A History of Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult (DK A History of)

by Suzannah Lipscomb

Magic is as old as humankind. As soon as early people became aware of their environment, they believed it to be filled with spirits whose aid they invoked to control it, either directly through shamans—who they thought could travel into the spirit world—or through art. It is thought that early people modeled figurines and painted animals on cave walls in the belief that doing so would give them magical power over their world.

In the ancient world, chaos and death were never very far away and the desire to stave these off, if only for a short period, meant that magic was ever-present.

To understand such mysteries as the sun’s rising and setting, birth and death, and the daily struggle to hunt for food for survival, our earliest ancestors conceived of spirit forces that they could invoke to gain an advantage. A belief in supernatural forces and a human desire to use them to gain some sway over the physical world has been a feature of societies ever since.

Perhaps more potent than hunting, fertility, or the earth’s mysteries was the fear of death. Formal burials have been found, dating from as early as 60,000 BCE, containing bones scattered with red ocher (suggestive of blood). Some burials also included flowers or necklaces to accompany the deceased into the next life. At Kebara Cave in Israel, Neanderthals buried several skeletons and skull bones, probably as a post-mortem rite. Early peoples, too, seem to have had a fear of dead spirits. At Gough’s Cave in Somerset, incisions on bones that are around 15,000 years old indicate that they engaged in ritual cannibalism. The aim of this may have been to acquire the powers of the dead or to prevent their spirits from inflicting damage on the living.

Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians all sought help from exorcists and omen-interpreters to gain protection from malign supernatural entities and discover the future.

Beneath the official pantheon, including the likes of Enlil, the Assyrian sky god, and Ea, the god of wisdom, was a layer of demons, such as Lamashtu, who threatened pregnant women, and Namtaru, the plague-demon, who needed to be mollified. Natural phenomena such as floods and lightning, or epidemic diseases, were not scientifically understood despite Mesopotamian advances, and so people at all levels of society preferred supernatural explanations.

Kings guarded against these occurrences by consulting temple priests, in particular ashipu (exorcists), who performed magical rituals, and baru, who interpreted omens.

Personal misfortune or sickness was often blamed on witches or demons.

Priests developed rituals to counteract malign influences and collected them in nine Maqlu tablets, first compiled around 1600 BCE.

Exorcists often doubled as doctors, and another tablet contains a spell calling on Gula, the goddess of health, to drive out the ghost making a patient ill.

t Human-headed lion This lamassu guarded a palace door. The horned cap and wings indicate its divinity, and the belt its power. The sculptor gave the figure five legs so it looks as if it is standing firmly from the front but striding off from the side. Royal palaces were guarded by monumental statues of lamassu, winged creatures with the head of a man and the body of a bull or lion, which blocked and supported gateways, corridors, and the entrances to throne rooms. These thresholds were seen as particularly vulnerable to infiltration from the underworld by demons such as Rabisu, “the crouching one.”

Wearing amulets was another part of protective magic, and such amulets often portrayed the spirit they were supposed to ward off. For instance, Pazuzu, the king of the wind demons, would be depicted as a creature with a bird’s chest and talons, holding a thunderbolt, and Lamashtu, who preyed on pregnant women, as a hybrid of a donkey, lion, and bird. Amulets could protect a traveler in hostile territory inhabited by demons, such as the desert, or keep disease away from a house during an epidemic. In the Mesopotamian world much was unpredictable, and magic tilted the balance just a little in people’s favor.

This plaque depicts Pazuzu, king of the wind demons and lord of the southwest winds from the desert, which brought famine and locusts. It was crafted to provide protection from Pazuzu himself and to co-opt his aid in driving away another demon, Lamashtu.

The same priests who performed ceremonies in the temples—channeling divine power via the pharaoh to ensure that the sun rose each morning and the Nile floods brought fertility to the land—chanted spells and blessed amulets for far more private purposes. They were the custodians of spell books such as The Book of Overthrowing Apep. Apep was the serpent who personified the forces of chaos, and whose evil powers were seen as a particular threat.

Although all gods were believed to possess heka, that of the lion goddess Sekhmet was especially powerful. Her “Seven Arrows” brought infectious diseases, and the “slaughterers of Sekhmet,” a group of demonic messengers, could wreak havoc during the five extra days added at the end of the calendar year to harmonize it with the solar year. To guard against them, magicians recited a spell called The Book of the Last Days of the Year and wrapped linen around their necks, exchanging amulets in the shape of Sekhmet to ward off Sekhmet’s anger.

Ancient Egyptian priests and other magicians had a variety of strategies for thwarting malevolent deities. In the spells themselves they might claim authority over the deity by

uttering its name; or trick a demon into believing it was attacking the goddess Isis and her child Horus rather than a humble mother and baby;

Magicians used spells either as a direct measure, such as “ordering” a stuck bone to leave the patient’s throat, or indirectly, for instance, telling the spirit (often identified as a foreign demon) responsible for the illness to leave the sick person.

For kings, Pyramid Texts, written down from the 27th century BCE, let their souls fight demons, pay off otherworldly boatmen, and reach the next life.

there were other divine beings called daevas, who should not be worshipped, but who nonetheless had devotees among the Magi known as daevayasna. Daevayasna included yatu (sorcerers) and pairika (witches). Pairika were at first believed to be supernatural spirits who sought to harm humans.

In this painted scroll, several grotesque demons parade through the countryside. They are the retinue of Zhong Kui, a legendary magician known as the Demon Queller, who was said to have cured Emperor Xuanzong in the 8th century CE of a fever by slaying a demon inside the ruler’s dream.

Occult practitioners called the onmyōji performed divination rituals and read omens from the stars and unusual phenomena such as eclipses. They even carried out exorcisms by summoning a spirit to enter the victim’s body and interrogate the possessing spirit to identify it. Then they could perform the correct ritual to expel the unwanted spirit.

In the Vedas, the devas were identified with positive power, and their adversaries the asuras (demons) with destructive force. The powers of the asuras were often said to be great—the demon Maricha, for instance, transformed himself into a gazelle to trick Rama (a manifestation of the god Vishnu).

The book mentions that one such amulet came from the splinters of 10 holy trees that could protect against demonic possession.

As Christianity spread north and west, high ceremonial magic, at least, was increasingly driven underground, or pushed to the far fringes of the Celtic and Viking worlds where pagan beliefs held fast for many centuries. Supernatural powers such as control of the elements and the weather—so important in rural farming communities—were appropriated by the Church for saints. In the meantime, powerful practitioners of magic were literally demonized: they were portrayed as owing their abilities to the Devil. They were described as practicing sortilegium (sorcery) or maleficium (evil deeds). The punishments for such practices became severe. In 789 CE, for instance, the Emperor Charlemagne issued the General Admonition, whereby sorcerers and enchanters were condemned to death.

Muslims believed in fallen angels who had become demons and devilish spirits called jinns, and the use of talismans to protect against them was a part of everyday life—despite their condemnation in the Quran.

Muslims considered God all-powerful, but still believed that they needed his intervention to protect them from shayatin (dangerous ancient spirits). The shayatin were a group of evil demons, including fallen angels and malicious jinns (genies). In the Quran they are identified as tempters of the mind, but for many people the shayatin were real and dangerous.

Those accused were often the poor and vulnerable, and they were said to distort Christian rites to do the Devil’s work.

During the Renaissance, the form of ritual and ceremony most often associated with evil magic was goetia. The term was typically used to refer to magical practices that aimed to summon demons, especially those associated with Solomon, the biblical Israelite king.

For educated Europeans in the Renaissance period, demons were central to their ideas about sorcery and witchcraft. Such beings were thought to be wicked spirits able to access occult powers, but only within the limits of the natural world created by God. Demonology (the study of demons) drew on earlier cultures, including Mesopotamian beliefs about demons and evil gods, early Islamic jinn, and ancient Greek guardian spirits (one word for such a spirit was daimon). Early Christian thinkers built on these ideas; for example, Augustine asserted that demons existed and that they could enter people’s bodies.

For Christians, the Devil—also known as Satan, Lucifer, Baal, or Beelzebub—was the prince of demons, who were his helpers.

French philosopher and jurist Jean Bodin quoted an earlier text explaining that pacts with demons must be avoided. It states: “… the demon is judged to be an undaunted and implacable adversary of God and man.”

Demons were also said to submit to the power of a biblical figure, King Solomon—hence the importance of Solomonic ritual, which invoked holy powers with the aim of gaining control over demons, in ceremonial magic

However, the common belief was that the Devil took the form of animal familiars, and so their supposed companionship became a key piece of evidence used to prove guilt during witch trials.

respect for the rights of others is also a core value.

It was created by American occultist Anton LaVey, and promotes the beliefs that there are no gods or higher beings; that humans have great capacity for self-improvement, but are carnal beings; that there is no afterlife; and that humans are, in effect, gods themselves, able to determine their own destinies by exercising self-will. LaVey named the movement after Satan to shock people, and adopted the sinister goat-headed deity, Baphomet, as its symbol. Yet Satanists, as atheists, do not believe in the Devil—Satan being a Christian concept, if there is no God, there is no Satan.