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Pompeian wall painting depicting a hermaphrodite sitting, left hand raised towards an old satyr approaching from behind; a maenad or bacchant brings a love potion.. Magic in the Greco-Roman world – that is, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the other cultures with which they interacted, especially ancient Egypt – comprises supernatural practices undertaken by individuals, often privately ...
The Greek Magical Papyri (Latin: Papyri Graecae Magicae, abbreviated PGM) is the name given by scholars to a body of papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt, written mostly in ancient Greek (but also in Old Coptic, Demotic, etc.), which each contain a number of magical spells, formulae, hymns, and rituals.
Theurgy (/ ˈ θ iː ɜːr dʒ i /; from Greek θεουργία theourgía), also known as divine magic, is one of two major branches of the magical arts, [1] ...
Ancient Greek scholarship of the 20th century, almost certainly influenced by Christianising preconceptions of the meanings of magic and religion, and the wish to establish Greek culture as the foundation of Western rationality, developed a theory of ancient Greek magic as primitive and insignificant, and thereby essentially separate from ...
Greek divination is the divination practiced by ancient Greek culture as it is known from ancient Greek literature, supplemented by epigraphic and pictorial evidence. Divination is a traditional set of methods of consulting divinity to obtain prophecies (theopropia) about specific circumstances defined beforehand.
[20] For Pliny, this magic was a "monstrous craft" that gave the Greeks not only a "lust" (aviditatem) for magic, but a downright "madness" (rabiem) for it, and Pliny supposed that Greek philosophers – among them Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, and Plato – traveled abroad to study it, and then returned to teach it (xxx.2.8–10).
MS 5236 (inventory number of the Schøyen Collection) is an ancient Greek amulet of the 6th century BC, which is unique in two respects: it is the only known magic amulet of the time inscribed with a text that was stamped as opposed to incised, and it is the only extant specimen of ephesia grammata made of gold.
Ephesia Grammata (Greek: Ἐφέσια Γράμματα, "Ephesian Letters") are Ancient Greek magical formulas attested from the 5th or 4th century BC. According to Pausanias the Lexicographer (Eust. ad Od. 20, 247, p. 1864), their name derives from their being inscribed on the cult image of Artemis in Ephesus.