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…
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A Coptic Magical Christmas
In Coptic, Christmas is p-houmise m-pe-Khristos (ⲡϩⲟⲩⲙⲓⲥⲉ ⲙⲡⲉⲭⲣⲓⲥⲧⲟⲥ), “Christ’s Birthday”, and in the modern Coptic Orthodox Church it has been celebrated from at least 433 CE on the twenty-ninth of the month of Khoiak. In the old Julian calendar this corresponded to the twenty-fifth of December, but since the calendar reforms of Pope Gregory in 1582, Coptic Christmas corresponds to the seventh of January in the now-dominant Gregorian calendar. In orthodox Christianity, Christmas represents one of the most important moments in history, when God became man, and was born through a virgin. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are a few Coptic magical texts that attempt to draw upon the power of this…