RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Mag-ee Magic
The Babylonians are usually regarded as the nation among whom magic, in the strict sense of the term, first appeared, although it must be borne in mind that Babylonian here connotes Sumerian, and that the Babylonian Semites first became acquainted with magic through their Sumerian neighbors. The Medes and Persians were strongly opposed to magic and sturdily resisted the priests of magic coming from Babylonia, India, and Egypt. Neither the Medes nor the Persians
3. In can be regarded as the authors of the Babylonia, magic art which later spread from the
Orient to Greece and Rome, but the real source of magic was the proto-Babylonian priesthood of the region of the lower Euphrates, whose incantations, written in Sumerian, are doubtless the oldest documents of their class. The Sumerians seem to have been a " Turanian " people who left their original home in Central Asia and became fused with the Aryan stock south of the Caspian, especially with the Medes, and also with the Semites of the Euphrates valley (see Babylonia, V., §§ 1-2). This worship of the elements and their spirits to which the peoples of central and northern Asia were devoted thus penetrated into the southwestern part of the continent. In the older magic texts, preserved in numerous clay tablets in the library of Asshurbanipal (see Assyria, VI., 3, § 14), witchcraft is essentially a system of incantation to avert the power of evil demons, while various gods, especially Ea, Marduk, Gibil-Nusku, and Sin, are invoked as protectors. The entire object was the averting of physical ills and the exorcism of disease-demons, thus presenting numerous parallels with the arts of shamanistic medicine men. It was only this older Babylonian magic, which was still influenced by Sumerian traditions, that was medical, for after the consolidation of the Babylonian kingdom in the second millennium b.c, divination superseded all other forms of magic in Babylonia while astrology spread from Chaldea throughout the west and made the terms Chaldean and astrologer almost synonymous.
In Egypt, which, like Babylonia, was one of the earliest homes of Oriental magic, witchcraft never became overlaid with divination, but always remained essentially a system of med-
4. In ical exorcism, practised by priestly Egypt, medical magicians, and based on sympathetic cures, the conjuration of hostile powers of nature, and the banishment of sickness by amulets and the like. The magic papyri of the New Kingdom contain incantations against crocodiles and other noxious creatures, especially serpents, as well as against all sorts of demons, against the evil eye, and against sickness of every kind, and many of their mystic words of power are Assyro-Babylonian in origin.
The ancient Hebrews, surrounded and influenced by two neighboring peoples which were adepts in magic art, also showed a strong tendency to witchcraft, as is clear from the rigid but ineffectual prohibitions in the legal code (Ex. xxii. 18; Deut. xviii. 10-11; comp. II Kings xxi. 6; Isa. viii. 19, 20, lvii. 3; Micah v. 11). Both the divination of the Babylonians and the medical exorcisms of
the Egyptians seem to have exercised a strong influence on Israel, and the later development of pre- Christian Judaism favored an increased 5. Among devotion to these forbidden arts. the Hebrews. This is shown by many of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, especially Tobit iii., vi.; Enoch brix., the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the late Jewish Testament of Solomon and various other Solomonic legends and incantations connected with the tradition of the queen of Sheba based on I Kings x. 1-10.
Throughout the Aryan and non- Aryan peoples which surrounded the Semites of southwestern Asia magic is seen to appear at a relatively early period, although it did not exist in the very beginning. Nor did it disappear with development of civilization and learning, but, on the contrary, increased in extent and refinement. So it was among the Hindus (see Brahmanism), whose earliest phase of religion, as represented in the Rig Veda, was a simple nature worship free from magic 6. In India, accretion, while the rise of the Brahmanic priesthood produced an extreme formalism with a tendency to exercise power over the gods by means of a correct performance of the prescribed offerings, prayers, and invocations. The Atharva Veda contains a vast number of examples of formulas to be employed in such acts of magic, and the Sutras, or compendiums of ritual for the Brahmanic sacrifice, mark a still further advance in religious formalism. Even the Buddhistic reform was unable to suppress the witchcraft underlying Hinduism, and it was in Buddhism that the popular belief in a cult of magic appropriate to the spirits of earth, trees, mountains, fields, and houses found its most luxuriant development. If this be true of Hindu Buddhism it is still more characteristic of the Mongolian and Tatar neighbors of India, especially the Chinese and the shamanistic tribes of central and northern Asia. In modern China (q.v.) Buddhist bonzes vie with Taoist priests in the practise of magic and divination.
In Persia (see Zoroaster, Zoroastrianism), in like manner, magic forced itself upon a Mazdaism which was originally free from witchcraft. The Avesta bitterly opposed the magic arts of the " wizards " who derived their skill either from " Turan " or from Babylon, but toward the end of the Achamenian period, as well as under the Arsacids, magic began to play so prominent a part in the popular religion of the Persians that the name Magian became a designation for the 7. In Persia, priesthood of Persia. Even the efforts of the Sassanians to restore the ancient pre-Magian faith had only temporary success. As far as this later Persian or Parthian magianism was predominantly astrological or mantic in character, it must be regarded as borrowed from Babylonia, but its magic elements in the narrower sense of the term, such as conjuration and amulets, doubtless came from the " Turanian " or Scythian peoples in the north.
Among the ancient Teutons a cult of the divinity of the fields and forests connected with the practise of magic was an important feature of religion at a
Magic