Episodios

  • Necromancy: divination and evocation of the dead

    Necromancy: divination and evocation of the dead
    Jun 24 2024
    The afterlife has always held a strange allure, depicted as a place teeming with "life" despite the absence of the living. We are familiar with the numerous legends from Greek mythology that tell of heroes like Odysseus, Heracles, Theseus, and Orpheus who descended into the Underworld for various reasons. This recurring narrative trope is even given a name: katabasis, meaning "to go down" in ancient Greek. Later figures like Aeneas, the founder of Rome, and even Dante Alighieri went in the place below, all united by a desire to explore the realm of the dead, even if it meant encountering lost souls and dry bones.However, lurking on the fringes of these heroic journeys were figures far more unsettling. These practitioners of a dark and macabre magical art – necromancy – were considered powerful and evil. Necromancy, derived from the Greek words "necros" (dead) and "manteia" (divination), literally translates to "divination by the dead."
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    13 m
  • The Necromancer Erichto

    The Necromancer Erichto
    Jun 21 2024
    “She lived in abandoned tombs” this is how the description of Erictho, the necromancer of Thessaly, begins. Yet Erichto was alive, a mortal woman, a characteristic that is underlined right from the start to highlight her evil nature. Because there is no divine justification for such cruelty: only evil for its own sake.I warn you that now we are bordering on real horror. A historical horror, taken from authentic ancient sources, which will amaze you with its literary power, and perhaps will send a few shivers down your spine.The time has come to thoroughly investigate mystery religions, sifting through the manuscripts that deal with what will later be called black magic. One of these is De bello Civili, a Latin poem by Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, from the 1st century AD: a source of inspiration for the horror genre of the 20th century and beyond.
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    15 m
  • The Origins of the Witch

    The Origins of the Witch
    Jun 21 2024
    Who is the whitch?

    Circe, therefore, seems to embody the archetype of the ancestral witch, the source from which everything began. She concocts potions, wields a wand, practices divination and prophecy, and occupies a role that straddles antagonist and helper to the hero, as seen in the later stages of her encounter with Ulysses. Everything aligns perfectly, except for one crucial aspect that defines Circe's magical nature: she's not actually a sorceress, as the common label "Circe the Sorceress" suggests. Circe is a goddess, a divine being within the realm of Greek religion, where magic doesn't exist.

    The term "magic" itself is anachronistic. It didn't exist in Homer's time, the 8th century BC.The concept of magic emerged later, in the 5th century BC, with Herodotus. He described the Persian priests who performed sacrifices, funeral rites, divination, and dream interpretation – the Magi.

    The episode that could be considered the origin story of magic (at least etymologically) occurred during the Persian Wars under Xerxes' rule, more precisely in 480 BC. The Persian magi sacrificed their emperor's white horses to aid the army in crossing the Strymon River.Herodotus, needing to describe this feat by the priests, couldn't categorize it as something mortals could achieve. Perhaps for the first time, the Greeks became aware of powers beyond those of the Olympian gods. The West had encountered magic...
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    15 m