Witches. Witches EVERYWHERE.

I noticed a few repeating themes in this week's readings. One in particular was the subject of "night rides" in which witches perceive themselves to go traveling across vast distances, accompanied by other witches and a pagan god, usually Diana. Regino of Prum, Burchard of Worms and even Aquinas reference these night rides in almost exactly the same terms. Regino and Burchard seem to refute the possibility, saying they're illusions cast on witches by demons, but Aquinas doesn't comment on whether or not such things actually happen. These texts are only a few centuries apart, with Regino writing first. I have to wonder whether these beliefs in night rides were so widespread, and Christian theological beliefs so consistently aligned against them, that all three writers would have addressed them separately in similar terms, or if they had in fact read each other's works and were committing some kind of theological plagiarism. That said, I doubt plagiarism actually mattered much to medieval theologians - what does a little copy and paste here and there matter so long as it's the word of God?
The other major theme I noticed was impotence. Medieval thinkers spent an awful lot of time dealing with the idea that the infliction of impotence was one of the foremost uses of magic. It's very easy to look at this and think that medieval people were just incapable of accepting that they were having their own set of problems and were trying to cast blame elsewhere, but the sheer amount of thought and argument put into "proving" that it was the work of witches and sorcerers and demons and whatever else suggests to me that there was a very strong belief in these powers. It wasn't that they were casting blame for impotence onto things they invented on the spot. Rather, belief in witches was already so strong that if someone was impotent, it MUST have been a witch's fault. I think this is something totally alien to most modern readers who haven't grown up with that kind of cultural paranoia. The closest thing I can compare it to in modern memory is the Red Scare in the '50s, but I don't think even that approaches the perceived pervasiveness of witchcraft in the medieval mindset.

As a side note, I thought it was funny how light most of Burchard of Worms' suggested punishments seemed to be - when he's specific, it's mostly just bread and water for a few weeks. That said, he's not specific very often. I'd be interested to know exactly when the "appointed days" for penance are, and what exactly that penance was supposed to entail.

Help me, Lawd! Help me!

Crazy chapters, right? Some of these readings could even make one think that witch craft was and IS real.

Have you ever been skeptical of the thought of witch craft or magic? The idea has always been there, but I have never really thought it were real because I thought of magic as; wands, cauldrons, and broom sticks. As of recent, I started thinking about magic as rituals or seances. Yeah, I have seen Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and The Wizard of Oz, but I never thought anything of it.

The fact that these readings are so in depth about what a magi, witch, or wizard has done and what their punishment should be, makes me rethink my ideas about magic being real. The one reading, specifically, that has made me rethink my ideas about magic, is the passage from Buchard of Worms. His crime and punishment passage was so in depth with what someone has done and what they should do to heal themselves and come back to Christ, it made me wonder if magic was actually real, or if these people in the 13th century were on drugs or really gullible.

Magic involved herbs and sayings in the 13th century-- also illusions and spells, but it also involved demons. To believe in demons, most people were to believe in God as well. The reason magic may not be believed in so much as in the 13th century may be that more people are too distracted to believe in something or just won't believe in something they can not see. 

God and following astrology is basically all that the people in medieval times made time for. There was not much to take up their time, but church and scripture was always there. With the fear of the wrath of Christ, there was a fear of demons deceiving and taking over the population of the earth. This caused a huge fear of evil being used and walking the earth. One passage in chapter two was a story about a resident leaving food out for "nightly visitors." The residents believed that the visitors were their neighbors, but they were demons who made the home owners think they were their neighbors. This idea scared a lot of people and made them more cautious about Magic and casting spells.

Christianity and the way times were and how the times are now, made a difference on the belief of magic, demons, and even the power or existence of God. Do you believe in magic?

Whether you should do penance (Spoiler: the answer is "yes")

Reading chapters 2 and 3 of the Kors/Peters book, all I could think was, "For people who condemn demons and magical practices, you saints and holy writers sure know an awful lot about the particulars of how they interact with humans."

"Hey, so how do I summon the Devil? Oh, uh, it's just to make sure no one will do it."
(Source: www.traditionalcatholicmass.com)

The evolution of discovering the prevalence of magical practices, addressing them, and universally condemning them I found particularly interesting.  Before the 14th century, magic was considered "singular and episodic, one more manifestation of Satan's usually unsuccessful attempts to tempt mankind from orthodox belief and practice." (p. 59) And yet we have a prominent figure in early(ish) Christianity, Thomas Aquinas, part of whose writings in the 13th century were meant to "explain precisely how it was possible for demons to influence human actions." (p. 88)  It seems like the clergy during this time period wanted magic and demons to be compartmentalized, dealt with, and left behind as they moved on to more important things.  If they described exactly how these "episodic" incidents happened, for example the nature of demons and the extent of how they were able to tempt man, then righteous men (I almost typed "and women" there regarding 13th century Christianity, silly me!) would rise up against any temptation, ever again, because they would know how a demon would go about tempting them.

Speaking of my "and women" comment up there - there were so many descriptions in these chapters of how women were the ones who were usually corrupted by magic, and men only occasionally, and only if they were "weak." Not cool, people. Get over your superiority (even though I know you won't for hundreds of years. If that.)

Considering the eventual acceptance of magic as a widespread (or at least, more widely noticed) event, I was very surprised to read about the penances for various sinful magical practices. It is firmly established that magic and communing with demons is a sin of varying degree based on the results of the magic, but I was expecting more "Burn the heretics at the stake!" and less "Eat bread and water for ten days or so."  In fact, in some cases using demons seems okay - even though it's a grave sin, it might be permitted to use them and then just ask for forgiveness, even if you know you're sinning. (p. 89, paragraphs 2-3) Further, according to Augustine, "all divinations are to be avoided; although physical death ought not to be inflicted without grave cause." (p.89) I wonder when the pivotal shift occurred to go from (comparatively) light punishment and repentance at this time to death by burning in the 17th century.

"Have you ever felt like you were just born in the wrong time period?"
(Source: www.whenintime.com)

Another thought:  while invoking Christ or the cross for various incantations or charms did happen in our other readings from Keickhefer, I feel like the magic in those readings was much more generally secular in nature.  One of the big themes throughout Thomas Aquinas' writing selections was that all magical things come from demons, and all demons and magics are only permitted to act by God. I thought this was an interesting rationalization or analogy for how bad things are allowed to happen to good people - everything is God's will, be it good, bad, or ugly. Whatever you have to say to make yourself feel better, Mr. A.

...was it God's will that I posted a cat video?

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…

Arguing about Magic

In this weeks reading, Rachel forgets all about the fanciful, dark, and magical adventure this book is supposed to be as she becomes very confused and frustrated at the arguments and opinions of various authors in the text. First of all, Burchard of Worms somehow ends up saying something about how magical acts cannot happen directly on the body, with no other sources but some examples where that thing doesn't happen, none of which appear to actually say it's impossible. Then, Ralph of Coggeshall implies near the end of his work that's it's better to renounce what you believe in out of fear of death instead of nobly standing your ground, but only when you're not Christian or Jesus himself. Finally, in chapter 3 Thomas Aquinas truly embodies the spirit of modern argumentative reading by using questionable sources and manipulative logic to ultimately create something genuinely boring and hard to read.

As for my opinion on Burchard's text, I will admit I've never actually read any of the stories he has referenced and therefore don't know for a fact that none of them explicitly related the impossibility of magical acts happening directly upon the body. However, Burchard introduces them in the context of the magical acts occurring in the soul as opposed to the body, but only that much doesn't matter because correlation does not equal causation SIR, and that is quite the leap of logic either way.

My anger towards Ralph probably stems from my deep, deep hatred of confirmation bias, of which this is a prime example. Obviously, since he, as well as many other people, believe Christianity to be the one true religion, when Christians do noble deeds it's seen as wonderful and Holy, but if someone else does something the exact same way it's seen as evil and misguided. Intolerance breeds hatred, so not cool bro.

Other than picking up a few instances of him making some major assumptions (such as the validity of his sources, but I won't go too much into that because everyone has to make that assumption to an extent), and watching him clearly play with his reasoning in a very particular way to make his point ("Planets can't affect intellect because they don't have brains" somehow doesn't seem like a very solid foundation when you're talking about MAGIC), I don't really have much to say about him because he was just so boring to try and read through his stuff that I really don't want to take the time and effort to sort through every painful detail of his painfully long text just to get even more irritated at him.

In the end, my nature as a math major who must know how to write proper logical proofs, as well as a logic puzzle aficionado, has clouded my eyes to the actual content of the material and made me unnecessarily angry at dead people not making sense because that's not a waste of my energy or anything. Now Rachel is going to go take some ibuprofen to quell the raging headache that has spurred from reading all of that and calm herself with a nice murder mystery.