The Philosophy of Magic

Many Western magicians, from the Renaissance to the present, have used Egypt as a model for their practice. Many other traditions from the Middle East also contributed to Western magical practice. The synthesis of these traditions took place in Alexandria, Egypt, in the first to the third centuries after the birth of Christ. 

The Middle Eastern traditions stem from the ancient civilizations of the area known as the Fertile Crescent. This area stretches from the eastern Mediterranean coast that is now part of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, to the fertile lands that exist between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers as they flow to the Persian Gulf. To the ancient Greeks this eastern end was known as Mesopotamia and it is now part of Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Unlike Egypt, with its insular and stable culture, the Fertile Crescent was inhabited by several cultures, which migrated, conquered, and merged over the centuries. 

The first civilized people in this area were the Sumerians, who settled in the southern region of Mesopotamia about 6,000 to 7,000 years ago. The Sumerians had an advanced culture with distinctive arts and urban centers. Around 3500 b.c.e. they became the first people to develop writing and therefore the first to leave historic records. Another of their achievements was the construction of artificial mountains in the form of step pyramids called ziggurats, which they used to observe the sky and worship their gods who lived there. 

In 2350 b.c.e. the Akkadians, the first Semitic people (people who spoke a Semitic language, which is related to modern Hebrew and 

During this period, sometime between 2000 and 1825 b.c.e., the patriarch of the Hebrew people, Abraham, left the Babylonian city of Ur and brought his people to the other end of the Fertile Crescent, to what is now Israel. There they founded a religion that focused on their one tribal god to the exclusion of all others. This was the beginning of the monotheistic biblical tradition that led to the creation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 

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Paracelsus.The archidoxes of magic Of the supreme mysteries of nature Of the spirits of the planets Of the secrets of alchemy Of occult philosophy The mysteries of the twelve signs of the zodiack The magical cure of diseases Of celestial medicines / Paracelsus [translated from the Latin by Robert Turner], 2nd English ed. [i.e. 1st English ed. reprinted ed. Translated by Robert Turner. London 1656 reprint, London New York Askin Publishers Samuel Weiser, 1975. 162, [29] p. 

Agrippa von Nettesheim, Henry Cornelius. The Philosophy of Natural Magic. 1531. 

Brian Copenhaver, "Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus, and the Problem of a Philosophy of Magic in the Renaissance," in Heimeticism in the Renaissance (see 6A, above), pp.79-110. 

For the history of this dispute Debus, Chemical Philosophy (1977), 1, 129-34. Also see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, multivol. (New York Columbia University Press, second reprint, 1953), 5, 652-67. 

Paracelsus. Paracelsus of the supreme mysteries of Nature. Of the spirits of the planets. [Of] occult philosophy. The magical, sympa-thetical, and antipathetical cure of wounds and diseases. The mysteries Iof the twelve signs of the Zodiack. Englished by R. Turner. .. London Printed by J.C. forN. Brook and J. Harison and are to be sold at their shops at the Angel in Comhil, and the holy Lamb neer the East-end of Pauls, 1656. 10 pi, 158, [4] p. 

Easlea, Brian. Witch hunting, magic and the new philosophy an introduction to the debates of the scientific revolution 1450-1750. Sussex Harvester P, 1980. 

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