In the last post in this series, we discussed stories in which transforming a woman or man into an animal served as a way to enslave them, so that they could be made to carry out forced labour or even driven into sexual subjection. These seem to be literary fantasies – we have not come across any magical texts from Egypt or elsewhere which really aim to transform a human into an animal. But, as David Frankfurter has pointed out, we do find texts in Coptic in which animal-like behaviour is wished on the targets of love spells: …I want to make NN, the daughter of NN, spend forty nights…
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Coptic Love Spells I: “You will burn her heart and soul”
This week’s post is the first in a mini-series about the manuscript Leiden F 1964/4.14. Although this manuscript is only one sheet of parchment, it is a formulary containing a series of recipes, ranging from curses to destroy individuals and separate couples, to those intended to reconcile couples or induce sexual desire. Dating paleographically to the 11th century CE, this formulary is among the latest preserved witnesses to Coptic magic. Edited by Michael Green in 1987, the recipes of this formulary were not included in the collection “Ancient Christian Magic” edited by Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith, and so they are not very well known. As one of the many…
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Looking at the Coptic Magical Papyri II: Formularies and Applied Texts
Once we have defined magical texts, the next thing we need to do is categorise them. This week we’ll discuss one of the major divisions we use to classify magical papyri – their separation into formularies and applied texts. The distinction is fairly simple: formularies – also called handbooks or grimoires – contain one or more recipes for performing rituals. By contrast, applied or activated texts are objects – such as amulets or curse tablets – created in the course of these magical rituals. One way of understanding this distinction is by thinking about the process of performing a ritual. Before an individual could carried out a magical ritual, they…