DEFINING ANCIENT MAGIC: a BRIEF HISTORIOGRAPHY and Exploration

DEFINING ANCIENT MAGIC: A BRIEF HISTORIOGRAPHY AND ExPLoRATIoN Colleen Marie Bradley NE ofthe basic tenets of History is that one must know the parame Q ters of a subject in order to study it. For some subjects this is quite easy. For example, it is quite clear what the parameters of nineteenth- century French political history would be. For some subjects, such as ancient magic, it is far from clear what is being studied. Ancient Greek and Roman magic tended to be defined differently by every scholar who studied it. Sometimes these scholars have been quite inaccurate in their definitions, forcing modern concepts on an ancient practice. Most modern scholars have done their best to find a definition that would accurately reflect the ancient world, but the lack of continuity in the definition of ancient magic has not been advantageous to the discipline. In any case, what defines the parameters ofancient magic remains one of the most debated subjects in ancient intellectual history. The purpose of this paper is to review some ofthe scholarly definitions ofancient Greek and Roman magic and try to decipher the ancient meaning of the subject, and possibly come to some conclusions on how the word should be defined and utilized. There are three ways in which scholarly interpretations of ancient magic have tended to differ. The first is magic’s place in the history of religious and scientific development. Many pre-196os scholars placed magic at the beginning of a religious evolution, but more recent scholars have not found this argument compelling. A second major focus of scholars has been the theory behind magic—why did ancient peoples expect magic to work? Much of this information came from anthropolog ical inquiry and often forced a stigma of savagery and foolishness upon the practitioners of magic. The last point ofcontention was where magic ended and religion began. The dividing line was unclear in ancient societies, which is especially frustrating for many modern scholars, who largely originate from monotheistic Europe, where there is a clear-cut line between magic and religion. 150 Colleen Marie Bradley The debate over defining ancient magic must inevitably start with Sir James George frazer’s The Golden Bough, first published in 1890. frazer’s work had a profound effect on the subject of ancient magic. The Golden Bough, while centering upon the rituals ofDiana atAricia, was a study in comparative religion and magic. frazer believed that religions went through set stages and that magic, which was eventually eschewed for real religion, was the first and most basic of these stages.1 He compared the rituals of the ancient Romans to rituals found more recently in what he deemed “primitive cultures.” These cultures were primarily those of Sub-Saharan Africans, South East Asians, and Native Americans.2 Frazer designated ancient beliefs into two categories, religion and superstition. Magic was a part ofsuperstition and more akin to primitive science than religion. frazer saw sympathetic magic as a part of ancient religious belief, and claimed that with ancient magic, “we have another mode in which primitive man seeks to bend nature to his wishes.”3 frazer saw his religion as superior to that of ancient and non-European societies, at one point he commented dismissively, “There is, perhaps, hardly a savage who does not fancy himself possessed of this power of influencing the course of nature by sympathetic magic.”4 While Frazer’s work was centered on religion and not magic, his definition of magic embodied the ethnocentric arrogance ofhis Victorian age. frazer’s view of magic as primitive continued unchecked for many decades. Joseph Mooney’s lengthy discussion at the end ofhis 1919 translation of Hosidius Geta’s Medea elaborated on Frazer’s view of ancient magic. Mooney saw necromancy as the earliest form of Roman magic, and that it, along with other forms ofmagic, was primarily practiced by women in nocturnal rites.5 Mooney described magic in great detail and explained the rituals and devices involved, but could not explain how magic was different than religion, other than its illegality. He admitted that the line between magic and medicine was “largely mixed up” by the Romans.6 Mooney attempted to systematize Roman magic, but the categories did not come together to comprise a coherent system. Magic, it seemed, was the category where ancient beliefs that did not adhere to other categories were conveniently placed. ‘Robert Ackerman, The Myth and Ritual School:J. G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists (New York: Routledge, 2002), 63. Ibid., 50. George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, vol. i (New York: McMillian, 1894), 12. Ibid., 12. Hosidius Geta, Medea, trans. Joseph J. Mooney (Birmingham: Cornish Brothers, 1919), 58, 6z, 64. 6lbid., 90. Ex PosT FAcTo DEFINING ANCIENT MAGIC 151 In comparison, Mooney’s contemporary Eli Burriss had a very clear- cut idea of what constituted magic and what was religion. In Taboo, Magic, Spirits, written in 1929, took frazer’s belief in cultural superiority to a new level. As a deeply religious man, he was disdainftil of ancient religion in general and likened ancient magic to the thinking of child ren.7 Buriss concluded that the reason for ancients’ fallacious belief in magic was their “underdeveloped” physiology.8 He succinctly described the pre-196os scholarly beliefabout ancient magic as such: In the early stage of his development man has no conception of a supe rior being on whom he is dependent, whose will he must win; but be lieves that by performing some mysterious action, usuatty imitating the action desired, and often assisted by an incantation or charm. he can force the desired result. This mysterious action and incantation, passing under the name of magic, arises. from a curious twist of logic.9 Burriss not only wrote that magic came before, and therefore was more primitive than religion, but that later magic was a “degeneration.”° Burriss’ curious addition to Frazerian theory was the idea that in cas es where it was not clear if an incantation was religious or magical, the “mental attitude” of the practitioner was the determining factor.” There were, therefore, magic-like acts within mainstream Roman religion, but Burriss interpreted these as religious attempts to protect against evil magic.’2 Burriss’ focus on the “mental attitude” ofthe ancient practition ers differed from frazer’s view of them as it gave practitioners some— albeit not much—agency. This meant ancient peoples were not purely products of their time. In Burriss’ magical-religious landscape, ancient persons could decide to partake in primitive acts of magic, whereas Frazer had insinuated that all rituals acts in a given period were repre sentative of a single stage of religious development. Cyril Bailey’s 1932 Phases in the Religion ofAncient Rome softened Frazer’s stance on magic, by adopting the stance that religion and therefore magic were difficult to define.’3 He maintained that magic came before religion, but claimed that primitive elements (magic) were a Eli Edward Burriss, Taboo, Magic, Spirits: A Study of Primitive Elements in Roman Religion (New York: MacMillan, 1931), . His father was a minister, as stated above. 8 Ibid., 124, 9lbid,, i. ‘° Ibid., i. “Ibid., 177—178. Ibid., i44(E ° Cyril Bailey, Phases in the Religion ofAncient Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1932), 5. VOLUME XIX 2010 152 Colleen Marie Bradley part of Roman religion.’4 He kept Frazer’s general definition of magic, but claimed that the line between magic and religion was determined by whether an act was public or private in nature.’5 As well as invoking Frazer, Bailey also utilized the works of the anthologist R. R. Marett, who claimed that magic was the basis for religion.’6 Ultimately Bailey believed that “magic may be distinguished from religion because it believes that this force [apart from nature] resides in things or persons or acts or words and not in beings, spiritual or personal, to whom an appeal is made.”7 The difference between how magic and religion worked on a theoretical basis was far from clear using Bailey’s definition, which was clearly created to separate modern monotheism from magic. Bronislaw Malinowski, one of the most prominent anthologists of the twentieth century, in his posthumously published 1948 book Magic, Science, and Religion applied a more scientific approach to Frazer’s theories. Malinowski focused on contemporaneous cultures; he found that “the stone-age savages of to-day” still practiced magic, which he explained as “an entirely sober, prosaic, even clumsy art, enacted for purely practical reasons, governed by crude and shallow beliefs.”8 He wrote that the core of magic was the spell—that words were magic and everything else was secondary.’9 According to Malinowsid, among these less-advanced practitioners, magical power was conceived as originating from nature, but in “higher societies” magic came from spirits.20 These theories were crafted from years ofanthropological study and reflected a much more scientific approach to the subject than previous studies. Because of this careful study, Malinowski also gave magic more credit than previous scholars. He said that both magic and religion came from the same need for escape from the stresses of society. Malinowski ultimately distinguished religion from magic by saying that magic should be viewed “as a practical art consisting ofacts which are only means to a definite end expected to follow later on; religion as a body of self- contained acts being themselves the fulfillment oftheir purpose.”’ Magic was physical, while religion was spiritual. The Scottish classicist W. K. C. Guthrie was best known for his work with Greek philosophy, where he brought new historicism to classical 4lbid.,8.

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