Every culture contains a plethora of images, animals, foods, etc. that are symbolic of their values. Symbols are an important, meaningful aspect of culture that can teach historians, archaeologists,...
Witchcraft, as those who go beyond superficial Sabrina well knows, is all about “energy transferal.” This bizarre statement is made perfectly clear in the discovery of a jar containing a mutilated...
Recently, an American professor has for the first time analyzed the First Book of Breathing , a famous ancient Egyptian book that reveals incredible insights into the afterlife. What happens to us...
As long as humanity has had beliefs in a higher power, the use of magic, spells, curses, and incantations have featured widely across cultures. A number of influential texts or ‘grimoires’ (textbooks...
By Adam Parker / The Conversation Valentine’s Day is not all love, hearts, and roses for everyone. For the hapless in love, the day can be a yearly reminder of failed romances, unrequited love and...
The Book of the Dead is not a book per se , but rather, a corpus of ancient Egyptian funerary texts from the New Kingdom . Each ‘book’ is unique, as it contains its own combination of spells. In...
Harry Potter books have been removed from a private Catholic school in Nashville because they include actual “ curses and spells ”, according to staff at the school. In a recent report in the US...
Experts have found a treasure trove of unusual objects concealed in Pompeii and it is theorized that the objects belonged to a Roman sorcerer who used them in the casting of spells . Pompeii is one...
The once highly rich tradition of Icelandic books of magic of the 16th and the 17th centuries has survived only in a fragmentary state. Despite this fact, Icelandic folktales speak about the...
The Black Book is said to hold within its pages all the magical practices which are in opposition to the divine. The idea regarding the existence of such a book is very old and it appears briefly in...
It was a well-kept secret among historians during the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the practice of magic was widespread in the ancient Mediterranean. Historians wanted to keep the activity...
Since men and woman have been capable of making vocal sounds, incantations have been floated on airwaves by enchanters, who whispering charms, spells in rituals, hymns and prayers, invoked curses,...
The Grand Grimoire, sometimes referred to as the ‘Red Dragon’ or the ‘Gospel of Satan’, is a medieval grimoire believed to possess immense powers. According to legend, it was written by an apocryphal...
Archeological records and a trove of recovered specimens inform us that shabtis (funerary figurines) produced from different materials were placed in the tombs of Eighteenth Dynasty Pharaoh...
Among the most important items that made it into the crypts of both kings and commoners alike were shabti figurines that served to ensure that the Afterlife was one long holiday for their masters...
Death, the ancient Egyptians believed, was not the end of our struggles. They believed in an afterlife and that the worthy would go on to paradise, but their dead didn’t simply pass over to the other...