Magical Mondays on Hold Until Further Notice, but the Heian and Regency entries will continue

After careful consideration, I've decided to temporarily (and likely permanently) shelve the Magical Mondays feature on my blog. Although I really enjoyed doing it, I've found that the research involved in finding interesting new topics (rather than just going into increasing, intense depth on certain things already mentioned) was starting to take up a lot of time, especially as I'm interested in trying to accurately document people's true beliefs in these matters. Due to various recent changes in my circumstances, the amount of free time I have has become increasingly constrained, and I need to make sure I have time to squeeze out some actual fiction now and again.

My Heian and Regency features have benefited from the fact that I've already done extensive research or am in the process of doing research for various novels set in those periods (or, in one case, a slightly alternative history paranormal version), so I often have easy access to relevant research materials or detailed notes I can draw on. So, while they do take up some time, they don't require quite the effort of Magical Monday.

Thank you for your attention, and I hope that those who have stopped by for Magical Mondays will check out my continuing series on Heian Japan and Regency England. The Heian series will, on occasion, contain entries related to magical an supernatural beliefs of the period. In addition, though perhaps less exotic, there is still the occasional ghost story or bit of spiritualism to talk about in the Regency period (the Victorian period was more the heyday of that sort of thing).

Magical Mondays #12: Kushtaka, the Otter Men

Welcome to Magical Monday. In these segments, I'll be briefly examining various magical traditions, creatures, and elements that people have been believed in (or continue to believed in) throughout history. Eventually, I may also move onto depictions that appear only in novels, but there's plenty of historical material to keep me busy for a while.

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Untamed wilderness is both wondrous in its beauty and threatening in its separation from the careful tool-wielding hand of man. It's hard not to imagine all manner of mysterious creatures surviving in places people rarely tread.

This is something I've been thinking about tonight after speaking with my stepfather. He's from Southeastern Alaska. I've been to visit several times. It truly is a beautiful part of the country, a huge state with a low population density both in modern times and the past. The rich mythology of the native people speaks of all sorts of strange creatures.

In 1900, a group of prospectors traveling in the Thomas Bay area reported a rather odd encounter, as related in this excerpt:

"Right there, fellows, I got the scare of my life. I hope to God I never see or go through the likes of it again. Swarming up the ridge toward me from the lake were the most hideous creatures. I couldn't call them anything but devils, as they were neither men nor monkeys-yet looked like both. They were entirely sexless, their bodies covered with long coarse hair, except where the scabs and running sores had replaced it. Each one seemed to be reaching out for me and striving to be the first to get me. The air was full of their cries and the stench from their sores and bodies made me faint."

The Strangest Story Ever Told, Harry D. Colp

Given the wide variety of wildlife in the area, one can come up with a variety of possibilities for what these men might have seen, but the sighting is often associated with a long existing native legend of the Tlingit people of Southeastern Alaska, a legend about a shape-shifting creature called the kushtaka.

In the Tlingit language, the word kushtaka roughly translates as "otter man of the land".  These creatures are a type of shape-shifter that the myths report can assume several forms including that of a human and an otter. In addition, the legends also grant them a sort of in-between form that would correspond roughly to what was described in the above sighting, explaining why the existing kushtaka legends have been associated with it.

The stories of the kushtaka don't present an entirely consistent account of their behavior of the creatures. While often they are presented as dangerous tricksters who lure men, particularly Tlingit sailors, to deaths with illusions and faked cries of love ones, other stories talk of them saving people from drowning or cold. What's interesting, though, is that in both the hostile and friendly accounts, they often end with the human being turned into a kushtaka. In the least friendly versions of the stories, the kushtaka tricks end with them not just inadvertently leading humans to drowning, but with the creatures attacking and murdering them. 

Though even the friendly encounters are arguably bad for the human benefactors. For example, if a person is saved from drowning by the creatures, their souls will be trapped with the creatures and they'll become a kushtaka. Given that the native beliefs of the Tlingit involve a soul passing onto the Land of the Dead and subsequent reincarnation into descendants, being stuck as a kushtaka and separated permanently from the tribe might be considered by some a fate worth then death.

The alleged anti-kushtaka protection methods are reflective of the environment and culture that produced them: fire, copper, and human urine. Of course, avoiding the creatures entirely and areas they are believed to frequent is also recommend in the myths. Although I've focused on the Tlingit in this entry, many other native Alaskan groups have similar legends.

I've not talked about other shape-shifting legends of the natives of North America in my Magical Mondays segments, so just I'll note that the kushtaka are somewhat distinct in that they are a distinct class of being as opposed to being the result of a type of evil human magic. From my admittedly cursory review of the mythology of the indigenous peoples of North America, the latter is more common.

Magical Mondays #11: The Power of Internal Anatomy To Tell The Future: Haruspicy

Welcome to Magical Monday. In these segments, I'll be briefly examining various magical traditions, creatures, and elements that people have been believed in (or continue to believed in) throughout history. Eventually, I may also move onto depictions that appear only in novels, but there's plenty of historical material to keep me busy for a while.

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Given the practical value that would come with knowing the future, it's not surprising that many forms of divination have developed across many cultures. While some forms of divination strove for a somewhat objective method of interpretation by allowing only yes/no answers, many forms were quite ambiguous. A believer might attribute this to the difficulty associated with peering into the future, the cynic might note that such ambiguity allowed ancient diviners to claim a higher success rate.

Among the ancient Etruscans and later Romans (although likely borrowed from other earlier cultures), one common form of divination involved examining the entrails of animals particularly slaughtered as part of ritual sacrifice. This type of divination, like many types of ancient divination, required a specialist: a haruspex. in general, haruspicy was supposed to be conducted in conjunction with different techniques provided by other divination specialists, similar how many modern studies often involve two different scientists independently examining the data. The haruspexes themselves also tended to have some knowledge of interpretation of other omens, such as the meaning of lighting strikes (obviously, that type of divination was a bit less human-directed and controllable).

The haruspex was supposed to fast for a decent period, anywhere from a half-day to three days before the procedure. They were supposed to pray and have a proper mindset to beseech the gods for aid. This was often supposed to come as part of a meditation period where the haruspex concentrated on the question being answered.

An animal, typically something like a sheep or a chicken though occasionally something more grandiose like a bull, would be ritually slaughtered and its organs extracted. Different organs may be used for inspection, but the liver and heart were common. The haurspex was supposed to example patterns, folding, bumps, and other markings in particular areas that were supposed to correspond, potentially, to different particular interpretations based on their links to particular deities. So, in theory, this type of divination was at least attempting to be more precise but given the tremendous amount of liberty about determining what was worthy of note in a particular region, a lot of the ambiguity was retained.

Archaeologists have even found an Etruscan liver model that was either a "practice" liver or a handy reference tool:

The Piacenza Liver: An Etruscan haruspicy practice liver

After conducting the divination procedure, the slaughtered animals would typically be consumed in a feast. Waste not, want not.

Although many forms of divination throughout history have been associated with major events, there is one particularly important ancient Roman event wnere haruspicy was involved. The diviner who allegedly warned Julius Caesar to "beware the Ides of March" was a haruspex. In that case, I suppose one could chalk that up as a "success" for haruspicy.

Magical Mondays: Reader's Choice

For various reasons, including today being my birthday, I didn't prepare a Magical Monday entry. So, I'll throw the floor open to suggestions for next week whether it be a specific tradition you'd like me to research, a general area, a general culture, or whatever. Just let me know in the comments.

If everyone's too bashful to suggest anything, I'll just think something up for next week. I'll take suggestions up until Friday, so that I'll have a couple of days to do the necessary research.

Magical Mondays #10: I am most certainly not number four, East Asian fear of the number four

Welcome to my tenth Magical Monday. In these segments, I'll be briefly examining various magical traditions, creatures, and elements that people have been believed in (or continue to believed in) throughout history. Eventually, I may also move onto depictions that appear only in novels, but there's plenty of historical material to keep me busy for a while.

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Most  cultures that have developed number systems have also ascribed both power and meaning to numbers. As expressions of mathematical reality, they occupy an unusual sort of place in existence. Even absent complex numerology, certain individual numbers have gained special attention.

If one travels to Hong Kong, for example, they will find many buildings missing a fourth floor. Obviously the builders in Hong Kong aren't idiots. They build skyscrapers, so they've likely mastered basic arithmetic. The issue isn't counting; it's superstition. The number four is considered unlucky.

This fear comes not from some complicated numerology analysis or some ancient religious influence, but rather from something a bit more prosaic: the word four is rather close in sound to the word death in many East Asian languages. 

Let's take a linguistic step back.  The reason for this convergence is the influence of China on the various countries surrounding it. The might and majesty of the Middle Kingdom lead to the spread of its philosophies, language, and even religions all over East Asia. Even in the case of languages that are otherwise totally unrelated and unlike any form of Chinese (e.g., Japanese), Chinese words have been borrowed and/or modified to be brought into the language. Along with that borrowing came the similarity between death and four. 

As I don't want to get side-tracked by linguistics, I'll just note when I say "Chinese" I'm actually referring to the collective Chinese dialects. Despite the fact they are often called dialects, most of these "dialects" are in fact separate spoken language as different from each other as most Romance languages are. The particular nature of the Chinese writing system, which is more meaning than phonetically based, however, allows them to all be written, for the most part, the same way.

Chinese itself is a tonal language. The tone pattern associated with a word changes meaning. The complexity of these tones will vary on the individual dialect. I mention this because four and death are not perfect homonyms in most Chinese dialects (nor were they in the ancient Chinese dialects that influenced all their neighbors). The tone distinguished them. They were still quite close. Some of the languages that integrated Chinese words were not tonal, and thus some of them now have true homonyms between death and four.

Now, there's a certain irony in all of this. There's something else that spread throughout East Asia and has come to heavily influence it--Buddhism. The fundamental tenets of Buddhism are referred to as the Four Noble Truths. It's slightly surprising to have a key aspect of such an influential religion associated with the unlucky number four.  Buddhism, however, despite its current association with East Asia is actually South Asian in geographical, theological, and linguistic origin.

One might rightly wonder if this superstition is still common. Well, it's hard to say what percentage of people believe it, but I can testify from personal experience based on my time in Korea that it's far from an extinct there both in individual people or in general building numbering schemes. 

Magical Mondays #9: No lions, no wardrobes, but some witches: A brief discussion of European witch hunts

Welcome to my ninth Magical Monday. In these segments, I'll be briefly examining various magical traditions, creatures, and elements that people have been believed in (or continue to believed in) throughout history. Eventually, I may also move onto depictions that appear only in novels, but there's plenty of historical material to keep me busy for a while.


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Ah, the European witch trial--few concepts have seeped into our collective imagination or metaphorical concepts as thoroughly. The rise of Neo-pagan movements has cast a different light on the whole matter. Many modern day self-identified witches strongly insist that witch trials in the past were about oppressing pagan substrate influence, and their spiritual ancestors didn't even believe in the dark forces they were believed to be in league with. While there actually isn't a huge direct connection between modern neo-Pagan groups and medieval paganism, might they be onto something? Were witch trials about smoking out stubborn people clinging to the old ways? Were they the ultimate example of an out-of-control monolithic church?


Of course, the pre-modern age in Europe was one marked by piety, massive mixture ofChurch and State, and general superstition. In such a mix, one would suspect that the Church had been seriously pushing around witches and sorcerers ever since the twilight years of the Roman Empire. You know, running around with priests, accusing any pagans they found of witchcraft. Well, not quite.


It's important to note that anti-witchcraft/anti-sorcery laws in a more general sense go back well before the existence of Christianity. The Code of Hammurabi (approximately 1800 BC) says:


"If a man has put a spell upon another man and it is not justified, he upon whom the spell is laid shall go to the holy river; into the holy river shall he plunge. If the holy river overcome him and he is drowned, the man who put the spell upon him shall take possession of his house. If the holy river declares him innocent and he remains unharmed the man who laid the spell shall be put to death. He that plunged into the river shall take possession of the house of him who laid the spell upon him."

So, the general idea of punishing someone for using "evil magic" is a cross-cultural and present in most every religion. Though interesting enough, the Code seems to object less to sorcery or witchcraft per se rather than inappropriate sorcery and/or witchcraft. This makes perfect sense given that "magic" in the form of things like divination were part and parcel of many ancient societies. Of course, when things got bad, a lot of people suddenly ended up accused of evil sorcery. The rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire actually helped cut down on witch hunts, and despite a somewhat common meme of overzealous  Christians running around afraid of pagans and equating them with infernal forces, the early Christians were far less likely to grab a random woman or man, pagan or otherwise, and accuse them of being a witch and kill them than many pagans were around the same time. Of course, in the beginning, the Christians were the ones often accused of undermining societies with their unusual rituals and what not. Still, though when they got the post-Constantine upper-hand, the early Church was striking in its general lack of concern about witches. Arguably, though, they were still working out such basic stuff like fundamental organization, what they wanted to include in their holy book, et cetera. Worrying about hunting down witches may have been putting the cart before the horse in those early years even once they become the dominant religious force rather than the persecuted minority.

Now, this isn't to say there wasn't political and military oppression of pagans or the occasional charge of sorcery and what have you. Indeed, the last few centuries of the Roman Empire, despite the efforts of Julian the Apostate (333-361 AD; he was the last Roman emperor who had a serious shot at reversing the rise of Christianity in the empire) was marked by a curious and chaotic mix of Christian internecine fighting between the Arian and Nicene factions (a fascinating historical topic, but I'm trying to avoid turning these entries too deeply into theological minutiae) and vacillation toward the pagans in the empire. Anyway, we all know how that went down in the end. 


Back to the late Roman Empire, even though the pagans were vilified as heretics, there wasn't as much concern or association with them being actively league with infernal forces working to undermine the empire. Sure, there was a lot of concern about them undermining the empire for political reasons, but that's a slightly different angle. There also was the occasional spasm of anti-pagan violence, but given the tenor of the times, it's hard to sort through how much of that was religious versus political. Heck, the Arians and the Nicenes also scrapped on occasion. For the most part though, a combination of sustained political and economic repression rather than inquisitorial judicial power was the hammer used against those pagans. The people actually accused of evil sorcery might get in trouble, but the religious background didn't seem to matter as much as the just the use of evil magic.


So, we jump forward a thousand years or so. By the late-15th century, we have people rushing around various European countries now concerned about various witches calling forth the power of Satan who may or may not have been associated with pagan substrate beliefs systems in the eyes of authorities or not at all. Some have argued that success of the medieval Church at purging (often violently) heretical Christian sects, left various heretic-hunters in search of a job and that got directed toward "creating an enemy" within as it were. While that's certainly at least one aspect of what likely influenced the rise of the witch hunts, there's a more technological explanation I'll touch on here soon.


It would take weeks to sort through all the misinformation from the period and a lot of the misinformation from well-meaning and not-so-well meaning moderns concerning witchcraft. Suffice to say, though, the perception of the people at the time was what was important, even if it wasn't actually justified by reality. The threat, as they perceived it, was different than say some pagans sitting around not thoroughly converted. Instead, there was a deep fear that instead of heretics worshiping the wrong gods hiding out in some country or rural area, there were secret and organized Satanic worshipers  undermining society with infernal magic. This all reached a fever pitch around the tale end of the 15th century and would not fade, in some European countries, until the 19th century. For example, the Holy Roman Empire (which as the joke long ago went was neither holy nor Roman) executed their last "witch" as late as 1775! 


So, why did it take so darn long for the real witch hunts to get going? Why weren't the witch patrols strolling about looking for witches more seriously before the 15th century whether they be pagans, infernals, or just maybe some poor Zoroastrian who got on the wrong boat or something (Note to self: write that story)? Well, whatever one may think about the medieval religious institutions of Europe, they actually didn't, for many centuries actually believe in formalized witchcraft for the most part. None other than the rather Christian King of the Franks himself, Charlemagne (742-814), actually banned the execution of accused witches ten years after a Church council basically voted witchcraft officially out of existence as far as the religious authorities were concerned. In fact, this council, The Council of Paderborn, actually ascribed the death penalty for witch hunters. 


So, ironically, despite the modern association in the common mind with the Christianity and witch hunts, the early Church actually broke with the tendency, present in laws in many pre-Christian pagan societies, to have harsh penalties for witchcraft and sorcery. One can spend weeks discussing why they did that (or why we think they may have done it), but it's just important to note that the organization later most directly associated with later witch hunts were basically, early on, saying it was not only not a serious problem, it was technically a problem that didn't even exist. 


In a way, that's easy for many modern people in many places to understand. Sure, I'm sure there's some old law still on the book in some township somewhere that still says something about witch craft, but, for the most part, if your congressman or MP introduced an anti-magic piece of legislation, he or she would be roundly mocked. They are supposed to concentrate on real problems and similarly, the early Church wanted to concentrate on "real" problems (e.g., the Crusades, heretical Christian sects, et cetera,, conversion of pagan areas).


This doesn't mean your typical "Francois the peasant" didn't fear witchcraft and sorcery. A little mob violence against someone thought to be hexing a neighbor or something might erupt in a village on occasion, but you didn't really see the organized Church-lead efforts against it. In addition, there were various secular laws against it, but penalties were often minor. Execution was rare for centuries.


Around the 14th century, there began a more organized effort against witchcraft, particularly by religious authorities. Despite the involvement of the Inquisition as early as 1320, people who had zero moral problems with torturing heretics, there was a curious lack of concern about witchcraft. There are various reasons likely contributing to that, but the long tradition of the early Church and later Catholic Church of not even really officially believing in witchcraft contributed to it. There were even a few documented cases in the end of the 14th century where the Inquisition initially only gave a slap on the wrist to accused witches.


A lot can happen in a century. There were those in the Church who made a lot of noise not just about witches but, more importantly, about witch conspiracies to undermine society. That's the key element needed for a lot of the true out-of-control persecution, the idea that these people weren't just the occasional harmless magical wannabe, but they were organized cells of dangerous Satanic lackeys with actual magic they were going to use to undermine society. 


Still though, a review of several early 14th and 15th-century witch trial cases involves the religious authorities basically denying the existence of true witchcraft and the secular authorities, in contrast, insisting it was a real threat.


By the mid-15th century Gutenberg had introduced the printing press to Europe. Besides aiding the burgeoning Protestant movement, it allowed the wide-spread dissemination of books like Formicarius (1437) and Malleus Malificarum (The Hammer of Witches, 1487). These books codified and spread widely several ideas about witchcraft such as the strong and clear association with the Devil, the idea of organized Satanic groups, and a very clear and strong association between witchcraft and women (even if they didn't deny the existence of evil sorcerous males).  There's a lot of back and forth on how much of witch hunting was motivated by misogyny (and it's important to note men could and were accused of witchcraft), but it's still striking to note that Malleus Malificarum is focused on and obsessed with witchcraft as a heavily female endeavor.


Iit's hard to see passages like this and not see misogyny:


"Concerning Witches who copulate with Devils. Why is it that Women are chiefly addicted to Evil superstitions?"

or:

". . . that they [women] have slippery tongues, and are unable to conceal from the fellow-women those things which by evil arts they know; and, since they are weak, they find an easy and secret manner of vindicating themselves by witchcraft. See Ecclesiasticus as quoted above: I had rather dwell with a lion and a dragon than to keep house with a wicked woman. All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman. And to this may be added that, as they are very impressionable, they act accordingly."

Sure, I guess not that more misogynistic than many other texts at the times, but this was something where you could easily see how a woman who didn't "know her place" suddenly could end up accused of an executable offense.

More than anything else these books helped promote the idea that witchcraft, with its accompanying infernal magic, was real and a clear and present danger to European society. Malleus Malificarum even laid out procedures for how to run a proper witch trial along with such tidbits as noting a proper non-witch knows to sob in front of the judge:


"If he wishes to find out whether she is endowed with a witch’s power of preserving silence, let him take note whether she is able to shed tears when standing in his presence, or when being tortured. For we are taught both by the words of worthy men of old and by our own experience that this is a most certain sign, and it has been found that even if she be urged and exhorted by solemn conjurations to shed tears, if she be a witch she will not be able to weep: although she will assume a tearful aspect and smear her cheeks and eyes with spittle to make it appear that she is weeping; wherefore she must be closely watched by the attendants."


Malleus Malificarum, Part III, Question XV


I'm guessing crying while being tortured was less of an issue. 


The fires of the witch hunts (note: most witches were hung, not burned at the stake) would eventually burn themselves out for many reasons. In a reversal of the original situation where the secular authorities insisted witchcraft was real, a lot of it was arguably the rise of the Enlightenment. People were still religious, but the secular authorities stopped placing as much stock in the idea that an individual could summon actual supernatural powers. 


The distrust lingered on, though and in some places in Europe, anti-witchcraft laws would linger until even the middle of the twentieth century though more in a context of fraud-related laws than actual anti-magic laws. While this discussion was focused mostly on European witchcraft, there are still countries in the world today that people can and are executed for witchcraft or sorcery.


If you're interested in getting your inner witch hunter on or just shaking your head at the paranoia of the past, you can actually read Malleus  in translation at: http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/

Magical Mondays #8: The Cards Don't Quite Tell All: The History of the Tarot

Welcome to my eighth Magical Monday. In these segments, I'll be briefly examining various magical traditions, creatures, and elements that people have been believed in (or continue to believed in) throughout history. Eventually, I may also move onto depictions that appear only in novels, but there's plenty of historical material to keep me busy for a while.

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Ah, the ancient mystical arts. Proud magical traditions refined over the ages and kept preserved until the present day. Well, not always. Such is the case with Tarot cards.

How old do you think they are? I asked a few people this question recently and they thought Tarot cards had been around and used for fortune telling for around a thousand years.

If you said 500 or so years, you're right. The thing is, 500 or so years ago, they weren't use for anything approaching magic. I'll discuss the general mechanics of the Tarot itself in more detail in a future entry, but for now it's enough to know that Tarot cards are still commonly used as a method of divination and self-analysis. 

Playing cards first appeared in Europe around the 14th century for rather mundane use in games. These original cards were the descendants of cards from the Mamluk Sultanate (which covered parts of Turkey, North Africa, and the Middle East). Those cards, in turn, likely were descendants of Chinese playing cards. 

As early as the beginning of the 14th century, the cards that were in Europe weren't all that radically different from the modern card decks. They were 52-card decks of four suits and ten "pip" cards along with three "court cards". There were variations of both courts and suits depending on location. A modern person dropped back in time, though, could very quickly familiarize themselves with the deck even if some of the symbol were different. How that's for historical continuity?

Moving into the 15th century, Tarot decks arose. These were defined by the additional of allegorical and symbolic  imagery in addition to the standard suits and court cards. Though some of the symbolism may seem a bit obscure today, at the time they were all very well-known images and ideas often expressed in Medieval art. These Tarot cards were used to play games throughout Europe. There was no hint of them being associated with magic. In some areas they were banned, but that was more out of their association with gambling--the fine mystical art of taking money from suckers.

There have been 16th-century documents found discussing the use of cards as part of a divination process, but these records do not seem to suggest that Tarot cards in particular were involved. Even in these non-Tarot cases, the cards seemed to be used as a randomizing device for certain aspects of  ritual, but they were not ascribed power in and of themselves. Extant anti-Tarot statements by religious authorities in this period again focused on Tarot cards as a gambling tool.

The 17th century brought additional game variants. Though there was some expansion of normal cards with basic fortune telling (so your 52-card deck might be as good as the Tarot),  it isn't until the end of the 18th century that French occultists laid the ground work for the use of Tarot as an independent symbolic divination method. The world's first professional cartomancer, Jean-Baptiste Alliette, published material associating the Tarot with  astrology. He also produced a dedicated occult divination deck. Many of the specific elements still associated with the occult Tarot in some form were mostly defined by Alliette. He, along with several other writers, also further clouded the true history of the Tarot. They proposed various ideas with no historical basis, such as a link between the Tarot and various forms of ancient Egyptian, Jewish, and Gypsy magic.

The expansion of the idea of the Tarot as a deep, mystical occult tool was heavily promoted in the 19th century. The 20th century saw a bit of a push-back against the various "ancient mystical" aspects of the Tarot. Instead, various mystics, including Arthur Edward Waite, would try to correlate Tarot with a more universal symbols and correspondences. Note this isn't really a rejection of Tarot as a mystical tool, but rather just a rejection of an explicit link between Tarot and specific ancient mystical traditions.

Later 20th-century and early 21st-century interpretations of the Tarot are often influenced by Waite's ideas. The infiltration of Jungian ideas into the mainstream of thought somewhat mirror Waite's thoughts and have allowed many modern practioners a way to distance themselves from the more purely mystical, though relatively recent, Tarot tradition.

So, despite their heavy association with the occult in many cultures today, if you went back in time even during some of the periods of religious persecution, you'd be more likely to get a lecture about gambling then accused of sinister magic. 

Not So Magical Monday

No Magical Monday this week. Various deadlines in other realms are catching up to me this week, and so it's limited my time to do non-job-related research and type up nifty blog entries. I do intend to, however, still have my Heian and Regency post up this week, so it won't be a total bust.

Magical Mondays #7: Courtship's for losers, just use a spell: Ancient Greek Love Magic

Welcome to my seventh Magical Monday. In these segments, I'll be briefly discussing various magical traditions, creatures, and elements that people have been believed in (or continue to believed in) throughout history. Eventually, I may also move onto depictions that appear only in novels, but there's plenty of historical material to keep me busy for a while.

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Magic, ultimately, is about control: control of the world, control of yourself, control of the spirits, maybe even control of the gods. Think about the last bit. A ritual offering is an attempt to placate--to control. There are many reasons to seek the control: power, protection, wealth, ambition--or love.


Love is a bit hard to pin down. It means many things and has meant many things to various cultures throughout history.


To the ancient Greeks, the concept of love could be broadly divided into four basic categories. To simplify things tremendously these are agápe (deep self-sacrificing love, spiritual love), eros (more wild passion, longing, attraction), philia (the love of one's friends and also basic affection), and storge (familial love). There is a bit more nuance than that, but those are a good approximation.


So, if you're an ancient Greek wandering around and want to generate a love "spell", the first question to ask is what kind of love is it that you're attempting to invoke. The mechanism of invoking the magic are going to vary by the type, as are the gods you are going to attempt to request some aid from. The rich ancient pantheon included numerous gods, but an aspiring love mage wouldn't necessary just call out to one of the gods with a domain that involves love and/or relationships. It was often more about what the intent of the spell was: enhancement of emotion, manipulation of emotion, et cetera.


Evidence suggests the often, the type of magic that many male aspiring toward mystical love aid would invoke would be more eros-based, in other words, lust magic. This magic might be channeled through sympathetic techniques (i.e., the use of figures and effigies that represent the target). They could call upon the power of love deities  like Eros and Aphrodite or others less obvious, such as Pan (nature) and Hecate, who broadly (and simplistically) speaking is a goddess of magic. 


What's really curious is the techniques used (other than incantations, which are fairly standard) They might prick the effigy. Now, these days, this is the kind of thing we might associated with some sort of stereotypical voodoo doll (now that's a huge misnomer in a lot of ways, but we'll leave that discussion for another day). The point wasn't to harm the woman but instead create lust wounds, of a sort, to fill her with eros. 


The prospective lover might also attempt to channel the love god Eros more directly as well by creating a wax statue that would then embody the spirit of the god. Again, the idea in this scenario was to create an irresistible passion. Other techniques might include lead tablets that were inscribed with a sort of binding curse. Many of these eros-based spells were, in a sense, a type of curse.


Now, this is not to say that women would never use eros-based love "curses", but more often they were associated with philia-based magic that was designed to bring the man toward them to connect on a more basic affection level. They might also call on Aphrodite, but as opposed to the eros-based magic, they wouldn't call on someone like Hecate or Pan, but rather someone like the moon goddess, Selene.


The way the magic was focused in a different way. Though they might make use of incantations, usually they would create something that the man could be directly exposed to, such as something they could spread on his clothing or create an elixir he could consume either directly (your basic 'love' potion) in his food or drink.


For a particularly tragic take on this sort of agape/philia-based love magic, the legends concerning the death of Heracles/Hercules. He died when his wife, Deianira, concerned about him straying, gave him a chiton (a kind of tunic). The clothing was stained with the blood of a centaur Heracles had killed years earlier using poisoned hydra blood-tipped arrows. As a result, the centaur blood itself was also poisoned. The centaur, prior to his death, had convinced that his poison-soaked clothing contained a magic that would help her rekindle his love. Years later when Deianira becomes concerned about Heracles wandering, so gives him the cloak. It starts burning away his skin and, to end his suffering, he ends up building his own funeral pyre, which a friend then lights.


Though that is a legendary story, it is reflective of the idea of giving a man something to bring him back, rather than to incite controllable passion in him. I also should note that though the Heracles story is legend, there are multiple references to these kinds of spells in different sources. While we can never be sure how many men or women actually attempted this type of magic, it is referenced enough that it seems fairly clearly the magic wasn't particularly fringe.


Normally, in all my historical or magical segments, I rely on a variety of sources online and offline, including my own personal knowledge (of course that also is, in turns gathered from a variety of online and offline sources). This article, however, was almost entirely sourced from one book, so I'm going to give a direct shout out to University of Chicago classics professor Christopher Farone. He's written a number of books on ancient Greek magical thought. In particular, the material in this article was gathered from his interesting (though somewhat uninspired in regards to title) book, Ancient Greek Love Magic. If you want to explore this magic in extreme detail, along with the sociological implications for gender relations in ancient Greece, check out the book. I will note his prose style is a bit turgid at times, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Magical Monday: A Very Magical Summary

Due to the magical gathering of candy with my children, I didn't prep a Magical Monday today, but I did want to offers links to the various more Halloween-inspired/supernatural-themed entries I've had going for most of October in all my various blog series in case you missed them, especially as I know I have many new people people following in the last couple of weeks: So, this entire month has been mostly been magical!

Magical Mondays #3: Poisonous Immortality: Taoist Alchemy
Magical Mondays #4: Ikiryō, Haunting by the Living
Mr. Beard's Regency Tour Day 4: Phantasmagoria, The Regency Horror Show
Magical Mondays #5: Blemmyes, the headless threat
The Age of Tranquility and Peace, Heian Japan #4: The Demon of Rashōmon
Mr. Beard's Regency Tour Day 5: The Mighty Enchantress, the Gothic Queen: Ann Radcliffe
Magical Mondays #6: Cihuateteo, The Duality of Suffering Mother Spirits
Mr. Beard's Regency Tour Day 6: Classy Bloodsuckers and the Modern Prometheus, Two Pillars of Horror Birthed in the Regency

Next Monday, I shall return with fresh material: an entry on ancient Greek love magic.

Magical Mondays #6: Cihuateteo, The Duality of Suffering Mother Spirits

Welcome to my sixth Magical Monday. In these segments, I'll be briefly discussing various magical traditions, creatures, and elements that people have been believed in (or continue to believed in) throughout history. Eventually, I may also move onto depictions that appear only in novels, but there's plenty of historical material to keep me busy for a while.

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The rich and complex mythology of the Aztec people is defined by plentiful gods and other lesser types of supernatural beings.  As an expansionist empire of a martial bent, a warrior culture permeated many aspects of the society on all levels--including their beliefs in the supernatural. In particular, the spirits of fallen warriors were believed to be escorted by a type of spirit called the cihuateteo, the goddesses of the crossroads. During the day, the cihuateteo were said to dwell among the stars and traveled with the sun from noon to sunset and the continued along with the sun as it traveled through the underworld. Given the nature of their creation and their particular tasks, they are associated with several different Aztec deities, in particular Cihuacotal, a fertility and motherhood goddess, who herself was associated with the Aztec underworld, Mictlan.

These goddesses, or spirits depending on your interpretation, are a lot more interesting than just simple escorts for the spirits of dead warriors. They were said to be the spirits of women who died in childbirth. On first glance, it might seem odd that the spirits of such women would be tasked with escorting the spirits of fallen warriors, but in the Aztec culture, childbirth was considered a type of battle. Women who died in childbirth were therefore honored as fallen warriors. Besides their new post-death role as the escorts of the dead, their ashes and severed fingers were also believed to possess magical energy that could could aid Aztec warriors. As exemplars of personal courage, the thought was that their remains could help channel both that bravery in a direct and indirect way to lend aid in battle.

Images and depictions of the cihuateteo vary. Sometimes they were rendered as mostly normal women but with various symbolic animals and headdresses. A skeletal face was also a reoccurirng motif.

Aztec myth is defined by duality, and the cihuateteo are no exception. Despite the apparently nobility associated with being a escort of the honored dead, they were also sometimes a feared spirit. At night, however, and during certain days in the ritual calendar, they might haunt crossroads. There, they were associated with a variety of supernatural mischief. 


Some of these negative beliefs are fairly common things associated with dangerous spirits: disease, madness, and infirmity. Others are more closely linked to their origin, such as their reported tendency to occasioally kidnap children. Yet others are perhaps reflective of a fairly common cross-cultural ambivalence about women. For example, despite the association of the spirits with the honorable death in childbirth, the nighttime crossroad haunts were also associated with the seduction of men.

A carving of a cihuateteo from the Mexican National Museum of Anthropology
Photo by William Neuheisel

Even with this association with the occasional bit of anti-human action, they were still deeply venerated for both the sacrifice that brought to them their supernatural status and their role as spirit escorts. Shrines were built for them at crossroads, where they would be given offerings. Despite the bloody sacrifice that is associated with some types of Aztec ritual and religious practice, these spirits were apparently content with simple tamales and corn.

Magical Mondays #5: Blemmyes, the headless threat

Welcome to my fifth Magical Monday. In these segments, I'll be briefly overviewing various magical traditions, creatures, and elements that people have been believed in (or continue to believed in) throughout history. Eventually, I may also move onto depictions that appear only in novels, but there's plenty of historical material to keep me busy for a while.


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Blemmyes traduntur capita abesse, ore et oculis pectore adfixis. (It is said that the Blemmyae have no heads and that their mouth and eyes are in their chests).

Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book V, Paragraph 46 (75 A.D.)


The fear of the unknown. The fear of uncertainty. The fear of the other. In our modern television and internet-linked world, we are able to see and even interact with people all over the world. No matter how ignorant a person is about people of another culture, we still understand they are human beings, maybe different in culture but not truly alien.

While some monsters and legends were manifestations of a culture's attempt to understand the often seemingly dark and capricious world around them, others are just the projection of the fear of the unknown onto another people--such is the case with the Blemmyes (the middle-gazer or chest-gazer).

The Blemmyes is the fourth from left.
Image from Cosmographia, a 16th-century German atlas

Pliny's Natural History was nothing less than an attempt to comprehensively document all the knowledge known in the world available to the Roman Empire at the time. Divided into thirty-seven sections, the Blemmyes are discussed, along with various other fantastic peoples, in a general section devoted into sections best described as geography and anthropology. In subsequent centuries, the Blemmyes were not just known for their freakish appearance but also for their tendency to eat normal humans.


In truth, the Blemmyes were a Nubian tribe. Though they had some conflicts with the Romans in later centuries, it wasn't that many decades before Pliny's description that other ancient sources described them as mostly a peaceful tribe. Pliny was not the first to describe them as headless. In the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus described a headless tribe in the same region of the world. The convergence of description, however, likely just reflects that the Natural History was a compendium of existing expert sources, including Herodotus.


At the time of Natural History, there didn't seem to be much in the way of a cannibal reputation, so the later century propaganda after conflicts with the Romans likely lead to a the tarnishing up their reputation, and their evolution into a full-fledged monster. 

There's a certain irony to this. By the time the Blemmyes entered into conflict with the empire, the Romans would have obviously become aware that they were not headless monsters. This negative reputation has lingered throughout the centuries with even a reference to their cannibal ways in Othello of all things. 

Schedule Change

After a few weeks of my new content, I now have a much better sense for the time involved. With that new knowledge in mind, I'm adjusting my schedule for my regular material:


Monday: Magical Mondays (supernatural traditions and historical supernatural beings)
Wed: The Age of Tranquility and Peace (Heian Japan entries)
Fri: Mr. Beard's Regency Tour (Regency England entries)


In addition, until the end of October, my entries will vaguely be supernatural/horror/ghost-themed in honor of Halloween.


Due to the adjusted schedule, there's no Heian entry this Sunday, but if you haven't already read the entry, I encourage you to check out last week's Magical Monday, as it is Heian-relevant: Ikiryō, Haunting by the Living.

Magical Mondays #4: Ikiryō, Haunting by the Living

Welcome to my fourth Magical Monday. In these segments, I'll be briefly overviewing various magical traditions, creatures, and elements that people have been believed in (or continue to believed in) throughout history. Eventually, I may also move onto depictions that appear only in novels, but there's plenty of historical material to keep me busy for a while.


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"Now in the torchlight Genji saw at her pillow, before the apparition vanished, the woman in his dream. Despite surprise and terror, for he had heard of such things at least in old tales, he was frantic to know what had become of her, until he shed all dignity and lay down beside her, calling on her to wake up, but she was growing cold and no longer breathing."


The Tale of Genji (Tyler Translation), Chapter 4.


The above snippet from Murasaki Shikibu's 11th-century Japanese novel recounts the fatal end of tryst between the protagonist and a young woman. One night when they travel together to an abandoned mansion to spend some amorous time together, his lover is literally frightened to death by a frightening ghostly apparition.


Now Japanese folklore is filled with a variety of spirits, ghosts, and mystically inclined animals that can threaten people's lives and souls in a myriad of unpleasant ways. Indeed, in the full chapter I've quoted from above, the protagonist, Genji, who initially doesn't take some spookiness at the mansion seriously, even suggests that foxes (who are associated with many magical powers in Japanese folklore) might be causing mischief. 


Interestingly enough, the killer of Genji's lover is not a ghost, spirit, fox, demon, or any other sort of hostile (or even mischievous) supernatural entity. Instead, she was killed by another jealous lover of Genji's (yes, he gets around a lot), Rokujo no Miyasundokoro. This is where things get even more interesting. The jealous lover never laid a hand on the woman. Instead, it was her ikiryō--a sort of malevolent traveling spirit manifestation from a person--that killed Genji's latest conquest.


Ikiryō are said to manifest because of extreme and generally personally directed negative emotions. They are basically a piece of the soul (or the entire thing) of the other person detaching themselves temporarily from their source and going to harass the source of their anger. In some cases, these ikiryō can even possess other people. Although though the tales note can be exorcised, particularly by Buddhist priests, they were often harder to remove with such rituals versus actual ghosts or supernatural creatures, perhaps due to their living human source.


The relative awareness of the person who provides the source of the ikiryō varies. In many tales, people weren't truly aware that their soul is striking out at another. Though, it is often the case that it is easier to separate from the host body when the person is resting or sleeping. Although the spirit may be acting on deeply held emotions of the person, it is effectively an autonomous entity. In some tales, the ikiryō manifests when the person isn't actively aware of the level of antipathy they hold in their souls. Potentially killing someone you don't even  realize you hate is a fairly disturbing idea.


As the ikiryō is a part of the person's soul, excessive absence from the host can lead to weakness and sickness. That's an important aspect to note. This isn't about summoning some hostile creature with negative emotion but just taking a piece of a person and having it strike out. In that sense, it's kind of an autonomous version of something like the evil eye. 


Although I won't discuss it today, I should note that Japanese folklore also has a positive flip-side of souls traveling distances to contact love ones, help people out, et cetera. Such examples, along with the ikiryō, are a reflection of the idea in Japanese folklore (and many other belief systems throughout history and around the world) that the soul and body as linked, yet still somewhat autonomous entities.

Magical Mondays #3: Poisonous Immortality: Taoist Alchemy

Welcome to my third Magical Monday. In these segments, I'll be briefly overviewing various magical traditions and elements that people have been believed in (or continue to believed in) throughout history. Eventually, I may also move onto depictions that appear only in novels, but there's plenty of historical stuff to keep me busy for a while.

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Humanity has conquered the skies, even walked on the moon. We can transmit information almost instantly from one side of the globe to the other. Despite all our knowledge, one of the most ancient desires, immortality, escapes our grasp. Different attempts at achieving immortality using modern technology are being attempted, such as cryonics. Technologically-based movements such as the transhumanists conjure up all sorts of schemes involving using the power of technology to free themselves from the shackles of mere mortal life. In this, these modern day seekers share a common bond with the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang (247 BC-221 BC), who was obsessed with immortality.

Of course, the ancient Chinese emperor couldn't even conceive of the technological innovations that inspire modern day immortality seekers. Instead, he focused his efforts on various potions and elixirs of immortality. In doing so, he often turned to Taoist alchemists.

Taoism, which emerged roughly six centuries prior, was originally relatively free of a lot of low-level mystical and directly magical attachments. The original texts are defined by a modest simplicity. As Taoism spread throughout China, it fused with and absorbed different folk beliefs. By the time of Qin Shi Huang and later contemporaries, complicated Taoist magic and alchemy was associated with many schools of Taoist thought.

While going into detail about Taoism is well beyond the scope of this entry (and would probably require an lengthy series of its own), there are a couple of relevant concepts I should briefly mention that are relevant to the emperor's quest for immortality. The Taoist alchemy tradition is divided into the so-called "inner"/"spiritual" alchemy and "outer"/"physical" alchemy. Incidentally, European alchemy also had a similar mix between spiritual and more physical elements.

The basis of inner alchemy were the "Three Treasures" of Jing, Qi, and Shen. Though it is a gross simplification, one can think of this as roughly equivalent to physical vitality, general life energy, and spiritual essence. A balance of these elements and proper maintenance of Jing were believed to extend life.

Inner alchemy depended on a variety of rather mundane techniques including eating a controlled diet, meditation, breathing exercises, and other things that make a certain logical sense even in our modern technological world. It also depended on other less straight-forward things including sperm retention and menstrual control.

Outer alchemy, on the other hand, made use of various herbs and chemical substances. Despite the mystical overtones, it was effectively proto-medicinal chemistry. They were used to manipulate the Treasures and the elements that make up the body (in Chinese philosophy these are wood, fire, water, metal, and earth). As with inner alchemy, manipulating the balances of the essences and treasures of the body could lead to extended life or even immortality. Jade, gold, hematite, and cinnabar (a mercury ore) were popular ingredients in immortality elixirs.

Taoist outer alchemy was also just as concerned with turning base metals into gold as European alchemy, but the alleged point of the quest for gold was to consume it to extend life. One Taoist sage was alleged to have remarked, "Have you ever seen a rich immortal?"

Now, an astute reader will probably notice that the continued consumption of things like toxic mercury ore is likely to lead not to immortality but to illness and/or death. Several Chinese emperors likely died of mercury poisoning. Qin Shi Huang, mighty first emperor of China, himself likely died from the consumption of mercury either in pill or elixir form.

The respect for mercury is obvious from the descriptions of Qin Shi Huang's tomb, which include entire scale "rivers" of mercury. Although once thought mere exaggeration, the emperor's tomb was re-discovered in 1974, and subsequent chemical testing has confirmed extremely high mercury residual vapor levels in the soil.

*The tomb was supposed to be a scale model of the imperial lands including the major rivers. Even if they were mere "creeks" of mercury, that is still a staggering amount.

Magical Mondays #1: The Imperfect Creation of Man: The Golem

Welcome to my first Magical Monday. In these segments, I'll be briefly touching on various magical traditions and elements that people have been believed in (or continue to believed in) throughout history. Eventually, I may also move onto depictions that appear only in novels, but there's plenty of historical stuff to keep me busy for a while.


Disclaimer: These blog entries should not be interpreted as either the promotion or insults against belief in any particular magical system or religion. I find this fascinating from an intellectual and creative stand-point and respect the wide variety of human thought.


Today's topic: Golems


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Modern humans take for granted the impressive scope of our current understanding of the world. Molecular biologists push at the very understanding of what defines and produces life. Physicists peer into the fundamental fabric of space-time. We've flown to the moon. For most of history, true understanding of any of the forces of nature has eluded us.

Our ancestors spent just as much effort trying to understand their world through various magical systems. In the end, despite the religious or spiritual elements that often accompanied them, magic systems were previous attempts to understand the universe or attempt to imitate the grandness they saw in nature.

Before genetic engineering or robotics arose, there were people who sought to create artificial life. Such was the case with legendary Jewish mystics and golems.


A golem, fundamentally, is an artificial magically-animated humanoid. Legends note they could be made from a variety of earthen materials with mud and clay the most commonly mentioned. According to the Talmud (the central written collection of Jewish Oral law and rabbi commentaries), when God created Adam, the first man, he remained as a soulless golem for the first 12 hours hours of his existence. Various methods have been described concerning the actual act of creation. Many of these procedures involve variations on invoking the name of God. Numerology based on the Hebrew alphabet often figures prominently. These methods basically involve borrowing the wisdom and power of the divine to invoke the power of the creation of life.


Despite all the links to the divine, there's still a heavy element of scholarship and analysis (this is a recurring motif in Jewish mysticism that I may revisit in a future article, though certainly not limited to Jewish mystical traditions), thus golem creation is typically associated with rabbis. The implication being that enough study and wisdom can grant the knowledge of creation. The magical power is not inherent to the rabbi. The details vary, but it is very common that the Hebrew word emet (truth) is inscribed on the golem's forehead. The construct can then be deactivated by removing the final Hebrew letter forming met (death). Another word-based activation involves Adam being inscribed on the head. The word inscription is not universal and one interesting variant includes walking around the golem chanting the secret name of God (also worth of an entire entry itself) backwards.


There are numerous other legends and details associated with golems, and mystical manuals in the Middle Ages even purported to offer detailed instructions on the proper creation methods.What is rather striking that despite the mystical and spiritual links to the divine, golem creation is still often defined in legend as a process that can be learned through the acquisition of knowledge. 

This human-limited creation can only manage a limited act of creation. Golems possess great strength and durability, but they lack intelligence and have to be given literal commands (in some legends these were oral, in others they were literally 'fed' instructions on paper). The inability of golems to speak is a continuing motif. Many legends focus on golems getting out of control.

The last point is an interesting theme repeating even to this day. In one of the more famous stories set in the 16th century (evidence suggests the legend didn't arise until the 19th century though), Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Chief Rabbi of Prague, created a golem to deal with a spate of antisemitic violence. Though it defended the Jews, it eventually fell to violent rampaging and had to be deactivated by the rabbi. Many variants of this particular legend claim the golem is still around in storage, deactivated.

Indeed, the Golem of Prague has made appearances in such diverse places as the beginning of Michael Chabon Pullitzer Prize's winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and the far less literary The Simpsons. I doubt that any of those ancient rabbis were ever thinking about anything like that when they were trying to learn how to create life.

Changes (The Non-Jim Butcher Kind)! Call the Prince Reagent, have him talk with a Fujiwara regent, and then go find an alchemist

Okay, this has been coming for a while, but I'm going to slightly be shifting the content on my blog (and in some cases already have).

I'll still going to be doing weekly interviews and guest blogs from other authors. I think this is a great way to help out both authors and readers.

In addition, starting next week, I'm going to try and be efficient and combine two of my writing-relating activities together: blogging and research.

So, starting next week, I'm starting three new weekly features. On Mondays, I'll be talking about different magical systems. I'm a very non-magical person and don't believe in any magic (except the magic of compound interest), but in the course of writing various fantasy and paranormal stories I've become fascinated by the varied types of magical beliefs and systems that people have thought up. I intend to focus both on historical magical systems and those that have only appeared in the pages of novels. I intend to call this 'Magical Mondays'. What can I say, I like alliteration.

On Thursdays, I will be sharing tidbits about Georgian and Regency England (Mr. Beard's Regency Tour). On Sundays, I will be sharing tidbits about Heian Japan as part of my "The Age of Tranquility and Peace" (a rough literal translation of Heian jidai, not necessarily an objective statement about the entire period).

These entries will usually be modest in size, but I hope to communicate at least some small bit of useful information in them.

I'll no longer be participating in SFFS or SSS due to time constraints, though I'll still be trying to stop by many of the blogs I routinely visit to comment, but it will probably take me the entire week to make it through those.

I hope, if you're interested in any of those topics, you'll stop by.

Magical Mondays Index Page

Here is the archive of all my Magical Mondays entries:

Magical Mondays #1: The Imperfect Creation of Man: The Golem
Magical Mondays #2: Diving the Future: Chinese Oracle Bones
Magical Mondays #3: Poisonous Immortality: Taoist Alchemy
Magical Mondays #4: Ikiryō, Haunting by the Living
Magical Mondays #5: Blemmyes, the headless threat
Magical Mondays #6: Cihuateteo, The Duality of Suffering Mother Spirits
Magical Mondays #7: Courtship's For Losers: Just use a spell: Ancient Greek Love Magic
Magical Mondays #8: The Cards Don't Quite Tell All: A Brief History of the Tarot
Magical Mondays #9: No lions, no wardrobes, but some witches: A Brief History of European Witch Hunts
Magical Mondays #10: I am Certainly not Number Four, East Asian Fear of the Number Four
Magical Mondays #11: The Power of Internal Anatomy to Tell the Future: Haruspicy
Magical Mondays #12: Kushtaka, the Otter Men
Magical Mondays: Magical Mondays discontinued

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