behind the spoken first-person words.", "claimed_effect": "The witch's power is destroyed and returned on her", "claimed_mechanism": "Analogy and substitution: what is done to the figurine (ṣalmu) happens to the witch", "practitioner": "Exorcist (āšipu)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Legitimate counter-witchcraft performed for a patient", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-3", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Maqlû I–III and Šurpu III (KAR 94; CCP 2.1.D)", "author": "Anonymous Assur exorcist", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Assur)", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P369075:transliteration", "ref": "33'–35'", "conventional_ref": "KAR 94 33'–35'", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "{d}be-let-a-ga-de₃{⸢ki⸣} [(...)] / EN kum₂-me-ša₂ [(...)] / be-let {munus}UŠ₁₁.ZU-MEŠ ši-⸢i⸣ [(...)]", "translation": "'Bēlet-Akkade' ... '(up) to her cella' ... she is the mistress of the witches.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a list linking cities and deities, the commentator identifies the Lady of Akkad (a form of Ištar) as 'mistress of the witches (kaššāpāti)'. The context is broken and the line is short, so how this identification works is uncertain. Even so, scholarly exegesis gave witchcraft a divine patroness inside the official pantheon.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Witches (female) under a goddess", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Shows that 'illicit' witchcraft was still mapped onto the divine order", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-4", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Maqlû and Šurpu III (KAR 94; CCP 2.1.D)", "author": "Anonymous Assur exorcist", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Assur)", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE; Šurpu canonised late 2nd/early 1st millennium", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P369075:transliteration", "ref": "46'–49'", "conventional_ref": "KAR 94 46'–49' (comm. on Šurpu III)", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "astrology", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "ma-mit KI.TUŠ a-na IGI {d}UTU a-ša₂-bu u₂-<(pa-aš₂-šar {lu₂}MAŠ.MAŠ {d}ASAR.LU₂.HI)> / ma-a ša₂ a-na tar-ṣi {mul}SAG.ME.GAR uš-ša₂-bu / ma-a {d}UTU {mul}SAG.ME.GAR šu-u", "translation": "'The curse (māmītu) of a seat, of sitting facing the Sun: the exorcist Asalluhi will release it.' That is, one who sat opposite Jupiter. That is: 'Šamaš' here is Jupiter.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Šurpu III lists hundreds of māmītu-curses that a person can incur unknowingly by breaking taboos (sitting facing the sun, touching certain objects or places). The divine exorcist Asalluhi/Marduk releases them. The commentator recodes 'the Sun' astrally as the planet Jupiter, and further lines tie other curses to Babylon's shrines. Such star-identifications are typical of late exegesis.", "claimed_effect": "Release from illness or misfortune caused by the curse", "claimed_mechanism": "Unwitting transgression creates a binding 'oath/curse' that clings to the person; ritual burning and incantation 'loosen' (pašāru) it", "practitioner": "Exorcist (mašmaššu), modelled on the god Asalluhi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-5", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Tummu bītu and Šurpu (AfO 12 240 = VAT 13846; CCP 2.1.C)", "author": "Kiṣir-Nabû, junior exorcist, son of Šamaš-ibni, exorcist of the Aššur temple", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Assur)", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P470058:transliteration", "ref": "1–6", "conventional_ref": "AfO 12 240, 1–6 (comm. on 'Tummu bītu')", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "EN₂ tum₃-me E₂ qaq-qa-ru šu-ta-as-⸢suk/suq⸣ ... [ina] ⸢ap⸣-ti ṣe-li la te-rab-šu₂ / ap-tu ša₂ E₂ ra-ma-ki / ina ap-ti ⸢ṣe⸣-li a-he-e {} te-rab-šu₂ / ap-tu ⸢ša₂ tar⸣-ba-ṣi", "translation": "Incantation 'The house is conjured, the ground ...'. 'You shall not enter it by the side window': (this is) the window of the bathroom. 'You shall not enter by the outer side window': the window of the animal pen.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Commentary on the house-protection incantation 'Tummu bītu' ('the house is conjured'). It forbids demons every opening of a house (windows, door sockets, the space between the doors) and the commentator identifies each opening. The colophon (lines 57–58) names the scribe, Kiṣir-Nabû, from the famous Assur family of exorcists whose house library survives.", "claimed_effect": "The household is protected from demons and disease", "claimed_mechanism": "An oath laid on the house's thresholds and openings binds demons from entering", "practitioner": "Exorcist family (Kiṣir-Nabû, Šamaš-ibni)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Temple-based hereditary profession; knowledge passed from father to son", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-6", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Tummu bītu and Šurpu (AfO 12 240; CCP 2.1.C)", "author": "Kiṣir-Nabû (Assur exorcist family)", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Assur)", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P470058:transliteration", "ref": "39–42", "conventional_ref": "AfO 12 240, 39–42 (comm. on Šurpu II)", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "a-na an-na ul-la iq-bu-u / a-na ul-la an-na iq-bu-u / ma-⸢a a⸣-na qa-bi-ti la qa-bi-tu iq-ta-bi / [(ma-a) a-na] ⸢la⸣ qa-⸢bi⸣-[ti] qa-bi-tu iq-ta-bi", "translation": "'He said \"no\" for \"yes\"; he said \"yes\" for \"no\"': that is, for what was spoken he said 'not spoken', for what was not spoken he said 'spoken'.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Šurpu II, as quoted here, lists moral offences (lying, double-dealing, slander, false judgement) that bring the 'curse' and its sickness on the sufferer. Mesopotamian 'magic' was not separate from ethics: the exorcist's patient had to confess, and the burning rite removed sin and curse together. Compare Esarhaddon's charge that the Babylonians 'answered yes and no to one another' (mesopotamia-41).", "claimed_effect": "Healing of the illness caused by sin", "claimed_mechanism": "Sin and falsehood generate a māmītu that binds the sinner; confession and ritual release it", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Morality, law and ritual intertwined", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-7", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Udug-hul (Iraq 62, 48 = JRL 1053; CCP 2.2.1.A.b)", "author": "'Questioning' (oral lesson) of Kiṣir-Nabû (Assur exorcist)", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Assur)", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P430865:transliteration", "ref": "11–14", "conventional_ref": "JRL 1053, 11–14", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "a-na E₂ ina e-re-bi-ia {d}UTU ina IGI-ia {d}30 ina ⸢EGIR⸣-ia / ma-a šum-ma ina {d}UTU.⸢E₃⸣ {d}UTU.⸢E₃⸣ pa-ni-ia šak-nu / ... {d}⸢IŠKUR⸣ ina im-ni-ia {d}MAŠ ina GUB₃-ia", "translation": "'When I enter the house, Šamaš is before me, Sîn behind me.' That is: if (I enter) at sunrise, my face is set toward the sunrise. ... 'Adad at my right, Ninurta at my left.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The exorcist entering a patient's house surrounds himself with a cordon of gods. The commentary reads the formula literally as practical orientation (face the rising sun). The colophon calls the tablet the maš'altu ('questioning, oral examination') of Kiṣir-Nabû, a glimpse of how the craft was taught. The variant in LKA 82 puts Nergal on the right (mesopotamia-8).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine escort: the gods physically flank the practitioner", "practitioner": "Exorcist (āšipu)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-8", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Udug-hul (LKA 82 = VAT 8286; CCP 2.2.2)", "author": "Anonymous (Assur)", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Assur)", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P413991:transliteration", "ref": "o 6–b.e. 11", "conventional_ref": "LKA 82 o 6–11", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "{d}U.GUR ina im-ni-ia {d}MAŠ ina GUB₃-ia ina KA-ia ha-riš ... ša₂ mu-še-niq-ti le-mut-ti ši-iz-ba i-ni-qu šu₂-nu / ina a-ra-al-le-e še-pa i-šak-nu ma-a ša₂ da-a-ki šu₂-u", "translation": "'Nergal at my right, Ninurta at my left ...' ... 'They are those who sucked milk from an evil wet-nurse.' 'They set foot in Arallû (the netherworld)': that is, it is one who was killed.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The same divine-bodyguard formula, here with Nergal rather than Adad on the right, is followed by glosses on the demons' origins: 'semen poured out by Anu', 'offspring of the Earth', nursed by an evil wet-nurse. The commentary explains 'one who has set foot in the netherworld' as a person violently killed, and goes on to the one 'who opened the gate in the grave' (b.e. 12). The restless dead and the demons are thus explained genealogically.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Demons and ghosts have origins and natures; naming them correctly is part of expelling them", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-9", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on a namburbi ritual (BM 38271; CCP 2.3; base text LKA 115)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Babylon)", "language": "", "date": "Neo/Late Babylonian, perhaps Hellenistic (c. 4th–2nd c. BCE)", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P461166:transliteration", "ref": "10–11; 20–21", "conventional_ref": "BM 38271, 10–11, 20–21", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "divination", "protection-amulet", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "{⸢dug⸣}SILA₃.GAZ ši-ir-mu ša₂ IM la ba-šal / NU IM NU {lu₂}UŠ₁₁.ZU u {munus}UŠ₁₁.ZU ... maš-al-ti ša₂ BE{ma} GISKIM-MEŠ HUL-ME / ana LU₂ u E₂-šu₂ it-ta-na-an-ma-ri", "translation": "'A širmu-vessel of clay': unfired. 'A clay figurine': a figurine of the sorcerer and the sorceress. ... Questioning (lesson) on 'If evil signs are repeatedly seen against a man and his house.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A namburbi ('its loosening') averts the evil foretold by an omen before it happens. This commentary shows the ritual made clay figurines of a male and female sorcerer, so the evil portent was traced back to witchcraft and discharged onto effigies. Divination and anti-witchcraft merge here.", "claimed_effect": "The evil announced by the omen does not occur", "claimed_mechanism": "Signs are warnings, not fixed fate; ritual substitution diverts the portended harm", "practitioner": "Exorcist (implied); sorcerer and sorceress as targets", "practitioner_gender": "male and female sorcerers named", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-10", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Bilingual incantation against the Oath, CT 17 pl. 34–36 (K 3586+)", "author": "Anonymous; Ashurbanipal's library copy", "culture": "Sumerian–Akkadian bilingual, Neo-Assyrian copy (Nineveh)", "language": "", "date": "Copy 7th c. BCE; composition of Old Babylonian origin, canonised late 2nd millennium", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:blms:P395106:transliteration", "ref": "16; 28–30", "conventional_ref": "CT 17 34–36, 16, 28–30", "source_collection": "Oracc BLMS", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "lu-u u₂-tuk-ku lem-nu lu-u a-lu-u lem-nu lu-u e-ṭem₂-mu lem-nu ... ša₂ a-na zi₃-sur-re-e ša₂ {d}ni-sa-ba i-ṣar-ru-ru / ... sa-pa-ru ša₂ {d}ni-sa-ba lik-su-šu₂", "translation": "Whether evil utukku, evil alû, or evil ghost (eṭemmu) ... whoever glares at Nisaba's magic flour circle (zisurrû): may Nisaba's net bind him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The 'Oath' (māmītu) is turned into a trap and net set by the gods against every class of demon, including Lamaštu, the lilû-demons and Namtar (lines 15–22). The material focus is the zisurrû, a circle of flour drawn around the patient or bed, here backed by the grain goddess Nisaba. Later lines bind the demon at every threshold, door-pivot and window of the house.", "claimed_effect": "Demons are trapped, expelled and kept out of the house", "claimed_mechanism": "A ritually drawn boundary charged with divine oath captures any demon crossing it", "practitioner": "Exorcist (āšipu)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-11", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Bilingual incantation against the Oath, GAAL 2 pl. 24–25 (BM 74528)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Sumerian–Akkadian bilingual (Babylonian copy)", "language": "", "date": "1st millennium BCE copy (probably Late Babylonian)", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "oracc:blms:X000012:transliteration", "ref": "15–22", "conventional_ref": "Incantation against the Oath, GAAL 2 pl. 24–25, 15–22", "source_collection": "Oracc BLMS", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "ša₂ {⸢d}e₂⸣-a a-na-ku ... ša₂ {d}DAM.KI.NA a-na-⸢ku⸣ ... DUMU šip-ri ša₂ {d}AMAR.UTU a-na-ku ... ša₂ qa-ti {d}e₂-a ina qa-ti-ia i-ba-aš₂-ši", "translation": "I am Ea's man; I am Damkina's man; I am the messenger of Marduk. The hand of Ea is in my hand.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The exorcist's self-legitimation: he does not act on his own power but as the agent of the gods of magic (Ea, Damkina, Marduk/Asalluhi). The next lines add 'the incantation of Ea is in my incantation, the word of Ea is in my mouth', followed by good protective spirits at the right and left. This marks the emic line between legitimate āšipūtu, sanctioned by the gods, and witchcraft.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Delegated divine authority: the words and hands of the exorcist are those of Ea", "practitioner": "Exorcist (āšipu)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Legitimacy derives from divine commission, not personal power", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-12", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Bilingual incantation 'Oath, oath, go away', GAAL 2 pl. 17–18 (K 4969+)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Sumerian–Akkadian bilingual, Neo-Assyrian copy (Nineveh)", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE copy", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:blms:P395814:transliteration", "ref": "1–4", "conventional_ref": "GAAL 2 pl. 17–18, 1–4", "source_collection": "Oracc BLMS", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "en₂ saŋ-ba saŋ-⸢ba⸣ [sil₇-la₂] ⸢sil₇⸣-[la₂] ⸢bad-ra₂⸣ bad-⸢ra₂⸣ / ma-mit ma-mit ⸢pu⸣-[ṭur dup-pir] ⸢i-si re⸣-qi₂ / saŋ-ba an-⸢na⸣ [saŋ]-še₃ i-[ri]-pad₃ / ma-mit AN{⸢e} u₂⸣-tam-⸢mi⸣-ka", "translation": "Incantation: Oath, oath, be loosed! Go away, withdraw, be far off! Oath, I adjure you by heaven!", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The curse (māmītu) itself is personified as a demon-like agent that can be adjured and sent away. The text then draws a contrast: the 'incantation that releases' casts the net, while the oath is extinguished. Copies of this cycle survive from Nineveh, Sultantepe (STT 168, 171), Assur (VS 24 53–54), Ur (UET 7 129), Kish (OECT 11 26–35) and Babylon (GAAL 2), which shows a standard curriculum spanning the Assyrian and Babylonian worlds.", "claimed_effect": "Release from an incurred curse", "claimed_mechanism": "Counter-oath: adjuring the curse by heaven and earth makes it withdraw", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-13", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Bilingual incantation against the Oath with rubric, VS 24 54 (VAT 17056)", "author": "Anonymous (Assur copy)", "culture": "Sumerian–Akkadian bilingual (Assur)", "language": "", "date": "Neo-Assyrian copy, 8th–7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -680, "edition_urn": "oracc:blms:P347173:transliteration", "ref": "15–r 3'", "conventional_ref": "VS 24 54 r 2'–3'", "source_collection": "Oracc BLMS", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "[ši-pat ap-si-i u eri-du₁₀ a-a] ip-pa-ši-ir / [ka-inim-ma zid₂-sur-ra] ŋeš-hur-a-⸢kam₂⸣", "translation": "'The incantation of the Apsû and Eridu cannot be undone.' Incantation-rubric (ka-inim-ma) for the flour circle and the 'design' (uṣurtu).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The rubric names the incantation's ritual use: drawing the zisurrû flour circle and the protective 'design' or drawn boundary. It also states the doctrine of the exorcist's spells: a 'spell of Eridu', Ea's city, cannot be loosened by any rival power. The same text recurs in OECT 11 26 (LB, Kish), showing transmission across about five centuries.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Spells from Ea's Apsû are irrevocable; drawn boundaries channel them", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-14", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Ludlul bēl nēmeqi (K.3291; CCP 1.3)", "author": "Anonymous Assyrian commentator; Ludlul attributed to Šubši-mešrê-Šakkan", "culture": "Babylonian poem (Kassite), Neo-Assyrian commentary (Nineveh)", "language": "", "date": "Poem c. 1300–1100 BCE; commentary 7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -1200, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P394923:transliteration", "ref": "o 26'–o 29'", "conventional_ref": "Ludlul II 7–9 (Lambert; numbering varies), via comm. K.3291 o 26'–29'", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "divination", "exorcism", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "i-na maš-šak-ki {lu₂}⸢ENSI⸣ ul u₂(I-)ša₂-pi ⸢di-ni⸣ / maš-šak-ku sur-qe₂-nu ša₂ {lu₂}⸢ENSI⸣ / {lu₂}MAŠ.MAŠ ina KID₃.KID₃{ṭe₃-e} ki-mil-ti ul ip-ṭur / KID₃.KID₃{⸢ṭu-u₂⸣} ne₂-pe-ši", "translation": "'With his incense the dream-interpreter (šā'ilu) did not clarify my case': maššakku is the šā'ilu's strewn offering. 'The exorcist with his ritual did not undo the divine anger against me': kikiṭṭû means 'ritual procedure'.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The righteous sufferer complains that neither the dream-interpreter nor the exorcist could help him; in the poem the diviner (bārû) also fails. Only Marduk's own decision heals him, announced in dreams in Tablet III. The text admits that the experts' techniques can fail, but it does not deny they work: success depends on the god. The commentary also explains the poem's later 'bank of the River' as the river ordeal (r 30'–31', mesopotamia-15).", "claimed_effect": "Failed: the sufferer was not cured by experts", "claimed_mechanism": "Rites work only if the angry god relents; human expertise is subordinate to divine will", "practitioner": "Dream-interpreter (šā'ilu), exorcist (mašmaššu/āšipu), diviner (bārû)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-15", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Ludlul bēl nēmeqi (K.3291; CCP 1.3)", "author": "Anonymous Assyrian commentator", "culture": "Babylonian poem, Neo-Assyrian commentary (Nineveh)", "language": "", "date": "Poem c. 1300–1100 BCE; commentary 7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -1200, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P394923:transliteration", "ref": "r 30–r 31", "conventional_ref": "Ludlul (Tablet IV in recent editions), via comm. K.3291 r 30–31", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "i-na i-te-e {d}ID₂ a-šar de-en UN-MEŠ ib-bir-ru / i-te-e {d}ID₂ hur-ša₂-an", "translation": "'On the bank of the River, where the case of people is decided ...': 'the bank of the River' means the ordeal (huršān).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The commentator explains that the healed sufferer's passage by the 'River' refers to the river ordeal, in which the divine River decided guilt or innocence. This was a judicial-divinatory institution well attested in Mesopotamian law (e.g. for sorcery accusations, though the laws themselves are not in this library).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "The River-god judges: the guilty sink, the innocent survive", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Ordeal as legal procedure for undecidable cases", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-16", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "School commentary tablet with excerpts (CDLI Literary 002701.01 ex. 24 & 002718.01 ex. 31; CCP school tablet)", "author": "Anonymous student", "culture": "Late Babylonian", "language": "", "date": "Late Babylonian (c. 6th–3rd c. BCE)", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P381770:transliteration", "ref": "15–16", "conventional_ref": "Maqlû IV (excerpt) on LB school tablet, 15–16", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "a-na UDUN a-lik-ti a-šar-rap-ši-⸢na⸣-[ti] / {d}GIŠ.BAR qu-mi(LUM) kaš-ša₂-pi kaš-⸢šap⸣-[ti]", "translation": "I shall burn them in a blazing kiln. Girra (Fire-god), burn my sorcerer and my sorceress!", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Students copied lines of the anti-witchcraft series Maqlû alongside lexical lists, Šumma izbu, the Šamaš Hymn, Ludlul, Enūma eliš and Erra, all on one school exercise. Anti-witchcraft incantation was part of the ordinary Babylonian scribal curriculum, not secret lore.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "The fire-god burns the witch through her effigy", "practitioner": "Student scribe (copying); sorcerer/sorceress as target", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-17", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on the medical-diagnostic text 'If a man's tongue is swollen' (SpTU 1, 47)", "author": "Anu-ikṣur, junior exorcist (mašmaššu), descendant of Šangi-Ninurta", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Uruk)", "language": "", "date": "Late Achaemenid / early Hellenistic, c. 4th c. BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P348468:transliteration", "ref": "o 2–o 5", "conventional_ref": "SpTU 1 47 o 2–5", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "healing", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "a-na E₂ mu-sa-a-tu₂ la₃ KU₄{ub} {d}ŠU.LAK SIG₃-su / {d}ŠU.LAK ša₂ E{u₂} ŠU qa-tu₄ la la-a KU₃ el-lu / ana E₂ mu-sa-a-tu₂ KU₄{ub} ŠU₂-šu₂ NU KU₃ ana UGU qa-bi", "translation": "'He should not enter the washroom: Šulak will strike him.' 'Šulak' is said because ŠU = hand, LA = not, KU = pure: it is said of one who enters the washroom with unclean hands.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The demon Šulak, 'the rābiṣu of the washroom', is etymologised from Sumerian signs as 'hand-not-pure'. Disease is linked to entering the bathroom with unclean hands. The commentary also glosses symptoms (stroke, rolling eyes, insomnia) and, under 'exorcist's craft' (mašmaššūtu, o 11), a recipe: pound aromatic resin until its oil comes out, and use a goatskin bag (o 13–16). The Uruk exorcist is plainly also the physician.", "claimed_effect": "Swelling of the tongue and related illness; cure by aromatics and amulet bag", "claimed_mechanism": "A lavatory demon attacks the ritually unclean; wordplay on the demon's name reveals its nature", "practitioner": "Exorcist-physician (mašmaššu)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-18", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary M on the Qutāru ('Fumigation') series, on four types of epilepsy (BRM 4, 32; CCP 4.2.M.a)", "author": "A nêšakku-priest of Enlil, son of Zēr-kitti-līšir, descendant of Gimil-Sîn", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Uruk, Nippur-trained scribe)", "language": "", "date": "Achaemenid, c. 5th–4th c. BCE", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P296515:transliteration", "ref": "o 1–o 3", "conventional_ref": "BRM 4 32 o 1–3", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "healing", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "AN.TA.ŠUB.BA mar-ṣa ih-tan-naq u₃ UH₂-su ŠUB.ŠUB{a} AN.TA.ŠUB.BA / {d}LUGAL.UR₃.RA IGI-MIN 15-šu₂ u 150-šu₂ i-kap-pi-iṣ ... ŠU.DINGIR.RA DINGIR-MEŠ i-nam-zar", "translation": "'Fallen-from-heaven' (antašubbû): the patient keeps choking and his spittle keeps flowing. 'Lord-of-the-Roof': his right and left eyes roll back. 'Hand-of-a-god': he curses the gods ...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The commentary defines four named seizure conditions (Fallen-from-Heaven, Lord-of-the-Roof, Hand-of-a-god, Hand-of-a-goddess) and 'Hand-of-a-ghost' by their clinical signs: choking, salivation, eyes rolling up, ringing ears, inability to eat. Each is ascribed to a supernatural agent, and the therapy is fumigation. This is careful clinical description of what look like real seizure disorders, inside a demonological explanation.", "claimed_effect": "Relief of seizure disorders", "claimed_mechanism": "Diseases are the 'hand' (touch) of a specific god, goddess, demon or ghost; fumigation drives it off", "practitioner": "Exorcist/physician; the commentary itself mentions the asû (physician) at o 13", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-19", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary M on Qutāru (BRM 4, 32; CCP 4.2.M.a)", "author": "A nêšakku-priest of Enlil (Uruk/Nippur scholar)", "culture": "Late Babylonian", "language": "", "date": "Achaemenid, c. 5th–4th c. BCE", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P296515:transliteration", "ref": "o 5–o 7", "conventional_ref": "BRM 4 32 o 5–7 (plant code-names)", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "A.RI.A NAM.LU₂.U₁₈.LU {u₂}maš-ta-kal ... {u₂}IGI-lim ki-ma GIR₃.PAD.DU NAM.LU₂.U₁₈.LU ... MUD₂ ka-mi-i MUD₂ {lu₂}ga-ar-ba-nu", "translation": "'Human semen' = the maštakal-plant ... the 'It-confronted-a-thousand' plant is like human bone ... 'blood of a captive' = 'blood of a leper' (alternatively: blood of an owl).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Several repellent-sounding ingredients in the fumigation recipes ('human semen', 'soiled rag', 'fox flesh', 'human skull') are glossed as ordinary plants or described by plant analogies; the CCP editors classify them as Decknamen (code-names). The commentary thus decodes 'filth pharmacy' into herbal materia medica, and also lists sulphurs, salts, resins and aromatics (o 12–16). The same phenomenon is known from Greek magical papyri.", "claimed_effect": "Healing of epilepsy-like conditions", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbal and mineral fumigation; secret names protect specialist knowledge", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-20", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Šurpu/Maqlû-related lists (K.4320 = RA 28 124; CCP 2.1.B)", "author": "Anonymous (Ashurbanipal's library)", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Nineveh)", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P395480:transliteration", "ref": "o i 1–o i 3; o ii 1", "conventional_ref": "K.4320 o i 1–3, ii 1", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "{[d}ia-ab-ru] {⸢d}a-nu NIM{ki⸣} / {⸢d⸣}[hum-ba-(an)] {[d}en]-lil₂ {} / ⸢nap-ru⸣-[ša] {⸢d}e₂⸣-a {} ... ⸢U₂⸣ {d}UTU ša₂-gi-⸢ru⸣", "translation": "Iabru = Anu of Elam; Humban = Enlil of Elam; Napruša = Ea of Elam ... 'Plant of Šamaš' = šakirû (perhaps henbane).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The commentary on Šurpu's list of gods (used to release curses) equates the Elamite gods with Babylonian ones, an explicit cross-cultural translation of deities. Later in the commentary the 'plant of Šamaš' is identified as šakirû, conventionally henbane (identification disputed), alongside lists of sins, holes and pits, and preparation verbs (crush, pound, anoint).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Correct naming of gods and plants underlies ritual efficacy", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-21", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on the therapeutic series 'If a man's head hurts him' (SpTU 1, 51)", "author": "Anu-ikṣur, exorcist, son of Šamaš-iddin, descendant of Šangi-Ninurta", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Uruk)", "language": "", "date": "c. 4th c. BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P348472:transliteration", "ref": "r 2–r 8", "conventional_ref": "SpTU 1 51 r 2–8", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "u₂-pul ša₂ SAG.DU-su kal-ma-tu u₂-naq-qi₂-[ir-šu₂] ... PIŠ₁₀.{d}ID₂ GE₆ kib-rit ... AMAR a-tam li-da-nu SIG₂ SUMUN ŠUB-ma SIG₂ GIBIL ⸢E₃⸣", "translation": "'Upul' (means): one whose head the lice gnaw ... 'black river-stone' = sulphur ... 'chick' = hatchling ... 'the old hair falls out and new hair comes out'.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The commentary explains a remedy for head lice, itching scalp diseases and hair loss: sulphur, naphtha, myrtle and juniper oils, bird droppings. The colophon (r 17–21) calls it a commentary 'from the mouth of the master' and 'treatment of the house of Dābibi', read out by the exorcist Anu-ikṣur. Practical dermatology was part of the exorcist's craft (āšipūtu).", "claimed_effect": "Removal of lice, cure of itching and regrowth of hair", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Exorcist (mašmaššu) as healer", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-22", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Sakikkû (Diagnostic Handbook) Tablet 3 (BM 43854 + BM 43938; CCP 4.1.3.C)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Babylon)", "language": "", "date": "Neo/Late Babylonian (c. 6th–3rd c. BCE)", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P461216:transliteration", "ref": "12'–15'", "conventional_ref": "BM 43854+ 12'–15' (comm. on Sakikkû III 45–49)", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "[ne₂-per-ku-u₂] ba-ṭa-lu ŠU-MIN-šu₂ u GIR₃-MIN-šu₂ i-ra-ʾu-bu ... [at-mu-u₂] da-ba-bi il-la-ti ru-ʾu-tu lu-ʾa-a-ti ⸢šu-kul⸣ / [lu-ʾa-(a)]-⸢ti⸣ kiš-pi ŠA₃-šu₂ ana BURU₈{a-re-e}e i-te-ne₂-el-la-⸢a⸣-[ma]", "translation": "'His hands and feet shake' ... 'Talk' means speech; 'saliva' means spittle. 'He has been fed debility (lu'âtu)': debility means sorcery (kišpū). 'His insides keep rising to vomit.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the Diagnostic Handbook a cluster of symptoms (loss of speech, halting speech, shaking hands and feet, salivation, repeated vomiting) is diagnosed as 'fed debility', which the commentator glosses as 'sorcery'. Witchcraft is imagined as something given in food or drink: a magical theory that overlaps with real poisoning.", "claimed_effect": "Neurological and gastric symptoms in the victim", "claimed_mechanism": "Witchcraft administered through food ('feeding' sorcery)", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-23", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on the potency series 'If a man's heart rises toward his wife' (SpTU 2, 39)", "author": "Iqīšâ, son of Ištar-šuma-ēreš, descendant of Ekur-zākir, of Uruk", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Uruk)", "language": "", "date": "Late 4th c. BCE", "date_sort": -320, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P348644:transliteration", "ref": "r 4'–r 8'", "conventional_ref": "SpTU 2 39 r 4'–8'", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "love", "healing", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "[...]-ta-mu NA BI ina kiš-pi du-um-ma / [...] di-im-mat da-ma-ma / [ṣa-a-tu₂ šu-ut KA u maš-ʾa-al-tu₂ ša₂ KA um-man]-nu ša₂ ŠA₃ NA ana MUNUS-šu₂ ŠA₃-šu₂ IL₂-šu₂-ma", "translation": "'... that man is made to moan through sorcery' — 'moaning' means wailing. Commentary, oral explanations and questioning from the master's mouth on 'If a man's heart rises toward his wife'.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The colophon identifies the base text as part of the potency (ŠÀ.ZI.GA-type) therapies concerning a man's desire for his wife. The quoted line attributes the man's distress to sorcery, and an earlier line mentions washing (r 4'). Impotence and sexual failure were among the classic results of witchcraft, treated by the same scholar who wrote eclipse and birth-omen commentaries.", "claimed_effect": "Restoration of potency or desire", "claimed_mechanism": "Witchcraft blocks sexual function; counter-ritual and therapy restore it", "practitioner": "Exorcist-scholar Iqīšâ", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-24", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on the birth incantation 'The woman giving birth' (OIC 22, 131 no. 20)", "author": "Enlil-kāṣir, lamentation priest (kalû) of Enlil, son of Enlil-šuma-imbi, descendant of Lu-dumununna, 'the Sumerian'", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Nippur)", "language": "", "date": "Achaemenid period (c. 5th–4th c. BCE)", "date_sort": -450, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P459066:transliteration", "ref": "1; 12–13", "conventional_ref": "OIC 22 131 no. 20, 1, 12–13 (also 21, 40–41, 53–55)", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "en₂ munus u₃-tu-ud-da-a-ni e-lep-pi ša₂ uq-na-a ṣa-na-at ... he-pi-ma aš-šum GI / na-ki-is ab-bu-un-na-ti", "translation": "Incantation: 'The woman giving birth is a boat loaded with lapis lazuli' ... (the reed is mentioned) because the reed is what cuts the umbilical cord.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A word-by-word commentary on a childbirth incantation in which the labouring woman is a laden ship and the moon-god Sîn's cow gives birth. The commentary explains the reed that cuts the cord and Sîn as 'lord of the pure cows' (21). It also explains the instruction 'reach out your hand, touch our vulva' (40–41), which glosses actual midwifery among the mythological images. The commentator was a lamentation priest (kalû), not an exorcist.", "claimed_effect": "Safe, quick delivery", "claimed_mechanism": "Mythic analogy (Sîn's cow delivered by divine help) applied to the woman, combined with manual assistance", "practitioner": "Lamentation priest (kalû) as commentator; midwife (implied) as performer", "practitioner_gender": "male (commentator); female practitioners implied", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-25", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Enūma Anu Enlil 20 (lunar eclipses) (SpTU 4, 162 = IM 75990; CCP 3.1.20.B.a)", "author": "Iqīšâ, son of Ištar-šuma-ēreš, descendant of Ekur-zākir, exorcist; written for Anu-aba-uṣur", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Uruk)", "language": "", "date": "Year 2 of Philip (Arrhidaeus), 322 BCE (copy); EAE c. early 1st millennium BCE", "date_sort": -322, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P348755:transliteration", "ref": "o 15–o 17", "conventional_ref": "SpTU 4 162 o 15–17 (comm. on EAE 20)", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "KU₄ ina U₄.NA₂.A dele-bat ana ŠA₃ 30 KU₄-ma 1 me AN.GE₆ DUG₄.GA / [U₄].NA₂.A AN.GE₆ u₂-kal-lam-ka ul-tu U₄.NA₂ ša₂ {iti}GAN / [ana] U₄ AN.GE₆ ša₂ {iti}BARA₂ ta-qab-bi 1 me U₄{mi}", "translation": "'If on the day of the moon's disappearance Venus enters the Moon: you predict an eclipse in 100 (days).' The day of disappearance shows you the eclipse: from the disappearance day of Kislīmu to the eclipse day of Nisannu you reckon 100 days.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A late exorcist-scholar's commentary on the lunar-eclipse tablet of the great omen series. It contains an explicit forecasting rule: an observed Venus–Moon conjunction at the dark of the moon predicts an eclipse 100 days later, roughly Kislīmu 28 to Nisannu 14. The colophon, dated by Philip Arrhidaeus, shows the āšipu family of Ekur-zākir as astrologers as well as healers (r 21'–23'). Commentary B on EAE 20 (Q005129) is a duplicate.", "claimed_effect": "Forecast of an eclipse and of its political consequences", "claimed_mechanism": "Heavenly signs are written by the gods and readable by rules; some signs announce others", "practitioner": "Exorcist-astrologer (mašmaššu) of Uruk", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-26", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Enūma Anu Enlil 20 (SpTU 4, 162; CCP 3.1.20.B.a)", "author": "Iqīšâ (Uruk exorcist)", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Uruk)", "language": "", "date": "322 BCE (copy)", "date_sort": -322, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P348755:transliteration", "ref": "o 6–o 9", "conventional_ref": "SpTU 4 162 o 6–9", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "EN ITI-šu₂ {mulₓ(ab₂)}LU₂.HUN.GA₂ ina ŠA₃ LUGAL A.GA.DE₃{ki} UG₇ iq-bi IM ša₂ / ina ŠU-MIN-ka tu-kal IM ša₂ ana KUR.KUR il-la-ku-ma pi-šir₃ ana ŠA₃ / ta-qab-bi EŠ.BAR ana LUGAL A.GA.DE₃{ki} ta-nam-din", "translation": "'By the end of its month': in (the constellation) the Hired Man, it says 'the king of Akkad will die'. The (record of) wind you hold in your hand ... the wind that blows over the lands, you state the interpretation accordingly, and you give the decision to the king of Akkad.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An eclipse on 14 Nisannu in the Hired Man (Aries) portends the death of the king of Akkad. The scholar is told to take the observed wind direction into account when giving his 'decision' (purussû) to the king. This is the logic behind the Assyrian substitute-king ritual, which the library does not itself attest. Even under Macedonian rule the formula still speaks of 'the king of Akkad'.", "claimed_effect": "Prediction of royal death; a basis for apotropaic action", "claimed_mechanism": "Eclipse plus constellation plus wind form a composite sign to be interpreted", "practitioner": "Scholar-astrologer advising the king", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-27", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Enūma Anu Enlil eclipse omens (BM 47447; CCP 3.1.16)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Babylon)", "language": "", "date": "Late Babylonian (c. 6th–3rd c. BCE)", "date_sort": -400, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P461229:transliteration", "ref": "1–3", "conventional_ref": "BM 47447, 1–3", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "weather-nature", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "⸢AN⸣.GE₆ GAR-ma U₄ ŠU₂{up} AN.GE₆ GAR-ma {d}IŠKUR KA-šu₂ ŠUB{di} AN.GE₆ / GAR-ma ŠEG₃ ŠUR{nun} AN.GE₆ GAR-ma NIM.GIR₂ {ib}GIR₂ ana UGU AMA-MEŠ qa-bi / ik-kam-ma-ru id-da-a-ku", "translation": "'An eclipse occurs and the day is overcast; an eclipse occurs and Adad thunders; an eclipse occurs and rain falls; an eclipse occurs and lightning flashes': said with reference to the clouds(?). 'They will be heaped up and killed' ...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The commentary merges celestial and weather omens: an eclipse accompanied by cloud, thunder, rain, lightning or coloured clouds (lines 9–13) changes the forecast. Apodoses include plague, flood, the king in distress. The observing scholar had to record terrestrial weather together with the eclipse.", "claimed_effect": "Forecasts of epidemic, flood, death in battle", "claimed_mechanism": "Combined signs from sky and weather", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-28", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Enūma Anu Enlil, Adad (weather) section (ACh Adad 25; CCP 3.1)", "author": "Copied by Aššur-mudammiq, son of [...] (colophon: 'copy of a Babylon original')", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian copy of Babylonian scholarship", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P393842:transliteration", "ref": "o 1–o 3", "conventional_ref": "ACh Adad 25 o 1–3", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "{d}IŠKUR ina la a-dan-ni-šu₂ GU₃-šu₂ [ŠUB-ma] / ina {iti}ŠU {iti}NE u {iti}KIN GU₃-šu₂ [ŠUB-ma] / {d}IŠKUR ina la si-ma-ni-šu₂ GU₃-šu₂ [ŠUB-ma]", "translation": "'If Adad thunders not at his appointed time': (that is,) he thunders in Duʾuzu, Abu and Ulūlu. 'If Adad thunders not in his season' ...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The commentary defines 'thunder out of its time' as thunder in the high-summer months (IV–VI), when in Mesopotamia it is rare. Omen interpretation here rests on accurate climatic knowledge: the 'portent' is a real meteorological anomaly.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Anomalies against the normal seasonal order are divine signs", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-29", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Venus omens of Enūma Anu Enlil (ACh Ištar 5; CCP 3.1)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian or Babylonian", "language": "", "date": "c. 7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P393722:transliteration", "ref": "20–21", "conventional_ref": "ACh Ištar 5, 20–21", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "{mul]}⸢dil⸣-bat ina EN.NUN.U₄.ZAL.LI KUR{ha} su-ga-ga-ti / sag]-ga-ša₂-a-ti ina KUR GAL₂-MEŠ", "translation": "If Venus rises in the morning watch: ... killings will occur in the land.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A typical Venus (Dilbat) omen with commentary. The planet's flaring, position relative to constellations (Yoke, Wagon, Bull of Heaven, Orion), month and time of rising predict famine, revolt, rain, or kings changing allegiance. Venus omens are among the oldest astral omens (the 'Venus Tablet of Ammiṣaduqa' itself is not in the library).", "claimed_effect": "Forecasts of slaughter, famine, revolt", "claimed_mechanism": "Ištar's star signals political and military events", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-30", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on planetary omens (ACh Ištar 21; CCP 3.1)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Nineveh)", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P394167:transliteration", "ref": "o 13'–o 14'", "conventional_ref": "ACh Ištar 21 o 13'–14'", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "{mul}EN.TE.NA.BAR.HUM ina E₃-šu mu-lu-uh ina SAG {iti}ŠU.NUMUN.NA IGI / BURU₁₄ KUR SI.SA₂ KI.LAM {i}TUR", "translation": "If the 'Mouse' star (Mercury) is seen flickering at its rising at the beginning of Duʾuzu: the harvest of the land will prosper; the market (prices) will fall.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Mercury omens forecast harvests and grain prices. These economic predictions were the material of later Babylonian astronomical diaries, which recorded prices alongside sky observations.", "claimed_effect": "Agricultural and price forecasts", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-31", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Extispicy commentary (mukallimtu) on Bārûtu, 'If the eye-slit ...' (CT 30 pl. 43; CCP 3.4.1.H)", "author": "Anonymous (Ashurbanipal's library)", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Nineveh)", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P366009:transliteration", "ref": "o 14'–o 15'; r 6'–r 7'", "conventional_ref": "CT 30 43 o 14'–15', r 6'–7'", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "BE NA GIM GIR₂ GIR₂ GIM NA e-ṣir ⸢x⸣ / an-nu-tu₄ UZU-MEŠ ša₂ {lu₂}HAL mam-[ma NU ZU{u₂]} ... BE{ma} MU-MEŠ ša₂ ina ba-ru-ti KUR₂-MEŠ-⸢ma⸣ [GIŠKIM-šu₂-nu ana la-ma-di KUR{at₂]}", "translation": "'If the Station is drawn like the Path and the Path like the Station ...': these are omens that not every diviner knows. ... (This is a commentary on) lines that are strange in the diviner's lore, whose signs are fit to be learned.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Reading a sheep's liver (extispicy, bārûtu) was the most prestigious divination. Its commentaries mark some configurations as rare or esoteric 'omens that not every diviner knows', and the reverse (r 5') mentions 'secret' lore. Divination was a graded, learned discipline with insider knowledge.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "The gods Šamaš and Adad write the answer into the entrails of a sacrificial lamb", "practitioner": "Diviner (bārû)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-32", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Šumma izbu (malformed-birth omens) (SpTU 2, 38)", "author": "Iqīšâ, son of Ištar-šuma-ēreš, descendant of Ekur-zākir, exorcist of Uruk", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Uruk)", "language": "", "date": "14 Duʾuzu, year 6 of Philip (318 BCE)", "date_sort": -318, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P348643:transliteration", "ref": "21–22", "conventional_ref": "SpTU 2 38, 21–22 (comm. on Šumma izbu)", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "BE iz-bu GIM SUHUR.MAŠ₂{ku₆} u₃ MUŠ qu₂-lip-tu₂ sa-hi-ip / uz-za-at {d}SUEN LU₂ ep-qa SA₅ qu₂-lip-tu₂ qu₂-lip₂-tu₂", "translation": "'If an anomalous birth is covered with scales like a goat-fish or a snake': anger of Sîn; the man will be covered with epqu (a scaly skin disease). 'Scales' means scales.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Malformed births of animals and humans (izbu) were read as divine messages. This commentary covers anomalies with scales, matted or erect hair, withered shoulders, intestines out of place, and an ewe eating her afterbirth (lines 21–31). The colophon (32–35) curses whoever steals the tablet. The physical descriptions plausibly reflect real congenital conditions.", "claimed_effect": "Prediction of disease and political events", "claimed_mechanism": "The form of the birth mirrors a coming event by analogy (scales lead to scaly skin disease)", "practitioner": "Exorcist-scholar", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-33", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary on Šumma izbu (CM 31, 139)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Neo/Late Babylonian", "language": "", "date": "1st millennium BCE", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P415763:transliteration", "ref": "1–2", "conventional_ref": "CM 31 139, 1–2", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "BE iz-bu SAG.DU UR.MAH GAR NUN LUGAL{tu₂} ŠU₂{tu₂} DAB{bat} / meṭ-lu-tu₂ DU{ak} me₂-eṭ-lu-tu₂ ši-bu-u₂-tu₂ MIN lit-tu-tu₂", "translation": "If an anomaly has a lion's head: a prince will seize kingship of the world. 'He will reach mature age': mature age means old age, or alternatively extreme old age.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A royal omen from a monstrous birth with a 'lion's head', glossed as a prince seizing universal kingship. Political prophecy from teratology.", "claimed_effect": "Royal succession and longevity", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-34", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Commentary A on Šumma ālu 22–23 (snake omens) (Q005171; duplicate SpTU 5, 259)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Uruk duplicate)", "language": "", "date": "c. 4th c. BCE", "date_sort": -350, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:Q005171:transliteration", "ref": "29–31", "conventional_ref": "Comm. A on Šumma ālu 22–23, 29–31", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "divination", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "U₄{+mu} ša₂ {d}30 la u₂-šu-uz-zu MUŠ NA IGI-ma GAZ-šu₂ NA BI a-di-ra-tu-šu₂ NU TE-MEŠ-šu₂ ... NAM.BUR₂.BI DUG₄{+si}", "translation": "'(On) the day when Sîn does not stand' (the moonless 29th): if a man sees a snake and kills it, that man — his fears will not approach him. ... he shall recite its namburbi.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Terrestrial omens (Šumma ālu) cover everyday events such as snakes in the house, birds' cries and lawsuits. Here the same act, killing a snake, is good or bad depending on the day of the month, and the commentary refers the anxious reader to the corresponding namburbi ritual.", "claimed_effect": "Freedom from misfortune and fear", "claimed_mechanism": "Hemerology: days have qualities that change the meaning of acts", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-35", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Astrological commentary on 'Marduk's Address' (Udug-hul) (BM 47529 + BM 47685; CCP 2.2.1.B)", "author": "Colophon names Marduk-per'u-uṣur, son of Eṭiru", "culture": "Late Babylonian (Babylon)", "language": "", "date": "Late Babylonian/Hellenistic (c. 4th–2nd c. BCE)", "date_sort": -250, "edition_urn": "oracc:ccpo:P461231:transliteration", "ref": "14–15", "conventional_ref": "BM 47529+, 14–15", "source_collection": "Oracc CCPO", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "GE UMUN{hi} {lu₂}HAL EŠ.BAR pa-ri-is hal-hal-la KI {mul₂}PA.BIL.SAG / {lu₂}HAL u {lu₂}ša₂-ʾ-i-lu hal-hal-la HAL bi-ri HAL pi-riš-tu₂", "translation": "'I am Asalluhi, the diviner who decides the verdict': ... the region of Pabilsag (Sagittarius). 'Diviner' and 'dream-interpreter'; HAL means divination, HAL means secret.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Each self-predication of the exorcist-god Asalluhi ('I am Asalluhi ...') in the incantation is assigned a zodiacal or stellar region (Scorpius, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Pleiades, Orion, Auriga), with a reference to Mars' 'secret house'. This is late learned integration of incantation, divination and zodiacal astrology.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Correspondences between divine attributes, stars and zodiac regions", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Hellenistic-era temple scholarship in Babylon", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-36", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Bilingual hymn calling its god 'pure diviner' (CT 58, 28 = BM 78666)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Sumerian–Akkadian bilingual (Babylonian)", "language": "", "date": "1st millennium BCE copy", "date_sort": -500, "edition_urn": "oracc:blms:P274223:transliteration", "ref": "r? 8'–r? 8'a", "conventional_ref": "CT 58 28 r 8'", "source_collection": "Oracc BLMS", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "diŋir ir₉ a-zu babbar₂-ra / i-lum nam-rum ba-ru-u₂ eb-bu", "translation": "Shining god, pure diviner!", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The hymn addresses its god as the 'pure diviner' (bārû ebbu) and, at the start, as 'diviner of all that is named'. In Mesopotamian theology the gods themselves are diviners and exorcists, and the human experts imitate them. The deity is uncertain in the broken text.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-37", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Esarhaddon, Babylon inscription A (RINAP 4 104)", "author": "Esarhaddon, king of Assyria", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (concerning Babylon)", "language": "", "date": "c. 680–679 BCE", "date_sort": -680, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap4:Q003333:transliteration", "ref": "ii 2–ii 9", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 4 104 ii 2–9 (Babylon A)", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "⸢mar-qi₂-ti⸣ 70 MU.AN.NA.MEŠ / ⸢mi⸣-nu-ut ni-du-ti-šu / ⸢iš⸣-ṭur-ma re-me-nu-u₂ / {d}AMAR.UTU sur-riš lib₃-ba-šu / i-nu-uḫ-ma e-liš a-na / šap-liš uš-bal-kit-ma / a-na 11 MU.AN.NA.MEŠ / a-šab-šu₂ iq-bi", "translation": "He had written 70 years as the measure of its abandonment, but merciful Marduk's heart quickly calmed. He turned (the number) upside down and ordered its resettlement after 11 years.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Marduk had decreed 70 years of desolation for Babylon, destroyed by Sennacherib. Esarhaddon's scholars reinterpreted the divine decree by inverting the cuneiform numeral: 70 written as 60 plus 10, read backwards, gives 10 plus 1 = 11. The same claim recurs in RINAP 4 105 ii 16–21 and 116 o 20'. A divine sign is reread through scribal manipulation to authorise royal policy.", "claimed_effect": "Early rebuilding of Babylon is divinely sanctioned", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine decisions are written; written signs can be legitimately re-read", "practitioner": "Royal scholars (implied) on behalf of the king", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-38", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Esarhaddon, Babylon inscription A (RINAP 4 104)", "author": "Esarhaddon", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "c. 680–679 BCE", "date_sort": -680, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap4:Q003333:transliteration", "ref": "ii 33–ii 41", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 4 104 ii 33–41; cf. iii 12–14", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "uš-⸢ta⸣-nak-⸢la-mu⸣ MUNUS.SIG₅ A₂-ti / {mul}SAG.ME.⸢NIG₂⸣ mut-tan-bi-ṭu / pa-ri-is EŠ.BAR KUR URI{ki} ina {iti}SIG₄ / u₂-qar-rib-ma a-šar {d}ša₂-maš / uš-tap-pa-a iz-ziz ba-il₃ ... a-šar ni-ṣir-ti / ik-šu-dam-ma", "translation": "(The gods) kept revealing favourable signs: Jupiter, the brilliant, who gives decisions for the land of Akkad, drew near in Simānu, became visible where the Sun (is), stood, shone brightly ... and reached its place of hypsoma (niṣirtu).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Esarhaddon presents astronomical events (Jupiter's appearance and arrival at its 'secret place', its exaltation) as divine approval for rebuilding Babylon. In iii 12–14 he adds that extispicy 'in the diviner's bowl' gave him favourable omens. Astrology and extispicy are used together as public legitimation.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Jupiter (Marduk's star) signals the god's reconciliation", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-39", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Esarhaddon, Babylon inscription A (RINAP 4 104)", "author": "Esarhaddon", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "c. 680–679 BCE", "date_sort": -680, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap4:Q003333:transliteration", "ref": "i 19–i 24", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 4 104 i 19–24", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ina BALA-e ⸢LUGAL⸣ maḫ-re-e / ina KUR EME.GI₇ u URI{ki} it-tab-ša₂-a / A₂.MEŠ ḪUL.MEŠ UN.MEŠ / a-šib lib₃-bi-šu an-na u₃ ul-la / a-ḫa-meš e-tap-pa-lu / e-dab-bu-ba sur-ra-a-te", "translation": "In the reign of a former king, evil omens appeared in the land of Sumer and Akkad. The people living in it answered one another 'yes' for 'no' and spoke lies.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Bad portents and moral corruption go together: the Babylonians' lying ('yes for no') matches the Šurpu II catalogue of sins (mesopotamia-6). This, with the plundering of temples, explains the gods' anger and Babylon's destruction, in a theological reading of history.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Collective sin provokes divine anger, announced by portents", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-40", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Esarhaddon, Babylon inscription (RINAP 4 105)", "author": "Esarhaddon", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "c. 680–679 BCE", "date_sort": -680, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap4:Q003334:transliteration", "ref": "vi 21–vi 27", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 4 105 vi 21–27", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ra-am-ki pa-ši-ši / ⸢AN⸣.GUB.BA.MEŠ maḫ-ru-te / na-ṣir pi-riš-te / ma-ḫar-šu₂-nu uš-ziz / {⸢lu₂⸣}i-šip-pi₂ {⸢lu₂}KA⸣.PIRIG.MEŠ / {⸢lu₂}GALA⸣.MEŠ {[lu₂]}⸢NAR⸣.MEŠ / ša₂ gi-mir um-ma-nu-tu₂", "translation": "I stationed before them the ramku- and pašīšu-priests, the former angubbû-priests, guardians of the secret, purification priests (išippu), exorcists (kakugallu), lamentation priests (kalû) and singers — (masters) of all scholarship.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Restoring Babylon's cult meant restoring its ritual experts: purifiers, exorcists and lament-singers, 'guardians of the secret (pirištu)', sit alongside cult priests as one body of temple scholarship (ummânūtu). There is no line here between 'religion' and 'magic'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Temple ritual specialists", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "State-funded temple personnel", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-41", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Esarhaddon, Assur–Babylon inscription A (RINAP 4 48)", "author": "Esarhaddon", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "c. 670 BCE", "date_sort": -670, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap4:Q003277:transliteration", "ref": "r 73–r 75", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 4 48 r 73–75", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "divination", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "{LU₂}DUMU.MEŠ HAL.MEŠ u₂-šat-ri-iṣ a-na e-reb E₂ mu-um-me UGU bal-til{KI} KA₂.DINGIR.RA{KI} u NINA{KI} bi-ru ab-re-e-ma ... {UZU}UR₅.UŠ₂.MEŠ ki-i pi-i iš-ten in-da-har-ma", "translation": "I lined up the diviners and performed extispicy about entering the workshop (bīt mummi) — whether in Assur, Babylon or Nineveh. ... The extispicies agreed as with one mouth and answered me a firm 'yes'.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Before renewing the gods' statues, which in this ideology means the gods' own bodies, Esarhaddon has the place, the craftsmen and the timing chosen by extispicy, cross-checked by several diviners ('with one mouth'). The gods' new bodies are made only with the gods' consent, and the craftsmen are 'taught by Ea' (r 70–71). This is the pre-history of the mouth-washing (mīs pî) animation ritual.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine consent via extispicy; statues become gods through ritual", "practitioner": "Diviners (mārē bārê), craftsmen", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-42", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Esarhaddon inscription of uncertain attribution (RINAP 4 1015)", "author": "Esarhaddon (attribution in RINAP); the actor in col. i is probably his father Sennacherib choosing an heir (uncertain)", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "c. 680–669 BCE", "date_sort": -675, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap4:Q003387:transliteration", "ref": "i 7'–i 12'", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 4 1015 i 7'–12'", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "⸢ul⸣ u₂-pat-ti ša DUMU.MEŠ {lu₂}⸢ḪAL pal⸣-ka-a ḫa-si-sun₂ / i-na ṭup-pi iš-ṭur e-ri-im ib-⸢ri⸣-im id-din-šu₂-nu-ti / ⸢ul⸣ iṣ-lul kal mu-ši a-di ip-pu-ḫa ... {d}UTU", "translation": "He did not disclose (the matter) to the diviners of broad understanding: he wrote it on a tablet, enclosed it in an envelope, sealed it and gave it to them. He did not sleep all night until the judge, lord of lords, Šamaš, rose.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The question concerning 'the son of his heart's desire' is put to the diviners sealed, so they could not know which answer was hoped for: in effect a blind protocol. The king's son prays to Šamaš and Adad while the 'wise diviners' kneel (i 11'–12'). The account shows the Assyrian court's awareness that diviners might be swayed, and its effort to prevent this.", "claimed_effect": "Divine choice of royal successor", "claimed_mechanism": "Šamaš answers the written question in the lamb's entrails regardless of the diviner's knowledge", "practitioner": "Diviners (bārû)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-43", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Esarhaddon inscription of uncertain attribution (RINAP 4 1015)", "author": "Esarhaddon (RINAP attribution)", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Assur)", "language": "", "date": "c. 680–669 BCE", "date_sort": -675, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap4:Q003387:transliteration", "ref": "r v 10–r v 13", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 4 1015 r v 10–13", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "UD.7.KAM₂ nu-bat-tu ša {⸢d⸣}[...] / ina KISAL e₂-šar₂-ra a-šar ⸢nab⸣-[nit ...] / ma-ḫar MUL.MEŠ ša₂-ma-me {d}e₂-[a ...] / ina ši-pir ABGAL ⸢KA.LUḪ⸣.[U₃.DA", "translation": "On the 7th day, the night vigil of [...]; in the courtyard of Ešarra, the place of creation [...], before the stars of heaven, Ea [...], through the craft of the sage (apkallu), the mouth-washing [...]", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A fragmentary record of the mīs pî ('mouth-washing') of divine statues, performed at night in Aššur's temple courtyard under the stars 'through the craft of the apkallu'. The ritual transformed crafted images into living gods; the human makers were ritually dissociated from the work. This is the closest the library comes to theurgy, giving life to statues.", "claimed_effect": "A crafted image becomes a living god able to eat and smell", "claimed_mechanism": "Ritual washing of the mouth under the stars animates the statue", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-44", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Esarhaddon, Nineveh A prism (RINAP 4 1)", "author": "Esarhaddon", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "673–672 BCE", "date_sort": -673, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap4:Q003230:transliteration", "ref": "i 12–i 14; i 50–i 51", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 4 1 i 12–14, 50–51", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "divination", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "um-ma an-nu-u₂ ma-a-ru ri-du-ti-ia / {d}UTU u {d}IŠKUR ina bi-ri i-šal-ma an-nu ke-e-nu / i-pu-lu-šu-ma um-ma šu-u₂ te-nu-u-ka ... a-na na-ṣar LUGAL-ti-ia ina A.MEŠ u₃ I₃.GIŠ it-mu-u₂", "translation": "'This is my successor' — he asked Šamaš and Adad by extispicy, and they answered him a firm 'yes': 'He is your replacement.' ... (the people of Assyria, who) swore by water and oil to protect my kingship.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Sennacherib's choice of the younger son Esarhaddon as heir is confirmed by extispicy. The nation is then bound by a treaty-oath (adê, māmītu) sworn 'by water and oil', a ritual medium for the self-curse. Divination legitimates the choice, and a ritual curse enforces loyalty.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Extispicy reveals divine will; the oath taken with water and oil invokes automatic divine punishment on the perjurer", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-45", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Esarhaddon, Nineveh A prism (RINAP 4 1)", "author": "Esarhaddon", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "673–672 BCE", "date_sort": -673, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap4:Q003230:transliteration", "ref": "i 73; ii 5–ii 6", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 4 1 i 73, ii 5–6", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ti-ib ME₃-ia dan-ni e-mu-ru-ma e-mu-u₂ maḫ-ḫu-tiš₂ ... uk-ki-pa-nim-ma i-da-at dum-qi₂ ina ša₂-ma-me u qaq-qa-ri / ši-pir maḫ-ḫe-e na-aš₂-par-ti DINGIR.MEŠ u {d}iš-tar", "translation": "They saw the onslaught of my mighty battle and became like ecstatics (maḫḫûtiš). ... Good signs in heaven and on earth kept coming to me: messages of ecstatics, the dispatches of the gods and goddess.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ecstatic prophecy (maḫḫû) appears beside astral and terrestrial signs as a recognised channel of divine communication, one of the few traces in this library of the prophecies known from SAA 9, which is absent. Being 'like an ecstatic' is also used of soldiers driven out of their wits.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Gods speak through possessed or entranced people", "practitioner": "Ecstatics (maḫḫû/maḫḫūtu)", "practitioner_gender": "male and female (gender not specified here)", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-46", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Esarhaddon, Nineveh A prism (RINAP 4 1)", "author": "Esarhaddon", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "673–672 BCE", "date_sort": -673, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap4:Q003230:transliteration", "ref": "ii 55–ii 57", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 4 1 ii 55–57", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "a-na {kur}ELAM.MA{ki} še-la-biš in-na-bit aš₂-šu₂ ma-mit DINGIR.MEŠ GAL.MEŠ / ša e-ti-qu {d}aš-šur {d}30 {d}UTU {d}EN u₃ {d}AG / an-nu kab-tu e-mi₃-du-šu-ma qe₂-reb {kur}ELAM.MA{ki} i-na-ru-uš ina {giš}TUKUL", "translation": "He fled like a fox to Elam. Because of the oath of the great gods which he had transgressed, Aššur, Sîn, Šamaš, Bēl and Nabû imposed a heavy punishment on him, and in Elam they killed him with the sword.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Sealand governor Nabû-zēr-kitti-līšir broke his oath and was killed in Elam. Esarhaddon presents this as the oath-curse working by itself. The same idiom is used of Samsi of Arabia (TP III 20, mesopotamia-55) and of the people of Ekron (Sennacherib 4, mesopotamia-56).", "claimed_effect": "Death of the perjurer", "claimed_mechanism": "A broken oath activates the gods' curse", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-47", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Esarhaddon, Assur inscription (RINAP 4 57)", "author": "Esarhaddon", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "c. 679 BCE", "date_sort": -679, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap4:Q003286:transliteration", "ref": "ii 12–ii 19", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 4 57 ii 12–19", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ši-pir {lu₂}maḫ-ḫe-e / ka-a-a-an su-ud-du-ra / ša SUḪUŠ {giš}GU.ZA / ša-an-gu-ti-ia / šur-šu-di a-na u₄-me ṣa-a-te / iš-šak-na-nim-ma / i-da-at dum-qi₂ / ina MAŠ₂.GE₆ u ger-re-e", "translation": "Messages of ecstatics about securing the foundation of my priestly throne for distant days were constantly regular for me; good signs came in dreams and in chance utterances (egerrû).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Prophecy, dreams and egerrû (overheard chance remarks taken as oracles) are listed together as unsolicited signs. They complement the solicited techniques (extispicy) and the observed ones (astrology).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "The gods communicate through dreams, ecstatics and chance speech", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-48", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Esarhaddon, prism fragment on the conquest of Egypt (RINAP 4 9)", "author": "Esarhaddon", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (with Egyptian deportees)", "language": "", "date": "c. 671–670 BCE", "date_sort": -671, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap4:Q003238:transliteration", "ref": "i' 9'–i' 11'", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 4 9 i' 9'–11'", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "other", "divination", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "[...].⸢GAL⸣.MEŠ {⸢lu₂⸣}MAŠ.MAŠ.MEŠ {lu₂}ḫar-ṭi-⸢bi⸣.[MEŠ] / [... {lu₂]}⸢mu⸣-na-i-ši {lu₂}A.BA {⸢kur}mu-ṣur-a-a⸣ / [...] {⸢lu₂⸣}MUŠ.LAḪ₄.MEŠ a-di {lu₂}GAL.TUKU.MEŠ-⸢šu₂-nu⸣ KI.MIN", "translation": "[...] exorcists, ḫarṭibu-specialists, [...] veterinarians, Egyptian scribes, [...] snake charmers together with their [...] — ditto (I carried off).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After taking Memphis, Esarhaddon deported Egyptian ritual experts among craftsmen and soldiers: exorcists, ḫarṭibu (from Egyptian ḥry-tp, 'chief lector priest', the word behind Hebrew ḥarṭummîm, Pharaoh's 'magicians' in Genesis and Exodus), veterinarians, scribes and snake charmers. Foreign magical expertise was valued as war booty.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Egyptian lector-priests (ḫarṭibu), exorcists, snake charmers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Forced transfer of foreign specialists to the Assyrian court", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-49", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Sennacherib, Assur Akītu-house inscription (RINAP 3 168)", "author": "Sennacherib, king of Assyria", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Assur)", "language": "", "date": "c. 683 BCE", "date_sort": -683, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap3:Q003973:transliteration", "ref": "29–31", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 3 168, 29–31", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "divination", "exorcism", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "ṭe₃-em {d}UTU {d}IŠKUR al-mad-ma an-na ke- i-pu-lu-in-ni-ma / iq-bu-u-ni e-pe-e-šu₂ ina ITI DUG₃.GA u₄-me šal-mu ina ši-pir i-šip-pu-ti / ne₂-me-eq ka-ku₃-gal-u-ti ina {na₄}pi-i-li NA₄ KUR-i UŠ₈-šu₂ ad-di-ma", "translation": "I learned the decision of Šamaš and Adad; they answered me a firm 'yes' and commanded me to build it. In a good month, on a favourable day, through the craft of purification-priesthood and the wisdom of exorcism (kakugallūtu), I laid its foundation with mountain limestone.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Building works were ritual acts. The decision comes by extispicy, the timing by hemerology, and the foundation laying is performed with the 'craft of the išippu' and the 'wisdom of the kakugallu' (exorcist), to secure the building against evil.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Ritual purification of the foundation secures the building", "practitioner": "Purification priests and exorcists on royal commission", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-50", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Sennacherib, inscription with a list of gods (RINAP 3 153)", "author": "Sennacherib", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "c. 700–681 BCE", "date_sort": -690, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap3:Q003958:transliteration", "ref": "o 15", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 3 153 o 15", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "{d}AMAR.UTU ABGAL DINGIR.MEŠ MAŠ.MAŠ {d}i₂-gi₃-gi₃ u {d}⸢a⸣-[nun-na-ki ...]", "translation": "Marduk, sage of the gods, exorcist (mašmaššu) of the Igigi and Anunnaki ...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The chief god of Babylon is himself 'exorcist of the gods'. The human āšipu's profession is modelled on a divine office, which is why his practice counts as legitimate religion, not illicit sorcery.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-51", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Sennacherib, building inscription with curse (RINAP 3 10)", "author": "Sennacherib", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "c. 700–690 BCE", "date_sort": -695, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap3:Q003484:transliteration", "ref": "25–29", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 3 10, 25–29", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "mu-nak-kir₃ MU.SAR-a-a da-a-a-i-ṣi a-ma-ti-ia AN.ŠAR₂ MAN DINGIR.MEŠ u DINGIR.MEŠ GAL.MEŠ / ša AN-e u₃ KI-tim ar-rat la nap-šu-ri ma-ru-uš-tu₂ li-ru-ru-šu-ma / LUGAL-su lis-ki-pu TI.LA-šu₂ li-ki-mu-šu₂", "translation": "Whoever alters my inscription or disregards my words: may Aššur, king of the gods, and the great gods of heaven and netherworld curse him with a grievous curse that cannot be released; may they overthrow his kingship and take away his life.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The standard blessing-and-curse coda of royal inscriptions. A future ruler who anoints the inscription with oil and offers sacrifice is blessed (25–26); whoever alters it suffers a curse 'that cannot be loosened' (la napšuri), the opposite of the exorcist's 'loosening' rites. Writing is protected by divine sanction.", "claimed_effect": "Loss of kingship, life, name and offspring", "claimed_mechanism": "The named gods enforce the curse automatically", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-52", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Sennacherib, Bavian rock inscription (RINAP 3 223)", "author": "Sennacherib", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "c. 689–688 BCE", "date_sort": -689, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap3:Q004028:transliteration", "ref": "54; 59–60", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 3 223, 54, 59–60 (Bavian)", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "la muš-ši-i i-na ma-a-mi uš-ḫar-miṭ-su-ma ag-da-mar ... DINGIR.MEŠ GAL.MEŠ ma-la i-na {na₄}NA.RU₂-e an-ne₂-e šu-mu na-bu-u₂ ... ma-ru-uš-ti li-ru-ru-šu₂-ma lis-ki-pu BALA-šu₂", "translation": "So that the site of that city (Babylon) and its temples might not be identifiable in the future, I dissolved it in water and annihilated it ... May the great gods, as many as are named on this stele, curse him with a grievous curse and overthrow his reign.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Sennacherib boasts of dissolving Babylon in water, then curses anyone who undoes his canal works. Dissolving things in water is also a counter-witchcraft technique in incantation literature. A symbolic reading of the destruction is possible but speculative and not stated in the text.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Curse by the gods named on the stele", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-53", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Tomb inscription of Queen Yabâ (RINAP 1 Tiglath-pileser III 2003; Nimrud)", "author": "Anonymous, for Yabâ, queen of Tiglath-pileser III", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian (Kalhu/Nimrud)", "language": "", "date": "c. 730 BCE", "date_sort": -730, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap1:Q003619:transliteration", "ref": "11–18", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 1 TP III 2003, 11–18 (Yabâ tomb)", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "ša₂ {na₄}KIŠIB ša₂ KI.MAḪ šu-a-tu₂ BAD-u₂ / e-le-nu ina šu-ru-ru {d}šam-ši / e-ṭe₂-ma-šu₂ ina ṣu-me-e ka-ma-te / li-ir-pu-du / šap-la-nu ina KI-tim ina na-qa me-e ... la i-ma-ḫar", "translation": "Whoever opens the seal of this tomb: above, in the rays of the sun, may his ghost roam outside in thirst; below, in the netherworld, at the libation of water, beer, wine and flour among the Anunnaki, may it receive nothing.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An oath by Šamaš, Ereškigal and the Anunnaki protects a queen's tomb. The tomb-robber's punishment is to become a restless, thirsty ghost (eṭemmu) cut off from funerary offerings (kispu), the very state the exorcist's ghost-rituals tried to cure. The inscription ends by condemning his corpse to sleeplessness (21).", "claimed_effect": "Eternal unrest of the violator's ghost", "claimed_mechanism": "Netherworld gods enforce an oath; the dead depend on offerings from the living", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-54", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Glass-making text, kiln ritual and recipe (K 2520+; Oracc glass)", "author": "Anonymous (Ashurbanipal's library)", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian copy of Babylonian technical lore", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE copy (tradition possibly older)", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:glass:P394484:transliteration", "ref": "o 1–o 5", "conventional_ref": "Glass text K 2520+ o 1–5 (Oppenheim, Glass and Glassmaking)", "source_collection": "Oracc GLASS", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "e-nu-ma uš-ši ku-u₂-ri ša NA₄ ŠUB{⸢u₂⸣} / i-na ITI šal-me U₄ ŠE.⸢GA KIN⸣.KIN-ma uš-ši ku-u₂-ri ta-nam-di ... {d}KU₃.BU-MEŠ tu-⸢še⸣-[šib]-⸢ma⸣ ša₂-nu-u a-hu-u NU KU₄{ub} NU KU₃ a-na pa-ni-šu₂-nu la GIB", "translation": "When you lay the foundations of a kiln for 'stone' (glass): you seek out a favourable month and a propitious day, and lay the kiln's foundations. ... You install the kūbu-deities; no outsider or stranger may enter, no impure person may cross in front of them.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Glass-making was surrounded by ritual. A good day is chosen, and kūbu figures (deified stillborn foetuses) are installed at the kiln with constant offerings, incense and libation (o 5–o 8; also K 203+ o i 6–10). Outsiders and the impure are excluded, and only 'good, smokeless fire' is used. The ritual wraps a real high-temperature chemistry in protective religion and secrecy.", "claimed_effect": "Successful glass production", "claimed_mechanism": "Kūbu-deities and purity rules protect the delicate process from failure", "practitioner": "Glassmakers (craftsmen, ummânū)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-55", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Glass-making text, recipe for blue glass (K 2520+; Oracc glass)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian copy", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:glass:P394484:transliteration", "ref": "o 13–o 16", "conventional_ref": "Glass text K 2520+ o 13–16", "source_collection": "Oracc GLASS", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "šum-ma {na₄}ZA.GIN₃.DUR₅ a-na e-pe-ši-ka 10 MA.NA {[na₄]}⸢IM⸣.MA.NA / 15 MA.NA NE {u₂}NAGA 1 2/3 MA.NA U₂ BABBAR a-he-e ta-[mar-raq] 1{niš} HI.HI ... ⸢IZI⸣ ṭa-ab-ta la qa-tir-ta ta-šar-rap", "translation": "If you want to make zagindurû-glass (a blue glass): 10 minas of immanakku-sand, 15 minas of ash of the naga-plant (soda), 1⅔ minas of 'white plant' — you grind them separately, mix them together, ... you burn a good, smokeless fire.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A quantitative recipe: silica sand plus plant-ash alkali (soda), melted in a four-holed kiln over a clean, oxidising fire until the 'stone' turns white. It sits on the same tablet as the kūbu ritual (mesopotamia-54). Fuel too is specified: thick peeled poplar logs without knots, cut in the month Abu (o 10–o 12).", "claimed_effect": "Production of coloured glass", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Glassmaker", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-56", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Glass-making text (K 4266+; Oracc glass)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian copy", "language": "", "date": "7th c. BCE", "date_sort": -650, "edition_urn": "oracc:glass:P395468:transliteration", "ref": "r i 33'–r i 36'", "conventional_ref": "Glass text K 4266+ r i 33'–36'", "source_collection": "Oracc GLASS", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "tu-ma-har-ma GAR{an} u₄-ma i-ma-an-du-ni-ku-ma / i-na a-li-ku 2 be-er {d}KU₃-be tu-še-ši-ib / {udu}SISKUR ta-ṣa-bat a-na um-ma-ni / ki-is-pa ta-ka-si-ip", "translation": "... and when they set a day for you, after two double-hours have passed you install the kūbu; you take a sacrificial sheep; for the craftsmen(?) you make a funerary offering (kispu).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The kūbu (stillborn beings) receive a kispu, the offering normally given to the dead, at the start of glass work. The ritual of the furnace borrows from the care of the dead. The reading of 'for the craftsmen' (ana ummâni) is uncertain.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-57", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Tiglath-pileser III, annals fragment (RINAP 1 20)", "author": "Tiglath-pileser III", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "c. 733 BCE", "date_sort": -733, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap1:Q003433:transliteration", "ref": "18'", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 1 TP III 20, 18'", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "{⸢f⸣}sa-am-si šar-rat {kur}a-ri-bi ša ma-mit {d}ša₂-maš te-ti-qu-ma", "translation": "Samsi, queen of the Arabs, who had transgressed the oath of Šamaš ...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A foreign queen's rebellion is framed as breaking an oath sworn by the sun-god. Her defeat follows as divine as well as military punishment.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-58", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Sennacherib, Rassam cylinder (RINAP 3 4)", "author": "Sennacherib", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "700 BCE", "date_sort": -700, "edition_urn": "oracc:rinap/rinap3:Q003478:transliteration", "ref": "42", "conventional_ref": "RINAP 3 4, 42", "source_collection": "Oracc RINAP", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "{lu₂}GIR₃.NITA₂.MEŠ {lu₂}NUN.MEŠ u₃ UN.MEŠ {uru}am-qar-ru-na ša {m}pa-di-i LUGAL-šu₂-nu EN a-di-i u₃ ma-mit ša₂ KUR aš-šur{ki} bi-re-tu₂ AN.BAR id-du-ma", "translation": "The governors, nobles and people of Ekron, who had thrown Padî their king, bound by treaty and oath (adê u māmītu) to Assyria, into iron fetters ...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Padî is called 'lord of treaty and oath'. The adê/māmītu sworn before the gods was the legal-ritual bond of Assyrian vassalage, and breaking it was both crime and sacrilege. The same Ekron episode belongs to the campaign against Hezekiah of Judah.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-59", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Letter of Sargon II's reign (SAA 1 128)", "author": "Official writing to Sargon II", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "c. 715–705 BCE", "date_sort": -710, "edition_urn": "oracc:saao/saa01:P334113:transliteration", "ref": "r 16–r 19", "conventional_ref": "SAA 1 128 r 16–19", "source_collection": "Oracc SAAO", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "02 qa\\d NINDA-MEŠ 02 qa KAŠ-MEŠ\\m ša\\dm {lu₂v}MAŠ.MAŠ / 01 qa\\d NINDA-MEŠ\\m 01 qa KAŠ-MEŠ\\m ša {lu₂}lah₂-hi-ni / PAB 06 qa NINDA-MEŠ\\m KAŠ-MEŠ\\m gi-nu-u / ut-ru ša₂ E₂—{d}AG", "translation": "2 qa of bread and 2 qa of beer for the exorcist; 1 qa of bread and 1 qa of beer for the (temple) steward; total 6 qa of bread and beer, regular offering, surplus of the Nabû temple.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An administrative glimpse: the exorcist is a salaried temple functionary drawing double the steward's ration from the regular offerings of the Nabû temple. This is the institutional, not the fringe, face of Mesopotamian 'magic'.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Exorcist (mašmaššu) on temple payroll", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Temple economy", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "the original check moved this reference away from where the quotation begins; the surveyor's reference was restored", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-60", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Letter of Hunni to Sargon II (SAA 1 134)", "author": "Hunni", "culture": "Neo-Assyrian", "language": "", "date": "c. 715–705 BCE", "date_sort": -710, "edition_urn": "oracc:saao/saa01:P313458:transliteration", "ref": "o 16", "conventional_ref": "SAA 1 134 o 16 (cf. r 6)", "source_collection": "Oracc SAAO", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "[dul-lu ša LUGAL iš-pur]-⸢an⸣-ni šu-u-tu₂ ina ši-a-ri ne₂-⸢pa⸣-[aš₂]", "translation": "[The ritual (dullu) about which the king wrote] to me — we will perform it tomorrow.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Rituals (dullu, literally 'work') were scheduled by royal command, with day-counting and a night in the temple (r 1–4). A later line mentions a 'bathing of the mouth' rite (r 6, word repeated three times in the stored text). This is only a small window, because the scholars' letters of SAA 10 are absent.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-61", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Old Babylonian scribal examination text, bilingual (ZA 64 169 = 1881-07-27, 130)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Sumerian–Akkadian (Babylonian school)", "language": "", "date": "Composition Old Babylonian (c. 1800 BCE?); copy 1st millennium BCE", "date_sort": -1800, "edition_urn": "oracc:blms:P452402:transliteration", "ref": "9–10", "conventional_ref": "Examination Text A (Sjöberg), ZA 64 169, 9–10", "source_collection": "Oracc BLMS", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "[... eme nu]-⸢eš₃⸣ eme išib eme gudug mu [...] / [...] ⸢li⸣-ša₂-an ne₂-šak-ku li-ša₂-⸢an⸣ [...]", "translation": "[Do you know] the language of the nešakku-priest, the language of the išib (purification priest), the language of the gudug-priest ...?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the scribe's examination the student must know the jargons of the various professions, including the purification priest's (išib/išippu) special idiom, beside the languages of craftsmen. Ritual speech was a technical register taught in school.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-62", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Bilingual balag lament (SBH 1)", "author": "Anonymous; Late Babylonian temple copy", "culture": "Sumerian (Emesal)–Akkadian (Babylon/Sippar)", "language": "", "date": "Late Babylonian copy (c. 3rd–1st c. BCE) of older liturgy", "date_sort": -200, "edition_urn": "oracc:blms:P414268:transliteration", "ref": "o 2–o 3", "conventional_ref": "SBH 1 o 2–3", "source_collection": "Oracc BLMS", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ina a-mat {d}EN ⸢u₃ GAŠAN-ia₂ lis-lim⸣ / ud-dam {{ a }} ki am₃-⸢us₂⸣ {{ a }} ⸢ša₃⸣-[bi nu-pad₃-de₃]", "translation": "By the command of Bēl and Bēltiya may it go well! — 'Like a storm it is set in place; its heart cannot be found.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The large SBH group consists of lamentation-priest (kalû) liturgies: balags and eršemmas that soothe the angry 'word' of the gods, likened to a storm. Their aim is ritual pacification of divine anger, the other half of the āšipu's work, and the kalû too belonged to the restored cult (mesopotamia-40) and wrote commentaries (mesopotamia-24).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "Lamentation priest (kalû)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "mesopotamia-63", "corpus": "mesopotamia", "work": "Bilingual goddess lament over plundered treasures (FAOS 18 pl. I–III)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Sumerian–Akkadian bilingual", "language": "", "date": "1st millennium BCE copy", "date_sort": -600, "edition_urn": "oracc:blms:P414363:transliteration", "ref": "o ii 50–o ii 51", "conventional_ref": "FAOS 18 o ii 50–51", "source_collection": "Oracc BLMS", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "id₂-da a-bi umun {⸢d⸣}[am]-⸢an⸣-ki-ke₄ na-aŋ₂ im-ma-kud-de₃ / na-a-ri ša₂-a-ši be-lu₄ {[d]}⸢e₂⸣-a li-ru-ur-ši", "translation": "That river: may lord Ea curse it!", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A goddess whose jewellery and treasures were carried off curses the river, the road and the chariot that carried them away, calling on Ea, Šamaš and others. Here cursing is a divine and literary act.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-1", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Völuspá (Codex Regius)", "author": "Anonymous (Eddic poem)", "culture": "Norse-Icelandic (pre-Christian mythological poetry, Christian-era record)", "language": "Old Icelandic (normalised)", "date": "poem c. 1000 (disputed, late 10th–11th c.); ms GKS 2365 4to c. 1270", "date_sort": 1000, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:eddic-poems:gks-2365-4to", "ref": "1.177–1.184", "conventional_ref": "Vsp. 22 (R)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Heiði hana hétu hvar til húsa kom völu velspá vitti hon ganda seið hon kunni seið hon leikinn æ var hon angan illrar brúðar.", "translation": "Heiðr they called her, wherever she came to houses, a völva of fine prophecy; she worked charms with staffs (or: spirits, ganda); seiðr she knew, seiðr she performed in trance (or: was possessed by seiðr); she was ever the delight of a wicked woman.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The canonical portrait of the itinerant seeress. She visits farms ('hvar til húsa kom'), prophesies and practises seiðr. She follows the Gullveig stanzas, in which the gods burn a woman three times and she lives on, and she is linked to the first war in the world. 'leikinn' is a crux: it may mean 'possessed, in a trance' or 'skilled'.", "claimed_effect": "prophecy; enchantment", "claimed_mechanism": "seiðr; working with gandr (staff or spirit)", "practitioner": "Heiðr, a völva (possibly identical with Gullveig)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "travelling seeress received in households; the poem frames her as delighting 'evil women'", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-2", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Völuspá (Hauksbók)", "author": "Anonymous (Eddic poem)", "culture": "Norse-Icelandic", "language": "Old Icelandic (diplomatic)", "date": "poem c. 1000; ms AM 544 4to (Hauksbók) c. 1302–1310", "date_sort": 1000, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:vǫluspá:am-544-4to", "ref": "1.28.1–1.28.8", "conventional_ref": "Vsp. 22 (H)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Heiði hana hetv huarſ til hvſa kom ok vǫlu vel ſpa uiti hon ganꝺa ſeið hon hvarſ hvn kunni ſeið hon hvgleikin æ var hon angann illrar bruðar", "translation": "Heiðr they called her wherever she came to houses, a völva of good prophecy; she charmed staffs/spirits; seiðr she did wherever she could, seiðr she, mind-played (hugleikin), ...; she was ever the delight of a wicked woman.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hauksbók variant of the Heiðr stanza. It reads 'seið hon hvars hun kunni, seið hon hugleikin', against R's 'seið hon kunni, seið hon leikinn'. Read 'hugleikin' as 'with her mind entranced' or 'mind-deluded'. The variant makes the seiðr explicitly a matter of the mind, which matters for any trance or ecstatic reading of seiðr.", "claimed_effect": "prophecy, enchantment", "claimed_mechanism": "seiðr worked 'with the mind'", "practitioner": "Heiðr", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-3", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Völuspá (Codex Regius)", "author": "Anonymous (Eddic poem)", "culture": "Norse-Icelandic", "language": "Old Icelandic (normalised)", "date": "c. 1000; ms c. 1270", "date_sort": 1000, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:eddic-poems:gks-2365-4to", "ref": "1.225–1.242", "conventional_ref": "Vsp. 28–29 (R)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Ein sat. hon úti þá er inn aldni kom yggjungr ása ok í augu leit: hvers fregnit mik hví freistit mín allt veit ek Óðinn hvar þú auga falt ... Valði henni Herföðr hringa ok men fé spjöll spaklig ok spáganda", "translation": "Alone she sat out, when the old one came, the terrible one of the Æsir, and looked her in the eyes: 'What do you ask me? Why do you test me? I know everything, Óðinn, where you hid your eye...' Host-father chose for her rings and necklaces, wise speech and prophecy-staffs (spáganda).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The frame of the whole poem. The seeress 'sits out' (úti), the posture the later laws call útiseta, and Óðinn pays her rings and necklaces for prophecy. The divine patron of magic consults a female specialist and pays her a fee. 'spáganda' (prophecy-staffs or spirits) links to the gandr of st. 22.", "claimed_effect": "knowledge of past and future", "claimed_mechanism": "sitting out (útiseta); spá; payment", "practitioner": "the völva who speaks the poem; client Óðinn", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "prophecy as paid professional service", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-4", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic, Christian-era historiography of the pagan past", "language": "Old Icelandic (17th-c. copy orthography)", "date": "c. 1230; ms AM 35 fol, 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "5.16–5.20", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 4", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Oþinn tóc hǫfotit oc ſmurþi urtum þeim er eigi mátte fúna. oc qvað þar yfir galdra oc magnaðe ſva at þat mælte við hann, oc ſagðe honom marga leynda lute.", "translation": "Óðinn took the head and smeared it with herbs so that it could not rot, and chanted galdrar over it, and empowered it so that it spoke with him and told him many hidden things.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Vanir behead Mímir and send the head to the Æsir. Óðinn preserves it with herbs and galdrar and keeps it as an oracle. This is a euhemerised account: Óðinn is a human chieftain from Asia whose arts made him seem divine. It pairs a mundane technique (embalming herbs) with an incantation (galdr) that 'empowers' (magna) the head to speak.", "claimed_effect": "a severed head that speaks and reveals secrets", "claimed_mechanism": "embalming herbs plus galdrar that magna (empower)", "practitioner": "Óðinn (as euhemerised king)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-5", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography of the pagan past", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "5.22–5.26", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 4", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Dottir Nia-rþar var Freyia, hon var blot-gyðia hon kende fyrſt með Áſom ſeið ſem Vǫnom var títt.", "translation": "Njörðr's daughter was Freyja; she was a sacrificial priestess; she first taught seiðr among the Æsir, as was customary among the Vanir.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Origin myth for seiðr. It comes from the Vanir, as a custom native to them, and enters the Æsir through Freyja, a blótgyðja (sacrificial priestess). Seiðr is thus coded as female, priestly and foreign.", "claimed_effect": "transmission of seiðr", "claimed_mechanism": "teaching; cultic office (blótgyðja)", "practitioner": "Freyja", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "seiðr as a Vanir custom imported into the Æsir", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-6", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "9.18–9.27", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 6", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Oþinn kuɴe ſva gera at i oʀosto urðo ovinir hans blindir eða dꜹfir eða ót-tafllir . en vápn þeira bito eigi helldr en vendir. enn hans menn fóro brynjolsir oc váro galnir ſem hundar eða vargar.", "translation": "Óðinn could make it so that in battle his enemies became blind or deaf or panic-struck, and their weapons bit no more than wands; but his own men went without mail-coats and were mad like dogs or wolves.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Óðinn's battle-magic: it blinds enemies, makes them deaf and terrified, and blunts their weapons. His men's fury, which bites shields, is strong as bears, and is untouched by 'fire or iron', is 'called berserksgangr'. This is the classic definition of the berserk. Battle magic here mixes psychological effects (terror, ótti) with physical immunity.", "claimed_effect": "enemy blinding and terror; weapon-blunting; invulnerable frenzy", "claimed_mechanism": "Óðinn's skill (kunni svá gera); frenzy (berserksgangr)", "practitioner": "Óðinn; his berserkir", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-7", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "7.2a–10.9", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 7", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Oþiɴ ſcipti hꜹmom, lá þa bú-kriɴ ſem ſofiɴ eða dðr, eɴ hann var þa fgl eða dýr, fiſkr eða ormr. ... þat kɴe hann eɴ at gera með orðom einom at ſlqva elld oc kyʀa ſiá. oc ſnua vindom", "translation": "Óðinn changed shapes (hamir); his body then lay as if asleep or dead, but he was a bird or beast, a fish or serpent ... He could also, with words alone, quench fire and still the sea and turn the winds.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Chapter heading 'Frá íþróttum Óðins' (On Óðinn's accomplishments). Shape-shifting is described as the body lying inert while the self travels in another hamr: a soul-journey or trance model, not a bodily metamorphosis. He also has verbal power over fire, sea and wind. These are the same powers the Ljóðatal charms claim, a catalogue absent from the library.", "claimed_effect": "out-of-body travel in animal form; control of fire, sea, winds", "claimed_mechanism": "skipta hǫmum (change of hamr while body lies inert); words alone", "practitioner": "Óðinn", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-8", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "10.13–10.18", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 7", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Oðinn hafðe með sér hǫfot mimis oc ſagðe þat honom morg tiðende or ꜹðrom heimum, en ſtundm vacte hann pp dꜹða menn or jorðo. eða ſettiz ndir hanga. fyrir því var hann callaðr drꜹgadrottiɴ eða hangadrottiɴ.", "translation": "Óðinn had Mímir's head with him and it told him many tidings from other worlds; and sometimes he woke dead men out of the earth or sat down under hanged men; for this he was called lord of ghosts (draugadróttinn) or lord of the hanged.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Óðinn as necromancer. He has an oracular head, raises the dead from mounds, and sits under the gallows. Snorri uses these practices to explain divine bynames: 'draugadróttinn', 'hangadróttinn'.", "claimed_effect": "news from other worlds; consulting the dead", "claimed_mechanism": "oracle head; waking the dead; sitting under the hanged", "practitioner": "Óðinn", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-9", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "10.23–10.26", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 7", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "rune-writing-magic" ], "excerpt_original": "Allar þessar iþróttir keɴde hann með rnom oc lioðom. þeim er galdrar heita fyrir því ero æsir callaþir galldra ſmiþir.", "translation": "All these accomplishments he taught with runes and with songs, those that are called galdrar; for that reason the Æsir are called smiths of galdrar.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A native theory of transmission. Magic (íþróttir, 'accomplishments') is taught through two media, runes (writing) and ljóð (songs, which are galdrar). It explains the kenning 'galdrasmiðir'. Galdr is framed as a craft, smithed like metalwork. In the previous chapter Óðinn and his temple-priests are also called 'ljóðasmiðir' (song-smiths) as the founders of poetry: magic and poetry share one origin.", "claimed_effect": "teaching of magical arts", "claimed_mechanism": "runes and galdr-songs", "practitioner": "Óðinn and the Æsir", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-10", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "10.27–11.10", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 7", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Oðinn kɴe þa iþrott er meſtr mattr fylgðe. oc framþi ſialfr er ſeiðr heitir. ... En þessi fiolkyɴge er framit er fylgir ſva micil ergi at eigi þótte karl mǫnnom viþ at fara. oc var gyðionom kend ſ iþrót.", "translation": "Óðinn knew the art which carries the greatest power, and practised it himself, which is called seiðr ... But this sorcery, when it is performed, is accompanied by such great ergi (unmanliness) that men did not think it fitting to deal with it, and so this art was taught to the priestesses.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The key definition of seiðr. Its powers: knowing men's fate (ørlǫg) and things not yet happened; causing death, misfortune (óhamingja) or illness; taking wits or strength from one person and giving them to another. It carries ergi (sexual or gender shame) for men, so it passed to the gyðjur (priestesses). A gendered legitimacy boundary inside pre-Christian practice as Snorri understood it.", "claimed_effect": "foreknowledge; killing; bringing illness or misfortune; transferring wits and strength", "claimed_mechanism": "seiðr", "practitioner": "Óðinn; the gyðjur (priestesses)", "practitioner_gender": "male and female", "social_legal_context": "ergi: shameful for men, hence assigned to women", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-11", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "11.10–11.25", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 7", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Oðinn viſſe m alt jarð-fe hvar folgit var. ... Margir aþrir námo þo micit af, oc hefir þaðan af dreifz fiolkynngin viða oc haldiz lengi.", "translation": "Óðinn knew where all buried treasure was hidden ... Yet many others learned much of it, and from there the sorcery (fjölkynngi) has spread widely and lasted long.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Treasure-finding: spells open the earth, rocks, stones and mounds, and bind those who dwell within. Then comes a historical theory of magic. All Scandinavian fjölkynngi descends by teaching from Óðinn and his temple-priests (blótgoðar) and has 'spread widely and lasted long'. Contemporary magic is presented as a survival of the euhemerised Asian immigrants' arts.", "claimed_effect": "finding treasure; opening mounds; persistence of magic down the ages", "claimed_mechanism": "songs (ljóð) that open the earth; transmission by teaching", "practitioner": "Óðinn, blótgoðar, and their pupils", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-12", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "8.5–8.7", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 5", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Mart attuz þeir Oðiɴ við oc Gylfi i brogðum oc ſionhverfingom. oc rðo æsir jaf-nan rikri.", "translation": "Óðinn and Gylfi contended much with each other in tricks (brögð) and illusions (sjónhverfingar), and the Æsir were always the stronger.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A contest of illusion-magic between Óðinn and the Swedish king Gylfi. The pairing 'brögð ok sjónhverfingar' (tricks and eye-turnings) shows the native concept of illusion as a kind of magic. It is the historiographic counterpart to the Gylfaginning frame (norse-60–62).", "claimed_effect": "deceiving the senses", "claimed_mechanism": "sjónhverfing (turning of sight)", "practitioner": "Óðinn; King Gylfi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-13", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography (Swedish legendary kings)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "20.18–21.8", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 13 (ms 'XVI. Cap.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "love", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Drifa keypti a Hulþ ſeið cono at hon ſcylde ſiða vanlanda til fiɴlandz. eða deyþa hann at ꜹðrom coſte. ... callaði hann oc ſagðe at mara traþ hann.", "translation": "Drífa paid Huld the seiðr-woman to draw Vanlandi back to Finland by seiðr, or else to kill him ... he called out and said that a mara was trampling him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A Finnish wife abandoned by the Swedish king Vanlandi hires the seiðkona Huld. Vanlandi is seized by longing to go to Finland, and his friends recognise 'fjölkynngi Finna' in his desire. He falls asleep and cries that a mara (nightmare-being) tramples him. When his men hold his head it tramples his legs; when they hold his legs it presses his head until he dies. The seiðr compels desire at a distance, and the mara kills.", "claimed_effect": "compelled longing (return), then death by a mara in sleep", "claimed_mechanism": "paid seiðr; a sent mara", "practitioner": "Huld seiðkona, hired by Drífa", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "magic for hire; Finnish (Sámi or Finnic) origin", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-14", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "22.15–22.20", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 14 (ms 'XVII. Cap.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Þa var en fengit at ſeið oc ſiðit til þeꜱ at þeir ſcylldo mega drepa fǫðor sinn. þa ſagðe Hlðr vǫlva þeim. at hon mundi ſva ſiþa oc þat með at ætt víg ſcyldo avalt vera i ætt þeira ynglinga", "translation": "Then again seiðr was procured and performed so that they might be able to kill their father. Then Huld the völva told them that she would so perform it, and with it that kin-slaying should forever be in the line of the Ynglingar.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Vísburr's sons hire Huld again to enable patricide. She warns that the seiðr will carry a hereditary curse of kin-killing, and they accept. The same chapter has Dómaldi's stepmother 'having ill-luck (ógæfa) worked upon him by seiðr' (22.7–8). Seiðr works on luck and on a lineage across generations.", "claimed_effect": "enable patricide; a lasting curse of kin-slaying on the dynasty", "claimed_mechanism": "seiðr (síða)", "practitioner": "Huld, called both seiðkona and völva", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-15", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "33.26–34.1", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 23 (ms 'XXV. Capit.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "hann hafði mioc i hirþ sinni allz conar leikara, harpara, oc gigiara. oc fiðlara. hann hafði oc með sér ſeið menn oc allz-conar fiolkuɴict fólc.", "translation": "He had in his court all kinds of players, harpers, fiddlers and viol-players; he also had with him seiðr-men and all kinds of sorcerous folk.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "King Hugleikr, rich and 'no warrior', keeps seiðmenn and sorcerers alongside musicians and entertainers. Courtly magic is classed with performance and with an unwarlike, effeminate king, consistent with the ergi of male seiðr.", "claimed_effect": "unspecified (court service or entertainment)", "claimed_mechanism": "seiðr", "practitioner": "court seiðmenn", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal patronage; associated with entertainers and an unwarlike king", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-16", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Ynglinga saga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "39.19–40.18", "conventional_ref": "Yng. 25 (ms 'XXIX. Cap.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "þa ſagðe Oþinn honom at hann ſcylde æ lifa meþan hann gæfi Oðni ſon sinn et tínda huert ár. ... þat er ſiþan cǫlloð A-na ſott ef maðr deyr verclꜹs af elli.", "translation": "Then Óðinn told him that he should live for ever so long as he gave Óðinn one of his sons every tenth year ... Ever since, it is called 'Aun's sickness' when a man dies without pain of old age.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "King Aun sacrifices nine sons to Óðinn for added decades of life. He ends bedridden, drinking from a horn like an infant, until the Swedes stop the tenth sacrifice. The saga's own name for the result, Ána sótt ('Aun's sickness': dying painlessly of old age), labels as natural senescence what the story frames as purchased longevity.", "claimed_effect": "prolonged life", "claimed_mechanism": "human (filial) sacrifice to Óðinn", "practitioner": "King Aun", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "the community (Svíar) forbids the final sacrifice", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-17", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Haralds saga hárfagra", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography (Norwegian kings; Sámi)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "131.7–131.23", "conventional_ref": "HHárf. 32 (ms 'XXXIV. Cap.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Ec hefi hér verit til þeꜱ ſegir hon at nema kɴoſto af fiɴom tveim er hér ero froðaſtir a morkiɴi ... ef þeir verþa reiðir þa ſnyz iorð m fyrir ſionom þeira. En ef nockot kvict verþr fyrir ſionom þeira þa fellr dát", "translation": "'I have been here,' she says, 'to learn arts (kunnosta) from two Finns who are the wisest in the Mark ... if they become angry the earth turns over before their gaze, and if any living thing comes before their gaze it falls dead.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Eiríkr's men find Gunnhildr in a Sámi hut in Finnmark, apprenticed to two Finns. They track like dogs on thawed and frozen snow, they are so skilled on skis that neither man nor beast escapes them, and they hit whatever they shoot at. Their angry gaze overturns the earth and kills. The Sámi appear as the North's specialists in magic, and their skills (tracking, skiing, archery) blend with the 'evil eye'.", "claimed_effect": "deadly gaze; earth turning; unerring hunting", "claimed_mechanism": "knowledge (kunnosta, fróðleikr); evil eye", "practitioner": "two Sámi ('Finnar'); their pupil Gunnhildr", "practitioner_gender": "male (teachers); female (pupil)", "social_legal_context": "magic learned from an ethnic outsider group", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-18", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Haralds saga hárfagra", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "132.3–133.5", "conventional_ref": "HHárf. 32", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "hon tóc lín seck eiɴ oc hgðo þeir at aſca væri í. hon toc þar i hendi ſinni oc ſeri því um gam-an utan oc iɴan. ... hon tecr þa ſelbelgi tva micla oc ſteypir yfir hofot þeim", "translation": "She took a linen bag, and they thought there was ash in it; she took some in her hand and strewed it round the hut, outside and in ... then she takes two large sealskin bags and pulls them over their heads.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Gunnhildr hides the king's men with a ritual of strewn ash, and the Finns cannot find tracks that end at the hut. She then lulls the jealous Finns into deep sleep, pulls sealskin bags over their heads, and lets Eiríkr's men kill them. The 'magic' scenes are interleaved with plainly practical deceit, including suffocating sleeping men.", "claimed_effect": "concealment from trackers; enchanted sleep", "claimed_mechanism": "strewn ash; seduction and sleep; sealskin bags", "practitioner": "Gunnhildr", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-19", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Haralds saga hárfagra", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "135.33–135.51", "conventional_ref": "HHárf. 34 (ms 'XXXVI. Cap.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "hann nam fiolkyngi oc gerðiz ſeiðmaðr . Haralldi konongi þotto illir ſeiðmenn. ... hann breɴdi iɴi Rognvald bróðor sinn með Lxxx ſeið manna oc var þat verc lofat mioc.", "translation": "He learned sorcery and became a seiðr-man. King Haraldr thought seiðmenn evil ... He (Eiríkr) burned his brother Rögnvaldr inside, with eighty seiðmenn, and that deed was much praised.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Rögnvaldr réttilbeini, a son of King Haraldr, becomes a seiðmaðr. The seiðmaðr Vitgeirr's mocking verse answers the king's order to stop: 'small harm if we do seiðr when the king's son does it'. Eiríkr blóðøx burns Rögnvaldr with eighty seiðmenn, a mass killing of sorcerers by a pagan king that Snorri says was 'much praised'. Hostility to seiðr predates Christian law in this telling.", "claimed_effect": "unspecified seiðr", "claimed_mechanism": "seiðr", "practitioner": "Rögnvaldr réttilbeini; Vitgeirr; 80 seiðmenn", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal prohibition and mass burning by a pre-Christian king", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-20", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography (Norway's conversion)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "336.26–336.47", "conventional_ref": "ÓT 62 (ms 'LXVIII. seiðmanna Brenna')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "at þeir menn allir er kɴir oc ſaɴir yrði at þvi at fǫri með galdra oc gǫrningar eða ſeið menn þa ſcyldo allir fara af landi a brot ... oc þa er þeir váro drcnir lét Oláfr leɢia eld i ſtofona", "translation": "that all those men who became known and proven to deal in galdrar and gerningar, or seiðmen, should all leave the land ... and when they were drunk Óláfr had fire set to the hall.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At the Túnsberg assembly King Óláfr Tryggvason outlaws practitioners of galdr, gerningar and seiðr. He then summons them, feasts them with strong drink, and burns them in the hall; only Eyvindr kelda escapes through the smoke-hole. The vocabulary triad galdrar / gerningar / seiðr anticipates the later laws.", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a", "practitioner": "seiðmenn including Eyvindr kelda", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "royal assembly decree of banishment, followed by mass execution by trickery", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-21", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "338.22–339.23", "conventional_ref": "ÓT 63 (ms 'XLIX. Cap. Dráp Eyvindar kelldu')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "gørði Eyvindr þeim huliz hiálm oc þoko myrcr ſva mikit at konongr oc liþ hans ſcyldi eigi mega ſia þa. ... lét konongr taka þa alla oc flytia þa i flǫði ſker oc binda þa þar.", "translation": "Eyvindr made for them a helmet of concealment (huliðshjálmr) and a fog-darkness so great that the king and his host could not see them ... the king had them all seized, taken out to a tidal skerry and bound there.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "On Easter Eve Eyvindr kelda lands a ship full of seiðmenn and conjures concealment and fog. At daybreak the fog turns against them, so that they wander in circles unable to see, and the king's watchmen capture them. They are bound on a skerry that floods at high tide (flæðisker) and drown. Weather-magic rebounds on its maker. The execution by drowning was a standard method for sorcerers.", "claimed_effect": "invisibility; magical fog", "claimed_mechanism": "fjölkynngi magnified (mögnuðu)", "practitioner": "Eyvindr kelda and a shipload of seiðmenn", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "execution by binding on a tidal skerry", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-22", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "278.18–279.13", "conventional_ref": "ÓT 31 (ms 'XXXi. Cap.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Gǫrðiz Oláfi forvitni á at reyna ſpádom mannz þess. hann ſendi þaɴ af mǫnnom sínom er friðaſtr var oc meſtr ... Ecki ertu konongr, eɴ þat er rað mitt at þ sér trúr konongi þínom.", "translation": "Óláfr grew curious to test the man's prophecy. He sent the handsomest and tallest of his men ... 'You are not the king, but my advice is that you be loyal to your king.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "On the Scilly Isles Óláfr hears of a spámaðr whose predictions come true and tests him with a disguised decoy. The seer sees through it. When Óláfr comes himself, the 'hermit' answers 'with holy prophecy' (helgum spádómi) and offers a verifiable sign: an ambush, a wound, recovery within seven days. A deliberate empirical test of a seer. It also marks the boundary: this prophecy is 'holy' and leads to Óláfr's baptism.", "claimed_effect": "accurate foreknowledge; seeing through disguise", "claimed_mechanism": "'holy prophecy' (helgr spádómr)", "practitioner": "a hermit-seer in the Scillies", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "testing a seer with a decoy; Christian prophecy as legitimate", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-23", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "284.15–284.20", "conventional_ref": "ÓT 33 (ms 'XXXV. Cap.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "hefna niðz þeꜱ er allir iſlendingar hofþo hann niddan. þat var i lǫgom haft a iſlandi at yrkia ſcylde m Dana konong nið víſo fyrir nef hvert er a var landino", "translation": "to avenge the níð with which all Icelanders had defamed him. It was made law in Iceland that a níð-verse should be composed about the Danish king for every nose (head) in the land.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After the Danes seized an Icelandic ship, Iceland supposedly legislated a collective níð: one níð-verse 'for every nose' against King Haraldr Gormsson. A quoted stanza follows. Defamation verse functions here as public and political magic, which Haraldr then answers with a sorcerous spy (norse-24).", "claimed_effect": "defamation and harm of a foreign king", "claimed_mechanism": "níð verse", "practitioner": "all Icelanders (by law)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "claimed Icelandic law mandating collective níð", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-24", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "285.6–286.10", "conventional_ref": "ÓT 33", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "protection-amulet", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Haralldr konongr bꜹð kɴgom manni at fara i hamfꜹrom til islandz oc freiſta hvat hann kynni ſegia honom, ſa for i hvals líki. ... hann ſá at fioll ǫll oc hólar váro fllir af landvettom", "translation": "King Haraldr ordered a man skilled in magic to go 'in shape-journeys' (hamfarir) to Iceland and find out what he could tell him; he went in the likeness of a whale ... he saw that all the mountains and hills were full of land-spirits (landvættir).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Danish king's spy-sorcerer travels in whale-shape and is driven off at each quarter of Iceland by its landvættir. A dragon with serpents and toads blows poison at him, then come a huge bird, a bellowing bull, and a mountain-giant with an iron staff. These four guardians are the ancestors of the modern Icelandic coat of arms. Shape-journeys used for espionage; the land itself defended by its spirits.", "claimed_effect": "reconnaissance in animal form; repulsion by land-spirits", "claimed_mechanism": "hamfarir (shape-journeys)", "practitioner": "an unnamed kunnigr maðr (cunning man) of the Danish king", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-25", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography (Hálogaland; Sámi)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "356.8–356.21", "conventional_ref": "ÓT 76 (ms 'LXXXII. Cap.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "ec em einn andi qvicnaðr i mannz licam með fiolkyɴgi fiɴa, eɴ faðir miɴ oc moðir fengo eigi fyʀ barn átt.", "translation": "'I am a spirit quickened in a human body by the sorcery of Finns, for my father and mother could not have a child before.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Eyvindr kinnrifa refuses baptism even when a brazier of live coals is placed on his belly and bursts it. He explains that he cannot be baptised because he is a spirit given human life by Sámi magic to cure his parents' childlessness. Sámi fertility-magic yields a being outside Christian salvation. The text is also a stark record of forced conversion by torture.", "claimed_effect": "conception for a childless couple, via an embodied spirit", "claimed_mechanism": "fjölkynngi Finna", "practitioner": "Sámi magicians (unnamed); Eyvindr himself 'the most sorcerous of men'", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "forced conversion; torture with live coals", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-26", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography (Hálogaland)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "357.16–358.10", "conventional_ref": "ÓT 78 (ms 'Lxxxiv. Cap.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Rꜹðr var blotmaðr micill oc mioc fiolkɴigr ... Rauðr hafþi jafnan byr hvert er hann vildi ſigla oc var þat af fiolkyɴgi hans", "translation": "Rauðr was a great sacrificer and very skilled in sorcery ... Rauðr always had a fair wind wherever he wanted to sail, and that came from his sorcery.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Rauðr inn rammi, a Hálogaland chieftain followed by many Finns, escapes the king with a perpetual fair wind. Later the fjord is held closed for a week by a storm blowing out of it while the open sea is calm. He is captured and, refusing baptism, killed when an adder is forced into his mouth through a horn or angelica stalk (361.17–362.3).", "claimed_effect": "fair winds on demand; contrary storms against enemies", "claimed_mechanism": "fjölkynngi", "practitioner": "Rauðr inn rammi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "pagan chieftain resisting conversion; execution by snake", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-27", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "359.29–359.43", "conventional_ref": "ÓT 79 (ms 'LXXXVI. Cap.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "exorcism", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Sigurðr byskup toc allan meſo ſcr-ða sinn oc gecc fram i ſtafn a konongs ſcipi lét tendra kerti oc bar reykelſi ſetti roðo cross upp i ſtafninn las þar guðſpiall oc margar bǫnir aðrar. Stcþi vigðo vatni m alt ſcipit.", "translation": "Bishop Sigurðr put on all his mass vestments and went forward to the prow of the king's ship; he had candles lit and bore incense, set up a crucifix in the prow, read the Gospel and many other prayers, and sprinkled holy water over the whole ship.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Christian counter-rite to Rauðr's weather-magic. The bishop asks whether God will lend His strength 'to overcome this devil's power' (fjanda krapt). The rowed ship then moves in a lane of calm while spray rages on either side. Formally this is ritual against ritual: vestments, fire, incense, image, text and water. It is legitimate because its agency is God's.", "claimed_effect": "calm passage through a sorcerous storm", "claimed_mechanism": "liturgy: candles, incense, crucifix, Gospel, prayers, holy water", "practitioner": "Bishop Sigurðr", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "ecclesiastical rite as sanctioned counter-magic", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-28", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "363.4–363.10", "conventional_ref": "ÓT 80", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "oc varþ i þeiri ferð mart þat er i fraſǫgn er frt eɴ troll oc illar vettir glettz við menn hans oc ſtndom við hann ſialfan. Eɴ vér viliom heldr rita m þa at-burði er Oláfr konongr criſtnaði Noreg", "translation": "and on that journey much happened that is told in stories, how trolls and evil beings teased his men and sometimes the king himself. But we would rather write about the events of how King Óláfr christianised Norway.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Snorri explicitly declines to retell troll-and-spirit encounters that his sources contained, and prefers the history of conversion. Selective scepticism by an author who elsewhere reports seiðr and shape-journeys. The wonder-tales of Óláfr Tryggvason's sagas were known and deliberately excluded.", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a", "practitioner": "n/a (trolls and illar vættir)", "practitioner_gender": "n/a", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-29", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Hákonar saga góða", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography (10th-c. Trøndelag cult)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-1:am-35-fol", "ref": "184.10–184.19", "conventional_ref": "Hák. góða 17 (ms 'XVIII. Cap.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "konongr toc við oc gerþi kroſs marc yfir ... konongr gerir ſva ſem þeir allir er tra a matt ſiɴ oc meginn oc ſigna fll ſitt Þór, hann gerþi hamars marc yfir aðr hann drack.", "translation": "The king took it and made the sign of the cross over it ... 'The king does as all those do who trust in their own might and main, and he hallows his cup to Þórr; he made the hammer-sign over it before he drank.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At the Hlaðir sacrificial feast the Christian king Hákon secretly crosses the toast-cup. Jarl Sigurðr defuses the pagans' suspicion by calling it Þórr's hammer-sign. The earlier description (180.1–180.12) gives the cult: blood-sprinkling, the chieftain 'signing' (signa) the cups and the sacrificial meat, Óðinn's toast for victory, Njörðr's and Freyr's for good harvests and peace. The same gesture (signa) is pagan or Christian according to its addressee.", "claimed_effect": "hallowing of the cup", "claimed_mechanism": "signing (cross or hammer)", "practitioner": "King Hákon; Jarl Sigurðr", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "public cult feast; concealment of the king's Christianity", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-30", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga helga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography (Óláfr in Finland)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; ms AM 36 fol 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-2:am-36-fol", "ref": "9.17–9.26", "conventional_ref": "ÓH (Hkr) 9", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "þeir fiɴar gerþo um nóttina ði ǫði veðr með fiolkyngi fiolkingi oc ſtorm ſiavar ... mátti þa eɴ ſem optaʀ meira hamingia konongs eɴ fiolkyngi fiɴa", "translation": "In the night the Finns made a raging storm by sorcery, and a sea-gale ... yet, as more often, the king's luck (hamingja) proved stronger than the Finns' sorcery.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ambushed in Finland, the young Óláfr's fleet is struck by a sorcery-storm. It beats out to sea and escapes. The text explicitly weighs two invisible forces: the king's hamingja (personal luck) against fjölkynngi. The transcription preserves doublets (fiolkyngi fiolkingi).", "claimed_effect": "storm at sea", "claimed_mechanism": "fjölkynngi, defeated by royal hamingja", "practitioner": "Finns (Finnic or Sámi)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-31", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga helga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography (Hálogaland, Sámi trade)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-2:am-36-fol", "ref": "458.25–459.5", "conventional_ref": "ÓH (Hkr) 193 (ms 'CCIV. Cap.')", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "hann atti margs konar cꜹp við fiɴa , hann let þar gera sér xí(?+)j hreínbiálba með ſva micilli fiolkynngi at ekki vápn feſti á oc ſiþr miclo eɴ á hringa brynio", "translation": "He had many kinds of trade with the Finns; he had twelve reindeer-skin coats made for himself there, with such great sorcery that no weapon could take hold on them, far less than on a ring-mail coat.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Þórir hundr spends two winters on Finnmark trading expeditions and has twelve reindeer-hide coats made by the Sámi 'with great fjölkynngi'. Weapons bite them less than chain-mail. The magical claim is attached to a real, traded, material object, which invites a technological reading (norse-32, 33).", "claimed_effect": "invulnerability to weapons", "claimed_mechanism": "fjölkynngi worked into reindeer-hide garments", "practitioner": "Sámi coat-makers, for Þórir hundr", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Norwegian–Sámi trade (finnferð)", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-32", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga helga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson (quoting Sigvatr Þórðarson)", "culture": "Icelandic historiography; 11th-c. skaldic verse", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230 (verse c. 1040); 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-2:am-36-fol", "ref": "504.16–504.24", "conventional_ref": "ÓH (Hkr) 228 (ms 'CCXL. Cap.'); Sigvatr, Erfidrápa Óláfs", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "Oláfr konongr hio til Þóris hundz um herþarnar ſverþit beit ekki, eɴ ſva ſyndiz ſem dyſt ryki ór hreínbialbanom ... Mildr faɴ gerſt hve galdrar gramr ſialfr megin rammir fiolkuɴigra fiɴa fullſtórum barg þóri", "translation": "King Óláfr struck at Þórir hundr across the shoulders; the sword did not bite, but it seemed as though dust flew from the reindeer coat ... The generous king himself found clearly how the mighty galdrar of the sorcerous Finns protected Þórir.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At Stiklestad (1030) Óláfr's sword fails to bite Þórir's coat, and 'dust flew' from it. Sigvatr's contemporary verse already attributes this to 'galdrar of fjölkunnigir Finnar', so the magical interpretation is roughly contemporary, not a 13th-c. invention. In ch. 228 Óláfr then tells Bjǫrn to use a club, i.e. blunt force, a practical answer to armour that resists cuts.", "claimed_effect": "sword fails to cut", "claimed_mechanism": "Sámi galdrar in reindeer hide", "practitioner": "Sámi (via the coat)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-33", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Legendary Saga of St Óláfr (Óláfs saga helga, Uppsala DG 8 II)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Norwegian hagiographic historiography", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "saga c. 1200; ms DG 8 II c. 1250", "date_sort": 1210, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:kap-1:dg-8-ii", "ref": "33r.30–33r.6", "conventional_ref": "Legendary ÓH ch. 80 approx. (Stiklestad)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "En þorer oc þæir .xí. saman varo i vargsk inz stakcum þæim er finnar hafðu gort þæím með mikilli fiolkyngi. þa er Biorn sa at sværðet bæit æigi. þa kallaðe hann a konong- enn oc mællte. Æigi bita vopnen hundana", "translation": "But Þórir and the eleven with him were in wolfskin coats which the Finns had made for them with great sorcery. When Bjǫrn saw the sword did not bite, he called to the king and said: 'Weapons do not bite the dogs.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The earlier Norwegian version of the Stiklestad episode. The coats are vargskinnstakkar (WOLFSKIN), not reindeer, and the striker is Bjǫrn digri, not the king. The king replies 'beat the dogs then' and Bjǫrn takes a club. The material detail shifted between versions while the Sámi origin and the club response stayed. Compare 25v.27–25v.30, where Þórir 'trusts greatly in the fjölkynngi of the Finns'.", "claimed_effect": "weapons fail to bite", "claimed_mechanism": "fjölkynngi in wolfskin coats", "practitioner": "Sámi coat-makers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-34", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Óláfs saga helga", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography (saint-king miracles)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-2:am-36-fol", "ref": "435.11–435.23", "conventional_ref": "ÓH (Hkr) ch. 'Frá Urðarhöfða?' (ms 'CLXXXIX. Cap.'), Valldal", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "healing", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "kellda er oc þar nær hellinom oc þó konongr sér í, eɴ ef búfe manna verþr ſiúct i dalnom oc dreccr þar af vatni þvi þa batnar því ſotta.", "translation": "There is also a spring near the cave in which the king washed himself, and if men's livestock fall sick in the valley and drink of that water, they recover from the sickness.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In Valldal Óláfr clears an impassable rock-fall. The spring he washed in heals sick cattle. He then insists on sleeping at a mountain shieling where 'no one may be at night because of the walking of trolls (trollagangr) and harmful beings'. Healing water and the overcoming of trolls are legitimate supernatural power, the saint's counterpart to spells.", "claimed_effect": "healing livestock; safety from trolls", "claimed_mechanism": "contact relic (spring water the saint bathed in); sanctity", "practitioner": "St Óláfr (via his relics or contact)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-35", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Heimskringla: Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1230; ms AM 63 fol 17th-c. copy (section from AM 18 fol)", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:heimskringla-3:am-63-fol", "ref": "164.14–164.22", "conventional_ref": "HSig. 81 (Gyrðr's dream)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "hann þóttiz þar vera ſtaddr a konongs ſcipino oc ſá upp a eyna hvar trǫllkona micil ſtoð, oc hafþi ſcálm i hendi eɴ i aɴarri hendi trog", "translation": "He dreamed he was on the king's ship and saw up on the island where a great troll-woman stood with a short sword in one hand and a trough in the other.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Before Stamford Bridge (1066) Gyrðr dreams of a troll-woman with a knife and a trough (for gore), and of eagles and ravens on every prow. She chants a prophetic stanza. Þórðr dreams of a troll-woman riding a wolf with a man's carcass in its jaws (164.30–164.41). Dream-omens with female supernatural figures as harbingers of death.", "claimed_effect": "premonition of defeat", "claimed_mechanism": "prophetic dream", "practitioner": "n/a (dream figure)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-36", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous (attributed by some to Snorri)", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic (normalised)", "date": "c. 1220–1240; ms AM 132 fol c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:hér-hefir-upp-egils-sǫgu-af-kveldulfi-búanda:am-132-fol-62va199rb41", "ref": "77v.31a–77v.41a", "conventional_ref": "Egils saga 44", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "rune-writing-magic", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Dróttning ok Bárðr blǫnduðu þá drykkinn ólyfjani ok báru þá inn. Signdi Bárðr fullit ... Egill brá þá knífi sínum ok stakk í lófa sér. Hann tók við horninu ok reist á rúnar ok reið á blóðinu.", "translation": "The queen and Bárðr then mixed the drink with poison and brought it in; Bárðr hallowed (signed) the cup ... Egill drew his knife and stabbed his palm; he took the horn, carved runes on it and reddened them with the blood.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At Atley Gunnhildr and Bárðr poison Egill's drink. He carves runes on the horn, colours them with his own blood, and recites 'Rístum rún á horni'. The horn bursts and the drink spills into the straw. Two rituals meet: Bárðr's 'signing' of the cup and Egill's blood-runes. The poison itself (ólyfjan) is an ordinary substance.", "claimed_effect": "detecting and neutralising poison; the horn shatters", "claimed_mechanism": "carved runes reddened with blood, plus verse", "practitioner": "Egill (runes); Gunnhildr and Bárðr (poison)", "practitioner_gender": "male and female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-37", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Egils saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1220–1240; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:hér-hefir-upp-egils-sǫgu-af-kveldulfi-búanda:am-132-fol-62va199rb41", "ref": "85r.31a–85r.40a", "conventional_ref": "Egils saga 57", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "rune-writing-magic" ], "excerpt_original": "Hér set ek upp níðstǫng . ok sný ek þessu níði á hǫnd Eiríki konungi ok Gunnhildi dróttningu. Hann sneri hrosshǫfðinu inn á land. Sný ek þessu níði á landvǽttir þǽr, er land þetta byggja.", "translation": "'Here I set up a scorn-pole and turn this níð against King Eiríkr and Queen Gunnhildr.' He turned the horse's head toward the land. 'I turn this níð against the land-spirits that dwell in this land.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Egill raises a níðstǫng: a hazel pole with a horse's head, set in a rock cleft facing inland. He curses the land-spirits to wander lost until they drive Eiríkr and Gunnhildr out of Norway, and carves the whole formula in runes on the pole. The curse works through the landvættir, as intermediaries that can be coerced. Eiríkr was in fact expelled soon after, so the curse is 'fulfilled' by history.", "claimed_effect": "expulsion of a king and queen", "claimed_mechanism": "níðstǫng; spoken formula (formáli) also carved in runes; coercion of landvættir", "practitioner": "Egill Skalla-Grímsson", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-38", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Egils saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1220–1240; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:hér-hefir-upp-egils-sǫgu-af-kveldulfi-búanda:am-132-fol-62va199rb41", "ref": "86r.17–86r.19", "conventional_ref": "Egils saga 59", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Svá er sagt, at Gunnhildr lét seið efla ok lét þat seiða, at Egill Skalla-Gríms son skyldi aldri ró bíða á Íslandi, fyrr en hon sǽi hann.", "translation": "It is said that Gunnhildr had seiðr worked up, and had it worked by seiðr that Egill Skalla-Grímsson should never find rest in Iceland until she saw him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Gunnhildr's long-distance compulsion, a counter-curse to the níðstǫng. Egill becomes restless and sails, and is shipwrecked in Northumbria where Gunnhildr and Eiríkr rule. Hedged with 'svá er sagt' (it is said). The Wolfenbüttel manuscript reads 'lét seið magna' (48r.31), a variant verb.", "claimed_effect": "restlessness that drives the victim into her power", "claimed_mechanism": "seiðr (efla seið / magna seið)", "practitioner": "Queen Gunnhildr", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-39", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Egils saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1220–1240; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:hér-hefir-upp-egils-sǫgu-af-kveldulfi-búanda:am-132-fol-62va199rb41", "ref": "87r.3–87r.8", "conventional_ref": "Egils saga 59 (York)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "Hefir hér setit svala ein við glugginn ok klakat í alla nótt, svá at ek hefi aldrigi beðit ró fyrir. ... Hann sá, hvar hamhleypa nokkur fór annan veg af húsinu.", "translation": "'A swallow has sat here at the window twittering all night, so that I never had peace for it.' ... He saw a shape-leaper (hamhleypa) go off the other way from the house.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In York Egill must compose the 'Head-Ransom' poem overnight and is prevented by a twittering swallow. Arinbjǫrn keeps watch at the window and sees a hamhleypa (shape-leaper) leave. The text does not name Gunnhildr, but the implication is clear. The poem is finished once the watch is kept.", "claimed_effect": "distraction of a poet; animal form", "claimed_mechanism": "hamr (shape) shifting", "practitioner": "implicitly Gunnhildr", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-40", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Egils saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1220–1240; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:hér-hefir-upp-egils-sǫgu-af-kveldulfi-búanda:am-132-fol-62va199rb41", "ref": "92v.29–94r.12", "conventional_ref": "Egils saga 72 (Helga in Vermaland)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "healing", "rune-writing-magic", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "þar fann hann talkn, ok váru þar á rúnar. Egill las þǽr, ok síðan telgði hann af rúnarnar. ok skóf þǽr í eld niðr. ... Skalat maðr rúnar rísta, nema ráða vel kunni", "translation": "There he found a whalebone, and there were runes on it. Egill read them, then whittled the runes off and scraped them into the fire ... 'A man should not carve runes unless he knows well how to read them.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Helga has suffered long illness and sleeplessness, as if 'hamstoli' (out of her wits). A farmer's son had carved runes to cure her and made her worse. Egill has her lifted out on clean bedding and finds a whalebone with 'ten secret staves'. He scrapes them into the fire, burns the bone, has her old bedclothes aired in the wind, and carves new runes under her pillow. She wakes as if from sleep, well though weak. Later the cause comes out: a rejected suitor 'thought to carve love-runes (manrúnar)' but did it wrongly. Magic is a technical skill that can fail through incompetence.", "claimed_effect": "illness from mis-carved runes; cure by removal and correct runes", "claimed_mechanism": "runes carved on bone; destroying the object; new runes under the pillow; cleaning and airing the bedding", "practitioner": "Egill (healer); an unnamed bóndason (failed love-magician)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-41", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Egils saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1220–1240; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:hér-hefir-upp-egils-sǫgu-af-kveldulfi-búanda:am-132-fol-62va199rb41", "ref": "72r.32a–72r.39a", "conventional_ref": "Egils saga 27", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "Svá er sagt, at þeim mǫnnum vǽri farit , er hamrammir eru, eða þeim, er berserksgangr var á, at meðan þat var framit, þá váru þeir svá sterkir , at ekki helzk við þeim. en fyrst, er af var gengit, þá váru þeir ómáttkari en at vanða.", "translation": "It is said of men who are 'shape-strong' (hamrammir), or on whom the berserk-fury came, that while it lasted they were so strong that nothing could withstand them, but as soon as it had passed they were weaker than usual.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After the ship-fight in which Kveldúlfr and his companions 'hamask' (go into shape-fury), the saga gives a quasi-clinical generalisation: superhuman strength during the state, collapse afterwards. Kveldúlfr feels exhaustion, takes to bed and dies. The saga's opening says he grew surly each evening and slept early: 'it was said that he was very hamrammr', hence 'Evening-Wolf' (62v.24–62v.27). The saga reports the belief ('þat var mál manna') rather than asserting it.", "claimed_effect": "irresistible strength, then prostration", "claimed_mechanism": "hamremmi (shape-strength) / berserksgangr", "practitioner": "Kveldúlfr, Skalla-Grímr and companions", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-42", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Egils saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1220–1240; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:hér-hefir-upp-egils-sǫgu-af-kveldulfi-búanda:am-132-fol-62va199rb41", "ref": "76v.8a–76v.11a", "conventional_ref": "Egils saga 40", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Þorgerðr brák hét ambátt Skalla-Gríms. Hon hafði fóstrat Egil í barnǿsku. Hon var mikil fyrir sér, sterk sem karlar ok fjǫlkunnig mjǫk. Brák mǽlti: Hamask þú nú, Skalla-Grímr, at syni þínum.", "translation": "Þorgerðr brák was Skalla-Grímr's slave-woman; she had fostered Egill as a child; she was formidable, strong as a man and very skilled in magic. Brák said: 'Are you going into your shape-fury now against your own son, Skalla-Grímr?'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At an evening ball-game Skalla-Grímr, seized by his hamr-strength, kills Egill's playmate and grabs Egill. The fjölkunnig slave foster-mother intervenes and is killed by a stone as she swims away. The practitioner of magic is a low-status but powerful woman inside the household.", "claimed_effect": "n/a (identified as fjölkunnig)", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a", "practitioner": "Þorgerðr brák (slave, foster-mother)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "unfree household woman described as fjölkunnig", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-43", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Laxdæla saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1245; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1245, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:laxdǿla-saga:am-132-fol-156rb11-198rb08", "ref": "172v.41–172v.4a", "conventional_ref": "Laxdæla saga 35", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Síðan lét Kotkell gera seiðhjall mikinn. Þau fǿrðusk þar á upp ǫll. Þau kváðu þar frǿði sín, en þat váru galdrar. Því nǽst laust á hríð mikilli.", "translation": "Then Kotkell had a great seiðr-platform built; they all climbed up onto it; they chanted their lore there, and those were galdrar. Next a great storm struck.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The immigrant Hebridean (suðreyskir) family of Kotkell, Gríma and their sons, 'all very skilled in magic and the greatest seiðmenn' (171v.35a), raise a storm from a seiðhjallr (raised platform). It drowns Þórðr Ingunnarson, Guðrún's husband, off Skálmarnes. The seiðr scene uses galdrar: two native categories are combined, not opposed. Public reaction (172v.19a–21a): 'people thought those deserving death who practised such fjölkynngi'.", "claimed_effect": "storm drowning a targeted man", "claimed_mechanism": "chanting galdrar from a seiðhjallr", "practitioner": "Kotkell, Gríma, Hallbjǫrn, Stígandi", "practitioner_gender": "male and female (family)", "social_legal_context": "immigrant outsiders; community condemnation", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-44", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Laxdæla saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1245; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1245, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:laxdǿla-saga:am-132-fol-156rb11-198rb08", "ref": "173v.19a–173v.32a", "conventional_ref": "Laxdæla saga 37", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Þau fóru á bǿ Hrúts. ok gerðu þar seið mikinn. En er seiðlǽtin kómu upp, þá þóttusk þeir eigi skilja, er inni váru, hverju gegna mundi. En fǫgr var sú kveðandi at heyra.", "translation": "They went to Hrútr's farm and performed a great seiðr there. When the seiðr-sounds rose, those inside could not understand what it meant; but beautiful was that chanting to hear.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Night seiðr against Hrútr's household. Only Hrútr recognises the sounds. He orders everyone to stay awake and not look out, but all fall asleep. The 12-year-old Kári, 'against whom the play (leikr) was made', goes out into the seiðr and drops dead. Seiðr acts through sound and induced sleep and targets one chosen victim. Its chant is described as aesthetically beautiful.", "claimed_effect": "sleep on a household; death of a chosen boy", "claimed_mechanism": "seiðr chanting (seiðlæti, kveðandi); looking out exposes the victim", "practitioner": "Kotkell's family", "practitioner_gender": "male and female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-45", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Laxdæla saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1245; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1245, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:laxdǿla-saga:am-132-fol-156rb11-198rb08", "ref": "174r.7–174r.26", "conventional_ref": "Laxdæla saga 37", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "Þar varð Hallbjǫrn slíkisteinsauga tekinn ok dreginn belgr á hǫfuð honum ... Váru þau þar barin grjóti í hel ... Hallbjǫrn rak þá skyggnur á landit, ok var augnalag hans ekki gott.", "translation": "There Hallbjǫrn Whetstone-eye was taken and a bag was pulled over his head ... They were stoned to death there ... Hallbjǫrn then cast his gaze on the land, and the look of his eyes was not good.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Community execution of the sorcerers without trial. Kotkell and Gríma are stoned and buried under a cairn, Skrattavarði ('Wizard's Cairn'). Hallbjǫrn's head is bagged against his evil eye; when the bag is removed at sea before his drowning, he gazes at the land and curses it. The curse 'seems to have come true' ('þykkir ... á hafa hrinit'). Stoning, bagging and drowning are practical techniques for neutralising a sorcerer.", "claimed_effect": "curse on the land via gaze and spoken words", "claimed_mechanism": "evil eye; atkvæði (pronounced doom)", "practitioner": "Hallbjǫrn slíkisteinsauga", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "extra-judicial killing by chieftains (Óláfr pái, Hrútr); stoning, cairn, drowning with a stone", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-46", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Laxdæla saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga (Christian period)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1245; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1245, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:laxdǿla-saga:am-132-fol-156rb11-198rb08", "ref": "194r.19a–194r.25a", "conventional_ref": "Laxdæla saga 76", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Þar fundusk undir bein. Þau váru blá ok illilig. Þar fannsk ok kinga. ok seiðstaðr mikill. Þóttusk menn þá vita, at þar mundi verit hafa. vǫluleiði nokkut.", "translation": "Bones were found under there; they were blue-black and ugly. A brooch was also found there, and a great seiðr-staff (ms 'seiðstaðr'). People then thought they knew that a völva's grave had been there.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Herdís dreams of a woman who complains that Guðrún, kneeling in prayer, 'tosses on her' and drips burning tears. Guðrún has the church floor dug up where she knelt, and the bones of a völva are found with a brooch and a staff. They are reburied far from paths. The pagan seeress persists under the Christian church. The reading 'seiðstaðr' here, against editions' 'seiðstafr', needs checking.", "claimed_effect": "the dead völva's discomfort under prayer", "claimed_mechanism": "dream revelation; grave goods (kinga, staff)", "practitioner": "a dead völva", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-47", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Laxdæla saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1245; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1245, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:laxdǿla-saga:am-132-fol-156rb11-198rb08", "ref": "185r.16a–185r.21a", "conventional_ref": "Laxdæla saga 57", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "En sú er náttúra sverðsins, at eigi skal sól skína á hjǫltin, ok honum skal eigi bregða, svá at konur sé hjá. Ef maðr fǽr sár sár af sverðinu, þá má þat sár eigi grǿða, nema lyfsteinn sá sé riðinn við", "translation": "And this is the nature of the sword: the sun must not shine on the hilt, and it must not be drawn where women are present. If a man receives a wound from the sword, that wound cannot heal unless the healing-stone that belongs to it is rubbed on it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The heirloom sword Skǫfnungr comes with taboos and a paired lyfsteinn (healing stone). Its 'náttúra' (nature) is a set of rules about light, women and healing. Magic is built into objects and governed by observances. Compare Kormáks saga's version (norse-50).", "claimed_effect": "wounds that heal only with the matching stone", "claimed_mechanism": "náttúra (innate property) of sword and stone; taboos", "practitioner": "n/a (object lore)", "practitioner_gender": "n/a", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-48", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Kormáks saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1200–1220 (disputed); ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1210, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:kormáks-saga:am-132-fol-120vb21129rb7", "ref": "122r.1a–122r.3a", "conventional_ref": "Kormáks saga 5", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "love" ], "excerpt_original": "En því skal ek þér launa, at þú skalt Steingerðar aldri njóta. Kormákr segir: Því muntu ekki ráða, in vánda kerling.", "translation": "'But I shall repay you for this: you shall never enjoy Steingerðr.' Kormákr says: 'You will not decide that, you wicked old woman.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Þórveig, 'very skilled in magic', whose sons Kormákr has killed, curses his love. The saga then states that Kormákr cooled toward the betrothal and missed the wedding 'because Þórveig had worked seiðr so that they should not enjoy each other' (122r.24a). The narrator thus explains a psychological change, Kormákr's loss of desire, by magic.", "claimed_effect": "lovers kept apart for life", "claimed_mechanism": "spoken curse; seiðr (seiddi til)", "practitioner": "Þórveig in fjǫlkunniga", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "blood-feud; Kormákr also has her expelled from the district", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-49", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Kormáks saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1200–1220; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1210, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:kormáks-saga:am-132-fol-120vb21129rb7", "ref": "127v.39–127v.14a", "conventional_ref": "Kormáks saga 22", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "love", "protection-amulet", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "hefir hon skorit tvǽr gǽs ok látit renna saman blóðit í bolla. ... Hafða ek nú ǽtlat at fyrirkoma þeim óskǫpum , er Þórveig hafði á lagt ykkr Steingerði. ... Kormákr mǽlir: Ekki trúi ek á slíkt.", "translation": "She had cut the throats of two geese and let the blood run together in a bowl ... 'I had intended to undo the evil fate (óskǫp) which Þórveig had laid on you and Steingerðr' ... Kormákr says: 'I don't believe in such things.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Þórdís spákona, Kormákr's foster-mother, prepares his invulnerability for a duel and secretly attempts a counter-curse by sacrificing three geese. Kormákr's curiosity interrupts the third goose and so ruins the cure. He openly scorns it, and she had also taken a fee from his opponent. The episode contains magic for hire on both sides, a reversal rite (fyrirkoma óskǫpum), and the hero's explicit disbelief.", "claimed_effect": "invulnerability ('that iron shall not bite you'); undoing a love-curse", "claimed_mechanism": "night vigil; sacrifice of three geese, blood in a bowl; secrecy as a condition", "practitioner": "Þórdís spákona", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "paid by both duel parties; the client's scepticism", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-50", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Kormáks saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1200–1220; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1210, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:kormáks-saga:am-132-fol-120vb21129rb7", "ref": "123v.11–123v.19", "conventional_ref": "Kormáks saga 9", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Pungr fylgir ok skaltu hann kyrran láta. Eigi skal sól skína á it efra hjaltit. ... blás á. Þá mun skríða yrmlingr undan hjaltinu ... Kormákr mǽlti: Margt hafið þér við, tǫframenninir.", "translation": "'A pouch goes with it, and you must leave it alone. The sun must not shine on the upper hilt ... breathe on it; then a little worm will creep from under the hilt.' Kormákr said: 'You have many rigmaroles, you töfr-men!'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Skeggi's instructions for drawing Skǫfnungr: a pouch not to be disturbed, no sunlight on the hilt, draw it sitting alone, breathe on the blade until a little worm creeps out, then tilt the sword to let it back. Kormákr mocks them with the rare word 'tǫframenn' (sorcerers). He tears off the pouch, the sword 'howls' and will not leave the scabbard, and in the duel it is notched. His wound heals 'ugly'. The text is a model of procedural object-magic and of its breach.", "claimed_effect": "proper performance of the sword", "claimed_mechanism": "taboos and a procedure (pouch, sun, breathing, worm)", "practitioner": "Skeggi of Miðfjǫrðr (sword lore)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-51", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Njáls saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga (conversion c. 1000)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1280; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1280, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:am-132-fol-11ra01-61rb08:am-132-fol-11ra01-61rb08", "ref": "37v.19a–37v.36a", "conventional_ref": "Njáls saga 103", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "Vér skulum gera elda 3. Ok skuluð þér heiðnir menn vígja einn, en ek annan, en inn þriði skal óvígðr vera. En ef berserkrinn hrǽðisk þann, er ek vígða, en vaði yðvarn eld, þá skuluð þér taka við trú.", "translation": "'Let us make three fires. You heathens shall consecrate one, I another, and the third shall be unconsecrated. If the berserk fears the one I consecrated but wades through yours, then you shall accept the faith.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The missionary Þangbrandr proposes a trial between two kinds of consecration. The berserk Ótryggr, who 'feared neither fire nor edge', wades the pagan-consecrated fire but will not enter Þangbrandr's, saying he is burning all over. Þangbrandr strikes his arm with a crucifix, 'and such a miracle (jarteign) happened that the sword fell from his hand', and he is killed. The Christian power is called jarteign, not magic.", "claimed_effect": "fire-immunity overcome; disarming by a crucifix", "claimed_mechanism": "competing consecration (vígja) of fires; crucifix", "practitioner": "Þangbrandr (missionary priest); the berserk Ótryggr", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "conversion contest; ordeal-like public test", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-52", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Njáls saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1280; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1280, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:am-132-fol-11ra01-61rb08:am-132-fol-11ra01-61rb08", "ref": "37r.16a–37r.23a", "conventional_ref": "Njáls saga 102", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Maðr hét Galdra-Heðinn, er bjó í Kerlingardal. Þar keyptu heiðnir menn at honum, at hann skyldi deyða Þangbrand ok fǫruneyti hans. ... þá brast í sundr jǫrðin undir hesti Þangbrands", "translation": "There was a man called Galdra-Heðinn (Spell-Heðinn) who lived in Kerlingardalr. The heathens paid him to kill Þangbrandr and his company ... then the earth burst apart under Þangbrandr's horse.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A professional sorcerer, hired by the pagan community, holds a great blót on Arnarstakksheiðr. The ground opens and swallows Þangbrandr's horse and harness; he leaps clear and praises God, and Galdra-Heðinn is speared. The place lies in Mýrdalur below Katla (glacial outwash, quicksand, jökulhlaup channels), which points to a geological reading.", "claimed_effect": "the earth swallowing an enemy", "claimed_mechanism": "blót (sacrifice) and galdr, paid by a community", "practitioner": "Galdra-Heðinn", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-53", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Njáls saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1280; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1280, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:am-132-fol-11ra01-61rb08:am-132-fol-11ra01-61rb08", "ref": "12r.7–12r.11", "conventional_ref": "Njáls saga 30", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Hallgrímr hefir atgeir. þann, er hann hefir látit seiða til, at honum skal ekki vápn at bana verða nema hann. Þat fylgir ok, at þegar veit, ef víg er vegit með atgeirnum . því at þá syngr í honum áðr hátt.", "translation": "Hallgrímr has a halberd which he has had worked on by seiðr, so that no weapon shall be his death but that one. It also has the property that it is known at once when a killing will be done with it, for then it sings loudly beforehand.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A viking's halberd enchanted by seiðr. It makes him safe from every weapon but itself and 'sings' before it kills. Gunnarr later wins it and it sings before his own fights. Seiðr here is commissioned on an object and gives both protection and premonition.", "claimed_effect": "invulnerability except to itself; audible omen of killing", "claimed_mechanism": "seiðr worked on a weapon; 'náttúra'", "practitioner": "unnamed (Hallgrímr 'had seiðr worked on it')", "practitioner_gender": "unknown", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-54", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Fóstbræðra saga (Saga Þormóðar ok Þorgeirs, Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1200–1250 (dating disputed); ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:saga-þormóðar-ok-þorgeirs:am-132-fol-198rb8201vb41", "ref": "201v.14a–201v.17a", "conventional_ref": "Fóstbræðra saga 9", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Þat var mǽlt um Grímu, at hon kynni sér margt, ok þat tǫluðu menn, at hon vǽri fjǫlkunnig. Nú fyrir því at kristni var var ung ok vangǫr, þá sýndisk þat mǫrgum mǫnnum atgervi , at maðr vǽri fjǫlkunnigr.", "translation": "It was said of Gríma that she knew a great deal, and people said she was skilled in magic. Now because Christianity was young and immature, it seemed to many people an accomplishment (atgervi) that someone was fjölkunnigr.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A 13th-c. author's explicit historicising note. In the early Christian period, being skilled in magic was valued as an accomplishment, which implies it is no longer so valued. Compare the same saga's remark that 'many sparks of heathenism' remained (198v.14a–15a). Change in moral evaluation is thematised by the medieval author himself.", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a", "practitioner": "Gríma of Ǫgr (widow)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "historicised valuation of magic in early Christian Iceland", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-55", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Fóstbræðra saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1200–1250; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:saga-þormóðar-ok-þorgeirs:am-132-fol-198rb8201vb41", "ref": "198v.14a–198v.23a", "conventional_ref": "Fóstbræðra saga 2", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "þá skuldu þeir ganga undir þrjú jarðarmen, ok var þat eiðr þeirra. Sá leikr var á þá lund, at rísta skyldi þrjár torfur ór jǫrðu langar. Þeirra endar skuldu allir fastir í jǫrðu.", "translation": "Then they had to walk under three earth-strips, and that was their oath. That rite was done like this: three long turves were to be cut from the earth, with all their ends fixed in the ground.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A sworn-brotherhood rite, explicitly called a 'leikr' (rite or play) and a survival of 'sparks of heathenism' in the young Christian period. Not magic in the strict sense, but a binding ritual using the earth. It sits on the boundary between oath and magic.", "claimed_effect": "binding mutual vengeance obligation", "claimed_mechanism": "passing under arched turves (jarðarmen)", "practitioner": "Þormóðr and Þorgeirr", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-56", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Hallfreðar saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1200–1220; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1210, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:hallfreðar-saga:am-132-fol-149va32156rb10", "ref": "155r.7–155r.13", "conventional_ref": "Hallfreðar saga 10", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Ok um várit er hann fór norðr, þá rak á fyrir þeim hríð. Hallfreðr kvað þat vera gerningaveðr.", "translation": "And in spring, when he travelled north, a blizzard struck them. Hallfreðr said it was a sorcery-storm (gerningaveðr).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A spring blizzard on the road is interpreted by the traveller himself as gerningaveðr. An ambush by Már, who shields himself with a 'blóttrugl' (a sacrificial object?), follows. The attribution is the character's own and the narrator does not confirm it, a good example of weather read as hostile intent.", "claimed_effect": "blizzard", "claimed_mechanism": "gerningar (sorcery)", "practitioner": "unnamed (implied enemies)", "practitioner_gender": "unknown", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-57", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Droplaugarsona saga ('Af Katli Þrym', Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga (set partly in Norway)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1200–1250; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:af-katli-þrym-capitulum:am-132-fol-141va3147vb4", "ref": "147v.22–147v.28", "conventional_ref": "Droplaugarsona saga 15", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "kona. ok lézk vera lǽknir. Hon bað at binda um sár Gríms, ok þat var, at hon batt um. ok hvarf á brott. Lítlu síðar kom blástr í fót Gríms. ok allt upp í kviðinn ... En þessi kona hét Gefjun. in fjǫlkunnga.", "translation": "...a woman, who said she was a physician (læknir). She asked to bind Grímr's wound, and she did so and vanished. A little later swelling came into Grímr's leg and right up into his belly ... This woman was called Gefjun the sorceress.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A fjölkunnig woman, mistress of the man Grímr had killed, poses as a healer, dresses his wound and disappears. Spreading swelling (blástr) kills him after he receives the last rites. The 'magic' killing is narrated entirely in medical terms: a contaminated or poisoned dressing and a spreading infection.", "claimed_effect": "death from a dressed wound", "claimed_mechanism": "false healing (wound binding)", "practitioner": "Gefjun in fjǫlkunnga", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "revenge by a dead man's lover", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-58", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Finnboga saga ramma (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga (late)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1300; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1300, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:am-132-fol-100ra1114ra41:am-132-fol-100ra1114ra41", "ref": "107r.35a–107r.38a", "conventional_ref": "Finnboga saga 30 approx.", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "Ok ertu hinn versti maðr, sem sagt er, ok eigi einhamr. Ok ertu troll, þó at þú sýnisk maðr. Þat þolir hann eigi", "translation": "'You are the worst of men, as is said, and not of one shape (eigi einhamr); you are a troll, though you look like a man.' He could not bear that.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Calling someone 'not single-shaped' and a troll in human form is an insult provoking violence. The man kills two boys and wrestles Finnbogi. Shape-shifting belief functions socially as defamation. The same saga has Jǫkull raise a 'most shameful níð' against Finnbogi (109r.32a).", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a", "practitioner": "Þorvaldr moðskegg (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "accusation of shape-shifting as insult", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-59", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Víga-Glúms saga (Möðruvallabók)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic family saga", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1220–1250; ms c. 1330–1370", "date_sort": 1235, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:hér-hefr-vígaglúms-sǫgu:am-132-fol-129rb8141va32", "ref": "133r.9–133r.19", "conventional_ref": "Víga-Glúms saga 9", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Hann þóttisk sjá konu eina ganga útan eftir heraðinu ... En hon var svá mikil, at axlirnar tóku út fjǫllin tveggja vegna. ... Ok mundi kona sjá hans hamingja vera, er fjǫllum hǽra gekk.", "translation": "He dreamed he saw a woman walking up the district ... she was so huge that her shoulders touched the mountains on both sides ... 'And that woman, who walked higher than the mountains, must be his hamingja (luck-spirit).'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Glúmr interprets his dream of a giant woman as the hamingja of his grandfather Vigfúss, who has just died, coming to settle with him. News of the death arrives later. The hamingja here is a personified, heritable fortune, the native counterpart to 'luck' that beats fjölkynngi in norse-30.", "claimed_effect": "knowledge of a distant death; transfer of family luck", "claimed_mechanism": "dream; hamingja as female spirit", "practitioner": "Glúmr (dream-interpreter)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-60", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Snorra Edda: Gylfaginning (Codex Wormianus)", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic mythography", "language": "Old Icelandic (diplomatic)", "date": "c. 1220–1225; ms AM 242 fol c. 1340–1370", "date_sort": 1222, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:gylfaginning:am-242-fol", "ref": "9.1–9.6", "conventional_ref": "Gylf. 1–2 (Faulkes)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "hann unꝺraðiz þat er aaſa ꝼolk var ſua kunnikt at aller luter gioꝛðuz at þeira vilía ok hugſaði hann hvart þat munꝺi vera aꝼ eðli ſialꝼra þeiꝛa eða munꝺí þi vallꝺa guð mǫgn þau er þeiꝛ blotuðu.", "translation": "He wondered that the Æsir folk were so knowledgeable that everything went according to their will, and he pondered whether that came from their own nature, or whether the divine powers they worshipped caused it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The frame of the Prose Edda poses a theory question about magic's source. Is the Æsir's efficacy innate ('af eðli sjálfra þeira') or derived from the powers they sacrifice to? Gylfi, 'king and fjölkunnigr', travels in disguise. The Æsir, 'wiser in that they had prophecy (spádómr)', foresee his coming and make sjónhverfingar (illusions) against him. Everything that follows, the whole mythology, is told inside an illusion.", "claimed_effect": "total control of events; illusory hall", "claimed_mechanism": "either innate nature or worshipped powers; spádómr; sjónhverfing", "practitioner": "the Æsir; Gylfi", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-61", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Snorra Edda: Gylfaginning (Codex Wormianus)", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic mythography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1220–1225; ms c. 1340–1370", "date_sort": 1222, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:gylfaginning:am-242-fol", "ref": "31.24–32.4", "conventional_ref": "Gylf. 47 (Útgarða-Loki)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "enn ſionhvꝼingar heꝼi ek goꝛt þer ok ꝼẏrſta ſinn a ſkoginum kom ek til ꝼunꝺar við ẏðꝛ ok þa er þu ſkẏllꝺer læẏſa neſtbaggan þa haꝼða ek bunꝺit hann með gꝛeſſ iarní", "translation": "'But I have made illusions (sjónhverfingar) for you; the first time, in the forest, I came to meet you, and when you were to untie the food-bag I had bound it with iron wire...'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Útgarða-Loki explains every one of Þórr's 'failures' as an illusion. The food-bag was tied with iron wire. Þórr's hammer-blows struck a hidden table-mountain, leaving three valleys. The drinking horn's end lay in the sea, so his draughts made the ebb-tides (fjǫrur, 32.4). The cat was the Midgard Serpent. These are the North's classic exposures of 'magic' as deception, with aetiologies of natural features bundled in.", "claimed_effect": "misperception of tasks; tides; valleys", "claimed_mechanism": "sjónhverfing (optical illusion)", "practitioner": "Útgarða-Loki (giant)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-62", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Snorra Edda: Gylfaginning (Codex Wormianus)", "author": "Snorri Sturluson", "culture": "Icelandic mythography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1220–1225; ms c. 1340–1370", "date_sort": 1222, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:gylfaginning:am-242-fol", "ref": "39.20–39.28", "conventional_ref": "Gylf. 53 (end of frame)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "þa ſtenꝺꝛ hann utí a ſlettum vellí. ... at menn ſkẏllꝺu ekki iꝼaz i at aller væri æíner þeir æser er nu var ꝼra ſagt ok þeſſer er þau ſǫmu noꝼn uoro geꝼen.", "translation": "...then he is standing out on a level plain ... [the Æsir gave themselves the same names] so that people should not doubt that those Æsir who had just been told of and these to whom the same names were given were all the same.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After a great din the hall vanishes and Gylfi stands on an empty plain. The Æsir then deliberately adopt the names of the gods in the stories they told, so that later generations will identify the human Æsir with the gods. This is Snorri's euhemerist exposure: pagan religion results from illusion and deliberate impersonation.", "claimed_effect": "vanishing hall; creation of false gods", "claimed_mechanism": "sjónhverfing; name-adoption (deliberate deception)", "practitioner": "the Æsir (as human deceivers)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-63", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Snorra Edda: Gylfaginning (Codex Wormianus), quoting 'Völuspá in skamma'", "author": "Snorri Sturluson (quoting Eddic verse)", "culture": "Icelandic mythography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1220–1225 (verse earlier, undated); ms c. 1340–1370", "date_sort": 1222, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:gylfaginning:am-242-fol", "ref": "10.30–10.31", "conventional_ref": "Gylf. 5; Hyndluljóð 33 (Vsp. in skamma)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "eru vǫlur allar ꝼra viðolꝼi vitkar aller ꝼra vilmeiði enn ſeiðberenꝺr ꝼra ſvarthoꝼða iotnar aller ꝼra ẏmí komner.", "translation": "All völur are from Viðólfr, all wizards (vitkar) from Vilmeiðr, and seiðr-workers (seiðberendr) from Svarthǫfði; all giants come from Ymir.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A mythic genealogy that sorts magical specialists into three types (völur, vitkar, seiðberendr) and traces each to a giant ancestor. Magic is classified by lineage, and its origin lies among the giants, outside the gods. 'seiðberendr' is often read as an obscene compound (berendi = female genitals?), which would tie seiðr to ergi; the reading is disputed.", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "descent from giants", "practitioner": "völur, vitkar, seiðberendr", "practitioner_gender": "female and male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-64", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Snorra Edda: Prologue (Codex Wormianus expanded version)", "author": "Snorri Sturluson (with Wormianus interpolations)", "culture": "Icelandic learned euhemerism (Trojan-origin theory)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1220–1225; expanded prologue in ms c. 1340–1370", "date_sort": 1222, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:prologus:am-242-fol", "ref": "4.28–5.9", "conventional_ref": "Edda, Prologue (Wormianus version)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "alchemy" ], "excerpt_original": "hann var ok sua mikill a þa iðꝛott er phítonſanꝺa liſt heiter. at hann uiſſi ꝼẏrer uoꝛðna lutí. hann ꝼann ok rauða þann i ioꝛðu er hann bleſ aꝼ gull", "translation": "He was also so great in the art called 'pythonic art' (phítonsanda list) that he knew things before they happened; he also found the red ore (rauði) in the earth from which he smelted gold.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Saturn, a man born on Crete, gains wealth and worship through prophecy ('phítonsanda list', from Latin pythonissa) and by smelting gold out of 'rauði' (Old Norse for bog-iron ore). His people therefore 'believed him to be a god' (5.6). Saturn then claims to rule heaven and earth. Divination and metallurgy explain the origin of pagan gods. Later (7.16) the Æsir travelling north 'seemed more like gods than men'.", "claimed_effect": "foreknowledge; gold from earth; deification", "claimed_mechanism": "pythonic art; smelting (blása)", "practitioner": "Saturn (euhemerised)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-65", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Snorra Edda: Skáldskaparmál (verses, Codex Wormianus): Kormákr Ǫgmundarson, Sigurðardrápa", "author": "Kormákr Ǫgmundarson (skald), quoted by Snorri", "culture": "Norwegian–Icelandic skaldic praise poetry (pagan period)", "language": "Old Icelandic (diplomatic)", "date": "verse c. 960s; ms c. 1340–1370", "date_sort": 965, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:skáldskaparmál:am-242-fol", "ref": "1.51–1.54", "conventional_ref": "Skáldsk. (Faulkes v. 9); Kormákr, Sigurðardrápa 3", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "love", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Eẏkr með enni ꝺuki iarðlutr ꝺia ꝼiarðar bꝛæẏti hunn ſa er bæinan binꝺꝛ ſeið ẏggr til rinꝺar.", "translation": "...Yggr (Óðinn) binds (or: worked) seiðr toward Rindr.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The earliest datable reference to seiðr in the corpus, in a pagan-period praise-poem for Jarl Sigurðr. It alludes to Óðinn winning Rindr by seiðr to beget Váli, his avenger for Baldr. Óðinn practised seiðr for love or coercion already in the 10th-century tradition. The text reads 'bindr seið'. The syntax of the half-stanza is notoriously difficult.", "claimed_effect": "winning Rindr", "claimed_mechanism": "seiðr", "practitioner": "Óðinn (Yggr)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-66", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Rígsþula (Codex Wormianus)", "author": "Anonymous (Eddic-style poem)", "culture": "Norse social-origin myth", "language": "Old Icelandic (diplomatic)", "date": "date disputed (10th–13th c.); ms AM 242 fol c. 1340–1370", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:rígsþula:am-242-fol", "ref": "1.323–1.336", "conventional_ref": "Rígsþula 43–44", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "rune-writing-magic", "protection-amulet", "weather-nature", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "en konr ungr kunní runar æꝼinrunar ok allꝺꝛrunar. mei kunni hann monnum biarga eggiar ꝺeẏꝼa ægi lęgia. klǫk nam ꝼugla kẏrra ellꝺa ſæva ok ſveꝼia ſoꝛger lægia", "translation": "But young Konr knew runes, runes of eternity and runes of life; he knew more: to save men, to blunt sword-edges, to calm the sea; he learned bird-speech, to quench fires, to soothe and lull, to allay sorrows.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The library's closest equivalent to Hávamál's Ljóðatal, which is absent. Konr ungr ('Konungr', the first king) outdoes his father Jarl in rune-knowledge. The abilities are saving lives, blunting edges, calming the sea, understanding birds, quenching fire and easing grief, with 'the strength of eight men'. Rune-magic appears as a royal accomplishment that legitimises kingship.", "claimed_effect": "save lives; blunt weapons; calm sea; bird-speech; quench fire; ease sorrows", "claimed_mechanism": "knowledge of runes (æfinrúnar, aldrrúnar)", "practitioner": "Konr ungr (proto-king); taught by Rígr", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "runes as the attribute of the highest social rank", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-67", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Íslendingabók", "author": "Ari Þorgilsson inn fróði", "culture": "Icelandic early historiography", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1122–1133; ms AM 113 b fol 17th-c. copy", "date_sort": 1125, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:íslendingabók:am-113-b-fol", "ref": "5v.20–6r.25", "conventional_ref": "Íslendingabók 7", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "þá lagðisk hann niðr Þorgeirr. ok breiddi feld sinn á sik ok hvílði þann dag allan ok nóttina eptir ok kvað ekki orð. ... Skyldu menn blóta á laun, ef vildu", "translation": "Then Þorgeirr lay down and spread his cloak over himself and rested all that day and the following night and said not a word ... People might sacrifice in secret if they wished.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The heathen lawspeaker Þorgeirr lies silent under his cloak for a day and a night before proclaiming Iceland's conversion (c. 1000). The compromise allows private blót, exposure of infants and horse-meat, subject to lesser outlawry if witnessed. Many scholars read the cloak episode as a seer's trance, comparable with útiseta; Ari does not say so. The terms of conversion leave pagan ritual legal in private.", "claimed_effect": "decision on the conversion (implicitly inspired?)", "claimed_mechanism": "silent seclusion under a cloak (interpretation disputed)", "practitioner": "Þorgeirr Ljósvetningagoði", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Alþingi compromise; private blót tolerated", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-68", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Older Christian Law of Borgarþing (Kristinréttr hinn eldri Borgarþings)", "author": "Anonymous (Norwegian provincial law)", "culture": "Norwegian (Viken) church law", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "12th c.; ms AM 78 4to c. 1320s", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:kristinréttr-hinn-eldri-borgarþings-borgartings-eldre-kristenrett:am-78-4to", "ref": "7v.13–7v.19", "conventional_ref": "Borgarþ. eldri kristinréttr I 16", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "þæt er ubota ꝩærk at gera ꝼinꝼarar ꝼara at ſpyría ſpa Eꝼ kona bítr ꝼíngr eða to aꝼ barne ſínu till langlíꝩis· bte erkr· íí· En eꝼ kona ꝼoðer baꝛn hæiðit eða bonde till langliis bte erkr· íí", "translation": "It is an unatonable deed (óbótaverk) to make journeys to the Finns to ask prophecy. If a woman bites a finger or toe off her child for long life, she pays three marks; and if a woman or a farmer nurtures a child heathenly for long life, they pay three marks.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Consulting Sámi seers (finnferð at spyrja spá) carries the highest penalty, outlawry without atonement. Domestic longevity rites for infants, biting off a finger or toe or 'heathen' feeding, carry a fine. The law records real folk practice by mothers and farmers and grades it far below consulting a foreign seer.", "claimed_effect": "knowledge of the future; long life for a child", "claimed_mechanism": "consulting Finns; mutilation or ritual feeding of infants", "practitioner": "mothers; farmers; Sámi seers (consulted)", "practitioner_gender": "female and male", "social_legal_context": "outlawry for finnferð; three-mark fines for longevity rites", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-69", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Older Christian Law of Borgarþing", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Norwegian church law", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "12th c.; ms c. 1320s", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:kristinréttr-hinn-eldri-borgarþings-borgartings-eldre-kristenrett:am-78-4to", "ref": "7v.19–7v.8b", "conventional_ref": "Borgarþ. eldri kristinréttr I 16", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Su er ꝼoꝛdæða uærſt er ꝼirir gerer ku eða kale kono eða barne En eꝼ ꝼoꝛdæðo ſkapt ꝩærðꝛ ꝼunnín j bæðium eða bolſtrom manna hor eða ꝼrauða ꝼtr manna har næghl eða þa luti er uener þíkkía till gærninga", "translation": "She is the worst fordæða (destroying witch) who destroys a cow or calf, a woman or a child. And if a fordæða's kit is found in people's beds or bolsters, hair (?), or frogs (?), human feet (?), hair, nails, or those things thought fit for gerningar (sorcery)...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A rare inventory of sorcery material ('fordæðuskapr') as found evidence: bits of hair, 'frauða' (perhaps frogs), human body parts, hair and nail clippings, hidden in beds and bolsters. The accuser may bring suit, and the accused must undergo the hot-iron ordeal. If guilty, she is outlawed and 'may be taken and killed', with forfeiture of property. The worst offence is destroying cattle, women or children. Several readings ('hor', 'frauða') are uncertain.", "claimed_effect": "killing livestock, women, children", "claimed_mechanism": "gerningar using body-material hidden in bedding", "practitioner": "fordæða (female sorcerer)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "suit; hot-iron ordeal (járn); outlawry and killing", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-70", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Older Christian Law of Borgarþing", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Norwegian church law", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "12th c.; ms c. 1320s", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:kristinréttr-hinn-eldri-borgarþings-borgartings-eldre-kristenrett:am-78-4to", "ref": "7v.8b–7v.18a", "conventional_ref": "Borgarþ. eldri kristinréttr I 16", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Eꝼ kono er trylƶka kend í heraðe þa ſkall hon haa till· ví· kuenna ꝩítní at hon er æigi trylſk ... ækki vældꝛ hon þuí ſíolꝼ at hon er troll· guð ſkulu men væll trua en æigi a boluan eða a blot ſkapp", "translation": "If a woman is reputed troll-ish (trylsk) in the district, she shall have the testimony of six women that she is not troll-ish ... it is not she herself who causes it that she is a troll. God men shall believe in well, and not in cursing (bölvan) or sacrificial practice (blótskapr).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A suspected witch can clear herself with six women's oaths; failing that she must leave the district with her goods. The clause adds a striking note: 'she herself does not cause it that she is a troll'. Being a troll is treated as a condition rather than a chosen act. A creedal sentence follows: trust God, not bölvan or blótskapr.", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a", "practitioner": "reputed trylsk women", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "compurgation by six women; expulsion from the district", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-71", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Older Christian Law of Frostaþing", "author": "Anonymous (Norwegian provincial law)", "culture": "Norwegian (Trøndelag) church law", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "12th c.; ms AM 60 4to (14th c.)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:kristinréttr-hinn-eldri-frostaþings-frostatings-eldre-kristenrett:am-60-4to", "ref": "18v.2–18v.10", "conventional_ref": "Frostaþingslǫg (eldri kristinréttr) III 15", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Vm blot a heiðnar uettr· xv· ꝼ maðꝛ blotar a heíðnar uetter eða ꝼer hʼ m; ſpaſogur eða m; gerní̅gu̅ ſa mͬ e͛ þͥ lyðír oc þan̅ man̅ huſar til þeſſ· hʼ e͛ ſua utlægr ſem mᷦbane·", "translation": "On sacrifice to heathen beings, 15. If a man sacrifices to heathen vættir, or deals in prophecies (spásögur) or sorcery (gerningar), the man who listens to it and houses such a man for it is as outlawed as a murderer.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Sacrifice to landvættir-type beings, soothsaying and sorcery are equated with murder. The clients and hosts of practitioners are also outlawed. Denial is by ordeal: men carry iron, women take from the kettle (boiling water).", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a", "practitioner": "sacrificers; soothsayers; sorcerers; their clients", "practitioner_gender": "male and female", "social_legal_context": "outlawry 'like a murderer'; gendered ordeals (iron for men, kettle for women)", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-72", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Christian Law of King Sverrir (Kristinréttr Sverris konungs)", "author": "Anonymous (attributed to King Sverrir)", "culture": "Norwegian church law", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "attributed c. 1200, probably compiled later in the 13th c. (disputed); ms AM 78 4to c. 1320s", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:kristinréttr-sverris-konungs-kong-sverres-kristenrett:am-78-4to", "ref": "42v.12–42v.17", "conventional_ref": "Sverris kristinréttr 79", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "ætt er nu þæir neſt at ver ſkulum æigi lyða ſpom ne goldꝛum ne gerningum illum· En ſa er kunnr oc ſannr værðꝛ at þuí at han ſægir ſpar oc ꝼer með þæím þa er han utlægr oc vhæilagr", "translation": "That is next, that we shall not listen to prophecies, nor galdrar, nor evil gerningar. And he who becomes known and proven to tell prophecies and deal in them is outlawed and without legal protection (óheilagr).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The triad spár / galdrar / gerningar (with 'illar') defines prohibited practice. The practitioner's property is split between king and bishop, and those who listen are also penalised. The adjective 'illum' on gerningar is notable, as if 'deeds' needed specifying as evil.", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a", "practitioner": "soothsayers, galdr-singers", "practitioner_gender": "male and female", "social_legal_context": "outlawry; confiscation shared by king and bishop", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-73", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Christian Law of King Sverrir", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Norwegian church law", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "13th c.; ms c. 1320s", "date_sort": 1230, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:kristinréttr-sverris-konungs-kong-sverres-kristenrett:am-78-4to", "ref": "46r.18–46r.26", "conventional_ref": "Sverris kristinréttr (on trollkonur)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Nn eꝼ þæt er kent kono at hon ſe trolkona eða manæta · þa ſkall mæla a hendꝛ henne oꝛ huſum þæiꝛi· ... En eꝼ hon værðꝛ at þuí ſon þa ſkall ꝼra hana a ſæ vtt· oc hoggua a ryg·", "translation": "Now if a woman is accused of being a troll-woman or a man-eater, it shall be charged against her from her household ... And if she is proven guilty, she shall be taken out to sea and her spine broken (or: struck on the back).", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An accusation of being 'trollkona or manæta' (man-eater) must come from her own household. If she denies it she undergoes the ordeal of hallowed water and kettle; if she clears herself, the slandering accuser is outlawed (46r.2a–7a). If guilty, she is executed at sea by 'hǫggva á hrygg'. The rule both punishes and restrains witch accusations.", "claimed_effect": "n/a (troll-nature, cannibalism)", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a", "practitioner": "accused women (trollkona, manæta)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "accusation by the household; kettle ordeal; execution at sea; penalty for false accusers", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-74", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Christian Law of Magnús Hákonarson (Lagabøtir)", "author": "King Magnús Hákonarson and Archbishop Jón (drafting)", "culture": "Norwegian royal-ecclesiastical law", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "c. 1267–1273; ms AM 60 4to (14th c.)", "date_sort": 1270, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:kristinréttr-magnúss-hákonarsonar-magnus-lagabøtes-kristenrett:am-60-4to", "ref": "1r.2a–1r.10a", "conventional_ref": "Magnúss Lagabœtis kristinréttr (Borgarþing) ch. 1–2", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "binding-curse", "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "till uillu heiðíns atrunaðar· Galdꝛar oc g͛ningͬ· ok ſa eꝼ nokoꝛn· man̅ kallar trollriðu· ſpadomar oc at trua a landuett͛ at þꝛ ſe ild̅dum · haugu̅ æda ꝼoꝛſu̅ Sua oc vtiſætoꝛ at ſpyꝛia oꝛlaga", "translation": "...[these belong] to the error of heathen belief: galdrar and gerningar, and if one calls someone a troll-rider (trollriða); prophecies (spádómar), and believing in land-spirits, that they dwell in groves, mounds or waterfalls; likewise sitting out (útisetur) to ask about fate (ørlög)...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The fullest catalogue of 'heathen error'. It lists galdrar, gerningar, the slander 'trollriða', spádómar, belief in landvættir living in groves, mounds and waterfalls, útisetur 'to ask about fate', and seeking wealth in burial mounds. It defines a whole folk cosmology (vættir in the landscape) as illicit belief, not only practice.", "claimed_effect": "n/a", "claimed_mechanism": "n/a", "practitioner": "general population", "practitioner_gender": "male and female", "social_legal_context": "royal and episcopal duty to investigate open heathen belief", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-75", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Landslǫg Magnúss Hákonarsonar (Norwegian National Law)", "author": "King Magnús Hákonarson", "culture": "Norwegian national law", "language": "Old Norwegian (normalised)", "date": "1274; ms Holm perg 34 4to c. 1276", "date_sort": 1274, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:landslǫg-magnúss-hákonarsonar-magnus-lagabøtes-landslov:holm-perg-34-4to", "ref": "23v.24–23v.27", "conventional_ref": "Landslög IV (Mannhelgi) 4", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "En þeir er líf sitt láta fyrir þýfsku sakir eða útilegu ... ok svá fyrir morð ok fordǽðuskap, fyrir spár ok útisetur, at vekja troll upp, at fremja með því heiðni", "translation": "And those who lose their lives for theft or brigandage ... and likewise for murder and fordæðuskapr (witchcraft), for prophecies and útisetur (sitting out), to wake up trolls, to practise heathenism by it...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the national law's list of óbótamál (unatonable crimes), witchcraft, prophecy and 'útisetur to wake up trolls' (necromantic sitting out) sit alongside murder and banditry. The same clause appears in DG 8 I as 'spáfarar allar at vekja troll upp' (13v.21) and in other Landslǫg manuscripts (AM 305 fol 19r.18–19).", "claimed_effect": "raising trolls (the dead or spirits)", "claimed_mechanism": "útiseta", "practitioner": "seers; útiseta practitioners; witches", "practitioner_gender": "male and female", "social_legal_context": "capital, unatonable offences", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-76", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Old Norwegian Homily Book (Gamal norsk homiliebok, AM 619 4to)", "author": "Anonymous (Norwegian homilist; edition filed under Alcuin)", "culture": "Norwegian Christian preaching", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "ms c. 1200–1225 (texts 12th c.)", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:alcuin:de-natiuitate-domini-ſermo:am-619-4to", "ref": "17r.24–17r.15a", "conventional_ref": "Gamal norsk homiliebok (Indrebø 1931) p. 30 approx.", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "healing", "divination", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "lauſung. mein æiðar. mutu fe. ok trva a liflyf qvenna eða gerningaʀ. eða a ſpa ſꜵgumſpa ſꜵgur. þat er allt diofulſ craftr.", "translation": "...wantonness, perjury, bribery, and to believe in women's life-herbs (líflyf) or sorcery (gerningar), or in soothsayings. That is all the devil's power.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a sin-list the homilist singles out belief in 'líflyf kvenna' (women's healing or life-charms, probably herbal amulets and potions) together with gerningar and spásögur. All are 'the devil's craft' (djǫfuls kraptr), by which he lures people from Christ. Women's domestic medicine sits on the illicit side of the line.", "claimed_effect": "health or long life (líf-lyf)", "claimed_mechanism": "herbs or charms; for the homilist, demonic power", "practitioner": "women healers (implied)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-77", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Old Norwegian Homily Book (AM 619 4to), Marian miracle", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Norwegian Christian preaching", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "ms c. 1200–1225", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:alcuin:de-natiuitate-domini-ſermo:am-619-4to", "ref": "61r.18–61r.45", "conventional_ref": "Gamal norsk homiliebok, Maríu jartegn", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Hon ok ſagðe þa illu ſot á hverium mꜵnaðe vitia ſin. ok enga læcning lyf eða galldra cvað hon ſér at hialpum verða.", "translation": "She said that the evil sickness visited her every month, and that no healing, herb-medicine (lyf) or galdrar had been any help to her.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A woman with monthly seizures has tried læcning (medicine), lyf (drugs or herbs) and galdrar, all useless, before she calls on the Virgin Mary. The text treats medicine and charms as a continuum of remedies that people tried in turn, and makes the saint the effective last resort.", "claimed_effect": "cure of recurrent illness (failed)", "claimed_mechanism": "medicine, drugs, galdrar; then Marian intercession", "practitioner": "unnamed healers or charmers", "practitioner_gender": "unknown", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-78", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Old Icelandic translation of Gregory the Great's Dialogues, Book II (Life of Benedict) (AM 677 4to)", "author": "Gregory the Great (translated anonymously)", "culture": "Icelandic Christian translation literature", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "translation 12th c.; ms c. 1200–1225", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:untitled-section-1:am-677-4to", "ref": "40v.20–40v.24", "conventional_ref": "Greg. Dial. II.10", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "þá sýndisk munkum eldr brenna af skurðgoðinu. ... sagði þeim, at sjónhverfingareldr vǽri í augum þeirra, þvíat hann sá eigi eldinn. Þá gekk hann til bǿnar ok bað munka gøra krossmark fyr augum sér.", "translation": "Then it seemed to the monks that fire was burning from the idol ... he told them it was an illusion-fire (sjónhverfingareldr) in their eyes, for he did not see the fire. Then he went to prayer and told the monks to make the sign of the cross before their eyes.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The monks see their kitchen ablaze from a bronze idol they unearthed. Benedict sees no fire and explains it as a sjónhverfingareldr. The translator uses the native word for illusion-magic, the same term as Útgarða-Loki's tricks, for demonic deception, which the sign of the cross dispels. The same manuscript (25v.10–25v.18) has a devil showing 'sjónhverfingar' of animal noises.", "claimed_effect": "illusory fire", "claimed_mechanism": "sjónhverfing; dispelled by the sign of the cross", "practitioner": "the devil (implied)", "practitioner_gender": "n/a", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok-manual", "library_check_meaning": "the script could not match the transcription, and an AI agent confirmed the passage by reading it", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-79", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Icelandic medical fragment (AM 655 XXX 4to)", "author": "Anonymous (compiler drawing on Latin herbals)", "culture": "Icelandic learned medicine", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "ms c. 1300 (approximate)", "date_sort": 1300, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:am-655-xxx-4to:am-655-xxx-4to", "ref": "1v.8–1v.10", "conventional_ref": "AM 655 XXX 4to, fol. 1v", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Við blóðrás― Tak gras þat er vex í hveitiakri með sínum blǫðum ok rauðu frǽ. ok stappa í víni eða ǫlðri ok syng meðan pater noster. ok gef honum drekka.", "translation": "For bleeding: take the herb that grows in the wheat-field with its leaves and red seed, and pound it in wine or ale, and sing the Pater noster meanwhile, and give it to him to drink.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A recipe that builds a Christian prayer into the preparation, used either as a timing device or as a blessing. It is the only overtly ritual element in an otherwise practical herbal (sleeplessness, wounds, snake-bite, eye complaints, bladder stone, cough). Herbal medicine and prayer co-exist without tension, unlike the homily's condemnation of 'líflyf kvenna' (norse-76).", "claimed_effect": "stopping haemorrhage", "claimed_mechanism": "herb (red-seeded field weed) in wine; Pater noster sung during preparation", "practitioner": "lay or clerical healer", "practitioner_gender": "unknown", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-80", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Icelandic medical fragment (AM 655 XXX 4to)", "author": "Anonymous (citing Dioscorides and Galen)", "culture": "Icelandic learned medicine (Latin tradition)", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "ms c. 1300 (approximate)", "date_sort": 1300, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:am-655-xxx-4to:am-655-xxx-4to", "ref": "3r.12–3v.6", "conventional_ref": "AM 655 XXX 4to, fol. 3r–v (cf. Dioscorides, De materia medica III.140)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Dioskurides segir af grasi því er peonia heitir: Ek sá svein einn átta vetra gamlan, er hafði þat gras hengt á hals sér. En þá barsk svá at of daginn, at þat gras féll af honum. En þegar jafnskjótt féll sveinninn niðr ok hafði brotfall.", "translation": "Dioscorides says of the herb called peony: 'I saw a boy of eight who had that herb hung on his neck. It happened one day that the herb fell off him, and at once the boy fell down and had a fit (brotfall, epilepsy).'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The peony amulet against epilepsy. The text reports a three-fold 'trial': the boy falls ill whenever the herb falls off and recovers when it is re-tied, 'the same witness Galen bears'. Amulet-magic is presented in the form of an observational test with an authority citation. The tradition goes back via Galen (Simpl. med.) to antiquity.", "claimed_effect": "prevention of epileptic seizures", "claimed_mechanism": "peony root hung on the neck (contact amulet)", "practitioner": "n/a (amulet use)", "practitioner_gender": "n/a", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-81", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Icelandic medical fragment (AM 655 XXX 4to)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Icelandic learned medicine", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "ms c. 1300 (approximate)", "date_sort": 1300, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:am-655-xxx-4to:am-655-xxx-4to", "ref": "2v.13–2v.16", "conventional_ref": "AM 655 XXX 4to, fol. 2v (terra sigillata)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Jǫrð sú er á innsigli er lǫgð ok manns líkneski er á― Hon er góð við ormsbit. ok annarra flugorma. Ok ef manni er gefinn ólyfjansdrykkr, þá drekki hann af þessi jǫrðunni . Þat hrindr eitri út", "translation": "That earth on which a seal is set with a man's image: it is good against snake-bite and the bites of other flying serpents; and if a man is given a poison-drink, let him drink of this earth; it drives the poison out.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Terra sigillata (stamped medicinal clay from Lemnos) as an antidote: the same 'ólyfjan' (poison) as in Egill's horn (norse-36). The fragment also notes that quicksilver drunk is fatal and its fumes kill insects (3v.8a–3v.11a), that white hellebore in milk and honey kills mice, and that wormwood in ink keeps mice from gnawing manuscripts. These are pharmacologically sound observations next to amulet lore.", "claimed_effect": "antidote to poison and venom", "claimed_mechanism": "ingesting sealed medicinal earth", "practitioner": "n/a", "practitioner_gender": "n/a", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-82", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Konungs skuggsjá (Speculum regale)", "author": "Anonymous (Norwegian royal-court author)", "culture": "Norwegian learned didactic literature", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "c. 1250–1260; ms AM 243 bα fol c. 1275", "date_sort": 1255, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:konungs-skuggsjá:am-243-bα-fol", "ref": "8r.5d", "conventional_ref": "Konungs skuggsjá ch. 11 (wonders of Ireland)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "þa toco þeir þat til raðs at yla at hanum sꝩa sæm ꝩargar En þa er hann sa at hann munnde sino œrœnnde litlo fram coma ꝩið þætta folk þa ꝩarð hann mioc reiðr oc bað þæss guð at hann skyllde hæfna þeim", "translation": "...they decided to howl at him like wolves. And when he saw that his mission would make little headway with this people, he grew very angry and prayed God to avenge it on them...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "An Irish clan howls at St Patrick like wolves. His curse makes them turn into wolves, some every seventh winter, others for seven winters together (8v.4–8v.7); they keep 'human wit' in wolf-shape. A saint's curse produces exactly what heathen hamr-magic would. Its legitimacy comes from the agent (God via Patrick), and the text presents it as a marvel, not as sorcery.", "claimed_effect": "periodic transformation of a lineage into wolves", "claimed_mechanism": "a saint's prayer-curse; divine vengeance", "practitioner": "St Patrick (through prayer)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok-manual", "library_check_meaning": "the script could not match the transcription, and an AI agent confirmed the passage by reading it", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-83", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Konungs skuggsjá", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Norwegian learned didactic literature", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "c. 1250–1260; ms c. 1275", "date_sort": 1255, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:konungs-skuggsjá:am-243-bα-fol", "ref": "8v.9–8v.4a", "conventional_ref": "Konungs skuggsjá ch. 11 (geilt)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "En þæsse er soc til æf mænn ꝩærða at giellte at þar sæm lið kœmr saman oc skipat mæð tꝩænnum fylkingum oc œpa hvarertꝩæggia hærop akaflega þa kann þat at hænnda blauða mænn oc œsku fulla", "translation": "And this is the cause when men become geilt (wild-mad): when armies come together, drawn up in two battle-lines, and both raise the war-cry fiercely, it can befall timid and young men...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Irish 'gelt' (geilt): men who lose their wits from terror in battle, run to the woods and live like beasts. The author gives an explicitly causal, psychological explanation (fear, inexperience, the war-cry). He then adds the marvel that after twenty years feathers grow on them and they can fly. Natural and marvellous explanation sit in one sentence.", "claimed_effect": "madness; later feathers and flight", "claimed_mechanism": "terror (ógn ok hræzla) in battle", "practitioner": "n/a", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-84", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Strengleikar: Bisclaretz ljóð (Old Norse translation of Marie de France's Bisclavret)", "author": "Anonymous translator (for King Hákon IV)", "culture": "Norwegian court translation of French lais", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "c. 1250–1270; ms DG 4–7 c. 1270", "date_sort": 1260, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:strengleikar:dg-47", "ref": "27v.17b–27v.22c", "conventional_ref": "Strengleikar 5 (Bisclaret), opening", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "Bisclaret het hann i bræzsko male. en norðmandingar kallaðo hann vargulf. I fyrn skonne matte hœyra þat sem optsamlega kunni gerazc. at marger menn hamskiptauzt oc vurðu vargar oc biuggu i morkum oc i skogum.", "translation": "He was called Bisclaret in the Breton tongue, and the Normans called him vargulf (werewolf). In olden times one could hear of what often happened, that many men changed shape and became wolves and lived in forests and woods.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The translator renders French werewolf vocabulary with native terms: vargulfr, hamskiptask (change hamr), 'í vargs ham'. He places shape-changing in 'fyrnska', the olden days. A French literary werewolf is naturalised into the Norse hamr concept.", "claimed_effect": "periodic transformation into a wolf", "claimed_mechanism": "hamskipti (change of shape), dependent on his clothes", "practitioner": "Bisclaret (knight)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-85", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Strengleikar: Desire (Old Norse translation of Désiré)", "author": "Anonymous translator", "culture": "Norwegian court translation", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "c. 1250–1270; ms c. 1270", "date_sort": 1260, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:strengleikar:dg-47", "ref": "31r.7–31r.23", "conventional_ref": "Strengleikar 7 (Desire)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Sva ihugar þu at ec vilia gera þer galldra með udað. En ei em ec þesskonar ilsku vetr. þa er þu gengr til kirkiv at biðia fyrir þer. þa skall tu mic sia stannda i hia þer. oc taca vigt brauð með þér.", "translation": "'So you imagine that I want to work galdrar on you with evil intent. But I am no such evil creature: when you go to church to pray, you shall see me standing beside you and taking consecrated bread with you.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A fairy mistress rebuts the suspicion that she is a sorceress or demon. Her proof is ritual: she will attend church and receive the eucharist. Galdr appears as the default suspicion about the otherworldly, and participation in sacrament as the test of legitimacy.", "claimed_effect": "n/a (denial of galdr)", "claimed_mechanism": "eucharist as proof of non-demonic nature", "practitioner": "a fairy lady (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-86", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Þiðreks saga af Bern (Holm perg 4 fol)", "author": "Anonymous (Norwegian, from 'German poems')", "culture": "Norwegian translated or compiled heroic saga", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "c. 1250; ms c. 1275–1300", "date_sort": 1250, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:holm-perg-4-fol:holm-perg-4-fol", "ref": "112v.4b–112v.11a", "conventional_ref": "Þiðreks saga ch. 352 approx. (Ostacia)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "þat kollom ꝩer at hon færi at sæiða sua sem gort ꝩar i forneskio at fiolkungar konor þær er ver kollom ꝩolor skylldo sæiða honom sæið.", "translation": "That is what we call it, that she went to do seiðr, as was done in olden times, when sorcerous women, those whom we call völur, would work seiðr.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Queen Ostacia, taught by her sorceress stepmother (112r.19–2b), 'stirs her gauðgandr' and summons lions, bears and flying dragons that obey her. She herself becomes 'like a flying dragon', and 'German poems' say her host was like devils. The 13th-c. author glosses the episode with native antiquarian vocabulary: 'what we call seiða, as was done in forneskja (antiquity)... women we call völur'. Seiðr was a remembered, explained category by c. 1250.", "claimed_effect": "summoning and taming beasts; dragon-form", "claimed_mechanism": "seiðr; gandr (staff or spirit); inherited fjölkynngi", "practitioner": "Queen Ostacia", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-87", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Þiðreks saga af Bern (Holm perg 4 fol)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Norwegian heroic saga", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "c. 1250; ms c. 1275–1300", "date_sort": 1250, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:holm-perg-4-fol:holm-perg-4-fol", "ref": "53r.6–53r.8", "conventional_ref": "Þiðreks saga ch. 163 approx. (Reginn)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "honum uar þat oc golldit. at han feck sua miklar gerningar oc kynzl at hann uarð at ormí. oc nu gerðiz sua at han var allra orma mestr oc verstr.", "translation": "And he was paid back for it, in that he took on such great sorceries and wizardries (gerningar ok kynzl) that he turned into a serpent, and it came about that he was the greatest and worst of all serpents.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In this version Reginn, not Fáfnir, becomes the dragon through his own 'gerningar ok kynzl'. The transformation is the consequence of practising sorcery. 'kynzl' (wizardry or tricks) is a rarer synonym.", "claimed_effect": "self-transformation into a dragon", "claimed_mechanism": "gerningar ok kynzl", "practitioner": "Reginn", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-88", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Barlaams ok Josaphats saga (Holm perg 6 fol)", "author": "Anonymous (Norwegian translation of the Latin Barlaam legend)", "culture": "Norwegian Christian translation literature", "language": "Old Norwegian", "date": "c. 1250; ms c. 1275", "date_sort": 1250, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:barlaams-ok-josaphats-saga:holm-perg-6-fol", "ref": "74v.13a–74v.20a", "conventional_ref": "Barlaams saga ch. 160 approx. (Theodas)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "divination", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "En þar i einum myrkuum helli. bio einn gamall maðr. galldra fullr oc gernninnga. oc hinn fremsti til þionastu guðanna. hann het. teodas at nafne.", "translation": "And there in a dark cave lived an old man, full of galdrar and gerningar, and foremost in the service of the gods; his name was Theodas.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The pagan magus Theodas is rendered with native magic vocabulary ('fullr galdra ok gerninga'). The king trusts in 'his prophecies and fjölkynngi'. On conversion he renounces 'my old misdeeds, galdrar and gerningar and accursed unbelief' (85r.24a–26a). Translated literature carries the native galdr/gerning terminology into a Christian narrative of the magician's conversion.", "claimed_effect": "prophecy; seduction by demons", "claimed_mechanism": "galdrar, gerningar, demonic service", "practitioner": "Theodas", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-89", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Old Swedish Barlaam och Josaphat (Holm A 49)", "author": "Anonymous (Old Swedish translation)", "culture": "Swedish Christian translation literature", "language": "Old Swedish", "date": "translation 14th–15th c.; ms 15th c. (approximate)", "date_sort": 1420, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:ca-xxv:holm-a-49", "ref": "158r.22–158r.27", "conventional_ref": "Fornsvenska Barlaam ch. 25", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "hæntidh theodas hafdhe hørt thæ̅na helſamlika kæ̅nedom aff konu̅gſins ſon wtgik ha̅ ſnarlika j ydhknena til ſin cella oc tok alla ſina bøker m; huilko̅ ha̅ plæghadhe øwa ſin truldo̅ oc ſina galdra kaſtadhe tho̅ j eldin oc brænde tho̅ alla", "translation": "When Theodas had heard this wholesome teaching from the king's son, he went quickly into the wilderness to his cell and took all his books, with which he used to practise his sorcery (truldom) and his galdrar, cast them into the fire and burned them all.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Swedish Theodas burns his BOOKS of truldom and galdrar. This is the Acts 19:19 motif of converted magicians burning their books. Magic is book-learning here, in contrast with the oral galdr and carved runes of the sagas, and the Swedish uses 'truldom' where Norwegian has fjölkynngi.", "claimed_effect": "n/a (renunciation)", "claimed_mechanism": "book-based sorcery (truldom, galdrar)", "practitioner": "Theodas", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-90", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Old Swedish legend collection (Holm A 10; section filed 'De sancta Margarita regina'), miracle of St Jerome", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Swedish late-medieval devotional literature", "language": "Old Swedish", "date": "late medieval (15th c., approximate)", "date_sort": 1450, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:de-ſancta-margarita-regina-et:holm-a-10", "ref": "87v.3–87v.13", "conventional_ref": "Holm A 10, fol. 87v", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "love", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "fan han en trolkaꝛl en koklara en diæwuls man ſom roſadhe ſik mykit ku̅na af ſwartekonſt Honu̅ lofuadhe han ſtoꝛa pæninga ſu̅mo at han matte ſin wilia fræmia Tha togh han til at øwa ſina galdra", "translation": "He found a trolkarl, a koklare, a devil's man who boasted that he knew much black art (swartekonst); he promised him a large sum of money so that he might accomplish his will. Then he began to practise his galdrar...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A man consumed by lust for a nun hires a sorcerer, called trolkarl, koklare and 'diæwuls man' (devil's man), who is skilled in swartekonst. The sorcerer summons a devil to tempt the nun at night. An image of St Jerome painted on her cell door keeps the devil away, and the hired koklare flees. Professional love-magic for hire is defeated by a saint's picture.", "claimed_effect": "inflaming a nun with lust (attempted)", "claimed_mechanism": "galdrar summoning a devil; black art", "practitioner": "a hired trolkarl/koklare", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "magic for money; defeated by a protective saint's image", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-91", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Old Swedish treatise on the Seven Sacraments (Holm D 4: 'Her byrias siw sacramenta')", "author": "Anonymous (drawing on Gregory, Dialogues I.10)", "culture": "Swedish late-medieval pastoral literature", "language": "Old Swedish", "date": "late 14th–early 15th c. (approximate)", "date_sort": 1400, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:her-byrias-ſiw-ſacramenta:holm-d-4", "ref": "293r.18–293r.31", "conventional_ref": "cf. Greg. Dial. I.10 (Fortunatus of Todi)", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "Sidha̅ komo qͥnno̅na frænder oc kalladho koklara at the ſkullo m; kokelſkap diæwlin wtkøra Ok tha koklarene willo diæwlin wtkøra tha pintis ho̅ ſo̅ ho̅ hafdhe thuſanda diæffla", "translation": "Then the woman's kinsmen came and called in koklare (sorcerers) to drive the devil out with kokelskap (sorcery); and when the sorcerers tried to drive the devil out, she was tormented as if she had a thousand devils.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A young wife who did not abstain from marital sex before a feast is possessed in church. A priest's altar-cloth fails, the kinsmen's hired koklare make her worse ('as if she had a thousand devils'), and Bishop Fortunatus' prayer frees her. Lay recourse to folk exorcists is depicted as counter-productive and only episcopal prayer works. The lesson drawn is that married couples should keep holy nights.", "claimed_effect": "exorcism (failed vs. successful)", "claimed_mechanism": "kokelskap (sorcery) vs. a bishop's prayer", "practitioner": "koklare (hired folk exorcists); Bishop Fortunatus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-92", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Flores och Blanzeflor (Eufemiavisor, Holm D 4)", "author": "Anonymous (Old Swedish verse translation for Queen Eufemia)", "culture": "Swedish court romance", "language": "Old Swedish", "date": "1312; ms c. 1400 (approximate)", "date_sort": 1312, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:her-ſigx-aff-flores-oc-blanzafloor:holm-d-4", "ref": "105r.50–105r.57", "conventional_ref": "Flores och Blanzeflor vv. 1900ff approx.", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "ællr͛ huru matte thu ij tornith ga at ængin matte vardha var thr͛ thik vtan thu ku̅ne truldoom oc ſwik ... Flor͛s ſwaradhe iak ſighr͛ thik ... iak kan ey truldoom gøra", "translation": "'Or how could you get into the tower so that no one noticed you, unless you know sorcery (truldom) and deceit?' ... Flores answered: 'I tell you ... I cannot do sorcery.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The emir assumes that Flores could only have entered the guarded tower by truldom. Earlier he was told that no truldom could approach the girl there (98r.28). In fact Flores had himself carried in, hidden in a basket of flowers in a tunic matching the blossoms (101r.41–101r.48). The poem stages an accusation of magic whose real explanation is a simple ruse.", "claimed_effect": "undetected entry into a guarded tower", "claimed_mechanism": "accused: truldom; actual: hiding in a flower basket", "practitioner": "Flores (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-93", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Alexanders saga (AM 519 a 4to)", "author": "Brandr Jónsson (translator of Walter of Châtillon's Alexandreis)", "culture": "Icelandic learned translation", "language": "Old Icelandic", "date": "c. 1260; ms c. 1280", "date_sort": 1262, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:am-519-a-4to:am-519-a-4to", "ref": "1v.7–1v.10", "conventional_ref": "Alexanders saga I.1", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "love", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Sá maðr var með hirð konungsins, er Neptanabus hefir heitit. Inn mesti galdramaðr var hann. Af sínum gǫldrum ok gerningum fekk hann svá gǫrt, at hann náði at sofa með dróttningunni sjalfri.", "translation": "There was at the king's court a man called Nectanebus, the greatest of galdr-men. By his galdrar and gerningar he managed to sleep with the queen herself.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Nectanebus seduces Olympias by sorcery. The saga then insists that Alexander's deeds proved him the king's son and 'not a bastard', against the enemies' slur. The Old Swedish Konung Alexander (Holm D 4, 113v.42–113v.50) has Nectanebus 'with devilry and truldom' send Philip a dream that the god Ammon lay with his wife: magic as political and sexual fraud.", "claimed_effect": "sexual access to the queen; deceiving the king", "claimed_mechanism": "galdrar ok gerningar (OSw: diæwlskap ok truldoom; sent dreams)", "practitioner": "Nectanebus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "norse-94", "corpus": "norse", "work": "Vadstena prayer book (Holm A 80), rubric 'Th; sigx at jngen ær swa stor syndare...'", "author": "Anonymous (Birgittine compiler)", "culture": "Swedish late-medieval devotional practice", "language": "Old Swedish", "date": "c. 1500", "date_sort": 1500, "edition_urn": "urn:menota:anonymous:th-ſigx-at-jngen-ær-ſwa-ſtoꝛ-ſyndare-om-han-daghelica-læs-tæſſa-bøn-at-ha-jw-ſanelica-far-nadhe-j-ændhelikthinne-aff-míſkunena-modhꝛ-maria:holm-a-80", "ref": "1.14", "conventional_ref": "Holm A 80, rubric before 'O maria thu som ær alla dygdha ophoff'", "source_collection": "Menota", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Th; ſigx at jngen ær ſwa ſtoꝛ ſyndare om han daghelica læs tæſſa bøn at ha̅ jw ſa̅nelica far nadhe j ændhelikthinne aff míſku̅nena modh͛ꝛ maria ... O maria thu ſo̅ ær alla dygdha op-hoff", "translation": "It is said that no one is so great a sinner that, if he reads this prayer daily, he will not truly receive grace at his end from the Mother of Mercy, Mary ... 'O Mary, you who are the source of all virtues...'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The rubric (stored in the library as the section title) promises automatic efficacy for daily recitation. Neighbouring rubrics in the same book promise that Mary will come at the hour of death to free the reader's soul from the devil's power. Others promise indulgences of '80,300 years' or 'as many years as there are sand-grains on the sea floor'. Formally these are conditional efficacy-formulas like charms, but they are sanctioned by Church and papal indulgence, so the culture classes them as devotion, not magic.", "claimed_effect": "grace at death; protection from the devil; remission of punishment", "claimed_mechanism": "daily recitation of a fixed text; Marian intercession; papal indulgence", "practitioner": "lay and monastic readers", "practitioner_gender": "female and male", "social_legal_context": "Birgittine (Vadstena) devotional book; ecclesiastically sanctioned", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok-manual", "library_check_meaning": "the script could not match the transcription, and an AI agent confirmed the passage by reading it", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-1", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Macbeth", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Scottish setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1606", "date_sort": 1606, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:mac:opensource", "ref": "1.3.8–1.3.25", "conventional_ref": "Mac. 1.3.8–25", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "But in a sieve I'll thither sail … I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do. … I'll give thee a wind. … I will drain him dry as hay … Though his bark cannot be lost, / Yet it shall be tempest-tost.", "translation": "I'll sail there in a sieve, shaped like a tailless rat, and do my work. (Second Witch:) I'll give you a wind. (First Witch:) I'll wither him dry. His ship can't be sunk, but it will be storm-tossed.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A sailor's wife refused the witch some chestnuts. In revenge the witch will sail in a sieve, take the shape of an animal and, with winds her sisters give her, torment the husband's ship. She will deprive him of sleep 'nine times nine' weeks until he 'dwindle, peak and pine'. The motive is a petty neighbourly slight, and the harm works at a distance through weather and wasting. That is exactly the shape of the English and Scottish witchcraft accusations of the period. The play's limit is precise: 'his bark cannot be lost', so the witches torment but cannot kill outright. Modern scholars commonly link the sieve and the storm to the North Berwick trials (1590-91), where witches were accused of raising storms against James VI's ship. That pamphlet is not in the library.", "claimed_effect": "Storm at sea; sleeplessness and wasting of a distant man", "claimed_mechanism": "Witches sell or give winds; transformation into an animal; nine-fold counting; a relic (a pilot's thumb)", "practitioner": "the First Witch, helped by her sisters", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Small-scale village malice (a refused gift), the pattern of contemporary English witchcraft prosecutions; staged for a king who had written on witches.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-2", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Macbeth", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Scottish setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1606", "date_sort": 1606, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:mac:opensource", "ref": "1.3.49–1.3.68", "conventional_ref": "Mac. 1.3.48–69", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter! … If you can look into the seeds of time, / And say which grain will grow and which will not … Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none", "translation": "Hail Macbeth, thane of Glamis… you who will be king hereafter! (Banquo:) If you can see which seeds of time will grow… (Third Witch:) You will father kings, though you are not one.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The greeting-prophecies that drive the plot. Macbeth is already Glamis, is about to be made Cawdor, and is promised the crown. Banquo will beget kings. Banquo's image of the 'seeds of time' presents the sisters as seers of what is already germinating, not as causes of it. The play never settles whether they cause anything or only foretell. The scene follows Holinshed closely (see renaissance-english-47), down to the order of the three titles.", "claimed_effect": "True foreknowledge of titles and dynasty", "claimed_mechanism": "Unexplained; seeing 'the seeds of time'", "practitioner": "the three 'weird sisters'", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Banquo was the reputed ancestor of the Stuarts. A prophecy that his line will reign flatters James I.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-3", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Macbeth", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Scottish setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1606", "date_sort": 1606, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:mac:opensource", "ref": "1.3.80–1.3.86", "conventional_ref": "Mac. 1.3.79–85", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, / And these are of them. … Were such things here as we do speak about? / Or have we eaten on the insane root / That takes the reason prisoner?", "translation": "The earth throws up bubbles as water does, and these were some. Were they really here? Or have we eaten some root that drives men mad and imprisons the reason?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The witches have vanished, and the first response is to doubt the senses. Banquo offers two explanations. Either the creatures are natural exhalations of the earth, or the two men have eaten a hallucinogenic plant. MacCallum traces the 'insane root' to North's Plutarch, where Antony's starving soldiers ate an unknown herb that destroyed their memory (see renaissance-english-69). The play raises a pharmacological explanation inside a supernatural scene, then lets events confirm the prophecy.", "claimed_effect": "Apparitions possibly caused by a drug, or a natural phenomenon", "claimed_mechanism": "An intoxicating root; earth-'bubbles'", "practitioner": "none (Banquo's hypothesis about the witches)", "practitioner_gender": "none", "social_legal_context": "Demonological writers of the period debated whether witches' visions were real, demonic illusion, or melancholy and drugs.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-4", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Macbeth", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Scottish setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1606", "date_sort": 1606, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:mac:opensource", "ref": "3.5.6–3.5.29", "conventional_ref": "Mac. 3.5.6–29", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "And I, the mistress of your charms, / The close contriver of all harms … And that distill'd by magic sleights / Shall raise such artificial sprites / As by the strength of their illusion / Shall draw him on to his confusion", "translation": "I, who rule your charms and secretly plot every harm… That drop, distilled by magical skill, will raise artificial spirits whose illusion will draw him to his ruin.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hecate rebukes the witches for dealing with Macbeth without her. She will catch a 'vaporous drop' hanging from the moon and distil it into spirits whose deceptive power will make Macbeth over-confident: 'security / Is mortals' chiefest enemy'. The speech says outright that the coming apparitions are 'artificial' illusions meant to deceive. That matches the demonological view that the devil's prophecies are true in the letter and false in effect. Most editors regard 3.5 (and the Hecate passages of 4.1) as a later addition, probably by Thomas Middleton, because the songs cited ('Come away') belong to his play The Witch. The authorship is disputed.", "claimed_effect": "Deceptive apparitions that lead a man to destruction through over-confidence", "claimed_mechanism": "A lunar drop distilled 'by magic sleights' into artificial spirits", "practitioner": "Hecate, 'mistress' of the witches", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Hecate is the classical goddess of witches (as in Ovid's Medea), grafted onto Scottish witches; probably an interpolation for performance.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-5", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Macbeth", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Scottish setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1606", "date_sort": 1606, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:mac:opensource", "ref": "4.1.4–4.1.38", "conventional_ref": "Mac. 4.1.4–38", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Round about the cauldron go; / In the poison'd entrails throw. … Eye of newt and toe of frog, / Wool of bat and tongue of dog … Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark … Then the charm is firm and good.", "translation": "Circle the cauldron and throw in the poisoned guts… eye of newt, toe of frog, bat's fur, dog's tongue… hemlock root dug up in the dark… Then the charm is strong and sound.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The cauldron scene. The witches circle the pot and add a list of ingredients: venomous animals (toad, adder, 'blind-worm'), exotic parts (dragon scale, shark's maw, tiger's entrails), human remains ('witches' mummy', the finger of a 'birth-strangled babe', parts of a 'blaspheming Jew', a Turk and a Tartar), and poisonous plants (hemlock, yew 'silver'd in the moon's eclipse'). They chant a refrain and finish with baboon's blood to 'cool' it. Two kinds of power combine. Some ingredients are real poisons (hemlock, yew, toad). Others draw force from sacrilege, unbaptized death and the outsider, and timing (dug 'i' the dark', cut at an eclipse) adds more. The list owes more to classical witch-brews, such as Ovid's Medea and Seneca, than to English trial records, where cauldrons are rare.", "claimed_effect": "A 'charm of powerful trouble' that prepares the apparitions", "claimed_mechanism": "Boiling poisonous, sacrilegious and outsider matter at a chosen time, with circling and chanted refrain", "practitioner": "the three witches", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "The ingredient list carries contemporary religious and ethnic prejudice (Jew, Turk, Tartar) and the horror of unbaptized infants.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-6", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Macbeth", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Scottish setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1606", "date_sort": 1606, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:mac:opensource", "ref": "4.1.68–4.1.103", "conventional_ref": "Mac. 4.1.62–94", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "divination", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Call 'em; let me see 'em. … none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth. … Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until / Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him.", "translation": "(Macbeth:) Summon them; let me see them. (Second Apparition:) No one born of a woman will harm Macbeth. (Third Apparition:) Macbeth will not be beaten until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Macbeth asks the witches to call their 'masters'. They pour in sow's blood and gibbet grease, and three apparitions rise: an armed head, a bloody child, a crowned child holding a tree. Their oracles are true but deliberately ambiguous. Macduff was 'untimely ripp'd' (a Caesarean birth), and soldiers carry Birnam boughs as camouflage. Each apparition 'descends' after speaking, a direction that implies the Globe's stage trap. Within the play the spirits are demonic. On stage they are stage machinery.", "claimed_effect": "Oracular answers about the future, delivered by summoned spirits", "claimed_mechanism": "Blood and gibbet grease poured on the fire; command ('Come, high or low')", "practitioner": "the witches and their 'masters' (apparitions)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Consulting spirits about a king's future was treason as well as witchcraft (compare the Cobham case in renaissance-english-27, -28 and -51).", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-7", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Macbeth", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Scottish setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1606", "date_sort": 1606, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:mac:opensource", "ref": "5.8.12–5.8.26", "conventional_ref": "Mac. 5.8.8–22", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "I bear a charmed life, which must not yield / To one of woman born. … Despair thy charm … And be these juggling fiends no more believed, / That palter with us in a double sense", "translation": "My life is protected by a charm; no one born of woman can kill me. (Macduff:) Give up hope in your charm… (Macbeth:) Let no one trust these cheating devils any more, who trick us with double meanings.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Macbeth believes the prophecy has made him invulnerable. Macduff's Caesarean birth undoes the charm by a technicality. Macbeth then calls the spirits 'juggling fiends', jugglers being conjuring tricksters. They 'keep the word of promise to our ear, / And break it to our hope'. This is the play's verdict on prophecy. It is not false, but it equivocates, and the danger lies in how it is believed. 'Equivocator' was a loaded word in 1606, the year of the Gunpowder Plot trials, where the Jesuit Henry Garnet's doctrine of equivocation was notorious (the Porter jokes about it at 2.3).", "claimed_effect": "Invulnerability, which turns out to depend on wording", "claimed_mechanism": "Prophetic 'charm' resting on a literal condition", "practitioner": "Macbeth (as beneficiary); 'juggling fiends'", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Post-Gunpowder Plot hostility to 'equivocation'; 'juggler' as the stock word for a magical fraud.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-8", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Macbeth", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), English court in a Scottish play", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1606", "date_sort": 1606, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:mac:opensource", "ref": "4.3.163–4.3.174", "conventional_ref": "Mac. 4.3.146–159", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "healing", "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "'Tis call'd the evil: / A most miraculous work in this good king … The mere despair of surgery, he cures, / Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, / Put on with holy prayers", "translation": "The disease is called 'the evil'. This good king works a miracle: people swollen with ulcers whom surgeons have given up, he cures by hanging a gold coin round their necks with holy prayers.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the play's counterweight to the witches. A sacred king heals scrofula ('the king's evil') with prayer and a gold 'stamp' (the touch-piece, or 'angel' coin) hung around the neck, and he passes 'the healing benediction' to his successors. He also has 'a heavenly gift of prophecy'. Magic and miracle use the same means here: an amulet, words, prophecy. What separates them is the source and the sanctity of the person. James I continued the ceremony of touching for the evil, though he is reported to have had doubts about it. That report comes from modern historians and is not in the library.", "claimed_effect": "Cure of scrofula; prophecy", "claimed_mechanism": "Royal sanctity, prayer, a gold coin hung on the patient", "practitioner": "Edward the Confessor, King of England", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "The royal touch was a real English and French ceremony; this passage compliments James I's dynasty as its heirs.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-9", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Tempest", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Mediterranean island", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1610–11", "date_sort": 1611, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:tmp:opensource", "ref": "1.2.227–1.2.237", "conventional_ref": "Tmp. 1.2.196–206", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak, / Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, / I flamed amazement: sometimes I'ld divide, / And burn in many places; on the topmast, / The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly", "translation": "I boarded the king's ship and, at bow, waist, deck and every cabin, appeared as terrifying fire; sometimes I split up and burned in many places at once, separately on the topmast, yards and bowsprit.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ariel reports how he made the opening storm. He appeared as fire running over the ship and splitting into several flames on masts and yards, with lightning and 'sulphurous roaring'. This is a recognisable description of St Elmo's fire, the corona discharge seen on ships' rigging in electrical storms. Voyage narratives of the time record it, and most scholars say the Bermuda wreck pamphlets of 1609-10 (Strachey, Jourdain) were among Shakespeare's sources. Those pamphlets are not in the library. The spirit's 'magic' is a real weather phenomenon presented as a performance.", "claimed_effect": "A storm and ship-fire that terrifies but harms no one", "claimed_mechanism": "A spirit acting under the magician's command", "practitioner": "Ariel, spirit serving Prospero", "practitioner_gender": "none", "social_legal_context": "Raising storms was a standard charge against witches; here a 'good' magician does it, with no lives lost.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-10", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Tempest", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean); North African witch", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1610–11", "date_sort": 1611, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:tmp:opensource", "ref": "1.2.303–1.2.332", "conventional_ref": "Tmp. 1.2.258–284", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "This damn'd witch Sycorax, / For mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible / To enter human hearing, from Argier, / Thou know'st, was banish'd … she did confine thee, / By help of her more potent ministers … Into a cloven pine", "translation": "This damned witch Sycorax was banished from Algiers for many crimes and sorceries too terrible to hear… With the help of more powerful spirits she shut you up in a split pine.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Prospero's account of his predecessor. Sycorax is the antitype of his own art. She is old, foul, 'blue-eyed', exiled from Algiers for terrible sorceries, and spared execution only because she was pregnant ('for one thing she did / They would not take her life', usually read as pregnancy, which deferred execution). She commanded spirits by 'more potent ministers' and imprisoned the delicate Ariel in a pine for refusing her 'earthly and abhorr'd commands'. Her magic is dark, earthly and coercive. His claims to be learned and airy. Yet Prospero threatens Ariel with the same punishment, an oak this time. The two magicians are less different than he says.", "claimed_effect": "Imprisoning a spirit in a tree; commanding lesser spirits", "claimed_mechanism": "Spirits bound through 'more potent ministers'; the witch's god Setebos (1.2.437)", "practitioner": "Sycorax, witch from Argier (Algiers)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Banishment rather than death for a pregnant convict reflects real European legal practice. The North African witch reflects English ideas of the Barbary coast.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-11", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Tempest", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Mediterranean island", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1610–11", "date_sort": 1611, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:tmp:opensource", "ref": "1.2.380–1.2.437", "conventional_ref": "Tmp. 1.2.321–374", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd / With raven's feather from unwholesome fen / Drop on you both! … to-night thou shalt have cramps … his art is of such power, / It would control my dam's god, Setebos", "translation": "May dew as poisonous as any my mother swept with a raven's feather from a foul marsh fall on you both! (Prospero:) Tonight you'll get cramps… (Caliban aside:) His magic is strong enough to master even my mother's god Setebos.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is an exchange of curses. Caliban wishes on Prospero the poisonous dew his witch-mother gathered with a raven's feather. Prospero answers with real punishments: cramps, side-stitches and goblins ('urchins') that will pinch him. Caliban obeys because the art is stronger than Setebos, his mother's god (the name comes from Patagonian accounts of Magellan's voyage, and scholars note that it is not taken from Hakluyt's text in this library). Prospero's 'white' magic shows itself mostly as bodily torment of a servant. The power is coercion, whatever its learned origin.", "claimed_effect": "Cramps, aches, pinching; mastery over a rival god", "claimed_mechanism": "Spirits sent by Prospero; the witch's poisonous dew", "practitioner": "Caliban (cursing); Prospero (punishing)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Coerced labour on a colonised island; magic as instrument of mastery.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-12", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Tempest", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Mediterranean island", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1610–11", "date_sort": 1611, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:tmp:opensource", "ref": "3.2.50–3.2.56", "conventional_ref": "Tmp. 3.2.86–93", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Remember / First to possess his books; for without them / He's but a sot, as I am, nor hath not / One spirit to command: they all do hate him / As rootedly as I. Burn but his books.", "translation": "Remember to seize his books first. Without them he's as much a fool as I am and can't command a single spirit; they all hate him as deeply as I do. Just burn his books.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Caliban plots murder with Stephano and Trinculo and explains where the power lies. It is in the books, and Prospero without them is an ordinary man. This is a learned, textual magic. Its force comes from written knowledge, the 'volumes' that Gonzalo packed for him, which he prizes 'above my dukedom' (1.2.193-195). The spirits obey under compulsion and hate their master. The two marks of the Renaissance learned magus are both here: power stored in books, and spirits compelled by learning. The second is what made such magic suspect to theologians.", "claimed_effect": "Command of spirits", "claimed_mechanism": "Knowledge stored in books, together with the magician's robe and staff", "practitioner": "Prospero (as described by Caliban)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Burning magical books was the standard end of a magician's career, from Acts 19:19 to inquisitorial practice.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-13", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Tempest", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Mediterranean island", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1610–11", "date_sort": 1611, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:tmp:opensource", "ref": "3.3.95–3.3.102", "conventional_ref": "Tmp. 3.3.83–91", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou / Perform'd, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring … My high charms work / And these mine enemies are all knit up / In their distractions", "translation": "You played the harpy splendidly, Ariel; it devoured gracefully… My powerful spells are working, and my enemies are all bound up in their madness.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ariel, as a harpy, has made a banquet vanish and accused the 'three men of sin'. Prospero praises it as a theatrical performance: he speaks of the 'figure', of how it was 'perform'd', of 'good life' (lifelike acting) and of not missing a line of 'what thou hadst to say'. The magic is described in the language of stagecraft. The vanishing banquet was a 'quaint device' in the stage direction of the 1623 Folio (not in this edition), meaning a piece of stage machinery. What the victims experience is guilty 'distraction', a psychological effect.", "claimed_effect": "A vanishing feast; madness of guilt in the onlookers", "claimed_mechanism": "Spirits impersonating figures; spectacle; conscience", "practitioner": "Prospero, with Ariel and lesser spirits", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Court masques of the period used stage machinery for exactly such vanishing banquets and descending deities.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-14", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Tempest", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), drawing on Ovid via Golding", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1610–11", "date_sort": 1611, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:tmp:opensource", "ref": "5.1.38–5.1.55", "conventional_ref": "Tmp. 5.1.33–50", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves … I have bedimm'd / The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds … graves at my command / Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth / By my so potent art.", "translation": "You elves of hills, streams, still lakes and woods… with your help I have darkened the midday sun, summoned the rebellious winds… at my command graves have woken their dead, opened and let them out, by my mighty art.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Prospero's farewell to his art, his longest claim of power: eclipsing the sun, raising winds and sea-war, splitting Jove's oak with lightning, shaking headlands, raising the dead. It is a close reworking of Medea's invocation in Ovid, Met. 7.192-209. The library's Latin (phi0959.phi006.perseus-lat2) has 'auraeque et venti montesque amnesque lacusque / dique omnes nemorum, dique omnes noctis adeste' (7.197-198) and 'manesque exire sepulcris' (7.206). Golding's 1567 English (renaissance-english-15) supplies Shakespeare's 'elves' and 'standing lakes', words Ovid does not use. How close is it? The structure is the same: an invocation of the powers of air, hills, waters and groves, followed by 'by whose aid' and a catalogue of feats. Several feats correspond one for one: winds called, sea stirred, trees uprooted, earth shaken, the dead let out of graves, the sun darkened (Ovid's Aurora paling and Golding's 'darkes the Sun at Noone'). Shakespeare drops Medea's Hecate, the Moon drawn down, the snake charm and the herbs of rejuvenation. He adds fairy-lore (green 'ringlets', midnight mushrooms) and Jove's thunderbolt. The darkest claim, raising the dead, comes word for word from the witch's speech. It sits oddly with 'white' magic. Many critics read it as Shakespeare showing that Prospero's art and Medea's are one, just before he abjures it.", "claimed_effect": "Eclipse, storm, earthquake, lightning, raising the dead", "claimed_mechanism": "Command of elemental and fairy spirits ('weak masters' who supply the power)", "practitioner": "Prospero", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "A learned borrowing from a classical witch's prayer, given to a magus who is about to renounce it.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-15", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Metamorphoses (English translation)", "author": "Ovid, translated by Arthur Golding", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) translation of Roman poetry", "language": "eng", "date": "1567", "date_sort": 1567, "edition_urn": "phi0959.phi006.perseus-eng4", "ref": "7.159.263–7.159.277", "conventional_ref": "Golding, Met. 7 (Medea's invocation = Ovid Met. 7.192–209)", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "necromancy", "theurgy" ], "excerpt_original": "Ye Charmes and Witchcrafts, and thou Earth which both with herbe and weed / Of mightie working furnishest the Wizardes at their neede: / Ye Ayres and windes: ye Elves of Hilles, of Brookes, of Woods alone, / Of standing Lakes", "translation": "You charms and witchcrafts, and you Earth who supply wizards with powerful herbs when they need them; you airs and winds; you elves of hills, brooks and woods, of still lakes…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the English intermediary for Prospero's speech. Golding renders Ovid's 'dique omnes nemorum' (all you gods of the groves) as 'Elves of Hilles, of Brookes, of Woods', which turns Roman deities into English fairies, and he adds 'standing Lakes'. Shakespeare keeps both phrases (renaissance-english-14). Golding also Englishes Ovid's 'cantusque artisque magorum' as 'Charmes and Witchcrafts' and 'magos' as 'Wizardes', so the Roman magi become English witches. The speech continues with streams run backward, seas roughened and calmed, viper's jaws burst, woods moved, 'dead men from their graves' called up, the moon darkened 'though beaten brasse abate thy perill' (the folk practice of clashing bronze to help an eclipsed moon), and the sun darkened at noon. The Latin original is phi0959.phi006.perseus-lat2 7.192-209; the Latin poetry survey treats it.", "claimed_effect": "Reversing rivers, controlling sea and weather, moving forests, raising the dead, darkening sun and moon", "claimed_mechanism": "Invocation of night, Hecate, earth's herbs and the spirits of places", "practitioner": "Medea", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Golding was a Puritan and also translated Calvin. His Ovid naturalised classical witchcraft into English vocabulary for two generations of readers.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-16", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Tempest", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Mediterranean island", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1610–11", "date_sort": 1611, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:tmp:opensource", "ref": "5.1.55–5.1.62", "conventional_ref": "Tmp. 5.1.50–57", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "But this rough magic / I here abjure … I'll break my staff, / Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, / And deeper than did ever plummet sound / I'll drown my book.", "translation": "But I here renounce this crude magic… I'll break my staff, bury it fathoms deep in the earth, and sink my book deeper than any sounding-line has reached.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The abjuration. Having used the art one last time, by music, on his enemies' senses, Prospero formally renounces it: 'abjure' is the legal and ecclesiastical word for renouncing heresy. He breaks the staff and drowns the book. The play calls the magic 'rough', even though it was the hero's. The enemies then enter the circle he has drawn and 'stand charmed' (the stage direction at 5.1.62). Ending the magic is the condition of his return to Milan and to normal society. Many critics read the speech as Shakespeare's own farewell to the stage. That reading is a modern inference.", "claimed_effect": "Renunciation; the end of the magician's power", "claimed_mechanism": "Destroying the instruments, staff and book", "practitioner": "Prospero", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Magicians who repented were expected to burn or surrender their books; abjuration was a formal church procedure.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-17", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), Athenian setting, English fairy-lore", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1595", "date_sort": 1595, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:mnd:opensource", "ref": "2.1.168–2.1.175", "conventional_ref": "MND 2.1.165–172", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "It fell upon a little western flower … And maidens call it love-in-idleness. … The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid / Will make or man or woman madly dote / Upon the next live creature that it sees.", "translation": "Cupid's arrow fell on a little western flower, once white, now purple from love's wound; girls call it love-in-idleness. Its juice laid on sleeping eyelids makes anyone madly love the next living thing they see.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the play's love drug. Love-in-idleness is the wild pansy (Viola tricolor). Its juice, put on the sleeper's eyelids, makes the person fall in love with whatever they see first on waking. Its power comes from an aetiological myth: a stray arrow of Cupid, aimed at a 'fair vestal' (usually taken as a compliment to Queen Elizabeth), stained it. The antidote is another herb, 'Dian's bud' (4.1.55-56), so chastity cancels desire. The drug is applied to the eye, the organ through which love enters in Renaissance love theory, and not swallowed. Egeus's charge in 1.1.28 that Lysander 'bewitch'd' his daughter with rhymes and love-tokens shows the ordinary father's version of the same idea.", "claimed_effect": "Instant infatuation with the first creature seen", "claimed_mechanism": "A flower given its power by Cupid's arrow, applied to the eyelids; cancelled by Diana's herb", "practitioner": "Oberon, king of the fairies (Puck fetches the herb)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Comic fairy magic; the love-philtre theme is defanged and made reversible.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-18", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), English fairy-lore", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1595", "date_sort": 1595, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:mnd:opensource", "ref": "2.2.9–2.2.19", "conventional_ref": "MND 2.2.9–19", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet" ], "excerpt_original": "You spotted snakes with double tongue, / Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; / Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong, / Come not near our fairy queen. … Never harm, / Nor spell nor charm, / Come our lovely lady nigh", "translation": "You spotted forked-tongued snakes and spiny hedgehogs, keep away; newts and slow-worms, do no harm; don't come near our fairy queen… Let no harm, no spell or charm, come near our lovely lady.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The fairies' lullaby is a protective charm against the creatures and spells that threaten a sleeper. The animals it bans are the same toads, newts and blind-worms that go into the Macbeth cauldron (renaissance-english-5). The protective song names harmful things in order to forbid them, a standard form of counter-charm. Oberon's drug reaches Titania all the same, minutes later. Protection fails against a stronger fairy.", "claimed_effect": "Protection of a sleeper against harmful creatures and spells", "claimed_mechanism": "Sung command naming the harms; a sentinel left on guard", "practitioner": "Titania's fairies", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Night prayers and lullabies against 'spells' and creatures were a living folk practice.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-19", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Romeo and Juliet", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), Italian setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1595", "date_sort": 1595, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:rom:opensource", "ref": "2.3.15–2.3.26", "conventional_ref": "Rom. 2.3.15–26", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies / In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities … Within the infant rind of this small flower / Poison hath residence and medicine power", "translation": "Great is the power that lies in herbs, plants and stones and their real properties… Inside the young skin of this little flower live both poison and medicine.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The friar gathers 'baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers' at dawn and states a theory of natural virtue. Everything in nature has some special good. Misused, virtue turns to vice. The same flower cheers the senses when smelt and kills when tasted. This is the theory of natural ('licit') magic and pharmacy: power that is real, physical and morally neutral, stored in herbs, plants and stones. It prepares the audience for his sleeping potion (renaissance-english-20) and makes the friar a respectable herbalist rather than a witch.", "claimed_effect": "Both healing and killing from the same plant", "claimed_mechanism": "Inherent 'qualities' (virtues) of herbs, plants and stones; dose and route of use", "practitioner": "Friar Laurence, Franciscan herbalist", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Clerical and monastic herbalism was the respectable pole of plant knowledge, set against the witch's 'simples'.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-20", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Romeo and Juliet", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), Italian setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1595", "date_sort": 1595, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:rom:opensource", "ref": "4.1.94–4.1.107", "conventional_ref": "Rom. 4.1.93–106", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Take thou this vial, being then in bed, / And this distilled liquor drink thou off … No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest … Thou shalt continue two and forty hours, / And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.", "translation": "Take this vial to bed and drink the distilled liquid… No warmth or breath will show you are alive… You will stay like that for forty-two hours and then wake as if from a pleasant sleep.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The sleeping potion. A 'cold and drowsy humour' will stop the pulse, drain colour from lips and cheeks, and stiffen the body 'like death' for exactly forty-two hours, after which she wakes unharmed. There is no spell and no spirit. It is a 'distilled liquor', and the friar later calls it a 'sleeping potion' (5.3.252). Romeo, meanwhile, buys real poison from a Mantuan apothecary for whom selling 'mortal drugs' carries the death penalty (5.1.69-70). The play sets a drug that imitates death beside one that causes it, and both are pharmacy. The precise duration and the total absence of breath are beyond any known drug. Opiates, nightshades (scopolamine) and mandrake can cause deep stupor and slowed breathing, but not a safe, timed, pulseless sleep.", "claimed_effect": "Death-like coma for forty-two hours, then full recovery", "claimed_mechanism": "A distilled drug inducing a 'cold and drowsy humour' (humoral pharmacology)", "practitioner": "Friar Laurence", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Poison sales were regulated (Mantua's law is a death penalty); a friar may hold drugs, an apothecary may not sell lethal ones.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-21", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Othello", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Venetian setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1603–04", "date_sort": 1604, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:oth:opensource", "ref": "1.2.75–1.2.91", "conventional_ref": "Oth. 1.2.62–79", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "love", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Damn'd as thou art, thou hast enchanted her … That thou hast practised on her with foul charms, / Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals … a practiser / Of arts inhibited and out of warrant.", "translation": "Damned as you are, you have bewitched her… you have worked on her with foul charms and corrupted her youth with drugs or minerals… I arrest you as one who practises forbidden and unlicensed arts.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Brabantio cannot believe his daughter would freely choose a Black man, so he concludes it must be magic. He offers two kinds of explanation in one breath, 'foul charms' and 'drugs or minerals', and he makes a formal arrest for 'arts inhibited and out of warrant', meaning prohibited practices. Before the Senate he repeats the charge: 'spells and medicines bought of mountebanks', for 'nature' could not 'so preposterously … err' 'sans witchcraft' (1.3.68-72). The accusation is driven by racial prejudice and by the father's sense that his daughter is his property. The play makes the magic charge the measure of the accuser's blindness.", "claimed_effect": "Love and elopement produced against nature", "claimed_mechanism": "Charms; drugs or minerals 'that weaken motion'; spells bought from mountebanks", "practitioner": "Othello (accused); the accusation is Brabantio's", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "The 1604 Act against witchcraft made using spirits or charms to 'provoke unlawful love' a crime. The play is close in date to it (a modern scholarly link).", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-22", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Othello", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Venetian setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1603–04", "date_sort": 1604, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:oth:opensource", "ref": "1.3.181–1.3.184", "conventional_ref": "Oth. 1.3.167–169", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "love" ], "excerpt_original": "She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd, / And I loved her that she did pity them. / This only is the witchcraft I have used", "translation": "She loved me for the dangers I had survived, and I loved her for pitying them. That is the only witchcraft I used.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Othello promised a 'round unvarnish'd tale' of 'what drugs, what charms, / What conjuration and what mighty magic' won her (1.3.101-102). He answers the charge by telling the Senate how he won her, by stories of his adventures. The 'witchcraft' was narrative, sympathy and pity. The Duke concludes 'I think this tale would win my daughter too'. The scene is a trial for love magic that ends in acquittal, and it shows the power of words and stories doing exactly what a charm was supposed to do.", "claimed_effect": "Love won without magic", "claimed_mechanism": "Storytelling and pity: psychology, not charms", "practitioner": "Othello (denying)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "A quasi-judicial hearing before the Venetian Senate on a charge of love magic.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-23", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Othello", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Venetian setting; 'Egyptian' charmer", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1603–04", "date_sort": 1604, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:oth:opensource", "ref": "3.4.55–3.4.76", "conventional_ref": "Oth. 3.4.55–75", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "love", "protection-amulet", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "That handkerchief / Did an Egyptian to my mother give; / She was a charmer, and could almost read / The thoughts of people … there's magic in the web of it … And it was dyed in mummy", "translation": "An Egyptian woman gave that handkerchief to my mother. She was a charmer who could almost read minds… There is magic in its weave… and it was dyed with mummy that experts prepared from virgins' hearts.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The handkerchief's history, told to frighten Desdemona. An Egyptian (a gypsy, in period usage) 'charmer' gave it to Othello's mother. While she kept it, it would keep her husband faithful, and if she lost it, his love would turn elsewhere. A sibyl two hundred years old sewed it 'in her prophetic fury', from hallowed silkworms, dyed with 'mummy', the powdered embalmed-flesh drug sold by apothecaries. It is a love-binding amulet whose loss would bring disaster. In 5.2.250-251, though, Othello calls it 'an antique token / My father gave my mother'. The two origins contradict each other. Critics debate whether the magical history is true within the play or a story Othello invents in his jealousy.", "claimed_effect": "Keeping a husband's love; loss brings his hatred", "claimed_mechanism": "Consecrated materials (hallowed silkworms, 'mummy' of maidens' hearts); made by a prophetess in trance", "practitioner": "an Egyptian 'charmer'; a two-hundred-year-old sibyl", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "'Mummy' was a real pharmaceutical commodity in Europe; Egyptian or gypsy women were stereotyped as fortune-tellers and charmers.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-24", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Hamlet", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), Danish setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1600", "date_sort": 1600, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:ham:opensource", "ref": "3.2.183–3.2.187", "conventional_ref": "Ham. 3.2.255–260", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, / With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, / Thy natural magic and dire property, / On wholesome life usurp immediately.", "translation": "You foul mixture of weeds gathered at midnight, three times blighted and three times infected by Hecate's curse: let your natural magic and deadly property seize on healthy life at once.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the play within the play the murderer pours poison into a sleeper's ear. The poison's power is double. It has a 'natural magic and dire property', the inherent virtue of the plants, and it has been cursed three times by Hecate, with herbs collected at midnight. The phrase 'natural magic' was a technical term (Giambattista della Porta's Magia naturalis, 1558): the hidden but physical powers of things. Poison, herb lore and curse are not separated. The ear as the route of poisoning was believed possible and repeats the Ghost's account of the real murder (1.5).", "claimed_effect": "Instant death", "claimed_mechanism": "Inherent properties of midnight-gathered weeds plus a triple curse of Hecate", "practitioner": "Lucianus (player poisoner in 'The Mousetrap')", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Poisoning as a court crime; poisoning and witchcraft shared one legal and verbal field (Latin veneficium).", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-25", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Hamlet", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), Danish setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1600", "date_sort": 1600, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:ham:opensource", "ref": "1.1.173–1.1.178", "conventional_ref": "Ham. 1.1.158–164", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad; / The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, / No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm", "translation": "They say that whenever Christmas approaches, the cock crows all night; then no spirit dares walk, the nights are healthy, no planet strikes, no fairy kidnaps, and no witch can cast a spell.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After the Ghost fades at cockcrow, Marcellus reports a belief: at Christmas the cock crows all night and the whole range of night dangers is suspended. Planets 'strike' (malign astral influence), fairies 'take' (abduct or cause illness), witches 'charm'. Horatio replies 'So have I heard and do in part believe it', a model of half-belief. One sentence lists the full set of supernatural threats in the popular mind and their remedy, the sacred calendar.", "claimed_effect": "Suspension of spirits, astral harm, fairy abduction and witchcraft", "claimed_mechanism": "The holiness of the Christmas season; the cock as herald", "practitioner": "none (sacred season)", "practitioner_gender": "none", "social_legal_context": "Popular calendar belief, reported as hearsay ('some say', 'they say').", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-26", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "King Henry IV, Part I", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan); Welsh magus", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1597", "date_sort": 1597, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:1h4:opensource", "ref": "3.1.10–3.1.17", "conventional_ref": "1H4 3.1.24–60", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth In strange eruptions … I can call spirits from the vasty deep. … Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?", "translation": "(Hotspur:) Sick nature often breaks out in strange eruptions… (Glendower:) I can summon spirits from the vast deep. (Hotspur:) So can I, or anyone. But will they come when you call them?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Glendower claims the earth shook and the sky burned at his birth, so the signs mark him 'not in the roll of common men', a master of 'the tedious ways of art' and 'deep experiments'. Hotspur debunks each claim. The earthquake was 'colic' in the earth, wind trapped in her womb (Aristotle's theory of earthquakes). And anyone can call spirits; the question is whether they come. 'Tell truth and shame the devil.' The exchange is the play's most quoted joke about magic. The skeptic is the hot-headed English rebel, and the believer is his Welsh ally. Holinshed reports Glendower's prophets and the 'moldwarp' prophecy (England, Henry 4.69) as 'vaine', which suggests where Shakespeare found the material.", "claimed_effect": "Birth portents; summoning spirits; commanding the devil", "claimed_mechanism": "Nativity omens; learned 'art'", "practitioner": "Owen Glendower", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "English stereotypes of Welsh bards and prophets; an alliance strained by competing claims to supernatural authority.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-27", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "King Henry VI, Part II", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), fifteenth-century setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1591", "date_sort": 1591, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:2h6:opensource", "ref": "1.2.18", "conventional_ref": "2H6 1.2.87–107", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "They, knowing Dame Eleanor's aspiring humour, Have hired me to undermine the duchess And buz these conjurations in her brain.", "translation": "Knowing Eleanor's ambition, they (the Cardinal and Suffolk) have paid me to undermine the duchess and whisper these conjuring schemes into her head.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Hume, the priest who arranges the duchess's séance, reveals in soliloquy that her enemies have hired him to lure her into it. The conjuring is a political trap. He takes gold from both sides. The play shows a magic accusation manufactured from above, with an agent provocateur, and it lets the audience know before the rite is performed. Shakespeare invents this framing; Holinshed (renaissance-english-51) reports only the charge.", "claimed_effect": "Destruction of the duchess and her husband Gloucester", "claimed_mechanism": "Political entrapment using a conjuring séance", "practitioner": "Sir John Hume, priest and double agent", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Court faction; witchcraft charges as a weapon against royal kin (Duke Humphrey of Gloucester).", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-28", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "King Henry VI, Part II", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), fifteenth-century setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1591", "date_sort": 1591, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:2h6:opensource", "ref": "1.4.6–1.4.11", "conventional_ref": "2H6 1.4.15–31", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "wizards know their times: Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night … We will make fast within a hallow'd verge. … Bolingbroke or Southwell reads, Conjuro te, &c. … The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose", "translation": "Wizards know their proper times: the dead silence of night… We'll bind whatever we raise within a consecrated circle. (Stage direction:) One reads 'I conjure you…' (Spirit:) The duke is alive who will depose Henry…", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is a full stage conjuration. They choose the hour (midnight), draw a 'hallow'd verge' (magic circle), and a priest reads a Latin conjuration ('Conjuro te'). There is thunder and lightning, and the spirit Asmath rises. It is compelled 'By the eternal God, whose name and power / Thou tremblest at' and gives ambiguous answers ('The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose', which can be read two ways). Southwell writes them down. A learned male conjurer, a female 'cunning witch' and clergy work together. Ritual magic uses holy names to force demons. York and Buckingham break in at the moment of success.", "claimed_effect": "A raised spirit answering questions about the king's fate", "claimed_mechanism": "Timing, consecrated circle, Latin conjuration in God's name, prostration of the witch", "practitioner": "Roger Bolingbroke (conjurer), Margery Jourdain (witch), John Southwell (priest)", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Inquiring into the monarch's death was treason (under Elizabeth, statute 23 Eliz. c.2 made it a felony).", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-29", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "King Henry VI, Part II", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), fifteenth-century setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1591", "date_sort": 1591, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:2h6:opensource", "ref": "2.1.80", "conventional_ref": "2H6 2.1.124–135", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "If thou hadst been born blind, thou mightst as well have known all our names as thus to name the several colours we do wear. Sight may distinguish of colours, but suddenly to nominate them all, it is impossible.", "translation": "If you had been born blind, you could as easily know all our names as name the colours we are wearing. Sight can tell colours apart, but to name them all at once (having never seen) is impossible.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At St Albans a man claims his sight was restored at the saint's shrine, and the king rejoices. Duke Humphrey of Gloucester tests him. A man born blind could not name colours he has just seen for the first time. He also orders a whipping for the 'lame' man, who leaps over a stool and runs, and the crowd cries 'A miracle!'. This is a deliberate exposure of a false miracle by an empirical test. It sits a scene after the conjuring of the duke's own wife. The skeptic is the 'good duke', and the believer is the pious king. The story is old (Thomas More tells it in his Dialogue concerning Heresies) and appears in the chronicles.", "claimed_effect": "A miraculous cure of blindness and lameness (claimed)", "claimed_mechanism": "Invocation of St Alban; in fact fraud for alms", "practitioner": "Saunder Simpcox, false miracle-claimant, and his wife", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Shrine cures, begging fraud, and the post-Reformation suspicion of pilgrimage miracles.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-30", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "King Henry VI, Part I", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan); French enemy as witch", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1591–92", "date_sort": 1592, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:1h6:opensource", "ref": "5.3.1", "conventional_ref": "1H6 5.3.1–29", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Now help, ye charming spells and periapts; And ye choice spirits that admonish me … Now ye familiar spirits … Where I was wont to feed you with my blood, I'll lop a member off and give it you", "translation": "Help me now, you spells and amulets, and you chosen spirits who warn me and give me signs of what will happen… You familiar spirits… I used to feed you my blood; now I'll cut off a limb and give it to you.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "As the French lose, Joan calls on her charms, her 'periapts' (amulets) and her familiar spirits. Fiends appear and say nothing. She reminds them she used to feed them her blood and offers a limb, then her body, then her soul, and they hang their heads and leave. This dramatises the English witch's familiar, fed on the witch's blood (as in English trial pamphlets), and transfers it to the French national heroine. Her earlier claim to a vision of the Virgin (1.2.18) is thereby recast as diabolical. 'My ancient incantations are too weak, / And hell too strong for me', and she is captured. Joan's supporters had claimed divine aid, and the English answered with a charge of witchcraft. The play stages the English side.", "claimed_effect": "Military victory and foreknowledge from spirits", "claimed_mechanism": "Familiars fed with the witch's blood; bargaining body and soul; amulets", "practitioner": "Joan la Pucelle (Joan of Arc)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "English nationalist and Protestant portrayal of the French saint (she was rehabilitated in 1456 and canonised only in 1920).", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-31", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "King Henry VI, Part I", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan); French enemy as witch", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1591–92", "date_sort": 1592, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:1h6:opensource", "ref": "5.4.11", "conventional_ref": "1H6 5.4.36–53", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "I never had to do with wicked spirit: But you, that are polluted with your lusts … You judge it straight a thing impossible To compass wonders but by help of devils.", "translation": "I never had dealings with evil spirits. But you, corrupted by your lusts… immediately assume no one can do wonders except with devils' help.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Condemned to burn, Joan protests that she was 'chosen from above, / By inspiration of celestial grace, / To work exceeding miracles'. She makes a sharp point about her accusers' psychology: the corrupt think wonders must be devilish. The audience has just seen her fiends, so the speech is undercut, and she then claims pregnancy to delay execution. Still, the play voices the real issue of the trial, the line between miracle and magic, and leaves the stronger argument briefly with the accused.", "claimed_effect": "Miracles by divine grace (her claim)", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine election and inspiration", "practitioner": "Joan la Pucelle (defending herself)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Discernment of spirits: the same 'wonders' are read as saintly or diabolical according to the judge.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-32", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Richard III", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), fifteenth-century setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1592–93", "date_sort": 1593, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:r3:opensource", "ref": "3.4.62–3.4.75", "conventional_ref": "R3 3.4.59–75", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "See how I am bewitch'd; behold mine arm / Is, like a blasted sapling, wither'd up: / And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch, / Consorted with that harlot strumpet Shore, / That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.", "translation": "Look how I'm bewitched: my arm is withered like a blighted sapling. Edward's widow, that monstrous witch, together with the whore Shore, has marked me so by witchcraft.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Richard stages a witchcraft accusation at the council table to destroy Hastings. He shows a withered arm and blames the queen and Jane Shore. Hastings answers 'If', and Richard has him beheaded at once. The audience knows Richard's deformity is from birth (1.1), so the charge is visibly fabricated. The source, Holinshed after Thomas More (renaissance-english-53), says the arm was 'as it was neuer other'. A witchcraft charge is a political pretext against women associated with a rival faction.", "claimed_effect": "A wasted arm", "claimed_mechanism": "Witchcraft by the queen and Shore (claimed)", "practitioner": "Queen Elizabeth Woodville and Jane Shore (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "False witchcraft accusation as a tool of usurpation; a sexually stigmatised woman is accused alongside the queen.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-33", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Comedy of Errors", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), Ephesian setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1594", "date_sort": 1594, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:err:opensource", "ref": "1.2.97–1.2.102", "conventional_ref": "Err. 1.2.97–102", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "They say this town is full of cozenage, / As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye, / Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind, / Soul-killing witches that deform the body, / Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks", "translation": "They say this town is full of fraud: quick conjurors who fool the eye, sorcerers who secretly alter the mind, soul-destroying witches who deform the body, cheats in disguise, babbling quack-sellers.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Antipholus of Syracuse, confused by the first case of mistaken identity, recalls Ephesus's reputation and lists the types of magical practitioner. Each is defined by what it acts on. Jugglers deceive the eye, sorcerers change the mind, witches deform the body. Then come plain cheats and mountebanks. The list sets magic and fraud side by side as one trade ('cozenage'). Ephesus had this reputation from Acts 19 (the Ephesian magicians' books burned) and the 'Ephesia grammata', which Elizabethans knew from Scripture. Every 'magical' effect in the play is in fact twins.", "claimed_effect": "Deceived senses, altered minds, deformed bodies", "claimed_mechanism": "Sleight of hand, sorcery, witchcraft (by reputation)", "practitioner": "the reputed tricksters of Ephesus", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Elizabethan cony-catching literature classed jugglers, cozeners and conjurers together as urban cheats.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-34", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Comedy of Errors", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), Ephesian setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1594", "date_sort": 1594, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:err:opensource", "ref": "5.1.240–5.1.248", "conventional_ref": "Err. 5.1.237–246", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "illusion-trickery", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "A mere anatomy, a mountebank, / A threadbare juggler and a forutne-teller … Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer, / And, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse … Cries out, I was possess'd.", "translation": "A walking skeleton, a quack, a shabby trickster and fortune-teller… who set himself up as a conjurer and, staring in my eyes and feeling my pulse, announced that I was possessed.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Antipholus of Ephesus describes the exorcism performed on him in 4.4.31-39. There Pinch had commanded 'I charge thee, Satan, housed within this man, / To yield possession to my holy prayers' and 'I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven!'. The diagnosis mixes medical gestures (pulse, eyes) with the exorcist's charge. The treatment for 'possession' is the same as for madness: being bound and kept in a dark vault. Pinch is a schoolmaster, a Latin-speaker, which is why he is presumed able to conjure. 'Conjurer' covers both one who exorcises and one who raises spirits. The library's text reads 'forutne-teller', a misprint for 'fortune-teller', preserved here exactly.", "claimed_effect": "Expelling a devil from a 'possessed' man", "claimed_mechanism": "Command in the name of the saints and holy prayers; diagnosis by pulse and eyes", "practitioner": "Doctor Pinch, schoolmaster and 'conjurer'", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Unlicensed exorcism was banned in the Church of England by Canon 72 (1604); Elizabethan exorcists like John Darrell were tried as frauds.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-35", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), contemporary Windsor", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1597–1601", "date_sort": 1599, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:wiv:opensource", "ref": "4.2.76", "conventional_ref": "Wiv. 4.2.159–165", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "We are simple men; we do not know what's brought to pass under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by charms, by spells, by the figure, and such daubery as this is, beyond our element: we know nothing.", "translation": "We plain men don't know what goes on under cover of fortune-telling. She works by charms, spells, astrological figures and that kind of fakery, out of our depth; we know nothing.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Ford has banned the 'old woman of Brentford' from his house as a witch. When Falstaff escapes disguised as her, Ford beats 'her' out of doors. His speech sums up the village cunning-woman: she runs errands, tells fortunes, and works 'by charms, by spells, by the figure' (casting an astrological figure). Ford's attitude is suspicion of what women do behind men's backs, since she is a go-between. He calls her art 'daubery', or sham. Falstaff later says he nearly ended up in the common stocks 'for a witch' (4.5.46). The comedy rests on a real social type and the real danger such women faced. Sir Hugh Evans's joke about the 'witch's' beard echoes Banquo's 'your beards forbid me'.", "claimed_effect": "Fortune-telling; messages and matchmaking", "claimed_mechanism": "Charms, spells, astrological 'figure'", "practitioner": "the 'wise woman' or 'witch of Brentford' (Falstaff in disguise)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Village cunning-women: tolerated, used and suspected; beating and the stocks as informal punishments.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-36", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Twelfth Night", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), Illyrian setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1601", "date_sort": 1601, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:tn:opensource", "ref": "4.2.11–4.2.14", "conventional_ref": "TN 4.2.25–34", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Out, hyperbolical fiend! how vexest thou this man! talkest thou nothing but of ladies? … Fie, thou dishonest Satan! I call thee by the most modest terms", "translation": "Get out, you ranting devil! How you torment this man! Do you talk of nothing but ladies?… Shame on you, lying Satan! I'm addressing you as politely as I can.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Malvolio, gulled into madness, is shut in a dark room as one 'possessed' (3.3.73). Feste plays a curate exorcising the 'fiend', addressing the devil instead of the man. Every protest of sanity is turned into a symptom. The scene shows how the possession diagnosis cannot be refuted: whatever the patient says counts as the demon speaking. It is a comic version of the dark-room confinements and clerical exorcisms that were controversial in the 1590s and early 1600s.", "claimed_effect": "Expelling a demon (pretended)", "claimed_mechanism": "Clerical command to the indwelling 'fiend'; darkness and confinement", "practitioner": "Feste, disguised as 'Sir Topas the curate'", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Contemporary controversies over exorcism (John Darrell, Samuel Harsnett's attack of 1603).", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-37", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Winter's Tale", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Sicilian and Bohemian setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1610–11", "date_sort": 1611, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:wt:opensource", "ref": "5.3.105–5.3.136", "conventional_ref": "WT 5.3.85–111", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "but then you'll think-- / Which I protest against--I am assisted / By wicked powers. … It is required / You do awake your faith. … If this be magic, let it be an art / Lawful as eating.", "translation": "(Paulina:) But then you'll think, though I deny it, that I'm helped by evil powers… You must awaken your faith… (Leontes, touching her:) If this is magic, let it be an art as lawful as eating.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Paulina makes Hermione's 'statue' move, descend and embrace Leontes, while anticipating the charge of 'wicked powers' and dismissing those who think it 'unlawful business'. She calls her words a 'spell' that is 'lawful'. Leontes blesses the art as 'lawful as eating'. Then the explanation arrives: Hermione has been alive and hidden for sixteen years, 'preserved' by Paulina because the oracle gave hope (5.3.154-156). A scene staged as necromancy or animation turns out to be a deception, kindly meant. The audience is left between wonder and explanation. The lawful/unlawful vocabulary echoes the legal language of the witchcraft statutes.", "claimed_effect": "A statue brought to life", "claimed_mechanism": "Music, faith and a 'lawful' spell; in fact concealment of a living woman", "practitioner": "Paulina", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Animating images was idolatry or necromancy in Protestant eyes; the scene insists on lawfulness.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-38", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "King Lear", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), ancient British setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1605–06", "date_sort": 1606, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:lr:opensource", "ref": "1.2.54–1.2.55", "conventional_ref": "Lr. 1.2.103–135", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune … we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion", "translation": "This is the world's great stupidity: when things go badly, often from our own excess, we blame the sun, moon and stars, as if we were villains by necessity and fools because heaven forced us.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Gloucester has just blamed 'these late eclipses in the sun and moon' for the breakdown of family and state. He concedes that 'the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus', so a natural explanation is admitted and set aside. Alone, Edmund mocks judicial astrology as 'an admirable evasion of whoremaster man'. His nativity under 'the dragon's tail' and 'Ursa major' did not make him lecherous, and he would be what he is under 'the maidenliest star'. Then he cynically uses the same astrological jargon to manipulate Edgar. The play gives the best argument against astrology to its villain. Gloucester's eclipses may echo those of 1601 (a modern dating inference).", "claimed_effect": "Stars causing human vice and political disorder", "claimed_mechanism": "Planetary influence; nativity; eclipses as portents", "practitioner": "Gloucester (believer); Edmund (skeptic)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Judicial astrology was attacked by Protestant divines as fatalism; almanacs and prognostications were best-sellers.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-39", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "King Lear", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), ancient British setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1605–06", "date_sort": 1606, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:lr:opensource", "ref": "4.1.62", "conventional_ref": "Lr. 4.1.57–64", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "five fiends have been in poor Tom at once; of lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididance, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of moping and mowing", "translation": "Five devils have been in poor Tom at once: Obidicut for lust, Hobbididance prince of dumbness, Mahu for stealing, Modo for murder, Flibbertigibbet for moping and grimacing.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Edgar, disguised as a Bedlam beggar, performs demonic possession: devils who tempt him to suicide (3.4.51), the 'foul fiend' who bites his back. He names the devils. Scholars have shown that these names (Flibbertigibbet, Hobbididance, Mahu, Modo, Obidicut) come from Samuel Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603), a government-sponsored exposure of Catholic exorcisms of the 1580s as fraud. Harsnett's book is not in the library. The possession on stage is avowedly feigned by a sane man. Its vocabulary is taken from a book that called real possessions feigned.", "claimed_effect": "Possession by named devils", "claimed_mechanism": "Feigned; a role played for survival", "practitioner": "Edgar, feigning possession as 'Poor Tom'", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Anglican campaign against Catholic and Puritan exorcists; Bedlam beggars as a recognised vagrant type.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-40", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Julius Cæsar", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), Roman setting", "language": "eng", "date": "1599", "date_sort": 1599, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:jc:opensource", "ref": "1.2.19–1.2.24", "conventional_ref": "JC 1.2.15–24", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, / Cry 'Cæsar!' Speak; Cæsar is turn'd to hear. … Beware the ides of March. … A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.", "translation": "I hear a voice, shriller than the music, calling 'Caesar!' Speak, Caesar is listening. (Soothsayer:) Beware the Ides of March. (Brutus:) A fortune-teller warns you to beware 15 March.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the famous warning at the Lupercalia. Caesar looks at the man, calls him 'a dreamer', and passes on. Just before, Caesar tells Antony to touch Calpurnia in the Lupercal race, 'for our elders say, / The barren, touched in this holy chase, / Shake off their sterile curse' (1.2.8-11), a Roman fertility rite. Later the augurers find a beast with no heart (2.2.39-45), and Caesar reads it against its plain sense. Cassius notes he 'is superstitious grown of late' (2.1.205-210). The play's Rome is full of signs that are true and ignored. Plutarch's version, as North translated it, is in renaissance-english-68.", "claimed_effect": "A true warning of a date of danger", "claimed_mechanism": "Prophetic knowledge (unexplained)", "practitioner": "a Soothsayer", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Roman public divination (augurs, haruspicy) and private soothsayers.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-41", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Antony and Cleopatra", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Egyptian setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1606–07", "date_sort": 1607, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:ant:opensource", "ref": "1.2.5–1.2.34", "conventional_ref": "Ant. 1.2.1–52", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "In nature's infinite book of secrecy A little I can read. … There's a palm presages chastity, if nothing else. … if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear.", "translation": "(Soothsayer:) In nature's endless book of secrets I can read a little. (Iras:) There's a palm that foretells chastity, if nothing else. (Charmian:) If a sweaty palm isn't a sign of fertility, I can't scratch my ear.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Cleopatra's women have a palm-reading party. The soothsayer's own claim is modest: 'a little' reading in 'nature's book', which presents divination as reading natural signs. The women turn it into bawdy jokes about husbands and fertility. To Charmian he predicts she will outlive her mistress, and she will, by minutes. At 2.3.10-13 the same soothsayer warns Antony that his 'demon' is overpowered near Caesar's, and Antony admits 'Be it art or hap, / He hath spoken true'. Shakespeare took the demon passage almost word for word from North's Plutarch (renaissance-english-69).", "claimed_effect": "Foretelling fortunes by the hand", "claimed_mechanism": "Palmistry; reading 'nature's book'", "practitioner": "an Egyptian Soothsayer", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Egypt as the home of fortune-telling ('gipsy' = Egyptian), already a stereotype in English.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-42", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Cymbeline", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), ancient British setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1610", "date_sort": 1610, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:cym:opensource", "ref": "1.5.39–1.5.50", "conventional_ref": "Cym. 1.5.33–44", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "She doth think she has / Strange lingering poisons … Those she has / Will stupefy and dull the sense awhile … but there is / No danger in what show of death it makes, / More than the locking-up the spirits a time", "translation": "She thinks she has strange slow poisons… What she has will only numb the senses for a while… The appearance of death it produces is harmless, nothing more than locking up the vital spirits for a time.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The wicked Queen asks the doctor for poisons. She says she will test them on animals 'to try the vigour of them', which is an experimental programme. The doctor distrusts her and secretly gives her a stupefying drug that only imitates death by 'locking-up the spirits', after which the patient wakes 'more fresh'. The plot then works like Romeo and Juliet's: Imogen takes it as a 'cordial' and is thought dead (4.2). The would-be poisoner relies on a physician, who can quietly defeat her. The 'spirits' here are the physiological vital spirits of Galenic medicine, not demons.", "claimed_effect": "Apparent death followed by revival", "claimed_mechanism": "A stupefying drug that suspends the vital spirits (Galenic physiology)", "practitioner": "Cornelius, the court physician (deceiving the Queen)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Court poisoning fears; the physician's duty and his control of dangerous drugs.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-43", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "All's Well That Ends Well", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), French setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1604–05", "date_sort": 1605, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:aww:opensource", "ref": "2.1.46–2.1.47", "conventional_ref": "AWW 2.1.104–124", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "On's bed of death Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one, Which, as the dearest issue of his practice … I say we must not … To prostitute our past-cure malady To empirics", "translation": "On his deathbed my father gave me many recipes, above all one, the best fruit of his practice… (King:) I say we must not prostitute our incurable disease to quacks.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Helena offers the dying king her late father's secret remedy. The king refuses at first: 'our most learned doctors' and 'the congregated college' (the College of Physicians) have given him up, and he will not resort to 'empirics', unlicensed practitioners. Helena's cure works. In the period a woman healer outside the licensed profession was an obvious candidate for suspicion. The play frames her through her father's learning, and Lafew later calls the cure a 'showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor' (2.3.18).", "claimed_effect": "Cure of an incurable fistula in two days", "claimed_mechanism": "An inherited recipe ('receipt'), 'sanctified by the luckiest stars' (1.3.60)", "practitioner": "Helena, daughter of the physician Gerard de Narbon", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Licensed physicians versus empirics and women healers; the College of Physicians' monopoly in London.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-44", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "All's Well That Ends Well", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Jacobean), French setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1604–05", "date_sort": 1605, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:aww:opensource", "ref": "2.3.1", "conventional_ref": "AWW 2.3.1–6", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors", "translation": "People say the age of miracles is over, and we have our natural philosophers to make supernatural and inexplicable things seem ordinary and everyday. That's why we treat terrors as trifles.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "After the king's cure, Lafew states a contemporary opinion, then criticises it. The Protestant doctrine that 'miracles are ceased' (compare Henry V 1.1.69, 'It must be so; for miracles are ceased') combines with natural philosophers who explain everything away. The result, he says, is false confidence, 'ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear'. The sentence names the intellectual shift of the age, the 'cessation of miracles' and the rise of naturalistic explanation, and it is ambivalent about both.", "claimed_effect": "None; a reflection on the decline of wonder", "claimed_mechanism": "Natural philosophy 'modernising' the supernatural", "practitioner": "none (Lafew's reflection)", "practitioner_gender": "none", "social_legal_context": "Reformed theology of the cessation of miracles; early natural philosophy.", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-45", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Pericles Prince of Tyre", "author": "William Shakespeare (with George Wilkins)", "culture": "English (Jacobean), Ephesian setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1607–08", "date_sort": 1608, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:per:opensource", "ref": "3.2.86–3.2.99", "conventional_ref": "Per. 3.2.80–98", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Death may usurp on nature many hours, / And yet the fire of life kindle again / The o'erpress'd spirits. I heard of an Egyptian / That had nine hours lien dead, / Who was by good appliance recovered.", "translation": "Death can seem to take over the body for many hours, and yet life's fire can rekindle the overwhelmed spirits. I heard of an Egyptian who lay dead nine hours and was revived by good treatment.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Thaisa, thought dead in childbirth at sea, is cast overboard in a chest. Cerimon revives her with fire, warm cloths, his boxes of medicines, music and air: 'she hath not been entranced / Above five hours'. He is explicitly a man of 'physic', a 'secret art' learned 'by turning o'er authorities' and practice, knowing 'the blest infusions / That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones' (3.2.34-38). The scene looks like resurrection. The play presents it as learned medicine applied to an apparent death, and audiences of the time knew real cases of people taken for dead and buried alive. Ephesus, the city of magicians in Comedy of Errors, here holds a physician.", "claimed_effect": "Revival of a woman thought dead", "claimed_mechanism": "Warmth, medicines, music, air; the theory of 'o'erpress'd spirits'", "practitioner": "Cerimon, a lord of Ephesus learned in 'physic'", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Gentleman-physician ideal; contemporary fear of premature burial.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-46", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "As You Like It", "author": "William Shakespeare", "culture": "English (Elizabethan), French forest setting", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1599", "date_sort": 1599, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:shakespeare:ayl:opensource", "ref": "5.2.16", "conventional_ref": "AYL 5.2.58–70", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Believe then, if you please, that I can do strange things: I have, since I was three year old, conversed with a magician, most profound in his art and yet not damnable.", "translation": "Believe, if you like, that I can do strange things. Since I was three I have been taught by a magician, deeply skilled in his art and yet not damned for it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Rosalind, in disguise, promises Orlando she will produce Rosalind tomorrow by magic. She invents an uncle-magician 'most profound in his art and yet not damnable'. The phrase states the boundary exactly: a magic that is profound but lawful. Her 'magic' is nothing but taking off her disguise. Orlando repeats the claim to the Duke (5.4.33, 'a great magician'). The legitimacy line is invoked as a joke because no magic happens.", "claimed_effect": "Producing an absent person", "claimed_mechanism": "Claimed magical training; in fact disguise", "practitioner": "Rosalind disguised as Ganymede, claiming a magician's training", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "The distinction between 'damnable' (demonic) and lawful (natural) magic was commonplace.", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-47", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The History of Scotland (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "Raphael Holinshed (after Hector Boece)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) chronicle of Scotland", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:scotland:history:opensource", "ref": "Duncane.15–Duncane.16", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) II, Scotland, reign of Duncan", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "the common opinion was, that these women were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say) the goddesses of destinie, or else some nymphs or feiries, indued with knowledge of prophesie by their necromanticall science", "translation": "People generally came to think that these women were either the weird sisters, that is the goddesses of destiny, or else nymphs or fairies given knowledge of prophecy by their necromantic art.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is Shakespeare's source for the witches' greeting. Holinshed gives three explanations in order. First the meeting 'was reputed at the first but some vaine fantasticall illusion'. Then, because 'euerie thing came to passe as they had spoken', opinion shifted. The women were Fates ('weird' from Old English wyrd, destiny), or nymphs, or fairies with 'necromanticall science'. Holinshed never calls them witches here. The shift from Fates to old village witches is Shakespeare's.", "claimed_effect": "True prophecy of titles and kingship", "claimed_mechanism": "Fate-goddesses, or fairies with 'necromanticall science'", "practitioner": "three women 'in strange and wild apparell'", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Chronicle drawn from Boece's Latin Scotorum historia (1527); explanation by 'common opinion'.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-48", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The History of Scotland (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "Raphael Holinshed (after Hector Boece)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) chronicle of Scotland", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:scotland:history:opensource", "ref": "Duncane.53", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) II, Scotland, reign of Macbeth", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "a certeine witch, whome hee had in great trust, had told that he should neuer be slaine with man borne of anie woman, not vanquished till the wood of Bernane came to the castell of Dunsinane.", "translation": "A witch he trusted greatly told him he would never be killed by any man born of a woman, nor defeated until Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane Castle.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In Holinshed, the two equivocating prophecies come from a different source than the greeting. The weird sisters spoke first. Later 'certeine wizzards' warned against Macduff, and a single trusted witch gave the woman-born and Birnam prophecies. Holinshed then states the effect: 'This vaine hope caused him to doo manie outragious things'. The prophecy produces the tyranny that destroys him. Shakespeare merges all these into the weird sisters and the apparitions.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of the conditions of Macbeth's fall", "claimed_mechanism": "A witch's prophecy", "practitioner": "'a certeine witch, whome hee had in great trust'", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "A king keeping a personal witch, and spies in every noble house.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-49", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The History of Scotland (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "Raphael Holinshed (after Hector Boece)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) chronicle of Scotland, 10th-century events", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:scotland:history:opensource", "ref": "Duffe.7–Duffe.9", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) II, Scotland, reign of Duff", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "one of the witches rosting vpon a woodden broch an image of wax at the fier … as the image did waste afore the fire, so did the bodie of the king breake foorth in sweat.", "translation": "They found one of the witches roasting a wax image of the king on a wooden spit at the fire… for as the image melted before the fire, so the king's body broke out in sweat.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "King Duff is wasting from a sickness his physicians cannot explain, sweating and unable to sleep. Rumour blames witches at Forres. A soldier's lover, a witch's daughter, betrays them, and soldiers find one witch roasting a wax image of the king on a spit while another recites incantations and bastes it with a liquor. Under examination the witches explain the sympathetic mechanism: as the wax melts, the king's flesh melts, and the words keep him awake. They were taught by evil spirits and hired by rebel nobles. The image is broken, the witches are burned, and 'at the verie same time' the king recovers. Holinshed hedges: 'as is to be thought', 'It was said', 'howsoeuer it came to passe'. The geography (Forres) is one Shakespeare later uses for his witches.", "claimed_effect": "Wasting sickness and death of the king; recovery when the image is destroyed", "claimed_mechanism": "Sympathetic magic: a wax image roasted and basted with incantations; taught by evil spirits", "practitioner": "witches of Forres, hired by the nobles of Moray", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Image magic as political treason; witches hired by rebel nobles; confession under 'streict examination'; burning.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-50", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The History of Scotland (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "Raphael Holinshed (after Hector Boece)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) chronicle of Scotland, 3rd-century events", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:scotland:history:opensource", "ref": "Natholocus.2–Natholocus.3", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) II, Scotland, reign of Natholocus", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "The witch consulting with hir spirits, declared in the end how it should come shortlie to passe, that the king should be murthered … by the hands of one of his most familiar friends … Euen by thine saith she", "translation": "The witch consulted her spirits and finally declared that the king would soon be murdered by one of his closest friends. 'By whose hands?' asked the messenger. 'By yours,' she said.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is a clear case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. King Natholocus sends a trusted gentleman to ask a seeress on Iona about the war. She says the king will be murdered by a friend, the messenger himself. He rails at her and says he hopes to see her burned. On the way back he reasons that if he reports it, the king may kill him first, and if he hides it, someone else may tell. So he kills the king. The prophecy causes its own fulfilment through the hearer's fear, a psychological mechanism the chronicle spells out step by step.", "claimed_effect": "Accurate prediction of a king's murder", "claimed_mechanism": "Consultation with her spirits; in fact fulfilled by the hearer's fear", "practitioner": "a woman of Iona 'estéemed verie skilfull in forshewing of things to come'", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Kings consulting island seeresses; the threat of burning used against an unwelcome prophet.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-51", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The History Of England After the Conquest (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "Raphael Holinshed and continuators", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) chronicle, events of 1441", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:england:history2:opensource", "ref": "Henry 6.252–Henry 6.253", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) III, Henry VI, 1441", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Roger Bolingbrooke a cunning necromancer (as it was said) and Margerie Iordeine, surnamed the witch of Eie. … deuised an image of wax representing the king, which by their sorcerie by little and little consumed", "translation": "Roger Bolingbroke, a skilled necromancer (so it was said), and Margery Jourdemaine, called the witch of Eye… made a wax image of the king, which by their sorcery was gradually consumed, intending to waste and destroy his person.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the chronicle of the 1441 case behind 2 Henry VI. The duchess was accused 'by sorcerie and inchantment' of seeking the king's death to make her husband king. She did open penance in London and was imprisoned for life on the Isle of Man. Jourdemaine was burned at Smithfield, and Bolingbroke was hanged, drawn and quartered, though 'taking vpon his death that there was neuer anie such thing by them imagined', that is, denying it to the end. Southwell died in the Tower, having prophesied he would die in bed. Holinshed hedges ('as it was said'). The charge was a wax image. Shakespeare instead stages a spirit-raising and adds the frame-up (renaissance-english-27/28).", "claimed_effect": "The king's gradual death", "claimed_mechanism": "A wax image consumed by sorcery", "practitioner": "Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester; Roger Bolingbroke; Margery Jourdemaine; Thomas Southwell; John Hume", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Treason by magic in the royal family; differential punishment by rank and sex (the duchess penance, the witch burned, the cleric hanged).", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-52", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The History Of England After the Conquest (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "Raphael Holinshed and continuators", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) chronicle, events of 1430–31", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:england:history2:opensource", "ref": "Henry 6.128–Henry 6.129", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) III, Henry VI, 1431", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "to be a pernicious instrument to hostilitie and bloudshed in diuelish witchcraft and sorcerie … hir campestrall conuersation with wicked spirits, whome in hir first salutation to Charles the Dolphin, she vttered to be our Ladie, saint Katharine, and saint Annes", "translation": "She was found to be a dangerous instrument of war and bloodshed through devilish witchcraft and sorcery… her conversations in the fields with evil spirits, which, when she first greeted the Dauphin, she claimed were Our Lady, St Katherine and St Anne.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is Holinshed's account of Joan's trial. She was examined by Bishop Cauchon, found guilty of wearing men's clothes and of 'diuelish witchcraft and sorcerie', abjured, relapsed, claimed pregnancy, and was burned at Rouen with her ashes 'shaken into the wind'. Her voices are reinterpreted as 'wicked spirits', since 'satan … can change himselfe into an angell of light'. The chronicle itself marks the core of the dispute, whether her visions were saints or devils. The next paragraph (Henry 6.130) reports the 1455 papal re-examination of her case, which overturned the sentence. Holinshed treats it as the Dauphin's political cover-up.", "claimed_effect": "Victories and foreknowledge through spirits", "claimed_mechanism": "Conversation with spirits disguised as saints", "practitioner": "Joan la Pucelle (Joan of Arc), as condemned", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "An ecclesiastical heresy and sorcery trial serving English war aims; the rehabilitation process is acknowledged but dismissed.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-53", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The History Of England After the Conquest (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "Raphael Holinshed (after Thomas More)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) chronicle, events of 1483", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:england:history2:opensource", "ref": "Edward 5.95", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) III, Edward V (from More's Richard III)", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "that sorceresse, and that other witch of hir counsell Shores wife … haue by their sorcerie and witchcraft wasted my bodie. … he shewed a weerish withered arme, and small; as it was neuer other.", "translation": "'That sorceress (the queen) and that other witch, Shore's wife, with their associates, have wasted my body by sorcery and witchcraft.' And he pulled up his sleeve to show a shrivelled, withered little arm, which had never been otherwise.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the source of renaissance-english-32, from Thomas More's History of King Richard III as taken into Holinshed. The narrator adds four words of exposure, 'as it was neuer other'. The arm had always been so, and everyone at the table knew it. A few paragraphs later the chronicle describes Jane Shore as stripped of her goods and, in age, 'old, leane, withered' (Edward 5.114), and the scapegoated woman's withering is told with pity. The source says outright that the witchcraft charge was a pretext.", "claimed_effect": "A wasted arm (alleged)", "claimed_mechanism": "Sorcery and witchcraft (alleged)", "practitioner": "Queen Elizabeth Woodville and Jane Shore (accused by Richard)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "A council-chamber pretext for judicial murder; women of a rival faction scapegoated.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-54", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The History Of England After the Conquest (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "Raphael Holinshed and continuators", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) chronicle, events of 1213", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:england:history2:opensource", "ref": "John.168", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) III, King John, 1213", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "either inspired with some spirit of prophesie as the people beléeued, or else hauing some notable skill in art magike, he was accustomed to tell what should follow after.", "translation": "Either inspired with a spirit of prophecy, as the people believed, or else highly skilled in magic, he used to foretell what would happen.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A hermit near York, popular because his predictions often came true, told King John he would lose his crown by Ascension Day. He offered to die if he was wrong, was imprisoned, and when the day passed was hanged with his son. Holinshed sets out a test, in a Latin seven-line poem, of the conditions a true prophet must meet, finds Peter lacking, and calls him a 'pseudoprophet', 'a deluder of the people, and an instrument of satan'. Shakespeare's King John (4.2.150-157, 5.1.26-29) handles it differently. The prophet is vindicated in a technical sense: John has surrendered his crown to the papal legate before Ascension Day, though not 'on constraint'. Chronicle and play disagree on whether the prophecy came true.", "claimed_effect": "Foretelling the king's loss of his crown", "claimed_mechanism": "Spirit of prophecy, or 'art magike'", "practitioner": "Peter of Wakefield (Pomfret), hermit", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Political prophecy against the king was punished; popular prophets drew crowds.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-55", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The History Of England After the Conquest (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "Raphael Holinshed and continuators", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) chronicle, events of the 1380s", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:england:history2:opensource", "ref": "Richard 2.64", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) III, Richard II", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "they delt with no witchcraft, nor art magike, whereby they might obteine the victorie of their aduersarie, nor had about them any herbe or stone, or other kind of experiment with which magicians vse to triumph ouer their enimies.", "translation": "They swore they were using no witchcraft or magic to defeat their opponent, and carried no herb, stone or other device of the kind magicians use to triumph over enemies.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Before a judicial combat (trial by battle) between a knight and an esquire, both swear that their cause is true and that they carry no magical aids. The oath names the actual kit of combat magic: herbs, stones, 'experiments' (magical procedures). Its formulaic presence shows how normal such aids were assumed to be. It also shows the legal logic. Trial by battle was God's judgement, and magic would corrupt it, as a later Holinshed passage says of the ordeal (renaissance-english-60).", "claimed_effect": "Victory in combat (the oath forbids seeking it by magic)", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbs, stones, magical 'experiments' carried on the body", "practitioner": "none (oath forbidding magic in judicial combat)", "practitioner_gender": "none", "social_legal_context": "Judicial combat oath; magic as a corruption of divine judgement.", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-56", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The History Of England After the Conquest (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "Raphael Holinshed and continuators (Abraham Fleming)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) chronicle, contemporary events", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:england:history2:opensource", "ref": "Elizabeth.2.6", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) III, Elizabeth (c. 1581)", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "being a figureflinger, and vehementlie suspected to be a coniurer … there were found about him fiue diuelihs bookes of coniuration, and most abhominable practises, with a picture of tin of a man, hauing thrée dice in his hand", "translation": "He was a caster of astrological figures, strongly suspected of conjuring… on him they found five devilish books of conjuration and other abominable practices, with a tin figure of a man holding three dice.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is a contemporary London case. Penbrooke, summoned before the church court in St Saviour's, Southwark, suddenly collapsed and died while talking to a proctor. The judge, arriving, called it 'the iust iudgement of God' on sorcerers. His clothes held five books of conjuration and a tin figure with dice, inscribed 'Chance dice fortunatlie', a gambling charm made for clients. The chronicler quotes Leviticus 20:6 against those who consult conjurers. It is a rare picture of an actual Elizabethan practitioner's equipment: a figure-caster (astrologer) who also sold luck charms. He died before he could be judged.", "claimed_effect": "Luck at dice; astrological answers", "claimed_mechanism": "Books of conjuration; a tin image with dice and a motto", "practitioner": "Simon Penbrooke of Southwark, 'figureflinger' suspected of conjuring", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Church-court jurisdiction over sorcery; sudden death read as divine punishment.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-57", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The History Of England After the Conquest (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "Raphael Holinshed and continuators (printing Cardinal Pole's articles)", "culture": "English (Marian Catholic) ecclesiastical law, printed in an Elizabethan chronicle", "language": "eng", "date": "1556–57 (articles); printed 1587", "date_sort": 1557, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:england:history2:opensource", "ref": "Marie.341", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) III, Mary I, Pole's visitation articles, lay item 13", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Item, if there be anie that doo practise or exercise anie arts of magike, or necromancie, or doo vse or practise anie incantations, sorceries, or witchcraft, or be vehementlie suspected thereof.", "translation": "Item: whether there are any who practise any magic arts or necromancy, or use any incantations, sorceries or witchcraft, or are strongly suspected of it.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is Cardinal Reginald Pole's visitation of Canterbury diocese under Mary I. Item 13 of the articles for the laity asks churchwardens to report magic, necromancy, incantations, sorcery and witchcraft, or 'vehement suspicion' of them. It sits between drunkards and irregular marriages, as an ordinary item of parish discipline. The list shows the categories church law used. Suspicion alone was reportable. Under both Catholic and Protestant regimes, the parish was the first place where magic was policed.", "claimed_effect": "None", "claimed_mechanism": "None", "practitioner": "none (prohibition)", "practitioner_gender": "none", "social_legal_context": "Ecclesiastical visitation; churchwardens' presentments; sorcery as a moral offence in the church courts.", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-58", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Irish Historie (Holinshed's Chronicles, after Giraldus Cambrensis)", "author": "Raphael Holinshed (translating and glossing Gerald of Wales)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) chronicle of Ireland; Welsh-British prophecy", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:ireland:cambrensis:opensource", "ref": "2.36.4", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) II, Irish History, on Merlin's prophecies", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "a man verie excellentlie well learned in philosophie, and in knowledge of all natural causes; and by diligent observations he would gesse maruellouslie at the euents of manie things. Wherevpon he was taken for a prophesier", "translation": "He was extremely learned in philosophy and knew all natural causes, and by careful observation he could guess remarkably well at how things would turn out. So he was taken for a prophet and reputed a magician.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Two Merlins are distinguished. Merlin Silvester of the Caledonian wood is explained naturalistically. He was a natural philosopher whose good forecasts from 'diligent observations' got him the reputation of prophet and magician. The earlier Merlin Ambrosius was learned 'in philosophie and the art magike', but his sayings were so obscure that 'nothing could be conceiued nor vnderstood by them before the euent'. That is a skeptic's remark about prophecy that can only be interpreted after the fact. In the History of England Holinshed passes over the monstrous birth of Merlin and his prophecies as 'not of such credit as deserueth to be registred in anie sound historie' (history1 5.7.1).", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of events", "claimed_mechanism": "Natural philosophy and observation (Merlin Silvester); 'art magike' (Ambrosius)", "practitioner": "the two Merlins (Silvester/Caledonius and Ambrosius)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Merlin's prophecies were used in Tudor and Welsh political propaganda; the chronicler treats them with caution.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-59", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "The Svpplie Of This Irish Chronicle (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "John Hooker (continuator of Holinshed)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) chronicle of Ireland, events of the 1570s", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:ireland:supplie:opensource", "ref": "Elizabeth1.115", "conventional_ref": "Holinshed, Chronicles (1587) II, Supplie of the Irish Chronicle (Hooker), Elizabeth", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse" ], "excerpt_original": "Some thought rather that he should be bewitched, as that countrie is much giuen to such dailie practises. But how far is that from all christianitie, all wise and godlie doo know … and therefore not to be credited.", "translation": "Some thought rather that he had been bewitched, since that country practises such things daily. But how far that is from all Christianity every wise and godly person knows… and therefore it is not to be believed.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A young nobleman dies suddenly in Dublin. Rumours run through three explanations: poison (examined and ruled out), a dysentery-like flux, according to physicians, and witchcraft. The chronicler rejects witchcraft as unchristian and 'not to be credited', and he concludes that 'some inward griefe of the mind and secret sorrow of the hart' hastened the death. This is a religious skepticism, which treats belief in bewitchment as itself unchristian. It sits beside a colonial stereotype that Ireland is 'much giuen to such dailie practises' (compare the Description of Ireland 8.2, where the Irish are 'manie sorcerers').", "claimed_effect": "Death by bewitchment (rejected)", "claimed_mechanism": "Witchcraft (rejected); disease and grief preferred", "practitioner": "none (rejected explanation)", "practitioner_gender": "none", "social_legal_context": "English administrators in Ireland; Protestant skepticism coexisting with ethnic stereotyping.", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-60", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "An Historicall Description of the Iland of Britaine (Holinshed's Chronicles)", "author": "William Harrison", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) description of England", "language": "eng", "date": "1587 (2nd ed.; 1st 1577)", "date_sort": 1587, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:holinshed:england:description:opensource", "ref": "2.9.11", "conventional_ref": "Harrison, Description of England (1587) II.9", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "king Iohn, who séeing the manifold subtilties in the same (by sundrie sorcerous and artificiall practises whereby the working of the said elements were restreined) did extinguish it altogither as flat lewdnesse and bouerie.", "translation": "King John, seeing the many tricks used in it (various sorcerous and artificial practices by which the action of the elements was suppressed), abolished it entirely as plain wickedness and foolery.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Harrison describes the medieval ordeals by cold water (sink and you are innocent, float and you are guilty) and by hot water or hot iron, and he calls them 'vnlearned dealing and blind ignorance'. He says they were abolished because people defeated them by 'sorcerous and artificiall practises' that kept the fire or water from working. Magic and trickery are named together as the reason the test failed. The ordeals were in fact abolished after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) forbade clergy to take part. Harrison's explanation is his own. The cold-water test he mocks returned in English witch-hunting as 'swimming' a witch.", "claimed_effect": "Defeating the ordeal", "claimed_mechanism": "'Sorcerous and artificiall practises' restraining fire and water", "practitioner": "those who manipulated the ordeals", "practitioner_gender": "unspecified", "social_legal_context": "History of English legal procedure; a Protestant clergyman's contempt for medieval judicial ritual.", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-61", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Faust Book (The Historie of the damnable life, and deserued death of Doctor Iohn Faustus)", "author": "anonymous, translated by 'P. F.' (filed in the library under Christopher Marlowe)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) translation of a German Lutheran chapbook", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1592 (earliest surviving edition)", "date_sort": 1592, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:christopher_marlowe:efb:opensource", "ref": "1.1.2", "conventional_ref": "English Faust Book, ch. 1", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "astrology", "healing", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "vsing Figures, characters, Coniurations, Incantations, with many other ceremonies belonging to these infernal Arts as Necromancie, Charmes, South-saying, Witchcraft, Inchantment, being delighted with their bookes, words, and names", "translation": "…using figures, characters, conjurations, incantations and many other ceremonies of these hellish arts, such as necromancy, charms, soothsaying, witchcraft and enchantment, delighting in their books, words and names.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is Faustus's career. He was a Doctor of Divinity who threw away Scripture. He associated with men who knew 'the Chaldean, Persian, Hebrew, Arabian, and Greeke tongues', the languages of learned magic, and studied 'Figures, characters, Coniurations' day and night. He called himself 'an Astrologian, and a Mathematician', and 'for a shadow sometimes a Phisitian', curing 'with hearbs, rootes, waters, drinks, receipts, & clisters'. The list joins the whole learned and popular repertoire under one heading, 'infernal Arts'. The ordinary professions of astrologer and physician serve as cover ('for a shadow') for necromancy. The narrator's Lutheran moralising runs through it: 'no man can serue two masters'.", "claimed_effect": "Knowledge of 'the secrets of heauen and earth'; cures", "claimed_mechanism": "Learned languages, figures, characters, names and conjurations", "practitioner": "Doctor John Faustus of Wittenberg", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "A cautionary chapbook; university learning that has turned diabolical.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-62", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Faust Book", "author": "anonymous, translated by 'P. F.' (filed under Christopher Marlowe)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) translation of a German Lutheran chapbook", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1592", "date_sort": 1592, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:christopher_marlowe:efb:opensource", "ref": "1.2.1", "conventional_ref": "English Faust Book, ch. 2", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "into a crosse way, where he made with a wand a Circle in the dust, and within that many more Circles and Characters … to charge him in the name of Beelzebub to appeare", "translation": "Towards evening he came to a crossroads in the wood, drew a circle in the dust with a wand, and inside it many more circles and characters… and commanded him (Mephostophiles) in the name of Beelzebub to appear.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the first conjuration, a full ritual-magic procedure. The time is night (nine or ten o'clock), the place a crossroads in a wood near Wittenberg, the tools a wand, concentric circles and characters, and the spirit is charged in the name of Beelzebub. The devil answers with storm, roaring like lions and rumbling like a thousand wagons, thunder, lightning, then music, and a dragon hovering overhead. Faustus nearly leaves the circle. The circle protects the conjurer, and the noise is the devil's attempt to make him step out. Every element matches the grimoire tradition. The difference is that here the conjurer calls on a prince of devils by name, which removes any pretence of commanding by God.", "claimed_effect": "Summoning the spirit Mephostophiles", "claimed_mechanism": "Circle and characters, charge in the name of Beelzebub, chosen time and place", "practitioner": "Faustus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Invocation of evil spirits was a felony under the English Witchcraft Act of 1563 and capital under that of 1604.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-63", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Faust Book", "author": "anonymous, translated by 'P. F.' (filed under Christopher Marlowe)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) translation of a German Lutheran chapbook", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1592", "date_sort": 1592, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:christopher_marlowe:efb:opensource", "ref": "1.6.1–1.6.2", "conventional_ref": "English Faust Book, ch. 6", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "giuen both bodie & soule, vpon such condition, that they shall learne me, and fulfill my desire in all things … at the end of 24. yeares … I haue written it with mine owne hand and blood", "translation": "I have given both body and soul, on condition that they teach me and fulfil all my desires… at the end of twenty-four years… I have written this with my own hand and blood.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the pact, given as a legal instrument. Faustus lets blood into a saucer on warm ashes, and the chapter heading says he 'writ as followeth'. The text is a contract: 'I couenant and grant with them by these presents', a term of 24 years, full service in the meantime, then body, soul, flesh, blood and goods to be fetched 'wheresoeuer'. It includes an explicit apostasy: 'I defie God and his Christ'. His motive is intellectual. Human teachers could not satisfy his study of 'the course and order of the Elements'. The written blood pact, a legal deed with the devil, is the core of the Faust legend and of learned demonology's theory of the witch's compact.", "claimed_effect": "Twenty-four years of knowledge and service", "claimed_mechanism": "A contract in blood with the 'hellish prince of Orient' and his messenger", "practitioner": "Faustus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "The demonic pact as the defining crime of witchcraft in learned demonology.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-64", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Faust Book", "author": "anonymous, translated by 'P. F.' (filed under Christopher Marlowe)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) translation of a German Lutheran chapbook", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1592", "date_sort": 1592, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:christopher_marlowe:efb:opensource", "ref": "2.24.1", "conventional_ref": "English Faust Book, ch. 24", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "of the which springeth a prodygious monster, or as you call it, a Comet, which is a figure or token appoynted of God as a forewarning of his displeasure", "translation": "From this springs a prodigious monster, or as you call it a comet, which is a sign appointed by God as a warning of his displeasure.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Asked about a comet seen over Eisleben, Faustus gives an astronomical account. A comet arises from the conjunction of sun and moon, the sun its father and the moon its mother, while the moon changes colours. He then adds the theological meaning, that God appoints it as a warning of hunger, plague and war. Physical cause and divine sign are not alternatives: the comet is both. The book's middle section (chapters 17-28) consists of such cosmological questions put to the devil and to Faustus, so the magician is a natural philosopher of sorts. The physics is wrong. The idea that comets are omens was conventional and was then being challenged (Tycho Brahe, 1577).", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of calamity from a comet", "claimed_mechanism": "Conjunction of sun and moon 'begetting' a comet; God's appointment of signs", "practitioner": "Faustus as astrologer", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Comet pamphlets and prodigy literature in Protestant Germany and England.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-65", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Faust Book", "author": "anonymous, translated by 'P. F.' (filed under Christopher Marlowe)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) translation of a German Lutheran chapbook", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1592", "date_sort": 1592, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:christopher_marlowe:efb:opensource", "ref": "3.34.1", "conventional_ref": "English Faust Book, ch. 34", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "willing him that bought him, that in any wise he should not ride him ouer any water … forthwith hee rid him into the riuer, presently the horse vanished from vnder him, and he sate on a bundell of strawe", "translation": "He told the buyer on no account to ride the horse through water… the man promptly rode it into the river, and at once the horse vanished from under him and he was sitting on a bundle of straw.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Faustus sells a conjured horse for 40 dollars at a fair, with the condition that it must not be ridden into water. The buyer does it anyway and finds himself sitting on straw in the river. When he goes to the inn to confront Faustus, he pulls at the sleeping magician's leg and it comes off. He flees, and Faustus keeps the money. Running water dissolves the illusion, a folk belief known from many tales. The joke is a swindle by glamour ('blinding' the senses), told as a merry jest. In chapter 35, Faustus 'eats' most of a cartload of hay for three farthings, and the carter later finds it all there. The text says the onlookers were 'blinded', so the eating was an illusion of the senses.", "claimed_effect": "A horse made from straw; a detachable leg", "claimed_mechanism": "Illusion (glamour) dissolved by running water", "practitioner": "Faustus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Horse-dealing frauds at fairs; the magician as trickster in jest-book tradition.", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-66", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Faust Book", "author": "anonymous, translated by 'P. F.' (filed under Christopher Marlowe)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) translation of a German Lutheran chapbook", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1592", "date_sort": 1592, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:christopher_marlowe:efb:opensource", "ref": "3.47.1", "conventional_ref": "English Faust Book, ch. 47", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "foure Iuglers that cut one anothers head off, and after their cutting off, sent them to the Barber to bee trimmed, which many people saw … a glasse full of distilled water … the chiefe Iugler named it the tree of life", "translation": "…four jugglers who cut off one another's heads and then sent the heads to the barber to be trimmed, which many people saw… a glass of distilled water… the chief juggler called the lily the tree of life.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Professional jugglers at Frankfurt fair perform a decapitation trick. A head is cut off, barbered and replaced, and for each man a lily grows in a glass of distilled water and vanishes when the head is restored. Faustus is jealous ('he meant to haue himselfe the only Cocke in the diuels basket'). He secretly cuts the chief juggler's lily, and that man's head cannot be put back. Decapitation illusions are well known in conjuring literature: Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) explains one such trick, 'to cut off ones head', with a trick table (Scot is not in the library). The book treats the jugglers as real magicians, rivals in the same diabolical trade.", "claimed_effect": "Beheading and restoration; a sympathetic life-token", "claimed_mechanism": "A 'tree of life' lily linked to each man's life", "practitioner": "four itinerant jugglers at Frankfurt fair; Faustus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Fair-ground performers; conjuring as public entertainment shading into diabolism.", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-67", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Faust Book", "author": "anonymous, translated by 'P. F.' (filed under Christopher Marlowe)", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) translation of a German Lutheran chapbook", "language": "eng", "date": "c. 1592", "date_sort": 1592, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:christopher_marlowe:efb:opensource", "ref": "3.45.2", "conventional_ref": "English Faust Book, ch. 45", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "I charge you all that vpon your perils you speake not a word, nor rise vp from the Table so long as she is in your presence. … but that they perswaded themselues she was a Spirit", "translation": "I order you all, on your peril, not to say a word or get up from the table while she is here… (They would have been inflamed) except that they persuaded themselves she was a spirit.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At the students' request Faustus brings Helen of Troy into the room, as he had shown Alexander the Great to the Emperor Charles V. He imposes silence and stillness, the usual rules of necromantic apparitions. The students are dazzled but tell themselves 'she was a Spirit', and so 'such phantasies passed away lightly'. The book insists that the figure is a demon in Helen's shape, not the dead woman herself, since in Protestant theology the dead cannot be recalled. Later (ch. 55) Faustus takes this 'Spirit of fayre Helena' as his paramour, and the theologically inevitable conclusion is intercourse with a demon.", "claimed_effect": "The apparition of a famous dead person", "claimed_mechanism": "A spirit assuming the likeness of the dead; silence and stillness required", "practitioner": "Faustus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Protestant denial that ghosts are the dead; necromancy reinterpreted as demonic impersonation.", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-68", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Shakespeare's Roman Plays and their Background (quoting North's Plutarch, Life of Caesar)", "author": "M. W. MacCallum, quoting Sir Thomas North", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) translation of Plutarch, quoted in a 1910 study", "language": "eng", "date": "1579 (North); quoted 1910", "date_sort": 1579, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:maccallum:maccrplays:opensource", "ref": "5.0.18", "conventional_ref": "North's Plutarch, Life of Caesar (portents before the Ides), quoted by MacCallum ch. on Julius Caesar", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Caesar selfe also doing sacrifice unto the Goddes, found that one of the beastes which was sacrificed had no hart: and that was a straunge thing in nature, how a beast could live without a hart.", "translation": "Caesar himself, sacrificing to the gods, found that one of the sacrificed animals had no heart, which was a strange thing in nature: how could a beast live without a heart?", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is Shakespeare's source for the portents in Julius Caesar. North lists fires in the sky, spirits running in the night, solitary birds in the forum, men seen 'going up and done in fire' (from Strabo), a slave's burning hand unharmed, a heartless sacrificial beast, and the soothsayer's warning with the exchange 'The Ides of Marche be come: So be they … but yet are they not past'. North's 'straunge thing in nature, how a beast could live without a hart' already raises the naturalist's objection inside the omen. Plutarch introduces the list with 'destenie may easier be foreseene then avoyded'.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of Caesar's death", "claimed_mechanism": "Prodigies; haruspicy; a soothsayer", "practitioner": "a soothsayer; Caesar's sacrificing priests", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Roman state divination as transmitted through Plutarch to the Elizabethan stage.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-69", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Shakespeare's Roman Plays and their Background (quoting North's Plutarch, Life of Antony)", "author": "M. W. MacCallum, quoting Sir Thomas North", "culture": "English (Elizabethan) translation of Plutarch, quoted in a 1910 study", "language": "eng", "date": "1579 (North); quoted 1910", "date_sort": 1579, "edition_urn": "engLit:renaissance:maccallum:maccrplays:opensource", "ref": "10.0.7", "conventional_ref": "North's Plutarch, Life of Antony, quoted by MacCallum (on Macbeth's debts to Plutarch)", "source_collection": "Perseus canonical-engLit", "practice_types": [ "divination", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "For thy Demon, said he (that is to say, the good angell and spirit that kepeth thee), is affraied of his … there was one that killed them, and made them out of their witts.", "translation": "'For your daemon,' he said (that is, the good angel and spirit that guards you), 'is afraid of his.' …There was one plant that killed them and drove them out of their wits; whoever ate it lost his memory.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "MacCallum prints two passages of North's Antony that he traces to Macbeth. The first is the soothsayer's warning that Antony's guardian 'Demon', Englished by North as 'the good angell and spirit that kepeth thee', is cowed by Caesar's. Shakespeare reused it in Antony and Cleopatra 2.3 and in Macbeth's 'my Genius is rebuked'. The second is the starving army in Parthia eating an unknown plant that 'made them out of their witts' and destroyed memory. MacCallum argues this is the source of Banquo's 'insane root' (renaissance-english-3). North's translation turns the Greek daimon into a Christian guardian angel. The Parthian herb is a real-world episode of plant poisoning, and modern commentators suggest a tropane plant such as henbane or thorn-apple. That identification is an inference.", "claimed_effect": "A guardian spirit overmastered; madness and amnesia from a plant", "claimed_mechanism": "Rival daemons; a toxic herb", "practitioner": "an Egyptian soothsayer; an unknown herb", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Classical daimonology Christianised in translation; a critic's source study of 1910.", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "renaissance-english-70", "corpus": "renaissance-english", "work": "Basilikon Doron", "author": "James I (James VI of Scotland)", "culture": "Scottish and English royal (Jacobean)", "language": "eng", "date": "1599 (printed; London ed. 1603)", "date_sort": 1599, "edition_urn": "james1.basilikon.perseus-eng1", "ref": "2.6", "conventional_ref": "Basilikon Doron, Book 2", "source_collection": "Perseus Digital Library", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "so is there some horrible crimes that yee are bound in conscience neuer to forgiue: such as Witch-craft, wilfull murther, Incest, (es- pecially within the degrees of consanguinitie) Sodomie, poisoning, and false coine.", "translation": "There are some horrible crimes that you are bound in conscience never to pardon: witchcraft, wilful murder, incest (especially between blood relations), sodomy, poisoning and counterfeiting.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "This is the king's manual for his son Henry. A prince may pardon offences against himself, but some crimes he must never pardon, and witchcraft heads the list, before murder. Placing it beside poisoning and counterfeiting groups crimes that work secretly against life and against the order of the realm. In the same book (2.31) James forbids the prince to 'Consult … with no Necromancier nor false Prophet, vpon the successe of your warres, remembring on king Saules miserable end' (Saul and the witch of Endor) and tells him to 'keepe your land cleane of all South-sayers'. This is the king for whom Macbeth was written, and here he is a legislator. Daemonologie (1597), his treatise on witches, is not in the library.", "claimed_effect": "None", "claimed_mechanism": "None", "practitioner": "none (royal precept)", "practitioner_gender": "none", "social_legal_context": "Royal mirror-for-princes; James presided over the North Berwick examinations (1590-91) and the English Witchcraft Act of 1604 was passed early in his reign.", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-1", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard), Charlemagne cycle", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "3494–3517", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 3494–3517", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "other", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Jules Cesar me nori bien soué ; / Morge li fée , qui tant ot de biauté , / Che fu ma mere ... Fées i vinrent ma mere revider . / Une en i ot qui n’ot mie son gré , / Si me donna tel don que vous véés , / Que jou seroie petis nains bocerés", "translation": "Julius Caesar raised me tenderly; Morgue the fairy, so beautiful, was my mother... Fairies came to visit my mother. One of them was not pleased and gave me the gift you see: that I would be a little hunchbacked dwarf.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Auberon gives his own pedigree: son of Julius Caesar and Morgue la fée. At his birth fairies granted him gifts. An offended fairy made him a dwarf, then relented and made him as beautiful as the summer sun. Another let him know a man's heart, his deeds and his mortal sins. A third (3518–3526) let him be anywhere at a wish. Fairy power comes by birth-gift, not by learning.", "claimed_effect": "Dwarfism, beauty, heart-reading, instant travel", "claimed_mechanism": "Fairy gifts (dons) at birth", "practitioner": "Auberon; fées; Morgue la fée", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Fairy kingship with Roman imperial ancestry; Auberon presents himself as a pious Christian", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-2", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "3231–3255", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 3231–3255", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Fées le fissent en une ille de mer . / Une en i ot qui donna . i . don tel : / Qui le cor ot et tentir et sonner , / S’il est malades , lues revient en santé", "translation": "Fairies made it on an island of the sea. One of them gave it this gift: whoever hears the horn ring and sound, if he is sick, at once returns to health.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Auberon's ivory horn was made by four fairies. It heals anyone who hears it, stills hunger and thirst, makes even the poorest man sing, and Auberon hears it from any land. When he blows it, Huon's party feels no hunger. Elsewhere (3361–3364, 5581–5589) it forces everyone to sing and dance; the emir Gaudise says the horn-blower has come 'pour nous tous encanter'.", "claimed_effect": "Healing, satiety, compulsory singing and dancing, summoning", "claimed_mechanism": "Fairy gift built into the object; sound", "practitioner": "Fées (makers); Auberon and Huon (users)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-3", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "3161–3190", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 3161–3190", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Car il fera et plovoir et venter , / Arbres brisier et fort esquarteler ... Vous fera il une riviere tel / C’on i poroit grant navie mener ... C’ert tous fantomes canque vous i verés : / Tout à sec pié par l’aige paserés", "translation": "For he will make it rain and blow, break trees and split them... He will make you such a river that a great fleet could sail on it... All you see there will be phantoms: you will cross the water dry-shod.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Gériaume warns Huon about the dwarf of the forest. Auberon raises storms and creates a river and a ship, but these are 'fantomes', illusions. Anyone who answers him is caught for ever, so silence is the defence. The poet himself frames fairy weather-magic as illusion, not real change.", "claimed_effect": "Storms, phantom river and ship; captivity of anyone who speaks to him", "claimed_mechanism": "Fairy illusion (fantomes); a speech taboo", "practitioner": "Auberon", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-4", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "3646–3679", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 3646–3679", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "other", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "De se main destre l’a trois fois enviré , / Puis fist crois sus de Dieu de maïsté ; / Lors devint plains de vin et de claré ... C’est de par Dieu que chis hanas est tés ... Nus n’i puet boire s’il n’est preudom par Dé , / Et nes et purs et sans pecié mortel .", "translation": "With his right hand he turned it three times around, then made the sign of God's cross over it; it then filled with wine and spiced wine... 'It is from God that this cup is so... No one can drink from it unless he is a worthy man before God, clean, pure and without mortal sin.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Auberon's golden cup fills when he circles it three times and makes the sign of the cross. It gives wine only to the sinless. Auberon insists the power is God's ('Le grant pooir que Jhesus m'a donné, / En faerie fai jou ma volenté'). Huon, who has just confessed to the pope, drinks, but still remarks 'vous savés encanter'. Fairy power and Christian sacrament are fused: the cup works as a moral test, a kind of ordeal.", "claimed_effect": "Endless wine; it detects sin", "claimed_mechanism": "God-given fairy power, circling gesture and sign of the cross; the drinker's state of grace", "practitioner": "Auberon", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-5", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "10195–10224", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 10195–10224 (cf. 6599–6611)", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Li rois le prent , k’il ne l’ose véer ; / Lues qu’il le tint , li vins en est alés . / Vasal , dist Karles , vous m’avés encanté » / Dist Auberons : « Ains fait vo mauvaisté", "translation": "The king takes it, not daring to refuse; as soon as he held it, the wine vanished. 'Vassal,' said Charles, 'you have bewitched me!' Auberon said: 'No, it is your own wickedness that does it.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "At the end, the cup empties in Charlemagne's hand. Auberon hints at a grave sin the emperor never confessed (traditionally the incest that produced Roland). Earlier (6599–6611) the same thing happens to the emir Gaudise, who says 'Vous m'avés encanté' and gets the same reply. Those exposed call it enchantment; the poem calls it moral truth made visible. The charge of magic is the guilty party's excuse.", "claimed_effect": "Exposure of hidden sin", "claimed_mechanism": "The cup's 'dignité' reacting to the drinker's sin", "practitioner": "Auberon; Huon", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-6", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "3706–3729", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 3706–3729", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Que se tu cornes ce cor d’ivoire cler , / Que jou ne l’oie à Monmur , ma cité ; ... En me compaigne . cm . hommes armés ... Jou te deffenc , sour les membres coper , / Que ja por nient n’aies le cor sonné", "translation": "If you blow this bright ivory horn, I will hear it in Monmur, my city... I will come with a hundred thousand armed men... I forbid you, on pain of losing your limbs, ever to sound the horn without need.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Auberon gives Huon the horn as a summoning device, with an absolute taboo on blowing it without real need, and a parallel ban on lying (3700–3702). The gift's power depends on the receiver's loyalty and truthfulness. Huon's later breaches drive much of the plot.", "claimed_effect": "Summons a fairy army from 400 leagues", "claimed_mechanism": "Sound heard by the fairy king; a binding taboo", "practitioner": "Auberon", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-7", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "5055–5073", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 5055–5073", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability", "protection-amulet", "rune-writing-magic" ], "excerpt_original": "Ce dist la letre qui est ens el coler / Que nus ne puet le hauberc endosser , / S’il n’est preudons et sans pecié mortel ... S’il ciet en eu , il ne puet esfondrer , / S’il ciet ens fu , il ne puet enbraser .", "translation": "So says the inscription on the collar: no one can put on the hauberk unless he is a worthy man without mortal sin... If he falls into water he cannot sink; if he falls into fire he cannot burn.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The giant of Dunostre describes the hauberk he took from Auberon. Its inscribed collar states the rule: only a sinless man can wear it, and only if his mother never desired anyone but her husband. Its wearer cannot be beaten in arms, drowned or burned. The giant swears 'par Mahom' that he has tested it. Later (5556–5561) a serpent guarding a fountain bows to Huon 'par le vertu del haubert'.", "claimed_effect": "Invulnerability; it cannot sink or burn", "claimed_mechanism": "The armour's inherent virtue (vertu, dignité); an inscription; the chastity of the wearer's lineage", "practitioner": "Auberon (former owner); the giant Orgueilleux", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-8", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "3609–3621", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 3609–3621", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Li fausdestuef fu de tel disnité , / S’il ciet en fu , il ne puet embraser ; ... Car ne puet estre por riens envenimés , / Por nul venin ne puet estre grevés : / Tantost le voit c’on li a aporté", "translation": "The faldstool was of such worth that if it fell into fire it could not burn... nor could anyone sitting on it be poisoned or harmed by any venom: he sees at once that it has been brought to him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A fairy-made seat, passed from Alexander to Caesar to Auberon, protects its occupant from fire and poison and reveals poison in whatever is brought to him. This is a literary form of the real courtly fear of poisoning and of 'poison-detecting' objects.", "claimed_effect": "Protection against poison and fire; detects poison", "claimed_mechanism": "Fairy craftsmanship; the object's virtue", "practitioner": "Fées; Alexander; Caesar; Auberon", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-9", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "4563–4571; 5236–5239", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 4563–4571, 5236–5239", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Et s’a . ii . hommes à l’entrer de l’ostel ; / Tout sont de keuvre et fait et compasé , / Si tient cascuns . i . flaiel acouplé ... Et a l’engien maintenant jus jeté / U li doi homme estoient conpassé", "translation": "And there are two men at the entrance of the hall, all of copper, made and engineered, each holding a jointed flail... [Later:] and she at once threw down the mechanism to which the two men were fitted.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The castle of Dunostre, which Julius Caesar had built, is guarded by two copper men who beat iron flails without stopping, so that not even a lark can get through. A captive girl stops them by 'throwing down the engien'. The poet treats them as machinery, not demons: a mechanism someone can switch off.", "claimed_effect": "Perpetual guarding of a gate", "claimed_mechanism": "An engine (engien) of copper figures", "practitioner": "Julius Caesar (builder); a captive maiden", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-10", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "5346–5366", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 5346–5366", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "Si le saras , j’ai à non Malabron , / De le maisnie sui au roi Auberon ; ... Que jou seroie . xxx . ans en mer luiton ... Car je m’en vois ens en ma pel entrer .", "translation": "'You shall know it: my name is Malabron. I belong to King Auberon's household... [my lord gave me this lot,] that I should be a sea-goblin for thirty years... For I am going to get into my skin.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Malabron, a fairy of Auberon's household, serves a penance of thirty years as a 'luiton' (goblin, sprite) in the sea. He puts on an animal skin to carry Huon across the Red Sea dry-shod, and tells Huon to cross himself. Helping Huon doubles his penance. The fairy world runs on Christian penitential logic.", "claimed_effect": "Shape-shifting into a sea creature; ferrying a man across the sea", "claimed_mechanism": "Putting on a skin; fairy service and penance", "practitioner": "Malabron", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-11", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "5539–5563", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 5539–5563", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "healing", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "De paradis vient li ruis sans fauser . ... Que se il puet el ruis ses mains laver , / Que lues ne soit meschins et bacelers . ... Que , s’ele boit de l’aige . i . seul petit , / Ne soit pucele comme au jour ke nasqui .", "translation": "The stream truly comes from Paradise... whoever can wash his hands in it at once becomes a youth again... any woman who drinks even a little of the water becomes a virgin as on the day she was born.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the emir Gaudise's orchard a fountain fed by the river of Paradise makes old men young and restores virginity to women. A serpent kills any traitor or oath-breaker who touches it, but bows to Huon because of his hauberk. In the same lines Huon forgets his errand (5563).", "claimed_effect": "Rejuvenation; restored virginity; death to traitors", "claimed_mechanism": "Water from the earthly Paradise; a guardian serpent", "practitioner": "none (natural marvel); owned by the emir Gaudise", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Saracen court as a place of marvels", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-12", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "5531–5534", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 5531–5534", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Bien sai de voir diables m’encanta / Quant je menti à ce pont par delà", "translation": "I know for sure the devil bewitched me when I lied at that bridge back there.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Huon blames his lie (claiming to be a Saracen to pass a bridge), which breaks Auberon's ban, on diabolic enchantment. In this poem 'enchanter' can mean the devil's inner pull towards sin, not only outward sorcery.", "claimed_effect": "Moral lapse, a lie", "claimed_mechanism": "Diabolic enchantment of the will", "practitioner": "the devil", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-13", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "8996–9001", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 8996–9001", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Vés là Geriaume qui les a u costé ; / Deseur le hance les a enséelés , / Car là les mist Auberons li faés , / Par faerie , par le Diu volonté .", "translation": "'See Gériaume there, who has them in his side; they are sealed up above his hip, for Auberon the fairy put them there, by fairy power, by the will of God.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The emir's four molars and white whiskers, the tokens Charlemagne demanded, are kept sealed inside old Gériaume's hip by Auberon. The refrain 'par faerie, par le Dieu volenté', which recurs at 4500, 6642, 6688 and 9739, explicitly sets fairy magic under God's will.", "claimed_effect": "Objects stored inside a living body", "claimed_mechanism": "Fairy power sanctioned by God", "practitioner": "Auberon", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-14", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "10355–10368", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 10355–10368", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Ains les souhaide là sus emmi les prés , / Que il i soient tous . iiii . traïné , / Par faerie et par ma disnité . / A unes fourqes soit Gerars encrués", "translation": "'Instead I wish them up there in the meadows, that all four be dragged there, by fairy power and by my dignity. Let Gérard be hung on a gallows...'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Auberon's power works by wishing (souhaidier). He wishes the traitors Gérard and Gibouard, and the abbot and monk who bore false witness, onto gallows, and it happens at once ('Tantost i furent com il l'ot devisé'). Here fairy magic is used as justice: punishing perjury and treason.", "claimed_effect": "Instant transport and execution", "claimed_mechanism": "The fairy king's spoken wish", "practitioner": "Auberon", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Supernatural punishment of false witnesses, including clergy", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-15", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Huon de Bordeaux", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Picard)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1260–1268", "date_sort": 1265, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-huong:dipl", "ref": "10452–10458", "conventional_ref": "Huon de Bordeaux vv. 10452–10458", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Je ne veul plus au siecle demorer , / Là sus m’en veul em paradis aler , / Car nostre Sires le m’a certes mandé ... Mes sieges est à son destre costé ; / En faerie ne veul plus arester .", "translation": "'I no longer wish to stay in the world; I want to go up into Paradise, for Our Lord has summoned me... my seat is at his right side; I will not remain in Faerie any longer.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Auberon leaves Faerie for Paradise, where his seat is at God's right hand, and hands his realm to Huon. Faerie is a Christian holding, not the Devil's domain: the strongest possible statement that this fairy magic is legitimate.", "claimed_effect": "A fairy king's salvation and transfer of his power", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine summons", "practitioner": "Auberon", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-16", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Aymeri de Narbonne", "author": "Anonymous (attrib. Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube)", "culture": "Old French, Guillaume d'Orange cycle", "language": "", "date": "c. 1210–1220", "date_sort": 1215, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-aimerid:dipl", "ref": "3507–3527", "conventional_ref": "Aymeri de Narbonne vv. 3507–3527", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Avoit .j. arbre q an i ot fet ovrer / Fet fu de coivre si l ot en fet dorer ... Li enchanteres fist forment a loer ... Par nigromance i fait le vent entrer / Encontremont par le tuel monter / Qant li vanz sofle les oisiax fet chanter", "translation": "There was a tree that had been made there, of copper, and gilded... The enchanter was much to be praised... By nigromancy he makes the wind go in and rise up through the pipe; when the wind blows it makes the birds sing.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the emir's palace at Babylon stands a gilded copper tree, cast in a mould, with pairs of birds of every kind. An 'enchanteres' uses 'nigromance' to drive wind up a pipe, and the birds sing so sweetly that an angry man forgets his anger; the song can be started and stopped at will. It is a clear echo of the real singing-bird automata of Byzantine and Abbasid courts. The text calls the engineering 'nigromance' while describing pipes and wind.", "claimed_effect": "Singing artificial birds; anger soothed", "claimed_mechanism": "'Nigromance' – in practice wind driven through a pipe", "practitioner": "an enchanteres in the emir's service", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Saracen court as a place of marvellous technology", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-17", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Aymeri de Narbonne", "author": "Anonymous (attrib. Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube)", "culture": "Old French", "language": "", "date": "c. 1210–1220", "date_sort": 1215, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-aimerid:dipl", "ref": "1043–1048", "conventional_ref": "Aymeri de Narbonne vv. 1043–1048", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Qant veu l ont Sarrazin et Persant / Dist l un a l autre Molt sont Francois sachant / Or nos amoinent .j. enchantement grant / Tuit somes mort vaincu et recreant", "translation": "When the Saracens and Persians saw it, they said to one another: 'The French are very clever. Now they are bringing a great enchantment against us; we are all dead, beaten and defeated.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Charlemagne's carpenters build a siege tower (berfroi) overnight, working by lantern light. The defenders call it an 'enchantement'. The poem shows that the label 'enchantment' attaches to unfamiliar technology seen from the losing side.", "claimed_effect": "Terror; the city's expected fall", "claimed_mechanism": "Military engineering misread as enchantment", "practitioner": "Charlemagne's engineers Morant, Savari and Jordant", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-18", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Aymeri de Narbonne", "author": "Anonymous (attrib. Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube)", "culture": "Old French", "language": "", "date": "c. 1210–1220", "date_sort": 1215, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-aimerid:dipl", "ref": "4411–4418", "conventional_ref": "Aymeri de Narbonne vv. 4411–4418", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Manda .j. mire sanz plus de demoree / Paiens fu ja d outre la mer salee / Une poison a molt tost destranpee ... El cors li a la poison avalee / Ainz que venist au main a l ajornee / Fu il plus sains que n est pome paree", "translation": "He sent at once for a physician, who had been a pagan from beyond the salt sea; he quickly mixed a potion... bound his wound and made the potion go down into him; before morning came he was sounder than a peeled apple.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "On his wedding night the wounded Aymeri sends for a mire (physician) who was once a pagan from overseas. A mixed potion ('poison' here means a drink) and a bandage heal him overnight. Overseas, formerly pagan medicine is trusted and presented as skill, not magic.", "claimed_effect": "Overnight healing of a wound", "claimed_mechanism": "A compounded potion and bandaging", "practitioner": "a mire, an ex-pagan physician", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-19", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Anseïs de Metz", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Lorraine cycle)", "language": "", "date": "late 13th c.", "date_sort": 1290, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:transcr-ansmetz-u:dipl", "ref": "33r.301–33r.324", "conventional_ref": "Anseïs de Metz, ms U f. 33r, ll. 301–324", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "pꝛeſ l apͥſt le cl͛rc auſtrologıe / Ce eſt .ı. art quı́ mout eſt couoıtıe ... Par ıceſt art fu Joſeph treſtot ſı́re / Ꝺe pharaon ... Ꝑ ıceſt art ſoꝛent ıe vos pleuıs / tvıt lı troı roı ... par l eſtoıle qͥ aꝑut auſı", "translation": "After that the clerk learned astrology; it is an art much coveted... By this art Joseph became lord of Pharaoh and all his court... By this art, I promise you, the three kings knew... by the star that appeared.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A clerk's curriculum is described art by art. Astrology brings wealth and honour, foretells which champion will win, and was used by the Roman senators before battles. Joseph rose under Pharaoh by it, and the Magi found Christ by the star. Astrology is presented as a respectable, biblically validated science.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of the future and of battles; finding Christ", "claimed_mechanism": "The stars (estoile), learned from books", "practitioner": "a clerk (unnamed in the opened lines)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Clerical learning of the seven arts", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-20", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Anseïs de Metz", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French (Lorraine cycle)", "language": "", "date": "late 13th c.", "date_sort": 1290, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:transcr-ansmetz-u:dipl", "ref": "33r.325–33r.347", "conventional_ref": "Anseïs de Metz, ms U f. 33r, ll. 325–347", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "necromancy", "divination", "transformation", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "a nıgromance au ꝺeraın le mıſt / Ce eſt .vn. art ꝺeſ vı. le pl⁹ haı́s / Q̃r lı ꝺeableſ en eſt tot poſteıs ... Par ıceſt art ſoıt l en leſ larecıns ... De luı meıſme faıt bıen vne ꝑtrıs", "translation": "Nigromancy he put last. It is the most hated of the arts, for the devil holds full power over it; whoever learns this art is not much hated by the devil... By this art one knows of thefts... he can make himself into a partridge.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The last art the clerk learns is nigromance, called the most hated art and the devil's domain. Yet he can name thieves, understand dogs' barking and every bird's speech, turn himself into a partridge or falcon, turn two torches into two horses, escape any prison and take a castle without bloodshed. The barons at once wish he were with them to destroy their enemies. The art is both condemned and coveted. The reading 'des vi.' ('of the six', or a slip for seven) is uncertain.", "claimed_effect": "Detecting thefts, understanding animal speech, shape-shifting, illusory horses, prison escape, bloodless conquest", "claimed_mechanism": "Diabolic power acquired through a book-learned art", "practitioner": "a clerk", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Nigromance as the last of a curriculum of arts; useful in war despite being 'haïs'", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-21", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Fierabras", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French", "language": "", "date": "c. 1190–1200 (fragment V)", "date_sort": 1195, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:transcr-fier-v:norm", "ref": "71–81", "conventional_ref": "Fierabras, fragment V, vv. 71–81", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Si sa ceínture avoies a flori. emblee / ja puís francois n aroient vers nos nule duree ... Tant com la ceínture aient n ert la tor afamee", "translation": "'If you had stolen her girdle from Floripas, the French could never hold out against us... As long as they have the girdle, the tower will never be starved.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The emir hires the master thief Malpin to steal Floripas's girdle. While the besieged French hold it, the tower cannot be starved. This verifies the lead about the hunger-banishing girdle. The famous healing balm of Fierabras is not in this 196-line fragment.", "claimed_effect": "Immunity from famine under siege", "claimed_mechanism": "The girdle's inherent virtue", "practitioner": "Floripas (owner)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-22", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Fierabras", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French", "language": "", "date": "c. 1190–1200 (fragment V)", "date_sort": 1195, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:transcr-fier-v:norm", "ref": "89–121", "conventional_ref": "Fierabras, fragment V, vv. 89–121", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery", "poison-drug", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "une chandele a prise au feu l a alumee / vínt a l us de la chambre si la trova fermee / et il a dit son charme tantost est deffermee ... Si a noz gent li lerre soduíte et enchantee ... La chandele au larron est adonc anublee / Onc plus l enchantement n ot la dedenz duree", "translation": "He took a candle and lit it at the fire, came to the chamber door and found it locked; he said his charm and at once it was unlocked... So the thief had beguiled and enchanted our men... Then the thief's candle went dark; the enchantment lasted no longer in there.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Malpin climbs the tower, lights a candle, opens the locked door with a charm and puts the French knights into an enchanted sleep. He finds the girdle and tries to rape Floripas. Gui de Bourgogne cuts him in two, the candle goes out and the enchantment ends. The girdle falls into the sea and is lost. This is a burglar's magic of charm and sleep-candle, close to later 'thief's candle' lore.", "claimed_effect": "Doors unlocked; sleepers kept asleep", "claimed_mechanism": "A spoken charm; a lit candle whose flame sustains the spell", "practitioner": "Malpin, master thief in the emir's service", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Criminal magic for hire", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-23", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Otinel", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French / Anglo-Norman", "language": "", "date": "c. 1220–1250", "date_sort": 1235, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-oting:dipl", "ref": "0258.1319–0258.1324", "conventional_ref": "Otinel vv. 1319–1324 (cf. ms B, norm. 1207–1208)", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "« Foul , as tu donc ta bone loi guerpie ? / « Enchanté es , si as béu oublie / « Par quoi ces mires font avoir estoutie .", "translation": "'Fool, have you then abandoned your good faith? You are enchanted: you have drunk a draught of forgetting, by which these physicians cause madness.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Saracen Clarel explains Otinel's conversion as enchantment by a drug of oblivion brewed by doctors. The Anglo-Norman ms B reads 'si as beu l'esterlie / de quei cil mirie destemprent l'esturdie' ('you have drunk the potion with which those physicians mix stupefaction'). The poem itself credits a miracle (see romance-medieval-24): magic is the pagan's explanation of Christian grace.", "claimed_effect": "Forgetfulness, loss of one's faith", "claimed_mechanism": "A drugged drink mixed by physicians", "practitioner": "mires (physicians), as alleged by a Saracen", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-24", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Otinel", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French / Anglo-Norman", "language": "", "date": "c. 1220–1250", "date_sort": 1235, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-oting:dipl", "ref": "0235.615–0235.625", "conventional_ref": "Otinel vv. 615–625", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "A ces paroles vint . I . colon volant blant ; / Karles le vit et tote l ' autre gent . / Saint Espirit sus Otinel descent , / Le cuer li mue par le Jhiesu commant", "translation": "At these words a white dove came flying; Charles saw it, and all the others. The Holy Spirit descends upon Otinel and changes his heart at Jesus' command.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The French pray and a white dove, the Holy Spirit, descends on the Saracen champion mid-duel and changes his heart; Otinel renounces Mahom, Tervagant, Apolin and Jupiter. This is the legitimate miracle against which the pagan accusation of 'enchantment' (romance-medieval-23) is set.", "claimed_effect": "Instant conversion", "claimed_mechanism": "Prayer answered by the Holy Spirit", "practitioner": "God, answering the prayers of the French", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-25", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Otinel", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French / Anglo-Norman", "language": "", "date": "c. 1220–1250", "date_sort": 1235, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-oting:dipl", "ref": "0251.1093–0251.1100", "conventional_ref": "Otinel vv. 1093–1100 (cf. 1358–1362)", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "Ses plaies levent , si l[e] mettent culchier . / D ' une herbe duce li donent à mangier , / Ke Deu méisme planta en sun vergier ; / Seine at à nun , tel pot hum préiser . / Cil dormi tost", "translation": "They wash his wounds and put him to bed. They give him a sweet herb to eat, which God himself planted in his garden; its name is 'Seine' (Healthy)... He soon fell asleep, and when he woke he felt light and sounder than a plum on the tree.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The captured Ogier is disarmed by (Saracen) women, his wounds washed, and he is fed the herb 'Seine'. He sleeps and wakes healed. A sedating, wound-healing herb is credited to God's own garden. Ordinary camp medicine appears too: 'Cil mire portent oingnemenz par ces prez ... Et les malades ont toz medecinez' (0260.1360–1362).", "claimed_effect": "Sleep and rapid healing", "claimed_mechanism": "A God-planted medicinal herb; washing; rest", "practitioner": "women caring for the captive Ogier", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-26", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Floovant", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French", "language": "", "date": "c. 1200", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-floovg:dipl", "ref": "1216–1223; 1772–1779; 2172–2177", "conventional_ref": "Floovant vv. 1216–1223, 1772–1779, 2172–2177", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Lai a une herbe prise que li donai .I. mires , / Si en a oint son cors , son vis et sa poitrine : / Plus ot noire la char que poiz qui est bolie .", "translation": "There he took a herb that a physician had given him, and anointed his body, his face and his chest with it: his flesh became blacker than boiled pitch.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Richier blackens his skin with a herb from a mire so he can pass as a Saracen. Later the princess Maugalie does the same to pass as a Moorish man (1774–1779), and removes the dye with an ointment and a bath (2173–2176: 'La blenchour li revint'). This is a disguise by plant dye, reversible and practical, never called enchantment.", "claimed_effect": "Change of skin colour and identity; reversal", "claimed_mechanism": "A herbal stain; an ointment and washing to remove it", "practitioner": "Richier; Maugalie; a mire who supplied the herb", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-27", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Floovant", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French", "language": "", "date": "c. 1200", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-floovg:dipl", "ref": "739–745", "conventional_ref": "Floovant vv. 739–745", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Lai ot .I. Sarazin qui ot non Jacobé , / Tot vaz et tot chenu , car .C. anz ot passez . / De la loi Maonmont fut si argumantez / Et si sout des estoiles et dou cours de la mer", "translation": "There was a Saracen named Jacobé, all hoary and white, for he was past a hundred. He was so well versed in the law of Mahomet, and knew about the stars and the course of the sea...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The nearest thing in these chansons to a Saracen priest: an aged preacher of 'Mahom's law' who also knows the stars and tides, and preaches at the great feasts. Star-knowledge belongs to the pagan clergy.", "claimed_effect": "Learning about the stars and the sea", "claimed_mechanism": "Knowledge, not ritual", "practitioner": "Jacobé, Saracen preacher", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-28", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Mort Aymeri de Narbonne", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French, Guillaume cycle", "language": "", "date": "c. 1180–1200", "date_sort": 1190, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-mortaymc:dipl", "ref": "1984–2006", "conventional_ref": "Mort Aymeri vv. 1984–2006", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "Dist . iiiparoles de sainte Trinité / Et de la croiz de la crestienté , / Dont estanchierent les plaies criminels ; / Et de vin blanc li a fetes lavers ; / Un oignement tret d’un escrin paré", "translation": "She said three words of the Holy Trinity and of the cross of Christendom, by which the deadly wounds were staunched; and she had them washed with white wine; she took an ointment from a fine casket...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The leader of the maidens of Femenie (the Amazons) heals Bernart's mortal wounds. She says three Trinitarian words, washes the wounds with white wine and applies an ointment said to come from Christ's burial, kept by Nicodemus and brought to Femenie by Longinus. Ritual words, a practical antiseptic and a relic-drug are combined, all presented as legitimate. Ordinary first aid also appears: Guibert applies an ointment and bandage at 1848–1850.", "claimed_effect": "Healing of mortal wounds", "claimed_mechanism": "Trinitarian formula, wine washing, a relic ointment from the Passion", "practitioner": "the mistress of the women of Femenie", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Female healers from an exotic women's land", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-29", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Mort Aymeri de Narbonne", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French", "language": "", "date": "c. 1180–1200", "date_sort": 1190, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-mortaymc:dipl", "ref": "490–491", "conventional_ref": "Mort Aymeri vv. 490–491", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "« Car je me muir , l’en le m’a deviné , / « Uns miens provoire qui est des arz parez . »", "translation": "'For I am dying; it has been foretold to me by a priest of mine who is accomplished in the arts.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Aymeri knows he is dying because his own priest, learned 'in the arts', has divined it. Foretelling is legitimate when it comes from a learned cleric. 'Deviner' covers both prognosis and prophecy.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of death", "claimed_mechanism": "Clerical learning (arz)", "practitioner": "a priest (provoire)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-30", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Mort Aymeri de Narbonne", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French", "language": "", "date": "c. 1180–1200", "date_sort": 1190, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-mortaymc:dipl", "ref": "1182–1185", "conventional_ref": "Mort Aymeri vv. 1182–1185", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "invisibility-invulnerability" ], "excerpt_original": "Plaine sa lance l’abat del destrier sor . / Bien le garissent deable de la mort , / Car en char ne le toche .", "translation": "With his full lance he knocks him from his sorrel horse. The devils certainly save him from death, for it does not touch his flesh.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The narrator puts the Saracen emir's survival of a lance-thrust down to devilish protection. Pagan invulnerability is demonic, against the Christian 'Damedex le garda' (cf. Fierabras V 3).", "claimed_effect": "Escape from a fatal blow", "claimed_mechanism": "Protection by devils", "practitioner": "devils, protecting a Saracen emir", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-31", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Mort Aymeri de Narbonne", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French", "language": "", "date": "c. 1180–1200", "date_sort": 1190, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-mortaymc:dipl", "ref": "3353–3359", "conventional_ref": "Mort Aymeri vv. 3353–3359", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "« Ce ne sont pas Paien ne Sarrazin , / « Mès Sajetaire a qui ja Dex n’aïts ; / « Des ars turquois tréent par tel aïr , / « Les granz quarriax entoschiez de venin .", "translation": "'These are not pagans or Saracens but Sagittaires, may God never help them; they shoot from Turkish bows with such force, great bolts poisoned with venom, against which no armour can protect...'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Sagittaires (centaur-like archers) use poisoned arrows that no hauberk can stop. Poison here is a weapon technology, not sorcery. 'Darz teint en venim' also appears in CATMuS, Cologne, Bodmer 168 (#66531, Otinel ms).", "claimed_effect": "Lethal wounds", "claimed_mechanism": "Poison-smeared arrows", "practitioner": "Sagittaires", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-32", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Gui de Bourgogne", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French, Charlemagne cycle", "language": "", "date": "c. 1200–1230", "date_sort": 1215, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-guibourgg:dipl", "ref": "4375–4384", "conventional_ref": "Gui de Bourgogne vv. 4375–4384", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "binding-curse", "weather-nature" ], "excerpt_original": "Et Karles se coucha desor l' erbe en la prée , / S' a faite .I. orison bien faite et enparlée ... Que la citez est toute en abysme coulée , / Et par desus les murs tote d' eve rasée , / Si est assés plus noire que n' est pois destemprée", "translation": "Charles lay down on the grass in the meadow and made a well-composed, eloquent prayer... and the city sank wholly into the abyss, the water level with its walls, blacker than melted pitch.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Charlemagne's prayer curses Luiserne so that no one may covet it again. The city sinks into a black lake whose walls still show red 'and are still seen by those who go to that region'. A curse by prayer, which is legitimate. In the same way God's wind wrecks the fleeing Aquilant's galley (4302–4311). The miracle explains a landscape (cf. Pseudo-Turpin's Lucerna).", "claimed_effect": "A city sunk beneath a lake", "claimed_mechanism": "The king's prayer answered by God", "practitioner": "Charlemagne", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-33", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Gui de Bourgogne", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French", "language": "", "date": "c. 1200–1230", "date_sort": 1215, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-guibourgg:dipl", "ref": "842–854", "conventional_ref": "Gui de Bourgogne vv. 842–854", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "« Anuit sonjai .I. songe , je nel vous quier noier , ... « Une si bele gent an issi sans targier , / « Com se ce fuissent angre qui doivent flamboier . ... « Naimes , dist l' emperere , se Dieu plaist , ce ert biens . »", "translation": "'Last night I dreamed a dream, I will not hide it... such fair people came out at once, as if they were flaming angels... rain, hail and white snow fell on you...' 'Naimes,' said the emperor, 'God willing, it will be good.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A prophetic dream, told and interpreted cautiously, foreshadows the arrival of the young army. Dream-reading is the normal, lawful kind of divination in the chansons; compare Gérard's dream of three leopards tearing out his heart in Huon de Bordeaux 593–597.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge", "claimed_mechanism": "A dream sent by God, interpreted", "practitioner": "Naimes (dreamer); Charlemagne (interpreter)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-34", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Doon de la Roche", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French", "language": "", "date": "late 12th–early 13th c.", "date_sort": 1200, "edition_urn": "urn:geste:ed-doonrochem-num:dipl", "ref": "115–116; 2956–2958", "conventional_ref": "Doon de la Roche vv. 115–116, 2956–2958", "source_collection": "Geste", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": ".I. losengiers du regne les a toz enchantez ; / Il avoit nom Tomiles , .j. traïtres mortex . ... Tant enchanta le duc qu' i[l] li dona sa fille .", "translation": "A flatterer of the realm bewitched them all; his name was Tomile, a deadly traitor... He so bewitched the duke that he gave him his daughter.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Here 'enchanter' means to beguile by flattery and slander. The traitor Tomile 'enchants' the court and the duke 'par engien' (2956) into repudiating Olive. No sorcery is involved. The word's range runs from literal magic to manipulation.", "claimed_effect": "Manipulation of a lord's judgement", "claimed_mechanism": "Flattery, lies, a trick (engien)", "practitioner": "Tomile, a losengier (flatterer)", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-35", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "9.22–9.27", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 9.22–27", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Ver è ch'altra fiata qua giù fui, / congiurato da quella Eritón cruda / che richiamava l'ombre a' corpi sui. / Di poco era di me la carne nuda, / ch'ella mi fece intrar dentr'a quel muro, / per trarne un spirto del cerchio di Giuda.", "translation": "True, I was down here once before, conjured by that cruel Erichtho who called shades back to their bodies. My flesh had not long been stripped of me when she made me enter within that wall to draw out a spirit from Judas' circle.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Virgil reveals that the Thessalian witch Erichtho, Lucan's necromancer, once compelled him to fetch a soul from the lowest circle. It is a story with no ancient source, invented by Dante, which grants that necromantic compulsion could work on the dead. It also chimes with Virgil's medieval reputation as a magician.", "claimed_effect": "Recall of a damned soul into a corpse", "claimed_mechanism": "Conjuration (congiurare) that binds a shade", "practitioner": "Erichtho", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-36", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "9.52–9.63; 9.89–9.90", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 9.52–63, 89–90", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "transformation", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Vegna Medusa: sì 'l farem di smalto», ... O voi ch'avete li 'ntelletti sani, / mirate la dottrina che s'asconde / sotto 'l velame de li versi strani. ... Venne a la porta e con una verghetta / l'aperse", "translation": "'Let Medusa come, so we may turn him to stone'... O you who have sound minds, look at the doctrine hidden beneath the veil of the strange verses... He came to the gate and opened it with a little wand.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The Furies threaten petrification by the Gorgon; Virgil covers Dante's eyes. Dante then tells the reader to read allegorically. The heavenly messenger opens Dis with a mere wand, a holy counterpart to the magician's rod. The episode shows magic recast as allegory.", "claimed_effect": "Turning to stone; opening a locked gate", "claimed_mechanism": "The Gorgon's gaze; heaven's authority, symbolised by a wand", "practitioner": "the Furies; a messenger from heaven", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-37", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "11.52–11.60", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 11.52–60", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "onde nel cerchio secondo s'annida / ipocresia, lusinghe e chi affattura, / falsità, ladroneccio e simonia, / ruffian, baratti e simile lordura.", "translation": "So in the second circle nest hypocrisy, flattery and whoever casts spells, falsification, theft and simony, pimps, barratry and such filth.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In Virgil's map of Hell, sorcery ('chi affattura') is a sub-kind of fraud against those who do not trust you. It is classed with flattery and falsification, not with violence or heresy. Dante's moral taxonomy treats magic as deception.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Fraud", "practitioner": "sorcerers (affatturatori)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-38", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "20.10–20.18", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 20.10–18", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "ché da le reni era tornato 'l volto, / e in dietro venir li convenia, / perché 'l veder dinanzi era lor tolto. / Forse per forza già di parlasia / si travolse così alcun del tutto; / ma io nol vidi, né credo che sia.", "translation": "For the face was turned towards the loins, and they had to walk backwards, since seeing ahead was taken from them. Perhaps through the force of palsy someone was once twisted so completely; but I never saw it, nor do I believe it is so.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The diviners walk with their heads twisted backwards: those who tried to see ahead now see behind. Dante pauses for a naturalistic aside, asking whether paralysis could produce such a twist, and doubts it. It is a rare medical reflex inside a punishment scene.", "claimed_effect": "Punishment of forbidden foresight", "claimed_mechanism": "Contrapasso (punishment mirroring the sin); Dante tests it against a medical cause, 'parlasia'", "practitioner": "diviners (indovini)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "naturalistic-explanation", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-39", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "20.31–20.51", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 20.31–51", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "transformation", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Vedi Tiresia, che mutò sembiante / quando di maschio femmina divenne, ... Aronta è quel ch'al ventre li s'atterga, / ... ebbe tra ' bianchi marmi la spelonca / per sua dimora; onde a guardar le stelle / e 'l mar non li era la veduta tronca.", "translation": "See Tiresias, who changed his appearance when from male he became female... Aruns is the one backed against his belly, who in the hills of Luni had a cave among the white marbles for his home, from which his view of the stars and the sea was not cut off.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Amphiaraus, swallowed by the earth at Thebes; Tiresias, who changed sex by striking serpents with his rod; and the Etruscan haruspex Aruns (from Lucan), who watched the stars from a marble cave at Carrara. All are classical seers punished as diviners. Dante damns pagan prophecy, Etruscan included.", "claimed_effect": "Prophecy; sex-change", "claimed_mechanism": "Augury, haruspicy, star-watching; a rod and serpents", "practitioner": "Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-40", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "20.52–20.99", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 20.52–99 (cf. Purg. 22.113)", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "other" ], "excerpt_original": "Lì, per fuggire ogne consorzio umano, / ristette con suoi servi a far sue arti, / e visse, e vi lasciò suo corpo vano. ... Fer la città sovra quell'ossa morte; / e per colei che 'l loco prima elesse, / Mantua l'appellar sanz'altra sorte.", "translation": "There, to flee all human company, she stayed with her servants to practise her arts, and lived, and left her empty body there... They built the city over those dead bones, and after her who first chose the place they called it Mantua, without any other casting of lots.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Virgil tells the founding of his Mantua over the bones of the seeress Manto. He stresses that the name was given 'sanz'altra sorte', without augury or lot, and orders Dante to let no other origin story deceive him. This corrects Aeneid 10.198–200 by taking the magic out of the foundation. Dante elsewhere puts 'la figlia di Tiresia' in Limbo (Purg. 22.113), a famous inconsistency.", "claimed_effect": "(Denied) magical foundation of a city", "claimed_mechanism": "Manto's 'arti'; the founders' rejection of sortilege", "practitioner": "Manto", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-41", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "20.106–20.117", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 20.106–117", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Quell'altro che ne ' fianchi è così poco, / Michele Scotto fu, che veramente / de le magiche frode seppe 'l gioco.", "translation": "That other one, so slight in the flanks, was Michael Scot, who truly knew the game of magical frauds.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Eurypylus, the augur who with Calchas set the hour for the fleet at Aulis, and Michael Scot (d. c. 1235), astrologer and translator at Frederick II's court. Dante's phrase 'magiche frode' calls magic a fraud or trick. Whether 'seppe il gioco' means 'mastered' or 'saw through' the game is disputed, but frode places magic among deceptions.", "claimed_effect": "Prophecy; court magic", "claimed_mechanism": "Augury; 'magical frauds'", "practitioner": "Eurypylus; Michael Scot", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "An imperial court astrologer under Frederick II", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-42", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "20.118–20.123", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 20.118–123", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "love", "binding-curse", "poison-drug", "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Vedi Guido Bonatti; vedi Asdente, / ch'avere inteso al cuoio e a lo spago / ora vorrebbe, ma tardi si pente. / Vedi le triste che lasciaron l'ago, / la spuola e 'l fuso, e fecersi 'ndivine; / fecer malie con erbe e con imago.", "translation": "See Guido Bonatti; see Asdente, who now wishes he had stuck to his leather and thread, but repents too late. See the wretched women who left the needle, the shuttle and the spindle and made themselves diviners; they worked spells with herbs and with images.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The contemporary astrologer Guido Bonatti of Forlì and the Parma cobbler-prophet Asdente are joined by anonymous women. These women left women's work to become fortune-tellers and worked 'malie' with herbs and wax images. This is Dante's sketch of everyday thirteenth-century Italian sorcery: professional astrologers, a lay prophet, and women's herb and image magic.", "claimed_effect": "Harm, love-binding, prophecy", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbs; image (wax figure) magic; astrology", "practitioner": "Guido Bonatti; Asdente; anonymous women", "practitioner_gender": "mixed", "social_legal_context": "Women stepping out of domestic textile work into paid divining", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-43", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "29.109–29.120", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 29.109–120", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "alchemy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "Vero è ch'i' dissi lui, parlando a gioco: “ / I' mi saprei levar per l'aere a volo”; ... me per l'alchìmia che nel mondo usai / dannò Minòs, a cui fallar non lece».", "translation": "'True, I told him, speaking in jest, \"I would know how to raise myself through the air in flight\"; and he, who had curiosity and little sense, wanted me to show him the art... But to the last of the ten pouches Minos, who cannot err, damned me for the alchemy I practised in the world.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Griffolino of Arezzo was burned at Siena because he joked that he could fly and could not show the gullible Albero the art. But Minos damned him for alchemy. The alchemists sit among the 'falsifiers', scabby and scratching (29.73–84). Dante separates the real crime, falsifying metals, from the claimed marvel, flight.", "claimed_effect": "Flight (claimed in jest); transmutation of metals", "claimed_mechanism": "Alchemy as falsification", "practitioner": "Griffolino d'Arezzo", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Burned at the stake in Siena (on a bishop's authority, in the commentators)", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-44", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "29.136–29.139; 30.73–30.75", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 29.136–139; 30.73–75", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "alchemy", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "sì vedrai ch'io son l'ombra di Capocchio, / che falsai li metalli con l'alchìmia; / e te dee ricordar, se ben t'adocchio, / com'io fui di natura buona scimia».", "translation": "'You will see I am the shade of Capocchio, who falsified metals with alchemy; and you must remember, if I eye you rightly, how good an ape of nature I was.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Capocchio, burned in Siena in 1293, admits he 'falsified metals' and calls himself an 'ape of nature', an imitator, not a transformer. Beside him Master Adam counterfeited the florin of the Baptist ('falsai la lega suggellata del Batista', 30.73–74) and was burned for it. For Dante, alchemy and coin-clipping are the same crime: falsification.", "claimed_effect": "Gold and silver made from base metal", "claimed_mechanism": "Imitation of nature (scimia di natura) – fraud", "practitioner": "Capocchio; Master Adam", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Executions by burning for alchemy and counterfeiting", "authorial_stance": "exposure-of-trickery", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-45", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "15.55–15.60", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 15.55–60", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Ed elli a me: «Se tu segui tua stella, / non puoi fallire a glorioso porto, / se ben m'accorsi ne la vita bella; ... veggendo il cielo a te così benigno,", "translation": "And he to me: 'If you follow your star, you cannot fail to reach a glorious harbour, if I judged rightly in the fair life... seeing heaven so kindly disposed towards you...'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Brunetto Latini speaks as if he had read Dante's nativity: a benign sky promises glory. Personal astrology appears as a teacher's encouragement, voiced by a damned soul.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of success", "claimed_mechanism": "The natal sky", "practitioner": "Brunetto Latini", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-46", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "19.1–19.6", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 19.1–6", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "O Simon mago, o miseri seguaci / che le cose di Dio, che di bontate / deon essere spose, e voi rapaci / per oro e per argento avolterate,", "translation": "O Simon Magus, O wretched followers, who, greedy, prostitute for gold and silver the things of God that should be brides of goodness...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Simony takes its name from the magician Simon (Acts 8), who tried to buy the apostles' power. The magician becomes the patron of selling sacraments: magic and simony are both counterfeit spiritual power. Compare the Middle Dutch 'toverare' in CATMuS KBR 2485 (romance-medieval-65).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Buying spiritual power", "practitioner": "Simon Magus; simoniac popes", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-47", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "31.4–31.6", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 31.4–6", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "così od'io che solea far la lancia / d'Achille e del suo padre esser cagione / prima di trista e poi di buona mancia.", "translation": "So I have heard that the lance of Achilles and of his father used to be the cause first of a sad and then of a good gift.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The spear that both wounds and heals, as in the Telephus story, is used as a simile for Virgil's rebuke and comfort. The classical healing-weapon motif survives here as metaphor.", "claimed_effect": "Healing the wound the spear itself made", "claimed_mechanism": "(implied) a property of the weapon", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-48", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Inferno", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1306–1314", "date_sort": 1310, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:inferno:petrocchi", "ref": "25.94–25.102", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Inf. 25.94–102", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "transformation" ], "excerpt_original": "Taccia di Cadmo e d'Aretusa Ovidio, / ché se quello in serpente e quella in fonte / converte poetando, io non lo 'nvidio;", "translation": "Let Ovid be silent about Cadmus and Arethusa; for if, in his poetry, he turns the one into a serpent and the other into a fountain, I do not envy him.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the thieves' pouch men and serpents exchange natures. Dante explicitly competes with Lucan and Ovid as a poet of metamorphosis. Transformation, the stock of ancient magic, has become divine punishment and poetic bravura.", "claimed_effect": "Exchange of human and serpent forms", "claimed_mechanism": "Divine justice (contrapasso)", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "literary-fiction", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-49", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Purgatorio", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1308–1315", "date_sort": 1315, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:purgatorio:petrocchi", "ref": "19.1–19.33", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Purg. 19.1–33", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "love", "divination", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "quando i geomanti lor Maggior Fortuna / veggiono in oriente, innanzi a l' alba, ... mi venne in sogno una femmina balba, ... Io la mirava; e come 'l sol conforta / le fredde membra ... così lo sguardo mio le facea scorta / la lingua", "translation": "...at the hour when geomancers see their Fortuna Major rising in the east before dawn... there came to me in a dream a stammering woman... I gazed at her, and as the sun comforts cold limbs, so my gaze loosened her tongue...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The pre-dawn hour is dated by the geomancers' figure Fortuna Major, read off real stars. Dante dreams of an ugly, stammering woman whom his own gaze makes beautiful. She sings that she is the siren who 'dismagates' (bewitches) sailors and turned Ulysses aside. A holy lady appears and Virgil tears open her robe; the stench wakes him. Enchantment is explained psychologically: the beholder's desire creates the beauty.", "claimed_effect": "Seduction away from one's course", "claimed_mechanism": "The viewer's own projecting gaze; song", "practitioner": "the siren ('antica strega', 19.58)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-50", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Purgatorio", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1308–1315", "date_sort": 1315, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:purgatorio:petrocchi", "ref": "19.58–19.63", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Purg. 19.58–63", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "«Vedesti», disse, «quell' antica strega / che sola sovr' a noi omai si piagne; / vedesti come l' uom da lei si slega.", "translation": "'You saw,' he said, 'that ancient witch who alone is now wept for above us; you saw how a man frees himself from her.'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Virgil names the siren an 'antica strega' (ancient witch): the vice of excessive love of worldly goods, purged on the upper terraces. One unbinds oneself ('si slega') by turning one's eyes to heaven. 'Strega' is used morally: the witch is a vice.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Binding by desire; release by turning to God", "practitioner": "the siren as vice", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-51", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Purgatorio", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1308–1315", "date_sort": 1315, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:purgatorio:petrocchi", "ref": "16.67–16.81", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Purg. 16.67–81", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Voi che vivete ogne cagion recate / pur suso al cielo, pur come se tutto / movesse seco di necessitate. / Se così fosse, in voi fora distrutto / libero arbitrio ... Lo cielo i vostri movimenti inizia; / non dico tutti", "translation": "You who are living refer every cause up to the heavens alone, as if they moved everything with them by necessity. If that were so, free will would be destroyed in you... The heavens initiate your movements – I do not say all of them...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Marco Lombardo gives the orthodox limit on astrology: the stars incline but do not compel. Free will and a mind 'that the heavens have not in their care' remain. This is the theological line between acceptable natural astrology and fatalistic, condemned judicial astrology.", "claimed_effect": "(Limited) influence of the stars on behaviour", "claimed_mechanism": "Celestial inclination, overcome by free will", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-52", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Paradiso", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1316–1321", "date_sort": 1320, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:paradiso:petrocchi", "ref": "4.49–4.63", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Par. 4.49–63", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Dice che l' alma a la sua stella riede, ... S' elli intende tornare a queste ruote / l' onor de la influenza e 'l biasmo, forse / in alcun vero suo arco percuote. / Questo principio, male inteso, torse / già tutto il mondo quasi, sì che Giove, / Mercurio e Marte a nominar trascorse.", "translation": "He [Plato's Timaeus] says the soul returns to its star... If he means that the honour and blame of their influence return to these wheels, perhaps his arrow hits some truth. This principle, misunderstood, once misled almost the whole world, so that it went astray in naming Jove, Mercury and Mars.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Beatrice concedes a kernel of truth to planetary influence. She explains pagan religion, the worship of planet-gods, as a misreading of real celestial influence. This is an Aristotelian-Christian theory of how astrology both works and leads into idolatry.", "claimed_effect": "Planetary influence on souls", "claimed_mechanism": "Celestial 'influenza'", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-53", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Paradiso", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1316–1321", "date_sort": 1320, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:paradiso:petrocchi", "ref": "8.1–8.12", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Par. 8.1–12 (cf. 8.127–135)", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "love", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "Solea creder lo mondo in suo periclo / che la bella Ciprigna il folle amore / raggiasse, volta nel terzo epiciclo; / per che non pur a lei faceano onore / di sacrificio e di votivo grido / le genti antiche ne l' antico errore;", "translation": "The world used to believe, to its peril, that the fair Cyprian rayed down mad love, turning in the third epicycle; so the ancient peoples, in their ancient error, honoured not only her with sacrifice and votive cry...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Pagan love-cult is put down to the belief that the planet Venus radiates passion. Dante keeps the astronomy (epicycles) and drops the cult. Later in the canto (8.127–135) the 'circular nature' of the heavens stamps mortal wax but not by lineage, so Esau differs from Jacob: a natural explanation for differences in character.", "claimed_effect": "Love inspired by Venus", "claimed_mechanism": "Planetary radiation (raggiare)", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-54", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Commedia: Paradiso", "author": "Dante Alighieri", "culture": "Italian (Florentine)", "language": "", "date": "c. 1316–1321", "date_sort": 1320, "edition_urn": "urn:dante:commedia:paradiso:petrocchi", "ref": "22.112–22.120", "conventional_ref": "Dante, Par. 22.112–120", "source_collection": "UD Italian-Old (Dante)", "practice_types": [ "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "O gloriose stelle, o lume pregno / di gran virtù, dal quale io riconosco / tutto, qual che si sia, il mio ingegno, / con voi nasceva e s' ascondeva vosco / quelli ch' è padre d' ogne mortal vita,", "translation": "O glorious stars, O light pregnant with great power, from which I acknowledge all my genius, whatever it may be: with you rose and with you set the father of all mortal life [the Sun]...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Entering the sphere of the fixed stars in Gemini, his birth sign (the Sun was in Gemini when he was born), Dante credits his talent to that constellation. It is a personal, devout natal astrology from the poet who damned Bonatti and Scot.", "claimed_effect": "Gift of intellect", "claimed_mechanism": "Natal constellation's 'virtù'", "practitioner": "Dante", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "devotional", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-55", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Sortes sanctorum, with charms (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Latin (Anglo-Norman England? 12th c.)", "language": "", "date": "12th c. (manuscript)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – London, British Library, Egerton 821", "ref": "#16860; #16869; #16904; #16934", "conventional_ref": "BL Egerton 821 (Sortes sanctorum)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (CREMMA)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "Hae sũt sortes scõꝵ q̃ nũꝙͣ fallũt᷑ id̾oq dm̃ ... IIII IIII III Recede sortes ñ dãt tͥ respõsũ alt̾a die ueni.", "translation": "These are the lots of the saints, which never fail; therefore [pray to] the Lord... [Throw] 4-4-3: Go away – the lots give you no answer; come another day.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A twelfth-century Latin lot-book. The questioner throws dice and reads an answer keyed to the combination (I.I.I, III.IIII, IIII.III.I, CC.I...): 'Seek and you will obtain', 'Beware the great lion', 'Your neighbour seeks to seduce you with smooth words', 'It is bad to go against the lots'. It calls itself 'sortes sanctorum que numquam falluntur' and prescribes prayer first. Church councils repeatedly banned this Christianised form of lot divination, but it was copied in monasteries.", "claimed_effect": "Answers to personal questions", "claimed_mechanism": "Dice throw read through a table of responses, with prayer", "practitioner": "literate (probably clerical) users", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Sortes sanctorum condemned by councils (Vannes, Agde) yet copied", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-56", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Fever charm (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Latin (12th c.)", "language": "", "date": "12th c. (manuscript)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – London, British Library, Egerton 821", "ref": "#16876; #16879; #16877; #16880; #16897", "conventional_ref": "BL Egerton 821 (charm against fevers)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (CREMMA)", "practice_types": [ "healing", "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "⁊ frigores q̃ estis septẽ sorores pͥma dicit᷑ lilia scd̾a ... reptilia.t̾cia fugalia.qͣrta africa.qͥnta uilia ... sexta sufocalia.septima ignea ... ꝯiuro uos febres.", "translation": "...and chills, you who are seven sisters: the first is called Lilia, the second Reptilia, the third Fugalia, the fourth Africa, the fifth Vilia, the sixth Sufocalia, the seventh Ignea... I adjure you, fevers.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A healing charm in the same twelfth-century manuscript. It invokes Christ's healing of Peter's mother-in-law ('Petrus dixit...', 'imperavit febri et dimisit illam'), names the seven fever-sisters, lists quotidian, tertian, quartan and other fevers, and adjures them by the Trinity, the Virgin, Michael and Raphael, with magic words ('abre, arot'). It is a gospel narrative charm plus demon-naming. Lines nearby (#16873, #16883) mention a pregnant woman, perhaps a birth or tumour charm.", "claimed_effect": "Driving out intermittent fevers", "claimed_mechanism": "Adjuration of named fever-demons by Christ, the Trinity and archangels; a gospel precedent", "practitioner": "a healer (unspecified, probably clerical)", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 5, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-57", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Charm for a beast (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Latin (12th c.)", "language": "", "date": "12th c. (manuscript)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – London, British Library, Egerton 821", "ref": "#16850; #16851; #16856", "conventional_ref": "BL Egerton 821 (charm for a beast)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (CREMMA)", "practice_types": [ "protection-amulet", "healing" ], "excerpt_original": "hõ iłł.d̾ bestia illa.Sc̃e siluane ispena ⁊canes ... hõo d̾ ista bestia.Tũc q̃ ueniẽs tãgat.III.baculos ... d̾s qͥsaluasti latͦnẽ in cruce.saluã bestiã iłł.", "translation": "...from that beast. Saint Silvanus, ... and dogs... from this beast. Then let him come and touch three staves... God, who saved the thief on the cross, save that beast.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A fragmentary charm. It concerns an animal (livestock threatened by wild beasts or thieves), calls on Saint Silvanus, has someone touch three staves, and uses the 'as you saved the good thief' formula. It mixes the saint's protection with a gesture ritual. Because the lines are probably column-interleaved, the exact sequence is uncertain.", "claimed_effect": "Protection or healing of an animal", "claimed_mechanism": "Saint's invocation, touching three staves, a biblical analogy", "practitioner": "", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "practical-instruction", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-58", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Penitential canons (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Anonymous compiler", "culture": "Latin canon law (12th c.)", "language": "", "date": "12th c. (manuscript)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – Paris, BnF, lat. 12270", "ref": "#15732; #15733; #15721", "conventional_ref": "BnF lat. 12270 (penitential canons)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (HTRomance)", "practice_types": [ "other", "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "magi & arioli. qͥa magicã artẽ exercuis ... xu. annos peniteat. & nũquã mu", "translation": "...magicians and soothsayers... because he practised the magic art... let him do penance for fifteen years, and never...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A twelfth-century collection of penitential canons (with council attributions such as 'toletano'). It sets years of penance for 'magi et arioli' who practise 'magicam artem'. A nearby rubric reads 'Qui immolat demoniis in minimis' (who sacrifices to demons in small matters). This is the legal and pastoral side of magic: sin to be confessed and penanced.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Magic art; sacrifice to demons", "practitioner": "magi, arioli", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "Confessional penance, measured in years", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-59", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Penitential canons (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Anonymous compiler", "culture": "Latin canon law (12th c.)", "language": "", "date": "12th c. (manuscript)", "date_sort": 1150, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – Paris, BnF, lat. 12270", "ref": "#15724; #15720; #15763; #15764", "conventional_ref": "BnF lat. 12270 (canons on women's magic)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (HTRomance)", "practice_types": [ "love", "healing", "poison-drug" ], "excerpt_original": "sem̃ uiri sui. & testã hominis cõbusserit.", "translation": "...the semen of her husband, and has burned a man's skull...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Rubric fragments of the well-known canons (Theodore's penitential and Burchard type) on women's domestic magic. One is a woman who mixes her husband's semen into food to gain more love; another burns a man's skull (or grain where a man died) and gives it 'for health'. Also 'Nam de his qui magicam... dedit viro suo ut comederet' (#15763–15764: 'concerning those who [practise] magic... gave to her husband to eat'). Canon law imagined this kind of magic as female and practised within marriage. The lines are fragmentary.", "claimed_effect": "Increase in a husband's love; health", "claimed_mechanism": "Bodily substances and bone ash given in food", "practitioner": "wives", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Penance for married women's love and healing magic", "authorial_stance": "legal-prohibition", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-60", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Nithard, Historiae (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Nithard", "culture": "Carolingian Latin", "language": "", "date": "c. 841–843 (manuscript 10th c.)", "date_sort": 842, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – Paris, BnF, lat. 9768", "ref": "#120078", "conventional_ref": "Nithard, Hist. 1.5", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (HTRomance)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "more maleficorũ. In ararim mergi", "translation": "...to be drowned in the Saône, in the manner of sorcerers.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The only manuscript of Nithard (late tenth century, the one that also preserves the Strasbourg Oaths) records Lothar's drowning of Gerberga, sister of Bernard of Septimania, in 834 'more maleficorum', the customary punishment for sorcerers. It is an early medieval witness that a sorcery accusation and drowning were tools of dynastic politics.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "(accusation of) maleficium", "practitioner": "Gerberga (accused)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "Political execution by drowning under the label of sorcery", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-61", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Miracles of St Peter Martyr (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Anonymous (Dominican hagiography)", "culture": "Latin, Lombardy", "language": "", "date": "late 13th–14th c.", "date_sort": 1300, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – Paris, BnF, NAL 775", "ref": "#132549; #132264; #132318", "conventional_ref": "BnF NAL 775 (Miracula S. Petri Martyris)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (HTRomance)", "practice_types": [ "exorcism" ], "excerpt_original": "uocor belzefaz uͫ ꝯ ꝑ bm̃ petrũ adiu-", "translation": "'...I am called Belzefaz...' – adjured by blessed Peter...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "Miracles at the tomb of Peter of Verona (killed in 1252). Women 'a demonibus agitata' are brought to his sepulchre. Demons speak through them, name themselves (Belzefaz) and leave when adjured by the saint. A woman troubled by demons for seven years is freed. Exorcism at a saint's tomb is the Church's lawful answer to possession.", "claimed_effect": "Expulsion of demons", "claimed_mechanism": "Adjuration in the saint's name; contact with the tomb", "practitioner": "St Peter Martyr (posthumously); clergy", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Possessed women from the dioceses of Milan, Vercelli and Ivrea", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-62", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Simon de Phares, Recueil des plus célèbres astrologues (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Simon de Phares", "culture": "Middle French, court of Charles VIII", "language": "", "date": "c. 1494–1498", "date_sort": 1496, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – Paris, BnF, fr. 1357", "ref": "#12281; #12288; #12282; #12271; #12533", "conventional_ref": "BnF fr. 1357 (Simon de Phares, Recueil)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (HTRomance)", "practice_types": [ "astrology", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "Inuocateurs. Nigromãciens abuseurs ou diuins pour ... Et la pͥncipalle ⁊ doyenne des sept ars liberaulx. astrologie ... De phares son humble ‸astrologues et obeissant subiect", "translation": "...invokers, necromancers, deceivers or diviners, for... And astrology, the principal and dean of the seven liberal arts... de Phares, his humble astrologer and obedient subject.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The royal astrologer's defence of his science, written after his condemnation by the Paris theology faculty in 1494. Here the boundary between legitimate and illicit is drawn from the practitioner's side. 'True' astrology, 'dean of the liberal arts', is separated from invokers, necromancers and 'abuseurs'. A 'charmeur' only 'pretends to' use it ('s'en aide ou faint aider', #12271). Corrections in the text (marked ⟦⟧ and ‸) fit an author's working copy.", "claimed_effect": "True knowledge of the future through the stars", "claimed_mechanism": "Astrology as a rational science, as opposed to demon-invocation", "practitioner": "Simon de Phares", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Condemned by the Sorbonne in 1494; appealing to Charles VIII", "authorial_stance": "philosophical-theory", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-63", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Les Évangiles des quenouilles (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Middle French (Flemish-Picard), print", "language": "", "date": "c. 1470–1480 (16th-c. print)", "date_sort": 1475, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – Paris, BnF, Rés. Y2-733", "ref": "#112276; #112571; #112520; #112524; #112542", "conventional_ref": "Évangiles des quenouilles (BnF Rés. Y2-733)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (Gallicorpora)", "practice_types": [ "love", "divination", "protection-amulet", "necromancy" ], "excerpt_original": "ami biẽ aimee si lui face mẽger de l herbe de chat ⁊ il sera d el ... qui fut le premier qui trouua l art de nigromãci le quel art", "translation": "...[if a woman wants to be] well loved by her lover, let her make him eat catnip and he will be hers... who was the first to discover the art of nigromancy, which art...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "A comic collection of 'gospel truths' told by old women at their spinning gatherings: dame Ysengrine, Sebile des Marestz, Gomberde la fée, Berthe cornue, Maroye la fée. It covers catnip as a love charm, salt on a sleeping girl's head, a hare crossing one's path as a bad omen versus a wolf or stag as good, the nightmare that 'rides by night' ('de nuit chevauche de la cauquemaire'), leaving a trivet with its feet up because devils sit on it, and how to 'conjure a black devil'. Women's household magic is shown through male satire.", "claimed_effect": "Love, luck, protection, omens", "claimed_mechanism": "Herbs, household gestures, omen animals", "practitioner": "spinning women ('fées' among them)", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "The veillée, women's evening spinning gatherings", "authorial_stance": "satire-mockery", "importance": 4, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-64", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Old French prose romance (CATMuS lines; probably Tristan prehistory)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French prose", "language": "", "date": "13th c.", "date_sort": 1240, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – Paris, BnF, fr. 104", "ref": "#70819; #71071; #71073", "conventional_ref": "BnF fr. 104 (prose romance)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (HTRomance)", "practice_types": [ "weather-nature", "divination", "astrology" ], "excerpt_original": "aige qui mout sauoit dastro ᷠ ͦmie ⁊ de nigromãce ... Lors fist ses charmes ⁊ ses ꝯiuremenz ... rinier sachiez que ciz oraiges ⁊ ceste tẽpeste que si", "translation": "...[a s]age who knew much of astronomy and of nigromancy... Then he made his charms and his conjurations... know that this storm and this tempest which...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a thirteenth-century Arthurian-type prose romance set around Cornwall, a 'philosopher' learned in astronomy and nigromancy interprets a king's dream. Elsewhere charms and conjurations raise a storm against a ship. The weather-magician is a learned man. The identification of the romance and the exact narrative links are uncertain because of the line order.", "claimed_effect": "Storm at sea; dream interpretation", "claimed_mechanism": "Charms and conjurations; astronomy and nigromancy", "practitioner": "a 'philosophe' or sage", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-65", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Middle Dutch papal bull on simony (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Anonymous translator", "culture": "Middle Dutch", "language": "", "date": "14th c.", "date_sort": 1350, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – Brussels, KBR, 2485", "ref": "#150610", "conventional_ref": "KBR 2485 (Middle Dutch bull)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (Carthusian Monastery of Herne)", "practice_types": [ "other" ], "excerpt_original": "", "translation": "...[like] the sorcerer who wanted to buy from Saint Peter with money...", "excerpt_withheld": "this CATMuS subset's licence is not confirmed", "summary": "A Middle Dutch translation of a papal bull against simony calls Simon Magus simply 'den toverare' (the sorcerer). It is the vernacular counterpart of Dante's 'O Simon mago'. Ghent UL 1374 also has 'een toverare' in a verse chronicle of popes (#179724).", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "Buying spiritual power", "practitioner": "Simon Magus", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Clerical discipline against simony", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-66", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Verse bestiary (CATMuS lines; probably Guillaume le Clerc)", "author": "Anonymous (probably Guillaume le Clerc)", "culture": "Old French verse", "language": "", "date": "c. 1210 (manuscript 13th c.)", "date_sort": 1210, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – Paris, BnF, fr. 24428", "ref": "#76085; #76086; #76088; #76091", "conventional_ref": "BnF fr. 24428 (Bestiaire, the siren)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (CREMMA)", "practice_types": [ "love", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "L es maroniers qͥ par mer uõt ... Qi l note le chant qͥl decoit ... C est li malfeiz qui la nous maine ... P ar coi plusor sont enchantei", "translation": "The sailors who go by sea... who hear the song that deceives... It is the Evil One who leads us there... by which many are enchanted.", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "The bestiary siren, read allegorically: the song that lulls sailors is the devil's pleasure, by which many are 'enchantei'. It is the moralised enchantment that Dante's Purgatorio 19 turns into psychology.", "claimed_effect": "Sleep and death of sailors; damnation", "claimed_mechanism": "Song; the devil's delight", "practitioner": "the siren as the devil", "practitioner_gender": "female", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "condemnation", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-67", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Old French legendary: Life of St Martin and others (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Old French prose hagiography", "language": "", "date": "13th c.", "date_sort": 1285, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – Paris, BnF, fr. 412", "ref": "#78750; #78453; #82677", "conventional_ref": "BnF fr. 412 (legendary)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (CREMMA)", "practice_types": [ "exorcism", "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "il fait par enchanterie.ne plus ne seroit", "translation": "...he does it by enchantment, and would no more be...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a thirteenth-century French legendary (around St Martin and Brice), a healing miracle is dismissed by a sceptic as 'enchanterie'. Elsewhere saints adjure demons ('je te conjur par celui qui...', #78453), and 'charmes' are mentioned (#82677). The hagiographic pattern is that miracles look like magic to enemies; the saint's adjuration is the licit form of 'conjurer'.", "claimed_effect": "Healing; expulsion of demons", "claimed_mechanism": "(Alleged) enchantment, against divine power ('par la divine puissance', #82707)", "practitioner": "saints; their accusers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-68", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Catalan Miracles of St Nicholas (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Anonymous", "culture": "Catalan", "language": "", "date": "14th c.", "date_sort": 1350, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – Paris, BnF, esp. 44", "ref": "#10500; #10501; #10546", "conventional_ref": "BnF esp. 44 (Catalan hagiography)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (HTRomance)", "practice_types": [ "illusion-trickery" ], "excerpt_original": "dix. Quines artz ni quins encantamẽs / sabetz uos altres que axi nos escarnitz", "translation": "...said: 'What arts and what enchantments do you people know, that you mock us like this?'", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In the Catalan St Nicholas miracles (the Jew and the debt sworn on the altar), opponents read the saint's wonders as 'artz' and 'encantamens'. A later line insists that they 'were not enchanters' ('no eren encantadors'). Iberian vernacular hagiography rehearses the same miracle-versus-magic argument.", "claimed_effect": "", "claimed_mechanism": "(Alleged) arts and enchantments", "practitioner": "Christians accused by opponents", "practitioner_gender": "", "social_legal_context": "", "authorial_stance": "believing-narrative", "importance": 2, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" }, { "id": "romance-medieval-69", "corpus": "romance-medieval", "work": "Prose Life of Bertrand du Guesclin (CATMuS lines)", "author": "Anonymous (prose version after Cuvelier)", "culture": "Middle French", "language": "", "date": "15th c.", "date_sort": 1450, "edition_urn": "CatmusLines – Paris, BnF, fr. 1984", "ref": "#97838; #97884", "conventional_ref": "BnF fr. 1984 (Bertrand du Guesclin, prose)", "source_collection": "CATMuS Medieval (Gallicorpora)", "practice_types": [ "divination" ], "excerpt_original": "si lui souuint que es liures merlin auoit leu que", "translation": "...then he remembered that he had read in Merlin's books that...", "excerpt_withheld": "", "summary": "In a fifteenth-century chronicle-biography, characters read 'les livres des prophecies Merlin' and recall them in action. Merlin's prophecy is a living political text in the Hundred Years War, not a romance motif.", "claimed_effect": "Foreknowledge of political events", "claimed_mechanism": "Written prophecy attributed to Merlin", "practitioner": "Merlin (attributed author); his readers", "practitioner_gender": "male", "social_legal_context": "Political prophecy in war narratives", "authorial_stance": "neutral-report", "importance": 3, "library_check": "ok", "library_check_meaning": "a script found the quoted words at the cited passage", "check_note": "", "surveyor_ref": "" } ] }