5 posts tagged “magic”

This is pretty entertaining.

I'm not totally sure how I feel about it, but you know. It's pretty interesting anyway.

From Hans Dieter Betz's translation of PGM VII. 664-85 in The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. That's a papyrus scroll, found in Egypt, written in Greek, certainly from before 600 CE. the origin of how we think of magic in the modern world. These scrolls are the source of "abracadabra," of amulets, ultimately of things like Harry Potter.

SPELL FOR OBTAINING DREAM REVELATIONS: Take a linen strip, and on it you write with myrrh ink the matter, and wrap an olive branch and place it beside your head, beneath the left side of your head, and go to sleep, pure, on a rush mat on the ground, saying the spell 7 times to the lamp:

"Hermes, lord of the world, who're in the heart,
O circle of Selene, spherical
and square, the founder of the words of speech,
pleader of Justice's cause, garbed in a mantle,
with golden sandals, turning airy course
beneath earth's depths, who hold the spirit's reins,
the sun's and who with lamps of gods immortal
give joy to those beneath earth's depths, to mortals
who've finished life. The Moirai's fatal thread
and Dream divine you're said to be, who send
forth oracles by day and night; you cure
pains of all mortals with your healing cares.
Hither, o blessed one, o mighty son
of the goddess who brings full mental powers,
by your own form and gracious mind. And to
an uncorrupted youth reveal a sign
and send him your true skill of prophecy.

OIOSENMIGADON ORTHO BAUBO NIOERE KODERETH DOSERE SYRE SUROE SANKISTE DODEKAKISTE AKROUROBORE KODERE RINOTON KOUMETANA ROUBITHA NOUMILA PERPHEROU AROUORER AROUER (say it seven times and add the usual, whatever you wish.)

The term "AKROUROBORE" means "ourobouros," the snake eating its own tail. "Arouer" is Egyptian for Hr-wr, "Horus the great."

I don't know if you realize how cool this is, but it is totally cool. There's a whole book of these plus about 1,500 curse tablets, written to call on the spirits of the dead/heroes/gods to work one's will on earth. They're fantastic. I love them. I am a huge nerd.

You know, little inconsistencies in scholarship really bother me.

For instance, almost everything I read about curse tablets favors the term defixiones over καταδεσμοι (and yes, I am too lazy to put the accents on that, O Greek-readers who read this. You will live) despite the fact that the latter term is actually better attested in the curse tablets themselves. There isn't even a Latin verb defixio - it's from defigo.

Anyhow, I wish that I could use καταδεσμοι in my paper, but unfortunately the seminal work in the field uses the terms I was talking about in my last entry, defixiones amatoriae and all that, and it gets pretty confusing when you're using three terms (defixiones, curse tablets, καταδεσμοι) for the same thing. So defixiones it is.

Bother.

I've completed my qualifying exam (well, except for the oral defense, which happens on Wednesday). Thank heaven! In the course of this experience, I've learned many things, to wit:

1. Sallust is incredibly boring. Seriously. You'd think that he would be interesting since, you know, he's talking about a conspiracy to overthrow the government, but nope. Boring, boring, boring.
2. Almost every word in Latin, ever, can be read as having implications of effeminacy.
3. If you try hard enough, you can work fortunatam natam me consule Romam into absolutely any paper. You just have to really, really want to make fun of Cicero. All things are possible with the holy spirit of mockery.
4. LaTeX is only moderately scary. BibTeX, on the other hand, is just about the scariest thing ever invented. Holy shit! Please, please, please don't eat my bibliography! I don't know what that error message means! I'm your willing slave, BibTeX, I'll do anything you want me to, just please tell me what to do in good -- plain -- ENGLISH!
5. You cannot, in fact, make things italic in HTML by typing {\it this}. That only works in LaTeX.

I've also completed my Greek paper. It's basically a big, long truism, but I don't care: I'm not going to trash six pages of well-written blather for that reason. Actually, I'm not sure whether or not it's a truism, since I'm at that point where I have no ability to assess my own work anymore. I'm just going to go with it for now, since my world will be full of pain and suffering if I have to rewrite it, and frankly I have enough pain and suffering as it is.

Now I'm on to the last paper I have to write, "Sexuality in Defixiones from the Athenian Agora." I spent about thirty minutes trying to figure out how to say "Curse tablets written against criminals" in Latin, and I still haven't figured it out. Eventually I just emailed Nigel. That simple statement sounds easy, but I promise you it isn't, especially when defixiones (which means "curse tablets") is a bizarre word and I can't figure out its gender or declension.

Oh well.

Anyway, the good news is that this paper isn't due for another week, and since all my research is finished I'm going to be fine in terms of writing time. I'm mostly concerned about my Greek and Latin finals now, since I need to do very well on them. To that end, I am now going to study, instead of writing in my blog.

ETA: Oh, man! Nigel is my hero. He suggested defixiones vindices, that is "vengeance curse tablets," because the text of the tablets usually goes something like "may that jackass who stole my cloak at the baths never have a day's luck with it." And that works just fine. Super-professor-man, to the rescue!

so, uh, someone stop me, but i've signed up for nanowrimo and i want to write a story about magic in the early empire.

I KNOW, I KNOW. 

goddamn i'm a geek.