Attitude Adjustment
As I sat down to read chapters 2 and 3 of Kors and Peters,
something struck me as completely odd and it blew my mind. Apparently when,
monks, friars, nuns, and whoever else had total undeniable access to literature
of questionable origin, came across notions and writings of relation to
sorcery, magic, or anything of otherworldly nature, they didn’t just stop
reading or writing about it or even stop teaching it. These people, these godly
people, actually wrote about it, as it was big deal. This coming from many of
the same people who would’ve sooner burned a proponent of witchcraft or magic.
That’s insane. When I think of witchcraft of the olde (e to the end=old), I
think people being burned at the stake, tortured, or having their children (if
they had any) taken away in an effort to make them renounce this “evil” way of
life.
As I thought further and further into the matter of such
things, an idea struck me. The whole feeling towards magic and sorcery was not
always what it was during the days of yore. Much earlier before that,
monasteries and even the common people embraced the powers of magic towards
their own ends. In many early manuscripts, questionable cures of ailments were
openly written about and used. That isn’t even the strangest part: allusions to
the bible and its ideas sprung out from the same pages of evil and witchery.
Then, the ideas of magic and its rituals and spells were said to be a “criminal
sin” if even talked about (Kors/Peters, 59). And now, in 2015, people have parades
and covens based on the ancient arts and rituals of earth magic and its sub
disciplines. I mean seriously people MAKE UP YOUR MINDS!!
This whole stage of acceptance afterwords all came from the
translated texts of Arabic origins now made widely available due to the
printing press and increased curiosity over all things natural, theological,
philosophical, musical, mathematical, and supernatural and all and everything
in between. The people of the far, middle, and near east, seemed to be much
more open to all things both physical and spiritual. This openness to test everything
for the sake of knowledge ended up rubbing off big time in their written works.
These ended up translated and being more widely available than they had been in
previous years and could be found nearly everywhere. That compounded with the
learning people began to be getting from these Arabic texts on alchemy, astrology
and the works ended up giving us that many more amateur witches and wizards and
that many more people that you’d much rather not cut in front of for fear of
being turned into a newt or better yet a sack of potatoes. People definitely
changed their attitudes towards otherworldly matters: now if it was for better
or for worse, that’s for you to decide…
