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?
I think you bring up a really great point. I remember that this was the craze when Harry Potter was extremely popular. People started asking if Hogwarts was real and therefore, the whole wizarding world. Of course, the easy automatic reply is to say "of course it's not real, how could it be?" But if muggles were blind to magic and couldn't see the wizard world, then how would we truly know if we weren't magical ourselves? It would be meant to be hidden from us. How can you show evidence that something doesn't exist if you have no evidence to show that it does either? These passages we read remind me a lot of Greek mythology and the fact that mythological tales were created in order to explain the unknown. If you wanted to know why it rains, there was no scientific reasoning for why rain fell, but instead a God or Goddess was invented and there was a backstory to why that rain existed and what it means. Mythology was an answer and perhaps magic is the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI think that because there is so much detail, there are bits of "magic" that are real, but those weren't necessarily magic but earlier forms of science, medicine and alternative remedies. People truly did believe in it, whether it was actually real or not, and that's why so much information exists. Once people become invested in something, all of this information starts to accumulate and more people latch on and become followers. I'd call it far fetched that devils were appearing and tempting people to do evil, but I do think people would make mistakes and sin and instead of confessing their faults to a church or god, they would make up a figure to blame for their troubles. The devil was more of a scapegoat for believing in things that were not the current norm. Magic was a big umbrella term for all different types of solutions and creations, and even if they did not work, with enough people believing and being curious enough to try, that promise of magic was going to spread and certainly did.
I have always thought of magic the same way you have--broomsticks and wands, with the occasional magic trick, of course. But that was not the case. It was more spiritual with rituals. Almost scientific, as Logan mentioned. Although, I do think the people were gullible during the 13th century because of the punishments they came up with for people using "magic."
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