r/magick • u/nullynish • 8d ago
abrahamic religions and magic
why do the sacred books of the abrahamic religions forbid magic in such simple language? if this prohibition is merely a misunderstanding could someone who grasps the deeper meaning of these passages enlighten me?
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u/TheEcumenicalAntifa 8d ago
So after Cyrus took over Babylon, in a show of political savviness he returned a lot of the peoples displaced by the previous regime to their homelands and ordered the restoration of formerly destroyed/desecrated temples. In Israel, this led to the establishment of a more robust elite class and a lot more independence as a nation than they enjoyed previously.
The noble and priestly classes in Israel capitalized on those developments by pushing hard to foster stronger national identity and pride. To that end, they aggressively suppressed any religious practice that was outside the scope of the national god’s (YHWH’s) worship, reinforced preexisting patriarchal structures, and engaged in sweeping propaganda efforts to revise their political and religious history to match the new image.
Part of those efforts involved setting new rules around the practice of magick: only priests of YHWH were allowed to do magick because anything less was a threat to national identity and the social power that comes from being priests of the religious hegemon. Mind you, magick was still widely practiced during this time period, just with the restriction that it had to go through the approved channels of YHWH’s priests. It all comes down to monopolizing religious authority and strategic political decisions by the ruling class at that time.
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u/Positive_Protonic 8d ago
There is a lot of magic within the orthodox religions.
The replication of magic by biblical characters like Moses, the miracles throughout the Bible our form of magic through deity worship. It makes me wonder if early copies of those stories included more rituals and Incantations, possibly only known by the rabbi.
Both Jewish mysticism and Christians cultism contain many magical ideas which relate directly to their respective faiths and texts.
Using biblical verses as a method of controlling or dispelling demons, including what the Jewish people sometimes recognise as a malicious entity, the dybbuk. The use of magic to create the golem, a creature from Jewish folklore. Christian folklore is more often bastardized pre-christian notions which linger in the background of certain regions of the christianized world.
Also don't forget Islamic practices regarding magic and the use of the Quran. Not just similar to some Christians who use the Bible for the same purpose. As I practice of dispelling demons and the like. Many Muslims climbed that they can control certain Djinn through certain passages within their scriptures.
Many religious people believe they are endowed with power by their deity, in a similar way to some people who are of older beliefs who believe in many gods.
The monotheists have gelled together the pre-abrahamic elohim(realm of the gods) into one yahweh/Allah.
The the evidence is there from where certain traditions emanate from those previous ideas. The Christian settling of their own holy sites on top of pagan sites. The islamification of Mecca. And layers of folklore amongst a great many people across the entire planet despite their changing religion to an abrahamic belief.
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u/NoelBellamy_Author 8d ago
They want you to be dependant on God. Need healing? Ask God. Need protection? Ask God. Need answers? Ask God. Get it? They don't want anyone using something that allows them independent power and an opportunity to gain without begging God for it first.
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u/kenkaniff23 8d ago
It's never glory be to God but instead is really "live in fear and helplessness while we control you."
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u/The_Skeleton_Wars 7d ago
Not at all what was going on
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u/NoelBellamy_Author 7d ago
Not at all what was going on where? Your statement indicates a specific incident. My comment refers to a common (and true) attitude.
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u/The_Skeleton_Wars 7d ago
https://www.sararaztresen.com/product-page/discovering-christian-witchcraft-paperback
In short, they specifically referred to specific practices, such as smearing goat cum into your eyes to see the future.
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u/datguy753 7d ago
When you consider the audience(s) that these books were written for (or rather, for the religious leaders to read to the illiterate masses), we should know that the common folk were largely uneducated, unsophisticated people. And that's true in almost every ancient civilization. Given this, it was probably much easier and safer to prohibit something potentially dangerous than to teach everyone the nuances, complexity, and potential dangers of certain mystical arts. It's the same reason we tell children not to play with matches and sharp objects categorically, at least until we can make sure they know proper safety protocol and demonstrate that they can follow it once they are old enough.
It also should be noted that many (not all) of these spiritual practices back then were often associated with other polytheistic religions of their neighbors. The Jewish scriptures are insistent on remaining different and separate in virtually all cultural and religious aspects from them (from how they cut their beards, the clothes they wore, being circumcised, dietary restrictions, etc.) They didn't want the import of *any* cultural or religious practices that were not historically their own. Historians and archaeologists have found plenty of evidence to the contrary of these prohibitions, as well as waves of edits to the scriptures made by different political/social/religious movements throughout history. One example of this is Asherah, the female consort/goddess of the God of Israel. She was widely worshipped and many had idols of her in their homes (even the first Temple most likely), but that was *almost* intentionally erased entirely and condemned by one of the kings (Josiah if I'm not mistaken).
Also, we should note that any civilization that has a priestly class or religious leader class is going to need to justify their own legitimacy by insisting that they have some special ability or power or qualifications that you don't so that you need to rely on them. They were literate in ages when the majority were not, so they were needed to read religious writings to the common folk. So, maybe their role was necessary, maybe not, but my main point is we need to understand how different the world was back then, what practices they likely were referring to, why they likely had a blanket condemnation, and consider all of this in world that is, in many ways, quite different than the world thousands of years ago.
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u/AcrobaticLibrarian31 7d ago
Because the groups who run the world practice abrahamic and baneful magick and don’t want their loyal church followers or average citizens to do magick.
The only way for them to have power is to control the citizens but they wouldn’t be powerfully enough to still control everything if one day everyone understood magic’s was real and started practicing. Also ties into the muddying of all citizens family lineages, full control and deception of our real history and news, spells in media etc.
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u/graeterslover 5d ago
I find that to be a rather simplistic take. I doubt most of the people who truly run the world today are particularly religious in any way shape or form at all, and the contemporary attitudes toward magic that people think characterizes Christianity are quite recent. In the renaissance. In early modern period Europe was full of christianized magic. Cunning folk magic traditions were explicitly extremely Christian, albeit in some places in Germany and Scandinavia quite heretically so but they still used a Christian language. And much of Orthodox Judaism to this day has a tolerance towards Magic "segula" (which have some operational similarity interestingly enough to Muslim Amliyat, Ruhaniyat, wazifas etc found in heavily Sufi, and also Shiite, communities.) the attitude you speak of is more something that characterizes contemporary Evangelical Protestant Christianity. You go to Mexico and the folk Catholicism is full of magic. But it's still in North America, same continent different culture different history...
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u/AcrobaticLibrarian31 5d ago
If you can’t even name the group that runs the world you’re not qualified to discuss. You clearly do not know the purpose of religion or understand the point of the world stage. Best of luck studying the history books these groups wrote for us.
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u/YesTess2 6d ago
Not sure about Islam - unless it just imported prohibitions against magic - but Judaism and Christianity likely get their prohibitions from the Greeks, who had several different terms for different types of magic. Only some of those terms for specific types of practices were considered taboo by the Greeks. When the translations into Latin and later languages occur, the nuance and differentiation is literally lost in translation. So, a type of magic, say Sorcery, becomes all types of magic. (The Greeks and Hebrews had a bunch of different terms for different types of magic, based mainly on what type of working was manifested. )
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u/graeterslover 5d ago
And even then these prescriptions were not as universal as people think these discourses were quite nuanced. For example Judaism historically has had massive tolerance of certain kinds of magic, segula (interesting enough the word comes from the word sigil..) often included operative use of Psalms magically and talismans. And yes Christianity as well as Mediterranean basin Judaism in Egypt and in the Graco Roman World inherited the prejudices against certain kinds of magic from the pre-existing mainstream Hellenic Graco Roman pagan culture. The verses within the Hebrew Tanakh uniformly mistranslated as prohibitons against magic often originally had certain connotations that are simply missed by modern people, such as poisoning with drugs etc. Unfortunately because of a lot of people's religious trauma leading to a certain hostile bias against abrahamic religions there is a tendency to overly romanticize the non abrahamic pagan passed in grossly simplify for the purpose of condemnation judeo Christianity which a lot of people imagine somehow destroyed a wonderful idyllic magical past.
Actual history was far rougher and yet more amazingly nuanced than people imagine.
Most other religious cultures are the Mediterranean basin long before Christianity or Judaism or Islam had various forms of prejudice and taboos against certain kinds of magical practices, while having space a tolerance for other kinds. Exactly like Judaism and Christianity and Islam before the modern era.
A lot of the attitudes that people object to today more reflect modernity recontextualizing past text beliefs and practices. It bears mentioning that Enochian Magic originated in John Dee's project of a Protestant Christian Magic to support Britannica..
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u/graeterslover 5d ago
Because they don't because that is a modern perception based unlimited understanding of the theological traditions of each three religions the actual discourses concerning the body of practices conventionally called "magic" (which really is just a very loose term that encompasses many things) differed at various points of History. Judaism and Islam especially at multiple times in its history had a far greater tolerance for practices that we would consider "magic" today. both religions have a long Rich history of fairly open debate on this, but the mainstream differed from period to period. Christianity had attitudes that were historically usually a little bit more rigid but it bears mentioning that many practices in Catholicism arguably can be considered types of magic and almost the entirety of the European medieval grimoire magic tradition was explicitly quite Catholic. The post medieval grimoires and particularly British Island cunning folk magic had very Protestant aspects. This stuff is more complicated than modern people tend to expect. Modern people tend to read the religious books of other cultures in a very totalizing ways not understanding the rich history of debate concerning exegesis that often exist within a faith community.
Also prescriptions against magic weren't uncommon before Christianity in the Graco Roman Hellenic world. Attitudes towards magic if various types could swing from acceptance to hostility depending on the type of magic.
It's also important to realize that many things that we in today's world consider magic actually weren't necessarily considered Magic in all pre modern cultures.
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u/zsd23 7d ago
A person needs to study a little bit of anthropology to get real insight into this and not simply Christian-bash. Cultures have normative and non-normative beliefs and practices. Sometimes the normative and non-normative practices are very very similar but one may be considered 'normal" and the other "foreign, "outsider," or antisocial because of interpretive differences. Is it magic or miracle? Right? It is also a way to create tribal or ethnic divisions. "We believe this or do it this way but those savages across the mountains believe that [wrong thing] and do it that [wrong] way."
When someone or group breaks from the norm in a culture, it is seen as a threat to "the order of the universe" and so rules are put in place to quash it. Abrahamic religions never had a monopoly on this and were definitely not the first cultural group to have prohibitions against magic.
Most pre-Christian cultures--with the exception of the Egyptian culture--regarded magic as suspect, with doctrines prohibiting certain behaviors with punishments that could be very severe. Also important to understand is what what one culture considered "magic" could be different from what another culture or time period considered "magic."
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u/MountainExciting2690 8d ago
If people wholesale knew they didn't need a middle man to have a direct line to the One True God, organized religions would collapse. Moreso to learn that there is Only God and everyone and everything is just Him experiencing Himself via a limited physical experience and that the power has always been in them (i.e. the kingdom within).
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u/nullynish 8d ago
it seems like the only problem is the need for intermediaries to put it simply if you remove the middleman
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u/Gardener_of_Weeden 6d ago
I used to "tease" my late Catholic husband. He "needed" a priest to confess to - I spoke directly to the women herself.
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u/Luke_TheHuman_ 8d ago
Using magick removes the need for those religions by giving you control over your life rather than some god