Witchcraft Glossary N!
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Witchcraft Glossary give discussions to myth and ritual,alchemistry and other relatives,witchcraft and witchery!Witchcraft, in various historical, anthropological, religious and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. Historically, it was widely believed that witchcraft involved the use of these powers to inflict harm upon members of a community or their property.
Since the mid 20th century, the term witchcraft has sometimes been used to distinguish between bad witchcraft and good witchcraft, with the latter often involving healing. The concept of witchcraft as harmful is normally treated as a cultural ideology, a means of explaining human misfortune by blaming it either on a supernatural entity or a known person in the community. A witch (from Old English wicce f. / wicca m.) is a practitioner of witchcraft.
The "witch-cult hypothesis", a controversial theory that European witchcraft was a suppressed pagan religion, was popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the mid-20th century, Witchcraft has become the self-designation of a branch of neopaganism, especially in the Wicca tradition following Gerald Gardner, who claimed a religious tradition of Witchcraft with pre-Christian roots.
Contents: namburbi |natural witches |New Moon |Nuts&Cones | |
namburbi:a Sumerian term meaning literally "its undoing",a certain kind of ritual the ancient Mesopotamians sought to avert the portended evil.About 140 such rituals are known in which most comes from the Assyrian libraries of the seventh century BC,but genre is undoutedly of Babylonian origin,type of kind of namuburbi rituals are many ,such as for special situations,"to remove the evil of partridges which gather over a man" or "Namburbi for the evil of a dog which howls(and) moans in a man's house,or spatters its urine upon a man".sometimes such instructions appear in omen or sign forms,as a rule the namburbi rituals can be classified as "handbooks for performance of private apotropaic rites".normally the participants in a ritual were only two:the exorcist and the person who observed the omen and concerned by it.Since the portended evil was thought to point to a disharmony in the relations between man and gods due to some offence or impurity,the purpose of a namburbi was twofold.On the one hand,the object portending the evil had to be "undone",either concretely by destroying it or getting rid of it(for example a malformed animal was thrown into the river),or by an act of sympathetic magic(a clay image of a dog that howled was thrown into the river).On the other hand,the man had to be cleansed and freed from his sin,performed by physical cleansing washing with pure water or river bathing as a merely symbolic action by stripping off the garment and putting on a clean one.Offerings(bread,cake,dates,beer and incense,some cases a sheep) made and prayers also part of the ritual since the dispelling of the evil was only possible through the intervention of the gods,the gods most frequently Šamaš,god of justice,and Ea and Marduk as gods of magic.Other rituals use fire or river assist destroying the evil.0
natural witches:The Witches' Almanac quotes Robert Graves as saying that natural occult power exists in one out of twenty people,and Colin Wilson,a British author,we quoted in the New York Times as saying five out of every one hundred people were natural Witches.2
New Moon:
The Moon's unilluminated side is facing the Earth. The Moon is not visible (except during a solar eclipse).The new moon is the beginning of the lunar cycle.This phase begins on the last day of the "drak of the moon" phase.The following evening,if you are observant,you will probably see that very thin crescent,low in the western sky.Cast your herbal spells during the new moon phase for new beginnings,birth,growth,and fresh starts.
Nuts&Cones:Nuts&Cones.Sacried to the Druids;highly steeped in magic.Small cones or acorns are often used to tip the wands used by Celtic priests.All nuts can be used in fertility magic.
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Reference:
1: see p.82~85,Part 1:witchcraft and magic in ancient mesopotamia,under title "Magic:Evil Portents and Apotropaic Rituals",from Witchcraft and magic in Europe:Biblical and pagan societies,by Frederick H.Cryer,Marie-Louise Thomsen;edited by Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark.ISBN 0-8122-3615-7(alk.paper),First published 2001 by The Athlone Press,A continuum imprint,the Tower Building,11 York Road,London Se1 7NX,First published in the United States of America 2001 by University of Pennysylvania Press,Philadelphia,Pennsylvania 19104-4011.http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress.
Every unusual events seems to have been feared as a bad omen and reported to the king,as for instance a fox entered the city of Aššur fallen into a well in the temple garden,brought up and killed in order to dispel the evil portent although not mentioned a namburbi performed,most of the omen interpretations quoted by the Assyrian scholars,and those in hemerologies and other divination compendia sound like primitive peasants' weather maxims;for example,"when it thunders on a cloudless day: there will be darkness(or) there will be famine in the land"(Thompson,1900 vol.II:lxxv,no.235 rev.7-8).It seems from namburbi the Babylonian scholars later sought to establish an empirical basis for divination by collectiong as much data as possible,they record information systematically aout the weather,prices,accidents and water levels of the Euphrates,astronomical observations,to improve their knowledge about the relationship of celestial phenomena and such events.
2: see p.45.Chapter 3.Witches and Herbs.from Green Witchcraft: Folk Magic, Fairy Lore & Herb Craft by Aoumiel, Ann Moura,Edition: illustrated,Published by Llewellyn Worldwide, 1996,ISBN 1567186904, 9781567186901.
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