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Greece: That magic in its
widest sense was native to the imagination and genius of
the Greeks is apparent in their theogony and mythology,
essentially magical in conception and meaning, in their
literature, sculpture and history. The natural features of
the country appealed powerfully to the quality of their
imagination. Mountains and valleys, mysterious caves and
fissures, vapours and springs of volcanic origin;
groves,—these according to their character, were dedicated
to the gods. Parnassus was the abode of the sun-god,
Apollo ; the lovely vale of Aphaca that of Adonis; the
oak-groves of Dodona favoured of Zeus, the gloomy caves
with their roar of subterranean waters the Oracle of
Trophonius. Innumerable instances of magical
wonder-working are found in the stories of their deities
and heroes. The power of transformation is shown in a
multitude of cases, amongst them those of Bacchus who, by
waving a spear, could change the oars of a ship into
serpents, the masts into heavy-clustered vines, tigers,
lynxes and panthers to appear amidst the waves, and the
terrified sailors leaping overboard to take the shape of
dolphins; in those wrought by Circe who by her magic wand
and enchanted philtre turned her lovers into swine. The
serpent-staff of Hermes gave, by its touch, life or death,
sleep or waking; Medusa's head turned its beholders into
stone ; Hermes gave Perseus wings that he might fly and
Pluto a helmet which conferred invisibility. Prometheus
moulds a man of clay and to give it life steals celestial
fire from heaven ; Odysseus to peer into the future
descends to Hades in search of Tiresias the Soothsayer;
Achilles is made invulnerable by the waters of the Styx.
Dedicated by immemorial belief, there were places where
the visible spirits of the dead might be evoked, Heraclea,
Acheron, piaces where men in curiosity, in longing or
remorse strove to call back for a fleeting moment those
who had passed beyond mortal ken. In the month of March,
when the spring blossoms broke through the earth and
snowed the trees with white, the Festival of the Flowers
was held at Athens, also the Commemoration of the Dead,
when their spirits were thought to rise from their graves
and wander about the familiar streets, striving to enter
the dwellings of man and temples of the gods but shut out
therefrom by the magic of branches of whitethorn, or by
knotted ropes and pitch.
Oracles: Of great antiquity and eminently of Greek
character and meaning were the Oracles. For centuries they
ministered to that longing deeply implanted in human
nature the longing to know the future, and to invoke
divine foresight and aid in the direction of human
affairs, from those of a private citizen to the
multitudinous needs of a great state. Divination and
prophecy were therefore the great features of the oracles.
This was inspired by various means, by intoxicating fumes
natural or artificial, by the drinking of mineral springs,
by signs and tokens, by dreams. The most famous Oracles
were those at Delphi, Dodona, Epi-daurus, and that of
Trophonius, but others of renown were scattered over the
country. Perhaps one of the earliest was that of
Aesculapius son of Apollo, and called the Healer, the
Dream-sender because his healing was given through the
medium of dreams that came upon the applicant while
sleeping in the temple-courts, the famous temple-sleep.
This temple, situated at Epidaurus, was surrounded by
sacred groves and whole companies of sick persons lingered
there in search of lost health and enlightment through
divine dreams. Famous beyond all was that of Apollo, the
Delphian oracle on the Southern Slopes of Parnassus where
kings and princes, heroes and slaves of all countries
journeyed to ask the questions as to the future and what
it might hold for them. The temple was built above a
volcanic chasm, amid a wildness of nature which suggested
the presence of the unseen powers. Here the priestess, the
Pythia, so named after the serpent Pytho whom Apollo slew,
was seated on a tripod placed above the gaseous vapours
rising 'from the chasm. Intoxicated to a state of frenzy,
her mouth foaming, wild torrents of words fell from her
lips, and these were shaped into coherence and meaning by
the attendant priests and given to the waiting questioner
standing before the altar crowned with laurel, the symbol
of sleep and dreams and sacred to Apollo. Priests and
priestesses were also crowned with these leaves, and they
were burned as incense; before the Pythias chamber hung a
falling screen of laurel branches while at the festival of
the Septerion every ninth year a bower of laurel was
erected in the forecourt of the temple. One writer has
left strange details such as the rule that the sacred fire
within the temple must only be fed with fir-wood ; and,
though a woman was chosen as the medium of the prophetic
utterance yet no woman might question the oracle. The
Oracle of the Pelasgic Zeus at Dodona, the oldest of all,
answered by signs rather than inspired speech, the
rustling of the leaves in the sacred groves, by means of
lots and the falling of water, by the wind-moved clanging
of brazen-bowls, two hollow columns standing side by side.
The three priestesses, Peliades, meaning doves, were given
titles signifying the Diviner of the future ; the friend
of man, Virtue: the virgin-ruler of man, Chastity. For two
thousand years this oracle existed, from the time when it
was consulted by those heroes of the ancient myths,
struggling in the toils of Fate. Hercules, Achilles,
Ulysses and Aeneas, down to the latest vestiges of Greek
nationality. The Oracle of Trophonius was also of great
renown. Here there were numerous caverns filled with misty
vapours and troubled by the noise of hidden waters far
beneath. In this mysterious gloom the supplicants slept
sometimes for nights and days, coming forth in a
somnambulic state from which they were aroused and
questioned by the attendant priests. Frightful visions
were generally re-'counted, accompanied by a terrible
melancholy, so that it passed into a proverb regarding a
sorrowful man '• He has been in the cave of Trophonius."
Thus it may be seen that magic in the sense of secret
revelations, miraculous cures and prophetic gifts, of
abnormal powers, had always existed for the Greeks, the
oracles were a purely natural human way of communing with
their gods upon earth. But magic in the lower sense of
sorcery was unknown till Asiatic and Egyptian influences
were introduced. The' native conception of Fate as
inexorable and inescapable for gods, kings and slaves
alike was inimical to the spontaneous growth of a form of
magic which had for its primary aim a certain command of
the destinities of man. Good and evil and the perpetual
strife between these two principles, the belief in
demonology, these were foreign to the Greek mind, they
were imported. It is said that to the Pythagorean school
may be traced the first mention of good and evil demons
and not till after the Persian War was there a word in the
Greek language for magic. As these foreign beliefs were
thus gradually introduced and assimilated they were
ascribed to the native deities, gradually becoming
incorporated with the ancient histories and rites.
After the invasion by the Persians, Thessaly, where their
stay was of lengthy duration, became famous for its
sorceresses and their practices which embraced a wide
than-maturgical field, from calling down the moon to
brewing magical herbs for love or death, so much so that
Apuleius in his romance, The Golden Ass, says, that when
in Thessaly he was in the place " where, by common report
of the world, sorcery and enchantments were most frequent.
I viewed the situation of the place in which I was, nor
was there anything I saw that I believed to be the same
thing which it appeared to be. Insomuch that the very
stones in the street I thought were men bewitched and
turned into that figure, and the birds I heard chirping,
the trees without the walls, and the running waters, were
changed from human creatures into the appearances they
were. I persuaded myself that the statues and buildings
could move ; that the oxen and other brute beasts could
speak and tell strange tidings ; that I should hear and
see oracles from heaven conveyed in the beams of the Sun."
Sorceresses.—Homer tells the tale of Circe the
enchantress, with her magic philtres and magic songs but
makes no mention of Medea, the arch-sorceress of later
times. Round her name the later beliefs clustered, to her
were attributed
all the evil arts, she became the witch par excellence,
her infamy increasing from age to age. The same may be
said of Hecate, the moon-goddess, at first sharer with
Zeus of the heavenly powers, but later become an ominous
shape of gloom, ruler and lover of the night and darkness,
of the world of phantoms and ghouls. Like the Furies she
wielded the whip and cord; she was followed by hell
hounds, by writhing serpents, by lamiae, strygae and
empusae, figures of terror and loathing. She presided over
the dark mysteries of birth and death; she was worshipped
at night in the flare of torches. She was the three-headed
Hecate of the cross-roads where little round cakes or a
lizard mask set about with candles were offered to her in
propitiation, that none of the phantom mob might cross the
threshold of man. Love-magic and dealh-magic, the usual
forms of sorcery became common in Greece as elsewhere.
Love philtres and charms were eagerly sought, the most
innocent being bitten apples and enchanted garlands. Means
of protection against the evil eye became a necessity for
tales of bewitchment were spread abroad, and of misfortune
and death being brought upon the innocent and unwary by
means of a waxen figure moulded in their image and
tortured by the sorceress. In tombs and secret places
leaden tablets were buried inscribed with the names of
foes and victims, pierced through with a nail in order to
bring disaster and death upon them. At this time it became
law that none who practised sorcery might participate in
the Eleusinian Mysteries, and at Athens, a Samian
Sorceress, Theoris, was cast to the flames.
Orphic Magic,—The introduction of Egyptian influences were
due generally to the agency of Orpheus and Pythagoras,
who, while in Egypt, had been initiated into the
mysteries. The story of Orpheus shows him as pre-eminently
the wonder-worker, but one of beneficence and beauty. To
men of his time everything was enchantment and prodigy. By
the irresistible power of his music he constrained the
rocks, trees and animals to follow him, at his behest
storms arose or abated. He was the necromancer, who by his
golden music overcame the powers of darkness, and
descending to the world of shades, found his beloved
Eurydice, and but for the fatal and disobedient look into
her face ere they gained the upper air would have brought
her back to the living world. Jealous women tore him limb
from limb, and his head floating down the waters of the
Hebrus was cast on the rocky shores of Lesbos where, still
retaining the power of speech, it uttered oracles, the
guidance of which people from all parts sought, even those
of Babylon. He was said to have instructed the Greeks in
medicine and magic, and for long afterwards remedies,
magical formulae, incantations and charms were engraved
upon Orphean tablets and the power of healing was ascribed
to the Orphean Hymns. Pythagoras, Philosopher and
geometrician, to the populace a magician, indefatigable in
the pursuit of knowledge, wielded an immense influence on
the thought of his time. After his return from Egypt he
founded a school where to those who had previously
undergone severe and drastic discipline he communicated
his wide and varied knowledge. He was also credited with
miraculous powers such as being visible at the same hour
in places far apart as Italy and Sicily; of taming a bear
by whispering in its ear; of calling an eagle from its
flight to alight on his wrist.
Mysteries.—Among the greatest features of religious life
were the mysteries held at periodic intervals in
connection with the different deities, such as the
Sautothracian, the Bacchic and most famous of all, the
Eleusinian. Their origin is to be traced mostly to a
pre-historic nature-worship and vegetation-magic. All
these mysteries had three trials or baptisms by water,
fire and air, and three specially sacred emblems, the
phallus, egg and serpent, generative emblems sacred in all
secret rites. The Saraothracian centred round four
mysterious deities, Axieros the mother, her children
Axiocersos, male, Axiocersa, female, from whom sprang
Casindos the originator of the universe. The festival
probably symbolized the creation of the world, also the
harvest and its growth. Connected with this was the
worship of Cybele, goddess of the earth, of the cities and
fields. Her priests, the Corybantes, dwelt in a cave where
they held their ceremonies, including a wild and orgiastic
weapoa-dance, accompanied by the incessant shaking of
heads and clanging of swords upon shields. The cult of
Bacchus was said by some to have been carried into Greece
from Egypt by Melampus. He is the god of the vine and
vegetation, and his mysteries typified the growth of the
vine and the vintage; the winter sleep of all plant life
and its renewal in spring. Women were his chief
attendants, the Bacchantes,who, clashing cymbals and
uttering wild cries in invocation of their god, became
possessed by ungovernable fury and homicidal mania.
Greatest of all in their relation to Hellenic life were
the Eleusinian, Mysteries. These ware the paramount
interest and function of the state religion exerting the
widest, strongest influence on people of all classes. The
rites were secret and theirdetails are practically
unknown, but they undoubtedly symbolised the myth of
Demeter, corn-goddess, and were held in spring and
September. Prior to initiation a long period of
purification and preparation was enforced, during which
the higher meaning of the myth was inculcated, the
original meaning having become exalted by the genius of
the Greeks into an intimate allegory of the soul of man,
its birth, life and death, its descent into Hades and
subsequent release therefrom. After this there came the
central point of the mysteries, the viewing of certain
holy and secret symbols ; next, a crowning with garlands,
signifying the happiness which arises from friendship with
the divine. The festival also embodied a scenic
representation of the Story of Demeter; the rape of
Persephone, the sorrow of the mother, her complaints
before Zeus, the final reconciliation. Women played a
great part in this, the reason being that as they
themselves " produce," so by sympathetic magic their
influence was conveyed to the corn, as when crying aloud
for rain they looked upward to the skies, then down to the
earth with cries ofli Conceive! " These priestesses were
crowned with poppies and corn, symbolical attributes of
the deity they implored. (See article Mysteries.)
Divination.—Besides the priests and priestesses attached
to the different temples there was an order of men called
interpreters whose business it was to read futurity by
various means such as the flight of birds and entrails of
victims. These men often accompanied the armies in order
to predict the success or failure of operations during
warfare and thus avert the possibility of mistakes in the
campaign: they fomented or repressed revolutions in state
and government by their predictions. The most celebrated
interpreters were those of Elis, where in two or three
families this peculiar gift or knowledge was handed down
from father to son for generations. But there were others
who were authorised by the state—men who traded on the
credulity of the rich and poor, women of the lowest dregs
of humanity, who professed to read the future in natural
and unnatural phenomena, in eclipses, in thunder, in
dreams, in unexpected sight of certain animals, in
convulsive movement of eyelids, tingling of the ears, in
sneezing, in a few words casually dropped by a passer-by.
In the literature and philosophies of Greece magic in all
its forms is found as theme for imagination, discussion
and belief. In the hands of the tragic poets, sorceresses
such as Circe and Medea become figures of terror and
death, embodiments of evil. Pythagoras left no writings
but on bis theories were founded those of Empedocles and
Plato.
In the verses of Empedocles he teaches the theory of
re-incarnation, he himself remembering previous existences
wherein he was a boy, a girl, a plant, fish and bird. He
also claimed to teach the secrets of miraculous medicine,
of the re-animation of old age, of bringing rain, storm,
or sunshine, of recalling the dead. Aristides the Greek
orator gives exhaustive accounts, of the many dreams he
experienced during sleep in the temples and the cures
prescribed therein. Socrates tells of his attendant spirit
or genius who warned him, and others through his agency,
of impending danger, also foretelling futurity.
Xenophon, treating of divination by dreams, maintains that
in sleep the human soul reveals her divine nature, and
being freed from trammels of the body gazes into futurity.
Plato, while inveighing against sorcery, took the popular
superstitions relating to magic, demons and spirits and by
his genius purified and raised them, using them as a basis
for a spiritual and magical theory of things, unsurpassed
for .intellectual beauty. On his teaching was founded the
school of Nep-Platonists who were among the most fervid
defenders of magic. Aristotle states that prediction is a
purely natural quality of the imagination, while Plutarch
in his writings, wherein much may be found on magic and
dreams^ gives an exhaustive account or the somnambulic
states of the oracular priestess, Pythia, attributing them
to possession by the divinity.
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