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Witchcraft Past and Present
other even when separated and that like has the power to affect like.
Thus, a burn could be cured by the recitation of the words used by Isis
over her son Horus when he was once burned, and that one may cause
one’s enemies pain by mistreating a wax image of them. From these and
similar conceptions arose the belief in protective amulets which assumed
huge importance for both the living and the dead.
Egypt was an extremely stratified society, in which everyone knew their
place, but there was no professional class of magicians – indeed, there
was not even a general word for magician. Magic was the domain of
priests and others who studied sacred books. But magic on a small,
personal scale was within the reach of anyone who was willing to
observe the conditions laid down, and judging from tomb paintings and
papyri that have survived the many thousand years that have passed,
magic played a very large part in everyday life. There are records of
spells being cast to escape death, to drive out disease, to avert the evil
eye, to cure snakebite, to drive out rats from a barn and to prevent the
approach of a storm. There was even a spell to secure the various
advantages summed up in the phrase, ‘to be blessed every day’.
In the Graeco-Roman world, the gods were duly worshipped and tales of
them looking down from where they lived and using their magic powers
to help those whom they favoured and hinder those whom they frowned
upon became part of common belief. And the same can be said of the
Germanic and Scandinavian people.
All of these peoples honoured the same things – rivers, trees, plants,
animals, the wind and the rain, the sun and the moon. But perhaps it was
for pagan Celts that they played the most important part in religious
ritual, although little is known about the Celts for they left no written
records and archaeological records of them are scant. A number of votive
sites have been found, suggesting that religious rites were performed at
sites of natural significance – on the banks of important rivers, in
clearings in woods and on the tops of hills and mountains.
Paganism
It is the oral rather than the written tradition that makes many people
believe that nature played a significant role in Celtic religious ritual and
it is this oral tradition that suggests to many that modern witchcraft has
Celtic roots. Away from the world of fairy tales and wicked witches,
modern magic and its spells have their roots in Celtic times – 700
BC–AD 100. The deeply spiritual Celts were artistic, musical, fine
farmers and brave warriors, feared by their adversaries. As pantheists,
they honoured the ‘Divine Creator of all Nature’ and worshipped the
‘One Creative Life Source’ in all its many aspects. They believed that
after they died they went to ‘Summerland’ where they rested and
awaited new birth on Earth.
Celtic rites and rituals (the names of which will be familiar to those who
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