Magic: Did you mean...?

In ancient Egypt, if a woman were having difficulty conceiving a child, she might spend an evening in a Bes Chamber (also known as an incubation chamber) located within a temple. Bes was the god of childbirth, sexuality...

For the Greeks magic (mageia or goeteia) was a wide-ranging topic which involved spells and evil prayers (epoidai), curse tablets (katadesmoi), enhancing drugs and deadly poisons (pharmaka), amulets (periapta) and powerful...

Elements of Norse mythology abound in The Lord of the Rings, and none is so compelling as the ring itself. The One Ring is reminiscent of magic rings in Norse lore, especially Odin's Draupnir or Andvaranaut from the...

Magic and medicine in ancient Egypt were understood as gifts from the god Heka, who presided over both, and were used together – or interchangeably – by medical professionals in treating patients. 'Magic' was recognized...

Magic was ever-present in the wider Greco-Roman world. Spells and herbs, spirits and gods, curses and blessings, prophecies and oracles, they were all the domain of the...

In this talk I present some considerations about the use of runes in Norse sources and draw attention to how they were instrumental in occult and nationalist circles in the 19th century up to Nazi ideology. Hope you...

A ten-year project to study and digitise some 80,000 cases recorded by two famous astrological physicians has opened a wormhole into the everyday worries and desires of people...

Hekate, painting by Maximilian Pirner, 1901. A depiction of the Greek goddess Hekate, or Hecate, with her many symbols and faces in an art nouveau style. She is associated with the domains of magic, witchcraft, night, light...

Il Violino Magico, 'the magic violin', featuring violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini on a bed of clouds, being presented with a violin by the devil, lithograph on paper, by James Anthony Minasi, 1831.

Heka is the god of magic and medicine in ancient Egypt and is also the personification of magic itself. He is probably the most important god in Egyptian mythology but is often overlooked because his presence was so pervasive as to make...