Title: The origins of necromancy or How we learned to speak to the dead
Source document: Sacra. 2015, vol. 13, iss. 2, pp. 30-58
Extent
30-58
-
ISSN1214-5351 (print)2336-4483 (online)
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/137705
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
As far as human history goes, death and dying has always been an important, though in many occasions tragic, event that influences the everyday life of the community. With the development of more complex and elaborate ideas about the afterlife and the underworld, humans have started to think through methods for contacting the dead. The reasons may vary, ranging from the emotional to the purely pragmatic, but the effort remains the same. A multitude of rituals have been developed over time aimed at reaching the deceased and summoning them to the land of the living. And thus the function of the necromancer was born – and the person who is able, or knows of ways, to speak to the lifeless. But are we able to determine where this practice originated? When the moment that man was thought to himself that he might be able to overstep the thin line between life and death?
References
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[18] Diogenes Laertius. Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντων. Trans. R. D. Hicks (1972), Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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[23] Herodotus, The Histories. Trans. A. D. Godley (1920). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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[25] Horace. The Satires. Trans. A. S. Kline (2005). Luxembourg: Poetry in Translation.
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[27] Kieckhefer, R. (1998). Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century. Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press.
[28] Lenormant, F. (1999). Chaldean Magic – It's Origin and Development. Boston: Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
[29] Murphy, E. (2008). Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record. Oxbow: Oxbow Books.
[30] Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. C. Martin (2010). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
[31] Özbek, M. (2009). Remodeled human skulls in Kösk Höyük (Neolithic age, Anatolia): A new appraisal in view of recent discoveries. Journal of Archaeological Science, 36(2), 379–386. | DOI 10.1016/j.jas.2008.09.032
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[33] Plato(a), Protagoras. In Trans. W. R. M. Lamb (1967), Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 3 (pp. 309– 362). London: Harvard University Press.
[34] Plato(b), Sympossium. In Trans. H. N. Fowler (1925), Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 9 (pp. 172–223). London: Harvard University Press.
[35] Pliny the Elder, Natural History. Trans. J. Bostock (1855). London: Taylor and Francis.
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[37] Plutarch(b), De sera numinis vindicta. Trans. W. W. Goodwin (1874). Cambridge: John Wilson and Son.
[38] Plutarch(c), Moralia. Trans. W. W. Goodwin (1878). Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
[39] Plutarch(d), Solon. Trans. B. Perrin (1914). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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[42] Strabo, Geography. Trans. H. G. Bell (1903). London: George Bell & Sons.
[43] Suda s.v., Epimenides. Trans. J. Svenbro (1993). New York: Cornell University Press.
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[52] H. Diels & W. Kranz (1903). Xenophanes of Colophon. In H. Diels & W. Kranz (Eds.), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 21 B20 (pp. 38–58). Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung.
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[54] Bolte, F. (1932). Tainaron. In G. Wissova & A. Pauly (Eds.) (1932), Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft IV (pp. 2030–2046). Berlin: J. B. Metzler.
[55] Churton, T. (2005). The Golden Builders: Alchemists, Rosicrucians, and the First Freemasons. New York: Weiser Books.
[56] Cuberland, R. (2016). The Postumous Dramatick Works of the late Richard Cumerland, ESQ., vol. II. London: Wentworth Press.
[57] Dickie, M. W. (2003). Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World. New York: Routledge.
[58] Diels, H. & Kranz, W. (1903). Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker griechisch und deutsch, Xenophanes. Berlin: Weidmann'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung.
[59] Lauden, B. (2011). Homer's Odyssey and the Near East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[60] McNamara, P. (2011). Spirit Possession and Exorcism: History, Psychology and Neurobiology, volume 1: Mental States and the Phenomenon of Possession. Oxford: Praeger.
[61] Nock, A. D. (1927). The Lyra of Orpheus. The Classical Review, 41(5), 169–171. | DOI 10.1017/S0009840X0008077X
[62] Ogden, D. (2004). Greek and Roman Necromancy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[63] Ogden, D. (2001). The Ancient Greek Oracles of the Dead. Acta Classica, 44, 167–195.
[64] Ogden, D. (2009). Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[65] Roberts, A. & Donaldson, J. (1995). The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Michigan: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[66] Simson, J. & Weiner, E. (2003). Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (3rd. Ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[67] Stern, J. (1998). Problems and Parables of Law: Maimonides and Nahmanides on Reasons for the Commandments. New York: State University of New York Press.
[68] Van Raalte, M. (2010). The Nature of Fire and its Complications: Theophrastus' De Igne 1–10. Bulletin of the Insitute of Classical Studies, 53(1), 47–97. | DOI 10.1111/j.2041-5370.2010.00004.x
[69] West, M. L. (1984). The Orphic Poems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.