The Beginning of Magic

As the serpent burns, Hui recites the words of power from the text. Starting with, Fire be upon thee Apep, thou enemy of Ra, he 

There have always been people with special powers that others look up to or go to for help. These men and women exist in all traditional tribal cultures and anthropologists, the scientists who study culture, have labeled them shamans. At times people have also called them witch doctors, medicine men, sorcerers, witches, or even magicians. 

Anthropological evidence suggests that prehistoric shamans practiced magic in the caves of southwestern Europe 40,000 years ago, and it is likely that the practice is older than that. Magic, therefore, is likely to be as old as the human race. 

Most prehistoric shamans were concerned with using magic to help with the success of the hunt. They painted pictures on the walls of caves of the types of animals that the hunters desired. It is believed that this practice was a type of sympathetic magic, based on the idea that like attracts like. By painting a picture of a deer or a bison, the prehistoric shaman hoped to draw the actual animal to the hunter. Perhaps he or she believed that the picture captured the animal s soul and that the body would follow. 

8 To control weather, especially when rain is needed 

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Hamer s work among the Jivaro did not stand alone. Since the beginnings of ethnographic reporting out of the Amazon there have been mmors and unconfirmed reports of magical excrement and... 

The profanation of the mushroom cult did not stop with the scientific investigations. The publication about the magic mushrooms unleashed an invasion of hippies and drug seekers into the Mazatec country, many of whom behaved badly, some even criminally. Another undesirable consequence was the beginning of true tourism in Huautla de Jimenez, whereby the originality of the place was eradicated. 

It is not improbable that more than one writer wrote under the name of Democritus, and that works of an alchemical character were written at a later period than the works on magic which Pliny alludes to, but even the latest period to which they can be ascribed is somewhere near the beginnings of our era.80... 

Paul Ehrlich, the father of immunology and chemotherapy, discovered Salvarsan, an arsenical magic bullet (a favorite phrase of his) used to treat syphilis. He hypothesized at the beginning of this century that it might be possible to find a dye that would selectively stain, or dye, a bacterial cell and thus destroy it. In 19321.G. Farbenindustrie patented a new azo dye, Prontosil, which they put through routine testing for chemotherapeutic activity when it was noted it had particular affinity for protein fibers like silk. 

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