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• Magical Iconography. How Can an Image Protect and Heal?

  43–52.

  Grzegorz First

  Views:

  262

  One of the features of the attitude of ancient societies towards the threats of everyday life was a close relationship between spiritual/magical and religious beliefs and the real actions aimed at overcoming dangers. This relationship is visible in the magical iconography of Ancient Egypt and other Ancient Near Eastern cultures – in the form of demons, minor deities, and other benevolent supernatural beings that can protect people. Images of theses deities are sometimes accompanied by archaeological traces (holes for water, traces of rubbing, touching), indicating that images were also subjects of action. The question is how the magical and religious iconography meets the non-supernatural actions and how this custom could emerge in other parts of the Ancient world and in post-ancient times.

• Materiality, Oral Incantations and Supernatural Agency in Ancient Healing Magic

  15–42.

  Francisco Marco Simón

  Views:

  360

  In the Ancient World illness was thought to be the effect not of accidental or natural causes, but rather the result of a negative agency, an external attack on the victim’s body. This paper focuses on the diverse strategies used in healing magic attested in the material and textual records from the ancient Near East to Late Antiquity, with special attention paid to how the cultural status of objects and substances was changed through ritual, a process that, along with the invocations of demons and gods, allowed objects to acquire agency to counterattack the harm inflicted on the victim’s body.

• Gagates: A Magical Gemstone

  95–104

  Attilio Mastrocinque

  Views:

  108

  The jet stone was used for amulets from antiquity to modern times. Legends and beliefs concerning it flourished. It is black and, being similar to amber, could be burned to obtain a smoke used for magical and medical purposes. Some religious ceremonies used it for attracting snakes. It was often confused with other stones, such as aetites and serpentine and even with agate because it was also called antachates.

• The charaktêres in Ancient and Medieval Jewish magic

  25–44

  Gideon Bohak

  Views:

  218

  This paper examines the different magical signs found in Jewish magical texts and artifacts in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. These include especially the Graeco-Egyptian “charaktêres” (ring-letters, Brillenbuchstaben), the Arabic “string letters” (or Siegel), and the Latin sigilla or figurae, to which one may add a few other types of magical signs. This paper surveys their appearance in Jewish magical texts of different times and places, and analyzes their function within the magical texts where they are found.