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I am moderately certain that the concept of the European witch hysteria being used as a tool to eliminate powerful women was disproved a while ago but I don't have any good sources on that to hand. Certainly people have rejected the assumptions of Barstow's Witchcraze by now but I think the most recent books on the subject I have in the house right now are from the late 90s / early aughts.
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Nov 17, 2022 15:28
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Nothingtoseehere posted:I think it was a element of the Salem trials in America, and since those dominate cultural perception of witch trials due to American cultural influence it gets treated as a norm instead of literially being a tiny rural community on the very edge of the Christian world at the peak of idelogical insanity. Several years ago while at a pagan festival I attended a really neat lecture on Salem and I'll have to dig out my notes from it. I am not as well-versed in Salem as I am in Europe, but it certainly does feel like people focus on it a lot. I am always delighted to correct the major misconceptions about that nightmare because they are everywhere! People get surprised when you tell them that the town called Salem isn't that Salem, and they think people were burned at the stake for the crime of being witches, when they were actually executed because they wouldn't confess to being witches (being weirdo Puritan types, lying would have imperiled their mortal souls, you know) and they were hanged. Except for Giles Corey, of course :metal:.
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Nov 17, 2022 18:17
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Anthropologically speaking the witch is someone who works magic in a fashion that isn't socially-sanctioned, and often uses their magical powers for malevolent means. The stereotype here is of black and midnight hags making bargains with the Devil and fulfilling his instructions to wither your livestock, sour your sheep's milk, and make your shirts itchy. This is a bit different from 'wizardry' which, if we were to draw any kind of real-life comparison, would be someone would be someone working ceremonial magic in a grimoire or Solomonic tradition, which is where you see things like elaborate magic circles, paying attention to astrological timing, and compelling demons or other spirits to do their bidding instead of bargaining with them - in this sort of setting the operator calls up a demon and binds it to his will with the threat of punishment if it does not comply. Contrast this with the image from the Witches' Sabbath where the Devil is master over the witches, making them carry out his evil work and beating them if they disobey or do not meet sales targets. The Solomonic magician imposes his will on a spirit either by his own authority or by essentially threatening to call that spirit's manager. A lot of the equipment, magic circle design, and especially mode of dress as outlined in the Key of Solomon is basically the operator dressing up as the Creator of the Universe and Karening out at whatever entity s/he is calling up. This kind of thing mostly stems from the Greek magical papyri. Stephen Skinner wrote a fantastic book on the subject, Techniques of Solomonic Magic, which explores the connections and alterations of this material as it moved around Europe. FreudeianSlippers says "Summoning what is essentially minor gods and forcing them to do his bidding." What he is presumably referring to here is the notion that several of the spirits catalogued in Ars Goetia were once pre-Abrahamic gods who were demonized by subsequent religions. This argument is usually predicated on the presence of Astarot (Ashtoreth / Asherah) and Flaures (claimed to be a corruption of Horus) in that spirit catalogue.
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Nov 18, 2022 17:35
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A_Bluenoser posted:It is necessary to be careful with terms like "wizard" as well. Etymologically in English it simply refers to a "wise man" and is pretty much equivalent to the term "sage" until at least the 16th century if I recall properly. That means that talking about "wizard magic" as a category before the 16th century is probably misleading because it is back-projecting a later concept on to an earlier time. Sir Terry Pratchett famously remarked that 'wizard' is derived from the archaic word "Wys-ars", meaning one who, at bottom, is very wise. Edit: I forgot to say this earlier, but I don't believe anyone practicing any kind of ceremonial magic in the Western world calls themselves a wizard, or at the very least, I have never seen it. Mad Hamish fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Nov 18, 2022 |
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Nov 18, 2022 18:26
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Well I certainly didn't intend to open up this can of worms! Sorry, folks!Glah posted:This discussion brought into my mind that how often in these cases the witches and 'making deals with the devil' type people were actual witches? Actual in a sense that they actually believed they were doing magic and worshipping satan and whatnot. I know that the popular view is that witch trials and such were targeted against people because of political reasons or that the people just didn't like that strange neighbour and started accusing her because their cow had died and it made them angry. But it would make sense that there would be cases where power hungry people would try making deals with the devil if their belief framework was based on reality of it being possible, no? It is very obvious that no-one was travelling to the Witches' Sabbath and doing all the things we see discussed in books on the subject - the osculum infame, the renunciation of baptism and being re-baptized by the Devil, receiving the witch-mark, that sort of thing. These ideas spread around because people read a book or tract on the subject and got scared. The exact same thing happened in the 1980s-1990s with the satanic ritual abuse hysteria and it spread in the exact same way. Montague Summers' preface to his translation of the Malleus Maleficarum spends a lot of time drawing connections to the European witch hysteria and the Red Scare, but Montague Summers was a nutjob and he equated Communism to Satanism. He wasn't alone in this, it was the style at the time. One of the interesting things about this is that the idea of evil witches and their deeds really took off once literacy became more common, because people would print pamphlets with all the lurid details of what happened over in Shelbyville. People two towns over would read them and either get scared that there were witches in their town too, or notice that people passed the hat around to support the poor little bewitched girl and think "Hey, I could pretend to be bewitched" and then the idea would spread. In 1620 in England a boy living in Bilson was bewitched and passed black urine, and it was eventually discovered that he had learned this trick by reading about it in a broadsheet about a different bewitchment. I've read a lot of trial records and books written by and for demonologists from the early modern period and off the top of my head I can think of one (1) case where the accused may, may have been practicing some form of folk magic, which was the Pendle Witches. A lot of modern-day pagan witches, especially those who focus more on 'traditional witchcraft' (as opposed to Wicca, the two are not the same) make a lot of sausage out of a very small amount of pig with the Isobel Gowdie case, but in my opinion Gowdie was off her loving rocker. I can comfortably say that if anyone caught up in the European witch hysteria was practicing folk magic of any sort it would have been a rarity. La Voisin is a weird outlier in witchcraft lore in that it really set the trend for what a Black Mass would look like, but the activities she was accused of doing were not really related to the sort of thing accused witches were supposed to have gotten up to.
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Nov 19, 2022 21:17
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The Emperors of Japan claimed descent from the goddess Amaterasu until Hirohoto was forced to say otherwise at the end of the Second World War.
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Dec 4, 2022 15:56
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What the gently caress?
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Feb 24, 2023 05:36
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Nessus posted:What makes it justified sorcery? Look, she knows what she did.
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Mar 14, 2023 23:55
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Say, uh, Lemon, do you like to read? I just got a great book on tape. It's about life in ancient Greece and...
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May 2, 2023 23:23
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Patchouli smells perfectly fine, as long as you're not trying to use it as a substitute for bathing and deodorant. I think it's very cool that the quartz vial got the same kind of crazing and iridescence that you usually see in Roman glass.
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Jun 13, 2023 14:56
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Scarodactyl posted:I think that is the dessicated perfume. Unlike glass quartz does not mind being buried one bit. Well I didn't even think of that! I just thought it was unusual for quartz to do so. I can't remember what museum I was at where they had a lot of Roman glass, but most of it had the iridescence going on. Strange how deterioration can be so pretty. ....I wonder what those 'actually, glass is a very slow liquid' people would say about the continued stable shapes of ancient glass.
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Jun 16, 2023 17:45
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I would assume the Romans loved melty cheese just like everyone else. What maniac doesn't like melty cheese?
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Jun 28, 2023 12:47
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I will point out that I said that everyone loves melty cheese, not that every society in antiquity was set up for it in the past. Absolutely many cultures were not agrarian in a fashion that leads to lots of cheese-making or has a cooking style that leads to the melting of that non-existent cheese, but my point was more along the lines of asking who would encounter it and then say "no, we don't want this"? You're reading a lot more into that post than was intended. Like, ok, in Asia there wasn't a lot of cheesemaking, but they definitely go for pizza now. Admittedly the things they do it it probably make food purists weep, but hell, they seem to be having fun with it and I say let them.
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Jul 6, 2023 12:50
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Eventually the Atlanteans will come back from space, see the evidence for pizza-eating in North America, and assume that obviously those North Americans were an offshoot colony of the Romans and Italians. They must be, just look at how all these pillars look the same, and also the flatness of their flatbreads!
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Jul 6, 2023 14:50
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People today may look with distaste on the Roman practice of deifying emperors, and yet there is a painting at the crown of the dome of the US Capitol Building depicting the apotheosis of George Washington. Gods, those Atlanteans will be so confused.
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Jul 6, 2023 17:05
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They should have tried milking the seals instead. Mmmm, delicious seal cheese.
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Jul 7, 2023 18:25
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Cyrano4747 posted:Wonder if there's a way to make a thread that starts at like page -5000 and counts up. Ah, like the calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab in the Discworld books. No-one knows what it's counting down to.
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Jul 22, 2023 19:22
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I occasionally teach a class on Egyptian mythology and telling them about the Contendings of Horus and Set inevitably gets laughs. It's just an excellent set of stories. Greek mythology may be horribly incestuous and lots of bad behavior on display but I feel that Egyptian myth is the best divine soap opera. It has it all! Secret children, hidden parentage, an endless court case, dream sequences, people falling into comas, it has everything.
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Jul 28, 2023 13:02
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It's true, not all Egyptian literature we have revolves around mythology. For example, there's a very silly joke. How do you cheer up a sad and depressed Pharaoh? Dress the prettiest dancing girls in the palace in fishnets and tell him to go fishing.
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Jul 28, 2023 16:07
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I was under the impression that the Great Green was the Mediterranean?
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Jul 28, 2023 20:00
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Ancient humans probably thought that the neighbouring community of Neanderthals were just a little weird for reasons they couldn't quite explain. They'd be Shelbyville, basically.
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Aug 3, 2023 17:27
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Kylaer posted:Metal and metalworking is unbelievably cheap (and often unbelievably good) in the modern era compared to any premodern time. We make disposable goods out of metal and that would be unthinkable to someone in the classical era. A basic stainless steel skillet or stockpot you'd find at Walmart today would be a family heirloom if not a royal treasure if you transported it to back then. It's kind of fun to think how things that are very common and boring would be mind-blowing to people of the past. I have multiple items of clothing made from a sturdy and durable cloth that has been dyed an intense and rich royal blue that barely fades, and these are considered so common and low-class that it would be socially unacceptable to wear them for any kind of formal event even though they are usually imported from the far east. Absolutely astonishing.
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Aug 9, 2023 15:34
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Tulip posted:Roman behaviors (that are attested to!) were not practiced, and to make a point about decline of civilization since Rome, in a "Romans would not have tolerated leaded gasoline" argument for trad stuff. LMAO, oh my God. (not at you, at the guy you're referring to)
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Aug 10, 2023 21:28
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Is there any place in Pompeii or Herculaneum where they've set up a working replica of one of those street food vendors, with the counter with the built-in heating and everything? Because if not someone should do that. They could serve pizza and start arguments about it.
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Aug 23, 2023 15:55
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Look, if humans didn't want Hathor, Goddess of music, dance, beauty, and rocking out with your tits out to turn into Sekhmet, the vengeful and burning Eye of Re, then maaaaaaaybe they shouldn't go around making fun of Re on one of the times He gets old and start comparing His flesh to silver and His hair to lapis lazuli. Just sayin'. Like honestly, what did they think was going to happen?
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Aug 31, 2023 13:29
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Silver2195 posted:Edit: This is probably an insoluble problem to a degree (in general, not just Holocaust history). I don't think traditional encyclopedias ever fully solved it either; I think the tendency of the Encyclopedia Britannica was to have experts writing the articles, but only one expert per article, and to present that one person's views as the truth rather than trying to reflect an expert consensus. The Encyclopedia Britannica had Margaret Murray write the article on witchcraft for quite some time and that is quite the lol if you know anything about Margaret "selectively edit trial records and make absurd leaps of logic" Murray.
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Aug 31, 2023 18:53
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Gaius Marius posted:I got a co-worker who near everyday talks about how the dollar's gonna collapse when Biden moves us all to federal bitcoins, she's playing that redpill revolt podcast everyday she ain't coherent, and we're going to have to move back to bartering and she's preparing. I just look at her and eventually point out that we're both baker's working for a billion dollar corp, we don't got any control of the inputs for our labor. I don't have a flour mill or the acres to grow it, I can't make you a loving loaf of bread despite having the skills to do it unless I got some flour. So either we as a society need an exchange medium or godawful future contracts where I'm forced to use my labor in exchange for a portion of the output in exchange for the input which puts my labor at a severe bargaining disadvantage. Well then when this inevitably happens (lol) she'll have the joy of being right and also surely when the collapse comes everyone will hate Biden as much as she presumably does. I had a crazy conspiracy lady I worked with for a while and it was indescribably unpleasant. You have my sympathies. I wonder what kind of things these people would have fixated on in the ancient world. Aside from the inscrutable and perfidious Jews / Saracens / lepers, I mean. Like, was there some dude who was completely and totally convinced that Antinous had faked his death and was still alive and some guy that he knew said he saw Antinous changing horses several towns over?
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Sep 21, 2023 12:50
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skasion posted:Nero truthers. A couple random guys rose to prominence in the generation after Nero’s death because they somehow managed to convince people they were him. At least the time frame was still remotely plausible, but even in Augustine’s day people apparently still believed Nero would be coming back at some point! I saw the secretly-still-alive Antinous and Nero making babies in the closet, and I saw one of the babies, and the baby looked at me and called me a credulous fool for supporting the greens over the blues.
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Sep 21, 2023 14:20
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30 years ago was 1993. Ooof
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Dec 1, 2023 18:56
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Also, fabulous birdpost, as always.
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Dec 1, 2023 18:57
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Nuclear War posted:Checkmate, Atenists
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Dec 5, 2023 22:04
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zoux posted:In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony sun god's blessing, but because Ma'at is maintained as the pharoah acts as an intercessory between the gods and man. Wow, lots of triggered libs around here who have bought into Big Ma'at. Funny how there's all this injustice in the world but meanwhile I can gaze directly at the verifiable real Sun-disk for several minutes a day! I don't even have to worship the Aten myself, I just have to worship the king and he'll worship the Aten for me. Such convenience! Seriously tho
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Dec 7, 2023 16:07
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It looks to me like these are contracts for people selling themselves into the service of a deity or agreeing to do x work for y amount of time in exchange for certain divine favours. I base this mostly on the emphasis on spiritual protection from ghosts, demons, and spirits, which would generally be beyond a human landlord's ability to guard against. Please note that I am an Egypt enthusiast, not an Egyptologist.
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Dec 8, 2023 03:07
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It's a weird thing, right? Like, on the one hand, Tutankhamun died and was buried and should have been left alone, unplundered (either in modern times or in antiquity). On the other, he now has a kind of immortality that would have been literally impossible in his lifetime in a fashion that ensures his name and likeness endures to an extent that would have been inconceivable at the time. He's more famous than Ramses II and people across the globe know who he was. The name of Tutankhamun is spoken by the mouths of the living, which was A Big Deal in Egyptian religion, but it came about by someone digging him up and taking pictures. It's a weird and kind of contradictory situation. (may not apply to non-Egyptian cultures who didn't place so big an emphasis on HEY REMEMBER THIS GUY)
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Dec 16, 2023 18:36
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BrainDance posted:I always get this kinda :3 thought about that when I read some Egyptian letter that is the only reference to some unimportant person we have. I think about this a lot. There's a mummy in the main gallery of the Royal Ontario Museum of a little boy who died when he was about 12, whose name was Nakht. He had been a weaver, and his family must have loved him enough to have had him mummified. He was, I believe, the first mummy to undergo a CT scan, because he was not considered historically important in the same way a king or priestess would have been. He probably did not have a monument, and if he did then it has not survived to this present time, but even so, through some accident of fate we know things about his life. The name of Nakht endures in the mouths of the living.
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Dec 17, 2023 04:18
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bob dobbs is dead posted:thats what genghis khan apparently did and it worked great It's probably hard to kill the people who know where they buried you when you're dead and in a box in the ground, unless he somehow set up some remote kill-switch on a time delay (unlikely) or was perhaps some kind of vampire (possible?).
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Dec 20, 2023 18:01
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Crab Dad posted:Just draw it in if it’s that important to you. 
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Dec 20, 2023 22:40
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Polytheism gets particular weird with this, I do get the impression with Ancient Egypt it was almost a matter of musical chairs with various domains and roles, and nearly everyone got a turn at being the sun god. Look, you live in a country where the only things you have are the river, the desert, and the sun, you're going to get some divine overlap. There's an entertaining bit in Pratchett's Pyramids where all the Gods who are the Sun God get into a big fight over the actual Sun, because it turns out that it being the Eye of Horus, the Aten, a flaming orb being pushed across the sky by a dung-beetle, Re in the Boat of Millions of Years, and gods only know what else, all at the same time, presents some logistical difficulties.
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Jan 17, 2024 17:37
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PittTheElder posted:Stupid dragons, why do you keep trying to eat the sun only to burn to death 4 minutes later?? Look, no-one ever said that Ap/ep is smart.
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Jan 25, 2024 23:01
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Benagain posted:I thought this was the Elden Ring thread for a second There's a scene in Horizon: Zero Dawn where Sylens is explaining Earth's technological past to Aloy, shows her a hologram of a globe, and smugly tells her that the Earth is round, not flat like he assumes she believes. She swiftly counters this by telling him that obviously the Earth is a sphere because it casts a circular shadow on the moon during an eclipse.
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Jan 26, 2024 02:14
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