Modern-day magick, witchcraft and sorcery easily trace some of its roots to Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamians had many deities specifically for various types of disasters, such as Telal: Bull Demon, Utug: Dweller of the Desert, Alal for destruction, Namtar for pestilence, Idpa for fever and Maskim who was the snare setter.
It was believed that the pharaohs, kings and other persons in positions of power all were imbued with some power of the gods, so much so that even the slightest movement they made would cause an action to occur. It was also believed that an image or statue could carry the spirit of the person. For this reason, many images and statues were carried from place to place and the most of the images or statues of these persons were created with their hands straight to their sides, thereby preventing them from causing any unwanted occurrences.
In direct opposition to the Mesopotamians and Egyptians, who believed that everything occurred with either the favor or lack of favor of the Gods, the Chaldean star religion believed that luck and disaster were not chance events at all. The Chaldeans believed that events were controlled by the planets and stars, which seemed to send good and bad according to mathematical laws and therefore represented a more orderly fashion. The Chaldeans held that man was incapable of fighting the will of the planet and star deities and yet continued to incorporate "one's will" into one's fate.
The Babylonians, Assyrians and Persians believed that myriads of evil spirits, demons or devils hovered about the face of the earth and caused all the evils of humanity. This belief in legions of devils was passed through the Jews, into Christianity, and soon became associated with the old religion and the Pagans or Heathens. The term Pagan comes from the Latin word paganus, meaning country dweller. Paganus, in turn, was derived from pagus, Latin for rural area or village. As Christianity took hold, the last people to be converted lived in outlying areas. These people remained as practitioners of the old religion and were referred to as being Pagan or Heathen (heath dweller); names that, due to political pressure from Christian sources, became derogatory but failed to eradicate them.
The old religion, which was based upon the reverence of nature and the magick that surrounded them, was now twisted by governments and the Christian church to represent Devil worship (a Christian image of the Pagan Horned God), and persecution of so-called "Witches", the Pagans and Heathens, began in earnest. The Fathers of the Church, particularly St. Augustine, the most influential of them all, had formally denounced the old religion and its magick as "pagan".
This correlation by the early Christians and their Bible was devastating and resulted in horrible atrocities. In the eyes of the early Christian fathers, magick meant collusion with the devil, a dangerous combination in a religion that taught that the world swarmed with devils. Moreover, it was precisely this elaborate devil-doctrine held by the great theologians of the Middle Ages that caused the appalling witch-massacres. The thirteenth century, being the most tyrannical, superstitious and sanguinary century of the Middle Ages and of which modern Catholics are so proud, inaugurated the massacres on a large scale. This persecution reached its pinnacle in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, continued in varying degrees, and still exists today, albeit in limited areas. Thousands of innocent people were tortured, maimed and murdered as Witches and Devil-worshippers, but there were those who survived and continued to follow their proud traditions.
Enter witchcraft, as an expression of a constant effort by a people to rid themselves of a religion forcefully imposed upon them. The old religion, which is based on thousands and thousands of years of learning and experience starting at the dawn of the world, was terribly twisted in its presentation to the unknowing masses and fearfully condemned by the innocent ignorant. But great strides have been made in the past century. Increased education and enlightenment have been bestowed by caring individuals upon persons who formerly would have gone without. Magick, its roots and its present-day applications are surfacing and being accepted into the mainstream. Many are realizing where the truth lies and how to attain the wealth of personal satisfaction, harmony, peace and understanding that come with it.
The magic of the ancient conjurations and
invocations lives on...
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