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Witchcraft Past and Present
As ‘civilization’ dawned, first, according to archaeological evidence, in
Mesopotamia and from there spread east into India and west into Egypt,
religions developed in which magic played a central part, and both magic
and religion depend on ritual to maintain cosmic order. The religions of
Ancient Egypt, of Classical Greece and Ancient Rome, those of the Celtic
world and the Scandinavian countries, all had magic in some form at
their roots.
Magic has no one homeland, but Ancient Egypt can be said to be its
cradle. There it was believed that the sun god Ra died in the western sky
every night to spend the hours of darkness in the underworld and to be
magically reborn every morning in the eastern sky. Many later
magicians believe that nine-tenths of the world’s magic comes from
Egypt and the Old Testament depicts Egyptian magicians as so powerful
that they could reproduce the magic that Moses used to convince the
Pharaoh to allow his people to leave Egypt.
In Ancient Egypt, magic was known as ‘hike’, which was a spoken
formula that had to be reproduced exactly as prescribed if it was to work,
and an act or gesture that had to be performed at a particular time and
place and under special conditions and position. The Egyptians believed
that two things that had been connected could continue to react on each
Queen offers vases to Goddess Hathor
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