The argument is a play on the notion of a "tornado sweeping through a junkyard to assemble a Boeing 747" employed to decry abiogenesis and evolution as vastly unlikely and better explained by the existence of a creator god (although this quote is first attributed to Fred Hoyle, who used it to argue for panspermia, not creationism). According to Dawkins, this logic is self-defeating as the theist
must now account for the god's existence and explain whether or how the
god was created. In his view, if the existence of highly complex life
on Earth is the equivalent of the implausible junkyard Boeing 747, the
existence of a highly complex god is the "ultimate Boeing 747" that
truly does require the seemingly impossible to explain its existence.
Richard Dawkins begins The God Delusion by making it clear that the God he talks about is the Abrahamic concept of a personal god
who is susceptible to worship. He considers the existence of such an
entity to be a scientific question, because a universe with such a god
would be significantly different from a universe without one, and he
says that the difference would be empirically
discernible. Therefore, Dawkins concludes, the same kind of reasoning
can be applied to the God hypothesis as to any other scientific
question.
After discussing some of the most common arguments for the existence of God in chapter 3, Dawkins concludes that the argument from design
is the most convincing. The extreme improbability of life and a
universe capable of hosting it requires explanation, but Dawkins
considers the God hypothesis inferior to evolution by natural selection as an explanation for the complexity of life. As part of his efforts to refute intelligent design, he redirects the argument from complexity
in order to show that God must have been designed by a superintelligent
designer, then presents his argument for the improbability of God's
existence.
Dawkins' name for the statistical demonstration that God almost
certainly does not exist is the "Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit". This is an
allusion to the junkyard tornado. AstrophysicistFred Hoyle, who was an atheist, anti-theist and advocate of the panspermia theory of life,
is reported as having stated that the "probability of life originating
on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping
through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747."
Arguments against empirically based theism date back at least as far as the eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume, whose objection can be paraphrased as the question "Who designed the designer?" According to philosopher Daniel Dennett, however – one of Dawkins' fellow "brights" –
the innovation in Dawkins' argument is twofold: to show that where
design fails to explain complexity, evolution by natural selection
succeeds as the only workable solution; and to argue how this should
illuminate the confusion surrounding the anthropic principle.
Dawkins's statement
Dawkins summarizes his argument as follows; the references to "crane" and "skyhook" are two notions from Daniel Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the
centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of
design in the universe arises.
The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. In the case of a man-made artefact
such as a watch, the designer really was an intelligent engineer. It is
tempting to apply the same logic to an eye or a wing, a spider or a
person.
The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis
immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The
whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining
statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate
something even more improbable. We need a "crane", not a "skyhook"; for
only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly
from simplicity to otherwise improbable complexity.
The most ingenious and powerful crane so far discovered is Darwinian
evolution by natural selection. Darwin and his successors have shown
how living creatures, with their spectacular statistical improbability
and appearance of design, have evolved by slow, gradual degrees from
simple beginnings. We can now safely say that the illusion of design in
living creatures is just that – an illusion.
We don't yet have an equivalent crane for physics. Some kind of
multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory
work as Darwinism does for biology. This kind of explanation is
superficially less satisfying than the biological version of Darwinism,
because it makes heavier demands on luck. But the anthropic principle entitles us to postulate far more luck than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.
We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics,
something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in the
absence of a strongly satisfying crane to match the biological one, the
relatively weak cranes we have at present are, when abetted by the
anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating
skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer.
A central thesis of the argument is that compared to supernatural
abiogenesis, evolution by natural selection requires the supposition of
fewer hypothetical processes; according to Occam's razor, therefore, it is a better explanation. Dawkins cites a paragraph where Richard Swinburne
agrees that a simpler explanation is better but reasons that theism is
simpler because it only invokes a single substance (God) as a cause and
maintainer of every other object. This cause is seen as omnipotent, omniscient
and totally "free". Dawkins argues that an entity that monitors and
controls every particle in the universe and listens to all thoughts and
prayers cannot be simple. Its existence would require a "mammoth
explanation" of its own. The theory of natural selection is much simpler
– and thus preferable – than a theory of the existence of such a
complex being.
Dawkins then turns to a discussion of Keith Ward's views on divine simplicity
to show the difficulty "the theological mind has in grasping where the
complexity of life comes from." Dawkins writes that Ward is sceptical of
Arthur Peacocke's
ideas that evolution is directed by other forces than only natural
selection and that these processes may have a propensity toward
increasing complexity. Dawkins says that this scepticism is justified,
because complexity does not come from biased mutations. Dawkins writes:
[Natural selection], as far as we know, is the only process
ultimately capable of generating complexity out of simplicity. The
theory of natural selection is genuinely simple. So is the origin from
which it starts. That which it explains, on the other hand, is complex
almost beyond telling: more complex than anything we can imagine, save a
God capable of designing it.
Assessment and criticism
Theist authors have presented extensive opposition, most notably by theologian Alister McGrath (in The Dawkins Delusion?) and philosophers Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne. Another negative review, by biologist H. Allen Orr, sparked heated debate, prompting, for example, the mathematician Norman Levitt to ask why theologians are assumed to have the exclusive right to write about who "rules" the universe. Daniel Dennett also took exception to Orr's review, leading to an exchange of open letters between himself and Orr. The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny also considers this argument to be flawed. Cosmologist Stephen Barr responded as follows: "Paley finds a watch and asks how
such a thing could have come to be there by chance. Dawkins finds an
immense automated factory that blindly constructs watches, and feels
that he has completely answered Paley's point."
Simplicity of God and materialist assumptions
Both
Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne raise the objection that God is
not complex. Swinburne gives two reasons why a God that controls every
particle can be simple: first, a person, as indicated by phenomena such
as split-brains,
is not the same as their highly complex brain but "is something
simpler" that can "control" that brain; and second, simplicity is a quality that is intrinsic to a hypothesis, not related to its empirical consequences.
Plantinga writes:
So first, according to classical
theology, God is simple, not complex. More remarkable, perhaps, is that
according to Dawkins's own definition of complexity, God is not complex.
According to his definition (set out in The Blind Watchmaker),
something is complex if it has parts that are "arranged in a way that
is unlikely to have arisen by chance alone." But of course God is a
spirit, not a material object at all, and hence has no parts. A fortiori
(as philosophers like to say) God doesn't have parts arranged in ways
unlikely to have arisen by chance. Therefore, given the definition of
complexity Dawkins himself proposes, God is not complex."
He continues:
"But second, suppose we concede,
at least for purposes of argument, that God is complex. Perhaps we think
the more a being knows, the more complex it is; God, being omniscient, would then be highly complex. Given materialism
and the idea that the ultimate objects in our universe are the
elementary particles of physics, perhaps a being that knew a great deal
would be improbable – how could those particles get arranged in such a
way as to constitute a being with all that knowledge? Of course we
aren't given materialism.
In other words, Plantinga concludes that this argument, to be valid,
would require materialism to be true; but, as materialism is not
compatible with traditional theology, the argument begs the question by requiring its premise to assume God's non-existence.
In an extensive analysis published in Science and Christian Belief,
Patrick Richmond suggests that "Dawkins is right to object to
unexplained organised complexity in God" but that God is simply
specified and lacks the sort of composition and limitations found in
[physical] creatures; hence the theist can explain why nature exists
without granting unexplained organised complexity or the extreme
improbability of God.
Some respondents, such as Stephen Law, have suggested that God is or would indeed be complex if responsible for creating and sustaining the universe; According to Law, God's omniscience would require the retention of and ability to use all knowledge. Richard Carrier also argued that God's mind is extremely complex.
Necessity of external explanations
There are many variations on how to express this objection. William F. Vallicella
holds that organized complexity as such does not need explanation,
because when in search of an ultimate explanation, one must in the end
accept an entity whose complexity has no external explanation.
Dawkins has stated that we should search for simple beginnings for
explanations, like in evolution which moves from simple to complex, and
so what we ultimately accept with no external explanation must be simple
for it to be a good explanation. And Plantinga writes that when not
in search for an ultimate explanation of organized complexity, it is
perfectly fine to explain one kind of complexity, that of terrestrial
life, in terms of another kind of complexity, namely divine activity. Dawkins addresses this point in his debate with John Lennox over The God Delusion,
saying that it would be perfectly reasonable to infer from artifacts on
earth or another planet that an intelligence existed, but that you
would still need to explain that intelligence, which evolution does,
while for God's existence there is no such explanation.
Alister McGrath suggests that the leap from the recognition of
complexity to the assertion of improbability is problematic, as a theory of everything
would be more complex than the theories it would replace, yet one would
not conclude that it is less probable. Dawkins has responded to this
point in his debate with Lennox and at other times, saying that while
physics is hard to understand, fundamentally, unlike biology, it is
simple.
McGrath then argues that probability is not relevant to the question of
existence: life on earth is highly improbable and yet we exist. The
important question in his view is not whether God is probable, but whether God is actual. In interviewing McGrath for The Root of All Evil,
Dawkins responds that the existence of life on Earth is indeed highly
improbable, but this is exactly why a theory such as evolution is
required to explain that improbability. In the case of God, Dawkins says, there is no such satisfactory explanation.
On the point of probability, Alvin Plantinga claims that if God is a necessary being,
as argued by classical theism, God is, by definition, maximally
probable; thus an argument that there is no necessary being with the
qualities attributed to God is required to demonstrate God's
improbability.
Eric MacDonald has pointed out that theists assume the coherence of
their position when they make arguments for God when, by Plantinga's
standards, they would have to present an argument that the concept of
God is not logically incoherent before discussing other arguments.
Plantinga's objection would seem to apply to all atheist arguments that
contend that God is improbable, such as evidential arguments about the problem of evil and the argument from nonbelief.
But the reason why theists and atheists do not usually address this
prior to making their arguments is because they want to go beyond merely
discussing whether God is maximally probable or impossible.
Dawkins's response to criticism in The God Delusion
Dawkins writes about his attendance at a conference in Cambridge sponsored by the Templeton Foundation,
where he challenged the theologians present to respond to the argument
that a creator of a complex universe would have to be complex and
improbable. He reports the strongest response as the claim he was imposing a scientific epistemology
on a question that lies beyond the realm of science. When theologians
hold God to be simple, who is a scientist like Dawkins "to dictate to
theologians that their God had to be complex?"
Dawkins writes that he did not feel that those employing this "evasive"
defence were being "wilfully dishonest", but that they were "defining
themselves into an epistemological safe-zone where rational argument
could not reach them because they had declared by fiat that it could not."
Theologians, Dawkins writes, demand that there be a first cause
named "God". Dawkins responds that it must have been a simple cause and
contends that unless "God" is divested of its normal associations, it
is not an appropriate name. Postulating a prime mover
that is capable of indulging in intelligent design is, in Dawkins's
opinion, "a total abdication of the responsibility to find an
explanation"; instead, he seeks a "self-bootstrapping crane" (see above)
that can "lift" the universe into more complex states. This, he states,
does not necessitate a scientific explanation, but does require a
"crane" rather than a "skyhook" (ibid.) if it is to account for the complexity of the natural world.
In philosophy, the problem of the creator of God is the controversy regarding the hypothetical cause responsible for the existence of God, on the assumption God exists. It contests the proposition that the universe cannot exist without a creator by asserting that the creator of the Universe must have the same restrictions. This, in turn, may lead to a problem of infinite regress wherein each new presumed creator of a creator is itself presumed to have its own creator. A common challenge to theistic propositions of a creator deity as a necessary first-cause explanation for the universe is the question: "Who created God?" Some faith traditions have such an element as part of their doctrine. Jainism posits that the universe is eternal and has always existed. Isma'ilism rejects the idea of God as the first cause, due to the doctrine of God's incomparability and source of any existence including abstract objects.
No, don't ask that. That's what all
the religions say – don't ask who created God. But this is strange –
why not? If the question is valid about existence, why does it become
invalid when it is applied to God? And once you ask who created God, you
are falling into a regress absurdum.
John Humphreys writes:
... if someone were able to provide
the explanation, we would be forced to embark upon what philosophers
call an infinite regress. Having established who created God, we would
then have to answer the question of who created God's creator.
Alan Lurie writes:
In response to one of my blogs
about God's purpose in the creation of the universe, one person wrote,
"All you've done is divert the question. If God created the Universe,
who created God? That is a dilemma that religious folks desperately try
to avoid." The question, "Who created God?", has been pondered by
theologians for millennia, and the answer is both surprisingly obvious
and philosophically subtle... whatever one
thinks about the beginnings of the Universe, there is "something" at the
very origin that was not created. This is an inescapable given, a
cosmic truth.
God himself was once as we are now,
and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is
the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who
holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things
by His power, was to make himself visible—I say, if you were to see him
today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the
person, image, and very form as a man... it
is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and
how He came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God.
We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I
will refute that idea, and take away the veil...
It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the
character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man
converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that
God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus
Christ Himself did... Is it logic to say
that a spirit is immortal and yet has a beginning? Because if a spirit
has a beginning, it will have an end....
All the fools and learned and wise men from the beginning of creation
who say that man had a beginning prove that he must have an end. If that
were so, the doctrine of annihilation would be true. But if I am right,
I might with boldness proclaim from the house tops that God never did
have power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not
create himself. Intelligence exists upon a self-existent principle; it
is a spirit from age to age, and there is no creation about it.
Moreover, all the spirits that God ever sent into the world are
susceptible to enlargement.
Responses
Defenders of religion have countered that, by definition, God is the first cause, and thus that the question is improper:
We ask, "If all things have a
creator, then who created God?" Actually, only created things have a
creator, so it's improper to lump God with his creation. God has
revealed himself to us in the Bible as having always existed.
No person or thing created God. He created "time," and because we dwell in the dimension of time, reason
demands that all things have a beginning and an end. God, however,
dwells outside of the dimension of time. He moves through time as we
flip through a history book...He dwells in "eternity," having no
beginning or end.
Ibn Sina, the preeminent Arabic
philosopher, answered this question a thousand years ago, when he
described G-d as non-contingent, absolute existence. If so, to ask "Why
is there G-d?" is the equivalent of asking, "Why is there is-ness?"
Atheists counter that there is no reason to assume the universe was
created. The question becomes irrelevant if the universe is presumed to
have circular time instead of linear time, undergoing an infinite series
of big bangs and big crunches on its own.
John Lennox, professor of Mathematics at Oxford writes:
Now Dawkins candidly tells us that
he does not like people telling him that they also do not believe in the
God in which he does not believe. But we cannot afford to base our
arguments on his dislikes. For, whether he likes it or not, he openly
invites the charge. After all, it is he who is arguing that God is a
delusion. In order to weigh his argument we need first of all to know
what he means by God. And his main argument is focussed on a created
God. Well, several billion of us would share his disbelief in such a
god. He needn't have bothered. Most of us have long since been convinced
of what he is trying to tell us. Certainly, no Christian would ever
dream of suggesting that God was created. Nor, indeed, would Jews or
Muslims. His argument, by his own admission, has nothing to say about an
eternal God. It is entirely beside the point. Dawkins should shelve it
on the shelf marked 'Celestial Teapots' where it belongs. For the God
who created and upholds the universe was not created – he is eternal. He
was not 'made' and therefore subject to the laws that science
discovered; it was he who made the universe with its laws. Indeed, that
fact constitutes the fundamental distinction between God and the
universe. The universe came to be, God did not.
The rotating view of a smoothed chain of a knotted protein (PDB ID: 1xd3)
Knotted proteins are proteins whose backbones entangle
themselves in a knot. One can imagine pulling a protein chain from both
termini, as though pulling a string from both ends. When a knotted
protein is “pulled” from both termini, it does not get disentangled.
Knotted proteins are very rare, making up only about one percent of the
proteins in the Protein Data Bank,
and their folding mechanisms and function are not well understood.
Although there are experimental and theoretical studies that hint to
some answers, systematic answers to these questions have not yet been
found.
Although number of computational methods have been developed to
detect protein knots, there are still no completely automatic methods to
detect protein knots without necessary manual intervention due to the
missing residues or chain breaks in the X-ray structures or the
nonstandard PDB formats.
Four knot types identified in proteins: the 31 knot (upper left), the 41 knot (upper right), the 52 knots (lower left) and the 61 knot (lower right). These images were produced by KnotPlot. Note that the 31 knot has in fact two distinct forms: left-handed and right-handed. What is shown here is a right-handed 31 knot.
Mathematical interpretation
Mathematically, a knot is defined as a subset of three-dimensional space that is homeomorphic to a circle.
According to this definition, a knot must exist in a closed loop, while
knotted proteins instead exist within open, unclosed chains. In order
to apply mathematical knot theory to knotted proteins, various
strategies can be used to create an artificial closed loop. One such
strategy is to choose a point in space at infinite distance to be
connected to the protein's N- and C-termini through a virtual bond, thus
the protein can be treated as a closed loop. Another such strategy is to use stochastic methods that create random closures.
(A)
A protein is an open chain. (B) To create a closed loop, we pick a
point at an infinite distance, and connect it to the N and C termini,
thus the whole topological structure becomes a closed loop.
Depth of the knot
The
depth of a protein knot relates to the ability of the protein to resist
unknotting. A deep knot is preserved even though the removal of a
considerable number of residues from either end does not destroy the
knot. The higher the number of residues that can be removed without
destroying the knot, the deeper the knot.
Formation of knots
Considering
how knots may be produced with a string, the folding of knotted
proteins should involve first the formation of a loop, and then the
threading of one terminus through the loop. This is the only topological
way that the trefoil knot can be formed. For more complex knots, it is
theoretically possible to have the loop to twist multiple times around
itself, meaning that one end of the chain gets wrapped around at least
once, and then threading to occur. It has also been observed in a
theoretical study that a 61 knot can form by the C-terminus
threading through a loop, and another loop flipping over the first loop,
as well as the C-terminus threading through both the loops which have
previously flipped over each other.
The folding of knotted proteins may be explained by interaction
of the nascent chain with the ribosome. In particular, the affinity of
the chain to the ribosome surface may result in creation of the loop,
which may be next threaded by a nascent chain. Such mechanism was shown
to be plausible for one of the most deeply knotted proteins known.
There have been experimental studies involving YibK
and YbeA, knotted proteins containing trefoil knots. It has been
established that these knotted proteins fold slowly, and that the
knotting in folding is the rate limiting step. In another experimental study, a 91-residue-long protein was attached to the termini of YibK and YbeA.
Attaching the protein to both termini produces a deep knot with about
125 removable residues on each terminus before the knot is destroyed.
Yet it was seen that the resulting proteins could fold spontaneously.
The attached proteins were shown to fold more quickly than YibK and YbeA
themselves, so during folding they are expected to act as plugs at
either end of YibK and YbeA. It was found that attaching the protein to
the N-terminus did not alter the folding speed, but the attachment to
the C-terminus slows folding down, suggesting that the threading event
happens at the C-terminus. The chaperones, although facilitate the
protein knotting, are not crucial in proteins' self-tying.
Other topologically complex structures in proteins
A possible slipknot in a protein. If the terminus is cut from the red line (1), a trefoil knot is created (2).
The class of knotted proteins contains only structures, for which the
backbone, after closure forms a knotted loop. However, some proteins
contain "internal knots" called slipknots, i.e. unknotted structures
containing a knotted subchain. Another topologically complex structure is the link formed by covalent loops, closed by disulfide bridges. Three types of disulfide-based links were identified in proteins: two versions of Hopf link (differing in chirality) and one version of Solomon link.
Another complex structure arising by closing part of the chain with
covalent bridge are complex lasso proteins, for which the covalent loop
is threaded by the chain one or more times. Yet another complex structures arising as a result of the existence of disulfide bridges are the cystine knots,
for which two disulfide bridges form a closed, covalent loop, which is
threaded by third chain. The term "knot" in the name of the motif is
misleading, as the motif does not contain any knotted closed cycle.
Moreover, formation of the cystine knots in general is not different
from the folding of an unknotted protein
Apart from closing only one chain, one may perform also the chain
closure procedure for all the chains present in the crystal structure.
In some cases one obtains the non-trivially linked structures, called
probabilistic links.
One can also consider loops in proteins formed by pieces of the
main chain and the disulfide bridges and interaction via ions. Such
loops can also be knotted of form links even within structures with
unknotted main chain.
First discoveries
Marc L. Mansfield proposed in 1994, that there can be knots in proteins.
He gave unknot scores to proteins by constructing a sphere centered at
the center of mass of the alpha carbons of the backbone, with a radius
twice the distance between the center of mass and the Calpha that is the
farthest away from the center of mass, and by sampling two random
points on the surface of the sphere. He connected the two points by
tracing a geodesic on the surface of the sphere (arcs of great circles),
and then connected each end of the protein chain with one of these
points. Repeating this procedure a 100 times and counting the times
where the knot is destroyed in the mathematical sense yields the unknot
score. Human carbonic anhydrase was identified to have a low unknot
score (22). Upon visually inspecting the structure, it was seen that the
knot was shallow, meaning that the removal of a few residues from
either end destroys the knot.
In 2000, William R. Taylor identified a deep knot in acetohydroxy acid isomeroreductase (PDB ID: 1YVE), by using an algorithm that smooths protein chains and makes knots more visible.
The algorithm keeps both termini fixed, and iteratively assigns to the
coordinates of each residue the average of the coordinates of the
neighboring residues. It has to be made sure that the chains do not pass
through each other, otherwise the crossings and therefore the knot
might get destroyed. If there is no knot, the algorithm eventually
produces a straight line that joins both termini.
Studies about the function of the knot in a protein
Some
proposals about the function of knots have been that it might increase
thermal and kinetic stability. One particular suggestion was that for
the human ubiquitin hydrolase, which contains a 52 knot, the presence of the knot might be preventing it from being pulled into the proteasome.
Because it is a deubiquitinating enzyme, it is often found in proximity
of proteins soon to be degraded by proteasome, and therefore it faces
the danger of being degraded itself. Therefore, the presence of the knot
might be functioning as a plug that prevents it. This notion was
further analyzed on other proteins like YbeA and YibK with computer
simulations.
The knots seem to tighten when they are pulled into a pore, and
depending on the force with which they are pulled in, they either get
stuck and block the pore, the likeliness of which increases with
stronger pulling forces, or in the case of a small pulling force they
might get disentangled as one terminus is pulled out of the knot. For
deeper knots, it is more likely that the pore will be blocked, as there
are too many residues that need to be pulled through the knot. In
another theoretical study,
it was found that the modeled knotted protein was not thermally stable,
but it was kinetically stable. It was also shown that the knot in
proteins creates the places on the verge of hydrophobic and hydrophilic
parts of the chain, characteristic for active sites. This may explain why over 80% of knotted proteins are enzymes.
Another study shows that knotted and slipknotted proteins constitute a
significant number of membrane proteins. They comprise one of the
largest groups of secondary active transporters.
Web servers to extrapolate knotted proteins
Some local programs and a number of web servers
are available, providing convenient query services for knotted
structures and analysis tools for detecting protein knots, including:
Topoly - Python package to analyze topology of polymers
Knot_pull - Python package for biopolymer smoothing and knot detection
KnotProt 2.0 - Database of proteins with knots and other entangled structures
AlphaKnot 2.0 - Database and server to analyze entanglement in structures predicted by AlphaFold methods
Magic in the Greco-Roman world – that is, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the other cultures with which they interacted, especially ancient Egypt –
comprises supernatural practices undertaken by individuals, often
privately, that were not under the oversight of official priesthoods
attached to the various state, community, and household cults and temples as a matter of public religion. Private magic was practiced throughout Greek and Roman cultures as well as among Jews and early Christians of the Roman Empire. Primary sources for the study of Greco-Roman magic include the Greek Magical Papyri, curse tablets, amulets, and literary texts such as Ovid's Fasti and Pliny the Elder's Natural History.
Pervasive throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia until late antiquity and beyond, mágos, "Magian" or "magician", was influenced by (and eventually displaced) Greek goēs (γόης), the older word for a practitioner of magic, to include astrology, alchemy and other forms of esoteric knowledge. This association was in turn the product of the Hellenistic fascination for (Pseudo-)Zoroaster, who was perceived by the Greeks to be the "Chaldean", founder of the Magi and inventor of both astrology and magic, a meaning that still survives in the modern-day words "magic" and "magician".
Authors William Swatos and Peter Kivisto define magic as "any
attempt to control the environment or the self by means that are either
untested or untestable, such as charms or spells."
While Herodotus, Xenophon, and Plutarch used magos
in connection with their descriptions of Zoroastrian religious beliefs
or practices, the majority seem to have understood it in the sense of
"magician". Accordingly, the more skeptical writers then also identified
the "magicians" – i.e. individual mages – as charlatans or frauds. In Plato's Symposium (202e), the Athenian identified them as maleficent, allowing however a measure of efficacy as a function of the god Eros. Pliny paints them in a particularly bad light.
According to one source magic in general was held in low esteem and condemned by speakers and writers. Betz notes book burnings in regards to texts such as the Greek Magical Papyri, when he cites Ephesus in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 19: 19). And on the account of Suetonius, Augustus ordered the burning of 2,000 magical scrolls in 13 BCE. Betz states:
As a result of these acts of
suppression, the magicians and their literature went underground. The
papyri themselves testify to this by the constantly recurring admonition
to keep the books secret. [...] The religious beliefs and practices of
most people were identical with some form of magic, and the neat
distinctions we make today between approved and disapproved forms of
religion – calling the former "religion" and "church" and the latter
"magic" and "cult" – did not exist in antiquity except among a few
intellectuals. It is known that philosophers of the Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic schools, as well as Gnostic and Hermetic
groups, used magical books and hence must have possessed copies. But
most of their material vanished and what we have left are their
quotations.
Albrecht Dieterich
noted the importance of the Greek Magical Papyri for the study of
ancient religions because most of the texts combine several religions,
Egyptian, Greek, or Jewish, among others.
According to Robert Parker, "magic differs from religion as weeds
differ from flowers, merely by negative social evaluation"; magic was
often seen as consisting of practices that range from silly superstition
to the wicked and dangerous.
However, magic seems to have borrowed from religion, adopting religious
ceremonies and divine names, and the two are sometimes difficult to
clearly distinguish. Magic is often differentiated from religion in that it is manipulative rather than supplicatory of the deities. Some mainstream religious rites openly set out to constrain the gods.
Other rough criteria sometimes used to distinguish magic from religion
include: aimed at selfish or immoral ends; and conducted in secrecy,
often for a paying client.
Religious rites, on the other hand, are more often aimed at lofty goals
such as salvation or rebirth, and are conducted in the open for the
benefit of the community or a group of followers.
Religious ritual had the intended purpose of giving a god their
just due honor, or asking for divine intervention and favor, while magic
is seen as practiced by those who seek only power, and often undertaken
based on a false scientific basis. Ultimately, the practice of magic includes rites that do not play a part in worship, and are ultimately irreligious.
Associations with this term tend to be an evolving process in ancient
literature, but generally speaking ancient magic reflects aspects of
broader religious traditions in the Mediterranean world, that is, a
belief in magic reflects a belief in deities, divination, and words of power. The concept of magic however came to represent a more coherent and self-reflective tradition exemplified by magicians seeking to fuse varying non-traditional elements of Greco-Roman religious practice into something specifically called magic. This fusing of practices reached its peak in the world of the Roman Empire in the 3rd to 5th centuries CE. Thorndike comments: "Greek science at its best was not untainted by magic".
The magic papyri we have left to study, present more Graeco-Egyptian, rather than Graeco-Roman beliefs. Betz further notes:
In this syncretism, the indigenous ancient Egyptian religion has in part survived, in part been profoundly Hellenized.
In its Hellenistic transformation, the Egyptian religion of the
pre-Hellenistic era appears to have been reduced and simplified, no
doubt to facilitate its assimilation into Hellenistic religion as the
predominant cultural reference. It is quite clear that the magicians who
wrote and used the Greek papyri were Hellenistic in outlook.
Hellenization, however, also includes the Egyptianizing of Greek
religious traditions. The Greek magical papyri contain many instances of
such Egyptianizing transformations, which take very different forms in
different texts or layers of tradition.
History
Magic in Homeric times
In Greek literature,
the earliest magical operation that supports a definition of magic as a
practice aimed at trying to locate and control the secret forces (the
sympathies and antipathies that make up these forces) of the world (physisφύσις) is found in Book X of the Odyssey (a text stretching back to the early 8th century BCE). Book X describes the encounter of the central hero Odysseus with Circe, "She who is sister to the wizard Aeetes, both being children of the Sun...by the same mother, Perse the daughter of the Ocean," on the island of Aeaea. In the story Circe's magic consists in the use of a wand against Odysseus and his men while Odysseus's magic consists of the use of a secret herb called moly (revealed to him by the god Hermes, "god of the golden wand") to defend himself from her attack. In the story three requisites crucial to the idiom of "magic" in later literature are found:
The use of a mysterious tool endowed with special powers (the wand).
The use of a rare magical herb.
A divine figure that reveals the secret of the magical act (Hermes).
These are the three most common elements that characterize magic as a system in the later Hellenistic and greco-Roman periods of history.
Another important definitional element to magic is also found in
the story. Circe is presented as being in the form of a beautiful woman
(a temptress) when Odysseus encounters her on an island. In this
encounter Circe uses her wand to change Odysseus' companions into swine.
This may suggest that magic was associated (in this time) with
practices that went against the natural order, or against wise and good
forces (Circe is called a witch by a companion of Odysseus). In this mode it is worth noting that Circe is representative of a power (the Titans) that had been conquered by the younger Olympian gods such as Zeus, Poseidon and Hades.
Magic in Classical Greece
The
6th century BCE gives rise to scattered references of magoi at work in
Greece. Many of these references representing a more positive
conceptualisation of magic. Among the most famous of these Greek magoi,
between Homer and the Hellenistic period, are the figures of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Empedocles.
Orpheus
Orpheus is a mythical figure, said to have lived in Thrace "a generation before Homer" (though he is in fact depicted on 5th-century ceramics in Greek costume). Orphism,
or the Orphic Mysteries, seems also to have been central to the
personages of Pythagoras and Empedocles, who lived in the 6th and 5th
centuries BCE. Pythagoras for example is said to have described Orpheus
as "the...father of melodious songs". Since Aeschylus (the Greek playwright) later describes him as he who "haled all things by the rapture of his voice,"
this suggests belief in the efficacy of song and voice in magic.
Orpheus is certainly associated with a great many deeds, the most famous
perhaps being his descent to the underworld to bring back his wife,
Eurydice.
Orpheus' deeds are not usually condemned or spoken of negatively. This
suggests that some forms of magic were more acceptable. Indeed, the term
applied to Orpheus to separate him, presumably, from magicians of ill
repute is theios aner or 'divine man'.
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos
Magical powers were also attributed to the famous mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras (c. 570 – 495 BCE), as recorded in the days of Aristotle.
The traditions concerning Pythagoras are somewhat complicated because
the number of Vitae that do survive are often contradictory in their
interpretation of the figure of Pythagoras.
Some of the magical acts attributed to him include:
Being seen at the same hour in two cities.
A white eagle permitting him to stroke it.
A river greeting him with the words "Hail, Pythagoras!"
Predicting that a dead man would be found on a ship entering a harbor.
Predicting the appearance of a white bear and declaring it was dead before the messenger reached him bearing the news.
Biting a venomous snake to death (or in some versions driving a snake out from a village). These stories also hint at Pythagoras being one of these "divine man" figures, theios aner, his ability to control animals and to transcend space and time showing he has been touched by the gods.
Empedocles
Empedocles
(c. 490 – c. 430 BCE) too has ascribed to him marvelous powers
associated with later magicians: that is, he is able to heal the sick,
rejuvenate the old, influence the weather and summon the dead. E.R. Dodds in his 1951 book, The Greeks and the Irrational, argued that Empedocles was a combination of poet, magus, teacher, and scientist.
It is important to note that after Empedocles, the scale of
magical gifts in exceptional individuals shrinks in the literature,
becoming specialized. Individuals might have the gift of healing, or the
gift of prophecy, but are not usually credited with a wide range of
supernatural powers as are magoi like Orpheus, Pythagoras and
Empedocles. Plato reflects such an attitude in his Laws (933a-e) where
he takes healers, prophets and sorcerers
for granted. He acknowledges that these practitioners existed in Athens
(and thus presumably in other Greek cities), and they had to be
reckoned with and controlled by laws; but one should not be afraid of
them, their powers are real, but they themselves represent a rather low
order of humanity. An early Christian analogy is found in the 1st
century CE writings of the Apostle Paul. Paul's First Letter to the
Corinthians conceptualizes the idea of a limitation of spiritual gifts.
The ascendancy of Christianity by the fifth century had much to do with this. This is reflected by the Acts of the Apostles, where Paul the Apostle convinces many Ephesians to bring out their magical books and burn them.
The language of the magical papyri reflects various levels of literary
skill, but generally they are standard Greek, and in fact they may well
be closer to the spoken language of the time than to poetry or artistic
prose left to us in literary texts.
Many terms are borrowed, in the papyri, it would seem, from the mystery
cults; thus magical formulas are sometimes called teletai (literally,
"celebration of mysteries"), or the magician himself is called mystagogos (the priest who leads the candidates for initiation).Much Jewish lore and some of the names for God also appear in the magical papyri. Iao for Yahweh, Sabaoth, and Adonai appear quite frequently for example. As magicians are concerned with secrets it must have seemed to many outsiders of Judaism that Yahweh was a secret deity, for after all no images were produced of the Jewish God and God's real name was not pronounced.
The texts of the Greek magical papyri are often written as we
might write a recipe: "Take the eyes of a bat..." for example. So in
other words the magic requires certain ingredients, much as Odysseus
required the herb moly
to defeat the magic of Circe. But it is not just as simple as knowing
how to put a recipe together. Appropriate gestures, at certain points in
the magical ritual, are required to accompany the ingredients,
different gestures it would seem produce various effects. A magical
ritual done in the right way can guarantee the revealing of dreams and
the talent of interpreting them correctly. In other cases certain spells
allow one to send out a daemon or daemons to harm one's enemies or even
to break up someone's marriage.
This self-defined negative aspect to magic (as opposed to other groups defining the practice as negative) is found in various curse tablets (tabellae defixionum) left to us from the Greco-Roman world. The term defixio is derived from the Latin verb defigere,
which means literally "to pin down", but which was also associated with
the idea of delivering someone to the powers of the underworld.
It was also possible to curse an enemy through a spoken word, either in
his presence or behind his back. But due to numbers of curse tablets
that have been found, it would seem that this type of magic was
considered more effective. The process involved writing the victim's
name on a thin sheet of lead along with varying magical formulas or
symbols, then burying the tablet in or near a tomb, a place of
execution, or a battlefield, to give spirits of the dead power over the
victim. Sometimes the curse tablets were even transfixed with various
items – such as nails, which were believed to add magical potency.
For most magic acts or rituals, there existed magics to counter the effects. Amulets
were one of the most common protections (or counter-magics) used in the
Greco-Roman world as protection against such fearful things as curses
and the evil eye, which were seen as very real by most of its inhabitants.
While amulets were often made of cheap materials, precious stones were
believed to have special efficacy. Many thousands of carved gems were
found that clearly had a magical rather than an ornamental function.Amulets were also made of organic material, such as beetles.
Amulets were a very widespread type of magic, because of the fear of
other types of magic such as curses being used against oneself. Thus
amulets were actually often a mixture of various formulas from Babylonian, Egyptian, and Greek elements that were probably worn by those of most affiliations so as to protect against other forms of magic. Amulets are often abbreviated forms of the formulas found in the extant magical papyri.
Magical tools were thus very common in magical rituals. Tools
were probably just as important as the spells and incantations that were
repeated for each magical ritual. A magician's kit, probably dating
from the third century, was discovered in the remains of the ancient
city of Pergamon in Anatolia and gives direct evidence of this.
The find consisted of a bronze table and base covered with symbols, a
dish (also decorated with symbols), a large bronze nail with letters
inscribed on its flat sides, two bronze rings, and three black polished
stones inscribed with the names of supernatural powers.
What emerges then, from this evidence, is the conclusion that a
type of permanence and universality of magic had developed in the
Greco-Roman world by the Hellenistic period if not earlier. The
scholarly consensus strongly suggests that although many testimonies
about magic are relatively late, the practices they reveal are almost
certainly much older. However, the level of credence or efficacy given
to magical practices in the early Greek and Roman worlds by comparison
to the late Hellenistic period is not well known.
High and low magic
Magical operations largely fall into two categories: theurgy (θεουργία) defined as high magic, and goetia (γοητεία)
as low magic. Theurgy in some contexts appears simply to glorify the
kind of magic that is being practiced – usually a respectable
priest-like figure is associated with the ritual. Of this, scholar E. R. Dodds claims:
Proclus
grandiloquently defines theurgy as, 'a power higher than all human
wisdom, embracing the blessings of divination, the purifying powers of
initiation, and in a word all operations of divine possession' (Theol. Plat.
p. 63). It may be described more simply as magic applied to a religious
purpose and resting on a supposed revelation of a religious character.
Whereas vulgar magic used names and formula of religious origin to
profane ends, theurgy used the procedures of vulgar magic primarily to a
religious end.
— E. R. Dodds, The Greek and the Irrational
In a typical theurgical rite, contact with divinity occurs either
through the soul of the theurgist or medium leaving the body and
ascending to heaven, where the divinity is perceived, or through the
descent of the divinity to earth to appear to the theurgist in a vision
or a dream. In the latter case, the divinity is drawn down by
appropriate "symbols" or magical formulae. According to the Greek philosopher Plotinus
(205–270), theurgy attempts to bring all things in the universe into
sympathy, and man into connection with all things via the forces that
flow through them.Theurgia connoted an exalted form of magic, and philosophers interested in magic adopted this term to distinguish themselves from the magoi or góētes (γόητες, singular γόηςgóēs, "sorcerer, wizard") – lower-class practitioners. Goetia was a derogatory term connoting low, specious or fraudulent mageia. Goetia is similar in its ambiguity to charm: it means both magic and power to (sexually) attract.
Personages of the Roman Empire
There
are several notable historical personages of the 1st century CE who
have many of the literary characteristics earlier associated with the
Greek "divine men" (Orpheus, Pythagoras and Empedocles). Of particular
note are Jesus of Nazareth, Simon Magus and Apollonius of Tyana.
From an outsider's point of view Jesus was a typical miracle-worker. He
exorcised daemons, healed the sick, made prophecies and raised the
dead.
As Christianity grew and became seen as a threat to established
traditions of religion in the Greco-Roman world (particularly to the
Roman Empire with its policy of emperor worship) Jesus (and by inference
his followers) were accused of being magic users. Certainly Christian texts such as the Gospels told a life story full of features common to divinely touched figures: Jesus' divine origin, his miraculous birth, and his facing of a powerful daemon (Satan) being but a few examples. The gospel of Matthew claims that Jesus was taken to Egypt
as an infant. This was used by hostile sources to explain his knowledge
of magic; according to one rabbinical story, he came back tattooed with
spells.[ It is also argued in rabbinical tradition that Jesus was mad, which was often associated with people of great power (dynamis). Scholars such as Morton Smith have even tried to argue that Jesus was a magician. Morton Smith, in his book, Jesus the Magician,
points out that the Gospels speak of the "descent of the spirit", the
pagans of "possession by a daemon". According to Morton Smith both are
explanations for very similar phenomena.
If so this shows the convenience that using the term "magic" had in the
Roman Empire – in delineating between what "they do and what you do".
However Barry Crawford, currently Co-Chair of the Society of Biblical
Literature's Consultation on Redescribing Christian Origins, in his 1979
review of the book states that "Smith exhibits an intricate knowledge
of the magical papyri, but his ignorance of current Gospel research is
abysmal", concluding that the work has traits of a conspiracy theory.
Simon is the name of a magus mentioned in the canonical book of Acts 8:9ff, in apocryphal texts and elsewhere. In the Book of Acts Simon the Magus is presented as being deeply impressed by the apostle Peter's cures and exorcisms
and by the gift of the Spirit that came from the apostles' laying on of
hands; therefore, he "believed and was baptized". But Simon asks the
apostles to sell him their special gift so that he can practice it too.
This seems to represent the attitude of a professional magician. In
other words, for Simon, the power of this new movement is a kind of
magic that can be purchased – perhaps a common practice for magicians in
parts of the Greco-Roman world. The Apostles response to Simon was
emphatic in its rejection. The early church drew a strong line of
demarcation between what it practiced and the practices of magic users.
As the church continued to develop this demarcation Simon comes under
even greater scrutiny in later Christian texts. The prominent Christian
author Justin Martyr for example, claims that Simon was a magus of Samaria, and that his followers committed the blasphemy of worshiping Simon as God. The veracity of this is not certain, but proves the desire of the early Christians to escape an association with magic.
The third magus of interest in the period of the Roman Empire is Apollonius of Tyana (c. 40 CE – c. 120 AD). Between 217 and 238 Flavius Philostratus wrote his Life of Apollonius of Tyana, a lengthy, but unreliable novelistic source. Philostratus was a protégé of the empress Julia Domna, mother of the emperor Caracalla. According to him, she owned the memoirs of one Damis,
an alleged disciple of Apollonius, and gave these to Philostratus as
the raw material for a literary treatment. Some scholars believe the
memoirs of Damis are an invention of Philostratus, others think it was a
real book forged by someone else and used by Philostratus. The latter
possibility is more likely. In any case it is a literary fake.
From Philostratus' biography Apollonius emerges as an ascetic traveling
teacher. He is usually labeled a new Pythagoras, and at the very least
he does represent the same combination of philosopher and magus that
Pythagoras was. According to Philostratus Apollonius traveled far and
wide, as far as India, teaching ideas reasonably consistent with
traditional Pythagorean doctrine; but in fact, it is most likely that he
never left the Greek East of the Roman Empire. In Late Antiquity talismans
allegedly made by Apollonius appeared in several Greek cities of the
Eastern Roman Empire, as if they were sent from heaven. They were
magical figures and columns erected in public places, meant to protect
the cities from plagues and other afflictions.
Jewish tradition
Jewish
tradition, too, has attempted to define certain practices as "magic".
Some Talmudic teachers (and many Greeks and Romans) considered Jesus a
magician, and magical books such as the Testament of Solomon and the Eighth Book of Moses were ascribed to Solomon and Moses in antiquity. The Wisdom of Solomon, a book considered apocryphal by many contemporary Jews and Christians (probably composed in the first century BCE) claims that
God... gave me true knowledge of
things, as they are: an understanding of the structure of the world and
the way in which elements work, the beginning and the end of eras and
what lies in-between... the cycles of the years and the
constellations... the thoughts of men... the power of spirits... the
virtue of roots... I learned it all, secret or manifest.
Thus Solomon was seen as the greatest scientist, but also the
greatest occultist of his time, learned in astrology, plant magic,
daemonology, divination, and physika (φυσική "science").
These are the central aims of magic as an independent tradition –
knowledge and power and control of the mysteries of the cosmos. Such
aims can be viewed negatively or positively by ancient authors. The
Jewish historian Josephus
for example, writes that: "God gave him [Solomon] knowledge of the art
that is used against daemons, in order to heal and benefit men". Elsewhere however, "there was an Egyptian false prophet [a magician] that did the Jews more mischief... for he was a cheat".
The idea of magic can thus be an idiom loosely defined in ancient
thinking. But whether magic is viewed negatively or positively the
substance of it as a practice can be drawn out. That is, that magic was a
practice aimed at trying to locate and control the secret forces of the
cosmos, and the sympathies and antipathies that were seen to make up
these forces.
Authors of the Roman Empire
The Natural History of Pliny the Elder (23/24–79 CE)
is a voluminous survey of knowledge of the late Hellenistic era, based
according to Pliny on a hundred or so earlier authorities. This rather
extensive work deals with an amazing variety of issues: cosmology,
geography, anthropology, zoology, botany, pharmacology, mineralogy,
metallurgy and many others. Pliny was convinced of the powers of certain
herbs or roots as revealed to humanity by the gods. Pliny argued that
the divine powers in their concern for the welfare of humanity wish for
humanity to discover the secrets of nature. Pliny indeed argues that in
their wisdom the gods sought to bring humans gradually closer to their
status; which certainly many magical traditions seek – that is by
acquiring knowledge one can aspire to gain knowledge even from the gods.
Pliny expresses a firm concept is firmly being able to understand this
"cosmic sympathy" that, if properly understood and used, operates for
the good of humanity.
While here lies expressed the central tenets of magic Pliny is by
no means averse to using the term "magic" in a negative sense. Pliny
argues that the claims of the professional magicians were either
exaggerated or simply false.Pliny expresses an interesting concept when he states that those
sorcerers who had written down their spells and recipes despised and
hated humanity (for spreading their lies perhaps?).
To show this Pliny linked arts of the magicians of Rome with the
emperor Nero (who is often portrayed negatively), whom Pliny claims had
studied magic with the best teachers and had access to the best books,
but was unable to do anything extraordinary.
Pliny's conclusion, however, is cautious: though magic is
ineffective and infamous, it nevertheless contains "shadows of truth",
particularly of the "arts of making poisons". Yet, Pliny states, "there
is no one who is not afraid of spells" (including himself presumably). The amulets and charms that people wore as a kind of preventive
medicine he neither commends or condemns, but instead suggests that it
is better to err on the side of caution, for, who knows, a new kind of
magic, a magic that really works, may be developed at any time.
If such an attitude prevailed in the Greco-Roman world this may explain why professional magicians, such as Simon Magus,
were on the lookout for new ideas. Pliny devotes the beginning of Book
30 of his work to the magi of Persia and refers to them here and there
especially in Books 28 and 29.
Pliny defines the Magi at times as sorcerers, but also seems to
acknowledge that they are priests of a foreign religion, along the lines
of the druids of the Celts in Britain and Gaul. According to Pliny, the art of the magi touches three areas: "healing", "ritual", and "astrology".
In his treatise On Superstition, Plutarch defines superstition as "fear of the gods". Specifically, he mentions that fear of the gods leads to the need to resort to magical rites and taboos, the consultation of professional sorcerers and witches, amulets and incantations, and unintelligible language in prayers addressed to the gods. Although Plutarch himself takes dreams and omens seriously, he reserves superstition for those who have excessive or exclusive faith in such phenomena. He also takes for granted other magical practices, such as hurting someone by the evil eye.
He also believes in daemons that serve as agents or links between gods
and human beings and are responsible for many supernatural events in
human life that are commonly attributed to divine intervention. Thus, a daemon, not Apollo himself, is the everyday power behind the Pythia. Some daemons are good, some are evil, but even the good ones, in moments of anger, can do harmful acts.
In general then, Plutarch actually accepts much of what we today might
define as superstition in itself. So what he is really defining as
superstition are those practices not compatible with his own
philosophical doctrine.
A later Platonist, Apuleius (born c. 125),
gives us a substantial amount of information on contemporary beliefs in
magic, though perhaps through no initial choice of his own. Apuleius
was accused of practicing magic, something outlawed under Roman law. The
speech he delivered in his own defense against the charge of magic, in
c. 160 CE, remains and it is from this Apologia that we learn how easy
it was, at that time, for a philosopher to be accused of magical
practices. Perhaps in a turn of irony or even a tacit admission of guilt, Apuleius, in his Metamorphoses (or The Golden Ass),
which perhaps has autobiographical elements, allows the hero, Lucius,
to dabble in magic as a young man, get into trouble, be rescued by the
goddess Isis, and then finds true knowledge and happiness in her
mysteries.
Like Plutarch, Apuleius seems to take for granted the existence
of daemons. They populate the air and seem to, in fact, be formed of
air. They experience emotions just like human beings, and despite this
their minds are rational.
In light of Apuleuis' experience it is worth noting that when magic is
mentioned in Roman laws, it is always discussed in a negative context. A
consensus was established quite early in Roman history for the banning
of anything viewed as harmful acts of magic. A Roman law for example
forbade anyone from enticing their neighbors' crops into their own
fields by magic. An actual trial for alleged violation of these laws was held before Spurius Albinus in 157 BCE. It is also recorded that Cornelius Hispanus expelled the Chaldeanastrologers from Rome in 139 BCE ostensibly on the grounds that they were magicians.
In 33 BCE, astrologers and magicians are explicitly mentioned as having been driven from Rome. Twenty years later, Augustus
ordered all books on the magical arts to be burned. In 16 CE magicians
and astrologers were expelled from Italy, and this was reinstated by
edicts of Vespasian in 69 CE and Domitian in 89 CE. The emperor Constantine I
in the 4th century CE issued a ruling to cover all charges of magic. In
it he distinguished between helpful charms, not punishable, and
antagonistic spells.
In these cases Roman authorities specifically decided what forms of
magic were acceptable and which were not. Those that were not acceptable
were termed "magic"; those that were acceptable were usually defined as
traditions of the state or practices of the state's religions.
John Middleton argues in his article "Theories of Magic" in the Encyclopaedia of Religion
that: "Magic is usually defined subjectively rather than by any agreed
upon content. But there is a wide consensus as to what this content is.
Most peoples in the world perform acts by which they intend to bring
about certain events or conditions, whether in nature or among people,
that they hold to be the consequences of those acts."
Under this view, the various aspects of magic that described,
despite how the term "magic" may be defined by various groupings within
the Greco-Roman world, is in fact part of a broader cosmology shared by
most people in the ancient world. But it is important to seek an
understanding of the way that groups separate power from power, thus
"magic" often describes an art or practices that are much more specific.
This art is probably best described, as being the manipulation of
physical objects and cosmic forces, through the recitation of formulas
and incantations by a specialist (that is a magus) on behalf of
him/herself or a client to bring about control over or action in the
divine realms. The Magical texts examined in this article, then, are
ritual texts designed to manipulate divine powers for the benefit of
either the user or clients. Because this was something done in secret or
with foreign methods these texts represent an art that was generally
looked upon as illegitimate by official or mainstream magical cults in
societies.
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