Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power

Very well written book and based in the occult studies of Moabite traditions

I bought this book hoping for more information on Catholic and Christian folk magic and folk ways. This is deffinently more of a "ceremonial" type book calling on various spirits and angels. There also aren't many amulets presentes as the back of the book boasts, nor are there complete prayers, rather fractions of several prayers with many blanks left in between.

If all one wants to do is decide if there was such a thing as Christian magic, this book is not for them. Instead such a person ought to read C K Barrett's _New Testament Background_. Barrett includes half a dozen sample texts along with texts which illuminate other aspects of Christian origins. What the reader gets in this book is Coptic and Greek texts of ritual power, i.e. magic. There are spells of healing and spells of protection from harm. There are also curses. In one text a woman named Mary appeals to three archangels to "bring away" a woman by the name of Martha. Mary's appeal is rather vicious in that she seeks to have Martha suffer an ulcerous tumor or to pour forth worms. It is significant that Mary considers this "punishment" for Martha. She then appeals to "lord Jesus Christ" to dissipate any hope that Martha might have.Personally I find magical incantations distasteful. They represent the worst in people. What can not be gained by the legitimate rules of a society are attempted to be gained by invoking the power of a supernatural being. Such selffishness would not seem to be in alignment with what Christianity proclaims.Meyer has collected a number of Coptic texts from the early centuries of Christianity which are texts of ritual power. Since there are thousands of un-recorded Coptic texts in the Berlin Museum alone, one can not say that Meyer has a comprehensive collection. Nevertheless he has collected texts for diverse situations and events. And most helpfully, he has added numerous notes to help the reader toward understanding.

With so much interest in things magical (from card games to Harry Potter) and mystical (from Celtic chants to Zen monastic biographies) I have been surprised that this book is not better known, and yet it remains, despite a prestigious university press pedigree (Princeton University Press) and marketing by one of the powerhouses of publishing (HarperCollins, their HarperSanFrancisco division here) a relatively unknown text. Not perhaps coincidentally, many of the texts contained herein were, for most of Christian history, relatively unknown. Indeed, it is virtually unknown that, in many parts of Christendom, magic was not only tolerated, but expected of the priestly class; miracles, after all, often seem magical events, much to the chagrin of rational theologians who try to explain them metaphorically, symbolically, or any way other than as Houdini-esque happenings. In particular, the Coptic Christians, who were concentrated mostly in Egypt, spreading (as all Christians were wont to do) throughout the Roman and non-Roman world from a centre not too far from Alexandria, one of the major cities of the world of the time. The Coptics never really died out, but always remained a strange Christian aberration from orthodoxy on the fringes of East and West. The texts contained in `Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power', by Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith, come from these people. These texts contain the whole slate of magical utterances -- rites, spells, amulets, curses, recipes. The magical practices contained herein include a spell for protection against headless powers, an invocation to a thundering power to perform every wish (shades of the `Prayer of Jabez' here), an amulet to protect against the mischief of evil spirits, and even an erotic spell for a ma to obtain a male lover (lest we think that modern controversies in the church have no historical bases or parallels). Lest we think that the magical period of Christianity was only in the remotest of history, this collection includes texts as early as the first century after the time of Jesus to the twelfth century -- more than half the span of Christian history. Almost all texts are from Egypt, centre of the Coptic and Gnostic communities. The users of these texts, the authors contend, had the same disdain for 'magic' as traditional Christians have for 'magic' today -- magic is usually assumed to be alien, evil, something dark and probably demonic. Yet, these texts were used in much the same way, with an intention rooted in Christianity that somehow would serve to make the practice acceptable, even holy. Within this text are 135 Coptic texts. They originated in Old Coptic, Greek, and Gnotic texts. This volume combines them in three sections. Ritual Power in Egypt These texts come from various sources, manuscripts held in museums all over the world, including the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris, texts from Cairo, Berlin, Cologne, Amsterdam, Florence, and Oslo, and of course, the Nag Ha

In an environment where `what we do is religion and what they do is magic' attitude, these compilers prefer to speak of `ritual' as a less value-ridden word and since the spells relate to that sphere of life we call `religion' the sub-title may be a more appropriate description. There are 135, dating from the first 1000 years of Christianity, in English, with notes and written originally on papyrus, parchment, rag paper, pottery or bone. There are love spells, healing spells, sexual spells, protective spells, spells to drive out demons, spells for a good singing voice or to silence a dog, and curses. A book for specialists.