• Animals in Coptic Magic,  Coptic Amulets

    Animals in Coptic Magic II: Archangels, Mustard, and Rabbi Judah – 1500 Years of Amulets against Scorpions

    On the ninth of March 1932, a young Coptic woman living near el-Badari in Upper Egypt was stung on the chest by a scorpion. A healer named Butros Salib Girgis Bahum Biyush was called, and he copied an amulet onto a piece of paper for her, depicting an image of a huge black scorpion, surrounded by Arabic and Coptic text calling upon God to overcome the power of the scorpion sting, making reference to the Biblical promise in Psalm LXX 90 (Masoretic 91) that the Lord would tread upon scorpion and serpent and the power of the Adversary. Thanks, perhaps, to the amulet, the woman survived, and subsequently lived to…